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MJ12 posted:Hordes of civilians with 3 health and lovely aim (like 35 on Normal and 45 on Classic/Impossible) and extra-poo poo pistols (like, max damage 1, min damage 0 :p), but giant hordes of them, backed by a few loyalists who they recruited from special forces types, with stats and gear equivalent to XCOM rookies. The aggressive non-cover using failmooks would be a huge challenge because they're a ton of chaff which nevertheless can poke you to death.  Actually I wish you could freely select two weapon systems to put on your MECs so I could make a Furioso Dreadnought with flamethrower + rocket fist.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:16
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Xmas Dumpster Fire posted:yellow abilities have a cooldown? Nope. Kinetic Strike has no cooldown and it's a yellow ability.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:17
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Pimpmust posted:I kinda wish that the late game threw in a couple of "swarms" of lower-tier enemies to round out the ELITE ELITE ELITE SECTOPOD HEAVY conga-line. Oh god yes, I really really miss Sectoids and the like. I really want the idea that you could get a terror mission which wasn't Sectopods + Heavy Floaters + Muton Elites + Mechtoids + Lids, but rather, "60 Sectoids and Floaters with a bunch of Lids". It'd make you feel like a huge badass when you wipe the poo poo out of them. Also, I wish you could use XCOM base personnel in more missions. Say, a few Skyranger upgrades which let you take a couple of mooks, with a few Foundry/etc upgrades that let you upgrade them to laser weapons (But never plasma) and maybe even Carapace or Skeleton (when you've got Ghost armor), and some more defense missions when aliens attack your Interceptor bases. The mooks would still have crappy aim and gear compared to the rest of your bros, but having a pair of extra gunners who are expendable and can be used like it would be nice. As a bonus: They should show up on the memorial wall, so you can fill it with hundreds of names cuz you moved a mook out into the open just to draw fire from a high-ranking soldier.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:17
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quiggy stardust posted:Nope. Kinetic Strike has no cooldown and it's a yellow ability. Smoke grenade also has no cooldown, and it's yellow. I know that it's a small detail, but it bothers me. WHY ARE THEY YELLOW?! 
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Nov 18, 2013 19:19
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VVV think Lotish is right, they are class actions.
Carecat fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Nov 18, 2013 |
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Nov 18, 2013 19:20
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I honestly think that a better solution to enemy redundancy is something like Halo's enemy rank system. Grunts were fodder enemies, but they came in a variety of flavors, from 'rookies with pistols that'll scream and panic and run off if their commander takes a hit' to 'up-armored veterans with near-unshakable willpower and carrying anti-armor weaponry' I'd love to see Sectoids return later in the campaign with maybe some cyborg bits to give them more health/armor/power.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:20
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I think it's just that they're supposed to be the special, signature abilities rather than the generic everyman abilities. Is suppression yellow? I think that counts as a special move considering it's normally only for two classes instead of everyone. ^^^^^ armored sectoid, yeeeeeees. I wish sometimes that sectoids who've been linked could link to another sectoid so you could see a chain. Then if you could kill the guy at the top of the chain you'd kill the whole chain. I love chain killing Sectoids. marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Nov 18, 2013 |
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Nov 18, 2013 19:22
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Carecat posted:They end your turn if used as the first action. Not true - MEC has an ability that turns him into high cover, and it doesn't end the turn. Also, many other abilities end your turn and they're not yellow (grenades, flamethrower etc.) I think even Firaxis doesn't know why they're yellow. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ edit: poo poo you're right, I think every yellow ability comes from the skill tree.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:23
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Gene mods are hysterically uneven. Two of them are complete trash, and three of them go on everybody in A and B team. No panic, mimetic skin and jumpy legs? Don't mind if I do. The optic ones in particular are disappointing, especially +10 Aim after a miss. I need +10 aim before I miss, not after.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:35
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Nail Rat posted:Portent's insanely easy when you realize the thin men only spawn on the VIP advancing. All the council missions are like this, but I guess people are used to rushing for meld, and don't think about it. First turn, you should just hunker your vip down somewhere, because you always get a drop at the end of the turn. After that, you move up in little bits, making sure to never trigger more than one drop down per turn, and never moving your vip if you have any active aliens. I took a bunch of damage to my mecs in that mission, but it wasn't hard, just slow.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:37
