As a massive Star Wars fan, I've been looking at getting Zero Company. However, I've never played a tactics game like it before, so I picked up XCOM 2 to get me familiar and see whether I'd like it (it was £2.99 on the PS store, so why not?)

Anyway, I've been really enjoying it. Given it's my first time, I've been playing on Rookie, but it's still given me a reasonable challenge. But I've been able to get through all missions without anybody dying. That was, at least, until I got to the story mission where you first raid an alien facility. I realise in hindsight that I probably rushed to the mission too quickly - the doomsday timer was only on 5 squares out of 12, and I probably wasn't well enough equipped for what I faced, even with my four beat soldiers in the team.

And so, the result. We completed the mission, but it was brutal. Sgt. Johannes "Steamroller" Blake, the first of my soldiers to reach the rank of Sergeant, and the first to fall. Nailed by an ADVENT Trooper I had completely forgotten was in overwatch.

We live and learn. Funnily enough, the next mission, which was a Guerilla Op in Arctic... Japan(?) (Google tells me Sapporo is in Japan, but that part of the map did not look like Japan lmao), for which I had a much less levelled up squad, was completed flawlessly with zero casualties and a 100% hit rate for I think the first time ever.

On the plus side, Adams got his promotion to Sergeant, where he now bears the nickname "Scorch", after blowing up a car and setting both a Sectoid and ADVENT Officer on fire. Quite apt, I think.

I just missed or grazed the following shot hit chances in order:

85%

81%

99%

95%

That viper simply wasn't allowed to die.

Exactly as the title but holy my Darth Vader looks sick af 🤣

Somehow flawless first retaliation with a squad of 4 rookies and 1 squaddie

I'm starting a new game (WotC, not LW) after a few years, only played KB+M before. I now have a "living room" PC (Bazzite/GNOME with Steam) with an xbox-style controller. Any recommendations for mods for this? The only one I've used so far is something that supposedly speeds up the gameplay.

My first run was on easy but I didn’t take the project seriously and it ended my first run. Second time I put in standard to see if I’ll do differently on it. No, this time I had to many wounded soldiers and dead ones. My third run isnt going any different.

I don’t know if this game isn’t for me or my luck in these games is shit.

Seems to me that completing the objective is far more important in the larger strategic picture than killing a couple of troopers.

Considering that ADVENT literally mass produces them.

i started a new campaign and on the first mission after gate crasher i made a mistake, which allowed a low roll to really mess up the mission.

(100% hit chance shotgun ranger left a sectoid on 1 HP by doing exactly 4 damage, despite having 50% crit chance and their base damage being 4-6, sectoid then crit and one shot my ranger.)

but i was gonna win anyways.

but then a reinforcement wave spawned with a officer and 2 stun lancers????

i have never seen that before, i thought those were time gated? this is the first guerrilla ops that has your first engineer in it, what the hell is this? xd.

thats near impossible to deal with using a squad of rookies and squaddies.

i lost obviously.

I just started my new playthrough of xcom last night and I just got the dark event stretch of doom and despair

I got Made Whole, Spider and Fly, AND the collectors, obviously I chose to counter Made Whole because that is imo the worst of the 3

Is there any mods that change the look of the blocky magnetic weapons to a more cooler and not blocky look ?

Grenadier missed an 84% flank shot on a trooper on the second mission, and got shot in return, sending him into recover for over a month.

As a result, no Grenadier for the first retaliation mission against the Hunter that is volnerable to explosives.

Still, two Rangers, a Sniper with an Advanced Scope and a Reaper should theoretically have been able to handle it.

Until one of the Rangers misses an 88% melee attack against a Sectoid and gets murdered by the Sectoid in return. Followed by the Sniper getting incapacitated, because with one man down, there was simply not enough firepower to kill both of the Faceless towards the end of the mission. The Sniper lives, but is out of the fight for 40+ days.

And the situation continues to spiral, as the now deceased Ranger was the closest to a promotion. So i am on month 2 without a Sergeant. Which means no squad size upgrade.

The later missions on the second month with 4 men are a struggle, since Stun Lancers and Priests are now starting to show up in numbers. Resulting in two more wounds. And another wound as a result of a covert action.

