Be Excellent To Each Other

Courage in your convictions, people!

My first PC was a 16-bit machine. (8086, represent!)

12mhz 286 baby, in your face!

FFS. I won't have Internet in the new gaff till early November, and although I can go online by tethering my PC to my iPhone, O2 seem to block access to Steam - so I can't even get the DVD-ROM version of the game. I'm starting to get so desperate for playing this now that I'm seriously contemplating heading out and grabbing the PS3 version instead.

In the meantime I've been trying to console myself with the original UFO: Enemy Unknown, which seems to be the only game I can play on my PC thanks to the loss of Steam (and the offline mode has stopped working now too!). I'm now doing my first major terror mission against the Ethereals, and in true XCom style, my battle-hardened veterans are getting their arses collectively handed to them.

I had to choose between an 80286 with 320x240 four-colour CGA and an 8086 with luxurious 16-colour EGA. I decided I could appreciate how Sophie felt after going through that.

*presses Turbo button*

Not any more!

I remember going to the local game shop and seeing Alone In The Dark running on a 33mhz 386DX, how do I know it was 33Mhz? Because of the huge LED panel on the front that had 33 lit up on it. Amazeballs.
I pressed the turbo button. Nothing happened.

It basically comes down to how much free time I have to play games and my tolerance for doing the same stuff time and time again. (This is incidentally the reason I've binned off WoW completely. Having bought the panda expansion I realised I just flat out don't have the time to invest in an MMO like I did during Cataclysm.)

I wouldn't say that XCom is 'dumbed down' even if you are saving/loading an awful lot, as the game still delivers a stiff challenge and it still takes skill and planning to use the tools at your disposal in a successful manner.

The simple fact of the matter is that without save/load functionality XCom would simply exceed my patience/free time threshold and I wouldn't play it all. (And rather like DocG, it would fry my OCD circuits too.)

For those who want to do XCom 'properly' (whatever that's supposed to be), they can simply play Ironman mode or never return to a saved game - job done.

Save/load gives an extra option for those who want to use it, it doesn't take anything away from those who don't.

Along with the deaths of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, finding out from a computer store guy, while ours was being fixed, that you could set the LED to read anything you wanted, even 99... well, another huge childhood trauma.

I don't mind fucking up XCom; all in the game, yo.

OH FUCK, now I know who to name my peeps in my new game - the cast of the Wire! (I swear I will cry when Omar and Prez buy it.)

AE, I think you should take a step back from looking at it as a game you HAVE to finish first time, perfectly. Think of it more as a series of fun tactical battles that happily work towards an end point with extra tangy strategy sauce to vary things each time, and enjoy each encounter for what it is.

I have, a few times, dashed my men towards until they found aliens, then reloaded (as they were hopelessly out of position) and planned based on where I now know the aliens are. It's arguably cheating, but it's a hell of a lot quicker than leapfrogging guys around the map keeping half the squad in Overwatch at all times (which is how I'd play Ironman).

I have respect for those with the cojones for Ironman mode, and if I'm still playing the game down the road I might try it out to spice things up. But not while I'm still learning the game's various subsystems.

That's just not how my brain works, it would drive me insane. I like things to be ordered and neat and tidy, and if not predictable, at least repeatable until the preferred result is obtained.

The game I'm playing now is far from 'perfect', not least because I've knobbed up the satellites so much, but save/load is at least allowing me to enjoy stuff like the alien base assault without going nuts.

Once I ditched Ironman mode (or self-enforced Ironman mode at least), I actually started enjoying the game more.

Inching forward all the time, making sure I had a couple of squad members in Overwatch every turn, 'guessing' wrong and finding my squad entirely out of position, having a couple of missed shots equal a death, the horrible tricks that random numbers can play with misses/hits (for my dudes and the aliens etc etc), not being able to stun and losing the chance to make a capture etc etc just wasn't FUN for me.

If it's not the 'right' way to play the game then so be it, I find it enjoyable, it works for me, so it's what I'm going to do.

Ironman mode is there for anyone who wants it.

I now have this (or, rather, an "extended demo" of this).

It's pretty good, isn't it? Apart from the fact that the dude I named after me bought it

Zio - want me to bung it on a few DVDs and send it over?

I binned my first game, after messing it up spectacularly.

I then started with an Easy Ironman game, have done the Alien base, have an alloy SHIV up and running, and am currently equipping titan armour and plasma weaponry, and have full satellite coverage. Casualties: zero.

