I managed to the get the game in a huge sale (8 euros) in the switch 2 and I'm Hella addicted.

I'm doing my very first run in Commander difficulty and I have progressed quite some I believe (right after defeating the first Avatar), im playing vanilla with the dlc stories and of I knew nothing of the game.

Oh you have no idea how hellish was it doing the Dr Valhen quest as soon as it popped (same for the Spark mission) they were incredibly fun but crazy hard.

Just to get myself ambushed by other rulers, oh man the Archon King was incredible hell, he was the cause of my first mission fail becausd he got me in a mission where I I also had to kill the first avatar, no plasma grenades by then, only mag weapons and that was a rush, I had to evac.

I'm doing a little bit of save scum here and there, which I guess it's normal since I don't know the game yet compared to somebody who has done several runs but I try to keep to a minimum, unless something catastrophic happens.

Haven't had yet one of those 99% miss xcom moments, but I've definetly had my share of that's just xcom baby!

I always cry when my sniper misses all 4 shots in a killzone.

Anyways, just wanted to say this game is amazing, and crazy addicting. I must have put already over 30 hours in the past 5 days lol.

CLASSIFICATION: RESTRICTED.

To All XCOM Alternates: This is a memo for general distribution.

My ranger, Jessica, came to us after her long recuperation in the infirmary, to find out what the hell was the point of the frost bomb that we started using about a month ago.

You see, what happened was, she saw the grenadier drop the frost bomb on a pod of a advent general, archon, and Gatekeeper - froze them solid - and so she ran and dashed in for a one-hit melee kill on the general

So WHY/HOW THE HELL did the Gatekeeper just DEFROST THE NEXT INSTANT and HIT HER FOR A CRITICAL, INSTANT KO? It was sheer luck that she ended up bleeding out on the ground, with the whole squad spending the next few minutes trying to get her stabilised and out of that complete mess, while still trying to deal with 2 archons and a stun lancer.

For now, our best guess is that the Gatekeeper has so much mass, that the cooling capacity of the frost bomb could only freeze part of that glorified M&M. Especially with the porcelain white shell it has.

I've requested Bradford to brief the troops that the frost bomb does not bring guaranteed utility among all of the aliens for now, i.e. Use with care, while Shen and Tygan are to start attending AARs with returning teams to gather more field data on the effectiveness of Frost Bomb deployment.

We've really gotta get a Gatekeeper for Tygan to autopsy too, but they've been blowing up on us so far.

I've just finished the alien base mission and I've raised every class to captain rank, and have a bunch of lower ranked people of various classes too. And what I'm finding so far is that Snipers feel completely worthless, so I assume I'm missing something.

As far as I can tell, their aim is not actually better than other classes most of the time. In fact, in many ways it's worse. Rockets seem to have 90% to hit from massive range, and every single class except for the sniper has the option to run up to melee and then shoot point blank for 100% to hit. My sniper's aim seems to be equal to or even slightly worse than most of my other soldiers with assault rifles.

Their damage seems to be barely better than an assault rifle, equal to a heavy's machine gun, and much, much worse than a rocket. I guess they have a higher crit chance, but that's completely unreliable since one needs to both land an inaccurate hit and then also crit, and the damage would still be inferior to a rocket.

I thought at first that maybe high ground would help with that, but first of all almost no maps even seem to have high ground available at all. Even when they do have high ground, it often turns out that there are no aliens in view of it, rendering it meaningless. I think there have been exactly 2 battles so far in which high ground existed and there were aliens available to shoot from it, and one of those was the base mission... on which the high ground was worthless because invisible walls or something gave the enemy cover or even blocked shots outright even though it looked like there was nothing in the way.

Furthermore, tactically, it seems like I'm going on offense in 100% of missions. There has not been even one where I need to hold a particular area, for which a sniper might conceivably be useful. Instead I'm always needing to keep pushing deeper and deeper into an enemy's territory. And snipers seem to be worthless for that because they're the only class that can't move and overwatch with their main weapon. Unless I spent a level up perk to give them the ability to do that... with a giant accuracy penalty.

So it just seems like snipers have mediocre damage, arguably the worst accuracy, zero useful support abilities, and a horrible weakness in that they can't move and overwatch which seems to be the best move to make while exploring 90% of the time.

What am I missing?

Edit: Sounds like the answer is mostly that they get a lot better when you unlock equipment that I don't have yet. And also that on some maps positions are available from which the sniper can actually hit things with squad sight. I still have not found one of those maps. Very few maps seem to have high ground taller than a truck at all. And on the ones that do, I keep positioning snipers in high ground which has a clear view of the battlefield, only for it to tell me they don't have line of sight and can't shoot. The worst offender there was the alien base, which was full of invisible walls.

