...Like, I'm pretty sure the only Sniper skill that is you'd want to lock-in is In the Zone On Steroids Holy Shit What Are They Thinking Serial; every other pick is decided stronger on the Gunslinger end.
I think Kill Zone would be another you might pick up, I've seen a couple of videos where someone used that somewhere they were expecting reinforcements at to great effect.
As for the aim penalty on squadsight, it only seems to get really bad if you try the classic EU/EW strat of perching your sniper in the highest point you can find near the drop zone for the entire mission. If you're moving them with the rest of the squad instead then it looked like the aim penalty was manageable.
Slingshot is kind of like Portent, in that the missions are a cakewalk so long as you understand the spawns.
Blue move forward through the graveyard; at most, you'll get 2 thin men drops at a time, at least 1 of which should die to overwatch (unlike Portent, spawns are triggered by the furthest unit forward, including soldiers - not just the VIP). Lightning Reflexes should fix the other one.
When you hit the end of the graveyard and kill the single pre-spawned Thin Man at the end, gold move into the street to get the jump on the Muton. If you brought an Arc Thrower, welcome to skipping laser tech and going straight to plasma.
If you leave a Sniper on the far end of the graveyard, leave one person back there with them when you move out to kill or capture the Muton - a surprise Thin Man will try to get the jump on said Sniper.
For Confounding Light, bring 2 squadsight snipers and place one on each side of the train with good sight lines. Pop the Think Men as you come across them with squadsight. Blue move to minimize spawn-in triggers. When the Mutons show up, Lightning Reflexes should help you take care of business.
Gangplank works like any other mission except you can memorize pod locations, making it a cakewalk except for the deaded Gangplank Cyberdisc. You can still minimize the danger to yourself, however, by understanding that it only spawns in after one of your units steps on the tile directly in front of either door leading into that particular section of the ship. So: set up your squad on the high ground positions across the way, except for one person (preferably a close combat MEC), who runs out to step on the spawn trigger tile. If you have a close combat MEC do this, just have them step to the side, out of vision from the doorway, and wait for the disc to walk through. Either it will double move through the door, in which case you kill it for free, or (more likely), it will walk through, sit at point blank range with the MEC and shoot it for ~10 damage (4 effective damage if you have repair servos - irregardless, it will not be sufficient damage to put the augmented soldier into sickbay). Then your MEC can punch it, and you can move on.
I'm a fan of how Slingshot does exactly what it says on the tin: it offers the player a tech & economic slingshot option - something to do aside from just sat rushing - if they're able to keep their A team in sufficient shape to tackle the missions. The only thing I don't like about it is how binary the difficulty is due to the way the spawns work; it's almost unbeatable when you first encounter it because you don't understand how the spawns will work, and then just becomes a triviality once you've figure it out.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
There's been some discussions on Xcom2 being easier than Xcom:EW. I would just love it if the early game was made easier as it was problematical in Xcom:EW (early game was insanely hard on Impossible compared to mid game), and it turns out you get smacked into the dirt later on Legendary. Like if everything we've seen so far has been the kid gloves.
Streamers/Youtubers seem to have a 3 month limited build, that definitely doesn't behave the same as the one the devs have been playing from what I've seen, Also it's worth noting that Legendary in XCOM 2 is designed to be a challenge, but not outright unfair masochism like Impossible in EW.
I suspect that the aliens abilities and how the metagame on the strategic layer works out - which nobody has seen the full extent of BTW - will really answer this question. Nothing anyone does at the moment has much of a consequence after all and a lot of these people are modding things to accelerate research to show more abilities/game off. Some have even rigged the game so some missions, like the avenger defense, come up very often to show them off.
Edit: Also Blacksite missions are substantially harder, I've seen some people like Northernlion (BTW his XCOM base defense was HILARIOUS in EW and you should absolutely watch it - he gets his kumuppence at last) do fairly well on normal missions and become hideously unstuck on the blacksite mission.
Had anyone else had any luck getting a refund on XCOM2 so they can get the digital deluxe edition instead? Put in a request yesterday and haven't heard anything. I'm way over the 14 day limit.
On Steam yeah? I did this the other day, happened within an hour, no problems. Was months over the 14 day limit if that's a Steam thing.
