X-COM Firaxis - XCOM: Enemy Unknown + Enemy Within Expansion

[Zero Credibility]

Tried Long War and it is a real improvement over the vanilla game so far. Tough battles right from the start (a supply barge landing in the first month of the game, with 30+ enemies on board; a terror mission with 20+ zombies and 10 chryssalids in the second month, only a couple of civilians walked away from that one), already lost a couple of countries. Research is going really, really slow and my fighters can't even scratch bigger UFOs yet. Just had my first mech enemy and it took my whole team firing at him point blank to take him down. I think I'll delay alien base assault until I can field mechs of my own, otherwise I'm going to get raped on a counterattack.

 

[Multidirectional]

For me it was money and not being sure if I'd like the game.

So now that you're sure, Complete package is even cheaper on steam at the moment than buying Enemy Within separately. For me it was 7.5 euro, dunno how it is in dollars.

 

[Jaedar]

Tried Long War and it is a real improvement over the vanilla game so far. Tough battles right from the start (a supply barge landing in the first month of the game, with 30+ enemies on board; a terror mission with 20+ zombies and 10 chryssalids in the second month, only a couple of civilians walked away from that one), already lost a couple of countries. Research is going really, really slow and my fighters can't even scratch bigger UFOs yet. Just had my first mech enemy and it took my whole team firing at him point blank to take him down. I think I'll delay alien base assault until I can field mechs of my own, otherwise I'm going to get raped on a counterattack.

I think in long war the assault on xcom hq is no longer tied to alien base assault.

Next beta is apparently going to have assaults on the hangars worldwide. That could be interesting.

 

[Gozma]

How does the mod handle having so many troops in the field at once balance-wise?

Having randomized spawns and much more flexible alien units (plus you have far more options yourself) makes balance night and day compared to vanilla anyway. It's really a whole new (and better) game so far, so much so I'm gonna have to play a lot and max out difficulty before I can really criticize it. The first month of impossible is easier in a good way - the first month of EU impossible had a few maps that were totally unworkable (and a couple that were just bugged), and you had so few and such poorly balanced options that you really had no choices but to execute a few exploitative tactics. With six soldiers of eight different classes with two pockets each and an option for +mobility armor you have some much needed immediate freedom in the tactical layer.

(I keep restarting at higher difficulties because the first month is fun so I have no idea how the strategy layer in LW works yet)

 

[Zero Credibility]

I think in long war the assault on xcom hq is no longer tied to alien base assault.

Next beta is apparently going to have assaults on the hangars worldwide. That could be interesting.

Huh, maybe then I was just lucky so far. I did read somewhere that there can be multiple assaults in the Long War, both on the alien bases and on the HQ. But I assumed that the first attack on the HQ is still triggered by that beacon thing you drag home and so paint yourself a target.

 

[Multidirectional]

For umodded game, what would you guys regard as a "must have" second wave options?

 

[Zero Credibility]

Aiming Angles - it makes cover less of an absolute "you either have it or not" thing. I honestly don't know why this isn't the default setting anyway.

Training Roulette - if you want to spice things up instead of always picking up the same clearly superior perks, this is a must have. Some of the best class abilities are always there, so you don't have to worry about making a soldier completely useless. And if you are unhappy with how a soldier turned out you can always chop off his limbs to make him better. Not Created Equally and Hidden potential also work well with this.

Red Fog is a cool one in Long War because it's supposed to affect both soldiers and enemies. Again, I don't see why this isn't so by default. Not a good idea for unmodded game though unless you are into masochism.

 

[Average Manatee]

One caution I would give is that Training Roulette has the potential to make your soldiers a bit overpowered. Things like being able to open up every confrontation with 3 shots (in my game I actually got 4 shots with my assault), or the medic ability being a random ability (making support useless and letting you bring along another non-support) will almost certainly tilt the odds your way. But it is quite fun.

 

[Average Manatee]

New version out today btw. Perfect timing for me.

