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[Sonlirain]

Odd. On normal i don't have much trouble with the first cargo ship. Its usually only sectoids drones thinmen and seekers. Maybe floaters.
And of course 1 or 2 outsiders.

Nothing a squaddie squad can't handle really.

[scrdest]

It's rather strange to argue that LW alien buildup is tied to your own progression. That doesn't follow at all; their tech progression is wholly independent of player progress. The only way you affect how much and how rapidly they progress is by executing missions and flights which delay them. They're scaling completely independent of you; they'll be at the same point regardless of whether you've puttered around doing autopsies and building sawn-offs, or if you've powerground your way up to pulse lasers in five months, as long as your Geoscape actions and Battlescape successes are relatively equal.

It's also rather laughable to compare it to the vanilla progression solely because you can set them back with early sequence-breaking and luck/savescumming; that's not at all how vanilla went. I can't speak for anyone else, but frankly I don't want that vanilla progression, that's a big part of why I play LW.

"Oh no, enemies become more difficult and more numerous as the game goes on!" is an attitude I have a rather hard time grasping -- the only times I've had it become literally unbeatable without cheating were Impossible and certain maps on Classic with Cinematic whatever turned off, and when that happened I did the reasonable thing and retreated. That's one of the underlying themes of LW, having to accept that you can't win every battle. In my current campaign I was in a stretch for about two months after I overreached myself and got all of my interceptors badly damaged, which forced me to only fight the missions that came to me. It fucked up my Alloy income and delayed my development, but I sucked it up and kept going. Now I'm back on track and clawing my way out of the hole I dug.

You seem to be missing the point of the argument.

It's not that the alien tech progression is or is not dependent on player progress. It's that, as keeping that progression in check depends on doing missions, which depend on keeping the progression in check, therefore a single early-game success begets further successes and an early failure (including ignoring or aborting) results in further failures. The learning curve is, essentially, backwards, ramping up difficulty in earlygame entirely outside of your control and getting trivialized later when you can reliably halt it.

I wanted more numerous/difficult enemies as the game goes on. What I got was the game being reduced to reloads before a month passes because suddenly ayy lmaos have more health than my Corporal has with armor on and ten lasersights affixed to each limb, because I didn't realize that first Large ship was a cargo ship.

[Rince Wind]

I did really well up until maybe three months ago I think (it is the 1st of December now), but then I lost the airgame and too many satellites. Europe is gone, Canada was the scripted country. I just got China back from the aliens and barely managed to not loose it again at the end of the month, India is at about 95 panic, which is an improvement.
Now I get 10 meld per canister and etherals started showing up in the last terror mission. I really need to get my shit together and deprive the aliens of some resources. I just got my first nexus online, so I can watch the whole of Asia and either Africa or North America. Now I just need some more fighters and weapons for them. I ragequit my current mission. It is a small map (the icecream parlor), and on turn two I have activated two pods myself, and another two wandered into me. Of course, there is a rookie in my team and some more low level guys, because November was hard. lost 4 guys (not counting base security) and have quite a few injured ones.

Plasma Weapons are 18 days away, pulse lasers 8, not sure what would be the better choice. I guess plasma, because it is free?

[puke]

its free if you can capture them.  How many heavy plasma weapons do you have in stock, compared to how many laser weapons can you build?

Thats one of the things that irritates me about LW:  manufacturing costs for high tech items is exorbitant.  This would be fine if I could say something like "always outfit this guy with these items when available"  and then the "make available" button wouldn't just be the "fuck me, i have to manually rearm everyone now" button.

Given the limitations of the game engine, I feel like I need to manufacture enough weapons and armor to outfit all of my guys.  This is not optimal play, but it is /convenient/ play.

This gets really pricey when it comes to MEC troops.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Plasma weapons are not free in Long War. They cost a bunch and require alien weapons as production components. Also the Plasma Weapons research only unlocks the SMG and carbine. There are more plasma researches for the rest.

[Flying Dice]

You seem to be missing the point of the argument.

