XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Strategy Game - Developed by Firaxis

Satellite's are your key priority. Everything else should be sacrificed until you get those. However, engineers are important since they let you build more satellite uplinks so you need those too.

Malor wrote:

I don't think it's so much that the RNG is unfair, it's that it's so central to this game. A single bad roll can reduce your strength by 17%, perhaps more, depending on how strong the dead soldier was. Having six soldiers, and only one shot per soldier per round, means that a few bad numbers in a row can easily cause total squad wipe and mission loss, in turn causing a whole game loss.

They like to say "that's X-COM!", but it's not, that's just bad luck. The real game, by allowing either 14 or 16 soldiers, and multiple shots per soldier per round, allowed you to use skill, positioning, and overwhelming firepower to overcome a few bad rolls. It didn't matter much if your sergeant missed with your only plasma rifle, when there were ten more laser rifle shots available because of your clever tactical play.

In this version, you have so few tactical options that the influence of skill and experience is greatly diminished. It's still important, but Lady Luck is the dominant feature in Enemy Unknown, and your ability to mitigate this is very limited, no matter how good you are.

This is why I don't think the game, at least as it originally shipped, is going to have anywhere near the staying power of the original; the skill curve is shallow and short. Randomness has much too strong a role. Mods have a good chance of improving or entirely fixing the problem; we'll see how that plays out.

Thank you for saying what I've been trying to put together in my head. I quit my classic playthrough because it felt like one unlucky roll would unravel everything. The only option is to play so cautiously, that it quit being fun.

That said, I love the s**t out of this game and it's easily my GOTY 2012.

Does one of the GWJ podcast guys do voicework on this game? (Sorry, not sure if this was covered already.) There's a guy that gives you a tip on finding your target in a rescue mission from the council that sounds suspiciously like one of the voices I'm used to on GWJ.

dRailer wrote:

Does one of the GWJ podcast guys do voicework on this game? (Sorry, not sure if this was covered already.) There's a guy that gives you a tip on finding your target in a rescue mission from the council that sounds suspiciously like one of the voices I'm used to on GWJ.

I messaged Demiurge about this already and he swears that he didn't. I bet he did!

I managed to scrounge enough cash to build a satellite uplink facility and have a couple more satellites in the hopper. I also built another suit of carapace armor, two laser rifles, and two laser sniper rifles. Armed with my new toys, I went on a rescue mission.

I advanced slowly making liberal use of overwatch. Good thing too. The first wave was just random Thin Man drops. All of them were easily dispatched before they could get a shot off. Once I got to the ledge where the bridge ends and the package awaits, three more Thin Men showed up. The snipers managed to kill off two of them, but the third was holed up behind a car. Not wanting to take any chances, I lined a rocket shot from my heavy up and blew him the fck up.

One of my assaults gathered the package and they both made their way back toward the landing area. Once again, the crew advanced deliberately and with care to use bounding overwatch. Again, Thin Men showed up and were blown away before having a chance to get a shot off.

Three more days until the council review.

I think I have a problem.

I'm pretty early on in the game, and responded to a distress call from Mexico - it's a gas station/convenience store location. I killed a few of the aliens, and have now spent a good 30 minute traipsing about the store and parking lot looking for what I gather is the last alien. I keep getting the "Alien Activity" thing between rounds, so I assume there's still one of the little buggers around. Am I glitched, or is he just really good at hide and seek?

Nicholaas wrote:

I think I have a problem.

I'm pretty early on in the game, and responded to a distress call from Mexico - it's a gas station/convenience store location. I killed a few of the aliens, and have now spent a good 30 minute traipsing about the store and parking lot looking for what I gather is the last alien. I keep getting the "Alien Activity" thing between rounds, so I assume there's still one of the little buggers around. Am I glitched, or is he just really good at hide and seek?

I have yet to hear of missing aliens in other missions than the final one, so most likely they are there somewhere.
If you're not playing iron-man, you can just save and spread out your troops in every direction, and then reload once you got a rough idea of where it/they are located.

Exzyleph wrote:
Nicholaas wrote:

I think I have a problem.

