UFO: Enemy Unknown, remake by Firaxis

[VoidTrooper2014]

Speaking of pistols, does anyone use them? I have yet to use one (I never used them on the first game either). I don't even know how to switch what weapon I use... It would be useful maybe when I"m out of ammo and there's an enemy in front of me?

On PC it's "X", IIRC or clicking on the weapon (?). Consoles have a special button for it (square on PS3).

Yes, I use Pistols - a) for reducing aliens I want captured to make the capture more likely, b) as a finishing move for aliens down to 1-3 points (depending on the pistol available), especially when I have not research the Ammo tech in the Foundry. Ammo can have a tendency to run out on you in target-rich environments.

 

[sherbz]

Speaking of pistols, does anyone use them? I have yet to use one (I never used them on the first game either). I don't even know how to switch what weapon I use... It would be useful maybe when I"m out of ammo and there's an enemy in front of me?

I'm near the end if I ever remember to use my psi abilities. I don't like being forced to use psi abilities to win the game. Another thing I don't like is only having 2 (1 to start) rockets. It's these kinds of limitations that piss me off from Firaxis. Same with 1UPT in Civ5. They think these kinds of limitations make the game more tactical, and maybe it does, but it also pisses me off. Give us more options so we can have more fun dammit. I think the graphics for rockets kind of suck too. They were so much cooler in the original. Nothing beats 1 guy (I usually had 2 heavies) carrying a rocket launcher with 3 large rockets to spare in his backpack. I could level nearly the entire map. Now that's what I call fun.

I actually find pistols quite useful. Even if you just have the bog standard average one, and there is a big ugly alien in front of you with only one hit point, i always use my pistol for two reasons. the first is that you usually get a higher percentage to hit with the pistol, making that miss less likely. But the other, and perhaps more important reason, is that you dont waste one of you 4 shots (less if you use abilities like double shot and suppression) killing an alien that only has one hitpoint. The pistol works just fine at that job.

I usually buy my sniper the best pistol there is too. If they have moved, then its the only way to make sure they can do something other than hunker down when there is no point.

I also disagree about rockets. One is just fine. If you want more then take more heavies or promote your existing heavy in such a way that they can carry 3.

 

[sherbz]

It's really like playing different games:

Normal - is a walk in the park, you pretty much have the leisure to try everything and still beat the game.
Classic (playing this currently on PS3) - is a real test of tactics, you are going to be force to "walk the thin line" of risk and reward.
Classic Ironman (playing this currently for my AAR) - Oh my. This is Classic, but much more intense. Every decision gets pondered, because a wrong move - or a series of them could be your last.
Impossible (Ironman) - Yeah, some people like to be hurt...

The higher the stakes, the more likely you are to use explosives. They have the huge advantage of having fixed damage, so you can make sure that specific alien is snuffed. Only a dead alien cannot shoot back. In addition they eliminate cover and are AoE. So you use explosives either as prep, or as a finishing move on the higher difficulties.

Of course there are stories where rockets go haywire and suddenly you find your own troopers hurt and without cover...

About Stealth Satellites: Not needed on Normal, but on CI the scenario of having too many wounded / not having enough air coverage becomes a real threat (Answer: Research and build Firestorms as early as you can fit it in).

My stupid heavy just shot a car in front of him which then blew up, which killed my colonel support soldier in front. I wont be making that sort of mistake again

 

[sherbz]

I do have one question about psionics. Out of my soldier list of about 20-30, I have a grand total of 1 soldier who is psi capable. Is this normal? Is there a way to better your chances at finding psi soldiers? Is it advantageous getting your soldiers to the highest promoted level possible and then test them (due to the bonus to will power you can get via the officer training school)?

 

[Disgustipated]

I'm not sure about psi. Turns out I didn't need to get my guy to the highest level psionics for the last mission to start. All I had to do was to build the psi suit.

