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• Long War 2 Console Codes
• Long War 2 Console Commands
• Long War 2 Enable Console

Long War Enemy Within introduces 7 new armors (for a total of 14) generally built as lighter armors allowing more mobility at some cost of protection; we used the Gene Mod armor bases to represent these armors. If you don't like the look, try some of the alternate decos, which will minimize the sleeveless effect. SelectSoldierProgressionAbility 415 2 0; Enable Ability for Soldier 415, Rank 2, left Skill SelectSoldierProgressionAbility 415 2 1; Enable Ability for Soldier 415, Rank 2, right Skill SelectSoldierProgressionAbility 415 3 0; Enable Ability for Soldier 415, Rank 3, left Skill.

Long War 2 Console Codes

Note: This procedure involves editing a game file; create a backup copy of the file before proceeding. Add the '-allowconsole' command line parameter to end of the 'Target' field in the 'Shortcut' properties that are used to launch the game. In the Steam version, right click XCOM 2 in your Steam Library, then select the 'Properties' option in the 'General' tab. Select the 'Set Launch Options' button, and enter '-allowconsole' in the text field. While playing the game, press ~ to display the console window. Type 'enablecheats' and press [Enter] to enable cheat mode. Then, type one of the following codes and press [Enter] at the console window to activate the corresponding cheat function:

Note: This procedure involves editing game files; create a backup copy of the file before proceeding. Use a text editor to edit the indicated file in the 'Program Files (x86)SteamsteamappscommonXCOM 2XComGameConfig' directory. Edit the listed parameter in that file to get the indicated effect:

Enter a soldier's customization menu, go to the character info menu, and enter one of the following names to unlock the corresponding character. Note: This only works in the single player campaign and disables achievements from being earned and removes all your previous soldiers' attributes.

Use Skulljack on the four different ADVENT soldier types listed below to get the 'Brutal Collection' achievement. The hacking outcome does not matter.

Officer (the red unit). This is story related.
Stun Lancer (unit with the sword)
Shieldbearer (unit with white armor)
Trooper

Research the EXO and War Suits from the Proving Grounds to be able to research Experimental Heavy Weapons and Experimental Powered weapons, respectively. Do this enough times to obtain one of each type of the following weapons:

Heavy Weapons (requires EXO Suit)

Flamethrower
Rocket Launcher (unlocked EXO Suit is researched)
Shredder Gun

Powered Weapons (requires EXO or WAR Suit)

Blaster Launcher
Hellfire Projector
Plasma Blaster
Shredstorm Cannon

After obtaining the required weapons, equip your soldiers with W.A.R armor. Give each of them a different heavy or powered weapon. Start a mission with Advent soldier enemies. Get into position, then save the game. Kill an Advent soldier with one of the weapons, reload the saved game, then kill the same enemy with another type of weapon. Repeat this process until all the weapons were used to kill an enemy to get the 'Heavy Metal' achievement.

To do this without losing your entire squad, focus on killing enemies as quickly as possible instead of rescuing the civilians one-by-one. Also, try drawing the enemies attention to have them attack you instead of the civilians.

Use the 'Faceoff' Sharpshooter ability to fire at every visible target in range using the pistol. If there are at least three wounded or weak enemies in range, use that ability.

This can also be done with the Ranger's 'Reaper' ability. Kill an enemy with the sword to get another action so you can kill another enemy. Repeat the process in a chain.

Successfully complete the indicated task to unlock the corresponding achievement. To view your achievements and stats in Steam, select 'Community', 'My profile', 'View all my games', then the game and view stats.

