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

[20 Eyes]

So I was just bored enough to try out the full version not removed from an inventory. Got as far as the controls section, accidentally changed the input device from "mouse" to "Xbox 360 gamepad" by clicking on the unlabelled arrow next to "mouse" to see what it did, and it completely disabled my controls. I had to alt-F4 out. I think this brief experience told me everything I need to know.

This is a poor post.

"I was playing Arcanum, when I almost immediately encountered a game breaking bug. I think this brief experience told me everything I need to know, I can now freely state the game has no redeeming qualities because I encountered a bug almost immediately and quit playing."

"I was playing Fallout, when suddenly my game froze. blablablablablablabla"

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Well, if Arcanum had had a demo that consisted of a gigantic goatse.jpg and then I had played it only to encounter a gamebreaking bug in the options menu, yes, I probably would have been put off.

 

[Emily]

Well, if Arcanum had had a demo that consisted of a gigantic goatse.jpg and then I had played it only to encounter a gamebreaking bug in the options menu, yes, I probably would have been put off.

i had the game freeze up on me only 1 time, and i played more then 20 h of it probably.

 

[Emily]

the make the game balanced. and that is good enough for me. If there was 2 slots, i think everyone would have the sameish setup, and there wouldnt be any hard choices to make.
I would go for everyone to have vest+scope, and supports would have medkit+vest.
In this system as it is now, there are a lot of hard choices to make, do i equip vest or scope on heavy guy, or go for grenade when i get the perk that allowed me to carry 3. Do i put arc thrower on assault, or heavy, or maybe even support.
With two slots, it would just eliminate most of these hard choices.

I kind of agree, but there aren't really that many choices to make. Support gets the arc thrower because it's the fastest (+medikit or a vest if no healing perks), sniper gets the scope, assault gets the vest/chitin, heavy gets the scope (grenades are weaker than rockets and you want him providing rocket cover and hanging back shooting twice or using holo ammo). You can, of course, mix things up, but it's not like there are that many choices (stimpaks can be good later). If you had more equipable items and more slots, you could make just as many (or more) "hard" choices.

i do not agree with you. For instance i had a radicaly different play stile. Also supports get 2 slots when they reach Major.
I mostly used arc on assault, medkit on support, S.C.O.P.E on sniper. On one hevy i used granades, on other i used vest..
So yeah there are more way to play the game. Also there are alien granades that deal 5 damage, and tactical advantage of breaking cover has saved my ass more then once ( i play on classic ironman)
Maybe if you savescum there are less options..

 

[Marsal]

Well so far I had horrible Mutton Rape, a lot of it.

This is wrong on so many levels. Zoophilia, Necrophilia + (tasteful?) rape. Truly an old an proud member of the prestigious Codex

I am not like you people and play on normal and I had plenty of deaths, the strategic layer is the hardest to balance since I had 2 countries going to bail and was saved by assaulting the base, the problem is that Terror Missions can fuck you over and the Satellite only detection system fucks you over over downing UFOs that means sometimes you cannot do any project because you lack materials.

Here's how I did things (nothing major or groundbreaking, but maybe you'd like to figure everything for yourself)

Spoiler

Favor engineers over other things in mission selection and build workshops early and often. You get up to 50% discount on items and buildings + a rebate for each connected workshop. Labs are not worth building until much later, IMO. Same goes for advanced power and uplink buildings.

Build satellites at the start of the month as they take 20 days to build and satellite uplink a bit later (14 days to build, IIRC). Wait and launch satellites a couple of days before the end of the month in countries that are in danger of pulling out. Try to get the whole continent covered for the bonus perk or just get rich countries (USA, Russia) with remaining satellites. Don't forget to transfer/buy interceptors for each continent you have satellites on.

If you need money first couple of months, sell everything but elerium, alloys and weapon fragments.

Try to focus your research and don't research anything you don't intend to build in the next few weeks. All research consumes materials you could use to research things you'll actually produce and put in action right away or even sell the resources and spend money for better things early on.

Ideally I like to build 4 uplinks in a square in first two rows to the left and next to the elevators and 4 workshops to the right, but not next to the elevators. In the remaining two spots on each side I put power generators (it helps a lot if there is steam in one of those spots), alien containment and an officers academy.

