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Speedball posted:
Haha nice callback. I really enjoyed your Civ LP and I'm working my way through Tropico now. XCOM is an extremely excellent game and I look forward to reading your version of the plotline!
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Aug 29, 2014 21:40
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BULLSHIT. Psychic powers do not and have never existed and there is no scientific basis for them. Larry Niven just wrote psychics into all his hard SF stories because even he wanted space wizards. Unless you can get a scientist or twelve out here to write a whole bunch of math that I can understand about which of the four fundamental forces of nature account for shooting glowy poo poo out of your head, it's loving magic and aliens are evil sorcerers. 
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Some of the later MEC options are completely insane, as are the gene mods. Those are going to be fun to read.
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Aug 30, 2014 04:44
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You're lucky to have steam in the second row, as well as so many hollow tiles. Lacking either one won't prevent you from winning but they sure do help if you have them. e: zero countries. I believe in
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Sep 1, 2014 04:29
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A top-tier Sniper that gets their arms and legs hacked off after they max out their aim. It's wasteful, really, but being able to count on never, ever missing with your giant  guns just makes the later bits such a breeze. Plus they're tanky enough to be frontliners.Otherwise Heavies. They're a get-out-of-squad-wipe free card, until enemies get a little beefier (even then you can make rockets hit harder to counter that!) Shut up forever Vahlen, explosions rock.
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Sep 3, 2014 01:28
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SEXCOM: Orientation Unknown
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Sep 3, 2014 19:43
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Oh, no I really like the narrative, that just popped into my mind and I thought it would be funny. Loving, fighting, sweaters... all part of an XCOM operative's busy life!
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Sep 3, 2014 21:07
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Claverjoe posted:Hey, she's Israeli, go with Merkava RickVoid posted:I don't care what gets picked, so long as the Mimi nickname sticks and everyone flat-out refuses to call her by the name we (she) picked. To her unending frustration. These two
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Sep 10, 2014 20:37
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Section Z posted:I've got some illogical negative reinforcement confirmation bias whatever regarding Hunker Down, because my luck has run towards "Hunker down=get shot in the face and die" anyways, despite "Well, I can't get crit if I hunker down right? I get this too. XCOM is very, very insistent on the "best defense is overwhelming offense" school of tactics, so ending a turn with any soldier not having fired/ready to fire just doesn't feel right.
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Sep 13, 2014 03:44
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 I never noticed the text on this medal, anyone know what "POEDUS" is supposed to mean?
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Sep 14, 2014 00:03
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Bruceski posted:That's an F, not a P. "Foedus" is latin for treaty, probably used in a fancy name for the Council. Rigged Death Trap posted:Protector Of Earth, drat U Slick. It will always be this in my heart
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Sep 14, 2014 00:57
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MEC Zhang. Just because I think he's a punk.
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Sep 15, 2014 01:53
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My policy has always been to keep the operative completely out of harm's way so it never really matters what class they are!
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Sep 15, 2014 17:50
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It feels really good to research that many xrays all at once after you lock down South America.
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Sep 16, 2014 17:07
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First, Satellites everywhere. You've got pretty good interceptor coverage if I recall, and more money from protecting scrubs from sectoids means better guns for shooting into the air at movie night. Second, SATELLITES EVERYWHERE. This is the most important thing! They could be hatching plots in like Australia and you wouldn't know because the ozone hole makes normal satellites feel insecure about their tans so XCOM's gotta step up. Once we can watch every citizen of Earth pick their nose in realtime 4k we can focus on stuff like actually killing the aliens. For movie night: Event Horizon Our XCOMs should appreciate the idea of crazy brainmelting assaults from beyond the stars when rendered through Sam Neill's hammy absurdity. As long as Vahlen doesn't build any meat-grinder hallways they should be fine.