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
You can also hugely mitigate the accuracy penalty from Squadsight distance by being at higher elevation (+20%) and taking the perk that gives accuracy and crit if you didn't move last turn (+10%)
They won't be able to sit at spawn anymore necessarily, but Squadsight is far from useless and you can still make sniper shots at fairly huge range
Yeah, you'll notice there's lots of ways to boost your aim in that tree. I think the idea is that if you can set your sniper up in a nice position, you'll be able to pull off all the sniper nonsense you could in EU/W.
Also, holy shit killzone looks awesome.
I just wish that the Sniper tree had some more high damage crit focused perks. LW lets you build out a crit monster. Bring Em On, Precision Shot and Double Tap. Deadeye is really the cornerstone of the sniper build now.
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wiltingI had fun once and it was awfulRegistered Userregular
Had anyone else had any luck getting a refund on XCOM2 so they can get the digital deluxe edition instead? Put in a request yesterday and haven't heard anything. I'm way over the 14 day limit.
On Steam yeah? I did this the other day, happened within an hour, no problems. Was months over the 14 day limit if that's a Steam thing.
Ah that's good. On Steam yeah. It's been over 21 hours and I haven't heard anything.
Eh, while I often picked it I didn't really use opportunist much. Overwatch sure wasn't what made squad sight snipers good. The penalty change is completely warranted what with high leveled snipers with scopes just picking aliens out of cover every round mid game. Now you'll have to move more, but you can still fire from outside enemy range.
I'm just not going to spec into something with an accuracy penalty on my first guy, especially if they're supposed to be a clutch unit. I'll get squadsight on a second sharpshooter, like with Snapshot in EU.
After over two dozen restarts, I finally beat EW on classic, which feels great. I was having a hard time, because I hadn't played EW before, but I didn't want to do another playthrough on normal. I also wanted to do all of the sidequest chains, so Portent ended several promising attempts. But now I've won, so it's K. I'm so eager to dive into XCOM 2 without feeling like I left unfinished business in EW.
The only real sore spot in the end is that I failed Confounding Lights by running out of time, either because MECs can't activate the train, or because of a bug. I'm not sure which. So I missed out on the last part of the DLC, which is kinda lame. That, and I suffered from a serious alloy shortage for a long time that Gangplank would have completely alleviated.
The campaign was almost a cakewalk after getting laser weapons and carapace armor though. I wonder if XCOM2 will have a somewhat more even difficulty level.
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SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
Squadsight is the base ability for sharpshooters, like Headshot in vanilla. So it's "free".
Zxerolfor the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't doso i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered Userregular
All sharpshooters get squadsight automatically on promotion.
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WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
One of the first questions I have for modders is: Is it possible to create a character class that carries no primary weapon, but carries both a blade and a pistol? How about one that carries no weapon at all, but has two or three extra utility item slots? Just how flexible is the "Primary + Secondary + Utility" baseline?
How do you get UFO computers so you can make an Interceptor thats worth a shit? They just shot down a satellite and I lost Canada in an instant.
You salvage them from UFOs.
Don't bother, if you want better interceptors do autopsies or get improved weaponry. Experimental warfare gets you a better gun off the bat, heavy laser research gets you guns that can carry you all the way to lategame.
Also unless you're unlucky you can stagger 2 avengers after each others on the same UFO. Just retreat before you die and sic the next one on them.
How do you get UFO computers so you can make an Interceptor thats worth a shit? They just shot down a satellite and I lost Canada in an instant.
You salvage them from UFOs.
Don't bother, if you want better interceptors do autopsies or get improved weaponry. Experimental warfare gets you a better gun off the bat, heavy laser research gets you guns that can carry you all the way to lategame.
I've heard bad things about the Phoenix Cannon (which comes from Experimental Warfare). The Laser Cannon is very good though
One of the first questions I have for modders is: Is it possible to create a character class that carries no primary weapon, but carries both a blade and a pistol? How about one that carries no weapon at all, but has two or three extra utility item slots? Just how flexible is the "Primary + Secondary + Utility" baseline?
Hypothetically? It depends on how much of the guts are exposed to modders. Something like that would require a completely new set of animations for just about everything plus some extra if you want to include the personality settings. If you were fine with them miming an invisible rifle and bolting on the pistol and sword, it would probably be easier. It has to be noted that Firaxis basically did the bare minimum for troop animations, perhaps to limit the amount of work they would need to include the other personalities. Its why the heavy class holds the minigun like a rifle but shoots it underslung.
