Oh god they have jumpjets as well!?

Thanks Raine, a lot of that is actually helpful for what I was planning on doing, you saved me quite a bit of time running through the list of helpful things that new people would need to know to survive.

Coyote, Beaglerush is a good idea of what I want to do just a lot more in-depth. I suppose it would help more if I laid out the basics of what I'm thinking and already in the process of doing. Any feedback would help.

Basically I want to do an informative let's play on classic with advice for new players and veterans. I want to break down the alien tactics and give advice on the optimal ways to go about dealing with certain maps, squad compositions, reasons for certain upgrades over other, tech pathways, base layouts, and then in game advice to survive and thrive.

That's the first part of it and probably the easiest to do. The other part to this is a smaller advisory series on the aliens specifically, the basic premise of what I'm doing is the champion spotlight from league of legends for each alien. I would also toss in history of the aliens and how they have changed since their original creation, use some of the concept art and dev diaries I've managed to find. The plan is to make about a 5-10 minute video on each of the aliens that would be posted as the aliens are seen on the playthrough.

Thoughts? Would you watch something like that?

 

So less of a Let's Play, and more of a How to Play? I'd be happy to watch and/or contribute to something like that, sure. The aliens have a fair number of tricks that you'd normally only know about when they use them to murder your soldiers (Cyberdisk Deathblossom = large AoE on-self that can wreck people who get close to it, the melee instakill at less than half health move the Muton Berserker has, ect). Just an informative video of those alone would be nice.

Yes, they have jumpjets. I've seen one literally fly up three stories to get on the balcony my snipers were camping on during a Terror mission.

I also can't confirm it, but I strongly suspect them of having something similar to the Floater's Flying Jump ability as well. Several times, I've seen one very far away on the other side of the map, only for it to step back into the shadows, and then reappear directly behind my squad on the next turn, where we already passed through, where nothing could have possibly been hiding. Certainly not anything that big.

And it's not multiple Sectopods either, because I freaking kept count. On all of those missions, there was only the one. So it had to be the one I saw.

So I can confirm that they can fly when they want to, and they might also be able to jump-jet-teleport like the Floaters can.

 

Is it just me, or is the Floater jumpjet essentially fucking useless for them? I've never had it cause problems for me, and more often than not they jumpjet right into the open in the middle of my line which lets me get like three flank shots.

 

You sir are lucky then, more often than not they jump into high cover behind my lines and able to get a flank shot on at least one of my soldiers. I hate floaters, always best to either suppress the bastards if you think they are the only active units or hit them hard and wipe them out before they can move.

 

This seems to be a running fucking theme with me and XCOM. I keep hearing about all of the awful fucking shit that happens to people on the tactical level and little of it ever happens to me. My only problem is people getting shot dead while in full cover. That's... vexing, and happens way more than it seems to for anyone else.

Then again, I'm fucking paranoid about cover.

 

And probably a good thing you are. Also, a new rage inducing moment that led to my sniper from the last story I posted finally kicking the bucket. In one turn I lost my entire squad, breaching a room was standard and I made sure everyone had full cover as we were going in for the final boss.

Everybody misses.

I think fine, we can come back from this, I just need to put a couple of new holes in his head. Well the uber ethereal or whatever you want to call him essentially goes, NOPE! Manages to mind control my sniper who is just in line with him, and happens to be flanking every last one of my men. In one turn due to "In the Zone" my squad was dead and the aliens didn't need to fire a shot.

 

...Wow. I actually just had to fuck off from a downed UFO after losing half my squad and having the rest be wounded. A Large, too, which makes it all the more painful.

tl;dr: I forgot Mutons had grenades, floater jumpjets are still useless but good at distracting you at a critical time, it's fucking stupid to assault with your medic, and danger zone is a wonderful ability when you need to nuke an area, but makes your rockets unwieldy as shit.

*hums the ShackCops theme*

 

I just learned blowing out walls and stuff in UFO's reduces the amount of loot you get... damnit. I always do that =/

 

What difficulty are you playing on? Enemies will often deliberately make tactical errors and bad judgement calls on lower difficulties.

