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Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Rorahusky posted:

I suppose it would be kind of hard to explain to your spouse about how you got all your arms and legs chopped off so you could be turned into a cyborg, or how you're now a mutant freak who can jump five stories with his new mutant legs.

Funny note about that - MEC soldiers are one of a half-dozen ways XCOM really loving sucks at the whole secrecy thing in the EU/EW, but presumably the rationale is that after the aliens are all murdered they can release the truth to the world and say "THIS GUY WITH NO ARMS, NO LEGS, AND IS SWIMMING IS NOT 'BOB'. HE IS A HERO. SO SHUT THE gently caress UP."

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Bobbin Threadbare
Jan 2, 2009

I'm looking for a flock of urbanmechs.

Rorahusky posted:

I suppose it would be kind of hard to explain to your spouse about how you got all your arms and legs chopped off so you could be turned into a cyborg, or how you're now a mutant freak who can jump five stories with his new mutant legs.

I don't feel bad for the gene-modded soldiers. After the X-COM project ends, they get to go home and be goddamn superheroes.

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

Bobbin Threadbare posted:

I don't feel bad for the gene-modded soldiers. After the X-COM project ends, they get to go home and be goddamn superheroes.

I'd like to think at least one of them gets to be a superpowered stunt double who gets hired to do superhero movies and they save a million bucks on production costs when the guy they film is actually able to leap small buildings in a single bound.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
Stunt double nothing. At that point, that joker has more qualifications to be an action hero than Schwarzenegger, Stallone, or Weaver. Just cast them as the star and have them do their own stunts. It's not like you're throwing anything at them that the aliens didn't.

MJ12
Apr 8, 2009

Speedball posted:

Personal theory as to the terrible aim of your soldiers: You know how hard it is to get the nations to fund you? It's just as grudging for them to send you competent soldiers. Guava's original X-Com LP is all too appropriate here too: it's a ragtag bunch of misfits in an outfit funded by the lowest bidders.

Aim statistics for real life soldiers are incredibly low as soon as enemy fire becomes a thing. Again, remember that supposedly the aliens (and you) are shooting at each other all the time, they just took it out because it looked 'too busy'. In the turn based nature of a game, there's necessarily abstractions like this-but a 25% hit rate against guys in 90% cover is goddamn amazing and most armies would give you literally a billion dollars if you could train guys to shoot that accurately.


Coolguye posted:

Funny note about that - MEC soldiers are one of a half-dozen ways XCOM really loving sucks at the whole secrecy thing in the EU/EW, but presumably the rationale is that after the aliens are all murdered they can release the truth to the world and say "THIS GUY WITH NO ARMS, NO LEGS, AND IS SWIMMING IS NOT 'BOB'. HE IS A HERO. SO SHUT THE gently caress UP."

XCOM is secret presumably not to hide from governments, but to give governments an excuse to not talk about aliens invading on live TV because that kind of sucks, or in the case of China/Japan (and other XCOM members, like Iran and Israel) to not talk about how their governments are actually militarily cooperating, because nobody wants to hear that.

That way, a thin veneer of deniability is enough for 'secrecy'. I doubt they're secret secret. So anyone in XCOM would presumably be special forces types assigned to some sort of "long-term experimental warfare" assignment, and if they die it's because they "died in training". Sadly, the body can't be released because he/she was killed by a 2000 pound bomb and even if we did release it to you all it'd do is cause you more trauma so we're very very sorry but you can be assured he/she died a hero."

Pyroi
Aug 17, 2013

gay elf noises
I don't really think X-COM is that much of a secret. When aliens attack, a big metal thing flies through the city and drops off a group of 4-6 superhumans who take out the aliens. That's ignoring the (assumed) cleanup crews who collect the alien corpses, weapon fragments, UFO pieces, and assorted baskets of space candy, since the Skyranger can hold 6 soldiers at most. Unless the countries are somehow managing to cover the whole invasion up as an international group of roving cosplayers, I would think that letting the public know of the existence of X-COM would probably help calm them down in the face of imminent destruction by small gray men.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



The thing about this game's recruits I'm interested in is the promoted soldiers you pick up from some council requests.

