View Full Version : XCOM: Enemy Unknown
I lost. 3 months and 11 days into the campaign and I lost.
Now I have a simple colour setup for my classes: Assaults black, Heavies darkblue, Snipers green, Supports white and Rookies are redshirts. In my latest campaign I ended up with redshirt Supports, since I lost 4 of them at sergeant+ rank. Given that I give them the adaptive bone marrow augment this meant a lot of lost MELD, meaning that my core crew were out for a long time if they got wounded. I also lost at least 10 rookies during the campaign (they're still redshirts, be sure of that!) which meant that when a bomb mission came around, I had 3 majors, a sergeant Support and two rookies. No matter - at least the mission is only Thin Men, and I had the 2-inventory slots-perk from the Foundry, as well as 4 Carapaces, Laser Rifles and enough Nanofiber Vests to go around, giving everyone at least 7 hp.
Long story short I decide to run my Sniper into a near point blank range Overwatch, losing him 6 of his 7 health (why would he need Carapace duh). Eventually this lost me the game. As I closed in on the bomb, I had 1 turn left to defuse it. My Assault was in range of the defusal, my Heavy, Sniper, Support and rookies had a shot on the last Thin Man and his heavy cover. Had no explosives left, but with 5 guys - 3 of which had the chance to destroy his cover with the Laser Rifles - I decided to just go all out on the Thin Man. 5x35%+ chance to hit, it cannot fail.
Of course it can, and he survives, but no matter - I run my Assault up and defuse the bomb. Now this was a bomb map I hadn't tried a bomb mission on before, but I expected a couple of Thin Men to drop by at this point. But first the sole surviving Thin Man takes a potshot at my 5th attempt at a Support and hits him for 4 damage, sending him into panic. Right... new guys and their low will... he Hunkers, but this sends one of my Rookies into a panic as well. She decides to take a pistolshot at my Sniper and hits him - with his 1 health this means he dies. And at this point the drop ins start. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.... 6 Overwatched spread-out Thin Men drop in in the same bloody turn (Ananda Gupta?!), right as I have a panic spiral and a dead Sniper. With Bulletswarm, a cold-as-ice Rookie and my Assault I manage to clear out 4 of them, but the remaining 2+the initial one take out my panicked Rookie and put a 9 damage flank on my Assault, leaving her with 1 health. Eventually it comes down to my 1hp Assault, my 4hp Heavy vs 2 Thin Men with 2 hp each. Poison takes the Assault out, the Heavy takes out a Thin Man, and the last Thin Man takes out the Heavy. Game over. Every good soldier is dead, the country panics with a Satellite in place already - its over. And that feeling when you just know its over...
Now if I hadnt decided to eat plasma with my Sniper things would still be bad, but I would probably have won. I did not know about, or remember, 6x Thin Man drops either, but even if only 3 had dropped this could have ended up much worse than it should have. I went all-out on a single Thin Man instead of securing another bomb node, and if my 5x firing squad should fail I hadn't considered any backup plan. I forced my own hand. I believe I got lazy. I had Carapace! Lasers! Augments! 6 pimped out guys! 3 continent bonuses! Foundry upgrades! 900+/month income! Why even bother playing the mission? Just give me the reward!
This story is why this game transcends my idea of "excellent". I got far, I played fairly well up to that point, then I stopped playing well and got punished severely by a low-tier type enemy en masse. Sure, right after this I was ready to break my poor monitor, but the fact is that the game was lost and my team dead because I played poorly - not because of an unlucky mission or RNG-unbeatableness. That means there is plenty of room for improvement. Encouraging indeed.
My policy after missions like these is to take the last name of each remarkable soldier and turn it into a random nickname for that class, removing it as a last name option. I think it was Beagle who said that using random names instead of prefixed ones gives the possibility of creating new heroes, and I know exactly what he means ;)
While EW did fix up a lot of things, it does seem to have done something to the way soldiers are prioritized promotions. I got roughly 30 promotions last game through training and the OTS upgrade, and out of those merely 3 were Assaults. I got 11 Snipers! It was always random, but by now it seems "more random" than in EU. I don't recall having an entire page worth of Supports and Snipers before, with 5 Heavies and 0 Assaults (ok, so 3 of them died, that's in the job description!).
Also flying units that are flying now seem to get the "Hardened" bonus without showing it. Correct me if Im wrong but I recall that flyers were liable to the exposed crit rate pre-expansion. They sure aren't now. This leads to some really bizarre situations where a Floater hovering 1 tile above ground point-blank is unkillable to a Rookie, but if the Rookie runs to another Floater hiding behind heavy cover and gets a flank he can crit it with ease.
