You know what ability is powerful as ****? Serial. I ****ing love that perk

n1 was about to pay full price and gave this a whirl, saved me 15 quid

kind of leads to this question?

Is there a good way to increase ammo capacity? I know there are expanded clips and autoloaders, but you are at RNG mercy to get them.

Also, I think you can only go autoload or expanded clip, not both. what do you prefer on snipers? I thought autoload originally, but once i got killzone, i think expanded clip is better.

super fun mission report from yesterday:
start concealed, move one guy up to really high roof. no enemies in site. dash to edge of roof. of course i picked the single square that the viper and advent could see from the lower roof. they run to cover street level. I'm fine with this, as i have a huge elevation advantage. I dash the rest of my squad to roof positions where I'll have shots next turn. I'm not super concerned because its only one stun lancer and viper, and i have the elevation advantage.
Viper grabs one of my guys. i'm not concerned, i still have 4 and the viper didn't actually kill anyone. the viper pulling my guy from the roof to ground level activated a second pod of enemies. **** me. i had two snipers killed before i cleaned teh situation up.

I believe these are often for purchase at the black market. Also get the vulture perk from the guerilla tactics area.

With serial and killzone, I prefer the expanded clip over the autoloader

Yeah expanded>autoloader for sure, for all classes. The 3 ammo using specials(Rupture, Hail of Fire, the other Grenadier one that sets your dude on fire) are also better with expanded, and you can't use the autoloader between shots in Rapid Fire. You can use it during Serial but not mid-Killzone, and Killzone will often result in >3 shots if set up right.

The autoloader is cool but sometimes I forget I have it and accidentally waste it to refill one ammon during a lull. I wish you could tell guys with it to use their regular reload instead.

You are at the mercy of the RNG, though, and the black market generally only stocks 2-3 attachments at a time.

Oh I saw on reddit something really valuable that I didn't understand. Dodge chance is not a percentage of hitchance, it's applied to the entire stack. So if you have 25% dodge and an enemy has 50% hitchance, half the time he hits you'll dodge. If he only has 25% chance to hit, you'll dodge every hit. Having a high dodge in full cover makes your guy neigh-unkillable.

i've had 100% sniper shots dodged. so thats fun.

The spotting mechanic can lead to real frustration.

You have one guy high up on a ledge, cant even see any pods. Move a guy next to him, ohhh its in the sight zone of a pod, and because it was a timed mission that move which you assumed was to safety, was your last move.

Sometimes as you say, this combines with pod on pod activation.

Its normally something like this that ends all my Ironman runs.

I always try to have my lead scout on the ground for this reason. Always have him take the corner of a building to check everything is clear before moving troops on the roof up to the ledge.

Suddenly, the game got much easier. I thought you should just move to the yellow line most of the time, like, why wouldn't I want to travel forward more? I had no idea there were 2 actions based on the blue and yellow markers. Heh.

Ok now my question is... how do I target a different enemy from the default one my character is aimed at?

There's a row of yellow or red faces that show each mob your guy can target that I always just click on. They're sorted in order of hit chance.

Probably an easy key stroke too though. Maybe tab with the targeting window open?

Tab

+1. Always move the guy who is going to furthest first and always move blue area first with the front troops. This way the furthest ones in a back can catch up, possibly even use the second movement point.

If there's no timer, just move the blue distance with all the troops and then spam 2. 2 is always the overwatch. It might seem slow first but once you learn it, it's faster than moving the whole distances where you have to be extra careful.

I almost never melee an alien (especially the ones in the back) unless I know it's the last pod. The risk of activating another pod is just not worth it.

Tab after you hit '1' to fire (or click the button) or click on the little red figures that represent the targets you can see.

The patch today broke the game on my computer. Having all kinds of performance issues where I previously had none.

Dont drink and iron man.

game seems very similar to the first reboot so far, not nec a bad thing as the first game was very good. few complaints tho

why could they not include at least one male & female stereotypical ivan voice to cover russia/ukraine/poland. annoyed that uncle vanya sounds like he was born in maryland

why cant the aliens, who tygan keeps reminding me have technology beyond my wildest dreams, spot and shoot down my gigantic tin can which is flying all over the globe. just give me a reason game, i dont care how flimsy it is (fwiw i havent done the tutorial so maybe it's explained there?)

in the original amiga x com, when you purchased five smoke grenades or whatever, and then your bloke threw a smoke grenade during a mission, you had 4 smoke grenades left when you got back to base. i liked that.

why cant i take my advanced hair trigger off this gun and put it on another

moaning aside its a v fun game and i'm enjoying it

mimic beacon decoy goat

One of the continent bonuses is the ability to re-use weapon upgrades and pcs upgrades. Another is an extra weapon upgrade slot. Running around with Superior Scope, Superior Expanded Mag, and Superior Hair Trigger on your sniper is pretty sweet.

I've become a fan of superior stocks on my psi op and specialist. It's pretty useful having that safe 3pt min damage shot even on misses to finish off mobs.

Also, WTF at the "Who needs Tygan" achievement.

i have 5 soldiers vs a single advent soldier. Last enemy on the map. I have taken no losses on this mission. advent soldier throws a grenade. hits 3 guys for 3 damage. one panics. runs next to car advent is hiding behind. car explodes, killing advent and my panicked soldier. idiot.

Also, new way to gauge a successful mission:
most under fire: mimic decoy beacon.

Yea my main sniper is running at +40% crit chance thanks to weapon upgrades, proving ground ammo and a skill boost from the GTS. Its hard to level anyone else because he one shots so much stuff. Dont have expanded ammo on his rifle which will have to be corrected, though those reloads do give the other squad members a chance to contribute.

yeah i have a sniper with +20% aim pcs, and +20% scope. putting him on high ground is just money.

also, his AWC skill is blast padding. while this doesn't help him killing aliens, it does give me a little more comfort in his survivability.

Sniper is kind of weird in xcom 2. I've struggled with running two sniper teams with 4-5 soldiers. I think with 6 is fine, but I really think with smaller squad sizes, single sniper is better.

Another thing which allows you to power through the mid game is grenadier with the extra grenade perk + proving ground grenade.

An incendiary grenade will basically one shot all organic pods. My current team gets to use 4 a mission.

Gas grenades are also great, especially for reinforcements(which are heavily organic).