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So my game on normal is going well, farther I've gotten before, actually got everyone lasers instead of giving up in frustration long before then. Are Muton Berserkers meant to be chumps? I mean they just kind of die without doing anything most of the time, hell the last one I saw when it activated moved AWAY from everyone for some reason.
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Aug 26, 2013 03:29
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What kind of cosmetic options are going to be available for Mec Troopers? This is important.
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Aug 26, 2013 03:32
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Catts posted:What kind of cosmetic options are going to be available for Mec Troopers? Robotic hats.
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Aug 26, 2013 03:56
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xanthan posted:Are Muton Berserkers meant to be chumps? I mean they just kind of die without doing anything most of the time, hell the last one I saw when it activated moved AWAY from everyone for some reason. They're not the smoothest operators around, no  Their purpose is to draw fire away from their normal muton buddies, and little more.
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Aug 26, 2013 04:05
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PiCroft posted:I'm wondering if there is a memory leak in the battle phase since I'm playing XCom on an old piece of poo poo laptop. Starting the game from a cold boot, the base screen and the first battle I enter seem fine, slightly sluggish but nothing serious. However, after the second battle, things get really slow really quickly and the trigger for each progressive slowdown seems to be completing battles. Most videogames have memory leaks of some form, they're just usually compounded slowly enough that they're a really small amount of memory compared to that being actually used for stuff.
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Aug 26, 2013 04:06
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Doctor Reynolds posted:Hi thread, just posting to say gently caress THIN MEN okay bye back to discussing new DLC. I just did the hostage rescue mission where you're in the square with the big raised fountain in the middle. Thanks to some previous casualties, I only had six fresh people for the mission. Which included three higher-level heavies. Every time one of those packs of thin men would reveal themselves, they'd automatically run and hide behind the nearest car or structure. Didn't do poo poo for them though. Because every time they did, my nearest heavy would launch a rocket and send them all flying across the screen while yelling DANGER ZOOOONE. Totally ruthless and I lost out on a ton of weapon fragments, but gently caress those guys. I guess it was more funny to watch than to describe. 
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Aug 26, 2013 04:14
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The Rat posted:I just did the hostage rescue mission where you're in the square with the big raised fountain in the middle. Thanks to some previous casualties, I only had six fresh people for the mission. Which included three higher-level heavies. No, you summed it up beautifully. From your description I could hear their dying hisses fading as they flew through the air, and that was the greatest gift you could ever give.
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Aug 26, 2013 04:35
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I must have missed the bit where enemy within is apparently going to strip equipment from inactive soldiers so you don't need to manually unequip stuff from soldiers before giving it to current squad members. I like that they are not only adding neat new features but fixing complaints and irritating flaws too 
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Aug 26, 2013 04:44
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I've been trying the Long War and I'm having trouble competing against enemies like floaters, because they now have their health vary anywhere from 5 to 8, while i'm still running around with no equipment improvement. I'm not sure if the mod came with it, but I had the dev version, so eventually I wanted to cheat to see if I could even get anyone up to captain. So many missions I cheated just to see if a guy could make it to captain and I see no progress on my soldiers, maybe a few sergeants. AND I'm still broke. So, how exactly am I expected to even win if I am not going to even have the funds for satellites? Let alone an interceptor force capable of taking down Battleship class UFOs with pitiful Interceptor missiles? LET alone the fact that when and if I get new equipment, casualties make sure I don't get those items back? I mean, the original game already takes me out of my comfort zone of always winning, and I like that. This mod makes it seem that you are born to fail. How does a SHIV cost more than a Laboratory anyway?
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Aug 26, 2013 04:47
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Fargin Icehole posted:
By paying your scientists a pittance, of course. More seriously, I do like the Long War mod, too, but I have the same complaints. It's certainly more difficult, but it's not particularly... fun. It tries to add mechanics from the original game, like making scientists important, but the difference is that in the original game, the first XCOM, you could buy scientists. You had plenty of ways to get money, more than in EU. It like a lot of the ideas, like making SHIV relevant and, as much I hate it, the fatigue system is somewhat neat, as well as the new soldier classes even if they're kind of... odd, at times. However, there's still a lot of hiccups about it. The fact that it takes you a month, almost, to get Xenobiology is very telling. I mean, the mod IS called Long War, on the other hand. A lot of the difficulty is up about the strategic side of things, but it doesn't give you much tools to keep up with the ramped up difficulty.
