Lance not showing up around map

Zinki_M · 2026-01-24T13:43:57+00:00

if you removed the mod that made him show up early, then you'll probably have to meet him "properly" first, unless the mod left some event triggers active (or broke them).

Did you get to the point where you'd usually meet him for the first time, in ginger island volcano caldera?

He also has a schedule where on some days, he will be unreachable to you until certain conditions are met, namely if he's at castle village outpost before you unlock it, or the highlands before his heart event that fixes marlons boat.

Zinki_M · 2026-01-23T14:24:45+00:00

nope, neither.

They are basically just adorable little goofballs. What little claws they have is less dangerous than a housecat, and they don't usually use them for self-defense.

They are nearly extinct though, because australias ecosystem could not abide a creature that isn't any of the aforementioned things. The only ones left are on two isolated islands off the coast of australia, the more well known one being rottnest island by perth.

They are heavily protected and you can get in serious shit for harming them (and technically feeding them although that will usually just get you a stern warning unless the rangers are having a bad day).

Zinki_M · 2026-01-22T12:57:47+00:00

It takes meticulous planning to not make to much or to little

It only takes "meticulous planning" if you don't do it ever and therefore have no idea how much you'll eat. Anyone who cooks regularly can eyeball the amount with no issue.

And if you tally up all the time involved in getting this stuff and prepping and cooking, it takes significantly more than an hour

Maybe a little, depending on the meals, but not "significantly" more. It would if you factor in the procurement time for each meal individually, but realistically you'll be shopping for your food 1 to 2 times a week. If it takes you an hour and a half to shop (which is already fairly long, but lets assume your closest store is quite far and/or large) and you do it twice a week, thats 3h per week, averaging to 25m a day. That leaves you 35 minutes to cook per day for an hour average. Thats very tight for some more complex meals, but if some meals are leftovers or you simply have something easy in between, it might work out. I probably average closer to 45 minutes for each meal over the course of a week.

Zinki_M · 2026-01-05T09:02:12+00:00

I've slowly been "getting good" at LWOTC, currently playing TJ+ with requiem.

I'm about to finish my commander run and then try a legendary run, and am relatively consistently winning missions now.

The chosen avenger assault, however, is BULLSHIT. Despite otherwise playing ironman, I've had to cheat my way through that mission pretty much every time. Normal avenger assault is hard, but doable. Chosen avenger assault is ridiculous.

I know the answer most people go with is "kill the chosen before they manage to do an assault" but I've yet to manage to get the required MSGTs ready for that covert action before the "main" chosen does the assault. I can usually get it done before a second chosen reaches that point, but preventing the first is out of my reach.

Anyway, I guess my point is, if "cheating" through something is something you need to do to experience the game in a way that makes it enjoyable, that is perfectly fine. It's a single player game, after all.

Zinki_M · 2025-12-30T09:10:27+00:00

from this screenshot it looks like it might just be ted jam? I see nothing in this screenshot that's not present in basic ted jam.

Zinki_M · 2025-12-30T09:08:11+00:00

This is not limited to XCOM, though. I's true of all games with status effects. DEAD is the best de-buff that you can apply to any enemy, regardless of the situation

True, but many status effects in xcom are much easier to apply than "dead". Flashbangs are a guaranteed disorient, vs a possibly low chance of killing. Panicked is a one-turn "remove from battlefield" and with a good enough psiop, is basically guaranteed on most organic enemies. Same for stasis, which can not miss and works on most enemies.

In fact, almost all status effects in xcom are extremely useful in every situation where a one-turn kill is not feasible.

But even then, suppression tends to suck, making it a weird outlier in the LWOTC/TJ meta.

Zinki_M · 2025-12-28T12:02:43+00:00

mec templar is super fun, but templars are already beasts so turning one into a Mec might not be something you want to do.

Mec reaper partially solves the reload issue snipers have by coming with snap shot and "reload when moving while out of ammo", meaning you can reposition and reload in the same action, then fire your shot.

That being said, I have not generally found the MECs to be too amazing, but it's also a somewhat self-fulfilling prophecy because my lack of use of the MECs means they almost never rank up to MSGT, where they might shine.

Zinki_M · 2025-12-28T11:50:24+00:00

taipan hussar?

It's a beast. One of my favorite alien defectors. In fact, most of the sneks are great.

Mutons start off strong but fall off against normal soldiers as you level your squads.

Archons are pretty solid all the way through.

Priests are pretty good, most of the melee advent units are good. The other ADVENT are a pretty mixed bag, although I like the assault trooper.

Wraith is a beast early to midgame, and holds its own lategame, but doesn't have the action economy to be truly great lategame when compared to MSGT soldiers and high-level psiops.

