Long War 2 is out TODAY

[meiam]

Started playing a bit, the biggest things I need to adjust to is that your soldier are actually quite a bit more survivable than in the base game so I have to play far more recklessly. Especially since time limit are so tight in mission, really can't afford to place all soldier in defensible position, better to rush and pray. Shinobi do a good job of that, there sword is about the only reliable source of damage early on.

Had my first wipe, although it pretty much happen because I didn't realize that if you stun an enemy for 2 turn it count the turn where you did the stun (ie the enemy only miss one turn), so that kind of screwed me up when I placed a soldier right next to a stun droid.

Also some mission infiltration time are bonkers compared to how long you have to do them. Like had a mission that would expire in 1 day and even a small time would need 5+ day to infiltrate, was I suppose to just send like 1 dude?

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Also some mission infiltration time are bonkers compared to how long you have to do them. Like had a mission that would expire in 1 day and even a small time would need 5+ day to infiltrate, was I suppose to just send like 1 dude?

Set more of your haven guys to Intel.

The more of them are on it, the more missions you find, and the EARLIER you find them.

I recently tried that, and several of my next missions had time limits of, no joke, 10 days.

Sent in a squad of 7 guys on the next jailbreak mission, it was a steamroll. XD

Unfortunately, I hit a bug where the soldier I was trying to rescue along with the rebels refused to activate, so I'm waiting anxiously for them to release the path so I can continue on my run. >_>

 

[Sonmi]

So I've been playing it for some time and I'm saving scumming like a *****. Lots of frustration, I really like it, but I need to take breaks every once in awhile just to keep my blood pressure from going through the roof.

Save-scumming in a game like XCOM is literally immoral if you want my opinion.

Spoiler

It's the only way I feel I'd be able to succeed in LW2 though, to be honest, I'm getting my ass kicked on Ironman.

Well, I don't. Thank you for sharing, but I really don't. If I wanted to play on Ironman, and I have in the past, I'd turn on Ironman.

You can find a nice balance between Ironman and save-scumming, save scumming takes all challenge out of a game.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

So I've been playing it for some time and I'm saving scumming like a *****. Lots of frustration, I really like it, but I need to take breaks every once in awhile just to keep my blood pressure from going through the roof.

Unfortunately some scumming is virtually necessary due to the present state of LW2. That should alleviate somewhat with the patch. Currently a couple of things are going to be fixed...

1. Turn times on Veteran should be going up by +2. Should help with the "rescue prisoners" (extremely large maps) and "disable device" (only 9 turns) missions. Even those would be presently doable, if not for...

2. The pod behavior is all fucked up right now. Vanilla included code wherein pods would "leash" to the player rather than simply patrolling. When you have a large map and only 12 enemies on it, and XCOM can easily clear a pod in a single pass, Firaxis didn't want the patrols to be easily bypassable leading to OP stealth. They wanted stealth to let you open up on a pod of your choice and then you fight it out from there. In Long War 2, stealth is MANDATORY, both to have a prayer of hitting certain turn timers and because infilitration mechanics often force you to bring a reduced squad into action, so you literally cannot hope to eliminate a pod in a single turn (and tech/numbers escalation makes that increasingly difficult as time goes by). There are also a lot more enemies on the map. So now, instead of leashing making sure you have a fun fight, leashing ensures two things. One, your attempts to stealth past patrols will almost always be flummoxed...they'll psychically path into you no matter which way you try go (try scumming and going left and then right and watch the patrol change its pattern to box you in). Two, the patrols will slowly tighten in a noose around the objective, so any attempts to flank or advance on one group once inevitably triggered will cause a pod trigger cascade, and you'll quickly be fighting the entire map at once.

The first region liberation mission I did, with a squad of 6, had pods of up to NINE aliens. One had three vipers and 5 sectoids, and we still had conventional weapons...not even lasers yet. They also 'yellow alerted', meaning they didn't wander into me and scatter, they acted as if they'd already been triggered, and came in guns blazing.

The game in its present state is punitively, UNFAIRLY difficult. You have three choices...

