The biggest problem is that their spit is 100% accurate, isn't it? I've never seen them miss, even on normal behind full cover with upgraded smoke.
Poisoned guys on classic tend to loose will checks super fast and drag others into panic mode.
One panic round by half of your team (2 guys, so not that uncommon) in bomb run is all it takes to loose it. On classic they also have that one additional health so usually survive rifle and shrug off grenades.
LordofHats wrote: Never had a problem with thin men. Don't bunch up and they're less of a problem (and bring lots of Support, I always pack two).
Even in early game its not that hard to one shot them, provided the game shows mercy on your chances to hit the target.
It's really more that the RNG seems to worship the thin men, than anything else. They just never miss, constantly crit, constantly cause panic, always seem to choose the best places to take cover and there are so many of them. They frustrate me than any other enemy type. I guess the poison can be an inconvenient sometimes, makes it hard to aim but it isn't a huge deal. Most of the time I'm happy to see a poison shot, since it means they won't be causing massive amounts of damage with their guns... and they're like the second enemy in the game! Yikes.
In contrast Berserkers who show up relatively late are harmless. You tag them once and they run headlong into the middle of your squad and promptly get vaporized by 100% hit rate attacks. Enemies who mind control are basically wasting their turn, I've never failed to kill the controller before he did *anything* with the victim.
Alien Grenades were the best item ever, just because they could 1-shot Thin Men without LoS and without needing to hit.
OMFG THIS GAME IS AWESOME. I know Im a little late to the party, but I used to play this game to death as a kid and I just rented the new one last night. Was literally up til 2am playing it. What an incredible update for a great game.
My biggest problem are the cyberdisks. They have this annoying habit of floating across half the map and taking a flank position and firing into someone. Usually kill them as fast as I can but those things hurt XD
Melissia wrote: I don't mind thin men myself . Better than facing off against muton elites.
Chongara wrote: It's really more that the RNG seems to worship the thin men, than anything else. They just never miss
Actually there's a good reason for this.
The Thin Man Plasma Rifle is the same as the Light Plasma Rifle. Which gives +10 to aim./
That's actually a common misconception. The LPR the thin men use does not grant them the +10 to aim; the game gives it that stat after you capture one. What it does give is the suppression ability. I think its in the .ini somewhere. The forums talk about it.
What they do have is 65 basic aim, which is increased to 75 in classic (all aliens receive a +10 aim boost in classic). Combined with the fact that they are usually on high ground, they have a whopping total of 95 aim.
LordofHats wrote: My biggest problem are the cyberdisks. They have this annoying habit of floating across half the map and taking a flank position and firing into someone. Usually kill them as fast as I can but those things hurt XD
Agreed, got to a point where i would start sweating buckets whenever one of those bastards turned up...the auto move when they spawn is just a killer i find, allows them to get enough movement the next turn (flying half the map) to really get into an awful position for you, and the combo of a badass main gun and grenades hurts something awful...
Just got achievement 3xExcellent on terror mission. Thanks to inferior AI I guess. Somehow I didn't get this one on normal.
I really needed this boost after loosing 3 counties in one month Can't believe how much more exciting this game is during another playthrough.
I got it because everything stayed about midway across the map and it didn't take me long to find them all. Gun down the cryssalids as they come leaping off of the building them rush in and destroy the floaters. I think I did it in 4-5 turns.
I find this game amsuing but also somewhat of a disapointment. Granted I never played the original so I am somewhat unaffacted by childhood memories. But the thing that irritates me the most is how damned long things take to reasrch and build, sided with the system that leaves you stranded without your best men should they get wounded.
And the AI and somewhat shoddy grafics also contributes to my lack of intrest in completing it
I beat normal mode pretty handlily the 2nd go i had at it. I beat it the first time but for some odd reason i kept getting the defeat screen and i heard it was a bug.
The real challenge is to play classic or impossible difficulty on iron man mode (impossible is always on iron man mode). You see in classic you're dead if you're not always in full cover pretty much and you have to face enemies little by little. Every enemy has an aim bonus, some like mutons and thin men have health bonuses so they can't be killed by just one grenade if they bunch up (you need several). Also i think i may have to allow some continents to go down the tubes early on like 'south america'. South america has very low income countries and only 2 of them. The only good thing it has is the 'we have ways' boost and later on it doesn't even matter. I also think i'm going to let most of north america go down the tubes except for the USA because of the high income it has. I might also let go of africa but the 30% extra income bonus sounds nice so i'll try to keep it. Asia and europe i'm going to save as much as i can because they each have 4 countries and failing a mission in one of those countries raises the panic level for all 4 countries and more for the main country i didn't help. Basically if i keep the panic down in europe and asia then i can lose all but one of the other countries in all the other continents (the one being the U.S. for sheer income reasons and because i'm an american ).
Tackling classic difficulty on iron man mode is a challenge though. I suggest everybody try. It's very frustrating esp. when you fight the 10 hp mutons that can crit. you with 12 hp damage which is enough to kill pretty much anything early on. I figure the 2 things i need most in battle other than rockets are a high defense amount (smokescreen, unit bonuses, cover, armor, etc.) and a good aim ability if at all possible. I find it easier to only face a couple guys at a time so you have to watch out for uncovering more enemies in the rest of the battlefield and yet you should probably engage only like 2 or 3 guys with your entire squad out of 5 or more that are there.
Carapace armor seems pointless but i may get armor that boosts speed and defense. I'm unsure if i want to use titan armor and sometimes medkits because you will get one shot killed quite a bit. I may go for 2 smokescreens rather than 3 medkits and the smokescreen with an extra 20 to the already 20 defense from smokescreen must be a godsend for a total of 40 defense. With ghost armor or skeleton armor, special abilities and even partial cover i bet those super smokescreens will just make your guys super hard to hit even with the stupidly ridiculous aim of enemies. You can be behind multiple intervening objects an entire building's length away and your enemy will still shoot at you and hit you even if you're behind a car with the long end away from you. Basically your enemies in classic difficulty are insanely stupidly accurate and you need more potent laser weapons and better extremely fast. I may opt out of using carapace and titan armor entirely for ghost armor and skeleton armor. I'll see about the archangel armor and psi armor.
Soladrin wrote: I got it cause I had 4 snipers and 2 supports with the extra movement to search them out. Squad sight ftw.
That's the thing. I had 2 noobs, lvl2 assault and lvl 3 sniper. 3xCarapace, scope, medkit and a vest. No upgraded weapons. Classic Ironman so no save shenanigans. Still have no idea how this happened.
I fear the new DLC will be additional 2h gameplay and 10E. At least overall success of XCOM could mean some new squad turn-based games.
Is anybody else playing classic difficulty on iron man mode and having as hard of a time with it as me? It's fine until you fight masses of mutons with guns that crit. with a 12 and mostly just one shot kill your guys. The best i could do was 2 shot kill them when my shots actually do hit.
Usually the way the game works is i get a guy all the way to captain rank but i need to get them to major rank before i can get the will bonus and the 'new guy' bonus which might be the most useful of them since all your guys start off with a class and use better weapons or abilities.
Somehow i managed to keep most of my nations but one or two in my council but i don't think i can ever make it past september in classic mode currently. Just without better weapons and more defense as well as better soldiers i just die.
I may have to stun thin men early on and get their weapons like most people mention just so i can get the aim boost and then add that to the scope bonus. I'm more interested in stunning mutons though because of alien grenades and all the crazy guns they have.
Another thing i found out is that using hunker down is pretty good for when you are in partial cover as it negates critical hits and doubles your cover (makes partial cover count as full cover). This helps for if you use one move to send a guy out early on and have one left to use and you can't go back as easily due to enemies moving into position. Sometimes i find hunker down to be fantastic if you can't shoot your enemies well and there's only partial cover around as it forces your enemies to come around so they can shoot you better and often pulls them out into the open. That said running away could help too but running away a little and using hunker down to draw out your enemies helps a bit.
I'm still having trouble with classic difficulty though. Any hints would be nice. I think i may have to capture aliens pretty fast and use their weapons. That said it won't be easy not even close.
flamingkillamajig wrote: Is anybody else playing classic difficulty on iron man mode and having as hard of a time with it as me? It's fine until you fight masses of mutons with guns that crit. with a 12 and mostly just one shot kill your guys. The best i could do was 2 shot kill them when my shots actually do hit.
Usually the way the game works is i get a guy all the way to captain rank but i need to get them to major rank before i can get the will bonus and the 'new guy' bonus which might be the most useful of them since all your guys start off with a class and use better weapons or abilities.
Somehow i managed to keep most of my nations but one or two in my council but i don't think i can ever make it past september in classic mode currently. Just without better weapons and more defense as well as better soldiers i just die.
I may have to stun thin men early on and get their weapons like most people mention just so i can get the aim boost and then add that to the scope bonus. I'm more interested in stunning mutons though because of alien grenades and all the crazy guns they have.
Another thing i found out is that using hunker down is pretty good for when you are in partial cover as it negates critical hits and doubles your cover (makes partial cover count as full cover). This helps for if you use one move to send a guy out early on and have one left to use and you can't go back as easily due to enemies moving into position. Sometimes i find hunker down to be fantastic if you can't shoot your enemies well and there's only partial cover around as it forces your enemies to come around so they can shoot you better and often pulls them out into the open. That said running away could help too but running away a little and using hunker down to draw out your enemies helps a bit.
I'm still having trouble with classic difficulty though. Any hints would be nice. I think i may have to capture aliens pretty fast and use their weapons. That said it won't be easy not even close.
Yeah, CI is a bitch. I never had any real problems with mutons though; its always the thin men who get me.
flamingkillamajig wrote: Carapace armor seems pointless but i may get armor that boosts speed and defense.
Carapace armor is just a stepping stone.
The most economical armor is the skeleton suit, which comes right after the carapace armor-- for the loss in just one HP, it increases movement rate, defense, and mobility, and costs less alloy to boot.
I agree with Mel, I don't have any issues with the skinnies, they are annoying, but die nice and easy with one shot. The dangerous gak is the stuff that takes heaps of punishment, I think its because I get overconfident and run all my assault guys up and blast the gak out of them. I play super aggressively, and always take three assault guys, I like to get right up in their grid and make sure I hit them hard and fast with the business end of a shotgun. Sniping ain't my style.
Issues start if whatever I'm shooting survives, and on their turn they are three feet away from my men. So Elite Mutons, Ethereals and Sectopods are the bad asses for me.. obviously I suppose seeing as they are the elite fethers! The Cyberdisks are pretty tough as well and can survive a good couple of shots, they seem to be really accurate with their return fire as well.
But especially a Sectopod critting for 14 and getting to shoot two separate guys in the face in one turn.
Sectopods and cyberdisks are the main reason why I ALWAYS carry around a single heavy gunner. Suppressive fire against the heavy hitters combined with a bonus to hit them granted by holo targeting can mean the difference between life and death.
Melissia wrote: Sectopods and cyberdisks are the main reason why I ALWAYS carry around a single heavy gunner. Suppressive fire against the heavy hitters combined with a bonus to hit them granted by holo targeting can mean the difference between life and death.
Bah. HEAT ammo and just shoot them in the face... robot face? Front of the disk?
lord_blackfang wrote: There's also no way to get a leg up on the aliens, whereas in the original, if you did really well early on and attained air superiority, you could start dictating the terms of engagement.
There is a way. Once you can enter the alien dimension you can keep wiping out their fleets so they literally can't attack you. Of course by this stage you will be near fully kitted out anyway and would be starting in the end game missions. When UFOs invade you can also target the buildings that they deploy troops to (they use a grey tube type thing), if you do this you will very rarely get terror missions.
Well you guys know i'm talking about classic difficulty on iron man mode so when i say mutons are hard i mean they crit. on 12's and have like 10 hp per guy. That's generally when i start to go downhill and the fact all my elite guys die off so i have to deal with a bunch of rookies with base weapons that panic a lot.
I played a mission not too long ago and i think i received no damage whatsoever and fought a bunch of floaters and sectoids. Let's just say i lit up the place with rockets and shot like 3 of them with 2 guys (a shredder rocket was on one of em). I can't stress the importance of heavies enough but you will curse when it goes off target or blows up on your guys. Try your best to shoot with as open terrain as you can get and keep them in somewhat forward positions so you can get a good shot off. That said heavies are pretty good against mobs early on. Dunno about later but i figure a good couple of rockets could do some nice damage esp. when the enemy takes cover behind a car or other explosive terrain that blows up too (the explosions stack). I think a rocket plus a car blowing up is enough to kill a muton using it for cover even with its 10 hp. Also if an enemy takes cover anywhere the rockets go through the cover as well and should the shot not kill them it should still be enough to make them stay out in the open long enough to die from the fire on your other dudes.
Currently i have a couple lieutenants (a sniper and a heavy i think) and if i remember correctly the game starts getting hard right about when i have a captain or something. I'm trying to get some majors so i can at least get 'the new guy' upgrade so all my starting dudes at least have a profession. I'm trying really hard to keep my lieutenants alive right now so we'll see where this goes. I'll probably be cursing how i failed for the 9 or 10th time on classic difficulty next time i post though. It usually happens because i get rushed by large mobs of dudes and i usually quit when i have to fight 2 cyberdiscs that instant kill my guys and fly over so much terrain it has to be a bad joke. Seriously right now cyberdiscs have the most ridiculous move and combined with their firepower in classic diff. being a one hit kill just as mutons and chrysallids one hit kill it's just too much.
@Melissia: Yeah i was trying to make a point of the skeleton armor being the better early tier armor though i may try very hard to get ghost armor pretty quickly. I may skip titan armor altogether but i'm unsure. I'm wondering if the archangel armor when shooting at enemies from below counts it as flanked. I ask this because i'm wondering if i should get the other colonel sniper power that allows you to snipe and not have it cost an action and to maybe get move and snipe with the sniper early on. My point in doing this is if i can fly up over people and auto-flank a whole bunch then i can snipe all of them. If this isn't the case i suppose i could just destroy cover with rockets and snipe at the enemies out of cover until they die. Either way it's a win for me. Could be good against sectopods actually though 'double tap' is fun esp. since i never choose the move and fire sniping option so it's preferable.
Being high enough that cover shouldn't matter doesn't seem to give the flanking bonus, or at least it hasn't been for me.
Automatically Appended Next Post: -and ye gods...this play through is ridiculous - I have one support. I bought a bunch of dudes, and it was just heavy/assault/heavy/sniper/heavy/assault/heavy...
I really wish they didn't assign the classes for you.
Melissia wrote: That's why I save before the end of hte first mission. It assigns classes randomly upon getting back to base and promoting.
It's okay now, the US just gave me like 1600 bucks for 3 heavy plasma and I hired four more dudes ... two of which are support.
Although that did remind me of the whole not being able to just sell my outdated crap... like the US army doesn't have a couple hundred dollars to give me for this stockpile of lasers I have laying around collecting dust?
