XCOM: Enemy Unknown

[TinCow]

Unfortunately, 2k pulled perhaps the biggest move of recent memory and put color customization and helmets for your squad in the pre-order bonus. The Elite Soldier Pack that came with all digital pre-orders, and I think, all physical copies has the DLC.

I don't get helmets because I didn't pre-order? I am hoping that these helmets are decorative only.

[Monk]

I don't get helmets because I didn't pre-order? I am hoping that these helmets are decorative only.

Oh no, don't worry the helmets and colors are purely cosmetic and don't offer any in game bonus. The only benefit they provide me is shielding me from the faces of all the starry eyed men and women I've sent to their death.

[TinCow]

Ok, I'm not too bothered then. Extra character customization options seem to be standard pre-order bonuses these days, so I don't think it's particularly bad. I didn't even really care until Pape mentioned his color-coding scheme for easier specialist identification. That sounded like a really good idea to me, which is why I asked.

[Papewaio]

It's useful in the aliens turn. However as this is turned based it doesn't create a disadvantage as long as you look around at the start of your turn. I think they should have released at least the first third of the colour schemes.

Finished the terror mission, 10 Aliens killed, 8 civilians killed, 2 Soldiers WIA and 3 walked away. Yay for carapace! I now with my squad rotation have a Lt. 4 birds are being built and I will be building two more uplinks to form a block of four.

I'm saving all my alien autopsys for when I put two birds above South America... This should auto unlock them. So right now research is on getting some weapons to go along with the armour.

[White_eyes:D]

Does anyone find a use for the more upgraded versions of the power room or satellite nexus, when you can just get to a steam area for power or link satellite up-links together? I only ever built one nexus...it was expensive and getting enough satellites and materials was just a pain.

The Psy lab remains the most unlikely building I thought I would have a use for...until I saw how OP some of the psy ability's can be. Even the most basic attack saved my bacon, when we run out of ammo and couldn't waste a turn reloading.

[HopAlongBunny]

Got it loaded!

I seem to be building up a fair pile of corpses already (mostly mine) good fun :)

Whenever I go to the base I seem to get stuck ie: go to Barracks; cycle through soldiers; cannot get out of barracks. "esc" does not take me out, nor does it give me the menu_cntrl-alt-del to exit game!? really!!?? Gah!

I must be missing something obvious but I can't find it. edit: it was obvious :p follow what the tutorial asks you to do!?

[TinCow]

Ok, I have a complaint. There should be an easier way to transfer loadout items from inactive soldiers to those who are on your mission list. It's annoying to have to find the inactive soldier with the item you want, load them up, remove the item, load up the soldier you want, and then equip the item. I cannot find any in-game reason to have more than one squad's worth of any item, other than the convenience of not having to do this item swap dance, and money is so tight that I need to save every credit I can. That means not buying more equipment than I need.

[therother]

Does anyone find a use for the more upgraded versions of the power room or satellite nexus, when you can just get to a steam area for power or link satellite up-links together? I only ever built one nexus...it was expensive and getting enough satellites and materials was just a pain.

They are more useful later in the game, when you are running out of room for new facilities, and the extra energy and satellites/per slot makes a difference.

I'm just about to complete my second run through, am almost ready for the final mission but want to have 6 psi operative colonels in my team so am playing on for quite a while after I could have completed it. One additional benefit is that I have the time and resources to play around with my base.

Foundries can be moved, but you lose the already completed projects. Same goes for the Officer school. You can get rid of Alien containment once you've interrogated the alien necessary for the "plot" and if you don't care about the research bonuses interrogations allow, and can scale back on labs entirely once you have enough scientists/research bonuses. For instance, with no additional labs I researched fusion in two days. In terms of planning to group facilities, squares are better than lines, and I prioritise uplinks then power then workshops then labs.

