XCOM2 - Glorious PC Exclusive (for now)

degrassinoel

Yeah it's mostly 2 or 3.. maybe that i get, but it's better than a single shotgun kill and 'untouchable'

Actually, does untouchable only work for the first hit or is it for the entire enemy turn? I'd guess it's just the first one yeah?

Rebel Rebel

1st attack only I think

degrassinoel

makes sense alright, otherwise i'd have 6 rangers out everytime!

KonFusion

Had my first run in with an

Avatar

Didn't do too badly considering skulljacking the codex was my 3rd move, and I'd killed none of the 8 existing enemies those first 3 moves :pac:



Toughest one yet

degrassinoel

lol Rainman!

Rebel Rebel

Vipers, hate those slippery dodging fecks above all others

Nody

Rebel Rebel wrote: »

Vipers, hate those slippery dodging fecks above all others

Much more hate for the codex due to their vortex of doom; I don't mind the damage as much as the effing reload losing me a turn in combat (it should go away for no damage if I kill the damn caster)...

Rebel Rebel

auto-loaders on your guns are your friend when codex are in-play

Nody

Rebel Rebel wrote: »

auto-loaders on your guns are your friend when codex are in-play

I got TWO autoloaders in my full run...

degrassinoel

blackmarket every month for cheap intel cost on sims and weapon parts, actually the blackmarket is just awesome all round if you can afford the intel costs

Shiminay

Just finished it on Veteran. Lost 2 of my best in the last mission and that was a tough one. RIP soldiers!

Had some serious graphical glitches that gave me reason to restart from a save during the last mission, but otherwise it was a very enjoyable experience. I think I would have liked some longer missions maybe. Never faced more than 11 enemies in a mission until the last one and it meant that the last step up of difficulty was pretty rough - you learn just how far your grenades and Super Weapon supplies get you.

Consistent bug: when a Ranger with Bladestorm is grasped by a Viper and the Bladestorm kills the Viper, the Ranger would go into the "bound" animation and never leave it because it can't trigger the "back to normal" animation when the Viper normally releases because of damage taken. Caused a lot of glitching and I think was the source of the graphical issues I experienced on the final mission. Annoying as it would jump the Ranger to their next location and at one stage was showing the model in completely the wrong position and I didn't realise until I saw an enemy meleeing an area where the Ranger wasn't

To counter my previous statements re: snipers - I was awarded a Sharpshooter with rank of Colonel and managed to see the top tier damage output. Yea, I could totally see that being utterly devastating in the right circumstances, but that doesn't seem to be the way I play, so it's a testament to the flexibility of the game I think. I made some great use of Reaper with a Ranger carving my way through clusters of enemies after dropping a big area effect weapon on them, so I suppose it shouldn't take me too much to adjust that tactic for sniper play.

I quite liked getting the commander in as an Avatar for fun. Woulda been pretty OP to have had him for all of the missions post Avatar appearance. I'm quite interested to see the "Terror From The Deep" either expansion or sequel.

Zillah

I think mine was bugged for the final mission. Every time

the reinforcements would portal in

the alien's turn would freeze up for 10 or 20 seconds and they would all just stand near where they

portaled in

. I imagine they're suppose to be attacking and pushing you to the limit?

I'm considering trying an Iron Man run through, but 95% of my reloading was when something bugged out, or I misclicked on the dodgy interface, or when some poorly-described mechanic didn't behave the way I expected it to. I did very little save scumming, I'm not sure it's a polished enough game for something as brutal as Iron Man to work.

Also: did anyone have a bug where after you grabbed an enemy unit with Psi powers or hacking, during the initial ambush attack, that second or third groups of enemies would get activated and the aliens would seem to get two full rounds in a row? Really screwed me over once or twice - the kind of thing that would have me pulling my hair out in Iron Man.

(Amazing game otherwise, loved it)

degrassinoel

I've done ironman, and yeah that last mission was a bitch for bugging

I'd assume it's because of the amount of stuff that's going on and the size of the actual map itself - i think it's the largest one in the whole game.

