greydan

XCOM Enemy Unknown

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Anyone played around with any XCOM mods?  I just learned that Not Created Equal and Hidden Potential can both affect your movement, but it's a hidden stat, so difficult to know when it's changed (particularly if it only goes up by one point, you might not even realize it in combat).

 

The beta of this mod allows you to view mobility and view experience, along with a ton of other features.  Most of which I wouldn't use.  But being able to equip an Arc Thrower as a pistol and disabling some of the animations to speed up combat would both be really nice.

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I really want to talk to someone about how how incredible Training Roulette is in the new Second Wave options.  I'm using it, hidden potential, not created equal and random economy on a CI playthrough.   It doesn't feel like there are only 4 classes anymore, it's like there are a bunch of classes and you never know what one you're going to get.  I've got an assault Grenadier with Mimetic Skin who is AMAZING.  He picked up Deep Pockets from the support tree and Grenadier from the Heavy tree, so he can carry 6 grenades that do +1 damage.  He can move forward safely staying cloaked until he finds some aliens, use a grenade to soften up the group before they scatter, then everyone else can finish them off.  It also means that aliens rarely have safe cover if I can keep him forward far enough.  I've got a heavy who is the tankiest tank that ever walked in XCOM.  He's lucked into a tree of basically all defensive bonuses (immune to crits, reduced damage and low cover counts as full), so he gets used to pop alien pods knowing that he'll live even under dangerous conditions.

 

It's also got downsides.  My only Colonel sniper basically got the Assault close combat bonuses.  He's just waiting until his replacement is trained so he can "volunteer" to get his arms and legs chopped off. His replacement just picked up HEAT ammo, so that pretty much seals that deal.

 

So anyone want to talk about all this awesome?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Beuhler?

 

I also did install that mod that I linked to.  Turns out the mobility and xp view is still disabled even in the beta.  But I'm really digging the ability to equip an Arc Thrower in the pistol slot.  And skipping the overwatch animation and enemy spotted movies speeds up combat a bit.

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I've been trying that as well.  Having only beaten the game on normal, turns out I'm a baby who is getting wrecked a lot.  However at one point I did have a super tanky assault with all those defensive perks(besides crit immunity) that basically took no damage.  Except for a game ending wipe to an outsider who was somehow built completely of critical hits, even one shot my assault.

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FUCKING CRITS!  I'm taking crit immunity on every single soldier it appears on, even if I'm sacrificing another great ability for it.  Every soldier I've lost so far on this game has been to a crit.  I really thought about turning on the "flanking auto crits" and "improved aim as you approach flanking" options, but then I realized how ridiculously frustrating that would be.   It's funny, the eligible random perks should have an equal chance of showing up, but it's silly the number of people I've had immune to criticals and close combat specialist show up on. 

 

When I switched to Classic, I think I restarted 6 or 7 games in a row within the first 2 months as I relearned how to approach combat.  I rarely used explosives in Normal, as I wanted all that sweet weapon fragment swag.  Classic is just like screw it, I rocket and 'nade if I think there's a ghost of a chance of a soldier taking a hit. 

 

The most dangerous thing about Training Roulette is the loss of dedicated medics.  I had one Support who had actually drawn good medic abilities, and she got killed by a one hit crit last night.  She was the only soldier I had even seen Field Medic on so far. 

 

The one thing I would criticize about Training Roulette is that I think you ought to be able to see what their tree is once they hit squaddie rank.  It's fun to be surprised, but it would be better for the game to still be able to plan soldiers out if there are perks that synergize particularly well. 

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I've been mostly lucky on the supports getting healing stuff. Though I did have a sniper that could either take deep pockets or 3 medkits, so that was pretty great!  I too have gotten in the habit of grenading things either in emergency or if the enemy decided that clustering together was a good call.  Thin men are suddenly super dangerous apparently, Every single time it's come up I wipe on the convoy mission where you find a living exalt member and have to escort him, because again the thin men seem to be crackshots that crit on any angle or cover. Occasionally I get super bad luck with a soldier taking relatively minor damage, which somehow causes 2 or 3 people to panic and they die to a situation that should have been easy.

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That Exalt dude mission, Portent I think it's called.  It's brutal for when it pops. It wrecked my first CI game on Enemy Within, total squad wipe, and left me with only rookies in the barracks.  Restart.  This game, I got through it, but still had one soldier killed and the other three in the infirmary when it was done. 

