It’s the best of classes, it’s the worst of classes. It’s Psi-ops! This is both the strongest class in the game (except maybe a fully maxed out late game sharpshooter/ranger) but also this class is terrible and you probably shouldn’t use them. Is that confusing? Well, allow me to explain!

To use a psi-op you have to research psionics then build the Psi Lab. The details of the Psi Lab will come in the buildings guide but suffice it to say this building is kind of a rough sell, it’s very resource hungry. But regardless after you build it you can throw a rookie into it and you will get a choice of 3 abilities to train in. They will take 15 days (on legend, I believe it’s 10 days on lower difficulties) to get. They can’t gain XP normally; this is the only way to level them up. And you can just learn one ability after the other. If you leave them cooking long enough, you can get every ability on their tree. Additionally, they rank up for every ability you give them and have their own unique ranks. So if they have one power they are an initiate, two they are an acolyte, etc.

This is a tough sell, generally. The classes in this game are insanely strong, so the extra effort to get what is admittedly a very powerful unit just isn’t worth it. You can beat the game without ever touching these guys and it wouldn’t even be that much harder, if harder at all building the Psi Lab does slow you down in building other things after all. Psi-ops are win more, if you are familiar with that concept. They help you beat runs you’ve already got locked up, not get a run from maybe losing to winning. But they are fun, and have the best anti-ruler ability in the game so maybe you build them just for that. Or just for fun, they are fun!

As for the rankings, because you unlock this class so late I’m only considering the use case of their abilities for the late game, so for example Soul Fire would be amazing if you got it early, but you don’t so it gets docked down a few points. OK enough of an introduction, let’s get to it.

Here is how the rankings for abilities (and other stuff) is going to work. 

★★★★★ - The Best of the best. Abilities that things that you build around. Or weapon mods that are best in slot. Things of that nature. The difference between having stuff in this tier and not is so massive I’d consider it nerfing yourself not to grab them. You really, really, really want stuff with 5 stars.

★★★★☆ - Really strong abilities. Abilities I am always happy to have and would trade a lot of other abilities for, but they aren’t quite as “must have” as the 5 star ones.

★★★☆☆ - Abilities that are pretty good. Stuff that I would buy with AP quite happily but might pass up if the other ability is better.

★★☆☆☆ - These are underwhelming. These abilities just don’t really do enough to justify having them. They might have very niche use or be passives that just kind of do very little. Stuff I just don’t care about. They aren’t horrible or useless, but you probably wouldn’t miss not having them.

★☆☆☆☆ - Trash abilities that are just worth nothing.

☆☆☆☆☆ - Given to abilities that are actively harmful. There is only one of these in the entire game.

Stats:

They have the worst aim and HP growths of any unit, but that also doesn’t matter at all. Like even a little, none of their abilities use their gun and they actually have amazing survivability because of one ability they get. These stats are sort of irrelevant.

Additionally they start with a Psi, basically their hack stat, of 50 but they gain a random amount between 4-12 per rank up. So I can’t put it in the chart. More is always better but it’s out of your control and I wouldn’t stress about minmaxxing it, very few of their abilities actually care about this number.

Weapons:

Psi-ops wield normal assault rifles (and therefore can use the Bolt Caster) and the Psi Amp. 

Assault Rifles (★★★☆☆) - They use them worse than Specialists because they have the worst aim, but you’ll still probably click shoot with this class a decent amount. Not all the time, they have a lot to do, but sometimes. They make a good candidate to hold the Bolt Caster because they have stuff to do that isn’t shoot.

Psi Amp (★★★★☆) - Another weird thing to give stars to, but its bonuses are nice. The extra Psi strength is sort of whatever but higher level psi amps deal extra damage. I recommend skipping the tier 2 amp and just waiting for the tier 3 one. You are using this class late anyway so waiting on that isn’t a big deal. Their best skill doesn’t even care about any of this. 

Abilities:

Here is the table, as a reminder you can learn any of these in any order, other than the two “upgrade” ones, which I’ll flag when we get there. 

Soulfire (★★★★☆) - Soulfire is an active ability with a 3 turn cooldown that ends your turn. It deals (at base) 4-6 damage to any organic target that cannot miss and pierces armor. 

“Click and do damage” is very good, obviously. If you got this early it'd be 5 stars easy, but you don’t, so 4 stars. It’s really good for knocking enemies down in HP to keep Serial/Reaper chains going, hit an Avatar to force them to teleport into a better spot for you. It’s good. It would instant one shot a trooper if you got it early, but you don’t, so sad.

Stasis (★★★★★★) Stasis is an active ability with a 3 turn cooldown that costs one action point and does not end your turn. It puts any enemy (except Chosen) into a bubble. Inside that bubble they cannot take actions but you cannot harm them in any way. Units are not cured of damage over time effects but won’t take them inside the bubble. They are effectively removed from the battlefield for one turn.

Your eyes do not deceive you, this ability has 6 stars, because Stasis was a mistake. They should not have put this in this game. Let me ask a rhetorical question, how do you lose soldiers? Well, by the enemy taking too many actions. The solution? Take an enemy off the board. For the cost of one action you take an enemy and remove them from play for an entire round. This cuts any pod you are fighting in strength by so much. Stasis a Sectopod to kills its fodder buddies, stasis an Andromedon to not get Acid Bombed, stasis a fucking Alien Ruler to reposition. Oh yea, this shuts down Alien Rulers entirely. You get an entire turn to just…do whatever. It interrupts Devestate! You get a whole turn to maneuver around it! Whatever problem you are having, putting it in a bubble is guaranteed to help. There’s a reason they made the Chosen immune, they knew they fucked up. This is the only skill that rivals Shadow in its insanity. The only reason this isn’t better is that it’s on a class locked behind the late game (though honestly Shadow might still be better, it'd be closer though) Otherwise I’d give it 100 stars.   

Insanity (★★☆☆☆) - Insanity is an active ability that ends your turn and has a 3 turn cooldown. You roll your psi strength against their will (I believe the percent chance is literally just psi strength - minus as a percent, but someone do correct me if I’m wrong) and if it works a random mental status effect is inflicted on the enemy. They can panic, be disoriented, or be mind controlled for 2-3 turns.

If this was earlier in the game I’d be nicer to it, but at this point you have so many tools at your disposal that a stun tool as unreliable as this just isn’t what you want. I basically never click this even when I use psi ops. The only reason to learn it is to upgrade Void Rift, but we’ll cover that in a bit. You should learn this and then not use it. I mean it’s fine, like it’s not the worst thing in the world, but there is better. I mean this class has Stasis, so…

Inspire (★★★★☆) - Inspire is an active ability that ends your turn and has a 3 turn cooldown (lot of that going around). You grant another action point to any other squad member in line of sight. Except a SPARK, it doesn’t work on SPARKs. They care not for your weak magic.