Ended up dropping the graphics settings a bit and reloading it and it worked okay, got it completed anyway

Nody

Zillah wrote: »

I think mine was bugged for the final mission. Every time

the reinforcements would portal in

the alien's turn would freeze up for 10 or 20 seconds and they would all just stand near where they

portaled in

. I imagine they're suppose to be attacking and pushing you to the limit?

I'm not so sure on this one honestly; I think they may be around simply to aggro as needed and protect

the avatar from you getting in close

. In my case

they all ran to the middle pillar the avatar started on and piled up there with an avatar while another two waves decided to charge me and push in once the pillar was full

.

Also: did anyone have a bug where after you grabbed an enemy unit with Psi powers or hacking, during the initial ambush attack, that second or third groups of enemies would get activated and the aliens would seem to get two full rounds in a row?

That's normal though; once you're spotted they get an activation move (they can only move, can't attack and have 1 action only) which if that ends your turn is then direcly followed by their two turn round. Hence if you hack it as last move they would appear to get two turns in a row.

ancapailldorcha

So what did ye think?

By the way, how hard is it in relation to XCOM? I thought about starting at Commander if I ever get round to playing it.

Also, ta for the spoiler tags.

Zillah

Nody wrote: »

I'm not so sure on this one honestly; I think they may be around simply to aggro as needed and protect

the avatar from you getting in close

. In my case

they all ran to the middle pillar the avatar started on and piled up there with an avatar while another two waves decided to charge me and push in once the pillar was full

.

Yeah yours sounds like it doing what it was supposed to do, or at least trying. Mine was quite buggy, I had to go confront each unit separately, which on a map that big and with the

powers your commander has

made it really easy and time-consuming.

That's normal though; once you're spotted they get an activation move (they can only move, can't attack and have 1 action only) which if that ends your turn is then direcly followed by their two turn round. Hence if you hack it as last move they would appear to get two turns in a row.

No, much more confusing than that. I mean hostile units getting two attacks in a row before I regain control. And doubly weird, if I had a sniper on Kill Zone (where you get one shot at each enemy that moves within the zone), she would shoot at the unit in question twice - once for each of his "turns". So they seemed to get two turns in a row, but we got one double-length turn that over-lapped their two. Very odd behaviour, totally unpredictable. Not a huge deal but if it screwed me over in Iron Man I think I'd throw it out the window.

Nody

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

So what did ye think?

By the way, how hard is it in relation to XCOM? I thought about starting at Commander if I ever get round to playing it.

Also, ta for the spoiler tags.

Assuming you mean the latest X-Com and not the original I'd say harder at the start, same cruising in the middle with more chances you'd get randomly punished (these moments come in two forms; either an change in unit type you're not prepared for or the enemy getting a lucky roll on certain powers at a key moment) and ending being harder.

ancapailldorcha

Nody wrote: »

Assuming you mean the latest X-Com and not the original I'd say harder at the start, same cruising in the middle with more chances you'd get randomly punished (these moments come in two forms; either an change in unit type you're not prepared for or the enemy getting a lucky roll on certain powers at a key moment) and ending being harder.

Yeah, Enemy Unknown & Within.

Ta. Normal/Veteran might be best for a first playthrough.

Zillah

Nody wrote: »

Assuming you mean the latest X-Com and not the original I'd say harder at the start, same cruising in the middle with more chances you'd get randomly punished (these moments come in two forms; either an change in unit type you're not prepared for or the enemy getting a lucky roll on certain powers at a key moment) and ending being harder.

I found XCOM2 to be far harder. Basically, if you don't build a Guerilla Warfare School first (allowing you to unlock the 5th team member), and research Magnetic Weapons ASAP, you're going to be in a world of trouble very quickly. They give you the impression that the world is your oyster, but no matter how well I conducted the battles in my first and second aborted campaigns, without these things I was doomed. I originally went Advanced Warfare Centre first because it seemed like a good way to get soldiers back on their feet quickly, but it's a false economy - better to have 5 team members and kill everything before it can hurt you at all.

