XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Strategy Game - Developed by Firaxis

Itsatrap wrote:

patch notes released, no date announced

Second patch?

Easy is now easier?!

Grr and double-grr.

Game locked up on me as I dispatched the final enemy in a terrorism mission that had gone spectacularly well, potentially even well enough to pop the As A Scalpel cheev.

Itsatrap wrote:

patch notes released, no date announced

I can't believe that's all they're doing with it. Sheesh.

oMonarca wrote:

The scripted maps are a bit iffy, the random generated ones are so good.

THere aren't an any random or procedurally generated maps. All the maps have been designed, they just appear at different times. The devs said they couldn't get random/procgen map creation working properly.

Malor wrote:
Itsatrap wrote:

patch notes released, no date announced

I can't believe that's all they're doing with it. Sheesh.

Yeah seems like they are still working on getting the first patch to the consoles...

Had my first really noticeable bug while assaulting a landed alien supply ship. I was moving from fore to aft, sending my team over the top of the center cargo bays. As I reach the end of the bay, some chrysalids come out of the door on the little balcony that leads aft. After the glam-cam view of them marching out, the camera pulls back to reveal a freaking sectopod right next to one of my troops.

Fortunately, I'd put off the alien base assault so I had a powerful squad and took him out before he got a chance to fire, but that magical sectopod could have been devastating to an inexperienced squad.

1Dgaf wrote:
oMonarca wrote:

The scripted maps are a bit iffy, the random generated ones are so good.

THere aren't an any random or procedurally generated maps. All the maps have been designed, they just appear at different times. The devs said they couldn't get random/procgen map creation working properly.

Whoa, really? That makes a bit more sense, after all the gas station was way too perfect and functional and reasonable.

In that case, why did they made the end map so... plain? Very anti-climatic. Give me those train station missions anytime!

My guys were assaulting an alien ship, saw a sectopod, and pulled back to overwatch. When the sectopod appeared next turn, it was behind them all. Fortunately, 6 plasma hits = dead sectopod.

FeralMonkey wrote:

Fortunately, I'd put off the alien base assault so I had a powerful squad and took him out before he got a chance to fire, but that magical sectopod could have been devastating to an inexperienced squad.

Enemies scale to your game progress. I did the base assault "early" and encountered nothing more advanced than a muton berserker.

Itsatrap wrote:
FeralMonkey wrote:

Fortunately, I'd put off the alien base assault so I had a powerful squad and took him out before he got a chance to fire, but that magical sectopod could have been devastating to an inexperienced squad.

Enemies scale to your game progress. I did the base assault "early" and encountered nothing more advanced than a muton berserker.

Shoot all I had on the base assault was some thin men, bugs and a cyber disk. Although it was the first time seeing the latter.

Spoiler:

Oh and the commander of course

FeralMonkey wrote:

Had my first really noticeable bug while assaulting a landed alien supply ship. I was moving from fore to aft, sending my team over the top of the center cargo bays. As I reach the end of the bay, some chrysalids come out of the door on the little balcony that leads aft. After the glam-cam view of them marching out, the camera pulls back to reveal a freaking sectopod right next to one of my troops.

Happened to me once as well. Sectopod just appeared out of thin air on one of the huge ships among five of my soldiers. Went down quickly though, the only concern was to get everyone out of the reach of its explosion.

Funny, I've had the exact same experience (in a cargo-ship).
I had fought a losing battle to just enter the ship, costing me one causality squaddie and one incapacitated veteran, and then when I finally get positioned inside a Sectopod just teleports in right next to one of my soldiers. Luckily I was able to take it down before it opened fire, and even managed to salvage the mission without further casualties. But it must be the fifth time something like this has happened, though luckily I have yet to lose any soldiers due to this bug.

So much for the break. Started another classic game last night. Got the Flight of the Valkyries achievement on the third mission. Pretty stoked.

Itsatrap wrote:

Enemies scale to your game progress. I did the base assault "early" and encountered nothing more advanced than a muton berserker.

