greydan

XCOM Enemy Unknown

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Also worth noting is that XCOM has issues with giving clear player feedback about the implications of your moves.

More than a few times I got caught out because I thought I moved into a spot where I could attack an alien but it turned out I was entirely wrong and then it just moved into position to flank me instead. It's not that I needed it to tell me outright and inform me on all things, but the rules of what counted as a shootable alien seemed too arbitrary and fluctuating to accurately predict.

 

This is a true thing.  I also originally played Xcom on console, and the inadequacies of using a controller led to me moving a guy to the wrong spot a few times unintentionally. 

 

I've known a couple of people who ended up with corrupted Ironman saves as well (it never happened to me, thank god).  If you're really dedicated to the Ironman idea, you can just force yourself to play that way without it turned on and have backups in case of a corruption, without having to deal with manually backing up your Ironman save after every time you play. 

 

I would say the "purest" way (for me, not saying others should be obligated) to play is with Ironman (either enabled or just forcing yourself to live with consequences), on Classic with some of the Second Wave options turned on.  I felt like the randomness added by some of the 2W options really enhance the experience and it's unthinkable for me to play without them now.

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Yeah don't need to check the ironman box if you play that way naturally.  The key distinction to me is whether you allow yourself the potential to lose the game.  Is XCOM like Chess or Civilization -- you play for awhile, maybe a long while in Civ, and then *somebody* wins but it might not be you.  Sometimes you don't make it to Alpha Centauri first.  If you play that way with occasional reload because of misclicks or bad UI that's the essential core of what you get from ironman.  Some people avoid ironman because they don't want to 'waste' 10 hours by losing the game -- which if you think of XCOM as a strategy game like Chess or Civ is a bit strange.  If you view XCOM as a narrative game though that makes sense.  

 

I myself *am* big baby and I *need* that checkbox.  I started XCOM without it and and simply could not resist a few loads when I hit a string of ridiculously bad luck.  With the checkbox on I found myself much more engaged and even the easy battles were exhilarating.  If you think you might be like me and have moments of weakness I still recommend starting with ironman and lowering the difficulty to even out the lack of reloading.  You can recover from even full squad wipes in XCOM on normal and easy, and I even full squad wiped on classic and ended with a win.  It made for an incredible experience actually I was forced to attempt the alien base long before I considered myself ready for it in a desperate attempt to keep panic from losing me the game.  The whole mission was a nailbiter with just two soldiers surviving, but finally giving me breathing room to rebuild after.   

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That's entirely fair. I like to give myself the option.

 

I'm also pretty sure on easy or normal you actually can't lose your last man. Not sure about normal, but I'm sure the devs specifically said you can't fully wipe on easy. 

 

sure sure sure urgh.

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That's entirely fair. I like to give myself the option.

 

I'm also pretty sure on easy or normal you actually can't lose your last man. Not sure about normal, but I'm sure the devs specifically said you can't fully wipe on easy. 

 

sure sure sure urgh.

 

I only ever played normal and I had some disastrous missions where I lost all 6 soldiers. I think I even had one game where I totally ran out of soldiers because I didn't realise I was running low and had no recruits coming in.

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So I decided to try Xcom on Ironman, despite what I said above. 

 

It's a different game. I don't know whether it's better, but it's different. My mind changed while playing. Normally, when I have the option to reload, if a Colonel or Major dies, I'm distraught. I'm stressed out at whether I should reload and get back my favourite sniper or favourite assault, but in Ironman if someone dies, I don't even notice. Just more meat for the grinder. The response is generally to think about how to kill their intended target, not to be pissed and upset I lost a valuable member of the team.

 

I'm playing more conservatively, but that's not the interesting thing. For me it's that I'm buying recruits, training everyone equally, and also not progressing in the story. I've been playing 5 hours and I've not captured an alien yet. It's crazy. I'm more concerned with keeping people alive and making sure the lowest ranks get at least one or two kills. I'm also shocked at how much I rely on new recruits. They're a staple of my team, whereas before they were throw away members who I avoided using at all cost.

 

Anyway, try Ironman. It's pretty rad.

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So, I thought I'd pull this thread back up to the top to mention that http://openxcom.org/ has been released. I never played the original XCOM when it was first out, and I've made several attempts since I had such a blast with XCOM 2012, but I've always bounced off. I've tried several different mod packs, none of which fixed the clunky controls. I'd always accidentally move a guy and then get destroyed, and then quit. 

 

OpenXCOM finally made it playable for me. I'm in so deep right now and I can't get enough.

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No shit, I've tried so many times to play original Xcom, and just can't do it.  I'll have to fire it up soon.

 

I also saw that Xenonauts is out of Early Access, and seems to have had a pretty positive reaction.

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It was actually the Xenonauts video that made me think of the original XCOM, which then had Steam news about OpenXCOM, which has now lead me to finally beating this piece of gaming history. Even today it's an incredible game. at least with the interface improvements and bug fixes of OpenXCOM.

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Currently playing EW Long War, just got my dream team massacred by six(!) mutons that came out of nowhere. Should probably restart.

