OpenWorldGames Server ONE

Video games => Other games => Fantasy and Sci-Fi => Topic started by: Art Blade on February 09, 2014, 05:13:58 AM

Title: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on February 09, 2014, 05:13:58 AM
Hey guys. It came as a surprise, I can tell you that. I had never in my life played any turn- or round-based strategy games on a computer, only a few horrific attempts at real-time strategy (such as Dune2) which I have ever since abhorred. So I thought TBS games were just the same horror as RTS.

Then I came across an article for some reason which had an intriguing headline: "The perfect XCOM run: How Zemalf beat Impossible Ironman with zero deaths" (http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/01/31/worlds-best-xcom-player-how-zemalf-beat-enemy-within-on-impossible-ironman-with-zero-deaths/). I had no idea what game he played but those zero deaths and apparently on some ultra difficulty level just made me want to check it out. I then wanted to watch at least some of that 50-hours-playthrough (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpbTkbv4L2Y&list=PLvqxe4XbcSiEzrZm28NjsLXmHkffCJmBY) which actually was a DLC called "XCOM: Enemy Within" but it is the same game, same principles, just with a couple of new features, so for me that will be something for later, after finishing the base game. However, I started to watch and I soon was convinced that I should give it a try.

As usual, I wanted to buy the game in my favourite games shop but they had run out of stock.. so I acquired some steam wallet codes which they did have in stock and dashed home to redeem the code and my money on steam and I purchased the game. A 9.2GB download later I could finally start to play.

And now I'm addicted  :-D

[smg id=6569 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM base"]
[smg id=6570 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM mission start"]
[smg id=6571 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM unit deployed"]
[smg id=6572 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM there are hostiles"]
[smg id=6573 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM hands on"]
[smg id=6574 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM who are you"]
[smg id=6575 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM it's all me"]
[smg id=6576 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM overwatch reaction"]
[smg id=6577 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM nice shot"]
[smg id=6578 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM excellent"]
[smg id=6579 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM not a scratch"]
[smg id=6580 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM skilled sniper"]
[smg id=6581 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM aftermath"]
[smg id=6582 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM successful mission"]
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on February 09, 2014, 05:52:46 AM
As you can see, there are bazillions of things to do and you may customise your unit members almost like in an RPG.

Apart from battle tactics you need to take care of global events and research and money and who knows what. So it is a bloody mess when you first look at it but it becomes all clear after some time playing the game.

You have apparently unlimited savegame slots. Plus quicksave and autosave (after your last turn or last important change, some three consecutive autosaves will be there and they might come in handy in case you screwed up badly.

The game has a couple of minor flaws, like during a mission you can't see who of your unit got how many kills (which you can see when in the base) and stuff like that, or take a rookie with you and after his/her first mission a class (heavy, support, assault, sniper) will be randomly and permanently assigned. I ended up with three heavies in a row.. but found out that you can help it with a little trick:

Spoiler: ShowHide
the last mission autosave should be the moment before your last kill(s). Load it, finish the mission (again) and get a new try for your rookie's assignment. I finally got my sniper "Lockdown" like that and he did bloody well :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on February 09, 2014, 07:12:17 AM
By the way, so far I haven't lost any soldiers :) Also by the way, I am playing on "easy" as I haven't got any experience with that type of game and generally speaking, I like my games easy and to be an enjoyable pastime as opposed to getting angry, annoyed, a severe case of heartburn and to top it off, an exemplary cardiac arrest.  :-D

Here is a playlist/playthrough (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-EXKoFOdtk&list=ELazNajer0kc0) by Zemalf for his 2nd attempt on XCOM:UE. I watched some of his first attempt and could already recognise a couple of grand mistakes so I couldn't continue watching him without cringing; luckily he came up with this 2nd attempt. Check the first vid to get an idea of what a mission looks like -- he explains what is going on. :)

Let's Play XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Part 1 (S2) - I/I [Impossible][Ironman] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-EXKoFOdtk#ws)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on February 09, 2014, 03:48:36 PM
Cool :-X

I'm wondering if this game is an updated version of an older game called "UFO: Enemy Unknown" that came out I think in the late nineties. The concept seems very similar in some regards.

I too am not crazy about RTS games. The only ones I ever liked were Dune 2 (which was the first Command and Conquer style game) and Sid Meier's Gettysburg. The C&C series with it's seemingly endless sequels, spinoffs and imitators never did anything for me.

That's why I like TBS games such as the Civilization series - I like to have time to think and plan strategies as opposed to having every game end in a virtually uncontrollable "tank rush".

Thanks for the info Art :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on February 09, 2014, 05:59:13 PM
welcome, I was already waiting for you to show up here :-()

Oh and you made me edit the first post regarding RTS, I had to put it in there: "Dune2" which was horrific, same as C&C and the likes  8-X

But XCOM or for that matter, TBS, is different. It is fun to be able to move around and get action cam views of your guys aiming and firing etc, zoom in and around, customise stuff.. nice :) Only the fracking economy systems still are not exactly my strong suit.

I decided to restart (this time without tutorial) because I realised that you can only get anywhere in that game by building satellites which will reduce panic as well as generate money needed for everything else. It is absolutely necessary to get them up and running at all costs and as soon as humanly possible. Which means don't spend money on anything else in the beginning.. And boy, did I spend money. I thought I had time. That wasn't exactly true..  :-D

I know I'm new to this so hey, let's get some practice -- no need to play a lost cause to the grim end, despite the nice battles and cool unit I had.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on February 13, 2014, 04:40:27 PM
Alright. During the past days I've spent most of my spare time reading up on strategies and basics and economy and whatnot regarding this game because I realised it was WAY more complex than I had imagined. Not wanting to go in blind and into certain death again, I've been taking my time getting familiar with the background of all this. I found a tremendous amount of valuable information here:

http://ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Enemy_Unknown_(EU2012) (http://ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Enemy_Unknown_(EU2012))

And I followed Zemalf's 2nd (successful) playthrough of this game mainly to watch his base construction and research decisions and how that played out during his game. Now I'm confident enough to try again and have resumed playing. I know I'm not bad at turn-based combat but I'm still bloody wary of all of the rest (research, engineering, funding.. all that stuff) -- yet I'm already on it.

I've already learned that I have to sacrifice good things, e.g. I have got only one steam tile in the base which is the only place where I could build an efficient steam-powered Thermal Power plant but unfortunately it is located right below my first (it's there by default) satellite uplink. In order to get a maximised adjacency bonus (one extra satellite for two adjacent uplinks) I will have to build 4 uplinks so that two are next to one another and two more directly beneath them, forming a square of four tiles, each represented by an uplink and each connected with two adjacent uplinks. And one of those will take away my only steam tile so I will have to build a couple of regular power plants until I have researched an even better power plant which will take time during which I will have to place satellites..  :D :-D

The battles are almost a relief, allowing me to get away from all that base stuff.. but getting on with satellites first and waiting for every one of those 16 countries to get covered by a satellite is essential and will maximise my monthly income which will give me the funds for future investments such as better weapons and armour. It means: survive the first three months and get all satellites up so worldwide panic stops and then focus on building a combat unit with uber soldiers so the final fight may be won. Gah.  :-D

Here is my first month's result, the so called council report at the end of each month has to be good because it determines what kind of funds you'll get next month. I managed with excellent results, grade A. Let's hope that I can keep it up like that :)

[smg id=6588 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM grade A council report"]
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: PZ on February 13, 2014, 04:46:19 PM
It does sound like you're hooked - have fun  :-X
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on February 13, 2014, 04:57:20 PM
Thanks, will do :)

The game could be described like this:

It's not about what you want. It's about what you need.

By the way, that was not a quote. But you may quote me :-D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: PZ on February 13, 2014, 05:20:32 PM
Reminds me of an old Rolling Stones tune  :-()
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on February 14, 2014, 12:38:15 AM
Heh ;) :-D

It all sounds very interesting actually.

This game must definitely be an updated UFO: Enemy Unknown. That game also was big on base construction, securing funding, acquiring scientists, etc., and if you stuffed any of that up you could forget about getting anywhere useful with it. This game is obviously a follow-on.

My best mate tried to get into UFO: EU back in the day but being the kind of guy who likes to jump in and blitz it up he neglected the infrastructure side of things and so lost patience with the game, especially when his troops started getting clobbered before they could even get out of the transport aircraft that delivered them to the combat area :-() I tried to tell him, but...
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on February 14, 2014, 09:07:32 AM
no idea, PZ. They must have nicked it off me. :-D

fragger, it is indeed a game inspired by the 1994 version but not a remake as such. The devs wanted to create something they could only dream about back in the day; something they wanted it to look like back in the day, with today's graphics and computing power and all that. Apparently the basic principles still apply, though :)

Which is why I can fully understand why that friend of yours ended up getting killed before the battle even started. You can do anything you want.. but you're likely to die by the consequences  :-D Essentially you don't have a choice but to do more or less the same thing: get satellites up, defeat enemies in turn-based combat, get more satellites up, kill more enemies.. and level up everything in between, which is the tricky bit. Every turn of a month, you'll get a council report which reflects the past month's deeds (and failures, if you screwed up something) and thereupon you'll be rewarded with scientists, engineers and cash. The better, the more. Or, if you screwed up, you'd get less money and so forth: you'd be on a path with letters painted in bright red on it that read, "you suck and you will die"  :-D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: PZ on February 14, 2014, 10:34:09 AM
Quote from: Art Blade on February 14, 2014, 09:07:32 AM
no idea, PZ. They must have nicked it off me. :-D

The rolling stones-You can't always get what you want (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIX0ZDqDljA#)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on February 14, 2014, 12:15:54 PM
alright. They did nick it off me.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: PZ on February 14, 2014, 01:10:36 PM
Quote from: Art Blade on February 14, 2014, 12:15:54 PM
alright. They did nick it off me.

Wow... those boys (and that song) are really old  ????

Spoiler: ShowHide
 :laugh:
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on February 15, 2014, 12:07:27 AM
That they are. They no longer have much time on their side :-()

Cheers Art for the lowdown. My mate sucked and died :-D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on February 15, 2014, 03:23:19 AM
 :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on February 23, 2014, 03:18:38 PM
This is what a proper council report looks like.
[smg id=6602 type=preview align=center caption="xcom council report"]
My current team, all beefed up. To the right my senior sniper. Not on the team but in my unit: Crater, my heavy. For some missions I replace a heavy with a sniper.
[smg id=6599 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM current unit"]
Just have to show you this. This is basically an ambush. I had my guys set up to fire as soon as an enemy moves in(to) their line of sight. And that's what I call a proper sniper shot -- all across the map, through an archway, through a gap in a wall and pow, hit:
[smg id=6600 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM perfect sniping 1"]
She got a second shot in a row and finished that enemy off  :-D
[smg id=6601 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM perfect sniping 2"]

Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: PZ on February 24, 2014, 10:58:49 AM
Nice sniper position!
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on February 24, 2014, 02:27:40 PM
Thanks :) Although I'm afraid those aliens won't agree with you, in particular the one who got his head blown off.  :-D

I had positioned my two snipers left and right of the inside entrance room at the start of the map hoping for them to be able to get a chance for literally a crossfire situation while I moved on (killing) with the rest of the team. The snipers are not so useful in close-quarters combat but hey, did they get a chance to prove how valuable they are IF placed correctly, even inside a crammed spaceship  >:D They looked alongside the walls or across the map, respectively, reaction shots fired depending on alien movement.

You can see the other sniper in the lower left corner of the first sniping pic. There are two bright lamps -- actually a teleporter escalator -- forming a diagonal, if you follow that diagonal to the left (basically looking at the upper lamp) you should see the blue armour of that second sniper and the white(ish) health/cover information.

It was indeed the best shot I've seen so far, ever  :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on February 27, 2014, 01:24:56 PM
I just did it again. The "lone sniper" presents a pretty nasty surprise to enemies who don't know what's waiting for them >:D Here, after finishing a bunch of aliens to the top right of the pic where most of my team mates are, one clever enemy ran through the door in the middle of the pic outside and was about to flank them from behind. Only he already had been flanked from behind.. and never saw it coming.  :-D I had a good chuckle at that one.

[smg id=6603 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM lone sniper tactic"]
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on February 28, 2014, 12:30:24 AM
 :-X :-D

Few things are more satisfying than flanking a flanker :-()
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on February 28, 2014, 11:15:31 AM
Oh yeah, like grabbing your shoe and holding it like a club and then flattening a mosquito with the heel of your shoe, producing a satisfying BLAM-SPLAT! after it had been terrorising you all night long. I used to have one such massive blood mark on my white wall in my bedroom for years as a warning for the new guys. They never even crossed the line into that room ever since. :-D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: PZ on February 28, 2014, 11:24:07 AM
 :-X :-D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: mandru on February 28, 2014, 11:27:26 AM
 :laugh:
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Binnatics on March 08, 2014, 01:54:28 PM
Quote from: Art Blade on February 28, 2014, 11:15:31 AM
Oh yeah, like grabbing your shoe and holding it like a club and then flattening a mosquito with the heel of your shoe, producing a satisfying BLAM-SPLAT! after it had been terrorising you all night long. I used to have one such massive blood mark on my white wall in my bedroom for years as a warning for the new guys. They never even crossed the line into that room ever since. :-D

Nice warning sign indeed, BUT.... it was your blood matey ^-^

Excellent sniper positioning there man, I can see how you are enjoying the game. I was wondering; what happens if you let once continent uncovered and thus panic breaks out on, let's say, South America. What will be happening according gameplay? Will you just loose those countries and continent, unrecoverable, or will it result into a massive fight against severe alien presence? That would also be cool :)

I played quite a bit of C&C games, until it bored the s#!t out of me. I liked getting my army upgraded and then show off, with massive triple stripe parades on the maps. The best setting was 2 huge tropical islands with different enemies on one island, and your own base on the other. You could literally control the entire area and keep your enemy base alive just enough to have their small bursts of soldiers as daily food for the 'yet to be upgraded troops' of your own >:D
I could spend hours and hours re-structuring my troops and parades and dream of world dominance >:D :angel:

I also remember a game that looked a bit like C&C setting, but was in fact more like XCOM. A group of 4 soldiers, with their own qualities, exploring a variety of levels throughout the game. The same guy that introduced me to Dune 2 was playing that game. I don't remember the name of it, but it must have come out around '94 or something.

I really like this game, but I don't have the time to dig into it. For now I'll just keep myself busy with simple shooting and when a sequel hits the shelves I might join the party :-X :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 08, 2014, 07:53:03 PM
 :)

As a matter of fact, I've got all continents covered with satellites except South America and that on purpose just to get my monthly mission or three to train rookies (levelling up soldiers) and to collect valuable alien stuff needed for constructing or buying better gear.

In this game, South America only comprises two countries but at least I get to choose between two panic-reducing missions (either/or) that only happen because there are no satellites and aliens start to annoy.. err, kill, people. If I fail to complete a mission successfully or if I ignore them, the panic level will jump up on that continent which may hit the maximum of 5. If I complete a mission nicely, all panic on that continent will drop according to my performance which usually means it's down to a minimum. If any country is still at panic level 5 by the end of the month, it will leave the council forever which means you'll lose one option of getting those "resource grinding / soldier training" missions and if you lose too many (I believe eight) countries, you'll lose the game.

OK, I haven't lost any country. So, covering all countries (and thereby continents, in my case: except South America) reduces the overall panic level and you don't have to worry much. I don't have the continent bonus from South America (all autopsies and interrogations would be instant) but that isn't important. I get my research results within a day, anyway.

Now you're likely to see how important satellites are. If you fail to cover the earth with them within the first three months, you'll most likely fail to win the game or at least it will be goddamn difficult to finish it. And it is pretty difficult to live through the first three months doing everything you need to do plus making sure there are as many satellites as you can muster going up.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 08, 2014, 08:22:57 PM
Oh, in addition to levelling up a soldier's abilities, later in the game you'll have to test your guys in order to find those with psionic powers and then level them up, too.

[smg id=6618 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM Psionic Operative"]
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on March 08, 2014, 11:55:57 PM
Interesting experiences you are having Art, I'm enjoying reading about them :) I think I might enjoy this game but my budget is currently a bit tight for splurging on new games (remember, they cost an arm here). Plus I've got car registration and insurance coming up, also I'll soon be needing new tyres so I need to save some dough ::)

Quote from: Binnatics on March 08, 2014, 01:54:28 PM
I also remember a game that looked a bit like C&C setting, but was in fact more like XCOM. A group of 4 soldiers, with their own qualities, exploring a variety of levels throughout the game. The same guy that introduced me to Dune 2 was playing that game. I don't remember the name of it, but it must have come out around '94 or something.

That wasn't Commandos, was it? Although I seem to remember it was six guys, not four. And it was a bloody difficult game, quite unforgiving if your timing was off even by a couple of seconds.

On second thought, Commandos came out in the late 90s, so this was all a bit of a pointless comment, really :-()
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 09, 2014, 03:08:52 AM
fragger, first of all, get a proper internet connection, then get steam, and then get the game when it's on discount. Like I did :) There's also always that nasty little option to perhaps receive a game as a surprising gift via steam, that's how Binnatics made me play GTAIV and Portal2  ;)

Some more to whet your appetite. Here is a nasty surprise attack in progress without the enemy knowing despite the fact that it's already happening and about to blow up in their faces. I'm using ghost armour that allows you to stay invisible for one turn, up to four times per soldier and mission.  >:D There are walls and a roof that you don't see because the game always toggles them on and off for your gaming convenience, depending on your camera position. So for the aliens, they're inside a room the doors of which I've just opened (and that made them visible to me) but they haven't yet realised that I did due to that ghost armour. I've positioned three soldiers around each of those two doors and now the trap will clap those last two aliens. They're sectoid commanders with psionic powers but my guys have too strong a will to get mind-controlled. Instead, they'll fry the enemies' brains out in just a second :-D

[smg id=6619 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM ghost armour"]

Of course, there's always an option to go in loud with a disturbing lack of subtlety. Here the legendary Blaster Launcher attack (screenshot taken some time ago) that turned Major Harris into Colonel Harris :-()

[smg id=6620 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM ker-boom"]
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: PZ on March 10, 2014, 04:04:50 PM
Sounds like lots to keep track of - way above the capabilities of this old gamer  ????
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 10, 2014, 05:56:01 PM
There is indeed a lot of management going on and the missions are only a small part of the entire game (considering all the thinking needed in order to get a proper strategy regarding how to build your base properly and how to get up those satellites and what to do with your rookie soldiers and many more things) but those missions are what I'm enjoying the most -- those battles may easily take an hour or two, depending on your gaming style -- fast with lots of losses or slow with tactical superiority and without any losses, which is how I prefer to play.

Generally speaking, the game requires you to do lots of things outside the battles while the battles are what you're working for: get money, soldiers, level them up, win battles for XP and resources, use resources to build facilities and military gear, use facilities to gain access to better technology and gear.. check top right some of my resources and then the "price" for that gun in the pic. When I was quite new to the game, I didn't even have access to it let alone the funds, now I could outfit an army with it. I'm taking my own time  :-()

[smg id=6623 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM alloy cannon"]

And somehow you want to progress the story line when you're ready or keep on levelling up stuff.. it's a very consuming game. The only really important thing to know is the satellite coverage, the rest is something you will learn and there is quite a bit of freedom of choice. Hard to explain, watch some vids like the ones at the start of the topic and read some wikis.

