XCOM V5: Grazed shots still count as hits - Games

So The Xcom Turrets kind of trivialized the Avenger defense missions. They have unlimited range squad sight. I just sent my Reaper out to spot the turrets, generator, or pylon, and the turrets can shoot it. It's kind of ridiculous. Sniper turrets. I also killed the warlock last night with 7 psi operatives and one Templar. It was grand. 7 Null lance and the Templar to deliver the killing blow. (I have 8 soldiers, but there's double the enemy numbers, because I hate myself.)

back on the soviet uniforms [img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/230162395178205187/356859112270725120/Poster_001.png[/img]

[QUOTE=Pilotguy97;52670280]Apparently you can only get multiple operatives from the first faction you meet, which is the Reapers if you play the tutorial. There's a fix on the workshop to remove this, but I can't get a link right now because workshop ate shit and died.[/QUOTE] Workshops back up, anyone got a link for this? My dream of having a full skirmisher squad needs to happen at endgame.

[media]https://youtu.be/FSV3l_fq2P8[/media] [sp]Beaglerush was joking about a sectapod walking up to a drivethrough and a sectoid ordering Big Smokes order out of it and I loved the idea of it so I made a video.[/sp]

So I know that TFTD has been teased pretty heavily, but part of me kinda hopes that next XCOM game goes back to the "Defend earth from invading aliens" theme. I loved XCOM2 and the resistance theme worked well for it, but looking back on EU/EW, the theme of those games felt so much stronger to me.

[QUOTE=Hogie bear;52671874][media]https://youtu.be/FSV3l_fq2P8[/media] [sp]Beaglerush was joking about a sectapod walking up to a drivethrough and a sectoid ordering Big Smokes order out of it and I loved the idea of it so I made a video.[/sp][/QUOTE] You should tweet that at beagle, since who knows when the next time he'll do fan art.

[QUOTE=richard9311;52671963]You should tweet that at beagle, since who knows when the next time he'll do fan art.[/QUOTE] I think he's catching up on sleep, the guy has been doing like 13 hour streams non stop. I did message him it though.

I just beat wotc, so I'm only just now catching up on his vods. It's looking like it may take me up to a month to do so, with just what he's already put out lol.

reapers are fucking hilarious. its a breeze to complete bomb maps without ever having a confrontation. [t]https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/848222683501884799/9AEEE4AD4BE32C5155878C204029C197697F1CE5/[/t] [editline]12th September 2017[/editline] not that i'd recommend doing that regularly. i did it just so i can get the avatar project reducing missions out of the way :v:

Am I the only one who finds the chosen to be an unbalanced as fuck pile of bullshit? I thought I'd give myself a challenge cause I've already played through the game once, so I started on commander difficulty. It all went reasonably well the first couple months, then the chosen started apprearing. Pretty much every time they showed up the mission went tits up real quick. Doesn't matter if I save scum and try 10 different approaches, they always end up wrecking half my team, their abilities are just way broken. Like seriously, the assassin can do about 5 actions in a single turn, has twice the movement range compared to your units, immune to overwatch and usually enters overwatch as well at the end of his turn. How the fuck am I supposed to deal with a 20HP boss enemy it if I can't even get a chance to fire a shot at it most of the time? I got so pissed off that I lowered the difficulty all the way down to rookie, and it still takes me like 5 restarts before I manage to kill a chosen when it appears on my mission. Oh and they usually appear on already difficult missions where it's impossible to get your people in an advantageous position and the enemy pods trigger at the worst possible moments. What am I supposed to do, just pack my bags and evac immediately when I see a chosen appear on the map? Oh wait, they also appear in story missions where you can't even call the skyranger, are you fucking kidding me? I don't know about you guys, but this sort of shit is sort of killing my enjoyment of the game. I thought that vanilla XCOM 2 already had a weird difficulty curve, but it wasn't all that bad. WotC on the other hand just completely shits on any sense of reasonable progression. It just throws everything at you in the first 10 hours, then expects you to eat shit while you're still struggling to build the basic facilities and tier 2 equipment for your soldiers.

