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[Sirus]

I didn't mean to sound hostile or anything O.o;

Anyway, considering how the amount of damage can vary from shot to shot, I don't see any reason why a glancing, low-power hit might simply be deflected by a bit of flak or carapace. Once you get to higher armor tiers, it gets more and more likely that any particular shot simply gets absorbed.

[Tarran]

Oh. Intent doesn't carry over the internet well.

Anyway, unless I'm misremembering, sometimes the shots aren't glancing. Sometimes they hit right in the chest or head. Or perhaps a shoulder. This is especially evident with Lightning Reflexes when right next to an overwatched alien.

[umiman]

I still don't think Impossible Marathon mode is physically possible.

The sheer number of abduction missions before you can even possibly go to say... the alien base, means you'll lose half the planet before you can even dream about it. I haven't reached it myself, considering it's bloody difficult to fight Mutons and Cyberdisks with regular rifles and armour.

Does anyone have any theorycrafting on how to make it possible?

[Sirus]

Savescumming and focusing entirely on satellite coverage, if I remember correctly.

[Furtuka]

I got slingshot and oh dear god those missions were terrifying. Nothing like facing cyberdiscs and mutons with assault rifles...

[umiman]

Savescumming and focusing entirely on satellite coverage, if I remember correctly.

I tried that... it was part of why I was fighting Mutons and Cyberdisks with assault rifles.

And I don't see how it could be done too still. I lost Nigeria after the first month, without losing a single mission. In fact I completed 4 abduction missions and shot down two UFOs as well as completed the Council's special mission. After that it went completely downhill because while I *only* lost Nigeria, at that point about half the planet was at orange status.

By the time I gave up I was down to North America and South America only... because those were the only places I managed to rush the satellites to.

[Leafsnail]

You need to sell some of the spoils of your missions so you can rush satellites harder.  What I've heard is that once you get going properly it's actually easier than non-marathon since you get so much more cash.

[umiman]

You need to sell some of the spoils of your missions so you can rush satellites harder.  What I've heard is that once you get going properly it's actually easier than non-marathon since you get so much more cash.

No no, like I said... I did everything in my power to rush them.

There is one big limiting factor other than price. It's time. Because it takes so damn long to construct stuff.

Even if you constructed a power plant followed by the satellite facility then a satellite. Each takes so many days on Marathon. You can see where I'm getting at right? I never really had any problems with money. Especially on impossible because you get so much crap when you win your missions. The amount of time it took to do things was the impossible part. By the time the first satellite launched I had to choose between whether to let one country live or die. By the time I rushed the fourth, half the entire planet was gone.

All this time I was stuck with 4-man squad size and regular rifles and armour. Couldn't capture anything either.

That's why I think another strategy needs to be developed. Hell, I'm starting to think making NO satellites would be better, or maybe just enough to protect a few countries.

[gogis]

Most modern games is simplified, but have much, much better UI. Do you actually played old XCOM, I mean recently. Gameplay is a chore, to say least. I was spitting and cursing playing it.

Yeah, I played it last night. ._.

And MOO2??! Really?! I agree with you about UI being shit in the 90's (though you really can't blame them; modern devs take for granted having two plus decades of games to look at in order to see how to make a game right) on nearly all accounts except THAT one! That game had absolutely astounding UI, probably the best of its generation! Especially compared to the first and third one! I could (and DID) play that game and play it WELL when I was in fucking middle school! Nor would I condemn ALL 90's DOS games. What about System Shock? Looking Glass (the developers of System Shock) practically INVENTED UI! *stomps out of thread*

Actually yes, I am feel sorry I mentioned MOO2, this game having incredibly good UI for these times, so I apologize for including it. I just needed old game to be placed versus DW, and there is no better thing than MOO2.

[Sharp]

Focus on 2-3 continents, because you don't need to rush so many satellites you don't need to be rushing for engineers all the time so you can safely choose abduction missions solely to keep panic low in continents you want. The game is nice that once you have sat coverage if it looks like a country is still going to pull out it normally sends a ufo so you can win that for panic reduction.

It's always better to focus continents when placing sats, not just for the bonus but once you have a continent covered then it will be excluded from abduction missions until you have all available countries covered so the panic level will be more stable in a fully covered continent. Once you have one covered move on to another, I like to keep one half of the situation room covered so its either Europe+Asia or Americas+Africa. If you can keep more covered then great, gives you a bit of padding vs game over but if not just keep the ones you have covered safe.

[gogis]

I do weep though because along with vastly improved AIs has come... well... the removing of complexity.

There is this great push to handhold players and part of me almost wishes there could be a game like the really old ones (Like Albion and its speach system) with greater AIs.

Then there is the fact that even in RPGs is the story starting to be considered more and more secondary. I mean yeah... early RPGs were pretty much "go kill the monster" but even RPGs with heaps and heaps of story tend to keep it WAAAAY at the side so as to not interfere with what you are doing.

I will take Knights of The Chalice over Planescape Torment any day. I know i know, it's sounds like blasphemy, but for me design and gameplay is a top priority. Many compare PT with a good book. You know? If I need book - I read book. I do it everyday. If I need a game - I play game. I never rated PS Torment  highly. I think it's nothing compared to Baldurs series. And complexity is overrated. Think Dominions 3 complexity - alot of races, spells, everything. But it's all wrong - too many choices. Give me UI, moderate complexity and difficulty for a challenge and a lenght of playtime. I will buy it.

