Idle Thumbs 105: XCOM Obama

[Problem Machine]

Phone book?

[Nappi]

My reason for posting is this: I need your suggestions for naming schemes for my soldiers. In the original UFO Enemy Unknown I used characters from Battlestar Galactica; something tells me that I am going to need a much larger roster this time.

 

Ideas please!   

 

I always named my Worms line-up after famous scientist.

 

There are a lot of great and bizarre Wikipedia lists out there that may help or inspire you. Start here. Can you also change the nickname? If so, then these two lists might be of interest to you:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foods_named_after_people

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inventions_named_after_people

 

"No! Those bastards shot Prince "Fillet of Beef" Albert!" yelled Richard "Bananas" Foster as he cowered behind the control panel of the downed UFO.

[melmer]

The cast of friends

NOOOOOOOOOOO GUUUUUUNTHEEEEEEER

[thestalkinghead]

i bought xcom (because of this podcast and sale) and i like it, it is very much like a better version of UFO afterlight but made xcom-ish, i am playing on hard but not iron man, nobody has died i still have the guy from the first mission that didn't die and he was called Alejandro Haderas or something (and is voiced by Lee Everett) so i renamed him My name (Alex Head) but then after that i named them after game characters and stuff, i have agent 47, goo'day Kenny (he was australian and had a moustache) steroid gontarski, laura croft, nice guy (canadian medic), shaft, then i started to not care about the guys i didn't choose of my main guys so named them like "fast medic"  and stuff, but man not letting people die is hard, i swear they intentionally put in the odd near impossible mission just so you will get squad wiped occasionally, i think i have nearly finished it (shaft used the psionic device thingy and I'm on the ship) and i think i could do the research base building more efficiently next time but it does seem a bit more linear than previous xcom/ufo games, good game though the only bug i have experienced is a save file glitch where i think i saved so many times in so many slots i think i broke the arrange in order of date thing so i have to just overwrite the saves on the top of the list but nothing bad.

[tegan]

I haven't picked any XCOM names, but my ship in FTL is always helmed by Captain James Rustler. It's the subtlest joke.

[Colourful Stuff]

I never rename my recruits, it feels too dehumanising, What I do do is give special armour to squads before sending them on particularly dangerous missions. It lends a sense of history to the soldiers and makes it easier to remember who has fought side by side. 

[draziw]

I haven't picked any XCOM names, but my ship in FTL is always helmed by Captain James Rustler. It's the subtlest joke.

 

Captain James Russell if you want to make it even more subtle.

[DanJW]

I never rename my recruits, it feels too dehumanising, What I do do is give special armour to squads before sending them on particularly dangerous missions. It lends a sense of history to the soldiers and makes it easier to remember who has fought side by side. 

 

That sounds interesting. Do you mean like colouring parts of their armour like a shoulder or knee pad? I haven't played with the elite squad pack yet so looking forward to the extra options. It's almost like giving them tour ribbons.

[DanJW]

Thanks Nappi, just the kind of stuff I need! I've recently been inspired by astronauts, even before Chris Hadfield's Space Oddity video (which is awesome BTW) so I think I will start with that. I Might need more female names though. I'm going to comb these lists!


Also, Terry 'Bag' Spragg.

 

I always named my Worms line-up after famous scientist.

There are a lot of great and bizarre Wikipedia lists out there that may help or inspire you. Start here. Can you also change the nickname? If so, then these two lists might be of interest to you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foods_named_after_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inventions_named_after_people

"No! Those bastards shot Prince "Fillet of Beef" Albert!" yelled Richard "Bananas" Foster as he cowered behind the control panel of the downed UFO.

edit:

here are the lists I'll be using

List_of_astronauts_by_selection

List_of_science_fiction_authors

and the strangely apt List_of_people_who_disappeared_mysteriously

[DanJW]

First attempt at Impossible Iron Man lasted less than 2 months. Ouch.

 

I read some tips here and will now try again.

[thestalkinghead]

First attempt at Impossible Iron Man lasted less than 2 months. Ouch.

 

I read some tips here and will now try again.

tip 7 is the reason i won't play ironman mode, i don't see the point of playing a game without taking risks, sure i could methodically move through the map making sure every member of the squad is always in as little danger as possible (i do that sometimes) but that isn't fun, to me what is fun is having a plan that if something goes wrong your team could all die but if it works you will kick ass and win in a spectacular way, you could say that having saves takes away any of the risk but the risk is my personal enjoyment, meaning i don't like to load the game because i have failed and that isn't fun so i avoid it, but it is good to have it because what i don't like even more is losing everything i have worked for over the hours i have put into the game, so called "hardcore" gamers like to lose things and the ability to lose things gives them more enjoyment in a game but not me, i still want them to add a load function in don't starve because playing it just seems pointless, even though i enjoy most of the game the fact that in like 3 seconds you could lose everything you have done for the past 5 hours just makes the time and effort you have put in worthless 

[DanJW]

Yeah I'm starting to think Impossible Iron Man might be too much for me. In a way I regret playing on Classic mode first, because now that I have beaten it I don't want to go back and do it again, even on Iron Man.

 

xcom_jake_solomon_admits_impossible_difficulty_is_too_hard.html

[Colourful Stuff]

You could try using some of the modifiers on classic iron man. Some increase difficulty, others just increase randomness. Impossible is for crazy people. The hardest thing about it is Sectoids have four health instead of three. It means grenades are no longer the contingency plan they are on classic.