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Aug 26, 2013 04:59
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Because SHIVs are a godsend and I wish I'd gotten one earlier. You know how your dudes take a month to recover if they're gravely injured? SHIVs don't. They take like a week to repair, max, so you can bring them along on a good chunk of the missions. They have 12 health, good movement, ignore 2 damage/hit, and have 20% defense. They also hit like an LMG, but with acceptable accuracy. Plus, while it costs money to upgrade them, you can give them some pretty nice equipment. Holotargetting, extra ammo, and bulletstorm is a pretty powerful combination (and later, they can get the ability to return fire on any enemy that hits them for free). Seriously, godsends. As for the aerial stuff, you don't actually need to fight the battleships. They made it so that its actually hard for the aliens to find your satellites even if you fail to kill the scanning ships. Also, letting aliens go doesn't actually hurt panic in the country that it was on, as long as you at least engage it. Btw, Destroyers are what vanilla called Large Scouts. It usually takes me two interceptors to get one down. And yeah, its definitely a lot slower of a game. Every so often, you'll get some nice abduction rewards. 200 cash goes a long way in the middle of the month. I've also had a lot of luck with holotargetting. That 10% bonus and sheer volume of fire is pretty handy. Remember that the squadsight penalty decreases as more members of your squad can see the enemy, and that snipers can steady their weapon for a 20% aim bonus. Snipers aren't the gods they used to be, and its often worthwhile to have them steady rifles for a round while the rest of your squad sucks it up. Suppression, holotargetting, tactical sense, and aggression are all very, very useful skills. So's having 3 rockets on one rocketeer, by the way. Simply put, the game made it easier for you to fail, but in a lot of ways, you don't actually NEED to succeed. Letting UFOs live, if you at least engage them, won't hurt you (in the short run. It may slightly increase the alien tech levels). edit: Though now I'm going to bitch about Muton grenades, because they've done something to the AI that basically makes them chuck a grenade if they have it available. That's pretty brutal, especially since they'll throw multiple grenades on one person. Pretty much a guaranteed death each time, unless you've got a SHIV around to draw their fire instead. Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Aug 26, 2013 |
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Aug 26, 2013 05:03
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Cosmic Afro posted:By paying your scientists a pittance, of course. I sort of felt similar. You may want to check out Warspace Extension mod.
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Aug 26, 2013 05:05
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xanthan posted:So my game on normal is going well, farther I've gotten before, actually got everyone lasers instead of giving up in frustration long before then. Instead, they are supposed to force you out of your safe little hidey holes that and mandate that you do something besides shred their Muton squadmates. I am never afraid of a Berserker. But I am frequently afraid of what's behind him. Also yeah, I like what Long War tried to do with the class expansion, giving you a bit more control over how your soldiers develop, but really I feel like all it did was make promotions a complete clusterfuck. After messing with it a lot I'm just not happy with the class overhaul and I find myself preferring the simplicity of the vanilla game a lot more.
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Aug 26, 2013 05:05
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I am afraid of Berserkers. Not because they're dangerous or anything, but because the framerate tanks in a major way every time they move after being shot. Makes me worried that the game's about to crash every time.
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Aug 26, 2013 05:16
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Well I just found myself at the end of a map with a mind controlled Muton Elite and a couple of extra turns. So I walked him in to the middle of the room while everyone whips out pistols.  Then Panic him as soon as he is out of your control and hope he runs so that he will trigger overwatch.  Send pictures to thin men as a warning. Also I think I love shooting guys in the face with pistols at close range.  
