Questions on the game and beginner tips welcome!

[Hoppled]

So I have a rocky story with this game. I bought it on sale back in 2020 and refunded it. I am quite an indecisive person and never really know what I want.

I refunded it due to its complexity and the fact that I couldnt get past the first mission (the snow level where I gotta capture the explosive device or something). Ever since I refunded it, the game has always stuck with me. Because I know it's a good game, I just didnt have the patience at the time.

This similarly happened with Factorio and I ended up learning it/playing it all day.

So I got the complete edition that comes with WotC. I assume there is a lot of content here for the 24 dollar sale price.

I am excited to start playing, but have a few concerns. Most namely- save scumming. Thing is, save scumming leaves that "indecisiveness" there, leaving me unsure if I should or shouldn't- that's why I love autosave.

I want to beat levels knowing I earned it. So how youd recommend me going about doing this- appreciated.

I also am starting on veteran difficulty instead of rookie- I'd rather still have a challenge once I learn the ropes.

Anywho I'm excited to play and I'm sure I'll love this game. I just worry about restarting a bunch and or having to restart with 30 hours invested into a save.

Thank you

[Discotooth™]

I would heavily advise you play without WOTC first, there is much more content but it also adds in the Chosen, which if you haven't looked into is a miniboss on almost every 2nd or 3rd mission.

If you are struggling with Advent and aliens, these guys are a pain in the ass and also like to come along with a pod or two and cause problems for you.

As far as difficulty, I always played Veteran - Ironman untill I was very confident in my ability, if you reduce beginner VO and turn off the tutorial mission its actually very forgiving. Losing a campaign just means you get a nice fresh start, where you haven't made any mistakes.

This game is awesome! And remember: 90-99% still means 1% chance of failure, and its going to happen alot.

Yours sincerely, The Commander currently on his 37th Ironman campaign (and doing pretty good so far too)

[red255]

Tactical level is pretty much managing activations. enemies get active when you spot them the first time, so if you have too many enemies active at one time you have a bad time.

I'm being very simplistic here, but if you are going to save scum, save scum at bad activations over missing shots. learn to avoid bad activations.

[Hoppled]

Originally posted by Unfortunate Serf™:

I would heavily advise you play without WOTC first, there is much more content but it also adds in the Chosen, which if you haven't looked into is a miniboss on almost every 2nd or 3rd mission.

If you are struggling with Advent and aliens, these guys are a pain in the ass and also like to come along with a pod or two and cause problems for you.

As far as difficulty, I always played Veteran - Ironman untill I was very confident in my ability, if you reduce beginner VO and turn off the tutorial mission its actually very forgiving. Losing a campaign just means you get a nice fresh start, where you haven't made any mistakes.

This game is awesome! And remember: 90-99% still means 1% chance of failure, and its going to happen alot.

:lonestar::brotherfist: Yours sincerely, The Commander currently on his 37th Ironman campaign (and doing pretty good so far too)

Okay, thanks! When you say advise me against WOTC, do you mean I have to actually turn the DLC off or you mean just dont play the WOTC campaign yet? I've started the vanilla game's campaign.

Also, you recommend ironman for a first playthrough? I guess it makes sense and addresses the issue of save scumming.

[hazrob52]

I play with auto save turned off, I save either after I end a mission or before I start a new mission. In mission I have a mod 'Restart Mission' which takes me back to the beginning of the mission. This is different from save scumming as it enables you to replay the mission as a whole as many times as you like using different tactics.
Sometimes late at night and a mission goes horribly wrong, I select restart mission and then save and quit the game. Often when I play the mission next day I often complete it flawlessly.
I too recommend avoiding playing any DLC until you have a good understanding of the game. Early adoption of ironman can be an exercise in frustration. You don't learn from your mistakes you merely battle with the game trying to overcome the consequences of your mistakes. If that seems like fun to you then go for it, me, I would as soon have a tooth extracted.

[EmpressMelanie]

I honestly don't know about playing on veteran your first campaign. This is a very hard game by design and you may be torturing yourself. Its been too long since I played vanilla so I can't remember too much but some advice that works is to focus on offense. Both on equipment and abilities. Best defense is a good offense situation, dead things can't shoot you. The one exception is to rush plate armor research. The predator armor is a huge upgrade to your soldiers ability to survive and you can get it very early.

Also have a big roster of soldiers. Virtually every enemy in the game has some ability that has a 100 percent chance of hitting you and dealing damage regardless of cover or other circumstances. Injuries are going to be everywhere.

Final note when that avatar project bar fills up its game over no matter how well your otherwise doing. Don't chase random missions, like get supplies for 8 days of searching unless its something you desperately need. Focus heavily on getting your contact limit up so you can contact as many parts of the world as quickly as you can. When an alien facility shows up it needs to be destroyed yesterday and you can't do that if you haven't made contact with the region yet.

