First death, incredibly soured.

Phaseless
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Phaseless »

You've gotten many useful hints and I too have learned from this thread that there are some habits of mine which are clearly sub-par.
I think one of the most important skills though to have fun with Long War is to not take deaths to heart too much. It will always feel unfair because in the first immediate emotional reaction, all you can focus on is "I did everything to my best knowledge you fucking game".
What has helped me is to admit that feeling, but not focus on it. If I focus on it, my anger just boils up and gets bigger. If necessary I leave the situation, take care of myself or something and then I come back and ask myself what has gone wrong and how to prevent it next time, if possible. And even if I dealt with a case where I couldn't find anything to improve, I'd tell myself what I told you earlier: that once in a while, even low percentage shots will hit and kill a soldier that in 95% of the cases would have been safe.
jumpingjacks
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by jumpingjacks »

Phaseless wrote:You've gotten many useful hints and I too have learned from this thread that there are some habits of mine which are clearly sub-par.
I think one of the most important skills though to have fun with Long War is to not take deaths to heart too much. It will always feel unfair because in the first immediate emotional reaction, all you can focus on is "I did everything to my best knowledge you fucking game".
I am more or less in the same boat as you @Tac1, however, the above quote sums up my biggest weakness with LW2. My gameplay degrades once I have one of those moments you describe, primarily because of my emotional reaction. For me, the reason I keep playing is because I do enjoy xcom/lw tactics, and the fact that it is also challenging me with how I handle my emotional responses over a long campaign. Your description of your gameplay strongly suggests you are a very good tactical thinker, me thinks what you are being challenged with is not tactical, but the feels ;) Thanks for your posts, and hope you can get some more enjoyment(and challenges) from the game.
Icarus
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Icarus »

Psieye wrote: Stop trying to debuff their aim and buff your def instead. There's a reason why I value smoke grenades over Sting flashbangs. 45 (high cover) + 20 (smoke) + 20 (Aid Protocol) ="anyone who doesn't have OVER 85 aim just gives up". You know you've succeeded when they just stand still and OW instead of shooting.
Is this the only viable approach? Because to me this sounds like playing the AI's quirks, which is too "gamey" for me. I'd very much like to not use that approach, if possible.
gimrah
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by gimrah »

IMO some of the discussion is getting a little overcautious in terms of defence. The way I actually play:

- Try and kill everything on activation but without undue risk of further activation (e.g. generally don't run and gun straight forward against the first pod).

- If the enemy is going to be able to shoot back, everyone needs to be unflankable in full cover, with ideally at least one further debuff to enemy to-hit (suppression, flashbangs, smoke, aid protocol, whatever).

- Everyone should be able to take a non-crit hit from regular advent without dying. Everyone wears ablative always. Armour is expensive but vests are cheap, especially the basic one, which also gives -25 to crit: a huge lifesaver on frontliners especially when you screw up and get flanked. And then prioritise things that can still one-shot you, e.g. early mutons and MECs.

- Defensive perks are well worth having. My favourite is formidable: extra ablative is great and reduced explosive damage is nice. I also take Incoming on officers. Together you can control MECs by bunching up and baiting them into using micromissiles, which will then take off 1 ablative and that's it usually.

And by the by, drones on commander/legend are fine. There are many counters. Specialists in particular have haywire from squaddie and then combat protocol or revival protocol at LCPL, all of which are hard counters to drones. Shotguns and ranger sawn-offs are very effective. Once available, it's worth having one soldier with AP ammo in the squad: you need it against MECs in any case.
Icarus
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Icarus »

gimrah wrote:IMO some of the discussion is getting a little overcautious in terms of defence. The way I actually play:[...]
Which is almost exactly how I play. But with this gameplay, accidents like OP described do happen and I wouldn't generally count this towards suboptimal play.

