XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Not the shooter) -- Out Now. Use New Thread.

Ceno

Ironman means no quick-saving or loading and it can be attached to any difficulty.

Classic is the traditional balls-hard difficulty that evokes the original. Normal is less hard, obviously.

InkSplat

ANTVGM64 wrote: »

So I'm at work and everything gaming related is mostly blocked - what's the difference between classic and regular mode? Ironman means no quick-saving, right?

Normal means that the AI goes easy on you. So, UFOs won't go after the country closest to leaving just because its the closest to leaving--its more random. Enemy groups will generally stay still, and if you trigger too many aliens into a fight at once, some will actually leave the fight.

In Classic, UFOs are going to aim for your weak spot, and alien groups in the tactical maps will be on the move--and if you whoops into a 10 aliens at the same time, you're going to have to fight them all.

Also, some aliens have some extra hp so that you have to fight them differently--Thin Men, for example, get 1 extra HP so that they can't be offed by grenades.

Evil Multifarious

Sokpuppet wrote: »

SayuriUliana wrote: »

Machinima's review of the game:

Only thing I care about: he uses a smoke grenade to obstruct shots on a soldier well outside of the smoke.
Yesssssss.

whoa whoa whoa

whoa

when

CuddlyCuteKitten

Classic is harder difficulty. Iron man is no saving at all. Or rather, no loading. The game saves at every turn, regardless of what you do you can't load.

TychoCelchuuu

ANTVGM64 wrote: »

So I'm at work and everything gaming related is mostly blocked - what's the difference between classic and regular mode? Ironman means no quick-saving, right?

Via this article, which explains difficulty modes:

There are a lot of things I changed about Classic from normal that are subtle things like on the strategy layer in terms of what cities the aliens would target. On normal a lot of times the aliens would take it easy, in terms of like don’t target the city that’s suffering the most, that would just be a Dick move by the aliens.

On Classic it’s like all gloves are off, the aliens are trying to play the best game that they can. It’s the same in tactics. If you play a game on normal, the aliens will say, “Oh god, we’re already engaging him with four or five aliens, everybody else that’s out there, everybody just sort of hang back and be cool.” On Classic mode it doesn’t really matter how many aliens are in the fight. In normal you can actually see some aliens running off if there are too many, but in Classic if you’ve made the mistake of somehow encountering six or eight aliens at once the aliens will all simply join into the fight and work together. So yeah, panic changes, the way they use psionics, the psionic aliens can work together with the Mind Fray ability but on normal difficulty you’ll only ever encounter one psionic alien at a time. On Classic you’ll actually encounter two and that’s not to sort of add another enemy, it’s more because the AI goes, “Oh, I have two guys here, well I should Mind Fray first and then I should use [Mind Control].” The AI is just a little more, you know I don’t want to oversell and be like oh they use different tactics. I mean they do actually but after the sort of tactical upgrades then there are some number upgrades for really key aliens, like Mutons, and again this is very specific.

I didn’t just go, everybody gets this much [critical hit chance] or everybody gets this many hit points, instead it’s more like the chryssalids get two more hit points, which doesn’t sound like a lot but it completely changes the way they play, and Mutons get two more hit points, which again makes them really difficult on Classic. It’s really specific math to that alien. One of the big things is that thin men get an extra hit point so they can’t be killed with grenades on a Classic game. The floaters are the same. It’s not numbers just for the sake of increasing the numbers, it’s numbers to change the tactics of the player, so a grenade is not going to kill a floater anymore so now you’re like, “Well, s---.” Now you’ve got to think of a new way to kill those guys; you actually have to kill them with something other than [area-of-effect] weapons.

At Impossible I think there’s an across the board increase in terms of their crit, but typically when going from normal to Classic the numbers are adjusted to specifically change the way you interact with that particular alien.

Ironman is no quick loads. Presumably the game quick saves all the time.

Casually Hardcore

It isn't 'Classic' hard unless an alien mind control a guy in my airship and wipes my entire team with a well place grenade in the skyranger, it its first turn.

