XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Strategy Game - Developed by Firaxis

Motleyai wrote:

Quick question, how does everyone feel about Heavies?

HEAT rounds, suppressive fire, two attack a rounds if they haven't moved (or fire and overwatch), and removing cover while softening things up with a rocket. Seriously, if I leave the base without a heavy or two, its because they are all on the injured list.

*

Gremlin, in the original, you split off a third of your soldiers, you run into aliens and its business as usual - because every team has grenades, HE or Incendiary rounds for the autocannon, rockets, smoke, medkits, and someone doing overwatch. Here, you split off two of your four to six soldiers, run them around a corner, run into aliens, and probably die, because they will lack the tools to get the job done and can't kill things fast enough since only two are shooting and one of them probably missed, while the aliens didn't. The soldiers in the original game were individually more capable than the class restricted soldiers in the remake, just due to the ability to vary and customize your loadout on the fly, both before and during combat.

Sorry, I can't agree with you there, two soldiers can't do the job that 3 to 6 soldiers in the original did, accordingly you can't do squad tactics, only a single fire team's tactics. File it under agree to disagree and move on.

Nevin73 wrote:

Has anyone captured a Drone? What happens/how does it work? I usually just let them get caught in the CyberDisc blast or I'm too far away to use the Arc Thrower on them.

They become one of your units, similar to mind-controlled units but permanent until the end of the mission. No healing, but unlimited (or very extensive) SHIV repair. They can repair once per turn for three damage points - I repaired an almost-dead SHIV for 15 damage points, and then for six more after it was hit again. You can also suicide them, but I don't know how effective it is as I did not try it.

The main problem with trying to capture them is that they tend to run away when they are by themselves. Since they can still shoot and charging after them is extremely dangerous, it's quite difficult to pull off a capture - I wasn't able to grab one until I had Ghost Armor and was able to sneak up on it.

I tend to use captured drones as cannon fodder - since they usually accompany a sectopod or a cyberdisc, they can draw fire from them while I whittle their overlords away. Saves precious healing time.

Playing now a custom modded game, too many changes to put in details. But basically it is a longer game, tech advancedment reduced, start is less unforgiving and panic level fluctuate less. It is prepared for classic mode, and includes changes from the popular Warspace mod. Currently in my third month and already had 18 casualties, but the game seems to compensate giving me missions with a level up unit as reward.

I am worried that the game has its own pace and I will end up to far behind in tech, I need to find a way to keep the basic aliens for more time.

I have been having a blast on my normal game, honestly my top game for the year.

Unfortunately, I found the friggen "can't pass through a door" bug. On the last mission. Going into the last damn room. My 2 heavies and 2 assaults made it through fine, stranding my support and sniper behind the mysteriously impenetrable open doorway. I reloaded autosaves to no avail, so I have to restart the entire last mission.

I'm just glad this isn't an Ironman game. I'm really frustrated, and kinda PO'd, so I'm going to take a break for a while. Hopefully this gets fixed soon. Oh, this is on Xbox.

Well, I passed the alien base mission and a few others after that and I realized I have not had one casualty yet. Wish there was a mode between normal and classic. Still having a blast with it, though.

Aries wrote:

I have been having a blast on my normal game, honestly my top game for the year.

Unfortunately, I found the friggen "can't pass through a door" bug. On the last mission. Going into the last damn room. My 2 heavies and 2 assaults made it through fine, stranding my support and sniper behind the mysteriously impenetrable open doorway. I reloaded autosaves to no avail, so I have to restart the entire last mission.

I'm just glad this isn't an Ironman game. I'm really frustrated, and kinda PO'd, so I'm going to take a break for a while. Hopefully this gets fixed soon. Oh, this is on Xbox.

Any idea what triggers the impassable door bug? For me, it seemed to happen right after I had a SHIV placed immediately in front of the door, then wheeled it through.

grobstein wrote:
Aries wrote:

I have been having a blast on my normal game, honestly my top game for the year.

