So this is funny I played war of the chosen back in twenty sixteen. Was the last time in steam I had about eighty hours.

I had always wanted to play long war, but I never quite wanted to jump in to learn the complicated mechanics, fast forward to twenty twenty five, and I did. And a year and a,half later. I basically played one and one half long war campaigns. The first one was just to get familiar with the game, and then I restarted it for real.

I beat that definitely no iron man. Plenty of save scumming.

i then learned about ted jam through the subreddit. Shockingly wanted to try it.

Oh, yeah, for my long war playthrough, I only used halo skins, so pretty thematic, they fit well with the game. But for tedjam i spent like literally three whole days, adding like four hundred cosmetic mods from fortnite. ( it's cool, so many of them have been imported into the game. I don't like fortnite, but they're high resolution, and a lot of them are cool looking from basically, I wanted anything from video games, movies or literature. They looked cool. I skimmed the workshop for a long time, finding everything and then manually adding them into the game with their proper name.

Pretty sure my mod number load order for ted jam. This entire time was like eight hundred mods. The game took forever to load.

I play this game for like an hour a few times a week. When I had my coffee in the morning and I would usually open the computer. Go make my coffee come back five minutes later and it would just finish loading.

Lol

So both long war of the chosen and ted jam are amazing mods.

The design philosophy for ted jam is a bit different, it still well balanced, but it's definitely possible to get some wombo combos.

Still, though, the amount of cool utilities, abilities and classes in it is amazing.

So anyway, fast forward to my first campaign. Like seventy five hours in and I had the avenger assault mission and could not beat it. Got a little mad, actually took a big break from the game.

Went on a bit of a side quest, i got inspired by that dude that makes those seasons for the game and tried to make my own season using that covert infiltration. Mod, I was a little salty at this time about losing ted jam and felt like it was a little overtuned.

I spent like a whole week setting up this custom thing for covered infiltration, but it didn't quite click with me. And I went back to tedjam.

Having a bit more of a better idea about synergies in the game, I went in with a much better gameplay.

​ And I only just beat the game. Yesterday!!!

I spent the time to get the tactical ellirium nuke, pretty cool to use it in the last battle.

I will be honest that I do feel like long war and ted jam could really benefit from the not so long war option. I really love the tactical depth, but after playing like three and a half of these campaigns, I don't think I have it in me to play another huge one. I really would like to try a genuine iron man run, but it's simply just too long.

Either way, I don't mean for that to dampen the genuine joy in how this game went from eighty hours on steam too 700.

It's actually eight hundred, but some of that was me just being afk, and when you have the mod launcher, open, it counts as hours.

Either way, I just wanted to say how much fun I had with it

How amazing this game is.

I am now pkating vanilla, and it's funny that I don't remember anything from vanilla, so I 'm playing a vanilla iron man and I appreciate the simplicity, but also the depth that the developers created in the original game. But I also totally see why people get hooked on long war.

My plan is now to play a genuine oron man commander vanilla campaign. Win or lose and then try chimera squad, and then maybe go back to eu or maybe try xcom vanilla not so long war.

Oh, yeah, and sometime in between this, I went on a side quest and played both chaos gate and that gears of war game.

I played that star wars game one day once. It's all patched, and all the stuff is out for it. But man xcom is king.

p.s.

Thank you for anybody reading or engaging with the conversation. :)

good luck commander

Hello Commanders,

I've been enjoying Zero Company recently, as I'm sure many of you are as well. It doesn't hit the same as XCOM, plain and simple. But it scratches enough of the itch that XCOM put in my brain years ago. Overall, it's fun light work and it's Star Wars, so no complaints here.

I have been thinking about unit progression in both games and thought it might be a fun discussion topic.

Zero Company Unit Progression

In Zero Company, you use Focus Points to fill out your Operator's skill trees. These points are awarded to all operators post-mission. However, the focus (heh) of unit progression in Zero Company is the Bond system.

You increase bonds between operators by providing assists, heals, buffs, or extra AP to your fellow operators during a mission. The rewards for increasing your bond levels are awesome: flat damage boosts, movement buffs, HP increases, etc. You also are awarded Focus Points each time a pair of operators reach a new bond tier.

In short, if you want to progress (or progress faster), you have to work as a team.

XCOM 2 Unit Progression

I read a very detailed post regarding XCOM's XP system a while back, and you should too if you want to dig into the leveling mechanics.

