XCOM 2

[ImperialGuard]

Here's a gift on the first retaliation mission


EDIT....

I actually don't know how to embed an image



would someone mind telling me how? thanks

 

[sherbz]

Here's a gift on the first retaliation mission


EDIT....

I actually don't know how to embed an image



would someone mind telling me how? thanks

If it's on steam, go to your screen library and open up the image. Make sure you have clicked at least a few times on the screenshot. Then right click, I think it's copy page url (might be link), then on forum just insert image and past the url. Wrap spoilers round pictures though as they mess with some peoples filtering systems at work.

 

[BvBPL]

XCOM 2 Tactical Tips




Plan Your Turns.

Take a few seconds to evaluate the situation before acting. Prioritize your targets and goals. Try to figure out who can get to what good cover. Make a plan and then develop a back up plan. Think, then act.

Also take the time to figure out how you will approach the objective. Imagine landing and finding your objective is across a plaza enclosed by buildings on either side. The fast way may be through the plaza, but you might be better served going through the buildings.

Your goals in tactical combat.

Emphasis should be placed upon eliminating or disabling as many units as you can in a single turn. This means concentrated fire on a limited number of enemy units instead of spreading the damage around and making them easier to take out the next turn. Instead of saying "how can I use my munitions effectively to deal the most damage over all," think about how you can defeat as many units as possible, even if it appears to be an overuse of a resource.

For example, say you are up against two units say an officer w/ full health and a trooper w/ one health. Your sniper has one shot left. Your sniper can reliably wound the officer or reliably kill the trooper. Kill the trooper. Even though a sniper bullet is over kill against the one health trooper, killing the trooper ensures one less enemy unit next turn. Even if you expect to have difficulty defeating the officer next turn, killing the trooper ensures the future safety of your own units more than wounding the officer.

In addition, prioritize enemies that may disable your troops. Stun lancers, vipers, and sectoids can all easily remove a unit from play for a turn despite doing relatively low damage. Mutons, Andromedeans, and Berserkers I think also can knock your guys out w/ their melee attacks, albeit less reliably. Deal with those enemies first even if it means leaving a MEC around. The MEC is probably less likely to kill your units than a stun lancer is to knock them unconscious. It is worth noting that dealing with these units need not mean killing them. Throwing a flash bang is effective.

Don't use one unit's actions all at once.

Moving your grenadier forward will give you a good shot with a grenade on your enemies. You can then move your other units forward and have them shoot at the enemy. Okay, but that's not the order of operations you should do.

Instead, move your grenadier into position, then move your other units forward, and then go back to your grenadier for the grenade and use the other units to attack. When possible, you want to take all first actions you can before taking second actions that end your characters' turns. This enables your units to react.


Move forward first.

When moving, move as far forward as you are going to that turn as your first action. If you are going to move forward with your second action as well, move as far forward as your are going to with that second action first. There's a strong feeling that your should edge your back troops forward first under the cover of your front guys. That's not a necessary tactic in a turn based game. It is also tempting to perpetually edge guys forward on the assumption that there probably isn't any enemies there to activate. Sooner or later, you will be wrong about that assumption, and you'll wind up activating a pod with your last guy's movement.

Use your units to set up other units for success.

Grenadiers are often best used not to do damage, but to set up enemies for other units. Using a grenade to blow up cover enables your other units to better engage enemies. Taking away cover increases aim by 20 or 40 and offers a 40% chance to crit.

Take the high ground.

Height advantage gives a +20 to aim. That negates the bonus to defense from being in half cover. The high ground is worth seeking out.

Use the environment.

XCOM 2 offers a lot of ability to mess with the environment. Grenades and explosives can reliably destroy many pieces of the environment. It is worthy examining how you can use that to your advantage. For example, you can use a grenade to blow up the floor from under a band on a roof top. Bear in mind how your explosives can or cannot destroy various pieces of cover as well.

Use your items.

