Man I am really struggling with this. I'm on my second campaign cos the first went into a dead end, and it just seems so difficult even on veteran, like I went for weapon and armour upgrades early and I definitely feel like I'm getting more advanced enemies sooner. Combined with low ranking soldiers and heroes I'm having a tough slog getting through most missions. It's still fun, but it's pushing it.
I mean, this sounds like fun. It's likely all about how you play on the tactical maps, so don't think so much about the strategic map and what upgrades you get etc. You gotta figure out how to not take fire and deal mostly high percentage lethal shots yourself. All while not revealing extra enemies and completing your objectives on time of course, have fun!
When you get to the point where you can just crush all opposition and you're never in any danger anymore restart on commander, it's the difficulty where xcom starts being xcom. It's a ride.
Today on my continuing L/I run (still first campaign in WotC past gatecrasher) I got assaulted again. It was a cakewalk but it put like 80% of xcom into shaken status. The hunter regains 5-10 hp anytime something gets injured, he fires back on missed shots and he teleports whenever he's injured. End of the map was just him left, I started laying into him and he literally teleported from one end to the other end of the map in one turn. I couldn't get to him, it was ridiculous.
Yeah there are a few principles that have served me well so far
-Always seek high ground for the aim bonus, it's huge (+20)
-Avoid low cover if it all possible. It's better not to engage at all than risk it. If you have to go there, hunker down.
-Use grenades to blow up cover. Consider saving your grenadiers when ambushing so you can blow up cover after the aliens scatter and hide behind stuff.
-Ambushes are powerful, and overwatch on ambushes suffers no hit penalty, so it's worth considering if your guys can all OW from safe positions
-If it isn't a timed mission, take as long as you want to set up a strong first attack where your whole squad gets to do something
-Don't hesitate to just run a guy out of enemy lines of sight if they have nothing better to do or you can't get a safe spot to take a shot. Run behind a van or a wall, and ideally overwatch just in case.
-It's often better to finish an enemy off than do non-lethal damage, because you reduce the volume of fire coming at you. This is why it's often worth using grenades even on enemies with just 1 health left.
On the strategic side:
Now that missions produce willpower losses you need to pay more attention to when missions occur.
youre going to want at least two teams because you can hit retals and council missions really close together; consider tailoring teams for the missions they're good at
pay attention to the retaliation timer. It's pretty accurate
skipping a retaliation or a council mission will lose contact with that region... this can be a good thing as it will free up resistance contacts.
skipping guerilla operatione loses nothing except the rewards. If you don't need the rewards and a retal is coming up or you haven't seen the monthly council mission then...
Man I am really struggling with this. I'm on my second campaign cos the first went into a dead end, and it just seems so difficult even on veteran, like I went for weapon and armour upgrades early and I definitely feel like I'm getting more advanced enemies sooner. Combined with low ranking soldiers and heroes I'm having a tough slog getting through most missions. It's still fun, but it's pushing it.
My advice is to watch streams and get some pointers on how to get some foreward momentum against the progressively stronger foes.
You definitely learn how positioning and destroying cover can really affect your performance.
Some useful tips, based on playing up to Commander:
- Count the enemies you encounter. Most missions don't go above like 10, particularly early on. If you're looking at a couple enemies and you've already killed 8, run straight to their faces and kill them.
- Flashbangs are amazing. Always pack at least one. They save you from Sectoids early on, and they do a good job keeping soldiers safe after they've taken shots if they didn't manage to kill someone.
- GTS squad size upgrades are great, having 5 soldiers means having a much more even fight most of the time.
- Try to always stick to high cover or elevation or both.
- Check every shot available before you commit. Count on doing the least damage, and see if you can kill every enemy on screen. If you can't do that, focus on one or two that you can either flank or that have the highest to-hit. Two full-health enemies is significantly better than three badly damaged enemies, because it's one fewer shot for their turn.
- Use grenades for guaranteed damage and to destroy cover. And don't be afraid to use them early! Remember, usually ~7-9 enemies to a map early on, getting one of them 100% dead with a grenade is worthwhile.
- Get the Specialist the Combat Protocol skill, always. Guaranteed damage is incredibly important and rare early-game.
- Try to scout with a Reaper or a Ranger as much as possible. You should always be trying to engage with enemies purposefully, not stumbling into them. If you have no concealed person, start by moving someone as far as possible on a blue move, and don't go past them.
- If you're on a timer that's really bearing down, sprint ONE person to full cover on the FIRST turn, and then deal with the inevitable clustercuss that occurs with your other troopers.
- The new Training Center is spectacular, and it's worth paying attention to people's Combat Intelligence and trying to pick a squad of awesome folks. A couple of people with an extra skill can become real heroes.