Klyka

Casually Hardcore wrote: »

It isn't 'Classic' hard unless an alien mind control a guy in my airship and wipes my entire team with a well place grenade in the skyranger, it its first turn.

Can't happen cause your team doesn't start in the Skyranger anymore.

Casually Hardcore

Which sucks, getting off the Skyranger was half the fin.

Klyka

Casually Hardcore wrote: »

Which sucks, getting off the Skyranger was half the fin.

It was pretty retarded because parking your Skyranger 3 feet from an alien ship made no sense and was just pure frustration.
The game is better without it.

Lork

Klyka wrote: »

Casually Hardcore wrote: »

Which sucks, getting off the Skyranger was half the fin.

It was pretty retarded because parking your Skyranger 3 feet from an alien ship made no sense and was just pure frustration.
The game is better without it.

I think it's mostly a matter of pacing. Having a guy walk out onto the ramp and get shot immediately was cool and all, but shuffling everybody out of the skyranger one by one was just tedious as hell.

Marikir

timspork's ghost wrote: »

Started a new UFO Defense game.

First UFO, Ethereals. Loose four people getting down the ramp to a guy camping there.

Second mission sectoids. I have a couple Laser Pistols at this point. Only lost one due to a sectoid APPEARING OUT OF FUCKING NO WHERE IN THE POWER CORE ROOM AFTER MY GUY CLEARED IT.

Third mission, everyone has laser pistols and there are two rifles carried by Sgts Rimmer and Lister. A third Laser Rifle is carried by second squad Sgt Frank Hill. He had a random name but my god he killed three floaters, one shot each, from the base of the skyranger at extreme range when the HWP rolled forward to reveal them then spun around and killed a fourth with his pistol, in one turn.

Fourth mission, Terror in Ciaro. Ten troops and a HWP all with Laser Rifles against floaters and reapers. Only one civilian is killed and I do not lose a person mostly due to strange clumping that resulted in my two squads standing around the skyranger killing everything. I had reaction fire from Frank Hill's squad kill three floaters in one turn.

Fifth Mission, now in February. Sectoid about five squares away from the bottom of the ramp. Start unloading guys to kill it. EVERY SINGLE MEMBER OF MY TEAM misses with every shot. Lone sectoid just starts murdering everyone. I rage quit.

"That's XCOM, baby!"

or

"XCOM, motherfucker!"


Did we ever decide which we prefer?

heenato

Lork wrote: »

I think it's mostly a matter of pacing. Having a guy walk out onto the ramp and get shot immediately was cool and all, but shuffling everybody out of the skyranger one by one was just tedious as hell.

That, and usually the only cover around the damn thing were the wheels, and the tank, so sometimes you either have them out in the open, or only 4 or 5 guys OUT of it.

Maddoc

Yeah, leaving the skyranger was usually a two to three turn process.

First dudes use wheels for cover.
First dudes move away from Skyranger, second dudes use wheels for cover.

Dongs Galore

I decided to stick X-COM on my laptop so I could play it in lectures while waiting for this to release

February 1, 11:00 PM: Shoot down my second UFO, raid the crash site without casualties

February 2, 12:30 AM: A battleship lands on my starting base while the Skyranger is somewhere over Persia. Game over.


I reloaded, declined to pursue the UFO and met the invading Sectoids head-on with my 8-man team

Spoiler:

Turn 1: The Sergeant panics under psychic attack, drops her gun and hides in a closet.

Turn 2: A blaster bomb zips down the hallway and kills 5 men instantly.

Turns 3-5: The surviving 2 squaddies die fighting back-to-back in the ruins of a hallway as a dozen Sectoids and Cyberdiscs close in from both directions.

I hope the new game can provide similar experiences.

Ninja Snarl P

Klyka wrote: »

Casually Hardcore wrote: »

Which sucks, getting off the Skyranger was half the fin.

