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Author Topic: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)  (Read 969990 times)

i2amroy

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Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)
« Reply #9000 on: June 22, 2015, 04:42:10 pm »

Or put assault rifles on a couple of your guys (who act as spotters for the rest).
Bah! Bah I say! What sort of sniper doesn't carry a sniper rifle!?! Madness! :P
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Urist Imiknorris

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Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)
« Reply #9001 on: June 22, 2015, 04:50:52 pm »

Well someone needs to forge ahead so the rest can blow everything away from across the map!

Maybe a SHIV could do it, if those were allowed.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I found out an interesting quirk. I'm pretty much just screwing around and trying new stuff until I get a computer that can actually play it without crashing every few missions (currently planned for the end of summer). So I made the air game way easier by adjusting the base soldier aim to -15 and the Cinematic Mode bonus to 80, and I found out that units with fixed starting stats (Van Doorn and Private Friendly, in this case) have their stats actually fixed and not just modified from the base values, so they had 151 and 148 aim respectively.
« Last Edit: June 22, 2015, 05:04:08 pm by Urist Imiknorris »
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Flying Dice

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Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)
« Reply #9002 on: June 22, 2015, 05:14:58 pm »

But yeah, the best start now is the USA, because Cheyenne Mountain. Seriously, a lot of the bonuses are nice, but none are quite as sweet as being able to build the absolute optimal base. It doesn't hurt that you can rush the continent before you start your main interceptor buildup, either.

That said, Nigeria is also an excellent choice, especially if you're playing without the random stat options.
How does Cheyenne Mountain give you the "absolute optimal base"? You can do that already quite easily I find. Also, AUSTRALIA. Nigeria gives your guys +1 move, South Africa gives them +1 health, UK gives you Aim, and Something gives you Will, but AUSTRALIA gives you a random +5 spread across stats, meaning your guys could come out with an extra +5 defense, move or health. Worst case with Aussies is you get +5 will or aim, which is hardly a bad thing. Combining this with other random stat options means you can make a fucking super soldier.

Just restarted with 15e, was running beta ELEVEN, and already everything is better. I want to rush the Russia bonus so bad right now because MOAR HEALTH to the two most useful classes, but might end up hanging off on that to blanket the rest of Asia. Aliens took Canada, which sucks asshole because it means no cheap planes and satellites for me anytime soon :(

Oh, and Commanders Choice is just barely beaten out for the title of "Best thing ever" by the removal of the scrappy mechanic I mentioned in previous posts.
I WILL HAVE MOAR INFANTRY! MOAR OF THEM! ALL OF XCOM WILL BE BLUE!

Cheyenne Mountain means that you don't have to worry about putting off building things or removing buildings in order to get optimal arrangements of workshops, labs, satellite uplinks, &c. The bonuses you get from an optimal base vastly outweigh any of the other starting bonuses, though they don't become relevant until lategame when you have a mostly complete base.

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AUSTRALIA gives you a random +5 spread across stats, meaning your guys could come out with an extra +5 defense, move or health.
That's not how it works. Per Ardua Ad Astra adds +5 to their initial point-buy total of 48. Yes, it could mean an additional +5 Aim/Def/Will, or it could mean +1 Mob & +1 to one of the other three. That +5 alone isn't enough for even a single extra point of HP. Nigeria is vastly superior because Mobility is always a god-stat. It's a god-stat early because it lets your rookies with shitty aim get to flanking positions or move to hard cover without dashing. It's a god-stat late because it makes it easier to cover ground, reposition, flank, and kite melee enemies.

What Australia is good for is if you unwisely didn't use Strict Screening, because (IIRC) it tends to bolster the dump stats. That said, I've switched to exclusively using Strict Screening + Hidden Potential for good reason. Randomized starting stats, like many of the randomized elements of LW, tend to fuck you more than they help you. For every potential supersoldier you get, you have half a dozen PFCs with 22 Will, 65 Aim, 11 Mobility, or something equally stupid. With Strict Screening every PFC at least has the baseline 30 Will and acceptable stats all around, so you don't end up throwing any away because they're too slow to do anything or complete psy-wimps.