The ones who are promoted veterans already.

Now, if we take the game at face value, the baseline rookies are SAS, Spetsnaz, Devgru, and the like. The experienced troops only get that way from killing aliens in the field.

So, why the hell are these guys?

Thinking about, seems the likely story is they're every not-XCom military's few success stories against the aliens. Survived a muton ambush, killed a sectoid, that kinda thing. They're the people whose faces go on the propaganda posters, the total badasses.

And in XCOM, they're just more meat for the mill.

Tendales
Mar 9, 2012

Coolguye posted:

In the novels that were written about UFO Defense (I have no idea how canon these are supposed to be), there were only two requirements to be a soldier in XCOM: Be willing to disappear from the 'normal' world, and be aware of aliens without us having to tell you (this typically means surviving an alien attack). So a lot of soldiers that you get are presumably dudes who have stories like this:

I was an overweight barber until a terror attack hit my sleepy suburb. My parents were killed and my girlfriend disappeared. I think she was abducted. All I want now is to kill as many of these bastards as I possibly can. XCOM found me, I enlisted on the spot. We faked my death and I worked at losing my gut and learning which end of the laser rifle is dangerous while I waited to be called up. And now, here I am, on the Skyranger, next to Sergeant Alvarez, as we hum across the sky to another terror attack halfway across the world. I still hear my own screams inside my head, from when I snuck past the road blocks and found my parents' home engulfed in an unnaturally green-tinted inferno.

I wonder how hard it would be to mod the game so that any civilian you rescue in a terror mission becomes a rookie, and that's the only source of new rookies.

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

Pyroi posted:

I don't really think X-COM is that much of a secret. When aliens attack, a big metal thing flies through the city and drops off a group of 4-6 superhumans who take out the aliens. That's ignoring the (assumed) cleanup crews who collect the alien corpses, weapon fragments, UFO pieces, and assorted baskets of space candy, since the Skyranger can hold 6 soldiers at most. Unless the countries are somehow managing to cover the whole invasion up as an international group of roving cosplayers, I would think that letting the public know of the existence of X-COM would probably help calm them down in the face of imminent destruction by small gray men.

If you stay in the situation room long enough you'll see news tickers talking about how some weird military organization is apparently really good (or not) at saving cities from aliens and look, another sighting in Russia of these guys in strange armor fighting back the alien menace. Plus, the capital cities of the council nations are routinely attacked by ufos with the goal of spreading terror, and XCOM only even found out about it because someone turned on the news. Plus there's that whole thing where XCOM decides that the perfect equipment to bring on a covert op are grenades, rocket launchers, and giant robot men with flamethrowers for arms. What's going on is no secret after all that.

RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Feb 6, 2014

TwistedSynapse
Dec 31, 2012

Voted Most Purple Wizard
2007, 2009, 2011, and 2014

Tendales posted:

I wonder how hard it would be to mod the game so that any civilian you rescue in a terror mission becomes a rookie, and that's the only source of new rookies.

XCOM: Peace Walker?

Make sure to Fulton those civvies, Otto, no sense in them getting shot when we could potentially recruit them - even greenest of the green can become battle-hardened after a few passes through that training course we're working on!

(Oh god I literally have Peace Walker on the brain today!)

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

TwistedSynapse posted:

(Oh god I literally have Peace Walker on the brain today!)

What hath I wrought? Forgive me, Something Awful!