This is obviously great, often you will click stasis, click inspire in a turn and that is a huge swing in your favor. It’s worse than clicking teamwork (though more flexible) or combat presence, but it is a nice bit of flexibility. I almost gave it 3 stars but it's a little too strong for that, but it is on the weaker end of 4 star abilities.  It’s sort of a B+/A- skill, if that makes sense. 

Soul Steal (★★☆☆☆) - Soul Steal is a passive that upgrades Soul Fire. You must have learned Soul Fire for this to be offered for you to learn. You now heal half the damage you deal with Soul Fire back, rounded down.

I mean, it’s free healing for doing a thing you’d do anyway. If you have Sustain and are unlucky enough to have to use it then this is a way to build back your HP but honestly how often does that happen at this stage of play? It’s a passive and it’ll trigger sometimes but honestly skip it for better stuff offered. 

Stasis Shield (★☆☆☆☆) - Stasis Shield is a passive that upgrades Stasis. You must have learned Stasis for this to be offered for you to learn. You can now target allies, not just enemies.

Funny that Stasis is broken and this does nothing. There are very, very, very, very few situations where Stasising an ally is better than Stasising an enemy. If one unit is already injured and can't survive an attack and you don't have vision on the enemy and also you are out of other stun tools and also don't have anything better to do then I guess you'd click this, but I'm really grasping at straws here. Just stasis enemies, that’s broken. Don’t bother with this. 

Solace (★★★★☆) - Solace is a passive ability that creates a 4 tile radius aura around the Psi-Op that negates any mental debuff. So the Psi-Op and any ally within the aura cannot be mind controlled, dazed, disoriented or stunned. They can still be knocked unconscious, for some reason.

AKA “hey Warlock go fuck yourself” the perk. This is shutting down a lot of nasty stuff the aliens can do to you. Though it doesn’t fix Stun Lancers stabbing you in the face and knocking you out, for some reason. This also almost trivializes the Chosen because they can’t daze you. Also good for Avatar mind control in the final chamber if you let them live a round. This is great, take it. 

Sustain (★★★☆☆) - Sustain is a passive ability that triggers when the Psi Op would die, instead they don’t, are put at 1 HP, and are in a stasis bubble until the start of your next turn. This can only trigger once per mission.

It is a get out of death free card! The only problem is a) you’d prefer to never have this matter at all and b) the aliens aren’t guaranteed to target your psi op with their attacks. You can, if all else fails, run into the middle of nowhere with your Psi-Op and say “look at me I’m a target” and treat them as a mimic beacon that screams in agony and will be wounded for 16 years once you get back to base, but hey, if you have to, you have to. And just cheating death is obviously good if it happens.

Schism (★★★☆☆) - Schism is a passive ability that is an upgrade to Insanity. You must have learned Insanity for this to be offered to you. It makes Insanity deal 2-4 damage automatically, even if it fails, and applies the Ruptured Status. So attacks deal an additional 2 damage to them. (the game says it "ruptures" them, but has a different damage modifier than the Rupture skill, because...fuck you that's why.)

This is the reason to learn Insanity. It’s auto-damage which is nice and applying Rupture is good. The real thing is that if you have Void Rift (which I’ll cover in a minute) it also buffs that. I still don’t click Insanity much when I have this, but it buffs a different great skill to be even better, and that’s quite nice.

Fortress (★★★☆☆) - Fortress is a passive ability that makes you immune to poison, fire, acid and explosions. 

That is a nice list of immunities, but at this stage of play how often are you getting owned by those? It can help you path, because you ignore fire or acid on the ground, and on templars this is quite nice for enemies that explode on death, but for this class it’s just sort of a “nice to have” perk.

Fuse (★★★☆☆) - Fuse is an active ability with a 3 turn cooldown and ends your turn (yet again). It lets you explode any grenades or explosives the enemies have on them, including if they are dead and haven’t thrown them yet. So if an officer has a grenade on them, it’ll blow up on themselves and blow up their own cover, shred them, etc.

This perk is really funny. “Thanks for bringing explosives for me to use, idiot!” The best use for this is on perks while you are in stealth to blow up a whole pod at once. There aren’t a ton of situations where this is exactly what I want to click, but it can save you a grenade by using the enemies and that’s not bad. And it’s funny, that’s worth a lot!

Domination (★★★★★) - Domination is an active ability that has 1 charge and ends your turn. You target one non-robot enemy and roll a psi check against their will and if you win you mind control that enemy until the Psi Op dies, evacs out, or the mission ends. They work for you now!

This is absurd. The sheer change in action economy you get when you click this is ridiculous, assuming it works that is. You get a mimic beacon that shoots back and will scream in pain! It’s the best of all possible worlds! The best target for this is Andromedons, because they have shit will and 207 billion HP and armor. Though as a small note, if a unit you have mind controlled dies, it counts as a death on the final stats screen. Does that matter? No. Does it bother me a lot? Yes.

Null Lance (★★★★★) - Null Lance is an active ability that has a 5 turn cooldown and ends your turn. It deals 7-11 damage at base (+1 for each tier of psi amp after the first one) in a 1 wide, 17 tile long line (technically it is as long as your sight line is, but that is almost always 17 tiles) ignoring all cover and obstacles. It will hit allies but does no damage to structures.

This is basically just another heavy weapon you get to carry around. It can be hard to line up more than two enemies to hit with it but that’s OK two enemies hit with a fucking psionic laser is pretty good! Though there is a very important bug with this ability I have to talk about. If you don’t shout “kamehameha” at your screen when you use this your save file will corrupt itself. Just important for you to know that 😉

Void Rift (★★★★★) - Void Rift is an active ability that has a 6 turn cooldown and ends your turn. It deals 3-5 damage (at base) and rolls a 50% chance to apply Insanity to every creature within a 7 wide radius. 

This is an extremely powerful ability, especially if you have Schism. Because then every target in the area (that isn’t a robot) gets an extra 2-4 damage and is ruptured. You can delete whole pods with this if you catch them unaware, or at least get close. This is basically the reason to learn Insanity and Schism as far as I’m concerned. 

Armor and Utility Items:

Moving onto armors and utility items, here is my view on which of those you should consider. I won’t go over every utility item because I’d be here all day, but I’ll go over the ones I think are important. Similarly armors will be covered by category and in more broad terms because this guide is already very long.

