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

[Space Satan]

Also, Reaper's target Definition confirmed to work on Assasin. She is also revealed when any unit comes within 5 tiles, making the Lost a kind of a help here.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Mazisky]

Very interesting interview.
94 xcom had a dynamic difficulty scaling just like any modern arcade racing game
Those dumbed down old games lel

Ps i love them both

 

[luinthoron]

The original pitch video's Sectopod explains a lot about where they went with it in XCOM 2 - there are quite a few similarities between the two, so it looks like even with the different visuals of the ADVENT style, they finally got to do in XCOM 2 what they could not manage in the first game, especially its huge size.

 

[Alienman]

Is my game bugged? I have the lost showing up fucking everywhere now. It's starting to get annoying. Most ridicules is when they show up in one of those mega-city maps. I mean how?

 

[Freddie]

Is my game bugged? I have the lost showing up fucking everywhere now. It's starting to get annoying. Most ridicules is when they show up in one of those mega-city maps. I mean how?

You got the Lost dark event, which means they show up on every mission. Unfortunately event is bugged and can last longer than a month.

 

[Alienman]

Ah, that must be it. I remember getting that card a long time ago. Is there a fix? So tired of fighting those asshole zombies.

 

[Freddie]

Ah, that must be it. I remember getting that card a long time ago. Is there a fix? So tired of fighting those asshole zombies.

For me it game sort of fixed it self after I got some mission again which was actually supposed to have Lost siterep. I recommend checking Steam forums etc. if issue persists. On funny side, it's not that often you tag 80+ kills on a single mission. I think my best while suffering from that bug was 125+

 

[Alienman]

Ah, that must be it. I remember getting that card a long time ago. Is there a fix? So tired of fighting those asshole zombies.

For me it game sort of fixed it self after I got some mission again which was actually supposed to have Lost siterep. I recommend checking Steam forums etc. if issue persists. On funny side, it's not that often you tag 80+ kills on a single mission. I think my best while suffering from that bug was 125+

Yeah, found a mod. But the fix only take effect after a restart

Lost sitrep, is that those missions when you have rescue someone trapped? 125, jebus. My highest so far is 69. Had to protect some kind of device. After I killed the normal aliens the lost just kept respawning, attacking in waves. Had to find one specific lost zombie to kill to be able to finish the mission. Was a bit odd. Talk about padding those kill stats!

 

[J1M]

It's weird how they decided this should be a puzzle game where you try to use your actions in the right order to eliminate the enemy before they can act. Also, that the aliens don't have radios to call other pods.

 

[J1M]

Ah, that must be it. I remember getting that card a long time ago. Is there a fix? So tired of fighting those asshole zombies.

Try a ranger with bladestorm.

 

[Galdred]

Ah, that must be it. I remember getting that card a long time ago. Is there a fix? So tired of fighting those asshole zombies.

Try a ranger with bladestorm.

Even better is a templar with bladestorm. His melee damage just does not compare. And I don't remember having seen the templar ever miss.

 

[Galdred]

BTW, I wanted to add recurring enemy lieutnants in my own game (it was something I really liked in Descent), so that would be close to the way chosen work, but I was wondering what do you think about them never dying?
Is getting a reward for dispatching them enough or is it too frustrating?

I could add a contingency spell: teleport away when the character is about to get killed, and it would work the same mechanically.
In descent RTL v1, lieutnants were very hard to pull back from combat: if you wanted to use them in battle as the overlord, there was a big risk of them being cornered and butchered by the heroes, so they ended up leading from the rear, and fleeing as soon as the heroes approached (unless the overlord had been able to massive "out tech" the heroes), which was not very epic.
It was especially true with the melee lieutenants who could not trade a single blow against the heroes without a risk of being blocked and slain.

Given that the heroes are linked to their Stronghold (ie: losing a hero let you turn one of your other characters into a new hero as long as you still control the relevant stronghold), I intend to give a similar benefit to the lieutenants: the only way to thin their number would be to storm it (so it would really work pretty close to the way Chosen work).