Anyone have a better placement strategy?

 

[Gozma]

Here are the qualitative differences between Classic and Impossible:

On Classic if you are in high cover and you mass fire on a single group of aliens, you will usually win without taking more than some non-crit hits at the beginning and always win easily from the early midgame on. High cover is essentially safe. You lose people to dumb mistakes, getting multiple enemy groups on you at once and occasionally maybe mid-turn cover destruction. Stuff like grenades and rockets are "oops I fucked up" tools to get you out of situations where you triggered too many enemies.

On Impossible at the beginning you will usually lose 1-2 dudes if you just straight-up fight from high cover against a single group, even if they are all in low. You have to remove their cover, flank, or burn Heavy rockets to win straight up single spawn fights, and even removing their cover isn't great unless you use the above flanked overwatch trick (on further testing you don't even need two guys - for the normal alien AI, a flanked enemy being overwatched is largely paralyzed). The increased enemy density means there are a lot more chances to trigger multiple groups, which is pretty much certain death unless you have gotten lucky to get a full deck of heavies. You need map knowledge to isolate groups. I suspect the game still degenerates later on but maybe the raw stat increases and higher incidence of "whoops, misclicked, out of cover instant death" troop losses are enough to counter that.

 

[Marsal]

I kind of agree, but there aren't really that many choices to make. Support gets the arc thrower because it's the fastest (+medikit or a vest if no healing perks), sniper gets the scope, assault gets the vest/chitin, heavy gets the scope (grenades are weaker than rockets and you want him providing rocket cover and hanging back shooting twice or using holo ammo). You can, of course, mix things up, but it's not like there are that many choices (stimpaks can be good later). If you had more equipable items and more slots, you could make just as many (or more) "hard" choices.

i do not agree with you. For instance i had a radicaly different play stile. Also supports get 2 slots when they reach Major.
I mostly used arc on assault, medkit on support, S.C.O.P.E on sniper. On one hevy i used granades, on other i used vest..
So yeah there are more way to play the game. Also there are alien granades that deal 5 damage, and tactical advantage of breaking cover has saved my ass more then once ( i play on classic ironman)
Maybe if you savescum there are less options..

Firstly, what's up with the non-capital "i" and double punctuation? Come on, bro, it's not that hard. Just use a spell checker and read your post before hitting "post reply".

Secondly, I finished the game on classic ironman and know what abilities the classes have.

Thirdly, your choices are suboptimal (read stupid).

Why equip Assault with an arc thrower if they are most likely to get shot (close range weapon) and are needed to kill/weaken aliens you stun? Support is much faster, thus able to get in range to actually use the close range stun, it has a "support" role, i.e. hangs back and heals, provides smoke cover and overwatch, plus it has an extra slot available.

You can take grenades or a vest with heavies, but they shouldn't be getting shot to need the extra protection and you can do everything with rockets that you can do with grenades, from longer range and with more damage.

You can also give the sniper chitin plating, pistol damage perk and go pew-pewing stuff. Is it better than a "traditional" sniper? I don't think it is.

Of course you can use different builds (4 classes, 6 dudes), but there are not that many variations that are actually (roughly) equally "optimal", as you think.

Here are the qualitative differences between Classic and Impossible:

On Classic if you are in high cover and you mass fire on a single group of aliens, you will usually win without taking more than some non-crit hits at the beginning and always win easily from the early midgame on. High cover is essentially safe. You lose people to dumb mistakes, getting multiple enemy groups on you at once and occasionally maybe mid-turn cover destruction. Stuff like grenades and rockets are "oops I fucked up" tools to get you out of situations where you triggered too many enemies.

On Impossible at the beginning you will usually lose 1-2 dudes if you just straight-up fight from high cover against a single group, even if they are all in low. You have to remove their cover, flank, or burn Heavy rockets to win straight up single spawn fights, and even removing their cover isn't great unless you use the above flanked overwatch trick (on further testing you don't even need two guys - for the normal alien AI, a flanked enemy being overwatched is largely paralyzed). The increased enemy density means there are a lot more chances to trigger multiple groups, which is pretty much certain death unless you have gotten lucky to get a full deck of heavies. You need map knowledge to isolate groups. I suspect the game still degenerates later on but maybe the raw stat increases and higher incidence of "whoops, misclicked, out of cover instant death" troop losses are enough to counter that.

