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  • Locked thread
FistEnergy
Nov 3, 2000

DAY CREW: WORKING HARD

Fun Shoe

tooterfish posted:

If you stick it on your wishlist they'll email you when it's on sale.

I did already, but I didn't know that I'd be emailed when it goes on sale. Thanks!

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

dyzzy
Dec 22, 2009

argh

FistEnergy posted:

I did already, but I didn't know that I'd be emailed when it goes on sale. Thanks!

Yeah, also in case you missed Drifter's post at the end of the page GMG has the steam version of the complete edition on sale for :10bux:

http://www.greenmangaming.com/s/us/en/pc/games/strategy/xcom-enemy-unknown-complete-edition/

RickDaedalus
Aug 2, 2009
So besides Beagle, are there any other good XCOM playthroughs?

Fintilgin
Sep 29, 2004

Fintilgin sweeps!

Coolguye posted:

The Big Secret regarding the Newfoundland run is that as long as you don't have any Chyrssalids in front of you and you follow a fairly flat run to the Skyranger (there are at least two such paths that I'm aware of), the Chryssalids will be able to catch up to you, but not actually hurt you. They're fast, but they're not so fast that their one move is worth two of yours, generally speaking. So they'll haul up on their first move a square or two out of melee range, and blow their second one just closing the last few feet. You needn't worry too much about fighting a running gun battle, really.

This changes if they can draw a more direct line to you using jumpy legs or something, though. While it isn't foolproof, it's much easier to make it out of Newfoundland without leaving a lamb than people might notice at first glaze.

Honestly, FiraXcom chryssalids aren't half as scary as 1994 chryssalids. They could cross half the map (it felt like) and still attack at the end.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Fintilgin posted:

Honestly, FiraXcom chryssalids aren't half as scary as 1994 chryssalids. They could cross half the map (it felt like) and still attack at the end.

Then you got flying suits and they became harmless. Now, tentaculats... those could fly and had better stats across the board.

Bolow
Feb 27, 2007

RickDaedalus posted:

So besides Beagle, are there any other good XCOM playthroughs?

Guavamoment did a bunch of classic xcom playthroughs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WziO005uM3g

Carnalfex
Jul 18, 2007

Cythereal posted:

Then you got flying suits and they became harmless. Now, tentaculats... those could fly and had better stats across the board.

Didn't they also get psi powers?

Basically everything in TFTD was a giant gently caress you to the player. And hey, your equipment was worse too! Enjoy your lovely dart guns, and your heavy weapons/tanks only work underwater.

khwarezm
Oct 26, 2010

Deal with it.
XCOM 2's PC exclusivity has got me thinking, is there any reliable way to find out total sales for a game on PC? I want to find out more but steam doesn't release figures I'm pretty sure.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Carnalfex posted:

Didn't they also get psi powers?

Mercifully, no. Psi powers in TFTD were still restricted to the sectoid and ethereal equivalents. Tentaculats were "merely" stronger, tougher, flying chryssalids.

Skuzal
Oct 21, 2008

khwarezm posted:

XCOM 2's PC exclusivity has got me thinking, is there any reliable way to find out total sales for a game on PC? I want to find out more but steam doesn't release figures I'm pretty sure.

http://steamspy.com/ uses an algorithm to estimate the total number of people that own a game.

Vib Rib
Jul 23, 2007

God damn this shit is
fuckin' re-dic-a-liss

🍖🍖😛🍖🍖

Vib Rib posted:

Why are there no Thin Women huh

Speaking of reptilian species, I was really, really hoping when it was announced that the Enemy Within expansion would re-add Snakemen. And maybe Reapers.
Was going back over my old posts trying to find out how to rename missions and I found out I'm a candidate for psi aptitude, see you all in the Gollop chamber.

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!
I hope to blot out the sky with swarms of drones with full squads of specialists...

Also, Jake Solomon had better let us name our drones.

Beagle
Dec 8, 2012

It's fine...

Woozy posted:

Find a video of him doing this that doesn't also include an incredibly awkward argument with his wife and I'll watch it the next time I have four hours to kill

Which is cool because I was just thinking how incredibly awkward it was to scroll through like four pages of this thread not understanding what you were arguing about or why. I guess the difference is I have a wife and you have weird opinions.