Hm, I didn't realize that. Do you have any idea how the scaling works? Does it determine number of enemies as well as toughness, placement, weapon loadout, etc.?

kincher skolfax wrote:
Itsatrap wrote:

Enemies scale to your game progress. I did the base assault "early" and encountered nothing more advanced than a muton berserker.

Hm, I didn't realize that. Do you have any idea how the scaling works? Does it determine number of enemies as well as toughness, placement, weapon loadout, etc.?

It's based on length of game time. You will start encountering enemies at set game times (day, months, etc...) The only exceptions are with

Spoiler:

Sectoid Commanders and Ethereals, which show up at certain story objectives are completed.

Tkyl wrote:

It's based on length of game time. You will start encountering enemies at set game times (day, months, etc...) The only exceptions are with

Spoiler:

Sectoid Commanders and Ethereals, which show up at certain story objectives are completed.

Yeah, I wondered about that. It seemed certain encounters were scripted based on objectives completed. I think I gamed the system a bit in my first playthrough by intentionally not triggering those events so I could grind out my soldiers' ranks more.

Just thought I post a quick other xcom game question here. UFO extraterrestrials gold is on sale on steam. Worth getting? Only other Xcom I played was the one on mars.

master0 wrote:

Just thought I post a quick other xcom game question here. UFO extraterrestrials gold is on sale on steam. Worth getting? Only other Xcom I played was the one on mars.

I haven't tried it myself (yet), but saw a pretty informative summary of the game over at Reddit, and decided to pick it up: Link.

Finished my second Classic playthrough. Colonel Texas "Tectonic" Tboon sacrificed (?) himself to save all of mankind.

IMAGE(http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/938133213218345375/3165C823991490C0FFB35ADFD4D1504BC7F2A292/)

I tried the demo last night, I really liked it and all the positive reviews and talk on various podcasts have gotten me intrigued, but there is one thing that confuses me:
I read forum posts and reactions from regular players about all the bugs, how they seriously impact the enjoyment of the game. Is it really that buggy? And if so, why don't the reviews (or review scores) don't reflect this? Perhaps I should wait til the bugs are gone 4 months from now and the inevitable 50% off Steam Sale shows up?

It seems to vary. I've had less than a handful of genuine bugs. The game locked up on me once when switching to the operations center, and a couple of times enemies appeared out of thin air, so I can't say they had any meaningful impact on my enjoyment.

On my second game, Ironman Impossible and so far the only thing bugging me is the camera angle that will keeps jumping levels at certain ufos and the weird level pathing causing missteps.

But that is easily fixed with judicious use of F and C keys and the Q and W keys. YMMV

jeffsceu wrote:

On my second game, Ironman Impossible and so far the only thing bugging me is the camera angle that will keeps jumping levels at certain ufos and the weird level pathing causing missteps.

But that is easily fixed with judicious use of F and C keys and the Q and W keys. YMMV

Pretty much apart from this, the only thing I get is sometimes the person will be facing the complete other direction than where they are firing. It's minimal and hasn't impacted my enjoyment of the game.

Some nice bugs in multiplayer. My sniper is on a roof with a Chrysalid. On my opponents turn, I can see the Chrysalid. On my turn, it dissapears. Has it jumped off? I'm not sure. I'd better overwatch. End of my turn.

Oh, look. It's still there, but I can only see it on my opponent's turn. Oh, he's come to attack me. If I'd known he was there on my turn, I might have shot him.

Then my friend tells me 'Even if you can't see the enemy in standard view, when you go into aiming mode you might still get a chance to shoot at it'. The damn thing was 12' away from me. I'm a sniper. Why can't I see it?

Then there's the game where I turned off the action cam to save time. Of course, it didn't actually turn off. So it ate into my time and I couldn't fire before the round ended.

I want to give this game a chance, but these things need fixing. It's crazy that you want to release DLC - with its own problems and awful shortcuts - without making sure teleporting monsters and invisible Chrysalids are sorted beforehand.

