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Ravenfood posted:Long War is a mod that has a lot of great ideas and implements some of them well but most of them poorly.
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Nov 7, 2013 07:26
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nnnotime posted:You appear to be answering your own question, and I agree. Ironically the activities of the EXALT faction on top of the regular alien missions may have EW play similar to the Long War mod: more missions per month with fewer able-bodied troops available, with the risk of losing your A-Team troops more often. More missions also means more opportunities to level up your squad. I'm planning on having one squad for exalt missions and one squad for regular missions.
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Nov 7, 2013 07:33
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nnnotime posted:You appear to be answering your own question, and I agree. Ironically the activities of the EXALT faction on top of the regular alien missions may have EW play similar to the Long War mod: more missions per month with fewer able-bodied troops available, with the risk of losing your A-Team troops more often. General consensus among people with review copies is that EW makes the game easier overall, actually, due to MECs being crazy powerful and more missions giving you faster experience.
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Nov 7, 2013 07:38
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:General consensus among people with review copies is that EW makes the game easier overall, actually, due to MECs being crazy powerful and more missions giving you faster experience. Ugh, I was worried about that.
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Nov 7, 2013 07:39
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^^^ Mind you, no reviewer ever plays a game above normal difficulty, and most don't go above easy. Section Z posted:I'm still convinced that all your Rookies are really soldiers who couldn't make the cut for GI Joe, lured by the promise of laser battles and silly nicknames. Playing OpenXcom really makes you appreciate your soldiers in EU. Nothing like having to sack half your troops because they have a bravery rating of 10. Or a firing accuracy of 40. I had a soldier with a laser rifle miss the side of a barn in my last game. Literally could not hit the broad side of a barn. I pretty much have the same attitude towards rookies in Xcom as Richie Incognito.
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Nov 7, 2013 07:57
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Vengarr posted:^^^ Well, Total Biscuit was especially hammering on how EW is easier and he was playing on Classic.
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Nov 7, 2013 08:03
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If it really is too easy it sounds like something that can be addressed in patches or mods that change things like number of enemies, health, or weapon stats. That being said, I have a feeling impossible is still going to be an enormous meat grinder for all but the best players.
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Nov 7, 2013 08:22
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Before I pre-order the expansion, previous talk around Games has given the impression that GMG always has a 25% off code or something. Is there one right now I could apply to EW? Edit- RE: Reviewers and difficult; the game becomes loads easier once you have experience under your belt, so I think it's plausible the reviewers are just better at the game than they were when EU came out. Even early game, nothing short of ironman Impassic gives me a challenge anymore. Pomp fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Nov 7, 2013 |
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Nov 7, 2013 08:25
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I don't know, it seems like you barely even have to use tactics in the exalt missions, so don't expect those to slow you down much. I think it's kind of foolish to not expect the game to be easier at this point. They've empowered the player so greatly with MECs and gene mods while only slightly empowering the aliens. And you end up with loads more cash as well, apparently, allowing you to more easily kit out your crew and making MEC repairs not a big deal.
Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 09:42 on Nov 7, 2013 |
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Nov 7, 2013 09:39
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poptart_fairy posted:A prime candidate for MEC Alpha-Zero-One. While I'm temped to MEC Zhang ("Welcome to XCOM, hang in your limbs at the door!"), but heavies seem the least useful MEC type to me. I'm more interested in a assault turned punchbot and a ranged MEC built from a Sniper or Support. Probably Support, they can hang near the squad giving a defence boost and shoot, or bound forward to flame things. Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:Well, Total Biscuit was especially hammering on how EW is easier and he was playing on Classic. Yes, but on the other hand he mentioned he was 15-20 hours into that game but hadn't yet progressed the story at all (which is fair enough, as the preview build apparently ends with the base attack). He'd also done very little research, besides lasers and armour. If Exalt techs up due to story progression and/or player research it would explain why they got murdered so hard, but even if they progress independently he'd been farming a ton more Meld and experience than you'd normally have at that point, which throws the balance out somewhat. The other reviewer that played vs Exalt got killed pretty good on Normal, even with hacking their comms, although he made lots of mistakes. I guess we'll see next week anyway. Darkrenown fucked around with this message at 10:25 on Nov 7, 2013 |
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Nov 7, 2013 10:23
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Finally got my Lone Wolf achievement for having 1 person do a downed UFO. Sent in my heavy psionic colonel with plasma cannon, psi armor and chitin thingy. They had 5 heavy floaters, a muton elite and an ethereal. With lots of running back and forth and mind controlling them, I did it with 3/20 life left. I just kept my heavy out of sight mostly, just mind controlling one and using it to help direct his 3 rockets to whittle them down before finishing off the last few with hail of bullets plasma cannon fire.
