XCOM 2 Catch-All

Finished my candidate run. Final party was:

Booker (ranger)
Bernie (ranger)
Gillibrand (psi)
Harris (support)
Inslee (heavy)
Klobuchar (sniper)

I sent Klobuchar on a bunch of +aim resistance ring missions, so by the end she almost couldn't miss.

As many Reapers as I've gotten killed over the last few ironman runs, I'm surprised Volk still takes my phone calls.

No no no I have to finish Assassin's Creed Origins first I'm so close to the end!

I don't know why I never got around to adding Shen and Aliens before, but the recent sale has seen me rectify this.

A flawless Operation Gatecrasher and I'm off to a bit of a flier. Having a Templar from the start is so valuable.

Bruce wrote:

I don't know why I never got around to adding Shen and Aliens before, but the recent sale has seen me rectify this.

A flawless Operation Gatecrasher and I'm off to a bit of a flier. Having a Templar from the start is so valuable.

Wait until you the meet the alien rulers.

I have an Legend Ironman campaign that is hanging on just about.

Just had the mission from hell though. Underground, loads of advent and a short timer to get to the extraction. Then reinforments turn up (including an amdromedon, and I’d run out of explosives to shred it’s armour), lose my specialist, the an Alien ruler turns up.

I lost 4. I think I’ll be OK but I’ve really got to get to the hunters base before he gets to the avenger

The Templar got Bladestorm at Sgt. OP PLS NERF

Bruce wrote:

The Templar got Bladestorm at Sgt. OP PLS NERF

If it winds up getting Reaper, it's all over.

Just an FYI, a templar can not activate parry after using Reaper so you will need to return to cover if you think you can't land another killing blow.

Current campaign progress:

2 of the chosen will no longer be bothering me. The avatar timer has tripped 3 times, but I one pip short at the moment and I’m about to contact a new region with a facility in it. The shadow chamber is nearly finished and there is a ‘reduce the avatar timer’ covert mission available (if I don’t need to find the final chosen first)

I’ve got warden armour up and just unlocked plasma weapons. This is Legend Ironman. By far the furthest I’ve reached in L/I and for the first time I feel like I’m riding the curve rather than trying to cling on. Some of the missions throw ridiculous levels of enemies at you, but I’ve slowly learned the art of good stealth and not over extending yourself. It is L/I though so might still go horribly wrong at some point, but right now it feels like it’s kinda going OK.

That's when you know everything's about to go sideways.

Kidding! I hope you complete this run.

LarryC wrote:

That's when you know everything's about to go sideways.

Kidding! I hope you complete this run. :)

Yes this it what I’m worrying about. Still I won’t be playing for a couple of days now while we have some essential house work done, so a bit of a breather before heading back in Later this week. This is my - well, probably somewhere in my 20s now - attempt at Legend Ironman, it would be nice after 830 hours of playing the game to succeed.

Reaper81 wrote:
Bruce wrote:

The Templar got Bladestorm at Sgt. OP PLS NERF

If it winds up getting Reaper, it's all over.

Just an FYI, a templar can not activate parry after using Reaper so you will need to return to cover if you think you can't land another killing blow.

She did. Parry or cover don't make much difference when everything is dead.
The Viper King nearly got lucky with his second appearance. Squeezing a ranger down to 1HP before I took him down, but he seemed fairly manageable. His skin looks a bit dorky when being worn as a hat.

I may never tire of this game.

This is my greatest achievement in gaming:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/bPQBFlT.png)

Seriously, Sorbicol? Sometimes I think they put that screen in there never expecting anyone to actually *see* it. Congrats!

Well done!

Wow that's awesome. Congrats.

Congrats, Sorb! That's awesome!

Well played Sorb.

I have some ambitions to do some more voice over acting, so I think I will start trying to create a voice mod for this. Do our experienced modders have any advice for a newb?

Holy cow, Sorbicol. Well done.

I'm doing a playthrough of the base XCOM2 with the Bob Ross voice pack on for fun. It makes me giggle.

