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moot the hopple posted:Losing explosive cover damage is already a massive negative If I'm remembering right, Meld canisters can be destroyed with explosions so the needle grenades fit in a little niche there when you want to be careful. Also Cryssalids.
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Nov 4, 2013 07:52
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Seriously though they better have done something to make Chryssalids scary.
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Nov 4, 2013 07:55
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'Stimmed' Chrysalids in the later stages of the game can jump over cover and, should they be able to reach in their second move, can basically attack and move in the same turn.
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Nov 4, 2013 08:04
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Getting ahead of myself a bit, but is Zhang inherently psychic or are his values random like other soldiers?
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Nov 4, 2013 09:55
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I've run three games where I bothered getting Zhang, and in two of them he was gifted, while in the most recent one he wasn't. So it seems it's still random with him, but given his higher stats than vanilla troops he's likely to end up with the gift through Will alone unless you get him shot up a bunch.
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Nov 4, 2013 10:28
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poptart_fairy posted:There's also EXALT undermining your efforts in the global map, sabotaging research and so on. I'm guessing they're shaking up a lot of the early/mid game with this but making the late game quicker to get through in return. Once EXALT are out of the picture I imagine your new toys will basically have free run of the place. I wonder if they can sabotage your building progress too? If those fuckers mess up my satellite builds I am ignoring the aliens to murder them at all costs. Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:Neither did I. It seems like Enemy Within will be a pretty good expansion overall. I'm just saying I think I'd rather have a sequel at this point. My hope is that is what Jake is working on now while Gupta does the expansion. Pretty sure when people noticed he wasn't lead on EW he mentioned he was still doing something XCOM related. Darkrenown fucked around with this message at 11:55 on Nov 4, 2013 |
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Nov 4, 2013 10:54
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Psycho Landlord posted:I've run three games where I bothered getting Zhang, and in two of them he was gifted, while in the most recent one he wasn't. So it seems it's still random with him, but given his higher stats than vanilla troops he's likely to end up with the gift through Will alone unless you get him shot up a bunch. Ah, cool. He's pulling his weight in my Marathon missions so far and figured that becoming psychic/volunteer would be a great way to end his arc, such as it is. I haven't started coming across Mutons just yet though - and I'm about a fortnight away from Carapace - so there's always time for him to get a face of plasma I guess. Darkrenown posted:I wonder if they can sabotage your building progress too? If those fuckers mess up mt satellite builds I am ignoring the aliens to murder them at all costs. That would be such a dick move if they could, ahahaha.  'Tank' is a loving monster. Think I'll give him Rocketeer over Mayhem though; I'm shooting down a poo poo ton of UFOs, so salvage and collateral aren't really an issue. Exploding groups of Thin Men is worth the sacrifice. I also need to get the recovery decrease when I get my next batch of funding as Zhang only suffered two damage in the mission. Also, Witchy?   Rule Number 1: Enjoy these little moments.  e; wtf, I go all week without a UFO sighting but three slip by in the twelve hours it takes to retrofit my Interceptors with new laser cannons. poptart_fairy fucked around with this message at 11:30 on Nov 4, 2013 |
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Nov 4, 2013 11:16
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poptart_fairy posted:
If you have more than one per base (which you should), upgrade them separately in case that happens. 
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Nov 4, 2013 13:25
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On classic, I just had the first terror mission when all I had was four squaddies with starting gear. Screwed, right? Nope, somehow I managed to kill 14 aliens, of which 8 are crysalids, without a single casualty (although one was on one health at the end). They all died on the next crashed UFO mission, thought 
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Nov 4, 2013 14:04
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chami posted:If you have more than one per base (which you should), upgrade them separately in case that happens. Well now I know that.  Got my carapace armour into mass production and lasers have been distributed to every member on my A and B teams. Going to be losing a couple countries this month - Europe, primarily - but I can do without them for now. A month or two will be spent on making sure all air defenses are up to speed and then I'm hitting the alien base. Suffered my first "proper" loss at the hands of Mutons - didn't realise they'd be savvy enough to keep my guys penned up for grenades. Won't be making that same mistake again.
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Nov 4, 2013 14:54
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nothing to seehere posted:They all died on the next crashed UFO mission, thought I had something similar happen last night. First terror mission went flawless so I got cocky in the next abduction. I'm being more offensive than I should be and my assault guy gets up close and personal with a wounded thin man. 95% chance to hit. It obviously misses and he gets a critical plasma to the face. He dies and causes a panic. I lose everyone and the campaign would have been lost had I not started doing the whole "cycle soldiers" thing. They may be weaker overall but I have a good selection to pick from so losses don't actually cripple me the way my previous "run the same 4-6" games went.
