XCOM 2

[SupremacyKing2]

Anyone tried proximity mines? Because you should try proximity mines. You should try a Salvo grenadier placing 2 proximity mines beneath an unaware Gatekeeper, and then moving a soldier into its vision.

But stand well back.

Does planting proximity mines break concealment?

 

[PhilBowles]

Built my first psi op soldier. I really like the stasis ability. I have used it very effectively to help me defeat the powerful alien units like the gatekeeper and the sectopod. I basically put them in stasis, so that I can focus just on the other alien units, then on the next turn, my entire squad can focus just on the remaining gatekeeper or sectopod when it comes out of stasis. It works really well especially now that I have a 6 man squad of colonels with warden and WAR armor and plasma weapons, and cool experimental ammo including blue protocol and talon bullets. My favorite squad is 2 grenadiers, 2 rangers, 1 sharpshooter and 1 psi op. The amount of firepower that a late game xcom squad can bring to bear on the enemy is truly awe inspiring.

Aside from replacing at least one Ranger with a Specialist (and possibly the other with either a Specialist - don't discount the value of multiple units with haywire in the late game - or a Psi-Op), that's along the lines of my preferred build as well - though I haven't tried WAR armour.

Stasis seems pretty much essential for dealing with at least the first Avatar, since any Avatar that successfully mind controls and then survives to teleport out of sight is a real problem, and it can take a full squad to kill one without lucky execution rolls. Obviously domination is ultimately the best ability, especially as Andromedons are such tempting targets, but it's not reliable below level 3 or 4 without tier 3 psi amps, and you don't get to reuse it if your pet gets killed.

Anyone tried proximity mines? Because you should try proximity mines. You should try a Salvo grenadier placing 2 proximity mines beneath an unaware Gatekeeper, and then moving a soldier into its vision.

But stand well back.

Haven't tried them yet, but it seems worth doing - a nice idea, at least.

 

[sherbz]

Does planting proximity mines break concealment?

No it doesnt. You can use this to quite hilarious effect. Especially in gas stations. I had an Adrommedon in a gas station with two elite troopers. Shot a Proximity mine whilst concealed. Then used my second grenadier to launch a regular plasma grenade with the squad on overwatch. The result was glorious.

 

[sherbz]

Built my first psi op soldier. I really like the stasis ability. I have used it very effectively to help me defeat the powerful alien units like the gatekeeper and the sectopod. I basically put them in stasis, so that I can focus just on the other alien units, then on the next turn, my entire squad can focus just on the remaining gatekeeper or sectopod when it comes out of stasis. It works really well especially now that I have a 6 man squad of colonels with warden and WAR armor and plasma weapons, and cool experimental ammo including blue protocol and talon bullets. My favorite squad is 2 grenadiers, 2 rangers, 1 sharpshooter and 1 psi op. The amount of firepower that a late game xcom squad can bring to bear on the enemy is truly awe inspiring.

Psi soldiers are essential late game. And they become very powerful quite quickly. As you rightly note, stasis is probably their most useful ability. Other good ones include domination, inspire and rift. Only one i have found little use for is fuse. Sometimes its ok when you have a muton behind full cover and you blow its grenade up. But honestly there are usually better things to be using.

 

[Barathor]

Well, just completed my first game.

SPOILERS

Spoiler :

What a great adventure. It felt like it ended a slight bit abruptly, but I guess it needed to since my soldiers were becoming insanely powerful. Plus, it's still vanilla.

I was a little confused by the initial radio tower mission. With the warning message, I initially thought THAT was the final mission and was a little disappointed with the squad size restriction. I thought I was going to face an epic rooftop showdown, Ghostbuster-style or something, haha... but the initial enemy count listed via the Shadow Chamber didn't look right. Thankfully, I only slightly injured one of my main soldiers (still brought him along for the final) on this. I was relieved once the "final" final mission popped-up and I saw the enemy count and such.

Anyway... I liked the intel perks that could be chosen before the mission, I hope more of that could possibly be incorporated into the game and/or the expansion.

The final mission was a lot of fun -- especially that last room!

But... !

Omg, the performance of it and the bugs killed the experience a bit. While avoiding spoilers, I've read that the final mission had performance issues, but I wasn't concerned since the game's performance had seemed pretty solid the whole game. It was such a disappointment; enjoying this incredible game and then it all goes to crap right at the very end of it all.

