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Danaru posted:Cherub, Terminal, Verge, Godmother, Patchwork, and Axiom. Cherub's great for the first two encounters but his shields instantly melt at the start of the third So Axiom is a good choice for a decent but unreliable way to break action economy with his rage. Use him as your vanguard, rage him up and always be shooting. Depending on what level he is will inform how good he is at this role. Shrug it off makes him an amazing tank, and his ability to do unlimited Psych Ups, 2 slams and a shot every 3 turns if you have him at level 3 will make him your most damaging dude by far (though incredibly feast or famine). Basically always use Psych Up, always start by popping Adrenal Surge and having a ridiculous first turn if possible. It helps set the tone for the rest of any fight. Patchwork is good for shutting down Androids/Me a/Turrets/Andromedon shells. I'd always bring her. Cherub... Has issues and this is the part of the game he is by far the strongest in. He and Zephyr don't really scale well but he's still amazingly useful for 'proactive' healing with his shield. I would only take him or Terminal, not both, since otherwise you're down too much damage. Early Game I'd also probably take Godmother over Verge, especially against Coil with all their robots. Because of the random item/attachments you could have there is a ton of variability in how tough the encounters can be.
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Sep 13, 2020 05:42
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Danaru posted:Anyone got any tips for beating Bellus Mar, I get to the last encounter just fine then Mar takes seventeen turns to clown my rear end and his eight million other units chip at my dudes before they can take any turns. If I even look at the generators I lose two units I loving LOVE it! The Sacred Coil's final mission (if you play them first) has always been the hardest mission in the game by a long mile, you'll probably not be comforted much by knowing its not as bad as it used to be. So: Bellus Mar is going to gently caress up your team, you can't stop him. As long as everyone is upright at the end of the first turn, consider yourself in good shape! His berserk rage stops there and he just becomes another mook, thank god. Play around with different breach deploys to find something that lets you facetank his damage output, and strongly consider disabling the generators on the first turn - Yes it sucks, Yes you'll probably have a guy enter bleedout, but infinite reinforcements also suck. If you complete the mission with 3 of your guys on the floor in bleedout, it's still a win! Again, the first turn is a horribly dark comedy and you just have to grin and bear it before you're allowed to fight back.
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Sep 13, 2020 06:15
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Putting him in stasis for a round saves a lot of pain. You can use that time to clear other goons off the map, and then have more bandwidth to focus on him when he comes out of stasis.
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Sep 13, 2020 06:49
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The room before his has turrets so you can leave one alive and heal up to full before going in.
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Sep 13, 2020 17:03
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Danaru posted:Cherub, Terminal, Verge, Godmother, Patchwork, and Axiom. Cherub's great for the first two encounters but his shields instantly melt at the start of the third Cherub shields go up on folks diving the control panels, terminal provides overwatch and picks, Godmother has a shotgun It'll probably be easiest with Patchwork for anti-MEC work or Axiom for another shotgun
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Sep 15, 2020 21:47
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Patchwork takes a ton of the stress out of that room just because a mc'd mechanism draws a lot of fire that would otherwise be aimed at important people
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Sep 15, 2020 22:22
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Haven't played Xcom 2 since my initial couple of playthroughs when it was released. I had so much fun with XCops I picked up the dlc and started a new game. Oh man, Chimera Squad taught me so many bad habits and my dudes have such terrible aim. Now I need to relearn all my muscle memory for why flanking and crits are so important. Also, I'm missing the subdue action and my rookie who got the initial ranger promotion also ate a pile of damage in the intro mission, so I haven't been able to use her since.
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Sep 18, 2020 05:07
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Subdue is nuts: I remember the first mission proper mission in CS, and thinking to myself 'Why wouldn't I use a guaranteed 2 damage on every attack, ever?'. CS was fun, but perhaps not that hard.
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Sep 19, 2020 07:36
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Decided to restart my CS playthrough rather than figure out which bugs were and were not permanently attached to my save file and which ones I wasn't too late to save it from (said bugs being why I stopped in the first place). Decided to take the same order of investigations as my first run, which got partway through the third investigation. My team ended up being the same, with one exception: Instead of Axiom, I have Zephyr. And honestly, I'm seeing the appeal. I decided to forsake Fiststorm in favor of the auto-subdue - though it was more for the +1 to Melee damage. I know a big point against her that people point out is her damage dropping off later on, so I decided to take what I could get on that front. So I've got the tutorial four, plus Claymore, Torque, Patchwork, and Zephyr. It's a good crew.
