XCOM: Enemy Unknown

[Reldan]

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.

Sometimes you take the shot because there’s no guarantee the retreat will prevent them from advancing and shooting you anyways. Keeping clean lines of retreat open is part of the tactical decisions you’re making.

If I’m about to go around a blind corner I make sure I’ve got everyone else in position to either rush in and deal with whatever I find, or to set up an overwatch zone of death to retreat back into if I run into something where I don’t feel confident I’d come out ahead with a full assault.

Going around a corner with one dude, not knowing if there’s hostiles there and/or what your hit chance is going to be, and being locked down to only the options of 50% attack or retreat - the tactical fail here was proceeding to go around that corner in the first place.

[Reemul]

Sometimes you take the shot because there’s no guarantee the retreat will prevent them from advancing and shooting you anyways. Keeping clean lines of retreat open is part of the tactical decisions you’re making.

If I’m about to go around a blind corner I make sure I’ve got everyone else in position to either rush in and deal with whatever I find, or to set up an overwatch zone of death to retreat back into if I run into something where I don’t feel confident I’d come out ahead with a full assault.

Going around a corner with one dude, not knowing if there’s hostiles there and/or what your hit chance is going to be, and being locked down to only the options of 50% attack or retreat - the tactical fail here was proceeding to go around that corner in the first place.

The problem is there is no tactical fail, you never do it which equates to less choice and only 1 way of playing that rather than multiple ways.

It is great game but tactically there is less to it, the choice is generally more black and white and good or bad, there seems very few shades of grey.

[Arbit]

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.

Definitely had this problem as well. The game does not handle shooting from one elevation to another very well. See also: a guy taking cover at a half-wall overlooking a room cannot see shit on the lower floor except at the very back of the room.

I also had a squaddie be able to draw a LoS to a muton through a solid wall, but as soon as said wall was blown halfway down he could no longer see the target, and neither he nor the muton moved at all.

[Hugin]

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? :)

Yes, I see that I’m really glad they got rid of TU’s.

At the end of the day, when it comes to all the tradeoffs available, I like the idea of having to make a hard choice between 3 or 4 choices (usually a standard offensive choice, a standard defensive choice, a personal utility choice, and depending on the class, a Super Aggressive Offensive choice, a Super Defensive defensive choice, and a more team oriented utility choice), knowing a mistake can be costly. To me that’s good solid gameplay. Breaking that down into 15 steps per character per turn feels like a slog to me. Obviously people’s mileage varies on that.

[Stepsongrapes]

The problem is there is no tactical fail, you never do it which equates to less choice and only 1 way of playing that rather than multiple ways.

It is great game but tactically there is less to it, the choice is generally more black and white and good or bad, there seems very few shades of grey.

The tactical choice on basic actions (e.g., shoot and move) are clearly less than the original Xcom. That said, the special abilities are a whole layer of gameplay that aren’t in the original.

So, basics more abstracted, specials/perks more variety. The new Xcom arguably is more tactical on a squad-based level than the old Xcom. You can create a lot of different combos of skills in this one, whereas the old Xcom had each trooper having more options, but less definition.

[jpinard]

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.

How do you know if your mission is going to be loaded with Thin Men? I’m pretty bad and I usually try and carry grenades as I need the extra firepower.

[Papageno]

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 kept reading over the years that someone modded out the Panzerkleins somehow, or made them less awful. Is that not true?

Re: X-Com, I was assaulting a large alien scout ship (intact, not crashed) and was feeling pretty good about how things were going, and had even captured the energy alien that captains the ships, when something like 5 mutons show up from outside the ship (I suppose they’d been, appropriately, scouting). That was one crazy firefight.

BTW, I bought the faster healing upgrade from the OTS, but I gather it doesn’t affect people who are already injured? I looked before and after buying it and my wounded dudes/dudettes still had the same recovery times.

[Reemul]

The tactical choice on basic actions (e.g., shoot and move) are clearly less than the original Xcom. That said, the special abilities are a whole layer of gameplay that aren’t in the original.

So, basics more abstracted, specials/perks more variety. The new Xcom arguably is more tactical on a squad-based level than the old Xcom. You can create a lot of different combos of skills in this one, whereas the old Xcom had each trooper having more options, but less definition.

Yep that is true, it’s a more of a you have unlocked a special move per level as you play, meaning as long as you have high ranking soldiers you get more options but if you don’t you lose that and have less choice. The unlocks are great and if you are lucky you get the type that suits your play style (i have had only ever 1 sniper at a time which is frustrating when I can’t take one along due to injury)

I also have to add as a father of 2 young kids it’s much more manageable now to play than it was, so while I hark back to the other way of playing I probably play more or at least i advance the game quicker as you get more done in the same time

[TurinTur]

Yes, I see that I’m really glad they got rid of TU’s.

