greydan

XCOM Enemy Unknown

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No, you have the ending right. I'm surprised everyone's talking about how hard that mission was, though. Like I said before, I shredded it. Of course, this was on Normal and my team was six colonels, four of them psychic. The biggest hardship was having an alien grenade knock my Heavy's unconscious body on top of a railing, from which he couldn't move once revived. At least it was near the end, but still.

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I am really enjoying XCOM so far, but I am having an issue with suspension of disbelief. Which is super weird, because I can't think of any video game that has really evoked that for me, and I certainly wouldn't have expected this one to. It isn't really adversely affecting my enjoyment of the game either, but I'm trying to figure out why I feel that way.

I think it may be that it is the real earth, and the soldiers seem like real dudes, but the situations and tactics used, by both sides, are absurd when considered against reality. It could also be something about strategy games with me that I am just noticing now since... I can't think of the last one I played that was set on earth.

Anyone else notice anything like this? Curious to know if its just me.

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I am really enjoying XCOM so far, but I am having an issue with suspension of disbelief. Which is super weird, because I can't think of any video game that has really evoked that for me, and I certainly wouldn't have expected this one to. It isn't really adversely affecting my enjoyment of the game either, but I'm trying to figure out why I feel that way.

I think it may be that it is the real earth, and the soldiers seem like real dudes, but the situations and tactics used, by both sides, are absurd when considered against reality. It could also be something about strategy games with me that I am just noticing now since... I can't think of the last one I played that was set on earth.

Anyone else notice anything like this? Curious to know if its just me.

That's an interesting reaction. I haven't had that, because the game feels very consciously abstracted in the way a board game is--or many other strategy video games, for that matter.

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That's an interesting reaction. I haven't had that, because the game feels very consciously abstracted in the way a board game is--or many other strategy video games, for that matter.

I think it definitely is, but I think juxtaposing that with the story and cutscenes of real people, or just seeing the soldiers in the sky-ranger when loading, adds enough, I guess not realism, but context, that I think about the fact that what is actually happening would be pretty strange if it were real. I don't think it's really detrimental to the experience though, since what I enjoy most are the mechanics and systems anyway.

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To me it feels an awful lot like a super typical American 50s sci fi B movie. The fact that 'Moscow', 'Nigeria', 'and 'China' all look like the midwestern United States, and the big no aliens decal on the dropship are what instantly implanted this in my mind. So, I just imagine I'm playing Dr. Strangelove's Alien Defense game.

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I am kinda right on track with everyone who feels it's abstracted in the way a board game is. This may sound strange but the absence of "real time" in ANY facet of the game is what makes it's suspension of disbelief function for me. To me it communicates that they're creating an emulation (not simulation) of something. To me everything fits into that view of things. From the 80's GI Joe action figure look of the characters, to the kinda hot wheels looking nature of the cars (really I think part of me loves this game because so much of it's art style reminds me of the toys I grew up with :P ). All the way through to the implementation of their systems. It all feels like a "1 to 2 step" abstraction of reality. To me everything kinda makes sense in the framework of their separation of time. Looking at it in that way the tactical combat, IMO, is not as absurd feeling. It's just a representation of how these units would move around and flank one another shown in extremely segmented time.

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So, noob/baby question for you lads...

I'm playing normal (never played the original) and have recently learned the beautiful pain of losing all but one of my guys. Twice in a row. And then... pretty much running out of soldiers. I'm not going back to an earlier save because... I don't have one. Also, that would really ruin the fun I'm having.

"Play classic with Ironman!" I'm sure some people are saying. Well, I'm not good at video games.

ANYWAY. Question is this: are the enemies random or do you get steadily more difficult enemies as the game goes on? I was getting absolutely MURDERED for what seemed like weeks in-game and suddenly the last two missions that have popped up have been thin men. I can handle thin men.

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ANYWAY. Question is this: are the enemies random or do you get steadily more difficult enemies as the game goes on? I was getting absolutely MURDERED for what seemed like weeks in-game and suddenly the last two missions that have popped up have been thin men. I can handle thin men.

A little of both. Certain mission types seem to be weighted towards certain enemy types. However, harder enemy types do get introduced gradually throughout the campaign, and as the campaign goes on they dominate more and more of the enemy force composition.

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A little of both. Certain mission types seem to be weighted towards certain enemy types. However, harder enemy types do get introduced gradually throughout the campaign, and as the campaign goes on they dominate more and more of the enemy force composition.

Cheers man. I was wondering why things got a bit easier again. Ultimately I haven't invested properly as I've gone and I'm unlikely to finish the game this playthrough. A second playthrough is inevitable and welcome.

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It seems to be a combination of a lot of things.

The longer you play, not necessarily based on your story progress, more difficult enemies will show up. Also, higher panic levels in the mission zone seem to lead to tougher opposition, while certain mission types are also definitely weighted to specific enemy types.

