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

[Mrbloodworth]

In my current game, I'm doing a sort of whack a mole with them. This may be flawed. I'm Closest to filling up the EU.

[Goumindong]

Yay.. playing my game and finally decided to get the containment chamber... expect I've got to the point that most everything I get are mutons at worst... and capturing mutons doesn't trigger the story events.. so I'm not actually able to capture anything...

You probably already captured the thing you needed to capture and just missed it.

I tried that easter egg.  Some different builds than I'd have done but wow are they powerful. I certainly see the point of "In The Zone" after one-shotting 3 chryssalids in a row on a terror mission.   Cheated stats do that, I guess.  

Don't need cheated stats for that. In the Zone is stupid good for terror missions.

ed: That reminds me.  The nicknames are pretty great.  I haven't had one that I thought "well that's dumb" and only a few I've changed because it didn't fit my view of that character.  "Sheriff" is my favorite assault nick so far.  I got a support named "Deep pockets" yesterday.  

My support who had the most kills on my team... "Mr Clean"

Did you win your tactical missions? I'm not sure how you got 3 countries in red unless you're skipping missions?

If you don't do your two abduction missions in a particular continent and that continent has a 3 panic to start country you can lose one on the first month.

You can also lose one by failing to shoot down an alien ship.

In general you should expect at least one country to be 5 bars by the end of the first month (I.E. you have to save them with a satellite)

[koro]

I have been getting really shitty luck with abduction mission reward choices. Scientists and cash/recruits in the countries/regions with the most panic, but engineers in the areas with the least.

So now I'm way behind on engineers in order to keep panic under control.

[Ingmar]

Cash can turn into engineers anyway though, building a workshop or just satelliting somewhere that gives engineers monthly.

[koro]

Yeah, I've been turning the cash into base expansion, mostly for uplinks and clearing space to build workshops. Another hitch in the plan is that the majority of already-cleared spaces in my base are on the very bottom level, necessitating a lot of time-and-money-consuming excavation to build anything.

[Merusk]

My first game I made the mistake of rushing scientists and I was engineer blocked on a lot of stuff.  Lesson learned; let research handle itself.

This was underscored in my 2nd, now current, game where I built a lab 2 or 3 months ago.  I'm out of crap to research with only foundry projects remaining and my 63 scientists are sitting around sucking up money.  Useless science staff not even writing grants.  I blame Nebu!

Next game I'm not going to even go for the lab.  Once I cleared the base mission panic has remained totally manageable.  So I'm going to rush lasers and armor and then run up the firestorm ASAP, hopefully completing my first as I finish up the base mission.  That's the plan at least.

[HaemishM]

You do tend to get attached to your squad. 

Snipers:  "Ghost" and "Ice"
Supports: "Santa", "Atlas" and "Combo"
Heavies: "Tectonic" and "Flash"
Assault: "Chops"

I renamed the Israeli recruit I got Malachi Rothstein (been watching a lot of Boardwalk Empire) and not only did he survive, he's become an invaluable sniper nicknamed 'Lockdown.' I renamed one of my recruits Meat Dunn and now that's he's leveled into a heavy, I'm thinking of nicknaming him Rock N' Roll. It's becoming a regular GI Joe up in this bitch.

[Ingmar]

My first game I made the mistake of rushing scientists and I was engineer blocked on a lot of stuff.  Lesson learned; let research handle itself.

This was underscored in my 2nd, now current, game where I built a lab 2 or 3 months ago.  I'm out of crap to research with only foundry projects remaining and my 63 scientists are sitting around sucking up money.  Useless science staff not even writing grants.  I blame Nebu!

Next game I'm not going to even go for the lab.  Once I cleared the base mission panic has remained totally manageable.  So I'm going to rush lasers and armor and then run up the firestorm ASAP, hopefully completing my first as I finish up the base mission.  That's the plan at least.

Yeah the lab needs something else to make it worthwhile. Scientists are a bit of a trap, you really only want enough to hit the things you need as you need them, there's not really a lot of advantage of hitting techs early since you could theoretically outpace your acquisition of new things to research. Engineers on the other hand make stuff cheaper which is a win pretty much all the way through.

[Tannhauser]

The War on Aliens has taken a toll, but I still have three stalwarts who form the core of Earth's resistance.  We have the team leader Mickey "Axle" Knight from America.  Support.  He is the ace scout and medic.  His fellow colonel is Shane "The Mighty" Quinn, humanity's greatest sniper and the pride of Ireland.  My nickname for him. Game nickname is "Hex".  Lastly is Alejandro "Prototype" Lopez, the Heavy.  He lays down the law, Argentinean style.  Also rocks a mean 'stache.