Oh, my top alien buster: Col. Mimi.

Heh, put the difficulty up to Normal now as I feel I'm starting to get the hang of things, tussled with the Mutons for the first time.

Kurt Cobain put a solid laser rifle shot into one of the motherfuckers as he was fleeing, (his two pals were dead already), Muton did 'Intimidate', Cobain panicked, and shot the bastard again right in the face

Still going to go back to my last save to do the encounter a bit more tidily though, it just feels 'messy' as it is at the moment. (Lost a couple of squad members, not happy about that. Muton threw a grenade, bastard.)

I love this game.

TBH I don't think how any person chooses to play it is really that relevant, it's got everything from 'IMPOSSIBLE DIFFICULTY IRONMAN' to 'EASY DIFFICULTY + SAVE AND LOAD AS MUCH AS YOU WANT TO' - and why the hell not? As long as the game is fun and folks are enjoying it, I'd say that's all that matters, irrespective of what 'mode' they choose to put it in.

For now I've settled on Normal difficulty (up from Easy), but still with my regular saving and loading. I may step it up another gear as time goes by, but either way, I'm having an absolute blast with it.

I've got Col. Mr "Solo" Craster.
Lulz

I don't like naming the troops after people. I keep their default names, colourise them, and then give them a fitting nickname when they earn one. (MR RUN AT THEM).

Do you not weep tears when Mr Ingame Grim dies? Or are you more tempted to reload if he dies rather than an equivilent soldier?

I am chicken. Still on easy. But fuck this is a good 15 year wait

There needs to be a bloody button to unequip everything from your soldiers. I have limited equipment and I'm trying to cycle my squad usage. Have to continually unequip things from people, decide who to take, then re-equip the squad.

Also, the fact that you can move between squad members on their info screen when they're stood infront of the skyranger, but you can when they're in the barracks, is really, really odd.

The soldier named after my real name died, and I dealt with that. I've only lost four soldiers so far, and I'm playing on normal.

I recently completed a mission and "won" a new soldier - he was a black gentleman with the charming nickname "Congo".

I have a white scottish sniper called Zulu. I guess I dodged a few bullets there.

Assuming the first "can" should be "can't".

Both of these things bother me deeply. I can't afford two dozen suits of carapace armour, dammit!

It's also a curious design decision that you retrieve the equipment of any soldiers killed in action.

This essentially means that, provided you can deal with the aforementioned UI issues when it comes to equipping your soldiers, you never need to manufacture more than 6 of anything that they carry.

My second game, this time on Normal difficulty, is going much better. I've got 9 satellites up, panic levels are either 1 or 2 across the board (except for France and Mexico, they left early on, the belming idiots) and I've just finished assaulting the alien's base - which netted me quite a considerable amount of resources, and gave me enough promotions to get my squad up to 2 Colonels and 3 Majors. This is primarily with laser weaponry too - my squad consists of 2 snipers, 2 heavies and 2 supports, with two fireteams made up of one of each class.

Laser sniper rifles for the two snipers, with laser pistols as a backup, and a SCOPE.
Heavy lasers for the two heavies, with rocket launchers as a backup (both now have three rockets too!) and frag grenades.
Light plasma rifles for the two supports, with laser pistols as a backup, and Arc Throwers.

Squadsight and Double Tap for snipers essentially makes them invincible, which in turn means the rest of the squad are invincible too with liberal use of overwatch and not dashing into unseen areas.

Only complaint I have with the game so far is that you can't sell any equipment that you've manufactured, only that you've retrieved from mission sites. I've got a buttload of craft weapons that I no longer need (all on Plasma Cannons now) but can't do anything with them.

//edit: I was playing this from 9pm until 4am last night. I just didn't notice the time, I was having that much fun. I wasn't even tired when I pulled myself away.

No Assault class? I'm in love with Run and Gun and Lightning Reflexes. They're great breach teams.

My assault lady (Col. Mimi (with 61 kills)) is used for opening those pesky doors on the UFOs. move just inside the door, see what happens. If there's aliums inside, she dashes to cover, using Run and Gun and Rapid fire to mess up at least one enemy. If theres enemies really close, she gets three shots (via the skill which allows the assault trooper a reaction shot if an enemy moves within 4 squares) enough to drop a Berserker.

