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

[cvv]

:D Yeah, been there. If an EXALT heavy is on the field, you can't bunch up your guys like you do against the aliens. I don't think I've seen them using a grenade or a rocket against a single guy.

 

[anus_pounder]

Enjoying enemy within so far (decline etc...), but the game could use another expansion to fix the lack of anything to do late-game. Just my two cents.

 

[Jaedar]

:D Yeah, been there. If an EXALT heavy is on the field, you can't bunch up your guys like you do against the aliens. I don't think I've seen them using a grenade or a rocket against a single guy.

It's funny how exalt are completely useless most of the time, but sometimes they manage a 'miracle turn' where they kill half your guys with rockets and grenades.

 

[Raghar]

When they'd keep it this way, it might be actually fun. You are doing the same to aliens.

 

[Heresiarch]

The EXALT missions are giving me a lot of trouble - not only those guys use TONS of explosives, but they come in HUGE number and they have MUTON class of HP. If I can't one shot an EXALT heavy then I'm screwed. Why are these humans tougher than Floaters and Thin Men? It doesn't make sense.

Fighting EXALT reminds me fighting Cult of Sirius. Both uses tons of launchers and shit.

 

[Morgoth]

I have just one question: Is it worth it?

 

[bonescraper]

Yup.

 

[Gozma]

These are $20 indie Unity TBS games masquerading as AAA, wait until they drop the price to the point you'd buy the indie game.

 

[cvv]

I have just one question: Is it worth it?

The time yes. The money no.
Wait for the Easter sale.

 

[Raghar]

I have just one question: Is it worth it?

For free? After three patches, yes.

For money? Don't feed trolls. Either they'd patch these chrysalis attacking throught walls, and floaters moving directly trough roof, or it's pointless to give them ANY money. (even if you are Firaxis fan)

It's probably the next-to-last room in the final mission on Impossible (I think on Classic there are only 2) and yeah, it's pretty insane. I can just imagine playing this on Impossible Ironman, getting your whole elite squad wiped out and then grinding for another 6 months to promote and upgrade the replacements. And then try the Temple Ship assault again, probably with the same result

C'mon. He played on normal, and he downed a large UFO. You are just imagining things. Actually it was worse.

For reference I'm on easy difficulty for my first run through, you know get used to all of the changes. Because of how these things are, I don't want to see these things on classic or impossible.

There is no reason, even on a battleship to have 3 in the same room, let alone that annoying damage reduction buff that makes them so hard to kill, and they can wipe out your squad in 3 shots.

Yes, it looks like he received 4 Sectopods on easy difficulty.

 

[Heresiarch]

Just finished the fishing village mission. Probably the best XCOM mission ever. It was not difficult as I took it with Carapace armor + Laser + 4 Colonels, but the atmosphere was damn scary and gave a very good sense of horror. Also it's full of hints of the next XCOM being underwater...

 

[Grunker]

Well... I was wrong. The game could still use random maps, but the map and unit density is pretty big now, and along with a ton of minor add-ons (like medals), the game became pretty effin' fun and much less repetitive. I'm having an actual blast.

 

[cvv]

Well... I was wrong. The game could still use random maps, but the map and unit density is pretty big now, and along with a ton of minor add-ons (like medals), the game became pretty effin' fun and much less repetitive. I'm having an actual blast.

Yep, same here.

Some things still annoy me though. The UI is still painfuly consoltarded, but that's of course beyond repair and/or hope. The maps still do get repetitive, only this time it's after the third playthrough instead of the second. And I still think Firaxis did a pretty fucking slipshod job with the hit/miss mechanics. Something's just not right with the percentages if I can miss twice in a row with rapid fire and 85% chance, standing a tile away from a creep (this happening multiple times throughout a playthrough). Or if my sniper has four 95% chance shots during a short mission and two of those are misses.

The new XCOM - a game where extremely rare occurrences happen all the time (cue XFiles music).

 

[Zeriel]

Keep in mind the save games do keep seeds. So if you aren't playing on Iron-Man and don't use the save scum second wave, reloads won't "fix" misses.

Re: topic in general...

Have to say the new mechanics do quite a bit to spice up the boring formulae of knowing exactly what to do in the geoscape area at any given time. Tactical combat is still easy/too gamist + exploity, but the option to randomize ability trees in particular does a lot to present obstacles on my ol' favorite Classic Iron-Man.

 

[cvv]

Keep in mind the save games do keep seeds. So if you aren't playing on Iron-Man and don't use the save scum second wave, reloads won't "fix" misses.

