Join the XCOM 2 character pool today!

John of the Castle, reporting for duty!
Haha, thx for the Country of Origin touch. XD

I would like to say that the pouty face does not represent me, but thinking back on certain anecdotes, yes, yes it does very much.
I definitely don't have that much facial hair, though (no probs about it, no need to change it). Would it be possible to change the hair color, though? it's brown rather than black even if it does come out darker than it is in the pictures I gave.

Now, don't mind me while we're not deployed, I'm just here browsing some confidential documents that could be *ehem* useful on the field, yeah...

Can't you make custom civilians/VIPs, too? Throw an Adam into that pool if so.

I forget if there are customization options for those, but if you can, make him look as ridiculous as possible.

Name: Octo Prime
Callsign: Smashmouth
Appearance: eyepatch, cigar and handlebar mustache
Nationality: Canadian
Personality: Twitchy
Backstory: After suffering minor, but still hospitalizing, injuries in every single engagement he’d been part of, Octo “Smashmouth” Prime was forced to join the sniper corps, out of hope that being very far away from enemies would at least cut down on his insurance premiums and hospital bills.

Hah, nice job with Kirin there. Not quite what I envisioned (last XCOM game I saw a lot of was one of the PC originals back in the 90s so I don't really know the setting much) but still fantastic.

Now I'm hoping there is a mod that gives characters the options of theme music that plays when their turn is up.

Somebody once told me...

I looked up a list of Spanish last names for you character; when I saw this one, I picked it as an hommage to the excellent XCOM 2 series that Austin and Rob are doing over at Waypoint (seriously, it's really good guys, you should watch it). Also, I'm from Quebec, so I totally understand the whole culture-within-a-culture thing. As a bonus, I've even been to Barcelona, which quickly became one of my favorite cities. Couldn't find bad food or wine there no matter how hard we tried!

You don't make the pouty face all the time, just when something seems suspicious to you. Which is...all the time. Anyway, modifications are dead simple, so I'll tweak the hair color and I can very easily get rid of the stubble if you don't like it. You seemed to have some in a few of your photos, so I kinda flipped a coin.

I'm not sure I follow you, should I know which Adam you are referring to? But yes, you can make a character and only select them for VIP duty, or any combination of Solider/VIP/Enemy VIP. So if anyone here wants to get knocked out and abducted by XCOM, let me know and I'll activate those options for your character. You can't make pure civilians AFAIK.

It's also me! Ignore if you don't want dupes; I was just hoping for a civilian cameo.

Ah, I see. I'm sure we can work something out, I have an extensive collection of ridiculous hairstyles that I still haven't used.

Gotcha, that's really cool. And I didn't even notice the shadow until you pointed it out.

Man, I look good!

*takes notes*
Well, I do have some places to take you to, then, if you ever come by again. We shall end the tour at my place, which will nullify all previous good experiences, only to leave trauma behind, mwahaha.

Srsly though, glad you enjoyed it!


Do I look like I make a pouty face to you? ( `3�)
I do have a stubble but it's basically chin, some neck and moustache, the rest is an arid desert with only the occasional bush, so I take care to shave often because it looks quite bad - admittedly I had not shaven in some of those pics, so yeah. Better off, but it doesn't bother me if it's there either.

I should mention that roughly half of my XCOM 2 playtime was with Long War 2, so some percentage of my knowledge of the game is actually of a different game.

So if my character sits around the bar telling horror stories about hive queens and sectoid commanders, do not be alarmed.

i vote blowout hair for kirin

I feel like something really special happened tonight.

Flawgic

Not sure what needs to be added here. Flaming arm tattoos courtest of the XXL Tattoo pack mod.

Big Sexy

Is the heart pattern too much or just barely enough?

Smashmouth

Only the most discerning will spot the clever allusion in Smash's color scheme.

Adam

There's no option to display a character as a VIP, but Adam is only set to appear as one (although I'm honestly tempted to run the ridiculous hipster as part of the squad).

Better dead than white guy dreads.

I guess an alien invasion is good motivation for hitting the gym.

YYYYEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Name: MetManMas
Callsign: DWN-009
Appearance: Whether he's human or robot, try and get him as close as you can get to Metal Man within the character creator's limitations.
Nationality/Voice: Japanese
Attitude: Shrewd or something like that.
Class: Whatever you think fits is fine.

NAME and/or CALLSIGN: Violentvixen, or a riff on it if that doesn't fit with the character limits

APPEARANCE:
gender Female
race White
hair color and style Blue long hair, up in a ponytail is cool too.
accessories Any lab goggles or science-y stuff?
clothing and weapon colors Steel gray/blue
And for reference here's a post back from when I had blue hair.

