XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Strategy Game - Developed by Firaxis

So, I ran a low level squad into my first transport ship and suffered from a rough case of not being able to hit sectopod/elite muton unless I was on top of him. I made the mistake of running two heavies in this group along with a single sniper (see afore mentioned regret on not doubling down on snipers) and a mix of sq/cpl support and assault. I needed up loosing two (maybe it was three) troopers before I called it a day and headed back. Even got berated by the engineer guy for loosing so many troops.

The good news is that the ones that did make it through ended up getting promoted and one ended up with Psi.

CEJ wrote:

So, I ran a low level squad into my first transport ship and suffered from a rough case of not being able to hit sectopod/elite muton unless I was on top of him. I made the mistake of running two heavies in this group along with a single sniper (see afore mentioned regret on not doubling down on snipers) and a mix of sq/cpl support and assault. I needed up loosing two (maybe it was three) troopers before I called it a day and headed back. Even got berated by the engineer guy for loosing so many troops.

The good news is that the ones that did make it through ended up getting promoted and one ended up with Psi.

The engineer dude is always good for commentary.

My particular favorite is when you first discover alien entertainment and he says "This is what aliens do for fun? Well, at least they aren't playing computer games.".

I have XCOM and my current roster of victi... heroes are:

1) My friend from Sudbury, handle Bluewolf

2) My friend from Ottawa, handle Parallax Abstraction

3) My friend from Ohio, Dirk Knemeyer

4) Strangeblades

Classic Ironman mode. The line up:

IMAGE(http://i866.photobucket.com/albums/ab221/Strangeblades/Chris_zps617d7a67-1_zps96cd83f5.jpg)

IMAGE(http://i866.photobucket.com/albums/ab221/Strangeblades/Katherine_zps4a4d8606-1_zpsfeac9bdc.jpg)

IMAGE(http://i866.photobucket.com/albums/ab221/Strangeblades/Dirk_zps1e9b6693-1_zpsf79ea162.jpg)

IMAGE(http://i866.photobucket.com/albums/ab221/Strangeblades/Gerry_zps301e9ed5-1_zps4eaa8362.jpg)

That is a remarkably handsome crew you run with there, Strange. Especially that first chap.

How is it going? Hard?

I expect it will be once I throw these f**kers into the meat-grinder. IMAGE(http://i866.photobucket.com/albums/ab221/Strangeblades/RubHandsIn-1_zps7bcb7de5.gif)

I started my second game and found it quite a bit harder. I have already lost India and England and just about all of Asia is near panic level. The good news is that the satellite nexus I have being built now will solve my abduction problem entirely as I have the satellites prebuilt and already have 8 up. The nexus should give me four plus the two I get for the adjacency bonuses giving me 14. This is full coverage now that I am down to 14 countries.

My A-squad is equipped with carapace and laser weapons. I have two snipers with squad sight. One Jack "zero" Ryan is my only colonel. One of my assaults is a major and I have a bunch of captains and lieutenants. Dr. Incurable is my other sniper, but is only a corporal right now.

I have suffered three squad fatalities since first contact. Two were killed in one missions (Operation Unceasing Fire), in which my squad was ambushed from either side of the construction yard by floaters from elevated positions. If it wasn't for the heroic effort of Assault lieutenant Valentine "Gorilla800lbs" Tsyplenkov, the squad may very well have been eliminated. For this, he was awarded the Орден «За военные заслуги» and sent to recuperate in the infirmary for 12 days.

Paleocon wrote:

For this, he was awarded the Орден «За военные заслуги» and sent to recuperate in the infirmary for 12 days.

Does this belong in the Frabulisim thread?

Mixolyde wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

For this, he was awarded the Орден «За военные заслуги» and sent to recuperate in the infirmary for 12 days.

Does this belong in the Frabulisim thread?

Despite numerous suggestions to the contrary, the Russian language and drunken mumbling are neither interchangeable nor equivalent.

