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

[SmartCheetah]

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.

Yeah, if actually turns went a little bit faster and there would be bigger map diversity/even bigger and funnier research tree - that would actually be pretty cool. With the stuff game currently has, it's not. And I'm afraid they can't mod in new models and stuff, so we won't see any "huge" differences on that matter. It takes way too long to achieve something.

 

[Gozma]

On this note they put in a speed up command in one of the latest beta revisions that literally makes the game go faster, as in animations play faster and stuff

 

[sqeecoo]

So what's the verdict of the hivemind? Does LW make the fine but forgettable XCOM into a successor worthier of the name?

 

[Jaedar]

So what's the verdict of the hivemind? Does LW make the fine but forgettable XCOM into a successor worthier of the name?

Worthier of the name yes definately.

Actually worthy? It's debatable. The game is still a buggy mess, and it's not like the new stuff piled on helps in this regard.

 

[sser]

Long War is a massive improvement and it really does blow the base game away. I've been very impressed with it thus far. There's no fixing XCOM's base issues, though, like how you can game fog of war busting and other shenanigans. Also, no AP movement still bugs me.

 

[Gozma]

LW strategy:

Air war and satellites give very little feedback and there's no manual to tell you this stuff, so I'll spoil anyone that wants to know:

Air war: There are two types of each class of ship (the small 1-engine, the medium 2-engine, the abductors/harvester, the supply ship/terror ship, and the battleship/assault carrier). One is the weaker normal version and one is the stronger version - the stronger versions flash on radar. Note which type it is and look at the altitude of UFOs when you spot them - the altitudes are high/low/NOE (nap of the earth, i.e. very low altitude). Non-flashing weaker version ships that are at NoE are generally gonna land and you should wait to do a ground assault on them for the extra loot and to save having to repair damage on an interceptor - it's pretty rare to get intact UFO computers or power sources from ships that you shot down. Abductors are at NOE are gonna do an abduction, obviously (and you can't really do shit to large+ ships in interceptions until lategame). Flashing ships at NoE or low altitude are generally doing stuff to increase panic in the country they're over (smaller ships are bombing it, larger ships are going in to trigger a terror attack) and they're tougher so you can generally spare yourself the interception attempt and tank the panic/do a terror mission. Flashing ships at high altitude are gonna destroy your satellite in that country and it's worth throwing multiple interceptors at them to take them out (although it's not actually too bad to keep a few satellites in reserve and just launch new ones when they get shot down if you get into a loop where you can't keep enough interceptors alive).

(also my opinion: landed transports are horrible slogs with 50+ aliens on them in huge packs that are more advanced than anything else you'd run into during that month and you shouldn't bother with trying them until you've hit some of the friendlier spots on the power curve - it's completely possible to see a transport landing on like day 2 of the first month; you aren't "supposed" to be able to do that shit with rookies)

Also: the reason you launch satellites in LW is like the reason you put up more radar bases in the original X-Com - to detect more UFOs for you to attack. If you can't handle the UFOs you're getting, don't launch more satellites. It's not like the vanilla game where satellites are basically just money generators that are more-or-less unconnected to ufo detection. The aliens also focus heavily on one country/continent at a time to put at 5 panic with bombing/terror attacks

 

[Admiral jimbob]

is it true that the new Enemy Within enemy faction is annoying as fuck with Long War and swarms you with like 50 dudes at a time

 

[Gozma]

Yeah, exalt is the human faction they added in enemy within. The gimmick of the exalt missions is that you have a plainclothes soldier on the map that is able to touch these pylon things that force every exalt on the map to waste their next turn doing this "unfuck my weapon" action. So basically the missions work by flooding the map with tons of exalt dudes that you have to gun down by the dozen while your plainclothes guy runs from one pylon to the next keeping them from being able to attack you. I was like what is this shit at first but they're actually kind of a fun change of pace once you get the idea (always use an assault, preferably with sprint, as your plainclothes guy, because they can use the run & gun ability to double move and then trigger a pylon, and don't reduce their mobility by giving them pocket items or heavy pistols either).

