Who's preordering X-COM?

[PhatoseAlpha]

This game has some really stupid mechanics.

Off on my second downed UFO mission. Sticking to heavy cover, encounter the first xenos, a couple of grays and thin men. The thin man uses it's poison attack - which completely ignores cover, and never misses. Gets my sniper and assault. Deal with the group after that, not hit once, some floats drop in. Kill two, the third one flies off.

Then on the next turn, the poison tick causes my assault to panic. That causes one of the other recruits to panic.

At which point the gods of completely irrational gameplay mechanics decide having him turn around and shoot the friggin sniper is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Of course, she's not in cover from that direction - and he kills her. Which causes the other two remaining guys to also panic.

So, despite being in heavy cover the entire time, one of my guys is at half health, my sniper is dead, and the entire team is panicked.

Yeah, that's idiotic.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

This game has some really stupid mechanics.

Off on my second downed UFO mission. Sticking to heavy cover, encounter the first xenos, a couple of grays and thin men. The thin man uses it's poison attack - which completely ignores cover, and never misses. Gets my sniper and assault. Deal with the group after that, not hit once, some floats drop in. Kill two, the third one flies off.

Then on the next turn, the poison tick causes my assault to panic. That causes one of the other recruits to panic.

At which point the gods of completely irrational gameplay mechanics decide having him turn around and shoot the friggin sniper is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Of course, she's not in cover from that direction - and he kills her. Which causes the other two remaining guys to also panic.

So, despite being in heavy cover the entire time, one of my guys is at half health, my sniper is dead, and the entire team is panicked.

Yeah, that's idiotic.

That's random gameplay for you. (And part of the reason I don't get the allure of Iron Man - it doesn't matter how good you are if you can be bent over by the random number generator.)

For every "friendly fire" incident I've had with panicked troops, I've had multiple panicked soldiers shoot and kill an enemy.

What difficulty level are you on? What were your soldiers' Will ratings (and did you hire a bunch and fire the weak-willed ones to prescreen?)

 

[Dijeangenie]

That's random gameplay for you. (And part of the reason I don't get the allure of Iron Man - it doesn't matter how good you are if you can be bent over by the random number generator.)

That's exactly why i DO play Ironman, it keeps it interesting, I know if I played with save games I would constantly reload to save my favourite soldiers etc.

 

[thespyder]

This game has some really stupid mechanics.

Off on my second downed UFO mission. Sticking to heavy cover, encounter the first xenos, a couple of grays and thin men. The thin man uses it's poison attack - which completely ignores cover, and never misses. Gets my sniper and assault. Deal with the group after that, not hit once, some floats drop in. Kill two, the third one flies off.

Then on the next turn, the poison tick causes my assault to panic. That causes one of the other recruits to panic.

At which point the gods of completely irrational gameplay mechanics decide having him turn around and shoot the friggin sniper is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Of course, she's not in cover from that direction - and he kills her. Which causes the other two remaining guys to also panic.

So, despite being in heavy cover the entire time, one of my guys is at half health, my sniper is dead, and the entire team is panicked.

Yeah, that's idiotic.

LOL. Yeah. Par for the course on Classic.

No.... This game doesn't have balancing issues.

 

[georgec84]

$25 on Amazon right now.

 

[you2]

Yea for amazon $25. Now I have the game. Now I can get crushed.

 

[MetalMat]

Sometimes the whole panic thing is really stupid.

One mission I had my assault guy up front with a sniper and 2 heavies behind him. A thin man poisons him and he panicked, he then proceeded to turn around and shoot my sniper which kills him. Then one heavy panics and shoots my other heavy. HE PANICS and shoots the heavy and kills him. Really really lame

 

[you2]

Ok. I just started my first game on normal. Will I find success or will they deep fry me and feed me to the dogs ?

Btw I think a while ago I saw some comments about aliens shooting through walls and other bugs. Have these been fixed ?

 

[Howard]

Normal's pretty easy. It's a good place to start off.

Line of sight can be strange sometimes but you shouldn't see too much trouble with it.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

I'm playing on Normal. It's only easy relative to the other difficulties, not any meaning of the word easy you might use in conversation.

While I can live with the difficulty, the main problem is that the sources of the difficulty are completely nonsensical.

"Commander Phatose, welcome to X-Com, the worlds premiere anti-UFO task force. Be aware that we're the world's premiere anti-UFO task force only because we're the only anti-UFO task force, and until last week, we were actually the Young Republicans of Topeka, Kansas."