Ok so i'm actually doing ok in classic ironman after quite a lot of games. All i have to say is that getting your officer training academy up reasonably quickly is needed as you will need to boost squad size pretty fast to keep up. For some odd reason i went with skeleton armor before laser weapons (go figure). I actually got pretty far into the game and even had 3 colonels. Well maybe not far but i've killed sectopods so that's reasonably far. I'd say go for 2 supports and 2 heavies. Heavies will be worth their weight in gold or more when you get ganged up on esp. when your guys level up and get boosts. In fact i don't think i'm exaggerating when i say early on it's more important to keep your elite squad alive so you can have super rocket heavies and supports that scout. Should things get bad you can use defense boosting smoke or the dense smoke. If you get your elite squad wiped out early on chances are you're best off just starting the game over if it's iron man mode. Right now i lost all most colonels and stuff but i had one support captain left (i like to imagine her as ripley from the aliens series now for some reason).
I can't stress the importance of falling back somewhat, possibly using hunker down and throwing smoke grenades for your guys caught in a bad situation in the open. This is why it's always good to keep one or two supports with a move left.
Boosted heavies are hilarious. I'm not exaggerating by saying i basically just nuked the crap out of the aliens with rockets in a few missions and just retreated my supports just before the nuking if they gathered up around them (like chrysallids just love to do).
Right now since my support is my only real skill on the team i'm just trying to level the rest of my guys before i take on the alien base. I know that isn't too far into the game but in the first game i got owned for not being prepared and it happened a lot to where my squad competence was very low. Currently i have about 4 sergeants with my support major.
As far as skills go i usually go for ones that boost defense or dodge attacks. For the support i chose to have 2 smoke grenades even though that's probably a bad idea. For heavies i think the plus 2 strength rockets are better but the boosts 2 tile (radius or diameter?) rockets are definitely a god send. You have 2 heavy support colonels and you'll see those guys just nuking everything as long as they have the range. I mean i must've had 60 something kills on one of my heavy colonels before he died and a lot of these were elite guys too. Also if you get heat ammo the double damage is also included on the rockets so you'll see 16 damage being laid down upon robotic enemies in a blast. I might not remember it correctly but i think that's enough to lay low a cyberdisc but it's definitely significant damage.
So as far as the game goes now it's more about heavies doing most of the damage to masses and you have the shredder rockets and normal rockets (please take the shredder rockets as that gets a boost to 6 damage and boosts damage of other attacks). If that's not enough heavies boost your aim on enemies even when they miss if i remember correctly.
I'm trying to see if i can get ghost armor now but i don't know the tech tree. I don't think i'll see another sectoid again in any normal circumstance and i never captured one early on. I did try capturing some things like berserkers, thin men and mutons and succeeded but i haven't really gotten much else other than the outsider shard thing of course. I am already starting to fight armored mutons and sectopods though. I mean crap i even fought a battleship which wasn't quite a good thing to face.
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So yeah long story short 2 heavies, 2 supports and 2 of whatever else (maybe one sniper and an assault). Go for the officers academy thing fast and get those upgrades going, don't let your elites die esp. not the whole squad and try your best to have colonels and heavy colonels at that (shouldn't be terribly hard as heavies can rack up a lot of kills), capture some aliens to get tech at a decent time in the campaign like when you start to see some mutons, and try to wait until you have near full satellite coverage or all around low panic levels on every remaining country before you feel fairly safe that losing a squad of elites probably won't doom the campaign for you.
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I have yet to finish the campaign and the alien base assault might give me trouble but so far things look to be going alright. Every place that can have a building has one and now i have so much power i can just get rid of the normal dinky power generators i needed earlier for something else like the mission specific buildings i need to make.
Oddly enough i have enough money, elerium and alloys for enough weapons to handle most of what i've got (esp. money though since it's at about 3k cash) but i have almost no weapon fragments of all things. It's probably a sick joke because i've been blowing everything to oblivion and that prevents you from getting anything but a corpse. The only things left i can research at the moment are better fighter craft (firestorms?) which i actually need and want because i fought a freaking battleship not long ago and lost 4 plasma cannon interceptors that just got 2 shotted (not that i could've successfully boarded it and won the fight) and then i can research light plasma rifles which i don't care about. Chances are the light plasma rifles might open up the tech to plasma pistols but right now i'd rather have some firestorms.
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Sorry that was long-winded and a wall of text. I apologize for never being able to keep things short and sweet but i've been playing endlessly for hours. Finally getting past getting owned constantly is definitely a nice thing. It's kind of funny because i think i actually earned the 'wet work' achievement (some mission in 5 turns or less) just from using rockets. The amount of death and destruction all those rockets inflicted was just ungodly and awesome. If only i could've put it on youtube for you guys to watch. In the campaign on classic difficulty on iron man mode i've only lost argentina from the council and only 3-4 nations have a panic level of 3 while everybody has less. It's not as hard as i remembered it. It takes a while to figure out a working formula but once you do enemies just die en masse.
Melissia wrote: That's why I save before the end of hte first mission. It assigns classes randomly upon getting back to base and promoting.
It's okay now, the US just gave me like 1600 bucks for 3 heavy plasma and I hired four more dudes ... two of which are support.
Although that did remind me of the whole not being able to just sell my outdated crap... like the US army doesn't have a couple hundred dollars to give me for this stockpile of lasers I have laying around collecting dust?
Yeah, that bugs me, too. Most I've seen is them asking me for laser pistols.
To be fair, the money used in XC:EU seems to represent millions, not dollars.
Melissia wrote: That's why I save before the end of hte first mission. It assigns classes randomly upon getting back to base and promoting.
It's okay now, the US just gave me like 1600 bucks for 3 heavy plasma and I hired four more dudes ... two of which are support.
Although that did remind me of the whole not being able to just sell my outdated crap... like the US army doesn't have a couple hundred dollars to give me for this stockpile of lasers I have laying around collecting dust?
Yeah, that bugs me, too. Most I've seen is them asking me for laser pistols.
To be fair, the money used in XC:EU seems to represent millions, not dollars.
I don't know. It doesn't scale well then since soldiers are 15 million dollars a piece or whatever with that exchange rate.
Ethereal mind controlled my most powerfull assault dude and took out my entire squad because the dude had the close quarters perk where he gets a reaction shot everytime someone moves. Everyone died.
Melissia wrote: That's why I save before the end of hte first mission. It assigns classes randomly upon getting back to base and promoting.
It's okay now, the US just gave me like 1600 bucks for 3 heavy plasma and I hired four more dudes ... two of which are support.
Although that did remind me of the whole not being able to just sell my outdated crap... like the US army doesn't have a couple hundred dollars to give me for this stockpile of lasers I have laying around collecting dust?
Yeah, that bugs me, too. Most I've seen is them asking me for laser pistols.
To be fair, the money used in XC:EU seems to represent millions, not dollars.
I don't know. It doesn't scale well then since soldiers are 15 million dollars a piece or whatever with that exchange rate.
Sounds about right for me. The soldiers are given state of the art body armor and assault rifles (even if they suck), communications equipment, etc, and they're having hazard pay and etc-- this isn't uncle sam.
Ethereal mind controlled my most powerfull assault dude and took out my entire squad because the dude had the close quarters perk where he gets a reaction shot everytime someone moves. Everyone died.
The best thing to do against a mind controlled guy that you have is to use disabling shot with your sniper or snipers (it only does like 2-3 damage anyway) and also to just run away from the mind controlled guy until the mind control wears off (i think it's about 3 turns). If i remember the ability has a 5 turn cooldown so you should be able handle the ethereal in 2 turns or 3 as a mind controlled guy can't do anything the turn the opponent controls it. I feel your pain though. Many close calls i had where i was about to snipe some ethereal and was one shot away from winning and then suddenly bam! my mind controlled sniper snipes him after the ethereal managed to hit him as well. I was so pissed.
It's hard for me to decide if i like archangel armor. Sure it's great for hitting your enemies but unfortunately if you're playing a mission that's very cramped and in buildings then it doesn't really help so much. This includes the aliens supply ships. For some reason there isn't a really good spot for you to just aim at everything in the air and when you're not in the air it's just 8 armor without any bonuses whatsoever.
@bromsy: It would be nice if the game let you sell your extra weapons and equipment on the gray market for when you don't use them anymore. Speaking of which that name always seemed weird to me. I couldn't help but laugh at the idea of the panic level on every country being like the terror alert level. We're at orange for somewhat alarmed but not too much. There has to be a humor for all this alien activity becoming so serious. Would be nice if they made the ufo conspiracy theorists try to show footage of some out of focus craft or something. That would've made the game much funnier i think. They sort of didn't take themselves too seriously but sometimes they did. I'm unsure if i would've liked to see a little more goofiness.
It's like "black market", but instead of being strictly illegal, it's just unofficial. At least that's what I assume they meant. Could be I'm over thinking it.
I've gotten to the point that I consistently run out of steam on Classic/Ironman right around the time that muttons show up. I can (carefully) make my way through the first terror mission and quite skillfully take out any UFO missions, but about the time muttons show up, other aspects tend to get harder as well.
Of course, muttons are frustrating as I'm never expecting them then BAM, they run out of nowhere and murders one of my trooper.
The counsel missions are the worst, seeing as the game loves to pit me against a seemingly endless wave of thin men. It's getting to the point where I'm going to have to forgo grenades just to keep everyone with a medkit because poison kicks my butt so hard.
YotsubaSnake wrote: I've gotten to the point that I consistently run out of steam on Classic/Ironman right around the time that muttons show up. I can (carefully) make my way through the first terror mission and quite skillfully take out any UFO missions, but about the time muttons show up, other aspects tend to get harder as well.
Of course, muttons are frustrating as I'm never expecting them then BAM, they run out of nowhere and murders one of my trooper.
The counsel missions are the worst, seeing as the game loves to pit me against a seemingly endless wave of thin men. It's getting to the point where I'm going to have to forgo grenades just to keep everyone with a medkit because poison kicks my butt so hard.
Honestly it's probably is gonna take too long to repeat but just do as i said and use 2-3 heavies, get one of your guys to colonel rank, keep your elite squad alive for a good while and get some skeleton armor and laser weapons pretty fast. It's not easy at first but right now it's not that hard for me and i'm on classic difficulty on iron man mode.
So yeah use heavies as they're worth their weight in gold early on esp. when they rank up. They're mostly useful for rocket attacks as it's one of the best ways to take on hordes of tough opponents and it goes through cover. Heavies can also use attacks that help you hit the enemy so that's always good. I also use a couple of support soldiers as scouts and to pop cover for my guys. I'm unsure whether to use the 3 medkit route or the 2 smoke grenades route as boosted smoke grenades are pretty nice esp. when your guys are in even partial cover. Currently i go 2 smoke grenades on my supports but i may change that back to 3 medkits. Then again since i'm at titan armor it's probably a waste now to have more than a few medkits since i just use combat stims on my heavies and assaults mixed with smoke grenades for some extra hard to hit guys that are hard to kill as well.
Strangely enough this game isn't too bad and all my super elite guys died off. I think i'm left with like 4 corporals currently and then a bunch of squaddies since i have the upgrade.
I think the point of the game is to handle the late early and late mid game and then the late game isn't too hard from there. Of course you need to use smoke, cover and heavy rockets constantly. Now that i have better everything i get combat stims to use too and those help a ton. You have to play a lot smarter in classic difficulty and you can't fully run a support out with both moves when scouting so you can run back once in a while. I don't play super defensively but i do use plenty of smoke and explosions. It's also nice to capture some enemies at a decent time to get access to their plasma weapons.
Currently i finally have access to ghost armor and i beat the alien base mission in the campaign in classic/iron man mode. Ghost armor should help my support and sniper classes out a ton since i use supports as scouts i just cloak them and send them out across the map to find enemies and then run back when they're found.
Oh btw heat ammo works on all heavy attacks to my knowledge so even rockets use it. Then again i'm unsure if grenades have the heat ammo +100% damage to robotic units ability. It's awesome vs sectopods and cyberdiscs though esp. with the 8 damage rockets you can get at colonel rank with the +2 damage modifier (they are normally 6 damage).
Not great. Unless you absolutely geek out for the gameplay, you'll probably get your first playthrough on normal, which is too easy, then a playthrough on classic ironman. It's all pretty linear.
This game only did one thing for me. Remind me how awesome Fallout tactics was and how gakky this games gameplay is. It´s so dumbed down it´s not even funny.
Soladrin wrote: No action points, extremely limited control of your squad, smaller squad etc.
Some may call it streamlining but they did it to such a degree that it just became over simplified IMHO.
I don't think it's too dumbed down.
Cover matters here. Playing on normal was way too easy. I'm two
missions into classic/ironman and I like how my tactics have
changed from run run run shoot shoot shoot to advance huddle
blow up cover finish the job. It's very cool.
I'm actually on the temple ship and about to beat classic ironman. I would've last night but i was one shot away from killing the uber ethereal and ran out of ammo for my main gun on my last guy left (female psychic). I ran back a bit and reloaded and the uber ethereal moved a bit and saw me and fired his attack which finished her off. One more successful hit on him. That's all i asked for. Didn't get it. Would've won me the game last night. Least it saves for the temple ship assault. Hopefully nothing bad comes of this.
So far to me classic ironman has to be played pretty specifically at first. You need an officer academy fast and you need to keep your elite squad alive for at least a while in the campaign. It's also needed to have 2 heavies and 2 supports. The heavies you need for rocket attacks and to boost your own aim with the machine gun attacks and the supports you need for all the smoke bombs you deploy which help a lot. Also get the carapace armor research but only as a stepping stone for skeleton armor as the defensive bonus, speed and grappling hook as well as only one less health than carapace armor is totally worth it. The main importance is to use everything in your power for defensive bonuses (cover, special armor, abilities, smoke grenades, etc.) and most of all when you feel your cover is too limited. It's also good to have a move or two left on your supports to throw out a smoke grenade on your guys just in case you're in a bad position. It might be annoying but don't bunch your guys up near cars and such when facing certain things that can throw grenades. It's not that enemies know to do this but when you deploy smoke or boost defense it's quite possible your enemy throws a grenade at you instead of shooting. However if your defense is too high enemies all too frequently will run away a bit and go into overwatch. This is generally a good thing for you but you have to remember who's on overwatch as you can use a high ranking assault to just dodge the first reaction shot.
InquisitorVaron wrote: I thought it looked challenging, but I've only seen highest level ironman gameplay.
A game being simple has nothing to do with it's difficulty. It's simple in what you can actually do. (compared to the original and other games in the genre that is)
InquisitorVaron wrote: I thought it looked challenging, but I've only seen highest level ironman gameplay.
A game being simple has nothing to do with it's difficulty. It's simple in what you can actually do. (compared to the original and other games in the genre that is)
I guess.
The other game had simplistic character development. Raw numbers, pretty
much. Skill selection is far more interesting/deeper than just equipping a
guy with two heavy plasma.
I'm actually pretty new to this turn based strategy thing but i thought what the game gave was really fun. I wouldn't have thrown in 160+ hours already if it wasn't. I'll probably be over it in a few months anyway though. It's most likely new game interest that's got me playing so much. I will admit though i have no life to have played it so much already.
InquisitorVaron wrote: I thought it looked challenging, but I've only seen highest level ironman gameplay.
A game being simple has nothing to do with it's difficulty. It's simple in what you can actually do. (compared to the original and other games in the genre that is)
I guess.
