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XCOM 2 |OT| Be Aggressive! Be Be Aggressive!
- Thread starter Sober
- Start date
Vincent Grayson
Member
I'd say he should replace a Specialist with a fully-trained Psi-Ops, but I'm guessing he doesn't have one.
Shake Appeal
Member
Enemies I have never been hit by in my dozens of hours of play:
And only once by an Archon (but I've never seen them use Blazing Pinions, not once), because their health pools and dodge are a nightmare.
I wish there were a difficulty between Commander and Legend. Or just a difficulty curve where your guys weren't demigods by the end.
Sectopod
Gatekeeper
Andromedon
Heavy Mech
Gatekeeper
Andromedon
Heavy Mech
And only once by an Archon (but I've never seen them use Blazing Pinions, not once), because their health pools and dodge are a nightmare.
I wish there were a difficulty between Commander and Legend. Or just a difficulty curve where your guys weren't demigods by the end.
Shake Appeal
Member
But I don't even know what some of those enemies can do! I just crush them in one turn, else mimic/hack/domination/shutdown/stasis.
you can create your own commander+ with mods
Shake Appeal
Member
It's sort of explained in the Faceless research description, but it doesn't explain the mimic beacon's appearance. It should be like a weird goopy flesh mannequin, not a glowy blue thing.
ISee
Member
I had them on my commander playthrough, plenty of them.
I understand why most people feel like demigods on 'lower' difficulties. I'm reaching the late game phase of my legendary ironman run (andromedans and sectopods are showing up now) and I appreciate every kind of power I have atm.
Granted the late game is way more easy than the early game (early game was hell for me, tbh), but some missions are still hard and every move has to be planed out, every grenade well spend, every utility item/soldier skill used at the correct moment. The game tends to swarm you with enemies. 'Oh you're fighting one andromedan and one sectopod already? Here take three more codices, a heavy MEC accompanied by some advent troops and a reinforcement beacon'.
But I'm still not at the possible top tier tech (no war suits, no proving ground heavy weapons, still no storm guns, power armor should be finished soon) so maybe I'll change my opinion later.
I understand that even legendary isn't challenging enough for some people, but I wish that the majority of people complaining about OP grenadiers, PSI ops (etc.) would try out the game on a higher and more uncomfortable difficulty + ironman first.
Awesome. Just looked at my saves and realized I have no hard saves between the last regular mission I did and the start of the final two missions. So instead of replaying the last two missions and losing maybe two hours of progress, I have to reset three missions and lose more than four hours of progress. All because I figured "It always leaves an autosave in the base, right? Why make a hard save?"
Fuck this is frustrating. And it's my own damn fault. I wish the game would've said in the point of no return warning, "Hey, idiot, there's a whole tier of tech you haven't even unlocked yet. Without it, you're fucked on the last mission."
Ugh, I legit might just uninstall the game for a few months at this point. So discouraged at the moment.
Fuck this is frustrating. And it's my own damn fault. I wish the game would've said in the point of no return warning, "Hey, idiot, there's a whole tier of tech you haven't even unlocked yet. Without it, you're fucked on the last mission."
Ugh, I legit might just uninstall the game for a few months at this point. So discouraged at the moment.
Elerium: The holy grail of xcom
I realize that now. I let Elerium sit in my research list for most of my game and never bothered to look into it, opting to do all the autopsies and shadow chamber projects first.
Shake Appeal
Member
I'm not saying I've never seen them; I'm saving they've never hit me with an attack. I'm playing on Ironman Commander.
You shouldn't have to dial up to Ironman Legend to have a consistent difficulty curve.
You're still planning for a second hit, which shouldn't be a thing.
One fuckup is enough!
Royal_Phalanx
Member
RNG is unpredictable, I've had soldiers get shot and killed behind full cover, I don't know how people expect not to get anyone shot in XCOM.
The Jackdog
Member
just got my steam controller. few days after beating it.
excited to turn on 100 mods and go back in from my couch
excited to turn on 100 mods and go back in from my couch
Royal_Phalanx
Member
Regret putting Muton Centurions into my game. They look like Krogan though, so I added them because they looked cool.
Better to plan for it than not
RandomSeed
Member
You shouldn't? Isn't the higher difficulty there to use? Most games I've ever played (with RPG elements) are harder at the start, then get easier...just kinda the way it goes. If you're that good at the game, just crank it up. I'm sure most people are getting hit by their attacks.
