Injury time only occurs if a unit's lowest health in a mission is lower than their base health, without any items/armor. A MEC's base health doesn't change, they just get oodles of bonus health from the suit, so it's not too common for them to actually get injured.
Garthor on
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
Injury time only occurs if a unit's lowest health in a mission is lower than their base health, without any items/armor. A MEC's base health doesn't change, they just get oodles of bonus health from the suit, so it's not too common for them to actually get injured.
Will healing a unit with a medkit/restorative mist before the mission end prevent the injury time?
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
The health a unit ends the mission with does not matter. The lowest health value they were at during the mission is what determines injury time.
+3
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Yeah, MECs start out with being able to weather heavy damage without being injured, and they just pile on shitloads of health after that. High-level MEC-2's can have, what, 20+ health? And with Absorption Field, you can force that damage to be no more than a third of the MEC's HP, so they can absorb the big hits without being crippled horribly, unlike troopers that can get one-shotted from a bad crit.
Basically, if your MEC is in the hospital, you KNOW things went belly up in that mission.
M A G I K A Z A M
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited October 2014
The first mechtoid I met flatlined my main mech. I had to stabilise him. I don't generally care too much about will negatives. If he ends up being too weak willed later on I'll have someone else built up to replace him by then.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
I gotta be honest, I like the tactical mechanics of EU, but I feel like all the randomness and and the punishing nature of the strategic layer make it hard to get to the actual fun of the game. Like, I know "That's XCOM, baby!" and all, but I don't really get much enjoyment out of that larger story of a playthrough. I find the fun in leveling my mans and the tactical layer. Panic spirals, bad luck on the strategic layer, and how much losses can screw you over just kinda get in the way of that for me. I'm probably still going to throw myself at this game for those parts I do like, but I was wondering if anyone felt the same way.
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scherbchenAsgard (it is dead)Registered Userregular
well it certainly started that way for me. let me shoot aliens!
then it is a bit of a slog to get to learn the geo layer in order to be better at the shooting the aliens bit which is ok because it lets you shoot aliens better. you experiment and learn and then that part is done.
at that point it becomes negligible because you have learned what to do in order to shoot aliens better (unless you play a modded version in which case the learning starts all over again which is kind of ok because it lets you shoot aliens better, eventually)
the real slog for me is story shooting aliens missions. or even worse story shooting humans(-ish) missions. base assault and aliens assaulting your base and their ilk. ugh.
I gotta be honest, I like the tactical mechanics of EU, but I feel like all the randomness and and the punishing nature of the strategic layer make it hard to get to the actual fun of the game. Like, I know "That's XCOM, baby!" and all, but I don't really get much enjoyment out of that larger story of a playthrough. I find the fun in leveling my mans and the tactical layer. Panic spirals, bad luck on the strategic layer, and how much losses can screw you over just kinda get in the way of that for me. I'm probably still going to throw myself at this game for those parts I do like, but I was wondering if anyone felt the same way.
Try turning on "absolutely critical". That will lower randomness and make the game a tad bit easier because you will flank more than aliens will. (I feel like you hit more at high crit as well as if the game checks crit first and then auto hits if you crit.)
That being said it is an unfortunate aspect of this game that randomness in the tactical layer cannot ever be eliminated. (No Randomness on the strat layer would not be fun)
I'm not convinced that the game couldn't be fun without any randomness, but whatever the case panic spirals are just bull. Like, things are going bad? Flip a coin to see if they get even worse! And then flip another to see if you're just completely fucked.
Also I just had my soldiers fire their overwatch and two of them destroyed cover we were using and so that was just goddammit
pretty sure that's more of a fringe case tho
cB557 on
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Stay the hell away from the first game in that case.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
The randomness is fine in the battlescape, but it's just incredibly annoying in the geoscape, because there will be times it presents an unwinnable situation right off the bat.
