XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

i just got the hyperspace transwarp deflector dish thingie

it tells you what aliens are on the ships you shoot down! awesome

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re attachment

this **** ****ing pisses me off


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and again, for **** sake that is ridiculous.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

how does finding psionic troops work

i tested all my soldiers and only found two, a sniper (who i'd obviously rather keep so far away from the front lines that her psi abilities become useless) and an assault (who just died)

i've just hired some new rookies so I'll run them all through the psi scanner thing but.. is it possible i'm going to be stuck with just my sniper as the psionic soldier? the game said you haveto have a pretty high will so that kinda leaves the chances of any of my squaddies having psi ability pretty damn slim

ED E

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

how does finding psionic troops work

i tested all my soldiers and only found two, a sniper (who i'd obviously rather keep so far away from the front lines that her psi abilities become useless) and an assault (who just died)

i've just hired some new rookies so I'll run them all through the psi scanner thing but.. is it possible i'm going to be stuck with just my sniper as the psionic soldier? the game said you haveto have a pretty high will so that kinda leaves the chances of any of my squaddies having psi ability pretty damn slim

Step 1. Ensure you have iron will.

Step 2. Do not scan until a unit is at colonel. You can only do it once and no low level will have psi.

My sniper was my only psi, just get psi armour and you'll be able to advance and finish the game.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

yeah i was wondering if I oughta let them level up before I scanned them

too late now, scanned everyone im stuck with my sniper psionic

Patser

I've got Psis by scanning new recruits. Of the 3 in my current game, 2 were brand new recruits I just put through the test since they weren't needed at the time

ED E

Patser wrote: »

I've got Psis by scanning new recruits. Of the 3 in my current game, 2 were brand new recruits I just put through the test since they weren't needed at the time

I suspect you got very very lucky.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

just finished on ironman normal

last mission was ridiculous with two col snipers w/ double tap


one thing though... it said

Score
YOU 27419
WORLD 117259.72



how the hell is my score so low...

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ugh, thanks for the formatting help boards

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my avg damage per shot ws around 8... world was 29.77!

29 damage per shot?! Did I miss out on a series of tech trees?

ED E

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

just finished on ironman normal

last mission was ridiculous with two col snipers w/ double tap


one thing though... it said

Score
YOU 27419
WORLD 117259.72



how the hell is my score so low...

--edit
ugh, thanks for the formatting help boards

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my avg damage per shot ws around 8... world was 29.77!

29 damage per shot?! Did I miss out on a series of tech trees?

My data was similar, dont know what "world" means exactly or how its calculated but it doesnt seem comparable. I remember there being a figure lower than 1 which made no sense or something along those lines.

blatantrereg

Playing Classic Ironman now. Currently building the Gollop Chamber, and have kept the full council, and have full tech - soon to be including blaster launchers for the first time in three games. Good squad, though half of them have the crapped HP from the initial characters. Only hole is that I have been bad at keeping support soldiers alive, and haven't any above squaddie rank now

One odd thing is that my psionic soldiers have been exclusively male (got loads of them in my first two games, though only one so far in this one). Even one character had 95 willpower tested negative before.

Grimebox

Check out the trailer for the new XCOM film!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waC9zPjTqq4

blatantrereg

Finished it on ironman classic. The decreasing difficulty curve makes more sense on ironman, since you lose all your progress if things go wrong. Lost 16 soldiers in total - only a few above squaddie rank, 1 mission, 0 nations from the council.

dango

Just finished Ironman Classic a few minutes ago. Once again 2 Colonel Snipers with Archangel armour made the latter half of the game a breeze. Haven't gotten the blaster launchers in 2 playthroughs though. Didn't really bother with SHIVs this time. Differences I found between normal and classic were: using full cover far more (until titan armour and beyond if flanked it pretty much meant instant death), taking the time if you know there are aliens in a room to reload and position tactically (95% of the time they won't come out), if engaging some aliens not to go "exploring" to reveal more of them on the map and finally luring aliens out of spaceships for waiting snipers.
Now contemplating impossible ironman...

Also I think it would balance the game a bit more if hovering with archangel armour consumed fuel each turn regardless of movement.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

i dont think i'm able for classic mode

my fourth mission in was a vip escort mission. lost all my squad, including my new sgt sniper.

im not even angry, I just dont want to play any more

civilnug

Started into this yesterday (miserable day, perfect excuse). Have played probably 3 hours total. So still early doors but really enjoying it.

Should I be concentrating on anything in particular for building up my facility or just go for a mix of everything? I think I have 2 labs, 2 power stations, satellite uplink, and I just unlocked foundry and workshop.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

labs aren't really neccesary, they're handy if you can afford them so you get quicker research but the important thing is workshops

build workshops so you have engineers to build satellite nexus, build 1 satellite nexus every month so that it'll be finished before the council report. build satellites at the start of every month as they take 20 days to complete. first month build 1 satellite straight away, every month after that (provided you build your satellite nexus close together to get the adjacency bonus) build 3 satellites.

civilnug

Cheers thanks for that. I'll get cracking on my workshops this evening.

Woden

Enjoying this at the moment. Been a while since i've had an urge to play a game. Nice to just sit on the couch with the xbox. Just playing regular normal on my 2nd game.

