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[RedlineRonin]

I wasn't really fond of the "larger-than-life super villains" as a theme for this expansion, but I have to say I'm loving pretty much every new introduction they made in this expansion, when it comes to mechanics.

P.S. Pro-tip: the skirmishers may not seem so powerful in terms of raw damage output, but as they start to level up all their melee stuns become invaluable if used at the right time on the right target.

Glad to read this pro tip.

I've been using my starting skirmisher and haven't been impressed thus far by the dmg output. Good to know I should keep getting him experience to unlock some other abilities.

Also, learned the hard way that Mutons aren't super big fans of the two grapple strike abilities. Or melee in general. =(

 

[LurkerPrime]

I wasn't really fond of the "larger-than-life super villains" as a theme for this expansion, but I have to say I'm loving pretty much every new introduction they made in this expansion, when it comes to mechanics.

P.S. Pro-tip: the skirmishers may not seem so powerful in terms of raw damage output, but as they start to level up all their melee stuns become invaluable if used at the right time on the right target.

Skirmisher have unparalleled mobility. I think that's their Big Thing™.

They're basically Spider-Man.

 

[Sentenza]

Skirmisher have unparalleled mobility. I think that's their Big Thing™.

They're basically Spider-Man.

But a ranger with a grappling hook can have a very comparable mobility and a better damage output overall, while the skirmisher's 2-turns stuns every time they connect a melee attack (at close range with their bladestorm-like passive or at range with or Justice and Wrath) is quite the unique feat.
I'm finding Mox invaluable to keep at bay alien rulers with stuns, for instance.

 

[Gamer @ Heart]

God I'm excited for this game.

I forget one thing though, the missions that start the dlcs from the original game will remain active and on the map until you want to start them months into a campaign right?

I have so much to relearn that the idea of facing the alien hunters with early assualt weapons is a terrifying.

 

[Sarek]

What is the green bar under the HP bar?

 

[Sentenza]

What is the green bar under the HP bar?

Will/tiredness

 

[LurkerPrime]

Chosen pls.

God I'm excited for this game.

I forget one thing though, the missions that start the dlcs from the original game will remain active and on the map until you want to start them months into a campaign right?

I have so much to relearn that the idea of facing the alien hunters with early assualt weapons is a terrifying.

If you choose integrated for the DLCs, those introductory missions won't appear at all. I think a non-integrated campaign is as normal? Not sure. But anyways, Alien Hunters when integrated will place Alien Rulers at those Avatar facilities, guarding them and unleashing them once fought, while SPARKs will just be available from the get-go. There's clear warnings when first facing Alien Rulers.

 

[Shake Appeal]

If you turn off "The Lost" in a campaign start, does that just remove that first scripted mission but leave everything else intact? Because I kind of don't want to play it again.

Does anyone know?

I don't want to remove any content other than the scripted mission.

 

[Tacitus_]

Does anyone know?

I don't want to remove any content other than the scripted mission.

You'll get a random ally & their unit.

 

[TC McQueen]

Fun fact: you get 8 AP from killing an Alien Ruler and 15 for killing Julian in the Shen's Last Gift story mission.

Also, someone on the dev team thought it was a great idea to not give the Infiltrate resistance order the same name in its template, so now I have to find a way to find the localization text and see which order it is.

 

[Dick Justice]

The workshop is starting to really piss me off now. Twice today, it's reset all of my mod folders, meaning my custom tweaks have been removed twice. Mitigated by my backups, but still, what the fuck? It resets mods that haven't been updated recently (e.g. Grim Armour) for no discernable reason, forcing me to reinstall my ini tweaks.

 

[Erheller]

yooooooooooooo bladestorm against the lost is so cool

 

[Freeman76]

The base game stressed me the fuck out. I loved the first one, and this one is better in many ways, but somehow the map and management aspect done me in, I found it so hard to keep up. Does this address that at all?

 

[Tacitus_]

The base game stressed me the fuck out. I loved the first one, and this one is better in many ways, but somehow the map and management aspect done me in, I found it so hard to keep up. Does this address that at all?

