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XCOM: Enemy Unknown |OT| Neo GAF is Under Alien Control

Nocebo

Member
In my experience so far, Overwatch is easily the most important ability (at least, the most important ability that everybody shares). If you position your guys well with Overwatch you can wreck havoc with free reaction shots.

It's particularly useful in escort because it allows you to essentially get two free hits with one soldier on enemies that suddenly appear. Say two Thin Men drop down around the Skyranger as you near it - with one soldier, you'll get a free reaction shot on one Thin Man and probably kill him right there. And then your turn will come up and you've got a shot on the other.
Yeah, I almost never dash. I only move and go into overwatch or hunkerdown depending on the situation of course.
 
So at what point is continuing a lost cause? I'm really considering starting over after losing all but one of my promoted units and having some issues with base management as well (including 3 countries dropping out and 3 more right on the verge).

I've definitely learned a lot from this run but I just don't know if it's worth continuing or not.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
is it ok to ignore missions? I had one come up (after a news report, aliens doing something different) which is marked 'very difficult'. So far I've been avoiding the really tricky ones when I have a choice of three. But is this something I have to do? Might leave Garcia behind, he's too precious to get fucked up.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
In my experience so far, Overwatch is easily the most important ability (at least, the most important ability that everybody shares). If you position your guys well with Overwatch you can wreck havoc with free reaction shots.

It's particularly useful in escort because it allows you to essentially get two free hits with one soldier on enemies that suddenly appear. Say two Thin Men drop down around the Skyranger as you near it - with one soldier, you'll get a free reaction shot on one Thin Man and probably kill him right there. And then your turn will come up and you've got a shot on the other.

Even better if that soldier happens to be a sniper on Overwatch that you've kept near the start of the level, since he'll be around Skyranger point. Reaction shots with a sniper rifle can be quite deadly.

Snipers are uber. Place them in a good defensive spot, give them abilities like Squad Sight, and they can completely dominate. Since they tend to be away from the thick of things and wrack up tons of kills, they're also relatively easy to keep alive and rank up.

do snipers have a limited range? couldn't get my head around squad sight - surely if your sniper can't see it, he can't shoot it - doesn't matter if someone else sees it, there will be a wall/hill/door in the way.

Can you drop the pistol and use the slot for somethign more useful? I'd like to have eg grenade and medkit, or scope and medkit.
 

Onemic

Member
Dashing in this game is terrible. It seems like a complete liability to use it as you cant run to cover if you end up right beside an enemy and you cant use overwatch or hunker down after. I can only see it being used effectively if you're against the clock or something
 

Mupod

Member
Funniest moment so far was when my entire squad got wounded and I had to send 5 rookies to take on a landed UFO. All they had between them was an arc thrower, one medkit and a laser rifle.

They actually started off doing a great job, captured my first alien (a floater no less) and had the aliens down to two sectoids before they got a lucky shot off and instakilled the awesome rookie who captured said floater. And then EVERYBODY PANICKED AT ONCE. Made it through though. The laser toting guy is now my new lead Heavy.

Most intense was intercepting a medium UFO with a stock interceptor...I had my finger hovering on the 'abort' button and I was about to hit it, my craft was almost fully red damaged. Right as I pressed the button, UFO downed. It was a tough mission but I got TONS of intact computers/power sources, captured an Outsider and got 99 freaking alloys which allowed me to (almost) deck everybody out in laser weapons and carapace armor. I really need more workshops, I underestimated how important they are despite being TOLD THIS.

So do you guys ever feel like certain members of your team are personally responsible for the deaths of others? You know, like when someone misses a key 75% chance shot only for that enemy to finish off one of your other squad members on the next turn? I make sure those idiots know that this is all their fault, and certainly not that of the commander.

My sniper almost got my best support killed because he missed and blew up the tree he was hiding behind. I was yelling at my monitor, there.
 

Orgun

Member
Anyone getting blue screen of death crashes on their PC, whilst in the home base area? Its probably just my dodgy PC, but not sure.

I've not had that one no.

The only bug I've come across is when it gets stuck on Alien Movement and the only option is to Ctrl alt del my way out
 
When the game tells you the difficulty of a mission is that difficulty absolute or is it relative to where you are in the game? So, for example, if you see a "very difficult" mission at the beginning of the game does that mean it is only very difficult now for where you are or that it will always be very difficult?
 