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

MJ12 posted:

Aim statistics for real life soldiers are incredibly low as soon as enemy fire becomes a thing. Again, remember that supposedly the aliens (and you) are shooting at each other all the time, they just took it out because it looked 'too busy'. In the turn based nature of a game, there's necessarily abstractions like this-but a 25% hit rate against guys in 90% cover is goddamn amazing and most armies would give you literally a billion dollars if you could train guys to shoot that accurately.
The special forces/small unit tactics stuff that XCOM does is also completely different from 'normal' asymmetric engagements where artillery, air strikes, UAVs, and more are all things. Those guys tend not to squeeze the trigger unless they are really goddamn certain it is going to result in a dead enemy, an alive ally, or both. Which, amusingly, is close to the optimal way to play EU/EW, so art imitating life I suppose. Riffing on rookies for sucking is a tradition, though, so dosing your reality in here won't help. :v:

quote:

XCOM is secret presumably not to hide from governments, but to give governments an excuse to not talk about aliens invading on live TV because that kind of sucks, or in the case of China/Japan (and other XCOM members, like Iran and Israel) to not talk about how their governments are actually militarily cooperating, because nobody wants to hear that.

That way, a thin veneer of deniability is enough for 'secrecy'. I doubt they're secret secret. So anyone in XCOM would presumably be special forces types assigned to some sort of "long-term experimental warfare" assignment, and if they die it's because they "died in training". Sadly, the body can't be released because he/she was killed by a 2000 pound bomb and even if we did release it to you all it'd do is cause you more trauma so we're very very sorry but you can be assured he/she died a hero."
The game, in reality, is pretty schizophrenic about it. XCOM's name is certainly not released to the public, as (like others said) the news ticker never references it by name, just 'mysterious group' or whatever. The visibility of some of the alien attacks and the recurring reports of people murdering things and then disappearing means that a lot of reasonable people would suspect something serious is up, but there's hints that the secrecy layer is thin, and others that it's slathered on like butter in a Paula Deen recipe. Again, it's just funnier to think they're supposed to be all Area 51 and Alpha Protocol and they just blow really bad at that part of their jobs.

Tendales posted:

I wonder how hard it would be to mod the game so that any civilian you rescue in a terror mission becomes a rookie, and that's the only source of new rookies.
Hard. They haven't released any dev tools so the only modding we've been able to do is cracking stuff open in the unreal engine editor, which is awkward in the best of situations.

OtherworldlyInvader
Feb 10, 2005

The X-COM project did not deliver the universe's ultimate cup of coffee. You have failed to save the Earth.


Speaking of XCOM fluff, I like to imagine the alien bosses keep their troops in the dark about XCOM as well. Joe Sectoid thinks he's getting an easy assignment abducting some backwater primitives, then steps off the flying saucer to face a squad of power armored troops with heavy plasma rifles. :allears:

Jade Star
Jul 15, 2002

It burns when I LP

Psion posted:

Just so we're clear you're referring to GuavaMoment here right? :v:

good to see you doing this LP, both of you. I look forward to shitposting qualityposting shitposting in it since I love me some XCOM.

I was wondering what was taking you so long to show up. I guess it's because I didn't feel the need to change your avatar for this thread.

We should fix that.

Nemo2342
Nov 26, 2007

Have A Day




Nap Ghost

Jade Star posted:


I am a huge fan of Haiku. Compose for me a Haiku about X-Com Enemy Within.

If nothing else, I want to see all the haikus people submitted with their applications.

Bobbin Threadbare
Jan 2, 2009

I'm looking for a flock of urbanmechs.

Coolguye posted:

The game, in reality, is pretty schizophrenic about it. XCOM's name is certainly not released to the public, as (like others said) the news ticker never references it by name, just 'mysterious group' or whatever. The visibility of some of the alien attacks and the recurring reports of people murdering things and then disappearing means that a lot of reasonable people would suspect something serious is up, but there's hints that the secrecy layer is thin, and others that it's slathered on like butter in a Paula Deen recipe. Again, it's just funnier to think they're supposed to be all Area 51 and Alpha Protocol and they just blow really bad at that part of their jobs.

To me it seems like the secrecy is mostly for the sake of preventing alien infiltrators from discovering their base(s). So it's less about X-COM not being a thing at all and more that everyone associated with the project denies their involvement. After all, if everyone gives the same response to questions about X-COM, the aliens won't know who to mind rape, right?

