(LW) How to do Portent 1/2nd month for dummies. Impossible / Ironman

[XiongBenXiong]

Hey guys, here's an easy way to do Portent on I/I (April). I forgot if last season it was earlier or later but even if you get it in March, the difficulty should be around the same.

1. Camp the building rooftops and advance slowly. The first building never has any aliens (might change in future who knows xD). Hop between each piece of cover on the rooftop.

2. Minimize how much ground you check, don't pop 2 pods if possible. For instance, the first check I make is on the corner of the first building on the left side as I can only look a little bit into the street in the center and facing left is a game wall.

3. Fall back to one of the defense points on the roof top that doesn't involve a wall that can look down onto the ground. This tricks the thin men to come to you and run up the building for an overwatch trap.

4. Engage the thin men once you've knocked out 1 or 2 of them. You don't want to fight 3 thin men by themselves.

5. Kill all the enemies before you pick up the survivor. You don't want to deal with drops and the survivor.

6. Drops only happen depending on how far you move your survivor. The key is then to keep your soldiers ahead and on the buildings so that they can overwatch towards the ground when the aliens drop down and to not advance your survivor so much.

I just went with a team full of scopes + laser sights. I think I had a corporal or lcpl as the highest level. I brought an engineer with 2 ap / 2 HE which I basically didn't use and a medic which I didn't have to use either minus taking off some acid near the end. :p I made one mistake where I got greedy for a kill but it didn't cost me fortunately but this mission is pretty easy if you play it right. xD

Link for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz20H9hUUhE

Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLZUnRwcrejZN8J0Zm1Mw0XoTpWutFv3N

[Stardustfire]

missing the most important point "1a" . do 2 early MECs to make portent cakewalk.....
And btw when u talked about a modded game say that u mean a modded game, other ppl can get confused and think u mean vanilla.
Edit: and in vanilla it ever happens second month.

[XiongBenXiong]

Originally posted by Stardustfire:

missing the most important point "1a" . do 2 early MECs to make portent cakewalk.....
And btw when u talked about a modded game say that u mean a modded game, other ppl can get confused and think u mean vanilla.
Edit: and in vanilla it ever happens second month.

I placed the LW in the topic but yeh I'll stick that into the topic too. Thanks

[red255]

played an EU game recently and was surprised slingshot comes in month 1. still beat it but was much more of a challenge over the EW version.

[Kash]

Early mechs possible in Long War?

[SquarelyCircle]

Why post this on the discussion board instead of making a guide? On the discussion board this will disappear in a week. Make a guide, so that people who are searching for this strategy can find it later.

[XiongBenXiong]

Originally posted by SquarelyCircle:

Why post this on the discussion board instead of making a guide? On the discussion board this will disappear in a week. Make a guide, so that people who are searching for this strategy can find it later.

Thanks, I'm a noob to steam community. I will do so xD

[happy]

Originally posted by xBr0wnBear:

Originally posted by SquarelyCircle:

Why post this on the discussion board instead of making a guide? On the discussion board this will disappear in a week. Make a guide, so that people who are searching for this strategy can find it later.

Thanks, I'm a noob to steam community. I will do so xD

well, if you really are to make a guide i would suggest you seriously rethink point 3....
yes over watch trap is nice, but, relying on it is nothing but serious, if you are going to play I/I, this is not a reliable advice

in march, april, that s only 6 overwatches, odds are you dont have 6 experienced infantries so most of your overwatches suffer from -20 aim penalty...providing the first building has nasty trap doors that have access to unsuspected vulnerable areas, given that overwatches can miss or hit and not kill...thats a good plan to end up with 2 dead soldiers(if unlucky)
lucky or inlucky is not the core discussion here, the important thing is that if you are to make a guide, you should be aware that relying on overwatch to deal damage or kill is a really BAD plan
overwatch in I/I is to prevent aliens from moving, not to kill them

i ve watched some of you vids, though you certainly are a nice fellow, you are also a very lucky one, good for you, but luck is sooner or later going to abandon you, you really rely on it too much and had you had normal luck, you would not have dodged the flanking shots you ve lived through, and the ones that did hit you surely would not have dealt a friendly 4 damage.

edit
"had you had" is that even near proper english???

