X-COM Firaxis - XCOM: Enemy Unknown + Enemy Within Expansion

[Zetor]

Finished my Army of Four run. lol mimetic skin, how does shit like this get through playtesting? After the base defense, I think the only encounter where any of my dudes were at risk of taking any damage at all was the two sectopods in the final mission. It's not any kind of player skill either, just the ability to go invisible at any time and pick enemies apart one by one with an ITZ squad sight sniper (who can also use a move after the last ITZ kill to cloak even at half-cover, thx low profile) at no risk. Sectopods occasionally tried to mortar people out of hiding, but that's what disabling shot is for.

Regarding LW: I gather just setting some of the 'easymode' second-wave options (friendly skies, mainly... also red fog / aiming angles, maybe disabling exalt completely if it's as obnoxious as people say) should keep the tedium level low... or should I just get horribly massacred in openxcom until xcom2 is out? Reading back in this thread, dynamic war (the one that reduces # of battles and overall campaign length) sounds p. borked.

 

[Jasede]

Watching beaglerush play X-Com Impossible Ironman I must say that the tedium level is pretty intense. He hasn't even played to the first base assault and it's been dozens of Exalt mission (the only clues are "not in <country>"), literally 100's of UFO contacts, a dozen terror missions...

It does look extremely challenging and rewarding, though. But the title really is true. It is very, very long.

 

[Jaedar]

Regarding LW: I gather just setting some of the 'easymode' second-wave options (friendly skies, mainly... also red fog / aiming angles, maybe disabling exalt completely if it's as obnoxious as people say) should keep the tedium level low... or should I just get horribly massacred in openxcom until xcom2 is out? Reading back in this thread, dynamic war (the one that reduces # of battles and overall campaign length) sounds p. borked.

Exalt gets incredibly tedious and shitty. Once they start flinging 10+ damage grenades with reckless abandon...

Not to mention the "stealth" missions where you get 4 dudes against their 20.

The exalt base assault mission is pretty cool though.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Not to mention the "stealth" missions where you get 4 dudes against their 20.

I started just running when I got the two hacks done. Whats the point in fighting those guys?

edit: Also I have about 10 countries eliminated for the exult base. Can I just save SCUM my way to their base and end this madness?

 

[Jaedar]

Not to mention the "stealth" missions where you get 4 dudes against their 20.

I started just running when I got the two hacks done. Whats the point in fighting those guys?

edit: Also I have about 10 countries eliminated for the exult base. Can I just save SCUM my way to their base and end this madness?

Sure you can savescum. Note that the final mission is pretty hard, and if you do it way in advance you might not make it.

And yeah, running is the thing, but if you get bad spawn locations of transmitters, pods and operative you can be entirely screwed.

 

[Mozg]

Exalt extractions last time I played stopped being runnable (just having the assault covert operative leg it) at a certain point, mostly because Exalt starts spawning so many ultra-elites that half of them will be dudes with mayhem+other-damage-booster grenades that will kill an unarmored MSGT in one hit, which they're happy to use if their gun has been disabled.

 

[Raghar]

Exalt gets incredibly tedious and shitty. Once they start flinging 10+ damage grenades with reckless abandon...

Perils of playing a mod.

 

[Raghar]

I looked around, and found that one broadcaster is trying to play EW original on impossible. It's pretty funny, at least first few "missions".


He managed to get two squad sight snipers and carapace after multiple restarts, and didn't finish Progeny mission. He was so accustomed to LW, he though suppression reduces range of poison spit, and didn't bother to take medikits.

 

[Raghar]

There is another video.
http://www.twitch.tv/matt_gambler/v/38067830
Look at about 2:00:00. It's very funny. (He plays long war.)

I never knew Long War is comedy.

 

[Konjad]

You all probably already know, but Long War hit 1.0 version. I guess it's time for me to try it out finally as I have finished Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within a few times. I have bought Xenonauts to play too, but maybe I will leave it for later.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

I was having good fun with Long War for a while but the combination of clown car alien technology and the dumbest parts of the base game are combining to drive me into prodromal schizophrenia. The dumb fucking way you activate enemies by moving around, the small maps (though I think it adds more and slightly bigger ones?), the really fuckin limiting two-actions thing instead of perfectly good action points. It's December, I'm in the middle of upgrading to Plasma Weapons having skipped gauss (which was a dumb mistake I guess), I just moved my first character on a normal abduction mission, still in blue squares, and he triggered five elite mutons, an ethereal, four floaters, two heavy floaters and five seekers. fuck this game

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

don't fucking tell me to git gud. fuck you

 

[Average Manatee]

Git motion scanners. Like 12 usages of them. Literally no reason to be surprised by any enemy after the first month.

You skipped Gauss and Pulse Lasers? That's kind of insane.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

you just experienced long war at its best.
there are options to lower the numbers of pods and enemies spawned, to set the game more in line with vanilla values. still you're going to fight 40+ hp berserkers.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

You skipped Gauss and Pulse Lasers? That's kind of insane.

For some reason (probably alcohol) I was under the impression that pulse lasers were a sort of sidegrade of gauss and not another step up again... so I figured both were skippable? I'm not even sure. It was kind of insane.

*clown car honks in the distance as five more floaters pop out*

 

[Mozg]

The gauss tier has the notable special feature of giving the full size sniper rifle HEAT ammo (and a base size-1 clip). I thought the plasma tier was so expensive to build individual weapons in I could never field it on everyone until like the last month of the game.