Though I usually double up on the debuffs/buffs with suppression/smoke when possible.
Psieye
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Psieye »

Icarus wrote:
Psieye wrote: Stop trying to debuff their aim and buff your def instead. There's a reason why I value smoke grenades over Sting flashbangs. 45 (high cover) + 20 (smoke) + 20 (Aid Protocol) ="anyone who doesn't have OVER 85 aim just gives up". You know you've succeeded when they just stand still and OW instead of shooting.
Is this the only viable approach? Because to me this sounds like playing the AI's quirks, which is too "gamey" for me. I'd very much like to not use that approach, if possible.
Pretty sure I've gotten the AI to give up with flashbang+suppression before. It's more "gamey" than Aid Prot + smoke as I think the AI doesn't quite understand it can run suppression to get a better shot. Just so happens it's hard to make the AI think it has no shots: again you ensure nobody except the tank (gunner) is seen.

Much as I want to experiment with full suppression gunner + EV ranger, it won't happen anytime soon - my current campaign has reached the 8-man GOp state. Every other mission is a 2 hour long GOp while the timing window is open: I'm not sure how feasible 8-man GOp is when M3 dudes show up. Still... I should make an effort to put a gunner (of any build) together with an EV ranger/spec and experiment.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
Tac1
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Tac1 »

Frankly, I've come to despise Gunners and suppression. I have yet to have suppression fire actually hit the enemy, the debuff alone never seems enough to prevent enemy weapon's fire, and Advent just runs it willy nilly and never takes punishment for it anyway. Between that and infiltration penalty, I feel more inclined toward bringing a second Ranger or Grenadier to slag them. Likely the same reason I've come to hate Overwatch; I never see it actually hit targets, and the AI seems to run it every time, assuming they don't just shoot through it and knock out my Gunner, first.

I gave Smoke grenades a try, though. I still don't like them. Ran into the exact issues I thought I would - Must be combined with Flashbangs or I get drilled by abilities all fight, which necessitates a second action. I constantly ran into issues of people not being within range of smokes without dashing to stay clustered, not having better cover when they get there, or the Advent just shooting through it anyway.

What I did find success in was reducing the Graze band to 5, after that I noticed Advent taking a lot fewer shots. Even a Flashbang+Low Cover was enough to cause several to just Overwatch where they were, rather than spamming me for 20% grazes and 9% hits. Has further emphasized the overbearing power of Lightning Reflexes, though. I can't justify taking any other Assault Cpl perk, and that's rather annoying. Even on Rifle-Assaults, it's too useful solely to clear Overwatches, which I have a nasty habit of never managing any luck with not being shot full of holes when running.

Like gimrah said, too cautious and defensive. I've been finding a lot more success in just bulldozing Advent than trying to avoid dying. Anytime I deploy defensive measures, it usually costs me more than reward me. Pop Smoke? Spent an action, a grenade, an item slot, and 1 mobility so I can get shot anyway and lose the 'effect' if I move up to actually engage the enemy. At least with Flashbangs I can force the enemy's mobility down to ensure they don't retreat to safer ground and gut ability use to ensure I don't get bogged down by Mark Target, Mindspin, and Area Suppression.

Not to say Drones aren't fine or balanced, but the only effective counter I've found was Sawn-off Shotguns. Shotguns are too inconsistent, I see them survive with 1 health after a 4-damage shot too often, and I've failed far more Haywires than I've succeeded. Or hacks in general. I'll probably start taking Combat Protocol more often, since Sentinel seems laughably counter-productive with how often Overwatch misses anyway, and that I can't Overwatch and toss Flashbangs in the same move. Rangers with Light 'Em Up, AP rounds, and scopes/high aim seem a better counter, and double at butchering the rest of the Pod, too.
Phaseless
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Phaseless »

My gunners hit constantly with suppression. Put hair triggers on their weapons, give them the graze fire skill and generally try to get gunners with high aim and they become beasts.
Tac1
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Tac1 »

This campaign I had a 73(Sqd) aim Gunner with an Advanced Hair Trigger who managed to fail seven ran Suppression shots, back to back. Call it bad luck, but I have a lot more success with them just actively shooting through cover than trying to reaction-fire anything. The only time I feel comfortable Overwatching is when nothing else can be done and I feel like throwing dice at the wall, for the hell of it. Hell, my Gunners seem to hit through-cover shots more than every other class I have in this game. About the only bit of actual good luck I see.
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8wayz
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by 8wayz »

As I suspected - the graze band makes a huge difference in how the AI play out their turns. Do note that you can remove Overwatch with a lot of things - grenades, Suppression, special attacks that do damage etc. You are not obliged to always have an Assault that can run through the shots at hand.