Working on a Classic Ironman game in EW, since I've never completed an Ironman game before.
After many, many failures, most due to my stupidity, some to RNG, some to RNG I could have mitigated had I not been so stupid, I restarted again, and my first 4 rookies have aims of 75, 80, 80 and 75.
How do you get UFO computers so you can make an Interceptor thats worth a shit? They just shot down a satellite and I lost Canada in an instant.
You salvage them from UFOs.
Don't bother, if you want better interceptors do autopsies or get improved weaponry. Experimental warfare gets you a better gun off the bat, heavy laser research gets you guns that can carry you all the way to lategame.
I've heard bad things about the Phoenix Cannon (which comes from Experimental Warfare). The Laser Cannon is very good though
Phoenix Cannon is a tiny stepping stone. It isn't strong enough to shoot down anything that Avalanche missiles can't, but it does make shooting down large scouts and abductors more reliable with fewer boosts and/or interceptors needed. Nice to have on a couple of birds until you get laser cannons, but you're not going to want to outfit your entire interceptor fleet with them.
I think you still have to build a Firestorm to take down the Overseer ship though, IIRC unless you have a Fusion Cannon from Slingshot you simply won't be able to shoot down the ship fast enough before it flies off, even with tracking/aim boosters.
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DuriniaEvolved from Space PotatoesRegistered Userregular
Working on a Classic Ironman game in EW, since I've never completed an Ironman game before.
After many, many failures, most due to my stupidity, some to RNG, some to RNG I could have mitigated had I not been so stupid, I restarted again, and my first 4 rookies have aims of 75, 80, 80 and 75.
God bless you Not Created Equal.
That is the second wave option I never turn off, along with hidden potential. Makes the game way more fun.
For business reasons, I must preserve the outward sign of sanity.
--Mark Twain
Going through EW one last time. Just got to the Portent mission.
This is way hard, right? Not just me? Because...fuck
XBL: Jhnny Cash PSN: Jhnny_Cash Steam ID: http://steamcommunity.com/id/hypephb 3DS: 0619-4582-9630 Nintendo Network ID: DBrickashaw
You might know me as D'Brickashaw on Steam.
Eh, while I often picked it I didn't really use opportunist much. Overwatch sure wasn't what made squad sight snipers good. The penalty change is completely warranted what with high leveled snipers with scopes just picking aliens out of cover every round mid game. Now you'll have to move more, but you can still fire from outside enemy range.
That and the penalty is only with increasing distance of the target from the sniper using squad sight. If you keep the sniper close with your main push, it's still a significant increase in usability for the sniper without a major accuracy penalty. Just no more parking on the clock tower at spawn killing everything on the map.
Working on a Classic Ironman game in EW, since I've never completed an Ironman game before.
After many, many failures, most due to my stupidity, some to RNG, some to RNG I could have mitigated had I not been so stupid, I restarted again, and my first 4 rookies have aims of 75, 80, 80 and 75.
God bless you Not Created Equal.
First council mission is bombs in the freight trainyard.
A lone thin man avoids all my overwatch fire and runs in real close.
"No problem" says I. I run'n'gun my assault up to him, and realize, "Shit. I'm melee range with this dude. His death cloud's gonna get me."
Since it was too late anyway, I wasted him with my shotgun. There was some momentary weirdness of the glamcam, as nothing happened, causing me to think I'd somehow missed the 100% shot.
Finally, the corpse flings away at a right angle to the vector you'd expect, causing the death cloud to drop 1 square further away, leaving my assault safe.
Phoenix cannon gets your ships more lethal for sure, but I didn't get them on my best EW I/I runs because there was just no space. I would consider it depending on starting build, I would definitely only get it early month 2 (for the medium) if I went a big sat rush month 1.
To be honest on I/I it's probably a waste, 2 avalanche interceptors are better than 1 phoenix cannon interceptor and you only save 5 bucks (possibly more with manufacturing bonuses). It's for some extremely niche circumstances where you want to save 5 bucks by upgrading one of your interceptors instead of building a third. On classic they're probably great because you could feasibly be content with just the one phoenix cannon interceptor.
I'm only talking about the first 2 months because honestly on I/I that's what matters, afterwards you can screw around. Obviously fewer more heavily armed interceptors saves you cash in maintenance, and 2 cannon interceptors can probably deal with the whole mid game if you pick up some autopsies on the way. If you made it through the first 2 months without catastrophic failure you're 95% in already anyway and it's not your interceptor setups that's gonna determine your success anymore.