Once you do get them asap the game becomes pretty easy. I didn't lose a single soldier and frequently got flawless, but that's also because of earlier paranoia about letting them get injured at all.

There's also a huge amount of luck. Some enemies can RUIN you with a single one of their powers, but for no reason use one of their crappy ones instead - you survive unscathed through sheer chance. I'm looking at you

Gatekeeper with your utterly obscene doom-blast that kills everything and raises a zombie army

.

Nody

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Yeah, Enemy Unknown & Within.

Ta. Normal/Veteran might be best for a first playthrough.

Veteran; helps you get up to speed on the new research, mechanics etc. I tried normal after playing through on Veteran to finish a few achivements and the changes it makes are utterly stupid and arguably makes it harder but not in a challenging way (things such as spawning you right in view of two+ enemy squads etc. because it brings you closer to the target goal, avatar project resetting slower etc. makes things more difficult but not more challenging).

Zillah wrote: »

I found XCOM2 to be far harder. Basically, if you don't build a Guerilla Warfare School first (allowing you to unlock the 5th team member), and research Magnetic Weapons ASAP, you're going to be in a world of trouble very quickly. They give you the impression that the world is your oyster, but no matter how well I conducted the battles in my first and second aborted campaigns, without these things I was doomed. I originally went Advanced Warfare Centre first because it seemed like a good way to get soldiers back on their feet quickly, but it's a false economy - better to have 5 team members and kill everything before it can hurt you at all.

Did the same but the problem with additional team members is that it trivialize battle (gun upgrades are like +1 damage vs. doing another 6 with another team member) in the middle. Agree on the route though and the weapon upgrades being key along with research for radio towers.

There's also a huge amount of luck. Some enemies can RUIN you with a single one of their powers, but for no reason use one of their crappy ones instead - you survive unscathed through sheer chance. I'm looking at you

Gatekeeper with your utterly obscene doom-blast that kills everything and raises a zombie army

.

I found them ok since

all zombies die when you kill the Eye which is done quickly with focused fire

; more annoyed with the Sectopods "Lolololol I go so much armor you can't do **** to me" when they started to appear (still salty over my first encounter with two Rangers, two Specialists who failed at their job and two Sniper squad as all my heavies were out hurt over broken toes).

ancapailldorcha

Nody wrote: »

Veteran; helps you get up to speed on the new research, mechanics etc. I tried normal after playing through on Veteran to finish a few achivements and the changes it makes are utterly stupid and arguably makes it harder but not in a challenging way (things such as spawning you right in view of two+ enemy squads etc. because it brings you closer to the target goal, avatar project resetting slower etc. makes things more difficult but not more challenging).

Did the same but the problem with additional team members is that it trivialize battle (gun upgrades are like +1 damage vs. doing another 6 with another team member) in the middle. Agree on the route though and the weapon upgrades being key along with research for radio towers.

When you say Veteran, do you mean normal, ie one above easy? I wish they'd used less confusing difficulty names as I would normally associate veteran with hard.

Edit, you've corrected your post.

Zillah

Nody wrote: »

more annoyed with the Sectopods "Lolololol I go so much armor you can't do **** to me" when they started to appear (still salty over my first encounter with two Rangers, two Specialists who failed at their job and two Sniper squad as all my heavies were out hurt over broken toes).

Pff, they're easy. Stasis with a Psi Op will put them out of the fight for a turn so you can make sure you can gang up on it the next turn. Even better if you hack it with a Specialist - it's shut down for two (three?) turns, and can take damage. Specialist's zappy power does double to robots and bypasses armour. You can also equip units with armor-piercing ammo.

