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

[Goumindong]

Once leveled, Support gets Medkits AND grenades!    (Or stuns if you really need to cap something.)

I'm finding Support; if leveled properly into a specific role; is nearly as OP as snipers.  +3 move, Supression and deep pockets!?  Hello my little capture machine.  I wonder if the stun launcher is in, or if I can only use the improved sungun  from The Foundry project.

Blaster Bombs yes, Stun Launcher no.

Also, support tends to be the weakest of the classes, though the +3 move is very nice.

[koro]

My Supports do really well. I have three of them; my main one is a mix of both trees (who also turned out to be psychic), one is full field medic, and the third is full down the right-hand tree, with the exception of getting Dense Smoke instead of Combat drugs. Each one does really nicely, and light plasma rifles are probably their best weapons, freeing up both inventory slots for other things instead of SCOPEs to boost their middling Aim. Smoke grenades are lifesavers, and they're arguably better-suited for suppression than a Heavy.

Also, remember that "Second Wave" stuff that was talked about a few pages ago, where beating the game would unlock extra options to enable for your next playthrough? Well...

Regarding "Second Wave"
Hey guys,

The "Second Wave" settings that some people have found by digging in to the game files was a feature that the team was toying around with, but it was not ever finished by the time the game released. It’s something the dev team at Firaxis is still interested in going back to and working on, but at this point we don’t have any firm plans to share.

And finally:


Ugggggggh.

[lamaros]

I thought I saw a screenshot with the second wave options button...

For enabling it, see here: http://xcom.the-craftsmen.com/forum/viewthread.php?thread_id=132

[Sophismata]

Sorry Sophismata, grenades are amazing.

They do three things:

1. Rarely miss.
2. Destroy cover and massively improve other shot %.
3. Do a fixed amount of damage (great for capture attempts).

On impossible, especially the early missions where pretty much every enemy shot is a dead rookie, they are vital. Only my snipers have scopes, and once levelled support gets metkits.

I agree with you; as I said, I often use ALL my grenades in EVERY mission.

This does not stop them being much worse than the XCom 1 grenades.

More game-y advice: If I was doing an impossible ironman I'd replay the first mission until you get it flawless, and then restart the game until you get a good steam square.

I've done the first mission a bunch of times, and I usually complete it with no casualties. Unfortunately, any soldiers wounded in the first mission are not available for the abduction mission due to recovery times. Best I've come out of it with was three healthy soldiers + one wounded, which was a good place to be for the abduction. Sadly, the abduction mission spawned 12 sectoids in one small area and the other 3 on my flank, and since plasma fire often destroys your cover it didn't go too well.

The most effective strat is turning out to be retreating once you find the aliens and letting them come to you one at a time, but it doesn't always work. Still, if you can force them to double move instead of shoot you've saved a life. Finally, light cover is a death sentence.

[koro]

I thought I saw a screenshot with the second wave options button...

For enabling it, see here: http://xcom.the-craftsmen.com/forum/viewthread.php?thread_id=132

Link doesn't work.

[apocrypha]

I can't stop playing this. I'm very glad I got an XBox controller though, means I can swap between sitting down with mouse & kb and standing up using the controller when I've been sitting down too long (anything over an hour and I get uncomfortable) 

Only playing on Normal and restarted a couple of times to get the early months right. My first game I didn't find how to build satellites until 3 months in. Since they weren't showing up in engineering I assumed I needed to research something... then I found the other tab on the engineering window. 2nd game I didn't twig that my steam vents were all on the bottom level until 3 months in. Third game is going great!

Choosing between Snapshot and Squad Sight on snipers is the toughest skilling choice for me. I've got one sniper with Snapshot and it's really, really useful. Many times he's saved the life of some other squaddie by being able to run into LOS and pop a shot off on a threatening ET. But Squad Sight is also the bees knees! If Assaults & Supports weren't so useful I'd take 2 Snipers every mission! I love that the game is full of these choices, where both options are good ones and you end up finding yourself being both glad of the choice you made and also wishing for the other option at the same time. Great design.

And I almost never use grenades... I want those weapon fragments dammit! I can probably get away without having to use them on Normal though, I'm sure they'd be more liberally thrown around if I was on a harder difficulty :)

[HaemishM]

Fuck me, Classic is hard and/or I am bad at games. 