The silly cinematic intro with the avatar appearing triggered like 3 or 4 times on different turns when one of my units approached the altar and the big wall with the elder statue. It was a bit confusing.

Also, I had to shutdown the game since, at one point, things started turning crazy colors like this:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/02/22/xcom-2-final-mission-graphics-glitch/ Glitch-O-Rama is a nice way to put it. I thought my GPU was overheating or something! (Especially since I'm stuck on a single GPU right now and can't use SLI yet until they fix things and prevent the cover icons from disappearing!) Thankfully, this didn't happen again.

My frames have been pretty solid the whole game until that evil room as well... perhaps it's due to all the reflections and watery effects all about? (Wow... now I'm actually hoping we don't get a "Terror From the Deep"-inspired expansion.)

Also, the aliens seemed to freeze-up every now and then during their turns which were a bit slower than usual.

This was the biggest annoyance, however: the third avatar disappeared after I shot it! I cleared everything else on the turn I shot the avatar (with that powered shred cannon, nonetheless, killing the codex behind it, haha) and it disappeared. I spent two or three turns looking for it; by the third turn I was getting reckless and spread my troops out to cover everything because I was getting annoyed. No trace. I shut the game down (again!) to do some googling and to see if anybody else has experienced this. I read that the avatar can sometimes teleport to the beginning of the map! haha... ridiculous.

I wasn't going to chase the thing down so I put all my soldiers on top of the middle platform and kept overwatching them for maybe six turns, probably more. During those turns, I would get those graphical sound wave notifications that an enemy was near, but they were coming from a very weird direction (as in, not in the direction of the entrance and the start of the map). I was really annoyed and kept overwatching and hoping that the avatar was actually still on the map making its way over to me and that it wasn't glitched-out, forcing me to reload an older save do things over (Not ironman'ing it until some patches are released).

Then, after I put everyone on overwatch one more time, a steam achievement popped-up and the game was starting the cinematic. I was like, "wtffff is going on here???" But, then the cinematic closed and it went back to the tactical map action shots as each of my soldiers gunned-down the avatar as it charged back into the final room again once its jog was complete. During the action shots I was worried that it just ruined my cinematic experience, but thankfully, it started up again and I got to watch it all (still slightly confused with the story too).

Again, love the game, I'll continue to play it for a long time. But, they really need to fix this final mission. I can't believe it went down like that, and I can't ever get that first game completion feeling back and experience it properly.

What a major choke... It's like this great singer giving an incredible performance, but at the very end of the song, as she's screaming into that mic and carrying the note, her voice cracks and she uncontrollably starts to cough. Not only that -- as she's bent over coughing, she slips on the stage and falls on her ass. The whole shock of the incident causes her to piss her pants as well while she's lying on the floor coughing. That's XCOM 2, baby.

So.... how was everybody else's experience with their first final mission?

 

[PhilBowles]

Psi soldiers are essential late game. And they become very powerful quite quickly. As you rightly note, stasis is probably their most useful ability. Other good ones include domination, inspire and rift. Only one i have found little use for is fuse. Sometimes its ok when you have a muton behind full cover and you blow its grenade up. But honestly there are usually better things to be using.

Fuse isn't good but it is at least effectively free, since you can always leave it until last to get. Rift only becomes useful with the insanity upgrade (conversely, the upgrade that lets you Stasis your own soldiers is only situationally relevant, basically an improved Aid Protocol). Early on you just want as many abilities as possible you can activate (so, not upgrades to existing ones) so that you always have something to do while the others cool down.

One tip about using Stasis: while there are cases like Avatars when it is best to use it on the most powerful enemy, unless you trigger a pod late in the turn I prefer to use it on one of the lesser enemies so that you can focus on taking the big guy out immediately without worrying about the enemies that you aren't shooting. The fact that stasis doesn't cost you your second action can be very relevant, as you can stasis and then shoot, Soulfire or Null Lance (which works on mechs and ignores armour) the priority target in the same turn, as well as hitting it with the rest of your squad.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

The result was glorious.

Oh I bet.

 

[ImperialGuard]

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.

Thanks Sherbz for the directions!

