Do urgent missions stick around for a bit if you don't do them instantly?
I had a terror mission pop up while my Grenadier was less than a day away from recovery, would have been nice to bring her along.
Okay, I cleaned up anyway (12/13 saved, no wounded, hello Chrysalids, meet Scanning Protocol), but if you can delay them by a bit, it'd be nice to know.
Do urgent missions stick around for a bit if you don't do them instantly?
I had a terror mission pop up while my Grenadier was less than a day away from recovery, would have been nice to bring her along.
Okay, I cleaned up anyway (12/13 saved, no wounded, hello Chrysalids, meet Scanning Protocol), but if you can delay them by a bit, it'd be nice to know.
You can delay them by a very tiny bit, but it's like.. a day/hours at most. I've someitmes delayed when i know a research proejct has like 6 hours left on the clock, but otehrwise it's best to run to them asap.
I've chanced it with urgent missions for the exact same reason of having an A team member about to come out of sickbay in less than a day's time. The urgent missions don't stick around for more than a couple of days but if someone is less than a day away from healing up, you should be alright if your clicking reflexes to turn scanning off are really good.
Also, here's my first victory screen:
Also also, never use gas stations for cover, kids:
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited February 2016
I had an advent captain run up to the other side of a car two of my guys were behind and throw a grenade at the car, which killed him with both the grenade explosion and the car explosion.
Amusingly, my ranger with untouchable active ignored the grenade, but the car still did 3 damage to her.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
I'm having a good time with the timed missions, now that I've sunk my teeth in a bit. I really like the pressure to advance and set up good ambushes. I kinda don't like how the enemy spawns work in that environment though, feel like they should be a little more predictable than suddenly aggroing a new group because one of them looked sideways at you through a window from a screen away.
I had a couple misions where I wish I'd been taking video; in one my squad staged in a gas station before ambushing some guys; we blew up most of the station and 6-7 cars before kidnapping some lady in a ridiculous pantsuit and evacing off the top of the building across the street.
The first blacksite mission kinda went sideways on me, and my lieutenant/gunslinger/'team leader' wound up shooting his way out basically solo as the team panicked and died around him (shoulda waited a bit and done it without so many rookies I guess.) I really need to get a screenshot of him in the post mission screen; he looks like kevin hart and the bit where he leans in front of the kills/damage reward screen (that he's inevitably leading) with a ridiculous grin makes me giggle every time.
also, does anybody else think the close ups of your guys aiming look super weird? Every time I see one of their faces while they do the double clutching aim animation, it reminds me of
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I had one mission where my team started 2 squares away from a pod.
I could see a sectoid sanding there, but despite standing in the open, no LOS issues, none of my guys could see him to shoot him.
In retrospect I should have put everyone on overwatch then moved someone, but I thought it might be glitching or something, so I moved first and set it off, along with an archon who was hidden somehow, even if I should have been able to see him there.
Fortunately they made a pigs ear of moving into cover, so I managed to flank them pretty easily, but it was annoying to lose my concealment like that.
Question about dark events; the 'launch a UFO to hunt XCOM' is essentially to set up a base defence mission, right? So if I stop that one, I won't have to worry about it that month?
Yeah I really want to see how very good players would deal with a mod that just upped the mission lengths by about double. Dealing with twice as many pods makes "just 'nade and mimic beacon across the map!" way tougher.
I played with this idea some when prepping for the last mission on my legendary run. I'm pretty sure the answer is that it lowers the value of grenades/mimic beacons/heavy weapons, but not by enough to actually make anything else clearly better. You still take all the same stuff, you just have to be more conservative with its use. The biggest deviation is that psi operatives become proportionately more powerful, because dimensional rift and null lance are on cooldowns instead of being limited use, so they generally displace some of your grenadiers.
Beaglerush wrote a soldier build guide for Xcom2 for Pc Gamer.
[...]
Of note he does not appear to be of the opinion that experimental projects are traps of any kind, since several of his builds recommend various ammos, special armor underlays, specialised grenades, and so on. Something I agree with, since several of the ammos are utterly insane. I didn't even know about Talon rounds. +20% crit and +1-2 damage. You can keep your goddam grenade. That's going on my shotgun ranger. Hello near-guaranteed criticals.
I learnt several eye opening things, such as revival protocol removing panic, or the +1 ammos applying to pistols, etc.
