XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)

[fragger]

Ta mate :)

I read on the XCOM Wiki about all the new things EW brings to the game. Looks like a generous amount of new goodies and I think it would be worth getting, but Steam's asking price of $49.99 USD (just over $70 AUD) is a bit more than I want to spend right now. All I wanted to do was be able to change the colour of the soldiers' armour to make it easier to see who's who in battle. Guess I'll just stick with the different hair colours for now - that works well enough anyway.

I will get EW though once I'm a bit less cash-strapped :-X

[fragger]

I stumbled across a cool easter egg in XCOM:EU.

I was already aware that the game will allow you to change the names of your soldiers to whatever you like. All soldiers are initially created with a random first name and last name, and up until now I haven't bothered changing them. Soldiers also earn a random nickname upon reaching the rank of Corporal, and some of these I have changed to ones I liked better.

Well, this time around I started changing their first and last names just for fun, giving them names like Gomer Pyle, Gordon Freeman, Sarah Connor, and so on. I'd been playing a bit of Civ earlier in the day so I decided to name one of my XCOM soldiers Sid Meier. When I did, this came up:

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So I clicked on "Summon Hero" and the guy turned into Sid Meier. That is in fact SM's face on the soldier.

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But check out his stats: Will 200 +20 (it's very rare to get a soldier with 100 Will, and never more than that - highest is usually around 80-90), and 100 Aim (most good soldiers have around 80-90). He was also immediately promoted from "Squaddie" (first rank after Rookie) all the way up to Colonel (highest) in one go, with the best rank-dependent special abilities already awarded to him. As you can see above, the soldier I renamed was a Sniper class guy, but he was switched to Support class upon becoming Meier. Sid also has his own Psi armour, which I haven't even developed yet in the current game, and he has a full complement of Psi abilities without having to earn them or be Psi-tested. Normally, no single Psi soldier can have all those Psi abilities, only three of them. He/she gets the Mindfray ability upon becoming a Psi trooper, then you can choose one of two abilities for each of the next two psychic "ranks" the soldier achieves. A Psi soldier gets a fourth ability called "Rift" for the final battle only.

After I came across this egg I investigated online and there are three other Firaxis developers' names that you can enter to produce more Heroes (there may be more, but I doubt it as there is one for each class). I started a game from scratch just to check them out, and even though I picked rookie soldiers to make into Heroes, they all became Colonels and were kitted out with the most advanced gear:

Here they are:

Sid Meier (Support Class)
Loadout: Psi Armor, Plasma Rifle, Plasma Pistol
Stats: HP 20+6, Defense 0+10, Will 200+20, Aim 100
Psi: All

Ken Levine (Sniper Class)
Loadout: Archangel Armor, Plasma Sniper Rifle, Plasma Pistol
Stats: HP 20+8, Defense 0, Will 100, Aim 200
Psi: None

Joe Kelly (Heavy Class)
Loadout: Titan Armor, Heavy Plasma Rifle, Blaster Launcher
Stats: HP 20+10, Defense 0, Will 100, Aim 100
Psi: None

Otto Zander (Assault Class)
Loadout: Ghost Armor, Alloy Cannon, Plasma Pistol
Stats: HP 100+6 (yes, 100+6), Defense 0+20, Will 100, Aim 100
Psi: None

If you pick a female soldier to make into a Hero, she'll still become the chosen male Hero.

None of these guys come with anything in their inventories, but you can put stuff in them like Medikits, S.C.O.P.Es, grenades etc just like any other soldier. You can also change their armour and weapons if you want to, but this will affect their "+" stats accordingly. Naturally they all have custom heads, and they come with preset ability choices (I didn't list those here).

As you can see in the first pic, if you summon a hero, achievements will be disabled for the rest of that game. Selecting "Nevermind" will allow you to keep the name-change but not create the Hero nor disable achievements.

I'm not going with it this time around, but next game I might start off with a squad of uber-soldiers :-()

I love easter eggs :-X

[mandru]

I'm not going with it this time around, but next game I might start off with a squad of uber-soldiers :-()

This bring up a question for me.

If you start with a squad of the uber-soldiers and you lose one in a campaign would it be possible to resurrect them (after their untimely passing) by grabbing a newly recruited grunt and renaming them after the dearly departed?

I would suspect that you can't have two soldiers by the same name concurrently but it would be interesting to find out if the game continues to keep track of the names of dead soldiers.  And if by chance you can have a clone army it would be amusing to look over the stats of these "Heroes", pick the one that best suits the type of campaigns you plan to carry out and turn them loose on the unsuspecting enemy.  >:D

[Art Blade]

Nice, fragger :) I knew about that Easter egg but have never used those heroes. So I didn't know much more than the fact that there were heroes to be summoned. Thanks for the detailed info  :-X :)

[fragger]

Cheers mate :)

And if by chance you can have a clone army...