A Better Human Being: Recover the Forge Item.
A Dark Doorway: Recover the Psi Gate.
A Final Stand: Create the Commander's Avatar.
A Forbidden Experiment: Investigate the Abandoned Research Facility.
A God Falls: Kill an Avatar.
A Grim Key: Recover a Codex Brain.
A Horrible Truth: Recover the Blacksite Data.
A Line Crossed: Complete the Avatar Autopsy.
A Torch Passed: Beat the Lost Towers mission.
Always be Shooting: Hit three shots on a single turn with a SPARK unit after using its Overdrive ability.
Archon Annihilator: Kill the Archon Ruler.
Axles to Axles, Bolts to Bolts: Defeat a robotic enemy with a SPARK unit.
Beginner's Luck: Beat a mission in June or later using only Rookies.
Bells and Whistles: Outfit a SPARK unit with the highest tier weaponry and armor.
Berserker Breaker: Kill the Berserker Ruler.
Breathing Room: Kill a Viper who is strangling a squadmate.
Bring It Down: Sabotage an alien facility.
Brutal Collection: Skulljack each different type of ADVENT soldier (does not have to be in same game).
Car Wrecked: Cause an enemy to die in a vehicle explosion.
Codebreaker: Build the Shadow Chamber.
Come Back To Me: Kill a Sectoid who is currently mind controlling a squadmate.
Cyberlord: Earn a second tier hack reward.
David and Goliath: Kill a Berserker in melee combat.
Deadly Arsenal: Purchase all of the final tier Hunter Weapons.
Defender of Humanity: Overthrow the aliens on Commander difficulty.
Earth Avenged: Overthrow the aliens at any difficulty level.
Enemy Adopted: Use a ruler armor ability against an alien ruler.
Excalibur: Completely upgrade a beam weapon with superior grade weapon upgrades.
Exquisite Timing: Beat the game on Commander+ difficulty by July 1st.
First Blood: Complete the tactical tutorial.
Global Resistance: Get all of the continent bonuses available in a single campaign.
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger: Apply a PCS upgrade to a soldier.
Have a Nice Trip: Cause an enemy to fall to its death.
Heavy Metal: Kill an enemy with every heavy weapon in the game (Doesn't have to be in the same game).
Heroes of the Resistance: Beat a Retaliation mission with less than 3 civilian deaths.
Immortal Commander: Overthrow the aliens on Legend difficulty.
Just Like Dad Used To Make: Build a SPARK unit.
Kingslayer: Kill all alien rulers in a single game.
Like Clockwork: Complete a successful ambush.
Locked and Loaded: Upgrade a weapon.
Make ‘em go Boom: Kill an enemy primed Derelict MEC before it can self-destruct.
Matter Over Mind: Defeat an Avatar with a SPARK unit.
Meat Over Metal: Kill a Sectopod on the same turn you encounter it.
Mechlord: Hack and take control of a Sectopod.
Nick of Time: Evacuate a soldier whose bleed-out timer is still running.
Not Throwing Away My Shot: Kill an alien ruler while it attempts to escape.
Now Am I Become Death: Kill 3 enemies in a single turn, with a single soldier, without explosives.
Now I Am The Master: Use all ruler armor abilities in a single mission.
Our New Overlords: Promote a SPARK unit to Champion rank.
Overpowered: Beat a mission on Commander+ with a squad composed entirely of soldiers of the same class (but not Rookie).
Pile 'Em Up: Kill 500 aliens. (does not have to be in same game).
Rebel Radio: Build Resistance Comms.
Regicide: Kill an alien ruler the first time you encounter it.
Rise of the Resistance: Make contact with a region.
Rise of the Robots: Complete a mission with three or more SPARK units in the squad.
Room to Grow: Upgrade a facility.
Rumor Hunter: Complete a Rumor.
Running on Fumes: A SPARK unit survives a mission it started with less than half health.
Shadow Broker: Sell goods worth 1000 supplies to the Black Market (Can span multiple games).
Shen's Legacy: Build a facility in every Avenger slot.
Stop Hitting Yourself: Kill an enemy with a hacked turret.
The Few and the Proud: Beat the game on Commander+ difficulty without buying a Squad Size upgrade.
The Most Dangerous Game: Win a multiplayer match..
The Sun Never Sets: Build a radio relay on every continent.
The Untouchables: Beat the game on Commander+ without losing a soldier.
Tinker: Build an experimental item in the Proving Grounds.
Valhalla: Beat the game on Commander+ difficulty in Ironman mode.
Viper Vanquisher: Kill the Viper King Ruler.
Who Needs Tygan?: Beat the final mission using only conventional gear.
With Extreme Prejudice: Skulljack an ADVENT Officer.

From the very first mission of The Long War 2, the stakes are different. Your enlarged squad isn’t doing anything as brash as blowing up an Advent statue; instead, they’ve managed to track down an under-strength patrol and are determined to take it down. Two things are immediately clear: the insurgency aren’t as bold as at the beginning of vanilla XCOM 2, but, as individuals and as squads, they’re far more cunning.

