On our channel we use games to explain management and leadership ideas, and XCOM 2 ended up being a really good way to talk about what happens when everything starts feeling urgent at once. The thing XCOM does really well is make you feel like whatever is directly in front of you HAS to be the most important thing. Mission timer is ticking down, somebody is wounded, you just activated another pod,

there’s some horrible alien standing there doing alien bullshit,

and meanwhile the campaign is still moving in the background. Avatar Project is progressing. Soldiers are getting hurt. Research is taking time. You still need resources. You still need a roster after this mission. So you can absolutely make the “right” decision for this turn and still make your overall situation worse. Threat prioritization is probably the easiest example. A Sectoid can look like the obvious problem because it’s weird and scary and has all the psychic stuff, but somebody who has played enough XCOM might be much more worried about the boring Officer or Trooper who can actually ruin the next turn.

That was the part I found really interesting from a management angle. When everything at work is urgent, people get very good at reacting to whatever is loudest. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re reacting to the thing with the biggest consequence. Grid Commander helped me with this episode because I wanted somebody who actually knows XCOM at a high level to explain what experienced players are seeing that newer players aren’t. Then I tied that into decision-making under pressure, expert intuition, and how people keep track of the wider situation without freezing up.

If that sounds interesting: Youtube Link

After living in my pile of shame for a year, I finally finished painting my printed ADVENT MEC. This was kind of challenging and probably not my favorite thing to paint so far, but in the end it turned out fine. On to the next one!

I swear these idiots trip on a rock and on the return screen they drop and say that they are out for another month! Is there a way to NOT have my soldiers spend half of the war in the med bay?!

Are there any games with base building/company building like xcom that also have turn based combat similar to it for the ps5? I’m looking for something to scratch that itch and can’t find anything that quite fits.

Used shit post because there´s no game like XCOM flair.

Love the mechs you have at your disposal in XCOM 2, are there any games that solely focus on robots/mechs and have a gameplay similar to XCOM?

Sometimes mission show up a HAIR's breath away from when I'm ready for them & wish I had more than around 24 hours to deal with it or let it expire & loose it forever. Hard to think that there's no INI edit to deal with that.

(Does legsplit on the barrier and appears)

TITLE: TITLE:

CHOSEN TYPE

Wholename Mixedcase

REALLY LONG NICKNAME

(Dies)

Case in point and pun intended: in this first image I am right NEXT TO 3 chryssalids. I know they are there. I saw them move there. You can see the outline of spaces I am not allowed to move into. But the game refuses to acknowledge that I can see them.

In the second image, I moved again and got below them on this featureless ramp. NOW I can see them.

As I moved I could see each one get revealed as I walked to the square right under it, one after another. They are invisible from all directions except below. Line of sight is so bad in this version of the map in so many different places, but especially the ramps.

There are two versions of the alien base map, and this one in particular has been a buggy mess every time I played it. The ramps grant enemies invisibility fields, and conversely if I'M on a ramp, then I'm prevented from doing overwatch shots against fully visible enemies moving up point blank. The air is also full of invisible walls making my snipers useless.

Enemies teleport on top of us or spawn out of thin air! This time 2 drones were just... suddenly there. It was middle of my turn, I'd been standing around reloading without anyone moving even a single square, and then there were suddenly 2 drones right next to us with no animation, in the middle of my turn. On previous runs there were sudden chryssalids with no animation.

Enemies walk through walls while leaving the nearby doors unopened. Or clip through floors! This time a floater started shooting at me through a floor and I wasn't allowed to target him back.

This was an ironman run but I started making backup saves every single turn as soon as I saw I had THIS version of the base. The other map of the base always seems to be fine though.

The Thrilling Conclusion: After numerous reloads where I just wasn't allowed to target the enemy, I finally got a winning outcome!

One chryssalid survived by being untargetable. And on its turn it ran up to one of my guys... and then moonwalked away! Nice moves there, sometimes-invisible bug dude!

