XCOM 2 Catch-All

Speaking of skill combinations, I was thrilled to get Rapid Fire on my Sharpshooter. Only...It doesn't seem to work with Squad Sight. I've only ever been able to use it close up (i.e, almost never). Plus, they actually receive a penalty for being close.

I wish I could go back and take all the pistol perks for her!

Is anyone else using Sparks? I built one on a lark, even though they were a bit underpowered in the base game. I'm glad I did. They're tough, they don't get tired and the later skills in the trees are pretty darn nice.

Plus, you know, now Worf is voicing two characters for me.

A_Unicycle wrote:

I wish I could go back and take all the pistol perks for her!

Just do the retrain ability option in the...thing.

...I might have to try that. I've never had to use that in all my hours playing. Hopefully it doesn't remove Rapid Fire.

I just took out the assassin, but at a cost. I lost my best sharpshooter - a major, and my best specialist - a sergeant.

I recorded about an hour and a bit of my XCOM 2: War of The Choosen Ironman run on our Youtube channel today. I don't mind saying, they were pretty clean missions ... for a change.

Mr Crinkle wrote:
A_Unicycle wrote:

I wish I could go back and take all the pistol perks for her!

Just do the retrain ability option in the...thing.

Just be careful, because retraining abilities doesn't refund any points you put into "Xcom" abilities. Those little extra ones like Rapid fire on the Sharpshooter for example.

Also, I love all the choices. It's nice not being able to pick and do everything. The min maxer inside me is screaming every time I have to prioritise something over something else (typically Intel, god do I need Intel!!!). But I really like the fact that it's not perfect. You make mistakes and you just roll with it. It makes it damn fun.

The skill combinations are randomized making for unique soldiers, if you can manage to purchase the extra skills. Rapid Fire isn't too charming on a Sharpshooter, but it is fairly excellent on a Specialist, which otherwise doesn't get too many +damage options, and they have next-best Aim. I combo'd it with Holo-Targeting so the second shot is at a normal percentage, and attacking anything with the Specialist paints the target for every other squaddie.

The skill I found unusually effective on my Sharpshooters is Hail of Bullets, because it allows the Sharpshooter to shoot and kill pretty much anything they can see normally (not squadsight), which is amazing. Auto-damage 8 is a pretty amazing power, and it's not like Sharpshooters aren't reload-hungry anyway. The Shadowkeeper Pistol also has a 1-off free action autohit power so together it's 11 autodamage with possible boosts from BlueScreen rounds.

For Reapers, the killer +combo is Superior Autoloader and Superior Extended Magazine. Not only does this make them amazing at killing Lost, it also bolsters their Banish power (shoot at the target until you're out of ammo) to the point where it's a Ruler-killing power, capable of dishing out upwards of 30 single-unit damage at a pinch. The Auto-Loader is so they can reload to full whenever the Ruler shows up.

Its only real competitor in terms of sheer single-target damage output is a multi-man fire team, and that requires multiple actions and two XCOM operatives, which makes it less than ideal in a Ruler scenario. The two-man combo is any Soldier with Teamwork, plus Grenadier with Rapid Fire, Holo-Targeting and Chainshot. The combo is initiated with Holo-targeting the target with the Grenadier using Rapid Fire. Then Teamwork an action onto the Grenadier with his partner, which is used for Chainshot, Then Dual Strike with the Soldier for good measure, assuming the Grenadier still has rounds to fire.

The number of insane damage and utility combos is higher with multiple bonus skills plus action-point shifting using Teamwork. I can easily see why they restricted it to 1/mission.

It's very important that there are now randomized Breakthroughs as well as randomized regional powers Resistance Network which allows for insta-Contacts is a region power. This means that there are many, many more ways to go through the map and tech-tree with different feels while ultimately defeating the Ethereals and their minions.

