Difficulty: Rookie (why rookie you wuss?) I consider myself a very good XCOM player and I knew this wouldn’t be a particular challenge for me. My goal for the first play through was really to experience, research, and engineer everything to get a feel how every single aspect of the game worked together. As I expected, I generally crushed advent and the aliens at every turn. For this reason I won’t comment on higher difficulties much, but I have been following the meta on Pavonis forums, Reddit, and Youtube.
Additional mods:
*Gotcha flank preview -> Gotcha again
*Additional Icons
*A few pure cosmetics (capn bubs, etc)
*More maps, PCPs, etc
*Grimys Hotkeys
*Show me the skills revised
*Overwatch all/others, Evac all
*Perfect information
*Quick reload
Second wave:
*Red fog for everyone
*Not created equally
*Aiming angles (see below)
*Also All DLC
ITEM I: Things I like:
First of all, wow, thank you Pavonis for all your hard work in making this. I honestly couldn’t write about all the good things you’ve done with XCOM 2, and it would be ruthlessly long so I’ll just touch on a few of the hallmarks of LW2.
- 1. The strategic layer changes. There is so much depth and choice left up to the player, it’s just the best changes made. The infiltration system accomplishes the goal of soldier fatigue while also leaving it up to the player to decide the best way to approach a mission, as well as whether to attempt a mission at all.
- a. Resistance havens and haven management: Again, more opportunity for the player to decide how they want to manage each region of the world.
b. Squad management: this is a nice addition that many players love and I appreciate it. Personally I don’t use squads because I prefer to hand select specific soldiers for each mission, resulting in me deviating from static squads >95% of the time. But that’s just my play style and other people love it, so it’s great.
c. Diversity of mission types: so much more, and they all fit so well into the theme and the feel of the game. I love the detection system by working rebels on intel jobs.
d. Advent strength and vigilance mechanics: Really great.
3. Trap missions? Yes please!
4. Loading screens! WOW!
5. XP system
I really like that XP is awarded mainly by mission completion now. It gives the player the option of whether to kill aliens for some loot or flee; much like the choice of whether to do a mission or not.
6. Important note about all these changes: Where LW2 really succeeds is world building and immersion. For the first time playing XCOM 2, I actually felt like I was the commander. I feel like I am the leader of a worldwide resistance. I can feel the weight on my shoulders of having to manage each region throughout the world, trying to keep the enormous resistance machine moving forward; outfitting and deploying my soldiers to respond to advent operations throughout the world. My god does this feel good. Vanilla XCOM completely missed this feeling with the one-dimensional strategic layer that was present there. I cannot say enough praise for how this game feels exactly like what it should: a resistance operation. - a. Resistance havens and haven management: Again, more opportunity for the player to decide how they want to manage each region of the world.
ITEM II: Things I have feedback on regarding balancing and the evolving game ‘meta’:
1. Mission types
- a. The small stealth vs big team swarming squad missions: It definitely seems like the game currently evolves into these two types of missions. This has been discussed extensively with respect to a “lack of middle-class missions” of squad size 5-7. I have an important idea that I think would begin to address this issue, but first let’s discuss training up your C and D teams. LW2 is great in that it forces you to have depth of roster, it’s not enough to have A and B teams, but C and D as well. One of the challenges is how to train up your C and D teams. Later in the game this gets harder because stealthing missions begins to fall off as the aliens get really powerful. It was easy to train up newbies on stealth missions when it was just basic advent forces on extremely light hack-the-objective ops. Later on in the game though, it’s elite advent forces, mutons, and elite snakes on very light or light activity. Most of the power in your soldiers comes through perks and stat gains from promotions. Any guerilla op with a predetermined EVAC come October can be dicey. I’m struggling to train up the next generation of soldiers here and I WANT to. Buying them from the black market makes the later game just feel empty due to a bunch of cheap, meaningless soldiers you are not attached to available for purchase.
- i. Solution to this problem: GTS combat tactics purchases that greatly reduce infiltration time for low ranking soldiers.
- 1. Squaddie infiltrations: Squaddie ranked soldiers -90% of their penalty to infiltration time. Unlocked with SSGT ranking soldier.