Hmmm...does getting stats from a covert op have any sort of sanity check? Could I feasibly get a ranger with 100% accuracy with a shotgun from sniper distance?
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SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
Dodge seems to have a cap, my Templar got to the point where he was ineligible to go on missions with a dodge reward. He had 88 dodge with deflection though so it's not like he was too hard done by.
Man I am really struggling with this. I'm on my second campaign cos the first went into a dead end, and it just seems so difficult even on veteran, like I went for weapon and armour upgrades early and I definitely feel like I'm getting more advanced enemies sooner. Combined with low ranking soldiers and heroes I'm having a tough slog getting through most missions. It's still fun, but it's pushing it.
My advice is to watch streams and get some pointers on how to get some foreward momentum against the progressively stronger foes.
You definitely learn how positioning and destroying cover can really affect your performance.
Some useful tips, based on playing up to Commander:
- Count the enemies you encounter. Most missions don't go above like 10, particularly early on. If you're looking at a couple enemies and you've already killed 8, run straight to their faces and kill them.
- Flashbangs are amazing. Always pack at least one. They save you from Sectoids early on, and they do a good job keeping soldiers safe after they've taken shots if they didn't manage to kill someone.
- GTS squad size upgrades are great, having 5 soldiers means having a much more even fight most of the time.
- Try to always stick to high cover or elevation or both.
- Check every shot available before you commit. Count on doing the least damage, and see if you can kill every enemy on screen. If you can't do that, focus on one or two that you can either flank or that have the highest to-hit. Two full-health enemies is significantly better than three badly damaged enemies, because it's one fewer shot for their turn.
- Use grenades for guaranteed damage and to destroy cover. And don't be afraid to use them early! Remember, usually ~7-9 enemies to a map early on, getting one of them 100% dead with a grenade is worthwhile.
- Get the Specialist the Combat Protocol skill, always. Guaranteed damage is incredibly important and rare early-game.
- Try to scout with a Reaper or a Ranger as much as possible. You should always be trying to engage with enemies purposefully, not stumbling into them. If you have no concealed person, start by moving someone as far as possible on a blue move, and don't go past them.
- If you're on a timer that's really bearing down, sprint ONE person to full cover on the FIRST turn, and then deal with the inevitable clustercuss that occurs with your other troopers.
- The new Training Center is spectacular, and it's worth paying attention to people's Combat Intelligence and trying to pick a squad of awesome folks. A couple of people with an extra skill can become real heroes.
These are great tips in general for 99% the game, but to avoid failing at the eleventh hour you it helps to groom some soldiers to create a different sort of squad for the end. The average mission may only have a dozen or so targets, but without straying to far into spoiler territory I can warn that the big finale is a major test of endurance and that squads that would cake walk through 99% of the game by leveraging their limited use abilities like grenades against a handful of hostiles can find themselves exhausted and running dry against the volume of targets defending the final objective.
Man I am really struggling with this. I'm on my second campaign cos the first went into a dead end, and it just seems so difficult even on veteran, like I went for weapon and armour upgrades early and I definitely feel like I'm getting more advanced enemies sooner. Combined with low ranking soldiers and heroes I'm having a tough slog getting through most missions. It's still fun, but it's pushing it.
My advice is to watch streams and get some pointers on how to get some foreward momentum against the progressively stronger foes.
You definitely learn how positioning and destroying cover can really affect your performance.
Some useful tips, based on playing up to Commander:
- Count the enemies you encounter. Most missions don't go above like 10, particularly early on. If you're looking at a couple enemies and you've already killed 8, run straight to their faces and kill them.
- Flashbangs are amazing. Always pack at least one. They save you from Sectoids early on, and they do a good job keeping soldiers safe after they've taken shots if they didn't manage to kill someone.
- GTS squad size upgrades are great, having 5 soldiers means having a much more even fight most of the time.
- Try to always stick to high cover or elevation or both.
- Check every shot available before you commit. Count on doing the least damage, and see if you can kill every enemy on screen. If you can't do that, focus on one or two that you can either flank or that have the highest to-hit. Two full-health enemies is significantly better than three badly damaged enemies, because it's one fewer shot for their turn.
- Use grenades for guaranteed damage and to destroy cover. And don't be afraid to use them early! Remember, usually ~7-9 enemies to a map early on, getting one of them 100% dead with a grenade is worthwhile.
- Get the Specialist the Combat Protocol skill, always. Guaranteed damage is incredibly important and rare early-game.
- Try to scout with a Reaper or a Ranger as much as possible. You should always be trying to engage with enemies purposefully, not stumbling into them. If you have no concealed person, start by moving someone as far as possible on a blue move, and don't go past them.
- If you're on a timer that's really bearing down, sprint ONE person to full cover on the FIRST turn, and then deal with the inevitable clustercuss that occurs with your other troopers.
