XCOM 2: Long War 2

[nekobaka]

I do like the how much work has gone into this. I am unfortunately am feeling overwhelmed with how tedious and long missions have become. I almost feel like I am playing Civ now.

[DeadmanWalking]

My game ended sooner than expected because there is no way to monitor how close the enemy is to fulfilling their goals. Strategy battles are not my problem but the out of combat strategy is a bit vague.

[endersblade]

I do like the how much work has gone into this. I am unfortunately am feeling overwhelmed with how tedious and long missions have become. I almost feel like I am playing Civ now.

You are seriously complaining that a mod titled "LONG War" is too long? Are you fucking kidding me? It says right on the tin:

1) A much longer campaign, running for 100 to 120 missions on average

[nekobaka]

You are seriously complaining that a mod titled "LONG War" is too long? Are you fucking kidding me? It says right on the tin:

I am aware of that including the comment about mission count. My comment is towards the missions themselves. A hell of a lot more grazes even when flanking and in my experience larger unit counts makes for much longer missions. Where I might have cranked through three missions a night I am now standing at one and a half. Hopefully with more gear this will be less of a problem.

[StrawberryZebra]

I almost feel like I am playing Civ now.

I feel the same. While the new classes and combat skills are fantastic, all the new overword mechanics it's shifted XCOM to be something closer to a 4X game in my opinion. Thats fine for those who like it, but it's not what I'm really after from XCOM. Been giving some thought to just uninstalling LW and getting the class packs and AI upgrades seperately. Lets me keep what I like about it but ditch what I don't.

[DeadmanWalking]

I am aware of that including the comment about mission count. My comment is towards the missions themselves. A hell of a lot more grazes even when flanking and in my experience larger unit counts makes for much longer missions. Where I might have cranked through three missions a night I am now standing at one and a half. Hopefully with more gear this will be less of a problem.

If you are properly infiltrating missions there shouldn't be more than 6-9 enemies on a stage. Larger xcom units should make the game faster as taking 8 shots at an enemy pod should kill it faster than a 4 man team. As far as grazing goes in the old version you would of just missed and done 0 damage. In this case you did 1-4 damage of graze (counting on damage) and the creature is dying faster than doing 0 damage.
As you get better weapons you will kill more quickly.

The only thing that takes longer is the movement phase, if you take two snipers you will find that movement won't be an issue as you get them up high and they stay there most of the mission.

[Deleted]

i havnt played xcom since the old amiga 1200 days, has much changed?

[Deleted]

i havnt played xcom since the old amiga 1200 days, has much changed?

Not that much - it's still turn-based isometric battles, with a pausable real time strategy level. It's a reasonably faithful modernisation of the original, better than what's gone between. The commercial games have streamlined a lot of stuff - for example, you havetwo actions rather than use a budget of action points. You "activate" pods of aliens, rather than have them pseudo-randomly move around. There are more restrictions on equipment loadouts, but fun traits as you level up. It is a very polished and playable experience, with nice "cinematic" style graphics to liven up the turn-based gameplay. X-Com2 adds pace by introducing time limits on many missions (I hated the idea, but it worked). If you liked the original, give it a go - I think you'll like Firaxis's "reboot".

This thread is about a mod which I haven't played but in some ways backtracks on some of the above changes - i.e. makes the game longer.

[Deleted]

Not that much - it's still turn-based isometric battles, with a pausable real time strategy level. It's a reasonably faithful modernisation of the original, better than what's gone between. The commercial games have streamlined a lot of stuff - for example, you havetwo actions rather than use a budget of action points. You "activate" pods of aliens, rather than have them pseudo-randomly move around. There are more restrictions on equipment loadouts, but fun traits as you level up. It is a very polished and playable experience, with nice "cinematic" style graphics to liven up the turn-based gameplay. X-Com2 adds pace by introducing time limits on many missions (I hated the idea, but it worked). If you liked the original, give it a go - I think you'll like Firaxis's "reboot".

This thread is about a mod which I haven't played but in some ways backtracks on some of the above changes - i.e. makes the game longer.

thanks very much. i might just have a look, as i enjoyed the original.
sorry for derailing the thread.

