LW2 General Tips we provided press reviewers

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johnnylump
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LW2 General Tips we provided press reviewers

Post by johnnylump »

Hey folks, this is a copy-paste of some general tips we provided to press reviewers before the release of Long War 2. In time this will probably seem extremely basic, but I'll throw it up here as a starting point.

Tips

Overall
• Use the Archives in the Commanders Quarters as it contains helpful info.

• If you are lacking new recruits it's possible you are trying to go on every mission you detect -- that's a mistake. You will encounter more targets than you can handle; your job is to hit lightly defended ones while keeping a reserve for must-finish missions.

• If you are running out of Intel remember the main role of the Intel job is to generate missions -- and generate missions with LOTS of time to infiltrate, which are going to be much easier if you let an infiltration get to >100%. Early on, go on high extremely light or very light missions only, unless it's an emergency. Use the boost infiltration button when you can afford it. Pick up gear and perks that help with infiltration time (suppressors, chameleon vest, tradecraft perk are the biggies).

• If you are hitting missions where the Turn Timers feel extremely punishing, remember Officers have an ability, Intervention, that spends intel to increase the turn timer. So train an officer in the GTS (they do lots of other cool stuff too).

• On many missions, XCOM can request an emergency evacuation from the battlefield at the Commander's discretion. Once the Skyranger has been contacted, the soldier making the call will need to select a rendezvous point for the evacuation to occur. Doing so will reveal the squad if it is concealed. Once placed, the squad will need to move into the designated EVAC volume and request a rope out. Note that the Skyranger may take some time to arrive: if XCOM has many infiltrations active around the globe, has poorly infiltrated this particular mission, or has a large squad, expect to have to defend the evac zone until the Skyranger can arrive.

• Also remember that not every mission is going to be winnable, you will lose soldiers and missions, but through careful planning and smart choices you can win the war.

These are the new and changed tips that appear when loading a mission.

Tactical
o "When controlling a Shinobi, right click on an enemy to initiate your charging melee attack."
o "An increased Dodge stat can lead to \"graze\" shots, where only partial damage is applied."
o "Soldiers with the Phantom ability will begin every mission in concealment, even if the squad does not."
o "On higher difficulties, the enemy will sometimes get bonus actions if they patrol into you on their turn."
o "When assaulting an ADVENT regional HQ, take as large a squad as you can afford."
o "Frag and alien grenades thrown by soldiers lacking the \"Sapper\" or \"Combat Engineer\" perks will be unreliable in destroying cover. Try using a rocket."
o "Each utility item you equip reduces a soldier's mobility by one, so it may be advantageous to leave some of your utility slots empty for bonus movement."
o "Soldiers may equip one plating item and one protective vest. Plating grants ablative HP that can't be healed but isn't counted as a wound when lost."
o "Submachine guns lack the punch of other primary weapons, but they grant bonuses to both mobility and infiltration."
o "Any soldier may equip a pistol in a utility slot. Pistol perks are trained in the Advanced Warfare Center."
o "A Shinobi's slash attack takes only one action and does not end the Shinobi's turn."
o "The Combat Protocol and Arc Pulser perks are good early counters to ADVENT drones."
o "Enemy UFOs are extremely well-defended and require a powerful squad to take on."
o "Summoning the Skyranger for an evacuation now takes multiple turns. Be prepared to defend the evac point."

