The Firaxis XCOM Series

I'm not so sure that Muton was being spiteful as it was just a weird interaction of the AI. Whenever I played XCOM, enemies would typically use their alt fire if their hit rate was too low (generally leading to a lot of Thin Man spit spam, since I play pretty safe). This includes Mutons grenading 95% of the time. In your case, I think you triggered that section of the decision tree, but apparently the AI doesn't account for friendly fire (makes sense in-universe, since everything not Ethereal is just a disposable pawn).

SHIVs definitely aren't useless. They're overcosted in EU, but EW fixed that, to the point that they're one of the best early game rush strats (pick Asia and rush to them and Tactical Rigging).

I never found putting off interrogations in XCOM to be particularly impactful. It's just typically not all that useful, so I'm usually at least into lasers and Carapace/Skeleton before I even seriously consider doing much of anything with it—because even on Impossible, general research times aren't that long and it's only when plasma and the advanced armours are on the table that the time cuts start actually become worth taking pains for. I've heard Marathon shifts this priority a lot, though.

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Yeah, if you're playing Marathon, you want the South America bonus ASAP to make your research speed reasonable.

If I do another Marathon run I'm picking a South America start. It's nice to be able to just instantly have something instead of spending most of a month on tech, and earning research credits is vital to get through the rest of the tech tree at a decent pace.

Overall, I'd say Marathon mode is a good challenge. Like I've said before in this thread, it enhances the Early Game Hell on the strategic level, making you feel starved for time as well as resources, and giving much more impact to the decisions you make. On the tactical level I'd say it's more balanced - you're more likely to be under-equipped for the enemies you're facing than in a vanilla campaign, but the fact that your soldiers are leveling at the same rate means that those ballistic weapons will be wielded by dangerous veterans. And I've found that the endgame is weird, that once you finally get the income to build up labs and whatnot, you can actually rush through the rest of the tech tree and have a lot of uber-equipped colonels waiting around for something to happen.

At this point in my campaign, I'm just killing time until the Gollop Chamber is finished. Vahlen's science team has set up a Minecraft server, Shen's boys in the Foundry can't figure out Advanced Flight because we've only seen two Heavy Floaters the entire invasion and one was taken alive for an interrogation, and my A-Team is in de facto retirement. Instead I'm seeing how many T-Posers I can get to colonel before the final mission becomes available, and whether any of them have the Gift. And if it turns out that my objectively worst soldier does, well, we'll have our Volunteer!

Current earworm: "Mother - Outro"

Had a pretty hairy mission today. I was attacking one of those UFOs with the big rear bay containing the two power sources and got dogpiled by every single enemy on the map at once:

• Opening move, activated the two Outsiders.
• Then a Heavy Floater pod.
• Moving a bit closer to the Heavy Floaters activated a Muton + Berserker pod.
• Lured the Berserker closer with sniper fire and stunned it, first capture in the campaign.
• Firing a Blaster Launcher at the two Heavy Floaters and two Mutons caught another Muton + Berserker pod, a Muton Elite pod and a Sectopod in the blast radius as well, all standing just out of sight in the exact same spot. All three pods activated and came at me, at which point I decided fuck it and had my second Heavy fire another Blaster Launcher into the middle of this Zerg Rush to kill them all, which killed the out-of-sight Sectopod (both Heavies were rocking HEAT Ammo and Danger Zone) and thinned them out enough for conventional force to succeed.
• Next turn, a Cyberdisc showed up as well but couldn't get a single shot off before it was blown away because by this point, I was more than a little pissed.
• Last remaining Muton got bagged with an Arc Thrower and I still can't figure out how the hell we walked away from that clusterfuck with only a damaged SHIV and zero injuries. I keep rotating out my soldiers for the least-experienced ones every mission and just happened to have brought two Heavies; without them, that could've been a whole lot worse. I mean, this is the kind of shit that TPKs on Impossible. We never even moved beyond the entrance; only the SHIV went any deeper to flank one of the Outsiders.