 

[Gozma]

Just in time for me to replay March yet again

As far as second wave settings I always use the one that standardizes recruits. I can see a little bit of RPG management appeal to rolled recruits but I don't have ability to remember which gunner is the one with X stat or whatever and it's too much effort to keep checking.

I guess you could probably make a mod that would automatically rename soldiers to their statline every mission just like X-Com mods used to and drain every molecule of narrative or human warmth from the game

 

[Average Manatee]

I don't really worry about the specific stats of each class, it just adds flavor to not see everyone as automatons with the exact same accuracy/health/will at each level.

 

[Xeon]

Man, almost all my current soldiers have negative defense. 2 have 4 and 3 have 2 and 1 have 0 and the rest are in the negative. I don't know if its just my luck or did they change that in Beta 14 or something.

I also just lost my one and only satellite so I have to send the one I am making to replace it instead of another one. I kinda want to mod the repair time but I know that the upgrades later evens out interceptors that I kinda don't know if I should or just endure.

The new starting points for maps seems great so far, kinda makes it fresh.

 

[Gozma]

I've discovered the main reasons I thought LW March was easier than vanilla: First, EW added maps that are generally designed to be advantageous to the player, with lots of roofs that humans are much better at exploiting than aliens and lots of LOS breaks. Mixing those into the first month maps when you are much stronger at short range than long range makes it a lot easier. Second and more importantly they had Sectoids using pistols without the gunslinger skill, meaning they had terrible accuracy from about half of sight range on. You could trade shots with Sectoids and keep them back with overwatch and you'd win as long as you were in high cover. If you fought at short range you'd use grenades.

Now they gave all sectoids gunslinger and the random map disembark points added in B14 mean a lot of the work Firaxis did to make player-favored maps gets negated. It's a way harder game now, more than both B13 and vanilla. In vanilla you'd abuse heavy rockets to kill a couple of spawns to thin out the maps, but rockets are damn useless at base accuracy in LW and rocketeers are dead weight until you have scopes and laser carbines. The consolations are the extra item pocket and flashbangs/smoke grenades but closing distance using half cover is still pretty suicidal when you have a couple of sectoid spawns active on the old shit maps like the flooded roadway.

 

[Average Manatee]

You'd say players are much stronger at short range in early LW? I'd say the opposite. LW gives you enough space for medkits that if someone is hurt, you can always patch them up. It also gives enough health and cover-based damage reduction that virtually nothing can kill you unless they flank you or multiple shots hit. Plus there is the fact that snipers get steady aim (insanely useful for them to steady->scout moves forward to reveal->take shot->pull back out of sight and everyone else overwatch). I'd say that only extremely close range advantages X-Com, and even then only when you are sure you won't reveal more enemies.

Also the early game is significantly eased by drone groups, which are kind of a freebie and pose no threat unless along with another group of enemies. So long as they don't flank you they don't seem to deal more than 2 or 3 damage max, often only 1.

And yeah, Rocketeers are so fucking useless early on. Had multiple instances of groups of 3+ enemies clustered together and every time the rocket will go completely off and hit one of them for 2 damage. Probably only useful on terror missions where crysallids are right in your face. Grenadiers are pro as fuck though, and using them generally doesn't lead to destroying loot.

Are outsider spawn positions supposed to be somewhat randomized now? I keep having them activate from other rooms or slightly outside the UFO on small/medium sizes. Also I assaulted a large UFO in March. Final room contained 6 fucking outsiders including a super outsider with 20 HP. Lost 3 of my best men to that.

 

[not an artichoke]

Xeon, b14 gave enemies a flat reduction in accuracy and got rid of the bonus to defense that all soldiers used to get. I didn't read enough to find out why they did it, but that's why defense values seem low.

 

[Gozma]

On range: I'm talking in march where you are gonna have multiple missions without snipers (and their march-grade accuracy is abysmal... spending 10 turns to snipe out a sectoid off half cover will happen if you're playing full turtle). Plus in LW you usually can't get the extra few tiles of effective grenade engagement range where you could blow away an alien's cover or destroy vehicles in vanilla, since terrain destruction is pretty limited until later in the game. At "good" short range (e.g. short range when you can throw grenades over LOS blockers, or you can swarm into a room) it's night and day in march. Later on when rockets become useful and your snipers aren't seeing 35% accuracy shots off of a stead aim all the time yeah.