Unfortunately, I found the friggen "can't pass through a door" bug. On the last mission. Going into the last damn room. My 2 heavies and 2 assaults made it through fine, stranding my support and sniper behind the mysteriously impenetrable open doorway. I reloaded autosaves to no avail, so I have to restart the entire last mission.

I'm just glad this isn't an Ironman game. I'm really frustrated, and kinda PO'd, so I'm going to take a break for a while. Hopefully this gets fixed soon. Oh, this is on Xbox.

Any idea what triggers the impassable door bug? For me, it seemed to happen right after I had a SHIV placed immediately in front of the door, then wheeled it through.

Well, I didn't have a Shiv, but I had placed a few guys in the narrow hall just on the other side of the door and ended the turn. There were 4 on the other side and 2 that hadn't gone through yet. On my next turn, I could move the 4 (not sure if I tried going back through the other way) but the 2 left behind couldn't pass through.

I also wonder how much QA the game had, considering that pretty much *everyone* I've talked to has encountered at least one serious bug. Not all bugs are game-ending, but they're discouraging, and the game is hard enough even when it works as intended. I think the problem with the bugs is that they're really killing the replayability aspect. People are shelving the game until a patch comes out, by which time there will be new games to play.

IMAGE(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/596985541398440715/D01472578AFC836DCE7F56909686085919E8AE28/)

Looks like someone missed an important part of basic training...

grobstein wrote:

Any idea what triggers the impassable door bug? For me, it seemed to happen right after I had a SHIV placed immediately in front of the door, then wheeled it through.

I had it happen after I blew away a thin man coming through the door. Luckily the building had other exits.

I'm nearing the end of the final mission and the game has overstayed its welcome. I would estimate I've played 25 hours. Through the first fifteen I thought this would be a GOTY contender for me, top five at the least. Now I think it would be 8th or 9th at best, and it'll probably be pushed out of the top ten altogether as more stuff comes out.

The problem is that the game's progression halts too early. Around that fifteen hour mark I had 8 or so Colonels and I was well on my way to having them all geared as well as possible. My base was also humming, I had just about full satellite coverage, and a Firestorm interceptor over each continent. But then the game went on another ten hours, and the rinse-repeat of crawling through maps and flushing enemies wasn't a complex enough core to hold up an experience on its own. The one big positive to the last third of the game is the ramp up and close of the narrative. It's kind of boiler-plate but wraps up the loose ends pretty well.

It's a very good game, but once you see how the sausage is made it really loses some appeal.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I'm nearing the end of the final mission and the game has overstayed its welcome. I would estimate I've played 25 hours. Through the first fifteen I thought this would be a GOTY contender for me, top five at the least. Now I think it would be 8th or 9th at best, and it'll probably be pushed out of the top ten altogether as more stuff comes out.

The problem is that the game's progression halts too early. Around that fifteen hour mark I had 8 or so Colonels and I was well on my way to having them all geared as well as possible. My base was also humming, I had just about full satellite coverage, and a Firestorm interceptor over each continent. But then the game went on another ten hours, and the rinse-repeat of crawling through maps and flushing enemies wasn't a complex enough core to hold up an experience on its own. The one big positive to the last third of the game is the ramp up and close of the narrative. It's kind of boiler-plate but wraps up the loose ends pretty well.

It's a very good game, but once you see how the sausage is made it really loses some appeal.

Classic Ironman?

No, I played on normal. Having no history with the franchise I didn't see any reason to change from the defaults. I avoided in-mission saves (except before the final room, heard nasty things about it that turned out to be true), and thought the difficulty was just right. I think I lost six guys ranked higher than Sergeant, and I know two of them were Colonels.

Good find, thank you, BNice. It's a wonderful discussion, not just from the Xeno dev but also a few of the commenters. The assessments here really get me excited for Xeno and mods for XCOM.

Assuming

Keithustus wrote:

Good find, thank you, BNice. It's a wonderful discussion, not just from the Xeno dev but also a few of the commenters. The assessments here really get me excited for Xeno and mods for XCOM.

