The XCOM Thread: HOW DOES SNEK KICK DOOR?!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The XCOM Thread: HOW DOES SNEK KICK DOOR?!

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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.

Torrannor posted:

I hope so, although the Grenadiers Blast Armor did nothing against exploding cars in one of Beagle's streams.

To be fair, that was an earlier build. That might have been fixed since then.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2016 07:14

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 10:32

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.

Speedball posted:

It was in development at least as long as the Bureau was but for some drat reason 2K decided that Bureau was the big-money project everyone would be excited about and so only advertised it at first while Firaxis' strategy game was kept hush-hush until only a year before it came out.

It was a strange and stupid year for games. And not the first time a beloved strategy game got replaced by a first person shooter (they also did that with Syndicate).

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.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2016 18:37

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.

Fangz posted:

Uhh.

Firaxis != 2K.

And seriously, these stories about those eeevil publishers never fail to be hilariously inaccurate to how things really work.

Firaxis still made Civ V. 2K published it. And I'm not saying they were eeevil, I'm saying they had a period of a few years where they tried a marketing and community management model that really doesn't work for a smaller developer like Firaxis, likely because of a mixture of inexperience and perhaps 2K leaning on them. I wouldn't be surprised if the reason Civ V got like a dozen 1-2 Civ DLCs was partly because the devs went "Wait, we can just do this now since everything's got online connectivity! This is really cool!" and didn't realize how much it would annoy the fans when you're tossing out Ghenghis Khan instead of visibly working on a proper expansion to flesh out the game and try to fix some of the deep rooted mechanical issues with the vanilla game itself. Mixed with Firaxis's traditional incredibly slow and long cycles on patches, it really did create a view of the developers really snobbing and disregarding their customers. It's why Firaxis tries so hard to be interactive with their fanbase these days.

And also the backlash over Slingshot was very much why the second mission DLC set, Progeny, was bundled into Enemy Within.

Exposure posted:

Without touching that whole "is DLC evil?" thing, I have an image I think you need to see:

I'm not saying DLC is inherently evil. I'm comparing Firaxis's days when they shat out almost horse-armor quality stuff like Slingshot (Hey, let's gently caress up our game's progression with three stale missions and a boring guy you can't even play dress up with) and single-civ DLC for Civ V in near-total silence compared to today where they put effort into massive updates and actively communicate with their fan community.

Alkydere fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Jan 30, 2016

# ¿ Jan 30, 2016 18:49

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.

Junpei posted:

Yeah, if that's his good mood I'd hate to see his bad mood.

Watch his LPs. His good moods generally involve doing grievous bodily harm to near-endless waves of poncy-space elves. Or being an all around horrible person in Dishonored.

(they're also really good LPs)

# ¿ Feb 1, 2016 02:36

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.

Junpei posted:

Andromedons scare me a little.
Also, we need a way to differentiate "killing the driver" and "killing the suit".

Has one been seen on a Beagle stream so we can figure out how it works? As much as I've desperately wanted to watch more of his streams I've been avoiding them to avoid being too spoiled on enemies (Glad I saw teh Advent Memorial Honor Guard one at least though :v:

). Mainly I'm mostly just curious if it acts as biological until you kill it and the suit takes over, where it becomes a new mechanical unit? Or is it some sort of alien MEC or what have you?

Either way, it sounds like at some point it's gonna be either vulnerable to hacking, mind control or both.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2016 06:29

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.

Exposure posted:

From a ChristopherOdd video did on late-game enemies, it's vulnerable to both mind control and hacking, and basically needs to be killed twice, though it seems to act as a mechanical berserker once the pilot has been killed.

Cool!

That was one enemy I was honestly curious about since I simply had no idea how it would work mechanically.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2016 06:37

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.

Lewd Mangabey posted:

Didn't see this posted yet -- According to Steam's automated countdown, XCOM 2 will unlock midnight between Thu/Fri (i.e. 38 hours from now). That time is for southern US, not sure about other regions.

Firaxis has developed a tradition of midnight releases. They're last two big releases (Beyond Earth and Rising Tide) were both midnight releases. I think Starships was as well, and that might as well be a tablet game.

So when Firaxis says the game comes out on "Friday the whatever" (they also do Friday releases now), Firaxis means you will be able to play that game starting Thursday Night and you really want to take that Friday off. :v:

year199X posted:

I paid $60 because I bought it off of steam like an idiot, too lazy to refund it and rebuy it off of GMG. I'm okay with giving Jake Solomon more of my money.