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Aug 26, 2013 05:32
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Cream-of-Plenty posted:I sort of felt similar. You may want to check out Warspace Extension mod. Yeah, I'm thinking of giving it a look, too. One thing I really don't like is that, well, research takes a long rear end time to do, but you have no real means of hiring more scientists, except for buidling Labs, with a very much small pittance of money you need to get elsewhere. AND Interceptors costs 200 credits. Each. It's like it's trying to go 'hey, hey, you really like things hard has balls, huh? WELL HAVE FUN WITH THIS HAHAHAHA' and throw me a Battleship on Month 2 and Thinmen with 6 HP. And I barely have Arc Throwers at that point. Warspace Extension do look rather neat, I'm downloading it right now. But seriously. gently caress Thin Men with 6 HP.
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Aug 26, 2013 06:10
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Cosmic Afro posted:Yeah, I'm thinking of giving it a look, too. One thing I really don't like is that, well, research takes a long rear end time to do, but you have no real means of hiring more scientists, except for buidling Labs, with a very much small pittance of money you need to get elsewhere. AND Interceptors costs 200 credits. Each. I've found that Warspace Extension fixes a lot of the nagging issues I've had with the vanilla game and removes a lot of the "no brainer" choices, instead promoting different weapons, research, and strategies. It's no longer "oh skip this crap, always research this, and race as quickly as you can to getting this weapon". It generally makes things a little more difficult without making them too unfair.
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Aug 26, 2013 06:16
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 Meet Iris. Iris is on her 13th shot of this sectoid. It's been more than 13 turns of her shooting at this sectoid, the first only managed to graze it. This sectoid, at 1 hp, has had 13 close calls since him being struck from earlier. How difficult is the shot?  At least the guy seems content in just spamming overwatch. 
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Aug 26, 2013 07:49
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TalonDemonKing posted:
I do this too. A lot of times on downed UFO scout missions, I'll corner the remaining sectoid and see how long it takes to make a 20-35% shot. My most recent one was a shot with a 22% chance of hitting, and it took 14 attempts to make.
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Aug 26, 2013 07:53
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Henry Scorpio posted:Haven't seen this posted... The more I see mechtoids and mech troopers the more I wonder why they have no head armour. Kinda a shame if you're reduced to torso in a massive robot suit only to by killed by some kid with a .22 rifle or eat a poison spit to the face.
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Aug 26, 2013 10:21
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Darkrenown posted:The more I see mechtoids and mech troopers the more I wonder why they have no head armour. Kinda a shame if you're reduced to torso in a massive robot suit only to by killed by some kid with a .22 rifle or eat a poison spit to the face. That said, the MECs are pretty much Robocop already, who says Vahlen didn't already replace their skull with one built from alien alloys, and then taped the face back on? \/\/ For the mechtoid, sure. The aliens have already demonstrated that they're quite happy using just forcefields as a instead of large amounts of the outer hull on their ships. Groetgaffel fucked around with this message at 10:56 on Aug 26, 2013 |
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Aug 26, 2013 10:47
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Alternatively: Force fields
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Aug 26, 2013 10:49
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PiCroft posted:I'm wondering if there is a memory leak in the battle phase since I'm playing XCom on an old piece of poo poo laptop. Starting the game from a cold boot, the base screen and the first battle I enter seem fine, slightly sluggish but nothing serious. However, after the second battle, things get really slow really quickly and the trigger for each progressive slowdown seems to be completing battles. Not ruling out a memory leak, but given that X-Com is multi-platform I think it is at least less likely. The PS3 and 360 are severely limited memory environments compared to even a really old PC - less than 512 MB for video memory and CPU memory *combined*. As a result, it is really hard to certify a game with leaks in it ( the sort of leaks that can scuttle the game in the time span you mention ) due to the fact that it would make the game incredibly unstable. If you want to be sure though, memory leaks are easy to ID on a PC: just pop open task manager and check the memory consumption. X-Com's normal range for memory consumption on the PC from what I've seen is 300MB - 1GB. Is your laptop below min spec? Something that can cause major issues is not having at least a dual core comp. Henry Scorpio fucked around with this message at 13:19 on Aug 26, 2013 |
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Aug 26, 2013 13:16
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Pretty sure it's a bug but I've never asked and I've never seen it pop up in the thread, but is your evac zone disappearing on very difficult abduction missions common? Because that's how I lost my support LT 2nd month in while four rookies poo poo themselves and all shot each other to death  This is also my third Classic IM game in a week. 1st one was a wipe after two months, the second one I was doing well till October thanks to a solid effort post from the old thread, and then I lost all of my veterans and couldn't muster anything better than squadies who were up against elite mutons. I could always go back to that since I'm not in any danger of losing any countries to panic (and my funding is good), just the grind is getting my guys nowhere. Ugh. Hopefully my latest game stays solid for awhile.
