X-Com: Enemy Unknown Let's Play

Nice. Yea, my sniper wound up taking the killing shot, but yea, my sniper was only a Captain. Still, it was all in the last room, so only emotional damage was done. :p

Once I've got jumped by almost ALL aliens from big cargo ship. Not all of them, but most on my 2-3 turn. My sniper (Col. Ramirez 'Do everything') was on higher ground and they all were in cover. But. 2 well placed grenades from my assaults, and one well fired rocket and they all with low/middle HP and w/o cover.
On that day I was happy, that I've researched 'auto-load' aka 'extended mags' and sniper's crits with 'In sight' (I forget how it call'd, thing that allows you shoot 'another one' after you kill someone, who you're flanking or who w/o cover). If not for empty mags, I'd shoot em' all in that one turn.

And I got and necro this thread. Yes I'm still planning on doing another Ironman Classic run, and try to beat the game.

Next time I'm starting in Africa and just going to have it so that Rookies have no name until they gain their class. I'm expecting a ton of Snipers.


But that's not why I'm re-reviving this thread. One reason is because I've noticed a good number of people playing this game lately and I want to ask them to share stories, doesn't have to be a full After Action report but small stories from in game, and there's been some reports going on around the game.

There's been talk of X-Com: Enemy Within, which is shaping up to be an expansion to Enemy Unknown since there's been a ton of new placeholder achievements added to the game. What has me curious is was this planned from the start?

The Slingshot DLC that added unique soldier Zhang wasn't well receive when it came out, probably because all it did was add three Council Mission; Person extraction, a modified bomb disposal, and a quite literal battleship raid. It was so ill-received that the other planned story based DLC was scrapped entirely. So did they go back and make this is response or did they always plan on doing this.
Then there's the name, Enemy Within. Could mean so many different things. Like having to fight human troops if you lose countries because they joined the aliens, maybe a return of base defense like the original game, or maybe even adds some post-game stuff. Who knows at this point.

Moodyman90 wrote:But that's not why I'm re-reviving this thread. One reason is because I've noticed a good number of people playing this game lately and I want to ask them to share stories, doesn't have to be a full After Action report but small stories from in game.

Anything?:

And what's all this about new things? I know there's a Mass Effect style cold war era thing starting up, but I don't think that's what you're talking about.

Whatever it is, I hope it involves more Chryssalids.

Here's PC Gamer's latest info. It also include links to how a few days ago Korea pinged the internet with how their ratings board put something up for Enemy Within.

Now what you're talking about is The Bureau, which I honestly haven't payed much attention to but hopefully somebody else can fill you in.


As for your bit, all I got to say is BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Too perfect. Never in a million years could that happen ever again but that's just great.
Don't feel too bad for save scumming. I'm guilty of it myself. Usually in cases of taking a shot that misses and then three soldiers are taken out because the one I missed got a kill and panicked the others.
But Ironman makes you live with those mistakes, and man are they painful. Like sending Johnathan too far forward and taking hot plasma to the face, making Magma run for it and the Thin Man on the train car right on top of him taking him out. Ordering a walk taken down with a rocket and having it blow up in the middle of your troops and getting the medic killed.

Still doesn't feel right. I'm mowing down heavy floaters and collecting hulking aliens like bottlecaps because I haven't had to sacrifice many materials or soldiers due to mistakes. My soldiers usually have more health than the tougher aliens and attacks that are as strong or stronger. I guess this is why I like multiplayer so much, it forces you back down to being... roughly equal with your opposition. Even in your foolish mistakes (which make for the best stories).

So I hope that whatever this mysterious add-on is, it adds some more to multiplayer.

Or lets you get Chryssalids in single player.

I remember I once tried to stun a Chryssalid in single player. Oh how silly of me to think it would work even though I hadn't read anything that you couldn't. I later did read some stuff about how you couldn't but I didn't know at the time.

You're sounding like one of those guys who have to reload every time you miss or are wounded badly. I may save scum myself but that never killed my enjoyment of the game because I usually let mistakes ride out until I'm damn sure I can't pull it out. I made a lot of mistakes during my very first fight against a Cyberdisk, but played it out. I lost one of my two best Assaults to it, but I let him stay dead because it was one of those earned deaths. Everybody took a beating during that fight, and that Cyberdisk was the last thing standing between me and the first Sectoid Commander, who went down like a bitch compared to what I had been through.

Moodyman90 wrote:I remember I once tried to stun a Chryssalid in single player. Oh how silly of me to think it would work even though I hadn't read anything that you couldn't. I later did read some stuff about how you couldn't but I didn't know at the time.