I was beginning to get a little blasé about the missions until I assaulted a cargo ship laden with 20+ aliens including muton elites, beserkers, cyberdisks, sectopods, heavy floaters and an ethereal. Twice I encountered serious firepower activating all at the same time. Nearly lost two (stabilised them just in time) and all 6 spent time in the infirmary after that encounter. Have changed my tactics and loadout ever since, moving away from titan to ghost armour for the ground crew and archangel for the snipers, and thinking about restricting having two snipers to only those missions where I know there will be mostly open ground or where the second sniper is a gunslinger (up to 7 damage with their plasma pistol). Definitely not two snipers for large ship assaults.

Similarly, I was happy enough with EMP-armed Firestorms, one per continent, but an encounter with a battleship has more than persuaded me to construct some fusion lances. I now have a relative abundance of resources, but losing a Firestorm would still hurt, and it was only a bit of luck and the dodges from the defence matrix that saved it. Now I'm begging for another battleship because I want another fusion core to construct another blaster launcher. Those things are serious weapons.

Oddly, though, I've not had an alien abduction mission in months, so world panic is not an issue. Don't know if this is because I'm ready for the final mission, I have worldwide satellite coverage, there are only a set number of them, I've been extraordinarily lucky or it's just a bug...

The Psy lab remains the most unlikely building I thought I would have a use for...until I saw how OP some of the psy ability's can be. Even the most basic attack saved my bacon, when we run out of ammo and couldn't waste a turn reloading.

Psi abilities are extremely useful, plus are required for the final mission, where you get some seriously powerful psi powers. All of them are useful, although I tend to go with panic over inspire and MC over telekinetic field. There is nothing more satisfying than MCing an ethereal...

[therother]

Ok, I have a complaint. There should be an easier way to transfer loadout items from inactive soldiers to those who are on your mission list. It's annoying to have to find the inactive soldier with the item you want, load them up, remove the item, load up the soldier you want, and then equip the item. I cannot find any in-game reason to have more than one squad's worth of any item, other than the convenience of not having to do this item swap dance, and money is so tight that I need to save every credit I can. That means not buying more equipment than I need.

Yes, it does have a number of UI quirks. For instance, would be nice to have easy access to a soldier's stats on the battlefield, especially will, without having to go into the info panel. Also, a tooltip over the ability icons would be handy. Not being able to ghost after selecting run and gun is strange, but have now trained myself to do it in the right order. Having to remember to rearm a newly constructed Firestorm after transfer is annoying, I often forget and then only have avalanche missles on hand when a UFO is detected. I also don't understand when you get the alien spotted sound during a movement but if you can't see it from where you end up you don't get any information about where it was. A little map would be great as well.

Edit: But for me the biggest issue by a country mile is controlling your soldiers movement when the terrain has different levels, especially larger ships. It's a real pain to have to get the right zoom and rotation settings to allow to move where you want to go...

[HopAlongBunny]

So far I'm impressed. This has to be the cleanest game I've played in a long time.

Transferring equipment is a bit fiddly ie: "where did I put that other Medkit?" In a tight place camera control is painful. No game breakers that I can see so far; a very welcome relief after Skyrim. Now if I could just get "assault" units to live a little longer....

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Give them rifles and use run and gun for conservative flanking, not bum rushing.

[Monk]

Give them rifles and use run and gun for conservative flanking, not bum rushing.

[White_eyes:D]

I have just made it half-way though one of the bloodiest months I have played on "X-COM:Enemy Unknown". It's like the game sense's that if it let's up for a few days, I am going to get my second wind and crush all opposition. I have had two UFO landing missions, another small scout that I shot down, 4 abduction missions, 1 terror mission and I also assaulted the alien base to get the panic levels down.

After that 4th abduction mission came swinging down when I was at my weakest, I had to ask the question if the game is trolling me or not...

I have over 500 alien alloys, 200 weapons fragments and tons of other stuff I will need later on. I am hurting bad after I lost three of my veterans with 5 going into critical care. Should I try it and risk losing 3 recruits and a newly minted squddie or just ignore it and hope panic levels don't go though the roof?

