XCOM 2

wow i just got my ass handed to me. Everything was going fine on my classic ironman game. Then i pop a very hard resistance mission. I have plasma rifles and a couple of psionics,, so think piece of cake. How wrong i was. The first group was a nice easy warm up of the angelic alien, a advent commander and an elite advent soldier. Dispatched them fairly easy. Then just as the fight was about to finish, 2 new packs come in to the fray. And i think they were called Andrommedons or something. Anyway, watch out for them. I put one in stasis but couldnt do anyting about the other one, which went and face palmed my major grenadier and destroying his cover. Then the lowly elite advent soldier crit my grenadier and killed him. So thats a 16 mission and 34 kill soldier dead. Then i kill one of the andrommedons and stun the other but wait, its coming back to life. Turns out its not dead after all, it almost kills my medic, and becasue i have to kill it again whilst it spews acid out all over the place, the other one has a chance to wake up and then it shoots a glob of acid out and kills my best hacking specialist. So thats 2 of most experienced gone. How sad :(

I did have an interesting victory though. I managed to sneak past the whole map escorting the VIP and only had to kill a couple of mutons and that blinking alien at the end:

Spoiler :
 
I pretty much agree with everything you said. The only place I would offer a contrary opinion is with your description of the ranger as the best balanced class. I consider some of the perks in his left hand tree, like Phantom, to be autopicks, and swords are just plain worse than the shotgun unless you take ALL of the sword perks. Without getting all of the perks, the sword does less damage, has less accuracy at point blank range, can't take weapon mods, and gets your soldier one-shotted if you try to use it against certain enemies who counter melee attacks. You have to specifically specialize only in the sword perks for it to be any good, and considering some of the great perks you have to give up to do that, I just don't see why you would want to. I built two rangers, one specializing in each side of the tree, and the one specced into the left side is a FAR more effective soldier on the ground. Sword spec seems fun on paper but in practice it's hard to use requires a lot more effort and babysitting just to get it to do something that the shotgun can do without the extra effort.

Phantom is the only autopick I've seen so far. I agree with your points about the sword (and it's usually fatal to use simply because it leaves the Ranger in an exposed position - if he could use it as a first action and then move but not shoot or attack again with his second, it would be improved), but it is an automatic hit against enemies without counterattack (why it has a % to hit I don't know, I've yet to see it miss), it seems to have less variance in the damage it deals, and it doesn't use ammo, every one of which is a relevant consideration. And in principle the arc blade can be used as a stun weapon, though so far I haven't seen that - it's killed everything I've used it against.

Just had a fantastic black site mission, and - back to the Specialist - my combat specialist was an all-star (though all three mission survivors - the others being my sharpshooter sergeant and primary grenadier - all did good work). Shut down two mechs (failed to shut down a third - which was a reinforcement - but fortunately it didn't do a lot), destroyed a turret with the first combat GREMLIN attack and killed a 1-health Sectoid (hiding at the 30% to hit range for my other soldiers while it was mind-controlling my sniper) with the second, and finally disabling a turret to allow my team to escape with the vial. On top of killing a fair few enemies the old-fashioned way with his assault rifle (something he'll be even better at in future, since as a reward for his efforts he became my first soldier with an AWC promotion, granting Death from Above).

Given that if those first two mechs had been in the fight I'd likely have either lost or lost soldiers, I really don't think the Specialist is a replaceable class as tesb suggested (never mind that it's just such a damn fun way to play).
 
Just finished the game, lost no one on the last mission which is insane btw.
I don't know how i could have finished that mission without psi ops

The mechs and turrets I've faced aren't that formidable, but it's still valuable to shut them down for free. Combat GREMLINS either outright kill small robotic targets (and presumably do more when upgraded), and against anyone else act like a pistol shot (again, without upgrades) with 100% chance to hit and squadsight, which is solid for finishing off wounded enemies without needing to get within grenade range. The scanner is fine for evading blobs while concealed at the start of the mission, since it seems to point out locations across the map.
later in the game you get buildable munitions and bombs that deal pretty well with robotic enemies. my a-team was 2 grenadiers, 2 psi ops, 1 specialist and 1 ranger. if i would have farmed more on the campaign map i would have probably replaced the specialist with another psi ops, probably the ranger too. anyways the specialist was not that useless on the last mission as he got some critical overwatch chains with the guardian trait. my main problem with the specialist is that most of his abilities are limited.

