Leaderboard

Yeah, in that Point we both are on the same Wave. It makes the Officers-Women, which is your left / right Hand to assist the Commander (which is the Gamer) more interessting. She have such an Analytical Department in the Background (she announce it), but it don´t show up in the Game yet. It would be then important for some special Missions (Rescue an VIP, Capture Enemy VIP, Rescue shot down Pilots, Rescue lost Soldiers, Espionage Cleaner & Alien Activity, Prepare Convoy-Ambushes to get more R & D-Materials, etc.) to give some more flexibility in the Game / Missions and your Officers-Women-Assist with their secret Field-Agents something to work. The Analytical Department have not only that important Job. The Analytical Department analyses the Strengh & Weaknesses (which atm. the Workshop and Reserachers do) as well as the secret Field-Agents reduce the Panic. That´s an very cool Contnent / Feature from Terra Invicta. The last and important Part from the Analytical Department and the Field-Agents is to look for small / medium Outpost for more Range of your existing Main-Base & Backup-Base.

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although note they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain! Changes: Reload time for Sidewinders and other light missiles in air combat reduced from 6 seconds to 3 seconds. Fixed a crash that could occur at end of turn after manually reloading an Advanced Laser Weapon. Fixed various sections of the text incorrectly displaying in English even when you had a different language enabled. Fixed an issue where upgrading to advanced workshops / labs could cause you to lose the adjacency bonuses. Fixed ammo quantity for equipped weapons on the Soldier Equip screen not being shown. Fixed the Cleaner Soldier autopsy research report showing the interrogation image instead. Fixed the Rescue VIP missions displaying the objective "Make contact with VIP" when the VIP now starts under your control already. Fixed various UI issues that could occur if you destroyed a lab / workshop in a base, and tried to go down to 0 scientists or engineers. Fixed an issue where manually reloading a weapon with an empty clip in the tactical inventory would give you back the old clip with 0 shots. Fixed a minor bug that could cause soldiers who had been hit with several attacks to sustain extra bleeding wounds. Fixed stacked containers having an upper container with a destroyed state that could be left hovering in mid-air. Fixed the air combat target image for each interceptor not always updating correctly at the start of the battle.