Well, not unwinnable, but I hope you like losing 3 countries month 1 because fuck you!
heenato on
M A G I K A Z A M
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
I actually got Oldcom first. Played on a lower difficulty, had some fun, but the later game just got boring.
my first game of old com was a total wipe where the entirety of my squad was either killed instantly upon exiting the dropship, paniced or went berserk and killed fellow squadmates
i had dudes spinning in circles, dudes running around randomly
and dudes completely failing to shoot the one thing i managed to spot
it was hilarious
xcom nu has never given me a game that bad
i like panic. i'd miss it if it was gone.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
One of the best things I've ever seen in old Xcom is the fact that reaction fire can happen with rocket launchers. Door opens, Alien walks out and rocket fires, misses and kills the entire squad.
One of the best things I've ever seen in old Xcom is the fact that reaction fire can happen with rocket launchers. Door opens, Alien walks out and rocket fires, misses and kills the entire squad.
That's why you alwaaaaays use up all the TUs on rocket guys.
One of the best things I've ever seen in old Xcom is the fact that reaction fire can happen with rocket launchers. Door opens, Alien walks out and rocket fires, misses and kills the entire squad.
That's why you alwaaaaays use up all the TUs on rocket guys.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Panic isn't a bad idea, but it's a horribly shitty idea that it will make troopers shoot at each other. It's just absurd to have even rookie soldiers so crappy that flipping out makes them start shooting their buddy right next them. It's a very clumsy and game-y mechanic, and should never have been done.
But stuff like hunkering down, running away, or taking wild shots at the enemy? Yeah, that's all decent stuff. Puts you at a disadvantage, but doesn't just completely fuck you over arbitrarily.
Panic isn't a bad idea, but it's a horribly shitty idea that it will make troopers shoot at each other. It's just absurd to have even rookie soldiers so crappy that flipping out makes them start shooting their buddy right next them. It's a very clumsy and game-y mechanic, and should never have been done.
But stuff like hunkering down, running away, or taking wild shots at the enemy? Yeah, that's all decent stuff. Puts you at a disadvantage, but doesn't just completely fuck you over arbitrarily.
I think it's too luck based and punishing, even if you took did that shooting at your own mans out. Things are already going bad, and then the game rolls to see if you lose control of a soldier for a turn in a situation where you probably need everything you can get. The possibility of panic spirals is of course the icing on the luck based cake.
cB557 on
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
THAT'S XCOM! Seriously, I don't trust the game enough to ever ironman mode it.
Had a turn where I chucked a grenade at some Mutons out of sight range. When the explosion activated them, it gave the two Floaters in front of my troopers a free shot each, teleported the Mutons directly into the middle of my unit, moved the Mutons into cover, and then my turn ended. I also repeatedly had enemies that would drop on top of my units during combat, causing them to occupy the same square but not letting me attack them; very annoying, as it meant I repeatedly was stuck having to burn an action to move a single square so I didn't trigger Overwatch but could still attack the enemy.
That sort of thing is exactly why Ironman never looks like anything more than a bunch of wasted time to me; the bugs are just too common.
THAT'S XCOM! Seriously, I don't trust the game enough to ever ironman mode it.
Had a turn where I chucked a grenade at some Mutons out of sight range. When the explosion activated them, it gave the two Floaters in front of my troopers a free shot each, teleported the Mutons directly into the middle of my unit, moved the Mutons into cover, and then my turn ended. I also repeatedly had enemies that would drop on top of my units during combat, causing them to occupy the same square but not letting me attack them; very annoying, as it meant I repeatedly was stuck having to burn an action to move a single square so I didn't trigger Overwatch but could still attack the enemy.
That sort of thing is exactly why Ironman never looks like anything more than a bunch of wasted time to me; the bugs are just too common.
I've also had the occasional enemy that's been immune to explosive weapons. I'd fire a rocket centered on it; everything around it would die, but it'd just look unperturbed.
And the ol' Mimetic Skin teleport bug.
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scherbchenAsgard (it is dead)Registered Userregular
y'all got patched games, right? because other than the one disc on that one mission my aliens have been behaving like champs for just about forever.
this is disregarding the seeker bug for LW ofc.
I had maybe one buggy pod (other than said disc) in all of my I/I EW playthroughs.
you make it sound like this is happening all over the place. it really isn't.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
you make it sound like this is happening all over the place. it really isn't.
