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Yeah, the tutorial mission is by far the dumbest thing in the game. I mean it does its job right in teaching the combat, but it's so freaking frustrating!

It felt like a bad horror movie. "NO! Don't near the guy who's face is all shadowed and is holding a grenade as big as your head!!!"

Yeah the tutorial is just dowright annoying with it's hand holding and doesn't represent the game well. The game is very fluid and extremely addicting.

I avoided the demo and started up the single player campaign with tutorial and fecking love this game. I think I'm still in the tute as my options are limited but even though it feels quite scripted ATM its a real blast.

Key moment was not realising the assault trooper gets a shotgun and deciding to shoot an alien at short range through a car window. Kapow!

I'm naming all my troops after ex's and near misses/wishes. It has created a real love/hate relationship wih my squad that I maintain is not creepy at all....honestly!

You'll be able to tell if you are still in the Tutorial notprop, if when you hover your mouse over something red (ie. you cant do it), it will eventually tell you 'Blocked by Tutorial'....should let you know if you are blocked, or just dont have the money/scientists/engineers yet....

Also, yeah totally not creepy, so long as you dont start ramboing the exes and painstakingly protecting the near misses...

 Manchu wrote:
Maybe it's just confirmation bias? Every time it's my sniper turn to shoot, I find myself talking to the TV:

Me: Now, I'm asking you as a friend not just ordering you as a superior officer, to actually make this shot.

*POW*

Sniper: That did not just happen.

Me: So we're not friends, huh?

Catching up on this thread, wondering if I should get XCOM for the PS3 (apparently I should!) and I read the above and laughed out loud quite loudly at work - thanks!

The first tutorial mission is awful, but the whole tutorial explained everything you needed to know about the game.

I don't have any problems with one of my snipers.
He's so broken I actually sometimes don't take him not because I want to train others, but because it's unfair to the aliens.
*Shredder rocket and two sniper shots* Those mutons were supposed to be elite -_-

 pretre wrote:
It felt like a bad horror movie. "NO! Don't near the guy who's face is all shadowed and is holding a grenade as big as your head!!!"

Haha, that's almost exactly what I thought.

 Deathshead420 wrote:
Any thing warhammer like that would be kickass. Even a BFG game with this kinda of cinematic turn based combat would be cool.

Honestly, you could reskin this game as is and it would fit perfectly as an inquisitorial/deathwatch themed game of escalating black ops campaigns. Chrysalid are already genestealers and Mutons are already Orcs, might as well just put some bows on it and sell a few million copies. I'd buy.

Normal seems really easy.

Especially with spam saves.

I know I'm a bit late to the thread, I'm absolutely loving the game. I spent my first week trying to bullhead it through classic mode but I always got wrecked by the time the first terror mission comes around. Once, I had my guys run up to cover only to find a group of crysalids hiding around the corner and they had already gotten a few civies that were next to them. Having three crysalids in your face out the gate sucks. Having floaters jump in as backup while you're trying to deal with them is even worse. I had to back up to normal for the time being. I'll be back to try classic again later.

My favorite class by far is the assault. The shotgun is absolutely ridiculous! Upgrading with increased defense per enemy and free reaction shots when an enemy moves close by makes crysalids so much easier to deal with (damage from far away, by the time they get close they get murdered by shotguns). Run and gun makes them death machines, extending out to the flanks and killing the supporting xenos. Only gotten bit by that once when I went to kill a buffing sectoid and ran into a squad of floaters. Poor squaddie didn't survive that one.

Snipers are great for UFO missions, but everything else is hit or miss because of the unpredictability of open terrain to fully utilize them (like UFO missions typically get). But when a sniper gets going... wow...

I do have one reply to an earlier post though:

Lynata wrote:
-> testers were "frustrated" because they were not planning past the single unit - that is not the fault of TUs but the fault of testers. Were you "frustrated" back then during UFO Defense?

Yes, I was incredibly frustrated with TUs in UFO Defense. I absoutely hated it when I moved a trooper into position only to find out that I had miscalculated and I was one or two TU short of performing the action I wanted to do. It got to the point where I had to slowly step them one square at a time just so I could possibly have a chance. The fact that the TU usage differed based off of units for movement and shooting made it even more frustrating. I'm SO glad that is gone!

I don't miss time units either. TUs got so tedious and boring that I ended up going in real-time mode in Apoc more often than turn-based, simply because it was often both more fun to watch AND more effective anyway.

YotsubaSnake wrote:Yes, I was incredibly frustrated with TUs in UFO Defense. I absoutely hated it when I moved a trooper into position only to find out that I had miscalculated and I was one or two TU short of performing the action I wanted to do. It got to the point where I had to slowly step them one square at a time just so I could possibly have a chance.

Wow. Okay, I guess it all just depends on how we as gamers "tick" and how we approach a problem like allocating resources (which TUs basically were - just like planning a financial budget). I miss the greater freedom, but if you like this version more ... enjoy! At least we all got something out of the franchise, then, just at different times.

