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[Rolan7]

I can give them carbines to improve their rocket aim?  the f*** what?  Can I have them stuff cucumbers in their pants to improve their confidence and will?

Works for me, have you ever tried it?  Carrots are good too.

[Flying Dice]

Wait, what now?  I'm pretty sure that that laser sights and scopes increase the accuracy of your primary weapon only.  Are you meaning to tell me that high tech sights wont help my rocket accuracy, but the simple act of carrying a laser rifle with me WILL help it?

Yup.

Untrue.

Long War uses a revamped system for rocket accuracy. Aim is used when firing rockets to determine the chance of them landing on target, rather than the fixed 90% chance in vanilla. Rather than the vanilla behavior of a missed rocket veering wildly off course, Long War rockets never "miss" but will veer off course a random amount based on the soldier's Aim, with higher Aim giving less scatter. Lower range means less scatter, and the soldier achieving 120 Aim yields no scatter at any range. Rockets can also be fired after moving, but with increased scatter and reduced range. Rockets can not change height through scatter.

Anything that improves a rocketeer's Aim will improve their accuracy with rockets, including SCOPEs and laser sights. Incidentally, it's better to equip your rocketeers with carbines; the Laser Carbine gives +15 Aim (note that the SCOPE only gives +10), and all others give +7, while other laser weapons also give +7. Carbines are also better in terms of Mobility, which rocketeers are hungry for.

This is also why it's usually best to train new recruits with laser weapons, even at the point where you're using gauss and plasma, because the big aim bonus helps them land shots, which helps them kill, which helps them rank up. There are also lots of other small bonuses that you have to pay attention to notice; for example, the Gauss Long Rifle has a -15 Aim penalty and a higher Mobility penalty than other sniper rifles, but gives the sniper the HEAT perk.

Likewise, the Laser Cannons for your interceptors are one of the best air weapons due to their range; you'll eventually get Foundry projects to, among other things, improve the penetration of all interceptor weapons, and a lot of the "stronger" ones are also much less accurate, which precludes (ab)using Defensive to keep them alive. Likewise, they're also good for training new interceptors up.

Also in relation to interceptors and satellites, don't play like it's vanilla. Fast-expanding is a bad idea, especially because you lose points on council reports for spotting but not intercepting UFOs. Don't expand to another continent until you have six interceptors on your home one. If you spot a UFO, dispatch an interceptor even if you can't kill it, and in that case immediately abort. An aborted interception is better than not doing it at all.

For your Infantry, give them High-cap Mags until they get the perk that does the same thing. Shoot for Ammo Conservation ASAP. It's expensive in LW ($600, 20 Muton corpses, 100 fragments, and 65 alloys), but damn if it isn't great. Likewise, Alien Metallurgy and Improved Salvage are important to get early on.

Later on, turn small UFO breaches into farming sessions to take captives. You can't produce your own plasma weapons, so you need to grab them. Likewise, later in the game you'll get excellent offers from nations for live captives. Check the UFOpedia table for what corpses are used for, and once you've got them researched, keep them on hand to sell. Don't actually Grey-Market anything unless you're going to spend the funds instantly, to avoid the risk of EXALT ganking you.

There's lots of stuff, really, but the underlying theme is staying power. Plan for the long game. Money is easy to get, satellites aren't terribly important. Focus on teching up as hard as you can, and on building a roster which is broad over one which is deep (aka, lots of soldiers of equivalent level, rather than an A-team that's 4-5 ranks ahead of everyone else). I mean, heck, I'm in mid-October and I still haven't researched the Outsider shard. I'm also somewhat behind because I tried to build up NA and Europe at the same time, and the result was a solid two weeks where I had nine interceptors in repair and two up at any given time.

[puke]

ah ha, so the text that says that Laser Sights and SCOPEs only benefit primary weapons is in fact incorrect?  Any accuracy bonus applies to rockets now?  Well, still a bit nonsensical but at least it follows a logical pattern.  So if all these things give accuracy bonuses, will a laser pistol provide an additional bonus above and beyond your regular laser weapon?

I'm picturing this as a bunch of weapons all with modular rail systems.  You've got your laser rifle with a SCOPE on top and an underslung laser pistol, and a laser targeting system under that.  Something like this, plus a laser:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Thanks for the other tips, very handy.  Some followup questions I have not seen explicit answers to elsewhere:

Multiple HEAT or SHRED perks on the same soldier dont stack, do they?  I assume if you have both HEAT and SHRED that they do combine with each other?  Do multiple hits (either from the same soldier or from different soldiers) with SHRED or HOLO have stacking bonuses?

I think Hi Cap Mags stacks with a similar perk, so those infantry can really become powerhouses I guess.  There is something to be said about pure volume of fire, especially with things like firing twice, automatic overwatch, and multiple opportunity shots. 

I've heard experienced players say that the most reliable way to go is with these boring but stable classes -- gunner and infantry to just lay down lots of fire.  But there is something extremely pleasing about playing with Scouts (dodging past opportunity fire) and Assaults (nothing feels better than taking out a chrysalid with a close-combat shot)

Good to know about inability to build plasma, I hadn't realized that.  Also nice to have a point of comparison regarding your time-in and status.  Good to know that I made the right call with investing in the improved salvage project.

