Somebody help me feel less bad. I violated my self imposed ironman. I ran into a codex (think that's what it's called, glitchy dude who clones himself when he takes damage) for the first time. Had 5 guys in high, full cover and a pod on the ground. He fired the purple blast that disables everyone's weapons. Seeing that the effect was disabled weapons, I took the next turn and reloaded everyone since they were all in safe cover (figured the disabling mechanism was used to slow you down when trying to reach an objective)

Of course the next turn comes, the purple area explodes and 4 out of my 5 die.

So I rage reloaded. How am I supposed to know the purple stuff that already has an effect is going to have a second, much worse effect?

Normal difficulty though, waste of time playing less than commander imo.

Because it looks like a hurricane and sticks around. I didn't know exploding was the effect when I first encountered it, but when the visual persisted I figured something bad would happen and got the hell away. (I may have thought I needed to get out of it for my weapons to work again).

Or just learn the hard way like everyone does with some things (like what floors can get destroyed and kill your character with the fall, goddamnit)

This doesn't make me feel better

Got through after save scumming multiple times. Completed the next two missions 1st time with lots of injuries but no fatalities. Not sure if I'm getting better or have just been lucky.

Stealth rangers are awesome.

Just started an ironman run and in the first mission after Gate Crasher my specialist hacked the mission objective with a success on the bonus result which was permanent +20 to his Hack skill. This guy is gonna be a star if I can keep him alive.

So i think i just had a run ending mission last night.

Had a couple different mission choices. My advent bar was two short of full. One of the missions had the option to cancel the dark event for an advent major breakthrough. Mission was to hack a data terminal in 8 turns.
Started mission, first engagement went well. Second was kind of a mess, didn't lose anyone, but it took longer than i would have liked. Eventually got it cleared up. I had just upgraded to MK II Gremlins, so I decided to hack a detection tower. This was a mistake. I had a 73% chance to successfully hack, failed hack dropped reinforcements on me. Of course i miss my 73% chance. No casualties, but further slowed down.
Now i'm really pushing the clock. I have my concealed ranger spot the remaining pod. Get overwatch all set up, but i dont have a good way to trigger them. I end up rocketing the front of the building they are in, but it doesn't trigger. They are in a building that the entire front of just exploded, but since they cant actually see anyone, no need to react.
The following turn I do get them to react. One of the stun lancers* manages to kill my ranger. I manage to kill all the aliens with 1 on the turn timer, but I cant get close enough to have my specialist remote hack. Mission failed.
So I lost my best ranger, and failed to stop the major breakthrough that will fill my advent bar.

* I ****ing hate the stun lancers. I'm not far into the game so i haven't faced the codex everyone is talking about, but the lancers are annoying as hell. Mutons, shieldbearers, mechs, sectoids, are all "controllable", but the lancer can be not even on the screen, and dash+crit (it seems lancers have a high crit) takes out someone you thought was totally safe.

Performance optimization guide:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201...rformance-fix/

This made a HUGE difference. I'm not one to study my fps, or anything like that, so this is just a layman's view, but there is far less stutter in all parts of the game, without losing any of the visual crispness I was seeing.

Flashbangs have an enormous radius and disable Stun Lancer melee ability and also Sectoid Psionic abilities. I've also heard the Mimic device to draw enemy attacks is tremendously useful but I haven't used one just yet (just bought one).

I just hit a massive difficulty spike in terms of the Aliens I am now encountering.

Am I the only person who has noticed that in XCOM you need to prioritize weapons technology to avoid the horrific effect of getting straight up tanked by the aliens?

Well now don't I feel stupid.

I never played the first game and just discovered this one and I'm loving it. The poker world has made its bitch lately so I'm taking 5 days off to go from a xcom rookie to hopefully clearing Commnder difficulty.

Hopefully I don't get too distracted by creating grinds in the editor that I can gleefully send to their death

If anything XCOM 2 is better than EU/EW on that, if you got to a terror mission without lasers Chyrsalids would destroy even armored and promoted guys, there's just nothing you can do. In 2 the increased use of explosives, the ability to **** with concealment, and so forth let you at least feel like you've got a fighting chance.

FWIW none of that did **** for me, so YMMV

Yeah... I was mostly floating that because I haven't tried NOT rushing weapons the whole game. I'm not entirely sure it's necessary...

Not sure if the mission I had was fluke, but I have plasma rifles but no other plasma weapons, dont have power armour and my only way to complete the extraction mission was to basically run to the VIP, run to extraction and leave 3 squaddies to die so my captains could get out.

Could not possibly win in a straight up fire fight.

I have been really held up by a lack of Alien Alloys.

I'll add on to this a little bit.
All this is being said that I've only had one deep run, and haven't beaten XC2 yet.

But as Fly said, in XC1 you had to beeline lasers especially on classic and impossible. I also feel like no matter how quickly you beelined them, you couldn't get them that fast. In XC2, I feel I had mag weapons pretty quick.
In general, I like the early game XC2 much, much better than XC1. XC1 there is basically a correct build order, if you don't follow it, you are in trouble.
This gives a lot more freedom in XC2 early game. XC1 you had to prioritize satellites or lose funding, this game you don't have that satellite rush you have to worry about.
Having squad site as the first skill is also huge.

almost forgot to mention, the way you get armor and weapons is huge. XC1 once you discovered a weapon or armor, you had to individually buy each member of your squad one. So once you researched teh laser sniper rifle in XC1, you then had to individually buy 3 of them if you had 3 snipers. If you could only afford one, it made item management much more of a pain in the ass. Armor even more so. Having everyone in your squad automatically equipped is much simpler.

Maps where you cant isolate one pod off at a time get to be real bitch.

The worst enemy has to be the:



They are brutal.

Is there some bug where the AI for panicked soldiers is actually just the regular tactical AI that the aliens use? Every time one of my guys gets panicked, they basically just dash into cover in a flanking position and shoot an alien in the back of the head, which is what I would ideally want if I got a free move and a free shot anyways. I wish all my guys were panicked all the time. They'd be unstoppable.

My panicked soldiers seem pretty much 50/50 hunker down or shoot. They almost never "panic" into a flanking position and shoot.

Experimental Dragon rounds combined with a pistol spec'd Sharpshooter is straight up cheating. Activate Face Off which shoots every visible enemy, sets the victims on fire doing 1-3 damage/turn, and disables many of their special abilities.

Was terrain this destructible in the first game?

There is something immensely satisfying about having two grenaders who can just crack open a building so everyone else can just pick off the now completely exposed aliens.

So far my favorite grenader moment was during a "get a box off a train" mission where I dicked around too much creeping up with overwatch and was in a serious time crunch. There was a patrol nearby that I hadn't located yet and I knew it would be a bloodbath if I had to make a run for it. Patrol turned out to be three sectoids who decided to kick out a second story window to stand on top of a garage. Grenader blew the face off the house, dropped them, where they all got mowed down by overwatch as they desperately ran for anywhere to hide, and my ranger booked it for the objective making it with two tiles to spare on the last turn.

Thinking about just abandoning this game and restarted on ironman commander. Spent too much time goofing around experimenting with game mechanics and what not and I may have doomed myself with the avatar project. Note for second game: manage power and comms better

Feels weird that even if you use an in mission healer to top someone off they still are wounded at the end of the mission. I'm def doing something wrong with my snipers because they don't seem to want to do anything but take pot shots with their pistol.

How is xp earned? Is it pooled or should I be going for kill shots to level desired troops faster?

Spread your kills out. Xp is gained individually.