Sorbicol

Just throw a battlescanner at them!

Yeah explosives destroy loot drops, so try and finish them off with weapons fire if you can

Well I'm loving it after a weekend of some pretty solid play. The tactical missions are mostly a joy, especially the 'snatch the advent VIP and get to da chopper!!!' Missions. I love those. Couple of things concern me a little though - the comms relays seem to have taken on the satellite uplink and satellites optimal path of the first game - have I missed something? Space on the ship feels a lot more restricted and so I've been building other stuff I though was useful. I think I may have messed that up. Is it recoverable? Also the bugs - shooting through walls is depressingly common and makes trying to work out angles from cover very difficult - getting dragged out by a viper through 2 walls is seriously annoying. I've also had more than one instant where I've moved someone once (not dashed) and their turn has ended. That's normally fatal, or near enough. Don't neglect specialist grenades in the proving grounds. I have a grenadier who gets grenade bonuses, and when she lobs an acid grenade its 5 points of damage from the hit and another 5 the next turn. She took out 6 mutons in one shot with that baby my last 'terror' mission. Beautiful.

I wouldn't take too long about it. I got absolutely slapped having left it too long

Well my first campaign ended in abject failure last night, I don't want to spoil anything but a scripted mission happened and I was overwhelmed in 3 turns despite attempting that mission about 7 times. I gave up, dialled the difficultly down to veteran and started again. It doesn't gate quite like XCOM 1 I don't think, but clearly hanging around to do the black site mission is not a good idea. You get a hell of a lot engineers and scientists on veteran too. Hopefully this play through will give me a much better idea on what I should be doing and we can progress through It wasn't quite as brutal as the Long War but let those aliens get too far ahead and it's all over very fast.

It does seem to take a while doesn't it? I'd say I'm having broadly the same amount of dead time when I'm flying too and from missions

Anyone else finding their resistance fighters can see and shoot through solid walls, rocks, scenery with no problem at all? I'm all for having the advantage, but wallhacking?

My first attempt at stabbing someone with a sword last night ended in abject failure after my ranger missed and got her face chewed off by a reanimated zombie. Harsh yet fair if she can't hit with a sword......

Well got playing last night, did the tutorial mission and then the second mission. My first attempt at that (on the classic difficultly equivalent) ended in a total squad wipe. It was glorious! Admitted I replayed it flawlessly but having that timer completely eradicated the 'creep forward on over watch' default tactic of the first game. Excellent!

It's not really sword combat though is it? It's basically the Berserker's bull rush ability for XCOM units, only without destroying cover. Very close range, extremely powerful but will leave you very exposed if things go wrong.

I'd have been happy if the pre-order bonus was just 'we'll release the soldier customisation element early so you can pre-make all your squad members prior to playing the game' if I'm honest. Clearly the first couple of hours of this are going to be spent making people rather than actually doing anything in game from the looks of it. I did pre-order the 'delux' package however. Mostly because this'll be one of the few games I buy this year and because I'd be buying the DLC for it regardless I expect. PC games though - they surely be getting more expensive again

I'd have been happy if the pre-order bonus was just 'we'll release the soldier customisation element early so you can pre-make all your squad members prior to playing the game' if I'm honest. Clearly the first couple of hours of this are going to be spent making people rather than actually doing anything in game from the looks of it. I did pre-order the 'delux' package however. Mostly because this'll be one of the few games I buy this year and because I'd be buying the DLC for it regardless I expect. PC games though - they surely be getting more expensive again

There is a game from about 10 years ago called Silent Storm. It's a turn based tactical game (no really strategic layer) ah la XCOM set post WW2 with a Sci-if elements to it. Nothing too taxing, you can just play a mission and leave it. Available of steam for probably not a lot of money. Worth a punt I reckon.

The Long War was the best strategy game I played this year. Mind you I didn't play that many. The Long War. It's both long, and a war. A very very brutal war with an unfortunately tendency to let you play for 40+ hours before letting you know that really bad month you had right at the start meant you were never going to win this campaign. 8 Mectoids on one map? Yeah, thanks for that......

Probably only ones designed to be played by adults and children at the same time?