Splicer posted:

That's why thin men are so annoying. In every other aspect of the game 95% of the time if it goes south I will go "Well... that was my fault". Or things will go only a bit south, meaning I have to make Hard Decisions. Which is awesome. Classic+ thin men fights suck because they take place early enough that you don't have many tactical options unlocked. Earlier you're fighting sectoids, who do that funky mind-thing so you can go for twofers, run up and point blank them, grenade their 3HP asses etc etc. Choices! In Normal thin men are also 3HP critters, so positioning, cover etc. are all about trying to run out of thin men before I run out of grenades. Tactics! In classic and higher their 4HP means I lose the "shoot or grenade?" choice and don't get anything to replace it with, so most of the fight is just RNGing at each other. By the time I hit later, theoretically more bullshit enemies I have more guys in the fight with more abilities and more items.

The early thin man battles are basically a hunk of roll-offs you need to push through so you can get back to playing XCOM.

Now it's been ages since I played vanilla so I might be totally wrong but you can still frag grenade them to remove their cover, right? I seem to remember frags taking out cover reliably unless it was a car or a UFO wall. So you can frag then followup with shots, right?

Suppression may help, too. Suppress from Heavy Cover so you've got a cumulative bonus of +30 from suppression and +40 from heavy cover. Shouldn't be getting hit through that.

Ahh, yes, speaking of vanilla heavies, it's all coming back to me now. Rocket Thin Men pods as soon as you have a chance. Blow the poo poo out of them. That's how I dealt with them.


Elderbean posted:

As a new player, what Beagle videos should I watch to get an idea on how to properly move my guys around, flank, etc?

The main concepts of moving and flanking is knowing the different phases of the mission you're in and knowing how much contact you can expect to be lurking out there. When there's no active contacts you're moving out in the open in a way that leaves you ready to get into cover at a moments notice, but minimizes the chance of you activating extra aliens on that turn. So if there's a giant wall, you want to be moving alongside the giant wall because it conceals you from any possible enemies that could be out there in that direction. The optimal time to make contact is usually within your turn - because you'll get a string of overwatch shots at the enemy as they patrol into view, and you'll have your entire next turn to react to them before they even get a shot off. The bad time to make contact is on your turn, and the worst time to make contact is with the last move on your turn - you get no reaction to the enemy and they instantly start loving you over.

In a similar but different scenario, when you already have contact, making a bold move forward to flank those contacts can result in you discovering more aliens - and activating them during your turn, most likely with both moves of a Run n Gun Assault, is going to end in tears and flanking. So Flanking comes down to how confident you are that you can make that bold forward move without activating new contact, or how confident you are you can handle extra contact if it happens. Battlescanners can help, but basically, you evaluate the move you're about to make, you evaluate how much contact could be out there in that direction - and then you evaluate whether the risk is worth the reward. For example, if you're in a windowless room that you have total vision of and there's a sectoid up the other side of it you can just do whatever the hell you want - run and gun up, no-one will see you. But if you're out in an open field and you move up, there could be more aliens behind your contact, waiting for you.

Also note that the AI are little bitches who will do dumb things like run to their unactivated allies for help if you blow up all their friends. So if an alien starts dashing off into the fog keep in mind that he could be leading you to his buddies.

Captain Invictus
Apr 5, 2005

Try reading some manga!


Clever Betty
Oh hey cool, it's Beagle. I thought people were joking when they said you posted here.

edit: wait, I think I remember you making references to goons or SA before on the TNX archives, or it might've been one of the shacktac guys.

Well, you've completely gotten me into XCOM again from your videos, so kudos for that. Just have to wait for my new computer before I can actually play it, which hurts. Is Long War something I can hop into, or should I play through the EW campaign first?

Captain Invictus fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Jun 7, 2015

FistEnergy
Nov 3, 2000

DAY CREW: WORKING HARD

Fun Shoe
Oh hey Beegs! I got sick of begging you for new YouTube content via Twitter and YouTube comments, so I went full nerd and installed the Twitch app and subbed. Now I've got tons more content to pass the time at work. Thanks buddy!