Oh, and if EXALT raises panic, they raise panic in entire continents at a time, including satellited ones. I did not know that. I wish I had ;)
easytarget
11-30-2013, 22:49
Yeah, that last piece is the reason Exalt cannot be ignored. They can quickly become more a problem regarding panic than the aliens. I wasn't able to narrow it down very quickly in my last campaign, I'm hopeful I can do a better job this time and pull the trigger on invading their base earlier than later, last round I lost either one or two countries to their shenanigans.
Greyblades
12-01-2013, 04:06
Argh! I just... Argh! Ironman is so frustrating. I cant get past the part of me that wants to save scum. When that thin man pulls off an impossible shot on my escort, my sniper misses at 90% or, best yet, my escort gets poisoned and panicks a turn away from the end and dies because he's too dumb to run for his life I want to just alt F4.
HopAlongBunny
12-01-2013, 05:13
I am enjoying this expansion :)
The choices are a bit more complex and the AI is pretty good.
It seems Exalt has access to mimetic skin and uses it! Very dangerous :yes:
Yes, I have been blowing my brains out in mission after mission...but I like it :laugh4:
Argh! I just... Argh! Ironman is so frustrating. I cant get past the part of me that wants to save scum. When that thin man pulls off an impossible shot on my escort, my sniper misses at 90% or, best yet, my escort gets poisoned and panicks a turn away from the end and dies because he's too dumb to run for his life I want to just alt F4.
Council missions are cruel and unfair, but there is a counter to how tough they are early on - they're 100% scripted. I've only had three different types of escort missions (+Slingshot/Portent) and I know them by heart now. It's kind of questionable design to have them be so difficult that you must know them through and through to stand a chance, but it makes it possible to know where to put the escort so he is never at risk of being hit. Always keep him in designated "safe zones" and out of line of sight of your soldiers so that they don't just shoot him if they get a little nervous. It is possible on all of them.
The game has decided: Nein. No Assaults for you. Again I am left with just 1 from the initial mission. I guess it is time to test the new Snapshot and rifle-Support!
Greyblades
12-02-2013, 00:24
Oh god.
My first TPK in iron man I havent alt f4'd to undo.
A bunch of mutons appear out of a ship when I was making what I thought was a easy rush for some meld. My troops were out in the open on a hill and they injured my heavy, in return he puts a rocket into the side of one's head as the rest of my team screw up thier 60% shots trying to take the rest out. Next turn my heavy shoots his last bullet at the enemy and I send my medic out to save his ass, the two remaining mutons retreated into the ship and my 3 men provide cover fire. Turn after that, a freaking cyberdisk saunters out of the ship follwed by the two mutons and a drone and catch my heavy and medic out of ammo and cover. I cant take out all 4 so I book it, but before I can react a freaking seeker strangles my assault and my main healing support gets put down by the cyberdisk, the rest of the level is my troops getting gunned down rushing for the ship.
A particular highlight was my assault being freed from his strangler, getting pegged by the drone, shooting half a muton's face off and then getting gunned down as his would-have-been savior is caught one space away from the escape.
I lost 3 captains and a corporal.
F:daisy:
easytarget
12-02-2013, 04:11
Yep, that's ironman. And frankly I don't care what anyone says, ironman classic is not just classic with one save. I've played classic and it's really not all that big a deal in terms of difficulty difference from normal, however, ironman/classic is, and it's more than just the one save business.
As for pain, I hear misery loves company, so here's mine from tonight. Dropped into the 3rd exalt mission, keep taking them out in threes, since they keep showing up all over the place in threes as they are prone to do, get caught out on a reload with a heavy who has been holo tagged and before I can do anything about it, a laser sniper crits him out of existence. First Colonel I've lost, had to park the game for the night after that one. Same mission I also got within one health of losing a Colonel sniper thanks to a rocket he took while taking cover by a car, the extra damage from the car exploding nearly got him as well.
The trouble with it was the reinforcements which just didn't stop coming.
Not as bad as your situation I'll admit Grey, but man oh man did it hurt losing a Colonel (one btw that was spliced too, so that went to waste as well).
Greyblades
12-03-2013, 00:39
I'm considering getting the All Weapons Mod; I'm seriously having trouble keeping my snipers alive as the enemies keep killing them in thier infancy. Also before I can get squadsight or gunslinger squaddie snipers are useless and thier useless-ness makes ranking them up take forever.
It seems to me that they'd be better off keeping thier assault rifles until they rank up.
HopAlongBunny
12-05-2013, 02:01
I love the new toys!
Kinetic Strike has been a little disappointing; the only time I tried to use it, I smashed my own cover and blew my position. The Flamethrower targets properly and is just too handy to ignore.
Mimetic Skin is just too good :) Next game an entire squad with it will be a priority. The rest of the gene mods are situational; top-flight effects but narrow in terms of situation.
