XCOM 2

yeah you get 3 weeks, although its good to know that the timer resets every time you knock bars off. Decided not to abandon my campaign just yet although I'm gonna be battling from behind for awhile. I figured out that I was neglecting my supply economy early on, which then caused me to waste a lot of time trying to get enough supplies to outfit mag weapons, which is how I ended up behind. I didn't realize radio towers increased region income on top of reducing intel costs for contacting new regions, so radio towers should probably be your second priority after getting a proving ground operational.

Some of these skill choices are hard, heh. Finally got a ranger up (Mine got injured on the first mission), blademaster looks deceptively good, +2 damage for such a high damage attack already is boss. Combined with the later ability for assaults to roll in, kill and then roll out makes me really want it.

But I'm thinking Phantom might be better for my squad overall. Anyone have experience with Phantom? Essentially it looks like you almost lose a member of your squad for the first pod activation, because if he fights he's revealed--but if you let him hang back, he can scout the next pod and let you set up. Combine this with the re-conceal and you can ambush 3 pods during the mission, or 2 in missions that don't start you concealed. Only issue is I'm wondering how useful it will be with the mission times oneverything. (If I had unlimited time, it would be a no brainer, I think. But the game really doesn't allow 3+ turns per pod for set up and ambush execution. )

I just cannot find the resources to even get a psi training place going. I feel like I'm so far in the game and I don't have any psi dudes.

Lithose_sl said:

Some of these skill choices are hard, heh. Finally got a ranger up (Mine got injured on the first mission), blademaster looks deceptively good, +2 damage for such a high damage attack already is boss. Combined with the later ability for assaults to roll in, kill and then roll out makes me really want it.

But I'm thinking Phantom might be better for my squad overall. Anyone have experience with Phantom? Essentially it looks like you almost lose a member of your squad for the first pod activation, because if he fights he's revealed--but if you let him hang back, he can scout the next pod and let you set up. Combine this with the re-conceal and you can ambush 3 pods during the mission, or 2 in missions that don't start you concealed. Only issue is I'm wondering how useful it will be with the mission times oneverything. (If I had unlimited time, it would be a no brainer, I think. But the game really doesn't allow 3+ turns per pod for set up and ambush execution. )

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He doesn't even have to hang back, as long as he's still in cover relative to any enemies when concealment is broken he'll stay concealed. Phantom is really good but I always take blademaster on my first ranger, among other things a guaranteed kill on a full health sectoid is super powerful in the early game, and that +2 damage on a swing adds up. I wonder if the +2 damage scales with the tech level of your melee weapon, if not there probably needs to be a mod that does. I know shredder scales with the tech level of your cannon. At any rate once you have a warfare center you can respec if you aren't happy. I've been very pleased with my blade ranger, especially since I figured out that mimic/bladestorm trick.

So after completing a very difficult blacksite assault with nothing more than trivial wounds, I'm thinking maybe tech rush is a viable strategy. I may be lagging way behind in the story/controlling the Avatar project, but I'm having little difficulty with tactical missions since I'm on an even footing with Advent. Assuming at this point that I crank up the tempo into high gear on the geoscape, I believe I can stay ahead of the project for now, especially with the generous timer you get when the project bar fills up. I would guess that the timer is shorter on higher difficulties, but I could have assaulted the blacksite in time even if I only had a week.

*edit* Honestly, the best part about Phantom is your ranger starting in concealment on missions where you don't have concealment. Being able to safely rush a scout ahead on a retaliation mission makes a big difference in setting up engagements and saving more civilians. I double up on rangers about 90% of the time.

*edit again*

you can use the waypoint system to check line of sight on enemies that you cant fit onto the screen with your intended destination. Just queue up a waypoint at the spot you want to check, then scroll over to see if the little line of sight icon is lit up on the enemies in question.

This game really does just keep throwing more crazy shit at you and you never feel like your guys get overpowered. I don't want to spoil it for anyone but I just came across a new enemy far into the game that was ridiculous.

Vaclav_sl said:

I thought I saw an option to remove/reduce them - Tried that?

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Nah that only affects movespeed of units, not the overly long animations for everything... Hell there's a 3 second deadtime after basicaly every action, makes the game feel like i'm watching paint dry on a wall.

Seananigans_sl said:

So I lost a rookie who I had a Nanovest on, and I apparently lost the Nanovest. Was I supposed to go drag her corpse off, or something? How do I prevent losing special stuff on killed soldiers?

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Yep, you need to grab your dead soldiers or any single items on them get left on the field. If it is a kill all alien mission it happens automatically, though.

Gavinmad_sl said:

*edit* Honestly, the best part about Phantom is your ranger starting in concealment on missions where you don't have concealment. Being able to safely rush a scout ahead on a retaliation mission makes a big difference in setting up engagements and saving more civilians. I double up on rangers about 90% of the time.