regarding swords: the main problem is that you can get to 100%+ hit and 100+% crit chance with shotguns, i.e. with rapid fire i can deal 30-40 damage to a single target in one round. swords are good to clear a bunch of weakened enemies but there are a lot of classes that can deal with those, however there are certain enemies where you need absurd amounts of burst damage.

edit:
as for story i think the ending was bad because it left with a cliffhanger and also went into super saiyan territory. i also think the capaign map should have captured the feel of an insurgent/resistance movement better. there are a lot of missions where you ambush advent trains, vips and facilities yet there is nothing on the strategic layer that leads to those missions, they just come by passively. personally i would have liked a strategic layer where you actually plan ambushes, i.e. the focus would not be to build a resistance movement, but to actively search for weak spots of the advent administration. i also did not like that for a game with aliens there are very little ufo missions. with advent (i.e. "humans") being the most numerous enemies around i sometimes missed the classical alien setting.
 
On classes:

I think the ranger is a decent early finisher with the sword. But once you get further into the tree the sword gets totally outplayed by the shotgun. Which is quite early on. I kind of see though that the ranger is your maximum damage unit, which is useful for really powerful enemies. So it is always worth having one on your team.

The Grenadier is the most versatile class, and always worth having at least 1 if not 2 in your squad. They are also the best at destroying cover, which is crucial.

The specialist is an interesting class. To begin with I made one medic and one hacker. Now I am approaching the end (I hope – unless something terrible happens again like my last mission), I think the medic is actually inferior in almost every way. The combat hacker, in contrast, is actually very useful. Not so much for the hacking, although if you had a decent tech score then it would make hacks more viable. I just think that usually the negative consequence of a failed hack is usually too bad a thing to contemplate. Especially on timed missions. Last failed hack attempt I had spawned a heavy mech, a regular mech, and a heavy stun lancer. And that is no joke. I was trying to get some extra intel at an 80% chance. But honestly it really wasn’t worth that 20% chance. I barely made it out alive managing to evac the VIP with turn to remain and an unconscious soldier in tow. But combat protocol, although it doesn’t do that much damage, it does ignore armour and properly upgraded is decent against armoured units and also useful at finishing.

The sharpshooter I think is probably the worst class, aside from the medic. They do get a decent amount of kills, and kill zone is a decent perk when you have a swarm of enemies and combined with an upgraded clip size and scope. The reduced power of squadsight and higher number of hitpoints though make snipers less devastating than they were in EU/EW.

Psionics is the most powerful. They allow you to control a battlefield. Stasis is hands down the best perk. It basically reduces enemy effectiveness by 33% for most pods. The others are pretty decent as well.

I think the squad makeup of:

2 psi ops
1 grenadier
1 ranger
1 specialist
1 sharp shooter

Is pretty best for most missions. Sharshooters are good if you can get them a good vantage point up high. But that’s not always possible on all maps. On black sites though you might want to sub in a grenadier.

On items:

Assuming the above is correct, then I think you should can the medic. Their best ability is probably revive for when stun lancers knock you unconscious. So maybe worth taking on missions with a timer. If you don’t though, then you should really take a medikit for at least 2 members of the squad. That means only one item slot with predator armour. I think using both slots on the sniper and 1 each on the grenadiers is probably best. But not sold either way.

On radio relays:

I think you need to place these strategically aside from the 3 you can usually place in your starting area. It depends on how much intel you have to spare. But intel costs double without a radio nearby and the cost goes up with each mast, so something to bear in mind. This is more of a problem on classic difficulty as you have fewer jumps you can make in a web, instead being forced to use a more linier route to your goal. I think on normal you can jump from the US to western Europe no problem. You cant on classic, you have to go through asia. So to reach western Europe with no masts would cost you a huge amount of intel. And intel is better spent in the black market.

On building:

This is a tricky one. I think it is a viable route to try and max out your engineers and plunge straight for the nearest power core, assigning multiple engineers to each excavation and rushing the power plant once complete. That leaves you enough money to buy one resistance com and the guerrilla tactics centre, which should be built off the bat. The workshop should be built on the third tier down (middle column) just about your power cores (assuming thats where they are). That gives your gremlins access to 4 rooms, which is plenty. Top row should be AWC/Psionics, Guerrilla warfare and Proving grounds (IMO).

