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

[Jimmious]

https://xcom.com/news/en-long-war-studios-preparing-xcom-2-content-for-launch

Pretty awesome news, right?

*Damn, ninja'd

 

[Jasede]

Pretty awesome. Long War looks really good. I'll try it this weekend, finally have time. I was watching beaglerush play it and it really reminds me of classic X-Com. So many more items at the start, more soldiers to control. I like having a lot of tools against a wide variety of enemy tools.

 

[Mazisky]

This is totally unexpected

 

[Space Satan]

What's this smell? Is that...incline?

 

[Matalarata]

Pretty awesome.

Yes, it's gud. But the last version I tried (the one before the final) was also incredibly grindy, even with the dynamic war option enabled, which also destroys the balance...
Also be prepared for oh shit! moments, like demolishing a wall and exposing your squad to 12+ aliens in one turn, happened to me once. While such situations made Auld X-Com the great game it is, replacing veteran soldiers in LW is a PITA. Do keep that in mind.

Also 8 mech classes are just too many, at least half of them could be wrapped into the other half.

That said, the mod is clever and challenging, I hope you'll have as much fun as I did with it!

 

[Zeriel]

I wonder if they're going to have Long War modders cook up a "real" difficulty setting and invoke that to defend the hardest vanilla difficulty in XCOM 2 looking super easy compared to Impossible. Regardless, it'll be interesting to see what Amineri and Johnnylump do with actual mod tools and unfettered access to the game.

 

[veevoir]

I wonder if they're going to have Long War modders cook up a "real" difficulty setting and invoke that to defend the hardest vanilla difficulty in XCOM 2 looking super easy compared to Impossible. Regardless, it'll be interesting to see what Amineri and Johnnylump do with actual mod tools and unfettered access to the game.

Will probably happen in DLCs though. Maybe it is all an evul plan to sell a Long War DLC for Xcom2

 

[Jimmious]

It just proves how good it is that the game is designed to be highly moddable from the get-go. Great decision , especially for us the players.

 

[!godspeed]

I'd argue that Overwatch spamming in the first one was different from the maneuver because there was no smart firing and aliens would scatter after the shot into cover. So with some luck you might kill 2 out of maybe 3 or 4 aliens, and that's if you are lucky; often you would have everyone fire at a single alien, leaving 2-3 alive. That's quite different from the current maneuver where you can basically annihilate an entire pod from just the fire, and if you don't you kill them for certain right after without being hit. It's good they address this.

Firaxis still seems to be refining the way Aliens react during first contact: https://twitter.com/SolomonJake/status/689827110668668928?s=09p

By the way, this has made me check out beagle's videos. I hate his European accent but that guy is amazing at Long War Ironman Impossible; learning a lot.
(Unless this is some Australian accent I never heard before. I don't like it.)

Beagle is Australian.

 

[Raghar]

Can the above masturbation squad stop masturbating and remember the previous page? If developers of long war are cooperating with firaxis, and it's a positive news, how is possible beagle maneuver?

 

[Jasede]

They already said they are addressing it, dude.
And how it it possible? Making a game like this is very complex. Even in play-testing you can't possibly try everything.
Have you watched beaglerush play? The guy is a fucking X-Com prodigy. His play is masterful, he destroys Impossible Ironman, Long War or not.

Do you really think play testers, the average player, are going to come up with difficult maneuvers that the top 1% of players do? And even those only got that good after months of playing and practice. A developer is probably too busy developing to play the game much.

 

[Raghar]

They already said they are addressing it, dude.
And how it it possible? Making a game like this is very complex. Even in play-testing you can't possibly try everything.

I designed and wrote more complex stuff. So pretending a game is complex doesn't work on me. XCOM design and game set is relatively simple, they just sucks.

Have you watched beaglerush play?

I prefer playing games and learning that way, then look at streams. And I still didn't finish my current semi-ironman game, where when leader die, it's failure. Assault class and shotgun occasionally. (And majority of missions leader should be in.)
(I forgot to use snipers, I had three, one with squad sight. One was killed by overwatch by an accident.)

The guy is a fucking X-Com prodigy. His play is masterful, he destroys Impossible Ironman, Long War or not.

He can abuse rules, and make things easier for hm. I'm pretending it's properly designed, use smart tactic, and I'm getting punished for that...

Do you really think play testers, the average player, are going to come up with difficult maneuvers that the top 1% of players do? And even those only got that good after months of playing and practice. A developer is probably too busy developing to play the game much.[/QUOTE]
https://www.twitch.tv/anzleon/v/32494438 1:15

There is nothing like that in game. You can't open door and aliens sit there, they just scatter.

That's a reaction of a relatively competent player on a solution of the beagle tactic. He calls it bug, which probably is.