It's not that the alien tech progression is or is not dependent on player progress. It's that, as keeping that progression in check depends on doing missions, which depend on keeping the progression in check, therefore a single early-game success begets further successes and an early failure (including ignoring or aborting) results in further failures. The learning curve is, essentially, backwards, ramping up difficulty in earlygame entirely outside of your control and getting trivialized later when you can reliably halt it.

I wanted more numerous/difficult enemies as the game goes on. What I got was the game being reduced to reloads before a month passes because suddenly ayy lmaos have more health than my Corporal has with armor on and ten lasersights affixed to each limb, because I didn't realize that first Large ship was a cargo ship.

No, I'm saying that your argument doesn't make sense. You're suggesting that LW is a binary system in which one of the two sides is always going to have an overwhelming advantage, despite that not being the case. You need to get lucky with the Harvester spawn and go out of your way to gain that early lead, but unless you're playing on a low difficulty and have a perfect campaign after that the advantage you gain will slowly fade away over the next couple months.

Meanwhile, you're acting as if not taking that initial landed ship dooms you to failure, which is outright laughable. The mod was designed for players to not take that ship. And, frankly, even if you don't take it, the early months are still the easiest in the game. LW has never handed me an outright unwinnable scenario in the first couple months, and the overwhelming majority of players apparently have the same experience, given that most of the talk about difficulty has to do with the lategame surprises. Not being able to one-shot all the ayy lmaos with ballistics doesn't make the game impossible. 

[Rince Wind]

Heavy Plasma, not so many, I think. But while I have a decent amount of materials (couple hundred of each) money is scarce. I could sell stuff to get more, but I have no idea how much pulse lasers cost, and I'd like to give my guys titan armor (and the lighter equivalent) as well.
Heavy plasma is the SAW one, right? So I would only need one or two, (unless they are needed for sniper and maybe shotgun? But as there is no more shotgun model, I would guess it comes down to a fundry upgrade).

Only carbines, hmm. I had hoped for rifles as well.
And I can't just use the captured guns?
Oh, I play beta 14, as I started this campaign a while back.

[puke]

Plasma weapons are not free in Long War. They cost a bunch and require alien weapons as production components. Also the Plasma Weapons research only unlocks the SMG and carbine. There are more plasma researches for the rest.

Oh, thats right.  Somehow I thought they had a lower cost because you needed to capture the weapons, and heavy plasma weapons were hard to come by --- but they're actually hella expensive.  You need both a captured gun, and the resources to modify it for xcom use.

I usually stick with Pulse and Gauss, since getting the captured weapons for plasma guns is a serious hassle.

If you are short on cash, plasma might not be for you:  http://ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Weapons_(Long_War)#Plasma

[Rince Wind]

Pulse it will be then.
And probably Africa, not NA.

[Flying Dice]

That's one thing LW did really well, making each continent bonus worthwhile. One really good start as of b15 is Canada: it makes it easier to build up your interceptor fleet with the continent bonus, and the country bonus starts you with a free workshop and lab or four corporals. Egypt's pretty boss too; you start with Advanced Repair or 50% reduced fatigue for psi/genemod/officer ranks. Japan can give you three extra steam vents(!!), Nigeria +1 mobility to all troops, shit like that.

Check out the satellite bonuses as well, there's a lot of useful stuff to pick up.

[i2amroy]

I'm a big fan of the France start with the 40% decreased time between country requests, and 40% bonus rewards and defense from completed ones. The sooner each country hits that max shield the less I need to worry about keeping them in the game.

[BurnedToast]

Doing well, then LOL 3 monsters closets wander in at the same time, 6 thin men, 3 floaters.... all I've got is basic weapons and armor  They scatter really wide so the best I can do is rocket two of them.