There's one other type of exalt mission where you only get four soldiers and you have the option of getting your plainclothes soldier to the exit point, then having everyone leave the map without having to kill everyone. I just did those by having the plainclothes guy run for it.

LW also uses exalt soldiers as "regular enemies" in some of their pack configurations you might see on a random abduction or something.

 

[Average Manatee]

The "flashing" ones have armor, use armor-piercing stingray missiles against them. I think by the midgame with lasers and the armor-piercing upgrade that laser cannons are your best shot for everything regardless of armor, since they will upgrade to Pulse Lasers for free once you research them. But weapon stats and what affects them isn't exactly exposed so it's hard to tell.

I'd still argue that getting as many satellites up as possible is always a good idea. Continent bonuses are always powerful, an easy +200-400 credits a month for Africa or North America in addition to getting more from the individual countries. On Classic my limit to satellites was Engineers, which you just have to twiddle your thumbs and wait for the requests to come in.

So long as you start USA you should be able to shoot down the majority of small/medium UFOs for most of the game. Build at least 2 more aircraft in month 1 and get around 4 new aircraft for each new continent you take.

The Transports are a PITA to complete and frankly I don't think it's really worth much even if you win. You simply have no use for the 50-60 or so Elerium and Alloy so early, so you're going to end up selling most of it. But by assaulting the Transport you've set the AI "back" a lot and because of this you now get only 3 meld from canisters for the next month or two when normally you'd get 6-9, and getting around 5 meld more for 20 missions is a LOT of meld even assuming you only get 1 canister per mission. Meld goes for 7 credits each vs. 5 credits for Elerium or Alloy, and Meld is obviously worth far more when needed for essential foundry research or when used for country requests (and I haven't even gotten into MECs for lack of meld yet). But if you do assault them then one essential tip: Outsiders can't climb ladders and will happily cluster below your units and wait around.

is it true that the new Enemy Within enemy faction is annoying as fuck with Long War and swarms you with like 50 dudes at a time

I've heard lots of complaints but I have no idea why people struggle. I actually did the first 5 or so without even knowing about the transmitters and only figured it out when EXALT got laser weapons and I looked online about disabling their weapons. Once you do that the mission is a ridiculous piece of cake. Just know that the guys with Rocket Launchers IIRC have grenades and shit they can still hurt you with, so gun them down first.

As Gozma says, abuse Assaults (frankly the class is useless outside of EXALT anyway). Keep in mind that you can't use Run and Gun if the pistol is empty, and close combat perk causing you to shoot nearby enemies can empty your gun.

Make sure you use the Exalt Scan option at least twice a month to avoid their attacks draining your money or research. Another thing that I didn't even know you could do in Vanilla because EXALT were so easy that there was no need to learn.

 

[sser]

I went to a landed transport mission, killed a few things, opened a door to an army of guys with giant HP bloat, and promptly got back on the dropship and left. Even though I didn't necessarily complete the mission I did get some resources out of it, so it might be worth visiting those and seeing if you can kill some enemies and then bailing when shit gets rough.

 

[cvv]

The Transports are a PITA to complete and frankly I don't think it's really worth much even if you win. You simply have no use for the 50-60 or so Elerium and Alloy so early so you're going to end up selling most of it

I definitely don't recommend not bothering getting as much as possible of elerium or let alone selling ANY at any point. Problem is elerium is a late game substance, in that you need A LOT of it for late-game research, weapon upgrades and Firestorms, and if you hadn't squirrelled away enough of it during the game you have to grind for it which is a bit annoying wich huge groups of beefed up berserkers, commanders and ethereals to oppose you.

 

[Average Manatee]

The Transports are a PITA to complete and frankly I don't think it's really worth much even if you win. You simply have no use for the 50-60 or so Elerium and Alloy so early so you're going to end up selling most of it

I definitely don't recommend not bothering getting as much as possible of elerium or let alone selling ANY at any point. Problem is elerium is a late game substance, in that you need A LOT of it for late-game research, weapon upgrades and Firestorms, and if you hadn't squirrelled away enough of it during the game you have to grind for it which is a bit annoying wich huge groups of beefed up berserkers, commanders and ethereals to oppose you.

