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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).

Time units sucked anyway. So I'm okay with not having them.

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.

+1

It was too damn console friendly

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.

I have to say, I'm not a fan of the Heavy.

My usual team consists of 2x Support, 2x Assault, 1x Sniper and either another Sniper, Support or a Heavy.

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?

 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...

 Just Dave wrote:

 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...

I played the demo on PS3 and really liked it...but it's not worth $60 in my opinion. I'll wait till it's cheaper to pick it up.

EDIT - grammar

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.



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.

That will end it.

However, I recall reading that the DLC will only apply to games started after its purchase.

 kirsanth wrote:
That will end it.

However, I recall reading that the DLC will only apply to games started after its purchase.

... well, that certainly is annoying.

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!

I shall die catching plasma for no reason, at all.

And I shall die on the first mission, or on C-Day.


Only true X-com fans know what I am talking about

Speaking of time units, my friends and I would always joke we were out of TUs when asked to do something like moving the couch.

I will probably be mind-controlled and shot repeatably.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
I will probably be mind-controlled and shot repeatably.

Ahhh so many damn times haha

I'll be shot to death by NoQuestionzAsked after he panics from Cthululs Spy being shot.

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.

This game is awesome

 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.

This game is awesome

The classic skins are just customization options.

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.

---------------------------

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