2. Lance Cpl infiltrations: LCPL ranked soldiers -80% of their penalty to infiltration time. Unlocked at TSGT
3. Corporal infiltrations: -70% unlock GSGT
4. Sargent infiltrations: -60% unlock MSGT
5. SSGT infil: -50% unlock with Field Commander (I know this one is an officer, sue me).
- 1. Squaddie infiltrations: Squaddie ranked soldiers -90% of their penalty to infiltration time. Unlocked with SSGT ranking soldier.
- i. Recruitment defense: Ugh. Reinforcements drop in immediately, and the pods on the map always seem to be close by, so the immediate firefight pulls them in. Both times I did this mission I was engaging every enemy on the map by turn 3-4, AND we have to get the rebels to the other side, AND we have to wait for a new EVAC once we get there, AND there are reinforcements dropping in on us as we battle everyone on the map. These missions just weren’t even fun, even on rookie where I still win and get the reinforcement flares, I dread these coming up. What is with the reinforcements on these missions? The intel hard-point defense is so different from these. At least for me, right now there are no reinforcements on intel hard-points. I think I’d rather just let the rebels die.
ii. The retaliation where there are 13-ish rebels that you have to run out and contact and then get them evac’ed while reinforcements come in. I think it’s a bug where their circles disappear, but once they did it was so annoying to try and find them, and again reinforcements are just constantly trolling you from the start.
iii. For the other type of retaliations, the classic vanilla terror missions, I’ve considered giving civilians 70 innate defense just because it drives me crazy how advent will just ruthlessly begin massacring all your rebels as soon as things start. If you are lucky enough, the civilian will be in cover and they will miss the shot. But then scumbag XCOM decides to let a different pod take a shot at another rebel since the poor aliens missed their first civ kill. This has been going since vanilla, and is still infuriating.
iv. There’s no real prize for retaliations, the unhindered operations hardly covers having to recruit for your lost soldiers and then do quality control on them because some newbie is a faceless. If I slog through one of these I want a real prize. Maybe +1 to liberation in the region; reduced infiltration throughout region? I’m sure there’s plenty of better ideas.
v. Retaliations in general start to get tedious as the game goes on as they come more and more frequently. Here, again, GTS upgrades that raises the minimum working rebels required to trigger a retaliation would be nice. I think the GTS upgrade system is vastly under-utilized if you haven’t guessed.
- i. I really enjoyed them and they were usually some of the easier missions I went on. I really like the mission style ‘meta’ of being a mid-size team stealth mission. There is an extremely high emphasis on movement and positioning for this mission that is a really good aspect of it. I think that, even on higher difficulties they wouldn’t be “too hard” if you know what you’re doing. I do have one tie-in recommendation though for higher difficulties and attempting these in high advent strength regions that I will discuss below (Item II, sec 3a).
- i. Great as is. Two things have been strange or peculiar though. First, on some of them the patrols seem wonky and I scouted practically half with map without encountering a single pod. This feels weird when a mission is “swarming”, but I don’t know how easy it would be to code in some forced spreading out of alien placement, it’s not a big deal really. Second, the last pod I encounter always seems to be rooted in position and it becomes a hassle to find them because they do not give off those indicators in the fog of war to tell you what direction they are in. If these (and really all missions) could force the “I hear something in the distance” indicator after n number of turns without contact (regardless of whether the pod is actively patrolling), it would be a huge QOL improvement.
- i. I didn’t attempt, other people will have better comments.
- i. Solution to this problem: GTS combat tactics purchases that greatly reduce infiltration time for low ranking soldiers.
- a. GTS:
- i. Very good as is, I was at first wondering about commanders choice but I’ve very much grown to like the dynamic of getting the GTS online to fill this roll and having to decide what to do about any suboptimal classes rookies trained into (playing with Not Created Equal). GTS = Awesome. I say more about the GTS elsewhere in this manuscript, basically, the upgrades are underutilized.
