Vaeliorin

I've built one (of everything), but never used it. Mimic beacons are too good, though I suppose I could swap out one of my incendiary bombs. Mostly I forgot, though. Anyway, I had what may be the best ambush I ever have. I had 2 pods (7 enemies total) together on the roof of a two-story building. Opened from Ambush with a Blaster Bomb, does massive damage (obviously) and drops all the enemies 2 stories. Out of the initial 7, only a Heavy Mech survived the blast plus fall. It was pretty amazing. Also, I have no idea what the new DLC class is going to be, but I can't imagine what would be good enough to replace a second grenadier. I can't imagine not having Chain Shot and Volatile Mix both available in my squad. The +2 damage from Volatile Mix applies to the DoT damage from grenades (at least fire and acid...I haven't tried gas, as I found Gas Bombs a little underwhelming.) It's lovely dropping an Acid Bomb on a pack of chryssalids and knowing that even though they have 3 hp left they're already dead. Oh, and a word of warning. Apparently at least some Elite Lancers have Shadowstep, as I had one run in between two overwatches to attack someone (he missed, thankfully) without drawing a single shot. I think I'm within 2-3 missions of finishing the game. I'd have probably finished it already but I've been trying to get a second Blaster Bomb and Tracer Rounds from the Proving Grounds. I have permanent "Unassigned Engineers" and "Low Intel" warnings, but given I've got every single facility fully upgraded and staffed, I literally have nowhere to assign my extra Engineer, and I don't really consider over 1000 intel low. I'm pretty sure the Low Intel appeared as soon as I finished my last contact, so I'm assuming it's just something weird in the coding. Edit: Meant to mention, some corpses seem really rare. I'm nearing February 2036, and I've seen a total of 2 berserkers. 1 for autopsy, 1 to make the utility item they're required for.

Definitely past the point where difficulty drops off. I think the only thing that might give me grief now (by which I mean do more than minor damage to my troops) is 3+ sectopods or 2+ Gatekeepers, or some combination thereof. I did manage to 1-shot a Gatekeeper with a crit Deadeye shot from a sniper with a plasma lance and AP ammo, but I wouldn't want to rely on that. Did see one of the more hilarious things I've seen so far, though, when an Andromedan suit panicked and ran for it...left a nice straight trail of acid going off the edge of the screen. There are some really dirty combos you can pull off, like Salvo for a grenade to strip armor and destroy cover, followed by Chain Shot, or any source of Rupture plus a gunslinger (5 pistol shots in a round equals +15 damage from Rupture.) A Guardian Specialist using Aid Protocol with Threat Assessment on themselves prior to opening an ambush is pretty nice, too. Let's you overwatch while still having a move if you need it after your cover is blown. I rule all of the world except Europe now (there hasn't been a facility in Europe so I've had no reason to expand there...it's next on my to-do list.) Got a second comms and power set up, only have one spot left in my base, which I assume is for a lab as all I can build now is a lab, comms, and power. I guess it's possible there's a second plot-related structure, but it seems unlikely. I'm really not sure how I feel about how they did psionics. I've got a fully trained Psi Op who's never left the Avenger, and somehow that doesn't feel right. Maybe some sort of mod that limits the number of powers you can train based upon rank, gaining ranks the way normal soldiers do would make them feel a little less easy.

I've been on the last couple days of the countdown timer a couple times now, but it was intentional. Figured if I can't keep up with it, might as well save facilities until the last ticks of the timer. Granted, I'm in August and have yet to Skulljack anyone, so...I've kind of been slacking on moving forward.

I haven't managed to take control of a sectopod yet (not for lack of trying), but my backup specialist picked up +20 hacking on a mission, so he's now my main specialist. Unfortunately, he's a level or two below my main specialist (who's max rank) and he's currently being treated for me being an idiot. I've got so many engineers at this point I have some sitting idle (they can staff my eventual second relay and comms) and the only thing I haven't built (afaik) is a lab, but given I literally have nothing but intel items left to research (until I advance the story) I don't see much point in that (though if I've ever got extra supplies lying around I suppose I'll build one just to see what it looks like.)

