4924

I’m glad my failing memory was not as bad as I feared, but the above comments indicate that I… really sucked.

I assumed that the baseball-capped reinforcements were from my pool of unused squaddies with no rank (I had just procured a new batch). Knowing that they were under-armed and armored intentionally actually makes me feel worse since the game obviously thought they would be a match for the berzerkers and cyberdisks that they threw at me.

I’m still convinced that my “make all equipment available” move hurt me, as I did have some recognizable, ranked troops who were in the default armor and gun… only two of the troops in that meatgrinder had plasma weapons.

I am enjoying the new maps, personally. Although I have recognized one or two as repeats from the first game I am often struck by the clever locales.

4925

A way to arm your dudes would’ve been nice for that part. Keeping everyone equipped when you have to deal with the rest of the game is just a pain. Even a quick moment to access the barracks would’ve been nice. I had my 2nd MEC show up using a mini-gun. I had a particle fucking cannon, but apparently it got unequipped somehow, so I had to make due. Thankfully my other mech had his and I got most of Squad A who were still decked out from some other mission.

4926

Enabling ‘Diminishing Returns’ helps a bit and it was part of the original game design, but Jake said he couldn’t justify thematically why satellites should be more expensive the more you build. Seems like a silly reason but whatever.

But they really need to revamp panic or introduce something else for the global campaign state in the last 1/3 of the game. Maybe it could be as simple as: base assaults should keep coming and keep getting harder. If you squad wipe at the end of the game in the current game, it means a slog to rebuild but you are unlikely to actually lose anything but time. If you squad wipe and then have your base attacked… you are in trouble.

And it would be fun to just keep postponing the final mission and fighting increasingly difficult waves of enemies until you can’t hold them off. XCOM Horde mode.

I wonder if they were just reluctant to make players lose the game in the last part as often as they do in the early game, because it feels so much worse.

4927

I didn’t mean to contradict this part. I had the exact same thing happen to me. Bought a bunch of rookies, switched out weapons, and then got this mission. On ironman :(. I didn’t feel bad using force quit to cheat ironman in this case. Managed to survive but lost 6 colonels. (incidentally it was during this battle that I was able to confirm that if you get bullet storm, close and personal, and that assault double shot (via training roullette), you can indeed fire 4 times.)

Someone mentioned equipping all your off duty guys with exalt stuff, which is what I’ll do from now on.

4928

I’m with you. It took me several restarts to get a Classic Ironman campaign that wasn’t instalose to me (eg, bad luck on first mission), but once I got going, things were pretty similar to my Classic Ironman EU game.

Until I hit the first EXALT mission, that is. At least two groups of 3 enemies deployed when the mission began, one of which began hacking on their first turn. Then 3 more drops (two drops of 3, and one drop of 4) during the mission. At this point it still takes 1-2 rounds of concentrated fire from my squad in order to kill one of them, and yet I’m facing 16 at once. Versus my 4 + 1.

I’m shelving this crap for a while. And I freaking loved EU.

4929

I like his aggressiveness, but he’s also one of the luckiest rollers I’ve ever seen.

4930

But but… you can modify your guys so they can jump higher! And turn them into MECs (aka walking barns) that also can’t hit anything!

4931

FYI, that EXALT mission was one of my complaints above. However, I learned to live with it and now I know better. Because the transmitters are arranged somewhat randomly, the 1st was way on the other side of the map. It was yeah, pretty much impossible. I’ve run into this mission (which is one of two basic EXALT types) quite a few more times and it’s never been as bad as that one.

— Alan

4932

Tell me about it. When I play, it’s usually the aliens who get the lucky rolls.

4933

I’ve found the easiest way to handle the extract missions is to do your best to blow away all cover near the encoder / transmitter as early as possible, and then arrange your forces around it so it becomes a killing field. But yeah, this depends on the luck of the draw in getting a decent starting point.

4934

Hey Gang,

While I’ve proudly snagged EW, I can’t claim to have ever made it that far in EU previously.

I just hit my first Chryssalids (also known as Christ’s Salads). Hoo Lordy!

Playing ironman up to that point it was the final nail in the coffin of this game’s run and I have now started the campaign over.