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Sep 19, 2020 08:53
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FoolyCharged posted:Patchwork takes a ton of the stress out of that room just because a mc'd mechanism draws a lot of fire that would otherwise be aimed at important people Yeah i cheesed the hell out of that room by just hacking and mind controlling. Let me turn off the generators and get back into position for free.
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Sep 19, 2020 11:50
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A blog I like which writes in-depth looks at the history of games just did a piece on the development of the original X-COM. https://www.filfre.net/2020/09/x-com/
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Sep 19, 2020 20:24
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good read, thanks for the link
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Sep 19, 2020 21:07
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Does anyone else have an issue where some dead lost will have pulsing red movement squares around their corpse for the rest of the mission? It's weird and annoying and only happens with lost. It could be a mod  But I mostly only have voicepacks and I feel like it's been there from the start with WOTC even unmodded. I can't really find any other people complaining about it on the internet though so...??!
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Sep 19, 2020 21:10
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I've seen that. I'm pretty sure it's just in the game. And it only seems to happen if you select them for targeting a particular way, although I forget what that way was since it's been a little while since I played. Possibly clicking the icon in the enemy lineup above the commands?
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Sep 19, 2020 22:26
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Akratic Method posted:I've seen that. I'm pretty sure it's just in the game. And it only seems to happen if you select them for targeting a particular way, although I forget what that way was since it's been a little while since I played. Possibly clicking the icon in the enemy lineup above the commands? I'd been hoping there was a mod or something to fix it but I guess not.
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Sep 20, 2020 00:48
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So I saw this on a random discord and thought it was good enough to share.  
DMW45 fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Sep 20, 2020 |
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Sep 20, 2020 05:43
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DMW45 posted:So I saw this on a random discord and thought it was good enough to share.  
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Sep 20, 2020 09:26
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Hello thread. I downloaded XCOM: EU again and decided I want to finally beat it. I have the two smaller DLCs but not EW. I know The Long War gets recommended for repeat playthroughs, but what are some good quality of life mods for a first time playthrough in TYOOL 2020?
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Sep 23, 2020 08:32
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I didn't use any mods for XCOM1, but for the love of god get EW and play it through WELL before even considering LongWar. edit:vvv fair enough, that's unfortunate about the pricing. Keep an eye on it! Again, I don't think there was a big QoL mod scene for #1 like there is for #2, there isn't even a steam workshop page for it. LW is a huge beast of a conversion based around dreary self-flagellation, while EW is a brilliant addition with fun toys and mechanics. The best advice I'd give is just keep a sharp eye out for sales (for both EW and #2 complete), they're always on. Serephina fucked around with this message at 08:51 on Sep 23, 2020 |
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Sep 23, 2020 08:43
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Serephina posted:I didn't use any mods for XCOM1, but for the love of god get EW and play it through WELL before even considering LongWar. EW is the full $30 on Steam right now.  But mods are free.
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Sep 23, 2020 08:45
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Serephina posted:edit:vvv fair enough, that's unfortunate about the pricing. Keep an eye on it! Again, I don't think there was a big QoL mod scene for #1 like there is for #2, there isn't even a steam workshop page for it. LW is a huge beast of a conversion based around dreary self-flagellation, while EW is a brilliant addition with fun toys and mechanics. The best advice I'd give is just keep a sharp eye out for sales (for both EW and #2 complete), they're always on. Are any of the (vanilla, non-EW) Second Wave options worth considering for Enemy Unknown? I completed most of EU a few years back, but never actually beat the game, so this is my second-ish playthrough. THey all seem pretty interesting to me. But all I know is I read some complaints on Reddit that the randomized damage as a little too random, and that the randomized stat ones can mess with soldier progression a little too much. Thoughts?
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Sep 26, 2020 06:16
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literally this big posted:Are any of the (vanilla, non-EW) Second Wave options worth considering for Enemy Unknown? I completed most of EU a few years back, but never actually beat the game, so this is my second-ish playthrough. THey all seem pretty interesting to me. But all I know is I read some complaints on Reddit that the randomized damage as a little too random, and that the randomized stat ones can mess with soldier progression a little too much. Thoughts? Definitely a matter of taste. I kinda like the not created equal (i think that's what it's called), where the starting stats aren't the same for everyone. Sure, you get a lot of duds.. but on the other hand you also get War Gods and teletubbies with extreme willpower. It requires you to actively cull your recruits - and might not be your thing. Also the setting that makes country income randomized makes the strategic layer varied on replays. I'd say that it is good to learn the game progression and strategy with default settings first and then start fiddling with the knobs to make replays interesting.
