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

[veevoir]

- no way to have the geospace pause when your soldiers are healed (which long war had for example, I have no idea why they didn't give us an option for this in Xcom 2) - why is this important? So we can take that engineer that gives a boost to healing and put him/her somewhere else.

Actually the "bored engineer" icon shows up.

 

[ArchAngel]

Yes but game does not pause and time goes super fast when you are already passing days making new contacts or scavenging for supplies. Even if you are super careful by the time you stop half a day will probably pass already.

 

[Jasede]

So if you didn't experience it, it does not exist? Are you dumb or retarded?

No you dumb cunt, if I didn't experience it in 30 hours that doesn't mean it doesn't exist; it just means it's not very likely to happen.

Why must I explain such basic concepts to you?

Oh.

 

[mutonizer]

You reloaded a save, didn't you? It's a visual glitch, but you will always fail if you failed once. Just like in EU/EW, the RNG seed has ben pre-generated for you before you saved the game, and you will always fail if you failed before. It's an anti-savescum feature.

Well yea, I knew that I'd get the exact same result, that's why I ALT-F4 before turn end then reloaded to record it (which I didn't have time to do when it happened during other missions, etc). Only way I know how to record (possible) bugs in Ironman mode unless you're recording everything or something.

 

[Cyberarmy]

This is much less buggy than the previous game. Only crashed once for me and only "serious" bugs I've encoutered was vipers grabing me from behind walls.

 

[ArchAngel]

So if you didn't experience it, it does not exist? Are you dumb or retarded?

No you dumb cunt, if I didn't experience it in 30 hours that doesn't mean it doesn't exist; it just means it's not very likely to happen.

Why must I explain such basic concepts to you?

Oh.

I don't why I even bother with Undertail retard. I would put Undertail as you tag if I could, that is much more damning than any other tag...

 

[Jasede]

Mission accomplished.

 

[Parabalus]

I'm playing on Commander and the last similar thing I played was nuXCOM (no EW) on Impossible. I recently started getting sectopods.

Thoughts:

• Had severe FPS issues when I first booted up the game, it took me 2 min to click "autodetect" in the graphics options because of the lag. Smooth sailing after that though. Had no crashes, no major LOS issues so far, but I was sufficiently scared of potential bugs to not check IM.
• I absolutely love the timers. I hated using overwatch in the previous game, I'd always rather double move, potentially trigger several pods and lose people instead of 2222222222 spamming. This validates my playstyle so I like it. Don't find them too rough, I always make it out with 3-4 turns remaining unless I'm farming XP on purpose.
• Classes seem more interesting and balanced against each other. I got 9 different (PSI gets everything) soldier specs and it's genuinely hard for me to decide who to bring; I had great success and spectacular failures with everyone. Only thing I dislike is that having a dedicated specialist hacker is almost mandatory because of how strong they are and you stack can stack bonuses on one.
• There are a lot more sucker punches than I remember from EU. Things like Muton melee counterattack, Archon frenzy, Pinion explosive radius, Lid burrow, Gatekeeper PSI nuke, Codex disarm/explosion etc. You will probably lose a soldier the first time you encounter any of those.
• Geoscape has me feeling much more spread thin, it does in essence boil down to whack a mole but it is entertaining.
• Base management and items are MUCH MUCH more varied and "cool". I'm still bothered a bit by how obtuse the research tree is, in the sense that you have no idea what is gated behind something. I only got heavy weapons 2 missions ago because I never bothered constructing an E.X.O. suit before. (Possible I missed some fine print here)
• Player mind control effects are a bit too strong for my liking. You pretty much get an automatic flank, removing 2 enemies from the fight, destroying massive amounts of cover AND the enemy is likely to focus the dominated target because you parked it in the open and they are flanking it AND if it survives you get to do it again.
• CC seems a bit too strong of an option. Between stasis and mimic signals you can lock down enemies for several turns, and those are only the dependable ones, there are several soldier abilities which have a % of locking down targets. Enemies rarely get to fire anymore.
• It's much better than I remember EU to be, but I probably won't insta-replay it because time, Legend/IM gonna be after DLC/mods.
• Apparently pressing Caps Lock during the loading screen makes load faster. I can't even begin to fathom why, but for me it drops the post-mission load to 10 sec from 2 mins without...