They don't pay you to bring them home. Don't be stingy.

 

[sherbz]

I think the drop phase is the most crucial in this game. If you mess it up then it call all go south very quickly. Ideally you want everyone in place after they have had a blue move and your sniper has not moved at all. Your ranger with phantom should have both moves left to deal with potential stragglers when you break concealment. It is crucially important that you only trigger one pod when you break concealment unless they are all weak. 6 enemies means someone is almost bound to survive, so you run the risk of getting shot. High ground is best as it enables you to get closer without being seen. Take your opening shot with the highest %, and if no chance of flank put people on over watch. Grenade openings are a good tactic if your chance to hit isn't great. On timed missions you ideally only break concealment when close to the objective. As this allows you to dash further and get closer. On many maps you can almost complete the objective first before breaking concealment. Be careful on this though as that usually calls in reinforcements.

 

[sherbz]

So after a bit of a break, I am now on the final mission. Annoyingly, I have not encountered any bugs on this one so my first two ironman games might have actually concluded had I enabled ironman on this one. Although, I was thankful I did have saves on as I died in the final mission. It was a really weird “Bug” (at least I assume it was a bug). One of the Avatars used its teleport ability when I had knocked it down to 1 hitpoint and teleported to the start of the map. I had already killed one and quickly killed the other. I thought “do I go look for it, will it come back”. In the end I thought I would wait, plus there were a storm of enemies piling in. After a number of turns of attrition, I lost my sniper to 3 Andrommedons that teleported in. They then killed my rocketeer. Then I couldn’t deal with the numbers, no final avatar and I eventually lost all but my commander and one rocketeer. So I dashed back with my commander and bumped into the final avatar almost immediately, who was on his way back from the start of the map. But they regen, so my last shot at victory was thwarted. Like the final mission in the last game though – even on ironman – if you lose the commander then I assume you can restart the mission?

Anyway - On things I think are wrong in the game or could be improved:

SWORDS – Are not very good, simple as that. They need some serious buffs. There also needs to be a rebalancing of the tree. Run and gun is on the wrong side. You should only have things that contribute towards your sword play. And it should focus exclusively on massive damage in a single hit with the potential to kill. My suggestions would be “Decapitation – a 33% - 50% your sword strike will kill an enemy outright”. And “Reaper (or something similar) – every sword strike is a guaranteed critical hit”. That would buff swords enough that they remain comparable with shotguns, but still weaker than the move and then rapid fire option you can get later firing slugs. Swords still work well at lower levels however.

AI – In general I think the AI is good, and I might be wrong on the point I am about to make. But, there are a couple of instances that I think need correcting. Namely – if your soldier is out of view, it should not be possible for the AI opponent to know where they are. There have been numerous times when I have hidden my operative and then received a stun lancers attack to the face. This should not be allowed to happen. I can accept being shot at, but being lanced is not fair because I would not be able to do the same attack in the same way without having eyes on the enemy.

AWC – In my opinion it needs a buff. It also needs to freeze out phantom as a random perk gifted to soldiers. A sniper with kill zone and phantom is not a good combo. And nor is a specialist with phantom and guardian. I know you can retrain your soldier to make better use of their additional perk, but really if I have a decent kill zone sniper then I want to keep him/her like that. And if I don’t have a ready replacement then I don’t want my sub standard replacement to take their place. I would also move a portion of the proving ground projects to the AWC instead. Even if you build the Proving ground early and have an engineer staffed there at all times you will still struggle to have a decent amount researched by the end game. I have loads of projects left at the end of my commander game. The suggestion would be to move all of the armour types out of the proving ground and put them instead in the AWC (which is a kind of lore friendly approach). So that would be the EXO suit, the SKELETON suit, the WAR suit and the WRAITH suit. You could also put experimental armour in there. That’s not a huge change. But it does save you about a months worth of building/researching. Time which could be spent researching another 5 new weapon, armour and grenade types.

