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[EnigmaticHat]

Roofs are very good tho, against a small number of enemies you can endure partial cover if it means taking the high ground and killing them quickly.

Depends. I've had snipers picked off regularly because they were too far forward in partial cover on the high ground. Maybe it's the LW2 AI, but I swear it has it out for snipers if they're even marginally a good target. I'm gonna try baiting the AI to shoot at my least covered soldier in partial with Hunker Down though. Probably going to be way better than overwatch or a shitty % to hit unless it's a do or die moment.

You can ambush from concealment by throwing everyone on overwatch and shooting or tossing a grenade into the enemy squad.  However you risk not killing all the enemies so try to leave one guy with his move still up (2 or 3 once you have squad size 6).

Sitting in overwatch and letting them path in to LOS is vastly superior to launching an ambush on your turn. You also get the benefit of almost point blank range too. Just sayin'.

Stealthing missions never goes well.  View concealment as a way to scout. get good terrain and avoid bad reveals.  Not a way to win without fighting because you wont.

Without a fight? No. Fighting 1 of the 3 to 4 pods on the map instead of having to grind through all of them? Yes. Were it not for the auto-reveal when you complete the main mission objective, you could absolutely do some missions without ever being seen or fighting.

Moving forward into undiscovered areas can reveal alien pods.  This makes Rangers a bit underpowered (further worsened by melee weapons being able to miss in vanilla).  If you want to use close range weapons you can retreat so that the enemy will come to you, and then rush forward into the ground you used to occupy.  This has its own risks tho and takes up time.  Common mod to mitigate this is increased melee accuracy.  If you ranger gets stuck out in the open you can use gremlin support and/or smoke grenades to help him out.

This is like the #1 most annoying thing in XCOM2. Revealing new enemies on your turn makes every fight in the game x2 as deadly.

Oh to be clear, I only use high ground if I can kill all enemies (or all but one enemy) in a single turn, OR if I can use defense boosts to bring the roof soldiers into full cover.  I would not fight out of a balcony unless the situation had descended so much that I was abandoning cover.

I thought they added some kind of counter to the Beagle strat?  Like the aliens would shoot you if you ambush OWed them on your turn?

Well, anyway, I still stand by my statements.  If you try to sneak next to the objective or wait for the enemy to walk into you, my experience is that a pod will "pin" one of your soldiers in cover by moving close to them, and a second pod will move in on the other side of you.  Whereas if you make sure a pod is alone, lead with a flashbang/grenade, and then open fire you should be pretty golden.  OW shots taken from ambush are the same as shots taken against no cover enemies.  Meaning that you probably would have taken them on your own turn anyway.

You are right that it is a good strat tho, if the developers did indeed not add any kind of fix.

[GiglameshDespair]

I must admit I've never experienced enemy pods homing in on my troops during concealment... more the opposite, to be honest. The buggers always seem to be strolling away.

[nenjin]

LW2 has a mechanic where sometimes, depending on the alert level of the mission, enemies will take action during the "scamper" phase. It doesn't really prevent your whole team from getting shots off though. Just means if anyone survives they might take a pot shot at you or throw a grenade.

I must admit I've never experienced enemy pods homing in on my troops during concealment... more the opposite, to be honest. The buggers always seem to be strolling away.

Just kind of depends. If you've got like 3 pods just out of line of sight and they all start moving, it can start to feel like they're homing in on you. They tend to path in a straight line until they stop, turn and proceed on another straight line.

Except for Drones. Drones most definitely follow you around.

[Sindain]

In vanilla X-2 they did add a counter to the Beagle strat where enemies will take shots if you break concealment on their turn. This was removed in LW2.

Breaking concealment on the enemy turn with overwatch traps is super OP in LW2 because of this, but I'm not sure if i would recommend it for vanilla.

[Rince Wind]

LW2 enemies might still shoot after scampering though.

[Sindain]

Its very unlikely that it will happen on the turn you break concealment though.

[nenjin]

Jesus, 2nd Avenger Defense mission in 1 month. Getting sick of this shit.

[GiglameshDespair]

In vanilla X-2 they did add a counter to the Beagle strat where enemies will take shots if you break concealment on their turn.

Eh?

I only have 33 hours in xcom 2 but I've never had an enemy do this.

[Rince Wind]

There is a chance that they shoot you if you are flanked.

[EnigmaticHat]

In vanilla X-2 they did add a counter to the Beagle strat where enemies will take shots if you break concealment on their turn. This was removed in LW2.

Breaking concealment on the enemy turn with overwatch traps is super OP in LW2 because of this, but I'm not sure if i would recommend it for vanilla.

Wait wait wait wait wait.  So actively taking action on your turn, that's been nerfed.  But passively overwatch trapping and waiting for the enemy to discover you, that's being rewarded?  WTF Long War devs?

[Neonivek]

In vanilla X-2 they did add a counter to the Beagle strat where enemies will take shots if you break concealment on their turn. This was removed in LW2.

Breaking concealment on the enemy turn with overwatch traps is super OP in LW2 because of this, but I'm not sure if i would recommend it for vanilla.

Wait wait wait wait wait.  So actively taking action on your turn, that's been nerfed.  But passively overwatch trapping and waiting for the enemy to discover you, that's being rewarded?  WTF Long War devs?

In all fairness you are laying a trap for them to walk into on their own volition. It seems sufficiently stealthy for a bonus.

[DoomOnion]

Yeah, I'm sure that was the logic behind it, but look at from a game mechanics point of view. In grand scheme of things, the only behavior this reinforces is never accepting missions under 14 turns time limit.

[Neonivek]

Yeah, I'm sure that was the logic behind it, but look at from a game mechanics point of view. In grand scheme of things, the only behavior this reinforces is never accepting missions under 14 turns time limit.

The Long War 2 is a horrible mess of miscommunication to the player (and hidden mechanics, that would be neat if they weren't hidden)

[Egan_BW]

I feel like with the kinda stealthy mood that Long War 2 seems to have it would make so much sense to include True Concealment with it.

[nenjin]

Face it though, True Concealment radically alters the pace and balance of gameplay. It goes from a "every turn counts" to "shit only gets real when I pull the trigger" for the most part. You can park yourself by an objective in concealment and the game basically treats it as though you spawned there, once you break concealment. I've had it take 5 turns or more just to move across some modded maps in my game. XCOM2's default "6 turns to midnight" would have never worked on these maps.

Frankly I would never play XCOM2 without TC; it's just not a fun challenge to me to be outnumbered, outgunned, double or even triple activated AND having every single turn count against you even when it doesn't make logical sense for it to do so.

So I understand why LW2 didn't just roll TC into the LW2 base package; I think they essentially consider it to render turn limits moot and much of their own balancing hinges on them. They appreciate why some people want it, but it doesn't represent the game they by default want people to play. No, they and Firaxis would much rather you play the Rookie murder simulator instead.