I am hoping that for the rest of the month after this, it's quiet and just lets my men get out of the hospital and get some new equipment researched...or this might be as far as I can go.

[Monk]

I have just made it half-way though one of the bloodiest months I have played on "X-COM:Enemy Unknown". It's like the game sense's that if it let's up for a few days, I am going to get my second wind and crush all opposition. I have had two UFO landing missions, another small scout that I shot down, 4 abduction missions, 1 terror mission and I also assaulted the alien base to get the panic levels down.

After that 4th abduction mission came swinging down when I was at my weakest, I had to ask the question if the game is trolling me or not...

I have over 500 alien alloys, 200 weapons fragments and tons of other stuff I will need later on. I am hurting bad after I lost three of my veterans with 5 going into critical care. Should I try it and risk losing 3 recruits and a newly minted squddie or just ignore it and hope panic levels don't go though the roof?

Yeah. The game is certainly an attrition battle once you get out of the early game, to the point where if you've had a squad completely wiped out even once in the first few months, it's almost not worth continuing. You need higher ranked guys to face down the Cyberdisks in the mid game. If you're cutting corners with explosives on the battlefield as well, you're also missing out on resources that you will desperately need when you hit laser tech. You'll find yourself in that awful spot where you're bloodied and beat up with only squadies and rookies to face down Mutons (with heavy plasma) and Cyberdisks. It's a terrifying position to be in.


I'm on my 10th attempt at classic after a run through normal. This time I am doing much better, as playing on Normal allowed me to formulate a much more viable long term strategy. Rushing sats, engineers and laser tech seems to be a good plan for the early to mid-game. With smart tactics you can really decimate the enemy no matter what they send at you. Still, classic being classic, you're always one shot away from disaster at any time. Love the tension.

I lost my best sniper and one of my favorite characters last night, code-named Garrote. It was nearing the end of April and laser tech was just starting to come off the line, but no carapace armor as of yet when the council wanted an escort. It was the alley way map. Two tall buildings seperated by a narrow alley. We elected to move over the rooftops with the VIP and all was going well, until time came for the decent. Thin Men had been dropping in the mission periodically and I'd nailed a few, but as we neared extraction i made a grave error and placed the VIP in a really vulnerable spot.

You can imagine my dismay when a sectoid group showed up when half of my team were out of actions. The vip took a plasma shot to the chest, but he survived! Unfortunately.. he was in a spot where the next turn he was a dead man for sure. We took out two of the sectoids but one still had a good shot on him. I knew the mission was gonna be a failure if I didn't find a way to save him.. so I had to make the ultimate sacrifice. Garrote was in position on the roof still and was the only unit with an action, she dropped down and ran in close to the sectoid and pulled out her pistol. Without bothering to take cover, she popped a few rounds off at the nasty little grey. Not enough to kill it, but more than enough to get it's attention...

The AI doesn't consider things like who the VIP is or what the objective is, it seems to prioritize targets by what type of covor your men are in and their overall chance to hit you. Garrote was in the enemy's face the chance to hit her was super high. The enemy took the bait, the sectoid turned and fired, and my sniper died a hero's death. Next turn I got the VIP into heavy cover, hit run and gun on my assault and blasted that little piece of into oblivion... Rest easy, Garrote.

[HopAlongBunny]

Yeah. The game is certainly an attrition battle once you get out of the early game, to the point where if you've had a squad completely wiped out even once in the first few months, it's almost not worth continuing.

I have learned this more times than I care to admit :p

I am slowly realizing that motion does not have to always be forward; I can't imagine the game would be playable with limited ammo.

[Papewaio]

Still playing NI. Almost had a total squad wipe with Bravo. I had shot down a large UFO after taking 90% damage to two interceptors.

I landed Bravo squad with members of Charlie to fill gaps and a rookie to learn the ropes.

