Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Teneb]

Evac all
Overwatch all

True Concealment

[nenjin]

True Concealment is a must. I don't see how you enjoy this game the way it's presented without it.

LOS Preview is handy but it's super fucking laggy.

Make Heals Persist prevents you from having half your roster wounded for two weeks due to grazing shots, even if you healed them back to full.

Revival Protocol and Restoration fix allows you to wake up unconscious soldiers, which is a big benefit given stun lancers and shit like the Muton Queen ground slamming and knocking half your team unconscious.

Skulljack Feedback fix so you don't continue to take damage from failed Skulljacks.

Evac All, simply because it turns Evac into a free action if someone is standing in the extraction volume. I would have not gotten guys out of several missions alive without it.

Update Carried Units. Doesn't come into play very often but the bug it addresses (carried units not having their position updated so if you grenade a tile you picked them up from they act as though they're still there when it goes off) sounds super stupid.

VIPs grab loot is a pretty obvious one.

Gremlins Grab Loot is very useful although it can feel a little cheaty. Frankly though it just gives you another reason to always have a Specialist/Whatever the Vanilla class is called on every mission, I get a lot of use out of it.

Increased Squad Size is a big one for me. It can be game breaking in vanilla XCOM2 but for LW2 (which does its own version of it) I feel like it's required for some missions.

I'm sure there's a ton of shit LW2 has fixed or added that are covered by other mods.

[Flying Dice]

Pretty much everything above is required QoL. Here's a couple that can add more depth to gameplay but which also affect balance in minor ways.

Hack Plus is an interesting one. It permanently adds a couple points to the soldier's Hack skill after they complete a hack. Personally the default values feel high, and I turn off the skill gain on failure, but adding +2/1 each time a soldier succeeds helps create a feeling of deeper progression for Specialists (and differentiation for non-Specialists used to hack doors &c. in a pinch -- you might end up with a Shinobi or Assault who can act as a cut-rate Specialist for objectives).

Grenade Throwing Tweaks. Removes tile snapping, reduces grenade range for suppressed units.

Here's a combo that's not precisely necessary, but which adds a lot of depth to the gearing game:

Grimy's Loot Mod (+PCS and Alien Rulers Expansions), + Mod Everything + Customizable Secondary Weapons + Moddable DLC Weapons. Basically extra loot crates you have to research to open, Diablo-esque tiered loot with special effects on higher levels, and more stuff which can be modded. Does feel kinda powerful when you get a nice rare weapon or armor mod, but the time cost to open higher-tier crates is actually pretty substantial, and you don't directly control what you get. It's really cool to have weapons from the same category which handle drastically differently.

Also consider picking up some of the better tactical map expansions, it's nice to get more variety in missions.

[nenjin]

Yeah I was going for just the big ones but:

Grimy's Loot Mod for sure. It has the added benefit of continuing to give your scientists something to do, especially in LW2 where most of the high end research costs supplies to start so you'll often be unable to pursue new, core research. So far I haven't been blown away by what's in the crates but I've only opened the basic ones so far. I did just get armor with some special properties though, which is huge because other than the DLC armors I don't think there's anything like it anywhere else in game. Must have taken some serious magicks to get that to happen.

More Maps.
Even More Maps!
Even More PCPs.
More Cities.
World Expansion Project: Advent.
Dragon's Wilderness PCPs.

All good stuff for increasing map variety. (Although some of them can get huge, so without True Concealment some can cause you timing problems.) Definitely increases load times for some maps, you can easily tell which ones are vanilla maps and which are mod maps just based on how long it takes to load the mission.

Free Camera Rotation is a QoL must in my book as well. Can occasionally lock up the game when you're looking straight down and a reaction fires off on someone though.

Grimy's Loot Mod (+PCS and Alien Rulers Expansions), + Mod Everything + Customizable Secondary Weapons + Moddable DLC Weapons

I've got all of these and they're good. Doesn't make a huge difference but being able to, say, increase the armor shredding of grenade shots with a mod is pretty nice. Plenty of melee weapon mods out there too that can make your Ranger/Shinobis beast as hell.

