[Scotty]

For those of you playing, don't sell your ADVENT Trooper Corpses.  For the love of God don't do it.  You need them to research the mid tier armor.

Don't do what I did, and sell most of them, and leave yourself unable to build the new armor.  Fighting Sectopods with kevlar is not easy (but I can't genuinely claim it's not fun).

[The E]

Speaking of an HLP playthrough, given that this game has a character creator and exportable characters, what do you guys think of getting an HLP file going?

[deathfun]

That would be... a rather fantastic idea

Also, I totally forgot to update mine let alone finish it. God dammit, now it's irrelevant D:

Also yes, you've been voluntold. Get to it, XCOM 2 HLP-LP

[AdmiralRalwood]

Speaking of an HLP playthrough, given that this game has a character creator and exportable characters, what do you guys think of getting an HLP file going?

Lack of information on the character pool is probably the one thing stopping me from starting an HLPX-COM2 LP right now. Like, does it draw exclusively from the character pool until valid options are exhausted (before falling back on randomly-generated characters), or is it a random chance whether a character will be drawn from the pool at all? If we have people who want to be scientists and they're added to the pool as "can be used as VIPs", will they be used for personnel available for sale at HQ? Similarly, will they be all the VIPs that show up until the pool is used up? And what happens if you add or remove characters from the pool in the middle of the game?

It's entirely possible I may need to download the development tools and mod the game before starting the LP, if only to add some sort of UI to let me rename scientists/engineers so that someone can "claim" such a role without needing to be added to the character pool as a VIP first (and also because "VIP" doesn't specify scientist or engineer, and presumably people would have Opinions about that).

[Kobrar44]

XCOM 2 is arguably one of the most moddable games ever made, because Firaxis released the source and all assets with it.  If you find something you don't like, fix it.

They allow you to modify the source code? Wow. Just wow. 

[NGTM-1R]

That would be... a rather fantastic idea

Also, I totally forgot to update mine let alone finish it. God dammit, now it's irrelevant D:

Also yes, you've been voluntold. Get to it, XCOM 2 HLP-LP

Could be worse. I just needed to do some writing on mine to get it moving again...until the new computer.

[Mongoose]

That would be... a rather fantastic idea

Also, I totally forgot to update mine let alone finish it. God dammit, now it's irrelevant D:

Also yes, you've been voluntold. Get to it, XCOM 2 HLP-LP

Not irrelevant, just delayed!  I loved having your 1080p-image-crammed posts flat-out crash my old machine's browser.

[Colonol Dekker]

I put myself forward as first reserve on any heavy (or light) demolition focused combat individuals.
Baseball cap and MTP colours. Relaxed personality and if possible a smoker!

[Scotty]

I put myself forward as first reserve on any heavy (or light) demolition focused combat individuals.
Baseball cap and MTP colours. Relaxed personality and if possible a smoker!

Grenadiers are the god-tier in this game I love them so much.  I'm sorely tempted to run a squad of four Grenadiers, a Specialist (gotta hack dem turrets yo), and a Gunslinger Sharpshooter.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Grenadiers are the god-tier

More like high level characters are god-tier; high-level Combat Hackers hacking everything (what's that? you brought a sectopod? how lovely, I wanted this to be even easier), high-level combat medics making it virtually impossible for your team to die, high-level snipers literally wiping out every enemy they can see in a single turn (I stacked a +19 Aim PCS with a Superior Scope (+15) and Tracer Rounds (+10), and high ground gives my sniper a 100% chance to hit most things, so Serial tends to be a 0-risk "make everything that can be killed with a single plasma lance shot dead now" button), high-level gunslingers combining rapid-fire short-ranged death with the occasional long-ranged sniping, high-level demolitions experts blowing up everything in sight, high-level heavy gunners applying the leverage needed to let the rest of your team pummel heavy targets to death as quickly as possible, high-level scouts ambushing enemies with point-blank rapid-fire shotgun blasts (and then fading back to cover after killing the enemy), high-level assaults killing everything with swords, and high-level psi operatives...

...Okay, high-level psi operatives are basically gods.

[Scotty]

Grenadiers are hands down the best for every other part of the game because armor is tough and they tell it to go **** itself with extreme prejudice.  Destroying cover and armor are the easiest ways to take out enemies and open up escape routes.  It's especially funny when you're trying to extract a VIP and there's a pesky wall in the way.  Not anymore!

Grenades are so great.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Grenadiers are hands down the best for every other part of the game because armor is tough and they tell it to go **** itself with extreme prejudice.

Other ways to tell armor to go **** itself include Combat Protocol and Capacitor Discharge, various psi powers, and heavy weapons (Shredstorm Cannon is one of my particular favourites; fired it at a group of enemies and half of a building suddenly ceased to exist).

Not to mention that you can just give Acid Grenades to people who aren't Grenadiers as well.

[Gortef]

When someone does an LP of this, I want to be in it.

I'm still counting my cents to decide if I can afford to buy it immediately or from the upcoming sales.

[Killer Whale]

I'm a dirty stinking cheater (ie. savescummer). So to balance it out I gave every pod the chance to contain 10 ppl (except like civilians and turrets). Its perfect!

[Scotty]

Gatekeepers are the worst things ever.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Gatekeepers are the worst things ever.

Somewhat surprisingly, their biggest vulnerability seems to be psi powers.

[The E]

Here's some observations from my current playthrough:

-Delaying the skulljacking of an Advent officer until after you did the raid on the processing center is the correct choice. This massively reduces the probability of Codices or MECs appearing there, which is A Good Thing.
-Speaking of codices, a stunned codex will not clone.
-Hacking is more fun than healing.
-Gatekeepers will happily hateball their own team if they think they can get Zombies out of the deal.
-Mimic beacons are almost essential equipment (but beware: there is currently a bug where Sectoids at least can zombiefy a dead mimic beacon)

[NGTM-1R]

Gentlemen.

[Rodo]

Must be an ilusion, it's head might not even be there.

Still, I'm now wanting to know if that shot connected or not.

[Shivan Hunter]

I picked this up a couple days ago and it's my first experience with an XCOM game. How do you nerds think it compares to EU/EW? Also **** andromedons. Also pic related