those tanks happen. You have to rank up your troops quick and get strong attacks like rapid fire holotargeting perks and officer abilities.

Dark Events can get very, very nasty, even if you play very well and have very good tactics.
Every mistake you make, strategywise or tactical wise has much more and longer lasting consequences then in vanilla game.
If you do not really have mastered the mod in all his facettes, its unlikely that you win it on a higher difficulty then rookie.
Dont be pissed off, its meant to be very hard (to hard in my opionion, but this is discussed elsewhere) and it is very hard, but on the other hand the game gives you some new combinations of perks, PCS and strategys that make it winable, well .... some ppl swear it is ... I myself did also not manage to win it till now, and I now play it for a couple of hours.
There are also still too much gamebreaking bugs inside game (most of them already in vanilla version), that make it impossible to win it if you are unlucky, cause anything inside LW2 that adds to the difficulty makes it nearly impossible to win for most ppl.

But there are many mods out there to make it more easy ... so I suggest you choose a few of them and install one or two, that you like, many, when not most ppl do.
With this additional mods you can learn to master the mod and then try again to win it without making it more easy.
Thats what I do now ....

Yeah I may just turn off dark events.
As far as I can tell the only mistake I did was not doing the Dark Event mission counters before the dark event triggered and before they expired.
Which is dumb.
It incentivises you to head into to go off on a mission before you've infiltrated.
Which is basically the main mechanic of the mod.
Also if they are permanent you should always be given at least the opportunity to cancel them out, that means keeping enough resources aside to always be able to send out the team.

Right now it is unclear if you loose because of a bug or a feature, I cant tell them apart anymore. This messes with the balancing, confuses the strategies and is sometimes simply annoying.

Originally posted by democles_pl:

Yeah I may just turn off dark events.
As far as I can tell the only mistake I did was not doing the Dark Event mission counters before the dark event triggered and before they expired.
Which is dumb.
It incentivises you to head into to go off on a mission before you've infiltrated.
Which is basically the main mechanic of the mod.
Also if they are permanent you should always be given at least the opportunity to cancel them out, that means keeping enough resources aside to always be able to send out the team.

Dark events and advent strength mechanics right now are broken IMO.

This mechanic is so important for beating the game that winning or loosing might just come down to this dice roll.

Do you know the "dancing pigeons" experiment? this is what LW2 feels sometimes.
You expect logical patterns you can figure out, but in reality its all simply randomness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtfQlkGwE2U

Long war is 100% luck now you can rely on nothing

grenades ? no, 1 dmg no cover removing
rocket? - no fly somwere else but not were you aimed
flamethrower? - no, distance ultrashort & u even cant shoot over half cover
1 by 1 pots? - no, pack together in one big cluster and ♥♥♥♥ your soldiers in their sweet an*s
any shot - no, because even on 100(000)% they can dodge or do under minimal damage.


best thing is 100% shinobis and stealth throu everyshit and run away all the time.
oh and better call evacuation right after start, because things happen.

they need to do many more balancing - its not possible to ironman

I make it to about the second tier playing iron man, then I just get flattened. I think on riot missions they should allow for a second evac zone, I often send my team in, and right as they bug out the poor locals show up, dressed in skivvies and way out gunned. They all die because they cannot reach the exav zone across the map, even after I have evaced my main squad. Then, that hurts my long term war effort as I do not have any one left in the insurgency in the area. I agree that shinobis amd stealthing the missons are the easiest way to win, but I think that hurts LW2 as a whole. I cannot ever seem to get enough guys to fight it out with even 20% of the mission, I just do not have enough personnel. I understand that it is part of the game, I just think it needs a tweak.

Shinobis combined with Sharpshooters far in the back solve many problems, yes.
I did already find that out on my first playthrough (attempt).
But its not my playstyle.
I since then try to find diffrent ways of dealing with the balancing.
But there are not many.
Supression Gunners combined with many meelee classes are a way some times, but you need at least 2 - 3 of them, which also does not fit my playstyle.
I like diversity and there is not much diversity in (at keypoints) useable classes for LW2.
Dont get me wrong, in normal missions, yes, no prob ... but if you need 8 Supermanshinobis and 4 specialized Sharpshooters to be sucessful when it comes to the real thing ... well ... you must have them ... so before you have to train them which makes it very boring.
A balanced, good game in my opinion is one which gives you multiple ways to solve every problem and which does not reduce you to one or two solutions.
Well, there are games where this is normal, but they are not called tactical ... they are called puzzlegames.
LW2 has good ideas, some real nice mechanics, but its not what I call good at the moment ... not as a standalone mod.

