XCOM: One Does Not Simply "Shoot" a Cryssalid...

[Parra]

I did the first Alien base last night and had a similar encounter to you. I simultaneously activated 2 Thin Men, 3 Floaters, 2 Drones and 6 Cryssalids.

Unlike your experience however I was being super paranoid and had great firing lines on all of them (Cryssalids needed to go up a ramp the long way to reach my troops), taking everything out with out receiving a hit in return

[Cespenar]

Occasionally, yes. It's more RNG and less Classic, though, in my opinion.

In an unrelated note, I had a Heavy shoot through 10 metres of solid material and kill an alien. I sometimes wonder if they did any beta testing on this game.

[shadow_archmagi]

Needless to say, I ragequit to come post this here. Is Classic usually this bad?

It happens sometimes. Try to avoid half-cover. It's always better to Overwatch from just out of sight than shoot an enemy with cover.

In an unrelated note, I had a Heavy shoot through 10 metres of solid material and kill an alien. I sometimes wonder if they did any beta testing on this game.

I think *in theory* you're supposed to be shooting them when they poke their heads around the corner, but the game disregards synching animations as often as not.

I'm particularly fond of soldiers who face the wrong way and then bullets emerge from their gun at a 150 degree angle to kill a Muton on the far side of the map. I like to imagine they're just showing off.

[Triaxx]

It's surprisingly hard to configure animation for every eventuality.

[Tengu_temp]

Figures. The first unit who gets a promotion is from Ireland, so I rename him after me (Irish name).

Obviously, he dies 5 seconds in the next mission.

If you name a unit after yourself, it will always either die or turn out to be a colossal wimp with awful stats. Always. The only exception is Chiasaur.

[Chen]

It's surprisingly hard to configure animation for every eventuality.

That doesn't seem like a reasonable excuse for a finished product game though.

The game is pretty buggy. Ironman is pure masochism. I had the game lock up near the end of a mission AFTER it had autosaved rendering the save completely unplayable. So there goes all the time in that attempt. No more ironman attempts for me after that.

I haven't played the original in a LONG time but it does seem like we're lacking some of the depth at the base building/intercepting level. If you didn't intercept an alien ship in the original didn't it land and you got to do a mission? I would have liked something like that in this one.

Overwatch and the way aliens are discovered is also a big issue I find. It would be nice if aliens actually came at you sometimes, instead of you discovering them and then them moving in. It really makes the most effective tactic to overwatch a bunch of snipers/assaults and use a support to run up, discover things then run back and get behind heavy cover.

[SlyGuyMcFly]

Needless to say, I ragequit to come post this here. Is Classic usually this bad?

Not usually. Sounds like you had some real awful luck with the RNG there. And with the mission. There's some missions where it seems that no matter how careful you are, you'll always pop multiple spawns near the start. Had one like that myself - a army depot in South Africa. Every time I advanced I'd get hit by a half-dozen heavy floaters, couple mutons and a Berzerker. After a couple of retries I blew a hole in a wall next to my Skyranger (it was forcing me advance parallel to it, strait into the X-rays) and advanced in a completely different direction. I still activated the two spawns of Heavy Floaters, but the cover was much better and the 'zerker didn't show up until I'd already picked off most of the floaters.

But it's far from the usual. You can usually advance pretty safely, activating one, maybe two spawns at a time.

Yes <._.> my snipers tend to get at least half of their kills in overwatch in large part because of that little factor. Saves the bacon of my other troops too.

And with Opportunist, those reaction shots are more accurate and can even crit! One-shotting a Muton from halfway across the map when it isn't even your turn is the best feeling.


EDIT: Woah woah woah. I just saw that Shredder Rocket doesn't replace your regular rocket, but gives you a second rocket? Is this true?

[Trazoi]

I haven't played the original in a LONG time but it does seem like we're lacking some of the depth at the base building/intercepting level. If you didn't intercept an alien ship in the original didn't it land and you got to do a mission? I would have liked something like that in this one.

One review I've read described the strategy as if it was XCOM: The Boardgame which I think it pretty fair. Everything feels like an simplified abstraction from the original.

For the most part I like that, because it makes the game flow along much smoother and quicker. And it makes it its own game with a unique experience, meaning I can still play the original and not feel its totally superceded.

But I do miss some of the global map stuff, like the strategy in tracking and intercepting of UFOs over the entire world. Or choosing where you build tracking stations and bases. I miss having the option to put the main base in Hawaii even though tactically that's pretty stupid.

[Zevox]

Minor spoiler about a midgame mission in this question, but I figure better safe than sorry, hence the tag.

Spoiler

Show

When your soldiers encounter the Alien Entertainment in the base assault, Dr. Shen in the PC version says something along the lines of "So this is what aliens do for fun? Well... at least they're not playing computer games." I wonder if he pokes fun at "video games" in any of the console versions.