 

[Average Manatee]

First rank in sniper should give an average of +5 accuracy to a base 65 accuracy for soldiers, so 70. Add +5 for laser sights, +20 for steady, that's 95. Full cover gives 95 - 45 = 50% shot and half cover gives 95-30 = 65% shot. I'll take those risk-free sniper shots any day. If you have the bad luck to miss 10 shots in a row with a sniper imagine how bad it would have been had you missed those shots in short range where a single miss means death. The first 2 missions with all-rookies can be hard, but generally snipers don't take damage and I've managed to have at least one for every mission thereafter. Assuming you don't just have poor luck with class rolls that is.

One other big advantage compared to vanilla is that cover is a lot better for you in LW. Hunkered down in low cover gives 30 * 2 = 60 defense. Base Sectoid accuracy is 65. Pretty damn good odds for scouts that don't need to shoot to do their job. Also Thin Men are completely helpless against hunkered down soldiers in full cover, at worst they can shoot spit which does nothing so long as you hunker down (Note that you can still walk to another spot of cover so long as you continue hunkering down each turn till it wears off).

EDIT: Just long war things.

Spoiler

help

Actually I killed 3 and the rest retreated to kill civvies. Splendid mission all around.

 

[Xeon]

I stopped trying to fight UFOs unless they are after my satellite and keep shuffling[?] my interceptors between my Home country Asia and NA for the Air Bonus stuff to keep a good number of healed interceptors. But I think this is affecting the aliens research speed since I am getting a lot of melds now. I am in the 4th month I think and already have a 180 melds which is pretty insane I think but I am a little concerned that this will bite me later. I have 3 laser rifles so far and 1 auto gun.

Anyway so far I only lost one soldier in a mission but because of a bug, the Field Surgeon Medic brought him back to life after the mission which kinda makes me happy since he was somewhat experienced. I am also thinking of raising the difficulty a little bit from Normal. So far normal is kinda easy, the only problem is now with Beta 14 is aliens kinda like to flank and shoot me even if they risk getting flanked and killed. I got 1 critically wounded soldier and one killed (but not really) because of this. I don't remember this happening before, They did try and flank me before but they did so while keeping safe but now they just don't seem to care about getting killed as long as they get to flank me.

I should also try and look up how the close combat works because it doesn't seem to work when aliens getting around the other side of the corner from my assault.

 

[Gozma]

If the corner is the first tile they need to step into that the CC guy can see it won't go off, just like overwatch doesn't go off if they only take one step in visible range (similary, you can do stuff like drop off of a roof within sight of an overwatching enemy, and if they couldn't see you on the roof before you dropped they don't get to reaction fire at you when you hit the ground). I kinda wish long war would have a button that you could hold down a la JA1.13 that would show a sight range halo so you didn't have to just eyeball or (if you are crazy) hand-count that stuff - it's probably one of the million things they can't feasibly do because of hard coded problems.

Getting lasers is a big turning point, and I think it's kinda more important in LW because floater AI breaks and does retarded shit less often than vanilla, and if they actually use their strengths (they should almost always just fly, go to the top of the map for height bonuses, and take potshots) they're a huge problem for ballistic weapons that need to hit them 2-3 times with ~60% shots because you can't knock out their cover or set up flanks. Laser cannons also help the air game immensely.

I love marksman rifles in beta14 but I'm kind of afraid they're gonna nerf 'em back in the next version because I plain don't use full sniper rifles ever anymore. I also love the marksman scope that lets me use scouts as holo-targeting half-snipers that can clean an overwatch.

 

[pippin]

as a southern american person, i lol'd at the fact that this game considers the WHINSEC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_for_Security_Cooperation) teachings as the most valuable tool for the war against aliens. still, it's quite an enjoyable game.

