Azazel

My campaign is really trying to kick my ass tonight.  Bunch of important missions in a very short amount of time.  I got through them but now both more main squads are tired and need a break, so I have to send some untrained guys on a couple of missions, thankfully I have enough semi decent soldiers to baby sit them and I handed down some good equipment temporarily.

I think the Berserkers are just trying to break the game on me, I had a Resistance Defense mission and a pod of 2 Berserkers plus three other units spawned right beside my defense point when the map loaded, so they triggered before Turn 1 even started with just 3 resistance and 1 of my soldiers there to try and hold them off.  I have no idea how nobody died and I almost just lost the mission because my tower was 1 hit away from being destroyed.  Smoke Grenades, Flashbangs and Stun Guns really saved the day on this one.

12 minutes ago, Mick said:

Maybe the Resistance enraged the Berserker?

Yeah, looks like if a Berserker is enraged, it will attack it's own allies if X-Com is not in range. 

There was nobody even remotely near it, I rescued the VIP and it was the last pod on the map, guess he just hated that Muton for unrelated reasons.

I just witnessed something in XCom i have not seen before and I have no idea if it was a glitch.

Camera moved across the map to a pod I couldn’t see with a Berserker and a Muton, and the Berserker attacked the Muton, got a crit and killed it.  Apparently they can attack friendlies if they cannot reach XCom, but they were not even triggered and nowhere near me, so I guess thanks?

8 hours ago, Mick said:

Uh, I suppose it depends on how we define "A Lot".

Planned additions to the list include: Stalker, (Sgt) Slaughter, Wild Bill, Rip Cord, Shockwave, Sci-Fi, Leatherneck, Grunt, Doc, Falcon, (Captain) Grid-Iron, Braker, Clutch, (Major) Bludd, Buzzer, Ripper, Torch, Firefly and of course, Snake Eyes. 

 

Adding non Army/Marine/Air Force guys would be odd (Even though Shipwreck is a must have), although I'm thinking about including members of the Oktober Guard to help fill it out. 

 

 

Yes, Shipwreck is a must have!  You should be okay if you aren't going with a couple dozen, there is just an annoying issue where the game shoves most of your created characters as recruits you are never going to need.  There is a mod that fixes it if you feel like using them.

GI Joe and Cobra unite to face Advent?  I like that idea, lots of characters to choose from.  You plan on making a lot?  I just looked at some of the characters, and I knew Sgt. Slaughter was a GI Joe because I watch the '86 movie like two dozen times, but I just found out that Roddy Piper was a member of Cobra.

I wanted to add some more to my like 170 Game of Thrones characters pool, and I had a list of everyone I wanted to add and marked off who was complete but I can't seem to find the list now, but it was mostly just down to super minor characters anyway.

Graveyard Keeper is done!  Now to finish Stardew Valley.  To 100% that I need to do the following:
- Get the Qi Quest for Radioactive Ore to finish the Shipping/Crafting
- Beat Prairie King without dying
- Kill 18 more Pepper Rex's
- Start a new farm and do the Joja achievement
- Earn 10 Million gold

I'm at just over 6 million gold now, I'm going to set up a second shed for more Kegs/Jars to try and cut down the time by a couple of weeks.  I have like 136 kegs going now with Starfruit or Ancient Fruit Wine, plus a couple dozen fairy honey houses and then some extra income from my animals other crops/jelly.

I'm really tempted to get Rimworld, but I think I should finish Stardew first.

2 hours ago, RPS said:

I downloaded the Long War campaign because of y'all talking about it on here. 

Prepare to both love it and hate it.  Let me know if you need any advice.

I think the biggest beginner tip is to set all your resistance members in your first area to Intel.  This will make help you find missions faster so you can get more time to infiltrate and therefore have easier missions for a while.  Try to always get to 100% infiltration if possible, unless you just cannot and the reward is worth it.  Skip missions when you need to, there is no penalty and its impossible to even try to do them all.

Rimworld might be my next game to get and try out.  However, I want to finish off Stardew/Graveyard Keeper first.  So that way I am only playing my Xcom2 Long War campaign, the Monster Train DLC and one other game.  I have somehow too much to do now.

I also kind of want to give Factory Town another go since it's been updated and I think I can plan out my town better.

Vanilla Xcom2 can be pretty absurd.  Long War gets ridiculous in very different ways.  I just had 2 pods of enemy reinforcements spawn together, right in front of a building where I had about a dozen soldiers on/around on overwatch.  It was a bloodbath.

Then 2 turns later another dozen enemies spawns in and a horde of lost.  Flamethrowers came in quite handy for once.

The downside is getting back into Xcom has put my Stardew Valley/Graveyard Keeper 100%ing on the backburner.  Hopefully I get some done this weekend.

Put together a third squad of slightly undertrained soldiers, Black Market recruits and sparks so they can take care of a mission so you can do the bases.  You can probably win with just 2 squads if your A team is max rank you don't lose anything by training new soldiers and using 2-3 of your A team to babysit them until they rank up.

1 minute ago, Mick said:

ADVENT Pod, meet Shredstorm Cannon!

That would have made things a lot easier.  I can start to get laser weapons now (tier 2 of 5) and I just got a my first Exo Suit so now I have a Shredder Gun.

