UFO: Enemy Unknown, remake by Firaxis

[coanda]

Thin men seem to be my bane. They pretty much hit every shot they take even when I'm behind full cover and also they crit like 90% of the time for 7-9 damage instantly killing my soldiers.... grr. I got carapace armor now but I only had credits/alloys to make one.

I saw someone describe thin men on Impossible as early-game minibosses, and it's a pretty fair description. Either you hammer them really hard really fast - blow through your rockets and grenades if needed - or you expect to take losses.

 

[sirtommygunn]

I think it's kind of weird that floaters usually appear after thin men, because thin men are almost objectively better in every way.

 

[sherbz]

Floaters would be very dangerous if their special ability was used properly. If your advanced guard of troops popped a group of 3, then all 3 drop down on top of your highly levelled sniper, who is absolutely miles away.

I think classic is plenty hard enough for me. I just got rolled in my ironman game again (sigh). Sometimes stuff happens that just destroys you and there isnt much you can do. I was in a UFO landing mission, moved my troops once, and then on the aliens turn I was set upon by 3 mutons and 3 floaters (which is bad at the best of times), but this caused reaction shots, which revealed 3 sectoids and 3 thin men (they were in different parts of the UFO, and my over watches that missed opened up the view). Thats by far the worst luck ive ever had. The only thing i was missing was the outsider I think. Also slightly strange to have that diverse a mix.

Oh well, back to the drawing board. I think ill probably give up once ive done classic iron man. Ive already expended over 100 hours on the game so far. Might look to get baldurs gate enhanced and play that instead .

 

[Camikaze]

Yeah, my experience with floaters teleporting is that they usually seem to drop down so they're flanked and easy to hit. It might be annoying to have to take a shot at one when you'd really rather kill of the Berserker, but I'm not sure that's the effect it's going for.

 

[Gzz]

Well , in my experience , the floaters are all but a danger : i did a terror mission , there were like 3-4 floaters and 10 sectoids : a sectoid killed a rookie , the floaters did nothing but doing a hp1 damage to my sniper with Nano shirt

 

[Wolfbeckett]

Just bought this game today. Went to Steam expecting $50 and surprise, it's 33% off. Bonus. Would have bought it anyway but I'll take the discount. Played it for a few hours, really really enjoying it so far. I'm only on normal with no Ironman for now because I never played the original for more than an hour, it was one of those games I always intended to play but never got around to (see also: Bioshock, Portal 2, Mass Effect, Half Life). This one though, this one I likey. Looking forward to really getting the hang of it so I can start some Ironman attempts and maybe push it to classic difficulty at some point. It's shocking how fast your dudes can die though, even on normal. On my first UFO landing mission, I cleared the map of everything except the outsider. At this point I had 2 guys who were still completely unscathed so I sent them forward. Both in cover, one is a sniper so he's a fair distance away, no need to get him in to close. Imagine my surprise when the outsider pops around the corner and one shots him from roughly 5 miles away. Luckily I finished the mission before he bled out so he only ended up gravely wounded instead of dead, he'll be back in action in a couple more days.

 

[sirtommygunn]

I think it's kind of weird that floaters usually appear after thin men, because thin men are almost objectively better in every way.

Since the time I posted this, I have started losing tons of soldiers to floaters due to them suddenly knowing how to use suppression properly (It always ends up destroying the cover I'm hiding behind).

 

[VoidTrooper2014]

I saw someone describe thin men on Impossible as early-game minibosses, and it's a pretty fair description. Either you hammer them really hard really fast - blow through your rockets and grenades if needed - or you expect to take losses.

In my recent Classic Ironman playthrough I really learned new respect from them. The coucil missions became a real challenge, despite the opposition consisting "only" of Thin Men. They were responsible for several deaths.

 

[sherbz]

In my recent Classic Ironman playthrough I really learned new respect from them. The coucil missions became a real challenge, despite the opposition consisting "only" of Thin Men. They were responsible for several deaths.

I agree completely with this statement. On normal, thin men are no problem at all because they only have 3 hit points and unless you are unlucky, you should 1 shot kill them. On classic they have 4 hitpoints, so a 1 shot kill with a rifle is problematic unless you score a critical. They therefore pose a real danger to rookies and support soldiers. For this reason, the first council mission is very dangerous, especially if you only field rookies. I think its optimum to only pick assault, sniper and heavy’s for this mission. Its not so bad in later missions because you can mitigate the threat of thin men by taking 5 squad members, plus you may well have access to better armour and/or weapons.

I think rookies are incredibly vulnerable to thin men and outsiders. Both can 1 shot without too many problems.

 

[OrsonM]

I just got the game, I'm surprised that the matches are so relatively quick most of the time. Must be because the game encourages not abusing save states. The interface is a bit wonky for a pc game though. It's not console port terrible, but could be better.