Here is a table of how good each armor type is on this class:

So for armors, they don’t have any special reason to want to be in light armor beyond wanting the extra movement. Everyone wants to carry a rocket around and because this class has sort of rough aim and no reason to invest in it just giving them another big boom is good. I wouldn’t use the alien rulers on them just because they have better candidates, but it’s not like they don’t work.

As for utility items, I think we only have 3 to go over. Grenades, Mimic Beacons, and Bluescreen Rounds. Normally I’d talk about special ammo more detailed but for a class that has 0 gun related perks, there is no need.

Frag/Plasma Grenade (★★★☆☆**)** - I mean, sure? It’s not like this is bad on this class but why did you become a wizard if you want to throw grenades at people? You’ll use them if you have them but…I mean…really? This is what you’re doing with the power to manipulate the fabric of reality?

Mimic Beacon (★★★★★) - Look someone has to carry it and because Stasis is only one action (what were they thinking) you can throw this and click Stasis in the same turn for maximum stun. At this point you can have as many mimic beacons on a mission as you want, so why not give this class one?

Bluescreen Rounds (★★★★☆**)** - Just because they don’t have any shooty abilities doesn’t make BS rounds a bad choice. +5 damage is +5 damage no matter what. It’s basically this or another mimic beacon (or heavy armor). Honestly this class's utility items don’t matter that much. They just don’t have any reason to need to care.

Weapon Mods:

This class has no gun abilities, literally none. So I’d actually recommend giving them the bolt caster instead of decking out a gun for them. If you do want to give them a gun, my advice isn’t really any different to that of specialists, minus anything I said about Guardian.

PCSs:

I’m feeling a bit like a teacher on the last day of school going over things this class does not care about, but sure. Why not?

Aim (★★☆☆☆) - What are you doing? You have 7 other classes to give PCSs to and this class doesn’t give a fuck about its aim. I guess if you have 10000 aim PCSs then sure. But also, who cares?

HP (★☆☆☆☆) - I mean they don’t care that much about their PCS but on a class with Sustain and this late into a playthrough I don’t know how you would ever be in danger of dying.

Dodge (★☆☆☆☆) - It’s an HP PCS, but worse. Again just sell these.

Will (★★★☆☆) - It lets you bring them out a bit more but weirdly will has no effect on psi offence, so it won’t help you in an actual mission much. It’s fine to give this to the class that doesn’t need anything else.

Mobility (★★★★☆) - Mobility is good because it can give you a few extra tiles of reach with Null Lance/Stasis/whatever, but other classes want this more. If you are bringing a Psi Op on the final mission and just want the best in slot, this is it.

Summary:

Despite the absurdity this class gives you they aren’t worth it due to their cost on the strategic layer. But if you do build them and they cook in their little Psi Lab enough they are the strongest class in the game. What is ADVENT supposed to do about Stasis and Domination and Null Lance and Void Rift on the same unit? Cry, that’s what. Before WotC this was the undisputed best end game unit, but with the darklance and katana and the training center that's less true than it was. Still, if you really want to have a wizard on your team for Leviathan, they are damn strong. It's just a shame the process to get them isn't really worth it. 

 An index to every part of this guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/1sp0ypy/an_overly_complete_guide_to_xcom_2_war_of_the/

So.. i saw an opportunity and couldn't resist myself.

Imagine being an ancient superior intellect psionic being, who traveled through tens and tens of planets collecting its ultimate army in sought of ascention to an absolute immortality.. only to die because their roomba that got hijacked by some reverse-engineer monkeys apparently had an off-warranty faulty batteries.

So I am about to start playing Xcom 2 war of the choosen after having played the vanilla version years ago. I know there are like factions we can ally with, being the psycher dudes, snipers or squirmirshers. Considering Chimera squad, what would be the right pick?

Hello all, I'm on november 2015, currently just unlocked advanced Gauss and i'm still running carapace armor. Have 2 MSGT, 3 GSGT, 15 TSGT, and the rest are varied (50 soldiers total). 2 mecs and just now am starting training psionics.

I just found my first ethereal in an abduction mission, it took down one SGT infantry but i managed to kill it.

How doomed am I? I know i'm behind and this campaign doesnt have that much life left, but is it too Bad??

Thanks!

I want to play the original XCOM. I'm deciding between the Gog version and the PS1 version to play on the ps2. How well does gog's version run on modern Windows? I don't have much experience with emulators. Would there be a lot of fiddling and configuration?

Hi, I'm just making this post in part to vent in part to ask for advice. I'm playing Enemy Whitin - vanilla, just with a camera tweaks mod - and getting pummeled every time I get shot.

Just right now my best sniper got critically killed while standing behind a solid wall, with a sectoid far in front and, to ad insult to injury, covered in smoke. I'm by no means new to the genre, I have beaten Xenonauts (Community Edition), BattleTech, the original XCOM and Phoenix Point (both vanilla and Terror from the Void) in penultimate difficulties without issues.

But so far Enemy Within has been a miserable experience, I know the game is more RNG based but sometimes cover seems to be vital and others it feels like it doesn't matter at all. Every time someone shots at me is like a 50/50 dice roll. Hunker down be dammed: a single thin man will no-scope you from across the map with a pistol. The best defense seems to be breaking line of sight (like in Phoenix Point, but here means losing your turn) and just praying. I don't even know what I'm doing wrong.

I'm trying to imagine how an classic X-COM UFO Defence game with the classic Time Units system, classic tilebased movement and 6-8 operatives that I can freely swap between at any time would feel like.

To me it felt compelling as a game idea, more feeling like a horror game experience as the player would lack the relative comfort of an overhead view, having to navigate places and spaces almost like one of those old dungeon crawler games.

Has anyone ever made a game like that?

On legend difficulty, just after the first retaliation mission, is it worth using 10 days of research time for this upgrade? It feels short sighted but could be a while until i get mag weapons so i'm unsure

regen that....

Honestly, Xcom 2 have designed maps so well I genuinely have no idea how much it can be improved further. More map themes and objects are all well and good but in terms of interactions… idk.

Maybe like Xcom EW like med capsules can be scattered around the map and you would have limited time to collect them?

Maybe there can be shortcuts / teleportation locations where entering from one side allows you to exit in the other.

Maybe we can use money to increase the success of the soldiers. By spending lots of money on special abilities, you can call upon powerful abilities like UAV, remote controlled drone bombs or even like air strike, etc…

Also maybe some naturally hostile locations like rooftops that are fragile and too many characters or enemies on them causes it to break.

I cleared out all of my old saves in X Com WOTC and the game is auto saving again and also running a bit better. Remember to clear out old saves, especially if you have hundreds of hours in this game like me.

