LWOTC - Version 1.2 notes

A collection of notes from my first dive into the new version

So I’ve recently played some LWOTC v1.2, and its been a blast. I decided to change things up this time through - along with the fresh updates of version 1.2, I included my own difficulty enhancing mod, Make Me Cry Weapons Nerf for LWOTC. Also I left ‘Not Created Equally’ ON, so my soldiers were dealt the random stats that most XCOM commanders are accustomed to seeing.

Before I talk about the version 1.2 changes, a quick word about my mod: It’s brutal. I kind of want to promote the mod, because its my baby, but I can’t in good conscience recommend it. I needed to play at my best to survive the early game. And I needed a solid squad on every mission. No more 4 man missions; 5 soldiers squads on an extremely light is risky. Aside from the tactical layer being rough, the need for more soldiers puts strain on the barracks, slowing promotions, eating up funds, and generally making it harder to go on enough missions to stay alive economically.

So the campaign was crazy. Extremely hard from the start, and didn’t get much easier. Below is a summary from one of the tougher missions on this campaign:

Previously the Avenger Assaults were not too bad. With my nerfed weapons, I lost one soldier and had 2 others KO’d, and 2 more severely wounded. It was a near disaster, and a lot of fun.

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Version 1.2 is buff

Many of the changes to v1.2 decrease the difficulty. Of the most popular mods of XCOM, I think base LWOTC is now the easiest.¹ That’s not a bad thing - players can just go up a tier in the difficulty setting, or add some mods. I think most of the experienced commanders are using Requiem / Ted Jam to boost difficulty.

Version 1.2 adds enough changes to force me to think through all my builds and much of my tactics. Almost all the changes to the skill trees were improvements in my opinion, and many of the other changes were well considered. I have a couple quibbles that I won’t even bother mentioning here. Limiting myself to just one criticism; I don’t love the front loading of aim progression.

On the plus side, Scanning Protocol now and forever. I love Scanning Protocol. It speeds up the game considerably, helping your squad avoid RNF drop-ins, and prevents most of the nasty double pod activations that could doom a campaign in the first couple of months. Sewer maps can be safely navigated. Just great all around.

And how about all these new rockets on my Technical? They have more rockets and more variety of rockets, and this makes them more viable on long missions, and against late game enemies. Is the Technical class now better than a grenadier in the late game? I can’t really say, and I don’t really care. They are good enough to bring along throughout the campaign, and that just feels good.

And look at these new Sparks! Give me a platoon of these heavy hitters. You can have a pretty tanky build, while not losing too much offensive firepower. They are comparable in strength to all the other classes, but also completely unique.

Only one class has been nerfed: the Reaper. The shooty build is much weaker - which gives us a good reason to try the other builds.

There are also a ton of quality of life improvements. Most significantly, you don’t need to remove a soldier from a haven to add them to a mission. There is also much more information easily available at the strategy layer. Most of this intel could be calculated or tracked by the player, but would be too tedious in practice.

There are a ton of other changes, but I am not going to go down the whole list.

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Version 1.2 - Chosen

The Assassin has been nerfed. Her damage reduction was reworked such that it kicks in after losing a percentage of HP, rather than building up after each hit. This makes it easier (and less fiddly) to knock her down a bit, then use other actions to control her. She used to be the most dangerous of the Chosen, at least in the early stages of the campaign, but now I can usually kill her in 2 turns on Haven Defense missions, and hold her to 1-2 slice attacks.

The Warlock is a slog to fight on data taps. Summon, Summon, Summon. If he actually used his mind control ability his performance would match his ego; instead he summons tons of allies which might cause some difficulty, but usually just lengthens the battle, giving him more time to prate on about how awesome he is. Has it always taken this long to kill the Warlock? Just shut up and die you insufferable prick.

The Hunter is not as frustrating to fight - he won’t run as far away, though he does fall back and flank repeatedly; still annoying and dangerous.

The answer is still (mostly) fire and suppression. Fire is great against the Assassin because it limits her to a single attack. If she is allowed to shotgun someone then slice them, the mission will turn bloody. Fire will negate the Warlock’s CCS ability, which is usually helpful at some point.

Suppression limits actions, decreases aim, negates CCS, and deters the Warlock and Hunter from moving. Ideally I want the Hunter and Warlock to stay right where they are. Please, just stand behind that tree and shoot at me or cast summon or whatever.

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Stats and Class Selection in LWOTC:

With ‘Not Created Equally’ ON I am fiddling around with stats in LWOTC for the first time in awhile. Its tiresome, but if you fight through the tedium you get shooters with serious aim, and some powerful purple glowsticks; worth the effort. On the downside, I also ended up with a low aim sharpshooter in a sad holo-target build; also a low aim ranger that ran a hybrid sawed-off build. Oh well. A few misclassed soldiers is not the end of the world, and we need someone to work the havens.

We want to pick the class for as many rookies as possible; a good reason to build the GTS immediately.² But we can’t train them all - we need soldiers to run missions, and start leveling up. The obvious question is how many rookies should we wait to train using the GTS, and which ones? For me the answer is about 6. That number can go up or down based on how things go, but 6 is about right. Anymore than that is tough.