 But there have been losses.  In memoriam:

Maj. Pranav "Psycho" Ranjaran -India-20 Kills
Sgt. Tony "The Bear Jew" Lowenstein-Israel-6 kills (my nickname; Game name is 'Vita')
and others.

The fight continues...

[lamaros]

Yay.. playing my game and finally decided to get the containment chamber... expect I've got to the point that most everything I get are mutons at worst... and capturing mutons doesn't trigger the story events.. so I'm not actually able to capture anything...

You probably already captured the thing you needed to capture and just missed it.

Nah, I got the outsider capture cutscene. Just nothing comes up when I capture mutons, at all. I am still stuck on 'capture a live alien' in objectives too. I'm not sure if it's a sequence error on my or the games behalf, or just a bug. Either way it's annoying. Will see what I can do but ironman means save testing is a no go. I have two outsider shards, which are not researched, but I can't research them. Bit wonky when I have titan armor and firestorms already in this game.

[Ingmar]

It might have to be a sectoid/thin man to count, which means you might need to wait for a council mission. I never see thin men outside of bomb/data retrieval type missions anymore.

[koro]

Even late in the game I'll occasionally see Thin Men in UFO crashes.

[Simond]

Sounds like a frustrating game.  Does the fun out weigh it?  I hate being frustrated and I am the type of guy who will reload until I save everyone on a map...  I do not like the idea of not rescuing abductees.

On the other hand, I'm slightly disappointed that the Smart UFO:EU Commander tactic for dealing with Terror missions got removed. In the original game, you lost points for each civilian killed by the aliens.

Admittedly this turned terror missions into "load everyone up with rocket launchers and autocannons loaded with HE rounds, break out the instant urban renewal" but they shouldn't have been attacked by aliens if they wanted to survive. 

[lamaros]

Yeah I got a thin man and it started working again.

[Evildrider]

Maybe it's just me, but when I go to the loadout screen I can't change anything.  It just shows my dude standing there and nothing to interact with.

[lamaros]

Bit of an idiot question: Made a shiv for the first time...how am I meant to upgrade it? I've done the research for plasma, but they don't get any loadout options, and I can't see where I'm meant to build them?

[HaemishM]

Third classic ironman playthrough is shot to shit. I made it to month 2, lost Mexico and Russia but was humming along with almost a full squad of promoted folks including 2 snipers. Got to a difficult abduction mission and was doing just fine against 6 floaters and 3 mutons until I got one of the mutons down to 1 HP. From then on, I couldn't hit shit, I started running out of ammo at just the wrong times and got leveled. The very next mission was a very difficult abduction mission in a cemetary that had 3 mutons and a goddamn cyberdisk that proceeded to skullfuck most of my team. I killed it, but then the remaining mutons bent the rest of my team over a car and had their way with them.

Tomorrow night, I start again.

[murdoc]

Tomorrow night, I start again.

I made it further with this play, but got a squad absolutely shredded in a Terror mission and promptly lost 3 countries.

Tomorrow night, I start again.

[koro]

Bit of an idiot question: Made a shiv for the first time...how am I meant to upgrade it? I've done the research for plasma, but they don't get any loadout options, and I can't see where I'm meant to build them?

The SHIV upgrades are done in the Foundry and are applied automatically.

[Ingmar]

What the ending lacked in coherency it made up in abruptness.  

EDIT:

[Pezzle]

Game bugged out, started again.  I give thanks to one of my Valkyrie

Captain Kanyakumari Chatterjee 'Disco'

Melting alien faces in a world that will never be!

[koro]

What the ending lacked in coherency it made up in abruptness.  

EDIT:

No, you have to

[Ingmar]

I never even saw one. Won too fast I guess? Classic/Ironman is up next.

[lamaros]

Bit of an idiot question: Made a shiv for the first time...how am I meant to upgrade it? I've done the research for plasma, but they don't get any loadout options, and I can't see where I'm meant to build them?

The SHIV upgrades are done in the Foundry and are applied automatically.

So my SHIV just doesn't get it? Or does flying shiv get something different?

[Goumindong]

So my SHIV just doesn't get it? Or does flying shiv get something different?

All SHIV's get all the upgrades. They start out with autocannons and can be upgraded to a laser cannon, plasma cannon, and adding the ability to suppress.

SHIV's get whatever the "best" weapon upgrade you have is.

[lamaros]

I've researched and everything for plasma, but my flying shiv still has a minigun. What a rort!

[Trippy]

You have to research at Foundry.

[lamaros]

You have to research at Foundry.

I did. Oh well, buggy run finally finished. Now to beat impossible ironman and get all the other achievements.

[amiable]

So experts help me out, I'm playing the game for a third restart on classic after getting about half way.  I'm not doing ironman, and I am guilty of restarting missions if I am beset b a series of mishaps...