Edit: Uh wait a minute I'm pretty sure I played the 1 avalanche/1 cannon setup for continents quite a lot... Maybe disregard everything I'm saying. I don't remember honestly.
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WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
Working on a Classic Ironman game in EW, since I've never completed an Ironman game before.
After many, many failures, most due to my stupidity, some to RNG, some to RNG I could have mitigated had I not been so stupid, I restarted again, and my first 4 rookies have aims of 75, 80, 80 and 75.
God bless you Not Created Equal.
First council mission is bombs in the freight trainyard.
A lone thin man avoids all my overwatch fire and runs in real close.
"No problem" says I. I run'n'gun my assault up to him, and realize, "Shit. I'm melee range with this dude. His death cloud's gonna get me."
Since it was too late anyway, I wasted him with my shotgun. There was some momentary weirdness of the glamcam, as nothing happened, causing me to think I'd somehow missed the 100% shot.
Finally, the corpse flings away at a right angle to the vector you'd expect, causing the death cloud to drop 1 square further away, leaving my assault safe.
Working on a Classic Ironman game in EW, since I've never completed an Ironman game before.
After many, many failures, most due to my stupidity, some to RNG, some to RNG I could have mitigated had I not been so stupid, I restarted again, and my first 4 rookies have aims of 75, 80, 80 and 75.
God bless you Not Created Equal.
That is the second wave option I never turn off, along with hidden potential. Makes the game way more fun.
It makes the game way easier, but one you've gotten some experience with the early-game tactics I'd say it's much less fun. There's no more of the intense game of flanking, abusing aim bonuses, and careful use of grenades, and instead it's just the mid-game "shoot them through their cover" stuff.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
I still haven't been able to find if XCOM2 is a dirty cheat and gives the players hidden bonuses to hit (and the aliens a penalty) on normal. Hopefully not doing so will prevent people complaining about the game "Cheating" on harder difficulties, because then everyone will get the same wonderful RNG shenanigans no matter the difficulty.
I still haven't been able to find if XCOM2 is a dirty cheat and gives the players hidden bonuses to hit (and the aliens a penalty) on normal. Hopefully not doing so will prevent people complaining about the game "Cheating" on harder difficulties, because then everyone will get the same wonderful RNG shenanigans no matter the difficulty.
On the Firaxis stream they said that XCOM2's normal won't be cheating in player's favor any more.
I still haven't been able to find if XCOM2 is a dirty cheat and gives the players hidden bonuses to hit (and the aliens a penalty) on normal. Hopefully not doing so will prevent people complaining about the game "Cheating" on harder difficulties, because then everyone will get the same wonderful RNG shenanigans no matter the difficulty.
On the Firaxis stream they said that XCOM2's normal won't be cheating in player's favor any more.
That's fantastic, because I personally feel one of XCOM's biggest design flaws was doing that, because it just made going from normal to classic a gigantic cliff in difficulty. Also it made normal on XCOM much easier than it should have been.
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
There was a good long while where Normal was so easy it was boring and I didn't want to play, and Classic was ball busting and I couldn't make any progress
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wiltingI had fun once and it was awfulRegistered Userregular
I still haven't been able to find if XCOM2 is a dirty cheat and gives the players hidden bonuses to hit (and the aliens a penalty) on normal. Hopefully not doing so will prevent people complaining about the game "Cheating" on harder difficulties, because then everyone will get the same wonderful RNG shenanigans no matter the difficulty.
On the Firaxis stream they said that XCOM2's normal won't be cheating in player's favor any more.
That's fantastic, because I personally feel one of XCOM's biggest design flaws was doing that, because it just made going from normal to classic a gigantic cliff in difficulty. Also it made normal on XCOM much easier than it should have been.
Normal didn't do anything for you until you were down to 3 guys. Even then, it's just +10 aim for every miss, and -10 aim for every alien hit, resetting on a hit/miss respectively.
People drastically overstate it because, once again, people are bad at statistics.
One thing to remember with that sniper preview video is that he was previewing it vs dudes without any armor. Firing a huge number of weak shots becomes a lot less impressive as soon as they start getting a few points of armor.