There's a bunch of folks working on modding. Too bad Firaxis is ambiguous about whether it will support modding or not. I'd really really like a few mods for XCOM like custom scenarios and point-based survival mode in the style of the game's multiplayer, but we'll see if it can actually happen.

hannibals wrote:

IMAGE(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/596985541398440715/D01472578AFC836DCE7F56909686085919E8AE28/)

Looks like someone missed an important part of basic training...

I think that screenshot is the best one I've seen yet. I turned off the glam cam because it was giving me crashes and, for the most part, I don't miss it. Scenes like this, though... I could be tempted to turn it back on

hannibals wrote:

There's a bunch of folks working on modding. Too bad Firaxis is ambiguous about whether it will support modding or not. ....

Every Total War has been modded. Civilization games, even early ones, were modded. There's really not too many PC games that haven't, right? It may take a few more weeks or months than modding something like Neverwinter Nights, but I'm confident we'll see XCOM:EU:UFO Defense Edition before too long. (unless you're on a console, of course)

Blind_Evil wrote:

I'm nearing the end of the final mission and the game has overstayed its welcome.

I had a similar experience on my first game. I got to the Ethereal device, and had a soldier capable of using it, but had seven people in the hospital (including both of my trained medics) and needed a couple more suits of Ghost Armor and some other equipment before I made a try at the final mission.

So I didn't use it. Two missions later, I lost all four of my Psi-capable soldiers in one craptastic terror mission full wipe. Fine, not a problem, I'll just find some more, train them up, and we'll go, right?

I went through thirteen iterations of Psi evaluations and thirty-nine soldiers without finding a single Psi-capable trooper. Four and half months of game time, and probably twenty hours play time total. I had so many resources that I had four Firestorms at my main base, all the Foundry items, everyone equipped with Ghost Armor, all my active assaults equipped with Alloy Cannons, six linked workshops, and 21 soldiers at Lieutenant or higher.

The grind was fun, but depending on the RNG of the Psi evaluations without being able to make them go faster was just painful. Why couldn't I build more Psi evaluation buildings?

Too bad Firaxis is ambiguous about whether it will support modding or not. ....

Right now they seem to go against more than for, really don't know what's going on. Is no one from the CIV team working with them? Have they changed owners? They seems like a strange company to me with this product, recently a very active community manager or some similar position left the place, haven't follow them too much, but I just hope for the best.

Blind_Evil wrote:

No, I played on normal. Having no history with the franchise I didn't see any reason to change from the defaults. I avoided in-mission saves (except before the final room, heard nasty things about it that turned out to be true), and thought the difficulty was just right. I think I lost six guys ranked higher than Sergeant, and I know two of them were Colonels.

I mention it, because I loved my first normal playthrough, but when I started a second normal playthrough things felt grindy.

Bumping it up to classic (non-ironman) has definitely freshened it up. It's hard, but satisfying.

1Dgaf wrote:

Decided to play this again to see how I felt about it. (The paid-shortcut announcement put me off the game.)

I adjusted by squad before going on the mission (downed UFO), but I wasn't quite as fussed as before. Met some Mutons, including a Berzerker, two cyber discs and some drones. Managed to kill the cyberdiscs and drones. Lost a couple of guys.

A few tense moments, but, again, I was a bit dispassionate about it.

And then, after sneaking around a UFO I encountered three other Mutons. I had one rookie assault pinned down, one sniper held back and had flanked with another rookie. I was in prime position to attack. Exciting!

And then, somehow, the Mutons disappeared from the screen. They were just gone. Had they run past my men and I didn't see it? Had they turned invisible? Either way, my flanking guy was killed by a Muton that had clipped into scenery. My sniper was shot through the outside wall of the UFO (it'd be like sniping through the Great Wall of China) and the last guy was killed by a Muton that appeared in a doorway.

Ironman!

Yeah. I'm playing classic now, and I just had a real b**** of a mission with one survivor. I re-loaded. I feel really bad about that, but there are just enough bugs and interface issues that I can't trust my heart to ironman.

Conflicted!