Telarra
Oct 9, 2012

While I swear by Long War, it's definitely something you play after finishing a vanilla playthrough, and with a fair bit of advice from videos and forum threads.

Cuntellectual
Aug 6, 2010

Gibfender posted:

Goddam that game sucked

What is it?

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
Finished my first playthrough of Enemy Within. Some thoughts on Enemy Within changes:

Mechtoids: I liked these things, they added some welcome variety to the mid-game and were amazing at punishing my fuckups. I also really liked their visual design and animation, they looked and felt both heavy and faster than you'd think despite clearly being big, heavy mechs. I've always hated big robots that look and move like they're weightless ballerinas.

Seekers: These, I did not like. I appreciate the idea, an alien that punishes you for isolating soldiers like squad sight snipers, but in practice they were just annoying and never threatening. The only time I ever felt like they added a meaningful gameplay mix-up was when I had seekers jumping into an existing firefight with other aliens.

New Sectopods: These things goddamn suck and I love it. My biggest complaint about them in EU is that they usually went down in one or two rounds of concentrated fire, now they're proper roaming minibosses. I approve, though my troopers don't. :v:

Exalt: On the geoscape, annoying and prone to complicating already tense situations, but I felt their implementation as a whole was lackluster. I liked fighting them, they were an interesting departure from fighting aliens and demanded different tactics until I got into the late game, but hunting down their base was incredibly tedious and I postponed winning the game by three months just to intel sweep every week and jump on exalt cells whenever I saw them. The exalt base raid was a fun mission, but not worth the tedium and time it took to get it and once I had late game tech exalt missions were short, boring shooting galleries.

Gene mods: These fell into two categories: mimetic skin and everything else. I ended up fitting everyone with the same mods: neural dampening, hyper reactive pupils, adrenal neurosympathy, mimetic skin, and muscle fiber density. Mimetic skin broke the game over my knee and I almost never noticed any of the others except for neural damping occasionally nullifying mind control. I might have noticed them if I had someone without them in the squad, but I'm conflicted about how well I think gene mods were implemented beyond mimetic skin being plainly overpowered.

MECs: I only got a couple of these in the very late game, so I didn't get much experience with them. They seem pretty useful, and the next time I play EW I'll definitely get one early.

Ashes and Temples: Hectic, stressful, and difficult. Lots and lots of fun, and I still want my security guard who killed a sectoid, chryssalid, mechtoid, cyberdisc, and muton to join X-COM.

Site Recon: I'm glad I accidentally spoiled myself about this one watching Beagle, otherwise I definitely would have lost at least one trooper. Tense and fun.

Progeny campaign: Portent is utter bullshit because thin men, Deluge and Furies were fine. Annette joined my A-team after my colonel support accidentally got turned into the bread in a sectopod, ethereal, and two mechtoid sandwich. That rocket was not my best idea.

On the whole, thumbs up.

Nick Esasky
Nov 10, 2009
is there a recommended place for jumping onto Beagles' latest playthroughs other than At The Beginning?

Tsurupettan
Mar 26, 2011

My many CoX, always poised, always ready, always willing to thrust.

Cythereal posted:

Exalt: On the geoscape, annoying and prone to complicating already tense situations, but I felt their implementation as a whole was lackluster. I liked fighting them, they were an interesting departure from fighting aliens and demanded different tactics until I got into the late game, but hunting down their base was incredibly tedious and I postponed winning the game by three months just to intel sweep every week and jump on exalt cells whenever I saw them. The exalt base raid was a fun mission, but not worth the tedium and time it took to get it and once I had late game tech exalt missions were short, boring shooting galleries.

Agreed 100%. I didn't feel like EXALT added much to the game. As soon as I could start accusing countries, I saved and accused them until I got the right one. Although, I guessed it right on the first try, but you get the intent. Normally I wouldn't skip out on content like this, but EXALT was really tedious and not fun.

Captain Invictus
Apr 5, 2005

Try reading some manga!