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Sep 21, 2014 09:03
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Feinne posted:There need to be more transforming magical girl strategy games, done well those can be pretty fun (such as Jeanne D'Arc). You can do this in Wasteland 2 HondaCivet posted:Desert Ranger Madoka Magica
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Sep 22, 2014 18:35
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I have to say I would choose bioelectric skin. Having an entirely new sense organ, plus electric-shock skin, would be pretty boss. I've been scuba diving a few times and it's awesome but you're so out of your element it's hard to appreciate everything. Being able to literally feel the life around you... that's the stuff of dreams. PS that was an excellent update Speedball 
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Sep 28, 2014 05:10
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I liked the couple of lines about non-government organizations getting their filthy paws on alien tech and what that would mean. XCOM really doesn't delve into anything that isn't happening in either your base or your crosshairs and I've always thought that was kind of a weak point. My most hated enemy is probably Berserkers, not because they're hard to kill (they aren't) but because they are dumb as rocks (see: easy to kill) and don't really feel like they fit with the rest of the alien forces. They're basically just walls of idiot HP to be chipped away during a real fight.
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Sep 29, 2014 21:52
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inflatablefish posted:I think they work pretty well, because they're an imminent threat - it doesn't matter how good your lines of fire are to the rest of the enemy, if you don't take down the Berserker right the hell now then somebody's in for a really bad day. Berserkers are there to soak up your fire while the Mutons do some killing, and they're very, very good at that job. Plus they're pretty scary the first time you see them. I agree with most of this, but it still feels weird to have a unit that attacks that way sharing bunk space with lazer-toting flying cyborgs. The part I don't agree with is that they are an imminent threat; I can probably count on one hand the number of times they've actually hit one of my units and I'm a middling Commander on any given day. If they had grenades too then they would be legitimately terrifying, like how others have said about Cyberdisks. e: their special animation is pretty awesome though, Speedball if there's a way for you to show that off when we get to that point you should post a video too
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Sep 29, 2014 23:57
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SpookyLizard posted:While they're mainly advertised to debuff aim and remove overwatch, they also tack on a -50% movement penalty This makes them really, really useful if you still need to capture something you haven't already vivisected in Brazil.
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Sep 30, 2014 22:37
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Vicevirtuoso posted:Never used a SHIV in my first playthrough, so I decided to make some. I had no idea that Hover SHIVs were so good. I manufactured a bunch of them as backups once the money started piling up in the late game, decided to do an abduction mission with all 6 of them, and proceeded to clean house faster than I would have with my six Colonels. The defense they have in midair is absurd. Hover SHIVs are amazing. If you can get them before the Newfoundland mission it just completely trivializes it, shooting-gallery style.
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Oct 3, 2014 16:48
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 You monster
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Oct 3, 2014 21:26
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I believe that intelligent aliens have/will/do exist, but the odds are that our civilization (or one to follow it) will never even establish contact, let alone meet face-to-tentacle. The universe is vast literally beyond understanding, and even with the most optimistic estimates the Drake equation still has that whole Fermi paradox to deal with - if they're out there, why haven't we met them? The answer is time. Our planet is roughly four and half billion years old, with simple animal life emerging only in the last 600 million. Humans as we currently recognize them have existed for about 200,000 years, the exact amount isn't important. What is important is that we've only had the capacity to even recognize an incoming transmission for a few centuries at best. If another civilization was trying to contact our planet, even being off by a thousand years would mean we would never connect. That's an eyeblink in evolutionary time. On top of that, there's the problem of sending the signal in the first place. Even though space is mostly empty, you'd still need a laser (or equivalent device) capable of sending a sustained burst across light years. Stars can sort of do that but they're loving stars, and remember that Sol is itty-bitty compared to most of what we can see with the naked eye (hint lots of "stars" are actually galaxies). So you're going to need a poo poo-ton of resources, energy, and coordination to even send a signal. If aliens are anything like us that means that a planetary government capable of making that happen is almost inconceivable, but let's say they've figured it out and they've built their laser and they want to send transmissions. Well how do you pick where to start? You can't just send out a spherical pulse, so you target the nearest, most-likely-to-have-life stars, but we're still talking years, at a minimum, before any kind of response could be received. So you're gambling a measurable fraction of your planets resources to build and send a signal, betting against astronomical odds that your target is inhabited and in sync with your civilization's development, and you have to sustain interest for long enough for a reply to be received. The bottom line is that the existence of aliens is essentially a given, but it will never really matter for humanity.
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Oct 4, 2014 01:51
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Also I believe human intelligence is a fluke, not a given checkpoint in evolution, so even if/when we find alien life I wouldn't expect them to be sophonts and that means "friendly" is more a matter of how dangerous we are to each other.