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Marketing New Brain posted:I need +10 aim before I miss, not after. I think it'd work far better if it was +5 Aim with an extra +5 Aim for each consecutive attack on the same target.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:37
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Do Mimetic Skin and Low Profile combo with each other? I'm trying to make a psychic Snap Shot sniper happen.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:39
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I thought EXALT should be the Umbrella corporation of the X-COM universe and they start creating huge monstrosities that also terrorize cities when their experiments of greed / transhumanism turn into nightmares from beyond. Heck, EXALT, XCOM, and aliens on the same map fighting for meld would be practically Starcraft. But perhaps that's better left to another expansion. Hero unit types that are the primary kill objective would be a neat addition to the game with rather few balancing issues. Or maybe the aliens get desperate and you can get aliens with random abilities from others like we have Training Roulette and you might get Chrysalids that can launch itself anywhere and throw grenades or sectopods that melee your guys and turn them into more sectopods? Pimpmust posted:Like 6xgroup of sectoids, or 1 Heavy Floater + 2 regular floaters and 1-2 squids all in the same group. Same kinda deal for Muton Elites and ordinary Mutons.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:39
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EXALT's AI seems to be shackled, and it makes me rather nervous what they could be capable of if they weren't holding back. They already don't give a gently caress about cover, but they should probably actually use explosives and shoot whenever possible as well. Imagine if they picked the XCOM that was closest to them on average and just focused them the gently caress down one at a time. Explosives to kill cover, then holo-targetting to ensure subsequent attacks hit, then finish them off with concentrated AR/sniper rifle firepower. Granted, by late game they generally don't even get a chance to act anyway, because I move a bunch of MS Assaults and Supports into place and then make it rain grenades. XCOM has such a crushing advantage at that point that it feels more like they're slaughtering civilians than fighting a dangerous enemy.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:40
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AngryBooch posted:Do Mimetic Skin and Low Profile combo with each other? I'm trying to make a psychic Snap Shot sniper happen. It works exactly how you'd want it to.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:40
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Honestly I thought Thin Men drops were based on number of turns, not moving the VIP, so I was always moving trying to make sure I didn't get swamped.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:41
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I was wrong earlier, you don't need Disabling Shot for capturing aliens, you can use MECs and Collateral Damage. You can also use Collateral Damage to set up your squad in a good position and then blow up the walls to get to the nice 'leader' aliens in UFOs. Don't need no stupid doorways, we'll make our own!
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Nov 18, 2013 19:43
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Marketing New Brain posted:Gene mods are hysterically uneven. Two of them are complete trash, and three of them go on everybody in A and B team. No panic, mimetic skin and jumpy legs? Don't mind if I do. The optic ones in particular are disappointing, especially +10 Aim after a miss. I need +10 aim before I miss, not after. No, the +10 after a miss is extremely good for Bulletstorm/Rapid Reaction/Sentinel builds, because it DOES trigger on a missed Overwatch shot. If you can manage to snag an Opportunist/Bulletstorm/Sentinel soldier via Training Roulette, that +10 aim after a miss is extraordinary because you are going to be shooting all day evverday. I had a Covering Fire/Bulletstorm/Sentinel Support in my last game. Shoot once, Overwatch, get two shots on the alien turn. Gave her a Scope, the +10 aim gene mod, and the adrenaline gene mod and watched the bodies hit the floor. Depth Perception is less impressive, but hell, it's only 5 meld. My dream is to someday have a Covering Fire/Opportunist/Bulletstorm/Sentinel/In The Zone/Squad Sight Sniper. Never stop shooting until the gun goes *CLICK*.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:46
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Earth is saved, thanks to Eric 'Loki' Hunt!   Who blinked at the climactic moment, goddammit.   I may have to speed things up for my next playthrough.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:46
