The Firaxis XCOM Series

Actually that went rather well since, for once, I managed to use a probe at the right moment. That, and the guided rocket launcher that allowed me to fire from outside their line of sight. Everything becomes easier once they are shredded.

<twitch> I. Hate. Sectopods.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

I dread Sectopods, but at the same time, I like them in a sort of sadistic way because they're one of the two enemies (the other being a shielded Mectoid) that allows me to unleash the full fury of my arsenal on them and not have them die prematurely. >.>

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Okay, I tried Classic Mode, it's not for me. It's just unfair for the pleasure of being unfair. Thin Men never miss., and one-shot your squad 90% of the time. I tried an experience : I had a 40% shot to take, and I activated the 'random seed' in the second wave options. I tried to take the shot 20 times by reloading the save, it hit 3 times. 3/20. That's not even close from 40%. Same experience with a pistol that is supposed to do 1-2 damage. Ten tries, it did 2 dmg once. again, 1/10 =/= 50%.

I deeply respect people who manage to play this way, but I just can't. I stopped when I fell into a Terror Mission where I saved 3 civilians...and then my scout triggered 7 freaking aliens at once. It wasn't even a dash, just a repositioning a bit forward. Oh, and it was a mission I had to do with 3 rookies because I got 3 injuries on the previous one.

I just don't get what what you're supposed to do in this situation. I don't even want to know what Floaters can do when I saw what Thin Men did, I'm not a masochist.

edited 14th Dec '14 4:34:23 PM by Julep

Twenty shots really isn't anything resembling a good sample size. There will be variance on hit rolls like that.

Also, the way damage rolls work, your expectations on the pistol were incorrect. It's a 50% chance to do the base damage, 25% to do base damage -1, and 25% to do base damage +1. Thankfully, the game uses 1 instead of 0 for the pistol, therefore giving a 75% chance for 1 damage.

Thin Men generally aren't a good thing to get into a fire fight with because of their decent accuracy and the spit making hunkering down a poor option. Killing (at least some of) them on their activation turn is usually the best option (Squadsight Snipers or Heavies can usually pull this off with minimal difficulty). Failing that, getting out of line of sight, then popping out to hopefully pick them off is usually the next best.

As far as 7 enemies activating go, well, that's just mostly bad luck. Early on, about the only decent response to this is a rocket. One sort of saving grace with Terror Missions is that the enemies will prioritize civvies, so there's a good chance half of those spawns will just run off to gun down a random civvie.

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Well yeah, but there were Chryssalids in the middle, so every civvie dying made then another enemy.

If I had my for promoted characters available, I may have succeeded. But with three rookies, it is flat-out impossible, unless I save scum after every shot. And even then, the rookies just don't deal enough damage and get killed in one hit.

As for the Thin Men, if they were slow like sectoids, I could handle them. But they can jump up and down of buildings like it is nothing, and, well, Overwatch is far from always hitting with low-level characters. If there is one building with a flat roof, it becomes a nightmare, because while my Overwatch tends to hit less than half the time, theirs is an almost-guaranteed hit. Plus the AI keeps finding improbable lines of sight throughout walls-that-actually-have-holes-in-them, and being on a lower level does not even seem to have an impact on their chances to hit.

I'll agree that my sample size was only on six missions, but hell, it is so frustrating I really don't feel like trying even more will bring me anything worth the time. It's basically like Fire Emblem on Lunatic: sure, it should be possible to learn all enemy patterns, one map after another, just to manage to advance without too many losses, but is the satisfaction high enough when you struggled for two hours on a single map? Not for me, at least. Especially with a system that relies quite a bit on luck or lack thereof. For example, I currently have no Assault, since she got 1-shot by an Outsider after all 4 characters missed shots ranging from 55 to 80%.

edited 14th Dec '14 6:24:24 PM by Julep

Rookies are definitely more tech dependent than the rest of the soldiers. If you've researched Lasers by the time the first Terror Mission rolls around (doable on any difficulty if it's the #1 priority), they can generally take Chryssalids, Floaters and even Cyberdiscs if the 'Discs and their Drones come out on their own.

As I said before, it's generally not worth staying in line of sight of the Thin Men. Get back away from the corners of large buildings and whatnot for the enemy phase. Of course, this is assuming that killing them on the first turn isn't feasible, which can happen quite often on higher difficulties.

