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Probably late but I've start to prefer carrying two Assaults, two Heavies, and two Snipers on abduction and terror missions as soon as I can get six crew members. Before that, I almost prefer having two Assaults at the expense of the other classes. Even the base shotgun is nice because if you're at close range you're seemingly for a high-odds shot that will hit with a crit and do 12 damage on the enemy, which gives you the potential to one-shot a Muton, Chryssalid, Thin Man, Floater, Sectoid, or Drone (those annoying fuckers). If they've got the Close Range Specialist skill, then they can be pretty much Chryssalid-proof if you've got your troops setup right. EDIT: You have to change things up later in the game though. I had a terror mission in my laptop game the other day that was nothing but five Sectopods. Yeah that was fun. Crazy Ted fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Oct 22, 2013 |
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Oct 22, 2013 16:02
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Kaal posted:There's nothing that a SHIV can do that will justify the cost in doing it... I feel like people are really overselling the cost of SHIVs. I can certainly buy them being prohibitively expensive on Impossible, where you really actually have to put all your efforts early on into satellite/jet production in order to not lose. But considering that I've been pretty reliably able to afford 3 Alloy SHIVs on Classic difficulty as soon as I can get them, without sacrificing anything game changing, I think this may be something that only really applies to Impossible difficulty.
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Oct 22, 2013 16:24
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Ernie Muppari posted:I feel like people are really overselling the cost of SHIVs. I can certainly buy them being prohibitively expensive on Impossible, where you really actually have to put all your efforts early on into satellite/jet production in order to not lose. But considering that I've been pretty reliably able to afford 3 Alloy SHIVs on Classic difficulty as soon as I can get them, without sacrificing anything game changing, I think this may be something that only really applies to Impossible difficulty. The problem is that my research always follows a pretty neat Alien Containment>Arc Thrower>Live Sectoid>Beam Weapons>Alien Materials>Carapace Armour line. Now it's mid/late month 2 and I'm rolling out laser rifles and armour just in time to deal with Terror missions and possibly mutons. My money is going into that (after satellites and uplinks). Spare money after that is going into expanding my Squad Size. Maybe now I get Experimental Warfare, but Scope/Pistol/Ammo upgrades are all vastly more tempting. Now I've hit mid-game and I'm taking full squads of medium level soldiers out on missions and I'm not sure what an investment into SHIVs actually gets me.
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Oct 22, 2013 17:03
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Whenever I use Not Created Equal, my assaults always end up with the lowest possible movement; it's uncanny and makes them really hard to use without popping Run and Gun every turn it's up.
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Oct 22, 2013 17:17
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Lotish posted:Whenever I use Not Created Equal, my assaults always end up with the lowest possible movement; it's uncanny and makes them really hard to use without popping Run and Gun every turn it's up. Crazy Ted fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Oct 22, 2013 |
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Oct 22, 2013 17:24
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Crazy Ted posted:I used that for my current game, and one of my snipers ended up with the highest movement in the whole squad. Thanks, X-Com. I wonder if there's any way to choose which class a rookie promotes up to? In my current game I've got one assault, two snipers, two heavies, and four or five supports. Which is great for sprinting and defensive play, but if I could, I'd choose to get an extra assault or two as a precaution.
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Oct 22, 2013 17:27
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Davin Valkri posted:I wonder if there's any way to choose which class a rookie promotes up to? In my current game I've got one assault, two snipers, two heavies, and four or five supports. Which is great for sprinting and defensive play, but if I could, I'd choose to get an extra assault or two as a precaution. It would be nice to choose which class a rookie promotes to, because the game does seem too random at choosing the class for newly-promoted officers. I got my second Sniper because, as a rookie, he killed two aliens in a mission - the first one via close-range machine gun fire and the second with a grenade. Apparently X-Com took that into account and said "Yep...sniper material right there!" Crazy Ted fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Oct 22, 2013 |
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Oct 22, 2013 17:28
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Wait, the game was designed and balanced with those second wave options in mind? If that's the case I feel much less guilty about using them.
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Oct 22, 2013 17:30
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Crazy Ted posted:I've also noticed that when using Not Created Equal you seemingly never get a rookie with a Will higher than 35 or an Aim higher than 64, even though in the game files you can see that rookies can start with much higher values in both. Sorry to tell you, but my 60 will rookie and my two 80 aim rookies would like to disagree with you. Or they would if they hadn't gotten killed. 
