What a great mod

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notasquaddie
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Joined: Sun Jul 17, 2016 1:43 am

What a great mod

Post by notasquaddie »

Okay, so I finally got around to playing this last night. I'd put it off because I just didn't have the time for it (says the person who had near 100 hours clocked in on xcom on Steam, which was really just EW since I wound up doing EU on my iPad). And I was going to play xcom2 (but was too cheap to not wait for a sale).

Anyway, I started my first game last night on Classic Ironman, with Dynamic War and Humanity United (because of lack of EXALT scaling with DW and because they're less fun to me). Dropped into the map with the fountain in the middle and was attacked by sectoids. Like, ALL the sectoids. I think they were all having a party there that night. They were up to some freaky stuff, with just one huge psi-web crisscrossing all over the place.

I learned one lesson very quickly - even more than in vanilla, at all costs avoid sending people around in ways that will uncover new aliens. Also, I learned you can't abort the first mission. My poor recruits were just sitting there in the blue box wondering why the skyranger wouldn't open the door back up.

Restarted it, and applied those lessons to taking out the sectoids in a much more cautious manner. Also, there just weren't as many. Luck of the draw. Then I had a long battle on the dam with a few of my rested officers (gunner, sniper and infantry). Made sure to bring a medkit or two. Again, played it much smarter, being very cautious. Sectoids and drones this time. The drones had me scared shitless that there was a cyberdisc floating around. We all made it out alive and with only a couple of injuries.

Then we downed a ufo in the woods. Holy crap those Outsiders. I'd heard about the regen and the general toughness, but it's another thing when you actually go up against your first one. Didn't help that a few drones showed up to crash the party. I thought I was going to have a complete wipe, as eventually I wound up with a crashed UFO and an Outsider BETWEEN me and the extraction point. My thrown weapons and rocket were gone. One rookie dead. My tactical with one dot left and being shot at by the Outsider (luckily he missed - especially lucky when I forgot to move her the second time!) Then finally the Outsider decided he'd had enough of the squishy humans and ran up to his and blasted another rook in the head. That's when I went all-in. I ran my people down out of cover and right next to him. One critical dropped him down. Then another one ran up and dropped him to one health. I had three more people with shots, but I also had two of the drones not far behind, ready to finish off my tactical and anyone else they could. And none of them had completely clear shots to the Outsider. But luckily one of them finally made one of those 30-ish% shots to finish him off, and the other two shots nailed both drones.

This was the most SATISFYING battle I can remember in a long time. Even playing EW on Ironman (but admittedly Normal difficulty), I only lost maybe three people over the course of the campaign. I almost never felt in true danger, having to really catalog my options and weigh them very carefully.

So glad I finally decided to try it out.
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