On combat:

There is a marked difference on classic. Either that or I was just lucky on normal. But enemy abilities activate much more frequently. Stun lancers used to be an annoyance. On classic they can really screw you over knocking your troops unconscious about 25% of the time. Then you have to carry them, and that basically removes 2 soldiers from your squad. But can be satisfying if you somehow manage to evac all your troops.

On research:

Top priority should be magnetic weapons and plate armour. Take the armour first if you can. An extra item really helps. Good utility items include the mimic beacon (faceless autopsy), which basically gives you a free turn if thrown correctly. The flashbang can also help early on in a pinch. You can wait on the skulljack. Its more difficult, but certainly doable later on.

On the black site:

I waited until I had predator gear and magnetic weapons for the first black site, and my counter is fine. So I don’t really see a reason to deviate from this. You can get a 50%+ to research time on either magnetic or plate armour from the black market, so try for that if you can.

On missions:

IMO the most important are supply line missions. These net you a huge amount of gear and corpses and are not to be missed out on.
 
Swords sadly suck indeed :(

Swords are ok in the very early game, when your opponents are weak enough that it can one shot kill them, especially if you get the first ability that gives you +2 damage. But later in the game, they become obsolete. But in the beginning of the game, I find that the sword can give me a guaranteed kill when a lot of my rookies cannot. There is a "rookie mistake" (pardon the pun) that newbies have to watch out for though. It can be very tempting to go for that guaranteed kill (88% chance of kill versus a 49% chance of only inflicting 3 points of damage with a rifle shot) but it can leave your ranger dangerously exposed after the melee attack if you are not careful. I made that mistake in my first mission ever. I saw an opportunity for my ranger to guarantee a kill against a sectoid. I took it without realizing that it left my ranger out of cover. I got the kill but on the next turn, a couple advent soldiers dropped in and killed my ranger.
 
Yea I think the sword route could be improved by removing run and gun and having a perk along the lines of:

Decapitation - a 50% chance your enemy is killed outright from a sword strike regardless of health. That might seem op, but I don't think it is really. It's like a really good version of the weapon mod that gives you a 5-10% chance of a kill with a standard shot.

I would also put in:

Parry - the first attack that hits after a sword strike is guaranteed to be dodged by the ranger (doing minimal damage like the viper perk)
 
Does the Doom Clock affect the strength of the aliens?

A retaliation strike was imminent. I scanned through a few days and started the mission. It was a bad loss so I restored to where it was merely imminent. This time I attacked the black site, hoping it would delay the retaliation. The doom clock went down. When the retaliation mission came up again, the enemies were less powerful than previously.
 
I believe i am gearing up for the end game. I have completed one of the dark chamber missions anyway. And i am also seeing sectopods. Which totally wreck the scenery, which is quite amusing to watch. It is really important you equip your troops with EMP grenades and/or blue jacketed rounds later in the game against robotics. Sectopods have about 6 or 7 armor points, which is pretty nasty. But one EMP grenade totally wrecks them.

I am a bit surprised at how late chryssalids arrive on to the scene. And it seems that it is even more important than ever to have a spare medikit ready just in case. The game is long as well. Much longer than vanilla. I reckon its probably twice the length as a guesstimate. Be interesting to see how quick people finish it and our relative finish times. Post your screenies of the victory screen when you're done. :king:
 
Another "obvious" observation: this game really is all about your soldiers. They are your #1 resource. If you are promoting your soldiers and getting new weapons and armor "on schedule", you are most likely going to win. My first campaign, I had some devastating losses which forced me to go back to rookies. I had to spend valuable supplies just to keep my squad full and as a result, I fell behind in terms of upgrading my weapons and armor. As a result, I started losing battles badly because my soldiers were not strong enough against the aliens. The losses only made my squad weaker and I lost the campaign. My second campaign, I got some key wins, promoted my squad several times. I now have magnetic weapons and my squad is pretty strong. I am doing much better against the aliens. The magnetic weapons are really making a difference.
 