For my part, I didn't actually find the Reaper very strong because I got the Improved Assault Rifle Breakthrough very early followed shortly by the Modular Assault Rifle breakthrough. These basically turned my conventional rifles into Laser Rifles, and my Magnetic Rifles into Light Plasma Rifles. Coupled with an early Superior Stock Weapon Upgrade, this turned Mox into a remarkably lethal weapon.

Beckett wrote:

Does anyone have any tips on how to avoid triggering multiple hidden enemy patrols at once?

XCOM 2 growing into one of my favorite games ever, and the Chosen expansion has fixed almost every complaint I had with the base game. But the one thing that continues to frustrate me is that every single time I'm in a fight and attempt to position a far-right or far-left unit for what I think will be a clever flanking maneuver, I end up triggering a second enemy patrol. And suddenly what was a manageable encounter becomes TWICE as hard!

Even after playing a hundred hours of this game, I still can't seem to avoid this happening. I'm playing Ironman on Recruit difficulty and most of the time the game feels too easy EXCEPT when I tip off two patrols at once - then the difficulty feels just right. But if I try to play on Veteran, when that second patrol jumps in I get wiped out. I think the only way I could handle Veteran difficulty was if I turned off Ironman and reloaded anytime I accidentally triggered a second patrol, but I don't want to play that way.

How does everyone else deal with this? Do you keep your squads closer grouped than I do and ignore wide flanking opportunities to lower the risk of this happening? Do you try to draw enemies towards you once a fight begins so that you are always fighting on familiar, fully explored ground? Do you use battle scanners or a shadowed reaper or some other trick to make sure you know where nearby patrols are at all times? Do you emergency evac if a second patrol shows up? Or is this something that happens regularly to everyone and if I were a better player I should be able to handle two patrols at once?

I consider handling two pods at once as the "standard" setting of the game, because while you may be able to ambush multiple pods one at a time in succession, it's inevitable that you're going to make a mistake and trigger another one, or simply trigger another one using your Templar or Ranger melee. Or you could just happen across two patrolling pods that are too close to one another to tackle separately. Basically, one-pod is a gimme, a victory of stealth, won with intel. But standard combat (for me) is two pods.

I think this way because many of the game's mechanics are overkill or don't make sense on Normal with one pod. They may make sense on higher settings, even on one pod, but to me they make a lot of sense with more enemies on the field. Flashbang, many of the explosives, Suppression, Aid Another, all of these make a lot more sense when you can be subject to a lot of attacks or have to mitigate attacks rather than win by a simple application of overwhelming force.

Prior to WOTC, I usually had a Phantom Ranger with Conceal as a mainstay of scouting, plus Scanning Protocol and/or Battle Scanner for good measure. Pro-tip: put Battle Scanner on the soldier without Scanning Protocol. The intel really is invaluable. Visibility range is about 17 tiles, so if you know where a patrol is headed, you can park your squad within their patrol LOS and gain a turn of Overwatch fire with the entire patrol in the open, which can be enough to end the encounter.

With WOTC and Reapers, I'm really spoiled. Phantom Rangers can't really attack much because doing so breaks Concealment. A Reaper with Silent Killer won't break concealment on attack, so long as she kills her target. So she can contribute to combat, and stealth better than a Ranger, AND she moves faster, too.

There are also tricks you can do with standard troops. You can advance with a Ranger and draw fire and attacks her way. Run and Gun isn't just for running in close and flanking. It's also for getting into a bad position, repositioning somewhere more defensible and still ready Overwatch fire. Aid Another with Hunker Down helps her survive and with the entire enemy squad facing her way, the entire rest of your squad can move in and flank everything. There are also squad tactics you can play with using Conceal. They can't target what they can't see, so Conceal can protect the Ranger while drawing in enemies to attack a squad in full Overwatch. Enemy units presumably are in positions beyond firing range - the Ranger triggers the pod, Conceals, and the rest of the squad beyond sight range goes into Overwatch.

I do like flanking and I flank a whole damn lot. I used to run into the problems you describe. I still get myself into some trouble now and again, but nothing Aid Another and Flashbang can't solve.

