Long War 2 - I don't understand

[networkn]

So. I heard about LW2 and went to get it, which is done.
I am not sure quite what it is exactly. If I click on LW icon it starts a new mission with lots of people which is a pretty tough mission, but afterward it takes me back to base.

I am already part way through the standard missions and am not sure how exactly LW works. Is it standalone missions that don't affect the main story? If I load up my last saved game from 2 months ago, will it contain new elements?

I am not sure how it all fits together. If it's now part of the main story, should I restart from scratch?

One thing I noticed is how much less accurate I seem to be. Under Xcom previously a fair number of my 30% shots would land, but pretty much now, I am missing most everything at that range.

[Martial.Lore]

Start a new campaign. Choose rookie difficulty, by the sounds of it. Same story. Longer campaign. Vast changes in gameplay, including accuracy of unflanked shots. Ditch the old save. Or leave it in case you decide to go back to it and stop playing LW2 (and you uninstall it).

[Flodge]

It's a complete overhaul of the base game... mission stucture and strategic layers are massively changed, new classes, new mechanics in the background...

It needs a new campaign, loading up an old campaign will probably break the old campaign save and also not work with the mod properly.

[Dies Fourth]

LW2 adds and or changes sooooooooooooooooooooo much its best to take a look at some YT videos for explanations.

Its basically a whole new xcom so w/e you think you know........ its different now.

[networkn]

Ok so start a new campaign seems to be the consensus. Starting a new campaign, is that by clicking the long war button, or clicking the other new game button. Sorry to be dumb.
Is there a good video that explains the changes in a shortish way? I don't need a 2 hour explanation (probably).

[Flodge]

Xwynns has a good series - He was one of the balance testers before the mod was publically released and an entertaining youtuber and very good player, the first episode is a general coverage of the changes :)

[SamBC]

Originally posted by networkn:

Ok so start a new campaign seems to be the consensus. Starting a new campaign, is that by clicking the long war button, or clicking the other new game button. Sorry to be dumb.
Is there a good video that explains the changes in a shortish way? I don't need a 2 hour explanation (probably).

Yes, the Long War button is to start a new campaign.

[networkn]

Ok so I am back to confused. Is long war an independant set of missions/campaign from the original, or do they fuse together? If I enable LW2 and then play the origanal campaign, what is the rules/units that I get? Original or LW?

[Dies Fourth]

Originally posted by networkn:

Ok so I am back to confused. Is long war an independant set of missions/campaign from the original, or do they fuse together? If I enable LW2 and then play the origanal campaign, what is the rules/units that I get? Original or LW?

Xcom2 is a game thats awesome.

LW2 is a MOD that adds/overhauls/changes/re-does EVERYTHING about Xcom2.

If you play Xcom2 its its own original game as the dev team imagined and created.

If you ADD the LW2 MOD the original game is completely overhauled top to bottom.

When you start a new game, if you want to play Xcom2 WITHOUT the LW2 mod select " new game " that will play an original stock NON modded version of Xcom2 as originally released a year or so ago.

If you want the original game to be completely overhauled in almost every way play " Long War".

You cant play Long War 2 without Xcom, you CAN play xcom2 without the long war 2 mod.

[Flodge]

If you enable long war, you can't play the original campaign because you're now playing the LW version of the campaign. Superficially they appear the same; same cutscenes, same storyline, same strategy map but below the surface it's been hugely changed.

So it's kinda hard to answer your questions...

Units... kinda the same? There's still Advent Officers, still Mutons, still Snakes, the general enemy is the same - but the AI that controls them is different, they'll appear in different groups, in some cases they have different abilities... your own soldiers have been completely swapped around from the vanilla 6x different classes with 6 promotions of 2 choices each into 8x different classes with 7 promotions of 3 choices each (and a whole ton of other ability options as well).

Rules... some of it's the same as vanilla, you click and move around a tactical map according to the same movement rules, try and get line of sight to take a shot... but the actual calculation for whether that shot hits or not has been modified, there's a whole revamp to how concealment and stealth works... the whole strategy game has been changed...

It's very different :D

[networkn]

Ok Woah! Started a new campaign as suggested.

I have observations:

1) WTF is up with the aim calculations. I stood point blank against enemies and was showing 82% and missed! Firstly short of climbing on top of them, how can I be 1 square away and only 82%
2) Height seems to have the opposite to an advantage compared to what I was expecting. I am seeing a 45% penalty to aim when I am on top of someone aiming down with an unobstructed view.
3) My second mission was to infiltrate which was baseline extremely light, did it to 100% and turned up. I had 3 players, had the initial sectiod with 2 robot flying things, the standlone robot, then they called in reinforcements, and then I get to the item I need to collect and there are *4* more senior officers who blitzed me. I can't see how it's possible to complete these missions.
4) My players recieved a little bit of damage and are out of action for 2 freaking weeks.

Surely, this can't be for real? Doesn't seem like fun to me!

[Zyrrashijn]

1) That's how it is. Rooks don't hit the broad of a barn.
2) Height advantage is 10% bonus to hit and 10% bonus to defense.
3) Whoever thought engaging in a fight with a squad of three makes a good idea is downright out of his mind.
4) That's how it is. In vanilla XCOM2 they could get hit for 1 HP and be gravely wounded for 40 days. That's none better.

[Dies Fourth]

Is the difficulty setting on " rookie " in your new campaign ?