A Mec Assault is just a riot! Self-Healing and absorption lets you just rip it up!! The other Mec's are useful but nowhere near as fun.
I'm considering getting the All Weapons Mod; I'm seriously having trouble keeping my snipers alive as the enemies keep killing them in thier infancy. Also before I can get squadsight or gunslinger squaddie snipers are useless and thier useless-ness makes ranking them up take forever.
It seems to me that they'd be better off keeping thier assault rifles until they rank up.
This is a classic problem. May I ask which item you use on your squaddie Snipers? For the longest time I used SCOPEs or Nanovests - both pale in comparison to just having a grenade. This page (http://ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Soldiers_%28EU2012%29#XP_Requirements) is genius for keeping tabs on how far your soldiers have progressed in ranking up. And it shows why squaddie Snipers feel like three times the deadweight they were in EU. Ranking to corporal takes forever now: 6 alien kills or 3 completed missions more than in EU.
Oftentimes the best bet is to let the Sniper be a glorified grenadier, getting kills by blowing up aliens or finishing off weakened ones with a pistol. Also - and this is something I didn't consider for the longest time - when you assault small UFOs from the energy door-side, put your Sniper close enough to be able to take a shot, but put her on Overwatch and then open the door. This way your Sniper takes a shot with -20 aim instead of -40 on the Outsider's heavy cover, and gets to shoot first (without having to move). This applies to any situation where you can control the enemy spawn via door openings and know that your Sniper is safe from harm due to the enemy being dead the next turn whether the shot connects or not. Its no guarantee, but the importance of the corporal rank for Snipers cannot be stressed enough. I've been playing around a bit with Snap Shot, and while I still feel like Squadsight is better for the Sniper class as such, Snap Shot feels just as game-changing for the Sniper. They turn from "are you seriously weaker than a Rookie?" to "look at him GO, DAYWM!" either way.
In regards to how Snipers feel weak at first, I personally really like this. A Heavy gets ridiculously useful at squaddie rank due to the rocket launcher, and the corporal rank is also strong through Bulletswarm. The next couple of ranks are solid utility, sure, but they have nothing on the first two ranks. For the Sniper it takes a while to get kicking, but then they really get kicking. Supports are also a bit slower than the Heavy, with Assaults completely changing role and usefulness when ranking up. This diversity in peaks and strengths forces you to think about which composition to use and which tactics to use in order to promote the "correct classes" the correct way, which gets especially interesting if you only rank 2 or 3 of your soldiers in the first few missions. I really like it. But then again I also like the fact that Outsiders have 80 aim/10 defense on Classic/Imp, so maybe Im just slightly masochistic.
Let me also share a train of thought I've had, which might help everyone avoid the mistake I've made more often than I wish to admit. Concerning Overwatch squads/traps and how likely they are to not get your people murdered, and how unfathomable a single point of health can be in terms of overthrowing previous correct conclusions.
I dislike a number of maps, the long narrow train in the station-map is high on that dislike-list for a variety of reasons. Mostly I just can't see any way to advance on it without either relying on shootouts or hoping that your cover doesn't get blown up by the notorious clown car of spawns this map has. Consequently I decided on the following strategy on it: I put my Support in front of the train, peaking out over the right flank. My squaddie Sniper and a Rookie took position inside the driver's room of the train, taking each piece of hardcover that's available there, and my Assault would edge up, grab the first MELD canister that happened to be that way, and trigger a pack of 3 Sectoids. Now my reasoning was this: With 3 Sectoids, one of them will almost certainly mind merge. That leaves a maximum of 2 Sectoids advancing. If they both advance inside the train, they will block eachother due to lack of cover, so I guessed that one would take the train and one would take the right flank (the left flank up to the map edge would be walking into a very angry concealed Assault which they knew about). Thus, the flank-Sectoid would be susceptible to three Overwatch-shots, and the train-one to two, one of which is a Sniper (+10 Aim, +1 damage from a Rookie-Overwatch). Sounds good, right? Even if they don't kill the little bugger he only has 35% chance to hit me back. And I am all out of good ideas for this stupid map, so I went for it.
Here's the issue I didn't consider: I've been tracking damage spread for a while, since I had gotten the idea that it was top-heavy (3-5 would yield more 5's than 3's). My data pool is still too small to conclude anything, but it seems to be completely random. I can't say that it isn't, so we'll assume that it is for now. All numbers are averaged slightly to the point of insignificance.