Strategy
o "Every month new scientists, engineers and veteran soldiers are available for recruitment at the Black Market."
o "Scanning at a Haven will significantly increase that Haven's chance of detecting missions."
o "Upon reaching the rank of sergeant, soldiers will have more extensive customization options."
o "Experimental projects in the Proving Grounds facility can unlock various items for construction."
o "Power relay facilities provide a large increase to power capacity when built atop a power coil."
o "Make sure to check back with the Black Market every month, as it will have new items for purchase and personnel available for recruitment."
o "Enemy bodies are only collected as loot if XCOM does not \"evac\" from the mission or have to leave the battle site immediately after the mission."
o "Elerium cores are valuable loot items, as they are required to create many specialized items."
o "Any timed loot on the map is recovered if you complete the mission before the timer expires, but only if XCOM does not \"evac\" from the mission or depart immediately after the battle."
o "To sabotage an alien facility and set back the aliens' Avatar project, you must first contact the region where the facility was built."
o "The Avatar project can be temporarily delayed, but it cannot be stopped. You are in a race against time."
o "The more Resistance personnel you set to the intel job, the higher chance you have of discovering a mission that has sufficient time left for you to infiltrate a large squad."
o "Attempting a mission before the squad is close to 100% infiltration can greatly increase the mission's difficulty."
o "High-ranking Specialists have access to an ability that will let them reprogram a MEC to work for the Resistance."
o "Liberating a region is a good way to build a supply of enemy corpses for research."
o "If a UFO is hunting the Avenger, it may be advantageous to recall a veteran squad from a mission to help defend XCOM's headquarters."
o "If you are successful on several missions in a region, ADVENT will relocate troops there, making your missions more difficult."
o "The Black Market now deals exclusively in supplies when buying and selling items."
o "Many technologies and items require additional science and engineering staff to unlock. The Basic Research and Engineering techs allow you to work around some of these restrictions."
o "Some missions are simply going to be too difficult for XCOM and should be ignored."
o "Contacting the Resistance in multiple regions will enable you to strike where ADVENT is weakest."
o "The aliens are pursuing the AVATAR project from the start of the campaign, but XCOM can only learn details by completing its objectives."
trihero
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Re: LW2 General Tips we provided press reviewers

Post by trihero »

I appreciate the tips, but one thing I find myself severely lacking is in supplies. Do you have any tips for that? I can't exactly build items that reduce infiltration times, or train officers, or any of the other nifty tips, considering I make about 0 per month due to faceless and the only supplies are coming from excavations that barely pay for necessary structures.
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JC Lewis
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Re: LW2 General Tips we provided press reviewers

Post by JC Lewis »

trihero wrote:I appreciate the tips, but one thing I find myself severely lacking is in supplies. Do you have any tips for that? I can't exactly build items that reduce infiltration times, or train officers, or any of the other nifty tips, considering I make about 0 per month due to faceless and the only supplies are coming from excavations that barely pay for necessary structures.
Selling some of your materials to the black market is a good way to earn supplies when you're a bit short. Some missions also offer supplies or materiel, and of course your havens can also produce supplies via the supply job. You should definitely prioritise hunting down the faceless in your haven however. Put one of your higher ranked soldiers, ideally an officer, on the task and soon enough you'll have a rendezvous with some rather slimy characters.

The GTS is one of the most important structures to build as early as possible on for this reason, among others.
GavinRuneblade
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Re: LW2 General Tips we provided press reviewers

Post by GavinRuneblade »

JC Lewis wrote:
trihero wrote:I appreciate the tips, but one thing I find myself severely lacking is in supplies. Do you have any tips for that? I can't exactly build items that reduce infiltration times, or train officers, or any of the other nifty tips, considering I make about 0 per month due to faceless and the only supplies are coming from excavations that barely pay for necessary structures.
Selling some of your materials to the black market is a good way to earn supplies when you're a bit short. Some missions also offer supplies or materiel, and of course your havens can also produce supplies via the supply job. You should definitely prioritise hunting down the faceless in your haven however. Put one of your higher ranked soldiers, ideally an officer, on the task and soon enough you'll have a rendezvous with some rather slimy characters.

The GTS is one of the most important structures to build as early as possible on for this reason, among others.
I have found I don't get anything valuable to sell. In EW there were steady numbers of damaged UFO parts and mountains of exalt weapons. In Vanilla 2 I could suck it up for a few months and get radio towers built in every zone so I eventually had enough income.

But in neither vanilla nor long war 2 have I found anything I get enough of that I can afford to sell more than like 40-supply worth per month. And I'm running negative income from 5 areas and positive nowhere even with soldiers in all 5. I had one area give me an "ambush the faceless" mission and that one went from -15/month to 0 per month. I have no areas giving me income at all.

I've seen posts about the economy being based on selling corpses, but even into the third month I have only managed to autopsy a trooper, officer and sectoid, because no corpses. And I only have 5 trooper corpses having sold none and rendered none. That would be a whole 25 supplies if I sold them. So where are the supplies supposed to come from?
mattprice516
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Re: LW2 General Tips we provided press reviewers

Post by mattprice516 »

Havens only produce supplies if you set rebels in them to the Supply job - then it's (nominally) one supply per day per rebel.