Yeah seems like WOTC can put you into situations that you couldn't possibly account for beforehand. There was already a lot to plan for in the game, but now there's another layer that can basically fuck your shit up. While concealed at the start of a mission, you have to consider every movement and every consequence, get your crew in good positions and be wary of what you're running into. Just when you think you've got every possible situation figured out, pop the ambush... surprise, its the assassin and she's going to teleport in, knock out a soldier, summon a MEC, and disappear before you can react. You may well be in an potentially unwinnable situation. I like the ideas, but yes it feels like you can be put into stupid situations with a roll of the dice.

I'm only playing on normal, but I had no problem dealing with assassin and warlock outside the first story mission where assassin is introduced. Infact, I "killed" assassin every mission and I'm about to get rid of her for good. Please tell me the various queens from that one dlc aren't in WotC though. They made me want to scratch my eyes out.

I'm playing on commander and I think the Chosen are pretty manageable. The assassin is by far the scariest but she can still be dealt with. If you're really desperate I guess you can let them capture/extract knowledge from your dazed soldier so they'll go away. [editline]12th September 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=SFArial;52673467]I'm only playing on normal, but I had no problem dealing with assassin and warlock outside the first story mission where assassin is introduced. Infact, I "killed" assassin every mission and I'm about to get rid of her for good. Please tell me the various queens from that one dlc aren't in WotC though. They made me want to scratch my eyes out.[/QUOTE] If you have Alien Hunters and have "integrated DLC" enabled the alien rulers will be guarding certain avatar facilities.

[vid]https://my.mixtape.moe/mezmux.webm[/vid] schwarzenegger voice pack is easily the best

[QUOTE=Kljunas;52673480] [editline]12th September 2017[/editline] If you have Alien Hunters and have "integrated DLC" enabled the alien rulers will be guarding certain avatar facilities.[/QUOTE] Also take note that if the ruler escapes during that mission, it can show up in future missions regardless if it's a base infiltration mission.

ragequit so hard last night So near late game, just got plasma but still using predator armor. Squad is mostly within two levels of max rank. I even have two mimic beacons and the mission gave me an extra resistance soldier to work with. You can understand the confidence I'm going into this mission with. Destroy advent beacon mission. I'm wiping out the second squad that's right on the beacon when advent reinforcements are called right on it. I'm down to one last advent soldier and one of my soldiers who still has actions. I'm not worried because it's not like advent can have reactions on me once they drop, I'll just pick off this last soldier and deal with the enemies who come in next turn. My sniper crits the purifier, good. Not good is that the explosion blows up half the house. Revealing, on my last move, a pod of new units I haven't encountered before. A gatekeeper, and two codexes, who immediately spread out and take a turn on me. jfc. And then the reinforcement pod drops off a preist, another purifier, and shieldberrer. So now there's all sorts of buffs and psychic bullshitery and soldier stasising and weapon jaming and teleporting flank shooting going around I can do nothing about. The only reasons I lost four of my six man squad and not a total wipe was that the enemy killed two 10 hp mimic beacon soldiers I desperately was throwing out on the next couple of turns AND the extra resistance soldier before really chewing into my squad proper. All because I crited a purifier on the last shot of my turn. Now I'm playing on soft ironman, just because new expansion and mods- I wanted to make sure I didn't get ruined by a glitch or a bad crash or something and ruin my only save. I'm trying to justify save scumming this mission over because of the incredibly unlucky bullshit I ran into.

All in all, out of the Chosen, the Assassin is the hardest. The Warlock is the second hardest, but his psychic bullshit is easily countered and he rarely does anything that could actually cause harm, other than the odd mindcontrol and the Hunter, despite being my favorite, is most definitely the weakest of the three, like he never did ANYTHING to my soldiers whenever I encountered him besides waste his bloody turn stunning people or setting up his easy to ignore sniper rifle. Killed them all for good now though, fucking love the rewards you get from them and despite being the weakest Chosen, the Hunters sniper rifle is fucking ace on my best sniper, you can move AND shoot.

[QUOTE=Kljunas;52673480]I'm playing on commander and I think the Chosen are pretty manageable. The assassin is by far the scariest but she can still be dealt with. If you're really desperate I guess you can let them capture/extract knowledge from your dazed soldier so they'll go away. [editline]12th September 2017[/editline] If you have Alien Hunters and have "integrated DLC" enabled the alien rulers will be guarding certain avatar facilities.[/QUOTE] They're generally manageable but yeah there are some situations they can just appear in a mission at a horrible moment and ruin you

Grenades are still overpowered in this expansion even when it summons the lost. In fact, throwing 3 grenades at a Chosen and then an Ultrasonic lure leads to some pretty funny scenes.

