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Hra Mormo
Mar 6, 2008

The Internet Man
So am I the only one who gets to the point where you have a psi operative or three and you just need to shoot down the Overseer UFO, or possibly already have. From there it's a matter of building the Gollop Chamber and doing the last mission. I just can't bring myself to finish the game when I get to this point. It just feels like a foregone conclusion that you're going to win. The only remotely challenging part of the game left at that point is the possible Battleship and the increasing amount of sectopods in terror missions, which you can just ignore anyway because you have more money in the bank than you've spent over the course of the entire game and plenty of ticks left on the doomclock. At this point I just tend to start a new game instead of going through what I experience as the chore of finishing a won game. I know I should just do whatever the gently caress I personally want to do with my free time playing a videogame, but it's also abit anticlimactic.

I've been playing C/I so far, I've been trying to get into impossible to keep things interesting for longer, but it seems one of the first 5 missions always has an overlapped spawn (the one thing I really wish they removed by the way) and I just can't get through that situation with just a couple squaddies with no upgrades. My latest game was probably the most egregious example where I pulled back into a strong defensive position when it happened. Sectoid comes in view to full cover, 4 overwatches miss. Sectoid misses but completely destroys the full cover a guy was behind. Second sectoid moves in and kills the now exposed soldier. The exact same thing happens to another soldier. Third soldier just gets sniped from full cover by the 5th sectoid.

The surviving soldier got out with 1 health left. I made her into a MEC and the next mission was Portent. Where 3 missed 70%+ shots leads to a Thin Man shooting back and immediately critting her. I've never even seen a MEC get critted through their passive before.

:xcom:

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cyberbug
Sep 30, 2004

The name is Carl Seltz...
insurance inspector.

Cathair posted:

The first map type you describe isn't really a 'stealth' map unless you choose to play it that way. I always assumed that my saboteur would be in deep if he triggered an EXALT squad, so I always had him hole up and wait while the extraction squad blasted their way over to him, then covered him while he hacked the beacons.
I once hacked the beacons with a mimetic skin operative with everyone else just chilling at the Skyranger and got out without anyone firing a shot. I expected some cool achievement but instead got just a terrible evaluation for not killing anyone :(

VDay
Jul 2, 2003

I'm Pacman Jones!

Hra Mormo posted:

So am I the only one who gets to the point where you have a psi operative or three and you just need to shoot down the Overseer UFO, or possibly already have. From there it's a matter of building the Gollop Chamber and doing the last mission. I just can't bring myself to finish the game when I get to this point. It just feels like a foregone conclusion that you're going to win.

Yeah that's a pretty common occurence/complaint. I think I've only ever actually beaten the game like 3-4 times despite the hundred+ games I've played at this point. You either screw something up early and die, or you get past the beginning, stabilize in the middle, and cruise to the end. One of the goals of Long War is to adjust that difficulty curve so it goes from easy->challenging->hard as you go along. Haven't gotten to the endgame yet so can't tell you how successful they've been, but it seems pretty good so far. The early missions are fairly easy, but it's mainly due to having 6 guys. I can bring 7 along at this point with an 8th unlocking soon, but I can see it getting significantly harder when I start facing things with more HP that won't get one/two-shot by my lasers.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
I just found out you can add more names to the default pool for missions, which is cool. Doubt anything I can add is ever going to top the game ending mission I had titled "Hot Tears" though.

Moochewmoo
May 13, 2009
I'm not sure if this even remotely interests anyone but right now on the humble store there is a game called "Breach and Clear" for Android OS. It's kinda of a turn based tactics game with soldier classes, door breaching, and turns though I think they're simultaneous as the bad dudes. I dunno it's fun when I want to kill time somewhere and a little X COM sounds good. I'm playing on a Note 3 right now and a stylus is helpful, I might try it on my old Droid and see how it plays.

