1.3 Changelog got updated.

[Saph7]

- With more pods roaming the map in general (and it looks like more pods near objectives in particular), it's supposed to be more difficult to sneak a soldier all the way to the objective without activating, so that you actually need to do some fighting.

- From xwynn's videos, it seems like infiltration bonuses for single soldiers are significantly less extreme compared to squads now, so you need either a somewhat acceptable mission timer or some level of investment (suppressors, chameleon suits, perks) to actually infiltrate a mission, under-infiltration making it even less likely you'll be able to reach the objective without incident.

Pretty much this. The difference between the infiltration time for a 1-man squad and the infiltration time for a 4-man squad is relatively small now, and there are a lot more small pods to sneak past, meaning that stealthing in a solo soldier is harder.

However, a bigger reason not to complete missions via suicide runs is that it's a less than ideal tactic. First, you won't get any loot or XP, which is a substantial part of the mission reward, and second, early game in 1.3 you'll often find that you need every single soldier you can get, and sending a steady stream of sacrificial rookies will hurt your manpower. So while it's a viable tactic, it's a suboptimal one.

[LordYanaek]

However, a bigger reason not to complete missions via suicide runs is that it's a less than ideal tactic. First, you won't get any loot or XP, which is a substantial part of the mission reward, and second, early game in 1.3 you'll often find that you need every single soldier you can get, and sending a steady stream of sacrificial rookies will hurt your manpower. So while it's a viable tactic, it's a suboptimal one.

Suicide rookies were mostly used mid to late game when rookies were cheap (or free with the right continent bonus), numerous and useless (no time to train them correctly).
Trial by Fire might help for that last part. It's a Captain perk so it should come online somewhere mid-game and with that perk all you need is 3 post GTS missions to get a new Sgt. Rookies might stay valuable longer especially with a requirement for more actual fighting squads.

[Saph7]

Suicide rookies were mostly used mid to late game when rookies were cheap (or free with the right continent bonus), numerous and useless (no time to train them correctly).
Trial by Fire might help for that last part. It's a Captain perk so it should come online somewhere mid-game and with that perk all you need is 3 post GTS missions to get a new Sgt. Rookies might stay valuable longer especially with a requirement for more actual fighting squads.

True enough. You're still getting substantially less benefit for the completed mission, though, so I'm not sure it really needs 'fixing'. Sending rookies on suicidal missions is an XCOM tradition.

[MacroNova]

I've seen suicide rookies used more often for Kill VIP missions than Hack Workstation missions. It's totally worth it if all your real squads are out on assignment and the Kill VIP mission is for the Lib chain. Then you get Lib chain progress, one of the rewards, and it only cost some supply.

[stefan3iii]

I've seen suicide rookies used more often for Kill VIP missions than Hack Workstation missions. It's totally worth it if all your real squads are out on assignment and the Kill VIP mission is for the Lib chain. Then you get Lib chain progress, one of the rewards, and it only cost some supply.

Yup Kill VIP, Hack Workstation, Research Facilities are the easiest to suicide. Relays are also possible, though much more expensive, usually need to sacrifice multiple rangers.

I bring it up because I was able to do suicide missions on Swarming activity in 1.2, not with 100% success of course, but even if it's 50% success then there is little reason to not try. Worst case you fail a mission you would never have tried anyway, and lose a rookie or squaddie with crap stats.

As for it being not as good as fighting the mission normally, yes that is true. But you don't always have a squad available, or equipment available, or the infiltration time is too short. Well we'll see in 1.3, I'm sure suicide missions will be a thing, but hopefully not quite as frequent.

[Alketi]

I hate that suicide missions were a thing in 1.2. I think they're the ultimate cheese. I looked up joinrbs' Lib 3 missions, because in my campaign they were so hard to find and infiltrate, and even he suicided both Lib3s with rookies.

Hopefully this gets better in 1.3. And, hopefully 1.3 drops soon -- though I bought Prey last night to keep me busy in the meantime. )

[Clibanarius]

What we need is a REINFORCEMENTS indicator at the top-left of these forums that switches from green to yellow to red as the patch gets closer. I'd say with Xwynns starting up a 1.3 LP and the second batch of translation done, we're at yellow. Please go to red!