"We have literally every resource the world could spare from their sock drawers. We've got trained soldiers. Well, they made it out of boot camp anyway. We can deploy them 4 at a time. Maybe 5 at a time once Private Johnson hits Sergeant. Well, If he hits Sergeant - we've got a pretty high turnover rate. We had a corporal once, but he was killed in a friendly fire incident during that panic attack last month when we ran out of toilet paper. The report is on your desk."

"We can detect alien abductions all over the world - mostly by watching CNN - but we only have 1 air transport, and only enough gas for one flight. No, nobody here has any frequent flyer milers, or even a car, so it's pretty much 'one thing at a time.' The local governments also have CNN, but they have never once responded to any alien activity, so I wouldn't expect any help there."

"Where were we? Yes, space! The earth is surrounded by a network of Satellites. We cannot use any of them, and Bob hasn't had any luck picking up UFO on the weather channel's doppler rader. So, we'll have to put up our own sattelites. We currently only have 1, and a Commodore 64 to use it, so we should upgrade first chance we get. Food stamps show up the first of the month, so that would be a good time."

"We may need to shoot down the UFOs. Currently, we have two planes. No, not jets, planes. I'm pretty sure Johnson stole them from the Smithsonian. We'll need more, since the governments of the world will hold us personally responsible for any alien attacks despite not offering us anything on top of our welfare checks."

"So...who did you piss off to get this job?"

 

[kevinsbane]

I'm playing on Normal. It's only easy relative to the other difficulties, not any meaning of the word easy you might use in conversation.

While I can live with the difficulty, the main problem is that the sources of the difficulty are completely nonsensical.

"Commander Phatose, welcome to X-Com, the worlds premiere anti-UFO task force. Be aware that we're the world's premiere anti-UFO task force only because we're the only anti-UFO task force, and until last week, we were actually the Young Republicans of Topeka, Kansas."

"We have literally every resource the world could spare from their sock drawers. We've got trained soldiers. Well, they made it out of boot camp anyway. We can deploy them 4 at a time. Maybe 5 at a time once Private Johnson hits Sergeant. Well, If he hits Sergeant - we've got a pretty high turnover rate. We had a corporal once, but he was killed in a friendly fire incident during that panic attack last month when we ran out of toilet paper. The report is on your desk."

"We can detect alien abductions all over the world - mostly by watching CNN - but we only have 1 air transport, and only enough gas for one flight. No, nobody here has any frequent flyer milers, or even a car, so it's pretty much 'one thing at a time.' The local governments also have CNN, but they have never once responded to any alien activity, so I wouldn't expect any help there."

"Where were we? Yes, space! The earth is surrounded by a network of Satellites. We cannot use any of them, and Bob hasn't had any luck picking up UFO on the weather channel's doppler rader. So, we'll have to put up our own sattelites. We currently only have 1, and a Commodore 64 to use it, so we should upgrade first chance we get. Food stamps show up the first of the month, so that would be a good time."

"We may need to shoot down the UFOs. Currently, we have two planes. No, not jets, planes. I'm pretty sure Johnson stole them from the Smithsonian. We'll need more, since the governments of the world will hold us personally responsible for any alien attacks despite not offering us anything on top of our welfare checks."

"So...who did you piss off to get this job?"

Yep Welcome to the X-COM franchise, where the best the world has to offer panics at the first excuse, where the world's elite couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, who use technology from the 1990s in the twenty-first century, where funding nations abandon their best hope at defeating an alien menace senselessly, where civilians run towards the enemy (or worse yet, block your path and your line of sight), where rookies are more dangerous to you than your enemy, where rockets fly sideways, cars blow up when someone breaths on them, where nations line up to buy dead alien bodies off of you (and are your main source of funding), where scientists use ipads, where engineers build things instantly, where Africa is richest, where Russia is part of Europe, where heavily armoured aliens are not as tough as heavily armoured soldiers, where soldiers can have more HP than a frickin' mecha that shoots frickin' LASER BEAMS.

That's XCOM baby! It was pretty much the same in the original game; except the nations were even more keen to backstab you than in the new XCOM. Oh, and they had nastier Crysallids. Way nastier crysallids.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

goddamn this game. Im escorting some jackass back to the checkpoint, and random enemy gets spawned out of nowhere, and shoots this asshole before i can get him on board. FUCK!