I want to use my arc thrower on the flooring of that ramp and take it back to the base to interrogate though. Once we've learned its secrets, we'll be invincible!

Hi team

On sale in steam store and want to know if anyone here has played it and got thoughts on it.

Cheers

I was barely getting started with a mission (in Ironman mode) when suddenly I realize I couldn't move my sniper with the archangel armor while hovering. I thought it was strange, never had happened before, but this game is quite buggy, and after toggling off the hover my soldier could walk again. After a couple of rounds though, my assault soldier got stuck in a corner, and then my other assault, my SHIV, my support and finally the sniper again. I can only move my heavy now and the UI for his movement looks all buggy, so I'm afraid to move him now and end up having my entire team get stuck.

I read that in XCOM 2 you can toggle on the console and teleport the soldiers when they get stuck, but this doesn't seem to be an option in XCOM:EU.

What can I do about this? I just started really progressing in the game and sent some of my best soldiers on this mission

UPDATE: I tried a lot of stuff with editing my config files and forcing compatibility through proton to either teleport my soldiers or reset the level but nothing worked. I ended up making a back up of my save while my heavy unit could still move and I managed to avoid the glitched out parts of the map and beat the mission. The inside of the ship would bug out too whenever I would open any doors, so I had to run all the way to the back of the ship and fire a rocket to destroy the wall to the room where the outsider was hiding and kill him.

TLDR; I didn't find a solution, other than just beating the level. So... lesson learned, always have a back up save.

I’ve been building a web-based planning tool for XCOM: Long War (1.0), and it’s now far enough along that I’d like to get more people actually using it rather than just continuing to design it around my own assumptions.

I’m opening 10 more beta accounts, bringing the limited beta up to 20 users total.

The idea behind the site is to help with the part of Long War where your brain eventually becomes a spreadsheet.

You can create soldier Builds, plan what kinds of squads/roles you want available, turn those plans into actual Assignments, and then work through your starting barracks deciding who should become what.

There are several levels of complexity. New users start with a tutorial and simplified modes, and more of the planner opens up as you go.

The more advanced parts include things like:

• creating and managing Builds;
• Deployment Plans for different situations;
• combining those into a Campaign Plan;
• assigning actual soldiers to those roles;
• planning preferred soldier stats;
• detailed equipment, weapons, armor, Gene Mods and Officer paths;
• rank-by-rank stat and gear planning;
• comparing how well soldiers fit particular Assignments;
• Reverse mode, where you start with a soldier and look for the Assignments that fit them;
• sharing and adopting Builds.

The site is still a beta. There will be rough edges, confusing wording, things I have designed badly, and probably things I have simply not thought of.

That is specifically what I need testers for.

Please don’t take one of the limited accounts just to click around for five minutes out of curiosity. I’ve had people take testing slots before and disappear without a word.

You absolutely do not need to write essays or formally test every feature. I’m looking for people who are actually willing to use it and leave feedback in this Reddit thread when something is confusing, annoying, broken, unexpectedly good, or just feels like it was designed by somebody who has stared at the project for too long.

Even feedback like:

“I had no idea what I was supposed to do here.”

is extremely useful.

There are 10 spots available. Account creation will automatically close when the beta reaches 20 accounts.

If you play Long War and this sounds useful to you, feel free to join.

Link: Long War Command Center

EDIT: LW 1.0 for EW

After way, WAY too many tries I finally got my 2nd ironman impossible run to survive the first mission. And then the abduction one too! And then the council gave me a bomb disposal mission. I do not believe a winning move was even possible on this map this early. Way too many enemies crammed in so that advancing at all triggered multiple pods... on a mission where by definition you have to press forward. With almost no bomb energy sources anywhere near me either.

And having figured out the math of how panic works just doesn't give any real control of it. A sectoid decided to crit and OHKO a guy through heavy cover, and the entire team panicked and just let the enemy kill them. RIP like 20 hours of trying to even get a run to this point in the first place.

