Sinfullyvannila

I pretty much just used laser weapons up until the very last mission. It was pretty obvious that Plasma was superior in the old one too. Do people really get upset that there aren't a bunch of zeroes on your currency? Wasn't pretty much everything's cost in the original pretty much a nice round number anyway? It's really hard to take someone seriously when they complain about something as small as this.

Interesting read: http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/xcom-enemy-unknown/1226388p1.html This guy knows his stuff.

Yeah that stuck out at me too. I think that was a miscommunication. I think Jake thought he was asking about the Base map, which is randomly generated. If you look at the context, the previous question was about the Base view, and his response really is a non-sequitor and doesn't make any sense. Why would randomly generated battlemaps affect base layout?

It's like the game designers of today (or their sales managers/bosses whatever) cringe from the idea of letting players have it their own way in HOW THEY WANT TO PLAY THE GAME. And as have been said many times over on this thread, by others: the game is oversimplified. The soldiers don't have mechanics for different ways of dealing with the assignments. And they most basic stuff simply can't be done: pick up stuff, be a carrier of ammo for another soldier, throw stuff between the soldiers, shoot walls and/or other obstacles tactically, etc etc Sorry you were disappointed, but you have to realize, the game was made by X-Com fans, and they made it according to their tastes. They made the game the way they, as XCOM fans, wanted to play. If you look up the development interviews, you'd know how much they cared about capturing the spirit of the original, it's just that their view of that spirit is different from yours. I think their tastes resonate with mine a lot more than with yours. The fact of the matter is you can't please, or even accommodate, everyone. I like the game, because I think that most of the simplifications and limitations were for the better, and actually make you have to think about how you are going to use your limited resources. You also have to realize that there a LOT of games that refined the original's model and are considered "failures" by the fans. It's a catch 22 for the developers. If they make the game too similar to the old one, they didn't innovate enough, and they risk that stigma of failure. If they change it, you are going to alienate some fans. Don't take it personally, they can't read your mind, I'm sure they didn't want to alienate or disappoint you. A lot of people like the game, you unfortunately don't. At least you have other games to look forward to that do accommodate to your tastes. Here's a pretty good developer's interview that may give you some perspective as to why they changed lots of things: http://xcom.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:TheBlueRogue/XCOM:_Enemy_Unknown_Developer_Interview

You really don't have to squint to play 3DS/Vita. You hold it like 3 inches from your face so that the field of view is comparable to a TV. It really doesn't make any difference. And Pokemon is about 20 times deeper than the average PC game. And yeah, Console elitism exists relative to Handheld games. It's funny, because the virtues that Consoles elitists extol(convenience and ease of use) are a much bigger strength than in Consoles.

Generally, Hunker Down is a much better option than Overwatch. The only classes that are worth it to overwatch are Assault(because they can survive a crit) and Sniper(Because the have Sqaud Sight). Heavies should never overwatch, it's pretty much a waste of ammo you want for Holo-Targetting, which you don't get with Overwatch. Of course, if you know that you've cleared all the enemies you revealed so far, then Overwatch is a no-brainer.

Umm, that DLC isn't out yet. The DLC they did release was just a cosmetic one. And they did patch the game 2 days after it came out. It does need more patching though. I'm sure if they want people to buy the DLC, there will be more patches eventually. Mouse issues are annoying. I'd recommend using a gamepad, it resolves pretty much all of the camera angles. How does the game block you from doing what you want to do? And I'm going to go out on a limb that you looked up strategies for the original at some point.

Sounds like you were ignoring the "Hunker Down" option. It negates crit chance if you have any directional cover. You shouldn't ever get a crit against you unless you are outflanked, which can happen if your cover gets destroyed. You shouldn't be losing more than 1 or 2 Soldiers per mission once you get Carapace Armor, and you should be relying on explosives before that. Grenades NEVER miss and Rockets have 90% hit chance. Also, I noticed you said your 2 best squads, totaling 8 soldiers. You should be getting the Officer School and Squad Size upgrades ASAP. That's the second priority after Satellites. I don't know what else to tell you, because I don't know the specific circumstances of how you lost your Soldiers. If you did, maybe I could shed some light on it. Granted, the game CAN be very cheap from time to time, but I found that usually comes down to getting the wrong map at the wrong time. Like getting a Bomb Disposal as your first council mission, or getting the demolition site map or graveyard with the monument in the center for your first fight against Mutons.

