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[Mr Space Cat]

So I'm assaulting the alien base on Classic Ironman for the first time in EU. Got laser weapons for everyone, all colonels except for the support and 1 assault(trying to spread promotions).
team highlights:
2 heavies with shredder rockets, two normal rockets, grenades and grenadier, titan armor, heat ammo
1 sniper with squadsight, gunslinger, in the zone, battle scanners, skeleton armor, scope, laser sniper and laspistol
2 assault with run n gun, lightning reflexes, scatter lasers and laspistols, rapid fire, titan armor, close combat, and chitin plating
1 support with field medic, revive and smoke grenade, carapce armor, medkits, light plasma rifle and laspistol

Long story short, everything that could go wrong so far has gone horribly wrong.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 First, a sectopod somehow got triggered on the third turn and walked through a door. It got a cheap as hell clusterbomb off on a heavy without anyone being able to see it. Then it apparently "patrolled" (teleported like the cheap AI it is) away, leaving me paranoid of finding a sectopod around a corner.

Then a couple elite mutons and thin men get triggered in the next room with my team split up and out of position. I send one of my assaults in to flank the elite that appeared to be by itself. Once he was down there, he saw there were actually two, standing right next to each other. So he had to retreat. I had rockets, I had control of the situation.

Nope. One rocket missed. It missed, and just barely blew away the only cover my out of position assault had. The other rocket hit, but the two mutons still had 8 health, clear shots at my assault, and a thin man in position to shoot him as well. My support manages to kill a muton. The thin man somehow misses an elevated shot on my assault, who has no cover mind you, and the assault eats some muton plasma and survives. Finished off the aliens next turn, moved on. Used 2/3 medikits to heal the injured assault. Still paranoid of the sectopod blasting us from out of vision at any moment.

we run into the sectopod again next section, who starts another clusterbomb. My heavies are in position to shoot a shredder rocket and then the other shoots a normal rocket, while my assaults finish it off with run and gun. The shredder rocket completely misses, just barely blowing some cover a tile next to the sectopod. Now I have to expend the other shredder and pray the sectopod doesn't do much damage.

GUESS WHAT. The OTHER shredder misses too! It just barely hits it. My assaults rapid fire it with laser pistols and both do 2 damage with the first shot, completely miss the second shot. My sniper is out of position and can't assist. The clusterbomb goes off, dealing no damage but blowing away the cover of my heavies. The sectopod then takes another move because apparently it can do that and shoots the same heavy it hit with a cheap clusterbomb in the mission start. It critically wounds him. My other heavy spends his last rocket and doesn't miss for once, and my assaults close the gap and finish off the injured sectopod. The last medkit is used to revive the heavy.

At this point I decided to report this mission gone wrong just for history's sake.

So, in closing, I've missed 3/4 rockets shot so far. 10% of the time it misses right when you can't afford to miss. 1 missed rocket left a soldier exposed, the other 2 rockets were critical for killing a sectopod. I only have 3 grenades and a rocket left for exploding robots, no medkits left. The RNG hates my guts right now. I think I'm maybe halfway through the mission.I haven't even gotten to the chrysalids or cyberdiscs yet.

I just cannot believe three rockets went off target in this one mission.

[umiman]

You had colonels when assaulting the alien base? Why did you wait so long haha.

I don't think you can beat sectopods with lasers.

[MaximumZero]

Okay, doodz, I have a question. Does anyone know how to hax the newest update to force it to load from DefaultGameCore.ini? I changed the balance of the game, and it was wonderful, and would like to do so again, but I haven't the foggiest clue of which offset to change in the .exe in the newest patch to get the tweaks to stick.

[Mr Space Cat]

You had colonels when assaulting the alien base? Why did you wait so long haha.

I don't think you can beat sectopods with lasers.

I waited so long because Classic Ironman. Also because first I wanted to get lasers, then carapace armor, then firestorms and all this  foundry stuff became available and then more goodies like titan armor and I had to build satellite uplinks and workshops to build more uplinks and excavate for more space and--yeah. Stuff came up. Story progression takes a back seat to managing everything else for me.

If it was Impossible/Ironman it'd seem perfectly reasonable to wait. Plus, it's really easy to get colonels in EU. Just keep taking the same dudes to every mission. Pretty sure I got my first colonel shortly before the first terror mission.

[Sharp]

Impossible Ironman sometimes you need to do the alien base quicker because beating that mission does global panic reduction so it's really good to have before you lose lots of countries.

[umiman]

You'd have lost before the first two months ended if you used that strategy in impossible ironman.

[Mr Space Cat]

Probably, yeah. I didn't have too much trouble handling panic this game, so I could afford to wait. Impossible pretty much forces you to lose a nation the first month due to panic and stuff.

