This game is too hard

[Slayemin]

I have been playing the game on normal difficulty. I prefer not to save scum my games. If soldiers die on the battlefield, then we have a short funeral, move on, and hire their replacements. As it should be, right?
Well, the difficulty curve of this game is ramping up into ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ territory now. You go into a tactical battle and you get swarmed by like 15-20 aliens. Okay... the battles have gotten so difficult that if you even take one casualty, it becomes harder and harder to win. I'm fighting the wraith aliens who are pretty much one shot snipers who can kill 2-3 soldiers in a round. Like, I've had to reload my turns dozens of times just to get to the next turn. It's gotten ridiculous. The game flow for a tactical battle is like this:
tactical battle -> round 1 -> alien round -> round 2 -> get butchered -> load autosave -> redo round 2 -> get butchered -> load autosave -> redo round 2 -> rinse repeat 15x to get to round 3 -> same thing for all rounds -> battle complete
Like, it stops being 'fun' because the game is really about reloading the same turn 10x to find the optimal strategy. I don't mind strategy games and tactical games, but this is too unforgiving. It's gotten to the point where I don't even want to do a tactical battle anymore because its going to cost 2-3 hours of real world time to resolve it with tolerable levels of losses.

[toruvinn]

Yeah, I see where you're coming from. Losing squaddies is a HUGE punishment in this game (perhaps OK), but how easily they die is just incredible. This game absolutely hates your soldiers.

Let me paste a bit of my feedback I wrote to join a discussion in one of the comment threads:

My main issues with the game now (milestone 4.16.0):

Confusing cover, particularly two types: the "front only" cover (🔳🟩🔳 or 🔳🟨🔳) is actually only ~90' angle, so if the alien can get to a place where they see you at 45', you'll die. and they usually can get there, since they have a lot of TUs, especially compared to your noobish soldiers. The other confusing thing about covers is that if you are behind a wall that provides 100% cover, you cannot shoot enemies (soldiers cannot lean and shot, I guess), at which point you have to get up (if crouched), turn around, move, get out of cover, shoot the enemy, turn around to go back, but nvm you just left your cover so you get hit by a lot of enemy overwatch and die. There is basically no way to avoid that, you have to use covers that actually let enemies shoot you, 100% cover won't let you shoot either.

Another thing proving this game absolutely hates your soldiers is the latest weapon tech available in the game (I believe, I haven't seen the full research tree, I know the wiki is quite outdated since I had much more tech researched than it lists, but I seem to never get anything beyond that, hence currently it's probably the last), spoilered for your convenience:
Fusion weapons, even the research report says something along the lines of "nothing can stop a hit from this, so we've given up, enjoy being killed; however here's fusion weapons you can use too: enjoy being a bunch of glass cannons"... and don't forget to get a life insurance I guess.
Honestly, this thing often just one-hits you with highest armour available - possibly except colossus which I never tried (because it's "you can use all kinds of armaments as long as it's a HEAVY", pretty huge restriction imo).
Given how noobish the newely recruited soldiers are, the 40 TUs they have will let you move two squares per round at most - if you want to reserve TUs for overwatch misses (and they will miss, given their accuracy is around 40% too - unless aiming at their own squadmates of course, then it's 120%). At this point it's an absolute chore to play any tactical mission, plus you'll just keep losing those soldiers anyway to enemies with hundreds of hitpoints and a lot of armour on top of that.

[orcaa]

Originally posted by Slayemin:

I have been playing the game on normal difficulty. I prefer not to save scum my games. If soldiers die on the battlefield, then we have a short funeral, move on, and hire their replacements. As it should be, right?
Well, the difficulty curve of this game is ramping up into ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ territory now. You go into a tactical battle and you get swarmed by like 15-20 aliens. Okay... the battles have gotten so difficult that if you even take one casualty, it becomes harder and harder to win. I'm fighting the wraith aliens who are pretty much one shot snipers who can kill 2-3 soldiers in a round. Like, I've had to reload my turns dozens of times just to get to the next turn. It's gotten ridiculous. The game flow for a tactical battle is like this:
tactical battle -> round 1 -> alien round -> round 2 -> get butchered -> load autosave -> redo round 2 -> get butchered -> load autosave -> redo round 2 -> rinse repeat 15x to get to round 3 -> same thing for all rounds -> battle complete
Like, it stops being 'fun' because the game is really about reloading the same turn 10x to find the optimal strategy. I don't mind strategy games and tactical games, but this is too unforgiving. It's gotten to the point where I don't even want to do a tactical battle anymore because its going to cost 2-3 hours of real world time to resolve it with tolerable levels of losses.

to be honest , the game is very hard. enemy armor and life points ramp up pretty fast. while research is slow and manufacturing takes time as well. Our troopers learn slowly so losing 2-3 veterans per mission is a losing position. The noobs have trouble hitting very often and it takes 2-3 hits to kill an alien while the aliens kill with one or two hits.