LABORATORIES – Need some work. There are a number of different ways that these could be improved. I like the engineer system of clearing debris, building and staffing of rooms. Something similar should be there for scientists. I guess this will get corrected in a long war type mod, but my suspicion would be that it will be along the lines of “make research times longer”. The alternative is to have certain techs only unlockable if you have X number of scientists or labs. Or that you get a penalty if you do not have any additional labs (like +100% research time on plasma weapons without a lab). One further option is to make capturing a Scientist VIP with plasma/magnetic weaponry as their specialism will unlock the research goal. This last option is of course more difficult to implement.

ENGINEERING – Once you research proving ground items like acid grenade, incendiary grenade, and others, you should be able to build them in engineering and not have to reassign in the proving ground. You can still have the system whereby if you lose someone you lose the gear, but replacing it should be a quick job of a visit to Shen. You could add a timer if you wanted. Again, this is more about freeing time up in the proving ground.

PSI SOLDIER LEVELLING – I think they should level as normal soldiers. The current way feels a bit cheap. Their experience thresholds can obviously be a lot lower as they start later. You could also have a system whereby they only level if they go on a mission and they don’t get injured, but they will level every time as long as assigned to psi lab. There is serious debate as well over whether they should have access to the whole tree, both left and right hand. Arguably this should be locked to one or other, with being unable to pick perks on the adjacent side.

MIMIC BEACONS – much as I love them, they should expire after being hit once, not when their health is depleted (but they can still make use of cover and aid protocol)

DISORIENTATION/BURNING/POISON – these need to be buffed so that any soldier suffering from the effects cannot make critical hits; and I would also impose a slightly more severe aim penalty. This would have the effect of buffing flash bangs and incendiary/acid/poison grenades. But also increase aliens potency with these weapon types. It also seems a bit daft that a lancer can disorient you, and then the next turn you crit them and spray their innards over the pavement with a critical hit.

AVATAR PROJECT – should be tied to difficulty. It sort of is in the time it takes to do stuff. But I think the counter should also be. I know there is a mod for this, but just because this game has mods doesn’t mean Firaxis cant patch it.

SECOND WAVE – I am a bit surprised these were not included from the start. But yea, there should be options for this. One I think that should be there for all the cry-babies on timers is – “FLIP FLOP – adds 4 turns on any timer for easy, 3 for medium, 2 for hard and 1 for legendary – or something similar).” But seriously – just get better at the game, use concealment correctly, or play on a lower difficulty. Even completing this game on the easiest skill setting with ironman enabled is a decent achievement. Another one would be “RNG GOD – any shot that is less than 10% will automatically miss and any shot that is 90%+ automatically hits”. Again, I am fed up of people complaining they miss 90% shots like they are cursed. 1 in 10 is a fairly frequent event in all honesty, but still unlikely. You can expect to miss at least a handful of times during your play through. Missing two 90% shots in a row is very unlucky – 1 in 100. But again, is likely to happen to you at least once in your play through. And there will always be that time that you miss 3 or more in a row. Then you are at 1/1000. You would need to miss something like 8 shots in a row @ 90% before you hit the realms of luckiest/unluckiest for you to win the lottery (on statistical methods at least). I have hit hacks at 3% before, so it does work the other way round. It is just that whilst you are far more likely to take a 90%+, you might not bother with a >10% as you “think” it is unlikely. So don’t run the odds as much. But that doesn’t mean the game is cheating.

HUNKER DOWN – it should be impossible to crit a soldier who is hunkered down unless he is flanked. Regardless of full cover/half cover and regardless of weapon.

FULL COVER – you should be less likely to score critical hits when enemies (or yourself) are in full cover

SKULL JACK – You shouldn’t be allowed to shoot if your skull jack fails. You should only be able to move away, like the ranger perk implacable.