[BigFatStupidHead]

Fantastic, thanks all! I'll get on getting these together.

[DolosusDoleus]

A few more for you:

Grimy's Loot Mod
A Better Advent
Shut Up Bradford!
Stop Wasting My Time
More Maps Pack
Overwatch All/Others

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I'd throw in the Long War Alien Pack. Even if not playing Long War, it adds a good twenty or so enemy variants that improve the tactical schemata massively. Note that this will make the game somewhat harder.

[nenjin]

Unrelated but does anyone know how to "cleanly" uninstall a mod via the Steamworkshop from a saved game? "Uniform Management", which would have been super fucking useful, just straight up crashes in LW2. I tried to uninstall it back at the start of my save game and while my save game works, it bitches at me constantly about it. There's other mods in my mod list that don't look like they're working and I don't think are load bearing to the saved game that I'd like to get rid of. Or is there just no safe way to really do that?

[ArchAIngel]

Everyone seems to have missed one:


Numerical HP.

You will not regret it. It is so good when dealing with lategame HP levels.

[nenjin]

I want it but between LW2, Perfect Information and another UI mod, it flat out won't work.

[Aklyon]

Additional Icons does numerical hp better and with more compatibility in my experience.

And increased squad size is unnessesary if you have either Robojumper's squad select (which has both support for larger squads and can set your squad size), LW Toolbox (same, but with a different method of squad size support), or LW2.

Gotcha Again is the best thing for more info on flanks and other things vanilla doesn't tell you about.

Remove Missing Mods is a mod for wiping your mod bindings, which is as close as I've seen to clean uninstall. You activate it, load the save, save the now-clean save, and then quit and uncheck RMM. If it won't load, include Ignore Missing Content to give you a way past.

Prevent Ruler Executions is a must if you like to keep the anticlimatics to a minimum, because in vanilla repeater instakills can hit rulers.

A Better Advent 2 is excellent for increased alien variety and difficulty. Add in Grimy's Attrition mode (but disable limited ammo in the config) if you want timed infinite reinforcements on every normal mission.

Also, Accurate Swords is the best thing for Rangers you expect to actually need the sword. Because it makes swords more accurate. Beatdown Skill is nice for those rare times where you actually are right next to an alien with 2 hp or less, because it lets you clobber them for exactly 2 hp of damage.

[Flying Dice]

TBH I'd suggest just editing the weapon ini to give all swords perfect accuracy. They're entirely too underwhelming to justify taking the risks associated with a melee action. I go farther than that with my own game because shinobi flat out aren't worth the risks with vanilla values in place when you could have literally anything else (except a sharpshooter). If you're going to have a hyperspecialized class dedicated to swording things in the face, it better be less ending of The Last Samurai and more RULES OF NATURE.

[Aklyon]

Thats literally what Accurate Swords is, its the ini tweak. I've just been lazy and let it do it for me.

[Mephansteras]

I'm rather fond of the Samurai class for making melee attacks not only worthwhile but borderline OP.

[Chiefwaffles]

I think the worst part about expansion packs like the upcoming one is that they always make me really want to play the game being expanded upon. But I know if I do play through it, I'll almost just "spoil" my enjoyment of the game with the expansion pack once it comes out. I keep on staring at the icon for XCOM 2 but then convincing myself to snap out of it.

It is a tough dilemma that I must endure. Woe is me.
Also, here's yet another interview with Solomon. Most interesting is this tidbit:

We have an entirely new intro for the game, a new finale, a bunch of cinematics in the middle. There’s a lot of new story as well.

We already knew there was a new ending cinematic, but this new intro seems interesting, as does the middle cinematics. Though the middle ones are probably just for introducing the Resistance factions and maybe the Chosen, if the new intro doesn't do that already.
While it's unlikely that it'd happen, I just hope they don't remove the rescuing-the-commander part.