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

[Jasede]

They never become obsolete. I honestly think rushing Alloy SHIVs is the optimal strategy for Ironman Impossible. (That's not with Long War, I haven't tried Long War.)

They are just better than any soldier can be. But the base defense mission will be very difficult if you aren't careful, I almost lost my save there. SHIVs never get obsolete, regenerate, have huge defense, can't be PSI attacked, can fly...

Honestly, they are just better than even 6 highest ranking soldiers.


You probably remembered the tanks from the original and didn't give them a good try, MadMaxHellfire. If you upgrade to Alloy SHIVs with lasers you can already win the game solely with that. Once you get plasma it's over. Hover is optional; i often forget to use it, but I still upgraded all my SHIVs to it since I have no use for all the money and materials I have. On Impossible Ironman. SHIVs have made me so rich I have multiple Firestorms with Fusion weapons stationed at every continent; plus, I didn't lose a single country, ever. Panic is 1 everywhere. SHIVs are OP!

The one thing is that base defense mission, it nearly made me lose my safe. Make sure that even if you exploit SHIVs you level up at least 4 good soldiers. I only had 3 core soldiers I would sometimes use, my 2 elite snipers and Zhang from the council mission, but sadly everyone but 1 Sniper died on the base defense. It doesn't matter, though. I never needed to use human troops ever again from that point on.


If you do want to try what I did, go Ironman Classic or Impossible, start in ASIA (yeah, I know, WTF?) and rush a foundry / Alloy SHIVs. You can have them by the beginning of February thanks to the Asia bonus, and they're so good that you should get enough money coming in to cover everything in satellites without a problem, even without the better starting bonuses. Plus, Asia allows you to research SHIV upgrades ASAP since money is not a problem. Also, sell aggressively, I sold tons of Elerium and Alloys to pay for more satellites and buildings to overwhelm the enemy in a time race.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i only play long war, so mileage may vary.

i gave the alloy shiv with lasers a try. yes, it can hit hard but once it's hit itself it becomes useless (fewer hps, lower accuracy. it makes no sense playing without this rule).
also other than cover fire and an item or two, it lacks any kind of aoe or crowd control which almost all the soldiers can provide. i'm sort of far in the game (berserkers just started appearing but i still have to capture an alien. probably i missed it but it looks like i have to get a sectoid and only a sectoid, or i just encountered a new bug) and i'm still killing a lot of stuff with grenades, which shivs haven't and which even the greenest recruit has aplenty.

 

[Raghar]

SHIV is only way how you can have high deflection in the completely open space. When you play ironman, it's extremelly important. Thought when you lose squads early, you don't have money to manufacture it and time to research it.

 

[Average Manatee]

In Long War the cost to rebuild a SHIV that was destroyed is basically nothing. I'd rather have a shiv take 2 hits and need to be rebuilt than 2 soldiers take a hit and be out for a month each (or worse, crit and dead). Alloy SHIVs are even more durable.

You still don't want them to get hit, you use them to rush and finish off the last enemy of a pod. If they fail or accidentally activate another pod by moving forward they'll have a better chance to survive than an assault did and if they don't they aren't a big loss. And if you are in a crunch in a multiple activation they can tank fire for a turn while you salvage the situation.

 

[Raghar]

I thought they explode in normal game, and you need to manufacture another one, and have at least one as backup.

 

[Average Manatee]

They do in vanilla. In Long War a destroyed SHIV is recovered as salvage and can be used to build a new SHIV at something like -75% cost of buying a fresh one.

 

[Raghar]

I thought Long war was about increasing difficulty...

 

[Average Manatee]

Its about more tools vs. better enemies. If you use the tools well its arguably easier than vanilla in many ways.

 

[Zetor]

The question is, does using LW's tools well mean straight-up exploiting (like tilescanning for stealthers, the "kite enemies around forever while an untouchable squadsight sniper kills them one by one" thing, etc), tedious shit (overwatch for 20 turns until a pod walks into you), or actual 'tacticool' stuff such as what you're forced to do in JA2 1.13 compared to vanilla (ie. don't just turtle in one position unless you want to get flanked/snipered/grenaded/mortared, maintain multiple fire teams, etc)?

Though I did notice that LW seems to have nixed Mimetic Skin (and moved a nerfed version of it to a scout talent instead), which is an utterly ridiculous genemod in vanilla -- having a support or assault with it basically wins exalt missions by itself!

 

[Jasede]

Well, Exalt missions win themselves no matter what.

 

[Zetor]

Well, Exalt missions win themselves no matter what.

