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?
I'm fairly new to XCOM. What difficulty should I start with?
Normal.
I'm an XCOM veteran. What difficulty should I start with?
Normal.
But I'm really awesome at --
Sorry to interrupt, but just start with Normal. We don't have easy difficulties in this mod that hold your hand while you learn the ropes and we've removed every bit of code we can find that cheats for the player on the lower difficulties. It's going to be hard. The other difficulties are just harder versions of Normal; feel free to move up when you get a handle on all the new mechanics.
OMG, this is hard. I'm having to save and load lots to win all my missions
You are not intended to win every mission, and in fact if you do you'll have a very imbalanced game. You can and will see Supply Ships and Battleships in March or April and you're not intended to beat them. Take heart though, Long War is balanced around winning some and losing some. You can get countries back if you lose them and you can keep fighting as long as even one country supports you. You're expected to have dozens of soldiers on your roster, so losing your highest ranked sniper isn't the end of the world. There will be a lot of UFOs to assault, so if you don't shoot some down or fail to assault them there will be many more.
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:
-More weapon tiers (ballistic, beam lasers, gauss, pulse lasers, plasma) and more weapon types (SMG/carbines/rifles/heavy rifles, marksman rifle/sniper rifle, shotguns, LMG/SAW and their exotic variations) that trade different stats around and perks.
-More items in general, so you start with 2 item slots and much more starting items that used to be abilities or perks in vanilla (smoke grenades, battlescanners, flashbangs, AP (needle) grenades, etc. are all starting items with infinite inventory)
-Almost everything can be sold on the grey market, including weapons and armour and items you've build, down to meld and elerium, etc.
-Air game is much more difficult and expensive (interceptors cost 200 bucks to order from 40 in vanilla), also the introduction of stances (defensive/balanced/aggressive) for airplanes.
-Funding from countries starts from everyone, but only a smaller % if they don't have a satellite, so you don't need to satellite rush.
-Panic from countries is now on a 100-pt scale rather than a 5-point scale
-Workshops/Labs don't grant engineers/scientists, the only way to gain them is from requests from countries, to trade stuff you've researched/built (e.g. corpses, weapons, captures, artifacts) for scientists, engineers, cash, soldiers, etc. There are a lot more requests from council countries in general.
-Fulfilling requests also helps makes that country more resilient to panic.
-MEC/Gene mods are much further down the tree and are mid-game paths rather than being fairly early game in EW where you're gated by meld.
-PSI is learned, not discovered, so you can eventually train someone to start using PSI, but to unlock new abilities you need to capture aliens as well.
-Things like autopsies require more corpses as well as prerequisite techs for higher level aliens; you can't interrogate until you autopsy either.
-Medal system in EW is redone to work as officer promotions. They work the same as medals, except officers can choose different perks for the same rank (unlike medals which are locked for 1 choice in EW). Officers can't take PSI or become MECs (or vice-versa). These perks generally affect the entire squad but also add extra fatigue.
Missions
-Cash bounties for shot and destroyed (no crash) UFOs
-Abduction missions are only 1 at a time now, because the aliens have to actually fly an abductor ship to a site, which you can try to shoot down (unlike vanilla XCOM) and only reward cash based on the difficulty.
-Although you can expect to see multiple UFOs on the hologlobe at one time performing various missions, so in theory you can see 2+ abductions at once, but there is no "choose 1 and have 2 panic" like in vanilla.
-Terror missions ALWAYS generate panic: 2 panic to the country for each dead civilian, and 1 panic to the continent; if you don't take on the terror mission, the country leaves and an alien base is created in the country.
-Alien Base assault mission is not 1-per campaign - you can win council member countries back by assaulting the alien base in that country by building a skeleton key and putting a satellite over the defected country.
-XCOM Base Defense is also not 1-per campaign, if the aliens think you're too far ahead, they will attack your base. Since it's also a mission, they need to fly a carrier to your base. Yes, if you think you're lucky enough you can try to shoot it down (good luck).
-Aliens will start attacking your interceptor bases (triggering a tactical mission) after you start building Firestorms.
-Up to 3-4 meld per map at random, the timer is removed. Meld per canister is also based on alien resources at the moment, so they might only contain 3 meld or as much as 12.
-Meld can be taken from alien corpses, but only if they were not hit by explosives, flamethrower, etc.
-Explosives on a killing blow on an alien don't just destroy the fragments they might drop, but also the corpse
-Certain aliens also drop elerium/alloys on death
-EXALT later on in the game can appear WITH the aliens.
Aliens
-Aliens also conduct more advanced missions to harvest resources and conduct research
-Alien missions can be stopped for the most part if you can shoot down their ships en route. You'll just see more UFOs in general. You will even see large/very large UFOs in the early months but you probably won't be able to shoot them down or attack them on the ground if they land.
-Alien pods will start to include leaders (bigger alien, more hp, more perks) and navigators (slightly better 'scout' types).
-Aliens in general will start to get more stats, hp, perks as the aliens conduct more research. So by 2016 spring, I've seen Sectoids do like ~8 damage from their pistol and have around 7+ hp.
-All alien types will appear and never get phased out, because the aliens also have to spend their resources on missions now, so they might send cheap aliens out on a quick mission to try to harvest more resources while saving up for bigger, more elite aliens on a terror mission or something.
-Aliens can play tricks on the player like setting up 'trap' smaller UFOs loaded with way more aliens than their should be.
-Boss aliens that have upwards of 35+ hp, usually replacing the pod leaders on certain missions, which usually appear mid-game and require you to combo them down with your squad (this is cooler and more fun than it sounds for the most part)
-Seeker AI unshackled, so they fire more often (i.e. they can flank you if you're not careful), even in stealth, and unlike vanilla, they don't take turns uncloaking to strangle people, they could do 2+ strangles if they want.
-Mixed alien pods, so you can find things like 1 muton leader and 3 thin men activate rather than pure alien type pods
-Outsiders can appear outside UFO missions, they usually have more HP and regenerate HP even at the start of the game.
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.