The X-COM Topic

Edit history:

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-13 12:21:07 pm

2013-11-13 03:01:26 am

Should be getting my copy of Enemy Within this afternoon, but I won't have a chance to play it much until Friday. You decided whether or not you're going to pick it up yet?

tomatobob

2013-11-13 03:08:26 am

One shall stand, one shall ball.

For me it's less about deciding whether or not to get something so much as it is sort of coming across it at the right time. I'll probably end up getting it if I pop open Steam and happen to feel like spending money.

Prime Hunter

Edit history:

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-14 03:08:29 am

2013-11-14 03:08:07 am

Played for an hour earlier today and already had to restart, in the tutorial no less! (Decided to click this on again to see if they changed anything in the story) Completely bugged out the 2nd mission since I used a rocket when it wanted me to shoot the Sectoid instead. The game wouldn't let me select anyone else, go on overwatch, or even access the menu. Tried loading a few times and it left me with the same result.

Hope that's not a sign of bad things coming my way once I get to the real game.

Prime Hunter

2013-11-16 06:36:27 am

Played a bunch of EW today and I finally think I'm starting to get somewhere despite the fact that I've lost 7 nations again. Had to restart a few times before that too due to getting crushed by the aliens all over the place. Any worries about the game being easier thanks to the new goodies can be thrown out the window. Still as tough as ever on Classic.

It'll be fun to try out my Major Sniper who got Lightning Reflexes and Holo-Targeting with his last two promotions. You can get all sorts of interesting combinations like that with Training Roulette, such as a Heavy I have that can wield up to SIX grenades thanks to Grenadier, Deep Pockets, and the new Tactical Rigging project from the Foundry. The level of customization and personalization you can put in your soldiers now is incredible when you consider all of the things you can do even before you apply any Second Wave options to randomize everything. I love it.

Also, the new maps are amazing. Early favorites might be the 3 new UFO crash sites I've seen so far. (Farm and 2 different city crashes!)

Played a bunch of EW today and I finally think I'm starting to get somewhere despite the fact that I've lost 7 nations again. Had to restart a few times before that too due to getting crushed by the aliens all over the place. Any worries about the game being easier thanks to the new goodies can be thrown out the window. Still as tough as ever on Classic.

It'll be fun to try out my Major Sniper who got Lightning Reflexes and Holo-Targeting with his last two promotions. You can get all sorts of interesting combinations like that with Training Roulette, such as a Heavy I have that can wield up to SIX grenades thanks to Grenadier, Deep Pockets, and the new Tactical Rigging project from the Foundry. The level of customization and personalization you can put in your soldiers now is incredible when you consider all of the things you can do even before you apply any Second Wave options to randomize everything. I love it.

Also, the new maps are amazing. Early favorites might be the 3 new UFO crash sites I've seen so far. (Farm and 2 different city crashes!)

tomatobob

2013-11-16 07:07:23 am

One shall stand, one shall ball.

Oh god I hope you're just making that Heavy throw grenades at every damned thing.

tomatobob

2013-11-16 07:13:14 am

One shall stand, one shall ball.

Hey wait, I remember from some preview stuff that there are grenades that you can use to ghost your dudes. Oh my god.

Prime Hunter

Edit history:

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-16 03:25:58 pm

2013-11-16 03:23:32 pm

...

How did I not think to make one of those for him? That's genius! Now that he's back from the med bay I should definitely look into that. (Also get a +1 damage boost to frag, alien, and the new needle grenades with Grenadier too, which is awesome.)

Prime Hunter

Edit history:

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-16 04:38:21 pm

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-16 04:38:12 pm

2013-11-16 04:38:02 pm

Game just trolled me hard, XCOM style. Crying or Very sad

This arrival:

Ended up with this result:

I think this one mission might have screwed my chances of survival, since I've got Australia in the danger zone and very few options to try and pull them out of it.

Prime Hunter

2013-11-16 04:41:05 pm

You CAN face multiple of those at once on Classic, by the way.

tomatobob

2013-11-16 04:45:23 pm

One shall stand, one shall ball.

They don't go down easily I take it.

Prime Hunter

2013-11-16 05:04:50 pm

Let me put if this way:

- Incredibly mobile
- Can sometimes fire twice for high damage (think this is like Sectopods where they have to stand still)
- Very durable (20+ HP and then their shields add some more)
- Can buff themselves up if they have nearby Sectoids mind merge with them (think this cuts all damage in 1/2 while the shield is up too)

Put that together and add some extras (Mutons and Berserker in this instance) and make is so the only way to get close enough to take out their Sectoid allies is by getting out in the open between your only cover and the back of the Abductor... All the wrong ingredients, especially when you have 2-3 Mechtoids running around at the same time.