The other game had simplistic character development. Raw numbers, pretty
much. Skill selection is far more interesting/deeper than just equipping a
guy with two heavy plasma.
And this is why I prefer Fallout tactics. Turn based (or real time if you want to) strategy with fallouts character creation system for every squad member.
Ok well sweet i just finished beating classic difficulty on ironman mode and got the achievements for both classic difficulty and doing it on ironman mode. I don't think i can do impossible difficulty yet. I'd like to try classic a few more times before i feel up to even attempting a impossible difficulty game. I checked btw and something like 1% to .9% of players with the game have the classic/impossible on ironman mode achievement. Not bad. I'm feeling pretty good right now. I'm up for another run. Wondering what continent i should go for next. I'm actually surprised i made it as far as i did too. I only lost one country of all 16 and at the end everybody was at 1 panic (though that usually seems easy towards the end).
I think we all agree that Time Units sucked. I'd also like to throw out there that EUs interface streamlined the game by removing unnesscairy and aggrvating micromanagement, not dumbed it down.
There was no point in replicating the incredible annoyance of the interface that you used to make sure all of your troopers were equipped with a grenade pre-mission as well as equiped with the right weapons. I remember it getting to the point where I avoided specialty weapons because I didn't want to have to wrestle it away from the rookie every mission to give it to the vet that can actually hit with it.
haha I'm just the opposite. I loved TU and the equipment interface. No proximity mines nor picking up downed guys weapons made me sad.
That said, it' a fantastic game in it's own right.The systems they replaced it with are great... except not being able to sell your old gear... that's just annoying.
I'm okay with them taking away TU's... I never had an issue with them due to my tactical brilliance and attention to detail, but I can understand it. However, the base management and inventory is not a change for the better. And I would have preferred to a different system for leveling troops.
I'm trying classic difficulty on ironman again but it's not too easy. It's more because i'm going with asia as my starting country this time around. I'm wondering if i should go another continent. Also with the game i was playing yesterday i lost my elite squad and then too many nations are getting pissed so i think i should start over.
Bromsy wrote: I'm okay with them taking away TU's... I never had an issue with them due to my tactical brilliance and attention to detail, but I can understand it. However, the base management and inventory is not a change for the better. And I would have preferred to a different system for leveling troops.
Faced some trouble last night and wasn't able to save some countries. I think i lost south africa, the UK and nigeria but i could be wrong. I also lost argentina and germany a couple days ago i think. Believe it or not i think i'm still doing alright. I might not be doing as great as last time but i think i have more money from the battles i choose to do.
V.I.P. missions used to be easy and killing the baddies is easy but for some reason my V.I.P. end up getting stuck behind a car that gets fired upon once their movement is done. I don't even think i got to one V.I.P. before the aliens forced a car near him to explode due to shooting at my guys and missing during a reaction shot i think. Reaction shots alone have killed two of my V.I.P.'s in all games combined just for lighting cars on fire and blowing them up. I'm not entirely fond of these V.I.P. missions. They're not that hard but sometimes some of this is annoying and you usually deal with thin men which shoot like gods.
Also i pretty much found out that you only face abductions on the countries you don't have a satellite over whereas of course you find them mid-flight with the satellites. That's probably super obvious and makes sense that the satellite actually do their job but it's something worth adding to your plans. Basically if you have a continent completely covered with satellites not only will you get a continent bonus if everybody is still there but you won't get an abduction mission there either. Then again who knows if one will happen if you just allow an alien ship to get away.
Bromsy wrote: I'm okay with them taking away TU's... I never had an issue with them due to my tactical brilliance and attention to detail, but I can understand it. However, the base management and inventory is not a change for the better. And I would have preferred to a different system for leveling troops.
I would have preferred to CHOOSE classes, at the very least.
Also more variety in skills, or perhaps even advanced classes.
Revenent Reiko wrote: Thats my usual team as well, but with the final slot firmly a Heavy, as i love them...big guns and a rocket launcher? yes please!
Any particular reason you are not a fan?
The Rocket Launcher's handy for when a group of tough enemies is bunched up, but I find the only usual occasion of that is a Cyberdisk and drones. Whilst it's damage output seems lacklustre and grenades equally capable of performing the same job (just with slightly less range - but enough - and difficulty with floating enemies). Holo-targetting seems OK, but underwhelming, as is suppression and they're constantly having to reload - but this is a heavy that was built towards suppression, rather than rockets, after reading some people discuss holo-targetting earlier in the thread.
But one of my biggest problems is his hit-rate (despite being a Major+) seems really, really poor.
I just find anything he can do, someone with a Plasma Rifle and Alien Grenades can do too, and more...
Revenent Reiko wrote: Thats my usual team as well, but with the final slot firmly a Heavy, as i love them...big guns and a rocket launcher? yes please!
Any particular reason you are not a fan?
The Rocket Launcher's handy for when a group of tough enemies is bunched up, but I find the only usual occasion of that is a Cyberdisk and drones. Whilst it's damage output seems lacklustre and grenades equally capable of performing the same job (just with slightly less range - but enough - and difficulty with floating enemies). Holo-targetting seems OK, but underwhelming, as is suppression and they're constantly having to reload - but this is a heavy that was built towards suppression, rather than rockets, after reading some people discuss holo-targetting earlier in the thread.
But one of my biggest problems is his hit-rate (despite being a Major+) seems really, really poor.
I just find anything he can do, someone with a Plasma Rifle and Alien Grenades can do too, and more...
Its also handy for getting rid of terrain the enemy are/can hide behind (something ive picked up of this thread i have to say), or for occassionally punching a hole in a wall for an unexpected entry (situational, but very handy when it works). Otherwise my Heavy is on overwatch duty as opposed to supression, either that or i can use his holotargetting to help out another shooter (and to take large chunks of health from larger enemies). I do get the same problem with his aim, but he is usually either the first to fire (thereby giving his bonus to everyone else), or he sits centrally on overwatch (the perk giving him 2 shots is really very handy...). With a heavy plasma rifle i find that even if he misses, the holo bonus is still applied, and he often takes ut the cover of the enemy without resorting to one-shot rockets or grenades, and when he does hit, it is catastrophic to whatever was stupid enough to get in his way. My heavy is also a tank, he has so much health/defense that when in combination with the -2 dmg perk, he just doesnt go down...
The other thing he does for me is that he is psionic, which means that even if he has a minimal to hit chance with is big gun, he has a 100% (or near to it) chance of a mindfray. He is otherwise geared to be defensive psionically, so he can boost the rest of the team's Will, or give them more defense depending on the scenario. Its probably just different playstyles/set ups, but my Heavy is the ultimate support trooper (in my head at least....), he has a big gun, he can aid the others targetting, he can buff them in a couple of ways, he can help pick off enemy health and lower their Will+aim etc. etc. he is also never taken out of the fight, if theres one guy i can rely on to still be shooting at the end, its this guy (and he still has the ability to suppress if i want him to )...
have you got the Foundry upgrade for better ammo consumption? Otherwise, yes, suppression fire destroys your ammo (it uses the most out of the options), which can leave him on low ammo, but another thing i learned was to wait a turn before advancing (when you have cleared you area of the map/when there are no enemies around) just to reload everyone...put your asault guys next to any handy chokepoints and even if an enemy appears they will still get hit due to the close combat specialist perk...
I tend not to take grenades o nthe res tof my team i have to say, so the option of an explosive is very attractive to me...
I do see entirely where you are coming from, i must just have more luck with mine...
Finally getting the hang of it. Im to to Ethereals (which are a bitch to stun). Even bought the Blockbuster 30 day pass to hang onto the game for 30 days.
d3m01iti0n wrote: Finally getting the hang of it. Im to to Ethereals (which are a bitch to stun). Even bought the Blockbuster 30 day pass to hang onto the game for 30 days.
They're harder to mind control with a high level psychic but i've done it. It's not easy because they keep trying to mind control your guys and your best bet is to run away for a while or use the weapon disabling shot with the sniper on you mind controlled guy.
As far as the other guy goes i used to hate heavies and then i loved them. They are absolutely needed early to mid-game in classic difficulty on ironman mode. Considering so many things have at least 4 hp a simple frag grenade just won't do and if you have 2 heavies you can basically just send a guy back and then blow grouped up mutons, floaters, sectoids, thin men and chrysallids sky high esp. if they group up (like chrysallids do in a reaction move so you should move heavies last) and if enemies go near vehicles which blows up as well as the explosion of the rockets. You can ask a friend i've used them against online. He hates me for using them. Not only that but if they get to a high enough level and you take the extra 2 tiles radius upgrade on explosions and suppression at a high heavy level then explosions have a much larger explosion radius. Also shredder rockets are separate from the normal rockets so you have 2 rockets instead of one to use it's just one boosts damage for 4 turns and is weaker and the other is just stronger. However both together are usually enough to kill 10 hp guys which group up when you use a couple heavies. The bad thing about rockets is that you can't move and use them but usually their range is good and if you can move far and keep up until you get the chance to use them then they can really be fantastic esp. in comparison to base frag grenades (alien grenades are ok in classic but needed in comparison to frag grenades around fairly early to mid-game).
I haven't even mentioned about the better rocket launcher called the blaster launcher or similar that has higher strength on all attacks, a longer range and can move around objects so that you can even shoot with them outside of line of sight of enemies and just bombard them to death.
Currently my tactics involve using a couple assaults with combat stims by using the combat stims when getting close to enemies when there are quite a few of them. Getting only 5 damage from a sectopod shot in classic is hilarious when you are wearing titan armor. Honestly seeing 6 damage taken from anything when your guys are stimmed is pretty high. I then have a support or two which i haven't really used smoke grenades with anymore and just scout with them with the ghost armor. I recently gave one a stun gun and let him cloak and then stun aliens at low health when he gets close enough. Considering their run amount this is good esp. with cloak. I used to use assaults for this but you can't use the stun gun after running and considering assaults are always up in everybody's faces it'll just get them killed unless they have combat stims. I've also got a couple snipers up. Other than that if i can field a heavy i use it but at this point 1 or 2 heavies probably won't do much except rock sectopods and cyberdiscs which if i remember heat ammo does effect rocket attacks too and possibly grenades.
Bumping this thread rather than making a new one for a simple question.
With the DLC dropping recently with new Council missions and such, I had a question about the main line. Spoilered for obvious reasons.
Spoiler:
I'm about to assault the Temple Ship in my main game. Is that the final mission of the game, or is there more story afterwards? I don't want to do that game, then have to start over to see the DLC missions.
Don't really need details, simple yes/no works. I just don't want to screw myself over.
Edit: the DLC also includes a crapton of new customization options btw. Including like...10ish new helmets and new armor decos for all armors, including titan/psi/ghost/archangel which all previously only had 1.
Starting a classic Ironman play again soon. Probably just going to do it after the download.
I liked the other poster's idea and will probably use Dakkanaut's names for the team. The main problem is that my initial completion on normal included about 40 lost soldiers, including colonels and folk with dozens of kills. I am expecting some heroic losses from you guys, but I know you can carry the day!
so for the DLC that comes with the game, does the "classic" inspired XCOM soldier that you get only appear once, or does he show up every playthrough afterwards? I havent started a new game to see what he's like yet, just wanted to know.
Also, he better only have 10 will and 10 aim, or he's not a true rookie
Also, even on medium, this game channels the original game infuriatingly well. I had a terror mission (2nd one of the playthrough if I remember correctly) that was just rediculous. Step off the skyranger with my best guys, including two colonel level snipers with doubletap. I have a really bad feeling for some reason, so I move everyone up to the nearest piece of cover and put everyone in overwatch. First turn, no less than THREE chrysalids come straight at me from a doorway not 20 feet away from my guys. Had not every guy been on overwatch, half my squad would have died. Next turn, THREE MORE come out of the same door way. Only through some lucky headshots do I drop them (and one nomming a civvie not 10 feet away from me). Next turn? If you guessed THREE MORE FETHING CHRYSALLIDS, you would be correct. Best part? After I finally dropped those last chrysallids, the only other enemies on the map were 2 floaters, who my squad absolutely butchered.
I swear to god, I've never freaked out that badly in a video game before. Having 9 friggin chrysallids and a zombie come at me like that so quickly was just insane.
MrMoustaffa wrote: so for the DLC that comes with the game, does the "classic" inspired XCOM soldier that you get only appear once, or does he show up every playthrough afterwards? I havent started a new game to see what he's like yet, just wanted to know.
Also, he better only have 10 will and 10 aim, or he's not a true rookie
Also, even on medium, this game channels the original game infuriatingly well. I had a terror mission (2nd one of the playthrough if I remember correctly) that was just rediculous. Step off the skyranger with my best guys, including two colonel level snipers with doubletap. I have a really bad feeling for some reason, so I move everyone up to the nearest piece of cover and put everyone in overwatch. First turn, no less than THREE chrysalids come straight at me from a doorway not 20 feet away from my guys. Had not every guy been on overwatch, half my squad would have died. Next turn, THREE MORE come out of the same door way. Only through some lucky headshots do I drop them (and one nomming a civvie not 10 feet away from me). Next turn? If you guessed THREE MORE FETHING CHRYSALLIDS, you would be correct. Best part? After I finally dropped those last chrysallids, the only other enemies on the map were 2 floaters, who my squad absolutely butchered.
I swear to god, I've never freaked out that badly in a video game before. Having 9 friggin chrysallids and a zombie come at me like that so quickly was just insane.
I think i'm going to go with one of melissia's opinions here though somehow i think if i said i was agreeing with one of her points she would say i misinterpreted it and she really meant something else. If she does or doesn't i don't give a feth though.
The opinion is that the game could just use more stuff. I love this game i really do or i wouldn't have played it more than probably anybody i know with a total game time of 350-400 hours. I managed like 200 hours on this game in a couple weeks. That's a lot more time spent and more fun had than most games esp. ones i only really play the single-player for. That said this game could use more stuff. Most of what you get boils down to a shotgun, an assault rifle, a pistol or rocket launcher, a stun gun ability, a sniper rifle, grenades and a machine gun. Any other varieties of weapons that deviate from this basic set-up like mortars, flame-throwers (enemies burn), tesla coils, acid guns (maybe leave a pool of acid), poison attacks (poisons enemies), freeze ray (has a chance to freeze enemies obviously) or anything else that could be in here just isn't done. Maybe i'm overcomplicating this but even the better weapons you can get are mostly just upgraded versions of everything you start off with and an increased possibility of destroying cover/blowing up crap with each. The only weapon which seems totally different as an upgraded version is the blaster launcher and this is because it can move around cover unlike the normal rocket launcher. That said you have to successfully assault a battleship to recover fusion cores just to make the blaster launchers and since a battleship only comes with 2 you have to fight your way successfully through 24 strong enemies just to get these fusion cores to make the only weapon in the game that needs them. The battleship weapons (fusion lances?) you can research when you've beaten a battleship so it doesn't matter.