I'm pretty early on in the game, and responded to a distress call from Mexico - it's a gas station/convenience store location. I killed a few of the aliens, and have now spent a good 30 minute traipsing about the store and parking lot looking for what I gather is the last alien. I keep getting the "Alien Activity" thing between rounds, so I assume there's still one of the little buggers around. Am I glitched, or is he just really good at hide and seek?

I have yet to hear of missing aliens in other missions than the final one, so most likely they are there somewhere.
If you're not playing iron-man, you can just save and spread out your troops in every direction, and then reload once you got a rough idea of where it/they are located.

Do you have to sit your folks and wait in order to get the "I hear something" indicator? If so, it might just be an idea to reload and wait until you get the signal.

And now for my question....

I have a couple troopers who have made it to colonel and a whole bevy of rookies that have yet to see a single mission. Do colonels continue to gain the benefits of experience or am I better off sitting them on the easy missions just so I can get the others to the top ranks.

One of my colonels is my original trooper Umberto Ecco. He is also my only heavy. It might suck not to have the rocket, but I figure I can run missions with two of each of the other troop classes and usually do okay.

Oddly enough, I have an embarrassment of riches in experienced assaults and supports (four of each at captain rank or above), but am pretty poor when it comes to heavies (one) and snipers (two). I thought about purchasing the "rookie no more" advance in the OCS, but I have other things to spend the cash on.

Nicholaas wrote:

I think I have a problem.

I'm pretty early on in the game, and responded to a distress call from Mexico - it's a gas station/convenience store location. I killed a few of the aliens, and have now spent a good 30 minute traipsing about the store and parking lot looking for what I gather is the last alien. I keep getting the "Alien Activity" thing between rounds, so I assume there's still one of the little buggers around. Am I glitched, or is he just really good at hide and seek?

Check the roof. You didn't explicitly mention that you had, so that's my 2 cents.

Paleocon wrote:

And now for my question....

I have a couple troopers who have made it to colonel and a whole bevy of rookies that have yet to see a single mission. Do colonels continue to gain the benefits of experience or am I better off sitting them on the easy missions just so I can get the others to the top ranks.

They are maxed out once they hit colonel.

Thanks for the responses, guys. I had two snipers on the roof, and my other units spread out pretty evenly. I never got the "I hear something" indicator, either. I reloaded, tried the same mission (different map this time) and it went fine. However, the same thing happened again a few mission down the road. One again, a reload seemed to "solve" it. I'm pretty sure it's just me, but it's getting annoying. =P

Otherwise, though, I flippin' love this game!

Pacman wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

And now for my question....

I have a couple troopers who have made it to colonel and a whole bevy of rookies that have yet to see a single mission. Do colonels continue to gain the benefits of experience or am I better off sitting them on the easy missions just so I can get the others to the top ranks.

They are maxed out once they hit colonel.

Okay. Then it looks like time to bring folks up from the bench.

Unfortunately, I lost my good support medic (Major MacCaffery) to my first encounter with a cyberdisc. And since I only have one heavy (who is not equipped with armor piercing rounds), future encounters with the like are likely to be costly as well.

In the very next engagement, however, I got a clinic in exactly how deadly a well placed colonel level sniper armed with a laser sniper rifle can be. Using the executioner and double tap perks, she managed to rack up six kills in three (non-consecutive) turns. Two were thin men, but four were Mutons. And one of the Mutons was a berserker.

Got a distress call from China. They were in full-on freak-out mode, with high panic and ready to pull out. The mission status was "difficult", one I hadn't done yet. I could have gone with France, which looked to be a walk in the park - and part of the European continent I was established on. But I had already lost Australia, Japan, and India; I wasn't about to give up China so easily. I went in with my A-Team, and went in hard. When the smoke cleared, I lost two of my best. RIP Lt. Alexandra "Devil Dog" Katsaros and Lt. Feng "Black Widow" Zhou.

A country saved (for now), and two more names on the wall - two veterans, at that. Still not sure if it was worth it, but onward we go.

Man when you have bad luck you have bad luck. Was bored and I started a new game on classic. My 2nd mission in, I walk towards the center with my squad. I trigger greys on my left, right and front basically surrounding myself. That was very unpleasant. Worse thing is there wasn't much choice, I only moved to the center because it was the area I could move to really. Made for fun game though.