Especially on the first playthrough when you don't know what they can do.I thought I was smart by sneaking around the side of the map on a blacksite mission, only to open the door into the main room and be greeted by 2 Gatekeepers, 2 Archons, a heavy lancer, and a elite shieldbearer, while I had no plasma weapons. Thanks be to AOE damage and the much maligned meme bacon. Acid bomb, capacitor discharge, void rift, a grenade, then a heavy gunner on cleanup for the 4 bunched up, then a mimic beacon to soak up two attacks from the ones behind cover. Was fun.
Kaffeemann
Banned
WTF. Soldiers can't hack terminals when disoriented?
Have you ever tried to login to a PC while drunk?
I'm near the end of the game, I believe, and from what I read I don't even want to play the last mission. Sounds awful.
I probably didn't upgrade tech fast enough but it feels like there's not enough missions where I can take advantage of all this late game gear.. by the time I have it all, the game is almost over. Guess that's how it goes. And it feels like there's no breathing room.
But I'm more interested in some sort of infinite campaign mode than finishing my current run at this point :/
I probably didn't upgrade tech fast enough but it feels like there's not enough missions where I can take advantage of all this late game gear.. by the time I have it all, the game is almost over. Guess that's how it goes. And it feels like there's no breathing room.
But I'm more interested in some sort of infinite campaign mode than finishing my current run at this point :/
Does the final mission end as soon as you kill the three avatars, or do you have to kill all enemies and destroy the gates? Because if all I have to do is kill the avatars, I think that it's honestly almost within my capabilities. I've gotten to the final area and killed the first avatar, and the other two have appeared. I have a Gatekeeper I've been mind controlling that's been helping a lot. I probably can't quite pull it off as is, but I'm pretty close. At this point I think I'll just edit the ini files and make my soldiers do a little more damage to compensate and just finish the mission. I can always do a second playthrough fair and square now that I know better how to progress in the metagame.
Slackbladder
Member
Just kill the Avatars.
Ok cool, I'm just gonna cheat a little bit then to even things out. I think I've earned it.
Shake Appeal
Member
I will definitely play Legend, and I will definitely struggle and fail repeatedly. I struggled and failed a few times on Commander, too, before this (fourth?) run.You shouldn't? Isn't the higher difficulty there to use? Most games I've ever played (with RPG elements) are harder at the start, then get easier...just kinda the way it goes. If you're that good at the game, just crank it up. I'm sure most people are getting hit by their attacks.
The point is that the game should present some sort of challenge throughout. But just like EU/EW, XCOM 2 becomes a cakewalk once things snowball in your favor a few months in (apart from some sort of spike on the last mission?). I find myself missing the early game as a result, where the stakes were higher and pod reveals felt threatening.
I'm sure this is at least partly by design, but it's also because certain things are just hugely overpowered (shotguns, grenades and grenade launchers, mimics, psi), and this makes some things later on a chore and/or repetitive unless you choose to ignore optimal play.
Glitchesarecool
Member
So can someone tell me why this keeps happening at the end of every mission? Game just hangs here.
This is after the loading for back to base happens, and I thought the patch last night might have fixed it for me since it happened on the previous mission, then was fixed when I ran the game this morning. It's seriously killing my vibe for playing when the game breaks so badly.
Sidenote, skulljacking/mining is fucking brutal every time it happens, and I love that it's hard removal of a unit that can be targeted. Also the wraith suit giving my sniper a free movement to shoot still is pretty fantastic, and I've discovered the wonders of scanning protocol to uncover pretty much every Faceless on a map in one go. Also fuck chrysalids, jesus how many movement spaces do they get?
This is after the loading for back to base happens, and I thought the patch last night might have fixed it for me since it happened on the previous mission, then was fixed when I ran the game this morning. It's seriously killing my vibe for playing when the game breaks so badly.
Sidenote, skulljacking/mining is fucking brutal every time it happens, and I love that it's hard removal of a unit that can be targeted. Also the wraith suit giving my sniper a free movement to shoot still is pretty fantastic, and I've discovered the wonders of scanning protocol to uncover pretty much every Faceless on a map in one go. Also fuck chrysalids, jesus how many movement spaces do they get?
I think ideally it should ebb and flow, be difficult, then easy, difficult, then easy. throw up a challenge but then let you enjoy the feeling of having overcome it. The pacing as it stands I think is even worse than EU.
RandomSeed
Member
I agree that the game shouldn't become a cakewalk, and I agree that the balance of some abilities/weapons/items isn't perfect, but I can't help but think you got better at the game, and outside of some dynamic AI that can adapt to your crushing of it, playing on the same difficulty over time will only get easier. You leveled up. I mean if they made commander difficulty (mid to end game) so hard that it would challenge someone that played it 4 times, I'd probably just give up and drop the difficulty, rather than work my way up.
I have an Asus laptop with an Nvidia 960M (4GB VRAM). I saw a video on YouTube where someone was getting 35-45 fps using the same gpu.
