Poll: XCOM 2 is Nigh - Prepare Your RNG Holes

[DoPo]

Edit: On to something more important: How are you guys doing your base layouts?

Terrible... I'm pretty sure I'll lose because I don't think took my time digging instead of building stuff. Still, I'm not restarting until I actually lose.

Anyway, I'm jut about to build a workshop and in the middle of the second row. I think that is a pretty good position - I'm not sure if "adjacent" would mean immediately next to (left, right, top, and bottom) or do they include diagonals as well. I assume it's the former. Either way, it seems like a good spot - then you can build the rooms that require staffing aroung it. Right now, what I have is this

[Guerilla School] [Proving Grounds] [empty]
[Resistance Comms] [Workshop] [empty]
[empty] [Power plant] [empty]
[empty] [empty] [empty]

The power plant is build on an exposed power coil...I vastly underestimated how much time it would take to clear up that space. If I were to do it again, I'd have built it where the resistance comms are or on the other side of the workshop. The shadow chamber, I'll be building in the top right, as I believe it doesn't need anybody to staff it, hence it doesn't need to be next to the workshop. Other things that don't need staffing are labs, so they could go in some of those empty spaces.

Psi school is apparently a building as well, and I don't expect it to need engineers staffed, so it can also be put away from the workshop.

 

[Maladict]

Edit: On to something more important: How are you guys doing your base layouts?

Anyway, I'm jut about to build a workshop and in the middle of the second row. I think that is a pretty good position - I'm not sure if "adjacent" would mean immediately next to (left, right, top, and bottom) or do they include diagonals as well. I assume it's the former.

You're correct, it's just up/down/left/right. No diagonals

The shadow chamber, I'll be building in the top right, as I believe it doesn't need anybody to staff it, hence it doesn't need to be next to the workshop. Other things that don't need staffing are labs, so they could go in some of those empty spaces.

Psi school is apparently a building as well, and I don't expect it to need engineers staffed, so it can also be put away from the workshop.

Shadow Chamber doesn't need any staff, but the Psi Lab benefits from an engineer (the engineer greatly reduces Psi training time, and Psi soldiers need to do a LOT of training).

 

[DoPo]

Edit: On to something more important: How are you guys doing your base layouts?

Anyway, I'm jut about to build a workshop and in the middle of the second row. I think that is a pretty good position - I'm not sure if "adjacent" would mean immediately next to (left, right, top, and bottom) or do they include diagonals as well. I assume it's the former.

You're correct, it's just up/down/left/right. No diagonals

Yeah, would have been a bit too OP if it covered all 8 rooms. Then you'd just need two to staff everything

[R] [W] [R]
[R] [R] [R]
[R] [R] [R]
[R] [W] [R]

W is the placement of workshopw, everything else is just any room.

The shadow chamber, I'll be building in the top right, as I believe it doesn't need anybody to staff it, hence it doesn't need to be next to the workshop. Other things that don't need staffing are labs, so they could go in some of those empty spaces.

Psi school is apparently a building as well, and I don't expect it to need engineers staffed, so it can also be put away from the workshop.

Shadow Chamber doesn't need any staff, but the Psi Lab benefits from an engineer (the engineer greatly reduces Psi training time, and Psi soldiers need to do a LOT of training).

I see. Thanks for that information - I'll include it in my plans. I've not researched psionics yet.

 

[LetalisK]

Yeah, would have been a bit too OP if it covered all 8 rooms. Then you'd just need two to staff everything

[R] [W] [R]
[R] [R] [R]
[R] [R] [R]
[R] [W] [R]

This has me thinking about workshop configuration and I don't know if there is really one optimal configuration. For example,

[R] [R] [R]
[R] [W] [R]
[R] [W] [R]
[R] [R] [R]

or

[R] [R] [R]
[R] [R] [W]
[W] [R] [R]
[R] [R] [R]

plus yours are all functionally the same, right? Or am I missing something? Are there any other buildings with adjacency bonuses?

Edit: Actually, maybe I see a difference. With your scheme, you get the excavations going quicker in the early game. On the down side, I'll have to delay the Guerrilla building a bit since it would have to go on the second tier. But I would get more power earlier. Hm. Something to think about.

 

[DoPo]

Yeah, would have been a bit too OP if it covered all 8 rooms. Then you'd just need two to staff everything

[R] [W] [R]
[R] [R] [R]
[R] [R] [R]
[R] [W] [R]

This has me thinking about workshop configuration and I don't know if there is really one optimal configuration. For example,

[R] [R] [R]
[R] [W] [R]
[R] [W] [R]
[R] [R] [R]

or

[R] [R] [R]
[R] [R] [W]
[W] [R] [R]
[R] [R] [R]

plus yours are all functionally the same, right? Or am I missing something?

