5624

Note that the XCOM designers have stated something to the effect of “XCOM is merely a 20 hour tutorial for Long War”. So don’t feel bad if Long War interests you before you finish EW. :)

5625

Well good timing for this conversation, Long War 1.0 finally came out a couple hours ago!

5626

johnnylump was kind enough to add the bit about the alternative .ini file into the mod’s FAQ on Nexus (under Q: It’s still too hard), so hopefully more people realize that is an option. Thank Quaro for finding his response about it in the first place!

5627

I just tried long war and uninstalling now. The difficulty is so stupid, I honestly have no idea how anyone can play this unless you are such a glutton for punishment. After the first try at the easiest level, I replaced the ini file with the “training” ini file, giving me an even easier way, but it’s still too hard. Things I do not like at all:

  1. Grenades are basically worthless. They don’t take out cover, they don’t kill things (I know I’m exaggerating, as I didn’t even make it out of the first mission, but all grenades I threw didn’t take out cover nor did they kill enemies that were highlighted in red)

  2. The whole weariness factor is too stupid for words. Ok, so my guys degrade so much after each move that their aim %'s are in the low 20’s.

  3. The first mission has so many aliens with mind-fray, with plasma pistols, even a drone! Wonderful!

The concept of more missions and more classes is appealing - but I would like it without the catastrophic ramp in difficulty.

5628

Aww… too bad to hear it is still silly hard even with the ‘training’ profile. I’d be crushed.

5629

  1. I think you need to use HE to take out cover and AP only work well against enemies out of cover.

  2. Isn’t that a specific option you have to check? I personally use the option where your troops are more accurate in long war as i hate firing at someone standing next to me and missing three times in a row. I also like using the option where you have increased aim when you (or the enemy against you) flanks a target.

  3. I don’t think aliens have anything lower than plasma pistol if i remember right? The drone was also not that powerful from what i saw. Obviously your experience may vary with options set, luck and strategy.

My main annoyance with long war is that even if i do really great, my soldiers are out of action for a LONG time.

Also when i tried it a year ago, the default settings resulted in a game that went on FOREVER and was extremely repetitive. They took the same content and stretched it out to extremes resulting in doing MANY missions without any sort of new research/item building advancements.

I played the first mission just to get a bit of a feel for the changes since i played it last. Still great fun and the long war mod adds a number of cool things. Even for a semi experienced (i didnt finish a game with it) long war player like myself some of the new options for starting are mildly daunting.

Really makes me want to do an xcom playthrough before the second game comes out, especially since i only spent a tiny bit of time with the expansion. However i don’t think i can justify it vs finishing a bunch of other games on my plate, and i dont think i want to wait to play xcom 2 when it comes out.

5630

My experience with Long War was basically the same. It was the game with all of the fun crushed out of it. X-Com (the 1990s version) was hard, but at least managed to be entertaining when things went pear-shaped. Long War just was ponderous.

5631

For me at least, i need to see “new stuff” happen at the world map level at minimum every few missions. This could be researching new things, making new guns, training new troops in special ways, etc. Long war with default settings does not do this. I suspect the shorter long war might, but not sure on that.

Really if they separated out the making it longer part from the new classes/items/etc i would not even get the long war part.

5632

Personally I loved Long War once I modded the fatigue system out of it. I don’t care that my soldiers became super-powered; I just wanted to be able to use them constantly (minus injury time).

5633

I don’t remember having many fatalities in Enemy Unknown (on normal diff), but I just lost a nicely leveled solider (who I rescued in a mission) at the end of March. The chrysalids came out of nowhere and ripped him to shreds. I’ve lost 1 or 2 rookies too. The game seems a tad harder than EU.

5634

I just had the mission where you are dropped onto the alien battleship and need to disable the power cores. That one got pretty hairy. I actually had 2 veteran soldiers go down. Luckily they only got wounded and I won the mission before they bled out. I wouldn’t of been very happy if I lost them.

It also reminds me that I don’t like the missions on alien ships / HQ with the abundance levels and hallways. I prefer the smaller earth bound battlefields.

5635

Phew, I made it through the alien counter attack without losing anyone too important. I think it’s time to move the story forward and research the beacon I’ve been sitting on for a month or so. My guess is that if I dawdle too long it will come back to bite me.

5636

Good job! That home base invasion can be harrowing.

Me, I’m slogging along in Long War (pretty much convinced at this point it took its own name a bit too literally) and very much doubt I’ll see the end of it before Xcom 2 releases, at which point I’ll likely stop altogether as there will be something far more interesting and enticing to spend my time with than a war that feels like a repetitive blur of endless missions.

5637

Knowing myself I wouldn’t have the patience for an extra long campaign. So far this is plenty long. I wish I had research and built the advanced aircraft so I was ready for what came. Now I’m trying to get that stuff ready so I can be prepared the next time.