A Sectoid has 4 health. This means that my Rookie has a 45% chance to hit the guy, and 33% of those will be 4's, giving her a 15% chance to outright kill the alien. My Sniper has 55% hit chance and 66% of those will be 4+ hits, giving him 36,3% chance to outright kill. On top of that if they both hit the Sectoid it will die no matter what the damagespread, which is a 24,7% chance of happening. There is some overlap with their independant solo killing chance. All in all this leaves me with:
15% (Rookie)
+
36,3% (Sniper)
+
24,7%(overlap)
-
(0,15+0,363)*(0,247)=12,6% overlap on killing blows (took me a while to realize my own incompetence there :p)
=
63,76 chance of killing the little bugger if he wanders into the trap in the train. (Edit: Plan was good, I was bad at math) Now in those 35%some of cases that I don't just outright kill him he now has 35% hit chance for 2-4 damage of the plasma pistol, and 10% crit chance of a guaranteed lethal blow. With 4 health on both Sniper and Rookie this gives him a mere 11,55% chance of instantly killing someone with a hit, and a 2,3% chance of turning a 2 or 3 hit into a crit. Or:
(0,35*0,10)= 3,5% (the crits)
+
(0,35-0,035)*(0,33)=10,3% (the hit-and-kill-chance minus the crits)
=
13,8% chance to kill. Since he dies 2 out of 3 times, this is less than 5% likely to happen. Now 1 out of 20 is still kind of a lot for every single Sectoid but oh my I will taketh this any day with no better plan.
"But... what if he is the one getting the mind merge?", you correctly ask. Incorrectly my initial reaction was "well how much could it change? I have a plan, I will do said plan, now hush". This, my honorable forumers, is what is known as "delusion". It ruins everything.
With 5 health, my firing squad is now subject to the following chances: My Sniper's 55% hit chance gives him 18,15% chance for a 5. My Rookie cannot deal 5 damage on Overwatch, so she has 0% chance of killing the merged Sectoid alone. If they both hit, then once again damagespread is irrelevant since their combined minimal damage is 2+3. Chances of that are the same - 24,7%. But this still overlaps with some of the Sniper's solo killing chance (if he hits a 5 and the Rookie hits, this is overkill). Because of this, only the Sniper 5's without the Rookie will increase the likelihood of a kill:
18,15% (Sniper chance)
+
(55%*0,66) (Sniper non-lethal hits)=36,3% times the Rookie's hit chance (overlap kill chance) = (36,3%*0,45)= 16,3%
=
34,45% chance to kill. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this single point of health has reduced the odds of a successful trap by roughly half
And it gets so much worse. With the mindmerge's +25% critical chance the Sectoid now has the following return fire chances: He still hits 35% of the time. Now he has 35% crit chance, meaning that 12,25% of his shots will connect and crit for a kill.
The remaining 65% of his hits still have the same 2-4 chance, so 33% of those will also kill:
(23,45*0,33)=7,74% "4 hits"
+
12,25 (crits)
=
20% chance to kill. Since he now only dies 1 out of 3 times, he will return kill 13,35% of the time. Or more than twice as often. Add to this that even if he should miss he will be much harder to kill on my next turn with his innate extra hit point and the situation is arguable 3-4 times worse than if he were not merged.
Of course this would be different stats on Classic since Sectoids have one less health, but the concept is the same. So heed my warning, ye fellow fighters of ETs. Health and mindmerge matters beyond what I had even bothered to consider.
You could almost say this indicates that mind... over-matters...?
YEAAAAAAAAHHHHHH
Of course this would be different stats on Classic since Sectoids have one less health, but the concept is the same. So heed my warning, ye fellow fighters of ETs. Health and mindmerge matters beyond what I had even bothered to consider.
Yet another reason to try and go for the source of the merge rather than the target of it, since you can kill the weaker one and take out the stronger one at the same time. On classic that's actually really easy since you can dispose of the entire pair with a single grenade; when the source of the merge has 4hps that's not an option, but the theory remains the same. Grenade the source, dropping him to 1 health and insta-death on hit. You'll also frequently destroy his cover in the process, significantly increasing someone else's odds of the finishing shot.
HopAlongBunny
12-12-2013, 20:56
Thank you both for confirming my "gut feeling" about those pesky Sectoids!
It is a more dangerous situation than it looks to be; nice to see the numbers :)
Yet another reason to try and go for the source of the merge rather than the target of it, since you can kill the weaker one and take out the stronger one at the same time. On classic that's actually really easy since you can dispose of the entire pair with a single grenade; when the source of the merge has 4hps that's not an option, but the theory remains the same. Grenade the source, dropping him to 1 health and insta-death on hit. You'll also frequently destroy his cover in the process, significantly increasing someone else's odds of the finishing shot.
Absolutely. But on the train map this is litterally impossible. You will either be stuck in halfcover, get flanked or trigger the clown car of spawns. Also you can't set overwatch traps for mindmergers, since they cannot move after merging in EW (they could in EU).
I hate that map. And it can even be a bomb map.
HopAlongBunny
12-13-2013, 18:32
I agree. I think of it like a river crossing in MTW; always ends up as a meat grinder :(
I agree. I think of it like a river crossing in MTW; always ends up as a meat grinder :(
Well, to be fair, there are worse maps.
