5544

Today is March 1st, 2015.

According to XCOM Enemy Unknown’s campaign, today is the kickoff of the alien invasion.

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But today is March 2nd, did we win already?

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The aliens have fucking devastated my neighborhood and most of the Northeast USA. Could anyone send a tiny team of about 4 soldiers with small arms weaponry and silly names to save us? Remember we are in Ironman Mode.

-Todd

5547

Sorry, China is offering engineers and we need just a few more to get another satellite uplink. We have plenty of guys, but for some reason only built one plane to carry them. Good luck!

5548

You guys kill me!

5549

I’d like to declare on record to the whole world that I have personally signed a treaty with the aliens, giving them my precious bodily fluids in exchange for not being vaporized. XCOM will no longer be receiving my payment of $11.35 a month.

5550

Long war beta 15 out. Requires a new campaign.

Changelog: http://ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Change_Log_(Long_War)#Beta_15_.28March_2.2C_2015.29

Highlights for me:

  • Major overhaul to Not-So-Long-War
  • A new (country) bonuses system is in place
  • You can now build seven MEC suits.
  • Commander’s Choice (pick each soldier class) now available as a Second Wave option.
  • Some really thoughtful balancing

Only change I’m skeptical of:

  • Reinstituted MEC repair and added repair of regular soldier items…Cost to repair an item is initially set of 20% cash, meld, alloy and elerium cost, and a formula for time to repair is also in place that starts with a baseline of 60% of build time but goes down as you develop Advanced Repair and add engineers to your staff (minimum is 72 hours).
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I’m excited about Dynamic War, the new Not-So-Long-War, but it’s not really viable yet at the smaller values. If you’re looking for the definitive compact version of Long War it’s not here yet.

Item repair times are supposed to act like ‘fatigue’ on items. It used to be if you squad wiped and lost all your equipment it was worse than losing 6+ soldiers. With item damage, they can lower the cost of items so it’s not such a big deal to lose them and they aren’t all you care about.

5552

Wait- so items are initially cheaper now or do you not lose them along with the soldier (instead they get broken)?

5553

Not losing them makes sense (maybe with a % chance), but when I played XCom:EU I also kind of wished that weapons and other gear would be semi-permanently assigned to soldiers (mostly because I found the interface for unequipping and equipping items to be tedious). I also thought it was a bit weird that I had just one laser rifle and I’d swap it between soldiers before every mission, in part because it felt like I was sending them into battle with a tool they’d never used before.

Of course if weapons/gear weren’t so easily swapped, they’d have to be cheaper as well.

5554

2K United Kingdom’s Twitter feed just announced that XCOM 2 is coming this November as a PC exclusive!

EDIT: IGN First

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I know I’m excited.

5556

I played through EU and finally got around to trying out EW. Question: is the storyline the same for both games?

5557

Mostly. There are some twists though.

5558

Can anyone tell me if there’s a way to speed up the alien animations when it’s their turn? Having coming back after some AoW3 where you can kick up the speed of the AI’s turn I’m finding Xcom too tedious to get back into. Hello multiple sectoids mind melding. In the options you can disable action camera and 3rd person cam but I’m looking for a way to speed up the playback a la AoW3.

5559

They are always so shocked to see humans! Look! Look! Let’s scuttle away on our free turn! But no, I think this is a fixed feature.

5560

Install: http://www.nexusmods.com/xcom/mods/79/?

Then: “Fast Motion - Pressing “=” (Equals) key during a tactical mission will increase the game speed. Pressing “-” (Hyphen) key will return the speed to normal.
These keys can be manually configured in: XCom-Enemy-UnknownXComGameConfigDefaultInput.ini”

(If you’re playing Long War mod, then it’s ALT-F9 for fast, ALT-F7 for normal)

5561

I’m so bad at just playing the normal campaign, I can’t imagine going with Long War. But thanks much for the speed mod info - I hadn’t even though to look for such a thing.

5562

I’m on a new playthrough. The first few times I went with gene modification. This time I’m finding having two mech troopers with rail guns to be very helpful.

5563

Mechs are very useful, having a the ability to move very far and 1 punch kill something is not to be undersestimated.