[Jacke]

What we need is a REINFORCEMENTS indicator at the top-left of these forums that switches from green to yellow to red as the patch gets closer. I'd say with Xwynns starting up a 1.3 LP and the second batch of translation done, we're at yellow. Please go to red!

Great. Now half the rookies are panicking.

[sarge945]

What we need is a REINFORCEMENTS indicator at the top-left of these forums that switches from green to yellow to red as the patch gets closer. I'd say with Xwynns starting up a 1.3 LP and the second batch of translation done, we're at yellow. Please go to red!

Great. Now half the rookies are panicking.

This isn't right. THIS ISN'T RIGHT!

Seriously though, we should install Perfect Information on this forum so we can see exactly what % completion 1.3 is at

[Zloth]

Is there an option to avoid this update being apllied to my installation? For now, I always get automated workshop updates for my mods, but I would like to have my game as it is now.

I'm actually starting to wonder about the size of this update, too. Would it be better to post this as Long War 2.1, make Long War 2 unavailable for download, and ask people to manually switch when/if they want to switch? People near the end of their war aren't going to want to switch. A lot of people mid-war aren't going to know how to deal with the respec'ing and might be better off blissfully unaware of the big changes, too. (Or maybe you can make a small update to LW2 that pops up an announcement about 2.1 existing and how to go about switching to it?)

[JoeShmo]

Is there an option to avoid this update being apllied to my installation? For now, I always get automated workshop updates for my mods, but I would like to have my game as it is now.

I'm actually starting to wonder about the size of this update, too. Would it be better to post this as Long War 2.1, make Long War 2 unavailable for download, and ask people to manually switch when/if they want to switch? People near the end of their war aren't going to want to switch. A lot of people mid-war aren't going to know how to deal with the respec'ing and might be better off blissfully unaware of the big changes, too. (Or maybe you can make a small update to LW2 that pops up an announcement about 2.1 existing and how to go about switching to it?)

It really bothers me that the mod still requires you to redownload an almost 2 gig file every time. Are they mad?
You don't need to require people to do that for this mod...it's all loose files.

Did the movie files get updated? No? Save us 600 megs then.
Did the lasers get updated? No? Save us another 300 megs then.

It's ridiculous to re-download things that haven't been updated at all, and a distribution platform like Nexus Mods doesn't need you to re-download something in it's entirety every....single....time. Do these guys know what patches are?

Not only does this have bandwidth allotment conflicts with your isp, when dealing with constant several gig downloads ...but it makes modding vastly more complicated than it needs to be. As it is now, and has been since the first LW mod ....you basically have to reapply every single custom edit you do to the mod every time it gets updated...because you have no real idea which files were actually edited, and where. If they only included the files that were Actually updated into a patch..then people like me would know which files need to be looked into, instead of doing All...Of...Them.... just to make sure.

It could drastically cut down my workload for the day if LW patches were more organized and thinned out.

[Clibanarius]

Is there an option to avoid this update being apllied to my installation? For now, I always get automated workshop updates for my mods, but I would like to have my game as it is now.

I'm actually starting to wonder about the size of this update, too. Would it be better to post this as Long War 2.1, make Long War 2 unavailable for download, and ask people to manually switch when/if they want to switch? People near the end of their war aren't going to want to switch. A lot of people mid-war aren't going to know how to deal with the respec'ing and might be better off blissfully unaware of the big changes, too. (Or maybe you can make a small update to LW2 that pops up an announcement about 2.1 existing and how to go about switching to it?)

It really bothers me that the mod still requires you to redownload an almost 2 gig file every time. Are they mad?
You don't need to require people to do that for this mod...it's all loose files.

Did the movie files get updated? No? Save us 600 megs then.
Did the lasers get updated? No? Save us another 300 megs then.

It's ridiculous to re-download things that haven't been updated at all, and a distribution platform like Nexus Mods doesn't need you to re-download something in it's entirety every....single....time. Do these guys know what patches are?

Not only does this have bandwidth allotment conflicts with your isp, when dealing with constant several gig downloads ...but it makes modding vastly more complicated than it needs to be. As it is now, and has been since the first LW mod ....you basically have to reapply every single custom edit you do to the mod every time it gets updated...because you have no real idea which files were actually edited, and where. If they only included the files that were Actually updated into a patch..then people like me would know which files need to be looked into, instead of doing All...Of...Them.... just to make sure.

