There are moments that the bugs in this game absolutely ruin my night and inspire sheer terror. Ironman classic as usual and my first Col. is also one of the members of my original squad, his name is Farseer, he is my sniper. After surviving every UFO crash site, abduction, terror mission, base assault and whatever the name of that mission where you interrupt the abductions and go through the giant ship with a full crew; he went through everyone of those missions without a scratch.

I have no idea how he did this. This man should have died so many times it is actually quite ridiculous, to the point that the first time he encountered an ethereal, the assault troop 4 tiles away from missed with a scatter laser while being flanked. This man has horseshoes up his ass.

That almost all came crashing down during a terror mission where we managed to piss off two squads of muton berserkers, a cyberdisk, heavy floaters and chrysalids all pretty much at the same time. We were pinned down right near the starting area after drawing literally every alien on the map towards us. The plan was to have my assaults and heavies hold them off for one turn while I got Farseer up on a rooftop with a good line of sight to start using "in the zone" to pick off everyone with his plasma sniper. I got him just close enough to the building to use grappeling hook, making sure he was far enough away from any drain pipes the bastards could climb up while the floaters were suppressed.

The grapple failed. This was the first time I have ever seen that happen, it put Farseer down on the ground level right in front of the wall after doing the animation showing him climbing up. He happened to be in between the Muton berserkers at this point.

Next turn he was critically wounded and I needed to get my medic to him within three turns or my longest running soldier was going to be dead. I ended up using my assaults to kill one and pull the last berserkers away while my heavies picked off the chrysalids. Turn two, one assault died due to only being in carapace armor while my Col. was in titan and survived before filling the last berserker with plasma. Revenge is best served hot. One heavy floater left after a heavy laser tore it to pieces. Almost lost my medic to the cyberdisk, would have been hell if he had panicked but thankfully still alive with one turn to spare.

Thankfully he reached Farseer in time and they managed to pick off the rest of the aliens. Out of 18 civilians, 16 were saved because we drew all of them away. Farseer then amusingly enough became the first psi-soldier I had even with his Will penalty for being critically wounded.

Moral of this story, fuck the grappling hook.

 

Archangel Sniper ftw.

 

And that's what he has now.

 

What controls the progression of enemy appearances? Like one game I had cyber disks and berserkers before raiding the base for the first time, another they showed up after it. Is it weapons tech or levels of your soldiers maybe?

 

According to a FAQ I read, it's your tech level.

Does anyone else have a problem with a lack of weapon parts? Once I get the science department going, I never have enough of them. I never use explosives, so that can't be it.

 

I'd forgotten about explosives ruining weapon fragments Been driving myself nuts trying to build things lately and not having any fragments. Is there any benefit to caputuring live aliens other then stealing their weapon, if you've already interrogated them and autopsied them?

 

Limited resources are normal. Best bet for weapon fragments are Abduction missions, alloys are best off landed/crashed UFOs.

 

Nope no sense in doing that if you don´t want the weapon..

 

Really? it seems to be more time based.

Every month that goes by you get introduced to a new enemy or so.

Floaters then Mutons then Chrysallids then Beserkers(in the alien base) Sectoid commander.

Cyberdisks too up there with Mutons.

Then Cyberdisks can be replaced with Sectopods, Elite Mutons and Ethereals after you cap one in the OVerseer UFO.

That said generally the introduction of new enemies is the the game telling you: "I hope you kept up with your tech..."

eg. Chrysallids: "I hope you have lasers."

Mutons: "I hope you have lasers AND carapace.

 

I think you don't even get weapon fragments doing that so there is even less reason. I think its more for early game if you decide to ignore laser weapons than any kind of long term benefit. I think their may be a higher experience gain from taking enemies alive but don't quote me on that.

 

For me it's Mutons, then Chrysa's, then Cyber disks, then Berserkers, then Sectopods. Which I met my first one of today.. holy shit he wrecked my guys.

 

Sectopods are broken, absolutely irritatingly strong enemies, hey I can shoot twice, do long range missile barrages in a line, and even after that I am still always in overwatch. Not to mention their stupidly high defense stat that makes them difficult to hit despite the fact that they are a giant robot!

 

I've found the best way to deal with sectopods once you know they're going to start spawning is to bring along two heavies. Have one have shredder missiles. Shredder ==> Missile ==> sniper ==> anything else (if needed)

 

Lightning Reflexes double-attacking Assault says 'What?' After which your other double-attacking Assault can finish the job if it's not done already. That and Sniper double-attacks help too.

