You probably forgot the hyphen.
Thraeg
4203
Finally got around to picking this up. What is the recommendation as far as difficulty settings go? I’ve played a good number of tactics games over the years, and want something that’s challenging and thought-provoking, but not completely soul-crushing.
Along the same lines, any essential mods?
Giaddon
4204
Classic difficulty, non-ironman, or Normal with ironman are good choices for the first run.
robc04
4205
I played through on normal and didn’t have much difficulty. Started a second play though on classic, got board and quit. Wasn’t interested in a second game. Classic was significantly harder unless they tweaked it in patches. I would suggest starting on classic and if you feel it is too brutal start again on normal. I think the aliens get a significant combat boost on classic and sometimes it didn’t feel exactly fair.
Classic isn’t particularly fair. It forces you to play very carefully, leaving little to chance. You don’t want the aliens shooting at any of your guys if they have anything less than full cover, and preferably you don’t want to give them a chance to shoot back, period. You come to rely heavily on grenades in the early game when your assault rifles are questionable and the enemies are weak enough that a grenade is a sure kill.
Normal is better for learning the basics of the game, since you’re likely to make a lot of elementary mistakes that will get your squad wiped on Classic.
Pogo
4207
Classic requires modding, in my opinion. Installing a mod that scales back the excessive crit/hit modifiers that aliens get goes a long way to making it feel “fair.” Classic’s main difficulty increase is from its removal of the limit of active enemy combatants (which is 5 for Normal, IIRC, and uncapped for Classic).
And more important is that those mods do some cool stuff like unlock a 2nd item slot for everyone (not as overpowered as you would think) while giving some alien-specific bonuses. Throw in a couple of the game’s modifiers and it’s a great way to play.
I loved the game for about half my first play-through. Then it became a bothersome monster closet game.
Alan_Au
4209
Classic was a bit of a slog for me since I would only ever advance using the first action point. This is because I wanted to avoid activating aliens while using my second action point. That experience and playstyle really exposed the shortcomings of the “aliens get a free move” system.
In retrospect, I could envision a system where the aliens still get their “free” move, but then it’s immediately a new turn for the players. At the very least, it would definitely cut down on the tortuously slow pacing outside of combat.
Jab
4210
Has there been any news from Firaxis regarding new content for XCOM? After the last DLC there hasn’t been any news about if they’re going to add more to the game.
Quaro
4211
Supposedly news coming at Pax.
My hope is that Jake will announce mod support including a map editor.
Bateau
4212
Does anyone know if saved games from other players can be used to unlock the second wave options? I’m somewhat close to the end in my old Classic save, but since it’s been months since I’ve played it I’d rather start a new one with all the goodies enabled (for more randomization).
Jake Solomon is due to make a mystery announcement at GDC, so that suggests an expansion of some kind. :D
EDIT: Oops, missed Quaro’s post on the next page. D’oh!
I’d actually say that full cover is deceptive; it implies a certain amount of invisibility, but on higher difficulties near game-start, it’s a near-guaranteed way to get a Rookie one-shotted. The aliens have a significant to-hit bonus, and a critical hit (which isn’t strongly tied to cover) will kill a basic soldier right-off, invoking an endless “panic-induced friendly fire homicide” spiral that ends the game. Essentially, if the aliens can see a soldier at turn’s end, don’t expect him to survive except by dumb luck, and there is precious little of that in Classic and especially Impossible difficulty.
Cover in X-Com is a small percentage modifier to to-hit rates and nothing more. Don’t trust cover’s lies :)
WarrenD
4215
I don’t know if someone else’s save game will work for you, but that’s the way to go, it was by far my most enjoyable game on Normal Ironman with the Second Wave options enabled, it played out far less predictably.
I would avoid all ironman options until they fix the teleporting bug. If that’s the only thing Jake announces at GDC, I’ll be ecstatic.
Between that and the bug I get where the UI locks up and I have to force quit the game, I gave up any idea of going ironman.
Giaddon
4218
I believe they got rid of teleporting, that was in a patch last week.
Pogo
4219
Nah, that can’t happen. The move makes sure that you’re not getting free crits on exposed aliens. The move is “free” but it doesn’t count, because if you expose the aliens while still having action points left, the turn does not end for you, and the aliens do not get any free shots from it.
Yeah, the “free move” is really just visual flourish. If you pretend instead that all the aliens were already in cover, it doesn’t really change much. What it does change is that you always discover aliens in groups, instead of one at a time. However, it doesn’t matter much here either, since the max active alien count means that you only discover them up to the max count (i.e. on easy, you’ll never fight more than 5 - or however many - aliens at once)
I think what it’s missing is the “free move” mode that something like Jagged Alliance had: if there are no known enemies, you don’t have movement points, and when you do spot an enemy, you start a new turn with full points (after a reaction shot. But even if the alien has a reaction shot, re-setting all your troops to full action points would help somewhat.) That would speed up some of the boring half-move creep forward.
However, it still wouldn’t fix the fact that the game punishes you for flanking, in that doing so has potential to wake new aliens. So, the best course is still to be very boring, and have a single scout pull them into a kill-zone. I don’t know how you solve that. It’s neat to have unexpected “oh shit” moments, but it’s an artifact of the turn-based / action-point system that the order you move you units in matter so much. I was thinking maybe you could have the unit that spots new enemies get a huge dodge bonus or a bonus action point, or something, but that’s pretty obviously exploitable. I don’t have a good answer, I think it’s just part of the system. Maybe a slightly improved situational awareness to supplement the “noises”. Something like “This area is probably safe, This area is pretty good chance of seeing new enemies”. And the farther you move in one turn, the less accurate your predictions can be.