- The new Training Center is spectacular, and it's worth paying attention to people's Combat Intelligence and trying to pick a squad of awesome folks. A couple of people with an extra skill can become real heroes.
These are great tips in general for 99% the game, but to avoid failing at the eleventh hour you it helps to groom some soldiers to create a different sort of squad for the end. The average mission may only have a dozen or so targets, but without straying to far into spoiler territory I can warn that the big finale is a major test of endurance and that squads that would cake walk through 99% of the game by leveraging their limited use abilities like grenades against a handful of hostiles can find themselves exhausted and running dry against the volume of targets defending the final objective.
Oh definitely, I was focusing on the early stuff since that conventional -> mag area is where the specific issue was for Prohass
BUT also, one of the nice parts about WotC is that more characters can start as one-use folks and evolve into good endurance people. Like you can get Grenadiers chain-shot AND rapid fire, you can get specialists a charge of every single ability, the Alien Ruler armors can add fun potential to standard builds, and the Skirmisher/Templar/Reaper squadmates can do a lot to maximize single-use skills.
Like I think mid-late I was more often using the Templar I had to kill of near-dead pods than grenades, because he was doing 10-11 guaranteed damage and had Reaper.
Overwatch ambushes are generally very bad. Your abilities are much better than a shot without an aim penalty, and you can easily end up with all aliens surviving if your soldiers decide not to focus fire.
Overwatch ambushes are generally very bad. Your abilities are much better than a shot without an aim penalty, and you can easily end up with all aliens surviving if your soldiers decide not to focus fire.
Overwatch ambushes are generally very bad. Your abilities are much better than a shot without an aim penalty, and you can easily end up with all aliens surviving if your soldiers decide not to focus fire.
This is deffo not the case early game
It's almost always the case. Overwatch ambushes are good on gatecrasher and then almost never for the rest of the game. Specialists and sharpshooters can have situations where it's worth it to overwatch them for the reveal. Especially specialists with the GTS upgrade, obviously.
The penalty of not being able to deal critical hits is huge. That can be okay for troopers, not so much for anything else. The risk of whiffing and taking return fire is huge. Either you need massive overkill or you're in a situation where you'll be taking fire regardless and have no other options that deal more damage to the pod. These situations aren't common.
edit tl;dr: overwatch ambush with rookies and upgraded specialists
@Vic_Hazard also overwatch ambush with Killzone. Killzone is great, especially when you've got a Reaper scouting for your party. Pull the enemy on their turn, then get a whole turn of your own to mop it up.
@Vic_Hazard also overwatch ambush with Killzone. Killzone is great, especially when you've got a Reaper scouting for your party. Pull the enemy on their turn, then get a whole turn of your own to mop it up.
Oh for sure, but then you're just overwatch trapping, which is something that you should do whenever you can since its essentially free shots. Above they're talking about setting concealed overwatch and then reveal yourself so your overwatch proccs.
Edit: I mean, it's just semantics, you can just killzone and reveal on your turn and it's essentially the same thing. I agree sharpshooters can pull extra good overwatch shots, as can specialists.
The late-game solution to soldiers with depletable resources is Psi Ops, by the way. A fully specced Psi can replace 75% of the functionality of any of the 4 basic classes and can do so exclusively on cooldowns. Plus they energize well with the other classes.
Overwatch is only worth it if a patrolling pod walks into your squad, while unveiled, for free shots.
It is not worth it if you happened to trigger a stationary pod with your last guy while rest of the squad is in overwatch mode. Aliens are must harder to hit when they are on the move even with some overwatch bonus. Any aliens you don't kill during overwatch phase will do serious harm, like Andromedon and his BS AoE acid bomb.
It's better to trigger a stationary pod with first action then deal with it by optimally using your squad available actions.
Overwatch ambushes are generally very bad. Your abilities are much better than a shot without an aim penalty, and you can easily end up with all aliens surviving if your soldiers decide not to focus fire.
This is deffo not the case early game
It's almost always the case. Overwatch ambushes are good on gatecrasher and then almost never for the rest of the game. Specialists and sharpshooters can have situations where it's worth it to overwatch them for the reveal. Especially specialists with the GTS upgrade, obviously.
The penalty of not being able to deal critical hits is huge. That can be okay for troopers, not so much for anything else. The risk of whiffing and taking return fire is huge. Either you need massive overkill or you're in a situation where you'll be taking fire regardless and have no other options that deal more damage to the pod. These situations aren't common.
edit tl;dr: overwatch ambush with rookies and upgraded specialists
Overwatch ambushes from concealment have neither an aim penalty and can crit. They're exactly as good as an exposed/flanking shot.
Overwatch ambushes from out of concealment do not risk return fire.
