XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Strategy Game - Developed by Firaxis

Having a ton of fun with the game and so far I have resisted the urge to load up a save to revive dead squad mates. The difficulty is really ramping up now so that may change

Only problemi've been having is the engineer block. I have 5 vest, medic gun and the close range stunner queued to be built and it took me forever to realize that I didn't have enough power to build any of it. So now I am in a mad dash to build more plants and a thermo gen. I wish that was more clear.

Other than that, this game makes time fly by. I love all the little decisions I have to make with every move. Naming squad members is definitely the way to go. They make them more memorable in term of their class and you get attached to them more.

Ah-ha! Support class gets a 2nd slot when they get promoted to a certain level.

A few things I would love to see as improvements...

1: 2nd "utility" slot should be a promotion perk for everyone, regardless of class.
2: Why can't I name my saved games?
3: There needs to be a "weapons locker" for the pre-mission team selection. It's annoying to have to bounce back and forth to figure out who has my alien tazer.

Heh, Leeloo Dallas, codename "Multipass"

D-Man777 wrote:

Is it me, or does Dr. Shen (the engineering guy) sound an awful lot like Dr. Marvin Candle from the instructional films on Lost?

YES! Oh man, I knew I heard the voice actor before.

I love having an army of clone troopers.

IMAGE(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/939257693828519043/2DB9B9FDC7070146A7FC8351C5B40DFA67D1DFED/)

Spoiler:

Jonny, you're not an ahole, I just thought it was funny what you wrote in another thread.

The Ladies in White roll out.

IMAGE(http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/939257693828517159/3A3337EA9ABDBF384A02066D892F6F05A6E18CA2/)

So last night I was trying to decide what to research and it tells what resources each project requires. But for the life of me, I couldn't find any kind of stores that showed what my inventory of collected items was (fragments, corpses, etc.). Am I completely clueless or just looking in the wrong place?

D-Man777 wrote:

So last night I was trying to decide what to research and it tells what resources each project requires. But for the life of me, I couldn't find any kind of stores that showed what my inventory of collected items was (fragments, corpses, etc.). Am I completely clueless or just looking in the wrong place?

It's called the "Gray Market", and I think it's in the Situation Room tab.

Man this game is awsome in ways I can't even put into words. Sat down with it last night at 8:00PM and had to force myself to stop playing at 1:00AM. I am very new to the Xcom genre (tried CIV IV and V but didn't realy latch on). This has got my full attention. I started on Easy just to get a feel for it. Going to start over tonight on either normal or classic. Havn't decided yet. I am glad I started at such a low difficulty because it realy gave me an appreciation for the systems that are at play without punishing me so badly that I felt discouraged for silly mistakes, in either squad movement, resource allocation, or loadout. Still felt like even when I took some casualty's I was able to regroup in-mission and construct a plan B on the fly.

Right now I am focusing on learning how to be better at anticipating the enemies movement range and flanking ability. That seems to be where I get boned the most. I setup what I think is a good flank/overwatch position and in one turn they are outflanking me and taking pot shots at my guys.

I am +1-ing all the things that Sean A. and guest said on the Conf Call. Really can't wait to get home tonight and play some more.

I'll put on the invitation to play multiplayer again today. Just send me a message on Steam. Oh, and you'll get an achievement if you do.

So occasionally a sectoid will use a mental power which gives the recipient a green ^ over it's head. What does this mean?

Fredrik_S wrote:

So occasionally a sectoid will use a mental power which gives the recipient a green ^ over it's head. What does this mean?

The sectoid has used the Mind Merge ability. It gives the other sectoid (the one with the green ^) some bonuses. This includes 1 additional health, and increased chance to hit and increased chance to critical. However, if you kill the sectoid the did the mind merge (the one without the green ^), you will also kill the mind merged sectoid.

Also, if you want more information on particular aliens, target them with a fire action and hit the more info button. It will give you information about the alien, including any bonuses/penalties they are receiving. I think once you autopsy an alien, you'll get better info.

