XCOM 2

Gotta love that they actually balance towards harder instead of gimping their game down like most companies do. I'm 70 hours in with 2-3 campaigns I lost early and the current one where I guess it's basically won, avatar-surfing for fun right now but only a few missions from finishing.

Well one thing is you can still get a huge effect out of mimic beacons if you use them more tactically now. Couple active mecs or mutons? Pretty much wasted. Couple vipers, sectoids, an andromedon, or a gatekeeper? Pretty big deal to rob them of a turn. Especially since in the case of vipers, if you can get it close enough they'll blue move forward and attempt to wrap, wasting their turn completely AND leaving them exposed.

Is it just me or is scanning protocol totally worthless? I only used it a couple of times in my first play through, in ironman I was like I should use that more and its just so bad. Just failed a mission because scanning protocol revealed a pack way far away and when I go to move into position two other packs that were closer than the one revealed spotted me.

Scanning protocol shouldn't activate a pod. But yeah I don't think it's very good, maybe if it had unlimited uses with cooldown or something. Just take battle scanners to retaliation missions and the codex coordinate mission.

So I finally finished the game on the standard difficulty(veteran?). I never messed with any psi-troops at all during the game, but holy god the captain dude in the last mission is a killing machine. Is a maxed out psi troop comparable or is the main character in the last mission just a beast with no other equal in the game? I feel like I really missed out if that dude was a typical psionic soldier

PSI troops are actually better in my opinion because they have more options.

The commandatar doesn't even begin to compare to a fully trained Psi-Op. You get one permanent mind control instead of an unlimited number of temporary ones, your void rift can cause secondary affects including rupture and mind control, you project an aura that cures/makes people immune to disorientation/panic/mind control, you can give your turn to someone else, you can use stasis to stop an enemy or protect an exposed soldier for a turn, so much shit.

Psi Operative (XCOM 2 - XCOM Wiki - Wikia)

Seananigans_sl said:

I like scanning protocol just because it has such a huge range, and covers all around you. But no it can't activate pods, and I've never seen it "miss" pods in its radius. So I'm not sure quite what you're talking about, mures.

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I think my problem with it is doesn't it only greatly increases vision range? So environmental factors can still obstruct seeing enemies? Thats the only way I can explain what happened to me unless the game just decides its time for you to die and randomly spawns enemies.

..............A................
..............AZ..............
...............................
...........................B...
......C.......................
..............DY.............
...............................
.........D....................

This is what happened to me. D is the specialist using scanning protocol, it revealed pod A. Pod A moved to position AZ during the alien turn. I then move to DY and activate pods B and C, which alerted pod A. I had to have been practically on top of pod C when using scanning protocol because they were very close on top of a building I was directly underneath. Pod B was behind a rock ledge.

Also just reminded me, it bothers me you can't move your camera during the aliens turn, why can't I see which direction the enemies in my vision just went?

Cuz it ain't your turn?

Other XCOM old games would show that alien activity screen for anything not in your vision and you couldn't do anything during that either.

Anarchy's Children is out. Purely cosmetic stuff, but looks quite entertaining.

joeboo_sl said:

So I finally finished the game on the standard difficulty(veteran?). I never messed with any psi-troops at all during the game, but holy god the captain dude in the last mission is a killing machine. Is a maxed out psi troop comparable or is the main character in the last mission just a beast with no other equal in the game? I feel like I really missed out if that dude was a typical psionic soldier

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My FoH asshat allstars playthrough ended with Mist killing the last two avatars on her own with three inspires from the Psi ops in the team. It gives her a extra action but with Death From Above she ended up shooting like 4 times in one turn.

Why does it not surprise me you had Mist as a sniper? Early on misses the point entirely of a thread, then later makes very controlled comments often enabled by indirect support of others. It fits.

She rolled as a sniper. Wil "Cucknoomba" Wheaton was my go-to ranger. Laurie "Itzena" Penny was Support. They were pulled from the character pool as rookies and their classes rolled randomly.

Yeah she was pistols build. But she can shoot up to 6 times with her plasma rifle during Killzone anyway---which is the best reason to bring a sniper along. She rolled run and gun from the AWC, which wasn't very useful considering I sploited the skill that buffs you if you didn't move from the last turn, but with lightning hands and armor-piercing rounds she dominated the avatars.

I actually just used her pistols just to force them to teleport somewhere where Dumar and Chaos could shoot them, but she ended up critting and killing the first one and I figured she may as well finish off the last one since it still had armor and she was the only one with a AP rounds and a clear shot so I inspired her.