The recent small patch definitely did something. Played a mission in a Medium Scout ship last night and the rage inducing ceiling clipping issues are gone!
Patch convinced me to give ironman impossible a try.
First mission went well. Only lost one guy, and that because I bought the AI's gambit. Everyone was injured, though, and so the second mission went south. Quickly.
Patch convinced me to give ironman impossible a try.
First mission went well. Only lost one guy, and that because I bought the AI's gambit. Everyone was injured, though, and so the second mission went south. Quickly.
Im onmaybe my 50th attempt at impossible ironman
Rank is so important i restart if more than 1 person dies in the first 3 missions
I skip the first council mission if it is bomb disposal because thin men are too powerful without tech. Escort missions are do-able because the thin men spawn staggered rather than all at once
So a lot of you guys seem to be past the whole classic ironman thing and onto playing on impossible ironman. Can I get some advice for how to survive on Classic Ironman. I usually manage to scrap by until the first terror mission, which involves me getting raped hard.
What should my opening moves be in terms of research and production?
So a lot of you guys seem to be past the whole classic ironman thing and onto playing on impossible ironman. Can I get some advice for how to survive on Classic Ironman. I usually manage to scrap by until the first terror mission, which involves me getting raped hard.
What should my opening moves be in terms of research and production?
Don't try to rescue civilians. It does not end well.
Just hang back, let them come to you, and blast 'em.
Build a Officer Training School as soon as possible. Grab the extra squad mates.
I think my run involved getting carapace armor - so alien materials was a priority. You can't advance to plasma until you capture something, so keep that in mind.
If you take the first abduction mission that gives engineers you can build a workshop right away to get up to enough engineers to build a satellite uplink. hold off on building your satellites till after that first mission because it will reduce the cost per satellite from 100 to 77.
I think getting good at capturing aliens is a must for classic and impossible. The research credits and free gear help immensely, in both of my classic ironman victories I've had light plasma and skeleton suits for everyone by the end of May.
Disabling shot is the safest way to do it. If you disable an alien and run your stunner up close, 90% of the time they'll just reload and stay put. I've only seen them double move backwards once, but I just scooted not quite so close the second time and it worked out. If disabling shot isn't an option, then once you weaken an alien just keep someone in range to throw a grenade in case the stun doesn't work. Better safe than sorry. Also, put your arc thrower on a support with sprinter if at all possible. The extra 3 tiles of movement makes landing that stun so much easier.
If you take the first abduction mission that gives engineers you can build a workshop right away to get up to enough engineers to build a satellite uplink. hold off on building your satellites till after that first mission because it will reduce the cost per satellite from 100 to 77.
My enemies may have been only 4 sectoids and an outsider but running my first "no damage taken" mission on classic feels wonderful.
0
scherbchenAsgard (it is dead)Registered Userregular
addendum to the post I made that is somehow awaiting approval: if you have trouble using your shotgun assaults in the beginning on classic just give them regular rifles. once you get to 5 man squads give him the shotgun again and try and utilize them.
addendum to the post I made that is somehow awaiting approval: if you have trouble using your shotgun assaults in the beginning on classic just give them regular rifles. once you get to 5 man squads give him the shotgun again and try and utilize them.
This so bad, I feel that it's best to level up your first assault as a rifle dude by going in with the crit chance and flush (but still taking lightening reflexes and CQC overwatch) because it allows him to be much safer early game where being up close is a murder zone.
This build still leaves him pretty effective later on as well either as a more durable support or as the second man to your shot gun team.
BTW quick question: What the feck does defense actually do as a stat? Like what do the numbers translate in past 'it probably makes your guy not die'
So a lot of you guys seem to be past the whole classic ironman thing and onto playing on impossible ironman. Can I get some advice for how to survive on Classic Ironman. I usually manage to scrap by until the first terror mission, which involves me getting raped hard.
What should my opening moves be in terms of research and production?
I am 5/29 right now on Classic Ironman and I just got absolutely raped on my last attempt after boasting here how I thought I had the game down right now so take these advices with a grain of salt. lasz game still had some of the most intense fights I ever had and losing was still a lot of fun.
- satellites and thus engineers are the key to the strategic layer and there are no two ways about it. you start with 4 engineers and you want 10 as soon as april starts or at the least by april 9th. the first abduction mission you go for the engineer reward which gets you up to 8 and allows you to build a workshop. if you start on a continent that gives you +1 engineer per month and launch a satellite on a continent that gives you another you are set and can build your second satellite uplink. otherwise you have to build a workshop, get more abduction engineers or get lucky on council missions to get up to the next level of engineers required for the next uplink. getting engineers and sat uplinks is just basic math and launching 1 the first month and 3 each subsequent month is your primary goal. you should not be able to lose the game on the strategic level if 95% of your missions go well. 2 squad wipes will spell trouble, however. every other problem is usually tactical level related....
