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[Cthulhu]

I restarted, really hard to play on commander with the tutorial stuff forcing all your build choices and shit.  Started with templars and the hunter with Templar Nemesis, so that's pretty easy.

Probably biggest problem was starting on commander with the tutorial activated so  I ended up really far behind on everything.  I should probably do my first playthrough on veteran but I remember from the original XCOM just being bored with veteran after playing commander.  That one less HP early game for aliens is huge and makes things trivially easy.

[Teneb]

I restarted, really hard to play on commander with the tutorial stuff forcing all your build choices and shit.  Started with templars and the hunter with Templar Nemesis, so that's pretty easy.

Probably biggest problem was starting on commander with the tutorial activated so  I ended up really far behind on everything.  I should probably do my first playthrough on veteran but I remember from the original XCOM just being bored with veteran after playing commander.  That one less HP early game for aliens is huge and makes things trivially easy.

It should probably be noted that XCOM2's easy is XCOM:EU's normal, and so on and so forth. Still, yeah, the tutorial helps set the story but kind of shafts you in other areas.

[Cthulhu]

Three boxes left in avatar project, getting ready to contact a blacksite sector when suddenly priority mission in the adjacent sector, Very Difficult with Warlock and low profile sitrep, so I only have three active guys who qualify.

Cool game, thanks.

Finally got the adjacent sector going again and immediately get attacked by a UFO.  This is one of the first games I've played that seems like it's actively trying to make me lose.

[Nighthawk]

Three boxes left in avatar project, getting ready to contact a blacksite sector when suddenly priority mission in the adjacent sector, Very Difficult with Warlock and low profile sitrep, so I only have three active guys who qualify.

Cool game, thanks.

Finally got the adjacent sector going again and immediately get attacked by a UFO.  This is one of the first games I've played that seems like it's actively trying to make me lose.

The game doesn't make it obvious at all, but even after the avatar project bar fills completely, you have a grace period of 15 days (or 20 days on difficulties below Commander) before you automatically lose. If you decrease the progress within this time period, then your campaign is safe and it's business as usual.

[Cthulhu]

15 days in XCOM time is like seven or eight hundred interruptions though, if I get to that point I have no hope.

I think I remember noticing in regular XCOM 2 that the difficulty was a lot higher.  I beat XCOM EU on commander without much trouble, but at the same time I really don't want to start over again

[Nighthawk]

15 days in XCOM time is like seven or eight hundred interruptions though, if I get to that point I have no hope.

I think I remember noticing in regular XCOM 2 that the difficulty was a lot higher.  I beat XCOM EU on commander without much trouble, but at the same time I really don't want to start over again

They tried to amp up the difficulty after noticing that you could cheese a lot of Enemy Unknown by overwatch spamming and such. Now there are timers on everything (though in War of the Chosen there are a lot less "hard" turn-count timers and more incentives to be fast), which encourages risky gameplay and leads to a lot more... suffering.

Also, what Teneb said about difficulty options:

It should probably be noted that XCOM2's easy is XCOM:EU's normal, and so on and so forth. Still, yeah, the tutorial helps set the story but kind of shafts you in other areas.

On the subject of difficulty, I'm pretty sure you can change the difficulty mid-campaign, but you cannot enable/disable ironman mid-campaign.

[Cthulhu]

15 days in XCOM time is like seven or eight hundred interruptions though, if I get to that point I have no hope.

I think I remember noticing in regular XCOM 2 that the difficulty was a lot higher.  I beat XCOM EU on commander without much trouble, but at the same time I really don't want to start over again

They tried to amp up the difficulty after noticing that you could cheese a lot of Enemy Unknown by overwatch spamming and such. Now there are timers on everything (though in War of the Chosen there are a lot less "hard" turn-count timers and more incentives to be fast), which encourages risky gameplay and leads to a lot more... suffering.

Yeah, I was wondering about that.  I remember in EU at commander and higher shotguns were pretty much verboten but they're really strong in this game.  I think the ranger and templar are in a good place for that kind of thing, their design rewards them a lot for risky aggressive play, but the other classes still feel basically like EU.  Half-move forward and overwatch because if you aggro a pod on your turn you're gonna get dicked on their turn.

[EnigmaticHat]

That's a legit way to play, but worth pointing out that you can run a "point man" strategy where you double move your toughest ranger forward.  If they make contact the game gives you several options to make that one dude durable AF and the rest of your squad will be at a safe distance.  Teamwork gives them another move to hunker down/machete/run+gun/retreat.  Gremlin support gives them a defense bonus that can't be negated by flanking, while gremlin zapping will deal double damage to robots and doesn't require LoS.  Grenadiers can use flashbangs to disable almost every ability that penetrates cover, or strip the armor off of robots so you can hopefully kill them in one turn.  Flashbang + gremlin support = enemy missing point blank flanking shots.

