XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Strategy Game - Developed by Firaxis

Baron Of Hell wrote:

My game is going poorly. Two total wipes on easy. I'm down to rookies, puppies and strong language. Oh look terror sites all over the place and I only have two rookies. This is why the aliens won.

Right there with you. Up until my current playthrough, I severely underestimated the absolute importance of fielding satellites asap. If you don't do this, you are boned.

Starting to claw my way back up. Somehow I missed that you could move ships to different countries. I also didn't know I could order more ships. Well I knew you could do these things I just didn't know I could do them now. Now I have ship everywhere I have a satellite. I don't have full coverage yet but I'm working on it.

The last few missions went really well. I have two mechs that are making a big difference. I also started gene enhancement. If a man or woman is mostly machine and alien dna are they still human? Do they still have a soul? I guess those questions will be answered after the war is done.

Hah. I love honest game trailers. That's a good one.

Man, some days, the game is just out to murder you. I've seen a bunch of instances of an alien one shot crit killing my guys on cross-map shots that my guy only had a sub-20% chance on. Also can't manage to work out lines of sight, particularly inside UFOs. It makes positioning guys a huge pain if I can't tell where they can see what, so it comes down to guesswork sometimes.

I also have no clue if I'm on track or in a death spiral. I'm succeeding at missions, but I'm frequently losing one or more soldiers in a lot of missions. I've got everyone kitted out in either carapace or skeleton armor, lasers or plasma weapons (some light plasma rifles, plasma sniper, and laser everything else), but I'm still pretty sure I'm lagging behind the aliens. I try and capture when I can, but haven't managed to in forever, so I'm missing out on free weapons. I'm either 3 or 4 months in, and I've lost three countries so far.

Part of me's hoping I just start getting my butt kicked so I can scrap the campaign, but I want to see the fail so I can learn what I can, so I guess I keep going.

I'd agree with the "press on" strategy - you'll learn a lot in the failure (if it even results in that).

*edit nothing to see here wrong thread, thought this had a 2 on it *

It's feast or famine up in here. I'm now into August, and I've got one psi dude, access to archangel and titan armor, and all the plasma nonsense. I'll do great in a few missions, then run across one with a huge cargo UFO crash that throws no less than four berzerkers, a bunch of mutons, sectoid commanders, and heavy floaters at me, and I wind up wiping. At least I only brought five soldiers and a SHIV with me, but one of the soldiers was my favorite sniper. He had something like 47 kills over 19 missions, but a berzerker snuck up on him and one-shotted him.

At this point, I had to hire in a bunch of squaddies to fill out ranks, and things are getting mighty thin with the experienced troops. And I still hate the inventory management. I sent a sniper to psi training, only to find out that he seems to have taken my one plasma sniper rifle with him. Is it too much to ask to remove all the equipment when a soldier isn't in the active roster? Does Xcom 2 clean that up at all?

Yeah, XCOM2 is much better at that. You don't have to build the main weapons individually (you build plasma rifle one and everyone get them) and they added buttons to quickly unequip any special armor or items on any soldiers not in your current squad. The only things you have to worry about are weapon attachments and Personal Combat Sims which are locked to the soldier that equips them.

Well, that's good news. I think I'll probably finish this campaign, run through at least one Enemy Within campaign, then maybe start looking for an XCOM 2 sale. Maybe.

I just picked this up at the Steam holiday sale.

Is there a good FAQ for tips? I expect to lose often but I would like to not make silly mistakes.

farley3k wrote:

I just picked this up at the Steam holiday sale.

Is there a good FAQ for tips? I expect to lose often but I would like to not make silly mistakes.

Engineers > Scientists.

In timed missions, you want to be aggressive.

Don't sell corpses since you need them later for upgrades.

If animations and stuff take too long for you, you can enable "zip mode" in options to speed the game up.

If you want to play vanilla without mods, at least get Cap N' Bubs accessories pack (although Steam is down as I'm posting this).

If I recall correctly, anti-aliasing, depth of field, AO and shadows are the big performance hogs.

But like most games in this series, expect to fail and learn from failures.

farley3k wrote:

I just picked this up at the Steam holiday sale.

Is there a good FAQ for tips? I expect to lose often but I would like to not make silly mistakes.

Save often. Take your time. Upgrade your armor. Overwatch is your friend.

Accept that horrible death awaits.

BNice wrote:

If you want to play vanilla without mods, at least get Cap N' Bubs accessories pack (although Steam is down as I'm posting this).

I hadn't even thought about mods. Are there more that make the game better?

