XCOM: Enemy Unknown

[Telefrog]

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.

This is why I stopped playing. Once I figured out that the game punished flanking, I just couldn’t push myself to care about the tactical portion of the game any longer.

[CLWheeljack]

This is why I stopped playing. Once I figured out that the game punished flanking, I just couldn’t push myself to care about the tactical portion of the game any longer.

I don’t think it’s totally game killing, although I haven’t played through it more than once (the somewhat shallow strategic layer / base progression is equally guilty there).

It just makes the interesting-ness of the battles even more dependent on the map layout than it was already. Big open areas aren’t much fun, but you can still move around a fair amount while managing your danger zones if there’s enough walls around. And yeah, you do have to intentionally pursue interesting but non-optimal strategies, which is why Normal or modded Classic are more viable (they’re more lenient about letting you not be optimal).

[Pogo]

The solution to flanking is actually what the solution is in any square-battlefield TBS game… approach from one angle, like clearing out a corner and then moving in one direction, fanning your troops. This isn’t ideal, and the problem still occurs, but it’s playable.

[Gus_Smedstad1]

The solution to flanking is actually what the solution is in any square-battlefield TBS game… approach from one angle, like clearing out a corner and then moving in one direction, fanning your troops. This isn’t ideal, and the problem still occurs, but it’s playable.

This is my experience as well. I agree, the way in which you can activate additional troops while trying to flank hurts the game, but I did an awful lot of successful flanking on most maps. The fast food restaurant is the only one that comes to mind where the activation mechanics get really murderous.

[Squee]

Supposedly news coming at Pax.

My hope is that Jake will announce mod support including a map editor.

Fingers crossed for an “Expansion” that adds randomized maps, removes scripted council missions and replaces them with randomized council missions, adds at least accented English voices for soldiers, and adds the usual pile of new aliums, equipment, maybe a few base pieces, etc.

May as well reach for the stars if I’m going to hope.

[Woolen_Horde]

Yeah, I’ve tried replaying the game of late and just can’t get into it. It desperately needs randomization and a better, more dynamic strategic arc.

[Quaro]

It is disappointing that it is not very replayable.

For that reason I recommend doing your first playthrough on ironman. The game will be infinitely replayable until you finally win one because you keep refining your play and getting farther in the tech tree. I lost a couple of runs before finally winning a classic run and didn’t mind it then.

If you do want to replay though – do check out the Warspace Extension mod. It is a full overhaul that changes a ton of things in the game. It also smooths out the difficulty curve if you want to try an impossible run. Normally on impossible the first month of the hardest part of the game, but in Warspace, it’s much easier. But still insanely hard later in the game.

Alternatively, if you went crazy with the squad sight, try a no-sniper run. That does change the dynamics somewhat.

Actually… if you could simply turn off animations in this game that would go a long way. Waiting for all the sectoids to slowly mind boost the other sectoids every turn is maddening.

[Mark_Asher]

Steam says I got 56 hours out of it. I enjoyed it quite a bit. I hope Firaxis does something go refresh the gameplay. I can’t see putting more time into it otherwise.

[Alan_Au]

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.

So yes, I know it isn’t really a “free” move, but I’m calling it that anyway because it’s shorter way of explaining the mechanism that the game uses to make sure that the aliens don’t start out in a flanked position when you discover them. I guess what I’m proposing is that the player also get a similar option to ensure that discovering more aliens doesn’t immediately place the player in a flanked position. As things are currently, the player can discover a new group with the last move of the last XCOM soldier and give the aliens a full turn before even having a chance to respond.

[Giaddon]

The seems like an inherent risk in a turn based tactical game, though? How many troops did I lose to shots out of the black in the original X-Com? A million?

[Pogo]

The seems like an inherent risk in a turn based tactical game, though? How many troops did I lose to shots out of the black in the original X-Com? A million?

I think the difference sticks out because it’s always a pack of aliens, and never one at a time that you expose. The danger of moving into fog isn’t that you might add one enemy to the current fight, it’s that you’re going to add 3 enemies, and 90% of those enemies in Classic are going to make you go “awww fuck, someone’s gonna die again.”

On the one hand, it annoys people that changes in line of sight into the fog can so swiftly change a battle. On the other hand… X-Com, baby.

[MrPinguin]

I think the difference sticks out because it’s always a pack of aliens, and never one at a time that you expose. The danger of moving into fog isn’t that you might add one enemy to the current fight, it’s that you’re going to add 3 enemies, and 90% of those enemies in Classic are going to make you go “awww fuck, someone’s gonna die again.”

On the one hand, it annoys people that changes in line of sight into the fog can so swiftly change a battle. On the other hand… X-Com, baby.