- i. I think the second tube should unlock sooner. Having to wait to GSGT makes some early parts of the game annoying. The AWC perks are so good that I think the optimum play here is to always train up a soldier to GSGT as fast as possible. It makes selecting soldiers for missions not fun. I wanted to give my top soldiers chances to hunt faceless at my havens, or maybe spend time in the tube themselves; all to have a chance for the B and C teams to train up while advent still deploys basic troops. Instead of getting to make these fun choices, I gruelingly trained up the A team to GSGT because unlocking that second tube is SO IMPORTANT for a long term buff to XCOM. I think SSGT (same as the second officer training tube) is a much better level.
ii. My second issue is the pistol perks. While I certainly LOVE the idea of pistol perks separate from the class ones. The opportunity cost of training pistol perks is too high. If I can train a ranger with Deadshot or a sharpshooter with Lone Wolf, those skills will always be useful. The pistol perks require too much time in the tube for something predicated upon bringing a specific item. When compared to the sheer power of training either offensive or defensive perks on soldiers? No contest.- 1. Possible solutions: shorter training time for pistol perks, make pistols weigh 0 (take them without affecting mobility). There are probably better solutions than these.
- i. As others have mentioned, some PG projects are suboptimal, many of the ammo types are very conditional and probably not worth the research costs. Other PG projects are very overpriced for what you get.
ii. The weapon attachment projects are ludicrously expensive. The optimal play is just to invest in Vulture since you are going to need the advanced and elite versions to do their respective projects anyway. If you just invest in Vulture early, you will have enough attachments to do everything you want by September/Oct making these projects irrelevant. Your resources are better spent elsewhere.- 1. Solutions: make projects cheaper and/or change the projects to be direct manufacturing of the more advanced tiers, i.e. 2 basic scopes + 3 supplies = 1 advanced scope in your inventory. Maybe make this done in the workshop?
- i. Labs are great
ii. In the new research selection menu, it would be great to have a counter of our supplies since some research projects require supplies and their counter is notably absent.
- a. 300-400% infiltration. Because it can be so hard to reduce advent strength in a region I think it would be nice to unclamp infiltration at 200% and set it at 400% with 2 break points at 300 and 400 % that would further reduce advent strength and/or evac time. Ultimately, if a player wants to have their soldiers locked away infiltrating for that obscene amount of time, I think they should be able to. I’m not all-in on this idea yet though since I haven’t really dug through the code and ini files yet.
- a. Psi: hah, no. Like everyone else has said, not worth it. I know this is already planning to be revamped so I won’t say more.
b. Spark: Ehhhhhh, I think the repair times are way too long given that you can only repair one at a time. I also think they don’t progress very well as they rank. I think they could play a much more significant role than they currently do.
c. Assault: I actually like assaults more than most people, but have to agree with the general sentiment that they are underwhelming. Assaults are, by nature, something of a high-risk-high-reward type of class. This was the very last class that I got someone to MSGT. Let’s look at their perk tree:
- LCPL: Slug Shot | Electroshock | Lightning Reflexes
CPL: Trench Gun | Arc Pulser | Close and Personal
SGT: Killer instinct | Stun Gunner | Fortify
SSGT: Extra Conditioning | Aggression | Formidable
TSGT: Hit and Run | Rapid Fire | Close Encounters
GSGT: Bring em on | Close Combat Specialist| Untouchable
MSGT: Street Sweep | Chain Lightning | Lethal
- i. The problem with assaults is that they are mostly a hard carry in this role until TSGT when they get their powers to shoot more than once per turn.
- 1. Hit and Run: this TSGT skill deserves special mention because it’s a “never take” in terms of skills. I took it because I mistakenly thought it worked like it did in LW1. However if you read the description, you realize that the free action is only good for movement actions. Rapid fire and Close Encounters both allow the assault to take 2 shots in a turn, Hit & Run does not. For a shotgun assault, you’ll probably be within 4 tiles of an enemy anyway, and the fact that the close encounters free action can be used for anything makes that skill a better pick in 99.9% of scenarios. Hit and Run needs to have its free action usable for anything or it doesn’t belong on the assault tree at that position (more on this below).
