JonVanCaneghem

I've been playing on Veteran difficulty, and having no problems so far. I do not save-scum either, and troop losses have become very infrequent. Teams of 3 have been working fine, especially with the force multiplier that is the scout car. I eventually plan to play the hardest mode, and perhaps that will change my perspective... I'm also not totally inflexible and will be willing to adapt as mission areas get larger. I'm looking forward to adding a new role to each team once I get a new dropship, probably a rifle/shotgun guy. In general terms, it's all about attack vectors. If you create one big clump or wedge of 8 men, you are begging to be flanked. Relying on reaction fire is exceptionally dangerous in my experience, because it's entirely possible you miss and the alien gets free shots, something to avoid at all costs. Cover and crouching is an okay way to prevent lots of hits, but concealment virtually guarantees you won't get shot at. By concealment, I mean the types of terrain that block line of sight (walls and other large obstacles). The weakness of concealment is an enemy approaching from the side, which is all but guaranteed to happen if you move in one big group (presumably all moving the same direction). So the way to be safe in concealment is to clear the terrain to your flanks, since aliens do tend to roam the map. Each team goes to claim the corners, which allows them to then move in the same direction on the map. Typically, one team will meet with more resistance, and 99 percent of the time, this means they are headed toward the UFO. This team's progress will be slower, but that's fine. The other team is likely going to be covering more ground and meeting less resistance, clearing away a lot more fog and removing uncertainty about the flank of the other team. The scout typically fills in the gap between teams, and remains in position to assist either team, effectively meaning that either squad can instantly jump from a 3 to a 5 in terms of threat level. It also can move to destroy annoying enemy cover, preventing the teams from getting bogged down. Primarily though, its job is to spot aliens. Those headlights are wonderful to have on night missions too. To simplify: Phase 1 - Take the corners Both teams advance along the starting map edge with their one flank covered by the scout. These are the "easy corners" since usually the UFO will be on the other end of the map. Once you've hit those corners, you now have teams who only need to move in one direction, and will very infrequently take contact from the sides. Phase 2 - Push the front Advance both teams cautiously, putting them in points of concealment, not just cover. Never be spotted by an alien, always do the spotting yourself. Try to keep a rough line of frontage, so that no team advances too far ahead and gets flanked. Phase 3 - Take the other corners There will likely be one major pocket of resistance as well as a few scattered aliens on the rest of the map. Once the last two corners are cleared, you can then safely approach the UFO using the sides of the ship as full concealment. Scout car can gobble up any remaining fog of war that concerns you, though you eventually get a feel for where aliens tend to hang out. It can also watch for aliens making sallying efforts, though the idea is not to watch the door straight on, but at an angle. You just want to know if aliens are staying outside or going back in. Typically one or two aliens might try to make attempts to push out of the UFO, but the majority will remain inside. Phase 4 - Take the ship At this point the teams re-unite and breach as normal. I find that rarely are any aliens at the other end of the map to the sides of the UFO itself, which is really kind of silly of the aliens. It leaves a perfect way to approach the entrance without being observed by those aliens who keep popping the door open looking to take pot shots and re-close the door. Divide and conquer does apply to this strategy, as you divide the enemy's attention. I don't know too much about the AI yet, but it appears that once xenonauts are spotted by one alien, others will move in to support. Since the enemy is taking contact in two or three places on the map, you don't have a situation in which all aliens are making a bee-line to your one squad (from multiple angles). By using this method, your forces only have one "front" with which to contend, and so the majority of contact will be taken from more expected angles. This allows teams to utilize points of concealment effectively, and prevent enemies from getting to fire at you on their turns. In fact, I tend to advance my teams fairly tightly to make best use of concealment. You never do this if the team has been spotted, as the last thing you want is burst fire suppressing all of them at once or a grenade taking them all down. The only potential threat (so far) is the reaper rush, though they've never actually succeeded in killing one of my men. They will typically hilariously approach my scout car, only to look utterly confused by being unable to reproduce with it. Then I simply set up a charge for the reaper that's too far away for it to move and then attack. On the following turn, I get to choose how it dies (unless it gets pistol/shotgunned to death on approach first). I do take reapers into mind now when I spot sebilians, and it usually means taking maps more slowly and leaving more distance between troopers and the unknown.