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Nov 7, 2013 11:24
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Darkrenown posted:While I'm temped to MEC Zhang ("Welcome to XCOM, hang in your limbs at the door!"), but heavies seem the least useful MEC type to me. I'm more interested in a assault turned punchbot and a ranged MEC built from a Sniper or Support. Probably Support, they can hang near the squad giving a defence boost and shoot, or bound forward to flame things. I'm sorry I cannot hear over the sound of a giant gently caress-off walking weapons platform who is sentient and uses one-liners in combat.  Anyway, guys! Help me refine my base building a bit:  This is around the time of the alien base. I have a place set aside for an Elirium generator and a psi-lab then...uh, well, no clue really. I've not had any major issues with this base design but at the same time I feel like I'm missing out on something. It's a marathon game if that's any help.
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Nov 7, 2013 12:53
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:Well, Total Biscuit was especially hammering on how EW is easier and he was playing on Classic. poptart_fairy posted:Anyway, guys! Help me refine my base building a bit: Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 13:06 on Nov 7, 2013 |
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Nov 7, 2013 13:02
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poptart_fairy posted:I'm sorry I cannot hear over the sound of a giant gently caress-off walking weapons platform who is sentient and uses one-liners in combat. Secondly, workshops. Spam workshops, every free tile.
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Nov 7, 2013 13:05
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Groetgaffel posted:Well for the first thing adjacency bonuses work vertically too, Ravenfood posted:Something you might not now: adjacency bonuses also apply to vertical adjacency. This. Changes. EVERYTHING.  Jesus christ, ahahaha, I feel so dumb. Thanks for setting me straight on that. Coupled with the other advice that side of the game feels a lot less overwhelming now.
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Nov 7, 2013 13:22
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Mzbundifund posted:My question about Exalt is, how frequently do they do their actions? Like, are we looking at two covert ops a month? Three? One every two months? Assuming that the devs didn't space out the alien missions more to compensate for adding a new mission source, it might become necessary to have a couple standing squads, just so you have guys available for fighting Exalt while your alien-busting crew is in hospital from the last UFO crash. Well, it's more determined by player agency, simply because it's not random, it's based on what EXALT Cells about or whether they're there at all or if they're exposed or not. If you take initiative, do some intel scans and take out every cell as they come up and they won't be able to annoy you. If you're asking how often EXALT Cells spawn, though, we don't know yet.
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Nov 7, 2013 13:24
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Holy loving poo poo, we downed an Abductor so I sent my A team along with a new Support as training. Had this little scenario in my head where he was the annoying and naive - yet spirited and carefree - new guy in stark contrast with the bitter, jaded veterans who Had Seen Stuff Man. Chatting for the entire eight hour transatlantic flight about he was so happy to have been chosen for XCOM and that he was looking forward to be making a difference in the world. He was gunned down in the first shot right outside our Skyranger. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard at a death before. 
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Nov 7, 2013 13:59
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Depending on how EXALT is implemented I can see them being hugely debilitating depending on the timing of their attacks. Having EXALT make their entrance by resetting your Beam Weapons research right before the first terror mission lands would be a bullet-sweating moment.
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Nov 7, 2013 14:27
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Anyone can roll psi powers and Will only improves the odds, right? I'm trying to put an all Psi Squad together and managed to luck out with half of my A-Team now having powers but now I need to work on hiring soldiers and putting them through testing. I'm just wondering if it's just easier to level them up (harder to do when everything you start facing is armored mutons and sectopods) or keep rolling the dice until the classes I want end up with gifted people.
