XCOM: Enemy Unknown

[Murbella]

I wouldn’t mind turning off the cheat aim bonuses the ai gets on classic (seriously, i thought fps developers learned long ago that it wasn’t fun to just make the AI always hit?) and making the terror level start at base like normal personally.

[mjgreeny75]

I wouldn’t mind turning off the cheat aim bonuses the ai gets on classic (seriously, i thought fps developers learned long ago that it wasn’t fun to just make the AI always hit?) and making the terror level start at base like normal personally.

Well, for the second part: try what I explained a few posts up on this page then: start on normal but change the difficulty right away to classic. You get the officers trainingschool and lower terrorlvls to start with, and after that it’s classic. An easier headstart so to speak…

[Dejin]

What I want is Classic difficulty on missions, and Normal for the Geoscape. My first game on Classic I lost 7 countries, even though I won every mission.

It would be great if the strategic difficulty and the tactical battle difficulty were two different settings.

[TonyJudt]

It would be great if the strategic difficulty and the tactical battle difficulty were two different settings.

You can mod the .ini file to create those settings with the instructions here.

http://pastebin.com/VRryS0Pm

Tried this and seems to work. Three missions in to a Classic game modded to start with panic at Normal level, and enemies at 5 aim bonus and no crit bonus.

[Dejin]

You can mod the .ini file to create those settings with the instructions here.

http://pastebin.com/VRryS0Pm

Tried this and seems to work. Three missions in to a Classic game modded to start with panic at Normal level, and enemies at 5 aim bonus and no crit bonus.

Excellent. Thanks.

[Savillo]

Someone discovered reaction fire code that works similarly as in the original and created a mod based on it: http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread.php?177916-MOD-Reaction-Fire-by-echoic

The main modification made here is the (re-)introduction of Reaction Fire (RF) which dramatically changes the tactical combat in XCOM. It’s a fairly well fleshed-out mechanic. It must have been planned as a core gameplay feature then cut from the design at some point during development. There are also a slew of other changes in this mod, many are geared towards balancing reaction fire in the tactical game, others are the usual tweaks that most people on XCOM Nexus would be familiar with.

Suppression, Flush, Smokes, group buffs and debuffs are much more valuable with RF. And, flanking is much more risky. All in all I would say that RF ‘works’ pretty neatly with the rest of the game but you could keep on tweaking this sort of thing ad nauseam.

Reaction Fire (RF):

• All organic units have a 20% chance to use reaction fire when an enemy moves through their line of sight.
• Robotic units, SHIVs, Sectopods etc have a 40% chance to react.
• RF is a ‘free’ attack in addition to any attacks from overwatch.
• RF can only trigger against units in your reaction angle, which is 360 degrees for shotgun (assault) weapons and your front 200 degrees for all other weapons.
• Assault type weapons have reduced range for RF. (20 rather than 27 where 27 is visible range)
• A unit can’t use RF while Suppressed
• A unit can’t use RF if their current weapon is out of ammo.
• RF can benefit from soldier perks such as the Support ability “Covering Fire” and the Sniper ability “Opportunist”.
• RF has a reduced chance to trigger against melee creatures (Chrysalid, Berserker, Zombie)
• RF has a reduced chance to trigger against enemys that have a higher reaction rating than the shooter.

Sounds interesting!

Edit: Just noticed at the bottom of the Nexus page for this mod that the author has instructions to allow you to use mods that edit .ini files without going offline.

Alternatively if you want to play this mod (or any .ini tweak mod) with Steam in Online mode you need to add these lines to your “Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts” file.

127.0.0.1 prod.xcom.firaxis.com #XCOM phone home
127.0.0.1 65.118.245.165 #XCOM phone home

[Woolen_Horde]

I just had about a 36mb download for X-Com on Steam. Patch?

[Woolen_Horde]

I just had a 36MB download on Steam. Patch?

[Woolen_Horde]

Yup. It’s a patch.

UPDATE 11/8/2012
Patch is now live for all systems. Enjoy!

Here are a list of changes that will be included in the patch.

Major Fixes
• Abductor roof visibility problems resolved

• Interception game hang issues resolved

o If two interceptors are sent after UFO
o If Skyranger is returning from combat after an Interceptor was already deployed

• SHIV inaccessible issues resolved

• AI Alien Activity Hang resolution

• Multiplayer connectivity optimization

Other Fixes
• TempleShip optimization: All Soldiers properly spawn when restarting the mission after clearing the second room of TempleShip

• Snapshot penalty should no longer apply when Overwatching without first moving.

• Easy Difficulty is now easier.

Again, thanks for all the feedback and for being super patient as we prepare each patch for release. We are always monitoring the forums for issues and will post as soon as we get official updates.

[rezaf]

Btw., has someone caught the sales numbers that have surfaced lately?

Is that across all systems? Because, then that’s pretty underwhelming.
I’m aware that there are digital sales to beef this up, but not on consoles…
I’m wondering if all the concessions to consoles have paid off sufficiently…

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rezaf

[TurinTur]

Btw., has someone caught the sales numbers that have surfaced lately?

