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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").
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Sep 28, 2020 12:04
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Zephro posted:Wasn't one of the problems with TFTD that Microprose didn't know about the difficulty bug in the original, so they got a load of mail from people saying "I'm playing this on hard and it's way too easy!"? So they shrugged and ramped the difficulty in TFTD even further up without realising that literally no-one had actually been playing the original on anything other than Beginner? I'm pretty sure they knew about the bug- TFTD's biggest difficulty aspect is how nerfed the weapons you get to use are more than anything in particular about the game. It also has more obtuse progression and some insanely long missions, but I don't really think off-hand that it's that much more difficult than UFO defense once you understand the battlescape mechanics. The old x-com games always had a problem where the best shot every time so long as you had TUs for it was autofire, so TFTD's "fix" for it is that once you get to sonic tier weapons, autofire goes away. Panzeh fucked around with this message at 12:10 on Sep 28, 2020 |
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Sep 28, 2020 12:07
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Also, a snap shot cost ~50% of your total TUs. You couldn’t kneel and shoot twice. e: with the sonic cannon. Which you should have been using as soon as you possibly could. Icon Of Sin fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Sep 28, 2020 |
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Sep 28, 2020 14:24
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I tried X-Piratez after seeing people talking about it and was taken aback by how ludicrously horny (and anime) it is. I really liked the melee/capture mechanics but eventually ended up uninstalling because it was just A Lot.
The potential is there for X-Piratez to be a genuinely incredible mod (and the sheer amount of work that's gone into it is honestly impressive), but at the end of the day it felt like sort of a mess. I spent quite a few hours on it and tried a few runs with different strategies hoping it would "click," but the same issues just got more and more glaring. It's a shame. Like, literally, if my husband had walked in and seen me playing X-Com: Weird Muscular Amazon Schoolgirl Prostitute Kidnapping Simulator, I would have experienced genuine shame Angry Diplomat fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Sep 28, 2020 |
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Sep 28, 2020 14:37
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Angry Diplomat posted:I tried X-Piratez after seeing people talking about it and was taken aback by how ludicrously horny (and anime) it is. I really liked the melee/capture mechanics but eventually ended up uninstalling because it was just A Lot. Yeah, it's insanely horny. There's a less horny(mostly not at all) mod with similar scope in X-com files though it doesn't really have some of the fun aspects of X-piratez(melee being good and having supersoldiers and some of the vehicle stuff). I would never play either mod without using q to hit the research browser to figure things out, and then there's some things you still have to look at the files to understand. X-com files is rather difficult though in a more conventionally x-com kind of way. It also has a lot of research RNG(things with dependencies that are based on repeatedly researching something with a specific result out of like 30 or so). Icon Of Sin posted:Also, a snap shot cost ~50% of your total TUs. You couldn’t kneel and shoot twice. I usually use sonic pistols instead just because of how bad the sonic cannon is, or i just switch to the blaster bomb equivalent and use that as much as possible.
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Sep 28, 2020 15:39
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Yeah Piratez is so bizarre. There is in fact a decent game in there somewhere, but it’s buried so deep under so many layers of bizarre design decisions and outright fetish art that you have to be either supremely tolerant or a very special brand of bonkers to ever find it.
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Sep 28, 2020 15:40
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Coolguye posted:Yeah Piratez is so bizarre. There is in fact a decent game in there somewhere, but it’s buried so deep under so many layers of bizarre design decisions and outright fetish art that you have to be either supremely tolerant or a very special brand of bonkers to ever find it. I was kinda put off by it the first time i tried and i pushed on and had some fun with it. There's nothing like mowing down a mansion full of nazis with advanced weapons, and you can actually go to cydonia(which is very similar to vanilla cydonia) with weapons that let you punch holes in the rock walls which makes it pretty easy. However, the only craft that the game lets you take to cydonia takes a truly tedious amount of manufacturing to build. X-com files has a really annoying grind where you have to research alien engineers over and over to get the three prerequisites to plasma weapons to get them.
