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[Rolan7]

The main thing is that his moves being "delayed" is almost meaningless because... he's a ruler.
Flashbangs didn't stop him from Uber-pinioning all my guys, either.  Apparently the trick is to hide in a building - a trick you just need to know ahead of time.  Because nothing about the rulers is explained or intuitive, so I'm frankly surprised that the cheeseboard floors even offer protection.

But I should have just checked online and put all my guys indoors with repeaters, since *insanely* those do work.  Ridiculous.

Edit:  And no I didn't have the best stuff, because I didn't research all this ahead of time, and this is my only playthrough because, again, the loading is unbearably and inexcusably slow.  For no reason.
Edit2:  When I say the ruler stuff is unintuitive, I don't just mean the time-moves-when-you move BS.  I also mean that the answer to a soldier being held above 5 stories up in the air is to open fire on them.  The game doesn't even try to explain any of that.

[Chiefwaffles]

I haven't tried XCOM 2 LW yet, because I have an XCOM 2 vanilla run that I can't bring myself to finish because of literal minute load times.  It's frankly bullshit considering what my machine can do.  And caps lock (IE that retarded undocumented feature to prioritize loading over staring at your dudes) causes crashes pretty often.

Kicker is, I think XCOM 1 *looks better*.  2 is all fuzzy and shiny in a way I hate.  I love the new outfits, enemies, and the theme but the graphics and load times kill it for me.  Not to mention the significant added difficulty (which Jake Solomon specifically acknowledged and apologized for, saying that 2's recruit is like 1's normal and they should have added more levels to avoid insulting people).

I mean, is XCOM 2 on a solid state drive? Because it doesn't really to make sense to complain about your machine not impacting loading times without a SSD, since that's more or less what SSDs are for. I have XCOM 2 installed on my SSD and it loads pretty fast. Not that I care, because I usually just alt-tab out for far longer than it takes to load regardless.
And XCOM 2's difficulty seems pretty divisive in opinions. It feels like the extra difficulty over XCOM 1 is pretty artificial. Once you learn how to deal with the time limits, they become much less of an issue bar the rare mission where you mess up. I do really hate the forced-evac-point timed missions, though.

I've lost so many soldiers in timed force-evacs. It rarely happens, but when it does, I end up getting 1 turn to evac with 6 enemies active and 3 out of 6 people within range of the evac site. But extreme majority of the time, time limit isn't an issue.

[Rolan7]

I even like the time limits, in theory...  They're too strict, though.  They could give the feeling of pressure without demanding you charge into the fog of war so often, based on meta-understanding of pod placement.  That level of mastery should come up above the normal difficulty.

But for the difficulty in general, here's the Jake Solomon interview I was referencing.  It's actually pretty cool, and cooled me off a bit (no, really )  https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/02/25/making-of-xcom-2/

As for the SSD thing...  Pedantically I'm going to say your argument is wrong.  Of course I can complain.  My whole point is that XCOM 1 looks better with less, and both are doing far less than say, Skyrim or Dishonored, which run without hiccups.  Whereas I have to click the tiles in the Avenger 2-3 times occasionally, and the new Geoscape is a weird blue haze!  And for what, this performance cost?  Just look at the Elerium reactor in research - even in the Long War 2 stream, it's blocky yellow polygons!  XCOM 1 looks *good*.

That said, I'll try clearing enough space on my SSD and see if that even helps.  Hopefully so.  Though people have been complaining about the load times since XCOM 2 launched, particularly compared to 1.

But I shouldn't NEED an SSD to play a damn strategy game like this, especially not to load the freakin strategic mode...

Sorry for the tone, that's unrelated to the game.  I'm just in a mood to complain about things that have been frustrating me.

[Chiefwaffles]

...I wasn't saying you can't complain?

It's a matter of opinions. In my opinion, XCOM 2 is hands-down far superior to XCOM 1 in graphics and aesthetics. I was mostly just pointing out that you were complaining that XCOM 2 was loading slowly on your capable computer when nothing really affects loading times other than your harddrive.
It's like a lesser form of saying "I can't believe this game has such a low FPS! I have the best power supply money can buy!"

[Rolan7]

I mean, is XCOM 2 on a solid state drive? Because it doesn't really to make sense to complain about your machine not impacting loading times without a SSD, since that's more or less what SSDs are for. I have XCOM 2 installed on my SSD and it loads pretty fast. Not that I care, because I usually just alt-tab out for far longer than it takes to load regardless.

Like I said, I'm just being surly and pedantic
And I don't understand how people can find 2's graphics superior, but I'm not that surprised.  I think I just like cleaner, "older-style" graphics in general.
All this anti-aliasing and blur.  I just don't get it.