My first encounter was two of the crystal energy guys, then I triggered two floater packs. My sniper missed every shot. Assault was under pressure, support was outside the ship, heavy was maintaining pressure and the rookie was racking up the kills. Wiped out the two floater packs and a third. Assault was on two health and we were out of med packs. Stumbled into the next chamber and was setting up my guys at the sides of doors when a corridor between them was defogged.

Three chrisalyids procceded to munch on my heavy and sniper. Support, assault and rookie fell back firing as they went. However after killing one of the aliens the support died. Two more firing retreats with 3 zombies and 1 chrisalyid left and the rookie was poisoned. She died soon after as she made a retreat and shoot maneuver. At that point the assault run and gunned to the extraction zone.

Luckily with those in the infirmary I still have 2 active Bravo squad (promoting a Delta to Bravo), assault in the infirmary and enough troops in Alpha and Charlie to field a battle experienced squad.

[Papewaio]

Still playing NI. Almost had a total squad wipe with Bravo. I had shot down a large UFO after taking 90% damage to two interceptors.

I landed Bravo squad with members of Charlie to fill gaps and a rookie to learn the ropes.

My first encounter was two of the crystal energy guys, then I triggered two floater packs. My sniper missed every shot. Assault was under pressure, support was outside the ship, heavy was maintaining pressure and the rookie was racking up the kills. Wiped out the two floater packs and a third. Assault was on two health and we were out of med packs. Stumbled into the next chamber and was setting up my guys at the sides of doors when a corridor between them was defogged.

Three chrisalyids procceded to munch on my heavy and sniper. Support, assault and rookie fell back firing as they went. However after killing one of the aliens the support died. Two more firing retreats with 3 zombies and 1 chrisalyid left and the rookie was poisoned. She died soon after as she made a retreat and shoot maneuver. At that point the assault run and gunned to the extraction zone.

Luckily with those in the infirmary I still have 2 active Bravo squad (promoting a Delta to Bravo), assault in the infirmary and enough troops in Alpha and Charlie to field a battle experienced squad.

[White_eyes:D]

The AI doesn't consider things like who the VIP is or what the objective is, it seems to prioritize targets by what type of covor your men are in and their overall chance to hit you. Garrote was in the enemy's face the chance to hit her was super high. The enemy took the bait, the sectoid turned and fired, and my sniper died a hero's death. Next turn I got the VIP into heavy cover, hit run and gun on my assault and blasted that little piece of into oblivion... Rest easy, Garrote.

I think you should have hit "Hunker down" and she might have survived....but I understand wanting to kill him and not waste two weeks in the hospital.

Made it though the month very smoothly after that last abduction mission. I have Laser weapons, tons of other stuff researched, 3 of my best men/women being "tested" for psy power and a firebird nearly fresh off the line. In short, it was a VERY slow month and now I can curbstomp some Xenos. I missed that alien supply ship though...which just about destroyed my satellite.

That is going to hurt my material gathering efforts later on...

[HopAlongBunny]

Found this tech tree in a post at strategycore:

http://i.stack.imgur.com/NGLEJ.gif

For me it makes the whole tech thing a lot easier to understand :)

[Monk]

Found this tech tree in a post at strategycore:

http://i.stack.imgur.com/NGLEJ.gif

For me it makes the whole tech thing a lot easier to understand :)

Saved. Thanks hopalong :D

[Monk]

Killed my first berserker tonight. Felt damn good. I have this picture in my head that my troops pried the sucker's helm off and mounted it in their rec room for the sole purpose of telling stories to scare the crap outta the rookies.

Figured out the hard counter to Cyberdisks, no surprising it's Heavies equipped with the HEAT ammo passive. Good god. You wanna talk about wrecking machines, these guys put Ivan Drago to shame when it comes to destroying robots. A normal LMG with HEAT ammo does 10 (!!) damage to all robotic enemies, non crit. The trick is keeping your heavies alive long enough for them to get the ability in the first place. I've been putting Nano-fiber on the heavies to try to give them the extra survivability, but honestly, I'm finding SCOPEs to be even better. A heavy with a scope on high ground is ridiculous.