The main thing about area suppression is ammo and situational awareness. The AI will often run through the Suppression if there isn't at least another Overwatch soldier guarding the vicinity. So like in real life, you will need to have a machine gun crew - 1 Gunner, 1 Overwatch Ranger and if you want to, 1 Overwatch Officer Specialist. On untimed missions such a team (+ 1 Crit Ranger for good measure) works really well.

This way you have a dedicated team to lock 1 or 2 whole pods on their turn. And they are easier to put smoke cover on. The rest of your team can either stay behind (Snipers) or try to flank, if possible.
Tac1
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Tac1 »

I know that, yes. It's not always possible to break Overwatches, though. I've had instances of pods with three Sentries that Overwatch nearly every turn, without being close enough to catch with a single flashbang, and not having enough grenades to go around. Volume of fire for grazes sometimes works, but it's incredibly inconsistent. I'm not obligated to bring an Assault, but with how obscenely useful they are, why wouldn't I? With a Shinobi scouting, activating Pods can be avoided, and they're valuable for forcing picks, flanks, and breaking Overwatch-clusters.
faket15
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by faket15 »

8wayz wrote:The main thing about area suppression is ammo and situational awareness. The AI will often run through the Suppression if there isn't at least another Overwatch soldier guarding the vicinity.
To anyone interested in the actual numbers non-flanked enemies have 25% chance to run Suppression and 50% to run Overwatch. With multiple suppressors/overwatchers they roll once for each suppressor/overwatcher and only run if all the rolls tell them to.
Tac1
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Tac1 »

Definitely doesn't feel like 25% and 50%. Just ran a VIP rescue, the AI ran literally every Overwatch I put up.
Jacke
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Jacke »

Tac1, I'm thinking something is broken with your XCOM2 / LW2 install, you've had such problems hitting.

It's a pain, but perhaps you should wipe everything in the Steam XCOM2 and XCOM2 Workshop directories and your profile directory and install from scratch. (I wrote down notes about all my config decision just to reduce this pain when required.)

And perhaps let us know what mods you're running with (or did you already do that?). Closest thing I can think of is my games earlier in the year where my troops were just getting promoted too fast. Turns out they were getting extra experience from a mod. Metamodded that off and it's now more like everyone else.
Swiftless
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Swiftless »

Tac1 wrote:I know that, yes. It's not always possible to break Overwatches, though. I've had instances of pods with three Sentries that Overwatch nearly every turn, without being close enough to catch with a single flashbang, and not having enough grenades to go around. Volume of fire for grazes sometimes works, but it's incredibly inconsistent. I'm not obligated to bring an Assault, but with how obscenely useful they are, why wouldn't I? With a Shinobi scouting, activating Pods can be avoided, and they're valuable for forcing picks, flanks, and breaking Overwatch-clusters.

Assaults, forever and always. Every squad I have has an assault as point man.
Tac1
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Tac1 »

Honestly, I'm just unlucky. I've done a full wipe and reinstall numerous times, no change. Vanilla or modded, RNG just doesn't agree with me.

Mods are Perfect Information(LW2), Gotcha Again, LoS Preview Ability, Commander's Choice, A Better AWC(LW2), A Better Squad Icon Selector(LW2), Smooth Scrolling, Yet Another F1, Uniform's Manager, Peek From Concealment, Overwatch All/Others, Instant Loot, Cost Based Ability Colours, TacticalUI Kill Indicator, and a handful of cosmetic mods.

