Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[umiman]

I'd say there are three hurdles you must overcome in II.

1. Survive and prosper first month somehow.
2. Be strong enough to defeat the first mutons.
3. Be strong enough to defeat two Sectopods at once.

If you can do all three, you will win.

My recommendation.

1. Get laser ASAP. Screw everything else. You must have laser or you won't be able to kill mutons. Ignore the forge and armour, you can't afford to get them as well as the satellites you need to fund everything else.
2. After you get laser, max out your squad size. Having 6 men with lasers will make part 2 super easy. Then you can breathe easy, but make sure to get stuff to kill Sectopods. Snipers and heavies are good for this.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

No, it's not even remotely a guarantee. Classic and Impossible will both just completely screw you over on occasion, partly because the AI is unshackled on them. I recall the instance in which a Classic run was thrown into the meatgrinder in but a single turn, in which my A-Team was ambushed by a Sectopod and six Heavy Floaters, all of whom came from a place I had just cleared.

[umiman]

The AI move in the fog of war. I find they run around in circles.

You must be the epitome of caution in impossible battles. Never overwatch, always hunker down. Don't bother flanking, use explosives extremely liberally. If outnumbered, run away to the edge of the map. Always stick together as a group. When in doubt for any reason, run away. If probability of attack is less than 80%, don't attack but hunker down.

With enough practice (from playing the first few missions a million times), you will easily go through impossible missions without losing a single guy. Of course, each mission will take an hour. But that's the price you pay for such a crazy difficulty.

Honestly, I'd say regular II is pretty easy for me now. The II games with every second wave option on except marathon was beyond insane.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I know all of that. But when the RNG wills it, the RNG wills it.

[Nadaka]

My first time through iron man impossible I got stuck in a rut where I didn't have the material to finish critical research and build critical equipment.

I couldn't upgrade my fighters well enough to shoot down most saucers, my experienced soldiers were all slaughtered on 2 badly timed missions, and I didn't have the weapons and armor to bring rookies to bear effectively against muton swarms or mechanical enemies I was facing by that time. I spent the better part of 2 in game years throwing my men into each mission, and retreating after getting 1 or 2 kills total, hoping to slowly build up to having skilled soldiers. Until eventually I got lucky and managed to complete a mission against a small scout, and i finally had the material to finish the necessary equipment. There were not many countries left in the end, but I managed to turn it around somehow and win in the end.

[GlyphGryph]

Assaults are the best for killing one alien, heavies though can kill multiple.

I'm pretty sure snipers are better at both once they get to high levels.

Snipers CAN be better than both... situationally. Heavies make their own situationally beneficial situations.

It's why most people would prefer a team of 5 heavies and a sniper to a team of 5 snipers and a heavy.

[Neonivek]

Assaults are the best for killing one alien, heavies though can kill multiple.

I'm pretty sure snipers are better at both once they get to high levels.

Snipers CAN be better than both... situationally. Heavies make their own situationally beneficial situations.

It's why most people would prefer a team of 5 heavies and a sniper to a team of 5 snipers and a heavy.

The key is how often they will be useful.

Though 5 heavies + 1 Sniper certainly sounds like the turtle strategy.

[Parsely]

Snipers CAN be better than both... situationally. Heavies make their own situationally beneficial situations.

It's why most people would prefer a team of 5 heavies and a sniper to a team of 5 snipers and a heavy.

I can dig that. Heavies are really great for softening up the tougher enemies with rockets. Gotta love them shredders. They make having a squad mostly made of Supports worthwhile. Favourite build is 2 Heavy (for extra rockets!), 3 Supports (with light plasma for extra aim), 1 Sniper (with Archangel) or Assault (with titan, or ghost for abductions).

[GlyphGryph]

The key is how often they will be useful.

Though 5 heavies + 1 Sniper certainly sounds like the turtle strategy.

