XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Strategy Game - Developed by Firaxis

No, it´s one of the new DLC missions added. You go to a fishing village in Canada that went silent. Once there, you realize it´s been infested and overrun by Chrysalids, because they infested a Whale. They have a hive there. Only way to kill the threat is via airstrike. It´s not a recurring type of mission like say, escorts or bomb disposals. This one is a one of a kind, and pretty cool.

Generally though, the mission won´t net higher than 12-15 kills, but I stayed longer. I camped next to the whale before activating the ship´s transponder. Thought they would continually spawn, but no, after a while they stop spawning until you hit the transponder, then, depending on difficulty level, you have something like 7-8 turns to escape the site.

Chrysalids continue to burst out as you hike your way back. I brought everyone back except an assault who kept on killing, and only brought her back with 3 turns left. Made it back to EVAC on the last turn. Total kills was 35. I was on Normal. I wanna try doing that again on Classic, see if I can up my record.

DLC Enemy within is $10 on amazon.

So I've been playing this finally, and over the last few days I made it to a near dead end on research prior to doing the (first?) alien base assualt. Once the month changes over, I charged in, and emerged victorious. Oddly, annoyingly, amazingly, improbably, when I revealed the final enemy, I had a sniper with his plasma pistol drawn on overwatch at just the right spot so that he took 4, yes four, shots and killed him without me even having a chance to do anything else. But what bothered me the most was what came next. Globally, panic levels were reduced. Did I mention the month had just started? I had just lost 2 nations during the monthly review.

You know what I did? I looked back at my old saves and saw I would lose about 10 in-game days worth of progress, which was like 2 nights of work for me, given it was a rescue mission, landed ufo, and the base. I bit. I"m now going to dive into the alien base prior to then end of the month to attempt to rescue those 2 nations from withdrawing.

Please tell me I'm not wasting my time.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

Please tell me I'm not wasting my time.

Saving the Alien Base for just prior to the end of the month so you can save some extra countries from withdrawing is a viable strategy.

Krillerill wrote:
mrtomaytohead wrote:

Please tell me I'm not wasting my time.

Saving the Alien Base for just prior to the end of the month so you can save some extra countries from withdrawing is a viable strategy.

Well, my real question was if going back on a few hours of gameplay was worth it. I can't see why not, but was just checking in.

I would definitely say you are not wasting your time. Preventing nations from withdrawing should always be priority number 1. That´s why you want to prioritize your missions, money, etc, for satellites and engineers.

Question, you playing vanilla or Enemy Within DLC?

kexx wrote:

I would definitely say you are not wasting your time. Preventing nations from withdrawing should always be priority number 1. That´s why you want to prioritize your missions, money, etc, for satellites and engineers.

Question, you playing vanilla or Enemy Within DLC?

Vanilla. I might try Enemy Within maybe some point way later when I have money to spend on games again and time to restart.

Interesting to know. Well I might just gift that sh*t to you at some point. How about that, smarty pants?

By Grabthar's hammer...what a savings.

kexx wrote:

Interesting to know. Well I might just gift that sh*t to you at some point. How about that, smarty pants?

That'd be awesome, but time still might be an issue, with a newborn who doesn't like to sleep on his back and a 2.5yr old at home.

Send them with a relative for a month, beat game, get children back, raise. Pretty simple plan if you ask me.

kexx wrote:

Send them with a relative for a month, beat game, get children back, raise. Pretty simple plan if you ask me.

Based on my time with my first playthrough of the original game, a month would not be long enough. I obsessed over that game, and was terrible(ly clueless) at it.

bighoppa wrote:

By Grabthar's hammer...what a savings.

Can i just say that I love you right now?

Lysias wrote:
kexx wrote:

fuggedaboudit.

What is that? Is it, like, if you agree with someone? Or if you disagree? Or if something is, like, the greatest thing in the world? Or like saying "Go to Hell"? Or is it just forget about it?

o/

In the days following the incursion on the alien base, we have managed to produce a number of new, higher powered weapons, including the alloy canon. The deployment in the hands of 2 of our veteran soldiers simultaneously has resulted in no less than 2 injury free missions since, despite the rookies and other less experienced officers best efforts to not contribute during said missions with shots aimed at buildings in the distance behind the real threats. We will be investigating the new supposed anti-constructionist movement in the coming weeks. We are just glad the localities do not penalize us for such wanton destruction of property. Something feels like in some alternate, apocalyptic universe, this would not be the case.
/end transmission

Not sure when I'll get back to this, since I'm picking up Mario Kart 8 today...

Obviously there are two logical explanations. One, you soldiers had reason to believe aliens were hiding within said buildings of interest. Or Two, your soldiers are frustrated and have no good outlets so they are venting when they finally get outside; you might consider building the Gardens module in the near future. But when they are on the battlefield there are no witnesses, so they can just claim the aliens destroyed it.

Armor and weapon upgrades are so huge every time you can get them. The fact that they survive after soldier death makes them one of the best investments.