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Oct 4, 2014 05:38
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RickVoid posted:I take it you've read Pushing Ice? If you haven't, it's a near-future novel by Alastair Reynolds that I think you'd probably enjoy. I actually haven't read Pushing Ice, although after checking out the synopsis I think I will, thanks. I drew a lot of what I posted there from my own musings and Edward M. Lerner's article in the Sept. 2014 ANALOG Science Fact column, which is probably hands-down the nerdiest sentence I've ever written, but it's a good article and magazine and you should subscribe.
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Oct 4, 2014 07:10
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Dr. Shen's gonna go all GITS on Van Doorn for SHIV mastery
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Oct 4, 2014 07:37
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The surviving Thin Man looks completely freaked the gently caress out too which is just perfect.
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Oct 4, 2014 07:45
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Robindaybird posted:basically she got shot, bled out and somehow feel through the stairway she's on so her head and arm was sticking out. I could put my support next to her and basically on top of her, but it won't register. Every now and then XCOM just freaks out about z-levels. I once had a Sectoid drop one tile under the ground and become invisible, except he was still shooting my guys like cover didn't exist. Finally had to use a rocket to root him out.
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Oct 16, 2014 04:10
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Advanced cyber warfare could reopen some of those possibilities. A fleet can't be sunk if the enemy thinks that fleet is still at port 3000 miles away.
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Oct 20, 2014 02:37
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Endless Space is a good game if you hate diplomacy. I could never figure out how trade routes and everything worked, but I still enjoyed developing all my planets and designing individual ships. I think the ship-designing and admittedly poor fleet control turned some people off but I didn't mind it much. Also the space battles can be skipped or you can watch your pretty space pods shoot colors at other space pods for a minute or two  Definitely going to pick up Endless Legend at the first sale, I had to stop reading the thread because it was tempting me to pay full price.
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Oct 30, 2014 18:23
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I guess I sort of understood all that, it just seemed like such a huge blistering hassle that I never bothered. Honestly it's not like the AI presents a significant challenge anyway, unless you get stuck with a galaxy full of hot stars and asteroid belts and they get to run away with the game from the start.
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Oct 30, 2014 19:29
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Man that was a good one! Nice job playing up the commander's influence on the team.
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Nov 26, 2014 05:12
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Robindaybird posted:Sadly Zhang never tested positive for PSI ability in my game Zhang didn't need Psi powers to smoke that Sectoid in his recruitment mission. Dude's just such a stone cold badass he knows what you're going to do before you do.
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Feb 11, 2015 01:59
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They didn't anticipate that humanity would be willing to invest the resources to field a full six shooters on the front lines. The invaders only budgeted for three humans, someone back on the homeworld's getting reamed over this one.
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Feb 13, 2015 07:46
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Stephen9001 posted:A new soldier? Is it someone you get as a mission reward or just a new hire from the "hire soldiers" option? or does that count as a spoiler? Let's find out together in the update!
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Feb 15, 2015 01:29
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Speedball posted:
Van Doorn in a nutshell for sure. What an adorable psycho.
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Feb 15, 2015 19:46
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*sniff* I didn’t get to kill anything! *sob*
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Most of my meld is usually reserved for MECing as many troops as possible  That being said, spread it around seems to increase the overall effectiveness of the squad more than dumping it all onto one soldier. The logic being that no matter how awesome that one dude is, they still only get two actions per turn. If the whole squad has abilities to use, that means you're able to put more control over a larger area of the battlefield, rather than having one powerful (but still vulnerable) unit who the rest of the squad plays backup for. Plus it makes me nervous putting all my glowing orange eggs in one basket.
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Feb 16, 2015 20:28
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:This is a dumb mechanic honestly, though -- it kind of implies that your soldiers are wearing their deployment gear all the time instead of just when they go on missions. Eh, you can kind of rationalize it as gear that's assigned to them so it's near their bunk or whatever. Random equipment would probably be better though.
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Mar 5, 2015 06:00
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Scanners.
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May 26, 2015 06:46
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Definitely, Gunslinger operatives are amazing. Give em the appropriate meld upgrades and they barely need the rest of your squad at all.
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Jun 4, 2015 21:27
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 17:38 |
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Make them give you the good drugs, and plenty of them
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Jun 17, 2015 20:58
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