 

[thespyder]

Yep Welcome to the X-COM franchise, where the best the world has to offer panics at the first excuse, where the world's elite couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, who use technology from the 1990s in the twenty-first century, where funding nations abandon their best hope at defeating an alien menace senselessly, where civilians run towards the enemy (or worse yet, block your path and your line of sight), where rookies are more dangerous to you than your enemy, where rockets fly sideways, cars blow up when someone breaths on them, where nations line up to buy dead alien bodies off of you (and are your main source of funding), where scientists use ipads, where engineers build things instantly, where Africa is richest, where Russia is part of Europe, where heavily armoured aliens are not as tough as heavily armoured soldiers, where soldiers can have more HP than a frickin' mecha that shoots frickin' LASER BEAMS.

LOL. I found both analyses to be hilarious and primarily for their accuracy. Some of the things that the game developers expect you to just swallow in order to suspend disbelief about the game is just insane.

That's XCOM baby! It was pretty much the same in the original game; except the nations were even more keen to backstab you than in the new XCOM. Oh, and they had nastier Crysallids. Way nastier crysallids.

And don't forget poppers. They were the worst (IMHO).

But I don't necessarily agree that all of what they expect you to swallow existed in the original. At least in Apocalypse, you could have multiple squads located around the globe. And they didn't expect you to ignore the fact that it takes less than an hour to reach any point on the globe from any other point. Or that you only had the capacity to send one single fighter into the air at a time. or that a multi-billion dollar funded project would only have enough resources to take out one abduction at a time.

 

[you2]

So far normal is not too bad but how the freak do I accelerate $$$$. I need more $$$$. There are a few aspect of the gui that is taking me a bit of time to get used to - i.e, just how far I can move and still fire. Oh well I have a captain now (and maybe a major; or maybe he died).

 

[Dijeangenie]

But I don't necessarily agree that all of what they expect you to swallow existed in the original. At least in Apocalypse, you could have multiple squads located around the globe. And they didn't expect you to ignore the fact that it takes less than an hour to reach any point on the globe from any other point. Or that you only had the capacity to send one single fighter into the air at a time. or that a multi-billion dollar funded project would only have enough resources to take out one abduction at a time.

I think its amusing that you have limited resources (in all the games) I understand that it makes it a much better game but if this was a real situation you would realistically have all the money in the world as you are humanities only hope...

 

[PowerYoga]

So far normal is not too bad but how the freak do I accelerate $$$$. I need more $$$$. There are a few aspect of the gui that is taking me a bit of time to get used to - i.e, just how far I can move and still fire. Oh well I have a captain now (and maybe a major; or maybe he died).

Build satcoms. That's the only way to get money... outside of selling useless junk like excess corpses.

The grids are different colors so you can tell how much you can move and still fire/overlook. I think there's also a little dialogue that pops up that says "Sprint" when you move into the sprint range on the grids.

 

[darkewaffle]

So far normal is not too bad but how the freak do I accelerate $$$$. I need more $$$$. There are a few aspect of the gui that is taking me a bit of time to get used to - i.e, just how far I can move and still fire. Oh well I have a captain now (and maybe a major; or maybe he died).

Grey Market and satellites is about all you can do, for the most part you can unload a lot of stuff and not miss out on much. Most of the corpses you only ever need one of, and any damaged equipment from landings can be sold freely.

 

[thespyder]

I think its amusing that you have limited resources (in all the games) I understand that it makes it a much better game but if this was a real situation you would realistically have all the money in the world as you are humanities only hope...

I think you seriously underestimate Governments and their capacity for selfishness.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I think you seriously underestimate Governments and their capacity for selfishness.

It's also a matter of scale. If the most capable fighter jet in the world is $20, then $100/month is a crap-ton of money.

Puts those $10 nanofiber vests in perspective, huh? They're probably grown from carbon nanotubes at Oak Ridge or something.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

Well, that almost works until you hit the '$10 to hire a random soldier'

 

[thespyder]

Well, that almost works until you hit the '$10 to hire a random soldier'

Not really. Most of the Rookies I got seemed like they were merely pulled off the street (or more likely out of a bar) and offered $10 for the chance to save the planet. LOL.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Well, that almost works until you hit the '$10 to hire a random soldier'

True.

Although "near certain death" and "cannon fodder" are two words that would make me pause and ask for a lot more money. Frankly, a cool $100 Mil would be a good start.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

anyway to disable dialogue when im trying to move a person im trying to rescue? most annoying thing ever.

 

[darkewaffle]

Theres an option to at least disable some of the soldier feedback voices which might affect that, can't say for certain.

 

[nanobreath]

Theres an option to at least disable some of the soldier feedback voices which might affect that, can't say for certain.

I tried that last night, didn't seem to help at all.