Yeah, I've hit this point to. Really, it was acid bombs and a highly trained Psi Op that did it for me. I just beat an alien facility that had 2 sectopods and an andromedan without my ranger ever breaking stealth, and the only injury I took was because I was an idiot and forgot the mech that dropped in went on overwatch. I could have easily damaged it to remove the overwatch, it just slipped my mind as I was trying to get the soldier away from a car before I used Fuse (just for chuckles) from my Psi Op. A couple missions before that, the "Most Under Fire" award for the mission went to an Archon. Opening with Void Rift on a pack of 3 Archons really worked out for me that mission, and Inspire let me dash my grenadier into position and still acid bomb a sectopod that got triggered when I hacked the objective. Acid bomb plus 5 pistol shots from my Sharpshooter plus Capacitor Discharge equals dead sectopod (with the Elite Shieldbearer and Elite Trooper from the same pod as a bonus.) I did get lucky and get AP Ammo from my first ammo research, which made my gunslinger Sharpshooter happy. I need to take over North America now, as the continent bonus is an extra mod slot in weapons, which is going to be awesome. It's too bad the pistol doesn't take mods, because 5 shots each with 15% to kill and 15% chance at an extra turn would be incredible. Edit: I wish I'd taken a screenshot of it, but I had an enemy VIP mission a couple missions ago where the enemy VIP was in a building along with a sectopod and, eventually, basically every enemy on the map. At the end the building was basically demolished, there was fire everywhere, and there were big pools of acid where the side of the building towards the evac point had been. It was glorious.

The fire ones are really nice too. Burning enemies apparently can't use all of their abilities, so they help out in more than just damage and shredding. Also, there's at least one pain in the butt enemy immune to acid and poison (don't know about fire, didn't get a chance to test.) Given that I never built any of the fancy armor (outside of one of each exosuit variation) I'm not sure what else I'd use the cores on (admittedly on my current campaign I've got predator armor but the only non-frag grenade items I have are 2 medkits, so I've been pretty bad about getting secondary items...but I'm all tier 2 except snipers.)

They're random, just like grenades, vests (both of which I've gotten were awesome, one made the wearer immune to environmental damage and the other had an auto-medkit) and heavy weapons. I've seen fire, acid and poison grenades so far. The only heavy weapon I've gotten was a flamethrower, which I never ended up using (the rocket blows up cover and shreds, awesome to have on my assault.) I kind of wish there was a way to get more elerium cores. Even killing everything it was reasonable to kill (and some it was unreasonable), it seems rare to get more than 1 per mission. The randomness is neat, but it would get really frustrating not being able to get a particular thing you wanted.

Well, I won't go all the way down gunslinger because I'm definitely taking the +10 aim and crit if you didn't move over the +aim if you hunker, since I think I've hunkered once in 32 hours. But there are definitely skills that I find more useful than others, in particular I'm avoiding sword skills other than Bladestorm (and only because the other choice is pretty terrible) because I found the sword not super useful against later enemies (and I'm honestly tempted to stick with the tier 2 sword, as I find stunning more useful than burning.) Sniper side of sharpshooter is about the only place where I'm likely to go purely with one side, and that's mostly because I found my sniper was almost never in range to use his pistol on my first attempt. I took Lightning Hands, but I only used it maybe 3 or 4 times due to range. Codexes (codices? I'm not sure what the proper plural would be) and the angel things whose name I forget (guardians?) were about the only things that got too close to snipe, and those are generally high priority enemies that don't get a chance to do much before I've killed them.