TRJoker : Awesome thing on LW2 is that even with GTS training your guys to roles you want, you still will have lot of soldiers with all kind of classes around.
And with multiple missions infiltrating at the same time it feels natural to put together even classes you prefer less just to fill gaps. And that way you learn them use for their full potential.

Curently only class that I do not apreciate is assault and even that will maybe change. All other from specialist to gunners feels usefull.

As for tactics to win:
Jailbreak missions: Go with single soldier. Preferably Shinobi with Ghostwalker. I keep one of those just to quickly do these jailbreak missions that have very short timing. Just evade all enemies and evac point is ussaly one sprint away from prison room.

For Light-Extreme light missions anything goes.

For those missions with 30-40 enemies, you must fight them one pod at a time. Lot of grenades even though they destroy loot because with so many enemies I still am getting lot of rewards. For those fights you really need to start with good AOE. Those 9 man pods are insane unless you get grenade that deals 20 damage between them.

To summarize: One thing that really impresses me is that now certain combination of soldiers are better or worse for certain missions. My 5-Shinobi,1-Specialist(Electronic warfare) squad is lethal against maps with 20 or less enemies, often ending with one or two guys still in concealment at the end.
Yet on more populated missions AOE oriented team is needed.
And yet for certain maps it is godly to have 3 rangers-1 sharpshooter- 1 specialist(medic) - 1 Gunner where this insane firepower racks kill after kill.
And then is good to have one or two smaller mostly random team to deal with those extremely light missions.


As for campaign altogether, either rush psionics if you get sectoid corpse early. Or go for fast magnetic weapons. I so far encountered only 4 mutons and about 20 vipers and I already got them (altough I fed all my suplies to buying scientists and did not bother with things like proving grounds yet).
And before you get to magnetic weapons simply throw grenades everywhere. I had few missions with missing statistics for most accurate shots since I simply exploded everything. If grenades do not solve your problems, it means you are not using enough of them.

I tried before that going for overwatch builds and survivability tactics but in the end best way to reduce casaulties is to reduce ammount of guns shooting against you in first place. Especialy with mean timers that prevent turtling tactics.

Also good idea is to rush liberating first area asap. Sharpshooter or two are very welcome for liberating mission since there is lot of high buildings with great view on that map.

And of course last but probably most important tip, make contacts in at least 2 non-liberated areas at any moment and go for missions in the one that has lesser Advent strength. That will solve half of your problems with going against enemy that is too advanced

Addendum: Grenades deal normal damage if you throw them behind that cover that is used by alien.
It makes sense otherwise they would be insanely overpowered. Even then, grab few grenadiers, give them heavy ordnance perk and rain grenades all day.

Rockets are kinda meh. If you take that perk to make them accurate it gets ok. But I rather pick other one since I use them more for removing cover then for actualy dealing damage. if they hit, great but at least that wall is down or that turret is falling.

As for flamethrowers... yeah they suck. But that is probably because I did not encounter chrysalids yet. Just in case, I have two technical with Flamethrower tree perks when the time comes.

Originally posted by Corvo:

Long war is 100% luck now you can rely on nothing

grenades ? no, 1 dmg no cover removing
rocket? - no fly somwere else but not were you aimed
flamethrower? - no, distance ultrashort & u even cant shoot over half cover
1 by 1 pots? - no, pack together in one big cluster and ♥♥♥♥ your soldiers in their sweet an*s
any shot - no, because even on 100(000)% they can dodge or do under minimal damage.


best thing is 100% shinobis and stealth throu everyshit and run away all the time.
oh and better call evacuation right after start, because things happen.

they need to do many more balancing - its not possible to ironman

grenades were nerfed to prevent grenade spam, which made vanilla a cakewalk (though way overnerfed IMO), also existed in original LW, though better implemented
rockets have perks to improve their accuracy and effectiveness, and suffer aim penalty if you move, plus the spread is averaged over the distance fired, so a longer rocket shot will stray more
flamethrowers definitely hit through low cover, but not through high cover. Don't spread misinformation
Yellow Alert is a mechanic that exists to draw other pods to you during fights because you make noise. What? You didn't expect that officer pod to hear your massive firefight in the advent city center? Louder weapons attract more attention.

Snatch and grab missions are definitely doable in this game and are encouraged. Unfortunately right now they take up 90% of my gameplay because there's no reason to engage in firefights.

