licker

Did I say it was easy? No. Apparently I mistook what you meant by vanilla, vanilla implies non-ironman. Of course, non-ironman is a cake walk if you want it to be that way. The game is clearly possible to lose, and many attempts should be loses, on ironman at least. There is a large rogue-like effect in the randomness. I sell off corpses almost as soon as I get them to keep the engineering projects rolling. I can still beat the game. Your contention that you can't sell corpses (and be successful in game) is simply incorrect. Another example of your assumption that you know better than anyone else. You don't. It's not tactics even, it's a strategic decision to invest in multiple fighters, and to limit your exposure from satellites to only 2 continents early so that you can afford it. It also works. It may or may not be optimal, that's a different discussion. Panic is not so totally unmanageable from failing to shoot down UFOs (as opposed to ignoring them) that you can't send up a fighter and recall it if it can't shoot down the UFO. It's also the strategy of how you manage the continents, and if you are willing to let countries/continents go or not. Which is a mod and not vanilla nor 2nd wave. Harder or easier... debatable. More UFO missions means more goodies compared to simple abduction missions. Fair enough. Yet you also said you played Vanilla. I did, but your comments on them were nonsensical, which is why I wondered if you were talking about something else. Again, there is more than one way to do this. Psi armor obviously, but also Titan is perfect in some situations and AA is very poor for some maps. Matter of fact I rarely bother with AA, not because it's not useful, but because I prefer Ghost for the sniper. Also depends on how you build your sniper. And again, the debate about optimal is interesting, but clearly, there are different builds which are effective. *shrug* that's not even the best example of obvious choice, and it's not so obvious depending on how you want to play your snipers. Optimal build is great, but some of the fun is playing with a different team composition. Many people feel squad sight is just too powerful, so they play without it. Are they right or wrong? It's a game, play it how you want to play it. Kind of like in the OG, how you can just level everything with BBs and psi if that's how you want to do it. More? Equal for plasma vs. light plasma, otherwise I don't think so. And light plasma isn't the 'proper' weapon for plasma tech either is it? I don't see the same things you do then. Maybe we are looking in different places. What made XCom XCom is different for everyone anyway, and you will still persist to tell us that you somehow are the speaker for that topic as well. Was it the TU system that made Xcom Xcom? Was it the pointless and tedious equipping screen? Was it the broken and trivial economic system? Was it the layers of stats and information which wasn't really necessary? Was it the combination of all of that? Oh, of course, the above are my opinions, and I enjoyed UD quite a bit in it's day, though Apoc was actually my favorite XCom. It's clearly an excellent game. EU is a different game, cut from the same cloth, but taken in a different direction. Neither good nor bad, just different, which will appeal to some more than others. It's not without it's warts, but neither was the OG. Preferring one over the other is fine, it's expected. Trashing one just doesn't make a lot of sense to me though. Implying that people who prefer one over the other are retarded is, well, retarded.

I almost certainly have not done what? Completed the game on I/I? ROFLMAO at I/V. Essentially though, you are simply wrong, maybe you are not very good at the game, I don't know, I don't care. What I do know is that there is precious little reason to save piles of corpses, and piles of corpses is usually what you wind up with. Especially on Impossible, since you know... there are more aliens and all that... and... even more especially on Marathon, since, again, even more aliens over the time it takes to finish research projects. Err... there's more than one way to shoot down a UFO. I never, and I mean NEVER, build consumables. I probably should, but meh, you don't really need to. You can just send up to 4 Interceptors at the UFO, and that's usually good enough. Granted, that's expensive (in maintenance, hello NA bonus!), but it's an alternative. Upgrade to plasma cannons ASAP, and you don't even need firestorms for anything other than a battleship. Now that's a legit criticism of the NG though, the alien ships are fairly uninteresting unless you force the battleships to come. Also, letting UFOs go can increase panic, but does nothing to your funding, unless the country leaves as a result. Letting UFOs go can lead to battleships showing up (and indeed people do this intentionally to get battleships), but that's not guaranteed either. Battleships can lead to panic and loss of funding if they shoot down a sat. I've followed it, you just do not present cogent arguments. What specs? Ammo? That's not a spec, there's simply a different mechanic involved in how they treat ammo in EU than the OG. And that mechanic is 'cleaner' in that you don't need to bother equipping 10s of clips, though you do still need to bother to take a turn to reload as necessary. Like the abstraction or don't like it, it boils down to basically the same thing in the end. Also pistols do have purely unlimited ammo without ever needing a reload. And you can even do some decent damage with pistols if you build your sniper that way. I never had to manage inventory tightly, and the utility of other weapons was purely cosmetic. I don't care why you wanted 26 soldiers either, a lot of people liked having 26 soldiers, I found it tedious and unwieldy. That's not to say it's bad, I just didn't like the micro hell it entailed. Now skip ahead to EU, and wow, a tight squad of 4-6 (or less if you want) with varying abilities and weapon choices. That tickled me in the right place. But rather than just admit that different mechanics can be fun for different people, you want to tell me I'm retarded, and prove that EU is for dummies and no one with a brain could possibly have anything good to say about it.

