XCOM: Enemy Unknown (on 360/PS3)

[noiseredux]

so the Long War mod has been released. If you haven't heard of it, it's supposed to be intense. I haven't installed yet, because it breaks multiplayer. Not that I've played multiplayer, though I would like to. So for now, I'm going to stick w/ beating EW first.

BUT, perhaps Popo could tell us about Long War...

[MrPopo]

I've played about 10 days in? Maybe less. The first change is that the time spent when you click the fast forward button on the globe proceeds slower. The second change is that the abductions so far have spawned as singletons; in other words, only a single site is being abducted. This brings it to a bit closer to the original X-COM feel of doing single missions (thought you might get several back to back). The next thing is that squad size starts at 6 and goes to 12, and you have SHIVs unlocked from the get go (though that might have been an EW change). Units suffer from fatigue, so after a mission they will be in the fatigued state for a number of days (with certain abilities increasing or decreasing that time). You can send a fatigued unit into combat, but the result is that they will fight at reduced efficiency.

The classes have been rejiggered. There are now 8 classes, which in general are two derivations of the four base classes. So, for example, the heavy is split into a gunner and a rocketeer, where one gets the SAW and the other gets a rocket launcher. When you get your first promotion you will find that, like in vanilla, your unit is automatically a base class (heavy, assault, sniper, support), and you then get to immediately choose which of the two specializations you are. There is also a third option to get a random specialization of the other 6 (so a support is engineer or medic, you instead get a random one of the assault, sniper, or heavy specializations).

The weapons tree has been lengthened; it's now five deep rather than three. There are more sets of armor, and there are more general cases of doing the health vs. mobility/dodge tradeoffs. In general it seems like the weapon upgrades are designed to be incremental upgrades, rather than the major jumps you used to see. Also, there are carbine weapons, which are basically like the light plasma (little less damage but extra aim) and at all levels. Finally, you start off with +aim scopes available as well as medkits, so you don't have to spend time and money researching basic tech you'd expect XCOM to already have.

In the missions there tend to be more aliens, and the drones are now a starting-tier alien, which basically makes them less threatening floaters in terms of how they operate tactically.

Panic is now on a 100 point scale, rather than the five point scale of before. Apparently the panic of a terror site is based on number of civilians killed, so if you blow up the majority of the map you're going to gain panic in the country (though not as much as if you didn't do the mission at all). A country can leave XCOM independent of panic level due to alien actions that you don't pick up on (in my case I failed an interception and I think the UFO landed in Russia and did stuff). On the flip side, you can get a country back into the project through the missions, though I'm not nearly far enough in the game for that to be an option. Speaking of interceptions, they happen much faster now. The starting interceptors will be able to do three shots of their avalanche missiles before the UFO geos out of range.

Countries spam you with requests for goods; you need to be choosey with which ones you take on.

Several of the enemies are more difficult; I know the Outsiders now have 10 HP and regenerate health, and they can spawn two at a time in later UFOs. You also will need to capture more than one if you want to take on additional alien bases (as there can now be additional alien bases, not just the main one from the storyline).

That's about all I can comment on so far.

[noiseredux]

thanks Popo - just what I wanted to hear.

My new EW campaign is going awesome. About 9 hrs in and only 1 casualty.

[noiseredux]

funny how some of us gravitate towards a single game. I can't shake XCOM.

I got some mechs now. Killing some shit. But oh man is tragic to see one of them fall. I NEED MORE MELD!

[Jmustang1968]

funny how some of us gravitate towards a single game. I can't shake XCOM.

I got some mechs now. Killing some shit. But oh man is tragic to see one of them fall. I NEED MORE MELD!

STOP POSTING!! You are going to get me to start up a new game! lol

[noiseredux]

funny how some of us gravitate towards a single game. I can't shake XCOM.

I got some mechs now. Killing some shit. But oh man is tragic to see one of them fall. I NEED MORE MELD!

STOP POSTING!! You are going to get me to start up a new game! lol

if I was going to stop posting about XCOM, it was probably going to happen already.

[MrPopo]

funny how some of us gravitate towards a single game. I can't shake XCOM.

I got some mechs now. Killing some shit. But oh man is tragic to see one of them fall. I NEED MORE MELD!

I love mechs. The punch one-shots cryssalids (and always hit) and they have a ton of health. They get even better when you upgrade them, though the level three upgrade isn't as much of an upgrade over level two as two is over one.

[noiseredux]

Any trick to getting more meld?

[MrPopo]

Don't get full satellite coverage so that you can keep doing abduction missions (which have meld). As I recall each map you can only get meld from once, so once you've done all the abduction maps (which would take a long time due to the map weighting and number of maps) then you're left with terror missions and UFO shoot downs (with the same limitations). Meld is a limited resource in the game.

[noiseredux]

Any trick for getting more meld if you have had full satellite coverage for like 5 hours?