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I'm finding the last mission where you assault the alien fortress and have to kill the 3 avatars to be a challenge. The first part is ok but the last room where you get swarmed by a lot of aliens and the avatars is tough. Things were made worse because I lost my only psi op soldier so I lost the ability that protects your nearby units from psi attacks. I managed to kill 2 avatars but the last avatar mind controlled my best grenadier and used it to kill my sniper. I had vipers, adromedons, archons and mechs attacking me all at once. Then 4 codexes were teleporting around and flanking me like crazy. I was completely outnumbered and outgunned. Needless to say, my squad got wiped out fast. When I play this mission again, I will make sure to take the right items to be ready for it and it should be easier.

 

[ls612]

Take Blaster bombs. They are useful for smoking out avatars who have teleported to odd locations.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Big patch just released today. Here are the changes:

Performance

Added Zip Mode gameplay option. While Zip Mode is enabled animation (like step outs & gremlin movements) speeds are significantly increased. Normal movement animations are moderately increased
Fixed an issue where shadow rendering during glam cam shot transitions was slowing down performance
Support for nVidia SLI and AMD Crossfire
Removed MSAA options from default presets and adjusted autodetect to target 40FPS instead of 30FPS
Reworked Light Clipping Manager
Particle Vertex Buffer Reallocation
Optimization to shadows in the Avenger
Enable triple buffering to fix VSync performance
Shadowed light fade out within Avenger; Disabled Post & Pre Mission cinematic lights not being used
Disabled shadow casting from character lights w/in Avenger
Reduced High Shadow Resolution - Reduce shadow resolution when set to HIGH to 1536, instead of 2048
Reduces the impact count of the Avatar Rifle
Removed a hitch that occurs when the camera enables/disables building visualizer
Deferred profile saves to next tick. This prevents multiple calls within the same frame from creating multiple requests to save the profile
After changing graphics settings, based on the selected preset, extra crew will be capped
Character head mesh optimized


Balance



Mimic beacon rebalance: Price increased to 75
Mimic beacons can no longer take cover, and are guaranteed to be hit by enemy shots
Wet Work is no longer retroactive
Graze is no longer a chance for 100% shots. Targets being shot by a concealed attacker cannot dodge
Gameplay

Added a new recommended Steam Controller configuration with support for additional actions
Fixed an issue where VIP units would take damage when their origin location was damaged
Fixed an issue where Promotion Earned text appeared before action is seen on screen
Fixed an issue where civilians pathed to the base of ladders and blocked XCOM units
Fixed an issue where Character Pool choices like Class, Attitude, and props did not save
Fixed an issue where weapons did not keep names and customizations upon tier bump
Fixed an issue causing some scan timers to go into negative time
Engineering items that are full squad upgrades are now designated in the UI
Fixed an issue where strategy project timers reset if players started building a radio relay immediately after making contact with a region
Fixed an issue with POIs not spawning when first visiting the Geoscape if Beginner VO is turned off
Removed start-of-turn hang during certain missions where enemy units had fallen out of the world. Auto-saves (and ironman saves) made in these situations should now be playable
Minimized action camera obstructions
Minimized camera look-at hopping during AI abilities
Fixed an issue where Psi abilities did not trigger death cams
Kill Zone now respects concealment status
Fixed an issue where the Ever Vigilant AWC perk did not work for Sharpshooters
Buildings don't cut down when tabbing through units
Fixed an exploit that skips the AI turn by spamming the END/BACKSPACE button while the Player's last action is being visualized
Rapid Fire and Chain Shot visualization optimized to get the second shot to fire faster
Fixed an issue where shot HUD wings would fail to re-open after taking an action that required the wings to close
Fixed an issue where crit chance would be negatively affected by shots with a success chance greater than 100
Optimized Return Fire hits causing long delays
Optimized AI reveals causing long hangs
Optimized Wait actions causing long timeouts
Optimized falling unit visualization to timeout faster
Updated the Geoscape save description to use the localized HQ time, instead of previously used GMT game time
Fixed an issue with an invalid spawn point on a specific Retaliation mission plot
Destroyed cover does not take reduce % to-hit on enemies
Systems

New option to only use Character Pool creations until the pool is exhausted
Bulletproofing bad saves from causing main menu crashes
Fixed an issue causing hitches in strategy
Fixed an issue where armor customizations did not save


Graphics

Unit Highlighting Flash when targeting units

Multiplayer

MULTIPLAYER: Fixes slow communications with internet players resulting in delays between actions, turns, and end-of-game screen.
Added camera rotation to MP

 

[sherbz]

Big patch just released today. Here are the changes:

Thanks for the update. I'm kind of glad I'm a decent way through my legendary play through with that nerf to mimic beacons. A nerf was needed though. I'm a bit disappointed they went with the no cover route though and guaranteed to hit. That removes the aid protocol tactic. Maybe a better solution would have been to remove cover, but giving aid protocol allows mimic beacon to take cover and also enables the chance for shots to miss. That would still be a nerf, but would buff aid protocol, and actually make it useful.

