XCOM 2 Catch-All

billt721 wrote:

Oh yes. The resistance ring makes it basically impossible to actually lose a campaign. You can level up a B squad entirely through it, so even a full squad wipe won’t ruin your game.

Oh, no. When playing on Commander or Insanity, it is still very possible to squad wipe an A and B team and lose. That said, there is definitely a tipping point in the middle game where your A squad is roflstomping everything.

So I tried playing mechanicus but bounced on it. Instead it made me want to play xcom 2. So I installed longest war mod for it. It's fun but the number of missions is really high. Not sure if there is a way to tweak that.

I'm also the odd ball who preferred the lower troop and enemy count of the original but I'm guessing you can't tweak that.

Had a fun interaction on my latest mission. My Ranger with Bladestorm (free melee attack against anything moving in range, unlimited number of times per round) wielding the Chosen's Katana walked into two pods of burrowed Chrysalids. They all pop out and rush him one by one, but the Bladestorms one-shot them and so he ends up surrounded by dead Chrysalids without having to do anything!

Bladestorm is kinda abusable in general, really, since it will apply if an enemy starts adjacent to you (for instance, if you spent your turn running up and katana-ing them) and tries to run away.

That Katana can’t miss. Makes it straight up OP but considering the aggro you have to go through io get it, you sort of deserve and OP weapon by that point.

I'm at the "waiting for Shadow Chamber projects to complete" phase of the game. There's no real tension in the strategic layer. I've kept the Avatar gauge to 2-3 consistently, contacted every region, and taken out every Facility. Oh and killed all the Chosen too.

I don't know is this is standard, but I've only been able to recruit one additional Resistance faction recruit, total, beyond the initial 3 (one from each faction) the game gives you. I got suckered into recruiting some vanilla rookies that had those faction's head-skins though

I'm sitting on a whole pile of Ability Points at the moment. Seems like I can make some of my best guys super overpowered but, really, they do fine already.

Jake Solomon is leaving Firaxis

Whoa.

Yeah. A bummer. That means that XCOM 3, if there even is one, won't be under his leadership. Which makes me very sad.

Looks like he's just one of several long-time employees who are leaving. And didn't Civ VII's presumed director leave last year? I wonder what's going on at Firaxis.

Vargen wrote:

Looks like he's just one of several long-time employees who are leaving. And didn't Civ VII's presumed director leave last year? I wonder what's going on at Firaxis.

Midnight Suns happened I think. The commercial non-success of MS though has maybe accelerated things a little, you do wonder how much of the decision to make that Firaxis and how much was being driven by 2K.

When all is said and done though it’s easy to read too much into the situation. I suspect it’s more of a ‘End of cycle’ type scenario rather than anything else.

Any thoughts on maybe Jake was hoping for the head of the studio but not chosen might have been the catalyst to leave?

I think Ed Beach is still the director for the new Civ.

Balthezor wrote:

Any thoughts on maybe Jake was hoping for the head of the studio but not chosen might have been the catalyst to leave?

I think Ed Beach is still the director for the new Civ.

Maybe? Hard to know.

Balthezor wrote:

I think Ed Beach is still the director for the new Civ.

I heard something on Three Moves Ahead about them planning to have a new lead, as they usually do with Civ. One of the hosts mentioned interviewing someone as part of a "head designers of the Civ series" article, and then they left the company a couple months later. They were wondering if they'd find someone else or have Beach take the reins on another one.

3MA is in my settle-my-brain-so-I-can-fall-asleep playlist though, so it's entirely possible that I missed something though.

I also thought I'd read that Beach is still running the show for Civ7, which would actually be quite a departure for the franchise: Jeff Briggs (Civ3), Soren Johnson (4), Jon Shafer (5), and Ed Beach (6). At least, I think that's right. Wiki says Soren worked on 3, but I don't think he was the lead. I feel like one of the various pods he's hosted/been on, he's indicated he didn't take the reigns until the expansions?