So yes we are in agreement. the game is very hard without save-scumming. With save-scummming battles take a long time to finish one without losing too many troopers.

[Magicdancer]

I think X2 is more forgiving than X1 and you can adapt your difficulty in settings too but the game is not for everyone.
I would suggest to play on lower difficulties and learn from your mistakes.

The important part of the game is not only air game and tactical combat but also research and economy.
If you are low on resources or too late with research you might be in a big trouble.

OP in what phase of the game are you plaing and what technology using?
The wraiths are tough enemies (they also spammed grenades before 4.16 ver. like no tomorrow .. ).
They are hard to hit from distance bcos of their camo (you need trained snipers to be able to do that) so you need to get closer.
You can break their "camouflage" for a turn (that reduces your chance to hit them) if you damage them (use grenades or heavy launcher)

Smoke and flash grenades are your friends from the beginning.

Originally posted by toruvinn:

Another thing proving this game absolutely hates your soldiers is the latest weapon tech available in the game (I believe, I haven't seen the full research tree, I know the wiki is quite outdated since I had much more tech researched than it lists, but I seem to never get anything beyond that, hence currently it's probably the last), spoilered for your convenience:
Fusion weapons, even the research report says something along the lines of "nothing can stop a hit from this, so we've given up, enjoy being killed; however here's fusion weapons you can use too: enjoy being a bunch of glass cannons"... and don't forget to get a life insurance I guess.
Honestly, this thing often just one-hits you with highest armour available - possibly except colossus which I never tried (because it's "you can use all kinds of armaments as long as it's a HEAVY", pretty huge restriction imo).
Given how noobish the newely recruited soldiers are, the 40 TUs they have will let you move two squares per round at most - if you want to reserve TUs for overwatch misses (and they will miss, given their accuracy is around 40% too - unless aiming at their own squadmates of course, then it's 120%). At this point it's an absolute chore to play any tactical mission, plus you'll just keep losing those soldiers anyway to enemies with hundreds of hitpoints and a lot of armour on top of that.

Enemies with fusion weapons are deadly yes and you have limited protection against them but in this phase you should have your troops skilled (major, col. mostly) with either gaus or fusion weapons who can deal with them too.

They have buffed guardian armor in 4.16 (from 24>30) so it helps a bit (still 50:50 to be one shot unless you have low life then gg)
Colossus help with 40 armor a bit better now (upgraded goes to 70).
You can also research Vanguard armor late game (50 armor)

Only shields and fully upgraded MARS/ARES (it has up to 75 armor) can survive a few hits (1-3) reliably before getting the latest armor.
I used double heavy launcher with smoke grenades to cover area, fully upgraded ARES and a few shields (+ take 1-2 extra for later use) and tried to suppress enemies I cannot (wont) kill in one turn.

You cannot avoid cassualties 100% but it should help.
Btw I am playing on Commander (mostly ironman).

[Butterhai]

i would be so happy if my pilot would STOP LANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF AN ALIEN BEACH PARTY

[orcaa]

Originally posted by Butterhai:

i would be so happy if my pilot would STOP LANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF AN ALIEN BEACH PARTY

i have not found that................might have one or two in sight of the aircraft when my troops land. I always send a full crew when I go so I have 9 troopers to kill the one or two.

[Lycan]

I honestly think the issue that make the game so hard is just the balancing, enemies ramp up too quickly and do too much damage, it really feels like our soldiers should either be given an extra 40 HP by default or every set of armour gives increasing health. Likewise I think enemy progression speed needs to be cut in half bare minimum, we shouldn't be seeing a new more dangerous enemy type every 20 days.

[kyu bey]

Experience vary from people to people thanks to the alien pool being rng.
Someone got 3 cyberdrones at his 1st terror mission (veteran), i got 0 (soldier). See the problem?