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Got the expansion and so far it's been a blast getting back into the Xcom. Several wipes in classic/ironman later, I've finally begun winning missions with very low casualties at a pretty consistent rate (squadsight snipers are godly) though need to work on the strategic aspect of game. Clearly, spamming satellites won't work with only a handful of the most basic of basic interceptors to protect them. Few questions... Is there anything that the player does that influence a rookie's role? Last game I was swimming in supports, which became problematic when my pool of soldiers literally became all supports, a sniper, and Zhang. How soon should I be building the Officer's School with expanded squad size? It's pretty pricey when I have all these new genetic mods and other toys to play with.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:46
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Mr Dog posted:Granted, by late game they generally don't even get a chance to act anyway, because I move a bunch of MS Assaults and Supports into place and then make it rain grenades. XCOM has such a crushing advantage at that point that it feels more like they're slaughtering civilians than fighting a dangerous enemy. In all fairness, I think that's all they were ever meant to be: The "horror" of forcing your troops to fire on other humans, rather than unknowable enemies. Also, I'm pretty sure all the developer interviews stated that Exalt were never meant to feel like a larger threat than the aliens. On a related note, does anyone know if I have to take down Exalt before finishing the game? I'm on Ironman and I really don't feel like risking my A-listers on these human scrubs if I can help it. Oh, and the base defense isn't only randomly triggered, the aliens they send at you seem random as well. Also, much easier with real armor and weapons. Edit: What really grinds me is how sporadic triggering the Portent missions seems to be. I got the first one in the second or third month, but now I'm about to build the Hyperwave Relay and I still haven't gotten the second mission. C'mon, XCOM, I really want some psychics! Hellburger99 fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Nov 18, 2013 |
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Nov 18, 2013 19:48
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Man Musk posted:Got the expansion and so far it's been a blast getting back into the Xcom. Several wipes in classic/ironman later, I've finally begun winning missions with very low casualties at a pretty consistent rate (squadsight snipers are godly) though need to work on the strategic aspect of game. Clearly, spamming satellites won't work with only a handful of the most basic of basic interceptors to protect them. 1. No, nothing. Best thing you can do is get the "New Guy" Officer School upgrade that automatically turns your rookies into squaddies, and then just hire a bunch of soldiers till you get the classes you want.. 2. Pretty much as soon as you possibly can. If not sooner.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:49
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Nail Rat posted:Portent's insanely easy when you realize the thin men only spawn on the VIP advancing. Condoleezza Nice! fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Nov 18, 2013 |
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Nov 18, 2013 19:50
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My favorite part of EXALT is how easy they make it to have every soldier have at least a laser weapon equipped for the base defense mission.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:52
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Vengarr posted:Depth Perception is less impressive, but hell, it's only 5 meld.
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Nov 18, 2013 20:00
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Someone was asking about whether your normal soldiers could carry around MEC railguns, about fifty pages ago. It turns out it's a pretty trivial DGC.ini edit to allow that (if you've altered your exe so it actually loads from the ini). However... this power is not without consequence. The soldier carrying a MEC gun seems to use the MEC animations, despite them being inappropriate for the model.   Transhumanism! Emy fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Nov 18, 2013 |
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Nov 18, 2013 20:04
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GenericOverusedName posted:EXALT feels like it would be a lot scarier with improvements to their AI. If they did the cover busting grenade and rocket spam followed by headshots and run n gun shotguns they would be very scary. But instead they fart around running in circles healing each other. If I remember right, it was mentioned that Exalt had Assaults with shotguns in the early builds and it was pretty unfun to fight. I get the feeling that's why we're not seeing hordes all at once too.
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Nov 18, 2013 20:06
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Emy posted:Someone was asking about whether your normal soldiers could carry around MEC railguns, about fifty pages ago. It turns out it's a pretty trivial DGC.ini edit to allow that (if you've altered your exe so it actually loads from the ini). You can also give them the Ethereal's psi-lance, or even Chryssalid claws! Unfortunately, the soldiers do not do the cinematic "murder someone and puke down their throat" animation. Aliens also don't get zombified by Chryssalids, so you likely won't have your own personal zombie army in a mission if you were to give your soldiers this, unless you spawn some hostile civilians to kill first with the dev console and give your soldiers the "Implant" perk that Chryssalids have.
