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[forsaken1111]

I feel the same way.  I don't mind the "choose" mechanic, I like the feeling of water leaking through the dam and there's only so many fingers to plug in; it makes for a tense game and does give the 'invasion' some weight.  But the panic results do seem overly doomtastic - the resulting "can't win" panic levels seems like something that should have been in Impossible, not Classic.  While I certainly lost countries in the original, it was never as relentless as it is here.

The variables that control panic are coded into the exe, though you can edit them with Resource Hacker. You can adjust the initial global panic levels for each difficulty level as well as how much panic is added for the various events in the game.

There's also a hidden menu which has extra difficulty options, if anyone's interested. See this thread.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Agh... does that have to be done on a new game? I'm doing so well!

Oh well, it can wait for my classic playthrough.

[Anvilfolk]

My next playthough should go better.

That's what I thought too

I feel like it's so rigid compared to the old game though. The original had the same thing going on but it wasn't based on screens or so strictly controlled. You also had multiple bases and multiple teams to respond to threats asynchronously, whereas here you're basically pigeon-holed into the "only get to do one!" choices. Yes, it keeps the tension up very well but at times I feel like it's contrived.

I hear ya, part of me feels the same.  I approach it this way - in the original, if you planned well, you could handle it, and as expert players we could easily get "ahead of it".  Once you knew what to do, you were always in control of it.  In this game, whether you are expert or newbie, you can't get ahead of it.  You are not in control, and the game maintains that 'edge' on you where you feel out of control of the events.  It feels contrived to us because we remember the original, which is unfortunate, but I think the new method will have merit over time.

I think it kinda works, but the current system makes the RNG a little too powerful for my taste. My second game of Classic Ironman simply spiraled out of control because I could not hit at 70%, and the enemy Thin Men obliterated my soldiers behind high cover. I'm now on normal and hit about as often with 50% as I did with 70% in Classic. Maybe it was just dumb (bad) luck, but it was a huge streak to say the least. I do feel sometimes that the game is just plain cheating against me, when I miss that fifth shot at 50% (which should be 96% to hit at least once!) and it feels a tad forced. I'm still enjoying it immensely though! I'm one of those guys that has a hard time with dealing with too much difficulty (a smart but not overly complex strategy should work for me), but it just works for this game.

I also liked some of the flexibility in the original better than this current system, but this one gives me more food for thought, more thinking about optimisation, more very meaningful tactical decisions, etc. Further, the original one became a grind with so many UFOs at some point. This system avoids it, with the risk of what Mephansteras said - losing some coherence. I felt more attached to the world and less to the soldiers; now I'm more attached to the soldiers and less to the overall campaign, which WAS replaced by a linear storyline. Which isn't my piece of pie, but works to keep the tension up.

I'm starting to feel the effects of the consoley interface. I wish I could see the to-hit bonuses at a glance. There's enough space for that on a computer screen, maybe not on a TV. Shooting cover with autoshot would also have been rather nice. All the animations take a little too long, I would love a way to speed them up. Minor gripes... they add up, but they won't stop me from playing this game madly no matter how hard they try.

[Werdna]

So, yeah, Second Wave Options can be hacked to be available.

Does it have to be hacked?  I thought they became available after your first complete game.  In fact that's why I've resisted restarting my current game and am playing to the bloody end, thinking that will unlock these options.

[Mephansteras]

So, yeah, Second Wave Options can be hacked to be available.

Does it have to be hacked?  I thought they became available after your first complete game.  In fact that's why I've resisted restarting my current game and am playing to the bloody end, thinking that will unlock these options.

As far as I know, they have to be hacked to work. No one has reported seeing these options after a completed game.

@Anvilfolk: I don't think the game cheats. I've had great runs on luck on Classic with shots hitting at 45% or even 25%. I've had guys dash through the reaction fire of three aliens and get missed every time. I've also had shots at 95% miss and Aliens snipe me when I'm behind full cover. It's just random, for good or bad. And sometimes the RNG gods just hate you.

[mikefictiti0us]

There's no condition in which Second Wave is activated in the current game. In fact, the coding for these options is incomplete because you cannot select any of them with a mouse. You need to scroll through and choose each one with a keyboard or gamepad. Also, the Second Wave menu disappears if you select Advanced Options, so you have to set your Second Wave options first, then Advanced/Ironman afterwards.

