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[ZebioLizard2]

I'd give this more depth but you guys want blind hype right now because these announcements are too fresh.

Mmhmm, love me some blind hype!

[ArchAIngel]

You can't get blindly hyped for a video!


Visibly hyped, sure, but if you're blind, you can't watch it!


Duh.

[RAM]

Pfft, you can get hyped perfectly well from a brail-encoded rumour of a video that is likely to come out at some point in the future that may potentially be definable as "soon"...

[Culise]

Or just the sound of the video. A really good OST for a game can get me quite audibly hyped.

[nenjin]

Man my game is getting buggy. Every Avenger Defense mission produces an additional mission tile that I can't make go away. I've done two defenses now and I have three mission tiles that can't be resolved. Thinking ahead, on the next I'll have 5, then 7 (or .....

The doom clock on my game apparently isn't the Avatar project, but Avenger Defense tiles eventually breaking my UI when there are too many of them.

[GiglameshDespair]

Man my game is getting buggy. Every Avenger Defense mission produces an additional mission tile that I can't make go away. I've done two defenses now and I have three mission tiles that can't be resolved. Thinking ahead, on the next I'll have 5, then 7 (or .....

The doom clock on my game apparently isn't the Avatar project, but Avenger Defense tiles eventually breaking my UI when there are too many of them.

The most cunning of all the alien plots.

[My Name is Immaterial]

New video talking about the Reaper faction.

Key Highlights + Things I noticed:

• Percentage chance to reveal after taking a shot from concealment or stay hidden. Also, faster in concealment, and smaller detection radi. And I mean MUCH shorter, only a couple tiles! (0:47)
• Possibly new mission type: Kill Advent Field Commander? (0:24)
• Can throw claymores, which stick to enemies and only blow up when triggered, which can be done by any soldier.
• Much larger skill tree than vanilla: Seems to be broken into Sneaky, 'Slodey, and Snipey. Also, reworked XP system? And what's combat intelligence? (0:57)
• Russian names, and Russian sounding gun, makes this faction sound like they're Soviet.
• Can blow up explosives on the map better than XCOM soldiers.

It looks like they're very specialized, and seem to fill a role where they can blow things up in a limited fashion, snipe things, but not from too far away (no mention of Squadsight, which is interesting for a faction built around sniper rifles), and sneak around better than anyone. I'm not in love with how much health they seem to get: I counted 16 and an Armor point on the blacksite mission vs 15 on a sharpshooter wearing what looks like Plated armor. Still, there's lots we don't know yet.

[Chiefwaffles]

Regarding the Ability Points System, here's a quote from a firaxis employee (the community manager?):

Yes! The Faction soldiers all gain Ability Points (AP) when they rank up, so you can always purchase at least one ability from their new rank.
Each soldier also has a new "Combat Intelligence", which modifies how much AP they earn at each rank. Smarter soldiers earn more AP, so they can buy more abilities.
And on top of that, you can then choose to spend any extra AP you've earned from combat (listed as "XCOM AP" on the promotion screen) to purchase additional abilities.
TLDR: Very possible to unlock all of the abilities if you really invest in one soldier, or if they're super smart.

The Training Center (replacing the AWC) can be built to allow regular XCOM soldiers to also use AP as well. AP is in addition to XP and is the primary (if not only) way for Faction soldiers to improve.
Also, apparently according to Solomon's twitter, one of the three branches for Faction soldiers - the "XCOM" Branch - is populated with randomly chosen abilities from the standard classes.

[nenjin]

Wow, what tech level do you need to wade in to Supply Drop missions in LW2 with the intent of getting some real loot? I went with 8 guys with Advent at Extremely Heavy Reinforcements, and I was getting 8+ sized pods, multiples, back to back with some of them being full Muton pods.

That shit is cray cray.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That's LW2 for you. In the end, it was Pavlonis that went too far into hard for hard's sake, not Firaxis.

[nenjin]

I mean, I kinda dig the flexibility because it has not been a challenge to over infiltrate most missions without burning intel, and maybe one day I could field units that could dial that?. But at that point I'd be doing it for lels, I don't see the practical side of attempting those missions even if you ARE save-scumming. I expected, I dunno, a little more scaling than that. Some "Extremely Light" missions feel like there's tons of Ayyyysss ass to ass already.

[Neonivek]

That's LW2 for you. In the end, it was Pavlonis that went too far into hard for hard's sake, not Firaxis.

In all fairness you aren't supposed to do extremely heavy if you can help it and even then only with the most experienced and powerful people you can muster.

[nenjin]

Well it seems to be the kind of mission where you're taking damage, probably lots of damage, because it's hard to a) realistically keep down 8+ guys with 12 to 14 health apiece with 8 guys, and b) not chain activate pod after pod. Pods out of your sight line run, not walk, to the sound of gunfire and battle in LW2 when their alert level is that, so they show up quickly, when they're that large and that densely spawned. It seems like the kind of mission they'd let you take more than 8 guys for.

[Neonivek]

I will say though the Long War 2 has a miscommunication problem

The IMMEDIATE instinct of a player when seeing that they don't have to get to 100% is that they can chose to end it early for a harder, but sooner, mission. Yet the reality is that you should always go for 100% no matter what.

[Cthulhu]

Can we talk about Xenonauts here?  The game sells itself on the improved air combat but god damn these pipe fitters are getting on my nerves.  The way they approach targets is so inefficient I probably lose half the UFOs I go after if I don't babysit them every step of the way.