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Ok, I have tried some of the "Second Wave" options and here is my thoughts about them.
Damage Roulette: Well, it's pretty much adding another RNG to the game but it quite fun too because it makes game a little bit more intense and unpredictable. This option also applies to all explosive weapons. I once shot a rocket that hit 4 Floaters at the same time, but only deals 4 damage to each of them. So yeah, every shot is more of "please kill them, please kill them" feeling.
New Economy: I'm not sure whether the total amount of funding possible is still the same as normal game or it is random too. But I got Egypt offers +230 fund while US drop down to 100 and other countries drop down too. Need more testing to confirm but it can create some new plans of where to put your satellites on first.
Marathon: It is pretty much everything in Engineering tab cost 1.9x more (both building and items) and everything in Research tab take 1.9x longer. The value 1.9 is too avoid bug when you need to build Hyperwave Relay (if 2.0 then you need to have 2 Relays, which is impossible). Also, everything that is sold in Gray Market has 1.9x more value. Not sure if it effects funding or not but the rate of Alien abduction is still the same. I can say that the game is quite harder with this option on.
Absolute Critical: All flanking shots that hit = critical. It's make thing harder and easier at the same time. On one hand, your Assault will become very very very important because Gun & Run is significantly stronger with running in to flank and kill. On the other hand, if your soldiers are caught out of position then that means they are dead. Especially true with Damage Roulette off, since with it on you can crit for 2 damage (but rarely). I suspect that Cyberdisc would be a total monster with this because you can be out of the position very easily against them.
High Stakes: The amount of rewards are random. So the Engineer reward can give you 3 to 6 engineers (instead of 5 every time) or Cash reward can be from 100 to 200+ credits. So the abductions missions become harder to pick.
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I just love this game!!! So here is a little story.
+ Show Spoiler +I finished the 1st assault to the alien base, and I just got my main squad either killed or wounded for several days. After that I got a mission in Japan that i need to go or Japan would drop out of the program. Since I forgot to hire new guys, I just had 2 rookies and a sniper major.
Long story going short, my team killed a few Chryssalids, Sectoids and Thin mans, but only the Major survived. I can just imagine what was in the mind the major
'I don't even want to know the names of new rookies, they just die...'
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Canada8033 Posts
Apparently I flew one of my archangel armor soldiers into a weird spot, because the game instakilled him. =/
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Kyrgyz Republic1462 Posts
If anyone is up for some multiplayer right now, join tlxcom group on Steam, I will be there for a while :-)
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impossible ironman, why you so mean to me
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I saw some streamers and they have helmets on their soldiers. How did they do that?
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On October 22 2012 02:20 Emnjay808 wrote:
I saw some streamers and they have helmets on their soldiers. How did they do that?
In the customize options there is a option called hair/ Helmet they are the last 3 unless you have the classic pack installed that one is 14.
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On October 22 2012 02:29 Vagabond wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2012 02:20 Emnjay808 wrote:
I saw some streamers and they have helmets on their soldiers. How did they do that? In the customize options there is a option called hair/ Helmet they are the last 3 unless you have the classic pack installed that one is 14.
I have no hair/helmet option. Just hair.
So I read only the "elite soldier pack" can get helmets? What exactly are those? Recruits?
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On October 22 2012 03:11 Emnjay808 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2012 02:29 Vagabond wrote:On October 22 2012 02:20 Emnjay808 wrote:
I saw some streamers and they have helmets on their soldiers. How did they do that? In the customize options there is a option called hair/ Helmet they are the last 3 unless you have the classic pack installed that one is 14. I have no hair/helmet option. Just hair. So I read only the "elite soldier pack" can get helmets? What exactly are those? Recruits?
Elite soldier pack is a free bonus to all people that preordered.
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Canada8033 Posts
On October 14 2012 18:14 Sentenal wrote:
Man, this game hates me. I down the Overseer, and attack the ship. I inflitrate the ship, and my sniper throws a scanner thing, and I see the Etheral thing and some Muton Elites in the middle. Then they sorta.... Fall through the floor. And the game bugs out for a little bit following them through the floor to the world below, before returning control to my guys. So, I move up a little bit, hugging cover, not knowing WTF just happened, or where all the enemies just disappeared to. At this point, I'm worried they won't ever come back, so I wouldn't be able to complete the mission. Except they did come back. The Etheral and two Muton Elites just appear right in the middle of my guys. Two heavy floaters appear right next to my guys. One of those... Metal Gear Rex guys, IDK what they are called, appear right next to my guys. Its as if the game said "fuck you, suddenly, enemies surrounding you from every direction!" I'm lucky I made it out of there with the death of just one of my veteran heavies. Another of my veteran Assaults dodged like 3 shots at point blank range from the rest.