What's the difference in strategic layer? I haven't had the time to try the game on Impossible yet. On my Classic ironman playthrough I got hit quite often when in full cover and, as I don't like waiting for my guys to recover, I just ran away and hid if I wasn't certain I could wipe the aliens with the first volley. I used explosives liberally, at least 2 heavies were always in the squad and almost never had any rockets left after the mission.

 

[Vival]

Council missions for me been rare, that is annoying since they reduce panic levels and they dont seem balanced against Terror missions because for every council mission I had 4-5 terror missions so there is no "cancel out" effect of panic added by Terror missions, I dont like the whole "pick one and get fucked on the other two" system.

Yeah, i hate those damn abductions. They probably wanted to avoid making panic an easily manageable thing. Anyways, satellites have a certain chance to lower panic by 1 point every month(on classic it's a coin flip at level 5 panic) and once a country has reached level 5, a sat also lowers the chance of defection at the end of the month. Shooting down UFOs helps as well.

 

[Misconnected]

Thirdly, your choices are suboptimal (read stupid).

Hmm... I tried experimenting a little bit with stunners on support and assault troopers, because my initial thought on unlocking the movement+ ability thingy was also that FiraXcom had somehow gotten the support and assault troopers mixed up. I'll admit I haven't done a whole hell of a lot of experimenting, and after reading your post I'm wondering if I may just have been fucked with by the ever-hateful gods of the RNG. Still, my limited experimenting led me to believe the crit+ ability thingy assault troopers get somehow applies to stunners, because I've had very significantly better luck actually KO'ing verious critters at various health levels with assault troopers, than I've had with support troopers.

The interface certainly makes it look like you'd be right. But then... This is the same interface that claims heavy troopers have 1% chance to hit pretty much regardless of circumstances, which insists on displaying every Z-level this side of the Alps if there's action within a structure, which thinks "Next Trooper" should be the last one you moved, which freaks the fuck out in a massive spastic fit if you try to throw a grenade, fire a rocket, use radar or anything else along those lines, which.... Gah..
Point being, the interface is something to be annoyed with, not something to put one's trust in. I mean, as best as I can determine, its primary function is to fuck with the player.

 

[Marsal]

Thirdly, your choices are suboptimal (read stupid).

Hmm... I tried experimenting a little bit with stunners on support and assault troopers, because my initial thought on unlocking the movement+ ability thingy was also that FiraXcom had somehow gotten the support and assault troopers mixed up. I'll admit I haven't done a whole hell of a lot of experimenting, and after reading your post I'm wondering if I may just have been fucked with by the ever-hateful gods of the RNG. Still, my limited experimenting led me to believe the crit+ ability thingy assault troopers get somehow applies to stunners, because I've had very significantly better luck actually KO'ing verious critters at various health levels with assault troopers, than I've had with support troopers.

The interface certainly makes it look like you'd be right. But then... This is the same interface that claims heavy troopers have 1% chance to hit pretty much regardless of circumstances, which insists on displaying every Z-level this side of the Alps if there's action within a structure, which thinks "Next Trooper" should be the last one you moved, which freaks the fuck out in a massive spastic fit if you try to throw a grenade, fire a rocket, use radar or anything else along those lines, which.... Gah..
Point being, the interface is something to be annoyed with, not something to put one's trust in. I mean, as best as I can determine, its primary function is to fuck with the player.

It should only depend on the remaining HP of the target. It's 90% for 1 HP alien with an unupgraded Arc Thrower, IIRC.

Then again, anything is possible (I am convinced that I missed a lot more than 55% of those 45% chance shots and have, as a direct consequence of this belief, stopped wasting ammo on anything below 60% to-hit chance, though it's probably just confirmation bias in action).

