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MisterBibs posted:I make hard decisions in real life. In games, I'm the Player, and the only reason to be given only lovely options is to find the other option that isn't lovely. You can always play on recruit.
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Feb 6, 2016 06:17
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K8.0 posted:You fix bad core mechanics by entirely replacing them, not with lovely bandaids. Most of the things that would've "fixed" it would have harmed any kind of aggression in gameplay further or simply been arbitrary, moreso than the clock.
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Feb 7, 2016 05:33
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AlternateAccount posted:Yeah. I would enjoy the option of either sneaking to the objective and fighting our way out or blasting our way in, etc. Maybe some missions just become really easy and straightforward if you sneak in, grab the thing and then extract out from popping smoke while under fire. I don't think this game is really that much of a stealth game.
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Feb 7, 2016 05:42
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K8.0 posted:That's my point. The entire design of the combat system is trash and should have been thrown out. They could have made a game that was both deeper and more cinematic by moving away from discrete turns to a system where actions take time, and away from a cover system with bonuses/penalties to having actual projectiles and collision detection, but they just made more of the same crap. I really wanted to like the first game and I want to like this one, but the mechanics are just... bad. The original xcom had even dumber mechanics than the modern one does because you could pretty much just set up a firing line and have one guy borg-spot the aliens while the rest of your guys with explosive or plasma weapons just wreck whatever pops up. The "actual projectiles" and collision detection didn't add much at all. At least the modern xcom makes you actually maneuver your men for LOS when they shoot.
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Feb 7, 2016 05:49
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SlayVus posted:If I equip a unit with special ammo, like Venom Rounds, will I lose that after the mission? Not unless they die and you don't recover them.
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Feb 7, 2016 05:52
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K8.0 posted:I'm not talking about an AP system OR a system where you execute over a fixed chunk of time. I'm talking about a kind of system a bunch of smaller games have used, where actions take actual time, everything gets executed simultaneously, and you essentially get a "turn" whenever someone finishes what they're doing or something interesting happens. There have been some very fun games (most notably Brigade E5) that involved this system, but they've all had bad interfaces and really bad non-combat systems. An actual big budget game based on that kind of system would be a smash hit even bigger than EU was. So, I played Brigade E5, and that system is clunky as gently caress, especially when you're trying to have more than one or two people move and do things at once. It sounds really cool until you actually try to play it and do things other than set people up in a spot and have them shoot at what they see and it's an absolute clunky mess of tiny turns and things happening that make OG X-com's shots out of the blue seem utterly fair. APs at least give you a chance to do a bunch of things at once in some kind of manageable sequence, Brigade E5's and the other russian games of its ilk.. hahahaha. Wizard Styles posted:
Yeah, I think the procedural development of the levels makes this game a lot buggier than it has to be, especially in some of the timed missions where you reaaaally have to hustle. Sometimes the game gives you some poo poo. The difficulty is a lot more erratic. Panzeh fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Feb 7, 2016 |
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Feb 7, 2016 06:06
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at people crying about time limits in Steam reviews, that poo poo is a gold mine.
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Ciaphas posted:My Hot Take on Timers: The way the AI handles the procedural levels leaves a lot to be desired as well. I'm not gonna say the timers are perfectly calibrated, though.
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Feb 7, 2016 06:16
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K8.0 posted:Like I said, they have extremely bad UI design. It's actually not hard at all to do that stuff in BE5 if you understand the UI, but it's really bad and makes things harder than they should be. All the system needs to fix the issue you're talking about is one button that puts you in a "planning" mode where you can give multiple soldiers different orders and they automatically delay to sync with the slowest action. You could fix the UI but it wouldn't change the fact that you'd have to pause every half a second to deal with the fact that your enemies did something that needs your attention right now. It's very similar to the infinity engine except where infinity engine characters are fantasy dudes who have long animations and big epic battles where everyone takes a hit, Brigade E5 and that sort of system are twenty-second battles that end up taking an hour because everyone takes very few shots to kill and you can't afford any kind of mistake and the mistakes will be myriad because you don't have the easy analysis of discrete turns. The infinity engine games still don't handle more than 3-4 controlled characters well anyway and playing optimally is still a massive pause-fest. Frozen Synapse is fun but it's its own game and is designed around its particular foibles. It's hardly the perfect successor to turn based strategy.