- play slowly, first guy to advance should be the only guy to reveal new territory. the others just follow up.
- when you down a group of aliens take time to reload.
- knowing the maps is a huge help, if you played a map before and had trouble at particular spots or spawns in specific locations remember those the next time around.
- a member of your squad that is bleeding out is dead.
- on terror missions ignore civilians. let the aliens come to you.
- get that 5th man on your squad asap. early on you might want to sell every corpse and every ufo part if you are short on cash. getting the officer training school and the 5 man squad perk quickly is well worth the investment. there will always be more ufos. the only things you might want to hold onto are weapon fragments, alloys and elerium in that order.
- if your trouble is the first terror mission switch to beam weapon research as soon as you down the first ufo which will get you laser rifles for that mission which is a big help.
- soldiers will need certain skills in order to be useful. this is down to personal taste and preference but here is mine: snipers need squadsight in order to contribute, everything else is icing on the cake. supports want rifle suppression and 3 medkits. heavies want bullet swarm and HEAT ammo. assaults take +defense per enemy seen and lightning reflexes.
- do not, and this is probably the most important tip, get into a bogged down shootout situation with aliens. they have cover, you have cover and you just take potshots at each other. you will lose this fight. if you cant deprive them of their cover or outflank and kill them retreat and overwatch.
- liberal use of explosives.
0
scherbchenAsgard (it is dead)Registered Userregular
edited November 2012
no idea why that was a double post but let me say this in regards to defense as a stat to make this less spammy.... xcom math is quite simple. say your rookie has a 50% shot on a sectoid in half cover. give that sectoid Ghost Armour (+20 defense) and your chance to hit goes down to 30%. have that sectoid hunker down (doubles defense) and your chance to hit goes down to 30% as well (20 defense from half cover). now don't ask me if those bonuses are additive.
no idea why that was a double post but let me say this in regards to defense as a stat to make this less spammy.... xcom math is quite simple. say your rookie has a 50% shot on a sectoid in half cover. give that sectoid Ghost Armour (+20 defense) and your chance to hit goes down to 30%. have that sectoid hunker down (doubles defense) and your chance to hit goes down to 30% as well (20 defense from half cover). now don't ask me if those bonuses are additive.
Defenses are additive yes. In fact, if you have enough defense, you can make your enemy's chance to hit into 1% (minimum number for Chance To Hit). High Cover + Ghost Armor + Hunker Down + Smoke Grenades + Telekinetic Field, or any combination of these will make you untouchable to enemy fire.
Also, what happens when Epic Meal Time gets their hands on an alien...
no idea why that was a double post but let me say this in regards to defense as a stat to make this less spammy.... xcom math is quite simple. say your rookie has a 50% shot on a sectoid in half cover. give that sectoid Ghost Armour (+20 defense) and your chance to hit goes down to 30%. have that sectoid hunker down (doubles defense) and your chance to hit goes down to 30% as well (20 defense from half cover). now don't ask me if those bonuses are additive.
Defenses are additive yes. In fact, if you have enough defense, you can make your enemy's chance to hit into 1% (minimum number for Chance To Hit). High Cover + Ghost Armor + Hunker Down + Smoke Grenades + Telekinetic Field, or any combination of these will make you untouchable to enemy fire.
If I can back out of this workshop I can possible get some satellites up by the end of this month, but if I lose resources in the deal I might just have to grin and bear it....
EDIT: loaded up a previous unwinnable ironman game. Canceled a building, looks like you get it all back.
The JudgeThe Terwilliger CurvesRegistered Userregular
This is Ironman Normal for this run. I sent six Colonels into a battleship I shot down near Baja. At the very end, I have one dead, one incap'd but alive, four left with no more medkits, three of those at 8 health or less, and the final upstairs cockpit contains a Cyberdisc, two drones, three Elites, and an Ethereal.
Fuck you, XCOM: brought 'em home alive. Judicious use of Overwatch, Ghost, and a willingness to let the healthiest guy draw fire. I may have dry-humped the air a few times.
Last pint: Focal Banger / The Alchemist - Untappd: TheJudge_PDX
Always the bridesmaid; never the bride. You softened up a number of sectoid targets with overwatch, but I don't think you actually killed one.
And then you took some plasma to the face and were knocked out. Survived, at least, but it didn't matter because ...
You ever have one of those days? Walking around the outside of a building, tensely checking for enemy groups. Decide to make a breach point at a door, so you position your shotgunner (neglected to swap it out) next to the door, and
*bam*
kick it open to see 5 sectoids.
On impossible ironman
to say "things did not progress well from that point" is to vastly understate the ensuing carnage.