It was pretty retarded because parking your Skyranger 3 feet from an alien ship made no sense and was just pure frustration.
The game is better without it.

Yeah, that was always pretty stupid. Even with not landing randomly five feet from a large group of aliens, it's still a little silly to not have the map layout revealed (who would ever not do a flyover of the dropzone before landing? It would takes less than a minute.). But that's something I can overlook simply for the sake of gameplay; the game wouldn't be nearly as interesting if you instantly knew the layout of every map, and arguing for something like that gets on a slippery slope of a million other smarter things to do to win that would make the game less fun and tense.

Considering that your soldiers actually level up and gain skills now, it would be one hell of a fatal flaw in a modern game to be able to lose some super-soldier you've been carefully using for hours simply because the dropship pilot is an idiot and landed you in the middle of some 'lids.

CoJoeTheLawyer

Quick question: Anyone know if Gamestop is offering a midnight release with X-Com? Just curious as to when I can start getting my ass handed to me...

Last Son

CoJoeTheLawyer wrote: »

Quick question: Anyone know if Gamestop is offering a midnight release with X-Com? Just curious as to when I can start getting my ass handed to me...

It varies location to location, based on how many pre-orders they got for Xcom and Dishonored(They both come out Tuesday).

Lilnoobs

Dongs Galore wrote: »

I decided to stick X-COM on my laptop so I could play it in lectures while waiting for this to release

February 1, 11:00 PM: Shoot down my second UFO, raid the crash site without casualties

February 2, 12:30 AM: A battleship lands on my starting base while the Skyranger is somewhere over Persia. Game over.


I reloaded, declined to pursue the UFO and met the invading Sectoids head-on with my 8-man team

Spoiler:

Turn 1: The Sergeant panics under psychic attack, drops her gun and hides in a closet.

Turn 2: A blaster bomb zips down the hallway and kills 5 men instantly.

Turns 3-5: The surviving 2 squaddies die fighting back-to-back in the ruins of a hallway as a dozen Sectoids and Cyberdiscs close in from both directions.

I hope the new game can provide similar experiences.

The review posted earlier in the thread said the game was more "fair", so I doubt occurrences like that will happen. The reviewer complained that in the old X-com he landed, sent his first dude who got Mind Controlled (and was also holding a rocket launcher), and blasted his rocket launcher into the skyranger killing everyone. I thought that was an awesome story, the reviewer didn't and used it as a counter-point that the new X-com doesn't have that =(

Klyka

Man, I will preload this, VPN it and record at least my first 1-2 hours of the game all on Tuesday.

SO GOOOOOOOD.

No Great Name

33 hours

ANTVGM64

No Midnight Launches in my area for the 360 version.

Tayrun

Must resist urge to risk whole collection by using VPN trick.

Must.

Resist.

Hoz

I forgot on which game I did it, but I used the VPN trick a while back. From what I read about it back then, Valve only cracks down when you use it buy something that's cheaper in another region.

Still a risk though.

Tayrun

I think I'd be happier risking my health than my steam collection, so I'll climb into the freezer and go into cryosleep until friday.

ANTVGM64

is there a tutorial to getting this game running on a Mac via Dos Box somewhere? I downloaded Dos Box on my mac, and am a bit iffy on the whole mounting a drive / specific path sort of thing considering I'm on a Mac and C: and such doesn't exist there.

Lork

ANTVGM64 wrote: »

is there a tutorial to getting this game running on a Mac via Dos Box somewhere? I downloaded Dos Box on my mac, and am a bit iffy on the whole mounting a drive / specific path sort of thing considering I'm on a Mac and C: and such doesn't exist there.

Try dragging UFOCD.bat onto DOSBox's executable file. I don't know if you can do that on a Mac, but that's how I've always done it.

Skab

So i guess i'll be getting this on 360 instead of pc this week. that makes me sad, but i can always grab it when its on sale on steam over the holidays or something.

I'll miss you my PC brothers and sisters!