Ditto, a mixture of laziness and convenience, the fact I'm flush with cash after doing way too much overtime, and wanting to support Firaxis and their XCom digital cocaine cartel made me just pay full price on Steam. Between pre-ordering and not searching for a deal, I'm a horrible consumer and I know it.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2016 17:05

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.

Miftan posted:

Do they usually adjust for region? Or does it all usually unlock at 00:00 EST all over the world or something?

They adjust for region. It probably won't be exactly for your timezone but I remember BE and RT splitting the world up into 3-4 sections so someone new got their copy every 6-8 hours.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2016 17:08

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.

Miftan posted:

Fair enough. I live in GMT so there's a fair chance it'll be adjusted for that.

If you're available to play earlier/really need to get your fix sooner you might be able to set up a VPN and convince Steam that you just moved to Japan for 24 hours. Of course Steam seems to get wiser to that with every release (do NOT run Steam in online mode without the VPN activated until your actual unlock time has passed or the game will re-lock until you should get it normally).

# ¿ Feb 3, 2016 17:13

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.

Kanos posted:

It's primarily because explosives are 100% reliable and getting good at and consistently winning in the highest difficulties of strategy games is mostly a matter of minimizing risk.

Pretty much this. There's RNG everywhere in XCOM (and will be in XCOM 2). This isn't bad on its own since it's generally rather reasonably set up. However the enemy gets to roll more dice than the player. The player generally has better dice to roll, but the player needs to keep consistently winning the dice rolls, while the computer only needs to win one or two dice rolls to really screw over the player. Tossing grenades can either replace a potentially bad roll by damaging enemies directly, or improve multiple other rolls by removing cover.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2016 17:40

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.

Junpei posted:

New weapons, the Thunder tier, which balances less damage for a chain lightning effect.
Edit: This isn't a thing revealed, I want to mod it in.

The chain lightning effect "jumps to" (makes an aim roll against) a random target in range, with no check for friendly fire. So it can totally jump from Advent soldier to Bufftoid to Advent soldier to civilian to your critically wounded sniper to VIP and finally back to your Specialist who fired the weapon in the first place.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2016 05:00

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.

The Kins posted:

My favourite part of the thread so far is Americans being culturally unable to cope with the sheer horrifying concept of not being able to play a videogame before a country that historically has to wait six months extra to pay fifty bucks more.

As an Amurhican I find it amusing. Honestly this is how Firaxis has been doing its releases lately: Australia got both Beyond Earth and Rising Tides before us. Admittedly that might be considered a mixed blessing, but it's their new pattern. Honestly I find unlocking across the world over 12-24 hours far, far better than the BS we had before.

Anyways, struggling to free myself from a kitten on my lap to turn on my computer and put a Pectoid on the Barbie, mate.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2016 19:09

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.

So, quick hint when using Slash: Do not just hit the hotkey, it will give you a pre-determined path that might not be all that good. You can instead initiate a slash entirely via the movement cursor: move the movement cursor to the tile adjacent to your target that you desire your dude to stand on, then move the cursor onto the enemy's tile. The picture on the movement cursor will now display Slash's icon. Congratulations you have initiated a player-controlled Slash.

Also, I have had two panics when a soldier would, in response to the enemy moving, relocate to actually good cover and then return fire. :stare:

Oh, and if your dudes panic too much or take too much they get a temporary will drop that will apparently revert when they win a mission. Finally: there is now actually an animation for soldiers using medkits on themselves. No more spraying the location you were standing a moment ago. :v:

Alkydere fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Feb 4, 2016

# ¿ Feb 4, 2016 23:08

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.

TescoBag posted:

So what starting locations have you guys had out of curiosity?

Siberia, or "New Arctic" as the zone was called.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 04:13

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.

Broken Cog posted:

That's nice and all, but there's still 2 turrets, 2 shock lancers, and 2 sectoids standing close by that I have to get rid of first (First time I tried to rush it, the specialist just got panicked by the sectoids).
This is like the 4th or 5th missions btw, I'm not really far into the game.

A good idea I've found is to use grenades/explosives to blow a wall open to give your specialist LOS on the objective.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 05:12

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.

Right, sneaking all the way to the Black Site buliding without getting seen, slipping seamlessly through patrols like a ninja. Pile up on a door and open it and get seen by the MEC patrol inside because I had dudes out of cover.

