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Furism posted:Not a big fan of the Avatar Project thing. I hate time limits and that's apparently what it is. I realize it was possible to delay a little bit too much in XCOM1, just rack in XP to get the best possible squad for the Temple Ship, but that was also kind of cool. We'll see how it turns out, but having to beat the alien clock doesn't super fun to me. I'm sure there will be mods to take it out. I'm also sure it would utterly break the game. I mean it's basically the standard roguelike mechanic of a hunger timer or Spelunky's ghost. It's the necessary pressure to make decisions in the game dangerous and meaningful.
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Jan 29, 2016 11:55
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Zaphod42 posted:That is how US Capitalism is supposed to work, but US Congressmen who are corrupt as gently caress and willing to sell state-sponsored monopolies kinda fucks everything up. Yeah, basically the free market in the US translates to 'pro-Business' politicians bending over backwards to support their lobbyists and prevent any competition from emerging. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/01/who-wants-competition-big-cable-tries-outlawing-municipal-broadband-in-kansas/ Fangz fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Jan 29, 2016 |
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Jan 29, 2016 22:02
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I kinda wonder whether victory will really mean victory here. Like I can see an ending where you've ended Project Avatar or whatever and there's widespread revolts throughout the world, and the Advent leadership is dead... but there's still millions upon millions of aliens still occupying the globe, and you've only dealt a temporary setback to their plans.
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Jan 29, 2016 23:25
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Hopefully there will be dogs in XCOM3. Or maybe someone can mod dogs into 2?
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Jan 29, 2016 23:36
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CrazyLoon posted:Taking in the symbolism of the sectoid head logo, whose human heads turn into skeletons, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say...yeah, anything's better than the human race going extinct lol. Suure, believe in that XCOM propaganda tape why don't you.
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Jan 30, 2016 00:06
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Furnaceface posted:I have managed to keep hype level to minimum. Do you like the Mass Effect 3 combat system? It's basically a lot like that. It's a decent game, though the story and art direction is kinda blah.
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Jan 30, 2016 03:30
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:It's worth remembering that when they first revealed the bureau it was just straight up called XCOM, and when some executive/marketer was asked why they were making a shooter out of that IP, they basically said that no one wanted to play turn-based games. I'm not sure if Enemy Unknown had even been greenlit at that time. Nah, Enemy Unknown, or rather the general idea of a Firaxis XCOM game had been in the works since 2003, years before Bureau. Basically that game went through a ton of iterations and many large changes, only coalescing into a final design around about 2008. If you wanna call Bureau development hell, Enemy Unknown was at least Purgatory. Basically I think that the 2k guy made what he thought was the reasonable call at the time - it was unclear whether the Firaxis XCOM was ever going to come out, 2k Marin seemed a surer bet due to their experience with Bioshock 2 (which I think is the best Bioshock game), and lest we forget this was around about the time of the big surge in tactical ability based FPS games. Jake Solomon was a nobody whose only experience was with Civ Rev. http://www.civilizationrevolution.com/podcasts/podcast_2_transcript.html quote:Jake Solomon: Yeah I second that. I’m Jake Solomon, I’m a junior programmer and I do whatever Sid tells me to because he’s vicious. If you do not obey.
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Jan 30, 2016 17:56
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Alkydere posted:It was also made at a weird time in Firaxis's life. There was a few years around the release of Civ V where Firaxis tried to go all EA and I wouldn't be surprised if the Bureau/FPS-COM was thought up and spat out due to much of the thinking that was going on in the shop at that time. "We're just gonna dump the game on people, ignore their complaints, and then nickel and dime them to death with DLC content packs instead of making actual expansions." By the time EU did come out Firaxis was pulling out of that state of utter contempt for their customers as they realized it really didn't work for them, but you could still see a few traces of that old thinking with the Zhang DLC questline. Uhh. Firaxis != 2K. And seriously, these stories about those eeevil publishers never fail to be hilariously inaccurate to how things really work.
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Jan 30, 2016 18:41
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Coolguye posted:it's hard to argue that slingshot fit in really awkwardly into the main game, since council missions were used as a panic valve in the earlier plays of the game, and zhang violated some basic tenets of the game by overshadowing your gi joes. if you liked it that's cool but it's basically an objective fact that there was some serious tonal dissonance. Yeah but it's really a false dichotomy. From a management viewpoint basically the role of this stuff is to have parts of the studio doing things and producing a revenue source from the more committed players, and to keep folks playing the game, while the larger expansions are slowly being made. I find it implausible that Enemy Within would have gotten out any faster if Slingshot didn't happen, and ditto in the case of Civ 5's expansions.