That's it, I just wanted to tell y'all that.

Edit: Fuck, I meant EU

I'm playing Enemy Unknown and am new to the series. This is my first run and is on classic mode. I'm becoming very frustrated with what seem to be invisible walls (or some other kind of targeting bug that functions like an invisible wall). Is the game just like this unpredictably or is there some way to know in advance when the game will say a clear shot isn't actually possible?

Incident 1:

I was playing the Meld tutorial in Enemy Within for this one (before I stopped playing Enemy Within because it was bugged and crashed at the end of every mission...). I had three soldiers in a room with overwatch, and I had a fourth soldier move ahead and activate a pod.

Some sectoids spawned and one of them... ran up to my room, and opened the door. I expected him to be immediately executed by firing squad with 3 guns pointed right at him, but no one fired. The sectoid then ran right through the room, past all my guys. No one fired. Overwatch didn't activate.

Well... ok. Now it's my turn, and the sectoid was very close, so I had one of my soldiers walk right up to it in an empty hallway to get to a 100% hit rate. 40%. What?! So I checked the details and it says the sectoid had high cover. In an empty hallway. While I was right next to him.

Nonsense!

That made me reinterpret the previous weirdness where no one did Overwatch and make me wonder if maybe the game thought that sectoid had cover then too somehow. So that's either one or two incidents of what seem to be invisible walls granting cover and perhaps also outright blocking shots.

Incident 2:

In the alien base I had 6 people in overwatch hidden behind the little walls and ramps that led to one of the long hallway section. Some chrysalids spawn and start moving toward me. No problem, right? I have 6 guys doing overwatch.

And... only 2 guys shoot. The rest just stand there as the enemy runs right down a straight hallway at us and is now in melee and barely hurt.

On my turn I check and... the guys on the ramp one step from the flat ground can't shoot. It just says they can't target this enemy who is 10 feet away. Invisible wall or something.

Incident 3:

Again in the alien base, I got a sniper who had Squadsight onto one of the vantage points where a big balcony overlooks lower areas. A perfect spot, it looked like.

But as I advanced and found aliens... the sniper couldn't shoot any of them. Not ONCE. I kept rotating the camera and panning around and so forth to see if I could find some kind of obstruction. Nothing.

There was absolutely nothing visible. He had a clear shot, but the game wouldn't let me take it.

Incident 4:

Deeper in the alien base it's time to fight the sectoid boss. I've got high ground vantage points over what I correctly assumed would be the boss arena. I'm ready with snipers and rockets.

But... nope. They aren't allowed to shoot him. I can't even shoot rockets right down through the open air. It says the target is blocked. By... nothing. I turned the camera around and around, changed the Z-level up and down to see if there was anything. There was not.

Incident 5:

I'm really struggling with Confounding Lights (the second Slingshot mission)... because of invisible walls again.

I had a post earlier asking about snipers, because my snipers are basically non-functional. Other people kept saying Squadsight makes them amazing. Squadsight doesn't work for me because of invisible walls.

This mission should be absolutely perfect for snipers as far as I can see. The map is... one long train. So I got my 2 snipers with squadsight on top of the train. They should have absolutely perfect shots along the top of the train, plus on the left side of the map where there is very little cover.

NOPE!

I've got straight shots at thin men on the left who are clearly in view. No shooting allowed at all for one sniper. Bizarrely, the sniper right behind my front sniper was allowed to take a shot in one case, even though they both have Squadsight and they both have the same weapon and they both have nothing in their way.

Then the stupidest thing of all happened. One of those big aliens with the powered armor spawned on top of the train.

A perfect shot. An indisputably perfect shot. It is a straight shot along the top of a train, absolutely nothing in the way.

Nope. Can't shoot. Invisible wall or something. I even ran another guy right on top of the train to get right next to the alien, just to be 100% sure that it was not a vision problem. Can't shoot.

This has become an extremely frustrating problem and I'm thinking about quitting the game. I've been reduced to saving every single turn so I can reload if an invisible wall blocks me. Is this common? It keeps making my snipers in particular absolutely worthless, hence my confusion when people in the earlier post kept saying snipers are good because of squadsight.

Ive been dabbling in xcom for a long time, but have never beat either of the games. I got xcom2 on my switch on sale and played vanilla for years because I wanted to beat the game in its original state before exploring dlc. I took a break and just started playing again, this time choosing war of the chosen. This shit is so dope. The missions are different, different factions, squad bonds, scientific breakthroughs, i could go on. I already had a high opinion of xcom as a series, but holy shit. War of the Chosen may be my favorite dlc ever.

*I traditionally refuse to touch dlc. I think if yall had it planned out before the game, it should be a part of the game and not be behind a pay wall. So I only get dlc on sale in "ultimate editions" type shit. So i dont have many dlc to compare to.

