XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Strategy Game - Developed by Firaxis

So is the only way to get scientists and engineers by completing missions? That seems to force an overly tricky path of choosing between missions. If I continue to take missions where the crisis is highest, but the rewards aren't s/e staff, I'll never be able to progress in those disciplines.

Or am I just missing something...again?

Nevin73 wrote:
muttonchop wrote:

...I tend to use them as bait/cannon fodder and rush them forward to flush out enemies. ...

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

Pfft.. back in the original I used the rookies as suicide bombers. Gave them no armor, a pistol maybe, and a powerful explosive. Set an alien grenade or C4 pack to 0 timer. Have them be the first man into alien ships/doorways. They served the human race with dignity.

Tkyl wrote:
mrwynd wrote:

I've seen people talk about selling stuff, where do I go to do that? I've seen requests come up to fulfill but is there a way to sell some of my goods?

In the situation room, click on the Grey Market.

So is there going to be a repeat of the Laser cannon or Medkit from the original, where you just manufacture certain items and make way more money than the maintenance and the materials cost? I used to set up an entire base to manufacture items and make tons of cash.

D-Man777 wrote:

So is the only way to get scientists and engineers by completing missions? That seems to force an overly tricky path of choosing between missions. If I continue to take missions where the crisis is highest, but the rewards aren't s/e staff, I'll never be able to progress in those disciplines.

Or am I just missing something...again?

You can build rooms in your base to increase them

IUMogg wrote:
D-Man777 wrote:

So is the only way to get scientists and engineers by completing missions? That seems to force an overly tricky path of choosing between missions. If I continue to take missions where the crisis is highest, but the rewards aren't s/e staff, I'll never be able to progress in those disciplines.

Or am I just missing something...again?

You can build rooms in your base to increase them

You also get 1 or 2 each month depending on where you have satellites set up. I'm not clear on what triggers the ability to build workshops and labs though. I think you have to get a certain number of engineers or scientists in order to build the buildings to get more engineers and scientists.

Tach wrote:

Loving the game but things I'd like to see:

Ability to free fire all weapons (not just grenades and rocket launchers) to tear down obstacles/cover
Ability to at least use a downed troop's equipment (medikit specifically).
Equipment locker on kitting out screen so I don't have to try and track down the guy with the missing suit of armour
Single button to go to Mission Control and start scanning
A troop status bar that shows me my entire 6 guys and their current health (or life state)
A less obtuse way of knowing things like how many satellites I have built, how many I can put in the air, how many engineers I have, how many scientists etc.
Also, let me know *before* I research something what I'm going to need to build it. Nothing worse than researching laser rifles only to find out that I don't have the engineers to build them.

A lot of these things I know are console compromises for the PC, but still, I'm using a PC, so give me a better interface!

QFT

I think I'm around 7 missions i on my Normal Ironman game, with only 2 losses. Those 2 were of course my best Assault and Support, but oh well, mistakes were made and hopefully learned. I didn't know the importance of satellites, likely because I skipped the tutorial since I played the demo, and I've now got half the nations close to peril, in peril, or already left. I'm doing fine, the rest of the world, not so much!

Automatic gunfire and laser fire tearing down walls always seemed a bit gamish to me. Makes way more sense that they're primarily designed as accuracy-dependent anti-personnel weaponry, largely incapable of radically changing terrain.

Boudreaux wrote:

(stuff about RNG seeds being identical)

Yep, tried the same thing after I lost three guys to an AoE attack. Reloaded the previous turn, performed identical actions and got identical results. Tried this a few times, always identical. By varying up the turn order and stopping the guys at different points I could get some results to change, but not others. Eventually decided that the exact anti-save-scumming logic that governs the seeding was beyond my ability to figure out without doing a lot of experimentation and results tracking. Which is cool, because it removes the temptation to pursue perfect turns.

I'm typing this up on an alternate machine while my game sits at "Alien Activity." And sits, and sits. I've had odd processing delays after shots here and there, but this time I fear it shall never recover. Had a few turns go really, really well before this moment, and of course I haven't saved in a while :).

Jeez, time just melts away when you are playing this game.

Welp, I believe Classic difficulty has got the best of me. I can't seem to keep any of my squad alive for more than a mission or two and it's getting super difficult now (6 hours in) with countries leaving willy nilly so I believe I'll start a new game on normal instead.

In other news.. what are your suggestions for base building and research? What to put where and so forth. Any good tactics / strategies regarding this?

MAN DOWN!

Sorry, Rabbit. You'll be missed. You did, however, manage to stun a floater before they took you out.

IMAGE(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/577843823743821692/BEDEA3150A8EBDFBA73FA09282F60EEAF410D899/)

I also regret not changing the nicknames to something more appropriate. I'm going with a podcaster theme for naming my soldiers. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of female podcasters so I fell back female action heroes.

Argh. So frustrating. I spent a whole day building up a team to captain level to try to take the alien base. Nearly cleared the base, then for the FIRST time (I've ever seen) they breach their own force field on my last guy's movement and get a whole turn to chew threw my no-movement-points-having team. If I had time to take position it would have been cake. But it went from breach to team annihilation in one turn, no response possible. Of course I went Ironman.

