XCOM 2

You juice them up with every +accuracy mod you can get (scope upgrade, tracer ammo, perception PCS) then park them on high ground with commanding LoS of where you expect to be fighting, and then rain down death. I think pistoliers are better for the first chunk of the game, but once you get one developed a sniper just racks up the kills.

@Lithose I'm thinking maybe the mimic beacon shouldn't benefit from cover. It would still be extremely powerful but it wouldn't soak up all the fire from every alien in range for a full turn.

As far as my position on SMGs and leaders, I stand by it. I never said they weren't viable, I'm sure they work just fine if you tailor strategies around them. I just think it's strictly better not to.

I like marksmen/snipers even more in this one with rangers and concealment. After breaking concealment I'll have my ranger sneak ahead while concealed and it makes for some easy no cover, squad sight kills. Pretty sure my marksman has the most kills so far by a long shot.

I didn't use one for the first half of the game or so, until I got a LT sharpshooter as a reward. Between kill zone and serial, she sure as fuck is catching up though.

I do enjoy how much the physics has been improved in this game though, makes for some good kill cams, like when I blasted a trooper with a shotgun blast close range and they went flying back 4 feet and bent in half over a guard rail.

My favorite so far is 3 guys were on a roof, I launched a grenade at them, hitting all 3. It blew out the floor underneath them and two died from the falling damage.

There is a surprising lack of character screenshots.
I've seen a weaksauce Kylo Ren and a decent Dr. Gordon Freedman

mures_sl said:

I do enjoy how much the physics has been improved in this game though, makes for some good kill cams, like when I blasted a trooper with a shotgun blast close range and they went flying back 4 feet and bent in half over a guard rail.

My favorite so far is 3 guys were on a roof, I launched a grenade at them, hitting all 3. It blew out the floor underneath them and two died from the falling damage.

Click to expand...

Yeah blowing up the roof is one of my favorite ways to break concealment.

Powered heavy weapons are absurd. Like crazy absurd. Especially the Shredstorm cannon.

This game is consuming my waking hours here recently, and destroying my sleep schedule. I only stopped playing this morning because the game crashed during one of my missions. Don't know how many times I tell myself, "this is the last mission for tonight."

Btw, here is the status effects from the INI if anyone was curious.

BLEEDINGOUT_TURNS=4
BLEEDOUT_BASE=50
BLEEDOUT_SIGHT_RADIUS=3
BLEEDOUT_ROLL=100
BLEEDOUT_BONUS_ROLL=50
BURNING_TURNS=2
ACID_BURNING_TURNS=2
CONFUSED_MOBILITY_ADJUST=-5
CONFUSED_WILL_ADJUST=-3
DISORIENTED_TURNS=2
DISORIENTED_MOBILITY_ADJUST=-6
DISORIENTED_AIM_ADJUST=-25
DISORIENTED_WILL_ADJUST=-30

POISONED_TURNS=5
POISONED_MOBILITY_ADJUST=-4
POISONED_AIM_ADJUST=-30
POISONED_INITIAL_SHED=0
POISONED_PER_TURN_SHED=20
POISONED_DAMAGE=1
POISONED_INFECT_DISTANCE=1
POISONED_INFECT_PERCENTAGE=100

BOUND_MOBILITY_ADJUST=0
PANIC_WILL_ADJUST=-2
STUNNED_WILL_ADJUST=-40
PANICKED_TURNS=2; 1 more than intended as its removed on Begin turn, so 2 results in 1 turn of panick
PANICKED_AIM_ADJUST=-25
PANIC_SUCCESS_WILL_MOD=30

On the higher difficulties, for the first dozen missions, I brought 2 nades and 2 flash bangs. As you can see from the disoriented stats, flash bangs are pretty essential. (Someone mentioned them earlier and was spot on.) -25 Aim, but more importantly it halves their blue line mobility, making it very difficult for them to flank you unless they are already on your dick, it also makes lancers have a much rougher time meleeing you. This is really important because you don't have to waste an overwatch to keep them pinned, instead you can flash and you get the extra defense from the aim penalty and effectively get the effect you want from overwatch (Except for the rare instance overwatch does damage early game.) Best part is flash bang radius is massive and it doesn't affect your own troops.

That said, poison is also awesome. -30 aim and -4 mobility, for 5 full turns, as well as 1 damage per turn. So actually more powerful defensively than flash, but it's got a tiny radius so I think flash wins.


Also, the overwatch penalty is -30%, not -30, but a straight 30% drop like deadeye's 25%. So if you overwatch with 100 aim, you get a 70% chance to hit. If you overwatch with 50, you get a 35% chance to hit. So it scales down with shitty aim and scales up with better. Overall, the whole concept of overwatch ambushes unless you have the time to do them on the enemies turn should probably be avoided by your high hit (Sniper) characters, and your lower hit characters are probably better off flanking unless you're really being cautious about extra pod activation.

Ha that last mission map has some sort of memory leak or something that made my graphics card go ballistic and it turned into a rave and got so damn laggy , the aliens were doing some funky shit as well like moving one square at a time and just ending their turns. Had to restart game and it was fine after that and they did their moves normally and the ending was interesting to say the least. Not sure how i feel about that but hey more X Com is good X Com and it could just be DLC which i would be fine with , but with their last DLC i guess that was a hint at what X Com 3 would be. Oh and the mission name is a dead give away as well. I just hope its DLC though =(.

Burning says it prevents some abilities from being used, but I assume you'd have to look at the text for each ability to see exactly what it prevents.

Gavinmad_sl said:

Burning says it prevents some abilities from being used, but I assume you'd have to look at the text for each ability to see exactly what it prevents.

Click to expand...

As far as I know it prevents all except movement and basic fire. Another big thing is aiming angles are in, too. Not sure if they were in the base game EW, I know there was an option for them in second wave (But was unsure if that was elevation angles). In any case, depending on the angle of the enemy, they can reduce your cover by between 0 and 50%. The angles being between 0 and 80 (So right before it is considered a flank). It does help, in other words, to move even if you don't get a flank.

Just keep doing the story missions.

So I beat it, went to start a new game, and saw that there were no second wave options. Seriously? They decided to just say fuck it and let modders handle it?

Got a voice-over at one point when I was looking at my recruits. Bradford says something like they received some radio transmissions from some guy named Van Doorn who wanted to join, but that he wasn't Xcom material. Made me chuckle, I hated that whiny fuck.

Do you not know the legend of Peter 'Doom' Van Doorn and Private Friendly?!?!?

I know the legend of Peter "Never shuts up" Van Doorn.

So right after the Van Doorn mission, Beagle had a crop of recruits show up and he named one after Van Doorn. Long story short, the RNG gods smiled upon Van Doorn. He survived certain death, made impossible shots, and in general just saved the fucking day whenever it needed saved. He was epic. So the Long War folks made Van Doorn a reward for that council mission, with his rank scaled to how far you were in the game when that council mission popped. Later they added Private Friendly to represent the guy who yells 'Friendly over here!' when you're first moving up in the mission also joining up.