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Paingod556 posted:There are 2 main ways to play a tactical squad-based game like X-COM, or Jagged Alliance, or whatever. Note this is pretty basic and could be wrong but whatever. The platonic ideal of a 2-turn kill of an enemy group  It's rarely that simple of course. But that right there is what I use as my basic gameplan for most encounters.
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Jan 22, 2013 19:41
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Klyith posted:snip That is pretty much / precisely the way I fight. Although depending on how the aliens position/you are positioned, you can sometimes skip part 1 and go straight for the flanking and murder, without having to pull back the scout. If the promise for murder is there, and the scout is in a good position like full cover, you can have him hunker down while the enemies move closer and you move your own team in for the kill(s). But whatever I say, whatever plan I draw .. it always comes down to being careful, never dashing into the unexplored wild, and not advancing past the front man (when moving into unexplored territory). Though you can always pull ballsy manoeuvres and take risks, as long as they have been thought through. It's not uncommon for me to step out into the open completely so I can get a frag on the mind-merging sectoid .. if I am certain that there are no more enemies to activate or sneak up my flank. That sorta thing. Iceshade fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Jan 22, 2013 |
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Jan 22, 2013 19:58
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:In The Zone is amazing in a lot of circumstances. Double Tap is good, but I probably like In The Zone more, ever since my sniper killed five Chrysalids in a single turn. My best sniper killed six mutons and a berserker in one turn. Emptied her rifle in one round.
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Jan 22, 2013 20:06
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Somewhere deep in the greasy guts of the old thread there was a pretty good step by step recommendation on how to punch out maximum satellites by the first month's payday- anyone who knows what I'm talking about, would you be capable of reposting it? I'm prepared to do the digging myself when I get home later.
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Jan 22, 2013 20:14
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This one?ulmont posted:Jesus, this took forever to find.
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Jan 22, 2013 20:30
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5er posted:Somewhere deep in the greasy guts of the old thread there was a pretty good step by step recommendation on how to punch out maximum satellites by the first month's payday- anyone who knows what I'm talking about, would you be capable of reposting it? I'm prepared to do the digging myself when I get home later. It is already in this thread, I've just been lazy as all hell about adding it to the OP.
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Jan 22, 2013 20:40
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ESDK posted:This one? That one! Thanks! Coolguye posted:It is already in this thread, I've just been lazy as all hell about adding it to the OP. I think I scrolled past it, sorry.
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Jan 22, 2013 21:12
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I have a newfound love for suppression, and I think it's the superior option for both Supports and Heavies on Impossible difficulty. Reason 1: Your Shredder rocket takes off 4 health, which is enough to kill...sectoids and drones. However, Shredding people is cool, so I usually keep 1 heavy with Shredder. Reason 2: Reviving people with medkits is fine and dandy, but Squad Size 1 and 2 let you bring enough manpower to mitigate the problem of just having a troop stabilized, but down for the round. The reason why Suppression is awesome on Impossible? For capturing aliens! Using Suppression, I locked down a floater for 5 rounds (he was the last guy on the map) by alternating between my Heavy and my Support suppressing. If you have 2 people with suppression, you could keep a single unit suppressed indefinitely. These suppression tactics eventually led to the successful capture of 2 thin men, a muton, and a floater all in the same mission. Thanks for the all the guns, folks!
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Jan 22, 2013 21:16
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bobfather posted:I have a newfound love for suppression, and I think it's the superior option for both Supports and Heavies on Impossible difficulty. Suppressive fire locks them in place because of the reaction shot if they move. Overwatch has the same effect. That's the first requirement for a completely passive alien. The second part seems to be a flanking position. When I have one unit on overwatch and another in a flanking position, the enemy doesn't move and doesn't fire. It makes sense that it doesn't move because of overwatch (well, sort of), but why it won't shoot is beyond me.
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Jan 22, 2013 21:39
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Iceshade posted:Suppressive fire locks them in place because of the reaction shot if they move. Overwatch has the same effect. That's the first requirement for a completely passive alien. The second part seems to be a flanking position. I imagine it's an AI conflict issue.. or something. Back at alien school they were probably taught that their only priority when flanked should be to move out of harms way, but then Mrs. Applebee said that they should never move under any circumstances when being overwatched and oh god it's so confusing what do I do! 
