4884

After the excellent example set with Civ4 (and much too late with Civ5 also) Firaxis locked down this game’s moddability down - not only was it limited out of the gate, no, they futher reduced it by preventing some stuff you could do at release.
Modding maps, models etc. was never even on the menu, just little tweaks with the rules. From what I understand, you can’t even reskin.
If it was within grasp, I’m sure people would have figured something out, but it appears this time Firaxis plans on not ever supporting modding or maybe introducing it when all interested parties have long moved on, like they did in Civ5.

Jake Solmon always said that it wasn’t a priority for them … but man, Civ4 level moddability for this game would be OUTSTANDING - folks could mod rules more similar to classical X-Com back in, there could be a modded geoscape with actual dynamic stuff going on and so on and so forth.
Someone has that disappoint son gif handy?

rezaf

4885

This one?

[CENTER][/CENTER]

4886

Not sure if serious?
If was of course thinking of this one:

kleinepause.4mal.de-son-disappoint-04.jpg480×600

rezaf

4887

This I never understood in regards to Civ5: I mean, I can’t dispute there were (are) some /excellent/ mods for Civ4, but people don’t just ‘move on’ from the latest in the line of the Civ games, do they? Surely no matter WHEN mod tools were released, people would use them, so why are the mods for Civ5 still so crappy and limited?

4888

Increasingly OT, but … modders DO move on, eventually. If you look closely, the amount of modders doing the heavy lifting is actually quite limited. They are enthusiastic folks, many ambitious mods were announced in the early days of Civ5 modding, but quickly it became clear just how limited the modding prospects were early on, and although Firaxis promised the source SDK relatively early on, they twiddled their thumbs for YEARS before actually bothering to release them.
During this time, the modding forums became quiet, and the folks that had planned making grand mods moved on. To other games, back to Civ4, elsewhere - it doesn’t matter, they moved away from Civ5.
Any why should anyone come back to mod Civ5 when he’s no longer playing it nor interested in playing?

Also, Civ5 seems to be a special case in where many of the tweakers seem to be in the camp that thinks Civ4 is superior anyhow whilst a huge amount of Civ5 players couldn’t care less about mods and enjoy playing the the game in it’s more casual approach as it is.

rezaf

4889

For people like me who are having trouble with classic and up. I found a great let’s play that someone did on impossible (no second wave options on though). The parts that are interesting are how he handles combat and using hunker down and flanking to survive. I’ve only watched the first few months of the campaign but it did give me some ideas on what to change on classic.

4890

Well, I’m doing a little better on Classic, but am now stuck at the story mission (at least I assume it is) where you are investigating what happened to a French convoy. It seems to come quite early in the game, so I literally only have beginning weapons and armor (with scopes). Full squad wipes each time, three times in a row.

Even hiding behind full walls, the Thin Men basically just blast through them and kill me in one shot.

4891

My priorities are either:

  1. Kill everything without risking aggro on more groups with a very high chance. If not possible…

  2. Get anyone who could die out of the the line of sight entirely, not just in cover, and try for 1) next turn.

If you have it take shots try to have just one person exposed in heavy cover hunkering down, primarily because it makes you immune to crits so you can at least put an upper bound on the damage.

In general I found having two heavies early game was a massive leg up. They immediately get the rocket and that 90% AOE that one shots thin men is a life saver. Really more than 90% since off targets quite often still hit the enemies.

Also note you can usually skip council missions without consequences. If I get a bomb mission first I’m just like, “Screw that!”

4892

The second wave setting that scrambles your level-up abilities is terrible. I have support without any medkit abilities, and heavies and snipers WITH them. WTF.

4893

I think of my combat engagements from a statistical standpoint. Some percentage of shots are going to hit, so I try to influence the number of shot opportunities, both on the attacking and defending end of things. And yes, Hunkering Down is underrated.

4894

According to that video I linked earlier, hunkering down causes a 80 point drop in the aim of whomever is trying to hit that guy along with removing the crit chance. I never knew that and that’s probably why it’s so important on the higher difficulty levels.

That random skill option is definitely crazy. I’ve yet to see a heavy actually get bullet storm which makes things very crazy to play.

4895

Note the crit thing only applies to full cover – it’s +40 in full, +20 in half.

Also be careful not to hunker down with one soldier and leave another exposed because they will just shoot at that one, unless that’s what you want.

4896

…Yeah, I rarely see the value in hunkering down. Sooner or later, somebody needs to shoot and kill the aliens, and anyone who is shooting is, by definition, exposed (except snipers I guess). Thus, if you hunker down the guy(s) up front with the best shots, you’re decreasing your odds of getting a kill and still leaving your other shooters exposed to return fire.

I’ve only used it when I was caught out of position (e.g., if my squad is spread out for recon/flanking reasons and I ‘wake’ another alien squad, I may not have enough shots to thin out the enemy squad. In that case, and if my exposed soldier can’t retreat behind a wall, hunkering for one turn makes sense to me).

4897

If you hunker down with the only unit the enemy can see though, they can waste their whole turn firing at a soldier they can’t crit and have -80% chance to hit.

4898

Oh man, I ran into that scripted Chrysalid mission for the first time (when the start popping out in ever-increasing numbers from the thingee in the ship) and wow, I had my squad (with my first mech) wiped out; my last guy got the bridge but I guess you actually need to do something rather than just get in the “exit box” and they wiped him. Oh this is on Ironman, where previously I had lost just 4 squaddies. Sigh.

— Alan

4899

Funny you should say that, because that was just my solution for the French Convoy mission. After repeatedly having my guys get blasted through full cover by Thin Men, I said screw it and ignored the mission. The next couple of “normal” missions, no losses.
It would not surprise me if they give aim bonuses or something similar to the aliens for the special missions.

4900

EW is much more difficult than EU. I completed an Ironman EU game on Normal with 2 deaths the entire game.

EW on normal and I’m lucky if I only lose 1 guy a mission. When I tried to capture my first crystalline-guy, he dropped 3 of my guys.

4901

Wow, I never had that problem in the French Convoy mission. Having a decent shot up high helped a lot, though.

— Alan

4902

Yeah, I don’t know. I’m playing on Classic again, because as mentioned, in going to normal, I didn’t even come close to losing a man through 7-8 missions.

But on Classic, I replayed that stupid French Convoy mission 3-4 times. Each time, my guys were repeatedly missing shots (like try after try, 3-4 guys would miss 50% shots). Then, after missing 3-4 50% shots on one Thin Man, he would blast one of my guys through full cover, then a couple of guys would panic.

I don’t know what it was. I understand statistics enough to know I may have had a fairly exception run of bad luck, which happens. But something seemed off to me.

I did not have a sniper - the game only graced me with one of them, and he was one of two guys I lost in the 5-6 other non-French Convoy missions so far.

4903

You can call me Motoko Kusinagi, 'cause I’m about to turn my Japanese captain chick into a cyborg and give her an MEC mark 2. I’m skimping on everything to try and get my damn satellite network up and defensible, so I figure the MEC should give me a firepower advantage for a while. I can’t even build lasers yet. Aside from unlocking the third tier, other upgrades aren’t going to affect the mech capabilities?