3081

Well my run of Excellent mission results in my Classic run came to a grinding halt just now. It’s one of those escort missions give to you by the council, and those are my least favourite type of mission because they involve Thin Men who drop onto the map once you reach the escort guy. Having 6 of the damn things surround my troops and go immediately into Overwatch was definitely a “we’re dead” moment. Even if you knew what was coming I’m not entirely sure how you’re supposed to cope with that. I needed a grenade to turn it into a “you always were an asshole, Gorman” moment. I still love the game though, although right now it makes me want to strangle a kitten. I’ll definitely concede this point to rezaf.

3082

LoS is particularly bad when the shooter/shot are on different height levels, especially on a ufo. These days I just assume that if my soldiers are somewhat, kind of, almost in sight, they can be head shot with ease. Also that s ceiling or floor gives no protection.

You’re pretty lucky to have not experienced any obvious bugs though.

3083

Yeah, I acknowledge that I’ve been very lucky. I also only have three saved games and I’ve been using the controller instead of M&KB the whole time, so that probably helped keep me out of trouble.

3084

I guess I must be lucky too, then. I haven’t encountered any significant bugs in many hours of gameplay. No trouble finding saved games. Occasionally the UI does something wonky, but I find turning the camera usually gets me around it.

I think they’ve done a great job of updating the original game. I don’t miss TUs, and I certainly don’t miss scouring a map for that last hidden sectoid – the new “noise” feature saves lots of time. I like the new soldier abilities; they give each class even more of a distinct feel.

I do have minor complaints. I’m a bit worried that there are only a few ways to play the strategic game. Always prioritize engineers over scientists, for example. Kinda wish we had to make more make-or-break decisions on what to research. Even so, I also enjoy the strategic layer.

3085

Yes, that’s another good one for the mechanics thread. But I’ve had Double Tap on both snipers so long that it’s usually worth taking 2 shots at someone in full cover.

By the way, I complained about lethality, dice rolls, and attrition early in the game. Late in the game, you get so much HP and heal times are low enough that I just plow forward and absorb the hits. Every now and then I have to reload on a lethal critical hit because I’m too lazy to use the medkit (which I haven’t bothered to upgrade). It’s faster than playing carefully.

Anyway, I have to give the game credit for making attrition less of a concern as the campaign goes on. But you always have to move cautiously until the enemies pop.

3086

One thing that’s annoying UI-wise on the PC is that, at least at the initial screen, if you’ve chosen to use the controller you can’t just go back to keyboard/mouse control on the fly as with most other games (at least it doesn’t work for me).

3087

I tried both controller and m&k, and prefer the latter actually. Perhaps it’s also because you get the selection rectangle that harks back to the original, which is missing if you use the controller. But I wish WASD could be used to scroll around the base map, instead of edge scroll. I’d actually scroll around to jump to relevant areas if I could use WASD - edge scroll is so annoying I just use the selection menu instead.

3088

See, I still don’t get this.

Problem: An enemy is dug in behind good cover, making him difficult to hit.

[CENTER]Solution #1: Bullet Hell.
[/CENTER]

Purchase every ability in the game that allows your troopers to fire multiple times, plus skills like Holo Targeting. Equip your folks with SCOPES. Fire a billion times and be assured you’ll peck them to death.

[INDENT]Downside: You’ll eat through a lot of ammo, leaving your guns empty at just the wrong moments sometimes. And sometimes the gods of chance will laugh at you and you’ll manage to miss with everything even with the targeting enhancements.

[/INDENT][CENTER]
Solution #2: I’ve Got Movement In Front and Behind.

[LEFT]Take Assault troopers with Run and Gun and Flush Shot. Take Support troopers with Sprinter. Get grapples and Snipers with Squad Sight. Use speed to flank and elevation to get a superior position on the target, defeating his cover.

[INDENT]Downside: All that running around might take a little while, and some missions are time sensitive. All that running around might trigger new enemies, making your situation worse.

[CENTER][B]

Solution #3: It’s All Got To Go.[/B]

[/CENTER]
[/INDENT][LEFT]Load up on Heavies. Load the Heavies up on all the rocket and grenade skills. If you have a squad of three maxed-out Heavies, one Assault, one Support and one Sniper, your team has 19 cover destroying shots per mission, which really should be more than enough. Blow up everything!
[INDENT]Downsides: You’ve blown up everything! Which means your mission rewards will suck, the labs won’t have much to work with, etc. Your team will be relatively slow and immobile, and in some missions speed can be handy. You’ve also destroyed all of your own cover if you have to advance into the zone of your last fight to continue the mission. And your team will be low in other useful accessories like Medikits and Arc Throwers.

[CENTER]Solution #4:(Not Appearing In This Game).

[/CENTER]
[/INDENT][CENTER][LEFT]All weapons can be aimed at and destroy cover. The answer for every engagement is “Hunker down. Destroy cover. Destroy aliens behind cover. Rinse, repeat.”
[/LEFT]
[/CENTER]
[INDENT][CENTER]
[LEFT]Downside: Most tactical and squad improvement choices in the game become not all that relevant. The most efficient solution is obvious. A bright 6 year old can beat the game using one tactic.
[/LEFT]
[/CENTER]

[/INDENT]

I could have someone who could run far AND shoot well AND carry a lot of stuff.

[/LEFT]
[/LEFT]
[/CENTER]

But, you can see from a game design and game balance point of view why it isn’t necessarily desirable to be able to make a trooper who is essentially good at everything? It makes roles largely pointless, and takes the fun/tension out of leveling choices.