The main reason they're easy, though, is that their doom attack takes two turns. The

Gatekeeper

can launch it at you the second it has a move.

degrassinoel

Really lucky with a sharpshooter in my latest game - the AWC gave him 'shred' on all sniper rifle shots, does 3 points of shred with a plasma lance

Have him using AP ammo too, so he's annihilating anything with armor

degrassinoel

Figured out what the memoryleak was in the voicepack mods - Turns out the modbuddy was including a 85meg shader with every build - so if you were running a few voicepacks you could have over a gig of random unneccasary shyte being dumped into memory

I've remove the shader content but kept the reference - so it's a 1kb file instead of an 85meg one..

So yeah, ye can run all of these awesome mass effect voicepacks effortlessly now

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=627892339

Keep in mind, it may take a while for that fix to filter through the modding community so i can only guarantee it'll work with this collection of voicepacks.

ancapailldorcha

Mass Effect... voicepacks... Why am I only now becoming aware of this?

degrassinoel

They're really popular on the workshop, far more than i ever imagined they would be - i think in total we had around 40,000 subscribers, that's probably up a bit since the last count as we've been randomly getting page 1,2 and 3 spotlights for at least 1 of the 14 packs on the XCOM2 workshop page for the last few days aswell

degrassinoel

actually streaming a live demo of the voicepacks atm if you're interested

https://youtu.be/3jiEclXQ6VU

Zillah

degrassinoel wrote: »

actually streaming a live demo of the voicepacks atm if you're interested

https://youtu.be/3jiEclXQ6VU

lol stop getting flanked you scrub

degrassinoel

worked out well in the end

BKtje

Finally completed it on Commander Ironman. Was tough, "only" the 29th campaign (though had no run through on easier settings to prepare me for anything). Great game, very enjoyable.

Not sure I'll try legend though... ah who am I kidding, of course I will.

degrassinoel

First dlc announced for next week

'Anarchy's Children', purely aesthetic customisation stuff - if you bought the reinforcement pack you already own it - otherwise it's a fiver.

Apparently it's got over a hundred new things to customise you soldiers with, from hair, to armour, decals, upper/lower face things, helmets, masks etc..

https://xcom.com/news/en-xcom-2-recruits-anarchys-children-on-march-17

if you own the reinforcements pack this is the first of three DLC's Firaxis are making to go with that, considering it was 20quid, i hope they have actual DLC instead of custom stuff that you can get mods for anyway Not sure what to make of it tbh

Nody

They already stated at least one DLC in the summer is suppose to be new missions etc.

degrassinoel

• ANARCHY’S CHILDREN is a rebellion themed DLC featuring more dramatic soldier customizations. (To be released in Spring 2016)

• ALIEN HUNTERS introduces new soldier customizations and gameplay themed around XCOM as an elite alien hunting unit. Face off against “Ruler” aliens with new, more powerful weapons and armor. Experience a new dramatic mission & confrontation. (To be released in Summer 2016)

• SHEN’S LAST GIFT introduces a new soldier class with unique upgradeable weapons, armor and customization features, and a new narrative-driven mission and map. (To be released in Summer 2016)

That's what they've got in the reinforcement pack, but what i'm concerned about is, well, miserly i suppose - but still, 5 quid for the first one, means or should mean the future dlc in the RP is gonna be 7.50 a pop, i'm just curious now if the entire pack will work exactly the same as buying individually or better, i'll have to wait til late summer for that answer i guess :P

BKtje

Have no interest in the first dlc, the second one looks good however and 3rd might be worth it. Will see what I do.

Taking a break from this at the moment and playing the division but will get back around to doing legendary campaign soon enough. Just love this game!

degrassinoel

First major patch is on steam atm

notes below.

