XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Page 85

On November 21 2013 20:04 Gorsameth wrote:

Thin Men have high base accuracy and a Light Plasma Rifle for another 10% bonus. So yes they are very accurate. Move slow. Set up plenty of overwatch and most of them should die as they land.

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 22 2013 02:38 Godwrath wrote:
It's NA.Also, you will be able to field cheaper aircraft, aircraft upgrades and they will cost less to maintain. On impossible you start with 275 on NA for example. Second best is Europe for the cheaper workshops/laboratories when it comes down to which country gives more "cash", because you will have an easier time fielding the first (and consecutive) workshops which are a no brainer.

On November 22 2013 02:43 ViperPL wrote:


Wow, american continent bonus also applies to air upgrades? Nice, didn't know that! I thought it's only interceptors and their maintenance.

On November 22 2013 04:12 Gorsameth wrote:
I actualy think the other way around for MEC. There very good early game but they fall off late. There damage soaking ability isnt needed as much when you get Titan armor and a heavy does as much or more damage. There still very good and I did take 2 on every mission but once Sectopods start showing up Heavy's become more and more needed.

And my fav starting location is prob Europe for the workshop/lab discount. I find I dont need as much aircraft in the first 2 months anyway and that is the critical portion of the game for me.

On November 22 2013 04:28 deth2munkies wrote:


While I have 2 Heavies, I didn't get HEAT ammo on either one of them. Sectopods seem to have damage reduction on non-critical hits that is similar to your MECs (reduces to fraction of their max health, in this case, 5). Therefore, HEAT ammo seems pretty bad, and both the MECs and Heavies can fire as both of their actions with the correct perk.

Not only that, but melee MECs can disable sectopods with the EMP. I use them almost exclusively as anti-sectopod bombs.

On November 22 2013 04:12 Gorsameth wrote:
And my fav starting location is prob Europe for the workshop/lab discount. I find I dont need as much aircraft in the first 2 months anyway and that is the critical portion of the game for me.

On November 22 2013 06:34 Sub40APM wrote:
What are the chances that 4 soldiers miss a shot with 80% chance for each one of them twice?
Am I not understanding math or isnt it. 1-(20%*4*2) to show the probability of making that shot? And yet here I am without my sniper. Screw you RNG.

On November 22 2013 05:21 Godwrath wrote:
I did the maths, and yep, NA is better (slightly) for the first month, but since you will need to buy interceptors, it's much better anyways. Spam labs is bad because you won´t have engineers neither the resources to take advantadge out of it, and spam more workshops than you need doesn´t benefit you economically if you don't go a lot of sats, in which case, you are better off with NA to begin with. To be honest, one if not the biggest flaw of the game, is how poorly developed is the macromanagement of the XCOM resources, where there is the choice, and everything else is a wrong one (not going sats, you can win, but you are handicapping yourself, like playing with 4 soldiers instead of 6, etc).

Heat Ammo is really low, crowd control skills are better (sniper disable is really handy against them), too bad i don't have a snapshot. The best sectopod killers are assaults with offensive perks anyways, since they can raise their crit chance by a lot, get close with mimetic/stealth, next turn use close combat shot (don´t remember the name of the perk) and then rapid fire.

The first bonus i got this time was south america, and i recommend it to everybody, since that way you can get one soldier with mimetic skin pretty fast by month 2 problably (i will try on my next playthrough).

On November 22 2013 06:44 Derez wrote:

Disabling shot has no effect on the secondary weapon of sectopods from my experience.

On November 22 2013 06:47 deth2munkies wrote:


They can still barrage you and still get a reaction shot. I think it even only skips their first shot of the next turn but I'd actually have to get my snipers to land the 80% disabling shot to confirm.

On November 22 2013 06:49 Gorsameth wrote:

99% sure they wont reaction fire or barrage if you disable shot them.

On November 22 2013 06:55 deth2munkies wrote:


They absolutely did both of those things to me last night. The way disabling shot works is it requires their primary weapon to reload. That takes 1 action for a sectopod and doesn't affect their secondary weapon that they use for reaction shots.

On November 22 2013 07:03 Gorsameth wrote:

And i've used it to avoid reaction shots and they do nothing in there turn so... we seem to have conflicting experiances