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Happy Noodle Boy posted:It'd great if you could keep one or two soldiers in stealth/ambush mode. I'm hoping that ambush mode is more of a general alert trigger, and that ADVENT activates all units on the map after seeing XCOM. The big problem with pods is that for XCOM to work after the first two months combat needs to involve the squad outnumbered (or at least matched) by a diverse team of aliens, and that never happens with pod activation because the optimal strategy is to advance slowly to avoid activating more than one pod and fight by using squadsight+tactical retreat. It's why the most fun missions are the EXALT king-of-the-hill maps, Ashes and Temples, and any time you gently caress up advancing and trigger three pods you aren't ready for. It's bad design that skillful map clearing leads to samey six-on-three one-turn slaughters and you're only rewarded with fun gameplay when you gently caress up.
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Jul 4, 2015 01:50
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The design choices that went into EW show they've definitely learned their lesson about that. All the original missions designed for EW at the very least feature some kind of time pressure to keep you from inching through the map one pod at a time, and the addition of Meld canisters to normal missions provides you with a similar incentive to make calculated risks in order to move forward quickly instead of going for 100% safety. Looking back, the cargo lander where I accidentally triggered a Cyberdisk, Mechtoid, Sectopod, and Sectoid Commander in the same fight with my squad partly spread out certainly made for some fun times (thank god for EMP).
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Jul 4, 2015 02:01
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Microcline posted:I'm hoping that ambush mode is more of a general alert trigger, and that ADVENT activates all units on the map after seeing XCOM. The big problem with pods is that for XCOM to work after the first two months combat needs to involve the squad outnumbered (or at least matched) by a diverse team of aliens, and that never happens with pod activation because the optimal strategy is to advance slowly to avoid activating more than one pod and fight by using squadsight+tactical retreat. It's why the most fun missions are the EXALT king-of-the-hill maps, Ashes and Temples, and any time you gently caress up advancing and trigger three pods you aren't ready for. Well, advent calls in reinforcements in the tutorial/demo, I think they mentioned it's not the last time we'll see that mechanic either. Also, I have nightmares from payday 2 games and stealth.
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Jul 4, 2015 02:05
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Thanks for the replies. I suppose it was just XCOM being especially XCOMish and my mind trying to put order to chaos.
Dr. Gene Dango MD fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Jul 4, 2015 |
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Jul 4, 2015 02:25
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Voyager I posted:The design choices that went into EW show they've definitely learned their lesson about that. All the original missions designed for EW at the very least feature some kind of time pressure to keep you from inching through the map one pod at a time, and the addition of Meld canisters to normal missions provides you with a similar incentive to make calculated risks in order to move forward quickly instead of going for 100% safety. There's a reason both of the "guaranteed good" missions I listed were from Enemy Within. It did a lot to keep the game from getting old, even if some of the problems are baked into the game (interception, the geoscape, fixed enemy spawn story/council missions) and some of the fixes were one step forward and two steps back (seekers slowing down the pace and mimetic skin creating invisible spotters). It's still amazing how much they got right in EU given how much of the gameplay they had to build from the ground up.
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Jul 4, 2015 02:47
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AttackBacon posted:Quote me on this: Air game is garbage. That is okay, but someone asked if anyone had reasons to not like the game that weren't the two things they listed. orangelex44 posted:
Almost everything that's just a stat boost. Ranger, will to survive, extra conditioning, deadeye, sharpshooter, vital point targeting, even LW Mayhem gets boiled down into one. Tactical sense, and bring'em on are neat, but almost every class has the options. A lot of these exist in Vanilla too, but they either aren't near as ubiquitous or they're complimenting one classes kit. Knowing that engineers half exist because of some hosed up insistence that explosives kill terrain too easy just makes me hate them more. Pomp fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Jul 4, 2015 |
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Jul 4, 2015 02:51