Tamin on
0
scherbchenAsgard (it is dead)Registered Userregular
lemme throw this out here.... escorts are different now on CI or am I going nuts? before they triggered by where the escapee was at but now the fixed spawns are different and there are more drop-in thin men, right?
Man I got wiped at the Base assault mission on Ironman normal and everything went south pretty much after that. I was doing so well too. I have no idea how you guys are playing through Ironman impossible.
Lemme tell ya, Damage Roulette can be pretty rage-inducing.
On the plus side, the highest-funding nations are in Africa, so...this should be fun.
I'd imagine so.
In original X-Com it was bad enough with numbers large enough that a kill was still very likely.
When there's a 25% chance of grenades doing almost nothing, I would want to kill someone.
Zero points of damage on a point blank shot against alien or one-hit kills from the fog of war even when you're wearing the best armor in the game? X-Com got you covered, yo.
Lemme tell ya, Damage Roulette can be pretty rage-inducing.
On the plus side, the highest-funding nations are in Africa, so...this should be fun.
I'd imagine so.
In original X-Com it was bad enough with numbers large enough that a kill was still very likely.
When there's a 25% chance of grenades doing almost nothing, I would want to kill someone.
Zero points of damage on a point blank shot against alien or one-hit kills from the fog of war even when you're wearing the best armor in the game? X-Com got you covered, yo.
Well that was one thing when you had 14 soldiers in your squad and you were really only exposing the worthless redshirts but it is quite another thing when you have 4-6 soldiers and you can't afford to even bring rookies along.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Lemme tell ya, Damage Roulette can be pretty rage-inducing.
On the plus side, the highest-funding nations are in Africa, so...this should be fun.
I'd imagine so.
In original X-Com it was bad enough with numbers large enough that a kill was still very likely.
When there's a 25% chance of grenades doing almost nothing, I would want to kill someone.
Zero points of damage on a point blank shot against alien or one-hit kills from the fog of war even when you're wearing the best armor in the game? X-Com got you covered, yo.
Well that was one thing when you had 14 soldiers in your squad and you were really only exposing the worthless redshirts but it is quite another thing when you have 4-6 soldiers and you can't afford to even bring rookies along.
Yes this. When a single missed shot is a quarter/a sixth of your available firepower for your turn/their turn, it gets really, really frustrating to miss three or more in a row.
Meanwhile, in UFO Defence, one shot is not that big a deal. Because you're usually firing bursts.
Just_Bri_Thanks is as clusmy as he is stupid. He's standing next to a door in an alley. At the far end of the alley, an alien charges across. He decides the smartest possible move is to bash the door open before firing at the alien.
5 sectoids appeared. This will probably end very badly.
Posts
They are all lined up in a rocket sized line...
First mission went well. Only lost one guy, and that because I bought the AI's gambit. Everyone was injured, though, and so the second mission went south. Quickly.
Im onmaybe my 50th attempt at impossible ironman
Rank is so important i restart if more than 1 person dies in the first 3 missions
I skip the first council mission if it is bomb disposal because thin men are too powerful without tech. Escort missions are do-able because the thin men spawn staggered rather than all at once
What should my opening moves be in terms of research and production?
satellites
lots of satellites
sell practically everything - corpses, damaged equipment, even excess non-damaged ufo salvage.
Don't try to rescue civilians. It does not end well.
Just hang back, let them come to you, and blast 'em.
Build a Officer Training School as soon as possible. Grab the extra squad mates.
I think my run involved getting carapace armor - so alien materials was a priority. You can't advance to plasma until you capture something, so keep that in mind.
Disabling shot is the safest way to do it. If you disable an alien and run your stunner up close, 90% of the time they'll just reload and stay put. I've only seen them double move backwards once, but I just scooted not quite so close the second time and it worked out. If disabling shot isn't an option, then once you weaken an alien just keep someone in range to throw a grenade in case the stun doesn't work. Better safe than sorry. Also, put your arc thrower on a support with sprinter if at all possible. The extra 3 tiles of movement makes landing that stun so much easier.
this assumes you succeed at said mission. :P
This so bad, I feel that it's best to level up your first assault as a rifle dude by going in with the crit chance and flush (but still taking lightening reflexes and CQC overwatch) because it allows him to be much safer early game where being up close is a murder zone.
This build still leaves him pretty effective later on as well either as a more durable support or as the second man to your shot gun team.
BTW quick question: What the feck does defense actually do as a stat? Like what do the numbers translate in past 'it probably makes your guy not die'
This is why rookies have like 40% chance to hit certain enemies standing out in the open, they have low aim and the enemy has a natural +Def
I am 5/29 right now on Classic Ironman and I just got absolutely raped on my last attempt after boasting here how I thought I had the game down right now so take these advices with a grain of salt. lasz game still had some of the most intense fights I ever had and losing was still a lot of fun.