In the beginning check every mission upper right for " time to infiltirate " it should be 5 days or longer. Thats the TOTAL time your team has to basically sabotage or blend in to the area.

When adding soldiers the time it takes your team rises with every soldier you add. Heavy support ppl with big clunky weapons and gear are louder so they penalize or add time to the infiltration total. The more ppl you add the longer it takes.

You always want the enemy to reach a state of " vulnerable " so theres fewer enemies to face/fight. Theres no shame in....

1. passing on a mission for basically any reason
2. retreating or aborting the mission because the infiltration ISNT at " vulnerable "
3. If the infiltration time is low to start dont even accept the mission

Also like stated above unless your guys are super advanced with primo weps/armor sending 3 soldiers is suicide. I send up to 6 as long as i can get it infiltrated under the time limit. If i get a mission that has like 3 days or something to infiltrate i pass on it altoghether.

Having more people in that areas " haven " gives you more warning/time to infilterate mission in that region.

LW2 is for experienced xcom players, maybe play the regulat xcom2 awhile to get the hang of the games quirks and mechanics ? Also mods can help alot, you ant tailor the game to your skill level by modding just about everything.

Dont play any game unless its " fun ", mod it, lower the difficulty level do w/e you have to until its " fun ". Then slowly bump things up keeping the game fun no matter what.

[Pawnman]

Originally posted by networkn:

Ok Woah! Started a new campaign as suggested.

I have observations:
1) WTF is up with the aim calculations. I stood point blank against enemies and was showing 82% and missed! Firstly short of climbing on top of them, how can I be 1 square away and only 82%

The best you can get with a rookie, even at point blank range is 85% in vanilla! I'm guessing your rookie had 62 starting aim. But this is just how it is in the first mission, pray for RNGesus. I'd say more so in vanilla though, because there you don't even have the flashbangs!

Originally posted by networkn:

2) Height seems to have the opposite to an advantage compared to what I was expecting. I am seeing a 45% penalty to aim when I am on top of someone aiming down with an unobstructed view.

You might not have been flanking the enemy at lower elevation! High cover is 45 Def now & low cover is 30! Something to keep in mind! Flanking is far more important and you use grenades early on to guarantee kills!

Originally posted by networkn:

3) My second mission was to infiltrate which was baseline extremely light, did it to 100% and turned up. I had 3 players, had the initial sectiod with 2 robot flying things, the standlone robot, then they called in reinforcements, and then I get to the item I need to collect and there are *4* more senior officers who blitzed me. I can't see how it's possible to complete these missions.

In short! Some missions are going to be impossible to complete! You're not meant to take on every mission that pops up in front of you due to infiltration/expiration times. Don't take on any mission that has below 4-5 days to infiltrate (4 man squad minimum!). To help with detecting missions, set all your starting Rebel's in your Haven (see Haven management in Cmdrs room;Archives) to the intel job! (maybe leave 1 on recruit, if you wish, but no more than that) Supply isn't worth it the first month (I'd argue even 2nd month) as most of it will get stolen anyways and intel detects missions faster with far more manageable expiration days!

Originally posted by networkn:

4) My players recieved a little bit of damage and are out of action for 2 freaking weeks.

Surely, this can't be for real? Doesn't seem like fun to me!

Quick last question, have you played vanilla Xcom 2 yet?? Beat the campaign on at least commander difficulty?? If you haven't, I's suggest doing that first. Long war 2 ramps the difficulty up to 11! And will tear unprepared players apart. The general consensus is that Long war 2 on Rookie is about just as hard (if not harder) as vanilla on Legend-Ironman!

Now I don't wanna sound mean here but LW2 may not be for you (yet :D ). Play the vanilla game and get familiar with the cover/flanking mechanics first. If you do decide to continue with LW2, hope some of the above helps & good luck
Cheers :)

[Flodge]

1) Yep. Rookies are bad.

2) Flanking is still important even with the height bonus. To understand the math unless you're completely flanking the guy they get a -30 defence from low cover or -45 from high cover whilst the high ground bonus is only +10 aim.

3) At the start of the game there's an entirely new stage to the gameplay where you need to be mostly sneaking around and avoiding conflict entirely. You want to be sneaking to the objective adn then when you lose concealment (whilst grabbing the intel/civs/whatever) you call for evac and try to survive until it arrives. You are not a god squad of super soldiers here to wipe every alien from the planet anymore. Late game you become much stronger, your soldiers are better at infiltrating and you can start to fight more.

4) One of the greatest things in LW1 and LW2 is that you need a full roster. You can't complete every mission in a campaign with the same 6 soldiers. You need to train up lots of squads and replacements - that said you should also be able to complete the opening mission with pretty much no casualties once you know what you're doing. As an experienced player (who still gets wrecked regularly) I'm disappointed if I don't get all the loot and have more than one wound across my whole squad.

[networkn]

I've played a LOT of Xcom over the years, and yes I was about half way though the XCOM2 campaign when I heard about Long war. I guess my recollection about how hard the start of the game was out of whack.

I ran the same 6-10 soldiers through the X2 vanilla campaign so they were pretty senior.

I don't mind difficult (to a point) but the idea of having to level up soldiers from scratch every few levels doesn't sound fun.

In the Vanilla X2, from my memory not completing missions meant the aliens/advent moved the doomsday timer toward bad so I usually took on every mission.

Maybe I should go back and finish the vanilla and then start again from LW2 after I finish.