For what it's worth, it's not like there is a shortage of good games right now, so I may as well be happy for y'all instead of continueing to bitch about my personal expectations. Much of what I am looking for has become fairly unpopular in today's world of gaming, anyways.

Don't get me wrong, Time Units worked.

But they weren't this OMGWTFBBQ GRAETETS TIHGN EAVR type of gameplay mechanism.

Been playing it every minute of free time I had since EU release.

My only real complaint is that fighting the interface is harder than fighting the "x-rays". I honestly do not believe they playtested multi-story maps at all. Anyone who played 2 turns in a large UFO would tell them to scrap the whole thing and do it again.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
My only real complaint is that fighting the interface is harder than fighting the "x-rays". I honestly do not believe they playtested multi-story maps at all. Anyone who played 2 turns in a large UFO would tell them to scrap the whole thing and do it again.

Sounds like they captured the multi-story interface from the original nicely.

 pretre wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
My only real complaint is that fighting the interface is harder than fighting the "x-rays". I honestly do not believe they playtested multi-story maps at all. Anyone who played 2 turns in a large UFO would tell them to scrap the whole thing and do it again.

Sounds like they captured the multi-story interface from the original nicely.

Actually, it feels like an improvement from the original. My biggest complaint is the pathfinding. The troops will take some of the most akward paths at times, like on the subway level if a clear hole has been blown in the side they'll still run 5 squares to the nearest window to jump through.

Or if they're standing by an open door, they'll run sideways to the nearest window.. and jump through.

Lynata, if you haven't played it
http://ufoai.org/wiki/index.php/News

It's a lot closer to the original, and you can't beat the price. The 2.4 update did a lot for it.

beat it today, kind of mixed about it
the ending is kind of silly imo, fairly hard on classic difficulty but that is mostly due to them giving you long stretches you cant really run all the way through with no cover options (difficulty to be annoying not to be difficult)

Not enough aliens (imho) not enough weaponry (imho) the critical missions have entry costs to sort of stop you from blowing through the game in record time, its not sandboxy enough, not enough tech to really specialize in one thing or another to add more variety.

That being said there are already mods under dev and I really enjoyed the game.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Been playing it every minute of free time I had since EU release.

My only real complaint is that fighting the interface is harder than fighting the "x-rays". I honestly do not believe they playtested multi-story maps at all. Anyone who played 2 turns in a large UFO would tell them to scrap the whole thing and do it again.

There are times when the game quite nicely figures out which level you mean and adjusts... and other times when it guesses the wrong floor and you adjust to the right floor, and then the game starts saying 'no I'm pretty sure you want the floor I suggested' and the 'up one floor then computer automatically goes down one floor' argument begins.


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 YotsubaSnake wrote:
Actually, it feels like an improvement from the original. My biggest complaint is the pathfinding. The troops will take some of the most akward paths at times, like on the subway level if a clear hole has been blown in the side they'll still run 5 squares to the nearest window to jump through.

Well if you were able to run through windows without cutting yourself or getting a bill from the owner, wouldn't you do it whenever you could?

But yeah, the pathfinding is a little annoying. Not really because it's that bad that often, but because there's no option to set way points. I mean, there are times when the way you go is pretty important, and there should be an option to pick out how you move.


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 Macok wrote:
The first tutorial mission is awful, but the whole tutorial explained everything you needed to know about the game.

I don't have any problems with one of my snipers.
He's so broken I actually sometimes don't take him not because I want to train others, but because it's unfair to the aliens.
*Shredder rocket and two sniper shots* Those mutons were supposed to be elite -_-

Wait until that sniper gets double tap and a plasma sniper rifle. Pretty much my only answer to Reapers at this point.

Ok I tried it on Classic. I've been humbled - back to Normal for now!

 Bromsy wrote:
Lynata, if you haven't played it
http://ufoai.org/wiki/index.php/News
It's a lot closer to the original, and you can't beat the price. The 2.4 update did a lot for it.

Thanks! Have to admit, to me the graphics appear to be in the "uncanny valley" between the original's pixel charme and the remake's fancy 3D (and it seems to miss destructible terrain ), buuuut I've bookmarked it. For the time being, MWO still keeps me super-busy, and I wanted to give Democracy 2 a try soon, but I will keep this in mind.
Sidenote: For some reason I had to think of Cadian Guardsmen whilst looking at the Battlescape screenies. I blame the green dropship and the helmets.

Been looking at Xenonauts lately, too. Apparently it changed a lot from how I remember the first pictures years ago.

sebster wrote:But yeah, the pathfinding is a little annoying. Not really because it's that bad that often, but because there's no option to set way points. I mean, there are times when the way you go is pretty important, and there should be an option to pick out how you move.

Well, if you're unsure you could simply move them step by step and ... oh, wait.

(for what it's worth, this could be solved even without returning to Time Units by implementing an "undo" button, or at least give you the ability to cancel move orders via Esc - as long as you did not spot a new enemy, of course)

 Lynata wrote:
Well, if you're unsure you could simply move them step by step and ... oh, wait.