Kooriken
Dec 27, 2012

This thread is beneath my talent, but I....shall elevate it.
Playing a Training Roulette run and my Sniper gets an upgrade choice between Close Combat Specialist and Revive. :cripes:

Iretep
Nov 10, 2009
I'm never doing a training roulette run ever again myself. It's really rare that youll not roll a bunch of overwatch or other complete garbage skills on everyone. The mod that reveals the training roulette skill tree hasn't been updated either.

VDay
Jul 2, 2003

I'm Pacman Jones!
I don't know, I absolutely love TR and can't wait for it to be fixed in the next Long War patch. Yeah you get the occasional lose-lose choice, but I still like that it adds variety to the game and makes soldiers feel unique instead of just being the same exact squad sight sniper or lightning reflexes assault or bullet swarm heat ammo heavy every single game. It's part of what makes vanilla EW endgame so boring, because you inevitably pick what abilities you like the most and then don't really have a reason to do otherwise.

TR actually forces you to take some of the abilities that aren't really that bad but never get used because they're matched up with way better abilities, which in turn sometimes makes you play differently in order to take advantage of said abilities. And getting a bad ability isn't really all that bad because chances are you got at least 2-3 other super useful abilities that you might not have had on that soldier anyway to balance it out. Plus, getting a bad/useless ability or two is all worth it for the time that the stars align and you get a ridiculous super soldier that breaks the game a month in.

VDay fucked around with this message at 14:06 on Mar 8, 2014

Jack Trades
Nov 30, 2010

I want to play XCOM but since the last patch, ToolBoks stopped working and I can't play without it anymore. :(

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused

Iretep posted:

I'm never doing a training roulette run ever again myself. It's really rare that youll not roll a bunch of overwatch or other complete garbage skills on everyone. The mod that reveals the training roulette skill tree hasn't been updated either.

I've played with TR a ton and literally never had this happen. You just have to accept that sometimes you're gonna get a guy that has suboptimal skills. Which, if you're playing with TR, you should expect that in the first place. Each class retains enough of their original skills that its impossible for a class to be completely useless unless you skip those, and you'd only do that if they had something really good available or you're just crazy.

The only thing I would add to it would be a gene mod that lets you spend meld to respec a character. Would be nice if you realize they had a skill that would of worked really well if you'd known about it. Letting you see the whole tree from the start would be awful though. Then you just weed through the rookies based on who gets the most broken set.

NihilVerumNisiMors
Aug 16, 2012

Jack Trades posted:

I want to play XCOM but since the last patch, ToolBoks stopped working and I can't play without it anymore. :(

Me too. :smith::hf::smith:

Doesn't look like we'll get an update any time soon.

DMW45
Oct 29, 2011

Come into my parlor~
Said the spider to the fly~
So, did they ever make Long War work with EW? I kinda wanted to try it, but I didn't find out about it until after EW hit and I had bought it.

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

Yeah they just put out a working beta of it. From watching Beaglerush stream it a lot of it looks interesting, a lot just looks tedious. If there was something halfway between vanilla EW and Long War I'd try it.

jng2058
Jul 17, 2010

We have the tools, we have the talent!





That was my problem with Long War back in EU. I loved a lot of the features...starting with six soldiers, moving to eight, the sub-classes, the extra gear, etc...but it just takes too drat long. I mean, yes, I know The Long War is the point and the parts I like just the gravy, but man I wish there was a way to get the goodies without having to play forever to get them.

Hopeford
Oct 15, 2010

Eh, why not?

jng2058 posted:

That was my problem with Long War back in EU. I loved a lot of the features...starting with six soldiers, moving to eight, the sub-classes, the extra gear, etc...but it just takes too drat long. I mean, yes, I know The Long War is the point and the parts I like just the gravy, but man I wish there was a way to get the goodies without having to play forever to get them.

There is a second wave option in Long War that's basically "short war" so that might be what you are looking for. It doesn't make combat any shorter from what I noticed, but development times and all seem much better.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
Playing with more than 6 soldiers sounds like a big pain. The game is really built around small squads that work efficiently. Hell I'm doing a 4 man run and its surprising how even in the lategame my squad still feels like it take on most enemies and that bringing along more soldiers would just weigh them down.