And yeah, the game is a blast overall.

 

[VoidTrooper2014]

I just got the game, I'm surprised that the matches are so relatively quick most of the time. Must be because the game encourages not abusing save states. The interface is a bit wonky for a pc game though. It's not console port terrible, but could be better.

And yeah, the game is a blast overall.

The game can only become better with some decent DLC. And it looks like it did well enough sales-wise to warrant that.

After 4+ years of development it still feels a little bit rushed. I am not surprised, though, the complexity of re-doing XCOM for today's markets is staggering (what to do, what not to do).

But, yes, the game is a blast - especially on Ironman.

 

[Gzz]

I hope for a DCL for multiple squads , just for simplify the things a bit at abductions missions , still , for Counter-balance , over to buy other skyrangers , the aliens will try to shut them down ( obliusly scaled by difficult , more the difficult increase , more are the chances to been haunted

 

[sherbz]

The game can only become better with some decent DLC. And it looks like it did well enough sales-wise to warrant that.

After 4+ years of development it still feels a little bit rushed. I am not surprised, though, the complexity of re-doing XCOM for today's markets is staggering (what to do, what not to do).

But, yes, the game is a blast - especially on Ironman.

I think the game probably took a long time in development due to firaxis trying to find a design that works across all 3 platforms, as well as constructing a game engine that works. Now that they have those nailed down, I expect them to be in a position where they are able to knock out quite a number of different maps etc. My main hope is that they open it up for modders. The best way to ensure that you get real diversity of content is to let the fans do it for you. It’s a sad but true fact.

 

[OrsonM]

After 4+ years of development it still feels a little bit rushed.

Well, either that or indeed in real life only 4 star generals are allowed to carry more than 2 grenades.

They did a good job overall I think, it reminds me of vanilla Civ V, very bare bones, but ripe for DLCs and expansions, so I agree there too.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

I'm not really sure how they could do DLC that would seem to be worth the money. They could add new maps I suppose but that isn't too exciting. They can't really add any other content without it potentially unbalancing the game. I think at this point I'd be looking for a full expansion or sequel, anything smaller is going to be either lame or unbalance the game or both. My understanding is that even on the harder difficulties, the game is already too easy by the end, only really being hard at the beginning until you build up a head of steam. If they try to add new weapons and items and such it's really not going to help that problem.

 

[Gzz]

They cna add more species of aliens and eraly-game weapons ! They can take back the ranks and so on

 

[OrsonM]

I'm not really sure how they could do DLC that would seem to be worth the money. They could add new maps I suppose but that isn't too exciting. They can't really add any other content without it potentially unbalancing the game. I think at this point I'd be looking for a full expansion or sequel, anything smaller is going to be either lame or unbalance the game or both. My understanding is that even on the harder difficulties, the game is already too easy by the end, only really being hard at the beginning until you build up a head of steam. If they try to add new weapons and items and such it's really not going to help that problem.

It doesn't have to be mind blowing or anything for Firaxis, it just has to sell (and you know, make money at it, hopefully). So the possibility of DLC and expansions are as large as the amount of money people are willing to spend on them.

I think they are already adding an expansion that takes place in China, from what I last recall. I mean, the franchise is about aliens, you could take it beyond earth if so inclined.

 

[coanda]

I'm not really sure how they could do DLC that would seem to be worth the money. They could add new maps I suppose but that isn't too exciting. They can't really add any other content without it potentially unbalancing the game. I think at this point I'd be looking for a full expansion or sequel, anything smaller is going to be either lame or unbalance the game or both. My understanding is that even on the harder difficulties, the game is already too easy by the end, only really being hard at the beginning until you build up a head of steam. If they try to add new weapons and items and such it's really not going to help that problem.

New maps is the obvious one. It wouldn't be the biggest addition, but a bunch of new maps would be nice (especially some ones that break up the rather repetitive UFO mission maps right now, since apparently right now Earth consists of cities/suburbs, and great sprawling deciduous forests everywhere else). On the top of my wishlist would be a way to let modders make and introduce their own custom maps, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

There's also room for a fair amount of tweaking and adjusting in the post-laser portion of the game. Note that introducing new equipment for the humans isn't the only way to add DLC. Introduce new aliens to add challenge. If done right, you could also mix in a new weapon or two that provide alternate but not clearly superior options to the existing ones (much like the current shotgun/rifle choice for Assaults).

With a lot of thought, it might be possible to introduce a fifth class of soldier into the game without unbalancing it. The risk would be either making a class that just duplicates a role already filled by one of the current four or making a class that is just too strong/weak compared to the existing ones... but I'm not prepared to say it's an unavoidable problem. All that said, I suspect if they have an idea for a fifth class of soldier they're going to sit on it until they can make it one of the big carrots for people to buy their first real expansion pack whenever that comes out.