On a completely unrelated note, here's a Beagle-video for no reason (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ighuZOpTc).
HopAlongBunny
01-03-2014, 06:24
Completed a "pansy" campaign (normal) to check out the new toys. Very enjoyable :)
Now comes the hard part; a "real" campaign...wish me luck :laugh4:
HopAlongBunny
01-05-2014, 23:05
Classic is tricky; no losses yet but too many near death experiences :no:
This is gonna be a bumpy ride :)
Training Roulette is awesome, the whole Second Wave-concept is great. There is a lot of campaigning to be done outside of just winning a difficulty.
Flashbangs are really good in vanilla as well. -65% mobility and -50 aim to a cluster of enemies can save squads. It works on Floaters (god I hate Floaters... I hate Floaters so unbelievably much), Chryssalids, anything. It also makes stun-attempts a lot easier and safer. It's like a Suppression times two, on a group, which stacks with Suppression. -Aim to the Thin Men!
11907
Finally! I must confess I found it harder than expected, but fortunately they decided to beef up the midgame and endgame enemies a bit. Sectopods truly are no joke anymore. But even with 14 soldier deaths I reeled in the I/I victory. Im glad so many died in the process - means the game pushes back all the way through, where EU was mostly a clean-up after month 2. MELD as a resource also spiked up things a bit. Dead soldiers is MELD wasted, which means my last 2 missions were purely MELD-grind for my t3 MEC Paladin EMP-upgrade. Which, in the last mission, proved... ultimately... useless. But fun!
I decided to go about the endfight a bit differently this time. Its spoilered for those that haven't made it there yet.
The Uber Ethereal fight was a real letdown, primarily because the guy only has 30 health and 50 defense... so he's 1 Ethereal with +5hp and +10 defense that I get to move first against. Sure, the 2 Ethereals and 2 Muton Elites could be a problem, if it wasn't for my Double Tap Squadsight Sniper being able to litterally end the fight before any of them move. So I posed the following restriction: I could not target the Uber Ethereal before everything else was dead. Unfortunately even this didn't save the fight from disappointment. My 2 Assaults simply went into the Ethereals' face and double-buckshot (or alloy-shot?) both to below 10 health, making them slim pickings for my Sniper. A Blaster Launcher+Grenade Launcher+Mindfray from my Support and all that was left was a 3hp Muton Elite and an 18hp Uber. He MCs my Support (good choice :S), the Muton runs into a Close Combat Specialist, and next turn my Volunteer can dish out an 12 damage Rift due to his 228 Will. Ms. Durant caps it off with the Plasma Pistol and once again the fight was yawny. Oh well. (Ananda Gupta!?)
Speaking of that I didn't feel like it was all done. I spent most of the campaign with either 2 Assaults or 2 Snipers, and both make the game pretty easy. After seing Beaglerush lose colonels on his current playthrough and succesfully deploy various SHIVs to fill in the gaps Im thinking next playthrough Ill limit myself to 1 of each class: Assault, Support, Sniper, Heavy, MEC and SHIV (it really should be a 2nd wave option). I hope it'll spice up the campaign a bit. All I need is a sign that another campaign is coming up after my exams... some sort of visual reminder of why we do all this...
11908
Ananda Gupta!?
easytarget
01-18-2014, 22:24
Congrats!!
Would anyone be interested in a small, friendly XCom MP tournament? therother and I have played a few matches and it's pretty fun:
http://www.twitch.tv/mobiusgamers/b/503281576
http://www.twitch.tv/mobiusgamers/b/503287390
We were thinking it might be even more fun to get a larger group of people to play against each other. Anyone interested?
I'm guessing I should get this game.
Quite interested! They patched it recently, and it buffed almost everything I use (get Thin Man'd!) so messing around in the MP is something on my wishlist.
Myth: If you like turn based games, it's one of the finest I've had the chance to play since Warlords 3. And its got character to it. You should definitely give it a few watches on youtube to get a feel for it. High value.
easytarget
02-28-2014, 04:53
So what were the big changes in the last update?
Quite interested! They patched it recently, and it buffed almost everything I use (get Thin Man'd!) so messing around in the MP is something on my wishlist.
Myth: If you like turn based games, it's one of the finest I've had the chance to play since Warlords 3. And its got character to it. You should definitely give it a few watches on youtube to get a feel for it. High value.
Just finding someone who has played Warlords 3 and recommending it is enough for me. Did you enjoy the Warlords: Battlecry RTS games?
Ok, I'm going to try and do some work to get a small and informal XCOM MP tournament going. If you're interested, please post in this thread (http://mobiusgamers.org/threads/xcom-tournament.114/).