Also Beagle's mentioned that the maps tend to have a lot more vertical variety than the xcom 1 maps did, plus there's more opportunities to upgrade your aim through weapon mods and such. With all those opportunities to increase your aim, complaining that squad sight is useless now seems pretty silly to me.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Going through EW one last time. Just got to the Portent mission.
This is way hard, right? Not just me? Because...fuck
It's almost unbeatable if you go into it blind, yes.
Once you understand the map (the spawns aren't randomized), the only potentially dangerous part is the first Thin Men trigger (2 on the ground outside the... library? Comic shop? And one on the roof), because what they do after you encounter them is completely random (they can run into the shop, or take cover in the street or jump onto the roof) and you cannot wait them out - they will overwatch in their choice of defensive position forever after they've picked it. You risk all kinds of unpleasant extra triggers if you chase after them (Thin Man in the street, another in front of the library / comic book store near the 18 wheeler), and will be eating LPR overwatch if you don't kill them the turn after you see them.
Solution? Cheat. Rocket the one on the roof from beyond LoS (he's to the left of the air conditioning unit), and grenade the spot where the other 2 Thin Men are sitting from the roof (again, beyond LoS). Some people call this 'cheese' or whatever; IMHO, the map is the worst kind of lazy Ye Olde Tyme puzzle dungeon design shlock, where the only solution really is to cheese it.
After blowing-up the first 3 Thin Men, the rest of the set encounters are pretty easy. Then you just set overwatch shotguns and / or opportunist sniper rifles on the spawn positions and - super important - only blue move the VIP toward the extraction point. Spawns are triggered according to where the VIP is positioned; they don't care about your squad. If you gold move the VIP forward, you will get too many spawns at once and will put someone at risk. Blue moves should trigger 1-2 spawns at once, which should immediately die to overwatch fire if you've trapped their positions accordingly (and if they don't die to overwatch, they should die to point blank shotgun and/or rifle fire on your turn).
Going through EW one last time. Just got to the Portent mission.
This is way hard, right? Not just me? Because...fuck
It's almost unbeatable if you go into it blind, yes.
Once you understand the map (the spawns aren't randomized), the only potentially dangerous part is the first Thin Men trigger (2 on the ground outside the... library? Comic shop? And one on the roof), because what they do after you encounter them is completely random (they can run into the shop, or take cover in the street or jump onto the roof) and you cannot wait them out - they will overwatch in their choice of defensive position forever after they've picked it. You risk all kinds of unpleasant extra triggers if you chase after them (Thin Man in the street, another in front of the library / comic book store near the 18 wheeler), and will be eating LPR overwatch if you don't kill them the turn after you see them.
Solution? Cheat. Rocket the one on the roof from beyond LoS (he's to the left of the air conditioning unit), and grenade the spot where the other 2 Thin Men are sitting from the roof (again, beyond LoS). Some people call this 'cheese' or whatever; IMHO, the map is the worst kind of lazy Ye Olde Tyme puzzle dungeon design shlock, where the only solution really is to cheese it.
After blowing-up the first 3 Thin Men, the rest of the set encounters are pretty easy. Then you just set overwatch shotguns and / or opportunist sniper rifles on the spawn positions and - super important - only blue move the VIP toward the extraction point. Spawns are triggered according to where the VIP is positioned; they don't care about your squad. If you gold move the VIP forward, you will get too many spawns at once and will put someone at risk. Blue moves should trigger 1-2 spawns at once, which should immediately die to overwatch fire if you've trapped their positions accordingly (and if they don't die to overwatch, they should die to point blank shotgun and/or rifle fire on your turn).
This is super good to know, thank you. I ended up just save-scumming my way through it.
It's funny, XCom is my most-played game by far, but I still don't know a lot of the little details about it (sight ranges, where exactly I can be in cover, etc). I think it's because I've always played Ironman or damn close, so I've been super-hesitant to experiment and figure out the nitty gritty. Now that I know I probably won't even finish this playthrough before 2 comes out, I can focus more on the little fiddly bits; I'm not as worried about cheaping out my "true" playthrough.
XBL: Jhnny Cash PSN: Jhnny_Cash Steam ID: http://steamcommunity.com/id/hypephb 3DS: 0619-4582-9630 Nintendo Network ID: DBrickashaw
You might know me as D'Brickashaw on Steam.
Going through EW one last time. Just got to the Portent mission.
