XCOM: Enemy Unknown

[Tony_M]

What are you talking about? Popular opinion seems to agree more with you than with me (and the few other, less vocal “naysayers”).

OK fair enough. I’d just finished reading the last 150 or so posts when I wrote that and there seemed to be alot of opinion the other way.

[TurinTur]

Essentially, it really boils down a bit to - like Tom put it - being a 1994 vs a 2012 gamer.

I’m not sure if I can agree with that. First, I consider myself a “gamer” not a 1994 gamer or a 2012 gamer. If i like or dislike a game, it’s not because that game coincides or not with my “year”, it’s because it’s good or bad. Whatever the year we are.

And if I have to make the distinction, I suppose my “2012 gamer” is like the 1994 gamer, but even more exigent, as he has played much more games and also expect something better, as he knows the industry had time to learn to do an even job, with better interfaces, AI, graphics, tutorials, and new techniques to put more complex gameplay but without being off-putting or hard to approach.

[Tony_M]

Essentially, it really boils down a bit to - like Tom put it - being a 1994 vs a 2012 gamer.
Some people these days seem to have the very positive attitude of “hey, this is great, stuff is being taken care of automatically for me!” when being declared “under disability” and faced with all decisions being made for them by a guardian.
Only a few “1994 gamers” mourn for the days when they could just make decisions themselves.

<cut>

Edit: In any event, I’m not surprised at all that he likes the simplification. He’s clearly the type of “you decide for me, and then let’s get on with the action” player you could probably call the “modern gamer”.

<Tony spots a quicktime event while Rezaf is looking down at the 200 page manual>
<Tony presses the “win” button>
Suck it old man! :P

Tony

[Hunty]

Agreed. According to Steam its been released in 9 languages so theres no excuse for not having some variation in combat barks. I know it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for a squad to be speaking in 6 different languages, but it would be more atmospheric. Even one language per continent would be a huge improvement (English, Spanish, German, Japanese and … ok so they’d need some additional recordings to cover Africa).

No need for actual foreign languages in the English version I don’t think. I’d be perfectly happy with some cheesy accents like EngineerGuy or ScientistLady have. Y’know, action movie realism.

[BoyFrance]

I’m getting crushed by Mutons on my Classic Difficulty attempt. I always end up with 2-3 packs of Mutons all duking it out with me, or 2 packs of Mutons and a Cyerberdisk. I’m not holding up very well, so I think this game is a loss.

I think I’ve made several mistakes. First, I tried to upgrade all my continents to Firestorm interceptors (mostly because my regular Avenger isn’t good enough to take on the larger ships), I should have spent that money on better Armor for my Squaddies. But most importantly, I think I should have pushed more into weapons research. My laser rifles just aren’t doing enough damage fast enough on the Mutons. When I’m in a firefight with six Mutons, I can take out maybe one Muton per turn. And the other Muton with the four bars of health, it takes me 2-3 turns to bring him down, even when he’s standing out in the open. But six Mutons all concentrating their fire can take out one of my squaddies once every turn or two. I need something to bring down the Mutons faster.

It sounds like you’re either scouting poorly or being way too aggressive. There is rarely any reason to fight more than one group at a time, and if you run in to another one it’s usually better to pull back and fight the aliens that come to you.

[Reldan]

I’m getting crushed by Mutons on my Classic Difficulty attempt. I always end up with 2-3 packs of Mutons all duking it out with me, or 2 packs of Mutons and a Cyerberdisk. I’m not holding up very well, so I think this game is a loss.

You shouldn’t be engaging 2-3 closets worth of enemies at a time if you’re playing on Classic. You need to move forward slower. Almost never move a guy farther forward than the first guy you move each turn. Once you engage a single group, finish them off before moving farther forward. You should try to control the engagements to be 6v2 or 6v3 at a time with your entire squad getting first strike always - if you’re going to engage, you should be getting 6-8 shots off before the aliens get a single shot back, period.

You ought to have 1-2 snipers with Squad Sight in every squad you send. If you do trigger multiple packs with your spotter, have the snipers pick off a guy or two and then move that first troop that spotted them back into cover with the rest of the group so that nobody has LoS, because then the aliens also won’t have LoS. If any aliens have LoS on anyone on their turn, they’ll move their forces into position and destroy you. If no aliens have LoS they often don’t do all that much on their turn, maybe 1-2 of them goes Overwatch but that’s about it. Never use a double-move to spot with - you always want the ability to pull the guy back if he bites off more than you can chew. Put everyone else on Overwatch. If the aliens don’t even push forward, move the guy back (an assault with Lightning Reflexes works great in this role) to get LoS again and have your snipers do more sniping, then move back. Once the engagement is down to numbers you can manage move the rest of the crew in to clean up.

