XCOM: Long War

[tippy2k2]

Man...some of these descriptions makes this Mod sound like it would be perfect for the XCOM Let's Play group.

The biggest issue I always had in my group was that there were so many people and it was hard to balance giving everyone "their chance" and not getting everyone killed. It sounds like you get a lot more people in your squad AND the fatigue thingy forces you to sub out people.

I wonder if my computer could handle XCOM. The game can't be that expensive by now I presume, I might have to gamble and see if that could work

 

[Ryan Hughes]

Roughly 3/4 of the way through the game on Long War ver. 13, however, I decided to upgrade to ver. 14 and start anew, because I was in a rather tough spot strategically.

I do like the mod, though it does make some rookie game design mistakes: First, much of the added weaponry is useless, and can simply be a waste of resources. While I like what they did with grenades, rockets have become near-useless for you, but even more deadly when wielded by human enemies. With the 8 classes, some of the balance issues have been solved, but new ones emerge, such as the weakness of rockets and the subsequent hampering of Rocketeer's mobility. Some of the large transport "landing" missions are superfluous, and are designed either by the devil, or for save-scumming. While it is not a bad idea to force players to pick their battles, it is a bad idea to do so in such a ham-fisted way. This speaks to some of the bloat that comes along with the mod.

On the other hand, many things are quite good: The "fatigue" mechanic works well, and forces both greater numbers and greater variety. I played through EU and EW without Shivs at all, and this near-forces Shiv use by the player. EXALT is much more deadly in this game, with some real teeth for once, both in-battle and with their hacking attempts. I find EXALT missions much more enjoyable overall. The new classes like Engineer are fun, and a greater variety of soldiers can use shotguns, making them more worthy of your resources in the early game. The air war is much more in-depth and engaging. Before, building and outfitting craft was all you had to do, but now choosing whether or not to engage is part of your overall strategy.

In the end, I cannot say it makes the game "better" than Enemy Within, but it does make the game fresher, and is a good alternative to another expansion.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Man...some of these descriptions makes this Mod sound like it would be perfect for the XCOM Let's Play group.

The biggest issue I always had in my group was that there were so many people and it was hard to balance giving everyone "their chance" and not getting everyone killed. It sounds like you get a lot more people in your squad AND the fatigue thingy forces you to sub out people.

I wonder if my computer could handle XCOM. The game can't be that expensive by now I presume, I might have to gamble and see if that could work

If I were going to do one again (I don't have the time any more) it would be Xenonauts.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I really appreciate that the creators give you the files and instructions necessary to tweak the mod to your liking. For example, I removed certain ridiculous aspects of the alien/Exalt research tree (62 max HP Chrysalids?! Are you insane?!) and toned down the panic values for terror missions and rearmament time for interceptors (I don't care how advanced these weapons are, it should not take five days to swap hardpoints!).

Hoo brother. 62 HP Chrysalids? I wasn't aware the alien tech growth got quite that ludicrous.

How easy are those values to change? How rapidly does the game ramp up to "stupid" level like that?

I wonder if my computer could handle XCOM. The game can't be that expensive by now I presume, I might have to gamble and see if that could work

Do it. Dooooooooooooooooo it.

The missions coming sequentially instead of as a choice of three however I'm not quite sold on. As well as tripling the amount of play, I would imagine that it removes the panic management element. The point of having to choose between the three is that the two we *don't* do increases the panic on those continents.

In addition to fatigue and manpower restrictions possibly limiting the number of missions you can respond to, terror missions function differently now. It's no longer a binary "Win/Lose" situation where finishing the mission gives you a successful global panic reduction. Now terror goes up based on how many civilians you fail to save.

 

[Neverhoodian]

*spits out drink* 62 HP CHRYSALIDS!!?? WHAT THE HELL

Im just on the finishing stretch of my Enemy Within playthrough, its really fun, and i really cant wait to try it on a harder difficulty.