2. Also, the Arc Thrower build seems a little weak until you reach MSGT, but I’ll discuss this forthcoming too.
- 1. Hit and Run: this TSGT skill deserves special mention because it’s a “never take” in terms of skills. I took it because I mistakenly thought it worked like it did in LW1. However if you read the description, you realize that the free action is only good for movement actions. Rapid fire and Close Encounters both allow the assault to take 2 shots in a turn, Hit & Run does not. For a shotgun assault, you’ll probably be within 4 tiles of an enemy anyway, and the fact that the close encounters free action can be used for anything makes that skill a better pick in 99.9% of scenarios. Hit and Run needs to have its free action usable for anything or it doesn’t belong on the assault tree at that position (more on this below).
- LCPL: Close Combat Spec | Slug Shot | Electroshock
CPL: Lightning Reflexes | Trench Gun | Arc Pulser
SGT: Fortify | Killer Instinct | Stun Gunner
SSGT: Close Encounters | Rapid Fire | *High Voltage*
TSGT: Close and Personal | Bring Em On | Hit and Run
GSGT: Aggression | Extra Conditioning | Untouchable
MSGT: Lethal | Street Sweeper | Chain Lightning
- iii. First let’s address “High Voltage”. This is the only place in any class where I think there should be a whole new perk to fill a role that seems empty to me. I imagine high voltage as having the following effect: using the arc thrower costs 1 action and does not end your turn, increases stun to 3 action points.
- 1. If I recall, the game handles stuns in terms of action points taken away. A one turn stun is actually a stun value of 2. Bumping up to a stun value of 3 would be a cool addition where the enemy gets 1 AP on the turn they come un-stunned.
v. Left side of the tree build: This assault is hyper mobile and likes to be right in the enemies face. This high risk tactic receives an early power boost with close combat specialist and receives great synergy with close encounters and crit stacking powers like close and personal and aggression. Definitely possible to sub in trench gun over lightning reflexes; or sweeper over lethal. Or untouchable
vi. Middle build: Run and gun specialist with great synergy between killer instinct, rapid fire, bring em on, and extra conditioning. Also good from range with slug shot.
vii. Right build: Arc thrower specialist.
- ADDENDUM: one funny thing I noticed about Hit and Run. It seems to give you a movement action for EVERY shot on a flanked enemy you take. I had a ranger get this in AWC and after taking two flanked shots, they had a blue and a yellow move available. Pretty cool in this case.
- LCPL: Sapper | Needle Grenades | Rapid Deployment
CPL: Heavy Ordinance | Formidable | Protector
SGT: Boosted Cores | Center Mass | Bluescreen Bombs
SSGT: Heat Warheads | Tandem War | Sting Grenades
TSGT: Biggest Boom | Chain Shot | Dense Smoke
GSGT: Volatile Mix | Bombardier | Ghost Grenade
MSGT: Combat Engineer | Salvo | Full Kit
- i. I would make very few changes to this class since the trees synergize well and are built very cleanly (demolition/damage grenadier on the left, support on the right.)
- 1. Needle Grenades: frankly not really that impressive compared to sapper and rapid deployment which are very important skills for a budding grenadier in their respective damage or support roles. I would just make needle grenades also not destroy corpses (if that’s possible) then you have a serious contender.
2. Formidable: up against +1 grenade for either grenadier build, I can’t honestly say I would ever take this perk. No idea what I would put in its place; it would have to be seriously powerful (maybe combat fitness for the grenadier who specializes in fast stealth missions?)
- 1. Needle Grenades: frankly not really that impressive compared to sapper and rapid deployment which are very important skills for a budding grenadier in their respective damage or support roles. I would just make needle grenades also not destroy corpses (if that’s possible) then you have a serious contender.
- LCPL: Center Mass | Combatives | Grazing Fire
CPL: Hail of Bullets | Shredder | Lockdown
SGT: Flush | Iron Curtain | Demolition
SSGT: Chain Shot | Formidable | Mayhem
TSGT: Cyclic Fire | Danger Zone | Cool Under Pressure
GSGT: Saturation | Rapid Fire | Traverse Fire
MSGT: Rupture | Combat Fitness | Kill Zone
- i. Problems here:
- 1. Combatives is so incredibly weak.
