XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Strategy Game - Developed by Firaxis

master0 wrote:

IMAGE(http://threepanelsoul.com/comics/2012-10-15-251.png)

Funny. Some of the later council requests seem a little light in terms of the rewards, so this is almost precisely the feeling I get sometimes.

Okay. I think I have the squad I want for the final mission.

After doing a shameful amount of recruiting and vetting through the Psi Lab, I managed to get a total of 8 Psi Talented troopers. Two are assaults, one is a heavy, one is a support, and four are snipers. The heavy and the support are up to colonel level already and have just about maxed out their Psi abilities. Two snipers are at captain and major level. And the two assaults are making rapid progress despite being the last additions. Two other snipers will be added to the starting rotation as soon as I max out the other two.

I find that Psi troopers advance amazingly quickly because kills and Psi kills give experience on both tracks. Moreover, the ability to Mind Fray gives snipers a great deal of short range utility that they simply don't have otherwise. For obvious reasons, my Psi snipers have squad sight since the mind fray attack is often a more effective move-fire attack than the rifle.

With this group (equipped with ghost and archangel armor), I managed to clear out an alien terror mission in four turns. This included killing a sectopod and several muton elites. Two of my folks got hit, but the damage they took whilst wearing chitin plating was in the "boo boo" category (no infirmary time).

The latest mission this group completed was a bomb mission in Australia. The ghosts identified 7 targets in the first turn alone, but did not activate them. The snipers went up to max level using the jetpacks and waited. In turn two, the ghosts revealed. The heavy used the double shot ability to kill off two skinnies. This activated a group that immediately ran out into the open, where one of my assaults used mind fray to pop his head open. The other four skinnies took defensive positions, but were quickly finished off by a combination of the snipers, my support, and my other assault. This allowed my support to use her fast move ability to get to the bomb and disarm it. This, of course, resulted in the alien wave attack. No less than 8 skinnies fell from the sky. Lucky for me, all of my troopers were in overwatch. This resulted in two of the skinnies getting kakked before they could even get their bearings. The rest were killed off by mind fray attacks. Again. No damage. Perfect mission.

Paleocon wrote:

Okay. I think I have the squad I want for the final mission. (All-star dream team of doom...)

You are going to give the aliens psi-wedgies and steal their alien lunch money.

pgroce wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

Okay. I think I have the squad I want for the final mission. (All-star dream team of doom...)

You are going to give the aliens psi-wedgies and steal their alien lunch money.

OMG. I've become a psi bully.

When did that happen?

Quick question - Do Sectopods cloak?

How do you guys deal with these things? The secondary area attack is brutal.

CEJ wrote:

Quick question - Do Sectopods cloak?

How do you guys deal with these things? The secondary area attack is brutal.

Prayer helps.

CEJ wrote:

Quick question - Do Sectopods cloak?

How do you guys deal with these things? The secondary area attack is brutal.

they certainly can be.

I usually just deal with them by hitting them with everything I've got before they can get a shot off. Double tap snipers with plasma sniper rifles tend to get the job done. As do Assault troopers with the rapid fire ability and alloy cannons. Any combination of two of these will generally take it out before it can get a shot off.

The funniest thing about Sectopods is the fact that they tend to materialize inside buildings in later terror missions and it makes you wonder how they ever got in there in the first place.

So I'm late to the party on this one but am having a wild ride so far.
Playing on Normal Ironman, I started off not realizing how important satellites were and lost a couple of countries to panic. That being said, my missions were going swimmingly and with barely any losses. That is, until very recently - as time has gone on and the difficult has ramped up, my tactics were clearly not up to the challenge of the higher damage-dealing foes. After a particularly brutal sequence of missions, I've lost half my Colonels and now have a bunch of squaddies to train up. I'm well positioned from a satellite/panic perspective and research/equipment perspective (I've got a full set of plasma gear and advanced armor for a squad of six), so I figure I just need to take a breath and regroup.