By the time the next mission rolled up, everyone except the Assaults and the SHIV were decked out in plasma weaponry and eager for bloody vengeance, with Muton Elites and Heavy Floaters getting one-shotted left and right and the two Mutons who thought they were clever coming up behind my Sniper on top of the observatory getting counter-ambushed by an Assault in Archangel Armor. I was sadistically grinning the whole time, especially when all three Snipers who were on the mission walked away with In The Zone added to their arsenal.

Another similar dogpile happened a few missions earlier when I got jumped by two Heavy Floater pods, a Cyberdisc pod and the campaign's first Muton Elite pod. Literally every single pod except the Outsider came at me at once. And a fail moment happened elsewhere when I was trying to pick a target with a Sniper, right-clicked to cancel out to check everyone else's percentage - and the game sent her dashing out into the open just a few tiles away from a Cyberdisc and in sight of a full Heavy Floater pod. She survived that round but died to a grenade in the next. Not that it was a big loss, as even though she was a Major, I accidentally misclicked and gave her Snap Shot instead of Squadsight early in the campaign, which I didn't want.

Edited by amitakartok on Aug 29th 2019 at 1:45:34 PM

Sounds like with that first dog-pile you listed ran afoul of the boss pod aggro mechanics. If you trigger the boss pod (the Outsiders, Sectoid Commanders or Ethereal), all other pods start moving toward them. I'm not sure why maps sometimes have the boss pod start super close to the player (I found most landings that start near the cockpit simply have the boss pod spawn near the middle or front of the ship), but it happens. No idea what happened with that other one, though, since you said everything other than the Outsiders showed up. Maybe just bad luck on a small map (I really dislike the smaller maps for that reason)?

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Blaster Launchers and Sectopods, but you're still encountering Outsiders? You're taking your time, aren't you.

Yup. I haven't even researched Arc Throwers until shortly before this mission (but got everything else researched and have five Firestorms with Fusion Lances).

...and once again I find myself agreeing with the aforementioned mod description. I have absolutely nothing against getting my ass kicked if I make a mistake, but the devs actively going out of their way to arbitrarily punish the player for trying to be clever is bad form. I mean, why not just have literally every single pod on the map teleport on top of the player's highest-ranking soldier as soon as any soldier is spotted by any alien?

If you want to fuck with the player just for the sake of fucking with them, at least be consistent about it.

Edited by amitakartok on Aug 30th 2019 at 7:03:30 PM

Delaying like that is also a commons strategic choice in order to avoid enemy mind control shenanigans before the team is ready for it (almost all of my Impossible runs have done as much).

To be fair with this one, I think it's more a flaw in the spawn code than the devs trying to punish people, since the boss pod normally doesn't spawn right next to the player, so a good portion of the map will likely be dead in most cases where that script activates. What the devs likely anticipated is maybe encountering the boss pod with one last straggler pod hanging out on the fringe and thus getting drawn into the fight when their commander calls for help.

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Yeah it sounds like an Anti-Frustration Feature gone wrong to me. You cleared the map of all the hostiles you saw and killed the boss but somehow you missed a pods of ennemies who were just out of your sight because shit happens, so we'll just have them go towards you instead of having you retrace your steps to find the one pod of squishies you missed.

"when you stare too long into the abyss, Xehanort takes advantage of the distraction to break into your house and steal all your shit."

I usually go after the alien base when one or more nations are at red panic and I have no satellites to deal with them. I really try not to let any of the nations fall.

I don't like letting nations fall, either, but if I don't think my squads can handle it and the proceeding aftermath (which tends to be a lot, since there's almost always something that goes horribly wrong), then tough luck for whoever is at 5. Granted, chances of saving everyone are always very slim from the outset, since I've stopped running the super risky quad-month-1-satellite rush.