I usually deal with corners using a scout car. They have incredibly good movement and most reaction fire from aliens will be of the single shot variety, unlikely to take the thing out. If your troops are close behind, you can have them follow up for the kill, since the alien will have expended his overwatch. I divide and conquer with my team, despite only having 6 troops and the scout car. I make 2 teams of 3, who explore different sections of the map. The scout car can assist either team, and can be quickly repositioned if either team gets mired in a tough situation. I always take the rocket launcher car, as it is so immensely useful. It is so much more effective than a rocket launching soldier could ever be, being able to snap fire two rockets per turn if needed. Insane mobility and relatively immense durability.. this thing is practically a third fire team. As the two fire teams typically advance along the perimeters of the map, the scout car can handle the mid-field in the awkward first few turns where the fire teams haven't claimed the first two map corners yet (the two corners nearest the dropship). Disembarking from the dropship on turn 1 becomes relatively painless, as the scout car can roll out, put eyes on the surroundings, and allow the troops to better plan their approaches. On to the troops... Each fire team consists of (early game) three troop types. Each team has one "breacher," which is my term for a guy with pistol and shield, grenades, stun rod and med kit. He is the point man of each fire team, and is the guy who pushes back the fog of war (if the car isn't around). This honorable position is typically occupied by a lower ranking soldier, since he isn't really called upon to make crucial shots and will receive more fire than the other two members of the team. It is absolutely still vital to advance cautiously and not rely on the shield.. the shield needs to be saved for the UFO breach if at all possible. A nice benefit of the pistol is that it is a good training weapon... easy to perform reaction fire with and doesn't cost many TUs to take pot shots. If I recall shots don't need to connect to grant ACC exp. I've also had plenty of times where a point-blank pistol shot finished off a wounded alien inside a UFO. Next comes our heavy, who carries the LMG with one reload. Since this is an early game guide, I'm going to assume we're only talking about up to medium sized UFOs. Running with two heavies, one on each team, I have NEVER run out of ammo when taking a single backup reload for each. A med kit and a couple grenades rounds out this guy nicely. I find the key to using heavies is putting them in full concealment rather than crouched behind cover. I try to position them in spaces which are one step away from good firing lines. They can usually walk one step and then fire, but you need to anticipate which directions. This will always be somewhere further back then our fearless breacher. I never attempt to use the LMG as an overwatch tool, it's simply too dangerous, so I will sometimes intentionally burn TUs if it might be a problem. Use those TUs to get into a better position. A heavy that can't use his gun should always have a grenade of some type to toss, especially considering how inflexible heavy weapons can be. Finally each has a Team Leader. This is typically a higher ranked officer, carrying a sniper rifle with a shotgun in his backpack and the best armor available. The sniper rifle means he can help teams advance across open ground, while the shotgun comes out if there are reapers around or when the team needs to pass through more cramped terrain. An added benefit of the shotgun is that it can be easily tossed to a breacher whose shield has been destroyed. As always, a couple grenades and a medkit round them out nicely. Early game, I find strength to be a key stat, as it allows you to load the troops down with enough gear to be really useful to the team. Just don't recruit anyone with insanely low bravery and you should be fine. Most of my kills don't rely on immense accuracy, whether it be grenade kills/gassing by my breachers or burst fire from the heavies. The accuracy dependent sniper rifle is typically in the hands of a capable soldier who can aim a shot for 95 percent to hit a good portion of the time.

Do crash site missions change/get more difficult the longer you wait to do them? Sometimes it seems like when I wait for daylight the aliens are a bit more "on the ball." Or is there literally no disadvantage for handling crash sites during the day?

I found the combat maps to be over-designed. As a result of there being far too few soldiers in the field, you couldn't have too much randomness in terms of how much cover was available. They had some interesting ideas in terms of mobile weapons platforms that could be used as cover, but there was never a real need for them (also they are a pretty big waste of a ship slot). There were just so few maps, and you always started in the same places in every map, that it became hard to want to replay it. The way ballistics were modeled was a disappointment. Shots fired in X-com each traced their own path, and the "cover system" just naturally flowed from the fact that a bullet might hit something else first. EU didn't even really model bullet paths, and shooting through walls really killed immersion.