- they melee you through walls
- you lose concealment even we you should not
- often fiddly grenade targeting
- random fps drops (one example is when trying to throw some grenades my fps suddenly drops to 11)
- LOS issues
- everything is super slow (not talking about fps problems)
- game sometimes locks up on one soldier and you have to fiddle around until it lets you continue playing
- and many others....
- then some minor irritating things like everyone is on extraction zone but you have to manually extract each soldier/VIP... wtf...
- no way to have the geospace pause when your soldiers are healed (which long war had for example, I have no idea why they didn't give us an option for this in Xcom 2) - why is this important? So we can take that engineer that gives a boost to healing and put him/her somewhere else.

Melee through walls seems like a feature to me, it raised an eyebrow at first but I noticed that every time that happened the separating cover would be destroyed, ie. you got fusion lances, if you know where someone is, you sure as hell can slice them through a wall.

Dunno bout concealment, what's been happening? It's pretty simple, you get discovered if you are in the red and flanked or make noise, never got subjugated to bullshit there myself.

Yeah they made grenades/other AOE snap to grid, kinda sucks since you very rarely get 3+ hits because of it. Probably for balance reasons.

Geoscape is a bit annoynig in that regard. The difficulty doesn't seems to be tuned so tightly that every minute matters so it's mostly OCD reasons but I agree. I find PSI training to be worse tho, dunno why we can't just assign training from the Geoscape, but I have to click 20 more tiems to get back.

Performance issues suck and if you get them you can basically fuck yourself because support sure as hell isn't gonna help you. I got lucky since I'm running this on a toaster and not having any problems, but you should def. test the game out before buying.

 

[Cyberarmy]

• Apparently pressing Caps Lock during the loading screen makes load faster. I can't even begin to fathom why, but for me it drops the post-mission load to 10 sec from 2 mins without...

 

[ArchAngel]

- they melee you through walls
- you lose concealment even we you should not
- often fiddly grenade targeting
- random fps drops (one example is when trying to throw some grenades my fps suddenly drops to 11)
- LOS issues
- everything is super slow (not talking about fps problems)
- game sometimes locks up on one soldier and you have to fiddle around until it lets you continue playing
- and many others....
- then some minor irritating things like everyone is on extraction zone but you have to manually extract each soldier/VIP... wtf...
- no way to have the geospace pause when your soldiers are healed (which long war had for example, I have no idea why they didn't give us an option for this in Xcom 2) - why is this important? So we can take that engineer that gives a boost to healing and put him/her somewhere else.

Melee through walls seems like a feature to me, it raised an eyebrow at first but I noticed that every time that happened the separating cover would be destroyed, ie. you got fusion lances, if you know where someone is, you sure as hell can slice them through a wall.

Dunno bout concealment, what's been happening? It's pretty simple, you get discovered if you are in the red and flanked or make noise, never got subjugated to bullshit there myself.

Yeah they made grenades/other AOE snap to grid, kinda sucks since you very rarely get 3+ hits because of it. Probably for balance reasons.

Geoscape is a bit annoynig in that regard. The difficulty doesn't seems to be tuned so tightly that every minute matters so it's mostly OCD reasons but I agree. I find PSI training to be worse tho, dunno why we can't just assign training from the Geoscape, but I have to click 20 more tiems to get back.

Performance issues suck and if you get them you can basically fuck yourself because support sure as hell isn't gonna help you. I got lucky since I'm running this on a toaster and not having any problems, but you should def. test the game out before buying.

If melee through walls is a feature it is a bad one because in this case this was without line of sight. Muton moved to other side of the wall and then did it. I can understand if Beserker charges or something and goes through a wall but this was just stupid.