I almost lost my squad to this! It took me a while to figure out, but pressing the 'stun' button (even when not close to aliens) will show you the stun radius on things you can zap, not showing anything around things you can't.

And honestly, it's not that I save scum when things go a little bit wrong. I understand that I can win and even keep everyone alive with a few bruises. The real problem comes from the fact that, in single player, you have all the time in the world to plan your perfect assault on enemies that won't move an inch until you start shooting at them. So you get the perfect plan in your head: Assault will go onto the roof here. The sniper will ghost through to the other side of everyone and get to work setting up a killzone. The SHIV will make a distraction in the east entrance, making everyone take cover in a way that will leave them exposed to my heavy and secondary sniper from the east. Support will throw a smoke one round before entering, and mind control this unit here. Okay.

No.

NO! BAD HEAVY! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO GO AROUND! NOT KICK DOWN THE DOOR, GO THROUGH SHOUTING LEEROY JENKINS WHILE EVERYBODY'S TURN IS OVER!

The problem comes when you set up the perfect attack, and it doesn't go perfectly. Your vision is just too beautiful to abandon for some skin-of-the-teeth skirmish, even if it wouldn't set you back very much at all. This is another reason why I like the ironman idea and multiplayer: it forces you to go through with your ambush anyways, or retreat and leave everybody in seriously vulnerable conditions. On top of that, the enemy is constantly trying to ambush YOU as well. You can't spend five turns setting up a massacre for them.

Now I wanna play Xcom. I hope I can implant a soldier this time.

Ah yes, what I like to call "Dynamic pathing".

"Half the walls of this building have been destroyed, guess I should kick down the closed door!"

"Why should I go through this open door when there's a perfectly good intact window right here?"

"You mean you wanted me to run from point A to point B while staying behind the log and in cover? I thought you wanted me to climb on top of the log and run along it so everybody could see me!"

That's where we differ. I fully expect and plan for my soldiers to do stupid stuff like that and just accept it. Plus no matter how well thought out my plans are or how long I take to get my troops in position, in the end it always ends up as frantic bullet storm fire fights that destroy half the terrain.

So true I'm laugh-crying.

Moodyman90 wrote:That's where we differ. I fully expect and plan for my soldiers to do stupid stuff like that and just accept it. Plus no matter how well thought out my plans are or how long I take to get my troops in position, in the end it always ends up as frantic bullet storm fire fights that destroy half the terrain.

I can't help it. But with ironman mode I don't need to. Unless things get significantly harder after the first encounter with an ethereal, I think I might just restart with an ironman file instead of finishing.

It depends on which difficulty you play on, but you can read through the first page of this thread and you can hopefully get a feel for how bad things can get.

I recovered after my first Code Black, everything went to hell after I lost Magma soon fallowed by my second Code Black.

Okay, jumped back into X-Com and started up an entirely new game. Ironman on Classic again. Nobody has been recreated in game so far. There was a few troops that would have made for great for people here but things didn't work out.

Made it through the first month. I seriously thought of restarting even though everything hasn't gone to hell yet but right now I'm gonna ride it out.

I'll have a proper story/report after all the screen shots are done uploading and I can think of how I want to do it this time.

Late February 2015- Africa.

Alright men listen up! You are here because you are the best of the best that each country can provide. Over the past few months we've had increased satellite interference from sources originating from space. Military and Civilian Observatories have reported unusual movement. There's also been an increase of supposed UFO sightings and alien abductions.

Cut the crap! This isn't a joke, a hoax, or a drill. We are not alone in the universe people, and we have no reason to believe that they came buy to borrow a cup of sugar.

Welcome to X-Com. We are based here in Africa, the birthplace of humanity. And it is here we are making our final stand.
I am the Commander, and that's all you're ever going to know about me.
Outside of missions Officer Bradford is who you answer to. Dr. Vahlen is our chief sciences officer and Dr. Shen is our engineer.
You all on the other hand, are nothing. I don't care who you are, what you done, what rank you was, or where you came from. Right now you are all rookies! And until you prove yourselves you will remain as nameless rookies to me. Dismiss!

Monthly Report-March 2015.

The Council seems to have good timing. Not long after X-Com was officially started then the aliens made their first move. As feared, they did not come in peace. Multiple site around the world were hit, but we deployed in Nigeria for how close it was to the base.

The team did exceptionally well. They encountered the Sectoids on top of an overpass. We determined they use Plasma based weapons, have neural link capabilities, and are susceptible to explosives and ballistic weapons. We recovered what we could, but it seems any tech they posses is set to self destruct if the user is killed.