Overwatch ambushes are generally very bad. Your abilities are much better than a shot without an aim penalty, and you can easily end up with all aliens surviving if your soldiers decide not to focus fire.
This is deffo not the case early game
It's almost always the case. Overwatch ambushes are good on gatecrasher and then almost never for the rest of the game. Specialists and sharpshooters can have situations where it's worth it to overwatch them for the reveal. Especially specialists with the GTS upgrade, obviously.
The penalty of not being able to deal critical hits is huge. That can be okay for troopers, not so much for anything else. The risk of whiffing and taking return fire is huge. Either you need massive overkill or you're in a situation where you'll be taking fire regardless and have no other options that deal more damage to the pod. These situations aren't common.
edit tl;dr: overwatch ambush with rookies and upgraded specialists
Overwatch ambushes from concealment have neither an aim penalty and can crit. They're exactly as good as an exposed/flanking shot.
Overwatch ambushes from out of concealment do not risk return fire.
Traditionally people have been calling it an overwatch trap when aliens walk into your overwatch on their turn, essentially giving you free shots. Regardless what we call it it's clearly something you always want to do if possible.
I'm 99,9% certain concealed overwatch into revealing on your turn, what I meant by overwatch ambush (ambush being attacking from concealment), never crits. If it does it's a recent change from WotC or since I played tons of vanilla xcom 2. Maybe I'll test it out tomorrow.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
edited September 2017
Let me take a shot at this (get it?!?!).
Whenever the enemy first sees your team, they get a free action. This is often called "scamper" or "scatter". It doesn't matter whose team it is when this happens - the instant that your team is revealed to the enemy, even if it's just one soldier, the revealing pod gets that free action.
Overwatch shots cannot natively crit. This means their potential damage value is lowered.
Overwatch shots have a default aim penalty multiplier of 0.7. Sometimes shooting an enemy in the open with Overwatch has a lower success percentage than a normal shot if you take into account positioning, cover removal, etc.
Overwatch from Concealment has no aim penalty, but still cannot crit.
With that said, there's two different things when people talk about Overwatch Ambushes that often get conflated:
1) Ambush from Concealment on Enemy Turn: Start with your squad in Concealment. During your turn, put one or more soldiers into the path of an enemy pod without revealing them. Place all other soldiers into Overwatch. End your turn. Enemy pod walks into the bait soldier, reveals your squad, and immediately scampers. This triggers Overwatch. After scampering, the enemy turn ends because they spent their turn walking into your bait soldier. This was dubbed by Firaxis as "The Beaglerush Maneuver" and explicitly re-balanced during vanilla XCOM2 so that the enemy had a chance to shoot during the scamper action instead of only running to cover.
2) Ambush on Your Turn: During your turn, place one or more soldiers out of enemy vision but in Overwatch (usually in front of a door or around a wall, but also things like Sharpshooter Squadsight range). Use one soldier to "reveal" the enemy by walking into them, attacking them ("Grenade!"), opening the door, etc. The enemy pod scampers during your turn. Your team uses their Overwatch charges to fire on the enemy during their free scamper action. You proceed with any subsequent actions and end your turn (or it ends if you used your last action to reveal). The enemy turn begins and they do what they gon' do.
#1 is still good but isn't nearly as powerful as it used to be, both because of the "they can shoot back!" balance change and because most missions have timers and setting up those ambushes takes forever. There are lesser variations of this tactic where you use soldiers who can get back into Concealment after the initial mission start one is burned (e.g., Rangers) and place them in Overwatch, expecting that they will be revealed during the enemy's turn.
#2 is basically a decision that getting the Overwatch shot(s) off during your turn, including the native lack of crit chance and aim penalty, is outweighed by getting to shoot the enemy when they don't have cover. But note you used that Overwatch shot during your turn, so once the enemy scampers and you end your turn, they now have all of their actions to retaliate per normal. Note that #2 doesn't really care if you started in Concealment or not. The only thing Concealment adds in that scenario is that you don't get the aim penalty on Overwatch shots. But the basic order of operations means that you are still exchanging that Overwatch shot for another action during the exact same turn, and more importantly that the enemy has a chance to actually do something meaningful during their turn besides scamper.
The best advice I read about playing on commander/legendary (and I guess veteran if you're struggling) is to always make decisions in light of surviving to the next mission. There's very little you really need to do, and even apparently awful things like passing on a retaliation or letting a chosen just mindfuck a soldier so they'll go away are often less bad than a squad wipe, or even losing 2-3 good soldiers. As long as you can make enough region contacts to keep up with the avatar timer (even easier with covert ops) the rest is fairly irrelevant
Also research mag weapons and plate armor early; even if 20+ days seems like a lot of research time the other available options don't help nearly as much with basic survival (exception: faceless autopsy ASAP)
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Whenever the enemy first sees your team, they get a free action. This is often called "scamper" or "scatter". It doesn't matter whose team it is when this happens - the instant that your team is revealed to the enemy, even if it's just one soldier, the revealing pod gets that free action.