TL;DR A crazy game bug tried wipe out my team, and killed one of my heavies.
Some similar shit just happened to me.I downed the overseer and was in the process of boarding it, and in the middle of my turn, I discover a sectopod and two drones. Since half of my guys aren't in position to deal with it, I beat a hasty retreat. On enemy turn, a drone pops its head out and is immediately killed.
Then the sectopod decides to spawn in the middle of my formation. Fortunately, it missed both of its shots, but it still wasn't a pleasant experience.
I did manage to stun the ethereal in the command room, but apparently I killed it with a rocket while I was cleaning up the remainder of the enemy forces. =/
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what does that little Star mean on the bottom left, sometimes a soldier gets it. At first i thought that it meant that the Soldier got a Promotion already(for that mission) but it actually isnt :O Sometimes there is a Blue Plus sign... this is what I mean:
![[image loading]](http://imageshack.us/a/img593/1421/unbenanntkl.png)
What does it mean?
What does the Blue Plus sign mean?
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On October 22 2012 22:34 Daumen wrote:what does that little Star mean on the bottom left, sometimes a soldier gets it. At first i thought that it meant that the Soldier got a Promotion already(for that mission) but it actually isnt :O Sometimes there is a Blue Plus sign... this is what I mean: What does it mean? What does the Blue Plus sign mean?
The star means that this person is in command. I think the better the will of the commander, the less likely the soldier are to panic (moderated by their own will).
The blue star means that this soldier has had a promotion.
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In addition, when your squad captain dies, there's a high risk of having soldiers go into panic.
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I think that part of the reason I've enjoyed XCOM:EU more than perhaps some other people have is that the timeline of events went like this for me:
Hear about XCOM shooter > Mutter darkly about the CoD-ification of video games over screwdrivers > Discover Xenonauts > Realize with relief that 'real' X-Com will come some time in the future > Hear about XCOM:EU > See XCOM:EU as a happy bonus
I know that some people are up in arms because of how this game isn't like the original X-Com games, but I'm willing to give new ideas a try and I did like and didn't like some things, and came up with a rationale for others that helped me keep things in perspective and, more importantly, keep the game fun. (That sentence is very poorly constructed...) I'm actually much less exercised over the loss of the ability to basically fund yourself and ignore the government funding mechanic - it actually felt cheap to me to be able to ignore what I viewed as a core mechanic, and grinding out laser cannons to sell was just pbbtth. Getting full Titan/Ghost/Archangel Armor in XCOM:EU with full Plasma weaponry actually felt like an accomplishment. And, as someone said before, the Terror missions (especially in TFTD) would just approach the s;lkajsfdl;akjsfd; level of annoyance.
I don't mind as much that they give you relatively fewer decisions but weight each one relatively more heavily. I don't mind that soldiers can see more than a 90 degree cone in front of them. I actually don't even mind the Panic system they implemented - it's a lot more discrete to manage that than to constantly shoot down infiltration UFOs. Overall I found it enjoyable and despite the relative derp of the story ending, to which I'll honestly admit I expected very little, I definitely view it as worth the time I put into it.
Phew.
I'm really looking forward to Xenonauts, though. Oddly enough, one of the things that irked me most was the relative scarcity of UFOs and the very limited evolution of interceptors and equipment. I can't claim that the original's interception was really all that involved, although the music was better, since really the only thing that took any kind of effort at all was arranging multiple interceptors on a single target simultaneously. But I did prefer that most of the missions were 'UFO missions' and that sometimes you'd completely slam a small scout and find just a single injured Snakeman on the ground for easy mop-up.
One other thing I will say in favor of XCOM:EU is that I greatly preferred its "very rare" approach to human psionics and the more limited scope of them overall. Honestly, psionics break the original game and TFTD both, as do Blaster Launchers. Sure, getting hit with waves of panic and mind control attempts from god-knows-where adds tension to the original, but requiring LOS just feels cleaner. Seeing that Xenonauts also plans to take a much more limited approach to player psionic power is something that I approve of greatly.
