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[Sergius]

Because you can get them dozen for a dime, while tere is not a single seargent on the entire planet left

They should take it a step further in the inevitable sequel. Instead of hiring soldiers, scientists and engineers you just hire generic people. And then they're randomly assigned a position based on a dice rolling minigame.

"Sorry Captain Badass of the teethkicker paratrooper regiment, you're in the lab from now on. Pick up your white coat and goggles at reception."

Bonus points if there's a slim chance of any recruit being a thin man in a terrible disguise. Groucho Marx comedy glasses style. You have to research the technology to detect them.

You could get a game over if all your employees are thin men in comedy disguises.

Then they take over the Phone Company and brainwash everyone using a a 60 Hz "hum".

[Neonivek]

I hate Thin Men with a goddamn passion.  I haven't had a mission with them yet that didn't turn to complete shit.  The only reason I didn't lose my whole squad to the latest mission is that the program crashed before they had a chance.  Bastards took out my tutorial squad, my all Squaddie-squad including that brave French and a reward soldier on his first mission, then shot Pharaoh in the temporally-lost mission.  They're just such pricks and really fast and accurate.

Yep, you do not want them to get a clear shot of your agents because they can pretty much chose to hit.

It was weird that inspite of the fact that Floaters tended to appear later then Thinmen for me... Thinmen are definately who I consider more dangerous. The Floater's major advantage works against them.

[umiman]

Blaargh! Holy cow this game is hard!

I lost count how many times I've had everyone die 1/4th through the game. It's like the moment you lose your veterans you might as well give up the game because it's virtually impossible for rookies to handle the higher-tier aliens.

Damn good though, just brutally difficult. And the RNG. 

[alway]

Dead. So many dead. The past few missions have been brutal for all but my sniper pair. All others have perished. On the plus side, I now have 2 Lieutenant snipers, one of which I think is about to rank up. Had the first terror mission; 3 countries left after that; it was actually my first mission failure. I also recently acquired both laser sniper rifles and carapace armor, so hopefully that will keep my d00ds alive a little bit longer. This run is chugging along rather nicely aside from the deaths of 3 squad members per mission.

Remember this lone sniper survivor from yesterday? http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=98553.msg3679534#msg3679534
One of the sniper pair is that dude. 8 missions, 17 kills. I swear, he must do nothing but play Touhou in the barracks or something.

[umiman]

Heh... I haven't even seen a higher ranked soldier than Lieutenant. Everyone dies by the truckload.

My favorite was my most recent run where I reached the furthest I've ever gone so far. The bridge rescue. Did pretty well, all things considered. Only two dead. Both rookies. I'm at the exit point with my three remaining guys, two sgt. and a rookie. I think "hmm, I haven't captured a live thinman yet. I better do it here since there's that one single thinman there."

Poison.

Rookie panics.

Rookie kills one sgt.

Other sgt. panics.

Sgt runs next to Thinman and hunkers down.

UN General panics, stops moving.

 

[Sirus]

This run is going so much better than the last one! It worries me, because things are getting progressively harder and I know I'm gonna lose one of my awesome dudes before long.

Alright: Current primary squad members are; Grande, the French Heavy (last name, I kid you not: Petit, which means "little"); Medi-San, the Japanese Support/Medic (been in the hospital for three missions now); Hellsing, the British Sniper with my best Mission/Kill ratio; and Honor, the German Assault (because of her last name, Weber. I'm sure some sci-fi nerd will get the reference). Also in the rotation are Socks, the Nigerian Assault and a recently-promoted and unnamed Sniper.

NOT ONE DEATH SO FAR, though the unnamed Sniper got critically wounded in the last mission, a landed UFO. But that's okay, since Socks managed to capture both my first Sectoid and an Outsider. That mission actually could have gone much worse, as all but Honor and Hellsing are wounded, quite badly in some cases. Unless there's a long wait until the next mission, we're gonna have to fill the ranks with rookies, and that makes me a little nervous.

[Grakelin]

Doing a terror mission. Assault ("Mad Dog") is behind a bar, the Bulletstorm Heavy ("Big Momma") is in the dining area.

Chrysalid bursts through the back door, jumps the bar. Heavy and Assault both hit, but it still has 1 hit point left. Heavy has no ammo left. Assault has no actions. So the Heavy throws a grenade, smashing open the whole back wall and shredding the Chrysalid just as it's hopping up on my guy.