1. Scum a bit
2. Watch your campaign end in May
3. Be a world best XCOM player

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

In Long War 2, stealth is MANDATORY

I tried that, and I ran into the problem of "OK, great, I have a guy who can hack the jail cell and spring the prisoners, and the rest of my squad can rotate around the building and bypass the 2 pods out front!"

*hacks door*

*RED ALERT SOUND EFFECT*

"We're busted! They know where we are!!"

*the 2 pods out front scramble to cover*

If trying to cap an objective breaks stealth, there's rarely much point in doing it all the way, as you'll just get busted later rather than sooner, and risk fighting on two flanks.

Not to mention that some patrols are so HUGE because of drones that it often takes longer to wait for an opening to dash past than it would to snipe the drone, use a Sapper Grenadier to blow up the enemy cover, then lay into them in one big huge barrage. ...IMO, anyway.

 

[Erttheking]

So I've been playing it for some time and I'm saving scumming like a *****. Lots of frustration, I really like it, but I need to take breaks every once in awhile just to keep my blood pressure from going through the roof.

Save-scumming in a game like XCOM is literally immoral if you want my opinion.

Spoiler

It's the only way I feel I'd be able to succeed in LW2 though, to be honest, I'm getting my ass kicked on Ironman.

Well, I don't. Thank you for sharing, but I really don't. If I wanted to play on Ironman, and I have in the past, I'd turn on Ironman.

You can find a nice balance between Ironman and save-scumming, save scumming takes all challenge out of a game.

I'm sorry, was I not clear in my first post? You do you, I'll do me.

 

[Sonmi]

So I've been playing it for some time and I'm saving scumming like a *****. Lots of frustration, I really like it, but I need to take breaks every once in awhile just to keep my blood pressure from going through the roof.

Save-scumming in a game like XCOM is literally immoral if you want my opinion.

Spoiler

It's the only way I feel I'd be able to succeed in LW2 though, to be honest, I'm getting my ass kicked on Ironman.

Well, I don't. Thank you for sharing, but I really don't. If I wanted to play on Ironman, and I have in the past, I'd turn on Ironman.

You can find a nice balance between Ironman and save-scumming, save scumming takes all challenge out of a game.

I'm sorry, was I not clear in my first post? You do you, I'll do me.

I apologize, I'm not too adept at getting passive aggressiveness.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

If trying to cap an objective breaks stealth, there's rarely much point in doing it all the way, as you'll just get busted later rather than sooner, and risk fighting on two flanks.

Yes, triggering the objective breaks stealth. You should only try stealth/sprint/objective missions at 200% infiltration. That way you get 1 turn evac. Break the objective drop your evac behind cover, scamper into evac, and hope some crazy ass bullshit doesn't ensue on the alien's one turn. If you have a 2nd/3rd guy, have one of them drop smoke over the evac area.

 

[Zhukov]

Edit - does anyone know where all my income is going, is there some dark event hidden somewhere?

Spoiler

You have a Faceless infiltrator among your rebels. Assign a soldier, preferably an officer, as haven liaison and eventually you'll get a mission to hunt it down.

 

[Amigastar]

patch 1.1 for Long War 2 was just released.

http://www.pavonisinteractive.com/longwar2_changelog.htm

 

[Zhukov]

Ehh, not really sure I like it, all things considered.

The extra stuff is nice, especially the expanded soldier skill/perk trees. The adjusted difficulty curve is definitely welcome.

However, there are some changes I like that have unwelcome side effects. I like that XP is awarded mostly for completing missions rather than kills. Trying to dole kills out to new soldiers in the previous game(s) was a pain and encouraged inefficient tactics. I also like that you don't have to clear every map. You can often just complete the objective then GTFO. Adds to the guerrilla warfare feel.