I think it would take forever explaining the details of this game. In order to understand the game, I watched two entire playthroughs (about 50 hours each) and perhaps half of the DLC Enemy Within playthrough. The DLC expands the game significantly and I'm waiting for a discount offer to get that, too. I want to understand the basics and a little more of the original game first and only then go through all of that with DLC enhancements that will alter a lot of the game (basically changing the entire game as in kicking it up the difficulty and complexity ladder).

But that is what is so great about it. It isn't getting boring at all, and I've already spent more than 200 hours on it without DLC.  :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: PZ on March 10, 2014, 07:53:03 PM
Quote from: Art Blade on March 10, 2014, 05:56:01 PM
... I've already spent more than 200 hours on it without DLC.  :)

Sure sounds like you're having lots of fun!
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 11, 2014, 08:47:15 AM
I've never thought about that possibility. Maybe you're right. Perhaps I'm indeed enjoying it. I'll have to think about it some.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: mandru on March 11, 2014, 10:35:22 PM

Quote from: Art Blade on March 11, 2014, 08:47:15 AM
Perhaps I'm indeed enjoying it. I'll have to think about it some.

200+ hrs and he needs to think about it.  ::)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 12, 2014, 11:38:07 AM
I'll have to think about that, too.

Spoiler: ShowHide
mandru, you seem to have missed the joke in the quote  ;) <nudges mandru a couple of times>  :-()
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 12, 2014, 11:48:53 AM
YAY! DLC XCOM: Enemy Within is on special steam discount for only 24 hours, 75% off! Only 6.24€! <ca-ching> bought, downloading 7.2GB...... :-D :-X


Maybe I do like that game. I'll think about it while downloading the DLC.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: PZ on March 12, 2014, 02:07:29 PM
Anyone that excited must like the game
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 12, 2014, 02:17:04 PM
Alright, I haven't yet thought about any of the previous things I thought I might think about because I think that I kept thinking about the game, instead.

Oh, did I mention that I really like this game? Like, A LOT?  :-D

The DLC is actually a complete new game based on XCOM:EU. When I fire up that game, I get to see a splash screen from which to choose either XCOM: Enemy Within or XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

Nice  :-X

I'm not far from finishing XCOM:EU and then I'll give the DLC a shot. Looking forward to it, already :)

Right now, I've just unlocked the psi armour needed to enter the Gollop Chamber which will trigger the final mission. I'll wait with that a bit though because I need a few ethereal corpses from missions to come in order to build mind shields. And for the fun of it, too. :-D

[smg id=6624 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM psi armour"]
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: PZ on March 12, 2014, 02:51:39 PM
hmmm... I'm not yet convinced that you really like the game  :angel:
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 12, 2014, 03:02:47 PM
ah. maybe you should give it another thought. 8)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 12, 2014, 03:39:48 PM
Here's an illogical calculation. IF a certain amount of research time of say 2 days equals 100% AND IF a certain rebate equals 50% of the research time or 1 day, THEN applying two rebates of 50% equals 100% or a two-days rebate which means zero research time. Now, if we applied three times that rebate, 150%, then we'd get a negative 50% research time which means the research would be finished one day before I ordered it. I'd actually lose that day because I would have had access to the research result a day earlier if I had known it was already available even before I wanted to have it researched at all. Confusing? Well, check that screenshot and read the text.. I get three times a 50% rebate :)

And I won't accept a different approach trying to make it logical: If you apply 50% and are left with the remaining 50% and then apply another 50% you'll get 25% of the original 100% and the third rebate would halve that 25% resulting in 12.5% -- I wouldn't accept that because you wouldn't either if your local dealer gave you a voucher telling you, "one of those grants a 50% discount on any of our products" without telling you that you may not use more than one voucher. However, the real result should be: IF you get enough discount to reach 0% ("for free") then you cannot apply any more rebates. But the result should be "for free" or in case of the research, "instant" because there is no time involved. Still, you see that the pic shows "fast (1 day)" which is silly because the game knows instant research.

[smg id=6625 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM illogical calculations"]
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: PZ on March 12, 2014, 05:27:43 PM
Game percentages are calculated using an alien form of mathematics.  For instance, I'm at 108.57% accuracy using a shotgun in B4.  How in the world can I hit more people than I aim at?
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 12, 2014, 06:07:09 PM
it means that you had more than once a double kill with one shot. Could be that you had two guys standing next to each other and you shot between them hitting both of them or that you had two guys standing one behind the other and your shot went through the front guy into the guy behind -- that is what you'd call "to kill two birds with one stone"  :-D Interesting is that your game apparently counts shots rather than pellets. I know games that usually present you with an abysmal accuracy because it basically means: if you send out a cloud of 100 pellets and the guy in the middle of it only soaks up 30 of those, you'll get a 30% accuracy for that one shot despite killing your only target. Also, if you shoot an explosive barrel that takes out 5 guys sitting around it, your accuracy would be 0% because none of your pellets hit any human target. So forget about shotgun accuracy. Also, forget about explosives accuracy. I mean, if at a wild guess you chucked a hand grenade into a window three stories above you and just happened to kill three guys who were hiding there -- without you actually knowing -- with the blast, how could that be called a 300% "accuracy" -- there is no such thing as an accurate kill with explosives. It would have been accurate regarding the fact that you managed to chuck it through and not to miss that open window but definitely not accurate regarding guys who simply couldn't escape the blast radius. In other words, forget about accuracy. I don't care if your accuracy is zero because you only shoot explosive barrels as long as you kill enemies with the explosion, same goes for all actions: only kills count, not how you got them.  :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: mandru on March 12, 2014, 07:45:55 PM
In FC2 the shotgun was a accuracy killer.

I'll use rounded numbers to keep things simple.  If there were 100 pieces of shot in a shell and the first 25 pellets were enough to kill a merc when fired point blank into the center of their chest those extra 75 nuggets of joyful overkill actually counted against your accuracy rating giving a 25% for a 1 round 1 kill situation.  :(
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: PZ on March 13, 2014, 08:17:06 AM
I knew it... alien mathematics  :-()
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 13, 2014, 11:44:48 AM
I'm just glad that XCOM doesn't show stats while playing. At all. Not even a menu for it. I do know, however, that after finishing the game, you'll see your performance vs the rest of the world playing this game. I think that is much better because you don't get distracted during the game. Also, in FPS games, checking your accuracy may prevent you from shooting barrels or, even worse, from just having fun with your gun because you're too scared to screw up your overly important accuracy that no one else but you will ever know about. So I stopped caring about those stats, just once in a while have a laugh or compare it for fun with friends, like in FC3 coop.

Well. Back on topic, then  :)

[smg id=6626 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM hyperwave info screen"]

With the new device, the Hyperwave Relay, there is a new info item on top of the screen telling me what to expect when raiding a UFO crash- or landing site. These last steps towards the end of the game are a lot more difficult now as the enemies are significantly stronger and more dangerous and numerous than ever before while the player's abilities (should) have reached maximum potential. Intense battles and ferocious alien attacks are now commonplace.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Binnatics on March 13, 2014, 11:54:58 AM
I like games where the shotguns leaves its marks. Like a massive hole in the chest, or a head missing ^-^

I actually think it's quite revolutionary for a game taking count of collateral damage and add more than 100% accuracy when hitting more than one guy.

I was doing "score attack" the other day in Max Payne. The best way to get high points there is to keep hitting with every consecutive shot. I was used to aiming for the head, but then I found out that the multiplier, that raises with every 2 consecutive hits or so, also raises when you hit someone in the chest, leg or arm 10 times without missing. So it was suddenly better to kill someone using a lot of bullets instead of starting with the headshots right away. Eventually, you had to switch to headshots anyway, because they would give the biggest score anyway ^-^

In regular playing style I head once a score of 104 headshots out of 113 kills total in a single chapter ;)

I do like stats like that. But I found out too many times that the stats were inaccurate in several games.   
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on March 14, 2014, 01:55:52 AM
Just curious Art, how do you win at this game? I'm assuming that the game is considered "won" by the player if he/she can render the Earth alien-free, but I may be wrong in that assumption (I have been known to be wrong in the past, although I try to keep such admissions on a need-to-know basis :-()). Is there more than one path to victory?

Forgive me if this is a dumb question (I know, there are no dumb questions, only dumb answers) but being intrigued by what you have posted thus far whilst remaining essentially clueless as to the overall nature of the game, I feel compelled to ask :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 14, 2014, 02:03:11 PM
no worries :)

All amounts to a last stance, a battle fought on board of the alien temple ship which you will only know about and be able to get there when you have nearly finished the story missions (you have control over when you actually take on any of those) and you must kill the alien leader, some uber-ethereal, and on your way there all enemy species that will be scattered across the ship in vast amounts.

The last mission is a mission of no return, story- and game-wise. All progress of the game will stop, you'll have to confirm that you really want to take the last step and then go for it. If you f@#k up, you may retry the last mission but there is no going back to continue to prolong the game the way you could prior to that last mission.

Actually, you can see that temple ship in the last screenshot (previous post), that lilac thingy hovering above the earth, in the lower right corner of the pic. It was only revealed by constructing the hyperwave relay and that is only possible towards the end of the game.

[smg id=6627 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM we can do it"]
[smg id=6628 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM one way ticket"]
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 15, 2014, 02:15:26 PM
OK, finished it (without waiting for the mind shield) -- what a great game.

Some of the stats are compared with the world's total and some with the world's average, it seems.
[smg id=6629 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM victory"]
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 15, 2014, 05:45:13 PM
Click here (http://www.openworldgames.org/owg/forums/index.php?topic=3425.0) to follow me on my new playthrough with the DLC "Enemy Within" :)

Here three more pics about the end of this game. It's the temple ship that I blew up  :-D

Big bugger hovering over the sea
[smg id=6633 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM temple ship 1"]

Getting away from the surface..
[smg id=6634 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM temple ship 2"]

..and blowing that ship up  >:D That's how you sacrifice your "volunteer."  :-()
[smg id=6635 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM temple ship 3"]
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on March 15, 2014, 07:31:33 PM
Thanks for the pics and info Art :) :-X
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 15, 2014, 08:20:57 PM
very welcome  :)

I might add that this game definitely offers a great replay value.

Many of the things are randomised and only few remain the same. For instance, at the start of the game, you may choose to enable an option that grants randomised stats of your soldiers on promotion. That means, a) you'll never know which of the stats such as will, aim and health are going to be randomised (sometimes all three) and b) to which amount. If you like, you can "save-scum" (reload a savegame in which you are about to fire the last shot, can be one of three sequential autosaves the game keeps producing and overriding or a manual save or a quicksave which you keep overriding) and hope for a better result when you return to base. Like that, I got my green Heavy "Nero" with an absolute mega will of 143 (normal would be around 80-90) or my blue Sniper ("The Aim") with 132 aim. Even if you don't save-scum you'll get random values and some can be pretty nice. Then there is that skill tree how you specialise your soldiers, each class has different skills and usually you can choose between two options every time you rank up so you can create soldiers with attributes that best suit your gaming style. In other words, you can create one defensive Assault and another Assault that will be a crit monster (goes up close and personal and does a hell of a lot of critical hits) and so forth.

Excellent  :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on March 15, 2014, 08:23:59 PM
 :-X
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Binnatics on March 16, 2014, 03:36:34 AM
Very nice indeed. I saw you had a pretty amazing score for a first playthrough; No countries and no men lost, no battles lost, actually a perfect playthrough :)
That deserves a pat on the back +1 :-X ;)

Now time for a higher difficulty level? :-D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 16, 2014, 04:40:07 AM
Thank you, Binnatics :)

Considering that it was my absolute FIRST turn-based strategy game EVER, the result wasn't all too shabby indeed  :-D I was very careful and thoughtful and even afraid (of losing my "men") that I took my sweet time completing it although I did rush it in the end. I didn't wait for missions that would reward me with ethereal corpses so I could craft mind shields and I skipped building some weapons for battle robots called SHIVs because I didn't use those.

And yes, I can imagine playing it on a bit less easy difficulty level but not now.

Now I'm new to the DLC that has LOADS of new stuff to offer which I would really like to see as much of as I possibly can while playing. Which means, another easy playthrough, this time of Enemy Within. I already know that I want to play through Enemy Unknown again and it is highly probable that I'm going to want to do the same with Enemy Within..

Once I feel safe and secure enough -- experienced, that is -- and once I know the details of the game I might seek a different challenge and up the difficulty level. In the end it is me who wants to have fun with the game and if that means "easy" it will be easy even if you lot wanted to see me play on a suicidal Impossible Ironman difficulty  :-D It took more than a decade for me to play a game on harder let alone hardest difficulty level. I used to play single player on easy AND cheat (only SP) my way through games. A game has to be really cool and well-balanced to sucker me into higher difficulty levels and to prevent me from wanting to cheat. It was the case with FC3 coop, I keep playing it on "insane" -- a game that I have played many, many times and I evolved to playing at the highest difficulty level.

As to XCOM, I am not yet totally comfortable with it. I did some so called save-scumming just to see how far I could push the stats (like 143 will and 132 aim) and I did revert to a savegame a couple of times to prevent a complete disaster (I once stumbled into hidden enemies and activated like 8 of them simultaneously, like a blind man walking across a floor covered with mouse traps, I triggered them all -- at once. Stuff like that. It always happened when I started to feel overconfident and wham, no-no, oh god.. so I learned to play more careful but without the consequences of a real f@#k-up that would have occurred without savegames ;)

Anyway. I love this game, man  :) :-X
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Binnatics on March 16, 2014, 04:56:05 AM
Sure thing :) :-X
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: PZ on March 17, 2014, 10:29:30 AM
Great report, AB!  :-X +1
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 17, 2014, 10:41:06 AM
Oh, thank you, PZ :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on April 06, 2014, 10:33:20 AM
Alright, back to basics.. second playthrough on EU in progress  :-()

This time I upped the difficulty from easy to normal and I've already noticed the difference. I also refrain from save-scumming which I had used to get maximum stats for my soldiers. This game is SO unforgiving that at times it was already difficult on easy. Now, on normal, I keep a steady supply of soldiers in my infirmary as they DO tend to return injured.

Additionally, I got the "Slingshot" DLC going which adds three new missions and additional customisations. I love this game  :)

Here is the new character Zhang, in the background..
[smg id=6734 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM 2ndPT slingshot 01"]
..who then joins my unit. Note some of the new customisations (the DLC contains quite a few new hats and armour changes)
[smg id=6735 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM 2ndPT slingshot 02"]
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on April 06, 2014, 04:06:19 PM
OK, finished the other two Slingshot missions. The first one took place in a graveyard somewhere in Chongqing, China, which was about exfiltrating Zhang from China. The second took place in a railway station in Beijing, China, and was about prepping a train in order to mislead, literally, an alien space battleship. The last mission was in Shanghai, China, on said battleship and you could see the city down below and slowly pass by while helicopters were buzzing around, great atmosphere.

The missions are great and the last one is rather difficult. The reward, however, is a very early ability to research and then access a fusion blaster rocket launcher for the Heavy class. Usually (erm, during my so far only two complete playthroughs including Enemy Within) I get those launchers towards the very end of the game.  :-X

Here a few impressions. :) Oh and check the comment in the last pic (top right corner)  :-()
[smg id=6736 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM 2ndPT slingshot 03"]
[smg id=6737 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM 2ndPT slingshot 04"]
[smg id=6738 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM 2ndPT slingshot 05"]
[smg id=6739 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM 2ndPT slingshot 06"]
[smg id=6740 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM 2ndPT slingshot 07"]
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Binnatics on April 07, 2014, 11:50:28 AM
I like that sniper ray. Excellent  :-X 8)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: PZ on April 07, 2014, 04:06:52 PM
Quote from: Binnatics on April 07, 2014, 11:50:28 AM
I like that sniper ray. Excellent  :-X 8)

x2 - I wish I had something like that in B4  :-()
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on April 17, 2014, 08:26:11 PM
Done. :)

I played on "normal" this time and that was quite a bit harder than on easy. In a way that made me a bit wary of the aliens levelling up to a point that it might get a little tough fighting through hordes of those so I decided to take my chances and fight them very early and very decisively even though I hadn't yet reached my own full potential. So I went in and raided their base and fought their overseer UFO and even dealt the final blow to their templeship while I was either lacking fully upgraded weapons or, in the final battle, didn't have every soldier on my team levelled up to colonel. Also, I only had ONE psionic soldier and made her the volunteer. Sod testing everyone. Sod buying loads of new recruits. Take what you've got and go for it, just play carefully, that's what I thought and did. And here goes:

Proper base management.
[smg id=6742 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM 2ndPT final base management"]
See, there is one captain, two ranks below colonel. Yet he did great  :) And I had two soldiers named "Karlsen" in my unit and on my team, they were both Norwegians, so I considered them sisters. Which was nice, I usually had at least one of them on every mission :) The pink one was the gifted one and therefore the volunteer, too. ;)
[smg id=6743 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM 2ndPT final team"]
lol, almost three times as fast as during my first time and twice as fast as "the world" on average :-()
[smg id=6744 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM 2ndPT victory"]
Let's compare.
Quote from: Art Blade on March 15, 2014, 02:15:26 PM
OK, finished it (without waiting for the mind shield) -- what a great game.

Some of the stats are compared with the world's total and some with the world's average, it seems.
[smg id=6629 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM victory"]

I think those strange world scores are not a total but cheated stats. There are stats that show that the "world" has got nearly a hundred thousand scientists while I had only 81 and so forth. Well.

However, I am pleased that I made it on a harder difficulty yet still without losing any soldier or country  :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on April 18, 2014, 05:39:55 AM
Continue reading here (http://www.openworldgames.org/owg/forums/index.php?topic=3425.msg67795#msg67795) as I am now starting my fourth playthrough which is my second at Enemy Within, playing on Classic difficulty level.  ??? :-()
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: PZ on April 18, 2014, 10:06:31 AM
Impressive win/loss ratio  :-X
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on April 18, 2014, 10:12:43 AM
cheers :) That is likely to change with the new PT on Classic difficulty, though.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Binnatics on April 19, 2014, 09:50:57 AM
Interesting stats, and indeed something to be proud of. I was curious whether the amount of battles you play is determined by the way you wish to fight the enemy. Since you have 27 less battles won and 1 country less funding... That makes the game even more complex I guess. Will continue to read about the classic difficulty right away :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on October 07, 2015, 11:10:51 PM
Earlier this year Art very kindly made me a birthday present of XCOM: Enemy Unknown on Steam, and I've finally gotten around to downloading it. As you may recall I had all kinds of hassles around that time with w@&k and having to move, then I had probs getting my internet sorted out, all of which contributed to the delay in my getting into the game. It's worked out for the best though as I now have a very speedy connection and a generous monthly data allocation, and so...

