greydan

XCOM Enemy Unknown

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Ahhh is that why there are a huge amount of enemies onscreen but 2-3 of them sill just move twice or move once and then just end their turn (or just end their turn). Do they ever tell you stuff like this? I remember the difficulty tool tips being stuff like (this is normal, this is harder, this is super hard).

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Ahhh is that why there are a huge amount of enemies onscreen but 2-3 of them sill just move twice or move once and then just end their turn (or just end their turn). Do they ever tell you stuff like this? I remember the difficulty tool tips being stuff like (this is normal, this is harder, this is super hard).

The exact differences are listed in one of the game's ini files. It's mentioned somewhere in the link for the mod greydan posted on page five of this thread.

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And i just lost my ironman run, i mismanaged my research and didn't have the gear i needed when mutons started showing up. Lasers, but no armor. In the time it took to research that armor, i got hit with a string of difficult battles and it completely screwed up my campaign. A series of missions where i would without fail end up with like two groups of mutons and a group of floaters all coming down on me at once, one-shotting all of my guys. By the time i was reduced to rookies, i had an entire team panicking when the mutons showed up. Again. (Fucking Mutons.)

I will say not to treat an individual mission failure like a game-ender, you can definitely recover from a bad situation. Fucking up at the strategic level is way more harmful than taking losses at the tactical level. There are some mission types with very manageable effects incurred from failure or a hasty retreat. UFO missions, for example, don't even appear to incur any serious penalties on failure. Letting one shoot down a satellite is very damaging, but once it's on the ground the outcome doesn't appear to matter much at all. (However, the big choose-one-of-three missions are always seriously bad to lose.)

Also, if you use the retreat functionality, you have to get all your squad members on that spot in front the drop ship and then select the menu option, anybody left behind is lost. (Interestingly, gear left behind is also lost, whether on a dead soldier or a live troop.)

Anyways, i definitely ended up in a spot where bailing on a bad mission was a pretty easy choice. Save your veterans or lose everything. You don't get any resources from any failed or fled mission, but i wasn't struggling with resources anyways, I lost entirely because i totally fucked up my research tree. (I think i'm going to try again, starting with Europe and moving into Asia, or vice versa.)

I really enjoyed it though, i'm definitely going to give it another go. I'm feeling that classic/ironman draws a light on some of the things the game is strongest at. (Though i agree with the sentiment that AI difficulty and mechanical difficulty should maybe be different options.)

Also, has anybody noticed that cover impairs your own aim as well? I noticed it a while ago, but i don't think anybody has mentioned it in relation to discussion concerning the cover system thus far.

If you have an enemy standing out in the open and you're behind high cover, your own aim is impaired by 40%. Whoever's aim debuff is highest seems to be applied to both participants in a fire exchange. I ran into a few situations where it was better to just get out of cover against an unprotected enemy for that 100% aim, because if i missed, i was going to die anyways.

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Huh, that's really weird. I'm not a soldier, but I'd be surprised if that was how it actually worked.

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So what's a good research path? I've just gotten my first Alien Base mission, and so far I've been going ground laser weapons and armor, while trying to get a third satellite up.

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Holy shit, zombies are bastards. Even on normal, when Chrysalids get going on a terror mission... bad news. Managed not to loose anyone, but it was really close with two of my best guys.

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You said it Sno, fuck those Mutons!

I had a similar situation in my Normal/Ironman game the other day. Everything was going great (or so I thought) until I hit the "now you face hundreds of Mutons/Chrysalids every mission" stage and had barely just got hold of a laser pistol (may have had one rifle at this point). It makes me feel like I really messed up the research side of things because I don't seem to have an advantage in any other area to make up for my lack of equipment. By the time I had caught up a bit with that (laser stuff for heavy/sniper, plasma's for assault/support + medium armour all round) my vet's had been decimated and I now have 12 rookies to stand up to all these new, tougher variants of alien that are popping up. Every mission is a mass panic/horrific massacre of some kind and I'm running out of funds to replace troops and equipment. On top of that panic is pretty much at boiling point the world over and I have no foreseeable means to launch satellites to secure slight relief and funding (only now see I how important they are). The World is doomed! Sorry World.