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Oct 22, 2013 18:47
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Alkydere posted:Yeah, the sniper firing animation is kinda "What the gently caress?" since it makes no sense whatsoever. From a few pages back. I have fired my .243 that way and it works alright, although bracing your elbow against your side is IMO a more stable stance. It doesn't look as cool though.
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Oct 22, 2013 19:28
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Brainamp posted:Sorry to tell you, but my 60 will rookie and my two 80 aim rookies would like to disagree with you. Or they would if they hadn't gotten killed.
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Oct 22, 2013 19:46
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quiggy posted:Once while running from a sectopod in a downed UFO I fired a rocket, missed, took out a wall, and revealed two ethereals. You don't even know what fear is. downed UFO? ABORT ABORT yeah I lost my only Heavy on the alien base run (I am playing extremely aggressively on this latest playthrough; blanketed the world by month 3 and raided the alien base right at the end of month 4) because oh, hey, have six chrysallids and a cyberdisk on the other side of the final door. Dealing with Sectopods next month is going to be interesting. And I'm still in Carapace because, again, I'm going super aggressive and skipping straight to Ghost Armor.
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Oct 22, 2013 20:52
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Mr Dog posted:And I'm still in Carapace because, again, I'm going super aggressive and skipping straight to Ghost Armor. Stop off at skeleton. Armor is important and ghost takes long enough that you want the slightly inferior version first.
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Oct 22, 2013 21:01
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Mr Dog posted:downed UFO? What this game really needs is an abort cutscene that shows the incoming cruise missile as the skyranger takes off.
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Oct 22, 2013 21:13
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Benagain posted:What this game really needs is an abort cutscene that shows the incoming cruise missile as the skyranger takes off. 
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Oct 22, 2013 21:22
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Well that was special. Temple ship on classic, lost a guy to mutons, oh well. Killed the Sectopods and the elite mutons, but as I flew my sniper over the Sectopod room he got stuck in the roof somehow. I can't get him down, so I head into the final room with 4 people, but I activate the Etherals and they MC 3 of my squad, leaving the Volunteer hosed as he can't one-shot any of the Etherals and the combined zoom kills him at turn over. Autosave kicked in after the MCs too. gently caress.
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Oct 22, 2013 21:47
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I didn't think about this until I was a few dozen hours deep in the game, but are there any downsides to not raiding downed UFOs? Besides missing out on loot, that is.
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Oct 22, 2013 21:47
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Darkrenown posted:Well that was special. Temple ship on classic, lost a guy to mutons, oh well. Killed the Sectopods and the elite mutons, but as I flew my sniper over the Sectopod room he got stuck in the roof somehow. I can't get him down, so I head into the final room with 4 people, but I activate the Etherals and they MC 3 of my squad, leaving the Volunteer hosed as he can't one-shot any of the Etherals and the combined zoom kills him at turn over. Autosave kicked in after the MCs too. gently caress. If you lose the final mission, you get to restart it even on Ironman.
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Oct 22, 2013 22:01
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poptart_fairy posted:Wait, the game was designed and balanced with those second wave options in mind? If that's the case I feel much less guilty about using them. I don't really think they are, as Not Created Equal + Hidden Potential can give you some amazingly broken soldiers. Regarding assault and shotgun talk, I find that playing with Absolutely Critical makes them really strong. Guaranteed criticals on a flank makes mobile classes like assaults really strong. Not to mention that they can become immune to critical hits themselves at Colonel, then you have a running, gunning, gives-no-fucks-ing fist of god in your team. 
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Oct 22, 2013 22:04
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Lotish posted:Whenever I use Not Created Equal, my assaults always end up with the lowest possible movement; it's uncanny and makes them really hard to use without popping Run and Gun every turn it's up.
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Oct 22, 2013 22:09
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Yo is it worth arc throwing a dude before I've built alien containment
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Oct 22, 2013 22:13
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Haha, guess I'll start over without NCE and HP then. Might a swell get that practise in before EW.