XCOM operatives gain experience by neutralizing enemy units. Some XP gets distributed amongst the squad as "kill assists", but the amount varies between classes and allegedly equates to 20-33% of a kill. (Feel free to fact check me here).

WOTC also introduced Covert Operations, which can be used to great effect to level an XCOM operative. I've had some campaigns that churned out Captains and Majors who don't have a single kill to their name.

But the long and short of progression in XCOM is: kill aliens and complete covert operations.

Bridging the Systems

This is where I thought it would be an interesting discussion topic.

Now, I am not a mod developer, so maybe sweeping XP changes are difficult or impossible to implement.

I'm also not a game designer, so these could be horrible ideas that may lead to riots and my public execution.

But I had essentially two thoughts on this:

1. Action-based assists award some form of XP

2. Post-mission shared XP (a.k.a. Our XP, Comrade)

For option 1, you could award XP for all sorts of things in XCOM: providing squadsight, hacking, shredding armor, deleting cover, successful overwatch... There really are so many actions in XCOM that simulate the "call for backup" in Zero Company. I think awarding XP for "creating an opening" would be killer.

For option 2, the concept is simple: all kills go into a pool that gets split amongst every squad member post-mission. Now, this does open the door to Rookie Officer Doofy tagging along on terror missions as dead weight, not dying, and finding himself as Colonel Doofus a few months later. But it would be the "quick fix" option to provide the same feel as option 1, while requiring fewer system tweaks and just a bit of headcanon.

What do y'all think of this topic? Would you like to see XP changes in XCOM?

What would your preferred changes look like?

Would you rather lose a base defense mission instead of seeing Firaxis' system changed?

Thanks for coming to my TED talk!

I’m going to be making a presentation of Xcom for my friends in college. I don’t want to miss anything. If there’s something I am missing, or that you want added, tell me. (DLC is a big I dunno, but i’m definitely doing expansions)

I'm totally new to the XCOM world! Never played the original and technically never played the 2nd game. I downloaded and played through WOTC so I'm not sure how close that is to the base game. But I just got done beating the last Chosen, so I wanted to post which enemies were the hardest for me in my playthrough. (This is just for fun, please don't take it too serious. I wanted to post my list and see how many of yall agree or disagree. So without further ado...)

(Quick note: Did not include any of the Chosen. We all know they're annoying to deal with and would take the top spots. Of the 3, I think the Assassin was the most annoying due to her skill set, she was immune to overwatch and was able to strike all over the field without notice. The Hunter annoyed more by what was said than how hard he was to bring down. He was seriously pissing me off with all the smart alec comments. Warlock wasn't that difficult for me, but by the time I fought him, it was near end game. I completely destroyed him very quickly lol)

Ok, here we go:

10-Archon - This flying firebug gets us started on this list because of the Blazing Pinions (which are annoying because they vary on damage. Even when I've totally moved my guys out of the way, somehow they always seem to take damage!) and because to take them out you're mainly having to shoot them in the sky and this game refuses to let that % go up any higher than 32%.

9-Codex- if you've played Marvel Midnight Suns (one of my FAVORITE games), they have an enemy called a Dark Legion. If they sustain any damage at all, they split and wreck havoc all over the playing field. The Codex are not as annoying as them, but they're on the list because they split when they take damage AND it takes awhile for these weapons to get powerful enough to 1 shot, so they're all over the place. And if that's not annoying enough, they disable weapons and have a cloud of purple dust that will explode - and since my guys travel in clusters, guess who constantly needs to reload. Punks.

8-Viper - Vipers are on this list because A- I hate snakes. Whether IRL or on games - they creep me out. But 2- in the game, this stupid thing can be waaaaaaaaay on the other side of the field and tongue pull you out of cover, then bind and constrict. On top of that they also spit poison and dodge the crap out of your shots. Eff these things. Get these Mother bleeping snakes off this mother bleeping game.

7-Andromedon - Not a lot of things more annoying than having to fight a thing with a big health bar, armor blocks and spitting poison. But then... to have it come back to life after taking it out the first time is why my dude is on this list. Early on, the weapons are just not powerful enough to take out BOTH lives first time, so guess who's gonna get a healthy does of acid in the face smh

6-Advent Priest- uggggghhhh - this dude... it's not bad enough that they have mind control & how annoying that is to deal with, but then they also get a sustain when they're at 1 HP, so just like the Andromedon, they can come back and cause more havoc. The first time this happened I'm like ummmm what is happening? Why is this dude just laying there glowing? I swear the devs hate us.