MasLegio

Banned
Dashing in this game is terrible. It seems like a complete liability to use it as you cant run to cover if you end up right beside an enemy and you cant use overwatch or hunker down after. I can only see it being used effectively if you're against the clock or something

youre doing it wrong

use dash to run for better cover only

maybe use for scouting if you can dash to a full cover
 

ElFly

Member
do snipers have a limited range? couldn't get my head around squad sight - surely if your sniper can't see it, he can't shoot it - doesn't matter if someone else sees it, there will be a wall/hill/door in the way.

I am not sure about that. Using that skill that lets the sniper shoot at anything his teammates see, my main sniper has been headshoting aliens from across the map, through cars/plants/statues/bus stops. Giving him the scope means he does so with 74% of accuracy too.

I think the game doesn't let you fire through buildings, but seems to me that anything else is fair game.
 

marjo

Member
This game is fucking troll face.

Hey, so you got a sniper bearing down on a runner with 98% chance to hit? GUESS WHAT! YOU MISSED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The math in this game is fuckin' awful.

Nothing wrong with the math. For every 50 shots you take at 98%, you will, on average, miss one of them. The other 49 just aren't nearly as memorable.
 

F!ReW!Re

Member
Dashing in this game is terrible. It seems like a complete liability to use it as you cant run to cover if you end up right beside an enemy and you cant use overwatch or hunker down after. I can only see it being used effectively if you're against the clock or something

It's not terrible, you're not doing it right ;-)
Never dash straight away (unless using the Assault class as described below), always try to move until the blue border so that after you get there you can decide what to do: Either overwatch, dash, reload or something...
I mainly use it to dash for full cover (behind a wall, three, etc) or do a retreat after my initial move triggered aliens entering the view.

Also having your assault dash and unload their shotgun in an Aliens' face is the best thing ever!
 

Effect

Member
Does anyone know what the game's length is? At least a playthrough on normal? Or is it close to a game like Civ where it really depends on what victory conditions you aim for? Don't really know how the game is actually setup other then seeing how battles are conducted.
 

sonicmj1

Member
I'm into May on my Normal Ironman run, and while my squad is mopping up pretty nicely, I definitely feel like I made a huge mistake in my base management. Thinking that research would be awesome, I invested heavily into quickly building 3 Laboratories. While it is awesome getting important research done in less than a week, the maintenance costs hurt badly, I can't afford to buy all the cool shit I research, and I'm still limping by on the two satellites I started with. Getting more satellites up is my highest priority before I try assaulting the alien base, but with the time it takes to build a satellite hub, build the satellites, launch them, and then defend them, I'm worried I'm going to lose some nations pretty soon.

Tip for success: satellites are your main source of income. Prioritize them!

This is on Normal, so I'm sure I can keep this run going if I keep my soldiers alive, but all this scrambling bothers me a lot. I usually like to try to smooth things out so they're the best possible. I guess that's the whole reason I did the Ironman run in the first place, so I wouldn't fall back on that behavior.

do snipers have a limited range? couldn't get my head around squad sight - surely if your sniper can't see it, he can't shoot it - doesn't matter if someone else sees it, there will be a wall/hill/door in the way.

Can you drop the pistol and use the slot for somethign more useful? I'd like to have eg grenade and medkit, or scope and medkit.

Snipers can have their firing lines blocked even with squad sight (making that ability pretty useless on close-quarters maps), but if you get them to high ground, you'd be surprised by the amount of supposed cover they can shoot around. I've had some great moments with my sniper perching somewhere and pulling off killshot after killshot from across the map.

I just bought him some Skeleton Armor, so I can't wait to see how awesome he becomes.
 

MThanded

I Was There! Official L Receiver 2/12/2016
This game is fucking troll face.

Hey, so you got a sniper bearing down on a runner with 98% chance to hit? GUESS WHAT! YOU MISSED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The math in this game is fuckin' awful.
Subtitile: Probabilities how do they work?

There is a 2 percent chance of missing. Nothing wrong with the math.
 

Protein

Banned
Scientist Lady, do you know how many times I've gotten my ass killed out here, had to restart my game, and you want me to preserve some science?
 
This game is fucking troll face.

Hey, so you got a sniper bearing down on a runner with 98% chance to hit? GUESS WHAT! YOU MISSED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The math in this game is fuckin' awful.

Feels like Assassin's Creed's assassin missions at time where even with 80+ percentage I fail most of the time.
 

ElFly

Member
Nothing wrong with the math. For every 50 shots you take at 98%, you will, on average, miss one of them. The other 49 just aren't nearly as memorable.

Sometimes devs fudge a little with to-hit chances so people perceive the games as more fair. Xcom and Fire Emblem are prolly the most notable franchises that just let probabilities do their work.