Yeah, each of these would allow you to staff 6 rooms in total with 2 engineers. There is one more which is the mirror of the final layout. There is also this which allows the same:


[R] [R] [R]
[R] [W] [R]
[R] [R] [R]
[W] [R] [R]

(there are 4 variations of this same layout)

I guess the way you'd choose would depend on where the exposed power coils are. I assume they have random placement per campaign, similar to the steam vents in the first XCOM. The guidelines are pretty much: try NOT to build a workshop on a coil. Reason being that if you build something on a coil, it doesn't need to be powered, however, workshops only use up 1 power, so it's wasteful to not put anything else there.

Maybe 3 workshops can be even better, but I don't know. It's possible a third one is not really needed, as you don't need to staff that many rooms.

 

[LetalisK]

Yeah, would have been a bit too OP if it covered all 8 rooms. Then you'd just need two to staff everything

[R] [W] [R]
[R] [R] [R]
[R] [R] [R]
[R] [W] [R]

This has me thinking about workshop configuration and I don't know if there is really one optimal configuration. For example,

[R] [R] [R]
[R] [W] [R]
[R] [W] [R]
[R] [R] [R]

or

[R] [R] [R]
[R] [R] [W]
[W] [R] [R]
[R] [R] [R]

plus yours are all functionally the same, right? Or am I missing something?

Yeah, each of these would allow you to staff 6 rooms in total with 2 engineers. There is one more which is the mirror of the final layout. There is also this which allows the same:


[R] [R] [R]
[R] [W] [R]
[R] [R] [R]
[W] [R] [R]

(there are 4 variations of this same layout)

I guess the way you'd choose would depend on where the exposed power coils are. I assume they have random placement per campaign, similar to the steam vents in the first XCOM. The guidelines are pretty much: try NOT to build a workshop on a coil. Reason being that if you build something on a coil, it doesn't need to be powered, however, workshops only use up 1 power, so it's wasteful to not put anything else there.

Maybe 3 workshops can be even better, but I don't know. It's possible a third one is not really needed, as you don't need to staff that many rooms.

From what I've gathered from looking stuff up, by the time you could build a third workshop without gimping yourself, you should already have enough personnel to man everything.

 

[DoPo]

From what I've gathered from looking stuff up, by the time you could build a third workshop without gimping yourself, you should already have enough personnel to man everything.

That's what I thought as well.

In other news, I really need to get some faster healing. Soldiers seem to be injured for much longer now. Whereas in the first XCOM you could do with about two squads of soldiers to rotate, I think I need, like, three here. And I already have them, too.

And vipers can go fuck themselves. They are one of the reasons I have people in sick bay all the time.

 

[LetalisK]

From what I've gathered from looking stuff up, by the time you could build a third workshop without gimping yourself, you should already have enough personnel to man everything.

That's what I thought as well.

In other news, I really need to get some faster healing. Soldiers seem to be injured for much longer now. Whereas in the first XCOM you could do with about two squads of soldiers to rotate, I think I need, like, three here. And I already have them, too.

And vipers can go fuck themselves. They are one of the reasons I have people in sick bay all the time.

Ditto. It's to the point where I will bring two snipers just to make sure vipers die ASAP.

 

[Jack Action]

From what I've gathered from looking stuff up, by the time you could build a third workshop without gimping yourself, you should already have enough personnel to man everything.

Erm... third? It wouldn't even let me build a second. As in, the option is completely missing. I had to remove the one I already made, which was a fun surprise, and made me waste a good half a month. Granted, by that point (well, this point), I'm running out of space faster than I'm running out of engineers.

 

[DoPo]

Erm... third? It wouldn't even let me build a second. As in, the option is completely missing.

Ri-i-ight. So what you're saying is that all that hard work we've put into calculating the optimal layout is WASTED?! All those...what, few minutes? I could have used them for something much more productive, then.

Also, fun fact, I didn't know how workshops worked anyway. Just finished mine finally and I found out that what it actually did is that you put one engineer in there and it gives you two GREMLINs you could use as engineers. This includes digging, for example. You can upgrade the workshop to give you another engineer slot for a total of 4 GREMLINs.

So, it's different to what I imagined. Well, anyway. In that case, the optimal location is up to you, since you can totally have it something like this

[R] [R] [R]
[W] [R] [R]
[R] [R] [R]
[R] [R] [R]

and one of the adjacent rooms could be a power reactor, thus you can put two GREMLINs in that for extra power, and one in each of the other rooms. Or whatever.

It's still a good investment, I think.

 

[Jack Action]

Erm... third? It wouldn't even let me build a second. As in, the option is completely missing.