Part of me wants to try a strategy of giving a rookie all the +health items and just dragging him along as a sacrificial lamb for when I get in a really bad situation.

EDIT: Also some people were talking about endgame fatigue earlier, and for me a big contributing factor to that is the lack of variety in lategame missions. All UFOs follow the same design. For medium and small ones, this doesn't matter since the vast majority of your mission is working your way through the surrounding landscape to attack the UFO. With large UFOs and barges, you spend nearly the entire mission in the UFO itself, which is always the same in terms of layout. Things quickly become repetitive when you're blasting your way through the same metal corridors, and its not like you have any options in how to assault it either. With barges you go up the middle ramps or come in from the front, because anything else is suicide. With large ones you just enter through the back because you always spawn there.

They added a lot of cool maps in EW, I'm sad they didn't add any new UFO designs to spice up the late game.

Internet Kraken fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Mar 8, 2014

legoman727
Mar 13, 2010

by exmarx
Yeah, I'm hesitant to try Long War (going to finish my Impossible run first) but it seems that the pace is a bit too brutal to the point where Beagle had to keep at least 4 full squads due to the fatigue bullshit combining with the constant swarm of missions. And then he got a landed Abductor in March with Cryssalids and Floaters :gonk: Are fatigue times lower on lower difficulties?

DMW45
Oct 29, 2011

Come into my parlor~
Said the spider to the fly~

RBA Starblade posted:

Yeah they just put out a working beta of it. From watching Beaglerush stream it a lot of it looks interesting, a lot just looks tedious. If there was something halfway between vanilla EW and Long War I'd try it.

Where do you get it at, then? I tried the Nexus, but it lists it as incompatible with EW

SixFigureSandwich
Oct 30, 2004
Exciting Lemon
Finally, my first X-Xom base defense!

First impression: that's a shitton of aliens :stare: (two mectoids, two muton berserkers, a sectoid, a muton, and two chryssalids)

I start with my Colonel Sniper, a decent Heavy, my last Mec, and of course the base security people. My first concern is the two Mectoids. I damage one and my sniper disables it, but the other immediately murders my Mec. Not a good start. However, base security manages to get some hits on various targets of opportunity, and the first wave of reinforcements is headed by Mad Dog the assault. I clean up and get people to reload when three Cyberdisks float in. Luckily, they all clump together near one of the bottom entrances and my Heavy has a Shredder rocket :clint:

Last alien wave is disposed of easily, and I'm going to get my base back.

dogstile
May 1, 2012

fucking clocks
how do they work?

legoman727 posted:

Yeah, I'm hesitant to try Long War (going to finish my Impossible run first) but it seems that the pace is a bit too brutal to the point where Beagle had to keep at least 4 full squads due to the fatigue bullshit combining with the constant swarm of missions. And then he got a landed Abductor in March with Cryssalids and Floaters :gonk: Are fatigue times lower on lower difficulties?

I'm on classic long war and i've got 3 squads. I like that i'm switching between all of these people though. You end up keeping your officers alive and sending your rookies out to spot/die as most units can't go above a certain level unless you make them into an officer (smart use of the medal system there) and you get limited slots. The officer training school is also linked to training ranks, so you need to train up a lot of troops anyway, so it helps you more than hurts you.

I never felt like I had a shortage of good troops anyway, the first officer rank can reduce the fatigue day by 1 and you can take fatigued troops to battle if say, portent comes up and all your good troops are fatiqued. You just have to accept they'll need more time to be ready to battle again after.

Chryssalids aren't that horrid when you have six guys though to be honest, you can hit em with a rocket and then you have a good five dudes to shoot the rest of the health down. I took down four from full health with just six guys (with ballistics) by putting my close combat specialist shotgunner at the front, killing three, hurting one and letting the close combat shoot the fourth. Its been pretty ok and losing people isn't the end of the world.

