It came from the sea help.

[Godzilla Rose]

Playing on the highest difficulty and they gave you without a doubt the worst loadout possible for this misison set. Wide open spaces, close range classes, ♥♥♥♥♥♥ in between misison upgrades that aren't useful, and of course a pistol sniper the most useless hero to get. I got a gold in the first set of missions, but htere I can barely get objectives on time. Mission 3 has a 10 turn timer (I hate timers in general in xcom 2 but this is pushing it to the next level of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥t).

So what do I do with this useless pile of shti bradford sent me now? This is the total antthesis of my playstyle which prefers carefully killing one pod at a time because my luck is terrible. If I try and make use of the templar abilities or get close with bradford they trigger every enemy pod around and can't survive. I also find skirmishers to be useless in general in this game even in ideal situations.

[Aranador]

Ironically, this is probably exactly why they have given you this load out - to get you out of your comfort zone, and into a new playstyle that will challenge you. Succeed, and you will be one step closer to being a legendary XCOM commander.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Aranador:

Ironically, this is probably exactly why they have given you this load out - to get you out of your comfort zone, and into a new playstyle that will challenge you. Succeed, and you will be one step closer to being a legendary XCOM commander.

Unfortunately, it involves many a "oh my god this Skirmisher is so useless just give me a grenadier"

[Javi]

mission number 7 on nightmare took me like 4 tries. 3 pods very close together almost impossible not to activate them all at once, with avatars, sectopod, gatekeeper. Really hard.
The one with the timer i sent bradford to destroy the thing and all my other soldiers died, it was very tense, and thats why i love xcom

[syken]

I just finished the it came from the sea part, will upload my videos to youtube to my channel if you want to see the details (fair disclaimer - they will be released next month after the current content in the queue is done).

I finished it on gold, flawlessed every mission first try, here are some tips towards the team:
- Look into the skills of both the skirmishes and the psi-operative, both have options to hand over turns to other characters, I did this a lot to maximize damage
- Templars with extra actions can activate parry multiple times and parry multiple attacks. So if you want to „tank“ in the first round because you cannot kill all of the enemies at once, move your Templar in, activate parry, then give him up to two more extra turns (skirmisher + psi-ops) and activate parry 1-2 more times. Enemies will prioritize the Templar, as it should be the only unit standing without any cover.
- Try upgrading grenades and armor (the grappling hook is really good for movement and the acid grenades helps you with the high armor rating of some of the enemies).
- Use Stasis in the pods with too many hit points and focus on a couple of the other enemies first
- The sniper in this campaign type has a gunslinger loadout, lightning hands, 2x pistol shots, fan fire and faceoff are EXTREMELY strong abilities. If you can upgrade your ammunition, the sniper gains AP on top of that. You might want to look into it
- Psi-Ops gains Dominate in like mission 3 or 4, which makes it really easy to gain additional members to your team
- Use high ground often (+20 aim bonus helps) and negates the need for cover
- Skirmishers gain incedeary rounds if you upgrade the ammunition, make use of that to prevent enemies from attacking in melee

If you still struggle, watch my videos on YouTube (syken4games), I am usually explaining everything in detail and make my thought process known.

[Janediel]

Originally posted by syken:

I just finished the it came from the sea part, will upload my videos to youtube to my channel if you want to see the details (fair disclaimer - they will be released next month after the current content in the queue is done).

I finished it on gold, flawlessed every mission first try, here are some tips towards the team:
- Look into the skills of both the skirmishes and the psi-operative, both have options to hand over turns to other characters, I did this a lot to maximize damage
- Try upgrading grenades and armor (the grappling hook is really good for movement and the acid grenades helps you with the high armor rating of some of the enemies).
- Use Stasis in the pods with too many hit points and focus on a couple of the other enemies first
- The sniper in this campaign type has a gunslinger loadout, lightning hands, 2x pistol shots, fan fire and faceoff are EXTREMELY strong abilities. If you can upgrade your ammunition, the sniper gains AP on top of that. You might want to look into it
- Psi-Ops gains Dominate in like mission 3 or 4, which makes it really easy to gain additional members to your team
- Use high ground often (+20 aim bonus helps) and negates the need for cover
- Skirmishers gain incedeary rounds if you upgrade the ammunition, make use of that to prevent enemies from attacking in melee

If you still struggle, watch my videos on YouTube (syken4games), I am usually explaining everything in detail and make my thought process known.

Nice tips. I'll check out your channel. Thanks

[Godzilla Rose]

Originally posted by syken:

I just finished the it came from the sea part, will upload my videos to youtube to my channel if you want to see the details (fair disclaimer - they will be released next month after the current content in the queue is done).

I finished it on gold, flawlessed every mission first try, here are some tips towards the team:
- Look into the skills of both the skirmishes and the psi-operative, both have options to hand over turns to other characters, I did this a lot to maximize damage
- Templars with extra actions can activate parry multiple times and parry multiple attacks. So if you want to „tank“ in the first round because you cannot kill all of the enemies at once, move your Templar in, activate parry, then give him up to two more extra turns (skirmisher + psi-ops) and activate parry 1-2 more times. Enemies will prioritize the Templar, as it should be the only unit standing without any cover.
- Try upgrading grenades and armor (the grappling hook is really good for movement and the acid grenades helps you with the high armor rating of some of the enemies).
- Use Stasis in the pods with too many hit points and focus on a couple of the other enemies first
- The sniper in this campaign type has a gunslinger loadout, lightning hands, 2x pistol shots, fan fire and faceoff are EXTREMELY strong abilities. If you can upgrade your ammunition, the sniper gains AP on top of that. You might want to look into it
- Psi-Ops gains Dominate in like mission 3 or 4, which makes it really easy to gain additional members to your team
- Use high ground often (+20 aim bonus helps) and negates the need for cover
- Skirmishers gain incedeary rounds if you upgrade the ammunition, make use of that to prevent enemies from attacking in melee

If you still struggle, watch my videos on YouTube (syken4games), I am usually explaining everything in detail and make my thought process known.

Tried all of this and it doesn't work. All of these seem very luck based strategies compared to alpha striking one pod at a time. I don't think you realize jusy how lucky you are. In many missions my riflemen will roll minimum damage. If you give me advice make sure its going to account for everything possible going wrong.

I've run the numbers on my x-com rolls in over 60 campaigns in all the new games and I statisitccally have a -13.4% chance to hit than your average player. Hence why I hate modes that force me to use more luck or risky based strategies like this. I'm going to knock it down to story for the cosmetics and get it over with. I've done the math on probably 1000 shots and definitely way unluckier than your typical person. There is nothing you can get me to convince myself otherwise I have the data in hand.

The squad they give you is bad for alpha strike style of play. I don't know how you even attack with the Templar without triggering like 2-3 pods of enemies in one round? Mathmatically how are you even killing them? Again I don't think you realize how lucky you are, you must be getting tons of max damage rolls or something.