There's room for significant tweaking of the psionics aspect of the game, on both the alien and the human part. A "Psionics Expanded" DLC of some sort could be fairly fun to play with if done well.

The way they seemed to be heading with the first DLC is in the form of relatively highly scripted story missions. That's not really what I'm interested in, but I can certainly see how some other players might enjoy that, and it's relatively easy to preserve overall balance while introducing those.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

New maps is the obvious one. It wouldn't be the biggest addition, but a bunch of new maps would be nice (especially some ones that break up the rather repetitive UFO mission maps right now, since apparently right now Earth consists of cities/suburbs, and great sprawling deciduous forests everywhere else). On the top of my wishlist would be a way to let modders make and introduce their own custom maps, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

There's also room for a fair amount of tweaking and adjusting in the post-laser portion of the game. Note that introducing new equipment for the humans isn't the only way to add DLC. Introduce new aliens to add challenge. If done right, you could also mix in a new weapon or two that provide alternate but not clearly superior options to the existing ones (much like the current shotgun/rifle choice for Assaults).

With a lot of thought, it might be possible to introduce a fifth class of soldier into the game without unbalancing it. The risk would be either making a class that just duplicates a role already filled by one of the current four or making a class that is just too strong/weak compared to the existing ones... but I'm not prepared to say it's an unavoidable problem. All that said, I suspect if they have an idea for a fifth class of soldier they're going to sit on it until they can make it one of the big carrots for people to buy their first real expansion pack whenever that comes out.

There's room for significant tweaking of the psionics aspect of the game, on both the alien and the human part. A "Psionics Expanded" DLC of some sort could be fairly fun to play with if done well.

The way they seemed to be heading with the first DLC is in the form of relatively highly scripted story missions. That's not really what I'm interested in, but I can certainly see how some other players might enjoy that, and it's relatively easy to preserve overall balance while introducing those.

New maps are fine but I'm only really interested if they are tactically different enough from the existing ones. Having my dudes hide behind different kinds of rocks instead of the ones already in game is not really something I'd spend money on. I'd like to see more involved mission types with specific objectives, similar to the bomb missions, 95% of the missions I do are just "kill all the aliens" which is fun but not really strategically challenging anymore.

There's no doubt that the post laser game could use tweaks, but that's more of a patch than a DLC, nobody is going to pay money for them to balance the game that should already be balanced. The problem with adding stuff into the game is that without more story content it doesn't work. You can add items that are balanced but unnecessary, but giving people more options in their loadouts risks making the game easier than it already is. You can balance that by making the game harder post energy weapons, but then the DLC starts to feel mandatory if you want to progress. It's a tricky thing.

Both new classes and expanded psionics really seem too big for DLC. A new class is big enough to save for an expansion/sequel, and the improved psionics thing runs into the same balancing problem I described above. You either make the new powers too weak to be useful, or they will make the game easier, in which case you have to make the game harder to balance it and now people feel forced to buy the DLC. To be honest these balance reasons make me think we are going to see very little in terms of official DLC beyond maps and scripted missions and such, the balance in a game like this is delicate and even minor additions can screw it up. My guess is expansion pack or sequel is when we'll see big additions come down the chute.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

So I just finished my first game of this, moving on to Classic, hopefully it will be more challenging than normal which after the first 5 or so missions I steamrolled the rest of the game. Some thoughts:

-Ghost armor. What the hell. Who exactly tested this and said "YEP, TOTALLY BALANCED AND NOT AT ALL BROKEN!" Because they need to be fired ASAP. Ghost armor is RIDICULOUS.

-Heavies need a balancing pass I think. Early in the game they are fine but late in the game their marksmanship is terrible, the only reason they are worth bringing along is because every so often a rocket is exactly what you need to save your ass, but in any mission where you don't end up needing the rocket (most of them late game) they are dead weight.

-Assaults maybe need a nerf, an assault with ghost armor is BASICALLY a one man wrecking crew. Got a mob that absolutely, positively cannot be allowed to act next turn? Stealth, run & gun, double crit shot to the face. Done and done.

-Supports are probably the most balanced class in the game skills wise. With every promotion the skill choice actually seems like a choice. The other classes have a lot of "choices" where one is pretty clearly better than the other.

And now a question if anyone knows. When testing people for psi ability, is whether or not they have the gift determined when the character is rolled or is it dependant on current stats? Seems like when I was testing my guys that had some levels (and therefore some Will) I got quite a number of positives, but as soon as I started testing squadies I never saw another psi soldier again. Do I need to wait to test guys until they have leveled up enough to gain some Will or is it all predetermined when they are created and I just got incredibly unlucky with them?