Mimic beacons can fuck up a floater storm.

 

[Average Manatee]

Pulse lasers both have +1 damage over Gauss and have a very nice project which automatically upgrades all laser cannons to Pulse laser cannons, a great help for your air game. Going until December with un-upgraded laser cannons is insane.

Aside from the HEAT sniper rifle, Gauss is also the next upgrade for your rocketeers.

Plasma is kind of priced to be out of reach. Pulse lasers is easily enough to win the game. Skipping Pulse or Gauss is an option but skipping both is a bad idea.

you just experienced long war at its best.
there are options to lower the numbers of pods and enemies spawned, to set the game more in line with vanilla values. still you're going to fight 40+ hp berserkers.

40 HP is not the issue with enemies. A gunner with double tap can take out at least 30 HP on his own. Can easily take anything out if you shred it and use the acid grenades.

The issue is when enemies start getting high defence (especially heavy floaters) such that even godlike soldiers have 60% CTH at best. And the ability that causes Mutons to panic soldiers when they are shot (IIRC the normal muton was worse than the berzerker for some reason).

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

this is what I get for playing blind

 

[Mozg]

Heavy floater leaders pretty much require you to have at least a couple good psis. There aren't really any other decent counters to leaders/big hfloater packs besides panic and mimic beacons unless they added them at the very end of b15 (flamers are OK too). Putting off psi shits/delaying the first alien base attack will bite you hard when they show up.

You can work around muton intimidate by hitting them with opportunist overwatch. I never felt pigeonholed against them compared to hfloaters.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

more like overly long game eh, eh, am i right. even with Dynamic War on it took me nearly 100 hours and it probably didn't need to. I mean I definitely took longer than I needed to because of some stupid research mistakes etc but Jesus. I spent the last few months just using the console to auto-win terror missions and base defense because I was terminally bored at that point and they weren't tough anymore, just tedious (and at one point I lost France to a terror mission because whenever I tried to load it I just got an endless cutscene of everyone admiring the hologlobe instead. ok then). How long does a campaign last without Dynamic War?

Pretty good overall. Definitely hampered by the game's own limitations - tiny maps, dumb 2-move combat etc as I said earlier - and the occasional case of modderbrains, but still probably one of the most impressive mods I've played and it managed to make me replay and finish a game I got bored with after one 20-hour playthrough in 2012 and haven't touched since, so that's something. In retrospect I should maybe have played or at least read about Enemy Within before going straight into LW, but it was interesting at least. The low point was definitely when clown cars started arriving and I hadn't developed the right combination of MECs and so on to deal with them, once I got past that hurdle and, uh, developed some pulse lasers like I probably should have earlier, things were pretty smooth sailing - I guess even the LW team couldn't totally get past the way games like this tend to snowball (for or against the player) in difficulty after the first half. Curbstomping terror ships is cathartic but I probably didn't need to be doing it for 30 hours. I guess I wanted it to be Xcom 1.13 when it was more its own thing? Still made it a good game, but one sadly full of irritating nonsense.

Also the last mission was disappointingly easy after some of the bullshit LW throws at you. The first room probably gave me the most trouble purely because a couple of cyberdisc leviathans jumped me while I was having bother with some healthier-than-expected sectoids. I was shitting it going into the final room and it was just two easily-dispatched mutons and the three ethereals, I remember it being an absolute clusterfuck in vanilla but I guess I'm remembering wrong?

Also I'm p sure I lost more soldiers/missions than that but w/e.

should I play Xcom 2 or wait for a Long War equivalent for that?

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

should I play Xcom 2 or wait for a Long War equivalent for that?

I'd wait, unless you're itching for a fix. It's better than vanilla XCOM 2012 was at release (e.g. random-generated maps, more destructible environment, timed missions forcing you out of your overwatch safe place), but doesn't reach EW in terms of content, let alone LW.

 

[Average Manatee]

IIRC Dynamic War isn't supposed to make the game take less in-game time to complete, instead it reduces the missions you get. So in non-Dynamic War you'd instead have had to win 260 missions instead of 130 and get 1/2 as much from each one.

2 years is a bit long, I think around 1.5 years is more normal.

 

[Zero Credibility]

should I play Xcom 2 or wait for a Long War equivalent for that?

I've recently finished XCOM2 and yeah, it just can't compete with LW. Random (and larger) maps are great and badly needed in LW, but aside that it's just missing a lot of things that LW and even vanilla EW had. Like full fledged mechs that don't give a crap about cover. Or second wave options - oh how I missed training roulette. And some design decisions in XCOM2 leave me wondering wtf - instant upgrade of all basic equipment, psi as a separate class that don't get normal xp progression, random production of special equipment.

You might as well try it, with some mods if there are any good by now - I used a mod to delay timers until my team is discovered, gave me a reason to actually sneak towards the objective instead of just using concealment to take out the first group I find. I have a feeling we'll have to wait a while for LW for XCOM2.

 

[Nuclear Explosion]

Given that classic is too difficult for me, should I even try the Long War mod?

 

[Althorion]

No, you shouldn’t. Even of easiest difficulty it is at least as hard as Legend, or however was the hardest difficulty in vanilla called.

 

[v1rus]

This remake any good?