 

[tesb]

SWORDS – Are not very good, simple as that

agreed, however i don't think they need that much off a buff. imho a simple change to blademaster so the passive gives +10/20/30 aim based on the techlevel of the blade. blades are sidearms and should not be super powerful imho.

AWC

i am not a big fan of the AWC random traits. you seldom get them and most of them are useless or very minor. i would rather have one guaranteed choice between 3 random traits (like discover in hearthstone), i.e. you keep an rng element but also have some choice.

FULL COVER

imho: -15% chance to crit in half cover, -30% chance to crit in full cover

PSI SOLDIER LEVELLING

i would prefer if psi classes are short skill trees for regular troopers (like in long war), but with perk choices unique to the class (unlike long war). i agree with you that the current implementation is a bit strange.

agreed with you on the rest

 

[PhilBowles]

Anyway - On things I think are wrong in the game or could be improved:

SWORDS – Are not very good, simple as that. They need some serious buffs.

It starts to seem that they were a sop to people who wanted melee weapons, but the developers' heart wasn't in it. One unpleasant surprise I ran into on Classic was that swords can actually miss, which either they can't on Normal or I got very lucky.

They aren't horrible - it seems that Firaxis wants every class to have access to a weapon that can't be disabled by the Codex, and not needing ammo is good. But they are very risky to use, since a miss can be fatal, and they don't offer any particular advantages - they may actually be less accurate than shotguns, and certainly have a lower critical chance (not least because they can't be given laser sights).

There also needs to be a rebalancing of the tree. Run and gun is on the wrong side. You should only have things that contribute towards your sword play.

I don't agree here - the Ranger tree seems the best-balanced to me and it should have incentives for using the 'sword side' without having to be a sword specialist. As it is all the promotion trees are far too binary (a weakness of Long War, from which they appear to have taken particular inspiration in this regard) and don't sufficiently reward taking perks from both sides. They certainly shouldn't be defined by the name arbitrarily given to one side or the other.

And it should focus exclusively on massive damage in a single hit with the potential to kill.

The problem there is that that's already what the 'shotgun side' does.

Given that the Ranger can be equipped with either a rifle or a shotgun, and while the tree is fairly well-balanced it doesn't actually result in a unit that plays very differently whichever side you specialise in (both are just massive single-target damage dealers), it might be good to combine the shotgun and sword side into a single 'deal massive damage to a single target' tree and focus the other side of the tree into scouting and assault rifle effects.

AI – In general I think the AI is good, and I might be wrong on the point I am about to make. But, there are a couple of instances that I think need correcting. Namely – if your soldier is out of view, it should not be possible for the AI opponent to know where they are. There have been numerous times when I have hidden my operative and then received a stun lancers attack to the face. This should not be allowed to happen. I can accept being shot at, but being lanced is not fair because I would not be able to do the same attack in the same way without having eyes on the enemy.

The AI seems a bit weaker to me than the equivalent in XCOM, I think because it struggles to appropriately choose between the wider variety of activated abilities. Aliens (except mechs) are much less prone to using grenades to break cover, and units like Sectoids and Vipers that have special attacks are much more likely to use those than their guns even when flanking. I've had Sectoids panic one of my flanked units and send it scurrying into cover where it's better-protected from follow-up attacks instead of shooting it to take advantage of flanking, and often the order the aliens activate soldiers in is suboptimal. They also no longer focus on killing the civilian in VIP missions.

AWC – In my opinion it needs a buff. It also needs to freeze out phantom as a random perk gifted to soldiers. A sniper with kill zone and phantom is not a good combo. And nor is a specialist with phantom and guardian. I know you can retrain your soldier to make better use of their additional perk, but really if I have a decent kill zone sniper then I want to keep him/her like that. And if I don’t have a ready replacement then I don’t want my sub standard replacement to take their place. I would also move a portion of the proving ground projects to the AWC instead. Even if you build the Proving ground early and have an engineer staffed there at all times you will still struggle to have a decent amount researched by the end game. I have loads of projects left at the end of my commander game. The suggestion would be to move all of the armour types out of the proving ground and put them instead in the AWC (which is a kind of lore friendly approach). So that would be the EXO suit, the SKELETON suit, the WAR suit and the WRAITH suit. You could also put experimental armour in there. That’s not a huge change. But it does save you about a months worth of building/researching. Time which could be spent researching another 5 new weapon, armour and grenade types.