And so the first thing I do is find the 2-3 soldiers with super high psi offense and mark them for psi operative training. Then I want to choose a few high aim soldiers to save for training into a shooter class. Maybe I can save a high hack soldier to be a specialist. All the average stat soldiers need to roll the dice. It is also worth noting that other stats matter. A slow shooter (13 mobility) can really suck, no matter how high their aim. Mobility 15 is important. Decent Will is important. Combat Intelligence is important. Don’t get stuck on aim.

Also, none of this fiddling around will guarantee a super soldiers - he might get killed on the first mission, or never level-up due to wounds or negative traits. Or his XCOM abilities could suck. Investing all your hopes and dreams in a high aim rookie is a mistake; let’s try not to get caught up in statmaxxing.

That being said, it always pays off for psi operatives; psi offense is really the only stat that matters for this class and it matters a lot. Low mobility? who cares when you can teleport. And the XCOM row abilities don’t signify - pistol abilities are usually preferable. We just want psi offense, and the Domination ability. With random stats I am getting much better psi operatives - by the end of the campaign I expect to have 3-4 soldiers starting with ~30 psi offense. With non-random stats they always start with 20.

There is a little trick that gives you a freebie class selection at the start of a campaign. After we promote the gatecrasher squad members, we actually have a little influence on class assignments - the first 8 promotions will always be one of each XCOM class. And so after 7 promotions, we know which class will be chosen on the next promotion, since there is only 1 class left. We can take advantage of this by choosing a rookie for the next mission who has the right stats for that class. Or maybe 2 rookies with the right stats, just in case the first choice gets killed.

We only get 1 free class selection - but sometimes after 6 promotions the 2 remaining classes want similar stats (eg. Shinobi/Assault/Technical or Gunner/Ranger/Sharpshooter). In this case, I might choose to promote only 6 soldiers, and wait for my squads to return from the first 2 missions before promoting rookies 7 and 8. This is a rare situation, but it does happen.

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The rest of this post is just my notes gathered from this campaign, covering rule changes, tactics, bugs, and whatever else I found interesting or want to remember…

Notes:

Some of these “raid chosen train” missions are now quick response?!? How many did I skip thinking they required infiltration time?

Building Sparks require 3 scientists and 3 engineers.

Alloy Plating requires 2 engineers.

Psionics requires 2 scientists.

Laboratory is much better now. More efficient research boost than scientists after the prices go up in the black market. That being said, it still makes sense to buy scientists early to meet tech requirements and because of power issues.

Don’t sell muton corpses - tactical armor is now strictly better than nanoscale.

disorient now disables the Andromedon Acid Bomb.

Plasma blaster is worth equipping now because it has 2 ammo as opposed to 1 for the shredder gun. Also the shredder gun has a narrower cone. (Boo)

Supply retaliation mission has slowed down the drop-in rate to every 3 rounds (instead of every 2 rounds).

Identical mission rewards maybe stack now? so +10 intel and +10 intel will give +20 intel, whereas before that reward bonus could not be granted in duplicate.

Advanced Focus chips area a great (cheap) option for the will deficient soldiers during the early stage of the campaign. They improve soldier availability, when you don’t have enough soldiers.

Enemy pods patrol up to 8 tiles when moving in a straight line, and not being weird or buggy. This hasn’t changed but I keep forgetting the exact range.

Infirmary and Templar Base have no affect on the Tired status. Will recovery is also not affected by scanning at these bases. Will does not recover while in officer training, or bond training, or negative trait removal.

I did not know how Trial By Fire worked and I have been inefficient in leveling up soldiers. I had assumed that Trial By Fire was applied after all other XP - but that is not the case. Trial by Fire applies before mission XP, giving the soldier enough XP to level up; then mission XP is awarded after that. For this reason, even if a soldier that only needs ~10 XP, benefits from running with a Trial by Fire officer. Kill XP is awarded during the mission, and so reduces the amount of XP granted by Trial By Fire, and so it is essentially negated.

Power leveling a few soldiers to SGT rank is still and always super important. Need SGT to contact other factions and get another hero class soldier. SGT rank Officer can get Trial by Fire and speed level the whole barracks.

Don’t send your soldiers on low value faction missions until you have a significant surplus of manpower. Its just not worth it…

Purifier flamethrower is not disabled by flashbangs.

Berserker and Archon melee attacks are not disabled by burning.

Stunning a Spectre does not release shadow bind.

Suppressing advent rocketeers does not always work. They can run the suppression and fire a rocket.

Beware covering fire overwatch ability on advent soldiers. It starts showing up in the end game, and can be brutal.

Class pairings for bonding soldiers: grenadier + specialist is still strong: air drop + blue screen bomb → hack combo. Shinobi + shooter works well. Shooters are almost always able to use extra shots.

Network Tower Squad Composition: Specialist (for scanners, extra grenades), Grenadier, Shinobi, Ranger, Assault.

The Chosen change their drop in location based on your position during Haven Defense Retaliations. Typically this means you benefit from not spreading out too much during the first turn of haven defense.

To estimate when troop ambush missions will reappear: 9-12 day duration. 21 day cooldown. So time till next potential ambush = 21 - (9-12) + time remaining on current ambush mission, which can be simplified to: 9-12 days + time remaining. So once an ambush mission expires, another can spawn in that region in 9-12 days.

Good luck Commanders!

1. LWR is probably still the hardest, though I haven’t played that version in a while and it changes constantly. LW is goldilocks difficulty. Base LWOTC is the easiest.

2. The other reason to build the GTS is to promote officers. Probably even more important than choosing classes.