I've also had brilliant tactical situations when i've just taken rookies and barely pulled through (rookie at one health, he dodged the last shot while he was flanked and finished off the floater the next go). Its definitely shaken it up enough that i'm loving it.

VDay
Jul 2, 2003

I'm Pacman Jones!
Yeah the fatigue system isn't really that bad and adds a lot to the game I think. I have about 30 guys that I actually use instead of just powerleveling the same 6, and the fatigue system actually makes you think carefully about who you want to send instead of always sending the same 6. Do I send my badass infantry guy on this easy mission or save him in case something bigger comes up? Do I even take a 7th or 8th guy and leave myself with that many fewer choices on the next mission? Do you try to get your highest leveled guy all the kills so he levels up or do you spread it out amongst the rookies so that you have more options for future missions?

It actually feels like resource management and natural progression rather than watching your group of 6 soldiers go from pretty good to unstoppable killing machines in a couple of months. It also adds yet another role for SHIVs, since you can now send them on the easier missions and save your lower ranked guys for when you'll need something more than just guys that overwatch/shoot. I can see why the fatigue system would be annoying to some people, but I'm the kind of guy that would pick out 6 soldiers at the beginning and just use them the whole game, so it adds a nice variety that wasn't in the game before.

The only real bummer is that the game doesn't have any kind of 'Save Squad' feature, so that you have to clear the skyranger and then re-add everyone every mission.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
Finally done with my 4 man playthrough. Beat the final mission with what I felt was the most appropriate 4 man squad;



I decided Bradford would be the volunteer because he was by far the worst squad member, failing 70+ accuracy shots on a regular basis. Originally I was worried that none of them would be psi capable, which could've been a problem given that I hadn't trained any backups aside from one guy I used for covert ops. Of course they all ended up psi capable. This wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be either. Just further cemented my opinion that Heavy is the best class.

Still want to do one more classic game before trying impossible to wrap up some achievements. Is there some easy way to get 80 scientists I'm not aware of? All of my games end with only like 40 scientists. I would have to sit around waiting through several months just to get up to 80 and that sounds boring as hell.

Brainamp
Sep 4, 2011

More Zen than Zenyatta

Internet Kraken posted:

Still want to do one more classic game before trying impossible to wrap up some achievements. Is there some easy way to get 80 scientists I'm not aware of? All of my games end with only like 40 scientists. I would have to sit around waiting through several months just to get up to 80 and that sounds boring as hell.

Cheat. :v:

Honestly, cheevos like that aren't linked to a difficulty level. So just run through on easy or normal and pick scientists for every abduction reward or something.

Hopeford
Oct 15, 2010

Eh, why not?
Yeah, I think Long War just isn't for me. It's incredibly well done, but I'm just not having much fun with it. It's certainly more difficult and way more deep than vanilla but...well, at the risk of committing strategy-game-blasphemy, it kind of bores me. I enjoy the more difficult fights, but I also disliked a number of changes they did. Overall it's a great mod, but I just can't get into it. I also dislike the larger squad size for no logical reason whatsoever. I really like that you can sell meld though.

Then again maybe my tastes are just weird. If it was up to me, I would just want a mod that gets Exalt Plasma Weapons, assault soldiers(even if that would be unfair as hell) and stuff like that.

Spiffo
Nov 24, 2005


Doctor, you may want to exercise restraint when using explosives.

Spiffo fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Mar 8, 2014

Shyfted One
May 9, 2008
How often is Long War updated? I'd like to give the beta a try, but if the game takes as long as people are saying then am I better off waiting a few days/week? And what difficulty do people recommend playing Long War on?

Saith
Oct 10, 2010

Asahina...
Regular Penguins look just the same!
Long War feels to me like those mods for Total War that, though they add tons of cool stuff, do stupid poo poo like make peasants take ten turns to train just to stretch the game out and make it into a grind.

dogstile
May 1, 2012

fucking clocks
how do they work?
Hah, i've actually started using shivs in long war because they seem to only take 3 or so damage when they get hit. I'll protect them over rookies though, because shivs are more expensive to replace.