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X-com broke as soon as you got psionics, that is pretty clear. Once you got 2-3 good psiops, and had them trained a bit, the rest of your squad were basically just shepherds. Find alien, mind control it, use it as a scout. If you have more then 2-3 active aliens at once, kill some off, and continue to use the rest as scouts. You just need someone that looks at them at the start of each round. If something kills your aliens, it probably just used its reaction shot and volunteered to take its place.
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I don't really remember that part in the original that well. But when you mindcontrolled the last alien, wouldn't the mission end and you get a live capture as well? Also you could just shoot down a mind controlled alien if you wanted to.
It seems kinda odd in the new one that you always have to wait until the mind control wears off (well ok you could grenade yourself). Especially annoying that the mind controlled alien always get a turn when it wears off, so they're still able to get a last shot off before you finally kill them to end the mission.
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On October 23 2012 00:39 PandaCore wrote:
I don't really remember that part in the original that well. But when you mindcontrolled the last alien, wouldn't the mission end and you get a live capture as well? Also you could just shoot down a mind controlled alien if you wanted to.
It seems kinda odd in the new one that you always have to wait until the mind control wears off (well ok you could grenade yourself). Especially annoying that the mind controlled alien always get a turn when it wears off, so they're still able to get a last shot off before you finally kill them to end the mission.
I dont remember the orginal either, but I also dislike that the alien gets a turn when mc wears off and if you kill it yourself during mc your squad loses morale.
Btw anyone having progress with impossible ironman?
The longest I´ve survived is 92 days in maybe 60 tries or so.
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I finished an ironman classic playthough, I only wiped once on my 2nd terror mission (pantheon looking building, had 9 crysalids + a cyberdisk/2drones attacking me by 2nd turn).
Game was pretty fun, huge improvements on some parts of the game, let downs for others.
Outside of combat;
Early game panic level management, feels very frantic. Forces you to make some decisions, took me a few restarts to achieve a proper strategy.
Money and resource management is also very well handled, you pretty much always have to decide what your going to make/buy next with a large list of things you need to purchase ahead of you.
Disappointing how interceptions/geoscape is handled. I never got "outran" by UFOs and the only OFUs you need more than starting weapons for is pretty much the battleships. You can't "Wait until daytime" to land on crashed ship/terror site. Conversely you don't have to assault during nighttime because the terror site is too far or the UFO might fly off if you wait.
Combat wise;
Considering the six-member squad maximum I think they did a good but the squad limitations impacted the game in a negative way. Losing squad member is really really bad, so the game has to make sure it's possible to never lose members, and well it succeeds at that very well. No charging 3 rookies through a door into reaction shots, no getting mauled leaving the skyranger, no panic'ed or mindcontrolled rocketeer killing your team, no destroyed floors in a UFO where they will kill your guys on first floor and you don't know what angle to cross at a mutual surprise and no nighttime fights where aliens have a much longer viewing range than you do. Anything that had a high chance of crippling a large portion of your team is gone. That aliens "run away" after finding you pretty much kills the game. As long as you move up slowly you can pretty much completely control when and how many an aliens will attack you. Only times I really lost units were to sectopods, and early game crysalids if you don't have many laser weapons yet
It's a bit of a bummer all recruits are essentially created equal and any unit of a class has the exact same stats.
All that said I still liked the game quite a bit. I really liked the pack-based system of aliens early on, but in the long run it made the AI incredibly predictable.
Tips for beating classic ironmode;
I played Africa with 2x snipers (squad sight, pistol damage), 2x rocket heavies, 1x defensive assault, 1 medic.
Africa because; best bonus and secondary countries are worth little so you don't really want to pick them.
You want to make and get as many sats/uplinks as fast as possible use them to keep panic down + get USA/Russia ASAP, if you fully satelite a continent, you wont get abductions there anymore, so low-country continents seemed good. As long as you have enough engineers, cash rewards are the best early game.
Combat wise:
Get scopes then carapace armor asap then lasers. Scopes on everyone except medic (medkit + chitin) and assault (ark thrower/chitin). When in doubt, overwatch everyone and wait. And move ahead slowly. I usually overwatch snipers before moving forward because they usually have 95% chance to hit when aliens move around after you spot them. Hotkey overwatch and reload don't use number keys for overwatch because it moves all the time. Stagger reloads over 2 turns while overwatching others before moving, don't move snipers when you move other units. When on a level with multiple floors, be very careful, spin camera around and make sure you have a blue line. Be very careful when capturing aliens, when in doubt kill it don't chance it.