Overwatch shots cannot natively crit. This means their potential damage value is lowered.
Overwatch shots have a default aim penalty multiplier of 0.7. Sometimes shooting an enemy in the open with Overwatch has a lower success percentage than a normal shot if you take into account positioning, cover removal, etc.
Overwatch from Concealment has no aim penalty, but still cannot crit.
With that said, there's two different things when people talk about Overwatch Ambushes that often get conflated:
1) Ambush from Concealment on Enemy Turn: Start with your squad in Concealment. During your turn, put one or more soldiers into the path of an enemy pod without revealing them. Place all other soldiers into Overwatch. End your turn. Enemy pod walks into the bait soldier, reveals your squad, and immediately scampers. This triggers Overwatch. After scampering, the enemy turn ends because they spent their turn walking into your bait soldier. This was dubbed by Firaxis as "The Beaglerush Maneuver" and explicitly re-balanced during vanilla XCOM2 so that the enemy had a chance to shoot during the scamper action instead of only running to cover.
2) Ambush on Your Turn: During your turn, place one or more soldiers out of enemy vision but in Overwatch (usually in front of a door or around a wall, but also things like Sharpshooter Squadsight range). Use one soldier to "reveal" the enemy by walking into them, attacking them ("Grenade!"), opening the door, etc. The enemy pod scampers during your turn. Your team uses their Overwatch charges to fire on the enemy during their free scamper action. You proceed with any subsequent actions and end your turn (or it ends if you used your last action to reveal). The enemy turn begins and they do what they gon' do.
#1 is still good but isn't nearly as powerful as it used to be, both because of the "they can shoot back!" balance change and because most missions have timers and setting up those ambushes takes forever. There are lesser variations of this tactic where you use soldiers who can get back into Concealment after the initial mission start one is burned (e.g., Rangers) and place them in Overwatch, expecting that they will be revealed during the enemy's turn.
#2 is basically a decision that getting the Overwatch shot(s) off during your turn, including the native lack of crit chance and aim penalty, is outweighed by getting to shoot the enemy when they don't have cover. But note you used that Overwatch shot during your turn, so once the enemy scampers and you end your turn, they now have all of their actions to retaliate per normal. Note that #2 doesn't really care if you started in Concealment or not. The only thing Concealment adds in that scenario is that you don't get the aim penalty on Overwatch shots. But the basic order of operations means that you are still exchanging that Overwatch shot for another action during the exact same turn, and more importantly that the enemy has a chance to actually do something meaningful during their turn besides scamper.
There is also option 3:
Scout with a concealed unit (Ranger, Reaper) to find an enemy pod on the move. Using the preview feature, set your squad up just outside their vision and Overwatch. End your turn, the enemy walks into a (squad - 1) worth of overwatches and scatters, taking a few shots and letting you clean up the rest next turn. Works best with a Long Watch Sniper to ensure the pod gets pulled. This is IMO the best possible engagement method. You can't always set this up but it's fantastic when you can.
Hrm... is there a mod that reskins the plasma weapons? It's always bugged me how "pretty" they look, all nice and clean and polished. I feel like those adjectives aren't priorities for a broke resistance movement never sure where their next supplies are coming from. I wouldn't mind a team in for the power armor too, but for whatever reason that bugs me less than their shiny guns.
I'm actually kind of losing interest in finishing this. I've killed all the chosen and rulers and now I'm so OP I'm not sure I can be bothered to slog through the remaining story missions.
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
Hrm... is there a mod that reskins the plasma weapons? It's always bugged me how "pretty" they look, all nice and clean and polished. I feel like those adjectives aren't priorities for a broke resistance movement never sure where their next supplies are coming from. I wouldn't mind a team in for the power armor too, but for whatever reason that bugs me less than their shiny guns.
I know some weapon mods out there just let you select a weapon appearance that is entirely independent of the stats they do.
So like, you are firing an MG42 or whatever regardless of the tech level, and it just applies the damage as it should.
I'm actually kind of losing interest in finishing this. I've killed all the chosen and rulers and now I'm so OP I'm not sure I can be bothered to slog through the remaining story missions.
Yeah it feels like they really ran out of time for adding late game content. There are some mods like A Better Advent that seem cool but it's not the same.
