[Megathread] XCOM : Enemy Unknown

[Shamanic]

Aye I had my friend buy dishonored for me as a gift (I gave him cash) and told him not to let me have it until the 19th so I wouldn't be in the middle of two amazing games and have to make the hardest choice a person can make.

They are both reeeeally great games and it is REALLY hard to decide which to play first so I think you made a wise decision there.

Wait, aren't you in EU? How did you manage to play?

I use a USA IP address.

[Rannasha]

Wait, aren't you in EU? How did you manage to play?

Use a US VPN, activate the game, put Steam in offline mode, remove the VPN, keep Steam in offline mode until the game is out in your region.

Note that this is against the ToS of Steam, so formally, they could ban your account for doing it. In reality though, they don't really care unless you use the VPN to *buy* the game in another region (for a lower price).

[Jigain]

It's just a difficulty-level. The order is Easy -> Normal -> Classic -> Impossible. So Classic is just another name for "Hard". I guess they named it "Classic" to tempt old-school XCOM players that were worried about the game being too easy to pick that difficulty first.

Awww, dang.

Back to hoping someone will make a mod for it then.

[Fahrenheit]

As someone else mentioned. I was playing on "Classic" level. And everything was going smooth until the first terror mission with the Cyrstallids/zombies. WTF?!

I had to reduce down to normal level for that mission.

[Kathandira]

God i wish i didn't have to wake up for work this morning. I was having so much fun last night playing this game. Aside from dumbing down some of the mechanics, the game still offers quite a challenge. I started on Classic non-ironman, and all was going pretty well. Lost a few, Promoted a few, but i made it through about 6 missions. Then shit got real! I had a mission on a roof top vs about 6-8 Thin Men 3 Sectoids and 2 Floaters. At this time i was still working with a 4 man squad consisting of 1 Assault, 1 Support, 1 Heavy and 1 Sniper. Sadly my Support was a rookie since my better support was in the hospital. He unfortunately did not make it, but i did find a love for the assault class on this mission. Being able to Dash and Shoot is amazing when your rocking a shotgun lol. With about 8hp's i was able to get in the face of 2 thin men, 1 i blasted off the roof, and when the other came out of cover to take a shot at me, my sniper took his head off. My heavy was great for laying down suppressing fire and lowering the enemies Aim score. It's always tempting when you have a Heavy in your party to bust out that rocket launcher and clear out a group of 4 Aliens who are gathered up. But dammit i need resources!

After this thrilling victory i visited the situation room and noticed how terrible i have been doing. I was on the verge of losing at least 6 countries support, and i had already lost France. At one point since so many countries were Orange or Red each of the missions i was getting were Very Hard difficulty. I eventually had to lower the difficulty, but it was already too late. I believe since i began on Classic, even the geoscape part of the game was performing accordingly. I wasn't getting nearly enough missions to quell the fires of rage that each of these countries were burning. and i was moving way too slowly with building Labs and Workshops and Satellite uplinks. I was focused more on researching weapons and armor and blasting through the levels, i haven't even captured a sectoid yet. 4 months had passed already and i was way behind where i believe i should have been.

So tonight i'm going to create a learning game. I'm going to start over at normal difficulty and do things right this time instead of playing Rambo and charging through battle with guns blazing.

[unholytestament]

Grrr... Spawning enemies are cheap!

So I was on my first mission to disarm a bomb, which looked to be taking place on a highway or bridge. My guys move steadily along taking out aliens and nodes as we go. My sniper gets a good vantage point on top of a trailer which overlooks the final cluster of nodes and aliens. He picks them off as my other guys advance and draw enemy fire until my assault guy charges forward and shotguns the last alien in the face.

Which apparently triggers a wave of aliens to spawn. One of which was a thin man which dropped into the exact same spot my sniper was in. Apparently you can't shoot something when you occupy the same spot and none of my other troops could hit the thin man so I had to move my sniper away from him and hope the thin man's reaction shot didn't kill him. I would have been very pissed if my sniper had died, he's my highest ranking guy with loads more kills than the others, but I lucked out and the shots didn't do much damage.