You have to grind anyway thanks to the retardedly delayed progression that Gozma mentioned (if you even want to do that, the lategame is painfully boring). You'll get plenty. Saving 50 Elerium and 50 Alloy will give you, like, one and a half Plasma rifles. I'll take an extra $500 in March-June over one Plasma weapon in November that offers a half point more damage than my pulse lasers. Sell that shit and get total world coverage with satellites and 5-6 interceptors on every continent by September instead. Pure interceptor spam with laser cannons can take down everything but Battleships, given that you have a few boosters for the Large ships.

Obviously keep some elerium around, but if you don't sell any of it you'll really delay your progression to the point that it offsets your potential (small) lategame advantage. This goes double if you are assaulting Transports. Do get the foundry upgrades that boost Elerium/Alloy/Weapon Fragment ASAP though of course. Surprisingly Weapon Fragments bottlenecked me on researching Plasma far harder than Elerium/Alloy bottlenecked me on making the weapons, and I never sold a single weapon fragment.

 

[cvv]

The Transports are a PITA to complete and frankly I don't think it's really worth much even if you win. You simply have no use for the 50-60 or so Elerium and Alloy so early so you're going to end up selling most of it

I definitely don't recommend not bothering getting as much as possible of elerium or let alone selling ANY at any point. Problem is elerium is a late game substance, in that you need A LOT of it for late-game research, weapon upgrades and Firestorms, and if you hadn't squirrelled away enough of it during the game you have to grind for it which is a bit annoying wich huge groups of beefed up berserkers, commanders and ethereals to oppose you.

You have to grind anyway thanks to the retardedly delayed progression that Gozma mentioned (if you even want to do that, the lategame is painfully boring). You'll get plenty. Saving 50 Elerium and 50 Alloy will give you, like, one and a half Plasma rifles. I'll take an extra $500 in March-June over one Plasma weapon in November that offers a half point more damage than my pulse lasers. Sell that shit and get total world coverage with satellites and 5-6 interceptors on every continent by September instead.

In my late game I'm definitely not getting plenty. Most of small/mid UFOs I just blow up and the ones I shoot down (about 2 a month if I'm lucky) give me 10 - 15 elerium a pop, after wrestling it from a big pile of late game mobs. I haven't had a landing for many months now. I was selling elerium too in the first few months but next time I'll keep it all and save myself at least 3 months of late game grinding.

 

[Zeriel]

The Transports are a PITA to complete and frankly I don't think it's really worth much even if you win. You simply have no use for the 50-60 or so Elerium and Alloy so early so you're going to end up selling most of it

I definitely don't recommend not bothering getting as much as possible of elerium or let alone selling ANY at any point. Problem is elerium is a late game substance, in that you need A LOT of it for late-game research, weapon upgrades and Firestorms, and if you hadn't squirrelled away enough of it during the game you have to grind for it which is a bit annoying wich huge groups of beefed up berserkers, commanders and ethereals to oppose you.

You have to grind anyway thanks to the retardedly delayed progression that Gozma mentioned (if you even want to do that, the lategame is painfully boring). You'll get plenty. Saving 50 Elerium and 50 Alloy will give you, like, one and a half Plasma rifles. I'll take an extra $500 in March-June over one Plasma weapon in November that offers a half point more damage than my pulse lasers. Sell that shit and get total world coverage with satellites and 5-6 interceptors on every continent by September instead.

In my late game I'm definitely not getting plenty. Most of small/mid UFOs I just blow up and the ones I shoot down (about 2 a month if I'm lucky) give me 10 - 15 elerium a pop, after wrestling it from a big pile of late game mobs. I haven't had a landing for many months now. I was selling elerium too in the first few months but next time I'll keep it all and save myself at least 3 months of late game grinding.

There is an art to UFOs in LW. You don't have to shoot them down--that's why you see so few landings if you engage them as soon as they appear. There are certain ship types which you should shoot down (the satellite hunters), but the rest you can allow to dick around and land safely, unless you want to skip missions, which is totally fine too.

