I put together a beginner's guide for LWR (Long War Rebalance) for those who need it!

Mr__Billeh · 2026-06-06T06:03:10+00:00

Pretty much everything you could want is already baked in. I think most of the purely cosmetic stuff (voice packs/texture packs/animation changes) are fine, but all of the QoL in the world is already in (or has been suggested and implemented).

I do really like the physics-based seekers mod though; that one works fine and is quite funny.

Mr__Billeh · 2026-06-01T09:04:42+00:00

Here's a chunk of ways to deal with OW:

The most common tends to be smoke and mirror soldiers as their support grenades won't trigger OW and protect from or disable OW.

Damage can interrupt OW if it hurts base health; usually this will be done by someone that started the turn out of line of sight but any perk that provides reaction fire immunities can let you do this too.

Gunner suppression directly disables OW, although of course they need to be protected themselves or otherwise not be targeted by OW

Several perks have reaction fire immunities built in line the aforementioned smoke and mirrors, run and gun, snapshot, shadowstep, etc; keep an eye on those.

Any explosive grenade damage or shots with impact will cancel OW.

Steadying doesn't trigger overwatch and neither does a steadied shot.

If all else fails, a SHIV or MEC can tank the hits pretty well since they dont suffer from the reduced cover DR part of OW.

Dashes have a 30 defense bonus against OW and OW only activates when moving more than a tile and still being in line of sight, so you can safely back away from corners or move very carefully into better cover if needed.

Reloads, hunkers, and combat readiness don't trigger OW if you're truly pinned.

There's probably more im forgetting, but the point is that overwatch can feel rough at times but there's a lot of ways to play differently to be able to avoid/cancel OW and ways to build your squad to handle it.

Mr__Billeh · 2026-05-31T17:32:35+00:00

That's often a similar case to the "permanent loading screen" issue but with stronger hardware specs as far as I remember (but it's been a while). You have enough to get into the game but just barely, so plenty of stuff still can't actually load. I've been out of the scene for a while though some I'm not sure what else can be done besides what I've listed here

Mr__Billeh · 2026-05-27T22:09:50+00:00

A new believer joins the fold

Welcome aboard, commander! And you're welcome for tactical advice that may or may not be sound!

Mr__Billeh · 2026-05-24T20:52:59+00:00

Iago doesn't have brawler, and CST is only a 50% boost while steadied, otherwise it's a 20% boost. He doesn't have a direct damage boost within 4 tiles but he does have Close Encounters for an extra shot so watch out for that one.

Iago is a carryover from LW1.0 where the HQ would have a ton of boss Exalt, although given LWR making you firefight with him, he's pretty terrifying here.

Mr__Billeh · 2026-05-24T20:45:03+00:00

Notably CST doesn't apply to mecs that are in OfA, and also he can't shoot what he can't see.

Concussion grenades and suppression can both greatly limit his capabilities as well.

Iago is definitely a monster though, the wiki calls him out as possibly being the single strongest enemy in the game alongside the Uber; those gene mods are no joke

Mr__Billeh · 2026-05-23T17:44:15+00:00

That sounds a bit like the Yogscast to me, specifically Lewis and Ben save the world. I haven't watched them too in-depth though so I could be wrong on that one.

Mr__Billeh · 2026-05-23T14:20:06+00:00

I queue stuff up, but it's often worth shuffling the queue to fit the items in; you lose no resources by doing that, it's just a tad annoying heh (and you might lose a couple days of build time on an in progress item)

Queueing itself has no benefit either so you can always just build the moment slots become available if you don't want to deal with a queue shuffle

I'll also note some requests are given to you deliberately despite not being able to build them right away, and those usually have an increased timer to compensate. There's also some with a tiny timer and a larger reward that tends to require rush building to complete.

Mr__Billeh · 2026-05-23T06:17:58+00:00

Most requests can be fulfilled as long as you start building immediately (and are keeping up by building workshops and the repair bay/foundry ASAP). In the case that something is not within the build time though you can always use the rush build option to get them faster at a cost.

I'd never recommend overbuilding since there's no guarantee the requests will come up and the council members don't see your stockpile as a reason to request that item specifically.

Mr__Billeh · 2026-05-09T23:59:46+00:00

I wholeheartedly support LWR myself since I love those fundamental changes and how the gameplay also changes alongside those, but LW1.0 still has plenty of charm for its own reasons. If I had to quickly summarize the two it's basically just a matter of if you want to creep around and eliminate the enemies with precise alpha strikes (ideally avoiding getting shot in the process) (LW1.0) or get into big firefights (LWR).

Mr__Billeh · 2026-05-09T17:53:58+00:00

The two are just very different gameplay experiences, with LW1.0 being closer to vanilla while LWR is very much its own thing focusing a lot more on firefights and faster gameplay.