A win on veteran for my first run with Aliens and Sparks. Learned a few things and ready to go again.

My favorite resistance card has to be Inside Information. That extra +1 across every upgrade is a massive snowball of power upgrade.

I want to try this again, but I'm from the old school - go into a fight, take my time, set up attacks and move on afterwards. This game, though, has given me timed scenarios where it *seems* like the only way through is to sprint, take fire and die, and desperately try to reach some device before it explodes or melts away. I don't really know how to handle the choices in those missions.

What am I missing? Is there a good tactics guide for this game with the expansions?

I agree with you - I didn't enjoy those times missions. You can select a New Game option to increase those timers, and there are mods too.

I'm most of the way through my first Commander difficulty game. I had a supply crate mission with the lost, a bunch of aliens and the Chosen Assassin. It was total carnage.

Robear wrote:

I want to try this again, but I'm from the old school - go into a fight, take my time, set up attacks and move on afterwards. This game, though, has given me timed scenarios where it *seems* like the only way through is to sprint, take fire and die, and desperately try to reach some device before it explodes or melts away. I don't really know how to handle the choices in those missions.

What am I missing? Is there a good tactics guide for this game with the expansions?

You are basically down to mods.

This one eliminates all timers.

This one adds 4 turns to most missions and 2 turns to the rest (I have no idea which is which though)

XCOM2 is designed to be played with the timers intact. Remember that sometimes killing everything on the ground isn't the point - the point is to get the hell out while you can. Long War does this brilliantly - the way the game works you couldn't kill everything even if you wanted to - and it's something a lot of vanilla players tend to forget. Late game you can generally bulldoze anything you come up against sure, but early game sneaking around until you are ready can be the much better idea.

The time limits are a counter to the crawl along on overwatch style of play. Which is safe and effective but not as challenging.

So you need to manage moving forward quickly and just busting open a pod and dealing with it. Make a strong forward move early in your turn so the rest of the squad has a chance to do a lot of damage in your turn. If that move doesn't reveal anything that follow up everyone else just behind that. You don't want to reveal a pod with one of your last moves. A move to minimal cover that is behind your front line while not in combat is preferable to full cover but in a fight. We all still fall for moving to a good looking position with one of our last moves on a turn but that is the level where you get spotted by a pod and now they get a free turn on you.

Robear wrote:

I want to try this again, but I'm from the old school - go into a fight, take my time, set up attacks and move on afterwards. This game, though, has given me timed scenarios where it *seems* like the only way through is to sprint, take fire and die, and desperately try to reach some device before it explodes or melts away. I don't really know how to handle the choices in those missions.

What am I missing? Is there a good tactics guide for this game with the expansions?

XCOM2 is dead easy if you could take infinite turns, basically. Honestly, XCOM kind of was that way as well. So in XCOM2, time is a resource. It is like your grenade count or your troop count or your health. You only have so many of it, so you have to budget your turns, which means you also have to budget your actions. This gives meaning to reloads and double moves and sprinting movements and such. All of that is a lot more meaningful when you have to budget even your transitions from encounter to encounter.

I've only ever played the game in Veteran, but sprinting isn't the issue. Ideally, you pop a pod and kill or disable everything in one turn. You're never supposed to take fire, especially in War of the Chosen. Rangers and Specialists are there for a reason. The Reaper class takes that up and turns it to eleven, basically being all-stealth, all-the-time.

In most of my runs, I have about 3 to 5 deaths, and none of them were because I was pressed for time.

Basically, you have to value kill-efficiency as much as kill-certainty. A power is worthless even if it's 100% assured kills and 0% risk to your troops if it takes 15 turns to set it up.

This avoids the tedium of XCOM 1 because there is always a more efficient way to do something, so you're always trying to optimize your team loadouts and strategy. A team that is efficient at getting out a VIP through a gauntlet of enemies isn't necessarily going to be good at elimination missions or terror missions.