VDay
Jul 2, 2003

I'm Pacman Jones!

Shyfted One posted:

How often is Long War updated? I'd like to give the beta a try, but if the game takes as long as people are saying then am I better off waiting a few days/week? And what difficulty do people recommend playing Long War on?

I don't know if they've announced a strict release schedule or anything, but the EW version came out very recently so they're still mostly in the bug fixing stage, although there's already a giant laundry list of things fixed/added/changed in the upcoming 3rd beta. There's stuff being added to it daily, and they could probably release it at any point. I'm assuming they're either waiting to fix some big issue(s) or just want to add some more stuff to make each release more substantial. Either way it's probably safe to assume that you'll have to start a game over multiple times in the next couple of months while they iron everything out and get the balance down. As for difficulty, I found Classic to be pretty good for a first run. LW's difficulties are Normal, Classic, Brutal, and Impossible, and I think Classic hits a decent spot for 'Familiar with EW but want to learn how all the LW features work'.

Saith posted:

Long War feels to me like those mods for Total War that, though they add tons of cool stuff, do stupid poo poo like make peasants take ten turns to train just to stretch the game out and make it into a grind.4

I know what you mean, but I think the difference is that Long War actually is a cohesive overhaul that tries to provide a balanced experience. So those annoying changes that might seem to just make things longer or harder are at least attempting to provide some sort of gameplay balance rather than reflecting some weird personal tick that the main modder decides he wants in the game. It's not like X3 or Mount & Blade mods that are done by weird sperglords who think a quality of life feature breaks their precious immersion so they remove it without thinking about how it affects gameplay.

VDay fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Mar 9, 2014

TheCosmicMuffet
Jun 21, 2009

by Shine
I don't think it makes a ton of sense to criticize long war on the basis of grind. Xcom is about playing tactical battles that are randomly generated, basically. Not about completing the loop where you win the strategic layer. I've played a ton of games, and I often complete one only to start another immediately. I don't want the tactical battles to ever be boring, but aside from that, it's basically all I'm there for; trying different weapons and tactics against the evil alien oppressors. Filthy swine that they are.

Making the game longer and with a higher frequency of tactical battles just enhances that feature of the game.

I think they got the right mix.

Perhaps the longishness of the long war's one problem is that the items you can take into the tactical battle don't vary a whole lot for a long time, while you gradually research and build the facilities you need to get different weapon loadouts. So you do end up looking at the same choices for a while. But those choices are so much more deep and interesting than in the vanilla game, so it compensates somewhat.

The only thing I don't like about it is that they aren't balancing around Xcom's mechanics very well. They treat the various 'options' of grenades and buffs and so forth like they're built in a game where +1 makes a difference, and admittedly, it does more often, since they're randomizing more parts of the game, but the end result is that 1 health or extra crit, or an extra shot before reloading often come across as being a complete wash in terms of your approach to the tactics. What you want is for these choices to *change* your tactical options, not just come out in the wash as a shim that slightly improves your odds of success over multiple games.

VDay
Jul 2, 2003

I'm Pacman Jones!
Also worth pointing out that Long War opens up a lot of the maps for abduction missions that normally wouldn't be available because they're reserved for terror missions or other mission types, so the slower, longer pace of the game is balanced out a bit by you not just playing on the same 3 maps for 4 months. UFO maps are still the same I think which is unfortunate, but there's only so much you can do by loving with config files and not having any actual mod tools.

Zore
Sep 21, 2010
willfully illiterate, aggressively miserable sourpuss whose sole raison d’etre is to put other people down for liking the wrong things
I think my only real issue with Long War is that a lot of the 'new' classes just feel like gimpy half classes while others get tones of great perks.