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Sep 26, 2020 10:41
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Okay, a bit of self-indulgence here, but I just want to share this wonderful bit of unholy terror made possible by Grimy's Loot Mod that I remembered because I was just looking through old screenshots and reminiscing: Behold, Anya "Death Touch" Shadethorn. Most of the credit here goes to a terrifying combination of modifiers on the rifle out of the lootbox. But her just being terrifying in general helped too. She also had Deadeye. With THAT base damage. So that was a thing. The part where things got funny was in the fact that I also had Improved Bondmate Benefits. So, Bondmate Return Fire was a thing. Her bondmate was a Stormrider (Mod-added melee-only class), so he wasn't exactly going to be shooting at anything; but Anya was a Sniper. So long as she had line of sight to it, she could and frequently did just straight-up erase people from across the map for looking at him funny. And it was hilarious every time, because you would just see the shot fly in from off-screen, and I was never expecting it.
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Sep 26, 2020 10:50
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If I started the series with 2 and Chimera Squad is it worth it to go back and play XCOM 1/EW? I gather that 2 is regarded as a great mechanical improvement over 1 but I'm a bit curious about it after playing the others.
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Sep 27, 2020 16:22
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All I remember from xcom 1 was having multiple snipers sit in one place and clicking overwatch for a while until an enemy popped Also that gruesome scene where you rip a dudes arms and legs off so they could be enhanced by robot parts Oh and that cool dock level with the whale
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Sep 27, 2020 16:55
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Base EU without EW was a lot more barebones than 2 is without wotc, but I'd say EW is definitely worth playing. Its combat is slower paced and more difficult than 2; even if you still get op by endgame, the action economy doesn't go anywhere near the ridiculousness of 2 or Chimera. And I greatly preferred its aesthetics to 2. The biggest mechanical change besides the overall power creep in 2 is the lack of timers+concealment, two mechanics there to combat overwatch creeping while waiting for pods to patrol into you. Judge from how you played supply raids and facilities in 2 how big a drawback that is. The other common complaint was the small pool of fixed maps, but for a first playthrough I'd say the first games maps are a lot more tactically varied and interesting than 2, especially before wotc's sewer and lost city tilesets added some actual los blocking walls. KNR fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Sep 27, 2020 |
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Sep 27, 2020 18:38
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EW did let you mecha punch sectoids into I probably wouldn't go back and play it over 2 these days, but if you never did a run-through and you enjoyed the more recent titles I'd say it's worth a try.
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Sep 27, 2020 19:04
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Yeah I'd say that XCOM EW is different enough from 2 and Chimera Squad that it's worth going back to. Each game is kind of doing its own thing. You will probably miss some of the mechanical improvements from 2 but 1 still holds up.
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Sep 27, 2020 21:51
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I would say that if you've played 2 and Chimera Squad then actually the next thing to do is go allll the way back to the original 1994 X-COM.
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Sep 27, 2020 22:24
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That too. Both original 1994 XCOM and Apocalypse are still worth playing, they also do very different things from the reboot and each other. TFTD you can skip. I'd still like to see a TFTD themed expansion/sequel to the Firaxis games though - I think the narrative concept behind that game is still cool, the main problem is just the execution (that being "it's literally a reskin of UFO Defense, but with way more bullshit").
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Sep 27, 2020 22:34
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I cut my teeth on TFTD as a kid, I have no idea what it'd be like to play XCOM without that level of bullshit, to be honest.
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Sep 27, 2020 22:37
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Xcom EU felt more stressful to me, at least back when I played it. Specifically the general 'you can take this thing but you'll lose those other things' feeling was a lot more pressing than in 2. Maybe it was just lack of experience, though. But stuff like having countries pull out was played up enough that it felt like you were losing the whole game when it happened. It's not that bad, of course, but the game doesn't make that entirely clear on a first playthrough. So just a warning for anyone going back to it, if the constant (false) impression of stress and never having enough resources to put out all the fires in Xcom 2 makes you unhappy, 1 is that but worse.