2. Two suppression specialist perks are both at TSGT (DZ and CUP)
- LCPL: Center Mass | Combat Fitness | Combatives
CPL: Hail of Bullets | Shredder | Lockdown
SGT: Flush | Iron Curtain | Grazing Fire
SSGT: Demolition | Chain Shot | Mayhem
TSGT: Traverse Fire | Cyclic Fire | Cool Under Pressure
GSGT: Will to Survive | Formidable | Danger Zone
MSGT: Saturation Fire | Rupture | Kill Zone
iv. Right side of tree: the suppression/overwatch specialist, combatives would be useful with the added defense here because it would prevent advent from hitting the suppressor and wrecking area suppression.
v. Left and Middle side: Let the player choose what types of shot powers they want to take. On the left side are powers that work for a gunner that has poor aim (NCE) and in the middle are more aim dependent powers. Combat fitness would provide a strong boost to a gunner built for aim. - 1. Combatives is so incredibly weak.
- LCPL: Walk Fire | Close and Personal | Covering Fire
CPL: Locked On | Pump Action | Suppression
SGT: Aggression | Center Mass | Cool Under Pressure
SSGT: Executioner | Fortify | Grazing Fire
TSGT: Bring Em On | Formidable | Ever Vigilant
GSGT: Rapid Fire | Tactical Sense | Rapid Reaction
MSGT: Rupture | Combat Fitness | Killzone
- i. There are well-defined builds here (shooter vs overwatch). A few ranks I want to touch on:
- 1. LCPL: Close and Personal is pretty meh in most situations since the ranger is not a priority for mobility builds (NCE assumed). Also remember, the AI for the majority of aliens you meet is going to want to put distance between you and them. The ranger is a very poor candidate to take a move action and use close and personal because that action can instead be used to fire their weapon (a better alternative). I think another defensive perk would be a better substitute here.
2. CPL: It’s really a matter of play style but I just don’t take suppression. This comes down to action point opportunity cost for the ranger. By GSGT, rangers of either shooty or overwatch builds become extremely powerful and their action points are better spent doing those things rather than suppressing. Pump action is fun, but again, enemies generally move away from you. Pump action does have a niche though, for rangers as resistance advisors to dispatch faceless. Basically after I get the GTS up, I’m going to take Locked On at CPL rank 100% of the time because it’s so useful on any ranger.
3. Other than that the builds are good as it stands. Crit shooter on the left, overwatch on the right, some defensive perks in the middle.
- 1. LCPL: Close and Personal is pretty meh in most situations since the ranger is not a priority for mobility builds (NCE assumed). Also remember, the AI for the majority of aliens you meet is going to want to put distance between you and them. The ranger is a very poor candidate to take a move action and use close and personal because that action can instead be used to fire their weapon (a better alternative). I think another defensive perk would be a better substitute here.
- LCPL: Death From Above | Rapid Holo | Snap Shot
CPL: Damn Good Gnd | HiDef Holo | Precision Shot
SGT: Long Watch | Phantom | Deadshot
SSGT: Center Mass | Indep Tracking | Low Profile
TSGT: Conceal | Vital Point Target | Aggression
GSGT: Kubikuri | MultiTargeting | Hunter’s Instincts
MSGT: Double Tap | AMF | Serial
- i. TSGT: Why is conceal here? I can see conceal being useful for the holotarget specialist, but it’s up against VPT so conceal here is a never pick. The other sniper builds are usually shooting at squadsight so concealment just doesn’t matter.
ii. Precision shot doesn’t belong on the mobility sniper side because it requires both actions; at odds with a sniper that moves and shoots.
iii. We are going to redesign the perk tree based on the 3 clear types of builds I mentioned. My modified perk tree is as follows:
- LCPL: Death from Above | Snap Shot | Rapid Targeting
CPL: Damn Good Grnd | Low Profile | HiDef Holo
SGT: Long Watch | Hunters Instinct | Phantom
SSGT: Center Mass | Deadshot | Independent Tracking
TSGT: Precision Shot | Aggression | Vital Point Targeting
GSGT: Double Tap | Kubikuri | Multitargeting
MSGT: Serial | AMF | Conceal
- iv. Left side: Generally unchanged, stick this sniper up high and let them work.
v. Middle: The mobility sniper excels at engaging at long and very long range. They take key shots against flanked enemies, and are good at critting and killing priority targets on the fly and likely excel in smaller engagements.