Im gonna leave Long War til ive thoroughly explored everything in EW, but it sounds super interesting

Hoo brother. 62 HP Chrysalids? I wasn't aware the alien tech growth got quite that ludicrous.

How easy are those values to change? How rapidly does the game ramp up to "stupid" level like that?

To be fair, my example is a "worst case scenario," where the player has allowed the aliens to max out their research. Alien HP gain is slow, and you can sabotage their efforts by collecting meld canisters. Still, I find it an artificial way to increase difficulty and it takes some of the fun out of getting better weapons. Besides, there's plenty of other alien attributes that progress with you, such as movement tiles, aim bonuses and perk gain. You may want to disable/nerf some of those values as well depending on your preference.

Changing the values is fairly straightforward. All you have to do is open the "DefaultGameCore" file (found in the "XCom-Enemy-Unknown/XEW/XComGame/Config" folder) with a text editor. Find the section titled "ALIEN AUTOMATIC UPGRADES" and adjust the values as you see fit for the various units listed. You can also tweak a myriad of other options as well, such as basic unit stats, costs, panic levels, etc.

 

[Skin]

It is a good mod, but certain things are "off". Beagle's playthrough of it on II is a good example, how he doesn't get punished like he would in vanilla II because the aliens do odd things like overwatch rather than take a shot at someone in half cover. Then later on, the difficulty curb shoots straight up when certain enemies come along..

I love the extra layer of customization, I truly do, which is why I have so much trouble going back to vanilla.

Speaking of Beagles playthrough, I stopped watching a while ago (trainyard level) and I am just wondering if he has hit any difficulty spikes or lost any people. Please let me know if you can, it is greatly appreciated.

 

[Evonisia]

I wonder if my computer could handle XCOM. The game can't be that expensive by now I presume, I might have to gamble and see if that could work

It's £15 when it's not on sale IIRC. Enemy Within is £20.

OT: Oh this looks good, when I eventually buy eggscom on Steam I'll be sure to (eventually) get this.

 

[BeerTent]

I wonder if my computer could handle XCOM. The game can't be that expensive by now I presume, I might have to gamble and see if that could work

If your computer can handle Unreal Tournament 3 at a moderately playable pace (I consider 20fps to be moderately playable. Others would disagree because they have disposable income.) Then you should be able to run XCOM and Long war without any problems whatsoever. ^.^

Walking into this thread makes me feel like the scrubbiest of scrubs when it comes to X-Com. I can't even beat the game on easy... with cheats... God I suck at video games. So, if you can't guess, I will not be touching this mod with a ten foot pole. It does sound really fun though.

Take it easy, and think things through. Here's a few tips.

1. Avoid low cover in a combat situation. Always use high cover (Full shields)
2. Never sprint unless you NEED to run away. If you sprint into a bad position, that solder cannot act again because you've used both AP.
3. Try to avoid shooting if your to-hit is below 60%. Overwatch instead.
4. Shives are disposable. Solders are not.
5. Try to prevent aliens from being mobile. Overwatch scares them, but Suppression will often make them just waste their turn.
6. Think tactically. and keep your group close. Is there someone able to protect Diaz? Or is he fucked if he gets flanked?
7. Take your time. You won't lose a turn.

Spoiler: And the big tip that saved my bacon a lot... This goes over some game mechanics, so if you dont want to know, don't click!

8. When your not fighting, make all of your solders move once, preferably into low cover. Once all solders have used one AP, make them all overwatch. This way, everyone still has an action point if you discover a scary enemy, you can move them to safer cover instead of being stuck/attacking. However, if everyone is say, out of cover, and you get discovered on the enemy turn, everyone will unload on the aliens who discovered them. You could kill one or two, and it's unlikely they'll attack on their turn, so when your turn is up, you can move everyone into position and fight.