Support with Skeleton armor (or Ghost later) can cover the whole map in a couple of turns. My favorite class, because it's always in the right place and does shit that needs to be done when all others fail. Saved me quite a few soldiers and not just with healing

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

There can now never be such thing as a movement speed/distance penalty for wearing heavy armor or carrying lots of guns

There could be. Heavier armor classes could reduce the number of squares per move. Like ghost armor increases the number of squares. But instead of offering choices of "Slow heavy" and "Fast light" armors they made armor initially just improve, and then at the end you can choose more HP, flight, cloaking with grappling hook, etc.

Not specifically related to Sea but more of a general rant: Ghost armor also provides 20 defense which is the same bonus you get from being in light cover, only without the crit reduction of being in cover. Since so many people in this thread cannot into Xcom cover mechanics, light cover reduces enemy accuracy by 20, high cover by 40. They also reduce critical chance. Light plasma rifles (What thin men and early mutons use) provide +10 accuracy. So barring any height differences, close range modifiers (There's no penalty for long range fire, you just start to get bonuses the closer you are), and additional shit a thin man firing at your soldier in high cover is rolling whatever his base accuracy is -30 which isn't out of the realm of possibility at all.
That's how you lost your soldier.

Let's also note that the lack of proper inventory management for soldiers means that ammo management other than reloading is now non-existent; you can't choose between lots of guns but little ammo, or few guns and lots of grenades, etc. Why?

Because there are classes now and classes get access to their gun types and that's it. Grenades are a finite resource because of how useful they are at damaging groups of enemies and destroying cover, that's why there are perks for some classes that specifically increase the number of grenades that soldier can carry. Not being able to carry a backpack full of grenades may not be realistic, but if you're arguing for realism then that's fucking crazy.

Sorry, can't happen. The game is specifically designed and balanced around the existing encounter sizes of 3-6 dudes, to match your own 3-6 dudes. If enemies free roam then you would routinely end up fighting 10-15+ aliens at once, or more, which would be almost impossible to deal with given how they scale up. See what I mean about one change affecting everything else?

As I've already said multiple goddamn times in this thread, enemies do roam. I'll routinely be in a firefight against aliens and during the aliens' turn a new group will move in and join the fight. And I've been in fights with 7+ aliens engaged in combat at once. Chryssalids, no less. And then during that encounter some floaters roamed in from the side and engaged me.

It is a simplification. Lets not forget that the scope isn't put on a weapon, it is just a magical thing that makes you have better aim with BOTH weapons. The vest is just a strange thing, since you already got different armour and then... you put on a vest, which also gives you more HP. You could still have choice with a more realistic inventory (as in things sea mentioned) and you can't at any rate carry everything, but now we are talking about a simplified game were all is made to fit their simplfied model. The small maps, squads and lack of inventory all go hand in hand. Only one base, only one troop transport, a cyclic alien mission system instead of a random or more "alien masterplan" one.

Alright, retarded for multiple reasons. Reason #1, the scope isn't a scope, it's a "S.C.O.P.E." which is Xcom for "Bullshit we researched from alien tech". The description!
"When Equipped, this advanced targeting module integrates with XCOM's Active HUD system to offer a significant increase in the soldier's aim."
So even though it looks like a scope and it's called a scope it's bullshit alien magic your R&D team made in a week.

Reason #2, IT'S A GODDAMN UNDER-SHIRT. FUCK. The description is lightweight and the picture shows it skin-tight. FUCK. IT'S A SPACE-AGE ALIEN WIFEBEATER.

Reason #3, no shit small maps, squads, and lack of inventory all go hand in hand. The whole game moved to this simpler boardgamey style and it would be silly as shit not to adjust the whole game to it accordingly.

Reason #4, I'm retarded because I've been making this giant stupid-ass post as I scroll through the thread and I see Bonescraper was alright fighting the good fight on this shit.

 

[Marsal]

Sorry, can't happen. The game is specifically designed and balanced around the existing encounter sizes of 3-6 dudes, to match your own 3-6 dudes. If enemies free roam then you would routinely end up fighting 10-15+ aliens at once, or more, which would be almost impossible to deal with given how they scale up. See what I mean about one change affecting everything else?

As I've already said multiple goddamn times in this thread, enemies do roam. I'll routinely be in a firefight against aliens and during the aliens' turn a new group will move in and join the fight. And I've been in fights with 7+ aliens engaged in combat at once. Chryssalids, no less. And then during that encounter some floaters roamed in from the side and engaged me.