I know concealment system is simple except when it is not. I move to cover to spot where there is no red and suddenly you are discovered. I move only with my concealed ranger to full cover at edge of building because I know a viper is few squares away on the other side and even with no red and not being flanked suddenly I am discovered. Only possibly legit discovery was when I drop from a building by a window and muton and 2 sectoid were on other side of that window inside a building and there was low cover between us. Game didn't even wait for me to move from that spot, it said spotted immediately. In that spot I should have stayed concealed because I was not flanked by that group.

There are more problems with grenades, Viper grappled my guy but I was able to setup a grenade to hit my guy but not the viper?!?! Also if your grenadier is on high ground and you press to throw the grenade, move camera over lower ground, then use scroll wheel to lower elevation targeting and camera goes screwy. And some other problems like camera snaps back by itself when you are checking the edges of range and vision and rotating camera and such.

I am definitely testing this game before buying I would be supermad if I wasted 60$ on a such a buggy game.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I've put off buying this for the following reasons I have gathered from reading here, watching friends play, and steam user reviews:

1. spinning the job wheel remains.
2. there are too many timed missions and they tend to be frustrating
3. the sniper was nerfed too hard (somehow?)
3a. the ranger is too OP ?
4. enemies are SUPER fast and can run across fields, climb up two stories and then stab you in the face, all in one turn
5. buggy animations - soldiers trying to break windows that are already broken, or trying to break them and failing - for example
6. buggy gameplay - snake boob woman (the viper) targeting and pulling players through walls - for example
7. poor performance on beefy machines?
8. glitchy UI ?


Is this accurate? Is it better or worse than this?

1) If by job wheel you mean random classes, someone clearly hasnn't built the GTS
2) Not really. There are a few timed missions, but if you build your squad correctly and take scanners its quite easy to get to the objective. The game puts you like 2 turns away from the objective, and if you can't kill an enemy squad within one turn, you will generally have more problems than the time limit.
3) Sniper is still strong. Just not god tier like before
4) So can you
5) Yeah that happens
6) Haven't seen that yet. I have been able to draw LoS through closed doors sometimes...so that's a thing
7) I meet the minimal requirements, and its not too bad. Loading times are a tad long, but not unbearably so. I do experience some FPS drops, but that might be due to my subpar machine.
8) Haven't seen that either.

 

[ArchAngel]

There is more than few timed missions. At least half are timed. Also a main reason why sniper is not that good in Xcom 2.

After learning which are timed and which are not, taking 2 snipers for non timed missions makes them much easier.

 

[Norfleet]

Melee through walls seems like a feature to me, it raised an eyebrow at first but I noticed that every time that happened the separating cover would be destroyed, ie. you got fusion lances, if you know where someone is, you sure as hell can slice them through a wall.

If melee through walls is a feature it is a bad one because in this case this was without line of sight. Muton moved to other side of the wall and then did it. I can understand if Beserker charges or something and goes through a wall but this was just stupid.

Why would it be stupid? If you have some kind of melee weapon with the power to punch through walls, why wouldn't you? If I had, say, a lightsaber, you'd bet your ass I'd stab people through walls with it!

 

[Vault Dweller]

I've put off buying this for the following reasons I have gathered from reading here, watching friends play, and steam user reviews:

1. spinning the job wheel remains.
2. there are too many timed missions and they tend to be frustrating
3. the sniper was nerfed too hard (somehow?)
3a. the ranger is too OP ?
4. enemies are SUPER fast and can run across fields, climb up two stories and then stab you in the face, all in one turn
5. buggy animations - soldiers trying to break windows that are already broken, or trying to break them and failing - for example
6. buggy gameplay - snake boob woman (the viper) targeting and pulling players through walls - for example
7. poor performance on beefy machines?
8. glitchy UI ?


Is this accurate? Is it better or worse than this?

