XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Strategy Game - Developed by Firaxis

Later-game Terror missions: slightly {ableist slur}.

My LZ is on one end over here. Most of the Civilians are sprinkled around over there... in the case of my last mission, mostly all bunched up in a small warehouse. All the enemy mobs - including a Cyberdisc and Sectopod replete with Drone escorts - also spawn over there.

The game is under the impression I will sprint my entire team across the map, caution be damned, in order to save a few more civilians. Meanwhile, turn after turn, the aliens have their pick of helpless humans to zap or chomp on. Even pushing forward aggressively I was only able to save ONE person. Sure, sure the mission was considered a success and I suffered no casualties but I definitely feel like terror mission designs shouldn't be randomly generated like your typical abduction or UFO infiltration caper.

EvilDead wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

Hrm. Can you suicide your whole team?

That's actually not a bad idea. After playing and failing the final mission once I know that if a particular squadmate goes down the mission ends and restarts. I hope I have enough explosives to take him out.

This worked in a strange sort of way. I must have spent 10 - 15 turns just messing around the map and trying the different doors. After that I put the squad mate up against the middle door and knocked off 10 HPs with a couple grenades. I didn't have another squadmate that could use explosives that turn so I hit backspace and was prepared to knock him out with a rocket next turn. During the alien turn 3 chrysalids spawn out of thin air on all sides of the team and the doors disappear. It seems that the doors not opening were related to a spawn glitch. I'm not sure why attacking my own guy fixed it. So bizarre.

I do have a feeling that the spawn glitch had something to do with mind control which I was using heavily in the last few missions.

BlackSabre wrote:
EriktheRed wrote:
BlackSabre wrote:

Also, anyone got the achievement for taking on a UFO with only 1 soldier on Classic difficulty? Tips?

I bet having a soldier with mind control would help with this task. Maybe use a mind controlled enemy to spot for an in the zone sniper?

Hmm, that could work. I was originally thinking of a support as they have 3 med kits. Also thinking that it would probably be better to do it prior to the Alien Base.... but then you wouldn't have PSI abilities. The benefit is you would only have mutons, floaters and thin men, which are a lot easier to deal with.

I just did this last night. I figured the earlier the better since it could only get harder so I did it with the very first UFO shot down. I had the tutorial enabled so the first one you shoot down is a small scout and you're generally only going to encounter 4 Sectoids and the Outsider.

I used my Heavy who had been promoted up to having Bullet Swarm so I could fire twice in one turn and equipped him with a scope to make sure he hit. I only used full cover which luckily helped the Sectoids miss on every shot. The only trouble came when I opened the door and triggered the Outsider. We were both sitting in spots with full cover. We traded shots back and forth and with 1 HP left I finally got the killing blow on him.

EvilDead wrote:
EvilDead wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

Hrm. Can you suicide your whole team?

That's actually not a bad idea. After playing and failing the final mission once I know that if a particular squadmate goes down the mission ends and restarts. I hope I have enough explosives to take him out.

This worked in a strange sort of way. I must have spent 10 - 15 turns just messing around the map and trying the different doors. After that I put the squad mate up against the middle door and knocked off 10 HPs with a couple grenades. I didn't have another squadmate that could use explosives that turn so I hit backspace and was prepared to knock him out with a rocket next turn. During the alien turn 3 chrysalids spawn out of thin air on all sides of the team and the doors disappear. It seems that the doors not opening were related to a spawn glitch. I'm not sure why attacking my own guy fixed it. So bizarre.

I do have a feeling that the spawn glitch had something to do with mind control which I was using heavily in the last few missions.

That's not a glitch (at least not in the way perhaps other people are describing) - it's a trigger.

Spoiler:

You have to kill all enemies in each area before you can proceed through the doors. It happened to me in the first area and I doubled back and found some more sectoids to despatch. When the doors in the second area didn't open either I realised it was something similar.

My theory is that either the devs thought the average player would take longer to dispose of the mutons et al. OR they wanted the player searching around for a trigger, spreading their team out and then hitting them with a surprise chrysalid drop. That's what happened to me. I spread my team out and was looking for enemies when they jumped in.... I was lucky with that one!

Edit: To be honest, if this was an intended effect I'm not sure the experiment has succeeded...

Vega wrote:
BlackSabre wrote:
EriktheRed wrote:
BlackSabre wrote:

Also, anyone got the achievement for taking on a UFO with only 1 soldier on Classic difficulty? Tips?

I bet having a soldier with mind control would help with this task. Maybe use a mind controlled enemy to spot for an in the zone sniper?