And in general, Green ^ means the unit is receiving a bonus. Red (downward carrot) means the unit has a penalty.

If you're talking about the thing with the purple aura that links the 2 sectoids it's a buff. It increases the recipients offensive skills and gives them an extra hit point (maybe increases their defense as well). When you have aliens targeted you can press F1 and it will give you extra info about them. I think there's a description in there of the effect (maybe only after autopsy). You can do F1 on your own soldiers as well if you need a reminder of their skills/abilities and how they work.

I like how failure isn't a binary state in this game. I had a mission last night to disarm a bomb, but was one square short of getting to it in time. Instead of getting a Game Over screen, the objectives changed to evacuate immediately or fail and lose all my men.

...which I did. Because Mr. Support can't jump a goddamn 2-foot railing.

Is there a research/tech tree available online?

So I thought I was playing it smart by picking free "3-5 Day Shipping" from Amazon, but my order is just sitting there at "Shipping Soon" status.

Why does being frugal seem like a good idea before a game ships, but once you get to street date and everyone is having a blast, you're left feeling like the kid with a broken arm looking out his bedroom window as the other kids are enjoying a pickup baseball game?

I did at least get to give the 360 demo a whirl last night (Squee!!), but I can't tell if that made things better or worse.

Oh well, "Delivery Estimate: Tuesday October 16, 2012 - Monday October 22, 2012" will come to pass soon enough I suppose.

Malor wrote:

It's good, and I'm having fun with it, but I feel very much that I am on rails. My experience is being managed. I'm not in a world with unknown aliens pursuing their own agendas, which I have to suss out all on my own by observation. Rather, the game tells me everything, one thing at a time.

Now, I got stuck on the original game... I got to a certain point and stalled out, because I needed to capture an enemy leader, and either I didn't realize it, or I'd run into some kind of bug where I couldn't. Don't remember for sure anymore. That wouldn't happen in this game, because they tell you in BIG FLASHING GREEN LETTERS to go capture an enemy leader.

Did you play the game with the Tutorial enabled? If so, the tutorial holds your hand a lot more than without the tutorial. If the tutorial is disabled, you have a lot more options as to how to fulfill the objectives.

Tkyl wrote:
Malor wrote:

It's good, and I'm having fun with it, but I feel very much that I am on rails. My experience is being managed. I'm not in a world with unknown aliens pursuing their own agendas, which I have to suss out all on my own by observation. Rather, the game tells me everything, one thing at a time.

Now, I got stuck on the original game... I got to a certain point and stalled out, because I needed to capture an enemy leader, and either I didn't realize it, or I'd run into some kind of bug where I couldn't. Don't remember for sure anymore. That wouldn't happen in this game, because they tell you in BIG FLASHING GREEN LETTERS to go capture an enemy leader.

Did you play the game with the Tutorial enabled? If so, the tutorial holds your hand a lot more than without the tutorial. If the tutorial is disabled, you have a lot more options as to how to fulfill the objectives.

Ah, I am glad I turned it off then. I decide to not do the tutorials since I already played the demo.

Having a blast with this so far, but was really straining against the tutorial hand-holding for the first hour or so. I kept thinking "Just let me play!".

I'm finding it is a mistake to assume things that were true in X-Com are still true. As soon as I got a bunch of Sectoid corpses, I started selling them off thinking "I've already researched that". Then I realized that I might want some of those for building some items. Now I'm loathe to sell anything off.

One question - do you get the gear back if one of your troopers dies? I wasn't sure.

Nevin73 wrote:

One question - do you get the gear back if one of your troopers dies? I wasn't sure.

Yes. You'll never lose any items you have made, unless you trade them with countries.

Malor wrote:

Heh, Leeloo Dallas, codename "Multipass"

I think the designers must have had some kind of Fifth Element in-joke. Look at the rookie who got randomly generated for me last night:

IMAGE(http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/920116836120764313/92D129722B1A9E2B1D994F46816A777D67243312/)

I put in 6+ hours on classic mode....that REALLY felt like old school difficulty X-COM. Then decided to restart on normal. Wow, it's freakin' night and day....much-much better.