The other changes are ok I think.

 

[PhilBowles]

Thanks for the update. I'm kind of glad I'm a decent way through my legendary play through with that nerf to mimic beacons. A nerf was needed though. I'm a bit disappointed they went with the no cover route though and guaranteed to hit. That removes the aid protocol tactic. Maybe a better solution would have been to remove cover, but giving aid protocol allows mimic beacon to take cover and also enables the chance for shots to miss. That would still be a nerf, but would buff aid protocol, and actually make it useful.

The other changes are ok I think.

Agreed, the beacon needed a fix but I'm not sure about this route - apart from anything else, if the bug (I presume it's a bug) that forces aliens to move towards a beacon even if they start their move after it's been destroyed is still there, it may not even work (and speaking of bugs, I'd assumed Wet Work was bugged rather than that this was a gameplay feature, as it didn't work that way in XCOM).

I'd have just removed the 'aliens forced to fire at mimic' mechanic, which doesn't even make thematic sense. Just treat it as an extra, temporary squad member - aliens will preferentially target it if it's easier to flank or easier to hit, or if it's the only unit they can see, but not otherwise. That would actually reward using it tactically, instead of just throwing it and getting a free extra turn.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Just won my first xcom2 game last night!! I had previously played many campaigns but never all the way to the end. And, it just turned out that I won on Jan 1, 2036. Kinda fitting that the New Year would also be the day Earth was liberated.

 

[sherbz]

Just won my first xcom2 game last night!! I had previously played many campaigns but never all the way to the end. And, it just turned out that I won on Jan 1, 2036. Kinda fitting that the New Year would also be the day Earth was liberated.

Congrats. Although I hate to burst your bubble. But I thought I had liberated the world in xcom 1 and it turns out we lost the war and had to fight a guerilla war in xcom 2.

Still, if everything worked perfectly then we would have no sequel, so I guess I can live with that.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Congrats. Although I hate to burst your bubble. But I thought I had liberated the world in xcom 1 and it turns out we lost the war and had to fight a guerilla war in xcom 2.

Still, if everything worked perfectly then we would have no sequel, so I guess I can live with that.

I wonder what the storyline of XCOM3 will be.

 

[sherbz]

I wonder what the storyline of XCOM3 will be.

Judging by the ending cinematic, i am guessing that it will be some sort of terror from the deep type theme. There will also be some dlc, and i expect Dr Vahlen will make an appearance at some point. There are references to her in the game. We know what happened to Shen, but Vahlen is a bit of a mystery. But she definitely isnt dead.

After playing around with the new patch and the nerfed mimic beacons, i guess they are now slightly worse, but still good. They used to be able to nerf a whole pod and more if in cover with aid protocol. Now they survive 2 shots, so if you really mess up then a double mimic beacon might be in order.

 

[PhilBowles]

Judging by the ending cinematic, i am guessing that it will be some sort of terror from the deep type theme. There will also be some dlc, and i expect Dr Vahlen will make an appearance at some point. There are references to her in the game. We know what happened to Shen, but Vahlen is a bit of a mystery. But she definitely isnt dead.

I get the sense that both the Terror from the Deep approach and Vahlen's fate are set up for DLC or an expansion, not for the sequel.

 

[sherbz]

I get the sense that both the Terror from the Deep approach and Vahlen's fate are set up for DLC or an expansion, not for the sequel.

One thing i never understood about TFTD is that you could throw grenades underwater. Lets hope they address that glaring impossibility for the expansion/dlc/sequel.

 

[sherbz]

Legend is Total slogfest. Check out my soldiers:

Spoiler :

My sharp shooter has 90 kills and he STILL isnt a colonel. I mean seriously! Its a bit annoying as now i am faced with the dilema of do i stick around and level up or do i just go for the final mission. I am about 5 days away. Think i have to have highest ranked soldiers. Its a bit of a bummer in this game because you spend the whole game falling in love with your squad, and then at the end you have to buy some nobody from HQ or the black market because you have not got enough experience. Or am i playing it wrong.