Long War 2 - Dealing with Bugs
The bugs in XCOM are worse than Chryssalids.
There are a lot of bugs in every modern version of XCOM; Long War 2 is no exception. But we are steely veterans, accustomed to adversity. We can cope. Here is a list of the most common bugs I have encountered in Long War 2, and what I do about them.
BUG: Running through a Door; LOS does not reset.
This is the most common issue that I have to deal with. When a soldier runs through a closed door, Line of Sight will not reset to his new location. He will still be able to target enemies that were visible at the starting location, and they can target him. This also applies to hack objectives.
BUG: Grenade destroys Cover; Enemy still has Cover.
After environmental damage there can be a failure to reset the Line of Sight, but it is rare. It is most noticeable when a soldier throws a grenade and destroys enemy cover; but the uncovered enemy is still granted the defense bonus from cover that no longer exists.
SOLUTION: TTC one tile over, then back.
The Console command “TTC”, which stands for Teleport To Cursor, will easily fix this problem. Just open Console Command with the back slash, select the soldier that has incorrect LOS, type ttc, then while hovering the cursor over an adjacent tile, hit enter. This will teleport the soldier to that adjacent tile. Teleport the soldier back to the original tile and everything should be fixed.
BUG: Omniscient pod knows exact location of soldier.
The AI has omniscience. Some of the time. Yellow alert enemy pods will know exactly where your non-concealed soldiers are located, but only within a certain range (~15 tiles). And if a pod detects your soldier in this way, that pod gets bonus movement; zooming toward your soldier’s location until it gains visibility; in a single turn. The image below illustrates the bonus movement. My Specialist is hiding behind a fence, but within 15 tiles of that viper. When my Specialist hacked the objective a couple turns ago, all the enemy pods went on Yellow Alert, and they started running around searching for my team at random. But when my Specialist is within 15 tiles they know exactly where he is, and what is worse, that viper will end up moving 13 tiles (8 diagonal, 3 straight) to flank the Specialist. Very nasty.
SOLUTION: No Fix; Distance is the only way to be safe.
There is no fix for this, but we can cope. If this happens on a normal mission, it is not a huge problem, and may even benefit your squad if they are on overwatch. On a stealth mission, this bug is nothing but nasty. To cope, our strategy should be to get our exposed specialist as far away from enemy pods as possible. Breaking LOS will not work. Forget about hiding behind fences or trains or whatever. You need to get that Specialist far away. If that cannot be done, then hacking the objective will turn into a sacrifice, and the Specialist should throw the evac flare immediately on his current location. This will allow the Shinobi to survive, grab the objective, and hopefully carry out the Specialist as well.
BUG: Gatekeepers detection range is far wider than what is shown.
When in concealment, the detection range of most enemies is correctly shown; moving through a red tile will expose your soldiers. The Gatekeeper’s detection range is incorrectly displayed, and far wider. This bug has probably caught most veterans of LW2, as we are accustomed to getting as close as possible to enemy pods, in preparation for an ambush. When it first happened to me I assumed that there was some unknown civilian or enemy hiding behind high cover that had exposed my soldier. But no… it was the the Gatekeeper. Big cheater.
SOLUTION: Reload from a previous save, or be careful approaching Gatekeepers.
If you are playing Ironman you need to be careful, as the only way to fix this issue is to reload from a previous save. The increased detection radius is about 1-2 tiles for soldiers equipped with SMGs, and 3-4 tiles for soldiers equipped with bigger guns.
BUG: Roof of church has incorrect detection range.
This is similar to the Gatekeeper detection range bug. You may realize that something is wrong with the church roof, because the blue/yellow movement ranges for your soldiers will be incorrectly displayed. That’s not really an issue, just a warning. The problem is that the detection radii of enemies is also incorrectly displayed on the roof.
SOLUTION: Stay off the church roof when in Concealment. Or be careful.
This is pretty straightforward. Stay off the roof of the church when you are in Concealment. Or be careful.
BUG: Infiltration time leakage
Your squad always loses an hour or 2, when infiltrating. Usually you have some leeway regarding infiltration times on missions, and probably won’t even notice. But if the expected infiltration time is exactly the amount of time remaining, invariably you will end up just shy, at 99%. I believe this is due to the Skyranger’s drop off time, but can’t be sure. Anyway it’s annoying. Under infiltration may mean your squad does not begin in concealment or more enemies are on the mission.
SOLUTION: Pad infiltrations at least 1 hour; 2 to be safe.
Add a couple suppressors, switch a soldier’s gun to an SMG, or drop a utility slot item or 2.
BUG: Fog of War remains unrevealed.
As shown below the fog of war immediately ahead of soldiers remains unrevealed. This bug makes it much more likely that I will blunder into a pod of enemies.
SOLUTION: Restart the game.
Saving and reloading, will not work. You have to close XCOM 2 and restart the whole game. This fixes it. Shown below is what my squad can see after restarting the App.
Bug: Explosions are triggered by trivial actions or TTC.
This is a nasty bug where a burning vehicle will explode when something changes that would ordinarily not affect the environment such as using the teleport to cursor command, throwing a battlescanner, etc. I’ve seen this bug repeatedly in LW, less often in LW2.
Solution: Reposition Soldiers ASAP.
Just reposition any soldiers adjacent to a burning vehicle as soon as you can and don’t do anything that might trigger it.
I will be updating this post as I find new bugs, or remember those I have forgotten.
I just learned using TTC to fix LoS bugs can "fail" by immediately blowing up a smoking vehicle when using the command.