So good.

The Assault would later die in a Mexico City terror attack. It's the police station. Mad Dog goes in the side door while everybody else bunkers down in the street. The entire building is on fire, and he's heroically tag-saving people and downing floaters/drones and even a Cyberdisk solo, giving the rest of the squad a fighting chance. A Cyberdisk on the steps outside turns around and sprays the inside of the building, killing him instantly. Gone, but not forgotten. :*(

[Neonivek]

I will say that Lasers are not terrible... They are often the difference between killing an enemy and not.

[EnigmaticHat]

Some time I'm going to actually rescue a VIP, and it will be glorious.

Annoyingly, I'm pretty good at the basic gameplay, its just that twice now I've made some stupid mistake AND gotten unlucky right before we reached the skyranger.  This time it was on the bridge mission, and I failed a bunch of shots against a fairly close overwatching thin man, and then proceeded to move the VIP () triggering a predictable reaction shot.  Least there were no squad casualties.

[Sirus]

Thank the RNG that Medi-San recovered in time for this mission 

Abduction in China. Bunch of Sectoids everywhere with improbably good aim, plus some Floaters hiding in a corner. The Sectoids refused to come out to play, so I sent Honor on top of some shipping crates that had some cover on top.

She got critically wounded and there were still three Sectoids waiting. I rushed Grande and Hellsing forward, and they worked together to bring down a Sectoid mind-merging with another one (Grande destroying cover and using Holo-Targeting, Hellsing scoring a head shot). Medi-San climbed on top of the shipping crates and deployed a smoke grenade, which kept him safe from the surviving Sectoid. He then stabilized Honor, getting reduced to 1 HP for his efforts on the next turn.

At the end of the day, everyone lived and Socks managed to stun a Floater with a 49% chance to do so. Still, Honor got hurt pretty badly and Medi-San is out of action again. At least Hellsing is a Captain now.

[Neonivek]

Some time I'm going to actually rescue a VIP, and it will be glorious.

Annoyingly, I'm pretty good at the basic gameplay, its just that twice now I've made some stupid mistake AND gotten unlucky right before we reached the skyranger.  This time it was on the bridge mission, and I failed a bunch of shots against a fairly close overwatching thin man, and then proceeded to move the VIP () triggering a predictable reaction shot.  Least there were no squad casualties.

VIP's arn't that hard to escort so long as you have a command of the battlefield.

Most of those missions kill your VIP simply by having drop downs (either Thinmen or Floaters) who then immediately overwatch (except floaters I think they lose their entire turn, while Thinmen can only overwatch).

Overwatch only affects movement on most creatures, I have yet to find an alien who has a shooting overwatch, thus you can shoot them the turn they show up.

Also don't be afraid to move your VIP long distances. No alien has a "Show up and shoot" to my knowledge.

[etgfrog]

So...after playing for a bit and testing on both classic and impossible...the main difference in ai is the probability of the enemy "randomly" doing a not as great of a move, like running to low cover to the left instead of running to the right to full cover, as for the stats...I do know impossible thin men have 6 health however any "spawned" thin men have 3 health...almost makes me wonder if sectopods will get 60 health instead of the normal 30...

[Sirus]

Also don't be afraid to move your VIP long distances. No alien has a "Show up and shoot" to my knowledge.

That's terrible advice. Even if newly spawned aliens can't immediately shoot, aliens that are already on the map can be in Overwatch without you seeing it. If a Thin Man that spawns behind you or a Sectoid out in the darkness somewhere is on Overwatch and the VIP runs out in front of them, you'll probably have a dead civilian on your hands.

[EnigmaticHat]

My general policy is to never move the VIP across any ground that a soldier hasn't recently tread.  Figure the soldier is somewhat more expendable, and more likely to survive getting shot at.

My strategy isn't the problem, I've just made smallish mistakes twice now and lost those oh so desirable rewards.

[Sirus]

My general policy is to never move the VIP across any ground that a soldier hasn't recently tread.  Figure the soldier is somewhat more expendable, and more likely to survive getting shot at.

My strategy isn't the problem, I've just made smallish mistakes twice now and lost those oh so desirable rewards.

That's pretty much what I do. Soldier always goes first to draw fire, and when I can arrange to do so I have the rest of the squad providing cover.

In other news, I played a bomb disabling mission tonight. Geez, that was tense! Once or twice I was down to a single turn to disable the bomb.