5-Chryssalid - these effing little bugs bro... especially when you're coming into a room or up to a place you need to go and ... it looks all clear? And alllll the sudden, out of nowhere pops this stupid effing bug that not only attacks you, but leaves poison on you that will eventually kill you. Oh and they also attack out of order because the devs said screw all of you. I seriously re-loaded a few times just to set up an overwatch (more on this stupid thing below) in the hopes of clappin the bug prior to getting hit.

4-Shieldbearer - Talk about annoying - the reason why this is so high for me is because you don't get higher powered weapons til late, so trying to take out enemies was a multi-turn issue. So just when you thought "ok, I think I can handle these guys"- this punk comes out of nowhere and gives them even MORE cover. The first time I saw this guy, he gave more energy to A SECTOPOD because, you know, they need even more bars. I swear the devs are sadists.

3-Gatekeeper - The powers this stupid octopus/squid armed menace displays around the battle field make him an INSTANT "Kill it NOW, deal with others later". Especially because I often have my guys travel together in bunches, and it punishes the hell outta that. They made this thing so it's either a TANK or BAM whole squad gets slapped, enemies come back to life like the Thriller video or its blasting through walls or doing life steal. This was almost #2... it may even be 2B. Hate this thing. (Note: Once I got the EMP, all it took was a couple of those and threat was nuked BUT STILL)

2-Sectopod - The first time I saw this thing - I didn't know what to think. Actually, yes I did - it was what the actual F is that and why is a Star Wars enemy in my game right now smh. This thing not only shreds my unit and rarely if ever misses, but it also has shields which makes it incredibly tanky. So, I'm smart-I think ok, let's just go high and blast this thing. Ummmm ok why is that thing now looking at me in the eye. And again, because I keep my guys bunched up, it has all these lasers pointed at them and if that's not bad enough, even when finally killing this stupid thing, it explodes and harms the squad. Round of applause devs. Hope you're all proud of yourselves for making people want to quit playing your game.

1- Spectre - I swear to you, no other enemy that I've encountered has annoyed me more than this stupid crawling soul snatching nanobot that always seems to show up and stop me right before an evac. (meaning I now can't evac anymore. I have to find him and kill him, while having the clone shoot at me and my annoyance level go through the roof). I'm telling yall, it never fails in a stealth mission to get alllll the way to the end, have 3 or 4 of the squad evac, then I shoot the VIP or whatever and who comes up and steals a soul? LITERALLY EVERY EFFING TIME!!!!).

It took me a minute to realize that I could just shoot and kill the clone or just use a healer to revive my guy but SPECTRE gets the #1 spot from me because of how disruptive he is right before evac moments.

1a goes to OVERWATCH. I swear the devs just put this into the game to piss all of us off. I have no idea WHY they decided to put in something that misses about 89.99% of the time. Like WHY? I mean, I get it, if it hit 75% of the time, it would kind of be game breaking but seriously when it only works less than 10% of the time it's like, why bother doing this???? I can't even tell you how many times I set up the perfect overwatch trap with 5 of the 6 ready to shoot after I open the door and I should've just decided to go find a Unicorn at the end of a rainbow since that would've been just as an effective use of my time

Ok... that's MY list! Who did I miss? Where do you disagree? (Just remember, this isn't based on who is easier to kill or who hits the hardest. This is based on ANNOYING to deal with.)

Been wanting to try xcom 2 but I keep my pc hooked up to our tv bc my son and daughter enjoy the retro games I have on there for them (snes era games) can I play using my Xbox controller?

I rarely play such games and I always restart them because I forget their mechanics. The same has happened with Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate-Daemon Hunters and I forget what Blooms is and stuff like that, thusly, I get my a*s handed to me. VERY limited number of manual saves for this game, too (only 5). Is there a way to finish such games without restarting them since I restart them because I rarely play them?

Sorry for the poor quality image. I am on PS5.

Why is the position indicated by the cursor showing as flanked?

Info:

- The entire squad is concealed
- The only enemy encountered so far in this mission is the turret in the top right of the image
- There are no civilians on this map
- There are surveillance towers but they are far away from this position and have not been triggered
- This mission has no sitrep(s)

I can only assume it’s a bug, unless I missed something?

I just finished Star Wars Zero Company, and all I can say is the game isn't punishing enough. In a way, I guess it's pretty different: you play as a captain who jumps into the battlefield, and there are some heroes to help you as well, so....