Really enjoyed this episode, felt like one of the best for a while. The thing I felt probably wasn't really covered in the conversation though was 'when are comeback mechanics necessary'. In the end, there aren't really that many single player video games where you need them. In fact there aren't really any to be honest, I suppose the comeback mechanic is 'learn to play the game better' - the Dark Souls series builds its entire game mechanic around that concept. With regard to Strategy games though, I think the same principle stands? I suppose what you are trying to counter is frustration. Very often in strategy games - especially grand strategy games - you might well have invested many many hours into a particular game before you realised you've made a hash of things and are going to lose. Be it a specific victory condition in Civ (something I suffered from a lot in Civ IV but Civ V signposts before you start - 'pick this civ for these victories!') but really other than making the player feel like they haven't wasted that time - what are they for? The XCOM mod The Long War is a case in point here. I think I've invested over 40 hours in a playthrough before now before realising the bad month I had a couple of hours into the game meant that the aliens totally outstripped me for research and resources that I was completely buggered. Took another 30 hours of play to realise it though. But that's OK. Sort of. The mod makes no bones about that and makes it clear the conditions under which you are playing the game. I can't really think of another condition in strategy gaming (video) where you'd need a comeback mechanic other than making it feel to the player that they haven't been wasting their time. Which I think in most cases would just devalue the game. I understand it in social games even if it can be incredibly frustrating (Mario Kart is the example I would pick. The blue shell explosive is horrendous and renders skill in the game almost irrelevant. It homes in on the leader, is nigh on impossible to avoid and just means that if the person firing it is so far back they are just spiteing the leader and preventing them from winning, and if it is a game between players of the same moderate skill level just renders the winner down to pot luck) where keeping people engaged is probably more important. If someone is winning a game it's probably because they are the best player. The best comeback mechanics are surely those that give those losing a bit of a boost but do nothing to penalise the person in the lead.

Do the opening area to completion before moving on. When get to the main map it dumps in a location where everything around you is a much higher level than you are and you'll get spanked if you go exploring too far. It's worth following the main plot for a little while until you get to about level 7 or 8. Otherwise you'll spend a lot of time reloading for remarkably little reward.

Hmmm reading that I might be better off paying via PayPal. I'll have to break out s calculator though, and seeing as I've just moved house that's going to have to wait until I'm not living out of cardboard boxes.....

Sounds good to me but then I'm not giving you enough to ask questions

This, quite possibly, is going to be the first paradox game I might actually get in to playing.....

I get the emails about polls from patreon but that's about it. Personally I don't mind patreon emails direct from my backers, it's when they spam me with 'other people you might like to back' emails I get annoyed (although I think I've stopped that now) Email is fine with me to be honest. I didn't know there was a patreon bulletin board either.

Generally speaking, I'm not that much of a git to Riad. At least, most of the time

Memetic skin breaks the game. It's totally overpowered. I agree about the MECs though. A nice idea not really implemented terribly well.

You need at least one (preferably 2) snipers to hand that are fully levelled up by the end of the game. Put him/her in an archangel suit, with double tap and there is no 'minor' alien on the map that isn't going down in one shot with the plasma sniper rifle. As for the robot aliens - well you need heavies with HEAT ammo (that's the upgrade). They are your robot busters and HEAT ammo applied to both your LMG and your rockets. If you have the slingshot DLC and capture the alien battleship then you'll get access to fusion cores and then blaster launchers. These are your late game deus ex machina weapons. Sectopods are an arse admittedly but creep forward and don't pop them until you are ready. Don't bunch up or the grenade launcher will cripple you and don't move anyone without lightening reflexes. Pour in firepower (your heavies leading) and they'll go down. Stay in high cover. Your MECs aren't that essential In the base game, the gene mods are more beneficial iirc

Beyond Earth is the first Civ game I've not bought. I played the demo and, despite following the development of the game closely was left with the overwhelming feeling of....... 'Meh'....... After I played it. So much of what was said here still follows my feelings of the demo - I wanted to be in harmony with the wildlife but was forced to take out the worms (a painfully lengthy process) in order to get any development going or able to explore in relative peace, the trading system just seemed very confused and not worth the effort if my land train was going to be devoured the second it left my sight, and that all the 'quests' and technologies were just about numbers - improve this a couple of %, reduce the probability that that will happen. Even the quest system in Fallen Enchantress had more going for that, and you would have thought they would have taken a look at the Endless Legend system and had a rethink. Given you are exploring an alien world that quest system could have added so much flavour and charisma to the game given the (understandable) blandness of the faction leaders. Nothing said in this podcast is going to make me pick it up with Rising Tides, even if it's super cheap in the steam sale. I guess I'm looking at Gal Civ 3 next (any chance of a podcast on this now it's released?) and then looking to Endless Space 2 (again, no podcast?) and Stellaris (Rob if you don't flog Troy into arranging an interview about that soon..... I mean there's conflict of interest, and then there's conflict of interest you know?)