The first time I played Darkest Dungeon, I lost Dismas and Reynauld in the tutorial. My first mission proper resulted in the total wipe of the four heroes I sent in. It's why I hated that game and XCOM is more appealing; while RNG is rampant in XCOM, there are ways around in. Darkest Dungeon, not so much. Everything there was a dice roll, and no amount of practice or skill makes a difference. You can and will lose otherwise sure-fire encounters solely on RNG, at least with XCOM there's a measure of absolute control, even if only in a few areas.

Think I might use Commander's Choice to make my next campaign a bit goofy, for the sake of relieving the tension. I'd like to see a 5-man squad entirely composed of Shinobi and turn the game into a melee bloodbath. Or maybe Five Gunners and just Suppress all day.
Icarus
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Icarus »

Tac1 wrote:Frankly, I've come to despise Gunners and suppression. I have yet to have suppression fire actually hit the enemy, the debuff alone never seems enough to prevent enemy weapon's fire, and Advent just runs it willy nilly and never takes punishment for it anyway.
I only had that problem at the very start (Commander) - with advanced hair trigger, Lockdown and CuP my gunners hit practically every time. Mediocre aim is enough. I actually want enemies to run the suppression - Mayhem gunners hit like a truck.

You do need to keep the limitations in mind, though - sectoids especially like to foul up the suppression by targetting the gunner with psi.
Tac1 wrote:Mods are [...]
I use many of these mods and don't seem to have your issues, at least nothing I wouldn't chalk up to my bias.
Tac1
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Tac1 »

Unfortunately, my Gunners tend to be bullet-magnets and either are dead before long or in medical too often to level up and stay relevant. I did find an Elite hair trigger in Gatecrasher this campaign, but otherwise haven't found even basic ones that weren't in the market. I may restart, anyway. April 22nd and I haven't found a Scientist yet, facing triple-Viper pods and I haven't even begun Laser research. Five engineers, though. That's pretty neat.
Jacke
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Jacke »

Tac1 wrote:Honestly, I'm just unlucky. I've done a full wipe and reinstall numerous times, no change. Vanilla or modded, RNG just doesn't agree with me.
Well, to paraphrase Napoleon, being lucky is largely preparing for, recognising, and acting on chances when they come up. And taking the reverse of that, I'm thinking unlucky can be by a large part mistakes strategically and tactically.
Tac1 wrote:Mods are Perfect Information(LW2), Gotcha Again, LoS Preview Ability, Commander's Choice, A Better AWC(LW2), A Better Squad Icon Selector(LW2), Smooth Scrolling, Yet Another F1, Uniform's Manager, Peek From Concealment, Overwatch All/Others, Instant Loot, Cost Based Ability Colours, TacticalUI Kill Indicator, and a handful of cosmetic mods.
Like Icarus, I use those mods too, so I don't think they would be the source of an issue like this.
Tac1 wrote:The first time I played Darkest Dungeon, I lost Dismas and Reynauld in the tutorial. My first mission proper resulted in the total wipe of the four heroes I sent in. It's why I hated that game and XCOM is more appealing; while RNG is rampant in XCOM, there are ways around in. Darkest Dungeon, not so much. Everything there was a dice roll, and no amount of practice or skill makes a difference. You can and will lose otherwise sure-fire encounters solely on RNG, at least with XCOM there's a measure of absolute control, even if only in a few areas.
I'm no expert at Darkest Dungeon and will likely never finish a complete game. And losing like that isn't unexpected when learning the game. But like with LW2, it's more than just dice rolls.

Your level of issue with Darkest Dungeon and now LW2 parallels mine with Tharsis. That was a game I really struggled with and only once successfully completed a game. An acquaintance was much better and could win better than half his games. He "got" Tharsis much better than I did. He understood its systems better than I. It was only by learning from him that I eventually got a bit better and finally did win a game. And I deinstalled Tharsis and have never played it again. Besides not being very good at playing it, I just didn't like the nature of Tharsis (which is in some ways darker than either XCOM or Darkest Dungeon).

