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Voting closed: April 07, 2013, 10:34:35 am

[TCM]

I started playing X-Com: Enemy Unknown. The first mission went tutorially. The second went easily--a bit more freedom, but still pretty linear. I think I killed both of the enemies with one shot of the rifle instead of using the rocket launcher like they recommended. Wish I had caught the name of the soldier who did that.
It's pretty impressive. I like how the game transitions so smoothly from tactical view to personal view to "cutscene". It's a well-designed engine. The gameplay seems pretty fun, too, but I've only started.
EDIT: I think it's a Juan Medina of Argentina, home nation of Sq. Jorge Vargas, only survivor of the Tutorial. Medina became a Support, while fellow rookie Chase Mills of Canada became a Sniper for killing one enemy. With a grenade, I believe. Azubuike Hangana of some nation with a green-and-white flag got no kills. Poor guy...

Spoiler: X-COM (click to show/hide)

Just wondering, what difficulty setting are you playing on?

Also, on the subject of your grenade-throwing soldier becoming a Sniper; there's no way to predetermine which class your rookies will be come, it's based on a lottery system. When they level up, no matter how they got their kills, their class will be randomly chosen. Which is why I have about 94 Assaults and 2 Supports.

[Remalle]

((Wait a sec - do dynamic bonuses increase as they charge or is it only a +/- 1?

(They stack.)

"Hmm... alright then, why don't you help by holding this one down?  It's always difficult to operate when they're kicking and flailing about."
Patch up the guy with the chest wound.  Once he's done, do the one with the cut.

[Xantalos]

(())

[WhitiusOpus]

facepalm. Then, go down and get the cutting tool. Try again.

((This is not good with a -1 to handi...))

[GreatWyrmGold]

Spoiler: My X-Com Adventures, Continued (click to show/hide)

Just wondering, what difficulty setting are you playing on?

The easiest.

Also, on the subject of your grenade-throwing soldier becoming a Sniper; there's no way to predetermine which class your rookies will be come, it's based on a lottery system. When they level up, no matter how they got their kills, their class will be randomly chosen. Which is why I have about 94 Assaults and 2 Supports.

I knew that. It's still amusing.

Another mission: Rescuing an escapee of abductions, one Anna Sing. The team: Juan, Chase, and Azusomething of the previous mission, plus Akemi Okada, the Japanese rookie. Akemi (I'm assuming the game uses proper Japanese nomenclature) notes a human-looking alien. The scientist whose name escapes me requests that we try to capture it. I'm game, how do we do it? In attempting to kill/capture the thing, I discover that shifting even a single square prevents the sniper from firing. Oops. With help from an ally, though, his pistol takes down what was identified as a Thin Man, though well after it poisoned Hagana. No idea how to fix it, I'm thinking the black guy is going to die first. Eagle-eye Okada (Note to self: Make this her actual nickname) spots an alien moving to hide behind a big van thing. Sadly, en route to a decent position, she gets used in a lesson on how Overwatch works. Hagana fragged it (after it got off another shot), then Juan saw another of the little Sectoid things. Akemi, of course, spots Sing; it is thereafter discovered that two, rather than just one, of the Sectoids are present, seeming to be moving away from Ms. Sing, which would be good if they weren't probably moving to more efficiently kill us. And, of course, they are on the opposite side of the statue, etc, area from the entire team except her. While the others move into position, Akemi promptly frags the two sectoids.
Meanwhile, Anna Sing keeps pestering us to come "Over here!" instead of deal with the aliens who were shooting at us. Mills approaches her, and warns us that "they're everywhere". As we start to head back to the Skyranger, another Thin Man shows up and a car explodes (thankfully not near anyone). The Thin Man Overwatch-shoots at Akemi, but misses (as have most of the shots aimed at her). While the team moves to engage, I have Sing head straight for the extraction point. Terror is a scary thing. You know what else is scary? Akemi, who crits the Thin Man, killing it in one shot. (Come to think of it, everything's died in one shot. Except our agents.) We hurry onwards, Sing streaking ahead...straight into a Thin Man. (I was fully expecting something like this to happen. About frikkin' time.) This Thin Man continues to show their characteristic terrible aim, getting off a single miss before the sniper hit him with his pistol and Hangana finished the thinnie. The mission ended the instant Sing enters the magical rectangle, and promptly runs out in thanks.

Everyone except Juan Medina got wounded. The worst was Mills, at 16 days, but Akemi got nine and Hangana four. Hangana became another sniper, while Akemi became a nice assault. Fun.

[WhitiusOpus]

((Hey, I just did that exact same mission. With better results, but the same mission.))

