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

[Zeriel]

Chill, just derping around. It's not a terrible game - I've sunk some 30-40 hours into EW - but nominating it for one of the best of the decade is just silly.

Do hate the blown-up toyish graphics design, though.

Within the genre, I'd say it is definitely one of the best of the last decade. There really isn't any competition. Either you're looking at some random indie games that have alright gameplay and shit aesthetics, or XCOM, which has good aesthetics and and slightly less than alright gameplay. It's not X-COM, but what is?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i'm the best football player in my neighborhood. this doesn't make me a world champion.

 

[Zeriel]

If the rest of the world stopped playing football for a decade, it might make you one of the best of the decade.

 

[Ebonsword]

Guess I'm pretty LTTP on this game.

I picked it up on a Steam sale a while ago, but I only got around to playing it this weekend.


I'm about 20 hours in, and I'm really enjoying it. It's definitely not as deep as original X-Com, but it plays *much* faster. I can finish a lot of missions in 15-20 minutes. It's been a while since I played OX-com, but I seem to remember it sometimes taking an hour to clear out a fairly simple mission because some annoying alien was camped out on the second-floor of a barn on the far side of the map.

I'm mostly using Sniper, Support, and Heavy troopers. My Colonel-rank Snipers are definitely my favorites--it always brings a smile to my face when one of them uses Double Tap + Squad Sight to take out a couple of enemies hiding in cover half-way across the map. For my next playthrough, I'm thinking of maybe using a bunch of Snipers with the Gunslinger upgrade and all of the pistol upgrades from the foundry. Could be fun...



Oh, I haven't found much use for the Assault class, so far. They don't seem to have the firepower of the Snipers or Heavies, nor do they have they speed and utility of the Supports. What am I missing about them?

 

[bonescraper]

Oh, I haven't found much use for the Assault class, so far. They don't seem to have the firepower of the Snipers or Heavies, nor do they have they speed and utility of the Supports. What am I missing about them?

The ability to move twice then shoot with a crazy small cooldown (2 turns)? Also, shotguns deal high damage and crit often. Oh, and they have a passive ability that lets them ingore enemy overwatch.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Is that Long War mod configurable like mods for Ufo: Extraterrestial, where you can just go into .CFG file and change many stuff?

And I have no idea what's going on with that keys giveaway... First - it didn't recognized my account(s) for my Steam, then they run out of key. But I still see people talking about receiving keys. What is this I don't even.

 

[Jasede]

Free with GMG https://goldenjoysticks.greenmangaming.com/

Great marketing strategy, this. Now I have basically no choice but to play it! (They already sent me the key.)
Well played. I'll get the expansion if I like it.

 

[Xeon]

Yea, they allow you to modify the mod and I think I read somewhere that they will allow you to make more additional modification in Ver 14 when it comes out, hopefully soon. I could be wrong.

Link to the modding section of the mod.

 

[Zeriel]

Is that Long War mod configurable like mods for Ufo: Extraterrestial, where you can just go into .CFG file and change many stuff?

And I have no idea what's going on with that keys giveaway... First - it didn't recognized my account(s) for my Steam, then they run out of key. But I still see people talking about receiving keys. What is this I don't even.

Yes, but it's probably less user-friendly than those mods. The "CFG" file is the text files Firaxis uses for balancing, but if you are willing to dig you can change pretty much everything.

 

[Multidirectional]

So I like this game but I also suck at it. My problem is that Normal is too easy but Classic is too hard. I would like to play Classic because of "unshackled AI" but without the aim/crit bonuses enemy gets and I can't find a mod that just does this one little thing. Any of you guys know of any ini tweak I could do to remove these bonuses from AI?

 

[Jaedar]

So I like this game but I also suck at it. My problem is that Normal is too easy but Classic is too hard. I would like to play Classic because of "unshackled AI" but without the aim/crit bonuses enemy gets and I can't find a mod that just does this one little thing. Any of you guys know of any ini tweak I could do to remove these bonuses from AI?

Classic doesn't get health/aim bonuses. Lower difficulties get reductions

Iirc normal and easy also cheat for the player if you start doing badly. I don't know any mods that does this. You could probably tweak the inis yourself to compensate for the boosts. Consider giting gud by watching stuff like this also https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXctaw5JGF4LcidFVdkQMV1tc2DfC8x3D

 

[SmartCheetah]

Am I the only one who is constantly crashing after loading a game in Long War mod? I can play for like...a minute or so, before wild CTD appears.

 

[Multidirectional]

Classic doesn't get health/aim bonuses. Lower difficulties get reductions

Iirc normal and easy also cheat for the player if you start doing badly. I don't know any mods that does this. You could probably tweak the inis yourself to compensate for the boosts. Consider giting gud by watching stuff like this also https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXctaw5JGF4LcidFVdkQMV1tc2DfC8x3D

Hmmm, but everywhere else I've read about this people are saying enemies do in fact get aim and crit bonuses on Classic and Impossible. Are you absolutely sure about it? I'm fine with other changes like less money, lower soldier health and more aggressive enemies, that's all good, I just don't want them to also have + aim/crit. That seems like overkill and in my opinion should have been added only for Impossible. Of course I'll keep trying to git gud if no other options present themselves but so far I keep getting my squads wiped out in most starting missions and I'm becoming annoyed.
*edit* Oh shit apparently I've just found my answer here:

How to remove alien Aim and Crit bonuses for Classic and Impossible difficulty

You just need to edit DefaultGameCore.ini.

Unit stats modifiers for each difficulty level are set in corresponding BalanceMods_ entries. For Classic difficulty you have to edit BalanceMods_Hard and for Impossible edit BalanceMods_Classic entries.