I believe i am gearing up for the end game. I have completed one of the dark chamber missions anyway. And i am also seeing sectopods. Which totally wreck the scenery, which is quite amusing to watch. It is really important you equip your troops with EMP grenades and/or blue jacketed rounds later in the game against robotics. Sectopods have about 6 or 7 armor points, which is pretty nasty. But one EMP grenade totally wrecks them.

I am a bit surprised at how late chryssalids arrive on to the scene. And it seems that it is even more important than ever to have a spare medikit ready just in case. The game is long as well. Much longer than vanilla. I reckon its probably twice the length as a guesstimate. Be interesting to see how quick people finish it and our relative finish times. Post your screenies of the victory screen when you're done. :king:

I was surprised in that regard about the chryssies too. They are a lot less terrifying in this game because by the time they show up they're too weak to be much of a threat. They don't even do that much damage anymore, one of my soldiers got hit by one last night and it did a whopping 4 damage. They can also miss entirely now, the same soldier got attacked by a second one in the same round and it just missed. I should note that I fought a sectopod several missions before I even encountered a single chryssalid. Have a medkit somewhere in case someone gets poisoned and they're no trouble at all. Game has some weird balance issues.

I learned last night that I will never, ever play with Ironman enabled (well, not until the game is patched). Last night I did my first Avenger defense mission. I destroyed the scrambler thing that was preventing me from taking off, and then started retreating back to the ramp so that we could fly away. At this time the game decided, eh, why wait for the player to actually push the takeoff button, let's just do it. All of my troops were still off the ramp and the avenger took off on it's own. 9 troops just captured because of a bug. Thank the FSM that I am not playing Ironman so I was able to load a previous save. This is worse than the time one of my grenadiers autonomously decided to launch a grenade up my sniper's ass after I told him to go on overwatch. The bugs and poor performance of this game in general are incredibly frustrating, I wouldn't even be playing it if the gameplay wasn't so fan-freaking-tastic.
 
I was surprised in that regard about the chryssies too. They are a lot less terrifying in this game because by the time they show up they're too weak to be much of a threat. They don't even do that much damage anymore, one of my soldiers got hit by one last night and it did a whopping 4 damage. They can also miss entirely now, the same soldier got attacked by a second one in the same round and it just missed. I should note that I fought a sectopod several missions before I even encountered a single chryssalid. Have a medkit somewhere in case someone gets poisoned and they're no trouble at all. Game has some weird balance issues.

I learned last night that I will never, ever play with Ironman enabled (well, not until the game is patched). Last night I did my first Avenger defense mission. I destroyed the scrambler thing that was preventing me from taking off, and then started retreating back to the ramp so that we could fly away. At this time the game decided, eh, why wait for the player to actually push the takeoff button, let's just do it. All of my troops were still off the ramp and the avenger took off on it's own. 9 troops just captured because of a bug. Thank the FSM that I am not playing Ironman so I was able to load a previous save. This is worse than the time one of my grenadiers autonomously decided to launch a grenade up my sniper's ass after I told him to go on overwatch. The bugs and poor performance of this game in general are incredibly frustrating, I wouldn't even be playing it if the gameplay wasn't so fan-freaking-tastic.

I had a bug that bust my game too. I was not that far through a normal game. But i started again on Classic. This time though i did start on ironman. So if it breaks now then i will be really pissed. In general though i dont think its half as bad as some are making out. I think most of the moaners are trying to play it on max settings, cant, and then say its a bug. When really it is nothing of the sort. I had to turn mine down to low settings, but it is much more stable now.

Tend to agree about chryssalids. I think they look better than vanilla (purple - like wtf). But they dont have a huge amount of hitpoints. Worst thing they do is burrow, which isnt so bad as you should have scanners and/or battle scanners, so you can at least see the area they are messing around.
 
I had a bug. It did not quite break my game fortunately. When the Viper grabbed one of my soldiers with the tongue snatching thing, my soldier mysteriously popped up on the other side of the map. When the viper died, my soldier snapped back to where the viper had been.
 
I think the problem with x com is that because the game is so intense, and often the margins are so fine, is the minor bugs are felt so much harder. That and a lot of people tend to like ironman mode. So it's a but unforgiving. I have not seen the flanking or teleporting bug like in vanilla though.
 