You can. I tried it out, and you can have multiple copies of any Hero at the same time. There's nothing to stop you having a whole Barracks full of Sid Meiers if you want. Which also means if you lose a particular Hero you can just create another one from a spare Rookie, or buy a new Recruit and make him/her into an instant Hero :-() With all the hit points, abilities and gear these guys have, nothing is going to drop them any time early in the game.

When you begin a new game you automatically start off on your first mission, with four Rookies, before you even get to see your base. Since you need to get to the Barracks in your base to do the Hero thing, you have to play out that first mish with the Rookies. Then you can access your base (and the Barracks therein) and start summoning Heroes. I played the earliest possible mission, i.e. the second one, with all four Heroes and it made it ridiculously easy. The first types of enemy you encounter in the initial missions are little grey aliens, which only have three hit points each. Sid's Mindfray Psi ability simply drops them dead on the spot, and he can do it from quite a distance >:D

Not terribly sporting... Going in with nothing but Sids would be like attacking with a squad of X Men :-()

I'll still be playing the game properly without Heroes, but it'll also be fun to have a separate game going with Heroes in it just for kicks 8)

[Art Blade]

I want to try that once, kick down the door of those aliens with an all-star team. We need a slam dunk move when you toss aliens into litter bins :)

[fragger]

 :-D Hehehe

Playing with these Hero guys is great fun :-X

I started a second parallel game using the following approach - start as normal with four Rookies, keep playing with them until one or more of them ranked up enough to unlock the squad size increase to five and then to six, still keep playing with regulars to get them ranked up as high as possible (got up to 4 Colonels and two Majors) and save the Heroes for the much tougher missions later.

After fulfilling the prerequisite conditions, the mission to assault the alien base came up. For this, I sent in a Joe (Heavy) and an Otto (Assault) with my best regulars. The aliens never knew what hit them >:D Joe's two Blaster Launcher rounds made short w@&k of the two Cyberdiscs and their attendant repair bots that came at me (surprisingly, there was no big robotic Sectopod in this mission - there always has been before. Maybe the Heroes scared it off...) Otto with his Alloy Cannon easily blew away the two Beserkers who challenged me, taking each of them down with his Rapid Fire ability (the first shot left one of them with only two of his original twenty hit points intact), while the other guys dealt with the Berserkers' Muton mates. Finished the mish without any of my guys taking a single hit - first time ever.

After completing that mission, one of my Firestorm fighter aircraft shot down a big Supply ship and the mission came up to go in and secure the downed vessel. These Supply ship missions are always a bit tough, and having done the alien base I knew there'd be a psychic Sectoid Commander or two on board. These little buggers will mind control one of your guys if you're not careful, so to counter them I sent Sid in with the team. Sure enough, before long the Commanders appeared, but before they could employ any of their mindplay I had Sid mind-control one of them instead. Once I'd mind-bended him I used him to clobber the other Commander. Then I sent him off to hassle three Mutons who were lurking nearby.

The swirly blue field indicates that the Commander is being mind-controlled as he gives the other one a faceful of plasma at close range. That's gotta hurt...

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A mind control lasts for three turns. Conveniently, just as my control of the Commander was about to run out, the three Mutons I'd sent him after, who by now had classified the controlled Commander as an enemy, ganged up and took him out for me. In their efforts to get him though, two of them had left themselves exposed to my sniper, who used his Double-Tap ability (two shots per turn) to send them off to wherever it is dead aliens go. The third one got tagged by a lucky shot from my overwatching Assault girl on his next turn.

This is a fun way to play. I'm not too crazy about the later, bigger missions in the game, so having a Hero or two tagging along allows me to get through them with a bit less grief. These missions are still fun, but for me the earlier missions are funner. Using Heroes means I don't get to unlock any Achievements, but I've never been greatly fussed about those anyway.

The game has some cool little surprises. I'm currently on my seventh game now, and I still found something new. I stunned a Muton with an Arc Thrower and in the process I salvaged his alien grenade. Upon returning to base, a new option which I haven't seen before had appeared which allowed me to research the grenade. My Engineering Division can now make alien grenades, which do more damage than the human-made ones. I hadn't stunned a Muton before so I never knew this option existed.

