XCOM: Enemy Within

Yeah, I've had a couple lucky ones, like I didn't think bullet swarm would be very good on an assault, but it's been quite handy. Heavies without bullet swarm, on the other hand, really suck. Tempted to make the slingshot dude a mech just to save him from that awful build.

While there are a few abilities like bullet swarm, heat ammo, low profile, that are nice to have, there's also quite a few that are useless and the classes that usually get those tend to be weaker without them. And it's really hard to get stuff you need like field medic and lightning reflexes. I mean, do you want to be able to get an extra shot, or do a little more damage, or have a support that can carry 4 medkits that heal for 10, plus 3 arc thrower shots (for MEC healing/Drone Cap).

As for making Zhang a MEC, I wouldn't recommend it. Because of the way the math works with the MECs damage reduction abilities, Zhang's high hp is actually a detriment. In a fully upgraded MEC suit he has 30 health. So, the first shot he takes is 9-10 damage, and if he takes a second it's like 7. That's ~15-17 damage. If you gave him a defenders medal and have savior, it's still more than 1 medikit to heal him to full from two shots, more than 2 if you don't have savior and the medal. If you MEC's health is in the low to mid 20's they get hit for 7-8 then 5-6.

Training roulette is the only thing that actually makes this replayable for 2-3 more plays for me, and I always got a real medic out of it. If a soldier ends up useless due to random abilities, discard or mec it. It's not like you can only make 6 Colonels before the alien base ship assault.

you get some flat out awesome soldiers out of this, I had a heavy with bullet swarm AND holo targeting and an assault with Low profile, really good stuff

Necro time

Long War atXCOMEnemy Unknown Nexus - mods and community

I played the long war back for EU and it was pretty basic, looks as though they've gotten a ton more ambitious for the EW version. Probably fire it up tonight and see how it goes, but it looks pretty crazy.

You can watch Beaglerush stream Long War on Thursday nights here:

Twitch

Gavinrad_sl said:

Necro time

Long War atXCOMEnemy Unknown Nexus - mods and community

I played the long war back for EU and it was pretty basic, looks as though they've gotten a ton more ambitious for the EW version. Probably fire it up tonight and see how it goes, but it looks pretty crazy.

Click to expand...

This looks awesome. Will probably grab it sooner or later. Thanks for sharing.

First report: what an assbeating of a mod. On the home stretch of Portent (the first mission of the second DLC pack) and I'm thinking about starting over with both DLC turned off. I'm only playing on classic (Normal/Classic/Brutal/Impossible) ironman, so I can't imagine how you make it through Portent on Impossible, even abusing the fuck out of the scripted NPC spawns. Doesn't help that I didn't have a non-fatigued engineer or rocketeer to bring with me, I should have just exhausted one. Shiv bonus defense got nerfed pretty hard too it seems.

An assbeating of a mod about sums it up. I'm struggling even n the normal difficulty, but the tweaks are so worth it as it's really well done.

My only complaint so far is within 1-2 UFO sighting/shoot downs, the next pretty much 2-3 shot my ships and then with none left alive destroy satellite's and too expensive to make more. Not sure how to play it differently given I haven't even gotten to a point to begin researching any weaponry/flight weapons etc

Yeah I've actually put things on hold until beta 10 rolls out. Beta 9 can't be finished, aside from the wildly overbalanced Exalt missions, there is a bug where the Overseer is automatically destroyed when you shoot it down. Beta 10 looks pretty fucking ambitious on top of what they've already done.

Beta 10 (unreleased) Patch notes

NEW FEATURES:
- Before most missions you will receive some general information on the type of map you'll be on. This won't apply on council missions.
- Many new types and classes of weapons will be available, including a line of Marksman rifles (for scouts and snipers), machine pistols, submachineguns, battle rifles and LMGs. Scatter Blaster and Reflex Cannon will no longer be foundry projects but distinct weapons. MECs will have access to laser weapons, and SHIVs a new laser weapon. The Arc Rifle (with Disabling Shot perk) and a sawed-off shotgun (equippable in pistol slot) will also be available. These will use existing models, but they will be sized differently than other weapons of the same "look." LMGs and Marksman's and Strike Rifles can shoot 5 tiles beyond visual range (M&S Rifles require Sniper's Squadsight and are only weapon that can react beyond visual range; LMGs grant squadsight to Gunner when equipped)
- A more involved encumbrance system will now be in use. The net effect is that some powerful and large small items will impose larger movement penalties on soldiers, and you can gain mobility by taking no small item at all. In general, you will be trading off mobility, offense and defense when you equip items. Some extant items balanced against new standards.
- Added Ready for Anything (overwatch after firing if you didn't move) and Paramedic (free action to use medikit once per turn) perks
- You now receive feedback on panic rolls and help from Steadfast perk
- You now can see who is on overwatch
- Added a bunch of soldier heads
- Exposed Red Fog penalties to DGC.ini for player modding
- New Items: Reinforced Armor, Chameleon Suit, MEC Battle Computer, Fuel Cell
- Keybinds Alt-1 through Alt-8 select individual soldiers
- Made some changes to weapon ranges. Shotguns, pistols and machine pistols now capped at 2/3 visual range. (Gunslinger now provides +1 pistol damage and pushes most sidearms to visual range). Jaeger and Pathfinder can have Squadsight at Master Sergeant, allowing shots for 5 tiles beyond visual range.