I mean, he wrote a 'build' for each half of each class, but when he actually sits down to play he goes on to stomp the hardest difficulty with the same grenadier-based explosive-centric strategy that makes the special ammos bad. It's also worth noting that when he does bring armor underlays or whatever, it's not because they're the best thing to bring but because mimic beacons are so much better than everything else that he deliberately started self-limiting how many mimic beacons he brought as a personal challenge - which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do if you feel like they trivialize the game (because they kind of do) but is not an argument in favor of the idea that other items are equally powerful.
I'm pretty sure that if I were doing marketing work for the game company that sponsors me, I would also write an article that says "all the classes are good and all the items are good and all the builds are good and here's a bunch of different things you can do that are fun", and not one that says "there are like three builds that are head-and-shoulders above everything else and like two squad comps that are head-and-shoulders above everything else and all your soldiers should be bringing the same thing regardless of class because mimic beacons and grenades trivialize the game content, and you can play however you want but there's really only one or two strategies that are clearly more powerful than all the other options." regardless of my actual personal feelings on the matter.
Or, more briefly: When an article says it's listing the 'best builds' for a game and then goes on to list every build you can safely assume that it is not actually an article aimed at explaining a dominant strategy.
Checking out workshop.
Oooooh there's a zoom out more mod.
Yes please. Better Tactical Zoom Out its called.
It took me forever to realize it so I'm not sure how many people are aware, but in the tactical layer, 'g' zooms out and 't' zooms in. The default zoom is way too close.
I have lost my Commander campaign after 17 missions.
I was ready to attack second AVATAR facility, but when i was trying to gain contact nothng happened, time required to make contact became negative (for some reason), and just like that, the time was up. Was that because i already had maximum radio relays being used? I think that it wasn't the problem during my first blacksite mission. Or was it some dark event that didn;t let me make contact? Or just bug?
I am not sure if i should by mad or just resigned.
Question about dark events; the 'launch a UFO to hunt XCOM' is essentially to set up a base defence mission, right? So if I stop that one, I won't have to worry about it that month?
If there is one dark event I would not prevent, its that one. There was a very, very large difference in difficulty doing it early game vs late game, and the way the mission is structured give potentially a lot of experience to a wide range of troops.
My first campaign, I had Andromedons in that mission, my second, I'd just gotten snakemen. One ended much more cleanly.
0
SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
I have lost my Commander campaign after 17 missions.
I was ready to attack second AVATAR facility, but when i was trying to gain contact nothng happened, time required to make contact became negative (for some reason), and just like that, the time was up. Was that because i already had maximum radio relays being used? I think that it wasn't the problem during my first blacksite mission. Or was it some dark event that didn;t let me make contact? Or just bug?
I am not sure if i should by mad or just resigned.
It's a bug, happened to me and I found that it was right after some research or a building had finished. Going back into the Avenger and viewing the facility fixed it, so it was like the game was stuck on the "X has completed" popup, but still letting me scan. Fortunately it's easier to fix than the other bug I had 2 instances of (which was ADVENT troops getting bonus moves after being fired on from overwatch).
My next death was...I'm not sure what their PA name is. Their Nickname is "Kzer-za" in game. even had to abort the mission in the end because there were turrets that I just could do nothing about for half the mission. There was no cover between me and them. And then a pod with a shieldbearer and a mec activated, and I was just done. That mission was bullshit.
On the bright side, @Beryline makes a really good gunslinger sharpshooter. and whoever Aba is makes....uuuuh....well he takes turret shots like a champ.
M A G I K A Z A M
+1
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited February 2016
You generally don't write a strategy guide with "Look, just take grenadiers, mimic beacons and explode everything. Have fun." I think the idea is that the advice is for people who probably won't want to just take the easiest possible option.
For example, when I get my new computer I am playing with only 1 grenadier and 1 mimic beacon allowed.
Lost my Major medic specialist. He was one day from promotion as well.
He survived a ridiculous combination of a gatekeeper, sectopod and archons only to be killed by the trooper at the back on overwatch that I'd forgotten about. Whoops.
Think I'm pretty much at the end game, but I'm only just training psi-ops now. Might have to go back and try a game where I rush for them instead.
The SMG mod makes the Avenger defense so broken. Slap an SMG on a phantom ranger, walk him to the objective, snipe it to victory. Have him fall back.
And I don't hate it.
Seriously, people are getting worked up over timers and stuff and I'm here like, there's a mod for that. Use it. This is PC exclusive, each of us here has access to the same mods.
There is a mod where the timer doesn't start until you are revealed, and it balances this by reducing the timer from stock levels. That's awesome.
