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[Urist Imiknorris]

No, it's this one.

[BFEL]

No, it's this one.

That ones not too bad in my opinion. The VAN DORNE one though...GAHUGH

[BigFatStupidHead]

Finally got EW working and am trying Long War. I hate the first mission at the best of times, and Long War just makes it worse. It compounds the problem of not being able to pick your first team by giving a random mishmash of weapons to soldiers who can't shoot straight. I've read up on interceptor battles and don't think I'm looking forward to that, and I'm annoyed by the extra expensive satellites and extra small arrays. But I'll give it a chance; maybe I'll find it works out alright.

[umiman]

It makes up for the nerf in accuracy by giving you a shittonne of men.

You can also modify the config files of long war if things are not as you like them.

The reason I stopped playing long war is simply because it got a bit silly after awhile with the ubermassive sectopods and gigantic hordes of enemies and honestly, it drags on after awhile. Though that might be because I've played such ridiculous amounts of XCOM anyway.

[BigFatStupidHead]

Yeah! Stages can start to drag after a bit. Keep 'em short and sweet!

I'm figuring a major philosophy in Long War's design is "why do in one what you can do in many?" probably where the 'long' comes from in the name.

[Sonlirain]

Long war is about making the game (much) longer.
A typical non modded playthrough is like what? 40 hours maybe?
Assuming you don't play with a ruler and try winning the game without getting shot once and the like.
I really doubt that there are more than 50 missions in the base game before you get into the endgame... and that's not that much if you think about it.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, in some respects Long War is less for people who want the game to be difficult (though it does still cater heavily to that demograpic) and more for those of us who wanted more time on the Battlescape fighting tactical-level battles.

[BigFatStupidHead]

I'll admit, it IS fun having to run around the enemy cover with flankers. I think I would prefer this to have come about by cover being more valuable rather than marksmanship being so much worse, but YMMV.

Any hints, good mods I should be aware of, etc?

[crazysheep]

In what way would you like cover to be more valuable?

[BigFatStupidHead]

Cover gives the same defensive bonus as in vanilla EW but your troops can't shoot straight, so enemies are harder to hit. I think it would have been better for your troops to still be able to point their guns the right way round and cover being more valuable, making enemies harder to hit. Mind you, I like to play with Aiming Angles so that probably has me biased.

[crazysheep]

Eh, cover also gives damage reduction in LW.

Wouldn't you consider the miss chance as a defensive bonus?

[BigFatStupidHead]

Long War makes cover worth +10/+5 and grant some DR, but also every xcom agent is about -10 aim compared to EW. I would have preferred seeing cover worth even more, like +20/+15, without the decrease in xcom aim. Xcom agent aim is just a huge shock to me! But this just means I have to accept it as a challenge and adapt my tactics.

[crazysheep]

Yeah, I can see how +20/0 is better vs +10/-10.

[Chiefwaffles]

I don't really like Long War myself for the aforementioned reasons (no hive queens please and thank you) and due to small things like spawn randomization.
In EW, the maps may have been (also in long war) premade, but that gave them one benefit - they were designed with playing in mind. They were designed so you could just go "through" the map and usually finish killing all the aliens near the end. This is best shown by the things like the fire trails in UFO crashes that you can follow towards the UFO.
But Long War randomizes spawns, making the intended route meaningless and therefore making me have to spend more of my time hunting for aliens and the objectives. I want to have the intended experience, and I definitely don't want to spend half of my time in the battlescape playing hide and seek with aliens.

This is the same reason I'm not too fond of randomly generated maps, either. It's much more difficult if not impossible to bring the alien hunting to an acceptable level.

[genmac]

What's a good way to start base wise on long war?  I feel like the research takes too long and the abduction missions don't have the option of grabbing a few engineers or scientists early on.  I was feeling pretty good about my last attempt until the bomb disposal mission, when the sectiods all bumped up to 4 health, 5 with the boost, and got completely slaughtered

Wow...I'm making a mod specifically to make this easier because I am a baby and looking at this tells me one thing. You suck ass man.

Your guys start with 3 health (and -10 to accuracy compared to aliens) so taking bomb disposal early on was pretty brutal.  A few upgrades later and it's trivial.  Markman's rifles are freakin great once your guys level up, all of the zhang council stuff that I started pre-laser was a breeze thanks to a couple of marksmen, and they even helped my laser rifle guys complete a 30 zombie/chrysalid terror attack by backing up, then shoot, repeat

edit: On the first terror mission my best guys were getting crushed and it was a real bummer to find out that no you can't send in 6 privates, rescue 9 civilians, and then escape with the remaining 2 or 3 privates.  It counts zero civilian saves