Pissed about an X-Com FPS? Firaxis hears ya...

[kildorn]

Man, there are some shit panic rolls that make you go ::xcom::

I wasted 11 mutons taking no damage. Last muton uses his panic check ability. My lead squad member freaks the fuck out.

DUDE. Why are you scared? The squad has pretty much given no fucks so far on this mission. You're not even under fire! Wuss!

[Merusk]

I guess I can sell some alien artifacts to help bridge my funding.

This is perhaps the most tactically interesting change from the original. It used to be "sell all corpses after original autopsy."  Now they have a purpose and it's frustrating!

Though you should *always* check the grey market after a downed-ufo mission. Damaged parts have no research value and a very nice resale.

[MisterNoisy]

grey market

Heh.

[kildorn]

You may also wind up with a stockpile of things like Thin Men corpses that you can sell in a pinch. You kill a ton of those bastards.

Always keep about 10 corpses on hand in case of.. let's just say in case of council missions and `needs` in the engineering department.

[CmdrSlack]

I made myself an hour late to work today (salaried job FTW!) because I wanted to play "just one" mission before leaving for work.

This game is way too much fun. I was also up way too late last night as a result.

[koro]

So far my only real gripe about the game is the UI. It's painfully obvious it was designed primarily for a 360 controller, and KBAM control for it just feels so awkward. As I don't have a 360 pad, I have little choice but to make do.  

[lamaros]

My game unlocks in 28 hours.

I just have to make it through today without VPNing...

[Rasix]

I've hit a bug a few times where I haven't been able to select any character and thus have to save and restart.  I'm not sure if it's a button I hit or the game just wigged out after a mid fight cut scene.  Happened 3 times so far.

Other than that.. I'm so addicted to this.  Got to love it when you decide to do something risky (overextend, go for the shot instead of running, etc) and get punished severely for it.

[apocrypha]

My game unlocks in 28 hours.

I just have to make it through today without VPNing...

Hang in there, VPNing to get early unlocks gets Steam accounts completely banned I have heard.

[Furiously]

So it looks like hits and misses are predetermined.

[Quinton]

Though you should *always* check the grey market after a downed-ufo mission. Damaged parts have no research value and a very nice resale.

Yeah, I didn't realize that until later in my game (I do like that they clearly flag parts that have no value and parts that might have value but haven't been researched yet).  Selling broken Alien furniture and whatnot massively improved my cashflow.  Straight from the Warehouse 13 to Ebay.

[lamaros]

So it looks like hits and misses are predetermined.

It seems the random number seed is saved for each level, if that is what you mean, yeah. Only really comes in to things if you're savescumming particular shots.

[Pezzle]

Shot down my first alien ship.  Securing the wreck was almost a defeat.  Thought I was going to lose my whole squad when the sectoids started hitting from crazy distances.  Rookie put down the last sectoid covering my vets.  My suicide assault man took out the other alien (dont know what it was) at point blank range.  Total victory snatched from the gaping maw of absolute defeat!  My injured squad gets some time off to enjoy those new promotions!  Hopefully there will be time after work to see what was found and sell off damaged alien stuff.  Thanks for the tip!

[Amaron]

So it looks like hits and misses are predetermined.

Does this matter?  You can always cheat if you really want to.

[Trippy]

For anyone who missed the original and wants to see how it played/looked and how it compares to the new one.

http://lparchive.org/X-COM-UFO-Defense/

Everyone should probably read the prologue page just to remind yourself how brutal that game could be.

That playthrough is fucking awesome.

[Teleku]

I'm hear to declare that this game is amazing, fun, and that anybody who truly hates it is an asshole. Its also just as fucking god damn brutal as the original.  I made the mistake of sticking the difficulty to 'Classic', since I'm a veteran.  I'm having my ass handed to me on missions.  This is a wonderful adaptation of the originals style of game play, while smoothing out some of they very bad rough edges of the original.

And yes, much like most recent games, savescumming doesn't work.   

[Hoax]

I've hit a bug a few times where I haven't been able to select any character and thus have to save and restart.  I'm not sure if it's a button I hit or the game just wigged out after a mid fight cut scene.  Happened 3 times so far.

Other than that.. I'm so addicted to this.  Got to love it when you decide to do something risky (overextend, go for the shot instead of running, etc) and get punished severely for it.

Solution to that is to swap weapons. At least that's what does it for me when I get sort of locked up. That bug and having to fiddle with the key bindings a few times to get them to stay the way I wanted them to have been the only gripes so far. Not sure what it is about the UI that has people so pissed off. Working fine for me just using mouse for everything but camera controls.