I'm only starting to get upgraded weapons and I wanted to do this mission because I needed extra supplied but holy crap, what a enemy pod to run into turn 1.  I'm actually glad I found them first so I could initiate on my term otherwise I would have had no chance since I could fire an upgraded rocket into the middle of the group and kill 1 unit, damage the rest and shred all the armour.  I killed 5 of the 8 turn 1, the Berserker was stunned and the Shieldbearer was disoriented so I was pretty safe.

I took more damage from the 8 man Advent Pod across the map because I couldn't get the jump on them like I did here.

The Archon King at least gives you amazing armour.

I will gladly let you get wrecking in Long War, but its just nice to understand the mechanics so you don't do what I did that first time and send 8 rookies to fight like 30 advent in the first week, or have to scrap a campaign hours in because you have no money and you badly need to upgrade your equipment and you just figured out how the economy works.

You'll also need like 60+ soldiers and will still have times you need to turn down a mission because not enough people are available.

Just let me know if you need some pointers/help.  It took me a while to understand how some of the campaign concepts worked and how to use them properly.  The infiltration system is probably the most important to understand, with the resistance bases being something that can make your life a lot better if you know how to use them.

Plus, it is always good to know how to avoid getting absolutely wrecked in missions that you will not be ready for the first time.

Xcom 2 Long War gets pretty wild out of nowhere, I just had two missions against 27 enemies in a row and I'm only starting to upgrade my gear.  Thankfully I got pretty lucky with one of the missions and the other I was able to freeze 5 units at once to make a 9 advent squad actually manageable.

3 hours ago, Chris2K said:

WV Episode 8

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I really enjoyed the episode, naturally, and Vision's "what is grief if not love persevering" line is one of the most beautiful scripted lines I can remember. That said...

I'm more than a little concerned how willing everyone involved in the show is to, essentially, troll the most hardcore fans by making vague comments that can be easily interpreted as being something major, only for them to pull the rug out. So far we've had:

• Evan Peters being cast as Pietro, making everyone think the Fox X-Men were coming in or that the multiverse was open for business, only for it to be confirmed as nothing but a stunt casting by Kevin Feige and the Pietro in the show could have been played by literally anyone for all it mattered.
• Teyonah Parris stating that "[she] can't wait to see what y'all's reaction is when you learn who the aerospace engineer is.", only for it to turn out to be no-one of any importance (unless she turns out to be a Skrull i guess). If it really is just random aerospace engineer #239 then that quote makes it look like she was looking forward to seeing how disappointed/angry everyone would be.
• And now it seems like Paul Bettany's "huge actor that he's always wanted to work with" is going to be... himself, when Hex Vision and White Vision square off in the finale.

 

4 hours ago, RPS said:

This makes me want to download this mod, but I just bought the Pokemon DLC and want to give that a wrap. Someone remind me in two weeks to download this. 

It's a rather big change.  The main thing I wish I knew the first time I tried was that missions are skippable, you will have way more than enough to do so if a mission is going to be hard, or you are understaffed then it is better to just not do it and wait for something better to pop up.  Also figuring out how Infiltration so you don't end up with 8 rookies vs 40 enemies in the first month of the game.

I'm in, had no idea a game was starting already.

22 hours ago, Mick said:

So, just finished up the X-COM 2 campaign. My only real complaint was in the very last part of the last mission, wounds to other people were causing my troops to lose their cool. This was actually a tactical benefit when my Templar lost it and went nuts by a squad of Vipers I had forgotten about, but still annoying, especially when it's they're freaking out and I'm like "Oh come on, Mox has gotten worse shaving!"

The very last Avatar basically dumbassed itself. I hit it one, it teleported right next to my Reaper (who had yet to move)...so, shot number two from the Reaper, teleports into direct line of sight of the Commander. One Kamehameha (well, a Null Lance) later and that was it. 
 

Thing's I've learned:

The Hero units are awesome, although I didn't get to really see just what the Templar was truly capable of. The Reaper was hilarious, being able to just use Banish on Sectopods and make them more or less a non-factor. The scouting was top-notch too. 

Sharpshooter+Serial+A Repeater = Potential God of Death

I highly recommend Long War of the Chosen.  It's obviously a lot longer and harder but there are new classes, the need to have dozens of soldiers ready at all times because you will be doing multiple missions at a time.  The story is not just hold off the avatar project, but you actually take over regions and Advent tries to take them back so it feels like more of a fight.  You also use more soldiers per missions so fights are bigger and more chaotic.

I think it's a lot more fun.

I watched that new Russell Crowe movie, Unhinged.  It seemed like a modern day Duel from the previews.

Legit one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time.

Are Black Widow, Shang Chi and Eternals going to be one offs or are they dumping a whole season in a day?  Either way, I get the model, make people pay for Disney+ year round and I do kind of prefer the wait because it builds anticipation.  Some shows are better with the dump and binge method, some are better weekly, like I would hate something like Archer being released once per week.

I just started it and I'm not fully sure what show is being spoofed this episode.

My Farm in Stardew Valley has hit its money making stride and I'm making over 400k a week.  I still have a bunch of stuff to do and I'll probably eventually start a temporary new farm just to get the Joja achievment.

The Assassin in by far the worst of the three, especially if you have her early on so you don't have great equipment to face her.