I typically wait until I've Liberated a region to really start putting tons of rebels on Supply though. Until then I try to subsist on BM and Supply Raids/Troop Ambush missions/Excavation. Supply Raids and Troop Columns are hard to detect without lots of rebels on Intel.
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Valaska
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Re: LW2 General Tips we provided press reviewers

Post by Valaska »

o "The Avatar project can be temporarily delayed, but it cannot be stopped. You are in a race against time."
I want ah, a long war though :x. I want to be playing the same campaign for like a year, is this possible in the future?
Amineri

Re: LW2 General Tips we provided press reviewers

Post by Amineri »

Valaska wrote:
o "The Avatar project can be temporarily delayed, but it cannot be stopped. You are in a race against time."
I want ah, a long war though :x. I want to be playing the same campaign for like a year, is this possible in the future?
There are a few options available via config. The maximum number of Avatar "Doom Pips" can go up to I think 24 or so before the UI starts to overlap other stuff.

And there's always console commands to reduce doom if you really just enjoy that late game mission stuff :)
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Valaska
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Re: LW2 General Tips we provided press reviewers

Post by Valaska »

Amineri wrote:
Valaska wrote:
o "The Avatar project can be temporarily delayed, but it cannot be stopped. You are in a race against time."
I want ah, a long war though :x. I want to be playing the same campaign for like a year, is this possible in the future?
There are a few options available via config. The maximum number of Avatar "Doom Pips" can go up to I think 24 or so before the UI starts to overlap other stuff.

And there's always console commands to reduce doom if you really just enjoy that late game mission stuff :)
Oh that is an excellent point, well played Amineri
GavinRuneblade
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Re: LW2 General Tips we provided press reviewers

Post by GavinRuneblade »

mattprice516 wrote:
I typically wait until I've Liberated a region to really start putting tons of rebels on Supply though. Until then I try to subsist on BM and Supply Raids/Troop Ambush missions/Excavation. Supply Raids and Troop Columns are hard to detect without lots of rebels on Intel.
What, specifically do you sell? The best I've seen are some weapon mods I don't like, but even that is not enough to expand on.
ShockmasterFred
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Re: LW2 General Tips we provided press reviewers

Post by ShockmasterFred »

GavinRuneblade wrote:
mattprice516 wrote:
I typically wait until I've Liberated a region to really start putting tons of rebels on Supply though. Until then I try to subsist on BM and Supply Raids/Troop Ambush missions/Excavation. Supply Raids and Troop Columns are hard to detect without lots of rebels on Intel.
What, specifically do you sell? The best I've seen are some weapon mods I don't like, but even that is not enough to expand on.
I have made some decent money by selling off some of the less useful PCS units. Hyper Reactive Pupils, Focus, Psi and a couple of others are either not that great, or not useful early on. i was able to make 100 supplies and get my AWC up and running because of that, as they seem to be fairly common loot drops. Just a suggestion. Take it if it sounds feasible to you. Good luck Commander!
gimrah
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Re: LW2 General Tips we provided press reviewers

Post by gimrah »

I'm also struggling with supplies (incl alloys/elerium). I'm in late May. I eventually figured out how to clear a traitor and did so (there were two faceless). At the end of that month I still got all my supplies stolen. Does it just take another month to clear or does that mean I have yet another traitor?

If it's the latter, that seems a little extreme. It basically means you need soldiers as advisors all the time and you lose half your rebels as traitors (or on the mission). Maybe consider reducing the traitor spawn rate and/or setting an absolute cap for how much they can steal.

I've had two opportunities for supply raids. The first had 3 days left, so I let it go. The second had 6 days and change, which was enough to get 5 soldiers infiltrated at slightly over 100% infiltration (6 soldiers would have been <90%), taking it down from light/moderate to light. I got my ass handed to me. Maybe I could have won but when the second big pod joins your fight with the first big pod it gets hairy with 5 soldiers. Are they meant to be that hard? Or was I supposed to spend intel to boost infiltration (in each case I had just spent all my intel expanding)?

As a result I have about 3 laser weapons (I had to buy elerium at vast expense for the research), a couple of AP ammo - and that's it for gear.

I'm still winning missions but it's getting harder, T2 enemies are showing up and I'm still very much running at T1.
GavinRuneblade
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Re: LW2 General Tips we provided press reviewers

Post by GavinRuneblade »

gimrah wrote:I'm also struggling with supplies (incl alloys/elerium). I'm in late May. I eventually figured out how to clear a traitor and did so (there were two faceless). At the end of that month I still got all my supplies stolen. Does it just take another month to clear or does that mean I have yet another traitor?