Oh, it addresses it all right. Now you've got even more stuff to balance.

 

[Dick Justice]

Props Unbound is a fun little mod.

 

[RedlineRonin]

Fun fact: you get 8 AP from killing an Alien Ruler and 15 for killing Julian in the Shen's Last Gift story mission.

Also, someone on the dev team thought it was a great idea to not give the Infiltrate resistance order the same name in its template, so now I have to find a way to find the localization text and see which order it is.

Whew, that's the first confirmation i've seen that the Shen's Last Gift story mission is still in.

Someone was just saying you got SPARKs when you built the foundry now. Maybe that's what happens if you have the DLC but check the box to not include it or something.

 

[Freeman76]

Oh, it addresses it all right. Now you've got even more stuff to balance.

Fuck

 

[Anachronox]

Whew, that's the first confirmation i've seen that the Shen's Last Gift story mission is still in.

Someone was just saying you got SPARKs when you built the foundry now. Maybe that's what happens if you have the DLC but check the box to not include it or something.

Afaik it ticks the box to intergrate by default and if you play that way alien rulers are found at blacksites and the spark is built from the proving ground.

 

[Shake Appeal]

You'll get a random ally & their unit.

Thanks. I'll probably turn it off on future runs, then.

 

[Sblargh]

The Horde sitrep (the entire map is just lost units) are pretty easy overall, but The Lost one, where it just adds Lost to whatever other shit you have to do, oh my god.

It's like throwing 37 wrenches into whatever plan you're naively trying to accomplish. It is good, the feeling that this is truly a third party and that both you and Advent go "oh shit" when the swarm comes. I can almost see the Advent player going "well, I don't know how I'll survive this, neither."

 

[juicyb]

Surprised at the 40 dollar price point for this.... will wait for sale

 

[Decado]

Are modders saying anything about this dlc? No longer particularly interested in what Feraxis does outside being a base for mods. Vanilla isn't terrible, but mods improve it so much I can't go back. Don't see this being any different.

 

[AWizardDidIt]

Are modders saying anything about this dlc? No longer particularly interested in what Feraxis does outside being a base for mods. Vanilla isn't terrible, but mods improve it so much I can't go back. Don't see this being any different.

A lot of the code base for WotC was rewritten so it breaks most mods. It looks like modders are already updating no longer compatible mods at a pretty decent clip so a good portion of them should be available pretty quickly.

However I feel like as someone who also could never go back to vanilla after playing LW2 and a suite of mods, WotC base has been amazing so far. The things it adds are far more substantial than you would think looking at a bullet point list of features of the game. Both Strategic and Tactical layers of the game have quite a lot of added complexity, about equal to what was done in Long War or LW2 to their base games. I'd highly recommend checking out a stream or maybe ChristopherOdd's youtube series to check it out.

 

[grandwizard]

The base game stressed me the fuck out. I loved the first one, and this one is better in many ways, but somehow the map and management aspect done me in, I found it so hard to keep up. Does this address that at all?

There is more stuff happening now so I don't know if that will help or not. FWIW I haven't felt overwhelmed by anything so it's not like they didn't give more time to deal with it. XCOM is kind of a plate juggling sim at it's base anyway.

 

[Dick Justice]

Are modders saying anything about this dlc? No longer particularly interested in what Feraxis does outside being a base for mods. Vanilla isn't terrible, but mods improve it so much I can't go back. Don't see this being any different.

From what I've heard, Firaxis have done a few things to make modding more flexible. Can't remember the specifics, but I do recall something about splitting up certain gameplay elements into various ini files, which allows for better compatibility between certain mods, and also gives modders some more control. Timers and alien pods were two things that were mentioned.

 

[Fragamemnon]

Surprised at the 40 dollar price point for this.... will wait for sale

The scope of the changes are huge and this is a traditional PC expansion pack. $39.99 is the right price point between a full price game ($59.99) and a small DLC ($14.99)

 

[Royal_Phalanx]

I notice that's there's much less timer BS in this one. Many missions are untimed. I'm very pleased.