Anyway regarding build, I think I know how I wan tot go with assault and support classes, but I am confused about heavies  and snipers....

On snipers:  

I am really torn between snapshot and squad sight.  I've found both to be really useful, any thoughts on which way folks prefer to go?  I lean toward snapshot solely because it is more flexible and lets your sniper keep up with the team.

On heavies:

Is it wrong to want three heavies on a 6 man team?  I like to have one "bulldozer" with all the rocket abilities and 2 suppression experts that lock down enemies for my sniper and assault to pickoff.  Also:  the first game I took holo-targetting on these guys but now I feel bullet swarm is probably the way to go in all cases, do folks have an argument supporting holo-targetting over bullet swarm.

Also:  when should I build alien containment, should it be a build priority or can I do without it until later?  Thanks all!

[koro]

I prefer Squad Sight on Snipers, mostly due to playstyle. The -20% CTH on Snap Shot hurts, and you have to toss a Skeleton Suit/Archangel/Ghost armor on them and to try to make up for the huge CTH loss with Damn Good Ground, which I no longer take on Squad Sighters, preferring Gunslinger for the flexibility. My train of thought is that if you have to bring a Sniper close up to your squad - which can happen at times, depending on map - you're better off using upgraded pistols with Gunslinger than Snap Shot.

Three Heavies is probably a bit much; I run two most times, and even that's uncommon. One Heavy is the rocketeer, the other is more suppression-oriented. Holotargeting is quite nice (and applies to Suppression), but I didn't take it this go-around. I typically use one Heavy and one Support for suppression duties, the other taking over suppressing while the previous one reloads.

[eldaec]

Month 1 priorities:
Power gen
1 satellite
1 workshop

Month 2 priorities:
1 workshop
1 uplink
3 satellites

Build alien containment only when you have all that accounted for. You must build an uplink and the satellites for it every month till you have total coverage, at thst point you'll be finding the base and panic is less of a worry. Arguably you want an OTS first as well.

Squad sight snipers are the best piece in the game. He doesn't need to keep up, sit him on top of a truck or building and he will murder everything from the starting area. The only mission he's not broken in is the large ufos. Snapshot is fine, but he doesn't really play the same role. Always have a squad sight guy, optionally you could bring a snap shorter as well.

Regarding heavies, they are fine, but sounds like you undervalue the mobility of assaults and supports, both are much better at flanking. Also high level shotguns are broken, and high end support abilities are very cool.

[DraconianOne]

On the other hand, Alien Containment means Interrogations. Interrogations means Research Credits. Research Credits means halving Research time and getting better weapons and armour earlier. (That's 6/7 days until getting Laser Rifles rather than 12/14 depending on number of scientists you have.)

[Xilren's Twin]

My MVP this first playthrough has been Col Freida 'Combo' Vogel, the Psychic Support powerhouse.  She my German angel of mercy AND death.
Now that i've gotten the hang of it, i would say Normal is a little too easy for Xcom vets; currently running 8 Colonels, 2 Majors and a few lowers but have good variety and 3 psychics
Lost Egypt in month 2 but that was it; just took down a battleship and can now research the fusion lance. :)  Once this is done I'll be diving into classic ironman next.

Love it.  Havent event cracked Dishonored yet.

[koro]

On the other hand, Alien Containment means Interrogations. Interrogations means Research Credits. Research Credits means halving Research time and getting better weapons and armour earlier. (That's 6/7 days until getting Laser Rifles rather than 12/14 depending on number of scientists you have.)

This can't be overstated. On my first Classic win, I didn't capture jacksquat except what was required of me, and I was kind of scrambling for better tech come Muton May. On my current game? My primary Assault's been capture-crazy (her nickname of "Banzai" is well-earned), nabbing thin men, sectoids, and mutons left and right (with a floater or two for good measure). With a bit of a rush for South America in early April, I was in full carapace armor and lasers for everyone come May 1st, when I usually have to settle for one or the other by that time. I'm about a week from the end of May now, and I've gotten enough plasma pistols and rifles (both light and otherwise) to last me the rest of the game.

[Rasix]

I never even saw one. Won too fast I guess? Classic/Ironman is up next.

I think I saw one in early October or late September.

Just won at 189 days on Normal.  Yah, it's a little too easy if you've played this type of game before.  Took a month or so into my second attempt to really get a good grasp for the game, however.  Managing panic and satellites was not something I was initially doing well with.

That being said, if this was ironman, I'd have lost the last fight.  Easy to cheese, however, especially if you have two snipers rocking plasma.  I'd have preferred another heavy, the blaster launcher is a bit crazy in that setting.