is there an XCOM thread?

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/01/06/the-new-xcom-my-needy-little-wishlist/#more-87746

bit of a non-article really but

5) Destructible environments, but more so. It’s something the unofficial sequels never pulled off, but it’s an essential part of X-COM. Not just as a feature, but also as part of building the sense that X-COM are a taskforce with free reign – respect for civilian property doesn’t stand in the way of hunting aliens. I wouldn’t seeing property damage contribute to funding level assessments, though: international funding’s an aspect of the game that could stand to be fleshed out.

13) Minimal story and exposition. Everything that needs to be told can come from Researching alien items and lifeforms to study and act upon at my leisure. I don’t need a big cutscene explaining what and where Cydonia is, I just want a brief message saying that flying there is now possible.

i think it's really interesting how much the player's narrativization of the experience is a big part of the first three games: but also just how contingent that was on the narrative and the world being the least developed part of the game (it being something the gollops were pushed to add by microprose, & that they've never done in another game; also one that's only given the basic level of features, and that other ideas they had (you were going to be also commanding intelligence aspects beyond 'an alien base has been discovered!') were omitted from

also, i bought the first game and apocalypse. again.

I have hilarious memories of quitting and restarting from a save every time I lost a soldier in xcom (which happened like 90 billion times) because starting off fresh with a new rookie solider was a terrible thought.. damn I loved xcom..

Ok, this series of interviews has got me decently hyped
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02/01/xcom-enemy-unknown-preview/
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02/02/firaxis-xcom-preview/
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02/03/time-for-a-change-firaxis-on-xcom-part-3/

Neat!

been thinking of replaying xcom lately!

im more interested in xenonauts (http://www.xenonauts.com/) than the firaxis xcom, but i got some cautious optimism goin on with the latter. the xcom shooter will of course be an unspeakable abomination

the lead developer on the firaxis one seems like a mensch

the lead developer on the firaxis one seems like a mensch

yeah he really seems like he 'gets it'

also:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/12/jan/xgeo.jpg

yeeeeaaaaaaaahh

i mean it's pretty rare for me to be hyped about a videogame, i suppose i should try and get hyped about one that's not a remake

as long as the combat is turn-based i would probably enjoy it, but they do appear to be making a real xcom game. its exciting though i keep having to remember to maintain proper jadedness levels

they did remove time units, and you're restricted to basically two actions per soldier per turn, which sounds somewhat radical

still, i got a very good vibe from those interviews

Wow, had no idea a new one was in the works! That's nuts!

Past X-Com discussion - -

1993 VIDEO GAMES
1994 VIDEO GAMES POLL (yes it's in both, somehow)
and a little bit here un-retired

been browsing thru videos about the firaxis remake. am now recklessly confident in it from what i have seen and heard. this is going to fucking rule.

ufo defense is kind of that unfriendly bcz you're basically just dumped in it with a completely incomprehensible interface with like thirty buttons on it and you spend the first three missions leaving yr doods outside doors at the end of yr turn and watching the same alien come out and shoot them

RTFM

good shit here, comes w/ free x-com demo

http://boxerapp.com/

they added MT-32 support to Boxer? cooooool.

RTFM

my copy didn't come with the manual!

though to be fair it did come with the 400 page strategy guide but that seemed kind of a heavy investment, time-wise

http://www.xcomufo.com/x1manual.pdf

133 pages!