I've had only a couple bugs so far, and as previously mentioned, I'm playing on a machine that at best meets the minimum specs. I had one mission hang when an Advent soldier shot a civilian who then turned into a Faceless, and I had a crash loading one mission. That's it in 32 hours. Anyway, I'm coming to love my gunslinger. I don't know if there's any sort of armor piercing ammo (only got tracer, poison and extra crit ammo on my first run), but if there is, that would be an awesome combo. I've started taking some other picks on a couple other classes as well (took Volatile Mix instead of chain shot on a grenadier...not sure I could ever pick Holo Targeting over Heavy Ordinance, though.) Second attempt is going well. I held off on building power until I hit a coil (again in the same place...I wonder if it has something to do with difficulty or the tutorial...I've noticed the rewards from excavating can very wildly between playthroughs, anywhere from ~20 on this playthrough for the top row, to almost 80 last playthrough.) Now I've got 4 or 5 buildings that should be done within the next couple days. I still haven't scanned the Black Market even though I'm in late May. Got +8 power from continent bonus and scanning, so doing well there. Just finished the Black Site (flawlessly ) to knock the Avatar Project out of the countdown. I kind of wish the Avatar Project bar was about 50% bigger so I didn't feel so rushed. There are a couple things I'd like a mod for, though. One is the ability to reload without using the free reload from an autoloader, and the other is to disable Return Fire against mind-controlled squad members. The first time it went off was against a mind-controlled squad mate, and luckily it hit for 2 and not 3 or I'd have had my first friendly fire casualty. I actually thought Return Fire didn't work against melee, because it didn't go off when a Faceless attacked my Gunslinger (serves me right for trying to rescue the dang civilians) but later I killed a Stun Lancer with it (while disoriented.) So maybe it doesn't work with AoE attacks? I'd say I need to get my gunslinger grenaded, but that's not going to happen (on purpose, anyway.)

Yeah, seems like there might be potential, but I just look at the damage pistols do (and the amount of armor scary enemies have), the fact that all of the abilities have cooldowns, and have a hard time believing they could compete with a dedicated sniper. It'd be like trying to beat the game with ballistic weapons (which, admittedly, I think there's an achievement for.)

Both of them would be scripted. I believe the June terror mission will pretty much always be zombies with some Chryssalids, which would almost always be the third terror mission as you've seen. Zombies that are pre-placed on the map never spawn more Chryssalids, so you can take all the time you want with them. I had a screenshot earlier in this thread featuring them, it looks alarming but there's no risk whatsoever. As long as you can take out the 'lids, you can hold off the zombies indefinitely. Likewise, this one I just did, is the 9th (I think, could be 11th) Terror mission which will always be all Chryssalids with one queen. By this time, the player should have enough firepower that it isn't a problem. In the screenshots above, I goofed by placing my Rocketeer in a poor position and she couldn't get a Shredder rocket off, and of course Acid doesn't work on them. But even without those modifiers, I still managed to kill it, even if just barely. Would have been trivial with Shredder. The problem was that a second pod of zombies would invariably show up while I was dealing with the first, and I just didn't have the firepower to take them down before they got to me. The map was just too small for the number of enemies that were on it, as far as I was concerned. I am, however, at best mediocre, since I tend to lose focus.

Huh. I would have said that grenadiers were far and away the most important troops (and always shredder...almost everything later in the game has armor) and I was less than impressed with sharpshooters. The heals have saved me more than once (stupid aliens can shred too ), especially when a viper poisoned the VIP on one mission. Thinking my preferred squad would be 2 grenadiers, one of everything else. Still need to try out a gunslinger (I only really leveled one sharpshooter in my loss) but until you get the high-end pistols, I'm not sure they'd be worthwhile.

I have. It involves me moving to Canada. Hah, feel free to leave. Odd that you would flee to a country with higher tax and universal health care to get away from a democrat, but what-evs. It's not because she's a democrat. Hell, out of the people who have a reasonable shot at winning, I'd probably vote for Bernie. I decided a long time ago that if Hillary Clinton ever became president, I was leaving the country. As far as I'm concerned she's amoral, power-hungry, willing to do or say whatever to gather more power, and has no concern for the well-being of anyone other than herself. I don't trust her at all, and am fairly certain that given the chance, she'd gladly turn the US into a dictatorship with herself in power.