I usually do 2 Assault, 2 support (1 medic, 1 shootyman), 1 Heavy, sniper. The assaults and support are the best things in the team, and they do most of the shooting.

I sometimes replace the sniper with something else.

I think heavies are a bit crap as they chew through ammo and have no sidearm, but I do like the rockets. Snipers with squad sight are best. If they don't have squad sight I've found them to be really useless as they always miss after moving, and you can't leave them at the back as they can't see anything. I'd rather have another class there instead, e.g. MORE ASSAULT or SUPPORT.

Infact snipers are a bit lame when they're un-leveled. They can't move forward and be useful at the same time until you get them to squadsight.

I might even field a team of all supports for one level. It's a very diverse class. Lots of sprinting, medikits, double inventory, cover fire. I did have one problem though where there 'overwatch works on non-moving targets' skill didn't seem to work on someone I was suppressing, which is really really odd, as surely that's the point of both of those skills?!





I agree. It also makes terror missions much easier. Just arm your noobs up to the teeth and send them. If they live: hurrah. If they don't: you get your equipment back and stopped all your top brass from dying.

It also means that once you've captured a few grenades and various plasma rifles, there's no need to spend any more time capturing anything, except to have spares so you can sell them via the request things.

ALSO: If you have 4x alien grenades and have all your troops throw them during a mission, you still have 4x grenades in the barracks. You'd think it would be a limited supply or something?




You sometimes get requests from countries for your laser weapons. But I'd definitely like to sell my obsolete shit. Coupled with the "no loss" on equipment, or a second skyranger/B team, there's abosutely no need for the old stuff.

I only ever found them useful for scouting, and I've reached the stage now where only the heavies really pack enough firepower to take down the enemies I'm facing. Mutons are easy work for my snipers, but the Berserkers do pose a big threat (20 hp!) as do Cyberdiscs.

Having two heavies with HEAT Ammo (double damage against robotic enemies) has already saved my bacon a few times coming up against Cyberdiscs, so I imagine it'll do the same against Sectopods when they turn up.

Berserkers are amusing, they seem to blindly run towards whoever last shot them (during your turn, too!) so you can use this to great effect to set up Overwatch traps. I was assaulting a landed Abductor UFO which I'd cleared out, except for a pack of two Mutons and a Berserker who I saw during the previous turns. The Abductor has a long gantry down the middle, so I created a little "firing squad" at one end of it on permanent overwatch - two heavies, two snipers and a support with a LPR.

Using another support, I scouted around for it until I spotted it, legged it out of attack range and then shot it. It came bounding towards me, and the next turn I did the same, only this time it came out of the gantry straight into a hail of gunfire. Did a total of 25 damage or something ridiculous like that.

I then had another Abductor, so engineered the same trap but this time carefully arranged everyone's weapons to ensure that the damage would bring him down to 1 or 2 hp, for my support to then run in and stun. Worked flawlessly, and got me the research credit for the armour - very handy.

SNAP.
Except I bounced him around in a circle near the little goo pods on the flat, ground-level bit before zapping him.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =103911286

SEE. They won! vs 2 beserkers, 2 packs of mutons, some chrysallids and the new-on-the-screen armoured-floaters. They would have all come out alive if had hadn't have been for that meddling exploding car. (I don't think it was even smoking when the guy went next to it, but a beserker wandered over and all the firepower going that way caused it to explode at the end of the turn )

You guys sound like you have your shit together far more than I do, I am utilising the strengths of the various classes to some extent but not with that level of finesse.

I've skipped Squadsight on all my snipers 'cause it almost sounded too good to be true, is it literally what it reads as, that your snipers can shoot at any target, from anywhere, as long as one of your squad members has it in view?

No, they need line of sight. So what you do is put your sniper on top of a truck so they can basically 'see' everywhere, even if it's not in their sight radius. Then when one of your other troops reveals an enemy, as long as the sniper has a direct line of sight to the traget, they get to shoot them. They can't shoot through walls or anything (though it seems like everyone else can)

Oh right, I thought they could do that anyway, I didn't realise there was a sight radius

Spot the n00b!

My main sniper 'Ice' Grim... has snap shot. I found that you lose a hell of a lot of shots when you have to move a move-or-shoot sniper (due to eroded cover/burning vehicles/away from melee enemies), and the lower hit percentages are countered by the more shots you get.

I'm now just starting September 2015. I now have 14 satellites up (2 countries have pulled out, so apart from those two I have full satellite coverage.)