Prime Hunter

2013-11-16 07:24:14 pm

That's painful. Just lost the game at the end of July because there was nothing I could do to save Australia. According to the stats I'd only lost 2 missions through the whole game, so again it was the strategic layer and panic that got me.

tomatobob

2013-11-16 07:33:10 pm

One shall stand, one shall ball.

Are there any significant changes to the strategic layer? I can't remember if they ever really said much about that.

Prime Hunter

Edit history:

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-16 08:05:02 pm

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-16 08:04:46 pm

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-16 08:03:44 pm

2013-11-16 08:03:32 pm

Exalt.

Starting at some point in May, they show up and occasionally do one of 3 things:
- Disrupt your current research (can downside the setback by having more labs - they pushed back Carapace armor 9 days early on)
- Steal money
- Raise panic in a country

Once that happens you can either leave it alone or send a covert operative (extraction mission about a week later - if you ignore this the operative is automatically lost) to break up the cell in that country while narrowing down the location of their base by getting another clue. (These are things like "East of the Atlantic" or "A nation you can play in Civ 5") You can also spend some money to do a global scan for hidden cells, which will go into hiding if you do nothing for a while. I believe panic climbs faster in countries where there are hidden cells too, but they can flat out raise panic immediately as I mentioned above.

Now that I think about it I should have taken a gamble and accused a nation of harboring their HQ to see if taking out Exalt would've lowered global panic like the alien base does. I'd narrowed it down to 3 possibilities and all of them had already left the council so I'm not sure what would've happened if I was wrong. Choosing wrong automatically forces the accused nation to withdraw otherwise!

[i]Exalt[/i].

Starting at some point in May, they show up and occasionally do one of 3 things:
- Disrupt your current research (can downside the setback by having more labs - they pushed back Carapace armor 9 days early on)
- Steal money
- [i]Raise panic in a country[/i]

Once that happens you can either leave it alone or send a covert operative (extraction mission about a week later - if you ignore this the operative is automatically lost) to break up the cell in that country while narrowing down the location of their base by getting another clue. (These are things like "East of the Atlantic" or "A nation you can play in Civ 5") You can also spend some money to do a global scan for hidden cells, which will go into hiding if you do nothing for a while. I believe panic climbs faster in countries where there are hidden cells too, but they can flat out raise panic immediately as I mentioned above.

Now that I think about it I should have taken a gamble and accused a nation of harboring their HQ to see if taking out Exalt would've lowered global panic like the alien base does. I'd narrowed it down to 3 possibilities and all of them had already left the council so I'm not sure what would've happened if I was wrong. Choosing wrong automatically forces the accused nation to withdraw otherwise!

Prime Hunter

Edit history:

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-19 05:50:26 am

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-19 05:50:02 am

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-19 05:49:52 am

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-19 05:49:17 am

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-19 05:49:02 am

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-19 05:47:49 am

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-19 05:47:44 am

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-19 05:47:37 am

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-19 05:47:32 am

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-19 05:38:56 am

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-19 05:37:33 am

2013-11-19 05:37:23 am

BASE. DEFENSE. IS. AWESOME!

...but INCREDIBLY brutal! Hello multiple Mechtoids, Cyberdiscs, and Sectoid Commanders, all with a lone ETHEREAL leading the charge! (Before the Overseer!) Not sure if I just got incredibly unlucky with the random spawn or what, because this was absolutely insane when I only have lasers, titan armor, and a mostly maxed out MEC to combat that mess. Thankfully I get to retry it so my game isn't over just yet!

THIS is what XCOM is all about, right here. Pulls no punches whatsoever and is the single most challenging mission in the entire game.

tomatobob

2013-11-19 06:38:32 am

One shall stand, one shall ball.

How does it work with regard to how many dudes you deploy? Does it just dump everyone you have into a squad or do you have to select your squad?

Prime Hunter

Edit history:

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-19 12:23:21 pm

2013-11-19 12:19:46 pm

It's supposed to randomly grab people from your barracks from what I've seen others suggest, but I ended up gathering most of my main squad by the end. The enemy comes in waves in different parts of the map and throughout that you occasionally get reinforcements, what for me usually consisted of one soldier and a couple of "XCOM Base Personnel" which are essentially rookies with assault rifles. I started with 3 soldiers and 2 rookies before the first wave hit.