1. Build the tactics place (where you increase the size of your squad, et) and assign a desirable class to your rookies there.
2. It goes something like this: say you need to get to X and it takes 2-3 turns to get there. You get 8-10 turns to do it, but there are enemies between you and X, so you need to kill them reasonably fast (i.e. you can't play it on Overwatch, slowly crawling forward). I've played the game for 14 hours and usually I end missions with 2-3 turns to spare. I'm not powergaming, often get back with 2-3 wounded and have to use weaker troops.
3. The sniper is fine. I always use one, sometimes two.
4. Melee enemies are very fast and have exactly the same mechanics as your ranger who can run across fields and stab people in the face. So if you see such units, kill them fast. Sure, you can't always kill these bastards before they reach you, so - you better sit down for this one - sometimes you take damage. :gasp:
5. Never seen such animations
6. The snake women have a toad-like tongue attack, so they can drag you out of your comfort zone. They can pull you into buildings through windows, but I guess occasionally when the passability isn't set right, they can pull you through walls. I would't call it a game-breaking or even frustrating bug.
7. Runs fine on my PC (bought it in Dec, it's not a state of the art PC to brag about but fairly decent). The mission loading times are a bitch though.
8. Never seen any UI-related issues.

 

[veevoir]

There is more than few timed missions. At least half are timed. Also a main reason why sniper is not that good in Xcom 2.

After learning which are timed and which are not, taking 2 snipers for non timed missions makes them much easier.

Gunslingers are godlike, dunno what this is all about. Give them venom/dragon rounds and watch those DoT destroy enemies. It is the usual "I sit on a tower and overwatch as my life goes on" sniper that is harder to use.
But even that sniper has his work cut out unless on VIP extraction missions (other missions you need to disarm the timer, in extraction everyone goes way of the dodo if timer runs out)

 

[Zetor]

There is more than few timed missions. At least half are timed. Also a main reason why sniper is not that good in Xcom 2.

After learning which are timed and which are not, taking 2 snipers for non timed missions makes them much easier.

Gunslingers are godlike, dunno what this is all about. Give them venom/dragon rounds and watch those DoT destroy enemies. It is the usual "I sit on a tower and overwatch as my life goes on" sniper that is harder to use.
But even that sniper has his work cut out unless on VIP extraction missions (other missions you need to disarm the timer, in extraction everyone goes way of the dodo if timer runs out)

Sniper is fine, and you can't argue with a Kill Zone + grenade opener (with your Phantom scout giving squadsight). Even in the late game an opener like that just murders enemy pods, especially if you are firing a proxy mine from out of enemy sight range and the enemy group triggers it + Kill Zone + overwatch on their own turn.

For mobility, your sniper needs to be using light armor with grapple (and preferably warp)... he can easily keep up with the rest of the group then. My sniper only ended up missing maybe one or two turns of snipe time per mission, the rest of the time he could just rush to the next sniping spot as the rest of the group advanced to ambush the next pod.

 

[Jimmious]

Yup, my snipers are getting a lot of kills. That free pistol shot is awesome for finishers btw. Pop all them moles

 

[mutonizer]

Yup, my snipers are getting a lot of kills. That free pistol shot is awesome for finishers btw. Pop all them moles

Just got "Shredder" bonus perk on my maxed out Sniper, which is nice I guess for some missions, especially facilities since they got no timers during setup.
My top dogs are blade Rangers though. 3-4 of them and you can just keep the Reaping going turn after turn if need be. Best part is that if you position proper, you can reap, reap, reap and shotgun as last reap action, which with the +3 damage on flanked enemies and crit bonus mods and the crit ammo, is just nuts. Combined with one 185+ hacking dude and 1-2 salvo grenadiers, is just..."ok then!". Sharpshooters just don't fit in there in most mission for me, not mobile enough and for raw damage, rangers do better so that cuts down their use too.

Edit:

Spoiler

Otherwise, my game's at end of September and finally moving on a bit with the story and whatnot, which is pretty fast now. Enemies can't really cope anymore though, with Sectopods, Gaters and even Avatar getting completely destroyed the turn they show up pretty much. It's even getting to be a bit silly, as on the last mission, the "reinforcement" drop pod was 3 elite red MECs, who died on their turn mostly, and mine after.