You beat me to it! I think a good way to calculate suppression value would be something like, Suppression - range to target = suppression damage. Yes, I realize super-long range weapons wouldn't suppress very much (unless firing from up close), but that's not really their bag. Snipers are doing their job best when nobody knows they are there. You don't WANT to suppress your targets as a sniper, because then they hide in cover and you can't take em out. Ideally, they have no idea you are shooting at them until they are dead. If the job of a machine gun is to be loud and scary while not necessarily hitting that much, sniper rifles are at the opposite end of the spectrum. To clarify: Taking cover from sniper rifles is a logical move in your advantage. Being suppressed by machine gun fire is a fear response that is intentionally caused by an aggressor. EDIT: Another reason for range decreasing suppression damage that I just thought of... What about the melee attacking type aliens (assuming there will be some in the final game)? Reducing melee attackers to half AP is a pretty significant advantage, though I'd imagine they'd be very difficult, if not impossible to suppress.

I understand where you are going with this idea, BUT there is a major, major flaw with it. It seems really open to abuse by players by means of funky targeting. And in some circumstances, having a lower accuracy would actually increase suppression capability. Your rookie whose bullets fan out and strike everywhere would likely cause suppression in unintended targets, making him actually better at it than someone who is more "on target". Since suppression is a binary state, most of the veteran's bullets at the intended target would be "overkill". It would also create situations where you would fire at the ground near a target much more often than at the target itself, because bullets that miss the target will usually fly a good distance before hitting anything. If you target the ground near the target on the other hand, your misses will all impact much nearer the target. Not to mention, a target with a wall behind him will be orders of magnitude easier to suppress than a target with no wall behind him. Brief aside: This discussion triggered images in my head of rookies in X-com Apoc equipped with marsec flying suits and HE-autocannons... targeting the ground FTW! I also object on realism grounds... suppression fire is literally "spray and pray". No skill needed. Further, the fear caused by suppression doesn't come from the bullet impacts (which you might not even hear in a pitched battle), but rather from the telltale noise coming from the weapons in question. You'd never find a suppressor (silencer) on a machine gun, because the whole point of it is to be loud and scary. When someone opens up with one of these in your general direction, you hunker down (or not, as the case may be) as soon as you see (muzzle flash) and hear the shots being fired. You do not have a chance to observe where bullets are impacting and then decide if you are scared or not. Light machine guns (light=able to be carried by one man) are almost purely considered support weapons. You don't give it to anyone with above average marksmanship, but rather to the strongest who can bear its weight more easily. This brings me to my only concern with the proposed system... should "suppression" have its own, shorter maximum range (per weapon), independent from the max range of the weapon? Or maybe suppression damage should increase as the shooter closes distance with his target? It seems like parking rookies at max weapon range would be a "safe" way to suppress a distant target... Obviously someone up in your face firing full-auto is scarier than someone way off in the distance.

Regarding American TV: The most taboo thing to show on American television is anything remotely intellectually stimulating, which is why shows like Awake only last one season. The nudity regulations are pretty comical, because the intent is usually to prevent children from becoming "prematurely sexualized." Yet we have loads of shows about children copulating and reproducing, which is far worse. The violence and sex standards are pretty similar though... you can have a lot of implied violence and implied sex, so long as you don't get too graphic with either. Also, violence committed against zombies or other "monsters" gets a free pass to be as explosively visceral as you like. Upgrading base defenses: I like the workshop idea. The benefits of upgrading via workshop should be speed and cost. If you have a base without a workshop, and you want to upgrade, TOUGH you will have to do it the old-fashioned way (creating new defense system, then choosing to dismantle or keep old one). Upgrading to new technology always has some overhead, and this adds yet another strategic consideration. Auto-upgrade feels too "neat" and easy. If you are keeping the running costs of all tiers of defenses the same (which I would also disagree with), then I agree it makes no sense to ever keep any of the old ones around. But if the lower tier defenses are cheaper, then minor bases might not even need or want to upgrade to the more expensive to run defenses. It gives greater control over how much we want to protect each base. I've found that space isn't usually an issue outside of the main base, because typically the main base houses lots of research and production. Thus in minor bases, you'd not be concerned about reclaiming the build space that your old missile defense took up, since you're probably not maxed out anyway. If you ARE maxed out, chances are you have a workshop anyhow. If you're maxed out, and you don't have a workshop, and you still want to upgrade your defenses... well that's why build build space isn't infinite, it is a strategic concern. You might have to sacrifice some coverage while you dismantle and then rebuild. I also like the aesthetics of having a base where the old missile defense is sitting right near the fusion defenses, it's kind of a nice "how far we've come" feeling.

On my second playthrough I wound up just making my starting city a troop factory. Those veteran warriors with lots of upgrades can stand toe-to-toe with earth elementals. The problem is, eventually you run into worse nasties further into the other dimensions...

