X-COM Firaxis - XCOM: Enemy Unknown + Enemy Within Expansion

I had no problems with crashes in the ~25 hours it took me to beat the game, but what really got on my nerves in the end are the controls.
While they work fine 90% of the time, they can get pretty bad when flight, grappling hooks and especially large UFOs are involved.
The UFO maps have a tendency to obscure your vision by switching to the worst possible perspective, the grappling points can not be selected consistently and flight mode has a tendency to get weird.
Hope they patch that soon.

 

The grappling... oh god, the grappling. I actually think the controls are quite good, but grappling point selection is terrible.

 

I haven't had more than one or maybe two real crashes (I think I had one real unending Alien Activity phase, but several ones that took like two minutes for whatever reason) but the game is jank to the core. The camera malfunctions on multifloor areas, grenades, and grappling are terrible.

AFAI can tell it's:

1) Alien is flanked by anyone on your team (or "flanked" as in out of cover, for example after you have just blown away the cover it was in previously with a rocket)

2) Alien can see someone is overwatching him (can be the person flanking him, or not)

3) No one the alien can see is out of cover/flanked by the alien. The AI to shoot at people out of cover has a very high priority - for example sectoid commanders will uselessly plink with their plasma pistols at people in titan armor that are out of cover instead of mind controlling them - and therefore "shoot at people with no cover" overrides whatever AI bug is being exploited by flanked overwatch.

4) There are no groups of your guys the "throw a grenade at bunched up soldiers" AI action triggers on, if the alien carries a grenade, another high priority AI action. There is actually a different "reason" for an alien to throw a grenade - if they see someone that is difficult to shoot, like a guy standing in high cover with a smoke grenade on him, they'll throw a grenade at a single guy. That kind of grenade AI command does not interfere with the flanked overwatch trick as far as I have seen.

5) With some types of AI, most apparent on mutons, heavy floaters and heavy mutons, if they can move to flank someone in one action, they'll move and flankshoot the guy. Great way to lose people if you are trying to use the flanked overwatch trick for capturing.

The whole thing sometimes fucks up for mysterious reasons, and it doesn't work on some types of alien AI (floaters seem to sometimes be berserk and ignore overwatch and therefore the flanked overwatch trick, as do crysalids and usually muton berserkers). But in general that AI bug adds so much to the game I honestly need a way to keep steam from trying to patch the game if they change it.

 

Yeah, fingers crossed. I'd definitely be interested in an expansion or good DLC, neither of which would be more goddamn scripted council missions.

I can kinda understand their reasoning by not wanting to add new toys to the campaign since that would require more balancing than in most other strategy games (Since your choices and time are SO important in the strategic layer and are (Mostly) balanced at the moment to make most things useful enough to be considered) but the game could use more variety beyond a hell of a lot more maps. Might take a full expansion sized budget instead of DLC to expand the tech tree. Since Firaxis was able to put out an expansion for Civ5 hopefully they can do the same for Xcom.
That, or mod tools.

 

The game is pretty simple and they do a lot of shit to clamp down on it so you have game designery decisions to make instead of no-brainers (e.g. they try to throttle how many alloys you get in the first few months so you have to choose between making plenty of lasers and making all the carapace armor you like). They would have to make a whole new "RANDOM SHIT" mode and throw in a lot more options to make it into a playground kinda game that you could carpet bomb with genuine "interesting toys" content DLC - kinda like the original UFOD ironically.

 

Did anyone else have problems with rockets/blasters sometimes not hitting the enemies even they clearly seemed to be in the blast zone?
Don't know if they have a chance of "dodging" or resisting the attack or if it's simply another issue with multifloor areas and blast zone not displaying properly.

 

SORRY BROS I CANT HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF HOW FUCKING RIGHT I WAS WHEN I SAID THAT THIS WOULD BE EPIC

 

^by no definition is this game "epic"

Hmm, yeah, the game seems caught between kind of a roguelike feel and a campaign-feel. And that's an awful, awful shame. Had it been mostly roguelike-ish, it would have been much, much better. That was my point about the lack of difference in each game after a couple of playthroughs.

I'm confident that they could increase the roguelike-ishness, and I don't think you need much balancing-work for that. I mean, you win some you lose some when randomness is involved, and randomness and coping with that randomness in each playthrough is precisely what keeps this game interesting. The game needs more of that, not less.

