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

[MadMaxHellfire]

next lw2 update: "the game will bite your nuts even when you don't play it".
totally fun.

 

[Althorion]

The main point of 1.3 is to make concealment non combat tactics a bit harder while making combat missions with smaller teams a bit easier.

I have high hopes for this change, it might actually make it playable. XCOM was not made with stealth in mind and no amount of modding is going to change that—line of sight is far too unpredictable. I guess I’ll try it once more, waiting for the Spectrum mod to be released. It doesn’t change the strategic layer and as such will be more to my tastes—I want more tactical options without playing 100+ hours campaign where you figure out after 50 hours that because you were not aggressive enough during your first 10 hours, or put too many people on intel, or not enough people on intel, you are just screwed and will lose with certainty.

 

[Galdred]

Regarding the timed mission issues, it is true that the lack of any time pressure was a big problem in XCOM 1, as you had a strong incentive to advance very slowly. However, they may have overdone it: Even if time limits were twice as long in most XCOM2 missions, it would force player not to move 1 tile at a time with the point soldier.
Removing them would be a mistake, but they could just make them less predominant.

 

[ArchAngel]

Regarding the timed mission issues, it is true that the lack of any time pressure was a big problem in XCOM 1, as you had a strong incentive to advance very slowly. However, they may have overdone it: Even if time limits were twice as long in most XCOM2 missions, it would force player not to move 1 tile at a time with the point soldier.
Removing them would be a mistake, but they could just make them less predominant.

From my extensive experience it would be a bad idea to make time limits 1.5x or 2x longer. It would make the game super easy.
But I could see giving 2 turns to most timers without a need to change the game further to balance it. Some maps are too big and random position of enemies is such that current turn timers are such that you are set up to fail such missions or come out with significant losses.

 

[Althorion]

In vanilla, making timers start when you get revealed is also a very good idea and it fits the narrative.

 

[Galdred]

Regarding the timed mission issues, it is true that the lack of any time pressure was a big problem in XCOM 1, as you had a strong incentive to advance very slowly. However, they may have overdone it: Even if time limits were twice as long in most XCOM2 missions, it would force player not to move 1 tile at a time with the point soldier.
Removing them would be a mistake, but they could just make them less predominant.

From my extensive experience it would be a bad idea to make time limits 1.5x or 2x longer. It would make the game super easy.
But I could see giving 2 turns to most timers without a need to change the game further to balance it. Some maps are too big and random position of enemies is such that current turn timers are such that you are set up to fail such missions or come out with significant losses.

Indeed, it would require a lot of rebalance, because they are currently the focus of the missions. If they were more lenient, they could still prevent degenerate crawling advance strategies, while still letting killing aliens become the focus again.

 

[Cadmus]

Guys I'm waiting for xcom 2 to go on discount and have no idea about LW or what other mods should I use.
Questions:
1) play XCOM2 vanilla or start with LW or even more mods? I thought xcom1 was ok but nothing amazing.
2) for mods to work hassle-free should I just buy on STEAM? I have no idea how mods there work - can you describe it please?

 

[ArchAngel]

Guys I'm waiting for xcom 2 to go on discount and have no idea about LW or what other mods should I use.
Questions:
1) play XCOM2 vanilla or start with LW or even more mods? I thought xcom1 was ok but nothing amazing.
2) for mods to work hassle-free should I just buy on STEAM? I have no idea how mods there work - can you describe it please?

1) If you didn't find Xcom 1 "OMG best game" I would suggest you just start with Long War 2, it is a lot superior game to Xcom 2 and plays differently enough that playing Xcom 2 first would give you wrong idea on how to play the game. Better to play LW2 and then remove it later and try Xcom 2 (although after LW2 you will probably find it brain dead easy and boring).
2) One advantage of Steam version is that mods come to Steam before they come to Nexus. Also some mod authors will never upload them to Nexus. Disadvantage of Steam is that new versions of mods are automatically downloaded and updated no matter if you want them or not. 99% of the times you probably won't care about this.
2a) How do you use mods from Steam?
Well you go to Steam Workshop tab for your game, find the mod you want and click Subscribe button. Steam puts it into download list and downloads it into the correct place. You run the game, it will open a special screen where you can check or uncheck mods you want to use from the list of all downloaded mods (all those you subscribed to) and you run the game. For tweaking specific mods you will need to find specific files on your HDD and modify them. But if mods have such options and how it is done will always be described on Steam Workshop page for that mod. And some of the mods put ingame UI options for tweaking them.

 

[Althorion]

play XCOM2 vanilla or start with LW or even more mods? I thought xcom1 was ok but nothing amazing.

You should start with vanilla (with official DLCs, if you have them). LW2 makes game much longer and much more complex, requires good knowledge about game mechanics and willingness to search the web to find about new ones (like Alien Vigilance for example). It is better to know what are you getting into. If, after five hours or so, you decide that this game is far too easy for your liking and lacks depth, you should then mod it out. Not before, because unless you spend time searching online for the walkthroughs, you’ll fail and you won’t know why.
I’d only recommend jumping straight to Long War 2 for the veterans of previous Long War.