Anyway, I'm bummed Solomon is leaving, just because I love the new XCOM games, but if there will be an XCOM3 or more Midnights Suns, some new blood in the center chair doesn't have to be a bad thing.

ubrakto wrote:

I also thought I'd read that Beach is still running the show for Civ7, which would actually be quite a departure for the franchise: Jeff Briggs (Civ3), Soren Johnson (4), Jon Shafer (5), and Ed Beach (6). At least, I think that's right. Wiki says Soren worked on 3, but I don't think he was the lead. I feel like one of the various pods he's hosted/been on, he's indicated he didn't take the reigns until the expansions?

Anyway, I'm bummed Solomon is leaving, just because I love the new XCOM games, but if there will be an XCOM3 or more Midnights Suns, some new blood in the center chair doesn't have to be a bad thing.

Soren did the expansions on Civ III, I think he mentioned it when he was talking about Old World or Offworld Trading Company a few years back. Probably on 3MA.

I have to say there is a lot Civ should be learning from Old World, not least how to do combat using 1UpT.

I think Ed Beach started with the Civ 5 expansions, maybe Brave New World?

I met some of them at the Firaxicon. Jake Solomon was great. That was also 8 years ago. Time flies.

I'm contemplating playing XCOM 2 for the first time. I got it for free on Epic. Is the expansion considered essential for a first time playthrough?

beanman101283 wrote:

I'm contemplating playing XCOM 2 for the first time. I got it for free on Epic. Is the expansion considered essential for a first time playthrough?

No it's a really amazing game without it.

For a long time it wasn't on sale and I still had dozens of hours of good times beating the base campaign.

beanman101283 wrote:

I'm contemplating playing XCOM 2 for the first time. I got it for free on Epic. Is the expansion considered essential for a first time playthrough?

Not quite to Monster Train levels, but I think it's best experienced without it for your first playthrough anyway.

Mr Crinkle wrote:
beanman101283 wrote:

I'm contemplating playing XCOM 2 for the first time. I got it for free on Epic. Is the expansion considered essential for a first time playthrough?

Not quite to Monster Train levels, but I think it's best experienced without it for your first playthrough anyway.

Yeah, this.

And then when you finish your first playthrough and you're still hungering for more (which will happen), you can bung on the DLC and have another first playthrough.

Jonman wrote:
Mr Crinkle wrote:
beanman101283 wrote:

I'm contemplating playing XCOM 2 for the first time. I got it for free on Epic. Is the expansion considered essential for a first time playthrough?

Not quite to Monster Train levels, but I think it's best experienced without it for your first playthrough anyway.

Yeah, this.

And then when you finish your first playthrough and you're still hungering for more (which will happen), you can bung on the DLC and have another first playthrough.

And then you can download the Long War modpack and have another, another first playthrough...

I never finished XCOM: Enemy Unknown despite taking a couple cracks at it, so we'll see if the sequel fares any better before I start thinking about mods

beanman101283 wrote:

I never finished XCOM: Enemy Unknown despite taking a couple cracks at it, so we'll see if the sequel fares any better before I start thinking about mods :lol:

There are some QoL mods I would definitely recommend though. I’ll sort through a list and post it at some point. They don’t change the gameplay at all, but things like being able to evac everyone at the same time and know what/how many items you need to make some things is very very useful.

And is the goodjer file still there?

Fun to take some of you on missions and build a squad with familiar names

Question I have asked on Reddit and the Steam forums for the game but maybe you folks would have some ideas

What do I use/do to make the Xbox controller work right with Xcom 2?

I am on the Deck, I use the controller to navigate to Xcom 2 and launch it, but then when it finally launches the cursor moves at 90 miles an hour and so it is impossible to actually use it.

If I look in settings it says I am using a mouse for control - which is obviously wrong but if I change it to controller it says "reconnect controller" and won't accept the "X" button I am hitting.

So is there a community layout I should try? A command line I should ad so it knows I am using a controller? An .ini file I need to edit?

Does this entry from PCGamingWiki have anything useful for you farley? It mentions something about Xbox controller support in Steam.

Stele wrote:

And is the goodjer file still there?

Fun to take some of you on missions and build a squad with familiar names

No I think this has gone.

Weird, I'm playing on deck and haven't really changed anything, but don't have that issue.

What control profile do you have set for the game in Steam?