That's just from alien type.

There's also the min (just a little scratch) - max (usually r.i.p) damage thing.

[Deskath]

Originally posted by Butterhai:

i would be so happy if my pilot would STOP LANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF AN ALIEN BEACH PARTY

Yeah its somewhat a problem when mission loads and you see several 250hp sebilians and a few reapers...

[Koryliu]

Originally posted by Slayemin:

I have been playing the game on normal difficulty. I prefer not to save scum my games. If soldiers die on the battlefield, then we have a short funeral, move on, and hire their replacements. As it should be, right?

I like the way you think.

Personally I haven't found the game to be too difficult, but I guess everyone can have a different experience.

Don't feel bad about struggling, Xenonauts 2 is a hard game. As it should be, defeating an alien invasion ain't no small feat after all.

So let me instead give you some hopefully helpful tips so you can enjoy the game a bit more?
!!! Heads up a huge wall of text incoming !!!


0. Bring a lot of utility (grenades, smoke grenades, flashbangs, breaching charges etc.). I won't go into detail in this point, as the others will demonstrate it better.


1. The aliens really like to stay on overwatch, so whenever you meet one, it's safe to assume it probably has enough TU to donk you if you try anything. Because pretty much every enemy can survive at least one shot, don't try to trade shots with them willy nilly, that'll just loose you guys. Instead always, and I mean ALWAYS try to fight in such a manner that the enemy cannot shoot back. That is flashbang them, suppress them or flank them. Machinegunnes are one expection to this rule, as their high volume of fire pretty much guarantees that you'll suppress whatever bastard is trying to feed you with high tempature plasma, as long as your hit chance isn't completely terrible (10% should be good enough, 20% is pretty much a guaranteed kill, MGs are really good when used well).

There is one more thing which you can do is throw smoke between yourself and the enemy to create a wall of sorts. Of course this will mean you now cannot shoot them, but you can still use your other tools such as, that's right flashbangs. This is most important when breaching places where multiple enemies could shoot you and you can't suppress them all with one throw.


2. Don't rely on 40% cover. The aliens are REALLY accurate, doubly so on higher difficulties. Changing a 90% hit chance to 50% just isn't enough to consistently protect your guys. Instead seek out tall walls. The enemy can't shoot you if they can't see you, and any time you need to shoot them you can step out, do your thingy and then step back in. Sometimes, if you can it's even better to go 2 tiles deep, so that the enemy doesn't simply move a couple tiles to the side and suprise suprise, they can see you around a corner.

60% cover also isn't the best protection, but if you can combine it with other defensive techniques, such as keeping your distance and crouching, it can be good enough.


3. Don't just use rifles. Rifles are usable in every scenario yes, but they rarely give you an advantage.

Shotguns allow you to be mobile because of their cheap fire costs and their high volume of fire (always 3 shots), being one of the few weapons that can actually semi consistently "one-shot" enemies. Compare that to the rifles auto-fire, which is significantly more expensive and less accurate, the (close-range) winner is clear.

Machineguns pack an incredible amount of firepower, being capable of quickly dispatching not only the toughest enemies but also multiple enemies in one burst, but bevare their slow maneuvaribility as they are expensive (TU cost vise) to fire and are also very heavy.

Sniper rifles give you a large bonus to accuracy (50 acc points) as long as you stay on the tile where you started your turn (this also applies to overwatch btw). Put two of these guns on a long sightline and you'll have it covered very well (even their overwatch is amazing, especially if stacked).

Grenade launched is more a specialist tool rather than a primary.

Pistols are one-handed, cheap to fire and light, but have low range and not great damage. They can't really compete with rifles, but they have their own role (being a secondary weapon duh)

Rifles are relativelly cheap to fire, but don't pack the punch to kill on their own. Moderately accurate but not enough to be used long range (late game high accuracy guys very much can, seriously 90 ACC fusion rifle stacks SLAP, but that's besides the point). Lightweight but not enough to be used as a secondary. They are, by definition, the jack of all trades but master of none.

Why is this a bad thing? Well individually it wouldn't be, but in a team, which you have, the weaknesses of each weapon are covered for by another.