Now I'm back to rookies facing off against red Mutons. Can you say panic and

Spoiler:

shooting yourself in the balls?

Sometimes this game feels like self-abuse, and not the fun kind.

Been having a lot of fun, and I think I'm nearing the end of my first game (playing on normal). It's still going to be a while as I'm lacking critical supplies but I'm soon going to have 10 satellites up at the same time. Xcom is wonderful in the fact that you always need something. No matter how I plan I wind up needing more of something. First I needed better guns, then more cash, now more alien supplies. It's endless but fun. I've been having some crazy luck as so far I've only lost 1 soldier. This means I have a fairly high level group of soldiers.

How is everyone loading up their soldiers? I found the basic grenades to be too weak so I swap them out for an armor boost. Only my sniper gets a scope and support always has a med pack. My preferred team is two support, two heavies, and two assaults. Of course due to wounds and such people are constantly being shuffled in and out.

Mr Crinkle wrote:

I'm typing this up on an alternate machine while my game sits at "Alien Activity." And sits, and sits. I've had odd processing delays after shots here and there, but this time I fear it shall never recover. Had a few turns go really, really well before this moment, and of course I haven't saved in a while :).

If you have auto-save turned on, the latest one was saved at the beginning of this turn (maybe even the last move). If you don't have it on, then your conclusions about RNG should serve you well. Just replay those turns and you'll get all the same "fortunes".

I don't get that though. Why would they save RNG seed? If I WANT TO replay and get a different result, why not let me? I guess it's part of "on rails" experience. Meh.

cyrax wrote:

I didn't know the importance of satellites, likely because I skipped the tutorial since I played the demo, and I've now got half the nations close to peril, in peril, or already left. I'm doing fine, the rest of the world, not so much!

As best as I can tell, the game doesn't teach you anything about satellites. It doesn't teach you that it's satellites that actually give you funding. Doesn't teach you properly that you need to have interceptors in areas where you put up satellites. The whole satellite thing feels a little half baked and half finished. It seems the "council" is not countries that give you money, but rather candidates that may give you money if you build satellites over them.

Fredrik_S wrote:

In other news.. what are your suggestions for base building and research? What to put where and so forth. Any good tactics / strategies regarding this?

In my second run, I ended up building power plants and satellite uplinks on the left side of the lift, and everything else on the right side, with an intent of chaining labs and workshops vertically, if and when I build multiples. The left side of the lift ended up looking like:

PP PP SU Lift
PP SU SU Lift
xx xx xx Lift (hoping to end up with PP SU SNU Lift -- satellite nexus facility)
xx xx TP Lift (where TP is thermal power -- hoping for PP PP TP Lift)

MoonDragon wrote:

If you have auto-save turned on, the latest one was saved at the beginning of this turn (maybe even the last move). If you don't have it on, then your conclusions about RNG should serve you well. Just replay those turns and you'll get all the same "fortunes".

The identical Hand of Fate doesn't last through multiple turns. Just the one.

Had to kill the client and replay from a the start of a tough encounter. Sustained some injuries this time through, but everyone was still present and accounted for at the end.

In other news, Mind Control is really fun!

master0 wrote:

How is everyone loading up their soldiers? I found the basic grenades to be too weak so I swap them out for an armor boost.

So why not use alien 'nades? 5 damage, instead of 3.

master0 wrote:

Only my sniper gets a scope and support always has a med pack. My preferred team is two support, two heavies, and two assaults. Of course due to wounds and such people are constantly being shuffled in and out.

No sniper? Major/Colonel level sniper is a god on the battlefield. Even with a laser sniper rifle. And I'm not even talking about flying armours yet. I've started swapping out my Colonel sniper for lesser soldiers in missions that aren't supposed to be super tough, only because it started to diminish my fun.

My latest favourite character is my Colonel level Support chick. Instead of thinking of her as a medic, think of her as a badass ninja that dominates the battlefield. I haven't tested her for psi yet, but I almost hope she doesn't have psi abilities. She gets way too many movement points. She has 3 shots of medkit that each heal for like 10 hp or so, and she's winging an improved arc thrower. She has titan armour and a plasma rifle to complement her 90 aim skill. Everybody else seems to be limping behind her on the battlefield.

MoonDragon wrote:

As best as I can tell, the game doesn't teach you anything about satellites. It doesn't teach you that it's satellites that actually give you funding. Doesn't teach you properly that you need to have interceptors in areas where you put up satellites.

Um. Hmm. The tutorial absolutely told me that point blank at some point after getting the free second satellite and the engineers coming on-line.

Hypatian wrote:
MoonDragon wrote:

As best as I can tell, the game doesn't teach you anything about satellites. It doesn't teach you that it's satellites that actually give you funding. Doesn't teach you properly that you need to have interceptors in areas where you put up satellites.

Um. Hmm. The tutorial absolutely told me that point blank at some point after getting the free second satellite and the engineers coming on-line.