Nope, still says computer games. Which is a bit odd if you ask me, as you'd think they'd use the more general term, not the platform-specific one.

EDIT: Woah woah woah. I just saw that Shredder Rocket doesn't replace your regular rocket, but gives you a second rocket? Is this true?

Yes it is.

Zevox

[Jimorian]

If you name a unit after yourself, it will always either die or turn out to be a colossal wimp with awful stats. Always. The only exception is Chiasaur.

The old game randomly generated my real name once. I lasted a few months and reached Colonel before finally buying the farm.

[LongVin]

I haven't played the original in a LONG time but it does seem like we're lacking some of the depth at the base building/intercepting level. If you didn't intercept an alien ship in the original didn't it land and you got to do a mission? I would have liked something like that in this one.

Yep. Was actually a pretty valid strategy if you needed more elerium or such since the alien power supplies had a tendency to blow up when they crashed.

[Zevox]

Yep. Was actually a pretty valid strategy if you needed more elerium or such since the alien power supplies had a tendency to blow up when they crashed.

Then what was the point of intercepting them in the first place? If you got a mission either way, and could actually recover more supplies if you didn't shoot them down, I'm not seeing a reason to bother shooting them down.

Zevox

[Krade]

Then what was the point of intercepting them in the first place? If you got a mission either way, and could actually recover more supplies if you didn't shoot them down, I'm not seeing a reason to bother shooting them down.

Zevox

You had to send the interceptor anyway to track it. I'm not sure of the exact mechanics, but your radar coverage was not perfect. The only way you could make sure you didn't lose it was to follow it with an interceptor until it landed and then hit it with the skyranger.

[Anarion]

Yes <._.> my snipers tend to get at least half of their kills in overwatch in large part because of that little factor. Saves the bacon of my other troops too.

Heh, just rescued a Sergeant Sniper with a cool afro, and he promptly started kicking ass. Gunslinger is good. Makes the guy versatile.

Opportunist is beautiful with all this. Advance, overwatch with pistol and opportunist, get a good spot, overwatch with sniper rifle and opportunist. Chuckle when your sniper randomly crits an enemy as it moves across the screen.

?

Needless to say, I ragequit to come post this here. Is Classic usually this bad?

No, you had an especially bad run. However, it is true that all enemies in classic have a bonus to hit and crit compared to normal, so the rate of bad things happening is higher. In general, it's safest to use your turn to position yourself out of sight of the aliens and in high cover. You overwatch to shoot at the aliens as they come for you, and if they're in range when you start your turn, you can use combined arms to take them down, such as using explosives to wreck their cover or even falling back on a rocket as your last action if the RNG absolutely hates you and you don't care about the weapon fragments.

EDIT: Woah woah woah. I just saw that Shredder Rocket doesn't replace your regular rocket, but gives you a second rocket? Is this true?

It's true, but I'm not a fan. Suppression is really good and skipping suppression makes it a lot harder to capture aliens early, which is super important both for the research credits and for the sweet sweet plasma weapons.

That said, if you're playing classic, having one heavy with double grenades and shredder rocket is somewhat useful. That heavy basically serves as your "Oh crap" button. If all else goes south, you start leveling the stage and don't stop until there's nothing else moving.

You had to send the interceptor anyway to track it. I'm not sure of the exact mechanics, but your radar coverage was not perfect. The only way you could make sure you didn't lose it was to follow it with an interceptor until it landed and then hit it with the skyranger.

Expanding on this, in the classic game your radars only made a sweep every few minutes in the in-game clock. Thus, you might catch a UFO, but if it was fast enough it would move out of radar range before a second sweep. Interceptors in the original had their own radar which was 100% accurate but extremely short range. So if you caught a supply ship, you could send an interceptor and have it hang back, perfectly tracking the ship, but allowing it to land so you could get all that beautiful elerium. A nice bonus was that supply ships almost always landed near an active alien base, so usually your interceptor would find that too.

[Chen]

Then what was the point of intercepting them in the first place? If you got a mission either way, and could actually recover more supplies if you didn't shoot them down, I'm not seeing a reason to bother shooting them down.

Zevox

You had to deal with a much larger alien force if the ship landed safely as opposed to shooting it down and killing a chunk of the crew. Not to mention I seem to recall it was possible to just utterly destroy it in air combat negating the mission entirely (which is good when all your men are wounded or you need a few more days for a new weapon).

[Anarion]

You had to deal with a much larger alien force if the ship landed safely as opposed to shooting it down and killing a chunk of the crew. Not to mention I seem to recall it was possible to just utterly destroy it in air combat negating the mission entirely (which is good when all your men are wounded or you need a few more days for a new weapon).