This is the first time i've made it passed June on Classic and I am starting to really hit my stride, having gotten plasma tech and on a real roll with my sat coverage I think i've finally turned the corner. I'm starting to understand what most people mean when they say the early game is the hardest. Once you get full coverage on one or two continents the abduction missions really slow down. Then it becomes a game of fighting off UFOs and raiding the ones that land, which I have to say, is much less arduous than constantly going into abduction missions where 2 out of 3 continents are gonna get panic.

Out of curiosity, who are some of your guys' best soldiers? Right now the leader of my troops is a particularly intimidating Assault trooper from Scotland. She's the only survivor of the original 4 man squad the game gives you for the first mission and is nearing on 50 kills now.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Only thing that sucks about her is her low Will. She got critically wounded a few missions back and knocked unconscious so she has to live with the permanent negative to her stats. Still, it didn't stop her from gunning down 4 chrysalids on the last Terror mission

[TinCow]

Classic Ironman is hard.

[easytarget]

Yes it is. If I had a better fix on LOS, I could probably tolerate how hard it is, but since the approach is more DND in determining hit, if I get unlucky and the aliens get lucky, the mission can go ugly just way too fast for my tastes. So, I'm backing off classic ironman, just annoying me too much. If however I had a way to determine LOS that worked like combat mission, well, then I'd be up for it.

Minor quibble, rather like working your way through multi-level ships and having the damn UI flip out on you constantly.

All in all though, my first run through to completion on a campaign was the most fun I've had in a long time. Put a big smile on my face. Just as my 66 kill PSI sniper Colonel with pink archangel armor amused me so much that I went out of my way to put him in harms way so he could find some more new and interesting ways to "reach out and touch" aliens and relieve them of their earthly burden. ;)

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Because I'm a huge wimp I beat the game on Normal/Ironman. Pretty awesome, though I was getting tired of supply ship attacks by the end with the multi-level UI.

When I'm less emotionally drained I'll start up a CI game with the cutscenes and glam-cam off.

[HopAlongBunny]

I am an even bigger wimp:p

Monk is at the point where all my "normal" campaigns fall apart; got plasma, good sat coverage, next level of armor researched (beyond carapace). All my "vets" die gloriously in a mission and just no way forward.

Changed up this go through. More interrogation, more sats early, got and did the alien base while still using bullets. I might even get to the end this time :)

[frogbeastegg]

Well, thanks to circumstances I got XCOM on day 1 and have barely had chance to play it. What I have played, I really enjoyed. There's a few things I'm not sold on, but I'll wait and see how they pan out across the game. Regardless, despite looking in askance at several large aspects of the design, I'm having a great time and can see myself replaying it quite a few times.

I'm at the beginning of month 3 now. Haven't even captured an alien yet. Took me about 4 hours to get that far ... I've actually left the game on standby for longer than I've played it. Well, could be worse. I've only managed to play 15 minutes of Dishonoured.

I've got 1 assault trooper on my team, and I will be completely heartbroken if anything happens to her! She's got the highest kill-count by far. Run and gun = dead alien. Pot shots from cover = dead alien. Reaction fire = dead alien. Shooting halfway across the map with a shotgun after my entire squad misses = dead alien! I can't believe some of the shots she has pulled off. The game named her 'android' and she's more than lived up to it - she's a total no-nonsense killing machine. Meanwhile my sniper misses plenty of shots, even with a scope and several promotions.

Terror From the Deep expansion now, please. I preferred that game's setting to the original's.

[TinCow]

Attempting a stun on Classic Ironman is quite possibly the most nerve-wracking thing I have ever done in any game, ever.

[HopAlongBunny]

I am glad the game does not model friendly-fire casualties. I just had a Chrysallid vault from a second story; landed at the "five-spot" amidst a tight 4-pack of my soldiers; all were on overwatch, "bowed to their corner", and unleashed a storm of plasma!

