X-COM XCOM 2 + War of the Chosen Expansion Thread

[ArchAngel]

What are some key good differences between X-Com '94 and Xenonauts? I have played X-Com/JA2 down to their component atoms at this point and I need some different shit.

Edit - talking purely the tactical layer

Xenonauts has lots of nice UI improvements. It also has weapon classes, like shotguns, snipers and such. No PSI for your troops or OP Blaster Launchers.
Top level armor acts more like Power Armor than just a super advanced body suit that allows full range of movement. (also there is a flying version that is more a light armor type)

Air combat is very different, also you can bomb missions sites and get some money from that (but not alien stuff).
And that is just from vanilla, some of the more popular mods also have other stuff.

Otherwise Open Xcom is better.

 

[ArchAngel]

I watched a guy try to play MP this morning, it was hilarious. Almost impossible to get a game, zero balance and you can even use cheatcodes while playing MP Lol

 

[Zeriel]

How do you people get through the second month of the game on legend? Stun lancers are just trading with my squad and every pod has at least 1 or 2.

Learn to love grenadiers. Control activations aggressively. Don't flunk the first terror mission, then immediately research and build your first mimic beacon from the faceless corpses.

That's basically all you need to know to beat Legend.

If you're really bad at the game I guess you could use the 10 billion exploits and AI cheats in the game, but you really don't need to.

I've never been in situation where you cant focus fire down a single sectoid. What do you give up to achieve that goal (eg. accepting a turn of being under fire from everybody else)- thats a different matter.

I've seen them be a little scary in the midgame when they start appearing in packs of 3. Had two mind controls back to back in a situation where I couldn't deal with them easily. It's a very rare occasion, however, and sectoids are probably the worst enemy in the game, on that I agree.

Thing is, if their AI was "100% of the time use your pistol", they would change from the least threatening to the most lethal alien in the game, since they appear so early and have a great statblock compared to troopers. I heard there's an AI mod for them that is a little more subtle than that (i.e, just decreases the zombie raise chance, which is the real problem).

 

[oneself]

How do you people get through the second month of the game on legend? Stun lancers are just trading with my squad and every pod has at least 1 or 2.

Flashbangs

What is the advantage of a flashbang over the conventional grenade? Utility works when your soldier are not lacking in damage. My second month rookies can't shoot for shit.

 

[oneself]

How do you people get through the second month of the game on legend? Stun lancers are just trading with my squad and every pod has at least 1 or 2.

Flashbangs

What is the advantage of a flashbang over the conventional grenade? Utility works when your soldier are not lacking in damage. My second month rookies can't shoot.

Learn to love grenadiers. Control activations aggressively. Don't flunk the first terror mission, then immediately research and build your first mimic beacon from the faceless corpses.

That's basically all you need to know to beat Legend.

If you're really bad at the game I guess you could use the 10 billion exploits and AI cheats in the game, but you really don't need to.

How many do you need early on? I have two right now in a squad of five but I am not feeling it against stun lancers.

 

[Zeriel]

Flashbangs are only useful for cancelling abilities. The aim penalty is too small on Legend to be worth it for that alone. Some people seem to really like them, but I didn't use them at all on my latest playthrough, if you can hold out for proving grounds the grenades you get from there are so much better than flashbangs.

Mimic also makes flashbangs obsolete except for maybe fringe anti-codex uses.

 

[Zeriel]

How do you people get through the second month of the game on legend? Stun lancers are just trading with my squad and every pod has at least 1 or 2.

Flashbangs

What is the advantage of a flashbang over the conventional grenade? Utility works when your soldier are not lacking in damage. My second month rookies can't shoot.

Learn to love grenadiers. Control activations aggressively. Don't flunk the first terror mission, then immediately research and build your first mimic beacon from the faceless corpses.

That's basically all you need to know to beat Legend.

If you're really bad at the game I guess you could use the 10 billion exploits and AI cheats in the game, but you really don't need to.

How many do you need early on? I have two right now in a squad of five but I am not feeling it against stun lancers.

They just defeat cover + guaranteed damage. That's why you're bringing them. Stun lancers can be a pain if you get unlucky early on, but that's about it. And really, that's the whole challenge of Legend at all. If you play on iron-man, there's a pretty good chance you'll have a few runs scuppered early on because rolls didn't go in your favor. I mean, I've had games hinge on stun lancers running up and rolling unconscious hits on my squaddies on the second mission even with optimal play, it can happen.