[quote=Paleocon][quote=Pacman]

Paleocon wrote:

And since I only have one heavy (who is not equipped with armor piercing rounds)

What are armor piercing rounds? I'm familiar with what I think they call the Heat perk, but not armor piercing rounds.

Paleocon wrote:

One of my colonels is my original trooper Umberto Ecco. He is also my only heavy. It might suck not to have the rocket, but I figure I can run missions with two of each of the other troop classes and usually do okay.

Col. Umberto "The Dolphin" Ecco

Malor wrote:

I don't think it's so much that the RNG is unfair, it's that it's so central to this game. A single bad roll can reduce your strength by 17%, perhaps more, depending on how strong the dead soldier was. Having six soldiers, and only one shot per soldier per round, means that a few bad numbers in a row can easily cause total squad wipe and mission loss, in turn causing a whole game loss.

They like to say "that's X-COM!", but it's not, that's just bad luck. The real game, by allowing either 14 or 16 soldiers, and multiple shots per soldier per round, allowed you to use skill, positioning, and overwhelming firepower to overcome a few bad rolls. It didn't matter much if your sergeant missed with your only plasma rifle, when there were ten more laser rifle shots available because of your clever tactical play.

In this version, you have so few tactical options that the influence of skill and experience is greatly diminished. It's still important, but Lady Luck is the dominant feature in Enemy Unknown, and your ability to mitigate this is very limited, no matter how good you are.

This is why I don't think the game, at least as it originally shipped, is going to have anywhere near the staying power of the original; the skill curve is shallow and short. Randomness has much too strong a role. Mods have a good chance of improving or entirely fixing the problem; we'll see how that plays out.

I actually like the fact that the RNG is a much stronger element in this game.
The fact that you cannot simply use overwhelming force to negate the effects of chance forces you to be much tactical in your approach, especially when facing stronger groups of aliens. I personally found that the game offers many tactical options for dealing with encounters, thanks to the diverse abilities of the different classes, and the addition of the cover-system. The skillful use of those abilities and the environment allow you significantly improve the odds in your favor. In my experience, as soon as I got carapace amour for my troops (allowing them to reliably survive at least one hit), it was my own tactical blunders that got them killed, and not a "single bad roll".

I've tried playing the way you describe in the originals, but never found it to very rewarding. On the contrary, dragging a large force across the maps was extremely tedious, challenging my patience more than my wit. For that reason I've always tended to play with around 8 soldiers (and sometimes a tank) in those games. And it's clear to me that it would be no more interesting for me to manage a large groups of soldiers in the new XCOM either.

[quote=Wakim][quote=Paleocon]

Pacman wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

And since I only have one heavy (who is not equipped with armor piercing rounds)

What are armor piercing rounds? I'm familiar with what I think they call the Heat perk, but not armor piercing rounds.

It is the heat perk.

It's an acronym for High Explosive Anti-Tank. Though that doesn't explain how it helps if you give the heavy a laser.

Anyone else getting buggy water? I could swear I've done this mission before but I just shot down a small ufo and began the mission to see this. None of the other missions with water on the ground have this issue. Not sure if it's me or the game. Validating my files just in case.

EDIT: Had to re-download one 9meg file but it didn't change anything. No other bugs in the mission that I could see. Although whenever I told my assault to attack with his pistol he would use the pistol animations but with the shotgun instead.

IMAGE(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/921246653115732783/0B5A4FBFAAB5797A7BF367BAF4C8315B504AC87C/)

grobstein wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

One of my colonels is my original trooper Umberto Ecco. He is also my only heavy. It might suck not to have the rocket, but I figure I can run missions with two of each of the other troop classes and usually do okay.

Col. Umberto "The Dolphin" Ecco

Hunter S. "Gonzo" Thompson just made Colonel as well.

Tamren wrote:

EDIT: Had to re-download one 9meg file but it didn't change anything. No other bugs in the mission that I could see. Although whenever I told my assault to attack with his pistol he would use the pistol animations but with the shotgun instead.

I've had that multiple times with the same sniper (never with any of the others)...