Yeah, except save-scumming's got nothing to do with what I wrote.

 

[cvv]

Well... I was wrong. The game could still use random maps, but the map and unit density is pretty big now, and along with a ton of minor add-ons (like medals), the game became pretty effin' fun and much less repetitive. I'm having an actual blast.

Yep, same here.

Some things still annoy me though. The UI is still painfuly consoltarded, but that's of course beyond repair and/or hope. The maps still do get repetitive, only this time it's after the third playthrough instead of the second. And I still think Firaxis did a pretty fucking slipshod job with the hit/miss mechanics. Something's just not right with the percentages if I can miss twice in a row with rapid fire and 85% chance, standing a tile away from a creep (this happening multiple times throughout a playthrough). Or if my sniper has four 95% chance shots during a short mission and two of those are misses.

The new XCOM - a game where extremely rare occurrences happen all the time (cue XFiles music).

Not surprising or even exclusive to 2k games. Same with all Total war games.

This problem is very real and still not entirely resolved.

I don't remember ever to be frustrated or bewildered by the percentages in the UFO or TFTD like that . It always made sense, always seemed credible.

Here it's more often than not totaly implausible. Not only are those 5 - 10 % misses suspiciously, unbelievably frequent, but also the algorithm for calculating the distance/percentage ratio is fucked up in some weird way. It doesn't make any sense from the roleplaying point of view to say the least. Call me crazy but I think shooting somebody point blank should give you more than 80 % hit chance, even if the alien is behind "a cover" and you're a shotgun armed rookie. Even my half-blind granma would have at least 85. And after all aren't even the XCOM rookies supposed to be the most elite soldiers from the member countries?

And it's not that I couldn't deal with it, after all the game is basically a faceroll after the first few months even on Impossible. But everytime shit like that happens it's a big hit to my imurshun and suspenshun of disbelief.

 

[Quatlo]

Also it's full of hints of the next XCOM being underwater...

Did you guys ever finish Enemy Unknown? Because I get constantly bored near the very end, where I can faceroll everything aliens throw at me. I just declare myself a winner and quit. Enemy Within changes that?

Also that 85% misses, its just goddamn gambler's fallacy. I've used to play a lot multiplayer Fallout Tactics, you miss your 95% (With defense they are around 85% probably) all the fucking time, and always in that most critical gamebreaking moment. We need to sacriffice to Beshaba more.

 

[Gord]

I don't remember ever to be frustrated or bewildered by the percentages in the UFO or TFTD like that . It always made sense, always seemed credible.

Here it's more often than not totaly implausible. Not only are those 5 - 10 % misses suspiciously, unbelievably frequent, but also the algorithm for calculating the distance/percentage ratio is fucked up in some weird way. It doesn't make any sense from the roleplaying point of view to say the least.

Hard to tell unless you make a table of the different to-hit percentages and how they resulted, for a large enough sample (say at least 100+ shots).
Who knows, maybe there is really an error in the calculation or display of the percentages. On the other hand, one tends to overestimate the rates of unexpected misses for those seemingly certain hits, since they are more memorable than the expected hits.

 

[Gozma]

There is some legit weirdness when you shoot at someone that has a piece of high cover and a piece of low cover covering orthogonal directions. If you are in the quadrant where either piece of cover should work, sometimes the displayed hit% uses the high or low while if you hit the F1 shooting details screen it's showing a different defense bonus. Other than that (which is a rareish situation) I never thought anything was off. You take hundreds of shots in-game and then remember the most unlikely event of the playthrough.

 

[sser]

You are more likely to notice missed high-percentage shots when you only got four squaddies on your team. XCOM's small squads emphasizes successes and enhances failures unlike the general disposability of your guys in X-Com. This also forces the target-only nature of shooting at things (instead of having wild shots) to make panicked soldiers look even more ridiculous. Instead of shooting in random directions, they just appear to automatically target their own allies.

 

[cvv]

Nah, it's not just the general "I remember the bad days and forget about the good ones" feeling. First I thought it might be that but now I really feel something's genuinelly off. But you're right, I don't have any calculations or tables, it's just a strong feeling, but as I said it's not THAT a big deal, after all I had a blast with one playthrough and I'm not gonna come back to the game until the next expansion.

'Twas just a thought.