The best answer to stun lancers, like every other unit, is to kill it before it attacks. If you let it attack (and yes, sometimes you have to, especially early on), there's a chance you'll instantly lose someone. That's kind of why I like specialists on top of grenadiers. Defense protocol is a really underrated ability for moments where you know you're going to have to soak a hit or two. You can place a guy in a position where you know he'll be targeted and defense protocol and have pretty good chances that they'll just miss. Of course, sometimes they'll just one shot you anyway.

Keep in mind stun lancer AI is very predictable. They will always run up and attack with their baton if they can (not flashbanged, not burning, are in dash attack range, etc). If the only threat you are dealing with is stun lancers, sometimes it is smarter to overwatch than shoot at them in full cover, since you know they'll be running that overwatch. It's not a science, though. That's basically the stunlancer's MO, to throw a wrench in your plans.

 

[barker_s]

Another fun fact - I killed that hacked Sectopod last and never got its wreck as loot from this mission. Gotta be a bug.

If you evac from missions manually (like avatar labs) you won't get any corpses aftermath.

I know, but this mission didn't end in an evac and I got all the corpses except that one Sectopod wreck.

 

[ArchAngel]

Another fun fact - I killed that hacked Sectopod last and never got its wreck as loot from this mission. Gotta be a bug.

If you evac from missions manually (like avatar labs) you won't get any corpses aftermath.

I know, but this mission didn't end in an evac and I got all the corpses except that one Sectopod wreck.

That is nothing, in Xcom EU if you killed your mind controlled alien other party members would go into panic and start shooting each other
And there was no snake tits..

 

[Cyberarmy]

At last mission one of them sectoids raised a spent mimic as zombie.
Which can deal damage...

 

[Mr. Pink]

I always get happy whenever the "some civvies randomly turn into faceless for a month" dark event triggers. Free mimic beacons for everyone.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Finally doing a bit better mainly due to 3 pieces of advice that I picked up in here:
a) In missions where you start concealed and you have a timer, try to reach the goal in hiding, secure it and then deal with the aliens. I couldn't get rid of my alien extermination habits easily
b) Try to have the aliens find you in their "turn" when concealed
c) Utilize a Ranger with extra concealment for scouting. Helps immensely in "terror" missions with saving civies too

Another protip - it's worth it to rush faceless autopsy as the Mimic Beacon is basically a trump card. Whenever you use the beacon, all the enemies immediately target it except for some very rare circumstances. It's saved my ass plenty of times and, to be frank, is quite exploitable. Most powerful item there currently is in the game. Try bringing 6 of these to a mission and see what happens. Put the beacon away from melee-using enemies and in high cover for extra survivability.

Firaxis should limit the squad to 1 beacon per mission; it really does get silly when you bring in a lot of them.

IMO it's not worth it to research mimic beacon till you have 4 faceless corpses.

2 for research cost, 2 for build cost.

Early research is precious and you don't want to spend to researching an item you can't even build, and faceless are hard to come by.

 

[PhantasmaNL]

Pro tip, let your psi op who is permanently mindcontrolling a dangerous alien EVAC LAST.

 

[veevoir]

Pro tip, let your psi op who is permanently mindcontrolling a dangerous alien EVAC LAST.

I smell copious amounts of win here. Please explain on an example

 

[PhantasmaNL]

Pro tip, let your psi op who is permanently mindcontrolling a dangerous alien EVAC LAST.

I smell copious amounts of win here. Please explain on an example

It wasnt that spectacular and could have been worse...my team was ready to evac, at least i thought they were. Usually i assemble the team so they all can go in 1 turn. I got a bit careless though (on IM..) and didnt double check, started evaccing the guys. When i got to the psyop who controlled an elite stun lancer, who was also in high cover, i realized my remaining guy wasnt in range and the stun elite was hostile again. What saved the mission was a mimic beacon (totally op, will get nerfed i guess) on the remaining guy.

 

[Disgruntled]

Fuck, had my first really annoying soldier death just now. VIP capture mission going flawless, all mobs dead except an officer and incoming reinforcements.
I mistakenly think this is a good time to skullcap, forgetting the nasty surprise that is a codex spawning.

Manage to kill the reinforcements and left the codex last. 4 soldiers around. My best dude, a sniper with 27 kills after 8 missions is sitting on a rooftop, proud owner of dragon rounds and an upcoming promotion to Lieutenant. No prizes for guessing who the teleporting fucker targets, warps on the roof and crits in the back for an instakill.
Im livid, this guy was almost carrying my early L/I campaign with his 4-5 damage lightening hands and clutch rifle shots.