5638

I just finished by first play through of Enemy Within. I pretty much played it all day. If you haven’t played Enemy Within yet and haven’t played XCom since release, I recommend giving EW a try. I thought Enemy Unknown was good, but I never played it a second time. Since it has been so long this felt pretty fresh. I forgot enough of the details where it was fun to discover things.

I waited a long time to get a mech and I promptly killed it. My end team was 1 sniper, 1 assault, 1 support and 3 heavies. My volunteer for the last mission was a sniper, so I got rid of one of my heavies for that. I think the stats said I lost 6 soldiers. Admittedly I reloaded after one bad mission where I lost 3 of my maxed out soldiers. I had gotten careless, because I wasn’t having too much trouble and got myself involved with too many enemies while in a bad position. If I ever play again I won’t reload, but it was so late in the game I really didn’t want to start over. I probably would have quit, but now that I won (with reloading that mission) if I ever play again I’ll just let the chips fall where they may.

Between getting new weapons, skills, armor, etc - the game staying interesting and fun for most of the way through. By the last 25% I was trying to rush it. I was getting tactical battle fatigue. I started ignoring the exalt missions after squashing them up until that point. I even skipped some ufo missions and I was completing the final steps before the temple assault.

I know I want to play XCOM 2, but I don’t know if I’ll be ready for all those battles again. Plus I have Dragon’s Dogma and Tomb Raider preordered.

5639

Enemy within is so awesome. I’ve replayed it a number of times and am replying it now with the 2nd wave “marathon” option. RNG hates me this round. I’ve lost 3 countries and am very dicey on losing more. I keep getting abduction missions and maxing out power / uplinks, I’ve got most of my remaining countries covered, but even with satellite coverage, I’m making a decision right now for example, where I’m going to end up with 4 different countries at 4 - 1 less than max panic, I’m going to lose nigeria because it’s at 5 stars panic already and I need to save Canada that’s at 5.

A couple of turns ago, I got lucky with a panic reduction mission otherwise I would have already lost another one, but damn not sure it’s RNG or the longer option on 2nd wave, but I’m getting my butt kicked - and this is on normal.

I’m loving “training roulette” which is randomizing my stats. I’m getting some really interesting combinations. I’m going full rush with snipers with snap shot, close combat, opportunist - although getting one sniper with suppression was kind of weird, but still cool. I highly recommend this option for something completely different!

5640

I played with training roulette and the 2 other ones that randomized aspects of the soliders - starting stats and unknown potential. I liked them too. They make the soldiers not feel so samey.

5641

In the history of gaming, has any developer created a more annoying character than Annette Durand? Her voice work is so whiny, I have to imagine there is a mod out there that replaces her dialogue with another voice, but 3 pages of google fu and I’m failing.

Last time I played, I intentionally let her win the game so she would die, now I 'm thinking of a creative way to kill her off. I’m thinking getting her whittled down and then let a berserker stomp on her.

5642

I found her a little annoying. If my memory actually worked I would be able to think of other game characters that annoyed me more. The female character in Just Cause 2 is up there.

5643

So, since I have yet to pick up Xcom 2 but was feeling the itch, I started up a new game.

Difficulty Classic
Using New Economy, Not Created Equally, The Greater Good, Mind Hates Matter, and Hidden Potential.

As you can see my goal is to mix up soldiers, so they are more unique. Now I do have a star Heavy, and one whom I only take if my only other choice is rookies (and sometimes not even then). It mixes things up nicely, but I do wonder if Training Roulette might have been nice too. I still tend towards certain skills strongly, such as Lightning Reflexes.

I’ve noticed it feels like there are far more missions than at Normal. At one point I had 3 missions in a 2 day span (while I had 2 days to go for more satelites and a research to unlock some tools), and I don’t recall them ever stacking that much before. It’s attrition more than anything that is hard to control, I’ve only had my “A” team fully together once.

Still only 1 nation has left the project (all because the month ended 4 hours before I had 2 more satelites get free), and have both the Europe and South America bonus, with Asia coming in 5 days. The officer training school opens in a week, and I’ll have the thermal generator in about a month (have to excavate 3 spaces then build). Still no weapons or armor yet, though I’ve not made that a focus. Mutons have just appeared, so that’s fun, and I’ve just had my first Exalt mission.

Really it’s just been harder due to frequency of missions, and how every attack seems to be for 5+ damage. Things are getting heated, but I’ve mostly been able to keep just ahead of panic, but once all satelites are up I’m going to have to figure out how to deal with the gradually creeping panic.

Still other than the fact I’ve yet to unlock any alien weapons, or upgraded my armor, and the fact all my planes have 0 upgrades, and the fact I’ve always got 4-5 injured units, things are going great. Going to mass autopsy and interrogate aliens now, 2 days before I unlock beam weapons, and then automatic autopsies on seekers, chrysalids, mutons,ousider shard, thin men, and interogations of thin men, sectoid PSI commander, Muton, and thin men. So that’ll be nice. Gonna get a nice bump there… if I can keep a crew around.