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XCOM: Enemy Unknown |OT| Neo GAF is Under Alien Control
- Thread starter Jintor
- Start date
Though this is facetious, I think it's also somewhat true. The small scale of the engagements makes it so that a single action can be the line between success and failure on a mission. In the older games you had more soldiers and each soldier was capable of taking more actions in a single turn, so over the course of the engagement your overall success rate in terms of shooting and damage distribution rapidly converged toward the mean. Missing, for example, four consecutive shots with a 50% chance to hit isn't a particularly uncommon occurrence, but in the older games it was barely even noteworthy because four shots was basically the turn of a single soldier, and you usually had a dozen others waiting to send their plasma bolts flying off into the darkness. In this game, on the other hand, four consecutive misses at 50% can easily mean a complete squad wipe in the early game on Classic or Impossible, which rapidly spirals out of control on the Geoscape.
I've got a vague suspicion that this is the root of a lot of the complaints about the game's probabilities. The sample sizes are so small that it's not reliable to hang your hat on the assumption that your accuracy will average out over the course of a turn, and the margin for error on the higher difficulties is sufficiently small that a single streak of bad luck -- which is pretty much a statistical inevitability -- can be the end of an Ironman playthrough.
I joked about how silly the small squad size was after I played the demo, but now that I'm rapidly approaching the end of my second playthrough I'm starting to think it's a bigger problem than I'd anticipated.
Basileus777
Member
What does Sid Meier have to do with this game?
The Honorable Chairman Yang hit the nail on the head when he was talking about the meta importance of X-Com.
If I could have any gaming dream satisfied it would be for X-Com to have enough sales to raise eyebrows across the industry. I've really enjoyed the game so far on its own merits. However, there are also plenty of other properties that would also perfectly fit this genre. For example I've always wanted a Mass Effect: Terminus with X-Com gameplay. This is just one of a thousand other wonderful possibilities.
ps Yeah Sid and Firaxis are not interchangeable
He co-designed the prototype with Solomon (or rather, both he and Solomon each made their own prototype, then they merged the best aspects of each into one after that), and I think gave general advice to Jake throughout the project.
Fragamemnon
Member
No, the game generally gets much more manageable after the first couple of months. From there, you have to manage the following things:
1) Your ability to create and produce endgame tech (Titan Armor+plasma weapons).
2) Your ability to either not lose a key squad member or have reasonable replacements.
It's actually not all that hard after the first two months, just be careful and use your cooldowns to bypass the RNG variance as needed. The original had a similar frontloaded difficultly curve, as well as other Firaxis games where the higher difficultly levels hit hardest early on.
edit: the fix for this is to ramp up abduction rate and panic more and more as the game gets into the fall (Sept/Oct), so you put the player on a hard clock to win the game. This is the feel that they were shooting for with the abduction global panic increase, but I feel the implementation is way off-too constricting in the early months,not hard enough later on.
Damn university, Xcom!
Basileus777
Member
What exactly is wrong here? I'm not seeing anything special.
Interesting, I didn't realize Sid was involved with this project.
Metalmurphy
Member
Just look at this -.-
All my best soldiers died in the last 3 missions. This game is so ridiculously hard...
All my best soldiers died in the last 3 missions. This game is so ridiculously hard...
TemplaerDude
Member
Not cool Firaxis. Not cool.
Thankfully it didn't matter much in this situation, but this is the sort of (entirely avoidable) thing that'd like as not just embitter a player were it the cause of an important casualty.
What am I looking at here?
He wasn't supposed to initially, I don't think. But Solomon had a lot of trouble at the beginning of the project, so he eventually went to Sid for help with the design/direction, and apparently he helped a lot.
I don't necessarily disagree with this gripe, but I think you quickly run into balance issues if you increase the squad size even minimally because each individual soldier can become very powerful particularly with the class perks.