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Probably going to get this, played the original XCOM and Terror from the Deep back in the day; totally good times (surrounding one alien and beating him senseless hahahaha)! Some changes I'm not too happy about, but I can't complain until I've played!
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United States4471 Posts
On October 23 2012 01:26 Xafnia wrote:Combat wise;
Considering the six-member squad maximum I think they did a good but the squad limitations impacted the game in a negative way. Losing squad member is really really bad, so the game has to make sure it's possible to never lose members, and well it succeeds at that very well. No charging 3 rookies through a door into reaction shots, no getting mauled leaving the skyranger, no panic'ed or mindcontrolled rocketeer killing your team, no destroyed floors in a UFO where they will kill your guys on first floor and you don't know what angle to cross at a mutual surprise and no nighttime fights where aliens have a much longer viewing range than you do. Anything that had a high chance of crippling a large portion of your team is gone. That aliens "run away" after finding you pretty much kills the game. As long as you move up slowly you can pretty much completely control when and how many an aliens will attack you. Only times I really lost units were to sectopods, and early game crysalids if you don't have many laser weapons yet
It's a bit of a bummer all recruits are essentially created equal and any unit of a class has the exact same stats.
Agree with all of this. The six member max forced them to remove a lot of the more devastating things that could happen to a team, which is both a good and bad thing. I like that you don't have to exit the skyranger with aliens firing at you from every possible angle like in the original from a frustration point of view, but, along with the other things you listed, it really added to the general "feel" of the game in the original. Having more troops allowed the game to wipe out several of them with a single mistake or turn of bad luck without you feeling like you'd lost something significant or difficult to recover from.
The original really made you feel like you were fighting an overwhelming battle against a superior enemy force until you made the necessary advances and improvements to the organization. Your troops felt very vulnerable and ill-equipped in the beginning, but eventually their increased experience and technological advances allowed them to stand toe-to-toe and eventually even dominate the aliens. However, despite all the improvements, there was always the very real risk of losing multiple troops due to one mistake or stroke of bad luck, which I think made it feel more like actual combat. I don't think it was a bad thing that you always had to have some grunts/fodder to spearhead breaches because that sort of thing is simply part of warfare and a large part of what made the original enjoyable and unique. I want to say that it's a matter of scope and looking at the big picture, which EU kind of lacks due to the smaller troop count, smaller maps, fewer bases,
Not sure if others will agree, but an analogy that comes to mind is the difference between SC/BW and WC3. With the focus on heroes, smaller troop count, and an economy to match, the scope of WC3 was significantly smaller as compared to SC/BW. As a result, I always felt a little claustrophobic when playing WC3 after SC/BW and wanting to see "more". EU did the same thing by reducing the troop count, limiting you to one skyranger and one base, limiting the viable strategies (satellites early-to-mid game), reducing the number of UFOs, etc.
In SC/BW, I felt like I built a war machine of significant size and scope from the ground up in any game that made it past the 10 minute mark, whereas I didn't feel that way with WC3. In the original XCOM, I could see a significant growth and change throughout the game that started with a rag tag group of soldiers in one base with only a few planes that grew into an organization that blanketed the planet with multiple bases, dominated the skies by taking down any UFO that tried to land or fly by, and an army of significant size with meaningful hierarchy (only a few top level soldiers, a good number of officers below them, and a bunch of nameless grunts). The progression was great and felt meaningful, and it's lacking in a game where you feel largely the same limitations at end game as you do in early game (two actions per turn, same inventory capacity, only one skyranger, only one base, etc.).
All that said I still liked the game quite a bit. I really liked the pack-based system of aliens early on, but in the long run it made the AI incredibly predictable.
I've already mentioned it, but I agree that the pack-based system makes the tactical part of the game a lot less interesting. A careful player can have total control at the rate at which aliens come at him, and I don't think that should be true. Then again, the limited troop count necessitates it because it's too easy for aliens to overwhelm you with numbers and soldiers are too valuable to lose them on a consistent basis.
if you fully satelite a continent, you wont get abductions there anymore
I never noticed that. Great to know.
Hotkey overwatch and reload don't use number keys for overwatch because it moves all the time.
Feel dumb for not having thought of this already. I've accidentally Run & Gun while trying to activate overwatch quite a few times due to carelessness.
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EPT
