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[Kagus]

Yeah, smoke grenades are generally considered a good investment. Another alternative is bringing a vehicle along and letting them eat the shots going down the ramp, but you can easily lose a tank to heavy reaction fire and they're a fair sight more expensive than smokes...

Xenonauts helped the issue a lot with things like shields, multiple exits, and having the transport be at ground level rather than +1, not to mention the QOL of free smoke grenades.

...but then they also added aliens that can see through smokescreens, so eh.

[itisnotlogical]

Some thugs in the Clerk's Ward attacked me. They are stupid tough and go directly to The Nameless One. My useless teammates crowd around behind TNO and ignore several orders to move because they're all stuck on eachother. I die while fruitlessly trying to pick them apart one-by-one and escape.

Have I mentioned lately how much I despise Infinity Engine combat?

Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition.

[Iduno]

Yeah, smoke grenades are generally considered a good investment. Another alternative is bringing a vehicle along and letting them eat the shots going down the ramp, but you can easily lose a tank to heavy reaction fire and they're a fair sight more expensive than smokes...

Xenonauts helped the issue a lot with things like shields, multiple exits, and having the transport be at ground level rather than +1, not to mention the QOL of free smoke grenades.

...but then they also added aliens that can see through smokescreens, so eh.

Piratez made those same improvements, and also then added enemies who can see through smoke or see in the dark better than you.

[Akura]

Had one of the oddest colonist deaths I've ever seen, as they were both a Tourist and Renegade, and the cause of death was "Extenuating Circumstances". Not sure how someone can be both a Tourist and Renegade, since Tourists shouldn't be staying long enough for their morale to drop that low. It might have only been possible since I have the International Mars Mission sponsor, which prevents Earthborn colonists from getting Earthsick - instead they become Renegade like Marsborn.

Also, this person died way too far away from the entirely-disconnected tourist dome, and a while after all remaining tourists had already left.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Surviving Mars.

[Iduno]

the cause of death was "Extenuating Circumstances"

That whole thing reads like "the game bugged out, we don't know why, but we got rid of the bugged guy and this is how we let you know."

Better than "this shouldn't happen."

[Teneb]

Decided to play the expansion to Descent 2, Vertigo. It brings in new robots and even adds first game robots. I thought that was cool until they started throwing in the fucking hitscan robots from the first game everywhere. At that point, which was a few moments before this post I just decided that I don't want to deal with that stressful shit and declared the game complete and thus out of my backlog.

Grumble.

[Akura]

Made the mistake of aggroing the scary death lady by sniping one of her squad(a named ace, stronger but worth a small bonus). She proceeded to single-handedly do more damage to my entire squad *in one turn* than the castle-sized land battleship I was already fighting had done the *entire battle*.

Actually managed to pull through that with the only soldier "killed"(if left alone too long or the enemy walks over them) was one that cannot actually permanently die, though it took judicious use of save-scumming, as well as sending a guy to rescue a fallen soldier while they get blasted away and fall in a slightly better position for the next guy to rescue them. Also learned you can rescue fallen soldiers by driving over them in a tank.


As for actual deaths, the next battle was a stealth segment with landmines, constant mortar barrages, and enemies that can kill you before you can enter attack mode. Fun times.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Valkyria Chronicles.

Two more BSs from this game. First, an enemy lancer walked about halfway across the map, headshotted one of my girls who was behind cover, then walked the rest of the way over to execute her, in a single action phase. That's total bullshit because lancers have very little movement - they wear a blast suit and carry an anti-tank rocket rifle that's longer than they are tall and looks like a medieval jousting lance - so he'd be hard pressed to make the first movement, let alone the second. Lance weapons are ridiculously inaccurate(I've seen plenty of misses at 10 feet away), and people are immune to headshots when behind cover(granted, a body hit probably would still down a scout, even with cover).

Second one wasn't cheating AI but still pretty bullshit. At what I figure was about 2/3rd's through a long and tedious battle, I sent my command tank to clear enemies out of a forward outpost, then cover the road forward. Then I sent a scout up to capture the outpost, and she spots two enemy lancers prone in tall grass... right next to my tank. And I'm out of command points for that turn. And I hadn't saved once the entire battle. Naturally, the first thing that happens on the enemy turn is one of those lancers casually saunters forward with a shit-eating grin on his face(neither the tank or the scout fired at him either), gets behind the tank, and fires at the radiator at point-blank. An AT round hitting a tank's radiator is pretty much always an instant kill, and the Edelweiss is no exception.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Valkyria Chronicles. Also not sure why people who get bonuses in natural terrain getting those bonuses, this map was a smog-filled industrial slum.

[itisnotlogical]

I fell in love with Planescape: Torment for its detailed, intricate writing, interesting and flawed characters, deepening mystery, and unique setting. What's the culmination of this, you might ask?

Spoiler: What the endgame looks like (click to show/hide)

Getting bodyblocked and murderized by dozens of gigantic mobs while you run around trying to solve an idiotically simple puzzle. Also you can't save, and this whole process involves at least three unskippable cutscenes.

