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Talow posted:I'm half expecting a soldier named Shield Bearer to show up in the roster sometime in the future now. To be fair, Jade can make this happen. EDIT: There's an update one page back.
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Mar 30, 2017 11:27
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Wheany posted:Also I'd say that the turrets, especially when there's 4 of them, really help in the first few rounds when they almost double the number of shots taken at aliens. Funnily Enough, the Turrets didn't do much. but that was more a case off, every single ADVENT was dead before they could reach the Cliff i sat Upon. while i Agree that tygan has his own Charme, i really do miss DR. Vahlen
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Mar 30, 2017 11:34
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This is one of the missions I love having Phantom on. I usually use it to scout out ambushes to throw grenades on, but in this one allows you to camp the avenger ramp and just let your sniper shoot the objective while a guy just sits cloaked in a corner looking at the macguffin at little risk to himself.
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Mar 30, 2017 12:45
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Yami Fenrir posted:This is one of the missions I love having Phantom on. I usually use it to scout out ambushes to throw grenades on, but in this one allows you to camp the avenger ramp and just let your sniper shoot the objective while a guy just sits cloaked in a corner looking at the macguffin at little risk to himself. 
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Mar 30, 2017 13:27
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The "Relax, let it happen" line was in the original XCOM too. One of a few "are we the baddies?" moments in the game.
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Mar 30, 2017 13:39
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GunnerJ posted:The "Relax, let it happen" line was in the original XCOM too. One of a few "are we the baddies?" moments in the game. The implications of the Domination ability — permanently switching out someone's loyalties without their consent — are all there if you think about it. That line just makes it more obvious for those who didn't bother thinking about it.
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Mar 30, 2017 13:50
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I swear I heard it for Mindfray too. Someone could easily just think about those abilities as more buttons that do useful things, but then your soldiers start getting chatty about their enthusiasm for it. 
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Mar 30, 2017 13:53
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This is the XCOM that mounts the heads of dead aliens in their barracks. They even skinned vipers and berserkers to decorate their trophy hall which is all kinds of messed up. They also have no problems using flamethrowers and poison gas. Taunting someone as they break their mind is only middle of the road considering everything else they do. But it's fine because gently caress aliens.
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Mar 30, 2017 18:40
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I got this mission really early in my first game, like before I had any colonels and the most advanced alien that showed were berserkers and MECs. It was a pretty rough ride and Skippy Granola got left behind. (I got him back like six in-game months later none the worse for wear)
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Mar 30, 2017 19:06
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eating only apples posted:I got this mission really early in my first game, like before I had any colonels and the most advanced alien that showed were berserkers and MECs. It was a pretty rough ride and Skippy Granola got left behind. You monster. His jolly banjo playing was the only thing that the aliens had at that point. He was none the worse for wear because they just wanted a bard in their party.
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Mar 30, 2017 19:33
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Fun fact: in addition to being a variant of Mutons, Berserkers are also all female, going by a comment made by Jake at a PAX panel a couple years ago, as well as some of the in-game text for their abilities.
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Mar 30, 2017 19:50
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Avenger defense missions are on place where the role-reversal theme of this game really pays off. Aliens shooting down your ship and trying to capture it? Bonus points if it happens in Russia, I guess. Although who is XCOMming whom depends on a lot of things - which aliens spawn, how quickly you wake them up, and what tech level XCOM is at. It can be a nightmare in the early game, but it's usually not a big deal this late in the game. The map also makes a big difference - it can be a lot easier if there is a line of sight to snipe the alien spike thingy. (Or if a sectopod or other large, stompy alien accidentally steps on it. Yes, that can happen.) The aliens that start on the map can be anything, but reinforcements are just Advent. XCOM gets reinforcements too, which is nice. There is also the possibility of using hacking or psi to get even more stuff on XCOM's side - some people have even mind-controlled gatekeepers and used them to turn the never-ending reinforcements into a ridiculously huge army of zombies. Turrets help a little bit, but if it's early you can't afford them, and if it's late you don't really need them. That's a bit of a wasted opportunity, although the problem is really the new goodies in the Alien hunters DLC pushing low-priority upgrades into the "don't even bother" category.