Neat 8)

[Art Blade]

nice. :)

Now that you've gained quite a bit of experience it should be comparatively easy at the start of a new playthrough to determine which way to go regarding research and continental bonuses (full satellite coverage of a continent and where to set up base) so you can quite early focus on your preferred gaming style.

When I was still playing, I bred my own heroes using the savegame trick to get the best abilities and the best class matching my Squaddies' abilities. And it didn't hamper the achievements part of the game ;)

Research is important but then again, what isn't. :-() it may be interesting for you to use one of the continent bonuses which grants you an instant research. Good for ramping up your squad early and then go play proper havoc with the unsuspecting alien drongos.  :-()

[fragger]

Thanks for the tips Art :)

I think I like Asia best for my base location as it provides early bonuses for getting my guys' XPs up, plus cheaper upgrades from the Officer Training School (which is also pre-built there).

I try to get satellite coverage over each continent in turn as soon as I can, unless there is the odd country or two that has a very high panic level and could do with a satellite to chill them out.

I find that in the early game I'm struggling for money, but towards the end I'm rolling in it. A bit like FC3/4 ;) I finished one game with a shade under 10,000 credits in the kitty and nothing worthwhile or necessary to spend it on. I suppose one could spend it to stockpile weapons and equipment, or build a massive air force or something, but there's not much point. However, I read where if you complete a game on Impossible difficulty, a new Second Wave rule is unlocked: "Total Loss". If this special rule is enabled in a subsequent game (on any difficulty), all of a soldier's gear is lost if he/she dies. Then the excess dough might come in pretty handy for replacing lost weapons/armour/equipment.

I don't know why the Total Loss special rule isn't available in the Second Wave by default. It would add an interesting dimension to the game - not to mention making you extra wary of losing troops.

Having Heroes in the game seems to reduce the difficulty level a bit (maybe - this is the first game I've played with Heroes so it's too early to verify that). There seems to be less enemies generally and I haven't encountered a single Sectopod even though I'm way past the alien base mission and have almost gotten the Hyperwave Relay up. Usually a Sectopod appears in just about every mission after the alien base assault ???? Maybe it's just a consequence of the randomness factor of the game. But then, I did have an Abduction Ship mission where Mutons and Berserkers came thick and fast...

I pulled a dirty trick on a Sid-controlled Muton. On the last turn of the control, I positioned him right out in the open surrounded by my squad. When the control wore off, he promptly got smacked from all sides. On another occasion I daisy-chained the mind-control by using Sid to mind-control a Commander, then used the controlled Commander to take control of a Muton. There was a river of blue psi-energy flowing across a good chunk of the map for one turn :-() Mind-control opens up some cool possibilities - you can use the controlled alien to attack his mates, then leave him standing out of cover and make it easy for any surviving aliens to save you the trouble of knocking him off >:D

Dashed good game, this :-X You never know what might come up. I had one very difficult game where Egypt dropped out of the program right on the turn before I could get my last satellite up over it :D Then I had a horrific Battleship mission (actually, my second Battleship mission in the one game) where the aliens threw a whole army against me all at once - one Sectopod with two Drones, three Muton Elites, a Cyberdisc with a drone, three Heavy Floaters, three Mutons and a Berserker. They all hit me in that first big room as soon as my guys were through the central door right after egress. With only six guys against no less than fifteen targets, there was no way I could handle them all - I took out a Muton and damaged a few other units, and that was it. Then it was their turn... The first few enemy shots took out my guys' cover, so they consequently got the snot thrashed out of them by plasma fire and not one but two grenades from both the Cyberdisc and a Floater. Then a Sectopod cluster-bomb attack landed on them and I had four guys down, including both my Supports, so I had nobody to patch up the critically woundeds and they bled out. My two remaining guys were also half-damaged and had Buckley's chance, so I had to make them scarper back to the evac area and abort. Ouch... I should have chickened out and aborted as soon as I saw that freaking horde coming at me :o

I went on to win that game, but only just scraped through the Temple Ship mission with sub-par units (two of which didn't make it all the way through...) Still, it made the victory that much more satisfying 8)

EDIT: Funny, I had two Battleship missions in the game I mentioned above, but none in this one and now I'm ready to take on the final Temple Ship mission. I finally came up against a Sectopod in the Overseer Ship mission, then I had one Abductor Ship mish (with no Sectopod) and now I'm ready to do to the Temple Ship.

Definitely no two playthroughs are alike in this game 8)

[Art Blade]

good story, fragger, and welcome :)

I find that in the early game I'm struggling for money, but towards the end I'm rolling in it. ... "Total Loss". If this special rule is enabled in a subsequent game (on any difficulty), all of a soldier's gear is lost if he/she dies. Then the excess dough might come in pretty handy for replacing lost weapons/armour/equipment.