Liked the demo so much this past weekend that I wound up pre-ordering. I didn't personally like Civ V. I found Civ IV to be a better game in all respects, except graphics of course. To me the game suddenly felt like it was all about the combat system... whereas Civ IV really didn't seem to emphasize any one particular aspect of gameplay. I almost skipped out on even playing the demo for Warlock:MoA because it just looks so darn similar. Warlock IS a lot more combat focused, and that's what you'd expect of a fantasy 4x game. The city management system is simplified, but it is very appropriate for a game about exploration and conquest. The end results of what different cities look like is still very familiar. Build a city near a gold mine and then build mostly buildings that give economic bonuses. Build near multiple food sources to make another city your food-center... build near lots of magical mineral stuff and units you build there will be awesome. You also can only have one building per tile, and only improve one tile per population point. All of this is done without babysitting worker units, the cities just improve the tiles themselves. This limitation makes your choices more important and, even better, you don't have to assign new building orders to 12 different cities every turn (which is very nice). Combat is very much like Civ, but a lot deeper. There are several damage types and thus several types of resistance. You can spend money to really upgrade a single veteran warrior unit, or to pump out lots of ranged attackers. It is much more balanced than MoM, BUT it is lacking that awe-inspiring breadth of choice that MoM had. Only appears to be 3 playable races, but they are very different from one-another. I guess if you boiled down the races in MoM, there were a lot of similarities. Strongly recommend the demo, even if you hated Civ V.

Your default view is the base view, the Geoscape is the command center. It probably makes more sense this way, but this is a reversal of the original and from Xenonauts. You go to the "Geoscape" and "Press Y to scan for UFOs". What this means is basically "advance time forward until the next combat mission". It does not appear as though you will be able to manually control how much time passes, you will only be able to advance to the next interesting event. Hopefully things like completed research/manufacture will be considered interesting events. There was some mention of having multiple alien events occur simultaneously so that you would be forced to choose between terror missions or other types of missions. To me, this would feel like an extremely scripted type of situation, which isn't what this game should be about. Such choices should occur, but only if the game produces the circumstances organically. Sometimes a terror mission pops up across the world and you might detect a UFO a few hours later in another location, but the game shouldn't script it. Of course, this type of modification makes sense given the changes in how passage of time is no longer manually controlled by the player, but rather time passage jumps forward in chunks. It's all very "meh" so far.

The 3 vs 3 air combat is good, but I think we need to take a page from Star Control 2 here. You can create as large of a squadron as you want from your base (though naturally, bases will impose a limit due to hangers taking up space). In each combat you can have one "wing" of up to 3 interceptors. When those 3 are either wiped out or forced to withdraw (or manually withdrawn), you can send in another wing as reinforcements. If possible, it would be nice to be able to designate wings manually so that you could decide which ones to send in first. Imagine... the aliens using massive fleets as well and going on strafing missions for a late-game type of terror attack. Though at that point it gets a little hard to justify there not being tons of regular military jets counter-attacking... which could be cool, but it's a lot of extra features to add. In the meantime, I think the first part would be nice to have!

I've always figured there must be some kind of unmentioned background support going on. Like when you shoot down a UFO and somehow you are able to recover the alloys and all the loot.. I don't think it is all being crammed into the Chinook. Some kind of support crew must be going in and breaking down the materials and transporting them. I imagine some kind of search and rescue team would be deployed by the local authorities and coordinated with Xenonaut HQ in the case of a crashed transport. Unless of course we're talking Apocalypse, in which case UFOs could disappear up the tailpipe of a hoverbike. On most fronts, I'm glad the UFO recovery process is automated. If the player were in charge of coordinating the UFO recovery, you would get the possibility to have the following take place: You deploy your recovery team right behind your ground troops. Ground team clears the site, then the recovery team starts working. Aliens send their own scout to see what is happening at the crash site. Your interceptor remains on patrol nearby to cover the recovery team. Recovery team then needs escort to base as the aliens attempt to shoot them down. So you'd get the feeling of really having to fight to get a hold of new alien tech. You could tie in alien response to the materials/technology captured.

Tension takes time to build, and I fear the "action oriented" combat missions will eliminate those tense turns where you would move and not find the enemy at all. It looks to me like fog of war has been reduced as well, making even less "unknown" to worry about. I could be wrong, and hope I am, but I think a lot of the tension building elements of the original will be sacrificed on the altar of instant action and gratification. Having 4 to 6 soldiers at first seems like it makes you worry even more about each one.. but in truth this will probably just cause players to load game after every casualty, especially since losing 1/4 of your force in one shot will probably mean a failed mission anyhow.

