Xcom 2 Covert Actions
I'm a few missions into an XCOM: War of the Chosen campaign and nothing is on fire. Okay, things are a little bit on fire. I just massively failed a mission to slap some explosives on a pulsating alien artifact. The enemy's new colour-coded enemies pack quite a punch when you're unprepared for their abilities.—never underestimate an alien hybrid with a flamethrower.
It has been great fun so far. I was worried that the Chosen would become a game within a game—an annoyance to one side that had to be dealt with while getting on with the important business of saving the world. They really do dominate, though, which makes War of the Chosen feel like an overhaul rather than a straightforward expansion. New environments like the abandoned cities populated by The Lost (zombies) and ruined underground hideouts make the game feel immediately fresh even as the game's structural changes gradually become apparent.
Aug 28, 2017 How to Do Covert Actions and What They Do in XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. XCOM 2: War of the Chosen introduces the Covert Actions mechanic, which actually helps move things along a. XCOM 2 Official War of the Chosen: Lost and Abandoned Gameplay Walkthrough. The center from which you launch the enormously powerful Covert Actions. These have you send two or three troops (or.
I still worry that there will be too much to keep track of once I have discovered all of the resistance factions and I'm under attack from all of the Chosen, but War of the Chosen masterfully drip feeds each element in the early game with some new characters and some surprisingly badass cutscenes. There is plenty more to discover, and I'll get into the new skill trees and hero abilities closer to launch once I better understand their efficiencies. Here are a few points that have jumped out at me so far.
The resistance heroes are the real stars of the expansion
The Chosen are an interesting threat, but so far I have found the resistance heroes to be much more interesting. They are introduced through a great series of introductory videos and missions that build out the world. The idea that Earth has been occupied for a long time is much more convincing when you're meeting people who have survived in the shadows for decades and formed rivalries and alliances with other groups. I would read a series of XCOM comics set in this world.
The heroes' introductory missions mix up the formats we've become accustomed to in 'vanilla' XCOM 2. One mission lets you assign a resistance hero a bodyguard of two soldiers as you travel through a zombie-infested city on the way to a clandestine meeting. This bodes well for the special Chosen-hunting missions to come.
The two factions I have encountered so far—the powerful Reaper snipers and the fast hybrid Skrimishers—are characterful and exciting to use in the game. The Reaper hero can move and fire her sniper rifle, and has a chance to remain cloaked when performing actions, even when one of those actions involves tossing a claymore at someone's head. The skirmisher can obliterate enemies up close and then use a grappling hook to zip away to safety.
The Chosen patrol areas of the world map
Once the three Chosen have been introduced they pick a continent and camp down there. If you fight in their zone there is a chance they harry you during missions. The Chosen are tricky to deal with and they are a significant threat, but they have specific weaknesses that make them more manageable. The Assassin takes extra damage from Reapers and explosions, so you're encouraged to mix up your squads to incorporate some anti-Chosen options when you're battling in their territory.
If you don't disrupt the Chosen using covert actions and missions they can enact some nasty plans. The Assassin I'm battling at the moment is working towards 'Retribution—a brutal crackdown on the Resistance, permanently lowering XCOM's income.' The Chosen need to gather 'knowledge' before they can put a plan into action, which they accrue by kidnapping and holding XCOM soldiers. They give you a strong incentive to take a mission to break them out of prison.
I was worried The Chosen collectively would be too disruptive, but they are actually competing with one another for the favour of their alien overlords, thank goodness. That at least gives us the chance to pick them off one at a time.
Covert actions are an integral part of the expansion
You periodically receive a list of covert actions you can undertake from each resistance faction. You add the required soldiers to the mission, they vanish for a few days, and then automatically complete. Covert actions are essential if you want to hunt down the Chosen in that resistance faction's region, but they are also a vital source of supplies. You get a lot more rookies than you do in a standard XCOM 2 campaign, but it can be hard to scale up your economy to keep up with the demands of the campaign.
You can also use covert actions also increase your influence with resistance factions. Doing this unlocks more resistance 'orders', which give you strong, specific upgrades. I have 'lightning strike', which gives units +3 mobility for the first two turns of battle while they are concealed. It's hard to tell at the moment whether it's worth pursuing these at the expense of other covert actions.
There are so many facilities to build now
This feels like the most unfocused part of the expansion so far. You need a resistance ring to enact resistance orders and manage your covert actions. You need a training facility to manage your soldiers' skills, in addition to the guerrilla tactics school, which you absolutely have to build at some point to expand your squad size. Clearing out rooms in the Avenger, spending money and assigning engineers doesn't involve much interesting decision-making and it feels like I'm being charged in-game currency to access some of the expansion's coolest features.
Your scientists get inspired
There is so much to juggle in War of the Chosen that the game has to give you a hand every now and then. Sometimes your science team will get excited about a particular technology upgrade. If you select that 'inspired' upgrade it completes extremely fast. They complete so fast it feels stupid to select any other upgrade.
You can check whether you will flank before you make a move
One of my favourite additions in the expansion is a small one. When you have a soldier selected you can press alt while mousing over a square to see if you will end up in a flanking position or not. This certainty is great for the game. War of the Chosen rewards you with skill points for tactically astute moves like flanking and attacking from high ground. You can use these to give your ordinary soldiers special abilities that normally belong to resistance group specialists.
There is a huge amount to the expansion, including more customisation options, maps, ordinary mission types, Advent variants, propaganda posters, resistance radio, dodgy 'we're not so different, you and I' Chosen banter. We'll bring you more as I get stuck in. War of the Chosen is out on August 29.