Insane mission last night in what I consider the 'sewer' map - bog standard mission, hacking an advent box. 6 team squad with a Templar, lost and explosive barrels everywhere. Initially went well, but the hunter dropped in (first time I've encountered him) and, in the process of avoiding one of his talents, activated a 2 cortex and 1 andromendon pod. Then a swarm came in. The andromedon takes a swipe at one of the lost, detonates one of the explosive barrels as collateral damage, immediately calling in another swarm. At that point I think 'sod it', and due to the hunters shell shock vulnerability, launch a rocket at him.

Well, that calls in another swarm, so now there are two Cortex's ( who split, thanks to all the explosive damage) one lightly damage andromedon, one pissed off hunter and about 30 some odd lost.

Not sure how I made it through but I did, all six injured and the hunter having mind probed the Templar. Some Stirling work by my sniper and ranger killed about 20 lost in one turn, its very annoying that they seem to ignore advent and go after you instead. The Cortex's meant most of my free reloads went begging (thanks psychic bomb), my grenadier and specialist went down to 1 hours a piece (mostly because I had to hang my specialist out in the open to hack the box the turn before it self destructed) and the grenadier got caught in an explosion. My ranger now also has fear of the lost. Can't say I blame her.

Man I love this expansion, but I think I need to spend those XCOM points on some of my less combat adept soldiers.

Protip: don't have Mox use Justice on a Purifier when he's in cover behind an explodable car.

Love those Purifiers. They don't always blow up when you kill them, but it happens often enough that an alpha hit on them is a pretty good idea a lot of times.

Question for the long time players: Did they change the specialist's ability to hack terminals from a distance (mission goal terminals, not generic towers)? Since starting WotC I can never remotely hack anymore for a mission goal. I always have to get up adjacent to it.

Thanks to the couple of you that mentioned Alt+F4. I never play Ironman because I'm always killing myself with miss-clicks at some point. It never even occurred to me to use a Windows shortcut to exit out in a jam like that. Very good to know for my next run!

Nope. Just did a couple missions with remote hacking. In one, I hacked the workstation from Stealth. I had the Resistance Order that stops the clock under after you break concealment so it wasn't even any rush. Proper stealthing before a proper "sit-back" style XCOM beat down.

It just has to be within sight of the Specialist. Unfortunately the new "target predict" Ui doesn't indicate LOS to hack points.

Weird. I've done tons of missions now, and I've looked to remote hack on multiple occasions. I'm not sure if it's a bug or if I've had extraordinarily bad luck with line of sight (the latter seems most likely), but it's got to be one or the other.

ubrakto wrote:

Weird. I've done tons of missions now, and I've looked to remote hack on multiple occasions. I'm not sure if it's a bug or if I've had extraordinarily bad luck with line of sight (the latter seem most likely), but it's got to be one or the other.

line of sight seems to be a little more tricky, but it definitely still works.

I've been meaning to check whether hacking towers still increases hacking skill for the individual soldier. You used to be able to cheese the hacking rating a bit, to the point that even sectopods weren't too much trouble to deal with. I have the distinct sense that this is no longer the case. Or it may just be that there are a lot fewer towers.

I've been checking the towers, but the sheer variety of new maps and mission types available means that there simply aren't as many tower-type missions are there were previously. I'm already at Plasma Weapons and I still haven't encountered a tower with a +Hack reward. Having said that, there is a Resistance Order that reduces Hack Defense, and Covert Ops with modest +Hack rewards. It's not absent, but it's also not as cheesy.

The entire Hack mechanic feels problematic. The risk/reward of each Hack option doesn't seem very well thought-out. There's no downside to some, but with rewards not commensurate with the action cost, and too large a risk for others, such as amplifying the tactical power of a Sectopod.

You can mitigate some of those risks, of course. For instance, if you have a Sharpshooter on standby with LOS, BlueScreen Rounds and an insta-hit chance on a Mech, then going for the hack feels like a non-risk, and the commensurate reward would trivialize the entire pod. I feel like more modest, but varied gains would be the ticket here. Less time controlled (just 1 turn) or alternate tactical rewards like turning the mech hostile to all nearby units, without outright control.