At the end of the day, when it comes to all the tradeoffs available, I like the idea of having to make a hard choice between 3 or 4 choices (usually a standard offensive choice, a standard defensive choice, a personal utility choice, and depending on the class, a Super Aggressive Offensive choice, a Super Defensive defensive choice, and a more team oriented utility choice), knowing a mistake can be costly. To me that’s good solid gameplay. Breaking that down into 15 steps per character per turn feels like a slog to me. Obviously people’s mileage varies on that.

The funny thing here, for me, is that I already considered the original Xcom system for combat as somewhat “simple”!!, or light-medium level, it wasn’t particularly complex, detailed or realistic. If sometimes felt like a slog was the high number of soldiers, bigger maps, weird TU metrics, and the (now) outdated interface. But the combat system itself wasn’t really nothing out this world, it was kind of basic. Which wasn’t actually bad because it was a game with a decent strategy layer and you played lots of battles in a campaign.
JA2 is the medium-heavy level, and Brigade E5/7.62mm is the heavy level.

[Reldan]

Your tactics will change as you progress through the game and the composition of enemy forces and strength of your gear adjusts. It’s not so much the case that there’s only ever one tactic in the game, but it is true that in most situations there’s an optimal solution and a lot of crappy solutions that generally involve death or needless risk of death.

[jpinard]

When are you supposed to use a Pistol vs. a Rifle?

[rei]

When you run out of ammo in your rifle. Or if you need to keep an alien alive for capture purposes and a rifle’s damage would kill them.

[forgeforsaken]

When are you supposed to use a Pistol vs. a Rifle?

Pistols are useful on really only two classes. Assaults with shotguns, as it will give them a higher accuracy shot on distant targets, and on Snipers who can’t shoot and move. Pistols are exceptionally good on snipers with the Gunslinger perk.

[scharmers]

When are you supposed to use a Pistol vs. a Rifle?

1. Oh shit, long gun is empty. Switching to pistol.

2. I need to capture an alien. I can ping this sectoid or thin man for 2 damage, and have somebody nearby with an arc thrower then nail his ass.

3. Oh shit, I’m a sniper, and there’s somebody all up in my grill. (Sniper rifle min. range penalty).

4. I am SUCH A BADASS I DON’T NEED LONG GUNS.

[zombo77]

Pistols are nice to have on assaults that pack a short range main guns too, IIRC a plasma pistol with all the upgrades has almost the same stats as a light plasma rifle.

[ChiTownBluesFan]

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 use a 360 controller, so I wasn’t using the mouse anyway. But I did scroll through the whole list and it wasn’t there.

However, uninstalling and reinstalling did work. Or at least it cleared the file list. Just need to remember to not move the local save files anywhere.

Also find it amusing that I’m at the point where downloading a game over the internet is faster than installing it from DVDs. ~50-60 minutes off of physical media. About 30-35 for internet. I may have bought my last physical copy of a game.

[ChiTownBluesFan]

It could be the Steam cloud thing messing with you.

Didn’t think about that. May have to turn that off.

[jpinard]

Thanks for the pistol help! That gives me a lot more strategic options. Last question:

Is there any benefit to capturing even more live specimens after you’ve gotten that species already?

[Miramon]

Thanks for the pistol help! That gives me a lot more strategic options. Last question:

Is there any benefit to capturing even more live specimens after you’ve gotten that species already?

Free weapons for the high level ones, depending on species.

[TimJames]

I’d tell people to post mechanics questions to the mechanics thread, but you guys are on your own now.

To try to steer the conversation away from comparisons to Silent Storm and X-COM, I’d like to mention a letdown within XCOM as it’s designed: flanking. It’s my favorite game mechanic. I thought it’d be a positive tradeoff we’d get from the move to a cover system. It’s there in XCOM but there are two things that keep me from enjoying it as much as I’d like: lack of “perfect” cover, and enemy wakeup.

Perfect cover provides a static situation that I can exploit by maneuvering. Suppress with one unit, flank with another. That’s hard to set up in XCOM because cover provides no damage mitigation. Your static unit might be killed before you can get into position. It works the same way on offense. Most of the time it’s faster to apply concentrated force (dice rolls) until you kill the enemy behind full cover. Suppression exists as a special ability, and there are powers that allow aggressive movement for free. I just wish they would’ve designed the base mechanics around it instead.

But then they’d have to do something about enemy wakeup. Even if you want to send a unit to flank, you run the risk of alerting 2-3 enemies at a time. You’re giving the AI a greater concentration of force. With the free wakeup move, you can’t always put the cat in the bag by moving back. I mitigate this with Squad Sight to protect against emergencies. I also don’t flank at all until I’m sure there is no way for enemies to spawn unexpectedly, like at the end of the map corridor.

Obviously X-COM didn’t do any of this. But I thought it’d be one of the benefits of the switch to a cover system. It happens sometimes but not enough. It’s not just because of abstraction. Combat is based more on superpowers than maneuvering. It reminds me of the move from DAO (playing a thief) to DA2. So I’m a little bummed but at least I can still enjoy it for what it is.