8 Must-Have Mods for XCOM 2

[ffronw]

8 Must-Have Mods for XCOM 2

If you're playing XCOM 2, you should really check out these eight great mods.

Read Full Article

 

[Bindal]

Went throught the entire list and actually, I need or want none of them.

1. Free camera - the current fake-isometic one is exactly how I would look at the map 99% of the time anyway as it's exactly showing how I would want to see things.
2. More Maps - That mod is sadly offering barely any new parcels and plots. That's not really worth the download.
3. Stop Waisting my Time - isn't that kind of what Zip Mode is supposed to do? Either way, I like the game to be slower for the most part and those mentioned "pauses" after a shot I never noticed.
4. More Mission types - given that most of these mission types seem to use "throw large amount of enemies at player" as a form of increased difficulty, I am instantly losing interest. Nothing against the idea, but that's not something I want to deal with.
5. Stabilize me - given that this is only an issue in the early game (which I circumvent by having at least two guys bring a medkit) and not lategame (where I usually tend to bring two specialist in one way or another), that's not needed for me either way.
6. A better Advent - 60 new enemies, I don't buy. At all. 60 new enemy variants, sure, but complete new enemies? Checking the details, it's really just mostly "old enemies, but with a new ability added or removed". That and that the mod says it's balanced around having more-than-default soldiers means I'll skip by default.
7. Long War Alien Pack - same as before, but I also don't like Long War (by making XCOM a different game entirely from what I want from XCOM) and don't want to have anything to do with the entire thing, period.
8. Coop - Given how wonky it works, that's way too much hastle. If it would be invite a second player to help out in my entire session, sure, but just the tactical missions, with their selected soldiers instead of choosing out of mine? That's too restrictive and complicated for my taste.

 

[DoPo]

1. Free camera - the current fake-isometic one is exactly how I would look at the map 99% of the time anyway as it's exactly showing how I would want to see things.

Have you never gotten into a situation where the camera cannot show you something because it always rotates 90 degrees? I get into those very regularly, so I use that mod. I don't even use it for the free rotation except in very rare circumstances, I actually use it because rotating left/right is changed to 45 degree increments, so you don't get into situations where 90 degrees is an overshoot.

3. Stop Waisting my Time - isn't that kind of what Zip Mode is supposed to do? Either way, I like the game to be slower for the most part and those mentioned "pauses" after a shot I never noticed.

Zip mode is different - it increases the speed of the animations, whereas SWmT reduces various pauses. It used to offer functionality similar to Zip Mode, but I believe it was removed after the introduction of that feature in the core game.

I don't actually know if the game still has large pauses or how frequent they were, but they used to happen quite a lot when it was released. I've always ran that mod and I've had absolutely no complaints - it doesn't remove or change anything you need.

4. More Mission types - given that most of these mission types seem to use "throw large amount of enemies at player" as a form of increased difficulty, I am instantly losing interest. Nothing against the idea, but that's not something I want to deal with.

I would agree. I've seen what the missions are like and it's more or less wave survival. It actually disrupts the balance, too - you get to get a ton of corpses to sell. It also introduces a new retaliation mission type (which is still wave survival) but no faceless spawn there. So you might not be able to get a mimic beacon for a while, if you keep getting those.

5. Stabilize me - given that this is only an issue in the early game (which I circumvent by having at least two guys bring a medkit) and not lategame (where I usually tend to bring two specialist in one way or another), that's not needed for me either way.

I agree with the mod idea - I think you should be able to go and use something from a fallen body. Nothing worse than needing a grenade but the guy who has it is shot down. Apparently that means it's unusable any more. But I also agree that this specific mod isn't actually that interesting. It's only for medkits and it's a very useful strategy to always have two, in case that specific situation happens.

Not to mention that I don't find medkits that useful anyway. At the start of the game, getting hit might just kill a soldier, so you might be better off simply praying for them to survive and get an extra grenade or something. Later on, they almost guaranteed survive a shot and you can position and use abilities and stuff to protect them from getting hit a second time, thus surviving. Late game, you almost don't need healing most of the time - soldiers can survive about three hits but even then, they are quite adept at killing stuff before you get shot. In XCOM offence is really the best defence. OK, healing is not completely useless, but it's quite limited. Mostly it's worth against chryssalids and the archon king from Alien Hunters. I do tend to train a medic specialist later on, but it's definitely low on the list of priorities. A combat hacker is usually a lot more useful since they can proactively defend you from getting shot, as opposed to only getting to do something after the fact.

6. A better Advent - 60 new enemies, I don't buy. At all. 60 new enemy variants, sure, but complete new enemies? Checking the details, it's really just mostly "old enemies, but with a new ability added or removed". That and that the mod says it's balanced around having more-than-default soldiers means I'll skip by default.

Indeed - the new enemies are palette swapped ADVENT troopers and officers and so on but they get new stuff. What I find amusing is that ADVENT gets equivalents of XCOM soldiers - like snipers and gunslingers.