Could anyone enlighten me as to whether I can play this game comfortably? Can I Run It says I can't for some reason (even though, from what I Understand, I should be able to).
Could anyone enlighten me as to whether I can play this game comfortably? Can I Run It says I can't for some reason (even though, from what I Understand, I should be able to).
UpDownLeftRight
Banned
Really not feeling this final mission at all. I really enjoyed my time so far but this is just kind of lame. the map is pretty damn confined so codex can just screw an entire round easily and they appear to be patrolling since they're coming into view at the worst times even when I'm trying to be careful. Not actually sure I'm going to bother with finishing it for now.
Still there are a lot of things I've really preferred about this game over EU, but there's also been a number of things that I dislike. At first I really preferred being the attacker and being able to create an ambush but since it's only brief it doesn't really feel like it ended up changing the game much unless you can get a hack to conceal again. I kinda feel like there's a lot instances of outright avoiding the RNG due to grenadiers being so useful.
Even stuff like the procedural generation isn't something I got much use out of often since the grenadier method of blow everything to bits was always effective, whereas in EU I spent a lot more time making use of the level design and I kind of prefer it that way. Of course you can just not have a grenadier but even then you still have rockets and shred etc on WAR suits and some enemies tend to lead you down the route. I still love the game but after reaching the final mission and having a bit of a think on it I'm kind of caught between replaying 2 or EU.
Still there are a lot of things I've really preferred about this game over EU, but there's also been a number of things that I dislike. At first I really preferred being the attacker and being able to create an ambush but since it's only brief it doesn't really feel like it ended up changing the game much unless you can get a hack to conceal again. I kinda feel like there's a lot instances of outright avoiding the RNG due to grenadiers being so useful.
Even stuff like the procedural generation isn't something I got much use out of often since the grenadier method of blow everything to bits was always effective, whereas in EU I spent a lot more time making use of the level design and I kind of prefer it that way. Of course you can just not have a grenadier but even then you still have rockets and shred etc on WAR suits and some enemies tend to lead you down the route. I still love the game but after reaching the final mission and having a bit of a think on it I'm kind of caught between replaying 2 or EU.
MrCompletely
Member
AWC gave my ranger Serial, so her actions are refunded whenever she gets a kill! She's basically the Flash now.
Royal_Phalanx
Member
How do you do a fighting retreat properly? I'm having real trouble with extraction missions where enemy squads aggro when I'm trying to get the VIP out and get in my way. I lost a LOT of soldiers today trying to break out towards the extraction point. I use all my grenades in the initial engagements (hate Vipers, always screw things up by grabbing a soldier and binding or spitting poison).
King Tubby
Member
Flashbangs, flashbangs, flashbangs (or mimic beacons). It's the only way I've made the "fighting retreat" work. I also generally try to bring at least 3 flashbangs/mimic beacons per mission.
Don't bother with Reaper. It's too situational and most of the enemies that you encounter by that point will survive a sword strike.
I optimized to three mimics and two flashbangs eventually. I did get the Mind Shields for all my rangers though.
Not after a grenade, and Reaper eats Codex alive.
RandomSeed
Member
Does the Psi Op fortress ability only work with grenades? An Andromedon punched my guy, exploding a car he was using for cover, and he took 2 sources of damage.
MrCompletely
Member
Are you still early-mid game? I've found flashbangs are no longer as useful since there's a greater mix of mechanized enemies. Also, the revival protocol will get rid of certain status effects, but I dont think it counters mind control.
Now I'm carrying EMP's, Bluescreen rounds, scanners, and mimics since there are Heavy MEC's, and at least a Gateway or Sectopod on every mission.
Another method to deal with fighting retreat is hacking a mechanized enemy and rushing it into the where the other enemies are grouped up. They seem to all prioritize attacking the hacked unit.
Is it equipped on a soldier that isn't on the mission? There are buttons at the bottom of the deployment screen to remove armor and utility items from benched soldiers.
King Tubby
Member
Early-mid game are the only times I really need to use the fighting retreat method. By the mid-late game flashbangs are basically rendered obsolete by mimic beacons, but on top of that your squad is generally powerful enough to take down opposing pods on the very first turn you see them.
Yep, tried that over several missions hitting the unequip button. Still no acid grenades :/
vpance
Member
I think I'll try it on a different Ranger. This one's already got perception PCS and isn't even a Blademaster anyways.
I might retrain and get rid of Conceal though. It hasn't been as useful as i thought it'd be. I find myself in situations where I wish I had Run & Gun way more often.
Maybe the soldier that had them equipped died. In that case, it is gone.
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