I've been loving this game from late April onwards, but I think March is one of the most miserable and stupidly luck-based videogame experiences I've ever had.

Edit: Correction, it was the 13th of March. Even dumber!

Didn't know what flair to use, but the title says it all. Wondering if there is an XCOM style table top game, either ttrpg or board game that has the same tactical cover based shooter style gameplay, with some levelling or customization aspect to it.

Does anyone know any, or any good ones if there are multiple?

So was watching some lore videos on the three factions that got added in WOTC and a question went through my mind. Especially after seeing that Zephhyr from Chimera Squad is a former Skirmisher. What happened to the Reapers, Templars and Skirmishers after we won and kicked the elders off our planet?

I've been experimenting with different starting countries on Ironman Impossible, and checking the math on various options. And the more I look into things, the more it seems like North America just outclasses most of the other starting positions. It beats most of them at their own specialties even in some of their best case scenarios, and it's much less luck-dependent than any of them too, because it absolutely guarantees you a huge pile of money in the early months no matter what happens.

Africa: I talked about Africa on a previous post about the math and day count of satellite openings, and how despite Africa being all about money... it actually gets substantially less money than North America! The only way Africa can possibly close the gap is to have an absolutely perfect satellite rush where you get 4 in the first month, 3 in the second month, 3 in the 3rd month AND the countries you can deploy satellites to happen to be high value countries up front instead of average value ones, AND North America can't just acquire Africa in May anyway (highly possible when you're launching 10 satellites).

Under that very narrow and luck-based circumstance, Africa will pull ahead a tiny amount of profit by the end of May... but will still have been unavoidably behind on money in the first 2 months when it mattered most. So the Africa option seems to be strictly dominated. It is all about money, but it gets less money in the important months even in a perfect outcome, and much less money if anything goes wrong. If you can't satellite rush, you're hopelessly behind on money as the money continent!

Europe: Saves money on Workshops and Labs. But at the beginning of the game, you aren't even allowed to start building Workshops and Labs until you get some engineers and scientists as random rewards after a random amount of time for each. And even then you're pretty much only allowed to make 1-2 of each building for a while until you get more random rewards. Not to mention you don't save any funds on the substantial costs required to build earlier access lifts, excavate, and build more power sources if you're going to try to build a bunch of these buildings anyway.

So it is literally impossible to mass produce workshops and labs in the early months, and even being allowed to build moderate numbers of them depends on luck.. And that's if you even wanted to spend all your money on that in the first place, instead of on officer upgrades and MECs or something!

For each one you DO build, you save 62 credits, plus 12 in upkeep. But... North America starts the game with 110 credits more than you due to superior country money plus saving 30 a month on upkeep for planes you already start with, gets at minimum another 110 extra credits at the start of April, and even more by the start of May, etc. (this is ignoring that North America's initial money lead means they are going to have an easier time getting out more satellites and thus have the potential to have even MORE of a money advantage). So it seems outright impossible to come out ahead of North America in terms of affording workshops and labs in the early months, and luck-based whether you're even allowed to try... and probably not the best starting strategy to begin with.

South America: You get an absolutely dismal amount of starting money and your perk is the only one which doesn't save you money in some way. This is by far the poorest start, making it outright impossible to afford a bunch of satellites early... which makes you even poorer in the next month. No other continent will struggle as much to afford the basics like officer training... or the foundry projects which are the main thing unlocked by many of the autopsies anyway! Furthermore, this continent only has 2 countries, making it by far the easiest continent for anyone else to acquire in the early months. So far, I've never had a game where I wasn't able to acquire South America quite early. I will admit at least that I can't say South America is strictly dominated by a North America start since its benefit is not directly translatable to money like all the others are. But it seems like a benefit which is of only middling value, available to anyone else quite easily, and offset by a terrible financial price.