Clever Betty
Oh, Beagle, you absolutely 100% need to get Chaos Gate and use your loyal fanbase to help you get it working. It's probably my favorite old-era PC game, I played the poo poo out of it and if I could still play it on my current PC, I would. Yes, you're SPESS MAHREENS, but you're 2nd edition space marines, before it got ridiculously grimdark, so it's got all the old-style weapons and stuff. It's also pretty loving hard at times, though I'd say it's more fair than OG XCOM. It makes up for its more resilient soldiers on your end by throwing five times as many enemies at you, and the Sectopod/Ethereal equivalents are tanks and Greater Demons of Chaos. It doesn't look too shabby either for such an old game. Definitely pick it up considering you like both 40K and XCOM-style games. Plus, you get to explore randomly(?) generated maps to find ancient weaponry to equip your dudes with, so you can loot long-lost storage lockers for forgotten weapons from the Dark Age of Technology. It's buggy at times, but outside of one particular instance where a save corrupted, I never had an issue in 100+ hours of play.

Nick Esasky posted:

is there a recommended place for jumping onto Beagles' latest playthroughs other than At The Beginning?

For Live and Impossible? At the beginning, honestly. You don't get attached to characters unless you see them survive the most ridiculous bullshit. I consider his youtube Long War campaign to be almost a TV show at this point, and the loss of one of the most prominent cast members during a recent climactic episode was absolutely perfectly fitting for that.

Robzilla
Jul 28, 2003

READ IT AND WEEP JEWBOY!
Fun Shoe
Welp, I haven't touched my Long War game in over a month, I come back to it, start it up to continue my campaign, and it crashed to desktop.

Worked just fine last time I played it, unless windows updates hosed with something otherwise it looks like I'm reinstalling fresh. :ughh:

Synthbuttrange
May 6, 2007



They knew. :stare:

Captain Invictus
Apr 5, 2005

Try reading some manga!


Clever Betty

Japan. Japan knew.


winterwerefox
Apr 23, 2010

The next movie better not make me shave anything :(

Anatharon posted:

What is it?

Falling Skies: The Game
http://www.littleorbit.com/falling-skies-the-game.html

Its almost a direct XCom copy/paste. Except bad.

Edit: added link to the game

winterwerefox fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Jun 7, 2015

Tha_Joker_GAmer
Aug 16, 2006

Cythereal posted:

Finished my first playthrough of Enemy Within. Some thoughts on Enemy Within changes:

Mechtoids: I liked these things, they added some welcome variety to the mid-game and were amazing at punishing my fuckups. I also really liked their visual design and animation, they looked and felt both heavy and faster than you'd think despite clearly being big, heavy mechs. I've always hated big robots that look and move like they're weightless ballerinas.

Seekers: These, I did not like. I appreciate the idea, an alien that punishes you for isolating soldiers like squad sight snipers, but in practice they were just annoying and never threatening. The only time I ever felt like they added a meaningful gameplay mix-up was when I had seekers jumping into an existing firefight with other aliens.

New Sectopods: These things goddamn suck and I love it. My biggest complaint about them in EU is that they usually went down in one or two rounds of concentrated fire, now they're proper roaming minibosses. I approve, though my troopers don't. :v:

Exalt: On the geoscape, annoying and prone to complicating already tense situations, but I felt their implementation as a whole was lackluster. I liked fighting them, they were an interesting departure from fighting aliens and demanded different tactics until I got into the late game, but hunting down their base was incredibly tedious and I postponed winning the game by three months just to intel sweep every week and jump on exalt cells whenever I saw them. The exalt base raid was a fun mission, but not worth the tedium and time it took to get it and once I had late game tech exalt missions were short, boring shooting galleries.

Gene mods: These fell into two categories: mimetic skin and everything else. I ended up fitting everyone with the same mods: neural dampening, hyper reactive pupils, adrenal neurosympathy, mimetic skin, and muscle fiber density. Mimetic skin broke the game over my knee and I almost never noticed any of the others except for neural damping occasionally nullifying mind control. I might have noticed them if I had someone without them in the squad, but I'm conflicted about how well I think gene mods were implemented beyond mimetic skin being plainly overpowered.

MECs: I only got a couple of these in the very late game, so I didn't get much experience with them. They seem pretty useful, and the next time I play EW I'll definitely get one early.

Ashes and Temples: Hectic, stressful, and difficult. Lots and lots of fun, and I still want my security guard who killed a sectoid, chryssalid, mechtoid, cyberdisc, and muton to join X-COM.

