X-Com is pretty awesome guys, we should talk about it

Forar

I'm not sure what's so hard to understand. The mouseovers on things are short but pretty clear, you build up a base, buy / sell things, research and then fly out to attack alien craft.

Honestly, the only thing that I didn't intuitively pick up from the start was the "hold this many AP" feature at the bottom of the combat screen, but I just tried to leave people with enough AP to do things during the alien's turns anyway. This just lets you lock yourself into being able to make those shots.

That said, I played this back when I was a teenager, but I only finished it a few years ago. For some reason I'm always really slow on getting psionics set up and running, and when I did finish the game it was by the skin of my teeth.

It was really nice to just unload blaster bomb after blaster bomb on everything, however.

Witchsight

I loved doing swat manoevers once i had blaster bombs and flying suits. Get a bunch of guys on top of a large ship, launch a bomb up top to make a hole, then send everyone in at once on the top and bottom floors. Made me feel like a badass anyway.

Masamune42

Kelor wrote: »

cj iwakura wrote: »

So, any Rebelstar Tactical Command (GBA) love? It was my first experience with the series, if it can be called that, and it definitely left a good impression on me.

I never did finish it. Even a dumbed down X COM is apparently tough as nails.

I enjoyed what I played of it, but never got around to finishing it.

Also, I found the screenshot I was talking about from earlier.

This pretty much sums up the game for me.

Edit: And that's why I love it.

kuhlmeye

I loved X-Com, but sometimes it felt like it was supposed to be a horror sci-fi game. Like how the music during missions wasn't really music, just that tone, repeating over and over. Walking someone around a corner and being blasted in the chest. I jumped wayyyy to many times while playing.

SkutSkut

Definitely a freaky game that's awesome, I'm actually doing good this game lol, keep forgetting to research faster though.

Khavall

kuhlmeye wrote: »

I loved X-Com, but sometimes it felt like it was supposed to be a horror sci-fi game. Like how the music during missions wasn't really music, just that tone, repeating over and over. Walking someone around a corner and being blasted in the chest. I jumped wayyyy to many times while playing.

It was for the first part, then it changed a few times.

At the beginning, you're outgunned, have no way of knowing where the aliens are, and shots come from everywhere.

Then you get to a point where you can blow everything up with flying armored troops.

Then psi shows up...

Apharmd

Kelor wrote: »

I swear, that little bastard's grinning at me.

To be honest, my first experience with X-Com was Apoc. Played the demo, never found the game until I picked it up in the budget rack at Beatties at the Metro Centre.

Got it kind of working on XP too. For some reason, I can only play two or three missions per game, then the next mission screen, it crashes. Dunno why.

A friend of mine used to play UFO and other games with his dad, who played on Superhuman for a laugh. We recently played UFO again (on easy this time, just to get used to it again), but he's swearing off it after the following happened (spoiled for a bit of length):

So, about two months in, we've been shooting down UFOs easily. For some reason though, we've been running through several rookies who seem to rush into UFOs with primed bombs, get shot and blow the loot to hell. I don't deny they have one hell of an effective clearing strategy, but it would be nice if we could actually salvage a UFO intact for once.

Finally, we get a Terror Mission. We send out our primary assault force, armed with the new Laser Rifles. The Skyranger touches down, and our pointman walks out.

He barely gets halfway down the ramp before meeting three plasma beams head on. Dead.

We send out another person. Same result.

Third guy actually manages to see what's shooting at him before he dies. There's four fucking Cyberdiscs surrounding the exit to the Skyranger, along with at least three Sectoids.

The Sergeant leading the group decides enough is enough. He runs out, dodging fire. Fires, kills one Cyberdisc, the blast wounding another.

Fires at the wounded one, killing it and two Sectoids.

Kills the other two, who missed him in their turn.

We eventually killed all of the aliens, this guy accounting for at least half of their forces.

This Sergeant is eventually promoted to Colonel, which is when it went wrong.

The assault team is called to a UFO site, which is quickly discovered to be a small Sectoid ship. By this time, we've upgraded to Heavy Plasma guns, and we've finally got the armour in production, so this is going to be used as a training exercise for the newbies (I think a few of you know where this is going).