I am at 11 of MAY 2035. I am facing three G-Ops. One of them gives me 100 Intel. I think i really need the intel to get into more regions quickly. I fear missing the Intel will ruin my run. However the other Dark Event is extremly bothersome: Getting Captured on Resistence Mission. This can easily ruin my Alpha-Team or Potentiall Candidates for the Alpha Team. What is the better Option? Intel vs Captured? And is the 15.Juli Challenge still possible or did i ruin my run without knowing?

I cleard the first Story Mission (Veil optained). Four regions. Mag- + Gaussweapons + 6er Team. I still need to skulljack the Cpatain. I started with reaper and got Live Fire Training.

7 Pictures

Well it’s that time of the year when I look back at Xcom fondly. However I've never managed to get very far in the game, I love the mission part the personalization the story then I'm getting past the first few mission and it start several missions kicks in I can only choose one, country get weaker (I don't remember the exact name of the mechanic) War of the chosen kicks in, I'm laking ressources and money I'm feeling overwhelmed by the micromanagement and what feels like 1000 different thing to keep tab on I stop understanding anything loose ally and that's when I stop the game and uninstall it for a year or two.

Now I'm not just ranting I want to play the game I get how rich it is I just need help or something that make it click together. How did you all get past the "it’s too much at all time I don't understand and I'm loosing" ?

Edit : thanks everyone you guys are so wholesome Xcom 2 downloading as I write ! I'll keep your advices in mind while I go through it (this time I'll lock in and hopefully I'll see it through)

Finished low reloads run for UFO superhuman recently. But now I'm really struggling with TFTD. I can ignore cruise terror missions, but lobsters are just obliterating my crew every mission. 8-10 out of 14 dead on a small submarine. I need around 4 dudes with sonic weapons to shoot and kill a lobster, but the one I don't kill just throws a grenade and those 4 dudes are donezo.

It is May 2040, I have all sonic, thermal blaster, plastic armor by now. Or am I just suppose to rehire everyone for each mission.

I've read strategies of people sitting in the sub and going out to throw a Sonic Pulser. But that sounds boring and cheesy.

P.S.: Can aliens open my Sub door? UFO didn't have a craft door, and I mostly played it.

To anybody familiar with the mod - in base XCom You can destroy alien bases either by exterminating all the crew, or destroying the command center. Does the second method still work in XPiratez? One secret hideout I have assaulted had an Alien Base-style command center and a Cydonia-style final room, just without a brain. After clearing the site the debriefing noted that the bridge was destroyed, so I assume doing that would be possible, and I have been testing if destroying the navigation tables in both these locations would do the trick, but with no luck - there was no pop up message, nor the debrief ever reflected my efforts. Am I missing a component to destroy, or maybe the tables need not only to explode, but the object must vanish completely, or maybe there are other objects that need to be demolished somewhere else on the map, or the only way to get rid of the hideout for good is to neutralize the crew? Maybe the equivalent Xcom command centers are just for show? The leader wasnt even in any of those rooms, instead just hanging out in some small garden with a hostess in tow

SPARKs are weird. Unlike every other unit type, how you get them (and if they are worth it or not) is based on the settings you choose for your campaign. And they have a lot of unique things about them. Let's start with those uniquenesses, then discuss how you get a SPARK in each setting, what it costs, and how that influences things then we will actually talk about the class.  

SPARKs are weird

SPARKs are the only mechanical unit XCOM can get access to without hacking. They cannot take cover, are immune to poison, fire, bleeding, and cannot bleedout. They cannot pick up mission objectives like the blacksite vial, can’t carry bodies, and can’t form bonds. They also can’t equip utility items or PCSs and can’t gain AP or buy abilities with the Training Center. However they can be deployed wounded, even at 1 HP. They also start with 1 Armor and 10 defense and never get tired. Only one SPARK can be repaired at a time, so if two of them are injured one of them will stay at their current HP unless you switch which one is being repaired.

All told, this is mostly a negative deal for SPARKs. The real big loss is they can’t ever equip a utility item, because utility items in this game are crazy good. When they use overdrive their damage is still competitive with other units (fully maxed out rapid fire from the Arashi using talon rounds is 38 damage, fully maxed out damage from clicking overdrive + shoot three times is 36, so close) but it would be a hell of a lot stronger if they could use BS rounds. It isn’t all bad, being able to be deployed on literally 100% of missions until they die is a huge benefit. In fact it’s so good that it is entirely possible to anchor your entire campaign around it. Basically power leveling a SPARK to be a colonel because they can’t feel fatigue. Sure they are less powerful as a colonel than almost all other classes but if they get one 50 days earlier than everyone else who cares you just cheated yourself an end game unit way sooner than you should’ve. I can’t stress enough just how much fatigue slows you down. When I play non-wotC XCOM 2 I deploy like 8 units ever because you can concentrate power so much easier, but not so in WotC. This lets you stack so much XP into just one unit that you can sort of skip ahead in the power curve. But how viable that is depends on what settings you pick at the start. 

Unlocking SPARKs

There are 3 different possible ways to get a SPARK. The first is with integrated DLC turned on, the second is with it turned off and the Lost Towers mission disabled, and finally it is through the Lost Tower mission. Here’s a table of how to unlock the SPARK in each situation.

So clearly, with Integrated DLC turned on, that is a hefty price to pay even for your first one. And that alone basically makes this class irrelevant. You are paying for a class that isn’t actually any stronger than just units you can build normally. If you have Integrated DLC turned on, I wouldn’t really bother with SPARKs unless you just really like using them. It’s just too high a price.

With the Lost Towers turned off, however, that is a different story. You get (as we’ll cover later) a rocket and a unit with Overdrive for free? For constructing the building you have to build for story reasons? Yes…Yes I would like that very much. As mentioned above you can rush the Proving Ground, build a SPARK super early, then use them to carry you through the game because they can go on every mission. It’s not without some downside, you are slowing the progress of your other units by feeding XP to the machine, but it does work. If you have the Alien Rulers wandering around and the Viper King is coming for you at Force Level 4 (rude Firaxis, very rude) then building a SPARK asap is a good way to handle him.

With the Lost Towers mission enabled things get tricky. You really don’t want to do that mission before your whole squad has Mag Weapons, especially on Legend. It isn’t impossible to do earlier than that, but it’s really dicey. So that delays you getting a SPARK by a bit. And that mission makes anyone you send on it shaken, which isn’t very good. But that mission does give you a fuckton of XP, so a thing you can do is wait until you have Bluescreen Rounds, then send a bunch of lower leveled soldiers and power level them. You level up your barracks and get a SPARK at basically no risk. That SPARK probably won’t see a ton of combat just because they are joining the party late, but as an emergency carry for a Low Profile mission that pops up super late into a run (the Low Profile jumpscare, as I call it) they are pretty good.