Mission one: eight soldiers, all with protective vests, frags and flashbangs. Tougher recruits for a tougher war. The fight for Earth isn’t just longer, it’s broader and more involved at every level. The Long War is available now and we’ve been in the thick of the right for the past few days.

As I played The Long War 2, one question never left my mind: no matter how much longer and harder this might be, is it also more interesting and enjoyable? Bigger isn’t necessarily better. I’m currently playing Darkest Dungeon again, a game that is receiving a shorter mode in a coming update, and even though it’s comfortably one of my favourite games of recent times, I’ll be glad of a condensed mode. After a while, every dungeon starts to look a lot like the last one.

Stretch an XCOM 2 campaign out for an extra thirty, forty or fifty hours (I haven’t completed a Long War 2 campaign yet but I imagine length will vary quite a lot depending on chance and your own efficiency) and all of those extractions, retaliations and data hacks might become extremely repetitive. The pacing of the vanilla game is very deliberate, dropping new enemies and technologies in your path at a steady rate and ensuring that though you have a level of control over events, there’s always a guiding hand to lead you from one narrative beat to the next.

The Long War 2 doesn’t discard or sidestep those narrative beats, apart from the first (the Commander figure that you play no longer has that grand introduction), but it fills the spaces in between the major steps forward with much more of the tactical pleasures and emergent narratives that are the series’ key strength. Every time I’ve sent a squad into combat, I’ve been tense and excited all over again, which is incredible considering the tens of hours I’ve already poured into XCOM 2. For reasons that I’ll go into shortly, the tactical side of the game is not just the best it’s ever been, it’s so much improved that I’ll find it hard to back to vanilla. The improvements to the strategic side, which is where I thought The Long War 2 might make the most dramatic changes, don’t all feel as meaningful.

That’s partly simply because more time is spent in combat than on the Geoscape or in the Avenger base. It might have a strategic five o’clock shadow, but XCOM 2 is a game primarily about tactical combat. That hasn’t changed here, and I didn’t expect a mod to rewrite the game’s structure entirely, but what has been added does enhance the sense of fighting a war rather than progressing through a series of missions.

Most meaningful among the changes is the ability to field several squads simultaneously. It’s a change that makes itself known throughout the entire game. Primarily, it’s a way to deal with several threats or opportunities at the same time, tearing up the binary approach that XCOM 2 originally took. If Advent are attacking civilians in West Africa and New Australia, you can send one squad to each location rather than choosing who should live and who should die.

Complications arise in that you don’t get a fleet of Skyrangers to zip your people around the map and you’ll need to take the Avenger to each location, dropping off the squad and then moving on to your next stop. That makes the actual base feel much more like a mobile thing that exists on a map rather than a cursor that you move to a place simply to activate the mission in that place.

When you drop a squad at a mission location, in most cases they no longer jump straight into combat. There’s an infiltration period, which is a smart thematic fit and one of The Long War’s biggest game-changing additions. The infiltration period is the time it takes for your soldiers to locate their target, while remaining hidden among the general population or out in the sticks. They’re doing all the cool secret agent stuff and preparing for the final objective and the escape that follows.

All of those timed missions feel much more fitting now that they’re explicitly the final moments of a week-long effort, involving subterfuge, espionage and commando take-downs. That you don’t get to see any of the former is understandable, and I would have liked some flavour text or occasional choices to make along the way, but when you have two squads out in the world, infiltrating Advent cities, there’s a splendid sense of urgency.

Infiltration isn’t just window-dressing though. Missions have an expiry date and when you arrive at the location, every change you make to your squad, from adding new members to changing their equipment, affects the time you’ll need to complete infiltration. If you can hit 100% before the expiry date, which forces you to either launch the mission or abort, then you’ll face weaker Advent forces. Anything less than 100% and they’ll be reinforced. You can spend Intel to boost the rate of infiltration but it mostly depends on the makeup of your squad.

Remember how the first mission gives you eight soldiers? You can send ten on the next if you reckon that’s the best way to get the job done. My favourite thing about The Long War 2 is that it makes me think about squad-building far more seriously than XCOM ever has before. Do I want to risk sending a rookie, in the hopes she’ll get those first kills and start her climb through the ranks? Should I risk all of my best soldiers on a single target or split them between all of my active squads? Would it be smart to send a Shinobi-only squad, just three, to attempt the kind of fast, sneaky surgical strike that a larger mob couldn’t manage?

