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The enemy spawning is VIP movement-based!? Agh that... that explains so much! Rest in piece, my 90 Aim 50 Will Squaddie Heavy. The air-dropping thin-man that spawned in an unreachable location and then dropped off the roof to one-shot you actually turned out to be entirely my fault. 
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Feb 12, 2014 22:04
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Seekers also make a previous option, Covering Fire, even worse to take. Personal Experience: you can't Covering Fire a Seeker that decides to just shoot you with its plasma weapon instead of strangling you with its tentacles. It got my best support killed in an act of utter bullshit one game. A seeker appeared and took a shot at my support (who was in Overwatch and had Covering Fire) and the Support wasn't able to get either the "appear from stealth" or the "attack" overwatch shot off in retaliation. Then when my turn came around I managed to knock the seeker's health down to 2 and the support had a literally 100% rifle shot to save herself as my "battlefield control" option.... she missed.  The seeker killed her immediately on its next turn and I abandoned that game entirely out of sheer cheating rage.
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Feb 17, 2014 04:11
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MEC Punching and Flamethrower works well too.
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Feb 17, 2014 05:37
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A lot of the abilities seem to belong to the absolute wrong class, like Battle Scanner. That's something a Support or an Assault could get far better use out of than a Sniper. Holo Targeting ends up way better on Sniper or an Assault than a Heavy since they can often times put out way more important shots on enemies or can get multiple shots per turn. Covering Fire doesn't work very well on a Support since it's that or taking +3 speed, but you slap that on a Sniper or a Heavy with some build around overwatch and it saves lives. Not Created Equal and Training Roulette produce a really fun game. Now that I think about it, it really isn't that the skills themselves are bad, it's what skills you have to pick between. There's usually an obviously better option that makes certain choices a no-brainer. Mixing it up with Training Roulette can get some really cool combinations.
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Feb 17, 2014 06:30
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Green Intern posted:I am 99% sure that a seeker attempting to strangle a dude ignores all overwatch or reaction abilities from its intended target. They ignore it even when not strangling. It's not the strangling that makes seekers a real threat, its what they do when they can't strangle you. (Which is why I refuse to use gene mods or equipment to make EVERYONE immune to choking. Heavy can eat a strangle for a round or two if it means keeping the seeker from doing to me what my assaults do to the aliens.)
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Feb 18, 2014 19:13
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On the topic of Thin Men, I've been playing through my first run on Classic Difficulty and I just came up to Portent. Normally I take the hits as they come, reloading only when an obvious glitch (100% miss, taking a path I didn't tell them to take, their turn being skipped) kills a soldier that normally shouldn't have died, but man. gently caress Portent. I never knew how terrible that Thin Man Rain was until their innate +10 aim from the LPR was given ANOTHER +10 aim and +10 crit from Classic Difficulty. They're goddamned air platoon snipers and in that specific map the sight angles are so piss-poor you need to use tricks like that rocket abuse from the video (thanks for showing me that!) to keep your soldiers alive on Classic. Your tips on positioning people and taking all SCOPES/Medkits to that mission really saved lives, along with the MEC troopers ability to instantly explode vehicles with its cover-destruction ability.
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Feb 20, 2014 13:27
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Flammenwurfer MECs also make Chryssalids pee themselves in fear. Nothing quite like watch a Chryssalid charge come at you and roasting three of the bugs at once, forcing them to scatter so the rest of your group gets potshots. I used to think the +Mobility Punchy MEC was without question the best MEC, but then I realized how much area the flamethrower actually covers and how it can basically carry you through a lot of situations where there's just too many enemies to kill. Since the AI likes taking the 'best shots' and finding the best cover, there's usually at least 2 enemies you can hit with one flamethrower, sometimes even more.
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Feb 22, 2014 16:30
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On the topic of how long it's taking you to research beam weapons, I've been hearing some people are having success with skipping Beam Weapons entirely and going straight to the next tier. Would you recommend this, or is the damage upgrade too good to pass up early on?