I assure you, on the higher difficulties, or at least, with those of us who are less lucky than you, Floaters rarely if ever jump stupidly into the open where they can easily be picked off. More often than not, they choose to jump into flanking positions that also have cover. It's a good thing that they can't attack the same turn that they jump, and that the jump itself is imprecise (play them in multiplayer, and you'll understand what I mean). If it was precise and counted as a move action instead of a turn finisher, it would be the most broken thing in the game.

And that's why Mindshields aren't useless. Because enemy psychics are bullshit.

Seriously. When you're in endgame, you don't need SCOPES or Chitin Plating anymore. The endgame armors and guns make up for that. You need to give your best guys Mindshields, because the thing they most vitally need protection from are enemy psychic attacks. As you've now seen firsthand, the aliens don't have to outmatch you in firepower or tactical acumen if they can take over your strongest units and murder your entire team with them.

My advice? Invest in Mindshields for your strongest and most lethal units, to minimize the possibility that they will be mind controlled. Also, give Ghost Armor to your best Assault soldiers. They can use stealth, Run And Gun, and the escalating CQC bonuses to crit to knock out enemy psychics quickly and with minimal danger. A good Assault with the Alloy Cannon can kill an enemy Ethereal in a single round if they get off both taps of a Double Shot at point-blank range. Ruthlessly exploit this fact. Send them ahead first invisibly, and have your snipers hang back to provide covering support. Remember: Disarming Shot isn't just for capturing aliens. It's also for saving your squad's ass from their fellow soldiers who get taken over. Don't kill your own Heavies or Assaults. Disarm them. Force them to spend turns moving and reloading. Run out the clock on their mind meld duration.

Don't just have one plan. Have three. Plan for your door breach to fail. Plan for your invisible assault trooper to not be able to take out the enemy alone. Plan on people getting mindjacked. Prepare accordingly for all of it. Don't bunch up, don't have people standing near enough to each other that one guy with a grenade or rocket can TPK if they get taken, and have a sniper with Squadsight and Disarming Shot waiting in the wings to take the critical shots on your squad if it becomes necessary.

Psychic powers change the game. You need to change your gameplan accordingly if you want to survive. Traditional Dynamic Entry formations work amazingly well in the first two thirds of the game for entering the final ‘boss chamber’ room. But in the final segment, all you’re doing is lining everyone up so that they’re all flanking each other, and can thus instakill or instadown each other should one of them be mind hacked in round one.

 

I'm playing on Classic. Floaters are just fucking stupid. Sorry, but that's been my entire experience with them. And, like you pointed out, since it's a full turn action it's quite easy to manuever around 'em on the off chance you can't just have your sniper blast them.

But, then again-- Defensive playstyle. I tend to have no problems with damage output because I very rarely have more than 2 or 3 enemies visible at any given time. (This... backfired in a recent mission. Ended up pulling seven enemies at once. Luckily a rocket took out three and my rookies shot like fucking colonels. Still was a bit hairy and I lost a man.)

 

Err, does anyone know why XCom freezes randomly on enemy turns?

It feels like the AI doesn't know how to move and then just stops. I can't bring up any menus or anything.

 

Generally it's a bug in the game. They tend to crop up for me the longer I play a continuous game. Nothing you can do about it but sit tight and wait for the game to make its move.

You lucky son of a gun. Generally when I deal with UFOs now I go in with a bunch of low level soldiers and one elite soldier to babysit. Usually one of my snipers with squad sight. Lets me train my lower levels and if I really need to make a shot I usually have my sniper in position to clean house. Worse comes to worse if the mission goes to hell in a handbasket I can pull him out quick enough for an evac as well.

Raine, any chance you can clear me up on this? Besides the obvious benefits of gaining the alien weapons and the one time needed to interrogate each alien, have you noticed whether or not there is an experience bonus for your soldiers over killing them? Been doing the math in my head for selling the excess captured weapons for bonus cash and now I want to decisively see if there is an experience bonus as well for captures.