There are abilities but there could be more of them or more choices. Many of the abilities (once again just my opinion) are often ones i would choose easily over the other choice given 2 choices. Some of them sound good but i'd really rather just have some choices in comparison to another but maybe it's just playstyle and i don't know how to play differently. Still i think some abilities seem much worse than others. One of these examples is the heat ammo choice or i think the 2nd choice of having 2 reaction shots on a heavy. Now maybe i just don't use heavies right but the extreme damage given on robotic units with a heavy that has heat ammo combined with rocket attacks or any other given thing is just crazy (heat ammo works with grenades and rockets used by the heavy). You use a rocket launcher esp. if it's the blaster launcher with upgraded damage, the final colonel ability for rocket damage boost and the heat ammo ability on a robotic unit like a sectopod and shoot a normal rocket at it and you do 24 damage to all robotic units in the blast radius. In fact even my shredder rocket does about 18 damage to a sectopod if i have the final tier colonel upgrade for boosted rocket damage and i'm using the blaster launcher and then the sectopod is usually hurt enough that a couple shots will kill it anyway (not to mentioned for 4 turns it takes even higher damage). It's utterly crazy in comparison to 2 suppression shots that only go off if the first suppression goes off and hits.
I also feel psychic powers are a bit limited since you only get 3 psychic levels (5 might've been nice) and there's only 5 abilities with one or two being pretty useless. I don't even use the one that removes panic or mindfray from a target as you have to stand right up to an ally pretty much to use it. The final tier ones and panic are alright.
Anyway it's a great game but i just feel the game needs more of everything. It just feels like too much of the same after a while. I guess the joke's on me because i can't buy the DLC and experience the new maps and missions or skins or anything that'd totally be refreshing for this game. That said for me right now i care more about new weapons which aren't just an upgraded version of another i already have. Damage is nice but i'd rather want something that does more than better damage with the super assault rifle XT5 super-class deluxe special edition with holographic sights.
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I've almost finished up my 4th playthrough of classic ironman though i can't seem to get myself to finish it. I played with the south america starting position because it was the hardest. I also threw in members of a forum i used to go to and it was fun until they all died and i got depressed about it.
I don't really use smoke grenades much anymore because if your defense gets too high your enemies will usually opt out of shooting and just starting throwing grenades at you if they have them or they'll start spitting acid on you. If you're behind destructible cover this is bad as your defense bonuses will usually go to crap once your cover is gone.
My normal squad is composed of 2 heavies, 2 supports and 2 snipers. I don't like to use assaults anymore as it ruins a strategy that tends to work really well for me. This strategy is that before i see a patrol i move each guy one move each (you have 2 action points per guy so normally 2 moves unless you dash) until somebody spots an enemy patrol. If the patrol spots you they tend to get a free move and can flank you so moving completely with some soldiers means the person that found them will often die if you used both of your moves. Considering assaults need to run and gun constantly even with certain defense boosts or whatever there is a chance running out super far will leave them exposed and then they can only shoot while they wait to die for next turn. It's possible to use ghost armor on them and cloak before using run and gun but this would probably get very costly very quickly and these days i prefer to ghost my soldiers only because most of the time your critical hit chance goes up to 100% when you are cloaked.
Other than that my normal strategy usually goes with me putting my squadsight snipers on high ground and i can't tell you how good low profile is on high ground (makes partial cover count as full) esp. with ghost armor and the d*mn good ground ability (+10 aim, +10 defense when on higher ground than your enemy). All those abilities combined give you a total of 70 defense if you'r behind a small wall on high ground (usually high ground only has partial cover so 'low profile' is crucial considering partial cover gives +20 defense as opposed to full cover giving 40).
The next phase of what i do is i use lots of rockets with my heavies. Part of this is for damaging multiple enemies but the other thing is that it destroys most cover too and anything that can blow up will blow up with a rocket shot so if they're using something that can explode as cover and you hit your enemies with the rocket attack they'll take damage from the thing exploding and the rocket. Removing the cover from your enemies does the job of putting your enemies out in the open and making them infinitely easier to hit with your guys esp. if their rank is higher or they have abilities improving something. At this point with my snipers if i have 'in the zone' i can just shoot them all now one after the other and basically pick off a good 3 kills for muton elites. 'In the zone' is also good if you have to face a ton of chrysallids as they can never benefit from cover and plasma sniper rifle do 8 damage at the very least so as long as you have the ammo you can shoot as many chrysallids as you can see. Combine snipers with ghost armor and you can cloak for boosted critical hit chance.
Finally i just basically use the supports for a little bit of scouting but usally more healing since you can give them up to 3 med-kits.
I have some more advice but this post is gonna be super long and everybody will probably avoid it anyway.
My only complaints are that I hate only having one base, only being able to respond to one abduction out of 3 every time, the fact that you will never need more than 6 of anything, and the inventory system.
In the old XCOM, you could have 3 bases running, each with a skyranger and a group of troops ready to respond to an emergency. You could have it so you never needed to do a night mission again. In this younre stuck with one base, and you dont even get to choose where in the country it goes. This ties into the whole abduction thing, because if you could have multiple teams you could take on all the abductions at once.
Other than that, only needing to ever build 6 or less of anything is kind of disappointing. You never really lose gear, and even in rediculous explosions it seems to survive. It would have added a lot more challenge and interesting risk I feel. I remember in the old xcom picking up dead agents and carrying them back to the skyranger so i wouldn't lose their gear for example.
Finally, the inventory system seems unnescessarily simplified. TU's and the interface DID need to be simplified. Limiting inventory to slots was NOT. Used to be you could have a "grenadier" packing tons of grenades, or have a person mule around extra rockets for your rocket launcher. Now, you get one slot free that gets taken up whether its a single tiny grenade, medpack, or a nanoweave vest (seriously?) I'm not saying we need the nightmare way it was done in the original, but a "backpack" system with a basic grid layout wouldn't be a bad choice. It would add a lot more flexibility to your units at least.
Also, the game needs more maps. I'm starting to memorize them and its getting predictable
MrMoustaffa wrote: My only complaints are that I hate only having one base, only being able to respond to one abduction out of 3 every time, the fact that you will never need more than 6 of anything, and the inventory system.
I think one base / one abduction out of 3 was made deliberately to increase the whole: "small organization vs unstoppable alien menace". Especially on the higher levels of difficulty, where there is no chance of keeping all countries. You really feel more like plugging holes and, especially at the beginning, everything is slipping from your hands.
It doesn't make much sense, but IMHO it increases the overall "doom" feeling.
The dumbed down inventory is the by-product of class + skill system. Picking skills affects your inventory so you have less interaction with inventory itself.
I would modify it a little bit - allow more items by default, maybe adding ammo management but I wouldn't change it too much. If you wanted to have the old inventory back you would have to scrap the skills and come up with the new ones.
I'm not saying I'm perfectly happy with the above, but I do feel there are good reasons behind those changes, not just: "lol eazy for consolez lolz" like most people think.
Oh yeah I understand why they made the changes, I just don't like them personally. The most ironic bit is that I own the new XCOM for 360 (my comp would explode the moment it saw the requirements. Hell, the ORIGINAL XCOM lags it a bit) I just feel like the inventory was over simplified.
Also, why do the aliens never invade your base? Those were some of my favorite missions in the original, since you often had to deploy rookies who weren't ready yet and your vets had to grab whatever weapon was closest. Those always felt really hectic and tense.
Every time I lose a country in the report, the game locks up.
It might only be when I lose two at once, but I just cannot get past it.
It's lucky I finished the game a couple of run-throughs ago, but I now cannot replay it.
But, as games go, XCOM was too short.
It might be to cater for the console-crowd, but I hoped I could drag it out a mission or two before the end.
The inventory things I could overlook, as with the single base, small squads, and worthless drones.
I doubt I'll be getting the DLC, and hope there's a bug-fix patch soon...
I must be lucky, the only two bugs in the game I have seen is the multi level UFO "whoops ran off the edge" bug and the "I see dead aliens" bug.
Totally disagree on the worthless drones. I love me some shiv action. They make great forward observers for my squad sight sniper and if they die it doesn't make the team freak out or cost me a soldier. I'd much rather send a drone into the unknown then a Col. Once you do Classic or Impossible soldier panic becomes a HUGE issue.
I agree with moustaffa on the one base issue. I would make multiple bases and create a stranglehold on the aliens. I would have Cydonia or Bust researched for years and never do the mission. Kill counts would be in the thousands and money was as smooth as a cup of green tea. Of course this was all in UFO defense and not Terror from the Deep, screw that game.
That's why you only have 1 base; to stop you from putting a stranglehold on the aliens.
XCOM: UD became stupidly easy late game, as you could just spam bases everywhere and get complete coverage. You can't do that here.
God this game has the difficult factor of the original sometimes. Had a 5 man team of 2 Col, 3 majors, and a plasma hover shiv. All deck out in flight/titan/psy armor, plasma, etc etc. Down a ship and start like any routine UFO clearing....
Moving my last guy into place, I see a Etheral and 2 Advanced Muties... crap. Etheral hits 3/4ths of my team with Torrent instant killing my shiv, a team member and leaving the rest at 1/4th health. I move in to try to recover somewhat killing one mutie, injuring the other due to bad shots, and scratch the Etheral. 2 more members get killed. I recover one, lose another and finally kill off the pack with 3 guys at 1/4 heath and one full health.
Thankful to even be alive I move up super cautious. I scout up a path... 3 Muties, a Sectoid, 2 Drones... i get wiped in two turns after that.
So is the one DLC that you have to pay for any good? I've got around 5 bucks worth of points left on my account and was thinking about getting it. New missions is always a good thing in my book, but I don't know if it's really worth it.
The missions are downright hard (playing on classic). First mission you pass gives you a Sgt giving you nearly instant access to build a office school which is great. However the second mission I haven' beat yet, it's damn hard.
The stupid as hell thing is that when you get offered the first mission if you don't take it you can not have the opportunity to do the missions again. On Classic or harder you need the standard council mission for panic redux and the expansion missions do give you panic reduction (at least for the first two missions).
So I'm just getting into this game. I haven't read the thread for fear of spoilers. I've unlocked assault on alien base pretty quickly. I tried it out but it seems impossible. Is that just something I'm supposed to works towards after several virtual months?
Also, how's the DLC work? Does it just integrate naturally into the game or is it like a whole other storyline/game?
The alien base gets more and more difficult enemies to fight as time goes on so you may want to fight it when your squad is both skilled and your weapons have gotten powerful quick enough. That's my opinion of it anyway. You can handle and beat the alien base pretty quickly and sometimes won't fight that much. As i said the higher the rank of your soldiers the better. High ranking soldiers are much better than noobs with better weaponry and armor. All that said in the lab you want to research weapons and armor before most other things. Eventually you need to get the containment facility and the stuff that leads up to it. However interrogations and autopsies are the more useless research options. This is another reason why the south america starting location is the absolute worst. Not to mention it's only 2 countries to get that bonus and your starting country gives you only 70 credits per month as opposed to the normal 100 for all others except north america with the U.S. giving an astounding 180 credits.
I could give some tips on moving your squad in the gameplay too. As far as everything except the extra content goes i think (for once) i'm the most experienced person here or one of the most experienced people here on this game. I have tallied up a total of over 350 hours on the game so i feel like i've deserved that right. I'm probably not the best player as far as the game goes or the particular game forum on the site goes but for here i think i'm one of the best. Sorry for kissing my own *ss so much.
As a tip for playing the game my strategy is blow up enemy cover and then shoot them to death. They'll be much easier to hit this way and most cover is either completely destructible and/or explode-able.
Also whenever you move you move each guy one action space (so don't dash) and then when every move is used up you go into overwatch if you don't spot an enemy. If you do spot an enemy with one of your guys during a move then you can move the guys that have already moved one space behind cover that's appropriate for the enemies you found and then move the others behind cover and attack. When you uncover an enemy squad you are normally mid-movement and they react by getting a free move so will often flank you. This is part of why you only move one of the two action points for each guy and always leave a guy with an action point left to use for moving.
So anyway that's my huge as h*ll piles of comments. I know i went overboard and you only had a couple easier answered questions but there ya go. If you have questions regarding anything but downloadable content i should be able to help you with it.
Thanks. Blitzing the enemy base is just not working though. I'm getting whooped. First attempt was only about a month of game time. Takes like my whole squad just to kill one squad of those spider things. And there seems to be endless waves of spider things. Guess I'll wait 'me out and level up. There's no penalty for leaving it right?
Also I think I screwed up by building my base in US and my first Satellite in Canada. Sucks to be you rest of world!
There's really no benefit to autopsies and interrogations? They should have made it a damage bonus at least
flamingkillamajig wrote: The alien base gets more and more difficult enemies to fight as time goes on so you may want to fight it when your squad is both skilled and your weapons have gotten powerful quick enough. That's my opinion of it anyway. You can handle and beat the alien base pretty quickly and sometimes won't fight that much. As i said the higher the rank of your soldiers the better. High ranking soldiers are much better than noobs with better weaponry and armor. All that said in the lab you want to research weapons and armor before most other things. Eventually you need to get the containment facility and the stuff that leads up to it. However interrogations and autopsies are the more useless research options. This is another reason why the south america starting location is the absolute worst. Not to mention it's only 2 countries to get that bonus and your starting country gives you only 70 credits per month as opposed to the normal 100 for all others except north america with the U.S. giving an astounding 180 credits.
The US is the best start for the cash, but their national bonus is only good, not great, and with only three countries you can easily have it covered by the end of month two, or month 3 at the latest. This means you get the discount just before you're about to starting launching masses of satellites (when you can build satellite nexus) and before you upgrade to firestorms.
So I take Asia as my first base, the starting cash is good enough and its easy to lose a nation out of Asia and the bonus, while not great, is pretty handy once you start investing in all the foundry stuff. Then I build satellites as fast as I can (the limiting factor is having enough engineers to meet the requirements for most satellite relays), putting them either in countries that have gone red with panic (the satellite drops panic by two, and they only leave XCOM if they're red at the time of the council report) or in North America to score their bonus, and then wherever else will score me a national bonus (based on countries I've covered already to stop them defecting).
The fun bit comes when I finally get around to covering South America, because before then I don't bother with a single autopsy. Then I just sit there and grind through dozens of autopsies, benefitting from the instant result, one after the next.
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KamikazeCanuck wrote: There's really no benefit to autopsies and interrogations? They should have made it a damage bonus at least
It's just research bonuses, and you won't really miss them. It would have been way cooler if they gave damage bonuses from the autopsies, and other cool bonuses from interrogations (like being less vulnerable to the Muton's blood shout, for instance).
What gear are you trying to assault the alien base with?
Because if your answer is assault rifles and combat armor you're not going to have a good time
Make sure you don't make the key until you're absolutely ready. Otherwise you're stuck waiting on that mission and there's no way to scan, since everytime you hit scan it'll center on the base.
Heavies are d*mn near needed in the game esp. on harder difficulties. If nothing else you need to blow through enemy cover so that your enemies are easier to hit with the rest of your guys.
As a hint you may want to stay in full cover and if you have to be in partial cover (like if there's no full cover around) you can use 'hunker down' as it turns half cover into full cover.
I can not stress enough just how important later abilities are in this game. Snipers getting partial cover to count as full, snipers that can do 'double tap' (two shots) or in some cases 'in the zone' (basically allows you to keep shooting enemies one after the other as long as each kills and the enemy isn't in cover which is esp. useful in later difficulties where enemies have more health when you use rockets to destroy enemy cover). Also it's useful to note that 'in the zone' always considers chrysallids outside of cover so if you have a sniper able to one shot each one (easily done with plasma snipers as they always do at least 8 damage which is the full health of a chrysallid). You can quite possibly have one 'in the zone' sniper take out 4-5 chrysallids pretty easily and handily.
