Xcom 2

The load times are WAY better with the expansion, on PC at least.

The easiest difficulty cheats a fair amount in your favor, but ultimately the game is designed that sometimes your soldiers die. If you’re going to try to save/load out of everything you’re going to unnecessarily frustrate yourself.

I think he means the Steam Workshop, which doesn’t apply to the PS4 version.

And, yes, trying to definitively ensure your favorite team members survive is a path that leads to madness. My advice is to play it as conservatively as you dare, and remember that any percentage less than 100, no matter how close, is never a sure thing.

Speaking of which, can someone remind me whether success rolls are persistent across saves in XCOM 2? I think they were in XCOM, so that it didn’t matter how many times you reloaded—your roll would always be the same.

Even if that’s not true in the sequel, 55% is a pretty big gap for success, so I could easily see failing many, many times in a row.

The game uses an internal seed based on what you’ve done during the turn. So if you move soldier X to position Y and shoot at alien Z and miss, then reload and do the same thing, he will always miss. But you can change the seed by moving a different soldier first and having them fire first, etc.

I got the achievement for never upgrading my squad size on Commander, and it was incredibly difficult. Much more difficult than the Ironman achievement. I had to save scum the hell out of every mission, winding my way through the seed maze to find the best outcome out of every turn.

It’s supposed to, but it’s buggy and doesn’t always work reliably. In particular sometimes destroyed level objects in the savegame (exploded cars and the like) will mess with the seed so loading a savegame will have a different result than the first time, but subsequent loads of the same file will get consistent results. It was kind of annoying when I tried to play “halfway” to Ironman (only reload on misclicks and bugs) so eventually I just sucked it up and went all the way :P

In the original, there was an option at start that would allow rolls to change between saves but I don’t remember if that was also in the second one.

What mods do you all suggest (continued from Battletech thread)?

I highly recommend this UI improvement: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1125117314

I was about to list out a bunch of URLs, but actually, the easiest way to see the best UI mods would be to send @Mysterio a friend request, because I got all of mine through him. :) You can view your friend’s favorite mods in the Workshop, and he took the time to actually favorite them.

These are what I used the last time I was playing. They are all WOTC versions:

Capnbubs Accessories
Evac All
Smart Overwatch All
Stop Wasting My Time
Ammo and Vest Slots
K’s Medical Supplies X2
Instant Avenger Menus
Skirmisher Rebalance
Timer Tweaks for WOTC

Ok, that’s funny. Glad I could help! The only mods I favorite are 5-star ones that improve the UI; I’m not into mods that change the mechanics and content.

Have to play with Gotcha for WOTC too. It’s a must.

Does it change everyone’s weapons into paint ball guns?

Gotcha or Gotcha Again?

the latest: gotcha again.

For a long while WOTC was my addiction. Next playthrough I’ll have to try that one. Right now I’m in the clutches of Battletech.

Awesome awesome awesome. Thanks!

Also, because it isn’t mentioned, if you’re playing with WOTC, be sure to grab Extended Information. There’s an excellent, just-as-vital mod for regular XCOM2 called Perfect Information that’s absolutely essential. The same mod creator tried to make a new version of Perfect Information work for WOTC, but it’s bugged, badly, and the creator I think has moved on.

Luckily, some other folks came in and fixed Perfect Information to work with WOTC, and their mod – with many acknowledgements to Perfect Info – is called Extended Information. So good. I can’t imagine playing a campaign without it.

I picked up WOTC on the steam sale … I know people have mentioned the speed up in loading times, but good lord, WOTC is worth full price for that alone.

I picked up WOTC pretty blindly based on the hype and was rather surprised when I started it up. Didn’t realize its just a rehash of the original campaign!

I assume its been rebalanced a bit with some new enemies?

It is massively changed, though the beats of the original story are still the same.

It gives you a much more different experience than Enemy Within did for the first XCOM.