[HaemishM]

Welp, two play sessions, two hours of play and I think I'm going to have to start my Classic Ironman over. Last two missions have been almost complete and utter failures. Try to stun a alien and miss both times (once had a 70% chance and missed). Last mission lost EVERYONE. Got sent to a bridge in Argentina where there were some sectoids, some thin mints, and three fucking hover cyberfuckers. Promptly got surrounded, suppressed and facefucked. This was just after I got three recruits each with a speciality class including a sniper - who turned out to be goddamn useless with the rifle but killed a cyberfucker with his pistol because of the minimum range of the sniper rifle being shit.

I... Love... This Fucking Game.

[bhodi]

I was not prepared for how good squad sight was for snipers. Snipers in general seem pretty broken, right up there with the hilariously good assault class. Who needs suppression when you have 100% crit snipers that hit 80+% from across the map? One support for medkits is okay, I guess. Wow, was I ever wrong to take 'can attack after moving' in my first game.

Sadly, I've run into some major bugs:

I lost my classic game to a save game bug. I was clearing out old save games but the games I was deleting were mislabeled, so I lost my save.
There is a specific tile on the 'highway overpass' that flickers constantly; I tried right clicking to walk over it and the game decided my guy actually wanted to jump down into sectoids.
On the upper ramps of the large UFO, the default camera distance is outside the ship so it constantly resets itself to outside when you tab units.
There are a lot of times where the automatic reactive fire within 4 tiles assault ability fails. Notably, when berserkers auto-charge when hit and also the initial 'must get under cover' free movement of aliens during discovery.
There is also some weirdness with the double fire, if the first shot destroys the cover, the second has the same hit chance as if the cover was still there.
Crit immunity from hunker down doesn't work.
And three major things I discovered that you might want to know:

It's worth it to start satellite production in the first month (create 2-3) since they take 20 days and also put your first 2 extra satellites in south america so that you can save up during the first 2 months and then instantly interrogate/autopsy. Saves a ton of reesarch time.
I captured too many guys early and don't have enough fragments to research, you can't sell alien weapons in this one so be aware there's no benefit to your 14th plasma pistol/light gun, the shards are more useful.
The steam vent layout is random for your base, and it's worth restarting to get one on 1st or 2nd floor so you can go power generator -> steam generator. The number varies as well. I got 1 in my new (normal) game, but had 3 in my classic. This out of all things left a sour taste, since it's so critical to success and also early and random.

[Zetor]

So it looks like hits and misses are predetermined.

It seems the random number seed is saved for each level, if that is what you mean, yeah. Only really comes in to things if you're savescumming particular shots.

Yea, this is fairly standard. I remember it being the same way in JA2 to prevent save-scumming (though you could still get around it by doing actions in a different sequence).

[Xuri]

I've hit a bug a few times where I haven't been able to select any character and thus have to save and restart.  I'm not sure if it's a button I hit or the game just wigged out after a mid fight cut scene.  Happened 3 times so far.

Other than that.. I'm so addicted to this.  Got to love it when you decide to do something risky (overextend, go for the shot instead of running, etc) and get punished severely for it.

Haven't had this one, but a couple of times now I've had one where the game stops during "Alien Activity" periods, and just never returns control to me. Game doesn't actually crash, just .....seems like it gets stuck in a never-ending loop or something. Only way out is to force-close the game.

Also, I'm getting more and more skeptical about the correctness of the hit percentages... I've missed too many 96% shots now to trust it!

[lamaros]

I've hit a bug a few times where I haven't been able to select any character and thus have to save and restart.  I'm not sure if it's a button I hit or the game just wigged out after a mid fight cut scene.  Happened 3 times so far.

Other than that.. I'm so addicted to this.  Got to love it when you decide to do something risky (overextend, go for the shot instead of running, etc) and get punished severely for it.

Haven't had this one, but a couple of times now I've had one where the game stops during "Alien Activity" periods, and just never returns control to me. Game doesn't actually crash, just .....seems like it gets stuck in a never-ending loop or something. Only way out is to force-close the game.

Also, I'm getting more and more skeptical about the correctness of the hit percentages... I've missed too many 96% shots now to trust it!

About one in 25? ;)

[koro]

So far the only problems I've had were the weird flickering cursor on one bridge VIP map and a replicable CTD when trying to Suppress a Muton with one of my Supports.

I'm counting myself lucky.

[Entropy]

So it looks like hits and misses are predetermined.