Progress through the story will, at a few checkpoints, dramatically reduce the panic level and therefore the difficulty.

Edit - Egh, i didn't see that Gwardinen has essentially given the same answer.

How about i talk about my most recent classic ironman failure instead.

Things were going along pretty swimmingly, i was happy with where i was at. Laser weapons and carapace armor and a bunch of foundry upgrades, good troops, a good rate of income with more than half of the nations under satellite coverage. I had lost some nations in some bad battles, so kind of on the edge, but things were getting better. I had a firm grip on things, i was going to make it! Then multiple abduction missions in a row, one of which popped up before my guys has even returned to the base from the previous mission, threw everything into chaos. Very bullshit. Even if you win those things with a flawless showing, you still accumulate more panic than you reduce. Lost a bunch of nations, landed me very close to the fail state.

Then a terror mission comes up with very difficult ranking, but if i can get a decent rating on it i can restore everything to being in my favor. So i load up my best guys with my best equipment. I really had a pretty good game going, i was feeling confident i could do it. Maybe take some losses, but at least complete the mission.

First thing i notice is that it's a small map, which is always a horrible, horrible situation. Then two turns in, three seperate groups of chrysalids have made themselves known. Then a group of floaters. Then a cyberdisc and its drone.

My best guys though, with the best gear i could get them! So I'm doing fine up until my guys have to start taking turns to reload, and at that point i'm not doing enough combined damage to hold the enemies back. Cyberdisc comes flying in and splits my team in two. With reduced overwatch, two of my guys are killed by chrysalids that run in after having been skirting around the edge of the battle for a few turns. Then everybody else panics and dies.

I think i had allowance for losing one more nation before the failstate, but with only rookies left and my remaining territories in high panic, it wasn't happening.

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How about i talk about my most recent classic ironman failure instead.

Things were going along pretty swimmingly, i was happy with where i was at. Laser weapons and carapace armor and a bunch of foundry upgrades, good troops, a good rate of income with more than half of the nations under satellite coverage. I had lost some nations in some bad battles, so kind of on the edge, but things were getting better. I had a firm grip on things, i was going to make it! Then multiple abduction missions in a row, one of which popped up before my guys has even returned to the base from the previous mission, threw everything into chaos. Very bullshit. Even if you win those things with a flawless showing, you still accumulate more panic than you reduce. Lost a bunch of nations, landed me very close to the fail state.

Then a terror mission comes up with very difficult ranking, but if i can get a decent rating on it i can restore everything to being in my favor. So i load up my best guys with my best equipment. I really had a pretty good game going, i was feeling confident i could do it. Maybe take some losses, but at least complete the mission.

First thing i notice is that it's a small map, which is always a horrible, horrible situation. Then two turns in, three seperate groups of chrysalids have made themselves known. Then a group of floaters. Then a cyberdisc and its drone.

My best guys though, with the best gear i could get them! So I'm doing fine up until my guys have to start taking turns to reload, and at that point i'm not doing enough combined damage to hold the enemies back. Cyberdisc comes flying in and splits my team in two. With reduced overwatch, two of my guys are killed by chrysalids that run in after having been skirting around the edge of the battle for a few turns. Then everybody else panics and dies.

I think i had allowance for losing one more nation before the failstate, but with only rookies left and my remaining territories in high panic, it wasn't happening.

Oh man, Chrysalids.... eff those dudes.

Just failed my first game (on normal). I had a few rough missions in a row in the middle, but my biggest problem was definitely that I only had four satellites in the air. I had no money. It was ridiculous. Watched the cinematic for the fail state, immediately launched a new game. Still on normal, but now using Ironman, because that was my approach anyway and the auto-save sounds very convenient.

I'm already doing a lot better; basically, being very very cautious and actually using the team fairly well. In the last game, I hit my sweet spot taking on squads of thin men with lasers and titan armour, so there's a way to go yet really.

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I course corrected my normal play through pretty quickly after losing china. I shifted my strategy to maximize sats before anything else. Once I had about 60-70% sat coverage the difficulty really goes south. Something to consider, completing the story line missions will reduce global panic. The council will also occasionally (maybe once a month) bring you a mission that will reduce global panic. I find benefit in "rushing" to the story missions (the ones that have their own menu option in the war room) and then turtling at that stage to amass tech/funds/soldiers. That way if at any point your global panic levels start getting out of hand you can just send a team into that story mission and kinda let some steam off of the entire globe.

