I've been playing version 1.1 of LWOTC and I like it. This is not an overhaul, but rather a large set of bug fixes, quality of life improvements, and subtle balance tweaks. It doesn’t make the game significantly different, just refines much of it. It’s like the developer decided in advance to be incredibly cautious - like white velvet gloves with tweezers levels of caution - and so pretty much every change made to game balance seems readily justifiable to me.
But the biggest news is the bug fixes and QOL improvements. I am really happy that the memory bug with the HQ mission has been fixed (or at least didn’t happen to me this time). On my last run that bug forced me to replay the HQ three times before I could move on.1 It’s also nice how the infiltration estimates are automatically padded a couple hours (to better account for avenger transit time), and that the Geoscape pauses at 125% infiltration, and that nanoscale vests are no longer the best in most situations, and so on. There are several other nice little improvements that just make the game play better.
Some Miscellaneous Notes from my latest campaign
When ambushed operatives are usually revealed immediately by a pod of 2 advent units that spawn nearby (often a MEC and a soldier). It is a good idea to choose operatives that can deal with those enemies.
Alien Rulers will sometimes show up on Troop Ambush missions before you raid one of the advent facilities. I hadn’t seen this in my previous campaign. They won’t appear early on, but they are no longer entirely activated by facility raids. This is a nice mechanic that makes lucrative Troop Column missions a bit more dangerous.
The Miranda sitrep is dangerous. Best to use a more specialized team which relies less on shooting. I’ve had the Miranda sitrep on two troop ambush missions, and they both went far astray.
MECs that have been recruited to your team via the Full Override ability, will not flip back to advent control when your Specialist is disoriented, stunned, knocked unconscious, or even killed. The Hack is still permanent. The same is true for mind controlled units when your Psi soldier is disoriented.
Disorienting a purifier will not disable it’s flamethrower ability. I am not sure if this is new to version 1.1 or not (probably not) but in any case it is worth emphasizing - it is a damn unpleasant rule to learn while playing.
Recruits hired at the Black Market will be SSGT around late Sept. at Legend difficulty.
Panic does not remove overwatch, nor does it prevent CCS. I always forget this, and it usually bites me in the ass at some point.
You need 3 engineers to build a Spark.
Spectres can be stunned. This is easy to forget as they are not organic units.
Burning does not prevent faceless from swiping at you. But it does prevent Stun Lancers from jabbing you with their shock rods - apparently that attack is a special skill - and is deactivated by the burning status.
I somehow never realized this, but it is usually counterproductive to reveal the Assassin. When revealed, she gets 2 attacks, rather than the single blade attack she uses when breaking stealth on her own. Trying to find her can also eat up multiple actions which could otherwise be spent killing other enemies. I would recommend not searching for her unless there is A) no other enemies to fight B) you have a reasonable chance to do some real damage and C) you will be able to light her on fire and thus prevent one of her bonus attacks.
Psi Soldiers will continue to accrue exp when going on missions, even when they are in need of training to reach the next level.
I think it is possible that if the Assassin is standing on a burning tile, but not actually burning, she will not move. I’ve only seen this happen once, so I’m not 100% sure.
Advent Strength doesn’t track vigilance that closely - it seems to flow to those regions that are being liberated (see image below). And so, it might be a good idea to NOT start the liberation chain in those regions that you want to keep mining for easy missions.
The Lost take their turn before the aliens and they can activate enemy pods. For this reason, it is a good idea to be extremely careful with explosives (and listen to the Lost cues) even if fighting the Lost doesn’t worry you - simply because the Lost can activate a pod of aliens or Advent, which will then get a bunch of free attacks on your soldiers. This happened to me on my latest campaign, and it is the worst.
Trying to slip past pods when concealed is often a bad idea.
The fatigue mechanic usually doesn’t matter - the exception is for long missions, which will often result in your soldiers getting tagged with the Tired status for a week. There’s not much you can do to speed up HQ missions, but on Troop Column missions, the fatigue mechanic encourages quicker play.
Alien Rulers get a free action whenever your soldiers perform an action in visible range - this includes moving into visible range, but not reloading. Concealed soldiers don’t trigger alien ruler actions.
It’s a good idea to get an advanced arc thrower before facing Alien Rulers. This upgrade is less important against other enemies but gives you one extra action during the stun period. The standard arc thrower only prevents 1 ruler reaction, which is weird - When the stun counter is at 1, they are actually free to react.
If you need some help in dealing with the Berserker Queen, look for maim on the XCOM row abilities.
Trap missions still exist. I had forgotten about them, and so tried to run a Hack mission in a strength 8 region, then stumbled into a pod on round 2, resulting in a wild sh*t show. Reinforcements on every turn is hard to manage.
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To avoid the HQ memory bug, I had to use a console command giving all my soldiers infinite moves, so that they could complete the whole mission in a single turn. Tedious and deflating.