I'm only a little ways into the game, playing on Easy while I get the hang. I think that this will be quite an engrossing game to play. I've only done a few missions so far. I didn't realise that this game was produced by Firaxis, Sid Meier's company which also produces Civilization V. These folks are pretty good at creating interesting turn-based strategy games (er - we'll conveniently forget about Civ: Beyond Earth and pretend that never happened, OK? :-())

XCOM is a fun game with lots of strategy options, excellent graphics and an imaginative approach to play-area design. Despite coming from the same company that made Civ it's an utterly different kind of game - the only thing they have in common is turn-based gameplay. XCOM plays on several different strategic levels, it's not simply about sending a squad of soldiers in to do missions. There are also choices to be made about how you develop your technology, set up your base and so on. Thought too needs to go into how you equip your soldiers, and how you use them in missions. It appears that you really do need to w@&k them as a team to get the best results.

I can't say too much yet as I'm only a tiny fraction of the way in, but I really like what I've seen so far :-X
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: PZ on October 08, 2015, 08:18:28 AM
Nice  :-X

Enjoy, fragger  ^-^
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on October 08, 2015, 09:45:10 AM
fragger me old China..I'd say it's about bloody time now, isn't it?  :-D Looking forward to your upcoming reports :)


Quote from: fragger on October 07, 2015, 11:10:51 PM(er - we'll conveniently forget about Civ: Beyond Earth and pretend that never happened, OK? :-())

LOL :laugh:
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on October 12, 2015, 07:40:02 AM
OK, impressions thus far:

I'm finding this to be a very cool game and I'm enjoying it more and more (it's also another Firaxis time-dilator - I can't believe I just played for four hours). There's a possibility I may start over again before I get through the current game as I could have done things better, but that's what first-time plays are for :-() I've lost a couple of good soldiers and Brazil has dropped out of the program, with Argentina well getting ready to follow (don't cry for me, because I ain't crying for you >:D) If too many funding countries turn their backs on the XCOM project and drop out (i.e. you don't do enough to protect them from the alien threat), you lose the game. I should have concentrated on getting more satellites up earlier - this seems to be a key element to success as far as I can tell. I'll have to see if I can recover the situation, if I haven't stuffed things up too much to save poor old Earth...

I know Art has already covered a lot in this topic, but I'll add my two bob's worth anyway (actually it's late at night here and I don't feel like going through all the preceding posts right now :-() I will though as Art has posted lots and lots of helpful stuff here). The game works on many strategic levels: building up and maintaining your base of operations (which is like a whole game in itself), directing research and production, getting sufficient satellite coverage into orbit, managing your aerial defences, and of course taking a squad in to carry out missions in the field. This is my favourite part of the game, and I'm getting better at it now that I have more of an understanding of how things w@&k. There is a good range of tactical options and you can customize your soldiers to quite an extent. Learning how to utilize your soldiers' various skills to best benefit the squad's overall performance takes some time and practice. But this is the beauty of a turn-based tactical game - having the time to think things through and plan. Rushing in helter-skelter with guns a-blazing will likely win you nothing more than a cemetery full of dead soldiers. Sound tactics and planning will pay off.

I find myself getting quite attached to my squad members and it's actually a bit of a wrench when you lose one. I somehow managed to lose my one and only sniper, who had made it all the way up to Captain - bummer. Another squad member got herself bumped up to sniper class later on though. Snipers make a big difference in combat, especially if you can get them into a good vantage point.

The graphics are excellent, and for once I can run a game at 1920x1080px with everything maxed out. There's a nice "fog of war" system in the field mission game and the soldier animations are well done, as are environment effects like smoke, fire and running water. Artwork and level design is really nice to look at, and is a bit reminiscent of games like Syndicate and Crusader: No Remorse. I like the isometric-style view of the battle area, which can be zoomed and rotated in 1/4 increments, so you can view the area from four different angles, plus you can move the view "up and down" which will allow you to switch between say the roof of a building and its interior. This is all useful for getting the hang of the mission area layout. Some of the levels can be complex, yet the display never looks cluttered or gets confusing. Whenever a soldier fires, the view automatically zooms in and around to give you an "over-the-shoulder" view of the soldier shooting at the target. Very nice technique. The user interface is excellent and intuitive. Sounds and ambience are great, although the voice acting (what there is of it) is of the usual "read your lines" videogame quality. But this isn't exactly a character-driven game so it's not like it matters. It's good enough for this.

I meant to take some screenies but forgot to, so I grabbed this one just before I quit for the night. This shows part of my underground base, in a kind of cross-section view:

[smg id=8186 align=center width=600]

This view scrolls left/right and up/down and reflects the way you've configured your base facilities in relation to one another. The scrolling is very smooth, and the view perspective changes three-dimensionally as you scroll. It's a very nice effect.

Where the base facilities are built in relation to one another is important. Some, like power plants and satellite uplinks, will yield additional benefits if they're built adjacent to each other. There are limited "slots" available for new facilities (28 in total - seven across and four deep, with the central column of four spaces reserved for your access lifts, which also need to be built as you expand your base downwards) so some thought has to go into where facilities are, or will be, positioned. Major structures like the Hanger, Mission Control, Barracks, Engineering, Research Lab and the Situation Room are already in place when you start - these don't take up any of the vacant facility slots, which are all located further down. All other facilities must be built by you and this of course costs money (and takes time), so you have to carefully manage not only your finances and facility locations but also your game time. You also need to ensure your base is sufficiently staffed with scientists and engineers for research and manufacturing, and of course you'll need to make sure you have enough soldiers enlisted.

One strategic aspect I like is choosing a squad for a mission. Do I send in my top-shelf troops, or do I mix them up with some rookies in order for the newbies to get some experience, which counts toward promotions and the subsequent special abilities? Who will I load up with which weapons/equipment? If a mission isn't too difficult (they're rated in terms of difficulty) it might pay to send in a complete rookie team to get their experience level up. Sending in the best guys gives a better chance of mission success, but then there's the risk of losing them when I might really need their experience later on. Decisions, decisions...

OK, enough for now. I'm enjoying the game quite a lot. Nice w@&k, Firaxis :-X I don't know whether it will come to have the same long-term hold over me as Civ V, but I can see that there will definitely be replay value since certain game aspects are randomized with each new playthrough. I will definitely be playing more than once.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, there was a joke in the game at one point. While I was looking over my base, I heard a PA-type voice announce that reports had reached XCOM from overseas about someone named "Straker" and an associated secretive cadre of people called "Shado operatives". This is a reference to the British TV series UFO of the late sixties/early seventies, which I talked about elsewhere a couple of years ago. That gave me a bit of a chuckle :-()
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on October 12, 2015, 01:35:27 PM
nice post, fragger +1 :-X :)

I am glad that you enjoy this game and you know that I was already sure of it way back when I played it. Now you see why I really, really wanted you to give it a go and when you didn't, why I had to come up with an "in your face" idea to get you going -- a gift.  :-D

I can relate and agree to all what you observed so far. I remember two important things and one little trick about how to play this game.

1) It's not about what you want. It's about what you need.

which logically leads to

2) bloody get those satellites up. :-D

The trick:

Don't plant the last satellite if you want to keep those missions coming. Be aware that you cannot get the continent bonus if one satellite is missing so plan ahead and decide which bonus you need the least.

Indeed, I posted away happily when I still played the game and I left loads of useful tips so I strongly recommend reading them if you want a good start but hey.. you can find out the hard way, too.  :-D

I am definitely looking forward to reading more of your upcoming posts (please keep them coming) and maybe you can pop a screenie or three for an icing on the cake kind of treat when going through your posts :-()

So far, so good, enjoy, keep 'em coming :-X ;)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: PZ on October 12, 2015, 03:18:05 PM
Nice mini-review, fragger, +1  :-X
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on October 12, 2015, 05:48:56 PM
Thank you kindly chaps :)

Quote from: Art Blade on October 12, 2015, 01:35:27 PM
...I had to come up with an "in your face" idea to get you going -- a gift.  :-D

Ah, yes - the classic Portal persuasion technique ;) :-D

I've gone back and read the rest of this topic Art, and indeed you've provided lots of nuggets of handy info here - cheers mate :) Some of it is still a bit over my head as I haven't reached the relevant parts of the game yet, but this topic will be a great source of info when I get there.

Right then, I'm off to kick some more alien butt 8)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on October 12, 2015, 07:09:30 PM
heh :-()

I too read the topic from the start again for nostalgic purposes and had fun while I was on it. I remember it to be a game that made me go, "damn, it's late already.. but just this one more mission," and you will have guessed that I kept telling myself that. Day in, day out.. it was quite addictive :) I hope that you'll have the same fun playing it ^-^

By the way I would have recommend playing on easy first -- good that you decided to do so already. The difference between two levels is enormous. Going from easy to normal is already kicking up the difficulty level a couple of notches.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on October 21, 2015, 03:45:51 AM
I started a new game from scratch as I didn't get off to a very good start first time around, mainly because I wasn't aware of many of the game's finer nuances. This time I'm skipping the tutorial part because you lose three of your initial team of four during it, which then shows up in your stats. This seems to be built in to the tutorial, so by skipping that my stats show no losses of troops. I also lost a couple of guys during the first game by being blissfully unaware that there is a type of alien which can throw grenades. That was a rude little surprise :-\\ Some of these things you only learn the hard way, unless I suppose you bone up online and watch walkthoughs, neither of which I've done because I like to learn these things for myself, even if it hurts :-()

This new game is radically different from the first one I played. I'm still on Easy but I seem to be drawing much tougher missions - the first few were rated as "difficult" or "very difficult". I've run into a species of alien early in the piece which I never even saw during my first go, some four-legged critters that are quite tough and can turn people they've attacked into zombies, which are also quite difficult to kill. I had a mission where I had to rescue as many civilians as possible from an urban area and they were getting killed or zombified before I could even get near them (you have to get right next to them to rescue them). I could only save 8 civvies from 18 and got a rating of "poor". I heard five or six people getting killed in the first few turns while they were still a ways off in the fog-of-war, which I didn't think was very fair, and four other civvies started off in the same room of a building with three aliens already in there with them and they got done in before I could even get a shot at the aliens. I like to have at least a fighting chance of doing well... At least I haven't lost any soldiers yet.

Whether the tougher missions are a result of skipping the tutorial or if it's just the luck of the draw I don't know.

I really do like the game, though I have one minor gripe (which Art addressed earlier in this thread). When a new soldier goes on his/her first op, he/she starts as a rookie. Once they earn enough experience they get promoted to a "squaddie", and part of their promotion consists of being permanently assigned to a class (Heavy, Assault, Sniper or Support). You don't get to choose which class they get assigned to, the program decides. I would prefer it if I could choose the class, and the program could maybe compensate for it by limiting how many of each class I can have (so that I couldn't build an army of say Snipers or Heavies, which may tilt the odds too far in my favour). Art explained that the only way around this is to save the game before the final kill of the battle, then if you don't like the class a soldier subsequently gets assigned to, you can reload and try again until you get a result more to your liking. This is certainly doable, but I haven't done it, and as a result I now have one Sniper, one Heavy, one Assault, and a heap of Supports. Another Heavy or Assault trooper would come in mighty handy. My fault for ignoring Art's advice I guess, but I really don't like the way the program chooses that for me.

But that very minor whinge aside, this is a fun game (forgot to grab any battle screenies again - d'oh!) The tactical battle part of the game is the most fun for me. I've learned to use "overwatch" as much as possible. Each turn, every soldier has two moves they can make - they can move and then move again, or they can move then perform one other action such as fire at a target, throw a grenade, reload a weapon, or one of a few other things depending on their class/equipment, but one of the best options is to have them go into overwatch mode (as a rough rule, if they perform any action other than moving in the first part of their turn, say if they shoot or reload, they forfeit the second part of their turn. There are a couple of exceptions to this rule though). In overwatch mode, they will automatically take a shot at any hostile that comes into their line of fire/range during the aliens' turn. This can be an invaluable tactic and I try to use it as much as I can. There is a very occasional "time-limit" type mission where you need to move fast, but otherwise you can take your time moving up, in which case I will generally move each of my soldiers once then make them go into overwatch. They automatically come out of overwatch on the next turn, so I'll then move them up a bit more and make them overwatch again. It's a tactic that's saved my bacon a couple of times.

Environments are largely destructible (I also learned the hard way to avoid staying in cover behind a burning car that's about to explode :-()) so another tactic I've used a couple of times is this: If I know there are some aliens inside a building, I will position a Heavy (who has a rocket launcher as a secondary weapon) so that he has a clear shot at the building. Next turn, I'll get another soldier to throw a grenade near the wall of the building, which will blow a hole in it and, if all goes well, allow the Heavy to put a rocket through the hole and frag an alien or two inside, or at least weaken them enough for the other squad members to easily finish them off. The design of the game allows you to develop all kinds of cool tactics like this.

Positioning of your squad is important, so that they remain in good cover, can watch each others' backs and guard their flanks. The AI is pretty good and the aliens will often try to flank your positions (a flanking shot does more damage). Overwatch, overwatch... Relative elevations between shooters and targets are factored into the combat outcome, so a good sniper overwatching from a high position can pretty much rule the roost.

This is a very good thinking person's strategy game, one where careful planning, sound base management and thoughtful tactics will pay off, and being a turn-based game you can take the time to think these things through :-X It's not an easy game to beat, or at this early stage doesn't seem to be, but it is quite innovative and unique (well, as much as a reboot of an older game can be).

Screenies next time, promise :-D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on October 21, 2015, 05:36:05 AM
I'll hold you to it :-()

Another nice report, fragger, I enjoyed reading it :)

I think that it was just some sort of bad luck that you had to start off with difficult or very difficult missions. The game is very random with regards to "odds"  :-() It was a good choice for two reasons, however, that you started (over) without the tutorial. First, as you found out, you won't lose those three poor sods that will inevitably croak during the tutorial. I tried to outsmart the game trying to save them but it cannot be done. Second, you got a clean base. With tutorial, some structures will already be in place but not necessarily in support of your own ideas. Now you earned the freedom of positioning facilities in a neat order and only when you need them.

As to manipulating the outcome of automatic class assignments, I found it utterly fair to add a missing assignment option so I made use of the only option I had. I consider it proper assessment of the situation. I encountered an obstacle, adapted accordingly and overcame. Part of my job as a commander.  :-() You could as well call it a tactical decision and as such countering the very random "favours" of the game particularly because the entire rest of the whole campaign was depending on it :-D I mean, hey, IF you have to recruit soldiers THEN you might as well assign them a job they're qualified for. What good is a sniper with poor eyesight and a heavy with excellent eyesight.. you might want to swap their assignments. Generally speaking, you might want to assign your recruits and going-to-be squaddies a class they're best suited for. Actually, they start out as recruits and their first operation is but an assessment centre. Their performance should be taken into account and therefore they should be given a job matching their abilities as good as possible. Well, I took care of a proper assessment and assigned jobs that matched the performance of my recruits :-()
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: PZ on October 21, 2015, 10:49:54 AM
Nice one, fragger  :-X

XCOM is not my cup of tea, but I enjoy reading your reports!
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on October 21, 2015, 09:08:41 PM
fragger, managing your troops: Have you tried to colour-code them? It means, for instance, use red for snipers, green for heavies, orange for assault and so forth. Makes it easier to spot who is who and by that it will improve your tactical oversight tremendously. ;)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on October 22, 2015, 03:04:31 AM
Thanks for the tip mate, but I'm already doing that :-X :) I'm also changing their nicknames to better reflect their abilities and what kind of soldiers they are, e.g. I have a sniper nicknamed "BullsEye". I find that their nicknames catch the eye better than their actual names on the battle display.

I've got some screenies to post, will do that tomorrow. Got some other stuff I have to do tonight. Don't you hate it when real life gets in the way of a good game?

I had a kind of fatal glitch earlier unfortunately, right in the middle of a battle :D I Suddenly found that I couldn't get any of my soldiers to move. The pointer was still did behaving the way it should, but the troops wouldn't move when I clicked on a space and the pause menu wouldn't come up. I had to close the game via Task Manager. Luckily I'd saved only a couple of turns before. Hope it reloads the save OK.

I still haven't lost any soldiers and I earned my first Colonel :-X A couple of countries have dropped out of the project though, couldn't get my satellites up quickly enough. I've also run into my first Cyberdisc but quickly learned to take out its repair bots first so they can't fix its damage. Much tougher game this go-around and I'm having quite an uphill battle, but I'm tenuously hanging in there :-()
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on October 22, 2015, 04:51:28 AM
good luck, commander. :-()

Reading your impressions, I was thinking about my own from back then and how lucky I was beating the game twice, on easy and normal difficulty, losing neither any country nor any soldiers. It was partly a matter of how much time you invest thinking through strategies and to cling to them.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on October 23, 2015, 03:29:09 AM
Rub it in why don't you :-D

Just joking mate, that was an impressive effort :-X But I am flying pretty blindly here. I haven't watched any playthroughs online or consulted any wikis or tips sites. The only info I've gotten is from what I've read here, which has helped, but there's tons that I'm still trying to get my head around. I'm playing in masochist mode :-()

I don't know what I'm doing wrong in the satellite department though. I'm still getting countries dropping out of the project even when I have complete satellite coverage over the whole continent they're in ???? I've lost four countries so far - four more and I'm out. The panic factor remains very high in almost all countries, even those where I have continental satellite coverage. Maybe I'm missing some crucial detail... I'm taking on all abduction missions and making sure I pick the country with the highest panic factor each time out of the three on offer. I know that makes the panic factor rise in the other two countries I don't choose, but I can't seem to get on top of the panic. Does the global panic level only drop once every country in the game has a satellite?

I'm doing pretty well on the combat side of things, I've only lost one soldier and that was due to a brain fart on my part - I thought I had a particular soldier selected, but someone else was active and I moved him by mistake. It was his second action so I couldn't get him back for that turn and he got clobbered. It was late, I was tired, it was a tough mission, and since I'd neglected to save for a while I didn't want to go all that way back 'cause I'd done really well until I stuffed up, so I let it slide :-()

I'm up to the part where the mission to infiltrate the alien base on Earth has been offered. I'm psyching myself up for that, I imagine it will be quite a party :-() I will ask one question though: Am I right in assuming that you can take on this mission whenever you feel ready? I've been holding off on doing it for a bit while I try to get more of my base infrastructure up. Maybe that's a mistake...

I did get off to a bit of a messy start with my base facilities due to the random placement of several natural steam vents in my base region, which made it difficult to get a good arrangement for adjacency of my satellite uplinks, workshops and labs. Each type of building is adjacent to others of the same type, but not in the way I would have liked (I looked at your screenie of your base setup earlier in this topic, and your arrangement of uplinks was exactly what I wanted to go for, but the placement of the vents prevented it). The program seemed to go out of its way to pick the most bothersome places to put the vents in, although they were quite beneficial for my power generation.

But all that aside, I'm enjoying this game tremendously 8) I could read Wikis and so forth, and maybe I'll cave and do that if I find I just can't make any headway, but for now I'm happy to discover the game for myself, even when it bites me in the bum, or I bite myself in the bum, which I guarantee is quite a sight :-() Got to get on top of that panic factor, that's my biggest hurdle at the moment.

I'll have to post the pics tomorrow, I had an unexpectedly busy day today. I only had time for a bit of a game and post this, now I'm too buggered and droopy-eyed to prepare the screenies ^-^

And I've been meaning to say: Many thanks Art for getting me into this gem of a game. You're a legend :bow
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on October 23, 2015, 08:18:57 PM
As promised, here are a few screenies of the tactical part of the game. XCOM is so engrossing that I keep forgetting to take pictures. This is about all I have so far.

