XCOM: Enemy Within expansion announced

That's what I hoped for when Enemy Within was teased. A proper expansion with tons of new content and changes and additions to the core game.

Details revealed so far:

47 new maps

Ability to use localised language files to make your soldiers speak in their native language.

New class: Mec trooper. Mec Troopers are soldiers that are upgraded to cyborgs in a new facility. They lose all their old class abilities and get a new skill tree. They don't lose their rank when converted, and an upgraded former Sniper Major becomes a new Mec Trooper Major and can choose new abilities. Some of the new skills are Collateral Damage (target terrain and deliberately destroy cover), and Damage Control which reduces damage taken for one turn. They'll also be able to use jet-packs for jumps (like Floaters ?) and can function as smobile cover like Alloy SHIVs.
Mec Troopers also have access to exclusive weapons (flame throwers and rail guns among them).

Genetic upgrades: Every soldier (except Mec Troopers) will have five upgrade slots with two options each.
Brain upgrades: Neural Feedback (Psi attacks cause damage to the attacker) or Neural Dampening (immune to panic, soldier faints if mind controlled).
Leg upgrades: Muscle Fiber (can climb walls) or Adaptive Bone Marrow (limited health regeneration in combat).
There'S also eye, skin and chest upgrades.

New resource: meld canistes are randomly scattered across the map and self destruct after a couple of turns.

New items:
Needle Grenades: larger blast radius, but won't affect enemies in cover.
Stealth Grenade: Use on allied troops to turn them invisible.
Reaper Rounds: Increases crit chance of ballistic weapons but reduces aim.

New enemy types: Mechtoids, cyborg sectiods in powered armor. These guys can fire twice per turn and gain a protective shield from mind meld.

New Foundry project: Two inventory slots for your soldiers, like the old Deep Pockets skill. Speaking of which...

Balance changes to existing skills:

Deep Pockets gives twice as many uses for all inventory items.
Covering Fire triggers before the enemy shoots.
Close and Personal gives a free shot at enemies within four tiles.
Snap Shot has -10 aim instead if -20.
Squad Sight can't score critical hits against enemies outside of the sniper's own line of sight, except if Head Shot is used.

That's all the info I have for now.
Oh, it will be 30$ and the release date is November 12, 2013.

Really looking forward to this.

Thanks for the info, the new Mec Warrior looks to be really cool!

Snap Shot has -10 aim instead if -20.
Squad Sight can't score critical hits against enemies outside of the sniper's own line of sight, except if Head Shot is used.

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While the nerf to SS is unfortunate, it's still the best perk by far. If you rely on critical hits to kill anything besides maybe a sectopod or the uber ethereal, you're doing it wrong. Snap Shot needs no aim penalty at all for it to even be close to the usefulness of Squad Sight. Otherwise I don't know why they just won't change it so that SS becomes the squaddie ability and you choose between headshot or snap shot. It would make snipers so much more varied, while without effecting the metagame of snipers requiring squad sight to be effective. At the very least, snapshot shouldn't have an aim penalty.

I LOVE the idea of the foundry giving two slots for everyone. Snipers can still have their S.C.O.P.E. while taking grenades so they won't be ed, you can give your supports a medkit and nades, and simply put you can give nades to EVERYONE! For the people you can already give nades too, such as heavies, I wouldn't mind giving them either a S.C.O.P.E. so the minigun is more useful at long ranges, or perhaps a medkit so we're not as ed in a major battle. I expect the game getting A LOT easier yet more tactical with dual slots.

I like the idea of languages for soldiers, but the only languages supported are English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Italian and Polish. Firstly, I don't think you can recruit Polish troops without modding, so they might be hinting something with that. Otherwise, this list is very Euro-Centric, and it ignores the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. It's an improvement definitely, but couldn't they have thrown in Arabic and either Chinese or Japanese at the very least?

Also let us change our soldier nationalities/genders already. Really limiting my RP potential; the only reason I haven't done an XCOM AAR yet is because I want people to be able to make their own soldiers. Classes? Fine, I'd understand, you want the randomness factor. But there is literally no reason for the nationality/gender lock.

Otherwise I am completely stoked for everything. This will be a day one buy for me unless I'm broke

EDIT: Anyone notice the sniper on the cover has a suppressor? No sniper rifle in the current game has that, so I'm curious if we're seeing a new attachment or perk that allows guns (or just the S. Rifle) to fire without revealing your location or something.

One of the things I forgot is that there'll also be a second wave option to randomise the skill trees. It will be possible to get a sniper with snap shot and squad sight.

Ooooh. I am so looking forward to this. I noticed it was leaked last week as they created 30 something new achievements on steam with no name. Interesting that they seem to be going down the old syndicate route (as in upgrading your soldiers into cyborgs). Come to think of it, that seems to me like a marriage made in heaven. Both of them are squad based tactics games with a strategic element (Syndicate less so, but it was still there). Both too are awesome games of their kind (not any of the new syndicates though). But the original syndicate, even today, is a thing of pure class.

I wonder if this will mean that you have to play through the original campaign and then import your saved game into the expansion (to make use of your major sniper). Makes you wonder what will happen if you beat the game super early or late if that is the case, as well as the state of play in your tech research.

I would like to see a few more ways for your soldiers to die. I think it would be cool to see an alien spit acid in your troops face and then watch him melt. Or is this a little on the morbid side? The only different way the aliens kill you in EU is the chryssalids and berserker, and the berserker is a bit boring and they nicked the chryssalid.