BALANCING:
- Spaced out early Drone DR upgrades
- Spaced out EXALT trooper upgrades
- Scaled back pace of difficulty increase of Exalt missions
- Sniper Rifles and Marksman Rifles will have much greater aim falloff at close ranges
- Adjusted several perk trees
- Ignored UFOs raise panic by 2 (just like damaged ones), so there's no reason to game the system by quick-intercepting/retreating UFOs
- Adjusted panic rolling so the chances of catastrophic panic outcomes are lower, but panic remains a problem for longer in the campaign. You will now get some onscreen feedback about your panic rolls.
- HEAT Ammo perk now only applies to your primary weapon.
- Using training roulette means you no longer get stat bonuses from specific perk selections
- Eliminated multi-country Exalt clues, meaning it's gonna take awhile to find their base
- Lock N' Load now grants +1 ammo in all cases, and if you take it as a perk ability, using reload as your first action does not end your turn
- Adjusted Diminishing Returns SW option to be compatible with LW
- Red Fog aim penalty capped at -40 instead of -50.
- NSLW: Increased threshold forXCOMHQ Assault to occur
- Captured plasma weapons may no longer be used directly byXCOM; instead they are necessary forXCOMto construct their own plasma weapons of any type
- Significant increases in many mid/late game research times and engineer requirements
- Foundry buildable at start
- New foundry project to unlock air consumables, available at alien materials. UFO Tracking (Boost) unlocked with project; Aim and Dodge unlocked with project and prior techs. Some changes to costs of all consumables.

BUGFIXES:
- Fixed: You can now shoot down the Overseer instead of just blowing it up
- Fixed: Ghost Grenade, Psi Shield, Neural Gunlink will now be equippable by psis
- Fixed: Laser and Pulse carbine strat game texts
- Fixed: Borked Phalanx/Carapace and other decos
- Attempted fix: Altitude strings being buggy; shortened to NOE (old Low), Low (old High) and High (old Very High/Suborbital)
- Attempted fix: Intact UFO Power Supplies blowing up after a turn
- Fixed: Acidized rocketeer fires shredder rocket and gets shredded effect
- Fixed: You can't sell "rebuild SHIV" projects in the Gray Market
- Fixed: Bugged settings for alien upgrades; they should scale properly with difficulty now
- Attempted Fix: Rapid Fire does not work on Carbine weapons
- Attempted Fix: Certain items applying Alien Grenade charges
- Attempted Fix: Ammo Conservation failing sporadically with soldiers
- Fixed: Seekers re-strangling targets when they should be running away.
- Fixed: Seeker AI also trying to cloak repeatedly when in range of battlescanner. Reported CTDs possibly related to this (or vanilla bug)
- Fixed: Suppression bugfixes leaving space formerly occupied by suppressor closed off and interfering with sightlines
- Fixed: Should be able to equip advanced MEC weapons now
- Fixed: Soldiers should properly load saved loadouts during alien base assault
- Attempted fix: Satellites being randomly shot down with no visible hunt mission at end of month
- Attempted fix: Implemented updated pod randomization code to eliminate bad spawns and mix up the altitude an alien will appear at on multi-level maps
- Fixed: SCOPE upgrade bonus not appearing for SCOPES in crit line items (but is appearing for laser sights)
- Fixed: Rush-building a Foundry project initially displays the wrong (unrushed) time in the upcoming events list.
- Fixed: Rush-building a facility is confusing. In the upcoming events list, it displays the full time required to build, which then decrements twice as fast. In the facilities UI, it is displayed correctly.
- Fixed: Proportional meld on rush build projects not working
- Fixed: "Click to remove" option in gene lab (after picking a gene mod, and then trying to remove it) doesn't remove the gene mod from your queue
- Fixed: Covert operative loadout doesn't report hp bonuses from covert ops armor/plating items
- Fixed: You sometimes have a "build the arc thrower" objective after building an arc thrower
- Fixed: Removed Neural Damping from aliens (was causing lockups)
- Fixed: Animations firing at odd times when using certain carbines

ISSUES:

Confirmed (Major):