Here's my dirty half-dozen, with DeGroot being a little dirtier than the others. Someone give him a hanky, for crying out loud!
[smg id=8231 align=center width=600]


My first soldier to make Colonel. Actually, this picture was taken before it occurred to me to use different hair colours for the different classes, like you see in the previous shot. This makes it easier to see who's who during combat. I've earned a bunch more Colonels since I took this pic.
[smg id=8232 align=center width=600]


The "Skyranger" transport flying my squad in. Time to make some xeno-toast.
[smg id=8233 align=center width=600]


This is the tactical battle view, immediately after your squad deploys. The big ghostly rectangle immediately behind the squad is a kind of extraction area, which is only used in certain missions even though it appears in all of them. It stays where it is and also serves to show that the Skyranger is nearby (you can see one of its engines in the top-right corner). Some missions, like this one, take place at night, some in the daytime. Missions locations are many and varied - outdoor, urban, industrial, commercial, city, and more. The details in the environments are rich.
[smg id=8234 align=center width=600]


You move your soldiers one at a time. Each soldier has two "actions" per turn. A soldier can expend one action to move, then use the second action to either move again or perform some other action like reload a weapon, chuck a grenade, hunker down, go into Overwatch mode, or one of several other things depending on his/her class and special ability. As a general rule, if they do anything other than move for their first action they forfeit their second action, although there are a few exceptions to this. You don't have to make a soldier do both actions at once - you can make soldier A do one action, then order other soldiers around, then come back to soldier A for his second action. This gives you some tactical flexibility. Once all your soldiers have used up both their actions your turn ends, or you can end your turn whenever you like by hitting Backspace.

Another day, another mish... Holding down the RMB displays the hidden grid which the soldiers move around on, but I never bother with it as the mouse pointer is intuitive and gives you all the info you need.
[smg id=8235 align=center width=600]


Hovering the pointer over a space which provides cover. The little shields show what kind of cover is available here from the indicated directions - a "full" shield gives full cover, a half-shield gives partial cover. Soldiers can still fire from cover. They'll pop out, take their shot, then duck back in.
[smg id=8236 align=center width=600]


The cluster of little parallelograms floating above the selected soldier are his hit points, and the two arrow-like thingies below those indicate how many actions this guy has left - in this case two because he hasn't moved yet. The thin blue border surrounding the squad shows the selected trooper's maximum range for his first move should he take it, so you really don't need to bring up the grid.

The soldier can actually move beyond the initial move area, up to twice that distance if he "dashes", but that will use up his entire move for that turn. Hovering the pointer outside the initial move area brings up a more distant yellow dashing range.
[smg id=8237 align=center width=600]


Dashing will make it harder for enemies on Overwatch to hit him, but of course he won't be able to fire after dashing (unless he's an Assault class trooper, in which case he can elect to "run and gun", i.e. dash and then shoot). You can move the soldiers in whatever order you like, by clicking on them to select. The display can be zoomed in and out through five levels, can be rotated in 45 degree increments clockwise or counter-clockwise, and can be raised and lowered to show different floors and rooftops in urban areas. It's all very smooth, and it's easy to see what's what.

When a soldier has a shot, the "Fire" icon illuminates (the crosshair icon numbered 1 at bottom centre). Clicking on that zooms in your view to this over-the-shoulder perspective, which will give you an idea of how the shot might come off. The display will stay like that until I either hit OK to fire, or Esc to back out. The 35% is the likelihood that the shot will connect if the soldier takes it.
[smg id=8238 align=center width=600]


She takes it. She actually got lucky and scored a hit, but I snapped the pic just before her shot connected. Note the Union Jack on her back. Soldiers have all different nationalities and this is reflected by the uniform patches, which is a nice touch.
[smg id=8239 align=center width=600]


Unless the situation is desperate, I normally won't take a shot if the odds are less than 50%. In that case, I'll put the trooper into Overwatch mode so that if the enemy comes closer during its turn, its range will shorten and it will have moved from cover, thus increasing the odds of a hit when the overwatching soldier automatically fires on it.

A couple of combat pics from other missions:

Hey! Aim straight, Mr. Magoo! This guy is so doing latrine duty when we get back to base.
[smg id=8240 align=center width=600]


That's more like it! A "Sectoid' alien spills his gooey green guts. Adios, bobblehead!
[smg id=8241 align=center width=600]


The view of the targets getting killed as in the above pic is a toggleable option. I usually have that one turned off though - I only included it here for screenie purposes.

Here are my guys in the middle of an earlier mission, infiltrating a large spaceship which has landed. I had to fight my way through a small army of big nasties to get here, including the first Berserker I've encountered. He was a tough bugger, but I lulled him into a state of deadness once I discerned his modus operandi.
[smg id=8242 align=center width=600]


Care needs to be taken when fighting in or around a downed spaceship in case you damage any pieces of alien technology that your scientists and engineers can study and develop back at base. Among other things, this alien technology will be adapted and incorporated into advanced weaponry and armour for you troops, so it's worth taking the care to preserve as much of it as possible. Even so, damaged alien artifacts can be sold on the "gray market", thus boosting your finances a little. Every dollar helps.

You start off a new game with a roster of 12 soldiers, all rookies. They gain experience through battle and are awarded promotions based on this, and each promotion gives you a choice of one of two special abilities for that rank. Ranking up unlocks more abilities, and the abilities differ depending on the class the soldier belongs to. I like to add a rookie or two to the squad early on before the missions get too tough, so that if any soldiers come back from a mission wounded there'll be some stand-ins with at least a bit of experience to fill the vacant seats while the wounded guys recover. I haven't been bothering about buying new recruits. I still have eleven of the original twelve soldiers and received two more as rewards for completing certain missions, so I'm one up on the original roster. Apparently you can have up to 99 soldiers in the barracks. If you go through that many, I'd say you're not cut out to be in command ;D


*************************************


I wasn't aware of the importance of capturing certain types of aliens in order for the game to advance so I left it a bit too long. By the time I realised I needed to capture a Sectoid I was up into the harder missions where the Sectoids are much rarer - I went through about a dozen missions in a row without seeing any. By then I was fighting off bigger guys like Mutons, Cyberdiscs and Beserkers. Next time I'll try to get one of those pesky little Sectoids earlier on when there's still plenty of them about.

XCOM is like an iceberg - about 90% of it is hidden from sight at first. It's an excellent strategy game which subtly draws you into its depths, and there's lots to occupy your time. Doing field missions is just a part of it. There's base construction and management, developing research, maintaining your aerial fighting force, establishing satellite coverage, equipping and fitting out your ground fighters, and more. But be warned - this game may cause acute sleep deprivation...
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on October 24, 2015, 01:13:19 AM
Quote from: fragger on October 23, 2015, 03:29:09 AM
I don't know what I'm doing wrong in the satellite department though ... Does the global panic level only drop once every country in the game has a satellite?

Quote from: fragger on October 23, 2015, 03:29:09 AM
I'm up to the part where the mission to infiltrate the alien base on Earth has been offered ... I've been holding off on doing it for a bit while I try to get more of my base infrastructure up. Maybe that's a mistake...

I answered my own questions - I completed the alien base mission and world-wide panic was reduced by 2. All panic levels are now low or very low, except in the countries which dropped out of the program. Serves them bloody right for not having faith in me - hope they'll be happy in their alien-infested countries >:D

Tough mission, but I got through it without losing anybody. There were a few woundeds among them though.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on October 25, 2015, 08:22:08 AM
I haven't yet finished reading all of your recent posts, only the first one of those, where I stumbled across your comment that I want to give you the answer to right away. I'll then continue reading and I glimpsed screenshots somewhere, looking forward to checking them out :)

Quote from: fragger on October 23, 2015, 03:29:09 AMDoes the global panic level only drop once every country in the game has a satellite?

yes.

Read my old post (http://www.openworldgames.org/owg/forums/index.php?topic=3425.msg67824#msg67824) (particularly the spoiler) because I think that it might help you understand the process.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on October 25, 2015, 08:58:02 AM
Quote from: fragger on October 23, 2015, 03:29:09 AMyou can take on this mission whenever you feel ready?

yes

Quote from: fragger on October 23, 2015, 03:29:09 AMI've been holding off on doing it for a bit while I try to get more of my base infrastructure up. Maybe that's a mistake...

You can postpone that mission. I suppose you want to use that time to do some research to upgrade your troops, at least as a side effect to whatever you may be doing. Your enemy will advance alongside you. So if you attack the base early, you will find weaker enemies. But you will be weaker, too.


Quote from: fragger on October 23, 2015, 03:29:09 AMThe program seemed to go out of its way to pick the most bothersome places to put the vents in, although they were quite beneficial for my power generation.

Before actually starting the "real" second playthrough, I had started seven times over after the first playthrough, just so I got a somewhat beneficial placement of vents.


Quote from: fragger on October 23, 2015, 03:29:09 AMMany thanks Art for getting me into this gem of a game. You're a legend :bow

Heh heh :-() Many thanks, fragger  :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on October 26, 2015, 06:41:19 AM
Thanks for the answer Art, but if you look at the last post I sent before this one, I figured it out already. The hard way, as usual :-()

I actually started all over again as I didn't like the choices I'd made. I reached and completed the mission where you come across your first Ethereal and built the Psionics Lab, but I was struggling - losing those four countries earlier really put a dent in my finances and subsequently hamstrung me at weapons/equipment development. I didn't like my chances of going up against the Battleship with what I had available, and with my shaky finances it was going to take me quite some time to build everything up.

I'm doing much better this time around - got all satellites up, got the dough rolling in and have assembled a tough cadre of soldiers, with no losses of countries or troops. I'm about to assault the alien base again, but this time my guys are sporting Titan armour and are all packing plasmatic weapons. Last time it was Carapace armour, projectile weapons and a couple of lasers. They all made it through - just. Nearly all came home wounded to some degree, even after many field dressings :-\\

My favourite soldier class is Support. With the right combination of abilities, these guys rock :-X I like to give them these abilities as they rank up:

Sprinter
Field Medic
Revive (one Support with this and one with Rifle Suppression makes a good double)
Dense Smoke (I tend not to use Smoke though)
Deep Pockets (no choice here)
Sentinel (as with Revive, one guy with the Sentinel ability and one with Savior makes a good pair)

With these traits they're very versatile. I always take two on every mission. Generally, my standard squad is: 2 Support, 2 Heavies, 1 Sniper and 1 Assault (for the occasional Run and Gun with a shottie-type weapon, should the need arise). For missions later in the game which I know are going to be fairly tough I'll swap out the Assault soldier for a third Heavy.

I've also learned not to go crazy with weapons/armour/equipment purchases, e.g. since I only ever have one Sniper on a mish I'll only bother buying one sniper rifle (that is, one laser version and one plasma version as I develop them), and if I take a different sniper on a mission I'll just swap their weapons over, instead of buying a rifle for every sniper in the barracks. Same with Supports, I'll only buy two laser rifles, then later two plasma rifles. Pity you can't sell the weapons you don't use anymore, like you can with your obsolete Interceptors.

The beauty of the tactical part of the game is the way you can develop your own tactical style and tailor your squads accordingly. Two different players will probably have two different squad configurations and two different ways of doing combat. I also like how there's the strategic game (managing the project and constructing your base) and the tactical game (the combat). It's a great marriage of strategy and tactics.

This game's so cool I have trouble tearing myself away from it 8) Replay value? Definitely. There's so much randomness to the way the game unfolds that two playthroughs will never be the same. I don't think XCOM will ever replace Civ V as my favourite turn-based strategy game (Civ's strategy is like a mile deep and enormously flexible) but XCOM is still one of the best TBS games I've played. It loads up nice and quickly too, which is a big plus.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on October 26, 2015, 07:19:23 AM
Rockets are fun.
[smg id=8243 align=center width=600]

Lasers are fun.
[smg id=8244 align=center width=600]

Plasma is fun.
[smg id=8245 align=center width=600]

I'll say it again - rockets are fun.
[smg id=8246 align=center width=600]
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: PZ on October 26, 2015, 08:28:58 AM
I think the guy in the first pic is somewhat intimidated.  :-()
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on October 26, 2015, 10:02:45 AM
 :-D

Nice fragger :)

I usually had 2 snipers and 2 assaults, 1 heavy and 1 support.

Every member of my unit has got SCOPE equipped.

[smg id=6743 type=preview align=center caption="XCOM 2ndPT final team"]
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on October 26, 2015, 10:41:10 PM
Quote from: fragger on October 26, 2015, 06:41:19 AMThis game's so cool I have trouble tearing myself away from it 8)

Heh heh heh, told ya :-()

Quote from: fragger on October 26, 2015, 06:41:19 AMReplay value? Definitely. There's so much randomness to the way the game unfolds that two playthroughs will never be the same.

So true :-D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on October 27, 2015, 03:12:21 AM
Quote from: Art Blade on October 26, 2015, 10:41:10 PM
Heh heh heh, told ya :-()

And you were right, by gum! :-D

I take it that screenie is from XCOM: Enemy Within? I wish the armour colours could be changed in EU. I'll just have to get EW if I want to do that, I suppose :-()

Better performance this time - so far.
[smg id=8247 align=center width=600]

In fact, I reckon I've earned a little R&R.
[smg id=8248 align=center width=600]

...But this guy isn't invited. He's bad tempered enough as it is, I'd hate to see what he'd be like with a skinful.
[smg id=8249 align=center width=600]

A nice touch is how you can smoothly zoom right in to the rooms in your base display. These rooms are quite small in the normal base overview, but there's pretty good detail in them when you zoom in, considering that they're just for display purposes, not for playing in. Same with the bar picture above - these folks are tiny in the normal view. The people don't move around within the base but they're animated where they are, as is all the machinery and so forth. It looks cool, a busy little hive of activity.

My subterranean base. This is an older screenie from my second aborted game. My new base is almost complete.
[smg id=8250 align=center width=600]

Where the bar is (this is where it always is). You can see how tiny those two people in the bar picture above are in this view.
[smg id=8251 align=center width=600]

Where the Foundry is (this is wherever you build it). Note the change pf perspective as I've scrolled the view down and to the side a little. The bar is above the Foundry.
[smg id=8252 align=center width=600]

And these are the foundry workers - hey! Get back to w@&k, you bums!
[smg id=8253 align=center width=600]
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on October 27, 2015, 08:17:18 AM
I made it through a tough key mission, to capture an alien "Battleship". My guys cleaned house right up until near the end, where I had a hard time battling a Sectopod. I hate these things - they're an extremely tough robotic unit with a very hard-hitting energy weapon and they can launch a rain of clustered mini-bombs. I managed to get my sniper up high and he drilled a few good holes in it, which helped, then the other guys wore it down. Even so I ended up with one soldier critically wounded, but fortunately I had a Support class soldier on hand with the "Revive" ability to get him back on his feet.

I'm doing psi testing of some of my guys now to see if they have the right grey matter for psi combat. I must confess I'm not so crazy about the later major missions in the game. The earlier missions that take place among urban landscapes are the ones I like best as opposed to the more confined spaces of the alien base and their big ships. At least the missions are different each time through. I saved the game right before going off to do the alien base mission, and when I got to the mission location I realised that I'd forgotten to upgrade one guy's weapon. So I reloaded the game at the point just before they headed out, gave the dude the right gun, then went off to do the mission again - and the base had a totally different layout. I've also noticed that the game doesn't appear have a store of fixed level designs for missions - instead, it seems to build them on the fly, so that the combat locations are never, ever exactly the same. I haven't yet seen the same level layout twice. Sometimes they'll be similar, or will feature the same elements like a gas station or a liquor store, but the way they're put together with the rest of the layout will be different. It's pretty cool.

The combat system is very good overall, but sometimes the application of a soldier's stats to a situation makes for some farcical outcomes. Among a soldier's stats is an "Aim" rating. At one point whilst onboard the Battleship I opened a "door" (actually an opaque energy curtain) and a huge, tough specimen of alien warrior called a Muton Elite was right there. I had two guys at the door and they both opened fire - and they both missed. They didn't have the greatest aim ratings, but they weren't that shabby either. I mean, really - Gomer Pyle and Beetle Bailey should be able to hit something the size of the Hulk when it's standing five feet in front of them. But I kicked the Muton's butt anyway soon after.

Anyway, I'm getting there. Still got my "A" rating and haven't lost any soldiers.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on October 27, 2015, 09:19:45 PM
This thing that looks like a skinny Tars Tarkus in drag is an Ethereal.
[smg id=8254 align=center width=600]

It's a thin, weak-looking being, but don't let that fool you - it's a formidable opponent with lots of hit points and highly developed psychic abilities, which can take control of a soldier's mind and turn him/her against their squadmates. The only way to regain control of a possessed soldier is to kill the possessor (you can shoot a possessed soldier if you really want to, but I think it will negatively affect your rating as a commander). Ethereals can also sometimes "reflect" a shot taken against them with their telekinetic ability, sending the shot back at the soldier who fired it. Not always, but sometimes. It's still very unsports-alien like. They can only do it once per turn, if they do it at all, so once it's done that your other soldiers can fire at it with some confidence that they won't end up eating their own plasma.

You can give the aliens back some of their hocus-pocus later in the game. This is my first Psi warrior. I couldn't help myself, I just had to give her that nickname (to the left of the little Japanese flag).
[smg id=8255 align=center width=600]

Psi troops start off with the Mindfuck Mindfray ability (negatively affects an enemy's Will, Aim and Mobility traits for that turn, as well as doing some damage) and as they gain experience at using psi attacks they unlock new psychic abilities in much the same way as troops gain new combat abilities when they rank up.

Getting to the psi troop stage is quite a process. Not all soldiers have latent psi powers. They need to be tested for these, for which you first need to build a Gollup Chamber, for which you need to have captured an "Ethereal Device", which means eliminating the Ethereal who's guarding it, which means getting onto the Overseer ship on which it resides, which you can only detect once you've built a Hyperwave Relay, for which you need to have captured the aliens' hidden base on Earth, to get into which you need to have a "Skeleton Key" which you can only get by capturing a particular type of alien called an Ousider, which requires using a stun-device called an "Arc Thrower" to catch him and which first needs to be developed... and so forth. It's quite the merry road :-()

I said earlier that I wasn't crazy about some of the larger key missions in the game, which I'm not, but I should point out that these don't have to be undertaken as soon as they're offered. You can put them off if you like while you concentrate on ranking up your soldiers, doing more research projects or constructing more of your base. In the meantime you will still be offered conventional missions. The game will also offer some respite at times - even late in the game it will sometimes give you a bit of a break by throwing some much easier standard-type missions into the mix. My soldiers can pretty much wipe the floor with the same aliens types that gave them so much grief when they were low-ranked, under-equipped newbies.

So there's a good variety and balance of mission difficulties.

Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on October 28, 2015, 03:32:51 AM
nice progress and fun to read your detailed observations :)

I too had my moments with troops that just wouldn't hit the easiest targets.. but the aliens have got the same problem. Sometimes they miss you when you're already wondering how to continue without that soldier and phew, hey, they missed him.. he's still on the team and kicking.