I think that I'm going to deliberately kill off my skirmisher. They do drop off in power once the rest of Xcom starts coming into their own. I still think the class is useful especially in the early game where he can help flank and murder a lot of targets. In the mid-game his action point granting ability helped leverage whichever trooper could most benefit from it. He's been useful as a supporting unit that way. He's bonded with my reaper, and the pairing has allowed her 4 actions within one turn to setup all sorts of overpowered reaper things. He's worth bringing along just for the crazy stuff he enables the reaper to do.
But now I have a Psi Trooper, and one with 9.9 compatibility with my Reaper at that. There's going to be an unfortunate accident and then my reaper will pair up with a much more potent supporting unit.
I think that I'm going to deliberately kill off my skirmisher. They do drop off in power once the rest of Xcom starts coming into their own. I still think the class is useful especially in the early game where he can help flank and murder a lot of targets. In the mid-game his action point granting ability helped leverage whichever trooper could most benefit from it. He's been useful as a supporting unit that way. He's bonded with my reaper, and the pairing has allowed her 4 actions within one turn to setup all sorts of overpowered reaper things. He's worth bringing along just for the crazy stuff he enables the reaper to do.
But now I have a Psi Trooper, and one with 9.9 compatibility with my Reaper at that. There's going to be an unfortunate accident and then my reaper will pair up with a much more potent supporting unit.
I think that I'm going to deliberately kill off my skirmisher. They do drop off in power once the rest of Xcom starts coming into their own. I still think the class is useful especially in the early game where he can help flank and murder a lot of targets. In the mid-game his action point granting ability helped leverage whichever trooper could most benefit from it. He's been useful as a supporting unit that way. He's bonded with my reaper, and the pairing has allowed her 4 actions within one turn to setup all sorts of overpowered reaper things. He's worth bringing along just for the crazy stuff he enables the reaper to do.
But now I have a Psi Trooper, and one with 9.9 compatibility with my Reaper at that. There's going to be an unfortunate accident and then my reaper will pair up with a much more potent supporting unit.
... or you could just dismiss them, you monster.
He says "today is a good day to die", not "today is a good day to get fired".
I think that I'm going to deliberately kill off my skirmisher. They do drop off in power once the rest of Xcom starts coming into their own. I still think the class is useful especially in the early game where he can help flank and murder a lot of targets. In the mid-game his action point granting ability helped leverage whichever trooper could most benefit from it. He's been useful as a supporting unit that way. He's bonded with my reaper, and the pairing has allowed her 4 actions within one turn to setup all sorts of overpowered reaper things. He's worth bringing along just for the crazy stuff he enables the reaper to do.
But now I have a Psi Trooper, and one with 9.9 compatibility with my Reaper at that. There's going to be an unfortunate accident and then my reaper will pair up with a much more potent supporting unit.
... or you could just dismiss them, you monster.
He says "today is a good day to die", not "today is a good day to get fired".
He's not getting fired. X-Com is just undergoing some internal restructuring to maximize the synergistic performance of its employees, as part of a larger retooling of its strategic plan to accomplish its organizational vision of overthrowing the Elders and crushing Advent.
He'll get to take home his bullpup and a lifetime's supply of plasma grenades as part of a generous transition package.
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KetarCome on upstairswe're having a partyRegistered Userregular
I think that I'm going to deliberately kill off my skirmisher. They do drop off in power once the rest of Xcom starts coming into their own. I still think the class is useful especially in the early game where he can help flank and murder a lot of targets. In the mid-game his action point granting ability helped leverage whichever trooper could most benefit from it. He's been useful as a supporting unit that way. He's bonded with my reaper, and the pairing has allowed her 4 actions within one turn to setup all sorts of overpowered reaper things. He's worth bringing along just for the crazy stuff he enables the reaper to do.
But now I have a Psi Trooper, and one with 9.9 compatibility with my Reaper at that. There's going to be an unfortunate accident and then my reaper will pair up with a much more potent supporting unit.
... or you could just dismiss them, you monster.
He says "today is a good day to die", not "today is a good day to get fired".
He's not getting fired. X-Com is just undergoing some internal restructuring to maximize the synergistic performance of its employees, as part of a larger retooling of its strategic plan to accomplish its organizational vision of overthrowing the Elders and crushing Advent.
He'll get to take home his bullpup and a lifetime's supply of plasma grenades as part of a generous transition package.
He's heading off to join the resistance and learn 2 aim. Next time you go on a retaliation mission when you combine that with his action economy he's going to wipe the entire alien side before X-Com even sees a pod.
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I mean, this sounds like fun. It's likely all about how you play on the tactical maps, so don't think so much about the strategic map and what upgrades you get etc. You gotta figure out how to not take fire and deal mostly high percentage lethal shots yourself. All while not revealing extra enemies and completing your objectives on time of course, have fun!
When you get to the point where you can just crush all opposition and you're never in any danger anymore restart on commander, it's the difficulty where xcom starts being xcom. It's a ride.