Jarmam @HopAlongBunny (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/member.php?u=3655)
Just finding someone who has played Warlords 3 and recommending it is enough for me. Did you enjoy the Warlords: Battlecry RTS games?
I must confess I lost touch with the series after Darklords Rising. The Might and Magic series took over. But I still have the soundtrack from vanilla and xp WL3 stored on my NASbox. Did I miss out? And can you get it on GOG? It will be high priority!... right after this THIEF-marathon is over.
HopAlongBunny
03-02-2014, 15:25
Would be interested, though probably not for a month or so.
Could not set an account at Mobius; can't get the CAPTCHA script to load
People of the .org that like XCOM, rejoice! Two major things of indescribable awesomeness have happened recently that I believe deserves attention:
1. Beagle is doing a new I/I series (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUeHJ2RU1e0)! There is only one part atm, but Im as excited as I've been for a while
2. You'll notice he's not playing the Enemy Within vanilla, but the mod "Long War". This is something I've anticipated the release of for EW for a while, and a solid beta is functional now. This mod owns. The changes are gargantuan, but briefly it's summarized as "the improvement of perfection":
-6 soldiers at the start, 8 max later on
-All soldiers can carry 2 items from the get-go
-8 classes
-Significant rebalancing of many perks, items, base buildings, continent bonuses aaaaand...
-SHIVs! Who are now awesome
-Big changes to the cover mechanic, making low cover less useless and giving cover a damage reduction bonus, making flanking even better and more important
-Grenades and rockets rebalanced and are now random damage to reduce "guaranteed control". Rockets also scatter from the target based on range and movement
-Soldiers suffer fatigue from being in missions, requiring 5 days of rest between missions to avoid risking them breaking down (getting them in sick bay for an extended period).
-Switch of the difficulty curve. Starting with 6 soldiers, the game is much easier in the first few missions, but quickly gets hard as the aliens (and EXALT) now also tech towards new goodies.
-Amongst others the enemies now get more health, and also field squad "officers" with different perks and bonuses. Sectoid leaders have Low Profile and +1 health, for instance
-Outsiders are terrifying now. As they should be.
-You can take back lost countries now, making it more viable to include continent bonuses in your strategy as a continent is never "completely lost" due to randomness
-Panic is now given and removed in 1/100's instead of 1/5's
-Interceptor system has been tweaked a little
and a mindblowingly long list of more excellent ideas. I've played the mod for way too long already and I am completely in love. Not because the vanilla game is bad, but because this mod is both a breath of fresh air and some much needed increase in variety in classes, maps, strategy (!) and so on. I highly recommend watching Beagle's video and a few hours of this VOD (http://www.twitch.tv/miss_jamball/c/3936957) from his stream to get a feel for the whole deal.
easytarget
04-20-2014, 15:53
Outstanding work bringing this to our attention Jarman, after completing an Ironman/Classic I put this one to bed, I had no appetite for it after that.
A mod that tweaks the things that quite obviously need tweaking in this game is great news indeed. I'd love to hear when this thing comes out of beta, because at that point I'm re installing and going back in.
easytarget
05-12-2014, 20:18
Any update on that mod?
easytarget
05-17-2014, 00:34
Ok then, I'll provide the update on this: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/05/16/xcom-hardcore-mod/
~:smoking:
easytarget
05-17-2014, 00:34
Ok then, I'll provide the update on this: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/05/16/xcom-hardcore-mod/
~:smoking:
haha, sometimes not only does this website disappear w/o a trace, it also sometimes (like now) lags so badly you can't tell if a post has even posted
All the info I get from the mod is from Beagle and Steam updates. Since it's still a beta and it gets updated regularly, the patch-progressing is difficult to track and there is no "official current-beta site" like there is for Enemy Unknown's Long War Mod. All I can say for now is that the updates are great. They added random spawning in the beta patch 8, which makes every map a new experience. A lot of the balance changes are also solid. It has its problem, still, but I am completely confident in the project. There is some fine talent involved in it - Jake Solomon had good reason to praise the Long War people back in the day.
Here's a good display (http://www.twitch.tv/miss_jamball/b/527087009) of the current state of things in beta. The entertainment value of the result of the random spawn pods is well worth a watch.
Just a quick heads-up for those that waver on whether to give this game a chance - it is currently on Steam Sale. 15 euro for the game, the expansion and a couple of merh'ish DLCs (they come with hats).
I'm on Month 3 in my current Long War (beta 9a) campaign, and it's getting better and better. I really like the new, smoothened-out difficulty curve, and the large amount of missions you get, making it quite possible to have 2.5-3 teams cycling. The medal system has been scrapped (sadly, I wish I could at least award symbolic medals for soldiers risking it all) - instead there is an officer system through the Officer Training School, which lets you select a squad leader who brings bonuses to the team if this person doesn't get noscoped by a Thin Man. It's pretty interesting and I'm looking forward to unlocking more of it in the OTS.