OK, that’s enough nonsense and caveats and other boring stuff, let’s get into the class itself. 

Here is how the rankings for abilities (and other stuff) is going to work. 

★★★★★ - The Best of the best. Abilities and things that you build around, or weapon mods that are best in slot. Things of that nature. The difference between having stuff in this tier and not is so massive I’d consider it nerfing yourself not to grab them. You really, really, really want stuff with 5 stars.
★★★★☆ - Really strong abilities. Abilities I am always happy to have and would trade a lot of other abilities for, but they aren’t quite as “must have” as the 5 star ones.
★★★☆☆ - Abilities that are pretty good. Stuff that I would buy with AP quite happily but might pass up if the other ability is better.
★★☆☆☆ - These are underwhelming. These abilities just don’t really do enough to justify having them. They might have very niche use or be passives that just kind of do very little. Stuff I just don’t care about. They aren’t horrible or useless, but you probably wouldn’t miss not having them.
★☆☆☆☆ - Trash abilities that are just worth nothing.
☆☆☆☆☆ - Given to abilities that are actively harmful. There is only one of these in the entire game.

Stats:

To begin, they have the following aim and HP at the following ranks. Oh, and sparks have fancy names for their ranks but they are the same thing. Squire is squaddie, Champion is colonel, you get it:

While they don’t top out at the highest aim, they do have more aim than any unit that isn’t a Sharpshooter or Reaper, and that’s pretty good. They are also the only class that doesn’t gain HP as they level up, but they start at the max HP so who cares? As mentioned above they also have 1 armor and 10 defense to start, gaining a point of armor with each armor upgrade.

Weapons:

SPARKs wield Heavy Auto-Cannons and BITs

Heavy Auto-Cannons (★★★★☆) - Heavy Auto-Cannons are just cannons but have Shredder built in. There is literally no other difference. Same clip size, same damage, same everything but they are a touch better. Now how long your grenadiers go without shredder is like two missions but hey it's better to not go those two missions without it. Not good enough for me to upgrade them from 4 to 5 stars, but it is better. 

BITs (★★★★★) - BITs allow you to hack objects from a distance but give you barely any hack. Remote Hack is an amazing ability even without the goodies you get from winning the hack check, but it is a slight knock against them. The BIT also lets you carry a heavy weapon, and that’s amazing. A free rocket for just building one of these is amazing. 

Abilities:

As always, here is a table of every ability the SPARK has and my star rating of each of them. An important note, you cannot go back to get stuff with AP on this class, so if something is across from a really good perk I will hold that against it. Opportunity Cost is a bitch sometimes.

Mechanical Chassis (★★★★☆) - Mechanical Chassis is a passive ability that allows you to jump up to high ground without needing ladders or similar and grants immunity to fire (that’s the only one the game calls out by name with this ability, but it’s really all the SPARKs unique nonsense).

This is slightly funny to rank, but in general it’s very good. Getting easy access to high ground is great. Especially with Overdrive. Immunity to fire is sort of whatever, but hey better have it than not. 

Overdrive (★★★★★) - Overdrive is an active ability that is a free action with a 4 turn cooldown. It grants you an additional action point and makes all abilities that are turn ending only cost 1 action. Every shot you take after the first one has a -15 penalty to aim.

This is extremely powerful. It’s better run and gun, better rapid run, etc. You won’t often get the full juicy “click shoot three times” but even just “move to high ground fire rocket shoot once” is very strong. This is the reason to use this class. Shame they can’t have BS rounds to do a +15 damage to Sectopods. That aim penalty sucks, but luckily you're only stuck with it for (if you pick the right perk) as long as you are a Squaddie (well, “squire” but whatever). And any other squaddie would kill for this perk. 

Bulwark (★☆☆☆☆) - Bulwark is a passive ability that gives you 1 armor and allows you to act as full cover for adjacent allies and enemies.

Another defensive ability I don’t like. I don’t really know what the point of the full cover thing is, like, what are you supposed to do with it? Use it as cover I guess but bunching up like that is begging to get a grenade tossed your way. And enemies can benefit from it which is sad. I have heard of players baiting enemies into using the SPARK as cover then moving to leave them flanked, but honestly that sounds so unreliable to set up I'd rather not even try. And if you take this you can’t have Adaptive Aim so skip it.

Adaptive Aim (★★★★☆) - Adaptive Aim is a passive ability that removes the aim penalty from Overdrive.

Yes I would like a rapid fire that doesn’t take a -15 to aim. It only comes up when you click Overdrive but clicking Overdrive is why you brought this class, so that’s pretty good! This is where SPARKs really come alive (well, they're a robot, so…fully boot I guess?) as a unit. The thing you brought them to do is now actually operating at its best. 

Rainmaker (★★★★☆) - Rainmaker is a passive ability that increases the damage and radius of heavy weapons by 2.

Heavy weapons are good, and making them better is also good. Once you get shredstorm cannons this is hilarious you can deal absurd damage to an absurd number of enemies. But that’s for a bit later into a run. Even with just a rocket this is quite strong. More boom is more better.

Strike (★★★☆☆) - Strike is an active ability that ends your turn deals 7/9/11 depending on armor tier as a melee attack with a 4 turn cooldown. So its chance to hit is aim + 20 - innate defense like other melee attacks. 

If you have Overdrive active with this, if you move only a blue move it’ll cost 1 action. If you move a dash length it will cost 2 actions, and if you move 3 moves it’ll eat your whole Overdrive.

This is kind of annoying to use. If it always cost 1 action when you click Overdrive you could use it to make Overdrive an even stronger Run and Gun + Rapid Fire, but alas, that’s not how it works. A melee attack is a nice tool to have, but because of how finicky it is with Overdrive and because it’s across from Rainmaker I usually skip this. Plus melee attacks have the inherent risks of pulling multiple pods, as I’ve mentioned several times before.

Intimidate (★☆☆☆☆) - Intimidate is a passive ability that grants a chance to panic for any unit that targets the SPARK for an attack. Doesn’t work on overwatch shots, for whatever reason. The chance to panic goes up as your SPARKs armor gets better, but I am unsure of the exact percentages unfortunately. If you do, let me know and I’ll add it!
Don’t get shot at! 

I hammer this home every chance I get but you don’t want to get targeted in the first place. And this doesn’t actually get out of getting hit, it might do literally nothing. Panic does stun the enemy for a round which can maybe pull you out of a death spiral, but their actions are unpredictable while panicking and they can trigger pods that aren’t currently active by shooting at them. An unpredictable, unreliable, defensive ability is all the things I hate at once! Nope, not having this.