Today on my continuing L/I run (still first campaign in WotC past gatecrasher) I got assaulted again. It was a cakewalk but it put like 80% of xcom into shaken status. The hunter regains 5-10 hp anytime something gets injured, he fires back on missed shots and he teleports whenever he's injured. End of the map was just him left, I started laying into him and he literally teleported from one end to the other end of the map in one turn. I couldn't get to him, it was ridiculous.
On the strategic side:
Now that missions produce willpower losses you need to pay more attention to when missions occur.
Some useful tips, based on playing up to Commander:
- Count the enemies you encounter. Most missions don't go above like 10, particularly early on. If you're looking at a couple enemies and you've already killed 8, run straight to their faces and kill them.
- Flashbangs are amazing. Always pack at least one. They save you from Sectoids early on, and they do a good job keeping soldiers safe after they've taken shots if they didn't manage to kill someone.
- GTS squad size upgrades are great, having 5 soldiers means having a much more even fight most of the time.
- Try to always stick to high cover or elevation or both.
- Check every shot available before you commit. Count on doing the least damage, and see if you can kill every enemy on screen. If you can't do that, focus on one or two that you can either flank or that have the highest to-hit. Two full-health enemies is significantly better than three badly damaged enemies, because it's one fewer shot for their turn.
- Use grenades for guaranteed damage and to destroy cover. And don't be afraid to use them early! Remember, usually ~7-9 enemies to a map early on, getting one of them 100% dead with a grenade is worthwhile.
- Get the Specialist the Combat Protocol skill, always. Guaranteed damage is incredibly important and rare early-game.
- Try to scout with a Reaper or a Ranger as much as possible. You should always be trying to engage with enemies purposefully, not stumbling into them. If you have no concealed person, start by moving someone as far as possible on a blue move, and don't go past them.
- If you're on a timer that's really bearing down, sprint ONE person to full cover on the FIRST turn, and then deal with the inevitable clustercuss that occurs with your other troopers.
- The new Training Center is spectacular, and it's worth paying attention to people's Combat Intelligence and trying to pick a squad of awesome folks. A couple of people with an extra skill can become real heroes.
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These are great tips in general for 99% the game, but to avoid failing at the eleventh hour you it helps to groom some soldiers to create a different sort of squad for the end. The average mission may only have a dozen or so targets, but without straying to far into spoiler territory I can warn that the big finale is a major test of endurance and that squads that would cake walk through 99% of the game by leveraging their limited use abilities like grenades against a handful of hostiles can find themselves exhausted and running dry against the volume of targets defending the final objective.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Oh definitely, I was focusing on the early stuff since that conventional -> mag area is where the specific issue was for Prohass
BUT also, one of the nice parts about WotC is that more characters can start as one-use folks and evolve into good endurance people. Like you can get Grenadiers chain-shot AND rapid fire, you can get specialists a charge of every single ability, the Alien Ruler armors can add fun potential to standard builds, and the Skirmisher/Templar/Reaper squadmates can do a lot to maximize single-use skills.
Like I think mid-late I was more often using the Templar I had to kill of near-dead pods than grenades, because he was doing 10-11 guaranteed damage and had Reaper.
This is deffo not the case early game
It's almost always the case. Overwatch ambushes are good on gatecrasher and then almost never for the rest of the game. Specialists and sharpshooters can have situations where it's worth it to overwatch them for the reveal. Especially specialists with the GTS upgrade, obviously.
The penalty of not being able to deal critical hits is huge. That can be okay for troopers, not so much for anything else. The risk of whiffing and taking return fire is huge. Either you need massive overkill or you're in a situation where you'll be taking fire regardless and have no other options that deal more damage to the pod. These situations aren't common.
edit tl;dr: overwatch ambush with rookies and upgraded specialists
Oh for sure, but then you're just overwatch trapping, which is something that you should do whenever you can since its essentially free shots. Above they're talking about setting concealed overwatch and then reveal yourself so your overwatch proccs.
Edit: I mean, it's just semantics, you can just killzone and reveal on your turn and it's essentially the same thing. I agree sharpshooters can pull extra good overwatch shots, as can specialists.
Otherwise it's better to take one good shot and go for flanking or blowing up cover
If you've got guys with scopes and high ground, a bunch of overwatch shots in the 90s can level a pod
Not as well as if they'd taken their regular actions, most of the time.
It is not worth it if you happened to trigger a stationary pod with your last guy while rest of the squad is in overwatch mode. Aliens are must harder to hit when they are on the move even with some overwatch bonus. Any aliens you don't kill during overwatch phase will do serious harm, like Andromedon and his BS AoE acid bomb.
It's better to trigger a stationary pod with first action then deal with it by optimally using your squad available actions.