As for why Thin Men hit so often, they have 75 Aim, which is high enough to make partial cover useless and high cover a gamble (especially against their 5 base damage). Being on the roof pushes that up to 95, which is a big issue.

This is why explosives are at such a premium: they don't miss. I usually try to save at least one (preferably two, but this is usually not practical) grenade when I know I'm going to face an early Outsider, because their Aim is very high and on higher difficulties, they get a mobility buff.

A typical Outsider pull goes like this for me: move one soldier into the open in line of sight. Outsider aggroes, sees exposed soldier and goes for nearby flanking cover. Use one grenade to remove the cover. The bait soldier then takes a shot to try to finish it off. Failing that, the remaining soldier who doesn't have a grenade tries to get as close as possible for another shot. Failing that, the final soldier throws his/her grenade. If that final soldier doesn't have a grenade, I get him/her to do what the third soldier did. I pretty much don't bother with cover for my own soldiers, because I'm used to facing 90 Aim from Outsiders, which just makes cover a very unreliable restriction in this case.

Generally speaking, if I don't kill an Outsider on the same turn I trigger it, I expect someone to die, even if they happen to be behind cover.

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I may give it a shot another time, by I will go all classical, no second wave options, maybe that'll help get more used to the various mechanics while removing the randomness. But I except to lose some countries and get frustrated.

With Thin men, I stay unsure. Before Squadsight, if you can shoot them, they can shoot you. And with rookie or even squaddie aim, there is no guarantee even three assault rifles will be able to take one down - and they are not usually alone. I am fairly sure they are also as fast as the soldiers are, if not more, so if you retreat behind cover, they may still get the first shot, which means the first kill.

And the Tech...I don't know, Laser weapons needed 40 days to be researched at the beginning, since no lab at the start, and that's just Laser Pistols iirc, you need to get to the rifles afterwards. Not sure they would be available for the first terror mission.

Thin Men actually have slightly better movement than XCOM soldiers, but the AI rarely utilizes it that well (especially given that it never dashes, but uses two half-moves one after the other). Breaking line of sight isn't meant to be a strategy where the soldiers stay there continually. The idea is to get the Thin Men to have to reposition without being able to fire on the soldiers, nor knowing exactly where they are. Move them back to the corners next turn and if the Thin Men are being aggressive, they'll very likely be in a position to punish them for it. No guarantees without grenades, though, as we are still talking Rookie Aim. As I said before, the only really good response to a pack of Thin Men early is a rocket, maybe a Squadsight Sniper if you're lucky.

As for laser, you're thinking of the original game. The 2012 version does both for the first project. As far as time frame goes, it's possible to get it in before the Terror Mission with relative consistency by going straight for it even on Impossible. An exceptionally late UFO is required to throw it off.

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if you've got EW you can n00b rush ME Cs fairly consistently. I can normally have one ready and also do a sat rush if I get lucky.

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

Thin Men are terrible and have a tendency to one-shot newbies even when they are squaddies running carapace.

Heh, that's not just a Thin Man issue. Plenty of aliens can throw out 9 damage crits, which, on Impossible, can even one-shot top-ranked soldiers in Skeleton. This is why Hunker Down is usually very important.

That said, their durability and poison spit usually mean that in the early months I'm saving my rockets to make sure they become paste. I used to have some of the more annoying council missions memorized so that I could blind fire the jerks before they could even activate (in addition to camping sky drop points). Makes the Slingshot stuff several times more manageable.

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And you don't have much choice when they drop like four in a turn and they're all instantly on overwatch. The one where you need to escort the chinese dude was such a pain.

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

Yeah, giving them an actual turn to act is a pretty bad idea. Thankfully, that map is pretty easy to manipulate (the first few spawn on a turn timer and the others show up once any unit crosses certain thresholds) and the psuedo-highground (not high enough for the offense, but better vision) allows the squad to see every drop that will end up in the courtyard. Then the spawns on the side can easily be camped by slowly moving up and spam overwatching as a group.

The only parts that I find particularly dicey is the pack of two pre-spawned Thin Men behind the tree (because getting Squadsight line of fire on them is a pain) and the Muton (because fighting a Muton with ballistics).

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Okay, so I understand now why it's important to rush Laser Weapons.

