3121

I feel like the copious amount of explosives available in Silent Storm and X-com basically make the early game totally trivial.

3122

Help with Thin Men

…please…

3123

Carrying a medikit makes you immune to poison. That’s the big thing for me, with Thin Men. Also, try not to bunch up your soldiers too much (when you can help it, which I know isn’t always). Makes you less vulnerable to AOE attacks.

3124

Again, that’s not my complaint. My issue is that the visual representation, if made real with miniatures or people standing in a real setting, would not present what’s happening in the engine.

Situation 1: My squaddie is behind a corner with the alien standing 10 meters away. When he shoots at the alien, the glam-cam shows my soldier facing the wall and shooting through the corner at the alien. Kind of immersion-breaking. Sort of dumb looking, but not too terrible. I wish they’d used some resources to show my guy leaning around the corner and firing.

Situation 2: My squaddie is moving next to a building wall, the alien is on the roof 3 or 4 squares back from the edge. As my guy moves, the alien sees me and gets his Overwatch shot off and kills the soldier. In no way should the alien be able to shoot my guy as he runs along the building. The alien should not be able to see him at all. I understand that this is really just some abstract representation of what’s going on, but what? Show me what’s happening. Did the alien hear my dude, leap forward and shoot down, then leap back? Is it like the case above in which Firaxis just didn’t want to spedn the resources to show the lean around the corner? It’s infuriating because the game is showing me something that’s counter to what I know of reality. Show me the game’s reality and I’ll plan for it.

3125

I was specifically addressing the assertion that one could think realistically and not worry about the quirks of the SS engine. “Thinking realistically”, if I set my sniper up on the second floor he should be able to cover pretty much everything in his line of sight. He wasn’t. Not even close. Which means the think realistically thing was, again, simply untrue.

I’m not really sure what point you were making, but I don’t think it had anything to do with what I posted.

3126

While poison from Thin Men is really irritating, the bigger issue is that they seem to be deadly accurate at any range. I think they carry around the light plasma rifle, which provides a +10 to aim. I wouldn’t accept anything other than full cover against these guys.

Don’t push ahead, either. They always pop up in groups of three, and if you’re playing a scripted Council mission, then they’re going to fall in from the sky every few turns. You don’t want to become overwhelmed.

I like using Assaults against them: Run & Gun gets me get in quick to take 'em out in a single shot.

Still, these guys are really though, especially early on. I’ve lost entire elite squads because I’m dealing with 10-15 Thin Men at once.

3127

I have a love/hate relationship with Silent Storm. It does some things very well, like they way audio cues are represented. However, it does enough things badly that it ruined the experience for me, stuff like: staircases made of balsa wood, Axis patrols in the English countryside, those awful panzerkleins, etc.

I’m still adjusting to the XCOM cover system. That is, to me, it still isn’t always obvious how the diagonals work or how much intervening terrain features affect shots. As for destructible terrain, I had a bit of a nasty surprise when a muton berserker smashed a hole in the wall to reach me.

3128

Later in the game, an all Thin Men assault is friggin Christmas. They all go down in one shot, pretty much no matter what you hit them with. A great opportunity to train up some rooks. Side note… The SCOPE is also pretty good at mitigating a rookies terrible aim!

3129

I agree again and your right the tension is higher and it’s much easier to make a mistake, screw up and lose people. I like it, I also like the old way as well, while not as tense it’s defintely more tactical, having limited turns (2) means less tactical choices. Really i’d like both games, maybe a year apart :)

3130

My sniper colonel really cleaned up against the Thin Men last night. I think he had 8 kills in that one mission. On the other hand, both my normal support guys were on med leave, and all my other guys (apart from the sniper) were getting poisoned repeatedly and missing all the time.

3131

I know this is a frustrating answer but in my game the squaddie sidesteps out of cover, takes a shot, then sidesteps back. I have no particular memory of one of my team blatantly firing through a wall or whatever in terms of animation errors. I saw what you’re talking about on youtube in the preview builds but not in the actual retail game. When my guys fire through a car or a wall, they break glass, the car is set on fire, etc, indicating the animation was deliberate and had real in-game consequences.

Situation 2: My squaddie is moving next to a building wall, the alien is on the roof 3 or 4 squares back from the edge. As my guy moves, the alien sees me and gets his Overwatch shot off and kills the soldier. In no way should the alien be able to shoot my guy as he runs along the building. The alien should not be able to see him at all. I understand that this is really just some abstract representation of what’s going on, but what? Show me what’s happening. Did the alien hear my dude, leap forward and shoot down, then leap back? Is it like the case above in which Firaxis just didn’t want to spedn the resources to show the lean around the corner? It’s infuriating because the game is showing me something that’s counter to what I know of reality. Show me the game’s reality and I’ll plan for it.

Again, I’ve never had this happen. I’ve never had an enemy make an “impossible” shot through a wall out of LOS or whatever. I’m not saying you’re not being truthful, I’m just saying it’s not a frustration to me because it for whatever reason hasn’t happened to me yet. It took me a while to get a cascading panic situation as well, but it was irritating when it happened, so I sympathize.

3132

I think we have different definitions of “tactical choice”. For me, a tactical choice is:

“I can move, and fire, and then be vulnerable.”

“I can move, assess the situation, then pull back with my second move.”

"I can move, then utilize a special ability (run and gun to dash to different cover and still fire, use my scouting position to provide my Sniper with some Squad Sight chances before pulling back, throw a grenade, throw a smoke grenade, set up Overwatch fire, etc etc).

To me those are tactical choices.

