The Firaxis XCOM Series

And they explode.

Narrow maps, in general, are pretty gross without a Squadsight Sniper. With one (or two), all that partial cover just means the aliens are fish in a barrel. Just gotta find the one full cover spot for a spotter to hide behind (preferably in concealment, so that the aliens don't shoot and set the car on fire).

Cars can actually be really helpful against the aliens, since they will often take cover in groups around them. This allows grenades to get multi-kills where the aliens are usually too spread out, since two nades can set off cars that gib aliens the AI set up to be not targetable with a single grenade's standard blast radius. Also, with the advent of MECs in EW, Collateral Damage turns all that cover into a total hazard for the aliens. There are few things as satisfying as wrecking two Thin Men by shooting up their car cover with a minigun.

Oh thank God I wasn't just being an angry scrub in thinking that

Decided to start up a new game recently, just because.

For some reason, the game seems to think I really need heavies. My initial four promoted into one of each class, but after that I'm pretty sure I've been getting nothing but heavies.

I'm in the second month, and after a relatively quiet first month, it suddenly gave me three missions so close together that I'm pretty sure they happened in the same day. First a council mission, and then a UFO shows up as I'm flying to the council mission, and then an abduction immediately after the UFO. I'm hoping this isn't a sign of my luck to come.

It gave you all those awesome Heavies because it wants you to spam rockets at all of those missions. Which is good, because rockets are one of only two reliable very early game weapons for landing hits.

Although, when they fail it is bloody hilarious.

My game decided that like half of my initial 12 needed to be snipers.

Which, given how useful they are once they make Corporal, I appreciate the thought, but it's hell on early game.

So, I forgot to assign research after developing those lasers and now I get to replay the whole week, starting from the fucking bridge mission.

Am I the only one who hates the air combat? It's almost completely RNG which means it's a giant middle finger to me. Just cut the graphics out and roll a d6—on a 6 I shoot down the UFO, 2-5 I don't and my fighter is badly damaged, on a 1 my fighter is destroyed.

You have items...but yeah, it's pretty simplistic. Old XCO Ms weren't much better though.

edited 17th Jul '15 4:15:38 PM by nightwyrm_zero

Old X-COM's flight combat was really cheeseable, though. All of the longest-ranged weapons would allow the interceptor to fire from outside the average UFO's attack range (in terms of tech vs alien progression), with the exception of Battleships.

I don't have items yet, way too early. And I've never liked consumable items.

I'm at the point where I think XCOM needs to start robbing banks and engaging in terrorism against non-Council members. I need resources you asswipes, pay up.

It's also great that the game has thrown three UFOs at me at once. Thanks. Also great that there are three meaningless combat options—get my ass kicked without harming the UFO, get my ass kicked and maybe harm the UFO, get my ass kicked and maybe harm the UFO +1%.

edited 17th Jul '15 5:09:09 PM by Rotpar

Well, this is it. I finished a playthrough of OpenXCom^note Middle difficulty; Got one fatality in Cydonia because I didn't anticipate one of my guys getting successfully mind-controlled; anyway, I mind-controlled everyone in the base and got an ethereal to shoot the brain, so now I just bought the EU/EW complete pack, which is currently downloading.

Edit: Wait, sixteen gigabytes? Wow...

edited 19th Jul '15 2:16:50 PM by Medinoc

Another month passes. Should I invest in the salvage projects at the Foundry? They're expensive but I take it the campaign is long enough to really make it worthwhile?

The majority of the foundry projects are definitely worht it; there's one or two that depend on playstyle.

Nowadays Cydonia or Bust II takes but a single turn for me since I just chain-mindcontrol aliens until I find the control room and send some Blaster Bombs up the elevator.

It helps that higher difficulties mean more aliens to MC, I sometimes ran dry while exploring bases. Anyway, I'll probably start playing XCOM:EW tonight. Stylish XCOM. Fedoras for everyone!

edited 20th Jul '15 4:16:11 AM by Medinoc

m'uton

edited 20th Jul '15 6:43:12 AM by Locoman

Well, finally tried it out. Firstly, I was surprised my new PC couldn't run it smoothly at native HD resolution with minimum settings. Ended up running it windowed.

I'll have to check the control options, too; the lack of drag-scrolling in the default settings (and the fact the arrow keys stop being "scroll" keys the moment you select a grenade or rocket) is quite disorienting.

Started a game in Normal difficulty with tutorial on. I will try to keep my Delta 2 heavy out of harm for the achievement of having him on every mission. Took out my first UFO and haven't taken any damage so far, which is pretty good. Blowing up an alien's cover with a grenade before shooting it yields great results (but I can't wait for my sniper to reach Corporal and get squadsight. She'll be getting a captured Sectoid's plasma pistol ASAP, too).

Grenades are also excellent for kill secures if your squad decides to A-Team it up.

Like today. An hour wasted in the game because the enemy is just rolling higher than me at every turn.

Did the Portent mission last night, and something weird happened: A thin man spawned on top of my sniper. Panicking about the gas, instead of just hunkering down the sniper and shooting the guy, I shot the other thin man and set up overwatches. Thankfully, rather than try to shoot the sniper point-blank, it chose to move and shoot, and never made it to the shooting part.

If the AI is flanked/exposed, typically it will choose to shift to get into cover, even if it has a near-guaranteed kill. There are exceptions to this, but it's a pretty rare thing that tends to happen if there's very few soldiers with shots on that alien if it were to remain flanked/exposed.

Yeah, this happens if your soldier is standing on a tile as an enemy is air-dropped on to it. Usually the enemy ends up standing next to you though, as the system resolves the contradiction.

Ah, OK.

Well after the drop they were both standing on the roof, but definitely still on the same cell. I don't remember if they were colliding, though.

Damn, in another mission I landed my Assault in the hospital after a misclick sent it through gas instead of on a small platform above. Thankfully the sniper who got the same misclick only lost 1HP, which was absorbed by her starting armor.

I should start gene-modding soon, but for now the emergency is satellites, or I'll lose Asia.

So, when I get around to running my canon I/I game, who wants to be a corpse hero?

Pick like three nationalities and a gender.

edited 22nd Jul '15 8:37:55 AM by Rotpar