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GOD DAMMIT. I have clearly been getting better rolls than other people have. I've been incredibly fortunate (and cautious), and outside of the tutorial I had only lost one solider and none that weren't rookies. I had carapace armor, light plasma rifles, and lasers all around for everyone else. I decided to assault the first alien base, and right away I start taking damage and know it's going to go bad. I clear 2 mutons and 3 floaters by the skin of my teeth, with one of my heavies busted up and my support's life literally resting on her own shoulders, as she was exposed, down to one health, and the only one with a shot left before the remaining muton got to clean her up. We survive, and move on. My snipers are in great shape, with plenty of high ground to lay waste every turn. Then All Day Dieter uncovers 3 chryssalids, and ducks for cover, but I've run up too far. One attack doesn't kill her, but the second does and my support is down. The only saving grace is they all rushed her, and they all get put down with a single rocket.

The rest of the base is explored without incident, except the goddamn commander. I had a chance to finish it off without taking losses, and couldn't get more than 5 damage out of a 100% to hit headshot chance from my Col. sniper. My assault gets mind controlled, and blows my injured heavy's brains out. I am actually mad and frustrated right now and had to tell SOMEONE, even the uncaring, bored with only losing two soldiers internet, because far from everyone missing - everyone DID their jobs, and we still left with my most experienced soldier and first to reach colonel in a bag. I actually said "Hey, where's Guzman?" before deploying the next mission because he'd never missed one. RIP Dozer and Cpt. Yuan.

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My assault gets mind controlled, and blows my injured heavy's brains out. I am actually mad and frustrated right now and had to tell SOMEONE, even the uncaring, bored with only losing two soldiers internet, because far from everyone missing - everyone DID their jobs, and we still left with my most experienced soldier and first to reach colonel in a bag. I actually said "Hey, where's Guzman?" before deploying the next mission because he'd never missed one. RIP Dozer and Cpt. Yuan.

I'm with you mate. I'm not sure which is more heartbreaking and frustrating, mind control of half the damn team panicking and running out of the evac zone,

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this game needs a mode for auto-resolving missions so that ironman is actually playable without redoing the long and repetitive early portions of the game over and over again

reloading is this magical thing that turns "lost all soldiers. no reward. panic increased" into "promoted all soldiers. got a reward. panic decreased" completely negating the idea that there should be consequences for your decisions

if the choice is between a satellite and weapons + armor, then choosing the satellite should mean I lose soldiers. being able to dodge that penalty by being a bit more cautious in the missions is just silly. that satellite will pay for itself in 1 month, so I'll always be picking that option...

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I played a few missions with my X360 controller after the Three Moves Ahead guys talked about how well the interface for that worked. Let me tell you, I was floored by how smooth and easily it played, especially after a couple weeks with the PC interface. Take this is an official notice, if you have a gamepad but have been using mouse because you prefer PC-native controls, that XCOM​ is one game where you have to lay aside that chauvinism. The cursor moves exactly where you want, the button response is crisp and precise, basically everything the default PC interface isn't.

About my only complaint is that you can't switch freely between the two. The game boots up with a completely different UI if you're using a gamepad and your keyboard won't work with it until you switch back. Again, very impressive to see in action, although I think it speaks a little about the manpower devoted to PC controls.

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I've been playing on the 360 and the control setup is pretty phenomenal.

The camera is a bit fidgety, and i hate that i can't rotate it while aiming rockets and grenades, but it surprised the hell out of me to hear so many people complaining about misclicks and stuff on the PC.

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About my only complaint is that you can't switch freely between the two. The game boots up with a completely different UI if you're using a gamepad and your keyboard won't work with it until you switch back. Again, very impressive to see in action, although I think it speaks a little about the manpower devoted to PC controls.

In some sense, aspects of the game itself seem to be oriented towards a controller rather than a mouse. The inability to fire weapons other than grenades/rockets at anything aside from targets (and the attendant oddity of having panicking soldiers decide that "panic" actually means "shoot the shit out of a friendly person") works out fairly well for console controllers, because if this game were like the original X-COM and you could shoot anywhere you wanted, moving your crosshair would be a fairly tedious affair if you used a controller instead of a mouse. Simplifying cover down to a numerical abstraction that attaches to hugging various terrain features means that most movement is going to end at those various terrain features, which means you can have the movement thingy snap to those cover points. If it were like the original X-COM where moving just about anywhere was equally viable, and if you could reposition your squad members more than a couple times per turn, things would be much more fiddly on a controller. And of course getting rid of the complex inventory with separate slots for each leg, each shoulder, the belt, the backpack, and so on, and getting rid of much of the micromanagement on the Geoscape, gets rid of the sorts of things that would be hell on a console controller.

I'm not sure how many choices were driven by a bare desire to simplify and how many were at least partially influenced by the knowledge that there would be no way to do that sort of thing on a system other than a PC, but the end result is a strategy game that plays extremely well on consoles (from what I hear) and with console controllers. They certainly could've done a much better job on the PC UI and made it play just as well with a mouse and keyboard, so I wonder if, in an ideal world, there is other PC centric stuff they could've done that would improve the game, or if there's really no connection between simplifying the controls (which turned into a bad thing for people who want to play with a mouse and keyboard) and simplifying the game (which is potentially a bad thing if you liked some of that stuff in the original, but also potentially a much needed streamlining).