NATIONALITY and LANGUAGE: Czech, if that's not an option German

ATTITUDE: By the Book

BACKSTORY: She signed up to work in the lab but turned out to be very good on the battlefield. Enjoys seeing both sides of the war.

CLASS: I usually pick sniper-rifle type stuff, but if you have enough of that tank/melee type is good too.

Ahaha yesss

Here's my battle theme for crushing some alien scum:

It's like looking into a mirror!

All caught up!

DWN-009

If the question is "how close to Metal Man can we make an XCOM soldier", then the answer is "not very". The robot would have been even farther from the truth, so I think we'll go with this.

ViolentVixn

One character too long, your handle is. Ah well. As for laboratory equipment, pretty much the only thing I can offer is the pair of goggles that Spook is wearing, let me know if you'd like me to add them.

And with that, all my current applicants have been taken care of. If recruitment slows down, then I'll see about putting together a package for people to download soon, along with a list of mods that you'll need to make some of the characters work. That's a total of 15 characters added to my pool, I'm pretty happy! I also have a few older ones kicking around that I might include in the package, so there will be quite a number to choose from for any aspiring commanders.

I love it! And I like her without the goggles, thanks!

I figured that the character customizer would only be so flexible. Not every game's gonna let you do something like this:


Still, thanks a bunch for trying!

Ok, I'm all caught up with everyone's requests, so it's time to share my creations! Presenting: Tyrant Squad v1.0! I'll put instructions in the top post of the thread for where to copy this file and which mods you'll need in order to fully recreate the characters.

And now...time to play! I'm considering streaming the start of my campaign tonight, I'll be sure to post a link if I do. I'll also try to drop in some screenshots here and there to show off your characters' exploits and grisly deaths. And hey, if anyone else wants to use these characters in a campaign of their own, feel free to post about it here. This is a community project! Thanks to everyone who contributed their names and ideas, now let's evict some alien fascists from Earth...permanently.

Didn't feel like streaming in the end, but I did play a bit last night. Presenting:

Tyrant Squad's First Outing


Operation Gatecrasher is go! We don't get to pick a squad for our first mission, with the settings I'm using we get three random rookies and one faction class. Here we can see Smashmouth, Gerad and Kirin, along with lapsed TT poster Aquadeo (whose character I made in honor of an Extra Life donation a year or two back). I have the game set to favor characters from the pool, and I didn't make any faction soldiers aside from Kirin, so I don't know if we got a Templar because of that or if it was pure chance. Either way, an early Templar is a good pull, they are absolutely deadly at the start of the game.


I set up an overwatch trap for the first pod (three soldiers) and then send Kirin in to bust some heads. He happily obliges, taking out one of the ADVENT.


Smashmouth opens fire, wounding another soldier but not killing him.


Gerad follows up with a grenade to get the sure kill on a second soldier. I'm a big fan of guaranteed damage, and rookies are bad at pretty much everything, so no grenade goes unthrown in my early campaign missions.


Aquadeo also gets a clean kill, but we still have a problem...


I miscalculated my positioning, and while we were dealing with the first pod of enemies, the second one had poor Smashy here flanked. The ADVENT commander marks him, which makes him an even easier target. And then? Well...


The [bullets] start coming and they don't stop coming.
You could maybe say Octo "hit the ground", and that it "didn't make sense...to live".
Only shooting [ADVENT] break the [Smashmouth].

Thank you for your service, Rk Prime.
(Don't worry, guys, he was like, super expendable)


Kirin cleans up the straggler from the first pod, but takes a solid hit shortly after. This puts me in a tight spot, because I don't want to lose my only Templar so early in the campaign. Thankfully, Gerad and Aquadeo take care of one of the remaining baddies and Kirin...



...gets the last laugh on the ADVENT Commander. At least, I think he's laughing.



What's left of the squad returns home from the mission. Kirin is "gravely" wounded, but 6 days really isn't too bad. He's only going to miss one mission at most. Now it's promotion time!


Gerad became a sharpshooter, which I don't think quite fits his "angry all the time" persona, but it'll do. At this stage of the game, I can't choose anyone's class - they'll get a random job when they're promoted from Rookie to Squaddie. So for anyone who wants their character to take on a specific role, we'll have to wait until I unlock the Guerrilla Tactics School, at which point we can direct their evolution.


Aquadeo becomes our first specialist. Specialists don't get the glamour, but in WotC they're incredibly useful because of the diverse array of skills they have. There's almost always something useful you can do on a specialist's turn.