I usually avoided plain confrontations. I like laying out traps and ambushes. Sucker the aliens in and then wipe the floor with them. :-D

The colour upgrades for the body armour came with a DLC SLingshot
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on October 28, 2015, 05:50:01 AM
Cheers Art :)

I know what you mean. A couple of times I thought one of my guys was a goner, but survived thanks to some alien's inept weapon handling :-()

The first time I came across a Berserker I thought, "Oh, great - how am I gonna knock that big bugger down?" Then when I saw how he didn't have any weapons except for his fists and how when he got hit he moved forward a few steps toward whoever hit him, I realised it was just a matter of positioning my guys a certain way, then hit him with one soldier to make him go that way, then hit him with someone else to make him go that way, and pretty soon I could run him back and forth or in a zig-zag from one soldier to another until his hit points got worn out >:D I actually started to feel a bit sorry for the big dumb brute. I don't have much trouble with them anymore :-X It's those bloody Sectopods that tend to ruin my squad's day. Fortunately they're relatively few and far between.

The AI is interesting. I've noticed that the Muton Elites seem to be more intelligent than the regular Mutons. I've seen the MEs try to outflank me or get around behind my squad, and they'll w@&k together. I like how the aliens in general will make use of cover. It makes me laugh when I first uncover a group of Sectoids or Thin Men and they'll all look up startled, then bolt for cover. That's neat :-()

Regarding DLCs, I dropped in to Steam to look at the Slingshot one and I saw another DLC which looks like it might be more what I'm after called Elite Soldier Pack. Doesn't add any new missions or anything, it pretty much just adds cosmetics, which is all I'm really looking for. It was originally bundled with the XCOM pre-order but is now available for purchase for $7.75 USD, which converts to about $10 AUD.

Since all I'd like at this stage are some extra cosmetic options, I might consider ESP instead (I just realised what the initials of Elite Soldier Pack were - wonder was that deliberate?)

My data allowance is about to run out for this month but will reset in a week, and since I can't find any indication of how big the ESP DLC is at Steam, I may have to wait. Poking around on the net, I get the impression that it's about 7GB. That's pretty hefty just for some new armour colours and styles ???? Maybe that info is wrong - I mean, the whole game itself was about 9GB. I'll just stick with the defaults for now until I can nail that figure down.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on October 28, 2015, 04:40:41 PM
This game loads up so quickly from the Main Menu/Load Game option (about 3-4 seconds on my PC) that I thought it was a tad ridiculous to have to sit through twenty seconds of company logos before reaching the main menu. So you can do the following to get rid of the logos on launch:

Go to your <volume>:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\XCOM-Enemy-Unknown\XComGame\Movies

Delete the following files (or move them somewhere else if you want to keep them, just in case you need to put them back - you shouldn't have to though):

1080_Logo_2KFiraxis.bik
1080_UE3TechLogo.bik
XCOMLogo.bik

Bingo! From desktop to title menu in about 4-5 seconds, and from desktop to in-game in as little as about 8-10 seconds depending on how quickly you can w@&k your mouse :-X
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on October 28, 2015, 11:45:35 PM
Finished! Got through the game without losing any soldiers, and all countries still supporting the project. My psi trooper, Colonel Takahashi (a.k.a. "Succubus") proved invaluable in the final "Temple" ship mission with her Telekinetic Field ability. This mind-projected force field protected my squad for one crucial turn (she can only use this ability for one turn, then she has to wait at least four turns before she can use it again), just enough to deflect the attacks from not one but two Sectopods and allow my guys to take them both down. The Sectopods had foolishly stayed right next to each other, so that they were both damaged by the blast radius of each of the two rockets fired by my Heavies. My two Support guys each then laid a good glob of plasma on them, and my sniper (with the "Double Tap" ability) finished them off with a well-placed headshot each. Nice w@&k, team!

Then on to the main target - the ship's bridge and its commander.

And this is he,  an Uber Ethereal, who appears at the end of the final mission on the bridge of the hovering Temple ship. He's like an Ethereal on mind steroids.
[smg id=8256 align=center width=600]

He was guarded by two regular Ethereals and a couple of Muton Elites. Unluckily for him, I'd placed my sniper well and he was able to put two rounds through the Commander's head from way down the hall, and my two heavies had a bead on him with their one remaining rocket each. He went down like a sack of hammers - he didn't even get a chance to play any of his mind games on my guys. I had a feeling that if I took him down, his cronies would go down as well, since I suspected they were mind-linked to him. My hunch proved correct - when he died, the Ethereals and Muton Elites who were linked to him got snuffed along with him. Five for the price of one! Mission accomplished.

But then...

Oh oh... What's happening? (Rumble rumble, shake shake)
[smg id=8257 align=center width=600]

This is not good - she can nae take it, Captain! She's gonna blow!
[smg id=8258 align=center width=600]

It's all up to you, girl! Get this thing away from Earth before it takes the world down with it! Only you have the mind power to w@&k this device... Use the Force!
[smg id=8259 align=center width=600]

The rest of the team escapes the doomed ship as Succubus willingly sacrifices herself to save the human race. Gad, what a woman! Her valour will never be forgotten - until the next playthrough.
[smg id=8260 align=center width=600]

KABOOM!
[smg id=8261 align=center width=600]

It's over! It's finally over! Now our leaders can get back to making war, ripping off the public and making life miserable for everybody. Maybe we'd have been better off with the aliens in charge...
[smg id=8262 align=center width=600]

Some final stats.
[smg id=8263 align=center width=600]

I'm definitely going back for more. I'm going to be a wuss and play on Easy again for now (which is still fairly tough). I want to try some different squad configurations, abilities and tactics. Some other tactical plans occurred to me while I was playing but my guys weren't set up to properly try them out.

Great game, I'm hooked 8) Looking forward to XCOM 2 in Feb next year.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on October 29, 2015, 01:06:18 PM
congratz on finishing flawlessly :)

I heard bad things about that DLC you're willing to get. Basically, too much money for too little content. You should get the big one, Enemy Within, which comes with new armour. Also, the Slingshot DLC is good as it gives you some early access to a high-ranking heavy and through him to the plasma blaster cannon early on.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on October 30, 2015, 02:55:49 AM
Ta mate :)

I read on the XCOM Wiki about all the new things EW brings to the game. Looks like a generous amount of new goodies and I think it would be worth getting, but Steam's asking price of $49.99 USD (just over $70 AUD) is a bit more than I want to spend right now. All I wanted to do was be able to change the colour of the soldiers' armour to make it easier to see who's who in battle. Guess I'll just stick with the different hair colours for now - that works well enough anyway.

I will get EW though once I'm a bit less cash-strapped :-X
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 12, 2015, 05:21:03 AM
I stumbled across a cool easter egg in XCOM:EU.

I was already aware that the game will allow you to change the names of your soldiers to whatever you like. All soldiers are initially created with a random first name and last name, and up until now I haven't bothered changing them. Soldiers also earn a random nickname upon reaching the rank of Corporal, and some of these I have changed to ones I liked better.

Well, this time around I started changing their first and last names just for fun, giving them names like Gomer Pyle, Gordon Freeman, Sarah Connor, and so on. I'd been playing a bit of Civ earlier in the day so I decided to name one of my XCOM soldiers Sid Meier. When I did, this came up:

[smg id=8269 align=center width=600]

So I clicked on "Summon Hero" and the guy turned into Sid Meier. That is in fact SM's face on the soldier.

[smg id=8270 align=center width=600]

But check out his stats: Will 200 +20 (it's very rare to get a soldier with 100 Will, and never more than that - highest is usually around 80-90), and 100 Aim (most good soldiers have around 80-90). He was also immediately promoted from "Squaddie" (first rank after Rookie) all the way up to Colonel (highest) in one go, with the best rank-dependent special abilities already awarded to him. As you can see above, the soldier I renamed was a Sniper class guy, but he was switched to Support class upon becoming Meier. Sid also has his own Psi armour, which I haven't even developed yet in the current game, and he has a full complement of Psi abilities without having to earn them or be Psi-tested. Normally, no single Psi soldier can have all those Psi abilities, only three of them. He/she gets the Mindfray ability upon becoming a Psi trooper, then you can choose one of two abilities for each of the next two psychic "ranks" the soldier achieves. A Psi soldier gets a fourth ability called "Rift" for the final battle only.

After I came across this egg I investigated online and there are three other Firaxis developers' names that you can enter to produce more Heroes (there may be more, but I doubt it as there is one for each class). I started a game from scratch just to check them out, and even though I picked rookie soldiers to make into Heroes, they all became Colonels and were kitted out with the most advanced gear:

Here they are:

Sid Meier (Support Class)
Loadout: Psi Armor, Plasma Rifle, Plasma Pistol
Stats: HP 20+6, Defense 0+10, Will 200+20, Aim 100
Psi: All

Ken Levine (Sniper Class)
Loadout: Archangel Armor, Plasma Sniper Rifle, Plasma Pistol
Stats: HP 20+8, Defense 0, Will 100, Aim 200
Psi: None

Joe Kelly (Heavy Class)
Loadout: Titan Armor, Heavy Plasma Rifle, Blaster Launcher
Stats: HP 20+10, Defense 0, Will 100, Aim 100
Psi: None

Otto Zander (Assault Class)
Loadout: Ghost Armor, Alloy Cannon, Plasma Pistol
Stats: HP 100+6 (yes, 100+6), Defense 0+20, Will 100, Aim 100
Psi: None

If you pick a female soldier to make into a Hero, she'll still become the chosen male Hero.

None of these guys come with anything in their inventories, but you can put stuff in them like Medikits, S.C.O.P.Es, grenades etc just like any other soldier. You can also change their armour and weapons if you want to, but this will affect their "+" stats accordingly. Naturally they all have custom heads, and they come with preset ability choices (I didn't list those here).

As you can see in the first pic, if you summon a hero, achievements will be disabled for the rest of that game. Selecting "Nevermind" will allow you to keep the name-change but not create the Hero nor disable achievements.

I'm not going with it this time around, but next game I might start off with a squad of uber-soldiers :-()

I love easter eggs :-X
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: mandru on November 12, 2015, 07:12:14 AM
Quote from: fragger on November 12, 2015, 05:21:03 AM

I'm not going with it this time around, but next game I might start off with a squad of uber-soldiers :-()


This bring up a question for me.

If you start with a squad of the uber-soldiers and you lose one in a campaign would it be possible to resurrect them (after their untimely passing) by grabbing a newly recruited grunt and renaming them after the dearly departed?

I would suspect that you can't have two soldiers by the same name concurrently but it would be interesting to find out if the game continues to keep track of the names of dead soldiers.  And if by chance you can have a clone army it would be amusing to look over the stats of these "Heroes", pick the one that best suits the type of campaigns you plan to carry out and turn them loose on the unsuspecting enemy.  >:D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 12, 2015, 08:37:04 AM
Nice, fragger :) I knew about that Easter egg but have never used those heroes. So I didn't know much more than the fact that there were heroes to be summoned. Thanks for the detailed info  :-X :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 12, 2015, 04:47:03 PM
Cheers mate :)

Quote from: mandru on November 12, 2015, 07:12:14 AM
And if by chance you can have a clone army...

You can. I tried it out, and you can have multiple copies of any Hero at the same time. There's nothing to stop you having a whole Barracks full of Sid Meiers if you want. Which also means if you lose a particular Hero you can just create another one from a spare Rookie, or buy a new Recruit and make him/her into an instant Hero :-() With all the hit points, abilities and gear these guys have, nothing is going to drop them any time early in the game.

When you begin a new game you automatically start off on your first mission, with four Rookies, before you even get to see your base. Since you need to get to the Barracks in your base to do the Hero thing, you have to play out that first mish with the Rookies. Then you can access your base (and the Barracks therein) and start summoning Heroes. I played the earliest possible mission, i.e. the second one, with all four Heroes and it made it ridiculously easy. The first types of enemy you encounter in the initial missions are little grey aliens, which only have three hit points each. Sid's Mindfray Psi ability simply drops them dead on the spot, and he can do it from quite a distance >:D

Not terribly sporting... Going in with nothing but Sids would be like attacking with a squad of X Men :-()

I'll still be playing the game properly without Heroes, but it'll also be fun to have a separate game going with Heroes in it just for kicks 8)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 12, 2015, 05:08:11 PM
I want to try that once, kick down the door of those aliens with an all-star team. We need a slam dunk move when you toss aliens into litter bins :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 15, 2015, 10:53:29 PM
 :-D Hehehe

Playing with these Hero guys is great fun :-X

I started a second parallel game using the following approach - start as normal with four Rookies, keep playing with them until one or more of them ranked up enough to unlock the squad size increase to five and then to six, still keep playing with regulars to get them ranked up as high as possible (got up to 4 Colonels and two Majors) and save the Heroes for the much tougher missions later.

After fulfilling the prerequisite conditions, the mission to assault the alien base came up. For this, I sent in a Joe (Heavy) and an Otto (Assault) with my best regulars. The aliens never knew what hit them >:D Joe's two Blaster Launcher rounds made short w@&k of the two Cyberdiscs and their attendant repair bots that came at me (surprisingly, there was no big robotic Sectopod in this mission - there always has been before. Maybe the Heroes scared it off...) Otto with his Alloy Cannon easily blew away the two Beserkers who challenged me, taking each of them down with his Rapid Fire ability (the first shot left one of them with only two of his original twenty hit points intact), while the other guys dealt with the Berserkers' Muton mates. Finished the mish without any of my guys taking a single hit - first time ever.

After completing that mission, one of my Firestorm fighter aircraft shot down a big Supply ship and the mission came up to go in and secure the downed vessel. These Supply ship missions are always a bit tough, and having done the alien base I knew there'd be a psychic Sectoid Commander or two on board. These little buggers will mind control one of your guys if you're not careful, so to counter them I sent Sid in with the team. Sure enough, before long the Commanders appeared, but before they could employ any of their mindplay I had Sid mind-control one of them instead. Once I'd mind-bended him I used him to clobber the other Commander. Then I sent him off to hassle three Mutons who were lurking nearby.

The swirly blue field indicates that the Commander is being mind-controlled as he gives the other one a faceful of plasma at close range. That's gotta hurt...
[smg id=8284 align=center width=600]

A mind control lasts for three turns. Conveniently, just as my control of the Commander was about to run out, the three Mutons I'd sent him after, who by now had classified the controlled Commander as an enemy, ganged up and took him out for me. In their efforts to get him though, two of them had left themselves exposed to my sniper, who used his Double-Tap ability (two shots per turn) to send them off to wherever it is dead aliens go. The third one got tagged by a lucky shot from my overwatching Assault girl on his next turn.

This is a fun way to play. I'm not too crazy about the later, bigger missions in the game, so having a Hero or two tagging along allows me to get through them with a bit less grief. These missions are still fun, but for me the earlier missions are funner. Using Heroes means I don't get to unlock any Achievements, but I've never been greatly fussed about those anyway.

The game has some cool little surprises. I'm currently on my seventh game now, and I still found something new. I stunned a Muton with an Arc Thrower and in the process I salvaged his alien grenade. Upon returning to base, a new option which I haven't seen before had appeared which allowed me to research the grenade. My Engineering Division can now make alien grenades, which do more damage than the human-made ones. I hadn't stunned a Muton before so I never knew this option existed.

Neat 8)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 16, 2015, 08:15:40 AM
nice. :)

Now that you've gained quite a bit of experience it should be comparatively easy at the start of a new playthrough to determine which way to go regarding research and continental bonuses (full satellite coverage of a continent and where to set up base) so you can quite early focus on your preferred gaming style.

When I was still playing, I bred my own heroes using the savegame trick to get the best abilities and the best class matching my Squaddies' abilities. And it didn't hamper the achievements part of the game ;)

Research is important but then again, what isn't. :-() it may be interesting for you to use one of the continent bonuses which grants you an instant research. Good for ramping up your squad early and then go play proper havoc with the unsuspecting alien drongos.  :-()
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 16, 2015, 07:47:24 PM
Thanks for the tips Art :)

I think I like Asia best for my base location as it provides early bonuses for getting my guys' XPs up, plus cheaper upgrades from the Officer Training School (which is also pre-built there).

I try to get satellite coverage over each continent in turn as soon as I can, unless there is the odd country or two that has a very high panic level and could do with a satellite to chill them out.

I find that in the early game I'm struggling for money, but towards the end I'm rolling in it. A bit like FC3/4 ;) I finished one game with a shade under 10,000 credits in the kitty and nothing worthwhile or necessary to spend it on. I suppose one could spend it to stockpile weapons and equipment, or build a massive air force or something, but there's not much point. However, I read where if you complete a game on Impossible difficulty, a new Second Wave rule is unlocked: "Total Loss". If this special rule is enabled in a subsequent game (on any difficulty), all of a soldier's gear is lost if he/she dies. Then the excess dough might come in pretty handy for replacing lost weapons/armour/equipment.

I don't know why the Total Loss special rule isn't available in the Second Wave by default. It would add an interesting dimension to the game - not to mention making you extra wary of losing troops.

Having Heroes in the game seems to reduce the difficulty level a bit (maybe - this is the first game I've played with Heroes so it's too early to verify that). There seems to be less enemies generally and I haven't encountered a single Sectopod even though I'm way past the alien base mission and have almost gotten the Hyperwave Relay up. Usually a Sectopod appears in just about every mission after the alien base assault ???? Maybe it's just a consequence of the randomness factor of the game. But then, I did have an Abduction Ship mission where Mutons and Berserkers came thick and fast...

I pulled a dirty trick on a Sid-controlled Muton. On the last turn of the control, I positioned him right out in the open surrounded by my squad. When the control wore off, he promptly got smacked from all sides. On another occasion I daisy-chained the mind-control by using Sid to mind-control a Commander, then used the controlled Commander to take control of a Muton. There was a river of blue psi-energy flowing across a good chunk of the map for one turn :-() Mind-control opens up some cool possibilities - you can use the controlled alien to attack his mates, then leave him standing out of cover and make it easy for any surviving aliens to save you the trouble of knocking him off >:D

Dashed good game, this :-X You never know what might come up. I had one very difficult game where Egypt dropped out of the program right on the turn before I could get my last satellite up over it :D Then I had a horrific Battleship mission (actually, my second Battleship mission in the one game) where the aliens threw a whole army against me all at once - one Sectopod with two Drones, three Muton Elites, a Cyberdisc with a drone, three Heavy Floaters, three Mutons and a Berserker. They all hit me in that first big room as soon as my guys were through the central door right after egress. With only six guys against no less than fifteen targets, there was no way I could handle them all - I took out a Muton and damaged a few other units, and that was it. Then it was their turn... The first few enemy shots took out my guys' cover, so they consequently got the snot thrashed out of them by plasma fire and not one but two grenades from both the Cyberdisc and a Floater. Then a Sectopod cluster-bomb attack landed on them and I had four guys down, including both my Supports, so I had nobody to patch up the critically woundeds and they bled out. My two remaining guys were also half-damaged and had Buckley's chance, so I had to make them scarper back to the evac area and abort. Ouch... I should have chickened out and aborted as soon as I saw that freaking horde coming at me :o

I went on to win that game, but only just scraped through the Temple Ship mission with sub-par units (two of which didn't make it all the way through...) Still, it made the victory that much more satisfying 8)

EDIT: Funny, I had two Battleship missions in the game I mentioned above, but none in this one and now I'm ready to take on the final Temple Ship mission. I finally came up against a Sectopod in the Overseer Ship mission, then I had one Abductor Ship mish (with no Sectopod) and now I'm ready to do to the Temple Ship.