Ri-i-ight. So what you're saying is that all that hard work we've put into calculating the optimal layout is WASTED?! All those...what, few minutes? I could have used them for something much more productive, then.

Also, fun fact, I didn't know how workshops worked anyway. Just finished mine finally and I found out that what it actually did is that you put one engineer in there and it gives you two GREMLINs you could use as engineers. This includes digging, for example. You can upgrade the workshop to give you another engineer slot for a total of 4 GREMLINs.

So, it's different to what I imagined. Well, anyway. In that case, the optimal location is up to you, since you can totally have it something like this

[R] [R] [R]
[W] [R] [R]
[R] [R] [R]
[R] [R] [R]

and one of the adjacent rooms could be a power reactor, thus you can put two GREMLINs in that for extra power, and one in each of the other rooms. Or whatever.

It's still a good investment, I think.

Oh, it's great, I'm not saying it's not, the problem is that since you can't build more than one, if you're dumb like me and plan ahead thinking you'll have 2 workshops available to throw gremlins around, you end up wasting valuable time building pointless facilities you'll have to remove and overdigging instead of having the engineers assigned to cleanup doing more useful things.

That reminds me, Power Coils provide a massive boost to power facilities, so don't rely too much on the one you have to build at first to get to the exposed coils.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Some inspiring words for anyone who feels like putting Donald Trump in their game for whatever reason:

"I will build a great, great wall around Earth. And I will have ADVENT pay for that wall."

 

[LetalisK]

Erm... third? It wouldn't even let me build a second. As in, the option is completely missing.

Ri-i-ight. So what you're saying is that all that hard work we've put into calculating the optimal layout is WASTED?! All those...what, few minutes? I could have used them for something much more productive, then.

Also, fun fact, I didn't know how workshops worked anyway. Just finished mine finally and I found out that what it actually did is that you put one engineer in there and it gives you two GREMLINs you could use as engineers. This includes digging, for example. You can upgrade the workshop to give you another engineer slot for a total of 4 GREMLINs.

So, it's different to what I imagined. Well, anyway. In that case, the optimal location is up to you, since you can totally have it something like this

[R] [R] [R]
[W] [R] [R]
[R] [R] [R]
[R] [R] [R]

and one of the adjacent rooms could be a power reactor, thus you can put two GREMLINs in that for extra power, and one in each of the other rooms. Or whatever.

It's still a good investment, I think.

._. Poop.

Well, my power coils are in the two bottom corners. I think I'm going to leave them there for now. I reeeeally need my Guerrilla training more.

 

[DoPo]

Some inspiring words for anyone who feels like putting Donald Trump in their game for whatever reason:

"I will build a great, great wall around Earth. And I will have ADVENT pay for that wall."

are you implying trump wouldn't be a member of advent

make him a dark vip

There is a guy who is making famous people into soldiers [http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/163467-xcom-2/73259744]. That sounds like something he might do. Just imagine - Putin vs Trump. Oh, that's just going to be amazing!

 

[SweetShark]

I just played for a couple of hours the new XCOM 2 myself.

- I think it is a awesome game with a lot of mystery even in the beggining of the game. Seriously, after the Tutorial ends, I was curious to learn what would happened next.
- The Stealth system is great, but sometimes if you are close to the trigger zones even without touching them, is there a high chance to activate them. Other than that, satisfying killing all the uncovered enemies with one ambush. Put eveyone with Overwatch, then made the last soldier to trigger the alert.
- The Save system is great, Autosave in every single round you play [I know, I am not Hardcore enough] which give you a change to fix a dumb mistake you made.
- However a big problem is the loading time. OH BOY they take their sweet time to load even if you are leaving a mission...
Need a fix if possible.
- All the Aliens I met so far are great. They are so different from its other which make the player to think some interesting deep strategies for each Alien.
For Example if you meet a Sectoid with a group of enemies, he is deadly. But a Sectoid alone is useless. Most of the time he trying to manipulate the battlefiend with psionics powers, NOT inflict damage himself. So if you are alone with a Sectoid, if you don't take cover to shoot him, he probably will try to hide from you in the next turn to raise a zombie or something.
Good stuff, good stuff.
- Another problem saddly are the timed missions and the EVAC specificaly...
You must think fast and smart if you want to complete the mission in the time limit and without lot of casualties. Which of course cause a problem if you don't have a chance to kill a target most of the time [you know, to have a 89% shoot chance and miss like a boss...].
- The different objectives you have now related with the main plot in the World Map are more organic, but at the same time more complicated. Sure, I am at the beggining of the game, so I hope to get used to it.

In other words, great game in these 5-6 hours I played and I hope it get better.