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Jan 22, 2013 21:48
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Surprisingly, my Classic Ironman Marathon 2nd Wave game hasn't crashed and burned yet. Despite only having ballistics, I only lost my support, Chen "Patch" Ye, to a Chryssalid, when two shots did less damage then expected, and my backup rocket went off course. Fittingly, iTunes picked an appropriate soundtrack when I started the mission  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYbfFGyB7-E
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Jan 22, 2013 22:32
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I've been working on my XCom tactics. I've had two ironman games in a row messed up when I got a little sloppy and paid for it with a panic chain that ultimately led to a squad wipe. Some of that is bad luck and some of that is XCom, but I hit the books (ok, Youtube) to see what I could do better. It seems good players, at the start of each turn, decide if they can kill all the visible enemies. If they can't, they go very defensive. Perhaps they move a few guys around to set up for the next turn, but mostly it's "nobody get hurt." By far the best defense is breaking line of sight. If you have to leave a soldier exposed to fire, look for cover, preferably heavy, hunker down, throw smoke grenades, suppress the alien - whatever it takes. But remember that the aliens only have to get lucky once in a while to ruin your game. Both my panic chains started when an alien crit and killed a soldier who had full cover. If you do decide to kill the enemies, I hope you kept track of how many have activated, where any of them were when they ran into the fog of war, and if they're on overwatch. Then you figure how to kill them, and I mean kill for sure, not "Well, one of these two 50% shots will probably hit." Yup, 75% of the time at least one will land. And the other 25% you're screwed. When you go offensive, you want to use really high percentage shots. Until you've leveled up your soldiers that will usually mean flanking, or blowing up the alien's cover, or at least running right up next to them. Explosives, because they either rarely or never miss and do exactly predictably damage, are excellent (even if Doctor Doesn't-Apply-Her-Morality-To-Herself complains). But they come in limited supplies and give less loot, so they aren't the first choice. The last thing to do is to get into half cover and swap shots. It works on Normal - and gets you killed on Classic. Edit: And the thing that burns me most often? Overwatch sucks. You take a -20% to hit (maybe more if they dash), they have to move through two squares you can see, and everybody fires at the first alien. When there's a hidden alien lurking around I keep counting on overwatch to take it out when it shows up and I'm disappointed again and again. BurningStone fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Jan 22, 2013 |
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Jan 22, 2013 22:44
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BurningStone posted:I've been working on my XCom tactics. I've had two ironman games in a row messed up when I got a little sloppy and paid for it with a panic chain that ultimately led to a squad wipe. Some of that is bad luck and some of that is XCom, but I hit the books (ok, Youtube) to see what I could do better. This explanation is perfect. This is exactly the strat I use. Every time you reveal any enemies you should immediately assess if you can either guarantee that they all die that turn without revealing more enemies or whether you can guarantee that all of your units can be retreated to unflankable positions out of LOS with at least a few overwatches. If either A or B (but not both) is true then you do that one, if neither is true you calculate cost benefit, and if both are true you usually kill. Whenever assessing kill situations it essentially becomes a big puzzle game.
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Jan 22, 2013 22:54
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Overwatch traps are nice, but they have a reduced chance of hitting your alien and they can't crit compared to a normal shot. Which means, more often than not, the thinmen/mutons are going to rush right up to your trap, dodge a million goddamn bullets/lasers, tank the shots that hit, and then crit/grenade one of your guys behind full cover. Oh yeah, and there will always be that one alien who moves into firing range just on the edge of your overwatch trap and gets a free shot. Only snipers with Opportunist can reliably overwatch. What I do instead on I/I runs is: If you can't kill everything in one turn, retreat to a spot where you have good cover/concealment (and they will have bad cover if they move up) and hunker down. The aliens will then usually (A) suicide charge and die, or (B) they will sit and overwatch. At which point you can poke and prod with your assault for squadsight line of sight.
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Jan 22, 2013 23:01
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BurningStone posted:When you go offensive, you want to use really high percentage shots. Until you've leveled up your soldiers that will usually mean flanking, or blowing up the alien's cover, or at least running right up next to them. Explosives, because they either rarely or never miss and do exactly predictably damage, are excellent (even if Doctor Doesn't-Apply-Her-Morality-To-Herself complains). But they come in limited supplies and give less loot, so they aren't the first choice. The best thing I found for offensives is to use a single unit as a scout (always an assault with Lightning Reflexes) and move them only as far as they can get with one time unit. Then use your squadsight snipers who are way the gently caress back and can safely fire wildly, then pull your scout back. The rest of your team should be out of LOS and ready to gun down anyone stupid enough to approach. Anyone that isn't killed by the overwatch will be dead the next turn and your snipers are mostly immune to attacks. This is fantastic for supply barge cargo holds, abduction ships and several segments of the battleship.
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Jan 22, 2013 23:05
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I'm a fan of the "run an assault up near them, take your squadsight sniper shots, and then send the assault back to safety and overwatch everyone else" strategy.
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Jan 23, 2013 01:12
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This came in the mail today (linked for big) http://i.imgur.com/9b0epku.jpg
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Jan 23, 2013 01:26
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njark posted:This came in the mail today (linked for big) http://i.imgur.com/9b0epku.jpg Those are some nice crackers, but why did you get them mailed?
