3161

Really excellent analogy, Tim.

I am encountering a section of the game where partial cover is completely unreliable. With the paucity of total cover, coupled with the killing power of the enemy’s weapons, I am getting almost physically angry at the game. Yes, yes. I mad, bro.

I am reminded of memoir '44, a game I strongly dislike. They share a feature- highly variable outcomes that have massive in game consequences. If the chances against insta-death were high, I could handle the loss of an occasional well placed, well defended trooper. If the consequences of losing such a trooper were less, I could likewise handle it. Put them both together, and you get a game that is becoming increasingly frustrating.

This is on classic, fwiw.

3162

Yes, yes. I mad, bro.

The original X-Com fed on your hatred. I’ve had some “grrr…” moments in the new one – such as my (previously invincible) A-team gets wiped out on a Very Difficult terror mission – but nothing so hair-pullingly rage inducing as an X-Com mission gone sour. See .gif earlier this thread.

3163

There was an article some time back on why one of the (at the time) upcoming editions of DnD did away with the enemies rolling crits - because even small % chances added up over time, and with dozens of enemies rolling dozens of attacks at all times against the players, it always felt like they enemy was rolling non-stop crits.

Does anyone remember the first Puzzle Quest, which was completely fair with how it handled chain reactions for both the player and the AI, yet everyone thought the AI was cheating so in PQ2 they actually reduced the chance for the AI to pull those off?

Classic is in that same boat - you add a +10 to aim/crit and it’s going to actually be a much bigger advantage for the waves of enemies (and I had 20-25 aliens on a map almost every mission there in the last few game months on my Classic play through) than maybe the developrs intended. /shrug

3164

I’d like to mention that invisibility armor does allow you to scout and attack without the enemy getting a move off or splitting up.

Invis armor does come late, but it certainly allows for the total surprise that is being complained of missing here.

I think you have to consider the initial move more broadly, and think of the changes in spawn/roaming in context. The first game had all the aliens constantly roaming, which made it hard to discover them all, or pin them down if you saw them once.

New XCOM primarily uses these discovery groups of enemies – this lets you find and deal with enemies methodically, reducing the horrible “alien wandering into and out of bathrooms/containers” missions. Moving to static spawns though reduces a lot of the challenge, if you just spawn them one by one – it doesnt take much of a squad to win 1v6 decisively over and over.

Well, now that you are spawning multiple aliens in one spot, that takes care of completely lopsided matches of 1vX with your static spawns – but without the initial move, each batch of aliens is one or two grenades from death. The initial move removes this handicap as well. They don’t attack or reaction shot when found, so you are a turn ahead, even if you can’t always take advantage of it. In the alternate system, the first time you found an alien was often when you took its reaction shot to the head.

3165

I definitely agree with Tim that the extremely abstracted cover system which is just a basic to-hit modifier really does limit the opportunity to engage in flanking. You can almost never get “pinned down”, if an enemy can shoot at they are likely >33% to hit, enemies come in packs of generally 3, and most of your soldiers can take 1-3 hits before dying. So as soon as you contact an enemy your sole priority is to either break line of sight or kill the enemy ASAP.

Compared to something like Jagged Alliance, you never get into extended firefights with a lot of shuffling guys to different windows to get a better angle, or sending a guy to loop around and flank. With XCOM if you begin an engagement the clock starts on someone dying and you’re just hoping it isn’t your guy.

3166

For example, I LOVE when a bad guy chooses to suppress one of my soldiers instead of taking a shot. That gives me one turn to save the suppressed soldier.

3167

One thing I think the game needs is some element of time during the battles. The battles become pretty easy (on normal) when you take your time and keep your guys from straying too far from each other. I’ve been walking through my battles now that my squad is established and I have good equipment. You only really get into trouble when you explore too much area and wake up too many baddies.

It would be nice if there was some advantage to not taking too much time. Perhaps once the enemy is alerted to your presence they get the opportunity to dig in, take better cover, etc. If you move more swiftly you should be able to take them by surprise. The bomb and terror missions prevent the player from taking their own sweet time.

3168

So I checked out the demo.