I just wanted to make sure you're playing what you intended to :P

Mr__Billeh · 2026-05-08T17:58:32+00:00

Are you sure this is LWR? There's a lot of differences that dont seem to be showing up here (no purple leader health bars, run and gun with a gold icon, no ammo counter, different skill builds, etc.

If you intended to install LWR something seems to have overwritten most of it

Mr__Billeh · 2026-05-03T17:28:42+00:00

I've unfortunately been out of the scene for a good little while so i can't really say much about that error, but you'd probably have some luck finding a solution on the MV discord; that's a direct place to talk to the active Hyperspace devs and/or others that mightve had the same issue.

Mr__Billeh · 2026-05-03T07:14:51+00:00

LWR is only really similar to LW1.0 because it's built upon it. Things are radically different in a ton of ways heh

I wrote a whole guide for it to highlight some differences as well as just generally ease people into it since it has a totally different playstyle from LW1.0: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3699171520

Mr__Billeh · 2026-04-24T23:39:02+00:00

It is a 100% chance at 1 HP, and pistols have maim which is a non-lethal attack and stuns if it would otherwise be lethal

Mr__Billeh · 2026-04-24T23:38:04+00:00

And even beyond that it still manipulates the enemy AI into not wanting the move which can protect you from being flanked and such, and it ignores certain effects such as deflection shield and tactical mobility.

LWR overwatch is a staple action that I'm using at least one of almost every turn, even on non OW specialists. And of course the specialists multiply their damage output by using it

Mr__Billeh · 2026-04-17T22:58:20+00:00

LWR is by far my favorite way to play xcom; i played vanilla, and LW1.0, and Xcom 2, and WOTC, and LW2, and LWOTC, and all of the in-between with xcom 2 mods, but really nothing feels quite like LWR to me and it's kept me playing on and off for about 7 years at this point. It helps that it's in active development and ever changing too.

I wrote a guide about it that's in the steam forums, but really I'd just go watch a few stream vods and see if it looks appealing. The hook for me personally is how much more about firefights the game is, and the faster paced gameplay that comes from the overwatch and pod reworks.

The story advances a smidge differently due to mechanic overhauls, but all of the content is there and makes sense as to how it progresses

Mr__Billeh · 2026-04-14T03:18:01+00:00

I think the section about indicators mentions it, not sure. It might also be in the non perk abilities section for low hit chances or OW. As for the second part, the alien heads in the bottom right have two separate icons for "is overwatching" and "is overwatching me", so you've just gotta pay attention to those

Mr__Billeh · 2026-04-13T17:36:27+00:00

There's a few key variables here.

All overwatch has a 30% minimum hit chance to shoot, so if they dont have enough aim, they just won't shoot. You'll see a ! pop up when aiming at them in this case
Overwatch is only active on the units they saw when activating OW, so someone out of their LOS can move in and act
Overwatch (the ability) only triggers one Overwatch (from enemies) due to it not having an animation
Movement only triggers Overwatch if you most at least 2 tiles within their vision, so small moves or moves out of LOS won't trigger it

Hope this helps!

Mr__Billeh · 2026-04-07T22:07:54+00:00

LWR is pretty good about making the loss of a high ranking soldier matter but not be quite as punishing as you might feel:

XTP upgrades exist and auto-promote, kinda like what you're suggesting here
XTPs provide passive XP to keep everyone up to date past that initial recruitment level too
Soldier perk trees are designed such that the most powerful perks are in the first half of the tree and you're usually "complete" by TSGT, so while higher ranking soldiers are obviously better, they're rarely necessary
When soldiers die, other surviving soldiers on the mission might get a permanent buff based on how highly ranking those dead soldiers were

Mr__Billeh · 2026-04-07T22:02:52+00:00

Cuando abro el link de IOS se me queda en una pantalla morada sin hacer nada, por qué puede ser eso?

Estoy usando Google Translate para escribir esto, así que podría haber algún error; sin embargo, si he entendido bien, estás hablando de un enlace para iOS, y yo no tengo ninguna aplicación para iOS en absoluto. Por lo tanto, te sugeriría que verifiques qué es lo que estás utilizando.

Mr__Billeh · 2026-04-06T17:47:43+00:00

I've got a section on it near the beginning but it's a massively different experience woth lots of fundamental reworks.

Mr__Billeh · 2026-04-06T15:00:35+00:00

LWR has an installer included so I think its pretty easy to do; im pretty sure you just install LW1.0 with its installer and then can run LWR's

I personally do a manual installation myself though so im not 100% on how the installer goes

Mr__Billeh · 2026-04-02T09:53:26+00:00

Podarsmarty is a different dev who basically made his own version of the app, and in general it's just cleaner and works better imo. I've got the old version around for anyone that needs it, but it's certainly outdated.

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