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

[Cyberarmy]

I bet the endgame of XCOM2 is that you have to open a warp gate to the alternate reality where you won XCOM1 and a bunch of XCOM soldiers pour in. It's pretty much the ultimate clean way to end a terrorism plot, the intercession of a rival power that makes terrorism work where the rival power is also you.

Stop giving them ideas >_>

 

[Israfael]

Aliens can psi attack any xcom operative on the field. XCOM cannot do that, they need vision.
Aliens are immune to fatal wounds.
Aliens can see in the dark. XCOM still haven't figured out what flash lights are.

Not sure what version of the game you played, but it's possible to PSI aliens if you know where it was situated and if it didn't move, they don't attack any operatives, they just have much better vision, hide your toons better. I personally saw several sectoid <insert profession> dying from 'grey' wounds, one even died in flight to the base, i think. The problem with PSI was that it had fixed TU cost (it was somewhat alleviated in Pocket PC remake, where it's % based), which made your psykers infiitely more powerful with each 'levelup'.

Small arms cannot shoot through walls without destroying the intervening cover, at least not normally.
What you may be seeing is a graphical bug.

There were several screenshots published in 2012 xcom thread here on the Codex where the player toon shot through a solid wall and killed an alien standing behind it.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Aliens can psi attack any xcom operative on the field. XCOM cannot do that, they need vision.
Aliens are immune to fatal wounds.
Aliens can see in the dark. XCOM still haven't figured out what flash lights are.

Not sure what version of the game you played, but it's possible to PSI aliens if you know where it was situated and if it didn't move, they don't attack any operatives, they just have much better vision, hide your toons better. I personally saw several sectoid <insert profession> dying from 'grey' wounds, one even died in flight to the base, i think. The problem with PSI was that it had fixed TU cost (it was somewhat alleviated in Pocket PC remake, where it's % based), which made your psykers infiitely more powerful with each 'levelup'.

Small arms cannot shoot through walls without destroying the intervening cover, at least not normally.
What you may be seeing is a graphical bug.

There were several screenshots published in 2012 xcom thread here on the Codex where the player toon shot through a solid wall and killed an alien standing behind it.

The XCOM unit with psi does not have to see the alien himself, but you still need vision.
The aliens don't really follow that same restriction, in fact its the opposite; seeing 1 member of the squad is enough for them to target everyone. I had lost soldiers to mind control when there was no possible way that an alien could see them.

Alien only get fatal wounds if you mind control them, because they then count as XCOM soldiers. After mind control ends they do still take damage from the wound. They never get fatal wounds normally, hence the option to give make them susceptible to those in openXcom.

Yeah, that shooting through the wall thing is a bug.
Apparently the game doesn't check for walls when the hit animation happens, and only occasionally notices that there's intervening terrain.
Of course, the terrain is so absurdly fragile it doesn't really matter.

 

[Israfael]

Yeah, that shooting through the wall thing is a bug.
Apparently the game doesn't check for walls when the hit animation happens, and only occasionally notices that there's intervening terrain.

It's not a bug, it's game mechanics - when you press shoot in nu-xcom, game simply rolls a d100 to figure out if you hit it, and then chooses one of the four variants - alien, cover, terrain behind alien, miss. Basically, it doesn't calculate trajectory for in-game purposes, although engine is perfectly capable of doing that (because the rule is 'hit or miss', no friendly fire / stray hit etc). One of the 'gamey' stuff that i'm taking about.

 

[Gozma]

Long War made incidental cover destruction (e.g. cover destruction caused by an alien just missing a shot) much, much less common. Vanilla cover destruction made a lot of maps play completely ridiculously at high difficulty levels because there was zero useable cover.

I hope they take that and also use the Long War model where low cover is buffed enough not to be completely worthless.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Long War made incidental cover destruction (e.g. cover destruction caused by an alien just missing a shot) much, much less common. Vanilla cover destruction made a lot of maps play completely ridiculously at high difficulty levels because there was zero useable cover.

I hope they take that and also use the Long War model where low cover is buffed enough not to be completely worthless.

I hope they no longer have terrain be connected by long strips.
It was really dumb how an entire UFO wall can be blown apart by a single plasma bolt, as it counts as a whole piece of terrain that takes up multiple squares.
The original's system was better; each bit of terrain had its own square, and they placed them adjacently to form walls.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah, that shooting through the wall thing is a bug.
Apparently the game doesn't check for walls when the hit animation happens, and only occasionally notices that there's intervening terrain.

It's not a bug, it's game mechanics - when you press shoot in nu-xcom, game simply rolls a d100 to figure out if you hit it, and then chooses one of the four variants - alien, cover, terrain behind alien, miss. Basically, it doesn't calculate trajectory for in-game purposes, although engine is perfectly capable of doing that (because the rule is 'hit or miss', no friendly fire / stray hit etc). One of the 'gamey' stuff that i'm taking about.

Yeah, you have a point there. The original was better in that respect, as there was an actual, physical projectile instead of just numbers.

 

[ArchAngel]

No ammunition yet again? So when you are spraying you will not get too low on bullets...

Maybe you can't run out completely, but if you're constantly taking worthless shots, you have to waste a lot of turns on reloading. That's enough of a management issue to keep you thinking.

Honestly, the assumption that your guys bring enough ammo to last a firefight is a streamlining I can live with. You ever play one of these games and have a guy run out of ammo? And then spend the rest of the map having him walk around and skip his turn? It's not exactly scintillating gameplay.

I had it happen in Xenonauts and I had the guy run to his allies to get their spare ammo or pick up alien weapon and use that for the rest of the combat. Or pick up extra grenades from teammates and become the grenadier for that mission.