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Sep 28, 2020 15:44
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Fintilgin posted: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. Yeah he's frustrating but not terrible when he's in hiding, since all he ever does is spawn a couple of zombies that just make you waste a few actions. But once you get in aggro range and he mind controls your best soldier, then it gets rough. Best starting chosen is the hunter, because before he's revealed he mostly just hook shots himself around in circles and only rarely makes you move with his big AoE targeting thing. And killing him off early gets you his rifle which is practically cheat mode on a good sniper. Just delete whole pods with one soldier like it's nothing. Assassin is the worst starter in my book, because she's almost guaranteed to KO a soldier when she first pops out of invisibility, forcing you to react fast or get someone captured, and she always seems to do it when you're in the middle of fighting another pod.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:52
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Also in TFTD, the fact that the heavy sonic gun is so bad to fire means aliens will much more often use grenades and this is much more dangerous than them shooting.
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Sep 28, 2020 18:26
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For the Alien Activity sites at least, 4 people could block the lift and you could drop pulse wave torpedoes all over the place without fear of reprisal. In EU, blaster bombs could go up/down lifts...but not TFTD, unless you cleared out the ground and made a clear path for the torpedo to travel. XComUtil changed this slightly, and would have aliens charging up the lift after you and potentially blocking it (thanks, hallucinoids!). Also, the mod added reaction bites for tentaculats, if you dropped down a lift directly in front of them 
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Sep 29, 2020 00:05
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I loved TFTD. I would never play it without save scumming though, and shipping route missions were a nightmare.
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Sep 29, 2020 00:06
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My cruise ship strategy has never let me down, but then "not replaying TFTD" has also not let me down soooooo
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Sep 29, 2020 00:38
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Psion posted:My cruise ship strategy has never let me down, but then "not replaying TFTD" has also not let me down The huge multipart missions do not do TFTD any favors and are, alongside the bad weapons, its two worst design decisions. Several mods have cruise ship missions and i hate doing cruise ship missions in xcomfiles as much as i do TFTD, though at least in XCF it's worth some significant money.
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Sep 29, 2020 00:51
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Play TFTD you cowards.
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Sep 29, 2020 00:55
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If you haven’t played TFTD you aren’t a true xcom player. True xcom players like me asked for xcom RU for Christmas and got TFTD instead and we played it and we got slaughtered and we were grateful! We took torpedo launchers on terror attacks! We hit the easy save difficulty bug! We had 8 soldiers die to pipelines exploding after an aquatoid sneezed on them! We fought the flying chrysalids and we spent four hours and all our ammo slogging through a mission with three survivors only to find out then it was a part 1 because there were no guides or forums to tell us “it’s not you” we just thought we sucked and so we suffered and we triumphed. A bunch of you have never encountered lobstermen with zero information and it shows.
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Sep 29, 2020 01:11
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I encountered lobstermen having just heard 'they're fuckers' and nothing else. I figured 'they can't be that bad'. That one rear end in a top hat from a small scout ate 20 gauss rounds before he went down. They are that bad. Until you have melee weapons and power armor, then you shred them.
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Sep 29, 2020 01:16
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I loved how the UFOPedia entries hinted at some really dark stuff, like a bio-drone having a human brain that was just trying to ask for help and was instead screaming someone to death in front of it.
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Sep 29, 2020 01:44
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Imagine ever using Gauss weapons in TFTD.
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Sep 29, 2020 02:43
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Sonic Rifle was the pro choice. That, tons of grenades, and at least half your squad decked with Disrupter Launchers. Oh, and like 2 guys with stun poo poo and thermic lances and lots of stamina. But yeah, TFTD had so much dumb bullshit in it. It was the definition of tedious sequel. I remember playing it blind when it came out (same as UFOD), and holy poo poo, Lobstermen. Fuzz fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Sep 29, 2020 |
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Sep 29, 2020 04:12
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Night10194 posted:I encountered lobstermen having just heard 'they're fuckers' and nothing else. I figured 'they can't be that bad'. Yeah if you KNOW melee shreds them. I think they did tease that in an autopsy but never fully stated it and melee was such poo poo otherwise that your first encounter as a new player was almost guaranteed to end a promising run and assaulting a base full of em? Forget it.
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Sep 29, 2020 05:03
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My TFTD loadout was about 90% stun launchers, the rest MC.