I am considering 3 options:
a) Make them like the Chosen: teleport away on defeat, get healed for a relatively long time before they can act again
b) Set their "plot bar" advancement back on defeat. The plot bar would act like XCOM2 knowledge bar (basically, they are trying to achieve their own "master plan", like imbuing themselves with massive power, summoning a demonic host, or magically breaching the defenses of the player stronghold).
c) Kill them outright, but let the bad guys summon a fresh lieutenant to replace the dead one. So that would act like a more extreme version of b), but that would mean we would need generic lieutenants (because we could quickly run out of named ones).

What do you think would work best?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

BTW, I wanted to add recurring enemy lieutnants in my own game (it was something I really liked in Descent), so that would be close to the way chosen work, but I was wondering what do you think about them never dying?
Is getting a reward for dispatching them enough or is it too frustrating?

I could add a contingency spell: teleport away when the character is about to get killed, and it would work the same mechanically.
In descent RTL v1, lieutnants were very hard to pull back from combat: if you wanted to use them in battle as the overlord, there was a big risk of them being cornered and butchered by the heroes, so they ended up leading from the rear, and fleeing as soon as the heroes approached (unless the overlord had been able to massive "out tech" the heroes), which was not very epic.
It was especially true with the melee lieutenants who could not trade a single blow against the heroes without a risk of being blocked and slain.

Given that the heroes are linked to their Stronghold (ie: losing a hero let you turn one of your other characters into a new hero as long as you still control the relevant stronghold), I intend to give a similar benefit to the lieutenants: the only way to thin their number would be to storm it (so it would really work pretty close to the way Chosen work).

I am considering 3 options:
a) Make them like the Chosen: teleport away on defeat, get healed for a relatively long time before they can act again
b) Set their "plot bar" advancement back on defeat. The plot bar would act like XCOM2 knowledge bar (basically, they are trying to achieve their own "master plan", like imbuing themselves with massive power, summoning a demonic host, or magically breaching the defenses of the player stronghold).
c) Kill them outright, but let the bad guys summon a fresh lieutenant to replace the dead one. So that would act like a more extreme version of b), but that would mean we would need generic lieutenants (because we could quickly run out of named ones).

What do you think would work best?

Assuming your bad guy/rival factions perform missions of their own, perhaps the death of one of their lieutenants means they'll have to wait for some grunt to distinguish himself in combat, so they can train this grunt to replace the lieutenant? Basically a reprieve until the replace can match or exceed his predecessor.

 

[ArchAngel]

Ah, that must be it. I remember getting that card a long time ago. Is there a fix? So tired of fighting those asshole zombies.

Try a ranger with bladestorm.

Even better is a templar with bladestorm. His melee damage just does not compare. And I don't remember having seen the templar ever miss.

I think there is a bug with bladestorm (that was fixed in LW2) where bladestorm misses in situation it should not. Lucky that does not happen with the Templar

 

[J1M]

Ah, that must be it. I remember getting that card a long time ago. Is there a fix? So tired of fighting those asshole zombies.

Try a ranger with bladestorm.

Even better is a templar with bladestorm. His melee damage just does not compare. And I don't remember having seen the templar ever miss.

I think there is a bug with bladestorm (that was fixed in LW2) where bladestorm misses in situation it should not. Lucky that does not happen with the Templar

The chosen's katana has 100% accuracy. A miss might be due to something like an 'immunity to first reaction' ability.

 

[J1M]

BTW, I wanted to add recurring enemy lieutnants in my own game (it was something I really liked in Descent), so that would be close to the way chosen work, but I was wondering what do you think about them never dying?
Is getting a reward for dispatching them enough or is it too frustrating?

I could add a contingency spell: teleport away when the character is about to get killed, and it would work the same mechanically.
In descent RTL v1, lieutnants were very hard to pull back from combat: if you wanted to use them in battle as the overlord, there was a big risk of them being cornered and butchered by the heroes, so they ended up leading from the rear, and fleeing as soon as the heroes approached (unless the overlord had been able to massive "out tech" the heroes), which was not very epic.
It was especially true with the melee lieutenants who could not trade a single blow against the heroes without a risk of being blocked and slain.

Given that the heroes are linked to their Stronghold (ie: losing a hero let you turn one of your other characters into a new hero as long as you still control the relevant stronghold), I intend to give a similar benefit to the lieutenants: the only way to thin their number would be to storm it (so it would really work pretty close to the way Chosen work).

