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On October 12 2012 23:29 HoboJoe20 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2012 23:12 Rannasha wrote:
On a slightly different topic: I seem to distinctly remember that in Classic *with* Tutorial, you at some point in the tutorial are asked to launch a satellite and you have one available for launching. However, when you play without the Tutorial, you don't have this free satellite and have to build it first. This seems like a pretty big difference, given how important satellites are. Anyone else notice this? It's not an issue on Normal, because there you already have the spare satellite even if you don't do the Tutorial. I noticed that too. I'm not sure that having the freedom to do as you choose at the start of the game outweighs just straight up getting a free satellite (though I also didn't check if your money reserves are any different at the start if you turn off the tutorial)
I might check that out before I start on Classic again. I also don't remember when you exactly get the satellite. If you build one yourself, you can have it done before the first monthly report and thus have it count towards your funding.
In other news, someone on another forum worked out the discount that additional engineers offer:
price = floor( 0.5 * base-price * (1 + eng-required / eng-available) )
If a project costs 100 credits and has a requirement of 5 engineers, the prices with higher amounts of engineers are:
10 eng - 75 credits
15 eng - 66 credits
20 eng - 62 credits
More advanced projects require more engineers, which means that in the late game the advanced projects are made at a lower discount than a new med-kit or S.C.O.P.E. The cost-reduction also applies to some raw materials like Alien Alloys.
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I found a stupid bug in tutorial when I played it before. When the game tells you to go to engineering and build a building I clicked to build some items and could not go back from that screen. Esc also would not bring up the save and exit menu :D
I had to End Task the game.
As for getting a free satellite in tutorial, that would explain why both US and EU bases give crap bonuses compared to China or Africa.
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On October 12 2012 23:04 AngryMag wrote:I will name my soldiers after politicians, so it won't hurt if they die  Just need to restrain myself from suiciding them, also they will be more likely to just run away if they panic..
This is genius, i'm sooo gonna do this. thank you sir.
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My wife is so awesome for letting me buy this.
In other news, 2nd tutorial mission (where you gain actual control for the first time) gave me two injuries.
4 squad members, 1 gravely wounded for 11 days, another wounded for 5.
Classic ironman seems like a bad choice for my starting game, but meh, Lets do this! I'll just start again knowing what to do :D
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I love the game so far, it's amazing how close it is to the original, while upgrading every little annoying thing there was about it. My biggest issue with it, aside from the many glitches, is how there's no free aim. There's no way to shoot walls directly and make a way through it, no way to shoot a mind controlled alien, that's a real bummer right there.
Anyway, here's some basic tips I've found after one playthrough on Normal Ironman, what worked for me :
1- Satellites, Satellites, Satellites.
They're really the backbone of the whole game, and the game instructions unfortunately don't insist enough on that. I had to start over my first two games because I didnt focus enough on satellites and ran out of money/upgrades later on. Most of your money will come from the monthly country financing, so you NEED to get many satellites up and running early, even if it means delaying the story elements. (This is also why engineers are so important early on,so you can build more Uplink facilities)
2- Skip Lasers.
Lasers are good, sure, but just like in the original game, it's worth skipping all the precious early research time direct to Plasma, even if that means having to do 3-4 more missions using regular weapons. This will also save you a lot of money.
3- Capture aliens whenever possible, at least when it's safe.
Always carry Arc Throwers on Assaults early on, because any Alien you capture means you also capture his weapon. You'll get free Plasma Rifles as soon as they're researched, which are pretty expensive early on. Also, capturing more advanced aliens such as muttons will unlock various upgrades or research credits.
4- Two medics later makes everything much easier.
If you have all the medikit and medic upgrades, they will each heal for 10 points per hit, which means you can heal for a total of 60 hp during a mission. Along with the ''officers won't die'' upgrade, this will overcome most mistakes you can make, giving you a pretty big margin of error.
Of course, there's other basic tips such as ''always be covered'', reload whenever it's safe, but those are already well known.
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I got a really frustrating bug last night...
One of my veterans was shot down and critically wounded. He was magically teleported to a far corner of the map, and there were 2 pairs of Thin Men between him and the rest of my squad. At this point I already felt that something had bugged out (there wasn't a heal radius around his body), but I fought my way across anyway and managed get a support next to him, only to find that the stabilize option isn't available. Had to watch one of my best soldiers bleed to death 
Hopefully this is the first and last bug I meet...rest of the game is awesome.