Also it's that goddamn subway map (with the subway/train in the middle) so the only cover is light cover, or the extremely fragile full cover signs (or the side of the train, which was no good because that's where the aliens were)

I actually won due to awesome tactical prowess extreme RNG luck (not gonna lie, it worked in my favor for once, had a couple low % desperation shots actually hit which saved me), but I lost my only squadsight sniper, a squaddie, and Zhang The worst part is I used my last medkit dose to heal the squaddie, and next turn he got crit-sniped out of cover... and I had tactical rigging researching with less than a day left, I would have brought a second medkit on someone Zhang went crit soon after, so all I could do was watch him die while I kicked the squaddie's useless medkit-wasting corpse.

Killed the last baddie one turn after zhang died, too bad if I'd have won before he bled out I was going to use that as an excuse to make him into a mec (He never asked for this....)

Edit: and of course, right after, like literally 3 hours later, a terror mission and all I've got is rookies with basic guns/armor, everyone else is is in the hospital or dead... AND I just researched SHIVs  but they take 3 days to build. FFS, the game has to be doing this on purpose, the timing on these things could not be worse.

[Sheb]

Just had my first squadwipe. EXALT covert extraction in LW. It was that map with a highway down and a train up. I found the Exalt QRF with battlescanners, they were on the top. I tried to run around them, but didn't move fast enough on such a small map and activated it. At the same time, I had already activated a smaller, 3-men pod in front of me on the highway. I managed to clear it, but by then, I had the 10-strong QRF swarming down on the highway, cutting my retreat. And EXALT reinforcement was dropping in.

Seeing no other options, I dashed my operative out of that shed, brought it down to my troops and managed to hit one of the relays. I thought the hacking would let me at least thin the EXALT ranks, maybe enough to make dashing to the EVAC zone a possibility.

It wasn't fated so. An EXALT Heavy shouldered his rocket launcher and set a fire rocket across half the map, straight at two of my men hunkering behind a truck. One of them died instantly,the other was down to a few HP and panicked. My assault also panicked.

At this point, I was fucked, EXALT reinforcement was dropping faster than I could kill while constant fire from the QRF was dwindling my troops. I lost five of my best men and women that day.

[puke]

Edit: and of course, right after, like literally 3 hours later, a terror mission and all I've got is rookies with basic guns/armor, everyone else is is in the hospital or dead... AND I just researched SHIVs  but they take 3 days to build. FFS, the game has to be doing this on purpose, the timing on these things could not be worse.

I'm not sure, but I think it might be better to lose those terror mission than to ignore them or retreat from them. 

I /THINK/ an ignore  or retreat is an instant defection and a major morale hit to the continent, whereas failure is still very bad but isn't an auto-defection.

If you really cant win it, maybe just send a sacrificial rookie or shiv.

[BurnedToast]

It's always instant defection unless you win, and save at least one civilian. Even if you "win" but don't save any civilians, it's instant defection (maybe different in long war, I am playing vanilla). Anyway I tried it with 4 rookies for laughs and... they actually survived much longer then I expected, killed 3 chrysalids and some floaters, but eventually a zombie turn into a chrysalid while nearby, and the free move was just close enough to move in and kill one of them, which started a failure cascade.

I managed to get SHIVs out after that and they carried me for a while (aced confounding light my first try with no spoilers, too bad I had to skip gangplank because it comes less than a day later and the SHIVs were all damaged) but basic SHIVs + a few mid-tier soldiers vs cyberdisks and mutons, just didn't work out all that well so I gave up.

I feel like maybe they overtuned the early game difficulty with EW, there seems to be more missions per month so even when you don't wipe more soldiers end up in hospital (especially with seekers getting 2 almost completely unavoidable damage each), which spreads exp out more (which is not bad, per se, but makes early/mid game harder without high rank soldiers), it's even more painful because you need more exp to level now.

I also can't figure out any good strategy for the strategic level. 40% longer research means you *need* some labs/scientists (unless you want to spend 2+ months researching lasers), but the panic mechanics haven't changed at all so you still need to engineer/satellite rush too. It just seems like there's never a good time to buy it, especially if you want any OTC/foundry stuff.

EW classic honestly feels harder then EU impossible was (not that I manged to win or get more then a couple months in EU impossible).