What are you talking about? Real bounties? How some game handles it? What? Dude, these are games, they are not remotely close to realistic if you want to take the time to pick holes through their mechanics. If you prefer one mechanic over another. That's freaking great for you. Understand though, that your preference doesn't make that mechanic superior in any way, other than to you. So stop with your idiocy of slamming every aspect of the NG as being dumb or bad or retarded or whatever other shallow pointless argument you want to pretend you have. You like one set of mechanics over another. Yet you argue as though your opinion is the only one which matters. I didn't present defense of the NG before because why the hell would I? I'm not going to convince you of anything, your minds already made up. It's just entertaining to see people like you spin out of control when someone challenges your personal convictions. Incorrect. But hey, don't let your opinion of how to play the game intrude on reality. And your opinion, then, only counts as a summers breeze opinion. Seriously, do you actually think you're that special that you can discount everyones opinion which doesn't agree with yours? By the way, that's a rhetorical question. Say what? A choice of what? Weapon? Armor? Grenade/scopre/kit/arc??? It becomes rapidly apparent that you have not spent much time playing the game on a meaningful difficulty, or with the latest 2nd wave options. Which is fine, since you don't like the game, I wouldn't expect you to spend time playing it. So then why are you babbling about it as though you have clue one about the difference between Light Plamsa and Heavy and why you would choose one over another depending on your squad composition as well as individual soldier statistics? All weapons in the game have unlimited ammo. You mean time between reloads I suppose. Foundry project ammo conservation. *shrug* You brought along junk because you wanted to pretend that load outs mattered in the OG. The hint is that they didn't, other than for folks who wanted to pretend that they did. And look, that's great if that's how you wanted to enjoy it. But it's not exactly a great selling point. Look, I can equip my dudes with zillions of useless items because it makes them feel more like a real soldier to have back up weapons and 10s of clips! Even though mechanics wise it was meaningless to actually do this. Which is part of the reason why many people felt the economic system in the OG was broken and silly. I'm not going to argue that the system in the NG doesn't have it's own particular issues, but that doesn't mean that the OG was any better in that area.

You know, I don't know you, but you certainly come off as a rather large female hygiene product. Few intelligent people praise it? What does that actually mean? Have you consulted all the intelligent people who have played the game? Do you just like making inflammatory comments for no particular reason? Flexible financial system? That's rich. The financial system was so abusable that it quickly became utterly pointless. So you liked that you could essentially ignore all the countries in the world because their funding was completely unnecessary? Flexible. Sure, you can call it that. It's probably even correct to call it that. But flexible was broken as hell. And the inventory system? Full inventory system? Where you just equipped everybody with the same load out because there was precious little reason not to do it that way? Well I can see that. Some people like that, some people find limitations (no matter how 'unrealistic') to be more interesting. To each their own. But neither is exactly an example of good or bad design, just examples of different design. You can read between the lines to see which one I prefer, but I'm not going to say that the other one was bad. Your issues with EU are yours, but they in no way constitute a critique of what is good or bad about that game, other than from your very subjective point of view. Sure, we're all subjective with our points of view. Some of us are just much less like the french word for shower about it.

Nah... I'm quite familiar with TUs and how to use them. I just don't like using them any more I found the 2 move and perk system to actually increase tactical decision making, because the move/shoot/move cheese sequence is not possible. That and super soldiers with mega TUs just feel abusive to me, 3+ shots depending on which game... Large squad size on top of that is just level the map and go home. Granted, I have not played a lot of Xeno, and not the latest builds, so maybe they address that somehow, but the issue still usually comes down to AI, and how it can handle it's decision making in a TU system. As I think we can all agree, the AI in the old games was... well... bad. The only real issues one had was with shots from the dark and the occasional mind control rocket At first I resisted the new games combat model, but after putting in ~80h on it, I've come to really enjoy it. It makes the AI 'better' because it has a simpler set of rules to follow. It doesn't really make the game play any easier either, and it requires one to still use good tactics to achieve optimal results. At least on classic and impossible. Complaints about it on easy and normal are to be expected, but meh, easy and normal are really forgiving of bad tactics. Granted, once you get good at any game, it gets easy, but that's no different for any mechanic. And TUs just feel so clunky and slow, especially on a bigger map. I suppose there is something to be said for the gradual creep across a map not knowing when you'll bump into the buggers, but after doing a couple like that... wow, the next 10 times just feel like wasted time to me. That's the other unexpected 'advantage' I've come to find in the new XCOM. The hand crafted maps, while repetitive for some (though frankly 'random' maps are also repetitive since they usually are not very well constructed), lend themselves to certain fixed positions and (occasionally) interesting and tight positional battles. The flanking mechanism forces you to not just stand and exchange shots with the aliens, because over the long run that's a losing proposition. This is so true on impossible it's not even funny. I used to think that random maps were the only way. Now I appreciate that random maps really weren't very random, nor were they very much fun when they were too big. It's just a grid with a bunch of tile specific junk plopped down on it. Once you've seen them a couple of times, you've seen them all. At least the hand crafted maps are designed for specific 'choke' points, or present a problem in areas of low to no cover. Though again, once you've played them a few times, you know what to expect, but I knew what to expect on the 'random' maps too. Anyway, not here to poop on xeno, I think xeno looks great myself, just surprised with my own reaction to XCOM.