All things considered, the hackable towers are just an incidental feature on certain maps anyhow.

LarryC wrote:

Nope. Just did a couple missions with remote hacking. In one, I hacked the workstation from Stealth. I had the Resistance Order that stops the clock under after you break concealment so it wasn't even any rush. Proper stealthing before a proper "sit-back" style XCOM beat down.

It just has to be within sight of the Specialist. Unfortunately the new "target predict" Ui doesn't indicate LOS to hack points.

Larry, the target preview function for "interactables" appears to be bugged. I have had it both accurately and inaccurately represent LOS to hack points.

LarryC wrote:

Love those Purifiers. They don't always blow up when you kill them, but it happens often enough that an alpha hit on them is a pretty good idea a lot of times.

For a different reason, but much yes. There's a mod that let's you get the weapon for your grenadiers (iirc\makes sense as to class). I'll likely be scooping that to play around with.

I don't keenly recall if this was toned down before, or mostly by LW2 , but I'm glad to see environmental weapon damage and explosions back in a big way. Played a mission last night where there were a bunch of cars parked around gas pumps... sometimes the loot can just sod off. I mean, seriously, the reinforcements air drop RNGed on TOP of the platform above the pumps plus there was a sectoid by the pumps and other soldiers and a priest inside the gas station by the window close to a car between the two. Of course I'm going to go 80's action move on that mess waiting to happen. I couldn't stop from chuckling when the pumps blew a car which blew the other pumps.
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Ubrakto's remark reminds me of something. Not sure if this was a bug or something I am missing but I had a security tower|'light pole' that I successfully hacked but it still had two more icons in the exact same spot after (ie, there were three icons before the hack then after it dropped to two). Do you have to hack a security tower multiple times now to completely shut it off? bug? other?

ps per the interest shown: I believe a WoTC version of Gotcha Again (or a similar mod) is back up now with enhanced LOS preview stuff like objectives. Also, per the one Q I saw, if it's not in the base game there's an additional mod that gives an [extra] ~ 2 or 3 hacking points on a successful hack. Most of these mods are INI-value configurable so you can [likely] change it to 1 point if you want a little something for the feels. As example, I'm running Musashi's WotC infiltrator (primary pistol plus sword -- each tree side is heavily slanted the other way. Anyways, I toned down some of it's OPness -- especially the mobility). Oh, I think you can opt for the sawed off instead of a pistol for folks that miss the visual flair of that from LW2.

Aetius wrote:

Protip: don't have Mox use Justice on a Purifier when he's in cover behind an explodable car. :(

Found this out the hard way with my premier range and Bladestrike beside a tanker rail car. Went out in a spectacular blaze of glory along with half the alien squad!

I just had a crazy mission where I needed to save a skirmisher VIP and 2 units. I immediately had my reaper spotted by an unseen enemy. She was left exposed just inside a room. On the enemy turn a berserker and some other unit followed her, but didn't get a shot off. My grenadier used a grenade to blow up the fire escape they were standing on to send them crashing down. I was able to finish them off.

The explosion set off a horde of zombies, so I had a ton of those to deal with. One of the sectoids mind controlled one of my units, but then during the zombie phase the buggers actually killed the sectoid and freed my unit. It was awesome.

The zombies also injured a codex which caused it to multiple and teleport, very close to the VIP I needed to rescue. My reaper had used her shadow charge just before and now had to come out of it to save the VIP, except she did 1 damage too little, and now there were 3 codexes. My sniper had a long shot that was able to get the remaining hp, but that last copy of the codex drained 3 of my units of their ammo the next turn.

I needed to use grenades to kill the zombies and some enemies, which caused another horde. I finally got things under control, and saved the two other skirmisher units, but there was another horde on the way, and I spotted a large mec, one of those poison guys that are in an environmental suit, a priests guy and one other. I barely got by, because some of my units were caught without ammo. I needed to fallback and regroup.

