greydan

XCOM Enemy Unknown

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Just finished the game on normal, ending was weird.

it seemed like it was suggesting there was some sort of ancient evil that the aliens were trying to find someone to fight, and they were testing humanity? And then the ship turned into a black hole and my psychic dude flew it to space idk.

That's fine though, since the story really isn't very important anyway. I'll probably try a classic ironman game now. Well, at some point anyway.

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Is it possible for aliens to trigger my overwatch during their free movement? I.e., if I set all but one of my dudes to overwatch, move the remaining dude forward, and discover a cluster of aliens, will those aliens get shot by my overwatch dudes on that same turn if they cross their lines of sight?

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Is it possible for aliens to trigger my overwatch during their free movement? I.e., if I set all but one of my dudes to overwatch, move the remaining dude forward, and discover a cluster of aliens, will those aliens get shot by my overwatch dudes on that same turn if they cross their lines of sight?

The short answer is yes but it appears a bit buggy. I've yet to see over watch trigger if, during their turn, the aliens move I to my LoS from the fog of war if I've not seen them before. They do get the extra free turn though

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I've played this for about 8 hours or so. Kind of enjoying it a lot! On the other hand it's a really stressful game.

The game is really dense with new enemies, it's got loads of unique tricks, I'm surprised at how much cutscene stuff there is, and it's really challenging and cool.

I'm not totally sure of what I'm doing a lot of the time. Does cover make you take less damage, or make enemies miss you more often? It took me a while to figure out whether my new equipment is better than my old ones, and I'm still not totally sure, I don't get why some of my probabilities are so low, and I think the same enemies from the beginning have started doing more damage... also general cover stuff- it's a hard game to get into. I shot a rocket at some guys, and instead of sailing towards them it just hit the car right infront of me and I died.

I'm not sure if I ENJOY having no simoleons, and having a Very Difficult mission come up while all my guys are recovering. Whenever my guys die (only about 3 of em) it's usually some dumb accident where I moved them half an inch away from cover, or I don't know how to revive people or something, so I'm not really appreciating the permanence of dieing so far.

The game's really good though, so hopefully all the other stuff'll stop annoying me after a while.

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As you learn to play it you should find that it becomes more enjoyable and less of things that irritate you happen. Broadly speaking I believe that cover reduces the probability of the enemy hitting you, not how much damage you take (that's randomised I think) However many alien weapons and the sectoid's mind meld ability increase the probability of them hitting you, so it often appears they are better shots than you are. At the start pf the game they are! If you press F1 you will get a breakdown on all the modifiers that affect that all important % to hit number.

Missiles will generally be 90% accurate , but can miss (10% chance) misfire in a direction you weren't expecting. They can also be blocked so pay attention to the numbers on screen before you fire. If you fire a blocked missile t'll hit whatever was blocking the shot, so if its a car them the car will go boom, which isn't always good. They are not a guarateed hit, unlike grenades.

Cover is critical to the game, so much so there are positive bonuses for hitting exposed enemies (or your squad) if they are exposed, so you should always always try to end your move in at least half cover if not better.

As for permadeath, well that's sort of one of the points the game. If you don't like your squad dying try to make sure that your tactical play minimises the likelihood of that happening as much as possible. Stay in cover, use over watch a lot and use one guy as a scout to find the enemy, and then pull back. Flanking tactics and using higher ground all helps too.

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So i've just hit a point of no return moment in the game (purple physic ball thing), am i near the end?

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It is the final mission.

I finished the game some time ago. I enjoyed the game a lot, but couldn't help saving all the time. I don't even consider checking out the Iron Man mode.

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Cool, I'm stuck in a routine abduction mission then I'm bloody doing it. I'm only in month 5 or 6

Loved it! But kinda glad it coming to an end

what was the point of buying all those shit hot demon planes. tut :)

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Update: I found out that stalling for a while without moving onto story-critical missions is actually a bad idea. So I decided to rewind my save and assault the alien base as soon as it came up instead of researching and unlocking things first.

This was a much better idea because it turns out that lowers global panic by 2. Then I pulled out of an alien abduction mission and it turns out that kills your entire squad on the spot, so I decided to rewind my save again.

This game is gonna take a long time to finish.

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I'm really uncertain how I feel about the straightjacketing that these design choices confer, honestly. The way panic grows pretty much demands that you bootstrap your way through the (admittedly underwhelming) storyline, regardless of your tech level. It adds a very strong directional element to the gameplay experience, but I don't really like how the systems are designed to make me play it before I feel I've prepared.

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On the normal level it seems you can control panic well enough that you can delay the story missions sometimes. Although, I did have high panic before the alien base assault and lost China. Afterwards I got lucky I guess and panic has been mostly under control.

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Rest in peace, "Lockdown" Rodriguez. Your ability to move and also shoot your sniper rifle in the same turn was a valuable skill in this war effort.

Rest in peace "Ghost". If only you'd have lived to see the Ghost Armour that makes you go invisible, then your nickname would have been truly sick. Also your ability to sniper dudes twice was awesome.

Rip in peace, "Magic Man". You may have only lasted for 2 missions, but it was enough to level up to the stage where you could carry 3 medkits, and that was still better than using rookies.

RIP it up, Emily Edwards. I'm sure you would have been one of the characters to have psi-abilities if you'd have made it passed the first alien ship mission.

Never 4get.

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Rest in peace, "Lockdown" Rodriguez. Your ability to move and also shoot your sniper rifle in the same turn was a valuable skill in this war effort.

This is why you fail. My two snipers with squad sight and, later, double tap abilities were the backbone of my squad.

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Hey man, I can't see into the tech-tree future. This is like my first sniper. The DS game, "My First Sniper".