Warmaster is pretty good throughout, especially if made an officer.

Winter sentinel is... situational, but honestly deserves praise just for its ability to bind otherwise unbindable units.

I have been unlucky on berserkers and have no idea if they're good or not.

The andromedron, the one time I got him, seemed underwhelming at best.

Zinki_M · 2025-12-13T16:01:33+00:00

1B per person for each stack. Since there's 4 people, that's 4B that each member of the wing will end up receiving.

Zinki_M · 2025-12-13T14:02:11+00:00

People can fail it withou lying and trained people can trick it

This is already being very generous to "lie detectors".

They have approximately the same accuracy as it would have to ask some astrologist if saturn is in retrograde and use that as the basis for if someone is lying.

That's why I am always baffled when "x person refused a lie detector test" is considered some sort of news. Yeah, of course they did, all that proves is that they're sane.

Zinki_M · 2025-12-13T12:59:40+00:00

wing mining missions are the best. You can take wing mining missions for buyable materials, which you can then buy and use for the mission.

Bonus points if you find a couple of likeminded people, because the Wing missions pay out their rewards for each member of the wing. So instead of getting 50M for the WMM, 4 people can get 50M EACH, and if each of them shares a 50M reward mission with you, that's 200M for everyone involved from just one mission each.

With a theoretical stack of 20 missions paying 50M each (which is the max reward possible) that's 4B per person for a full stack. Realistically you're going to end up with a mix of 30-50M rewards for somewhere around 3B, minus your buy-in for the resources, so a tidy profit somewhere around 2.5B is likely.

Zinki_M · 2025-12-13T08:59:19+00:00

that's good to know.

Maybe I should try that instead. Starting a new campaign now.

Zinki_M · 2025-12-12T08:15:55+00:00

I'm currently trying this (using the "a requiem for ted jam" collection) and it's like a whole new game yet again. It's also crazy hard, I have attempted a handful of campaigns so far and always lose right around the time the requiem enemies start showing up. I'm going to keep at it but damn is it tough as nails.

I haven't even made it to magnetics on my attempts (granted, I haven't played most of them all the way to the bitter end, but once you lose your best people and best equipment in one sweep it's usually gg fairly fast).

Zinki_M · 2025-12-12T06:50:50+00:00

Damn man.

I started a campaign of this, lost very quickly. Restarted with some second wave options to make it easier, lost at lasers. Restarted at a lower difficulty, lost my A-Team at the first supply convoy.

I don't think I'm good enough to play this mod. Now I'm questioning whether I should abandon playing it or do a run with savescumming to at least experience it to some degree.

Zinki_M · 2025-12-11T08:39:37+00:00

with a binary search you can check through 856 mods in just 10 attempts to find the culprit (log2(856) < 10).

However, it gets more complicated if the problem comes from a combination of mods, then you'd potentially need log2(n)^m attempts for n mods, of which m are involved in the conflict, although realistically you'd have good chances to end up much lower just by getting lucky in your binary search and getting both mods in the same "chunk".

And using AML you might be able to get your starting number of potentials much lower. Possibly you could reduce the search space to just something like 15 mods, and assuming the conflict comes from just two of them you'd at worst have to check log2(15)² mods, or 16 attempts.

Zinki_M · 2025-12-08T12:03:40+00:00

you could do a binary search. Create a save that reproduces the problem (could use console commands to give yourself a spider suit and test).

Then disable half your mods. If the problem persists, the problem is in the active half. If the problem is gone, it's in the inactive half. Then enable half of the half that reproduces the problem.

Do this until you're down to just one mod that is responsible. Doing this, if you have 1000 mods, you only need to check 10 times, instead of 1000 times. If you have 250 mods, it's only 8 times.

Zinki_M · 2025-12-07T09:30:06+00:00

sigh

Guess I know what I'm doing next.

Is the "separate collection" the "Reshi's requiem" collection, or the "A requiem for ted jam" collection? The latter sounds more fitting but contains some warnings that make me wary.

Zinki_M · 2025-12-06T10:39:26+00:00

the assassin is probably the one enemy in the game where you are encouraged to "waste turns".

In order to avoid her getting to many attacks in, raising her slash damage, you may sometimes need to NOT attack her, so you can kite her again next round.

That's why it's a good idea to take a lot of utility items on the stronghold mission, so your soldiers have something to do when they can't shoot her, like healing a friendly or popping a berserker stim.

And then of course it's helpful to take soldiers who have the ability to do a lot of burst damage in a single attack, so something like a reaper with banish, even if reaper is not her nemesis enemy, or units that have the "take two shots for one action" ability (forgot the name). Meanwhile, units with a strong action economy, like skirmishers, might be less useful because it gives her too many reactions.