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Yea I still haven't cleared it, last time it popped I just ignored it completely because most of my men were injured. Current run going well, but everytime I think that I get murder trained by what is often the last alien on the map.

 

Had my dumbest/funniest soldier loss on a panic mission, punched a chrysalid into a tank with my mec trooper, tank explodes and kills my support.  Support comes back as a zombie for some reason for revenge!

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Ha!  That's actually kind of a hilariously disastrous way to lose a soldier.  The last disaster I had like that was an escort mission in my current game.  I wasn't very far from the extraction point, but was pinned down in a building, had terrible lines of sight and didn't know how many aliens were outside.  I decided to grenade a wall, which worked fine, but I missed noticing that the explosion set a car on fire (or another car blowing up did, not sure).  I had 2 guys on cover against a wall on the INSIDE of the room.  Next turn, car blows up, destroys wall, kills 2 guys in cover against wall.  NOOOOO!

 

I'm starting to feel bad using Mimetic Skin on Classic.  Once I got it on 2 people and got some mobility boosting armor, it's getting a little out of hand.  Missions are just rolling by, which doesn't seem like they should on Classic.

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I'm getting in a groove now.  Haven't even invested in genetics at all yet actually, but going real smooth with a couple tier 2 mecs and most of my soldiers are nearly captain.  Mostly just rolling over missions now, haven't lost anyone since the first month.  Turns out having the ability to throw 4 smoke grenades really helps with people not getting shot.  Got a weird roll with my heavy too who is pretty resilient, also is basically a medic while my support with the smoke grenades is filling the heavy role.  

 

Didn't notice this before but it's bizarre that one of the clues you get about exalt's headquarters is "you can play this country in Civ 5"

 

Edit: whoops spoke too soon, lost my assault

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That was the very first Exalt clue I got after being introduced to Exalt.  I was expecting them all to be weird after that, but they were just normal.

 

I started training another support up just to have more Smoke grenades.  I skipped the extra ones on my first support, and then a couple of months into the game decided that was a bad idea. My second Sniper picked up Sentinel (2 overwatch shots) at Major.  That's just almost not fair.  I'm also getting a lot more aggressive, playing more like I would on normal.

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Same here, I rarely even get injured. I just kept getting supports thrown at me, so I had like 7 smoke grenades per battle, though I just lost a support. Down to 4! Overall though I'm doing pretty great, just have to work on getting more satellites up.  Also I should probably look into actually capturing an alien at some point.

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I prioritized capturing a Muton early, was willing to sacrifice a squaddie to get it done.  Got one on the subway train in China, so that I could get the research credit for Plasma weapons.  Which was a great idea, except that I haven't had enough money to actually outfit everyone with Plasma weapons and build everything else.  I've sold so much on the Gray Market, like almost everything I get except for weapon fragments and trying to sell too much Elerium.  Even sold some Power Sources and Flight Computers, delaying the projects that need those. 

 

I'm really loving my random tree guys.  They almost make more sense to me than the standard trees.  These guys aren't regular soldiers.  They are world's elite Black Ops squad.  It makes some sense that each one would have custom training, not just a cookie cutter set of skills.  And they are coming from armed forces all over the world, it's not like every country is going to train their Assault exactly the same.  Other than their Smoke grenades, I feel like the supports are struggling the most to find a role in a squad.  But none of the ones I've trained have ended up drawing skills that synergize very well.

 

I haven't deployed my one mech yet, the money bottleneck has kept me from being able to upgrade his weapon, chassis and Foundry options.  But I converted my first Colonel sniper, so as a mech he's got a 118 natural aim, and a 128 aim if he hasn't moved.  As soon as I hit the next council payment, he's getting sent out into the fray.

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Welp! exalt mission wiped a lot of my good men.  Turns out it doesn't matter how weak they are if there's 20 of them and you have to defend the most open position on the planet.  This is probably a game ender for me despite still having some solid troops.

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That sucks!  Can you build Shivs?  I saved one CI playthrough before the expansion by having a couple of shivs escort my baby soldiers through some missions until they were leveled up a little. 

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Yea, I still have 4 really good troops, but i did lose a colonel mec and my awesome support/heavy lady.  Running two mecs was kind of destroying everything, but my melee mec was wounded before that mission.  Probably would have cleared easy with him since they tend to line up for punches by themselves if you just sit in the capture area.  Really my concern is keeping any more countries from withdrawing which could be rough.  Basically just bad timing as I'm trying to use money to build more satellites and I was planning on putting some people through gene modification, which is harder now that I don't have much of a B-team anymore.