So my sniper shot him in the face with his pistol and we won the map. He recovered from his injuries before the next mission too.

[Howard Moon]

One of which was a thin man which dropped into the exact same spot my sniper was in. Apparently you can't shoot something when you occupy the same spot

Weird! That kinda sounds like a bug.

[SirRobin]

For those guys about to lose countries, don't neglect satellites and uplinks. Not only do satellites increase your revenue, they also lower panic. Now you can only handle two sats per uplink but the first new uplink version handles four. It can also take like twenty days to make satellites so its best to start making them early.

---------- Post added 2012-10-10 at 11:53 AM ----------

Weird! That kinda sounds like a bug.

Yeah, bet that was a bug.

[Kathandira]

Grrr... Spawning enemies are cheap!

So I was on my first mission to disarm a bomb, which looked to be taking place on a highway or bridge. My guys move steadily along taking out aliens and nodes as we go. My sniper gets a good vantage point on top of a trailer which overlooks the final cluster of nodes and aliens. He picks them off as my other guys advance and draw enemy fire until my assault guy charges forward and shotguns the last alien in the face.

Which apparently triggers a wave of aliens to spawn. One of which was a thin man which dropped into the exact same spot my sniper was in. Apparently you can't shoot something when you occupy the same spot and none of my other troops could hit the thin man so I had to move my sniper away from him and hope the thin man's reaction shot didn't kill him. I would have been very pissed if my sniper had died, he's my highest ranking guy with loads more kills than the others, but I lucked out and the shots didn't do much damage.

So my sniper shot him in the face with his pistol and we won the map. He recovered from his injuries before the next mission too.

Epic! Stories like this are what makes this game great. It will always surprise you, just when you think you have the advantage the enemy will throw a wrench in your spokes. I'm finding that as long as i don't spread out my troops too much and always make sure i have the opportunity to flank an unexpected enemy, i'm pretty much good to go.

Give me more stories!

All Hail the Assault Class!

---------- Post added 2012-10-10 at 04:55 PM ----------

For those guys about to lose countries, don't neglect satellites and uplinks. Not only do satellites increase your revenue, they also lower panic. Now you only get two sats per uplink but the first first new uplink version handles four. It can also take like twenty days to make satellites so its best to start making them early.

---------- Post added 2012-10-10 at 11:53 AM ----------



Yeah, bet that was a bug.

I believe you are absolutely correct. I didn't realize how important satellites were until it was too late. Once i get home i'm starting my game over and the first thing i'm doing is building a second uplink and also a lab and workshop. I waited on those three things until it was far too late for them to do me any good.

[tibben]

I'm still trying to figure out how to get more missions to pop up to stop all the countries from leaving the Council. I played for about 4 hours last night and I've already lost Australia and have several other countries in the red. If there are no missions to support them then there's no way to reduce their panic level. Not really sure what to do about that. Is the game bugged out or am I missing some vital piece of information to help me stop the panic?

[SirRobin]

I believe you are absolutely correct. I didn't realize how important satellites were until it was too late. Once i get home i'm starting my game over and the first thing i'm doing is building a second uplink and also a lab and workshop. I waited on those three things until it was far too late for them to do me any good.

I was an idiot at first and thought the money, shown in the situation room, was how much the satellites cost. That's actually how much revenue it adds so get ones over the hundred plus guys as soon as possible.

---------- Post added 2012-10-10 at 12:00 PM ----------

I'm still trying to figure out how to get more missions to pop up to stop all the countries from leaving the Council. I played for about 4 hours last night and I've already lost Australia and have several other countries in the red. If there are no missions to support them then there's no way to reduce their panic level. Not really sure what to do about that. Is the game bugged out or am I missing some vital piece of information to help me stop the panic?

From what I've seen, so far, there is pretty much no way to save "every" country. It seems to be more about making sure the ones you do lose are the least important ones, revenue wise.

---------- Post added 2012-10-10 at 12:10 PM ----------

And then...