I have never had a team wipe in Darkest Dungeon, although I haven't taken a campaign far enough to face the most challenging content. I have lost party members, but I have learned its game systems well enough that party fatalities are rare. I make good enough parties and fight them well enough in the dungeon battles that the erosion of health and sanity rarely get pushed to the limit.

Tac1, like I was with Tharsis, I think you just don't get LW2 well enough, understand its many visible systems well enough. Part of the way of dealing with the RNG is reducing the number of times your troops face it, with appropriate team composition and tactical employment. This can be difficult with LW2 as there is a significant gap between making up a squad and deploying it. I also suspect Perfect Information, even the LW2 version, is just incorrect at times.

I don't know at what level you've previously played LW2, but I really suggest you try a Rookie campaign. Another thing would be to watch the LW2 videos of a systematic player like JoINrbs. I think you can get better at playing LW2 with study and practice. You'll still lose soldiers and even perhaps have squad-wipes, because even the best players have that happen to them. But you'll also have better games and more successful campaigns.
Tac1 wrote:Think I might use Commander's Choice to make my next campaign a bit goofy, for the sake of relieving the tension. I'd like to see a 5-man squad entirely composed of Shinobi and turn the game into a melee bloodbath. Or maybe Five Gunners and just Suppress all day.
I think that's a great idea. The point of gaming is to enjoy the game.
Tac1
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Tac1 »

You can only prepare so much. My second to last mission is an good example of that. VIP rescue from an Advent truck, split my squad of 6 to take a rooftop overlooking the truck, while the rest went to flank the street. A fight breaks out, and I have two Rangers and a Shinobi fighting an Officer, Drone, Engineer, and a Trooper. Ambush Overwatch has the Trooper dead and the Officer at 1 health, who runs out of the fight on activation. Shinobi follows and Fleches him to death, flanking the other pod guarding the truck in the process. Both rangers still have their shots, so I decide to have one double-fire while the other stays in reserve, in case it fails.

Both Ranger shots missed the Engineer, so I blue-move the other up into a 4-tile flank to take a shot. 95% to hit, grazes for 1. Engineer runs away next turn, Ranger blue-moves and fires a second flanking shot for 95% again and again grazes for 1. On top of this, he triggered Overwatch fire from my Specialist and a Rookie, both missing. The Engineer survives the turn and shoots my Shinobi for 3, wounding him through the Ablative. Point being; I had a plan to kill him, a backup in case the first failed, and a reserve in case he survived and tried to move and flank my Shinobi.

You can recognize and plan for opportunities and try to work around RNG, but anything that isn't a 100% can and will eventually disregard all made plans and screw you. As unlikely as it is, a plan involving seven 99% rolls and requiring every one to fail in order to fail can still happen, and all you can do is roll the dice and see if it actually works.

As for Darkest Dungeon, that game was infinitely worse and for that reason I stopped playing it. Even under the most ideal circumstances you can fail miserably, in even the easiest encounters, solely because of poor RNG results. Unlike XCOM, where there are grenades, EVACs, and Hunkering Down, there is no recourse in Darkest Dungeon. Even backing out of a fight is tied to RNG and can fail dozens of times when you absolutely need it to work. I've a friend with almost 1000 hours in this game and, despite their incredible understanding of the game, admit to losing entire parties of high-level heroes equipped with the best possible gear solely because of RNG.

I have watched several players on runs through Legend, and I've always been upset by the things I've seen them get away with. I understand the game a lot better than I used to, although I still feel a lot of this game needs better explained. I beat the original XCOM, the expansion, and the second game on Legend. I migrated to LW2, played on Rookie until I got my bearings, then slowly upped the difficulty over several campaigns. I dialed back off Legend after a few campaigns of miserable luck, but haven't caught a break yet.

This last campaign has me idling at the last days of April without a scientist, but five engineers. Usually I buy a scientist at day 1 from the market, because of this sort of thing, but it always delayed my AWC and for once I thought I'd try differently. ... Well. That didn't go well.