There is one major complaint that I do have to bring for those interested in trying out Long War: The Interceptor system is enfuriating. UFOs do not mess around, there are swathes and swathes of them and your poor paper planes are out for weeks at a time after taking a bit of hurt to their paint job. And they also cost 200 spacebucks per plane, with a solid 40 upkeep to boot. Have less than 4 of them over a continent? Good luck keeping satellites alive. When/If (when) I lose this campaign I'll take to prioritize teching straight for better Interceptors, since this is the area you cannot influence via tactics. The missions can be done with vanilla gear for quite a while, if you're ok with sacrificing some MELD, and I believe that's the best path to take for now. There is a lot to re-learn, it really is a new game. To weigh some positive input in: I really like the base management now. Both Workshops and Labs are worth it, and you need some careful base planning and a willingness to tear down structures to optimize the adjacency bonuses.
Edit: Yup, lost to a moderate Abduction mission, wiping the floor with all of my good soldiers. Cyberdisks - be afraid!
easytarget
05-30-2014, 04:14
Thanks for the update, I'm keeping a watchful eye on this mod, but feel it still clearly needs some balancing (some of which they've already done, more of which they need to do).
I can only recommend that you play it out a bit. This way you can supply the modders with info on what needs to be fixed, what feels uneven and what might be a good idea to tweak or implement.
I'm writing a longer essay to them atm, and I've just returned from one of my most terrifying XCOM experiences ever to fill in some more details. My current game is going amazingly. I'm fatiguing everyone hard and there are always 10 people in sick bay, but I managed to do a UFO mission, a Council mission (for 160 bucks and 5 engineers - in LW Scientists and Engineers are very valuable) and an Abduction all within 48 hours. I've got a firm plan for my tech paths, my squad officers and everything in general. It feels so right.
Then this happens on my first terror mission:
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The random pods idea is excellent. I love it. It makes every map feel fresh, and it has opened up areas of the maps that I never even noticed before. However, atm it feels quite bugged. Sometimes the Outsiders in small UFOs will spawn on top of the power generators. These will then blow up (apparently this happens when the generator is classified as "damaged" in the shoot-down). And this triggers the Outsider, who regenerates the damage and goes on the hunt. Outsiders are terrifying - you are now very afraid.
But at times you also have enemies spawn within vision range of your deployment position. As it: The combat music starts instantly and someone can shoot an enemy as their first move. Im fine with random spawns, but I really dislike that you can potentially aggro enemies before you have a chance to make any moves. And unfortunately the spawns can also stack really heavily on one another, as shown in that picture. It's the Mumbai Train Map (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usG-gwbLOz8) remade into a terror map, and as you can see I have moved litterally half a move from the deployment zone - and triggered every single enemy on the map. 4 Chryssalids from the flank, 4 Floaters from the spawn and 4 more who patrolled into me during turn 2. I get that the game is supposed to be really hard on Ironman Impossible, but this just feels silly. I was seriously considering just bolting for it - fulfilling the Beagle prophecy of the nefarious Trainyard. Now the game was going so well that I decided to do something stupid: I took a very randomized fight, double-nading the Chryssalids, taking 3 75% shots at them who all needed to hit (they did), and then taking a straight up shoot-out firefight with the Floaters, utilizing how efficient Infantry, Gunners and Snipers are in a shootout scenario. I used my Assault to cover the squad by hunting down Floaters who would do the airlift thing behind the squad on the lamppost, and my Support and Engineer as support.
The result was very undeserved:
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I still call this scenario problematic. If I had missed *any* of the Chryssalid shots, it could have been a teamwipe and the Floaters missed every single one of their 10+ shots at me. Hardcover is good, but it's not that good. I got really lucky. But what else can I do when the spawns are like that?
Stories and experiences like that are lost if the mod isn't being tested. A lot. Plus, if you roll the hard 6 like I did, you might even have a ton of fun ^^
Balancewise I think the mod is at a fairly solid position. I limit myself to 1 of each class to force myself to learn all the classes thoroughly, and I never feel that any of them is a waste to bring. The flow of income is consistent and the missions reflect the stated difficulty well. I still hate the dogfights, but what can you do. My only realexperience of genuine imbalance is that Month 1 Council Mission with 9 enemies, giving me cash and a massive 5 Engineers. But it's imbalance in my favour - so put on the sunglasses!
easytarget
06-01-2014, 00:33
While I get where you're coming from with the provide them feedback thing, I just can't bring myself to playing this mod yet when what you described above would happen to me and whereas you got a lot of lucky shots, I'd end up experiencing a total wipe that I would consider completely unfair, at which point I'd remove the game and put it back on a shelf.
