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Tbh I'm extremely curious what your late game air strategy is going to be, it's something I struggled with in my game and it sounds like you're just flat out better at it than I was so I'd like to get ideas if I ever decide to lw again.
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Jul 11, 2019 20:25
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cambrian obelus posted:"The surgery was successful, but the patient was lost." You can save a surprising number of civilians if you're willing to play in an rather game-y sort of way. The rules of terror missions are a little strange: there's a count of unseen aliens and a count of unseen civilians, and rather than actually plot out moves for all of those (inactive aliens move by pod), the game rolls some dice based on those two numbers and produces a number of dead civilians for the turn, then selects random unseen ones to become dead. This has the weird result that civilians cannot die* if you are looking at them, even if you see that they are surrounded by chrysalids. Thus, if you can move aggressively, keep battle scanner vision on civilian groups while knocking out the pods each in one turn before they can act, you can save everyone or nearly so. Of course, that's much more easily said than done, especially when you take away a lot of your utility items to load up on battle scanners. And even harder with a terrible start location like that. * activated aliens have their moves computed individually by the game, so they can go kill whoever they want. Kill the mobile ones first!
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Jul 12, 2019 14:44
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Akratic Method posted:You can save a surprising number of civilians if you're willing to play in an rather game-y sort of way. The rules of terror missions are a little strange: there's a count of unseen aliens and a count of unseen civilians, and rather than actually plot out moves for all of those (inactive aliens move by pod), the game rolls some dice based on those two numbers and produces a number of dead civilians for the turn, then selects random unseen ones to become dead. This has the weird result that civilians cannot die* if you are looking at them, even if you see that they are surrounded by chrysalids. Thus, if you can move aggressively, keep battle scanner vision on civilian groups while knocking out the pods each in one turn before they can act, you can save everyone or nearly so. Of course, that's much more easily said than done, especially when you take away a lot of your utility items to load up on battle scanners. And even harder with a terrible start location like that. This is 100% accurate, but also not something I'm willing to do so early in the campaign. Not because I don't want to be game-y; I'm fine with that. But for the "taking a lot of your utility items to load up on battle scanners" part. The most important part of any terror mission to me is just to get out of it without anyone dying, and being down a couple grenades is sometimes the difference between "handles 2 separate chrysallid pods easily thanks to shredder rocket + AP grenades" and "your entire squad has been eaten by insectoid abominations." Later, when I have units that get battle scanners as a perk, I'll play the "spam scanner" game. (Also 100% accurate when it comes to activated aliens. I just finished a terror mission where I activated 3 pods at once, dug in to deal with incoming fire, and then watched as the aliens murdered literally 10 civilians in a single turn.)
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Jul 12, 2019 15:18
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Jul 13, 2019 01:15
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FairGame posted:This is 100% accurate, but also not something I'm willing to do so early in the campaign. Not because I don't want to be game-y; I'm fine with that. But for the "taking a lot of your utility items to load up on battle scanners" part. The most important part of any terror mission to me is just to get out of it without anyone dying, and being down a couple grenades is sometimes the difference between "handles 2 separate chrysallid pods easily thanks to shredder rocket + AP grenades" and "your entire squad has been eaten by insectoid abominations." Oh, for sure, especially given how little you had to gain between having already lost the SA continent bonus and probably facing another terror attack later this month making sure Brazil goes. That was more just an informative "the rules do make it possible, if you know how weird they are". Also, nice seeker mind-reading for the rookie kill, there!
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Jul 13, 2019 04:12
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Alright, my turn! And I'm a dude! 
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Jul 13, 2019 12:04
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I'm almost disappointed that Taslin didn't die from friendly suppression fire by proxy of exploding truck. That would have been a fun and unexpected way to go.
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Jul 13, 2019 12:59
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XCOM operatives are not allowed to die in fun and interesting ways, only in perfectly foreseeable ways when reasonable plans get laid to poo poo due to RNG.