Duoae wrote:
Tamren wrote:

EDIT: Had to re-download one 9meg file but it didn't change anything. No other bugs in the mission that I could see. Although whenever I told my assault to attack with his pistol he would use the pistol animations but with the shotgun instead.

I've had that multiple times with the same sniper (never with any of the others)...

I guess that bug is low on the priority list. At least it's funny when it happens. I was watching a Lets Play once and one assault had no weapon in his hands when he went to shoot a sectoid. He looked like the heavy from TF2 gunning it down with his index finger. POW HAHA.

I REALLY wish they would fix whatever is wrong with the berserker, because whenever he moves my framerate drops to a crawl. I have no idea why, but my CPU usage doesn't register a spike or anything. The game just has a stroke and goes back to normal when the zerker stops moving.

Tamren wrote:

I REALLY wish they would fix whatever is wrong with the berserker, because whenever he moves my framerate drops to a crawl. I have no idea why, but my CPU usage doesn't register a spike or anything. The game just has a stroke and goes back to normal when the zerker stops moving.

Wow, no. Never had that one! It seems like this game as loads of small, configuration-specific bugs compared to most other games out there... or maybe it's just the echo chamber effect of the internet?

Tamren wrote:

I REALLY wish they would fix whatever is wrong with the berserker, because whenever he moves my framerate drops to a crawl. I have no idea why, but my CPU usage doesn't register a spike or anything. The game just has a stroke and goes back to normal when the zerker stops moving.

I get that too. Every time he moves.

I haven't noticed that bug with the berserker, but the only time I encountered one, he died after two headshots. So I didn't get a full turn of him running at me.

edit: I have only captured Thin Men and Floaters and they have yielded Light Plasma Rifles. What enemies yield better loot when you capture them?

Paleocon wrote:

I haven't noticed that bug with the berserker, but the only time I encountered one, he died after two headshots. So I didn't get a full turn of him running at me.

edit: I have only captured Thin Men and Floaters and they have yielded Light Plasma Rifles. What enemies yield better loot when you capture them?

I believe Mutons carry 'real' plasma rifles. You have to do research before you're able to use them.

Muton Elites carry heavy (minigun) plasmas.

dejanzie wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

I haven't noticed that bug with the berserker, but the only time I encountered one, he died after two headshots. So I didn't get a full turn of him running at me.

edit: I have only captured Thin Men and Floaters and they have yielded Light Plasma Rifles. What enemies yield better loot when you capture them?

I believe Mutons carry 'real' plasma rifles. You have to do research before you're able to use them.

I also found that they only started carrying them once I'd researched them. So it could have either been a timed thing, or dependent on you researching it. Not sure. Also, when you capture them, they also have grenades.

I'm hours in, done like 11-12 missions, have had 3 Council briefings, promoted a few soldiers to Lt, one to Captain, and one to Major - and decked them all out in Carapace Armor and laser weapons. So far, there are two things I notice I need to get on top of: building more satellites, and capturing a damn alien.

Is it bad that I'm this far in and haven't captured an alien?

BlackSabre wrote:
dejanzie wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

I haven't noticed that bug with the berserker, but the only time I encountered one, he died after two headshots. So I didn't get a full turn of him running at me.

edit: I have only captured Thin Men and Floaters and they have yielded Light Plasma Rifles. What enemies yield better loot when you capture them?

I believe Mutons carry 'real' plasma rifles. You have to do research before you're able to use them.

I also found that they only started carrying them once I'd researched them. So it could have either been a timed thing, or dependent on you researching it. Not sure. Also, when you capture them, they also have grenades.

When you first meet them they only have the light variant and no grenades. After a certain amount of time they upgrade to the heavy variant with grenades.

Nicholaas wrote:

I'm hours in, done like 11-12 missions, have had 3 Council briefings, promoted a few soldiers to Lt, one to Captain, and one to Major - and decked them all out in Carapace Armor and laser weapons. So far, there are two things I notice I need to get on top of: building more satellites, and capturing a damn alien.

Is it bad that I'm this far in and haven't captured an alien?

Nah doesn't matter really, the game is nice it that your not required to do anything if you really don't want to. Although the enemies will get stronger over time and such.