It seems the random number seed is saved for each level, if that is what you mean, yeah. Only really comes in to things if you're savescumming particular shots.

Yea, this is fairly standard. I remember it being the same way in JA2 to prevent save-scumming (though you could still get around it by doing actions in a different sequence).

I just don't get the need or motive to impliment this on the developers' side.  I've never understood how anyone can cheat someone other than themselves on a single-player game by toning down difficulty.   I had chose to restart a game early on because I apparently lost the number seed lottery really badly on a particular mission.  No amount of reloading and re-planning tactics could stop my squad from missing the first 12+ shots fired no matter what the percentage chance said.

That said I'm loving the game and for every bad decision they've made on the game they've made three good ones. 

[Yoru]

I was not prepared for how good squad sight was for snipers. Snipers in general seem pretty broken, right up there with the hilariously good assault class. Who needs suppression when you have 100% crit snipers that hit 80+% from across the map? One support for medkits is okay, I guess. Wow, was I ever wrong to take 'can attack after moving' in my first game.

...

I captured too many guys early and don't have enough fragments to research, you can't sell alien weapons in this one so be aware there's no benefit to your 14th plasma pistol/light gun, the shards are more useful.
The steam vent layout is random for your base, and it's worth restarting to get one on 1st or 2nd floor so you can go power generator -> steam generator. The number varies as well. I got 1 in my new (normal) game, but had 3 in my classic. This out of all things left a sour taste, since it's so critical to success and also early and random.

I have squad sight on my awesome sniper dude, but I don't think I've ever gotten it to work right. I park him behind full cover somewhere in overwatch and move my supports/assaults/heavies up in an arc (overlapping fields of fire, leapfrogging, etc.). But he seems to only be able to get a shot on a dude occasionally, even if the dudes are in full view of my forward team.

Do you tend to leave your snipers in the far corner of the map or something? I usually pick a somewhat-elevated position close to the Skyranger.

Also, I think I've gone too much the opposite direction; I've neglected capturing plasma rifles from Thin Men/Floaters, and as a result my damage output isn't scaling as fast as enemy HP. I've got two supports with light plasma rifles, one laser rifle on an assault and a laser sniper rifle on my sniper, but the other two schlebs (usually a heavy and another assault or a rookie) are both toting the starting projectile weapons around.

(The one good side to this is that, if a projectile-wielding dude gets mind controlled, it's not the end of the world.)

Stunning sectoids seems pretty pointless after a short while, but getting a complement of 4-5 plasma rifles off of the aliens is invaluable - those things cost $100 each plus a ton of fragments.

[Ironwood]

For anyone who missed the original and wants to see how it played/looked and how it compares to the new one.

http://lparchive.org/X-COM-UFO-Defense/

Everyone should probably read the prologue page just to remind yourself how brutal that game could be.

That playthrough is fucking awesome.

Quite.  I've not seen one done with quite as much imagination and enthusiasm.

[lamaros]

I have squad sight on my awesome sniper dude, but I don't think I've ever gotten it to work right. I park him behind full cover somewhere in overwatch and move my supports/assaults/heavies up in an arc (overlapping fields of fire, leapfrogging, etc.). But he seems to only be able to get a shot on a dude occasionally, even if the dudes are in full view of my forward team.

Do you tend to leave your snipers in the far corner of the map or something? I usually pick a somewhat-elevated position close to the Skyranger.

1. Never put your sniper on overwatch (well, not never, but don't just do it habitually) until the last action of your turn, you will get more options to use them if you keep them open (sorry if this sounds too simple, I've been watching a few people on twitch who constantly make the mistake of moving and overwatching their soldiers while the rest of their team is yet to take an action).

2. You'll want them to be in a position with good lines of sight over the map. Generally that means an elevated position, but for some maps you'll have to give up specific areas if they just aren't covering where you need them to. Also, if you're in a pretty safe position on the map full cover isn't necessary, and it might open your sight lines more.

[Sparky]

Game owns.  On reflection I even like choices they made to simplify systems such as getting rid of time units.  You have fewer choices but they're more meaningful so there's no more micromanage-2-win edging your guys one tile for absolutely optimal play.  Makes the squad missions pleasingly energetic.

A first big niggle is the camera.  It's a huge bitch to control in large buildings with flickering walls and grabs control away from you too often.  I've lost one dude just clicking somewhere I thought was the roof only to have him go off on a merry voyage to a lower level to get spit-roasted by crappy sectoids.

[Merusk]

So far the only problems I've had were the weird flickering cursor on one bridge VIP map and a replicable CTD when trying to Suppress a Muton with one of my Supports.