Again, RNG can't be fully controlled. I've had catastrophic results because I failed to kill that one last Trooper and had him go on to gun down XCOM even in cover, while yet more shots fail to roll well enough to drop him. The first death of my latest campaign was to an Advent Gunner on Yellow Alert that one-shot my Gunner through high cover. Which was a shame, I had high hopes for him given the amazing stat roll out of Gatecrasher, and I wanted to make a Gunner work in a campaign for once.

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the game still. But after having half my squad killed in one turn to a triple-Viper pod one-shotting people through high-cover/smoke, I feel like the game is just being arbitrarily mean and need more than a cup of tea for my mood.
Jacke
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Jacke »

Tac1 wrote:You can only prepare so much.
You have to prepare properly and to the right degree.

I'd say victory in games is 90% identifying how not to go wrong and 10% identifying when to take careful chances. Both parts are needed. Problems can exist with both.
Tac1 wrote:As unlikely as it is, a plan involving seven 99% rolls and requiring every one to fail in order to fail can still happen, and all you can do is roll the dice and see if it actually works.
To fail all of 7 true 99% rolls would only happen in 1 case in 10^14 trials. If you did 1 trial per second, it would be over 2 million years before there'd be better than a 50% chance to have a failure.

I strongly believe it isn't RNG that's killing your teams. It's flaws in your strategic, operational (squad makeup), and tactical decisions that lead you to running up against RNG too often and with too poor a distribution of odds.
Tac1 wrote:As for Darkest Dungeon, that game was infinitely worse and for that reason I stopped playing it. Even under the most ideal circumstances you can fail miserably, in even the easiest encounters, solely because of poor RNG results.
Outside of the Boss battles and the entirety of the 4 Darkest Dungeons, I'm going to respectfully disagree.

What level are you playing Darkest Dungeon at? You're not trying to master Stygian (hardest) difficulty out of the box?!? And if you've been playing at Darkest difficulty, why not try Radiant (easiest)? There's even a Steam Achievement for completing the game on Radiant.

In any game, there are millions of combinations of teams, tactics, and combat decisions, and most of them will get your team wiped. With Darkest Dungeon, you've got to learn how to exclude most of those by selecting the right team members in combination, put them in the right order, and equip them properly to go into the particular dungeon area and length of expedition. Especially key is gearing to manipulate the most likely order your 4 team member will fight in per round. You've got to know what to do and not do while walking down the corridors to advance things and not make it worse before you even get into battles.

And in those battles, you've got to make the right choices, which usually is kill those damn back rankers with all the stress attacks first. There's guides on a lot of these choices in the DD Wiki.

FTL is the same. And so is LW2. It's all about making the right strategic, operational, and tactical decisions. Learn what wrong choices not to make and when to take careful risks.
Tac1 wrote:I have watched several players on runs through Legend, and I've always been upset by the things I've seen them get away with.
Xwynns can frustrating as you see him get sloppy at times and often get away with it. He understands so much about Legend-level LW2 that he makes so many of his strategic, operational, and tactical choices right enough he can get away with that sloppiness.

But that's like getting mad at a uber twitch gamer pulling off amazing games. I barely ever registered on that scale and today ain't even as good as I used to be. That's why I suggested watching JoINrbs as he is a more careful player who talks out his decisions in his videos.
Tac1 wrote:This last campaign has me idling at the last days of April without a scientist, but five engineers.
Live and learn. Plan to either acquiring as a VIP or purchase a Scientist, an Engineer, the GTS, and the AWC in that order. Make one of your initial research actions Basic Research as it counts as a Scientist for research speed. This applies to all difficulties in LW2. Keep other early game expenses minimal but do spend on some. You will need AP Rounds and Nanofiber Vests sooner rather than later.
Tac1 wrote:Again, RNG can't be fully controlled.
You do not ever control RNG directly. You control when the enemy can take shots at your troops that leads to RNG, and to a degree the chances the enemy gets. But RNG is still there. That's what strategic and tactical depth are for. And if things go sufficiently wrong, make a command appreciation and if necessary abort and evacuate.