This is way hard, right? Not just me? Because...fuck
It's almost unbeatable if you go into it blind, yes.
Once you understand the map (the spawns aren't randomized), the only potentially dangerous part is the first Thin Men trigger (2 on the ground outside the... library? Comic shop? And one on the roof), because what they do after you encounter them is completely random (they can run into the shop, or take cover in the street or jump onto the roof) and you cannot wait them out - they will overwatch in their choice of defensive position forever after they've picked it. You risk all kinds of unpleasant extra triggers if you chase after them (Thin Man in the street, another in front of the library / comic book store near the 18 wheeler), and will be eating LPR overwatch if you don't kill them the turn after you see them.
Solution? Cheat. Rocket the one on the roof from beyond LoS (he's to the left of the air conditioning unit), and grenade the spot where the other 2 Thin Men are sitting from the roof (again, beyond LoS). Some people call this 'cheese' or whatever; IMHO, the map is the worst kind of lazy Ye Olde Tyme puzzle dungeon design shlock, where the only solution really is to cheese it.
After blowing-up the first 3 Thin Men, the rest of the set encounters are pretty easy. Then you just set overwatch shotguns and / or opportunist sniper rifles on the spawn positions and - super important - only blue move the VIP toward the extraction point. Spawns are triggered according to where the VIP is positioned; they don't care about your squad. If you gold move the VIP forward, you will get too many spawns at once and will put someone at risk. Blue moves should trigger 1-2 spawns at once, which should immediately die to overwatch fire if you've trapped their positions accordingly (and if they don't die to overwatch, they should die to point blank shotgun and/or rifle fire on your turn).
This is super good to know, thank you. I ended up just save-scumming my way through it.
It's funny, XCom is my most-played game by far, but I still don't know a lot of the little details about it (sight ranges, where exactly I can be in cover, etc). I think it's because I've always played Ironman or damn close, so I've been super-hesitant to experiment and figure out the nitty gritty. Now that I know I probably won't even finish this playthrough before 2 comes out, I can focus more on the little fiddly bits; I'm not as worried about cheaping out my "true" playthrough.
That's ok. When 2 comes out, fail your game and RP straight into 2.
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I think Kill Zone would be another you might pick up, I've seen a couple of videos where someone used that somewhere they were expecting reinforcements at to great effect.
As for the aim penalty on squadsight, it only seems to get really bad if you try the classic EU/EW strat of perching your sniper in the highest point you can find near the drop zone for the entire mission. If you're moving them with the rest of the squad instead then it looked like the aim penalty was manageable.
Blue move forward through the graveyard; at most, you'll get 2 thin men drops at a time, at least 1 of which should die to overwatch (unlike Portent, spawns are triggered by the furthest unit forward, including soldiers - not just the VIP). Lightning Reflexes should fix the other one.
When you hit the end of the graveyard and kill the single pre-spawned Thin Man at the end, gold move into the street to get the jump on the Muton. If you brought an Arc Thrower, welcome to skipping laser tech and going straight to plasma.
If you leave a Sniper on the far end of the graveyard, leave one person back there with them when you move out to kill or capture the Muton - a surprise Thin Man will try to get the jump on said Sniper.
For Confounding Light, bring 2 squadsight snipers and place one on each side of the train with good sight lines. Pop the Think Men as you come across them with squadsight. Blue move to minimize spawn-in triggers. When the Mutons show up, Lightning Reflexes should help you take care of business.
Gangplank works like any other mission except you can memorize pod locations, making it a cakewalk except for the deaded Gangplank Cyberdisc. You can still minimize the danger to yourself, however, by understanding that it only spawns in after one of your units steps on the tile directly in front of either door leading into that particular section of the ship. So: set up your squad on the high ground positions across the way, except for one person (preferably a close combat MEC), who runs out to step on the spawn trigger tile. If you have a close combat MEC do this, just have them step to the side, out of vision from the doorway, and wait for the disc to walk through. Either it will double move through the door, in which case you kill it for free, or (more likely), it will walk through, sit at point blank range with the MEC and shoot it for ~10 damage (4 effective damage if you have repair servos - irregardless, it will not be sufficient damage to put the augmented soldier into sickbay). Then your MEC can punch it, and you can move on.
