War manager

The major thing you need to know about playing "Long War" is that it is Football Manager for interstellar war. There is more of everything, and keeping track of soldier, weapon and enemy stats had better be fun for you, because that is 90 percent of what is new and different here.

Your soldiers now have more ranks, which roughly correlate to US military serviceman ranks. (You start as a PFC, then Specialist, etc.). When you rank up, you will fall into one of several classes, which include the traditional XCOM classes, plus engineer, scout and infantry. The XCOM heavy class is split in two and replaced by gunner and rocketeer. And the support class is renamed medic, with some of the support perks spread into other classes.

Too many classes, say you? True. You won't get to field a full hand until you unlock more soldier slots, but in Long War you start with six (as opposed to four, from the base game) and go from there. And you'll want to field newbies and rank them up continually, since soldiers now suffer from "fatigue" after missions, and must rest for several days or suffer penalties.

In my two days of playing, I tried to maintain a roster of about 33 soldiers, almost all of whom saw action. The highest rank I achieved was corporal, but I had several lance corporals and specialists in various disciplines, plus their SHIV armored robots. Between fatigue and much longer wound recovery times, it was a struggle maintaining a decent fighting force.

Beyond simply staffing the roster, selecting a team for each mission became a harder task. Instead of just the original four flavors of soldier to keep track of, there are now eight, and stats suddenly matter a hell of a lot more.

You can select multiple settings which determine how or random or not each soldier's stats will be, but they will nevertheless vary somewhat from soldier to soldier. Health, movement, will and aim are the most important here, and staffing a squad with soldiers that can cover each others weaknesses in each area introduces a hefty load of variables.

In "Long War," it's both a little easier and a lot more necessary to go full Type A.

For example, you start with two types of armor instead of one, tactical armor and tactical vest. The tactical vest provides less protection, but allows for greater movement. Similarly, the assault carbine is a lighter version of the assault rifle. You can move faster and aim better with it, but it does less damage. You also get many flavors of grenades from mission one, and a handful of stock add-ons, like the laser sight. Plus, you don't have to research and purchase medkits, because, for real. School buses have first aid kits.

If you're the kind of player who managed every detail in the original games, good for you, you will get a running start in this mod. I wasn't. And there weren't that many to manage anyway. But in "Long War," it's both a little easier and a lot more necessary to go full Type A. Enemies are harder, missions will take longer and there are a lot more of them. If you don't balance your soldier's stats, train your entire army up and keep your barracks full of fresh meat, you will fail.