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Dr. Gene Dango MD posted:My questions is if the game weighs its difficulty in response to the players actions. I had a shot lined up the other day, 84%. Took it and missed, that's XCOM. Had another at 87%, missed as well. My third shot was at 99% and I couldn't believe it when it didn't hit. Either it was an incredibly large chance I missed all three in a row or the game told my characters to miss even if they would have normally hit, sort of like how Left 4 Dead spawns more zombies if the players are doing well in order to add tension. OG X-Com doesn't pull that kind of bullshit, but the meaning of the "accuracy %" numbers next to snap / aimed / auto shot is kind of misleading. It's not actually your soldier's chance to hit his target at all; instead it's an indicator of how tight his shot's "cone of fire" is going to be. I don't have any source to quote for the actual numbers, but it's something like "0% accuracy means a shot might go anywhere within 90° of where it's aimed; 100% accuracy means the shot will stay within about a 1° cone." It's not a linear relationship, and it never actually narrows all the way down to a perfect straight line, so even when the displayed accuracy is at the cap of 125% you can still miss a target if it's far enough away (or if there's some kind of narrow cover in the way, like a lamppost or mailbox that just exactly blocks the target's center of mass). Basically the thing that's important to understand about "Accuracy%" is that it means less and less the closer you are to your target. A soldier with 65% accuracy against a sectoid at point blank range actually has a way better real chance to hit it than a soldier with 85% accuracy sniping from all the way across the map. EDIT MrBims posted:The poster meant Firaxis XCOM, but this answer is correct for UFO Defense if anyone didn't know. Oh whups. Not sure why my eyeballs registered the word "first" yet edited the word "firaxis" out of his post but yeah apparently that's what they did. Sam Hall fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Jul 4, 2015 |
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Jul 4, 2015 03:19
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Sam Hall posted:OG X-Com doesn't pull that kind of bullshit, but the meaning of the "accuracy %" numbers next to snap / aimed / auto shot is kind of misleading. It's not actually your soldier's chance to hit his target at all; instead it's an indicator of how tight his shot's "cone of fire" is going to be. I don't have any source to quote for the actual numbers, but it's something like "0% accuracy means a shot might go anywhere within 90° of where it's aimed; 100% accuracy means the shot will stay within about a 1° cone." It's not a linear relationship, and it never actually narrows all the way down to a perfect straight line, so even when the displayed accuracy is at the cap of 125% you can still miss a target if it's far enough away (or if there's some kind of narrow cover in the way, like a lamppost or mailbox that just exactly blocks the target's center of mass). The poster meant Firaxis XCOM, but this answer is correct for UFO Defense if anyone didn't know. MrBims fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Jul 4, 2015 |
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Jul 4, 2015 03:24
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Microcline posted:There's a reason both of the "guaranteed good" missions I listed were from Enemy Within. It did a lot to keep the game from getting old, even if some of the problems are baked into the game (interception, the geoscape, fixed enemy spawn story/council missions) and some of the fixes were one step forward and two steps back (seekers slowing down the pace and mimetic skin creating invisible spotters). Oh, I know, I'm agreeing with you and also suggesting that they took steps to correct those gameplay issues in EW is indicative that they won't repeat the mistake in XCOM 2 and we will instead see more missions with active, engaging opposition. Hell, from what they've shown us so far it looks like a lot of the missions will be daring raids where holding the field flat out won't be an option, so the EU slow-clear mold should be pretty thoroughly broken. For what it's worth, I actually like seekers and think they are a good addition to the game. If they were in EU they would have been a boring "mash Tab>Y until they decloak" kind of opponent, but when you're trying to push for the Meld you don't have three turns to stand around waiting for their cloaks to run out and that conflict of priorities creates interesting decision making for the player. Voyager I fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Jul 4, 2015 |
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Jul 4, 2015 03:33
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Voyager I posted:a lot of the missions will be daring raids This and the fact that you need to carry out bodies, enemy and ally, in certain missions just made me realize there's no way there aren't going to be missions specifically to capture VIPs.
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Jul 4, 2015 03:49
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How exactly do you nerf the air combat in LW? I'm playing it now, but Jesus Christ just let the air combat end. I'd be happy with it needed to even 50% as hard as it is now.
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Jul 4, 2015 03:49
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Sgt. Anime Pederast posted:How exactly do you nerf the air combat in LW? I'm playing it now, but Jesus Christ just let the air combat end. I'd be happy with it needed to even 50% as hard as it is now. https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/319mr9/lw_mod_v2_modify_air_game_stats/
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Jul 4, 2015 03:58
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Cat Army 
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One thing I want to see in XCOM 2 is for the Skyranger equivalent to fly a proper great circle route. That might even let me do two of the three abduction missions instead of flying the full width of the pacific to reach anything in Asia.