I am not the type to play the game several times so I would prefer to play the "best" version of the game I can.

farley3k wrote:

I just picked this up at the Steam holiday sale.

Is there a good FAQ for tips? I expect to lose often but I would like to not make silly mistakes.

Oh yeah. Is this for one or two?

If you were asking about two, you need to ignore my cautious approach. Aggressive decision making is the only way you survive.

Name your soldiers after fellow Goodjers. That way it's more amusing when they get killed.

It has been FOREVER since I've played vanilla XCOM, but have a stupid number of hours in the game overall. I still wouldn't call myself much more than average.

Partial cover is garbage, but better than none at all (unless that soldier has the "1/2 cover counts as full perk").

Overwatch is your friend, but will miss more often than regular shots (without the Opportunist perk)

Go for better guns before armour. - dead aliens can't hurt you.

Chryssalids are still terrifying.

Plan your base-layout - adjacency bonuses mean A LOT. A 3x2 block for satellite control (4 normal, 2 nexus). Power-blocks.

Good luck! Just remember, if you lose... it's canon!

Reaper81 wrote:
farley3k wrote:

I just picked this up at the Steam holiday sale.

Is there a good FAQ for tips? I expect to lose often but I would like to not make silly mistakes.

Oh yeah. Is this for one or two?

If you were asking about two, you need to ignore my cautious approach. Aggressive decision making is the only way you survive.

#1 I heard Xcom 2 was even tougher and I am pretty bad so I don't see a reason to go for a harder game (plus it was $8 and #2 is around $30)

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

Go for better guns before armour. - dead aliens can't hurt you.

This directly contradicts every list of tips I have watched on Youtube. They all point out that you need seasoned soldiers instead of rookies so it is more important to keep them alive so armour should be first.

farley3k wrote:
Reaper81 wrote:
farley3k wrote:

I just picked this up at the Steam holiday sale.

Is there a good FAQ for tips? I expect to lose often but I would like to not make silly mistakes.

Oh yeah. Is this for one or two?

If you were asking about two, you need to ignore my cautious approach. Aggressive decision making is the only way you survive.

#1 I heard Xcom 2 was even tougher and I am pretty bad so I don't see a reason to go for a harder game (plus it was $8 and #2 is around $30)

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

Go for better guns before armour. - dead aliens can't hurt you.

This directly contradicts every list of tips I have watched on Youtube. They all point out that you need seasoned soldiers instead of rookies so it is more important to keep them alive so armour should be first.

You definitely want armor.

As for the macro game, don't neglect your sattelite defenses or your fighters.

It could be my time in Long War talking... I'm starting to remember the vanilla aliens having tiny hp pools, comparatively - so perhaps armour is more valuable, in vanilla.

Oh man... Thin-men with only 3 hp! Hahaha.

Oh wow, just realized this was the wrong thread. Thought this was for 2. Ignore my tips

Having played the original back in the days when I was a student (and the alien movement took ages on a 486 DX100, If I remember correctly), I picked this up in the sale now and having an absolute blast with it!

My goodjers, I love this game and on an easy level I might be able to pull through it.

Question: do I need to capture more aliens alive, or will a sectoid just do?

It’s been awhile, but I always tried to capture at least one of every type. I think they give you different bonuses when interrogated. Not sure about capturing multiple of the same type.

Each interrogation gives you a specific research buff. It cuts the research time in half, so it's quite significant. I think the Muton one gives you bonus on plasma weapons research and the one for Floater gives you a bonus to Carapace Armor. It pays dividends to try to capture the first one you see of these aliens.

The council will sometimes ask for live aliens - for big bucks - I used to try to keep a few around, for that. I seem to remember something about weapons and grenades, too....

IIRC you get to keep the alien's weapons if you stun them. Otherwise they explode when they die.

EriktheRed wrote:

IIRC you get to keep the alien's weapons if you stun them. Otherwise they explode when they die.

Usually my punters explode and die when they try to stun the Aliens

Man, the rng was so rough on these. I always tried to have another trooper lined up with a "sure kill" in case I missed with the stun. Immediately getting lectured by Dr Vahlen afterwards was always a bitter pill. Hey, dude. I tried.

Chem-grenades at 1 hp

Otherwise, the Assault with a shotgun is positioned there to save that Engineer's ass.

My favorite way to get alien weapons in the late game was to exploit the captured status bug. If you take over an alien with mind control and he gets himself killed by his erstwhile buddies, you get to keep his gear no matter how gorily he died.

I once sent a mind controlled floater at a cyberdisc and one of those giant walking robot things and the results were predictable. And I still picked up his plasma gun afterwards.