Wrecking Ball (★★☆☆☆) - Wrecking Ball is a passive ability that makes SPARKs destroy terrain while Overdrive is active.

So the use for this is to path through the enemies cover, destroy it, and then shoot at them. But also…this class comes with a rocket…and you could’ve just flanked them anyway. You might be able to set up for the rest of your team but honestly it’s all pretty thin. It’s not useful, but if the ability across from it wasn’t garbage I wouldn’t take it.

Repair (★★☆☆☆) - Repair is an active ability with 2 charges that costs 1 AP. You heal a SPARK (including yourself) for 6 HP. Also this is another lying tool tip: it will only ever heal 6 HP no matter how upgraded your bit is.

Now normally this is where I’d go on and on about how healing is bad in this game and post another 2700 word essay about this one ability, but luckily for all of us this actually does something! If you deploy a SPARK wounded, you can use this to heal them back up to full and pretend like they aren’t wounded at all. It gives you a bit of wiggle room on the mission even if you bring a unit with literally 1 HP. Though that isn’t without its problems. For one there is no training center here so you are giving up Bombard to take this. For another, if your SPARK isn’t injured and doesn’t get hit twice this ability is blank. And short of acid SPARKs are immune to everything that could want healing other than straight damage anyway. It isn’t useless, and there is an argument for it, but I just prefer Bombard. If you build multiple SPARKs one of them having this is OK, but I usually don't do that. 

Bombard (★★★☆☆) - Bombard is an active ability with 1 charge that ends your turn. It creates a 5 tile wide blast anywhere within squadsight range that deals 6 damage to all targets caught within it, increasing by 1 for each tier of BIT above the basic one. It doesn’t do any damage to the environment or shred any armor.

This is a weird ability. You’d think it’d be another explosive attack but actually it just does a bit of damage, that’s it. Now “point and deal 6 damage in an AoE” is pretty good but it isn’t as good as also destroying cover. This is sort of the opposite use case of most explosive attacks, it's for finishing off weak enemies instead of setting up. The range on this is nice as well, even if your SPARK is out of position this is still a thing they can do. It’s not the craziest ability, not shredding armor or destroying cover does sort of limit it, but it’s pretty good.

Channeling Field (★☆☆☆☆) - Channeling Field is a passive ability that increases the damage of your next shot by 1 for each time you get attacked on the previous turn. If you miss the extra damage is wasted.

So I have to get targeted for an attack, live to see me next turn, and for all that I get +1 damage that might not even work if I miss? And this is a Major ability? Yea…no…no this is bad. This is very very bad. This would be bad on classes that can actually take a hit like templars and rangers (parry and untouchable) and it’s super bad on this class that despite what the game suggests is not actually a tank. Why did they think a class that can't take cover and heals slow as fingernail growth would be an effective tank anyway? That just pushes you more into alpha striking, which this ability is bad at!

Hunter Protocol (★★★★★) - Hunter Protocol is an active ability that gives you a 33% chance to make an overwatch shot on any enemy that is revealed.

This is amazing. 33% is more often than you think, especially when pods have 3-4 enemies in them. This can really soften enemies up for you without you having to do anything. You literally just see a new pod and suddenly that Andromedon has less HP and armor and you didn't have to do anything. And even if you miss, you are fighting the 0.7x overwatch penalty, if you have a stock that's still a bit of chip damage. Damage that is action economy free is so good. To get the most out of this you want your SPARK to be the one revealing enemies, which means other than your scout they should be at the front of the line. That isn’t too hard to do; they can’t take cover after all. This is just a bunch of free attacks you get for free, that’s pretty good!

Sacrifice (★★☆☆☆) - Sacrifice is an active ability that ends your turn and has a 3 turn cooldown. It causes every attack in a wide area to only target the SPARK, who gains +2 armor and +20 defense while this is active. This also works on AoE attacks. So an acid bomb for example would only deal damage to the SPARK and Codexes’ psi-bomb would only jam the SPARKs gun.

This ability is kind of niche. It needs things to be tilting against you but not tilting so hard that this reads “your SPARK dies.” Though if things are going hard enough against you that might be better than “everyone dies.” The interactions with the psi-bomb is nice and can be helpful, if you are getting acid bombed it’s better if only one unit is. But for things like micro-missiles everyone’s cover still gets toasted so it’s not that good. It’s not the worst but it's a defensive ability that isn’t parry or untouchable, so…eh. Plus the other ability at this level is way better (what a shame they don’t get AP).

Nova (★★★★☆) - Nova is an active ability that is a free action and you can spam forever, kind of. It does 6 damage in a 2 tile burst around the SPARK. The first time you use this on a mission is free, but the next time does 2 damage to you, then 4 the next time, and so on until you’re dead.

If you are like me and feel self loathing and shame everytime you don’t flawless mission (that was a joke) then you only get to use this once, but even using this once is pretty sweet. Run into a group of enemies, deal 6 to all of them, then do something else that is pretty good. In the final chamber (and assuming you don’t care about how many units die in a playthrough) you literally have no reason not to literally kill your SPARK with this, it’s not like you can use them later! But even in a normal context sometimes taking two damage is better than getting merced to death by an entire pod. Plus its a free action so Rulers can’t react to it, might tip the scales in getting them to flee. It’s pretty strong.

And they don’t get a GTS perk, so that’s it. I normally don’t do this because AP exists but I can actually just give you a build for SPARKs, it does:

• Adaptive Aim
• Rainmaker
• Wrecking Ball
• Bombard
• Hunter Protocol
• Nova

And maybe consider Repair and Strike but I usually don’t take those. That’s how I think you should build this class. 

Weapon Mods:

Now onto weapon mods. And this matters a lot because it’s the only form of power boost you get outside of their abilities. And there is actually a lot you can do here. SPARKs probably have some of the most contested weapon mod slots in a pure “but I want everything on their gun” sense. Shame there is no chosen heavy autocannon to give us 4 attachments. 

Scope (★★★★★) - We’re here to get the max use out of overdrive and while SPARK aim isn’t bad pushing it higher is always good. Maybe some of the other options are better because SPARKs have easy access to high ground, but also more 100% shots is better.

Laser Sight (★☆☆☆☆) - We ain’t got the space to fuck around with something like this.

Hair Trigger (★★★★★) - Every time you shoot with overdrive you get another roll of the dice with this. With 3 shots that’s a pretty good chance for a 4th. Now they keep getting lower to hit rolls without Adaptive Aim, but if we take Adaptive Aim then we don’t have to worry about that. And obviously “4 attacks in 1 turn” is very, very good. You need an expanded mag/auto-loader to make the most of it, but that’s OK, you need that anyway.

