I mentioned in another thread that I bought the XCOM expansions and installed the long war mod. I didn't play too much until recently, but I really put a bunch of hours into it over the last few days. It's a lot of fun. However, it's very hard. It's also not very forgiving. With Long War, the enemy have a tech tree that gets helped along for every mission you screw up, so you can't really afford to do poorly. As a result, I may have had a few save/load spamming missions.

The first few missions were tough. I lost a number of soldiers and was struggling to make it work. However, once I developed laser weapons and got a few laser rifles and a laser carbine, things became quite a bit easier. I've even managed to clear a few medium UFOs. I currently have a ridiculous amount of alien alloys, weapons fragments, and a healthy amount of meld. I left off with a team landed in Newfoundland. I have a total of about 50 soldiers, most of them ranked up at least once, plus a squad size of 7.

After the Newfoundland mission, I have an Exalt extraction, and with any luck I'll get laser sniper rifles and shotguns in the near future. I'm loving my infantry and assaults, though all classes are certainly amazing in their own way.

Haha, I asked for an update about this in the other thread because I didn't see this one yet - apologies.

Sounds great! For what concerns losing a lot of people in the first few missions, that is one of the aspects of this overhaul no? To get back to a more old-school X-com feel where you field large squads with lots of rookie fodder who (usually) die the most horrible deaths.

Do you have any screenshots? I'd love to see them. You can also just post them to Steam, might be easier.

I sometimes dream about that one lobsterman sitting in that corner and its reaction fire killing my squad.

I've posted some screenshots on Steam, as the two of you are aware. I haven't expanded my roster any, but I have gotten a laser gatling laser and laser pistol. The exalt mission was hard... really hard... I had to restart it quite a few times before I hit on a winning combination. It was one where I could only bring 4 soldiers on top of my operative and then had to hit the two relays. Fighting numerous exalt squads, including rocketeers and snipers, was rough. I ended up taking some wounds, but the success was worth the considerable amount of time it took.

The Newfoundland mission was easy. Since I knew what was happening, I brought a Shiv and a selection of my most mobile soldiers. Once the countdown started, I just moved to extraction as quickly as possible, usually using one action to move, then a second to fire if there were any visible enemies in range. Leap-frogging like that got me to extraction without issue.

Currently I'm assaulting my first large UFO. With the added heavy gatling laser, I should be able to beat this, but it's proving a bit of a bear. Mostly I'm good except it spawned me on a bad side of the UFO, so when the Chrysalids show up, I don't have enough time to react and kill them before they slaughter my squad. Still, I'll get it, and I'm definitely looking forward to the huge boost in resources.

On a research front, I'm working on advanced laser weapons, so I can get the laser shotgun, laser sniper rifle, and most importantly, laser cannons for my interceptors. I've already done the one to get the containment facility (I think I have that building), but I need to do alien neurology so I can get the arc thrower. Once I get that, I plan on making liberal use of them to capture as many aliens (and their weapons) as possible. It's good I'm so flush on resources... I think there's a good chance I'll sell off quite a bit of it to fund all the construction and foundry projects I'll need. On a positive note, I've already done the foundry project that yields extra weapon fragments.

Thanks for the write-up. Three questions:

- Where are you at now?
- Did you let the chryssalids kill the poor Shiv?
- Do Exalt missions give you good stuff in Long War? In vanilla, they are veritable goldmines of laser weapons.

I've been playing quite a bit (if it's not obvious) and made quite a bit of progression. I still reload missions a lot... I'm just not that great at this game, apparently.

At this point I've got satellites over north and south America, with 6 interceptors over the north and 5 over the south. All interceptors are laser-cannon equipped. I just completed the research to improve my accuracy, improve my interceptor's armor, and decrease the enemy accuracy. I wish I'd hit the right combination of research quicker, because I was having a hell of a time. I think I lost a good 4-5 satellites. However, now I'm finally dominating the air game. I still take some damage usually, but it's pretty minor.

I'm currently researching Elerium... once that's done, I'll be building elerium generators to supplement my fission ones, then installing satellite Nexii. I have several regular satellite control things and several fission plants... my plan is to slowly replace them with the better versions, as well as expand into Europe (the only remaining continent without at least 1 defected country).

I've gotten my arc throwers and have people in the first level of armor. I've captured numerous aliens as well... once the Elerium is done, I'll probably work on interrogations for a bit. Funny enough, I was unable to capture mutons forever... I actually got a berserker before a muton due to a combination of luck (good and bad). However, I then got 2 mutons in a single mission. I should have alien grenades researched in 2-3 more days, which is great as I really love bringing grenadiers along on missions. I've also got 2 MEC troopers. The lack of grenade launchers really sucks, though.

