Quaro
5444
Recommend ‘cinematic mode’ second wave option for Long War. And possibly turning on ‘not so long war’ although it’s not balanced very well yet.
Hehe, great write-up, I was there with ya :)
Your write up is giving me the itch to play it again. Awesome game, still the best game out at the moment, for my money. I think I’ll get Long War installed soon.
The long war mod is amazing and has a lot of cool features, but i think on default it is just TOO SLOW. I wish I had checked the less long war option at the start, but i don’t know if i want to restart either since i’ve been playing a while.
It just breaks the pace of the game. instead of maybe getting a new tech or a couple new items every few battles, there is even at the start of the game probably a dozen battles between any sort of new things at your base.
I didn’t really feel the original game’s research/production was too fast. It was likely a mistake to encourage people to skip lasers in vanilla (i think that was what it was, has been a while), but on the other hand i didn’t have that much time at the end of the game with all of the research/items. More importantly, through out the game i was steadily getting new cool things to play with.
I’m not a huge fan of the fatigue system either. If i send my most elite squad of soldiers to a low threat mission and they clear house without taking a single hit, i don’t see why they should have to recover for 4 days. This just results in me feeling less attached to individual soldiers, because i need to have 2-3 times as many constantly switching around. This combined with twice as many (something like that) classes results in trouble because the UI for switching active squad members, and managing them in general, is not very good.
In the original game i named my characters and had some minor attachment to them. I also customized their equipment and their appearance. In long war i have about 15-20 active soldiers and it is just too many to personalize them all.
I’d go with Xenobiology even if you did not start in South America, it’s worth it in the medium term. If you have Slingshot installed there’s some great early capture opportunities too.
Laser weapons are better than Carapace armor IMO, C/I and I/I is all about either taking out every threat in a single turn or getting out of LOS/hunkering down if you can’t. On classic you can get away with trading hits if you have armor but it’s still a bad idea. Don’t be afraid to use explosives to secure kills, you’ll have plenty of weapon fragments.
On council missions alien reinforcements get triggered by moving the objective NPC. If you take it slow you can deal with the normal alien pods and then kill additional spawns one by one as they appear.
Wolff
5448
Beaglerush’s Live and Impossible for long war. Has me excited to try out the mod.
I would say it’s a common problem in some mods. Talking in general here of the modding community, not even about Xcom.
Because they are done by super fanatics of the game (who else would go the trouble of making a mod of the game), mods usually tweak the game to their tastes, making it longer than usual and/or harder than usual.
Titan
5450
I thought that the EW pack made the game the perfect length. I played vanilla twice and EW once. I bought Xenonauts but reading this thread has me wanting more XCOM.
garin
5451
I think standard EW is slightly too long. Too many EXALT missions.
I like the Exalt missions. They’re very different from the three basic alien missions (UFO, abduction, terror). Some of them let you play defense, which doesn’t otherwise happen, and the hostiles aren’t wielding plasma weapons.
Razgon
5453
So, thanks to this thread, I gave it a try again, and started over completely. This time, I stated in Africa which gave me a tremendous amount of money. With some proper planning, the exalt missions are very doable, and I’ve actually only lost one soldier so far, and have plasma rifles, mecs and firestorms I think they are called.
About the MEC’s - What does class and rank matter when you make a soldier into a mec? I Seem to recall someone (Gus?) talking about having a colonel sniper made into a mec made the game easy pie. Why would that be?
zombo77
5454
MECs only get half the XP a normal soldier would get from kills, you could level two soldiers up to colonel rank instead in the same amount of missions. They also have the same crappy stat progression heavys get. If you make a squaddie into a MEC soldier you’ll end up with 75 aim when they hit colonel, a colonel sniper MEC soldier would end up with 105 aim.
The different base classes also get you different MEC soldier perks.
Razgon
5455
Ah, nice - Thanks for the explanation!
I was talking about making an early sniper MEC, not a colonel.
The way conversion works, soldiers keep their stats from before the conversion. Snipers are Aim 75 at Squaddie, higher than any other class, and their MEC ability is +10 Aim and +10% crit if they don’t move. Right off the bat you’ve got a soldier with 75-85 Aim, a weapon that does more damage than the LMG, and no move-and-fire restriction like squaddie Snipers. In effect they have a built in SCOPE and the Corporal Sniper ability Snap Shot.
A Support or Assault converted to MEC at squaddie has 70 Aim, a 15 point disadvantage. That often tells in the early game, particularly since MECs must rely on killing their targets or they will get hit in return, since they can’t take cover.
The higher the rank at conversion the better, since all classes are going to have better Aim growth than a MEC, but I’m operating under the assumption that you build a MEC as early as possible. The firepower advantage and the ability to survive at least one hit when being hit is unavoidable makes a big difference in the early game. Screw the long term implications for that soldier, it’s about surviving when the game is hard.
Aleck
5457
Yeah, you should basically plan on writing off that soldier for the later game. That soldier is simply a bridge until you can get a better soldier ready to take over the MEC suit.
JoshV
5458
Early game, I was relying heavily on the secondary. Mostly Punch, Punch, Punch, and sometimes flame throwers. The accuracy isn’t as big a deal for that, but the heavy ability for mecs kept me alive in a variety of situations. The Assault’s I was not impressed with, the Support’s seems like it might’ve been good early game.
(I do like how it’s not a cut and dried choice though).
I’d like the flame thrower a lot better if the ammunition weren’t so severely limited. The issue with the punch is that you have to expose the MEC. It’s still very good much of the time, but there are times when you have to shoot, not punch. This is particularly true of overwatch.
Razgon
5460
I must admit I find the initial mec weapon underwhelming - It does around 6 damage, and I already have plasma rifles.
Anyways - its very true that the games difficulty peaks early it seems. At least on normal.
I guess its time to try a classic or Long War game next :-)
By the time you have plasma you should have the tier 3 mec cannon that does insane damage.
Yeah, the initial MEC weapon is a conventional weapon, and it’s better than any of the other slugthrowers, but it’s not an energy weapon. You unlock the level 2 and 3 weapons as you unlock laser and plasma weapons, and the MEC weapons always significantly outpace the regular soldier weaponry.
If you’re getting MECs after plasma weapons, you don’t really need MECs. Normal’s not that hard, of course.
Soma
5463
Even on impossible I don’ think you need MEC to have a smoother ride. Just be prepared to frag everything, as long as they are a threat to a soldier’s life. A sectoid behind a high cover with only 1 health is worth 1 grenade as long as it is a danger to one of the soldiers. And bring two heavies if possible. Early game be prepared to lose at least half or all meld on any given map. Advance slow or not at all and set up a defensive position in the first turn and wait for the patrols. A good soldier’s life is so much more valuable. This style reinforces the “screw the MEC” mentality because it is THAT much harder to get the necessary meld to make MEC.
MEC with low accuracy is severely crippled IMO. On classic or impossible you can’t use it as a meat shield, so you have to use it like an assault to get to close range to do damage. Without late game upgrade to mobility it is pretty much a no go. The only plus for a low accuracy MEC early game is to use the collateral damage ability to destroy enemy cover. It is like having unlimited frag early game, which can be very useful.
I think it is worth it to turn a colonel sniper into MEC if the coloniel has low will, around 70s, probably due to lack of iron will upgrade. That MEC will become an equivalent of snapshot sniper that can also destroy cover, and the will will get a boost with the MEC suit to around 90s.