 

[ArchAngel]

Not true. The mechanics of Long War 2 don't exist in xcom 2 anyways and the rest is already familiar for people that played Xcom 1.
I can only recommend that first play of LW2 is on rookie or veteran difficulty. Veteran difficulty if he played xcom 1 on Classic or impossible difficulty

 

[Althorion]

There are still many mechanics that are different from XCOM 1 to 2 or different—you need to know your tech tree, what buildings do what, what kind of enemies you are going to face and some of their skills (i.e. Andromedon “resurrects” and Codex splits), you must adjust your tactics for timer constrains, learn about line of sight and stealth (though it is said to matter far less in 1.3) etc. Plus, IMHO Long War 2 on Veteran is much, much harder that XCOM 1 on Impossible—I’d say Veteran is somewhat as difficult as Long War 1 on easy.

There are too many mechanics introduced without proper in game explanation that if you’d have to add the necessity of learning differences between XCOM 1 and 2 most people will get lost and annoyed. Those who won’t are the ones that don’t mind learning outside the game. If you are someone like that, I guess you can jump right in. But I advise against that.

 

[ArchAngel]

There are still many mechanics that are different from XCOM 1 to 2 or different—you need to know your tech tree, what buildings do what, what kind of enemies you are going to face and some of their skills (i.e. Andromedon “resurrects” and Codex splits), you must adjust your tactics for timer constrains, learn about line of sight and stealth (though it is said to matter far less in 1.3) etc. Plus, IMHO Long War 2 on Veteran is much, much harder that XCOM 1 on Impossible—I’d say Veteran is somewhat as difficult as Long War 1 on easy.

There are too many mechanics introduced without proper in game explanation that if you’d have to add the necessity of learning differences between XCOM 1 and 2 most people will get lost and annoyed. Those who won’t are the ones that don’t mind learning outside the game. If you are someone like that, I guess you can jump right in. But I advise against that.

And he can learn all that in LW2. You are acting like these are super complex games , this is not a Paradox game or something.

 

[Althorion]

Of course you can learn that by trial and error, but it is easier to do so when errors are punished quickly—as in vanilla—rather than after a few dozens of hours—like in Long War 2 (vide Marbozir’s campaign on YouTube, which was discussed by the devs).

 

[Destroid]

I never played a nuxcom, should I play 1 or 2?

 

[Althorion]

I never played a nuxcom, should I play 1 or 2?

Go with 2. Much more polished mechanics, better UI, modding support (there are mods for XCOM 1, but they had to work around the engine)… No reason to go back to the first one, it is inferior in every way. Well, unless you can’t run the second XCOM, it has quite high system requirements.

 

[Zep Zepo]

There are like 3 or 4 Old Xcoms (I think)...what are you calling "2"?

Zep--

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

I never played a nuxcom, should I play 1 or 2?

2 is retarded, 1 with long war is closer to a real x-com experience and to a decent game.

 

[ArchAngel]

I never played a nuxcom, should I play 1 or 2?

2 is retarded, 1 with long war is closer to a real x-com experience and to a decent game.

2 + lw2 is better than 1+lw1
even 1+lw1 is not really close to old UFO in any meaningful way

And Xcom 1 vanilla was already based on abusing overwatch, LW1 brought that shit to another level.

LW2 at least forces you to move around and be proactive.

 

[Raghar]

There are like 3 or 4 Old Xcoms (I think)...what are you calling "2"?

You know they call them UFO.

 

[TC Jr]

Is LW2 easy to install? I remember lw1 wouldn't work on pirated copies

 

[InD_ImaginE]

There is literally torrents with it packed inside mate

 

[Alienman]

1.3 just made the mod annoying to play with the increase amount of drones and smaller pods. 10 turn limit to make it all across the map with stuff fucking everywhere, I'm done with this mod. I just get angry while playing. 1.2 was interesting.

 

[ArchAngel]

1.3 just made the mod annoying to play with the increase amount of drones and smaller pods. 10 turn limit to make it all across the map with stuff fucking everywhere, I'm done with this mod. I just get angry while playing. 1.2 was interesting.

What? I love it so far. Just did two missions I normally was forced to go stealth but this time I took 5 and 6 man teams and went at it rambo style.
The new free prisoners mission is awesome, now you get 18+ turns to do it, you need to get to cells and then back to extraction with reinforcements starting to come at under 10 turns left and coming faster and faster until they come every turn.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

so they solved the problem with too many mobs by adding more mobs so you can be killed by mobs while you're killed by mobs?
smart.

 

[Althorion]

1.2 was interesting.

1.2 was “sneak your way through the map with single soldier and hope that RNG‑based troop movements or buggy line of sight won’t fuck you over”. If you like proper stealth missions, try Hard West, which was designed with them in mind and have appropriate hand‑crafted level design and mechanics (seeing shadows etc.) for that, don’t try to put a saddle on a pig calling it a horse… Or, I don’t know, go with stealth‑only game like Invisible, Inc.

so they solved the problem with too many mobs by adding more mobs so you can be killed by mobs while you're killed by mobs?

That wasn’t a problem in their minds and they didn’t add more troops, they just distributed them more—instead of a few big pods you have more smaller ones. It is more like a vanilla in this regard. That makes fighting your way through easier and sneaking around harder. A very welcome change.