[Hoppled]

Thank you for all the tips. So I failed the first mission again (capturing the converter), I'm not so sure if ironman would be a good idea.

Kind of in a predicament since I don't like save scumming but I also don't wanna restart over and over.

Playing on rookie is an option too. Maybe I can start with rookie no ironman and learn the ropes. Not sure how far I'll get before I feel like trying on veteran. I'm really bad at this game. I have no idea how to prepare for an enemy attack even though I'm in blue cover. One of my soldiers will just get pulled up on and shot. So I'm just very undecided as of now.

[al_x_ator2411]

If you are totally unsure of what to do in a battle, try watching some video tutorials. Most youtubers explain why they shoot that alien instead of another one or why they take specific soldiers on specific battles.

[Hoppled]

Would it be an okay idea to bring it down to rookie until I can at least beat the first level and maybe few after?

I'm not exactly new to turn-based tactical games, but I have little to no experience with them now that I think about it. Maybe advance wars and some others I played years and years ago.

[Saulius]

Originally posted by Glory:

I
1 - honestly don't know about playing on veteran your first campaign. This is a very hard game by design and you may be torturing yourself.

2 - Also have a big roster of soldiers.

3 - Final note when that avatar project bar fills up its game over no matter how well your otherwise doing.

1 - actually veteran is like tutorial to learn basics of the game. If you play too long on easy, you gonna to learn bad habits on the tactical level.
2 - in vanilla there is no fatigue - 8 soldiers enough for everything. WOTC - with fatigue - more operatives always better
3 - No it's not game ower. After avatar fills up you have 7 days to knock it down. Most of story stuff does it. Just make sure you have options and you'll be ok with doom counter.
Recently I finished a game WOTC on legend . Didn't bother to do any facility at all. (Don't think it's possible on vanilla)

Edit
Most important- be prepared to miss even 99% shots- if you do you'll be ok with this game.
Don't rush and don't do any story stuff you DON'T NEED NOW
Good luck

Edit 2
Don't listen to Bradford too much - he is here to make you to rush and fail - alien agent ;)

[crayno]

This game has a reverse difficulty curve, so things do get a bit ....less hard.
Here's what I did:
Started out on commander and got annihilated.
Started on rookie and finished it, then veteran, then commander, then commander ironman, legendary, legendary ironman and finally L/I without losses.
You can always play honestman (Keeping save scum but only use it when you misclick or whatever) and even when playing ironman it's always a good idea to keep a manual backup save in the unlikely case of a bug or corrupt save.
If you read some guides and/or watch some youtube videos (I recommend Ronar) and learn the basic do and don'ts you can start on veteran.
Good luck commander !

[Hoppled]

Originally posted by crayno:

This game has a reverse difficulty curve, so things do get a bit ....less hard.
Here's what I did:
Started out on commander and got annihilated.
Started on rookie and finished it, then veteran, then commander, then commander ironman, legendary, legendary ironman and finally L/I without losses.
You can always play honestman (Keeping save scum but only use it when you misclick or whatever) and even when playing ironman it's always a good idea to keep a manual backup save in the unlikely case of a bug or corrupt save.
If you read some guides and/or watch some youtube videos (I recommend Ronar) and learn the basic do and don'ts you can start on veteran.
Good luck commander !

Thanks, could you link me to some of these guides? Most videos don't even talk about the actual combat flow and what the approach should be.

I finished the first mission finally on veteran, but with only 2 soldiers alive...

It was really bad, but I started the next, saved and got off for now. I'll continue a bit and see how far I can go before restarting.

My only gripe with restarting is having to watch all the animations/cutscenes again, like that of the beginning I've seen so far.

Ironman I guess I will do without for now. Barely scraping by the first mission is not good though. So a lot of choices- I can continue with veteran, or change it to rookie, etc.

The way I use the saves, is I just load off of autosaves. I do not manually save yet. I feel like real save-scumming is usually the continuous manual save (like in a hard level of doom). I am not the type of person to save mid mission, even when things are going great off the bat.

[2Battlestations]

When restarting a new campaign, you can press the Escape key a bunch to exit cinema storyline and go straight to mission #1.

[crayno]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2384273441
https://youtu.be/shk74dVLVJA
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpCaJrbMCtPicdjrrXwfKNcG4LzfU9EOj

[al_x_ator2411]

I think there is also the option to change difficulty mid-game. So you can start as easy as you feel comfortable with and crank it up when you start getting better.

[Karasukan]

maybe an odd question TS but did you play XCOM Enemy Within? It was pretty easy for me to get in this game because i played many hours of that. XCOM EW is a bit more simplistic but learning how to place your units, movements and turns is really explained there and the same as in XCOM2.