Site Recon: I'm glad I accidentally spoiled myself about this one watching Beagle, otherwise I definitely would have lost at least one trooper. Tense and fun.

Progeny campaign: Portent is utter bullshit because thin men, Deluge and Furies were fine. Annette joined my A-team after my colonel support accidentally got turned into the bread in a sectopod, ethereal, and two mechtoid sandwich. That rocket was not my best idea.

On the whole, thumbs up.

nah neural damping was trash in my opinion, 100% of the time when one of my dudes was mind controlled my response was to kill the controller on the next turn anyway (there wasn't a single instance where I couldn't do this, ever) so I'd rather deal damage to it because either way the result is the same, you lose the guy for one turn. I mean I imagine that's what everyone did when a dude is mind controlled so idk I guess if you played it differently then maybe damping was better for you.

Also the main problem about EXALT is that they just suck, takes too long for them to get laser weaponry and they never get plasma.

Agreed about seekers too, beyond garbage, every time you proc them you can just sit and wait for them to inevitably uncloack next to a dude and re-enact storming a normandy beach.

I had no idea there was a base defense mission and my best soldier was sipping piña coladas in the gene lab while I was fighting for the survival of X-Com, that was stressful (and therefore fun).

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I always figured Exalt was meant to be a way for you to more easily train up some new soldiers if you lost your A team, to try to address the potential brittleness of X-COM, hence why they suck.

Necc0
Jun 30, 2005

by exmarx
Broken Cake

Robzilla posted:

Welp, I haven't touched my Long War game in over a month, I come back to it, start it up to continue my campaign, and it crashed to desktop.

Worked just fine last time I played it, unless windows updates hosed with something otherwise it looks like I'm reinstalling fresh. :ughh:

It's a lot more stable if you put steam in offline mode for some reason. Try that first.

In other news I finally beat xcom. I was only on normal difficulty but I still feel like that was an accomplishment. On the one hand the last third is a pretty tough grind but I kind of liked how you were in a war of attrition of sorts. Sure you could largely handle any mission they threw at you but one gently caress up meant you were losing a high-ranked officer and good luck training another rookie up at this point.

Kaislioc
Feb 14, 2008

Drifter posted:

http://www.greenmangaming.com/s/us/en/pc/games/strategy/xcom-enemy-within/?affsrc=1&utm_medium=affiliates
EW: It's 7.50 with a steam key on Greenmangaming right now, if you want it right now. On steam.

http://www.greenmangaming.com/s/us/en/pc/games/strategy/xcom-enemy-unknown-complete-edition/?affsrc=1&utm_medium=affiliates
This one is the ENTIRE NewCom franchise for $10. DLC and everything. EU, EW, all the little bits. Steam Key, as well.

I just read the "Don't bother playing EU vanilla, EW is objectively better and more complete." post, looked up EW and then balked at the price/lack of sale so thanks for getting the links in at pretty much the perfect time. May as well have them on this page as well.

Hopeford
Oct 15, 2010

Eh, why not?
I'm currently going over a really gimmicky playthrough of LW and having tons of fun, but it's way too hard haha. The gimmick I'm going for is "canonically compatible with xcom2." So no weapon upgrades, no armor upgrades, Impossible/Ironman and the goal of the campaign is to survive land enough to capture a landed Assault Carrier in the end game, which I assume Shen is going to turn into our mobile base. To survive, I'm using the world's most cowardly squad. Over half the squad is precision shot snipers(NEED THAT DAMAGE) and everyone else basically plays hide and seek with the aliens. Hey, I'm already preparing for XCOM 2's guerrilla tactics!

I play VERY cowardly and evac missions very frequently because if my team of snipers can't finish a firefight in two turns, the enemy usually gets way too close and since they have no armor I can't hope to survive that. Plus if I roll a map that has bad synergy with guerrilla xcom, then I uh more or less just accept that I can't win that. Since I'm playing this under Quiddich rules, it doesn't matter to me if the aliens take control of almost every country so long as I can hold out for long enough to steal a really big ship and start on-the-run xcom. Been tons of fun, I'm way behind tech and I'm climbing my way toward endgame on the pile of rookies and even decorated soldiers.