So yea, pretty cake now...Still couple butt clenching since this is ironman and blind afterall, but been pretty easy for a while now.

 

[ArchAngel]

There is more than few timed missions. At least half are timed. Also a main reason why sniper is not that good in Xcom 2.

After learning which are timed and which are not, taking 2 snipers for non timed missions makes them much easier.

Gunslingers are godlike, dunno what this is all about. Give them venom/dragon rounds and watch those DoT destroy enemies. It is the usual "I sit on a tower and overwatch as my life goes on" sniper that is harder to use.
But even that sniper has his work cut out unless on VIP extraction missions (other missions you need to disarm the timer, in extraction everyone goes way of the dodo if timer runs out)

Sniper is fine, and you can't argue with a Kill Zone + grenade opener (with your Phantom scout giving squadsight). Even in the late game an opener like that just murders enemy pods, especially if you are firing a proxy mine from out of enemy sight range and the enemy group triggers it + Kill Zone + overwatch on their own turn.

For mobility, your sniper needs to be using light armor with grapple (and preferably warp)... he can easily keep up with the rest of the group then. My sniper only ended up missing maybe one or two turns of snipe time per mission, the rest of the time he could just rush to the next sniping spot as the rest of the group advanced to ambush the next pod.

All this is already late mid game stuff. My sniper got max level before I got any such armor. Most of the time I had 2 snipers and they waste 1+ rounds to find a high place (otherwise their hit chance is bad vs important enemies) and then you kill one group and need to move already because of timers. And if they use squadsight their only options is always to shoot and hit or miss, everyone else can employ some grenade or special ability.

And no, I don't consider a Gunslinger a sniper.

 

[rashiakas]

Just completed the game and I must say I really enjoyed it. Presentation is really good, visual and audio are top considering this is a turn based game. Missions are varied enough and the pacing and encountering new stuff right until the very end keeps the game interesting. Classes are way better balanced this time around, you can make a lot of combos that work great. My endgame team consisted of 2 snipers (not pistols), 2 grenadiers, 1 psion, 1 specialist, so concealment rangers aren't mandatory. The difficulty is a bit on the easy side once you upgraded everything, but even then a mistake can cost you a soldier which keeps you on your toes.

Now there are some bugs, but nothing gamebreaking. Meleeing trough walls/LOS issues are hilarious at times but overall I think they did a really good job with this release, aside from performance issues that is (which I luckily rarely had, and I run everything on max except AA). The UI is okay, a numeric display of health would have been great later on and maneuvering trough your base gets old after a while and I wish I could disable centrals babbling because I fucking know that I have to rescue those fucking stupid civilians.

The story was okay and an huge improvement over xcom 1. The ending suggest we will see more of this game which is a good thing imo. If you enjoy turn based combat this is a definitive must play.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah if weapon mods could apply to pistols that would be op.
Like, can you imagine a repeater or hair trigger on a pistol? There would be so many chances to proc that its not even funny.

 

[Moink]

Game crashes when I pick up the space suit body on one of the story missions, tried restarting, verifying the cache etc and nothing works.

 

[bonescraper]

More X2 bullshit: Shooting an enemy, grenading him - totally fine. Sending gremlin to combat protocol him? Activates another pod that sees it. And this was on a retaliation mission, so the activated pod decided to go kill more civilians. FML

That...

Spoiler

actually makes sense

 

[oneself]

I lost my ironman veteran save because of recovery times. I feel like most of my failures have to do with not understanding what to prioritize. Xcom seems to punish you really hard for not knowing exactly what order to build. I wasted my research on autoposies and story research when I should have rushed armor.

Exactly. The game is not hard by any means, but by being restrictive about how you handle each mission require you to play as intended.

 

[Villagkouras]

Fired it up today and while it's obviously nice, it is very buggy:

Units shoot through walls, buttons in Avenger vanish, actions in field or in Avenger take too long to complete after I click, animations take too long disrupting the flow of battle etc...

Gonna put it down and wait for a couple of patches.