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[KingofstarrySkies]

I just really want to sic a sectopod on an ethereal.

A Commander after my own heart.

[Rolan7]

I just really want to sic a sectopod on an ethereal.

Or go old-school X-COM 1, and sic a sectopod on itself.  Multi-tile creatures, hehe.

[Sonlirain]

I just really want to sic a sectopod on an ethereal.

Or go old-school X-COM 1, and sic a sectopod on itself.  Multi-tile creatures, hehe.

With aweakness to its own weapon.

[Rolan7]

If it's green like plasma, shaped like plasma, and fired by an alien sectopod...  It's actually a laser, technically.  So weird!
I never had trouble with sectopods, but I tended to equip lasers (along with rockets) even into the late game.  Not that heavy plasma clips were ever *actually* a limiting factor, but I liked to pretend there was some choice.  So lasers let me spray autofire willy-nilly.  Annoying large building on a terror mission?  Lasers!  Enemy behind a wall?  Lasers!  High turnover rate so most of my guys can't aim?  LASERS!

Plus, XCOMUtil makes the heavy laser a viable option.  As I recall it even has a decent chance of knocking down interior UFO walls!

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Remember how captured drones had a decent self-destruct radius? Extrapolate that to Sectopods. Hello bunker-buster!

[EnigmaticHat]

If it's green like plasma, shaped like plasma, and fired by an alien sectopod...  It's actually a laser, technically.

Pretty sure that was a glitch.  UFOpedia seemed to think so like 10 years ago.

[Flying Dice]

Who's bothered?  I just think its funny.  I'll be honest with you here, I think the only people that are bothered are the guys trying not to see it or making up reasons that it isn't there.  The rest of us are just having a good laugh.

All I see is people  complaining about having female aliens now and justifying it by making arguments over biology that don't matter anyway because XCOM was never realistic about it's science anyway.

Oh boy we get to have this argument shit up the X-COM thread too?

But seriously though, sexual characteristics on functionally asexual vat-grown clone-soldiers doesn't make sense any way you slice it, never mind alien reptiles mimicking terrestrial mammals in that respect. The only place where it even remotely does make sense is with Thin Men, because they're expressly designed to be infiltrators. Everything else... the Ethereals have literally zero reason to make them sexually active, and sexual characteristics that aren't being used for reproduction are, at best, a bit of flesh that makes armor cost more and have more potential weak points.

I'd be complaining even more if Sectoids were running around dragging their twig&berries on the ground because that's the same problem except even more stupid. The only aliums that could reasonably be gendered with noticeable sexual characteristics are converted native-born humans and (depending on what sort of physiology they turn out to have) Ethereals. Some of them (Mutons in particular) might have vestigial traits, but you don't see them running around in Alloy bikinis or banana hammocks.

Though I'll give props to you for trying to turn it into an argument about feminism instead of repeating one of the lines about, "No, really, I swear I don't see hips or boobs, they're totally reasonable and can be explain as venom-_fapfapfapfap"

[10ebbor10]

What I'm worried about is that, with drones now being a thing of the Specialist class, that the SHIV is going to dissappear.

[puke]

Annoying large building on a terror mission?  Lasers!  Enemy behind a wall?  Lasers!  High turnover rate so most of my guys can't aim?  LASERS!

I used autocannons with explosive shells for this, until I had enough  resources to manufacture large quantities of blaster bombs.  Even when the guys were all in flying armor with heavy plasmas, I kept a couple autocannons in the squad for massive terrain destruction and fire starting.

After I had enough juice to fabricate the blaster bombs though, I'd just gut entire battleships on turn one.  Sending bombs up the elevator shaft to detonate on each level.  The rest was cleanup

What I'm worried about is that, with drones now being a thing of the Specialist class, that the SHIV is going to dissappear.

Maybe, but the Shiv was always played as an independent character that took up a slot on the roster and had its own actions.  The drone is purely an extension of the Specialist guy, and uses his moves and does not take a place on the roster.

[Flying Dice]

Man, ACs continued to be good right into the endgame, if only for the utility. That AC-I lit up the night like nothing else.

I'm almost expecting to see a mechanic where you can capture hacked robotic units and do something to convert them into nu-SHIVs, then upgrade them from there, so that you'd have different build lines for each type of xenos robot. That'd be interesting, eh?

[puke]

I'm almost expecting to see a mechanic where you can capture hacked robotic units and do something to convert them into nu-SHIVs, then upgrade them from there, so that you'd have different build lines for each type of xenos robot. That'd be interesting, eh?

My kneejerk reaction is dismissive, since you could hack drones in the last game but not recover or reuse them between missions.  BUT -- since salvage is a thing now, maybe this will be a feature?

Could we have machete ninjas surfing out of the back of a cyberdisk?  Flying straight out of the back of a skyranger in flight?

[Rolan7]

Who's bothered?  I just think its funny.  I'll be honest with you here, I think the only people that are bothered are the guys trying not to see it or making up reasons that it isn't there.  The rest of us are just having a good laugh.