You control the battlefield by the location and state of your troops. You control the enemy by controlling what they observe and what they can do. And tactically maneuvering your troops and employing them to suppress (in a general sense, not just fire suppression) and kill the enemy. What that means and how to bring it about varies from game to game.

And if you are having so much difficult with LW2, you can make greater modifications to it. Try the mod A Better Rookie for LW2 (LITE). I take that and metamod it removing a lot of its buffs, just using it to change my Rookies (along with metamodding some of LW2) doing things like shifting the initial Aim spread from 55-75 to 70-80. Just use that mod as is and see what happens.
Tac1
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Tac1 »

I get this distinctive feeling I'm not getting my point across.

You can say the odds are beyond stupid, that you could play it ten times a second for a trillion years and statistically never get it, but it can happen anyway. Anything that isn't a flat 0% will happen eventually, and can certainly happen back-to-back. Considering I've seen Advent land multiple full-damage shots at 1%, back to back and in the same turn, you are never going to convince me that this game is solely based on tactical merit.

The last Gatecrasher dropped me into an open playground, so no abusing line-of-sight, and surrounded by civilians, who were unfortunately out of line-of-sight from the start and caused me to lose concealment on my first blue move up, just four tiles in a straight line to a small fence. The same move immediately activated a pod. Turn ends with just two of them alive, albeit at 1 HP and flashbanged, and another pod immediately patrols into us from the same side. First pod is finished off, second pod reduced to just a flashbanged Gunner with 1 HP.

Despite the red-fog and flash, he fired at 2% to hit and dealt 7 damage to a Rookie with 3 health. I was in a corner, so no retreating for Overwatch traps, even if I had enough actions left. There's nothing for 3 full dashes to break line of sight, so that's out. I already hit him with a grenade, two flanking shots, and a flashbang as a last resort, and the only cover in the entire playground was low-cover. So I guess I deserved that for not being skilled and tactical enough to roll better.

It's just like casino slots. After about 800 hours, you just start rolling jackpots every pull. Just have to tough this out, eventually I'll never miss a shot.
Psieye
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Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Psieye »

Tac1 wrote:I get this distinctive feeling I'm not getting my point across.
Quite so. It's likely you intended for this thread to just be some venting to blow some steam. We interpreted it differently and reacted accordingly. You are too busy trying to maintain your original purpose for this thread. That comes across in a way that's impolite for me to spell out. This is the wrong community to attempt getting sympathy for bad luck. There are others out there more suited to your needs.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
Tac1
Posts: 69
Joined: Sun Sep 24, 2017 9:49 am

Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by Tac1 »

No, again, missing the point.

And I don't want your damn sympathy, about as valuable as dry milk.
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8wayz
Posts: 340
Joined: Sat Jan 16, 2016 3:59 pm

Re: First death, incredibly soured.

Post by 8wayz »

@Tac1

Long War 2 was designed and balanced to favour the AI with the RNG and put you at a disadvantage, masking this again, as RNG.

The XCOM weapons were nerfed in terms of damage, ammo and stats. The AI units always seems to have 1 HP more than the max damage your soldiers can do in a single shot at that stage of the campaign, to make you have to land at least 2 proper Hits or 1 Critical Hit to kill that unit. Your soldiers have lower Aim and HP progression, to make it easier for the AI to one-shot you, as well as well survive multiple shots from you.

The odds are stacked against you by design. If you feel that you have been dealt a bad hand (which you have every reason to), just mod the .ini files to your liking.

The graze band is a great start. I would also suggest to up the HP progression of your soldiers (for each class) and possibly the Aim progression. With more HP the AI should need a critical hit to 1 shot a soldier. No more 4 HP+ 2 ablative armor killed on their first mission.

You can also mod the time required to do Basic research so it will be easier to make up for bad RNG on Geospace.

Players like Xwyns tend to abuse the AI and get away with a lot of things. They have intimate understanding of its limitations and base their playstyle heavily on them, something I consider dull to put it frankly.

The mod could use a better balance to make it less frustrating to players who haven't spent 200+ hours playing it.
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