Polite Nate, in Classic the aliens have better stats (to hit chance, damage, critical…) and your guys have one less HP. Apart of that, I don’t know if they throw you more aliens in the combat. The strategy mode is also harder.
Dejin
3062
Are you playing on standard or classic? AIUI in classic aliens patrol and in standard they don’t. IIRC the exact statement from Jake Solomon was that in standard during a firefight, wandering aliens never enter adding to the firefight. Whereas in classic mode, aliens are following patrol patterns, and if they hear you firefighting with another group of aliens, they’ll come running in your direction, potentially flanking you.
Sadly to me the voices all sound the same. Maybe my ear is just poor, but it really sounds like one male voice actor and one female voice actor with just slightly different lines based on each squaddies’ voice selection.
They seem to do this in Classic but not in Normal. I’ve had Aliens wander in in my Classic playthrough now and it pretty much never happened in my normal playthrough.
rezaf
3064
I’ve had patrolling aliens a couple of times in Normal.
It’s pretty rare, though. More rare than teleporting aliens, in any event.
rezaf
flyinj
3065
Polite Nate-
I strongly suggest you start over as soon as possible in Classic mode. Once you learn the ropes in Normal, the game becomes a boring cakewalk.
Classic is an entirely different beast- way better alien AI, much harder strategy mode… overall a lot more compelling.
hepcat
3066
Ditto. I started on Classic mode and I was wondering why some folks were complaining that aliens never appeared on their own. I’ve seen them wonder out of doorways on more than one occasion…which is why I loves me some overwatch.
As for the game itself, I’m enjoying it a lot. At first I was a little overwhelmed, but the game does ease you in and give you a margin for error when it comes to base building and finances.
I’ve been playing on Classic but without Iron Man. For a while, I was saving during missions so I could reload whenever I would lose someone. However, that eventually started to feel like cheating so now I just save at the beginning of missions and only reload if I completely wipe. Last night I lost 3 of my best soldiers…and it stung. That’s the x-com I remember I love.
The next play through, I’ll enable Iron Man though.
flyinj
3067
Something very important that I didn’t realize-
If you queue up multiple satellites to be built, they all get built at the same time. I thought I was looking at 20 days for each satellite… but put 3 in the queue, you get 3 satellites in 20 days.
I was wondering how people were able to keep countries from leaving in the first two months, well that explains it.
Juste
3068
Really? Wow.
Eh, I mean didn’t everyone know that?
(sneaks off to buy some satellites)
I see patrolling enemies in Normal sometimes, though it may depend on mission type? It’s annoying because they’ll user their “turn” to wander into view, but then they get their free “scatter” move immediately afterward.
I did have one infuriating encounter though where I fought a group of muton elites and armored floaters inside a grocery store, and finally got through it while destroying the entire place over the course of 4 or 5 turns. After all this I send on my last move of the last turn of the fight, I send one guy one square too far and he exposes a group of 3 more Muton Elites who apparently spent the whole 5 turn fight hiding behind the only 3 square aisle of canned fruit that was still standing that somehow I didn’t get a line of sight on during the whole mess. That one felt a little weird that they hadn’t joined the fight sooner even if I’d have been just as screwed.
Not only that, but you’re not limited to the number you can deploy. You could built all 14 satellites you need right off the bat, and then have them ready to deploy as you bring up the satellite control bunkers, or whatever they’re called. Granted, pretty big spending needed to get there, but it does help that you can build the satellites before they’re needed.
So - truly a game-breaking bug for me.
The savegame list is completely borked. I finished the game yesterday, so started a new one last night. Got through the first mission and saved. Today - it’s nowhere to be found. Do the same things this morning. Quit and restart just to make sure. Again, nowhere to be found. So it is impossible right now for me to start another game unless I want to keep the game up in the background the entire time until it’s finished.
Guess I’m looking at a uninstall and a reinstall.
Make sure you scroll through the savegame list to look for it. Also, don’t use the mouse wheel to scroll because it gets confused about the length of the list. You have to grab the bar and pull it down. And when you find the savegame, make sure to double click it. If you just leave it highlighted and click Next, it will pop up with the wrong game.
I wanted to go back to this for a second. For someone that hasn’t played the game, I think you just made a nice analogy.
The enemy wakeup feels somewhat similar to exposing the fog of war in a Panzer General scenario. If you advance too far in either game, you’re at risk of being picked off. In XCOM you have to (micro?) manage the order of operations to make sure you never advance without ending the turn first, and never spending the second action point until everyone has used the first one.
It’s not always a bad thing, and it’s not nearly as puzzle-like as Panzer General. But it helps me understand why the pacing feels a little bit off. Without time limits or decisive victory conditions, it pays to be overly cautious. That can lead to a slow, monotonous feeling until the shots start firing.
It could be the Steam cloud thing messing with you.
Picked this up Friday and played the hell out of it over the weekend. Playing on Ironman Normal, but I think I’m going to have to just pack this one in and start a new game soon. I know a bunch of things I screwed up, including poor equipment management (didn’t get enough laser / plasma weapons early enough, or build enough armor early on), and spending way too much money on interceptors, which don’t appear to matter much in Normal at all.
More importantly, I wiped my entire veteran squad fairly early due to interface issues, and I hadn’t done the officer training to increase my squad size yet. So, now I’m stuck in a loop of missions that are too hard because I don’t have enough troops, so that my troops always die, and I’m just throwing rookies into the meat grinder. I could probably slog along for a while this way, but it’s quickly becoming tedious.
I also wiped a team going into an alien base, which I assumed I was supposed to do because it was my next objective, but I now see that the objective was a dirty lie, and I wasn’t anywhere near ready for it.
MikeJ
3075
Sometimes it pays to put someone (especially a sniper) in overwatch before you move to uncover new ground. Aliens can be shot during their ‘free’ move and can take a hit before they get into cover.
Dejin
3076
Nice tip! I did not know that.
Did you actually play silent storm? In the unlikely event you did, please explain this comment.
Things like a decent LoS system, realistic bullet behavior and realistic (for a game of course) terrain destruction make things more tedious?
Imagine playing xcom, seeing an alien hiding behind a shed and having your high powered rifle shell punch right through the shed, or being able to sneak up on enemies, or not having enemies make shots that are completely impossible due to being blocked.
The silent storm engine is more detailed and better, but it doesn’t require the player to act differently. The engine itself is the one that acts differently. In fact, it requires less from you because you don’t have to plan for the game’s quirky rules and can instead think realistically.
MikeJ
3078
I don’t do it too often, since I can often hit them in cover with my sniper anyway, and I like to choose the most important target. It might be a very effective move for a sniper with ‘In the zone’ though.
I notice it more often when fighting Mutons, since they often move toward you when discovered (and into overwatch fire). It also works for the assault skill that gets a free reaction shot when something moves within 4 spaces.
Hunty
3079
The absolute safest way to get forward is to have two Snipers on overwatch covering a leapfrogging pair of Assaults with the upgrade that increases their defence in proportion to the number of enemies they see. Add Supports and Heavies to taste.
Takes a while though.
I haven’t encountered any obvious bugs yet, but I have seen way too many instances of aliens shooting my soldiers through walls or corners. I know the terrain details are an abstraction, but it’s pretty bad when the glam-cam routinely shows the shot going through things. Plus, there have been numerous times when combatants were on different elevations and shouldn’t have had LOS, yet inexplicably did. Apparently, “hugging the wall” does nothing for visibility.
Also, I think I’ll be fine if I never play the wooded-area-with-creek map again.
