XCOM2 thoughts and a question or three

[haphazard1]

Jowy's games and the current SG have inspired me to finally get this game and give it a try. The game is entertaining so far, but I do have a few thoughts/questions for those with more experience with the game.

- Is it just me, or is the geoscape screen just incredibly annoying and not fun? You are limited by time available to spend on activities, yet that time ticks away while you examine the geoscape map and consider your options -- why do this? Even if it is just small bits of time, why do it? Who thought this would be a fun mechanism in what is primarily a turn-based game?

Much bigger chunks of time are lost flying the Avenger between sites. And the game seems to positively delight in interrupting you while scanning at various sites, forcing you to leave them partly finished to respond to council missions, ops, etc., with even more time wasted flying back and forth. Monthly supply drops continue the theme -- you don't just get your supplies, you have to fly somewhere (again interrupting whatever you were in the middle of doing) and spend time scanning. Every step seems to be a constant punishment of the player, with limited time being burned on intermediate steps that don't actually gain you anything.

It just seems wasteful and pointless. Instead of focusing on the decisions to be made and prioritizing my actions, I am spending my time in a mini-game of "optimize the lost time" since it is your limiting resource. Who at Firaxis thought this would be a fun thing to do?

- Is there any information on how long an event/site will remain on the geoscape? Do they disappear, or will they remain until you complete them? (I assume the story-related ones such as blacksites must remain until dealt with, so this is about the random-ish ones.) I don't recall any information being given about this at all.

- How does power generation in the Avenger work? The "exposed power coils" apparently provide lots of bonus power if relays are built on them. Are non-coil relays at all worthwhile?

- How do scientists work? They seems to give a bonus to research speed, but there does not appear to be any way to assign them to anything like you can do with engineers. Probably I just haven't gotten to the appropriate tech/structures/whatever for that, I guess? No real explanation was given, though.

- How do you use your weapon upgrades? Since they are apparently not recoverable or transferable, do you just use whatever you have and get what value you can from them, or is it worth holding on to them to get super-specialized weapons later?

Thanks for any advice and pointers! And thanks to Jowy for his threads (even if I died horribly on my first mission ) and the SG players for piquing my interest in this game. Despite my grumbling it has been fun. Mainly the missions which are great -- like the previous game the rest is much much weaker.

[WarriorKnight]

Can't answer anything DLC related, but I'd assume most of it follows these rules.

- Is there any information on how long an event/site will remain on the geoscape? Do they disappear, or will they remain until you complete them? (I assume the story-related ones such as blacksites must remain until dealt with, so this is about the random-ish ones.) I don't recall any information being given about this at all.

Story missions never disappear, obviously.

Standard missions (Guerrelia Ops, VIP missions, Supply raids, Retaliation missions) disappear after 24 hours. If you're quick on the trigger you can delay it to finish something, but there's enough risk involved you don't want to do this often.

Resistance rumors disappear after a month. Since I've never seen one last more than 8 days you can delay it a little bit.

- How does power generation in the Avenger work? The "exposed power coils" apparently provide lots of bonus power if relays are built on them. Are non-coil relays at all worthwhile?

You generally have to build 1 non-power coil relay because you won't always have access to a power coil when you need more power. 2 fully upgraded/staffed power relays (1 on a coil, 1 not) generally give all the power you'll need IIRC.

- How do scientists work? They seems to give a bonus to research speed, but there does not appear to be any way to assign them to anything like you can do with engineers. Probably I just haven't gotten to the appropriate tech/structures/whatever for that, I guess? No real explanation was given, though.

Scientists provide research bonuses passively, you don't need to assign them anywhere. However if you build a lab, you can assign them in there to provide a bigger research boost.

- How do you use your weapon upgrades? Since they are apparently not recoverable or transferable, do you just use whatever you have and get what value you can from them, or is it worth holding on to them to get super-specialized weapons later?

There is minimal value in holding weapon upgrades, since they don't disappear from the weapon at all (even at magnetic/plasma weapons). Technically they are not transferable, but you can switch which weapon each solider holds so it is kinda transferable (in a way). As for how I use them, I generally go:

Ranger - Hair Trigger, Laser Sight
Specialist - Stock, Repeater
Sniper & Heavy Gunner Grenadier - Expanded Magazine, Auto-loader, Scope

As an aside, there is a continent bonus (lock and load?) that allows you to recover weapon upgrades and PCS. It's random whether or not it exists in each game though so you won't always have that option.

[Dreylin]

It just seems wasteful and pointless. Instead of focusing on the decisions to be made and prioritizing my actions, I am spending my time in a mini-game of "optimize the lost time" since it is your limiting resource. Who at Firaxis thought this would be a fun thing to do?

I dunno, isn't "a mini-game of "optimize the lost time"" just another type of "decisions to be made and prioritizing my actions"?

As WK says, you have some leeway on rumours; also monthly Supply drop stays around for a good while, so you can work them into a schedule. Overall, I'm OK with the design decision that sometimes there just isn't time to do everything and you have to prioritise accordingly.