I am considering 3 options:
a) Make them like the Chosen: teleport away on defeat, get healed for a relatively long time before they can act again
b) Set their "plot bar" advancement back on defeat. The plot bar would act like XCOM2 knowledge bar (basically, they are trying to achieve their own "master plan", like imbuing themselves with massive power, summoning a demonic host, or magically breaching the defenses of the player stronghold).
c) Kill them outright, but let the bad guys summon a fresh lieutenant to replace the dead one. So that would act like a more extreme version of b), but that would mean we would need generic lieutenants (because we could quickly run out of named ones).

What do you think would work best?

Why not use all three ideas?
a) Let them retreat from overwhelming odds, just like the player can. But also allow them to act again before they are fully healed.
b) Set back the 'plot bar' on defeat (not retreat).
c) Dead is dead, unless you have some sort of bleeding out mechanic you could apply to enemies too. (Might be an interesting choice to allow the enemy to save their champion because you like the traits it rolled vs. the rewards for killing it. In an extraction mission you may not have the ability to hold your position for another 3 rounds until the enemy finishes dying.)
d) Basically, I think fighting the same 3 enemies over and over is less interesting than seeing new combinations of traits. For a more guided experience, the traits could be semi-random. Similar to how the player will train a Ranger if all their Rangers die, but not all Rangers are exactly the same.

 

[ArchAngel]

Ah, that must be it. I remember getting that card a long time ago. Is there a fix? So tired of fighting those asshole zombies.

Try a ranger with bladestorm.

Even better is a templar with bladestorm. His melee damage just does not compare. And I don't remember having seen the templar ever miss.

I think there is a bug with bladestorm (that was fixed in LW2) where bladestorm misses in situation it should not. Lucky that does not happen with the Templar

The chosen's katana has 100% accuracy. A miss might be due to something like an 'immunity to first reaction' ability.

And my high level Ranger has 100% accuracy vs Lost but still manages to miss.

 

[sser]

Any of the small DLC worth it? (On sale as a bundle.)

 

[Freddie]

Ah, that must be it. I remember getting that card a long time ago. Is there a fix? So tired of fighting those asshole zombies.

For me it game sort of fixed it self after I got some mission again which was actually supposed to have Lost siterep. I recommend checking Steam forums etc. if issue persists. On funny side, it's not that often you tag 80+ kills on a single mission. I think my best while suffering from that bug was 125+

Yeah, found a mod. But the fix only take effect after a restart

Lost sitrep, is that those missions when you have rescue someone trapped? 125, jebus. My highest so far is 69. Had to protect some kind of device. After I killed the normal aliens the lost just kept respawning, attacking in waves. Had to find one specific lost zombie to kill to be able to finish the mission. Was a bit odd. Talk about padding those kill stats!

That's how some of my missions with insane kill count happened. I recall my 80+ mission being eliminate the field commander, I got him and Advent troops but Lost just kept coming until I found the right one.

 

[Freddie]

Any of the small DLC worth it? (On sale as a bundle.)

Between Alien Hunters and Shen's Last Gift, SLG is IMO the better one and you get a free SPARK which after WotC are actually useful. Especially with the Chosen around I don't see that much need for Alien Hunters DLC. Rest of stuff is just cosmetic stuff.

If you are interested about the DLC my advice would be to look for a deal for Digital Deluxe, which when I got my copy from sale, was about the same price as plain XCOM 2.

 

[J1M]

Any of the small DLC worth it? (On sale as a bundle.)

No.

 

[Freddie]

Finished this on Commander.

My tactic for super fast end game actually didn't worked out like I hoped, though it made end game really easy. In the end I practically rolfstomped even the last mission. I had one Reaper with me specxed for crits and TROLOLOLOL Banish with Superior Repeater and of course with improved weapon mods Resistance Order. Turned out I didn't need to use Banish in the last mission.

I build Resistance Ring and GTS first. But then started scavenging deep into Avenger, my plan was that in the time scavenging was done I would have the required supplies to build something in spaces and I could use supplies and stuff to get upgrades from GTS and Engineering. Went towards first power node available and against most advices I didn't built neither Shadow chamber nor PSI labs on it but Power relay because it was in the end of third row. Then went for old tactic to built Workshop in the middle, later I put Infirmary on top of workshop, coms to the left Power Relay being on the right and finally Defence Matrix below Workshop. Over time it paid itself back pretty well because getting Engineer was much slower process than on my Veteran run.