This kind of playstyle relies heavily on long range ability use so ideally every squad will have 2 grenadiers and specialists in it.  Also obviously if you can reach the objective without double moving then this strat is a needless risk.

WoTC pretty much blows up that whole issue; just bring a reaper to every difficult mission and revel in your utterly safe scouting.  Normally you can't rely on sharpshooters to help out the pointman since they might not have LoS, but with reapers you can check before the fight begins and its pretty broken.  Templar with parry is also excellent at not dying if they make contact (provided their bondmate is present).  Only hero that doesn't help with the pod revealing game is skirmisher, since their entire schtick is being able to attack with every action.

[Cthulhu]

I decided to play the UFO attack mission like that, never really used Aid Protocol cause the game doesn't let you see enemy hit chances and +20/+30 defense doesn't mean a whole lot without context.  My ranger clowned on the squads guarding the thumper, bladestorm stunned an archon and dodged everything else while the sharpshooter blew up the thumper from a mile away.  He was wounded and low Will though so he ended up shattering and then dying on the way back home.  That's a big loss, but the next mission is gonna give me a Captain ranger so I guess it evens out. 

I'll just use the templar for now.  Do flashbangs disable melee on Lost too?  I knew they were strong but I didn't realize how busted they were until I started bringing more than one and just mowing through multi-pod pulls like they were nothing.

[Egan_BW]

20 defence means that the enemy has a 20% lower chance to hit you. I think that low cover gives a similar amount of defense. Aid Protocol stacks with cover though, and unlike cover it can't be negated by flanking.

If it's really vital that someone doesn't take damage this turn, give them some high cover and stack aid protocol on top of that and they'll be very hard to hit. The enemy also tends to take shots that are more likely to hit, so someone with a lot of defense probably won't even be shot at.

[Cthulhu]

That mission went fine, the next mission is driving me up the wall.

Just let me do something.  Please.  Fucking anything.  Let me scan for two fucking days without interrupting me.  This game just piles so much shit on you constantly.  Just one fucking week without three or four god damn priority missions that I can't skip.  It's kind of at odds with the apparent theme of the game.  The entire point of the whole role reversal is that this one you're the one going around attacking and the aliens are reacting to what you do, but the game basically dictates everything you do with constant interruptions and required missions that you have no control over, aside from picking the least awful of three awful things.

I'm in a pretty strong position to lose the game because it won't let me fucking do anything.  I get constant priority missions on the territory adjacent to the three-tick blacksite, I can't fucking get to it.  I've been trying to do this blacksite for an ingame month and it won't give me thirty seconds to breathe without doing something to set back my progress.

[DoomOnion]

That's a lot of f bombs.

[Cthulhu]

I'm mad

[Nighthawk]

That's a lot of f bombs.

Only five over the course of twelve sentences of varying length. I've seen worse.

I'm in a pretty strong position to lose the game because it won't let me fucking do anything.  I get constant priority missions on the territory adjacent to the three-tick blacksite, I can't fucking get to it.  I've been trying to do this blacksite for an ingame month and it won't give me thirty seconds to breathe without doing something to set back my progress.

Best advice I can give you is probably turn the difficulty down (if you haven't already) or otherwise find a way to let the game give you a break. Barring that, I can also tell you that, despite Bradford's incessant complaints regarding the importance of your allies in the resistance, the only missions that will have serious consequences should you skip them are retaliations (y'know... aliens shooting your friends and burning your countries) and guerilla ops (stuff that cancels dark events, because you obviously don't want those to happen). Stuff that Bradford says is important but doesn't seem like it will result in the loss of an entire damn country are likely skippable without serious issues. Don't skip too many of them, though, as that will result in the decay of an invisible "vigilance" stat which affects the speed of the avatar project and hoo boy you already know how annoying that can get.

tl;dr - If you really need breathing room, you can try only taking missions that seem like they're direct actions by the enemy AI on the campaign map. If it's just some side-op that doesn't sound life-or-death, you can probably afford to say no.

[Cthulhu]

Are you sure?  The mission that really blew up my gameplan was a supply raid in west africa with the low profile sitrep and since I haven't been keeping a stable of squaddies I only had three guys who could join.  Declining it lost me west africa, so I have to reclaim it in order to reach the egypt black site.

The current mission is a faction request.  I suppose I can try ignoring it and see what happens.  God knows how much I've savescummed already.