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On October 12 2012 17:30 -Archangel- wrote:
OK let me state what I feel are problems with this game without comparing it with old x-com.
A common one:
1. Not being able to know which class your rookie is going to get.
Others:
2. Not being able to pick up items from fallen allies. If I need to capture an alien and my arc thrower guy falls during mission I want to be able to get to his body and exchange my item for the Arc. Or a medkit, or an extra grenade. This feature is critical for Ironman play.
3. Strategic part of the game being too scripted and not random enough. Or at least it feels like it.
4. Too many abduction missions, not enough UFOs. I hate abduction missions, they are a lose-lose missions. Even when successful panic goes up in 2 places and you get much less alloys and 0 elirium from them.
5. Randomly appearing enemies during tactical missions. By that I mean the thin man that drop from the sky. Or what I had, I camped my whole group on top of hill and in same turn 2 cyberdisks appear with drones with 2nd one "spawning" next to my group. Come on!?!! Tactical part of the game is never going to be really tactical with this shit. Planning is a crucial part of fun tactical games, and introducing this kills any planning and smart play and makes missions totally random.
6. Similar to 5. this is another problem that makes parts of tactical combat stupid. When you scout ahead, and discover new enemies they get a free move. I don't have a problem with that but often that free move is towards your troops or the scout often killing him without you being able to do anything (even if you had one move left often due to map/cover you cannot get him safe). The free move should always move them into cover away from your troops.
7. Soldier levels are too powerful and you are too dependent on it. Combined with only 6 men per squad it is not a good mechanic. Playing Ironman is much too punishing as it is now. Soldiers are expandable and should not become superheroes no matter how much experience they get. Their power should more depend on equipment and less on levels.
I fully agree with all of that.
Tactical game felt ok, the lack of TU and inventory management is different but it's not as bad as i feared. Yeah, taking items from fallen soldiers would be great, especially when you want to capture opponents alive, but i can live with that.
The strategic game is really lackluster, having only one skyranger and being able to only do one of three missions removes a lot of the strategy. It also feels like the story part progresses too fast with too little room for exploration/doing stuff your own way. There is no "I need an alien commander, let's shoot down every big UFO and stun everything that moves"-part.
Basically every second mission you do is a story/objective mission where you get told exactly what to do (not in a tutorial way, in a "We need this specific alien alive and he's on every UFO and hey, look, there is a UFO for you to shoot down"-way)
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I do agree the story progresses way too fast compared to the original.
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On October 13 2012 03:22 True_Spike wrote:
I do agree the story progresses way too fast compared to the original.
Story in the original?
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On October 13 2012 03:58 Zorkmid wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2012 03:22 True_Spike wrote:
I do agree the story progresses way too fast compared to the original. Story in the original?
Aliens attack, where are they from, ah, space, more specific, well gotta ask that alien leader, mars, where mars, gotta ask a commander, aha! Kill the brain!
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It seems also, that since you don't have that many satellites in the early game, you are rushed to complete that first alien base mission just for the panic reduction. I'm playing on normal and already lost 2 countries after the end of the second month and I didn't skip any missions.
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On October 13 2012 03:58 Zorkmid wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2012 03:22 True_Spike wrote:
I do agree the story progresses way too fast compared to the original. Story in the original?
The story was there, just subtle. The UFOs zipping around the geoscape all had missions and were part of an invasion plan.
The aliens would first scout and terrorize cities. After secret relations were established, they would send diplomats to cut a deal with the human governments. Then you would lose your funding nation. Which is why shooting down diplomatic UFOs should be your top priority.
If you shot down a UFO, they would send a search party to investigate, sweeping the ground slowly and low altitude looking for your base. That's why you never shot down UFOs near your base. When a base was discovered, they would send a battleship at high speed directly for your base.
At harder difficulties, they would send UFOs in waves, knowing you couldn't intercept all of them.
If a mission failed, they would send a successively larger UFO until the mission succeeded. They also adjusted their approach vectors, to avoid areas of XCOM activity.
Alien bases were established, and were regularly resupplied by UFO supply ships. Hitting the UFO supply as they landed was a reliable source of elerium.
If you paid attention in XCOM, you see the story of the alien invasion. By far the most innovative imagining of an alien invasion in game, film, or writing.
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You'd need to use an awful lot of imagination in order to view the first XCOM games like that.