Yeah, no. It definitely happens consistently, even if it doesn't happen for you; just finished a game last week for Enemy Within and it had plenty of bugs. I've never had a playthrough of XCOM that didn't have a number of instances of minor bugs and at least one or two major bugs that would've been infuriatingly devastating with Ironman if I didn't exploit the thing with forcing a game shutdown to return to the start of a turn, which means I should just play the game as normal anyway.
No way am I going to blow 10/15/20 hours on a game when it could hit me with a major bug that throws me into a fail spiral over a bug I have zero control over.
y'all got patched games, right? because other than the one disc on that one mission my aliens have been behaving like champs for just about forever.
this is disregarding the seeker bug for LW ofc.
I had maybe one buggy pod (other than said disc) in all of my I/I EW playthroughs.
you make it sound like this is happening all over the place. it really isn't.
The teleport bugs i don't personally see much of anymore, but the LoS bugs are still everywhere. Thought you were concealed behind that wall? Lol nope, you picked terrain that Firaxis didn't code properly. Destroy the cover that Thin Man was behind? Oh look, now your guy who was in position for a shot while he was behind it magically cannot see the exposed x ray anymore. Thought you could see & shoot the Muton standing 1 tile back from that window? Nope. But he can sure see & shoot you, though!
ironman is all but a non-starter when the game's most fundamental mechanics are so buggy / inconsistent.
With Love and Courage
+1
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited October 2014
I play iron man with alt f4 for a simple reason.
Long term strategic or tactical errors on my part (longer than 1 turn) are beyond salvaging. Bugs are never that long.
Sometimes I might exploit it because I ran into something I've never encountered before, sure. I'm not perfect. But for the most part I'm stuck with what I got and have to fix it as I go.
I enjoy that.
I screwed up the strategy layer over the course of a month in my current game, but it isn't something I can't fix if I play carefully from now on. So I'm going to push through. In Normal I would have just reloaded to a previous save.
I get the best of both worlds.
I think a few of you guys get too angry when things go wrong to play ironman. You've all got min max personalities, it seeps off yas. :P
I'm pretty tolerant.
This isn't to say that the game doesn't have bugs. I just like ironman for how it structures my play. And you can get around the bugs.
If you couldn't do that at least I wouldn't play it either.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
I don't get angry when things go wrong in an ironman. If I fuck up, it's my own fault. I get angry when the game fucks ME over because it doesn't work properly.
M A G I K A Z A M
+1
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited October 2014
That's what i meant. I'm fairly tolerant. I just keep going and work it out from there. I'm not saying it as a slight. There's nothing wrong with getting angry over that. It's a flat comment about personality differences. You could say I'm at fault for accepting it, for example, and that is technically true.
I try to set up my mans so that one guy not being able to see doesn't mean someone is going to die next turn. Makes me more cautious.
I basically play as if one man is not the lynch pin. I play out my tactics as an entire focused team, so that overlapping fields of fire mean even if one guy can't see or can't shoot the alien still dies.
Best way to think about it is that I don't trust my individual men/women. But I trust my team.
It's not a hyper efficient, maximal way to play, for sure. I can't really play like you guys talk (all running on open ground) on ironman because, as you say, I can't fully trust the systems. I have to think about the terrain extremely long term and plan out my maneouvres well ahead of time. Scattering when you spot a unit to hit the available cover doesn't work as well when you can't reload on line of sight bugs or bugs over one turn long. You have to plan very far ahead.
For example, the line of sight bug means I dislike setting up my dudes in weird terrain. I know from experience which types of terrain are more likely to get bugged. I try to find and approach areas through really clear lines of sight for me and less so for them. I wont even go into a ufo sometimes if its particularly banged up, because all the damage often triggers los issues. I'll trigger them and then make them come to me across open ground.
Another example, I use mimetic skin scouts and when I find enemies I set up my men over a large number of turns (sometimes up to 2 or 3) so that when the enemy is engaged they get obliterated. Bugs or not. Nothing saves them.
I guess you could say I like the bugs because they force me to stop gaming the system and think tactically at all times. Even when there are no enemies to fight.
It does make my games very slow though.
Oh and I'd never play ironman on impossible. Classic is the limit for ironman for me. Impossible and I'm right there with you guys going nope.
I doubt I'll iron man long war either. It sounds way too disjointed.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
y'all got patched games, right? because other than the one disc on that one mission my aliens have been behaving like champs for just about forever.
this is disregarding the seeker bug for LW ofc.