I rather think he was referring to this.

I took out the alien base without a single fatality, but two of my troopers ended up in the infirmary for five days a piece. Both were injured when the squad attempted to ambush a trio of floaters from the balcony only to activate an additional trio of heavy floaters, a trio of crysiloids, two mutons, and a berserker.

During the first turn of fire, my troops managed to take out all three crysiloids and a floater, but my main firepower (my snipers) had not managed to get into firing position. The aliens responded with a barrage of alien grenades and plasma fire that took two of my troopers down to a single point a piece.

The next turn, "Incurable" Pipes took out a floater and muton with his sniper rifle while "Zero" Ryan managed to take out a muton and a heavy floater with consecutive shots. Thank gods for Double Tap. Valentine "Gorilla800" Tsyplenkov backed up and took out the heavy floater that teleported behind the formation using the rapid fire feature of his plasma rifle. My heavy shot the remaining heavy floater, but didn't manage to kill it, but thanks to the fact that he hadn't moved, he got to finish him off with a second blast of his heavy plasma. My two supports shot at the remaining floater. One whiffed. The other knocked it out of the air. I figured as long as I did not shoot at the berserker, he wouldn't be able to close the distance in a single turn.

My major level supports both had three medpacks a piece and I ended up having to use four between them to bring Val and my heavy back to reasonable health levels. The rest took turns either reloading or going into overwatch. Oddly enough, the berserker, seemed content to wait below the balcony and out of line of sight.

By the time he ventured out his hole, my squad was fully healed up, reloaded, and in overwatch. All six opened up on him with a hail of green plasma the moment he broke out into the open. Most of the shots missed, but the ones that did did enough damage to reduce him to a single point. Ironically, when he bellowed out his Intimidate cry, my heavy went into full blown panic despite not being in anything approaching danger. Just out of general principle, I had "Incurable" Pipes finish him off with his 9mm sidearm.

When the squad got to the sectoid commander, I resolved to take him alive. The first thing I did was to bring my two supports up and suppressed the sectoid from two different angles. This gave me enough time to bring up my heavy and two snipers. The heavy engaged a drone and killed it while the snipers rushed into position. Once again, Gorilla ran to within knife range of the enemy and was rewarded with a blast of hot plasma for his efforts. Thankfully, it was only three damage.

The next turn, my heavy hit the sectoid with a shredder rocket. I followed this up with a disabling shot from one of the snipers. This took him down to three points. Gorilla whiffed on his stun attempt. Incurable managed to kill the second and final drone. The sectoid responded by mind controlling my heavy.

I then ran one of my support troopers right next to the commander and shot him with a pistol taking him down to a single point. After that, Gorilla's stun attack made short work of the sectoid.

Psionic lab bonus ftw.

Dixie_Flatline wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

For this, he was awarded the Орден «За военные заслуги» and sent to recuperate in the infirmary for 12 days.

Does this belong in the Frabulisim thread?

Despite numerous suggestions to the contrary, the Russian language and drunken mumbling are neither interchangeable nor equivalent.

True, Russian has a second register (drunken grumbling) and a third (drunken arguing). These other registers are particularly troubling to Fins, Poles, Ukrainians, Georgians, Kazakhs, and anyone with vaguely dissimilar political beliefs.

Dixie_Flatline wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

For this, he was awarded the Орден «За военные заслуги» and sent to recuperate in the infirmary for 12 days.

Does this belong in the Frabulisim thread?

Despite numerous suggestions to the contrary, the Russian language and drunken mumbling are neither interchangeable nor equivalent.

I rather think he was referring to this.

You clearly haven't heard my relatives.

And yeah, that's the right medal.

Purchased! I'm excited! Yay!

Also, tagging.

GameSpy made it game of the year! Cool. (Or GamesRadar? Maybe both?)

Anyone do MP yet? I need to give that a try. Love the game tho'.

