XCOM: Enemy Within

Quineloe_sl said:

Lets Play XCOM Enemy Within Ironman Impossible - Part 37 - Capturing an Ethereal at WHAT COST - YouTube

pretty good example of the explosive inflation I explained earlier. He kills a sectopod using almost exclusively grenades. and still has enough explosives for everything else except the cockpit, in a mission with 15 aliens, quite a lot actually. MECs are walking armories, way too many explosives.

Click to expand...

Eh, you're exagerrating, it's not that bad, and hardly different from stacking heavies in vanilla. He grenaded the sectopod for 3/5th of it's health and finished it off with the assault's alloy cannon, and the only reason he was able to do that is because the AI bugged and just sat there.

Guess the guy is new, too. He made some pretty boneheaded mistakes, and frankly I'm surprised he made it that far on I/I. Grouping up your squad vs Mutons (grenades) and Sectopods (missile barrage) and not knowing about the Overwatch mini-cannon on the Secto? Without the AI bugging out, and some extremely lucky low % shots he would've wiped, even with all his explosives.

The nicest thing about the mecs huge explosive inventory is that it just totally destroys cover and makes enemies into sitting ducks. I felt like I kind of had to ration explosives in vanilla, but I tend to go all out with them now. Also, collateral damage blows cars up in one attack, so you can treat it kind of like an explosive. It's not too different from stacking heavies, but it feels like you can do a lot more with just one guy. Being able to punch through walls and stuff gives you some more strategic options, I think.

Quineloe, I've been watching that guy's LP, and read some of your comments. Just wanted to let you know I'm almost positive he's using a modified ini file. Either that or he's the luckiest guy on the planet and should be hitting the tables in Vegas, or playing the lottery. I figure he plays I/I because it's more interesting and will draw more views, but he's not skilled enough for true I/I. Impossible is just not that forgiving, ever.

I know right. I just played the alien overseer ufo crash mission, and this is how it goes every single time for me:



every time the first group agros, another group joins in each turn and since that ship has a default crew of 2x3 ME and 2 Sectopods, you just can't kill that shit even at top tech level that fast.

I'm not bad, I'm 30 missions in with one casualty on C/I. But in some missions, you just get overwhelmed :/

and that loss fucking hurt, man! Maricruz had holo targeting AND double attack

I feel your pain, bro. I hate when that happens. It's much tougher now with the new Sectopods being so tanky. I try to wait til I have 2 guys with Mind Control to use on the Elites, and Disabling shot helps a lot with the Sectos. My recent C/I run I had the most trouble with the base defense. I had forgotten it was coming and had half my A team in Psi testing. By the time the last wave came, I was still working on the previous wave, and everyone was dead except for my 3 Colonels. A cloaked mimetic Support, who had a Muton and Mectoid run straight to him and stand next to him Overwatched (bug I guess) and a Double Tap Snapshot Sniper, and my Mec with 4 health left. I won, but it was hard.

Then you have Mr Odd, who just runs around doing whatever. Oh, look, half cover, let's go. Oh, 56% shot? Let's take it. Ugh.

Two French and a Canadian...

How is that team not dead?

SHIV are fairly absurd.

Total enemies in that mission:
2 mechtoids, coming with 1 commander and 3 sectoids
3 chryssalids
3 heavy floater
2 seekers
1 Ethereal with 1 muton elite

their accuracy is absolutely absurd, 85 base aim. Their damage output just with the laser cannon was insane, I two-shot pretty much everything.
They all have close combat specialist, which even worked when one of the seekers tried to "strangulate" a lone SHIV and killed the seeker. Their auto-repair makes small damage irrelevant.

They can't open doors, so I basically wasted the first shiv (it couldn't target the ethereal, if it had, I would have won in a single round)

I had no idea ethereals actually can do that. I love how sad everyone was because I lost 3 "xcom operatives" in that mission. Oh boy, I lost $75 worth of replacable units. Big Fucking Deal.

enough talk, pics.

ugh. Immortal regen pheromones...

Also interesting to know, when you have 0/0 hitpoints, chance to stun is 16%

.

That's my last chance at not having to abandon the mission.

Is there where I say "That's Xcom, baby!"? I can never remember.

Edit: Oh, and I never liked SHIVs much. Only used 1 on a mission once to try it out. I think they should restrict you to 1 shiv or 2 drones per mission.

ugh forum beat me :/

more like that's just broken. Proximity mines suck, I've seen all kinds of bugs with them so far. Thin men walking over them, triggering them and not taking any damage? Check.

That guy also "died" to Proximity mine blast.

What annoyed me a bit was that I could just restart the covert mission because the cell didn't go into hiding after abandoning. No stakes at all.

