Messages

31

Open Feedback / Promotions

« on: August 22, 2013, 08:23:57 pm »

Watching a few Let's Play's and in playing my own games what I'm seeing is that troops are not being correctly promoted - at least insofar as I understand the default game is SUPPOSED to do so.  A rookie becomes a squaddie by getting his first kill, yes?  I've seen a few promoted to squaddie while still having "# Kills" listed as 0.  Now it may be that they're getting credit for HITTING an alien that actually gets killed by someone else.  What I see more often though is rookies listed with 1, 2 or even more kills who are still rookies and that I don't understand.

32

Offtopic / Re: So what do you think of the firaxis Xcom 12'?

« on: August 21, 2013, 07:31:35 pm »

I enjoyed it enough I suppose but I have a lot more complaints for it than praise.  Had a couple really irritating bugs.  Aliens "teleporting" behind you.  Not displaying and calculating cover properly was a particular issue.  Instead of building it up to an even bigger game they pared it down to just the ground assaults.  The 80-item limit was bad enough in the original game but limiting you to 6 troops and having to choose between say, bringing a grenade or putting a scope on your rifle was just intolerable and unrealistic restriction.  No control over what "class" of trooper would be when you hire replacements (hard to rush across open ground or snipe if the game flat won't allow you to have the troops who can do it.)  Small, restrictive levels not randomly assembled but DESIGNED to give aliens all the advantages and force you to abandon tactics just to move forward.  Played it through to finish at a med difficulty and haven't really done anything with it since.

33

Suggestions / Re: Soldier salaries?

« on: August 16, 2013, 04:55:59 pm »

Any one with the bravery of a squirrel are point men and suicide bombers, they die first... ^^
That way I can boost the bravery of my actual soldiers even more XD

Well I'm not always consistent with what I do with them, but for the most part I just don't even want them around.  They are a serious liability.  They panic and run away when morale slides and steady hands are most needed.  They go berserk and kill the valuable, brave ones who are NOT throw-aways.  Yeah I don't feel badly when they get killed, but when they get OTHERS killed...   That's why I generally immediately fire anyone with less than 30 bravery - and the ones with 30 bravery are still not very trustworthy.

34

Suggestions / Promotions

« on: August 16, 2013, 03:39:35 am »

I'm sure someone has mentioned this before but it'd be nice to have some control over promotions. As it is the game seems to select random troopers to promote.  That means that some squaddie with 1 mission and 1 kill winds up getting promoted to Commander of all Xcom forces over a squaddie who has 15 missions and 30 kills to his credit.  That's messed up.

When promotions are in order the player should be allowed to choose from among "qualified candidates".  I assume that would mean that the only promotion rookies are ever going to get is to squaddie.  Lot of times promotions occur due to... an unexpected opening in the ranks.  I don't mind that the game might put SOME restrictions on who earns a promotion but as it stands there seems almost no rhyme or reason to it.  Certain troops just seem to get "fast tracked" to be officers - OBLIVIOUS of their actual in-game performance.

Even if the game retains absolute control over promotions the BASIS of those promotions needs to make more sense.

35

Suggestions / Re: Soldier salaries?

« on: August 16, 2013, 03:32:16 am »

Well a lot of new guys get $40,000 from me just to show up and then get fired for having the bravery of a squirrel.  You could look at it as that they know what they're signing up for.  Officers just get better treatment (better armor and weapon, no suicide rush-the-alien orders, etc.) 

36

Suggestions / Re: Soldier salaries?

« on: August 15, 2013, 11:25:42 pm »

Not sure what happens but I would imagine its a fixed cost regardless of what ranks you have right?  If it is, would it be worth while to create higher salaries for high ranks?  That might make it preferable to stick with smaller teams?  Imagine if you had multiple colonels, especially the unskilled ones....  Include a high pay and you'll want to 'fire' them yourself....

I believe salaries for soldiers is $20,000 each regardless of rank.  It would kinda make sense that they should require more pay as they are promoted - but if you're really so worried about their pay that you want to restrict yourself to smaller, un-promoted troops then I think you're playing it wrong. 

37

Playthroughs / Re: Lets Play Open Xcom with RANGED ACCURACY TURNED ON... MOTHER OF GOD!

« on: August 15, 2013, 11:11:31 pm »

Been enjoying the LP but it hurts to watch the tactics.   On a night mission NOBODY steps out of the skyranger without having a flare.  Throw them EVERYWHERE.  LIGHT IT UP!  If you don't you only have a small circle of visibility around you and you're just running into pitch dark asking to be shot.  When you do that they will just take reaction shots at you as you run because darkness does not hinder their vision - and then you die.  If a flare gets blown up by a grenade then throw another.  Don't just run another trooper into the now-dark corner trying to get close enough to the alien to have it visible within your tiny little personal circle of light.

Use the time-reserve buttons - the ones in the lower left around the big green arrow button.  Click the "auto-fire" button for example and THEN move.  It will keep you from moving soldiers too far and then finding they're standing exposed and unable to even shoot back.  I haven't tried it myself, but if you have the range-based fire option turned on then its clear you need to take fewer auto shots.  You're not hitting enough with the low % to-hit and your troops are getting killed as a result, so take multiple snap shots or aimed shots instead.