 Few days later there was reports of Abductions. There was a site in France, Japan, and South Africa. Weighing the options it was determined that deployment in France would be best as South Africa and Japan has lower projected panic levels.
Once again the troops did well, though we did lose a man. The Sectoids managed to outflank and wound him, while another was able to get the high ground and rendered his cover useless. Our assault trooper panicked at his death but was able to kill the last X-ray, ending the mission.

A week later our satellite picked up a UFO contact. We was able to intercept it and shoot it down.
The troops made their way to the ship, which was mostly intact. They encountered little resistance on their way to the ship until a weird crystal like being formed. It made quick work of one of our men but another was able to flank him and take it down. Two more Sectoid kills later the mission was declared a success. Unfortantly most of systems and the power cell of the ship was damaged, the only things of use was the alloy the ship was made out of and a new element now known as Elerium.

Another abduction five days later lead us to Australia. In a depressing trend we lost yet another trooper during the mission. As survival was deemed more important than recovering artifacts, the soldiers where ordered to use grenades to quickly finish off the Sectoids. There was around 10 on the site, but we managed to clear them out.

The team barely back to base when the Council requested we perform a mission. On the mission to rescue this escaped abductee, the team encountered a new alien type. It's frighteningly human appearance distracted our up and coming assault trooper, leading to her death. The rookies panicked but was able to bring down this... Thin Man. The rest of the mission was almost routine. Despite losing the soldier meant to act as leader, the rookies took out five Sectoids and two more Thin Men when they dropped in. They lead the target back to the Skyranger safely and quickly got out of there.

Other then combat missions, the base has been a full of activity. The science department has been dong research non-stop. On the alloys, the weapon fragments, and on the remains of the aliens. Engineering has been excavating the base, making room for the facilities we are no doubt going to need. They was also able to build a satellite that was launched over Brazil, as to reduce panic there and give us more coverage over the world. It may benefit us to completely cover South America as they promise something "more important than science and technology" as the other continents are promising.
Also hired more troopers. Even if we stay at only one loss per mission, we're going to run out quickly.
We haven't had any contact since the Council's mission, and they seem to be pleased. At least for the moment. Currently having another satellite being built, we found a steam pocket and are building a geothermal generator on it, and still making room for more satellite uplinks.

God. Damn. It. Less then five days into the month I hit with three back to back missions that decimated my entire fighting force. Those who lived were badly wounded and everybody panicked all the god damn time. I had just gotten around to actually naming people too.

Aonee and Guard, you guys died, Robo in a reversal of last time your Sniper was a badass and pulling off headshots left and right. And also panicking and shooting a teammate in the face. Didn't kill him but he panicked and returned the favor. I lost track of who all I made characters for but know you either died or was wounded as soon as you was sent out.

I can restart a new game and retry from Africa and just act like this never happened but this Let's Play died.

Wow...I should try Iron Man, looks fun. Only once my 'dream team' was badly crushed, when only not badly wounded was sniper, my best assault died, taking with him 4 brutes (plasma shotgun ftw!) others was stabilized by my support (yay for deep pockets and adv. medkit.)

I highly encourage doing Iron Man. And doing a Let's Play. Everybody should do one!

There's several outcomes:
1)I'll fail miserably.
2)I'll be silent for most of the time, but comment in English on some parts.
3)I'll be less silent, but will talk in Russian.

Well you could do what I do here. Try to type up an interesting story about what happened.

Just got xcom pack from pre-ordering The Bureau. Now i have all DLC (at least I think so).
*mansquee*
Interceptor and old ufo games, yay. I think I'll do as you say moody, maybe sometimes on next week or in September, when I'll get 2 weeks of vocation.

Really skipped over is cause I was doing the Let's Play, but who here has tried the Slingshot DLC and what are your thoughts on it?

I can see why a lot of people felt like it fell flat. I mean, other then more customization options for your troops all it really did was add three story missions. The same old extraction mission, except a Chryssalid shows up. A reverse Bomb mission in which you have 10 rounds to turn on four nods and get somebody to the trains cockpit, in which Mutons show up with full flegde plasma rifles rather then light versions drop in, and a good old battleship raid.

It was fun but... less than expected.

Slingshot is more like a shortcut. It gets you a ton of alloys and early access to interrogations and weapon tech, especially the Blaster Launcher. The extra Heavy was nice, too.
But really, it doesn't add anything.

Well it kinda added a new map. One that will probably never show up in any other mission, but a new map.

