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

[mediocrepoet]

I kinda wish they had left the original ‘plot’ and set the game post-invasion in an alien-controlled world. Just say that the funding is coming from the resistance in that country, and that the terror level is the current risk of that country’s resistance movement being found/wiped-out.

The gameplay would be exactly the same, but being a small resistance would make the four-man parties seem slightly less ludicrous. Would also explain why every soldier in the “last, best hope of mankind” is a rookie mook who can’t hit the side of a friggen barn.

That would be awesome. Already sounds better than the DLC they have announced.

 

[Bigg Boss]

If they made it too complicated the poor console gamers couldn't figure it out.

Yeah, that's why the original game was never a Playstation game. Never ever.

Yeah I know it was for the PSX. Was the Playstation version as good though? I know Warcraft 2 wasn't. Lets face it, they simplified the new one for the mass market whether they released the old one for Playstation or not. Civilization Revolution went through a similar change. It begins to get old. I mean, my soldiers can't even crouch for crying out loud. The bugs are fucking ridiculous. The lack of features just pisses me off, even though I like the game, I feel it could have been better. :shrug:

 

[circ]

I played it on Amiga CD 32 too, and it seemed like the same game to me. This was back in the day when games were ported to consoles and had to suck it up and not the other way around.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Play your fagcom while I enjoy 95% losses during terror site missions on Superhuman in the real X-Com.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Yeah, that’s heaps more shallow than the original game where you walk out of cover, fire, walk back, kneel, walk out of cover, fire, walk back, kneel, walk out of cover, fire, walk back, kneel, walk out of cover, fire, walk back, kneel, walk out of cover, fire, walk back, kneel.

well, you know, first of all every time you walk out of cover you're risking a reaction shot. every time you take an action while an alien is looking at you you risk a reaction shot. but they haven't 360° view, you could truly flank them, often the forward squad doesn't shoot at aliens but at walls, you open a hole on the side of a building to let another squad member reach the target without being spotted.
or you could bring lots of grenades and explosives. have you ever killed an enemy in the complete safeness of a building by placing a bomb right beside him, standing on the other side of the wall, and just walking away?
or a wall of exploding rockets! automatic rocket launcher with incendiary ammo (oh, right, different ammo for weapons), it's rarely going to score a direct hit but scorching the whole map is damn sexy! and sometimes all that fire gives you a stunned alien even if you didn't bring stun weapons.

but what are we arguing about? it's a 20 years old game! it's ducking obvious it has lots of limitations because old games could stuff only so much in those computers' memories. now we could store all the human knowledge into a single device and still today's games feels the retarded version of their predecessors.
THIS makes me angry.

I played it on Amiga CD 32 too, and it seemed like the same game to me. This was back in the day when games were ported to consoles and had to suck it up and not the other way around.

amiga version lacked extra animations (like fire and smoke, they were still) and night missions.
i've been told about the latter, i don't know if it was only no visual difference or the missions were the same whatever the time they took place.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Play your fagcom while I enjoy 95% losses during terror site missions on Superhuman in the real X-Com.

I'm not finding this game any easier, whatever else can be said about it. Thank you for your novel, insightful and witty post nonetheless.

 

[Gord]

No guys, you did misunderstand him!
He's completely right that this particular level of masochism enjoyment can not be achieved in XCOM-EU:
Losses in percent: (Dead Soldiers)/(Total Soldiers)*100
In case of the new game that gives 5/6=83,3%, which is ~12% below 95%.

QED

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I'm not finding this game any easier, whatever else can be said about it. Thank you for your novel, insightful and witty post nonetheless.

So, how many missions do you actually lose? How many men do you averagely lose per 10 aliens killed?

 

[Admiral jimbob]

I'm not finding this game any easier, whatever else can be said about it. Thank you for your novel, insightful and witty post nonetheless.

So, how many missions do you actually lose? How many men do you averagely lose per 10 aliens killed?

Enough - probably about equal to the original or slightly less. I've already had to restart a doomed game. Like I said, this isn't to say it makes the game great. I'm pleasantly surprised after the terrible demo, and I'm enjoying myself, but I don't think it has the tactical depth of other TBSs and I don't see myself replaying it much. It's a strange game, probably more unconventional than the original. It's not afraid to fuck you mercilessly; I've been doing well this time around, but money is so tight and things to research/manufacture so pressing that I've already had three countries drop support while I desperately try to put together the resources to launch more satellites as well as stay competitive in battle and advance the "story". Nobody's going to be talking about this game ten years down the line, but so far, I am enjoying myself more than expected. We'll see if that holds up, and I'll think about it more when I finish it.