Had a pretty messy mission with 2 sectopods on top of each other. The heavy with 2 shots and that robotic damage I think it was really helped out.

Think I need to capture more aliens!

civilnug

Yeah I need to work on my capturing. I've only had the arc thrower for the last few missions so need to work on isolating a dude and stunning him.

Another goal to add to the list for this evening!

Tenger

civilnug wrote: »

Yeah I need to work on my capturing. I've only had the arc thrower for the last few missions so need to work on isolating a dude and stunning him.

Another goal to add to the list for this evening!

The benefit of capturing the aliens is that you get to capture their weapons intact. Saves resources building them yourself. On the Council special VIP missions the Thin Men that spawn as you retreat are only 3 hit points so are great targets for stun if you have 2 Assault troops with Lightening reflexes to run up and hit them.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

haven't got past 4 months yet in classic mode

****ing hate this game

DeVore

Classic mode is a whooole different ballgame. Are you playing Ironman or not? I was going to play Ironman on my classic run but at last minute decided against it because it was my first game... boy am I glad Ironman Classic is for sadomasochists.

Beginning to get the itch to go back and start my Ironman Normal run lately after OD'ing on it for the alst run. (50 odd hours in a week... while working on a major project too... ugh).

Classic is just loopers, anyone not in cover is dead. Anyone under fire might survive one round in half cover. Might. Use Overwatch a lot, try and trigger them and have them move into your overwatch field but not at distance cos your guys take the dumbest shots at like 2% chance if they see anything in the distance. The underground base is a nightmare of a death slog and you will lose half the countries in the first 6 months if you dont get sats up fast.

My advice is treat recruits like fodder, try and get them to the end in one piece but look at it this way, if you lose 50%, the other 50% are good to go! Keep them in reserve and send out 4-6 greenhorns next time. Repeat until you have a few leveled up recruits and then start the process again with them
Get 6 man teams as fast as possible, it really makes a difference on Classic. You can lose two and still be ok as a team.

DeV.

[CrimsonGhost]

Finished normal run on sunday night. Was a bit disappointed with the final mission, I found it considerably easier than some of the ship clears I had to tackle. Will start a classic run this week.

My top man was an Irish sniper called James O'Connell, who was also my top psionic guy. Really enjoyed that aspect. His best moment was after I had lost two of his team mates he (in a single turn) crit sniped a sectopod for 17 dmg, killing it. Then with 'In the Zone' got another shot and sniped the sectopods 1 remaining drone. Then with a second in the zone turned and mind flayed an already injured Heavy Floater, killing that too.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

3 floaters just materialised in a circle around my sgt. sniper

no flying in from elsewhere, no jumping off the top of a ship. just one minute my sniper was taking cover far enough away from the fight and the next he was surrounded on all sides by 3 ****ing floaters

blatantrereg

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

labs aren't really neccesary, they're handy if you can afford them so you get quicker research but the important thing is workshops

build workshops so you have engineers to build satellite nexus, build 1 satellite nexus every month so that it'll be finished before the council report. build satellites at the start of every month as they take 20 days to complete. first month build 1 satellite straight away, every month after that (provided you build your satellite nexus close together to get the adjacency bonus) build 3 satellites.

I finished Classic ironman without losing a nation without building any nexus. By the time I could afford them easily I already had almost full coverage of satellites. Finished impossible without a nexus too (non-ironman)

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

i meant the ordinary satellite thing...

what are they called?

is nexus the fancy one yoiu get later on that can support more satellites?

Shiminay

Yea, "Uplink" is the basic one (2 satellites + 1 bonus) and "Nexus" supports 4 (also +1 bonus for adjacent Uplinks).

blatantrereg

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

i meant the ordinary satellite thing...

what are they called?

is nexus the fancy one yoiu get later on that can support more satellites?

Yeah the nexus is the fancy one. Normal one is called a satellite uplink I think.
You're right about building satellites asap anyway.
Rushing the base by the end of the second month does great things for managing panic too. You probably need to skip laser weapons to do that, but skipping lasers is a good idea anyway. A definite dead end in the arms race.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

i was doing so well
classic iron man, 4 months in with a good chunk of lieutenants and sergeants

7 days until the council report on month 4, my satellite uplink 2 days from completion and I realise I never built any sattelites this month

i blame the doritos

Lone Stone

I burned my self out because i kept restarting and now i cant bring myself to play it again I cant seem to stop countries leaving.

Also i would have loved to have a type of system similar to that assassins guild in ac2 where you send people out on missions while you do your own thing.

but yea anyway the games awesome was well worth the money.

Tenger

blatantrereg wrote: »

.....You probably need to skip laser weapons to do that, but skipping lasers is a good idea anyway. A definite dead end in the arms race.

Well the weapons tech is so linear I think Dead End is the wrong term. The are an intermediate step up from 'normal' weapons. I had planned to skip Laser but in the end didn't think it took too much time/resources to do so. Perhaps earlier capture of thin man Light Plasma's would allow you to skip Laser easier?

Original X-Com actually had a tech tree, certain weapon types were better against certain aliens. Some odd research items led to your actual goal. In this game each weapon type merely increases the damage and hit ratio of the previous. So no point carrying anything other than plasma as you progress.