Definitely no two playthroughs are alike in this game 8)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 17, 2015, 11:24:04 AM
good story, fragger, and welcome :)

Quote from: fragger on November 16, 2015, 07:47:24 PMI find that in the early game I'm struggling for money, but towards the end I'm rolling in it. ... "Total Loss". If this special rule is enabled in a subsequent game (on any difficulty), all of a soldier's gear is lost if he/she dies. Then the excess dough might come in pretty handy for replacing lost weapons/armour/equipment.

That's the game's nature: you're constantly struggling until you reach a point where you no longer need money that desperately any more. But. If you play on harder difficulty levels than "easy" you will have to cope with significantly less money.. so scratch that.

As for the base, I know it is tempting to get the Officer Training School early. However, it may be of tactical value to start without one just to be free to place your other facilities in a neat and orderly fashion. Particularly when the OTS is placed somewhere away from steam tiles or whatever you want to build adjacent to one another..  ;) Then place the OTS when you really need it.

You know, there is an achievement for winning with a team of (only) four.. :-()
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 17, 2015, 11:47:52 AM
just by the way, I checked the start of this topic to find it, my favourite base was North America to get the Air and Space bonus for starters. Good for getting up satellites and the protecting aircraft. All game long. :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 17, 2015, 04:03:41 PM
Good points about North America :-X I actually chose that for my first playthrough, which I messed up, and never went with it again. I'll give that a go next time. True, the pre-placed OTS does tend to get in the way a bit.

I didn't know about the four-man squad achievement. It didn't occur to me to try that, it would make for a more challenging game. Might give that a try too :) I'll have to ditch the Heroes for that game of course, but that's cool. They were just for a bit of wicked fun :-()
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 17, 2015, 04:06:40 PM
heh heh :-()

North America's bonus was so valuable for me I couldn't bring myself to test a different approach, even.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 17, 2015, 04:14:46 PM
Oh I wanted to mention that before: What you did with almost literally a "chain of command" (mind-control a mind controller who mind-controls someone..) is a really cool idea. I'll give you a +1 :-X for that, me old China :-D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 17, 2015, 04:15:46 PM
Thanks old mate :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 18, 2015, 10:10:53 PM
Man, every once in a while this game throws up a ridiculously tough battle.

I just got through an alien base mission where no less than 21 enemies attacked me in the first room before my guys could get more than a few steps. Let's see... in total there were 8 Mutons, 2 Berserkers, 3 Cryssalids, 2 Cyberdiscs with 2 Drones each, and 2 Thin Men. They'd all gotten into the room before the second turn was over. I took out most of the first wave - the 3 Cryssalids, 4 Mutons and a Berserker, leaving just one Muton alive and one beaten up enough to chicken out and run away, but he came back with everything else on the second turn. I thought I'd handled myself with aplomb, but then the rest of them started flooding in which evinced an involuntary "You've got to be kidding!" from me ???

When the first Cyberdisc came in my guys gave it a good response fire barrage that knocked out all its hit points - except one. That was still enough to allow it to set itself up and hit some of my squad with a grenade, which not only damaged them but wiped out their cover. Then three of the newly-arrived Mutons ganged up on one of my exposed Heavies and killed her (and she'd just made Major in the preceding mission :D)

Talk about a desperate fight. My guys couldn't even get a chance to reload, they ended up falling back on their pistols (plasma ones fortunately, which pack a bit of a wallop). After battling through that schemozzle the remaining five squad members were able to run the entire length of the base without encountering any more enemies at all until finding the Commander right at the end. The entire enemy force had been waiting at the front door.

I don't use Autosave any more. I did in the earlier games but the temptation to go back a turn or two to try altering an undesirable outcome was too great :-() I prefer to play in risky mode, i.e. save whenever I think of it, and wear any losses incurred.

And I'm still playing on Easy mode! I guess I should man up and try bumping it up a notch next time :-() But even Easy mode isn't often that easy.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 19, 2015, 07:58:18 AM
You've still got it, Gordon!
[smg id=8291 align=center width=600]

High-tech Bug Catcher.
[smg id=8292 align=center width=600]

This is a Hyperwave Relay. Now you can tell all your friends you've seen one.
[smg id=8293 align=center width=600]

I always thought a "Floater" was a meat pie in pea soup. It's actually an alien delicacy best served with a laser.
[smg id=8294 align=center width=600]
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 19, 2015, 08:49:10 AM
oh man, fragger :-D I don't think that I ever had the privilege and the pleasure of a full-blown alien welcoming committee at the ship's front door. But then again.. I had my share of "you've got to be kidding me" situations :-()

Actually, savegames and quick saves can speed up your learning process as you can test and correct moves. I didn't have a problem with that as I saw the whole thing as an entertainment job just the same as a film's director who would never ever deliver a film without proper takes. I learned and experimented a lot and the use of quicksaves was less and less needed but still.. once in a while.. and I think I got the job done properly :)

If you're really that crazy, try impossible ironman mode. No savegames except when quitting :-D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 19, 2015, 04:47:30 PM
Dunno if I'm crazy enough for that - yet - if ever :-D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 19, 2015, 06:10:27 PM
I can tell you that I am definitely not going to ever try that :-D

However, I'm curious about your likely next (and if you're like me, last) higher difficulty level -- called "normal" -- attempt to play through. It will be a lot more difficult, mainly because you'll start with less money and earn less money, too. If I were you, I'd try that at least once and perhaps revert to "easy" after that just for a reduced stress level and an increased fun level. Also, looking at how much you enjoy this game, you definitely should keep your eyes peeled for DLC and particularly the ramped-up version of the game called Enemy Within. The latter one will present you with quite a few more options and by that also an increased difficulty level, even on easy, but also an even bigger fun level. Check my posts on that subject again, particularly the screenshots.. to whet your appetite. :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 19, 2015, 09:06:46 PM
Cheers, yep, I fully intend to get some DLC for this, am mainly interested in Enemy Within.

I thought this might be of interest - comparison of graphics between:

UFO: Enemy Unknown (1994)
[smg id=8295 align=center width=600]

And:

XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
[smg id=8296 align=center width=600]

Gaming graphics have certainly come a long way, even for strategy games!
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 20, 2015, 01:22:19 AM
wow.. 1994.. hard to believe that we could ever have exclaimed, "wow, look at how cool those graphics are!" :-D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: PZ on November 20, 2015, 01:29:32 PM
It's all about the graphics!
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 20, 2015, 06:26:21 PM
I think a bit of nice gameplay, good handling and of course, an open world game environment are also part of the mix if I want to go all crazy about a game. If it were only about the graphics, I'd rather watch a slide show. :-D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 21, 2015, 04:40:26 PM
My two favourite genres of games are FPS and turn-based strategy. FPS (preferably open-world) for action and immersion, strategy for thinking and planning. Whichever I get into largely depends on my mood at the time. If I've had a rotten day at w@&k or something in life has pissed me off I tend to fire up a FPS for the venting value. It's better than socking out coworkers and is a lot less likely to land me in court (not that I go around socking people. The last physical altercation I got into was in my second year of high school to stop a would-be bully in his tracks, and it worked). If I'm mellowed out and all is more or less right with my world I'll go for strategy.

I generally don't go for corridor shooters but there have been a couple of exceptions. The Half-Life II series was very linear but looked amazing and was just so immersive and entertaining that it hooked me in. I also liked CoD 2 which too was fairly linear but was so well presented and historically accurate in its details that it made my personal cut, and a couple of the individual battles were actually quite non-linear (one called The Silo was my fave).

I was never into real-time strategy, except for Sid Meier's Gettysburg which was in a RTS class of its own. But I only like TBS when it's either deep or unique. Civ V is deep, XCOM is unique. I still have a series of TBS games called the Battleground Civil War series which was released by Talonsoft way back in the early 90s which I always enjoyed dipping into. These games were originally written for Win 3.1 but still ran under Win 95, Win 98, NT, Win 2000, XP and Vista, but won't run under W7 (though I've heard that there's a workaround). Each title in the series (Bull Run, Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg and Chickamauga) allowed you to "recreate" the battle of the title in its entirety, i.e. your various units start where and when they did in reality on a very faithfully reproduced playing area (from then on it's up to you), or you could play one of about two dozen smaller scenarios based on individual clashes that took place during the course of the title battle. Some of these were historically accurate, some were "what ifs". I played the entire Battle of Gettysburg scenario once and it took me three months to complete, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Now that's grand strategy, when you've got about 80,000 men to command which translates into several hundred game units (regiments) AND you have to try to keep the organisation of the army intact as you do battle: Regiment<Brigade<Division<Corps<Army, with corresponding leader units for each level above Regiment. These leader units were named for the actual leaders at the time and had their own stats based on their real-life historical reputations. Every unit in the game was authentic, i.e. selecting them would tell you who they were, e.g. 20th Maine Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, V Corps, Army of the Potomac. For a Civil War buff, the immersion level of those games was huge and contained an impressive strategic depth. They were created in such a way that you had to think, plan and fight the way Civil War leaders did at the time - it's not so much about killing the enemy as it is about breaking his line, demoralising his troops and sending them into a panicked retreat, which can happen in the game. It's dismaying to watch your carefully prepared line cave in and a bunch of your regiments bolt for the rear, leaving a gap for the enemy to exploit ??? Then there was the logistical side of things, where terrain and road/trail availability played a large role in the planning of movement, and there was also reinforcement,  resupply and management of artillery ammo to consider. Units could not only take damage from enemy fire but could also suffer from battle fatigue and morale loss. They're quite brilliant games really that took a lot of stuff into account, e.g. Cavalry units have to dismount to fight (except if they're fighting other mounted Cav units), but when they fight on foot, they only do so at 3/4 strength. Why? Because historically, one man out of every four had to stay back to hold his horse and those of the other three, to keep them from wandering off or bolting so that the troops could locate their horses easily and mount up quickly. So this gameplay element is historically accurate and is typical of the depth of thought that went into the games' creation.

Gee, that post turned into a blather :-() Well, it's a quiet Sunday, so why not...
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 21, 2015, 06:57:10 PM
 ^-^
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 24, 2015, 04:10:12 AM
The Civil War discussion that started here can now be found and continued there (http://www.openworldgames.org/owg/forums/index.php?topic=3795.0). :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 24, 2015, 03:00:44 PM
Good job mate :-X
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 24, 2015, 10:07:51 PM
ta.  ^-^
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 25, 2015, 04:35:40 AM
Well, I grew a pair and started a new game on the next difficulty level, "Normal". I'm actually doing OK so far, but there is quite a jump between this level and Easy. More bad guys and they do more damage, although I've drawn a few relatively easy missions so far. My guys did well in one mission when five Sectoids came at them all at once, from two directions, and my squad dropped three of them off the bat with Reaction fire and badly wounded a forth (suck on that, you little blighters). Even so, I nearly lost a guy on that mission, he came home critically wounded from just one hit from the last fit Sectoid (one of the weakest enemy types). I may have to re-enable Autosaves for this venture to give myself a fighting chance further on.

Should be lots of fun and games in the tougher later missions... :-\\ I'm not setting foot in the alien base until I've got a squad of Colonels in Titan armour and bristling with plasmatic weaponry :-()

I tried using a S.H.I.V. in the last game (Super Heavy Infantry Vehicle). This is an armed robotic machine which you order around just like a squad member, and which takes the place of one soldier in the squad (you could have more than one in the squad if you want, but they're pretty expensive and time-consuming to build, and they're not as versatile as a human soldier). It worked pretty well actually. S.H.I.V.s can have projectile, laser or plasma weapons mounted on them, with more research time and money required the more advanced the weaponry is, but plasma is definitely the best (for the highest weapon cost, naturally) which makes them quite hard-hitting and tough. If you build an "Alloy S.H.I.V." (even more expensive) one of your guys can use it as mobile cover. S.H.I.V.s also have the virtue of being immune to mind-controlling aliens, so they're good for sending up against psi enemies like Sectoid Commanders and Ethereals. If you research S.H.I.V. Repair in your Foundry, a soldier can repair a damaged S.H.I.V. in the field, but only if the soldier is equipped with an Arc Thrower, which uses up his/her Inventory slot (unless the soldier is a Support class ranked Major or above, in which case they have two inventory slots). S.H.I.V.s can't climb things, being mounted on caterpillar treads, but you can research and build Hover S.H.I.V.s which can float over things (for even more research time and expense).

Pity they can't fire rockets though...

I love all the tactical choices you can make in this game :-X
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 25, 2015, 06:52:23 AM
oh yes, indeed :-D I never used the robots because my tactical decisions were based on my soldiers' classes and with them I was more agile. Plus, they can wear ghost armour.. priceless.

I relied on two snipers who were my favourite toys for far away oncoming enemies as well as counter measure for flanking enemies. And two assaults at the same time for the middle part or CQC. One heavy for mopping up or breaking through. One support for extra range and therefore my preferred scout.

Whenever possible, I trained rookies until they were high-ranking and their classes were meant to create a different couple, say another support and another heavy. I remember I once had three assaults and two heavies and one support, or two supports and three snipers and one heavy.. stuff like that.

Very cool if you can use several soldiers of the same class.. I bet my tactics made the aliens go, "what a clusterfuck," more than once.  >:D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 25, 2015, 04:56:44 PM
 :-D hehehe

I too like to have at least two of each class on hand, so I can put together teams suited to particular missions types. Occasionally I've found it helpful to accept an abduction mission where the reward has been a partially ranked-up soldier of a particular class, to boost that class' numbers. Occasionally - other times I'll go for the money, or extra base personnel, or to reduce the offered county's panic level, depending on the overall status at the time.

I meant to ask you, Art: Did you play on Normal or Classic? Because I found when I started on Normal there was still an Officer Training School pre-built in my base. I was under the impression that you started without the OTS on Normal level. Consulting the Wiki, it claims that the OTS is not pre-built in Classic difficulty, but doesn't mention the status of the OTS in Normal.

Just curious :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 25, 2015, 06:06:02 PM
Easy and Normal. I'm not sure what the reason was for the absence of the OTS. I believe it had to do with skipping the tutorial and starting the game without it. But there may be options to choose from; I recall several decisions that could be made before starting out anew.

What I meant to ask you, how come you had 16 funding countries? I only had 13 or 14 without losing any (see the screenshots of the final results in this (http://www.openworldgames.org/owg/forums/index.php?topic=3415.msg67794#msg67794) post. There you can also see that I finished on Easy and Normal.

I know that I had satellites up on every country but one so the one that didn't have any would keep on giving me abduction missions which were good for both training rookies and collecting artefacts.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 25, 2015, 06:21:58 PM
Oh, I think there is a third option -- I may have removed the OTS and later rebuilt it.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 25, 2015, 06:30:40 PM
I just found it on the Wiki, it is because I started in Asia that the OTS was already there. So that's it.

It never occurred to me to leave a country without satellite coverage for the purpose of training rookies and harvesting goodies. That's a good tactic, cheers :-X I've always tried to get every country covered so that none will leave the Project and take their funding with them. But knowing now as I do that I'll inevitably end up with more money than I know what to do with, I'll leave a country uncovered.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 26, 2015, 11:01:24 AM
welcome. :) Be careful with your decision though, you'll not get the continent bonus for the continent your defenceless
country belongs to.

Hehe, with your newly acquired level of experience and understanding, maybe it's time that you read the whole topic (not just the captions) from the beginning again because you may have missed out on more than you thought -- I had already mentioned the satellite tactics before  :-D

Speaking of reading again, can you shed some light on this?
Quote from: Art Blade on November 25, 2015, 06:06:02 PMWhat I meant to ask you, how come you had 16 funding countries? I only had 13 or 14 without losing any
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 26, 2015, 04:29:58 PM
I was thinking of leaving a South American country uncovered, since their continental bonus is faster autopsies and interrogations, which to me seems the least valuable of the four continental bonuses.

Quote from: Art Blade on November 25, 2015, 06:06:02 PM
What I meant to ask you, how come you had 16 funding countries?

Not quite sure what you're getting at with this mate, I thought I answered the question already:

Quote from: fragger on November 25, 2015, 06:30:40 PM
...I've always tried to get every country covered so that none will leave the Project and take their funding with them.

Do you mean why am I going for all 16, or how am I ending up with 16? There are 16 countries in the game and I wanted to make sure I got the funding from all of them. Like I said, the idea of leaving one country uncovered for training and material harvesting didn't occur to me and I'd forgotten about reading it in your topic. I tend to go for everything in games :-D

Regarding the OTS:

Quote from: fragger on November 25, 2015, 06:30:40 PM
I just found it on the Wiki, it is because I started in Asia that the OTS was already there. So that's it.

Actually, that wasn't it. I tried a test start in North America and I still got the OTS. So you must have sold yours and rebuilt it somewhere else, I guess.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 26, 2015, 10:34:02 PM
haha, thanks man, I didn't get you said that in reply. I meant ending up with 16 in your final stats. I think I now know what confused me: when I started playing, I had all 16 countries covered but never took a screenie of the final stats, only after I applied the "-1 satellite" tactics. :-D

And yes, I think I deleted the OTS in order to get a better layout. :-()
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 27, 2015, 04:53:40 AM
 :-D No worries!

I'm not doing too badly on Normal. The alien base mission is now available and I haven't lost any troops, although South Africa dropped out of the project - once again, just 1 turn before I could get a satellite up over it :D All other countries are covered except Egypt, which I'm leaving for resource collection and training. With South Africa gone I miss out on the African continental bonus anyway, so Egypt may as well be aliensville for this game :-D

I've learned to position my guys at the start of a mission and let the aliens come to me, which they eventually seem to do, so I can fight on ground of my choosing (except for the bomb disposal and VIP escort missions, where I can't afford that luxury). Often I don't have much choice on this difficulty level - the aliens are all over me as soon as I get off the plane :-() Even with the civilian rescue missions, I focus on getting a good defensive possie first instead of chasing around after civilians. You don't seem to get penalised if you don't rescue very many (unless you lose all civvies, I'm not sure what happens then - maybe it's a mission fail). It seems that as long as you rescue at least one civvy you pass the mission, even if you get a mission rating of "poor" at the end of it. My squad members are more valuable, so bugger the civvies, they can fend for themselves >:D

I'm wondering what happens if you just never do the alien base mission. Will the game just go on ad infinitum from that point, throwing up various missions after missions well past the point where you've maxed out your ranks and researched and built everything? I might do an additional save, try it and and see what happens.

I must admit, I find playing on Easy to be more fun, and fun is the point of the exercise after all. And Easy still isn't terribly easy, it remains a fairly tough game even then. I hate to think what "Impossible" level must be like :-\\ Maybe I'll try it sometimes and see how far I get (probably not very).

This is such a cool game, I'm still hooked on it :-X With so many things you can try, it doesn't get old very quickly at all.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 27, 2015, 05:36:07 AM
I just read up a bit about Terror Site missions (civilian rescue) on the Wiki. The number of civvies rescued influences the amount of panic reduction for both the country and the continent:

Civvies rescued: 1-8 = panic reduction 2 (country) / 0 (continent)
Civvies rescued: 9-13 = panic reduction 3 (country) / 1 (continent)
Civvies rescued: 14-18 = panic reduction 5 (country) / 2 (continent)

So there is a penalty of sorts if you don't rescue very many.