I will agree though, that I said 'no no no' several times when I first encountered one and it was attacking my people(in particular the soldier that risked running up to stun the Ethereal(also new the same stage that had just got sniped for 19/20 damage). That particular soldier got hit down to 1/23 health, and was surviving by grace of a defense-boosted smoke grenade to dodge 3 attacks before my main Support could afford to heal for 10, after which I just ran up to the damaged Sectopod's face and double-shotgunned it.

Of course, said strategy becomes less viable the more extra enemies there may be...

 

So odd question to ask but quite frankly I can't really think of a better place off the top of my head. What would you like to see in an X-COM lets play?

 

Either an Abridged Series type set up or some really mad skills.

 

Everything going wrong, but you still pulling through by the skin of your teeth.

 

All My Friends: -playing Halo 4 and Black Ops II-

Me: “Wow, so you spend your time fighting aliens and zombies? That must be really hard for you.”



Some people had some questions, and I have some things that might be construed as answers, possibly.

The reason that happened is because of how panic works in X-COM. When an abduction happens, it happens in multiple places across the globe (normally three, but can be less if there are enough satellites up). However, you can only respond to one (in spite of having fleets of jets and up to a hundred able-bodied soldiers in your roster). This, you know. You also know that the places you don’t help gain panic, while the place you ‘do’ help loses panic.

What you may not realize, though, is that other countries that have no abductions going on can and will also increase in panic when an abduction takes place. To put it simply: when an abduction is allowed to take place, all nations in that block will increase their panic levels. The nation that actually played host to the abduction will gain the most, but all other nations associated with that nation will also gain panic. Example: an abduction is allowed to happen in Canada. Panic will therefore increase in Canada, the United States, and Mexico, because all three of them are in the North American block.

This is a deceptively simple fact, but it can seriously screw you over if you don’t bother to look at the global panic screen before choosing who to help. I’ll give you an example from my own experience:


It’s five days until the end of the month. I have a single satellite in reserve, and the slot to launch it. An abduction happens. The victims: China, 4 panic, 4 Engineer reward, Canada, 2 panic, 200$ reward, and the United Kingdom, 2 panic, 3 Scientists reward.


What do? If you think at all like I do, China is the obvious choice. They’re in the deepest trouble, and are offering the best reward. They’re the obvious choice. Canada and the UK can both deal with the two or so bars of panic from not helping them. China can’t. The choice is clear.

But wait. Look a little closer before you click that deploy button. What’s that you see?

India, Japan, and Australia are all low on panic. China is about to lose their shit. But, and here’s the important part, Germany and Russia are also both at 4 panic.

The United Kingdom is part of the European block. If you ignore them, they will suffer a panic increase, which they can deal with. But the panic increase for the rest of Europe that occurs from abandoning them will put both Russia and Germany at maximum panic.

It’s five days till rollover and the Council Report. Five days until any countries that are going to pull out, pull out.

And you only have one satellite.

So. Let’s ask the question again. Who do you help? With the knowledge at your disposal, because you bothered to check the global panic screen, then answer is still obvious. But it is, however, different than what it was a moment before. China is no longer the obvious choice. The United Kingdom is. If you help the U.K., you prevent Germany and Russia from reaching critical panic. China does reach critical panic, but it is the only nation on the map to do so. You wait an obligatory two and a half days to make sure the aliens don’t throw you a curve ball at the last minute, and then launch the satellite over China right before the Council Report, instantly dropping their panic level and putting them in the clear.

Had we, had I, gone with the knee-jerk reaction to help China, who was deeply in trouble and offering the best reward, the situation would have escalated to a point where it could not be controlled, and a choice would have had to be made between losing Germany, or losing Russia.

However, because we thought of panic on a global scale, because we thought of the consequences this would have on other nations that aren’t even up on the abduction roster, we were able to save everybody, instead of having to make the worst kind of choice.

The moral of this story is simple. You might think you’re doing great, but then three abductions happen, and suddenly you find out that the aliens have nickel-and-dimed you to global chaos. You need to pay attention to the status of every nation, not just the ones that are having abductions, to make sure that it doesn’t happen. Because the nation that will screw you over probably isn’t going to be the one with the high profile abductions. It’s going to be France, who has had no abductions and for which you have run no missions, that will start out fine at the beginning of the month but by the end of it be scooting full tilt down the Fun Slide of Paranoid Terror into the Ball Pit of Madness and Rampant Anarchy.