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Jul 13, 2019 13:36
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I've been playing regular Enemy Within on Classic again after years thanks to this LP and it's reminding me just how forgiving the vanilla game actually is when you have some knowledge of how it works and once you get out of the first two months without too many RNG losses. Unless you're playing on Impossible anyways. I'm in mid-July and I don't think my planes have had to shoot down a single UFO since I started upgrading to Phoenix cannons and I'm now well into Lasers. The first terror mission I saved all 18 civilians and didn't even take a hit. Maybe I actually should finally play on Impossible 
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Jul 13, 2019 18:51
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I've been having fun playing Xenonauts along this LP, and had my first terror mission with reapers (chrysalids). Them having an AI that seems to know how LOS actually works was an ugly surprise. A single reaper had run through a building, then presumably inside my dropship to hide until it ate a dude from behind the next turn. Having lost both my shotguns before that caused my salt levels to reach critical and I just loaded an autosave from mission start. Reapers in that game feel like an actual menace compared to old XCOM, since you can't just turbo beeline for plasma to drop them in 1 or 2 shots or level the map with explosives. They also start showing up outside terror sites for extra fun. Thankfully a single one can't breed out of control like they do on terror sites, I had a serious fear that I was going to run out of ammo on that terror mission, think I killed close to a dozen of them + the zombies they popped out of.
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Jul 13, 2019 20:41
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So how likely are people to get offed on a covert ops mission? I have a trifecta of not knowing much about the game, not having done commentary before and also having an odd time zone, but I do have an interetsing accent and if you need an extra I could give it a try (much like bringing a rookie along, right?)
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Jul 14, 2019 00:46
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It's very hard to die on a covert ops mission unless you gently caress up massively.
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Jul 14, 2019 00:47
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Grapplejack posted:It's very hard to die on a covert ops mission unless you gently caress up massively. It’s very easy to die on a covert ops mission through completely no fault of your own. At the same time, covert ops missions are usually ludicrously easy. Both those statements are in tension with one another, but both are true. I will explain once we do one in the thread.
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Jul 14, 2019 01:41
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Jul 14, 2019 19:51
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Ha I've been looking at my guy's mobility thinking he'd be a worthwhile scout, and the RNG rolled scout for him. poo poo health but that mobility. Hope to serve you well. I thought rookies needed a kill to promote on their first mission though? I may be wrong but I think Zh in names like Zhang is pronounced like in the french je, like in the middle of television. So more like Jang (with a long a).
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Jul 14, 2019 21:27
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eating only apples posted:I thought rookies needed a kill to promote on their first mission though? A kill is the reliable way to get a rookie their level, but there are other sources of XP. I think there's a bonus if nobody gets hurt, and maybe one for seeing certain aliens, for instance.
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Jul 14, 2019 21:42
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megane posted:A kill is the reliable way to get a rookie their level, but there are other sources of XP. I think there's a bonus if nobody gets hurt, and maybe one for seeing certain aliens, for instance. I think there's a small XP bonus for being the one who activates a pod? So the promotion might have been for startling those drones.
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Jul 14, 2019 21:52
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"Cythereal, why?..."
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Jul 14, 2019 22:15
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You get 80 xp for surviving a successful mission. You get an additional 20 xp if nobody gets killed. You get an additional 20 if someone sergeant level or lower activates OR kills a “tough alien.” The list of tough aliens is weird and kind of not accurate based on the “tough” adjective, but it includes outsiders. Thus, since EVERYONE is sergeant or lower right now, it effectively means that a rookie who survives a flawless UFO mission will promote, but that rookie would need a kill on an abduction mission. Different aliens have different xp values on kill, but I generally don’t pay attention.
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Jul 14, 2019 22:34
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FairGame posted:You get 80 xp for surviving a successful mission. Thanks for the solid explanation. I look forward to being a covert operative and/or dying in glory.
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Jul 14, 2019 23:17
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You know I just noticed but my Will score is really high, it looks like only zhang has me beat right now excited to maybe eventually throw brain bullets at aliens Also apples your movement is loving nuts, and as a scout you're incredibly valuable, as long as you don't die. Grapplejack fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Jul 15, 2019 |
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Jul 15, 2019 00:54
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Jul 15, 2019 03:27
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Jul 15, 2019 06:47
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eating only apples posted:Ha I've been looking at my guy's mobility thinking he'd be a worthwhile scout, and the RNG rolled scout for him. poo poo health but that mobility. Hope to serve you well. I thought rookies needed a kill to promote on their first mission though?  ) : Mandarin has like a ton of j/sh/ch sort of sounds and they just started using whatever letters they could get to do the romanisation. I'm no expert but the way I was taught was that (roughly) Zh == English J, Sh is the same as English, and Mandarin J is a funny one that's said with the tip of your tongue just touching the top of your lower front teeth. Ch, S and Q are unvoiced versions: Ch/S are the same as English, and Q is a sort of "tch" sound made in the same way as J.