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Jul 4, 2015 04:36
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Please tell me this is a paprika reference
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Jul 4, 2015 05:08
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Sam Hall posted:OG X-Com doesn't pull that kind of bullshit, but the meaning of the "accuracy %" numbers next to snap / aimed / auto shot is kind of misleading. It's not actually your soldier's chance to hit his target at all; instead it's an indicator of how tight his shot's "cone of fire" is going to be. I don't have any source to quote for the actual numbers, but it's something like "0% accuracy means a shot might go anywhere within 90° of where it's aimed; 100% accuracy means the shot will stay within about a 1° cone." It's not a linear relationship, and it never actually narrows all the way down to a perfect straight line, so even when the displayed accuracy is at the cap of 125% you can still miss a target if it's far enough away (or if there's some kind of narrow cover in the way, like a lamppost or mailbox that just exactly blocks the target's center of mass). I have had some crazy luck with rookies running into UFOs and unloading an autoshot and killing 2 aliens in one burst because the extra bullets flew so far off target. I always autoshot at the furthest one away just to hope it happens. 
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Jul 4, 2015 07:04
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Decrepus posted:I have had some crazy luck with rookies running into UFOs and unloading an autoshot and killing 2 aliens in one burst because the extra bullets flew so far off target. I always autoshot at the furthest one away just to hope it happens. My first victory of OG Xcom was thanks to spray and pray. From the soldier going berserk and just unloading. After three mutons missed their autofire shots on him in the brain room. After he got mind controlled to move into the alien brain room I was trying to find in the first place  This is why to me, OG X-Com is the story of an elaborate assisted suicide plot by the giant brain. Whatever the exact sequence of events or game mechanics behind it, the most clear part is "Guy gets mind controlled. Guy who got mind controlled through no input on my part ends up in the brain room and guns it down." Section Z fucked around with this message at 07:30 on Jul 4, 2015 |
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Jul 4, 2015 07:28
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Holy poo poo 1000 loving pages.
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Jul 4, 2015 07:49
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we did it commander
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Jul 4, 2015 07:56
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Man, I'm playing LW for the first time since it was in 4b, I'm having such hard time getting the ball rolling; not because I can't deal with the new mechanics, but because I've lost three countries with green panic during the first month and I don't even know why. 
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Jul 4, 2015 08:00
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I've only played the vanilla game on normal, but after many, many hours of playing Long War, I felt like taking a break and giving Enemy Within a try on classic (no iron man, though). It was a bit of a rough start, and I figured that the writing must surely be on the wall after six countries left the council, but I was somehow able to get panic under control. I waited until January to do the base assault and beside a sectopod teleporting out of the final room and into the room behind me, it went swimmingly. I got through the base defense without a loss, though I did make a huge mistake which left my support open to attack from a berserker. Fortunately, it was stupider than me and decided to run away from her and towards my assault. I've built the Gollop chamber, and I'm in the process of beefing up my squad with more gene mods and psionics. It's been a lot of fun going back to EW's more focused and balanced gameplay, though Long War's larger squad size has spoiled me terribly -- I want to take two MEC troopers to the temple ship, but that would mean dropping one of my support soldiers from the roster. Anyway, something happened on a landed UFO mission, so I made a recording of it. I thought it was kind of funny on its own, but I have enhanced it slightly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw2uu7vD-FQ
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Jul 4, 2015 09:53
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Pohl posted:Holy poo poo 1000 loving pages. everything by the numbers.
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Jul 4, 2015 10:14
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Musluk posted:everything by the numbers. Number one? That's terror.
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Jul 4, 2015 10:20
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Pohl posted:Holy poo poo 1000 loving pages. I wanted to be here when it happened but yesterday was celebration time with family. Congratulations, thread!!
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Jul 4, 2015 17:17
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congratulations thread have some snake tits wait wait what the gently caress this isnt what i ordered at all Control Volume fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Jul 4, 2015 |
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Jul 4, 2015 17:23
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I like this game. I also like this thread. I also happen to like some of Long War. I will probably really like XCOM 2.
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Jul 4, 2015 17:28
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:I like this game. E: also congratulations to coolguy
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Jul 4, 2015 17:52
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Control Volume posted:congratulations thread have some snake tits i, am the armour's cameltoe
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Jul 4, 2015 19:13
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Control Volume posted:congratulations thread have some snake tits  : Is this what the aliens do for fun?