Tube

I ended up getting bored of ufo defence pretty near the end. I needed to go and capture a commander from a base and had pretty much researched everything, but there were so many UFOs that it was getting boring, and missions with ethereals are just no fun at all. I guess if I'd gotten psi up and running faster it would have been better, but the rules that govern psi are just kind of bullshit.

My tactics were to have one interception base, one base just for science, one base just for manufacturing and one radar base. It went pretty well all things considered, although if I play again I'd probably make all the bases a little bigger. Mass producing motion sensors seems to be the only real way to make money.

Salvation122

Tube wrote: »

I ended up getting bored of ufo defence pretty near the end. I needed to go and capture a commander from a base and had pretty much researched everything, but there were so many UFOs that it was getting boring, and missions with ethereals are just no fun at all. I guess if I'd gotten psi up and running faster it would have been better, but the rules that govern psi are just kind of bullshit.

My tactics were to have one interception base, one base just for science, one base just for manufacturing and one radar base. It went pretty well all things considered, although if I play again I'd probably make all the bases a little bigger. Mass producing motion sensors seems to be the only real way to make money.

Laser Cannons. You have to waste time researching the nearly-useless Heavy Laser, but Laser Cannons have a higher ROI than any other item in the game by some ridiculous margin.

Tube

I'm such a dummy, I looked at a chart that said the most profitable things to manufacture and went straight for the top (fusion ball launchers) which take an age to get rather than going for the second which is essentially the same and much easier to research.

MechMantis

EDIT: NEVERMIND already addressed.

Tube

I might try a runthrough where I start by setting up as much in the way of money making as possible so that once I'm over that hump I can steam roll the rest of the game.

Lanrutcon

I have no shame. I am going to savescum the poopoo out of this game.

At least during the first playthrough.

enc0re

My RL friends and I made a pact that our first game will be ironman. Normal difficulty, but ironman. To get that proper, desperate feeling right off the bat.

timspork's ghost

First Turn. Two die stepping off the ramp. Kill the sectoid and get another person to look around.

Welp.

Gandalf_the_Crazed

Don't think that stun rod's gonna help ya much, there.

Shivahn

I never had much in the way of money problems in UFO defense, but I sold a lot of alien shit and used laser rifles to save on ammo.

timspork's ghost

Let me tell you how the rest of that mission went. I had started out with ten guys and a HWP. Laser rifles and laser pistols all around, two with stun rods. Lost two on first turn on the ramp.

Manage to kill the left Cyberdisc. Two on the right kill a guy each. A sectoid commander tried to mind control one of my people who panics, shoots a civilian then shoots another operative. Three dead, five left.That is turn two.

Turn three. Kill both cyberdiscs. Stunbomb hits two of my people, both go down. Daniel Hagman and Sharpe take the panicked chick and try to keep going. Commence the Mine Rapes. Sharpe panics and drops his gun.

Turn four. Sharpe recovers. Hagman trades fire with the commander. Panic chick dies.

Turn five. Hagman buys it. Sharpe starts to get mind raped every turn till he goes berserk, then gets taken over, then finally gets shot.

Several turns later, the HWP has taken about ten hits but killed three sectoids before finally getting overwhelmed but plasma fire.

Yup. XCom. I can not wait til Tuesday.

M-Vickers

Skab wrote: »

So i guess i'll be getting this on 360 instead of pc this week. that makes me sad, but i can always grab it when its on sale on steam over the holidays or something.

I'll miss you my PC brothers and sisters!

I'll be getting it on the 360, too, in a few months ! Going to start on the road to my sixth 100% achievement title. I am nervous about the impossible run, but am dreading the Ironman Classic run.

M-Vickers

Lanrutcon wrote: »

I have no shame. I am going to savescum the poopoo out of this game.

At least during the first playthrough.

Normal runthrough first, to learn all the new stuff and get a feel for how the different country bonuses will affect later playthroughs.

Then Ironman Classic.

Hoo-rah !