3241

There is definitely a bug with enemies teleporting around. I had a Muton that I saw move out of line of sight and within one turn randomly appear in a rock cul de sac behind my heavy. No way he could’ve circled around, I had an elevated sniper on the flank(who had just shot the Muton’s friend) and it was like he walked out of the hill itself.

Also happened with a cyberdisc. What I think happens is that when a bad guy is dashing from outside visual range the game forgets what direction he is coming from and he just appears whereever his destination square was. Both times I’ve seen it I saw a bad guy, triggered the reaction move where they moved out of sight, and then the baddie skips through my line by magic.

3242

That would definitely be nice. Especially in situations with ramps and/or doorways it is super annoying to use your move to get into a position that it seems you could see the bad guy from only to not see the red alien head.

That is one of the things that really draws attention to the “boardgameyness”. Under a proper AP/TU system, you can take a step, then another, until you’re in sight. The way that XCOM will let you go 12 squares and then fire but not 1 square, 1 square, and then fire makes the player feel like they are fighting the mechanics.

3243

“You know what’s an interesting choice? Who’s going to get off the Sky Ranger first.”

I laughed.

3244

I’d say at the moment that the civilian rescue missions are by far my favorite. All aliens are active, there is a drive to keep moving forward quickly while still being safe, and you need to observe the whole map if you hope to get to the civvies before the aliens do. It’s just well done all around.

I’m not sure how far along I am in the game right now. I’m pretty far down the research path, and seem to be running into some fairly big plot points, but not sure where the end is.

3245

I liked the bomb defuse missions.

3246

I like both of them, but prefer the terror missions for the reasons JFrazer stated.

3247

This is a good review and a good read.

The game is a love letter to 2012 gamers. So when you pick it from the inbox, you have to decide if you are a 2012 gamer, or a 1994 one. Is somewhat embarrassing to accidentally read a love letter written for a different person. Sorta like when at a airport you think a attractive women is waving his hand at you, but you notice his grandmother is behind you waving his hand in response.

3248

One, the sense of attachment to your troops. Write this down. Two, the way the gameplay unfolds in the campaign. Three, the atmosphere. Are you getting this? And, four, the way you can break stuff. This new XCOM gets all four of those things right, even if it does some of them in different ways. It knows. It understands. But not blindly, not slavishly. More than a fan of X-Com, this game is a fan of the tenets of modern game design. It’s doing exactly the right thing, in exactly the right ways, at exactly the right time.

This Tom guy has knack for summarizing the essence of a game in a few sentences. He might want to think about writing game reviews.

3249

Was anyone feeling the atmosphere? Just curious. Some of the alien ships were a little creepy. Terror missions were intense the first two times. Atmosphere is another thing I play games for and it didn’t always work for me in XCOM.

I agree, not catching a drag queen at first can be pretty embarrassing.

3250

The atmosphere is nice with all the screaming and dying going on, but the problem with terror missions is that there doesn’t seem to be any penalty to hanging back and letting the aliens kill everyone, which is what you do to max protect your squaddies.

At least in the bomb mission you have to move forward to buy time, putting you in potentially unsound tactical situations.

On the fiip side, some of those terror missions are terribly unfair if you’re trying to save people. Like, you’ve got a Sectopod and friends meeting you off the ramp while there are Chrysalids running free upstairs in the building on the far side of the map. You can’t even think of dealing with the Chrysalids until you get rid of the opposition in front of you. In the meantime, there go half the civies.

3251

Can someone give me tips on money for the Classic difficulty mode? I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be this badly broke all the time. I spent $100 on stuff I’m not using earlier and I have critical stuff I need to build but no money. If it supposed to be this bad?

3252

I haven’t started my Classic run yet, so I don’t know how well this advice holds up. However, I’m flush with cash in Normal mode, so I expect it’ll make Classic mode tolerable.

In general I’m super thrifty about buying equipment for troops. Try not to build/buy more than 2 of anything. As you research better technology, you’ll have hand-me-down equipment to spread around.

Invest in workshops early, since they give you refunds on things you build. They also come with engineers, which further reduce your costs.

You’re selling stuff on the Grey Market, right? Only sell stuff when you need the cash right away, but by all means, sell stuff.