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Nov 7, 2013 14:40
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EW definitely makes the early game a bit easier, which hopefully makes the difficulty ramp up a bit better than EU.
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Nov 7, 2013 14:43
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I'm wondering how a reverse terror mission would work in practise. Have to take your squad and eliminate a large amount of enemy research/construction/non-combat personnel in a short amount of time, before the enemy's elite squad shows up and begins to hunt you down. They could be defeated but it'd be difficult. Would hurt XCOM's shot for a heroic take on invasions though. 
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Nov 7, 2013 15:07
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:Anyone can roll psi powers and Will only improves the odds, right? I'm trying to put an all Psi Squad together and managed to luck out with half of my A-Team now having powers but now I need to work on hiring soldiers and putting them through testing. I'm just wondering if it's just easier to level them up (harder to do when everything you start facing is armored mutons and sectopods) or keep rolling the dice until the classes I want end up with gifted people. I think the math is something like 1/4 of their will is the % chance of them being gifted. I'm hiring lots of people and putting those with 60+ wills into the lab. Still 15% chance, but three rolls every 10 days means you find them eventually. Then you have to babysit them and let them get the last hits on lots of enemies to rank them up.
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Nov 7, 2013 15:09
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Vengarr posted:^^^ And even if all the people who reviewed it back at release played it in normal (possible just because it's not a quick game to play through), Xcom was fantastically popular with games journalists. Like, as a game to actually play for fun. I suspect plenty played it on classic difficulty and can give some accurate comparisons. EW making the early game easier is not a terrible idea -- one of the persistent complaints is the precipitous downward slope in difficulty. If that means the game as a whole is easier because the hardest part is easier, it sucks a bit for the people that liked impossible as it was. But realize that the number of people who played in the style required to do well in impossible is likely a small fraction of the audience. At least there are options to add in more difficulty for a super-impossible mod. Exalt looks like they'll be a bitch in the midgame though, so I wouldn't count on EW being a complete cakewalk. Can't play scout-and-snipe versus those human wave attacks.
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Nov 7, 2013 15:27
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I get the feeling they are intentionally making the normal campaign a bit easier since there are going to be quite a few more second wave options. Those are intended to be the real challenges. There's also of course ironman.
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Nov 7, 2013 15:36
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I've nothing against the early game being easier if the later is more balanced. It seems like you're flipping a switch and suddenly becoming untouchable when you hit a certain tech level.
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Nov 7, 2013 15:37
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A reminder that Toolboks exists and is v1.5.2 right now. There's a in-progress save editor, and a bunch of nice tweaks you can make to the game. Also custom mod support.
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Nov 7, 2013 17:28
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Kanos posted:Depending on how EXALT is implemented I can see them being hugely debilitating depending on the timing of their attacks. Having EXALT make their entrance by resetting your Beam Weapons research right before the first terror mission lands would be a bullet-sweating moment. From what I can gather from the previews, you'll get a warning cutscene when they first appear, and if you can keep on top of them, they should never be able to get off an attack on you--but the problem is keeping on top of them means intel scans, and intel scans cost cash.
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Nov 7, 2013 17:54
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Ravenfood posted:Plot and non-adjacency buildings run down the far left side, while the remainder of the right side is left for miscellaneous things and then masses of workshops since what ELSE are you going to build? (In some mods, this gets replaced by lab space). He said Marathon, so he needs a 2x2 block of labs. Workshops end up being a little less useful, or rather labs are that important on Marathon.
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Nov 7, 2013 18:18
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zylche posted:A reminder that Toolboks exists and is v1.5.2 right now. There's a in-progress save editor, and a bunch of nice tweaks you can make to the game. Also custom mod support. quote:DESCRIPTION=Changes female weapon size to same size as male weapons You know, I never noticed that they weren't the same size already.
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Nov 7, 2013 18:20
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"Marathon?"
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Nov 7, 2013 18:21
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If EW lets you keep the second wave options I'm considering making my first game a marathon. Think that'd be a good idea?