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Sep 29, 2020 05:04
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I'm in my first playthrough of XCOM2 (not WotC) and I have a couple general questions. I played Enemy Within a few months back but only for maybe 10 hours before I accidentally forgot to pause my Humble subscription and got XCOM2, so I decided to just play 2. Bottom line is that I'm still pretty new to this whole thing. I feel like despite the game being very clear on each of its individual systems, there's never really been a clear explanation of my overall goal. Am I supposed to be rushing through the capital-O Objectives? Or am I supposed to hold off on them and keep building up the army? Am I making it harder by rushing through the "story?" I get that there's a global timer, but I can't get a feel for how it actually progresses, what with it sitting for a long time and then all of the sudden moving three steps to the right, and then not having any clue how much each of the special missions will reduce it until after I do them. Is it okay to leave it sort of in the middle, or should I just always be trying to reduce it at every opportunity? Basically, I'm really not sure what I'm supposed to be focusing on, and yes, I realize the answer is some form of "all of it." Smaller questions: is there any way to know if a Proving Ground project is creating a one-use item or a squad item? I'm building the AWC with no real indication of what these "extra skills" are--is it worth it? I figure it's worth it just for the faster healing, because I walk out of the special missions with my whole A-Team hurt and I've had to run a few follow-up things with like three rookies. Finally, is Concealment just straight up "as soon as you get seen or attack, it's over no matter what?" I know there are skills with the Rangers that play with the mechanic, but if I one-shot enemies while concealed, is it gone no matter what?
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Sep 29, 2020 18:02
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It's ok to leave the avatar project one pip short of full, as long you have a plan to reduce it when it fills up. In the base game, that means access to a facility mission or a story mission. If you don't have any, working towards a territory with one should be among your top priorities. Beyond that there's no need to push the story forward. AWC extra skills range from useless to broken good, but you get them on a random levelup and they aren't retroactive so it's good to have it up early. No extra concealment gimmicks beyond the ranger skills (which non-rangers can also get through the AWC) without WotC.
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Sep 29, 2020 18:32
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Also the alien leaders do not show up if you never investigate the crash site, or do the follow-up mission. That poo poo is definitely the "second play-through" stuff because the muton leader is absolutely a wrecking ball if your team doesn't have the suitable skills or equipment to deal with it and it tends to show up around mid-campaign.
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Sep 29, 2020 18:40
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Concealment is a one and done deal even if you murder the only alien you're currently spotting. Use it wisely! A common strategy is to set yourself up and use your concealment round to annihilate a single pod.
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Sep 29, 2020 18:58
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KNR posted:AWC extra skills range from useless to broken good, but you get them on a random levelup and they aren't retroactive so it's good to have it up early. You get a random skill on level up (i.e. one per level), or one skill on a random level up? Basically should I make another A-Team entirely when it's finished?
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Sep 29, 2020 19:16
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OzFactor posted:You get a random skill on level up (i.e. one per level), or one skill on a random level up? Basically should I make another A-Team entirely when it's finished? One skill on a random levelup, a good skill might push a lower level soldier into your A-team but a bad/missed skill is nothing to drop a soldier over.
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Sep 29, 2020 19:48
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OzFactor posted:You get a random skill on level up (i.e. one per level), or one skill on a random level up? Basically should I make another A-Team entirely when it's finished? Each character will get exactly one skill form the AWC through their entire career, assigned at a random level. Since it's not retroactive, if you have high level soldiers when you build the AWC they probably won't end up snagging an extra skill. (i.e. if their 'skill' was assigned at the sgt level and they're already above that when the AWC is built, they just won't have an extra skill) It's generally not worth chasing by releveling a whole new squad, IMO. This is something that is redone in wotc in a much better way.
