Who's preordering X-COM?

[PowerYoga]

You can line up your guys in that corridor and send one guy in to aggro the boss, then you can have snipers double tap him to death. Keep your headshots ready for him and it'll be a cinch. You can also rocket him/her if you have any left.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Eh, I just send my soldiers in Ghost mode. It's fun to stand around inside just chilling =)

 

[Howard]

You can line up your guys in that corridor and send one guy in to aggro the boss, then you can have snipers double tap him to death. Keep your headshots ready for him and it'll be a cinch. You can also rocket him/her if you have any left.

Uh oh. I set them all up for ITZ.

 

[nanobreath]

They could totally fix that last room if they simply made the boss spawn after all your guys are inside (and then lock the door).

I don't see why the boss is out front in the fucking middle of the room. Have him not spawn till later. And spawn in a little more defensible position. Why sit out top with no cover to die?

Wait until you get good enough for Impossible. Sectoids have 1 more HP which doesn't sound like much until you realize that regular assault rifles and grenades can only do 3 damage.

For now, you need you learn to draw the aliens into your fire and use explosives more liberally.

Oh shits. 4 HP makes a big deal. Their mind meld ability gives em 4 hp normally, but then you just focus the guy doing the melding since he still only has 3 hp. But with 4HP base, you have to hit every guy twice to kill them. Not sure I'll ever attempt that...

 

[Sureshot324]

Classic Ironman is quite....challenging.
And yes, that's the difficulty I started out at.
Always better to start out the hard way, than to spoil the story and then never get around to that second play-through.
I should probably focus more on the willpower of the selected squad, as every so often the first death leads to one or two guys panicking.
I wish I could evac with slightly less consequences..but most of the time that's just no option. Either because I can't nearly afford the rise in panic, or because I've been flanked so hard, that I can't get back to the extraction zone.

My biggest nemesis is probably thin men, right now. While surely the big bad guys later on are also scary (3 mutons spawning at once is bad news), but the thin man's mobility and poison attack are weeding me out quite badly in the early game.
Especially their tendency to spawn in my flanks, having enough HP to tank most single attacks and poison death cloud means that if I spawn three and don't get lucky taking one out before he gets into position, I'm in big trouble. If I spawn six, it's pretty much over.

The problem with the cover system is that if you enemies coming at you from two directions, one of your men will always be exposed, but they can always be in hard cover. As you're outnumbered, you can't usually flank the enemy without getting into extremely high risk situations (of either getting to close to the mark, or getting detected by more enemies).

At least by now I got more aware of burning vehicles. Also, I once got so close as being able to use the stun-gun on an alien, got a 90% chance - blew it and lost a cpl.
Since then I tend to use maximum force to resolve conflicts, never mind losing two or three corpses and weapon fragments to explosives.

I guess the key tactic I have to adapt is to retreat at the right moment into a better position, and hope the aliens will give chase....

I find that the enemies are extremely accurate in classic. If you're in half cover they pretty much don't miss, and in full cover they have maybe 50% accuracy. You really need to take them out before they get a chance to fire a shot, which usually means drawing them to an area where the entire squad can shoot them.

 

[thespyder]

My biggest nemesis is probably thin men, right now. While surely the big bad guys later on are also scary (3 mutons spawning at once is bad news), but the thin man's mobility and poison attack are weeding me out quite badly in the early game.
Especially their tendency to spawn in my flanks, having enough HP to tank most single attacks and poison death cloud means that if I spawn three and don't get lucky taking one out before he gets into position, I'm in big trouble. If I spawn six, it's pretty much over.

It's funny that the thin men are your biggest threat. I had two of my A-listers taken out in a mission and the rest were all incapacitated except my sniper. So a Terror mission came up and I had to send in a team of low levels including two rookies. I was terrified because I had to send in my Sniper with them. I was so relieved when it turned out to be a bunch of Thin Men. They took out the entire compliment of aliens with only minor damage despite the inexperience of the squad.

For me, at this point the biggest threats are the Elite Mutons. Range AND heavy armor makes a formidable enemy. Plus usually they travel with Zerkers. Then one time there was a Mech with them. That ended my day pretty bloody.

 

[irishScott]

So I've taken to modeling my squad after the Power Rangers.

My sniper (the only female so far) is Pink, my heavy is Red, my support is Blue, and my assault is Green. Armor colored accordingly. I had a black guy as support, in the black ranger role, but he died first.

 

[PowerYoga]

Uh oh. I set them all up for ITZ.

Then you get 2 shots: 1 from each sniper.

Hope you got enough rockets.

 

[Martimus]

Cephalopods are the toughest enemy for me. A blaster ball to go with a huge amount of HP and a very high dodge rating make them very tough. Until the last room, I lost more soldiers to them than all otber aliens combined. I lost all three Colonels to a pair of them, all of which were psionic.

 

[Howard]

Cephalopods are the toughest enemy for me. A blaster ball to go with a huge amount of HP and a very high dodge rating make them very tough. Until the last room, I lost more soldiers to them than all otber aliens combined. I lost all three Colonels to a pair of them, all of which were psionic.