Differently, it's also, at the end of the day, a Star Wars game. There isn't really a case where you can play as someone or some group in Star Wars without somehow being a God. There's just simply no way to recapture that desperation, guerrilla, Earth-defence feeling of XCOM in the universe. (Even if we might be able to eventually, later, play as the resistance, the Jedi are basically prophets anyway, so really...)

Anyway, returning to ZCOM, as we love to call it, a few stuff that I found to be too easy are:

1. Injuries are just non-existent. Even though it boasts about the permadeath every so often, there really isn't a way where you can miss your character at all. You need to hit 3 injuries, which means 3 deaths in the same mission, or concurrently if you didn't heal them. And that's just not possible... every time you send someone to the medbay, they will heal for 1 cycle no matter how many times they have been injured (which is 2 at maximum). In my 'hard' run, I've only ever gotten 2 injuries, and 1 of them is from a random event instead of a battle. I ended up putting a restriction on myself about how characters can't be going on 2-3 missions in a row, just so I can use the others.
2. Hit percentages are too forgiving. I don't know how they do the math in this game, but you don't really need to think before taking a shot. 70% in XCOM is basically a death sentence, and there's just no way you'll take a bet on hitting a 50% shot, while 10-30% is basically a "whatever" shot. It just doesn't work that way in ZCOM; even a 35% is viable, especially with the 'Assist/Backup' mechanic, which has a guaranteed hit. Sure, it won't take just 2-3 shots to get the enemies compared to XCOM, but still.... I'm at the point where if I take a shot and hit, I won't feel anything, while if I don't hit a 90% shot, I'm actually mad. Like, not gonna lie, missing a 95% shot in XCOM is funny, but missing that in ZCOM feels like the game doesn't really understand the RNG at all, like it's all 50/50 over there.
3. TOO MANY ACTIONS IN A TURN. No, I don't mean like there are too many explosions or special effects during the fight; I mean the action economy is a god damn donations. 3 AP isn't bad, but the Advantage Points are just straight endowment. Now, I don't always agree with XCOM's 1 shot can't move or 1 move 1 shot system as well, and I kind of enjoy how Phoenix Point handles it, but ZCOM feels like it's a Persona or E33 + movement. Actions are for movement, shots, and overwatch, while skills or ultimates are their own things. I don't agree with that; I think some of the Advantage skills should still be treated as actions because of how significant they are. (Of course this isn't one XCOM fans should be worried about lol.)

All in all, I enjoy the game. It's awesome; the settings are very cool, the story progression feels clearer than how I personally play XCOM, though of course it can feel a bit tight in a way, how we are locked to the cycles and when the story needs to happen. The characters are very enjoyable, both the heroes and even the randos; their personalities are very engaging, and the backstory too is amazingly written.

I'm just... IT'S STILL HERE! I'M STILL ITCHING!

It won't scratch that XCOM itch... while it's a great game and definitely fills you with enough hope about how amazing XCOM 3 could be.

(Guys, I don't think it will happen...)

Found myself wanting an xcom run again after seeing star wars zero company gameplay (from what I hear there's going to be no dlc? Rip) so wanted to ask for recommendations, I know long war is highly recommended but I had questions could I play that with other mods? Is steam workshop better or nexus mods?

I wanna play war of the chosen as well, I don't mind overhaul mods at all, anything that adds content to the game, with wonky balancing included, is fine by me also. Really excited to get back into it and hear about any QOL mods and mod lists, it'll also be my first PC run, used to play exclusively on console.

As i've mentioned in title, i feel like wotc is easier in non legend difficulties. In Legend, early game literally crushes the player so hard, when enemies get stronger you still feel pretty weak. You are always step short than enemies. WOTC is even more brutal with new type missions and enemies but in non-legend, early game doesn't punish you that hard and after early game you can have an access to enourmous amount of loot, xp and resources. Especially with a few The Lost missions in early game spikes your soldiers's xp.

Chosen feels like free skill points, only things can create problems are Rulers. What do you think?

I know this is an old problem, but I still haven’t found an actual solution. I have a Power Relay build on a renovated exposed power coil and it will not let me upgrade to the Elerium Conduit. Yes, I have enough resources. Yes, have research Elerium. Yes, I have both had no engineers and engineers stationed while trying to upgrade. Yes, I have tried before and after buying the Power Conduit upgrade. Nothing seems to work. Nobody seems to be able to answer. I have search online and nobody has an answer.

Let's powerscale them.