Despite feeling like I messed up the campaign, I'm really enjoying the game and looking forward to starting afresh and getting onto that equipment asap.

It's funny how I only started playing the old XCOM properly a couple of weeks before the launch of this one and found myself in a similar situation of badly equipped troops and loss of funding. They really did get the feel of fighting a losing battle pretty darn well. And now that I've typed all this it occurs to me that the whole experience reminds me of playing Arkham Horror. You've even got the doom track. I wonder if they took some inspiration from it and it's ilk as it's a very boargame-y experience all round.

Before I go, one other small tip for relative newbs to XCOM like me; I made the mistake of selling off all corpses I'd autopsied & UFO parts I'd researched to get a bit of cash and realised too late that you need a certain amount of these to create some types of weapons and armours alter on. So don't do that.

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Had an alien abduction mission with three floaters and seven mutons in a tiny little construction yard, yikes. Lost three guys.

That's a good point about Arkham Horror! It's very similar.

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On top of that panic is pretty much at boiling point the world over and I have no foreseeable means to launch satellites to secure slight relief and funding (only now see I how important they are).

Yeah, I know a lot of people are saying that at this point but nor did I. I'm actually vaguely considering restarting my campaign and burning directly for full satellite coverage, but I'm far enough in that I'm loath to lose all my current progress. This actually makes me feel like there should be some kind of short campaign option, perhaps unlocked once you've finished a full-length playthrough. The reason I suggest this is that I'd be much more willing to try the harder difficulties, and mechanical ironman, if I could really lean into the roguelike feeling that has been brought up here. If I could experiment and really go up against tough odds and potentially unfair defeats within an environment that meant I would only lose a 3-5 hours of progress rather than 10+ I'd be far more likely to do it.

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I wouldn't worry about the doom ticker and satellite coverage until you've lost around half the map. I started my normal game without realizing the importance of satellites either, but once i shifted gears i got everything under control and managed to play through to the end of the game. Do what you can to mitigate the panic and hold it off as long as you can, but don't bail on your game because of it. The way there are so many events through which it can grow, and so few ways to reduce it, i'm pretty sure it's just going to end up being a mounting thing you cannot control. (There's a few checkpoints in the story that will dramatically reduce panic, so keep that in mind.)

I mean, the point is, you can definitely do fine late-game with just a few of the continents backing you. (Well, i guess i don't know how harsh it is in classic, but considering that normal gets significantly easier as long as you hold your shit together, i'm reasonably sure classic gives you a lot of wiggle room late-game too.)

I would say Asia and Africa are extremely valuable late-game.

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That would be a really good option actually Gwardinen. I would kind of like to start again but with the tactical options available with a more experienced squad, although I wouldn't want to lose that important raising the troops factor so that would be tricky to balance.

Losing my experienced vet's was what really killed that run for me. After that I just couldn't tactically hold any advantage over the tougher enemies. I had a great combo of a heavy with holo targeting and suppression with a shotgun assault with the flush ('Sheriff'! I miss you!) which really allowed me to take on the hard knocks. I don't even have suppression any more, and boy do I miss that Medic with extra movement and multiple heals. :sadface:

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for anyone having trouble with the tech tree or balancing investment in satellites, I suggest arc throwers and containment into carapace armour while stunning everything in sight and researching light plasmas as soon as carapace is done - the resources saved on building laser rifles has made the mid game much less of a struggle, at least for me

that's not going to help if all your officers die - which has ended my previous couple games - but the bonus to hit of light plasmas makes rookie less useless and easier to train up

unrelated question: how to train snipers? I really struggle to use them without squadsight

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I recommend this post on the X-Com forums: http://forums.2kgame...rom-My-Mistakes

This is really good, but I will quibble with some of it (I am on my 4th ironman run, haven't won yet but I have learned a lot).

Africa is by far the best starting position. The extra money makes a HUGE difference as improving funding and getting more engineers are going to be your primary goals in the first few months. You need to get as many satellites up as quickly as possible. If you don't, you will lose countries really, really quickly. Two countries leaving after the first month is not surprising at all in classic. Sell every corpse you have in the early game - you will get enough to research later on, and you don't need to research those things immediately. Sell all your flight computers/power sources too, even if they are undamaged. You need the money for satellites, uplink facilities, and to get increased squad size.