Suddenly I'm surrounded on all sides by about 6 pods. I haven't lost anyone but one of my crew is mind controlled. This was a hilariously bad idea.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 05:17

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.

Speedball posted:

It seems that using stealth for anything but ambushing a pod is a bad idea.

Well, it's good for moving to distant objectives on non-story missions. When you've got to reach a self-destructing objective you can slip around a squad or two and save time by dashing like a motherfucker. But, yeah, on the Blacksite mission at least the Ambush really should be used to remove one or two squads and then fight your way forward so you can at least somewhat control what direction people are coming at you from.

Also, be careful around Advent cargo rigs. Their semis seem to operate much like the tanks on the previous game's army base map: they'll be on fire and you won't know until they suddenly explode. Lost 3/5 of my crew to the game basically going "explosions fall, everyone dies".

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 05:29

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.

VDay posted:

I'm not the only one getting weirdly long (like 2 mins+) load times right? At first I figured maybe it's just my lovely laptop but I'm playing off an SSD and loading a save from inside a mission takes like 5 secs. Is there just THAT much stuff that it's doing while it generates a mission/map?

Remember, the missions are being procedurally generated. So that takes some time.

Speedball posted:

Typically it's just proper aliens and ADVENT officers who drop loot now, right?

I've had grunts drop phat loot as well, so it's not just the higher ups. Though what you get does seem to be determined by who you shoot, so aliens are more likely to drop power cores.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 08:06

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.

Elderbean posted:

Any tips for the first blacksite?

Don't be an idiot like me and try to ninja the site. Use your ambush to remove a squad and then move forward, cutting a blood swathe. Also, be prepared for a long mission.

I snuck all the way up to the front door, got seen, and then I was surrounded on all sides by every pod on the map at once. :v:

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 08:14

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.

Insert name here posted:

I assume you got the "kill some poor sod with fall damage" achievement if you hadn't already there?

By the way, if the terrain under a turret looks destructible, lob a grenade at it. It seems that if they move at all they self destruct. :v:

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 08:55

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.

Welp, Vulture is an amazing skill to pick up from the Training School. From a single loot drop I got 2 scopes, a stock and a datapad.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 11:14

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.

Oh, jeeze, I really under-valued Workshops. I think I'll start building those earlier, if not first. It lets you turn one engineer into two, or three if you've got the spare supplies. You can only staff adjacent buildings but the Gremlins can fill any engineer slot, even rubble clearing.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 19:12

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.

LuiCypher posted:

I am going to be really scared if their MECs start running up to my troops and punching their faces clear into the next state like I used to do in EW.

Don't worry, Their MECs are heavy weapons platforms, basically Sectopods that don't make civvies run screaming. Now, the Mutons on the other hands are absolute dicks. Had one gank a dude through a wall

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 19:56

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.

Mr.Citrus posted:

I feel like the experimental round types are tons better than grenades on almost everyone except the grenadier. The fire and poison rounds effectively add two damage, as they add one damage on the attack then one on the enemies turn.

I prefer the poison rounds as there are lots of other methods for dealing with mech enemies. The randomness of the fire rounds in exchange for working on everything just doesn't seem worth it.

This means a rookie that hits a advent captain will routinely kill them in one turn, and always kill a grunt.

Grenades are for destroying cover. Taking them off removes the ability to destroy cover. It's a lot more of a balanced thing than you think. At least if you're not running with Medium armor that gives you two item slots, since the game doesn't let you equip a second grenade anyways.

RoboCicero posted:

I missed a 91% yesterday!

Love the game so far, but I am absolutely horrible at it. Was playing on the second-highest difficulty, but I'm going to have to restart my second game because I keep accidentally wounding / killing my promoted soldiers by mission 2, which usually means the rookies all die or go MIA on the VIP mission, and then I have a team of rookies for the fourth civilian panic mission (which is great and all up until the Faceless shows up and starts destroying cover and, in one memorable instance, critting a rookie for all of their blood).

I missed a 96% earlier today! :v:

Best part: it was literally my self insert.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 20:41

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.

Vib Rib posted:

Seconding both of these. I didn't use explosives much in XCOM1 because it would destroy all equipment AND the corpse. In this it just reduces (removes?) the chance for a weapon mod drop, but you still get the corpse.
Flashbangs have an enormous radius and disorientation is incredibly powerful. Plus it can drop mind control!

