XCOM 2 has squad/faction turn-based combat. XCOM deployed squad gets to act first, then act ADVENT/aliens. In War of the Chosen DLC, the Lost faction acts after XCOM and ADVENT/aliens, and Resistance soldiers (during ADVENT retaliation missions) act last. Individual units of a faction can move and act in any order during their faction turn.
When revealed by their enemies for the first time Hostile squads get to make a move. For example: the Lost, revealed during ADVENT/aliens turn, will perform a movement towards ADVENT/aliens if XCOM was not revealed by this Lost group earlier; if enemy parties reveal XCOM during their turn they will not attack, despite being within the attack range, but only move, whereas XCOM can use Overwatch, Bladestorm and alike abilities.
XCOM's turn[]
Cooldowns and timers[]
- When the number would tick down to 0 it has run out and you can use the ability (Cooldown) again or the mission has failed (Timer).
- Timers - Displayed on the top right is the mission timer on missions such as: Guerilla Ops having a timer of 6-8 turns, Council Missions (Rescue/Extract/Neutralize VIP) with 12 turns.
- Cooldowns - All abilities that have cooldown, have a set cooldown, meaning that not counting changes made by DLC the cooldown is static.
Unit's turn[]
On your turn you can move your units - soldiers - most actions including moving and reloading spend 1 move, things like opening doors do not use up moves, unlike it's predecessor in XCOM 2 a unit can't open doors with all their moves spent. Without additional training (specific abilities), shooting, overwatching and dashing will end the unit's turn even with 2 moves left (blue bars above unit, under their health bar).
Reloading weapons[]
As opposed to XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM: Enemy Within reloading will not end the soldiers turn so if the mission does not have a timer or overwatch is preferable at the start of the turn you can order a unit to reload and overwatch not making them useless after reloading unlike in Enemy Unknown/Within.
XCOM has access to weapons upgrades (mods), specifically Auto-Loader, which allows reloading the weapon as a free action. The mod has limited amount of reloads, depending on the mod tier: 1 - for basic, 2 - advanced, 3 - superior. A player cannot choose between the free action reloading and standard reloading, which costs 1 action point, and it doesn't matter if only a single shot was made prior to the reload - the free reload is used up first; when all free reloads are used up, they will be available again only in the following missions. Very useful in several situations, especially against Codex Psionic Rift ability or Avatar's Dimensional Rift which empty the ammo clip of XCOM soldiers (besides other effects).
Enemies usually require reloading their ranged weapons but do not reload before the weapon clip is empty. Turrets do not require and, therefore, lack the reload ability.[citation needed]
Enemy's turn[]
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Technical notes[]
From defaultgamedata_soldierskills.ini:
ENERGY_SHIELD_DURATION=4 ; lasts for 3 full turns, ends at starting tick on 4th turn