On research I went for Mag weapons and armour as fast as I could but because I kept also building Avenger I compromised running with just one Squad Size upgrade for quite a bit of time, which made some missions actually challenging. I recruited lot of soldiers and there were times I save scummed hard. Despite scavenging Avenger I was really starved on supplies in early game so I guess either game is much less generous with Supplies on Commander than on Veteran or it happened because of RNG.

Chosen were actually challenge this time, both on tactical and strategy layer. Got sabotaged twice, had to defend Avenger twice against Chosen attack. I had some thought that I need Plasma weapons before assaulting their strongholds, which turned out to be mistake. I could had shorter game if I had taken at least one of them out when I got Mag weapons.

Some random thoughts / stuff I noticed:

WotC is buggy. I had few crashes., what is worrying though is that crashes can corrupt game files. Got to use Steams verify option few times, couple of times half of my saved games were gone after verifying. I read lot of reports about crashed on all platforms. For serious attempt to Ironman I would wait for patch.​

Some features don't work.

• Defence Matrix upgrade is supposed to get better defence against Chosen sabotage (from 30% to 60% IIRC) turned out that upgrade doesn't actually do anything.
• Weapon Stock mods damage doesn't always apply, or it is like 1 damage, even if Superior Stock is used.
• Skirmisher abilities that give extra actions appears to sometimes cause enemy getting additional turn. Though this might also be issue caused by corrupt game files. Anyway, this happened to me on my Veteran run and this time I didn't get / used those abilities I didn't had a the problem.
• Dark Event may get stuck (like Alienman posted earlier).
• Alien Hunters DLC doesn't trigger properly. I'm not sure which causes it but for me it looks like if you have done enough Black Site missions and / or killed of Chosen, Rulers won't appear even if you scan start location and get the weapons. I have had this same issue happening twice now, despite double checking that DLC options are set right in launcher, no Rulers in my game.

In general, my impression that this is worth expansion, just not necessarily worth € / $ 40, stands. I felt strategy layer got content game lacked really badly with Resistance Ring missions. Chosen themselves bring something to game with threat of sabotage and of course appearing on tactical missions, but IMO balance isn't what it should be. Especially if my theory that Alien Rulers and Chosen content are practically forced to do together can make it quite tedious, end game still remaining quite void of challenge. Spectres at least bring something new to the table, Purifiers being but joke after you learn not to let them close enough for them to use their grenade.

Soldier Bond system is actually great feature, especially if you get on them level 3, but playing with all those actions can sort of hit the sore spot because it also reminds from original UFO. It just gives much more creative freedom to have all those actions. I'm thinking maybe for NuXCOM designers idea was that with two action point system makes it easier to contain fights in small area and that way avoid players activating more pods, when in practice its effect can be opposite. If you use (and why the hell not) short / medium / long range mechanism to control the area. With just two action points and in fear of activating more pods of course you try to control as much area as you possibly can just to know where and what sort of enemies maybe joining into battle, just to get threat eliminating priorities right.

For style and other substance, there appears to be this trend for pushing more narrative in XCOM series and I have quite mixed feelings about it. Seeing those cut scenes and Chosen entrances is all right for one, maybe two times, but that you can't skip all of them is IMO mistake. I know the story, those scenes are in my memory, I don't need to waste my time to this again.

I can't but to note that poor performance for delivering the expansion for all platforms with bugs causing crashes, data corruption and that some features weren't thoroughly tested. Add that latter stages of game is still pretty much the same and very poor synergy with existing DLC, lot of attention in marketing paid to talking heads in strategy layer, I can't but to get picture of very calculated production, which isn't even targeted to that about 33% who actually finish on any difficulty level.

I have finished WotC twice now, I have been entertained. I may even try Legend PL if game gets a patch. Strong points of nuXCOM series are still there, there is that one more turn, one more Guerilla Op factor, with and despite this DLC, it's good for it is. But I don't necessarily like where Firaxis appears to be going with the series and I really hope Phoenix Point from Gollop succeeds to be better sequel for the classic series.

 

[ArchAngel]

Stopped reading at "save scummed".