Holy shit

Last week I shared the first gameplay teaser of X-COM: UFO Defense 3D, a full 3D battlescape for OpenXcom Extended. It runs the original game's rules, AI and saves, drawn in 3D.

Here's what changed this week:

Video (3:51): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJa4IzOUJtg

Everything in the video is real gameplay. Each comparison shows last week's build first, then wipes to this week's.

ENVIRONMENTS

• Ground materials now span many tiles, so the ground no longer repeats every tile
• All grass is procedural, with flowers, leaf litter, stones and dead weeds, tuned per biome
• Visual noise matched to the original sprites, so soldiers stay easy to read

TERRAIN AND VEGETATION

• Sun-following slope relief: hills and ramps read as clearly as in the sprites
• Living plants have a waxy sheen, and the hedges were rebuilt

LIGHTING

• Night missions are actually dark now, following the game's own shade levels
• Street lamps, flares and fires are real 3D lights, each reaching as far as the game's own light power

NEW UNITS

• 3D Tanks (Cannon, Rocket Launcher, Laser Cannon) and the Cyberdisc, filling their full 2x2 footprint
• Tanks cook off and burn down to a charred wreck
• A Cyberdisc's self-destruct uses OpenXcom's own blast and bursts it into burning segments

ANIMATIONS

• NaturalMotion Euphoria style shot reactions for non-lethal wounds: a hand reaches for the wound, the head looks at it, then back to the fight
• Hits land anywhere on the body, and blood hits the floor for every 10 HP lost
• Lethal hits get a short dying window, then death throes; head shots drop the body limp at once

Screenshots, clips and side-by-side comparisons with the original sprites: https://xcom-3d.pages.dev/

Feedback welcome, I'm thinking about releasing this sooner than I initially planned with any late game units that aren't finished being sprite billboards. It might be cool to have a sprite billboards mode while keeping the 3d environments as well.

I read conflicting statements (EW).

One said you should sat rush and you need 2 steam vents on 2nd layer after the first misson or just start over and the other said doing sat rush and picking engineers over scientists hampers your weapon / armor research and makes missions harder. Other guide mentioned to get mimetic gen with sniper ASAP to have a easy time in missions.

What's the current easiest approach to beat that mode (no ironman)?

Hi there, I’m someone who hasn’t really delved into the whole strategy type game of XCOM however I constantly watch a YouTuber Baalorlord and play a lot of slay the spire and saw him play XCOM and it looked really fun. However during stream I heard him say ‘he preferred XCOM 1 over 2’ due to various reasons. I want to try this game out and thought I’d get others opinion on which is a better game in general and which is a better game for someone just starting out!

HEAT Warheads is considerably stronger than its description suggests, particularly against flying robotic pods.

The reason is how HEAT interacts with explosive damage falloff.

A few interesting conclusions:

• At the edge of a rocket explosion, HEAT can increase damage against robotic enemies by 200%, rather than the advertised 50%.
• With Shredder Rockets, that relative increase can reach 333%.
• This makes HEAT especially valuable against Drones and Seekers, where multiple enemies may be caught near the edges of the blast.
• The effect is particularly significant with early-game rocket launchers, when a few extra points of damage can determine whether a Drone survives.

I've written up the mechanics, calculations, and actual weapon damage numbers here:

Countering Flying Robotic Pods: HEAT Warheads and Explosive Falloff

There's also a separate entry covering explosive damage falloff itself, including numerical examples.

Curious whether other Long War players have been valuing HEAT Warheads with this interaction in mind.

Playing LWOTC for xcom, friend suggested it since I played xcom 1. Second mission I have all rookies, a chosen shows up, squad wipes me and I have no clue how to win this. I don't want to skip the mission because its the mission where the reapers and other faction meet and idk if I get another chance at it. Please send help.

I played through the Legacy Ops again recently, and found myself wanting more missions. Using Special Named Characters is a difficult balancing act, but I was having a blast with a lot of these missions, and trying to envision what these fights look like in real time, too. I was flashbanging and distracting Advent and imagining the timeline of when these fights were occurring.

Imagine if, one day, the cops stopped answering to the government, and were replaced by alien troopers in your neighborhood. Then a group of ex-military and survivalist punks came along, flashbanged their Berserkers, and made off with the aliens' stuff before cornering the last survivor of their patrol and skulljacked the dude.

After playing Chimera squad, too. I know Long War 2 has different priorities than core game, but I like the idea of playing through XCom where killing all the aliens is not only not the priority but possibly the weaker play.

Or maybe having to go to extra measures to arrange your infiltration/exfiltration, like you could send the Skyranger or work with local resistance to just help you bug out. And then in Chimera squad, there's a big emphasis on taking people out with nonlethal tactics.

I find myself kinda wishing capturing enemies and the reverse was more the focus of the game.