Carapace armor and laser weapons make a huge difference. Research them before any mission "priority" ones if at all possible. Due to an apparent plague of paper cuts, I ended up with one vet and five rookies up against mutons, floaters, and thin men. Only lost one rookie.

The game also automatically unequips killed or wounded team members. So you'll never need more than six carapace armor, laser rifles, medkits, etc, etc... Unless you get a request for goodies from a member country. So I only made four laser rifles and have yet to need more.

[unholytestament]

I might wind up losing my current game. I have a few regions slipping away from me and I don't have the uplinks to support more satellites. If I'm lucky construction will finish in time to save North America, but I'm pretty sure South America is lost.

Satellites are important! At your earliest opportunity you need to expand your base, build more uplinks (and the power plants to support them) and recruit more engineers! Research can wait a little while! And sell off your unneeded alien shit! There's plenty more alien corpses where those came from.

[Kathandira]

I'm still trying to figure out how to get more missions to pop up to stop all the countries from leaving the Council. I played for about 4 hours last night and I've already lost Australia and have several other countries in the red. If there are no missions to support them then there's no way to reduce their panic level. Not really sure what to do about that. Is the game bugged out or am I missing some vital piece of information to help me stop the panic?

More Satellites! With out Satellites you can not see UFO activity therefore producing less missions. The more you can shoot down, the more missions you will get. and the happier those countries will be.

---------- Post added 2012-10-10 at 05:27 PM ----------

I might wind up losing my current game. I have a few regions slipping away from me and I don't have the uplinks to support more satellites. If I'm lucky construction will finish in time to save North America, but I'm pretty sure South America is lost.

Satellites are important! At your earliest opportunity you need to expand your base, build more uplinks (and the power plants to support them) and recruit more engineers! Research can wait a little while! And sell off your unneeded alien shit! There's plenty more alien corpses where those came from.

This is quite true. you only need a few alien corpses to research them. after than you can sell a bunch for some quick cash.

When the game begins i think it is very important to build a workshop, a second satellite uplink that is adjacent to the first, and a power plant or two to keep things powered.

You should be fine with just medkits and your stock weapons for while. at least until you get a workshop and lab built.

[unholytestament]

One question I do have...

Ships. When do/should I get around to upgrading them? Is the phoenix canon worth it?

[SirRobin]

One question I do have...

Ships. When do/should I get around to upgrading them? Is the phoenix canon worth it?

I just rearmed mine with laser cannons or pheonix cannons but have not had an interception come up since. Actually had a "UFO landed" one come up right after so mabye they are scared?

[Kathandira]

One question I do have...

Ships. When do/should I get around to upgrading them? Is the phoenix canon worth it?

good question in about 8 missions last night, the Avalanche Missiles were fine. But once i got to larger UFO's i was getting really really close to being torn apart. My guess would be that you can hold out a bit. also from what i can tell, research Heavy Laser Weapons which should then grant you access to Laser Weapons for your Interceptor. the Phoenix Cannon though does great damage, is limited in range. I believe the Laser Weapons have better range, and is still more powerful than the Avalanche Missiles.

This is all speculation though. I stuck with the Avalanche Missiles, and did not research the Heavy Lasers, but in the Heavy Laser description, it did state that it might unlock research for Lasers for the Interceptor. Flavor Text is awesome!

[SirRobin]

I took on one of the bigger UFO's, the brick shaped one, with Avalanches and lost the fighter.

I'll see what happens with them tonight now that I've upgraded.

[unholytestament]

Yeah, I've only taken on two UFOs and the second one almost destroyed my raven. Got a lot of parts from it though.

[Kathandira]

Hey all!

If anyone is new to XCOM and Tactical games, take a look at this article:

http://www.officialplaystationmagazi...ld-like-a-pro/

The tips provided in the article are not cheats or anything, it's just some advise on survival and how to utilize the synergy of some classes. It's really not super detailed, so if you are not looking for a guide to tell you how to play, these tips are great.

Kinda nice, it sorta confirms much of what has been discussed in this thread. This article confirms that yes, Satellites should be your main priority when starting a new campaign.

[unholytestament]

Did no one proof read that thing? Jesus...