It's interesting that on the 2K forums many people are now expressing how they simply cannot go back to a TU based tactical system. Frankly, I agree with them. After trying to replay some UFO:ET missions... it was just painful. Sadly, Xenonaughts feels the same to me now. The simple elegance and simplicity of the 2 action system seems to have ruined TUs for me. Needless and often irritating click clicking Oh well. Funny how perceptions change. For what it's worth (though I know many will disagree), the 2 action system does not feel dumbed down or limited at all to me. Rather, TU systems feel over complicated and offers too many ways to 'cheese' various scenarios. That and TUs just play so slowly, and feel more prone to misclicks since you have to be far more of a bean counter to try and maximize your movement/shots/actions. That's just not really fun to me anymore.

Wha? There's a cut scene for every autopsy... Kind of the same every time, but it is there. I dunno though, bailing on a game because it doesn't have the kind of autopsy pics you want? Your call man, your call...

Don't need too... You don't need to research plasma weapons either... Does everything in a game *need* to be done? All you need to do is not to lose more than 7 nations, well, and win some tactical missions, and research the priority techs, and build a couple facilities and the skeleton key, arc thrower... Need... Such a silly word. My personal want, is for XCOMEU to change the bomb missions to base/hanger defense missions. So the aliens invade a hanger/base, set up a bomb, and you have to send your troops to defuse it before they blow up your hanger. Main base defense would be fine too, but meh, not the biggest deal of any thing. Some people just like more 'builder' game play I suppose. To me, it just takes more time away from the tactical missions. If the tactical missions aren't any good then the rest wouldn't matter to me anyway.

Different strokes... I love it, but I don't have an pretensions about what it was supposed to be as many people over on the Take2 forums seem to have. I think it works really well with the design they chose, the reduced amount of micro tediousness which is a downer for some is a major plus for me, the tactical combat with the cover mechanic is different and enjoyable. That said there are certainly some issues, and some room for improvements. Then again what game these days doesn't come out that way (to varying degrees obviously). I think there's plenty of room in the TBS world for XCOM:EU as well as Xenonauts.

I don't quite follow your logic. A new game will attract new fans simply because it's a new game. Whether it borrows heavily from something in the past or strikes out on its own direction. What we are talking about in this genre is limited in just how far it can go before it's no longer 'Strategic Management and Tactical Squad Battles' anymore. The name and the story are the least important aspects (unless the story is simply horrible). The game mechanics and the look are what will ultimately sell copies *and* keep the community playing it and pimping it. A name can carry a lot of initial sales though, but look at what happened with MoO3, and MoO was the gold standard for space based 4x, but that is no longer true because MoO3 took the name and the IP and then proceeded to shit all over them with broken mechanics and uncompelling game play^1. Xenonauts is *not* XCom, but it is a spiritual successor. It will attract new fans to the genre (hopefully), but would probably have attracted even more if it could be branded as XCom. UFO: ET2 is also *not* XCom, but it too will bring new fans to the genre, just as the latest actual XCom game will. None of them are direct remakes though, but most fans probably don't want a direct remake anyway. ^1 for the record, I enjoyed MoO3 with the fan patch and some of the mods, it became quite a nice game, but the facts remain that its launch and subsequent mishandling by Atari and Quicksilver pretty much killed that franchise for the present. And that was a decade ago...

Well... It really isn't about the mechanics, it's about the IP related to the story/background/universe/... Clones still 'copy' a ton from their source material, but they (rarely?) borrow any of the actual background. Then again there's really only so many ways you can make story for games of this ilk, so there are bound to be similarities, but the names will be different, and there will be other tweeks. All of that is pretty immaterial in my opinion, what matters is the actual game play. Whether I'm on Earth, Mars, somewhere else doesn't matter, just give me intelligent bugs to shoot on interesting maps and I'll forgive just about any sci fi cliche.

My two favorite squad based tactical combat games are XCom:Apoc and JA2 (including Wildfire here...). Mostly I like these games because of the squad based combat and the 'advancement' of the troops. Throwing in research and air combat and other stuff is fine, it doesn't detract from anything when done well, but ultimately to me, if the missions suck, I won't bother with the game. I don't much care if you're shooting other mercs or aliens or animals or hello kitties. Now it's nice to have a good setting and story and all of that, even if it's not strictly necessary (to me). I don't mind the comparisons to XCom though, I mean what else do you compare it to? It's not a completely novel game in terms of either mechanics or basic story/setting.

I agree, the post about underwater missions was not stupid...

Hehe... You feel me though... right? [message received]