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And that's another campaign down. The MVP award of this session goes to Col. 'Blitz' Taylor who got ambushed by a kamikaze Sectopod while away from the rest of the team on a Battleship and took it down solo rather than fall back. And this crazy SOB wasn't even a Heavy, but an Assault. Specifically:

• Sectopod suddenly walks through the door only a few times away from the Assault with zero warning of its presence.
• Overwatch is triggered, hit. Close Combat Specialist is triggered, hit. Sectopod is down to 13 health.
• Sectopod stops right next to the Assault (and I mean on the very next tile) in a flank, turns 90° towards him and fires point-blank, injuring both itself and the Assault. Sectopod is down to 4 health.
• Assault backs out of the explosion radius and delivers the killing blow. Due to wearing Archangel Armor and Chitin Plating, he spends no time in the infirmary whatsoever.

I'm aware this would have killed him in EW, but it's still a CMoA. And sweet vengeance after one of my Heavies nearly died from a Sectopod blasting away her cover with a missile barrage and immediately following up with cannon fire on the same turn.

Went onto the Temple Ship with three psykers; I only ever got two Supports throughout the campaign, both tested positive and a Sniper was the third. Both Supports had kinda rubbish will but luckily, by the time the second Support and the Sniper tested positive, the first Support was maxed out on psionic skills and the second had higher will than him, so I designated her as the Volunteer and got two fully leveled psykers (specced differently: the Volunteer got panic and TK field, the other Support got inspire and MC). The trio tore some serious shit up with Mindfrays and even got some MC in, although only as meat shields (one Sectoid who killed another before getting gunned down by the Commander, one Muton who distracted the Berserker, also tried the Heavy Floater but he resisted).

For the final chamber, I decided to set up an ambush. Everyone except the Sniper piled into the chamber but instead of going forward, they all took up cover left and right of the entrance. Then the Volunteer stepped forward, aggroed the opposition, spotted for the Sniper to Headshot one of the Elites and In The Zone the Uber, then stepped back out of sight. Next turn, Volunteer steps up to the edge, all the opposition are piled up in the pit so the Heavy fires a Shredder Rocket in the middle of them, Volunteer steps back out of sight. Next turn, the enemy still hasn't come out of the pit, so I pass the turn. Next turn, still nothing, Volunteer peeks out to see what's the holdup. Everyone except one Ethereal is still in the pit, that one Ethereal is upstairs and in Squadsight LOS, so I line up a shot to pick this one off...

...and it turned out to the the Uber who died instantly from a combination of the shot critting and the Shredder Rocket from earlier. I didn't even get to Rift him. Or use Rift at all during the mission.

Question for going forward: does Absolutely Critical also affect units standing out in the open, or just flanking? So does it make, say, SHIVs always get critted if hit? Because I found out that the Hover SHIV excels as a recon UAV.

Edited by amitakartok on Aug 30th 2019 at 3:24:49 PM

I'm not 100% sure, but I think it would be weird if it didn't apply to exposed units. That said, SHIVs have Hardened, so they don't count as exposed when puttering around out of cover.

FE: New Mystery Fresh Cart Lunatic 7PM PT Sun, Mon, Fri; Expert Unicorn Overlord 7PM PT Wed, Thurs: http://www.twitch.tv/kuroitsubasatenshi

Huh, just finished my Temple Ship tonight too. Only thing of note was during the Sectopod duo. Ran up and spotted them with the Volunteer, one 'pod went into Overwatch and the other advanced, then I had the rest of my squad cluster up around the Volunteer - without getting LoS on the Sectopods - and hit everyone with a Ghost Grenade. During the Sectopods' turn, one lumbered forward to hide under the balcony near the room entrance where the team was gathered, the other... I'm not sure. The animation looked like the laserface attack, but it targeted the terrain between the door and the balcony and left some terrain destruction SFX, like the mortar barrage? Then everything died the next turn thanks to an amazing Assault with HEAT Ammo, who in turn was brought down to 1 HP by a combination of a Sectopod death explosion and Muton Elite overwatch fire during the final approach.

Final battle was an afterthought - Blaster Bomb from Zhang, Rift from the Volunteer, Archangel Sniper In the Zones the two Muton Elites and the Uber Ethereal. Props to Maria "Dice" Volkova for saving the planet in an ending cutscene that had a lot of black glitches in it.