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Was it the Exalt mission that killed a bunch of your guys the one with the transmitter you had to defend on a patio in front of a fast food restaurant?  That was probably the most open map I've seen, plus several inconveniently located cars that could blow up nicely.  I actually had to use my agent a lot on that one.  She ended up getting the achievement for 3 or more kills on a covert mission. 

 

I actually quit using supports last night and am just going full Rambo on every mission.  2 snipers, 2 Assaults, 1 Heavy and 1 sniper Mech.  The heavy and mech and use explosives to destroy cover, so the snipers can obliterate the enemy.  Then the Assaults mop up.  Both assaults have the perk where you get a free shot if you take one within 4 squares of an enemy, and both can cloak.  So they can often each kill two enemies per round, one sniper has In the Zone and the other Double Tap, so they can both kill 2+ enemies per round. 

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it was the water fountain one surrounded by cars.  The second I tried to send the covert to disable a comm she got surrounded and had to fall back.

 

The support I had lost was pretty much a heavy besides smoke grenades, had super high accuracy, suppression, bulletswarm, the +crit per enemy thing.  She was a beast.  Haven't had any assaults in a while.  Right now I have a kinetic strike mec, a heavy/assault hybrid thing with mimetic skin, heavy/medic, a different support with 3 smoke, a sniper I just got.  Everyone else is at squaddie level.

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Huh, I don't think I've seen that one yet.  I'm really impressed at the map variety now.  I'm still seeing new maps, or entering a map from a new angle, which really changes up how you approach it.  You can enter an abductor ship shootdown/landing from the side, which was super disorienting the first time I saw it. 

 

I'm getting into late game stuff now, did the base assault.  I have 7 Colonels, 2 Majors, 4 or 5 captains, and several Lts.  And I HAVE YET TO SEE BULLETSWARM ON A SINGLE SOLIDER.  Why you hate me Training Roulette?

 

I actually wonder if a few skills are less likely to show up, or if I'm just having weird luck.  No Bulletswarm, Sentinel twice, Sprinter twice.  But I've seen other skills a half dozen times or more.  I'm overflowing with medics and grenadiers.  It's probably just luck though. 

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I've only seen bulletswarm once. I get smoke grenades and grenadier the most probably.  3 medkit use a couple times too.  Just lost my game, though apparently compared to the world average I was doing pretty well.

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Ah, that sucks.  It's amazing how quickly a solid game can go bad. 

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OMG, I forgot to mention.  I discovered last night that Mimetic Skin works with Low Profile, so that a soldier cloaks on any cover, not just full.  My heavy has that.  So my cloaking assault finds a group of enemies, my heavy dashes forward to any cover he wants to be in rocket/nade range for the next round.

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Just did the base defense mission.  It's a lot more fun on Classic, by far the most enemies I've seen on any one map.  It also makes me want to have disposable rookies on every mission.   I only managed to get one killed, but I tried really hard to order the rest of them to their deaths.  They're like Battle Scanners with grenades.  I can just imagine the conversation:

Colonel Boom: Rook, go look around that corner and tell me what's there.
Rookie Fodder: Um, sir, I have paper mache armor.  You have chameleon skin AND Ghost Armor.
Boom: Uh huh.
Fodder: Can't I have the ghost armor?
Boom: Nope, I need it.
Fodder: You can't even use them both, why do you need it?
Boom: That grapple comes in handy.
Fodder: YOU CAN JUMP 2 STORIES TALL ALL ON YOUR OWN!
Boom: But how am I going to pretend to be Spiderman without a grapple?
Fodder: I...I...wait, is that cloaking grenade on  your belt.
Boom: Yep.
Fodder: You can't use it either?!  Why do you have 3 cloaking devices on you?
Boom: It looks cool.  I honestly even forget it's there.  This belt has more slots than I know what to do with, and I just usually grab the cloaking grenade before we leave.
Fodder: Can I have it?
Boom: I'd better save it, these things are useful, would hate to waste one in case we needed it for the very end of the mission.
Fodder panics and starts screaming incoherently.
Boom: Why are you panicking, there aren't even any aliens in sight, and no one's been shot?
Fodder shoots Colonel Boom.

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