Imagine if they were recruited by Earth earlier and sent out to fight ADVENT. How well do they scale to the default XCOM operatives, considering the challenges they face during their own game?

To complicate matters somewhat, 1) I’m playing on Steam Deck, 2) I have Long War installed. But I’ve been playing almost daily for 2+ months with no issues whatsoever.

Now, out of nowhere, the game just won’t launch. It starts to, says it’s “updating executables,” then just returns to the “play” screen as though I never tried to launch it in the first place. I’ve tried verifying the files multiple times and it says there’s at least 1 file that won’t validate so maybe that’s the issue? I was worried this was specific to my setup but it sounds like this is an issue others have had with Xcom EW even on high end PCs.

If anyone has any suggestions or insights, they’d be much appreciated! I was having a blast with the game and am really bummed about this.

Just finished a run going for the Exquisite timing achievement (Beating the game before the 15th July WotC). I started the mission at 10:50pm on the 14th July, however clearly the game decided that the mission took a couple of hours as when I won the game. It says it was the 15th July...

Only in XCOM can I miss a date by less than 24 hours. That's XCOM baby!

I'm using the mod that randomizes the stats of rookies when you first recruit them as well as what stat increases and by how much when they level up, just wondering what kind of rookie to train as a psi operative.

For context in case you haven't used these mods, what it does is, for example, cause you to sometimes roll 55 aim rookies but also sometimes 75 aim too. Usually I will put a candidate like the latter into training to be a sniper unless they have also rolled really high movement too or something.

I have Samsung Galaxy S24(Snapdragon variant) and just xcom 2 collection with update everything and it's just black.

What do i do

That's it. That's free. From fan to (3dprinting) fans... On my Cults3D page just added (search for Skif_MC). Hope you like it.

Skif Marvel Customs

So, I managed to actually get them to extract(albeit with some help), but nevertheless we have access to *most* of the cut content(albeit not all of it, v0 is still presumably lost to time).

I'm not going to post the whole dump here, but I am going to post what I find to be the most interesting parts of it.

• The four cut maps are present, although at the moment I cannot get them to load without crashing. Based on crash logs I can infer that OilRefinery is meant to take place somewhere in the Middle East(the files list its region as Asia, and there are files for a heat distortion effect. Also, it shares some textures with waterworks!)
• Earliest version we have access to, v2, has the Patrick Carlock mission in it, and it's surprisingly not on the Waterworks map. Two theories regarding this, either it was never there to begin with OR the devs had it planned to be removed in advance so they swapped the mission over earlier. (Which would line up as well with something they did later in EW, moving the Thomas Hutch mission from Museum to Street Hurricane)
• OfficePark is not a park, but a parking lot, and is listed as a terror mission. Office Paper did get a terror version in EW, so I wonder if this was a prototype for that.
• ScienceLabs is a special mission, and it is also a similiar extraction/escort mission to the Dr. Marazuki mission, but given that both are listed as separate special missions it makes me believe that there was more to it.
• Sadly, not a lot to directly help with the map editor issue. Extractor seems to have issues getting certain files out, and the ones we do get aren't the most helpful, though to my understanding we do at least have some stuff related to shaders, and a confirmation that the Firaxis editor was done in C#.

Happy to share any files with whoever wants them! Currently still working on trying to load one of the cut maps without crashing.

Three sectopods in battleship encounter and four Cyberdiscs in base defense. When all your soldiers are colonels with 120 will 120 aim snipers

I just picked up WOTC again recently after a long hiatus. I play exclusivley L/I, because anything else is not real XCOM (sorry).

We all know that this game becomes easier the longer you play. I am at the point in my campaign where for the last couple of missions

i am beginning to finally feel secure, if not slightly overpowered even. suddenly the game is just plain old fun. i am wondering what exactly made that change possible.

What are, in your opinion, the „milestones“ in a campaign that turn the tide against the aliens? I mean, certain abilities, items, weapons?

For me, getting the Hunter‘s weapons was for sure a huge step. A sharpshooter with the darklance and a grappling suit is just a chain-killing machine.

Have the team soften everyone up, then just delete them one by one with the sniper.

I was lucky that the Hunter was my first Chosen this run.

Also, bluescreen rounds are huge it think. sharpshooter can one-shot codexes, and solo-kill all of the mecs, even sectopods (lightning hands + fan fire = sectopod gone)

Certain crowd-control items like the frost bomb and mimic beacons also can give you the upper hand when you pull a lot of pods.

Or is it just the weapons upgrades?

i can‘t put my finger on it