“Move, fire, then move back into complete safety with no consequences” doesn’t feel like a tactical choice to me, because I didn’t have make any tradeoffs or sacrifices. There’s no downside. I get my cake and eat it too. It’s the obvious safe yet offensively effective move.

3133

I never played Silent Storm. I have now purchased Silent Storm 2: Gold Edition as well as its expanson and sequel at gog.com for $9.99 as a result of your posts and have grabbed all the available mods for it as well – including the mod which removes the Panzerkleins from the game :)

Regrettably, Silent Storm 2 does not appear to support widescreen, although there is a workaround for it using some native stretching options and apparetnly the results are pretty decent. (It appears that Silent Storm:Sentinels does support widescreen, though as I have not tried that yet I cannot say).

Anyways, thanks for the tip: I look forward to having something to play when my current love affair with XCom: Enemy Unknown ends. Assuming I don’t just go back and replay Valkyria Chronicles to the very end as I stopped a few missions shy of that when I first played it. VC is another excellent game (it is a hard to find PS3 exclusive with gorgeous graphics and awesome gameplay) which is, in many respects very, very close to many of the gameplay elements of XCom: Enemy Unknown.

.

3134

He just told your ass to learn 2 play, noob

(Note: not fan of SS. No strategic layer; you can do stupid, unrealistic crap with the destructable terrain, and PANZERKLEINS.)

3135

Yeah but there is no choice is there, you are at a corner, you spend your first move moving round it you are then left with no choice really, if it was me and i looked round and someone said you have a 50% chance
to hit it but if you miss you can’t move well you just retreat every time that’s not a tactical choice it’s self preservation.

Once again i’m not saying I don’t like the game but I feel i play a certain way only because that’s the way you have to play, 1 move at a time, leave soldiers in overwatch, never take chances moving round corners, put a sniper high, have squad watch and so on. It feels like a lack of variety and I can’t see much replay due to this, in fact as good a game as it is I can’t see this being played 15 years on due to limited maps and limited tactical variety.

3136

I loved Valkyria Chronicles and wish they made a real console or PC sequel, but you kind of had to discipline yourself not to 1. Use most of the Orders. and 2. Not just roll with a bunch of Superscouts.

3137

Steel_Wind, there’s no such thing as Silent Storm 2, regrettably - only the stand-alone addOn Sentinels.
S2 was just their semi-creative way of referencing the twin letters that abbreviate the game title.

Anyway, when you get to play it, don’t forget the graphics are now a decade old and try this:
Take some heavy explosives with you on a mission.
Find a building, ideally with something else that can explode (such as a gas boiler) in the basement.
Rig the basement with explosives.
Place soldiers spread out across the map.
Lure a couple of enemies into the ground floor.
Detonate.
Watch in awe as the building explodes SPECTACULARLY and bodies rain down on your unsuspecting soldiers halfway across the map.

Doing this for the first time is my #1 Silent Storm memory, and I like it better than maxle’s. :p

rezaf

3138

Sure, if all you’re running is abduction and VIP rescue missions. You’re right. But there was pretty much only one way to play in X-Com, too – movement was ALWAYS: stand, run only far enough to keep reaction fire TU, crouch. Sniper in cover, not moving to save all their TU. Heavies lumbering along to lay down base fire as needed. You’re making the same decisions in both games, just with different mechanics.

Goes out the window for terror missions, unless you’re just focusing on squad preservation and to hell with the civilians.

TOTALLY goes out the window for bomb defusal missions. Assault run and gun to the rescue!

3139

I think the cover system is actually pretty easy to understand once you understand it’s all abstract and not necessarily based on what anything on the map actually looks like. The frustrating bit is that later in the game LoS becomes as important or more important than cover, but that’s not something their engine makes easy to determine. The obvious bit is that if you have LoS on them, they have LoS on you too, but it can be a guessing game as to whether the spot you’re about to move to will have LoS. With a good amount of experience I probably get the LoS I’m expecting 95% of the time, but it’s brutal if you lose the opportunity to make an attack (or get attacked where you thought you were safe) because of weird LoS.

And yes, I’ve had blatant “shooting through solid terrain” happen on more than one occasion in my playthroughs. Also had a Berserker move onto a ramp and become effectively invisible - the guy I moved to the top of the ramp COULD NOT SEE HIM and thus couldn’t shoot him. On the alien’s next turn it was like he appeared out of thin air and ran up to beat on my guy.

3140

It doesn’t work like that. First, you are vulnerable at reaction fire the moment you enter in the LoS, and you have to enter in LoS to fire. Your description make it sound like totally safe and an invulnerable way of playing, which isn’t true.

Second, there are tactical choices: how many times to move, how many times to fire, when, where, and how.

  1. You can spend all your turn running
  2. Or firing once and then moving the rest
  3. Or firing twice and then moving the rest (shorter distance)
  4. Or moving and then firing once
  5. Or moving and the firing twice
  6. Or moving a bit, firing, then moving again
  7. Or not moving but firing all the turn
  8. Or leaving in any combination points to do reaction fire in their turn
    etc
    And every time you fire, you have to make a tradeoff of accuracy for more TU which could be used to move or fire more times.
    Apart from the obvious: where to move, in what direction, when to do it, how to do it (by pairs, in a wider formation, etc), target priority, etc

eidt: you say that way (6) it’s totally safe but even if you don’t eat a reaction shot, you may miss the hit. What do yo do then? Fire again? Then you stay out of cover? Get to cover again? ohh but then you use up all your movement points, no more for reaction choices, and the alien or any of their friend can turn the corner in his turn and kill you.

see? :)