Easier LW2 Balancing?

[Gawain Solus]

I love everything the new mod adds to the game, it fills in alot of gaps that XCOM 2 had. But and I'm not saying I want it to be as easy as the base game, but I want it to feel more like a challenge and less like a steel reinforced concrete wall. I'm wondering if theres any mods, settings, whatever I can change. I only infiltrate missions above 150% and I play very carefully, but with the reduced accuracy, high chances for grazing, low damage from soldiers, ammount of enemies per mission; even on extremely light vulnerable. It feels like I'm trying to fight the aliens with nerf guns. Even when I succeed my missions, most of the missions require my soldiers to evac, which means I don't get any corpses or resources. So I'm stuck with noob gear while the aliens are starting to deploy mecs, mutons, and vipers.

I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong or what, I'd love to hear how I'm supposed to be playing this if anyone has some helpful tips. I understand that I'm not always going to be able to get through a mission without losing one of my best guys. But when losing even one soldier causes me to lose the entire squad because of how outnumbered we are. I just can't find a way to play this mod.

[johnnylump]

What difficulty are you playing on?

[Gawain Solus]

Just veteran. I'm not a masochist.

[trihero]

I'm wondering if theres any mods, settings, whatever I can change. I only infiltrate missions above 150% and I play very carefully, but with the reduced accuracy, high chances for grazing, low damage from soldiers, ammount of enemies per mission; even on extremely light vulnerable.

1) in the options you can set the graze band down to 0. This makes grazing only possible on units that have dodge > 0. The default band of 10 makes it so 20% of any shot can be grazing. This should help with the "low damage from soldiers" as well since you're more likely to get those minimum damage shots off instead of grazes.

2) in the options you can also turn on red fog and give it only to the aliens, with a linear penalty. This means every time you damage the enemy, they get reduction to aim/movement/will.

3) in the options you can turn off randomized stats to your soldiers which removes the headache of having to manage wildly varying soldiers

[Gawain Solus]

I'm wondering if theres any mods, settings, whatever I can change. I only infiltrate missions above 150% and I play very carefully, but with the reduced accuracy, high chances for grazing, low damage from soldiers, ammount of enemies per mission; even on extremely light vulnerable.

in the options

are you talking in game options or do I need to digging in the files to change that stuff. Cause if you're talking ingame options I'm not sure how I completely missed those options....

[trihero]

Those are all in game options. Click the "LW2" and maybe also "campign" tabs or something and look for these options. They are very obvious. You cannot toggle the randomization option if you're in a fight, so just go to the avenger press escape hit options check the last couple tabs on the left.

[Gawain Solus]

Well damn, I feel like an idiot. I'm not sure how I missed that.

I'll check that out and see how it is after I fiddle with the options. I tried really hard to play LW2 Vanilla, I prefer playing things as the developer intended. But it just got to the point where every mission was a crushing defeat or a victory that cost me more then it was worth.

[Arcalane]

Well damn, I feel like an idiot. I'm not sure how I missed that.

I'll check that out and see how it is after I fiddle with the options. I tried really hard to play LW2 Vanilla, I prefer playing things as the developer intended. But it just got to the point where every mission was a crushing defeat or a victory that cost me more then it was worth.

Don't feel bad, they only appear once you're on the geoscape/avenger/battlescape-- you can't access the LW2-specific options from the main menu options due to engine limitations or something.

[sambezi]

There's also the true concealment mod for LW 2 which makes it so the timer only starts going down after you are revealed, I haven't tried it yet in LW but I did use it in vanilla and I am thinking this would definitely make the timed missions significantly easier.

But imo, it's thematic enough and it gives you some breathing room to start with a good ambush for example.