 

[Destroid]

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Holy shit, that does look like the plot to XCOM2
Advent even has a red and black scheme.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, that shooting through the wall thing is a bug.
Apparently the game doesn't check for walls when the hit animation happens, and only occasionally notices that there's intervening terrain.

It's not a bug, it's game mechanics - when you press shoot in nu-xcom, game simply rolls a d100 to figure out if you hit it, and then chooses one of the four variants - alien, cover, terrain behind alien, miss. Basically, it doesn't calculate trajectory for in-game purposes, although engine is perfectly capable of doing that (because the rule is 'hit or miss', no friendly fire / stray hit etc). One of the 'gamey' stuff that i'm taking about.

Does it actually do that? I assumed that it calculated hit or non-hit, but that non-hits were properly random and could hit and destroy cover based on the same way UFO worked.

 

[Israfael]

Does it actually do that? I assumed that it calculated hit or non-hit, but that non-hits were properly random and could hit and destroy cover based on the same way UFO worked.

No idea, really, but it looks like that it never hits the other NPC pieces, so that made me agree with some random guy on 2k forums (truly disgusting place) about the 4 types of the shooting outcome. The 100% thing is that the game doesnt calculate trajectories and plays it in the simplistic yes/no way.

 

[PhantasmaNL]

I wonder how xcom2 will do the strategic layer/base building/whatever they come up with. Underground resistance movements dont have tons of cash or fancy bases and rely on macgyver solutions.

 

[Zeriel]

I wonder how xcom2 will do the strategic layer/base building/whatever they come up with. Underground resistance movements dont have tons of cash or fancy bases and rely on macgyver solutions.

SPACE MAGIC.

(I eagerly look forward to how cringingly bad the handwavey excuses for why we don't start with alien tech after hijacking an ALIEN SUPPLY BARGE will be.)

 

[Average Manatee]

I wonder how xcom2 will do the strategic layer/base building/whatever they come up with. Underground resistance movements dont have tons of cash or fancy bases and rely on macgyver solutions.

X-Com attacking from another dimension a-la Apocalypse?

 

[Space Satan]

Raid aliens, get cash and resources. I bet there will be some kind of supply mission.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I wonder how xcom2 will do the strategic layer/base building/whatever they come up with. Underground resistance movements dont have tons of cash or fancy bases and rely on macgyver solutions.

SPACE MAGIC.

(I eagerly look forward to how cringingly bad the handwavey excuses for why we don't start with alien tech after hijacking an ALIEN SUPPLY BARGE will be.)

Clearly that supply barge only had alien toasters.
Hence the gremlin

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Raid aliens, get cash and resources. I bet there will be some kind of supply mission.

I hope we can raid buildings like in Apocalypse. That was cool

 

[Average Manatee]

Now you're making me dream of a finished Apocalypse with a full alien world and associated economic ecosystem mirroring X-Com's (with the human world fleshed out as well).

Sadly (or fortunately) I doubt that Firaxis is anywhere near that ambitious. You'll get raid missions but they'll be periodic one-shots like UFO appearances were, not "here's a map of the city, you can raid anything" style gameplay.

 

[Zeriel]

They are building a gamist series, not a simulationist one. Cool thing is that the tools should be comprehensive enough this time that someone could actually make a more simulationist take on the game if they were autistic enough. Long War modders are apparently done with modding for the most part and want to make their own game, though, so we're going to need some new autists.

 

[Black]

Underground resistance movements dont have tons of cash or fancy bases and rely on macgyver solutions.

Selling deadly weapons on the black market, the real X-Com way

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Underground resistance movements dont have tons of cash or fancy bases and rely on macgyver solutions.

Selling deadly weapons on the black market, the real X-Com way

Taking hostages would have been a possible solution.
But nope, Firaxis is a eunuch, like most companies these days.
Remember the 90s, when games had teeth? Good times.

 

[Stompa]

I wonder how xcom2 will do the strategic layer/base building/whatever they come up with. Underground resistance movements dont have tons of cash or fancy bases and rely on macgyver solutions.

SPACE MAGIC.

(I eagerly look forward to how cringingly bad the handwavey excuses for why we don't start with alien tech after hijacking an ALIEN SUPPLY BARGE will be.)

Alien weapons self-destruct when the user is killed, and XCOM never captured them alive?

Logically a SUPPLY BARGE would've had weapons and other offensive tech as cargo.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I wonder how xcom2 will do the strategic layer/base building/whatever they come up with. Underground resistance movements dont have tons of cash or fancy bases and rely on macgyver solutions.

SPACE MAGIC.

(I eagerly look forward to how cringingly bad the handwavey excuses for why we don't start with alien tech after hijacking an ALIEN SUPPLY BARGE will be.)

Alien weapons self-destruct when the user is killed, and XCOM never captured them alive?

Logically a SUPPLY BARGE would've had weapons and other offensive tech as cargo.

Not necessarily. Could have just been food or entertainment.

 

[Perkel]

Sadly (or fortunately) I doubt that Firaxis is anywhere near that ambitious.

Firaxis' ambition is not game-related, it centers on money...

They target PC only this time. To me it looks like they smelled success going PC only like their Civilization. Add proper steam workshop and modding and Xcom2 will soon joing Civilization as best profitable game in Firaxis portfolio.
Can't say i won't be happy.

What are they doing currently looks like incline even if Xcom was worse brother to ufo games.
By Xcom3 they will probably add raising buildings and other stuff.

I wish they would go for AP system though.
Reason they gone for 2 point system is speed. It limits you options but speeds up each turn a lot.