Me, I just did a flat increase of a couple turns. It's how I have the most fun.
I am considering doing a mod for rangers. I like the idea that a sword can't miss, but instead defaults to a "graze" on a miss
It'd be more of a job, but having certain enemies able to 'block' the sword would be cool. Same effect as a miss, but make it look like they actually bring a weapon up to defend themselves.
I'm still committed to finishing one run through without changing the rules, but a mod to make the extra armor HP give a buffer before you start getting wounded is pretty tempting.
I've redone the appearance of my health display mod (though not yet uploaded the update to the Workshop)
As you can see in the above screenshot it overlaps the cover icon on units with both shields and armor. And not pictured is it overlapping the eye icon on units in overwatch.
I don't I can move around those other UI elements (easily), so the easy fix would be to simply make my health display smaller, but I don't particularly want to do that. I suppose it wouldn't be too bad if I reduced it from 32px high to 24px high and made the max HP slightly bigger.
I'm regretting not making a GTS earlier due to the sheer number of sharpshooters the game's been spitting out at me.
In other news, nobody here's managed to die thus far, though @A steak! keeps doing his damnedest to try.
Happy I finally showed up somewhere. I need to do an update on how my forumer soldiers are doing so far / how they died.
In other news I had a really fun bug last night where an Advent MEC became invisible. It showed up as reinforcements, landed in the middle of all my soldiers, took damage from a grenade, and after that it disappeared form the screen and nobody could target it. It was definitely still there because it could still shoot at me on its turn. Then when it was my turn again it went back to being invisible. I reloaded a bunch of times and restarted the game trying to fix it, but the bug persisted. I finally got it to show back up on the screen after I had a soldier crash through a window. Only that one soldier could target it though, it was still invisible to all the others. I finally just said screw it, memorized its position and killed it with a grenade.
I've redone the appearance of my health display mod (though not yet uploaded the update to the Workshop)
As you can see in the above screenshot it overlaps the cover icon on units with both shields and armor. And not pictured is it overlapping the eye icon on units in overwatch.
I don't I can move around those other UI elements (easily), so the easy fix would be to simply make my health display smaller, but I don't particularly want to do that. I suppose it wouldn't be too bad if I reduced it from 32px high to 24px high and made the max HP slightly bigger.
I just wanted you to know that the first thing I said on seeing the screenshot was "Ooh, I like that" and I am glad I am working from home today because I wasn't very quiet about it. I really like this version of it.
My Commander Campaign continues: after 22 missions i dont even have Psi Labs and Proving Grounds yet, but i built Shadow Chamber andj ust got Warder Armor.
I will remember Xcom 2 at least because of perpetual poverty that surrounds me during playing: so many things to buy, so little money.
I let Avatar tick along without really knowing how long it would take to get necessary together to hit blacksite #2. I almost managed to salvage it, but came up 3 days short on establishing contact. Oh well.
The new meta layer is just such an incredible step up from EU/EW, while continuing to go in an entirely different direction from the original game. I'm pretty sure I love this Geoscape the most of any XCOM game (though Apocalypse still gives it a run for it's money).
I do have a big gripe about one very specific thing, though. Non story spoiler below about a certain beginner's trap:
6 Advent soldier corpses for basic armor.
Just fuck off, Firaxis. The only reason for that requirement is that you knew most players would sell those corpses, and then be shit out of luck because Advent soldiers pretty quickly stop spawning.
That isn't 'challenging' - it's just trial and error. It's not even really risk/reward, because I had no idea I was risking anything by selling that shit!
At least it worked out in the end anyway as far as the tactical battles were concerned because I'm so used to playing EW/EU while wearing minimal armor for as long as possible, but that really cheesed me off.
... literally every EU corpse was used to make something in the first game, you really didn't expect they would be used?
I think I've discovered the purpose of Blademaster; its for that short period at the start of the game where Blademaster is the difference between killing and not killing an enemy in one hit. Which leads me to my next epiphany; with the ability to re-spec soldiers at the AWC, an ability doesn't have to be good for a whole campaign to be worthwhile. Even if its only good for a specific period during a campaign its still worth taking because you can just drop it later. I'm having great success in my new campaign with a blademaster ranger and a combat protocol specialist because its the early game where those abilities really shine. Once I hit the mid-game I'll just re-spec them both for free.