Every soldier you add to a squad increases infiltration time, though some have abilities that lessen the impact. Giving them certain equipment also modifies the timing – suppressors are an early assist – so you’ll need to balance taking the best possible squad and ensuring you face the weakest enemy forces.

The multi-squad management and infiltration are the most significant changes to the Geoscape, or at least the most visible ones. You can also give basic instructions to civilians in the areas you’ve contacted and have some control over, using a simple menu that allocates them to gather intel, supplies or new recruits. It’s a little like a simplified version of the system in Jagged Alliance 2, right down to those folks appearing in missions that take place in the area. While the personnel management does allow for some level of control it really comes down to boosting the flow of resources when needed. There’s usually a correct way to adjust the settings, depending on your expenditure or discoveries that month, so it felt like one more plate to spin rather than the meaningful choices everywhere else in the mod.

And, thankfully, meaningful choices are Long War’s bread and butter. All of those decisions made during the infiltration phase pay off when you take control. All soldiers now have three slots for utility items but leaving one or all empty makes them more mobile. Immediately there is more to consider when building a squad and between turns in every mission. Flashbangs, frags and specialist equipment come into play far more often, not just through optional equipment but in the expanded skillset of every class (as well as the addition of a new class, Technical, which is halfway toward being a MEC trooper, with flames and rockets built into a single back-up weapon).

Each of the nine classes has a secondary weapon that is available at all times. If you’re wondering how we got to nine classes, there’s the brand new Technical class plus the three introduced in a previous mod from the Long War team. All of their mods are included in The Long War 2. The back-up weapons range from sawed-off shotguns for Rangers, which are devastating at close quarters but only have one shot per barrel, and a stun abililty for Assault troops. They all provide more options, informing how you engage with the enemy, how you improvise when things go wrong (more than ever, things will go wrong) and how you snatch victory from the jaws, claws and splash damage of defeat.

Long War 2 Console Commands

All of that along with new mission types and maps that, unless I’ve just been lucky with layouts, immediately feel larger and more varied completely refresh the tactical game. The opening mission ended with a shootout that levelled an entire church on my first attempt, and a sneaky, slick and effective suburban assault on the next. We didn’t take a scratch. My first attempt to break a group of civilians out of Advent cells in a city centre left me with a post-mission debrief that spoke of victory – every civilian saved! – and disaster – three soldiers left behind and captured. New Advent retaliation missions sometimes require evacuation rather than the simpler rescue missions seen previously, and there are chains of missions that have a lasting impact on the world map. Those, I will not spoil.

Long War 2 Enable Console

Everything is tied together by a more active Advent AI. On the Geoscape, Advent forces move to reinforce vulnerable areas in response to your actions, which adds another wrinkle to strategic decision-making. Sometimes attacking a weak spot isn’t worthwhile, particularly later in the game, because it might lead to heightened security in that region. On the flipside, Advent can be distracted, moving their pieces around the board to counter your actions and leaving themselves vulnerable where a blow against the Avatar Project can be effective in the long-term.

Stopping that project is still the goal and even in this extended campaign, the clock is ticking. The existence of new short-term targets keeps things interesting even when you don’t have end-game solutions in sight, and keeping XCOM running efficiently takes more time and energy than previously. The Long War matches its length with density, of choice and of action, and the increased difficulty challenges your skill and knowledge rather than your endurance.

The mod makes XCOM 2 feel new again. Tougher and smarter on every front. Even if the civilian management isn’t as interesting as I’d hoped, the greater tactical and strategic depth makes itself known immediately, and everything has been implemented intelligently within XCOM 2’s narrative and framework. New missions and tactical abilities fit with the resistance setting, and the ability to send in the kind of superheroic warriors that are typical of Firaxis’ take on the series while also occasionally relying on a mass of rookies makes every mission feel that little bit more unique.

A more reactive war on the Geoscape is a delight, but the soldiers are the heart of XCOM and they’re better and more varied than ever. From the very first mission, you’ll have rookies more capable than any you’ve seen before, and greater threats to counter them. By the mid-game you might have two Rangers with skillsets so different that they might as well be custom classes. In this Long War, the people are your most precious resource. Oh, and the robots too. If a new class and skills weren’t enough to make your squad stand out from the crowd, you can permanently steal Advent MECs now.

The Long War 2 mod is available now, from the Steam Workshop.