[thestalkinghead]

i am just playing classic but i have set my own hardness goal of never losing a soldier and sometimes that can be super hard even with the ability to load it, like sometimes because of the way the AI works ( being invisible in a group until they see you then they all get a free move) the enemy will spot you then totally surround you or jetpack into super effective spots and especially early on can just easily kill a guy, the way the AI works is one thing that bothers me though, why do they get a free move when they get spotted it seems like they are cheating to me.

 

also i wish i could set settings for the auto save, i have a system of saves for XCOM/UFO i have a save for the base, a save in the base before the mission, a save at the beginning of the mission, a save mid mission and a save that i use for a time i may have fucked up/may win spectacularly, saving when a guy dies is just pointless i would not load that save, also it doesn't seem to save every turn just when your guy dies or randomly(or i can't figure it out) if you kill some random number of aliens

[Colourful Stuff]

i am just playing classic but i have set my own hardness goal of never losing a soldier and sometimes that can be super hard even with the ability to load it, like sometimes because of the way the AI works ( being invisible in a group until they see you then they all get a free move) the enemy will spot you then totally surround you or jetpack into super effective spots and especially early on can just easily kill a guy, the way the AI works is one thing that bothers me though, why do they get a free move when they get spotted it seems like they are cheating to me.

I like that decision. They don't get a full move, they just get half. If they didn't get that move they wouldn't be able to take cover. That would give you crits on all of them, killing them before they could do anything. Alternatively the AI could have special information about your position to ensure they were ready for your approach, but surely that would be more like cheating. The only thing that annoys me are the Thin Men who drop out of the sky and overwatch in the Council missions.

[thestalkinghead]

I like that decision. They don't get a full move, they just get half. If they didn't get that move they wouldn't be able to take cover. That would give you crits on all of them, killing them before they could do anything. Alternatively the AI could have special information about your position to ensure they were ready for your approach, but surely that would be more like cheating. The only thing that annoys me are the Thin Men who drop out of the sky and overwatch in the Council missions.

 

i don't get a free move if the enemy find me out of cover, they should be moving in cover or be caught out like i would be, but yeah the thin man can be annoying especially when you have to save a person and on their way back to the ship the thin men just drop down out of nowhere in between the guy you are rescuing and the ship 

[Colourful Stuff]

They don't move. The patrols technically just teleport about in the fog of war every turn. The rest just sit there waiting to be activated. It is a stylistic choice which places you squarely as the aggressor. Your problem seems to be with the asymmetry, but that is the style of strategy game this is. It's a design which compensated for the fact that you are a clever human playing against a dumb computer.

[thestalkinghead]

yeah i guess is is the asymmetry/unfairness that bothers me, they could have just had AI that moved between cover(would that be a serious AI task?), they basically cheat and yeah i suspected cheaty teleportation, they didn't cheat in the older games but i guess cover didn't really exist the way it does in this one before

[Problem Machine]

It seems to be a design concession to avoid the shots from the dark that instakill your soldiers that were the norm in the original X-Com

[Colourful Stuff]

One issue I do have with the AI and the design more broadly is to be successful at harder difficulties you have to pick it apart. It's a common problem with strategy games, a familiarity with the systems makes them feel less naturalistic, like you are solving a puzzle. This is balanced quite well in XCOM by the incredible theme and very human soldiers.

Unity of Command solves the problem by having unusually naturalistic and unforgiving AI. A lot of the enemies and mission types in XCOM feel as if they exist to compensate for somewhat limited and predictable AI.

[thestalkinghead]

yeah, you can sometimes use the fact the the first time they see you they automatically move away from you into cover to your advantage by intentionally running into to the middle of where you think they are, this is useful if they are in a particularly well covered area because they are forced to move out of it, they won't call your bluff and just stay there, they have to run away.

 

 

edit: i just completed it, Shaft is a hero

[DanJW]

After 9 attempts at Impossible I downgraded to Classic Iron Man and enjoyed it much more. Still tough though; I went with famous comedians (Sacha Baron Chen did pretty well in his gold Ali G armour, Joan Rivers spent a lot of time in the sickbay) and only John Goodman managed to survive more than three missions before he and Tim Minchin wiped on the first terror mission and I couldn't face carrying on. I think I need to recuperate with a less intense game before trying again.

 

edit; yes I can definitely see Shaft in the Volunteer Role. That man has what it takes.

[dibs]

I never rename my recruits, it feels too dehumanising, What I do do is give special armour to squads before sending them on particularly dangerous missions. It lends a sense of history to the soldiers and makes it easier to remember who has fought side by side.

I feel like they are like nuns taking a new name if I do it, so I never do.

[TheLastBaron]

I started an iroman classic playthrough and was using the naming scheme of soccer players from the person's country, but I also would change their appearance to look like the person. It was so much more effort than it was worth and I gave up on the play through pretty early.

[sclpls]

I did the soccer player thing as well, although I didn't go so far as making them try to look like their real life counterpart, I was faithful to the nationality of the players. That also grew tedious since it seemed like I was constantly going on wikipedia to look up the names of players for like the Indian women's soccer league.

 

I was also annoyed during that play through that I didn't get any Argentinians. Not having a Messi in my squad was probably my downfall.