I ended up getting 2 guys on my main squad the highest level this past mission. It was a fairly easy small UFO shoot down, so I could use my psi abilities more. I just don't know how useful it is. I do want to get the achievement to mind control an etheral, however.

My main issue right now is getting the all research achievement. I'm missing something, and I don't know what. A couple missions ago I got an item that allowed me to research blaster launchers, I didn't realize I was missing that. Unfortunately it takes 2 UFO navigations for some strange reason, and I can't build it. I didn't get the item to allow this research until I took out my first very large UFO a couple missions ago. That was a little tough due to the layout of the interior.

What research am I missing? Maybe I'll see if I can find a tech tree somewhere. Or maybe the last research doesn't activate until I use the gallop thing.

 

[Markstar]

Hi,
as a veteran of the original, I thought I start of with "Classic". The combat part is no problem (even though it bothers me that a soldier behind full cover can still be shot), but I have serious trouble with the base and alien UFOs.

The game starts in March and already in May, there are large UFOs that I can't shoot down, so they land and increase the already high panic or destroy my satellites, which take too long to rebuild.

I try to go after Satellite Uplinks/Workshops asap, but I can't seem to get them out fast enough.

So, what is your recommended build order for the infrastructure? And how do you deal with the UFOs after 2 months???

Thanks in advance!

 

[Rubin]

Hi,
as a veteran of the original, I thought I start of with "Classic". The combat part is no problem (even though it bothers me that a soldier behind full cover can still be shot), but I have serious trouble with the base and alien UFOs.

The game starts in March and already in May, there are large UFOs that I can't shoot down, so they land and increase the already high panic or destroy my satellites, which take too long to rebuild.

I try to go after Satellite Uplinks/Workshops asap, but I can't seem to get them out fast enough.

So, what is your recommended build order for the infrastructure? And how do you deal with the UFOs after 2 months???

Thanks in advance!

If this is your first go at the new XCOM, I recommend playing the first 3-4 months on normal difficulty. This should tell you which research is useful to you and your style of play.

I've had success researching Heavy Lasers for a potent aircraft weapon. You should be able to deal with the first few bigger UFOs, and don't forget you can buy temporary buffs--especially if your research is taking a longer time.

The strategic game on classic seems broken, though. Firstly, you cannot make any mistakes, because your resources and time are not enough to ensure no countries leave the council. Secondly, you need a great deal of luck to actually keep up strategically, and this is beyond your control (unless you abuse the reload feature). If Satellite Uplinks fall behind, then your only option is to assault the Alien Base in order to reduce panic levels worldwide. Again, it seems broken, and I'm not even sure I see any "strategy" in this part of the game. Yeah, not much help, sorry

 

[Minor Annoyance]

About Stealth Satellites: Not needed on Normal, but on CI the scenario of having too many wounded / not having enough air coverage becomes a real threat (Answer: Research and build Firestorms as early as you can fit it in).

Here's something I didn't know so I'll tell others in case they didn't either. Stealth Satellites aren't a new type of satellite you build it just improves your existing ones. I put off researching it since I thought I'd just have to rebuild them. Same with SHIV weapon upgrades. I put off building one because I thought I'd be stuck with the weapon tech I had but no, it's upgraded.

 

[sherbz]

Well I just finished it. It took me 221 days of game time. I was surprised I had such a high shooting accuracy. It averaged out at 65%. I only lost 13 soldiers too, and didnt lose a single mission. Time to ramp it up and play on classic iron man now.

Hi,
as a veteran of the original, I thought I start of with "Classic". The combat part is no problem (even though it bothers me that a soldier behind full cover can still be shot), but I have serious trouble with the base and alien UFOs.

The game starts in March and already in May, there are large UFOs that I can't shoot down, so they land and increase the already high panic or destroy my satellites, which take too long to rebuild.

I try to go after Satellite Uplinks/Workshops asap, but I can't seem to get them out fast enough.

So, what is your recommended build order for the infrastructure? And how do you deal with the UFOs after 2 months???

Thanks in advance!

