XCOM: Enemy Unknown

[easytarget]

Frankly I don't care what the explanations are, the fact is the difficulty modeled here is front in loaded.

That means from a play experience the vast majority of the people playing this game will do the following:

1. Play and win on easy or normal, enjoyed the game, want to play through again with stiffer resistance
2. Fire up C or C/I only to find this was not a sloped difficulty increase, it was a step function that faced them from the 1st mission
3. one or two squad wipes later - game shelved

However, if they had survived the first three months they would have discovered lo and behold the game actually gets significantly easier and by the end is stupidly easy.

Tell me that's smart game play design.

[easytarget]

I abort missions all the time... early on losing one of your few vets is much worse than losing a mission.

One of the many reasons C/I gives me headaches. No such option.

[easytarget]

That's why Hunker Down is your friend. There are many, many situations in which Hunker Down is vastly superior to Overwatch.

I shouldn't have to hunker down from a thin man when I'm behind full cover or face death as a result, yet that's routinely what I'm facing.

[easytarget]

Thin Men have 75 aim on Classic+. So even in Hardcover you will get hit once per 3 shots, for 4-6 damage (6-9 critical). Taking a potshot fight with Thinmen early on is one of the best ways to get wiped with no real chance to win. (

I don't know what to make of this one, the only way to shoot at something is in LOS, so there's really no choice but to close on them, and no choice but to take "pot shots" at them because what's the other option? Not shooting at them?

I have the misfortune of no heavies and no snipers, that's just the luck of the draw, I however have assaults and rookies, so you can do the math on what my options are in a four man squad with two rookies and two assaults.

If I go into hunker down there will be no shots, not only do they fire more accurately, their movement range is greater than mine and they can move either to close faster than I can cope with or flank faster.

[easytarget]

Btw, I feel much better now after the above rants about thin men. Carry on.

[Jarmam]

I don't know what to make of this one, the only way to shoot at something is in LOS, so there's really no choice but to close on them, and no choice but to take "pot shots" at them because what's the other option? Not shooting at them?

I have the misfortune of no heavies and no snipers, that's just the luck of the draw, I however have assaults and rookies, so you can do the math on what my options are in a four man squad with two rookies and two assaults.

If I go into hunker down there will be no shots, not only do they fire more accurately, their movement range is greater than mine and they can move either to close faster than I can cope with or flank faster.

How many Thin Men are you faced with so early in the game? It makes no sense to not have any classes when Thin Men show up, you've had at least 2 Abduction missions by then, and 95% of the time there's been a 4xSectoid 1xOutsider-UFO mission as well - and this is all assuming a very early council mission outside the standard two scripted ones.

And not shooting is actually not that bad of a choice, if it means Hunkering instead. They shoot their 0-5% shot, now they're not on Overwatch. You can now move to another hardcover and Hunker. Circle the enemy like that and force him to either retreat (which they rarely do, but that could set up a 4xOverwatch trap), move to unfavourable cover, or get flanked. "Unfavourable" can simply mean "cover which a soldier with a grenade is within range of". If he does that, its 3 damage + he's now exposed and your measly 25% shots turn 65% for Rookies. Unless you rush way too aggressively, you should always outnumber Thin Men while you still bring Rookies to missions. Also Assaults with Lightning Reflexes are the absolute hotness on council missions.

On Classic you have to rely on tactics. Just shooting at the enemy is just gonna get you killed. This is mostly relevant once Thin Men become abundant, since on Classic a grenade is a guaranteed insta-kill on Sectoids. So on the first missions you are faced with 8, 10-12 and 4Sectoids+Outsider, meaning that with 4 nades you might not have to shoot anyone at all. Grenading Mind Mergers from a Hunker-advancement is often more viable. Why move without shooting? To advance in Hunker and threaten grenades. Threaten flanks. Leave the enemy optionless except to take an unfavourable firefight, which is to fight coverless against your hardcover. If he still kills someone, well... that's XCOM for you. But almost always you will come out ahead, and losing a guy here and there is acceptable and expectable at higher difficulties - that's part of the challenge.

You should rely on Hunker Down when facing Light Plasma Rifles on Classic, because the game seizes to mess around at that difficulty. If hardcover was unbeatable, the game would be moot. As for the bizarre difficulty curve, it's much reliant on overpowered abilities becoming abundant later on. In vanilla it was Squadsight, Blaster Launchers and Ghost Armor, in EW it's things Mimetic Skin and... Blaster Launchers. I agree, this should be handled by better balancing of the lategame, but if you self-impose a max of 2 of a class per mission, outlaw things like Mimetic Skin and refuse to ever build a Blaster Launcher the game stays somewhat hyper in spikes. It'll work until mods come out that overhaul Berserkers, Muton Elites and Sectopods again. For now, let's be happy that they nerfed Squadsight and HEAT Ammo, and increased research times of weapons and armor. It helps a lot and is all very intelligent rebalancing.