If it's the latter, that seems a little extreme. It basically means you need soldiers as advisors all the time and you lose half your rebels as traitors (or on the mission). Maybe consider reducing the traitor spawn rate and/or setting an absolute cap for how much they can steal.
Each new recruit has a 16% chance to be faceless, but existing humans don't get replaced. So once your haven is full and clean you are safe. 16% is like 1 in 5.5, so assume three per haven on average. More if you get casualties and replace them.
gimrah
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Re: LW2 General Tips we provided press reviewers

Post by gimrah »

@GavinRuneblade

Thank you that's very helpful to know.

Trouble is that still leaves you with the problem that after you clear out faceless you probably need to recruit (not least as rebels die very very easily in the mission), whereupon you get more faceless etc. Which IMO could make the current probability a little high.
trihero
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Re: LW2 General Tips we provided press reviewers

Post by trihero »

Even though I had a soldier stationed in my original haven since the first month, he still found a faceless in September so I think it's just safer to keep a soldier stationed always in havens; it's too hard to count who's clean and who's not. Not to mention it helps with possible retaliations.
PropheticShadeZ
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Re: LW2 General Tips we provided press reviewers

Post by PropheticShadeZ »

gimrah wrote:I'm also struggling with supplies (incl alloys/elerium). I'm in late May. I eventually figured out how to clear a traitor and did so (there were two faceless). At the end of that month I still got all my supplies stolen. Does it just take another month to clear or does that mean I have yet another traitor?

If it's the latter, that seems a little extreme. It basically means you need soldiers as advisors all the time and you lose half your rebels as traitors (or on the mission). Maybe consider reducing the traitor spawn rate and/or setting an absolute cap for how much they can steal.

I've had two opportunities for supply raids. The first had 3 days left, so I let it go. The second had 6 days and change, which was enough to get 5 soldiers infiltrated at slightly over 100% infiltration (6 soldiers would have been <90%), taking it down from light/moderate to light. I got my ass handed to me. Maybe I could have won but when the second big pod joins your fight with the first big pod it gets hairy with 5 soldiers. Are they meant to be that hard? Or was I supposed to spend intel to boost infiltration (in each case I had just spent all my intel expanding)?

As a result I have about 3 laser weapons (I had to buy elerium at vast expense for the research), a couple of AP ammo - and that's it for gear.

I'm still winning missions but it's getting harder, T2 enemies are showing up and I'm still very much running at T1.
This is how i lost my first 2 playthroughs, I couldnt seem to get anywhere so i just put my best technical/gunner/grenadier in the haven advisors position, and now im able to function. With the alloys elerium side, i found that taking a bigger squad on enemy material missions and not fully infiltrating will grant you with increased corpses, maybe a higher tier unit corpse, and more promotions, with the "safety" of being able to take it slow, evac anyone too injured, and reducing advent strength in the area. Im playing on veteran, and i skipped laser weapons (for now) and moved straight to magnetic, and made sure to only do missions in the areas with minimal advent strength.
I was in your position, and i thought i could keep fighting, until a bunch of dark events ramped up the difficulty, and then the avenger got attacked and not even my best squad could cope.
If you start to find that missions are not having enough infiltration time, consider leaving some more haven people on intel, they will help with discovering missions
(side note, i think leaving resistance personel on recruit makes more prison break missions show up, intel makes intel packages and normal missions show up, and im not sure but maybe being on supply makes "enemy material" missions show up, i cant find anything definitive though)
Bluescreen
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Re: LW2 General Tips we provided press reviewers

Post by Bluescreen »

Its my first LW2 playthrough, veteran diff. Needless to say i lack resources. Which are main priorities among proving ground projects? Plasma grenade, incendinary grenade? Flames and burning effect got a buff, and burning enemies do mainly nothing, so it seems very good for me.
LordYanaek
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Re: LW2 General Tips we provided press reviewers

Post by LordYanaek »

Try to search this forum, there are a lot of helpful threads including one discussion PG projects. For the short answer, yes incendiary grenades are great but they come late and require advanced grenade launchers and volatile mix perk to have a decent radius. Also burning doesn't stop every enemy attacks as i learned when a burning berserker knocked my flamer tech down :o
Vests and better plating are good for your frontliners. Venom and Dragon rounds are good on high aim soldiers. Plasma grenade is a must. Weapon add-ons can be useful for those add-ons you want on every weapons (exp mag and scope are probably the most useful).
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