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Jan 30, 2016 19:16
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Pigeon guns confirmed.
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Jan 30, 2016 20:03
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Large filesizes these days usually are either video cutscenes or audio. I'm guessing here it's the latter. Lots of voices in different languages.
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Jan 31, 2016 00:16
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Trilin posted:I just bought it and started on a whim and so far its kinda tedious. Enemies are bullet sponges and your teammates don't seem that useful. That's because flanking is super important. While it looks like you can just shoot a guy whose head is poking out of cover, the system reads him as being in cover and applies a massive penalty to your attacks making it take ages and ages to kill him. Meanwhile if you go flank the dude, you get massive attack bonuses. The difference is something like a 10x damage difference between flanked and in full cover. Your teammates are really great once you understand what their schtick is. For example the scout class has an ability that one-shots any standard enemy, and he can cloak, go behind the enemy, call in an artillery strike on them, then kill whatever's left really rapidly. There's others that summons turrets that pin enemies in place, ones that boost your damage, and so on and so forth. Fangz fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Jan 31, 2016 |
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Jan 31, 2016 18:36
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Junpei posted:Why can't someone just give Beagle, Chris, or another well-know XCOM fan an early (full) copy? I'm so excited my hands and feet are shaking. Makes typing on a smartphone really hard! Try to calm down.
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Feb 1, 2016 01:19
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I do hope the strategy layer is moddable enough to do ADVENT: the alien collaboration simulator.
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Feb 1, 2016 05:18
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Colapops posted:I'm torn between staying a virgin and watching Beagle's stream. That's a weird fetish.
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Feb 1, 2016 14:33
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What is actually the mechanic whereby researches become instant? What triggers it?
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Feb 6, 2016 00:54
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Neddy Seagoon posted:You need them for Plated Armor, and they vanish from the enemy roster FAST. Fffuck, how much have I screwed myself here?
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Feb 6, 2016 14:29
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Neddy Seagoon posted:By the time Advanced Troopers turn up, you're hitting Powered Armor though. They also only turn up as Reinforcements, which you'll almost never see in any situation where you have the chance to grab their corpses and bring'em home. Hah. I'm fighting Advanced Troopers in Kevlar.
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Feb 6, 2016 14:51
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Phew just completed my first game on Commander difficulty. What a great, stressful game. (Some savescumming towards the end, I'm afraid. What can I say, I got a bit tired/hasty...) MVPs: Demo, a grenadier who rolled *rapid fire*. You can imagine how much fun this is with shredder, holotargetting, and some plus aim. Cowboy was ironically my rifle sniper. Killzone was incredible as an initiator from concealment, also rolled Hail of Bullets, which curiously allowed him to move and fire (at 100% accuracy too) with the rifle. Albeit not with squad sight. Freak was my unfortunately named psi trooper. Holy crap guys psi is amazing. Special tip - null lances penetrate but do not harm walls. This rocks about as much as you think.
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Feb 9, 2016 09:10
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Tenzarin posted:This works on timed missions you just have to get near your target. The AI cheats and will almost always move towards you unless its stuck. This is just confirmation bias. Multiple times I've ended up chasing AI halfway across the map just trying to set up overwatch traps. The AI follows a random patrol path, that is all. Once you get better abilities, many of your characters end up with better things to do than a concealed overwatch, anyway. Setting your entire team to over watch is too slow, also.
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Feb 9, 2016 09:15
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Tenzarin posted:Go into a map, sneak around a group. Then on your turn move one guy away and overwatch. They will follow him where ever he moves. Nope. Dude, I've played this game.
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Feb 9, 2016 09:18
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victrix posted:If you heal a dude to full during a mission, does that have any bearing on the severity of post battle wounds, or is it totally random once wounded period? Just wondering if I should waste time with unnecessary heals or not. I believe recovery time is based on the minimum level your HP reached, so no, healing like that won't help.
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Feb 9, 2016 09:23
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Obviously the sequel to XCOM 2 is gonna be Pacific Rim.