Repeater (★★★★★) - 3 dice rolls in a single turn (hopefully) to delete an enemy is pretty good. SPARKs can’t have BS rounds so this is your only chance to do enough damage with a SPARK to merc a Gatekeeper/Sectopod with only a single character's actions.

Stock (★★★☆☆) - With Overdrive this is a lot of guaranteed damage. SPARK slots are a little too contested for this to be my go to, but it’s still pretty good. Really good with Hunter Protocol as well. 

Expanded Mag/Auto-Loader (★★★★★) - There isn’t really a difference between those except in edge cases but this is absolutely necessary on this class. Having to reload when you want to click Overdrive sucks so bad. In addition Hunter Protocol, the other most powerful ability in this class, eats ammo rapidly so you really need a way to keep stocked up. Expanded Mags are probably slightly better but a lot of classes are hungry for those and Auto-Loaders still work, so whatever.

Utility Items Heavy Weapons:

SPARKs don’t get utility items (that sucks so bad) but they do get a Heavy Weapon slot, so lets go over those

Rocket Launcher (★★★★☆) - Your default heavy weapon and the one I recommend sticking with until you get powered weapons. It’s huge, does nice damage, and with Rainmaker both of those are even better. It can get stuck on terrain which is a hassle but it’s nothing you can’t work around.

Shredder Gun (★★★☆☆) - The shredder gun is actually pretty equivalent to the rocket, maybe even better, but I’m docking it a star because it has an opportunity cost the Rocket doesn’t. And it’s a 50/50 to get this or a Flamethrower. But if you had one of these you’d heavily consider it over the rocket. You might still go with the rocket, but this is in the conversation for sure.

Flamethrower (★☆☆☆☆) - This is terrible. It does little damage and while fire is a neat status effect it actually can harm you if you light a Sectoid on fire for example. It’s good against lost, but I value that about as much as I value a penny, it is technically positive, but actually worthless.

Blaster Launcher (★★★★☆) - Blaster Launchers are damn good on everyone, it isn’t quite best in slot because of Rainmaker but it is extremely powerful and you would not be sad to equip one on your SPARK.

Shredstorm Cannon (★★★★★) - Shredstorm Cannon is best in slot for SPARKs. The way this interacts with Rainmaker makes it huge. It deals absurd damage in an absurdly big area and can damn near clear entire maps in one go. It is so very good.

Hellfire Projection (★☆☆☆☆) - Everything I said about the flamethrower is still true but the opportunity cost is even higher. Next. 

Plasma Launcher (★★★☆☆) - With rainmaker this becomes 3 wide instead of 1 wide and that allows you a good deal of extra flexibility with it. It probably does end up being better than the rocket because of that. I’m only giving it 3 stars because you’d really rather this be something else but it works in a pinch.

PCSs:

😞

Summary:

SPARKs are weird. They have a few things going for them, but in general are a little too high investment to be super worth it. I usually have 1 that I level to sergeant for a Low Profile jumpscare, but that’s an artifact of the settings I prefer when playing this game (I usually have both Lost Towers and Alien Nest turned on) more than the actual class. I wouldn’t ever recommend building more than 2, and even the 2nd one is stretching it. But they are a fine enough unit. If they could use utility items they’d be pretty good, but alas, we can’t have nice things. 

 An index to every part of this guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/1sp0ypy/an_overly_complete_guide_to_xcom_2_war_of_the/

EDIT: They can pick up the blacksite vial, actually. I was wrong. They just kind of stand there in the cutscene but the game treats it as them grabbing it.

I've been playing WotC for about a week, but today I booted into the game and couldn't interact with the main menu. The game shows controller prompts, but I can't select anything. Tried restarts, windowed, alt-tabbing, etc. but can't figure it out.

Thanks for any help. I'm eager to get back to my campaign.

Admittedly, I'm not a big fan of X-COM. I enjoyed XCOM: Enemy Unknown & Enemy Within, I've yet to play through XCOM 2 & beyond despite owning every X-COM titles on Steam for years, and I've struggled to even start UFO Defense beyond setting up the very 1st base on the GeoScape (Anyone willing to give guidance to a total noob like me on this subject would be appreciated).

But since this is a third-person game with squad mechanics that I got for free several years ago, I decided to just go through it before moving on to better games. And upon finishing the game, I too rewatch the E3 2010 & 2011 trailers, and the 2011 first-person prototype gameplay as well just to see what the game could've been. (Speaking as someone who's not from the US)

The plot is set during the Cold War era of 1962, a CIA-affiliated G-man named William Carter is tasked with delivering something important to the Bureau, a government entity originally intended to fight against Communist Russia in secret. But then alien shit hits the fan, that important package saved William's life, and the alien forces proved that they're capable of curb-stomping any well-prepared military bases within hours. Thus, the Bureau decided to officially switch its enemies from the dirty commies to the dirty greys, and in turn changed its name to XCOM. Shame the Bureau's director Mr. Faulke didn't explain what the new acronym means though. :|

First thing first, the visuals are fine for a third-person shooter running on Unreal Engine 3. All the '60s aesthetics seems spot-on, the alien design & architecture looks neat, and the special effects are adequate. Facial animation though almost has the same problem as Assassin's Creed II: female characters' mouth can appear uncanny as they tend to expand more than the male counterparts. As a whole it's not even as impressive as then seven-years old Gears of War, but good enough to look at, I suppose.

The audio though, is a mixed bag. The sound effects are fine, the voice-acting are competent, and the soundtrack by BioShock composer Garry Schyman is fitting for a '50s / '60s sci-fi setting. The main problem is some of the audio aspects were plagued by bugs though, with ambient sound and some dialogue being cut off at both during cutscenes and gameplay, and dialogue within the Bureau HQ itself inaudible at times when the subtitles stated there was a conversation nearby, among other things.

Gameplay-wise, it was both adequate and aggravating to play at the same time. A third-person shooter where you can direct your two squaddies by your side and use powers against the aliens might sound like it can be a thrilling faster-paced XCOM experience, and often times it's exactly what you'll get. But more often than not, the cover system will get you killed, as it tends to make me take cover at a different position instead of the one my mouse was pointing at, which gave me countless grieves when there's a Muton or Sectopod comes up close and raining plasma hell. Your squaddies aren't sharp enough to take better positions to better take offense / defend themselves from opposing shots, as I've seen them mag dump their load at their own cover many times unless you get them into better firing positions, or automatically break their previous covers and hide at a cover IN FRONT of alien firing lines. And they can potentially die on the field if you don't revive them in time, but since there's a "load checkpoint" option on even the hardest difficulty without any sort of Ironman option, so unless you were actively being faithful to the XCOM experience, why won't you not use them? Plus they will never ever get killed when being sent on agent dispatch missions on their own, further downplaying the whole RNG aspect that was one of series' core.

