The Firaxis XCOM Series

Gault: Yeah, that's what I mean about Van Doorn's signifiance and XCOM's priorities. This organization is forced to let entire countries burn, therefore, if they say this guy is important, he's pretty damn important.

Also, as a former soldier, he should also have more discipline and better judgment. If you'll allow me a WoW analogy here, it's the difference between Leeroy Jenkins and Tirion Fordring.

My take on it is that while the UN as an organization deems him "important", it has much more to do with their PR image (if they can't protect their high-ranking officials from getting nabbed by the aliens, how can they be trusted to protect ordinary civilians?) than him being actually that critical to the war effort against the aliens, and Van Doorn is a Father to His Men who disagrees with such a mindset by insisting that it's the rank-and-file soldiers and field officers at the front lines of this hellish war who are the true heroes of this conflict, and thus much more vital than "armchair military" people like himself.

edited 4th Oct '15 11:58:55 AM by MarqFJA

That's certainly an interpretation that's supported by what we see of Van Doorn's character. Of course, there's nothing to indicate he isn't a competent soldier in and of himself. Van Doorn's dedication to his soldiers might well be one of the reasons why he's considered such a valuable asset.

I don't know, a former soldier who ranks as a General seems pretty important to me. Combine it with your take and it means he really is that tactically important. The rank-and-file get their training from one of two places: their superiors and the field. The latter has a reputation for killing people before they can reach their peak. The best thing he can do is to live to ensure he can pass all his knowledge on to the up-and-coming soldiers.

Of course, it could be that the soldiers he was trying to rescue (and failed, evidently) were ones that he was in charge of training and saw great, one-in-a-million potential in them, whether as regular soldiers or as officers.

edited 4th Oct '15 12:42:26 PM by MarqFJA

Maybe. We're running pretty far into pure speculation territory here now, though.

So after finishing my Normal Marathon playthrough, I decided to do my next one (Classic, Training Roulette, squad of 4) with the language set to French, just for kicks.

And my observation so far is "WTF, this is Cultural Translation off its meds!" A lot of aliens got ridiculous names, and even the SR-77H Skyranger's name was translated! (thankfully the names of major NPCs (except for Big Sky's callsign) was not, so far).

They also mistranslated what the Second Wave option "Aiming Angles" does, but I didn't enable it anyway.

Edited to add: Today I learned the hard way that freezer mist can hide Thin Man smoke, at least on its second turn. Got my Heavy poisoned, which taught me another hard lesson: Gas wounds can cause panic too, including cascading ones. It caused my squaddie Support to earn a new, player-assigned nickname: As soon as he hits Sergeant, he will henceforth be known as "Commissar", after his attempt to shoot my Heavy for panicking.

edited 13th Oct '15 9:34:29 PM by Medinoc

Closing in on the end of my second Normal playthrough. Not Created Equal and Hidden Potential have been very good to me. I have 3 or 4 colonels with 100+ Will scores and a couple of low-rankers who are on track to be just as good. If all goes well, I'll have a fully psionic squad for the Temple Ship.

Training Roulette has also been surprisingly good. Several guys have some combination of Field Medic, Deep Pockets, and Savior, so I'm set for support. Other nice stuff includes Sprinter on one sniper and Rapid Reaction on another, Opportunist on a few Supports, and Extra Conditioning on one Heavy and Low Profile on another (where it will do some actual good, Low Profile is useless for squadsight snipers).

Low Profile isn't useless for Squadsight Snipers, just situational, especially on upper difficulties. Big Sky has a habit of picking awful landing zones, so sometimes the Snipers will risk being within firing range for a couple turns while the squad establishes a kill zone. Alternatively, sometimes the aliens just push that suicidally far ahead and suddenly having 40 Defense instead of 20 is a big relief. Also, some of the best high ground positions end up only being behind partial cover and are often highly exposed to lowground LoS. See: roof vents, roof edges, some rock clusters at the top of key hills in UFO landing zones, etc.

Low profile does make snipers your best scouts when paired with mimetic skin.

A Low Profile Gunslinger with Mimetic Skin is the best type of covert operative.

You can almost play the "hack two uplinks" missions like XCOM 2's stealth stuff.

What does low profile pair against in vanilla again?

Because I cant remember ever not choosing it.