This is correct. I observed the alien movement a few times (via sniper poke balls and Ghost armor) and they do move and can enter the fight without being "triggered". They don't move very far each turn and I think they all have a maximum allowed radius of movement from a spawn point (not 100% sure). The problem I have with this is their "intro" move. It can really mess you up (as I described in detail earlier).

 

[kris]

It is a simplification. Lets not forget that the scope isn't put on a weapon, it is just a magical thing that makes you have better aim with BOTH weapons. The vest is just a strange thing, since you already got different armour and then... you put on a vest, which also gives you more HP. You could still have choice with a more realistic inventory (as in things sea mentioned) and you can't at any rate carry everything, but now we are talking about a simplified game were all is made to fit their simplfied model. The small maps, squads and lack of inventory all go hand in hand. Only one base, only one troop transport, a cyclic alien mission system instead of a random or more "alien masterplan" one.

Alright, retarded for multiple reasons. Reason #1, the scope isn't a scope, it's a "S.C.O.P.E." which is Xcom for "Bullshit we researched from alien tech". The description!
"When Equipped, this advanced targeting module integrates with XCOM's Active HUD system to offer a significant increase in the soldier's aim."
So even though it looks like a scope and it's called a scope it's bullshit alien magic your R&D team made in a week.

Reason #2, IT'S A GODDAMN UNDER-SHIRT. FUCK. The description is lightweight and the picture shows it skin-tight. FUCK. IT'S A SPACE-AGE ALIEN WIFEBEATER.

Reason #3, no shit small maps, squads, and lack of inventory all go hand in hand. The whole game moved to this simpler boardgamey style and it would be silly as shit not to adjust the whole game to it accordingly.

Reason #4, I'm retarded because I've been making this giant stupid-ass post as I scroll through the thread and I see Bonescraper was alright fighting the good fight on this shit.

So basically you agreed with me on all most things, but had to be the second to point out about the magic scope? but you get points for good descriptions. Seemingly you just prefer the gamey mode, I don't. I like smarter games.

The undershirt is retarded, it is like having a kevlar vest under your power armour. And that one I knew was a undershirt, the picture shows it to being that. Both that one and scope takes "equipment spots" for no other reason than gamey ones. If you want to describe why you can't take something else (a grenade!) because of them, it would just sound retarded.

Personally I think the silly thing is that it WAS moved over to that boardgamey style. And I guess we won't agree on that one. i won't finish this game...

 

[Gozma]

What's the difference in strategic layer? I haven't had the time to try the game on Impossible yet.

Everyone starts at two panic besides the starting country, and abductions cause two panic to the country they hit and one to the whole continent it's on, for a total of three to the hit country - therefore one 3-way abduction puts two countries in 5-bar panic right off. You would have to do some really extreme stuff and get lucky to launch more than one new satellite in the first month, so you are pretty much guaranteed to lose multiple countries since there will always be two abduction missions in the first month. Satellites are also less likely to drain panic off of the countries they're over so you could easily get in a situation where a country with a satellite could get 5 bar panic from abductions in other countries in the continent and you can't do shit about it. However, I think if you don't lose anything on the tactical layer the ideal geoscape strategy on classic (which saves all 16 countries pretty handily if you never lose anything on the tactical layer) would probably still work out most of the time, you would just have no margin for error. There are no abductions once every country has a satellite or is dead so the main source of panic shuts off eventually.

 

[Marsal]

What's the difference in strategic layer? I haven't had the time to try the game on Impossible yet.

Everyone starts at two panic besides the starting country, and abductions cause two panic to the country they hit and one to the whole continent it's on, for a total of three to the hit country - therefore one 3-way abduction puts two countries in 5-bar panic right off. You would have to do some really extreme stuff and get lucky to launch more than one new satellite in the first month, so you are pretty much guaranteed to lose multiple countries since there will always be two abduction missions in the first month. Satellites are also less likely to drain panic off of the countries they're over so you could easily get in a situation where a country with a satellite could get 5 bar panic from abductions in other countries in the continent and you can't do shit about it. However, I think if you don't lose anything on the tactical layer the ideal geoscape strategy on classic (which saves all 16 countries pretty handily if you never lose anything on the tactical layer) would probably still work out most of the time, you would just have no margin for error. There are no abductions once every country has a satellite or is dead so the main source of panic shuts off eventually.