If you have a support with triple medpacks to heal up damage you take from random shots and reaction shots, you should rarely suffer casualties, and pretty much should never lose a man once you have armor that prevents any of your guys from being one-shot.

This is basically effective from the point that you have carapace armor/lasers through the rest of the game. Before that you’ll need to take more chances because you won’t have the skills/armor/damage to tidily win even 6v3 engagements handily.

[Scotch_Lufkin]

Relden, on Classic that doesn’t always work, especially on small maps. I don’t know how many times I stumble upon two groups at the same time and then on the following turn a patrolling group of heavy floaters joins the fray. Classic can get pretty brutal in that way, since there are no limits on the number of active enemies at a given time.

[SlyFrog]

reading about the difficulty, and people finding it too easy, I really feel like I’m playing a different game. I play on normal Ironman, and I’ve been losing people almost every mission. I finished the first terror mission with 2 KIA, 3 gravely wounded, which was largely due to 2 chryssalids I had to kill with normal guns because I didn’t have laserweapons yet. Only now, when I finally get some soldiers up the ranks, is it getting easier, but up until now I simply couldn’t keep them alive long enough to get experienced…! Still not sure if Ironman has anything to do with this, my first playthrough on plain normal being so much easier (without reloads), but I don’t mind either way.

All this probably means I suck strategically, but I’m not complaining… I find it quite a challenge, and therefor quite a lot of fun. ;-)

I’d bet that most people having problems in the tactical part of the game on Normal are having them because they are moving too often/too far.

You don’t have to move. You don’t have to make people dash. Slow movement, cover to cover, always leaving opportunity for overwatch, never discovering the next group of aliens until you’ve killed the first group, is the way to victory.

[Dejin]

It sounds like you’re either scouting poorly or being way too aggressive. There is rarely any reason to fight more than one group at a time, and if you run in to another one it’s usually better to pull back and fight the aliens that come to you.

Two situations in which it occurred.

In the first one, it was a large UFO and they were all outside the entrance. As far as I can remember, they really were all sitting there, I think it would have been very difficult to pull just one set of them. And unfortunately there was only light cover between the UFO and the Skyranger. I did have two snipers including one with Battle Scanners, so I think probably the right tactic (which I didn’t try) was getting all my non-snipers to scramble back as far as they could, and then toss in a Battle Scanner and let my snipers shoot at the enemy, hopefully without them seeing us. With two Battle Scanners and only standard sniper rifles, I probably still could have taken 2-3 of them out before my Battle Scanners ran out.

The second time I was outside of some kind of store in the parking lot. There was a Cyberdisc coming in from the left side of the parking lot, which I think I could have taken out by itself if I had been careful. There were two sets of Mutons inside the store. Again very difficult for to separate out the Muton groups. Then on the right-side of the store a Cyberdisc came in from somewhere. I tried to play through it several times, since I wasn’t on Ironman. I could take the left Cyberdisc out, but whether I engaged the Mutons inside the store or tried to get them to come on out, that was pretty tough, and then when the right-side Cyberdisc showed up everything went completely down the crapper.

I’m pretty sure in both cases the two Muton groups had line-of-sight with each other.

[Scotch_Lufkin]

Basically, don’t play at all like the people who made the game play when they were showing it off in the months leading up to release. :)

[Dejin]

Relden, on Classic that doesn’t always work, especially on small maps. I don’t know how many times I stumble upon two groups at the same time and then on the following turn a patrolling group of heavy floaters joins the fray. Classic can get pretty brutal in that way, since there are no limits on the number of active enemies at a given time.

Yeah, that was basically my experience with the store situation. I think both the Muton groups were sitting in the store in a fixed position. So I could take out the left Cyberdisc coming in from the parking lot if I was careful and didn’t get to close to the store windows (although it was a very narrow parking lot). I think the right-hand Cyberdisc was on some sort of patrol, because I don’t know where he came from, I’m pretty sure I was not pushing forward when he showed up.

My speculation is that in Classic the enemy groups hear sounds just the same as we do. When you’re in a firefight, they here the noise and come to investigate.

[Dejin]

You ought to have 1-2 snipers with Squad Sight in every squad you send. If you do trigger multiple packs with your spotter, have the snipers pick off a guy or two and then move that first troop that spotted them back into cover with the rest of the group so that nobody has LoS, because then the aliens also won’t have LoS. If any aliens have LoS on anyone on their turn, they’ll move their forces into position and destroy you. If no aliens have LoS they often don’t do all that much on their turn, maybe 1-2 of them goes Overwatch but that’s about it. Never use a double-move to spot with - you always want the ability to pull the guy back if he bites off more than you can chew. Put everyone else on Overwatch. If the aliens don’t even push forward, move the guy back (an assault with Lightning Reflexes works great in this role) to get LoS again and have your snipers do more sniping, then move back. Once the engagement is down to numbers you can manage move the rest of the crew in to clean up.