Jade Star
Jul 15, 2002

It burns when I LP
On the secrecy issue, I think that could be a real thing up till the Terror missions. When the aliens are running through a city killing and destroying as much of it as possible for the sole purpose of causing panic it would be impossible to keep that hidden. You can't put a lid on the things they show in cut scenes. A UFO is hanging out over a major city bombarding it with craft mounted guns and a sizeable chunk on the city population and buildings are not going to be there tomorrow.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
I really hate that you never encounter combat capable friendlies, even in places where they should be. There are side missions where you encounter soldiers and bodyguards who just hang out and watch your dudes get shot. Thanks, bro!

Even the lowest rookie accuracy is pretty drat good for night fighting while outnumbered with no support. I wish I could have the units use the suppression fire animations against each other when in range. Real firefights tend to involve thousands of rounds going down range. It would be so pretty!

Mordaedil
Oct 25, 2007

Oh wow, cool. Good job.
So?
Grimey Drawer
Huh, I just realized I never did the challenge to complete the game from every landmass. I should get back on board with that as well as try out these new DLC stuff.

Bruceski
Aug 21, 2007

The tools of a hero mean nothing without a solid core.

Mordaedil posted:

Huh, I just realized I never did the challenge to complete the game from every landmass. I should get back on board with that as well as try out these new DLC stuff.

I wish that one had a checklist.

Mordaedil
Oct 25, 2007

Oh wow, cool. Good job.
So?
Grimey Drawer

Bruceski posted:

I wish that one had a checklist.

I know I did a game in Asia on Classic, I think I had a game completed from Europe on Normal and I am doing a game from South America on Easy.

Ceebees
Nov 2, 2011

I'm intentionally being as verbose as possible in negotiations for my own amusement.
So, GuavaMoment, when you said that you consider supports to be the least useful class, could you please expand that argument? Because i really could not agree less.

Eifert Posting
Apr 1, 2007

Most of the time he catches it every time.
Grimey Drawer
Yeah. I almost always roll with two supports cause flanking is so easy with them.

Veloxyll
May 3, 2011

Fuck you say?!

Eifert Posting posted:

Yeah. I almost always roll with two supports cause flanking is so easy with them.

In my last full game, my supports ALWAYS died.

It was pretty much like Oldschool X-Com for any support.

Tzarnal
Dec 26, 2011

I tend to prefer a single support which almost always becomes my prime psion/volunteer. That additional equipment slot really helps with the psi shield.

Green Intern
Dec 29, 2008

Loon, Crazy and Laughable

GuavaMoment posted:

Beaten on Chris Kluwe not being some random dude. However I'm some random youtube dude, don't you forget it!


Fuckin' IGN...

Don't fret, Guava. They mention your LP if you go a little deeper:

http://www.ign.com/wikis/xcom-enemy-unknown/Otto_Zander

Nemo2342 posted:

If nothing else, I want to see all the haikus people submitted with their applications.

Yeah, I'd like to see this. And the winning pieces of artwork.

SovietPotatoe
May 14, 2011

Master of the Duncspawn Taint
So here's a question: can you get a soldier critically wounded so many times he gets 0 will? What happens if you do, does he just instantly panic the moment the enemy opens fire?

MadScientistWorking
Jun 23, 2010

"I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Pyroi posted:

I don't really think X-COM is that much of a secret. When aliens attack, a big metal thing flies through the city and drops off a group of 4-6 superhumans who take out the aliens. That's ignoring the (assumed) cleanup crews who collect the alien corpses, weapon fragments, UFO pieces, and assorted baskets of space candy, since the Skyranger can hold 6 soldiers at most. Unless the countries are somehow managing to cover the whole invasion up as an international group of roving cosplayers, I would think that letting the public know of the existence of X-COM would probably help calm them down in the face of imminent destruction by small gray men.
Nope. Missions in this game heavily hint that the cleanup crew is Skyranger.

Sloober
Apr 1, 2011

Mordaedil posted:

Huh, I just realized I never did the challenge to complete the game from every landmass. I should get back on board with that as well as try out these new DLC stuff.

My first go through EW got me the Valkyrie? (4 female soldiers) achievement on the tutorial meld mission. Was convenient if I was an achievement junkie.