Maybe you could skip building satellites and just "rush" the alien base to lower the panic? What do you need besides the live alien "captain" and a key? I don't really remember how long the research takes.

 

[Gozma]

Nothing, you don't even need alien containment. But I think the only UFO in March comes on like the 10th or so and I think it would not be possible to get the arc thrower in time.

 

[Marsal]

Nothing, you don't even need alien containment. But I think the only UFO in March comes on like the 10th or so and I think it would not be possible to get the arc thrower in time.

I quickly tried it. You can have the Arc Thrower on 11th or 12th and the UFO shows up on the 14th, after the Council mission on 13th. I took the 4 scientists in the 2nd mission, but maybe it can be done without them them. Lab finishes at the same time as the thrower, so no help there. This is on Impossible.
I think it would be possible to open 4 engineers, workshop, arc thrower, key, attack alien base before the end of March. Doing it with 4 Lieutenants (maybe a Captain or two) with "human" weapons would be a challenge though.

 

[Gozma]

The dates are somewhat randomized, I had a run where I had the first abduction on like the 3rd or 4th and the first UFO mission on the 8th or so. I was like, huh, that's so early, let me try starting over and doing 4 engineer->workshop->uplink (the extra corpses on impossible probably pay for at least one extra satellite, heh) but the first abduction mission was on IIRC the 8th or 9th and 10 days for a workshop and 14 for uplink would not be possible. Sometimes the order changes, too - usually the council mission is the last mission of the month for me. But there is always only one UFO and it's always a small scout, I think it's tutorial leftovers.

I guess that could suggest a flexible strategy where if the abduction is very early you can go for the second uplink and if it's late you can try getting the arc thrower.

I'd be interested to know what is in the March version of the base. I know the May version has only Chrysalids as the apex enemy, while June has "real" mutons (there are "preview mutons" in May on board UFOs, which have light plasma rifles, but they don't show up in the base) and cyberdisks that make doing it in June much more dangerous. Might just be sectoids everywhere.

 

[Drakron]

Here's how I did things (nothing major or groundbreaking, but maybe you'd like to figure everything for yourself)

I think you misunderstand what I meant.

Several projects require Alien shit, like the UFO Interceptor that requires a large amount of weapon parts so if you happen to be running low on the Alien shit required you cannot start meaning you have 3-4 projects in Red despite having the money for then and so no progress can be made.

Now I am saying this because in X-Com a lot of time was spend on intercepting UFOs and down then, in XCom the earlier gameplay is made by doing "one of three" Terror Missions because that is the only thing that happened to me, Council missions are still rare and UFO detections dont seen to happen that often and neither are Landed UFOs.

This mean Alien shit became very hard to come by since 1-2 months can pass and not one UFO decide to show up, meaning I have to deal with Terror Missions as only means of getting Alien Shit.

Its not as if X-Com did not had issues were their Terror Missions at first were Squad killers but at least the strategic level was relative easy to figure out and control, in XCom the strategic level is harder because, well its the opposite of X-Com were combat was "LOL Random" ... events triggers in XCom seem LOL Random, also because of the new detection grind being satellite based you dont even know if they are all hanging in Australia if you dont have a satellite there or they are just lazying around and doing nothing, considering how the Terrior Missions of the "Pick One Out of Three" are incredible punishing, you get a Panic reduction on the COUNTY were that take place and a Panic increase on the CONTINENTS that the missions you HAD to ignore, also the moment you get full continent coverage you have no way to keep it further down by launching satellites, only way is Terror Missions to spawn in that country alone or a Council Mission.

I would say Combat is functional but I dont like the way it scales things, one thing is a hard cap and another is "always leveling everything to you", its always strikes me as a boring lazy way to keep "challenge level".

 

[Emily]

I would say Combat is functional but I dont like the way it scales things, one thing is a hard cap and another is "always leveling everything to you", its always strikes me as a boring lazy way to keep "challenge level".

