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

Fjordson

Member
Weapons are always worth it.

it's the difference between killing an enemy in 2 turns or 3.

And I know the type of shit that goes down in a single turn.
Nice. Yeah, I'm starting to run into enemies that are taking multiple turns with the default weapons. Probably time for an upgrade.
 

Jubbly

Member
Personally I would go with Asia for the officer school. The 5th squad member and extra xp for kills is huge early game.

Once you get everything that bonus becomes useless. Personally, I'd go for All In in Africa, with the +30% monthly income.
 

doomquake

Member
PSA: think twice before setting up a trap to stun an alien...

Im on normal and it seems like Earth is slipping into a global catastrophe fairly quickly..while im working with pennies and 2 satellites..why the hell do i get paid so little! Terror missions are already "difficult" rating and i've got 3 countries at level 4 panic..but it feels like the game is still introducing stuff to me.

PSA2: when your old soldiers comeback, they seem to get auto picked for your squads. I mistakenly configured a squad with some items and was convinced that they were the ones going on a mission. Always double check
 
The difficulty scaling of this game is seriously broken. One month, I was fighting Sectoids and Thin Men. Then a Council Report happens, and the very next month on an Alien Abduction mission I'm facing a Cyberdisc and groups of 6 Mutons at a time. Hey Firaxis, you ever heard of scaling up difficulty gradually instead of suddenly a brick wall?
 
Don't use
panic
on an alien that can see a soldier. Chances are it'll still shoot them all the same, which makes it pointless to use. Well, maybe not pointless, but it's a double edged sword to use.
 

TTG

Member
How are beam weapons? Worth the research?

Probably. I decided to skip them and go straight for the plasma on my first go around, plasma has a small advantage in damage, but you also have to reload it. It's also very expensive to manufacture, you're relying on the weapons stunned aliens drop basically.
 
Just hit a fucking 6% shot that saved the life of my main lady, Lt. Ivana Humpsalot, big ol' heavy. Woke my room mate up when I screamed "WOOHOO". Fuck yea, this game.
 

-tetsuo-

Unlimited Capacity
Just hit a fucking 6% shot that saved the life of my main lady, Lt. Ivana Humpsalot, big ol' heavy. Woke my room mate up when I screamed "WOOHOO". Fuck yea, this game.

It has that effect on people. The game attracts MANY onlookers at work, and they all end up sitting and watching, cheering for those troops out there fighting the good fight. Helps that I usually name them after the folks watching lol
 

ixix

Exists in a perpetual state of Quantum Crotch Uncertainty.
Once you get everything that bonus becomes useless. Personally, I'd go for All In in Africa, with the +30% monthly income.

You get more benefit from that 30% the more countries you have covered, though. Your starting monthly income is pretty paltry, so starting with bupkis+30% instead of just plain ol' bupkis isn't much of a bonus. The straight-up price cut on important but necessary early-game stuff is a lot more valuable. You can qualify for All In when you start expanding your satellite coverage, which is coincidentally what you need to do to start actually reaping the benefit of it.

It's really handy late game, but its early applicability is so small that it's really not all that attractive as a starting location.

The difficulty scaling of this game is seriously broken. One month, I was fighting Sectoids and Thin Men. Then a Council Report happens, and the very next month on an Alien Abduction mission I'm facing a Cyberdisc and groups of 6 Mutons at a time. Hey Firaxis, you ever heard of scaling up difficulty gradually instead of suddenly a brick wall?

The game's difficulty is awfully front-loaded, I think. I've finished Normal Ironman (though self-enforced since I missed the option when I made the game) and I'm about halfway through a Classic Ironman playthrough, and there's a definite tipping point where new alien introductions cease to be anything particularly worrisome. Specifically, around the time you get
Psi training and Titan armor
it suddenly becomes remarkably easy to consistently steamroll missions with no casualties, at which point you just kinda never stop getting stronger relative to the aliens. My Classic game is starting to stabilize Geoscape-wise and there's really only one alien type whose introduction I'm dreading. I'm starting to wonder if I'm even going to bother finishing it since I can already feel my desire to slog through the second half of the game fading.
 

Ken

Member
I don't understand what engineers and scientists are for and what it means when I want to research something, it costs x credits and y Engineers?
 