Perhaps the funniest anecdote he shared about how much psychology affects gameplay was his discussion of combat odds in Civilization Revolution. When a player faces an opponent, and has 3:1 odds, Meier noted. That means the player should lose one out of four times. But if players lost at 3:1, they were mystified: “I have 3:1 odds! I shouldn’t lose!”
 

Onemic

Member
It's not terrible, you're not doing it right ;-)
Never dash straight away (unless using the Assault class as described below), always try to move until the blue border so that after you get there you can decide what to do: Either overwatch, dash, reload or something...
I mainly use it to dash for full cover (behind a wall, three, etc) or do a retreat after my initial move triggered aliens entering the view.

Also having your assault dash and unload their shotgun in an Aliens' face is the best thing ever!

Ya, I've started doing that now, before I was just dashing on the first go.

So assault has the ability that lets them dash and use an ability? So arc thrower is actually usable then with them and not just an item that sends a guy to their deaths? My last soldier got killed trying to do that stupid tutorial objective
 
Ya, I've started doing that now, before I was just dashing on the first go.

So assault has the ability that lets them dash and use an ability? So arc thrower is actually usable then with them and not just an item that sends a guy to their deaths? My last soldier got killed trying to do that stupid tutorial objective

Unless I just messed up, you can't run&gun + arc thrower. I tried, failed, and lost a soldier to that strategy.
 

sonicmj1

Member
Ya, I've started doing that now, before I was just dashing on the first go.

So assault has the ability that lets them dash and use an ability? So arc thrower is actually usable then with them and not just an item that sends a guy to their deaths? My last soldier got killed trying to do that stupid tutorial objective

It only lets them dash and fire/overwatch. They can't use items.

I've been able to make things work with the arc thrower a number of times, but I'm playing on normal, so it's easy to lock enemies down with overwatch or suppression until I can get on top of them.
 
VIP Escort - Mission begins with my team already on the ground with the VIP, all I have to do is escort him through this alleyway between a laundromat and a convenience store, just yards from the sky ranger.

Turn 1, I back up the VIP into full cover at the rear corner of the alleyway - within 4 tiles of his starting point and instruct him to put his head down. I position the rest of my squad in full cover behind some dumpsters and a small delivery truck.

alien turn 1 - Three thin men drop from the sky and land on top of the building adjacent to the VIP's cover. He's flanked. The thin man fires and kills the VIP - MISSION FAILED.

3 out of the 4 squaddies made it back to the skyranger. Richter took some plasma to the face, but luckily, we salvaged his grenade.
 

F!ReW!Re

Member
Ya, I've started doing that now, before I was just dashing on the first go.

So assault has the ability that lets them dash and use an ability? So arc thrower is actually usable then with them and not just an item that sends a guy to their deaths? My last soldier got killed trying to do that stupid tutorial objective

No his ability is to shoot his weapon AFTER dashing, so you can run up next to an alien and get a 100% shot in his face..

He can't however use any abilities after dashing.. (btw, this doesn't work automatically every time when dashing, it's a selectable skill: "Run & Gun" which allows an Assault class to Dash and then fire)
 

Protein

Banned
Man, eventually the game goes out of it's way to fuck you.

I thought I was the only one
qHxkt.gif


I've already missed like 4 x 90%-98% chance hits.

But at least it's more fair than Diablo III Insane.
 

Nocebo

Member
Ya, I've started doing that now, before I was just dashing on the first go.

So assault has the ability that lets them dash and use an ability? So arc thrower is actually usable then with them and not just an item that sends a guy to their deaths? My last soldier got killed trying to do that stupid tutorial objective
Description on run and gun clearly says you can't use items with it so no. At least I thought it did... :eek:
 

Mupod

Member
I took the sniper's disabling shot with the intention of using it to capture enemies, then I remembered that snipers suck balls indoors so I ended up having to do some ass backwards stuff in order to get that Outsider. Suppression helps because generally the enemy won't move when they are pinned down by it, so he won't walk up and blast your assault in the face when she's trying to sneak up on him.
 

garath

Member
I thought I was the only one
qHxkt.gif


I've already missed like 4 x 90%-98% chance hits.

But at least it's more fair than Diablo III Insane.

It happens. Also works in your favor. I've hit a number of 40-50% shots that made the difference in my missions.

So GAF, base strategies? I've opted to go Normal my first playthrough so silly things like building 4 Nano vests with the rest of my money thinking they are new body armor doesn't completely kill me like it probably would on Classic. But I am going Ironman so decisions matter. I'm trying to work out a solid plan for the base and struggling a little. I already feel like I'm off to a slow start.

