LW content / gameplay ideas:

[Beastfeast]

Hi devs i'd like to make a few humble content suggestions. I imagine that some of these could be implemented some time after the v1.0 launch:
- I suggest making it possible to do all the guerrilla ops every month (rather than just 1 like in vanilla).
- find a way to implement long term/permanent dark events and enable more than 2 active DE (dark events) at a time if possible.
- Make it possible to have more than 1 DE activate in a month.
- more DE added, possibly improving alien technology or force level in some way.
- If you decide to go with long term dark events, rather than vanilla monthly DE, you could consider making it possible to counter dark events by completing late game missions or maybe destroying alien bases.
- another possible feature is some kind of map-wide pod triggering, which could be mitigated by stealth equipment, weapons and skills.
You see map wide alert on some of the story missions (the sectopod one at the advent production facility and a hacking feedback event).
There are already mods which activate all the pods when concealment is lost. A more refined pod reveal system would be better imo.
- Alien tech tree? Gradually aliens get techs which buff them. These would be visible in UI, or possibly fitted into revamped DE menu on the ant farm strategy map DE menu.
- Air combat? Seems like a bit of a stretch, considering that there is no aerial combat in vanilla XCOM 2.

I hope you like some of my ideas.

[Beastfeast]

Having played a good chunk through the campaign (im now in mid august on veteran difficulty), I'd like to add some more suggestions/ bug fixes for future patches:
- The cover system is better in vanilla xcom 2 imo (you've rejected sid meir's xcom suggestion from Sid Meir to Jake solomon about aiming angles ). I can see why you did this I think, presumably to make cover more significant and more useful, but I think that for the sake of realism and game enjoyment you need to add this back in in some form. Quite often you can be in a very-near-to-flanking position and you get no bonus to aim at all. This in turn can often lead to missing shots and then getting flanked on the following turn, which can feel very frustrating and arbitrary. Perhaps you could 50% implement aiming angles rather than get rid of them completely, I was sorry to see this gone. Alternatively, make cover options configurable in LW toolbox.

- There are also cover bugs in LW2 that can be frustrating. You can be standing right next to an alien an be unable to hit it even though it is obvious that your xcom soldier can clearly see his target. Harder enemies get defensive bonuses, which can compound this problem. This happens less in vanilla xcom 2.

- Not sure infiltration evac time is fixed yet. I read in the patch notes for LW 1.1 that evac in 1 turn would require 200% infiltration but have been able to evac in 1 turn at lower rates.

- imo the flamer is inferior to the rocket launcher, i've seen other players comment on this also. 1.1 improvements have helped, but I think a bigger arch/range on the flamer blast would make this a more useful secondary weapon.

- On that note the technical class does seem very powerful and frequently does the most damage relative to other classes in my experience due to rockets being so tactically useful. Perhaps other classes should get something to boost them relative to the technical class?

- Alien general didn't do much in my game in advent base assault. I'd like to see fewer aliens on this map, as it felt like a very hard slog (53 alien kills). To compensate the general should have more command abilities akin to a field commander rank xcom soldier, possibly with the ability to alert pods and or call reinforcements. Maybe even consider giving him some psi abilities?

- Eventually it would be nice to see some development of resistance bases, especially as alien tech/units improve. This would help with repetitive missions on the tactical map later on.

- On this note, it would be cool to see a base development option emerge on the strategy map in the mid game. Perhaps each region could have a a unique resistance bonus, like a lab or a workshop, that you have to defend.

- Some AWC perks seem a bit meh and a bit secondary to the AWC's capacity to heal troops faster (intended?).

- Might be nice to see a bit more scaling up of officer abilities as they are promoted, like the extra charges they get for 'command' and 'jamming' but for other abilities too.

- As mentioned in the previous post, Xcom 2's pod triggering system badly needs work. The way that you can trigger a pod by moving just 1 space to far can be infuriating. Of course this is a problem with Xcom's overall design, not your mod. Its could to see that you have implemented a sound alerting system and three different kinds of alert. I'm not 100% sure how these work but it would be nice to see further developments in this area. As mentioned in the last post, this could relate to the amount of sound produced by different guns. Silenced guns would produce the least, followed by unsilenced smaller arms like smgs and pistols. Bigger guns like the gunners laser cannon and heavy weapons like the technical s rocket launcher would be very noisy and could potentially alert nearby pods immediately. In essence, pod triggering could be based more on noise than anything else, resulting in a game that is less fussy about one of your soldiers stepping too far forwards. Louder noise guns would encourage more smaller and medium arms usage in many games and would serve to balance out the relatively very strong technical and gunner classes. Some abilities could also produce more noise.

- No silencers for gunner class (weapons to big and too loud), but knife would be completely silent. Alernatively, silencers are less effective at reducing noise levels for gunners.

- Sound effects (muted weapon sounds) would be a quality of life improvement for silenced weapons.

- As previously mentioned, dark events could become permanent/ semi-permanent as play progresses. Perhaps dark events could be related to advent facilities around the world?

- Alloy plating (not sure if that's right name) upgrade from ceramic plating seems pretty weak considering it's cost and proving grounds requirement. I would suggest either removing proving grounds requirement or buffing it a bit. Rather than 3 points ablative HP I would change that to + 2 ablative HP an +1 point of armour. Might be nice to know beforehand that you need to keep your advent trooper corpses to make these (perhaps a hint could be left in one of the tech's blurb text?)

- A big ask but it would be really cool to see advent commanders acting on the strategy map in the mid-late gme. After bases appear you could have advent commanders conducting missions from these bases. Alien commanders would confer strategic and tactical buffs to forces that they command.

- Generally more tooltips, info supplied in-game for new/inexperienced LW players.

- Bring forward sectoid commander a few months (lower force level req?), I haven't seen him in action yet.