At the very least, I want more playing around with logistics, which I enjoyed in Xenonauts, but didn't like the 'Spend action points to turn 45 degrees' gameplay, which I thought was fairly ridiculous.

Help I only need the last two achievements can anyone help me??

long story short, havent played xcom in over a decade.
got xcom2 and war of the chosen since they were on special on steam. saw that theres this mod Long War people are talking about.just finished a vanilla playthrough of xcom2, so just wondering whats best next?

xcom2, xcom2+longwar, wotc, wotc+longwar
or
xcom2, wotc, xcom2+longwar, wotc+longwar?

Ive put like 16hrs into my first xcom playthrough and i was avoiding capturing aliens. I was confused why I wasnt unlocking plasma guns and did many missions without them until I captured some juggernaut guys. Now realizing i needed to capture an outsider to continue the story wondering if I've soft locked myself by not capturing an outsider sooo long.

This is my tier list for how annoying the enemies are in xcom2 wotc.

I play xcom2 wotc and I like it. Here's a tier list on how annoying I think each enemy is. Tier 6 are the least annoying enemies and tier 1 is the most annoying enemy.

Tier 6, Noob (not the hardest enemies): ADVENT Mecs, ADVENT turrets, ADVENT troopers

Tier 5, I can handle you: ADVENT officers, The hunter chosen (I find him the easiest chosen to deal with), Sectoids (Melee vulnerability), Beserkers, Facless

Tier 4, Annoying if it's bad timing: Archons, Chrysalids, The Warlock chosen, Spectres, Mutons, Vipers, ADVENT purifiers (especially their chance to explode and destroy the objective), ADVENT priest, ADVENT heavy Mecs

Tier 3, NO! WHY!: Andromedons, Gatekeepers, Codexes, Sectopods

Tier 2, Kill on sight!: ADVENT generals (because they are the objective), Archon king, ADVENT stun lancers, Beserker queen, Avatars, ADVENT shieldbearers, Viper king, The Chosen assassin

Tier 1, greatest power: game lag and game prolonging: The lost (I play xcom2 wotc on the PS4)

These enemies can be very hard when you're still upgrading your soldiers or if you're really unlucky. I'm never playing xcom2 on ironman mode, I don't have the patience nor will for it. Once you upgraded your soldiers and obtain all the powerful goods (armor from alien rulers and weapons from the chosen) some of these enemies are more tolerable.

Any, just wanted to make this tier list.

Trying Superhuman out

Is there a bug in OXE where mind controlled ppl get new TU, even tho I left their turn with Zero? or is this working as intended--that's some bs if so?

also, i heard that they can only start doing MC if they "see" you? so, as long as one sees you, the dudes with disruptors can try from across the map, afaik...

can they "see" further than we can See in full daylight conditions? Currently attempting an Artefact site, and staved off MC by not leaving Triton. But killed a few who got close by, but they were facing away from me so, they should not have "seen" me? Then they started MC after that...

But, again, Idk how it works

For a bit of background, I tried the Xcom games a few times over like a four year period some time ago (2017-2020). I randomly found an old copy of Enemy Within on a cracked Xbox 360 and put the series under my radar after I discovered that it was so fun. I was able to figure out Enemy Within without a huge amount of difficulty but never quite Xcom 2 after like three attempts getting some access to it on other devices I no longer had after 2020. Two of these attempts were with all DLC

Now, getting into Uni, I bought everything from Enemy Unknown to Chimera Squad with full DLC as an turn-based thing to start up or pause with the much more limited time I now have. I beat Enemy Within on Commander difficulty and got started on 2 at the same difficulty level. After my dumb ass realized I wasn't playing with WotC enabled (relaunched, on now) on once I cleared the blacksite, I'm starting over, but I'm still concerned about one thing regarding 2.

Beyond the new combat orientation that I'm still learning, I was never able to quite keep pace with the Avatar project stuff, least as far as I remember. With the latest one, I remembered the blacksite being brutally difficult in the past with ballistics and kevlar, so I showed up there once I had basic mag weapons and pred armor. Pretty easy but it took only one blip out of like six that were there and all the facilities were 3+ regions away. I don't think it necessarily would have been lost, had I pushed on, but I was also only just starting on shadow chamber and didn't remember what would happen next. It felt like I was late and would have to scramble.

So, when exactly is the proper time to take the blacksite or make other moves to keep Avatar down long-term?

Sapper: "Increases grenade and proximity mine damage by +1. Also triples damage to the environment."

Mayhem: "Confers +2 damage for... explosive grenades[.]"

What can Sapper/Mayhem destroy that mere Sapper can't? UFO walls? Landforms? I don't care about damage to enemies, just to environment. If it's possible to remove an inconveniently-located terrain feature, I'd like to know about it.