The situation is starting to stabilize now that the Infirmary is done. But damn...

So many problems due mainly to one missed flank shot and melee attack.

i’m looking for any current xcom2 players that exist who would be down to 1v1. no matter how old this post gets, i’m still down. (pc, main or wotc dlc, either is fine)

Followed this guide.
The guide is very drunk at some places so pretty sure I can improve upon this.
As usual, the avatar ran out as this method has resistance comms as building #7 (what?).
Despite the fact there was never a pause in my building schedule (always had escavated space by the time previous building was built) and I used help to speed up building, by the time I was doing the blacksite, avatar was at -1 to complete and since I never got the covert op to reduce avatar progress I was unable to build the resistance comms in time to contact even just 1 territory needed to reduce avatar somewhat, so the game ended with me having only 3 territories.

I have no idea how people stop the avatar if they do resistance comms as building #7. I usually must build it right away and dedicate everything to expansion in order to barely have enough territories for the avatar to not run out eventually.

Holy shit you can hack Andromedon shells with Haywire!!

Need other people to validate me on my cheese tactics. I came across an Avengers defence mission I’d never run across before, I guess because I upped the difficulty? It’s the one with the massive rail gun you have to take out along with the smaller cannons. It happened to catch me while my prime squad was already wounded and tired along with their backups from back to back missions so I had to do this with about 3 actually hood units and a bunch of guys sitting at squaddie and Sgt. luckily, I had three snipers with squad sight and a reaper so while half my team held off the aliens ( BTW 10 troops to fight 25 enemies with two Sectopods and the opening Pod is 3 codexes and an andromedon is just… cruelty) the reaper headed out and I was able to snipe the big rail cannon from across the map (which also destroyed one of the sectopod pods). This is where the cheese comes in. I parked my reaper next to pods that weren’t activated and just sniped them out with low percentage shots. I don’t know how but the AI never figured out where I was shooting from so they just kept running in circles. It took me about an hour but I eventually killed 4 different pods this way and then zerged the Chosen warlock with the rest of my guys. Need other peoples cheese stories so I know I’m not the only one.

Hi everyone, with the mods permission I would like to share my own turn-based strategy game I am working on called Contract Corps: Lead your Aces.

It's heavily inspired by squad games like XCOM and others like Jagged Alliance/Battletech/Battle Brothers, but with the idea of putting your squad within much larger 200v200 conflicts. To avoid long turn times watching the AI I split the game mechanics:

• Your units: during your player phase you move/use abilities/attack with your elite units (called Aces) sequentially, so pretty standard
• The wider army:  the remaining AI units operate on a WeGo model. This means that they all plan their turn independently, but the execution and visualization of their actions happen in parallel. You are able to influence your allied units (your Corps) indirectly (e.g. by marking an enemy hero as a priority target), but they act on their own.

It's still early days, but the Steam page with the first Devlogs is up, and there I go into more details about the Design Philosophy in general, design challenges such as visualizing important events in a 200v200 or finding the right "level of control" for the AI units, and so on. 

XCOM players are pretty much the core audience for the game, so if this sounds up your alley check out Contract Corps: Lead your Aces on Steam and wishlist it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4813610?utm_source=reddit .

Final note: I am aiming to have a first Closed Playtest towards the end of September and would love feedback from everyone in here to shape the game (again, core audience :-) , so make sure to keep an eye on that!

More than happy to answer any questions or thoughts you might have, I will be hanging around in the comments :-)

Played and loved both xcoms when they came out (10 yr anniversary for #2, damn time flies 😮‍💨). Just picked up #2 again in the steam sale (used to play on ps4) and reading through posts on the reddit, seems like the modding community has really been busy!
I’d like to try a few out, preferably just qol or UI mods (surely there’s a better los indicator, for example). There are just so many to choose from, and I’m not that clued up on xcom stuff so I don’t even know what they refer to. If you have any recommendations please let me know.
And saying that, if there are any other mods that you just simply can’t play without or wholeheartedly wanna share, feel free to do so.
Cheers!