 

I'm not certain. I'd have to look into it personally, because as far as I know, none of the wikis or infosites have that sort of information. I can always do some trial runs with some Squaddies, and see if killing three aliens levels them up faster than capturing three aliens, or what have you.

Basically, I'd have to actually try it in game to find out. I've got no problem doing it though. Give me a day or two.

[EDIT]

I've done some digging. No one yet seems to know exactly how XP breaks down in X-COM, but we do know some facts.

~ XP is shared. Players have reported taking low level characters on missions where they did not actively participate in any way (no kills, no damage dealt, ect), but they still leveled up after the mission.

~ XP is not 100% shared. Characters that actively contribute level up faster. Recruits and soldiers that score kills and deal damage level up faster/sooner than those that do not.

~ Using the Arc Thrower to stun an alien does earn XP. Whether or not it is more, equal to, or less than the XP earned from simply killing the alien is unknown.


Since nobody on the internet I can see or find seems to have an answer to this, I think I'm going to experiment with it, and see what I can accomplish. I've already started a recruiting grind on my good file (I'm trying to get Psi-Capable Assault troopers for my roster), so I'll just grab two of them at level one, and designate one to only capture while the other scores an equal number of kills (i.e. if the first one can catch a single alien on a mission, the other one will kill a single alien). We'll see if one ranks up faster than the other, or if they both stay the same, and from that we'll have our answer.

 

The first two I already knew about, the last is what I want to find out and I think is the last piece of the puzzle. I think I have a project for the next few days, figure do a test period over about 10 levels and see if there is a noticeable difference. I haven't been this inclined to dig into a games innards in years, this will be fun.

As irritating as it sounds though, because of the undetermined XP share they will need to contribute the same amount through each levels. Oh damn these variables are going to suck.

Also, if you are willing to sacrifice the time to do this, another way to make it more difficult for psychic attacks to work on your troops is the iron will upgrade in the officer academy. Despite the obvious time constraints involved in doing this, using your oldest elites to essentially babysit a group of new recruits from the bottom will end up with all of your soldiers having between 14-70 more will than the very max your current troops have. This was done by calculating from the private rank and not the squadie. Personally I find it well worth the time when dealing with an ethereal.

 

From what I've observed:

XP comes from two things:

Mission attendance, and kills.

From some save scumming and testing, stuns both do not count as kills, and do not give xp equal to kills.

As for whether it gives any xp at all? No idea.

 

I can confirm that stuns don't count as kills. That's been known for some time. A soldier has to actually kill the alien to get credit for the kill in their record, and taking an alien alive is not a 'kill.'

Stuns do grant XP though, which is what matters. The question is merely 'how much.'

 

Are kills through killing the Mind Melder giving exp as well?


Edit: Thin Man are fucking bullshit.
I've had 4 deaths so far to Thin Man sniping me from a good 10 squares away under full cover. What. The. Fuck.

 

While I do love this game ... it has an amazing ability to piss me off some days.

Second terror mission, turn a corner. Oh, 6 Chrysalids. Crap. Oh, a cyber disc. Oh, 2 more Chrysalids. Suffice to say - that didn't end well ...

 

I've kept track, and it does award the killing soldier 2 kills at map end, so I think it's pretty safe to say yes.

 

Thin men happen to have one of the best accuracy levels in the early portion of the game. It makes them incredibly irritating to deal with especially when you take the number slanting into effect on the higher difficulty levels. Muton has a higher score but by the time you are dealing with them you generally have some higher level units and better equipment to balance the score. Honestly, Thin men and sectopods are probably the single scariest units for their respective portions of the game. Ignoring BS Psychics of course, that shit will royally ef you up.

New play through and something magical just happened. Halfway through the second month and research just finished on Light Plasma Rifles, I had just collected my 6th one last mission and was able to outfit my squad. Literally the next day the first terror mission started. For some reason chrysalids are slightly less intimidating to deal with early on when you can put a plasma rifle in their face and pull the trigger.