XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Page 77

On August 22 2013 03:14 Obsidian wrote:
I've been playing Long War Beta 2.x recently.

I enjoy some elements of it, but I think there's quite a bit of balancing still to go. Huge alien pods are nice, but the enemies build strength fairly quickly.

I like the 8 classes, though H. Gunners need work yet, and base guns loose effectiveness very quickly.

The increased # of missions is good, but the new 'tired' system that forces soldier cycling is a bit harsh still. I haven't yet gotten to Mutons, but they will be chucking grenades and that will basically end most playthroughs I feel. The mechanism of interception doesn't fit well with the improved alien craft and # of interceptions required, but the worst is the development cycle. Research takes a very, very long time. Money is also incredibly tight, between the need for expensive base facilities, increased incerceptor costs, SHIV and item costs, and more it is problematic.

I never much agreed with Cash being a serious issue, considering that your supposedly the last line of defense and all that. In most other XCOM games, the economy is only an issue for very early game, where as is it's a permanent issue in Enemy Unknown, and very very harsh early game in Long War. Even with the fixed rewards for abduction missions, I simply don't have anywhere near enough to attempt to actually keep up with base, unit, foundry, and interception/satelite coverage, I don't even have enough to do 2, let alone all 5 elements, and that's before I can start building armor/weapons.

Enemy Within will add many, many new maps, and rework all of Enemy Unknown’s to support Meld canisters. The number of extra arenas hasn’t been finalised, but Gupta estimates that the odds of not seeing a new map in your first three missions are somewhere in the range of one in ten thousand.

Many more tweaks have been made under the hood. Firaxis tell me that one of the big advantages to doing a proper expansion, rather than incremental DLC, is that it’s allowed them to delve deep into the codebase and devote the time needed to some serious rewiring. This has enabled them to fix the notorious enemy teleporting bug, and a few bugs that would deny soldiers their hardearned flanking bonuses. They’ve also made lots of what they call ‘quality of life’ improvements. Cover can be targeted by explosive weapons. Objects and enemies within blast radius now gain a red scanline effect that makes it clear what is and isn’t being targeted by the attack. If you take a squaddie out of your lineup, their gear is placed into an easily accessible locker, so you won’t have to check every squad member to see who has that arc thrower you need. It’s a collection of small but significant changes that the community has been requesting since Enemy Unknown released.

On September 29 2013 18:45 screamingpalm wrote:
Some more info on Enemy Within, and sounds like they may have fixed the teleport bug now!

On October 07 2013 02:17 daemir wrote:
The thing about long war is, you will need more than 1 squad worth of people and the game is long so you'll have plenty of time to train them up. Also, SHIVs, get some.