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Oct 22, 2013 22:16
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Space Hamlet posted:Yo is it worth arc throwing a dude before I've built alien containment
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Oct 22, 2013 22:23
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Space Hamlet posted:Yo is it worth arc throwing a dude before I've built alien containment Yes. You get a free weapon out of it. - Light plasma rifle that's identical in damage to the laser rifle but gets a +10 to aim. - Plasma rifle, best rifle in the game from the tougher aliens like Muton Elites and Heavy Floaters, or regular Mutons in the later missions. - Plasma pistol, best pistol in the game and a necessary piece of gear to any non snapshot sniper (maybe even those for the lack of aim penalty) - Alien grenade, which is better than your grenades until you do the foundry project that's about grenades. No, don't try to zap Muton Berserkers without the containment, Chrissalids, Zombies, Sectopods or Cyberdisks ever, or drones unless you have the foundry project that is related to drones (and why would you have that, honestly? ) E: I take too long to post ^ DanielSeyar fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Oct 22, 2013 |
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Oct 22, 2013 22:30
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Alchenar posted:The problem is that my research always follows a pretty neat Alien Containment>Arc Thrower>Live Sectoid>Beam Weapons>Alien Materials>Carapace Armour line. Like people earlier said, a SHIV is a way for you to push ahead without endangering anyone (also the alien AI tends to lose its poo poo when SHIVs roll up). Yeah, you could use rookies, but rookies are likely to have lower HP than SHIVs, which means you're less likely to have a handy distraction as you progress farther through a mission (also rookies turn into much more valuable soldiers). And I'm standing by my earlier post, I follow almost the exact same research path, while interrogating/autopsying other aliens as well as grabbing Experimental Warfare/building a Foundary, and I still end up with everything you mentioned by the end of month 2 at the latest. The game isn't actually that demanding strategy-wise, unless you're playing on Impossible. Brainamp posted:Sorry to tell you, but my 60 will rookie and my two 80 aim rookies would like to disagree with you. Or they would if they hadn't gotten killed. If you've really had a rookie with 60 will, then you're either playing with a modified DGC.ini, or the code which determines how NCE works is wrong somehow. By default the lowest will a rookie can roll with NCE on is 25, and only increments of two between that and 60 are valid rolls. This is why you don't see any soldiers with 62 will the same way you see some soldiers with 80 aim (aim steps up in increments of 5, and when a soldier rolls the [stat]_high value for their will/aim/movement there's a 50% chance that they'll get another bonus step up in that stat): 60 isn't a valid result if you count up from 25 in increments of 2.
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Oct 22, 2013 22:38
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Anyone know if this strategy is still viable in Marathon mode?
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Oct 22, 2013 23:26
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I've had a ton of fun rolling with 4 assaults and 2 supports in the endgame. I did 5 assaults and 1 support at one point, but only being able to heal/revive 3 times per turn becomes a limiting factor pretty quick if you're playing aggressive like I was 
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Oct 22, 2013 23:36
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Space Hamlet posted:Yo is it worth arc throwing a dude before I've built alien containment You get to start building up a stockpile of guns early for when you research them. Also, since you can't safely store/interrogate them you get to imagine the XCOM commando team taking out their frustrations by kicking the damned thin-man to death on the flight home.
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Oct 22, 2013 23:39
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Ernie Muppari posted:If you've really had a rookie with 60 will, then you're either playing with a modified DGC.ini, or the code which determines how NCE works is wrong somehow. I was generalizing because  My point still stands.
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Oct 22, 2013 23:49
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Brainamp posted:I was generalizing because I was actually slightly worried that I'd somehow misunderstood the code and that everything I knew was a lie. So we're cool.
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Oct 23, 2013 00:38
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Woo boy, Classic is definitely a rude awakening. Normal was fun, never lost my attention, but I was never worried I would lose a mission or the game at all. Classic feels like a meat grinder. After my second mission most of my squad was injured, except for my sniper, and I went into a Difficult Abduction mission with 3 rookies and a sniper. (It was in a country at high panic level AND it was for more engineers? How could I turn that down?) Of course, even with it only being Sectoids, its one of the more white-knuckling video game experiences I've ever had. Grenades are just so, so useful at the beginning, guaranteed kills on multiple sectoids at a time with rookies, oh my god, better than they're default 45% aim. I ended up having all my rookies get killed and playing a game of cat and mouse with my sniper and the last sectoid. God. The feeling of accomplishment of nailing a 38% shot with him to win the mission was amazing. And then immediately I'm given a council mission before anyone else can get out of the hospital again. A bomb mission with 3 rookies and a sniper? Alright lets go! (Sniper gets flanked and murdered in one shot)
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Oct 23, 2013 01:25
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I just beat the second Slingshot mission on Impossible without laser weapons and a four man squad. Suck my loving dick you alien scum. Oh and everyone lived 
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Oct 23, 2013 02:16
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fennesz posted:I just beat the second Slingshot mission on Impossible without laser weapons and a four man squad. Suck my loving dick you alien scum. I applaud you, and look forward to your encounter with the first Progeny mission in month 2 on Impossible. 