It could drastically cut down my workload for the day if LW patches were more organized and thinned out.

Firstly, it's two gigs, not 20. That's an hour for the worst among us, tops, and maybe 10 cents to those of us unfortunate enough to live in Australia and hitting our bandwidth cap. Secondly, IT'S NOT TWO GIGS! NON-PIRATES can use the Steam Workshop, which does NOT download the whole thing over and over again; it updates each loose file individually. If the update for 1.3 includes 50 changed files, it downloads only those files changed. Not everybody NEEDS to go to the Nexus or smods.ru to get their copy of LW2 updated. Thirdly, and this is really the reason WHY Pavonis releases the mod in complete-download form to places like Nexus, people are RETARDS. You're all idiots who put 500 mods that are redundant or incompatible with LW2 onto your LW2 install and then come whining to them the second something isn't working properly in your install. Do you think these fucking idiots could handle installing an incremental update?

[lynx54321]

The man knows.

[Clibanarius]

I'm just feeling surly today, don't mind me. Point remains, though: Steam Workshop incrementally updates, mods cause problems especially when you get into the triple-digits, and 2 gigs is, in 2017, is not even worth the time investment and bandwidth to complain about having to download. I know that, in America, you don't actually get to choose your broadband ISP unless you're very lucky, and in Australia, there's bandwidth caps, but the odds your connection's slower than mine are quite low and, for me, 2 gigs is barely an hour's download.

[JoeShmo]

I'm actually starting to wonder about the size of this update, too. Would it be better to post this as Long War 2.1, make Long War 2 unavailable for download, and ask people to manually switch when/if they want to switch? People near the end of their war aren't going to want to switch. A lot of people mid-war aren't going to know how to deal with the respec'ing and might be better off blissfully unaware of the big changes, too. (Or maybe you can make a small update to LW2 that pops up an announcement about 2.1 existing and how to go about switching to it?)

It really bothers me that the mod still requires you to redownload an almost 2 gig file every time. Are they mad?
You don't need to require people to do that for this mod...it's all loose files.

Did the movie files get updated? No? Save us 600 megs then.
Did the lasers get updated? No? Save us another 300 megs then.

It's ridiculous to re-download things that haven't been updated at all, and a distribution platform like Nexus Mods doesn't need you to re-download something in it's entirety every....single....time. Do these guys know what patches are?

Not only does this have bandwidth allotment conflicts with your isp, when dealing with constant several gig downloads ...but it makes modding vastly more complicated than it needs to be. As it is now, and has been since the first LW mod ....you basically have to reapply every single custom edit you do to the mod every time it gets updated...because you have no real idea which files were actually edited, and where. If they only included the files that were Actually updated into a patch..then people like me would know which files need to be looked into, instead of doing All...Of...Them.... just to make sure.

It could drastically cut down my workload for the day if LW patches were more organized and thinned out.

Firstly, it's two gigs, not 20. That's an hour for the worst among us, tops, and maybe 10 cents to those of us unfortunate enough to live in Australia and hitting our bandwidth cap. Secondly, IT'S NOT TWO GIGS! NON-PIRATES can use the Steam Workshop, which does NOT download the whole thing over and over again; it updates each loose file individually. If the update for 1.3 includes 50 changed files, it downloads only those files changed. Not everybody NEEDS to go to the Nexus or smods.ru to get their copy of LW2 updated. Thirdly, and this is really the reason WHY Pavonis releases the mod in complete-download form to places like Nexus, people are RETARDS. You're all idiots who put 500 mods that are redundant or incompatible with LW2 onto your LW2 install and then come whining to them the second something isn't working properly in your install. Do you think these fucking idiots could handle installing an incremental update?

Firstly, tone your self righteous anger down. Eat a Snickers.

Second, some ISPs don't charge you 10 cents if you go over your monthly allotment, they charge you a months ( or worse ) worth of bandwidth, even if you only go over 10 mb. And some, cut you off entirely ( either throttling you down to lower than dsl speeds, or cut off your internet altogether for the remainder of the month ).