That's the game's nature: you're constantly struggling until you reach a point where you no longer need money that desperately any more. But. If you play on harder difficulty levels than "easy" you will have to cope with significantly less money.. so scratch that.

As for the base, I know it is tempting to get the Officer Training School early. However, it may be of tactical value to start without one just to be free to place your other facilities in a neat and orderly fashion. Particularly when the OTS is placed somewhere away from steam tiles or whatever you want to build adjacent to one another..  ;) Then place the OTS when you really need it.

You know, there is an achievement for winning with a team of (only) four.. :-()

[Art Blade]

just by the way, I checked the start of this topic to find it, my favourite base was North America to get the Air and Space bonus for starters. Good for getting up satellites and the protecting aircraft. All game long. :)

[fragger]

Good points about North America :-X I actually chose that for my first playthrough, which I messed up, and never went with it again. I'll give that a go next time. True, the pre-placed OTS does tend to get in the way a bit.

I didn't know about the four-man squad achievement. It didn't occur to me to try that, it would make for a more challenging game. Might give that a try too :) I'll have to ditch the Heroes for that game of course, but that's cool. They were just for a bit of wicked fun :-()

[Art Blade]

heh heh :-()

North America's bonus was so valuable for me I couldn't bring myself to test a different approach, even.

[Art Blade]

Oh I wanted to mention that before: What you did with almost literally a "chain of command" (mind-control a mind controller who mind-controls someone..) is a really cool idea. I'll give you a +1 :-X for that, me old China :-D

[fragger]

Thanks old mate :)

[fragger]

Man, every once in a while this game throws up a ridiculously tough battle.

I just got through an alien base mission where no less than 21 enemies attacked me in the first room before my guys could get more than a few steps. Let's see... in total there were 8 Mutons, 2 Berserkers, 3 Cryssalids, 2 Cyberdiscs with 2 Drones each, and 2 Thin Men. They'd all gotten into the room before the second turn was over. I took out most of the first wave - the 3 Cryssalids, 4 Mutons and a Berserker, leaving just one Muton alive and one beaten up enough to chicken out and run away, but he came back with everything else on the second turn. I thought I'd handled myself with aplomb, but then the rest of them started flooding in which evinced an involuntary "You've got to be kidding!" from me ???

When the first Cyberdisc came in my guys gave it a good response fire barrage that knocked out all its hit points - except one. That was still enough to allow it to set itself up and hit some of my squad with a grenade, which not only damaged them but wiped out their cover. Then three of the newly-arrived Mutons ganged up on one of my exposed Heavies and killed her (and she'd just made Major in the preceding mission :D)

Talk about a desperate fight. My guys couldn't even get a chance to reload, they ended up falling back on their pistols (plasma ones fortunately, which pack a bit of a wallop). After battling through that schemozzle the remaining five squad members were able to run the entire length of the base without encountering any more enemies at all until finding the Commander right at the end. The entire enemy force had been waiting at the front door.

I don't use Autosave any more. I did in the earlier games but the temptation to go back a turn or two to try altering an undesirable outcome was too great :-() I prefer to play in risky mode, i.e. save whenever I think of it, and wear any losses incurred.

And I'm still playing on Easy mode! I guess I should man up and try bumping it up a notch next time :-() But even Easy mode isn't often that easy.

[fragger]

You've still got it, Gordon!

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High-tech Bug Catcher.

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This is a Hyperwave Relay. Now you can tell all your friends you've seen one.

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I always thought a "Floater" was a meat pie in pea soup. It's actually an alien delicacy best served with a laser.

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[Art Blade]

oh man, fragger :-D I don't think that I ever had the privilege and the pleasure of a full-blown alien welcoming committee at the ship's front door. But then again.. I had my share of "you've got to be kidding me" situations :-()

Actually, savegames and quick saves can speed up your learning process as you can test and correct moves. I didn't have a problem with that as I saw the whole thing as an entertainment job just the same as a film's director who would never ever deliver a film without proper takes. I learned and experimented a lot and the use of quicksaves was less and less needed but still.. once in a while.. and I think I got the job done properly :)

If you're really that crazy, try impossible ironman mode. No savegames except when quitting :-D

[fragger]

Dunno if I'm crazy enough for that - yet - if ever :-D

[Art Blade]

I can tell you that I am definitely not going to ever try that :-D

However, I'm curious about your likely next (and if you're like me, last) higher difficulty level -- called "normal" -- attempt to play through. It will be a lot more difficult, mainly because you'll start with less money and earn less money, too. If I were you, I'd try that at least once and perhaps revert to "easy" after that just for a reduced stress level and an increased fun level. Also, looking at how much you enjoy this game, you definitely should keep your eyes peeled for DLC and particularly the ramped-up version of the game called Enemy Within. The latter one will present you with quite a few more options and by that also an increased difficulty level, even on easy, but also an even bigger fun level. Check my posts on that subject again, particularly the screenshots.. to whet your appetite. :)

[fragger]

Cheers, yep, I fully intend to get some DLC for this, am mainly interested in Enemy Within.