I like to imagine my commander realized he couldn't win the war, so now he's racing against the clock to try to find a way to keep the war going after the council gives up on xcom, which he sees as an inevitability. So he's playing extremely cowardly fights, allowing countries to fall and basically just hoping his forces can survive long enough to get that ship and run the gently caress away. I'm XCOM's most cowardly commander and I don't give a poo poo, I accept that we cannot win this war but dammit we'll find a way to go underground before this is over :colbert:

So far biggest disaster that happened to my playthrough was my girlfriend asking if she could play a mission out for me and I didn't have the heart to say no. I play Ironman. Your sacrifices will not be forgotten, B-Team. You died to keep a girl happy, be proud dammit! Second biggest disaster was Sniper-Doorn exploding a cyberdisc then activating a pod that I presumably had no vision on, which was hilarious.

PiCroft
Jun 11, 2010

I'm sorry, did I break all your shit? I didn't know it was yours

Captain Invictus posted:

Oh, Beagle, you absolutely 100% need to get Chaos Gate and use your loyal fanbase to help you get it working. It's probably my favorite old-era PC game, I played the poo poo out of it and if I could still play it on my current PC, I would. Yes, you're SPESS MAHREENS, but you're 2nd edition space marines, before it got ridiculously grimdark, so it's got all the old-style weapons and stuff. It's also pretty loving hard at times, though I'd say it's more fair than OG XCOM. It makes up for its more resilient soldiers on your end by throwing five times as many enemies at you, and the Sectopod/Ethereal equivalents are tanks and Greater Demons of Chaos. It doesn't look too shabby either for such an old game. Definitely pick it up considering you like both 40K and XCOM-style games. Plus, you get to explore randomly(?) generated maps to find ancient weaponry to equip your dudes with, so you can loot long-lost storage lockers for forgotten weapons from the Dark Age of Technology. It's buggy at times, but outside of one particular instance where a save corrupted, I never had an issue in 100+ hours of play.


For Live and Impossible? At the beginning, honestly. You don't get attached to characters unless you see them survive the most ridiculous bullshit. I consider his youtube Long War campaign to be almost a TV show at this point, and the loss of one of the most prominent cast members during a recent climactic episode was absolutely perfectly fitting for that.

Oh man, Chaos gate is one of my favourite games ever and got me into squad-based tactical turn based games. I played it before I'd even heard of XCOM. It was also one of the first games I played where I dabbled in the bundled level editor. Such an amazing game, brilliant level design and atmosphere before it got even sillier.

Zomborgon
Feb 19, 2014

I don't even want to see what happens if you gain CHIM outside of a pre-coded system.

I think I just had my first time researching plasma rifles before Experimental Warfare.

I love over-capturing and skipping lasers so much.

Segmentation Fault
Jun 7, 2012

Captain Invictus posted:

Japan. Japan knew.




What anime is this from? Asking for a friend

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Cythereal posted:

Seekers: These, I did not like. I appreciate the idea, an alien that punishes you for isolating soldiers like squad sight snipers, but in practice they were just annoying and never threatening. The only time I ever felt like they added a meaningful gameplay mix-up was when I had seekers jumping into an existing firefight with other aliens.

I agree with you on these. They're annoying and not much else unless you have them active while you're fighting something else. Then they're amazing (i.e. infuriating and dangerous) enemies not because of their own danger, but because of how easily they can potentially cause a stable situation to spiral out of control. I feel their biggest downside is merely that they only come in pairs with themselves. If you instead saw them hanging out as part of another alien squad (3 floaters and a Seeker), then they'd be much more dangerous. Also, they get even more laughable when you figure out that if they don't go airborne you can cheese them and suss out their location by figuring out which tile you can't move a soldier onto.

Cythereal posted:

Exalt: On the geoscape, annoying and prone to complicating already tense situations, but I felt their implementation as a whole was lackluster. I liked fighting them, they were an interesting departure from fighting aliens and demanded different tactics until I got into the late game, but hunting down their base was incredibly tedious and I postponed winning the game by three months just to intel sweep every week and jump on exalt cells whenever I saw them. The exalt base raid was a fun mission, but not worth the tedium and time it took to get it and once I had late game tech exalt missions were short, boring shooting galleries.