You still get the randomization from Hidden Potential where some emerge as real heroes while others stay fairly mediocre, but it saves you the trouble of firing/killing off half the PFCs you hire. Actually, there's been some joking speculation that Per Ardua Ad Astra was added as a joke about Beagle, 'cause he always plays with Strict Screening.

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How randomized initial stats are calculated, from Amineri:

Unfortunatly the Rookie initial stats stuff I ended up having to hard-code in a rather hacked-up manner due to some problems with not having access to local variables in the RandomizeStats and RollForStat code.
>> HP = 3; Offense = 50; Defense = -5; Mobility = 9; Will = 16
The above represents the floor for stats. All stat randomization adds to the above. In vanilla it started with the average and used +/- from there, but I coded it starting from the lowest and adding stats.

There is a "points" system present. By default each rookie gets 48 points for stats. If World Diversity is enabled (without Strict Screening) then each rookie gets 38 + rand(11) + rand(11) starting points instead.

Stats are worth the following points:
HP : 6 points
Mobility : 4 points
Aim : 1 point
Defense : 1 point
Will : 1 point


How it's actually rolled works like so:
1) Roll Mobility -- 4 50% rolls, so +0-4 mobility
2) Roll HP -- 2 50% rolls, so +0-2 HP
3) Roll Aim -- 3 rolls of 2 * rand(6), so +0-10 for each roll and +0-30 aim total
4) Roll Defense -- 2 rolls of rand(6), so +0-5 for each roll and +0-10 defense total
5) Remaining points into Will

At each step the either the 50% coin toss or the rand(6) roll is tweaked based on the remaining points vs expected points left which helps keep the final points spent to the total allowed for the soldier.

For example, a soldier with 48 points to spend after having rolled Mobility and HP on average will have 34 points remaining (6 points spent on +1 HP and 8 points spent on +2 Mobility for 14 out of 48 points spent). Each aim roll is adjusted with the formula :
>> AimIncrease = 2 * Min(5, int(FRand() * float(6) * float(RemainingPoints) / float(19+5*(3-NumberAimRollsMade)) ))

So the first roll has :
AimIncrease = 2 * Min(5, int(FRand() * float(6) * float(RemainingPoints) / float(34)
Second roll has :
AimIncrease = 2 * Min(5, int(FRand() * float(6) * float(RemainingPoints) / float(29)
Third roll has :
AimIncrease = 2 * Min(5, int(FRand() * float(6) * float(RemainingPoints) / float(24)

What this does is biases the randomization up or down based on previous rolls. If lots of points have already been spent then it's less likely to get high rolls, and conversely if few points have been spent its more likely to get higher rolls.
« Last Edit: June 22, 2015, 07:03:00 pm by Flying Dice »
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i2amroy

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Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)
« Reply #9003 on: June 22, 2015, 07:01:43 pm »

Eh, I'm personally a big fan of more randomization. In a worst case scenario my horrible people tend to become either snipers or grenadiers/assaults depending on their horrible stat. And honestly low will is pretty much moot, since in any decent case my officer is boosting everyone up to like 120 will anyways (I tend to have a psionic who's sole job is either inspiring or mind melding my officer constantly).

And yeah, being able to build "the optimal base" is nice, but I can usually build "the almost optimal base" without that bonus, and the France 40% to everything involving requests means that I get more rewards and have a fair bit less time need to pass before terror attacks can go off with only a single civilian saved and everyone just laughs it off due to their totally full shields.
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Flying Dice

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Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)
« Reply #9004 on: June 22, 2015, 07:04:06 pm »

Yeah, France's is damned good as well if you're going to push your eco game hard from the start.
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BFEL

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Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)
« Reply #9005 on: June 23, 2015, 05:38:56 am »

Eh, I'm personally a big fan of more randomization. In a worst case scenario my horrible people tend to become either snipers or grenadiers/assaults depending on their horrible stat. And honestly low will is pretty much moot, since in any decent case my officer is boosting everyone up to like 120 will anyways (I tend to have a psionic who's sole job is either inspiring or mind melding my officer constantly).

