First off, I just wanted to applaud you for all the hard work that's gone into Long War. I love the interception mechanics, appreciate the depth of the new class system, and am astounded by the way you constantly have to think about logistics in order to preserve your forces. Realizing you've walked into an ambush and having to scramble to evac your troops isn't something I thought I'd appreciate, but successful "aborts" (in which I manage to save the majority of my troops) feel just as satisfying as victories. As someone who thrived on Classic Ironman in vanilla, I appreciate the added challenge. Installation was a snap, and I did a full purge and reinstall of XCOM (including all the config files that lived in My Documents, just to be sure that I had no conflicts with the mod--everything went swimmingly. Unfortunately, there is one thing that diminishes my enjoyment of Long War: Thinmen. I'm inured to their ability to projectile vomit on a sniper in full cover on a rooftop (their torsos are esentially pressurized gas bags, after all), and their aim was legendary even in Vanilla. Both of those points are fine--but the Thinmen in Long War are essentially immortal due to their armor. If you'll bear with me, I'll lay out the crux of the problem. Playing Long War on Normal, the skinny folk have five or six hit points. I wouldn't have a problem with that, were it not for their armor. Ballistic weapons, such as assault rifles, only do a single point of damage on Thin Men (I've come to loathe that blue armor icon popping up after a successful hit), which would require a total of six shots over the course of a round to kill a thinman (barring the presence of gunners or snipers, which can deal 2HP and 3HP worth of damange on critical hits with lasers, respectively). 3 AP grenades can be used to bring one of the suckers down, if you're in a pinch. Beam weapons are marginally more effective, as a laser rifle can deal 2HP worth of damage to these humanlike aliens (on a critical hit). Here was the last straw for me: after losing ALL of my highest ranking troops on the first mission of Slingshot (due to the inability to abort), I went into an abduction mission with my well equipped C-Team (What was left of the B team was in the hospital ward)--everyone had laser weapons, and I had a medic loaded down with medkits ready to rock. I set up a chokepoint in an alley, and prepared for the onslaught. My team took down 3 Mutons, 10 sectoids, and 5 seekers. In the process, they lost a scout due to a lucky shot from a sectoid and a critically wounded gunner had to be stabilized. My medic ran low on supplies, but everyone on their feet was still kicking. Then 2 Thinmen arrived. My squad managed to survive 2 rounds against the Thinmen before the death of 2 soldiers sent the remaining 4 into a panic-chain that could not be recovered from. Combined fire from 6 soldiers over two rounds with laser weapons was not enough to take out these two enemies. To sum up, as of Long War 3 EW Beta 9a, a single Thinman is more difficult to deal with than a squad of Mutons with flanking advantage or a pair of Cyberdiscs. I love every aspect of this mod, and it's an absolute shame that a single enemy type has rendered such an ambitious project unplayable.
