Xcom: Enemy unknown discussion

Finally finished King's bounty WotN and started playing this.After 5-6 hours of active playing I think it's good game but UFO:Afterlight is still best modern Xcom iteration imo.Afterlight is far more complex game but Enemy unknown has some advantages.Map design is lot better(which ranged from ok to plain bad in Afterlight),also there is cinematics and good voice acting which some consider just minor thing but personally I like it a lot.Also very annoying thing is only 1 utility slot.
 
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I actually used scopes throughout for my Snipers. IIRC, you can get an improved version at the Foundry. Medkits are not that good - and you only need a few of them. I'd give them to people with a lot of mobility - like the Support class.

Yeah, I put a scope on my sniper last night, and it made a huge difference. I thought the +10 meant 10%, but it seems to have increased his aim a lot more than that.

I'm thinking about starting over now though. I didn't start building satellites soon enough, and now I've got countries dropping like flies. I didn't realize I could build satellites and have them ready before having the uplink facilities to launch them.
 
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Yeah, I put a scope on my sniper last night, and it made a huge difference. I thought the +10 meant 10%, but it seems to have increased his aim a lot more than that.

I'm thinking about starting over now though. I didn't start building satellites soon enough, and now I've got countries dropping like flies. I didn't realize I could build satellites and have them ready before having the uplink facilities to launch them.

I can also recommend focusing on pistols for snipers. I completely missed that on my playthrough - and it was obvious towards the end that they'd have made a huge difference because of the Overwatch limitation on snipers.

BTW, I made the same mistake with satellites in my game - but I managed to pull through until the very end - where I lost 2-3 countries.
 
I've lost 4 or 5, can't remember exactly just cba to start the game and check. :)
Luckily for me, all were with small sums of money so it didn't have a huge impact on my progress.
 
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Answer to subject: I love XCOM enemy unknown and play the Warspace extension in classic mode. It's a great strategy game. Only annoyance for me us the 4 angles to spin camera, I wish it had 8 or free spinning. I don't care that research, Geoscape and those have been dumbed down. Maps could be bigger and be visually more variable, but hey.

I play Xenonauts as well currently, which is of course a different experience and also great. Good mood and good music.
 
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For those having trouble here are my tips to being successful.

1. Don't worry about loosing members. You are going to loose AT least one member (at best) by the end of the game. In fact the best strat to take is always support, defend the biggest money makers right from the start (like Russia, USA, UK, China, etc) and unless you are desperate for the reward let the low income peeps (South America, Most of Africa) fend for themselves and sacrifice them as needed. In my current game I lost 6 peeps but that's fine, I have a smaller group of nations to keep happier and it's easier to maintain.

2. Start building sats ASAP even if you don't have the capacity for them they will be in reserve so when you do build more uplinks you can launch them right away.

3. No need to build more then 2 labs and 4 workshops. Make sure they are next to each other so you get the bonus.

4. one heavy or assault should ALWAYS have a arc thrower on him/her. Critical to capture new aliens which opens up new research paths. Also their equipment is captured and goes into your armory.

5. develop heavy armor asap (see tip #4) before worrying about new weapon development. Keeping your peeps alive is more critical to start then dealing more damage.

6. Work the same group of 4 (one of each class) in the beginning until you get a sgt then capt rank. As you do spend the monies in the officer school and increase your squad size to 5 and 6 respectively ASAP. That extra peep on the battlefield helps more then you can imagine. When you get your squad to 6 the best load out is 2 heavies, 1 assault, 1 support and 1 sniper. The 6th position bring a newbie you want to train/get xp. If you don't need, want a newbie then another assault or low ranked peep you want to help train.

7. ALWAYS have backup. Each mission rotate the squad so you build up more or less equally of 2 or 3 of each class. This way if you have someone sidelined due to being badly hurt or KIA you have someone else who can take their place without much if any loss in skill, abilities.

8. Overwatch is your friend. Move slow, using cover as much as possible and ALWAYS use overwatch. Dashing ahead with no overwatch/moves and running into a large group of aliens is pretty much a death sentence or at the very least a front row seat to the chunky salsa effect for some of your squad.

Hope this helps.
 
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Few more;

9. focus on steam power, easy to access and a good middle ground of power/cost/time.