I applaud your efforts and those like you playing this mod and refining it, but I'm afraid I'm not willing to join in quite yet.
I play games for fun, arbitrary and capricious death is not my idea of fun. Anytime I want an entirely fair yet soul crushing loss handed to me I need look no further than Fritz 13. :wall:
So Long War is rolling along fine and is now on beta 13. There have been some severe bugs in the last few patches but they are reported to have been cleaned out in this version, and I have yet to experience any. Noticable improvements include a rebalance/overhaul of Interceptor weaponry, Interceptor attack stances (aggressive/balanced/defensive) that give you some sort of influence on how dogfights play out, and lots of new weapons with various specialities and drawbacks for a few classes.
So I decided that there's no time like the present to try and make a video series of Long War. Unfortunately, I am as green as that one superhero guy in green when it comes to video editing and uploading, so I'll have to practice a bit before I start anything resembling a real project. I also heard that when you commentate or stream, you will start playing worse than usually. Well, here's a crappy video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIovh5UnRcw) of this happening in action. The quality is pretty rough and you can clearly tell that my new headset is in the mail, but I've tried to salvage it somewhat.
Edit: I should mention that the profanity is that of a frustrated noob at 1 AM. You have been warned.
So after a month of eurotripping on the trainroad I got back around to XCOM. We're still on patch 13, though the rough patch notes for 14 have been released and there are some welcome changes - primarily fixing the spawn-in-1st-turn-LOS and the nefarious Rocketeer bug that is the most damaging thing to gameplay in 13. It all looks pretty good, so I got around to doing a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJmTxm9AvtI&list=UUvjzWnSFf3v7FCatuf4pikw) with it. While it's only the first mission it does show a lot of the tactical changes in LW.
I'll stitch together a quick overview of the most important major changes from vanilla later this week, since that requires some planning if it isn't to end up a horrible mess. Also, trying to explain everything is hopeless. There's just so much of it.
easytarget
09-20-2014, 02:48
So, whats's the word, have they got this mod polished sufficiently yet in your opinion?
So, whats's the word, have they got this mod polished sufficiently yet in your opinion?
Patch 14 seems to be one of the final "big content" patches - a little birdy told me that they'll shift their focus to just balance updates. So once it comes out I'll give my verdict. Patch 13 has some annoying bugs that are all announced fixed, and 14 gives the Medic a long-needed overhaul and nerfs the Base Defense mission, which is beyond difficult atm.
easytarget
09-20-2014, 15:39
Thanks for the continuing updates, I'm interested in giving it a go, but wanted to sit back a bit and let them iron it out.
easytarget
10-11-2014, 21:21
Anyone know if they are going to make another Xcom?
Anyone know if they are going to make another Xcom?
Considering how well this one sold and the reception this one got, it's almost a certainty.
easytarget
10-12-2014, 03:37
I certainly hope so, it's been awhile since this one came out, one can only hope they are working hard on the next installment.
Played through Enemy Within on Impossible. First crack at the game. The startup is murder untill you figure out the satellites and stuff. Later on, two Squadsight snipers and save scumming got me through to the end. It is an icnredible, awesome, fun and stimulating game. I loved every second of it.
I'm going to do Impossible/Ironman now. I got rekt like 20 times on the first two missions, and one time I didn't get the UFO before the 11th so I couldn't afford the necessary satellites.
Anyone have any experience with the Long War mod?
Ironside
05-18-2015, 16:35
Played through Enemy Within on Impossible. First crack at the game. The startup is murder untill you figure out the satellites and stuff. Later on, two Squadsight snipers and save scumming got me through to the end. It is an icnredible, awesome, fun and stimulating game. I loved every second of it.
I'm going to do Impossible/Ironman now. I got rekt like 20 times on the first two missions, and one time I didn't get the UFO before the 11th so I couldn't afford the necessary satellites.
Anyone have any experience with the Long War mod?
It's harder, long and drags out in the end.
The big shift is harder battles at the trade of you being able to lose or not participate in battles. A lot. EXALT are heavily buffed, to the point that it wouldn't surprise me if later patches nerfed them.
The air battles are a bigger deal, the tech tree is longer, the new classes are quite variable.
New starting openings are needed, science labs matters.
All in all, well worth playing, in particular if you like it to be more brutal. Start out with "Not So long war" to try it out. It took me something like 200 hours to finish one ordinary campaign and a lot of that felt very repetitive.
easytarget
05-22-2015, 00:52
Where is the sequel?
easytarget
09-13-2015, 01:02
Heads up: free weekend if there's anyone out there that hasn't checked this out yet. Additionally if you try it and like it the main game is $7.49 and the whole package is a mere 10 bucks. Great game if you've not taken a look and have any interested in TBS games.
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