My second playthrough was going well with 4 promoted soldiers (1 of each class). On an abduction mission into the construction site, I took a heavy, sniper with squadsight, a medkit support and a rookie just to get the rookie a level. Rookie runs out, gets in full cover and discovers 2 of the 6 sectoids on the map. Promptly gets shot, but not enough to kill him. I run my support up to him also in full cover thinking to heal his wound the next turn. However, a couple of sectoids have shots on my sniper so when the time comes to heal him, I choose to fire at one instead. Next turn, the sectoid comes around the corner, blasts the rookie to death which then makes my heavy and sniper panic. The heavy shoots the sniper for 5 points of damage. Next turn, the sniper buys it with his 1 HP, as well as the doctor. Then the heavy gets into a shootout with the last sectoid and loses, despite most of his shots being over 50% to hit.

From there it went downhill until I didn't have enough troops to field a full squad, ignored all the missions because of it, and promptly lost the game on the 2nd month.

It's way too late to start another game, but damnit, I REALLY REALLY want to. This game is fucking incredible. Easily game of the year.

[Sophismata]

Protip for multiplayer: stick with soldiers. They have more options and more customisability than the aliens, plus the aliens are finicky to control and can bug out.

Psionics is extremely strong, and a fantastic counter to mutons.

[koro]

Classic beat'd.


Now on to slogging through Classic Ironman again.

[Big Gulp]

If Assaults & Supports weren't so useful I'd take 2 Snipers every mission!

I do, unless it's a huge ship mission or an alien base mission where distances are too short to make them useful.  At that point I go to my formula of 2 assaults, 2 supports, 2 heavies.

But yeah, once you get archangel armor, put 'em on your snipers immediately.  Zip those bitches up to the highest ground you can find and you'll get cheap kills all day long.  Both my snipers are colonels, and with double tap and squad sight, nothing lives once my assault/scout troops have flushed it out.

[lamaros]

Impossible still bugged. New soldiers have more health than my veterans.

[Merusk]

Fuck me, Classic is hard and/or I am bad at games. 

I put a lot of the 'problems' some people have been having down to the last 10 years of game design.  ( was reading the forums at GameFaqs yesterday, lots of rage there.  Most games have been far, far more forgiving than the 90's games were and rewarded aggression over defense.  You have to play very defensively to be successful in X-Com. 

Lost another 3 countries in my 1st game last night.  At this point I'm going to write this one off as too much *effort* to attempt to reconcile while still learning. I only have 17 engineers and 2 satellites.  I'll come back to it.

[Big Gulp]

Most games have been far, far more forgiving than the 90's games were and rewarded aggression over defense.  You have to play very defensively to be successful in X-Com. 

Exactly.  I'll spend two turns on a regular basis having half of my squad reload while the other half is on overwatch.  I get the feeling the CoD generation doesn't have that kind of patience.

[eldaec]

Unlocked for me last night.

Yeah, this is good. It had me up till 3pm.

I like everything they've done in the strategic game. Still think they went a bit too far in the tactical game. That said I really like the class and skill system.

Oh god the cinematics and the tutorial are awful. There is absolutely no charm or wit in any of them. Also why are all the guns about 6 sizes too big for the character models.

[eldaec]

And I'm really struggling to see the point of the shotgun.

[lamaros]

Most games have been far, far more forgiving than the 90's games were and rewarded aggression over defense.  You have to play very defensively to be successful in X-Com.  

Exactly.  I'll spend two turns on a regular basis having half of my squad reload while the other half is on overwatch.  I get the feeling the CoD generation doesn't have that kind of patience.

I spent 35 mins clearing a UFO map only to find that there was just the one sectiod out there, and all I had left to actually do was charge the outsider and kill it. True story.

I'm getting cocky - haven't failed an impossible mission so badly that it's caused a reload for about 6 missions. Yet to see cyberdisks, though. Also I am about to fail the strategy level...

Ninja edit: The shotgun is a boss. I dunno why you wouldn't use it.

The rookie bug is pissing me off though. My reward sniper has the most health of any unit on my squad, and unfortunately I've lost so many now that I have to take some of the newbies with me.

[Amaron]

Does invading the base early increase the difficulty ahead of schedule?