There's also a SW setting that controls how many cities appear during abduction events. It's disabled at the moment though. When modders figure all these settings out, we'll hopefully see a mod that dramatically increases UFO events, whilst setting abduction to randomly select between one to two sites per event, instead of three.

[Fikes]

I actually lost a game last night.

It was the standard Classic/Ironman downward spiral. I knew I could at best keep half of the countries +1, just enough to keep the project going.

I Picked South America, North America, and Russia and placed one interceptor in each area. Unfortunately I put my Russia interceptor in Asia (Doh!).

The UFO that showed up in Russia took out the satellite and Russia panicked. Shortly after I had the chance to salvage everything with a bomb mission. I was ready to beat it when I forgot to disarm a power node. 3 turns to cross the whole map. No one made it out.

I knew it was over but decided to play one last terror mission.

My squad dropped in very close to EIGHT EIGHT of those 4 legged zombie causers. Seriously, no chance!

Two of the 5 died immediately and a third was poisoned. I pulled everyone back to the abort zone. I planned to end the mission but figured I had to hit escape really quickly before it automatically ended my turn. I didn't know that if your whole squad was in the drop zone the game asked you if you wanted to abort, escape closed that window and the third guy died.

Standing in the drop zone a rookie and a heavy managed to gun down 3 or 4 more of the aliens before they were surrounded by live ones. I aborted.

XCOM was shut down a few days later.

Now I need to figure out the best start.

Does anyone know exactly how council funding works? I assume you get a base from each country + 1 point of satellite for the country you start in. That would mean max funding would be starting in North America.

Generally I go for alloys first so I can get the +2 to health item. I think I will try the "spam satellite" route and add interceptors to every area.

Any thoughts on laser rifles vs armor as a priority?

[Mephansteras]

Any thoughts on laser rifles vs armor as a priority?

Well, I did armor as a priority last time and it backfired. The mutons ripped my experienced troopers to shreds because we just couldn't damage them fast enough. The extra HP from armor helped, but not enough. So I think weapons are more important than armor. Once I got Laser weapons I had rookies taking out Mutons, and you'll find that the combination of Laser weapons + Carapace Armor is awesome. I'm going weapons first for my next run, so we'll see how that goes.

[sluissa]

My next playthough should go better.

That's what I thought too

I feel like it's so rigid compared to the old game though. The original had the same thing going on but it wasn't based on screens or so strictly controlled. You also had multiple bases and multiple teams to respond to threats asynchronously, whereas here you're basically pigeon-holed into the "only get to do one!" choices. Yes, it keeps the tension up very well but at times I feel like it's contrived.

I hear ya, part of me feels the same.  I approach it this way - in the original, if you planned well, you could handle it, and as expert players we could easily get "ahead of it".  Once you knew what to do, you were always in control of it.  In this game, whether you are expert or newbie, you can't get ahead of it.  You are not in control, and the game maintains that 'edge' on you where you feel out of control of the events.  It feels contrived to us because we remember the original, which is unfortunate, but I think the new method will have merit over time.

I think it kinda works, but the current system makes the RNG a little too powerful for my taste. My second game of Classic Ironman simply spiraled out of control because I could not hit at 70%, and the enemy Thin Men obliterated my soldiers behind high cover. I'm now on normal and hit about as often with 50% as I did with 70% in Classic. Maybe it was just dumb (bad) luck, but it was a huge streak to say the least. I do feel sometimes that the game is just plain cheating against me, when I miss that fifth shot at 50% (which should be 96% to hit at least once!) and it feels a tad forced. I'm still enjoying it immensely though! I'm one of those guys that has a hard time with dealing with too much difficulty (a smart but not overly complex strategy should work for me), but it just works for this game.

I also liked some of the flexibility in the original better than this current system, but this one gives me more food for thought, more thinking about optimisation, more very meaningful tactical decisions, etc. Further, the original one became a grind with so many UFOs at some point. This system avoids it, with the risk of what Mephansteras said - losing some coherence. I felt more attached to the world and less to the soldiers; now I'm more attached to the soldiers and less to the overall campaign, which WAS replaced by a linear storyline. Which isn't my piece of pie, but works to keep the tension up.

I'm starting to feel the effects of the consoley interface. I wish I could see the to-hit bonuses at a glance. There's enough space for that on a computer screen, maybe not on a TV. Shooting cover with autoshot would also have been rather nice. All the animations take a little too long, I would love a way to speed them up. Minor gripes... they add up, but they won't stop me from playing this game madly no matter how hard they try.