[kisame12794]

((Thin men? Inaccurate? What is this heresy/sorcery?))

[Corsair]

"Okay I'm moving in"
move through the doors opening and closing as needed, start looking for the reactor breach

[Empiricist]

"What happened to the two injured people over there?"
Charles prepares a speech to convince people to take the memory erasing drugs. Just in case he needed to deliver one.

[TCM]

Spoiler: X-COM (click to show/hide)

Playing on Easy is a good choice for someone's first time through. And just when you think you'll get the handles on things, prepare to be surprised. For example, Sectoids and Thin Men are among the squishiest enemies in the game. You'll run into some soon who aren't too squishy.

To capture Aliens you need to equip a soldier with the Arc Thrower in their Item slot. It should be available for purchase at a Workshop, and if it's not there, then you need to do some more research. When you get it, have the soldier equipping the Arc Thrower run up to the alien and then select the Arc Thrower Ability to use. The alien must be down to at least 3 health bars, at which point the capture success rate is 70%. At 2 health bars it is 80%, and at 1 health bar it's 90%. Also, make sure the captured alien's body doesn't get destroyed by explosives before you finish the mission.

Also, a helpful tip about Snipers: Their one big drawback is the inability to move and fire at the same time. However, this only effects the Sniper Rifle, not the Sniper him/her self. Notice that all of your team, except Heavies, have a Pistol as their alternate weapon. The sniper can move and shoot with their Pistol just like any other soldier. While the pistol is pretty weak, it can be upgraded later on. So, if you need your sniper to move, you can have them run somewhere, soften up an alien with a pistol shot and then switch back to their rifle the next turn. The pistol is also pretty useful for Heavies when their target is not in range, or their main weapon runs out of ammunition.

[Nikitian]

Pandora's bag. Maurice smiled to himself. Reminds me of the Pit, for some reason. Probably shouldn't open it here.
Wait for a little, slightly poke at the cloth of the bag; don't open it. If it doesn't open or rip apart from inside, put the bag back into the box and close it; go to Steve and offer assistance.
Steve, do any of the teams still have open spots? What can I help you with?

[GreatWyrmGold]

Spoiler: More X-Com (click to show/hide)

((Thin men? Inaccurate? What is this heresy/sorcery?))

Luck, more likely.

Playing on Easy is a good choice for someone's first time through. And just when you think you'll get the handles on things, prepare to be surprised. For example, Sectoids and Thin Men are among the squishiest enemies in the game. You'll run into some soon who aren't too squishy.

So far, you haven't said anything surprising.

To capture Aliens you need to equip a soldier with the Arc Thrower in their Item slot. It should be available for purchase at a Workshop, and if it's not there, then you need to do some more research. When you get it, have the soldier equipping the Arc Thrower run up to the alien and then select the Arc Thrower Ability to use. The alien must be down to at least 3 health bars, at which point the capture success rate is 70%. At 2 health bars it is 80%, and at 1 health bar it's 90%. Also, make sure the captured alien's body doesn't get destroyed by explosives before you finish the mission.

Noted.

Also, a helpful tip about Snipers: Their one big drawback is the inability to move and fire at the same time. However, this only effects the Sniper Rifle, not the Sniper him/her self. Notice that all of your team, except Heavies, have a Pistol as their alternate weapon. The sniper can move and shoot with their Pistol just like any other soldier. While the pistol is pretty weak, it can be upgraded later on. So, if you need your sniper to move, you can have them run somewhere, soften up an alien with a pistol shot and then switch back to their rifle the next turn. The pistol is also pretty useful for Heavies when their target is not in range, or their main weapon runs out of ammunition.

Noted.

[PyroDesu]

Spoiler: XCOM Goodness (click to show/hide)

Another note about pistols - they're great when you're trying to capture an alien. They're not powerful enough to kill unless the target is on very low health already (in which case, why are you not trying to capture it first?), but they are powerful enough to weaken (or, for some of the higher-healthed enemies, finish weakening) down to that last bar or two of health, making your capture chances a lot better. And you want the best capture chances you can get, because if it fails and you don't want to kill that alien so you can try again, it will probably hit (and possibly kill) the soldier that attempted the capture, since you're in such short range (be glad aliens don't get alloy cannons, but be very, very afraid of Berserkers - they're melee, and they will almost assuredly kill any soldier they hit if the soldier doesn't have heavy armor (and sometimes, even then)).

