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for a first time through, there really is not. the game stands very well on its own, aside from maybe the numeric health display mod as late game health bars can get difficult to read. for replay value, there is a whole slew of stuff you can try, leading the pack being A Better Advent, which makes the game much more difficult in a fun way. i would not recommend that for a first timer, though.
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Jan 3, 2017 20:42
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Yes at this point they've patched out all the bugs you can fix with mods, anything else is cosmetic options or stuff you really shouldn't touch until you understand the game well enough to know what you'd be getting into.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:17
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OK, thanks. Having fun so far, the only thing I kinda hate is the turn timers on every mission. I understand why they added it - I just hate timers in general. But the game is probably balanced around them so I don't want to just mod them out.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:25
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enraged_camel posted:OK, thanks. Having fun so far, the only thing I kinda hate is the turn timers on every mission. I understand why they added it - I just hate timers in general. But the game is probably balanced around them so I don't want to just mod them out. in a compromise, if they are really messing with your enjoyment of the game, there is the True Concealment mod to only start countdown timers after you blow concealment. it requires some finagling though because like everything else on the goddamn planet the mod cannot just do one thing cleanly, it does some other configurable junk to Dark Events so you'll have to gently caress around with it.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:33
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Kwyndig posted:Yes at this point they've patched out all the bugs you can fix with mods, anything else is cosmetic options or stuff you really shouldn't touch until you understand the game well enough to know what you'd be getting into. Ultrawide screen resolutions still have some UI issues if you don't use some mods, but I think you are right about any gameplay bugs.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:36
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There's also a mod that gives you just a few more turns and makes timer missions more chill. I like the Slow Advent mod because it actually gives you time between events to build and do stuff in that part of the game without constantly going on emergency drops.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:38
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A Better Advent is fun from what I've played, but hoo boy do some of those new Advent soldiers surprise the hell out of you with their new gear and abilities.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:48
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bad day posted:There's also a mod that gives you just a few more turns and makes timer missions more chill. I'm the opposite. I like the combat and wouldn't mind if they upped the pace (as long as they gave you enough dudes to compensate) on mission spawns. As it stands they keep you on the bleeding edge of recruits unless the RNG gets generous with rewards.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:49
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Been playing through this and am currently researching the resistance contact technology. The Last Gift mission has just unlocked from the encrypted signal as well. I'm playing on Veteran but so far, it feels too easy. The only death I've had was stupidly parking a rookie next to a truck and then hitting it with a grenade. Are things going to ramp up or should I restart on Commander? I played the original on Commander but dropped down to Veteran for this one after a post earlier in the thread mentioned the difficulty was ramped up this time around.
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Jan 3, 2017 22:36
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It gets harder. Now go chase that last gift immediately. 
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Jan 3, 2017 22:56
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Coolguye posted:if you don't immediately choose fuse the second it comes up in psi training you are just dead inside For certain. Fuse is both fun and amazing. Fun in that you make the enemy's grenade blow up in their face. Amazing in that if they don't die, you just shredded some of their armor and completely annihilated their cover. All of this is guaranteed to boot with a nominal (I want to say non-existent) cooldown!
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Jan 3, 2017 23:00
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Christ I got the Archon King on an extraction mission. Until now I had been roughly willpower ironmaning, but that went out the window when fighting it for more than 2 turns summons 2 extra enemy squads e: luckily I have 2 freeze grenades, and 2 acid grenades BUT STILL
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Jan 3, 2017 23:09
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LuiCypher posted:For certain. Fuse is both fun and amazing. Fun in that you make the enemy's grenade blow up in their face. Amazing in that if they don't die, you just shredded some of their armor and completely annihilated their cover. All of this is guaranteed to boot with a nominal (I want to say non-existent) cooldown! to be fair to folks playing the game fuse is legitimately underpowered when compared to half of the other poo poo a psi operative can do, but it's so loving hysterical that i can't imagine not using it
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Jan 3, 2017 23:43
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Man, I love failing a hack on the first turn of an extraction mission and having to fight reinforcements every step of the way. No reloads, the way god intended! Game has some seriously fun oh-poo poo moments.
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Jan 4, 2017 00:22
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bad day posted:There's also a mod that gives you just a few more turns and makes timer missions more chill. Yeah, I just use the one that gives me +4 turns across the board. I still need to move towards the target but I'm not in "OH GOD PANIC PANIC" mode. Definitely makes the game a lot more enjoyable for me after my first Vanilla run completion (which was on Commander). LuiCypher posted:For certain. Fuse is both fun and amazing. Fun in that you make the enemy's grenade blow up in their face. Amazing in that if they don't die, you just shredded some of their armor and completely annihilated their cover. All of this is guaranteed to boot with a nominal (I want to say non-existent) cooldown! Coolguye posted:to be fair to folks playing the game fuse is legitimately underpowered when compared to half of the other poo poo a psi operative can do, but it's so loving hysterical that i can't imagine not using it Timer is non-existent on Fuse, you can make an ADVENT grunt or Muton grenade-shart their pants every turn which is amazing. Which is somehow, as mentioned, still underpowered compared to some of the other stuff they can do. dud root posted:Christ I got the Archon King on an extraction mission. Until now I had been roughly willpower ironmaning, but that went out the window when fighting it for more than 2 turns summons 2 extra enemy squads I love both Snek Dick and Berserker Queen but Archon King is the one ruler where I feel the team went legit too far on making bullshit.