Hmm, that could work. I was originally thinking of a support as they have 3 med kits. Also thinking that it would probably be better to do it prior to the Alien Base.... but then you wouldn't have PSI abilities. The benefit is you would only have mutons, floaters and thin men, which are a lot easier to deal with.

I just did this last night. I figured the earlier the better since it could only get harder so I did it with the very first UFO shot down. I had the tutorial enabled so the first one you shoot down is a small scout and you're generally only going to encounter 4 Sectoids and the Outsider.

I used my Heavy who had been promoted up to having Bullet Swarm so I could fire twice in one turn and equipped him with a scope to make sure he hit. I only used full cover which luckily helped the Sectoids miss on every shot. The only trouble came when I opened the door and triggered the Outsider. We were both sitting in spots with full cover. We traded shots back and forth and with 1 HP left I finally got the killing blow on him.

Nicely done. I'll have to give this a go after I finish my current classic Ironman game. I'm too far into the story to try and pull that off now. Even with a fully decked out PSI colonel.

Maclintok wrote:

Later-game Terror missions: slightly {ableist slur}.

My LZ is on one end over here. Most of the Civilians are sprinkled around over there... in the case of my last mission, mostly all bunched up in a small warehouse. All the enemy mobs - including a Cyberdisc and Sectopod replete with Drone escorts - also spawn over there.

The game is under the impression I will sprint my entire team across the map, caution be damned, in order to save a few more civilians. Meanwhile, turn after turn, the aliens have their pick of helpless humans to zap or chomp on. Even pushing forward aggressively I was only able to save ONE person. Sure, sure the mission was considered a success and I suffered no casualties but I definitely feel like terror mission designs shouldn't be randomly generated like your typical abduction or UFO infiltration caper.

I think that's the point.
Terror Missions involve you reacting to aliens who have had several hours (typically, given the travel-distance) to chase around civilian.
In any case, I'm not sure how much randomness there is actually involved in Terror Missions, excluding the composition of the alien squads. I've played several of the maps multiple times, and those played out very similar each time.

Duoae wrote:
EvilDead wrote:
EvilDead wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

Hrm. Can you suicide your whole team?

That's actually not a bad idea. After playing and failing the final mission once I know that if a particular squadmate goes down the mission ends and restarts. I hope I have enough explosives to take him out.

This worked in a strange sort of way. I must have spent 10 - 15 turns just messing around the map and trying the different doors. After that I put the squad mate up against the middle door and knocked off 10 HPs with a couple grenades. I didn't have another squadmate that could use explosives that turn so I hit backspace and was prepared to knock him out with a rocket next turn. During the alien turn 3 chrysalids spawn out of thin air on all sides of the team and the doors disappear. It seems that the doors not opening were related to a spawn glitch. I'm not sure why attacking my own guy fixed it. So bizarre.

I do have a feeling that the spawn glitch had something to do with mind control which I was using heavily in the last few missions.

That's not a glitch (at least not in the way perhaps other people are describing) - it's a trigger.

Spoiler:

You have to kill all enemies in each area before you can proceed through the doors. It happened to me in the first area and I doubled back and found some more sectoids to despatch. When the doors in the second area didn't open either I realised it was something similar.

My theory is that either the devs thought the average player would take longer to dispose of the mutons et al. OR they wanted the player searching around for a trigger, spreading their team out and then hitting them with a surprise chrysalid drop. That's what happened to me. I spread my team out and was looking for enemies when they jumped in.... I was lucky with that one!

Edit: To be honest, if this was an intended effect I'm not sure the experiment has succeeded...

I believe what you are saying is spot on but in my case the chrysalids just never triggered. I had explored the whole room multiple times. It wasn't moving my units that made the magically spawn in, it was me using explosives at my own unit against the door. Also its not like they spawned out of view, two of them appeared out of thin air within spaces of my troops. I hadn't seen that happen in the 25 hours I had played prior.

I suspect that having a mind controlled unit after I had dispatched everything else in the room may have affected a trigger from occurring. And after the unit died, the new spawns did not automatically get triggered.

Edit: Even stranger is that my first failed attempt at the mission I was able to bring mind controlled units into the next areas and use them as trigger bait. I didn't even even occur to me that the doors could be "locked".

Classic Ironman seems to hate my snipers and Psi soldiers. I've only got one colonel sniper since all the others die off. Also, 3 complete rounds of Psi training (9 soldiers all up) and only 1 came out with a gift. Sheeeze!

And...done!

