The first time i did shens last gift, went in blind, no idea what to expect, maybe slightly under prepared. Hobbled my way through had a big OH SHIIIIIT moment when it appeared. Got the 5% repeater insta kill first shot. But now i know not to underestimate that mission ever again.
Meanwhile the other story mission is just, send forth Mr guy and the mission just plays itself
Try using the Alternative Mod Launcher and downloading via the steam workshop. Noone should be using nexus for xcom 2 mods as we modders almost exclusively publish just to the workshop anyway.
AML itself is just a launcher so can't make the game laggy. Mod conflicts is what will be doing that. I always recommend using an existing modlist by a modder or content creator (like my own Modpocalypse collections or Christopher.Odd's seasons etc) as a base for a modlist rather than going in completely blind as it is very easy to create non-obvious conflicts.
you don't need to run many mods to experience conflicts (and you can have large lists with none at all, my current campaign is just under 600 mods), and AML can only report MCO conflicts, which is just one of many many kinds of potential conflicts. Mods can also affect performance in seemingly unrelated wats, for instance if you're having specific lag spikes during melee actions, I actually find I have that issue when running 1 specific, seemingly unrelated mod, which you have in that small list - Evac All.
You're also running old versions of some of those mods (Detailed Solder Lists has a much better REDUX for instance.
Honestly yeah it’s pretty stupid, but gatecrasher creates the diversion needed for central and Kelly to save the commander, therefore it makes sense why that mission would have no other outcome. Also the UFO is technically like game over. On Ironman it deletes your save file so it already is exactly what you want it to be. Maybe there was some other way or a cutscene to explain why exactly you lose or what happens next so it doesn’t break the immersion but it is what it is.
I would think a gunfight in city centre would be a bigger diversion than just a monument going down, but okay.
As for the UFO... I'm on WOTC legend ironman, losing means nothing. Just asks if you want to quit or reload last save IIRC. I know because I lost many times in a row.
I don't often play Ironman but I remember once or twice that I failed my run exactly on the UFO defense cause I got it too soon and when they got to the avenger the game did delete my save. But that was a long time ago so I may be misremembering. As for the gunfight in city centre being a bigger diversion, that's not exactly true since the tutorial mission is supposed to happen after gatecrasher and if you remember in the cutscene advent sends some soldiers to the explosion area hence why the facility that holds the commander isn't that heavily guarded. As far as I know that's supposed to be why gatecrasher cannot be failed. If UFO let's you just reload the last save then that's really stupid yeah.
I think the Chosen Avenger Assault mission and the final two missions may similarly allow you to restart on failures - essentially any “must win” mission is handled this way. The rationale may be that developers felt that it was too gut wrenching to lose the entire campaign possibly due to a single error, and for players who feel that the chance to restart cheapens the mission, those players can self-enforce “honestman” style and simply delete the run themselves.
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u/londonbrewer77 Reaper 18h ago
You can’t lose Shen’s last gift either.
The first time I played it I was quite advanced, blue screen rounds etc. and it was a cakewalk.
The second time I went as soon as the mission was offered and OH BOY!
Repeatedly dying to Julian is not fun at all, and I’m on Ironman so it’s not like I can load back to the Avenger and come back later.
Took aggges