2 Interceptors with Plasma Cannons stationed at every continent.

2 Firestorms currently being built.

My "primary" squad are all Colonels in Titan Armour, with Plasma Snipers, Light Plasma Rifles (prefer them over the "normal" Plasma Rifle, as they give a +10 Aim boost) and Heavy Plasmas depending on the class.

Two of my troops are psionic, I've only used it for one mission so far but Mindfray is fantastic. Seems to be 100% to hit if you have line of sight, and as it always does 5 damage it comes in handy for finishing off stronger aliens that have taken a pounding, but not quite enough of one to kill them. Still got quite a few to test though.

I prefer proper plasma rifles, as they do a lot more damage. Also: Kindfray is 100% on everything exept beserkers I lost my second psi guy to a beserker

How do you rank up the psi abilities? If my psi guy is already a colonel, can he not get any more psi abilities?

edit: HMM. I have the hyperwave relay and it informs me of the types of beasties on the mission I'm about to do. I don't like the sound of a


edit: Meh. 2 shots from the alloy shotgun = 2 dead baddies. There was one on 2 health I was going to zap but he strayed too close to the shotgun wielding assault class who gets free reaction shots on close people = death.

which is a shame. I wanted a live one.

This is so bloody good. If I could I could sack all my responsibilities and sink days into this without looking up from the screen.

just the next geoscape event then bed... REPEAT TO FADE

The fact it clashes with the Dark Souls expansion upsets me greatly. Too many games, too little time...

After you've used the ability that you selected a few times, your guy will rank up and you'll be able to choose the next tier. It doesn't tell you during the mission though, as far as I can gather.

My psi guy can now do a Psi Panic manoeuvre, which I'm yet to try.


Yeah, I think once you build the hyperwave relay it basically tells the game to move on to the third act, so you get buttloads of Muton Elites, and then Sectopods and Ethereals shortly after.

Jeez, tell me about it. Just this morning I said "One more mission, then off to do some work" and I eventually tore myself away 4 hours later.

I have two nights in a hotel. This will stop the boredom

http://i.imgur.com/x50qZ.jpg

(apparently it's too tall to hotlink)

Someone made this on the QT3 forums. It took this graphic to make me realise that I don't get 'step around' on half cover, which is very evident in the game.

Now I realise why I sometimes got the flanking bonus and sometimes didn't.

I'm sorry Pod but I really can't work out what it is I'm looking at there?

It's some sort of cover/shot/LOS thing I presume?

And there's an actual flanking bonus? I know it's good to flank the baddies but you actually get better aim/damage as well? What counts as 'flanking'?

Sorry if these are all very n00b questions but remember I'd never played an XCom game until last week!

You get an increase in aim, and an increase in the chance of getting a critical hit (more damage.)

I believe they also suffer a defense penalty.

Huh - that's what my sniper, also called Grim..., got nicknamed.

It knows you're a cold hearted bastard IRL.

Yeah. Green area is where the alien is vunerable from. Unhappy aliens = aliens about to die. They're yellow, as in the game, to show they're flanked. As gazchap says, if they're out of cover/flanked you can deal some massive damage to them.

The image also shows you how high cover shoots on the gridrows next to it, whilst low cover shoots on the same grid row.

Also: The old xcom game didn'#t really have this idea of cover. In the old one you just crouched your noobs behind a bit of wall and hoped the projectile hit the wall before your mans head

So 'cover', then?

Cheers Pod and Gaz, helpful advice

I'm getting a lot better at the game now (I didn't even realise that yellow aliens meant you'd flanked them......), working my squad far more effectively, but I've properly gimped up the talents on some of my best soldiers and I really am just guessing at what I should be researching. (Some kind of meaningful tech tree would be very welcome, is there any way to work out what 'class' of stuff is going to come out of any particular sort of research?)

Plus I was far, far too slow out of the gates with satellites.

Also, the air combat stuff is still a bit of a black box to me at the moment, and I'm always short of cash.

I'll persevere with this game and see how it goes, but truth be told I'm looking forward to starting again and doing it properly.

In all fairness I haven't had any countries leave yet, it was very close but completing the alien base lowered panic levels right across the world, and I've got some pretty funky laser weaponry going on now, the laser sniper rifles in particular are deadly.

I dunno, it's hard to explain, it just feels 'messy' somehow to me, I hate the feeling of not knowing what I'm doing and just guessing at stuff.