If you increase squad size to, say, eight you can have something like four squadsight snipers, one of each other class, and then a SHIV, and encounters will pose much less of a problem except perhaps on Impossible. The tactical and strategy layers also directly feed into each other, so much of the game would have to be retooled to make larger squad sizes work, and you probably also can't go too big given the map sizes. Remains to be seen what modders are able to do.
Yeah... I'm gonna downgrade to normal Ironman for now, I'm not doing things fast enough to be prepared for the introduction of chrysalids, which if they don't kill me outright, will maim me enough for me to bleed slowly and die.
I think the officer training school is probably the most crucial early game advantage you can ever have and I haven't used it yet. Other items such as the scope, +2hp armor, medikit, aren't much better than the frag grenade early on in the game.
Also, snipers just seem like a ridiculous handicap early on. They don't seem to have higher hit chance, they can't move and shoot, and it seems they don't have a larger shooting range either. Takes too much effort to just build them up especially in ironman.
I think the officer training school is probably the most crucial early game advantage you can ever have and I haven't used it yet. Other items such as the scope, +2hp armor, medikit, aren't much better than the frag grenade early on in the game.
Also, snipers just seem like a ridiculous handicap early on. They don't seem to have higher hit chance, they can't move and shoot, and it seems they don't have a larger shooting range either. Takes too much effort to just build them up especially in ironman.
Basileus777
Member
I'm not sure how much we can really expect from modders on that front, especially given Firaxis seems pretty hostile to mods, so much that they made it harder to mod after the demo by locking things in the exe instead of .ini files. Changing things now requires tinkering with the exe, and if that sort of thing is necessary, modding won't take off.
If you give them squad sight they have supreme range as they can shoot whatever your other soldiers can see so long as they have line of sight to it. Snipers can be devastating.
Aye, I'm not sure what can really be done, but I guess we'll find out either way.
So how does the hit chance calculate using squad sight? Does it take the hit chance of the person that actually in line of sight of the alien? Still at squaddie they're still a big handicap to train up to the next rank.
Basileus777
Member
Long distance doesn't hurt aim chances with a sniper rifle, the only thing that really matters is cover.
Psychoward
Banned
I had 3 1/2 pages of that when my ironman run ended.Just look at this -.-
All my best soldiers died in the last 3 missions. This game is so ridiculously hard...
TemplaerDude
Member
They're a huuuuuge pain in the ass in the beginning, but they become fucking BEASTS later on.
bonesmccoy
Banned
There's a brick wall that's been rendered inaccessible by the red 'edge of map' bars, so he's forced to choose crummy half-cover.
So I just lost a high ranked psionic support because she panicked a heavy floater, who then used his panic reaction to shoot her with perfect accuracy despite the fact that she was behind high cover. Okay, game. Whatever, I got others, she was just a mission reward.
Alfred 'Major' Walken, the guy who has been my primary heavy since he successfully led a ragtag team of 5 rookies to victory against a landed UFO, took a critical wound because I forgot that Berserkers can Koolaid Man through walls. But just between you and me? I was gonna replace him with a SHIV anyways.
My other Heavy is now an unstoppable psionic badass. Mind control is hilarious.
My primary sniper ended up having 'the gift' as well, which won't help his ego. Squad sight seems to work for psi powers too...which is kinda nuts.
My secondary sniper Mike 'Mike Ross' Ross has stats through the roof but oddly enough he's not psionic. He sure gets the job done, with his uncanny ability to still hit things despite firing in the wrong direction.
Also I gotta say that council special missions become a joke later on because the only enemies that show up are thin men. Does this change eventually? Thin men are literally harmless to me at this point.
Alfred 'Major' Walken, the guy who has been my primary heavy since he successfully led a ragtag team of 5 rookies to victory against a landed UFO, took a critical wound because I forgot that Berserkers can Koolaid Man through walls. But just between you and me? I was gonna replace him with a SHIV anyways.
My other Heavy is now an unstoppable psionic badass. Mind control is hilarious.
