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[i2amroy]

Really? You're naming a character after the sun god? Then putting him in golden armor? xD
If my current character dies, I think I'll make a wolf-themed character, and call them Fenrir.

He was already Egyptian, what else was I supposed to do? That said with him going full-force run'n'gun style he should burn brightly enough, the question is just how long till he snuffs it.

In response to the balance stuff: I see. That kinda makes it so if you see someone with good stats you should snap them up. Are there growths with every 'level' as well, or is everything set from the start?

You grow every promotion, yeah, which means while picking someone with good stats to start with will certainly help, it won't totally determine how good they are at the end, just help to push them in the right direction.

[Sheb]

IT's funny that you'd consider Portent hard. Granted, I've only ever played Vanilla X-COM on normal, but all those "escort VIP" missions became some of the easiest ones once I realized enemies would only pop up when you move the VIP. Since there is no meld, you can take the time to position your soliders on high ground then reload, then overwatch/ready weapons before moving the VIP and triggering spawns one or two at a time.

[Mephansteras]

I normally play vanilla on Classic Ironman, and Thin Men can be really nasty on that level. You can prepare for them, yes, and that helps a lot. But all it takes is one to spawn outside of view of your troops and...well, they like popping up around corners and picking off the VIP when I play. Having 6 man squads helps considerably since I can better cover all angles.

[UXLZ]

You seem to be pretty damn experienced though (or at least good). I'm not sure if the game has a massive difficulty spike somewhere, but thus far there's only been one KIA.

[Sheb]

Long War get progressively more difficult as the game goes on, so don't worry, we will have plenty of bodiees.

[UXLZ]

Blood for the Blood God?

How accurate is XCOM's damage model for different body parts? Can you aim for someone's hand or arm to make them drop their gun, or for their leg to cripple their movement? I don't *think* it is, it's probably just like all the other games with this style of combat.

A game like XCOM with an accurate damage model would be so awesome... Or an incredibly enormous failure. But I'd hope for the awesome. 

[Sheb]

Nope, you just have HP. X-COM's combat is actually fairly simple, letting you focus on building strategies and combo out of abilities.

[UXLZ]

Is XCOM a game that runs off of Critical Existence Failure, or is performance slightly affected by current health levels?

[Mephansteras]

Is XCOM a game that runs off of Critical Existence Failure, or is performance slightly affected by current health levels?

Normally it runs on CEF, but I have a Second Wave option turned on that makes performance effected by health levels.

[UXLZ]

That's pretty neat. Glad to hear there's an option like that.
Now all we need is for someone to mod in an accurate damage model, DF style. xD

[i2amroy]

You seem to be pretty damn experienced though (or at least good). I'm not sure if the game has a massive difficulty spike somewhere, but thus far there's only been one KIA.

From my handful of runs through (I haven't quite finished one yet), Long War player losses tend to get you in two ways.
1) Unlucky shots. Even with cover and hunkering down it's totally still possible for an alien to get you with a critical shot and OHKO your guy, especially later in the game as they get better at aiming and do more damage.
2) You don't realize it's time to retreat soon enough and pretty much everyone dies. I've had some missions that looked pretty easy when I started, only for dozens of mutons to suddenly begin pouring in from all sides. (And sometimes the pods will move on their own, so you might not even be triggering them on purpose). Next thing you know your guys are surrounded and dying like flies, and if you are lucky maybe a few can even make it back.

In the long run overall long war losses tend to sneak up on you as well. Generally I've found they consist of you playing along and suddenly realizing that all of your weapons are just bouncing off of your enemies, your armor isn't good enough to stop their occasional lucky shot, and it's going to take another month of losing before you can research anything to counter that (and then another week or so to actually produce it). This is also a reason why it's generally a good idea to pick up gauss weaponry pretty early as well, alien armor goes up pretty quickly after mutons start showing, and if you aren't prepared things can get very tough, very fast.

(Alternatively they consist of you losing the air game badly enough that all of your satellites are being shot down faster then you can replace them, and everybody leaves xcom while you fail to gain any real funding to replace said satellites ).

[UXLZ]

You seem to be pretty damn experienced though (or at least good). I'm not sure if the game has a massive difficulty spike somewhere, but thus far there's only been one KIA.

