I’m playing on Normal and have lost Canada, South Africa and Egypt in my current game. That only leaves Nigeria in Africa (covered with a satellite). I think I’m in pretty good shape going forward, though–got an Elerium generator online, and a Satellite Nexus is coming soon.
hepcat
3582
Sigh…I just told France that Germany was looking at them funny and they left the council.
meeper
3583
Has anyone tried playing with the second wave mod?
Not yet. I wonder why it was cut from the official release?
Probably weren’t fully tested or something like that.
Savillo
3586
I’m playing a game with it now. Be careful, though: Enabling some options will cause the game to crash at certain points, usually the mission launch screen or during the Skyranger cinematics. If you have on autosave, you should be fine.
If you’ve already beaten the game, I wouldn’t bother using the provided profile.bin file, which just unlocks second wave for those who haven’t finished a campaign. That profile also unlocks additional options that you won’t see from unlocking second wave yourself, but all the extra ones are buggy and cause crashes.
Just stick with the options labeled “works” in the mod download page on the XCOM Nexus site: http://xcom.nexusmods.com/mods/7/
I really like using Damage Roulette, New Economy, Not Created Equally, and Hidden Potential. I wish High Stakes was working because that was is interesting, too. I tried it, but I’m pretty sure it crashed my game.
I am using Hidden Potential, but I think that’s crashes my game infrequently. Still, you get better a flavor of soldiers. It helps shake of the samey blandness of the vanilla troops. Same deal with Not Created Equally.
Damage Roulette, I’d argue, makes classic difficulty more manageable. This affects aliens, too, so they won’t be getting guaranteed critical hits all the time.
New Economy keeps the strategy layer interesting as you’ll have different countries you’ll want to prioritize as a result.
nKoan
3587
So, the first DLC has been announced.
Take that as you will. New council missions that will get you involved with the triad and fights over china. New maps, presumably, and maybe these ones will be location specific (or, maybe there will be Chinatowns all over the globe).
Not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, new council missions is awesome! But on the other, I don’t really know if I like it’s the same little side-story every time you play. It would have been better (to me) if it was just “three new types of council missions that could randomly come up instead of just escort/bomb diffusal”
Jab
3589
That’s a good start, but I really want to see more options built into the long term play. More items, aliens, strategic and base building choices.
Giaddon
3590
Sounds kind of silly, but whatever, I’m buying it. Need more XCOM.
EDIT: Looks like it includes a research shortcut for the blaster launcher? Could be seriously game changing if you get that sweet little number early.
rezaf
3591
Considering this games MASSIVE lack of variety in some respects (especially maps), it’s a little worrying that this is “one of TWO planned single player DLCs”. Only two? Modding tools please! Kthxbye.
rezaf
Agreed. If the Triad DLC is indicative of the content they’ll offer with the next DLC as well, then I’ll pass on both. I want more random stuff.
Quaro
3593
Meh on that DLC. This game needs Civ style gameplay expansions not tiny little missions added. I want more randomization not more prepacked stuff.
I was hoping the first DLC would be a fleshed out version of Second Wave – more customization options to really change up gameplay. I’d like to have about 4x as many chances to shoot down UFOs, but 75% of the time it is wrecked to badly to have tactical salvage mission. Essentially boosting the important of interception without adding extra missions.
Dejin
3594
+1
This one seems bizarre to me. It’s like they looked at the Mass Effect DLC and decided to do the same thing for XCom, even though it made no sense.
I want more generic mission types, not a once a game thing that always comes up. Also having a specific combat character in game with his own voicing just seems totally off from how the rest of the game works.
Jab
3595
Thinking about it further, they should look at The Binding of Isaac’s DLC for inspiration. Everything that’s there (with exception to the new final boss) is all a part of the randomization. Adding more depth to the game, by increasing the # of possible events and items that the player could find.
Quaro
3596
Jake did mention on Three Moves Ahead that he was inspired by Roguelikes, so here’s hoping this is more in the direction they go.
I’d like proper accents for the troops from various nations, and more maps (and ones that look right for different parts of the world, and different kinds of terrain–desert, ice, etc.).
Quaro
3598
Gods I just want mod support so bad. So much potential.
I was just thinking while playing last night wouldn’t it be sweet if troops fighting in their home country got a temporarily +will bonus? And when their country collapses they get a temporary -will because their family died or whatever. Right now the country attribute has no effect on gameplay but even if the effect was very slight it would add go a long way.
They’ve got a great framework. Civ 4 style modding would be ideal, but just Civ 5 style would be good enough…
Wouldn’t it make (financial) sense for 2K to release mod support after they’ve bled everyone with a few rounds of generic DLC? No point giving the community the tools to produce better content first.
Miramon
3600
Yah, me too.
I think the content part of the game was hurried and underfunded.
I speculate this was something of a throwaway title, or else some other project may have slipped and stolen resources. The game just feels thin somehow, what with the fixed event sequence, the limited number of maps and scenarios, the lack of appropriate national details, and the relatively weak and hasty ending. It’s sad because the underlying gameplay is good enough despite the flaws to warrant a bigger investment of time.
Interesting to compare to Civ 5, which really has much weaker underlying gameplay design and implementation (godawful AI, unbalanced tech, cultural, national, and religious traits, unfortunate single-unit-per-hex feature, terrible diplomacy system and so on), but has had a lot more content fluff and attention to detail lavished on it.