I made it without any deaths and all was good in the world.

That sounds like one hell of a mission!!! Love it!

My favorite trick is blowing up the floor underneath an enemy. Explosion plus fall damage is pretty damn deadly. I also found the reaper skill to blow up objects on command to be very useful.

And yes all the chosen weapons are insane. I never used a assault class as much as I did until I got that sword. The sniper and pistol was pretty damn good too.

Pratal Mox is great. Pratal "Mad Mox" Mox in a camo fedora is even better. I love XCOM.
Ok, so technically, I just rescued him back from Advent... but if the game doesn't let me manually add a nickname like the others then hello travesty.

The fedora just happened though and, let me tell ya, he is one handsome devil with that helmet off. I didn't think I'd give a flip about the picture taking thing... was I wrong about that!

Phew, I just beat the 2nd Chosen - the warlock guy. I lost 2 vs the Assassin, but I didn't lose any soldiers in this one.

Damn it, my save game got eaten when the game crashed...

Guess I'll start again!

wow...ok. One of the chosen finally caught up to the Avenger. :O

That's quite the epic mission you get out of it. I'd recommend letting it happen at least once!

ubrakto wrote:

Question for the long time players: Did they change the specialist's ability to hack terminals from a distance (mission goal terminals, not generic towers)? Since starting WotC I can never remotely hack anymore for a mission goal. I always have to get up adjacent to it.

Thanks to the couple of you that mentioned Alt+F4. I never play Ironman because I'm always killing myself with miss-clicks at some point. It never even occurred to me to use a Windows shortcut to exit out in a jam like that. Very good to know for my next run!

Was the terminal in a vehicle? This was a problem with LW2 as well, especially when coupled with the Gotcha Again mod (Which I consider essential) For whatever reason the game seems to allow you to see terminals in vehicles (The one that appears in the train carriage is notorious for this) but you cannot hack them unless you are in the vehicle. The same thing can happen when they are located in to trucks too, although that appears a little inconsistent. IF it's anywhere else I think it might be a bug.

I had the mission to take out the assassin last night - epic, much tougher than I was expecting. That final room feels a little cheesy though.

Also, I had another insane mission - WotC does seem to set itself up to deliver these. I had the haven defense mission where the Chryssalids show up. It started well - I had a phantom ranger see the pod which allowed me to set up an overwatch trap, and then a squadsight sniper drew them and eliminated them. The next turn my battlescanner popped both faceless, again a squadsight sniper drawing them in a nice overwatch killbox. At this point I'm thinking it's going to be an easy mission. Boy was I wrong.

A firefight with a priest and trooper got me stuck a little, and my ranger got flanked and spotted by a Cryssalid I didn't know what still on the map - he got poisoned and hurt (although he did take it out) with only one heal available (I had no uninjured specialists available) he got that on the 3rd turn.

Then the lost turn up. Fine, I set up a defence perimiter on a roof and go to town while my newly concealed ranger runs around rescuing all the civilians. I get to one civvie left, the ranger waltzes over only to trigger the bloody Berserker Queen, and two more cryssalids. Well my ranger gets hit by one of Chryssalids trying to get away, and he's toast. His bond mate goes berserker and wastes a magazine blazing away at the Chryssalid (who's miles away) and misses every shot. Plus the ranger cocoons up and I can expect 2 more Chryssalids. Another lost swarm turns up, but thankfully keeps the queen busy while I'm trying to kill off the Chryssalids, all the while not coming down from the roof so that the queen can't get at me.

In the end I got there - after a never ending swarm of lost (One each turn) and I'm trying to kill the queen so I can complete the mission. It took 17 turns, end kill count was 143 (134 of those being lost) absolutely bonkers. Not sure my refusal to leave that roof so the queen couldn't get at me helped, and for whatever reason when you are on a roof you cannot see the squares that directly surround a building. When she finally moved to engage another lost swarm I managed to kill her. Took forever!

That battle sounds epic for sure!