There is no level scaling in the game, i had a ironman run where i lost all my squad members, and had human weapons with carpace armor and the game still spawned very strong enemies, despite me not having even the slightest chance of killing even one group.[/quote]

 

[Gozma]

If a country has satellite coverage the abduction missions don't go to that country. If you have like Europe without any satellites and every other country covered, all three abduction missions will be in Europe (and IIRC you only get the good panic reduction in one country for doing one successfully and no continent panic, so it's very good).

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Seemingly you just prefer the gamey mode, I don't. I like smarter games.

I think that's the main thing. I wouldn't really call X-com smarter than Xcom, but deeper definitely. I'm just in here being the Xcom defense force because even though it's a different style to X-com I think it's executed quite well and works great with the setting, but if it's actually enjoyable or not is a personal preference. Plus I'm shouting when incorrect things get mentioned like aliens not patrolling.

 

[Gozma]

Having messed with it a bit I'm pretty sure a March base attack obtained by taking 4 scientists at the first abduction to rush arc throwers is probably the way to go. Seems like my very early UFO was an unlikely aberration - if you can get a UFO before the 11th you have a chance to get up 5 satellites in the first month, but it's rare. There's a chance the game will fuck you on the arc thrower path anyway but there's a chance you will get the bad graveyard map as a mission and get your team instagibbed on impossible too.

You also get a huge amount of salable shit from the base on top of the panic reduction so just for capital purposes it seems like a good idea. 2 impossible-scaled sectoid commanders in every UFO starting in April might get a bit interesting

 

[sea]

I just realized that Classic mode gives enemies bonuses to hit chance, critical chance and defense.



No wonder they are constantly getting crits and instakilling my soldiers from across the map, making impossible shots, etc. Lame to say the least, why can't I have a match where the game doesn't resort to cheating AI or enemies dropping out of thin air (bomb defusals)?

The more I play, the more I am frustrated by the little things. Doing movement based on number of moves and not distance is stupid, it means your have to choose between either your dudes running into the open and getting shot or vacuuming up more enemies, or moving them in non-ideal ways. The free move that enemies get as soon as you see them means it is literally impossible to take anyone by surprise, which is stupid. Satellites are really expensive to build and maintain... they provide good benefits but I can't ever see myself having more than 2-3 of them due to the cost involved. Interceptors are just not worth upgrading compared to everything else. Line of sight issues in combat are annoying, always. When firing rockets at a spot on the ground, sometimes they will seek out the nearest enemy anyway, so the blast radius does not affect other nearby enemies.

Yeah, not really coherent thoughts, but there are a lot of odd rough edges that really make me wonder how much play-testing Firaxis did with classic X-COM fans. The number of disabled features modders have managed to get working also give the impression that they skipped some final testing/balancing/polishing.

 

[circ]

I think these impossible crit lucky shots might have been a way for the designers to tip their hats at old XCom/UFO, where you would get plasma shots off the screen, instakilling your guys and making you go what the fuck just happened?

And as for the scaling, or lack of it - they obviously didn't learn anything from the Colonization remake they did with the Civ IV release; where you had to intentionally hold off gathering bells until you had a massive army, unless you wanted to get completely raped by the king and his continuously growing forces. Only this time it's reversed, and you have to follow the story based missions to get the right upgrades, unless again, you want to be raped. Possibly the rush campaign was implemented so the player wouldn't notice just how little content there actually is.

Also, just throwing this out there, replayed one save, just some random UFO landing clearing mission and ran into my first freeze bug. Run around, run into some drones, with a mechanical cannon or whatever it's called - always fun. Cannon decides to target my guys, of which a few are unfortunately a little too bunched up. They get hit with super grenades and two guys go comatose. I rush the fuck back with my forward guys, because fuck yes I had medkits on most people and one of the comatose guys was the medic, get them revived, sort of, and blow the cannon the fuck away. Run into some floaters, blow those up and then it's suddenly the AI's turn, showing a bunch of mutons in the fog and then it just freezes. I go make some tea, return 10 minutes later, no change. Take a shit, no change. Alt out and close it. Well. Atleast it fucking runs the campaign unlike Civ V, where you were lucky to get the thing running past the faction selection 1 times out of 10. Ok, 50.