Also, an interesting breakdown of how crit mechanics work. Hint: Its not what you'd expect:
TLDR; Critical hits seem to be rolled using the same "dice" used for the to-hit roll. The end result is that if your crit chance is equal to or higher than your to-hit chance, you will always crit. I.e, 50% hit and 50% crit actually means "50% hit, 100% crit". Which explains why disoriented Advent seem to crit so often; their to-hit chance is lowered but their crit chance remains the same, resulting in a much higher percentage of crits from the shots that do hit.
Not sure if I like this mechanic!
That is a really dumb way to do the hit calculations. It really just enhances the "XCOM effect" of being crit out of heavy cover because you literally can't be hit if the AI has any crit %
Posts
Just.
You know.
For testing purposes.
43/52 flawless. That's gross.
Vigilo Confido, motherfuckers.
Why I fear the ocean.
I had a terror mission pop up while my Grenadier was less than a day away from recovery, would have been nice to bring her along.
Okay, I cleaned up anyway (12/13 saved, no wounded, hello Chrysalids, meet Scanning Protocol), but if you can delay them by a bit, it'd be nice to know.
You can delay them by a very tiny bit, but it's like.. a day/hours at most. I've someitmes delayed when i know a research proejct has like 6 hours left on the clock, but otehrwise it's best to run to them asap.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
Also, here's my first victory screen:
Also also, never use gas stations for cover, kids:
That was the result of 1 grenade. Silly xenos.
Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
Amusingly, my ranger with untouchable active ignored the grenade, but the car still did 3 damage to her.
Google tells me that skulljack is an item and skullmining is a project to enhance that item. But in the game it's just to boxes to click?
Oooooh there's a zoom out more mod.
Yes please. Better Tactical Zoom Out its called.
My "Overpowered" achievement came from 6 Grenadiers on a retaliation mission.
10 / 12 civilians agree that high explosives can in fact be a successful mechanism for minimization of casualties.
The other 2 shouldn't have spawned right at the back, with the mutons.
I had a couple misions where I wish I'd been taking video; in one my squad staged in a gas station before ambushing some guys; we blew up most of the station and 6-7 cars before kidnapping some lady in a ridiculous pantsuit and evacing off the top of the building across the street.
The first blacksite mission kinda went sideways on me, and my lieutenant/gunslinger/'team leader' wound up shooting his way out basically solo as the team panicked and died around him (shoulda waited a bit and done it without so many rookies I guess.) I really need to get a screenshot of him in the post mission screen; he looks like kevin hart and the bit where he leans in front of the kills/damage reward screen (that he's inevitably leading) with a ridiculous grin makes me giggle every time.
also, does anybody else think the close ups of your guys aiming look super weird? Every time I see one of their faces while they do the double clutching aim animation, it reminds me of
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I could see a sectoid sanding there, but despite standing in the open, no LOS issues, none of my guys could see him to shoot him.
In retrospect I should have put everyone on overwatch then moved someone, but I thought it might be glitching or something, so I moved first and set it off, along with an archon who was hidden somehow, even if I should have been able to see him there.
Fortunately they made a pigs ear of moving into cover, so I managed to flank them pretty easily, but it was annoying to lose my concealment like that.
Question about dark events; the 'launch a UFO to hunt XCOM' is essentially to set up a base defence mission, right? So if I stop that one, I won't have to worry about it that month?
I played with this idea some when prepping for the last mission on my legendary run. I'm pretty sure the answer is that it lowers the value of grenades/mimic beacons/heavy weapons, but not by enough to actually make anything else clearly better. You still take all the same stuff, you just have to be more conservative with its use. The biggest deviation is that psi operatives become proportionately more powerful, because dimensional rift and null lance are on cooldowns instead of being limited use, so they generally displace some of your grenadiers.
I mean, he wrote a 'build' for each half of each class, but when he actually sits down to play he goes on to stomp the hardest difficulty with the same grenadier-based explosive-centric strategy that makes the special ammos bad. It's also worth noting that when he does bring armor underlays or whatever, it's not because they're the best thing to bring but because mimic beacons are so much better than everything else that he deliberately started self-limiting how many mimic beacons he brought as a personal challenge - which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do if you feel like they trivialize the game (because they kind of do) but is not an argument in favor of the idea that other items are equally powerful.
I'm pretty sure that if I were doing marketing work for the game company that sponsors me, I would also write an article that says "all the classes are good and all the items are good and all the builds are good and here's a bunch of different things you can do that are fun", and not one that says "there are like three builds that are head-and-shoulders above everything else and like two squad comps that are head-and-shoulders above everything else and all your soldiers should be bringing the same thing regardless of class because mimic beacons and grenades trivialize the game content, and you can play however you want but there's really only one or two strategies that are clearly more powerful than all the other options." regardless of my actual personal feelings on the matter.