That...is a lot of chryssalids. Lucky to have the flamethrower. Those things made me abandon many a terror mission (I think it was the 2nd or 3rd Long War terror mission I did had 15 zombies and ~10 chryssalids as the spawns on the library map. Not doable with low level characters with only 2-3 laser rifles, at least not doable by me.

I lost. It was my own stupid fault, but it was at least exciting. It was a race between the countdown timer, and me establishing contact with a region with an advent facility (first having to finish building comms and come up with 8 more intel.) I wasn't thinking and picked up New Indonesia and New Australia (which had no facilities) instead of picking up NA, which had 2. But I had tier 3 gear (except shotguns...researched, not built) and lots of other cool stuff. I could reload a save and be okay, but I think I'll start a new campaign. Maybe up the difficulty a notch, as I only lost one soldier (though I'll admit, I did savescum a bit.) My ranger and sharpshooter were neck and neck for kills (63 versus 64, same number of missions) but I think my sharpshooter would have pulled ahead, as he was starting to get pretty good at destroying enemies with his plasma lance. Had a partially trained psionic. Seemed pretty cool, Inspire is great for when you absolutely need an enemy shredded and you miss your shot. Pretty sure training turned her hair white, though. Think I saw most of the enemies. Won't discuss them further so as not to spoil, but man, some of them are super scary. So, so glad I had gremlin healing. That, and haywire protocol saved my biscuits a lot. Pretty sure the only facility I didn't build was a lab. Didn't seem necessary, and the supplies were better spent elsewhere.

I have. It involves me moving to Canada.

Ah, I haven't had the funds to upgrade my power. I don't know if I should have held off on some upgrades, or what, but I'm always broke. Hopefully, things start to get better as I expand.

You mean kidnap the VIP or rescue kidnapped troops? I've done a kidnap the VIP mission. It's really not much different than a friendly VIP mission where you have to find the VIP first, except you bring a rookie along to carry the dude (well, assuming you have any rookies. I don't anymore...need to get some if I ever want some psi troopers...that and a psi lab.) I haven't had to rescue kidnapped troops, because I've not left any behind. Has everyone else had the avenger layout identical each time they start? I've had power coils in the bottom center and bottom right both times. Those seem like definitely the best place to build power. I know facilities built on them don't cost power, but the most power hungry I've seen is 5 power, and you get an extra 7 (10 instead of 3) by building on a power coil. I'm doing better on power now that I had a scan thing that upped my power by 3, but it's still a hugely limiting factor.