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Jan 23, 2013 01:34
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Yeah they're like $2.00 at the grocery. Even factoring in gas, you'll have to go to the market eventually ANYWAYS, just stock up then.
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Jan 23, 2013 01:40
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Zylen posted:Those are some nice crackers, but why did you get them mailed? 
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Jan 23, 2013 01:49
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WeaponBoy posted:The best thing I found for offensives is to use a single unit as a scout (always an assault with Lightning Reflexes) and move them only as far as they can get with one time unit. Then use your squadsight snipers who are way the gently caress back and can safely fire wildly, then pull your scout back. The rest of your team should be out of LOS and ready to gun down anyone stupid enough to approach. Anyone that isn't killed by the overwatch will be dead the next turn and your snipers are mostly immune to attacks. This is fantastic for supply barge cargo holds, abduction ships and several segments of the battleship. I've done something similar, but instead of running back and forth my scout used hunker down after all the shots were taken.
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Jan 23, 2013 02:11
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bobfather posted:Reason 1: Your Shredder rocket takes off 4 health, which is enough to kill...sectoids and drones. However, Shredding people is cool, so I usually keep 1 heavy with Shredder. My general preference for capturing aliens is to use overwatch instead of suppression. The biggest problem I have with any capturing tactic is in the moments of panic before getting to the final alien and someone able to move in and stun him (without exposing another squad of aliens - the harder part if you ask me), you somehow keep the one soldier that can actually see him in overwatch because on Impossible, you use concealment as default "cover" and you oftentimes can't afford to have more than one or two soldiers visible to aliens at the end of your turn meaning you tend to use heavies with Bullet Swarm and move away. Heavies are the only class in the middle of a fight that can fire and run away, so they're essential for my Impossible games. Keeping them far enough away from my squad to avoid the inevitable rocket miss makes tactics harder (and riskier as you tend to make your heavy the scout rather than your support). If Impossible difficulty AI is ever patched to be primarily defensive instead of offensive, all of us Impossible players will actually have to start taking terribly bad risks for once. The only reliable way to win at this point is to be as cautious as possible - for either side.
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Jan 23, 2013 02:28
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I've seen people say that Shredder+Holoaim is viable just because everything that is tagged not only takes the increased damage debuff but is also easier to aim against. Honestly I never tried this just because Bullet Swarm seems so important it would be a shame to lose it.
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Jan 23, 2013 07:33
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Wow, I can't believe what I just did in my Classic Ironman actually worked. Beginning of an abduction mission, I'm outside a diner. I see a semi to the far left that'll provide good cover on the approach to the building. On my way over a Floater patrol arrives, my guys are in the middle of the parking lot, right out in the open. Almost all of them have like 50-60% hit chance, but out in the open like this that's not high enough to keep them all there and risk things going bad. The semi is the only heavy cover in sight, everything else is half cover. All of them would be able to make it to the safety of the truck in a Dash, except for my Assault. I figure okay, at least my Assault can run right up to one of the two Floaters and shotgun him in the face. He'll likely be killed by the other one because he's only in half cover, but it's better than getting gunned down as he runs away. So I do that, and the other Floater...runs away. Giving my Assault the chance he needs on the next turn to make it the rest of the way to the truck. That is certainly NOT XCom. The mission isn't over yet, I'm sure this is just the game gearing up to do something completely horrible to me.
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Jan 23, 2013 07:37
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THE AWESOME GHOST posted:I've seen people say that Shredder+Holoaim is viable just because everything that is tagged not only takes the increased damage debuff but is also easier to aim against. Honestly I never tried this just because Bullet Swarm seems so important it would be a shame to lose it. I'd ask of those people why are they letting the aliens whose cover they just blew up with the shredder live for another turn and get into more cover.
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Jan 23, 2013 07:39
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They could be behind a hill or already wrecked car or some other indestructible half cover. Or maybe they're Muton Elites. Or maybe the player is playing with random stats and his dudes are terrible. Actually I was meaning to ask, are any of the rebalance mods any good? I was looking at the warspace extended mod and it seemed interesting, anyone wanna chime in with their opinion of it or another rebalancer? AtillatheBum fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Jan 23, 2013 |
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Jan 23, 2013 08:00
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The army depot terror mission map is a factory for making chryssalids. My guys were besieged by wave after wave of them, I didn't have time to go rescue civilians to stop flood and wound up with 2 civvies alive by the end. The bodies were *everywhere* and I was seriously worried I'd run out of ammo before the aliens ran out of chryssalids.
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Jan 23, 2013 08:45
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Nephilm posted:I'd ask of those people why are they letting the aliens whose cover they just blew up with the shredder live for another turn and get into more cover. Who said anything about living another turn? Holotargeting only helps you the same turn anyway.