Performance

Added Zip Mode gameplay option. While Zip Mode is enabled animation (like step outs & gremlin movements) speeds are significantly increased. Normal movement animations are moderately increased
Fixed an issue where shadow rendering during glam cam shot transitions was slowing down performance
Support for nVidia SLI and AMD Crossfire
Removed MSAA options from default presets and adjusted autodetect to target 40FPS instead of 30FPS
Reworked Light Clipping Manager
Particle Vertex Buffer Reallocation
Optimization to shadows in the Avenger
Enable triple buffering to fix VSync performance
Shadowed light fade out within Avenger; Disabled Post & Pre Mission cinematic lights not being used
Disabled shadow casting from character lights w/in Avenger
Reduced High Shadow Resolution - Reduce shadow resolution when set to HIGH to 1536, instead of 2048
Reduces the impact count of the Avatar Rifle
Removed a hitch that occurs when the camera enables/disables building visualizer
Deferred profile saves to next tick. This prevents multiple calls within the same frame from creating multiple requests to save the profile
After changing graphics settings, based on the selected preset, extra crew will be capped
Character head mesh optimized


Balance



Mimic beacon rebalance: Price increased to 75
Mimic beacons can no longer take cover, and are guaranteed to be hit by enemy shots
Wet Work is no longer retroactive
Graze is no longer a chance for 100% shots. Targets being shot by a concealed attacker cannot dodge
Gameplay

Added a new recommended Steam Controller configuration with support for additional actions
Fixed an issue where VIP units would take damage when their origin location was damaged
Fixed an issue where Promotion Earned text appeared before action is seen on screen
Fixed an issue where civilians pathed to the base of ladders and blocked XCOM units
Fixed an issue where Character Pool choices like Class, Attitude, and props did not save
Fixed an issue where weapons did not keep names and customizations upon tier bump
Fixed an issue causing some scan timers to go into negative time
Engineering items that are full squad upgrades are now designated in the UI
Fixed an issue where strategy project timers reset if players started building a radio relay immediately after making contact with a region
Fixed an issue with POIs not spawning when first visiting the Geoscape if Beginner VO is turned off
Removed start-of-turn hang during certain missions where enemy units had fallen out of the world. Auto-saves (and ironman saves) made in these situations should now be playable
Minimized action camera obstructions
Minimized camera look-at hopping during AI abilities
Fixed an issue where Psi abilities did not trigger death cams
Kill Zone now respects concealment status
Fixed an issue where the Ever Vigilant AWC perk did not work for Sharpshooters
Buildings don't cut down when tabbing through units
Fixed an exploit that skips the AI turn by spamming the END/BACKSPACE button while the Player's last action is being visualized
Rapid Fire and Chain Shot visualization optimized to get the second shot to fire faster
Fixed an issue where shot HUD wings would fail to re-open after taking an action that required the wings to close
Fixed an issue where crit chance would be negatively affected by shots with a success chance greater than 100
Optimized Return Fire hits causing long delays
Optimized AI reveals causing long hangs
Optimized Wait actions causing long timeouts
Optimized falling unit visualization to timeout faster
Updated the Geoscape save description to use the localized HQ time, instead of previously used GMT game time
Fixed an issue with an invalid spawn point on a specific Retaliation mission plot
Destroyed cover does not take reduce % to-hit on enemies
Systems

New option to only use Character Pool creations until the pool is exhausted
Bulletproofing bad saves from causing main menu crashes
Fixed an issue causing hitches in strategy
Fixed an issue where armor customizations did not save


Graphics

Unit Highlighting Flash when targeting units

Multiplayer

MULTIPLAYER: Fixes slow communications with internet players resulting in delays between actions, turns, and end-of-game screen.
Added camera rotation to MP

https://xcom.com/news/en-xcom-2-patch-now-live

thegame983

I really should have finished this before they nerfed the mimic beacon

Cravez

First few campaigns didn't turn out so well since I was getting used to new features of XCOM 2, my current Ironman campaign however is going very well. Psi Operatives are so powerful! I mind controlled an Andromedan for the Codex Coordinates Mission and it pretty much tanked and killed all the Chryssalids on the mission.

ancapailldorcha

Anyone else wondering when AlphaGo will reach the level when it can kick XCOM's arse?

Kiith

The AI already kicks my ass, so let's not have it get any smarter

Cravez

One question in regards XCOM 2, are there potentially an infinite number of Alien Facility spawns? I'm trying to delay the Avatar Project going up as much as possible to try get as much stuff created in Proving Grounds, more Intel for Black Market items etc.