[XiongBenXiong]

Originally posted by happy:

Originally posted by xBr0wnBear:

Thanks, I'm a noob to steam community. I will do so xD

well, if you really are to make a guide i would suggest you seriously rethink point 3....
yes over watch trap is nice, but, relying on it is nothing but serious, if you are going to play I/I, this is not a reliable advice

in march, april, that s only 6 overwatches, odds are you dont have 6 experienced infantries so most of your overwatches suffer from -20 aim penalty...providing the first building has nasty trap doors that have access to unsuspected vulnerable areas, given that overwatches can miss or hit and not kill...thats a good plan to end up with 2 dead soldiers(if unlucky)
lucky or inlucky is not the core discussion here, the important thing is that if you are to make a guide, you should be aware that relying on overwatch to deal damage or kill is a really BAD plan
overwatch in I/I is to prevent aliens from moving, not to kill them

i ve watched some of you vids, though you certainly are a nice fellow, you are also a very lucky one, good for you, but luck is sooner or later going to abandon you, you really rely on it too much and had you had normal luck, you would not have dodged the flanking shots you ve lived through, and the ones that did hit you surely would not have dealt a friendly 4 damage.

edit
"had you had" is that even near proper english???

Hi, thanks for the advice. Actually I'd like to raise a point about overwatching. Using 70 aim rookies (base 65 + 5 with laser sight). Since overwatches in LW provide a 70%*aim modifier while enemy light cover provides a flat 30 defense. I'd argue retreating when outnumbered allows you higher aim. I think you are underestimating early game low % shots, while yes they do indeed kind of suck, multiple 40-50% shots onto the same target usually provides a kill. My point #3 basically involves retreating out of LoS so that when a thin man comes to you, you get 6 shots while you are hiding in that building whereas the aliens have to either double dash across the street to get to you, or run to the cover below the building in the first building on Portent.

I hope that clarifies up my point. xD

[happy]

you weirdly have a point, rookies suck and their overwatches are sort of better than them trying to shoot a half covered alien

BUT, it only works in the short term

-overwatches use bullets, laser rifles have only three shots...
-some ennemies, flying ones, can nastily find a unexpected position that will cause severe problem on your turn, in that case you are far better off with a steady weapon that will allow a decent shot at it on your turn instead of a normal shot
-some ennemies, flying ones again are hard to hit on overwatch, as they don t use cover anyway, in that situation, you end up with -20 overwatch malus, -30 flying target malus, for a total of -50
had you just shot on your turn, it s -30, had you steadied weapon behind full cover, it s -10 on next turn
-most important, if your rookies use HEs and flashbangs , you rarely need to overwatch, ennemy cover is not a problem anymore, you easily shoot or blind from your high covered troops, hunker the low cover ones, wait until the remaining capable ennemies make a move, then finish them on the next turn

overwatch is a BAD plan, not a horrible plan, but there are way better I/I plans that will assure you less med bay, less casualties in the longrun, really

[SquarelyCircle]

Although there are missions where sitting around overwatching is a bad idea (specifically, I'm thinking of missions where extra bad guys come over time, and anything where you hope to get meld), overwatch is pretty good.
It would be amazingly overpowered, if it weren't for the negative stat effects. Someone in cover may have a 15% chance of being hit, but when they leave, they may have a 40% chance of being hit. With overwatch, that brings it up to 20% chance of hitting them. Furthermore, you might catch an enemy who foolishly tries to reposition themself for a better shot. So, the overwatch is more likely to catch the enemy that is going to do the most damage. In contrast, overwatch won't waste ammo on an enemy that is just going to overwatch this turn. Plus, overwatch allows you to fire on enemies without exposing yourself to the enemy overwatch (i.e. you don't need to reposition yourself to hit them).

I can't say that it's the best strategy every time, but I certainly think saying it is a bad plan is at the very least an incomplete picture of the skill.

Throw on top of that all the skills that make overwatch better, and you have yourself a great skill. Especially for snipers.

Granted, I have never played impossible mode. Could be different.

