XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Strategy Game - Developed by Firaxis

One of my screenshots is up to 170ish unique visitors, looks like it's pretty far up the main Game Hub feed for some reason. It hasn't exactly gone viral, but this is probably the closest I'll ever come to having something go viral.

Paleocon wrote:

I suppose if you have the plasma pistol, all three foundry improvements on pistols, and gunslinger, a sniper might be almost as good as a rookie support with a light plasma rifle in close range,

Actually much better than a rookie support because veteran snipers have the highest base accuracy. Pistols do not suffer from close or long range penalties. And they also work with Double Tap, Opportunist, In the Zone etc. I prefer mobile snipers, but I use Gunslinger instead of Snap Shot. Squad Sight is king, but I don't pin my whole strategy around it.

Damn Good Ground sounds good on paper, but it's highly situational. Gunslinger is useful all the time. Shooting from high elevation is not always possible, even with jetpacks. It sharply cuts down your line of sight on most maps, especially UFOs. The accuracy bonus you get doesn't mean much at Colonel level, and the defensive bonus is useless if you already have squad sight.

Tamren wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

I suppose if you have the plasma pistol, all three foundry improvements on pistols, and gunslinger, a sniper might be almost as good as a rookie support with a light plasma rifle in close range,

Actually much better than a rookie support because veteran snipers have the highest base accuracy. Pistols do not suffer from close or long range penalties. And they also work with Double Tap, Opportunist, In the Zone etc. I prefer mobile snipers, but I use Gunslinger instead of Snap Shot. Squad Sight is king, but I don't pin my whole strategy around it.

Damn Good Ground sounds good on paper, but it's highly situational. Gunslinger is useful all the time. Shooting from high elevation is not always possible, even with jetpacks. It sharply cuts down your line of sight on most maps, especially UFOs. The accuracy bonus you get doesn't mean much at Colonel level, and the defensive bonus is useless if you already have squad sight.

I will have to give that angle a try.

The only times I really feel that the jetpacks are a liability are in the battleship, alien base, and temple ship missions. Most other times they are either at worst neutral and more often a tremendous benefit. In the aforementioned missions where they are a liability, I stock ghost armor for precisely that purpose.

One thing I haven't considered is whether or not I am just piling on accuracy effects where such is unnecessary. I find that the vast majority of the shots my airborne snipers make are pegged at 100% accuracy. This is even when the target alien is behind full cover. It makes me wonder if the actual number is 100% or closer to 130% (presumably with 30 points of accuracy "add ons" being wasted). It is like they say, you're walking down the street with Albert Einstein and suddenly he becomes five times more intelligent. Do you notice?

Perhaps my specialization is a little too dedicated.

Paleo, next time you line up one of your 100+% shot, there is a "More Info" button you can click on to the left of the screen. I think it is bound to F1. It will give you the entire breakdown of what is affecting the percent to hit and by how much.

Paleocon wrote:

Does anyone here actually use the gunslinger or in the zone abilities? I have never taken them and don't see them as particularly useful.

I always tend to take squadsight so, if I am doing it right, I won't really need the pistol. And I find that being able to double tap a berserker or sectopod is considerably more useful than being able to swat at a whole mess of thin men. That and, by the time I have colonel level snipers, I usually have other troops that are more than capable of dealing with the kind of low level threats likely to be one-shotted by a plasma sniper rifle.

Gunslinger is stronger early in the game when it's hard to get damage bonuses and before your sniper is Colonel level. After you have plasma sniper rifles the benefit of staying far in the back and sniping far outweighs running and gunning with pistols. And yes, the pistol does get pretty good with all of the foundry upgrades, but it takes a ton of weapon fragments to get there which always seem to be in short supply. And even with the upgrades the plasma sniper rifle is still significantly stronger.

