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[Neonivek]

In classic or above, most of your dudes are unlikely to have 9 life when they start showing up.

Well let me see... I'd have 6 + 2 + 2 = 10

I'd have 10 health by the time they start showing up.

Mind you I didn't intentionally tank. Just that for some reason it hit inspite of my smoke grenade.

[GlyphGryph]

How are you starting with a 6 there? Soldiers don't start with 6 health.

And not every soldier in the squad is going to have 2 ranks by that point either (especially since you'll be wanting to bring rookies and squaddies in every mission to train them up)

The only problem I've ever had with outsiders is /not/ killing them. They tend to spawn and run into overwatch and die before I can respond.

[Neonivek]

How are you starting with a 6 there? Soldiers don't start with 6 health.

And not every soldier in the squad is going to have 2 ranks by that point either (especially since you'll be wanting to bring rookies and squaddies in every mission to train them up)

What are you doing running your rookies up?

[GlyphGryph]

That is what they are for, obviously. I'm not going to be eating crits and will penalties with people I've actually invested in if I don't have to.

[Pandarsenic]

Soldiers start with 4 HP base in Classic.

[Muz]

The higher difficulty levels on this just remind of the Civ approach to difficulty. At higher levels, the computer cheats. I think "Classic X-Com difficulty" is more like TFTD, whereas Normal is supposed to be more like UFO Defense. After a while, you don't really play more intelligently, you just learn to play with AI exploits and start camping/grinding.

[Grakelin]

Where does this cheating come in? If it's just the obscene firing accuracy, I'll point out that in XCOM '94, raising the difficulty from Beginner to Experienced more than doubled the aliens' already excellent aim.

[alway]

Holy hell. I just found the worst bug ever. So, I go to the mission control room. All my aircraft (including the skyranger) are just hovering over their respective bases; on all continents. Hangars register as empty of all interceptors. Go to the barracks. All soliders listed as they should be. Go to start an abduction mission. Suddenly, all soldiers are listen as 'On mission' and I am told we have no soldiers available for the mission. Well shit.

Rebooting the game seems to fix it (or at least, it does when loaded from a previous save; dunno about after the bug occurs)

[Grakelin]

"Your Skyranger pilots have signed a secret pact with the invasion force."

[alway]

Holy hell.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Yeah. 3 Colonels, 1 Major, and 2 Squadies down in the same mission. Was fighting 2 mutons and a berserker; triggered 3 sectoid commanders. By the next turn, 3 of my 6 were mind controlled. 2 more turns, 4 of 6 were down; a couple more, and total party wipe.

[Tarran]

Oof, that hurts.

Hopefully you can recover from that.

[Anvilfolk]

Holy cow!

That's another big push for me never revealing any new territory if there are any aliens around. That way you can do one group of aliens at a time, rest one turn (at least) between groups to reload and get Double Tap activated again, and you're done.

My current 2 sniper colonels are absolutely kicking ass. Plasma sniper rifles, high terrain, double-tap. That's pretty much 4 enemies of 10 health dead per turn, or thereabouts.

[GlyphGryph]

Admittedly, I've had situations where no new territory was revealed and yet I triggered two new groups of enemies. At least when it happens on the alien turn, they end up only taking defensive actions instead of doing that and THEN blowing you up. Still sucks, though.

At higher levels, the computer cheats.

I... haven't actually seen any difficulty cheating by the computer in x-com. It's one of the things I'm fairly happy about. Obviously, the teleportation and wall shooting bugs could count. But those are just as common on every difficulty. How does the computer cheat?

[forsaken1111]

Yeah aliens do move around the map on their own in pretty much every mission. Even if you are super careful you could end up with new enemies.

[LoSboccacc]

At higher levels, the computer cheats.

I... haven't actually seen any difficulty cheating by the computer in x-com.

Excluding some bugs, I haven't seen glamorous cheating either. Except for the free turn alien gets, which is very annoying when they are chrisalid (others just seek cover).

but it does look like you miss more often on classic. but I can't really say, as numbers are runt hidden. If that was the case, well, I would have preferred a % malus shown on the shoot info instead that having the hidden number skewed, but there currently is no evidence either way.