A few minutes in, we've killed three Sectoids, and a third is detected in a nearby barn. The Colonel and one of the newbies goes in. The Sectoid fires, missing both of them. The Colonel ducks behind cover, nearer the Sectoid than the rookie, but with no TUs left.

The rookie fires three shots, two of which miss, the third..... hitting the Colonel in the head, killing him instantly.

It was about this time that my friend shouted "SON OF A FUCK!!!", turned off the game, and punched the wall (leaving a nice little indentation).

If there's another LP, I'll volunteer for the rookies too.

greeble

Xcom isn't too hard if you just keep up with research and accept the fact that you will have casualties. Also in the beginning grenades are very useful since your guys are such awful shots and your weapons are week. Also its pretty quick to research alien grenades which can kill most things in one hit. (The proximity grenades are fun. Especially if you hear the alien aircraft door opening and closing during the alien turns. Drop a prox infront of the door and when they peek out... booom!)

The shittiest part is outfitting all your guys properly in the ship before each mission. I give my sharpshooters the rifles, the guys with good throwing arms get a pistol in one hand and a grenade in the other. I make one guy the medic with the heal pack and motion sensor thingy. And one heavy weapons guy just so I can reinact the scene from predator where he blasts the jungle with his minigun.

Also save often incase things go real shitty.

SkutSkut

greeble wrote: »

Xcom isn't too hard if you just keep up with research and accept the fact that you will have casualties. Also in the beginning grenades are very useful since your guys are such awful shots and your weapons are week. Also its pretty quick to research alien grenades which can kill most things in one hit. (The proximity grenades are fun. Especially if you hear the alien aircraft door opening and closing during the alien turns. Drop a prox infront of the door and when they peek out... booom!)

The shittiest part is outfitting all your guys properly in the ship before each mission. I give my sharpshooters the rifles, the guys with good throwing arms get a pistol in one hand and a grenade in the other. I make one guy the medic with the heal pack and motion sensor thingy. And one heavy weapons guy just so I can reinact the scene from predator where he blasts the jungle with his minigun.

Also save often incase things go real shitty.

2 save slots is a good idea too, I have one for combat and map work, save after every buy/research/etc

Gooey

TFTD is one of the most unforgiving games of all time. I bought it when it came out and I still haven't beaten it.

SkutSkut

Talk about getting by the skin of your teeth, terror mission, Cairo, night. Tank rolls off the Skyranger, gets destroyed by just 1 blast after shooting at a cyber disk, soldiers pour out the skyranger, kills the cyberdisk and a sectoid blast one guy.

I send a few down the street, 1 cyberdisk and 2 sectoids start blasting at me, but my guys fight em off while 2 flank from inside a house and finish the job.

Sectoids flank my ship and get 2 soliders, I send in some backup squad to help and one gets killed by friendly fire, but the squaddie clears up one sectoid and the other runs off.

This sectoid meant business, he was the last one and by the time I killed him I only had 2 soldiers left.

RawrBear

I absolutely love X-Com, though the original is the only one I've played. Is TFTD worth picking up on steam? I was considering it, but I keep hearing that its not on par with the original.

Forar

RawrBear wrote: »

I absolutely love X-Com, though the original is the only one I've played. Is TFTD worth picking up on steam? I was considering it, but I keep hearing that its not on par with the original.

I know a lot of people love TFTD dearly, but the general consensus is that X-Com can be kinda hard (even on easier difficulties) whereas TFTD starts at "BEND OVER AND SPREAD 'EM" and goes up from there.

Like, 2 part terror missions with bunches of horrifically nasty aliens that have a habit of popping out on you and eating your men repeatedly.

For $5 you could do worse, but honestly, I think I'll just stick with the original until a true remake or spiritual successor captivates me.

jefe414

Minigun? I used a guy armed with the heavy cannon and incendiary rounds during night fights to light things up (those flares STUNK). Also, the fire walls allowed me to cover my butt. Every once in a while the fire would reach a gas station...

Nova_C

Holy shit, TFTD is on STEAM? Fucking BOUGHT'D.