If Double Tap didn't exist then I don't think you'd be upset about having In The Zone. All free/bonus/extra actions are good, but some are better than others. In the Zone is a good ability, but where ITZ is good, Double Tap is great. ITZ rewards the gambler's mentality (Gotta keep the hot streak going!) and it requires one specific circumstance to excel - lots of wounded/weak targets. It's not an ultra-rare scenario, by any means, but it's not exceedingly common either. That's why I think ITZ isn't as good on higher difficulty levels or Ironman mode where it's more important to take out one particular enemy (e.g. the muton who will probably take out your wounded squadmate if you don't land this shot) rather than those few exhilarating moments where your one sniper can cap 3+ wounded units.

On the other hand, Double Tap is a flexible and reliable tool. Although Double tap has lower potential damage there are plenty of situations where you want to shoot the same target twice, which ITZ doesn't allow. Or shoot two different unwounded targets to soften them up for other squadmates (e.g. to help train up the less veteran soldiers).

I'm speculating here, but I think ITZ might be stronger when you only bring 1 sniper along and you can use him to finish off multiple wounded/weak targets. ITZ gets worse if you bring multiple snipers along (they poach each others' targets) whereas multiple snipers with Double Tap is not redundant and does not diminish the effectiveness of Double Tap.

Other quirks with In the Zone (I forced myself to try it out with my 3rd Colonel level sniper to see what it was about):
I could only take 1 pistol shot. I assume this is to make sure that ammo is a meaningful consideration/limit.
I lost some free actions by cycling away from my sniper after he'd killed one target. I'm not exactly sure why this happened. Maybe the target moved away or was killed? Either way I wasn't able to move the sniper or shoot at any other targets - I simply couldn't select that sniper again that turn.

Scaphism wrote:

Gunslinger is stronger early in the game when it's hard to get damage bonuses and before your sniper is Colonel level. After you have plasma sniper rifles the benefit of staying far in the back and sniping far outweighs running and gunning with pistols. And yes, the pistol does get pretty good with all of the foundry upgrades, but it takes a ton of weapon fragments to get there which always seem to be in short supply. And even with the upgrades the plasma sniper rifle is still significantly stronger.

Don't get me wrong, squad sight death star beams raining down from the sky are a wonderful thing. But when you take the sniper out of that surprisingly rare situation they are essentially useless without gunslinger. With gunslinger you have the damage to compete and you can still move and shoot. Sometimes it's more important to have an extra trooper who can flank and shoot a target instead of a sniper in a tree somewhere who may or may not be able to see a target next turn. I guess it comes down to personal preference, I much prefer keeping my soldiers in a pack together and only splitting off the sniper if there is a wide and open firing lane.

I could have been more clear about gunslinger. I like it and I usually take it over Damn Good Ground (+10 to aim and defense against enemies on lower elevation). Especially if you give all your snipers squadsight, then pistols are necessary for move + shoot or move + overwatch. Most snipers get a decent amount of use from gunslinger through the early and mid-game.

That said, in the late game my snipers almost stopped using their pistols. It's so much easier and safer to scout with other units and double tap from safety with your sniper rifles, and the added aim is probably going to be useful more often than added pistol damage. (Again, speaking about the late game.)

If were training up a sniper after skeleton suit, ghost armor, or archagel armor, and I already have plasma sniper rifles researched I would probably grab Damn Good Ground because it's easier to get good elevation and the sniper is less reliant on pistols with a good sniper rifle available. But most of the snipers decide between gunslinger and damn good ground well before those techs become available.

Okay. Now for Heavies.

Does anyone ever take Grenadier over Danger Zone? Seriously. Two grenades is pretty thin sauce when compared to more than doubling the blast area of a rocket. Plus, you get to say "danger zone" in your best Archer voice every time you blow up a bunch of mutons with your blaster launcher.

I'm not a big fan of the increased blast radius. It makes it harder to use rockets closer to friendlies and it makes them destroy more cover objects than they needs to.

I still pick it anyway, because the AoE suppression is fantastic. (and all my heavies use suppression)

Paleocon wrote:

Plus, you get to say "danger zone" in your best Archer voice every time you blow up a bunch of mutons with your blaster launcher.

Because I have to (and also just re-watched this episode last night)

Tamren wrote:

I'm not a big fan of the increased blast radius. It makes it harder to use rockets closer to friendlies and it makes them destroy more cover objects than they needs to.