 

was uh



was this supposed to happen?
I am really rich now thank you Wyrmlord
(I would have done it for free to rid us of Andhaira)

 

Yeah. Heavy plasma guns are expensive as shit to manufacture and use up a lot of precious alien materials. Unless you had some/enough on hand from captured aliens that $1,500 would be way iffier. If you DO have them on hand from capturing aliens, congratulations for capturing aliens and being able to pull that off easily!

 

The above seem to happen a lot when you happen to have lots of advanced guns lying around.
In my recent game when I skipped lasers entirely and instead focused on early captures, I was asked to sell 6 light plama rifles for 1,500 in the second month, which I gladly did, and it pretty much solved my financial problems.
Next month, I was offered to sell 6 regular plasma rifles for 3,000$, but I already had most of the world sattelited at this point.

I would prefer to simply sell the junk on the gray market one at the time, but suppose they wanted to balance it in such a way.

 

Yeah, it feels like a lot of things about NuXCOM: limited, scripted, but done with the best of intentions to force you into careful and tactical decision-making. I think every time I play old X-Com I end up with literally more money than I can spend within less than a month by selling all the UFO junk and bodies. Here, I'm still struggling every step of the way, but because of an artificial gamey design element. Guess I can't complain too much about a 2012 game being tightly balanced to keep kicking your ass in a measured and fair way; it's one of the few games I can think of at all where I'm genuinely nervous as hell about encountering a new enemy type for fear of the horrors they'll bring into play and the mans I'll lose trying to adapt to them. Original is one of my favourite games, and certainly better than this one, but new aliens pretty much just meant a new gunner sprite to shoot 90% of the time.

 

6 men with pea shooters and crates saving earth from 10 aliens with pea shooters and crates.
truly epic indeed.

 

The market should work both ways, i.e., you can sell and buy, and you don't need to wait for offers.

 

Damn you are making me imagine an X-Com game where the aliens and tech tree are procedurally generated in every new playthrough

 

would be awzum

 

... until you'd learn that Firaxis decided to team up with Spore designers and aliens will be automatically generated based on random variables using the Spore Creature Creator. Nothing like aiming a plasma rifle at something that looks like a huge dick walking on duck legs with a single eye where the sack should be.

EDIT: also, there would be an issue stemming from the fact that only hand-wielded weapons were designed and 62,3% of Spore Creature Creator creatures have no arms and thus most of the time you'd be shooting at walking penises desperately trying to invade earth by getting into melee range and clubbing you to death.

 

So, my second full Classic playthrough slowly draws to a conclusion. I tried to do a proper ironman this time, but had to ditch it because I've been proven not man enough.
Seriously though, it wasn't the actual difficulty, but the bugs and UI that lead me to this. To give the game the credit, the rng had its moments of favoring the "x-rays" (seriously, who the fuck came up woth that one) and xcom, sometimes my guys failed to connect 3x 85% shots in a row, other times the aliens missed a clear flank shot. On the whole, most of the time I got my ass handed to me, I knew where and when I screwed it up. Felt a bit like chess in this regard.

But, seeing how punishing mistakes can get in this game, it's pretty unsufferable when you get kicked in the balls by an obvious bug, like units "miraculously" not taking any damage despite being clearly in the blast radius, soldiers moving to a bad spot because the view in the ufo glitched, or my favourite - aliens seeing you through a glitch in the level, spawning and shooting your ass off. At one point I even found a stealthed sectopod standing on the stairs that could take potshots at me, while I had to move down the stairs and get close to shoot, despite having the high ground. Also, don't get me started on sometimes not being able to see what you're actually aiming at in aim mode when the aliens are tightly packed.
I think I said it already, but for a game in which iron man is pretty much marketed as one of the main features, the game's QA fails to live up to that.

That said, I've had a pretty good playthrough on semi-ironman, saving only at teh beginning of the mission and reloading only if I fucked up to something else than my own stupidity.
It felt pretty refreshing, actually. I now had to use every trick in the book, had to accept losses, had to revive soldiers, damaging their Will, which meant they would sometimes shit their pants at the mere grazing of a plasma pistol. It added quite a bit of drama and I would say the casualty rate got comparable (in % values) to the original game. (I usually don't use suicide rookies in the original game, so obviously the mileage varies in this regard).