Also, there's an upgrade for the arc thrower in the Foundry that lets it stun aliens at 6HP and below, as well as upgrades that let you hack alien drones and repair mechanical units. Oh, and don't try stunning Chryssalids, Zombies, Cyberdiscs, Sectopods, Seekers or Mechtoids, it won't work.

And a bit late bit still amusing:

[GreatWyrmGold]

((I wonder what the chance is of someone posting before I finish another mission and type up another report.))

Spoiler: More X-Com Stuff (click to show/hide)

So it turns out restarting your computer without saving is a bad idea. Shocker, I know. Fare-thee-well, Jorge, Juan, Chase, Azuwhatever, and Okada. And the rest of you wannabes. Time to start a new game, I guess...

Operation Devil's Moon
In the briefing, I realized why we don't get missions to Belgium, Korea, or anything. X-Com only sends missions to member nations, which kinda sucks for everyone else but I guess they don't have the resources for anything else to begin with?
Soldiers: Chase Cook, Juan Castillo, Kostya Chepurnov, Yoko Fujiwara. Sadly, only Castillo survived, because during the tutorial everyone is made of wet tissue paper.

Operation Cursed Heat
We got a nice team this time. Castillo returns, along with Malika Ajram of some country I don't recognize the flag of, Anastasiya Smirnova of what I presume is Russia, and Chen Huang of China. Nice, gender-even, racially-balanced team. I wouldn't be surprised if it included a Buddhist, an atheist, and a homosexual, plus whatever other social issues they feel they want to include. (I can even make wild guesses as to whom each of those might be.)
We've got an abduction issue in LA, USA, which is still rather warm even in March. It went boringly. Ajram screwed up when I thought it was Huang's turn, and basically wasted half the turn. Then, she screwed up a grenade throw to destroy some cover, Castillo misses with the rocket launcher, and in a sudden display of competence, Huang kills the aliens with a grenade. The aliens were worse--they missed every shot. As you may have imagined, they got access to a lot.
Smirnova, who killed an alien earlier, got promoted to Assault. Huang, for his competent grenadiering, got promoted to sniper. Castillo, for killing another alien, got promoted to hospital patient (the first batch hit him, putting him out of commission for 12 days). We got four new scientists, but panic spread across Asia. Pretty successful.

Operation Devil's Smoke
Huang and Ajram return, along with Sabastian Papadoupolous of what I believe is Sweden and Emily King of Australia. We need to rescue an Anna Sing from Ms. King's  backyard, Sydney. Papadopul...Papa notices a strangely human-like alien, slender in appearance, like some kind of man in black. He shot a lion statue, destroying it and showering Papa and Huang, who were using it for cover, with debris. King gets shot and poisoned by another of those sectoids, right before yet another runs right past Ajram. That and another shot her, killing her (right in front of Sing). Papa killed one of them, while Huang missed a headshot on the other that King quickly dispatched.
We rescued Sing, triggering a swarm of Thin Men with terrible aim. They even missed people running at them, although one poisoned Sing when she was behind a bench. Remarkably, Sing running into the rectangle did not end the mission--we had to kill the last Thinman.
As mentioned, Ajram was KIA. RIP. King and Papa became Support, with the former being gravely injured requiring a dozen days of healing. We got a dozen weapon fragments and half as many corpses, good haul.

We have some nice plans for capturing aliens and interrogating them, and will presumably do so soon enough...

Ninjedit: There was a new post. And X-Com related one. Thanks for the advice!

[GreatWyrmGold]

Hopefully, piecewise won't mind me turning this into an impromptu X-Com blog.

Spoiler: More of my X-Com Adventures (click to show/hide)

Operation Shattered Pipe
Small UFO found in a scan. Our Raven-1 shot it down almost instantly; the following cutscene was accidentally skipped. Now to hunt it down, with a Dream Team--Castillo, Papa, Huang, and Smirnova. We are to try and get the UFO back if possible, trying not to break it. Papa spots a couple survivors, who use some kind of weird magical glowy thing which causes them both to die when Papa shoots one. At least I think that's what happened. Huang spots another duo, which he promptly botches a headshot on one because those 55% chances of success make him terrible. Smirnova runs into the open and shoots a sectoid, because that's how Assaults roll. Sadly, this lead to her being shot. Happily, she then runs behind cover and deals a critical!
Evidently, the UFO includes a creature of pure energy (and concentrated Castillo-hurting). It anticlimatically vanishes when Smirnova shoots it.
Papa and Huang are promoted to Corporal. Castillo is out of action for 11 days, Papa for 5. We recover a crapton of alien toys.

I have work begun on some new labs, and then decide that I ought to save sooner or later...but can't figure out how. Some advice here would be nice.