However, the upshot is that stealth is now OP as fuck. In vanilla XCOM2 it was intended as a way to save players from painfully creeping across the map so they could kick off the all-important first enemy pod activation on favourable terms. The stealth mechanical basically guaranteed that while saving everyone time. But in Long War 2 I complete most of the missions by stealthing all the way to objective, doing whatever it is that needs doing then sprinting for the evac, often without firing a shot. Which might sound cool, but the game isn't made for that. The stealth mechanics are pretty barebones because they were never intended to be used/exploited so much. I feel like I'm playing Invisible Inc: Shit Edition.

I've actually started to sour on the new XCOM games in general. I'm grateful that they demonstrated that there's a market for squad-scale turn-based strategy, but maybe next time they could make something a little less janky and unbalanced.

The enemy pod activation system dominates the game to an obnoxious degree since victory often depends on engaging pods one at a time. This cripples the positioning element because once a fight breaks out you don't want to move too much in case you activate four enemies squatting in that one grey square behind a potplant or something.

So you end up just stacking aim bonuses to mitigate the RNG and dice-rolling your way to success. In the first game this was mostly done by abusing squad-sight snipers. Then after they got adjusted it was all about destroying cover. Now it's about abusing stealth and avoiding the RNG by bombing everything to death.

 

[QuiteEnjoyed2016]

There was a similar mechanic in XCOM enemy within (the expansion of the previous one by firaxis) where you could make character into mech and they'd gain a specific skill based on what class they were, so that might have been it.

Are psi opt still in LW2? They were so ridiculously OP in the base game that they really contributed to the last part of the game being a cakewalk.

Yes, but the inverted difficulty curve is gone. Long War starts "easy" <cough, cough> and rapidly gets heinous.

So far I have been enjoying it... got murdered on first couple of missions twice, then flawless-ed them and now slowly realising I can't respond to anything like every mission

Edit - does anyone know where all my income is going, is there some dark event hidden somewhere?

One word. Faceless. You'll be eventually getting a security breach mission where you deal with some infiltrators.

Edit - does anyone know where all my income is going, is there some dark event hidden somewhere?

Spoiler

You have a Faceless infiltrator among your rebels. Assign a soldier, preferably an officer, as haven liaison and eventually you'll get a mission to hunt it down.

Oooh, thematically consistent and massively annoying, that's so very Xcom. Thanks. This mod gets better and better.

 

[meiam]

Ehh, not really sure I like it, all things considered.

The extra stuff is nice, especially the expanded soldier skill/perk trees. The adjusted difficulty curve is definitely welcome.

However, there are some changes I like that have unwelcome side effects. I like that XP is awarded mostly for completing missions rather than kills. Trying to dole kills out to new soldiers in the previous game(s) was a pain and encouraged inefficient tactics. I also like that you don't have to clear every map. You can often just complete the objective then GTFO. Adds to the guerrilla warfare feel.

However, the upshot is that stealth is now OP as fuck. In vanilla XCOM2 it was intended as a way to save players from painfully creeping across the map so they could kick off the all-important first enemy pod activation on favourable terms. The stealth mechanical basically guaranteed that while saving everyone time. But in Long War 2 I complete most of the missions by stealthing all the way to objective, doing whatever it is that needs doing then sprinting for the evac, often without firing a shot. Which might sound cool, but the game isn't made for that. The stealth mechanics are pretty barebones because they were never intended to be used/exploited so much. I feel like I'm playing Invisible Inc: Shit Edition.

I've actually started to sour on the new XCOM games in general. I'm grateful that they demonstrated that there's a market for squad-scale turn-based strategy, but maybe next time they could make something a little less janky and unbalanced.

The enemy pod activation system dominates the game to an obnoxious degree since victory often depends on engaging pods one at a time. This cripples the positioning element because once a fight breaks out you don't want to move too much in case you activate four enemies squatting in that one grey square behind a potplant or something.

So you end up just stacking aim bonuses to mitigate the RNG and dice-rolling your way to success. In the first game this was mostly done by abusing squad-sight snipers. Then after they got adjusted it was all about destroying cover. Now it's about abusing stealth and avoiding the RNG by bombing everything to death.

I... actually have to agree on pretty much everything, although I'm still really enjoying it.