I had maybe one buggy pod (other than said disc) in all of my I/I EW playthroughs.
you make it sound like this is happening all over the place. it really isn't.
The teleport bugs i don't personally see much of anymore, but the LoS bugs are still everywhere. Thought you were concealed behind that wall? Lol nope, you picked terrain that Firaxis didn't code properly. Destroy the cover that Thin Man was behind? Oh look, now your guy who was in position for a shot while he was behind it magically cannot see the exposed x ray anymore. Thought you could see & shoot the Muton standing 1 tile back from that window? Nope. But he can sure see & shoot you, though!
ironman is all but a non-starter when the game's most fundamental mechanics are so buggy / inconsistent.
I still feel that SUV in the graveyard map isn't implemented properly. I work around it now, but it always frustrates me.
A few los problems could be solved simply by allowing you to cancel a move command. Nothing is more stupid than moving to a spot that by every logical right should have an angle on an x-ray, only to find out nope, you wasted that move.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
A few los problems could be solved simply by allowing you to cancel a move command. Nothing is more stupid than moving to a spot that by every logical right should have an angle on an x-ray, only to find out nope, you wasted that move.
I also wouldn't mind being able to see how far enemies can see.
Or just like a "Will I be able to shoot or grenade this guy after I move, and what will my chance to hit be?" button.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited October 2014
Yeah I don't like that you can't cancel commands. My new mouse was giving me issues because I have it set to quite a high sensitivity and the buttons are very sensitive, so I would occasionally misclick completely by accident and then my guy would move a couple of spaces.
Although I think any theoretical cancel should be disabled if you activate a spawn.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Posts
Will healing a unit with a medkit/restorative mist before the mission end prevent the injury time?
then it is a bit of a slog to get to learn the geo layer in order to be better at the shooting the aliens bit which is ok because it lets you shoot aliens better. you experiment and learn and then that part is done.
at that point it becomes negligible because you have learned what to do in order to shoot aliens better (unless you play a modded version in which case the learning starts all over again which is kind of ok because it lets you shoot aliens better, eventually)
the real slog for me is story shooting aliens missions. or even worse story shooting humans(-ish) missions. base assault and aliens assaulting your base and their ilk. ugh.
Try turning on "absolutely critical". That will lower randomness and make the game a tad bit easier because you will flank more than aliens will. (I feel like you hit more at high crit as well as if the game checks crit first and then auto hits if you crit.)
That being said it is an unfortunate aspect of this game that randomness in the tactical layer cannot ever be eliminated. (No Randomness on the strat layer would not be fun)
Also I just had my soldiers fire their overwatch and two of them destroyed cover we were using and so that was just goddammit
pretty sure that's more of a fringe case tho
Well, not unwinnable, but I hope you like losing 3 countries month 1 because fuck you!
my first game of old com was a total wipe where the entirety of my squad was either killed instantly upon exiting the dropship, paniced or went berserk and killed fellow squadmates
i had dudes spinning in circles, dudes running around randomly
and dudes completely failing to shoot the one thing i managed to spot
it was hilarious
xcom nu has never given me a game that bad
i like panic. i'd miss it if it was gone.
I have. It's like the 4th of july and the grand opening of disneyworld all rolled into one.
That was fun.
One second I had men.
Then I had none.
That's why you alwaaaaays use up all the TUs on rocket guys.
Put a laserpistol in their other hand.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
But stuff like hunkering down, running away, or taking wild shots at the enemy? Yeah, that's all decent stuff. Puts you at a disadvantage, but doesn't just completely fuck you over arbitrarily.
Boo-urns.
Had a turn where I chucked a grenade at some Mutons out of sight range. When the explosion activated them, it gave the two Floaters in front of my troopers a free shot each, teleported the Mutons directly into the middle of my unit, moved the Mutons into cover, and then my turn ended. I also repeatedly had enemies that would drop on top of my units during combat, causing them to occupy the same square but not letting me attack them; very annoying, as it meant I repeatedly was stuck having to burn an action to move a single square so I didn't trigger Overwatch but could still attack the enemy.
That sort of thing is exactly why Ironman never looks like anything more than a bunch of wasted time to me; the bugs are just too common.
