Happy XCOM day

[Rochdale]

I've been playing since Wednesday and I'd say, other than some annoying bugs, it's pretty good. I do feel that you're led through the story a bit by the priority research and mission objectives, it also seems like the number of actual missions that you do as you go through the game is far lower than the original.

It's an enjoyable game though, especially when you get two snipers to colonel with the 'in the zone' ability

It's definitely not ready for a classic ironman campaign though, there are too many game killing bugs in it, and the aliens are still shooting through walls on occasion....

 

[Artanix]

so its not ready for my "locked-in-the-dark-all-weekend" session yet?

 

[Rochdale]

It's very playable, the only game stopper I saw is when I mind controlled a muton and turned him into a suicide bomber. He died, then all controls on the screen dissapeared so I couldn't do anything with my other troops.

Other people have reported strange game killers, like having an interceptor out when your skyranger returns to base leads to the interceptor flying to the north pole, the geoscape zooming in and again you lose all controls and can't do anything except alt-F4.

All in all I've enjoyed my playthrough, but the reliance on weapon fragments for most research and engineering tasks means there really should be more opportunity to gather them.

 

[Soupytwist]

Do the aliens move around at all? From the demo I got the sense you had to discover/see the aliens before they became active.

 

[Artanix]

Work cannot end quickly enough today, although I away for 3 weeks doing wireless surveys, so I hope my laptop can handle it. I'm not sure the girlfriend will enjoy me cracking �800 on a laptop to just play x-com \o/

 

[Rochdale]

They do move around, especially on terror missions.... but they move around a lot more when you discover them, they try to outflank you.

 

[Btone]

just acvitated this now, still havent played any, but any one whant to hook up to night for some multiplayer , i know we a TS server, not sure of it details but if someone postes the details here we can chat duing the game

 

[Zeus]

Merry XCom!
Won't be able to play tonight though

 

[Zed]

My bug last night was stunning a floater. The mission wouldnt end. I had killed everything, swept the map 3 times (it was a narrow corridor like map - so easy to do) and nothing. Had to restart.

 

[Artanix]

do floaters still hang around the top of stairways stacked with AP's? (or the equivalent)

And yeah we have TS server, IM me on Steam if you want the details, I forgot who's it is, but it doesn't have a password or anything, and I'm not sure which of these forums are public or not

Me and Emmon go on there for borderlands 2 and VOIP sex.

Oh and Roch, be careful if you're playing it because you did the VPN to USA trick to unlock it early, apparently some people are complaining that you wont be able to play if you move your region back to the UK. Or something daft like that.

 

[Rochdale]

Playing since release fine, it did download some stuff again but I'd done the change to make it use the 1080p videos and haven't checked what it actually downloaded. I have noticed a few changes in the game so maybe they patched.

Currently at the endgame, with the option to do the final mission but I want to level up some PSI soldiers before I do it, plus making the best weapons and armour needs lots of alloys and elerium so I need ship missions which seem few and far between. If you want to level up new guys in the endgame though the only way is bomb missions, it's always just thin men with 3hp each, ship missions now always have elite mutons and etherials in them, with the occasional sectopod.

In my first playthrough I lost canada and argentina early on, no other countries lost since, I think you really need a few satellites in reserve to launch early on above the countries you can't do missions on. The continent wide panic increase is a bit of a ballache, it cost me two seperate continent bonuses.

 

[Zed]

having done the VPN trick I found I had to redo something (error 55) but once that was done it fixed the game and its all working fine.

 

[Zeus]

oh god, it was horrible.

i'd gone since the beginning, not losing a single person, not even on my first terror mission!
and then... a straightforward abductions mission... we get in there, we spread out a bit, and i throw my sniper up on top of a truck for a decent firing line.... well, apparently thats just an invitation. as 3 mutons run out from behind a building, and i'm thinking 'shit, he'll be lucky to come out of this one unwounded, with all 3 of those shooting him!'. well i was wrong. a) it wasnt all of them shooting at him. b) he wasnt lucky. c) i'm pretty sure that, as the shot hit him in the face and knocked him (spraying blood) off the back of the truck, he did a little backflip.
it was a bit like that scene in starship troopers, where the bloke gets shot in the face on the training excercise, and his boss is just there yelling 'mediiiiicccc!!!!' with the guys brains splattered all over the ground :/

 

[Artanix]

lol i've not lost anybody either, and I've just hit an alien base. Will definately do a run through on classic after this.