Like everything opinions vary, but I liked it. Only played through it once on normal though so I can't say if they managed to balance everything out. If you have the MELD tutorial on you can rush the research and have in the least a MEC trooper by the first month.

The MEC and the Gene-mod soldiers do tip the balance to your favor, especially MECs for the early game and the Gene-mods in the later, Major level Sniper with memetirc skin, enhanced eyes, and the muscle fiber enhanced legs is a kill machine. That said, if you lose them, that's even more of a loss than a regular soldier. 

For me, it was fun, I enjoyed it, and I do recommend you to pick it up, but I can't say that you'll like it. The Site Recon mission that comes with it is worth it though. Of the dozen of new missions Within adds, including the Base Assault on your base that you can't turn off unlike the Slingshot and Progeny stuff, Site Recon is fun in the "Oh god even if I survive I'm gonna lose everybody!" kind of way.

Everybody needs to play Ironman at least once. Same with Impossible. And than Impossible Ironman.

Just got the game yesterday. Still working on completing it.

I decided to name my guys after SG-1. I have a heavy named Tiel'k, an assault named Jack O'neill, a support named Sam Carter, another support named Daniel Jackson, and I also had a sniper name Cam Mitchell, but he became Chrysalid food. Oh, and Tielk is my only soldier with psychic powers so far.

Let's see if this scenario sounds familiar to anyone:

I was waiting on the Hyperspace Relay to pick up the overseer ship, when suddenly I had to down and board a massive battleship. I spend over an hour wandering around in it hunting down enemy group after enemy group(it got really frustrating after I reached a dead end and found out a team of Elite Mutons were actually hunting My guys down), and by the end of it, over half my team is injured.

I hit the scan button to pass the time, and then the HSR finally decides to pick up the Overseer's UFO, so I'm forced to use my second string team based off of the Stargate Atlantis main cast, and by the end of it, they were all injured too thanks to a lucky grenade throw by an elite muton.

Replace injured with dead and you have some of my Ironman runs.

Now, something that has increased my squads survival chances is to play like I'm shooting for the "Ain't no calvary coming" achievement. That's the one where you need to have a single soldier be on every single mission. If you play the tutorial that's automatically the Argentinean Heavy but what I mean is among everything else you're doing for the early game( building sats and uplinks for them, researching better armors and beam weapons, etc) rush the squad size upgrades in the OTS.
After that, have your base squad of 4 that go on every mission, and rotate the 5th and 6th guy. If one of your main four are injured or killed, they either enter the rotation as well or outright replaced.

Short of bad luck and total party kills, should have a high level base squad and a bunch of mid tier guys ready to step up is something happens as oppose to six high level guys and them being replaced with rookies.

I've had that happen to me twice now. More if you don't count reloads.

Glitch? No, a glitch would be the aliens started appearing right on to of you. Like you was fighting the Heavy Floaters and than suddenly the Sectopod just appeared in the middle of your squad.

A spawn script problem left in to screw over players to spice up combat? Most likely.

If I find myself going to a supply ship and they put me in the front, I go around it. Don't care how long it takes, I get my guys in a position where they're fighting on leveled ground, if not elevated, with plenty of cover and avoid the kill zone that is the big open spaces on that ship.

Though really, if the game wants to screw you over, it will. I splashed a medium sized UFO, cleared the entire thing, than went on a marry chase after the late aliens following their sound only to find a Sectopod has spawned in the center room after I had already cleared it.

I love it when they spawn inside a really small room and try to bombard me. Great big old alien warmech and the thing seems to have forgotten that there's a roof over it.

I've gone against a supply ship that had my guys starting near a large hanger filled with four or five groups of mutons. Luckily, by the time they were revealed, my two colonel level squadsight snipers were in high ground and they ended up taking out all of the mutons almost single handedly.

Coincidentally, getting my snipers onto high ground ASAP is pretty much my goto strategy for any map.

Oh, and I read that the teleporting alien thing actually is a glitch. Apparently, until you actually uncover a group of aliens, they just TP around the map, sometimes popping up in the sights of your soldiers. It was fixed in Enemy Within which makes the undiscovered groups actually rome the map like discovered aliens.

Got a question for you guys. I haven't gotten a chance to try it, but can you zap cyberdisks and sectopods with an arc thrower?

No, no you can't. Don't try it. Don't try it if you want your guys to live. Same goes for the Chryssalids. If you haven't tried that already, don't. Those units can not be stunned.
*flashback to the time he tried that on a Chryssalids and nearly lost that trooper.*