A new X-COM: Enemy Unknown

[Eraser]

Assault seems to be the best class, run and gun + rapid fire is amazing with alloy cannon.

Yes, assault is useless without those skills, but once they get it, it's awesome.
I like that heavy gets the rocket launcher. It's basically a more powerful, free grenade. I rarely ever use the side arm anyway.
Plasma weapons are more powerful than the laser weapons so try to get those.

I'm going to start a new game and equip soldiers with Arc Throwers more often. Now that I know that I can salvage their weaponry that way, I'm sure I'll be able to do away with the conventional weaponry sooner. Using machineguns against Mutons and the like was what was holding me back and caused me to lose a lot of battles. Things actually got a lot better once I started using laser weapons and plasma weapons a bit later on. Still couldn't please those council fuckers enough though

[Ryoki]

Hah, i started over also, decided i fucked up too many times

More beginner tips i found out the hard way:

- Planning your base early is of great importance, my previous game i wasted a lot of resources on facilities that didn't connect. They should, the bonuses that gives are quite big. Two sattelite nexus things connected to two sattelite uplinks is enough to cover the entire planet, for instance.
- Related; if you have a few steam vents - don't build regular generators. Steam generators kick regular generators ass.
- Don't build more than 1 research facility. You just don't seem to need extra scientists as much as more engineers. Build at least 3 workshops.
- Don't build the hyper whatsitcalled until after you've found out stealth sattelites and the new armed interceptors - building that facility spawns a whole different nasty breed of UFO's that are impossible to bring down unless you've prepared for it.
- And don't bother with the SHIV, at least not until you've captured a floater and unlocked the floating ability for it. Bringing an extra soldier is better. In fact, don't bother with a lot of the foundry upgrades, the pistol improvements for instance are expensive and only really worth it for snipers. Improved medkit on the other hand is invaluable.
- Put rookies in the psionic test chamber, not your veterans. Less of them will succesfully test, but they have more xp to put into their abilities since they level up quicker (theory, might be wrong about this).

Doing roughly twenty times better in my new game, haven't lost a single country yet and just unlocked plasma gear. Looking forward to beating it

Also, heavies are good for up close combat if they have the bulletstorm perk which has saved my hide on several occasions. Also, rockets. Wouldn't bring more than 1 on any given mission though.

[feedback]

Assault seems to be the best class, run and gun + rapid fire is amazing with alloy cannon.

Yes, assault is useless without those skills, but once they get it, it's awesome.
I like that heavy gets the rocket launcher. It's basically a more powerful, free grenade. I rarely ever use the side arm anyway.
Plasma weapons are more powerful than the laser weapons so try to get those.

I'm going to start a new game and equip soldiers with Arc Throwers more often. Now that I know that I can salvage their weaponry that way, I'm sure I'll be able to do away with the conventional weaponry sooner. Using machineguns against Mutons and the like was what was holding me back and caused me to lose a lot of battles. Things actually got a lot better once I started using laser weapons and plasma weapons a bit later on. Still couldn't please those council fuckers enough though

My biggest mistake was not getting satellite coverage up. Even know you needed to in order to avoid panic cuz they didn't tell u :/

[DooMer]

Yeah, gotta prioritize satellites from the get go. I wasn't making enough money and hit an early bottle neck my first time.

[Eraser]

Some neat concept art for the game is viewable here:
http://kotaku.com/5954340/get-a-first-l ... oncept-art

[Eraser]

Here's an article that dives into the probability numbers behind aiming and shooting. It asks and answers some questions like what gives an assault soldier a bigger chance to hit: a single shot or a rapid fire shot. It's all basic statistical calculations but applied to XCom it makes it a bit less like dry theory

http://sinepost.wordpress.com/2012/10/2 ... ames-xcom/

There's also a follow-up article about random number generating in the game and how to combat "save-scumming", which is saving a game before taking a shot, and then reloading that save if the shot misses, until it hits:
http://sinepost.wordpress.com/2012/10/2 ... canniness/

[Eraser]

Zero punctuation review:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/ ... my-Unknown

[Eraser]

Shooting everything to smithereens with RPGs on crash sites won't help, as you're destroying the alloys and technology on the ship as well which prevents you from salvaging it.

The game does indeed become more easy as you progress, but missions tend to get longer as well, so being anle to hold out longer becomes more important. A single casualty early on could spell doom because you haven't got the combat resources to follow the mission all the way through.

[HM-PuFFNSTuFF]

I am so seriously impressed with how they updated this classic. Exceeded my expectations in every way.

[feedback]

Good game. But I stopped playing it after I beat the nightmare that was ironman mode.

[HM-PuFFNSTuFF]

[Eraser]

Does this mean the end of Q3WCom?

[losCHUNK]

Playing classic some more without ironman and i'm honestly starting to get fed up with it.

Once Mutons show up, it becomes little more than a slot machine, leaving the make or break of entire missions down to a single turn of dumb luck. Even with full cover and hunkering-down, troops of all ranks get one-shotted from a map's length regularly. The cunts hit for SIXTEEN damage and I barely have one guy with 12 health tops. Every single crit taken is a dead soldier. They crit way, way too often and it seems there is absolutely nothing you can do tactics-wise to prevent it.

Sure, you can head-down, back-up, overwatch, but the maps are barely large enough to pull that off once, especially near the starting point if you make contacts early. Moving too far aside will pull more enemies and when you're overwatchers inevitably miss (or even hit), aliens just move up into LoS the next turn and shoot you anyway. It's all a bit meh.

Gonna give the Warspace mod a spin, as apparently it does an excellent job of toning down the bullshit to a fairer, more reasonably managable level.

I told you so

[feedback]

Memphis, use a guide. Basically you have to have laser weapons and no squad deaths by the time the mutons show up. If you don't, then you'll lose the game. You will be playing the first few missions over and over.