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Sep 27, 2020 23:17
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The Cheshire Cat posted:That too. Both original 1994 XCOM and Apocalypse are still worth playing, they also do very different things from the reboot and each other. TFTD you can skip. I'd still like to see a TFTD themed expansion/sequel to the Firaxis games though - I think the narrative concept behind that game is still cool, the main problem is just the execution (that being "it's literally a reskin of UFO Defense, but with way more bullshit"). x-com '94, definitly. Apoc, ehhhh. Play '94 first, it's significantly better designed, but less ambitious. OpenXCom does a ton to make it palatable and modern UI-wise though it's still a very brutal experience and sometimes not in a good way. If you're used to the fairness of XCOM2012 or XCOM2 or Chimera Squad, you'll be immediately put off by the bullshit that can happen in '94. That said, if you're digging what '94 does, Openxcom has mods that do even crazier stuff.
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Sep 27, 2020 23:53
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The Cheshire Cat posted:That too. Both original 1994 XCOM and Apocalypse are still worth playing, they also do very different things from the reboot and each other. TFTD you can skip. I'd still like to see a TFTD themed expansion/sequel to the Firaxis games though - I think the narrative concept behind that game is still cool, the main problem is just the execution (that being "it's literally a reskin of UFO Defense, but with way more bullshit"). XCOM2 is explicitly themed after TFTD (everything from the second tier of weapons being 'magnetic', to the alien 'MC control network', to the final battle being in a hidden underwater city). They didn't literally rip it off, but all of the ways in which XCOM1 tips every thematic nod it can to the original X-COM, XCOM2 tips TFTD. e: the thrust of my suggestion is that playing XCOM1 after 2 will just make you wish you were playing 2 again for all the quality of life and general gameplay improvements, whereas going all the way back to the original will give you a taste of something actually quite different.
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Sep 28, 2020 00:06
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I'll just come out and say it. Reloading in EU and EW costs your full turn even if you haven't moved yet. Make your peace with that if you go back.
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Sep 28, 2020 01:39
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I think XCOM EW is probably best experienced after a break... and not right after playing 2 or CS. I went back to it after a long while and it was fine, and then immediately moved to 2 wotc and was shocked by how much faster even the animations were in 2. Going the other way might be rough. I really can't stand getting the Warlock as my starting Chosen. Ugh, he makes things so slow when he's hiding out in the back of the map. I'm also startled how even after 200 hours I didn't realize just HOW blatantly unactivated enemy pods will follow your hidden reaper around. You can just drag them into so many remote starts it feels like cheating. Think this run is screwed. I've got so many Avatar dots piled up in a facility two zones away I don't think I can get there in time. Just real bad luck on starting connections or something.
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Sep 28, 2020 03:08
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UFO Defense is still one of the greatest video games ever made on any platform. It's one of those top 20 genre creating/defining revolutionary games that still is amazing, 25+ years later. Other games on that list are the first ChronoTrigger, Deus Ex, and Super Metroid.
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Sep 28, 2020 06:18
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i agree but i would also add that UFO Defense is a lot harder to play from a modern perspective than any of those other noted games
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Sep 28, 2020 06:55
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Fuzz posted:UFO Defense is still one of the greatest video games ever made on any platform. It's one of those top 20 genre creating/defining revolutionary games that still is amazing, 25+ years later. And it came out of loving nowhere, to boot. I still laugh at the difficulty bug, resetting everything to easy mode on save/exit was a HUGE confidence booster when I was younger. Although that led to complaints about the game being too easy, which fed directly into one of the reasons TFTD became the soggy hellscape it’s known for 
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Sep 28, 2020 11:49
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Coolguye posted:i agree UFO defense is designed in a way that is patently unfair(at least in battlecape, geoscape is fairly easy), and while I consider it to be a good game, I wouldn't put it in a top 25 list. Icon Of Sin posted:And it came out of loving nowhere, to boot. While beginner isn't really hard, the funny thing is they didn't do anything to increase the loot so things go a lot slower on beginner- the easiest way to get a commander basically doesn't happen on beginner. It's a bit strange. The difficulty strangeness is much more pronounced in mods, though(X-piratez is significantly easier on difficulty 4 than 3, only its superhuman equivalent really makes the enemies more massively powerful and throws some awful events at you).
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Sep 28, 2020 11:54
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