UFO: Enemy Unknown, remake by Firaxis

[Wolfbeckett]

Yes, missing when you aren't supposed to have a 100% chance to hit sure is annoying .

You know what else really grinds my gears? When I have a lottery ticket that doesn't win. WTH.

 

[scratchthepitch]

Yes, missing when you aren't supposed to have a 100% chance to hit sure is annoying .

You know what else really grinds my gears? When I have a lottery ticket that doesn't win. WTH.

Console gaming attracts the most pleasant of people....

 

[coanda]

I'd have no problem with someone capping the edge results (e.g., make anything above the 95% threshold for either side be an automatic hit and anything below 5% an automatic miss). It would mean fewer fluky, highly improbable results, so the result would be more in line with whether you actually were being smart about what risks you avoided. You'd have to adjust the overall difficulty to compensate, because obviously human players would be much better at taking advantage of this than the AIs - for example, paired with the change above you might give all humans -3 aim and all aliens +3 aim.

But it's the little stuff like that. I have no problem with the game killing you if you make a mistake. I'd rather have the game occasionally kill you despite making no mistakes than have it let you get away with making mistakes and winning anyways. But if there's a way to trim out the edge chances, I'd be all for it; it's the same basic reason why I'd like panic toned down just a little bit.

 

[Pikkis]

Unfortunately, its difficulty tapers off a lot as you get later in the game - by the second month it's hard, but moderately forgiving; by the fourth month, it's barely more difficult than Classic.

Well, Normal and Classic also get a lot easier later on, at least if you don't jump on the first chance to do story missions. So what you're suggesting is that for Impossible, this is even more severe?

That said, there are players on the official forums who win 4/5 I/I attempts or more.

Wow. Just, wow.

Thin Men should be hit with rockets or double-grenades on sight.

So you're suggesting keeping the grenades over the alternatives in the early game? Most of the other stuff you mention I've come to think of myself.

Friendly fire needs to do less damage, and it should not be capable of triggering chain panic (where soldier A panics, shoots B, causing C and D to panic as well).

I think that at worst you can have one soldier killed by aliens and a panic chain that kills two more by friendly fire. It's not that unlikely.

I'd have no problem with someone capping the edge results (e.g., make anything above the 95% threshold for either side be an automatic hit and anything below 5% an automatic miss). It would mean fewer fluky, highly improbable results, so the result would be more in line with whether you actually were being smart about what risks you avoided.

But if there's a way to trim out the edge chances, I'd be all for it; it's the same basic reason why I'd like panic toned down just a little bit.

A fixed threshold doesn't sound like a good idea, because the lower threshold wouldn't affect almost anything -- there's pretty much always something better to do than a 5% shot, while the upper threshold would make things easier even if paired with an aim decrease of up to 4.

I don't know whether damage probabilities and hit probabilities are paired. The way criticals are represented would imply they aren't. If they were (or are), you would actually bet on a distribution of damage and the distribution at each 'hit percentage' (which would now actually be a more general measure of shot quality) could be tweaked without changing its expectation -- maybe even by player should Firaxis feel it doesn't add too much microlevel to the game. It could be a Second Wave option.

 

[Pikkis]

I think you have to be a massochist to enjoy playing impossible.

I thought so too at first, but I have doubts now.

That said there are some interesting lets plays on youtube played on impossible. Zenalf manages to win the game without losing any countries what so ever by careful base planning (he manages to build a satelite uplink and 4 satelites in the first month, which i didnt even think was possible).

I think I'll have to watch that, nice tip.

 

[Pikkis]

Yes, missing when you aren't supposed to have a 100% chance to hit sure is annoying .

You know what else really grinds my gears? When I have a lottery ticket that doesn't win. WTH.

Nice one.

Until someone conclusively proves the XCOM prng is rigged or otherwise faulty, these are just life as it is in XCOM sense. They tend to irritate, at a critical point they may cost you a mission, but in any case, you just have to accept them (at least in an Ironman game).

 

[HAND]

I recently bought XCOM:Enemy Unknown on the Steam summer sale, but having trouble with not being able to "go back" on the Mission control screens. It looks like there are numerous bugs with XCOM:EU and no patches for a while.. has anyone had this problem and solved it at all? I did purchase the DLC but that doesn't seem to have an effect on this issue.

 

[Pikkis]

I recently bought XCOM:Enemy Unknown on the Steam summer sale, but having trouble with not being able to "go back" on the Mission control screens. It looks like there are numerous bugs with XCOM:EU and no patches for a while.. has anyone had this problem and solved it at all? I did purchase the DLC but that doesn't seem to have an effect on this issue.