I completely agree with him on the grenades thing. They are by far the best thing to have on rookies. I'm torn on when to increase squad size. On the one hand it's obviously very helpful, but it's also expensive.

Iron man classic really feels like the only way to play this game. I can't even imagine going back to normal now, it would be pretty boring.

Edit: Also, take advantage of the alien move that happens when you first discover them. If you have soldiers on overwatch surrounding an area that you think aliens might be in, you can use another soldier to discover them and flush them into cover - if the overwatch soldiers are flanking them, they can get a nice flanking shot at them next turn.

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Edit: Also, take advantage of the alien move that happens when you first discover them. If you have soldiers on overwatch surrounding an area that you think aliens might be in, you can use another soldier to discover them and flush them into cover - if the overwatch soldiers are flanking them, they can get a nice flanking shot at them next turn.

I think this is really good advice. A lot of people are frustrated with the "alien pop and cover" mechanic, but this tactic really allows the alert player to get the jump on the bad guys. I often put my squad-sight snipers on overwatch before moving my guys forward, and they often get easy kills on uncovered aliens.

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Also take advantage of the alien reveal turns in that they cannot go into overwatch after their reaction move, so if you've just put a soldier in the way of serious harm, move them back out.

NEVER DOUBLE MOVE.

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I'm not sure i would encourage everybody to play on classic, but i think most people should give Ironman a shot.

A lot of the dynamics and difficult choices X-com excels in presenting don't really work when you can command time like a god. Taking control of the save system away from you is the only way you'll ever make a choice about retreating from a battle that has gone horribly wrong.

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Agreed. Never double move. If your first move puts you in range of an enemy squad that cannot be easily annihilated, fall back.

That's been my toughest lesson, honestly. The urge to stand and fight, or at least to hunker down and wait things out, is almost irresistible for me. It's so hard to get past that mental block and retreat to a good position for the enemy to walk into.

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boring playstyles (i.e. staying back, moving in very small increments) seem to be the only way to win ironman (classic/impossible)

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boring playstyles (i.e. staying back, moving in very small increments) seem to be the only way to win ironman (classic/impossible)

Your boring is my incredibly tense.

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it was tense for me too...

and then i did it for 30 hours and it was just repetitive

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it was tense for me too...

and then i did it for 30 hours and it was just repetitive

Man, I hate when I do something for 30 hours and it begins to feel a little boring. How incredibly disappointing.

On a completely unrelated note, just finished the alien base and two of my guys got killed. I cannot express my sadness.

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The final encounter of this game is pretty brutal. By the time I hit the last room where all the nastiest shit is I'm in kinda poor shape.

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The final encounter of this game is pretty brutal. By the time I hit the last room where all the nastiest shit is I'm in kinda poor shape.

At least you didn't run into the incredibly "fun" bug that I did.

When you kill the last boss, the game kills every remaining alien for you. Unfortunately, this also includes any squad members who happen to be mind controlled at the time, which can include the volunteer. Have fun starting the entire mission over from the beginning!

I suppose I should count myself lucky that it lets you restart the mission on ironman rather than dooming your entire campaign. Just one final little middle finger from the game as I send it off, I guess.

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oh wow!

I didn't notice anything special about that center ethereal and he actually had my volunteer mind controller when I took him out with a sniper shot. I guess I accidentally averted the fail state for myself! I thought I was going to have to clean up all those aliens so I was just eliminating him to bring that soldier back under my control. I was pretty surprised when all the other aliens popped right afterward!

BTW is there a dialog transcription of that last mission? I had subtitles turned off and I feel like I missed most of the story reveals in that mission. Is the reveal that the alien "overmind dudes" are actually in the glowy tubes and they're controlling the other aliens psychically and where searching for a perfect host body? That the closest thing they had was members of their own race who failed to evolve past their physical bodies? That seemed to be what they where getting at but like I said I feel like I missed a lot of that dialog.

That's an amazing game. I can't wait to start my next play through (although at a much more leisurely pace).

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