A shotgunner can't really do much against an alien a whole screen away, but with the support of a machinegunner they can easily close the gap and finish the bugger off. Snipers may not be the best when entering a UFO, but they can still throw utility like flashbangs and smokes. Yes that's right, you don' always have to shoot, use CQC guys for utility tossing when at long ranges, and vice versa with long range specialists.


4. Move in a team. One soldier cannot effectively deal with one alien, two can and three will do so with ease.

Fire superiority is king. It doesn't matter how bad your guys are, if you fire six 40% shots, you are bound to hit some. Even if you don't you'll probably suppress the enemy at which point you have already severely limited the actions that it has.


5. You don't have to fight your enemies the turn you see them. If you are scouting out an area and find a lone smacker far out in the distance, you don't have to engage it. Back of, group up and hit it on the next turn when you'll have full TUs. If you start to get overwhelmed, chuck some smokes and back off. Whilst the AI is fairly aggressive and smart, they can still easily over-extend, giving you ample opportunity to strike them on the next turn.


6. Don't be afraid to wreck ♥♥♥♥ up, unless you are in a UFO or an alien base, any damage done to the environment means nothing to you, well unless you were planning on using it yourself. If the enemy has a strong defensive position, blow it up to smithereens. Grenades aren't affected by smokes, so you can even keep yourself safe behind a wall of smoke as you live out your demolitionist fantasies.


There is so much more I could say, but what I have written could probably constitute as a short novel, so I'll stop here. Xenonauts 2 has a suprisingly deep and complex mechanics that you can use to your advantage to get better.

Hope it helps and best of luck, commander .

[Sinbad]

Guess you guys never played the old X-Com's. I still remember my first game when the drop ship had one exit. The NPC's could see in the dark and shoot across the map(no falloff) if there was nothing block line of sight. They could also use nade's and threw them the next turn with your squaddies huddled next to the off ramp. Aliens already had rifles and they would one shot you 90% of the time but your beginning craft held more soldiers.
The strat was always to have scouts(throw away solders) equipped with pistols and nades until you got the tanks. You have your firing line of rifleman behind the scouts and one or 2 guys that can destroy terrain. Now you have shields for scouts, flashbangs/machineguns for suppression, armor that can take a shot in the beginning. Game is a lot easier, don't get attached to soldiers, they're mostly cannon fodder.

[Cyborg]

For Wraiths use a lot of smoke and let them come to you. Don't over extend. A Grenade Launcher helps a lot by killing their stealth field, don't target them directly but use CTRL to target the ground.

[Ophois]

I just reached the "end of the content" screen in the current version. I played X2 on normal+ironman mode. The game can be punishing, but this is how it's supposed to work here since X2 is heavily inspired by the original XCOM :Enemy Uknown (1994) and XCOM: Terror from the Deep. And believe me, X2 isn't nearly as punishing as the same Terror from the Deep where aliens will just nuke you from afar and mind-attack your troops every turn like crazy.

X2 provides alot of opportunities to break alien opposition with suppressive fire, flashbangs, sharpshooting, etc for the player. You need to take your time, properly prepare your troops and not rush like there is no tomorrow. Even with good planing, soldiers will be killed by aliens eventually, so get used to the "survival of the fittest" strategy.

[toruvinn]

Originally posted by kyu bey:

There's also the min (just a little scratch) - max (usually r.i.p) damage thing.

Yeah the damage RNG spread may be too high, that's a pretty good point.

My main concern remains that it's VERY easy to lose even experienced soldiers to one hit you cannot avoid no matter how cautious you are. Do a bunch of missions like that and you find yourself with a squad full of rookies vs aliens being 150HP+ with 50 armour heh. Good luck!

[Magicdancer]

Originally posted by toruvinn:

Originally posted by kyu bey:

There's also the min (just a little scratch) - max (usually r.i.p) damage thing.

Yeah the damage RNG spread may be too high, that's a pretty good point.

My main concern remains that it's VERY easy to lose even experienced soldiers to one hit you cannot avoid no matter how cautious you are. Do a bunch of missions like that and you find yourself with a squad full of rookies vs aliens being 150HP+ with 50 armour heh. Good luck!

Loosing soldier here and there is ok if you have reserves.
You need decent pool of trained soldiers to deal with enemies.
You can also train your soldiers in training facility passively.

[Nattfarinn]

Has something changed in difficulty recently? Because last time I played the game, few months ago, I found game to be manageable, at least on normal (wouldn't say easy, but I never had to save scum).