Take the Gunner who still gets saddled with poo poo accuracy, loses the rocket, loses Bulletswarm and mostly gets to pick through bunch of second tier perks. Versus something like the Sniper, who has almost all the same perk options as vanilla with the addition of other options and Squadsight at Squaddie. And the ability to take Snap Shot later, exclusive access to disarming shot etc. Or the bizarre decision to make 8 MEC classes with wildly all over the place Perks that are almost all exactly the same just at different tiers.

I dunno. I also really don't like how some skills are on loving everyone (Rapid Fire, Vital Point Targeting, Bring Em On, Lone Wolf) while a lot of the better skills from the original campaign are absent even as capstones. Would it have killed game balance to give Infantry Bulletswarm at Colonel instead of Rapid Fire like the Assault, Gunner and Scout also have the option for? Why is Flush on one class when everyone seems to have Resiliance/extra conditioning as filler?

Zore fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Mar 9, 2014

Zokalwe
Jul 27, 2013
Just started a Long War campaign, I have barely scratched the surface but for now it seems really cool. Finding out that they had randomized grenade damage was pretty painful. Here goes one of the last certainties I could cling to in a world of unfair randomness. :xcom:

To those more advanced in this mod, have they achieved their goal to offer a mid/late-game that is less of a non-stop humiliation of the aliens? How do the difficulty levels compare to the ones from XCOM vanilla? I started in Classic, don't know if I should have been more daring. For now I'd say the difficulty is okay but when my most experienced soldiers are on the field I get this vibe of "let's rape the aliens" that I had in the end of Xcom C/I.

dogstile
May 1, 2012

fucking clocks
how do they work?
It'll get so much harder, I just had a series of 6 missions in about 3 days. That was everyone in my barracks fatigued. Made for some interesting choices later on.

Ravenfood
Nov 4, 2011

Zore posted:

I dunno. I also really don't like how some skills are on loving everyone (Rapid Fire, Vital Point Targeting, Bring Em On, Lone Wolf) while a lot of the better skills from the original campaign are absent even as capstones. Would it have killed game balance to give Infantry Bulletswarm at Colonel instead of Rapid Fire like the Assault, Gunner and Scout also have the option for? Why is Flush on one class when everyone seems to have Resiliance/extra conditioning as filler?
I agree that the MEC classes are really poorly thought out and need to be condensed to maybe 4 MECs, if not fewer. But, well, as to infantry getting bulletstorm at colonel, that wouldn't work too well since they start with it. :v: For some reason, some skills are renamed without any change to functionality at all.

edit: And if you're not really up on the resource/strategic game, that feeling of "lets kill some aliens" turns into "oh god oh god I need three hits with ARs to kill a single Thin Man and WHY IS THAT SECTOID INVISIBLE and they all one-shot my guys" around month three. Supersoldiers need rest, and while my A-team can compete, I didn't do a good enough job in the air or in weapons research and I just fell behind enough that I started losing with my C team. Some missions I'd win, some I'd lose, and I'll see where it goes, because I think I can pull it out if I get lasers finished, my squad outfitted, and new weapons/ECM on my interceptors. To do so, Asia's basically falling to the aliens for now, but I think I can bring it back.

Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Mar 9, 2014

DMW45
Oct 29, 2011

Come into my parlor~
Said the spider to the fly~
So, I just played through my first match on Long War, Classic Difficulty. Made it out with two casualties. Couple of... observations

There needs to be more visual differentation between classes--not with the models, but with the icons or something. I was wondering why no one had sleeves and why everyone had different skills/grenades when I thought they were supposed to be rookies. I still don't know who has what class.

Also, two more things.

Why can pistols do 0 damage!?
Why do Sectoids have low profile!? :wtc:

VDay
Jul 2, 2003

I'm Pacman Jones!

Zokalwe posted:

Just started a Long War campaign, I have barely scratched the surface but for now it seems really cool. Finding out that they had randomized grenade damage was pretty painful. Here goes one of the last certainties I could cling to in a world of unfair randomness. :xcom:

To those more advanced in this mod, have they achieved their goal to offer a mid/late-game that is less of a non-stop humiliation of the aliens? How do the difficulty levels compare to the ones from XCOM vanilla? I started in Classic, don't know if I should have been more daring. For now I'd say the difficulty is okay but when my most experienced soldiers are on the field I get this vibe of "let's rape the aliens" that I had in the end of Xcom C/I.