As far as other advice goes if you have the (-2 to damage if in cover and not flanked ability) then you can take combat stims with it and whenever an enemy attacks a heavy and you have that on you take half damage of normal with a -2 off of that. Getting at tops like 4 damage from anything with a heavy's titan armor super high hp isn't unheard of. I think combat stims also make you immune to critical hits. It's pretty hilarious.
Then there's the ghost armor which is easily the best armor in the game hands down as pretty much everybody agrees. It gives 20 defense, has 6 hp and can cloak. Also when cloaked the biggest deal is that it almost always allows your shots to do 100% critical hit chance when cloaked except for some flying enemies like possibly drones and that's not a big deal. You could also just cloak a guy and make some fairly risky moves and remain cloaked and unable to be attacked unless a psychic somehow reveals you (usually incredibly uncommon even if they see you and i think they have to get super close) or if you are on overwatch or an enemy gets within range of you with the 'close combat specialist' skill on an assault class (anybody that closes within 4 squares of the assault allows him to shoot at them as a reaction shot).
I don't like the double reaction shot skill of the heavy. I'm pretty sure the 2nd skill option is heat ammo which does double damage against robotic units (sectopods, drones and cyberdiscs). Also heat ammo is confered to the rocket attacks, special attacks and grenades as well as normal attacks (so basically all heavy attacks). Considering the incredibly high health of these enemy units heat ammo wins out in my opinion and double reaction shot only works if the first reactionary shot hits anyway and heavies seem to hit less than the other classes often times.
Use rockets against chrysallids. It's the best thing to do. So generally try not to move your heavies out too far. You should also probably have alien grenades at about this time from one thing or another. It's pretty helpful vs mid-tier enemies and even enemies in classic difficulty. In classic or harder the only useful thing about frag grenades is destroying cover and possibly damaging enemies enough to make them easier to capture with an arc thrower.
If at all possible though highly unlikely you can equip some of your dudes with the 'chitin armor' in your items and during terror missions (where chrysallids are incredibly common) you can put those guys close to where the chrysallids are to force them to fight said guy. Since chitin armor adds health and causes melee to do much less damage it's usually pretty effective.
I also want to state that you probably don't want to make your defense too high when facing things such as mutons, muton elites, armored floaters or cyberdiscs as these enemies can throw grenades at you (it becomes fairly frequent and annoying and is d*mn near brutal mid-tier when you only have carapace armor and an alien grenade hitting 2 of your dudes and destroying your cover can pretty much spell a huge loss for your team. As far as explosives go the sectopod has a mortar ability too but it takes until the next enemy turn before the attack goes off (generally it forces you to move your guys around from where they were so the mortar doesn't hit them esp. if they're near some vehicles).
Another important thing to note is that grenades and other guns take multiple shots to explode cars instead of causing them to go on fire and blow up within a full turn (after a friendly and enemy turn i think). Your early bullet based guns do absolutely nothing to destroy cover except for the machine gun. As your guns get better (laser and then plasma) you can shoot through cover and cause flammable things to explode or go on fire easier. Rockets auto destroy all destructible terrain completely within range. All cover and walls go away and all vehicles in range explode instantly. I can not stress the importance of rockets enough.
@MrMoustaffa: I don't know what you're talking about as it's always worked for me. Maybe it's been a while but i'm pretty sure you can always go back unless it's on the final temple ship assault mission and you've decided to use the gollop chamber but they warn you about this in advance.
Really hate those spider things. Every time someone gets a class assigned though it's support. Need some assault guys to fight them I think.
Snipers, mate. A well trained sniper on overwatch can kill them before they even get close.
Heavies are also nice with the 2xOverwatch perk.
My three best guys are a Heavy and 2 Snipers. It it wasn't for them I wouldn't get anything done. I need to spend more money on upgrading my weapons. I'm only now starting to equip everyone with laser weapons and I only have the level 2 armour.
I got my engineer guys working on some kinda support robot thing. Sounds awesome. It it awesome or am I gonna be dissapointed?
Really hate those spider things. Every time someone gets a class assigned though it's support. Need some assault guys to fight them I think.
Snipers, mate. A well trained sniper on overwatch can kill them before they even get close.
Heavies are also nice with the 2xOverwatch perk.
My three best guys are a Heavy and 2 Snipers. It it wasn't for them I wouldn't get anything done. I need to spend more money on upgrading my weapons. I'm only now starting to equip everyone with laser weapons and I only have the level 2 armour.
I got my engineer guys working on some kinda support robot thing. Sounds awesome. It it awesome or am I gonna be dissapointed?
Ouch dude. Yeah, if you don't have las weapons by the time Chrysallids show up, you are going to have a bad time. Especially on Classic.
Shivs are awesome. Especially the alloy types, which can be used as mobile cover.
Really? Some think shivs are good at times but they have no real abilities and at this point in time i don't really need them. They can't take advantage of cover or anything. Basically they may as well have a bulls-eye painted on them though you can eventually get arc throwers to repair them with a foundry upgrade. In fact a few arc throwers might make them ok but i'd still rather keep doing what i've been doing. It's not really failing me yet. We'll see how i handle impossible difficulty on ironman though (hardest difficulty with one save that always updates).
Classic Difficulty is basically 'Hard', but is called classic as it is meant to be more like the original games (or something like that)
Iron Man mode is when you dont get manual saves, you have 3 autosaves (generally at the beginning of turns, beginning of missions, end of missions and the like) and thats it. SO if you start a mission before you are ready and dont realise in time you are screwed, if you have a few bad turns and end up completely out of position, then you are screwed...that sort of thing. It is again meant to make the game harder and less forgiving of mistakes.
Beat that damn Alien Base! Got to a Abduction mission where I got slaughtered by those flying saucer things so I figured I go back and assault the base. Went much better this time. Spiders aren't nearly as scary with laser weapons.
Sigh, I miss Sectoids. Now it just non-stop Mutons. Then bigger Mutons then angrier Mutons now Mutons that are big, angy and Armoured. .....and then a fikkin Mech Warrior! It ain't easy being Xcom.
Anyway I got some psi-guys now. They mentioned it seems to be tied to will. Should I not bother testing rookies and low level guys until they level up for a better chance of getting a psychic?
After reading this thread I'm almost sold on getting the game. I just need to finish up what's already on my to play pile. Its been a while since I played a turn based strategy game so it'll be since from my usual habit of switching between FPS and RPG.
The last turn based strategy games I played were Final Liberation and Chaos Gate (so pretty much eons ago ) but this thread and some of the gameplay videos on youtube have got my interest. The character management reminds me a little of the older Rainbow 6 games too, especially earning experience for your troops, injuries and the possibility of losing them.
My only problem atm is that I have New Vegas, Ghost Recon FS and Space Marine to finish up and Dragon Age Origins to start. At least by the time those are cleared up XCOM may have dropped in price again
flamingkillamajig wrote: Really? Some think shivs are good at times but they have no real abilities and at this point in time i don't really need them. They can't take advantage of cover or anything. Basically they may as well have a bulls-eye painted on them though you can eventually get arc throwers to repair them with a foundry upgrade.
SHIVs do have a target painted on them. Or at least, if they don't then you're missing the point.
Using arc throwers to heal them is missing the point. You send them out scouting, and when they spot something then your squad sight snipers and heavies blow the aliens to kingdom come, with your assault on standby if there's only one alien left and you're sure he can get up close and kill it with run & gun and rapid fire (and you're sure doing so won't reveal any more alien units).
If that doesn't work then they'll blow up your SHIV... and you build a new one for the next mission. The point being that the SHIV might not be as powerful as veteran troops, but it's a lot better than a rookie soldier. Expose a vet to danger and lose him and you have to get a rookie. Lose a SHIV and you just build another SHIV.
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KamikazeCanuck wrote: Anyway I got some psi-guys now. They mentioned it seems to be tied to will. Should I not bother testing rookies and low level guys until they level up for a better chance of getting a psychic?
Whether or not a guy is a psychic is random. How good a psychic he is depends on his Willpower.
One thing to note is that if a guy takes a critical wound he takes a permanent hit to his will. By figuring out which guys are your psychics you know which guys to make sure never suffer will hits.
So its a good idea to just buy a whole bunch of guys and test them all, and then start getting them experience. The end goal being to do the final mission with six elite psychic troops
Poor Flores. He's my longest serving trooper and he's been wounded so many times his will is quite low. He's freaking out in combat now, pretty sure he's got PTSD.
I don't get the strategy with ghost armour. Why would you cloak when you could shoot? Even on Overwatch your going to shoot and reveal yourself anyway.
Cloaking doesn't take up an action point when you use it.
@sebster: I have no need to send my guys in needlessly to die though. My tactic of moving each guy one action point worth of moving before going into overwatch (and if i find something then i can react to said enemies with everybody) tends to work.
In fact that's really pissing me off. For some reason gigantic fat ass Mutons are so hard to hit. Can barely get 50% on a guy barely in cover like 25 feet away. Current counter strategy is to use the second inventory slot on support guys on a scope. Snipers are always good too of course.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I know cloaking doesn't use a action but shooting uncloaks you.
In fact that's really pissing me off. For some reason gigantic fat ass Mutons are so hard to hit. Can barely get 50% on a guy barely in cover like 25 feet away. Current counter strategy is to use the second inventory slot on support guys on a scope. Snipers are always good too of course.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I know cloaking doesn't use a action but shooting uncloaks you.
Destroy their cover with explosives or similar. It tends to help infinitely more than being on high ground and even flanking. Most cover should be fully destructible or at least it'll explode (like cars for instance). Most indestructible terrain is usually partial cover and in the form of a slight hill an enemy can hide behind. There are basically huge rock-faces from huge levels of land but usually this isn't the case. In most cases enemies will be behind trees, rocks or parts of their space ship and most of their ship is destructible too.
Yes shooting uncloaks you but you get 100% chance for a critical hit when you do it in almost every single case. Also it basically gives you infinitely more critical hit chance without the need to maneuver your guys around to flank an enemy and possibly open yourself up to be flanked by said enemy.
Ah, so there's an advatage to shooting cloaked. Kind of like Mass Effect.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Engineers are working on some kinda fancy flying armour right now. How's that going to work? Is it going to allow my guys to move faster or just get them shot in the head more?
In general,they are able to move further.Plus,taken with one of the sniper skills,it will increase damage and critical hit chances due to being in an elevated position.
On the SHIV front,i like taking one ( a plasma flyer ) for scouting.
I prefer the ghost armor. In the end you're still a big open target in the air. Yeah the elevated position is nice with a sniper esp. if you have 'd*mn good ground' and 'squad sight'. 'Squad sight' of course will allow you to just fly up and shoot from across the map and the height bonus for aim is good. That said sadly in some maps like the really weird 'supply ship' map it's not easy to really shoot down at enemies and in a lot of alien crash site missions they also like to stay indoors which prevents you from getting any good shots off. The same goes for some maps in general with aliens just taking cover in buildings to avoid being shot at.
The arch angel armor sounds good in theory but in many cases you can't use it too well if at all. It also has limited fuel and i don't think it's terribly fast. It is funny to troll melee units with them though (chrysallids and berserkers) and i'm fairly certain grenades can't hit you in the air.
Who knows though as maybe you'll figure out a good use for the armor with some abilities or classes and throw out some good combinations i've never thought of.
I'm pretty sure in the game it says it does not confer an ellevated position bonus but I just looked up a wiki and it says it does. So I guess the game is wrong about itself....
Anyways, I did it! I saved the world! It was approprately dramatic.
Spoiler:
Flores, the dude who's been serving the longest even since the tutorial sacrificed himself to save everyone. Only 2 guys survived the final mission. My second longest serving vet like vaporized from mind control or something....don't know if that's some kinda glitch or something but it's a pretty bad way to go.
I'll try out Iron Man I guess. On the console you're only allowed 1 save. Pretty sure it's going to go badly... I got the DLC too for some reason.
I always use Archangel armor with snipers. With squad sight it lets you get good field coverage from the middle of nowhere. Certain ships you can even see from through the front door all the way to the back room. A sniper shot from the other side of the board is a beautiful thing.
Ya, I was looking up Xcom on the interwebz and found this pretty interesting discussion about how you shouldn't use Titan Armor. You should use ArchAngel armour on your snipers, give them squad sight and the use ghost armour on the other guys to scout and just shoot people from the other side of the map. Sounds intriguing. I'll try it next time.
flamingkillamajig wrote: @sebster: I have no need to send my guys in needlessly to die though. My tactic of moving each guy one action point worth of moving before going into overwatch (and if i find something then i can react to said enemies with everybody) tends to work.
Who said anything about sending guys in needlessly to die? Point is, when you move in to an area, there is a chance you won't wipe out every single alien. And so, when the surviving aliens retaliate, some soldiers of yours will be victim to return fire. If you've moved a SHIV aggressively then the aliens will, most times, focus their fire on that, saving your vets, who are a lot harder to replace than a SHIV.
And moving a single action then going in to overwatch is kind of the basic strategy of the game.
It can from two feet away, which is the range a SHIV should be firing from. Actually, preferably two feet above, with a hover SHIV.
In fact that's really pissing me off. For some reason gigantic fat ass Mutons are so hard to hit. Can barely get 50% on a guy barely in cover like 25 feet away. Current counter strategy is to use the second inventory slot on support guys on a scope. Snipers are always good too of course.
Scopes work really well with every class. They're an obvious choice for snipers. They're an absolute must for heavies (who otherwise struggle to hit often enough). Even for assaults they can be ideal if you're going with the no shotgun version (and if you do go with the shotgun they can still be nice, except armour helps so much more then). And they work really nicely on supports, who with deep pockets and extra speed become really hand support units, able to dash into position and put out an accurate rifle shot when you really need one.
I know cloaking doesn't use a action but shooting uncloaks you.
With bullet storm on a heavy can you shoot and then cloak again?
Ya, but you only get 4 cloaks so seems like a bit of a waste. I'm not even 100% sure cloak shooting gives you better criticals.
Anyway, now I know why none of my snipers have squad sight. The other ability is snap shot which I can't get used to not having. This squad sight thing better pay off.
I tend to have one of each of Squad Sight and Snap Shot at high levels (not on the same team), just make sure you know which one you are using! They both work really well....
Been playing a new game on classic difficulty on ironman mode with europe as my starting position. I already took down the alien base with no casualties though i think a chrysallid would've taken out a sniper early on if it hadn't been like a space or two away from the end of its first move.
I'm actually using a very different assault build for my assault major and it seems to be having great success and working to great effect. I'm using all of the critical hit % type abilities as well as the added critical damage per enemies you can see if you get a critical. I mean with just a scatter laser i've been getting 12's to wound and since i have the double shot ability i can rack up 24 damage on a unit with it. It's pretty crazy. I've basically been one shotting mutons and chrysallids with it.