Yeah, both of these. Flashbangs got a huge loving buff, in addition to the general buffs to grenades. The only, ONLY nerf I can see grenades ever got is that you can no longer aim for individual pixels, having to aim along the grid. And that's still incredibly minor. Explode everything erry day.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 20:54

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.

Gunslinger snipers with experimental ammo are such bullshit. :allears:

Opened an ambush with Lightning Hands. Then used a normal pistol shot and finished with Face-Off. Between my sniper and the rest of the squad the entire enemy pod was either dead that round, or burned to death (Dragonsbreath rounds) the next round before their movement.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 22:24

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.

Klyith posted:

The Firaxis devs liked Long War, gave it much praise, even nabbed some ideas from Long War. But this is not Xcom: Long War 2.

If this game had a subtitle it would be "gently caress Your Cautious Play, Beaglerush"

Sub-Sub title: "And you too, Jadestar" going by his stream.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 22:59

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.

Good to know I wasn't loving up by the numbers as much as I thought with letting the Avatar project advance that far. My Avatar progress bar was one pip from completing when I finally, finally got the communications necessary to expand past the initial three sectors. :v:

I did notice that there's a couple of hidden ways to reduce the Avatar project progress as well. Dealing with the super happy funtimes that happen when you first Skulljack an officer will chop a pip off the bar.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 00:32

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.

Strobe posted:

If you guys are having trouble with turrets blow up the roof they're on. Falling damage destroys them instantly.

Note: this only works if it's on a roof that can be destroyed. Some roofs are harder than others. Of course if you're using a grenade, it's still one point of armor shredded even if you don't kill it.

Also, I find it hilarious that the Gas Grenade I got from the Proving Ground actually shreds armor.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 01:28

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.

The Elders/Ethereals are...Scrin? Does that mean as the rebel assholes XCOM is...Nod?

Peace through Power motherfucker! :black101:

(I need to make a Joe "Kane" Kucan soldier now...after I go have a snack and stare at something besides a screen for a few minutes).

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 03:49

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.

BigRed0427 posted:

Ok, this game is REALLY hard. You need a plan of attack and priorities laid out ahead of time or you sink.

I think it's more of the fact that it just doesn't let up, ever.. In the previous game you had a hump early on where you only had poo poo soldiers, no gear and no abilities. Once you got some Sergeants in your barracks and a few tools things just started to roll over. Later on you would run into a small handful of dangerous enemies (sectopods, douche disks, ethereals) surrounded by mountains of chaff.

In XCOM 2 every single loving enemy is a goddamned rear end in a top hat. And the moment you start getting the hang of one enemy, they introduce a new biggest douche, and then the douche bar is set higher again, and then you're getting entire pods of the previous "boss" enemies, and then you're getting elite ADVENT troopers that have giant piles of HP and armor (for the love of all that is good, get some Grenadiers with the Shredder skill, you will need them when you get Elite Shieldbearers with 4-5 armor points). And outside of the lower-health, non-elite versions no one really gets obsoleted, at least not quickly. Even at the point where I'm at Swoletoids are still dangerous just because they can make you lose turns.

The game isn't extremely hard at any one point so much as it's a marathon of near constant difficulty that wears you down.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 03:57

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.

Red Mundus posted:

Sectoid mind-control is making me feel conflicted. If we started with maybe 5 rookies it wouldn't be so bad but 3 squaddies with 1 mind-controlled is just really hard to counter.

Killing the sectoid is the obvious one but in some cases that can't be done quickly/efficiently and it can get annoying playing ring around the rosy with joe the mind controlled rookie.

I don't hate it but I think early sectoids should just be able to berserk soldiers and then after the first month or something give them mind control. It worked in the original xcom but that game relied on clown car tactics so it fit a little better early on there.

I would agree with you but there's a very easy counter for Swoletoids and their mental shenanigans:

Flashbangs. Flashbang a Swoletoid and not only will all of their mental shenanigans be disrupted (freeing mind controlled people and killing psi-zombies) but they won't be able to use their mental powers for another two turns

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 04:05

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.

Ciaphas posted:

Also, seriously, not having F1 to tell me what Disoriented or Marked or whatever actually loving do is really getting up my tits

Oh, good, I'm glad I'm not the only one who's noticed the utter lack of that screen.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 04:15

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.

Speedball posted:

Ugh, a Dark VIP mission. I have to either extract or assassinate this guy. He's surrounded by powerful enemies. What do I get for extracting him, more intel? Because I am tempted to just shoot him and book it.