Commander's Seal of APPROVAL!!!

 

[DoPo]

- Another problem saddly are the timed missions and the EVAC specificaly...
You must think fast and smart if you want to complete the mission in the time limit and without lot of casualties. Which of course cause a problem if you don't have a chance to kill a target most of the time [you know, to have a 89% shoot chance and miss like a boss...].

There are mods to fix that already:

TimerTweaks [http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=616857663] is straight forward - it increases each timer by a bit. It's +4 for most missions, +2 for main ones.

True Concealment [http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=618077830] changes the mission timer so it only starts ticking after you've been exposed. In addition it very slightly decreases the timers to account for that.

And there is also Diable Timers [http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=616964599] which does exactly what it says.

 

[SweetShark]

- Another problem saddly are the timed missions and the EVAC specificaly...
You must think fast and smart if you want to complete the mission in the time limit and without lot of casualties. Which of course cause a problem if you don't have a chance to kill a target most of the time [you know, to have a 89% shoot chance and miss like a boss...].

There are mods to fix that already:

TimerTweaks [http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=616857663] is straight forward - it increases each timer by a bit. It's +4 for most missions, +2 for main ones.

True Concealment [http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=618077830] changes the mission timer so it only starts ticking after you've been exposed. In addition it very slightly decreases the timers to account for that.

And there is also Diable Timers [http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=616964599] which does exactly what it says.

.........

OH GOD YES PLEASE!!! I didn't knew about these Mods! I only get the first ones only...
However a question remain: Does maybe are incidents which users reported these Mods corrupt their game?

 

[DoPo]

- Another problem saddly are the timed missions and the EVAC specificaly...
You must think fast and smart if you want to complete the mission in the time limit and without lot of casualties. Which of course cause a problem if you don't have a chance to kill a target most of the time [you know, to have a 89% shoot chance and miss like a boss...].

There are mods to fix that already:

TimerTweaks [http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=616857663] is straight forward - it increases each timer by a bit. It's +4 for most missions, +2 for main ones.

True Concealment [http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=618077830] changes the mission timer so it only starts ticking after you've been exposed. In addition it very slightly decreases the timers to account for that.

And there is also Diable Timers [http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=616964599] which does exactly what it says.

.........

OH GOD YES PLEASE!!! I didn't knew about these Mods! I only get the first ones only...
However a question remain: Does maybe are incidents which users reported these Mods corrupt their game?

If you mod your game, save, disable the mod, then load that game, it may not work. Saying that, the TimerTweaks should be rather straight forward - it's just a configuration change you can do yourself. I don't know about True Concealment, though, it might be more involved.

Saying that, in general adding mods to a game is fine, but removing them may require a new playthrough.

Occasionally some mods may cause problems, true - I don't think those are. I'm using Timer Tweaks myself and haven't had issues. What I'd do is just check the comments section for the mods. Usually it should be fairly evident if it works or not. If it's been out for a couple of days, it's very likely that somebody would have reported a problem. If there are no reports, then it's most likely not going to cause a problem for you, either.

 

[SweetShark]

- Another problem saddly are the timed missions and the EVAC specificaly...
You must think fast and smart if you want to complete the mission in the time limit and without lot of casualties. Which of course cause a problem if you don't have a chance to kill a target most of the time [you know, to have a 89% shoot chance and miss like a boss...].

There are mods to fix that already:

TimerTweaks [http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=616857663] is straight forward - it increases each timer by a bit. It's +4 for most missions, +2 for main ones.

True Concealment [http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=618077830] changes the mission timer so it only starts ticking after you've been exposed. In addition it very slightly decreases the timers to account for that.

And there is also Diable Timers [http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=616964599] which does exactly what it says.

.........

OH GOD YES PLEASE!!! I didn't knew about these Mods! I only get the first ones only...
However a question remain: Does maybe are incidents which users reported these Mods corrupt their game?

If you mod your game, save, disable the mod, then load that game, it may not work. Saying that, the TimerTweaks should be rather straight forward - it's just a configuration change you can do yourself. I don't know about True Concealment, though, it might be more involved.

Saying that, in general adding mods to a game is fine, but removing them may require a new playthrough.

Occasionally some mods may cause problems, true - I don't think those are. I'm using Timer Tweaks myself and haven't had issues. What I'd do is just check the comments section for the mods. Usually it should be fairly evident if it works or not. If it's been out for a couple of days, it's very likely that somebody would have reported a problem. If there are no reports, then it's most likely not going to cause a problem for you, either.

Then I will try the Timer Tweak Mod first, then will check for the other ones.
Thank you so much for telling me!

Btw, do you wish for a MIB Mod, eh? It would be sweet!!!