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Mar 30, 2017 19:57
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Honestly, the Defense Matrix "room" as is just feels like a trap for unwary players wasting resources and limited slots on the Avenger for something that is super-situational and not even that useful in that one situation. It'd make more sense if having to defend against alien attacks on the Avenger happened more often, which I assume was part of the original design but probably thrown out fairly late in the development process. Guess we'll have to hope for an in-depth postmortem to know for sure. See, while I think this mission plays better (and fairer) than the XCOM 1 base defense due to advances in the tactical gameplay, I preferred the atmosphere of the base defense mission. It really felt like it was your back against the wall precisely because the aliens were already past your perimeter and in your stronghold, with a change in scenery that highlighted what a big deal this was, and by moving through different sections of the base, it felt like it was showing off more of what you're actually fighting to defend. In contrast, the Avenger defense plays out on what is mostly a standard map, uses the (now) standard reinforcement mechanic instead of anything particularly tied into this specific occasion, and it chases you across the map to destroy a MacGuffin device while representing the Avenger - the one thing you got that enables you to keep resisting the occupation - as a metal box that provides some cover. I'm not saying it had to be a shootout inside the Avenger; I am saying that as is, it has too little presence in the mission. (Arguably even the base defense mission in XCOM 1 would have been more impactful if the game ever let us run around on the base map for anything but that one mission.) And to get back to what I was saying up top, the relative reliance on using established game mechanics in this mission rather than special rules for this makes me suspect that the plan was to make this type of mission more common and "modular" before we ended up with what's in the final game, and that had some ripple effects, namely the underwhelming atmosphere and the underwhelming existence of the Defense Matrix. Fix your game (design), Jake.
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Mar 30, 2017 20:32
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Gatac posted:Fix your game (design), Jake. These criticisms could be applied to a lot more games and/or generalized to: [developer] may have made a sufficiently robust game engine but failed to use available features/mechanics in interesting ways, leading to a shallow repetitive experience. Or maybe I'm weird for expecting a strategy/tactics game to involve more complex thinking than an exercise in optimization.
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Mar 30, 2017 21:35
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I'm a little bit disappointed you didn't leave Julian in the lead deployment position so we can see if he has his own calm and collected stroll.
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Mar 30, 2017 23:55
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I'm going to be the odd person out, but during my play through, I didn't get the UFO doing its victory lap around the world. Instead, it literally spawned on top of me as I was taking off from the HQ. Just popped into existence. It was sort of funny to watch it sit there for the 2 seconds it takes for the takeoff and landing animation to occur, especially since the Avenger didn't actually move anywhere. Mighty fine evasive maneuvers, Shen...
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Mar 31, 2017 00:08
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Zanna posted:Fun fact: in addition to being a variant of Mutons, Berserkers are also all female, going by a comment made by Jake at a PAX panel a couple years ago, as well as some of the in-game text for their abilities. 
VolticSurge fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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Mar 31, 2017 00:15
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Man, that must have been a hell of an episode of Samurai Jack.
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Mar 31, 2017 00:41
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i swear that's the third or fourth time i've seen a goon post that image
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Mar 31, 2017 00:45
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Sorry,just seemed pretty appropriate based on context.
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Mar 31, 2017 00:45
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Dire Lemming posted:This is the XCOM that mounts the heads of dead aliens in their barracks. They even skinned vipers and berserkers to decorate their trophy hall which is all kinds of messed up. They also have no problems using flamethrowers and poison gas. Taunting someone as they break their mind is only middle of the road considering everything else they do. I always wanted a sequel to xcom where xcom where the badguys just from them getting corrupt and using their tech and powers for own gain post invasion. Always a bit strange to me that apoc has psi used only as education and drugs and not OUTRIGHT CONTROL OF THE MASSES like it would if psi powers existed IRL and the government found out about it. In other words what really is keeping the world from going full yuri's revenge after the aliens gently caress off?
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Mar 31, 2017 02:47
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 You dropped into the wrong neighborhood, ADVENT-fucker. Edit: Speed limits on a random highway in the middle of nowhere, Texas, get up to 75 if not 80. And then they drop to 50 suddenly, and the speed cops are right there with their radar guns... IMJack fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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Mar 31, 2017 03:35
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Um, I think you will find that this fight was clearly taking place in New England, since apparently they were fighting on I83.
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Mar 31, 2017 04:26
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The tail end of that mission reminded me of the later EXALT missions from the first 3D X-COM game, just hilarious turkey shoots against over matched grunts.
