Though not if you play with the New Economy modifier in the Second Wave options, which makes continent choices much less boring if you ask me.
I haven’t played since Second Wave came out.
lokiju
4364
Justin, can you elaborate a bit more? Is that because of random country income?
Yes, sorry, it randomizes funding from each country. And, yeah, it is a little weird to see the US being out spent by South Africa, but you can always rationalize that Congress thinks all this alien stuff is hooey.
Gus, I definitely think you should give Second Wave a try. I have been choosing New Economy, Not Created Equally (random rookie starting stats), and Hidden Potential (random rookie stat increases) as my main modifiers, and it has made replays much more interesting. I stopped because the Teleport Bug was getting out of hand, but since that is supposedly fixed now, I should fire up another game.
sclpls
4366
Okay, you just cracked me up as I envisioned John Boehner saying we can’t spend money fighting an alien menace while every day Americans suffer under Obamacare.
Chryssalid just ate my friend? THANKS OBAMA
Chrysallids don’t eat your friends, they [i]impregnate[/i] them.
Goddamn illegal alien anchor babies!
Are those heavy weapon platform things worth it? I’m about 20 hours deep in my first real game and I’ve never researched the thing.
Mazuo
4371
I enjoyed using one in the squad just to have something different. Nice to have something mobile to take cover behind as well. Not as tough as I’d have liked it to be, but it can still take quite a few hits. If you’re that far in already and succeeding, I’d save your resources for upgrading your live soldiers or at least try them out having a save to go back to if you don’t end up liking them.
lokiju
4372
From what I’ve read in other places, here is a good summary:
Pros:
Huge movement speed, flight - probably the best flanking units in the game for this reason, and the best scouts. On flat terrain a hover SHIV can cover almost as much ground in one move action as a soldier dashing. Couple that kind of scouting ability with some squadsight snipers in the back, uber deadly.
Robot - No XP gains, uneditable name, plenty of HP. Who cares if these things take a few hits? With Advanced Repair and squadmates toting arc throwers (which you should anyway, for alien capture), you can heal the SHIV up after an engagement.
Immune to mind control - When I know I’m up against ethereals and sectoid commanders I field a hover SHIV to run right up into their face and blast them to infinity.
Suppression and plenty of ammo - Supports and Heavies get suppression but I find it drains ammo fast. The SHIV can lock down an enemy for quite a few turns.
Cons:
In the early game, getting good SHIVs may be more expensive than you can afford. Money may be better spent elsewhere.
Aside from that, there are not many cons. Considering most of my squad is Colonel/Major, too, XP gains are irrelevant for me.
I wish I could say repair times, but my SHIVs always repair faster than soldiers recover from wounds, even with Rapid Recovery, and even if the SHIVs get knocked down to 1-2 health.
Hover SHIVs are worthwhile for their 60 defense while in flight granting them a surprising amount of longevity, and with plasma cannons their aim is second only to Archangel snipers in most cases, they have an aim of 95 base and while in flight gain additional aim on targets below them. They have a great amount of sight, especially in the air, long flight time, and their weapon is as powerful as the plasma sniper rifle, with almost as much crit chance.
A Hover SHIV on the battlefield is a flying saucer of alien death, doom, and destruction. They are among the most survivable units I have found, besides Squad Sight snipers, provided they are in the air.
sclpls
4373
The immunity to mind control alone makes the SHIVs worth it. The strategic question for me when I play XCOM is not whether I introduce them into my squad, but when…
I’m interested in replay options (though I haven’t finished my first game yet), but where/when was it claimed that the teleport bug was fixed?
I’ve seen teleporting mutons several times in my current game (the last instance was probably ~1 month ago).
At first I was baffled by the Muton squad’s appearance so I replayed that bit over and over to confirm that they were passing through walls and–effectively–appearing out of nowhere. As others have mentioned, this issue seriously diminishes my interest and confidence in playing a classic/ironman game. I’d love for it to be fixed if possible.
Wolff
4375
How does the random stat thing end up working with fixed classes?
Finally bought this at the Steam sale.
It’s nice that you can zoom way out but is there a way to stop the camera from resetting to this close view to the ground after jumping to the next soldier? It’s kinda pointless to zoom out otherwise.
Does a satellite give 100§ additional income if deployed? Am I seeing this right?
Why am I missing shots two times in a row with 80% hit chance?
Why is everyone in the command center a bald male (space) marine? You know how the command center crew would look like if this game was Japanese! ;)
Each country has a different income. $100 is the average, some give more, some give less. When you look over the list of countries each lists how much money you’ll get per month if that country has a satellite.
Missing two 80% shots is just bad luck. It happens. It’s like rolling two dice and asking “why did I roll a 3?” You need to plan around the idea that you might miss, even if the odds are good. One thing about grenades is that they don’t miss - on the harder difficulties, the guaranteed damage is important for survival.
I do not want to think about a command center populated by spikey-haired adolescents.
Pod
4380
You’re not alone: I hated that every moment I was playing.
The interface suffers from a variety of (seemingly ‘console-inspired’) issues. Early on, I found myself wishing for more of a ‘free look’ or over the shoulder camera option so I could better judge the LoS for my troopers. However, once I discovered that it’s occasionally possible to shoot through walls/floors/etc., I just accepted that I need to continually check for targets to judge LoS (and the environment still works as expected ~95% of the time).
Having said all that, I took the advice of someone from the 3MA podcast and started playing it with a gamepad, and I loved it. It sounds counterintuitive, but the mouse and keyboard controls seem less precise to me than the thumbstick+buttons on my Xbox360 controller. (I bought the controller solely for this game and SpaceMarine. Prior to that I hadn’t used a gamepad since my days playing Halo2 on the old Xbox).
The game is built around a grid of hidden squares and the thumbstick seems to glide through/to these squares (using sort of a ‘sticky selection’) in a way that is smoother than trying to click on them with your mouse. Likewise, the game requires a number of extraneous mouse/keyboard clicks that you wouldn’t normally find with a PC-centric interface, and they feel much more natural with a gamepad.