Some questions now that I feel I'm approaching the end-game:
1) How often to Chrysalids show up later in the game? I've only seen them on a couple of terror missions and the first mission where you encounter the Sectoid Commander. I live in fear of being swarmed by them after losing a high-ranking assault soldier, but have rarely encountered them since, making me feel like my Chitin armor is wasting a spot.
2) How do you manage PSI training? Do you send in veterans? One veteran and a couple of squaddies? Haven't found anyone gifted yet.
3) What's the best approach to train squaddies in the later game? I feel like all the easy abduction missions are gone, and I'm just doing really hard UFO assaults, where I rely a lot on my veterans to pull me through (missing out on kills for rookie xp and putting my vets at risk). Can I ignore some of the seemingly tough missions and wait for ones that look easier? I only have one country without satellite coverage, does that change what missions I'll get?
4) I haven't researched the SHIV in the foundry yet - should I focus on that as a potential replacement for rookies?

1) I haven't seen bugs in a while.
2) I toss folks in the Psi lab as they become available. Of my colonel level troopers, only one showed any psi ability. The rest were squaddies recruited for the purpose.
3) Training squaddies with Psi talent is remarkably easy since psi kills count as regular kills as well. Just make sure to damage bad guys with heavier weapons and finish them off with Mind Fray and they will advance very, very quickly. Don't be afraid to send them on tough missions either. They can handle it.
4) I haven't bothered with the SHIV either, but I have an embarrassing amount of resources and nothing left to research so I will probably do so in order to prevent a bunch of bored engineers from starting mischief and shenanigans.

CEJ wrote:

Quick question - Do Sectopods cloak?
How do you guys deal with these things? The secondary area attack is brutal.

LobsterMobster wrote:

Prayer helps. :)

Well, so do Heavies with HEAP and double rockets. I was surprised when the rocket hit for a non-critical 12 damage.

Paleocon wrote:

they certainly can be.

I usually just deal with them by hitting them with everything I've got before they can get a shot off. Double tap snipers with plasma sniper rifles tend to get the job done. As do Assault troopers with the rapid fire ability and alloy cannons. Any combination of two of these will generally take it out before it can get a shot off.

The funniest thing about Sectopods is the fact that they tend to materialize inside buildings in later terror missions and it makes you wonder how they ever got in there in the first place.

Have not run into them in terror missions yet. Just assaulting the Alien Base for the first time and ran across one and it managed to move to a point where it hit my clustered XCOM agents with the area attack after I was mixing it up with some muttons and hvy floaters.

Anyone try the DLC yet? Is it worth buying?

I find that in late game missions that chitin plating with ghost armor is my go to setup for non snipers. Supports get a medkit as well with the deep pockets perk but the chitin plating makes the ghost armor every bit as tough as Titan but invisible and grapple.capable . That and if i need an alien grenade I can always just mind control a floater.

Paleocon wrote:

Funny. Some of the later council requests seem a little light in terms of the rewards, so this is almost precisely the feeling I get sometimes.

Hee hee. Yeah, I just assume that the numbers are in millions, and that they've abstracted out all of the details about stuff like buying food and ammunition.

I'd recommend not purchasing the Slingshot DLC at this time if you are currently playing through a game.

Some (including myself) have experienced an issue where purchasing and downloading the DLC results in being unable to load their old saves.

I'm not sure what's causing this, though I suspect it is an issue with the previous DLC (Pre-order/Elite Solsider pack DLC 1) and validating and verfiying related files (DLL Hell of some sort).

Edit: related post on 2k forums

http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread...

lol. Someone I talked with about this game referred to mind controlling floaters and using them to suicide bomb other aliens as "going Gangnam style" (Psy = psi). Ugh.

CEJ wrote:

Quick question - Do Sectopods cloak?

Not technically, but they have what I am convinced is a movement bug. I've had more than one teleport behind my troops while I was waiting for it to come through a doorway.

If they have a cloak or teleport power, it's not enumerated or mentioned anywhere in the game.

CEJ wrote:

Quick question - Do Sectopods cloak?

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Not technically, but they have what I am convinced is a movement bug. I've had more than one teleport behind my troops while I was waiting for it to come through a doorway.

If they have a cloak or teleport power, it's not enumerated or mentioned anywhere in the game.

Ok ... this makes a little more sense now. I think something very similar happened to me last PM.

FuriousDave wrote:

I'd recommend not purchasing the Slingshot DLC at this time if you are currently playing through a game.

Some (including myself) have experienced an issue where purchasing and downloading the DLC results in being unable to load their old saves.

I'm not sure what's causing this, though I suspect it is an issue with the previous DLC (Pre-order/Elite Solsider pack DLC 1) and validating and verfiying related files (DLL Hell of some sort).

Edit: related post on 2k forums

http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread...