From my handful of runs through (I haven't quite finished one yet), Long War player losses tend to get you in two ways.
1) Unlucky shots. Even with cover and hunkering down it's totally still possible for an alien to get you with a critical shot and OHKO your guy, especially later in the game as they get better at aiming and do more damage.
2) You don't realize it's time to retreat soon enough and pretty much everyone dies. I've had some missions that looked pretty easy when I started, only for dozens of mutons to suddenly begin pouring in from all sides. (And sometimes the pods will move on their own, so you might not even be triggering them on purpose). Next thing you know your guys are surrounded and dying like flies, and if you are lucky maybe a few can even make it back.

In the long run overall long war losses tend to sneak up on you as well. Generally I've found they consist of you playing along and suddenly realizing that all of your weapons are just bouncing off of your enemies, your armor isn't good enough to stop their occasional lucky shot, and it's going to take another month of losing before you can research anything to counter that (and then another week or so to actually produce it). This is also a reason why it's generally a good idea to pick up gauss weaponry pretty early as well, alien armor goes up pretty quickly after mutons start showing, and if you aren't prepared things can get very tough, very fast.

(Alternatively they consist of you losing the air game badly enough that all of your satellites are being shot down faster then you can replace them, and everybody leaves xcom while you fail to gain any real funding to replace said satellites ).

Ah, so it turns into a 'you lose because numbers' situation. xD (That is to say, while skill can compensate somewhat, the enemy just outclasses you and you stand no choice.)
I'm not sure if I like that kind of difficulty or not. I'd say it's good most of the time, but it's a pain in the ass in some games *cough* Roguelikes *cough*. Though that is the point, I guess.
Actually, a better example would be the Azure Kite, Tri-Edge and Taihaku fights in the third .hack\\GU volume (if you know what I'm talking about.)
They were mainly just bad because they were massive difficulty spikes that came out of nowhere and you seriously had to do a bit of level grinding to stand even the slightest chance. (Though it was possible to scum two of them with the right consumables, if still incredibly difficult).

The eternal spiral of failure. >_>
Ever played Dungeon Keeper 1?
'You need a treasury to store gold'
Of course, since you have no gold to build a treasury...


Luck's a part of everything, but XCOM's no Hearthstone.

[Sheb]

Well, it depends. In vanilla, you don't have fatigue, so you usually have a alpha squad of badasses, and if you loose them on one mission, you've pretty much lost the game. In Long War, you have to have many more men, so it's less of an instant loss and more of your capabilities slowly degrading until you'd better give up.

[UXLZ]

I think the long war way is far more interesting. The alpha badass squad is so... I guess you could call it immersion breaking (though a game like XCOM isn't really that 'immersive') but it kind of irritates me that you're meant to be this big operation and yet all the ground work is done by six guys. (Modern Military Shooter Syndrome, almost. xD)

[i2amroy]

Well, it depends. In vanilla, you don't have fatigue, so you usually have a alpha squad of badasses, and if you loose them on one mission, you've pretty much lost the game. In Long War, you have to have many more men, so it's less of an instant loss and more of your capabilities slowly degrading until you'd better give up.

Yeah. Long war does have some "helper" mechanisms that will help you to catch up (meld canisters contain more meld the farther you are behind the aliens, or less if you are ahead), and it can lead to an awesome feeling if you do manage to overcome insurmountable odds and get back on your feet, but losses kinda sneak up on you while you slowly start to lose worse and worse.

That said you can certainly avoid most of those "because numbers" type of loss by making the right plans and actions ahead of time (unlike many rouge-likes, where it often just comes down to RNG favor). It's just that Long War goes for more of a, well, "long" feeling to it. What you research and invest in now might not start to really make a difference until a few months down the line, and that difference can range from making things a breeze all of the way to making things nigh impossible. That extra +1 armor HP might not seem like much for the cost to research and produce it at first, until you realize that that's 1 more damage rookies can take without being wounded (since armor damage doesn't trigger wounded), which means they can go on more missions and get more xp to become more useful, which means a month or two from now you've got a much more developed team and have had to spend less on replacement soldiers (as well as buying you more time to research the next armor). Similarly investing in heavier weaponry right now might seem fairly useless when you are already 1-shotting enemies, but it's a high enough time and money cost to research and produce that you aren't exactly going to have time to research it when the enemies get stronger and you do need it. Unlike vanilla the aliens don't ever really stop progressing, and so you are constantly fighting to both catch up in research and to hold onto the ground you have already claimed against them.