XCOM 2

a_skeleton_00_sl said:

Ok need advice, doing my first legendary run, do I build awc before anything? What should I research first?

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I'd still build GTS first, I think. That 5th squad member, and the ability to have squaddies ready to go is massive. AWC I think has to be second (Which is painful, because proving grounds will have to get pushed to the fourth construction, and special ammo/grenades are extremely useful.)

In Commander you can push back AWC to 4th/5th no problem. But All my wounded timers in legendary have been 20-35 days. So yeah, I'd go AWC second.

Gavinmad_sl said:

well when you have 6 soldiers, plus however many reserves for when you have wounded in your front 6, you won't have optimal weapon upgrades on everyone. Granted, if you get the third upgrade slot in your campaign it changes things pretty dramatically. God that's such a crazy continent bonus. I got a lot of work done with hair triggers though, and a guardian specialist can sometimes chain together an absolute assload of overwatch fire, and that instakill chance adds up quickly. Repeaters are good on pistoliers too, and I honestly think a pistol sharpshooter is better than a sniper until Colonel. Face Off with a repeater and maybe even venom/dragon rounds is really strong, especially when you break concealment with it.

Too bad stock probably doesn't stack with repeater.

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I don't ever upgrade by B team's weapons. When an A team guy goes down I just take his weapon and give it to the B team guy. Also, repeaters DO stack with stocks, and it's awesome. That is the combo I use on my specialist, since if I'm shooting with her and not hacking or using the gremlin it typically means either shit is desperate and I need a hail mary, or I'm pretty far ahead and I just need a guy mopped up (3 guaranteed damage also allows me to get aid protocol).

Btw, does 'don't die on me' automatically lower wounded levels by one? Since I got it, I have not noticed a gravely wounded. And I was just an idiot in my last battle and ran my ranger into too much shit, he had 3 HP left. Every other time he'd have been gravely wounded but instead he was just wounded. (It's happened 2-3 times now. I guess it could be luck....)

omg...omgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomg I made it omgomgomgomgomgomgmgomgomgogjgmgqewrfafg

KNEEL BEFORE ME PLEBS

we're not worthy, crazy shit dude nice

I'm open to the idea of doing 'who needs Tygan' on legendary ironman, but I damn sure wasn't going to risk that playthrough trying. Especially since I would have needed another year of game time to train up the psychics i would need.

You beat legendary ironman with 4 soldiers? Did you rush a proving ground?

I really want to play with psi's but it's so much more efficient just to play traditionally and skip all of that aspect of the game.

No, he didn't.

The opening on the playthrough that worked was proving - awc - power - comms - workshop - psi. Think I built GTS after that. If you aren't buying squad size upgrades, the only good early tactic is vulture which isn't worth an early gts. Sucks having fewer chances at elerium cores, so you need a bit of luck with your grenades and heavy weapons. Aside from vulture, all you really need from the GTS is integrated warfare, the class specific captain traits, and stay with me. Stay With Me seems to lower healing times a little? The increased chance to bleed out instead of die isn't terrible helpful because if you have someone go down when you only have 4, it's probably a failed mission and campaign loss. I rushed PSI that time so that I could get a pair of them cooking up asap, the infinitely reusable lance and rift, assorted extra abilities, and 2 dominations is a big increase in manpower, especially when you score something super tanky like an archon or hit the motherlode with an andromedon or gatekeeper. On legendary, mind controlled archons are basically extended duration mimic beacons, between their larger hp pool, higher defense bonus, and dodge, they soak up an obnoxious amount of fire.

For me the hardest mission in the game by far was the codex coordinates mission. Failed 3 campaigns there, that many chrysallids with only 4 people is really hard and on top of that a guaranteed gatekeeper when you reveal the portal. Failed almost right away rushing it, failed saving it for late, failed once when I was enough of a dumbass to try it with Show of Force active (good god), succeeded when I saved it til after I had two Psi-Ops ready. Setup for the final mission was 2 Psi, 1 Grenadier (mostly gunner specced), 1 Specialist (mostly combat, bit of medic), dominated a Gatekeeper first (to make sure I had two chances to dominate in one round) then an Andromedon for the shredding and acid, two gatekeepers is redundant anyway. Took the mission at a snails pace til I was at the Avatar room, then led the way with a maniple of meat shield psi-zombies to cover my troops. Despite all the cannon fodder my specialist was bleeding out when I killed the third Avatar but she weren't dead yet so I got the no death achievement on top of the rest.

Could load my original veteran/savescum game and drag it out until I've got 2-4 more psi-ops to go for 'who needs Tygan', but that would be pretty tedious, more fun to try it on a separate playthrough.

Gavinmad_sl said:

omg...omgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomg I made it omgomgomgomgomgomgmgomgomgogjgmgqewrfafg

KNEEL BEFORE ME PLEBS

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woah

What month did you finish this? Seems that you did this fast.

Definitely an interesting opening. Did you intentionally forgo the squad increase to get the achievement or did you think that you'd stand a better chance at beating the game by rushing an AWC and PSI instead?