Edit: Huh, didn't expect that. The alien spawns are different the second time around. Wonder if that Ethereal will still be there in the end.

Prime Hunter

2013-11-19 01:32:37 pm

So yeah... we took down 43 aliens by the end of the battle. Assault wasn't lead by an Ethereal this time. No... just it's friend the Sectopod.

My Snapshot Sniper (with Heat Ammo!) was without a doubt the MVP in both attempts as she was often taking down Mechtoids and Cyberdiscs with OHKO headshots. She definitely earned that promotion to Colonel and the medal you get for surviving the base defense mission.

Prime Hunter

Edit history:

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-21 05:19:27 am

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-21 05:19:04 am

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-21 05:18:38 am

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-21 05:18:27 am

Prime Hunter: 2013-11-21 05:17:59 am

2013-11-21 04:48:10 am

I'm completely speechless right now. Brick wall

I was DAYS away from being able to assault the Temple Ship and complete the game and I decided to ignore a landed Abductor in the US because I didn't feel like taking it on and risking my team. Game decides to throw a battleship at me as a result, which shoots down the satellite and sends the US into panic. Cue the US leaving the council and causing a game over...

Want to know what's even worse about this? In the time the Abductor appeared a terror site popped up that I had no choice but to respond to. In Los Angeles. And I aced it. Which means the US went from panic level 1 straight to 5 when that satellite was shot down.

tomatobob

2013-11-21 05:38:55 am

One shall stand, one shall ball.

Haha damn. I guess satellite kills really freak people out, makes sense but a four point swing is kinda nasty.

tomatobob

2013-11-21 05:44:39 am

One shall stand, one shall ball.

Is the end game different enough for an Abductor to be considered high risk, now though? I mean late game Abductors do often have Sectopods in the vanilla game but by that point you do have some beastly firepower. But I from the sound of it Mechtoids might be worse so I don't know.

Prime Hunter

2013-11-21 01:01:52 pm

Seeing as I'd played something like 50 missions and only lost 4 according to my end stats, I probably would've had no problem with the Abductor. I think it had a bunch of high level aliens in it and it was more I just didn't feel like taking it on being that close to the end, thinking it wouldn't have made much of a difference. I'd had a number of close calls with my troops recently from making stupid mistakes too, including my only Psi unit at the time. (The sniper from the base defense) I still find it weird that a landed UFO can spawn the battleship though. What, did they take off and notice the satellite on their way out or something?

As far as Mechtoids vs Sectopods go, they can both be equally nasty but Mechtoids show up early enough where you might not be as prepared for them, plus they have no problem sending multiple at you at once. Except for the Overseer and Temple Ship I've only faced a single Sectopod at a time except for when I was on Impossible. And maybe I was just lucky, but their added resistance didn't seem to give me any issues at all.

Seeing as I'd played something like 50 missions and only lost 4 according to my end stats, I probably would've had no problem with the Abductor. I think it had a bunch of high level aliens in it and it was more I just didn't feel like taking it on being that close to the end, thinking it wouldn't have made much of a difference. I'd had a number of close calls with my troops recently from making stupid mistakes too, including my only Psi unit at the time. (The sniper from the base defense) I still find it weird that a landed UFO can spawn the battleship though. What, did they take off and notice the satellite on their way out or something?

As far as Mechtoids vs Sectopods go, they can both be equally nasty but Mechtoids show up early enough where you might not be as prepared for them, plus they have no problem sending multiple at you at once. Except for the Overseer and Temple Ship I've only faced a single Sectopod at a time except for when I was on Impossible. And maybe I was just lucky, but their added resistance didn't seem to give me any issues at all.

Prime Hunter

2013-11-24 09:23:55 pm

Oh, for the record, I got extremely lucky with the new Sectopods in that run. They've been absolute monsters this time around.

tomatobob

2013-11-25 12:24:20 am

One shall stand, one shall ball.

Wait, new Sectopods?

Prime Hunter

2013-11-25 02:33:04 am

Sorry, I meant the buffed ones. Still only Seekers, Mechtoids, and Exalt as far as new enemies.

Other than the Sectopod getting their huge defense buff and Muton Elites getting some extra HP I think the rest of the aliens are the same as before. I have been seeing more Sectoid Commanders running around late game though since they start joining the Mechtoids and you can find packs of 3 as the command group in the larger ships. Don't remember there being that many in the past.