I think SS needed a nerf, it was too powerful in vanilla (yay, we can say that now). Also agree that snapshot could do with more of a buff, as it is still vastly inferior to SS. The number of times I had a mission which wasn’t going so well, and I would have like 2 soldiers left, so I would inch my assault forward with my sniper way back and hunker down with the assault after taking a shot with the sniper. I think Omega’s idea is good. Make it the squaddie ability. With the nerf to SS, that would make snapshot an interesting choice with headshot.

47 maps sounds like that could be roughly double what we have atm. Here is to hoping they are not all American diners and bars. The language addition suggests they will try and make it more international. Agree though that the languages seem limited somewhat. I don’t necessarily want my soldiers to speak German, Russian (am amazed this is not there in place of Polish), French, just have a strong accent .

I am also definitely going to be a day one purchaser. I might even book the following day off work and have an xcom day. Isn’t that sad!

The balance changes are welcome, but surely patchable. There was never any real question about what XCOM Enemy Within was given the development time involved, but from what I've read I'd have hoped for more than just extra customisation for soldiers, a new alien with a really stupid name (Mechtoid? Even for a franchise that gave us such wonderfully imaginative names as the Blaster Launcher that's pushing it), and a disappointingly small set of new maps (a lot of people were clamouring for at least double the number rather than little more than half as many again).

Thematically I don't like the mech and genetic engineering stuff, but hopefully it will provide more varied options gameplay-wise. The Second Wave 'overwatch shot' option looks interesting, though I'd rather have a general fix to alien behaviour that lets them overwatch when hidden.

Of course, we haven't been told everything yet - maybe snakemen will be back, perhaps those maps will be supplemented by random starting positions (something the base game didn't manage to implement but was apparently intended), and maybe there will be extra story missions to extend the campaign.

I like the sound of it all but surely they will be doing something to make the game more difficult as well? All of these changes sound like they will just make the game way easier, XCOM is supposed to be difficult. They must be beefing up the enemies in some way too right?

47 new maps

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Awesome. This alone would make me come back to XCOM.

Wolfbeckett said:

I like the sound of it all but surely they will be doing something to make the game more difficult as well? All of these changes sound like they will just make the game way easier, XCOM is supposed to be difficult. They must be beefing up the enemies in some way too right?

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That was my thought as well, but who knows how many of those upgrades you'll actually be able to afford ? Maybe it will just give you more options to make use of your scarce resources, and I doubt that Mechtoids will be the only new enemies. My guess is that we'll probably get Snakemen as melee based Thin Man variant, and maybe some enemy types that can use stealth or other dirty tricks that used to be exclusive to the player. There's also been no official word on base defense missions. Nobody definitely said they won't be in the game, so naturally I hope they'll be in.

New maps are always good, hopefully they are mostly quite varied and not just rearrangements of the same thing (although I am sure some are and that's fine, as long as its not all).

Maniacal said:

New maps are always good, hopefully they are mostly quite varied and not just rearrangements of the same thing (although I am sure some are and that's fine, as long as its not all).

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Aesthetically, the urban UFO map looks nice, but without seeing the whole thing it's hard to say how it will play compared with existing ones.

No confirmation on whether there will be different environment maps such as deserts, rainforests or ice (which should have been in the game all along if only as a nod to the original).

This is sweet. Bring it on.

I'm wondering about what the "Enemy Within" name signifies. None of the stuff revealed so far really suggests that name.

Edit: Also, I just saw this...
"Bonus info! There is a button in the pre-mission UI that strips all soldiers not currently assigned to the Skyranger team of all equipment."

That button alone is worth at least $2.

coanda said:

I'm wondering about what the "Enemy Within" name signifies. None of the stuff revealed so far really suggests that name.

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You're not the only one to wonder.

"Enemy within mech suits", maybe?

Edit: Also, I just saw this...
"Bonus info! There is a button in the pre-mission UI that strips all soldiers not currently assigned to the Skyranger team of all equipment."

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Yep, that's been needed for a while, but an awful lot of stuff like this being announced as new shiny additions is stuff that could easily have been added in a patch.

Well the finally bring up this expansion and thank you for the list... I think I'm sold.

AlpsStranger said:

That button alone is worth at least $2.

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Yes, I second this. What was so frustrating was that by the time you eventually got in the habit of stripping and re-equipping your soldiers, along came psi labs and you find out that your stupid soliders would go into a tiny capsule fully kitted out in their titan armour and plasma rifles. GRRRRR!

They seem to be asking for too much for what they're giving.

SS-18 ICBM said:

They seem to be asking for too much for what they're giving.

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I don't know, looks promising to me. If what they've announced is the sum and total of everything the expansion will contain, it'd be a bit light. But I presume they've got more stuff not yet announced.

coanda said:

I don't know, looks promising to me. If what they've announced is the sum and total of everything the expansion will contain, it'd be a bit light. But I presume they've got more stuff not yet announced.

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I watched a video with some of the devs and they say that meld is a game changing mechanic. Basically their point was that in order to get it, you couldnt just overwatch your way to victory in the maps, instead rushing to get your hands on it.

I think they way the original was presented, and the name of this expansion suggests that there is an ethical element to the game and its possible conclusion. You kind of got this in the original with Dr Shen questioning the morality of your actions in actually becoming more alien like in order to defeat the aliens. Im guessing this theme will continue in the expansion as you turn your soldiers into cyborgs and mess with their gene pool.