 

[Heresiarch]

Just finished the base defense mission. Probably the best part of the expansion. This is with Ironman Classic BTW without reading (major) spoilers BTW. Screenshots & comments:

Spoiler

The sight of these two bros standing side by side facing surrounding mutons was fucking awesome

lol this looks like straight out of a shooter. I could feel that berserker foaming in my face. She survived (wow didn't know chitin plating is so awesome) and actually killed one of the serks and heavily damaged another one (close & personal + close combat specialist + rapid fire = 5 shots in one turn)

This part was fricking hairy. Two sectoid commanders, a MC'ed MEC (who shot my assault for 12+ damage by reaction fire), a fucking Cyberdisk, a muton who may or may not throw nades, and an Ethereal who would arrive right after that turn. Luckily enough no one dies in the process, double tap squad sight sniper with 137 aim and R&G ghost assault saved the day by assassinating the fucking MC aliens. Speaking of accuracy, I have a MEC (the one in the screenshot) who I augmented him right from Squaddie and grew up till Colonel. And now he has 111 accuracy. I do have Hidden Potential on, but that still doesn't make sense, as MEC are supposed to have the accuracy growth of heavies, and my best heavy has only 82 accuracy. Bug?

Sweet victory. The sacrifice of the four XCOM security guards won't be forgotten They actually killed 2 Mechtoids and a few Chryssalids. Not bad for assault rifle toting, 4 HP and less than 30 WIL rookies.

This mission was fucking intense. The longer research and my own genius at failing to capture an Outsider for 3 times (thus delayed the alien base assault) gave me plenty of time to train my troops and tech up, so I was defending with Titan Armor + full plasma weaponry. But the game also threw in a shitlot of aliens, there were literally three Mechtoids plus a variety of sectoids and mutons closing in at the same time while I had only 3 veterans plus a bunch of rookies. The game do provide reinforcements periodically, and I must say each time a veteran showed up I can't help but feel so fucking relieved and happy, seeing my guys' familiar face coming to rescue. If anything, XCOM did pretty good at making the players feeling attached to the soldiers, especially in this particular mission.

The only minor issue I had was the way the game picked my soldiers. It seems that the game will choose only Colonels (which I have exactly 6) which isn't a bad thing per se, but my problem was I have a Major MEC who became my favourite, and a Colonel heavy whom I don't use so much anymore, yet the game picked the latter for me. He was only in Carapace armor and with heavy laser. Luckily I didn't use the "make equipment available" function around that time and I kept my veterans fully equipped, because I was anticipating an invasion after the alien base assault, otherwise I'm screwed with a Colonel using personal armor and LMG. I even put all the obsoleted carapace armor and laser weapons on the rookies in case the game randomly pick them for me to use. Turned out it wasn't necessary. Only the highest ranked soldiers mattered.

Also, since the game chooses 6 highest ranked soldiers for you, what will happen if you have, say, 5 supports and 3 snipers, who all are Colonels? I suspect the result would probably make the situation unwinnable.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Been messing around with the game a bit, seeing what's new. Did very much like the fishing village mission, that's the kind of stuff I was hoping for, I only wish it was more difficult. I also do like the stealth gene implant - finally something that allows you to play aggressively and not just inching along to avoid triggering too many enemies. Put this on a sniper and you can hide him anywhere. Put it on a scout and you can use him as a spotter for the sniper on the highest point of the map. Shame they didn't fix the way enemies appear, that still sucks, but with the new options for recon and the need to play aggressively to collect the meld the game is a bit better. At least in early and mid game. Don't know how it looks later yet, but it probably might make the game too easy.

Decided to restart on impossible and because of a lucky break with the missions (extra engineers and money) managed to launch 4 satellites in the first month, so I didn't lose any countries yet. Of course, that means I quite likely won't be able to launch anything this month (too many engineers needed and not enough time to get them and build an uplink), so I'm making a rush at the alien base instead. Got a containment up and just shot down an UFO with 20 days to spare. With any luck (do I have to capture any other alien before that energy-whatever?) I'll be able to launch a strike just before the month is up. Of course, I'll probably have to do it with conventional weapons or maybe some laser rifles (depending on research time), but I think it's doable because I'm playing with the damage roulette setting that makes even weaker weapons usable to a degree, particularly with criticals.

 

[Heresiarch]

I don't know if rushing for the alien base is a wise choice, because you know,

Spoiler

destroying an alien base and taking their still-active antenna home is like inviting them to invade your own home...

but it shall be interesting to know what kind of offensive force you will face if you trigger the base defense mission very early, I've heard if you do it late you'll even face Sectopods.

 

[Zeriel]

Enemy packs are "level scaled" in that way. Applies to everything, really, even the alien base itself. AFAIK the only thing that doesn't change ever is the temple ship. So the only "bad idea" is to let months pass without advancing your tech. Doing things early is perfectly fine as long as you don't fail horribly.