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Jan 23, 2013 09:24
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Holotargetting ends up beingmore useful to me than Bulletstorm. My least accurate dude can shoot twice (or shoot and move, which /is/ nice) or their misses/suppression/rocketting can boost everyone else.
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Jan 23, 2013 09:33
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Don't forget that laser/plasma blows up cover, so you get two opportunities to blow up cover with bullet swarm. Or shoot, then suppress. The +10 to hit is a bit meh imo, if you compare it to the flexibility that bullet swarm offers. It is really effective if you spec holo-targeting with suppression, danger zone and mayhem, though.
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Jan 23, 2013 12:40
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I hate suppression but I also finished the game without doing the expanded magazine thing you get from Muton Corpses :/
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Jan 23, 2013 12:45
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Nephilm posted:I'd ask of those people why are they letting the aliens whose cover they just blew up with the shredder live for another turn and get into more cover. Heavies are too inaccurate to expect Bullet Swarm to be useful at ensuring enemies consistently don't live another turn. Using a shredder debuffs the enemies enough that units like snipers can have a much more consistent chance of taking them out in one shot. Sniper abilities like In The Zone and Executioner are pretty much made for that sort of situation.
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Jan 23, 2013 15:35
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1337JiveTurkey posted:Heavies are too inaccurate to expect Bullet Swarm to be useful at ensuring enemies consistently don't live another turn. Using a shredder debuffs the enemies enough that units like snipers can have a much more consistent chance of taking them out in one shot. Sniper abilities like In The Zone and Executioner are pretty much made for that sort of situation. That way, when they inevitably miss - well hey, everyone else got an aim buff. Good job, heavy, way to miss! Or, I can shredder the cyberdisc / walking tank thing, or I can take out any cover for miles, or... etc. Very useful. That said, I am beginning to wish I'd taken the shoot and move perk. Normal taught me to dig in and trade shots, not fall back, so I was all "man why would I ever do that." 
Shalinor fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Jan 23, 2013 |
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Jan 23, 2013 16:06
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I've decided to play with the second wave settings, including the random stats ones. I have a heavy with 90 aim at corporal. You can get some absolutely ridiculous soldiers with these second wave options  But at least it's a bit more true to the original, with these randomised stats.
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Jan 23, 2013 16:09
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That's what scopes are for!  Slap one on your heavy today and enjoy pumping out copious amounts of alien killing fun!
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Jan 23, 2013 16:13
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Scopes + Ghost Armor. Come out of cloak at point blank range to kill them. Then recloak like the Predator.
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Jan 23, 2013 16:20
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Somehow it's kinda a shame. Yes, when you think Heavy, you think rockets and things, but you also think 'mass pain with heavy guns' and they don't DO that because they have the worst aim. Aim Is God(Rightly so) and they don't get any, nor do their weapons help with this. The Heavy is as much 'support' as the actual Support class. They aren't something to fear on their own, it seems. Feel free to counter this brutally.
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Jan 23, 2013 18:13
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Yeah, Bullet Swarm is not for Shoot + Shoot prior to about Captain, even though that's what it makes you think of right away. Until Captain and SCOPE, it is for shoot and hunker, shoot and fall back, or some such. It gives you offense without the associated weaknesses. I am not a fan of Holo Targeting because you really shouldn't be taking that many shots at someone. They should be worm food pretty quick, Cyberdisks and Sectopods being the obvious exceptions. But this is also incorporating my ideals of heavies, too. I see them as the units that are around to say 'gently caress your poo poo'. They are there to punish mistakes. They are there to turn stuff into a crater. Some dude is out in the open after a fall back ambush? Too bad. Bullet Storm. gently caress your poo poo. A squad of aliens groups up behind lots of cover? Too bad. Rocket time. gently caress your poo poo. Aliens send a group of hard targets like Chryssalids or a Cyberdisk swarm? Too bad. Shredder rocket. gently caress your poo poo. Some people use their Heavies as base of fire and support demolitions. That's fine. It's just not how I use them.
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Jan 23, 2013 18:17
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Wait, wait, hold on. Bullet swarm lets you shoot TWICE? I thought it just let you shoot once then move after. Dammit. Sorry, boom-boom, but I'm finding another heavy and punting your rear end to B squad. 
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Jan 23, 2013 18:22
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Shalinor posted:Wait, wait, hold on. Bullet swarm lets you shoot TWICE? I thought it just let you shoot once then move after. Dammit. Yeah if you shoot first you don't end your turn... so if you want to you can shoot again. Also a Heavy with a full clip and no ammo upgrade from the Foundry who shoots+suppresses in the same turn will empty the whole clip
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Jan 23, 2013 18:27
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