Unfortunately, what I've seen is that once the mid to endgame kick in, the game tends to devolve and gets pretty similar to my previous playthroughs. Early game felt the most challenging and full of opportunities, especially when you have little cash to go round, every bit of research counts, and the rng can really give you lemons in terms of, say, an all-sniper team. It felt refreshing to try and explore the strenghts and weaknesses of each class when, say, all you had was supports and assaults, snipers needed lots of pampering and careful positioning until they finally started to pull their weight and each heavy you tried to promote got eaten up by a random critical hit by a thin man sniper.

I agree with you guys that more roguelike feel would really add a lot to the game, as it is now, it feels pretty railroaded. Wouldn't it be fun to have an opportunity to find a random sectoid commander on a large scout within the first month? How about not seeing any floaters in a current game, ever. Exclusive, branching choices in the tech tree for aliens and xcom? Well, one can dream.

 

Well lategame Snipers are absurdly broken

also Dear Doctor Dong is off to Volunteer himself for Earth

Have to say, first Ethereal encounter didn't disappoint. He immediately mind controlled COVERED IN BEES, causing DISGUSTING WHORE to panic and hide under a desk and Weedlord Bonerhitler to flee out of the room, prompting COVERED IN BEES to reaction shot him in the back.

 

In theory, yes, but when it really counts they can rarely get off the shot they need to. They aren't optimal in Terror Missions, and I usually only bring one to UFO missions.

 

Really, I'd take another heavy or support over a sniper anyday. Too much of a pain to manoeuvre with the rest of the squad without either leaving them to be attacked from behind or getting them too close to be shot at in the front, and as Grunker said; they fucking miss too often to be worth the trouble or aren't close enough to make them. Plus they'll only be able to get shots off about half the time they really need to unless you get Snap Snot.

 

With In the Zone and Plasma Sniper, they off cryssalids and zombies like there's no tomorrow since they don't use cover. I have one like that, built especially for the terror missions.

I've finally came to the conclusion that Snap Shot is useless because of the -20 penalty. You basically have to be on high ground and have a scope to counter that, and if the Sniper is low level, you'll get a whooping 60% chance to headshot out of that. Seriously, this is just inane design wise, especially compared to what squad sight gives you. The -20 would have only been justified if shooting did not end the turn, and even then I think half of that would suffice... and squad sight would have been a superior choice anyway.

If you really and absolutely want to move the sniper around, Gunslinger with plasma pistol is simply better, so much better if you get the foundry upgrades for it.

Overall, I think you're simply doing it wrong. First of all, always take squad sight and always put them on high ground, also, always give them scope. With Damn Good Ground you'll quickly notice the difference. The fun starts with archangel armor. All you have to do on the first turn is hit the skies, going as high as you can. You get bonus to aim for each level of diference, plus the Damn Good Ground Bonus. Defense wise, you get bonuses from archangel armor and DGG. At this point, you should see >90% chance to hit across half the map, as long as the line of fire is clear. Maximum elevation should gove you a lot of coverage, but you will need to maneuver them around. This trick also works in the alien base and the final mission, you just have to carefully choose your sniping nests.

Sniper squaddies are indeed pretty worthless. They begin to pull their weight somewhere past colonel, from my experience. The main problem is getting there. Getting the first few promotions for squad sight is a bitch, but before you get it, itll be a bitch to ket any kills. Later in the game, I usually give them grenades and plasma pistols to pull off a kill. Council missions are perfect for training troops this way, not just snipers. Nothing ever gets more than 5 HP, which means you can often nail two thinmen with one alien grenade or a rocket blast, and the light plasma + scope combo is surprisingly effective for long range shots.

 

The game really suffers for the squad size limit and how discovering new enemies works - it makes it more dangerous for you to try and advance/flank than it does sitting back and wail away at enemies with overwhelming firepower from rockets/grenades. Quite disappointing really. The numbers are just too low for the game to really be more than a shade of the proper X-Com games. And don't get me started on the maps - half the maps are fucking shameful, who put corridors in my TBS?



A leveled up Sniper with squadsight is the most powerful unit in the game on most maps; the area denial, the high damage/critical/hit chance and even the double shot just make them murder literally everything when you get the right support for them (Heavies).

 

Maybe I've just been lucky, but since I got Archangel armour, my two Snipers have been getting two kills per round each every time I meet a group of enemies in open ground; if they can see it, they can kill it. None of my other units come close to that level of ability. They're not quite as useful in UFO missions, but with good positioning and luring people out, two sets of double-tap quickly and efficiently kill everything from Berserkers to Sectopods. They have twice the kills of any of my other units.

 

THAT ENDING