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[puke]

There are things that Long War is fundamentally incapable of fixing.

It can never let you shoot through a target into what is lined up behind it, pickup or drop equipment in the field, pass a buddy a magazine or grenade, or anything like that.  The game remains fundamentally shallow.  You cant launch multiple sky rangers, or build multiple bases, or really play any sort of intelligent geoscape game at all. 

I enjoyed the original game for about 3 hours before I got really upset by that stuff.

I found Long War interesting enough to keep me exploring the options though, and 20 hours in I have forgotten about all those problems.  Some of the issues like the lack of multiple bases and skyrangers are mitigated by changes in long war.  They got rid of the three-way choice for which country to support, and instead the aliens constantly fly missions which you may or may not see happen.  There still isnt an air-game per se, but you do have to manage limited air resources.  They mitigated the problems with only one sky ranger and only one base by introducing fatigue and worse wounds, forcing you to keep a deeper roster.

All in all, it is totally engrossing.  Steam says I've got 135 hours in, and I intend to go back and play some more after I get tired of KSP again.

[Il Palazzo]

How's Long War versus Xenonauts?

[Aklyon]

How's Long War versus Xenonauts?

in what way?

[Il Palazzo]

Assuming you played both, which you prefer on a purely enjoyment basis.

[Teneb]

I think Xenonauts is basically OldCOM but better, while Long War is NewCOM but better. Xenonauts retain the time units system from the first game, for example.

[NullForceOmega]

Xenonauts also retains just about every other feature that makes the original an excellent tactical game (the strategic is just as fucked here as everywhere else though), the weight limitation are vastly preferable to newcom and the 'equip only these few things' paradigm, the ability to crouch for decreased targeting profile and increased accuracy, the option to actually have reaction fire, etc.  To me at least, while I enjoyed the hell out of newcom (and hated long war with every fiber of my soul for the three hours I was willing to give it), Xenonauts is flatly better at being a new 'Xcom'.

[BurnedToast]

The XCOM: Enemy Unknown Complete Pack is on Humble for 12 dollars.  Is that a good deal?

I bought the base game for ~12 a while ago and it felt worth it, so $12 for game + expansion is a pretty good deal.

I wasn't enamoured by XCom to be honest, felt ridiculously shallow to me and I've only put 9 hours into it on Steam compared to the hundreds I've played the originals over the years.

It very much is shallower then the original in a lot of ways, but there's also a *lot* of improvements. I think most of the changes they made were good, they just took them a little too far.

For example, two actions per turn makes combat a *LOT* less tedious.... trying to count how many squares you could move without giving up a shot was annoying (especially since everyone had different amounts of TU and TU required per shoot) but two is not granular enough, they should have had maybe 4 actions to increase flexibility. Chrisalids went from a true terror enemy in the original to a complete joke (my first game, classic ironman, I didn't lose a single soldier to one) because they would always waste the second action to move next to you, then you could just shoot them easily.

Or ammo, it was annoying as hell manually adding ammo to everyone and the idea that your whole base would run out of bullets because you forgot to order more from Bullets R' Us is absurd. But on the other hand, being able to carry for example more rockets at the expensive of less bullets, or maybe extra grenades or whatever was an interesting tradeoff. They should have just added more item slots, then made ammo an item that gave you a reasonable but not unlimited amount, and let you bring more "special ability" items like rockets or smokes in items slots.

Or the one skyranger thing, I'll be honest for 90% of the time in the original game I only used one skyranger with my "A" team in it anyway. I'd usually have a second one with the "B" team in it, but they only got used very rarely if something super important came up while the "A" team was busy, so this is not something I really missed.

and so on.

[Tnx]

Thanks for all the input guys, I decided to buy it.   Seems like it's gonna be weird without ammo/grenade management as the only other X-com game I've played was X-Com Apocalypse.

[Rolan7]

If you liked Apocalypse, you might like the UFO Aftermath trilogy (on GOG).  I did.  I think I enjoyed New XCOM more, but only marginally, and it's certainly very different from original XCOM.

The Aftermath series is continuous-time with pausing, like Apocalypse introduced.  The base management is also unique in the second and third games.  In the first (Aftermath) base management is almost entirely abstracted away.  Though the geoscape game is more interesting than it first appears...  A threat appears midway through the game which was, in my playthroughs, exceptionally creepy on the globe view.

[Levi]

How's paper sorcerer? It looked pretty neat when I looked at it a while back, but appearances can be deceiving.

I didn't like it much.  Kinda boring.

[n9103]

I would describe it as a mostly-linear First Person dungeon delver, with a Phantasie style combat (sorta similar to classic F.F. I guess) with a very strong magical fantasy theme.
I enjoyed it enough to finish it, and have almost all the secrets too, so that's over 40 hours, assuming you're not using a walkthrough.
I got it as a bundle, and it's now one of the better parts of that purchase imo.


BTW, RE: Chryssalids. Long War don't play if you use some of the difficulty settings.
Every terror mission thus far has a pack of at least 5 that will encounter you enmass in the 2nd or third turn. They have a high chance of mitigating partial damage even in the open, and few weapons hit as hard as they did in vanilla. Barring exceptionally good reaction shots and many multi-attack capable soldiers, you're gonna lose whomever they congregated around, and probably a couple others, since they couldn't move completely out of range, and still provide damage output. And if you're the kind that spreads out really quick to prevent a swarm from hitting more than one person at a time, well, now you have two more groups of floaters attacking you, in addition to the initial group and the Cryssalid pack.. The aliens will generally actively move towards your landing site or last announced position, unlike vanilla, where they were almost always idle. This all only gets worse if you use the variable damage output option, and end up having many rounds of only a couple damage combined of all the aliens due to armor absorbing your low-roll hit. (IMO though. My luck is regularly very awful.)

Oh, and that close combat trait only triggers one/round now So much for that defense.


Suppose that wraps up this edition of N9103's Walls of Texts

[aristabulus]

I recall at least one -50% IIRC. Anyway, I don't think it ever fallen below $15. Oh yes, and it was in a bundle once or twice (as the highest tier so it was $12 total I think?)

It's gone deeper than that a couple times... -66% on Steam/Humble, outside of major sales, and -75%ish over the last Steam Winter Sale.

But none of that matters!  Because it's -80%/US$5.99, right now, as a Steam Daily.

Who wants fresh fish for breakfast???

[n9103]

For those of you that already bought it, there's a 4$ upgrade that gets you multiwinia and uplink, as well as creating a customized official character.
I'd call it a worthwhile savings (from my skinflint POV ) if you don't already have the extra games, and/or you really want to make a character that all PA players will end up encountering.

[BigD145]

The stuff on sale at Humble Store today is quite good. Too much to say here. Just go have a look.

[puke]

The stuff on sale at Humble Store today is quite good. Too much to say here. Just go have a look.

Oh great, I was afraid my backlog wasn't growing enough.  My hobby:  collecting games I won't play.

Does anyone know if there is a reason to pickup the Space Hulk collection in addition to Ascension?  I guess Ascension is a stand alone expansion that is superior to the original in all ways?  Is there a reason to get the original then?  Is any of it's DLC applicable to Ascention?