Literally the second mission into it - it tells me to move my heavy weapons guy to the roof on the second move. When it is the aliens turn, an alien shoots through a box, through the edge of the roof, through an air conditioner, and pegs my guy 3 times. None of the scenery interacts with any of this in any way. I don’t think it really struck me how silly ‘cover only works orthogonally’ was until I saw it working - you literally get nothing if you are in a space vertically below some cover. So it’s less like ‘cover’ in the sense that there is any physical obstruction there, and more like ‘magic cover’ where you need to stick your people in the magic hole that will give you a magic shield for standing in the magic spot that is clearly obviously much easier to shoot to than the space that has no cover marked on it.

I think I may have inadvertently insulted Panzer General with the comparison before - this seems to be more on the level of that RTS minigame from the last Pirates! game.

3169

Agreed. That’s why I just moved to classic. Last night, even when I was careful, I still got my hat handed to me.

3170

I’m curious now why they didn’t put damage modifiers on the cover. They tested everything so they must have tried it. I don’t think it makes the game more complicated. I can’t imagine anyone getting overwhelmed by the numbers. Just stick to the full cover, kid. Maybe it made things too slow or didn’t work with the enemy wakeups.

I can’t get too upset about the design. Jake’s brutal honesty during development was a reminder how complicated this is. One problem leads to another. At least they pulled the trigger and put it out there.

Now it’s time to go manhandle the camera a bit more.

3171

Yeah the game really needs a “Put everyone in overwatch and end the turn” button.

And I also agree with you the the camera is frustrating. But it barely makes a dint in my enthusiasm for such an excellent turn based game.

Tony

3172

Well, this is a hell of a bug.

I built an alloy SHIV to take care of my rookies, but lost it. So when I built its replacement (pictured), I decided to have a backup, too, so I wouldn’t have to wait seven days for a new one. I didn’t have the alloys, so I made a regular SHIV as well. But now my alloy SHIV is mysteriously a ghost and (more importantly) unable to go on any missions.

3173

Yeah that happened to me too. I don’t think there’s a fix.

3174

I built hover and alloy shivs and I couldn’t ever take them on a mission. :(

3175

I’m finding Classic to be too easy now. I may have to try Impossible.

In particular, once you have a bunch of Colonels and alien gear, you have to be pretty reckless to get killed. Hell, my Assault Colonel dashed up a ladder to shotgun a Muton Elite in the face and triggered three Chrysalids nearby. Her shotgun blast didn’t kill the Muton Elite, who unloaded full plasma in her face point blank, and she took 9 points of damage. (She has 20+ health). The Chrysalids also jumped all over the place but reaction fire killed one. Then my sniper, hanging waaaaaaaaay back, Double Tapped the other two, and the colonel finished off the Muton Elite.

3176

Suppression is pretty awesome with the final upgrade that makes it do guaranteed damage. It’s like having infinite long range single person frag grenades at that point.

3177

Are you ironman? I thought it was not too rough, but a few horrible critical hits turned one battle into a slaughter. Now it’s tough again.

3178

It took over 20 hours of playing, but I’ve finally seen mutilated cows and can confirm this is a good game.

3179

Completely agree. I’ve beaten the game on Normal Ironman and just started Classic Ironman and I can echo what you are saying. I like the combat options and the 2 actions instead of Action Points, but combat seems to devolve to making contacting- breaking contact- waiting in overwatch. This wasnt as noticeable in Normal as it is in Classic, but I do think it forces you to play this certain way and this detracts from the game overall.

Damage mitigation via cover and partial cover I think would definitely help. Right now the game punishes you for being on the offensive. Which if you do something stupid, you should be punished, but to not be able to flank a group without alerting another group of deadly aliens is bad, lazy design. There isn’t really an option to fire and maneuver, as your flanking team will, without fail, aggro more groups.

Classic isnt as fun as I hoped it would be, I think the move to a 6 man team with the large gap in power between rookies and captains+, doesnt give you the same feeling as the original did. Rookies should contribute something more than just meat shield, point men in the mid-late game.

I really hope if they make another one and that they make combat more dynamic and exciting, rather than static and barely fun. Don’t get me wrong I like the game alot and will probably keep playing it, but I cannot help feel that too many corners were cut.

3180

Nitpick no. 1.
Would be too much to ask the devs to draw a line between your soldier and the aimed target? (with the rocket launcher)
I had two occasions where I really had no idea of why I couldn’t fire at tile X and I had to rotate and try to zoom several times so see wth was happening, because I thought it should have a clear line of sight.