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Jul 4, 2015 19:55
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Decided to play Long War again, got my first landed supply ship. Wade through a horde of Thin Men, Sectoids, Chryssalids and gently caress knows what else. I've lost a rookie, I'm out of medpacks and explosives, and all of my guys are wounded. But there's one group left, the command group. 2 Outsiders, that's what it's been in the past, perfectly doable. Six. loving. Outsiders. "Command, this is Big Sky. Mission aborted" 
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Jul 4, 2015 20:25
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Again, anyone know how the Quick and Dirty Long War SW option works? I'd like to try a 6 man LW run against slightly smaller pod sizes (and a few other tweaks) to see if it streamlines the game while still being fun. Itd be super handy if Quick and Dirty made it where I didn't need to find and much around with pod sizes in the game files. I will agree that the main reason you need 8 soldiers in LW is because of the number of niche positions you need filled on every mission. If you dont have a cover removal specialist you're hosed for removing cover, so you *need* an engineer or rocketeer on every mission. Triggering too many pods at once can be suicide, so you *need* someone who can scout with battlescanners or invisibility on every mission. Soldiers take so long to replace and default hospital times are so long (and alien damage can climb very high) that you *need* a medic on every mission. And so on. I really feel my 6 man vanilla squad was more tactically flexible than my 8 man LW squad of specialists. And of course pod sizes were upped to take into account an 8 man squad, so the aliens are balanced against an 8 man squad of killers while I have several slots filled with tactically important troops who aren't as good in a straight up firefight, contributing to the slow and deliberate map creeping style of most LW missions. As for the air war, the main thing I would do is get rid of crits. Its already basically pulling the handle on a slot machine, having another layer of RNG on top of that where my interceptor can be crit out of the sky faster than I can physically hammer the abort button is just too much. MadJackMcJack posted:Decided to play Long War again, got my first landed supply ship. Wade through a horde of Thin Men, Sectoids, Chryssalids and gently caress knows what else. I've lost a rookie, I'm out of medpacks and explosives, and all of my guys are wounded. But there's one group left, the command group. 2 Outsiders, that's what it's been in the past, perfectly doable. Yeah. The devs were tired of people successfully raiding the landed supply ship, which was supposed to convey the 'not every mission is winnable' aspect, so they made the final pod a great big gently caress you to anyone who tries. If you do manage to raid the ship it basically breaks the resource curve for the first few months and has lasting effects on the strategic game. Rather than accept that and reward anyone who takes the gamble, or just not include the landed supply ship if they don't want the game broken, the devs chose the most rear end in a top hat way possible of responding. Nix Panicus fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Jul 4, 2015 |
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Jul 4, 2015 20:27
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DOWN JACKET FETISH posted:i, am the armour's cameltoe I don't know why you have this gross insistence of pointing this poo poo out, but fine. Whatever. It's censored now. I hope you're happy.
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Jul 4, 2015 20:42
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MadJackMcJack posted:Decided to play Long War again, got my first landed supply ship. Wade through a horde of Thin Men, Sectoids, Chryssalids and gently caress knows what else. I've lost a rookie, I'm out of medpacks and explosives, and all of my guys are wounded. But there's one group left, the command group. 2 Outsiders, that's what it's been in the past, perfectly doable. It always feels like an action movie to me when this happens. Just when you think it can't get worse you find out the alien ship you're fighting is just the transport for the mothership that has just emerged from the clouddeck. How can humanity overcome?
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Jul 4, 2015 21:01
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Control Volume posted:I don't know why you have this gross insistence of pointing this poo poo out, but fine. Whatever. It's censored now. I hope you're happy. now you're just trying to provoke the mods!!
