Conveniently enough, exactly what my Valkyrie Squadron is composed of...
(well, my Heavy and my second Support are only Majors at the moment)

 

Don't worry, I'm sure that will change soon enough because there is no possible way they can really die. Also, the "In the Zone" and "Resilience" perks are absolutely amazing.

Edit: I despise bomb removal missions.

 

I love bomb disposal missions, too easy.

On my very first mission on my second play-through, I was lucky enough to start with a Valkyrie squad and only gravely wound one. Instant-achievement.

My first couple of play-throughs I lost so many men to new alien discoveries and terror attacks. My third play-through I learned from my mistakes and took things more slowly and in others more quickly.

Move your men from cover to cover without dashing, set up overwatches with your heavies and supports, get your sniper to high ground. In terror missions, however, I rush as quickly as I can. The faster I kill Chryssalids the less zombies I deal with. Don't focus on just a handful of soldiers, if the mission difficulty is low enough, or it's a council request mission, then send in some rookies with a higher-ranking officer to babysit. You will lose men, even the experienced ones, so having a well balanced barracks is a wonderful thing.

I started in asia because officer training school is a big money sink and in my first abduction I grab the engineers then rush a workshop along with a power generator. I had queued up three satellites and built my new uplink adjacent to the old one. After those were complete I grabbed both south-american countries for the bonus and then focused on capturing aliens to speed up research that was neglected in my engineering binge. After that everything followed smoothly aside from two failed missions, one of which was a major upset for the aliens - damn Ethereal.

Mid to late game avoid putting troops within a tile of each other or even adjacent to one another. Almost every enemy at that stage of the game is packing mid-damage explosives or area attacks.

I finally beat the game yesterday and while it was a satisfying experience, I was disappointed with the length of the campaign. I lost somewhere between 25 and 30 troops throughout the entire thing.

 

That's X-COM, baby!

 

I jinxed myself. Next month I had constant shit popup in the same countries almost, so now I've got 3 to red in just under a month and a half, with sats 3 days till ready, but 1 day until end of the month, so I'm going to lose a shitload of nations out of the damned blue =/

 

Yuck, that's no good. Only way I've found to avoid that is to have new sats rolling every month until you cover everywhere. Sounds like you were trying, but something tripped you up.

How many continent bonuses are you going to lose? If it's Europe or Asia, you can usually squeak by without them, but more than that and it'll be annoying. =/

 

Archangel armour on Chryssalid terror missions is the greatest.

 

South America for sure, and probably Europe. What tripped me up was multiple missions in one month had choices that were all shit like UK/China/Brazil, next one UK/America/Australia, next one Brazil/China/France. I had 2 bars of panic pretty much everywhere, and I had 3 countries get double picked like that in a month and a half, the panic just skyrocketed in 2 or 3 places.

 

Euuuugh. Yeah, without being able to put up a new sat to counter that, your only other real option is to

Spoiler

Take out the alien base for a global panic reduction

Losing SA and Europe bonuses is doable, i think. Just gotta shore up what you have and keep going.

 

Agreed. I always prioritize Africa, Asia and North America, in that order.

 

My first playthrough I had a thing where it seemed every time a new alien was introduced I lost 3 of my squad to them until I muddled through. But, this is an awesome game with a great premise. Oh, also the one alien that pissed me off the most was the chrissalids. Not only do they have an insane amount of dodging but turning people into zombies takes the cake. Two things I hope they add in future updates is that 1. you can sell excess weapons/gear on the grey market. 2. you can make squads fixed....or I mean you can set it up so they are geared around what mission you are undertaking. One click of a button your ready. I really had a problem with that.

 

Honestly, the more I play this game the more this one thing pisses me off. Every time you go to a mission you just get told which city you are going to and what general type of mission it is. No indication that it happens to be in a rural area, city, on a bridge, or any of the other places until you are on the skyranger and landing. This ranks up their with the whole "Central I have 30 men in my base and there are three abduction sites, can we have another Skyranger? No." You would think this would be one of those lovely things we can use our satellites for, "Hey why don't we actually look at where we are going to fight before I figure out which one of you poor bastards is going to die today to a Chryssalid." It annoys me every time because I always pick the wrong sniper for the job, pick the one with snapshot and I get large areas with lots of highground, pick the one with squadsight and I'm stuck in a cityscape with lots of indoor fighting.

Also Darje, I've decided I don't hate bomb disposals anymore, my luck just hates them. Managed to get through the entire battle with only one wounded soldier, even managed to capture a thin man in the process. Everything is looking up until two more thin men drop in, the first one dies instantly to overwatch fire. The second though... my luck must of hated me, flanked the bastard twice and he wasn't even scratched, even tried with a rocket launcher and the friken thing missed as well. The missile actually killed one of my own men, the thin man then killed the rest of my squad with no damage taken. This was a squad of sergeants.

Fuck my life.

 

QFT.

/filler

 

Re: The Skyranger, I have a pet theory about that.

Okay, X-COM is going to change the world drastically if they win, just by leaking the captured alien tech. Now, them winning is a long shot, but given that the alternative is a total loss, you plan for the win. And the Council is made up of world leaders before the First Alien War-- Presidents, CEOs, etc, judging from the council requests.

It's bad enough that some of them will likely lose power, or have to fight desperately to retain it. Why add another major player to the game?