(for what it's worth, this could be solved even without returning to Time Units by implementing an "undo" button, or at least give you the ability to cancel move orders via Esc - as long as you did not spot a new enemy, of course)

A single move option with the ability to set one or more way points along the way undoes all the issues, without adding the fiddly mess of a TU system.

But I think we've pretty much had this conversation already It's okay, I understand you like being able to tell your soldiers to turn 90' to the left, then take a step forward, then another. I'd rather get on with worrying about how to flank the alien menace before he flanks me

I think I just like to micromanage a lot.

And no, of course I didn't let my soldiers advance like that all the time - but it was nice to have the option. I suppose it's less atmospheric than the remake's more "cinematic" approach, but it never really bothered me.

But ... yeah, waypoints (hold Shift or Ctrl + click LMB to set?) would be another good solution, though I think an undo/cancel would be "safer" - your guys probably don't run the wrong path every single time, so you wouldn't set waypoints every single time .. and then, BAM, Murphy's Law, just when you thought there was no way they could pick the wrong path now!

Either way, all of this sounds like something they could patch in later; maybe mention it on their forums?

 sebster wrote:
Wait until that sniper gets double tap and a plasma sniper rifle. Pretty much my only answer to Reapers at this point.

Oh, he had double tap VERY fast.
Snipers with ally vision gets the kills like mad and are almost never wounded.
Snipers has the most imbalanced skill tree IMHO. The other route (move and shoot snipers) is very weak in comparison IMHO. Their only saving grace is battle scanner which is ridiculously good. I mean knowing where the enemy is without activating them? I'll take ten! I still use it on my squadsight sniper at the beginning of the round.

When you get the flight suits it gets even more silly.
Flight Suit + Opportunist + Double Tap + Plasma Sniper + Squad Sight + S.C.O.P.E. = God

I hovered about 3 squares up with LoS at a UFO. It ended up being a cargo UFO and I was shooting through the entire hull of the Ship into the back room with the Outsiders lololol. The overwatch shots were just pic.

Now that I have started fielding SHIVs on a regular basis I absolutely love them.

I don't like flying suits, which is strange.
I know it's XCOM trademark armour but my guys happily run around in Titan armour. Add chitin plating or even old school vest.
I like to think aliens feel exactly how I felt when I saw number of grids on sectopod.
I also use ghost armour just for its coolness.

Currently in the middle of final mission. Kinda sad that it's over already but also exited about increasing difficulty level and unlocking all the new options.

I use mostly skeleton armor actually. It's by far the most resource efficient. My A-Team gets equipped with titan and ghost armor though-- assault and support get titan, heavy and sniper get ghost.

Well, I started Normal Mode Iron man.
Bloody hell the difficulty is certainly ramped up!
First Terror mission was a disaster. I had to abort it with my last surviving soldier.

 Lynata wrote:
But ... yeah, waypoints (hold Shift or Ctrl + click LMB to set?) would be another good solution, though I think an undo/cancel would be "safer" - your guys probably don't run the wrong path every single time, so you wouldn't set waypoints every single time .. and then, BAM, Murphy's Law, just when you thought there was no way they could pick the wrong path now!

Either way, all of this sounds like something they could patch in later; maybe mention it on their forums?

I think it's another task for the modding community. It'll be interesting to see if it really takes off, because there's a lot of potential for modding with this game.


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 Macok wrote:
Oh, he had double tap VERY fast.

I found my snipers level just a little slower than my assaults. While assaults get wounded or killed more often because they're up in the thick of it, their Run & Gun and Rapid Fire skills means they're scoring the bulk of my kills each game.

But when I got my first sniper to Colonel and deployed a Plasma Sniper Rifle in the same mission the game just turned. Popping two Mutons a turn reliably (and from high ground frequently it was two 100% shots) has meant my sniper started scoring as many or more kills than the rest of the squad combined, and that's with me favouring the rest of the squad with kills to level them up where I can.

Seems like the assaults best choices are at the beginning, while the sniper has his most powerful options down the bottom.


That said, I'm starting to really like heavies now, as well. Gear them up with Titan Armour and a Chitin Vest underneath, then get them the perk that ignores two damage, and just watch them soak damage. My last mission I had two guys like that, with a single assault behind them to flank & double tap targets, and two snipers to do the real killing. I absolutely smashed my way through an alien force that I would have found pretty tough going a couple of missions ago (two sectopods, a muton bunch, a muton elite bunch, some crysalids and some heavy floaters on a terror mission).

Snipers with ally vision gets the kills like mad and are almost never wounded.
Snipers has the most imbalanced skill tree IMHO. The other route (move and shoot snipers) is very weak in comparison IMHO. Their only saving grace is battle scanner which is ridiculously good. I mean knowing where the enemy is without activating them? I'll take ten! I still use it on my squadsight sniper at the beginning of the round.

Definitely. I think its the skill tree with the most obvious choices, apart from possibly Executioner or Opportunist, which are both really good in the situations. Well, and I've probably changed my mind on Disabling Shot and Battle Scanner, because I've found Battle Scanner to be fairly ineffective most of the time, and kind of boring when it does work.

Does anyone know if Disabling Shot works on robot enemies like the Sectopod?