[QUOTE=JCDentonUNATCO;52673822]Grenades are still overpowered in this expansion even when it summons the lost. In fact, throwing 3 grenades at a Chosen and then an Ultrasonic lure leads to some pretty funny scenes.[/QUOTE] I dunno about that, I managed to get completely overwhelmed with lost because I was a little [I]too[/I] liberal with explosives in one mission.

Okay, so on my second Commander Ironman playthrough I've now beaten my second Chosen stronghold with a flawless rating, in stark contrast to the Assassin stronghold I did on my other playthrough where I got curbstomped and squadwiped The difference is that in these two strongholds I've just now done, with full tier-3 weapons and armour, is that the enemies that spawn after the Chosen dies for the first time are a total joke. One Andromedon and an Archon. I laughed when on the other one it spawned an [I]Advent Officer[/I] and a Priest. On the stronghold where I got squadwiped, where I had objectively worse equipment, lacking T3 armour and advanced weapons, only having plasma rifles, the game dumped triple Heavy MEC's and an Archon on me all at once after I killed the Assassin. Is it just completely randomly generated what enemies show up as reinforcements on Chosen missions?

[QUOTE=jonu67;52673768]All in all, out of the Chosen, the Assassin is the hardest. The Warlock is the second hardest, but his psychic bullshit is easily countered and he rarely does anything that could actually cause harm, other than the odd mindcontrol and the Hunter, despite being my favorite, is most definitely the weakest of the three, like he never did ANYTHING to my soldiers whenever I encountered him besides waste his bloody turn stunning people or setting up his easy to ignore sniper rifle. Killed them all for good now though, fucking love the rewards you get from them and despite being the weakest Chosen, the Hunters sniper rifle is fucking ace on my best sniper, you can move AND shoot.[/QUOTE] I've heard from seveal people so far that the Assassin is the hardest Chosen but I disagree. I've kicked her ass 6 times so far. Early game it was difficult but once I figured out her strategies it was easy to cheese her. The game shows you where she runs to after coming out to attack. Just remember where she is then rain hell on that spot with grenades. Keep the particular adversary handy. I might have just gotten lucky with her. She takes more damage after the first 3 attacks and is also weak to Reapers. My usual wombo combo for her is to expose her with grenades by destroying her cover, then follow up with two pistol shots from my sniper. This triggers Bewildered. Then I finish off with a shot from the Reaper. It's almost always a guaranteed critical because it's a flank shot, and she takes more damage from Reapers and that also stacks with the buff from Bewildered. Even if she didn't have Bewildered I still think she'd be easy. Grenade her cover and fill her with lead. I had much more difficulty with the Hunter. In fact I still do. He's immune to explosives, teleports after taking damage, exposes all concealed units including Reapers, and his adversary is Templars, which I can never get close enough to ever use mine on him. Not without incredible risk. I haven't lost anyone to him yet but my first encounters were dicey until I again, figured out his gimmicks.

[QUOTE=jonu67;52673826]I dunno about that, I managed to get completely overwhelmed with lost because I was a little [I]too[/I] liberal with explosives in one mission.[/QUOTE] Rangers with bladestorm are also still OP. Snipers with pistol skills are also really, really good. They are both pretty much mandatory for lost missions. I don't use grenades if I don't have to, but if I use one I might as well use them all because after it's all done when theres 20 lost clumped up together one final grenade can take out all of them and render the last 3-5 grenades consequenceless. Lost don't do that much damage and I'm at endgame and I haven't encountered any wacky exploding zombies or other such stuff like I expected, they just aren't a big threat IMO. Missions with only lost are stupid easy.