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Jan 4, 2017 00:24
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Honestly, I can tolerate everything about the Archon King except Devastate. And even then, the tipping point is the fact that it detonates after a single action. If you were allowed the CHANCE to move everyone out of the blast radius, I'd be completely fine with it. But no, all but one of your soldiers are 100% guaranteed to take that hit.
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Jan 4, 2017 00:35
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BlazetheInferno posted:Honestly, I can tolerate everything about the Archon King except Devastate. YUP! That's the issue I have with it too. If he spawned it and then he kept moving an the missiles hit the next turn like normal that would be fine. Like there was still a one turn timer on the attack it would still be pretty nasty due to the turn-economy fighting the dickhead. But nope, he just marked 4 dudes, 3 HAVE to take that damage, and 1-2 will be stunned/disoriented to boot.
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Jan 4, 2017 00:38
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Give everyone grapple armors! Free action moves are great against rulers in general.
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Jan 4, 2017 01:10
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Coolguye posted:in a compromise, if they are really messing with your enjoyment of the game, there is the True Concealment mod to only start countdown timers after you blow concealment. it requires some finagling though because like everything else on the goddamn planet the mod cannot just do one thing cleanly, it does some other configurable junk to Dark Events so you'll have to gently caress around with it. I prefer Default Timers True Concealment. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=619816174 It lacks the Dark Event and doesn't futz with the timers like the base mod does. 9 and 13 is pretty much just enough when combined with True Concealment.
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Jan 4, 2017 01:32
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I've honestly never liked true concealment because it screws with the balance in the worst possible way - it makes the easy missions even easier, and the hard missions (where you get a bad activation early) almost impossible. That's the opposite of how you want to do things! So then you get attempts to "fix" it where instead of being a trade-off with how the vanilla game does it, it's instead just a cheat mod that makes the game easier. (Except in those hard missions where you get a bad activation early). Honestly, if you're finding the timers too punishing, the best mod is just adding a couple of turns to all of them!
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Jan 4, 2017 01:37
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Timers are pretty much a non-issue once you get GTS up, then there are a ton of things that help you as you skill up and get armors and things. Once you get used to the game flow, the only missions where timers can get nasty is the kidnap advent VIP missions and even then you can just blap them if its getting late. I guess the retaliation ones can get bad too if you get some bad faceless activation and the rest of the aliens are way far away. Its just a slightly different kind of timer.
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Jan 4, 2017 03:43
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I got really lucky on a mission earlier today, it was an extraction with a 12 turn timer, but the map was set up so that the exit was at worst four yellow moves from start. Had so much time I would have cleared it without taking any damage if I hadn't messed up with my Spark and got it punched by some psi-zombies for 1 damage apiece after armor. Also learned the hard way that VIPs can't pick up loot drops.
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Jan 4, 2017 04:26
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Sometimes mission just goes to poo poo from the start, was careless and broke concealment by not paying attention and jumping through a window and then had gremlin trigger additional unactivated pod *twice*, first time from checking out haywire protocol chances and once from checking out hacks on lamppost  And never trust LoS indicator. Mimic beacon saved the day. Again.
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Jan 4, 2017 06:09
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So has anyone figured out why caps lock instantly finishes loading screens yet
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Jan 4, 2017 07:02
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Fojar38 posted:So has anyone figured out why caps lock instantly finishes loading screens yet It forces a bunch of stuff to load all at once (I dunno why, developer shortcut perhaps). The reason the game doesn't do that normally is because it has a small chance of crashing. So they load it in a slow, safe fashion but if the player knows about the force-everything button they can take the risk.
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Jan 4, 2017 07:14
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Alkydere posted:It forces a bunch of stuff to load all at once (I dunno why, developer shortcut perhaps). The reason the game doesn't do that normally is because it has a small chance of crashing. So they load it in a slow, safe fashion but if the player knows about the force-everything button they can take the risk. Wasn't there a mod for XCOM1 where it'd do it automatically?
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Jan 4, 2017 07:42
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Rinkles posted:Is the touchpad used at all? Yes. End turn. 
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Jan 4, 2017 09:23
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Fojar38 posted:So has anyone figured out why caps lock instantly finishes loading screens yet Does it actually do this for other people? For me it just froze the screen for about 10 seconds before cutting to the landing on the avenger. (Still a dramatic reduction in the load times)
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Jan 4, 2017 09:27
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DoctorTristan posted:Does it actually do this for other people? For me it just froze the screen for about 10 seconds before cutting to the landing on the avenger. (Still a dramatic reduction in the load times) Well mostly instantly, there's a brief freeze for me but it's under a second. Probably depends on your hardware.