That's probably true for later missions (I assume their tech doesn't scale too well). However, my first exalt mission was a king-of-the-hill (defend the transmitter) mission, and since I'm playing Army of Four on classic, I only had 4+1 soldiers against like... 20, the comm towers were all 2 turns apart, and everyone on my team was still armed with ballistic weaponry not to mention that a single rocket from an exalt heavy would one-shot anyone on my team. I'd like to see how dealing with that could be done in a legit way; maybe bring 3 heavies with 2 rockets each and just blow everything up, then pick off the rest while disrupting weapons with comm tower every 2 turns?

Mimetic Skin seems to break a lot of other things in the game, too. I was able to get full meld and then kill the entire enemy force (mechtoid+sectoids, mutons, seekers) on a map without them getting the chance to even see any of my characters except for the second seeker getting a shot at a squaddie assault... and then the last muton got arc thrower'd in the face for the extra humiliation factor. This is without the usual archangel armor / endgame death-from-above stuff on the sniper -- just a laser sniper rifle and squadsight.

 

[Jasede]

All right, but to be fair your technology was really lagging behind, you could have had Alloy SHIVs or beam weapons by the first mission. Would have been important with only 4 core operatives. Still, I don't know how early Exalt missions can come, so if you face your first one with ballistic weapons, yeah, it's probably a pain. Especially if you are limiting your squad size.

 

[Raghar]

Well, Exalt missions win themselves no matter what.

That's probably true for later missions (I assume their tech doesn't scale too well). However, my first exalt mission was a king-of-the-hill (defend the transmitter) mission, and since I'm playing Army of Four on classic, I only had 4+1 soldiers against like... 20, the comm towers were all 2 turns apart, and everyone on my team was still armed with ballistic weaponry not to mention that a single rocket from an exalt heavy would one-shot anyone on my team. I'd like to see how dealing with that could be done in a legit way; maybe bring 3 heavies with 2 rockets each and just blow everything up, then pick off the rest while disrupting weapons with comm tower every 2 turns?

Don't play at impossible, and concentrate on defending one node?

 

[not an artichoke]

They won't use rockets unless you put two men close enough together to be nailed by 1 rocket.

 

[Zetor]

They won't use rockets unless you put two men close enough together to be nailed by 1 rocket.

Hmmm, I'm pretty sure I had a support getting 1-shot by a rocket fired directly at her at one point, and she was 4+ tiles away from everyone else.

 

[Jasede]

I forgot to mention something. Rushing Tactical Rigging should make Exalt missions much easier. I always get it first and win month 2 by lobbing mad grenades.

 

[Average Manatee]

The question is, does using LW's tools well mean straight-up exploiting (like tilescanning for stealthers, the "kite enemies around forever while an untouchable squadsight sniper kills them one by one" thing, etc), tedious shit (overwatch for 20 turns until a pod walks into you), or actual 'tacticool' stuff such as what you're forced to do in JA2 1.13 compared to vanilla (ie. don't just turtle in one position unless you want to get flanked/snipered/grenaded/mortared, maintain multiple fire teams, etc)?

It's about 50/50.

For example, LW now gives you a scanner which activates a minimap showing nearby enemies up to 10 tiles or so beyond your vision range, so you can move up right next to them to overwatch, and if they don't run into you then you use a steady-aimed rocketeer to pulverize them (rocketeers starting with 3 rockets in LW, so you can use them pretty liberally).

The only point where you really need to exploit stuff is during the large landed UFOs early game, which you aren't really supposed to be attacking in the first place.

I forgot to mention something. Rushing Tactical Rigging should make Exalt missions much easier. I always get it first and win month 2 by lobbing mad grenades.

Best part of LW (aside from the obvious squad size increase) is that units start with 2 item slots by default and tactical rigging gives them a 3rd. Early game is so much smoother when you can pack 9+ grenades from the get go. Brazil as a starting country even lets you start with 3 items for early game armors.

 

[Noodles]

You can still bait the AI into losing. So LW doesn't improve anything other than making it arbitrary by throwing bigger and more monsters at you.

Why not just solo run with vanilla?

 

[Raghar]

I looked at LW stream, and I seen they increased squad size to 6, but they still have that group of 3 aliens pods, if they added more pods to increase difficulty, they did bad work, because increase in difficulty would happen only by making pods larger while keeping numbers of aliens the same. Three alliens per pod means the gameplay would remain the same as in original, but you'd get two more units, which means as long as you will not activate multiple pods, the mission would become easier. (And when you are afraid they would activate TWO BIG PODs, make pods of uneven size. Pods of uneven size at least reduce the chance of repeated tactic.)

