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[Cthulhu]

My heavy gunner grenadier just learned ever vigilant.  Ever broken more like.

[Jacob/Lee]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I made the mistake of sending a mind-controlled Sectoid way forward into that final room, which triggered the entire battle. All the aliens decided to stack up on the pillar in the center for some reason. My soldiers were all trapped on the bridge. Aliens poured out frequently enough that I couldn't roll out or else something would come and shoot someone in the back.

Eventually the aliens stopped coming and Avatar #1 came at me and got shredded. Avatar #2 mind-controlled a grenadier right after a Codex uses its voodoo rift crap to disarm him... And promptly gets shredded by a psi-lance and mass gunfire. Avatar #3 was more stubborn. He didn't come out, along with most of his fifteen or so bodyguards. I moved the Commander up and rifted his pillar, which made him teleport right in front of my soldiers. I couldn't quite hit him with a flashbang for some reason, even though I was well within range, so I unloaded and played a few rounds of teleportation ping-pong with him. I lobbed AoE attacks until I culminated in a psi-attack from my magus, which killed him and ended the game. They're tough little monsters.

Big Daddies Andromedons are the best mind-control targets. They have decently penetrable Will, solid armor, high health, and a shredding attack. I like using them to bust Sectopods when raiding alien facilities. Still, I'd take them even if they had 1 HP and a squirt gun, just for the cool sounds they make when they stomp around and grumble in their alien language.

[TherosPherae]

So I had a specialist take the '50% chance for extra Overwatch if you hit an Overwatch shot' perk.

I did not expect this perk to chain.

It went off 4 times in a fucking row during Avenger defense and wiped an entire pack of enemies. It probably would have gone further if she hadn't run out of ammo.

Good lord.

[Egan_BW]

Time for an advanced extended clip, then?

[debvon]

I must be really fucking terrible at making meaningful decisions in this game. I always end up with a ship full of wounded soldiers and I have to recruit rookies, but at that point rookies are just useless against the enemies I'm facing and they get slaughtered. Saving and reloading over and over is just too awful and makes me not want to play again so I'm trying to avoid having to do it in the first place. Any advice? Campaign-wide advice as well so I don't end up getting shit on like I just did?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I got shot down by a UFO and had to send everyone out to destroy the EMP beacon. I seem to have ran into the entire alien welcoming party at once. They all converged on my soldiers and wiped out 3/4 of them. With the trickling reinforcements I managed to destroy the beacon and lift off with.. three injured squadies. I had enough supplies to recruit four more rookies who proceeded to get slaughtered on their first mission. I must have handled that poorly but I really don't understand how I could have prevented the losses on the enemy's turn.

Also fuck panic. That shit is so god damned frustrating. Two of my corporals get panicked at once leaving my sniper and rookie to fire pot shots at entrenched enemies. Useless.

[Krevsin]

I am personally quite annoyed at soldiers being shaken. Oh, you lost nearly all health, got mind controlled twice and now you have PTSD or something?

Get back in the game soldier, this is no time to be a whiny bastard.

[Flying Dice]

For one, don't use rookies if you can help it. At the very least you can base-train them to Squaddie. Buy more experienced soldiers when they come up each month. When you do have a surplus of troops, take a low-ranking one on every mission and feed them kills. Get that upgrade to increase kill exp so they level faster.

Same shit as in EU, just with a few more options.

[Krevsin]

Ironically, on this run Rookies are better equipped than most of my squaddies because they use an assault rifle which is so far the only weapon I've upgraded.

[EnigmaticHat]

I must be really fucking terrible at making meaningful decisions in this game. I always end up with a ship full of wounded soldiers and I have to recruit rookies, but at that point rookies are just useless against the enemies I'm facing and they get slaughtered. Saving and reloading over and over is just too awful and makes me not want to play again so I'm trying to avoid having to do it in the first place. Any advice? Campaign-wide advice as well so I don't end up getting shit on like I just did?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I got shot down by a UFO and had to send everyone out to destroy the EMP beacon. I seem to have ran into the entire alien welcoming party at once. They all converged on my soldiers and wiped out 3/4 of them. With the trickling reinforcements I managed to destroy the beacon and lift off with.. three injured squadies. I had enough supplies to recruit four more rookies who proceeded to get slaughtered on their first mission. I must have handled that poorly but I really don't understand how I could have prevented the losses on the enemy's turn.

