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 good 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. Alternatively, 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 game. 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.