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Jul 15, 2019 12:53
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Jul 15, 2019 14:16
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So is the stated goal of long war to just turn every mission in the longest possible slog through trench warfare or is that just a side effect
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Jul 15, 2019 17:49
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mortons stork posted:So is the stated goal of long war to just turn every mission in the longest possible slog through trench warfare or is that just a side effect It's more a side effect of making the "war" more realistic.
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Jul 15, 2019 17:59
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Xelkelvos posted:It's more a side effect of making the "war" more realistic. Thank god the game about aliens invading with their army of grays and snake people and jetpack torso cyborgs and gorilla hulks and zombie creating spider monsters is focused on realism. Truly the most important priority. Also I'm only on about episode 22 but this LP is incredibly enjoyable and watchable on basically every level so my hat's off to you FairGame, this is rad. I don't think I'd enjoy playing Long War, but it's been incredibly fun to watch it.
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Jul 15, 2019 18:31
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mortons stork posted:So is the stated goal of long war to just turn every mission in the longest possible slog through trench warfare or is that just a side effect Nothing posted in response to this is wrong, per se, but I think basically what happened is this: In XCOM vanilla (and all of XCOM2, which was *much* worse about it), there was pretty much only 1 viable strategy: alpha strike EVERYTHING. The same turn you activate an alien pod, that alien pod has to die. That gets pretty uninteresting pretty quickly to a lot of folks, myself included. Long War gets around that by increasing pod sizes and increasing alien HP as the game progresses. It's not impossible to have an activation where you manage to murder an entire pod, but that's not the typical outcome. The typical outcome is "kill what you can, and then use your remaining skills to dig in and suppress aliens/flashbang aliens/smoke your troops, thus minimizing the amount of dangerous return fire you have to deal with." Which is fine, and I like that it makes abilities and items from XCOM vanilla that were basically useless suddenly pretty viable--preferable, even. But every now and then, XCOM's tech level vs. the alien units and terrain make the "engagements last longer than one turn" a big problem. And where we are in the campaign happens to have several factors that make that happen pretty often: 1.) There are a lot of floaters right now, and floaters freaking LOVE going on overwatch 2.) While scouts can run overwatch, it's not guaranteed to miss like it is in vanilla, and a scout that gets hit by overwatch fire stands a good chance of dying 3.) Mutons and Floater pod leaders that show up right now tend to always have both covering fire (and, in the case of mutons, opportunist) that makes enemy overwatch absolutely deadly. 4.) XCOM hasn't developed armor tech that'd allow someone to just eat a shot and not end up in medbay/deadbay, so 1-3 tend to shut down aggressive moves on my part. All of these stop being issues (or at least frequent issues) in about 2 in-game months, once XCOM has decent armor and the alien units are a little more diverse to the point that every other pod isn't a staring contest between you and some floaters. But right now, any time I have a landed UFO or certain council missions, it's gonna be slow going. I think I tend to play a little faster and less conservatively than most XCOM Long War players, which is likely a function of my not being as good as many of them AND the fact we're playing on classic so I won't be (as) brutally punished for certain aggressive moves. I hope it makes for entertaining videos, because I'm never going to be as entertaining as a person as someone like, say, Beaglerush. He's probably the best XCOM player in the world, really funny, and the rare popular gamer who has non-poo poo opinions on things, but watching him count tiles for line-of-sight or hunt for the magic pixel or just methodically plot his next move can be really irritating. At the end of June--we're almost to that month, at least--there are 2 council missions. I think you'll enjoy the first council mission which lets me be aggressive and keep moving and not play the slow methodical slog that's endemic with some Long War LPers. But I don't blame those LPers for it--the 2nd council mission in the pair...I did it as a long, methodical slog. Some missions you really just don't have a choice, I think. FairGame fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Jul 15, 2019 |
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Jul 15, 2019 19:10
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FairGame posted:I hope it makes for entertaining videos, because I'm never going to be as entertaining as a person as someone like, say, Beaglerush. He's probably the best XCOM player in the world, really funny, and the rare popular gamer who has non-poo poo opinions on things, but watching him count tiles for line-of-sight or hunt for the magic pixel or just methodically plot his next move can be really irritating. You're doing a good job dude. Like, you may not be as "lol funny" as beagle, but the flip-side is that you also don't become grating the way beagle becomes sometimes (at least for me I guess). And for people like me, who can't stand not watching something all the way from beginning to end, the fact that you finish a mission literally 3-5 times as fast is a pretty big deal.