I'm a fan of how Slingshot does exactly what it says on the tin: it offers the player a tech & economic slingshot option - something to do aside from just sat rushing - if they're able to keep their A team in sufficient shape to tackle the missions. The only thing I don't like about it is how binary the difficulty is due to the way the spawns work; it's almost unbeatable when you first encounter it because you don't understand how the spawns will work, and then just becomes a triviality once you've figure it out.
Streamers/Youtubers seem to have a 3 month limited build, that definitely doesn't behave the same as the one the devs have been playing from what I've seen, Also it's worth noting that Legendary in XCOM 2 is designed to be a challenge, but not outright unfair masochism like Impossible in EW.
I suspect that the aliens abilities and how the metagame on the strategic layer works out - which nobody has seen the full extent of BTW - will really answer this question. Nothing anyone does at the moment has much of a consequence after all and a lot of these people are modding things to accelerate research to show more abilities/game off. Some have even rigged the game so some missions, like the avenger defense, come up very often to show them off.
Edit: Also Blacksite missions are substantially harder, I've seen some people like Northernlion (BTW his XCOM base defense was HILARIOUS in EW and you should absolutely watch it - he gets his kumuppence at last) do fairly well on normal missions and become hideously unstuck on the blacksite mission.
On Steam yeah? I did this the other day, happened within an hour, no problems. Was months over the 14 day limit if that's a Steam thing.
They won't be able to sit at spawn anymore necessarily, but Squadsight is far from useless and you can still make sniper shots at fairly huge range
Also, holy shit killzone looks awesome.
Ah that's good. On Steam yeah. It's been over 21 hours and I haven't heard anything.
The only real sore spot in the end is that I failed Confounding Lights by running out of time, either because MECs can't activate the train, or because of a bug. I'm not sure which. So I missed out on the last part of the DLC, which is kinda lame. That, and I suffered from a serious alloy shortage for a long time that Gangplank would have completely alleviated.
The campaign was almost a cakewalk after getting laser weapons and carapace armor though. I wonder if XCOM2 will have a somewhat more even difficulty level.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
You get them from UFO landings/crashes. They may be damaged by crashes though
You salvage them from UFOs.
Don't bother, if you want better interceptors do autopsies or get improved weaponry. Experimental warfare gets you a better gun off the bat, heavy laser research gets you guns that can carry you all the way to lategame.
Also unless you're unlucky you can stagger 2 avengers after each others on the same UFO. Just retreat before you die and sic the next one on them.
I've heard bad things about the Phoenix Cannon (which comes from Experimental Warfare). The Laser Cannon is very good though
Hypothetically? It depends on how much of the guts are exposed to modders. Something like that would require a completely new set of animations for just about everything plus some extra if you want to include the personality settings. If you were fine with them miming an invisible rifle and bolting on the pistol and sword, it would probably be easier. It has to be noted that Firaxis basically did the bare minimum for troop animations, perhaps to limit the amount of work they would need to include the other personalities. Its why the heavy class holds the minigun like a rifle but shoots it underslung.
After many, many failures, most due to my stupidity, some to RNG, some to RNG I could have mitigated had I not been so stupid, I restarted again, and my first 4 rookies have aims of 75, 80, 80 and 75.
God bless you Not Created Equal.
Phoenix Cannon is a tiny stepping stone. It isn't strong enough to shoot down anything that Avalanche missiles can't, but it does make shooting down large scouts and abductors more reliable with fewer boosts and/or interceptors needed. Nice to have on a couple of birds until you get laser cannons, but you're not going to want to outfit your entire interceptor fleet with them.
I think you still have to build a Firestorm to take down the Overseer ship though, IIRC unless you have a Fusion Cannon from Slingshot you simply won't be able to shoot down the ship fast enough before it flies off, even with tracking/aim boosters.
That is the second wave option I never turn off, along with hidden potential. Makes the game way more fun.
--Mark Twain
This is way hard, right? Not just me? Because...fuck
You might know me as D'Brickashaw on Steam.
That and the penalty is only with increasing distance of the target from the sniper using squad sight. If you keep the sniper close with your main push, it's still a significant increase in usability for the sniper without a major accuracy penalty. Just no more parking on the clock tower at spawn killing everything on the map.
First council mission is bombs in the freight trainyard.
A lone thin man avoids all my overwatch fire and runs in real close.
"No problem" says I. I run'n'gun my assault up to him, and realize, "Shit. I'm melee range with this dude. His death cloud's gonna get me."