Er, Sectopod you mean? You can take them out with a Killer Instinct Ghosted Rapid Fire + Alloy Cannon, or a Ghosted Heavy Plasma with HEAT. Even easier with a Shredder Rocket.

 

[kevinsbane]

Er, Sectopod you mean? You can take them out with a Killer Instinct Ghosted Rapid Fire + Alloy Cannon, or a Ghosted Heavy Plasma with HEAT. Even easier with a Shredder Rocket.

I had to fight one where the Sectopod held his ground on high ground and I couldn't shoot it unless I went up to the high ground (no cover...) I didn't have a squad sight sniper, nor did I have HEAT ammo. That sucked. It was my first time fighting it too.

Suppression + a SHIV saved my squad... barely.

HEAT ammo rocks. It's ridiculous to see a Heavy one-shot a classic Sectopod... 30 dmg in one hit.

 

[Martimus]

How do you get a shredder rocket? I ran out of things to research having captured all living aliens and never saw that option.

 

[PowerYoga]

How do you get a shredder rocket? I ran out of things to research having captured all living aliens and never saw that option.

heavy lvl 2 perk i believe.

 

[Martimus]

Ok, thanks. I probably already had it. A sectopod killed my Colonel Heavy, so I went in with a LT Heavy instead. Can you stun a sectopod? I just wonder since there doesn't seem to be any other way to get the blaster ball launcher.

 

[PowerYoga]

The fusion cores you need come from alien battleships, which start landing/invading late in the game. Each one you down will have 1-2 cores that's needed to do the research, but you need a full core to create the actual launcher.

 

[LurkerPrime]

I really dont see how all you people can play this game on classic ironman. One mistake 10+ hours in and your squads going to wipe, and then your pretty much screwed.

 

[ChronoReverse]

I really dont see how all you people can play this game on classic ironman. One mistake 10+ hours in and your squads going to wipe, and then your pretty much screwed.

Well, I actually had two full squads of Colonels by the time I finished my Classic Ironman run.

Plus SHIVs are actually really good assuming you managed to avoid the bugs (I just dismantle the faulty ones and build new ones).

 

[kevinsbane]

I really dont see how all you people can play this game on classic ironman. One mistake 10+ hours in and your squads going to wipe, and then your pretty much screwed.

*cue music*
Beeeee preeeeepareeeeed!

But seriously, what you do is while you play, you rotate rookies in and high level officers out. Sometimes you do squad wipe, and you do have to recover... it's not insurmountable, but it's tough. I've squad wiped no less than 3 times in my current Classic/Ironman run (including once where my own rocket was instrumental in wiping out half my squad early in the game), and it sucks when it happens, but it by no means does not result in a guaranteed game over. You keep playing and struggle for a few missions while you rebuild.

I haven't used SHIVs personally, but they're a great substitute for vets if you don't have vets.

 

[QuantumPion]

I'm not playing ironman until they fix the bugs. In my current game there have been several instances where bugs would have caused colonel deaths or squad wipes - a whole squad of aliens spawning on turn 1 behind my squad's starting location and getting a full turn, insta-killing my flanked titan-armored guys. Sectopod floating in mid air untarget-able raining missiles down on me. Stuff like that makes me really not want to play IM lol.

 

[Martimus]

The first two times I came across a sectopod, I lost three Colonels and 4 psionics (all psionics I had at that point). I also lost all three of my support personnel, so even though I had everything I needed to do the last mission, I had to train up a new psionic and two new support personnel. Took me 10 rookies to get 2 support soldiers. Then about 5 missions to get them the triple medkit perk. That said, I still finished the game at day ~150 which was about 100 days less than average. I wonder if that is why I never saw a battleship?

 

[kevinsbane]

I'm not playing ironman until they fix the bugs. In my current game there have been several instances where bugs would have caused colonel deaths or squad wipes - a whole squad of aliens spawning on turn 1 behind my squad's starting location and getting a full turn, insta-killing my flanked titan-armored guys. Sectopod floating in mid air untarget-able raining missiles down on me. Stuff like that makes me really not want to play IM lol.

Playing Ironman with the bugs has been interesting to say the least. The bug has bitten me a few times, but has only screwed me badly once. Soldiering on...

 

[Howard]

What's the suggested tech path for a Classic IM game? I've heard that laser rifles are better than armor in early game.

 

[QuantumPion]

What's the suggested tech path for a Classic IM game? I've heard that laser rifles are better than armor in early game.

Some people say armor, others lasers, others fuck it and go straight to plasma weapons. I think whichever you chose can lead to dodgy situations but work out in the end.

FYI Yahtzee, the harshest critic around whom primarily likes console action games, gave this PC strategy game a glowing review. Nuts! http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/6468-XCOM-Enemy-Unknown

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Rifles always seem sufficient to me until you get to Mutons. Armor let's you survive that shot you took behind heavy cover anyway. A laser rifle doesn't.

 

[Martimus]

I think armor is more important. I used Carapace armor until the last mission. It is good enough to keep you from being one-shotted, which is enough to keep most people alive. Laser weapons are only slightly better than regular weapons. Although I think a laser sniper rifle and heavy weapon are important to get as soon as possible.