It's like all the moments I've ever been mad at KOTOR and Neverwinter Nights, when my characters just ignored commands, got stuck on chairs or in corners, or an attack got interrupted at the last second. It's like every time I got killed in an MMO because a lag spike gave the enemy 50 turns in a row. It's like somehow they looked into the future, saw that, and said "Wow, these games are awesome!"

I thought I would finish this game tonight, but I'm on my fourth attempt and actually starting to get mad.

Planescape: Torment, Enhanced Edition.

[Telgin]

Spoke too soon of my competence with XCOM Classic in the own thread.  I had my first terror mission with snakemen and chryssalids, and it went as badly as I expected.

First, there were 5 snakemen just outside of the boarding ramp.  They were all busy looking away, so they didn't reaction fire and kill anyone, but 10 soldiers and a laser tank somehow managed to only kill 3 of them, and the return fire on the next turn killed several soldiers.  Then friendly fire on the following turn killed another soldier because you can't trust an XCOM soldier to not shoot a buddy in the back unless it's literally impossible for them to do it.  Friendly fire later on would destroy my laser tank too.

And then came the chryssalids.  Frustratingly, I did extremely well against them at first by having my soldiers sit still and only shoot at any that were already visible instead of looking for them.  I killed about 7 of them this way, and when any wandered in my reaction fire actually killed them.

And the mission didn't ever end, so I knew I had a zombie or chryssalid left somewhere.  I went looking, and... tada, it was just sitting out of view very close to my soldiers.  4 soldiers shooting at it with lasers failed to kill it, and on the next turn it zombified them.  With only 5 soldiers left and at point blank range, I had no hope of killing all of the zombies and chryssalids they made.

Lost all of my experienced soldiers and a skyranger, so time to start over again.

[BurnedToast]

Decided to try xenonauts again for some damn reason.

Couple missions in, doing ok, corner a lizard guy in a building. Get my guys in position to attack him, one guy is shooting up from the ground and.... 100% blocked shot by something on ground level below the alien, wtf? The only way I can explain it is maybe the shot is trying to go in an "L" shape straight forward, than straight up, which is of course completely stupid but would explain how the shot is blocked. The other guys fail to kill him, lizard guy 1-hit KOs a guy straight through his armor. Fine, whatever.

Next turn, re-position, basically shooting down a straight corridor. Both guys have a 100% blocked shot by a wall that is not in any way, shape or form possibly blocking the shot. I have no explanation for this, there's no excuse, it's completely absurd. End turn, alien without moving casually executes both my guys with one shot each because LOS only works against the player apparently.

Ragequit - I really, really want to like this game but whoever thought the LoS system was fine is an idiot. I don't know why literally every other tactical game I've played (and I've played a lot) is totally fine with little to no problem and this game is so bad all the time.

...also late game psionics but I didn't get far enough to get mad about that.

[Khan Boyzitbig]

Honestly I have never seen shots blocked by something that shouldn't, though I seem to recall hitting an alien through the front door of a ship which shouldn't have been possible.

[Rolan7]

Weird, looks like they check a series of tiles along the route, instead of firing rays through 3D geometry like in Old-COM.  Some discussion with an example image where a wall blocks at one angle, not another.

Old-COM's system was often frustrating as well, and it's bizarre that such an old game used such a CPU-intensive check so many times a turn.  But the Xenonauts solution appears, well, worse.

[Iduno]

But the Xenonauts solution appears, well, worse.

I think that was the box quote.

[Telgin]

X-COM's line of sight calculations can be pretty janky too, for sure.  Case in point: tried my first alien base assault and learned that it was entirely possible for an alien to fire around a corner that I could not.  I've also had cases of aliens being able to shoot me through windows where I couldn't retaliate, and tons of cases where I couldn't shoot aliens the game told me just came into view with the alert in the corner, while being able to shoot aliens when there was no visibility alert.  Could just be me misunderstanding how that works, or problems with Open X-COM working differently from the original.

Anyway, lost that base assault and I'm pretty sure I need to put this game away for a while because it is no longer bringing me any joy.  Aliens are seasoned snipers who can toast my captain as he runs past a window, but one of my soldiers standing right behind a sectoid firing full auto with a laser rifle into his back can't kill him.  But, of course, he gets killed in one shot back, and so did my laser tank.  Not even going to get into the psychic attacks and fun of having 2 soldiers mind controlled every turn.

I figured I wasn't prepared for the mission, but I shouldn't have even tried it while still playing iron man.

Anyway, one thing I'm starting to doubt is if personal armor actually makes a tangible difference.  So far it seems to maybe save 10% of the soldiers who are shot by aliens, with the only real benefit I can guess is that it at least did save one from multiple laser shots when a buddy was mind controlled.

[hector13]

Lasers are kinda sucky, the only real benefit being they don’t need to be reloaded and they’re better than the ballistic weapons you have to use at the start.

Plasma weapons are where it’s at.