Basically LW lets you decide how many ground missions you have, attacking all UFOs as soon as they appear is you opting for less ground missions.

 

[Average Manatee]

In my late game I'm definitely not getting plenty. Most of small/mid UFOs I just blow up and the ones I shoot down (about 2 a month if I'm lucky) give me 10 - 15 elerium a pop, after wrestling it from a big pile of late game mobs. I haven't had a landing for many months now. I was selling elerium too in the first few months but next time I'll keep it all and save myself at least 3 months of late game grinding.

You're probably trying to buy stuff you don't need.

Plasma weapons are useless, ignore them. Pulse Weapons are 99% as good and dirt cheap. In fact I survived until November just using normal lasers because I was thinking of skipping Gauss and Pulse for Plasma, until I unlocked them and compared their stats to their cost and realized they were a joke. Then I just bought the Pulse after months of waiting around and not buying Pulse, completely silly. Honestly just use grenades (chem is amazing and debuffs everything, including robots) and rockets (my Rocketeers are packing 5 rockets per mission) well and you'll dominate everything. Indeed it's also worth mentioning that I was stuck with the standard rocket launcher not realizing you could upgrade to a Gauss launcher, and I was wrecking Cyberdisks and Mechtoids just fine. The Plasma Launcher might be a worthy upgrade though.

Pure Interceptor spam can take down everything but Battleships. For battleships you'll want 1 or maybe 2 firestorms with advanced weapons. Not too hard to get. As I said I was entirely bottlenecked in my research by weapon fragments, literally researching nothing for a month since every plasma research required 80+ weapon fragments, all while waiting around with a decent stockpile of alloy and elerium to build them.

Don't go after crash sites for elerium/alloy, it's a complete waste compared to what landed UFOs give. Non-flashing UFOs at NOE altitude almost always land, let them. Everything else just shoot down and ignore unless you want to go for experience or captures.

 

[cvv]

Yeah, plasma weapons do seem to be useless. I've been running just with pulsers for many months now and I was planning to switch eventually but I'm wrecking everything with those crazy pulser crits anyway. Plus I don't think the mob HP bloat will go any further. I'm glad I haven't sunk any resources in plasmas yet.

The problem is, I don't think plasmas are underpowered, it's more like the pulsers are a bit overpowered. They threw the weapon progression balance out of whack by introducing them and haven't fixed it yet.

But the tip about not going after every UFO and crash site is useful, it didn't occure to me to ignore missions tbh but it does make sense.

 

[Average Manatee]

Plasma could use its own special "perk" like laser/gauss/pulse have. I think it would also be better if the alloy/elerium requirements were lowered but each one cost multiple captured weapons to build (kind of silly but as it is you'll have a dozen of each alien plasma before you've even researched the weapons).

Pulse hand weapons aren't OP, but what definitely is OP is how the aircraft weapons upgrade from laser to pulse lasers at almost no cost at all. You'll probably have around 25 aircraft late game. You can rush Laser Cannons far faster and cheaper (it's like $65 and 5 alloy a piece with workshops) than anything else and with a mere $200 one time investment your laser cannons become the best weapon reasonably obtainable, by which I mean discounting the late game plasma weapons that would cost thousands of elerium and alloy to outfit your entire fleet with.

 

[Zeriel]

Yeah, plasma weapons do seem to be useless. I've been running just with pulsers for many months now and I was planning to switch eventually but I'm wrecking everything with those crazy pulser crits anyway. Plus I don't think the mob HP bloat will go any further. I'm glad I haven't sunk any resources in plasmas yet.

The problem is, I don't think plasmas are underpowered, it's more like the pulsers are a bit overpowered. They threw the weapon progression balance out of whack by introducing them and haven't fixed it yet.

But the tip about not going after every UFO and crash site is useful, it didn't occure to me to ignore missions tbh but it does make sense.

I think they just ran out of headroom on the damage curve. So many new weapon tiers. The way plasma work in both new XCOM and old X-COM is that they are a huge leap up, to justify all the investment. They're supposed to be way better. Not sure if that's an oversight that will be fixed in LW or they just don't want them to be particularly great, but whatever. They definitely are not worth getting in LW, especially with how punishing manufacturing requirements tend to be on equipment in the mod--there is almost never a time where it is worth throwing away so many resources just to get a 1 damage increase.