Got this today, thanks to the GMG $17.50 deal.

Installed and played tonight.

Finished the tutorial. Love it.

First X-Com game I've ever played. Not sure how I missed it before but I did.

Almost finished with the first set of objectives (capture/interrogate an alien). Got to sleep now I guess.

No way I can read 100+ pages of this thread. I did glance at a FAQ after I finished the tutorial for some basic suggestions (how to build your base, what to prioritize, try to bring one rookie each mission for when someone gets injured you have a decent replacement, save often, etc) But I'm open to any more basic stuff you guys have.

So far just playing on Easy. Had two soldiers down to 1 health in two separate missions but survived barely. So yeah, I suck for now. But I'm having fun.

To be honest, just play it and find out. You'll restart about 1/3 to half way through. But that's kinda the fun of it all.

Or if you want to get a head start:

Spoiler:

Focus on satellites and engineers. They are your lifeblood.

I made it through my first ever game without a restart, but BlackSabre is right. That is the lesson I learned. Game 2 is going MUCH smoother.

I got through the first game without losing a single country and without building a single lab. I concentrated entirely on satellites and workshops and found that the research pretty much took care of itself.

In my first play through, I managed to finish without losing a single country, but I wonder if much of that was just luck in which countries had abduction events and which ones did not. In my second play through, I lost India and England despite having raced to satellites as quickly as I could. I suspect that the placement of abduction events is random and that particular combinations make losing countries simply unavoidable. I tried limiting the countries that exited to ones on m home continent (so as to prevent losing the continent perks), but was unsuccessful.

I am also finding that psi troops are harder to come by in this run through. I suspect that I might have just had a very lucky run the first time through.

I am an idiot.

After about 6 straight hours of play after starting the game I piece together the opportunity to:

Spoiler:

board the alien ship

As I move through the area, I lose one soldier fairly stupidly.

Spoiler:

Thinking a glowing blue door was the only way forward having missed another set of steps, I send a guy through to meet a threesome standing on the other side of the door. It's a surprisingly fierce battle but sadly a losing one.

Nearing the end, I lose another soldier to

Spoiler:

one of Half Life's headcrab's giant cousins

I think I'm safe before

Spoiler:

that soldier zombifies, and kills the guy standing near her

I push on, sensing I'm near the end.
I see my prize. I rush forward losing another guy but sure that my brave sacrifices will be worth it as I watch the credits scroll by.

Only two soldiers return. One gravely wounded.

And the game did not end. Uh oh.

I'm an idiot but not for buying the game. I'm having a ton of fun.

So I have the objective to abduct an alien, do I have to do that to move things along? Or can I just ignore it?

Kamakazi010654 wrote:

So I have the objective to abduct an alien, do I have to do that to move things along? Or can I just ignore it?

I'm finding that waiting on objectives while I stockpile more satellites and fill out my base seems to be a good move.

Paleocon wrote:

In my first play through, I managed to finish without losing a single country, but I wonder if much of that was just luck in which countries had abduction events and which ones did not. In my second play through, I lost India and England despite having raced to satellites as quickly as I could. I suspect that the placement of abduction events is random and that particular combinations make losing countries simply unavoidable. I tried limiting the countries that exited to ones on m home continent (so as to prevent losing the continent perks), but was unsuccessful.

Certain story events also reduce worldwide panic by 2. I was in danger of losing Germany and Nigeria, with only 3 days left in the month, they were both maxed out. I completed the next story event

Spoiler:

skeleton key mission

and the whole world got reduced panic with 1 day to spare in the month. My next Satellite Nexus was still 10 days from completion and I couldn't have launched satellites to cover them even if I wanted to.

Stele wrote:
Kamakazi010654 wrote:

So I have the objective to abduct an alien, do I have to do that to move things along? Or can I just ignore it?

I'm finding that waiting on objectives while I stockpile more satellites and fill out my base seems to be a good move.