RTBFM

the tutorial in there basically just shows you exactly how to end up in the situation i described. there is a note on the importance of opportunity fire on p96, i suppose.

october 9th for new one.

so weird - so it's actually coming out way before the FPS reboot, which got pushed to next year

i got TFTD going on my MBP but it was much more boring than i remember, also the scrolling and animations were too fast or too slow on any cpu setting

that fps reboot is going to be a steaming pile of shit.. or vaporware.

the firaxis game looks like the bees knees tho.. not sure how I will be able to get my hands on it as I am a mac user, but firaxis is somewhat mac friendly so I have my fingers crossed.

is x-com: apocalypse any good? enforcer and interceptor look rather weak and i can't get enemy unknown working on my mbp

enemy unknown can work, you gotta try harder mannnnn

i maybe need to find a non-CD version

the original works great via boxer on osx. amazon is selling 5 x-coms (1, tftd, apocalypse and two more i never played) for 4 bucks right now, steam key, i d/led it via mac steam and put the actual files in boxer. perfect.

i bought the set on steam but it would not let me run it. how do i d/l the files? i am a steam noob.

i was able to convince the mac steam to d/l the files even though it's the wrong platform. i think i just right-clicked and told it to get the content. one's it's downloaded the files will be in wherever steam keeps its files (depends on yr version of osx, it's easily googlable) and install via boxer

i got bored halfway thru writing that so reading it is probably worse so d/l this, unzip, run thru boxer, ignore any savegames:

http://www.mediafire.com/?q5f5atp57u5rzdd

not positive that will work but maybe?

i am exactly as bad at this game now as i was in 1994. jesus. just burning thru recruits.

hahahah, yessss, that was me exactly the last time i played this.

that doesn't necessarily mean you're bad at all! the game seems pretty explicitly designed for your early dudes to be mercilessly killed

"Don't remember anyone's name before captain" is the motto, i think

apocalypse is worth a look if you can get stuff running

i seem to have gone off on one about it in one of the other threads

i've tried and failed to get into Apocalypse so many times... couldn't get past the weird graphic style and semi-realtime engine

thank you adam

I wasn't a fan of the semi-realtime, so I just switch it off and go full-on turn-based. I totally love it though. My main downfall is typically renaming recruits after my friends - kinda throws out the "Don't remember anyone's name before captain" option.

i think the pausable realtime is a lot more forgiving than the turn-based. was thinking about this earlier, it's funny how most of the late ufos just turn into parking your people outside and waiting for a hundred aliens to run out the door. i can't decide if this makes more or less sense on a diagetic level than sectoids standing with plasma guns and just waiting for you to open the door

that only worked for the smaller ships in the early game. the aliens wise up fast to that tactic, throwing grenades and bunker bombs into your dudes for crazy massacres...

worked all the way up, just pause while you work out where stuff is going to land and play some highly realistic grenade catch

that doesn't work unless you kill every single alien on that floor. and even then, aliens had a crazy habit of just chucking them in blind if you killed enough of them. especially once they got the guided missiles. how are you gonna catch the grenades that explode in 0 turns?

you're only really safe if you spread your guys out enough so that only a handful will get caught in a blast impact. damn those suicide discs!

we are talking about different videogames.

oh... right. sorry.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/44b7pf/xcom_2_tips_megathread/

Wow, these are good. Flashbang a sectoid to kill its psionic controls, aggro a patrol squad before you get too far in and wind up getting caught between squads afore & behind you, etc.

http://www.gamepur.com/guide/21988-xcom-2-pc-error-fix-fps-loss-save-game-location-cant-detect-4k-resolution.html

Ooo, how to speed up animations!

time management of base operations stress >>> combat stress

not sure there's a game I cuss out more while playing. missing multiple 80%+ shots unleashes my nerd rage.

during my playthrough of the 2012 x-com, i got so fed up with missing high percentage shots that i briefly maintained a spreadsheet where i recorded the predicted percentages vs the actual outcomes. it balanced out in the end. but yes, nerd raaaaaage

how does the new one compare to 2012 x-com?

i'm only a few hours in but its mostly the same aside from your base being busier/more complex. (there are likely more new aliens and tech I haven't got to.) my biggest complaint is that your base advisers won't stfu. No matter where you click they have some stupid comment or story.

if you were into the 2012 game, you'll easily like it.

I'm still only a few hours in, but, yeah, it's like the same but more so - more options, more stuff to do, more to research - biggest change to the feel is that most missions have some kind of timer, so slow-slow-slow overwatch play doesn't work.