Very impressive.

DrLifetilt_sl said:

woah

What month did you finish this? Seems that you did this fast.

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I would be more interested in the final stats page, has all kinds of good information.

Woolygimp_sl said:

Definitely an interesting opening. Did you intentionally forgo the squad increase to get the achievement or did you think that you'd stand a better chance at beating the game by rushing an AWC and PSI instead?

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The achievement. There is nothing in the game stronger than squad size increases, so unless you're doing the achievement GTS should always be your opening facility on legendary.

and really it was like 95% luck, 5% skill, 100% concentrated power of mimic beacons. I had one failed mission, aside from that it was almost all flawless missions without even being wounded. I think it was my 6th try? Entirely possible that I could have been pounding my head against this for another couple weeks before the stars aligned for me.

Gavinmad_sl said:

The achievement. There is nothing in the game stronger than squad size increases, so unless you're doing the achievement GTS should always be your opening facility on legendary.

and really it was like 95% luck, 5% skill, 100% concentrated power of mimic beacons. I had one failed mission, aside from that it was almost all flawless missions without even being wounded. I think it was my 6th try? Entirely possible that I could have been pounding my head against this for another couple weeks before the stars aligned for me.

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It's probably one of the most impressive things I've seen if you didn't cheat. Though mimic beacons are kind of broken, you still had to get to the 6th-8th mission before you could really use them.

Mimic beacons could be retooled to only absorb one attacks, no matter how much damage, and still be overpowered.

Edit: I had no idea that flashbangs broke mind control/zombies. That would have saved me from quite a few wipes early game when there was a sectoid in a location I just couldn't reach in time.

You got Gavin here beating it on I/L with only a four man squad, and I'm here struggling with I/V lmao. I failed a timed mission to extract info, thanks in part to getting a minus 50% sneaky rounds dark event. Only had four rounds to get to it, but I also had the True Concealment mod so it didn't start right away. Things were going great, but I got pathed found and couldn't get to the info in time. Only my two snipers survived as well

You could maybe pull it off on commander without mimic beacons, but I don't see how you could possibly do it on legendary unless you got impossibly lucky. Like, luckier than winning the powerball lucky.

Anyway, like I said, 95% luck, 5% skill, and I attribute most of that 5% to tactics I learned getting beaten like a ragdoll in Long War Ironman. Alien AI is almost identical to Long War, which had several improvements over EU/EW. Like you can't pin an alien in place by overwatching it while it's flanked anymore, the enemy will prioritize getting into cover over not triggering overwatch shots. Aid protocol on someone overwatching from heavy cover is a really great way to inhibit enemy movement, even if it costs you the use of a soldier. As long as your survival doesn't depend on him of course, because as soon as it does he'll get one-shot because this is XCom.

*edit*

and yeah learning things like Flashbangs disrupting psi from browsing Reddit is another really big deal. Although I didn't use a gunslinger, knowing that Quick Draw works on Fan Fire, meaning a Gunslinger could potentially go Fan Fire, Quick Shot, Faceoff in the ultimate alpha strike is pretty handy.

ya aid protocol is super powerful i learned that later into things, +40 defense after sectopod research + buying gremlin (3?)

I think that equates to a -40% chance to hit? Heh. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Gavin, does cover not directly adjacent to you still have an effect?

The two examples I'd like clarified are:

|=|=|=| there's a long wall
X if you stand in the middle, are you protected by the cover on the square to the upper right, and upper left?

What if you are standing two tiles behind high cover? What if you're standing behind a low guard rail that's directly behind high cover? It shows you under low cover when you move to the square, but they have to shoot through high & low to hit you. Do you gain 60% 40% or 20% bonus defence?

Nirgon_sl said:

ya aid protocol is super powerful i learned that later into things, +40 defense after sectopod research + buying gremlin (3?)

I think that equates to a -40% chance to hit? Heh. Correct me if I'm wrong.

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Yes, -40%. It is effectively high cover. In addition, Flash Bangs are -25 to the enemies accuracy, and the disorient effect prevents psionics, as well as halves their movement rate for 2 turns (Which makes it very hard for them to flank you). Early game you should always bring 2 flash bangs and 2 grenades. (Something to note about grenades though is that their damage range isn't a pure roll, it is a 20% chance for +1 damage. So 80% of the time, a grenade will only do 3 damage. I almost never use them for damage for that reason, they are purely to remove cover, I'll sometimes forgo damage on an enemy to get his cover instead.)

Later on, too, capacitor discharge acts as a flash bang (It does between 8-10 damage too) and disorients all organics (Does 50% more to robotic). So end game it's almost always wise to move your specialist last as they can often protect people caught by aid protocol and then disorienting a group of enemies, effectively giving the guy who was left out +65 defense. (Flash bangs have an advantage though in that their radius is bigger and they don't produce friendly fire, so if you're surrounded you can drop a flash right on top of your own troops.)