I'd actually move many of the Guerilla Tactics upgrades to the Advanced Warfare Center - such things as the class-specific upgrades make more sense there. It doesn't seem intended as a manufacturing facility of any kind, so I disagree that it makes sense to give it Proving Ground projects. It's a sign of a good design when options are left over - you should have to make tradeoffs, and the Proving Ground seems fine.

LABORATORIES – Need some work. There are a number of different ways that these could be improved. I like the engineer system of clearing debris, building and staffing of rooms. Something similar should be there for scientists. I guess this will get corrected in a long war type mod, but my suspicion would be that it will be along the lines of “make research times longer”. The alternative is to have certain techs only unlockable if you have X number of scientists or labs. Or that you get a penalty if you do not have any additional labs (like +100% research time on plasma weapons without a lab). One further option is to make capturing a Scientist VIP with plasma/magnetic weaponry as their specialism will unlock the research goal. This last option is of course more difficult to implement.

Just adding scientist slots to some of the facilities is probably enough - for psi labs, for instance, it makes no sense that an engineer increases training speed, but a scientist specialising in psi-training does. Either way the laboratory is not presently a useful investment - making it a requirement for certain techs would be welcome (how on Earth are you developing plasma technology with no laboratory space?), perhaps with its own upgrade tree.

ENGINEERING – Once you research proving ground items like acid grenade, incendiary grenade, and others, you should be able to build them in engineering and not have to reassign in the proving ground. You can still have the system whereby if you lose someone you lose the gear, but replacing it should be a quick job of a visit to Shen. You could add a timer if you wanted. Again, this is more about freeing time up in the proving ground.

I originally wanted that, but it makes more sense as it is - again because it offers trade-offs and doesn't allow you to just go for the best option (why build incendiaries when acid is basically strictly better?)

PSI SOLDIER LEVELLING – I think they should level as normal soldiers. The current way feels a bit cheap. Their experience thresholds can obviously be a lot lower as they start later. You could also have a system whereby they only level if they go on a mission and they don’t get injured, but they will level every time as long as assigned to psi lab. There is serious debate as well over whether they should have access to the whole tree, both left and right hand. Arguably this should be locked to one or other, with being unable to pick perks on the adjacent side.

I think a lot needs to be done on the psi front. I'm not altogether happy that everyone can automatically train all psi abilities and be equally good with them (as psi no longer appears linked to will, only to experience level and psi-amp tier) - to me that loses too much of the random element of psi power from both X-COM and XCOM, and I liked the XCOM system that required you to use psi powers to level them up. And that's without griping about the lore problems - X-COM/XCOM past has always treated psi powers as being at least linked to psychological effects such as panic and mind control. Stasis fields, vortices and magic missiles drift too far into magic for my liking or to feel thematically appropriate for XCOM.

MIMIC BEACONS – much as I love them, they should expire after being hit once, not when their health is depleted (but they can still make use of cover and aid protocol)

I'd keep them as they are, but remove the lure effect - so that they count as an additional soldier that the AI prioritises and reacts to in exactly the same way as one of your soldiers. That naturally presents a tradeoff between dropping it in cover, where it may absorb more attacks but is less likely to be targeted, and dropping it into the open where it will lure enemy fire but die immediately. There isn't any clear lore reason why it should attract all enemy fire and attacks.

 

[PhilBowles]

i would prefer if psi classes are short skill trees for regular troopers (like in long war),

Or like, you know, vanilla XCOM...

 

[BvBPL]

Squeezed out a facility mission with two hours left in the doom clock. This game is thrilling.