Although not too sure about build order on classic, I think i know generally what works well. First up you need to get a satellite uplink ASAP. To do this you need engineers. It might even be worth skipping the alien containment facility to save on power. Take engineers as your abduction bonus then if you are lucky you will get another couple from the council mission. Take cash as your next abduction and then go straight for the uplink. Try to remember to build your satellite before you build your uplink facility, because it takes longer.

Things to avoid include the foundry and laboratories (build the foundry late in the game. You dont need shivs at all), but labs are not really necessary, only if you have oodles of spare cash.

 

[Markstar]

The strategic game on classic seems broken, though. Firstly, you cannot make any mistakes, because your resources and time are not enough to ensure no countries leave the council. Secondly, you need a great deal of luck to actually keep up strategically, and this is beyond your control (unless you abuse the reload feature). If Satellite Uplinks fall behind, then your only option is to assault the Alien Base in order to reduce panic levels worldwide. Again, it seems broken, and I'm not even sure I see any "strategy" in this part of the game. Yeah, not much help, sorry

Grr, that's how it felt to me, too, but I thought I was missing something. Too bad.

Oh well, time to install Dosbox and give the original one a whirl again.

Thanks for the elaborate reply!

 

[Heretic_Cata]

Here's something I didn't know so I'll tell others in case they didn't either. Stealth Satellites aren't a new type of satellite you build it just improves your existing ones. I put off researching it since I thought I'd just have to rebuild them. Same with SHIV weapon upgrades. I put off building one because I thought I'd be stuck with the weapon tech I had but no, it's upgraded.

Aren't the majority of Foundry things passive upgrades ?

 

[Disgustipated]

I'm still not sure if those passives are working. I can't tell if my scope upgrade was working or not. BTW, what does the arc thrower upgrade do? I thought it increased the range, but it doesn't appear so.

I finally finished my game. I was dragging it out getting some achievements. The Einstein achievement (the one where you need all research), I figured out I was missing the interrogations of various alien races. I only did the bare minimum because I prefer killing, not stunning. So I got that done. It took me 33 hours but like I said, I dragged the game on about 10 months.

I can say, the game seems to get easier as you go along. This seems contrary to the old game which seemed to get harder as you went along. Although that may be because I played normal. I doubt I would fare so well on classic. And I refuse to do the no save thing, because I make too many mistakes moving my guys. I only reload when I accidentally move my guy where I don't want him to go. Sometimes they like to drop down a level when I don't want them to, and I have to rotate the camera, and use the mousewheel, and even then I struggle to get them into certain positions.

I'll write a review probably tomorrow in the We review games thread, but overall my impression of the game is positive. There are some things I miss from the original, but some things I'm happy are "streamlined", like clip management. Yeah I rarely ran out of ammo in the first game, but I think if you used more than 1/2 clip, it "used it up", and you'd have to remember to manufacture more so you can keep your skyranger fully stocked. I'm glad that's gone. I'm also happy to have much less psi combat. I prefer killing the old fashioned way, and psi combat isn't my thing. At least on normal level, I wasn't seeing more than 1 etheral per ship, and that's fine with me.

For some reason I didn't get the achievement where I have a solder survive every mission in the game. Weird. The only thing I can think of is the solder who participated in the tutorial mission (the only one who came out alive) was the one who used the gallop chamber and

Spoiler :

sacrificed himself at the end

I still prefer the original, and I would have been happier to have the original game with fancier graphics. But overall it's a good game. As for replayability, I'm not so sure. I'll replay it eventually. I'm sure I'll get 50 hours out of it (which is my goal for a $50 game). I'm not really in the mood to replay it right now.

 

[Unconquered Sun]

The strategic game on Classic and its much harder counterpart Impossible is about controlling risks.


What's counterintuitive is that the "priority" research path might be a bad idea.

Satellites are good; as long as you launch them just before the end of the month and are prepared to lose one in the second month and more later on. Stealth satellites help reducing the attacks.