I'm pretty sure the reward is more intel. That and watching your dude rifle-butt him.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 04:22

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.

Roobanguy posted:

im bummed out i chose the other skill instead of blademaster. i thought it would let you get a free attack after your first kill, but it just gives you another yellow move.

The stealth one is lousy on it's own. It's when you mix it with the next skill that gives you a fat boost to aim and crit when in stealth it comes into its own. Especially when mixed with a later ability to re-enter steatlh one time at-will. You basically have one "gently caress everything" attack stored in your back pocket.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 05:29

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.

CharlieFoxtrot posted:

So is the Advanced Warfare Center's ability only a chance to proc per promotion? Does staffing it affect that or should I be clearing it out when there are no wounded? (Which is like 1 day out of 30)

AWC will give every soldier 1 single random promotion on top of their stuff. It's quasi-retroactive, if you have promotions left you will get it eventually (provided you don't die :v:

). You don't get more than one, but hey it's free stuff/levels.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 06:03

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.

Kaincypher posted:

It's not terrible, it's just so drat prevalent. I liked the bomb missions on the previous game, just not for every single freakin' level. Even the terror missions are essentially timed (also like the first one), in that you lose civvies every turn till you lose the mission. Mix it up a bit more, give me nodes like the first game to extend the timer, something. My preferred method from the first game was to kill a squad or patrol, then re-load everyone and pull the squad back together so they aren't stretched from back-end sniper to the front scouting assault. This game simply doesn't allow it. Which I know makes sense thematically, but it just really limits the tactical options.

Yeah, I like them too but I will admit they also seem a bit too prevalent. They do the job well but they're also the major objective to deal with.

Ciaphas posted:

Grenadiers in this game are like squadsight Snipers in the last game: utterly insanely valuable

Though due to the time pressure in this game, proper Snipers aren't nearly as good as before sadly. Gunslinger Snipers are absolutely brutal, and Medical Specialists are lifesavers.

It also helps that Grenadiers actually have decent AIM growth unlike the previous game's Heavies.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 06:37

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.

CharlieFoxtrot posted:

Building a workshop first in the top center slot seems like a good deal; it helps clear your base out faster and will let you staff more rooms quickly.

The black market seems like a trap. There doesn't seem to be any no-brainer items to sell anymore, am I wrong? And it sounds like intel is crucial for expansion so I shouldn't give it away lightly.

The Black Market is only really a trap if you a) completely deplete your supply of one thing or another or b) visit too often (since it does take time to travel there). You really want to keep a stock of corpses around since almost all of them are used for something useful. Otherwise, the Black Market has some good deals in it, including trading intel for a large cache of supplies. And unless you're planning to expand, spending intel at the Black Market is just fine since there's only so many ways to spend it.

Also, what psi-trooper abilities have y'all gotten? I got a really neat mix myself: the guaranteed psi-damage one (no chance to dodge or whatever...but I think that's default), Insanity, the skill that gives Insanity damage...and the skill that lets the psi-trooper heal himself for half of the damage he does using any abilities.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 06:49

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.

Fister Roboto posted:

Apparently any damage you take causes wounding, no matter how much bonus health you have. Seems like a really bad decision.

There's a reason my AWS has an ~~engineer~~ gremlin in it at all times. Otherwise those medbay times really add up.

Also, seriously build your workshop in your top-center spot first. Speeds up poo poo so fast when you have 1 engi acting as two.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 06:56

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 10:32

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.

Harrow posted:

I'm having a hard time imagining how I could not lose a soldier in the situation I was in. Nobody could hit the loving thing and eventually it got close enough to one-shot my only Grenadier.

I've managed to not lose a single one to Faceless either. They're big, imposing and they've got quite a bit of HP when you see them, but their swipe only does 3HP so it's not really a big deal unless you're next to something explosive.

It also helps when you figure out how to goad them out: I tend to get within a single move of civilians and overwatch to see if they'll suddenly grow twice their size and become a playdough bear, if you play it right you can keep moving up fairly steadily to let you reach new civvies while also goading the Faceless out of hiding so they have to run towards your dudes and eat overwatches first

Also their jumping animation is goddamn hilarious. They just stand straight up and go "BOING!" into the air. It's even better when your squad is on overwatch and vaporizes the Faceless mid-jump and sends him into the stratosphere. I lost all fear of the Faceless the first time I saw one jump because I was laughing too hard.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 16:23

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The XCOM Thread: HOW DOES SNEK KICK DOOR?!

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