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XCOM Enemy Within (Long War Modded Edition): RNG, Tactics & Death ^10th

From the 1994 Classic X-COM: UFO Defense (UFO Enemy Unknown), players entered an unforgiving world where they would have to stave off an alien threat from over taking the planet Earth. There were many sequels to this game in the 90’s where the player commanded the familiar multi-nationally funded alien fighting organization. Fans who played these sequels got to experience the war under water, in futuristic societies split up by factions, in space and even in third person before the series died in the early 2000’s.

The 2012 title XCOM: Enemy Unknown has rebooted this series, bringing back the joys of getting personally attached to your soldiers and watching them die. XCOM: Enemy Within was a DLC overhaul that added plenty more content, items and mission types to the game. However, despite being a great reboot, Enemy Unknown/Enemy Within didn’t quite feel like the classics from the 90’s. In a series where it was common for soldiers to die often, players of EU/EW would find that they could easily stick with their “A team” throughout the whole game with maybe one or two soldier deaths. UFO battles in the air game weren’t that difficult and the time it took to complete the game was somewhat quick. While the game already uses chance and probability in its mission phase, it needed a little more. Long War, a mod created for XCOM Enemy Within by Pavonis Interactive (Long War Studios at the time of release) filled a lot of the void of what was missing from the XCOM titles. It made XCOM: Enemy Within feel like what an X-COM game would be like. An all out, extremely unforgiving strategic alien combat simulator.

Overhaul of an Overhaul

First off, Long War does what its name implies, makes the game extra long and increases the difficulty by a long shot. This is done for the purpose of, in my opinion, adding the amount of realism that you would expect from a strategic combat simulator. This mod takes every aspect of the game and expands upon it with a little more depth and detail.

Soldier Classes & System

Long War takes the game’s original 4 basic classes and splits them up into 8 different specializations. This allows for more variability and options when combating the now even more intimidating alien threat. On some missions the player may want to take a certain combinations of classes that another. This plays into the big change that the mod has introduced which is battle fatigue. Back in the vanilla game players could take the same soldiers on mission after mission after mission as long as the soldier wasn’t wounded. With Long War, soldiers who return from missions are fatigued and should be allowed to rest before coming along on other combat missions. While the player can still bring fatigued soldiers on missions, the consequences for doing so before they are rested up will result to those soldiers being wounded with now mandatory infirmary time. This new system brings the reality that you can't have just one super team of soldiers immune to the perils of war. It encourages the player to cycle through their barracks and level up all of their soldiers as it doesn’t make sense if only 6 out of 100 soldiers has experienced fighting the alien threat.

Chance & Probability Vs Tactics

Every X-COM games in the 90’s had incorporated chance and probability within their combat layers, XCOM: Enemy Within is no different. When targeting an enemy the player’s aim stat and position vs the enemies defense stat and positioning would calculate the player’s chance to hit and vice versa. The player’s soldiers also gain abilities as they level up that can also increase stats and chances to hit along with a number of cool and useful stuff. In Long War, the aliens are also conducting research against the player and have access to the same abilities and genetic modifications that the player’s soldiers gain along the way. Combine that with the increased size of enemy “pods” which are the groups of aliens soldiers encounter while on missions and you get terrifying, lengthy and challenging missions. No longer can you simply just overwatch trap the 10 Chrysalids coming your way when they all have lightning reflexes which lowers your soldiers chance to hit by 90%. Having to fight through 40+ powerful aliens with a punishing AI meant that the player should avoid taking careless and costly moves as they could reveal an unexpected pod of aliens that could wipe out their whole squad. There are many missions the player will encounter where the player is encourage to just retreat and abort the mission as trying to beat it may hinder their campaign. Long War has encouraged players to shy from running their assault out in the open for that 99% Flank shot since the AI will now capitalize on the opportunity to flank and kill your soldier. It makes the player pay more mind into how they will make their way through the map, what tactics they will us to outsmart the enemy, how they will breach a building etc. As a result it takes a greater number of skill to master vs relying on the high probability of some shots as RNG can still spit in your face.

The Air Game

Long War has also done a lot to make UFO combat actually feel like it should when you are combating an unknown threat. The vanilla air game made it fairly easy to shoot down small or medium UFOs. It only got harder when trying to shoot down large and extra large UFOs with just a basic fighter jet. Long war introduced different classes of UFO’s within their size groups. If you encountered a small UFO it could either be a fighter or a scout. This mattered drastically because fighters were much harder to shoot down and could down your jets before they could land a hit. Scouts were also troublesome but the player would have a bit more luck with shooting them down. AIr combat utilized the same chance and probability mechanics as in the ground missions. UFOs had stats like armor, HP and aim to match their size & class. Fighter jets could gain armor and better weapons through the appropriate and expensive research/foundry projects. Apart from already having the ability to shoot down satellites, UFO’s can now also go on bombing runs to cause panic in a given country and transport aliens for terror missions in a country. Players are now able to experience the difficulty that could be associated with trying to take on advanced weaponry and aircraft with conventional jets. And like the ground missions, the air game is no less forgiving.

Overall

Long War has gone to exponential heights to fill in the blanks of what was missing from XCOM: Enemy Within. It was sure to reinforce the core themes of the game by adding a more realistic take on how an alien invasion would likely occur. It encouraged the player to play the game more strategically and barraged them with consequences if they got too careless in order to motivate them to stay on track. Long War made XCOM feel like X-COM.



































































References

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/09/03/have-you-played-xcom-long-war/

Meer, Alec, Rock Paper Shotgun: Have You Played….XCOM: Long War?

2. https://sinepost.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/probability-in-games-xcom/

Brown, Neil Probability in Games: XCOM

3. http://www.acagamic.com/courses/infr1330-2014/chance-and-skill-in-game-design/

Lennart Nacke. (October 15, 2014). Chance and Skill in Game Design.

The Acagamic. Retrieved December 16, 2018