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Feb 7, 2016 06:33
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LibbyM posted:My ranger usually ends up on top damage done and highest kills per turn. I don't think you'd run 2 of them anymore (Like I would have with assaults), but the rangers' astounding ability to completely clean up a battlefield is way to useful to call them a liability. Rangers are also really useful for sussing out pods up ahead and also doing objectives while the advent dudes are distracted.
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Feb 7, 2016 06:37
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Space Hamlet posted:This is the most obnoxious armchair game designer stuff I've seen in ages, dude! I'm sorry XCOM 2 isn't the totally different game you wanna play, maybe that game would be totally sweet, but all you're proving by harping on it is that you're a dork Turn based games are obsolete, son. Welcome.. to 2003.
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Feb 7, 2016 06:41
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I think the game could do well to tone down the injury timers. I know you can pay to mitigate it but it should probably be a bit more optional to have to do that.
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Feb 8, 2016 12:30
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I kinda dig what they're going for in LW2, though I think they could serve to lighten up the mission timers for loud missions.
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Jan 21, 2017 17:31
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jfood posted:It's so this. I could roll with 'Sneaky Pete' or 'Non-verbal Kent' but Shinobi just broke my will to play the class. Just think of shinobi as these guys and it works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WPDDZyzvxo
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Jan 22, 2017 12:56
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I think armor is way too expensive given the game's current rate of giving you supplies. 35 supplies is really high when you need to end up buying 20+ sets.
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Jan 26, 2017 11:27
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High aim prospects are better off being rangers than sharpshooters. If you can get a favorable AWC ability they can absolutely dominate.
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Jan 26, 2017 14:53
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jfood posted:Tactical Suppressors an ability that's found on some of the classes in the game, so it'll require a little ini changing to not wind up with redundant skills. Or just don't use suppressors on those characters, I guess. I think these mods are made by people wanting easy mode.
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Jan 27, 2017 12:45
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Maluco Marinero posted:I think it's not unreasonable to expect the game to show some logical consistency, the games rules are being presented/communicated in one way, and then the assumed consistency is being broken. The original wasn't much of a simulation, either- TUs and the reaction fire didn't really give any sane tactical choices, and it never really ended up that deep. The 'sim' aspects of the geoscape in original was, uh, I guess you always end up building laser cannons and being a massive arms dealer to make a bunch of money which becomes meaningless anyway. Also I just want to say the enemies being able to drop reinforcements wherever they want AND THEN SHOOT is loving stupid. I had a guy die to that, where an advent MEC dropped in a reinforcement pod in a flanking position and one-shotted one of my two remaining people. Welp. Literally nothing I could do about it. Panzeh fucked around with this message at 13:18 on Jan 29, 2017 |
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Jan 29, 2017 13:15
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Lunethex posted:Reinforcements shooting upon landing is a bug that was hotfixed. Did you download from the Nexus? That hotfix isn't there according to the devs. I was playing yesterday but maybe the update didn't take. Odd, because I was getting the flamethrower stepout behavior(I think).
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Jan 29, 2017 13:33
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I heard john de lancie in the voices but I didn't realize that basically the rest of the Star Trek TNG cast did voices in it too.
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Sep 4, 2017 18:22
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I like how it's rocking- instead of carefully making sure it's xcom vs 1 pod in a big map where pods just kinda wander in, it's a bunch of xcom vs 1 pod fights which is by far the best part of the game. Managing pods on huge maps is the weakest part of xcom so it works well.
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Apr 25, 2020 01:18
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Been playing x-com files(an openxcom mod) and i do kinda enjoy the feeling of prequel x-com it gives though you fight a ton of cultists and random giant animals lol. Also, OG X-com's battlescape has a lot of awful mechanics and reminds me a lot of how arbitrary it can be when you don't smoke the hell out of everything. the new games geoscape is not good at all but i can definitely see the mechanical improvements in the newer games.
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Jun 6, 2020 20:19
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x-com files has this real slog portion during the alien invasion part of the game where the only way to progress tech is to research leaders and engineers over and over until you get the techs to get advanced craft and plasma weapons
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Jun 21, 2020 21:56
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Just finished a run of x-com '94. gently caress psionics, especially etherials. Blaster bombs are annoying, too, but really, gently caress psionics.