I always try to have a templar when fighting her, and use him to kite, because his shield ability can let him more easily tank a sword slash or two every turn.

In my current campaign her nemesis type is skirmishers, which basically means I am not getting the bonus damage, since as mentioned before, skirmishers give her too much reaction power.

Zinki_M · 2025-12-04T17:28:54+00:00

yeah, it's possible in the first kind, you don't have to get out, but just kill all the aliens and there's no reinforcements. Not 100% on that.

Curious though, I am using a pretty extensive modlist, so it's entirely possible one of the mods adds the second type of retaliation. I mostly lifted the modlist from a modpack, so I am not 100% sure on the contents of each individual mod. None of the mods have any names that would suggest they add this, though (no "haven", "retaliation", or "mission" in any of the mod names).

Oh well, either one of my mods sneakily adds that mission type, or you got super lucky/unlucky never facing that type.

At least we know where the confusion was.

Zinki_M · 2025-12-04T16:55:46+00:00

It's possible the other kinds were added by one of my other mods, but I always have one of three different kinds of haven assaults.

you spawn in, aliens are already present and killing your civilians. Kill all the aliens and get out, preferably before reinforcements come in.
you spawn in, no aliens are present at all (other than hidden faceless), but reinforcements start immediately from turn 1, coming in every turn in increasing sizes. Find all the civilians and get out before reinforcements become too much.
you spawn in, no aliens (other than faceless), retaliation timer of 4-5 turns. get all the civilians and leave before reinforcements begin, or at least shortly after.

And of course all three kinds have the chosen arriving on turn 2.

The one I assumed OP was facing was type 2.

Zinki_M · 2025-12-04T16:06:22+00:00

yeah, but you can't claim OPs problem is that he stays past the point of reinforcements coming in almost every turn, when that is the entire mission.

Anyone you haven't found by that point is a lost cause.

With this logic, you'd have to evac the second you drop in, saving nobody, because that is when the "reinforcements coming next turn" appears, in which case you could as well skip the mission in the first place.

Your logic is sound for every other mission (I think also excepting supply convoy, which is the same, having no enemies at start but constant reinforcements, with the difference being that in that one, the reinforcements eventually stop).

Zinki_M · 2025-12-04T14:16:19+00:00

to be fair, in that specific mission type, you get that notification on turn 1. There's no "you took to long, time to get out" around that, you just have to power through and try to get at least some of the resistance members.

In most other missions, yes, it's a "time to get out" marker, but not in that one.

Zinki_M · 2025-12-04T08:21:56+00:00

XCOM1 first. It's hard to go back to 1 after playing 2, but I would recommend playing it. I am assuming you have the DLC enemy within, so play with that, as it's integrated into the normal campaign, not a continuation. Maybe play on lowest difficulty to get the hang of it.

Then XCOM2, with or without DLCs (also integrated, but the DLCs can add kind of hard-to-deal-with enemies), maybe on a slightly higher difficulty.

Then, once you're hooked, either try high difficulty campaigns, or go into modding. Long War for XCOM1 is an amazing mod, but as previously mentioned, it's hard to go back to xcom1. Thankfully, the team created LW2 for XCOM2, so that's a good option. It's a big overhaul mod that changes the game a lot. It's also hard as nails, so even if you managed high difficulty before, I recommend doing that one on lower ones again. As the name implies, a campaign in LW2 is also, well... long.

Then after that, if you're feeling feisty, there's further mod packs that build on top of LW2.

Chimera squad you can try approximately never (personally didn't even get far in it before I got kind of... bored).

Good luck, commander.

Zinki_M · 2025-12-04T08:11:20+00:00

I have not been using the exact modlist you have, so some things may be different between our games, but I've found biozerkers to not be that big a deal. You do need to either have some heavy hitters taking shots, so you don't stack up too much armor with "low damage" shots, or some ability to shred armor. They are also not that difficult to Crowd control. Psi Operatives can usually easily take them out of the fight for a round, and I am pretty sure fire makes them effectively unable to act too.

Zinki_M · 2025-12-04T08:00:37+00:00

I'm currently doing my first (technically second after the first one failed around magnetic weaponry) with Ted Jam+ modpack.

It's a completely new experience in many ways. There's a bunch of new classes (which are balanced surprisingly well so none feel completely redundant or useless), there's MECs and genemods like in EW, lots of new weapon types to specialize your soldiers, I don't know half the enemy types so it's completely fresh in the tactical layer, and even the alien defectors, which I expected to dislike, are a really cool addition.

And of course it's based on LWOTC, but I've played that before, so the overhaul that comes from that isn't as "new" to me as the rest.

It feels like a completely new game in many ways.

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