Off-Topic General Discussion - Page 5069

Anyways, first things first, scan the wiki:

http://ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Long_War

Second, for the love of god, don't pick brutal or impossible difficulty your first time. Pick normal or, if you're actually good at the game, classic, for your first run. The +base damage makes aliens ridiculously lethal in impossible, so unless you get familiar with Long War mechanics, I don't recommend it for anyone. Heck, turn on cinematic mode.

There are several changes to remember: first, the new classes. There are a bunch of new perks, but those you can figure out yourself. Snipers are Snipers; they're no longer ridiculously op into the late game because late game enemies have gigantic health pools, but they're still useful for disabling shot and ITZ clearing packs of enemies after cover's been cleared; their power curve is pretty flat: they're useful at all stages of the game. Scouts on the other hand are very useful early game, but start falling off late because they don't have the same damage potential as other classes (lightning reflexes is great, but they aren't killy, and utility is taken up by medics and packmaster engineers later). Good covert operative candidates though.

Gunners start weak, but become essential starting around month 4 because unless you went for a gauss rush (which is a terrible strategy btw) cyberdicks come online and rape you because are basically impervious to ballistics, and it's hard to kill them with laser weaponry fire without HEAT ammo gunners (or some risky shotgun plays); beyond this, there are bullet wizard gunners useful for AOE suppression. Rocketeers are rocketeers (always useful), but their aim early on sucks (so make sure you give them the carbine for +aim and steady aim the turn before you want to fire a rocket). Also note that in LW, firing rockets will give +1 mobility afterwards.

Medics are a very good support unit now; not only are they the prime psi candidates because they get high will in general (also, you want psi online by ~November so you can actually deal with the stupidity that is Heavy Floaters; they will completely wreck your shit otherwise); can be built full medic (not terribly useful now that field surgeon is the second perk you can pick up), overwatchy (medics are decent at it), or support grenadey (overlaps with the engineer abit however, but "scales" the best). Engineers are your go-to item carriers: Repair makes them the go-to for capturing aliens and also hacking stuff (like hacking boss enemies + Show Spoiler +, sapper makes them extremely useful early on for destroying cover (which makes life so much easier, though sapper engineers do fall off later as engagement ranges drastically increase), and they're the #1 battlescanner and support grenade carriers (which you should always bring: you get access to flashbangs from the get-go, which will 100% make your life easier, especially on your first terror mission or on Newfoundland, though newfy now has a "surprise" in addition to the other things). A possible covert operative candidate (since they don't really lose their grenades when sent on missions), but in general scouts and assaults are flat out superior because of disarm chains you can pull off+flanking with a CCS assault.

And then the workhorses. Infantry are your core units, basically; in an 8 man squad, expect 2 or more to be infantry; they shoot really well, overwatch really well, tank really well, and are probably the best officer candidates given their positioning. Nothing much more to say than use them. Assaults are more specialized early on (though you always take one to make short work of UFOs; a shotgun crit will severely damage or kill the outsider which greatly reduces the risk) and gain value as they get much more "killy" as the game progresses. Not useful in a long-range shootout but hey, urban maps are common enough. Excellent covert operative candidates as well, since R&G allows you to make distance and reach communications arrays and activate them in 1 turn, which will seriously lessen the difficulty of EXALT missions).


Beyond this, most things you can figure out. Country boni are up to you to evaluate because they are seriously tailored to your strategy, much more diverse than the "start in Asia, let sat be shot down, rebuild air coverage in NA" cheese strat, since continent boni no longer apply for where you start. MECs are somewhat nerfed from vanilla, and I personally don't use them. Make sure to get a repair bay up quickly to deal with item repairs (you can turn this feature off if you want), the air war is a crapshoot: prioritize alien materials or advanced lasers ASAP so you can reliably shoot UFOs larger than a scout and maybe a fighter down (and make sure to swap the missiles on a few Interceptors to the AP missiles for fighters). There are alot of tech orders to choose from: I generally go for straight weapon tech because of aforementioned air war issues, but going for alien materials early is good if you don't want aliens to seriously wound your soldiers on near every shot, and going alien materials+xenobiology will help start your engineer+scientist flow via requests, which is important to get your early research flowing). Alot of people like starting 1 or 2 labs, actually, to help with early research, though I forego them in favor of getting sat coverage of NA up and foundry salvage upgrades to make sure I have enough alloys/weapons fragments for later).