I've also had the occasional enemy that's been immune to explosive weapons. I'd fire a rocket centered on it; everything around it would die, but it'd just look unperturbed.
And the ol' Mimetic Skin teleport bug.
this is disregarding the seeker bug for LW ofc.
I had maybe one buggy pod (other than said disc) in all of my I/I EW playthroughs.
you make it sound like this is happening all over the place. it really isn't.
Yeah, no. It definitely happens consistently, even if it doesn't happen for you; just finished a game last week for Enemy Within and it had plenty of bugs. I've never had a playthrough of XCOM that didn't have a number of instances of minor bugs and at least one or two major bugs that would've been infuriatingly devastating with Ironman if I didn't exploit the thing with forcing a game shutdown to return to the start of a turn, which means I should just play the game as normal anyway.
No way am I going to blow 10/15/20 hours on a game when it could hit me with a major bug that throws me into a fail spiral over a bug I have zero control over.
Because if it's that, THAT'S NOT A BUG
The teleport bugs i don't personally see much of anymore, but the LoS bugs are still everywhere. Thought you were concealed behind that wall? Lol nope, you picked terrain that Firaxis didn't code properly. Destroy the cover that Thin Man was behind? Oh look, now your guy who was in position for a shot while he was behind it magically cannot see the exposed x ray anymore. Thought you could see & shoot the Muton standing 1 tile back from that window? Nope. But he can sure see & shoot you, though!
ironman is all but a non-starter when the game's most fundamental mechanics are so buggy / inconsistent.
Long term strategic or tactical errors on my part (longer than 1 turn) are beyond salvaging. Bugs are never that long.
Sometimes I might exploit it because I ran into something I've never encountered before, sure. I'm not perfect. But for the most part I'm stuck with what I got and have to fix it as I go.
I enjoy that.
I screwed up the strategy layer over the course of a month in my current game, but it isn't something I can't fix if I play carefully from now on. So I'm going to push through. In Normal I would have just reloaded to a previous save.
I get the best of both worlds.
I think a few of you guys get too angry when things go wrong to play ironman. You've all got min max personalities, it seeps off yas. :P
I'm pretty tolerant.
This isn't to say that the game doesn't have bugs. I just like ironman for how it structures my play. And you can get around the bugs.
If you couldn't do that at least I wouldn't play it either.
I try to set up my mans so that one guy not being able to see doesn't mean someone is going to die next turn. Makes me more cautious.
I basically play as if one man is not the lynch pin. I play out my tactics as an entire focused team, so that overlapping fields of fire mean even if one guy can't see or can't shoot the alien still dies.
Best way to think about it is that I don't trust my individual men/women. But I trust my team.
It's not a hyper efficient, maximal way to play, for sure. I can't really play like you guys talk (all running on open ground) on ironman because, as you say, I can't fully trust the systems. I have to think about the terrain extremely long term and plan out my maneouvres well ahead of time. Scattering when you spot a unit to hit the available cover doesn't work as well when you can't reload on line of sight bugs or bugs over one turn long. You have to plan very far ahead.
For example, the line of sight bug means I dislike setting up my dudes in weird terrain. I know from experience which types of terrain are more likely to get bugged. I try to find and approach areas through really clear lines of sight for me and less so for them. I wont even go into a ufo sometimes if its particularly banged up, because all the damage often triggers los issues. I'll trigger them and then make them come to me across open ground.
Another example, I use mimetic skin scouts and when I find enemies I set up my men over a large number of turns (sometimes up to 2 or 3) so that when the enemy is engaged they get obliterated. Bugs or not. Nothing saves them.
I guess you could say I like the bugs because they force me to stop gaming the system and think tactically at all times. Even when there are no enemies to fight.
It does make my games very slow though.
Oh and I'd never play ironman on impossible. Classic is the limit for ironman for me. Impossible and I'm right there with you guys going nope.
I doubt I'll iron man long war either. It sounds way too disjointed.
I still feel that SUV in the graveyard map isn't implemented properly. I work around it now, but it always frustrates me.
I also wouldn't mind being able to see how far enemies can see.
Although I think any theoretical cancel should be disabled if you activate a spawn.