I think I'm going to lose. Not because of bad tactical play (I've only lost 1 soldier, and that was mainly because a muton charged her and stabbed her, which I didn't realize was possible) but because the Avatar project is one pip from finished and I'm two regions from the nearest facility. I haven't been expanding much (got all of Asia) because I didn't have supplies to build the uplink thing, and I've been so busy scanning stuff I haven't had time to make contact with more regions since I built it. I think I'm going to start skipping anything that's not supplies or engineers. I'm geared up pretty nicely, all tier 2 weapons and armor (well, 1 E.X.O. suit as well), as well as a 5 man squad, but if I wasn't I'd be getting crushed by the enemies, as it would be nearly impossible for me to 1-shot anything (it's already hard to 1-shot anything but the weakest enemies because of armor, large hp pools, and seeming crit resistance/immunity for at least some enemies.) My last retaliation mission it was impossible to get just 1 pod at a time, so it was pretty brutal. Thankfully people seem to heal pretty fast. Despite my not thinking I'd have a lot of use for rangers, my MVP so far is a ranger, though I sword a lot less now as opposed to earlier in the game. That's mostly because I missed 2 sword attacks in a row on one guy, whereas point blank shotgun is 100% to hit, and seems to do better damage. Specialists and grenadiers are awesome, but I'm a bit disappointed with my sharpshooter. He doesn't seem as accurate as a sniper from EU (yes, I'm aware of the Squadsight range penalty) but part of that might be the fact that I haven't gotten anything better than a basic scope. I've got a superior repeater, though. Not quite sure what to attach it to, though. Maybe a cannon so it can hopefully proc on that cone of death thing grenadiers get later. Also, the advanced warfare center is pretty cool. I got a specialist with chain shot and another specialist with holo targeting. A ranger or sniper with chain shot would probably be awesome. Hoping I get some more neat combos, but they seem pretty rare so far. Anyway, if you couldn't tell, I'm loving the game. It's made hours of my life vanish without a trace, and I don't know if I have any complaints beyond the loading times. Nothing springs to mind. I even like the timers, as they force me to play more agressively, which feels much more rewarding than playing turtle-style. Only had one that got down to the last turn, and that was just because the thing I needed to hack was in the back of a van and I had to kill everything before I could get LOS on it without leaving someone exposed. Edit: I thought of a complaint. There's no way to automatically unequip modded weapons from non-mission soldiers, and when you upgrade tiers, it keeps the mods but removes the name you've given the weapon, so you have to go in, figure out which ones are modded, and rename them. Not a huge deal, but something that bothered me.

Load times are a little long, but other than that, it's been fine. Granted, I'm playing on a machine that I'm not sure meets minimum specs (I can't recall if the video card is a 5770 or 5750) with everything turned down to minimum.

Honestly, while trash, it's nothing compared to some of the garbage that is in Early Access or Greenlight.

Wait, you had multiple options of extraction point? I've only run one extract mission, but I'm fairly certain it only had one extraction point. I'll have to check the next one I get. I advanced aggressively, flanked Advent at every opportunity (which were few and far between because of the direction they kept falling back didn't afford me much cover that could be reached without dashing, and I expected more enemies) and ended up takimg them out pretty easily given the number of flank shots I missed (so far it feels like flanking has been nerfed to me, as I've commonly ended up with flank shots that were only 60%-70% chance to hit, whereas they always seemed much higher in EU.) That reminds me, does anyone know how to see the continent bonuses? I know they're random now, but I wasn't seeing them listed anywhere. Oh, and if anyone's squeamish, you might not want to watch the autopsy cutscenes. They seem a lot more gory/disturbing than the EU ones (particularly the sectoid one, of those I've seen so far.)

I'd actually killed all the aliens before I even reached the evac point. I spent two turns safely making my way up on top of the building where it was, and when I got the end mission screen, it turned out I didn't need to be careful about it at all. That said, there seem to be a lot more enemies early in the game who can really screw you over. Sectoids are basically worthless, but Stun Lancers and Vipers are serious pains, and when an Advent Commander marks you and basically causes every enemy to attack the same soldier, it can turn out pretty painful if you've got multiple pods activated.

Actually got squad wiped in one of the timed missions because I had 3-4 troops in front of me and had 3 more drop in behind, and the enemies had so much movement that I couldn't get to any cover that didn't end up with me flanked after their turn (yes, I savescummed, I'm evil.) I'd had to rush forward because I only had a few more turns to hack the objective. I miss the Restart Mission button...was that a Long War only thing? I can't remember. Conversely, on the only extract the VIP mission I've had so far, I finished it with 5 turns left.

It ended up taking me half an hour (or a little bit longer) to unpack, but I'm playing on basically a toaster at the moment (stupid new PC parts not in stock...grr!) Seriously hating Stun Lancers. Not sure you can be far enough away from them that they can't get to you in one turn and still have LOS on them. Some of the "stunned" poses my characters have ended up in have been..."interesting" though. The number of events that are popping up, though...it's like I'm playing Long War. They're not all missions, but it seems like I can never finish scanning something before a mission or something else to scan pops up.