Bluth54

Member
I don't understand what engineers and scientists are for and what it means when I want to research something, it costs x credits and y Engineers?
Engineers and scientists don't get used up or spent like credits, but you do need a certain number of them to research something. If a new weapon requires 10 engineers to build and you only have 8 you can't build it until you get 10.
 

Nocebo

Member
Workshop and laboratory unlock after you pick up your first set of new engineers/scientists.
Ah thanks.

The story continued: Not that I really had a story going but yesterday I said I was feeling confident about my situation. Second classic ironman attempt and my geoscape situation was looking good, so did my squad. I confidently thought I was about to tip the scales. When I typed that post I was about to do a very difficult abduction site mission. I felt like, if I completed that mission successfully I would be "in the zone" so to speak.
Long story short: I had to flee like a beaten house cat... from 3 missions including that one, I was completely out classed and only managed to get out with 1 or 2 people alive each time but failing all missions. On top of that I didn't have the man power to do a 4th mission that popped up because my remaining 5 guys were all severely wounded. Suffice to say I was pretty much boned.

Or so I thought. I completed several research projects, shot 3 satellites in the air and constructed some facilities that month. When the council report rolled around I got a B rating, and one country left the council. I received tons of cash and went on a shopping spree in the officer training school. I grabbed the one where rookies begin with 1 level and the extra XP gain one, furthermore I started work on a foundry etc.

Thanks to all these upgrades I managed to pull of some missions with minor casualties and am finally starting to build up a solid squad again. 5 countries have left the council so far, but I have satellites above all the rest of the countries, meaning massive gains in money every month.
What really set me on the road to recovery was stumbling upon an alien supply ship. I successfully raided it with my 6 man team. Losing 3 men though. But the alien supply ship not only contained 251! alloys but also lots of other materials and items I could sell.
It got my research going, and my upgrade spree. Got some titan armors developed and more firestorms.
Still haven't captured a live alien though.. about 5-6 months in I think. I'm in desperate need of plasma rifles. My first encounter with a sectopod in that supply ship was very scary. haha
 

doomquake

Member
we meet again
mJ1NJ.png
FbeUw.jpg
 

-tetsuo-

Unlimited Capacity
I don't understand what engineers and scientists are for and what it means when I want to research something, it costs x credits and y Engineers?

The more scientists you have, the faster you research. You need a certain amount of Engineers to build nything, really. It tells you how many you need in engineering.
 

Ken

Member
Engineers and scientists don't get used up or spent like credits, but you do need a certain number of them to research something. If a new weapon requires 10 engineers to build and you only have 8 you can't build it until you get 10.

Can you only research/build one thing at a time for the whole game or can you increase this with facilities? What are some important facilities to build anyways?
 

Tokubetsu

Member
Squad select screen is so god damn buggy. From dudes clipping into each other to just not appearing at all. Even had one member of my squad appear for everyone.
 
Can you only research/build one thing at a time for the whole game or can you increase this with facilities? What are some important facilities to build anyways?

Some items are build instantly e.g. medikits, armor; some require time e.g. satellite takes 20 days. You can have multiple things building at once, provided you have money and materials.

Most important thing to build are facilities to allow you to launch more satellites.
 

McNum

Member
Installing now. Oooh. And then I have to download the patch, I bet. So it'll take an hour or two until the game is ready, I think.

So, the word is to run the tutorial, then restart the game and play without it to get the better start? I think I'll start with a vanilla Normal game. Ned to learn what's what in the new XCOM.
 

doomquake

Member
its great that the entire human race is under threat of eradication and enslavement..but you still gotta pay someone to do something..
 
Never had a real problem with Crysalids on Normal. I back everyone off but make sure they have Overwatch. If in doubt use a rocket. At later levels they're no problem. A Sniper with In the Zone can despatch them with ease with a plasma sniper rifle, one after the other. My sniper takes three out in one turn most times.
 

Sanctuary

Member
Has anyone successfully captured a drone (the little repair bots that fly around a disc)? I upgraded the Arc Thrower and did the drone capture research, yet the Arch Thrower always says "no target in range" when I try to zap a drone.
 

sahest

Banned
Oh, the horror of seeing this game available on Steam, and not being able to afford it for a month...

Enjoying reading your stories, though! Keep 'em coming :)
 

yarden24

Member
almost done with my normal iron man run, and does anyone else feel the last third of the game is weaker?

no suspense left, I need to force myself to finish, while the beginning is so much more appealing...
 