Missions now are pretty tough. It's not unusual for me to hit a UFO with 2 cyberdisks and a mechtoid, along with the various other enemies. Exalt missions typically have 20+ exalt, all armed with laser weapons. It's rough. Regarding mining Exalt missions for gear, you don't get gear from them in Long War unless you arc-thrower them, I believe. This isn't something I bother doing... there are usually so many it's a slaughter-fest... hopefully them being slaughtered. I just completed a 'defend the transmitter mission' where I was sprinting my agent from one comm relay to the next to disable their weapons while my MEC and troops were running around killing them as quickly as possible. It was a slaughter.

At any rate, Long War is relentless. I have about 10 injured troops and probably 20-25 currently fatigued. UFOs pop up and I shoot them down, but every time there are survivors, I have to try to scrape together a squad. I may need to recruit more troops. Also, equipment can be damaged if people are seriously wounded... I actually had several laser rifles, my laser gatling cannon, several armors, and even a MEC suit that were in my repair bay. That makes missions even more difficult. I'm really hopeful I get a couple days of quiet in the near future to let people come off fatigue, my foundry projects to finish, and my equipment to be repaired. I also really need to work on heavier armor.

So, just for the record, my current personnel count:

56 total troops including 1 Shiv
14 are wounded
28 are fatigued

24 are available, including the Shiv. With 8-man teams, I have the personnel to do 3 more missions before I run out of people... and I just got a council mission.

Just throw some more rookies in the grinder. Sink or swim!

Rookies actually take a few days to show up (5 I think), which in Long War is an eternity.

I ended up with 7 people for that council mission, so I spun the globe a bit to get some people off fatigue. Though I did get a few off fatigued status, a UFO showed up, which I promptly shot down and then became a crash sight. Ultimately, I chose to ignore the UFO crash sight and there was, thankfully, some down time to let my people recover.

I've since progressed quite a bit. I finished my elerium research, but I can't build an elerium generator until I finish alien power sources, so I'm working on dissections and interrogations instead. I also built my first 5 carapace armors, which is nice. Unfortunately, the missions got even harder. I went to an abduction mission recently that had a cyberdisk, a mechtoid, and a total of 4 berserkers, plus lots of ancillary aliens like drones, mutons and sectoids. It's freaking insane.

I'm not sure if it was a bug, but some aliens ships have proven very difficult to shoot down. I was pegging the crap out of a large alien UFO with a laser cannon and barely scratched it. That's really odd, considering I've shot down similar large UFOs before.

At any rate, I'm hoping after the basic research to knock out enemy power sources (for generators and pulse lasers, I believe) as well as Gauss weapons to upgrade my MECs with grenade launchers. After that, upgraded MEC suits are high on my priority list, as well as expanding my interceptor fleet and satellites into Europe. I also plan on making one more MEC trooper, but the 60 meld needed would pretty much run me out of meld, so I'm holding out for a bit first.

So, I've upgraded my installation of Long War from beta 15 to the 1.0 release and restarted my campaign. I think I messed up my existing game and was just in a really slow slide to losing. This because I failed to really push my research. Even as far in as I was, I only had 2 labs, so I think the aliens' research was far beyond mine and only getting worse. This was partially because I chose to start in Canada with a bonus that gave me a free workshop and lab, but it put them right next to each other, which kinda screws up base planning pretty bad. This time, I chose to start in the US with a buff giving bonuses to interrogations and autopsies. We'll see how that goes.

You restarted from scratch? :O You're hardcore.

I'm almost done with Kotor 2...kinda feel like playing the Long War too now.

I consider the first Long War game a refresher. :p My new game is already off to a better start. I've built my first elevator and opened up the top two levels of the base, as well as started construction on my first lab and the foundry. I've also gotten my first set of rookie upgrades and gotten quite a few more snipers this time. Snipers are nice. As I hire more soldiers, I'll try to pay more attention to the class distribution. I may also just fire the ones with crappy aim and movement.

Are you still at it?

It's on pause at the moment. I'm concentrating on Assassin's Creed 3. I do plan on returning to it, though. My focus is going to be on maxing my research as quickly as possible. I think that'll let me keep my head above water to a better degree. I still have my save games from the last game, as well, in case I decide to go back to it.