If you fail to rescue any civvies, or you ignore or abort a Terror Site mission, or all your troops in the mission are KIA, that country will leave the Project, so you really do need to rescue at least one civvy.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 27, 2015, 08:41:37 AM
nice read. :-D

Heh, I loved the appraisal far too much when they said, "excellent job, commander" so I usually rescued all or all but one civvies.  :)

That's an interesting tactic you came up with, to dig in and let the bugs come at you.  :-X :)

I went just the opposite way: bloody waltz in and hunt them down; the faster, the better. But I wasn't that fast as I always put my first one or two guys on overwatch so that when I moved my remaining units and by that scared up any enemies, the reaction shots from the overwatching guys would already stop anything that moved (other than me) in their tracks and sometimes even finish off whatever it was. :-()
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 27, 2015, 04:39:25 PM
Yeah, I use Overwatch a lot. If possible I always try to end each turn with at least a couple of guys overwatching.

The "wait for them to come" method doesn't always w@&k, sometimes I have to go looking for them :) Usually works best in the landed/crashed UFO missions, where the aliens will be roaming around the landscape. Then it's just a matter of sitting tight until they stumble across you. Once one lot of them finds you, the others will often then home in. Even so, there might still be a few who stay in or around the ship, especially the big Supply ones.

The aliens in the Abduction Site missions usually just hang wherever they are until you move into their visual range. Very occasionally, a quirk in the programming will allow me to see them before they see me (I'm sure you've had that happen) and if I keep my distance, they'll stay where they are, still visible but not reacting, allowing me to plan a move. I also like using a Sniper with a Battle Scanner for finding the enemies. The scanner has about the same range as a rocket, so sometimes you can reveal them and use a Heavy to put a rocket up their kazoos them before they even know you're around >:D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 27, 2015, 09:43:51 PM
hehehe :-()

yes, I know that quirk but it rarely occurred when I was playing. You'll be wishing for all this here when you start playing Enemy Within.. because there you'll meet an invisible type of enemy that will seek out your lone guys and start to strangle them until they either die or you kill that enemy.. and that's just one of the new things you're going to see.. not literally, as you won't see those invisible flying squids until you bump into them.. ;)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 28, 2015, 05:42:33 AM
Dunno about that invisible strangler thing, it sounds like it would actually annoy the dickens out of me :-\\ I hate invisible enemies in games. In Sid's Starships (http://www.openworldgames.org/owg/forums/index.php?topic=3674.msg74473#msg74473) (another Firaxis TBS game which I'm still enjoying despite not having posted about it for a while) you occasionally encounter enemy ships which have cloaking devices and can go invisible, but they can only do that while stationary and you can equip some or all of your ships with scanners to detect any cloaked ships within scanning range (this uses up an action for that ship's turn), so at least you have some counter-measures to combat the invisibles. In XCOM I like being able to leave a sniper with the Squad Sight ability well back to cover the field, that's one of my favourite tactics. The invisible squid creature sounds like it could totally trash that technique, requiring me to keep a valuable squad member back from the action to guard the sniper, which kind of defeats the purpose of having Squad Sight.

I don't know if I'll be getting EW actually. I've been totally wrapped up in EU for weeks, but a few things about it are starting to grate on me a bit. I still think XCOM is tremendous fun, but I have to admit that my interest starts to wane once I get past the alien base mission. The most fun part for me is in the early to middle stages of the game - getting the base set up, levelling up the squad, etc. I love that part of the process.

But I'm currently up to the part where I have a Psi soldier, built the Hyperwave Relay and am waiting for the Overseer ship to show up, when it suddenly occurred to me that I didn't much feel like continuing. I love the game up to the alien base mission, or a bit beyond it, but I'm not crazy about the direction it takes after that. It gets a bit too linear in terms of mission sequence and layouts, and how you proceed from then on. Battleships, Abductor Ships and Supply Ships always have the exact same layout (granted you won't know for sure what types of enemies you'll find inside, nor where they'll be), and there are only the two alien base layouts. However, not only does the final Temple ship mission always have the same layout, but it has the same enemies in the same places every time (which enemies, how many and where will depend on skill level, I'll assume, but in all my Easy games it's been the same). I found a way to take down the Uber-Ethereal at the end, in the turn right after he appears, and it works every single time, so even the big finale has ceased to be a challenge.

I could have done without the psi aspects of the game too, I'm not a huge fan of that.

I still love the rest of the game. If there'd somehow been more variety towards the end, I'd love all of it, but as it is, it sort of runs out of strategy once you've researched and built everything. From then on it feels to me like a bit of a chore. Games like Civ and Starships will keep the strategy choices coming right up until the end. In all the years I've played Civ V, I have still yet to research and build everything possible before the end of a game. I may reach the end of one branch of the tech tree, and on a couple of occasions I've researched all of it, but even then there will still be a number of unit and building types that I either don't need to build due to my situation, or simply just don't get around to building before the end. The options never run dry.

So I'm thinking that since I've finished XCOM a number of times already, I might just play up to the alien base mission from now on and leave it at that. There's no law that says I have to finish every single game :-() Or I might try what I thought about before and ignore the alien base mission altogether, and see what happens. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a huge fan - but only of the first half.

I know EW introduces swags of new things (I've been reading up about it on the Wiki) but I'm not sure if I like the sound of a lot of the things I've read about. Plus it'll set me back about $70 AUD, which I think is a bit of an ask for an add-on to a three-year-old game. If it comes down substantially in price I'll consider it :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 28, 2015, 06:39:00 AM
About the same here, fragger, regarding all of the above that deals with XCOM, except I got EW and converting a soldier into a Mech is really cool. :-D Plus the colours.. man :) You should get the Slingshot DLC for EU though. Cool missions and stuff that merges with EU.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on December 06, 2015, 12:08:39 AM
fragger, I've been thinking about you giving up on this game without having tried the big DLC EW which is actually a standalone (when installed, you can choose to play this or that, so either EU or EW). There are so many more tactical decisions to be made and every mission includes a hunt for weld, a material (or just as well a currency) for new upgrades with a twist: you only have so many turns, say 8 or some such, to find and reclaim those canisters or they'll be gone. So not only do you have to fight those aliens but to fight for that weld and against time -- in a manner of speaking, actually against a given number of turns. I recommend watching the first vid of Zemalf's 50-hour playthrough which I mentioned in my very first post so you get an idea of what EW looks like. I think you're missing out on a great experience if you don't try it. Never mind invisible aliens, I didn't like them either, and indeed they force you to come up with different tactics which, in a way, isn't so bad. I managed, so you can, too.  :-D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on December 06, 2015, 02:19:56 AM
 :) Well mate, I haven't given up on it, I still love the game and will certainly be playing more of it when I finally get back to it. I've been swallowed up by Beyond Earth lately but that doesn't mean I've lost interest in XCOM, far from it. With the updated version of BE finally turning that game into an actual enjoyable experience, I've been sort of making up for lost time with it.

SM's Starships was also updated and they fixed some issues with that as well. So I've been kind of spoiled for choice lately in the strategy game department with XCOM, Starships, Beyond Earth and Ultimate Generals Gettysburg, along with my abiding love for Civ V. Too many games and not enough of me to go around :-()

Look, I will give EW a go once Christmas is over and I won't have to be so tight with the wallet. By then I should be over my current BE infatuation too :-D

I really do appreciate your interest and advice Art, cheers :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on December 06, 2015, 03:03:03 AM
welcome mate :)

I'm not a fan of strategy games but hey, XCOM is just so cool that even I got hooked pretty good which is why I believed that you just had to give it a go and that included both titles (EU and EW) -- you should definitely give that DLC called Operation Slingshot a go, too :-D There's another DLC included with EW (called Operation Progeny) that never made it to the shelves as a separate add-on but you can en- and disable any of those DLCs when starting a new game. ;)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on December 06, 2015, 03:08:53 AM
Dang, it only just now occurred to me to mention this: you should "make your own" game by trying to manipulate the outcome of the rookie skills. I made sure they had a bloody high will (anything around 100 makes them immune to alien mind control) ... so much you can play around with, hehe  :-D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on December 06, 2015, 03:26:00 AM
Good thought :-X

By manipulating, I assume you mean to save before the last shot is fired, see the results, and if the rookie's new Will rating stinks, reload and try again? I mean, there's no other way to do it that I'm missing, is there?
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on December 06, 2015, 10:16:17 AM
correct. :)

I almost never used those Psy powers and decided to ignore that rubbish altogether but with a will of around 100 (the higher, the more resistant, and with 100+ you're immune) was a good way of saying, err, thinking, "up yours, bitch," when they tried anything funny. >:D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on December 24, 2015, 08:28:22 PM
Quote from: fragger on December 06, 2015, 02:19:56 AMLook, I will give EW a go once Christmas is over and I won't have to be so tight with the wallet. By then I should be over my current BE infatuation too :-D

I really do appreciate your interest and advice Art, cheers :)

Steam offer -80%

http://store.steampowered.com/sale/xcom/ (http://store.steampowered.com/sale/xcom/)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on December 25, 2015, 12:14:52 AM
Thanks for the heads-up mate, I'll be in for that :-X
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on December 25, 2015, 01:36:47 AM
welcome :)

however, those offers won't last forever.. and the rhyme was unintentional. :-D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on December 25, 2015, 12:42:33 PM
 :-D

Ends 5th January.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on December 25, 2015, 04:03:31 PM
 :-X :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on December 27, 2015, 06:27:41 PM
Bought it, now I just have to wait for it to download... Gonna take a while - as usual for this area, the influx of holidaymakers with their devices has left precious little bandwidth for us locals :angry-new: Bloody tourists.

It's been an hour and a half already and 1.4 of 7.2 gigs have come down... Normally it would take about half an hour to do the lot, if that.

Bloody tourists. Oh, I already said that, didn't I? Well, it's worth saying twice. They give me the right royals at this time of year.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on December 27, 2015, 08:57:45 PM
@#$%&

I had to give up for now. I'll try later during the wee small hours when all these damned blow-ins hit the sack and get off the net. 4 hours in and the DL has progressed 0.2 GB during the last 2 hours.

BLOODY EFFING TOURISTS
:angry-new: :angry-new: :angry-new: :angry-new: :angry-new: :angry-new: :angry-new: :angry-new: :angry-new: :angry-new: :angry-new: :angry-new:

Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on December 28, 2015, 09:39:41 AM
next time you see a tourist, slap him across the face and tell him, "that's for being a bloody tourist!" and walk a few steps away, then return, explain, "for political correctness's sake, this is for not being a local," and slap him across the face again. Then walk away whistling a merry tune. :-D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on December 28, 2015, 04:24:22 PM
Hehe :-D

Even well after midnight it took a couple of hours for the download to complete, but I finally have it (raises feeble sleep-deprived hurrah)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on December 28, 2015, 05:44:21 PM
Excellent.  :-D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on March 25, 2016, 07:33:07 AM
I picked up XCOM: Enemy Unknown again after a long break from it, and got addicted all over again.

I had a fright though last night. I decided to challenge myself by playing on Ironman mode. I think we all know what "Ironman" means, but just in case anyone doesn't, it simply means that you can't save a game until you quit, and you can't reload from a previous save. In other words, if you make a bum decision and end up screwing the pooch, you have to live with it.

The fright came when, after playing for a few hours, there was a power outage. Being in Ironman mode I hadn't been able to save, of course, so I thought I might have lost all the progress I made. Earlier, I'd actually jokingly thought to myself, "I hope there isn't a power cut while I'm doing this..." We almost never get blackouts - wouldn't you just know it? :D

Fortunately the game apparently does some kind of hidden autosave each turn, because when the power came back on and I reloaded, I'd only lost the turn I'd been in when the power went off. Phew... I'd hoped that would be the case, to allow for things like that.

Anyway, I still love this game. I had played most of the way through the EXP, Enemy Within, but I really prefer the vanilla Enemy Unknown. I felt that EW actually added too much to the game (and I hated those invisible squid things, they were quite a deal-breaker for me because they totally trashed my favourite tactical techniques). Some EXPs, like the ones for Civilization, can really elevate a game (and in Civ's case the EXPs are in keeping with the already sweeping nature of the game), but I thought EW somehow detracted from the quirky character of EU, a bit like taking a classic short story and trying to stretch a novel out of it. The vanilla game was fine as it was. One thing I did like about EW was being able to colour-code the soldier's armour, but for ten bucks I got the "Soldier Elite Pack" from Steam which lets me do the same thing in EU, so I'm a happy camper now :-()

There's still things I haven't experimented with yet, like some of the special optional rules, higher difficulty settings, different squad combos and special soldier abilities. One of the things I like is the approximate length of the game - long enough to be engaging but short enough so that there isn't too much time between one game and the next, so you don't get put off trying new things.

One of the best strategy and tactics games ever :-X
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 25, 2016, 12:51:58 PM
 ^-^ :) ^-^

Oh.. stay away from XCOM2 if you liked the vanilla and disliked EW. I certainly liked both but the next iteration is just as if EW went completely bonkers. Oh and I admit that the vanilla game indeed is the one I like best -- no over-the-top stuff.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on March 25, 2016, 05:38:10 PM
Yep, I'll be staying away from XCOM 2. I've read some reviews and rundowns and I definitely don't like the sound of it. I really went off it when I read about some missions having time-limited turns. Bugger that - the thing I like most about turn-based games is not having to rush my moves! Racing against time in a turn-based game would drive me bats ????

Ironman is an interesting way to play. I'm doing pretty well, haven't lost any soldiers or countries. I'm almost up to the endgame, just waiting on the Gollup Chamber to be built. One consequence of Ironman play is that I have to live with whatever classes the game assigns my rookie soldiers when they rank up. I lucked out and got a pretty even spread of all classes, although I have more Support guys than I need :-() But sometimes one of the three Abduction missions choices will reward you with a particular ranked-up class of soldier, so if you're short of, say, Snipers, the game will offer you a chance at an extra one at some point.

Attacking the alien base as early as possible is a pretty good strategy, I've found. Capturing aliens, doing the appropriate research and building the Containment Facility early in the piece can mean delaying Satellite coverage a bit, but bagging the alien base early has two big advantages: world-wide panic levels are reduced (so Satellite production is no longer such a pressing priority) and your troops get to deal with easier enemy types in the base itself. I even once managed to get the base done before Cyberdisks appeared in the game, so the easy-to-take-out Repair Drones were present within the base but they had nothing to fix. All they could do was float around and fire their occasional trifling shots, which often miss or only do 1 damage when they connect. Since they made up 4 of the base's 22 defenders, my guys had a relatively easy time of it. The rest of the enemy forces were made up of Thin Men, Floaters and Crysallids. There weren't even any Mutons and my squad did the mish with just Carapace armour, a few laser rifles, and all other weapons ballistic. I only had one Major among the troops, plus three Captains and two Lieutenants. No Colonels. It wasn't a cakewalk, but thoughtful tactics paid off, especially against those fast-moving Chysallids, which were the biggest threat. There were eight altogether, and five of them came at my guys all at once ??? Two were right there within clawing range when my troops dropped them, using every last shot I could muster 8)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 25, 2016, 06:39:04 PM
nice! :-X ???

The time-limited turns of XCOM2 w@&k the way recovering melt worked in EW: You're given a turn limit. Say, you must finish within 8 turns or it's game over. And most missions are designed that way. By golly, no thanks. That was something I didn't like about EW, having to get to those melt canisters within a given amount of turns.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on March 26, 2016, 03:56:53 AM
Agreed. Time- or turn-limited play really spoils the experience for me.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on March 26, 2016, 11:30:32 PM
First mission in Ironman mode completed. Almost perfect, I lost one soldier in the second-last mission. I could have ignored this mission as I was only 4 game days away from launching the final assault on the Temple ship, but I'd never refused a mission before and I didn't know what the consequences of ignoring it would be. Being in Ironman mode I didn't want to chance it, so I went ahead with it and ended up losing a guy. The rest of the team was getting well and truly hammered and I didn't want to risk losing any more of my best troops so close to the final showdown, so I aborted the mission and evacuated the remaining squad members. This counted as a mission loss :D

Ironically, the final mission went almost flawlessly - no KIAs, and only one trooper took a minor hit.

So, the final stats, with one soldier lost and one battle lost:

[smg id=8673 align=center width=600]

At least I still saved the world! I don't think I'll play Ironman again, but at least I can say I did, even if it was on Easy (and Easy isn't as easy as it sounds in this game).

I then started a new game and decided to give the highest difficulty level, "Impossible", a try, just to see how far I could get. It lived up to its name - I didn't even make it through the first mission! All four rookies KIA, and it didn't help when one guy panicked and shot one of his squadmates dead. Normally, on the easier difficulty settings, your rookie squad of four troops initially faces off against four Sectoids, the weakest of the enemy units with only three hit points apiece. In Impossible mode there are eight of them, and they have four hit points each (which they can boost to five by mentally enhancing each other). I ended up with one guy still kicking, but he was wounded and trying to deal with four enhanced Sectoids by himself. They promptly flanked him and plasma-zapped the dickens out of him. He didn't have a snowball's chance.

So this was the result - a message I've never had the ignominy of ever seeing before. If you don't wish to expand the image, the text says, "All XCOM operatives were lost. The XCOM project is terminated, effective immediately". So much for protecting the world...

[smg id=8674 align=center width=600]

Because a new game starts with the rookies already flying to their first engagement, which takes place before the player gets to do anything else at all, I didn't even get to see my own base! So stuff Impossible mode, I'm not enough of a masochist for it.

Sorry Earth. I'll save you next time, I promise :angel:
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 27, 2016, 06:49:51 AM
 :-D

+1 :-X for your endurance and courage playing through on ironman difficulty and with an outstanding result, even. I take off my hat to you mate  :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on March 27, 2016, 07:27:22 AM
Thank you mate :)

It struck me that this is one of the things that sets XCOM apart from almost all other strategy games: the depth of attachment you develop for your troops. After watching that soldier move up through the ranks from a grass-green Rookie to a veteran Colonel, then seeing him die after the 22 missions he'd survived, was something of a wrench. And the way he died... he got critically wounded and I only had three turns to get a Support medic to him before he bled out. But the squad was pinned down and I just couldn't get to him in time without very likely losing the medic as well. The medic would not only have had to cross an open area covered by two Mutons, three Heavy Floaters, a Sectopod and an Ethereal, he would have had to treat the wounded soldier out in the open as well. In other words, it would have meant certain death for both of them. So I had to make the decision to leave the wounded guy to die alone.

Command can be tough...
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on March 27, 2016, 08:07:58 AM
yes, and I agree with the attachment for your guys. I still remember the first sniper whom I had to give up along with the entire playthrough because I realised I couldn't win (no satellites.. lol) and when I started my 2nd playthrough, I kept my guys alive. Funny how you can remember certain situations like I remember critical sniper or rocket launcher shots. You actually remember certain single turns. Normal games gradually evolve and there are casualties, collateral, and the player develops a "like I care" kind of mentality. Not with XCOM :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on March 27, 2016, 06:04:44 PM
Yeah, some turns and moments stay with you. I remember the time one of my Support guys pulled off a very low-chance shot (8%) which ultimately saved the day. I also remember tearing my hair out when one of my assault guys missed a 98% shot and it very nearly cost me the life of another soldier.