 

[Soupytwist]

Lost my first man to my first encounter with a cyberdisc. I failed to take it down and it got in close, one hail of bullets later and my man has taken 8 points of damage from a crit. It was a sad moment and I actually toyed with reloading, but thought better of it - unit loss should be part of the game, no matter how sad!

Yeah also setup and ready for my first base assault. I actually finding the fighting fairly easy (so far) but the base management is a real juggling act always struggling for cash and really didn't get enough satellites up early game when I should - so I'm always on the back foot, panic level wise.

 

[Zeus]

i've managed to get all but 3 countries satellited by i think midway through June, which really helps my cash situation.

my first cyberdisc encounter went really well oddly enough - it advanced into the line of fire of my HEAT equipped overwatching heavy, who practically tore it in half, leaving my sniper to just drop one round in to finish it off.

i watched my mates first encounter with crysalids on saturday... it was hilarious. especially the bit when he said "they dont have arms, they probably cant climb ladders" immedately before one jumped up next to his (second to last) guy and ate him

 

[Rochdale]

lol, the best cure for a group of chrysalids is a colonel level sniper on high ground with the 'in the zone' perk.

*bang* *squish* *bang* *squish* *bang* *squish* *reload*

At the moment I'm enjoying my old tactic of mind controlling enemy units and sending them in to scout ahead for me, the difference in this game is that when they find something they tend to run right at your overwatching snipers

 

[Artanix]

I'm finding that some of the sniper perks are a little overpowered lol.

Get the high ground mods and the one where you can fire if a squad mate can see them and you're looking at 70% - 100% hit rate as long as you're one level up. tempted to have 4 snipers and 2 assaults pumped with HP and shotguns

 

[Agravaine]

I took the pistol perk rather than high ground as it makes snipers more powerful when having to move them.

Assault is probably my favorite class. Weak at range but uber at close range. Massive health and defence, immunity to crits, immunity to the first reaction shot each round, free attack against anything that comes within 4 spaces and you get to sprint to max range then shoot something in the face.

I put my Assault Colonel next to a door in a spaceship once and ended my turn with her having no moves left. On the alien's turn three thin men walked through the door and she killed them all with the 4 space perk.

Support class is pro too. So many useful abilities.

I played my first game for a while and got as far as needing to capture an outsider. Lost a few countries to panic and was always strapped for cash.

I restarted and concentrated on getting satellites up ASAP. Ignored the story line missions and researched what I felt like. I've now got all countries covered by stealth satellites without losing any, a decent base, good armor and weapons, more cash than I can spend (due to not enough materials) and I've started upgrading my planes to next gen models.

Satellites seem to be the key. It's fine spending a lot on them early on as you get it back at the end of the month and their biggest bonus is killing the panic level of countries about to bail on the project.

 

[Zeus]

thing is, assaults arnt weak at range - give one a plasma rifle and he's as good as a support, and probably as good as a heavy. wont quite compete with a sniper, but hey - assaults can dash AND do that
i'm pretty much at the end of the game now (well i assume so, i've got the 'no turning back' warning, telling me everything will stop now if i click ok...), but want to get my new sniper up to colonel before i carry on.
need to play on higher difficulty next time i think, i've made some silly mistakes and survived - but also needs less ways to make silly mistakes (eg. clicking to move up to a barrier on a walkway, and the game going 'oh that means you want to jump down to the level below, right?'. or clicking to select another soldier and the game goes 'well you've clicked somewhere, i dont think it was quite on that soldier (because there was an invisible ceiling in the way), so instead i'm going to assume you wanted to open this door over here. with 3 muton elites and an ethereal behind it.'