My primary sniper ended up having 'the gift' as well, which won't help his ego. Squad sight seems to work for psi powers too...which is kinda nuts.
My secondary sniper Mike 'Mike Ross' Ross has stats through the roof but oddly enough he's not psionic. He sure gets the job done, with his uncanny ability to still hit things despite firing in the wrong direction.
Also I gotta say that council special missions become a joke later on because the only enemies that show up are thin men. Does this change eventually? Thin men are literally harmless to me at this point.
I've been sort of vacillating on whether I think the panic levels are supposed to be a hard time limit or just a somewhat oddly-implemented abstraction of the Alien Infiltration missions of the original game. It seems to make more sense as a time limit, but I'm kind of resistant to that idea just because I like getting into a stable end-game holding pattern where I'm just chilling and rubbing the aliens' lack-of-noses in the fact that X-Com is just too badass for them to handle.
I'm sure things would get out of hand with a quickness if you just up and started increasing the squad size without actually adjusting the potency of leveled soldiers. I think the system they've got now is sort of situated awkwardly in between classic X-Com where every hapless peon is expendable and eminently replaceable and something more along the lines of a strategy RPG in the vein of Fire Emblem or Valkyria Chronicles where your units can die, but it's something to be avoided at almost all costs.
As it is now you're expected to keep individual soldiers alive, but for significant portions of the game they're only marginally more survivable than oldschool X-Com redshirts. If they either made individual soldiers scale up less and increased the squad size or kept the squad size the same but made it less common for an unlucky critical from across the map to kill your veteran soldier that you'd been leveling to unlock options in the Officer Training School I'd be fine with it. But the medium between the two philosophies that we've got going now isn't something I'm particularly fond of.
they look all the same to me in selection screen
chassi varies, but there is no visual indication on what weapon it is carrying. All have red light
I impulse bought this after the demo and am loving it so far. I have Walter White as my godly sniper, last mission I had him on a roof using overwatch and later an alien went through a door all the way across the map to get reaction shot in the head. I am already having trouble with a good half of my squad being injured...usually don't lose people but the waiting time for injuries hurts.
The effect of it is exascebated in Classic so badly just due to them locking the officer training centre off until you have a seargeant, and the requisite power, and the required space and money...
Can't wait for modders to rig
Funky Papa
FUNK-Y-PPA-4
Oh, neat. I made a puzzle!
I'm surprised you're not seeing it though. Doesn't that full cover look inviting? The map boundaries typically do a great job of syncing up with actual obstacles. It's jarring when they don't and it's a downright tease to place full cover one tile behind the boundary, especially down a narrow path like that with only half-cover strewn about.
I mean look at the dude. He's so confused. He's eyeing up that sweet corner and feeling put upon that it's not even an option for him.
TheApatheticOne
Member
Im on my second go around (first one I ended, got to far with with being terrible with finances and then my A-Team got wiped, and had no bench - which was my fault).
Playing a bit more conservatively, up to 6 guys now.... and just LOVING the game. May be my game of the year this year. Just playing on normal no tutorial though.
Playing a bit more conservatively, up to 6 guys now.... and just LOVING the game. May be my game of the year this year. Just playing on normal no tutorial though.
Square Triangle
Member
For someone who is fresh to XCOM, what are some tips you guys might suggest? I don't want to waste credits on meaningless researches or upgrades either.
Invest in satellites as soon as possible.
just one key. if you right click on the game in Steam Library and select view downloadable contents it should show DLC-1
TemplaerDude
Member
Yeah I didn't see the lines until Bones mentioned it. I am reallllly colour blind, though.
SnakeswithLasers
Member
Expand on this a bit if you can, please.
Unity2012
Member
Also make sure to build Satellite Uplinks so you can launch more satellites and make some money (credits) to upgrade your base and squad.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Satellites = money, resources, and slows panic.