 

[taoofjord]

Should I play the regular XCOM 2 campaign before getting this DLC? I’m not clear if this is extra content blended into the vanilla campaign or if it’s replacing most of it.

 

[Jintor]

How's the lethality and or soldier rotation? One of the reasons I liked the long war lp more than the original lp was that I could rotate a larger cast off players.

How many named positions am I going to have to fill?

 

[Akronis]

Surprised at the 40 dollar price point for this.... will wait for sale

It's an old style PC expansion, not DLC.

 

[Fragamemnon]

How's the lethality and or soldier rotation? One of the reasons I liked the long war lp more than the original lp was that I could rotate a larger cast off players.

How many named positions am I going to have to fill?

Lethality from the aliens is high, but frontloaded.

Soldier rotation isn't all that much-you'll stretch to maybe 12-15 total used troops in a campaign, assuming minimal losses.

 

[Jintor]

Ugh, that's not lp friendly

Maybe it'll be higher if I play blind

 

[Erheller]

How's the lethality and or soldier rotation? One of the reasons I liked the long war lp more than the original lp was that I could rotate a larger cast off players.

How many named positions am I going to have to fill?

It's a comfortable middle ground between LW1 and XCOM EU/EW/2.

Fatigue
The Chosen can wound and capture your soldiers
Various trainings can put your best soldiers out of action for a few days
Covert actions let you easily raise weak soldiers; some covert actions require you to send strong soldiers, taking them out of action for around a week

In my Commander game I'm finding that my roster is growing decently wide, despite me trying to rush my best soldiers to Colonel.

Edit:

Yeah, I agree with this

Lethality from the aliens is high, but frontloaded.

Soldier rotation isn't all that much-you'll stretch to maybe 12-15 total used troops in a campaign, assuming minimal losses.

 

[LurkerPrime]

The pixelated poster filter finally clicked for me.

It lets you have the classic X-Com font. (I can't actually tell if that's the right one, but it's sooo close!)

GOAT

How's the lethality and or soldier rotation? One of the reasons I liked the long war lp more than the original lp was that I could rotate a larger cast off players.

How many named positions am I going to have to fill?

I think I have like 20ish soldiers right now in the midgame. You'll have 2-3 on covert actions, some tired, some wounded, and always want to send in soldiers that can advance bonds. Missions can also appear a lot faster, so you you'll want like 2.5 squads ready to go at all times, I'd say.

...And that's without getting into losses.

 

[Jintor]

You know what that sounds acceptable

 

[mbpm1]

Time to update my mods ugh

 

[CrichtonKicks]

Whew, that's the first confirmation i've seen that the Shen's Last Gift story mission is still in.

Someone was just saying you got SPARKs when you built the foundry now. Maybe that's what happens if you have the DLC but check the box to not include it or something.

Looking into it and it seems that if you use the default integrated options you won't get the missions. To get the missions you have to uncheck the option to integrate the DLC.

Evidently Firaxis felt having the DLC missions would frontload the game with a series of really long missions.

 

[Sentenza]

Welp.

Turns out all the amazing stuns for the skirmishers I was raving about few posts back were actually a side effect of the second tier claw.
As soon as you update to the third, you'll get one that does more damage, but with a far less useful "burning" proc. Quite the bummer, since I was actually loving stunning enemies left and right.

It made the skirmisher feel a rather powerful crowd controller.
I'm tempted to stick to the second tier even giving up the bonus damage, in fact.

 

[TC McQueen]

My Suppression Weapons (certain guns have suppression) mod has been updated for WOTC:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=701134101

Ignore the warning icon in the game's launcher - this was compiled in the old ModBuddy and tested in WOTC.

Are modders saying anything about this dlc? No longer particularly interested in what Feraxis does outside being a base for mods. Vanilla isn't terrible, but mods improve it so much I can't go back. Don't see this being any different.

Basically, it's nice that it's way more flexible due to more stuff being in .INI files, but more advanced mods/stuff involving visualizations are fucked until Firaxis updates the WOTC SDK, because we can't get access to most of the script files.