And on that line of thought, I’ll give you a bit of advice: the secret to keeping panic under control is realizing that the best time to launch satellites is when a country is about to withdraw from X-COM. Satellites are your first, best, and only way to directly manage and deal with the rising global panic levels. It takes a few days after launch for a satellite to start providing coverage, but the panic for the nation to you launched it for instantly goes down. As such, the most efficient way to deal with panic is to shunt as much of the panic as you can onto a small number of nations, and then use satellites to flush that panic away right before it would cause those ‘scapegoat’ countries to back out.

Yes. It allows you to accumulate Research Credit in certain specific fields, which can be used to speed up research in those fields.

Also, on the highest difficulty levels, most of the advanced research projects can only be unlocked via Interrogation. Autopsies can reveal some limited things, but are ultimately a dead end for research. For instance, if I recall correctly, to unlock Psi Research on Insanity, you need to Interrogate a Sectoid Commander. The autopsy alone won’t do. To quote Dr. Hallsey on why you need the Arc Projector, “we’ve reached the limits of our capabilities from studying corpses. We will need live specimens if we hope to progress any further.”

Also, just for the record? Stealing their weapons is THE best reason to take them alive. All capturable aliens (hint: don’t waste time or lives trying to stun a Chrysalid, Cyberdisk, Sectopod, or Drone. They can’t be taken. All else is fair game) except for Ethereals carry plasma weapons, and plasma is the strongest tier of man-portable weapons in the game. If you’re powergaming, or if you’re on a higher difficulty level, you don’t have the luxury of indulging in the middle tier of weapon technology. You don’t have the time or resources to spare in outfitting everybody with lasers. The world will be on fire long before that. You need to skip straight to plasma via that two-week-long project in the beginning of the game, or die to the deluge of overpowered alien enemies. And even if you aren’t on such a difficulty, it’s still worth it to take them alive just for the guns. Plasma weapons are expensive to manufacture, and cost a lot of resources and Engineers. Instead of wasting that on firepower, save it for more important projects like the endgame armors and advanced base buildings, and get the bulk of your best weaponry for free. Remember: you don’t have to pry weapon fragments from their cold, dead fingers if you can tase them until they shit themselves.

The game does everything it can to encourage you to use ordinance as a last-ditch weapon of desperation. If you kill an enemy with a rocket or a grenade, it leaves nothing behind. There are no weapon fragments, and there is no recoverable corpse to take back. You get nothing. So think real hard before you decide to run around chucking grenades and rockets at every Thin Man and Muton you see. You’re only screwing yourself over in the end if you do.

It’s also the fastest way to damage your environment, and if you’re on a spaceship, the more damaged it is by the end of the mission, the less rewards you get.

They also have jump jets, in case you haven’t seen them pull that trick yet.

[FONT=&quot]An Ultra-Nationalist who tells all the other nations to go fuck themselves, and then sees how long he can survive as that. Can he complete the game before time, and funding, runs out?

[EDIT]

And I have no idea why the formatting decided to change five times while I wrote this. What the hell.
[/FONT]

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9zJE9GodMQ&feature=plcp

That. Exactly that. That's the perfect XCOM Let's Play. You just can't beat Beaglerush.

 

Also, just some general advice for those of you trying to design efficient bases, the most efficient and compact design is a 2x2 block of the same building type. The reason for this is because it allows for the maximum number of adjacency bonuses. A building can only have two associated with it, so a 2x2 square gives you the maximum number of adjacencies (each of the four buildings gets 2 bonuses) with no 'extra' spots where they could have gotten an adjacency if it wasn't for the cap.

The best example I can give for this is the Nexus/Uplink square. If you create a 2x2 where two of them are Satellite Uplinks, and two of them are Satellite Nexuses, you will have exactly enough slots to cover the entire planet in satellites. You don't need, and if you're trying to be efficient, should not use, any more than that in your final design plan for your base.

Likewise, a 2x2 grid of Laboratories will give you all the research speed bonuses you're ever likely to need.

I would not, however, recommend doing a 2x2 grid of power stations, because quite frankly, it's not actually necessary. I have a 1x3 row of generators where two are Steam and one is Elereium, and it provides an excess of power for my base. I have more than I need with that setup. However, if you're trying to be frugal, and want to cut corners where you can, a 2x2 grid made of regular power generators and whatever Steam generators you can fit into the grid works as an excellent substitute, and allows you to save the resources you would spend to make an Elerium generator on other things.

Basically, how viable the 2x2 is for power depends a lot on how lucky you are with steam vent placement. If you've got at least two steam vents that fall within the area of a 2x2, then making a 2x2 of Steam and regular is a good idea. If not, then you're better off sticking with Steam and maybe a single Elerium when the resources become available.