And I'm really struggling to see the point of the shotgun.

It will make far more sense later.

[lamaros]

I was going to post a bunch of my tips, but I see a guy on the 2k forums already did it for me.

Here are a bunch of things I endorse. No major spoilers.

[koro]

There is a caveat to the above post's #7 though.

[HaemishM]

And I'm really struggling to see the point of the shotgun.

Get close enough to use it on anything and you will struggle no more. It is a one-shot kill on most things especially early.

[Tannhauser]

Is there a way to send two interceptors at a UFO?  I have played for eight hours straight this morning and I'm about to dive back in.  I may start a new game, every country is going red and I'm on a slow slide to defeat.  Learned a lot though.

[Trippy]

Has anybody on the PC with more than 99 saved games figured out how to fix things so the list of games works properly again? I tried deleting some but that ended up deleting the wrong games including the most recent saves (fortunately I made a backup of everything before attempting).

[Xuri]

Hm. How about this: Go into \Documents\My Games\XCOM - Enemy Unknown\XComGame\SaveData\ and then delete based on modified date, avoiding the most recent ones?

[Trippy]

That doesn't work. It keeps a list of the saved games in the profile.bin file (presumably for caching purposes) and the list of saved games is still screwed up (not sorted properly). Basically once you create the file save99 all hell breaks lose. The list of games is not longer ordered by creation time and the delete game button deletes the wrong files or doesn't delete anything at all.

[koro]

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh! Failed a VIP mission and lost my best Assault. Thin man beaned my wounded Assault literally halfway across the map in heavy cover while Hunkered Down, then proceeded to poison spit the VIP. The VIP was literally one turn away from the extraction point and saving both himself and my Assault, but no. No. He HAD to panic with NO GODDAMN ENEMIES LEFT and then RUN AWAY FROM THE FUCKING EXTRACTION POINT.

[eldaec]

Do you guys even try to complete the early terror sites? I'm finding them an easy way to lose all my guys.

[Mrbloodworth]

Welcome to X-com. We will be watching.

[Merusk]

Do you guys even try to complete the early terror sites? I'm finding them an easy way to lose all my guys.

Completion of a terror site = More than 25% of civvies saved, IMO.

I think if you save 50% you get a "good" rating.  Don't worry as you hear the dying screams... it just means you know where the aliens are. 

[Tannhauser]

Terror missions are really tough.  I was doing well with two vets and three rookies until

[Dark_MadMax]

Do you guys even try to complete the early terror sites? I'm finding them an easy way to lose all my guys.

Hmm  never lost terror mission yet, I did lose once over 50% of civilians  and still counted as complete

[Trippy]

Has anybody on the PC with more than 99 saved games figured out how to fix things so the list of games works properly again? I tried deleting some but that ended up deleting the wrong games including the most recent saves (fortunately I made a backup of everything before attempting).

Found this thread which has the solution that worked for me.

Basically make a backup of all the files in SaveData but put the backup(s) *outside* of the SaveData folder (i.e. not a sub folder within it). Then delete all the saves you don't want and the profile.bin file. I was getting screwed up trying to fix the save game listing cause my backups were in the SaveData folder.

[lamaros]

Just fucked up my second impossible playthrough.

Three missions in, no one has died, only one critically injured... but I forgot to build my satellite in time as I forgot about the 5 day launch period. Bleh. Going to have to restart.

[Quinton]

Still working through my original Normal playthrough.  I've restarted from saves before missions once or twice when I blundered into a completely brutal full-party wipe, but otherwise have accepted the assortment of severe injuries and casualties as the price of the war for planet earth.  My latest mission was my first encounter with the armored walker things and the Ethereals.  The latter was not fun, but I managed to survive the mission with only one loss, and now I think I'm about in the end-game and it's going to get uglier.

[Ratman_tf]

The first base assault stomped on my nuts. I tried to ironman past it, but the game quickly went to shit. Losing a whole squad to that base put me so far behind.
So I reloaded and moved one. square. at. a. time. to make sure my squad could support each other, and be on overwatch. Only lost one trooper to the Sectoid leader's mind control, and had to put him down.

[Ingmar]

Trucking along on Normal. My memorial has like 15 people on it, lost two countries, but things are under control now.