Overwatch ambushes from concealment have neither an aim penalty and can crit. They're exactly as good as an exposed/flanking shot.
Overwatch ambushes from out of concealment do not risk return fire.
Nah, they can't crit. Run Gatecrasher a hundred times and you notice the pattern.
Traditionally people have been calling it an overwatch trap when aliens walk into your overwatch on their turn, essentially giving you free shots. Regardless what we call it it's clearly something you always want to do if possible.
I'm 99,9% certain concealed overwatch into revealing on your turn, what I meant by overwatch ambush (ambush being attacking from concealment), never crits. If it does it's a recent change from WotC or since I played tons of vanilla xcom 2. Maybe I'll test it out tomorrow.
With that said, there's two different things when people talk about Overwatch Ambushes that often get conflated:
1) Ambush from Concealment on Enemy Turn: Start with your squad in Concealment. During your turn, put one or more soldiers into the path of an enemy pod without revealing them. Place all other soldiers into Overwatch. End your turn. Enemy pod walks into the bait soldier, reveals your squad, and immediately scampers. This triggers Overwatch. After scampering, the enemy turn ends because they spent their turn walking into your bait soldier. This was dubbed by Firaxis as "The Beaglerush Maneuver" and explicitly re-balanced during vanilla XCOM2 so that the enemy had a chance to shoot during the scamper action instead of only running to cover.
2) Ambush on Your Turn: During your turn, place one or more soldiers out of enemy vision but in Overwatch (usually in front of a door or around a wall, but also things like Sharpshooter Squadsight range). Use one soldier to "reveal" the enemy by walking into them, attacking them ("Grenade!"), opening the door, etc. The enemy pod scampers during your turn. Your team uses their Overwatch charges to fire on the enemy during their free scamper action. You proceed with any subsequent actions and end your turn (or it ends if you used your last action to reveal). The enemy turn begins and they do what they gon' do.
#1 is still good but isn't nearly as powerful as it used to be, both because of the "they can shoot back!" balance change and because most missions have timers and setting up those ambushes takes forever. There are lesser variations of this tactic where you use soldiers who can get back into Concealment after the initial mission start one is burned (e.g., Rangers) and place them in Overwatch, expecting that they will be revealed during the enemy's turn.
#2 is basically a decision that getting the Overwatch shot(s) off during your turn, including the native lack of crit chance and aim penalty, is outweighed by getting to shoot the enemy when they don't have cover. But note you used that Overwatch shot during your turn, so once the enemy scampers and you end your turn, they now have all of their actions to retaliate per normal. Note that #2 doesn't really care if you started in Concealment or not. The only thing Concealment adds in that scenario is that you don't get the aim penalty on Overwatch shots. But the basic order of operations means that you are still exchanging that Overwatch shot for another action during the exact same turn, and more importantly that the enemy has a chance to actually do something meaningful during their turn besides scamper.
Also research mag weapons and plate armor early; even if 20+ days seems like a lot of research time the other available options don't help nearly as much with basic survival (exception: faceless autopsy ASAP)
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
There is also option 3:
Scout with a concealed unit (Ranger, Reaper) to find an enemy pod on the move. Using the preview feature, set your squad up just outside their vision and Overwatch. End your turn, the enemy walks into a (squad - 1) worth of overwatches and scatters, taking a few shots and letting you clean up the rest next turn. Works best with a Long Watch Sniper to ensure the pod gets pulled. This is IMO the best possible engagement method. You can't always set this up but it's fantastic when you can.
Between breakthroughs and Chosen weapons, I've never had such an easy time of it.
Moved my free resistance bro and activated berserker queen, before moving everyone else out of Archon pinions...
I also forgot those guys can show up anywhere once discovered. I guess that's the drawback to soloing facilities with a reaper.
Of course, a Reaper with Banish/Superior Repeater can get the job done for both.
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Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
If there's no enemies in LOS, yeah.
I know some weapon mods out there just let you select a weapon appearance that is entirely independent of the stats they do.
So like, you are firing an MG42 or whatever regardless of the tech level, and it just applies the damage as it should.
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But now I have a Psi Trooper, and one with 9.9 compatibility with my Reaper at that. There's going to be an unfortunate accident and then my reaper will pair up with a much more potent supporting unit.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
... or you could just dismiss them, you monster.
He's not getting fired. X-Com is just undergoing some internal restructuring to maximize the synergistic performance of its employees, as part of a larger retooling of its strategic plan to accomplish its organizational vision of overthrowing the Elders and crushing Advent.
He'll get to take home his bullpup and a lifetime's supply of plasma grenades as part of a generous transition package.
He's heading off to join the resistance and learn 2 aim. Next time you go on a retaliation mission when you combine that with his action economy he's going to wipe the entire alien side before X-Com even sees a pod.