[EnigmaticHat]

So it is with some disappointment that I can say that the AI does in fact cheat. I managed to, without ever seeing an alien, get a soldier within spitting distance of a sectoid who had remained in place and mind melded for the last 5 turns, only for it to magically stop and run forward, killing the stealthy rookie.  This was the first mission, so no seekers or anything like that.

The funny thing is, I don't know that it cheats on purpose.  The turn order of the aliens reversed (the mind melder had previously gone first, here it went second), so I think what happened was the first part of the AI code that decides the type of move each alien will make told the mind melder "no, don't mind meld, there's a soldier near you", and then the AI decided to make a small move forward because it was away from the fight and couldn't see the path it would need to move over to get to the fight.  That being said, I have noticed that the AI tends to move forward when I hunker down but not when I overwatch, even if it can't see any of my troops.  That still may not be intentional either.  The AI is supposed to move forward when you hunker down so that if you hunker down repeatedly it will eventually flank you; its possible they didn't bother to make that part of the AI to check for LOS.

So yeah, cheats.  But maybe not on purpose.  The AI definitely acts as if it can't see your soldiers most of the time.

[EnigmaticHat]

No, the alien was hiding behind one of those full cover cars that blocks line of sight.  Basically:

ACC.
.CC.
.CCR

Where A is the alien, C is the car, and R is the (very rough) direction the rookie came from.  Since it was the first mission, and Xcom soldiers have one tile more LOS than aliens iirc, I know that if any alien saw my approach I would have heard the sound and seen the icon.  And it was a double move by a rookie on the other side of the field that they couldn't see the starting position of, so no way they guessed.

[Sean Mirrsen]

You do know that double movement creates noise, i.e. the "audio cue" direction thing? You may have just gotten unlucky, and the AI correctly guessed what was happening using that cue. I had to rely on it to find the last EXALT soldier in the HQ assault mission.

Because I haven't once seen any notion that the AI actually cheats in any way. It is never tossing grenades at walls my operatives are standing behind, never actively avoiding getting itself in a bad position, and really it often falls for tactical traps.

Now, it might start cheating at the high difficulties, like Impossible, but even then I doubt it - the health and number increases are sufficient.

[EnigmaticHat]

Huh.  I didn't know that.

And yeah, the AI doesn't seem to cheat most of the time, which is why I said it might be cheating by accident.

[Mr Space Cat]

I've had instances where aliens teleport randomly where they really shouldn't be able to get in one turn. That could be considered cheating. It's certainly an unfair advantage.

Spoiler: Event #1 (click to show/hide)

At one point on a medium sized UFO mission I was slowly advancing toward the back of the ship. I had split my team into groups of three for a pincer movement and potential flanking. Probably stupid. Anyway, apparently I was taking too long to reach the aliens, so the last pack of mutons teleported right into the middle of a group. They literally appeared out of nowhere, got triggered, and moved into position. Said pack included a berserker, already in punching range. That was fun.

Spoiler: Event #2 (click to show/hide)

Another time a sectopod teleported into the starting corridors of the alien base assault and got triggered. It got to bombard my team from far away with its cheap ability. I was paranoid afterwards that I'd run into an overwatching sectopod until I finally found it, three rooms away from where it was triggered. Dat teleport.

Spoiler: Event #3 (click to show/hide)

Another time during a terror mission a floater pack literally moved all the way across the map of their own accord, without being triggered, before being triggered by, well, them flying into my squad's vision. Said floaters then got another free turn to move. Fun. They weren't using their ability or whatever, the screen panned to follow them as they flew, rather than cutting to where the floater would land.

I don't always call out the game for cheap shots, but teleporting mutons right in the midst of your squad is cruel and unusual.

[Mephansteras]

Is that bug still around? The devs have tried to fix it a few times, I know. In any case that's a bug and not intended behavior. Well, at least the 'teleport into your squad' is a bug. I don't know if the overall teleportation mechanic is considered a bug or not.

[umiman]

It happens once in awhile. Quite rarely. I generally find it as awesome as it only ever happens on their turn, so they don't get free moves. Furthermore, I've never had a situation where they appeared while I was fighting something else so it's almost always a slaughter as they surrounded themselves and proc my overwatches.

I only ever play on impossible or classic though, so my squads are always designed to kill whatever enemy in one turn. You can't beat those modes unless you can do that. So any situation where enemies basically get in range of my squad, make themselves flanked, and are essentially surrounded is good for me.

Or you could just use robots only. They can handle anything.

[Mr Space Cat]

Playing my first game of Enemy Within, on Classic Ironman.

It's only the first month and I've already got four squaddie heavies, out of the 7 promoted squaddies. The game is literally throwing rockets at me. On one abduction mission the two rookies I took along were both promoted to heavy.

Not that I'm complaining, of course. It's a nice change of pace from the countless useless squaddie snipers I got during Enemy Unknown. Still, four heavies in the first month. That's the most heavies I've ever had alive in one game.