DOWNLOAD THE MOD HERE(current version - beta 15)
The Long War wiki
A quick look at all the Long War class trees (updated for b15!)
What is XCOM Long War?
Long War is a mod for XCOM: Enemy Within that features hundreds of changes to the pacing and mechanics of Enemy Within to add more depth to the base game of Enemy Within. Simply put, the mod makes the game last longer but gives the player more opportunities and granularity to an XCOM campaign.
What are some of the big changes?
- For starters, you now start with a squad size of 6, which is upgradable to 8 for most missions and 10 to 12 for the bigger missions.
- New stats such as damage reduction/penetration, half cover is buffed to no longer be suicidal like in the base game and worth taking now.
- There are 8 soldier classes now (based off the 4 in XCOM EW) and 8 MEC classes (based off the 8 Long War classes).
- Soldier classes now have 3 perks per level (2 in EW), allowing more build options.
- Soldiers now fatigue after missions, meaning you need to build a much larger roster of soldiers rather than just cycling 1.5 teams worth of soldiers. You can drag a fatigued soldier out on a mission, but this will exhaust them and force them into the medbay.
- The pacing on the strategy/base building side is much slower, with even simple infantry items requiring time to build.
- Much larger research tree and more foundry projects and items to build.
- More weapon types for infantry, MECs are redone and drastically different from EW.
- The interceptor air game is more involved and harder to manage.
- Psi soldiers are now trained and not discovered, and are accessed much earlier. Psi soldiers also now have access to special psi-soldier only equipment.
- Aliens now also conduct missions and collect resources and research to grow stronger. Expect to see big UFOs flying from the get-go and expect even early-game aliens to be scary late-game.
- Alien base assault and XCOM base defense are no longer scripted one-time missions. XCOM can assault multiple alien bases per campaign now, with the purpose of bringing back council countries, while the aliens can launch base assaults if they accumulate enough resources and think that the player is big enough of a threat to attack. You also no longer lose the game on a failed base defense, you just lose a bunch of resources/scientists/engineers/captives.
So where do I start?
Long War makes it so that a loss is not completely crippling as it was in vanilla. If you fail a mission, you can still make up for it, as long as you keep on your toes. You can crawl back out of a failure really easily. Remember that larger roster you should have? I guess your B-team is now your A-team now.
Here's a small smattering of other (but not exhaustive) changes you should expect when playing Long War that I posted earlier this month:
Some screenshots
Sometimes you just need to retreat. Or sometimes you just need to be creative. At certain points, the game becomes less about just taking shots and now about how to survive the next alien turn while doing the most damage.
My current campaign
It's the end of February 2016 (so it's been almost 1 year since the start of the campaign). I've lost 8 countries, but I'm thinking of attacking the base in China soon. I have 2 skeleton keys. Sadly I'm a bit behind on gene/psi, and the aliens are ahead in some respects but I've fought them back by attacking a few of their landed big UFOs this month. That means I hope not to face off against any more gigantic attacks for the rest of the month. Right now, a council bomb disposal mission has appeared. But most of my top teams are fatigued right now, and I don't want to pull them out of fatigue, especially considering the map I'll be fighting on. I might just let the mission slip by and take the panic hit. I need my top teams to be ready to attack the next base. Too bad some of my B-team is out for the next month or so. I have about 23 free soldiers (and 2 SHIVs) but they are a smattering of top troops coming out of the sickbay or troops too low level and need to be babysat in case I run into something hairy, like an 80HP sectopod or a squad of muton elites (see picture above for an example).
The only consolation prize is my tactical play is getting really good so I can usually tackle a surprise as long as I'm careful, even with a squad babysitting 2 sub-par soldiers occasionally.
Here's a look at my fatigues/injuries in my roster. They're in there because I recently assaulted a few landed big UFOs plus a relatively easy but swarming (hardest difficulty) abduction mission.
I'm just trying to claw my way out of this. It's been back and forth like this for the last few months.
Discuss Long War if you're playing it guys! Or if you're new to the game, ask away! I've only put about 60 hours into LW, but I'm sure I can help. I know a few gaffers here are also playing LW right now.