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Feb 26, 2014 12:20
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Seekers can't be Flamethrowered, but it DOES let you know where the Seeker is since it pops up an "immune" message. This is helpful because the "scan the ground and see where you can't walk" method doesn't always work very well in darker textured areas or on darker maps, and some times the movement thing just gets finnicky. I've used a flamethrower to "spot" for seekers and then use explosives to deal with them.
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Mar 2, 2014 08:30
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In my latest attempt at a Classic game I actually shot that UFO down without Phoenix Cannons or any of the consumable research boosters, it just takes a lot of luck with whether or not you're able to roll hits and avoid misses. ...and then a squaddie died in the ensuing mission because I was two days away from Carapace Armor and they ate a plasma shot. 
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Mar 17, 2014 04:56
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Jimmy4400nav posted:I've been enjoying this guide immensely, I'm absolutely balls at XCOM so this has shown me some nice ways to improve my game when I get around to re installing it (I have poo poo download speeds here I have the same issue with my computer not registering the 'bug' the way Jade Star does it, but it's still doable the slower way as long as the sniper was not the last person to take their action. If you scroll over and physically click the sniper you can then easily tell them to swap weapons, letting them overwatch with a sniper rifle. The important thing is that you must still have a soldier able to take their action, because if your sniper finishes his final move and no one else can act the turn will automatically go to the enemy. You can still activate the glitch at that point through the normal timing, but if your computer is like mine and that timing is (functionally) impossible to hit due to micro-lag, you have to remember that you can't use the glitch if your sniper is the last person to move.
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Mar 20, 2014 10:03
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). Will I be doing things like using the sniper "feature"? Probably not, but learning how to do more competent maneuvering and potential ways to move down the tech tree and efficient use of satellites have been great.
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:Why did people have so much trouble with Portent? It just seemed like a regular council mission to me. There wasn't anything that seemed too terribly stacked against you. It's the placement of the enemy spawns and the bullshit Thin Man Rain. If you don't kill them the very turn they reveal, they have free roam to literally leap OVER a building and flank your soldiers to instantly kill them with an LPR shot. Their absurd hit ratio, the fact you have such terrible equipment that early in the game, and the unfair placement of the enemies (especially the thin men that spawn on or around the record store building most people run through. They have particularly egregious amounts of defense from the street and the ability to leap up and down that building to flank-kill your soldiers) means that if you do not kill a Thin Man the very turn it appears, a basic soldier will die at that portion of the map. It's not so hard on Normal, but on Classic you have to take off the kid gloves and for that one mission fight the game on its own dirty cheating level. You're going to paratrooper thin men onto my position? I'm going to leave an assault within range for a crit. MECs really help with their ability to just chew through cover and expose the Thin Men as well as their ability to move very far and get into flanking shots. They can even eat a single LPR shot before you need to start worrying about crits. I have no idea how I'd handle Portent without the very least a MEC and a Heavy (or two) to treat that mission as the bullshit it is.
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Mar 23, 2014 05:41
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I thought it just drastically lowered their MOV and crippled their AIM? Sort of like their version of being choked.
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Mar 23, 2014 20:19
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The mission report from the council tells you the stuff Zhang got in the briefcase was the transponders you use on the train. Like the Triad got their hands on the beacons they planned to use to vaporize a city, and were planning on just selling them on the black market because Alien Tech. You plug them on the train and the ship is delayed by trying to follow the signal, and you have to do it before the ship actually arrives while you're holding onto the transponders.
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Mar 26, 2014 04:25
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Vincent posted:About ITZ: If I have an archangel sniper flying around at the maximun height, does it mean every enemy is uncovered for the shot? The only shots that count are those where your target symbol is yellow or if the alien is a type that does not use cover at all, in which case they'll just be red but will always count for ITZ. It procs whenever the game designates a target as "Flanked" (In cover facing the wrong direction from your shot on the X and Y angles, Z never counts) or if the target is completely out of cover. You could be at the flying skybox and if a sectoid is crouched in half-cover that faces the square your character is flying above, it won't trigger ITZ. That's not to say flying ITZ snipers aren't the best things ever. If you have squadsight and a good flying position an ITZ sniper will basically see every enemy on the field and you can wipe out entire squads of Floaters, Chryssalids, Zombies, Seekers, Drones, or anyone whose cover has been blown away or is facing the wrong way relative to your sniper. It really helps to be able to wipe out drone escorts on mechanical enemies and still put a shot into them, or blow away an entire pack of floaters the moment they reveal. I always take ITZ over Double Tap, but both are legitimately great skills. I have a really great ITZ story but it involves the upcoming enemy type introduced in EW, so I can't quite talk about it beyond saying that one sniper cleared out the entire final portion of the map in one turn thanks to a fully loaded plasma rifle and mimetic skin. Fumbles fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Mar 31, 2014 |
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Mar 31, 2014 03:31
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I love that the justification given for researching the alloy cannon isn't that they can't get the firing mechanism to work or they don't understand how to get the ammunition viable, it's because every single prototype is immediately destroyed by the alloy shards when they fire it. 