That's our first mission! I took screenshots for two more last night, if I have time I'll continue with another writeup later today.

Alas, poor Octo.

What difficulty are you playing on?

I like how the screenshot lists Kirin as "ravely wounded".

That's taking "four on the floor" too literally.

Commander/Ironman, now and forever.

Guerrilla Op The First


A couple of days later, we get our first Guerrilla Op.


I can't remember if Kirin was available or not, but either way we want to spread some XP around, so I grab some fresh faces for this mission. Welcome aboard, Spoony and VV!


This mission is set in the tunnels, which I hate, because Bad Things happen in the tunnels. In this case, it's just a bit of time pressure: we have to get to the goal before running out of turns, but we can extend the turn timer by blowing up little 2 HP nodes like the one you see on the screen. Our first enemy group is a sectoid and an ADVENT trooper. We don't have time to position everyone perfectly, so we'll have to make our ambush work from this position.


Spoony, who is currently Bad At Everything, starts the engagement off by tossing in a grenade. I was hoping it would do enough damage to kill the trooper, but alas it only did 3 HP to both enemies.


Gerad follows up with a spectacularly bad overwatch shot. Dude, you are off by like 90 degrees. Needless to say, it doesn't connect. Thankfully, Vixen takes her overwatch shot and manages an impressive 5 damage on the sectoid. That's good news, because I don't have any melee characters with me (sectoids are weak to being sworded) and I don't want to deal with anyone getting mind controlled.


Aquadeo finishes off the encounter by walking right up to the ADVENT soldier and straight mercing him. Ice cold.


Our second group of ADVENT posts up behind some, uh, posts. That's bad for us, because we don't have the mobility to flank them and you can't blow pillars up to expose them easily.


That doesn't mean didn't try, though.


Gerad takes a shot from one of the turtled troopers. He's still in the game, but just barely. Note that taking hits is very dangerous in the early game, since so many of the enemy attacks can one-shot a rookie or a squaddie. We will be investing in some armor the very second we can afford it. Not nanoscale vests, though - the one extra HP they offer isn't nearly as useful to us as the grenade we can bring along instead.


Aquadeo rushes over to put his new medkit to good use. Specialists can get an ability that lets them heal at a distance, but since he's just a squaddie, he has to stand right next to his patient.


We manage to take down the trooper, but the captain retreats farther back (that's good!) to some more high cover (that's bad). Spoony beats the odds, though, taking him out with a really difficult shot. That winds up becoming something of a theme in this mission, as we manage to make another 2-3 shots that we really had no business nailing. Good luck does exist in XCOM!


There's another sectoid and trooper in the room with our mission objective, but they don't stand a chance against the lucky rabbit's foot that we apparently bought along with us.


Spoony plants the charge with time to spare and that's a wrap!


We return to base with another set of promotions. Aquadeo becomes our first corporal, earning himself the extremely useful ability to heal people from afar. Gerad's going to be out of action for quite a while after his injury, but that's not all...


Looks like he's got some PTSD. Negative traits cause your soldiers to randomly do stuff you don't want them to do, with consequences that range from "mildly annoying" to "team wipe". Gerad's new quirk isn't particularly bad - as a sniper, he can't shoot his main weapon after moving anyway, so making half moves isn't something I'll do with him very often. If I keep this limitation in mind (ha ha yeah right) I can probably completely circumvent it by doing stuff like reloading before moving or sprinting when he has a long way to go. In the future, we'll be able to cure him of his trauma in the Infirmary - ain't science great?


Spoony becomes our first grenadier. I'm a big fan of grenadiers. And VV?


Well she gets a sword. And not only that, but she also gets...


A friend! Vixen and Aquadeo are now bondmates, which means they can transfer a turn between them once a mission. It's very useful, although bondmates are prone to panicking when their buddies are killed or injured, so it's not all gravy. Bonds can eventually be upgraded two further tiers, which gains the couple even more bonuses, but it requires taking them out of the field for a while and I don't always do it.

We celebrate the union of Froese and Fuchsin with this rad commemorative poster.


Lastly, we get...this guy. Well, we needed an engineer I guess. I stick him on the Resistance Ring construction project that I started a few days back. The Ring is a really great tool for getting stuff you need in the early game, so it's always the first building I make. We'll be using it to run some covert ops soon, but for now it's time for another break. See you next mission!

F for Octo. He was taken from us to soon.


The "Fuchsin 'Violentvixin'" quasi-rhyme made me snicker when I saw it on the screen. Dunno, it sounds funny to me.