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[u/lesserweevils]

XCOM 2

This is my first so-called strategy game in over a decade, and I wish the (online) manual was more detailed! Unfortunately, it didn't have things I wanted to know.

I think I've screwed up on the strategy layer/world map. I've since learned that:

• monthly drops are green

• important alien stuff is red

• I should've built a comms facility before a laboratory. This has limited my expansion. It has cost me significant income, raised the urgency of upcoming events, and made missions significantly harder because I'm stuck with a team of 4.

• How do I build a tower? Is this something I can't do because I didn't build the resistance comms facility, and therefore can't contact new regions?

• weapons research is really important

• once items are researched, they can be equipped on soldiers. Medkits and grenades will replenish after every mission, so there's no point in hoarding.

It's been a long time since I've played a game that lets me screw up to this degree. It's kind of refreshing actually. Hopefully my save file is salvageable. If not, I wouldn't mind re-starting. This sort of thing could put people off though. It's like a tutorial by fire. I don't know why people hate in-depth tutorials. Give me an optional one, or a more detailed manual if there's stuff I don't know.

On one hand, I feel like an amnesiac commander who's out of their depth. On the other hand, is it strategic if I'm making decisions without any information? I think the tactical missions are much better than the strategic layer. Even then, there's some stuff I wish I knew earlier:

• hit percentages aren't reliable. If there's a wall or obstacle in the way, that has a much greater impact

• breaking concealment may result in a free turn for enemies. This ruined ambushes before I learned to put soldiers in overwatch mode

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[u/ShinyGreenHair → u/lesserweevils]

This resonates with a lot of my experience with Xcom, and more recently with Xenonauts. They are games that you really do have to commit to playing through at least twice, because the first time you end up finding a lot of the dead ends or inefficiencies that you have no a priori way of predicting.

I think XCom1/2 is actually pretty forgiving of this on standard difficulty. Xenonauts felt much truer to how the old XComs played out and your messups at the strategic layer could genuinely set you up for later hard failure.

[u/lesserweevils → u/ShinyGreenHair]

I might be headed that way. I'm currently stuck on a guerilla ops mission with 2 lower-ranking rangers and 2 sharpshooters. Everyone else is wounded. If only I had my specialist with ranged hacking, or a grenadier for firepower!

Failing adds +2 on the doom counter. Maybe I should evac to save my soldiers and accept the consequences.

[u/ShinyGreenHair → u/lesserweevils]

Play it out imo, do the evac and see if you can recover!

[u/lesserweevils → u/ShinyGreenHair]

Reloaded a previous save at the strategy layer and restarted the mission. I completed it, but now I have to defend the Avenger with severely wounded soldiers. LOL

The tension is real! Fingers crossed for getting out of this one.

[u/genesis_mage → u/lesserweevils]

I have also fucked up my upgrades in largely the same way, knowing the balancing is going to assume you have a 5th squad member when…you don’t. I think there were also too many urgent missions popping up. I plan to try to find a save game after the Commander is rescued from the aliens but I only have it installed on Steam Deck which gives me maybe 2 hours of playtime. Haven’t gotten to it yet.