- add a button to delete all saves ingame.

- More second wave style options in LW toolbox? Maybe firaxis will do this..

- More clues as to mission difficulty, no.of of soldiers needed for a mission? infiltration can complicate things quite a lot.

Great work LW team, excited to see what comes in future patches! I have really enjoyed what I have seen so far, with the exception of the above niggling issues. I am staggered by how much has been done already.

[Manifest]

Hi devs i'd like to make a few humble content suggestions. I imagine that some of these could be implemented some time after the v1.0 launch:
- I suggest making it possible to do all the guerrilla ops every month (rather than just 1 like in vanilla).
- find a way to implement long term/permanent dark events and enable more than 2 active DE (dark events) at a time if possible.
- Make it possible to have more than 1 DE activate in a month.
- more DE added, possibly improving alien technology or force level in some way.
- If you decide to go with long term dark events, rather than vanilla monthly DE, you could consider making it possible to counter dark events by completing late game missions or maybe destroying alien bases.
- another possible feature is some kind of map-wide pod triggering, which could be mitigated by stealth equipment, weapons and skills.
You see map wide alert on some of the story missions (the sectopod one at the advent production facility and a hacking feedback event).
There are already mods which activate all the pods when concealment is lost. A more refined pod reveal system would be better imo.
- Alien tech tree? Gradually aliens get techs which buff them. These would be visible in UI, or possibly fitted into revamped DE menu on the ant farm strategy map DE menu.

I hope you like some of my ideas.

Almost all of these have been significantly changed or addressed already. I assume this is before you played Long War, but you also have these DE suggestions in your next post.

You can do all the guerilla ops theoretically.

The DEs were expanded and many are now permanent.

There is a system for alerting inactivated pods at a range through sound, they can also take preemptive shots because of this.

[Beastfeast]

On dark events:
Yes, thanks for correcting me. I hadn't realised that events were permanent until I read about this and experienced this during my long war campaign (many aliens now have permanent +2 health and defence buffs to name a few!). These are a great feature, possibly the best thing in long war. It is the first mod I have seen that correctly implements permanent dark events as the 'permanent dark events' mod on steam seems to be quite buggy. I would suggest making these (dark events) more universal to aliens and advent, rather than making it apply to a few alien units at a fixed percentage rate. To compensate for this it would be good if there could be a way of rolling back dark events' effects. Also it would be interesting to see two or three dark event missions each month. These missions could be more common, but would not be subject to normal guerrilla ops rules on timing. You would always have a certain amount of time to prepare for these missions. It can be frustrating when a dark event mission pops up late, with a low chance of preventing it and it is often not a good choice to spend all your time trying to detect these using your intel operatives in the resistance.

On soldier classes:
As other LW players have noted, the classes in long war are not balanced even though they each fill niche role/s. As a hypothetical test, imagine exclusively using one type of class in missions. Of course this is sub-optimal play, but some would typically perform better. Imagine a squad of corporal rank techincals compared to a squad of snipers. Whereas the snipers would benefit a squad with lots of holotargeting, their lack of versatility and ability to destroy cover at range would mean that their performance would likely be pretty mediocre. Technicals would be able t destroy any cover they find with rockets and then shoot the exposed enemy, meaning that they would likely do more damage than the snipers.

And some classes are highly useful in a range of circumstances, such as the shinobi and particularly specialists who can double up as hacking infiltrators and combat medics. Other classes are narrower in their usage.

It would be nice to see changes to make the weaker classes (in my experience sniper and grenadier) get some balancing buffs. If snipers are intentionally inflexible in their battlefield and strategic role, they should be stronger to make up for that. I'm thinking either two attacks/turn like the ranger or higher damage per shot. Grenadiers, in my view are like a weaker but more reliable version of the technical soldier. However, a technical soldier has better killing capacity when correctly used. By standing still and using the 'fire in the hole' perk, technicals can usually avoid bad misses. Using a concealed shinobi or promoted sniper as a scout you can line up perfect shots with the rocket launcher without being spotted and scattering enemy pods. This topped by extra rockets later on from exosuits and much better cover destruction make the technical a superior tactical choice to the grenadier in most cases. Granted, it is good to have 1 grenadier armed with your frost bomb and supporting your squad but by no means essential.

On pod activation:
Its a long haul but what i'm really hoping for is a new system of pod activation based primarily on sound rather than sight.. Although sight could be a secondary trigger I believe that xcom 2 would be better with sound as the main cause of pod triggering. It just seems like a lot of aliens' behaviour isn't very 'realistic' (i use quotes as I am imagining what would be realistic in a fictional universe ). Sometimes I play xcom 2 with all pods activated following broken squad concealment, as this seems to create a more believable battle (although this would likely be suicide in long war 2, it would be interesting to try it out). You can imagine advent running at you if they hear load noises from a mile away, and this should be reflected in the game. You can also imagine them establishing combat procedures for what to do when a load noise is heard, e.g relaying in the news to every other combat unit and their' commanders). So yes, there should be a 'dog piling'

[Manifest]

The mod hasn't been out very long so it's understandable, but Aliens are "activated" by sound. They will run toward you and take immediate shots on sight if they are alerted by sounds. Explosives are the worst about this. This is a feature of long war 2.

Also people usually believe that grenadiers outclass technicals simply due to how many grenades they can carry over rockets. They are also perfectly accurate, and the range usually suffices.

Snipers are among the weaker classes in LW2, but they should not be hindered by cover quite so much as you seem to be implying. They have many ways to aim stack in this game (rapid targeting/death from above, Damn good ground, stock/steady weapon) that they are better at using than other classes means they are frequently reliable at getting high percent shots even through cover. They mostly suffer from low damage rate due to their relatively low rate of fire and lack of aoe compared to other classes, as you said.