 

[sherbz]

So after my first failed attempt at the final mission, i failed again. Its really tough the finale. I think you need to be careful who you bring. I kind of messed up in bringing a stealth ranger. When really i think you should have a run and gun ranger. You need the rapid fire on the avatars. Got a bit lucky on the final avatar. My psi soldier was too far away from all the spawns, but right next to the avatar and i could crit him, so i thought what the heck, ill take the shot. Turns out i executed him from full health with a repeater . Didnt quite see that one coming. Anyway, my victory screens:

Spoiler :

Be interesting to see other peoples. One thing i did notice is there is an achievement to finish the game by July 1st. That would be rather difficult i think. theres also an achievment to beat the final mission with only convential weapons. That must be insanely hard. Might be able to do it on easy with some decent weapon upgrades (repeaters ftw).

 

[PhilBowles]

So after my first failed attempt at the final mission, i failed again. Its really tough the finale. I think you need to be careful who you bring. I kind of messed up in bringing a stealth ranger. When really i think you should have a run and gun ranger. You need the rapid fire on the avatars. Got a bit lucky on the final avatar. My psi soldier was too far away from all the spawns, but right next to the avatar and i could crit him, so i thought what the heck, ill take the shot. Turns out i executed him from full health with a repeater .

I had a mission where I unexpectedly executed a full-health Sectopod with a repeater (sadly I lost the mission and reloaded, due to an Avatar I activated by skulljacking a Codex).

 

[BvBPL]

A disorientated Gatekeeper just one shorted my grenadier in WAR armor through heavy cover. Damn it.

 

[sherbz]

A disorientated Gatekeeper just one shorted my grenadier in WAR armor through heavy cover. Damn it.

Your game sounds rather touch and go. Hope you pull it off. I find Xcom to be far more satisfying at times than i even find Civ. Especially when you snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. That doesnt happen very often in civ. You usually just run away with it. Whereas its standard fare in xcom.

 

[PhilBowles]

Your game sounds rather touch and go. Hope you pull it off. I find Xcom to be far more satisfying at times than i even find Civ. Especially when you snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. That doesnt happen very often in civ. You usually just run away with it. Whereas its standard fare in xcom.

My current Commander campaign seems to keep randomly throwing good stuff my way, from a second engineer in month 1 to a resistance lead that gave me AP rounds and incendiary grenades. Past the very earliest stages it's been easier than my Normal playthrough.

Though things still have plenty of time to go wrong - I've yet to encounter anything tougher than a Muton or Shieldbearer. The Gatekeepers are still out there...

 

[sherbz]

My current Commander campaign seems to keep randomly throwing good stuff my way, from a second engineer in month 1 to a resistance lead that gave me AP rounds and incendiary grenades. Past the very earliest stages it's been easier than my Normal playthrough.

Though things still have plenty of time to go wrong - I've yet to encounter anything tougher than a Muton or Shieldbearer. The Gatekeepers are still out there...

I sort of messed up in my classic run w/o ironman. I never faced a gatekeeper in the field, so never got alien psi amp. In retrospect this was a mistake. As the more powerful rift is kind of important at the end. Cant make that mistake this time. Im playing commander iron man now. So if it goes wrong it goes wrong.

You tried any mods yet? In my opinion free camera rotation is a must. Its so much easier to see what you can shoot and what can shoot you by pressing your scroll wheel (it max zooms out on your current level, which is useful when in buildings and you weant to see if something can shoot you if you move to a certain tile). I also prefer changing the camera by 45 degree angles as opposed to 90.

Evac all is also nice, as it saves time not having to press evac button on certain missions.

Ive also got the mod that turns off bradford on retaliation missions. Once you have heard it once it gets a bit old after a while.

I also have stop wasting my time but turned off the soldier movement boost. It reoves pauses and speeds things up like your gremlin.