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Feb 9, 2016 17:38
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It seems trivially easy to check the flashbang thing - flashbang your own guys and see what happens. Or if you think there's a different version of the flashbang effect, try and mind control a flashbanged AI unit. Or run it in multiplayer, why not.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:03
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sighnoceros posted:What does everyone think about Combat Protocol? I used it pretty effectively in my first (abandoned) campaign, nice to finish off a near dead enemy or clear an overwatch preventing you from moving to a good flanking position. I didn't even upgrade my gremlin but I imagine it doesn't get too strong. Is giving up Medical Protocol worth it? Maybe only if you're going to run 2 specialists on your team? I wish it worked like the other gremlin abilities and didn't end your turn. I tend to go for combat protocol instead of medical, since my main thoughts on tactics is 'don't get hit, and then you don't need to heal'. Combat protocol does scale as you upgrade your gremlin, towards the end it does I think 6 dam, increasing to 10-12 vs mechanical enemies. My late game specialists are mainly there to use haywire protocol. On the other hand, I saved one mission by chaining stabilisation protocol into revival protocol, which let my downed sharpshooter get up and kill a bunch of enemies and a gatekeeper, so there's that I guess. EDIT: For those posters who wonder where all their luck for hacking went, it's me, I got it all. Fangz fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Feb 9, 2016 |
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Feb 9, 2016 20:36
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Broken Cog posted:Welp, I think I'm gonna take a break. I just lost a mission because a reinforcement deployment got called down in the middle of my group, and Every. Single. Shot. missed. I set up overwatch with all my guys first, every one of those missed. Then I used a grenade first move next turn to blow up their cover, and take flanking shots on the enemies. Every single of those flanking shots missed, at 75-90% hit chance each. Bring a memetic beacon.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:44
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Broken Cog posted:This is early in the campaign, I don't have that yet. I don't really know what you have so it's hard to say what you should have done instead (If you had grenades on your other dudes and we are talking about basic stun lancers, you should have strongly considered using a second grenade to kill that group), but it sounds like you were reliant on 2 out of 3-5 shots hitting, and even at 75-90% odds that isn't a safe assumption to make. Don't forget that stun lancers have dodge also, so your actual chances of killing those dudes is lower than that, even. EDIT: Not saying you weren't unlucky, but you should have adjusted your plan once it becomes increasingly unlikely it would work. I mean if you are down to one last trooper trying to make an unreliable shot that would hopefully kill one of two enemies, and your first instinct is to take the shot, STOP AND THINK. Fangz fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Feb 9, 2016 |
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Feb 9, 2016 20:54
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Dr Christmas posted:I love how Secotopods will demolish walls walking around even if you're in an ADVENT facility and you haven't come out of concealment yet. Advent are job creators.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:57
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Substandard posted:So I started on commander yesterday after beating Veteran the day before. I didn't actually realise you got reinforcements in that, and from what everyone said about it I was terrified of being overwhelmed by dozens of enemies, so I ended up rushing the objective and did it with about 5 enemies killed.
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Feb 9, 2016 21:03
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RBA Starblade posted:I thought I crawled along in EU but I've barely changed my tactics in XCOM 2 at all besides ignoring sniper rifles for the most part and I'm completing things with plenty of time to spare. The only times I didn't were in mass missing sprees. I don't know what people are doing (on Veteran at least) that they keep hitting the timer limit. Yeah my average 'turns left on time limit' was over 3. On Commander. I had plenty of time. Maybe people are overusing overwatch/not making use of concealed ranger scouts? The Avatar track is a non-issue when you realise how it works. In particular, when the aliens make progress, that progress is assigned to one of the existing facilities on the world map. You can see this in how many pips are beneath each facility. When you take out the facility, those progress pips are deducted from the avatar progress bar Just keep hitting the facilities with the most pips and you'll have no problems.
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Feb 9, 2016 22:04
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Fintilgin posted:I'm kinda thinking XCOM should have left the Commander in the tank because it would be more damaging to ADVENTs strategic skill then taking him out. Yeah but have you seen how bad Bradford's commanding is??? He loses all but one of his operatives on literally every mission! Still it'll be funny if now this means that for XCOM 3 it'll be 'XCOM failed, again'. Good job player base.