Oh, you mean the weapon. The weapon will be the same for all your SHIVs (I'm 99% sure). There are only 2 upgrades: laser and plasma. Well, there's another separate upgrade that gives you the ability to suppress an enemy, but that's it.
You want to maximize your satellite load as soon as the game starts, it'll tell you how much you can put out on the strategy screen in the base. Then you have to build satellite uplinks in the base to be able to build more satellites and eventually you can build satellite nexus' that gives you a higher limit.
Basically you want them because each time you give one to a country you get a bonus that's listed but more importantly you reduce panic in that country. Things can spiral out of control fast with abductions and other crap happening so you want to have satellites ready to counter it. Otherwise you can easily find yourself with 3 or 4 countries pulling out of the Xcom project within a couple of months.
You'll need ten engineers before you can build the Satellite Uplink though! (Might want to shoot for, say, 12 engineers asap, as that will also allow you to get in on Laser Rifles.) And arrange for it to be placed adjacent to the existing Uplink. And don't forget to start making satellites well in advance (base duration of twenty days). And make sure you're good for power supply. And if you actually want to have an impact on panic levels after the initial satellite placement, you'll need extra Interceptors stationed on other continents where you have coverage. And those Interceptors might want to be beefed up a bit once the medium UFOs start rolling in. And, and, and.
So I think I might bail out of my normal ironman run since I feel I can't keep up with the increasing difficulty. My main bottleneck were Engineers and I couldn't manufacture equipment/satellites until a lot later.
That and I had most of my good team murdered by 6 chryssalids backed up by a cyberdisk on a terror mission.
Also my best soldier got mauled by a 1hp Muton berserker because my retard heavy failed a 90% stun chance.
I think I'll try classic ironman when I can get some time.
That and I had most of my good team murdered by 6 chryssalids backed up by a cyberdisk on a terror mission.
Also my best soldier got mauled by a 1hp Muton berserker because my retard heavy failed a 90% stun chance.
I think I'll try classic ironman when I can get some time.
Square Triangle
Member
omg, so much to absorb in this game, its nearly overwhelming for me. The last strategy game I played was Age of Empires III in high school.
So I finished Normal, the ending;
Now that I have a better understanding of what the hell is going on, making the switch to Classic Ironman mode and seeing how I'll fair. It's going to be hell! Definitely one of my favorite games of the year so far!
it is a tough one. Up against 2 Sectopods, 2 Elite Mutons in 1 go and then the final battle an Uber Ethereal, 2 Ethereals and 2 Elite Mutons. Had 3 of my squad less than 20% health by the end of it, 1 guy on 1 bar of health. That ending -- Col. Mitt Romney sacrificed himself for the greater good *salute*.
My veteran's did that survive: Col. Oscar Schindler, Col. Mark Wahlberg, Col. Donnie Yen, Col. Usain Bolt and Col. Sarah Walker. They're all toasting to Romney!
Now I see the value in Sniper/Double Tap, makes life easier. Lost 3 squad members in all and a few SHIVs.
People are correct that normal eventually gets easy once you're in the Mid-End game, you can be a little bit careless but the AI does hold back a little bit but once you get a PSI soldier and Archangel Armor it is a cakewalk.
My veteran's did that survive: Col. Oscar Schindler, Col. Mark Wahlberg, Col. Donnie Yen, Col. Usain Bolt and Col. Sarah Walker. They're all toasting to Romney!
Now I see the value in Sniper/Double Tap, makes life easier. Lost 3 squad members in all and a few SHIVs.
People are correct that normal eventually gets easy once you're in the Mid-End game, you can be a little bit careless but the AI does hold back a little bit but once you get a PSI soldier and Archangel Armor it is a cakewalk.
Now that I have a better understanding of what the hell is going on, making the switch to Classic Ironman mode and seeing how I'll fair. It's going to be hell! Definitely one of my favorite games of the year so far!
Basileus777
Member
According to the ini files, the maximum number of enemies that will attack you at once on easy and normal is 5.