I still pick it anyway, because the AoE suppression is fantastic. (and all my heavies use suppression)

Yesterday, I ghosted one of my heavies to a forward position on the helicopter crash mission. And in so doing, he revealed two trios of mutons. When he revealed, he was able to place a Danger Zone (Archer voice required) missile perfectly between the two groups and annihilated all six of them before they got a chance to activate.

It is stuff like that that makes this game so freaking entertaining.

.... I may also call out SUPPRESSING or COVERING FIRE on occasion :D, especially when using the LMG.

Paleocon wrote:

Okay. Now for Heavies.

Does anyone ever take Grenadier over Danger Zone? Seriously. Two grenades is pretty thin sauce when compared to more than doubling the blast area of a rocket. Plus, you get to say "danger zone" in your best Archer voice every time you blow up a bunch of mutons with your blaster launcher.

I did on my first game since I decided my heavy should be Mr. Demolition, but I haven't since then. The heavies' utility equipment slot is too valuable to use on grenades IMO. They really benefit from having a SCOPE, Chitin Plating or a Mind Shield. I used to put most of my team in Titan Armor but the extra movement points from Ghost Armor are so great it's hard not to use it, but when I do I like to pair it with Chitin Plating.

Here's my question about heavies: Has anyone ever gotten any use out of Rapid Reaction (extra shot on overwatch if the first hits)? Can it trigger off of Suppressive Fire? In two playthroughs I have had Rapid Reaction trigger exactly once, and the bonus shot missed. So I've decided to stick with HEAT ammo from now on.

Suppression is good but heavies already chew up ammo faster than anyone else thanks to bullet swarm so I generally prefer the Shredder Rocket, and leave suppressive fire to the Support guys.

You prefer Rifle Suppression to Revive? With that -30 aim penalty I've always felt like Revive was better bang. If one of my guys drops I'd rather have him up and firing again if possible. Though I guess in late-game with Ghost armor that might not be so much of an issue.

So I just started playing XCOM again. I put quite a bit of time into it when the game first came out. I had never played an XCOM game before but love turn-based strategy so I was playing on Classic difficulty. It was really challenging, although I was having fun. The problem is I got distracted by other games (well, Guild Wars 2) and left XCOM at the wayside.

Decided to dive back in and I started on Normal. Having much more fun, mostly because the base management part is much easier with more cash and easier threats to deal with. My disappointment is that the tactical combat side is a little too easy. I got so used to the play style required for Classic difficulty that Normal has mostly been a breeze. I wish you could independently set the difficulty level for those two parts!

The good thing is that I'm having a lot of fun an am likely to finish the game since I won't get too stuck and really probably won't be replaying many missions. I think maybe my sweet spot will be Ironman Normal; combat will be pretty simple but it still requires care as you can take losses on Normal if you aren't careful!

Such a great game though.

bighoppa wrote:

You prefer Rifle Suppression to Revive? With that -30 aim penalty I've always felt like Revive was better bang. If one of my guys drops I'd rather have him up and firing again if possible. Though I guess in late-game with Ghost armor that might not be so much of an issue.

I used to take Revive, but I took a Revive bug to the knee.

Seriously, though, the whole Revive bug (in which your whole squad ends up being frozen in position while floaters toss grenades at you for two solid turns after you revive someone using the perk) pretty much made me want to put a plasma bolt through the monitor the first time I encountered it. After the second time, I reloaded to a previous save and took Rifle Suppression instead. Had I been playing on Ironman, I might have made the 30 minute trip to Bethesda to spread dog crap on Tkyl's car. I know. I have anger management issues.

That and I find that rifle suppression actually makes the plasma rifle a lot more useful in the late game where enemies tend to be too tough to take down with one or even two shots from a regular plasma rifle.

Just for craps, once, I hit a muton elite with mind fray and suppression to see what would happen. I also smoked and telekinetic fielded my position and had the nearest soldier (an assault that rushed forward with an arc thrower) behind full cover in ghost armor. He, disappointingly, did not take the shot. I can imagine that his chance to hit was in the negative digits.

