XCOM: Enemy Unknown

olaf · 2013-11-17T21:48:15.000Z

Tony M:

Greenman Gaming still has a 20% discount code on thier front page.

Thanks! I used that. $25 still seems steep but its better than $30.

Alan_Dunkin · 2013-11-17T22:02:58.000Z

SlyFrog:

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.

Ah, I’m on Normal and I find it difficult enough (again, on Iron Man).

…and I just did my first EXALT extraction. Oh my God, this is COMPLETE crap. You get 3 measly turns to disrupt the hack once it starts (and it starts right around the time you get halfway over to it), and then EXALT drops down five million dudes to attack you. There’s no possible way you can get into the zone to disrupt the hack for anything more than a turn before the other guys whale on you. So you have to go rescue the transmitter instead. Basically the mission gives you a false objective, which is total crap. I stupidly rushed to do it and got half of my squad killed before I decided to pull out.

— Alan

ShivaX · 2013-11-17T22:36:25.000Z

Balasarius:

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.

You get assaults with them as well, so it’s not terrible. And if anyone rolls especially bad, its off to the MEC Lab with em!

ShivaX · 2013-11-17T22:37:53.000Z

Alan Dunkin:

Ah, I’m on Normal and I find it difficult enough (again, on Iron Man).

…and I just did my first EXALT extraction. Oh my God, this is COMPLETE crap. You get 3 measly turns to disrupt the hack once it starts (and it starts right around the time you get halfway over to it), and then EXALT drops down five million dudes to attack you. There’s no possible way you can get into the zone to disrupt the hack for anything more than a turn before the other guys whale on you. So you have to go rescue the transmitter instead. Basically the mission gives you a false objective, which is total crap. I stupidly rushed to do it and got half of my squad killed before I decided to pull out.

— Alan

That’s a rare, for the record. It’s only happened to me once and I was similarly pissed off.

Normally you have a fair chance of at least getting shots on the objective.

LeeArac · 2013-11-18T00:33:39.000Z

Sapper Gopher:

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?

Heavy lasers/plasma do give you an upgraded version of your mech primary weapon, if that’s what you mean?

Malaak · 2013-11-18T01:37:13.000Z

There are also a number of foundry projects that will improve MEC capabilitities.

skedastic · 2013-11-18T06:54:46.000Z

Apparently my soldiers who get gene mods decide to show off their new biological enhancements by removing most of their armor. Um, ok.

Is there a mod that gives me a difficulty somewhere between normal and classic that works with the expansion?

Wolff · 2013-11-18T07:39:39.000Z

Jab:

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.

Thank you for sharing. I really like his aggressive style.

sclpls · 2013-11-18T10:18:14.000Z

After 3 botched classic ironman campaigns I’m dialing things down to classic flabbyman mode. I’m saving at the start of each mission. If I lose some dudes fine, but if the whole squad gets wiped I give it another shot. We’ll see if I can make it through now…

Quaro · 2013-11-18T11:36:48.000Z

skedastic:

Apparently my soldiers who get gene mods decide to show off their new biological enhancements by removing most of their armor. Um, ok.

Is there a mod that gives me a difficulty somewhere between normal and classic that works with the expansion?

The no-sleeves armor is silly. Not sure what they were thinking with that.

You can start on classic and turn it down to normal while in game, that makes it so you start without officer school like classic.

You can use this mod: http://xcom.nexusmods.com/mods/409/? to unlock all the second wave options and then either enable ones that make the game easier on classic, or harder on normal.

“Not Created Equally” makes the game easier since you can get get very high base aim soldiers by recruiting a bunch and being selective. You don’t need the mod to unlock this.

Most of the other options make game harder. Maybe: Results Driven, Red Fog, Diminishing Returns, Total Loss, on normal might be good tweak to bump normal just a bit.

LordGek · 2013-11-18T11:47:41.000Z

Quaro:

The no-sleeves armor is silly. Not sure what they were thinking with that.

You can start on classic and turn it down to normal while in game, that makes it so you start without officer school like classic.

You can use this mod: http://xcom.nexusmods.com/mods/409/? to unlock all the second wave options and then either enable ones that make the game easier on classic, or harder on normal.

“Not Created Equally” makes the game easier since you can get get very high base aim soldiers by recruiting a bunch and being selective. You don’t need the mod to unlock this.

Most of the other options make game harder. Maybe: Results Driven, Red Fog, Diminishing Returns, Total Loss, on normal might be good tweak to bump normal just a bit.

Any clue if use of Second Wave stuff adds some sort of end game score multiplier? I mean I’d like to believe that if I take on some of the nastier mods I’ll get some sort of boost to my end score for toughing it out.

Tin_Wisdom · 2013-11-18T12:58:43.000Z

I have a terrible memory, so I’ll ask the question: was the assault on YOUR base part of the old game, or is it part of the expansion? I don’t recall playing through that in the old version, but I only played it once and never went back for a game on “Classic” or whatever.

Either way, it was pretty brutal: I had recently selected “make all equipment available” for a previous mission, so 90% of the guys I had available for the defense were sporting assault rifles and basic armor. At the end of the mission I had lost nine of the ten guys, and the lone survivor is down for like two weeks due to wounds.

Gus_Smedstad1 · 2013-11-18T13:27:39.000Z

No, there was no base defense prior to the expansion.

mjgreeny75 · 2013-11-18T13:29:31.000Z

Tin Wisdom:

I have a terrible memory, so I’ll ask the question: was the assault on YOUR base part of the old game, or is it part of the expansion? I don’t recall playing through that in the old version, but I only played it once and never went back for a game on “Classic” or whatever.

haven’t played the expansion yet, but I can assure you: the base-assault is part of the expansion and not in the old game.

edit: I’m an incredibly slow typer…

Gus_Smedstad1 · 2013-11-18T14:30:05.000Z

I stayed away from the term “the old game” since of course base defense missions were part of XCom: UFO Defense. One of the complaints about Enemy Unknown was that it didn’t have them.

Virgil_Hilts · 2013-11-18T14:48:44.000Z

In the base assault a bunch of “rookies” get created just for that mission, they weren’t on your roster beforehand so your use of “Make everything available” didn’t matter. They will even be rookies if you have the OTC tech that upgrades everyone to squaddies.

KiloOhm · 2013-11-18T14:59:00.000Z

The base assault doesn’t use your own troops??? LAME

Nihm · 2013-11-18T15:59:52.000Z

KiloOhm:

The base assault doesn’t use your own troops??? LAME

It does use your own troops, but they throw in other soldiers as well wearing xcom hq costumes ie. the people that just work there.

Alan_Dunkin · 2013-11-18T16:25:05.000Z

Oh yeah so the Engineers and Scientists and stuff I guess. That makes sense. Kind of glad they put this in.

Of course I say that now, before I’ve run into it yet… running into those scripted missions so far in Ironman/Normal has been an on-off lesson in pain.

— Alan

Nihm · 2013-11-18T18:08:53.000Z

After a run through on classic ironman, I have many thoughts on a mostly positive experience. Mostly I’m reminded of why I turned to multiplayer many years ago (which feels like a detour as I return to a preference for SP). At this point, the feature I’d most appreciate from xcom, civ, etc… is a smooth difficulty curve. I want to find a challenging difficulty setting that remains difficult even my resources expand. Are there any single player games that accomplish this? ‘High scores’ used to address this I guess.