Thirdly, what does piracy have to do with it? I'm sorry, but how much modding do you do in video games? How easy is it to modify steam based mods? For most games, you can't; because the Steam Workshop handles the packing and unpacking of the mod into a proprietary file format, and because many games that utilize Steam Workshop ( or mods in general ) use an In Game system to open and access mod assets on the fly, instead of using loose files. So for many of us who do mod, we don't often use Steam Workshop at all, because its easier for us to pull files off of places like Nexus, modify them as we see fit ( mod maker willing ) and use them on the fly, without needing to depend on the Workshop undoing our work because the mod author sent in a single change and Steam overrode the entire mod. It also allows those of us, experienced enough, to combine mods that would otherwise have mod incompatibilities that would require the mod authors themselves to create "comparability patches" on the Steam Workshop. And how often does that happen?

And to that extent, not everyone here is "retarded", and can easily copy / paste to their mod folder. It's only when mod creators have poorly laid out file structures and/or require you to do all the work yourself ( copy x file to root folder, and then y file to mod folder, then z file to documents folder, and edit your W file so it reads ..... etc. etc. ) that people run into problems. Considering the difference between installing LW2 in its entirety, and installing a patched version of it ..is exactly zero ....It baffles me that people like yourself come here and start a fight without even knowing what they are talking about.

Lastly, and the most asinine thing I have to point out, ...the Nexus version does not provide only the updated files ( like you claim steam workshop does ). The only time they ever did..was for the 1.1 hotfix for reinforcements. Which again, points out the absurdity of the entire thing.

Seriously, a person talks about how long the line is at a movie, and you'd go off on how they're lazy, entitled children who want popcorn for free.

[Clibanarius]

Just to answer your question, I've been modding since DeHackEd for Doom 2. And what piracy has to do with Steam Workshop is that pirates can't use Steam Workshop, while they CAN use Nexus and smods.ru and such. So the only argument to not using Steam Workshop, if your concern is those file sizes on full updates, is that you can't access it as a pirate. That's what I was getting at there.

[JoeShmo]

Just to answer your question, I've been modding since DeHackEd for Doom 2. And what piracy has to do with Steam Workshop is that pirates can't use Steam Workshop, while they CAN use Nexus and smods.ru and such. So the only argument to not using Steam Workshop, if your concern is those file sizes on full updates, is that you can't access it as a pirate. That's what I was getting at there.

Or people dont like using the Steam Workshop? For the exact reasons I stated.

I never use the Steam Workshop, unless I have little to no choice but to; because using a 3rd party site like Nexus provides me with 10x as much content to download, plus the ability to mod as I see fit, and also not have to deal with the Workshop uploading system to put patches up to users. Take Torchlight 2 for example, who in their right mind would ever use the Steam Workshop for that game? There's a 10 mod limit..and absolutely zero comparability failsafes. If you only ever wanted to play 1 mod...then its perfect. Even adding a second mod could just cause your game to crash because of comparability issues. So you mod the files yourself and/or combine them yourself using GUTS. You've never seen a mod using crisis than if you've tried to play a game like Torchlight 1 or 2.

It's like you saying the only people who don't ride the subway...are pirates.
Or, I would counter, people who can just walk a few blocks, or have their own car.

I'm curious though how that particular comment was "just answering my question" ..considering I asked a bit more than whether you have ever modded or not. We talked about a lot more than piracy too..and you were the only one to bring it up.

[Clibanarius]

Firstly, for THIS game, the Steam Workshop has all the mods and Nexus has maybe a tenth of them on it. Not the other way around. Secondly, what? You're able to edit the configuration files and everything when you get them via Steam Workshop. I don't even know where you could've gotten this information.

[JoeShmo]

Firstly, for THIS game, the Steam Workshop has all the mods and Nexus has maybe a tenth of them on it. Not the other way around. Secondly, what? You're able to edit the configuration files and everything when you get them via Steam Workshop. I don't even know where you could've gotten this information.

Nexus Mods has about 600 entries on its site ( that I quickly searched for )
Steam Workshop has about 2700 entries on it ( that I quickly searched for )

Not quite "a tenth".

Also, we need to be aware of the problem with Steam Workshop and copying projects, creating "combo mods", and the like, and having them all show up as separate entities. You can get the same on Nexus..but at vastly lower odds because Nexus is actually staffed by people looking for those kinds of issues. But for the sake of argument, we wont get into those details.

