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[AzyWng]

Someone just told me that they found my Instagram account.

I've never installed the app ever, let alone made an account.

[Khan Boyzitbig]

XCOM always needs recruits, especially psionics.

Here's a stick, over there is an alien. Have fun and maybe next time we actually give you a gun!

This is really late but clearly you don't care for your soldiers much.

You gotta give them a medkit too. So that your real soldiers only need to find the nearest corpse to have access to life saving medicine.

Nah, the good soldiers get guns and maybe medkits. Guys who aren't good for anything but dying get healed if they survive a hit but you always need that one guy to stick his head out the door and hope the reaction fire isn't a blaster bomb.

[Rolan7]

The mechanics are so weird.  I remember in one playthrough, I started equipping my "soldiers worth a damn" in personal (alloy) armor to better keep track of them, and as a boon of rank.

But the "right" way to play is for jumpsuit rookies to run around finding enemies, then the competent soldiers sniping them across the map - everyone has infinite range and squadsight, and the only "range penalty" is relevant at quite short range (if you roll a "miss", the semi-random shot might happen to hit anyway). 

Only base assaults and later UFOs really require risking your actual shooters (exaggerating a little, but seriously).  And for those you soon obtain blaster bombs and psionics. 

Long story short, at the end of my second playthrough, my soldiers with aim were still in blue alloy while the scrub plasma-magnets wore powered armor (the game lets you manufacture money, even without glitches).  My psionics, always in hiding, wore the kevlar jumpsuits.

[Lord Shonus]

One of the reasons I prefer Terror From The Deep to the original game is that that tactic doesn't work - the maps are too big. 

[Rolan7]

Actually yeah...  That's probably part of the reason the TFTD was so frustrating.  It's a lot more vertical, even at the bottom of the ocean.  Instead of fairly simple farm-houses, the resorts have basements and large slopes preventing sniping.

And then the infamous cruise ships are a nightmare of corridors...  Even before you get to the second half of each.

Despite being frustrating, I can kinda see how that's a good thing.  More tactical, and buffs terrain destruction.

[Lord Shonus]

There's also the pure size of the maps. You can fit 4 first game maps in each TFTD map. I can certainly understand why that was frustrating, and I admittedly use XcomUTIL to reveal the map when I'm pretty sure I'm down to the last alien.

As for the ships, I found freighters to be much more hassle than cruise ships. The first half wasn't too bad, usually, but the second half of those is such a maze of shipping containers that it is really annoying to fight.


I kind of soured on the game after the last time I played it. I was doing so well that the game started throwing Lobstermen at me in Februrary, so I never saw a single Calcinite and was locked out of the melee weapons tree (which is really, really handy against Lobstermen).

[Rolan7]

The tech tree has a couple serious "walking dead" bugs, not to mention those overly specific requirements which can hold you back until you happen to encounter "early" enemies again.

Made it easier for me to justify dropping the game, but it was mainly the long levels and the changes yeah.  I bet it's better in openXCOM.

Edit:  (I did find the setting legitly creepy, though, even horrific.  They did a good job with that.  X-COM 1 had that too but in a different way, which is why I tried to like TFTD)

[Neonivek]

Man... I think can't get over Hufflepuffs in Harry Potter...

They feel like the biggest backhanded compliment group.

Don't get me wrong hard working people are important and in many ways you can consider it a talent.

Yet... a house dedicated to work horse people... whose talent is that they are good at menial labor and mindless repetitive jobs? Maybe at best athletes (except Griffindor and Slitherine are the best athletes because elitism... or more specifically because atheletes are "Leaders" Griffindor... or Slitherine if you want to get edgy that day)

Though someone else interpreted them as the Friendship house... the kind of house that would probably be the most powerful one there ever was... were this an anime.

[Frumple]

... and then you had cedric, who thrown under a resurrection bus or not, was identified as one of the most competent students in the school (and on par with or surpassing the some of the best in europe) and was a leader among the student body. Handful of others like that (tonks would stand as a decent example, probably), too. Their ethos is indeed hard work (both individually and collectively), they just didn't get much screen time.

[Helgoland]

I know a girl who proudly runs around with a Hufflepuff patch sewn onto her bag, and another one that'd totally do that. I think you mischaracterize them: They're more like 'slow and steady wins the race' than anything else, especially when you contrast them with Ravenclaw.

Fun question: To what extent do you think do these two have a rivalry going? Where specifically does this rivalry come from? How does it manifest?

[Lord Shonus]

Hufflepuff House is, according to the Sorting hat is made up of "hard workers", "loyal", and "the rest".

One thing I noticed about HP is that the the three main leads and Neville perfectly embody the virtues and vices of the four Houses, with Harry being Griffindor, Ron being Slytherin, Hermione being Ravenclaw, and Neville being Hufflepuff

[TheDarkStar]

Hufflepuff House is, according to the Sorting hat is made up of "hard workers", "loyal", and "the rest".

One thing I noticed about HP is that the the three main leads and Neville perfectly embody the virtues and vices of the four Houses, with Harry being Griffindor, Ron being Slytherin, Hermione being Ravenclaw, and Neville being Hufflepuff

How do you see Slytherin in Ron? I'd have put Harry in Slytherin and Ron in Griffindor myself.

[Akura]

Hufflepuff House is, according to the Sorting hat is made up of "hard workers", "loyal", and "the rest".

One thing I noticed about HP is that the the three main leads and Neville perfectly embody the virtues and vices of the four Houses, with Harry being Griffindor, Ron being Slytherin, Hermione being Ravenclaw, and Neville being Hufflepuff

How do you see Slytherin in Ron? I'd have put Harry in Slytherin and Ron in Griffindor myself.

So would I. And hell, the Sorting Hat had mostly the same assessment in-universe.

[Frumple]

Bigotry (against the snakes at the least, amusingly enough), ambition (mostly related to underperforming his siblings), somewhat questionable loyalty and a degree of willingness to undercut folks. He still belonged in gryffindor by and large, but he definitely seemed to express a good chunk of green lot traits.

Fun question: To what extent do you think do these two have a rivalry going? Where specifically does this rivalry come from? How does it manifest?

Probably not much, really. The two houses had one of the few interhouse relationships mentioned in the books, and they seemed fairly disinclined towards mimicking the behavior of the red and green houses. Still, main friction point is probably differences in social inclination, if I had to guess. Claws seem notably more inclined against collective stuff, and more likely to turn on themselves, which probably rubs the puffs the wrong way, with something similar on the other side of things.

It'd probably just manifest as avoidance, though. One way or another neither seem inclined to wasting much time or much effort on rivalry that could be spent elsewhere, in contrast to the more noisy groups that are basically grouped up based on their inclination towards engaging in conflict and/or getting involved in social dominance plays. Maybe a degree of competition in certain fields (sports, mostly, maybe studies with the two having an edge in different areas). They kinda' seem like they're were mostly chillin' as the other two houses tear into each other and largely ignore the sidelined pair.

[Neonivek]

Hufflepuff House is, according to the Sorting hat is made up of "hard workers", "loyal", and "the rest".

So where the other houses have strong virtues and an understanding of how they themselves can change the face of the earth.

Hufflepuff are the ones who sort of... are subservient by their own description... and their virtue is "They make good servants"

Cedric is likely a diversity pick by the hat (he does that)...