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[crazysheep]

I ran the Last Gift mission on normal and had 5/6 armour on the massive boss bot, not sure how much armour there is when you run it on Commander.

[Rolan7]

Huh, nice.  Just started playing this game again on easy (was initially frustrated and... salty, at how hard it was on normal).  Got Shen's Last Gift a couple days after the first month-ending.

Honestly, it wasn't that hard a mission...
And, gods, it was basically Tycho from Marathon.  I'm not complaining at all.  It was... perfect.

Spoiler: ~MARATHON~ similarities (click to show/hide)

Abandoned as dead, did a stint with the alien overlords, has a hatred of humanity... which, you have to wonder...  is it because we failed it?  Gave up on it?
Every sarcastic, dire, quip is deserved...  But it doesn't matter.  For humanity to survive, our corrupted mistake needs to be... ended.
In Marathon, we had rackish Durandal to defeat Tycho and ascend to godhood.
In XCOM 2... shit sucks.  No one will help us but ourselves.

also, I think it only had 3 armor for me.  Spark had a rocket, which helped, because I didn't have any freakin heavies- and actually I'm not sure my one grenade (after 2 other levels, with 4 completely unupgraded troops) actually shredded properly.

Spoiler: though (click to show/hide)

Ms Shen's 56% chance to hack all robots on site... worked, and maybe made the difference.  Sucks that exploding bots didn't strip any armor though.

My one sniper basically carried this, along with some fantastic luck.  I wish I had brought grenadiers.

[Flying Dice]

It's one of those missions where grenadiers really run into a wall, sort of like what you saw on the long slog plot missions in the base game. Even if you've got max-rank Long War grenadiers, they only get four grenades each, and if you use them to shred everything with armor you're going to run out very quickly. It's why I'm relying so heavily on the swords and shredder machine guns now and only grenading when I can hit a decent clump, insta-break turrets, or need to burn a Sectopod/Gatekeeper.

[Mephansteras]

Hey, I know I'm maybe crossing thread boundaries a little here, but I've got a quick little jiffy of a question about NuCOM1:

Play it through first or install The Long War from the get-go?

Personally, I'd play it through first on Vanilla and then do Long War. Long War is much harder, and I imagine it'd be a bit brutal to jump into from the get-go. Also, it is in fact much longer to play through than vanilla.

[Retropunch]

Hey, I know I'm maybe crossing thread boundaries a little here, but I've got a quick little jiffy of a question about NuCOM1:

Play it through first or install The Long War from the get-go?

Definitely play through it first vanilla. It's a lot harder, and some of it probably will feel a bit unfair if you don't know what it's compensating for in vanilla.

It's also very different, so you basically get two play through's rather than one!

[origamiscienceguy]

Has anybody watched Beaglerush's playthrough on youtube?

On the avenger defence mission, He killed the disrupter thingy on turn zero with two blaster bombs, then just hunkered in cover and killed over 100 aliens without a scratch until lag forced him to bail.

[TempAcc]

The avenger defense missions are pretty much free XP if you do it right, and if you get it when aliens don't have actualy somewhat scary stuff going around yet, like gatekeepers and archons. I'm not even sure if those can show up in defense missions since I've only got those relatively early in the campaign.

A good way to improve campaign survival on higher difficulties is to avoid the alien boss missions until you've got a full squad of veterans and proper equipment, since they can show up on pretty much every mission after you do the first. While the snek isn't that scary and the berserker queen is kinda lol, the archon king is pretty scary if you're not careful. In my last campaign, I managed to get a lucky instant kill against him with a reaction shot from my specialist that had a rifle with the one equipment that gets you 10% chance of instant kill per shot.

Shen's mission is pretty easy once you have mag weapons, a veteran specialist and a veteran grenadier.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Rulers are easily defeated so long as you have status effect grenades. Acid, poison, and fire. It slows them down and eliminates their special abilities, which includes Gate so there's no escape.

[Furtuka]

Oshit

[forsaken1111]

Aww yeah, I have been waiting for that

[GiglameshDespair]

Rulers are easily defeated so long as you have status effect grenades. Acid, poison, and fire. It slows them down and eliminates their special abilities, which includes Gate so there's no escape.

Acid, at least, doesn't stop special abilities.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Rulers are easily defeated so long as you have status effect grenades. Acid, poison, and fire. It slows them down and eliminates their special abilities, which includes Gate so there's no escape.

Acid, at least, doesn't stop special abilities.

But it does kill armor, reduce movement range, and fuck the AI so it won't try to move.

[KingofstarrySkies]

Oshit

god why

[Rolan7]

Seriously, that page is an astounding design.
To its credit, it does specifically only make you choose the year of your birthday- acknowledging that the gate is really an honor pledge.

But then, all it tells you is that Long War is coming.  Then links to the main site...
yeah, that information definitely needed to be agelocked

On the previous note, I'm not making proper use of the experimental grenades and equipment...  Which is probably why the Archon Ruler is currently kicking my ass despite several reloads, on easy.  Spires of Obliteration or whatever is pretty fucking OP if you don't have cheese to counter it, since you literally don't get the opportunity to move away- it's PRETTY UNINTUITIVE, in my defense

NewCOM 1 was only moderately challenging on normal.  I appreciate the added depth of NewCOM 2, but the fucking Avatar Project leaves even less room for failure than NewCOM 1.

Actually, realtalk.  I think X-COM (OldCOM) really did that better, in that you could literally get wiped on missions pretty often, and it didn't mean that much.  There was no accumulating endgame timer, and enemy advancements were partially tied to your own research progress.  You could grind out a success with massive losses, by re-attempting missions until you won.
In NewCOM 1&2, that's not possible.  You need to have a certain level of game mastery, or INEVITABLY fail.

Not to say either is better!  I do love NewCOM.  It added a *lot*, and is so much easier to play.  I only wish it was possible to have a glorious, BLOODY war against the aliens.  It promises that, but in fact... if you're losing soldiers, you're playing wrong.  And that's a shame.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Long War basically restores that on normal difficulties, with the fatigue timers and the extension of the campaign so you can afford to spend resources on rookies. I expect the same will be true for Long War II.