LW2 definitely has balance issues, but it's early in its lifecycle. Give them time to adjust balance and then complain if its still bad.

Originally posted by superweiner10:

grenades were nerfed to prevent grenade spam, which made vanilla a cakewalk (though way overnerfed IMO), also existed in original LW, though better implemented

The "grenade spam" is quite a need as they increased the effectivenes of cover (is a good thing).
the downgrade is you cant go for flanks most times as
- risk for additional enemies
- AI tend to be smarter in placing themselves

so grenades are an option but
- damage falloff crazy
- even no cover removing
- max 1(or2) dmg guaranteed

last option
- supress & risk
- flash & risk
- run & risk

so there is a very need of buffing grenades.

Originally posted by superweiner10:

rockets have perks to improve their accuracy and effectiveness, and suffer aim penalty if you move, plus the spread is averaged over the distance fired, so a longer rocket shot will stray more

yes a perk so they miss 2 tiles at maximum, that is hilarious if you think about it. So rockets are a weak option to remove cover, as they are not as destructive aswell.
this "perk" should be buffed aswell. no tile miss if you specialize for example

The inaccuracy you're talking about after moving is a good thing and I generally like those tactical extras.

Originally posted by superweiner10:

flamethrowers definitely hit through low cover, but not through high cover. Don't spread misinformation

I don't - there are aim-bugs.

Originally posted by superweiner10:

Yellow Alert is a mechanic that exists to draw other pods to you during fights because you make noise. What? You didn't expect that officer pod to hear your massive firefight in the advent city center? Louder weapons attract more attention.

never said that is a bad thing - did I?
the pods generally tend to stick together even if you are concealed...

Originally posted by superweiner10:

Snatch and grab missions are definitely doable in this game and are encouraged. Unfortunately right now they take up 90% of my gameplay because there's no reason to engage in firefights.

yea they are doable but all high risk. for myself the best option is to stealth them all, but that is kinda boring if you have to many of them.
There should be a balance.

Originally posted by superweiner10:

LW2 definitely has balance issues, but it's early in its lifecycle. Give them time to adjust balance

True and for me this is the way to go. At least for the moment.

Originally posted by superweiner10:

and then complain if its still bad.

Sir I think you need to rethink that part, anyone can complain about anything.
Otherwise how would devs know?

@Iglix

Originally posted by Iglix:

(altough I fed all my suplies to buying scientists and did not bother with things like proving grounds yet).

Can I ask why you bought scientists? Did you have a lab early?

If so, what is your suggested build order? I did go guerilla tactics - advanced warfare - energy - workshop - rebel comm - testing ground - psy lab - and then lab, after 6 months in the game.(Maybe this will be a problem for me, I dont know yet)
For anybody not knowing this, scientists DONT automatically shorten research! They need a lab to do so.

I think I would not advice to buy scientsists early, it is a waste of money. You need one for healing early and then (maybe) one more for the psy lab later. A Lab costs a whole lot of ressources and energy. One scientist in a lab increases reserach by only 20%, 2 scientsists by 30. I currently rather put scientists into my rebel bases to gather intel than spend more money on the lab extensions.Scientists at rebel bases increase intel gathering, which is good I guess, but early in the game, I feel it is more important to have good soldiers in the rebel bases to counter the faceless. (Maybe I am wrong, currently I am too confused by LW2 to really give good advice).

I also quite disagree with everything you said about rockets and grenadiers.
You and I use those very differenty it seems. My rockets never fail me and right now I almost exclusively build support grenadiers as I think they are the most usefull unit to have around.

Two things to guarantee at the very least a fair run.

1) Don't do Ironman.
2) Savescum like a motherf*cker.

I can guarantee you will only reach an unwinnable save 75% of the time with this strategy.

@All

There might by one strategy that works for me that I can share.

Once you encounter mechs get a grenadier with bluescreen bombs, somebody with redscreen rounds an have a reasonably good specialist to hack any mech with a 100% chance to control it. It makes things MUCH easier, and the grenadier can carry up to 7 flashbangs and fire two per round.
I love the support grenadier, sting - grenades and bluescreen bombs saved so many missions for me, it is much better than the explosive specialist.

Often, especially when facing mechs, I start the fight with the flashbang and half of the pod is stunned and all are desoriented and then follow up with the same grenadier blasting them to pieces or take over the mechs and start to blast soldiers with them while my soldiers hang back.

Its great fun having advent troops kill each other.

PS: Needles to say, get your grenadier to the AWC to get the free additional flashbang early.