This is sort of what I"m encountering. I can't seem to hit shit beyond point blank range and the aliens, excepting sectoids, seem to just obliterate my soldiers from any angle they want to. Last mission, a terror mission, I get deployed on a street with absolutely no cover within non-dash distance. So I dash to the corner of a building. 3 floaters appear, 1 shot my sniper in the face, THROUGH the corner of the building. My heavy runs up under a floater who is now flying. 2 squares away, only 75% chance... yet still misses. He dies as the floater just lands next to him and one shots him as well. My final two soldiers take out two of the floaters, one runs away. Then the chryssalids appear. Soldier walks into the building to rescue a civilian and a chrysalid runs through the door. Luckily it can't attack yet. So she runs out of the building and the other guy gives her covering fire. Takes it down a bit in health. It follows them outside, running right up to, but not attacking the guy outside. Point blank fire from both soldiers finishes that one off. Just as a zombie comes shambling into the building, promptly collapses, turns into another chryssalid which makes a dash for my soldiers. Miss, miss. It runs up to them. Hit, 2 damage, hit, 2 damage. It's just annoyed... So it kills one soldier and the other just runs for the skyranger.

I know I"m still doing something wrong... I did start in the US this time, which helped my money problems quite a bit. Also ran through the tutorial again to get its free satellite. Stuck in in Russia. Did fine for money after that... I could not get a god damned engineer to save my life though. Only one abduction mission that entire game offered them and apparently I didn't figure out which ever stupid research I had to do to build workshops... so I was stuck with just my two initial satellites, since I couldn't build any more sat buildings, since I could find any enginners, so I couldn't make the countries happy with coverage, so i ended up losing.

I'm still perplexed as to why I need to unlock something in order to just HIRE SOME MORE DAMN ENGINEERS... god I hate the strategic portion of the game... and the RNG is slowly making me hate the tactical portion as well... maybe I"ll just give normal a try. Perhaps classic difficulty just doesn't work well when you can't just throw soldiers at the enemy. Not that I am on purpose... just... damn RNG... damn shooting through cover... damn plasma to the face.

[Smitehappy]

Anyone else notice that LOS with ramps is really finicky? I've lost two squads because the a Sectopod was perched on a ramp making him completely invisible to half my squad. Apparently they don't have any issues though because they manage to shoot the squad members who can't even see them. 

[Sirus]

I had some nasty XCOM dreams last night <_<;

My favorite squad members died over and over again, and I fought Ethereals that I'm guessing are nothing like the actual enemy in the game. In my dream, they would turn invisible, raising their odds to hit so high that even point-blank shotgun fire was likely to miss. In the unlikely event of a hit, they "possessed" a random bit of trash to avoid the damage anyway. And they could psionically slice my soldiers in half, killing even Colonels in Titan Armor with a single hit - without critting.

Basically, they were more like murderous ghosts than anything else.

Any thoughts on laser rifles vs armor as a priority?

Well, I did armor as a priority last time and it backfired. The mutons ripped my experienced troopers to shreds because we just couldn't damage them fast enough. The extra HP from armor helped, but not enough. So I think weapons are more important than armor. Once I got Laser weapons I had rookies taking out Mutons, and you'll find that the combination of Laser weapons + Carapace Armor is awesome. I'm going weapons first for my next run, so we'll see how that goes.

I rushed armor, so I still had laser weapons before facing Mutons or other nasty things. Hell, I took out the first Sectoid Commander with nothing more advanced than a laser pistol, but everyone had armor.

[Thexor]

The UFO that showed up in Russia took out the satellite and Russia panicked. Shortly after I had the chance to salvage everything with a bomb mission. I was ready to beat it when I forgot to disarm a power node. 3 turns to cross the whole map. No one made it out.

You don't have to disarm all the power nodes. All they do is buy you another turn to get to the bomb; if you reach the bomb and disarm it, all power nodes automatically disarm as well. 

Does anyone know exactly how council funding works? I assume you get a base from each country + 1 point of satellite for the country you start in. That would mean max funding would be starting in North America.

Most likely, you'd get the most funding from Africa, since their perk is "+30% Council funding". Getting a satellite over the US would give a nice boost early on, but I'm betting All In will be much stronger in the late-game.