So, you wanted it to be really easy? Because all of those put together would have made the game a faceroll.

I don't mind people calling it (relatively) shallow, but what annoys me is when people call it dumbed down. If it's dumbed down, why do I have to think a lot more to beat it than the original?

It's because the aliens aren't invading in X-Com. They aren't fielding enough numbers for armies to get involved.

It cannot be possibly realistic, that's the point! Humanity has no chance of survival in that scenario. If the game is realistic the game canot exist. Just roll with the game. No XCOM game is ever realistic. Games don't need realism to be fun. And a lot of games (including this one) are not possible if you ground yourself in realism too much. You know their goal isn't to invade in either X-Com or XCOM right? They are trying to infiltrate through terror. In the first one they don't have FTL, in the second one it seems they do. But they aren't trying to invade in either. But in any case, the technology that they use to wage war on us is not too far ahead of our own, otherwise, we wouldn't be able to comprehend and reverse engineer it so easily. The reason for this is since necessity is the mother of invention, and there is very little reason to continue to develop that specific technology any further. Have you read much hard sci-fi? People don't wage war with necessarily "high-technology" weapons, not because they can't but because it's just not very effective. I've read books where capital ship-to-ship combat is waged with SAND, and ones where they use ICE for armor, because those are actually very cost effective weapons. I don't know about Xenonauts though, it appears that it is their intent to invade. So in these games, they aren't using their technology to the full, because it goes against their goals to wipe out humanity, so in the X-Com games, it's actually pretty realistic to thwart the alien's plans.

Ah, yeah, I meant individual mission difficulty ratings, not difficulty levels. I can see where that can be confusing.

Or is a guy with a long sword just as good as a guy with an assault rifle? If so then no one would switch from melee to firearms Maybe not a Longswordsman, but definitely a Longbowman. The whole reason for the shift from longbows to firearms was because it took decades to master the skills to use a longbow, and only about .001% of the population was even capable of firing one for extended periods of time. No modern military division even comes close to the amount of training and physical requirements as an English Longbowman.

You're making a lot of assumptions in that thread. And your counter-arguments are based on assumptions. Would we be at a massive disadvantage, absolutely. But assuming that they aren't there to wipe us out or that they are unwilling to damage the planet(there really isn't much point in destroying us just to be dicks) we'd have a chance as long as their armor wasn't resistant to ballistics. At some point, the will HAVE to field infantry, and they will HAVE to deal with our overwhelming numbers, our most likely hostile environment and our familiartity of the battlefield. If they DID just want to win at all costs, no we would not stand a chance. And there's absolutely no reason to assume that they'd have better soldiers. The disease thing works both ways too, haven't you ever heard of War of the Worlds?

I don't see what that has to do with the quote, but yeah, enemies have much higer stats than you on impossible.

Difficulty only affects the number of aliens. I think it also affects the number of alien patrols. Alien type is determined by time progress for some aliens and mission progress for others. But yeah, if you lose a bunch of vets, rookies are going to have a hard time. Not picking up items really doesn't make sense from a realistic standpoint, but I would imagine they did it on purpose from a gameplay standpoint(limiting your use of resources) and not because of a brainfart. Justify it by saying your Heavy doesn't have the training to use the medkit and the Support doesn't have the training to use Shredder Rockets. This kind of thing really isn't uncommon in Strategy games, you usually can't pick up a dead unit's items and use it. Also, running for a dead guy's medkit would probably get that unit killed too. Cover just adds a defense modifier which affects the chance-to-hit. It works both ways, the enemies aren't glitching/cheating. You can also surprise units with Ghost Armor, from higher ground, or with the battle Scanner + Rockets.