Gameplaywise i went for retroactive AWC (Which gives you perks even if you miss the promotion tier), the leader pack (allows officers in GTS - like in long war - but you can olnly take one officer on a mission), Muton centurion pack (a tougher muton) and hidden potential (like in vanilla).

 

[PhilBowles]

I sort of messed up in my classic run w/o ironman. I never faced a gatekeeper in the field, so never got alien psi amp. In retrospect this was a mistake. As the more powerful rift is kind of important at the end. Cant make that mistake this time. Im playing commander iron man now. So if it goes wrong it goes wrong.

Naturally, saying I was having an easy time of it proved to be a death sentence. My specialists, including my captain, were killed on the blacksite mission, I lost a high-ranking soldier in each of the next couple, and finally the doom clock went off - I launched a facility attack in which I ended up spawning multiple mobs, resulting in a firefight that only my sniper survived. "Okay", I thought, "those were all the aliens so I'll just get to the objective, plant the charges, and run". Which was when I triggered a mob with a mech, advanced trooper and stun lancer - the sniper was knocked unconscious by the lancer. I kept the clock ticking down to try and see the defeat screen, but got intercepted by a UFO. I'm glad this wasn't an iron man run.

You tried any mods yet? In my opinion free camera rotation is a must. Its so much easier to see what you can shoot and what can shoot you by pressing your scroll wheel (it max zooms out on your current level, which is useful when in buildings and you weant to see if something can shoot you if you move to a certain tile). I also prefer changing the camera by 45 degree angles as opposed to 90.

No mods yet - I'll try completing the game as is on 'proper' (i.e. above normal) difficulty first.

Ive also got the mod that turns off bradford on retaliation missions. Once you have heard it once it gets a bit old after a while.

I wonder if it's a bug that the default game's 'Reduce Beginner VO' tickbox doesn't seem to do anything? I kept it on for my first playthrough to hear the dialogue introducing each alien etc., then turned it off subsequently. But every single voiceover still seems to be there - the only difference is that I can skip the cinematics.

 

[sherbz]

Naturally, saying I was having an easy time of it proved to be a death sentence. My specialists, including my captain, were killed on the blacksite mission, I lost a high-ranking soldier in each of the next couple, and finally the doom clock went off - I launched a facility attack in which I ended up spawning multiple mobs, resulting in a firefight that only my sniper survived. "Okay", I thought, "those were all the aliens so I'll just get to the objective, plant the charges, and run". Which was when I triggered a mob with a mech, advanced trooper and stun lancer - the sniper was knocked unconscious by the lancer. I kept the clock ticking down to try and see the defeat screen, but got intercepted by a UFO. I'm glad this wasn't an iron man run.



No mods yet - I'll try completing the game as is on 'proper' (i.e. above normal) difficulty first.



I wonder if it's a bug that the default game's 'Reduce Beginner VO' tickbox doesn't seem to do anything? I kept it on for my first playthrough to hear the dialogue introducing each alien etc., then turned it off subsequently. But every single voiceover still seems to be there - the only difference is that I can skip the cinematics.

Agree on the VO reduction - it doesnt seem to work.

As for the mods, i would try the free camera rotation anyway. Like you, i wanted to complete without mods first. But its such a vital enhancement from a cosmetic point of view, and doesnt impact on gameplay at all.

 

[BvBPL]

Your game sounds rather touch and go. Hope you pull it off. I find Xcom to be far more satisfying at times than i even find Civ. Especially when you snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. That doesnt happen very often in civ. You usually just run away with it. Whereas its standard fare in xcom.

Yeah, it was close, but I pulled it off w/ an August win. I had a really small roster as many of my up and coming backup troops got killed. In the end, I had just six colonels, one of whom got within one health bar of dying in the penultimate mission. My team for the final mission was two rangers, two snipers, a support, and a grenadier. I would have rather had two grenadiers and one sniper, but it worked out fine.

Base Building

Someone mentioned wanting some tips for base building. Here's my strategy.