[EnigmaticHat]

f I need book - I read book. I do it everyday. If I need a game - I play game.

I think many modern game developers agree with you on this point.  Games are an interactive medium; much of what's happened with stories in games is that they're becoming more centered around player input (or randomness in some cases) producing a unique story rather than a traditional linear story.  The role of stories in games is shifting away from being a source of entertainment in and of itself, to adding a sense of impact to player actions.

There are three types of video game stories that are emerging, the way I see it.  First of all, there's completely emergent stories.  These stories are very basic, but defined entirely by in game elements.  This includes "make your own history" games like Total War and Crusader Kings, as well as "find out what happens to your virtual friends" games like Xcom and FTL.  Oh, and DF, of course.  Then there's branching storyline games, where the player picks between multiple linear stories.  Most modern RPGs are this.  Then there's immersive games, which tell a simple or linear story and do everything in their power to make the player feel like they ARE the main character.  Some examples: the recent Batman games, Amnesia: TDD, and Valve's single player games.

It'll be interesting to see where these things go.  Branching stories and emergent stories both have serious limitations that repeatedly come up.  Emergent stories tend to be simple and potentially repetitive, while branching stories are usually the same linear story with a few different lines of dialog based on what the player chooses.  Those aren't insolvable problems though.  Many branching stories have been going for changing the tone rather than the overall plot outline (Mass Effect is a good example of this), while activating the world in DF should bring emergent stories to a new level of complexity, assuming it works of course.

[Neonivek]

First of all, there's completely emergent stories.  These stories are very basic, but defined entirely by in game elements.  This includes "make your own history" games like Total War and Crusader Kings, as well as "find out what happens to your virtual friends" games like Xcom and FTL

I call those mostly "Non-narratives" If you provide absolutely no-little story. People will fill in their own so long as there is something to focus on.

It is why I don't like to even use the word Emergent storylines because they often don't exist and most games with this credit arn't ones that actually foster it.

When all games that provide little story have "Emergent stories" then it really just refers to any game that has very little story.

A true emergent story to me is a game that creates a narrative as it goes along. Yet that is the key it needs to create a narrative. It needs "character". Xcom doesn't provide character and FTL doesn't provide character.

[Soadreqm]

Personally, I think the original XCOM formula was shit. The game was (and still is) fun to play, but the inventory micromanagement minigame is definitely something I'm glad the new XCOM did away with. You hand-pick eighty items to carry in the Skyranger with every single ammo clip tracked and counted. At the start of the mission, you must manually assign every soldier to wield their weapons and ammo, because the computer can't handle it, and will give the rocket launcher to the guy with the lowest strength. Which is bad, since if a guy is carrying too many items, he will move slower. You can't view soldier stats while equipping squad, so you have to remember to check them back in the base, and keep track of them on your own. You can't view the encumbrance limit ANYWHERE, and if you want to know how many time units a certain load will shave off a soldier, you will have to test it yourself. Once in the field, every grenade and medkit is stored in some specific pocket on a soldier's body, and moving things from your hands to the backpack and back takes time units. (Want to know how many time units? Why don't you try and see? And then write it down because there's no other way to find out.) And grenades are not flawlessly accurate, and the only way to know a soldier's throwing range is to throw one. Before you do that, though, you need to prime the grenade to explode after a choosable number of turns. Primed the grenade already, but then discovered that the sectoids were too far away? Sucks to be you. Oh, and every single item also takes storage space in your base, and you need to build additional closets every now and then. This is not good inventory design.

[whining about XCOM 1 inventory micromanagement]

Well of course they'd deal with the obvious crap like that! Goodness! Do you really think that in the age of convenience the devs wouldn't think to provide some shortcuts for that kind of thing? Please!

Yes, I suppose I was nitpicking. You could craft a system where soldiers had reasonable weight restrictions that were effectively communicated to the player, and the action (for instance) of priming and throwing a grenade could be done with a single button and you could see beforehand how far you could throw the thing and how much time it would take. And instead of buying the damn things individually and waiting for them to be shipped, you could just bill grenades used from the player at the end of the month, with not much strategic depth lost. I guess the real difference would be between the arbitrary one item per soldier limit, and the arbitrary eighty items per Skyranger limit. And the items we have now would be way overpowered if you could carry more of them, so you'd need to seriously rebalance the whole game. But I admit it could have worked.

[Sharp]

I guess the real difference would be between the arbitrary one item per soldier limit, and the arbitrary eighty items per Skyranger limit. And the items we have now would be way overpowered if you could carry more of them, so you'd need to seriously rebalance the whole game. But I admit it could have worked.

It wasn't arbitrary, there was a reason and that was due to memory management. UFO: EU was made a long time ago a time where memory was scarce, there was only so much memory you could have on a map, there was something silly like in base defence missions where if you had so many guys and so many items that aliens spawned without items.

Also if your soldier got more then 255 in a skill it would then go to 0 on skill increase.