I've also have one sniper with the scanner ability (my sniper colonel) but my other two snipers have the disabling shot. Maybe it's just how i play but i prefer disabling shot because it great for when you're trying to capture enemies and just want to get close with your other guys with arc throwers and you don't want them to get shot to death. Also disabling shot is good if you don't have the ability to kill everything you're facing and just need a unit to just leave you alone for a while (cyberdiscs and sectopods are good examples).
Disabling shot is also good for when your people are mind-controlled; it lets you not have to kill your team member but still get to the annoying psyker.
KamikazeCanuck wrote: Ya, but you only get 4 cloaks so seems like a bit of a waste. I'm not even 100% sure cloak shooting gives you better criticals.
Anyway, now I know why none of my snipers have squad sight. The other ability is snap shot which I can't get used to not having. This squad sight thing better pay off.
Ghost is 100% critical for your next shot (or two if you have rapid fire). You can see it on your screen.
Squad sight is awesome. Put your guy on high ground at the back. Move forward your forward element. Use sniper to take out any hard targets. Rinse repeat.
It is pretty much necessary in Classic + since you have to be a lot more conservative.
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kirsanth wrote: Disabling shot is also good for when your people are mind-controlled; it lets you not have to kill your team member but still get to the annoying psyker.
I used that in my first game but then went to classic. I'm just a lot more careful and make sure no one advances outside of support range of the others. If someone gets mind-controlled, the easiest way to fix that is a shot to the head for the psyker. Battle Scanner is just too useful in Classic for keeping yourself alive and only exposing one pack at a time.
I agree, pretre.
Most of the use I got from using that idea though was not from really planning to as needing to. I had already gotten two good snipers leveled, but the lowbie I was messing with ended up psychic so his "silly" skill ended up finding uses.
After that run I pretty much stopped taking "silly" skills on even random guys that I think are worthless.
Even so, it is not even all that useful, as I am pretty sure they can still use grenades, poison spit, et al.
Or maybe I am misremembering.
Battle scanners are great, regardless. First move is either fly up and chuck one, or move to cover and chuck one.
The former less likely on Classic. ^^
kirsanth wrote: Disabling shot is also good for when your people are mind-controlled; it lets you not have to kill your team member but still get to the annoying psyker.
Oh yeah, good idea.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I'm playing an Iron Man game. It's been pretty rough. Lost two entire 6 man squads. Don't got much in the way of veterans.
I may be wrong about this but i think you take less damage from psychic attacks if you have a high will (in the form of ethereals) or said attacks have a much harder time hitting. I'm wondering if psychic armor on a psychic with the mind shield is any good if you also use supports with the +20 will smoke grenade. Maybe if my psychic is a support i'll also give it combat stims for an even higher will boost. It'd probably be a waste since it's not like there are that many psychics but it'd be funny to throw said guy at some ethereals and just be like 'There ya go *ssholes! Have fun killing and/or mind controling him.' At that point maybe i'd pull the other guys back and see how things go.
Psychic armor is a very strange thing to work with. Definitely boosts will for psychic attacks and that's alright. I kind of wish they gave more psychic abilities honestly. You only have 5 abilities and you get 3 of the 5 of them anyway. I kind of wished the touched up more on the psychic armor too btw. You pretty much get it at the very end and then that's it. You don't get the time to experiment with the armor or any builds with it really. I might try to use a crazy combo with some colonel that's a psychic in classic difficulty (not on this playthrough most likely as it's classic ironman) and throw said person in a one man fight against a small scout that crashes just so i can get the achievement already (i think i'll give him mind control and psi panic). I'm thinking i'll use a support class for my psychic though chances are that's the worst one to use considering it's a SUPPORT class .
I will also say the assault dude i had with the super critical hit/damage boost is fantastic but when you get up to plasma weapons and the alloy cannon the extra +1 damage per enemy and such types of skills become a bit less preferable. Also i can probably get as good critical hit % with ghost armor anyway. I still enjoy all the damage and the percentage to hit but i honestly think it does much, much more with early and middle tier weapons. Blowing through a muton with one shot is pretty awesome though when only armed with a scatter laser though even if you're at close range and flanking the dude the critical hit % still can get pretty high if you have those skills.
KamikazeCanuck wrote: Anyway, now I know why none of my snipers have squad sight. The other ability is snap shot which I can't get used to not having. This squad sight thing better pay off.
Squad Sight is about as powerful an ability as there is in the game. The ability to have guy in an elevated position, able to plink an alien just about anywhere on the map is a really powerful thing.
Snap Shot I never figured out the appeal of. So now the sniper can move and shoot... like everyone unit can do already, but less accurately? What's the point? Who looks at their heavies, assaults and supports and says 'oh if only I had a guy that could move and shoot. Well, that said Snap Shot can work well with In the Zone, but that's kind of a specialist, novelty build, compared to the much basic Squad Sight & Double Tap combination, that just ensures you 20 odd points of damage a turn.
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flamingkillamajig wrote: Been playing a new game on classic difficulty on ironman mode with europe as my starting position. I already took down the alien base with no casualties though i think a chrysallid would've taken out a sniper early on if it hadn't been like a space or two away from the end of its first move.
Heh, I'm doing the opposite in my current game. Just for fun I left Xeno-Biology until I'd occupied South America, after which I was going on an autopsy splurge (as they're immediate).
So by the time I got around to Xeno-Biology, getting an arc thrower, getting the crystal guy, and going to the alien base there were Sectopods in it Wasn't too much of a problem as I had archangel and titan armour, though the lack of plasma weapons made it a bit tougher.
I'm actually using a very different assault build for my assault major and it seems to be having great success and working to great effect. I'm using all of the critical hit % type abilities as well as the added critical damage per enemies you can see if you get a critical. I mean with just a scatter laser i've been getting 12's to wound and since i have the double shot ability i can rack up 24 damage on a unit with it. It's pretty crazy. I've basically been one shotting mutons and chrysallids with it.
Yeah, that seems the variation in Assaults. Either you go with guys who take a lot of punishment (Def bonus, immunity to crits etc), or guys who deal out a lot of punishment (bonus to crit chance and bonus crit damage). I'm thinking I might go with one of each.
I've also have one sniper with the scanner ability (my sniper colonel) but my other two snipers have the disabling shot. Maybe it's just how i play but i prefer disabling shot because it great for when you're trying to capture enemies and just want to get close with your other guys with arc throwers and you don't want them to get shot to death. Also disabling shot is good if you don't have the ability to kill everything you're facing and just need a unit to just leave you alone for a while (cyberdiscs and sectopods are good examples).
I hate battle scanners. They don't always work properly, and when they do and you spot aliens it's boring, you just sit there squad sight shooting them, and they don't retaliate properly. Really disappointing.
So I go with disabling shot instead. It's a handy ability to take a troublesome alien out of the game, and sometimes 2 damage is exactly what you need to make an alien able to be stunned, without the chance of killing it.
In the zone isn't so bad of an ability even if you do have squad sight. You see if you blow away enemy cover and damage them while doing so you usually have just enough health per guy and each one of them after losing cover counts as being in the open. Basically at that point the sniper just sort of shoots all the currently 'in the open' enemies with a super high hit rate and possibly critical hit % and lots of them will die. Even better is having 'in the zone' esp. with a plasma sniper vs chrysallids as they are always considered in the open and each one can be one shot'ed to death so you can see yourself racking up 4 chrysallid kills with one dude and then changing position with said guy and either reloading or going into overwatch. It's pretty freaking ridiculous.
I still think i'm gonna go with the super damage assault class variant for early and mid game high ranking assault guys. Once you have ghost armor and/or plasma weaponry it's probably a waste though.
Gotta say capturing mutons fairly regularly definitely gives you a nice bonus to your plasma rifle pool. Considering how much plasma weapons and such cost it's probably best to at least get the plasma rifles and possibly pistols from capturing some enemies first.
I'm not sure if i mentioned it but so far in the campaign i have 3 sets of ghost armor and 3 of titan armor. For whatever reason i totally avoided skeleton armor. I also took down a battleship though it practically killed the firestorm i had in the continent i took it down in (i took it down in the continental U.S.). I'll have 4 firestorms soon but even with a plasma cannon it almost got taken down and i think i may have used dodge too. After that i managed to beat the whole mission without a single death though one person became incapacitated and i had to save them. So far though it's going well and i've only lost china. I have a satellite on every other country and 3 continental bonuses proved to really help a ton. I'm at the end of october of the first year. So yeah going from a small organization to having a satellite over every country except the one i lost, having all the continental bonuses except asia's, having pretty much all the most advanced gear and having pretty much everything short of a couple interrogations (sectoids who never show up anymore, muton elites which are hard to hit and do insane damage and ethereals which i haven't been able to engage since they show up in continents without firestorms) and the fusion lance ship to ship weapon (i prefer the emp cannon to it anyway since it doesn't damage the enemy ship and does ungodly damage). Pretty much all i need is maybe a couple guns, a little more armor and then just some psychics and equipment and such and that'll be it really. I already have at least 5 plasma rifles and possibly more from all the mutons or armored floaters i capture.
pretre wrote: That's the point for battle scanners. In classic / impossible, if it isn't boring, you're dying.
Impossible, sure, but not classic.
And that's why I didn't bother much with impossible - I don't really want to spend my time grinding through AI exploits.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
flamingkillamajig wrote: In the zone isn't so bad of an ability even if you do have squad sight. You see if you blow away enemy cover and damage them while doing so you usually have just enough health per guy and each one of them after losing cover counts as being in the open. Basically at that point the sniper just sort of shoots all the currently 'in the open' enemies with a super high hit rate and possibly critical hit % and lots of them will die. Even better is having 'in the zone' esp. with a plasma sniper vs chrysallids as they are always considered in the open and each one can be one shot'ed to death so you can see yourself racking up 4 chrysallid kills with one dude and then changing position with said guy and either reloading or going into overwatch. It's pretty freaking ridiculous.
Oh, no doubting In the Zone is a solid skill. My doubts are more with Snap Shot.
And I thought of In the Zone and Cryssalids, but I find by the time I get a fully levelled sniper Cryssalids have stopped being a problem...
I still think i'm gonna go with the super damage assault class variant for early and mid game high ranking assault guys. Once you have ghost armor and/or plasma weaponry it's probably a waste though.
Enemy hitpoints scale faster than our weapons upgrade (Muton Elites & Sectopods) and with the built in critical resistance of some enemies, having some bonuses to override that becomes really handy.
I've worked on the idea that there's snipers and heavies to do the killing, what assaults need first and foremost is to soak enemy fire. But playing through this time, getting to the end game enemies, I'm thinking maybe an extra bit of killing might be very handy, and my own crit focussed assault is really useful.
Gotta say capturing mutons fairly regularly definitely gives you a nice bonus to your plasma rifle pool. Considering how much plasma weapons and such cost it's probably best to at least get the plasma rifles and possibly pistols from capturing some enemies first.
Sure, but at max you have maybe four guys needing plasma rifles (two assaults and two supports). Four rifles isn't that hard to do, and once you've built them they're there forever.
I'm not sure if i mentioned it but so far in the campaign i have 3 sets of ghost armor and 3 of titan armor.
I build six of everything, and use whatever seems the most fun at the time. Six Ghost, six titan, six arcangel, or some combination of the three, it's all fun.
For whatever reason i totally avoided skeleton armor.
Skeleton armour is great fun, and on some maps it lets you put sniper in a totally dominant position. Other times you get yourself in trouble and it gets you killed (cover on the tops of buildings always gets trashed by enemy fire for some reason).
I also took down a battleship though it practically killed the firestorm i had in the continent i took it down in (i took it down in the continental U.S.). I'll have 4 firestorms soon but even with a plasma cannon it almost got taken down and i think i may have used dodge too.
Yeah, basically the only time all those dodges and matrices become useful is when battleships turn up.
Still, completing a battleship means blaster bombs, so fun times ahead
After that i managed to beat the whole mission without a single death though one person became incapacitated and i had to save them. So far though it's going well and i've only lost china.
Shame about losing China, because then you lose the Asian bonus. That's why I start in Asia - you can let Asian countries go and keep the bonus, and the other continents are much easier to keep all the countries (except maybe Europe, but their bonus is junk).
having pretty much all the most advanced gear and having pretty much everything short of a couple interrogations (sectoids who never show up anymore, muton elites which are hard to hit and do insane damage and ethereals which i haven't been able to engage since they show up in continents without firestorms)
You might get lucky and get an abduction mission that is full of sectoids, that can happen late in the game. Capturing a Muton Elite shouldn't be too hard, kill his two mates, then Disabling Shot/Suppress him and run in there.
(i prefer the emp cannon to it anyway since it doesn't damage the enemy ship and does ungodly damage).
Yeah, that's actually one of the very few pieces of poor design the game has - there really isn't any reason to use anything other than EMP.
flamingkillamajig wrote: In the zone isn't so bad of an ability even if you do have squad sight. You see if you blow away enemy cover and damage them while doing so you usually have just enough health per guy and each one of them after losing cover counts as being in the open. Basically at that point the sniper just sort of shoots all the currently 'in the open' enemies with a super high hit rate and possibly critical hit % and lots of them will die. Even better is having 'in the zone' esp. with a plasma sniper vs chrysallids as they are always considered in the open and each one can be one shot'ed to death so you can see yourself racking up 4 chrysallid kills with one dude and then changing position with said guy and either reloading or going into overwatch. It's pretty freaking ridiculous.
That sounds pretty crazy. Do you have to kill the target to get the next free shot though?
I decided to do this game with "Damage Roulette". So far it makes all my snipers and heavies do 1 damage and Mutons do like 12. Fantastic!
Beat a game on Iron Man. Squad sighted snipers with Arch Angel armour are indeed as deadly as advertised. I thought I'd never beat the final mission without the crutch of reloads but it actually went pretty smoothly. Those upgraded rocket launchers you can get are the best thing ever! Not sure if that's a DLC thing or not. Speaking of which Slingshot is basically just 3 council missions and a guy with a Chinese accent. Not much to write home about.
flamingkillamajig wrote: In the zone isn't so bad of an ability even if you do have squad sight. You see if you blow away enemy cover and damage them while doing so you usually have just enough health per guy and each one of them after losing cover counts as being in the open. Basically at that point the sniper just sort of shoots all the currently 'in the open' enemies with a super high hit rate and possibly critical hit % and lots of them will die. Even better is having 'in the zone' esp. with a plasma sniper vs chrysallids as they are always considered in the open and each one can be one shot'ed to death so you can see yourself racking up 4 chrysallid kills with one dude and then changing position with said guy and either reloading or going into overwatch. It's pretty freaking ridiculous.
That sounds pretty crazy. Do you have to kill the target to get the next free shot though?
I decided to do this game with "Damage Roulette". So far it makes all my snipers and heavies do 1 damage and Mutons do like 12. Fantastic!
Sadly yes you do seem to have to kill them with each shot and you have to hit as well which means having a really insane hit percentage is usually for the best (give your sniper high ground and destroy enemy cover for this to have the best effect). Each dude you kill has to be considered flanked or out in the open for it to not cost an action.
KamikazeCanuck wrote: Beat a game on Iron Man. Squad sighted snipers with Arch Angel armour are indeed as deadly as advertised. I thought I'd never beat the final mission without the crutch of reloads but it actually went pretty smoothly. Those upgraded rocket launchers you can get are the best thing ever! Not sure if that's a DLC thing or not. Speaking of which Slingshot is basically just 3 council missions and a guy with a Chinese accent. Not much to write home about.