Wrapped up my first playthrough on Normal. Feel slightly bad that I'd let my girlfriend's namesake die in the final mission after carefully keeping her alive throughout. I guess karma was satisfied when

Spoiler:

my own namesake took one for the team and assploded the spaceship.

.

All in all, definitely on my GOTY list, and would likely be at the #1 spot if it wasn't so damn buggy.

Already started my Classic Ironman game, although I may take a break before I plough into that too deeply.

Second campaign, second failure. Not bothering to the name soldiers or customise how they look.

Yeap, it's utterly pointless. They'll all die. But it does make one want to play Icewind Dale.

Ironman Classic first attempt - failed. I think I waited too long for the [mission event] which reduces worldwide panic by a factor of 2. What a shocking terror mission - literally, there were Crysallid spawns deep into the map, on rooftops and civvies all next to them. Total kill count was 20+ and mission failed when my fallen squaddies hatched their bethren and tore their comrades apart.

It turns out my first playthrough was on normal, so I started a Classic with no Ironman - so far I've been doing well, first month with only one death. Is it just me or the game got stealth patched (and is easier) or turning off ironman seems to nerf the opponent? Sectoids no longer insta-critting from maximum range, they even seem to miss now.

Edit: trying to load a very nice shot I got at a group of Sectoids that spawned and sought 'cover' right next to one of their empowered friends!

IMAGE(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/6341/nicejg.jpg)

Bfgp wrote:

Is it just me or the game got stealth patched (and is easier) or turning off ironman seems to nerf the opponent?

The game did get patched last night. Of course, I have no idea what the patch was. God forbid that info gets put up on Steam.

As far as your problem, I think it's just a issue of psychology. When you know there is no way out, then every shot that hits is noticed that much more. But now, you know that you can reload if you really wanted. So you don't care as much. So you notice all the shots that miss you a lot more. I personally find it a much more enjoyable way to play.

Started my first game on Normal. So far, I got to building my first laser rifle and suit of carapace armor. I am in the middle of my first terror mission (appearance of chrysiloids) and managed to lose my first trooper to crappy thin man plasma fire.

I made the monumental mistake of not building interceptors immediately after putting up my second satellite. This resulted in my detecting a UFO over China but being powerless to do anything about it. As a result, China is on heightened alert despite my having completed two successful missions there.

I haven't captured any of the aliens yet. I built a satellite uplink next to my existing one so I have 3 more slots. As soon as I get them built, I think I will pop two up over Latin America so I can use the "We have ways" advantage to interrogate captured aliens without using research time.

I am down one level on my base and have built two workshops and am building a thermal generator. That should give me plenty of power. I haven't bothered building labs yet, but might once I get one more level lower. I am mostly concentrating on engineers for now.

One thing I have noticed is that my troopers are not terribly well balanced for skills. I get a lot of them injured so I am cycling through rookies (promoting to squaddie). Unfortunately, all but two have turned out to be either assault or support. I only have one sniper and one heavy, which makes stuff like rescue missions damned near impossible when my sniper gets injured.

For reference, it took me eight attempts before I managed to finish a Classic Ironman game. Granted, half of those were restarts after the very first mission.

Bfgp wrote:

snip

Pro-tip: Don't bunch up your people, it will be a duck shoot if something comes out of the fog of war.

Leave at least 3 spaces between each trooper to ensure that your troops will be out of any grenade blast zone if you are caught off guard.

This is my experience from my classic and also ironman impossible games. YMMV if you are playing easy or normal games instead

Managed to make it through a very hard alien terror mission without a single sniper. My five man squad consisted of my only heavy, two assaults and two supports. My heavy and my senior assault had carapace while the others were in regular body armor. No one had advanced weaponry.

When all you have is slug guns, those chrysloids take a lot of killing. Thank goodness for holo targeting.

I am building quite a bench of good assaults and supports, but I really need a couple more heavies and snipers.

Oh, and I really should have pre-built my satellites to coincide with my uplink facilities coming online. PPPPP.

I finally did capture a live alien. It was just a thin man, but it was a little white knuckled there while I was doing it.

jeffsceu wrote:
Bfgp wrote:

snip

Pro-tip: Don't bunch up your people, it will be a duck shoot if something comes out of the fog of war.

Leave at least 3 spaces between each trooper to ensure that your troops will be out of any grenade blast zone if you are caught off guard.

This is my experience from my classic and also ironman impossible games. YMMV if you are playing easy or normal games instead

I learned the hard way that Mutons (and Cyberdiscs) are good at exploiting that mistake on normal.
To make matters worse, alien grenades will destroy most cover, and so you often end up with a group of wounded soldiers standing around in the open.