All I see is people  complaining about having female aliens now and justifying it by making arguments over biology that don't matter anyway because XCOM was never realistic about it's science anyway.

[snip]
Though I'll give props to you for trying to turn it into an argument about feminism instead of repeating one of the lines about, "No, really, I swear I don't see hips or boobs, they're totally reasonable and can be explain as venom-_fapfapfapfap"

That's not an "argument about feminism", but nice deflection and crude accusation.  Again, I'm sure there'll be a mod for vipers which makes them literally snakes.  Tiny armless reptiles.  To preserve "realism" in a freakin XCOM game.

XCOM has always been one of the least sexist games to have female characters, and that hasn't changed one bit.  I was surprised to see people hold it to some weird puritan standard, but I guess it's actually just furry-hate after all.  Fortunately this "controversy" is only boosting exposure.

[scrdest]

Then again, there's probably going to be a localization that replaces every instance of 'Viper' to 'PORN WHEN'.

[puke]

nice deflection and crude accusation.

I was certainly entertained by his deflection and crude accusation.  I mean, without devolving into totally baseless mudslinging, his deflection and accusation was actually pretty on target and funny.  This isn't an Oxford Style Debate here, people can have a bit of smack talk as long as we're all having a good time with it.

XCOM has always been one of the least sexist games to have female characters, and that hasn't changed one bit.

This is actually very true.  Multicultural and multisexual roster in the original OldCom, with no sexualization of the female troops.  The comparison shot of the boobarmors in nuCom:EU and nuCom:EW were especially telling as far as the maturity of the design choices, which is probably the most conservative videogame I've seen.

I don't think anyone's looking for it to be puritanical.  I wouldn't have a problem with one of the characters being a tarted up Simone Segouin or something, I just think its ridiculous (this word means "something that is worthy of ridicule" and that is what we're doing:  ridiculing it) that they put BOOBS on a SNAKE.

[Flying Dice]

Who's bothered?  I just think its funny.  I'll be honest with you here, I think the only people that are bothered are the guys trying not to see it or making up reasons that it isn't there.  The rest of us are just having a good laugh.

All I see is people  complaining about having female aliens now and justifying it by making arguments over biology that don't matter anyway because XCOM was never realistic about it's science anyway.

[snip]
Though I'll give props to you for trying to turn it into an argument about feminism instead of repeating one of the lines about, "No, really, I swear I don't see hips or boobs, they're totally reasonable and can be explain as venom-_fapfapfapfap"

That's not an "argument about feminism", but nice deflection and crude accusation.  Again, I'm sure there'll be a mod for vipers which makes them literally snakes.  Tiny armless reptiles.  To preserve "realism" in a freakin XCOM game.

XCOM has always been one of the least sexist games to have female characters, and that hasn't changed one bit.  I was surprised to see people hold it to some weird puritan standard, but I guess it's actually just furry-hate after all.  Fortunately this "controversy" is only boosting exposure.

Projecting, much?

"This doesn't make sense, even in the context of X-COM's psuedoscience."

"OMG you bigot stop being so uptight."

I've not even made any value judgements, just explained why it doesn't make sense. I wasn't even thinking about it in terms of gender politics until someone else brought that up. But okay, you can have your assumptions, because you sure seem to enjoy leaping to them. That's what's honestly most bizarre about it, is how defensive people get about their snakeboobs. This whole thing started off with people having a laugh in the vein of "Hahaha really Firaxis?", then certain others decided that they were being mortally offended. Now it's more along the lines of an incredulous, "Haha... really?"

nice deflection and crude accusation.

I was certainly entertained by his deflection and crude accusation.  I mean, without devolving into totally baseless mudslinging, his deflection and accusation was actually pretty on target and funny.  This isn't an Oxford Style Debate here, people can have a bit of smack talk as long as we're all having a good time with it.

XCOM has always been one of the least sexist games to have female characters, and that hasn't changed one bit.

This is actually very true.  Multicultural and multisexual roster in the original OldCom, with no sexualization of the female troops.  The comparison shot of the boobarmors in nuCom:EU and nuCom:EW were especially telling as far as the maturity of the design choices, which is probably the most conservative videogame I've seen.

I don't think anyone's looking for it to be puritanical.  I wouldn't have a problem with one of the characters being a tarted up Simone Segouin or something, I just think its ridiculous (this word means "something that is worthy of ridicule" and that is what we're doing:  ridiculing it) that they put BOOBS on a SNAKE.

Thank you. That's exactly what's going on here, it was sort of absurd. Then people went super serious because defending the right of snakes to have boobs is apparently as strong a motivator as an NRA member or animal uplift's right to bear arms and there's no such thing as humor when it comes to bear arms.

That was actually one of the neat things about oldCOM is how they treated the gender of your troopers as functionally irrelevant, except that it determined whether they got a ponytail or that very '80s action movie... thing.

e: I don't hate anyone here for wanting their snakeboobs, I'm just taking the piss a bit because it's silly.