My thoughts are get a second uplink up right away, but of course I need power for that, so I excavate to the nearest steam power. During that time the game wants an alien containment unit so I'm building that. Now I'm excavated and building the thermal power so I don't have to worry about it in the future but I'm out of money. Research is going slow because I keep taking missions with engineers. I haven't even gotten plasma weapons yet and I'm halfway through the second month. I already have 2 countries on panic watch. I have a feeling I'd be hosed in Classic. Missions are going well (haven't lost anyone yet) but I think I'm going to fall behind in tech very quickly. These 2 damage shots really suck.
 

red731

Member
Scientist Lady, do you know how many times I've gotten my ass killed out here, had to restart my game, and you want me to preserve some science?

KuGsj.gif

So true. I am not thinking about granades anymore and there were situations where I really needed one.

For science!
 

Protein

Banned
This is my reaction when a rookie does something absurd like panics and blows up a car that kills 2 of my elite guys in the explosion.

mMWl0.gif
 

Zeliard

Member
do snipers have a limited range? couldn't get my head around squad sight - surely if your sniper can't see it, he can't shoot it - doesn't matter if someone else sees it, there will be a wall/hill/door in the way.

You still need line of sight, so getting to higher elevation is very helpful (especially when you add an ability like Damn Good Ground). Squad sight is hugely beneficial mainly because snipers normally have a fairly limited cone of vision, and squad sight extends it enormously, allowing the sniper to shoot at whatever is in range of his squadmates so long as he has line of sight to the target. It also works with Overwatch. Fewer things are more badass than your sniper hitting an across-the-map reaction shot.

Basically squad sight turns them into a true sniper, able to pick things off at huge ranges. This means you can park them far away from any danger and let them do work.
 
No his ability is to shoot his weapon AFTER dashing, so you can run up next to an alien and get a 100% shot in his face..

He can't however use any abilities after dashing.. (btw, this doesn't work automatically every time when dashing, it's a selectable skill: "Run & Gun" which allows an Assault class to Dash and then fire)

Not true. My Rapid Fire assault totally uses Run & Gun + Rapid Fire.
 
I think my favorite moment in the game so far has been getting two really terrible missions right before the first terror event. I went into it with three unequipped rookies. It quickly devolved into them fighting against several zombies, two cryssalids and four floaters. I think I took out one floater before I had my two remaining rookies run for the landing zone.

Cryssalids are faster than rookies.
 

Wanny

Member
I don't suggest any first timers to the series to play on Ironman mode. You will be frustrated pretty much for nothing. Learn the game first.
 

Funky Papa

FUNK-Y-PPA-4
X Command should forget about investing in new weapons tech and airdrop some CARS on top of the aliens. Surely there is no convention against the use of WMDs against martians.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
another question (mainly because the game doesn't really answer them)

when in oversight mode, do you have 360 degree vision? There is nothing that lets you set your direction after making a move, but perhaps it uses the direction you were running/direction of cover to affect things?
 
I don't suggest any first timers to the series to play on Ironman mode. You will be frustrated pretty much for nothing. Learn the game first.
I did but I don't regret the decision, I feel like I learned a lot. I'm still not sure what I should consider to be the point of no return, though.
 

derFeef

Member
I don't suggest any first timers to the series to play on Ironman mode. You will be frustrated pretty much for nothing. Learn the game first.

Ironman is just the feel of the campaign for me, the difficulty setting is what makes me rage. No mistakes allowed.
 

Hari Seldon

Member
So I didn't get to play as much as I would like last night. Got Starbuck equipped with a laser rifle, but didn't have enough shit to make them for the rest of my squad.

One question, is there a point to capture more live aliens other than the one it tells you to in the tutorial?
 

Mupod

Member
So I didn't get to play as much as I would like last night. Got Starbuck equipped with a laser rifle, but didn't have enough shit to make them for the rest of my squad.

One question, is there a point to capture more live aliens other than the one it tells you to in the tutorial?

Yes, definitely. Remember how their guns blow up when they die? Well, if you want an intact gun...
 
You guys were right, you don't dash to get somewhere, that's doing it wrong. You only dash when you're fucking running away from an ambush, or if you're using an Assault.

Always try to have Overwatch on. It will save your life; or make it easier to kill aliens.

Also the best way (in my opinion) to capture aliens is by using the Assault with the Tactical Sense ability. It gives you +5 def against every alien you see so you can survive most encounters. That actually saved one of my Assaults when it was against 3 floaters too.
 
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