12 avalanche missiles (that HIT) fail to take down a Large?

[Geronimo]

What the heck? 6 missiles not killing it I could believe. 12? No.

And it was definitely a large, not a very large.

[CrazedHarpooner]

Which one of the large ships? I don't believe a Terror Ship could keep on flying if all 12 avalanches connect, even with minimum damage of 50 per missile you would still reach the half health breakpoint, so unless you have to do more than half health to shoot down, that's very unlucky. On the other hand, a Supply Ship can keep on flying with 12 hits, it could go down with 11 if they all hit with full damage but it could also take up to 22 avalanches to reach the half health point.

[Geronimo]

Bluntly, that may be true (given the way the game works) but it is insane and unbelievable. IMO.

[Juku121]

Why? The whole idea of the game is that you're fighting an uphill battle against an enemy who has a massive tech advantage, and the point where your SoD breaks is that a giant saucer made of alien supermetal is hard to down with starter missiles?

[Geronimo]

Probably my sense of physics, and the fact that even being hit with one missile is enough to bring one of our planes down. It's too big a brick to swallow comfortably.

[Juku121]

Our planes are eggshells compared to theirs, even if we don't account for the alien supermetal and antigravity drive. And we've stopped armouring ours, on top.

[iodsnips]

Imagine traveling back in time in an armoured helicopter, and a small crew of individuals of that time period shoot 12 wooden arrows at your door.  A few stick, but most slide or bounce off.  They might mess up the paint job of your army helicopter.

The men with bows & arrows down below are angry that the metal flying monster lives.  For any running or swimming beast they've encountered before would have definately died from that many projectiles!

We're just lucky that in the X-Com universe the aliens don't have energy force fields making damage thresholds even more unpredictable.  I get more agitated when my advanced plasma weapons destroy craft that I mean to crash only, following them up with an invasion party such as a very small alien ship.  I always need to keep a dedicated craft with cannons only handy.

[Geronimo]

Hit it again tonight, after not playing it for most of a year, and had the same reaction.

Beyond flat-out not finding it plausible, I don't play games that force you into impossible situations. Indians defending teepees against tanks is not an interesting game. I want to believe that deaths come from bad tactics, not impossible death traps you cannot avoid. The game tries to force you into invading a full, undamaged battleship, and I don't want to. Seems lame.

Just not for me, I guess. I thought it was brilliant when it came out 30 years ago (-ish), and I'm sure it was, in context. There are still things I like about it, but I'm fundamentally not a fan of games that railroad your tactical options.

[Juku121]

I suppose you're a "combat as sport" kind of player, then.


The game never forces you to do any one single mission except the base defences. It's always your choice to fly there and touch down. You can win the game and never assault a single Battleship, if that's how you wish to roll.

The game is also about strategy. Good tactics don't get you out of a strategic black hole. There's plenty of real-life precedent where one of the better ways forward was to assault a strong fortress and try to mitigate the massive casualties from doing so. Heck, some people are doing it right this moment, and it even kinda works for them, for a certain meaning of 'works'.

[Geronimo]

Maybe so. Games that require slogging turn me off massively.

Fundamentally, XCOM wants to force me to make choices I don't want to have to make in a game because I don't find them fun. That's it. There is always a tension between the simulationist viewpoint -- make things feel more real -- and the desire to play games for fun, in a  more  light-hearted, somewhat unrealistic way. And of course *some* people like slogging, and don't mind horrific casualties, etc. We all vary.

When XCOM came out, I played it and enjoyed it without really understanding a lot of the mechanics. I was pretty new to PC games in those days. So I enjoyed it and didn't really notice a lot of these things. Now, I feel like I'm being slapped in the face.

Another icon of my youth falls by the wayside.