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Jul 19, 2020 01:47
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Icon Of Sin posted:I hated that they could go up lifts with zero issues, until I realized that: Yeah my main problem is that the engineers would shoot their blaster bombs in the elerium storage bays of bases because part of the calculation where the AI will decide to use an explosive is a check for how many units they'll get in the blast and they include themselves. Oof. The funny thing is how you can just one-arm the blaster launcher and have a heavy plasma in the other hand with no penalty. That's fun. Even rookies can use the blaster launcher(just make sure they drop it at the end of the turn) I'm doing mods now and some of them are kinda nuts. Getting huge points and an important tech gate by cleaning out a mansion full of nazis. xpiratez has some dumb aspects and is fairly NSFW but it is also sometimes very satisfying
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Jul 28, 2020 12:43
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 This is fine
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Jul 30, 2020 00:14
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Coolguye posted:i was gonna say it actually does look fine and then i saw the civilians nearby and well you are definitely losing those guys I had an enemy with a nuke mortar go into an inferno, ext turn go berserk from the morale hit from being on fire and nuke six of his own teammates(the nuke mortar has a 28 tile blast radius). It's probably one of the easiest ways to get squad wiped if you're trying to tackle supply ships.  Just cleanin' out a house full of nazis Panzeh fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Jul 30, 2020 |
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Jul 30, 2020 12:53
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Serephina posted:I'm fairly sure it does? Been ages since I tested it however. I've just left it off with the snipping thing i use
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Aug 2, 2020 10:54
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 Time to try a more straightforward mod with less of xpiratez' tech spaghetti-  Oh, alright then, hardmode expansion, i get it. (For those unaware, this is an alien base on day 17 of the game)
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Aug 5, 2020 23:12
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Rynoto posted:Depending on which aliens are inhabiting the base anywhere from a Barge to a Battleship in difficulty. Usually have a ton of enemies and the goal to destroy the command center (or kill all aliens). Yep. If you don't kill the base, it will cause increased alien activity which dings your score quite a bit, as well as the base itself hitting your score. The base itself in superhuman is basically a big battleship but your squad begins split in two parts which makes it significantly harder. So, in hardmode expansion, it's scripted to give you a base in the first month because you actually need loot from the base attack to get alien containment and lasers. Thankfully, it's guaranteed to give you a floater base(floaters are the easiest alien type in x-com '94) but still, doing a base with human weapons is not fun. In normal X-com you can research lasers from the start and plasma weapons basically as soon as you get them so you can be at the top tier of weapons in two months, but in hardmode expansion it's a long way to lasers, much less plasma weapons.
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Aug 6, 2020 01:16
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The Cheshire Cat posted:This is the trajectory for both XCOM 1 and 2 really. 2 I think has a smoother curve but they are still very front-loaded with difficulty and once you get enough high rank troops you have essentially won. None of the new aliens they throw at you in the late game are really much of a threat to a team of colonels. It's the same in UFO defense though if you don't want to do weapon-dropping protocol to nerf the effect of enemy psionics you have to pretty ruthlessly screen low psi strength soldiers because psionics in ufo defense is not a particularly well thought out mechanic and as soon as they get sight on any of your guys they will spam psionics on them from wherever they are. Basically the most arbitrary dynamics of gollop's original design are the only way the game has to get at a decent player with power suits, hover tanks, and blaster bombs.
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Aug 9, 2020 21:50
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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EXALT in x-com files are a really easy cult to fight right p to the point where the assholes with grenade launchers show up and ruin your day. The Red Dawn/Dagon idiots with dynamite are a problem but their range is quite low.
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Oct 14, 2020 15:38
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Hollandia posted:Just finished XCOM 2 vanilla, then Chimera, then found a flash sale on Humble for War of the Chosen so it's right back into X2. I had to stun 26 alien engineers, 20 leaders, and 3 commanders and research them all to get plasma weapons in xcom files.
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Oct 17, 2020 12:12
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Hollandia posted:
To be fair, xcom files has much less random tech gating than xpiratez does, but the one part where it's there, it's huge.
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Oct 17, 2020 12:40
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