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Nov 7, 2013 18:28
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In my ironman game, A UFO attacks and it's a large one. It turns out to be an abductor ship, for the first time, and I have not upgraded my fighters' weapons at all at this point. It somehow miraculously manages to shoot it down, thanks to Dodge and Aim. First turn, I move my guys and put them in overwatch. 3 floaters rush in, and two instantly get destroyed by the overwatch. I am feeling good. Then 3 more floaters rush in. Then 3 mutons. 9 loving aliens bumrushed me in the FIRST TURN. However, they did bunch themselves up.  No injuries were sustained to my soldiers, and I even managed to stun that floater off to the left!
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Nov 7, 2013 18:40
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Speedball posted:"Marathon?" A second wave modification after completing the game on Normal or above. To quote UFOpaedia: UFOpaedia posted:Marathon - The game takes considerably longer to complete.
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Nov 7, 2013 18:40
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Demiurge4 posted:If EW lets you keep the second wave options I'm considering making my first game a marathon. Think that'd be a good idea? Depends on how you feel about Marathon playthroughs at all I'd guess.
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Nov 7, 2013 18:41
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poptart_fairy posted:This. Changes. EVERYTHING. and diagonally too.
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Nov 7, 2013 18:41
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Demiurge4 posted:If EW lets you keep the second wave options I'm considering making my first game a marathon. Think that'd be a good idea? Maybe? Apparently the game makes existing techs (mostly autopsies) more useful rather than giving you a bunch of new ones, so it shouldn't gently caress up timing too much--the question is if, say, you're good doing the first terror mission with ballistics, or (if you're playing on Classic) willing to put off lots of technology upgrades and base expansions to keep hammering out power generators, uplinks and satellites for the first two-three months to keep the Geoscape from spiraling out of control. Oh, and if, after that, you're cool with the game basically going at a crawl--I don't think battleships show up until about March of 2016, for example. Marathon is fun for the first few months when it ratchets up the pressure, then it's basically just shooting fish in a barrel. Maybe EXALT will change that? I dunno. Hopefully.
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Nov 7, 2013 18:54
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Meis posted:In my ironman game, A UFO attacks and it's a large one. It turns out to be an abductor ship, for the first time, and I have not upgraded my fighters' weapons at all at this point. It somehow miraculously manages to shoot it down, thanks to Dodge and Aim. First turn, I move my guys and put them in overwatch. 3 floaters rush in, and two instantly get destroyed by the overwatch. I am feeling good. Then 3 more floaters rush in. Then 3 mutons. 9 loving aliens bumrushed me in the FIRST TURN. I learned to NEVER go in that main entrance on those ships. It's always a "surprise, we all just happen to be in here too" clusterfuck.
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Nov 7, 2013 18:57
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Klyith posted:If that means the game as a whole is easier because the hardest part is easier, it sucks a bit for the people that liked impossible as it was. But realize that the number of people who played in the style required to do well in impossible is likely a small fraction of the audience. This is me and I dislike the news that EW is going to be easier. I also dislike the idea that you think you need to play one style to do well in impossible. There's one style to do GREAT but if you understand the game you don't need to resort to cheesy BS like conga lines to beat it.
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Nov 7, 2013 19:00
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:I learned to NEVER go in that main entrance on those ships. It's always a "surprise, we all just happen to be in here too" clusterfuck. If you really want that to happen, just hit the command centers first. Activating the Outsider/Sectoid Commanders/Ethereals summons everyone else, which can lead to some really fun/intense siege situations rather than the usual "XCOM advances through the UFO, focusing heavy plasma and alloy cannons on two-three aliens every few turns" thing. Make your rookies earn their awesome toys  !
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Nov 7, 2013 19:07
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Demiurge4 posted:If EW lets you keep the second wave options I'm considering making my first game a marathon. Think that'd be a good idea? I don't know about that. EW is supposed to mess with promotion rates and other things to keep Gene Mods and MECs balanced, so you'll not only be without lasers for longer, your guys will be weaker than they would in EU.
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Nov 7, 2013 19:20
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