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Feb 9, 2016 22:08
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Captain Magic posted:Operation Blood Wagon has by far been my favorite mission name. I liked Operation Unholy Rhyme. Operation Frozen Misery was also portentous for how much of a clusterfuck that turned into.
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Feb 9, 2016 22:11
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Fintilgin posted:I could actually see them adding extra turns on the timer for the first two difficulty. I think they could even add a bunch of turns, like +50% or even double them, and not really make the game particularly easier. The problem is that the difficulty curve is already pretty steep, and making the easier difficulties even easier would make it steeper still and harder for players to get up to the next tier. You can reach the point where the easier difficulties are just failing to train players to be ready for the higher difficulties. The solution is probably to have a better tutorial that walks you through how to move speedily through a level. OddObserver posted:It's kinda overly intimidating early on (as it takes a bunch of communication setup to be able to do that first mission), though --- and then almost a non-factor later. Feels like it maybe should have been other at around. Yeah but it'd probably suck to lose a campaign 30 hours into it because of the Doom track.
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Feb 9, 2016 22:32
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SniperWoreConverse posted:Also, questions about engineers and workshops: you staff an actual guy there and that guy operates 2 drones who can go to whatever building you pick next door, right? Then maybe upgrade it so two engineers operate 4 gremlins altogether? How many engineers can be jammed into a com relay, two or one? It's correct to guess that psi lab only takes one soldier at a time and nothing else? Most facilities can take an engineer, actually. The only ones that don't are, I think, Guerilla Training School, Shadow Chamber, and Laboratory.
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Feb 9, 2016 23:04
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RBA Starblade posted:Ok this retaliation mission is bullshit. The map is five sprints long, so that's five turns that civvies die. On top of that they're running from me, so they're running and killing so I can't loving catch up. Not really? The AI randomly picks which civvie to attack, so the chances are they'll run out of unrevealed civvies in the area you can't get to and have to stop killing. Your scenario would only really happen if the AI kills the civvies closest to you first so you can't get to any.
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Feb 9, 2016 23:10
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Rookersh posted:To bring this back around to XCOM, for those who have beaten the game, in one of the earlier streams they mentioned the Earth governments make a return/become important again at some point in the story. Is that true? A simple y/n works for me. Not really.
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Feb 9, 2016 23:12
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RBA Starblade posted:The other units had 100% to hit, so I think I can in this case. Also it's usually about 70 for the guy. And he gets one shot. They just seem strictly inferior with how XCOM2 operates, and with how fun Gunslingers are. I would say that they are really useful in the final mission, though.
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Feb 9, 2016 23:19
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Ciaphas posted:Teach me how to play aggressively, in the name of beating ~The Timers~, as an EU/EW player. Do you take half cover? Walk into fog to get a flank? Skip medkits and healing/support perks in favor of damage perks? Dash more? It's not really what I can boil down into a simple post, but I'd say the key part is to have a ranger with phantom or conceal or preferably both. Don't wait too long to spring your first ambush, and after you deal with it have your scout be concealed and try and use both her moves (not together) to find the enemy and get into a position where they aren't uncovered. The rest of your squad can then dash-move up, following behind her, thus moving pretty quickly. Try and open engagements with the one-two combo of a Killzone sniper and a long range grenade (especially an experimental one that applies debuffs) from a grenadier, both staying out of the enemy's line of sight, then mop up with the rest of your squad advancing at the same time. If you have multiple concealment users, only have one be concealed at a time. Once you get mind control, you can also scout with a controlled enemy. EDIT: If you have a spider suit, use that on your scout to extend their movement, though keep aware that LOS is finicky on roofs. Try and stick to fairly open areas with low cover - this ensures you'll see them before they see you. Give the scout a mimic beacon to save their bacon if things go sour. Fangz fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Feb 10, 2016 |
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Feb 10, 2016 01:23
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ZoninSilver posted:Someone tried to figure out what ADVENT are saying in combat and I'm literally 12 years old again: This is perfect.
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Feb 10, 2016 12:20
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Musluk posted:The only useless thing is probably the aim bonus on hunker down from snipers. Rest, you can always find an use for. I got run&gun on my 'nadier, and even with salvo there are times when you can utilize it to move around AND then go introduce advent to a hiex nade. You say that, but combo that with deep cover....
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Feb 10, 2016 15:12
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