Interesting. I did play though the tutorial the first time around. Had my satellite destroyed by UFO because it had no protection. :/ I truly do not recall ever being told such a thing would happen.

I don't think they said your satellites would be shot down. They definitely said you needed interceptors by your satellites or the satellites would be useless, though.

MoonDragon wrote:

No sniper? Major/Colonel level sniper is a god on the battlefield. Even with a laser sniper rifle.

Yeah, this is true. With the improved cover perk, I don't even have to worry about decent armor or medkits for my sniper, he never gets hit. My sniper is a Major, has 32 kills over 12 missions. Next highest kill count on my team is in the teens.

Yeah there is something wrong with the RNG I am calculating some of the rolls that are happening to me in classic ironman and the probabilities are quite insane, i think im going to just load up a normal game before subjecting myself to this cruel DM who is hiding the rolls from me and somehow rolling constant 20's while the badly shipped and malformed die he's given me never seems to roll higher than a 9.

I'm not sure how far into the tutorial I am, but man I am less than great at this game. I'm only playing on normal and I'm still losing a soldier almost every mission. Slowing down and not rushing into things has helped, but I'm getting shot to hell. My last mission (The first time my interceptors had shot down a ship) one soldier was incapacitated. Of course it was the one soldier with a med kit.

Still having a great time even though I'm running out of family members to name my soldiers after. My poor Mother-in-Law was the medic who ate a laser last mission.

After a first couple of hours: I love it!

But my first Classic/Ironman game looks like the world's going to be toast pretty soon. May be switching to Normal in the near future.

D-Man777 wrote:

So is the only way to get scientists and engineers by completing missions? That seems to force an overly tricky path of choosing between missions. If I continue to take missions where the crisis is highest, but the rewards aren't s/e staff, I'll never be able to progress in those disciplines.

Or am I just missing something...again?

I've got 54 engineers at this point. Building satellites in the right countries helps a lot with this since the council seems to give you engineers every month based on where you've put up your satellites.

If you want to build workshops to get more engineers, clear out a 2x2 or 2x3 patch of base for workshops to maximize on the adjacency bonus. The downside of using workshops is that you've have to pay monthly upkeep to support them, but your reduced production costs partly offset this.

I'm using Firefly characters for my squad. Today, I got my first KIA.

Spoiler:

It was Wash.

Aristophan wrote:

I'm using Firefly characters for my squad. Today, I got my first KIA.

Spoiler:

It was Wash.

Hah!

Let me tell you about Captain Ivar "Combo" Johansen. When a terror mission went south and people started turning into zombies left and right, he was the only soldier to make it back to the Skyranger alive. When his idiot commander forgot to hire new soldiers and sent him on a difficult mission with only two rookies to back him up, Combo didn't complain. And when those rookies lost their nerve and got killed right off the bat, Combo just went right ahead and completed the entire mission on his own. The man is unstoppable.

I'm finding it extremely difficult to select roof tops. Is anyone else having trouble? My cursor will get stuck flashing between the ground level and roof level. I've tried scrolling with the mouse wheel to change my level and using 't' and 'g'. They work as they should (scroll-wise) but it isn't making it easier to get to higher ground or move around up there if I do. Otherwise, I'm having a great time.

Last night, I sent a squad of 5 to a downed UFO and got worked down to one unit, Amy Wong. She ended up getting trapped between two floaters with no ammo. Out of desperation I charged one and used her shock gun. To my surprise it worked, and I was able to take cover, reload, and kill the floater (who I thought was the final alien. Turns out there was a Outsider in the ship control room, and when I opened the door, he activated and run right up to the other side of wall. I doubted that I could kill the outsider with one shot so again I went to the desperation shock. It was something like 20% but I tried it anyway and to my surprise it stunned the Outsider and ended the mission.

IMAGE(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/920117395409752090/354F1FD6FCADAA3C59591410D785F5C068AA3405/)

Fry was on the bench recovering from injuries that mission but was able to avenge Leela's death on another mission.
IMAGE(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/920117395424893394/C06C5DCE2D3801EDA598356279A15A2586848B65/)

MoonDragon wrote:

No sniper? Major/Colonel level sniper is a god on the battlefield. Even with a laser sniper rifle. And I'm not even talking about flying armours yet.

My latest favourite character is my Colonel level Support chick. Instead of thinking of her as a medic, think of her as a badass ninja that dominates the battlefield. Everybody else seems to be limping behind her on the battlefield.

Ha, yes on both of these, my snipers are artillery, and my support has almost as many kills. It will be a sad sad day when my support colonel dies.

Sadly, I'm probably going to lose this game because I can't find any cyberdiscs to kill. Why?

Spoiler:

I need the corpses to make Boost to let my Firestorm keep pace with that damn Overseer UFO, and months have gone by with no cyberdiscs in the missions. I may need to restart and horde the disc wrecks rather than selling them on the Gray Market.

I bet everyone who doesn't live in North America is "waiting for tonight" (youtube).