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Aug 26, 2013 14:42
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Handsome Ralph posted:Pretty sure it's a bug but I've never asked and I've never seen it pop up in the thread, but is your evac zone disappearing on very difficult abduction missions common? I remember someone mentioning it while ago (I think it was here) so at least you are not the first one.
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Aug 26, 2013 14:54
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I did, a while back. Save/reload the mission and it should reappear. It worked for me every time so far 
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Aug 26, 2013 14:58
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Next official infodump will be at Pax Prime, Saturday 8/31 3:30PM - 4:30PMPax Prime Schedule posted:Strategy Masterminds Mega Panel - XCOM: Enemy Within
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Aug 26, 2013 15:21
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Kennel posted:I remember someone mentioning it while ago (I think it was here) so at least you are not the first one. IIRC, wasn't it just that the indicators for the evac zone disappeared, but the actual evac zone is still technically there? Thought I saw someone mention that...
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Aug 26, 2013 15:22
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Icon Of Sin posted:I did, a while back. Save/reload the mission and it should reappear. It worked for me every time so far Playing Ironman so the thought didn't occur to me  I'll do this next time though.
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Aug 26, 2013 15:24
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TalonDemonKing posted:
I've had 5-6 shots at 45-60% against Thin men and every single goddamn shot missed across 2 turns. gently caress THIN MEN. e: Henry Scorpio posted:Not ruling out a memory leak, but given that X-Com is multi-platform I think it is at least less likely. The PS3 and 360 are severely limited memory environments compared to even a really old PC - less than 512 MB for video memory and CPU memory *combined*. As a result, it is really hard to certify a game with leaks in it ( the sort of leaks that can scuttle the game in the time span you mention ) due to the fact that it would make the game incredibly unstable. Its a dual-core i5 from about 3-4 years ago so its probably barely able to play it. That being said, it does seem to be the CPU causing the most issues since when I open task manager or CPUID it shows the cores reaching nearly 90% of capacity. PiCroft fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Aug 26, 2013 |
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Aug 26, 2013 16:38
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Darkrenown posted:The more I see mechtoids and mech troopers the more I wonder why they have no head armour. Kinda a shame if you're reduced to torso in a massive robot suit only to by killed by some kid with a .22 rifle or eat a poison spit to the face.
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Aug 26, 2013 16:43
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Is anybody else beginning to feel genuinely unsettled by just the prospect of robbing a soldier of their limbs to create a Mech trooper? Or even a little weirded out by the genetic modification aspects? I hope they do a good job selling all this story-wise, because I'm already beginning to feel a vague unease. Dr. Shen's complaints about people losing their humanity in the game as it is now seem a little quaint by comparison, because making somebody PSI capable is just awakening something that was already there. The content of this expansion seems like a must have to me, and November can't come soon enough.
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Aug 26, 2013 16:56
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Sardonik posted:Is anybody else beginning to feel genuinely unsettled by just the prospect of robbing a soldier of their limbs to create a Mech trooper? Or even a little weirded out by the genetic modification aspects? Hey, I've got no problem with giving people genetically triggered superpowers, or replacing some guy's limbs with stronger, better versions if it's what they actually want. Glad to see Firaxis bringing the transhuman future to us through XCOM. Makes it even better that Michael McCann did the soundtrack for Enemy Unknown and DXHR, both. 
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Aug 26, 2013 17:14
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Psssh, you guys and your "morality". You'll never be top XCOM commanders until you're willing to make every sacrifice. Of course, I am a horrible jerk who always brings a squaddie with me just so I can run him forward as a scout/suicidal arc thrower.