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Mar 31, 2017 04:35
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They could be anywhere, since Canada's geography is clearly hosed. This mission is a lot of fun, I ran into it kind of early: I think it was my first Berserker, no Archons or Andromedons yet for sure, and I only had tier II weaponry. I did, however, have two very high-levelled snipers, and both types did a ton of damage here. I'd actually started up on a weird plateau that split the nearest side of the battlefield into three and made attacking across sides a pain. I spent so much time killing reinforcements or preparing for the next wave of reinforcements that I didn't really think about evacuating until every reinforcement was four more dudes and every reinforcement made the (PS4 version) game run another 2 or 3 frames slower. Having the extra guys is pretty cool, allows you to kind of break them up so you don't have to stretch yourself too thin if you're defending the Avenger, tackling reinforcements and making your way to the objective. It would make 4-man pods less of a concern unless they were either more hardcore packs of enemies or there were more patrols to fight. And I definitely see Jade's comment about knowing all your assets and remembering to use them, with so many more options it's easy to not take the obvious or easy solution. Those battleships that are inbound never turn up, though.
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Mar 31, 2017 04:47
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TheDarkFlame posted:They could be anywhere, since Canada's geography is clearly hosed. That is because they are using weeny dropships to drag them. Can you imagine how heavy a battleship IS? Alien cutbacks once Earth was 'taken' were brutal.
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Mar 31, 2017 05:14
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Istvun posted:Um, I think you will find that this fight was clearly taking place in New England, since apparently they were fighting on I83. No, see it's NEW I83.
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Mar 31, 2017 05:24
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I would honestly like to see that. If you survived 50, 100 turns, a giant battleship lands on top of your squad and the words "GET hosed" are painted on the side of it, and that's your Game Over screen.
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Mar 31, 2017 06:11
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White Coke posted:No, see it's NEW I83. The I83, connecting Vancouver North with Vancouver North North East.
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Mar 31, 2017 06:51
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...Via northern Mexico. I mean, I don't want to criticise Advent too much. Maybe they know more about geography than me, but maybe they don't because they missed the Avenger by almost an entire continent while it wasn't even moving, and then just carried on going until their round-planet trip got them to the right place.
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Mar 31, 2017 07:07
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TheDarkFlame posted:...Via northern Mexico. Look, when you travel interstellar distances regularly, any extra time on this sort of scale tends to seem negligible.
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Mar 31, 2017 14:18
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Dire Lemming posted:This is the XCOM that mounts the heads of dead aliens in their barracks. They even skinned vipers and berserkers to decorate their trophy hall which is all kinds of messed up. They also have no problems using flamethrowers and poison gas. Taunting someone as they break their mind is only middle of the road considering everything else they do. Well yeah since one sides first open act of war was bioweapons (chrysalid drop pods)... gently caress em
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Mar 31, 2017 23:29
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Maybe the UFO isn't actually chasing you at low altitude but descending from space? That would explain it doing loops around the earth on the 2d geoscape, it's flying in a straight line down but earth rotates below it.
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Apr 1, 2017 00:09
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Asehujiko posted:Maybe the UFO isn't actually chasing you at low altitude but descending from space? That would explain it doing loops around the earth on the 2d geoscape, it's flying in a straight line down but earth rotates below it. Well, except the geoscope simulates height when you land your avenger. There is no other explanation other than Jake, fix your game.
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Apr 1, 2017 00:16
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Well, considering how in the first xcom the Skyranger would some times warp from the north pole to the south pole, i think Jake just doesn't know how map projection works.
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Apr 1, 2017 09:38
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Wheany posted:Well, considering how in the first xcom the Skyranger would some times warp from the north pole to the south pole, i think Jake just doesn't know how map projection works. Eh, this one is understandable. Someone probably had the job of making +180 longitude wrap to -180. It'd be a shame to use that code for only one dimension. Plus that seems like such a half-mapped solution.
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Apr 1, 2017 14:40
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It's still pretty odd that the UFO was coming from over 13000 miles away, which is farther away than half the circumference of Earth. So, it somehow had to be farther away than the opposite side of the planet.
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Apr 1, 2017 17:02
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It came from outer space! 
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Apr 1, 2017 17:19
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Thyrork posted:It came from outer space! And this is how the message ran!
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Apr 1, 2017 18:10
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Tasteful Dickpic posted:And this is how the message ran! X-COM Let's Play double feature?
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Apr 1, 2017 20:21
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