Also fuck panic. That shit is so god damned frustrating. Two of my corporals get panicked at once leaving my sniper and rookie to fire pot shots at entrenched enemies. Useless.

The AWS halves healing time.  The fast healing HQ scanning bonus ALSO halves healing time.  GTS lets you train up rookies to squaddies.  Between those you shouldn't have to worry about not having enough people.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The base defense mission is just brutal, plain and simple.  There's no shame in losing to it.  In general I would hug the ramp until you've revealed and killed the alien packs.  The advent reinforcements aren't nearly as bad.

Yup, panic sucks.  The best I can say is that it starts becoming meaningless around Sergeant.  Try to cure your shaken soldiers and procure a focus PCS.  Mindshield makes units immune to panic but is that really better than a grenade?  I don't think so.  Panic is a luck based is the unfortunate thing.

As for your troop problems... every month you can get two slightly underleveled soldiers, one from resistance HQ and one from the black market.  If you don't have the black market yet you're basically shit out of luck if you get wiped.  You can also train people up in the psi lab.  The most important thing is being able to win missions, its not like EU where losing missions causes game over, rather it causes you to straight up run out of troops.  If you have to turn down a mission or two whatever.  You can see the difficulty rating of a mission AND what type of mission it is, which actually matters quite a lot.  Try to pick relay defense missions first, missions that allow you to evac at will second, and forced evac missions as a last resort.  I've found the best thing you can do to plan a comeback is to not contact regions in the first month or two.  That way if you fail a mission you don't lose contact (and thus the time and intel you spent making contact).

[debvon]

Thanks, that's some useful advice right there.

[TherosPherae]

Time for an advanced extended clip, then?

Advanced extended clip and scope as soon as I find them, then overwatch until my computer has an aneurysm.

I'm also really enjoying the random mechanic in the AWC; it gives you a reason to bring along an additional scrubby soldier on missions that don't look to be too brutal so they can level up and maybe become something extraordinary. For example, I recently had a medium-level Sharpshooter pick up Shredder, and she's saved my ass with it more times than I can figure. There's also the Specialist who picked up a Ranger stealth perk, so now on hack missions I can just maneuver him near the objective without having to worry as much about chopping through a small army within 3 turns.

[Neonivek]

I do with your role in the game was more active then passive at times though.

It is weird that the game isn't about using intelligence to find missions.

[Cthulhu]

I beat the game.  The final mission was pretty rough, without going into spoilers.

Of the final team, only two made it out, Bridgette "Omen" Gallagher the Psion and Penny "Smokey" McDonald the Grenadier.  It occurs to me that this is unfair.  Bridgette and Penny were randos that I didn't really care much about, secondary people who came onto the force very late or to replace fallen veterans.  Bridgette replaced Missy Elliott who died to a Chryssalid (it wasn't worth it) and Penny was an HQ recruit cause I couldn't maintain veteran heavies.

The casualties were hard one of those Game of Thrones style roster wipeouts.  Raiden died, his antics finally caught up with him but he took a ton of guys with him.  Sparks, the specialist, got blasted by a Gatekeeper in like the second room.  Bullseye Jeong, the smoothest operator on the team, got taken out by a MEC trooper.  My latecoming heavy weapons guy, "Tickle," got mind controlled and Bridgette had to put him down with a Soulfire before he chewed us all up.

Aside from the only survivors being nobodies, it was a pretty exciting finale.  Things were down to the wire and if certain abilities hadn't gone off cooldown the exact turn they did we wouldn't have been able to win.

[Sirbug]

As I beat EU on second difficulty, I figured it's about right difficulty to play X2. How wrong I was.

[Majestic7]

Weirdly, X2 has made me itch for playing space 4X.