Well, there are a lot of things that would be badass, but if you're going to dream, dream big. Bigger than terror from the deep anyway. Leave that for some hard-working modders who don't mind churning out all the re-skinning work that is necessary for such a project.

Gameplay wise, a big difference from Wasteland to Fallout was how many characters you are creating. I believe Fargo is planning on retaining the concept of creating a party of 7 adventurers instead of the more modern creation of a single character. Really pumped about the project, and I decided to go ahead with funding it at 50, to get the cloth map.

Well, I'd imagine the alien in question would also be clueless as to how to communicate its own surrender. Best I can come up with is them just walking out unarmed. I'd also imagine the term "surrender" wouldn't be in the vocabulary of a muton-type alien, them opting for the "blaze of glory" option every time. I like the idea of being able to research alien language in order to use communication against them. Maybe it would just translate into getting a better "cornered" result against a particular type of alien after the research is completed. Maybe you could structure it somewhat like Apoc did with the bio-toxin research. After you capture aliens of a certain set group, you get the first level of alien language, which gives a bonus of some kind against that type of alien. Another way to structure it, unprecedented in previous Xcom games, is you make understanding of alien language a sliding scale, requiring constant research. So while you'd still get the standard benefits of capturing a live leader, engineer, and what have you, every live alien studied would contribute to an overall knowledge base of alien language. In this way, it would always be optimal to capture as many as possible, as every live alien studied would contribute to an overall pool. At increasingly large intervals, you would get different bonuses. One could be better chance to have aliens surrender, you could intercept transmissions to gain info, etc.

Definitely should still have to neutralize the surrendering aliens. That option would mean they drop their weapons and walk out of cover. If you had no need of the alien you could always choose to gun it down, or you could be merciful. I see your concerns on the second point, but I'm thinking that this "cornered" status is basically a special form of panic mode. It would only trigger near the end of battles, meaning probably the last guy or maybe the last two guys (make it an increasing % chance the fewer remaining allies there are). Otherwise I imagine they would stay holed up in cover hoping for a rescue from allies. You'd have to put in some other conditions on top of that, of course. Maybe only if all exits are covered, preventing escape. I like the Chrysalid idea. Maybe different races could have unique options when cornered? Maybe you wouldn't want to corner some of them...

Why not take the concept of the "last annoying alien" and turn it into something awesome? Create a new psych-status called "cornered". Factor in things like remaining allies and spotting hostiles outside of current cover. This would obviously only work for certain aliens intelligent enough to comprehend that they are in a losing situation. Somewhat randomly, and somewhat based on the alien's bravery (or whatever morale will be based upon), they will perform any of the following actions when cornered. In order of increasing bravery: 1. Surrender - This is the worst result for the aliens, the best for the Xenonauts. They basically just drop their weapon and walk away from it. They count as "neutralized" for the purposes of ending the mission. You gain a live alien for research. 2. Suicide - Self-inflicted plasma blast to the head (if suitably armed for this action). Alien knows it will be interrogated if captured. 3. Blaze of Glory - Similar to suicide, but it tries to take out as many humans as possible as it comes out guns-blazing with no regard for its own safety. It will use the most damaging weapon it possesses (e.g. grenades) even if in close quarters. A good reason to base this random result on bravery is that alien leaders would be more likely to kill themselves than be captured, assuming they have a higher bravery than their troops. On the other hand, I imagine when storming a UFO, the engineers and navigators might more easily surrender. I think this would make the climax of battles a lot more exciting, or at least a lot less tedious. Obviously you'd have to take care that "cornered" triggers properly, or else hilarity might ensue. EDIT: Xenonauts should be able to get cornered as well!

Only real concern with the Firaxis remake is that the squad size will be too small to have satisfying tactical battles. But I'll give it a shot.

This is tough... 1) Dragonrealms 2) X-com - UFO Defense 3) Baldur's Gate II 4) Rome: Total War 5) Star Control 2 6) Civilization 4 7) Final Fantasy 6 8) Ultima Underworld 2 9) Might and Magic 3 10) Eternal Darkness It's hard to figure out exactly why these games jumped out, possibly has something to do with the circumstances in which I first encountered them. Might and Magic 3 in particular, I remember it being the first PC game I'd played since we upgraded from our old Apple II-C, and the sheer volume of content blew my mind. I could probably make this list again in a week and completely change whole entries.