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Jul 15, 2019 19:23
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FairGame posted:Nothing posted in response to this is wrong, per se, but I think basically what happened is this: I'm sorry, I hope you did not take that personally. I would like to reiterate that your campaign is the only campaign of long war that I have ever found watchable, and I follow it with interest. I am, in fact, not a fan of Beaglerush's '1h30m-2h per mission as he counts tiles and edits out jack poo poo' and much prefer your approach, even if it can get you punished. I was just asking because so far it seemed to me like what LW was doing was just cranking up numbers without much respect for keeping a certain flow of gameplay, with the result that most battles tend to be long slogs through walls of hp or defense (somewhat mitigated now by the higher tier weaponry), which would be the kind of amateur approach that turns me off a mod completely. I'm glad to know I'm wrong, and it's likely just a phase.
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Jul 15, 2019 20:04
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Dude, no worries. I think that Long War gets a bad rap because most of the #content out there for it is people playing on impossible, and generally the people who do that play in just incredibly conservative ways. That's not the way the game has to be, and it's part of what I'm trying to show off. That said, I admit I'm absolutely dreading having to go back and either caption/add voiceovers in post to some of the landed large UFOs I got. My voice recovered late last week so it's not that many missions I need to go back and re-do, but I can completely appreciate not wanting to watch an hour of "everyone goes on overwatch until something happens" because I don't want to watch my own "everyone goes on overwatch until something happens."
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Jul 15, 2019 20:47
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FairGame posted:Dude, no worries. I think that Long War gets a bad rap because most of the #content out there for it is people playing on impossible, and generally the people who do that play in just incredibly conservative ways. That's not the way the game has to be, and it's part of what I'm trying to show off. That's one of the things about XCOM in either Long War and in general is that being extremely conservative is usually more productive than being risky, but it ends up fairly boring as a result. To be entertaining, it ends up requiring a certain amount of risk that only very experienced players can work through or around that newer players can't.
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Jul 15, 2019 20:54
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I'm glad to see that, under the right conditions, how I felt the first time I did Site Recon in vanilla can be replicated in part in Long War even by someone who knows what they're doing
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Jul 15, 2019 21:58
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This was the nasty surprise I mentioned. Surprise! Chryssalids get lightning reflexes because gently caress you! There's still a few more tricks they get going forward but they got massively, insanely buffed in LW, more than anything else, I think specifically to try and counter conservative players. that's right liberal chryssalids E: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WziO005uM3g Grapplejack fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Jul 15, 2019 |
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Jul 15, 2019 22:09
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I think one of the good things XCOM 2 did was adding timers to missions so you can't just chill and overwatch forever. Definitely not perfect, of course. Meld canisters were an attempt to do the same thing here on a far smaller scale. I like the idea of a sort of soft timer that rewards you for being fast but doesn't instantly kill the mission of you aren't, but meld is far too soft, to the point where you go into many missions having already written it off as a distraction.
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Jul 15, 2019 22:15
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Jul 15, 2019 23:52
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lmao at you getting reverse overwatch trapped though, they loving got your rear end.
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Jul 16, 2019 00:15
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With the exception of that overwatch sometimes I wonder if EXALT is purposely programmed to be a bunch of bumbling minions most of the time.
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Jul 16, 2019 03:33
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It was their first mission in the field. I imagine rolling a 1 on sneaking in the next EXALT mission will result in someone dying.
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Jul 16, 2019 04:19
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