XCOM is a notoriously punishing series of strategy games, from the 90s originals up through Firaxis’ fantastic reboot, and XCOM 2 is no different. In many ways it’s significantly harder than its predecessor, Enemy Unknown. While the in-game tutorials do a good job of laying out the basics of how it works, there is an immense amount of second-order knowledge that has to be earned in the field. Veterans have now had over a year to master its intricacies, including its very own Long War mod, but Advent has thrown a wrench into our hard-earned strategies with the eponymous elites in the War of the Chosen expansion. Fortunately some powerful new rebel factions have joined the fight on our side to even the scales. Alongside our general guide for the base game, we’ve added some pointers to help you get the most out of these new additions, and take on the Chosen. These should be useful to both series veterans and fresh-faced recruits alike. If you just want the WotC-specific tips, skip to last page.
General tactics
Look at all of your options before making a move
Xcom 2 Covert Actions Priority
Since XCOM is a turn-based game, you have the luxury of unlimited time to make each move. Every turn, you should start off by cycling through your whole team to assess their options, rather than just taking actions in the automatic order. With a finite number of actions, you want to make sure that every move is as efficient and effective as possible. War of the Chosen has added a clutch feature that many players had already modded in, which is the ability to preview available targets when deciding where to move your units. Holding left alt will bring up all of the targets your soldier will be able to shoot from the tile you’re highlighting, taking out all the guesswork and making it much easier to plan your turns precisely.
If you have time, take it
XCOM 2 does a great job of mixing up mission parameters so you are forced to vary your tactics as the situation demands. Many missions have time constraints forcing you to plow ahead. For missions that do not, though, you should take as much time as you need to scope out the scene and set up to engage the enemy on your terms.
Concealment is a new mechanic that allows your squad to get the drop on unaware enemies. Until concealment is broken, the enemies have a smaller radius of awareness, which is clearly telegraphed so you can maneuver freely around them. Take the time to position your troops with cover and high ground to do the most damage, then set all but one member of your squad to overwatch. Attack the unsuspecting aliens with the last soldier and enjoy the ensuing slaughter.
Watch out for Sectoids
The cute, little, bobble-headed grunts of the first game have grown up. In addition to being larger and generally more intimidating, the infusion of human DNA into the sectoids has greatly enhanced their psionic capabilities and made them a far greater threat in the field. sectoids can now attack your soldiers psionically, causing negative effects that range from disorienting or incapacitating your troops for a turn to outright taking control over them, which can be a brutal swing in the alien’s favor depending on your positioning when it happens. They can also revive fallen foes as zombie puppets.
Although scarier than their predecessors, the sectoids’ AI can be gamed to your favor once you’ve figured out how they work. Sectoids are frequently deployed with a few Advent soldiers. If you can kill at least one of these before the sectoid has a chance to act, it will almost certainly spend its turn reviving it as a zombie. Because zombies and mind-controlled soldiers don’t act on their first turn, this can buy you time to kill the sectoid itself, which will in turn free anyone under its control.
Lead with explosives
Armor works a bit differently in XCOM 2 than its predecessor. The yellow lozenge at the end of a character’s health bar acts as a constant reduction on all damage taken. However, armor can be “shredded” by explosives (or normal grenadier attacks with certain upgrades), which permanently removes it for all subsequent attacks. Furthermore, many of the cover-providing environmental elements can be destroyed by grenades. Accordingly, it is often best to lead a round of attacks with explosives, which will shred armor, destroy cover, and generally make enemies more vulnerable to attacks from the rest of your squad, ensuring the most value for your actions. This is especially pertinent for ambushes from concealment, when unwitting enemies are more closely clustered than they will be once engaged.
Grow the resistance early and often
While the geoscape strategic metagame is certainly much more interesting in XCOM 2 than building satellites in Enemy Unknown, there are certain similarities to how your should approach it. The game will present you with lots of tempting options for ways to spend your time in the Avenger, picking up valuable resources or recruits. Focus on expanding the resistance early in the game, contacting new regions, and building radio towers in regions you own, once you have researched them. Both of these will increase your monthly supply income, which is critical to your long term success.
Radio towers also have the added bonus of reducing the intel cost of contacting new regions, which is based on the distance to the nearest tower. Global access becomes increasingly important as the game goes on and you are prompted to investigate alien facilities around the world. Having to spend weeks contacting multiple new regions in order to access a critical story mission or Avatar Project facility on the other side of the world can completely kill your momentum.
Don’t stress too hard about the Avatar Project
The Avatar Project–Advent’s menacing master plan–looms over the strategic layer and sets the overall tempo for the game as it ticks down towards your loss. Seeing that ominous red bar fill steadily up can apply a lot of pressure, and especially for new players can make the situation seem more dire than it actually is. In reality you can be a little more lax about letting the Avatar project fill up than the game wants you to think. There are no scaling consequences as the clock advances, so all that matters is that you hold off total defeat. Even when the meter runs to completion, that still gives you a generous 20 days to respond. It’s often better to let the Avatar meter tick up quite a bit early on, spending that time building out your team and developing a strong, economic foundation for the rest of the game. Once you’re in a good position, it’s not too hard to push it back by hitting a few Avatar facilities in quick succession, which should be easier to do than if you tried while earlier and less well equipped. Covert actions from the resistance ring in War of the Chosen also sometimes let you knock the Avatar Project back a few notches, letting you avoid dangerous raids even longer.