In the original game, you could shoot down UFOs over water and they would be gone for good. Also strong weapons like plasma cannons would sometimes destroy the smaller UFOs entirely, though that was somewhat random and hard to predict.

That said, if you were chasing supply ships, you avoided shooting them down to preserve all 4 elerium cores. It's true that there would be more crew in a landing than a crash, but you sent the interceptor just to follow the ship so you knew where it landed.

[Krade]

In the original game, you could shoot down UFOs over water and they would be gone for good. Also strong weapons like plasma cannons would sometimes destroy the smaller UFOs entirely, though that was somewhat random and hard to predict.

That said, if you were chasing supply ships, you avoided shooting them down to preserve all 4 elerium cores. It's true that there would be more crew in a landing than a crash, but you sent the interceptor just to follow the ship so you knew where it landed.

Small clarification: Supply ships had 3 cores. Battleships had 4.

[HamHam]

Guys, if you have not tried the multiplayer, do so now. It is amazing.

I guess it contains alien unit spoilers though if that's something you care about.

[RagingKrikkit]

If I had Xbox live, I would have years ago.

[shadow_archmagi]

Eesh. Tried Impossible today. That was a frustrating experience. It's less that the aliens are better (I mean, they are. Sectoids have 4 HP, thin men 6, and they seem to have high crit chances too) than that they're CLUSTERED.

I had one game where on mission 2, turn 2, I moved my Heavy up three squares and simultaneously spotted two groups of three sectoids. Realizing that 6v4 was even worse odds than Xcom normally enjoys, I decided to shuffle my heavy over to an adjacent heavy cover where he'd be out of their line of sight, and then overwatch everyone else for when the six sectoids advanced.

WHOOP! He spots another six sectoids from his new vantagepoint. 12v4 goes extremely poorly for me.

Whoever said a few pages back "It's a shame that the higher difficulties rely much less on tactics and much more on abusing the discovery mechanic" was right, as far as I can tell. I have yet to successfully flank an alien, only discover (and be flanked by) additional aliens.

:-/

[RagingKrikkit]

I tried Classic again, and with one week left in April, two contries gone, and another 8 at max panic, I said out loud "Just put me out of my misery."

I have never thanked a game for giving me the game over screen before.

[Surrealistik]

Whoever said a few pages back "It's a shame that the higher difficulties rely much less on tactics and much more on abusing the discovery mechanic" was right, as far as I can tell. I have yet to successfully flank an alien, only discover (and be flanked by) additional aliens.

:-/

Tactics are still mandatory for winning you the game, but you also have to be careful about not pulling spawns.

What I recommend for beating impossible is advance + Hunker Down behind full cover with fire magnets as your other troops advance out of sight with Overwatch/dash. Most aliens will open fire on the visible targets. Once you're close, you can grenade and follow up with gunfire. This strategy also synergizes extremely well with squad sight snipers. Advance -> spot -> fire -> hunker.

Mass grenades and rockets are crucial early, eliminating cover for snipers/follow up shooting, and doing guaranteed AoE damage.

Squad sight snipers are invaluable. Get them as soon as possible.

Flanking is recommended when possible, but be very careful about moving too far out that you trip other spawns.

'Execution rushes' are a useful technique after closing with hunker down + full cover, usually guaranteeing kills on weaker aliens with point blank flanking attacks.

Early on, remember to use pistols to weaken sectoids so a rifle burst will kill them, or to finish them off after they've eaten one.

Lastly suppression helps supplement an advance. It's a _really_ tough choice beween that and Shredder rockets. You should have at least one trooper capable of suppression so it can be used on an as-needed basis. Once you do, get Shredders. I like to use Support as my designated suppressor.

[mistformsquirrl]

And with Opportunist, those reaction shots are more accurate and can even crit! One-shotting a Muton from halfway across the map when it isn't even your turn is the best feeling.

Yeah, opportunist is *glorious* - it even works rather well with a pistol too. My snipers are the only people I give upgraded pistols to, and I've gotten a stunning number of kills with that since I always take Gunslinger (for the versatility it grants).

As for the Shredder Rockets - this is indeed true. It's a tough call between that and Suppression imo, but I usually take the latter on the basis that a suppressed enemy usually doesn't bother to act at all so I can sneak someone in for the capture.

That said, that may have been a mistake given that I have a lot of Supports with Rifle Suppression, which is nearly as good.

[Triaxx]

I've watched many videos, and I see a serious lack of smoke grenades. When playing the demo, I ended a move with my Sniper in a very awkward position. It was only the intervention of the Support's smoke grenade that kept him from getting a face full of plasma. Yes, those few points of defense seem insignificant, but it's definitely a case of the more the merrier.

There's one Support ability that causes smoke to grant a +20 bonus. Sounds like an exceptional help. Dense smoke I believe is the name. That's equal to half cover anywhere you want and should stack with high cover. That's a +60 bonus. It means you can advance through an open space without getting murdered.