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No, you just need to research a few living aliens (i think leaders and navigators), that is all stuff that you get told then. And if you have a hyperwave decoder you can figure some of it out because you know the mission of every ship, too. Of course their mission goals were often kind of ridiculous because the game wants to use all of the UFO stereotypes (cattle mutilation, abductions, probing, etc...)
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On October 13 2012 05:27 Zorkmid wrote:
You'd need to use an awful lot of imagination in order to view the first XCOM games like that.
Combining the navigator interrogations with the building to see missions on ufo's and its actualy very easy to see the patterns that are there.
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Been waiting to play this sucker all week now. Was watching streams the entire time just to get me by.
+ Show Spoiler +
Download faster plzzzz!!!!
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Sooooooo addictiveeeeeeee
+ Show Spoiler +On a side note, i just lost asia and europe in one loss, FML.
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Got it today and started playing for a couple of hours.
Then all my best men died on the base-infiltration mission, and now i have 2 sgts and a bunch of recruits left.
Things I learned for my next try: Always take a rookie or two with you to branch the XP a little, or you're fucked when they die.
Or option B: Don't die next time.
I'mma try and do both at the same time, but I'm not sure about the success of B.
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I've already spent hours in this game and it's punishing. I've been playing on Classic Ironman and it's unforgiving and rewarding.
Thought I'd share a story, the playthrough I'm currently on started really well, but panic is spreading and despite having a solid base of soldiers (6-8 corporals a couple missions in) panic was spreading.
Well after 2 missions in a row losing my 6 best soldiers and having spent all my credits on satellites, I found myself without soldiers. So after shooting down a small UFO I had to send 2 soldiers, my Lieutenant Assault Femi, "Tombstone" Mabuza and Squaddie Assualt Harumi Kato.
I find 2 Mutons within 2 turns, and Kato comes under fire and panics. However she panics and fires her laser rifle and hits a Muton for half his life. Meanwhile "Tombstone" Mabuza runs up to the damaged muton and kills him with a shotgun blast to the face from point blank range. The other Muton moves up and takes a shot at Kato (who didn't move because she was panicked) and critically injures her. Of course she's got the medikit, while Mabuza has the Nano fiber vest. So Mabuza pursues from behind cover and takes out half the Muton's health because the it decided it would be smart to kill Kato standing out of cover. Now the Muton decides to full on retreats.
Mabuza follows, hot on his heels hoping to catch and take him out before coming into contact with another group of aliens, except damn, 2 Floaters.
Mabuza activates run and gun getting into the cover of 2 big trees between the Floaters on one side of the trees and the injured Muton right on the other side (luck was on his side). "Tombstone" kills the Muton with another shotgun blast to the face as the Floaters take cover.
Mabuza has to take time to catch his breath and reload, allowing one of the floaters to hit him for 2/3 of his health and the other to fly behind him 5 squares. So this is it, Mabuza is in solid cover against one Floater and open to the other, with the shotgun only having a 47 percent chance to hit, let alone kill the Floater standing behind him. Seeing his only chance is to take out the Floater behind him while remaining in his current cover and hoping for a miss he takes aim and fires.
Boom, Floater eliminated. The other Floater's shot hits the tree, melting part of it, but leaving Femi "Tombstone" Mabuza unscathed and able to run up and deliver yet another shotgun blast to the face of an alien.
Mission accomplished, impossible situation, impossible victory. Much beer and wine was had when "Tombstone" returned. He had all 5 kills (another floater but I don't remember it, probably between the 2nd muton kill and the 1st). Now thankfully, the shot down UFO was under staffed, but still. So far it's the most impressive mission by a soldier so far for me and has me recommitted to somehow digging out of my XCOM hole and taking it to the aliens.
This game has me coming back for more.
Update: Apparently that's XCOM. Next mission with 2 rookies my Captain Sniper back and "Tombstone" I run into my first cyberdisk in an alien abduction mission rated Moderate difficulty. Needless to say my team died quite quickly and shortly after panic spread throughout the world leading to another loss. Long live Femi "Tombstone" Mabuza.
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Ironman + classic was too damn hard for me. Had to remove ironman but its still very challenging imo. Constantly lack funds and have to save/load a lot in true XCOM style.
I am not that far into the game but having a sniper with scope + the perk that allows him/her to fire at aliens within vision of any squad member feels "slightly" OP.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/314114_509713559040946_1573704007_n.jpg)