[QUOTE=haloguy234;52674052]I've heard from seveal people so far that the Assassin is the hardest Chosen but I disagree. I've kicked her ass 6 times so far. Early game it was difficult but once I figured out her strategies it was easy to cheese her. The game shows you where she runs to after coming out to attack. Just remember where she is then rain hell on that spot with grenades. Keep the particular adversary handy. I might have just gotten lucky with her. She takes more damage after the first 3 attacks and is also weak to Reapers. My usual wombo combo for her is to expose her with grenades by destroying her cover, then follow up with two pistol shots from my sniper. This triggers Bewildered. Then I finish off with a shot from the Reaper. It's almost always a guaranteed critical because it's a flank shot, and she takes more damage from Reapers and that also stacks with the buff from Bewildered. Even if she didn't have Bewildered I still think she'd be easy. Grenade her cover and fill her with lead. I had much more difficulty with the Hunter. In fact I still do. He's immune to explosives, teleports after taking damage, exposes all concealed units including Reapers, and his adversary is Templars, which I can never get close enough to ever use mine on him. Not without incredible risk. I haven't lost anyone to him yet but my first encounters were dicey until I again, figured out his gimmicks.[/QUOTE] Yeah I guess any of them can be really scary depending on their strength and weaknesses. Also the assassin being the earliest one you encounter (if you enable the story mission) maybe skews the perspective a bit. In my experience though the warlock and hunter always sat at the back of the map spawning zombies or setting up tracking shots and I could kinda engage them on my own terms. The fact that the assassin actively seeks you out can make things trickier especially on a timed mission where you can't afford to just wait for her to show up. If you have a chosen with an annoying ability like teleport it might be a good idea to freeze them. I've read they unfreeze at the start of their turn but at least it keeps them in place while you shoot them.

I didn't find any of the chosen particularly difficult. The Assassin was certainly the hardest one to fight of the three, but I always found her plenty manageable. Battle-scanners and reapers make it pretty easy to track her. Harbor wave was sometimes bullshit when she placed it correctly, but most of the time, it was just a minor annoyance. I even buffed their health to try and get more out of them (I gave them each 15 extra HP) The only time any of the chosen were an issue was when i got a chosen and three enemy pods at the same time. I never got much out of the warlock in 3 campaign. he always showed up last and the least. By the time he showed up, I'd have two psi-operative with solace, which counters his main abilities. The first time he showe dup, he just hung out in an unreachable part of the level and summoned zombies. Every time after that, the warlock would just hang out in one place and not move around, which made him extremely easy to focus down. I always took the warlock down in 2 turns. The hunter at least moves around. He'll hang out away from my forces and try to do his sniping, but once engaged he'll actually start to attack. He's not terribly threatening either way though. The only time he was remotely threatening was when he had return fire and kinetic plating. As long as none of the chosen have shadowstep and/or immunity to melee, rangers, skirmishers and Templar can trivialize them with bladestorm/retribution. I once killed the warlock just by surrounding him with my entire squad, he could do nothing, as he was beaten to death by three melee units.

I like when the lost show up to Alien retaliation missions and end up killing all the ayys for you Happened to me twice

So do I have to do anything to unlock a rescue mission after one of my soldiers gets captured on a covert operation? I got the Mox mission automatically after he got captured, but that one seems to be scripted. Now one of my high ranked soldiers has been missing for a month and there's still no word of her, is there any way to speed the process up or will the mission just show up?

[QUOTE=JCDentonUNATCO;52674123]Rangers with bladestorm are also still OP. [/QUOTE] Bladestorm? Are we talking about the same ability here? All that does is give you one attack with the most underwhelming weapon in the game if somebody gets into melee range. I never choose it over implaceable, being able to run and gun in, shoot them for massive guaranteed crit damage, and then fuck off around a corner is too good.

[QUOTE=Mort Stroodle;52674246]Bladestorm? Are we talking about the same ability here? All that does is give you one attack with the most underwhelming weapon in the game if somebody gets into melee range. I never choose it over implaceable, being able to run and gun in, shoot them for massive guaranteed crit damage, and then fuck off around a corner is too good.[/QUOTE] Are you serious? My best Ranger probably has over 20 kills from bladestorm alone. Give them the axes or the katana and it's pretty much game over for anything that gets close.

[QUOTE=Mort Stroodle;52674246]Bladestorm? Are we talking about the same ability here? All that does is give you one attack with the most underwhelming weapon in the game if somebody gets into melee range. I never choose it over implaceable, being able to run and gun in, shoot them for massive guaranteed crit damage, and then fuck off around a corner is too good.[/QUOTE] Well with lost being so low health and how early you can get arc blades, you can literally walk into a group of them and not one of them can land a hit on you. It's also great for drawing aggro when one of your soldiers are low. That's the only time it's really useful though. Then again, I don't usually need implacable as whenever I have my ranger get close enough for it to matter, everyone else is dead.