It's the Major-rank upgrade, so it's on EVERY sniper.

Then how could it ever be usless?

I mean, even the defensive protocols perk, the one that gives mechs on overwatch 15% defence would be usefull if it was FREE.

...

And that one is literaly broken and provides no tangible benifite since 9/10 times the mech will take its shot and lose its defence bonus before the alien fires and can make the bonus usefull.

edited 14th Oct '15 12:36:35 PM by Imca

If anything, the trigger should be reversed for that perk. That is, once the MEC takes an Overwatch, it gains the 15 Def boost. It could be justified as a sort of large AoE mini-Suppression where the aliens are more hesitant because something with a huge gun just opened fire. Then the ability would be actually usable.

One For All could probably use a buff too. Its extremely niche utility pales in comparison to the Jet Boot Module. Maybe if it picked up a 33% damage reduction if it gets shot while transformed into high cover (and since MECs have less innate Def than even low cover, it's going to get targeted 90% of the time).

Is there even a point to One For All? I waste a turn to change my mec, my biggest single shot damage dealer, into another piece of cover for another unit to move to. Which is probably close enough for the aliens to move to flank.

edited 14th Oct '15 2:36:49 PM by Spirit

It's a really niche application. It can be used to guard a soldier from a freak flank when said soldier really wants to take an action. Alloy SHIVs can also do this job and are more expendable, but I guess the MEC gives 20 more Def, so there's that (but SHIVs also don't have to level up to be able to do it). It can also provide high cover for a unit in a field or other place where there's otherwise only low cover. If the MEC has Overdrive, it can also shoot and then transform. I guess if it behaves completely like high cover, it could also block LoS. None of that is enough to convince me to give up the ability to ignore height with them, though.

Wow, for a "dreaded" mission, my Classic Counfounding Light was surprisingly easy, even taking in account the fact I reloaded: There were only like six Thin Men on the map (three of which I managed to his with a rocket after reloading) and two of the transponder were closer to each other than I remembered (both in the same car).

Thanks to my stealth Assault, the counter displayed 6 turns left when I finished it! (I placed all transponders on the same turn and rushed for the driver seat).^note This also means none of my soldiers missed the train, though one was traveling on the roof. Maybe the game went easy on me because I only had four soldiers?

It's luring you into a false sense of security

Placing all the transponders on the same turn does save you a muton or two dropping in per drop, yes. Honestly though I always found that mission more tense than difficult if I have a sniper up on the top of the train at the start.

Ah, that I had. I think he ended up in Leader position by accident (the Ufopedia wiki advises putting him there deliberately so he can reach his perch on turn 1, but I had forgotten that and not bothered to re-read it before doing the mission).

And like another troper suggested, I compensated for my lack of precision lasers with reaper rounds (good thing I had Tactical Rigging).

edited 16th Oct '15 3:48:03 PM by Medinoc

Yeah, doing that cuts down on Mutons, who are the real threats of the missions. Not that Thin Men aren't dangerous, but ballistics versus Mutons can get dicey very quickly.

I try to use the simultaneous transponder trick whenever I can because I want to avoid having to fight more Mutons, but because of the lower time limit I face, it's not always viable.

Also, the mission is completely scripted, so two Heavies can rocket into the darkness to take out the Thin Men pods before they even get a chance to activate. So basically, with the right tools and knowledge it's possible to fairly consistently (90% rockets can miss, though...) do the mission without fighting much of anything. This basically makes the mission tense the first time, but once dissected and strategized, pretty routine.

Apparently the Steam version of that mission doesn't have the cheevo where you need to complete it with more than 3 turns remaining. That confused me at first.

It actually does, but it seems unearned Slingshot achievements are not listed on the "all achievements" page (I know at least "rising dragon" is similarly hidden).

However, in your game's "main page" on your library, in the Achievements frame, it is included in the count of "locked achievements", which went from 9 to 8 for me when I got All Aboard yesterday.

Edit: By the way, I think I know what the worst will be with Classic difficulty: It will be mutons no longer being guaranteed kills with the plasma sniper rifle... And Elites no longer being guaranteed kills with a plasma sniper crit either (not even with headshot!).

edited 17th Oct '15 1:39:42 AM by Medinoc

At least 19 is the more common Headshot crit number. Also, still better than being guaranteed to never kill them with one shot.