X-COM already has armor, weaponry, and fighter jets decades ahead of anything else at game start, and that gap grows dramatically. So, what if the Shadow Council intentionally doesn't want them to have multiple supersonic, super badass transports on top of everything else?

What if the true "win" condition for the Shadow Council involves X-COM and the aliens taking each other out?

I mean, the theory's got a few holes. A few months in, the XCOM project is making enough cash that they could probably make their own damn transport planes. But given how fast they have to work (Pretty much less than a year from start to finish), and that it's surprisingly easy to get an A rank at month end (which implies that they thought you'd do much worse), you do have to wonder. And the council guy doesn't sound particularly /pleased/ when he's talking about you having surpassed their expectations...

(Also, re: Snipers, always take Squadsight Sniper + Archangel Armor, and use rockets and grenades to demolish the relevant faces off buildings in cityscapes. It's easier to shoot through a gaping hole that is now on fire than it is to try to angle around to shoot through a window. Seriously, unless you're doing 12+ damage with a single rocket, you are using it wrong if you're shooting at aliens with it.)

 

Exception being if you're up against Cyberdisks and you have HEAT rounds.

 

I've been playing a ton of this ever since I read Coyote's short fic in the thread. I was getting crushed in classic but normal felt far too easy, looking for a compromise I looked up some mods and found this one that I like: http://xcom.nexusmods.com/mods/28. Basically it removes the number of aliens the computer can use at a time restriction that's on normal and splits the numeric differences between normal and classic. So far it feels challenging without having the computer dominate me.

Another mod that I'm planning to try out but haven't yet is http://xcom.nexusmods.com/mods/30, it changes a ton of things attempting to keep the game balanced while having it make more sense. As an example he buffed the hp of large enemies while decreasing their defense since a target as large as a sectopod should be easy to hit. It also lets you try to intercept UFOs while they're on their way to try to do missions like abduct and terror while increasing the number of UFOs that can be operating at a time. Like I said, I haven't tried this one yet but it sounds pretty interesting.

 

Yeah there's some interesting mods that will unlock the Aliens AI(Classic/Impossible) but takes away their extra aim and crit rate.

In a sense you're actually playing on Normal as it would imply in the name. I'd think Easy would be the one with the gimped AI and nerfed aim and crit.

I expect Normal to have everything be... well normal. Full AI and regular aim and crit.

its the higher difficulties that should have the extras.


I finished the game on Normal.

Lost France and South Africe because I was a moron and didnt build satellites.

I still think its bullshit that it takes 20 days to build satellites yet it takes a week to build a Firestorm.

Fuck. Sectopods. Fuck em.

They get two attacks in a row. That stupid beam attack and a free overwatch.

The game CLAIMS that they get to attack again if they hit but I saw a sectopod miss my sniper. Immediatly turn around and hit my Assault. Bullshit.

By the way I hope you like fighting two of them at once.


Also: Chrysallids appearing is basically the game saying

"I hope you have lasers by now."

And then Mutons

"I really hope you have lasers AND carapace by now."

Maybe I should start up Classic.

I see you guys all complaining about losses but I've lost... about maybe 10 guys? 1 Maj. 1 Capt. and the rest were rookies.

Then again it was on Normal.

The Alien AI is very conservative. If you suppress or overwatch in los of an alien it will pretty much force the computer to take a shot at your soldiers. So I hope you have good cover.

Mind you the overwatch/shoot applies to the alien that has los on the overwatch soldier. Other aliens could just wander in and get shot.

This also applies to mind controlled soldiers. So basically the SOP for you is that when a guy gets mind controlled. Get the rest of them into cover and suppress and overwatch so that the AI cant do shit.

It literally cant. The AI is even MORE conservative with mind controlled units.

If it cant shoot with a flank bonus it wont.

If it cant move without getting shot it wont.

Therefore being suppressed and overwatched means that after the rest of the aliens move the computer will just end the turn.

Again this is on normal. On classic or impossible it might just move anyways to force you to take a shot at your own guy.

 

You've done so well because you're playing on Normal.

Apart from the aim/crit bonuses, Classic unlocks the full AI so that instead of just moving one group of units per turn it will be able to move every single unit at its disposal. Even those out of your line of sight. Terror Attacks are especially bad because it means about a dozen units can start moving on turn one. I've had missions where I've lost half the civvies after my first turn. Fuck Chryssalids.

 

Newest playthrough: Classic Ironman.

Just reached the final mission, full foundry, full research, Lone Wolf, Valkerie, triple excellent on terror mission, 80 scientist achievements unlocked on this playthrough. ZERO deaths so far. Feeling pretty good about this. Have a single psi above Squaddie, and he's the only who's been in combat.

I'm actually pretty amazed how lucky I've been. First terror mission, without even lasers (I skipped laser tech entirely), didn't even take damage.

This game is almost too good to be true.

EDIT: Just beat it. Zero deaths, classic ironman. Uber Ethereal died to a Shredder followed by a Blaster Launcher shot and a headshot. Didn't even know what hit him.

 

Raided the base, global reduction, saw I had a sat I didn't see, month rolled over, sats were ready, several missions in high panic places later, and everything is fucking 1 or 2 bars of panic, and everywhere but 3 places are sat covered. I have no idea how the hell I pulled that off, but it was awesome to play!