The last mission is a bit of a let down, isn't it? I've had much more tense fights in the alien bases, battleships, terror missions, and even some supply ships.
Oh, and some bomb missions have been really tough. In fact, the last mission just straight up sucks.
The last mission's only real hard part is the final fight with the 3 ethereals (2 regular and one uber ethereal and yes he/she is called that).
Battleships i'm unsure about scoring a difficulty on. They're not easy to take down with your own ships and you at least need abilities and a firestorm armed with a plasma cannon at the very least to take one down (and it may even get shot down). The actual fight with your troops in a battleship is hard to score. It's hard yes but generally there are some insanely good sniping positions in the battleship and lots of good high ground and whatever. I've never seen a battleship land which makes sense as that'd be pretty ridiculous but when a ship lands you generally have to fight double the amount of enemies in comparison to a ship you had to shoot down.
Terror missions are actually pretty easy esp. since it's chrysallid heavy (if you have 'in the zone') and enemies tend to target civilians and kill them instead of killing your soldiers. Generally losing most of the civilians isn't even a big deal as completing a terror mission successfully can only help you whereas with abduction missions you have to choose which of 3 countries you can help and the other 2 you don't usually rise in panic level. If you fail the mission you choose to undertake then all countries rise in panic and even worse you may lose your vets if you lose a fight.
The alien base is a weird fight that is pretty tense at times. It doesn't help that the fight gets harder as each month goes by and there's a very real chance you can face sectopods in the freaking thing.
If a supply ship lands it can actually be really hard esp. if you're unprepared. I've faced like 19 enemies in one of em because it landed and didn't need to be shot down. In fact i think you can sometimes face more than that.
Bomb missions usually aren't too terrible as you just have to fight thin men. Problem is that there's just so many of them (18 or 19 i think in later missions) and that they're extremely mobile and so accurate not to mention poisoning is annoying. All that said they die in like one hit from pretty much anything even plasma pistols sometimes.
KamikazeCanuck wrote: Well I just did well this time because I knew what to expect. That last door is tough as hell. No cover and 3 mind controllers on the other side.
Ghost Armor. Infiltrate 4 of your dudes into the room with ghost armor. End turn.
Have the last two walk in and get seen (generally snipers)
Bad guys move forward.
Assault dude ghosts and runs and guns next to uber.
Rapid Fire from Ghost with Alloy Cannon.
Watch the cinematic.
Alternatively, ghost in a single sniper. Ghost again and double tap the uber.
That last room is crazy easy since you only have to kill one guy.
Automatically Appended Next Post: As an aside, I finished my second Classic game (started in South America!) and just started my first Impossible (Europe).
Should be entertaining. So far it isn't so bad but injuries are getting annoying. I need my dudes to be avaialble. :(
I've played a lot of classic ironman games and yet no impossible ironman games. I value my sanity. I think i've done classic ironman on every starting location and my previous game i played it with south america the hardest one. I find that pretty ridiculous after your 2nd classic game you're doing your first impossible. Honestly the thought of playing on impossible scares me and i've played classic ironman a good 4-5 times and beaten it. In fact i've had a steady success rate with it and my current game has been super easy.
flamingkillamajig wrote: Battleships i'm unsure about scoring a difficulty on. They're not easy to take down with your own ships and you at least need abilities and a firestorm armed with a plasma cannon at the very least to take one down (and it may even get shot down). The actual fight with your troops in a battleship is hard to score. It's hard yes but generally there are some insanely good sniping positions in the battleship and lots of good high ground and whatever. I've never seen a battleship land which makes sense as that'd be pretty ridiculous but when a ship lands you generally have to fight double the amount of enemies in comparison to a ship you had to shoot down.
Battleships . They're by no means impossible, and a hardened team should be confident of taking them down, but they're still a long grind, with normally a couple of fights that can turn pear shaped if you screw up/get some terrible luck. By my reckoning that's one more fight that presents a real thread than the final mission.
Terror missions are actually pretty easy esp. since it's chrysallid heavy (if you have 'in the zone') and enemies tend to target civilians and kill them instead of killing your soldiers.
Terror missions become easy, once you get better guns and more elite troops Chrysalids start looking pretty tame. But early on there's a good chance that you'll face a terror mission with standard rifles and few troop promotions. Chrysalids can be tough like that, especially when there's other aliens coming at you at the same time. And the terror missions are often the first place to face a cyberdisc - which can be really tough if you haven't got anyone with HEAT.
The alien base is a weird fight that is pretty tense at times. It doesn't help that the fight gets harder as each month goes by and there's a very real chance you can face sectopods in the freaking thing.
Yeah, it's the first long mission you'll face, with several fights that you can get hammered in. Like the battleship, that makes it a tougher challenge than the last mission.
Bomb missions usually aren't too terrible as you just have to fight thin men. Problem is that there's just so many of them (18 or 19 i think in later missions) and that they're extremely mobile and so accurate not to mention poisoning is annoying. All that said they die in like one hit from pretty much anything even plasma pistols sometimes.
Thin Men are a tough challenge early on. While they die to a single hit, early on there's no guarantee that you'll be able to hit, even with three or four shots. And they hit all the damn time because they're using carbines. They don't do scary damage, but early on against troops in little armour it's more than enough damage. And once your attack stalls because you've lost a guy or two that countdown can get pretty bad.
Actually had to go back two missions on my impossible game. Hadn't researched a foundry yet and ran into the big square ship. 4 Interceptors with Avalanche couldn't take it down. lol
Still only hate chyrisilids. There's a portion of the game when they appear and your weapons and armour aren't up to calibre. That passes but I think the game incorrectly obsoletes them after a while. They would still be difficult enemies near the end game if used in conjunction with other troops. Muton Beserkers are pretty easy actually because you can "pull" them around.
KamikazeCanuck wrote: Still only hate chyrisilids. There's a portion of the game when they appear and your weapons and armour aren't up to calibre.
I think this carried over well from the original game. Chrysalids are the big 'Oh Feth' that happens early in the game, right when you are starting to feel okay about things. That said, I love chrysalids because you just move back and fire on them / overwatch and win. They get easier the harder the difficulty (comparatively) since the added crit/health/accuracy doesn't really benefit them at all.
Hey sorry for what may be threadcromancy, but I have something I'd like to contribute that bridges the video game world with the tabletop world. I recently read the rules for Wild West Exodus, and it seemed like it plays a lot like a tabletop version of XCOM. Granted the settings are very different, but the mechanics to me are very similar. I'd honestly recommend this game to any fan of XCOM and recommend XCOM to any fans of Wild West Exodus. Just my two alloy for anyone who would be interested.
I'm still playing this game. I keep meaning to stop playing...then I don't. I think the acheivement for beating it from every continent is spuring me on.
I'm actually considering getting rid of all my miniature wargame stuff because the Multiplayer... even the campaign mode... has the type of mechanics I look for in a skirmish.
djphranq wrote: I'm actually considering getting rid of all my miniature wargame stuff because the Multiplayer... even the campaign mode... has the type of mechanics I look for in a skirmish.
Then look at Infinity, its almost exactly this but with more guys on the table, big armoured suits (TAGs) and you get to 'overwatch' as many times as you want (plus, its pretty...... and the rules are free!)
djphranq wrote: I'm actually considering getting rid of all my miniature wargame stuff because the Multiplayer... even the campaign mode... has the type of mechanics I look for in a skirmish.
Then look at Infinity, its almost exactly this but with more guys on the table, big armoured suits (TAGs) and you get to 'overwatch' as many times as you want (plus, its pretty...... and the rules are free!)
Infinity kind of interested me but it'd just be more miniature war-games to buy and it'd be harder to find people who'd play it somewhere. Not only that but nobody knows if any of the companies smaller than GW and possibly the warmachine stuff will even stay afloat. I'd rather not play a game that eventually goes under like how i wanted to play AT-43 before it went under :(.
Well Corvus Belli is pretty well known these days, and Infinity is growing in leaps and bounds all over the globe (especially in North America at the moment), they have also been going to about 6 years and are expanding everything almost monthly.
Yes its more minis to buy, but (and this could cause controversy) it is far more efficient in terms of what you need to buy and play a game than most other games out there. depending on the faction and the list you want to field, you can get away with just having 7 models or so (you will probably want more, but even for a tournie list you can look at 10 models), thats it. 10. Yes, each individual model is more expensive than in some other games (although that is becoming less true in recent years with certain company's price hikes) but overall you are looking at an inexpensive, amazingly fun, beautiful game that has a far more tactical side to it that other mini wargames out there.
I dont really want to say much more as i dont want to derail the thread, sorry....
Heard some news from somewhere on the internet. Could just be a rumor or some new content or similar. I'm looking forward to it though i heard the slingshot DLC was kind of a disappointment. This was shown at PAX East '13 apparently. Yes it teases the f*ck out of everybody too.
I like the mysterious voice guy. Never has an anonymous NPC ever been so cool in all of gaming. I mean you can't even see his face or most of him and yet even his presence is scary somehow and he's on your own freaking side asking for your help.
Please be Terror from the Deep 2, Please be Terror from the Deep 2, Please be Terror from the Deep 2, Please be Terror from the Deep 2, Please be Terror from the Deep 2Please be Terror from the Deep 2Please be Terror from the Deep 2Please be Terror from the Deep 2Please be Terror from the Deep 2Please be Terror from the Deep 2Please be Terror from the Deep 2Please be Terror from the Deep 2Please be Terror from the Deep 2Please be Terror from the Deep 2Please be Terror from the Deep 2Please be Terror from the Deep 2Please be Terror from the Deep 2.PLEASE BE TERROR FROM THE DEEP 2
I swear that creaking in the background sounded like what you hear in the movies when the subs go too deep and start to buckle in from the pressure.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Just realized the other possibility.
Two alien types from the classic are missing. Snakemen and Reavers. Hopefully they can figure out how to make Reavers actual threats if they go that route
Thin Men are really cool. They're so creepy the first time you meet them. Of course late game you just own them but their missions are usually the most fun.
Reapers and Chryssalid were kinda combined in the new game... and man did they make Chryssalids a lot more scarey this time around from a visual perspective. I seem to remember some blob things in the original too that were missing.
BlueDagger wrote: Reapers and Chryssalid were kinda combined in the new game... and man did they make Chryssalids a lot more scarey this time around from a visual perspective. I seem to remember some blob things in the original too that were missing.
Visually scary, yes indeed. Mechanically, only for the first couple times that you meet them. Once you get troops skilled up enough, you destroy them from range before they can even do damage.
The original game, on the other hand, has you trying to hunt down a lone crysalid with your troops. You're terrified the whole time becuase you know there is only one, but one wrong move and there will suddenly be only one of your troops left while everyone else on your team has been converted. Ridiculously scary, even scarier when people start dying. That's just something that doesn't happen in the new game. In the new game, it's more of the first time you run into an all mutton mission, or when you first encounter a sectopod because you never know it's gonna happen until you run into it, then you realize you're not prepared for it at all.
I don't know about that. The first terror mission with Chrysalids can be pretty brutal in the new one. They still one-shot your guys and convert them, plus zombies.
Yeah have to disagree there. I can't say there wasn't ever a time I wasn't scared of cryslids. They aren't as scary mechanically as the first because the reboot does soldier quality over quantity, but the terror mission most don't allow for a ton of LoS becore you are in kill range. The notable exception being the goverment building map.
Finally finished the campaign - must say that I was a little underwhelmed with the Temple Ship. Guess I'll go back and play it on Impossible instead of Classic to see what sort of craziness it brings.
Any of the Second Wave options that I shouldn't miss?
Swan-of-War wrote: Finally finished the campaign - must say that I was a little underwhelmed with the Temple Ship. Guess I'll go back and play it on Impossible instead of Classic to see what sort of craziness it brings.
Any of the Second Wave options that I shouldn't miss?
The last mission an ending to the game are terrible, period. They did a great job of the whole game... except that.
pretre wrote: Eh? Not sure what you mean. Quick google shows there was a bug for overwatch and the game crashing? Or are you talking about something else?
If you fire more than one laser rifle at the same time (only possible during overwatch, obviously), the game immediately crashes to desktop. I suspect that its a sound issue, similar to the laspistol bug in chaos gate.
pretre wrote: Eh? Not sure what you mean. Quick google shows there was a bug for overwatch and the game crashing? Or are you talking about something else?
If you fire more than one laser rifle at the same time (only possible during overwatch, obviously), the game immediately crashes to desktop. I suspect that its a sound issue, similar to the laspistol bug in chaos gate.
KamikazeCanuck wrote: I like the last mission and ending. It explains how all the races came into this bizzare crusade and it wraps up the story in a dramatic way.
Spoiler:
Except for the fact that the missions is completely scripted, not terribly challenging, and in the end the "savior" may not even be someone that you gave a damn about. For a "final mission" it was a tad anti-climactic.
KamikazeCanuck wrote: I like the last mission and ending. It explains how all the races came into this bizzare crusade and it wraps up the story in a dramatic way.
Spoiler:
Except for the fact that the missions is completely scripted, not terribly challenging, and in the end the "savior" may not even be someone that you gave a damn about. For a "final mission" it was a tad anti-climactic.
At that point in the game, nothing is really challenging. Even on Impossible, you have the tech necessary to trivialize most encounters. And isn't that always the way with saviors?
IIRC (and it has been a while) it was similar in the original. Once you get past a certain point of tech and squads, you own anything that shows up. (Short of gotcha Blaster launcher shots).
KamikazeCanuck wrote: I like the last mission and ending. It explains how all the races came into this bizzare crusade and it wraps up the story in a dramatic way.
Spoiler:
Except for the fact that the missions is completely scripted, not terribly challenging, and in the end the "savior" may not even be someone that you gave a damn about. For a "final mission" it was a tad anti-climactic.
Well ymmv I guess. My savior on my first playthough was my main dude. The only one to make it though the whole game. As for difficulty: I guess you're just too good at the game.
My next go-thru I need to take more advantage of the various toys - my end squad had Plasma Rifles, Titan Armor, two Heavy Plasma and a Plasma Sniper Rifle.
My lone Support had Ghost Armor and I used it once just for a lark in the final encounter. My Volunteer used her psychic powers for the first time in the final encounter too. Just didn't need them earlier on. I only had one SHIV too and think I'd like to give the Hover SHIV and Archangel armor a try too.
I only had three levels of the base built up - hardly any workshops or laboratories. Once you get all the satellites up, things were pretty smooth sailing - just lost Argentina.
Mind you, I was playing on just Classic and not Classic Ironman- at least I can crank up the difficulty some more.
Once you get to this, you win every mission pretty easily(IMO):
- 2x Archangel with Plasma Snipers. One has In the Zone; one with Double Tap.
- 4x Ghost Armor with either Plasma Rifles or role specific plasma weapons.
You win. It's that easy. Use ghost armor to find baddies one at a time, snipers destroy them. I know people don't like In the Zone and I didn't either until I tried it.