I'm counting myself lucky.

I ran in to a pathing bug last night that was pretty frustrating, myself.  Had an assault that was poisoned and down to 1 heath.  The nearest support char wouldn't path to her because of two alien corpses in the door he was standing in, one on each side of the door.   It either thought one was alive or simply wouldn't let the door open.  I had to dash her out of cover towards the other support and leave them both out of cover for treatment.  Very, very frustrating.

Also; my terror mission. Holy crap was that a white-knuckle experience.  I didn't expect Chrysslads to be even MORE terrifying than the last game, but those fuckers are damn hard to kill.  Particularly if you still have the starter weapons.

I'm about to write this game off as a loss, though.  Panic levels in South America, China and Africa are all 1 tick from abandoning the council and I'm not seeing enough UFOs to shoot-down for missions.   My steam vents were on the bottom level which - now that I know they're random - pisses me off even more since I can't build satellite uplinks without a LOT more power.

[Murgos]

1. Never put your sniper on overwatch (well, not never, but don't just do it habitually) until the last action of your turn, you will get more options to use them if you keep them open (sorry if this sounds too simple, I've been watching a few people on twitch who constantly make the mistake of moving and overwatching their soldiers while the rest of their team is yet to take an action).

I'll take this a step further and say, don't put anyone in overwatch until you've done all your movement.  Then go back through and put people in overwatch if you have nothing else you would rather have them do.

After losing horribly in my first Ironman Classic game I restarted and am playing much more conservatively.  What that means is I will pull someone back from contact pretty regularly if they aren't in good cover or don't have a > 50% chance to hit the target or there are several enemies who can get a shot at them.  Also, even if you have a good shot on an alien without moving, you may want to evaluate moving before shooting anyway just to see if you can improve your position (provided the alien isn't in overwatch) with better cover or support from your other troops.

Snipers seem to be a bit OP but I think all the classes have ability choices that can really change the game.  For example a veteran support with +3 tile move up there for changing the way you play.  Being able to cover huge chunks of the map in one go really helps the tactical situation.

Also: If you wipe-out the very first mission on Ironman, it asks if you want to restart the mission.  I'm guessing that got added in after someone had a very frustrating start.

[Xuri]

Also, I'm getting more and more skeptical about the correctness of the hit percentages... I've missed too many 96% shots now to trust it!

About one in 25? ;)

Hehe quite possibly. However, yesterday I missed two of those during the same mission, over two sequential turns, which made me facedesk and promptly proclaim my woes at the top of my voice so all my neighbors would know of my plight.

[Murgos]

Hehe quite possibly. However, yesterday I missed two of those during the same mission, over two sequential turns, which made me facedesk and promptly proclaim my woes at the top of my voice so all my neighbors would know of my plight.

The thing about probabilities is it's not just you.  A 98% chance it hit is 1 in 50.  If everyone who plays each gets 2 98% chance to hit opportunities per mission then it's a ~4% chance to miss one of them.  If there are 1,000,000 people playing one map per day then 40,000 people will miss a 98% chance at least once.  400 will miss both shots.

If everyone plays two maps per day then someone will miss all four opportunities every few days!.  This progression continues with more people playing and more opportunities occuring, and what this means is that there is someone somewhere who is going to miss MANY 98% chances to hit during his/her entire play through (and there will be quite a few people who make every single one) and probably rant on a forum somewhere about how the game is rigged and broken.

It's probably not going to be you, or anyone reading this, but it could be.

e: maybe a more interesting example is missing 5 75% shots in a row.  (1-p)^n means that for 1,000,000 samples about 1000 of those will miss all five consecutive shots...  It's easy to think it's a broken system but people really don't get math and then like to post about it in all-caps.

[kildorn]

Snipers are meh until squad sight, and godly when fully leveled. Assaults are always good, but I tend to swap out the shotgun for a rifle since laser/plasma rifles do more than enough damage. Supports are crazy freaking good in general. Take the +3 movement skill early on. They will wind up being a key part of your breach and reaction teams. Heavies are mandatory (HEAT rounds and Rockets/Heavy Plasma make all the mean shit like discs and pods later on manageable)

Really, I like all the classes besides low tier snipers. Who suck, badly.

[Merusk]

I forgot to mention I had my first map where my Sniper could climb up and perch last night.   "Damn Good Ground" perk + Squad Sight = half-dead Muton with just the starter rifle. 

[Furiously]

I unlocked the snipe twice and plasma sniper rifles at the same time. I am death incarnate.