XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Page 80

On November 15 2013 05:25 sacrilegious wrote:

First time I tried to go old school after researching Meld not realizing what it was. I got wiped after the first terror mission. The 2nd time I got wiped after trying to escort the VIP back with a MEC soldier, and the officer school upgrades. The mission was going well for me and I had all 5 of my guys living, then 3 thin men and a sectoid dropped, one thin man the following turn after surviving overwatch fire found like the tiniest hole to fire at my VIP who dies, 2 of my squad panic, and the next thing I know mission failed with all 5 of my squad dead.

....

On November 15 2013 13:51 haffy wrote:
Have snipers been nerfed in this expansion? I remember relaying on them a lot on my iron man play throughs, but now I feel they're kinda shit. Might be more to do with the new maps I guess.

On November 15 2013 16:28 happyft wrote:


Yeah I feel like when you're on Classic or Impossible difficulty, one of the most common ways of getting a team wipe is having all your new guys panic and teamkill. If there's more than one squad of aliens on the field, I know it's pretty much over if I got a chain reaction panic event.

And if you look up the wiki on thin men, they have 75 base aim + 10 with plasma rifle, so even if you're under full cover, they still have a 45% chance of hitting you. And if they have the high ground, then that's 65% chance if you're under full cover. So basically, you need to kill Thin Men before they kill you.

On November 15 2013 13:51 haffy wrote:
Have snipers been nerfed in this expansion? I remember relaying on them a lot on my iron man play throughs, but now I feel they're kinda shit. Might be more to do with the new maps I guess.

On November 15 2013 18:10 -Archangel- wrote:
Just some advice to people having trouble playing on Ironman Classic.
-1. Turn off tutorial
1. Pick NA as starting region - because they give you most money at start.
2. build 4 satellites before 10 days pass (they build for 20 days and need to be ready before Council Report) - sell anything you get from missions if you need to but wait until you get first engineers from abduction mission before you start building them
3. on first Abduction take Engineer mission ALWAYS! - it will give you access to workshop and you need engineers to build new Satellite Uplink.
4. Build Workshop ASAP and when it is finished build Satellite uplink next to the first one. Have areas ready to build these buildings (it takes 5 days to dig earth from area). Workshop builds for 10 days and Uplink for 14. You need to have both ready before Council Report
5. With extra money get Power Building and Officer School after you have satellites, workshop and satellite uplink building.
6. With research get weapon research and then beam weapons. If you do it like this, you can have laser rifles and pistols before first Terror mission. I also managed to squeeze in Meld Research.
7. If you done everything OK, you will be able to Launch 4 satellites at end of month before Council Report. If possible cover all 3 Africa countries and some other with most panic. General rule of launching satellites is to save countries that might leave the council, and then 2nd one is to finish covering all countries in one continent (when you do cover them all you no longer get Abduction missions in that area there which means you can control Panic more easily).
8. Now you got lots of money and can survive missions failures more easily. For month two your goal is to build another Satellite Uplink and 3-4 more satellites as well as whatever else you fancy.

TLDR: This is how you can finish Classic Ironman without losing any council member (of course you also must do most of your combat missions)

On November 16 2013 07:10 sacrilegious wrote:
Yea so I made another new attempt again on classic ironman, and did the build -Archangel- described, although I don't know how he got 4 satellites up + sat comlink and 3 days minimum deployment of satellites before the 1st month. I rushed that and the most I could get was 2, with the 3rd one a day after.

On November 15 2013 16:54 -Archangel- wrote:

They no longer can critical hit on overwatch.

On November 16 2013 07:10 sacrilegious wrote:
Yea so I made another new attempt again on classic ironman, and did the build -Archangel- described, although I don't know how he got 4 satellites up + sat comlink and 3 days minimum deployment of satellites before the 1st month. I rushed that and the most I could get was 2, with the 3rd one a day after.

Anyway I managed to get laser weapons before my most hated mission so far, "PORTENT". Needless to say, my squad (4 members) got wiped after I rescued the dude, by you know what... THIN MEN. I'm telling you guys this mission has to be the most frustrating one (similar to the EU council missions involving diffusing the bombs). It seems every non-overwatch shot by them is a critical hit which means instant death. Otherwise they pussy behind overwatch themselves whether they drop from the sky or get proc'd making it impossible to flank them or get a high % shot. Fortunately for me I prepared myself and have at least 4 other non-rookies on my squad and laser weapons with carapace armor almost researched, so I won't give up this time. But does anyone know if losing the "PORTENT" mission set you back greatly?