I wonder what it's even loading so much of...  Probably 90% textures I guess?  I'd say the funny bits on the soldiers, except those are explicitly loaded in moments- you see them during the "ride"!  So it's the terrain and enemy textures and models, which... yeah.

I mean, there is the thing where hitting caps lock massively reduces the load time, by prioritizing loading instead of rendering the "flight".  Unless it crashes due to being a debug feature.  But that basically proves that the load times could be far faster, if they had static load screens.

[GiglameshDespair]

  I also mean that the answer to a soldier being held above 5 stories up in the air is to open fire on them.  The game doesn't even try to explain any of that.

I'll be honest, the action to take there seemed pretty self-evident to me.

[sambojin]

Quill18 has got a Let's Play going on youtube as well. He's not a hugely prolific Xcom player, so expect plenty of mistakes, but it should give a bit of an overview of what's available in the mod.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AkE2ksBReF8

[umiman]

  I also mean that the answer to a soldier being held above 5 stories up in the air is to open fire on them.  The game doesn't even try to explain any of that.

I'll be honest, the action to take there seemed pretty self-evident to me.

I have to agree with this. I think you're being kinda gratuitous with your assessment.

It really isn't that hard. You seem to have only fought it once and had a singular bad time.

I mean....

That's kinda par for the course for this series.

[Twinwolf]

I honestly had no trouble with any of the Alien Rulers. Berserker Queen never got an attack, and I had Psi Operatives by the time I met the Archon King, so using Stasis gave me plenty of time to get my people in position.

[forsaken1111]

Because they take so many actions, if you can stack some damage over time like poison or acid on them it does very well. Beserker queen I had locked down with acid and poison  then stunned.

[Drakale]

Started 2 ironman games in long war so far, they both led to disaster. First time was actually pretty fun, i had to hack a computer under a time limit. It was an infiltration mission but I used a lot of guys, so heavy resistance. After taking some insane risks to get the tech in hacking range, I managed to get it and figured I would just clear out the rest of them before calling the taxi. I clear a few no problem and a reinforcement come in. Okay, I can deal with... queue 8 guys warping in.

At this point I have no grenades left and I decide to bug out. Turns out there is a 5 turn delay on the taxi, and advent get reinforcement of around 6-8 guys every turn. There was just no way my battered squad could take that kind of punishment, but we holed up in a building and managed to make it pretty close. If it wasn't for the panic, two guys might have made it.

Second game I decided I should infiltrate with a small 4 man squad... I don't recommend it. Somehow they never even got a good infiltration score despite being well below the infiltration time limit on the interface.

Not entirely sure what the early game strategy should be yet. I'll experiment some more. I definitely had more success not going for stealth early on.

[lordcooper]

The main thing that has helped me deal with times missions in LW is shaking the 'I am here to kill aliens' mentality.  My second mission was to rescue three resistance members, and I brought eight guys with me.  My first attempt I played similarly to the base game: locate the first pod, set an huge overwatch trap and then proceed slowly to the objective, methodically wiping out all opposition on the way.  It fell apart when reinforcements landed just after I aggroed two pods at once.  The missions was technically a success (all the guys saved) but I only had two soldiers survive, both being gravely wounded.

I decided to try it again with a different approach.  This time I split my squad into two teams and attempted to get each to the target without being seen, taking different routes.  One got bogged down by a couple of inconveniently placed patrols and basically had to stay where they were or start a huge firefight, but the other team managed to reach the VIPs.  I sent the VIPs for extraction with a token guard consisting of my shinobi and assault (figured they stood the best chance of quickly dispatching any foes), then circled the other two soldiers round to flank the guys holding up my other team.  An overwatch trap took one of the pods so I started moving everyone to the extraction point via the already scouted route, using my gunner's suppression abilities and the the technical's special weapons along with a couple of flashbangs to slow down the pursuers.  Mission completed with one guy injured.

I don't know how well this approach will work with later missions, but at least for the early game I've been having far more success when acting like a bunch of guerrilla instead of a commando squad.  Which IMO at least is pretty in touch with the themes of the game.

[jocan2003]

i havent played yet but im thinking going full squad hardon everytime just for the kicks of it and see how long i last hahaha

[Flying Dice]

i havent played yet but im thinking going full squad hardon everytime just for the kicks of it and see how long i last hahaha

Probably a mission or two. I tried that myself and it just ends with every mission a failure since the timer runs out and you get bogged down in endless waves enemies that don't even really hurt you that much.

Definitely gotta go full stealth early on, but I detest that since it's all down to the RNG question of whether patrols will move where you need them to. Early difficulty is set up such that it's impossible to win by guns-blazing.

[Mephansteras]

You can adjust the mission timers according to this thread