This was my first Terror Mission on Classic◊. I am probably going to lose India (no big deal, the HQ are in Asia), but the game feels much less frustrating now.

Although I still got reasonably angry with Portent (I think it is the first "EXALT" mission where you secure a "witness"). Thin Men kept finding improbable LoS even when I retreated in positions I thought safe.

edited 18th Dec '14 3:51:05 AM by Julep

In general, if you have to have lasers before chrysalids or mutons appear. If you're still on ballistics at that point, missions become a whole lot harder, and more or less forces you to spam grenades.

Yeah, Portent is basically engineered that way. Every piece of terrain is basically a Thin Man advantage waiting to happen. It illustrates why killing some, if not all, of a pod (of aliens in general, but especially Thin Men) on their activation turn is often crucial to success. The one saving grace that allows for a reliable clear is that it's scripted. Once you figure out how to manipulate a pod into a bad position, making that same move in future runs will always manipulate them into taking a bad position. Also, since the spawn points are always the same, blind rocket shots become surefire pod kills.

One thing to keep in mind about council missions: even though they're scripted, sometimes the strats to cleanly pull them off are resource-intensive. Don't be afraid to decline them if they seem too risky. Hell, I declined Portent in my successful I/I run and I still did okay. It just made finding that psionic to win the game less likely (I had something like an entire extra month I had to play out for nothing but screening).

If it's any consolation, Squadsight Snipers laugh their way through the next map in the side story.

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Portent can be made a lot less painful with both Assaults and Snipers. Don't be afraid to let your Assault lurk in awkward positions out-of-LOS because if you manipulate right those Thin Men can be manuvered into places where they can be flanked.

The three finest things in life are to splat your enemies, drive them from their turf, and hear their lamentations as their rank falls!

Of course, that assumes those soldiers are available. The RNG can be pretty mean to Squaddie Assaults and Snipers. Any soldier, even Rookies can do the manipulating. The strat I employ almost allows Rookies to take it on, but there's a high risk spot where I prefer to have a Heavy (who will gain XP like mad from rockets and then have Bullet Swarm allow him/her to be more than a one trick pony while staying pretty safe) and a MEC (can typically be made regardless of RNG).

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So, anyone know of any games similar to this one in concept? Save the world with a strike force of elite soldiers (who start off unable to hit the broad side of a barn but get better) and limited resources, combined with managing expectations of all the various parties that want your help?

Valkyria Chronicles wasn't...quite what I was looking for here.

I've heard good things about Xenonauts, which is supposed to take many of its cues from the original X-COM. Haven't played it myself, though.

If we're counting mods, I think Long War is practically a different game. I haven't played it, myself, but from what I've observed, it played much differently from vanilla in that that player can be a bit more aggressive with low cover, even on upper difficulties. I haven't dug too deeply into it, though, so I have no idea how good the mod as a whole is.

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Valkyria Chronicles 2 was a much better game than the original, but I think it's only playable on the PSP or Vita.

I'm Charlie Owens, good night and good luck. PSNID: CEOIII 1117

^ Strange, I heard that it's actually a bit worse due to reduced roster in mission and cliched character compared to original...

Give me cute or give me...something?

Eh, I liked 2 better than 1, YMMV.

I'm Charlie Owens, good night and good luck. PSNID: CEOIII 1117

I only play on the PC, so it's only 1 for me due to Steam.

Gameplay wise, I like the hybrid of turn based and shooter.

I dislike the command map being useless in terms of not warning you about insurmountable knee-high ledges, and the level design requiring you to know what enemies are where beforehand and which enemies can be ignored so you can rush in to capture the base for the quick win (because rank, and thereby reward, is affected only by how fast you clear the level). XCOM seems a more "fair" assessment of your tactical abilities, as the way to win in XCOM is to use everybody and advance methodically, not buff up a single soldier (usually a scout (usually Alicia)) with orders and run them to the objective. I understand there is sometimes valid military need to do that, but it shouldn't be the key to A-rank 90% of the missions.

The squad size also makes me appreciate why XCOM has that party limit, though. It takes forever waiting for turns to finish. Although I maintain one of the things you should have been able to buy is a secondary Skyranger. Not to double your squad size, see, but to let you deploy to two places at once so you can better manage panic.