Then they thought of a smart idea of sawing off shotguns. Of course, real world sawn off shotguns are made from these long range cheap hunting shotguns to have something you could use at short range and in rooms. Sawing off barrel is supposed to increase spread, reduce problems with handling, and increase concealment. XCOM shotguns have loading mechanism under the barrel, and they are somewhat automatic to begin with. Sawing barrel off wouldn't help to reduce length of weapon, increase concealment, and would endanger hand of the shooter.

Suspension of disbelief boys. When you wanna to design something, think about how it would work.

So far I'm unimpressed in actual implementation of LW and its gameplay. It looks like a grind, and added stuff just because they could add the stuff.

 

[Average Manatee]

You can still bait the AI into losing. So LW doesn't improve anything other than making it arbitrary by throwing bigger and more monsters at you.

Why not just solo run with vanilla?

Well there are aliens with lightning reflexes and stuff eventually. It's not quite as easy as "overwatch and kill everything". Again, its more about having more interesting tactical options and more to do rather than simply being a hard mode mod.

I looked at LW stream, and I seen they increased squad size to 6, but they still have that group of 3 aliens pods, if they added more pods to increase difficulty, they did bad work, because increase in difficulty would happen only by making pods larger while keeping numbers of aliens the same. Three alliens per pod means the gameplay would remain the same as in original, but you'd get two more units, which means as long as you will not activate multiple pods, the mission would become easier. (And when you are afraid they would activate TWO BIG PODs, make pods of uneven size. Pods of uneven size at least reduce the chance of repeated tactic.)

Aliens get much tougher over time (see ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Alien_Life_Forms_(Long_War)) and eventually you'll have up to 6 aliens in a pod. LW generally has 1 or 2 more pods on the map which is needed to counter how much more consumables you have (if they stuck with 3 pods like vanilla then you'd literally have a grenade for every alien + some to spare).

It's true though that LW starts out way easier than vanilla. LW actually approximates a normal game difficulty curve as opposed to vanilla where the first mission is virtually impossible to reliably win and the only thing more difficult is first month bomb disposal missions. It's not really until months 3 or 4 that LW starts to ramp up.

 

[Noodles]

Well there are aliens with lightning reflexes and stuff eventually. It's not quite as easy as "overwatch and kill everything".

Why not just make an alien with massive HP.

I see no discernible difference between LW and vanilla with gimping formulas.

as opposed to vanilla where the first mission is virtually impossible to reliably win and the only thing more difficult is first month bomb disposal missions. It's not really until months 3 or 4 that LW starts to ramp up.

The first mission of course is a shocker to anyone who first plays. You can easily win the first mission by doing, what makes the entire XCOM (new) release tedious...by baiting the AI.

Don't get me wrong. I have over 1000 hours in Firaxis XCom, but a spade is a spade.

 

[Average Manatee]

Well there are aliens with lightning reflexes and stuff eventually. It's not quite as easy as "overwatch and kill everything".

Why not just make an alien with massive HP.

I see no discernible difference between LW and vanilla with gimping formulas.

Maybe actually playing LW would show you the difference between LW and vanilla.

as opposed to vanilla where the first mission is virtually impossible to reliably win and the only thing more difficult is first month bomb disposal missions. It's not really until months 3 or 4 that LW starts to ramp up.

The first mission of course is a shocker to anyone who first plays. You can easily win the first mission by doing, what makes the entire XCOM (new) release tedious...by baiting the AI.

Don't get me wrong. I have over 1000 hours in Firaxis XCom, but a spade is a spade.

Overwatches have very low chance to hit at that point, its definitely not easy and leaves a huge part of the mission up to chance.

 

[Noodles]

Maybe actually playing LW would show you the difference between LW and vanilla.



Overwatches have very low chance to hit at that point, its definitely not easy and leaves a huge part of the mission up to chance.

I'm playing LW now and other than the fluff I can see no difference than playing vanilla...lipstick on a pig.

The only reason to use over-watch is to let the AI come to you to be slaughtered. Same as vanilla.

 

[oldmanpaco]

I played vanilla when it came out and got seriously bored with it fast. At least with LW (once I figured out the air war part) its interesting.

 

[Average Manatee]

I'm playing LW now and other than the fluff I can see no difference than playing vanilla...lipstick on a pig.

The only reason to use over-watch is to let the AI come to you to be slaughtered. Same as vanilla.

Joined: Friday