Just to give an idea of how different a Marathon game is from a standard Normal campaign: 25 days until second satellite, 80 days until first colonel, 85 days until third satellite, 146 days until the alien base, 222 days until first Firestorm, 231 days until a psionic soldier was discovered, 252 days until the Overseer ship, 281 days until victory, with a total of 55 missions and 600 alien kills. I'd finished up laser weapons and carapace armor before the alien base assault, and was wrapping up plasma and the various powered armors before downing the Overseer ship. No Meld, no SHIVs, only non-random NPC used was Zhang because the only Heavy around when he was recruited was an awful Squaddie. That, and Annette and two of the Furies rolled Sniper, yuck.

Current earworm: "Mother - Outro"

I thought the Furies' classes were set in stone, not that I ever use them.

Annette the Sniper though, ouch.

Actually, a psionic Sniper sounds like a good idea for a Snap Shot/Gunslinger build.

---

So... first foray into Classic. Got rolled the courtyard map and decided to go towards the left instead of down the center in order to avoid getting mobbed. Didn't help because both pods came at me at the same time anyway. After one soldier got critically injured and several others wounded, I decided to just restart.

Second attempt, rolled the stormy highway map. Here I finally realized that I'm going to have to savescum the shit out of this difficulty level, after multiple panic chains. I've never had a single soldier panicking on Normal yet on Classic, the instant one rookie drops, another two instantly lose it, which is frakking ridiculous.

Observations:

• 45% chance to hit on Classic equals "don't bother, waste of ammo". Which is problematic because Sectoids are usually out of grenade range and I can neither close in nor move to flank without activating another pod or two and getting swarmed by six Sectoids at once.
• I recently read an Impossible guide that advocated retreating out of sight and setting up overwatch ambushes. I'm not sure where that came from because here on Classic, the entire team overwatching just beyond the sight radius of an activated Sectoid results in the Sectoid doing the same and refusing to come out. Sometimes it budges when I hunker down instead, but not always. Either I step up and get shot by overwatch or we get locked into a stalemate until the end of time.
  • Which is kinda problematic because the page quote on The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard states that while the AI cannot beat a competent human player without cheating (because if it could, the game won't be fun), getting caught cheating is bad form. And the AI basing its behavior on intel it shouldn't legally have (it can't see the soldiers and hasn't been for several turns, so how should it know they're on overwatch?) definitely counts as blatant.
• Yet again I find myself agreeing with the aforementioned mod's maker on one point: plasma weapons instantly destroying terrain in a single hit 100% of a time is BS. I don't normally reload on every screwup but when a Sectoid steps up, destroys my soldier's high cover with a missed shot, then another Sectoid steps up and instakill-crits the now-exposed soldier which starts a panic chain, I do reload because I refuse to take that crap.

Edited by amitakartok on Aug 31st 2019 at 3:59:21 PM

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with Psi Snipers, even for the superior Squadsight ones. It's just that Durand has decreased accuracy by default.

The problem with a Psionic Squadsight is that the sniper is never going to be in range to actually use his/her powers unless the aliens rush the drop zone.

Another issue in my case was that I had Training Roulette on, so the only soldier who rolled Gunslinger as a perk choice was one of my Supports. Hell, that run only one of my four Assaults got Lightning Reflexes, and the only soldier to get the option to use medkits multiple times was a Heavy.

Also, quite annoyed that there's no "Marathon" game-extending setting for XCOM 2, just the options to increase strategic and tactical timers. And of course I find the mod that tries to fix that after starting another campaign...

Current earworm: "Mother - Outro"

But Psionic powers do allow a Squadsight Sniper to have some better means of fighting up close in an emergency, whereas a Gunslinger/Snapshot would already have said means.

Probably the mortar. In my experience, Sectopods will react to stealth by targeting the mortar where the stealthed soldiers are. It's easy enough to just move out of the way, though, and indoors, the Sectopods have the hilarious tendency to accidentally fire into ceilings.