 

[Gozma]

Man I have screwed myself in my Long War game the exact same way I screwed myself in my original vanilla EU game. Sold all my UFO computers for the first few months on the assumption they'd keep coming in at the same rate, did the first base assault, and now UFO landings/attacks are so infrequent I'm not getting any chances to get more (had like one crashed UFO the entire month of July, naturally with all computers and power source broken) and I bottlenecked myself right at the beginning of the tech tree, which makes it so I can't research anything. No mechs, no pulse lasers, can't even do a floater autopsy. The alien packs have so much HP between them at this point (like a pack with a berserker and 5 mutons) that lasers are getting underpowered and I could have gotten to pulse easily months ago if I had the stuff for the pre-reqs. Not even close to being able to shoot down abductors so I can't get them by interdiction either.

The way they have the aliens "losing" strategically is that the cans of meld in missions give you way less meld and the aliens seem to do fewer missions, i.e. the aliens losing means they hand you less loot and less XP. Meanwhile their packs in the tactical game get stronger and stronger on more or less the normal timer (except now packs can be six dudes with twice the HP they had in vanilla each), so losing isn't quite losing...

Pretty much can't picture starting a new game of this thing it's so damn long, even though it's fun again

A cool thing happened earlier in the game: the alien strategic AI clearly attempts to knock out countries when it can. Like India was on four pips of panic and the AI did like 5 bombing attacks using fighters (eventually knocking out all my interceptors) and a terror raid on only India over the course of like 5-6 days right at the end of the month to push it over the line and have them go down.

 

[sser]

For Long War, I noticed there was an option to draw back on the number of missions. Is that worth doing? I've read people doing up to or over a hundred missions in a game and that's just way too many for me. But I'm wondering if you do the other option if it will upset the balance.

 

[Jaedar]

For Long War, I noticed there was an option to draw back on the number of missions. Is that worth doing? I've read people doing up to or over a hundred missions in a game and that's just way too many for me. But I'm wondering if you do the other option if it will upset the balance.

That option is pretty broken. I tried to play with it, but for some reason it makes all the ufos leave too fast for you to ever shoot them down. So you get no alloys and therefore can't do much of anything.

 

[Gozma]

Even NSLW is way too long. It's only an incrementally faster speed (as in, like 20% faster, not anything that makes it a whole new game) and the current LW endgame is pretty much not designed to be won by a sane person (you would have to grind psi XP/psi training and probably elerium/alloys/power plants for many game months after you've established a dominant position like having satellites everywhere and full interception everywhere). I think the endgame is really waiting for more shit to get implemented anyway. So just play until you're sick of what's in the game - it's kind of down low (Patreon?) early access at this point.

Edit - Here's the arithmetic on psi: It takes about 5 missions of psi XP to rank a psi up. There are like 4 times you have to rank up to be able to trigger the old EU endgame. Every time you get enough XP to ank up, you need to put the psi in the psi lab for a week - two weeks so they get a 40-60% or so chance to actually rank up. Miss the chance and they have to go back in for another week. Every time they rank up they get extra fatigue after every mission. Add it all up and your top psi you prioritize for training time so you can beat the game can probably go on maybe 1/10 missions. So 5 x 4 x 10 = 200 missions to trigger the old EU endgame - 200 missions after you have already progressed to building the psi lab in the first place, and without the psi ever taking an injury (which can last a game month in LW) or god forbid getting killed. No way in hell.

 

[cvv]

For Long War, I noticed there was an option to draw back on the number of missions. Is that worth doing? I've read people doing up to or over a hundred missions in a game and that's just way too many for me. But I'm wondering if you do the other option if it will upset the balance.

That option is pretty broken. I tried to play with it, but for some reason it makes all the ufos leave too fast for you to ever shoot them down. So you get no alloys and therefore can't do much of anything.

This. To be fair they mention in the readme this option is not tested. I don't know if they fixed in Beta14 tho. I wish they do it eventually because I'd be all over it. Tbh the standard LW is a littlebit too long for my taste, you can easily hit 200+ missions and the late game can get a bit draggy.