X-COM Long War Mod

[MaxAstro]

Just tried out this mod recently and it has completely gotten me re-addicted to X-Com. It actually kinda feels almost like "Better Than X-Com" in that the creator seems to have a really solid grasp on rewarding gameplay.

I got through X-Com on Classic/Ironman without ever having a particularly bad run. Long War... well, I'm on Normal, on maybe my fifth run, and I think I might finally have learned enough to scrape by. But when Mutons start showing up that might change.

Most of all, though, the mod is FAIR. Brutally hard, but fair. :)

Anyway, curious if anyone else has tried the mod, and wanted to point it out to anyone who likes X-Com and hasn't heard of it.

[FlowerChild]

Linky? I was eying XCom earlier tonight in my steam list, and had my usual "meh" response after a moment's consideration. Would certainly be into something that reinvigorates it.

[DaveYanakov]

Linky?

http://xcom.nexusmods.com/mods/88//?

I'll have to give it another read through when I can keep my eyes open.

[logorouge]

You just reminded me I actually bought the game. Will try vanilla for now and keep an eye on that overhaul for later. Thanks!

(Holy moly, look at the number of overhaul mods available!)

[Caevin]

I agree completely, I've been playing Long War mod for a week now and it's incredibly painful, and incredibly satisfying. I got away with being stupid a lot in the plain X-COM, though I got bored when I tried to bump up to impossible, it just wasn't terribly exciting.

Then I got the mod and thought "let's put it on classic like normal" and I've been having the most ridiculously difficult time ever (even having trouble dealing with beginning missions with sectoids) and it's the best time I've ever had with the game. I've already had to reset three times and I've finally broken down and gone to normal difficulty.

So yeah, Long War mod is incredible. Be afraid.

[MaxAstro]

I think what really sold the mod for me was, on my third or something run-through, Dr Vahlan was giving her usual speech about not using explosives and I instantly thought, "Fuck you, I want to WIN this war". And proceeded to grenade the crap out of everything.

And then proceeded to wince when I saw the mission rewards....

In vanilla X-Com, I got away with almost never using explosives. Now I find myself seriously considering the choice. "I really need a couple more drone corpses for that autopsy... but man, can I survive if those three drones get to act?"

[Six]

Wow, just poured over the details of this mod and it does look very interesting. A whole lot more cost / benefit stuff to think about and what looks like multiple valid strategies in terms of soldier and squad setups. I did love the base game, but one thing I would fault it on would be certain abilities and strategies which (after a fair bit of playing) seemed to be obviously 'the best'. I'm looking at you squad-sight plasma snipers.

[Sarudak]

I was going to try this last night but the download link seems to be broken. So far the thing that concerns me is that they took away the choice of what abduction site to go to. So either the completely and totally changed the strategic game to give some other meaningful limitation to the player or they don't understand the design important of limitations in forcing meaningful choices on the player.

[Six]

I was going to try this last night but the download link seems to be broken. So far the thing that concerns me is that they took away the choice of what abduction site to go to. So either the completely and totally changed the strategic game to give some other meaningful limitation to the player or they don't understand the design important of limitations in forcing meaningful choices on the player.

From what I gathered this was balanced by upping encounter rate, encounters actually just being balls hard and giving soldiers a cool-down period after missions, forcing you to not be able to always take an optimal squad. It even implied that sometimes after seeing what you are up against in a mission, the best option is actually to pull out rather than take casualties.

So rather than the forced "Here are two options, you have to pick one", the meaningful choice has been shifted to "Can I actually take on this landed UFO at the moment without killing all my soldiers?".

[MaxAstro]

Actually the "only one abduction mission" thing is really important because panic is really, really sticky in Long War. Very few things cause panic to rise (mostly fucking up in major ways) but it's also really hard to lower panic.

If you were guaranteed a panic increase in two countries every abduction mission, you'd lose very quickly. Also abduction missions only give cash, so there's not a choice in resources - they are basically just "standard" missions now, in contrast to all other missions being "unique" missions.

EDIT: Also, the "download manually" link is working for me, although certain servers don't seem to have the file so try a couple. You also don't actually need to download 2.0; the latest beta is a full installer and doesn't require 2.0.

Do read the readme though, installation is kinda a bitch.

EDIT2: And Six is also exactly right - you will find yourself making hard choices, but you will no longer be forced to make arbitrary choices. The whole three abduction thing always felt arbitrary to me, at least. "I have enough interceptors to defend the entire planet from UFOs, and I have two dozen highly trained soldiers, but no one knows how to build more dropships so gosh, I guess we can only do one mission."

[Sarudak]

Sure it's arbitrary. But it's arbitrary in the same sense that your soldiers can only carry one item. Or you can send at most 6 soldiers to a mission. Or how about that the entire earth defense force is less than 100 soldiers? Or the fact that you can only use a shotgun if you're of a specific class. Or that snipers can't use the rifle that they were using last mission. I could go on but I think you get the point. Gameplay trumps any kind of idea of 'realism'. The game is abstracted. The abduction missions were abstracted from the idea that the aliens were hitting so many point on earth you couldn't cover them all but instead of having 30 abduction sites at the same time and you were only able to field 10 skyrangers or whatever which would have gotten really tedious you get to choose one mission out of three.

[MaxAstro]

I think that more than being arbitrary in that it's unrealistic, it's arbitrary in that its fake difficulty. It's "no matter what you do, panic goes up". Could be a personal preference thing, but I much prefer Long War's system of "panic goes up when you make mistakes". I like feeling like it's my fault that a country abandons me.

[Sarudak]

You think it's unrealistic that no matter what you do panic goes up in an alien invasion? In the original game it was your fault when a country abandons you. Many people have done complete games without losing a single country. Even so I think it makes sense as a way to provide mounting pressure on the player. After all you are considered humanities last hope and the aliens are striking at civilians if you don't get your butt in gear and take the fight to the aliens quickly you should expect panic and an eventual loss of support. In what way is this arbitrary or unrealistic?

[MaxAstro]

~shrug~ Personal preference thing, I guess. I find the strategic choices in Long War both more difficult and more rewarding compared to base X-Com. The forced abduction choice was always something I disliked about vanilla X-Com; obviously it works for you. YMMV, as usual.