Now that this is up I might just have to put another run through in.

Tax Refund
Apr 15, 2011

The IRS gave me a refund. I spent it on this SA account. What was I thinking?!

Tendales posted:

I wonder how hard it would be to mod the game so that any civilian you rescue in a terror mission becomes a rookie, and that's the only source of new rookies.

Modding the game might be hard, but that would be a pretty easy self-imposed challenge: keep track of how many people you've rescued so far, and that's the maximum number of rookies you allow yourself to "buy".

apostateCourier
Oct 9, 2012


Coolguye posted:

I believe the XCOM project gets terminated if you lose too many members of the Council in the original XCOM, same as in EU. But there's a lot of lose conditions in UFO, including simply having a negative monthly score for too long, or being in debt two months in a row.

I think X-COM remains so long as you have at least a single backer in the original. The rest of it looks right though.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Pvt.Scott posted:

Even the lowest rookie accuracy is pretty drat good for night fighting while outnumbered with no support. I wish I could have the units use the suppression fire animations against each other when in range. Real firefights tend to involve thousands of rounds going down range. It would be so pretty!
During beta, they did this for a while. The initial burst was just the beginning, if you fired at an alien, your soldier and the alien would exchange fire until the next turn. They eventually scrapped it because it made firefights absurdly loud, busy, and visually distracting while trying to move anyone who's not firing. It looks really cool from a viewer's perspective, but from a player's perspective it's actually pretty inhibiting.

That might be something that Toolboks could eventually bring back if it's anywhere still in the code though.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

Coolguye posted:

During beta, they did this for a while. The initial burst was just the beginning, if you fired at an alien, your soldier and the alien would exchange fire until the next turn. They eventually scrapped it because it made firefights absurdly loud, busy, and visually distracting while trying to move anyone who's not firing. It looks really cool from a viewer's perspective, but from a player's perspective it's actually pretty inhibiting.

That might be something that Toolboks could eventually bring back if it's anywhere still in the code though.

Yeah, firefight mode would definitely be a "sometimes" toggle.

apostateCourier
Oct 9, 2012


Pvt.Scott posted:

Yeah, firefight mode would definitely be a "sometimes" toggle.

Having it available as a toggle would be nice.

MJ12
Apr 8, 2009

apostateCourier posted:

Having it available as a toggle would be nice.

I thought what they should have done was make it something that showed up in cinematic camera and/or could be turned on/off via hotkey, to show you who could see who at a glance.

So when you zoomed in to a soldier to see them shoot, suddenly everyone's firing guns and ducking behind cover etc etc.

Psion
Dec 13, 2002

eVeN I KnOw wHaT CoRnEr gAs iS

Jade Star posted:

I was wondering what was taking you so long to show up.

I was too busy telling people about your sandcastle post to notice you'd actually posted the thread. :negative:

ZenVulgarity
Oct 9, 2012

I made the hat by transforming my zen

How does Panic actually work? It never really explains how someone will panic anywhere other than it can happen and sometimes you will shoot your own guys. The mechanics of panicing were a mystery to me.

Zore
Sep 21, 2010
willfully illiterate, aggressively miserable sourpuss whose sole raison d’etre is to put other people down for liking the wrong things

ZenVulgarity posted:

How does Panic actually work? It never really explains how someone will panic anywhere other than it can happen and sometimes you will shoot your own guys. The mechanics of panicing were a mystery to me.

Basically, if a soldier gets wounded or killed the game makes a roll which is checked against everyone's will. If they fail the check, they panic and immediately take one action (Moving, hunkering down or shooting a random target).

Once they've gotten up a few ranks, panic becomes really rare. Unless someone on the squad dies, which incurs a will penalty on everyone else.

CasinoV
Aug 13, 2009
Mutons can also use Intimidate to cause a panic check, but I have never seen that work on anyone besides rookies.

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Fister Roboto
Feb 21, 2008

Panic chains are always fun on escort missions, when your soldiers inevitably flip their poo poo and unload a clip into the VIP.

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