3253

Here are some tricks that have helped me out on classic:

  1. Don’t build satellites until around 8th or 9th of each month. Especially try to get some engineers before you build your first. As I think 4 engineers drop the cost from 100 to 67 if I remember right.

  2. If you are ok in terms of panic, before the first month is up, get satellites over the US and Russia, as they have the highest amount of funding.

  3. Be ready to sell as many non critical items that you can: corpses, energy sources, flight computers etc. It may hurt you in research, but if it’s between that and getting an officer school , you always want the latter.

3254

Yes, even with 12 satellites and the 30% Africa bonus I am chronically short of funds by the end of the month, although it isn’t as bad as it use to be. I think you need at least 3 satellite link= 8 satellites. Avoid selling alloys, elerium, and weapon fragrments, but you may have to sell everything else beyond what is need for research.

3255

In classic early on you’ll be hard-pressed to choose between abduction missions that offer engineers or (most likely) scientists. I know there’s a rush on engineers, but always take the higher panic mission, even if you don’t need the reward (scientists.) You have to buy time in the early game, and ignoring a high-panic country is dangerous, especially if its neighbors are also teetering. Satellites are nice, but they only solve one country at a time. Plus, you need all the extra infrastructure to support more satellites (power, uplinks), and those cost a lot of $$$ and take a lot of time to get up and running.

In my current Classic game, I’ve gotten to the point where I’m treading water. Only France is elevated panic. Everyone else is 1-2 bars. Only countries I lost were South Africa and Egypt, and they were early. Which is another point: triage. Odds are you’re going to lose countries on Classic. It’s too damn hard to keep them all. So minimize your losses. Save China and the US ($$$$), sacrifice a small fry if you have to.

3256

I think the complaints about terrain destruction by normal weapons are misguided. Yes, the original X-Com did it, but it was silly and unrealistic. In modern infantry combat, as far as I can tell, there are a few weapons which can be used to destroy cover (or probably more accurately are typically used to attack enemies behind cover, and can have as a side effect the destruction of said cover), but for the most part they are specialized weapons. The new XCOM has some of those types of weapons and they can destroy cover.

I’ve never heard of a firefight where the combatants said “our enemies were hiding behind a wall inside the house, so we used our M16 rifles to shoot up and destroyed the wall, in order to expose everyone hiding in the house, so we could then shoot them.” That just doesn’t happen. Sure, some thin walls can actually be shot through, but they won’t generally be destroyed by small arms fire. Even after being shot through they’ll still provide some concealment, if not hard cover.

Taking hard cover out with your standard infantry small arms is just silly. A game which allows it as a game mechanic is creating a very gamey, unrealistic tactic.

3257

Are people asking for small arms fire to destroy load-bearing walls? I thought people were asking for the ability to purposefully target cover instead of it being destroyed only in collateral damage.

3258

That’s exactly what I’m talking about this idea that you should be able to purposely target cover to destroy it is completely unrealistic. In combat, soldiers fire at areas for suppression fire or they shoot at people to kill them.

Real soldiers do not target cover for the purpose of destroying that cover. That is a bullshit gamey tactic that does not exist in real life.

It makes complete sense for XCom to only allow small arms to target enemy units. I suppose if Firaxis wanted to, they could also allow all units to use suppression fire (instead of just those with heavy weapons), or even allow suppression fire on an area, rather than at a specific enemy. But that fire should not destroy cover. Small arms is simply not used to destroy cover in the real world. Some specialized support weapons may be used to destroy cover, but as I mentioned in the last post, I’m pretty sure in most cases destroying cover is a side effect of using the support weapons to get to the people hiding behind the cover. Artillery and tank fire is sometimes used to deliberately destroy cover, but infantry small arms is not used for this purpose.

3259

Except we’re using plasma rifles and heavy laser cannons, not modern day small arms. This is like saying artillery shouldn’t be able to destroy a shack because a matchlock pistol couldn’t.

I don’t see any reason I shouldn’t be able to shoot a car on purpose to make it explode.

Why don’t soldiers destroy cover in real life? Could it be because trying to destroy a reinforced bunker with a pistol would take a while? Why can’t a game model that without taking the easy route of invisible walls?

3260

So your argument is that XCOM is not like real life? Holy shit! STOP THE PRESSES!!!