But yeah, the mission time limit is so insanely tight you simply cannot afford to fight all the enemy on the way to the objective which means you really have to stealth your way there (on commander I typically have, for example, 8 turn to get to an objective that takes 4 turn to get to and then 1-2 turn to get to the evac without any fight).

And the cover bonus is so high that shooting at enemy that's behind cover is nearly pointless, you typically get 25-30% hit chance, normally the solution would be to flank the enemy position BUT this is actually a terribly risky move since if you trigger a second group of enemy, it's pretty much game over, so you need to avoid moving too much. You could try to lure the enemy back into an area you already explore where you can move more freely, but again the turn limit are too tight for that. And so I find myself relying on grenade and explosion for everything because it's the only reliable way to do damage without triggering more enemy.

Maybe if the pod were semi visible at all time we could move around fight a lot more freely and so flanking would become a viable tactics rather than a game of russian roulette. Or maybe if the turn weren't so tight. The turn limit were a quick fix to a bigger problem, because the enemy activation system was so sever, player would creep out very slowly to the objective, which was fairly boring but the only safe way to play. So Firaxis implemented turn limit in enemy within, they couldn't really do much more since it was an expansion, but they keep the system in for 2, but they implemented the stealth system to mitigate the worse of it and turn limit were in maybe half the mission. LW 2, the turn limit are in practically every mission. Maybe if you would automatically go back in to conceleament if you killed all the enemy of a group and no other enemy were activated it could work, but yeah for now it's pretty much race for the objective and grenade when fight break out.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I... actually have to agree on pretty much everything, although I'm still really enjoying it.

But yeah, the mission time limit is so insanely tight you simply cannot afford to fight all the enemy on the way to the objective which means you really have to stealth your way there (on commander I typically have, for example, 8 turn to get to an objective that takes 4 turn to get to and then 1-2 turn to get to the evac without any fight).

And the cover bonus is so high that shooting at enemy that's behind cover is nearly pointless, you typically get 25-30% hit chance, normally the solution would be to flank the enemy position BUT this is actually a terribly risky move since if you trigger a second group of enemy, it's pretty much game over, so you need to avoid moving too much. You could try to lure the enemy back into an area you already explore where you can move more freely, but again the turn limit are too tight for that. And so I find myself relying on grenade and explosion for everything because it's the only reliable way to do damage without triggering more enemy.

Maybe if the pod were semi visible at all time we could move around fight a lot more freely and so flanking would become a viable tactics rather than a game of russian roulette. Or maybe if the turn weren't so tight. The turn limit were a quick fix to a bigger problem, because the enemy activation system was so sever, player would creep out very slowly to the objective, which was fairly boring but the only safe way to play. So Firaxis implemented turn limit in enemy within, they couldn't really do much more since it was an expansion, but they keep the system in for 2, but they implemented the stealth system to mitigate the worse of it and turn limit were in maybe half the mission. LW 2, the turn limit are in practically every mission. Maybe if you would automatically go back in to conceleament if you killed all the enemy of a group and no other enemy were activated it could work, but yeah for now it's pretty much race for the objective and grenade when fight break out.

The True Concealment Mod mitigates the "stealth dash or bust" problem. It actually allows for engagement, and the player can take their time setting up their first ambush (which was sort of the design intention for stealth to begin with). It also makes solo stealth runs at least somewhat feasible and not hopeless suicide missions. It does, however, significantly mitigate/remove the time pressure. LW2 played default will end with a lot of desperate last second evacs and mission completions with 1 turn left. LW2 played with True Concealment will open up a lot more tactical options, but at the cost of finishing most missions comfortably within the time limit. It is a significant hit to the game's difficulty.

The change to patrol patterns has also largely mitigated the issue with flanking auto-popping pods, because the pods are no longer leashing aggressively to the player/objective and will actually follow full patrol routes. Prior to the 1.1 patch it was virtually impossible to hit the objective and not trigger every pod on the map (often all at once if you got too close to the objective before triggering one). Now if you play smart you can isolate pods pretty easily.