I think the difficulty scales much better (or at least more evenly) than in Vanilla EW. The beginning is easy(er) because you get 6 guys right off the bat and you're still mostly fighting 6-9 aliens per mission who, while buffed, aren't too ridiculous compared to Vanilla. But even 2-3 months in you start seeing medium-sized UFOs, and those have two outsiders in them, who both have 10 HP and regenerate health every turn. As the game goes on you start running into tougher and tougher enemies, and have to make actual choices on who to take thanks to fatigue. You run into situations where you're forced to take underleveled guys because the alternative means that you don't have a single decent soldier left if you get another mission in 2-3 days, so there's some added difficulty in that. And let's put it this way: they decided that having 8 soldiers instead of 6 would be necessary in order to balance things, so that gives you an idea of how much harder later encounters are.

BenRGamer posted:

Why can pistols do 0 damage!?
Why do Sectoids have low profile!? :wtc:

Because there's damage reduction now on certain aliens and when you use cover. If you press F1 after targeting someone it'll show you under your chance to hit. It'll be something like "Full Cover -45% (2/3 DR)" with the DR part being possible damage reduction. And sectoids with low profile are commanders or elites or something. They're a little more dangerous and add a bit of flavor to the early game along with the drones so that your first 6 missions aren't just you mowing sectoids down.

Ravenfood
Nov 4, 2011

BenRGamer posted:

So, I just played through my first match on Long War, Classic Difficulty. Made it out with two casualties. Couple of... observations

There needs to be more visual differentation between classes--not with the models, but with the icons or something. I was wondering why no one had sleeves and why everyone had different skills/grenades when I thought they were supposed to be rookies. I still don't know who has what class.
They are rookies, LW starts them off with random stats and gear. As for class, when they hit squaddie, you decide which one of two classes you want them to be. For example, if someone gets promoted to "Tactical" they get the vanilla assault icon and the choice between "Light 'Em Up" and "Run and Gun". Picking the former makes them an infantry (with infantry-specific stat upgrades and the infantry skill tree) while picking the latter gives them the assault class name, assault class skill tree, and assault class stats. At the beginning, when they're all rookies/squaddies, yeah, it can be confusing which one with the support icon is your medic and which is your engineer, but I found that actually goes away pretty quick, especially since their gear starts standing out. Its pretty easy once you start standardizing loadouts (relatively). Infantry got hi-cap mags and laser sights or flashbangs. Snipers are the ones with sniper rifles, same with rocketeers and gunners. Assaults and engineers get shotguns, medics get smoke and medkits, and scouts get flashbangs and whatever else. Makes it pretty easy to tell which one is which, I think.

The hard part is trying to keep a coherent squad together, so until I got a few superstars (the officer system helps with this) it was more of "okay, I have a sniper, engineer, infantry, and rocketeer on this mission. I have at least one decent infantry and a rocketeer ready to go in case a hard mission pops, so I can take a low-level scout along to give them some practice on this mission without risking too much"

dogstile
May 1, 2012

fucking clocks
how do they work?
And that last sentence is why I think its a lot cooler. You weigh the risks vs the rewards in LW rather than just going "ah, another abduction? Go go super soldiers!"

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MadJackMcJack
Jun 10, 2009
Hah, look at all you pussies pissing and moaning about Long War's difficulty. So far the first 4 missions have been pretty easy for moi :smug: Hell, at this rate I....

*Mission 5: Landed Supply Ship*

:stare: Ok, maybe it's only got Sectoids. And here we OHGODCHRYSSALIDS! :stonk: Ok, that wasn't so baOHGODFLOATERS! OHGODTHINMEN! OHGODTENTACLEROBOTS!

And that is the story of how the first mission were I fled back to the Skyranger went.

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