XCOM 2

My sniper has over 100 kills, she is fucking stupid good. A well managed Serial plus free reload mod is like cheating.

Like the first one this is probably the most frustrating game I've ever played. I know "it's xcom" blah blah blah. But I am getting pretty tired of doing really well and then hitting that one mission that just butt fucks you sidways.

"Moderate" difficulty mission where the timer is like 6 turns, I shoot at one pod from concealment and activate 3 pods and 2 turrets at the same time. Half of my veterans who have hardly even taken damage the entire game get erased in 2 turns.

I finally finished a psi op and took her on a mission. MADRE DIOS!! I had an 8 turn clock to get the chest open. Because of vigilance, the layout of the train, and the timer, when I made my move I knowingly activated every single enemy on the map, expecting things to get pretty rough.

One soldier took a serious wound from having their cover destroyed then being shot. That's it.

80% chance to dominate a <powerful endgame psionic enemy>? Yes please. Immune to the explosive damage that exposed my ranger? Yes please. Void rift to destroy cover and shred the enemy reinforcements? Yes please. If it wouldn't take 4 months to get them all trained, I think I'd run a team of 5 psi ops and one specialist for hacking/skullmining. Too bad you can't build more than one psionics lab, that would be sick and would make a pretty funny mod.

Anyway, most of my general complaints about the game are the exact kinds of things that the Long War mod addressed. Building a lab seems like it was a waste of time because of how small the tech tree is. Psionics, although much more powerful this time around, are implemented even worse than in EW/EU. It doesn't seem like a partially trained psi-op gets any benefit at all from missions, so the optimal way to use the lab is to just immediately upgrade it and leave two psi ops inside cooking until they have every ability. Also the muton counterattack abilitiy seems grossly imbalanced. Missing a melee attack can be disastrous enough, but them getting a free melee hit on you seems like a good way to guarantee your ranger is probably going to die on higher difficulties, which means you just never melee mutons. Ironically Berserkers seem safe to melee, Centurions seem to have a 100% chance, and regular Mutons either do it very rarely or gain the ability later in the campaign.

I think a Long War style mod would be even more amazing for XCom 2 than it was for EW, but they're busy with their own game now

3rd time in a row I get an extraction mission where the evaczone is placed on top of a building you can not reach the roof of.... what am I doing wrong? Did I miss an "Elevators and you, 101" lesson somewhere? Normaly I can climd the outside of most buildings, but the last 3 missions its been glass walls all around and no way I can get my guys to reach the roof...

Faith_sl said:

3rd time in a row I get an extraction mission where the evaczone is placed on top of a building you can not reach the roof of.... what am I doing wrong? Did I miss an "Elevators and you, 101" lesson somewhere? Normaly I can climd the outside of most buildings, but the last 3 missions its been glass walls all around and no way I can get my guys to reach the roof...

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I've had this once. I'm not sure if you can manually call down extraction somewhere else but in my game, a grenade landed on the building and blew a tile out, which made the game automatically re-draw the landing. So try that if it's fucked. (I suspect this is a bug with procedural map)

huehuehue

Timers are probably the most unfun thing about this game, maybe it can be modded out or changed into something else. Using a stealth scout to map everything out (they are even steathed on non-stealth missions) lets me move alot faster and kill alot faster. Not rushing communications has handicapped me a bit, so playing from behind is fun. Meanwhile my squad can murder anything. I love rangers, for mutons just shotgun them in the face. Also, hacking specialists seem shitty, while medical seems op. I end up hacking with a Ranger 70% of the time anyway. Meanwhile medical can heal and remove effects on the entire team in one action? Yes please. Then a sniper for the cherry.

Haywire protocol can disable or control Sectopods and Mecs.. My combat hacker has a 100% chance to stun a Sectopod. That's a really big deal when you activate more than one pod. Combat protocol is guaranteed damage to finish off a wounded target regardless of their cover. Scanning protocol is handy for when you're out of concealment, for making sure you can safely advance around blocked LoS when you're still in concealment, and revealing the positions of Faceless and Chrysallids. I will probably respec my combat hacker to get restoration instead of capacitor discharge though. Discharge is very potent but I just don't need that much firepower in my squad setups.

Both sides of the ability tree are very potent.

Now that I have a Psi-Op I never use my blademaster. I'm not gonna bother respeccing her since she'll still be quite good in retaliations, but otherwise she just can't compare to the power of a run & gun rapid firing shotgunner. Blademaster really needs to scale by an additional 2 for each tech level of your weapon, but even then I'm not sure I'd use one.

Got bored by turn 15, you get so OP near end game.

Bandwagon_sl said:

I can't figure out what I'm supposed to be doing to stay ahead of the avatar project. The only thing that drops the timer is dark sites, right? If not, how do I get the other missions?

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Storyline spoilers, short version is that advancing the storyline knocks off chunks of Avatar progress here and there.

Damn mimic beacon is OP. Completely trivializes a lot of encounters if you use it right. Very little reason to use smoke over it, as it soaks easily 2-3 aliens turns in damage. Which in general soaks up more damage than 20 defense does (And unlike smoke, it draws all visible aliens, where as smoke might only cover 2-3 of your guys, and turn their half cover into full). Beyond that though is draws in melee aliens letting you AE, or as Gav said earlier, letting your blade master rip them apart. Should really only be usable once per match.

Bandwagon_sl said:

I can't figure out what I'm supposed to be doing to stay ahead of the avatar project. The only thing that drops the timer is dark sites, right? If not, how do I get the other missions?

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You can't, don't try. Build your network toward Avatar base locations, but save them. Save black site missions as well. When the bar fills up you get a count down. Let the count down go a few days, then go do an Avatar location or black site, it will reset the count down and shave a couple bars off. You can keep going like this for a long time, because as your network grows, you get access to more avatar sites.

It's not like EW where the bar fills up and game over.

Had a fun thing happen where a snake grabbed my ranger and it pulled my guy to him and wrapped him up, and then blademaster went off and killed him. my character's animation for the rest of the match was a him twitching and a dead snake wrapped around him and he just teleported to where he was going.

I also made some armor that said it protected from all the elements like fire and acid etc so I put in on my ranger.I launch an acid grenade into a group and then send my ranger to go in and clean up and he starts burning from acid.

DAMNIT!!!