[XiongBenXiong]

Originally posted by happy:

you weirdly have a point, rookies suck and their overwatches are sort of better than them trying to shoot a half covered alien

BUT, it only works in the short term

-overwatches use bullets, laser rifles have only three shots...
-some ennemies, flying ones, can nastily find a unexpected position that will cause severe problem on your turn, in that case you are far better off with a steady weapon that will allow a decent shot at it on your turn instead of a normal shot
-some ennemies, flying ones again are hard to hit on overwatch, as they don t use cover anyway, in that situation, you end up with -20 overwatch malus, -30 flying target malus, for a total of -50
had you just shot on your turn, it s -30, had you steadied weapon behind full cover, it s -10 on next turn
-most important, if your rookies use HEs and flashbangs , you rarely need to overwatch, ennemy cover is not a problem anymore, you easily shoot or blind from your high covered troops, hunker the low cover ones, wait until the remaining capable ennemies make a move, then finish them on the next turn

overwatch is a BAD plan, not a horrible plan, but there are way better I/I plans that will assure you less med bay, less casualties in the longrun, really

In B9 actually I'd prefer the HE strategy but without sapper, it's almost impossible to blow up cover now. That's what I was doing in the first few missions and so and my entire last campaign :3. I feel like the nerfs to environmental damage have made HE grenades worthless unless it's on an engineer. Also it's not a -20 overwatch malus it's a 70% to aim. The xcom wiki is wrong; the ufopedia has the actual value.

Also I'd argue that minus the ammo, steadying weapon is rarely worth it. Mathematically (have to find the reddit link), if it's greater than 20% aim or so you should just fire twice rather than steady and shoot once. Of course, like I said I'd argue retreating is the best. The only time I'd steady a weapon is a sniper that has moved or breaching a door (killing the outsider in a landing)

In my last campaign, I really loved flashbangs but now I reserve them more for midgame work. A sectoid can be taken care of by shooting, thinman with an AP grenade. And floaters kind of just suck since they are usually flying so it's hard to use any grenade. This is why I've moved to just 6 hp minimal soldiers with scope + laser sights. Even as a corporal most of them have 85 aim so against a flying unit they stand a decent chance. When you get to mutons, I agree the flashbang is king but I think the new meta is duo gunners to suppress anyways what you can't kill / hit.

Against floaters, also I'd say pack a smoke grenade with heavy cover and you are more or less fine. Overall, I think both of us are seeing the game in a different way and you have some very good points as well that I will definitely take note of.

I think also I'm not suggesting never firing but rather that you gain initiative as you find a good location with heavy cover, overwatch. Get one free volley of fire against the enemy where you'll kill one or two of the pod and you are in an easily defensive location to counterattack the next turn and finish the rest.

Final Note: It's a bit ironic for me since last season everyone called me aggressive haha; that I'm now suggesting more defensive play :p

[SquarelyCircle]

http://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/29l4xw/lw_when_should_one_use_steady_weapon_i_did_the/
The above link is to a post that contains some data on steady weapon, and an interesting analysis. The TL;DR states:

What does this mean?/TL;DR
Without taking into consideration flanks, cover destruction, ammo usage or the need for overwatch, it is always better to use Steady Weapon if your shot's accuracy is less than 20%. If you only need to hit the enemy once, you should use Steady Weapon if your shot's accuracy is below 28% (although perhaps give more weight to firing twice as it nears 28%, as that option may let you hit the enemy on the first turn).

[happy]

to brownbears previous post:
maybe

i play beta14b on I/I with redfog now and don t have the same stuff you have
i frequently get crit hit one shot behind full cover,half cover without hunker down means DEAD in my playthrough, and my HEs do wonder providing i aim at things likely to blow up(desks, cardboard boxes, small concrete stuff) even with rookies

lets say the truth is in the middle , you are a very lucky man, i am a very unfortunate commander

[XiongBenXiong]

Originally posted by SquarelyCircle:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/29l4xw/lw_when_should_one_use_steady_weapon_i_did_the/
The above link is to a post that contains some data on steady weapon, and an interesting analysis. The TL;DR states:

What does this mean?/TL;DR
Without taking into consideration flanks, cover destruction, ammo usage or the need for overwatch, it is always better to use Steady Weapon if your shot's accuracy is less than 20%. If you only need to hit the enemy once, you should use Steady Weapon if your shot's accuracy is below 28% (although perhaps give more weight to firing twice as it nears 28%, as that option may let you hit the enemy on the first turn).

Thanks! That's the one I was looking for xD. This is really a great read.