So I've now completed XCOM 2 on Commander (using voluntary Iron Man mode) difficulty and I figured I'd post up some quick thoughts on it: 1) Bugs / Performance Issues: The first thing to mention is that the game is in need of another patch. I had pretty serious performance issues even on a powerful machine until I turned down shadows and occlusion, and it still started chugging in some sections. It has long load times even on a solid-state drive, and there's also annoying camera delays at some points, as well as visual and animation glitches. I also encountered some gameplay bugs that stopped me completing missions or got soldiers killed - whilst this really isn't unusual for a newly released game, just be aware they exist and I'd probably avoid using Iron Man right now. It's not like Xenonauts doesn't suffer some of these issues too - I'm just saying that if you're not in a hurry to play it, maybe wait a few weeks before picking up XCOM 2. 2) Repetition: I found the game got a little repetitive towards the end (I played 31 missions). The game starts off being really hard because four low-level troops don't have the skills required to win a mission if the aliens score a couple of lucky crits and kill half your team, but once you go up to 5 soldiers and they collect a few more abilities you can handle even large groups of aliens without too much trouble. Mid-to-late game is a bit of a cakewalk ... but more on that later. I think part of the issue is that the XCOM 1 mechanics have become ubiquitous over the past few years. I have over 200 hours in the original game and the expansion, and I've played several other games that use the same basic formula. The dominant strategy in XCOM 2 seems to be stacking damage so you can kill all the enemies before they get a chance to attack you, and the type enemies you are fighting almost don't matter when all they do is get riddled with bullets before they have a chance to move. There's some cool enemy designs and tweaks to the rules, but the same tactics seem to work against all of the enemies so I didn't find the gameplay changed dramatically throughout the game. 3) Difficulty: The game is pretty easy even when going in blind on Commander difficulty, at least once you've got past the first two or three missions ... although weirdly the reasons for this are all quite positive. Firstly, they've improved the "pod" system ... although the mechanics remain the same, so I'm not quite sure how. Maybe bigger maps? Anyway, in XCOM 1 the main challenge was essentially to fight each batch of aliens without accidentally activating another nearby pod and ending up massively outnumbered. The problem was that this discouraged mobile and tactical play - running a soldier around the side of the map to flank an enemy was a bad idea, because activating an additional pod was a bigger risk than the potential gains of gaining a flanking shot. Accidentally activating additional pods of aliens is much less common in XCOM 2 even when you are using melee troops, which I assume is because the pods are more spread out. In any case, this allows you to play with a bit more freedom and makes the game more fun ... but it also makes it easier. The other thing is that your soldiers now have the ability to gain abilities from outside their class. This can lead to some EXTREMELY powerful combinations and is a lot of fun to play with - and you obviously get far more attached to a truly unique soldier too. Problem is, these abilities tend to be fun because they are totally broken, which naturally screws up the difficulty curve of the game. The only addition to the game that makes it more difficult is the turn limit for missions (about 50% of them have one), which I like as they speed up the game dramatically. I've had frustrations with them - reaching the target on the last turn and then finding out you need an action available to actually disarm the bomb - but they're definitely a good idea. They don't make the game that much harder unless you're a compulsive overwatch crawler though! 4) Combat Mechanic Changes: A few changes to the combat mechanics worth touching on, I think. The first is the much heralded concealment mechanic, which is initially fun but I actually don't find has much impact on the gameplay. I started ignoring it entirely in the later stages of the game (it only affects the first fight) and I still did fine. The changes to melee are more significant. Melee units in XCOM 1 were pretty weak, but melee units in XCOM 2 are totally overpowered as they can move an absurd distance (both moves) and still attack. Chryssalids don't one-hit-kill like they used to, but along with the early-game Stun Lancers they can still feel a bit cheap. Thing is, the reverse is true too - your Rangers have melee attacks and they are easily the best soldier class in the early / mid game until their lack of armour shred becomes a bit of a problem. Their mobility and reliable damage is so high than you can just swarm the enemies and shotgun them in the face / hack them to death before they have a chance to react. The net effect somewhat trivializes the tactical game, because cover and positioning doesn't matter too much when most of the action takes place at melee range. The addition of an Armour system is a neat one though, and their system has some similarities with the one in Xenonauts 2. But basically splitting hit points and armour makes the combat more interesting, as some weapons remove armour whereas others just do raw damage and the interplay between the two adds an extra layer of strategy to the late game. I think I'd definitely miss armour if I went back to playing XCOM 1 now. 5) Map Variety: Their randomised maps work really well as far as I can see; I never saw a repeated map in all my hours of playing. A really good addition to the game, something we'll definitely have to study for Xeno 2 (it looks like it works on a sub-map system similar to what we had in Xeno 1). Conclusions: Overall, I'd say XCOM 2 is a good game and one that will be very good once they've patched some of the more obvious bugs. It's a big strategy game with good production values and interesting core mechanics that I think is worth paying full price for. I'm not sure it's quite as good as the reviews made out, though - I'd probably rate it at 8.5/10 and I'd probably bump that up to a 9 once the bugs are fixed. My problem with it is that it doesn't feel as fresh or as interesting as XCOM 1 did, and that's why I'd say the predecessor was a great game and XCOM 2 is merely very good. It has added quite a bit to the game overall, but I think the only mechanic that fundamentally altered the way I played the game were the melee changes (which are a bit overpowered). So for me it came pretty close to greatness but didn't quite make it. That said, Firaxis have a good track record with expansions and it'll be interesting to see what they have lined up for the inevitable XCOM 2 expansion! (There's not really that much that changes our plans for Xenonauts 2, though - the big successes in XCOM 2 for me are the randomised maps and the armour system, both of which were already on our radar.)

It's not X-Com... yes i said it.. No looting, no air fights, short/fast tactical game play, not a proper armour health system.. and soul maybe.. X-Com 1 was same for me.. i want to like those games but that simple and fast game play is not for me.. Even drops got timer.. everything got timer.. everything pushes you to make something..i don't plan what to do, i do things i must to do.. The maps are maybe bigger but not for you. It's like a chess which you can't effort to lose your pieces so easily but enemy does not have that problem. Because of the PODS, you can't find a good place to flank the enemy but if you miss your kill chance the enemy can place himself to a good point and crit you so easily. Even you got for point blank, you miss and you are dead. Thanks to xenonauts bonus acc for close combat. Even your soldiers do not die, they mostly badly wounded and at least 10 days at medbay. As i said, not X-Com.. won't be X-Com.. a good concept with good points.. but not X-Com.. AND... flanking.. a soldier lies down to ground even if there is no cover and if there is a cover between you and enemy, that cover will help you.. I got a huge tree in front of my soldier but he gets flanked because he is not hugging it.. So any tactical militaristic game without lying down or crouch option is a fail. X-Com Apocalypse did that, Xenonauts used it most part.. I do not want a fast chess game, i want a tactical turn based game.. why can't i produce scopes?????