In other news, here are the Warriors of Diversity, degenerate features and all:

From left to right:
Lieutenant COVERED IN BEES, my only Assault troop so far
Captain FEMALE STRENGTH PENALTY, a Heavy just as competent as the male one due to the feminist agenda
Captain Dear Doctor Dong, the man with the healing touch and the healing soul
Lieutenant Slippery Jim, flamboyant sniper
Captain WEEDLORD BONERHITLER, my first troop and the man who will be with us to the last, come rain or shine
Sergeant DISGUSTING WHORE, shameless liberal slut female

 

[knightley]

Lieutenant COVERED IN BEES, my only Assault troop so far
Captain FEMALE STRENGTH PENALTY, a Heavy just as competent as the male one due to the feminist agenda
Captain Dear Doctor Dong, the man with the healing touch and the healing soul
Lieutenant Slippery Jim, flamboyant sniper
Captain WEEDLORD BONERHITLER, my first troop and the man who will be with us to the last, come rain or shine
Sergeant DISGUSTING WHORE, shameless liberal slut female

Sergeant Whore, haha.

 

[kris]

This game suffered from the same fate many other new games have for me. I just stopped playing without finishing it (and it is pretty short) and when trying to play again I quit before doing anything.

 

[Gozma]

This can be far harder than the original X-Com. Not even including the difficulty bug.

It's actually fairly hard to lose UFOD as a tactics game once you understand anything about the game. The main way to lose is to allow a first month base attack (which is winnable but pretty dumb) - but this is ultimately still your fault because base attacks only happen as retaliation for shooting alien ships down and you don't have to do that, ever. The tactics layer is about exploiting the shit out of a couple of rules - namely squad sight shooting and the fact that if an X-Com solider and an alien see each other simultaneously, there is no reaction fire. Doesn't matter if you have 0 reaction stat and it has 255. So you can scoot a scout forward, see an alien looking right at you, then have a SS shooter or grenadier kill it, retreat the scout, and do it again next turn until everything is dead. The essential tactical consideration is not walking past blind corners less than 20 tiles away. Even failing that you can lose guys left and right. The individual mans in UFOD are completely disposable and the game is only hard if you insist on playing it as an RPG. Fresh rookies can win the final mission easily - they can do it with basic equipment (aside from an avenger) with some finesse or moderate luck. The geoscape loss condition is really generous and you can have multiple TPKs (generally only possible when you don't know how to get off the skyranger) and brush them off as long as you bring in a ship loot haul or two.

A TPK in the first couple of months of EU on impossible or even classic is catastrophic. You get locked out of OTS upgrades (or even building it at all), you lose concrete tactical abilities like rockets and squad sight, not just better aim or TUs, etc. Tactical layer losses can immediately fuck you up on the strategic layer, like failed or aborted terror missions instantly killing countries, of which you can only lose eight. There is a real slippery slope kind of design where you fall behind and everything gets much harder - there's no particular comeback mechanics at least on classic or higher.

 

[Mangoose]

Pls to updated version of Chaos Gate. The PSP 40k game was underwhelming.

 

[Gozma]

Outsiders just pop up in a UFO's core, run around and shoot a gun, BO-RING, someone must’ve run out of ideas.

I was thinking they might be the Firaxis people's nod to the FPS game which had geometric energy being enemies. The AI for Outsiders is fucking inexplicable, though. They seem to always use their free move to press their face against your assault, perhaps out of politeness so you can flank them with five people if you like. It kind of makes sense they are the retarded autopilots the aliens use before they get serious.

 

[Damned Registrations]

- Weapons are always lethal. In the OG, I remember that sometimes the aliens weren’t killed by your attacks, but only stunned. That was a weird, if interesting source of alien captives.

Actually, weapons were always lethal, but enemies could accrue stun damage from smoke, so occasionally you'd almost but not quite kill something that had wandered around a blown up gas station or rocket crater or whatever, and it'd be stunned. Usually they bleed out before the mission ends anyways though.

 

[Gozma]

UFOD/TFTD aliens don't take smoke damage (they also don't get fatal wounds, as in the wounds that take damage from you every turn). The alien stuns from ostensibly lethal weaponry just happen because all damage does some stun, and sometimes you happen to cross the stunned threshold but not the dead threshold.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

This can be far harder than the original X-Com. Not even including the difficulty bug.

It's actually fairly hard to lose UFOD as a tactics game once you understand anything about the game. The main way to lose is to allow a first month base attack (which is winnable but pretty dumb) - but this is ultimately still your fault because base attacks only happen as retaliation for shooting alien ships down and you don't have to do that, ever. The tactics layer is about exploiting the shit out of a couple of rules - namely squad sight shooting and the fact that if an X-Com solider and an alien see each other simultaneously, there is no reaction fire. Doesn't matter if you have 0 reaction stat and it has 255. So you can scoot a scout forward, see an alien looking right at you, then have a SS shooter or grenadier kill it, retreat the scout, and do it again next turn until everything is dead. The essential tactical consideration is not walking past blind corners less than 20 tiles away. Even failing that you can lose guys left and right. The individual mans in UFOD are completely disposable and the game is only hard if you insist on playing it as an RPG. Fresh rookies can win the final mission easily - they can do it with basic equipment (aside from an avenger) with some finesse or moderate luck. The geoscape loss condition is really generous and you can have multiple TPKs (generally only possible when you don't know how to get off the skyranger) and brush them off as long as you bring in a ship loot haul or two.