When you first start turn 1 and don't see any aliens consider just skipping the first turn.  The aliens will move and then when you actually start stepping out into the open they'll have a lot fewer reaction shots at you.  When exiting the skyranger step to the first space at the top of the ramp, turn 90 degrees and then step OFF the ramp.  Don't just walk down the ramp because that wastes time.  It uses less time units and immediately reveals what terrain and aliens are to your sides.  Consider giving your first two men in the skyranger a smoke grenade.  Toss them out around the ramp and then you'll have SOME cover when you deploy.

Troops left standing in the skyranger are troops who are utterly unable to help you kill aliens or save a trooper in trouble.  The more guns you can bring to bear at anything the safer your troops will be.  Look 360 degrees around the skyranger to make sure that your troops aren't going to just get shot in the back by an alien standing near the front landing gear.  That means that you have to move a few squares that direction because althoguh the landing gear (front or back) provides cover it also WILL block your line of sight.

You can't bring all of your troops out in a single turn but as you do you need to be examining the terrain - looking for where you can move your guys to COVER and then whenever possible use the terrain to your advantage.  Watch the aliens turns to figure out what buildings they are in and where, listen for the doors opening.  When assaulting downed ufo's as opposed to terror missions there are no civilians to open doors so it MUST be the aliens.  You like grenades so blow stuff up!  Don't storm into a buliding if you can just blow it all up with the alien inside.  It's safer for your troops.

If you have to be in the open then don't stay there.  Move to a position of cover if you can.  Don't push it if you're already in a bad positiion.  Fall back and wait for the aliens to move to where you can shoot at them from a position of greater safety.  Not that that's always possible but a soldier just standing in the open is a target.  The beauty of Xcom is how it allows you to use real-world tactics.  You can still win just by storming everything head-on all the time but you'll go through a LOT of troopers doing that.

38

Suggestions / Re: alternative base defense mini-game (the one with the base defense modules etc)

« on: August 03, 2013, 05:48:48 pm »

1) aliens shouldn't forget the position of your base after breaking through your defences and being defeated on the ground. why would they?  I know that it's a gameplay thing: if the aliens just keep coming at you forever, you would get frustrated, so there has to be some end to the attacks. perhaps after successfully defending your base, you are automatically able to determine the base-of-origin of the UFO that LANDED on top of your base, enabling a special counter-strike mission where you have to destroy that bases central computer, wiping out the information and preventing further attacks? that would make way more sense.
also, once you successfully defend your base, you should get ALL the loot from the UFO that landed. I mean, you wiped out the aliens, right? the UFO can't just disappear.

A simpler solution I'd suggest would be that once your base is found then once each month it WILL be attacked from that point on.  It becomes a reliable monthly event like a terror mission.

2) I think I mentioned this before somewhere: if your base defences almost destroy the attacking UFO, the attacking force should be somewhat decimated.
think about it: in the beginning, if you are unlucky enough that a UFO attacks your base, and you have just one missile defence, of course it barely scratches the paint on a battleship. but if a battleship is hit by three fusion balls before touching down, that's some pretty big holes. some aliens should be killed by that before the ground attack even starts.

Quite agree.  It really needs to scale up as your game progresses.  You don't start out encountering ethereals and sectopods - you start out fighting sectoids.  You generally don't even see battleships for some time and then often have to just avoid them until you can build a better interceptor/weapons to handle them.  The defense system deployment needs to not be a pass/fail check where you either shoot down the enemy attacking ship and nothing else happens or they get through and it's a full-blown base assault facing a full complement of whatevers.  OXC introduced random elements into terror missions (few/no civilians) it can and should do likewise for base assaults.

3) in order to make the early base defences useful, maybe the aliens should attack with smaller UFOs at the beginning of the game? (or even later, for that matter?) I mean seriously, those who already played the game never build base defences before fusion ball defences become available, right?

I never build base defenses PERIOD.  It's a waste of precious base space and money because you just can't build enough defenses and keep them upgraded fast enough to make any reasonably reliable "shield" versus base attacks.

If it's not just going to remain the useless and flawed concept from the original game then it definitely needs to be altered and balanced to make it a more involved part of the game.

39

Suggestions / Transfer loot from sites

« on: August 02, 2013, 06:49:52 pm »

So, as it is when you end a mission all the surviving loot from that mission is instantly available in your base inventory.  Instead, it should all be added as materials IN TRANSIT being transferred to the base, probably with some appreciable delay since one does not disassemble and ship all the alloys from a battleship faster than the skyranger can fly the troops back home.

This also brings to mind the issue of exceeding base storage limits.  It happens because all the weapons and elerium and alloys from sites are instantly added to base inventory.  What I'm thinking is that there should be some manner of penalty for exceeding base storage limits.  Since all that STUFF has to be put somewhere then it has to reduce your living quarters capacity and your efficiency at doing research and manufacturing since the bunkrooms, labs and workshops are then being used to store it all.