(As an aside, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but if you just want to say fuck it and have a couple really maxed out badass troopers, rename any two guys in your barracks “Sid Meier” and “Ken Levine”. I wouldn’t do it in a first playthrough, but for a second “what the heck” game, why not?)

3089

Is that some kind of Easter Egg? Does renaming troopers to Sid and Ken really create uber-troops?

3090

I see the discussion is pretty heated up in the last 24 hours, and I didn’t even participate in! :P

3091

Yes. I think it’s considered a cheat code so you lose achievements (which I never give a damn about). Ooh, also Joe Kelly and Otto Zander seem to work.

3092

It is and it does. I tried “Julian Gollop” and got nothin’. Bah!

3093

  1. Don’t be a dick. If I said I found Silent Storm tedious to play, then yes, I played Silent Storm.

  2. I explained what I meant in post #3026. Because the game engine has so many features and because the game is designed to leverage those features, I found SS fiddly and tedious to play. The order of operations and workflow in any given turn in XCom is faster, and I like that, even if it’s simpler. The LOS issue is simply a matter of accepting that XCom is not trying to be some kind of diorama combat sim with true-to-life everything.

3094

[LEFT]If the game would be too easy if you could free-aim your weapons and destroy all the cover, making all the different tactics irrelevant, the solution would be (IMO) :

  1. Make the cover harder.
    Will you waste two shots of a good weapon to destroy the cover, and a third one to hit the alien, when you could have shot him down with the first shot? Without cover you will hit him easier, but you need to use up more shots for that. It’s a trade off.
  2. Put some incentives to not destroy fucking everything in the scenario. -$$ for % of the scenario destroyed. Balance it so destroying stuff it’s still useful for some situations and well covered enemies but you still can’t use it always with every encounter, because that way you would lose money every time and battle after battle, it will show in your economy.
    Alternative: reduce loyalty if you destroy too much cover. But that would need another loyalty system.
    [/LEFT]
    [/CENTER]
3095

Hugin, you misunderstood my reasons for missing destructible terrain and/or called shots. I want this more to make a path where there is none, and because blowing holes in things was SO COOL in Silent Storm (though it wasn’t nearly as cool in the original X-Com). Chipping away cover isn’t really my main concern.

But following your train of thought for a minute, I don’t think the excluded solution #4 is quite as obvious as you make it out to be, especially not considering the other combat mechanics. A few things to consider:
> Making a called shot on a wall will consume this soldier’s entire turn - this means I’m giving up a lot just to have this wall gone.
> I still have to hit it! If I miss my shot on the wall, I’ve now wasted my turn for nothing.
> I can already shoot on an alien behind cover even with the current mechanics, and maybe it’ll even tear down the cover. But the point is, I can shoot at him, so tearing down the cover is nonessential. Also, flanking him is always an option, and probably often the better one.

So I see no good reason to prevent called shots on cover.

But it’s the same as with the RNG seed stored in the save game - the designer doesn’t want to be limited to encourage you how you should do things, he want’s to DICTATE you how to do them.
I guess it works, but pardon me if I don’t like it all that much.

rezaf

3096

While I played the hell out of the original Xcom, I have to say that dismantling houses with a rifle was one of the most abstracted elements in the game. I’m much more comfortable with the new system of allowing select explosive weapons to take out cover, while having certain cover that is destroyable. As far as I can tell, the game is at least partially tracking misses caused by the blocking effects of destroyable cover and then determining whether the cover is destroyed. This seems much more realistic than intentionally targeting the crate and then the guy behind it.

As to pathing, the troops jump and hop over most cover (particularly the destroyable type) with ease. The first time I saw that, I mouthed a thank you to the devs after years of playing games where a 1 foot high object acted as an insurmountable barrier.

My gut still misses a lot of the details of the original (e.g., crouching, shot types, detailed stats), but I can certainly see the game design decisions behind their removal. Some time get annoyed by the unpredictability of a rookies’s specialization, but this harkens back to psi ability.

3097

True enough.

But they are so stingy with number of rockets/grenades! :(

3098

19!! And that’s with a reasonably balanced team. If you go all-Heavies, it’s 30!!

3099

What? Maybe if they are all Colonels with the bonus grenade and shedder rocket upgrades…that is not usually an option.

Also, is anyone else kind of disappointed by how wussy grenades are in the game? In the original X-Com, a normal grenade would usually take out a Sectoid or Floater, and an alien grenade or demo charge would pretty much kill anything but a cyberdisc or sectopod, maybe a very lucky Muton or Chryssalid. In the new game…well, I suspect if you’re not in normal difficulty the basic grenades can’t kill anything – in normal, they will only kill Sectoids or Thin Men. Alien grenades can kill Floaters too…and nothing else. They’re pretty much ONLY good for blowing the hell out of terrain (which for some reason is easier to damage than a muton or Chryssalid).

Spoiler protected late game annoyingness (sorry about that)

I am about ready for the last mission now, and I had a mission last night were there was some serious Ethereal bullshit going on. Ethereal and an Elite Muton left, Ethereal mindcontrols one of my assault guys, everyone else but one sniper is positioned to take care of the ethereal. My other assault mind controls the Muton, everyone else fires at the ethereal…and every single person’s shot gets reflected back at them by the Ethereal. That was some serious bullshit – especially since Ethereals also have a bizillion hit points. How the hell does that power work?

3100

But he wants 19 per man ;)

Personally i would have liked a limit of 3 and just make them do less damage or damage in a different way, say they do 5 damage but if there is 3 aliens it’s 5 damage divided by 3 meaning you can’t kill em all in one go, or you kill 1 and slightly injure 2 and so on.

I also miss the option to look round the corner, see an alien, shoot then dodge back, i know why they did it but i still prefer the TU way however it is still a great game.