Or, more briefly: When an article says it's listing the 'best builds' for a game and then goes on to list every build you can safely assume that it is not actually an article aimed at explaining a dominant strategy.
It took me forever to realize it so I'm not sure how many people are aware, but in the tactical layer, 'g' zooms out and 't' zooms in. The default zoom is way too close.
I was ready to attack second AVATAR facility, but when i was trying to gain contact nothng happened, time required to make contact became negative (for some reason), and just like that, the time was up. Was that because i already had maximum radio relays being used? I think that it wasn't the problem during my first blacksite mission. Or was it some dark event that didn;t let me make contact? Or just bug?
I am not sure if i should by mad or just resigned.
If there is one dark event I would not prevent, its that one. There was a very, very large difference in difficulty doing it early game vs late game, and the way the mission is structured give potentially a lot of experience to a wide range of troops.
My first campaign, I had Andromedons in that mission, my second, I'd just gotten snakemen. One ended much more cleanly.
It's a bug, happened to me and I found that it was right after some research or a building had finished. Going back into the Avenger and viewing the facility fixed it, so it was like the game was stuck on the "X has completed" popup, but still letting me scan. Fortunately it's easier to fix than the other bug I had 2 instances of (which was ADVENT troops getting bonus moves after being fired on from overwatch).
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
Allright, now i am mad.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
So, false alarm, i guess.
On the bright side, @Beryline makes a really good gunslinger sharpshooter. and whoever Aba is makes....uuuuh....well he takes turret shots like a champ.
For example, when I get my new computer I am playing with only 1 grenadier and 1 mimic beacon allowed.
The true XCOM souls begins.
He survived a ridiculous combination of a gatekeeper, sectopod and archons only to be killed by the trooper at the back on overwatch that I'd forgotten about. Whoops.
Think I'm pretty much at the end game, but I'm only just training psi-ops now. Might have to go back and try a game where I rush for them instead.
And I don't hate it.
Seriously, people are getting worked up over timers and stuff and I'm here like, there's a mod for that. Use it. This is PC exclusive, each of us here has access to the same mods.
There is a mod where the timer doesn't start until you are revealed, and it balances this by reducing the timer from stock levels. That's awesome.
Me, I just did a flat increase of a couple turns. It's how I have the most fun.
I am considering doing a mod for rangers. I like the idea that a sword can't miss, but instead defaults to a "graze" on a miss
I'm still committed to finishing one run through without changing the rules, but a mod to make the extra armor HP give a buffer before you start getting wounded is pretty tempting.
As you can see in the above screenshot it overlaps the cover icon on units with both shields and armor. And not pictured is it overlapping the eye icon on units in overwatch.
I don't I can move around those other UI elements (easily), so the easy fix would be to simply make my health display smaller, but I don't particularly want to do that. I suppose it wouldn't be too bad if I reduced it from 32px high to 24px high and made the max HP slightly bigger.
They don't dodge explosives. And then you take their corpses to learn to make better explosives they can't dodge. It's the XCOM circle of life.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Happy I finally showed up somewhere. I need to do an update on how my forumer soldiers are doing so far / how they died.
In other news I had a really fun bug last night where an Advent MEC became invisible. It showed up as reinforcements, landed in the middle of all my soldiers, took damage from a grenade, and after that it disappeared form the screen and nobody could target it. It was definitely still there because it could still shoot at me on its turn. Then when it was my turn again it went back to being invisible. I reloaded a bunch of times and restarted the game trying to fix it, but the bug persisted. I finally got it to show back up on the screen after I had a soldier crash through a window. Only that one soldier could target it though, it was still invisible to all the others. I finally just said screw it, memorized its position and killed it with a grenade.
Plasma rifle, Rupture, FREE ACTION reload rapid fire.
*sobs* it was god damn beautiful. the remaining enemy forces all fell to their knees and wept.
I just wanted you to know that the first thing I said on seeing the screenshot was "Ooh, I like that" and I am glad I am working from home today because I wasn't very quiet about it. I really like this version of it.
I will remember Xcom 2 at least because of perpetual poverty that surrounds me during playing: so many things to buy, so little money.
... literally every EU corpse was used to make something in the first game, you really didn't expect they would be used?
That is a really dumb way to do the hit calculations. It really just enhances the "XCOM effect" of being crit out of heavy cover because you literally can't be hit if the AI has any crit %