I was in a roleplaying group where we did an alien invasion campaign. We effectively fought the aliens back, and I have what may be some solid reason that it would work. 1) SETTING DEPENDANT. The Aliens we fought were conscripted from conquered cultures. The ones we fought didn't nearly as bloody a history as we did, and weren't as well equipped culturally or psychologically to wage an effective war. The species that conquered them weren't the ones that fought us, so we were basically fighting an army who had no idea what they were doing. 2) Environmental issues. A big thing that comes into play in an alien invasion is the effects our environment has on their alien technology. Their equipment wasn't designed to function in our environment, ours was. Also, for a prolonged invasion, nutritional needs come into play. Supply and logistical issues come into play, which would be greatly exacerbated by the scale of the issue. 3) Technology works in a funny way, and more advanced Weapons/Armor is not necessarily more useful than old technology for a given task. The aliens armor was designed to defend against energy-based attacks, not kinetic ones, and their armor was woefully ineffective against bullets. For example, we use kevlar body armor today, because it is effective against small-arms fire(not ALL small-arms fire but some), but that body armor would be useless against pretty much any weapon used before the 16th century. Also, as someone brought out, you can only kill someone so hard. There is little point in wasting resources on "more powerful" weapons unless someone develops an effective defense against them. 4) Caveman fallacy, or, in other words, they underestimated us. Just because they had more advanced technology, doesn't mean they were any more intelligent than us, or that we couldn't effectively use their technology when it came into play against us.

4) Not being able to PICK a class. - I like the idea of specialization, but I'd like to be able to designate which rook becaomes what class once he hits the first promotion... rolling 5 snipers isn't fun. 7) Power of blaster launcher - considering what steps you have to make to be even able to research one (you need to bait a Battleship to appear, then down it fairly intact - so basically Firestorm with EMP weapon - the blast power is underwhelming... it does only 9 dmg and it has a standard rocket blast radius... it can't kill a freaking muton on a classic difficulty... that weapon should be doing around 15 dmg, and it still would not be killing stuff like sectopods, berserkers, ethereals. 4) Then everyone would just abuse it to constantly have 3 Assaults, and those Assaults would become very expendable. As is, Assaults are extremely powerful even just at squaddie, but it's extremely risky to use them to their full potential. There is an Officer School project that immediately promotes units to Squaddie, which is a fair tradeoff IMO. I always have an issue with having too many Snipers(they are completely useless for quite a while). 7) You can increase Damage with Mayhem, damage vs Mechs with HEAT Ammo, and Radius with a different skill. If you specialize, it will easilly kill a Sectopod with 1 hit. I do think that it's damage is still fairly underwhelming against non-mechs, but it IS 100% chance to hit. It would be nice if it had a splash damage system.

I do actually have one big gripe about XCOM EU. You can't equip Snipers and Heavies with Assault Rifles. That really annoys me.

You get a penalty because you are trying to hit a moving target.

Besides what Svidangel said, if you go into overwatch mode, then trigger the aliens free move, you will attempt to hit them before they can take cover. Same thing with Flush. If you didn't have the option to go into overwatch mode, you would either a) Lose the opportunity to hit them or b) assuming it automatically did do reaction shots, you'd lose the actions of people who you wouldn't want to put into overwatch.

It's because of the skill Flush, and because of the surprise move aliens get. I use the Gamepad, so I just press "Y" and it goes into overwatch. Not really a big deal.

If everyone has a move left and there aren't any enemies on screen, then yeah, everyone uses Overwatch, unless they need to reload. Otherwise, it's almost completely pointless to use overwatch when there are enemies present.

Nah, it's a complete waste to put Heavies on Overwatch, unless he's the last one to move, for use against patrols. You generally want to keep one of your Assaults off overwatch too, and maybe even a support in case you need Smoke. Your Overwatches generally all attack the same enemy anyway, so there's not much point in using more than your sniper on it.