To add insult to injury, I dont have time to finish off the codex. The clone is left over with 2 hp as my crew is forced to evac without getting the story objective completed. Oh and I lose those dragon rounds + scoped sniper rifle.
2 mistakes all up, skullcaping before i was ready and trying to be safe with the objective by carrying the dark vip away with one of my men when there was still 4 turns left.

I had to vent that

 

[Harpsichord]

What are some key good differences between X-Com '94 and Xenonauts? I have played X-Com/JA2 down to their component atoms at this point and I need some different shit.

Edit - talking purely the tactical layer

With regard to vanilla Xenonauts:

Off the top of my head, cover is way more sophisticated, the aliens are mostly analogous but largely different(and less hierarchical, by which I mean, early units stay relevant into the late game). Likewise, late game upgrades are less of a linear progression(power armor prevents you from climbing, using grenades, forces heavy weapons, restricts vision, but you can walk through a wall if it's flimsy enough), grenades aren't quite as good(lower radius, frags don't destroy most terrain), ufos get bigger quicker(different layouts too), and psionics are alien only.

Oh, and no more guided rockets.

In short, while it's still quite faithful to X-Com '94, it's not anywhere near a direct port with better graphics.

With regard to the community mod, you get much better AI(for civilians and aliens), further specialization of enemy unit types(e.g. sectoids see further than humans while reptilians regenerate and have poor vision, and there's more varieties within each species too), better enemy combos, and way more map variety.

 

[veevoir]

2 mistakes all up, skullcaping before i was ready and trying to be safe with the objective by carrying the dark vip away with one of my men when there was still 4 turns left.

I had to vent that

Moral of the story: extraction missions are p. bad moments to skullfuck things.

 

[ArchAngel]

I don't have big stories about fuckups. My only "fuckup" was game UI trolling me. I press attack with sniper and space to fire at last remaining hostile alien but just as I did I noticed that the game decided to target my mind controlled alien as a default target which I didn't expect as it is so fucking stupid. Similar shit happened to me when trying to use Stasis. I managed to Stasis my Psi Operative instead of a Sectopod due to Psi Operative being a default target for it while Sectopod was only alien in range of Stasis and I again assuming game UI was designed by smart humans instead of monkeys.

 

[Galdred]

Fuck, had my first really annoying soldier death just now. VIP capture mission going flawless, all mobs dead except an officer and incoming reinforcements.
I mistakenly think this is a good time to skullcap, forgetting the nasty surprise that is a codex spawning.

Manage to kill the reinforcements and left the codex last. 4 soldiers around. My best dude, a sniper with 27 kills after 8 missions is sitting on a rooftop, proud owner of dragon rounds and an upcoming promotion to Lieutenant. No prizes for guessing who the teleporting fucker targets, warps on the roof and crits in the back for an instakill.
Im livid, this guy was almost carrying my early L/I campaign with his 4-5 damage lightening hands and clutch rifle shots.

To add insult to injury, I dont have time to finish off the codex. The clone is left over with 2 hp as my crew is forced to evac without getting the story objective completed. Oh and I lose those dragon rounds + scoped sniper rifle.
2 mistakes all up, skullcaping before i was ready and trying to be safe with the objective by carrying the dark vip away with one of my men when there was still 4 turns left.

I had to vent that

I tried to flank the patrols to get to a landed UFO, in order to engage as close as possible to the UFO. When I got to the opposite corner, the 4 pods defending the UFO zeored on my squad, and revealed it. To add insult to injury, only one overwatch shot was successful. I had to face 4 snakes, 1 MEC, 2 sectoids, 1 Mutton, 1 shield bearer, 2 stun lancers, with no space to pulback. No one made it back alive.
I find recovering from such setbacks harder than in XCOM : losing all these PCS, weapon mods, and proving ground items really adds salt to the wound.
My sniper really deserved his gravedigger nickname. He caused the death of so many squadmates through sheer incompetence...

 

[Zeriel]

Fuck, had my first really annoying soldier death just now. VIP capture mission going flawless, all mobs dead except an officer and incoming reinforcements.
I mistakenly think this is a good time to skullcap, forgetting the nasty surprise that is a codex spawning.

Manage to kill the reinforcements and left the codex last. 4 soldiers around. My best dude, a sniper with 27 kills after 8 missions is sitting on a rooftop, proud owner of dragon rounds and an upcoming promotion to Lieutenant. No prizes for guessing who the teleporting fucker targets, warps on the roof and crits in the back for an instakill.
Im livid, this guy was almost carrying my early L/I campaign with his 4-5 damage lightening hands and clutch rifle shots.