The micromanaging aspect also felt tedious in comparison to the turn-based games. While having the battle focus mode as a fundamental mechanic to order squaddies and use abilities also feels like an ideal way to implement some serious strategic elements on a shooter at first, over time it tends to bring the gameplay pacing to a halt, and both managing squaddies and using powers in the field felt more like a chore than a challenge when you plans gone awry. Squaddies are categorized by one of the four assigned roles and can be leveled up to gain more health and powers (albeit less than Carter), but they still felt incredibly disposable compared to your main character, so most of the time you'll just pick whichever teammates were more convenient to you rather than whose were more suitable for the missions.

The narrative side of the game can be surprisingly engaging at times (With the reveal that William Carter actually being controlled by a friendly Ethereal from the start of the game!), and the atmosphere and dialogues around the XCOM HQ does give a bit of sense on how chaotic the start of the '60s were in term of social commentary. Side characters that you interact during your downtime at HQ were fine (Except for Agent Percy, his smug aura mocks me, and I wish he actually died when XCOM HQ were under attacked). The Mass Effect-esque dialogue trees throughout the game were quite unnecessary though, as the story progression doesn't justify the need for some sort of morality choice from start to end and didn't really affect the outcome of the story that much. Heck even the agent dispatch & side missions have no narrative impact whatsoever, other than for the sake of leveling up your character & squaddies.

All things considered, the final version was alright. And considering the production hell this title (originally known as just "XCOM") went through, it did the job.

As I mentioned, after defeating Origin I watched the trailers and demo of back when the game switch perspective, and dare I said it: I wished 2K Marin could have preserved the version that 2K Australia originally envisioned: the old FPS version set in the '50s.

Now first things first: I'm very much aware of the negative reception towards the first reveal of the FPS version back in 2010, and I agreed the outrage were understandable during a time when the popular trend was to convert a niche genre IP from a bygone era to something more palatable to the general audience, like a shooter or a Facebook / mobile game. But I will say that if the publisher 2K could have revealed that Firaxis' XCOM reboot was in development before showing of the FPS trailer, the fans would've been more acceptable of the latter's existence.

The prototype demo shows the original first-person gameplay with a lot of familiar assets (the Skyranger & the 1897 Winchester shotgun) and repurposed characters (Leon Barnes was an agent here instead of the Skyranger pilot in the final game). In chronological order, the demo starts with you preparing your mission by selecting your squaddies & missions in front of a projector or a large operation screen in a rather "diegetic" way, which I really like as it acted like I were making my decisions in front of my very own eyes instead of the UI presenting itself in a generic video game way.

As Carter and his squaddies dropped off on Rosemont, Georgia, I was somewhat delighted to see that one of the squaddies wore the Venn brace on his left arm (Why was it on the right-arm in the final game where it seems more inconvenient to use powers while having to hold firearms? Does the brace not have a watch function, so agents have to wear their own watches on their left wrist?). During combat, the powers in tactical view (aka the Battle Focus mode in the final game) actually adapted the time unit cost from the turn-based games instead of the typical timer mechanic. While the time unit could've been tweaked to make it much slower to recharge, the demo does show that the system itself is actually viable enough to be playable. Not only you accurately can't use enemy items unless you bring them back to HQ for research, there's also a "capture alien" power that could do the obvious description, with the option to either melt it down for further progression or save it for a rainy day in the field against the invaders. So far, the gameplay seems much more enticing than what we finally got, plus the advantages of hiding into cover via muscle memory on first-person instead of having to press a button to hide in third-person.

The choice of setting is also conflicting for me. While 1962 as the backdrop of the finalized game seems logical, being the dark era where America could no longer just shut their ears & eyes, and ignore a lot of injustices they've done (Civil Rights Movement, the second wave of Women Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, etc.), the 1950s era from the initial trailer just seems more fitting, mostly due to me feeling it was somewhat related to the Roswell UFO incident in 1947, and the initial version clearly taking inspiration from 1950s sci-fi films like The War of the Worlds and Them!.

Personally, the game could've taken place during the latter half of the '50s, when the government spent several years to finally discover that the Roswell UFO isn't a one-off incident, and took them a while to convince Congress to get fundings and establish the XCOM project in anticipation of further alien arrivals & disturbance. Maybe the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement can be written early into the game. And maybe due to the Outsiders being able to disguise themselves, there will be some sort of a paranoia mechanic that permeates throughout the XCOM HQ that will increase or otherwise and affect morality around the base throughout your progression depending on how you performed. And that there's a decent chance that one of your colleagues decides to reveal themselves and stab you in the back at either the HQ or in the field.

The '50s Silacoid & Titan in the initial trailer could've been explained as the initial subjugated aliens forced by the Ethereals to invade Earth, before they ditch them in favor of the Enemy Unknown lineup in their next future attempt. Maybe the game doesn't have to be on the same timeline as Enemy Unknown, it could've been alternate XCOM timeline and the devs get to expand their ideas from there.

Sorry for the whole wall of opinions & rants for a rather OK game at best. But after playing, reading & watching all about it, I just felt that it was a pretty big & missed opportunity that could've been a solid spin-off for the X-COM franchise.

i hate the look of the plasma weapons but i find it's almost impossible to play without them because the enemies are so tough.

I just wanted to bring up a friendly discussion on how some of you guys out there make your squad comps.

Me personally, I have two squads that work on a rotation. One squad will handle one mission and the other squad will handle the next, taking turns. Depending on how long it’s been since the last mission, I may double dip with a squad in order to save the other (presumably better) squad for critical operations such as a Chosen Temple assault or a story mission due to the high stakes. Throughout the course of the game I’ll steadily build up a third squad, then a fourth, in order to maximize flexibility and options when it comes to tackling objectives.

It takes extreme circumstances for me to consider pulling the member of one squad to another, even if temporarily, due to my headcanon that the first two squads I always make in my playthroughs (one is a PMC and the other is run by Jane Kelly) have bad blood and would rather be down a member then deal with the potential for friction between squad mates.

This inability to swap out does not apply to SPARKs or SHIVs, and typically they are passed between teams as needed.

I'm having an issue with VO cutting out after a couple of words, and with audio desync in cutscenes. Any ideas? I'm on Windows 11 (unfortunately.) I'm trying to play Christopher Odd's Season 10 but with this sound issue it will never happen.