3501

Yeesh. I was close. I think he only sat out two missions. Once due to injury and the other while being PSI tested.

3502

I imagine SHIVs are immune from PSI attacks, too? That’s what I fear more than anything.

I do hope they patch SHIVs. As was said above, losing one doesn’t hurt as much, emotionally, as losing a squaddie.

3503

Basically that you build them and you often can’t play with them. Sometimes, you can’t ever play with them.

3504

Yeah, I’m avoiding actually building a SHIV until they come out with a patch.

In the old game, that’s what I loved about the tanks and hovertanks, that they couldn’t be mind-controlled.

3505

So I failed my will check and panicked.

It was a routine mission – small scout landing. Couldn’t be that bad, right? I send my B team to deal with it. They touched down in a small stream in a Canadian forest, kind of like the area where I grew up. The alien ship was clearly visible maybe a hundred meters up the stream.

My forces advanced carefully. My point assault moved behind a tree to get line of sight into the enemy ship. The forest exploded with aliens.

Four sectoid commanders in the ship, along with three groups of berserker + 2 mutons. After the alien turn, one of my soldiers is mind controlled and one is dead. I decide to mount a full retreat and guide my units back up the stream.

Once they get there, they look around in desperation for the skyranger. Not there. In my panic, I had sent the team to the wrong corner of the map! Next turn, they were all dead or mind controlled. First full wipe of this game.

3506

Ouch, Gladdon. At least it wasn’t the A team.

So did all those enemies just appear out of thin air? That’s happened to me once or twice. Is there anything we can do to minimize the risk of this? I saw this happen in my first (Normal) game. Oddly, haven’t seen it yet in my Classic/Ironman game.

3507

Great story Giaddon. That retreat in the wrong direction sounds like something that could very easily happen in the heat of real combat.

Tony

3508

I’ve yet to see a female heavy. Do they exist?

3509

Definitely. I’ve got two of them on my squad right now, a colonel and a major. My Colonel kicks ass. In fact the two females are the only heavies I’ve got in my barracks of 11. They do look a bit odd in that they are not bulked up, they use the same female body as the female snipers, assaults, and support. So you’ve got these relatively thin looking women carrying heavy machine guns and dragging around in the case of my Colonel 3 rockets (although admittedly only one is shown). I guess there’s no way around it though, otherwise you’d have a relatively thin looking female rookie suddenly transform into a buffed out female heavy.

The weird male-centric thing I’ve seen is that in cut scenes in the XCom control room all the control people watching the video consoles are all guys. (At least that’s the way it was in the last cut scene I saw which IIRC was the clapping after taking down the alien base). A very minor nit, but it was rather jarring once I noticed it. The XCom universe is egalitarian enough to have a lot of female soldiers, but not egalitarian enough to have females in the control room other than the female lead scientist.

3510

The amount of hate I have for the map (I believe it’s Argentina, but I’m not sure) with the lower level street that cuts through the middle and the bridge to the far left will burn with the intensity of a thousand suns for the rest of my life…

3511

Weird. I’ve used Shivs extensively in my two play throughs and never seen any problems with them.

3512

Maps aren’t country specific, they just show up. I rather liked that map - it’s got a lot of high cover, easy to hold high-ground and very clear firing lanes.

My personal most-hated map is the terror mission military base with the tanks and the big warehouse full of civilians. Good luck getting any sort of good outcome there.

3513

I had my first terror mission there in my present game and it went pretty well. OTOH, I just had one in some sort of…well, I don’t know what the building is supposed to be. Three stories with a book store or library on the ground floor, and some sort of restaurant above.

Between the wonky camera and bad lighting that made finding the stairs incredibly difficult, this was nothing less than a headache. At least I managed to kill all the aliens without getting so much as a scratch, because there was plenty of cover, but the civvies weren’t quite so lucky.

3514

Sometimes the odds are just stacked against you. Terror mission. Assault captain takes 2 steps forward and 6 chrysalids activate. We’re in the middle of dealing with them when 6 more activate. In the middle of that the zombies killed by a straggler from the first wave show up. No time for reloading; the squad was down to pistols by the end. With all those free moves and high speed automatic hits, it’s amazing I only had one death. On the other hand, I didn’t have to rescue a single civilian by hand, didn’t enter a single building, and barely moved from my starting position; the whole map just up and attacked in the first 5 turns…

3515

Yikes. That scenario is one of the reasons I take Ammo conservation as soon as it’s available.

Am I right in assuming that cover doesn’t matter at all for melee attacks? If you’re just going toe-to-toe with Chrysalids, there’s no reason to bother staying in cover?

3516

I would just like to call out an appreciation for the color customisation. It gives me great pleasure to be able to color-code my team - red for assault, blue for heavy, grey for snipers, green for support and white for the chosen one. It really looks so good on screen.

3517

I’ve certainly been operating under the assumption that cover is a non-issue when dealing with Chrysalids.

3518

Thanks, that’s a fantastic idea that I do believe I’ll steal for myself!

3519

Rookies with no skills stay yellow. Plus, they have to wear the goofiest looking helmet.

3520

I give my guys an armour colour based on their nickname, when they get one. Very anime.