I do try to be very cautious in moving forward and almost never do a double move – experience has shown that if I double move into an uncovered area, I almost always pay for it :-P I use overwatch a lot. Although I have had situations where I swear overwatch does not get triggered even when enemies are entering my line of sight. I don’t know if this is a bug, or Squaddies only have some percentage of taking a reaction shot.

[rezaf]

<Tony spots a quicktime event while Rezaf is looking down at the 200 page manual>
<Tony presses the “win” button>
Suck it old man! :P

Heh, X-Com wasn’t really a “study the manual” game, and we’re not exactly discussing multiplayer herein, but … Touche, I guess.

I do try to be very cautious in moving forward and almost never do a double move – experience has shown that if I double move into an uncovered area, I almost always pay for it :-P I use overwatch a lot. Although I have had situations where I swear overwatch does not get triggered even when enemies are entering my line of sight. I don’t know if this is a bug, or Squaddies only have some percentage of taking a reaction shot.

While I definately agree that this is the proper way to play if you want to avoid losses, it also removes most of the momentum the new combat system was probably meant to infuse. Especially with low-ranking troops.
Playing this way makes combat somewhat dull and makes one battle feel like the other. Move forward a bit, from cover to cover, overwatch. Rinse and repeat. This can get tedious.
Even when actively fighting enemies, things can be a bit monotonous.
What breaks the mold is the unique abilities of your higher ranking troopers.
A Sniper in a good position with squadsight. An assault trooper with run and gun. A heavy that can fire and then fire again (or move).

I’m not so sure what the fact that you basically have to break them in order to have some action says about the new combat rules themselves, but that’s how it is.

---

rezaf

[Reldan]

Relden, on Classic that doesn’t always work, especially on small maps. I don’t know how many times I stumble upon two groups at the same time and then on the following turn a patrolling group of heavy floaters joins the fray. Classic can get pretty brutal in that way, since there are no limits on the number of active enemies at a given time.

I don’t know how many times that happens to you either. It happens to me extremely rarely. That’s the point where you either are far enough ahead on the strategic layer in terms of equipment that you can win against those odds, you dash back to the skyranger for extraction and accept a failed mission, or you wipe and fail anyways.

The only time I had something like what you describe happen while playing cautiously I ran back to the extraction point and accepted defeat. I’ve really not seen that situation very often though where that happens and you can’t use Squad Sight snipers to mop up and fall back to drop LoS.

[Fifth_Fret]

While I definately agree that this is the proper way to play if you want to avoid losses, it also removes most of the momentum the new combat system was probably meant to infuse. Especially with low-ranking troops.
Playing this way makes combat somewhat dull and makes one battle feel like the other. Move forward a bit, from cover to cover, overwatch. Rinse and repeat. This can get tedious.

XCOM has been on my ‘buy later’ list after hearing initial reviews, but this (combined with the comments about map variety, strategic layer immersion/replayability, and enemy AI) is one of the few worrying statements about the game. The optimal way of playing shouldn’t result in tedium! That’s really unfortunate design!

[forgeforsaken]

XCOM has been on my ‘buy later’ list after hearing initial reviews, but this (combined with the comments about map variety, strategic layer immersion/replayability, and enemy AI) is one of the few worrying statements about the game. The optimal way of playing shouldn’t result in tedium! That’s really unfortunate design!

I’m on my second playthrough now and the game is hardly ever tedious. Ultimately the games failing may be that it only provides 30-60 hours of enjoyment instead of a 100, and really that’s not something I could really hold as too much of a negative.

[Fifth_Fret]

I’m on my second playthrough now and the game is hardly ever tedious. Ultimately the games failing may be that it only provides 30-60 hours of enjoyment instead of a 100, and really that’s not something I could really hold as too much of a negative.

That’s good to know (and I don’t have time for 100 hour games these days either). Are you playing safely and optimally on ironman classic, or romping through on normal?

[forgeforsaken]

That’s good to know (and I don’t have time for 100 hour games these days either). Are you playing safely and optimally on ironman classic, or romping through on normal?

I beat Ironman Normal. I’m now playing a non-ironman Classic game as I want to experiment a bit.

[quarryman]

Stupid question here but as someone who is chickening out on non-Ironman Normal; in Ironman is each move saved? ie, if I want to stop playing suddenly the game will have saved to my last move in the tactical game, I don’t have to worry about losing moves after I come to play later?

One general comment I have on the game after a few hours is that I wish they had improved the environment detection when firing. Slightly annoying when your soldier is shoot through trees and corners and walls as if they weren’t there.

Also fighting inside UFOs is a pain in the ass. Exterior camera angles work fine but it all falls apart on the interior sections.

Other than that loving it!

[Nathan_Phoenix]

I think ironman saves after every turn