 

[cvv]

You can rush Laser Cannons far faster and cheaper (it's like $65 and 5 alloy a piece with workshops) than anything else and with a mere $200 one time investment your laser cannons become the best weapon reasonably obtainable, by which I mean discounting the late game plasma weapons that would cost thousands of elerium and alloy to outfit your entire fleet with.

Can you fight the large UFOs, battleships and the Overseer with laser cannons tho? The reason I'm building several EMPs now is that I'm afraid those will splatter me with just laser cannons.

 

[Average Manatee]

You can definitely take out Large UFOs with 4-6 laser cannon interceptors that have the foundry upgrades, and probably without much damage if you use boosters.

No, you can't really take out Very Large UFOs like battleships. You might be able to if you have like 4-6 firestorms with laser cannons, but you can't use interceptors since they get OHKOed and if you are splurging on the expense of a Firestorm there's no reason not to give it an equally good weapon. So yes, do get a few upgraded weapons for them. The point is that interceptors + laser cannons can down 99% of what you need taken down and do it as cheap as possible. You only need to take down and assault the Overseer once and you never need to take down Battleships, so those fancy aircraft and weapons are only useful when you're getting ready to end the game.

 

[Gozma]

Kind of annoyed by them stacking up a few spawns in the same spot and then never letting them patrol so you have no choice but to trigger 3 five man pods at the same time even if you know better. Maybe I should mess with the mimic beacon or whatever that summons enemies to it? I was like I don't want to play AI fuckery so I haven't tried it.

Also MECs with absorption shields + damage control + a carbide plate are so tough it's ridiculous. Had a guardian (medic mec) tank like 10 heavy floaters firing wildly at him with no smoke grenade or mind meld or anything in a "fuck I've triggered 5 spawns at once" scenario while everyone else took like 4 turns to clean up everything else. Non-MEC characters eventually become MEC assistants.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

EXALT definitely seem to have gained Clown Car tech in Long War.

 

[Average Manatee]

Kind of annoyed by them stacking up a few spawns in the same spot and then never letting them patrol so you have no choice but to trigger 3 five man pods at the same time even if you know better. Maybe I should mess with the mimic beacon or whatever that summons enemies to it? I was like I don't want to play AI fuckery so I haven't tried it.

I've never tried the mimic thing, but a rocketeer steadying weapon beforehand can rain down pin-point explosives. I play with Red Fog on, so even if I only badly damage a bunch of enemies their aim and movement end up debuffed enough to make it much more survivable.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

I've finished it on normal, tried later on Impossible with some second wave options. I was stomped to the ground after 122 days. What's causing my next attempt on hold is one big thing. The game takes a good amount of hard drive disk space, but still it annoys me when I hear that another mission will be on German border. When you just see over and over the same maps, with the enemies being spawned in the same places it gets boring. Aliens having a first free turn to hide in the covers, no free mode instead of hamfisted story in between the progression of the game, and many other things that were already mentioned in this thread. But still I'm baffled how many times I've seen some levels, especially the ufo crash landsides. Enemy Within is giving something extra, but I'll wait for another free key to play it.

 

[Gozma]

A good reason to bother doing long dangerous supply ship missions, at least once you hit the point of having lasers - early base attacks are game-killing and doing supply ship missions can drain enough alien resources to prevent it. Had a base attack in June where two mectoids (the first time they showed up in the game), a sectoid commander (same), several sectoids, three cyberdiscs and assorted floaters/drones/seekers showed up on the first and second turns vs. the random 6 people I had available that weren't injured or fatigued. In my first game the base invasion didn't happen until I had pulse lasers, multiple MECs and master sergeants out the ass and it was trivial (in fact it was almost the same enemies + a couple sectopods, so it may not be scaling correctly). A ~May/June supply ship will be about as easy as they get with you having lasers vs. a good % of junk enemies like seekers and drones.