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Sep 29, 2020 20:32
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Vanilla XCOM 2 makes it a lot easier to just have one main squad that you take on every mission, since there is no fatigue mechanic to worry about. That said, it's good to have backups anyway so you don't end up with an unexpected injury and have to sub in a rookie for a major. And while you're leveling those backups, sometimes you get lucky and find out that the AWC has given them a ridiculously good skill and they might be worth a permanent spot on your A team. So it's worth it for the rare individual surprises, but not worth completely maxing out an entire replacement squad just to chase those skills. WotC just handles it all so much better, with the chance at multiple off-class abilities, giving you more chances at finding something good, and nothing dumb like permanently missable skills. At worst you just get a soldier with unimpressive alt skill options, in which case you just use a normal spec for them and that's fine, since WotC fixed a lot of the weird imbalances in the base classes from vanilla. And then sometimes you get a bladestorm templar and life is good.
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Sep 29, 2020 21:02
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In my Enemy Unknown run, I went ahead with the Hidden Potential and Not Created Equally variants. One more question about Enemy Within. If I wait to get EW until it's on sale, and only buy/install it part-way thru my campaign, will that negatively impact my experience? Should I get EW before I start my first campaign proper? How would the EW content work if I get it part-way thru my campaign?
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Sep 29, 2020 22:04
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All right, thanks y'all! I'll stick with my dudes. I've grown significantly attached to my first grenadier who wears sunglasses and a smug-rear end grin and I'm sure this attachment will not end badly for me.
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Sep 29, 2020 22:44
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literally this big posted:In my Enemy Unknown run, I went ahead with the Hidden Potential and Not Created Equally variants. Its been a long time since I played EW, but I think it was a separate executable like WotC is, so you would need to start a new campaign.
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Sep 30, 2020 04:51
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I will note: If you're not against it, there is a mod out there that makes it so soldiers that would have missed their AWC Extra Skill are given it anyway, making it Retroactive. The mod is called "True Retroactive AWC" on the workshop.
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Sep 30, 2020 15:51
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binge crotching posted:Its been a long time since I played EW, but I think it was a separate executable like WotC is, so you would need to start a new campaign. Yeah I've never tried but I would assume that you cannot just switch over to EW mid-campaign. There are too many fundamental changes to the strategic layer, it would be incredibly broken from a gameplay perspective and probably just wouldn't work from a technical one. Like the game is balanced with the assumption that you've been getting meld the whole way through.
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Sep 30, 2020 21:18
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Yeah it's not possible, they're totally different applications despite sharing the same launcher. https://isthereanydeal.com/game/xcomenemywithin/info/ Enemy Within only has a 10% sale right now, but it routinely is sold at 50%+ off.
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Sep 30, 2020 22:14
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The Cheshire Cat posted:Yeah I've never tried but I would assume that you cannot just switch over to EW mid-campaign. There are too many fundamental changes to the strategic layer, it would be incredibly broken from a gameplay perspective and probably just wouldn't work from a technical one. Like the game is balanced with the assumption that you've been getting meld the whole way through.
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Oct 2, 2020 00:09
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literally this big posted:Hmm, that's a bit of a bummer. I really want to continue my EU playthrough. Should I wait for EW to go on sale and play through with that? Or should I maybe ignore EW, finish my current run, and just move on to XCOM 2? I know that's a very subjective decision, but I don't want to pay $30 for a 7 year old DLC, but I also don't want to miss out on the 'full' XCOM experience. Eh, I'd say finish what you've got going and come back after xcom 2. This also let's you pick up we much cheaper when it goes on sale because it's definitely worth picking up. Big edit: Also the android version is dirt cheap and portable if you want some fun on the go. They stripped some content out for portability and the graphics are locked, but it's an option if you're just looking for playing with the cool new toys and enemies. FoolyCharged fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Oct 2, 2020 |
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Oct 2, 2020 00:22
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Play it. These are not one and done games.
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Oct 2, 2020 00:29
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Zigmidge posted:Play it. These are not one and done games.
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Oct 2, 2020 00:32
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literally this big posted:True, but would I really come back to XCOM 1 after XCOM 2? It depends. 2 has a lot of iteration and refinement on 1 but there are some things 1 does with atmosphere that 2 doesn't really scratch the itch for. I also prefer how Psi powers work, Gene mods, and MEC troopers over the 2 equivalents. 1 also has a fully functional flight system unlike 2's weird implementation of flight. Its tough. Overall I prefer 2 more and have sunk more hours into it, but a ton of that has to do with how moddable 2 is.
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Oct 2, 2020 00:35
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