In my last impossible playthrough I had the whole base filled with Workshops filling up all the extra space (mostly in a huge block on the right). Adjacency bonus for workshops is absurd.
KamikazeCanuck wrote: I usually try to get through the game as fast as possible. My squad usually doesn't have all the best equipment it could.
When you get to the harder difficulties, you need the equipment. For my impossible game, I ran 6-9 workshops to get cheap equipment and fast satellites and 1-3 Labs (sold towards the end) to get faster research. It made sure my folks were well equipped which is essential against the tougher baddies.
I tried to like the game since it's one of maybe two games I bought at full price in the last year... I couldn't do it. I'm kinda mad at myself for paying full price - I should attach a breathalyzer to my Steam account.
Anybody else laugh at some of the skin color choices in the game? I just think it's funny somebody i had from i think it was nigeria looked like they had a really horrible orange spray tan. Sometimes it's like they drew a white person or similar and just looked at some of the skin colors and were like "f*ck it!" The asian ones seem pretty decent as well as black people and similar. I suppose i can't fault them for doing a pretty good job with a lot of it.
I will admit the lack of different voices for different nationalities did kind of bug me though. No russian, british, german, etc. accents as well as other countries with languages far different that may have trouble speaking proper english in an english speaking squad. For convenience i assume during an alien invasion one language for squad communication is key. That would've been an interesting thing to touch up on though. Lack of a unity of countries would've made all this much harder.
I'm playing through on Ironman with the soldiers named after my
facebook friends. Unfortunately, none of my female friends have
approved use of their names and I've gotten decent Assault,
Heavy and Support soldiers.
The first time I played not a single Canadian appeared so I actually thought they didn't have Canada in there for some reason. In subsequent playthroughs I've named the first male Canadian after myself. Sometimes I live, somtimes I die. It does add a little bit of extra fun and suspense.
Swan-of-War wrote: Ah well Bromsy, that's too bad. Maybe you'll be bored this summer and fire it up again and be like, "Wow, this actually IS awesome!"
Is it the turn-based aspect that's not floating your boat?
Nah, it's the simplified inventory and base management aspects, as well as the smaller squad size. I'm only really kicking myself because I think UFO:AI is better in pretty much every respect - and it's free.
I'd trade micro-managing infantry and squad size for cool abilities
for the soldiers any day, but that's just me.
I was thinking about sending a copy of the game to my niece. If
she doesn't like it, her husband just might. Are there any known
issues with the PS3 version of the game?
I've been playing on impossible difficulty but not on ironman mode. The game was impossibly difficult to not do on ironman mode but after a point it got hard for me to die. I've lost about 4-5 countries but i'm trying to hold onto the rest. I did the alien base mission successfully in one try (i would've lost the game if i didn't do it considering panic level) but i had to face 3 cyberdiscs, 6 mutons, 6 chrysallids, a sectoid commander and 12 drones. That said only one guy died from a flanking cyberdisc and he was a squaddie i think. On impossible difficulty sometimes it's just better to completely stay out of 'line of sight' when reloading or when too close to enemies (generally even full cover at medium distance may be too close). The enemy health bars are ridiculous with 6 hp thin men, 4 hp sectoids, i think 18 hp for zombies from chrysallids and some other stuff. I think the other health bars from classic difficulty remain the same though. It's much harder in the beginning i think so use of smoke grenades is fairly needed and pulling back when you have to face too many enemies at once.
In insane difficulty it's also worth noting that countries you don't help can go from 2 panic to full panic if you don't help them in even one abduction mission or if you fail. Terror missions are helpful as well as council missions to decrease panic as well as satellites. I've even found some use in scientists and getting them to an extent. Making research faster makes me get better stuff faster so that's good. Nice to balance what you get but i think engineers are the first thing to get, then scientists or a soldier and finally a soldier or money might be good. Usually you won't be as hard pressed for money if you can stun enough guys for their guns and early on laser weapons help a lot.
Currently playing on Classic Ironman, Europe start.
Its insane! I have no money, and I have 3 countries in the red, and that's only Month 3. I'm having to do an early base rush to try to lower the panic to manageable levels, and get some loot.
Its great ^^
Also, you have to do the alien base in one shot; failing that mission is game over, iirc.
Just started playing Ironman and got Flight of the Valkyries on my first mission- just happened to have an all-female squad.
What's nice about Impossible is that I can fling grenades left and right without having to hear Valten's annoying grenade-lecture. Other than that, it's hella-hard!
I have only 1 sniper who is any good (and he is; he has 110 aim base, and he's a major.), and my heavies are still stuck on las.
I do have many high-level assaults and plas rifles though. I do have the plas cannon for the shiv, but I'm running out of alloys fast, meaning I have to use the crappy type that dies in 1 hit to most things.
Its insane! I have no money, and I have 3 countries in the red, and that's only Month 3. I'm having to do an early base rush to try to lower the panic to manageable levels, and get some loot.
Its great ^^
Also, you have to do the alien base in one shot; failing that mission is game over, iirc.
No, I failed my first alien base raid. It came down between a standoff between their leader and my last remaining troop. Literally whoever shot first won and my sniper missed for the first time in ages ;_; sad times.
Regardless, the game still is going. It sucks having to rebuild your squad after a failure like that. Squaddies are so much worse than what I had before.
Ok, I think I worked out how to deal with sectopods despite my poor tech. The secret is shredder rockets + heat.
The shredder will deal 8 damage (because of heat), and anything that targets the sectopod after that will get a damage bonus. A second heavy with a holo targeting thing is nice as well.
Beating the alien base helped a lot. I now have satellite coverage over everywhere, and I lost only 2 countries, both of which limited to africa so I can get the bonuses from the other continents.
I still lost like 40 dudes though :/
I thought losing the alien base was an instant game over?
Oh man I've never had that, I've had them play catch the bullet before where #1 panics and shoots #2, who then panics and shoots #3 who then... I think you get the idea
DA's Forever wrote: Oh man I've never had that, I've had them play catch the bullet before where #1 panics and shoots #2, who then panics and shoots #3 who then... I think you get the idea
Well, where do you put your VIP? In the pocket.
And what's the best target for the people defending the pocket?
I'll admit, a majority of the time they do indeed behave like that, its just anytime I NEED them to kill that alien Jimmy seems to want to get back at the Major for being an arse last Thursday in the mess hall
I just had this ridiculous battle where one guy panicked and shot another guy and then he panicked and shot another guy and it just kept chaining until everyone in my squad shot at another guy in the squad. It would have been funny but this is the first time I'm trying Classic difficulty. Everything was going fine but I have Slingshot and basically the 2nd mission is impossible now because it has like six mutons in it and I still have normal assault rifles and body armour.
KamikazeCanuck wrote: I just had this ridiculous battle where one guy panicked and shot another guy and then he panicked and shot another guy and it just kept chaining until everyone in my squad shot at another guy in the squad. It would have been funny but this is the first time I'm trying Classic difficulty. Everything was going fine but I have Slingshot and basically the 2nd mission is impossible now because it has like six mutons in it and I still have normal assault rifles and body armour.
Yeah one bad timed panic on classic can really screw things up, especially before carapace armour when the destroy most of each others health.
I haven't tried to many of the second wave options yet, been wanting to actually beat classic before i dived into them too much. Damage roulette and marathon sound fun. How much farther does marathon make the game go?
KamikazeCanuck wrote: I just had this ridiculous battle where one guy panicked and shot another guy and then he panicked and shot another guy and it just kept chaining until everyone in my squad shot at another guy in the squad. It would have been funny but this is the first time I'm trying Classic difficulty. Everything was going fine but I have Slingshot and basically the 2nd mission is impossible now because it has like six mutons in it and I still have normal assault rifles and body armour.
Yeah one bad timed panic on classic can really screw things up, especially before carapace armour when the destroy most of each others health.
I haven't tried to many of the second wave options yet, been wanting to actually beat classic before i dived into them too much. Damage roulette and marathon sound fun. How much farther does marathon make the game go?
Really long time. I don't really recommend it but one cool thing is injuries last longer. I know that doesn't sound cool but you end up with this huge roster of guys because of it which ended up being kind of fun.
Damnation this game is without mercy! After a very long break I took it up once more, and tried the second wave options. And I dare say they made the game a lot more enjoyably. Until Germany went into panic mode and the rest of the world fell down the drain when all my veteran team members died due to alien grenades to the face.
pretre wrote: I prefer to yell 'Sneak Attack, Biznatch!'
You clearly aren't manly enough then.
This is very true. Does it help that when I fire the Blaster Launcher, I yell 'Cock Rocket!!!!'?
That'll do
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Trondheim wrote: Damnation this game is without mercy! After a very long break I took it up once more, and tried the second wave options. And I dare say they made the game a lot more enjoyably. Until Germany went into panic mode and the rest of the world fell down the drain when all my veteran team members died due to alien grenades to the face.
Anyway, better give some advice.
1) Did you have only one team of vets? That may have been your problem. Its generally advisable to spread promotions around by taking a few rookies with you on small missions.
2) Don't try to save everyone. Its better to sacrifice some countries and to keep the game going, then to try to save them all and lose everyone. I know it sounds strange, but it usually works.
3) If everything is going wrong, you can try to risk an assault on the enemy base. If successful, there's a sizable worldwide decrease in panic. If you fail...well, you're boned anyway, so who cares?
4) How was your sat coverage, and what difficulty were you? You can change the difficulty in the options menu, btw.
DA's Forever wrote: Oh alright, so does it just extend it by making things take longer then? Healing, Research, building?
Yes, everything takes longer to do. I don't like it at the beggining of the game because in the normal game you're like a lean, mean Spec Ops team that can complete an objective every mission. You do a lot more treading water in marathon. Anyway, every wrinkle adds more replay value so it's still worth checking out. South America might be a good starting location because it lets you do some research faster.
DA's Forever wrote: Oh alright, so does it just extend it by making things take longer then? Healing, Research, building?
Yes, everything takes longer to do. I don't like it at the beggining of the game because in the normal game you're like a lean, mean Spec Ops team that can complete an objective every mission. You do a lot more treading water in marathon. Anyway, every wrinkle adds more replay value so it's still worth checking out. South America might be a good starting location because it lets you do some research faster.
Yeah, SA is great. Especially if you are looking for an easier game, since you can get all those research credits early
DA's Forever wrote: Yeah SA was my first one i did it from. Made research so much easier! Doing NA now, Its helping me keep the skies a lot cleaner, dirt cheap firestorms
Oh yeah, its pretty hilarious to see Firestorms costing 75 credits a craft
1) Did you have only one team of vets? That may have been your problem. Its generally advisable to spread promotions around by taking a few rookies with you on small missions.
No I had several I keept in reserve, but on one particular blood drenched terror mission several Crystal things made mince meat of everyone but a lone assault trooper. The next mission went along similar lines, leaving me with only two living vets.
2) Don't try to save everyone. Its better to sacrifice some countries and to keep the game going, then to try to save them all and lose everyone. I know it sounds strange, but it usually works.
I had world panic kept low until I lost my best troops, after that all went down the drain alongside with a lack of weapons to shoot down those UFOs, this was mainly due to my somewhat sort sighted research plans.
3) If everything is going wrong, you can try to risk an assault on the enemy base. If successful, there's a sizable worldwide decrease in panic. If you fail...well, you're boned anyway, so who cares?
Did this and won with most of my people alive and well.
4) How was your sat coverage, and what difficulty were you? You can change the difficulty in the options menu, btw.
Normal. I had two or three sat link hubs up and running. And I know but thanks anyhow.
I guess you can say I am better when I am given a gun and pointed in the general direction of the enemy
Trondheim wrote: 1) Did you have only one team of vets? That may have been your problem. Its generally advisable to spread promotions around by taking a few rookies with you on small missions.
No I had several I keept in reserve, but on one particular blood drenched terror mission several Crystal things made mince meat of everyone but a lone assault trooper. The next mission went along similar lines, leaving me with only two living vets.
2) Don't try to save everyone. Its better to sacrifice some countries and to keep the game going, then to try to save them all and lose everyone. I know it sounds strange, but it usually works.
I had world panic kept low until I lost my best troops, after that all went down the drain alongside with a lack of weapons to shoot down those UFOs, this was mainly due to my somewhat sort sighted research plans.
3) If everything is going wrong, you can try to risk an assault on the enemy base. If successful, there's a sizable worldwide decrease in panic. If you fail...well, you're boned anyway, so who cares?
Did this and won with most of my people alive and well.
4) How was your sat coverage, and what difficulty were you? You can change the difficulty in the options menu, btw.
Normal. I had two or three sat link hubs up and running. And I know but thanks anyhow.
I guess you can say I am better when I am given a gun and pointed in the general direction of the enemy
Ouch, sounds like you got dealt a bad hand then :/
That happened to me once in my first C/I game; suffered 3 failed missions in a row, and a terror mission came up when I still had ballistics. I just restarted the game.
Trondheim wrote: 1) Did you have only one team of vets? That may have been your problem. Its generally advisable to spread promotions around by taking a few rookies with you on small missions.
No I had several I keept in reserve, but on one particular blood drenched terror mission several Crystal things made mince meat of everyone but a lone assault trooper. The next mission went along similar lines, leaving me with only two living vets.
2) Don't try to save everyone. Its better to sacrifice some countries and to keep the game going, then to try to save them all and lose everyone. I know it sounds strange, but it usually works.
I had world panic kept low until I lost my best troops, after that all went down the drain alongside with a lack of weapons to shoot down those UFOs, this was mainly due to my somewhat sort sighted research plans.
3) If everything is going wrong, you can try to risk an assault on the enemy base. If successful, there's a sizable worldwide decrease in panic. If you fail...well, you're boned anyway, so who cares?
Did this and won with most of my people alive and well.
4) How was your sat coverage, and what difficulty were you? You can change the difficulty in the options menu, btw.
Normal. I had two or three sat link hubs up and running. And I know but thanks anyhow.
I guess you can say I am better when I am given a gun and pointed in the general direction of the enemy
Ouch, sounds like you got dealt a bad hand then :/
That happened to me once in my first C/I game; suffered 3 failed missions in a row, and a terror mission came up when I still had ballistics. I just restarted the game.
Yes I suppose playing on that mode that only gives you one save did not help either But I did enjoy it though will try again! Em aliens are gonna burn!
DA's Forever wrote: Oh alright, so does it just extend it by making things take longer then? Healing, Research, building?
Everything.
As in, imagine 84 days to research laser weapons with the starting amount of scientists level long.
It'll also dramatically raise the cost on some items to slow you down. Things like satellites get much more expensive if I remember right. I think I remember medpacks being 50 bucks for example.
Construction times also take much longer.
Getting a ton of scientists and workshops is mandatory if you want to beat that option and preserve your sanity.
Also, beating any difficulty mode without using Ironman doesnt count. Everybody knows that
The last I read was that that announcements are coming soon, but nothing yet has surfaced that I have read.
I think we have accept there's not going to be any new DLC despite that teaser a while back. I think it's been quietly cancelled. It's just been way too long. Slingshot wasn't well received and I don't think this game had blockbuster sales so the powers that be probably just don't think it's worth it to produce new DLC.
So much cheaper than building them myself.
).
But I did enjoy it though will try again! Em aliens are gonna burn!