I'd personally recomend some simple quality of life improvements: Stop Wasting My Time and Free Camera Rotation are there, but there are more:

Better Tactical Zoom Out [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=617964189] - because the default tends to be a bit too limited. Sometimes I need to zoom out but I cannot fit both locations I want to see on the screen. This mod might zoom out a bit too much than what I actually need, but at least I can actually see more.

Evac All [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=618669868] - allows you to evac all soldiers in the zone at once instead of one by one. It saves up some time but honestly, I like it because it looks much cooler.

Overwatch All/Others [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=621695447] - it's like Evac All but for overwatches. It's actually a pretty small thing but it's alright.

Confirm Free Reload [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=858237491] - because I hate wasting them. There was another mod that was less "intrusive" - it simply colours the reload action green if you have a free reload, but it's a bit broken now, so I use this one instead. It throws you a confirmation if you try to do a free reload and you still have ammo left.

Mission Time Remaining [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=626589171] - gives you the expiration time for stuff on the strategic map like missions and resource scanning.

Show Health Values [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=617015579] - I'm not against the pips to show health, I'm against how annoying it is to figure out the exact number. Especially with beefier targets. XCOM: Enemy Unknown at least grouped them on rows of five and that was prefectly fine, you can easily glance at somebody and see how hurt they are. But look at a Sectopod and try to figure out if it has 24 HP or 26 HP when it really matters, and you'd be there a while. This mod just gives you an extra numeric display which makes things much simpler. There are other alternatives, but it's the first one I picked up. It just works for me, so I've not really tried the rest.

Strip Primary Weapons [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=618504171] - I'm not really sure why this wasn't in the base game already - there is already a strip armour and strip utility items buttons. This does the same but for weapons.

Show Enemies on Mission Planning [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=635257372] - gives you the Shadow Chamber information on the squad selection screen, so you don't have to go back to verify what the enemies you'd be facing are.

Quick soldier info [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=642371502] - this one is amazing. It gives you a constant info on your entire squad. Each soldier you have is represented as a portrait on the side of the screen and you get to see their condition and action count. You can even select a soldier by clicking on their portrait. It's awesome. A definite improvement of the game.

Gotcha Again [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=866874504] - another huge improvement. It improves line of sight indicators a lot - you get to see squadsight LOS as well as whether a new position would be a flank or not, you also get LOS indicators on your squadmates and objectives and a lot more. It eliminates the need for a free camera for me, as that's the only real reason to use it - to manually check potential LOS in some situations. Without this mod, planning requires too much counting and fiddling to figure out positioning.

And some purely cosmetic mods:

More Nations Mod [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=619708200] - it adds more nations. It's probably one of the things that annoyed me the most in the base game, even if it's pretty inconsequential - the game is about the world fighting the aliens, and yet there were only a handful of countries represented. Worse still, the name pool seemed quite small - I'd very often get the same surnames for soldiers. I don't know if it was randomness or anything, but I didn't have something that similar with XCOM: EU. At any rate, this mod gives you more nations and more names for each. I find it one of the better additions to the game.

XCom 2 International Voices Pack [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=623812197] - similar to the above. However, I do have a legitimate complaint here - the previous game definitely had more voices, for example it had Russian, which is not present in this game. I not only like the soldiers claiming they are from a given country - speaking that country's language is also a big thing. It makes it seem much more authentic.

More Random Backstories [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=626140605] - I like that. It's a small touch but appreciated. Makes the soldiers a bit more distinct.

Saints Row Female Boss Voice Pack [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=653173212] - it's funny but the first custom soldier I made was my Saints Row character, who was female and used Laura Bailey's voice. I then looked over mods in general and...found this one which is Laura Bailey's voice from the SR games. It's pretty awesome, too - I love the lines.

Random Nickname Button [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=630738292] - I hate thinking up of nicknames for soldiers. Uh, that's about it. Sometimes they'll get something that doesn't quite fit but I cannot think of something that does.

Lifetime Stats [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=634754304] - gives each soldier a count of shots/hits/misses. It's inconsequential but it's a fun thing to look up.

Finally, an actual gameplay change mod:

All Soldiers Gain XP [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=626589171] - it really doesn't make sense to me that I can have a soldier who has been with XCOM for months but they never pick up any new skills because they've not been on a mission. This mod changes it, so soldiers also gain XP when benched. I've configured it so it's just a bit, it affects healthy soldiers and they have to be at least squaddies, thus it's nothing game breaking. By the time you have colonels in your roster, a soldier who has been with you from the very beginning but never saw action might be rank 3. It's almost negligible, although it's a definite advantage.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

Interesting that the list mention Long War 2 a couple of times, but never includes that mod itself. Too popular to be worth it's own listing, or the confines of 8 items strike again?

 

[SmugFrog]

Thanks for this, I just started playing this after picking it up on the summer sale. The stop wasting my time is of particular interest as I thought it was silly that after shooting the soldier just sits there for a minute (to evaluate and decide if they did a good job?) before control is returned.

NOW, if only there was something that could be done about those female faces that look like they were stung horribly by an entire colony of bees...