Developer designed the game, he should know how it would behave in certain situations. Meeting engagement is common case in strategy games, they should know how it should behave.

 

[Zombra]

Hmmm. Cool that some LW-related mods will be available on day one. I loved the superficial complexities LW brought to the table. The underlying balance was pretty fucked though, it became unplayable for me pretty fast. Hopefully the mods will be truly modular so we can pick and choose.

 

[Jasede]

We already agreed like when it came out that this X-Com is super dumbed down. We're just enjoying it for what it is (TM.)
And honestly, it's pretty damn okay for a modern game. They don't make many higher budget TB games anymore.

Also your English is super hard to read.

 

[Jasede]

Haven't watched much X-Com 2 stuff yet, but watching X-Com 1 streams I gotta tell you-
I wish they added friendly fire! That'd make the game more fun and add another thing to worry about.

 

[Zombra]

So, this may be a weird question. Has anybody seen the screen for character pool options? I keep hearing stuff about how you can make a character "scientist only" or "bad guy", but can't find a preview that actually shows those switches.

 

[Zeriel]

So, this may be a weird question. Has anybody seen the screen for character pool options? I keep hearing stuff about how you can make a character "scientist only" or "bad guy", but can't find a preview that actually shows those switches.

There have been a few videos of it, it's a checkbox in the character screen. It's probably in this one somewhere:

 

[Space Satan]

At least now I can remove all niggers and other dindus from my squad.

 

[Zombra]

Huh? You could always change the race of your soldiers.

 

[Jasede]

Haven't watched much X-Com 2 stuff yet, but watching X-Com 1 streams I gotta tell you-
I wish they added friendly fire! That'd make the game more fun and add another thing to worry about.

Friendly fire is possible with panic and mind control. In the X2 streams you can see panic spiral situations where one soldier on overwatch panics, another soldier panics and runs out of cover, the overwatch shoots the runner. Or a panicking soldier lobs a grenade into his squad.

Well, of course I know about that.
In fact, in my latest vanilla X-Com Iron Man Classic game it ended when I was doing a Council mission and my guy who was in full cover, hunkered down, inside smoke was hit by a Thin Man, panicked, then shot the VIP we needed to rescue. I was mad.

What I mean is when you have soldiers standing in a conga line and are shooting through each other there should be a chance to hit a friendly soldier. Here is a diagram:

A SS

S are soldiers, A is an alien, they are all in the same horizontal square. The second S, when shooting the first alien, should have a chance to hit the first S, like in X-Com, the original.

 

[Zombra]

The engine provides plenty of opportunity for blundering and regret already, no need to make it so that shooting at enemies becomes an actively bad idea.

 

[Mazisky]

Unfortunately i got no response by Devs about an issue i noticed.

The geoscape day\night cycle is completely random and doesn't match with the clock time.

I hope this will be fixed by a modder, in order to sync the geoscape cycle with the in-game time.

 

[Zombra]

That level of realism is a "who cares" for me ... but I guess there's no good reason for them not to accurately synchronize.

 

[Mazisky]

That level of realism is a "who cares" for me ... but I guess there's no good reason for them not to accurately synchronize.

It was syncronized in both original and EU\EW, it should be here too considering that missions are based on bottom right corner clock.

It's a bit weird to go on a night area and find a daytime mission.

This happened with EU\EW beacuse of static fixed maps.

Now maps are matching with time clock on geoscape cause of dynamic lighting and that's nice, but why doing a time of day based clock with syncronized missions and leave the day\night cycle random

 

[Galdred]

Haven't watched much X-Com 2 stuff yet, but watching X-Com 1 streams I gotta tell you-
I wish they added friendly fire! That'd make the game more fun and add another thing to worry about.

Friendly fire is possible with panic and mind control. In the X2 streams you can see panic spiral situations where one soldier on overwatch panics, another soldier panics and runs out of cover, the overwatch shoots the runner. Or a panicking soldier lobs a grenade into his squad.

Well, of course I know about that.
In fact, in my latest vanilla X-Com Iron Man Classic game it ended when I was doing a Council mission and my guy who was in full cover, hunkered down, inside smoke was hit by a Thin Man, panicked, then shot the VIP we needed to rescue. I was mad.

What I mean is when you have soldiers standing in a conga line and are shooting through each other there should be a chance to hit a friendly soldier. Here is a diagram:

A SS

S are soldiers, A is an alien, they are all in the same horizontal square. The second S, when shooting the first alien, should have a chance to hit the first S, like in X-Com, the original.

They had that in Chaos Gate, but you had no good way of checking whether one of your squaddies was in the LoS. It would be expected that your operatives don't take the shot in the situation you described, or move a little before doing it.