I've been doing really well in missions but the Avatar Project will randomly go up 1 pip a month but sometimes not enough Alien Facility missions to counter balance it.

Also what do the Supply Raid missions reward you with?

BKtje

I think at the end the pips become faster to stop you just leveling/building stuff up so I think eventually you will run out of time.

degrassinoel

Cravez wrote: »

Also what do the Supply Raid missions reward you with?

Alloys, Elerium, and oddly enough... supplies

Cravez

degrassinoel wrote: »

Alloys, Elerium, and oddly enough... supplies

Aha! I was sure that was a given but thought a mission for 'just' supplies was a bit much. Good that you get extra stuff.

degrassinoel

it's dead handy for getting weapon upgrades early on in game, same with the landed UFO's, tonnes of supplies and crafting stuff in them

Nody

Ok, time to resurrect this thread. Is anyone but me disappointed in the mods so far? Yes there are a gazillion and one new customization options and some excellent voice mods (esp. done by boardsies) with the odd new weapon / class (usually OP if class or same weapon with a new skin) and a few map packs or fixing stupid stuff (see evac all, no time waste mods etc.) but where are the new game play mods? I've seen one new monster (released before the game) and that's it; no new monsters, no real changes to behavior or changing the numbers (i.e. it's the standard 9 - 14 every map rather than a mod doubling the numbers but reducing their aim stats etc.) or anything else to give a very new game experience. There are no new research options, no new missions, no new anything (and the Long War team has confirmed they are not doing a Long War mod for XCom2 as they are focusing on their own game instead)... For me this was one of the things I was looking forward to the most with XCom2 and it's vaunted modding possibilities but so far I've not really see anything of note outside of minor cosmetic changes

ancapailldorcha

Anything that big will surely take a lot more time than simple skins and tweaks. We'll get a new Long War soon enough assuming that that's why the Long War crew were hired.

Kiith

Yeah, i'd say you'll be waiting another 6 months or so before any mods that change the mechanics will come out. They'll do the smaller mods while getting to learn the engine and editor, and (hopefully) move onto bigger things. There's so much potential for mods based on other IP's, but we'd have to see how long they'd stay up. I doubt EA would be too keen on a full Mass Effect total conversion.

Patser

Anyone a bit disappointed by it. I've completed one playthrough to finish but haven’t been too pushes since. Performance issues - probably a weak laptop on my part - have played a huge part but I think it's lacking an x factor too.

Maybe it's that the original X Com had that perfrct blend of strategy and nostalgia that made it so great, that having gorged on it the new X Com 2 just doesn't feel a revolutionary, just an improvement.

Patser

Patser wrote: »

Anyone a bit disappointed by it. I've completed one playthrough to finish but haven’t been too pushes since. Performance issues - probably a weak laptop on my part - have played a huge part but I think it's lacking an x factor too.

Maybe it's that the original X Com had that perfrct blend of strategy and nostalgia that made it so great, that having gorged on it the new X Com 2 just doesn't feel a revolutionary, just an improvement.

Took the words right out of my mouth. The mechanics of the game have gotten stale for me. I haven't finished this one and doubt I will.

Nody

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Anything that big will surely take a lot more time than simple skins and tweaks. We'll get a new Long War soon enough assuming that that's why the Long War crew were hired.

Three new XCOM 2 mods have been announced by Long War Studios, as part of the company’s recent partnership with 2K, during the Firaxis Megapanel at PAX South 2016. But Long War Studios isn’t planning to create a new iteration of the massively popular Long War mod anytime soon.

Source here.

The point being; even minor tweaks to increase number of units on the map with reduced health and aim are not in the game (there are already mods that reduce/increase health, aim etc. on NPCs so taking it to the next step does not seem major). Or reskin existing models with tweaked weapons (multiple shots, lower damage) etc. My point being the game has been out now for two months and I'm not even seen a hint of anything like that and I've had no real wish to replay the whole game either because there will not be any difference in the game compared to my first run through.