Random tips and explanations

Overview

Some random basic tips and explanations which weren’t clear to me in the beginning. Feel free to incorporate them in your guides without any credits, as I don’t intend to build this one out much.V2 (February 9th)

Basics

1. Always keep in mind that the objectives have priority. Enemies far away from your objective can be ignored for the time being. You don’t have to kill every enemy when it’s not a mission objective.
2. Be careful with the ability “Scanning Protocol” from the Specialist. It triggers the Faceless to reveal themselves, which is good in most cases. But then they start to act, which might not so good on protection missions or in general on missions you don’t need to kill every enemy.
   On “protect object” missions, if they didn’t spot you, they’re going after the object!
3. Make a save (not quick save) at the beginning of every mission. Quick save/load (f5/f9) is more for testing and does not save you if your overall tactic doesn’t work out. Use quick save as often as possible though. If you don’t want to clutter your savegames, you can reuse one savegame you named “mission start” or similiar.
   Or try this mod: Restart Mission
4. The sword is a powerful melee attack with a very high hit chance. But be careful when using it on Mutons (others?), there’s a chance they block it and hit back – and they hit hard.
5. When your objective is to hack something, you can use your specialists gremlings to your advantage. While other classes have to go to those green star fields, specialists can hack via line of sight from distance. This fine difference can mean win or lose on turn limit missions.
6. If you’re standing in the evac zone, you can always evacuate, even without action points left. So feel free to give remaining enemies their last presents before evacuate.

Demolition

In XCOM2, you can destroy a lot of things with grenades, grenade launchers etc. Use it to your advantage, which can be:

1. Destroy enemy cover for a higher hit chance.
2. Create new lines of sight for your team mates.
3. Destroy roofs where enemies stand on for fall damage and/or to get them into a position you want them to be. Turrets seem to get destroyed instantly when falling.
4. Prevent enemies from climbing to your position by destroying nearby climbing possibilities. Probably the connected roof needs to be destroyed, needs further testing.

Stealth

1. Beware of enemies you didn’t see yet. If you don’t see them, you don’t know/see their reaction area, so beware of too bold rushes.
2. Stealth and overwatch. There are three things that can happen (not counting you run into them by accident):
   1. Classic: You discover enemies and shoot them first, without your team mates having overwatch.
      Results: Enemies take cover, but your team mates can still move. Enemies have their turn afterwards like always.
      Pros: You can still move, thus be able to react which might be neccesary.
      Cons: Enemies take cover. They still live except for maybe the one you shot at.
      Recommendation: When there is more than one enemy group which will react when you start shooting.
   2. Active stealth overwatch: You get your team mates in position and overwatch and last one shoots.
      Results: Enemies take cover while your team mates shot at them. Chance to kill them before they get in cover. But (big but!) it’s their turn then!
      Pros: Dead enemies. All currently spotted enemies dead at best.
      Cons: You can’t react anymore.
      Recommendation: Looks great at first, but I’d recommend it when there’s only one enemy group with 2 or 3 enemies and when the chance is high you can kill all of them. When they survive, it’s their turn and you don’t want more than one enemy group acting without being able to react.
      Grenades or Grenades launcher are a good way to start your attack and hitting multiple targets, especially with high HP enemies you probably won’t kill in one shot.
   3. Passive stealth overwatch: Get all of your soldiers into overwatch and let enemies discover your soldiers by themselves in their turn while they patrol.
      Results:
      1) Overwatch rampage. Enemies take cover, but don’t shoot back. It’s your turn again.
      2) One enemy shoots back (not taking cover), the others take cover. It’s your turn again.
      Pros: You deal damage while enemies take cover and it’s your turn again directly afterwards.
      Cons: Hard to set up, especially within a turn limit mission.
      Recommendation: Always if viable. Take out as many enemies as possible with overwatch and after they did take cover, you can try to get the rest.
      Basically, you need one soldier to get as close as possible and on a path the enemy will patrol. They’ll spot you when they flank your soldier, but that sounds worse than it is, as the enemies only take cover and nothing else and you can move afterwards. Only if some enemies survived your overwatch….
      Note: Works really well most of the time, but use quick save/load to be sure. I also read that proximity mines (after…Andromedon(?) research) works quite well in this scenario.

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Proximity Mines works really great. You can throw them directly between enemies, they only react if the enemies move. Get everyone else in overwatch and watch the spectacle. Alternatively, shoot an plasma grenade into them for a devastating attack, killing low and mid hp enemies instantly.

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Proximity Mine rampage! Still had to reload though, because the mine on the left side blew the truck, too, despite the truck not being marked as in range of the explosion. And in the truck was a mission objective, so be careful with mines near mission objectives.

Other

1. You can skip the evacuate animation by pressing “change soldier” (default TAB), if you still have soldiers left with movement points.