As far as I can tell, you always start in a corner on the first row. If start in the middle, this may require some adjustment (or not). For the purposes of this, I am going to assume the upper left corner starts open, if it is upper right then just mirror the system. There seems to always be two power spaces, both located on the lower two rows.

I start with a workshop in the open space. The workshop lets you staff an engineer who can then supply two gremlins to staff orthogonally adjacent rooms. An upgrade to the workshops lets you staff a second engineer for two more gremlins. Without an engineer, the workshop is useless so getting an engineer is a top priority.

Once you have an engineer, use him to build and staff the workshop then use the gremlins to start digging out the two adjacent rooms. Once they are dug out, build an AWC in the top floor opening and a power coupling in the other. Use your second engineer to clear out the last room on the top floor. Once that is, build the GTS in that space. Clear out the remaining rooms in the second floor, starting with the one under the GTS. I like to put the Proving Grounds on the right column of the second floor, under the GTS. Once the middle one is cleared, I will demolish the first workshop and rebuild it under the AWC. Upgrade that and staff it with two engineers and you can easily staff the AWC, Proving Grounds, power coupling, and use a gremlin to dig out the floor under the second workshop. This gives you four gremlins to staff the AWC, power coupling (you'll want two there eventually), Proving Grounds, and whatever is under the second workshop.

Priorities from there include resistance communications, the psi lab, and the Shadow Chamber. I like building the Shadow Chamber over a power chamber and using the second power chamber for another power coupling.

This base building strategy allows you to double up on your engineers early on, which is pretty valuable in base building. You can get your base up and running much more quickly by leveraging the workshop. It also allows for a fair amount of flexibility early on as you don't necessarily need to staff the power coupling and AWC so once you have those up you can pull the engineer from the first workshop and reassign him.

However, there are a few weaknesses as well. This strategy is costly, not just in terms of workshop initial costs, but also in upkeep for the workshop. I often get the low income warning when doing this. It also delays the GTS for a bit longer. You probably wouldn't have a unit w/ a high enough rank to unlock squad size five until a few days before the GTS is done so you might have to do a mission or two w/ four instead of five units. Not that big a deal. Finally, this strategy does delay resistance comms a bit. If that's an issue, just replace the Proving Grounds w/ a resistance comms and Bob's your uncle.

If you happen to land on a continent w/ the "fire when ready" bonus, you may want to move the Proving Grounds away from the second workshop as well, probably replacing it w/ resistance comms. An engineer is still useful for the Proving Grounds for armor and other projects, but if you have fire when ready you may not need an engineer there full time.

A key takeaway here is that you do not want to wait until you've drilled down to the power blocks to put up power couplings. Your base can only run two or three facilities w/o a power coupling. It is tempting to drill down to the power blocks first prior to building a power coupling, but in the end it isn't worthwhile b/c it delays your building so much.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Got a chance to play with the mimic beacon for the first time. It is indeed a must-have. It is actually a bit too good because of how it automatically attracts all the aliens even when they know where you are. I have had situations where I knew I would not be able to eliminate all the aliens on my turn which would leave me exposed to a dangerous counter attack. No problem! I just toss the mimic beacon and set the rest of my guys to overwatch. The aliens go after the mimic beacon. Some get taken out by my overwatch, while others waste their action on the mimic beacon, allowing me to take them out on my next turn. Makes things almost too easy.

Also, I have gotten a lot better at managing my base. I am making sure I have enough engineers in all my facilities. It has really helped. I was actually able to build the shadow chamber and get the cut scenes that revel the 2 secret sites and I am not at the doom clock yet. I got the lead on a black site which I am going to attack now. If I win, I will knock the avatar counter back to 3 pips to doom clock. That has never happened before.

 

[PhroX]

Well, the hotfix seems to have solved my issues, with the caveat that I had to also delete my save. Ah well, the game is fun so I don't mind having to start again.