I thought that my 50+ hours of FTL would prepare me for the difficulties of X-COM....nope.

Just received my XBOX copy. Installed to the drive, chose Classic Ironman with Tutorials off, North American base.

5 minutes later, the loading screen is still sitting there, the spinner spinning, and the Loading... text displayed. This has to be a bug, right?

TheHipGamer wrote:

Just received my XBOX copy. Installed to the drive, chose Classic Ironman with Tutorials off, North American base.

5 minutes later, the loading screen is still sitting there, the spinner spinning, and the Loading... text displayed. This has to be a bug, right?

I never had load times like that on my 360 copy

Sometimes it hangs while it's loading a movie but not for 5 minutes.

This game is eating my brain. I've been thinking about it all day at work.

Yup, just a bug. Restarted the game, was able to jump in within 10 seconds.

And now I'm being killed.

Thin_J wrote:

This game is eating my brain. I've been thinking about it all day at work.

Me too! Never played the original but do love Firaxis (Civ, SMAC). Played way too much of it last night. So far no deaths, but did have some close calls.

How does the game determine what advanced class a squaddie levels into? It may just be me, but I noticed that a squaddie (in the tutorial) who stayed at max range got auto-levelled into a sniper, and another that was in close proximity to the enemy got changed to an assault.

I love all the little moments of awesome in this game.

Whenever I have a recruit filling in for a wounded soldier, I tend to use them as bait/cannon fodder and rush them forward to flush out enemies. We're in the woods, and my redshirt runs forward to take cover behind a log on the left bank of a stream bed. Three floaters appear on the opposite bank, and she immediately starts panicking. No problem, she's already done her job as far as I'm concerned. I move my experienced soldiers forward to take out the floaters, but none are in range to shoot this turn. Next turn: the recruit stops panicking, so I order her to run forward and chuck a grenade at the floaters. The glam-cam kicks in as she vaults over the log. Time slows down mid-vault as floater reaction shots whiz past her, barely missing her head. She runs down into the stream bed, lobs the grenade, and it's a direct hit! No kills, but all three floaters are severely wounded and the rest of my squad finishes them off easily. Nice job, rookie.

Heretk wrote:
Thin_J wrote:

This game is eating my brain. I've been thinking about it all day at work.

Me too! Never played the original but do love Firaxis (Civ, SMAC). Played way too much of it last night. So far no deaths, but did have some close calls.

How does the game determine what advanced class a squaddie levels into? It may just be me, but I noticed that a squaddie (in the tutorial) who stayed at max range got auto-levelled into a sniper, and another that was in close proximity to the enemy got changed to an assault.

I was thinking the game just filled in the holes in your roster when it upgraded your squaddies (which it does), but it also seems to take into account how you used them in the missions to some extent. e.g., I gave one rookie a grapple so she could get up on the roof of a building to go on overwatch and spot enemies, and she became a sniper. I gave another rookie a medkit, and he became a support class. I don't know if those were just coincidences, but it was pretty cool. At the same time, my snipers don't live very long, so I may have just signed that soldier's death warrant.

muttonchop wrote:

I love all the little moments of awesome in this game.

Whenever I have a recruit filling in for a wounded soldier, I tend to use them as bait/cannon fodder and rush them forward to flush out enemies. We're in the woods, and my redshirt runs forward to take cover behind a log on the left bank of a stream bed. Three floaters appear on the opposite bank, and she immediately starts panicking. No problem, she's already done her job as far as I'm concerned. I move my experienced soldiers forward to take out the floaters, but none are in range to shoot this turn. Next turn: the recruit stops panicking, so I order her to run forward and chuck a grenade at the floaters. The glam-cam kicks in as she vaults over the log. Time slows down mid-vault as floater reaction shots whiz past her, barely missing her head. She runs down into the stream bed, lobs the grenade, and it's a direct hit! No kills, but all three floaters are severely wounded and the rest of my squad finishes them off easily. Nice job, rookie.

Man, I feel actually feel bad for your rookies even knowing that they are just digital people.