And yeah, being able to build "the optimal base" is nice, but I can usually build "the almost optimal base" without that bonus, and the France 40% to everything involving requests means that I get more rewards and have a fair bit less time need to pass before terror attacks can go off with only a single civilian saved and everyone just laughs it off due to their totally full shields.
Pretty much everything here. Randomization for the win, I love me some supersoldiers. Most of my fun in XCOM comes from making the best fucking soldiers I goddamn can. (Munchkin pride!) And horrible stats just relegate a rookie to different roles like the catman noted.

"OPTIMAL BASE" is one of the most easily achieved things in the game honestly. You can have all elevators within a month or so easy, well before you really have the resources to start a serious base building effort. If you really want to have a hardcore base building you might wanna try the Germany bonus instead, lets you build actual facilities faster, which is far more useful then having prebuilt elevators.

And while I am a bit disappointed I'll never see HP from Australia bonus, I still think its the best for supersoldiery for one simple reason. DEFENSE. Defense is easily an even bigger god stat then mobility or HP simply because there really aren't any ways to increase it naturally like the other stats. I.E. it never increases on levelup, so what you have at the start is what you have forever.
Having natural defense can be HUGE, often the difference between your soldier dying instantly and going without a scratch.

5 doesn't seem like much, but if I read the mechanics right it means you can get a soldier who is essentially always in partial cover. All the time. No matter what, partial cover.
And then you can put them in defense boosting suits to make them always in FULL cover. And then you can actually put them in full cover and suddenly you are basically invincible.
« Last Edit: June 23, 2015, 06:56:11 am by BFEL »
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SOLDIER First

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Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)
« Reply #9006 on: June 23, 2015, 09:45:57 am »

So, uh. Just got Enemy Within, the Slingshot Pack, and the Elite Soldier pack from the Steam Sale.
Yes.
Should I start with Long War or do a campaign first? I haven't played in a while, but I had it for the Xbox 360 before the disc died horribly.
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i2amroy

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Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)
« Reply #9007 on: June 23, 2015, 10:07:20 am »

Unless you've totally forgotten everything about how XCOM works I'd say go straight to LW honestly. The base game is nice if you need a tutorial and all that, but I wouldn't recommend playing it first lest you slip into bad habits.
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Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)
« Reply #9008 on: June 23, 2015, 10:13:02 am »

I don't really like long war, I think they made some good changes but they also made the game a *lot* more RNG based, which I feel is bad game design.

So I'd suggest you play through vanilla, and after you finish that if you still feel like playing you can try long war out. Maybe you will like it more than me, most people do seem to like it more.
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Shadowlord

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Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)
« Reply #9010 on: June 23, 2015, 10:39:15 am »

I agree with BurnedToast and umiman: Start with vanilla, either Normal or Classic difficulty. It's a lot more forgiving and a lot more understandable than LW.


LW throws 23784938 country/base choices at you, and then after you finally choose one, you get your first mission, which seemed even harder than in impossible vanilla* (and as in vanilla, you don't get to customize your troops first either, so for example, mine only had grenades).

* Judging by the fact that I lost the mission in LW with 6 troops, but succeeded in ironman impossible with 4. There seemed to be less aliens, and they died more easily in vanilla impossible - but I wouldn't recommend starting with vanilla impossible, either, because you can't get countries back if they leave, and they WILL leave. In the first month, for me.
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Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)
« Reply #9011 on: June 23, 2015, 10:42:36 am »

Thanks for the advice.
I think even though it's 3 against, I'll use Long War early. I did do the first campaign mission, and I didn't die horribly, so I could just put LW on the easiest difficulty and hope for the best.
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Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)
« Reply #9012 on: June 23, 2015, 10:51:22 am »

Long War only runs on that difficulty (which is to say, you're instructed to never ever run it on any other difficulty, because reasons).
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Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)
« Reply #9013 on: June 23, 2015, 10:53:24 am »

Yeah, I read that on the mod's page.
Well, looks like I'll be running Cinematic Mode and every possible Second Wave option that could possibly make things easier.
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Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis)
« Reply #9014 on: June 23, 2015, 10:59:40 am »

When I tried it, which was the last LW version, there was also an incredibly annoying pause every combat turn with LW - which didn't exist in vanilla. If there's a fix, I couldn't find it (other than uninstalling LW and going back to vanilla).
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