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Nov 4, 2013 14:59
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 zhang what are you doing that's not our uniform for this mission  witchy you are a sniper stop doing this    Did I mention I love the enemy design yet.
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Nov 4, 2013 15:03
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poptart_fairy posted:
God drat this game looks so good on PC. What armor are those?
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Nov 4, 2013 15:17
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:God drat this game looks so good on PC. What armor are those? Carapace armour and its variants with Slingshot helmets. I like to design my dudes so I know who's who at a glance - MECs are going to be bright yellow, like power loaders.  e; gently caress. 51 Kills, 18 missions later and 'Tank' finally gets overwhelmed on the second Slingshot mission. I've never been physically angry at an NPC before - if that goddamn loving German sniper 'Lockdown' hadn't been a complete and utter wimp over a single point of poison damage, he could have covered Tank during the encoder approach. But noooooo, X-Com lost one of its finest soldiers today thanks to that.  Bah, at least he went down knowing he'd saved China. poptart_fairy fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Nov 4, 2013 |
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Nov 4, 2013 15:21
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:God drat this game looks so good on PC. What armor are those? I think that's just carapace armor tinted black/white and DLC helmets.
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Nov 4, 2013 15:22
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Some of those are carapace armor variant #3 which you also get from slingshot.
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Nov 4, 2013 16:32
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Eager for payback over the death of Tank I threw myself into the final Slingshot mission but instantly regretted it when I woke up a Cyberdisc. Nonetheless, desire for REVENGE saw the troops through and now the XCOM project has a fully intact, fully functional battleship to play with. That dinky Rookie you see tucked down in the corner is Douglas Jones, the guy I brought on to replace Tank. It's kind of hilarious because he uses the sort of timid, Nolan North-esque voice like he's trying so hard to make out he's not here to replace his predecessor seriously guys. He got eight of the kills you see there so something tells me the squad will warm up to him quickly. e; that's a lot of resources for winning the mission. 
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Nov 4, 2013 16:51
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Yeah, that battleship is loaded. The two fusion cores in particular are insane, gives you access to the guided fusion launcher without having to upgrade air enough to shoot down a battleship.
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Nov 4, 2013 17:18
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UFO landed in Nigeria, sent in my team. Went forward, ran into a bunch of mutons. Okay no problem. Then a bunch of floaters showed up form the other side. Short story made shorter, ran the gently caress away, aborted the mission with only 2 survivors. So I assault the alien base and another UFO lands in Nigeria. Unfortunately, my A team is still recovering from the base assault, So I send a force of mostly rookies, with the two surviors from the first landing to support. It... goes well! up until I run in to 3 elite sectoids. Even worse, the extraction zone disappeared, so my last guy, one of the survivors from previous botched landing, who was responsible for most of the kills so far due to being the god of sniping apparently, gets gunned down by a mind controled soldier who was the OTHER survivor.
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Nov 4, 2013 17:28
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I was wondering about the mec trooper conversion again. If you have a fully leveled colonel and send him to the human chop shop to become a mec trooper, does he retain his aim/will/health points or do they reset to basic rookie values ? And if yes - will he get additional benefits from the extra mec levels ?
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Nov 4, 2013 17:34
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poptart_fairy posted:e; that's a lot of resources for winning the mission. Deuce posted:Yeah, that battleship is loaded. The two fusion cores in particular are insane, gives you access to the guided fusion launcher without having to upgrade air enough to shoot down a battleship. It's a huge tease in Marathon, however - if I recall correctly, just the research for Blaster Launchers and Fusion Lances both take 2 Fusion Cores, so you're only able to research one of them but not build it.
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Nov 4, 2013 17:39
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Hammerstein posted:I was wondering about the mec trooper conversion again. If you have a fully leveled colonel and send him to the human chop shop to become a mec trooper, does he retain his aim/will/health points or do they reset to basic rookie values ? And if yes - will he get additional benefits from the extra mec levels ? I think I read somewhere that they lose all their skills but they retain the points (to respend on the new MEC-specific skills).
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Nov 4, 2013 17:40
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I just had a thin-man poison one of my downed soldiers, the cheeky little gently caress.