40

Suggestions / Male/Female

« on: July 17, 2013, 01:08:26 am »

With all the new names from unfamiliar (to me) regions of the world I simply don't know if a soldier is supposed to be male or female until I see them on the field.  I'd rather see a M/F indicator somewhere on their stats screen so that when I do rename them I'm not trotting out a female renamed Frank or a male named Felicity.  Of course, if there were a way to see their appearance before getting into a fight that'd be good too.

41

Suggestions / Kneeling

« on: July 17, 2013, 01:03:21 am »

It's a simple thing and not always a problem, but with the limited graphics of 1994 it is difficult to always tell if a soldier is actually kneeling unless they are kneeling in the open.  What I'd like is a simple little UI indicator of whether a soldier is kneeling or not.  A color or icon change on the kneel button, a little red kneeling soldier icon that pops up in a corner when a kneeling soldier is selected... something.

42

Fan-Stuff / Re: Tactics to survive early games

« on: July 12, 2013, 08:41:40 pm »

What's the best thing to manufacture and sell near start of a game?

To make cash start by selling laser pistols.  Then step up to selling laser rifles as soon as you can.  The last step is to be selling laser cannons.  I think there are other things to be manufactured and sold for profit that will actually net you more cash - but they will require elerium or alien alloys which you will want and need for other purposes.  The laser weapons require no special materials and will otherwise always be your most efficient things to make for cash.  This takes into account how many you can make per man/hour as well, it's not just sale price.

43

Open Feedback / Re: Terror went down without a fight

« on: July 12, 2013, 08:05:26 pm »

I have seen a bit of... unusual air combat stuff.  I had a skyranger heading for a downed UFO when another UFO pops up.  It LANDS between the downed UFO and my base.  Redirected the skyranger to take it on already drooling over the full compliment of elerium and alloys, but also sent an interceptor to park over top of it.  Sure enough it takes off again, the interceptor engages, I order an aggressive attack and there's a "pew-pew" as a missile or two is launched at it.  Then suddenly I see a brief message that it's outrunning the interceptor.... and then I'm looking at the geoscape and an EMPTY sky.  It's not outrunning me - it's GONE.  It's simply no longer there.  I send the interceptor home and the skyranger goes back to its original mission.  It was just wierd.  I assume that these sorts of things are simply to be expected from a work in progress.

44

Open Feedback / Re: Feels like enemies are more difficult. MYSTERY SOLVED - Warboy is a meanie

« on: July 12, 2013, 07:56:20 pm »

This change of facing the aliens towards the ramp is both a good AND a bad idea.  in the original I'm not sure which direction the aliens were facing by default, whether it was random or what, but you could still get one nailing your troops one by one as they try to leave the dropship.  That was facilitated by the fact that even though xcom moves first on turn 1, the aliens begin with full TU's to expend upon reaction fire - whereas on any turn OTHER THAN turn 1 you can only take reaction fire with whatever TU's you have left over from your turn.  So, it was a bit of a cheat to let aliens have a full turns worth of TU's to take reaction fire, but they also weren't ALWAYS facing the ramp if they happened to be anywhere near it.

With this change the 1st turn threat of the aliens is significantly increased.  It's logical that they might be looking at this big machine that just dropped out of the sky next to them, but it's then also logical that Xcom pilots or the troops themselves be able to SEE some of these aliens as they're coming in to land.  After all, we are still artificially restricted in where and how we come into a hot LZ.  We can't land at the edge of it and THEN move into town.  We can't fast rope down from choppers.  We can't do HALO parachute jumps.  We get no intel on alien positions except the eyes of the individual troops - no sat coverage, no advance drones, no FLIR...  Xcom troops are at a serious disadvantage even from what troops had in 1994.  They get dropped IN THE MIDDLE of a swarm of angry aliens, and don't see or get a clue where they are until they step off the skyranger.

Had a terror mission yesterday.  5 troops dead on the first step of the ramp, 1 more dead in taking the step to the left off of that top ramp square and THEN he saw what should have be OBVIOUS - 3 cyberdisks in the open, clustered around the corner of the building.  The next several troops filed off and started taking them out, but of course the resulting detonation of the closest one killed one more trooper and gravely wounded another - and they were still standing on the ground right next to the ramp.

I still cleared the mission successfully (lost a total of 9 out of 14 troops) but that 1st round bloodbath...  It was both brutally excting and challenging AND a horribly frustrating cheat for the aliens.

One of the things I noticed is missing (in the 0.9 build) is something that was a "hidden" feature in the original - on turn 1 you could have troops turn in place inside the skyranger to reveal the terrain to the left and right.  You can't do that anymore.  I say that if the aliens are going to start turn 1 with full TU's AND facing the ramp then xcom should be able to turn, look out a "window" of the skyranger, and see not just the terrain but also spot/reveal any aliens in view - and all before anyone has to even take the first step off the ramp or throw an already primed smoke grenade.

45

Open Feedback / Steam led me here

« on: July 08, 2013, 05:26:55 am »

Looked at Steam for the first time in months.  Thought I might try a game of the old Xcom and saw the linked article.  Read it and soon after DL 0.9 to give it a spin.  LOVIN' IT.  No hints of issues... except, just hit my first terror mission and there are no civilians?