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Oct 23, 2013 02:25
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Mike N Eich posted:Woo boy, Classic is definitely a rude awakening. Normal was fun, never lost my attention, but I was never worried I would lose a mission or the game at all. Classic feels like a meat grinder. After my second mission most of my squad was injured, except for my sniper, and I went into a Difficult Abduction mission with 3 rookies and a sniper. (It was in a country at high panic level AND it was for more engineers? How could I turn that down?) Of course, even with it only being Sectoids, its one of the more white-knuckling video game experiences I've ever had. Grenades are just so, so useful at the beginning, guaranteed kills on multiple sectoids at a time with rookies, oh my god, better than they're default 45% aim. I ended up having all my rookies get killed and playing a game of cat and mouse with my sniper and the last sectoid. God. The feeling of accomplishment of nailing a 38% shot with him to win the mission was amazing. Yeah, Classic is a huge step up. Once you get used to it, it's hard to go back to Normal (though I probably will for at least my first EW game because there's so many new mechanics).
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Oct 23, 2013 02:28
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agauntpanda posted:I applaud you, and look forward to your encounter with the first Progeny mission in month 2 on Impossible. I had 3 nations dip out during the first report. I expect nothing but complete failure 
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Oct 23, 2013 02:29
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Classic is where the game just feels right for me. It doesn't pull punches, but it's also fair. Crushingly and unrelentingly fair. Impossible meanwhile is a load of poo poo
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Oct 23, 2013 02:29
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Mike N Eich posted:Woo boy, Classic is definitely a rude awakening. Normal was fun, never lost my attention, but I was never worried I would lose a mission or the game at all. Classic feels like a meat grinder. Hahaha I came here to post almost exactly this. I started a Classic Ironman with all the second wave options because I want truly random and mostly unforgiving odds and well I need to reconsider things. The first mission was grenade happy hour. The second mission (downed UFO) I lost an assault guy but mostly made it ok except for the fact that my sniper missed every single shot. Then came the first counsil mission: rescue a VIP. No problem! I'm engaging what I think is the bulk of sectiods and take my heavy one step too far to the right: a thin man shows up. I rush him and take a point blank shot: 70%+. I miss. He proceeds to crit one of my guys leading to a panic. Before I know it only my sniper is alive and he dies not connecting a single hit. So he got promoted, given a sniper rifle then NEVER HIT ANYONE WITH IT. Not Created Equally, Hidden Potential, and New Economy sound pretty good but what's the opinion on Damage Roulette?
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Oct 23, 2013 02:32
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:Not Created Equally, Hidden Potential, and New Economy sound pretty good but what's the opinion on Damage Roulette? Damage roulette sucks (in my opinion) because it basically takes an entire damage range for a weapon and gives equal weight to the likelihood of any single number coming up. So if a weapon originally does 7 damage, with Damage Roulette there's a 1-in-7 chance of it causing 1 point of damage, a 1-in-7 chance of it causing 2 points of damage, etc. all the way up to 7. EDIT: At least, I think that's how it works. Either way, get used to nailing a lot of people for 1 or 2 damage.
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Oct 23, 2013 02:35
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Oh my God I just started a new game. The very first mission on a gas station level. First move: Move 3 guys into cover and overwatch, dash with a 4th to move up a bit. Right off I uncover all 6 sectoids. One hits my vanguard dude for 4/5. He panics. A second alien kills him. 2 more guys panic. One does nothing. The other shoots the remaining guy and kills him. I'm down to two panicked guys in the second turn of the game. loving X-Com. EDIT: The panicked murderer got shot up. The surviving rookie just killed all six sectoids without getting hit once. He was promoted to Support 
Happy Noodle Boy fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Oct 23, 2013 |
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Oct 23, 2013 02:44
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Cream-of-Plenty posted:Damage roulette sucks (in my opinion) because it basically takes an entire damage range for a weapon and gives equal weight to the likelihood of any single number coming up. So if a weapon originally does 7 damage, with Damage Roulette there's a 1-in-7 chance of it causing 1 point of damage, a 1-in-7 chance of it causing 2 points of damage, etc. all the way up to 7. Yeah, Damage Roulette is just plain annoying. You're basically dialing up the RNG to 11, and it's not fun at all.
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Oct 23, 2013 02:54
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