Also, X-Com is hard as hell and infuriating.

Khavall

SkutSkut wrote: »

greeble wrote: »

Xcom isn't too hard if you just keep up with research and accept the fact that you will have casualties. Also in the beginning grenades are very useful since your guys are such awful shots and your weapons are week. Also its pretty quick to research alien grenades which can kill most things in one hit. (The proximity grenades are fun. Especially if you hear the alien aircraft door opening and closing during the alien turns. Drop a prox infront of the door and when they peek out... booom!)

The shittiest part is outfitting all your guys properly in the ship before each mission. I give my sharpshooters the rifles, the guys with good throwing arms get a pistol in one hand and a grenade in the other. I make one guy the medic with the heal pack and motion sensor thingy. And one heavy weapons guy just so I can reinact the scene from predator where he blasts the jungle with his minigun.

Also save often incase things go real shitty.

2 save slots is a good idea too, I have one for combat and map work, save after every buy/research/etc

I have 4 saves.


Normal Saving, then a backup in case the last save was secretly totally fucked up.

NEO|Phyte

Lord Yod

RawrBear wrote: »

I absolutely love X-Com, though the original is the only one I've played. Is TFTD worth picking up on steam? I was considering it, but I keep hearing that its not on par with the original.

TFTD is much, much harder. Also the Steam version has its share of bugs.

Dignified Pauper

I have found the only way to beat XCOM is to save a shit fuck ton of times per battle and per world screen and make back-ups and secondaries, etc.

Mr Ray

Forar wrote: »

RawrBear wrote: »

I absolutely love X-Com, though the original is the only one I've played. Is TFTD worth picking up on steam? I was considering it, but I keep hearing that its not on par with the original.

I know a lot of people love TFTD dearly, but the general consensus is that X-Com can be kinda hard (even on easier difficulties) whereas TFTD starts at "BEND OVER AND SPREAD 'EM" and goes up from there.

No kidding. You remember chrysalids? Well, they can fly now.

Oh, and there are 2-part terror missions which pop up every 6 months or so where they're ALWAYS positioned above and behind your men as you enter a room.


I think the ridiculous strength of the enemy's MC powers were what turned me off from TFTD.

You can mind-control my guys? Fine.

Wait, you can mind-control my guys without having to have seen them first? Even though I can't? Ok, well i'll just make sure everyone I send on base missions is MC-trained.

Oh, what's that? You can mind-control my guys without seeing them and you automatically go for the one with the weakest MC strength?

...

Fuck you.

Nova_C

I get fucked whenever the MC aliens start showing up because I could never figure out how to open that line of research. I even did raids to steal MC capable alien bodies without having to face all the units on a mission and still ended up with dead ends.

greeble

Nova_C wrote: »

I get fucked whenever the MC aliens start showing up because I could never figure out how to open that line of research. I even did raids to steal MC capable alien bodies without having to face all the units on a mission and still ended up with dead ends.

you need to capture some live aliens, give your throw away red shirts some stun rods. (Actually all my men carry stun rods in their backpacks. Live aliens give more money than dead aliens)

cj iwakura

One of my favorite lines ever came from Rebelstar, and I guess it applies to X-COM as well.

"What should we do if we encounter a UFO?"
"Run like hell."

vonPoonBurGer

If you've got a Windows Mobile based smartphone, you can check out Pocket UFO. It's a pretty good port from what I've seen so far, and it's freely downloadable. I've been playing it on the HTC 6800 (a.k.a. HTC Titan) I got through work. I imagine playing it on a device without a touchscreen would be difficult / impossible, but who knows. They've also made a few gameplay tweaks that could be offputting to purists (e.g. you can't use a heavy weapon and a pistol at the same time), but for the most part it seems to be classic X-Com. In playing it, it's obvious that the majority of the graphics are taken directly from the original X-Com, which probably explains why they aren't charging money for it (licensing issues, etc.).

yotes

I guess I'll give this a whirl again, can't hurt.

Four hours later: Hurts. First Very small UFO, no casualties. Terror mission, seven dead, one wounded. Small UFO, five dead, one wounded.