I think the problem with x com is that because the game is so intense, and often the margins are so fine, is the minor bugs are felt so much harder. That and a lot of people tend to like ironman mode. So it's a but unforgiving. I have not seen the flanking or teleporting bug like in vanilla though.

If I'm playing Ironman I'll take the flanking or teleporting bug any day of the week over the "mission where you have to manually extract your guys decides to end itself early stranding them all on the ground" bug. If I had been playing Ironman when that happened it would have been indistinguishable from my save just deleting itself, there would have been no recovery.
 
I had a snakeman bind a ranger, but the ranger had bladestorm, so she made a melee attack against the snakeman killing her. For a few seconds she had the "Bound" animation without the snakeman there.
 
If I'm playing Ironman I'll take the flanking or teleporting bug any day of the week over the "mission where you have to manually extract your guys decides to end itself early stranding them all on the ground" bug. If I had been playing Ironman when that happened it would have been indistinguishable from my save just deleting itself, there would have been no recovery.

I just encountered a bug I like less than either - all my Geoscape saved games reverted to the same point in the campaign I passed a couple of (real-time) days ago. Given that it seems from the point I reached that my inability to hire a scientist for the first three months set me too far behind to recover the game, I'd rather restart than go through that one again. Shame as I was further ahead than I'd previously got in a campaign (and just encountered the unpleasant surprise that was the Codex).
 
On classes:

I think the ranger is a decent early finisher with the sword. But once you get further into the tree the sword gets totally outplayed by the shotgun. Which is quite early on. I kind of see though that the ranger is your maximum damage unit, which is useful for really powerful enemies. So it is always worth having one on your team.

The Grenadier is the most versatile class, and always worth having at least 1 if not 2 in your squad. They are also the best at destroying cover, which is crucial.

The specialist is an interesting class. To begin with I made one medic and one hacker. Now I am approaching the end (I hope – unless something terrible happens again like my last mission), I think the medic is actually inferior in almost every way.

That's my experience as well. I lost my combat hacker and was left with a medic who basically does nothing. You even have joke options on the tree like the non-choice between giving that soldier covering fire and giving him the ability to give any soldier, with any weapon (such as the grenadier suppressing an alien, or a ranger at close range) covering fire with a meaningless 1-turn cooldown as a cost (since you don't use aid protocol that often anyway).

The combat hacker, in contrast, is actually very useful. Not so much for the hacking, although if you had a decent tech score then it would make hacks more viable.

It's a shame hacking skill is linked to level and doesn't increase with experience hacking.
 
Yea I think the sword route could be improved by removing run and gun and having a perk along the lines of:

Decapitation - a 50% chance your enemy is killed outright from a sword strike regardless of health. That might seem op, but I don't think it is really. It's like a really good version of the weapon mod that gives you a 5-10% chance of a kill with a standard shot.

I would also put in:

Parry - the first attack that hits after a sword strike is guaranteed to be dodged by the ranger (doing minimal damage like the viper perk)

I like the ideas, but would drop decapitation to 20% (even then it's not all that useful since swords are too risky to use given that they always leave the soldier out of cover, and you'll only ever use them when you get to kill an opponent in one hit anyway) and make Parry provide immunity from counterattack damage instead of the perk you suggest.

What the sword ranger really needs (if it doesn't have it - still haven't reached the top of the tree) is an ability to either let it move after attacking with a sword, or one that will automatically move it to the nearest cover as a free move after killing an enemy with the sword (which would work like a panicked soldier seeking cover).
 
This might be another "newbie" tip (I am new to XCOM). But you really have to pick your missions carefully. I've been accepting every mission. I've been winning most of the missions but now the avatar project is only 2 pips away from being complete. So, accepting all those missions means that it is probably too late now to stop the avatar project. Also, although I won most of the missions and have gotten lots of goodies, I did take losses. And I suffered my first major loss (lost 4/5 soldiers) in a very difficult retaliation mission. So, now I will have to go into the black site mission with my second tier squad. I do have predator armor and gauss weapons but if the black site mission is anything like the relation mission, I am going to get creamed. We shall see but I am afraid it is game over. So the lesson is pick your battles. The fewer the battles, the less likely you will take losses and the more you can focus instead on doing black site missions sooner to avoid letting the counter get so high.

Dang this game is hard.
 
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