As for actually engaging the larger UFOs; there's a number of things that help. Early investment in this, though, is questionable. Instead, sell ufo navigation/power/corpses in the grey market and develop your base rushing lots of links and workshops. Workshops cut production costs (inc. satellite costs) and allow more links; more coverage equals more pay, rinse and repeat. Full coverage by the end of month 3 is perfectly achievable.

 

[coanda]

@Rubin, Markstar - You're supposed to lose countries. It's supposed to be a game of making tough decisions over what countries to let go and which to keep. And once you start by acknowledging that, the strategic game is definitely not broken. Even with awful luck, you can still keep 9 countries in the game long enough to get 8 satellites up.

Also, the Alien Base mission is your big "gimme" mission early in the game. It's worth oodles of cash (far more than the alien containment costs), some useful tech, and a great global panic reduction. There's a reason the tutorial guides you into researching towards it ASAP; while it isn't necessarily the best thing to research immediately (my preference would be for Carapace Armor first, so your units don't get one-shotted with depressing regularity), it should be one of your first two or three goals.

@Disgustipated - the Arc upgrade halves the odds of failure on a capture (e.g., 90% chance of success instead of 80% if they're at 2 HP). If you're regularly exposing valuable units to get captures, it's something to consider. In my game I generally stuck the Arcs on my rookies, so I didn't really mind that much when a capture failed.
Yes, the game definitely has an odd difficulty curve. It's brutal for the first half-month (in fact, there is no way of reliably winning the first mission on Impossible); it eases up a bit as you start getting more abilities, better aim, and more health. It eases up a lot when your squad size increases to 6. The second month is typically the one where you feel like you're getting your feet under you. Then rising panic levels and the first terror mission kick your feet back out from under you in month 3; if you make it through that in halfway decent shape, the game is pretty easy from there on out.

The big problem is that end-game aliens just don't have enough health. Late-game firefights tend to be over in one or at most two rounds of combat; early game firefights drag on for a half-dozen rounds or more (I had one fight where all four of my soldiers were firing on one remaining sectoid... and failed to hit him for 5 straight rounds). The difference in tactical difficulty is really explained right there; if fights last four times as long, the aliens get four times as many shots at you.

 

[Rubin]

coanda, you have to agree that there really isn't much to the "strategic" part of the game, base building in particular. Rush some uplinks and workshops, build satellites, and if you have spare resources, spend some on "luxuries" for your troops. Then rush for the end and "beat" the game!?! Or am I completely off?

Abduction sites and terror sites are so random that your strategy either works or doesn't work. There's not much choice for the player. My games on normal difficulty did not suffer from this, and I knew when my strategy was faulty. That is not the case on classic difficulty, and I don't get the feeling that my success is caused by my strategic decisions; rather, my success depends on random luck (for example, I've had 14 engineers by the end of the very first week).

Perhaps the strategic layer is entirely flawed due to randomness and to too many dependencies (research resources, engineer requirements, etc.). I don't know, and I wonder if we'll be seeing a patch addressing the issue. The game deserves it

 

[coanda]

Sigh... karma came and bit me in the ***. I finally got a really great start for Iron Man Impossible. 4 promoted uninjured squaddies out of the first mission. Steam vent one level down right next to the lift. First abduction mission with targets in Asia (which I was preemptively giving up on), Mexico (which I was giving up on), and Great Britain... and that one had 4 engineers as the reward. It simply could not get any better than that for a start.

I took out 9 of the 10 sectoids without taking a single hit (so much easier when you've got that extra 5-10 points of aim on your troops, and a rocket launcher for when the going gets tough; I think they only got like 3 shots off total). At this point I was thinking I had an absolutely superb start going here, and all that was left was to go find and kill the last Sectoid, then enjoy having 3-4 corporals going into the next mission.