Also, just for craps and partially because of a Council request for 3 heavy plasmas, I mind controlled a trio of muton elites and had them play pass the grenade until they were down to three points a piece. After that, I ghosted three soldiers next to them with arc throwers and waited until they came out of control. By then, I had easily enough raw materials to build them to comply with the request, but it just seemed like the dick thing to do, so I did it.

Paleocon wrote:

Seriously, though, the whole Revive bug (in which your whole squad ends up being frozen in position while floaters toss grenades at you for two solid turns after you revive someone using the perk) pretty much made me want to put a plasma bolt through the monitor the first time I encountered it. After the second time, I reloaded to a previous save and took Rifle Suppression instead. Had I been playing on Ironman, I might have made the 30 minute trip to Bethesda to spread dog crap on Tkyl's car. I know. I have anger management issues.

Hey now! I'm not responsible for that piece of code... You'll want to get the car directly to the left of my car.

Tkyl wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

Seriously, though, the whole Revive bug (in which your whole squad ends up being frozen in position while floaters toss grenades at you for two solid turns after you revive someone using the perk) pretty much made me want to put a plasma bolt through the monitor the first time I encountered it. After the second time, I reloaded to a previous save and took Rifle Suppression instead. Had I been playing on Ironman, I might have made the 30 minute trip to Bethesda to spread dog crap on Tkyl's car. I know. I have anger management issues.

Hey now! I'm not responsible for that piece of code... You'll want to get the car directly to the left of my car.

*taking deep breaths* Okay. I know that now.

Seriously though, when do you want to grab a beer and a sandwich over at Roy's Place?

Eesh. Thankfully I haven't hit that bug yet. I have, however, run into an interesting...feature. When running missions on the larger supply and battleships and moving into the cargo bay, every alien in the mission triggers at once. Last night I had a Sectopod (with drones), two outsiders, two Muton Berserker squads, and two batches of heavy floaters all trigger on the same turn. It was a massacre. I'm glad I brought those two fusion launchers or I would have been in big trouble.

Also, any hope of picking up plasma pistols once muton elites are showing up? Maybe from the Alien Base (since I've left it alone trying to get a proper squad kitted out)?

bighoppa wrote:

Eesh. Thankfully I haven't hit that bug yet. I have, however, run into an interesting...feature. When running missions on the larger supply and battleships and moving into the cargo bay, every alien in the mission triggers at once. Last night I had a Sectopod (with drones), two outsiders, two Muton Berserker squads, and two batches of heavy floaters all trigger on the same turn. It was a massacre. I'm glad I brought those two fusion launchers or I would have been in big trouble.

Also, any hope of picking up plasma pistols once muton elites are showing up? Maybe from the Alien Base (since I've left it alone trying to get a proper squad kitted out)?

Yeah. I had that happen a couple times.

More interesting is when you are on the battleship and enter the big room where all hell generally breaks loose, but do it while fully stealthed with ghost armor. Then, you will have trios of aliens simply disappear for no apparent reason and run back into the area from solid walls.

On one alien terror mission, I ghosted my entire squad and ran it straight at the aliens in order to claim ground as quickly as possible only to have a sectopod and its two drones teleport off-board and get destroyed in the process (message confirmed that the sectopod and drones exploded). In several others, I have had trios of heavy floaters or muton elites materialize through walls leaving one or two on one side and the remainder on the other. So, yeah, ghost armor has its own bug(s).

Paleocon wrote:

*taking deep breaths* Okay. I know that now.

Seriously though, when do you want to grab a beer and a sandwich over at Roy's Place?

I'd love to get a drink some time. Though it looks like, from the website, that Roy's Place is closed. Plus, that's over an hour drive for me. Something closed to Baltimore would be much easier for me.

Tkyl wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

*taking deep breaths* Okay. I know that now.

Seriously though, when do you want to grab a beer and a sandwich over at Roy's Place?

I'd love to get a drink some time. Though it looks like, from the website, that Roy's Place is closed. Plus, that's over an hour drive for me. Something closed to Baltimore would be much easier for me.