vi. Right: Holotargeting specialist, great for low aim snipers (NCE) and becoming officers
- LCPL: Ghostwalker | Low Profile | Cutthroat
CPL: Shadowstep | Lone Wolf | Infighter
SGT: Covert | Hunter’s Instinct | Blademaster
SSGT: Shadowstrike | Evasive | Bladestorm
TSGT: Conceal | Hard Target | Coup De Grace
GSGT: Tradecraft | Tactical Sense | Implacable
MSGT: Serial | Rapid Fire | Reaper
- i. Problems:
- 1. I think blademaster is a better subclass defining perk than cutthroat. Using swords is high-risk-high-reward and the rewards are pretty terrible if you can’t hit and kill your target early game. Blademaster addresses both of these, while cutthroat does not. Cutthroat comes important as enemies begin to get armored, and would be good at SGT rank.
2. Coup De Grace is bad. Not useable as a yellow move like fleche, and it’s really a gambling ability. Too much reliance on RNG. I think it should be a passive ability that adds +2 damage against disoriented targets, +5 against stunned, and more against unconscious (but I think it’s incredibly rare to knock an enemy unconscious).
3. Infighter is also meh. Most enemies move to longer range, probably not worth picking. It would be better if it added 15 defense against enemies within 4 tiles.
- 1. I think blademaster is a better subclass defining perk than cutthroat. Using swords is high-risk-high-reward and the rewards are pretty terrible if you can’t hit and kill your target early game. Blademaster addresses both of these, while cutthroat does not. Cutthroat comes important as enemies begin to get armored, and would be good at SGT rank.
- ii. With the above Coup De Grace and Infighter changes, my suggested perk tree to better address these 3 roles:
- LCPL: Ghostwalker | Low Profile | Blademaster
CPL: Shadowstep | Lone Wolf | Infighter
SGT: Covert | Hard Target | Cutthroat
SSGT: Evasive | Hunters Instinct | Bladestorm
TSGT: Conceal | Shadowstrike | Coup de Grace
GSGT: Deep Cover | Implacable | Tactical Sense
MSGT: Tradecraft | Serial | Reaper
iv. Middle: Shooty class that excels at running and doing massive damage from flanks and from concealment. Perks are balanced against the fact that they will use SMGs to get reasonable mobility.
v. Right: Sword specialist (one of my personal favorites) - LCPL: Ghostwalker | Low Profile | Blademaster
- LCPL: Med Protocol | Cool Under Pressure | Combat Protocol
CPL: Revival | Covering Fire | Interference
SGT: Field Medic | Suppression | Airdrop
SSGT: Field Surgeon | Ever Vigilant | Failsafe
TSGT: Savior | Sentinel | Trojan
GSGT: Scanning Protocol | Killzone | Threat Assessment
MSGT: Restoration | Full Override | Capacitor Discharge
- i. I wouldn’t make any changes to the medic (left) side, except that scanning protocol is meh compared to threat assessment, maybe make the increased sight radius last 2 turns? Or make it a free action?
ii. On hacker side, I would just swap the positions of full override and capacitor discharge at MSGT because full override fits with the theme that is building down the right side of the tree.
iii. Building down the center would make a sweet overwatcher, but I’ve never done this because the medic and hacker functionalities are critical to my squads. But hey, to each their own.
- LCPL: Fire in the Hole | Suppression | Roust
CPL: Biggest Booms | Fortify | Napalm-X
SGT: Concussion Rocket | Shredder | Burnout
SSGT: Tandem War | Formidable | Phosphorus
TSGT: Javelin | Fire and Steel | Incinerator
GSGT: Salvo | Tac Sense | Quickburn
MSGT: Bunker Buster | Rapid Fire | Firestorm
- i. Obviously there’s a rocket build, a flame thrower build, and some stuff in the center column.
ii. Overall problems: they are generally unreliable and/or very conditional. At high rankings, I don’t think anyone would rather have a technical vs a grenadier.
iii. Rocket side problems: at MSGT full rocket spec you will have at best 2 rocket scatter, and if you move, it goes up to 4 AND the rolls for the scatter suffer great penalties. Firing rockets at long range (their one potential advantage over a grenadier) is wrecked by stiff aim penalties that only full rocket spec’d TSGT’s can begin to overcome.