You might have to shift one soldier around a bit (while leaving the other three in their overwatch positions). The aliens know your general location, so constantly shifting it will often jiggle them loose and have them run out.

Also, if the map has it, try to utilize high ground as much as possible. The AI is really bad at dealing with LoS shenanigans when they're on the lower ground and will often move into unfavourable locations (even on Impossible).

The best advice I can give here is to try not to give them LoS at all. I usually have one soldier scouting and drawing fire by hunkering behind one of those indestructable alien pods (80 Def is basically unhittable to 90% of the enemies) while the others hide around corners. It may take several turns to pull the enemies in, but once they do, have the other soldiers pop out and pop them.

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So were you always able to activate the supply crate Fulton balloons in a supply raid at the end of a double-move? Or is that a tweak from Musashi's RPG Overhaul or something? Because that was the first time, due mostly to dumb luck, that I got every single supply crate on the map - all the ones ADVENT tagged were within dashing range, and I was able to clear house before they got to some of the far ones.

That and an Inspiration have helped my current XCOM 2 campaign zip through mag weapons, and I'm in the process of building up the infrastructure to start expanding the Resistance out of my home continent. Only real issue so far has been the Squaddie perks not giving me a clear direction of how to specialize the roster, just lots of generic stuff like "Damn Good Ground" or "Mercenary." And then one guy got both "Praetorian" (improved hit chance with melee weapons) and "SystemAdmin" (improved Hacking score on relevant missions). I'm almost tempted to run him with a Sword/Gremlin setup so he can hack between hacks...

And despite specifying that my master character pool not be used in this campaign, the worst Sniper from the EW campaign I just finished somehow followed me into XCOM 2. And of course his Squaddie perks were things like "Toxicologist" and not anything that would help him be an actual Sniper.

The deciding factor was that I'm a firm believer of Your Dudes, and would rather use a character that I've grown over a campaign than one dropped into my lap (again, Zhang was the exception because the other Heavies were just that bad). And said Dudes included an Assault/Volunteer who had the psychic angle locked down and an absurdly good Snap Shot/In the Zone Sniper, so there was nothing that Annette or the Furies would bring to the team that my squad didn't already do better, without having to grind a bunch of lieutenants.

Guess the thing mis-clicked or something, because it was about four tiles off from where everyone was huddled around a spent Ghost Grenade. And whatever attack it used hit instantly, but I thought Cluster Bomb had a one-turn grace period to get out of the target area, and there wasn't any indication it had fired anything during its reveal move. And now that I check the wiki, it looks like the old laserface attack could destroy cover in a minor AoE, but only in EU, so...

Sectopods are fey and mysterious creatures.

Current earworm: "Mother - Outro"

Hmmm, yeah, sounds like it might have just bugged out, then. I don't think Sectopods were tested very well.

As for the incidental action thing, I'm not 100% certain, but I think that's something they pointedly fixed in XCOM 2, so you shouldn't be able to do it. It's one of those things that was supposed to be not allowed at the end of a turn in the first game, but the PC version let any soldier be reselected, so they could do stuff like, say, dash and then activate a bomb node when the console versions couldn't.

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I noticed that too and actively make use of it all the time when attacking a UFO's bridge by putting one guy on either side of the door, setting them both on overwatch, then having one of them pop the door for a double overwatch on the boss pod.

Serves 'em right for having that "free move into cover" thing upon being triggered. I don't mind them having it during the XCOM turn because I recognize it as fair, but why must they have it during the alien turn too? If the player dashes too far and gets flanked by a newly activated pod, they don't get a free move to cover in the same situation, so why should the aliens get a free move after dashing into the player's LOS?

Edited by amitakartok on Sep 1st 2019 at 2:18:45 PM

Why would you want to deal with the accuracy penalty on Overwatch? Just have some soldiers physically block the doors out of the UFO boss room, then open them with all actions available. The aliens run to cover, and your soldiers run into point blank range, surrounding the boss and any flunkies, like so.