I bought it and am apparently too late in the game for it to work (i am right at the last mission). Kind of obnoxious, but no worries. I am going to start a new game right after this one.

Did they change the way aliens move in a patch?

I played for a bit on Normal when the game first came out. Then I abandoned that game (fiance wanted her computer back, and I was done fixing mine) and did several attempts at Classic.

Now I've dropped back down to Normal, and the aliens seem to be moving around the map before I trigger them, just like they did in my Classic attempts.

Did they make the Normal enemies less static, or was my perception skewed by that initial short session + general internet complaining?

I can't say that I like the way Firaxis is approaching DLC so far (who exactly wanted more story elements?) but I intend on buying it anyways to support Xcom as a whole.

Another question related to Vargen's - I'm playing on Normal (Ironman) and find that the aliens are killing civilians before I trigger them - though I've never noticed this not being the case, so I'm not sure when this may or may not have changed.

I was just wondering what people's approaches to terror missions were? If I move with the normal caution of a regular mission, I find too many civilians get killed. If I try to cover as much ground as possible to get to civilians, my squad gets killed and I'm too spread out to effectively manage the civilians and save my squadmates at the same time. What's the appropriate balance here?

I can't speak to APPROPRIATE balance, but I know MY balance: f*ck Civilians. My people are WAY more valuable, and I've never gotten worse than a "good" rating by playing smartly, and letting civies die to keep my soldiers alive.

Dysplastic wrote:

Another question related to Vargen's - I'm playing on Normal (Ironman) and find that the aliens are killing civilians before I trigger them - though I've never noticed this not being the case, so I'm not sure when this may or may not have changed.

I was just wondering what people's approaches to terror missions were? If I move with the normal caution of a regular mission, I find too many civilians get killed. If I try to cover as much ground as possible to get to civilians, my squad gets killed and I'm too spread out to effectively manage the civilians and save my squadmates at the same time. What's the appropriate balance here?

Ghost armor. The answer is ghost armor.

Go ghost and run to cover as much ground as possible. Don't be afraid to rescue the civilians closest to the aliens first. Doing that will force them to exit buildings and cover to pursue civilians. That's when your flying snipers with squad sight get to go nuts.

Move quickly but keep your squad together, or in two groups of 4 if you have the larger squad size. Sending scouts is okay too so long as they have plenty of back-up on overwatch. Start in the place where you think civilians are most likely to be, which is generally the nearest large structure. If you get close to any civilians, rescue them to get them off the map, but don't put yourself out trying to rescue everyone. Once you have aliens on screen they'll typically focus on you, so it's easy to draw a lot more attention than you're ready for. In a pinch, use explosives on clumps of aliens. The point of terror missions is to save as many people as possible, so don't worry too much about salvage.

IMAGE(http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/image/901)
Another random comic.

Also on the dlc I swore I heard something from rock paper shotgun about another one in the pipeline.

Dr. Incurable asked me how I knew the aliens weren't actually trying to help us and that it wasn't just a terrible misunderstanding.

I told him that even if they were, you just don't abduct humans without permission.

Aliens always move around on Terror missions. They seem to move around "sometimes" on the other types, but I've seen some that must have just been at the very edge of my squad's sight, and that cluster of 3 stayed put until I moved that 1 square closer.

Onto my 2nd game on Normal, I swear those alien bastards have been practicing at the range. They hit my guys a lot more often (it seems). Of course, it could just be that I've been playing too aggressive with my newbie squad.

To protest against the lack of mod support (and enforcement against it) I will not buy the DLC, at least until it goes on sale

anyone wrote:

To protest against the lack of mod support (and enforcement against it) I will not buy the DLC, at least until it goes on sale ;)

wait, they are taking action against modders?

cej wrote:

A bunch of stuff about sectopods

After much deliberation (and prayer) I sort of have a handle on these:

  • a couple of assault troopers with move and fire and rapid fire skills can close and drop some hate
  • knowing what to look for on the area attack is key (the tell is pretty obvious if you pay attention). Also, if you kill it after it sets the area attack (attack occurs after your next turn), then the attack doesn't happen.
  • I have not been able to pull this off yet, but a snipe with the disabling shot skill supposedly can (a) hurt it and (b) keep it from taking its shot with the primary weapon (i.e.: of the three I have ran into, I have lost three XCOM troopers; 2 rookies and a corporal)
  • Heavies with the HEAP skill mess these things up. However, they need to get close or around their flanks.