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Jul 4, 2015 21:42
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Not a Step posted:I will agree that the main reason you need 8 soldiers in LW is because of the number of niche positions you need filled on every mission. If you dont have a cover removal specialist you're hosed for removing cover, so you *need* an engineer or rocketeer on every mission. Triggering too many pods at once can be suicide, so you *need* someone who can scout with battlescanners or invisibility on every mission. Soldiers take so long to replace and default hospital times are so long (and alien damage can climb very high) that you *need* a medic on every mission. And so on. I really feel my 6 man vanilla squad was more tactically flexible than my 8 man LW squad of specialists. And of course pod sizes were upped to take into account an 8 man squad, so the aliens are balanced against an 8 man squad of killers while I have several slots filled with tactically important troops who aren't as good in a straight up firefight, contributing to the slow and deliberate map creeping style of most LW missions. Tried my hand at a 6 man squad that can go on any mission, I don't think it is too hard to come up with ideas. Scout: Lightning Reflexes, Lone Wolf, Ranger, Battle Scanner, In The Zone, Sprinter, Vital Point Targeting. Carries support items early-mid game, aim and damage items later. Can carry arc thrower. Rocketeer: Fire Rocket, HEAT Warheads, Rapid Reaction, Suppression, Mayhem, Shock and Awe, Danger Zone. Carries Scope and Shredder Rocket. Medic: Field Medic, Steadfast, Smoke & Mirrors, Smoke Grenade, Combat Drugs, Sprinter, Savior. Turn into psi, carries medkits and support items like Flashbangs (Psi Grenades later). Archer: Bombard, HEAT Warheads, Mayhem, Sapper, Vital Point Targeting, Danger Zone, Tandem Warheads. Infantry: Light Em Up, Steadfast, Opportunist, Ranger, Lock N Load, Sentinel, Rapid Fire. Turn into officer, carries Scope and a Medkit. Sniper: Squadsight, Lone Wolf, Precision Shot, Ranger, Vital Point Targeting, Lock N Load, Double Tap. Carries Marksman or Sniper rifle based on what you prioritize for the mission type. You have cover destruction, squadsight, plenty of multi-shot capability, battlescanners, healing, smoking, AOE suppression, anti-mech capability, et cetera. MrBims fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Jul 4, 2015 |
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Jul 4, 2015 21:58
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I do wonder how it would have changed things if they'd just outright combined several classes (Assault/Scout, Gunner/Infantry, Medic/Engineer, Sniper/Rocketeer) and then let you pick two perks at level up instead of one...
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Jul 4, 2015 22:06
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GlyphGryph posted:I do wonder how it would have changed things if they'd just outright combined several classes (Assault/Scout, Gunner/Infantry, Medic/Engineer, Sniper/Rocketeer) and then let you pick two perks at level up instead of one... That sounds pretty cool actually.
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Jul 4, 2015 23:10
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Section Z posted:That sounds pretty cool actually. So anyone up here for making a mod? It will be awesome. Basically, it will be Long War but; Smaller Teams Fewer Classes Significantly shorter game Significantly de-emphasized air war We will continue to mod the mods until we've reached peak mod.
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Jul 5, 2015 01:56
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GlyphGryph posted:So anyone up here for making a mod? It will be awesome. Basically, it will be Long War but; You could actually do this with mostly .ini edits, and an air war mod already exists. A janky af implementation would be to edit the perk trees in the DCG.ini (clearly labelled, not very hard, comes with stat bonuses). There you could designate one class of the two to be the class you're working on while ignoring the other one and edit the perk trees as you please. You can use the dev console to add in a second perk/level, and Dynamic War to account for the shorter total game length. You'd also have to edit item restrictions... but that shouldn't be too difficult. Making it user friendly would be a lot of work though. I don't have any idea where I'd begin in terms of undoing the class split, but I might have an idea for the two perks/level thing. There's already a mod that lets you pick three perks per level, so depending on how that author implemented it I could possibly figure out how to set it to be two perks/level. I'm out of country so can't check now, but I wager that there's prolly three ways that he went about it. Either he just flat out granted every possible perk to every soldier at level up, granted the three specific perks per tree to every soldier at level up, or granted specifically 3 perks per level up. I have a bad feeling it's the first, which would present a serious problem. It might be the second but I find that really unlikely. It's probably not the third, but I can hope. Anyway, if that is possible, which I stress is only a maybe, it would address the issue that adding perks via the console doesn't give you any attached stat bonuses. You can use the Xcom Cheatengine table to edit that, but that's a bit of a pain in the rear end. Balancing it would be hella difficult too. tl;dr it actually would be pretty easy to see how the mod would play, because the biggest change - reworking the perk/item tree - is easily moddable in the DCG.ini Making such a mod user friendly would be massively more difficult, particularly condensing the classes, but you could definitely see how it plays. The Iron Rose fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Jul 5, 2015 |
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Jul 5, 2015 02:06
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That's... actually really encouraging. loving awesome. I can't do anything this month since all my game work is dedicated to the two games I'm making for SAGDCX, but as soon as I'm done with that I am totally on board with this. I've been looking for an excuse to go back to XCOM, but I miss all the LW stuff too much playing Vanilla, but I don't think I can stomache the grind of another Long War campaign. This provides a way to avoid both and do something legit cool at the same time.
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Jul 5, 2015 02:17
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GlyphGryph posted:That's... actually really encouraging. loving awesome. I look forwards to it. Tell me when you've got something off the ground and I'll look into the multiple perks/level up and maybe see about condensing the classes again.
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Jul 5, 2015 02:29
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