It does have its moments :-X
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on July 03, 2016, 03:33:06 AM
I've been playing this again, just finished another game actually.

During the last half-dozen or so playthroughs, I've concentrated on taking out the alien base as early as I can. Among other benefits to doing this, I've noticed that by doing the alien base early (which then makes it possible to get access to the rest of the key missions sooner) I've avoided having to do any Battleship missions.

According to the Wiki, Battleships will begin to appear around Month 4, sometimes earlier if you ignore too many Intercept missions (I try not to ignore ANY missions). But I haven't seen one in my last six or so 'thrus, i.e. when I've done the Alien Base mission early. Which suit me fine - I hate Battleships, they're tough freaking missions. The downside to never doing a Battleship mish is that you never get to acquire any Fusion Cores (these are only found on Battleships) which means you can't develop the Blaster Launcher weapon for your Heavies (which fire homing rockets). But you can get by just fine without those.


My standard setup is:


I'm finding that South America is a good continent to start on as alien autopsies are carried out instantly, which will allow earlier access to the Alien Base mission (and some research credits).

As a first step (after the initial mission), since XCOM only starts with two Interceptors and they're both based in the starting continent, I transfer one of them to the next continent, then buy three more and transfer one to each of the remaining three continents as soon as they arrive. Allowing UFOs to shoot down too many unprotected satellites can trigger Battleship missions (not to mention having the headache of building and launching Satellites all over again). Get that Interceptor coverage happening ASAP!


Then my priorities are:


* Choose Xeno-Biology as the first tech to be researched (allows building of Alien Containment Chamber) then research Arc Thrower (to stun and capture an alien, but of course the Alien Containment Chamber needs to be built first or the captured alien will have nowhere to live).

* Build the Alien Containment Chamber as soon as possible (after, or simultaneously with, the first Satellite Uplink), then build an Arc Thrower and equip a soldier with it. Assault Class is best as they tend to have better aim then the other classes, meaning that you can use their Equipment slot for the Arc Thrower leaving each of your other classes' Equipment slots free for a Scope (for better aim), a Grenade or a Medikit (Scope requires Weapon Fragments to be researched, which is the second tech I go for. I can get this done while the ACC is being built, then I'll research the Arc Thrower).

* Use Arc Thrower to capture any alien type as soon as possible. I try to capture a Sectoid as this is the only way to be able to research and build Plasma Pistols later on.

* Interrogate the alien to reveal the Outsider secret.

* Use Arc Thrower to capture an Outsider (during a crashed/landed UFO mission).

* Research Outsider Shard to unlock the Skeleton Key.

* Build the Skeleton Key (it gets built immediately).

* Alien Base Assault mission then becomes available.


But I don't neglect the building of Satellites and their Uplinks either, to make sure I get enough funding from Satellite-protected member countries (no Satellite over a given country means no funding from that country).

Doing the Alien Base mission brings the world-wide panic level down by 2 so Satellites are no longer such a pressing priority, and you'll encounter weaker enemies within the base itself as each passing month means progressively tougher enemies to deal with.

It can be a juggle, but it's sweet if you can pull it off. I once managed to make the Alien Base mission become available just before the end of Month 1, but Month 2 to Month 3 is more realistic. You can usually get Laser weapons happening during Month 2 or by the end of Month 3, which are more effective against the groups of Chryssalids you'll inevitably encounter during an early Alien Base mission.

I tend to sell a lot of the Alien corpses on the Gray Market in the early days too as the extra cash is more important than the corpses. Also, as soon as I finish a downed UFO mission I immediately go to the Gray Market and sell any damaged hardware from the UFO wreck. Money is of the essence in the early stages of a game, you need all you can get.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on July 03, 2016, 04:26:02 AM
I think you're doing a good job there, fragger :)

When I still played the game, I knew about your concept but I really, really wanted to get all the nice gear meaning I needed time and that inevitably brought those missions you try to avoid. I had a lot of massive fights involving battleships  :-D And as a result of researching everything, I was usually facing more or less equally well equipped and "evolved" aliens (OK, perhaps "developed" is a better term) And that made some missions, including the final mission, quite a handful to cope with. Then again, I enjoyed that :-()
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on July 07, 2016, 05:01:09 PM
Thanks mate :)

Did you ever capture a Muton? If you do, you can get an option to develop "Alien Grenades" in the Foundry. These do more damage than a human-made grenade. You can only do this in the month after they first appear, because in the first month of their appearance they don't have the grenades and they have Light Plasma Rifles. In their second month they upgrade to full Plasma Rifles and Alien Grenades.

Sectoid Commanders, Muton Elites and Heavy Floaters may also yield an Alien Grenade if captured.

I'd thought that when you recovered the first Alien Grenade, if you used it before you'd researched it, you'd lose it and would then have to get another one for research. But that's not the case. If you recover, say, one grenade, then use it before researching it, you'll still have it for the next mish - but you'll only ever have one (i.e. only one soldier can be equipped with it). Once it's researched, the Alien Grenades become available for all soldiers, just like the standard Grenades. You can still equip the standard Grenades, but I don't know why you'd want to when the Alien Grenades do more damage.

I like it when the Support class troops make Major and they get the "Deep Pockets" ability. I like to equip them with both the triple Medikit and a grenade. I also like to give them the "Sprinter" ability when they make Corporal. With those abilities, and once they get a Plasma Rifle and Titan Armour, they become extremely versatile units - as scouts, skirmishers, medics, and additional assault troops, as well as providing smokesceens when needed. They're my favourite class - if I had to choose just one class of troops to go in with, it would be those guys.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on July 08, 2016, 03:29:05 AM
yes, I did and I too had the same thoughts about grenades.

If you like Support that much, feel free to use nothing but. Depending on missions, I will do stuff like, "send in only four snipers, as the one team. More men are not necessary." >:D I remember doing stuff like that and it was cool. :-D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on August 05, 2016, 11:40:50 PM
I've been reading about XCOM 2, the new entry in the XCOM saga. I didn't want to start a new topic about it because Art and I would probably be the only ones interested, and I'm sure Art won't be after I pass on what I read. I'm certainly not.

It's been getting pretty lukewarm reviews, the biggest gripes concerning some pretty game-breaking glitches. CTDs, enemies that can hit your guys through walls (when they shouldn't be able to), troops shooting at targets other than the ones you order them to, issues with cover not functioning as it should, the procedurally-generated play areas sometimes not being generated very well with stuff stuck halfway through walls and such, and a few other negatives. I'm surprised at this as Firaxis games are usually pretty stable, but this one sounds like the family's naughty child.

I'm not crazy about the premise either, and the whole thing sounds like a test of your exasperation threshold. I especially don't like the reported fact that at least half the missions are time-limited, or rather turn-limited, where you'll only have a miserly number of turns to complete the objective or you'll fail the mish. One or two of these in a game I can put up with, but not more than half of the whole thing. A game of the original XCOM (Enemy Unknown) might see one, or at the most two, of these sort of missions (called "Bomb Disposal" missions), but no more. I've even had one 'thru where there were none of those at all. I went off the Enemy Within EXP largely because they introduced too many turn-limited aspects into the game. It wasn't so much the turn-limitation that bugged me - well, to an extent it did - but it was the ridiculously short turn limit. There's challenging and then there's exasperatingly near-impossible, and the latter isn't terribly conducive to gaming bliss.

I won't be getting into XCOM 2, I don't think. Anyway, No Man's Sky and Civ VI are just around the corner, so bugger XCOM 2 (thumbs-down emotie here).
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on August 06, 2016, 04:38:45 AM
You're right fragger, ever since XCOM2 news popped up on the net, there were none that caught my interest. On the contrary. Mostly because of the turn limits indeed.

Contrary to you, I finished EW and I had a good time playing it but just like you I was not exactly fond of those bloody limited turns, not to say I hated them, and that was true in particular regarding those bloody timed events during most missions that were to obtain some "melt" or "meld" (whatever it was called, some type of currency that you needed in order to acquire the newly introduced genetic and robotic upgrades)

The 2012 XCOM still is my favourite, however EW was indeed a lot more challenging.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on August 06, 2016, 06:23:58 PM
I could have tolerated the Meld thing a bit more if only they had allowed a few more turns until it disappeared or switched off or whatever it did. You not only had a terribly short number of turns to get to it, you had to find it first in the fog-of-war. Then the only way to get it usually meant sending your guys sprinting to get there in time and consequently leaving them either out of cover and vulnerable, or unable to engage until the following turn and subsequently getting hit. Then it was a decision of using up a precious turn to return fire, or run ahead toward the Meld again and risk getting hit some more.

So many times I'd get a dangerously wounded soldier to the Meld just one turn too late and I'd want to tear my hair out :-()
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on August 06, 2016, 10:54:40 PM
hehe  :-()

I remember losing one or two meld canisters because it would have been a tad too dangerous trying to get them. Albeit I have to admit that in order to get some of those more difficult ones, I did take a few silly risks -- not wanting that meld to go to waste. Actually, it was more like I very much wanted to get all those nifty tech and gene upgrades for my men so I had no choice but to try very hard to get that blasted meld :-() In the end, I managed to get most of it and all the upgrades I wanted.

I also remember that trick to try and see through the fog of war in preparation for getting close to the meld without revealing it too soon, not wanting to trigger the turn-based timer. With a bit of luck, you could perceive the silhouette of a meld canister that was sticking out in a different shade of gray just like you could recognise shapes of structures.

Most of the time there were enemies slumbering close to the meld canisters so with just a bit of luck you could kill two birds with one stone: charge, kill, and casually collect -- since you were already there "anyway." :-()

But yes, I'd have been a LOT happier if there hadn't been any timers at all.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 08, 2016, 02:15:41 AM
Having another play of this, I still love this game.

This was a first for me - an all-girl squad!

[smg id=9390 align=center width=600]

It's early in the game and I'm only at squad size 4. For those who haven't played, you start every new game with 12 soldiers in your barracks, of which you can choose 4 to go on a mission (later in the game, the squad size can be increased to 5, then eventually 6). Genders and names are generated randomly each game, and typically there will only be 3 or 4 female troops in the barracks. This time it created seven women and five men.

I got a reward for successfully completing a mission with an all-female squad - the "Flight Of The Valkyries" achievement :-()

(I've always known of the piece as "Ride Of The Valkyries", not "Flight Of The Valkyries". The original title is either "Walkürenritt" or "Ritt der Walküren", so "flight" can't be correct. I thought "ritt" was "ride". Maybe Art can confirm :)).

This below made me chuckle. The game generates the soldiers' first names and last names at random at the start of a new game, and whenever a soldier attains the rank of Sergeant, a randomly-generated nickname is assigned to him or her. All these names can be changed by the player. In the last game I played, the game just happened to come up with this name for this soldier. I felt compelled to change the nickname to this, I couldn't help myself (next to the little English flag in the info display - you may have to click on the picture to read it):

[smg id=9391 align=center width=600]

I may have jinxed her though - she nearly got killed a couple of times :-()
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Dweller_Benthos on November 08, 2016, 08:02:22 AM
Can you change their country of origin? Molly Brown was American, I believe.....

I watched a friend play this game, and though it looks cool, definitely not my cup o' tea. Setting stuff up ahead of time and just letting things roll from there isn't in my skill set, I always fail miserably.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 08, 2016, 09:38:59 AM
D_B: ^-^

fragger: you're spot on :-X :)
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 08, 2016, 01:23:23 PM
@Art, thanks :)

@D_B, Brown was indeed American, but you can't change the nationalities. And no matter what nationalities the soldiers are, they all have American accents ???? You can change a bunch of other stuff though - their faces, skin colours, hair colours and styles (plus different facial hair types for men). I don't bother with all that though because I like to put head-covering helmets on them to complete their ensembles, so their heads aren't visible. I just took the helmets off for the screenies.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 08, 2016, 02:01:54 PM
as far as I know, XCOM enemy within utilises the game's installation language packages so that you get to hear all the messages however in like five different but real spoken languages.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 08, 2016, 09:57:42 PM
Interesting, I didn't know that :-X
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 09, 2016, 10:47:03 AM
 ^-^
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on November 23, 2016, 03:00:21 AM
I'm currently alternating between this game and FC2, with a bit of Civ V thrown in (I gave up on Civ VI, I decided I didn't like it).

I'm impressed with how different one game of XCOM can be from another, it has great replay value :-X I'm currently on my 53rd playthrough and even though I've gotten to know all the maps, the randomness of values, event timing and enemy combos between games makes every playthrough a unique challenge.

I took on the alien base mission early, at the start of Month 3 (May) and for only the second time ever, all 21 enemies attacked me at once in the initial part of the base. It was a hell of a fight - my guys ran out of ammo for their primary weapons since they couldn't get a chance to reload so they all ended up falling back on their laser pistols ??? I had one Heavy along who managed to even the odds a bit with his single well-placed rocket, and my two Support guys had a grenade each which helped. By the time I'd cleared the enemies out (and my guys finally got to reload) I'd used up six Medikits (my total supply) and three of my guys still had some hit points knocked out. With all the defenders down, my squad was able to sprint through the entire base unopposed until they encountered the Commander at the far end, whom my Sniper duly dispatched with a long-distance head shot.

I'm doing well this go-around, I haven't lost any soldiers or had any countries drop out of the project. But because of the way I've gone about things this time, the Overseer ship keeps appearing but I haven't yet been able to get any Firestorm fighters into operation. These hybrid jobs seem to be the only fighter type that can deal with the Overseer ship, the default "Raven" jets can't do enough damage to bring it down within the few seconds you get to intercept. Three times the Overseer ship got away - and now a Battleship has appeared. I haven't seen one of those for ages, so I'm wondering if my repeated failure to splash the Overseer ship has triggered the Battleship's appearance. The last time I saw a Battleship was around game #20.

It's got 23 enemies on board, according to the Hyperwave report. Oh boy... At least I have three Firestorms up now, armed with plasma cannons, and two more in production from Engineering with plasma cannons waiting to go onto each of them, so the next time that danged Overseer ship turns up, I should be ready to ruin its day. Because it got away three times in one month, I got a "D" on my monthly report card from the Council and that faceless bugger who does the talking scolded me, saying something like, "We believe there is still room for improvement". Well, up yours then, Mr. Backlit Silhouette Head! I've only saved the world so far for you! Ingrate.

I like how sometimes when you're preparing for a mission and the Council guy says, "We're confident that you will handle this matter with discretion", then you go in and demolish walls, blast storefronts apart, cause parked cars to explode, blow up gas station petrol pumps and leave dead aliens everywhere. Oh yeah, very discreet :-()
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on November 23, 2016, 08:37:22 AM
It is but a thin line that separates the sublime from the pathetic. But who cares as long as the result is but a glorious victory :-D
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on December 20, 2016, 01:05:14 AM
What the - ?

I fired up the game after a break from it and my most recently saved game was gone. Instead, there was a saved game from about ten months ago. I've also played through over fifty times, but now it tells me that I've only had twenty or so games (for non-XCOMers, each save slot shows how many games you've played).

I think it was because I play XCOM offline and I recently cleared out my cache and did a thorough web-history cleanse, so the recent save and the game counter must have been cached, they got wiped out and that part of the game got reset back to whatever was last written to disk.

It's not that big a deal. I was going to start a new game anyway as I'd forgotten what I was doing in the last game. It's just a curious turn of events.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on December 20, 2016, 10:04:05 AM
that's where cloud saving comes in handy. It's particularly obvious when installing the game on a new computer, it downloads your last save games and you're ready to take off where you left off.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: fragger on January 24, 2017, 11:07:14 PM
I still dig this game, never gets old for me. I now know all the maps back to front, but due to the large degree of randomness involved in the way each game unfolds and the mission generation (types of enemies and how many, what combos of them, their starting locations on the map, etc) every field mission has its own challenges. Even after 60 games, I still find myself in some interesting (read perilously fraught) tactical situations that I haven't encountered before. I don't think I've ever played a game which makes me cheer and curse in equal measure :-()

Out of those 60 games, about 5 or 6 were aborts. Sometimes the randomness of the game produces a set of circumstances which just make things so tough that you can't get anywhere - or rather, you can, but it's such a steeply uphill struggle that it becomes less like fun and more like exasperation. It's relatively rare, but if it gets like that, I quit and start over. This can happen even on the easiest difficulty setting, which is what I always play on (occasionally I'll play on Ironman mode to give it a bit more of a challenge, but even on easy it can be a pretty tough game).

I've played through so often now that when I get to the final mission to assault the aliens' orbiting mother ship (called the "Temple Ship" for some reason) I don't bother and will start afresh. The reason is because unlike the rest of the game, the final mission is always exactly the same, i.e. the exact same enemies spawning in the exact same places at the exact same points in the mission. I've played this mission enough times that I know the best ways to deal with the enemies as they appear and I pretty much just breeze through the mish, so there's no challenge to it anymore - in fact, it's way easier than many missions that occur previously during the game. Besides, I think I've proven myself capable of saving the world enough times now, so bugger it :-()

The most fun to be had in XCOM is from the beginning through to somewhere past the halfway mark. Where that halfway mark occurs is actually dependent upon the player's actions. Some key missions appear only after you've achieved some prerequisite tasks, and these missions can be undertaken at the player's discretion, so how long a game will last depends on how long you shilly-shally before attempting those key missions or completing the tasks that unlock them. Delaying those tasks and missions will lengthen the gameplay but will also make things more difficult for you in the long run.

There is a special rule which can be enabled that will greatly increase the research time for new techs, so that's one way of lengthening a game if you feel it's too short. Personally, I feel the default kind of length is fine - not too long and not too short. I guess anywhere between about 20-40 hours per game. As mentioned, that can be largely dependent upon how the player goes about things, but can also depend on how the game itself develops, which is a bit different every time.

Wonderful game, one of my all-time faves. I have my good friend Art to thank for making me a gift of it a couple of years back. Dashed fine choice there, Mr. Blade 8) :)


PS  I have a tip for anyone who might consider taking the game up. It's worth playing the tutorial as it is very good for learning how the game works, but once you've finished the tutorial, quit and immediately start a new game without playing the tutorial. You always - always - lose a couple of soldiers in the tutorial, it's scripted that way. The loss will then carry over into the game proper, meaning that you'll be starting the actual game with only 10 soldiers in your barracks instead of 12 (mind you, I always finish a game with three or four rookie soldiers in the barracks who never get to see any action, and you can only ever take a maximum of six troops into any given mission). You can buy more recruits if you really need to and they're cheap, but I have never needed to do that. The loss won't seriously impact your performance in the game unless you totally stink, and none of you guys are dunderheaded enough to be that bad at it, but it will show up in your post-game stats. I don't know why the devs made the tutorial that way, but they did.
Title: Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)
Post by: Art Blade on January 25, 2017, 07:49:39 AM
Hehe, I'm really glad that you came to realise just how fine a game it is -- I hoped that you'd enjoy it and enjoying it you are indeed :-D

Yep, the guys you lose during the tutorial also count as lost soldiers when the final stats roll.. I didn't want to lose a single soldier and more on the contrary, I wanted to keep one set of soldiers all the way through to the finish which I did. That was an achievement that I still remember fondly. :)

Fragger, after all the EU, you should really try the alternative, Enemy Within. It is a lot more challenging even on easy difficulty and again it is just as you said: a game which makes you cheer and curse in equal measure -- only a lot more of each. :-()