To me the long term is pretty irrelevant. The strategy layer is basically an interactive skirmish battle generator.
XCOM battle generator kicking me out into the menu after losing a squad doesn't matter much to me when the battles it generates can be consistently passed with 6 men, while the UFO battle generator generates battles that can eat 14 man squads alive if one isn't using exploits that you have mentioned (that except the not crossing corner and generally saving TUs thing which is basically an equivalent of not running blindly).
Battle generator not kicking me out to menu after I have returned from 4 Terror Site missions with a single man, leaving the town to the aliens, doesn't make these missions any less horrible and doesn't make them wins - it's still 4:1 for the aliens.

Anyway, stuff like FoW exploits are one good argument against the limited day vision range.

 

[Raghar]

I'm playing along on the xbox version and I get a mission called Operation Crystal Night (UFO Crash Site) - Germany 9:06am????? Are you kidding me?

http://forums.2kgames.com/showthrea...ight-quot-!-in-GERMANY-!-!-Are-you-kidding-me
Random names are quite funny.

 

[Thane Solus]

What many of you dont understand, not that i defend this shity and greedy useless endevour, Day 1 DLCs are made because after the team finishes the game, untill they are moved to another project they have to produce something, so they make a shitty DLC and release it on the launch day or a few months later.

I kinda wish they had left the original ‘plot’ and set the game post-invasion in an alien-controlled world. Just say that the funding is coming from the resistance in that country, and that the terror level is the current risk of that country’s resistance movement being found/wiped-out.

The gameplay would be exactly the same, but being a small resistance would make the four-man parties seem slightly less ludicrous. Would also explain why every soldier in the “last, best hope of mankind” is a rookie mook who can’t hit the side of a friggen barn.

Every time my tiny crew is sent to the trashed army base, I have to shake my head at the silliness. What the frak can my rookies do that their tanks couldn’t?

Unless there are aliens I didn't bother disposing of earlier, but yeah, whatever. Shit on the other side, any AI noticable there? None. They will just sit there and wait for me to open that door and blow them all new assholes.

I'm quite sure that I've had packs come at me out of windows and doors.

hide behind crate, overwatch, overwatch, overwatch, overwatch, wait, hide behind crate, overwatch, overwatch, overwatch, wait, hide behind crate, shoot, overwatch, overwatch...
yeah, truly fun.

Yeah, that’s heaps more shallow than the original game where you walk out of cover, fire, walk back, kneel, walk out of cover, fire, walk back, kneel, walk out of cover, fire, walk back, kneel, walk out of cover, fire, walk back, kneel, walk out of cover, fire, walk back, kneel.

Good call.

If they made it too complicated the poor console gamers couldn't figure it out.

Yeah, that's why the original game was never a Playstation game. Never ever.

Also, like mentioned before, late game council missions got reeeaaally boring because all you fight are Thin Men.

Honestly, after the pain they caused me in the early game, I really enjoyed the later missions where I got to just rain hell down on them.

Good one. Do you think those McDonalds designers are capable of something like this?))

 

[Gozma]

Stupid trick to give you more money/breathing room on impossible: Don't intercept the small scout that comes in month 1. A few days later a large scout will show up to blow up your satellite - intercept that one. You have two interceptors so it's virtually a certain kill even with just avalanches. That's two more UFO navigations, another UFO power source, a few more aliens to kill to level up your guys on an easy UFO map instead of a horrible abduction map, and more alloys and elerium. I thought any satellite attack would be done by battleship but apparently not. Maybe an abductor or supply ship comes to destroy the satellite if you let the large scout that comes in April off the hook?

 

[Gord]

Guess some may know this already, as it did show up on Steam:
http://sinepost.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/probability-in-games-xcom/

 

[Admiral jimbob]

holy god cyberdiscs

 

[Gord]

Wait till you meet Sectopods

 

[Grunker]

Honestly when I encountered Sectopods I felt more equipped to handle that kind of stuff... First encounter with Cyberdiscs though. FUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

 

[Heresiarch]

Heh, my first encounter with the Cyberdisc, I was like "I've got a REAAAALLY bad feeling about it" and killed it with all my concentrated shots in one turn. HMMM disappointing.

The next encounter I couldn't kill it in one turn. Then I beheld its awesome transformation into the robot mode. I must say it was a nice surprise seeing the good old boring space saucer suddenly transformed into a mean badass killing machine.

Then it fired a barrage at my best sniper. 12 critical damage.

From that time on whenever I see Cyberdiscs I can't help but feel pure horror.

And it only got worse after the fourth or so encounter with it, when it slingshotted a grenade from like 12 tiles away and blasted 3 of my guys.