McNum

Member
Huh, the Steam disk installer is actually pretty clever. It didn't install the files that needed to be patched, it just downloads the newest version off the server directly after finishing with the disk.

New thread for LP yes/no

hint: the answer is yes
Well, duh! Of course we need a new thread for this. Will it be just about your LP or will it be like the other "Gaf plays X-Com" threads where anyone can join in?
 

ixix

Exists in a perpetual state of Quantum Crotch Uncertainty.
its great that the entire human race is under threat of eradication and enslavement..but you still gotta pay someone to do something..

I always figured that the whole deal with that is that you're the experimental upstart that nobody really expects to work out and in the meantime all the countries funding you are also running anti-alien projects of their own. So you're basically leasing all your personnel and equipment from your direct competitors, none of whom amount to anything in the end because they ain't got that X-Com swag.

This also explains how you're always able to find buyers for esoteria like alien corpses, with competing organizations run by various member states buying them for their own research. But that's not nearly as entertaining an explanation as selling all the dead Sectoids to cat food manufacturers, leading to widespread global confusion as pet owners wonder why things have started flying around the room at random and mice are seemingly being mind controlled ever since they started feeding Fluffy that new flavor of Fancy Feast.

Has anyone successfully captured a drone (the little repair bots that fly around a disc)? I upgraded the Arc Thrower and did the drone capture research, yet the Arch Thrower always says "no target in range" when I try to zap a drone.

I never actually bothered to do it, but I'm pretty sure it's a separate command from the regular zap command and that you need to be on the same elevation as the drone to do it. Since drones usually spend the entirety of their short mecha-lives airborne that's kind of a tall order.

almost done with my normal iron man run, and does anyone else feel the last third of the game is weaker?

no suspense left, I need to force myself to finish, while the beginning is so much more appealing...

Pretty much, yeah. I'm not really all that fond of the beginning either, honestly. The middle bit is the best part, when you've got plenty of research possibilities, you're having to make sacrifices in terms of priorities for manufacturing and building up your base, and you're running a full-sized squad that's kind of equipped piecemeal with whatever you've managed to research/build/scavenge. The beginning feels like you've got very little control of your own fate and the end basically consists of steamrolling every mission like it weren't no thing. From what I've played of Classic Ironman so far that difficulty is following the same basic trajectory.
 
Does the direction the cover it placed matter? When I am facing enemies up front in high cover that doesn't apply to the sides correct? How are the four directions partitioned? Circle areas with 90 degrees angle?
 

ixix

Exists in a perpetual state of Quantum Crotch Uncertainty.
Does the direction the cover it placed matter? When I am facing enemies up front in high cover that doesn't apply to the sides correct? How are the four directions partitioned? Circle areas with 90 degrees angle?

It seems like it's closer to 180 degrees than 90. When cover is flanked by an alien the little shield indicator that pops up over it will be red instead of blue to indicate that it won't be offering you full protection. Most of the time it only seems to turn red if there's an alien capable of shooting directly parallel to it.

Of course then sometimes you're looking at a line of cover and it's all showing red even though every single enemy on the map is straight ahead of it. Elevation in particular seems to screw with the way cover is calculated quite a bit.
 

Tokubetsu

Member
It seems like it's closer to 180 degrees than 90. When cover is flanked by an alien the little shield indicator that pops up over it will be red instead of blue to indicate that it won't be offering you full protection. Most of the time it only seems to turn red if there's an alien capable of shooting directly parallel to it.

Of course then sometimes you're looking at a line of cover and it's all showing red even though every single enemy on the map is straight ahead of it. Elevation in particular seems to screw with the way cover is calculated quite a bit.

If alien cover turns yellow it means you're flanking them as well. There seems to be a line so to speak, bisecting the map in relation to where you and the aliens are. At least it helps to think of it like that. If you cross the line you're flanking or they're flanking etc. So yea, I think it's closer to 180.
 
Sooo...after 20 days of absolutely nothing happening and me running dry on resources, a "small scout" UFO ship lands nearby. Since I don't really have a choice, I take it out. How bad can a "small scout" UFO be, really?

10 Mutons and 3 Sectoid Commanders worth of bad. Sigh.

The sad part was I killed the first wave of six Mutons only losing my SHIV. Then I got up close to the ship and through a hole in the ship the three Sectoid Commanders got loose. It was looking okay right up until the hidden wave of four more Mutons showed up from the back of the ship.

Sigh.
 
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