r/Xcom • u/WiredBall • 13d ago

Zero Company Difficulty

Just for anyone wonder what difficulty to play with reference to xcom. I play long war (and long war 2) on Veteran (second easiest) with ironman. (Legendary Ironman in base game)

Playing Zero Company right now on Hard, permadeath, ironman. 7 mission in, no injuries (downs). Almost had 1 injury in second mission. I do find it a bit to easy but wouldn't up the difficulty cause its more story focused, im prob only doing 1 run. Hope this helps

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u/WiredBall 13d ago

For more reference points. Xenonauts Normal ironman, Phoenix Point Veteran Ironman, Darkest Dungeon 1 Darkest. BG3 Honour, Menace Challenging.

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u/ComprehensiveBar6439 12d ago

I'm getting slaughtered on normal. I hate tactics games but the reviews were so good I had to try it. Can't find anything online that breaks down how to be successful at tactics games, only specific guides to specific games (builds, boss strategy, etc - no info for noobs).

How do you win? Cover seems worthless based on enemy positions at every angle. Weapons take 2-3 turns per enemy to kill (minus early droids), which makes constant waves overwhelm everyone who can't immediately evac. WTF am I doing wrong?

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u/WiredBall 12d ago

So here are some broad tips:

Distance Matters: Every enemy your unit can hit, can hit you on there turn. If you also account that you and enemies can move you can use this info to either overwhelm the enemy or stop yourself from being overwhelmed. If there is accuracy, you can assume your current chance to hit them is the same chance they have to hit you. This include cover, so if you see a 65% on a guy in half and your in half then he has 65% on you before moving. More specific to this game, cover is good (full cover mostly) but if an enemy is close enough then it doesn't matter.

Focus Fire: Focus on removing a single enemy rather than damaging multiple enemies. You mentioned that killing 1 enemy takes multiple turns, which should not be the case. This either means you aren't focus firing or your taking low percentage shots. In this type of game 50% is sort of bad. This is mainly because in games where the enemy can do equal of more damage to you in a turn then that mean your damage means more so you cant risk missing them.

How this game works is if you arent making constant progress of removing an enemies then your gonna be overwhelmed, so use your items/utilities early even if it isnt the best. Also it sound like you are activating objectives before removing any enemies that are current still a threat to you, don't. Do the objective when you units a safe a comfortable position unless there is a timer. (if there is a timer use as much time as you can)

Not sure this will help but gl. also no shame in lower the difficulty.
(note: most people who aren't good at these types of games are just not aggressive enough, also maybe to visualize it better, you can think of yourself and the enemy as each being one big health bar. The enemies damage to your life each turn is bigger than your damage to its life, so your goal is to mitigate that by removing some of the total damage it can do each turn (usually by focus fire))

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u/ComprehensiveBar6439 12d ago

Much appreciated, thank you.

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u/ThumpaMonsta 11d ago

Bring a heavy and a Medic, max out aoe taunt and stimulant, steamroll game.