LarryC wrote:
Robear wrote:

I want to try this again, but I'm from the old school - go into a fight, take my time, set up attacks and move on afterwards. This game, though, has given me timed scenarios where it *seems* like the only way through is to sprint, take fire and die, and desperately try to reach some device before it explodes or melts away. I don't really know how to handle the choices in those missions.

What am I missing? Is there a good tactics guide for this game with the expansions?

XCOM2 is dead easy if you could take infinite turns, basically. Honestly, XCOM kind of was that way as well. So in XCOM2, time is a resource. It is like your grenade count or your troop count or your health. You only have so many of it, so you have to budget your turns, which means you also have to budget your actions. This gives meaning to reloads and double moves and sprinting movements and such. All of that is a lot more meaningful when you have to budget even your transitions from encounter to encounter.

I've only ever played the game in Veteran, but sprinting isn't the issue. Ideally, you pop a pod and kill or disable everything in one turn. You're never supposed to take fire, especially in War of the Chosen. Rangers and Specialists are there for a reason. The Reaper class takes that up and turns it to eleven, basically being all-stealth, all-the-time.

In most of my runs, I have about 3 to 5 deaths, and none of them were because I was pressed for time.

Basically, you have to value kill-efficiency as much as kill-certainty. A power is worthless even if it's 100% assured kills and 0% risk to your troops if it takes 15 turns to set it up.

This avoids the tedium of XCOM 1 because there is always a more efficient way to do something, so you're always trying to optimize your team loadouts and strategy. A team that is efficient at getting out a VIP through a gauntlet of enemies isn't necessarily going to be good at elimination missions or terror missions.

Mostly this. I found the timers to be pretty much perfectly balanced on both veteran and commander. I never failed a mission because of a timer and usually finished with 1-2 turns to spare. The key in those missions is to be aggressive but not stupid. And if you're playing WOTC, take advantage of the reaper ability to scout out enemy positions prior to moving other soldiers.

Playing Phoenix Point makes me really appreciate Xcom even more. The beauty of this game, the way it just works and keeps dishing out those little pieces to keep you coming back... Amazing how no other game can really do it justice.

BlackSabre wrote:

Playing Phoenix Point makes me really appreciate Xcom even more. The beauty of this game, the way it just works and keeps dishing out those little pieces to keep you coming back... Amazing how no other game can really do it justice.

I'm playing Phoenix Point too - what is it about PP that's really making you appreciate XCOM?

Thanks for the advice, folks, I really appreciate it.

Dealing with those timed missions are tough. I've got a couple strategies to cope with them.

If I've got a Reaper handy, I use them to scout ahead and locate the target: Data cache, transmitter to destroy, etc. They also locate enemies along the way. I then leave them in the area so that if I can't get the rest of the squad up there, they can jump in and do the hacking. Rangers can serve this role too, but are not as stealthy, obviously.

In the case of hacking a chest to get at the data, etc, it helps to remember that a Specialist can do that remotely, so I try to get them up to a line of sight. If I run out of time, the Reaper (or Ranger) will jump in and hack it, but the Specialist has the best chance of getting an extra bonus out of it so I try to use them whenever possible.

In the case of destroying a relay or transmitter, Sharpshooters can hit them via squadsight, so long as they have line of sight. That allows you to destroy them at a distance. I'll also let the Reaper use a claymore on them if necessary. BTW, this is my main strategy if the Avenger gets grounded as well. Reaper goes out and finds the target Sharpshooter hits it from across the map.

Once the target is destroyed, the timers go away and you can mop up in a leisurely manner.

Of course, if you get the resistance orders that either allow you to delay timers until concealment is broken, or that increase the timers by 2, that's a huge help. Once recent Commander Ironman run I had both

I can only think of a couple of missions where the timer was too little to have a chance, the most notable was a mission full of priests that stasis locked my squad so much I couldn't get anything done in time.

You'll get better and learning how to arrange yourself to bring your firepower into a pod fast and devastating which will allow you to finish and move forward more quickly.