Hi, it was only august 2022 when I acquired the original xcom in memory of a deceased friend and after playing the newer games that were free on epic. Slapped that on my smartphone, played pretty sporadically... Mostly because the missions are considerably less convenient to play on smartphone (tho it gets better once you put in some serious hours). Well my first campaign is nearing it's end and I can't believe just how good the game is, especially playing my savegame a bit on the PC was a real delight. Like the new xcoms are quite enjoyable games, but they're a straight downgrade compard to vanilla with tiniest bit of QOL changes. I've come to the conclusion that I will be playing a lot more, and that it would probably be a good idea if I ran two different things on mobile and PC, because transfering savegames over and over is just annoying, and half the time I simply dont do it and then I dont play as much as I might lowkey want to.
First of all whats the deal with that "extended" version of the openxcom client? What does it achieve that the skeleton of the base game couldn't?
So I am a notorious savescummer, I do it in every game I can't help myself. Anyway I'm aware xcom would be more enjoyable if I didn't. The thing is as a campaign ramps up and I progressed quite a bit, I usually yearn for it to be longer... But if I'm at the start of a super large stretch, I'd be way too concerned to lock my progress if I allow myself to loose to much. There are too many options, and it's kinda hard to learn about the crazy big mods, unless you full on dive into the details. Probably for the phone something that has a campaign length of 1-2 ingame years would be good (and that I don't mind restarting), whereas on the PC a giant total conversion (that I don't mind stretching forever even if that takes "cheating" a little) would be the better pick... On the phone it would probably best to have something that is forgiving to just trying stuff out (whereas on the PC I don't mind having a wiki open at all times), but that can easily be put on it's head if the early game is so varied and fun that handling it as a roguelike/hardcore/ironman is actually more rewarding... Long story short, I don't mind spending a lot of time, but I hate feeling like I wasted it. I guess I just list a bunch of my concerns and then whoever wants can advise me accordingly:
-I'm interested in terror from the deep, but I heard that it leans much more into the tedious parts... Like if I start loosing my guys after frantically searching the map for the last lost npc, I'll be savescumming for sure. Alltogether there seem to be enough other options to skip this one, or is it required to run a bunch of mods?
-Is there were a mod that combines all the content of the vanilla xcom and terror from the deep, with just a minimum of additions, no more than required to make it all cohesive, that might very much interest me tho. (Basically the wet dream of my deceased friend, he probably wasn't aware of all the mods)
-I heard there is collection of mods that's sort of an expanded version of the basegame without being a total conversion... Which one would that be?
-My first instinct would be to "expand" the game, rather than convert, but you people are the experts if you tell me something's better I'll probably believe it, that was just fyi.
-So x-files, is like a relatively lore friendly total conversion, that should last 5-6 ingame years, and can be unforgiving if you screw up the research right? Basically builds upon the original but far exceeds it in scale right?
-Whereas x-piratez is at least as big as that, and then some more... I'm a little turned off by how funky it is... But if like 4 in 5 tell me that's what makes it so much more fun, I can see the appeal.
-I like warhammer, kinda prefer fantasy over 40k tho I've heard that a typical campaign will kind of have an ideal length for mobile... So I guess if on PC I go for the super serious xfiles that's kinda in theme with the original... something more flashy might be a welcome change on mobile.
-The real question is, does playing piratez without the "extended client" take away a lot from the best experience that could be had with piratez? Not sure if modding that hard would run or run well on the phone.
Yuck such ramblings, but I've postponed posting this for a few days now, it had to be done, any thoughts anybody?