6 shiv incoming now with plasma cannons. They should 1-shot all types of exalt.

Covert Operative with Mimetic Skin = Exalt never gets a shot off. The starting mission where you have to retrieve one of their agents is harder than all the others put together. Exalt is pretty disappointing because of that. The only thing I get out of it is being able to equip weapons that don't change color to match my armor. Which is gay.

Edit: On my current I/I playthrough I got requests for 2 scopes twice in the first month, with the reward of 4 and 5 engineers. Really made things so much easier. Too much RNG in this game.

Yeah, Exalt members are a turkey shoot. Their AI is so amazingly dumb. They just charge you firing weapons and hitting nothing like they're all members of COBRA or something.

I thought SHIV were pretty powerful. Then I discovered, that you could also build Hover SHIVs. I thought, the same thing with flying? Great, even better.

Then I built 6 of them and realized: They're not just flying SHIV. They have another 20 defense (so up to 40) and another 8 hit points. In addition to flying, that's just broken.

I did a Terror mission with them, zombies and Chryssalids are no threat since they are melee only, Sectopods are a minor threat since they can't hit a 40 Def target with a height advantage and their rocket artillery is useless and a cyber disc loses 1vs1 against them as well.

Then I had an exalt mission.

XCom Enemy Within - Exalt Turkey shoot - YouTube

fucking broken, I don't even understand how I/I youtubers haven't picked up on these yet.

I/I Let's Play vids are typically used to entertain and/or instruct and/or show off your tactics. They try to avoid using any tactics considered "cheesy" since I doubt anyone wants to watch that for 20+ hours. Also, soldiers at least have some personality, and viewers can become fans. Tin cans mounted with lasers, not so much.

Mimetic Skin abuse and zero shivs is how I beat Classic - Ironman.
I did another Classic Ironman with random skills.... and that one was much easier. Assault with Mimetic Skin, Low Profile, +3movement, and double shot... guys with the ability to shoot 2x a turn and halo targeting, ect.

yes, training roulette is a lot of fun, you get a few very awesome skill builds that way. But you also get garbage like a support with gunslinger, or an assault with sentinel and revive.

Basically, the worst part about Training roulette is that you can consider yourself very lucky to get an actual medic on your team, especially since supports are not that easy to level up.

Theres a guy (Defenderofsoul) on twitch streaming Impossible Ironman, 21/21 2nd wave options, 4 men squad only.
He beat that recently and is now doing the above without Sniper or Heavy.

While he's not the fastest doing turns, it's certainly impressive how he manages certain situations.

He's not fastest doing anything. I'm trying to watch the recording from yesterday and he takes 100x as long as it should just navigating screens, changing soldiers, talking to random fucks on his chat, ugh. Makes you want to go to his house and inject him in the fucking eye with a syringe of fucking cocaine.


Edit: Ok, so I just watched him do 2 missions. The first was a council mission, where he (as most people who play a lot) knew exactly where the aliens would spawn, nothing new there. The second he sat on the roof overwatching and peaking over the edge for like 20 turns, exploiting mind-merge particles to keep track of enemies and waiting for the perfect setup that never came. Grenaded 3 sectoids but the explosion destroyed the cover of the roof's edge and left him exposed, resulting in a wipe.

People who play this slow and defensively have no real grasp of tactics. Waiting for the perfect moment is just rolling the dice every turn, and if you roll too long, eventually you're gonna get snake eyes. This is like, what, his 9th attempt at this Second Wave playthrough? So, basically he's gonna keep rolling til he gets lucky and manages to survive the first 2-3 months? Not impressed.

So, here's the thing, Normal is faceroll, Classic offers some challenge, mostly early/mid game, but does not prepare you for Impossible. The best way to get ready for a successful Impossible Ironman run, is to play Impossible Tinman. Play Impossible and only save at the start of each mission. If you fail, or a soldier dies (or is even wounded, if you want to get really good) then you restart at the beginning of the mission, just like the first mission offers. If you do a whole playthrough like this, your tactics will improve greatly and you'll be ready to try I/I.

Beaglerush's Let's Play videos can offer some decent tips to get you started and are somewhat entertaining, but he's another one who plays a little too defensively. ChristopherOdd (that Quineloe linked) is great to watch for what not to do...unless you were born with a rabbit's foot up your ass.

Calroon, if there's some brilliant tactics buried in that guys vids somewhere, then please, state the name of the vid and the time. Because I see nothing interesting or useful and he is just too damned slow to wade through all that.

Edit #2: Nevermind. I checked his previous 2nd wave run that was successful. Saw he used SHIVS, stopped watching.