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I restarted the game because I kept getting squad wipes and being scared, only this time to motivate myself to keep going I've began a writing exercise in which I write "field reports" detailing what happened on the mission and then writing a short narrative based off of or around the events of the mission to give the cannon fodder personality and make me care for them more than simply "another rookie died".

 

However recently I experienced a full squad wipe where several of my favorite characters were killed and I'm finding myself struggling to write how the rest of the characters react. That said, war is hell.

 

I was wondering, has anyone else here done something similar just for fun or as motivation?

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A while ago I named all my soldiers after friends of mine and posted pictures of their deaths on Facebook. The best was when one of my soldiers was turned into a zombie and killed another one.

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Currently playing EW Long War, just got my dream team massacred by six(!) mutons that came out of nowhere. Should probably restart.

 

Oh, they finally got the EW release done?  How is it? 

 

 

I restarted the game because I kept getting squad wipes and being scared, only this time to motivate myself to keep going I've began a writing exercise in which I write "field reports" detailing what happened on the mission and then writing a short narrative based off of or around the events of the mission to give the cannon fodder personality and make me care for them more than simply "another rookie died".

 

However recently I experienced a full squad wipe where several of my favorite characters were killed and I'm finding myself struggling to write how the rest of the characters react. That said, war is hell.

 

I was wondering, has anyone else here done something similar just for fun or as motivation?

 

That sounds like an awesome exercise!  But no, I'm too lazy to actually do that.

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Oh, they finally got the EW release done?  How is it? 

 

I never played the EU version so I can't compare, but I really like it.

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I did do a similar thing before. I didn't stick with it that long though. It started to feel stale as writing, but I might have just been in a too unmotivated mood/not trying hard enough to get each character have a real unique voice and retain my/a reader's interest that way.

 

Also in my game I was naming all my soldiers after characters from other things based on what their actions in the mission suggested. That's why my first mission was a team made of Michael Scott, Princess Merida, Travis Touchdown and Scott Hansen (the cocky australian from Pacific Rim).

 

I have yet to go back and play through Enemy Within, maybe when I have time I could try doing this again. I did like the idea of getting further on and have missions where the characters are all reacting differently to the mechanics of gene splicing and making soldiers into mechs. Plus there's the potential for using missions where you capture aliens, and how people would interact with newly discovered alien tech.

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I never played the EU version so I can't compare, but I really like it.

 

I actually never played the EU version either, I didn't discover the Long War until after EW was out, and I was having to much fun with the expansion stuff to roll my install back to an earlier patch. I was more curious what your impression compared to vanilla EW was. 

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There's no need to roll back, it works with the latest version. I enjoy the difficulty and new classes, but I question the need for some of the new items, like the carbine, which is an assault rifle that does slightly less damage and is slightly more accurate.

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I restarted the game because I kept getting squad wipes and being scared, only this time to motivate myself to keep going I've began a writing exercise in which I write "field reports" detailing what happened on the mission and then writing a short narrative based off of or around the events of the mission to give the cannon fodder personality and make me care for them more than simply "another rookie died".

 

However recently I experienced a full squad wipe where several of my favorite characters were killed and I'm finding myself struggling to write how the rest of the characters react. That said, war is hell.

 

I was wondering, has anyone else here done something similar just for fun or as motivation?

 

I've done something similar before for a few different games, and I usually find that I lose motivation to write, which then kinda ruins the game for me. 

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Hmm, so despite beating this on Xbox when it first came out, I apparently competely forgot that one of the later story missions is...

 

an attack on your base. I don't ever remember this before, so I guess I must have breezed through it the first time or something. Unfortunately, this time I had just unequipped all my best soldiers so I could send the B team out on a mission, which means I had to play this mission with all my best soldiers with default crappy equipment. Thankfully, losing this mission on Ironman gives you a retry mission because that would have been a stupid way to lose the game right after I'd finally taken Exhalt down. As it is, I lost both my colonel Assaults (my favorites really, been with me since the start.) Kind of a bummer that they don't give you a chance to re-equip or pick up weapons at least.

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Ha, I read the wiki article on it last night and somehow completely missed the first line that says it's a mission added by Enemy Within. That explains a lot.

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I've just downloaded and installed the long war mod. It's clearly going to be a very long and very hard war.

Has anyone else given it a go?

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Played it a lot in b13 that I'm kinda burned out on it but yes, it is a pretty fantastic mod.

 

Shame that I'm so burned out on it cause there are tons of changes in b15 that I really like but it just takes too long to get to the juicy mid game.

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Yeah I'm a little worried about that. I've not really got time to invest in a game that's going to take a long time to complete. But we'll give it a go

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Unless they've fixed it recently, don't use the shorter war option. Some of the mission types don't scale with time and others do, and it can end up screwing you. 

 

Also, don't ever let them get a clean shot at you. Smokes, flashbangs, and running behind a wall (like no longer visible, not full cover) are all great tools.

 

Finally, limit your view of the map. Triggering two pods at once is when things go down hill. Move your soldiers where they're only going to uncover a little bit of the map at a time.

 

Beagle Rush has some great videos at https://www.youtube.com/user/Beaglerush/videos They are pretty out of date mechanics wise, but it does show you how careful you can be since he plays on impossible difficulty.

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