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Jan 4, 2017 10:23
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Also I just got around to playing the DLC and it pleases me greatly that the Alien Hunters intro mission is very obviously designed to let Bradford go loving nuts on aliens with his Hanzo Steel
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Jan 4, 2017 10:24
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Fojar38 posted:So has anyone figured out why caps lock instantly finishes loading screens yet Firaxis responded not long after the game came out: quote:Hitting the key, through a rube-goldberg-esque series of events, forces all outstanding load requests to be filled immediately in a single frame. This causes a massive hitch, and potentially could crash the game. If you don't care about those adverse effects the synchronous load is faster. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-02-11-a-single-button-press-skips-loading-screens-in-xcom-2
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Jan 4, 2017 16:49
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Coolguye posted:for a first time through, there really is not. the game stands very well on its own, aside from maybe the numeric health display mod as late game health bars can get difficult to read. for replay value, there is a whole slew of stuff you can try, leading the pack being A Better Advent, which makes the game much more difficult in a fun way. i would not recommend that for a first timer, though.
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Jan 4, 2017 16:56
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Kwyndig posted:I got really lucky on a mission earlier today, it was an extraction with a 12 turn timer, but the map was set up so that the exit was at worst four yellow moves from start. Had so much time I would have cleared it without taking any damage if I hadn't messed up with my Spark and got it punched by some psi-zombies for 1 damage apiece after armor. I had a mission where the shadow chamber claimed there were 0 enemies. I thought it was glitchy, but when I landed, the VIP was half a move away and the pick-up zone was 2 moves away with no aliens around. I guess that dude wasn't important enough for an advent escort.
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Jan 4, 2017 18:44
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pig out bigtime posted:I had a mission where the shadow chamber claimed there were 0 enemies. I thought it was glitchy, but when I landed, the VIP was half a move away and the pick-up zone was 2 moves away with no aliens around. I guess that dude wasn't important enough for an advent escort. you just rescued solid snake is all, he performed a sneaking mission in advance of your extraction
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Jan 4, 2017 19:30
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The best extraction missions I've gotten are this: For reference those are yellow moves from spawn and the truck in the top left behind the objective is where the VIP was. And this:  Where the VIP truck was basically a dash and a blue move from both spawn and extraction, with the bonus of me knowing the path was already clear to run back out. Fojar38 posted:Also I just got around to playing the DLC and it pleases me greatly that the Alien Hunters intro mission is very obviously designed to let Bradford go loving nuts on aliens with his Hanzo Steel Yeah it's pretty great and has likely gotten too many people to over-value Reaper. I'm not saying Reaper is a BAD skill, it's just definitely not nearly as good in normal maps as Bradford makes it look. Bladestorm on the other hand is something I have trouble deciding if its better than Implacable or not...its goddamned hilarious, especially now that Firaxis buffed the Ranger's melee, but at the same time being able to run to stupid spots to melee/shotgun someone and then have a free move to get into cover afterward is hella useful.
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Jan 4, 2017 20:54
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Alkydere posted:The best extraction missions I've gotten are this: Bladestorm us uniquely designed to utterly gently caress rulers up which is nice. If you park Bradford next to the Viper King during Alien Hunters he can absolutely shred that rear end in a top hat while he scurries around with his abilities on cooldown.
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Jan 4, 2017 21:01
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Alkydere posted:Yeah it's pretty great and has likely gotten too many people to over-value Reaper. I'm not saying Reaper is a BAD skill, it's just definitely not nearly as good in normal maps as Bradford makes it look. Bladestorm on the other hand is something I have trouble deciding if its better than Implacable or not...its goddamned hilarious, especially now that Firaxis buffed the Ranger's melee, but at the same time being able to run to stupid spots to melee/shotgun someone and then have a free move to get into cover afterward is hella useful. The best thing is when a viper successfully pulls the ranger out of cover and try's to constrict them.
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Jan 4, 2017 21:02
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I love Implacable because it just plain works. You kill an enemy, you get to ignore an attack on the next enemy turn. Bladestorm can miss.
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Jan 4, 2017 21:02
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Kwyndig posted:I love Implacable because it just plain works. You kill an enemy, you get to ignore an attack on the next enemy turn. Bladestorm can miss. You're mixing up Implacable and Untouchable. Implacable just gives you a move action, Untouchable is the free miss.
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Jan 4, 2017 21:03
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I prefer Implacable just because a lot of the game is trying to balance pros/cons of the cover system. There's a reason high ground doesn't usually come with high cover: you're trading offense for defense. Similarly, where to place your people is often about balancing their defensive position like high cover vs flanking an enemy or putting them in range of an ability. Is it worth moving to low cover so you can grenade a high-value target? What about leaving yourself open to being flanked? Implacable lets you basically tell that whole idea to gently caress off because you can put yourself in the optimal killing position and then gently caress off to a more defensive one later. Its one reason MECs had the potential to be so good in EW, too. You could drastically increase the number of spaces that you could move to for better offensive options without increasing your risk at all. Bladestorm is kind of hilarious against specific enemies though, so it only barely loses to Implacable.  : And yeah, you should always take one of Implacable or Untouchable, to the point where I kind of feel like they should be opposite each other in the skilltree.
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Jan 4, 2017 21:06
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