No real bugs here. Same one as Sabre's, occurs frequently when firing at close range, or at odd angles. I also had one of my guys on a roof trigger overwatch as a Floater flew inside the building and clipped into the ceiling.

Barring that, it's really stable. No hard lock-ups of any kind.

I'm fine with an oddly-angled shot. It looks silly, but it doesn't affect gameplay.

Only thing I've seen that I'd consider a "bug" is the occasional alien who pops out of nowhere. I had this occur in a mission in Egypt, where my team started out on an elevated lawn overlooking a graveyard. Everyone on the team had good cover behind various statues, and the graveyard was pretty much open ground other than the half-cover of a few gravestones. Right in front of my team was a concrete ledge that dropped down into the graveyard itself. We spotted a group of Mutons on the other side of the graveyard, who promptly scattered into cover. I spent a couple of turns in overwatch waiting for one of them to try to move toward me. Finally, an alien turn occurs where one of the Mutons appeared on my side of the graveyard - right in front of my team - hopping up onto that concrete ledge and flanking one of my soldiers. Luckily it had no time for a shot and we were able to take it down, but there's no way that Muton could have crossed the graveyard to get to that position without being seen.

I've also had problems with movement in multi-level alien ships where, because of the camera angle, a couple of pixels on the screen separate a well-covered position inside the ship and a completely defenseless position 30 feet outside the ship. I'm not sure that's a bug, just something you have to be careful about.

I'm not sure how many people have noticed this, but I realized about 2 months after I got the option to train Psionics that if you don't heal critically wounded team-members back up at least nearly to full(pror to the ensd of the current mission), that their Will rating gets degraded. I'm not sure how much. So several of my early Psionics capable members have been permanently benched, due to Will ratings of under 50. I also have about 5 team-members that are pretty much unusable(due to panic if any teammate even gets wounded), since their will has been degraded so many times by crippling injury and they are now hovering at the sub-30 Will mark. The lowest of which is at 23.

due to noticing these factors, and my policy to immediately test new recruits and flush those that have no gift, I'm rocking a full squad of Colonels of PSI-gifteds. The lowest is my Sniper with suited up Will rating of 102... but my Pride and joy is my latest gifted find, who leveled all the way up to 162 (the rest are 128 thru 144)Will. Even un-boosted, she regularly mind-slaves ethereals. They have one really cool ability that their buddies really hate having used against them. Stinks that I can't have it from the start of the boards tho.

I'm very much looking forward to doing the final mission tonight when I get home. I want to make the final board cry. I'd love to do Ironman, but I'm glad I didn't, so that I don't have to get frustrated if one of the few silly bugs I ran into forced me to restart and lose a lot of progress.

Non-Ironman Classic.

So if you learn anything from me: heal your troops, or you will need to replace even those who aren't horrifically vaporized... on a regular basis.

oddity wrote:

I'm not sure how many people have noticed this, but I realized about 2 months after I got the option to train Psionics that if you don't heal critically wounded team-members back up at least nearly to full(pror to the ensd of the current mission), that their Will rating gets degraded.

Wow! I actually remember hearing about this "feature" in a developer interview pre-release , but I assumed it hadn't made the final cut. Time to start planning some time to use up remaining medkids before hunting down the last alien it seems.

Underflow wrote:
oddity wrote:

I'm not sure how many people have noticed this, but I realized about 2 months after I got the option to train Psionics that if you don't heal critically wounded team-members back up at least nearly to full(pror to the ensd of the current mission), that their Will rating gets degraded.

Wow! I actually remember hearing about this "feature" in a developer interview pre-release , but I assumed it hadn't made the final cut. Time to start planning some time to use up remaining medkids before hunting down the last alien it seems.

"Critically wounded" means taken down but not killed, I think (you know -- 3 turns to stabilize or revive). I was aware that critically wounded soldiers get a permanent Will penalty. Are you saying this can be avoided by first reviving them and then bringing them up to full health before mission end (which probably takes 3+ medikits)?

Or are you saying that soldiers who are wounded but not critically wounded also take a Will penalty, which can be avoided by healing the damage before mission end? Are you sure?