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Nov 4, 2013 17:51
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chami posted:It's a huge tease in Marathon, however - if I recall correctly, just the research for Blaster Launchers and Fusion Lances both take 2 Fusion Cores, so you're only able to research one of them but not build it. Yeah, haha. I'm happy going for Fusion Lances though. I'd prefer to negate the air battles than acquire a (admittedly ludicrously powerful) rocket launcher. Mind you EMP might be an idea but then that greatly increases the risk to both fleet and squads, hmm.
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Nov 4, 2013 18:11
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TalonDemonKing posted:I just had a thin-man poison one of my downed soldiers, the cheeky little gently caress.
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Nov 4, 2013 18:12
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poptart_fairy posted:Yeah, haha. I'm happy going for Fusion Lances though. I'd prefer to negate the air battles than acquire a (admittedly ludicrously powerful) rocket launcher. Mind you EMP might be an idea but then that greatly increases the risk to both fleet and squads, hmm. I would take the Blaster Launcher over Fusion Lances every time. Even if they did the same damage as a normal rocket I'd take them, purely for the extra range and the flexibility of positioning. Plus, I've never seen them miss, ever.
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Nov 4, 2013 18:34
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poptart_fairy posted:Yeah, haha. I'm happy going for Fusion Lances though. I'd prefer to negate the air battles than acquire a (admittedly ludicrously powerful) rocket launcher. Mind you EMP might be an idea but then that greatly increases the risk to both fleet and squads, hmm. I never go for Fusion Lances - Plasma Cannons and EMP are more than enough to bring down any UFO. Later on in Marathon, you're going to start running into shortages of UFO materials which makes getting them mostly intact through EMP more useful. Blaster Launchers, however, are 100% hit chance, high damage, and go around obstacles. Blasters are pretty much always the best choice.
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Nov 4, 2013 18:35
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Suppose you guys make pretty good points. I'm just worried about losing my precious satellite network. 
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Nov 4, 2013 18:42
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poptart_fairy posted:Suppose you guys make pretty good points. I'm just worried about losing my precious satellite network. Stealth Satellites.
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Nov 4, 2013 19:24
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:Definitely, a more dynamic campaign is maybe on the top of my wishlist. The base invasion in the expansion seems to miss the point. If it's just another scripted moment with only two different possible pre-set maps, then it feels no different from any of the other scripted events. If instead you get invaded because you failed to respond to some scout UFOs and the enemy overran your perimeter defenses and end up fighting in your own base, that's about a million times better. I think 10-12 could easily work with XCOM mechanics, just need somewhat bigger maps. I mean the original could have you go all the way up to what, 24 soldiers? 28? (Bumrushing the alien base with nothing but cattleprods and high explosives  ).The risk for overpoweredness would be handled by not having 30 HP behemoth colonels with more OP skills each than you can shake a stick at. More options, but your guys also die easier. All which would allow a greater range of enemies (swarmers all the way to SectopodXL). Explosives in the original could get silly yeah but counter-point: SKULLSPLOSIONS The economy in the original was hurt by being "realistic" in weapon costs compared to XCOMs more abstract boardgame approach but it's not like that got anything to do with the number of boots you can put on the battlescape. Meanwhile I don't think the satellite mechanic and the geoscape in XCOM is all that "interesting" either, the irrelevance of money just takes a little longer to hit (because you got more things to spend it on, thanks to purchasable skills). As for modding in more than 6, I never got it to work properly. They'd just spawn and get stuck somewhere. A lot of XCOMs design "minimisations" come from probably not having much of a budget to work with and not much experience either to make it feel worth "Risking", but with XCOM 2 I think they can pull it off. Pimpmust fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Nov 4, 2013 |
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Nov 4, 2013 19:47
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Legendary Ptarmigan posted:Stealth Satellites. Yeah, just unlocked those. I neglected the Foundry. 
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Nov 4, 2013 19:57
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Sylphosaurus posted:Welcome to the esteemed brotherhood of "gently caress Thin Men"! You are but one of many here, brother. On that subject, I watched the Dutch preview above and it looks like MECs are immune to poison (and fire), despite their human faces being out in the open. This makes me all the more enthusiastic about running a MEC up to a group of Thin men and loving murdering them all. I hope there's a custom animation for Fisting Thin men.
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Nov 4, 2013 20:02
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Quift posted:What was horrible was how that huy thoguht that he playyed cautiously. He dashed into unnknows territory onmultiple occasions, and all of his losses would have been easily preventable. Don't play Ironman while posting on SA while drunk.