At this point I realize just how little sense your comments seem to make.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

My preference is 2 Snipers, 2 Heavies, 1 Assault, 1 Support. Fully leveled, that's 10 attacks per turn.

[EnigmaticHat]

The key is how often they will be useful.

Though 5 heavies + 1 Sniper certainly sounds like the turtle strategy.

5 properly built Colonel Heavies = 18 rockets = more rockets than aliens in most abduction missions.  Before then you're still easily looking at 10 rockets and 5 bulletstorm heavies.  Hardly a strategy that needs turtling or, well, strategy.

Anyway, I take whatever the RNG gives me in regards to squad composition.  Experience is more important than being the right class, and when you reach all max rank it basically doesn't matter what you do especially since you'll have ghost armor or plasma or something else game-breaking at that point.

Barring large amounts of death, my guidelines are: one of each class, and either a second support or the heavy gets a medkit, then the remaining 2 slots are filled by anything that isn't snipers.  Snipers are either largely useless (squaddie rank, out of position in urban terrain, or meeting aliens right at mission start) or WAY too good (any other time), so I don't find them fun except in small doses.  One squadsight is a must though, for the damage and utility.  One assault with lightning reflexes makes overwatch so much easier to deal with.  Heavy's rockets are a get out of jail free card if things go bad, and supports smokes are similar if worse.  Support medics let you heal without worrying about not being able to stabilize.  So yeah, I basically want every class on my team.

[Parsely]

Barring large amounts of death, my guidelines are: one of each class, and either a second support or the heavy gets a medkit, then the remaining 2 slots are filled by anything that isn't snipers.  Snipers are either largely useless (squaddie rank, out of position in urban terrain, or meeting aliens right at mission start) or WAY too good (any other time), so I don't find them fun except in small doses.  One squadsight is a must though, for the damage and utility.  One assault with lightning reflexes makes overwatch so much easier to deal with.  Heavy's rockets are a get out of jail free card if things go bad, and supports smokes are similar if worse.  Support medics let you heal without worrying about not being able to stabilize.  So yeah, I basically want every class on my team.

If I don't have a support, the squad just goes without a medikit. I only ever take one or no sniper, no matter what. I only use rockets to soften enemies for my high aim supports and sniper, or if the next turn there's more than one alien prepared to fire. I use smoke early in fights on my guys in low cover while there are still tons of aliens. If I have a ton of supports sometimes I give one the extra smoke grenade perk, since I find those things extremely useful since they let me advance units close to the enemy without exposing them to much extra risk of being shot, while making it more likely for me to hit.

[EnigmaticHat]

I don't usually play with the variable aim thing, so for me supports are actively mediocre damage dealers and if things got bad I wouldn't waste their turn firing unless it was at point blank.  In default Xcom firing with mid-range combatants is always rolling the dice, so I like to establish control by using 100% forms of damage like explosives or extreme close/long ranges to say "I know if this shot misses someone else can take care of it".  That way you can let your supports get kills without risking the squad's health on a 65% or something like that.

Thus, I want a squadsight sniper, an assault with a certain kind of build, a heavy, and a few grenades.  Maxes out the 100% damage and helps minimize the luck factor.

I always want to take the double smoke upgrade because those are fun but honestly its very hard to justify that unless red mist is on.  3 medkits + the healing upgrade is 24 points of healing per healer.  If you avoid taking revive (which you absolutely should, its a recipe for death) you should be able to actively keep your squad at full health as long as they aren't exposed to multiple turns of damage.  Add that to the crazy health of an experienced squad and the upgrade that makes higher level soldiers less likely to outright die, and you've got a squad that either gets TPKed or lives forever.  Which is what I would want if I was bringing more than one support.

[Muz]

I don't get the Archangel + Sniper combo. I thought it wrote somewhere in the help page that flying doesn't give a height bonus?

[WillowLuman]

I don't know about that, but it gives the sniper a line of sight to their targets, especially with squadsight.