I personally haven't played the new XCOM except for the demo, so I can't make any decisions, but I am sure that I like a lot of the complex stuff in the original, because I'm playing through it right now and wouldn't give up the inventory management for the world.

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I also switched to 360 controller after the TMA podcast and also think it improved the experience for me. Most notably in the downed Chrysalid carrying UFO levels were causing me a heap of issues with the camera and the roof of the ship once inside. Selecting one of the upper walkways without being impaired by the roof was almost impossible at times but with a controller the roof stays hidden and selecting those areas is a breeze.

You can also always hit Y for overwatch regardless of ability arrangement on the skill bar which is nice. The numerical hot keys switching use depending on abilities was a bit of an issue for me. I wanted shoot, overwatch and hunker down as dependable keys.

@TychoCelchuuu, I quite liked the control and options the inventory management gave in the old one but boy was it a UI nightmare. You had to set up every single soldier every single mission for starters which was a ball-ache. I feel that while the new one does sacrifice a lot of the control and simulation aspects associated with the original (how I wish I could pick up the med kit from my downed medic!) there is still a damn fine tactical/strategy game here that is it's own thing.

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Eh, maybe back in the old days you had to do the boring inventory stuff, but in these modern times there are programs that automate that all for you. All the complexity, none of the tedium.

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Boy I'm dumb. I was looking through the idle forums video gaming forum and not seeing any Xcom thread. Then I realized it was here! Great to read some of your guys strategies and what not.

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So I never played the original X-COM and actually have pretty much ignored the entire genre (only played Fallout Tactics if that even is in the same genre). And to my surprise, I am finding Normal to be a little too easy. Panic levels are at minimum in almost all countries. My sniper "Lockdown" (Major) just took out a sectopod by herself, while down to 1 health point. The Major skills for snipers are great (Double Tap or In the Zone) and after I lost my best heavies towards the beginning, the snipers became my favourites. I'm not sure if Squad Sight is entirely essential for snipers, as someone opined before in this thread, because the alternative (shoot after move) is great as well. Especially as I have snipers equipped with Skeleton suits and snapping accross rooftops if such are available.

The beginning of the game was really easy and I didn't have to save/load for a while. Later I started using save/load when things got really screwed up and more lately I've even been loading whenever one of my favourite units dies. I don't mind this much, although I'm sure playing this way is not the 100% authentic XCOM experience, I'm just playing to have fun not to have a specific experience with the game. But I might try Classic and/or Ironman at some point in the future.

I also found it somewhat weird that the aliens seem to just wait for you until you step into their radius -- stepping 1 more square to the left than you should can sometimes make the battle several times more difficult as you reveal a new group. However, I think they actually do move around on the field, at least in the UFO missions. I've actually made some UFO missions much easier for myself by being VERY patient (and boring). I literally waited 10 or so turns on overwatch until some enemies came out of the ship and exposed themselves. So I think the AI is not as patient as I am :)

The most confusing thing is the strategic layer... what to build, what to sell etc. Much of the beginning of the game I spent without selling anything because I didn't notice I could! And that turned out to be great because now I had lots of money suddenly and put much of it into engineering, sataellites and so on.

I had a real trouble shooting down UFOs at some point (about the same time I had to shoot down the overseer). I failed to shoot down about 10 altogether, even earning grade D in one month. I did several upgrades: Phoenix Cannon, Laser Cannon, the temporary boosts etc., but those didn't help at all. After two months, I finally was able to build Plasma Cannon, which DID help, and now I just shot down the overseer and cleaned it out without taking much damage.

I think this game is great, but it surely has some flaws and I do hate the interface occasionally, especially the camera controls.

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i fucking love this game!

I stormed an alien base last night and got utterly obliterated, i literally had no chance. I must have gotten hold of the alien key way before most people (i'm only in my 2nd month) so i reloaded my save.

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So... Reading about the levels of tech that you guys have got, have I attacked the alien base too soon? I have Carapace, but no upgraded weapons. It's tough going...but I also can't withdraw. Am I boned?

As an aside, in reply to the poster that said steam won't ban your accounts for using a VPN to play games early (rahter than buy them cheaper) if they find out, they will terminate your account; someone posted on steam forums and a valve employee replied:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2964594&highlight=VPN

It violates section 3A of the subscriber agreement:

"You agree that you will not use IP proxying or other methods to disguise the place of your residence, whether to circumvent geographical restrictions on game content, to purchase at pricing not applicable to your geography, or for any other purpose. If you do this, we may terminate your access to your Account."

Not saying this will happen. But it might.

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