- satellites and thus engineers are the key to the strategic layer and there are no two ways about it. you start with 4 engineers and you want 10 as soon as april starts or at the least by april 9th. the first abduction mission you go for the engineer reward which gets you up to 8 and allows you to build a workshop. if you start on a continent that gives you +1 engineer per month and launch a satellite on a continent that gives you another you are set and can build your second satellite uplink. otherwise you have to build a workshop, get more abduction engineers or get lucky on council missions to get up to the next level of engineers required for the next uplink. getting engineers and sat uplinks is just basic math and launching 1 the first month and 3 each subsequent month is your primary goal. you should not be able to lose the game on the strategic level if 95% of your missions go well. 2 squad wipes will spell trouble, however. every other problem is usually tactical level related....
- play slowly, first guy to advance should be the only guy to reveal new territory. the others just follow up.
- when you down a group of aliens take time to reload.
- knowing the maps is a huge help, if you played a map before and had trouble at particular spots or spawns in specific locations remember those the next time around.
- a member of your squad that is bleeding out is dead.
- on terror missions ignore civilians. let the aliens come to you.
- get that 5th man on your squad asap. early on you might want to sell every corpse and every ufo part if you are short on cash. getting the officer training school and the 5 man squad perk quickly is well worth the investment. there will always be more ufos. the only things you might want to hold onto are weapon fragments, alloys and elerium in that order.
- if your trouble is the first terror mission switch to beam weapon research as soon as you down the first ufo which will get you laser rifles for that mission which is a big help.
- soldiers will need certain skills in order to be useful. this is down to personal taste and preference but here is mine: snipers need squadsight in order to contribute, everything else is icing on the cake. supports want rifle suppression and 3 medkits. heavies want bullet swarm and HEAT ammo. assaults take +defense per enemy seen and lightning reflexes.
- do not, and this is probably the most important tip, get into a bogged down shootout situation with aliens. they have cover, you have cover and you just take potshots at each other. you will lose this fight. if you cant deprive them of their cover or outflank and kill them retreat and overwatch.
- liberal use of explosives.
Defenses are additive yes. In fact, if you have enough defense, you can make your enemy's chance to hit into 1% (minimum number for Chance To Hit). High Cover + Ghost Armor + Hunker Down + Smoke Grenades + Telekinetic Field, or any combination of these will make you untouchable to enemy fire.
Also, what happens when Epic Meal Time gets their hands on an alien...
good to know, cheers.
get all the resources back? sounds like alien talk to me!
EDIT: loaded up a previous unwinnable ironman game. Canceled a building, looks like you get it all back.
Fuck you, XCOM: brought 'em home alive. Judicious use of Overwatch, Ghost, and a willingness to let the healthiest guy draw fire. I may have dry-humped the air a few times.
Now for the other 4 continents.
Always the bridesmaid; never the bride. You softened up a number of sectoid targets with overwatch, but I don't think you actually killed one.
And then you took some plasma to the face and were knocked out. Survived, at least, but it didn't matter because ...
You ever have one of those days? Walking around the outside of a building, tensely checking for enemy groups. Decide to make a breach point at a door, so you position your shotgunner (neglected to swap it out) next to the door, and
*bam*
kick it open to see 5 sectoids.
On impossible ironman
to say "things did not progress well from that point" is to vastly understate the ensuing carnage.
Both your suspected changes could easily be true.
I really hope they aren't. Because those were already rage-inducing.
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
Lemme tell ya, Damage Roulette can be pretty rage-inducing.
On the plus side, the highest-funding nations are in Africa, so...this should be fun.
I'd imagine so.
In original X-Com it was bad enough with numbers large enough that a kill was still very likely.
When there's a 25% chance of grenades doing almost nothing, I would want to kill someone.
Why I fear the ocean.
Zero points of damage on a point blank shot against alien or one-hit kills from the fog of war even when you're wearing the best armor in the game? X-Com got you covered, yo.
Well that was one thing when you had 14 soldiers in your squad and you were really only exposing the worthless redshirts but it is quite another thing when you have 4-6 soldiers and you can't afford to even bring rookies along.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Yes this. When a single missed shot is a quarter/a sixth of your available firepower for your turn/their turn, it gets really, really frustrating to miss three or more in a row.
Meanwhile, in UFO Defence, one shot is not that big a deal. Because you're usually firing bursts.
Understatement of the decade.
Just_Bri_Thanks is as clusmy as he is stupid. He's standing next to a door in an alley. At the far end of the alley, an alien charges across. He decides the smartest possible move is to bash the door open before firing at the alien.
5 sectoids appeared. This will probably end very badly.
Steam: adamjnet