iv. Concussion rocket is garbage. I know the idea of its role, and I really wanted to like it, but it’s just garbage:- 1. Unreliable hitting the enemies you want due to scatter,
2. Unreliable that it will stun or even disorient the enemies,
3. Even if the enemies are stunned, the smoke coverage effect outlasts the debuff,
4. No javelin rockets synergy,
5. No real damage,
6. IT’S TERRIBLE AT THE ONE JOB IT’S SUPPOSED TO DO.- a. The purpose of concussion is not to kill but to buy time for your team to escape. But there’s a problem, to fire it accurately with a spec’d rocketeer, you have to use BOTH actions to fire it accurately enough to actually hit more than 1 enemy. So much for covering a retreat if you can’t actually retreat. Once you get salvo, you at least get one action to retreat, but waiting to GSGT for this is just silly. And remember, even if you do ALL of this correctly, it still might not even disorient the enemies needed for you to retreat, even at MSGT rank! Never, ever take concussion rocket. Burnout is a better choice on a fully spec’d rocketeer…
vi. So how do we fix the technical? The real issue is the drop off late game. I think it would be simple to make some slight buffs that apply to the Mk.II and Mk.III gauntlets. Note that the following changes depend on an important point I make below (Item II, sec 6a, permanent upgrades for secondary weapons).- 1. Mk.II gauntlet provides -1 rolls for rocket scatter always, Mk. III gauntlet provides an additional -1 scatter roll for -2 rolls total. This way a fully spec’d rocketeer will have NO scatter firing with both actions late game, and only max 2 after moving.
2. Decrease range penalty for rocket scatter aim rolls. It’s something like -3 aim per tile beyond 9 tiles. I think -1 would be better and allow explosives to be deployed more reliably at long range (the real rocket advantage over grenades).
3. Mk.II/III gauntlets provide additional slight flamethrower advantages. Maybe +1 range per tier or +10% chance to apply burning to enemies per tier.
- 1. Unreliable hitting the enemies you want due to scatter,
- LCPL: Slug Shot | Electroshock | Lightning Reflexes
- a. Regarding AH DLC equipment.
- i. I think these should be changed and/or balanced because it just doesn’t make sense to have ONLY 1 of the items ever. In vanilla it was OK, but in LW2 there are trap missions. I lost my frost grenade pretty early to a trap mission and it just seems unfair to the player that they can lose an item like that and never get it back.
- 1. Possible solution to this: make the items buildable, but make it so that you can only have 1 built at any given time.
- i. You succeeded in making this so late in the game that they don’t really matter anymore. Awesome nerf to one of the most OP things upon release.
- i. I think these should be changed and/or balanced because it just doesn’t make sense to have ONLY 1 of the items ever. In vanilla it was OK, but in LW2 there are trap missions. I lost my frost grenade pretty early to a trap mission and it just seems unfair to the player that they can lose an item like that and never get it back.
- a. This one is particularly important to me. I really enjoy having to build each weapon and armor separately, as this really gives a sense of “I am the Commander”. It’s a nice change over vanilla and is very LW1-esque. But then this was taken to the EXTREME. In LW2 there are basically NO straight upgrades. Where I draw the line here is at the secondary weapon lineup. Loading out each soldier with armor, weapons, specific upgrades, and utility slots was fine. But then you started asking that all secondary weapons be custom built and loaded-out. That’s where the tedium broke me. The effort to get each soldier ready at loadout crossed a line at that point. You can’t tell me that we can’t just upgrade ALL our gremlins with some new software and hardware. The thought of building each “vibroblade” and selecting it for every gunner at loadout makes me want to punch small children. Please consider, for secondary weapons, going back to the old squad-wide upgrades to break up the effort of loadout just a little bit. For balance, you would obviously have to significantly raise the price of many of the secondary weapon upgrades.
- i. I think squad-wide upgrades also serve an important purpose for the player. It feels REALLY GOOD to get a truly permanent upgrade, it gives a real sense of accomplishment knowing that you’ve made something better for the rest of the game. It feels like this is missing in the game outside of excavating your base and unlocking more training tubes.