 

[Nete]

Ugh, I shouldn't have used her in a mission with 1 fatigue

 

[RedlineRonin]

Afaik it ticks the box to intergrate by default and if you play that way alien rulers are found at blacksites and the spark is built from the proving ground.

Yup. Just learned that one the hard way.

Stupid.

But whatever. Maybe I'll just restart. I really like those missions =

Ugh, I shouldn't have used her in a mission with 1 fatigue

Can't say I love that mechanic. When I got shot down by the alien ship, it kept pumping out more of my soldiers to defend. It pulled out guys that were tired and now I have multiple with permanent issues like that and I never got a choice.

 

[Poodlestrike]

Just had my first "fuck this I'm outta here" mission of the new expansion. Supply Drop, one of the Fulton deals, but with a Lost sitrep. I'm thinking I'll sit back and let the two sides fuck each other up for a while when the Assassin shows up. At that point, I... make probably not the most brilliant tactical play of my career and drop a grenade on the bunched up Advent. And then another grenade to clean them up. Naturally this spawns a FUCKTON of Lost, right around when the Assassin show up. I clean up the remaining Advent and hope that the Lost and the Assassin will duke it out, but apparently she's not enough to hold their attention and most of them decide to go after my guys instead! Aaaat which point a truck explodes. Literally 3 hordes spawn in over a turn. More visible tiles had Lost than didn't, it was insane.

So I go fuck it and evac, despite never actually getting inside spitting distance of the supplies XD

 

[Sentenza]

Can't say I love that mechanic. When I got shot down by the alien ship, it kept pumping out more of my soldiers to defend. It pulled out guys that were tired and now I have multiple with permanent issues like that and I never got a choice.

You are aware that "permanent issues" can actually be removed with the infirmary, right?

 

[Shake Appeal]

All right, I'm clocking now. Through seven missions on C/I with only one (squaddie) casualty. Time for something unknown to thoroughly ruin me.

 

[RedlineRonin]

You are aware that "permanent issues" can actually be removed with the infirmary, right?

Just read that in the infirmary description actually. Good to know.

I re rolled anyway to be able to do the other missions and got a much better start. I got the "inspired" research to land on magnetic weapons, so it's the second thing I've researched, which will help a ton.

 

[Poodlestrike]

Took on the Hunter for the first time. On the whole, not half as scary as the Assassin. Between being visible the entire time and being basically harmless without a spotter, I'm not half as worried about him. Plus, melee invulnerability is way less terrifying than not triggering reaction fire.

 

[derFeef]

I don't like the enemies in this game. It's missing this mysterios/UFO feeling from the first one. It's more like a superhero XCOM and I am not really into that...

 

[Poodlestrike]

There ain't NOTHING like loading into a mission, finding out the deck is stacked against you, and pulling that shit out anyway because FUCK IT BEAST MODE TIME.

Got the "lots of explosives!" sitrep, so I thought "hmm, couple of sharpshooters might be useful here, reach out and touch an explosive barrel across the map." So I grab a gaggle of squaddies and load in. "Commander, we need to protect this data uplink in the sewers."

Well, fuck. So much for redundant snipers, I can barely get one decent long sightline.

Then, Chosen show up. Assassin, natch. She pops up juuuust outside of my sharpshooters LoS, suckerpunches my one Ranger (she's weak to melee, which is... weird, but whatever), and vanishes. Summons an Advanced Priest on her way out.

My guys basically decide FUCK IT. Little bastards pulled out a win against all possible odds, kick out the Chosen, clean up the remaining dudes. One guy had to be stabilized, but other than that, really light damage.

Admittedly, this was aided by the fact that their Codex dropped a Psychic Bomb on top of itself and a Sectoid for some reason. Not sure what's going on there.

GOD I LOVE THIS GAME.

 

[Apharmd]

Man, I bought the original XCom 2 and I was so giddy to start this expansion - but I was not aware that the PS4 version comes out in two more weeks.

I played myself.

 

[Zen Aku]

So should I play the original XCom 2 as it is before jumping into War of the Chosen?

Idk how this work. I heard WotC is a lot smoother on PC in term of frame rate.