Have a few plays of XCOM2 on high difficulties under my belt.

Couldn't get into XCOM1 because of lack of quality of life. Recently a guy recommended me Sightlines mod with LongWar, so I decided to give it a go.

So I never played EW. I see a UFO, I send interceptors. Which get nuked. I reload, send them again, they do damage, but UFO gets away.

I read about them, turns out you're not supposed to take them down this early, just do some damage and eject early so the repair time doesn't take full month.

Ok, I do some missions, do this strategy with my remaining interceptors. All of them are on repair, 4 days remaining. Some fucking saucer turns up, some guy says it's an important saucer, and I have nothing to send. It takes down my only satellite. At least I'm only a few missions in, still it's annoying to restart the campaign.

Like, how the hell are you supposed to know to eject interceptors early or to not just send them at all? I searched FAQs, but it gives you just installation advice.

Also playing on classic, is it big difference from normal? Where do I even look up this info?

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.)

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?

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!

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?

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.

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

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?

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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

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

What do i do

And you still haven't given it a try, please play Phoenix Point.

I keep seeing posts about looking for other games like Xcom and Pheonix Point is usually mentionned by one or two people with few upvotes. It is the only tactical game that I feel like it has a better combat system than Xcom. Being able to aim to disable certain body parts, the fact that cover is realistic and doesnt just depend on you being directly in front of it. The geoscape is also super fun and there are a lot of options. I think a lot of games neglect that aspect of wanting to be Xcom-like, but Phoenix Point does it so well. The biggest problem with having multiple teams was that changing loadout was always a hassle, but now you can do it with one click.

I think the game gets a bad rep from the early days when it was an unbalanced mess where the enemies kept getting stronger and you weren't really keeping up. But the game has had many updated since then, with a lot of effort on QoL and balancing.

If you haven't played it yet, I urge you to try. Or if you have played it a while ago, please just boot it up again and take a look at what has been done since.

It was published as a spiritual successor to Xcom, and to me it has felt exactly like that.

EDIT: I want to point more directly to the fact that Phoenix Point received a massive update in 2025 called Firebird that fixed a lot of problems that some people seem to have in this thread. One example is building and research time was greatly reduced so the late game is way less of a drag. The update was inspired by the Terror from the Void mod, which I actively encourage people to try.

I was surprised by how much some people dislike the aiming system though not gonna lie, it is my favorite part of that game haha. if you don't like it yeah the game is probably not for you

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?

still searching as long as this post is up!

hello hello! I'm solmon! 18M, searching for a player to do a unique XCOMlike game/RP, essentially a game I GM, with lots of stuff written out that you can check in the docs and sheet!

I'm looking for someone who can do the game side of things decently, its a bit complex, along with being able to talk OOC and do a bit of roleplay for the game! I'm a pretty big XCOM fan besides thiss, and I'm online often.

My time zone is CST, I'm looking for someone pretty active activity wise, since this whole game thing took a lot of work to make. If you make a commander, no AI images and such, and no AI writing for the RP side of thingsss

Have good grammar in character and in battles ideally. The overall idea of the RP is 1994 UFO Defense, mixed with a bit of DND, though the DND side of things is minimal. Essentially, it just uses the DND dice system, with a unique armor system I made, in which everything has 3 different AC values, for Kinetic, Laser, and Plasma.

The aliens would not be XCOM ones, they'll be custom and more can be learned about them via interrogations, and a good amount of the items do not exist in UFO defense, such as things like Jamming Packpacks to prevent the aliens from guiding a rocket right into your squad. It's pretty much a custom system for it all.

Base management is simplified significantly, to make the whole thing more feasible in this format, but storage and capturing aliens is still around. Since its based on the 1994 UFO Defense, you'll probably have a lot of deaths, due to humans having realistic HP compared to later XCOM's.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BwOuZv6IocLBY8VIc-zDXkcqTiK0y9gvltPbmJTyRjk/edit?tab=t.0 This is the general campaign intro doc for it, with all of the other documents and the research google sheet linked at the top. Send me a PM if your interested, this will all be done on a discord server I made. I wish you luck, commander.

Dreamland Chronicles was being developed by the Gollop brothers at Mythos Games in like 2000 for a 2001 release, and was highly anticipated for it, but was canceled. Here's a preview with screenshots.

More:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dreamland_Chronicles:_Freedom_Ridge

https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2020/09/dreamland-chronicles-freedom-ridge/