- i. Smoke bombs: so cheap to build, by the time you can build them you should be able to make enough for everyone to always get one. Please just make it a straight upgrade and have there be one less item on the list.
ii. Other bombs in general: a little tougher here because incendiary bombs are so good.
iii. Battlefield medicine: also mentioned in Item II, sec 2c. It is awful and frankly unrealistic that XCOM can’t just enhance all their medical supplies at once. This really needs to be a straight upgrade, it’s so expensive!
- a. This has been an issue since vanilla. Whoever at firaxis designed the squad loadout UI should be fired because at release it was broken and almost made me quit vanilla. Unfortunately without extensive coding, I don’t think you could really touch the biggest offenders of the poor UI.
b. To do the level of customizing for LW2 that must be done at squad loadout, you always have to hover over a soldiers ‘box’ and wait for EDIT to popup before clicking on it. Changing their loadout is easy, just click their weapon or the items in the slots. But weapon attachments, customization, and PCS’s? Gotta wait for the EDIT button. This sub-optimal design costs minutes each loadout (I know it’s vanilla holdover, sigh).
c. Each time you put a soldier in squaddie training in the GTS, there is that warning message that comes up and is totally unnecessary.
d. There are many other instances, and I know you are addressing them so thank you!
1. Dark Events
- a. I didn’t have a problem with dark events even though it’s been a hot topic (and yes I know I’m on rookie). Plus, I know that some changes are already coming to this area.
- i. The one that frustrated me came around when I met Muton Elites. With 20 innate defense AND tactical sense, that’s 40 defense if they are standing out in the open. That’s just not fun, and it acts as a buff to classes like grenadier (like they need it). When none of my GSGT or MSGTs can hit a shot, you need that incendiary grenade to prevent a shitstorm.
- 1. I really hate tac sense.
2. Lightning reflexes is a very close second.
- 1. I really hate tac sense.
- i. The one that frustrated me came around when I met Muton Elites. With 20 innate defense AND tactical sense, that’s 40 defense if they are standing out in the open. That’s just not fun, and it acts as a buff to classes like grenadier (like they need it). When none of my GSGT or MSGTs can hit a shot, you need that incendiary grenade to prevent a shitstorm.
- a. I’m still torn if I’m happy at +10, or think +15 would be better. Would need to be playing off rookie :/
- a. I didn’t use it much, but sometimes I had a squad loading out and realized I needed to check something else before infiltration began. Unfortunately this meant losing everyone I had from the loadout and having to go through and figure out who I was taking again. The ability to assign all troops at squad loadout to a squad (whiskey, November, zulu, whatev) would be a huge QOL improvement.
- a. I know you’re not a fan and it was wonky, but I use AA and am sad that aliens don’t benefit from it anymore. Feels cheaty but not having them on feels worse :/ Shame it wasn’t designed well in the base game. I'll nerf eventually.
- a. What if the black market had to move around once in a while as if Advent was raiding it and they had to go elsewhere? Fun thought, very very low priority on the wishlist.
- a. I really appreciate that a version of cost-based ability colors is made into the game AND that it is configurable via the ini. But why not adopt the extremely intuitive blue (1 action) yellow (2 action) system? I made the color swaps on my own and wow does it make a difference.
- a. If one of your soldiers becomes unconscious, there is only one way to get them back during that mission: revival protocol. There shouldn’t be 1 way to accomplish something so crucial on a long mission (what if I didn’t take this perk). I’d like a timer of something like 20 turns before unconscious wore off naturally. Thus on a timed mission you carry them out, but on a long mission they will wake up, eventually.
I am sorry if things I mentioned here have already been fixed or addressed. If you actually read all this, props to you. Balancing, in my eyes, is not a case of "but my MSGT Technical fired a rocket in the last mission and it was good, technicals have value!" No one is debating that, but balancing must consider opportunity costs and many moving parts.
The recommendations I feel most strongly about (if you read nothing else) are those listed in:
- ITEM II: Section 1a (specifically the GTS upgrades that allow you to train up C and D teams quicker)
- ITEM II: Section 2b (AWC)
- ITEM II: Section 6 (lack of true upgrades)
- Rework of Assault and Technical classes (Part of ITEM II Section 5).
Thank You