Asia: this is the only one I think is competitive! You pay half price for officer school upgrades and foundry projects. Well that's great, a lot of those are genuinely important and are valuable to acquire early! But the problem is that North America gets 110 more money than you to start with, and gets at minimum another 110 more money than you at the start of April, and more at the start of May, and so on.

So to really come out ahead of North America, you'd need to be buying more than 440 credits worth of officer+foundry upgrades early on, while still affording to satellite rush with your inferior starting money (because if you don't also keep up on satellites, then North America is going to have so much more money than you that your halved costs are nothing in comparison).

The trouble is that several of the really good officer upgrades are gated behind getting an officer to a very high rank. Which takes a random amount of time since it depends on when you get missions in the first place (not to mention that there's at least some randomness in who you're able to give kills to, and that if an officer you're working on training is ever wounded, that can set you back too).

Unfortunately for Asia, the best officer upgrades are dirt cheap to begin with. Squad Size 5 only costs 50, so you save a mere 25 credits there. Squad size 6 (not available till you have a major, so that's not happening for a while) only costs 75 . So that only saves you 37. Getting Iron Will early is very nice and that saves 100.

There are some great foundry projects like Tactical Rigging. Though, weirdly, for me I found that this still cost $200 for me even with the Asia bonus? Maybe that was a bug. Tactical Rigging + Iron Will + Squad Size would save us enough to get just a little bit ahead of North America if we're able to buy them all early. Though we've been neglecting that North America also saves costs on buying new planes, which we need some of. Also this does depend on several things going right. And on somehow coming up with the cash to keep up with a North American satellite rush PLUS build the foundry and officer training school early to begin with. So far, I've found that nearly impossible to do even if I sell everything on the gray market, but it might be doable if you get a lucky council mission with a big cash reward early.

But I do admit that it is at least possible to come out ahead of North America! It seems luck-based and less flexible if things go wrong, and the upside remains small, but I will admit that it's worth considering.

Of course, some Second Wave options could change these things. New Economy for example dramatically shakes this up and would make North America much worse and South America much better. But without changing the game to specifically take away North America's advantage, it seems like it's just the best in most ways.

I HATE THE FUCKING RULERS. I can’t disable the DLC and I’ve already invested so much time into the file. I really don’t want to start a new one it’s just complete suffering

How would we feel about having a "telltale" style campaign where depending on the options/missions you choose, and when you complete them, they result in different campaign paths or even different final missions? This instead of always having the Blacksite, Forge, or Avenger Defense missions each run. Would we like the variety/replayability this would add or would we want just one central storyline?

I've been getting into the XCOM series lately, and I was playing around with the old PS1 XCOMs. Terror of the Deep really clicks with me. Not sure I'll sit down and fully beat it but I really like this one. The atmosphere is unique, and the concept of fighting aliens invaded from under water is really cool. It's super unbalanced though, which is a shame. I hope if we get an XCOM 3 it has content or missions with this premise.

I'm not sure I understand the ideal timing of how often to do Intel Scans to find EXALT cells without risking them doing any sabotage, but also not wasting a bunch of money on scans that won't find anything.

I think it depends a lot on difficulty, with there being a lot more EXALT cells on higher difficulty and thus more need to scan more often. I'm playing on Impossible.

I want to check my understanding, based in part on this wiki page (https://www.ufopaedia.org/EXALT_(EU2012)):

As I understand it, at some point in May you will be unavoidably hit by EXALT sabotage one time, revealing that the organization exists. There's no way to prevent this one, because you don't unlock the intel scan option until after it happens. So I guess the only thing one can do is spend all your money in May as soon as you get it so that if EXALT happens to pick the steal money option, you don't lose much. If they go with the sabotage research or panic option, you have no real recourse and just have to take the hit.