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Nov 18, 2013 20:13
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Lotish posted:I think it's just that they're supposed to be the special, signature abilities rather than the generic everyman abilities. Is suppression yellow? I think that counts as a special move considering it's normally only for two classes instead of everyone. I had a sectoid commander use greater mind meld on the base mission - killing him took out 2 sectoids and 2 mechtoid shields. I'd never seen them use that ability before.
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Nov 18, 2013 20:15
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Fanzay posted:You don't say. Of course I know that. I've beaten the base game on I/I. The mission beats itself once you've activated the survivor. The hard part is everything up to that, if your squad is less than prepared. Which has been every time that mission shows up. I had trouble even after getting the survivor on Impossible. You get 3-4 Thin Men dropping at a time, and you probably only have 4 guys yourself with ballistic weapons. If anyone doesn't get a crit, or god forbid, misses a shot, then someone is going to get Light Plasma'd to death. And there's three waves. Even triggering one wave at a time, it's very easy for a single missed shot to start a snowball of pain. Example: three guys on the roof, one assault out in front. First wave spawns, but one Thin Man spawns way behind my squad. I run a heavy over there to take his shot, and...he misses. Everyone else kills their targets. Alien Activity. Thin Man leaps up onto the roof, flanks my Heavy, and one-shots her. Sniper panics and hunkers down while still being flanked. Assault is too far away to help. My other heavy lines up his shot on the Thin Man, whom he is currently flanking, and...misses. Alien Activity. Thin Man kills my Sniper. Heavy panics and takes a shot at the Thin Man. Misses again. Assault has rushed back, but he can't get close enough for a decent shot with his shotgun. I put him on overwatch to keep the Thin Man from rushing up and point-blank'ing my Heavy, since he's behind full cover. Alien Activity. Thin Man kills my Heavy, who was only behind half-cover, with a crit. That's a wipe, and it didn't come from poor strategy. Just Thin Men being Thin Men.
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Nov 18, 2013 20:18
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Monathin posted:If you commit some time to the Foundry pistol upgrades, a Gunslinger Sniper can essentially move and shoot with impunity to the point where if I only have a limited amount of plasma/laser pistols to go around, Snipers always get priority. Plasma pistols..? That was ever a thing? Also when the hell does officer academy school unlock in the base build on classic. So far classic has been impossible. I only figured out last night the only cover you should leave your troops in is full. Even though I was doing a decent ironman classic on enemy unknown, in enemy within I can't get past the first three months. And I'm losing a few critical missions too. If another play through only using high cover doesn't work I'm just going to start on normal then bump up to classic. I should probably watch some lets plays. I couldn't go back to non ironman. Being able to save whenever ruins it for me cause I save after every turn impulsively. Are there any lets plays of incredibly skilled players? Maybe some specific to help you get a bit better at this? I can see from my patterns of success and failure that I do not comprehend this game fully.
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Nov 18, 2013 20:19
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I'm just waiting for the Elite versions of Thin Men where they have a monocle over one eye and a suit of armor. +6 hp and +20 aim, natch.
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Nov 18, 2013 20:22
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Zudrag posted:Aliens also don't get zombified by Chryssalids, so you likely won't have your own personal zombie army in a mission if you were to give your soldiers this, unless you spawn some hostile civilians to kill first with the dev console and give your soldiers the "Implant" perk that Chryssalids have. I was greatly disappointed with that when I finally succeded in MCing a chrysallid and had it munch on a sectoid. Oh well, I guess Shen would've given me a stern telling off (and Vahlen silently admiring it) had it worked  NeoSeeker posted:Are there any lets plays of incredibly skilled players? Maybe some specific to help you get a bit better at this? I can see from my patterns of success and failure that I do not comprehend this game fully. Look up Beaglerush on youtube. You don't have to be as careful as he is (if you're not playing ironman impossible), but he's great at explaining stuff while being entertaining. Lima fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Nov 18, 2013 |
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Nov 18, 2013 20:24
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oswald ownenstein posted:I'm just waiting for the Elite versions of Thin Men where they have a monocle over one eye and a suit of armor. +6 hp and +20 aim, natch. 