[tensai_oni]

Then what was the point of intercepting them in the first place? If you got a mission either way, and could actually recover more supplies if you didn't shoot them down, I'm not seeing a reason to bother shooting them down.

Zevox

Interception was useful because pre-Hyperwave Decoders it was hard to find when exactly does the UFO land. And even if you did, it usually was up again by the time the Skyranger would reach it. Intercepting ensured it stayed down, and you got points for that too.

In the original game, you could shoot down UFOs over water and they would be gone for good.

Why would you do that?

It is a surprisingly common misconception that in the old game, you were penalized for ignoring shot down UFOs. That's completely untrue - you can leave a crashed ship until it disappears off the map and nothing bad will happen. You don't even lose a single point. Even if it was a Terror Ship with chryssalids. Even if it was a battleship.

[Surrealistik]

I've watched many videos, and I see a serious lack of smoke grenades. When playing the demo, I ended a move with my Sniper in a very awkward position. It was only the intervention of the Support's smoke grenade that kept him from getting a face full of plasma. Yes, those few points of defense seem insignificant, but it's definitely a case of the more the merrier.

There's one Support ability that causes smoke to grant a +20 bonus. Sounds like an exceptional help. Dense smoke I believe is the name. That's equal to half cover anywhere you want and should stack with high cover. That's a +60 bonus. It means you can advance through an open space without getting murdered.

I always take Dense Smoke nades. They're certainly useful in compensating for bad spawns/overextensions or for allowing an advance where there's otherwise no cover. Both them and Battle Scanners are my fav deployables. That said, Field Medic is too good not to take over Smoke and Mirrors.

So far as suppression goes, I actually find Support suppression with covering to be superior to Heavy suppression in balance. Heavy has a somewhat better accuracy adjusted damage per shot, but support's suppression also triggers on enemy fire. Further, given that Support covers the suppression niche so well, I feel Shredder rockets edge out Suppression.

[NEO|Phyte]

So far as suppression goes, I actually find Support suppression with covering to be superior to Heavy suppression in balance. Heavy has a somewhat better accuracy adjusted damage per shot, but support's suppression also triggers on enemy fire. Further, given that Support covers the suppression niche so well, I feel Shredder rockets edge out Suppression.

Haven't tried it personally, but apparently Heavy suppression can get pretty fun, with increased radius (area suppression! may also break cover) and free damage to the suppressed (1-3, based on the tech level of your gun)

[Surrealistik]

Haven't tried it personally, but apparently Heavy suppression can get pretty fun, with increased radius (area suppression! may also break cover) and free damage to the suppressed (1-3, based on the tech level of your gun)

Mayhem + Danger Zone isn't worth it; a second rocket/blaster bomb and grenade are too huge to pass up. The problem with pimping out the Heavy's suppression is that it has _way_ too high an opportunity cost.

[Zevox]

You had to deal with a much larger alien force if the ship landed safely as opposed to shooting it down and killing a chunk of the crew. Not to mention I seem to recall it was possible to just utterly destroy it in air combat negating the mission entirely (which is good when all your men are wounded or you need a few more days for a new weapon).

Ah, that makes sense.

Guys, if you have not tried the multiplayer, do so now. It is amazing.

I've been meaning to. Though honestly, I also want to get back into ME3's multiplayer, what with the huge update for it that hit the same day XCOM came out. And I really want to get back into some of my fighting games' online too.

I think right now I just have too many games I want to play and not enough time, really. And that even before you get into my backlog of unplayed games...

I've watched many videos, and I see a serious lack of smoke grenades. When playing the demo, I ended a move with my Sniper in a very awkward position. It was only the intervention of the Support's smoke grenade that kept him from getting a face full of plasma. Yes, those few points of defense seem insignificant, but it's definitely a case of the more the merrier.

There's one Support ability that causes smoke to grant a +20 bonus. Sounds like an exceptional help. Dense smoke I believe is the name. That's equal to half cover anywhere you want and should stack with high cover. That's a +60 bonus. It means you can advance through an open space without getting murdered.

Smoke Grenades grant +20 by default, Dense Smoke increases it to +40.

That said, I'm never really sure whether to take that or the other one, Combat Drugs. Yeah the extra defense is useful, but Combat Drugs increases your will, which is extra defense against psionics and/or a boost to your odds of making Mind Control work, something you really don't get much of.

Then again, I also rarely use smoke grenades either way, personally. If I find a character stuck in a particularly risky position and a Support is close enough to throw it I probably will, but more often than not I'm in perfectly normal positions and shooting or suppressing with the Support seems like the better option. Or healing if necessary, of course.

Zevox

[Krade]

I think right now I just have too many games I want to play and not enough time, really. And that even before you get into my backlog of unplayed games...

I know that feel, bro.