I feel EXALT was supposed to complicate the geoscape, at least a bit, and it did that...for the first five minutes they were active or however long it takes the player to figure out how to scan for cells. EXALT's real problem in my opinion was that they didn't really get strong enough, and what strength they do get they don't quite get fast enough. I suspect the big reason EXALT never get plasma weapons is because Firaxis was afraid players would just start farming them. I do feel that EXALT should have gotten something better than lasers, like maybe magnetic weapons that were basically Laser weapons with a slight perk, much like how the Light Plasma Rifle is basically a Laser Rifle with bonus AIM. Also, yeah, hunting down EXALT can be tiring if you don't get lucky.

Robzilla
Jul 28, 2003

READ IT AND WEEP JEWBOY!
Fun Shoe

Segmentation Fault posted:

What anime is this from? Asking for a friend

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight, a :airquote:friend:airquote:

Cuntellectual
Aug 6, 2010
Long War question: What should my first MEC be?

Robzilla posted:

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight, a :airquote:friend:airquote:



:thejoke:

Brainamp
Sep 4, 2011

More Zen than Zenyatta

Segmentation Fault posted:

What anime is this from? Asking for a friend

http://bato.to/comic/_/comics/monster-musume-no-iru-nichijou-r4280


Alkydere posted:

I suspect the big reason EXALT never get plasma weapons is because Firaxis was afraid players would just start farming them. I do feel that EXALT should have gotten something better than lasers, like maybe magnetic weapons that were basically Laser weapons with a slight perk, much like how the Light Plasma Rifle is basically a Laser Rifle with bonus AIM. Also, yeah, hunting down EXALT can be tiring if you don't get lucky.

They're the midboss. They aren't really supposed to still be around when you're getting ready to gently caress up battleships and poo poo.

Pohl
Jan 28, 2005




In the future, please post shit with the sole purpose of antagonizing the person running this site. Thank you.

Nick Esasky posted:

is there a recommended place for jumping onto Beagles' latest playthroughs other than At The Beginning?

If not at the beginning, then after he gets a mech. This takes you all the way up to something like episode 109, however, so you miss a lot of the early game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAEjz8ZFzgQ


Robzilla posted:

Welp, I haven't touched my Long War game in over a month, I come back to it, start it up to continue my campaign, and it crashed to desktop.

Worked just fine last time I played it, unless windows updates hosed with something otherwise it looks like I'm reinstalling fresh. :ughh:

Have you tried restarting it? If anything updated at all, Long War will always crash the first time you start it.

Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem

Liu posted:

nah neural damping was trash in my opinion, 100% of the time when one of my dudes was mind controlled my response was to kill the controller on the next turn anyway (there wasn't a single instance where I couldn't do this, ever) so I'd rather deal damage to it because either way the result is the same, you lose the guy for one turn. I mean I imagine that's what everyone did when a dude is mind controlled so idk I guess if you played it differently then maybe damping was better for you.

The benefit of damping is the +20 psi-defence to help stop you getting mind controlled (or mindfrayed, or psi-paniced) in the first place.

Alkydere posted:

I agree with you on these. They're annoying and not much else unless you have them active while you're fighting something else. Then they're amazing (i.e. infuriating and dangerous) enemies not because of their own danger, but because of how easily they can potentially cause a stable situation to spiral out of control. I feel their biggest downside is merely that they only come in pairs with themselves. If you instead saw them hanging out as part of another alien squad (3 floaters and a Seeker), then they'd be much more dangerous.

Having mixed pods with seekers + other stuff was definitely one of Long War's better decisions.

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Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010


Ignore my posts!
I'm aggressively wrong about everything!

RickDaedalus posted:

So besides Beagle, are there any other good XCOM playthroughs?

Jade Star just wrapped up his Commander's Guide over in the LP subforum, a Classic/faux-Ironman (his computer troubles are legendary enough that Ironman is a bad idea, but he's not save scumming), which is a pretty decent 'how to XCOM' tutorial. He spends a lot of the early-game going over how to play safely and smartly, not falling into traps, the pros and cons of the various skill choices. The idea was more doing it as a Classic difficulty tutorial, making it not seem so intimidating, and he does pretty well at that.

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