Watch some later EPs of Beaglerush or Marbozir to see how Hunker Down can be utilized.

[TinCow]

I don't know what to make of this one, the only way to shoot at something is in LOS, so there's really no choice but to close on them, and no choice but to take "pot shots" at them because what's the other option? Not shooting at them?

I have the misfortune of no heavies and no snipers, that's just the luck of the draw, I however have assaults and rookies, so you can do the math on what my options are in a four man squad with two rookies and two assaults.

If I go into hunker down there will be no shots, not only do they fire more accurately, their movement range is greater than mine and they can move either to close faster than I can cope with or flank faster.

Thin men in full cover are easy to deal with. Normal grenades will pop their cover and leave them with 1 health, thus avoiding the resource destruction you get by grenading sectoids. I routinely hunker down to survive the thin man volleys, then grenade them with one soldier and slaughter the uncovered survivors with the rest. Explosives are your friend! Cover destruction is a very important thing and you should utilize it regularly. Overwatch is, quite honestly, not of much use on harder difficulties due to the aim penalties. It's generally only decent when you've got high level soldiers with great aim and/or classes with feats that remove the reaction shot aim penalties. For low level people who will take those penalties, better to spend your time hunkering down so that you make it to the next turn intact.

[easytarget]

No, my guy was in full cover and still busy getting killed by a thin man who had no business making the shot he did.

As for grenades, I've got 4 guys, so that's four grenades. There are quite a few more greys and thin men on a mission plus two of the new invis-squid thing than four grenades will cover.

So, you used up your grenades, pat yourself on the back for taking 3 health off a psi'd grey who had 4, or a thin man who had the same, neither of which are dead, and they proceed to kill you behind full cover.

[easytarget]

Well, back to the drawing board. This run through on C/I netted me too many assaults and no heavies or snipers and I just couldn't manage it with just assault/rookie teams. Ran into a mission early called portent that is too tight of a map to properly flank on (a complaint I have about many of the maps, particularly the urban ones), with high buildings the thin men have on trouble jumping up no top of for yet another buff, and this pretty much put an end to this campaign with half the squad killed I dusted off and abandoned the mission.

Getting back to base I decided with no one ranking up and w/o the right classes this was probably headed quickly towards disaster.

But hope springs eternal, started a new one and the first couple of missions have gone well, but best of all, I've got a sniper and a heavy. So, we'll see how this one goes!

[easytarget]

I agree, there is a lot you can come back from, but I couldn't get to 6 man and squads (w/ armor, lasers) with what I had, and the re-start is going quite nicely, got to love first mission no one gets hurt and I get one of each class, now that's what I call a proper start.

The OTS in my opinion should have a re-train feature in case you get stuck with the wrong classes, make it take as long as you think keeps the game balanced, but make it so a commander has the option to fix what he or she may consider an untenable situation w/o requiring them to restart like I did, that's a design failure. Or make it a 2nd wave option. This isn't a requirement for everyone I'm making here, I'm suggesting yet another depth of option that ought be something the dev team would understand since that's really what this add-on was, a new set of options.

I have decided to follow a more traditional EU development, only grab meld where it works, still keep some focus on sats, but also make sure I keep my guys alive by skipping missions like portent if/when I know I'm simply not ready (I'll just take the increase on panic and lose some countries for the sake of ranking guys up).

A great game though in my opinion, I hate it and love it in equal measure, there can be no greater tribute I could make to a re-make of the original (which inspired the same feelings).

[Jarmam]

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 ;)

[Jarmam]

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]

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]

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]

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, I have been blowing my brains out in mission after mission...but I like it

[Jarmam]

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]

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

[easytarget]

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]

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]

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.

[Jarmam]

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 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.

[Jarmam]

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

[TinCow]

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]

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 :)

[Jarmam]

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]

I agree. I think of it like a river crossing in MTW; always ends up as a meat grinder :(

[Jarmam]

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.

[HopAlongBunny]

Completed a "pansy" campaign (normal) to check out the new toys. Very enjoyable :)
Now comes the hard part; a "real" campaign...wish me luck

[HopAlongBunny]

Classic is tricky; no losses yet but too many near death experiences
This is gonna be a bumpy ride :)

[Jarmam]

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.