I thought this might be of interest - comparison of graphics between:

UFO: Enemy Unknown (1994)

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And:

XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012)

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Gaming graphics have certainly come a long way, even for strategy games!

[Art Blade]

wow.. 1994.. hard to believe that we could ever have exclaimed, "wow, look at how cool those graphics are!" :-D

[PZ]

It's all about the graphics!

[Art Blade]

I think a bit of nice gameplay, good handling and of course, an open world game environment are also part of the mix if I want to go all crazy about a game. If it were only about the graphics, I'd rather watch a slide show. :-D

[fragger]

My two favourite genres of games are FPS and turn-based strategy. FPS (preferably open-world) for action and immersion, strategy for thinking and planning. Whichever I get into largely depends on my mood at the time. If I've had a rotten day at w@&k or something in life has pissed me off I tend to fire up a FPS for the venting value. It's better than socking out coworkers and is a lot less likely to land me in court (not that I go around socking people. The last physical altercation I got into was in my second year of high school to stop a would-be bully in his tracks, and it worked). If I'm mellowed out and all is more or less right with my world I'll go for strategy.

I generally don't go for corridor shooters but there have been a couple of exceptions. The Half-Life II series was very linear but looked amazing and was just so immersive and entertaining that it hooked me in. I also liked CoD 2 which too was fairly linear but was so well presented and historically accurate in its details that it made my personal cut, and a couple of the individual battles were actually quite non-linear (one called The Silo was my fave).

I was never into real-time strategy, except for Sid Meier's Gettysburg which was in a RTS class of its own. But I only like TBS when it's either deep or unique. Civ V is deep, XCOM is unique. I still have a series of TBS games called the Battleground Civil War series which was released by Talonsoft way back in the early 90s which I always enjoyed dipping into. These games were originally written for Win 3.1 but still ran under Win 95, Win 98, NT, Win 2000, XP and Vista, but won't run under W7 (though I've heard that there's a workaround). Each title in the series (Bull Run, Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg and Chickamauga) allowed you to "recreate" the battle of the title in its entirety, i.e. your various units start where and when they did in reality on a very faithfully reproduced playing area (from then on it's up to you), or you could play one of about two dozen smaller scenarios based on individual clashes that took place during the course of the title battle. Some of these were historically accurate, some were "what ifs". I played the entire Battle of Gettysburg scenario once and it took me three months to complete, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Now that's grand strategy, when you've got about 80,000 men to command which translates into several hundred game units (regiments) AND you have to try to keep the organisation of the army intact as you do battle: Regiment<Brigade<Division<Corps<Army, with corresponding leader units for each level above Regiment. These leader units were named for the actual leaders at the time and had their own stats based on their real-life historical reputations. Every unit in the game was authentic, i.e. selecting them would tell you who they were, e.g. 20th Maine Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, V Corps, Army of the Potomac. For a Civil War buff, the immersion level of those games was huge and contained an impressive strategic depth. They were created in such a way that you had to think, plan and fight the way Civil War leaders did at the time - it's not so much about killing the enemy as it is about breaking his line, demoralising his troops and sending them into a panicked retreat, which can happen in the game. It's dismaying to watch your carefully prepared line cave in and a bunch of your regiments bolt for the rear, leaving a gap for the enemy to exploit ??? Then there was the logistical side of things, where terrain and road/trail availability played a large role in the planning of movement, and there was also reinforcement,  resupply and management of artillery ammo to consider. Units could not only take damage from enemy fire but could also suffer from battle fatigue and morale loss. They're quite brilliant games really that took a lot of stuff into account, e.g. Cavalry units have to dismount to fight (except if they're fighting other mounted Cav units), but when they fight on foot, they only do so at 3/4 strength. Why? Because historically, one man out of every four had to stay back to hold his horse and those of the other three, to keep them from wandering off or bolting so that the troops could locate their horses easily and mount up quickly. So this gameplay element is historically accurate and is typical of the depth of thought that went into the games' creation.

Gee, that post turned into a blather :-() Well, it's a quiet Sunday, so why not...