Do you at least have a bird over the defector country?  Do more UFOs land there than other places?

And Rolan7, that's great for you but carrots don't give me the girth I need to really feel good about myself.

[GiglameshDespair]

Are you sure, FD? Pretty sure it was patched so things like laser scopes don't effect rockets. Think it's been mentioned by Beaglerush in his videos as well. I might be wrong, but I feel pretty certain this is the case.

Puke: laser pistols give no aim bonus. so unfortunately, no, you can't stack it that way.

[SOLDIER First]

Bleh.
My disc's broken and I have to wait a little while to get a new one.

[Flying Dice]

Are you sure, FD? Pretty sure it was patched so things like laser scopes don't effect rockets. Think it's been mentioned by Beaglerush in his videos as well. I might be wrong, but I feel pretty certain this is the case.

Puke: laser pistols give no aim bonus. so unfortunately, no, you can't stack it that way.

It might have been, since I haven't updated in a while. That said, I'm not certain how they'd have done it. I don't recall it being in any of Beagle's XCOM videos, in fact it's often quite the opposite -- he's the one who clued me on to using carbines on my rocketeers in the first place and to my knowledge still uses them, and I generally "watch" his videos by listening to them in the background, since I'm mostly interested in them as a different opinion on tactics and strategy rather than the actual gameplay.

That aside, I don't even know if it's technically possible with the nuCOM system to give weapons independent accuracy values rather than having them alter the soldier's Aim, else they would probably have done that from the start. Likewise, the wiki still lists laser weapons and carbines as giving Aim bonuses, and it would've been updated if that was changed.

[puke]

Bleh.
My disc's broken and I have to wait a little while to get a new one.

Wow, people still use Discs for things?  Or are you jumping in with the carrot / cucumber jokes in some way that just went over my head?

[puke]

ah ha, so the text that says that Laser Sights and SCOPEs only benefit primary weapons is in fact incorrect? 

WHOOPS!  It actually does not say that at all.  The description of the SCOPE benefit when I bring up my soldier info clearly states that it benefits rocket launchers, as it logically should.

I'd have to guess that since carbines benefit them, the mechanics are something like "this item changes aim by n%" and "this item uses aim skill for hit probability (BOOLEAN VALUE)"

But that's just a WAG.

[Sirus]

I just had my first encounter with Stalkers. Two of them came busting out of a window at high speed (I literally shouted "what the fuck was that?!" when it happened), immediately stealthed, and then proceeded to instakill kill my medic (who was running on a single health point). Not even having every other squad member nearby and on Overwatch was enough to save her

[SOLDIER First]

Bleh.
My disc's broken and I have to wait a little while to get a new one.

Wow, people still use Discs for things?  Or are you jumping in with the carrot / cucumber jokes in some way that just went over my head?

Disc, you know? Comes in a plastic case with an instruction booklet, you put it in your console to play the game...

[Robosaur]

Are there any rumors of another expansion? Or sequel?

I sure as hell hope so...

[Flying Dice]

ah ha, so the text that says that Laser Sights and SCOPEs only benefit primary weapons is in fact incorrect? 

WHOOPS!  It actually does not say that at all.  The description of the SCOPE benefit when I bring up my soldier info clearly states that it benefits rocket launchers, as it logically should.

I'd have to guess that since carbines benefit them, the mechanics are something like "this item changes aim by n%" and "this item uses aim skill for hit probability (BOOLEAN VALUE)"

But that's just a WAG.

You can literally see it when you equip your soldiers. Check the aim value of one, then give them a laser carbine and check it again. That's how all the weapons which change stats work, with flat addition or subtraction. Carbines end up affecting rockets because they provide a boost to Aim, rather than having an innately higher chance to hit.

I mentioned it earlier, but there's a table over on UFOpedia which lists the complete stats and effects for every weapon.

[Sirus]

Welp. The game hates me.

I'm on what I assume is the first Exalt mission. Need to escort a VIP to the exit zone while being harassed by Thin Men. I try to get my assault in position to stun a wounded Thin Man, when that same Thin Man takes aim at the VIP. The VIP behind full cover, with his head down, with a wall that I was sure blocked line-of-sight between his cover and the Thin Man. The VIP gets one-shot, mission failed, get to the evac zone. I run my assault in, stun the Thin Man, and it turns out that was the last enemy on the map because the mission ended right there.

If that Thin Man had just missed his shot...or if the VIP hadn't taken so much damage...or if the wall had actually blocked LOS...ugh.


AAAAAAND now my first terror mission of this campaign. With all but one of my veterans in the hospital for treatment from the last two missions.
Terror mission, of course, failed. Two rookies and my Sergeant Heavy died, the last two rookies managed to get back to the evac zone and escape. Australia straight-up just left the council

[EnigmaticHat]

The game doesn't hate you.  No, what happened is the first EXALT mission is bullshit.  One thin man is a credible threat to the team at that point in the game, so they put you up against a dozen in one mission, and they usually have the high ground.

...ok I guess the game does hate you.  Or the developers at least.

[crazysheep]

Not sure what goes on in Long War, but you shouldn't be fighting that many Thin Men in the first Council mission (not EXALT, that's the one where you fight rival humans). IIRC if you get Council missions that early, you get Sectoids first, then Thin Men near the end of the turn.