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Mar 31, 2014 06:34
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They could get the gun to fire, they just couldn't get it to keep being a gun after being fired. You're not researching how to make a prototype, you're researching how to make a prototype that won't immediately explode on shooting a wall of alien death-metal at whatever it's fired at. Now THAT'S a hell of a shotgun! 
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Mar 31, 2014 10:03
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Those are just their lounging-about limbs designed in-game to give them "some semblance of a life after the war is over" and out-of-game so they don't have to model some sort of absurd torso man hanging about your base without his arms and legs. The MEC suits are pieces of equipment and can be swapped from one to the other, so the robotic normal limbs are there so they can function without the MEC suit. Just imagine trying to cook breakfast and you Boosh your stove through the wall and kill your neighbor.
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Apr 12, 2014 07:07
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I'm still a bit tetchy and overkilly with rapid fire after the one (and thankfully so far only one) time one of my units missed a 100% shot.
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Apr 18, 2014 05:25
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I know this isn't the general thread but I think this is the best place to ask: If you could give a single tip for someone trying to progress from Normal to Classic and finding the first few missions a bit of a tactical brick wall, what would it be? We've really reached the point where technology and skill ups tip the scale more than tactics, but I keep finding myself having serious hurdles going through the first few missions when you don't have any better weapons or armor and everyone is a rookie.
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Jun 11, 2014 03:24
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Thanks for all the tips! The X-Nom project is advancing smoothly. Squaddie Commander Shepherds Pie is our first and so far only casualty, having moved up for a vital run and gun and having an 80% chance to hit, missing, and being killed by plasma on the next turn. RIP Commander Shepherds Pie. My unBeatable B-Team (There is no A-Team) of Benito 'Spicy Bean' Burrito, Coco 'Overfed' Bonbon, Ser Braten, an Olivier Borscht are proving themselves a very powerful four-man squad of absurd aim Heavy, even absurder aim Sniper, and a pair of really good Supports. I also got gifted the worlds worst Heavy. She's a Sergeant rank with 30 Will, 63 Aim, had a natural 6 movement tiles and got Sprinter, bringing her up to 9...which some of my best soldiers have NATURALLY. She's only good for training up rookies on easy missions by bringing along her rocket launcher and a grenade and acting as battlefield control for if the rookies can't handle it. She missed every single shot she fired, even a FLANKING shot, on her one and only "real" mission. So I named her Burnt 'Overpriced' Ramen, because it is the worst food, and she is not valuable. I've noticed that one huge improvement to my playstyle is naming the soldiers. I definitely treat Lieutenant Benito 'Spicy Bean' Burrito (who I suspect is a mutant, he phased right through a wall at one point to throw a grenade) different from Lieutenant Okoro 'Voodo' Akandi or any of the other pre-gen names. Naming all of my soldiers terrible food puns/names has actually dramatically helped my style of play, as has withdrawing and letting the Right People take the shots if the shots are absolutely necessary to take. All glory to the X-Nom Project! Fumbles fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Jun 12, 2014 |
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Jun 12, 2014 17:43
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it's also why rolling a battle scanner on another class, especially a high-mobility front lines guy, is so utterly glorious when you have an In The Zone sniper halfway across the map on an elevated position. Why yes, yes I would like to kill an entire pack of floaters before they get to do anything and then go on overwatch. 
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Jul 4, 2014 22:48
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