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Well, safer--the whole concealment system has a major flaw in that enemies out of sight sometimes do not illustrate their detection squares. It is frustrating as fuck and I have no idea if it is a feature or a bug. But I ran into a pod just now and saw the advent, but not the sectoid--so I move outside the detection range of the advent (Thinking it is the range of the whole pod). Here the sectoid was breaking LoS behind a dumpster and the moment I moved I saw all these new detection flags pop up and sure enough he spotted me.

Concealment would be very powerful if not for the time limits, but given them, I'm pretty sure if I could go back I'd for sure take your advice and get the +damage to sword. My rangers chopping people have saved my ass so many times.

Seananigans_sl said:

Why can't my duder hack this turret? Do you have to unlock that capability? Beagle was able to do it right off the bat, I thought.

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Your specialist? I think he needs haywire protocol, but not sure. You can, for sure, hack the scanners right off the bat though. (The one turret I've seen my specialist wasn't on the run, she was injured.)

when i originally played XCom in what 2010 when it was released i got bored because of the "arena-like" environments of the game. Drop me in to a square area, kill aliens repeat. I understand the team building and leveling up is fun... but is XCom2 more of a world to explore or just drop in missions like original XCom ?

shabushabu_sl said:

when i originally played XCom in what 2010 when it was released i got bored because of the "arena-like" environments of the game. Drop me in to a square area, kill aliens repeat. I understand the team building and leveling up is fun... but is XCom2 more of a world to explore or just drop in missions like original XCom ?

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Pretty much the same.

Lithose_sl said:

Well, safer--the whole concealment system has a major flaw in that enemies out of sight sometimes do not illustrate their detection squares. It is frustrating as fuck and I have no idea if it is a feature or a bug. But I ran into a pod just now and saw the advent, but not the sectoid--so I move outside the detection range of the advent (Thinking it is the range of the whole pod). Here the sectoid was breaking LoS behind a dumpster and the moment I moved I saw all these new detection flags pop up and sure enough he spotted me.

Concealment would be very powerful if not for the time limits, but given them, I'm pretty sure if I could go back I'd for sure take your advice and get the +damage to sword. My rangers chopping people have saved my ass so many times.

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Like I said, I do a 1/1 split on blademaster/phantom. My blademaster takes conceal while my phantom takes run & gun. When my phantom eventually gets revealed, I can pop my blademaster back into concealment and continue to have a scout. I used an SMG for a while on my blademaster, but I Found that it made me a bit too aggressive and I had a tendency to activate extra pods with the extra mobility. I kinda wish I'd used an SMG on my primary specialist for the extra range on skulljack/mining, but aside from that SMGs aren't very useful. The +mobility was a lot more valuable in Long War since capturing live aliens was crucial for both economy and research, whereas skullmining just gets you a smidge of extra intel once a mission. Which is fantastic, but not nearly as important as live captures were in Long War.

Seananigans_sl said:

Why can't my duder hack this turret? Do you have to unlock that capability? Beagle was able to do it right off the bat, I thought.

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Turrets are mechanical enemies and require Haywire Protocol. Specialists can hack Sensor Towers by default, anyone can hack mission objectives but specialists can hack them at range and with their higher hack skill they are much more likely to get the special rewards which can have a pretty significant (usually short term though) effect on your entire campaign.

*edit*

One of my dark events is that faceless infiltrators are present in all my missions. It seems like they don't give off detection squares when you're concealed or flee when you're not concealed, which makes it a dead giveaway where the faceless is. You can't shoot at them but you can damage and force a reveal with any area of affect weapon, or the scanning protocol of a specialist. Something for people to be watching for if you get the same dark event.

I am at the very end of the campaign now. Just the Radio Tower and final mission left seemingly. Only complaint is that Elerium Cores really seemed to dry up later on in favor of PCS and mods. I finally got a second WAR suit and figured that and one Wraith is good enough to win.

I also find it interesting how tactics progress as the game goes on. Early on the out of stealth over watch trap is that hot shit. Late game I don't waste the overwatch, the abilities on the classes are too good to just take a regular shot and I can't rely on heavies to land overwatch shots on high defense enemies plus I need their explosives to tear through the shit tons of armor things have at the end.

Some bugs for sure, especially with melee, but quite enjoyable and I can't wait for a second go to see what the randomizer gives me for grenades and ammo.

I'm really enjoying the ranger trees, both sides... Can you choose where to stand when you do blade attacks? Can't work out how to do it..

You can if your enemy is within blue move range, otherwise no I don't think you can.

Also, holy fucking shit at one of the late game enemies.

sakkath_sl said:

I'm really enjoying the ranger trees, both sides... Can you choose where to stand when you do blade attacks? Can't work out how to do it..

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You can, yes, just not by clicking the button afaik. Do a blade attack via part of your movement: hover over the intersection of where you want to stand and the enemy and the slash icon should appear - right click and bam moving and attacking from where you want (important for the flanking ranger perk). This also works with way points (ctrl click) to avoid hot spots/hazards.

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I'm loving the leader trees - only gripe is that clumping is punished so heavily and the leadership radius isn't exactly large. I can understand passive bonuses being restricted to the radius, but the active abilities should effect everyone imho. I mean seriously, how hard is it to shout 'KILL THAT FUCKER!'