Generally I go for alloys first so I can get the +2 to health item. I think I will try the "spam satellite" route and add interceptors to every area.

Any thoughts on laser rifles vs armor as a priority?

Standard weapons work just fine against Sectoids. But if I recall correctly, assault rifles don't reliably deal 4 damage, which means Floaters would be a problem.

If you're talking about researching armour vs. weapons, I'd go armour first, mostly because the Sectoid interrogation bonus is a 50% reduction in beam weapon research time. If you're talking about manufacturing, I'd build a suit of armour for every soldier that you think, "I don't want to lose this guy", while spending the rest of your currency on better weapons. A rookie with a suit of armour is a slightly more durable plasma catcher; a rookie with a laser rifle might help take down a Muton before dying!

[Urist McSpike]

There are definitely some game design elements I don't like, and wish they'd have done more like the original.  I can sort of see the reasons for it; some I like, some I don't.

OG Multiple bases vs EU single base - Many OG bases were simply radar/interceptor bases, with maybe the odd storage depot.  EU has satellites/interceptors, and no storage limit.  Mostly a good change - you're not size-limited on living quarters, workshops & labs.  As in, OG labs/shops/quarters held limited workers; EU labs/shops give bonuses, but you don't need them to research or build.

Abduction missions - don't like it.  OG, the only missions (other than terror) were if you shot down a UFO (or watched it land) and sent a squad.  You needed to expand your radar coverage to do this, and failing to would increase panic from all of those unseen missions.  EU, it feels like you have to wait for an abduction mission popup and then abandon part of the world.  I do like the different reward choices, but would rather have had one abduction mission, with a choice of rewards from the country - cash, soldier or eng/sci (based on what the country gives monthly).

UFOs - OG, one of my early tactics against large UFOs was to wait for them to land, and then send in the troops - because I couldn't shoot them down yet.  I'm not sure if you can do that in this one, as I've been sending interceptors out (Firestorm w/ EMP Cannon, woo!) all the time.  Although you do occasionally get a mission to one that is already landed.

Squad size - mostly liking this one.  4 starts rough, and you really need to make the Officer Warfare School a priority, and then the squad size improvements.  Once you get those, you can start mixing in a rookie with your more elite troops (if they're alive), so that you can build up more elites.  Plus I'd say they did it to help cut the mission time down some.

Also, there's something hinky with the RNG.  One of my earlier missions, I save-scummed hard at the end to test it, over 10 times.  Here's the setup, and order of my attacks.
1 Muton at 5 health, trying for a live capture.
1 Heavy, 23% hit chance on the Muton (and Holo Targetting, +10 aim for everyone else)
1 Support, 30% hit chance (pistol) on the Muton
1 Assualt, 49% stun on Muton at 5 Health.

Every single time - miss/miss/fail.  Reload, same, for over 10 reloads.  That's a bit improbable.

[Fikes]

The UFO that showed up in Russia took out the satellite and Russia panicked. Shortly after I had the chance to salvage everything with a bomb mission. I was ready to beat it when I forgot to disarm a power node. 3 turns to cross the whole map. No one made it out.

You don't have to disarm all the power nodes. All they do is buy you another turn to get to the bomb; if you reach the bomb and disarm it, all power nodes automatically disarm as well. 

I know this. The problem was I was moving slow, always keeping "1 turn until explodes!" Then I forgot to disarm a node. Queue bomb!

Also, there's something hinky with the RNG.  One of my earlier missions, I save-scummed hard at the end to test it, over 10 times.  Here's the setup, and order of my attacks.
1 Muton at 5 health, trying for a live capture.
1 Heavy, 23% hit chance on the Muton (and Holo Targetting, +10 aim for everyone else)
1 Support, 30% hit chance (pistol) on the Muton
1 Assualt, 49% stun on Muton at 5 Health.

Every single time - miss/miss/fail.  Reload, same, for over 10 reloads.  That's a bit improbable.

They could keep the random seed between loads, meaning you'll get the same random numbers every time you try. It is possible that the RNG always picks a number between 1 and 100 and your next 5 were < 30.

[fred1248]

Uh, I don't think reloading to change the outcome works, Does X-com even use random generated seeds?

[timferius]

It works the same way Civ 4 worked (not sure about 5). It saves the seed, so if you keep save-scumming you keep getting the same results. In fact, I don't know much about this, but isn't that generally how seeds work?