Is that across all systems? Because, then that’s pretty underwhelming.
I’m aware that there are digital sales to beef this up, but not on consoles…
I’m wondering if all the concessions to consoles have paid off sufficiently…

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rezaf

I’m sure it has sold a ton more on pc, but yeah, it didn’t usher a new generation of strategy games on consoles.

[Tony_M]

I will be a sad turn-based-panda if Firaxis didn’t make massive profit from XCOM.

[rezaf]

Well, firstly, like Turin, I do believe that there ought to be quite a few PC platform sales, many of them digital.
And secondly … Firaxis didn’t exactly throw content at us - just look at the limited map pool.
With which I want to say, I believe (and hope) they didn’t massively invest into the game on a scale where it needs millions of copies sold to turn in a profit.
Which in turn means even a relatively low number of sales (by blockbuster standards) should get them into the green.
For course I also don’t want Firaxis to lose money on the game.

That said - like I wrote above - I just wonder whether it wouldn’t have been better/viable to target the games “core audience” to a greater degree rather than making all sorts of concessions/modernizations just so it can work better on consoles and for the “new generation of gamers” - which clearly wasn’t blown away/acquired by the title.
A bit of a moot point though, since by all indications, many of the core audience seem to be totally in love with XCOM despite or even because of those same concessions - so maybe it was the right call after all.
We’ll never know.

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rezaf

[TurinTur]

Some thoughts.

The game had 4 years of development, and have good production values. While I’m sure it wasn’t as expensive as an AAA FPS, I suppose it was kind of expensive for a strategy game; but:

NPD numbers are only USA, and Europe have a bit more of tradition with strategy games. Maybe the other half we aren’t seeing it’s bigger than the american half.

Steam had a peak of 70k Xcom players. Through comparisons with other games in the past, that at least means 700k units sold (global).

[Wolff]

Well, firstly, like Turin, I do believe that there ought to be quite a few PC platform sales, many of them digital.
And secondly … Firaxis didn’t exactly throw content at us - just look at the limited map pool.
With which I want to say, I believe (and hope) they didn’t massively invest into the game on a scale where it needs millions of copies sold to turn in a profit.
Which in turn means even a relatively low number of sales (by blockbuster standards) should get them into the green.
For course I also don’t want Firaxis to lose money on the game.

That said - like I wrote above - I just wonder whether it wouldn’t have been better/viable to target the games “core audience” to a greater degree rather than making all sorts of concessions/modernizations just so it can work better on consoles and for the “new generation of gamers” - which clearly wasn’t blown away/acquired by the title.
A bit of a moot point though, since by all indications, many of the core audience seem to be totally in love with XCOM despite or even because of those same concessions - so maybe it was the right call after all.
We’ll never know.

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rezaf

These concessions you speak of make xcom a much more enjoyable play experience for me on the pc. We get it you don’t like the direction this game went but please stop trying to paint all the design decisions as consolatis. If it was only a pc game I gather many of the same decisions would of been made.

[rezaf]

Wolff, was that post of mine really not neutral enough?

I deleted some stuff from it with the exact intention of having it not come off as too negative, yet you have to jump in and play thread police right again calling me out as a troll? Unless I’m writing “this game suxxxx”, can’t you just, you know, ignore me or something?

Cause this time I was not referring to most of the stuff discussed before, but rather things like for example the soldier equipment screen, which basically screams “FOR CONSOLES”.
It doesn’t bother me that much, really, but I still noticed it. We could have a much nicer mouse-only interface. That’s one example.
The Elder Scrolls games show a similar behavior.

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rezaf

[kedaha]

These concessions you speak of make xcom a much more enjoyable play experience for me on the pc. We get it you don’t like the direction this game went but please stop trying to paint all the design decisions as consolatis. If it was only a pc game I gather many of the same decisions would of been made.

Even if the decisions weren’t made as a result of the game being developed for consoles, it’s still consolitis. Smaller levels, smaller teams, cramped and arcadey camera, base building being a defined path etc. None of them are necessarily bad or poor choices to make, but they were a deliberate attempt at moving away from the original and ‘modernising’ it by making it far smaller and simpler.

[Wolff]

That is where I disagree with you. Smaller levels smaller teams don’t scream consoles to me. It says to me smart design that doesn’t waste my time as a player.

[Wolff]

I don’t think I called you a troll or am playing thread cop. I disagree with what I think you are implying and posted so. Prob could of gone without the “we get it” bit in retrospect.

[kedaha]

That is where I disagree with you. Smaller levels smaller teams don’t scream consoles to me. It says to me smart design that doesn’t waste my time as a player.

Sacrificing depth in the name of accessibility screams consoles to me and it’s inarguable that the new X-Com has far less depth than the old ones.

The fact you and many others prefer that shows why Firaxis has gone down this route, but it doesn’t change the fact that the conscious decision to dumb down the game (in relation to the previous games) was made in the first place.