Another thing to take note. Aliens always move in "pods" or "squads." When aliens discover the player, or vice versa, this pod breaks up, and everyone acts independently. However, when they're in a "pod" state, they only have one AP. So they, 9 out of 10 times, will use this to run into cover, and end there turn. Abusing this mechanic will increase your longevity tenfold. Think of this way... Aliens are in a "pod state", when they've been discovered, they take their scuttle turn, and once it becomes the aliens turn again, (After you've reacted to the scuttle.) they have two AP like you. This gives you a lot of time to prepare.

You can do it Elfgore!! Save the planet!

 

[Smiley Face]

snip

Thanks for writing back!

In response to your concern that the sequential missions take away strategic choice, I forgot to mention a key feature: troops now become "fatigued" after a mission and are undeployable for a number of days. This means that your resources are very limited in choosing which threats you respond to- actually being able to confront every attack as it happens would only be possible with an extremely efficient, well-designed team.

Just to give a broader sense of things, every soldier that comes back from a mission completely unscathed is fatigued for 5 days. If they get wounded, they're out for a week or two, and if they're gravely wounded, they're out for a month or so. Combine this with the fact that once the game gets going (I'm at the point where we're about to go after the base with the psion, oh joy), you're going to be getting an alien attack every couple of days, and it means you really have to maintain a large, large stable of functional troops.

They also balance the fact that you have 6-8 troopers on your team by having more enemies, which in a turn-based area where you're facing down a bunch of chrysallids, means that every now and then you'll have these pitched 10 on 8 battles that are really crazy.

The damage reduction can make things difficult at times; some enemies have damage reduction that shaves damage off every hit, and when you bump into a cyberdisc with basic weapons, it means almost nothing short of a rocket, grenade or shotgun is going to leave a scratch. But then again, those guys are supposed to be hard, and if I bump into an enemy who I probably can't kill the turn I encounter them, maybe that's an interesting level of difficulty.

This is the first I've heard of 62 health chrysallids. Given the way that the mod throws waves of enemies at you (I once did a terror mission that had 20 zombies on it, there was just no way to kill them all before they turned some hostages and spawned into chrysallids themselves), I'm hoping I keep well ahead of that curve.

The missions coming sequentially instead of as a choice of three however I'm not quite sold on. As well as tripling the amount of play, I would imagine that it removes the panic management element. The point of having to choose between the three is that the two we *don't* do increases the panic on those continents. It adds the strategic choice of picking between panic level and different rewards. eg. go for the 4 engineers or keep panic in Asia low. Wouldn't being able to do every mission mean panic levels all stay low (and additionally, the troops get more missions to level up on)? When do the mid-range enemies start appearing, out of curiosity?

They change the way panic works in the mod - it goes up incrementally rather than by whole bars, and the primary way by which it grows isn't by forcing that '3 simultaneous attacks' question, but by having all alien incursions that go unresponded to, which, in the early game where you only have sattelite coverage of a couple of countries, is a lot, increase panic gradually. So panic won't grow in massive bursts with those weird choices, but during the early game it will grow everywhere you're not defending, and all you can do is burn along and try to get sattelite coverage, which is much harder to get, and with changes to air balance, harder to keep.

 

[Ryan Hughes]

Walking into this thread makes me feel like the scrubbiest of scrubs when it comes to X-Com. I can't even beat the game on easy... with cheats... God I suck at video games. So, if you can't guess, I will not be touching this mod with a ten foot pole. It does sound really fun though.

You know, I think most people here on this thread are more than willing to help if you have some questions. I don't pretend to be a master of the game, as I usually play on Classic difficulty, but I get through it. Tactical games like this are an acquired skill, by all means. I grew up on X-Com, Final Fantasy tactics, and others in the mid-late 90s, so I am used to the genre. It doesn't mean you are a scrub or anything, just that you have not put in the effort to become more competent. Unlike with some other genres, though, the Strategy/Tactical games are well worth that effort, as I find them so much more rewarding than thoughtless shooters.

 

[GloatingSwine]

The basic rule of the unmodded X-Com is don't advance too quickly. Advance slowly, open the monster closets one at a time and deal with the results.