Since it was too late anyway, I wasted him with my shotgun. There was some momentary weirdness of the glamcam, as nothing happened, causing me to think I'd somehow missed the 100% shot.
Finally, the corpse flings away at a right angle to the vector you'd expect, causing the death cloud to drop 1 square further away, leaving my assault safe.
God bless you Weird Physics Engine?
To be honest on I/I it's probably a waste, 2 avalanche interceptors are better than 1 phoenix cannon interceptor and you only save 5 bucks (possibly more with manufacturing bonuses). It's for some extremely niche circumstances where you want to save 5 bucks by upgrading one of your interceptors instead of building a third. On classic they're probably great because you could feasibly be content with just the one phoenix cannon interceptor.
I'm only talking about the first 2 months because honestly on I/I that's what matters, afterwards you can screw around. Obviously fewer more heavily armed interceptors saves you cash in maintenance, and 2 cannon interceptors can probably deal with the whole mid game if you pick up some autopsies on the way. If you made it through the first 2 months without catastrophic failure you're 95% in already anyway and it's not your interceptor setups that's gonna determine your success anymore.
Edit: Uh wait a minute I'm pretty sure I played the 1 avalanche/1 cannon setup for continents quite a lot... Maybe disregard everything I'm saying. I don't remember honestly.
You were just visited by RNGesus.
On the Firaxis stream they said that XCOM2's normal won't be cheating in player's favor any more.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
That's fantastic, because I personally feel one of XCOM's biggest design flaws was doing that, because it just made going from normal to classic a gigantic cliff in difficulty. Also it made normal on XCOM much easier than it should have been.
Normal didn't do anything for you until you were down to 3 guys. Even then, it's just +10 aim for every miss, and -10 aim for every alien hit, resetting on a hit/miss respectively.
People drastically overstate it because, once again, people are bad at statistics.
Also Beagle's mentioned that the maps tend to have a lot more vertical variety than the xcom 1 maps did, plus there's more opportunities to upgrade your aim through weapon mods and such. With all those opportunities to increase your aim, complaining that squad sight is useless now seems pretty silly to me.
It's almost unbeatable if you go into it blind, yes.
Once you understand the map (the spawns aren't randomized), the only potentially dangerous part is the first Thin Men trigger (2 on the ground outside the... library? Comic shop? And one on the roof), because what they do after you encounter them is completely random (they can run into the shop, or take cover in the street or jump onto the roof) and you cannot wait them out - they will overwatch in their choice of defensive position forever after they've picked it. You risk all kinds of unpleasant extra triggers if you chase after them (Thin Man in the street, another in front of the library / comic book store near the 18 wheeler), and will be eating LPR overwatch if you don't kill them the turn after you see them.
Solution? Cheat. Rocket the one on the roof from beyond LoS (he's to the left of the air conditioning unit), and grenade the spot where the other 2 Thin Men are sitting from the roof (again, beyond LoS). Some people call this 'cheese' or whatever; IMHO, the map is the worst kind of lazy Ye Olde Tyme puzzle dungeon design shlock, where the only solution really is to cheese it.
After blowing-up the first 3 Thin Men, the rest of the set encounters are pretty easy. Then you just set overwatch shotguns and / or opportunist sniper rifles on the spawn positions and - super important - only blue move the VIP toward the extraction point. Spawns are triggered according to where the VIP is positioned; they don't care about your squad. If you gold move the VIP forward, you will get too many spawns at once and will put someone at risk. Blue moves should trigger 1-2 spawns at once, which should immediately die to overwatch fire if you've trapped their positions accordingly (and if they don't die to overwatch, they should die to point blank shotgun and/or rifle fire on your turn).
"physical" games are just boxes with slips of paper with steam keys on them nowadays, right?
This is super good to know, thank you. I ended up just save-scumming my way through it.
It's funny, XCom is my most-played game by far, but I still don't know a lot of the little details about it (sight ranges, where exactly I can be in cover, etc). I think it's because I've always played Ironman or damn close, so I've been super-hesitant to experiment and figure out the nitty gritty. Now that I know I probably won't even finish this playthrough before 2 comes out, I can focus more on the little fiddly bits; I'm not as worried about cheaping out my "true" playthrough.
You might know me as D'Brickashaw on Steam.
That's ok. When 2 comes out, fail your game and RP straight into 2.