To add insult to injury, I dont have time to finish off the codex. The clone is left over with 2 hp as my crew is forced to evac without getting the story objective completed. Oh and I lose those dragon rounds + scoped sniper rifle.
2 mistakes all up, skullcaping before i was ready and trying to be safe with the objective by carrying the dark vip away with one of my men when there was still 4 turns left.

I had to vent that

I tried to flank the patrols to get to a landed UFO, in order to engage as close as possible to the UFO. When I got to the opposite corner, the 4 pods defending the UFO zeored on my squad, and revealed it. To add insult to injury, only one overwatch shot was successful. I had to face 4 snakes, 1 MEC, 2 sectoids, 1 Mutton, 1 shield bearer, 2 stun lancers, with no space to pulback. No one made it back alive.
I find recovering from such setbacks harder than in XCOM : losing all these PCS, weapon mods, and proving ground items really adds salt to the wound.
My sniper really deserved his gravedigger nickname. He caused the death of so many squadmates through sheer incompetence...

Your high score is only 4 pods? How very pedestrian.

 

[Cyberarmy]

I waited some turns in avanger defense mission to level up 3 low ranking soldiers. That was not a wise move...
But berserkers came to my rescue. 3 rampaging berserkers killing puny advent is a glorious sight for sore eyes.

 

[veevoir]

I tried to flank the patrols to get to a landed UFO, in order to engage as close as possible to the UFO. When I got to the opposite corner, the 4 pods defending the UFO zeored on my squad, and revealed it. To add insult to injury, only one overwatch shot was successful. I had to face 4 snakes, 1 MEC, 2 sectoids, 1 Mutton, 1 shield bearer, 2 stun lancers, with no space to pulback. No one made it back alive.
I find recovering from such setbacks harder than in XCOM : losing all these PCS, weapon mods, and proving ground items really adds salt to the wound.
My sniper really deserved his gravedigger nickname. He caused the death of so many squadmates through sheer incompetence...

You are aware of the "lay skyranger evac zone and get the fuck out" button? You can actually drop the evac zone on top of your squad, move to it, fire and grenade stuff for lulz and leave.
There is no delay, evac zone is dropped instantly.
Just fail is much more preferable than fail AND get everyone killed.

Protip: You can also use it to evac single soldiers that are poisoned burning and whatever (as long as you can move them). As long as there is one soldier left you can still finish the objectives and get mission successful.
This actually trivializes any DoT damage, now you can have dead soldiers only if murdered within one enemy turn. So it means dead folks appear only in the beginnig phas eof the game.

 

[Jimmious]

I had yesterday a moment of rage when while fighting two pods, a grenadier missed a 87% shot on a lancer who proceeded to murder him with a crit and caused another dude to panic.... which led him a few steps further, triggering another pod.
That pod killed one more guy eventually but I made it through just by sheer AI stupidity, it opted to shoot with 4 guys the only person left in high cover, missing all shots, while the other two were panicked and in random crappy spots.
I love this game.

 

[Galdred]

I tried to flank the patrols to get to a landed UFO, in order to engage as close as possible to the UFO. When I got to the opposite corner, the 4 pods defending the UFO zeored on my squad, and revealed it. To add insult to injury, only one overwatch shot was successful. I had to face 4 snakes, 1 MEC, 2 sectoids, 1 Mutton, 1 shield bearer, 2 stun lancers, with no space to pulback. No one made it back alive.
I find recovering from such setbacks harder than in XCOM : losing all these PCS, weapon mods, and proving ground items really adds salt to the wound.
My sniper really deserved his gravedigger nickname. He caused the death of so many squadmates through sheer incompetence...

You are aware of the "lay skyranger evac zone and get the fuck out" button? You can actually drop the evac zone on top of your squad, move to it, fire and grenade stuff for lulz and leave.
There is no delay, evac zone is dropped instantly.
Just fail is much more preferable than fail AND get everyone killed.

Protip: You can also use it to evac single soldiers that are poisoned burning and whatever (as long as you can move them). As long as there is one soldier left you can still finish the objectives and get mission successful.
This actually trivializes any DoT damage, now you can have dead soldiers only if murdered within one enemy turn. So it means dead folks appear only in the beginnig phas eof the game.

That would have been a good idea indeed!
Is there any workaround for the glitch where one soldier has no floor behind him, but stays in the air (there was someone downstairs at the same location when the floor collapsed I suppose)?