Exzyleph wrote:
jeffsceu wrote:
Bfgp wrote:

snip

Pro-tip: Don't bunch up your people, it will be a duck shoot if something comes out of the fog of war.

Leave at least 3 spaces between each trooper to ensure that your troops will be out of any grenade blast zone if you are caught off guard.

This is my experience from my classic and also ironman impossible games. YMMV if you are playing easy or normal games instead

I learned the hard way that Mutons (and Cyberdiscs) are good at exploiting that mistake on normal.
To make matters worse, alien grenades will destroy most cover, and so you often end up with a group of wounded soldiers standing around in the open.

Conversely, when you know a rifle shot will kill one or two of your dudes but a grenade will not (generally lower damage) then purposely bunch them together if you only have one guy left to fight!

[edit]

Finally put the time in to finish the last mission today and I was quite satisfied with the ending. Unfortunately, I'd chosen my god-gifted sniper (which, actually, I guess, makes some sort of sense) who had the most kills, psi abilities from the get-go first round of testing and squadsight to activate the device....

Spoiler:

and of course, lost him in a heroic set-piece. Ali "Drifter" Jalaal, I think from Jamaica...

IMAGE(http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8199/8171968955_ec4d202ed6_z.jpg)
2012-11-10_00015

May he rest in peace!

The more worrying thing is, after finishing the game, I don't really see any way they can make a direct sequel... Maybe Tykl could expand on this if he has the authority to do so. I'd love there to be more but it just seems like there was no corporate faith in this endeavour....

Duoae wrote:

The more worrying thing is, after finishing the game, I don't really see any way they can make a direct sequel... Maybe Tykl could expand on this if he has the authority to do so. I'd love there to be more but it just seems like there was no corporate faith in this endeavour....

They can always go the FreeSpace route:

Spoiler:

You thought that you beat the Shivans when you took out the Lucifer? Nope, that was just a small scouting expedition.

Or they could remake one of the later X-COM games (Terror from the Deep, or Apocalypse).

Exzyleph wrote:
Duoae wrote:

The more worrying thing is, after finishing the game, I don't really see any way they can make a direct sequel... Maybe Tykl could expand on this if he has the authority to do so. I'd love there to be more but it just seems like there was no corporate faith in this endeavour....

They can always go the FreeSpace route:

Spoiler:

You thought that you beat the Shivans when you took out the Lucifer? Nope, that was just a small scouting expedition.

Or they could remake one of the later X-COM games (Terror from the Deep, or Apocalypse).

The problem with the latter is, as I understand it, those games cannot happen from this canon.... there's no reason for them to exist.

Spoiler:

At the end of the day, this is more about religion than about conquest.... to meet the requirements of ascension for those who were cast out...

Duoae wrote:
Exzyleph wrote:
Duoae wrote:

The more worrying thing is, after finishing the game, I don't really see any way they can make a direct sequel... Maybe Tykl could expand on this if he has the authority to do so. I'd love there to be more but it just seems like there was no corporate faith in this endeavour....

They can always go the FreeSpace route:

Spoiler:

You thought that you beat the Shivans when you took out the Lucifer? Nope, that was just a small scouting expedition.

Or they could remake one of the later X-COM games (Terror from the Deep, or Apocalypse).

The problem with the latter is, as I understand it, those games cannot happen from this canon.... there's no reason for them to exist.

Spoiler:

At the end of the day, this is more about religion than about conquest.... to meet the requirements of ascension for those who were cast out...

From what I recall, X-COM:TftD involved the activation of a underwater colony/ship in response to the destruction of the main alien base in the old X-COM:EU. This premise could still be used, though the connection between the two groups of aliens would have to be rewritten. However, I'm sure that the people at Feraxis could think up an interesting story for that, if there is even a need for a direct connection between the two groups. Apocalypse could be used almost as is, with the only change required being that what caused the destruction of earths eco-system was the final mission in the new X-COM:EU (not completely implausible), rather than the final mission in X-COM:TftD.

IMAGE(http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/558706247574815159/D8984B9A1DA1BE06685BF83099EE099CA0EDC96C/)

/sigh

Spoiler:

This is the guy who saved humanity. No, I can't believe it either.

oilypenguin wrote:

IMAGE(http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/558706247574815159/D8984B9A1DA1BE06685BF83099EE099CA0EDC96C/)

/sigh

Spoiler:

This is the guy who saved humanity. No, I can't believe it either.

At least hot pink and neon green go together!