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Nov 18, 2013 20:24
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Wiggly Wayne DDS posted:They also have mimetic skin + close & personal "Complain about end game balance, will you? Okay then." -agauntpanda
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Nov 18, 2013 20:25
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Vengarr posted:1. No, nothing. Best thing you can do is get the "New Guy" Officer School upgrade that automatically turns your rookies into squaddies, and then just hire a bunch of soldiers till you get the classes you want.. Thanks, I'll give this a shot. Really digging the second wave option that randomizes perks. Even if I do have a small army of supports, they're all nuanced smoke grenade chuckers.
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Nov 18, 2013 20:34
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I take back all the rude things I ever said about Zhang, he just blew up 6 Thin Men with a rocket. Exalt seem totally toothless (playing Classic), over the course of 6 missions they have done exactly 18 damage to Xcom, and 9 of that was from one laser sniper. They have never even managed to have the encoder - not even decreased the count by 1 turn. I just murder them as the ineffectually dash forward. On the rare occasions they seem to be ready to fight I just have my covert ops soldier hack the relay and murder them while they can't fire. I feel sorry for them. After the first mission, Exalt ops became Rookie training missions. MECs are great, I made a female heavy into a giant pink punch-bot in the first month and she has lead the squad in every mission since then and now stands at over 130 kills. Pre-release I thought Heavies would make the worst MECs, but Body Shield plus the +15 defence in overwatch makes them pretty hard to hit, I have had multiple Thin men miss her from medium range - hilariously on Deluge 3 missed in a row, each one running closer than the previous ones so each took the Body Shield penalty. On most missions my MEC runs ones way and my Mimetic skin assault runs the other to find the first Meld canister with the rest of the team backing up whoever finds aliens first. I was sad that Xcom base personnel used regular grenades on the defence mission despite me having infinite alien grenades at that point 
Darkrenown fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Nov 18, 2013 |
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Nov 18, 2013 20:34
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I had one covert op where Exalt actually managed to be vaguely scary for like 3-4 rounds. It was one of those "prevent EXALT from hacking the thing, so they don't find and destroy the other thing" missions, and it was in the classic L-shaped office building with the fountain/benches out front. The hack point was just inside the north portion of the building, and loving EXALT swarmed all over it on pretty much the first round. Like 8 guys, including at least 3 snipers, and they were at laser tech. Half my squad was in half-cover, my MEC was BEING cover, one was using the MEC as cover, and the other was chilling back at a car (SS sniper). EXALT decided to start rolling well and they opened the gently caress up on my team and managed to half-kill almost everyone before I was able to return fire for a couple rounds and cut down over half of them.
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Nov 18, 2013 20:39
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Ravenfood posted:So is there movement set or do they just get movement points when they normally would on rank-up? A soldier's movement stat is set on generation. Default soldiers get 12 movement points, with Not Created Equally on soldiers can have 11-13 movement. People posted:EXALT/pacing chat. Yeah, I think the team missed a chance when they decided on some stuff in EW. EXALT probably should've been more dangerous individually, but appeared in smaller numbers. They probably should've been essentially Shocker with a shadowy Etheareal (the one from the Overseer ship) appearing on their big screen to tell them stuff instead of Optimus Prime. They should've shown up way earlier, the Meld tutorial would've been ideal since you could use the excuse that the aliens are dropping Meld off as a supply drop for EXALT. They could even have been a pretty minor threat (like, no armor or upgrades or anything) up until after you take out the alien base (how cool would it have been if the Base Defense mission was a joint attack by EXALT infiltrators and alien invaders?). They should've gotten MECs, psionics, plasma, and actually extreme looking gene mods. I think part of the problem is also that Firaxis wanted to make everything in the expansion available really early on in a new game. This is part of why Slingshot was a giant pain in the rear end in EU, and it's why the first few months in EW are so crazy hectic and difficult.
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Nov 18, 2013 20:39
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Vengarr posted:No, the +10 after a miss is extremely good for Bulletstorm/Rapid Reaction/Sentinel builds, because it DOES trigger on a missed Overwatch shot. If you can manage to snag an Opportunist/Bulletstorm/Sentinel soldier via Training Roulette, that +10 aim after a miss is extraordinary because you are going to be shooting all day evverday. I currently have a Bullet Swarm, Rapid Fire, Close and Personal Assault. This is about as ridiculous as you might imagine.
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