Which Alien would be so much worse by adding one perk?

Oh, well, here's an AMAZING post by /u/Xyptero Long War is different from every other game that you've ever played, because while they all needed to teach people how to play them, Long War didn't bother with that. The result is a game that doesn't walk you through any aspect of how to play - it punishes you brutally for making mistakes, but makes no effort ahead of time to warn you about them.

The advantage of this is that the game is still difficult and challenging on the nth playthrough. The disadvantage, as I'm sure you're finding out, is that when you first get started it can feel like the game is deliberately blindsiding you.

The solution is simple, but a little laborious to implement - learn everything you possibly can about the game before playing it. You need to understand how everything works and fits together, because the game won't walk you through it. All of this knowledge can be found here. Here's a reading list to start off with:

The page on soldiers, and the pages on bio troopers (i.e. non-MEC Troopers - Assault, Infantry, Engineer, Medic, Scout, Sniper, Gunner, Rocketeer).

Air Combat and UFO information.

Weapons, Primary Weapons, and Secondary Weapons.

Armour and Equipment.

Officers, which replace the Medals system.

This tech tree by /u/exodusinfinite, along with a helpful titles-only version, and the wiki Research page, which is the same info laid out in an easier to trawl through, searchable manner.

 

Hope that's not too scary. Here are some general tips and changes from Vanilla:

Your old tactics don't work. Seriously, throw them away and start again. Cover is good, but cannot be relied upon. It's better to retreat than push a bad offensive. You are not expected to win everything. People will die and get horrible injured, and in your first game this will happen with some frequency.

Start on Normal difficulty, with Commander's Choice second wave option enabled, and probably Friendly Skies. Your call on the last one, but Commander's Choice is a must-have. Do not, for the love of god, play Ironman. Game-screwing bugs are rare, but you shouldn't rely on a single save. Enable auto-saves as well. EDIT: To clarify, I highly recommend playing 'Honestman' (don't turn Ironman on, but mentally enforce no reloading on yourself) if you have the stomach for it. It teaches effective tactics, and really is the best way to play. I'm only recommending against actually checking the Ironman option in-game, which limits you to a single save-file - the chance of losing it is very low, but losing 100+ hours of game-time would be pretty devastating.

Some perks do different things than they did in Vanilla, so read them carefully. There's obviously also a shitload more that have been added.

By far the most important change (in my opinion) is Fatigue. After a mission, your soldiers will be fatigued for several days. You can send them out again with no penalties during this period, but they will be wounded on return and will be completely unavailable for several more days. You will need to maintain a large roster and cycle your troops around to avoid 'fatigue spirals', in which a lot of missions in a short timeframe leave everybody in the medbay and what rookies you have left at the mercy of the aliens. You should have an absolute minimum of three full squads of soldiers that you regularly bring on missions (i.e. 24 troops, but it's advisable to use closer to 30).

EDIT 2: F1 is your friend. In Long War, alien pods will have 'leaders', who will generally have better stats than normal aliens of their type, and will gain a variety of extra perks as you progress through the game. Some pods will also have any number of 'navigators', who do pretty much the same thing to a lesser extent. Using F1 to examine your enemies is essential before engaging them - it doesn't take long, and will let you know, for example, that that Heavy Floater there has Close Combat Specialist (probably best not to bring it down with you Assault), or that a Chryssalid has Lightning Reflexes (no overwatch traps to finish it off!). This, of course, makes autopsies incredibly important - thy may not be a priority in the early game, before leaders and navigators get many perks, but as you head into the mid-game they're essential. They don't need to be your highest priority, but they should be on the list.

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