How often should I be capturing aliens? I find it tough to get aliens below 3 health and then close gaps and stun without usually first taking some sacrificial damage. As such, I have just enough plasma weapons for the squad going on missions, forcing me to do loadout clearing decent gear to give to fresh soldiers.

You never need more weapons than one squad can use unless you get a country request to sell some. Capturing is a tradeoff and I often have my sacrificial rookie carry the zapper. Some interrogations are essential to advance the plot, most of the rest are just highly beneficial as they can cut the research of a whole range of topics (weapons or armor or interceptor upgrades) in half. But I definitely balance it. If I have to take a B team of soldiers on a difficult mission then the zapper gets left at home.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

How often should I be capturing aliens? I find it tough to get aliens below 3 health and then close gaps and stun without usually first taking some sacrificial damage. As such, I have just enough plasma weapons for the squad going on missions, forcing me to do loadout clearing decent gear to give to fresh soldiers.

Grenades help a lot when trying to stun stuff. The damage is fixed so you will never accidentally knock them below 1 hp, they are less useful on normal and easy because the grenade will instagib most weaker enemies, on classic just about everything has at least 4 health. Basic pistols can also chip away at health but may crit unexpectedly. Other than that suppression is key, unless you are confident that you can tank a hit (MECs are great for this) or you have a plan B if the stunner doesn't work. If you don't have suppression then overwatch or the MEC flamethrower can work too, aliens threatened with overwatch they can see will generally not move and aliens panicked by fire don't do anything on their turn.

As to WHEN to capture? Here are some tips:

- Once you get arc throwers bring one on every single mission. Try to use it to snipe the last remaining alien of each "encounter", supports with the running feat work best for this because they can approach from further away. Skeleton armour helps a lot too.
- Interrogations can greatly reduce your research time so it's important to snag some aliens as soon as possible. Ideally the first time you meet a new type you should be bringing home a live one.
- Live aliens drop weapons and plasma weapons are extremely valuable. Try to collect a full set of 6 plasma pistols and light plasmas as soon as possible, they make their laser counterparts obsolete but the cost of producing them yourself is very high. Sectoids are not that threatening, and easy to surround and stun. And outsiders are great capture targets because they are almost always alone.
- Even after you have a full "set" of plasma weapons for your active squad, snagging a few extras can't hurt. I try to have at least 6, of everything. Sometimes council nations will request plasma weapons from you and these are some of the most lucrative. But the credits are only worth getting if you can pawn off surplus weapons. Never produce plasma weapons for these requests, the elerium used isn't worth it.

The game is now available for Linux and SteamOS. Just the thing to get me playing again.

Are there any rumors on if there will be another expansion?

mwdowns wrote:

Are there any rumors on if there will be another expansion?

I wish there were. I wish there were...

How often should I be capturing aliens?

Well, you want to capture at least one of every type. I don't think you get any particular benefit for stunning more than one.

What I ended up doing was putting my stunner in the hands of, um, damn, I forgot the class name, maybe Support? One of the classes has a trainable ability that lets them run faster than everyone else, and I found that to be very useful, tinking away at an enemy until it was weak enough, and then running in with my quick guy to knock him down.

Malor wrote:
How often should I be capturing aliens?

Well, you want to capture at least one of every type. I don't think you get any particular benefit for stunning more than one.

The only advantage to stunning more than one is that you can take their weapons intact. This means you can acquire Plasma Pistols, Light Plasma Rifles, Plasma Rifles, and Heavy Plasma weapons from enemies and save some money towards the end of your weapons research.

Hmm, I shouldn't have read this thread. Now I want to start another play-through.

Hi all, this might not be the correct thread for it but I have questions about the android version of the game:

1) Has anyone tried it on a rooted 2012 Nexus 7, if so what is it like frame rate and battery wise?

2) Is there any news of upcoming patches to the android version? It came on the play store on 23/04 and is still at v1.0.0

If this is in the wrong thread can some one point me in the right direction?

Well, if you don't get any answers here, you could try asking in the Android Games thread.

I haven't seen the Android version mentioned here at all, so I dunno if anyone reading this thread has expertise with it.

I bought the Android version a couple weeks ago but haven't had the chance to check it out yet. I'll give it a go today on my Samsung Galaxy S3 and let you know how it feels performance-wise. My hopes aren't high, the only other PC to Android conversion I've played is The Cave and I wasn't particularly impressed with how that played. Even so, I couldn't pass up X-COM mobile play.

Impressions soon.

Thanks Mr_n00b I'll look forward to hearing how you get on. I'm interested to find out how it runs on a tegra3 device, not sure what powers the S3. If it runs well on tegra3 then I can root my Nexus 7 and purchase it for that. Loved the game on PC and PS3, particually with the Enemy Within additions.

@Malor - good shout, I might try on the Android thread too.

BlackSabre wrote:

Hmm, I shouldn't have read this thread. Now I want to start another play-through.

<----- This guy just fell victim to exactly that. I'm already a month into my fourth run into the game (not counting early endings/false starts, of course).