Actually whatever, I stand by it. He killed like 50 guys.

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If I remember correctly (and I do), the squad sight and the ability to snipe after moving were mutually exclusive choices. I think there is no (or very little) distance penalty in sniper accuracy, so once you find a good spot (in terms of line of sight) you rarely have to move the guy. Just something to consider when training your next sniper.

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Yea I read in a description for some sniper rifle that they get less accurate the closer you get.

But it definately goes back up at some point, cos I get plenty of 90%+ shots up close. On Normal.

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I pick the snap shot skill too. I like having the option of moving the snipers around a little and putting them on overwatch. Especially on maps where you have to shift your squad a little bit away from focusing on enemies to the north from enemies to the west, for example.

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I think both those skills work. Maybe Squad Sight pays off more in the long term (e.g with Double Tap), but in the short term Snap Shot is pretty good. You can't get a good position that covers all the places you want in all missions anyway, or not quickly enough. I remember one Terror mission where one of my snipers didn't move at all from the starting position, because I had to constantly rely on his squadsight shots as I got some pretty tough enemies revealed quickly. I lost my other sniper stupidly because i moved her on top of a structure where she was vulnerable and my medic didn't have a skeleton suit and couldn't follow her so she died.

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I think both those skills work. Maybe Squad Sight pays off more in the long term (e.g with Double Tap), but in the short term Snap Shot is pretty good. You can't get a good position that covers all the places you want in all missions anyway, or not quickly enough. I remember one Terror mission where one of my snipers didn't move at all from the starting position, because I had to constantly rely on his squadsight shots as I got some pretty tough enemies revealed quickly. I lost my other sniper stupidly because i moved her on top of a structure where she was vulnerable and my medic didn't have a skeleton suit and couldn't follow her so she died.

It's embarrassing (despite the fact I'm playing in a room on my own) how often I stick a sniper up in an elevated position, giddy with all of the hit and damage bonuses that will entail, only for the enemy to just look up and take him/her out. I really need to at least get a flying SHIV up there as cover.

On second playthrough on Normal (after my failure the first time around), there's a long way to go but I've already lost Canada, China and Mexico and France, Germany, the UK, the US and Japan aren't far behind. I'm getting decent money in but I have no idea how I'm going to keep going. But I will!

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I think both those skills work. Maybe Squad Sight pays off more in the long term (e.g with Double Tap), but in the short term Snap Shot is pretty good. You can't get a good position that covers all the places you want in all missions anyway, or not quickly enough. I remember one Terror mission where one of my snipers didn't move at all from the starting position, because I had to constantly rely on his squadsight shots as I got some pretty tough enemies revealed quickly. I lost my other sniper stupidly because i moved her on top of a structure where she was vulnerable and my medic didn't have a skeleton suit and couldn't follow her so she died.

Squad sight definitely pays off in the long term. So much, in fact, that I would say that it's the most essential skill for a sniper.

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It's embarrassing (despite the fact I'm playing in a room on my own) how often I stick a sniper up in an elevated position, giddy with all of the hit and damage bonuses that will entail, only for the enemy to just look up and take him/her out. I really need to at least get a flying SHIV up there as cover.

On second playthrough on Normal (after my failure the first time around), there's a long way to go but I've already lost Canada, China and Mexico and France, Germany, the UK, the US and Japan aren't far behind. I'm getting decent money in but I have no idea how I'm going to keep going. But I will!

I lost a multiplayer match that I had completely in the bag that way. Had my completely tricked out sniper with a skeleton suit on top of a church, grappled from one side of it to the other, saw the remaining wounded members of his team that I had suicided my last shotgun assault in to cripple. My opponent had revived the sniper I'd put down, and killed me from full to dead in one hit even though I had Damn Good Ground. I was thinking I'd be able to get a shot off, but I wasn't.

Remember kids: the high ground doesn't make you invincible. :getmecoat

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I don't know if I'll ever beat this game. I want to enter the final mission with a decent group of troops but Squadies are too weak to survive missions at this point. I'm also loosing my Colonels to some pretty ridiculous stuff: I'm twenty hours into the game and an ethereal just showed me a new area of effect attack that wiped out three of my troops. I think I played ten hours of this game without loosing a single dude, now with the highest possible gear my guys are hitting targets less often and getting shot up more easily.

One big change from the early game to the late game are snipers: in my early game I had great results with squad sight, but now the levels are designed in such a way that I can never get a sniper in position. I lost both my Colonel snipers and after that none of them have been able to rank up. I wish I could dip the camera down at will to the snipers view point, just to see the twig that the game thinks is blocking his line of sight.

Edit: I started using a flying plasma SHIV and that solved all of my problems. I got to the final boss,

where my Volunteer was possessed by one of the ethereals and also psychically attacked by the boss himself. When I fired a rocket to finish the boss off, I was told that my volunteer had died and that I would have to restart the mission. What the fuck?

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where my Volunteer was possessed by one of the ethereals and also psychically attacked by the boss himself. When I fired a rocket to finish the boss off, I was told that my volunteer had died and that I would have to restart the mission. What the fuck?

If a unit is being mind-controlled and the mind-controller dies, the mind-controllee dies as well. Excellent if you're killing a sectoid who is linked up with another sectoid; not so great if an enemy is mind-controlling one of your troops. That's XCOM!

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Worth dropping by Polygon to see a piece they did on the development of XCOM. A lot of the information will be old news to people that have read a lot of interviews with Jake Solomon, but even then it is worth watching the videos to check out some of the earlier prototypes and design concepts.

http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/1/31/3928710/making-of-xcoms-jake-solomon-firaxis-sid-meier

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