Playing on Classic (Ironman in particular, so you can't just savescum) will definitely keep you from "maxing out" too soon. You'll be chronically short on money, and good luck keeping enough soldiers alive long enough to reach Colonel rank. Yes, it's doable, but it won't feel overpowered.

Decided to play this again to see how I felt about it. (The paid shortcut announcement put me off the game.)

I adjusted by squad before going on the mission (downed UFO), but I wasn't quite as fussed as before. Met some Mutons, including a Berzerker, two cyber discs and some drones. Managed to kill the cyberdiscs and drones. Lost a couple of guys.

A few tense moments, but, again, I was a bit dispassionate about it. I tried to play well, but I had nowhere near the emotional involvement as I did before.

And then, after sneaking around a UFO I encountered three other Mutons. I had one rookie assault pinned down, one sniper held back and had flanked with another rookie. I was in prime position to attack. Exciting!

And then, somehow, the Mutons disappeared from the screen. They were just gone. Had they turned invisible? Either way, my flanking guy was killed by a Muton that had clipped into scenery. My sniper was shot through the outside wall of the UFO (it'd be like sniping through the Great Wall of China) and the last guy was killed by a Muton that appeared in a doorway.

None of those deaths were deserved. It was still my turn when they disappeared. They just weren't on the screen. Come on, man.

EDIT:

Added more dramdram before the post was quoted.

Somehow I'm not surprised that the answer to my "sick of the mechanics" complaint is "play more XCOM." Reminds of of Mass Effect 2

Seriously though, I don't think increasing the difficulty and playing again is the answer. I rarely replay games I love, so it's very unlikely with games I just like. For me, the draw of the progression is finding the limits of the system, and having played on normal I already know how everything pans out. If Classic Ironman is the ideal experience, it should have been the default.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Somehow I'm not surprised that the answer to my "sick of the mechanics" complaint is "play more XCOM." Reminds of of Mass Effect 2 :)

Ha! No, the answer isn't "play more," it's "play differently to maximize your enjoyment in less time"

Classic Ironman should not be the default, because most people would ragequit after 30 minutes. Let's face it; you're too skilled to play on Normal, but don't go inflicting that on everyone.

A question for the gallery:

How much do you feel the result of any given mission comes down to your skill at the game? Also do you feel like saving/reloading missions that go wrong is reasonable given the games admitted glitchyness/inconsistencies?

Like most in this thread I've been stomping my way through normal

Spoiler:

I beat the alien base with plasma weapons and caraparace armour

tried a classic run through and on the second mission got kinda screwed despite more or less following the gamestyle the game tries to teach.

Don't get me wrong I've enjoyed my playthrough but I'm on the fence whether or not to continue on a harder difficulty as I sense I'm getting close to the end on normal

PlainGreyT wrote:

How much do you feel the result of any given mission comes down to your skill at the game? Also do you feel like saving/reloading missions that go wrong is reasonable given the games admitted glitchyness/inconsistencies?

I feel that, similar to the original game, patience and tactical precision pay off, while charging ahead or sending people out solo tends to end badly (as it should). Good fire and movement discipline is critical, especially after you get heavies with area suppression and can actually do it right. Withdrawing from bad situations is important - I saved several missions that were going totally fubar by falling back and regrouping. Oh, and proper terrain usage will save you a lot of headaches, though trying to maneuver on the upper levels is sometimes frustrating due to the glitchy height/camera interactions.

I've got no problem with reloading on bugs, that seems reasonable to me. My first game wasn't bad enough to warrant it, though - I had only one soldier mysteriously die to a glitching sectopod (invisible chest cannon ftw).

PlainGreyT wrote:

How much do you feel the result of any given mission comes down to your skill at the game?

As you play more, you get a better sense that your decisions matter. Yes, sometimes you have a run of bad luck, or you start out in a tactically awful spot. However, you'll also have some runs of good luck too, or terrain where you can set up crossfires and kill zones.

The trick is really to tilt the random results to your favor, by having better cover than the aliens, by firing more shots, and by flanking or destroying their cover. If you're skillful, you can do all of those at once.