Brontoforumus

Neat; I'll have to check it out. Still working on the first one.

My score now stands like this:

EU/Easy: 1 loss, 1 win
EW/Normal: 1 loss

I think my failure is probably down to not using the gray market early and often. I got through Easy without ever selling anything, but I really should have been selling like crazy at least until I got all my sats up. And probably not researched anything; even the slow research pace I was taking left me getting wasted by mechs before I was ready to deal with them. And after a couple of missions went bad, I was left with a shitload of rookies and...I think nobody with a class except heavies.

(My last mission before losing was pretty epic, though; managed to barely survive to take out three mechs on a highway stage. Won the battle, lost the game.)

Yep, don't be shy about selling alloys and elerium in addition to corpses to keep money coming in during the early game.

Also, you know that putting power generators next to power generators and sat relays next to sat relays gives boots, right?

"Sell absolutely everything" is hard-coded into me from original X-Com. Except the elerium. You always hoarded every bit of that you could in the old game.

Don't be shy about playing with the Second Wave options either. There were two options that changed the aiming and crit bonuses based on cover angles that basically were the reason EW was better than EU for me. It eliminates thin men one shotting bullshit and made it so high cover and flanking maneuvers were essential for both you and the AI.

Also one that increases unit stats with rank ups which I'm pretty sure objectively makes things easier but it's always fun to see a definitive increase in soldier performance at endgame.

beatbandito wrote:Don't be shy about playing with the Second Wave options either. There were two options that changed the aiming and crit bonuses based on cover angles that basically were the reason EW was better than EU for me. It eliminates thin men one shotting bullshit and made it so high cover and flanking maneuvers were essential for both you and the AI.

Thought about setting one or both of those, but didn't. Wish you could change the setting mid-game. (I KNOW I've put "games where you can't adjust the difficulty after you start" over in the Unforgivable Sins thread.) Now that I'm playing on Normal I've begun to understand why everyone hates Thin Men; they were an annoyance on Easy but not the worst.

The RNG is fucking me hard on my current playthrough. Had a couple bad rounds, lost 10 soldiers and was left with nothing but heavies (Lt. Zhang and a bunch of Squaddies) and rookies, and then got hit with the train/ship missions with nobody else to send but that lineup.

I almost restarted the game in frustration but decided to stick it out; I managed to squeak out wins on both missions. And level up three rookies to become...more fucking heavies.

As I understand it squaddie heavies are the best class/level to convert to Meks, so that'll be useful once I finish building my cyber lab. Just a few days left now.

I actually always upgraded snipers to mechs, since they get an aim boost. That is huge for mechs, considering the damage they can deal if they hit.

Use the mech's grenade launcher for dealing with thin men. The "destroy cover" attack is also pretty damn useful.

Yeah, but snipers are so damn useful as-is. From what I've read sacrificing a heavy is a much better upgrade than sacrificing a sniper.

But I haven't actually built any Mecs yet, so I'll keep it in mind.

(First I'll need to actually get some goddamn snipers. As of right now I've got one assault, one support, and still a bunch of damn heavies. My first Mecs are going to be heavies just by frickin' default.)

Makes sense. Snipers are generally the ones most likely to survive, and their late-game abilities are second to none.

As far as early-game abilities, I tend to alternate between Squad Sight (better for open areas with good high ground) and Snap Shot (better for enclosed spaces where you have to move around a lot). It's a distinction that can actually make a pretty significant difference in how a sniper plays.

I eventually went all Squad Sight, always... particularly after realizing that, well, while not necessarily honest, you can move a Squad Sight sniper and go on Pistol Overwatch, then click back onto him, press X to switch weapons, and have him take the overwatch shot with the rifle. It essentially allows you to move and rifle overwatch with a Squad Sight sniper.

*takes notes*

I'm finally starting to regroup; now that I've got a good supply of Titan Armor, I can keep the Rookies alive long enough to actually gain some levels. The game, in its typical fashion, has overcompensated and now I have no Heavies. But at least the class I've got a glut of now is Support, and if I'm going to have a glut of any one class that's probably the best choice, at least at the low levels. (I think I've got one each Assault and Sniper right now.)

The game really is at its most exciting when you're barely hanging on, though. I had a covert mission where everybody in the rescue squad died and the op made it to the extraction point by the skin of her teeth, with something like three Exalt troops right on her heels. The next covert mission was similar, except that time one other member of the squad made it out too. That's the kind of gameplay experience you can't plan or force, and a great example of a game crafting a compelling narrative organically, with no narrative framework beyond the simplicty of the mission premise, the mission goals, and the player's experience trying to get from the former to the latter.

I was almost disappointed on the next covert mission, when nobody died.

Yeah, covert missions are great at the start, when you're about evenly matched, but the moment you get mechs, plasmas, armor, etc, they become absolute turkey shoots. You'll come to relish them as XP farms.

Poor bastards.

Nexus Mods is the brobdingnagian mod site for XCOM mods, right? Mothra actually posted it somewhere, but it's not ITT and I can't find the post (I guess it's probably buried somewhere in the LP?).

Mongrel wrote:Nexus Mods is the brobdingnagian mod site for XCOM mods, right? Mothra actually posted it somewhere, but it's not ITT and I can't find the post (I guess it's probably buried somewhere in the LP?).

I'm actually not sure. For the original game, OpenXCom.com has a mod section. For the new game, the Long War crew are the ones to follow.

Nexus has a great selection of mods for Skyrim but I haven't checkout out what it's got for other games.

Been giving the XCom 2 OST a listen through while work is fucking crushing me into a fine mist. It's very hit or miss. The good tracks are excellent:



The others, forgettable.

I feel like this game has a lot fewer memorable tracks than XCom 1, particularly when it comes to combat, but man, when they get it right, it's different and cool.

I absolutely adore how every combat track has an XCom version, and an alien version, and it switches between the two as you shift between sides during turns. Never breaks the track while giving each side its own theme.

Alien turn:


XCom turn:


Both combined:


Has that ever been done before, to anyone's knowledge? I know they've had music cut in and out when combat begins in stuff like Homeworld or Skyrim, but have they ever done what XCom 2 does, where it's the same track playing, unbroken, shifting between subtle variants?

When you ride Yoshi in Super Mario World, it adds a drum beat. I'm sure there are other, more recent examples, but that's the one that comes to mind.

Hyrule Warriors does that a lot. Each level has its own tune that plays continuously, shifting through different "moods" depending on where you are and what you're doing, and it even goes through a mellow phase for the pause menu. Apparently ripping the OST is kind of a nightmare because each individual piece has several tracks with different sets of instruments playing simultaneously in different combinations depending on game state.

Oh, and since we've been mentioning Crypt of the Necrodancer today, it also has three simple (but striking) examples on the floors of its third zone, which are randomly split into ice areas and fire areas that seamlessly switch between different versions of the same track depending on what tileset you're standing on, which is to say a metal-style electric guitar version for fire and a more electronic/dance version for ice.

This video in particular shows that off very early on:

Couldn't find one without commentary in a reasonable span of time but I think you still get the picture.

Mario Galaxy's final battle adds a chorus line when you score a hit, i think.