10. Research wise push getting to the sat nexus ASAP. Skip building basic sat rooms as they are too high a cost for what you get. Get 2-3 nexus built/linked and you can get most if not all surviving countries covered.

11. Getting your fighters equip with plasma weapons ASAP will make them much more effective and except for the last stage of the game can hold off buying the new alien based fighter craft.

12. Once you get a peep to col rank 'retire' them except for the core story/hard missions and work on building up the others in the barracks for the randomly generated missions.
 
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8. Overwatch is your friend. Move slow, using cover as much as possible and ALWAYS use overwatch. Dashing ahead with no overwatch/moves and running into a large group of aliens is pretty much a death sentence
Dashing? What is that? Really rarely using it :)
 
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I have to disagree with the party setup above. IMO the best setup is 2 snipers, at least one support and the rest doesn't matter.

Dashing is the move you should usually reserve only for the last party member - when you've put the other 5 into overwatch. Or use if the partymember can shoot while running.
 
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I have to disagree with the party setup above. IMO the best setup is 2 snipers, at least one support and the rest doesn't matter.

2 Assaults with the best armor leading the way (run & gun one of the best abilities for first encounters) followed by 2 heavies following up on the damage of the assaults. One support for running around healing as needed during combat and rear fire/support and one sniper to finish off those hurt. I find this setup has worked very well for me.
 
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Heavies didn't help me nearly as much compared to Snipers with a majority of missions but the map type made a big difference. The lack of accuracy and multiple rockets was my biggest issues with heavies. My problem with snipers was that they would always be on the far side of the map as they didn't move because I didn't have the move then fire perk.

I think only missions where you have to go room to room was where I preferred a heavy over a sniper. I tended to have 2 snipers, 2 assault, 1 support, and then 1 support/heavy. All of the classes have their use and I though were generally well balanced so you could still get through without the perfect loadout.
 
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I didn't want to spoil it much, but you'll desperately need snipers' bonus damage vs robots later in the game. Using 2 snipers in the party early will make sure they level up enough to grab the skill. In the late game, those two snipers will make the most dangerous enemy completely useless.

At least one support is selfexplanatory, but 2 are essential early game when you can easily lose ppl because of the poison damage (and with 2 supports you make sure one can heal the second one).

A for heavies I always kept one in the party but tried not to use him a lot (so he doesn't destroy too much of alien tech).
 
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I didn't want to spoil it much, but you'll desperately need snipers' bonus damage vs robots later in the game.

I wasn't aware that snipers did bonus damage to robots. I know that heavies do +100% damage to robots if you choose the "Heat Ammo" ability, and I think it's one of the easy choices.
 
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Now you got me. You're right.
Dunno why I always thought it's sniper ability and used two snipers to bring those robots down in one turn instead of heavies.
 
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Heavies didn't help me nearly as much compared to Snipers with a majority of missions but the map type made a big difference. The lack of accuracy and multiple rockets was my biggest issues with heavies.

(snip) All of the classes have their use and I though were generally well balanced so you could still get through without the perfect loadout.

Early on and even later stages heavies accuracy was and is a issue generally speaking. However, I found their inaccuracy a benefit more times then not. As when they miss a good amount of time they miss and hit the barrier the alien was using for cover and destroy it, this then opened them up for easy shots from the rest of the team, especially the sniper who I setup to always have last action or a run & gun assault peep.

In the end however I totally agree with your last assessment all the classes are fairly well balanced.
 
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Finally got around to finishing it today. I played on Classic difficulty, and I had an "A" rating when I finished the game. Great game overall, but I felt a little let down by the ending.

I definitely don't agree with the opinion that it's too short. I played for a month, although not everyday, and I actually felt it was starting to drag on at some points.

I guess it depends on how you play though. I ignored some of the priority objectives for significant lengths of time to do side missions and build up my squad. I can see it being a lot shorter if you complete all the priority objectives as soon as they appear.

One thing I didn't like was the randomness of the Psi testing. I had terrible luck with it, and only 1 of my top 15 soldiers turned out to be gifted. I only had 2 Psi Operatives when I finished the game. I wish there was some way to influence that other than saving and reloading.

I also didn't care for the randomness of hiring new soldiers. I would have prefered to be able to see potential squad members before hiring them. I wasted a lot of money hiring and dismissing squad members that I didn't like.

I look forward to playing the inevitable sequel.
 
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