…Wait, I’m baffled by this discussion. I had no idea that the new X-Com had a ‘waking’ mechanic and a capped number of ‘awake’ enemies. Are the sleeping enemies really not doing anything while you play? (e.g., If I’m in a battle with 5 aliens and there’s a 6th alien right behind them or in a room next door, does it just sit there and not react until I kill one of the 5?)

In most tactics games I’ve played, I generally assumed that all of the enemies were ‘awake’ all of the time. Of course, many such games work from a premise where your squad has the element of surprise, and a stealthy approach means that you can fight enemies piecemeal, but I don’t think I’ve ever played a tactics game where I was afraid of flanking. Naturally, if you have limited intel then sending troopers out on their own can mean that they get caught in an ambush, but isn’t that true in all TBS/RTS/team-FPS games with fog of war? Is that the issue here?

I guess the last turn based tactics game I can think of was Fallout Tactics, which was ages ago… I was able to use recon and flanking a ton in that game. Is there something really different about the fog-of-war/recon mechanics in X-Com:EU? (And FO:T used the classic Fallout combat model, where you moved in real time until you manually activated combat (action-point) mode, or until you made contact with an enemy and started exchanging fire).

[Giaddon]

Are the sleeping enemies really not doing anything while you play? (e.g., If I’m in a battle with 5 aliens and there’s a 6th alien right behind them or in a room next door, does it just sit there and not react until I kill one of the 5?)

Sort of!

In some cases, the aliens you encounter don’t exist on the game board until you activate them – if you’re entering rooms, the game will decide what setup of enemies should be in there when you open the door. Sometimes, there are the dormant clumps of aliens that just hang out until you activate them. And some have basic patrol patterns. But in general, aliens don’t attack until you activate them by seeing them.

[jpinard]

Fingers crossed for an “Expansion” that adds randomized maps, removes scripted council missions and replaces them with randomized council missions, and adds the usual pile of new aliums, equipment, maybe a few base pieces, etc.

May as well reach for the stars if I’m going to hope.

My exact hopes as well!

[MrPinguin]

Wow, that sounds horribly disappointing to me. I appreciate the idea of semi-random alien placement, but it sounds massively immersion-breaking if I can start a raging gun battle outside and the aliens inside the room don’t even exist or care about what I’m doing until I open the door. I’m assuming/hoping the levels and enemy placement were contrived in such a way that you’d normally ‘wake’ the entire clump all at once, but I would’ve expected a dynamic AI to be guiding the alien behaviors across the whole map (e.g., so they could try to overwhelm me by charging in en masse or flanking me if I made a lot of noise and disturbed some off-screen bad guys).

This actually reminds me of Minecraft in some ways, but it works fairly well there for a variety of reasons.

[Giaddon]

I would’ve expected a dynamic AI to be guiding the alien behaviors across the whole map (e.g., so they could try to overwhelm me by charging in en masse or flanking me if I made a lot of noise and disturbed some off-screen bad guys).

Because until mid-game your soldiers and the aliens are at parity (or the aliens are stronger!), and you are outnumbered, if every alien joined the fight at once, you’d be slaughtered. Every once in a while, like in a small map, you will activate a bunch of aliens at once (8+) things… don’t end well, in those cases.

It’s usually not that big a deal when actually playing. Each individual combat encounter is pretty absorbing, so I’m not really thinking about the rest of the map (other than, oh god I hope more aliens don’t appear!)

[CLWheeljack]

I believe that if you have a cap of 5 aliens, and you’re fighting 4, if you wake a new batch, they’ll run out of your sight range and kind of chill there until you kill some guys, at which point they’ll re-engage you. Sometimes enemies will retreat outside your sight range for other reasons (to flank you, etc), so it isn’t that noticeable unless you’re looking for it.

[Razgon]

It is, however, extremely annoying once you figure out whats going on.

I loved the game for quite some time in my first playthrough - Then it suddenly dawned on me how the alien spawns were working, and that brought me completely out of the suspension of disbelief needed to play a game like this.
Its not that its a bad game - The mechanics are just very gamey in my mind.

[Shellfishguy]

This all reminds me I need to get back and finish off the campaign. I was in what I believe was the last room of the last mission and I got the UI lockup bug only to realize that I hadn’t saved it since the start of the mission. Pissed me off to the point I haven’t touched it in months. Maybe this weekend I’ll finish it off. Would love to see some well done DLC for it though.

[WarrenD]

It is, however, extremely annoying once you figure out whats going on.

I loved the game for quite some time in my first playthrough - Then it suddenly dawned on me how the alien spawns were working, and that brought me completely out of the suspension of disbelief needed to play a game like this.
Its not that its a bad game - The mechanics are just very gamey in my mind.

I agree to a certain degree, but I always find turn-based games far more gamey anyways, but I love them, could be I just really like gamey games.