You can click off the in-house radio chatter, I think. The option of "ambient dialogue" or sumthing in the options, isn't it.

Added the mod for facepaint last night, and sending out all my squaddies in Pris-style warpaint is strangely satisfying.

Game is MUCH harder this time round, it should be emphasized. I'm just now getting non-shite gear.

feel like they overdo the punishment of getting squad members injured. trying to get your best crew set up for a difficult mission is almost impossible b/c of that.

Has anybody tried the multiplayer yet?

This game is really hard. I was chugging along doing great, beautiful squad, nice gear, flawless victory on holding off an attempted invasion of the base. Then all of a sudden while everybody's celebrating I find I haven't done enough outreach and I have three fires to put out and absolutely there's no way I'll have enough healthy guys to answer the second or third one. I just tried and failed through seven reloads to keep my best sharpshooter, Glenn Danzig, from getting merked by that muton on what should have been a pretty easy mission. Aka, I'm fucking done! Considering eating about 6-7 hours of progress and going back to an early save. I <3 u xcom

btw the specialist and ranger classes are the greatest in this game. The ranger's free overwatch bladestorm perk, how awesome is that. Also the flash grenade is the most useful flash grenade in video game history

Confirming that ranger and specialist are OP. Sharpshooters have been pretty underwhelming.

Specialist on the support tree is a little OP, I agree. It kind of blows the whole medikit economy which contributed to so much fun tension in the last game. (Specialist on the offence/hacker tree is kind of boring so far.)

imo saying ranger is OP is being kind of hard on yourself given how tough this game is. It's a glass cannon. Given that the sharpshooter can't be used in the usual way on the timed boards and the grenadier is actually more of a support class than a tank I think the classes are pretty balanced.

something i noticed today is that my evening spent playing xcom 2 war of the chosen has really made me want to time-manage my own life way more effectively

https://www.polygon.com/2020/4/14/21219644/xcom-chimera-squad-release-date-price-pc

firaxis announced a new xcom game today; it comes out in less than two weeks and it's half price on steam right now and for the first week of launch. HM.

i mean, is this a total dog they're trying to offload, or did an internal team do something experimental and they realised they could monetize it, or what ...

someone take the plunge and tell us how it is!
it's a 2K game so i will just wait until it's bundled. i never got around to playing XCOM 2 anyway

i have some buds who will for sure jump in day 1, i'll report back

-- the opening cutscene has a weird energy--it's still image flash animation. no budget. mouths don't move when people talk.
-- but the game itself is ... a modern xcom game.
-- runs just about on my non-gaming laptop on the lower settings but i should probably get my gaming pc out.
-- the writing is less bad than the other modern xcom games.
-- the base stuff ... kind of less bad also?
-- changing to interlaced turns doesn't bother me because it seems very familiar from just playing octopath traveler.
-- even on hard nothing difficult in the first two missions, though i guess one of those was a tutorial.
-- i wonder if the ending is going to set up a modern xcom version of apocalypse.

isn't there some sort of deal with this new one where there's a set, limited selection of characters you can pick from, rather than endlessly regenerating/training new soldiers like the last few? maybe i made that up

no that’s the deal

and if anyone bleeds out you have to start the mission over, which saps the tension rather a lot.

also missions are series of discrete rooms. it’s almost arcade-y. into the breach just got a big update, i think after i get through chimera squad i will do another run at that. maybe invisible inc also.

this game has over 1300 discussion topics on its steam board

my friend i mentioned above is a fan fwiw. i am prob gonna get it

don't play it on ironman. it generated a mission it was legit impossible for me to win* which meant i was just in an eternal 'restart mission?' loop

* if enemies ended the turn on a particular set of squares the mission was failed, but i didn't have the item or character that would let me start the mission near it, my characters all started more than a turn away from being in LOS of the fail condition