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Nov 4, 2013 20:11
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Pimpmust posted:I think 10-12 could easily work with XCOM mechanics, just need somewhat bigger maps. I mean the original could have you go all the way up to what, 24 soldiers? 28? (Bumrushing the alien base with nothing but cattleprods and high explosives Long War successfully mods in 6 upgradeable to 8 and everything works perfectly. Whatever else you may think of LW, 6 to 8 feels much better than 4 to 6 for me.
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Nov 4, 2013 20:24
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poptart_fairy posted:Did I mention I love the enemy design yet. It consists only of a research project to find the Thin Men's tailor. Sales go quadruple Platinum. Also I'm going to be so murdered (more than usual) considering I haven't really played this since launch, on Normal. But that will just make it feel more fresh right? EW content wise, I noticed in that last link to game updates, they are removing that lovely global passive final skill from the Officer School because "There's a gene mod for that now, per person". With this talk about MECs poison and fire immunity being special, does this mean I missed the memo about them removing that from Titan Armor too? Or that upgrade to medkits making the holder immune to poison? I love new things, but I always loving HATE it when updates go "Here is this cool new thing! It is functionally identical/worse or harder to get than this thing you used to have but we got rid of." The combo buff to Sectopods and Nerf to HEAT ammo meanwhile at least feels , even if they are probably only nerfing your robot murder bullets because it would lessen the impact of shiny new enemies, and less "Hey guys, Cyberdisks flying are slightly less gently caress you to low accuracy Heavies". I mean, just buffing the Sectopods would be fine, and make HEAT Ammo Heavies that much more valuable.. You know, if Reaction Shot ever helped me ever or gave me a reason to take it over HEAT ammo.EDIT: gently caress yeah skull explosions. Section Z fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Nov 4, 2013 |
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Nov 4, 2013 20:30
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I think I'm starting to get this game. End of month 2 and North America is in a panic so I drop the 3 satellites I have on it. I get the council report and immediately build some interceptors on USA because I just loving know the game will throw a large scout or something over that way the second it gets a chance. Sure enough, just HOURS after the interceptors are ready - large scout. Took all 3 interceptors to bring it down bit god drat does it feel good to not let that fucker go and shoot down one of my satellites which is pretty much what always happens. I'll probably going to be bleeding money this month keeping satellite coverage up while research gets somewhere. Is there any worthwhile upgrade in regards to air defense before the firestorm? I don't think I'll be able to pull those until next month and I'm worried this month will be particularly air-oriented.
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Nov 4, 2013 21:00
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Laser cannons have done me fine in a Marathon Classic game. I have to disengage from the Battleships, but supply barges and large UFOs could be shot down. Worst case scenario you use up two Interceptor slots going for one bogey, but that's doable.Section Z posted:The next expansion after Enemy Within is full price. You joke but I think almost everyone bought Slingshot for the hats, not the content! Anyway, alien base down with minimal injuries. Got light plasma rifles on my rookies, alien grenades in their pockets, carapace or skeleton armour on everyone and I'm currently researching Firestorm. I lost seven countries but the other nine have full satellite coverage and their panic is well under control. Despite the bumps I've had, Classic has definitely felt like a much better experience than Normal. Game was designed around it, feels like. e; gently caress. Took the death of a Sergeant and three Rookies - arc thrower failures - to bring him in, but I finally caught a live Muton. Lets open up this fucker's mind.
poptart_fairy fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Nov 4, 2013 |
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Nov 4, 2013 21:01
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SeaTard posted:Where is the xcom part? I skipped around to random bits, but couldn't find it. He linked to part two of the stream by mistake. EW is at 8'40" in part one. (I'd link it but I'm phone posting, sorry.)
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Nov 4, 2013 21:06
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Szechuan posted:He linked to part two of the stream by mistake. EW is at 8'40" in part one. (I'd link it but I'm phone posting, sorry.) You're probably going to need multiple assaults with CC specialist to extract the majority of your team from that map. So hyped!
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Nov 4, 2013 22:16
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That map is awesome and everything I hoped for in terms of diversifying mission parameters. However, I think it could use a bit of balancing to avoid the final wave of terror there and make it a casualty-free mission. I'm having trouble figuring out a solid retreat plan without a larger squad size and higher ranked soldiers.
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Nov 4, 2013 22:47
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