XCOM 2 Runthrough - A kinda sorta AAR

[Windigo]

American English!?! 

Love the eye patch.  :bd:

Missing the beret, but I do like the eye patch for the guy who mixes it up close and personal like.

EDIT:

will go looking for some sound files for Canadian English.
do they even have that as a mod?

[JasonPratt]

I miss being able to convert operatives into Mechs, but that's another way XC1 is still viable as its own game.

[Windigo]

So last night, with all the character customization out of the way, an understanding of the character pool and a few pretest plays - I launched the Veteran Ironman Game.

Game1 -

Hey great! Sabreman, Ferret, Banzai Cat and Pug are in the first mission. A small towm rural map with those traffic barriers.

Ferret has a great move stat... he goes first. I move up the map 2 turns, staying in at least half cover and at least 5 of the 8 on over watch.  Ferret say he hears something. He does a blue move.... goes to a house corner and there's 4 nasty's on the other side. The aliens don't have visual... no biggie. Everyone goes into an over watch trap... you know, just in case the bastards patrol around the corner. Well they did patrol around the corner, just not those aliens and not that house corner.

Only two over watch shots... one miss, one dead trooper -  so I have 3 alive , two troopers and an officer. They all go inside houses and find heavy cover.

I lob the grenades to remove cover and incidentally kill a trooper and I think Sabreman gets the officer.

Pug goes to grab the loot and activates another pod when they activate, and in comes two drones to the party as well. Stun grenade's give me time to deal with the drones, but shitty shooting leaves one standing (OK maybe I depend too much on those 50-60% shots). On the aliens turn, they all hit. Ferret and Pug are panicking, because some nameless dude is bleeding out and Banzai is way too exposed. My bad.

Two troopers and a drone .... gang up on Pug, not Banzai Cat like I thought and put him out of his misery. His last words are not, "Tell my family..." but, "Commander you're an ass."

More panicking and I am like %$#@!. RNGesus loves me because Banzai makes a 35% shot and no more drone and Ferret makes an allstar crit on the remaining officer and takes him out.

One advent trooper left.... and only one guy is dead and 1 left blubbering in panic... in high cover though so who cares.

Bye Ferret... RIP... the bastard one shotted you at probably 10-15% shot.


Veteran Ironman Game.

Game 2

Oh look, Ferret is back from the dead and is with Banzai Cat, Eddy, Freyland, and Undercover.
This game went by the numbers, all pod noises came from the direction in which they appeared and were dispatched in an orderly and professional manner.

[Barthheart]

[JasonPratt]

I discovered tonight while reading the Snapshot rules very carefully, that the Snapshot isn't bugged -- not exactly. The LW2 modders intentionally made every sniper rifle shot sucky after taking it. If you want your aim back, you'll have to train and kit up various ways for it again. That's the price for being able to use a sniper gun like an assault rifle. (...or almost like one. The sniper penalty for close-range shots is reduced, but not eliminated entirely.)

I almost took it anyway. "Death from above" has very limited applicability in a highly mobile game like this -- hard to sniperroost properly -- and Fast Targeting is of almost no more use than regular targeting other than allowing me to yellow-move afterward. (Aside from being able to snipe once every five turns after a free holo target.) Most of my damage has been by pistol so far.

[Windigo]

I discovered tonight while reading the Snapshot rules very carefully, that the Snapshot isn't bugged -- not exactly. The LW2 modders intentionally made every sniper rifle shot sucky after taking it. If you want your aim back, you'll have to train and kit up various ways for it again. That's the price for being able to use a sniper gun like an assault rifle. (...or almost like one. The sniper penalty for close-range shots is reduced, but not eliminated entirely.)

I almost took it anyway. "Death from above" has very limited applicability in a highly mobile game like this -- hard to sniperroost properly -- and Fast Targeting is of almost no more use than regular targeting other than allowing me to yellow-move afterward. (Aside from being able to snipe once every five turns after a free holo target.) Most of my damage has been by pistol so far.

I have made your guy a true sniper.... 5 kills in the defend the supply convoy mission. Freyland did his healing thing and killed a few heavies as well. Kitty almost bled out until a nick of time stabilize. Banzai, you're slicing and dicing real good. Finally figured out Rangers and now they hold the line and let the other classes do all the running. Except Undercover Geek, he has shit movement, but the sectoids have yet to panick him so he has been the go to sectoid exterminator.

[Windigo]

Whelp, the good news is some of us are still alive...  I installed the patch for LW 1.1 and when they said the AI had some improvements, they meant it.
*Sabreman now knows (or for a brief moment did) that turrets now have true squadsight and a godawful long range.
*Banzai Cat and Godfather (both stealth ninjas) were stunned by an enemy grenadier and were pummeled by mutons
*Frey took a chance and broke fullcover to get a visual on a terminal to hack.... everyone in his squad witnessed the only medic bleed out for 4 long agonizing turns
*UCG was on fire and is out for 15 days.

^%$#@! Ironman....

Time for take 3...

[undercovergeek]

You didn't equip me with a fire extinguisher did you

[Freyland]

I thought I was feeling a bit faint today...

[JasonPratt]

I am coming to the conclusion that I need to research all the perk options for various classes in LW2, to see if some of them will ever be truly viable. Because at the moment I can't figure out how snipers, for example, will EVER be viable in LW2. They barely count as viable in vanilla XC2. Now the AI doesn't rush blindly out of cover so much, and even half-cover works much better at foiling sniper aim. So unless I go for a gunfighter pistol build, like a less-fast assault class (due to having to carry the unwieldy sniper gun around), the sniper is practically useless. I'm still having to press my forward movement across the map every turn; the few turns I can stop to take a sniper shot mean almost nothing because the enemy probably has already gotten back into cover if I managed to flank; even my unique holotargeting ability doesn't help my teammates much.

In this regard, I might as well take snapshot for my first perk pick after all, to be less useful (at least I can take longer shots after flanking) rather than almost useless!  :P At this point, my random crop of snipers will all end up going to farms to hunt for faceless.

Relatedly: the necessity of constant forward progress in most missions combined with the necessity of building flank attacks and so also getting defensive move perks, suggests that I should retrain everyone to assault classes pronto. With three skill trees each, not even counting variant mixes, and two assault classes (at least, plus some other classes that can be tweaked for an assault-ish effect), and a flexible primary gun loadout (rifles, shotguns, submachines), plus highly effective stun capabilities (unique to the class afaik), plus their better infiltration properties, and they're the clear game winners.

[Windigo]

I find them very useful in the haven assaults and the faceless hunts.... I get flawless fairly often, due to snipers without snapshot... death from above plus the best scope I can get and AP ammo.... nasty bastards!

[BanzaiCat]

Does "pummeled" equate to "dead?"

I'm not up on the Canadiastan hippy free medicine terminology...  ;D

[Windigo]

Pummeled equals human equivalent of leaking bag of jellied remains.

[BanzaiCat]

Welp, at least he didn't die on the first mission.  ;D

[Windigo]

Welp, at least he didn't die on the first mission.  ;D

Will be getting screen shots tonight. I started Ironman Veteran #3 last night and it went well... maybe too well. KzyPB and you are storming 10+ kills in your 1st three missions.

With some of the buffs there are good things going on. UCG as a Technical is burning more than just weed.
Pratt IIRC is a specialist that is any squads answer to drones [combat not med]

All squads have AP now and I am working towards laser... only killed my borother's toon "Godfather"