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Aug 26, 2013 17:17
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Sardonik posted:Is anybody else beginning to feel genuinely unsettled by just the prospect of robbing a soldier of their limbs to create a Mech trooper? Or even a little weirded out by the genetic modification aspects? They want you to feel that discomfort. They've indicated that you SHOULD be slightly freaked out about the thought of lopping off pieces of G.I.Joes-named-after-your-siblings and gluing on alien bits in their places. They've also indicated that this is going to manifest itself in-game. Current theories include gene/mod rejection by the host body and anti-XCOM organizations forming as a result. Edgecase fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Aug 26, 2013 |
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Aug 26, 2013 17:37
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Trouble is they have to make the new enemies/scenarios tough enough to make using the new stuff a tempting notion don't they? Or not make the drawbacks really harsh. It'd be a bummer if all these new toys were just too risky/expensive/ineffective to actually use.
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Aug 26, 2013 17:51
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Hey, it's XCOM. It's not like any of them are going to survive long enough to have PTSD.
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Aug 26, 2013 18:21
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thebardyspoon posted:Trouble is they have to make the new enemies/scenarios tough enough to make using the new stuff a tempting notion don't they? Or not make the drawbacks really harsh. It'd be a bummer if all these new toys were just too risky/expensive/ineffective to actually use. My guess is that we're gonna face a very fierce opposition in EW. Something so powerful that we're gonna have to make the difficult choice: sacrifice the soldiers' humanity to have a chance or risk battling impossible odds without employing meld. I am guessing the opposing "faction" that is still to come will be an infiltrated, "Cult of Sirius" organization tht will employ meld against XCOM. That would serve to add drama to the narrative: 1) If XCOM faces the organization employing meld as well, we're not much different than they. At least we'd agree with them that humanity is better off "evolved" this way. And yeah, the Ethereals wanted to "guide" us, didn't they? 2) If we choose to face them with "pure" humans, it's gonna be much tougher. But at least we send the World a clear message of who the good guys are. Also, we kinda show, in a poetic way, that the human spirit prevails. In option 2, if my guess is correct, you'd only see the new soldier customization content as it's employed against you. Which would kinda be a bummer, but I don't think removing the limbs of my soldiers is terribly exciting either, so we'll see.
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Aug 26, 2013 18:22
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It'd be hard to balance "we're gonna face a very fierce opposition in EW. Something so powerful that we're gonna have to make the difficult choice" for differing skill levels though. How do you balance pushing players to the edge and forcing them to use the new stuff without actually just forcing them to use the new stuff? It's probably something similar to what certain RPGs face when they make actually using consumables a vital part of combat, so many games don't require you to use them that players will slog through a section, dying, suffering and then complain that it's too tough when they have 40 strength potions and 20 elixirs still on them unused and "waiting for when I really need them". I could see in EW that by the time you realise "oh poo poo I need mecs/genetic stuff to even the playing field" it's way too late to actually correct that.
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Aug 26, 2013 18:36
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thebardyspoon posted:It'd be hard to balance "we're gonna face a very fierce opposition in EW. Something so powerful that we're gonna have to make the difficult choice" for differing skill levels though. How do you balance pushing players to the edge and forcing them to use the new stuff without actually just forcing them to use the new stuff? It's probably something similar to what certain RPGs face when they make actually using consumables a vital part of combat, so many games don't require you to use them that players will slog through a section, dying, suffering and then complain that it's too tough when they have 40 strength potions and 20 elixirs still on them unused and "waiting for when I really need them". I could see in EW that by the time you realise "oh poo poo I need mecs/genetic stuff to even the playing field" it's way too late to actually correct that. That's true. I believe many players, myself included, would try to push for the "good ending" (even if there's no such thing) and then risk going past the point of no return completely oblivious to its very existence. Then again... this IS XCOM, and this game hates you. Every player should experience the terror of walking into a Game Over at least once, so it'd be nothing terrible either, at least for the veterans. But yeah, it'd be very hard to balance, I agree.
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Aug 26, 2013 18:52
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