What do you mean with "going back"? XCOM:EU does have quite a big bunch of bugs at the moment, also in multiplayer, but most of them aren't too significant IMO. Hopefully they'll release a patch along with the "big DLC" when it comes, though.

 

[HAND]

What do you mean with "going back"? XCOM:EU does have quite a big bunch of bugs at the moment, also in multiplayer, but most of them aren't too significant IMO. Hopefully they'll release a patch along with the "big DLC" when it comes, though.

I was on the Access Research archives within the Mission Control screen and there was no "back arrow <-- " icon and the Escape key didn't work, so eventually I had to close XCOM from task manager and lose my progress .. oh well, I just restarted and just replayed again and I save at every significant point now.

 

[Michkov]

Right click acts as back function inside the base view.

The autosafe off default setting sucks. I got the game at the summer sale played for 9 hours straight before the thing quit on me because of steam server issues, lost all progress. Playing ironman mode since than.

 

[Pikkis]

I think I haven't seen that exact bug, but UI glitches are some of the most common. There are also arguably more severe bugs like multiplayer setup screen at times displaying wrong prices for units.

Although I play Ironman for other reasons, Autosave is actually quite nice, especially since the game crashes often on my sub-minimum requirements notebook.

 

[sherbz]

This game without ironmode is only half a game in my opinion. You should ALWAYS play with it on. Easy is easy enough that you should be ok even with loads of mistakes. Normal/ironman is about right for starting out i think unless you are hopeless at computer games.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

i didnt think this game would have the lasting power that civ has but after 3 playthroughs im done with it. i thought id get through it once with each continent but after recognizing every alien map and knowing what unlocks what in base management the mystique has worn off. impossible difficulty didnt turn out to be anything more than starved resources and worse RNG results. i thought id get more than 100 hours out of it but didnt even get to 100 before losing interest. i probably should try some of the multiplayer stuff though. i never got around to that.

 

[coanda]

Just FYI, the RNG in Impossible is the exact same one used in Classic. You just notice the bad rolls more because you're less able to absorb bad luck.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

The RNG thing itself is complete BS anyway.

I once started a terror mission an ended up with terrible die rolls. I replayed my first turns 20 times, but even with 70%+ odds all my first shots would miss. Thanks to that the mission became unwinnable (look at all the pretty zombies!) and I had to revert to an earlier save game.

But hey, at least the game made me play and appreciate the real (= old) X-COM again.
:3

 

[coanda]

The RNG thing itself is complete BS anyway.

I once started a terror mission an ended up with terrible die rolls. I replayed my first turns 20 times, but even with 70%+ odds all my first shots would miss. Thanks to that the mission became unwinnable (look at all the pretty zombies!) and I had to revert to an earlier save game.

But hey, at least the game made me play and appreciate the real (= old) X-COM again.
:3

The seed is saved. So the random number generator gives the same sequence of answers on loading a save every time you load that particular save. It's like the "no random seed on reload" option in Civ4. So you probably just stumbled into a really bad starting seed that gave a whole bunch of unlucky results in a row. Once you've got a seed like that, reloading isn't gonna fix it.

 

[Arakhor]

Presumably reloading to before the mission began would refresh the seed though?

 

[sherbz]

Ive got over 100 hours of enjoyment from XCOM. Admittedly i was done with it after about 80 hours, but I wanted to try and find a viable strategy for opening where you can reliably cover the whole world without losing a country.

There is a cheap shot you can try in order to get a satelite uplink + 4 satelites in the first month, but this is heavily dependent on your missions. Roughly it goes:

Abduction mission before 6th march - take engineers
ufo crash before 10th march
council mission before 16th march

You start out in America for the cash and then do the above, building a workshop on the 6th, 4 satelites on the 10th and an uplink on the 16th. Then you need a well placed steam vent which you can build by the end of the month after your 2nd round of abductions, which you take credits in.

This enables you to cover the whole globe without losing anyone on impossible difficulty. But it requires a massive amount of luck. So i tried to devise one where you build 2 satelite uplinks in month 2 with 6 satelites. This is much more achievable, but you are still somewhat reliant on getting a mission here and there.

 

[Pikkis]

Presumably reloading to before the mission began would refresh the seed though?

I'd assume the seed is longer than a single mission (after all, a lot of things are random in this game), though this is just speculation.

---

Personally, I've got roughly 220 hours of entertainment out of XCOM:EU. Private multiplayer matches added quite a bit of value later on.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

The seed is saved. So the random number generator gives the same sequence of answers on loading a save every time you load that particular save. It's like the "no random seed on reload" option in Civ4. So you probably just stumbled into a really bad starting seed that gave a whole bunch of unlucky results in a row. Once you've got a seed like that, reloading isn't gonna fix it.

I reverted to a save two (ingame) weeks earlier.