And the last sectoid proceeded to be missed in partial cover by two of my guys, then critical-hit insta-kill my sniper through full cover. Then I got a troop in grenade range and blew up it's cover (plus taking out 3 of its 4 HP), and my other troop in range missed the wide-open shot. It hit my Support through full cover to do 3 damage. Proceeded to miss two wide-open shots on it and my last squaddie finally dashed in range to help next turn (I'd thought the sectoid was further off and was doing a wide flank)... and the sectoid got another hit through full cover to finish off my Support. Then I missed two wide-open shots again, and it hit my Assault through full cover. I finally got a troop right up to point-blank range to kill it... but not before it turned a superb start into garbage by killing two squaddies and gravely wounding a third all by itself.

I think I'm done with XCOM for the day; that was just demoralizing. I think the odds of that sequence happening were roughly one-in-one hundred thousand.

 

[DaviddesJ]

What's the point of playing "Ironman" if you have to keep restarting to get a good enough start?

 

[coanda]

What's the point of playing "Ironman" if you have to keep restarting to get a good enough start?

Everyone playing Impossible Iron Man relies heavily on luck in the opening. No amount of tactical skill can fully compensate for the low rookie accuracy, health, and will, and the high alien accuracy and health. So by that metric, there would be no point in including an Iron Man Impossible option at all, because everyone has to restart until they get lucky (or at least don't get particularly unlucky).

As for why I personally keep doing it... because it's a fast and fun way to really learn what constitutes good tactics and what doesn't? If the game hammers your face into a wall every time you make the slightest mistake, you learn quickly (I just wish it didn't hammer your face into a wall sometimes even when you make no mistakes). If every move and every alien turn may well be your last, it adds a certain spice to the game.

If I ever get a save out to the end of month 1, I'll probably just store it away somewhere for a week or two, and go back to playing the opening mission.

 

[DaviddesJ]

As for why I personally keep doing it... because it's a fast and fun way to really learn what constitutes good tactics and what doesn't? If the game hammers your face into a wall every time you make the slightest mistake, you learn quickly (I just wish it didn't hammer your face into a wall sometimes even when you make no mistakes). If every move and every alien turn may well be your last, it adds a certain spice to the game.

You can do what you want, but it seems like it would be more interesting to play at a lower level of difficulty but to get past an average or bad start. Maybe there just aren't enough gradations.

 

[sherbz]

Well, my initial impressions of classic ironman are not terribly bad. I certainly think its do-able. As long as you play the tactical game the only way it should be played. I don’t think you should ever spread your troops out in this game. The only time that is ever permissible is if you are under threat from grenade attacks (but even then only spread out enough so that you can avoid getting double/triple hit all the time). Generally though, you want all your troops in the same area, able to hit the same things. This way you can spread the risk of horrendous luck. Having 4 troops miss at 35% odds is unlucky. But worse situations can and do happen. My immediate impressions are that aliens have more health, seem better at aiming, and your troops panic quicker.

Its interesting what people are saying about difficulty level. I kind of agree, but I also think that if you play well (or cheat) you are rewarded. If you play badly, you are punished. I played normal Iron man first up, but I had to start again after losing 2 consecutive missions, which wiped out all my vets and made panic levels go crazy. Next time round I played much smarter (still on iron man), managed to get a number of majors (once they got the top rank I stopped using them and started cultivating more junior soldiers), researched smarter, ignored shivs (which I actually think are rather useless) along with most other foundry projects to the point that by the end, I think I probably had about 3 teams worth of soldiers that could easily have taken on the last mission (although I didn’t have 3 psi guys). I think the first month is no problem, and things only start to get tricky at the first terror mission. Then there is another bump of difficulty with the introduction of Mutons. Once you have plasma weapons though even rookies are fairly formidable.

Im not sure how classic iron man will go. My immediate impressions are that stuff takes a lot longer to get set up (like how you don’t have an officer training school, for instance straight off the bat). I think its key in almost any game to make sure you get South America covered pronto. Instant interrogations and autopsies are a must. It’s a huge boost to your research - probably better than the science bonus offered by Europe.