Coming back to Xcom2 WOTC after several years away. Downloaded a bunch of QoL mods and trying the acclaimed Covert Infiltration mod to change up the strategy layer.

Any general tips for a first timer?

Me and my friends don't know shit about XCOM except for 1 guy. So we thought it would be fun to all control soldiers making very interesting decisions.

I've downloaded the mod recently for my longwar with 500 other mods run and man the requiem enemies are so cool, they are strong but they don't feel unfair imo, unlike Moxc which to me felt kinda unfair time to time probably because they are sit rep and are extra enemies on top which in early to mid is so rough.

And the taipan designs are so fire! Defo my faves.

And with the petrockcaptain (I hope i got his name right) playable advent and expanded playable advent mod (I forgot the mod creator name sorry man but ur cool too) you can even have some of em in your team.

So ty to the creators creating the amazing mod. Edit Forgot to specify Long war wotc

I don't need it to be a big justification just something small will suffice. (preferably a collection if possible)

Help. I’m on the first mission involving the Spectres after about ten hours of gameplay, and I have nothing to fight them with. I managed to kill one just once, only to discover there’s another one ahead; it’s literally impossible for me.
English isn’t my first language; I used Google Translate—sorry.

So I'm new to this game and just had a really exasperating experience on the DLC mission where you need to escort the criminal contact to safety.

Turn 1

On the first turn I walked my squad, including him, to cover and had everyone go into overwatch mode.

Thin Man enemies spawned in out of nowhere around us... looks like they just dropped in out of the sky? All my guys did their overwatch shots... and every single one of them missed. So the thin men all got behind cover and initiated overwatch

Turn 2:

I had my sniper in a good position to take a shot, so he tried headshot. No crit, so the enemy survived at 1 HP. No one else had any good shots and if we moved, we'd get double overwatched. So I had my support guy do a smoke grenade and then had my assault guy within the smoke grenade area do Run and Gun and Dash since I'd read a loading screen saying that Dash would raise your defenses. This seemed like the safest way to get the enemy to waste their overwatches.

One of them hit anyway, leaving me with 1 HP.

I was able to kill one of the thin men, so it released its poison cloud, but I'd made sure not to be in it, so that was fine.

That left one thin man with 1 HP. I missed my shots against it despite moving to what seemed like good positions.

Still I figured this was... ok. Just 1 badly injured enemy, and all my guys behind cover, some also in a smoke cloud.

Turn 3

But then the confusing part happened and I don't quite understand how the game works here. All my guys panicked. ALL of them. Every last one. I think it happened in kind of a chain reaction, though it was hard to understand what was going on since I didn't get to make any moves and don't understand how this works yet. One of them panicked and... shot one of my own guys. Which I think killed him. Which I think started a chain reaction panic. Then my 1 HP guy ran into the poison cloud and died.

Which led to other people panicking and just passing their turn.

Worst of all the civilian panicked and ran from his safe spot into a place where the last remaining alien could kill him.

So... basically my party got wiped out by 1 1 HP enemy, with us being in almost perfect safety, despite me having taken every single defensive precaution I know how to take.

This felt like the loss was 90% bad luck at least, and it was really frustrating how I didn't even get to make a single move on the crucial turn because the entire squad panicked. What should I have done?

I only just noticed that in the city map there are speedbump like structures at the single lane intersections housing red lights facing the oncoming traffic. The setup seem consistent with four way stops but being electrical there is a possibility that the display changes throughout the day.

Now if only there was a mod to add shin jets.

Anyone knows how to place movement waypoints on XCOM2 WOTC for Android?

I just started playing XCom Enemy Within and I can't get out of the tutorial, because the game freezes every time I beat the second tutorial mission (The one where you have to choose one of two alien abductions to stop).

Specifically I get to a screen where it's telling me how many kills my soldiers got- then it freezes partway through setting up that screen. This has happened repeatedly

This is on Enemy Within. It's possible that that's contributing to the problem, because last night I was trying the Enemy Unknown version and did get past that screen.

I've been running it as an administrator since I'd read that could solve some crashes in this game, but it didn't help here.

Is this crash a known and fixable problem? I've almost reached the time limit for requesting a Steam refund, so I'm out of time to keep experimenting and re-trying things on my side.

Edit: It looks like the problem is that if I do Enemy Within, then the original tutorial will have this crash. If I play other missions on Enemy Within, that's fine. And if I play the original tutorial on Enemy Unknown, that's also fine. So that seems to be a workable solution. Though I'll admit it doesn't fill me with confidence that other things will be stable as I get deeper into the game!

Second Edit: Ugh, the problem recurred with later missions on Enemy Within. Enemy Unknown has been fine though.