That should have been mission over :p

[TinCow]

I am glad the game does not model friendly-fire casualties. I just had a Chrysallid vault from a second story; landed at the "five-spot" amidst a tight 4-pack of my soldiers; all were on overwatch, "bowed to their corner", and unleashed a storm of plasma!

That should have been mission over :p

Unfortunately, friendly fire did result in mission over for me on an earlier Ironman attempt. I was on a VIP escort mission with everyone in cover and the VIP completely secure inside a storage container with a Heavy in full cover on overwatch standing guard over him. I moved up an assault, which revealed a previously unknown Thin Man on a nearby roof. The Thin Man took a reaction shot and killed my assault. Which caused my Heavy to panic and gun down the VIP. Ugg...

That's not as bad as what made me abort an otherwise decent Ironman attempt either. It was a bomb mission and I was doing pretty well. I had one man down on an all-vet squad of four, but he had been stabilized and there was only one sectoid left right by the bomb inside a building, with all 3 of my remaining soldiers ready to burst into the room, kill the sectoid, and defuse the bomb. On the sectoid's turn, he ran out of the door of the building that only had a single man guarding it (not on overwatch, due to rushing to get to the bomb), resulting in flanking of my guy. By a bloody miracle, the sectoid's follow-up shot from near point-blank range missed. The first thing I did on my turn was take the flanked assault guy up to point blank range and finish the Sectoid with a single shotgun blast. Unfortunately, I had not checked movement distances, and he was the only soldier who could get to the bomb without dashing. Both of the other two soldiers ended 1 square away from the bomb and thus couldn't defuse it before it charged. And since all three of my men were right at the bomb when it charged, I couldn't get them back to the evacuation zone and the entire team was killed when it went off.

I'm currently farther along in Classic Ironman (attempt 28, only about 5 of which I played past mission 2), but I'm down to about 8 soldiers on rotation and am losing men regularly. I may have to give Ironman a try on Normal instead... I'm just not good enough for this. It feels like no matter how careful I am, there's nothing I can do to prevent sheer bad luck from causing the death of critical soldiers.

[Monk]

I'm currently farther along in Classic Ironman (attempt 28, only about 5 of which I played past mission 2), but I'm down to about 8 soldiers on rotation and am losing men regularly. I may have to give Ironman a try on Normal instead... I'm just not good enough for this. It feels like no matter how careful I am, there's nothing I can do to prevent sheer bad luck from causing the death of critical soldiers.

When i played the game initially I thought that Ironman was the way to go, it just felt so.. visceral. So intense. It is no exageration to say every moment was an edge of your seat experience in Ironman. The fate of the world literally hangs upon every single shot you take, and that is not an experience that you can find in games very often.

The problem comes in how small scale your operation is. When you have a max of a 6 man squad (starting at 4), you can suffer a complete Pearl Harbor in a matter of seconds. The limited number of soldiers you have at your disposal means things need to go perfectly every single mission, if not? A Muton scores a lucky crit on your star assault and kills him, your sergeant heavy freaks the hell out and guns down another squadie, or worse, a VIP. End of game right there.

Those kinds of scenarios can happen in the blink of an eye, and you'll be sitting there completely stunned that the game is, effectively, over. It's a harsh sting largely because when you sit back and ask yourself, "Okay, why did I lose?" you will invariably come to the conclusion, "The dice just weren't on my side," and that is one of the worst feelings in gaming. You did everything right, it was just bad luck.

May/June is really the terminal point in my opinion, if you lose a single beefy squad on Ironman? You might as well just pack it in right there because you are now effectively so far behind you'll never win.

Ironman is an incredible experience because it gives you that tension.. but when your total failure state is, at any time, a single dice roll away (and you are literally rolling dozens upon dozens of dice every mission) it can quickly turn into an exercise in frustration. Everyone should without a doubt play Ironman to get that feeling I described, but if you want to keep your sanity? Play on regular. Trust me. You'll scream less obscenities at your monitor.