Aim bonus is set in iAim variable; crit bonus — in iCritHit variable. Set both to 0 to match settings with those set in Easy and Normal difficulty

Hopefully steam won't be an asshole about this and will let me keep modified file intact.

 

[Jaedar]

Classic doesn't get health/aim bonuses. Lower difficulties get reductions

Iirc normal and easy also cheat for the player if you start doing badly. I don't know any mods that does this. You could probably tweak the inis yourself to compensate for the boosts. Consider giting gud by watching stuff like this also https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXctaw5JGF4LcidFVdkQMV1tc2DfC8x3D

Hmmm, but everywhere else I've read about this people are saying enemies do in fact get aim and crit bonuses on Classic and Impossible. Are you absolutely sure about it? I'm fine with other changes like less money, lower soldier health and more aggressive enemies, that's all good, I just don't want them to also have + aim/crit. That seems like overkill and in my opinion should have been added only for Impossible. Of course I'll keep trying to git gud if no other options present themselves but so far I keep getting my squads wiped out in most starting missions and I'm becoming annoyed.

Well, whether they get bonus or malus and on which difficulty is all about where you place the norm

But because of several things(like the cheating on normal easy and shackled ai) I've come to the conclusion that classic is the 'default' difficulity and therefore the thing you should compare with.

 

[Multidirectional]

Maybe so, but like I said, I suck, and jump in difficulty from Normal to Classic is a bit too much for me, so I needed to customize it a bit. So far it seems to work better, I actually don't feel a need to restart entire game after few missions. I don't like the idea of playing non ironman and losing a lot from the start usually means an almost certain lost game down the road.

 

[Gozma]

Long War really revitalizes the game, five stars mayne

I got the expansion, tried to get through the first month of vanilla and was like nah I can't do this gonna die of bored let's go ahead and try long war and then regret that I bought this and uninstall it. But nope it's good

 

[Forest Dweller]

Just started playing this. It's good; I'm enjoying this. Will a replay with the expansion be worthwhile and different enough to be worth my time?

Also, does the expansion make the game harder by itself? I may up the difficulty on a replay, but if the expansion ALSO does that, I may not.

 

[Jaedar]

Long War really revitalizes the game, five stars mayne

I got the expansion, tried to get through the first month of vanilla and was like nah I can't do this gonna die of bored let's go ahead and try long war and then regret that I bought this and uninstall it. But nope it's good

I wish long war wasn't so incredibly long, and the second wave option to shorten it is really buggy(all ufos escape really fast, you can maybe get one interceptor on them which is never enough to actually accomplish anything).

Just started playing this. It's good; I'm enjoying this. Will a replay with the expansion be worthwhile and different enough to be worth my time?

Also, does the expansion make the game harder by itself? I may up the difficulty on a replay, but if the expansion ALSO does that, I may not.

Expansion is definitely easier lategame, possibly a bit harder by the early midgame.

Maybe so, but like I said, I suck, and jump in difficulty from Normal to Classic is a bit too much for me, so I needed to customize it a bit. So far it seems to work better, I actually don't feel a need to restart entire game after few missions. I don't like the idea of playing non ironman and losing a lot from the start usually means an almost certain lost game down the road.

Interesting. I can't stomach the idea of playing ironman because the game is a buggy piece of shit and I can't stand the idea of losing dudes/campaign because the game decided I could see through a wall or something like that.

 

[Gozma]

Ironman in the vanilla game helps a ton because the early game is the main difficulty (when starting over isn't so bad) while ironman can give you enough tension to get through the easy mid-late stuff without getting dead bored.

 

[Multidirectional]

I tried playing without ironman first time, but I developed a habit of reloading too much and bored myself. So I decided to try ironman and never wanted to look back since. The tension it adds just makes for a lot better experience to me.

Just started playing this. It's good; I'm enjoying this. Will a replay with the expansion be worthwhile and different enough to be worth my time?

Also, does the expansion make the game harder by itself? I may up the difficulty on a replay, but if the expansion ALSO does that, I may not.

I don't see a reason to play without expansion on first run, honestly. My first full playthrough was normal ironman with all content enabled. Didn't feel like it was too much.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

to me ironman doesn't add tension, it adds tedium.
xcox already must be played "make one step, overwatch the whole team", with ironman i would move only one tile per turn.

 

[Forest Dweller]

I don't see a reason to play without expansion on first run, honestly.

For me it was money and not being sure if I'd like the game.

 

[sser]

How does the mod handle having so many troops in the field at once balance-wise?

 

[Average Manatee]

How does the mod handle having so many troops in the field at once balance-wise?

Aliens get to be a lot more numerous and are stronger (both HP-wise and with lots of the perks that your soldiers can get).

Ultimately a large part of the mod is to get you away from building the perfect 4/6-man dream team. You'll want to have rookies and vets on most missions and you'll need to rotate soldiers in and out constantly since they fatigue. Higher troop count + more troops being used means that taking losses is a bearable fact of life rather than a complete screwup like in Vanilla.

 

[Xeon]

The only thing that is frustrating in Long Wars is the interceptors repair time I think because at start your interceptors get damaged quite a bit every encounter. Its just so hard to keep upgrading your items and still be effective with air battles. Upgrades later helps so much tho at least until late second year or third but you can probably get the Firestorm and probably be just as effective later.

Never managed to get to the end, I either lost most of my best troops or continued losing air battles until it felt hopeless.

Edit:
There is also giant version of aliens that show up in Terror missions. that's pretty cool.