Reported (Major):
- Escort missions Carlock, Thorne, presumably Van Dorn, Anna Sing and Zhang) escort missions bugged; -- they appear to get extra hp that can't be healed (doesn't have a box around it), and sometimes wounded/poisoned escortees prevent completion of the mission, even when it should be. Appears to be vanilla bug?
- Vanilla bug of all construction stopping when Skyranger is airborne, at least provide a warning?
- Cyberdisc death blossom sometimes seems to get confused by soldier altitude
- Hang during alien movement duringXCOMHQ assault
- CTD during MEC equipping
- Automatic success on 19 successive psi trainings
- Sporadic reports of council becoming stuck on a specific item request, making it over and over
- Psi soldiers can select neural damping

Display / Informational / interface only Issues
- Council nation left UI popup not showing lost countries 9+ in the lights
- With smoke grenade perk, smoke grenade counter doesn't decrement immediately after use, any refresh action will update
- Interceptor Rename button doesn't work with gamepad controllers
- Some controllers don't work with expanded perk tree interface
- Suppressing soldier vocalization is that they are being suppressed (connected to suppression/break cover change?). Occurs in female soldiers, in English and German (and possibly others)

Whenever they are ready to print money they can go ahead and release the alien homeworld invasion DLC

Is the game much different now than when this first came out (Enemy Within)? I remember the mechs being pretty strong and with all the upgrades you could just steamroll the whole game.

The base game hasn't changed at all, and tbh Enemy Within didn't really change anything over Enemy Unknown. On higher difficulties once you make it past the extremely rough opening couple months, you pretty much just cruise through the rest of the game as long as you don't run into any disasters. Aside from adding a great deal of complexity to the game, Long War also tries to even out the difficulty curve so that you're getting a good fight the entire playthrough.

I've made multiple tries to give the originalXComa shot, but the interface is just so janky it's nearly impossible to get into it if you didn't play it when it first came out.

The key issue I had with this game was the rapidly declining difficulty curve. Impossible is murder in the first few missions, but if you manage to beeline to a light plasma rifle the high damage and +10 aim makes the game a walk in the park because you will always hit and always kill. Especially once you increase the squad size from 4 to 6 (while enemy squad size remains at 3). The mech and OP augs only amplified this problem.

What is it Long War does to fix this?

Well I haven't gotten a Long War playthrough into midgame yet because I'm waiting for Beta 10 but from reading notes and watching some I/I long war videos, they've done a lot. Randomized pod placement, randomized pod size, even randomized pod composition. For example, drones were significantly buffed durability wise, and you'll randomly get one attached to a sectoid pod starting very early in the game. You'll also start encountering mutons much earlier in the game, but instead of an all muton pod which would be game over, you'll get a single muton mixed into a pod. Pods can have a 'leader', which is a significantly buffed version of the basic troop. Aliens and Exalt also get tougher as you progress through the game, and I don't just mean you encounter tougher alien types, but that they actually have the rough equivalent of research levels that makes all aliens more dangerous as time goes by.

You actually start with squad size six and can eventually increase it to eight in Long War. Large maps tend to play somewhat similarly to basicXCombecause you have room to maneuver, but it's extremely difficult to get flanks in smaller maps because of the risk of activating another pod.

Honestly there's so many changes it's practically a new game, like trying to explain the difference between Arma and Day-Z.

Long War atXCOMEnemy Unknown Nexus - mods and community

Gavinrad_sl said:

You actually start with squad size six and can eventually increase it to eight in Long War. Large maps tend to play somewhat similarly to basicXCombecause you have room to maneuver, but it's extremely difficult to get flanks in smaller maps because of the risk of activating another pod.

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This is the best way to explain it, the mod brings Enemy Within closer to what the originalXCOMwas like. Modded is unsupported out of the box though so they're doing a lot of hack job stuff with hex editors and a UE disassembler to create all this stuff so there are lots of problems that crop up.

I read in the Nexus thread for development that they're trying to give squadsight to the aliens...specifically Thin Men. Not unlimited range like how players have it due to design limitations but it should still be pretty damn ugly to run into.

Sounds dope, time to re-install.

It'll probably make me sad how far Divinity:OS/Shadowrun is fromXCom.

Also, just remembered after talking to Nirgon,XCOM(expansion + all 3 DLC -- everything except the base game) is 14.99 on steam sale right now. It's 24.99 for everything + the base game.

Are there any other working mods for the expansion? Looking at the nexus, almost all that I've tried to install don't fully work which is really disappointing. Such a great shell to work with

k^M_sl said:

Are there any other working mods for the expansion? Looking at the nexus, almost all that I've tried to install don't fully work which is really disappointing. Such a great shell to work with

Click to expand...

I didn't have any problems when the expansion first came out, iirc most of the mods say what they will/won't work with.

Beta 10 is live, go go go!