5564

…and the animation of a Mech punching a Sectopod is sooo good.

5565

See, now that is not how I play mechs. I understand that punching a sectoid is probably very satisfying. But while I use mechs as damage sponges, I went the way of the gun. No punching for me. Pure railgun mayhem. Well not that pure. I love the grenade launcher because it reminds me of Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie) and a good angle with a flamethrower can rout a group of sectoids. Or anyone.

5566

I once ended a mission by punching a the psy inspiration sectiod to end a mission. I happened to be streaming to my friends on twitch and one said “Aw you hit him so hard his little friend died”. Once of my best xcom moments.

5567

BTW, that is one sad little gameplay feature in terms of usefulness for the aliens, albeit a fun one for the player. I have only hazy memories of old Xcom – I only played one of the first round of games – but did they do anything like that? “Hey, let’s take two mildly dangerous little guys with plasma guns and turn them into one with an extra hit point, and the biggest vulnerability in the world.”

5568

Sooooo…I’ve been playing this again, and trying to see how far I can get through the campaign only using one soldier on missions. It’s actually surprisingly fun, and largely impossible. It’s my version of roguelike single soldier Xcom. I only play one character, and when that one dies, it’s game over. You could extend it to one soldier per missions until you lose the panic condition, but this makes for fun 1 hourish sort of sessions.

You can watch a few of my highly unsuccessful attempts at my twitch page lol.

If you’re bored! http://www.twitch.tv/megazenn/profile/past_broadcasts

5569

You have to put that one extra HP in the context of when you’re encountering these. In a game with 5-10 missions under your belt, an inspired sectoid is of no meaningful additional threat/risk. But in missions 2-5, that one extra HP might make the difference between being able to one-shot him (which you may be lucky to do if your soldiers are as crappy as mine) and having to score two lucky hits. That’s where the boost/vulnerability trade-off is.

Original X-Com had no interaction between enemy units at all.

5570

You have to put that one extra HP in the context of when you’re encountering these. In a game with 5-10 missions under your belt, an inspired sectoid is of no meaningful additional threat/risk. But in missions 2-5, that one extra HP might make the difference between being able to one-shot him (which you may be lucky to do if your soldiers are as crappy as mine) and having to score two lucky hits. That’s where the boost/vulnerability trade-off is.

Original X-Com had no interaction between enemy units at all.

5571

Not true! Sometimes they’d blow each other up with rockets/grenades/friendly fire.

5572

Sure, that happens, sometimes you only do 3 damage to one of them. It’s just that 2 shooting aliens with 3 hp is a lot more dangerous than 1 with 4. And if you get a shot on alien 2 that blows up both of them, that’s another silly consequence. So IMO the sectoids are weaker when they do that psi thing than when they just go out on their own and try to shoot you.

5573

Granted, but keep in mind that the shooting sectoid receives a +25% chance to critically hit, which may or may not be a substantial benefit depending on the relative to-hits. Fundamentally, the fact that you rarely (if ever) saw players choosing to mind control other sectoids in multiplayer pretty much seals the deal on its effectiveness. At best, it’s a situational ability.

The Long War did modify it such that the mind merged sectoid only loses two health if its controlling sectoid dies, which is a substantial improvement over the auto-kill.

5574

Don’t know if it’s in vanilla or just long war, but the mind meld also heals injured sectoids. That can be a real pain early in the game. It gets worse when you add in the way Long war ups the frequency of aliens using special abilities.

5575

It’s in vanilla. It adds +1 health and +1 max health. When the merge ends and the +1 max health goes away, the result is health = Min(health, maxhealth); Which in many cases acts as a heal.

5576

Long time Xcom fan here. I like both the classic and the newer one. Thought the Enemy Within added a lot of extra fun and detail.

But…the new Xcom drives me nuts. It’s the only game I have where if it tells me I have a 60 or 70% chance to hit I’m like, ok cool, but if I have a 90% chance I start sweating!

5577

So I played EU at release and did enjoy my 1 playthrough but didn’t feel the need to play more. Did Enemy Within change things up enough to warrant another playthrough if 1 of vanilla was good, but enough.

5578

Yeah, EW is actually awesome, with lots of crazy new things that happen during the entire game - it changes up quite a bit of how it plays (generally all in a good way).

5579

OK, thanks. I’ll make sure I give it a play. I’ve got so many gaming loose ends - in the middle of Alien Isolation, Shadowrun Returns, playthrough 2 of Invisible Inc, and hoping to get back into the 4X swing again!

5580

I felt the same way, but fired up Enemy Within on playstation now this morning after seeing these posts.

8 hours later…

Some of the stuff is great. New upgrade paths made the early game have much more interesting choices. I’ll be buying it the next time I see it on sale. :)

5581

OK, I was just trying to complete the STOOOPID mission in EW where you’re up in Newfoundland fishing village and the air strike is coming in, and HOW the F*** are you supposed to be able to get the hell out of Dodge in time without losing half your people to Chrysalids FFS? I tried twice on normal difficulty after activating the transponder and I just don’t see how it can work. If everyone has to dash every turn in order to make it, how can they defend themselves against attacks on the aliens’ turns?

5582

First time you try the game, you cant, and you’ll loose a great number of soldiers. The second time, you’ll try to cheese it by just sending one soldier up to trigger the airstrike, and the rest are pulled back. You may still lose soldiers, but you should do better.

5583

Stand all but your fastest guy to the roof of the shack near the ship. Don’t worry about cover - it’s not needed at all on this mission. With overwatch and explosives you should be able to get out of there no problem. The first time when you don’t know what to expect it sucks bad. I hated that mission now it’s just an experience boost for me.