The Firaxis XCOM Series

At least on this end

Not when there's three aliens for every XCOM soldier you have. Then it's kind of really bad.

That's easily solved if you ask yourself a simple question: EXPLOSIONS?

Edited by shigmiya64 on Jun 29th 2018 at 6:15:05 AM

The initial combo of glitches was super awful, though. It would teleport aliens into the middle of your squad, give them their scramble activation, then give them all full turns. I can't even count how many Impossible Ironmans in vanilla EU died to Floater squads teleporting into the middle of my troops, scrambling to their flank, and then critting three of them. And even if the instant-turn glitch didn't activate, there were now three Floaters all on separate sides of my squad who could tank at least one non-rocket shot and were not close enough together for grenades to hit more than one. It was for this reason that Heavies were in even higher demand in the vanilla game (which isn't to say they wouldn't have been the most powerful early game class in a completely bugless game, but still).

You may want to intruct your men to exercise restraint when using explosives.

But seriously, though, I only had one Heavy on the team, and she was the first to go down. Presumably because the aliens thought the same thing you did.

Hey, is there some kind of mod for changing soldiers' heights? It dawned on me that maybe my Japanese soldiers shouldn't, in general, be the same size as my Norwegian ones, and my search through the workshop has yelded less than stellar results.

[1]◊

Edited by shigmiya64 on Jul 6th 2018 at 9:03:59 AM

...how? In average, a Japanese person's height is 20 centimeters below a Norwegian person's.

Plus, I'd like to see a 5ft soldier run up to a Berserker and slash them to ribbons.

It makes sense for XCOM in the first game to be fielding larger Japanese, since they'd probably want to pick the best and most physically capable to deal with the invasion. XCOM 2, however, they'd have to use whoever they could get.

I think there was a workshop mod that allowed you to change the sizes of each soldier. I don't think it allowed you to adjust height and width individually though.

Well, width, sure, but you'd think there would be a bigger height variation amongst the troops. It's not like they engaged in melee in the first game anyways.

Do you know the name of the mod?

Technically they do, since MECs can run around rocket fisting aliens.

Besides that, being bigger and bulkier means they're less likely to be inhibited by obstacles and should be able to take hits better.

And, well, if we're getting into height variation, yeah, that's just a general problem of the game only using two models, not a nationality thing.

I'd say being in a giant robotic suit invalidates any size or width issues one might have But you have a point about bulkier soldiers having less issues.

At least the two models they have now are a bit more realistically proportioned. They're buff, but not ridiculously so. The ones in EU/EW, at least the male ones, looked like they ate a tire for breakfast.

Does anybody have any tips for panic?

Execute the coward as a warning to the others.

But seriously, there's no easy solution to Panic until late game. There are a couple ways to increase Will, which reduces chance of Panic, but they're not super reliable. On the plus side, once you get psi-operatives, Solace means you don't have to worry about anything like that.

Early game, it pretty much comes down to not getting hit, since the panic pain train can't start if no one gets hurt. There's more or less two approaches to this:

• Deny the enemy any ability to act. This can be tough with soldiers who have the poor starting accuracy, which is why Heavies (Grenadiers in the second game) are insanely valuable. Abuse explosives to clear groups of enemies on the first turn they appear. Alternatively, use grenades to blow their cover, then strike at them with guns from high ground; or, take flanking shots and if they merely wound the enemy, finish them with a grenade.
• Turtle like crazy. This isn't a viable option most of the time in the second game, due to time limits and the fact that everything has enough unnecessary windows that it's practically the building equivalent of swiss cheese. However, in the first game, there's pretty much no time limits (Meld isn't even remotely worth rushing for beyond the first batch to get MEC tech). Advance slowly. Hunker Down behind full cover to stick the enemy with -80% Hit (there are very few enemies where this isn't crippling to their ability to shoot stuff) or break line of sight by end turns on tiles that are one tile away from corners rather than right to at the corners. Then, next turn your soldier can pop out and nail the unsuspecting aliens. The major exception to this is with Heavies who want to use their rocket next turn, in which case you will have to settle for moving up and hunkering (there's risk here because even alien fire that misses can break the cover). Snipers technically might also fall under this category, but beyond Squaddie, there's really no reason they should be close enough for this to be a problem in the first place.

Hey, has anyone ever had a bug where the Experimental Ammo project in the Proving Grounds doesn't yield any results? I've had this one in my last two playthroughs, and presumed it was something with the mod I was using, but in my current one it was working up until recently, then it suddenly stopped. Anyone know what the deal with that is?

Never seen that bug, but I have seen a bug where no matter where I scanned, I got intel as if I were at my base, for an entire campaign. Does that help?

Edited by shigmiya64 on Jul 23rd 2018 at 6:15:04 AM

Not really, but thank you anyways.

Actually, I think I'd kind of like that bug, it seems useful. I did get one in WOTC once where the UFO hunting me actually caught up, but the mission never triggered, so it just stuck around in the map chasing me throughout the campaign without ever doing anything. And that campaign never got an UFO mission again.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Jul 23rd 2018 at 7:26:28 AM

I just have this image of the Advent/aliens cheering and whooping in the cockpit as they find xcom, they close in... and then they all slowly stop as it dawns on them they have absolutely no idea what to do next.

"So... now what?"

"Do we shoot them?"

"Dammit, Steve, you always want to shoot everything!"

"Well they're our enemies right? What do you want to do? Call them and ask them politely to land and surrender the great commandy one?"

Edited by Dragon573 on Jul 23rd 2018 at 10:55:23 AM

Maybe they are shooting at XCOM, but their gunner is just the worst ADVENT has to offer, so XCOM never even notices.

I always figured some fans had managed to hijack an UFO and were just geeking out at having found XCOM, so they followed them everywhere.

I bit the bullet and bought WOTC today. Thankfully I managed to not spoil most of the stuff in it, so could anyone please tell me a general overview of what has changed notably from vanilla to WOTC? Well, besides a horrifyingly broken stack of mods, that is.

The biggest change, off the top of my head, is the Advanced Warfare Center. It's gone now. It's been split into two facilities: the Infirmary, and the Training Center. The Infirmary sucks; you have to build it to get that injury healing boost, but it doesn't do anything else cool, other than offer an easy way to get rid of soldiers' acquired negative traits (which are also new). So it's one less building slot you have to work with.

The Training Center is awesome. Instead of the old way of soldiers getting bonus skills, where they'd pick up a single, random skill at a random promotion level ^* which they'd miss completely if they reached that level before you built the AWC, soldiers now get 3-5 random skills from other classes. Soldiers earn ability points as they level that you spend in the Training Center to unlock as many of these skills as they can afford. XCOM also has a shared pool of ability points you earn from doing smart things in the field, like attacking from height advantage or flanking, and these can be spent to buy skills for your soldiers when they're out of their personal points. You can also buy the skills you passed up during promotion, so now you can have Sharpshooters with both Deadeye and Lightning Hands.

There's also the Fatigue mechanic that prevents you from running the same A-Team mission after mission, as well as soldier Bonds that encourage you to run the same Whatever-Team when they're all rested up. Start thinking of blocks of soldiers as de facto squads, in other words, and cycle through them to keep your dudes fresh.

The Resistance Ring is another important new facility, one that lets you send spare soldiers out on missions to gather goodies, and just as importantly it unlocks Resistance Orders that grant powerful bonuses like a boost to XP gain or improved squad stealth - assuming you've done enough missions with the other resistance groups to get in their good graces.

But the most important new addition has to be the Photobooth. Now you're fully justified in spending hours juggling cosmetic mods and customizing each soldier so they look their best.