I ended up having to take an alien abduction mission in Egypt (and ignore calls from Germany and Mexico) in order to get my second sniper (a Lieutenant that I tricked out as my mobile shooter and renamed Atom Egoyan). On his first mission, he took out two floaters before getting bum rushed by three chrysloids. Thankfully, I was able to pull him back and scorch the area with a heavy rocket. That didn't kill, them, but it did hurt them enough for me to run my close assault expert to six tiles away. Then, on the Alien turn, they all rushed Charles Stross (my assault captain) who promptly went all crazy point blank rapid fire on them and blew all three away. It was awesomesauce.

That, however, left me with an empty gun, so when the three mutons came screaming through the door, Charlie had to put on his little girl pants and ran screaming behind a rock where he hunkered down into the fetal position. They gave chase, of course, and when they popped around the corner, Major Umberto Ecco opened up with his M60 putting a few choice holes in the first one. It managed to get one step further before Sgt. Thompson blew his legs off with his shotgun.

The other two fired their plasma weapons at poor Captain Stross, but the rock between them managed to hold long enough to shield him from damage. Needless to say, he probably soiled himself.

At the beginning of the next turn, Major Alice Walker took a deep breath, let half of it out, and gently pulled the trigger on her .338 Lapua ACWS from far enough away to need a forward spotter. The round impacted the Muton's brain pan with the dull thud of a ball peen hammer hitting a stack of phone books. The green abomination took half a set forward before collapsing in a heap.

Luckily, Lieutenant Etoyan had the angle as well. He took his breath, pulled his trigger and, unfortunately, missed clean. Cheap Chinese optics.

Major Ecco leveled his M60 and cut loose, missing clean, but marking the muton's position with his holo-tracers.

Lietenant Anne McCaffery used her track star speed to rush into position to take a desperation shot and managed to tag the muton with her anemic assault rifle. The wound barely registered.

Sgt. Thompson (Hunter S.) sprinted practically into the muton's lap before blasting it in the face with his sawed off, splashing alien gore onto the tree beside it, but it was still standing.... and pissed.

In desperation, Captain Stross dropped his empty sawed off, drew his pea-shooting sidearm and fired blindly over his cowed head..... striking the muton in the forehead.

Sequel? They set it up for the sequel.

Spoiler:

Listen the monologue from the ethereals at the end, they keep talking about 'them', implying that someone other than the failed ethereals was out there. Whoever judged the ethereals as flawed and failed. So these Judges come tracking down the failed, cleaning up their mess that escaped and find us. Since our sole superPsi died, we don't have proof that we succeeded where the ethereals failed and so we have to defend against the Judges. Who, having no prior existance in the XCOM games, can be anything. The sectoids/thin men/floaters/mutons/etc? The Judges don't need to use them, they can just say they were the failed experiments that the ethereals created after fleeing the Judges.

Welcome to XCOM: Judgment day.

Exzyleph wrote:
jeffsceu wrote:
Bfgp wrote:

snip

Pro-tip: Don't bunch up your people, it will be a duck shoot if something comes out of the fog of war.

Leave at least 3 spaces between each trooper to ensure that your troops will be out of any grenade blast zone if you are caught off guard.

This is my experience from my classic and also ironman impossible games. YMMV if you are playing easy or normal games instead

I learned the hard way that Mutons (and Cyberdiscs) are good at exploiting that mistake on normal.
To make matters worse, alien grenades will destroy most cover, and so you often end up with a group of wounded soldiers standing around in the open.

Yeah once you get to Muton / Cyberdisk spawn time it doesn't make sense to bunch up behind cover, but so far it's still Thin Men and Sectoids so no grenades

oilypenguin wrote:

IMAGE(http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/558706247574815159/D8984B9A1DA1BE06685BF83099EE099CA0EDC96C/)

/sigh

Spoiler:

This is the guy who saved humanity. No, I can't believe it either.

Words cannot express how happy this makes me. If only I could put that pic in my sig.

I figured you'd like that =)

Spoiler:

I didn't know whoever I put the psi-suit on and stuck in the chamber would end up being basically the main character. I'm really glad it was you since you were the only survivor of the tutorial. Nice job saving humanity =)

The joy of blasting sectoids and cyberdisks again is indescribably delicious. Hearing their frustrated shrieks and watching the colored slime explosions as my team blasts their way to the objective has not gotten dull after 56 hours on normal. In the final stages of the temple ship level so I have avoided all end spoilers so far.

I will definitely try a harder level next time I run through this until the additional DLC comes out.