You're trying to invalidate my entire argument by stating 1 example, when I clearly stated that this was based on more than just Xcom 2 ( you know...I even mentioned another game, Torchlight ). The same thing goes for editing files from Workshop downloads. I never said "Every" game is uneditable, I said most; and that comes from experience from the dozens of games I've modded.

And regardless of all that, you're still not even touching on any of the points I initially made. It's like you're just frequently jumping in to say a single out of context answer as if it argues against something.

I don't even know the point of you replying to me.

[Thrair]

Alright, that's quite enough, gentlemen. This has drifted off-topic from 1.3 changelog stuff to a personal war over Nexusmod vs Steam Workshop.

Each to this own, live and let live. So, as a fellow schmuck on the forum, I'ma plead with you two to take this into PMs if you're going to continue this argument. Please.

[Zloth]

Wow. Ummm, so anyway...

Other mod sources don't push. The player has to go out and pull in the update and you can educate them on 0'ing out the respec timer right then. (Many will ignore it but that's on them.) Steam does push, though, and players will start the game up only to find their soldiers with freaked out skills - possibly soldiers already on missions. Players using the "ironman" mode won't even have an old save to go back to so they will have to make it through their mission(s) with whatever turns up. I would expect some pretty serious {ahem} growing pains if this just shows up one day.

[Sir_Dr_D]

This is one update that you hope would not autopush. Image people are a good ways into a 1.2 campaign with lots of stealth shinobi, and suddenly the mod updates. Now suddenly their squads are ineffective as they were built around a stealth heavy game that has now bee altered. For this update people need to choose when it takes effect.

[DaviBones]

I agree, but is there a good solution? I mean they can set up a totally separate mod like Zloth was suggesting, but that is a pretty inelegant solution, requiring all those who do want to update (probably a much bigger proportion than those who don't) to uninstall 1.2 and download the entirety of 1.3, which, as has been covered in this thread, can infringe on bandwidth limits.

Ultimately, this is a limitation of Steam, not Long War 2 or XCOM 2. Steam should really have an option to disable automatic updates for mods, like it has for the games themselves.

[deaconivory]

Wow. Ummm, so anyway...

Other mod sources don't push. The player has to go out and pull in the update and you can educate them on 0'ing out the respec timer right then. (Many will ignore it but that's on them.) Steam does push, though, and players will start the game up only to find their soldiers with freaked out skills - possibly soldiers already on missions. Players using the "ironman" mode won't even have an old save to go back to so they will have to make it through their mission(s) with whatever turns up. I would expect some pretty serious {ahem} growing pains if this just shows up one day.

Quite honestly, there are only 4 changes that a player might need to make, the only one with any real time constraint is that some perk trees have been updated with new perks, and and some existing perks have been rearranged. So you'll need to set your "respec" timer to zero and put any soldier you are concerned about in the AWC, the change is instantaneous. You will only need to change a soldier if you had perk that has been moved. Many of your soldiers will not need any changes.

The other three changes are mid/late game buffs that you will need to use the dev console to apply:

1. You will need to cheat/remove the Psi lab and insta-build it to get the extra Scientist tube,

2. For every region you've liberated you need to remove one pip from the Doom click (liberating a region now removes a pip),

3. When you successfully assault the Network tower you receive a free Radio Relay in that region.

I've put about 30 hours over the past two weeks running a 1.2 > 1.3 save, and I'm pretty sure that unless they care deeply about a specific perk/perk tree, many players will be alright re-specing a soldier or two and continuing on.

I'll be posting instructions for these tasks to the Long War 201 forum when 1.3 is released.

As to the questions/comments regarding how the update is applied; the best practice for any overhaul mod is to unsubscribe and resubscribe, this is true for any mod that makes changes to the upk, not just LW2. The very simplest solution is to just backup and delete your \My documents\my games\xcom2\xcomgame\config
before launching the game post-update.

If you combine these two simple tasks you will ensure a totally smooth transition to 1.3.

Currently the majority of testers are running pretty heavily modded games and we've noticed only a handful of very minor bugs, so there should be very few (if any) mod conflicts introduced with 1.3, and a great many vanilla bugs have been squashed. PI has been working closely with quite a few mod creators to ensure a better experience for everyone, and has incorporated several of their suggestions into LW2 in order to allow even more flexibility for modding in the future. You are going to be pleasantly surprised with a lot of the new stuff that is in the pipeline.