Ah. I assumed that you were down by the office in Bethesda. If you're up in Baltimore, we can hit Max's.

Paleocon wrote:
Tkyl wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

*taking deep breaths* Okay. I know that now.

Seriously though, when do you want to grab a beer and a sandwich over at Roy's Place?

I'd love to get a drink some time. Though it looks like, from the website, that Roy's Place is closed. Plus, that's over an hour drive for me. Something closed to Baltimore would be much easier for me.

Ah. I assumed that you were down by the office in Bethesda. If you're up in Baltimore, we can hit Max's.

The Firaxis office is actually in Sparks, MD. Just north of Baltimore.

Tkyl wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
Tkyl wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

*taking deep breaths* Okay. I know that now.

Seriously though, when do you want to grab a beer and a sandwich over at Roy's Place?

I'd love to get a drink some time. Though it looks like, from the website, that Roy's Place is closed. Plus, that's over an hour drive for me. Something closed to Baltimore would be much easier for me.

Ah. I assumed that you were down by the office in Bethesda. If you're up in Baltimore, we can hit Max's.

The Firaxis office is actually in Sparks, MD. Just north of Baltimore.

Yeesh, I'm sorry to hear that, there's like nothing out there. Weren't you guys in Hanover at some point? Pretty sure you guys were one business park over from us.

maverickz wrote:

[Yeesh, I'm sorry to hear that, there's like nothing out there. Weren't you guys in Hanover at some point? Pretty sure you guys were one business park over from us.

Ever since I have been here (1.5 years), they've been in sparks. Before that, they were in Hunt Valley (About a mile away from where we are now.) There is actually a fair bit of stuff up here. While the office is right on the edge of "nothingness", south of us a fair amount. And we're only about a 20 minute drive to get into downtown Baltimore, so it's not really that bad. Plus, I like the country a bit more than the city.

maverickz wrote:
Tkyl wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
Tkyl wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

*taking deep breaths* Okay. I know that now.

Seriously though, when do you want to grab a beer and a sandwich over at Roy's Place?

I'd love to get a drink some time. Though it looks like, from the website, that Roy's Place is closed. Plus, that's over an hour drive for me. Something closed to Baltimore would be much easier for me.

Ah. I assumed that you were down by the office in Bethesda. If you're up in Baltimore, we can hit Max's.

The Firaxis office is actually in Sparks, MD. Just north of Baltimore.

Yeesh, I'm sorry to hear that, there's like nothing out there. Weren't you guys in Hanover at some point? Pretty sure you guys were one business park over from us.

Tru dat. Ever since Columbia got its own Wegmann's there is simply no reason to go north on 83 anymore.

Tkyl wrote:
maverickz wrote:

[Yeesh, I'm sorry to hear that, there's like nothing out there. Weren't you guys in Hanover at some point? Pretty sure you guys were one business park over from us.

Ever since I have been here (1.5 years), they've been in sparks. Before that, they were in Hunt Valley (About a mile away from where we are now.) There is actually a fair bit of stuff up here. While the office is right on the edge of "nothingness", south of us a fair amount. And we're only about a 20 minute drive to get into downtown Baltimore, so it's not really that bad. Plus, I like the country a bit more than the city.

Yeah, I mean, I wasn't entirely serious. It's certainly no White Marsh or Westminster.

maverickz wrote:

Yeah, I mean, I wasn't entirely serious. It's certainly no White Marsh or Westminster.

Yeah, I know. I didn't take offense.

bighoppa wrote:

Also, any hope of picking up plasma pistols once muton elites are showing up? Maybe from the Alien Base (since I've left it alone trying to get a proper squad kitted out)?

Forgot about this.

Yes. If you capture the sectoid commander in the alien base (or any of the sectoid commanders following that mission), you get a bright, shiny plasma pistol.

bighoppa wrote:

You prefer Rifle Suppression to Revive? With that -30 aim penalty I've always felt like Revive was better bang.

I don't like revive. Without revive, if someone falls during a fight you can just stabilize them at any time and be done with it. WITH revive you are forced to end the encounter before you bring back this soldier with basically no health who probably isn't in cover anymore.