Yes, you need to complete the abduction mission to move things along, and actually it's very important that you start trying to capture aliens so that you can 1. get the research bonuses from interrogating them and 2. retrieve some intact plasma weapons. Some of the later objectives can be "delayed" safely, or triggered when they would be more advantageous. For example, you might want to wait until your best troops are all out of the infirmary.

Got this game when it went on sale on GMG. It is one of the best gaming experiences I've had recently. Just, so great. Reminds me A LOT of Fallout Tactics though, with much better presentation and the great Mike McCann soundtrack. Just finished the first alien capture mission. Lost a few guys, but not many. Really really enjoying it.

Awesome. I thought it was the Dr from LOST doing Dr Shen's voice. So it is. Francois Chau

Just finished up my Classic Ironman game. Victory! I'm kinda glad that's done. I enjoyed the normal non-Ironman mode game better. I think I'll go back and play again, but either stick to classic non-ironman or normal mode.

Definitely not going to do an impossible mode playthrough though, that's just stupid.

Stele wrote:

Awesome. I thought it was the Dr from LOST doing Dr Shen's voice. So it is. Francois Chau

Yes, now if they had found an actress worth more than $1/hr to play the female scientist, I wouldn't need cotton in my ears when playing. Not as bad as TES Oblivion, thankfully, but far from adding to the experience.

After cycling through about 100 troops, I managed to get psionic troopers to fill a full squad. Three are colonels already (sniper, heavy, support), so I have to train up another sniper and two assaults. Thankfully, ghost armor, tier three weapons, chitin plating, and psionic abilities make advancement pretty quick.

In one alien terror mission, I ghosted my assault troopers to the opening of a building in which there were about 8 civilians. This revealed no less than 7 chrysalids in the parking lot outside. I had both of my snipers flying at high altitude with clear lines of sight using squad sight to all 7. I figured that the moment I fired, they were going to run for cover and the clearest place to run was right into the bar where all the civilians were.

My sergeant level sniper took her shot and splattered the bug all over the side of dumpster. This had the predictable effect of making the remaining two from the trio run for the bar. There, my assaults were waiting with alloy cannons and the close assault expert perk. And between the both of them, the two bugs didn't have a chance.

Next, my colonel took a shot and took out another bug. Predictably, the other two again ran for the bar. And again, the assaults blew them to mash.

Using the double tap perk, the colonel took out the final bug in that group.

Meanwhile, my heavy ghosted to a group of floaters, a sectopod, and two drones. And with a meticulously placed fusion rocket, she took out all but the sectopod in one go. My support popped dense smoke on her position and the combination of that, full cover, and the ghost armor pretty much meant that the return fire from the sectopod was inaccurate and uncoordinated. It did, however, pop its back for its indirect attack so I knew it was time to bug out of my position.

I ran the assaults around the other side of the building while pulling back my heavy and support to break contact. As predicted, the position I held moments before erupted in a hail of artillery fire. The sectopod advanced, but did not save action points to attack. At that point, he was in range of my sergeant sniper who took a head shot and reduced the sectopod to three points. At that point, my sergeant assault activated run and gun, closed to knife range, and blew a hole in the giant robot with his alloy cannon. The resultant explosion killed the only civilian of the mission.

Paleocon wrote:

After cycling through about 100 troops, I managed to get psionic troopers to fill a full squad.

I've scanned every soldier in my barracks (only 18) and only came up with 2 psi troopers, in the very first group I scanned. Both Col.

Is there really a chance of Sq. rank soldiers having a successful psi scan? Just wondering if I should level them up a bit first to try to raise their will, or if it even matters? Do some soldiers just "have it" while others don't?

I scanned about 25 squaddies and only had 1 test positive.

However,

Spoiler:

I wiped the floor with the aliens in the final mission with only 3 psi soldiers. Plus I never had the chance to use the chosen one's super power