Finally, for those that fear that the mod is somehow balanced based on only Legend players, I'll just say that there are only 3 Legend testers and since they are the only ones making videos (because, let's be honest you don't want to watch me save-scum a Veteran campaign do you?) I can see how it is easy to think that we are all Xavier or JOinRBS. But, rest assured that behind the scenes are far more Veteran and Commander testers and our votes count just as much, and sometimes more, as the Legend players.

[JoeShmo]

Alright, that's quite enough, gentlemen. This has drifted off-topic from 1.3 changelog stuff to a personal war over Nexusmod vs Steam Workshop.

Each to this own, live and let live. So, as a fellow schmuck on the forum, I'ma plead with you two to take this into PMs if you're going to continue this argument. Please.

Thrair, It was 10 hours since our last exchange of comments before you commented on it, I'm pretty sure we had settled our disagreement well in advance. There was no need for that kind of concern / intermediary Acton. A little late to the party

Back on Topic:

@Zloth, Sir, Davi
I agree, this is a big concern for players who solely utilize / depend on Steam Workshop. The changes in 1.3 may not break their saves, rendering them corrupt / useless, but it will make some fundamental changes to classes / progression timing / etc. that could ruin the experience of their 1.2 campaign. If anything, this is one of the first reasons why I still prefer 3rd party distrubutors for mods, and why I always manually install my mods. Having something that automates it, and doesn't allow for disabling it ( or checking in with you first ) can ruin a game experience pretty quick ( especially if it leads to crashing issues and you can't even play ).

Steam use to have the option to prevent games from updating at all, but it was removed when complications arose between players who would would play online with earlier versions of the game....and the devs who didn't want to deal with preventing it. So they required that you be forced to have your game updated at all times and/or preventing you from playing until you update it. It has really put a wedge into modding with steam games...even if you don't use the workshop; because if the devs push an update..even if just a bug fix...it could cripple all your mods and you often can't revert it back to an earlier version. Games like Terraria still suffer with this issue ..where you spend weeks updating your mod...putting hours / days into your playthrough ...only to have it broken / interrupted for long periods with a new hotfix update.

I don't think there is an easy solution for Workshop users, there has to be an option to prevent the pushing of updates to the client and/or forcing the client to update in order to play. The only solution Users have...is to play with Steam in Offline mode; and that's not a very good solution unless you are certain you are only going to use Steam to play a particular game until you are done.

Currently the majority of testers are running pretty heavily modded games and we've noticed only a handful of very minor bugs, so there should be very few (if any) mod conflicts introduced with 1.3, and a great many vanilla bugs have been squashed. PI has been working closely with quite a few mod creators to ensure a better experience for everyone, and has incorporated several of their suggestions into LW2 in order to allow even more flexibility for modding in the future. You are going to be pleasantly surprised with a lot of the new stuff that is in the pipeline.

Finally, for those that fear that the mod is somehow balanced based on only Legend players, I'll just say that there are only 3 Legend testers and since they are the only ones making videos (because, let's be honest you don't want to watch me save-scum a Veteran campaign do you?) I can see how it is easy to think that we are all Xavier or JOinRBS. But, rest assured that behind the scenes are far more Veteran and Commander testers and our votes count just as much, and sometimes more, as the Legend players.

That makes me feel better about the update in general. I like that systematically, LW has provided more aspects of the game to open to modding as time has gone by, which really helps. It's also good to hear that the design of LW2 ( and 1.3 ) is taking into consideration other mod makers / users as well, and not taking a "this is an overhaul mod..we do not care about anything else" stance anymore.

I would argue though that LW1 and LW2 1.0 - 1.2 has been designed around Legendary players though; I mean...the general design of the mod itself is in a manner that pushes experienced players ..and makes new / inexperienced players pull their hair out. It's kinda been the motto of Long War since its first conception. "This is not Vanilla Xcom, It will be harder". That said, you can clearly see changes in 1.3 that show a nod to lower difficulties, and even making some aspects of Legendary easier; so it would seem as if all difficulties are being treated fairly at this point, or at least all being looked at at some point during development; which is good for all players. Much appreciated.