It's especially hilarious when you manage to sneak an expendable dude into the UFO, only to notice you're just two TU short of stunning an alien. Fuck.

SammyF

The benefits of being able to reserve enough TU either to attack or flee cannot be overstated. It wasn't running properly on my laptop, so I fired up JA2 again instead, and it does NOT have this feature, the only way to reserve AP is to make the conscious effort not to spend them. This frequently results in me discovering that I'm not as good at math as I thought I was. Okay, so I run here, now I should have enough AP to fire a snapshot, and then I can crouch behind the... oh, I forgot I needed to add another AP to turn and face the guy before aiming. I'm about to take a mouthful of buckshot right in my face.

SkutSkut

So after I finish researching...something, and the game crashes. Any fixes for Windows XP for this game?

troublebrewing

is this game open license or whatever now?

I remember playing it back in the day and getting pretty far but losing eventually once they started raiding my bases, etc.

Bremen

I feel bad because I was the one who was running the previous LP and never finished it.

I don't remember why I dropped it, but it must have been a hell of a reason.

Edit: found it

re-edit: I think the reason I dropped it was I really suck at doing commentary.

Shifty_Calhoun

So what software house made xcom anyway? I wonder if they will make another turn based strategy like this in the future....

Bremen

Shifty_Calhoun wrote: »

So what software house made xcom anyway? I wonder if they will make another turn based strategy like this in the future....

Microprose. They also made Master of Orion and Civilization. Those were the days.

Unfortunately, they no longer exist.

Shifty_Calhoun

Bummer. I remember loving the hell out of microprose grand prix.

MegaMan001

The best day of my life was when I recieved X-Com Gold Edition (UFO Defense, TFTD, Apocalypse), with the Fallout collection and then I got X-Com Interceptor.

I still own all and I bought a 150 dollar old IBM Thinkpad to play them on.

mrsnackroad

This is information worth necroposting for:

This week, Steam has added the X-Com Collection to their store, featuring such hits as:

X-Com: UFO Defense
X-Com: Terror From The Deep
X-Com: Apocalypse

And a couple other games that aren't as well recieved for some reason or other:

X-Com: Interceptor
X-Com: Enforcer

All of which available as a bundle at $13 - I hadn't snapped up Terror From The Deep yet, and that's looking like a pretty good deal. Why were Enforcer and Interceptor not so well recieved, though?

Kelor

Wow, I hadn't heard that. I wonder if they're available elsewhere though, TFTD wasn't buyable in Australia previously.

polaris314

mrsnackroad wrote: »

This is information worth necroposting for:

This week, Steam has added the X-Com Collection to their store, featuring such hits as:

X-Com: UFO Defense
X-Com: Terror From The Deep
X-Com: Apocalypse

And a couple other games that aren't as well recieved for some reason or other:

X-Com: Interceptor
X-Com: Enforcer

All of which available as a bundle at $13 - I hadn't snapped up Terror From The Deep yet, and that's looking like a pretty good deal. Why were Enforcer and Interceptor not so well recieved, though?

Yeah, that news came as a surprise to me, too. Tomorrow is payday so I'll probably snag it.

Was Enforcer the Unreal 2.0 based fps? I remember reading about it a long time ago, but never saw it materialize.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

TekDragon

This X-com bundle is fucking AMAZING.

X-com 1? Win.
X-com 2? Ouch, but still win.
X-com Apoc? WIN.
X-com Interceptor. Still win, bitches.

Never played Enforcer.

Kelor

So I started a new game now I've got this on Steam and first mission off the bat, I'm spreading my guys around to scout the area around their ship when I get interrupted when I see a grenade bounce across. Fuck.

How close?

Cohsae

Anyone who doesn't buy this off Steam is a damn fool. I mean come on, $5.
On a related note, I've recently discovered that the true way to play this game is not to constantly quicksave/load, but instead to approach it in much the same way as Dwarf Fortress. Losing is fun! After all, that's how you end up with most of your squad being wiped out almost instantly, but the survivors pulling off some amazing clutch victory and then being heroes and getting loads of chicks etc.