[haphazard1]

Story missions never disappear, obviously.

Standard missions (Guerrelia Ops, VIP missions, Supply raids, Retaliation missions) disappear after 24 hours. If you're quick on the trigger you can delay it to finish something, but there's enough risk involved you don't want to do this often.

Resistance rumors disappear after a month. Since I've never seen one last more than 8 days you can delay it a little bit.

Very useful information -- many thanks, WarriorKnight! Knowing that the rumors last a while will be especially helpful, and will make it easier to prioritize without wasting so much time scurrying back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Thanks for the other info as well. Now I'll toss out even more questions.


How useful is the black market? I have not gotten a good feel yet for how useful intel is, so I can't really judge if the prices are worth paying for what is offered. So far intel is needed to contact new regions, but that is much more limited by communications capacity than intel. Maybe that will change, or other uses for intel will become available?

Can someone explain concealment, and the rranger perk for remaining concealed when the rest of the squad is revealed? Enemies don't react to concealed soldiers, but how is this different than XCOM1 since concealment breaks when you enter LOS? I don't understand how concealment benefits me, while I can see how it hurts me when overwatch does not trigger for units that are still concealed. I figure I must be missing something fundamental on this.

[Dp101]

Concealment does not break when you hit LOS, as you can see the enemies for a good few tiles before you get close enough to break concealment. A concealed ranger won't get hit if the rest of the squad is out of concealment, so you can use them to scout ahead and see upcoming pods without activating them. Also I'm pretty sure the game explains this, but shots fired during overwatch from concelement have no standard OW aim penalty.

[haphazard1]

I dunno, isn't "a mini-game of "optimize the lost time"" just another type of "decisions to be made and prioritizing my actions"?

As WK says, you have some leeway on rumours; also monthly Supply drop stays around for a good while, so you can work them into a schedule. Overall, I'm OK with the design decision that sometimes there just isn't time to do everything and you have to prioritise accordingly.

Knowing there is some leeway on some things will help. But the geoscape process and scanning just seems overly busy and fiddly to me. "Scan for N days" generally means at least N+1 interruptions, between immediate missions from the council or ops plus research/engineering/training finishing things and needing new assignments (and all of these requiring you to jump out of/back into the geoscape each time, with all the little swooping transitions between screens). It just feels like I am spending lots of time on meaningless busy-work in the interface, rather than spending most of my time making decisions on priorities and strategy.

Maybe I will get used to it, and it will just become background to the decision making. But the non-mission portions of the game do not make a strong first (or second) impression.

[haphazard1]

Concealment does not break when you hit LOS, as you can see the enemies for a good few tiles before you get close enough to break concealment. A concealed ranger won't get hit if the rest of the squad is out of concealment, so you can use them to scout ahead and see upcoming pods without activating them. Also I'm pretty sure the game explains this, but shots fired during overwatch from concelement have no standard OW aim penalty.

Thanks, Dp101! This helps.

But how does this lack of aiming penalty combine with the still-concealed ranger not triggering on overwatch, as happened several times in Jowy's games? No aiming penalty sounds nice, but if your soldier does not shoot it doesn't reallly help much.

[rho21]

Can someone explain concealment, and the rranger perk for remaining concealed when the rest of the squad is revealed? Enemies don't react to concealed soldiers, but how is this different than XCOM1 since concealment breaks when you enter LOS? I don't understand how concealment benefits me, while I can see how it hurts me when overwatch does not trigger for units that are still concealed. I figure I must be missing something fundamental on this.

Concealment doesn't break within LOS if you're in cover (or just moving into it), and the range to break concealment is a bit shorter than LOS, I think. This means you can get everyone into range before triggering a pod, meaning everyone can get off an overwatch shot before the enemies make it to cover. You can also sometimes hide in cover and have the enemies patrol much closer to your soldiers: they can't move without breaking concealment, but they will get an awesome ambush off.

The perk for remaining concealed has its downside, as you say, especially when you've forgotten it and put them on overwatch. The point is to give you a scout to help find pods after the first without triggering them, giving you time to get your soldiers into reasonable position. Perhaps more importantly for timed missions, this can let your other soldiers make orange moves forwards sometimes without risking a pod triggering, because you've already checked the area's empty with your scout. It can also be really handy for rescuing civilians from right under the aliens' noses in terror missions.

My thoughts (from one completed game): probably not worth it early in the game when you're desperate for every bit of damage you can deal. Once you have 2 extra soldiers in the squad, with good weapons and armour, it can be really nice. Much stronger, though, is the (later) perk that lets you re-enter concealed state.

[Dp101]

The ranger is still concealed because their concealment breaks separately, and because concealed overwatch only triggers when the soldier performing it gets revealed during the move, the ranger won't fire unless the aliens walk into them specifically.

[Jowy]

Sometimes they can get real close without breaking concealment. Here's a pic I was supposed to include in a report but forgot to do it:

I like how the timer keeps running btw. Increases immersion, and I don't think it actually hurts you unless you idle for hours.