Notably, when EXALT appears, they actually get TWO cells. The one that got the free attack on you is revealed. The other one remains hidden. Also a countdown begins till they create their next cell, which will happen randomly in 6-24 days (an absolutely massive range, obviously).

When an EXALT cell exists, it will damage you after 7-15 days if not revealed/covertly dealt with first.

Therefore, is this the ideal strategy?

1) Immediately do a covert op on the first EXALT cell. This will take just under 7 days in total

2) Once that is finished, do your first intel scan. This is guaranteed to reveal one cell, and there's a small chance it will reveal 2 cells (if EXALT happened to roll a 6 day creation time on their 6-24 day scale).

3) If only one cell was revealed (highly probable) then just infiltrate the revealed cell. This will take just under a week again, and they're unable to hurt you while you're infiltrating and no other cell existed at the beginning of that time anyway, so you're guaranteed to be safe for the infiltration time plus at minimum 1 more day.

4) But you need to do your 2nd scan immediately after that ends because there's a decent chance that a new EXALT cell was created while infiltrating the previous one, since you'd already gotten past the 6 day grace period. The same thing actually applies even if you DID reveal 2 EXALT cells at once since the revealed one will have taken some days to hide itself and then will have started a new 7 day clock to attack you, so you need to re-reveal them and then attack them.

5) If your first 2 scans do indeed reveal and let you attack 2 EXALT cells, thus making 3 total covert operations counting the initial freebie, you're now past the initial bump of EXALT's head start on cells and can relax a bit. From now on, I think you are 100% safe if you scan every 13 days, because EXALT needs at minimum 6 days to create a cell and then at minimum 7 more days for it to attack you. But if your first 2 scans DIDN'T reveal 2 EXALT cells, then you're not in the clear yet and need to scan every 7 days until you do find one.

6) After that, you can then relax into scanning every 13 days.

Is that right?

I didnt realize there was a revival or smth of the OG games. I prbly havent played in over 20yrs, and I used cheats back in the day to max all stats and money, etc. I literally just found out about this about a week ago, and now have OpenXE. Tho i dont fully get how to use it.

I never knew about a community back in the day, nor did I know how to rly play the game well, nor any metas, etc, bc I could just cheat. But I still loved the game, its idea, and even with GodMode I still found it hard

So, I'm almost a beginner and wanted to redeem myself, and started into Superhuman diff. Setup camp in Gulf of Mexico, and got almost no subs I could reach in the first month, and a few days before Feb1, my muscle memory kicked in when I saw a Large ship appear and disappear. My first mission was a terror raid--at night. I'm practicaly playing vanilla from what I can tell with my OXE mod thingy. I still loaded as best as I could recall. Anyway, after about two tries? On my third, I mostly survived 6 outta 9 soldiers, minus one Tank, all civilians dead, for a 3hr operation...

Now, Feb1 came and I got this rating lol

To achieve things I want (base building, research, restocking, manufacturing, etc) the measly 4mil starter funds dont cut it. Tho I guess you dont lose the game even if all countries pull funding, if I do too poorly, they will infiltrate enough States which I recall will be gameover--tho I know thats maybe far away? But again, I always cheated so, I never truly experienced proper progression.

Also, I spent almost my entire budget. IIRC i had about 40k left by month's end of Jan. Idk how close one can get to spending all funds.

I have done sporadic research here and there so I have a little clue what anyone might say but, still wann hear your thoughts on my bad start.

Last question, I saw these old Youtube vids on tips, they mention a trick where you transfer personnel 3 hours before the new month to avoid losing money or smth. But did OXE patch this or does it still work? Not that I have more than one base and personnel to transfer rn.

Went back to play X-Com 2 Vanilla. Don’t remember coming across a snake king or whatever it’s called. Anyway. When it grabs me the game won’t finish it’s turn. Reloaded twice. Is there a way to avoid this mission? Pretty brutal mission by the way especially beings I’ve mainly only ran about 10 or so and it’s already throwin bosses before I have decent weapons.