So, all you pros out there, what are some of the key tactics to dealing with these turkeys in EW? Beam weapons? Mec Flamers? Anything even more fundamental if not that far down the tech tree?

4935

I hear flamethrowers work well, but I went with fists for my two MECs. Each hit with a fist one-shots a Chryssalid, and a MEC can actually survive one of their counterattacks. That said, they tend to bunch up so I imagine that flamethrowers are pretty great. I loved my fists later on though, and the increased movement they give is pretty great too.

4936

Shotugns. Hit them with shotguns, over and over. Paradoxically, getting close to them with assaults is often the best way I could deal with them. Just make sure you finish them off!

I’m no classic player (normal only) but I would always drop everything and hammer on them until they went down.

4937

Try not to get too close to them. They are usually easy to hit, so you want to lure them into the open in range of several of your troops at once, with the best weapons you can muster. You can also one-shot them if you have a MEC trooper with the punchy attachment (which works better than the flamer for this purpose).

You also want to watch out for the zombies they produce.

Possible spoiler about the zombies

The zombies themselves aren’t super dangerous, but if you let them hang out for long enough, another chryssalid will burst out of them.

4938

Flamethrowers are really nice for groups. They burn them for a good amount of damage and send them panicking, which gives you some breathing room. If you’re only facing one of them at a time though, I see no wrong in just punching them in the face.

4939

…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.

incorrect in several ways. you seem to forget that the aliens are affected by distance too.

4940

Ultimately I’m a little disappointed in EW. I got it for a discount, and I think I got my money’s worth, but I kinda was hoping for more variety.

There’s the two types of Covert Ops missions(repeatable), the one off EXALT and your base invasions, and I got one other new scripted Council mission where you call in an airstrike. So you see most of the new stuff pretty early on, the late game is essentially the same.

Plenty of new maps but the vast majority of missions are still the same UFO/Terror types. I wish Council missions were more common or even triggerable to break it up.

4941

The chryssalid / air strike mission was terrible. I’m dreading it on my second play-through (gave up on my first one, the second wave option that scrambles your talents was retarded).

4942

GMG20-ODON-FLUA7 doesn’t seem to work on Enemy Within.

4943

I had that impression too when I first pulled the trigger, but after playing through about 75% of the campaign, I think you (and the earlier me) are selling it short.

There are two types of covert missions, but skads of new maps unique to those missions, along with the global panic-mechanics.

There are at least five “one-off” EXALT missions (plus the XCOM base attack) that I’ve counted so far, and I suspect I’m missing one or haven’t seen some yet:

EXALT Mission List

The initial one where you find out that there is an EXALT
The one where you capture/rescue the EXALT guy
The one where you rescue the girl
The XCOM base assault
The assault on the EXALT base
The rescue mission for the other abductees

… that’s pretty much the equivalent of all the scripted missions in the EO original and doesn’t even include the additional one-offs for the campaign, like the fishing village.

And come to think of it, there are so many EXALT one-off missions that they kind of crowd out the generic EO “council” missions all together; I think in the EW play-through I’ve only gotten one or maybe two non-EXALT council missions, where in the typical EO play-through I’d start to get tired of the repetition. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but I don’t miss trying to rescue yet another council flunky from that same damned ruined highway yet again.

There at least two new alien types, plus you technically get five or six new enemies in the various EXALT troop types. I know the latter might initially seem like a trivial addition, but I disagree: in the long late-mid game of EO, I got REALLY tired of shooting the same damned Mutons again and again, mission after mission. The EXALT missions give you some variety, and I like how their skills and weapons upgrade alongside yours.

You get the new MEC trooper, the MECs themselves and their weapon/armor upgrade paths.

You get the new genetic engineering stuff, which is effectively a new opt-in skill tree.

You get the new MELD resource and its associated mechanics in most missions.

47 new maps – basically increasing the “generic” maps by 50% plus the one-offs.

A bunch of new weapons, grenade types, accessories and armor, even beyond the new stuff associated with the MECs.

The medals mechanic, which at first seems pretty trivial and annoying, but which scales pretty nicely and makes your officers more survivable.

Plus there are the (relatively minor) UI and skill tweaks, the soldier language stuff, the new faces and helmets, etc., etc.

That’s a pretty decent list of additions for an expansion, at least in retrospect.