[StrawberryZebra]

I've just lost my LW game without as much as a word of explanation as to where I went wrong. I'm assuming that means I ran afoul of the Avatar clock and they completed it without me ever finding out about it. What's worse is that I never actually found a facility to attack during my play through, so it really feels like it was set up as a no win situation from the start.

Anyone else feel like a lot of the mechanics they changed in LW are there just for the sake of ramping up the difficulty? I spent a lot of my game losing a decent chunk of my supplies from a unknown causes, for instance. I assume there is some way of finding the cause of it and dealing with it, but it was never really made clear if it ever came up. Advent reinforcements showing constantly screwed me over more times than I'd like to recount. The fact that they drop in behind you with no warning just feels like they're trying to kill off your squad, in vanilla XCOM2 Advent reinforcements were used to force you to quickly rethink your stratergies, in LW they're a cheap way of upping the stakes.

A lot of the mechanics were also poorly explained, if they were even explained at all that is. Such as grenades no longer destroying cover, but now destroying loot drops instead. That's before you get into the, frankly, absurd numbers of units on the map now. Even with a small squad of elite soliders and huge Infiltration bonuses I was sometimes getting upwards of 40 Aliens, and reinforcements on top of that too.

It's a shame, I had such high hopes for LW but it's turned out to be quite a disapointment for me. It feels very much like they've tried their best to add as many new mechanics as they can, without really considering how they're going to affect the game play.

[endersblade]

I had to heavily modify the game to make LW2 playable, but it has become by far my best experience with this game.

First and foremost, I turn off the Doom Clock/Avatar project. I've done this since the mod for it first came out, long before LW2. Putting an artificial clock on a game that has NEVER had one before, in any of its iterations, is asinine. Fuck that nonsense, I like long games and taking my time.

I've beefed up the damage of my weapons, all tiers, by at least one point. I play on Legendary mode, no others, and the base damage of the weapons just wasn't cutting it. Considering you can sometimes run on maps that have upwards of 40 aliens on them, I needed that damage throughput to be able to walk away with at least most of my squad intact.

I've found that any class with the Fleche ability is rather OP, at least for the first and early mid parts of the game. I rolled an entire squad of Shinobi and Alien Hunters, both of which have Fleche, and just murdered everything without taking a single hit. It's basically a one-shot ability and does more damage the farther away you are from your target. It takes some skill to be able to maximize that every turn, but worth it in the end. Shinobi and Alien Hunters are just about useless as far as gunning goes, their swords are far superior. I equip them with SMGs and remove all utilities to maximize their mobility. They never shoot at anyone, just run around and slice bitches open.

I edited the files to remove the need for corpses on buildable items. I'm apparently missing something, but I'm about to research plasma FFS and still haven't found any corpses outside of the initial 'tutorial' stage. I do as many of the missions as I can, but I never get any of the ones where I can retrieve bodies. This is silly.

I make gratuitous use of grenades now. With the Needle Grenade ability where they don't destroy loot, Grenadiers can happily lob them all over the map without a care in the world.

I've boosted the mission timers by almost 10. I use a LOT of PCP mods (extra maps), and they tend to make huge maps. Some of these missions would be absolutely impossible to clear when you have 6 turns to get hostages to an extraction point, when it takes you 8 turns of sprinting just to get to the extraction point anyway.

I use the Grimy Loot mod (the new LW2 version) to remove all but the 6 continental bonuses I actually want. So many of them are just useless.

I like farming reinforcements. On maps where I have to spend several turns waiting for the extraction timer to go down, I will park my guys where the flare will cover, and just put everyone on overwatch. Every 2-3 turns, reinforcements show up. I just keep going until they show up, overwatch kill them, and go on. Even after the flare has expanded and I can leave, I will farm another 2 or so reinforcement groups. These missions, everyone gains a level no matter what.

I got so tired of skipping weapon tiers. By the time I can research lasers, I can also research mag weapons. Lasers are 1 point over base, mags are 2. So I edited the ini files so that mags require you to research lasers first, so I'm forced to go through them without skipping. (same with coils needing mags, and plasma needing coils.)

Even with all this, I still get my ass handed to me on occasion. LW2 on Legendary is just brutal.