(Even though this is an open thread, I feel like i’m butting into the middle of a conversation, so apologies everyone 😛 )
Falconer! How’s XCOM treating you?
I was going to hold off on getting it, but I know someone who has it. And when they’re all like “it’s really good, i’m having lots of fun, weee”, it slowly wears away at your willpower.. So I ended up crumbling under the pressure and bought it.
It’s so fun. O.O So far i’m loving how they’ve revamped it, and avoided things that were frustrating about the original (plus all the new stuff they’ve added). I think I might also be developing an unhealthy passion for the Overwatch ability.
Nepenthe
12 years ago
Even without hearing it, I’m wishing I had a transporter beam so I could puke into it and have it land on Romney’s lap. He makes me want to throw up and at least that way it’d be useful.
I have run for office in a Republican district TTF, it is not as simple as you think it is.
Nor does it help if the person making the stupid statement does it after the time to file the proper paperwork. Well okay it helps them but not anyone who would run against them.
Falconer
12 years ago
@Shade: Wait til your sniper gets the ability to shoot any alien any member of your squad has a line of sight on (unless there’s something in the way). Heee!
It’s been fun so far, and frustrating at the same time. I never have enough money, and satellites and satellite uplinks take so long to build, and I’m worried I’m going to lose my panicking countries. I’ve decided to restart once because I think I made a bad start.
It also feels familiar. The aliens are recognizable, and delightfully remixed.
When you develop new weapons, they’ll play a cutscene of a scientist trying one out. Pay attention to the target they’re using.
Falconer: Yeah, when I first saw that ability I was like “there’s no way i’m not choosing that”. I giggle every time I have my snipers somewhere with a good vantage point, in Overwatch, and an alien decides it’s going to have a go at moving somewhere. Boom!
I’m up to the point just before you go attack the alien base, and I have a full squad of six (for my squad, I went with two assault, two snipers, one heavy and one medic-focused support), all with laser weapons. I have the same money problem and I also still need more materials to research stuff so I can actually move forward. Kinda stuck at the moment until I can actually get in the base.
I don’t feel like i’m doing too bad at the minute, but in classic XCOM style, it will probably go very wrong, very quickly, very soon. 😀
I love how they did the movement most of all. In the old games, it was easy to mess movement up and leave your people with not enough action points to do anything like reaction shots (well, I might just have been really terrible at the game 😛 ). But in this one it’s simple and easy to know what your people can and can’t do, and being able to control their readyness for reaction shots is the best thing ever. That and your people (and their skills/equipment) actually matter, rather than just being faceless mook waves with useless armour that get insta-gibbed by Sectoids with plasma pistols.
Also, a way to stun things that doesn’t make me want to cry! Stun rods can burn in hell. 😛
Falconer
12 years ago
Didn’t you ever get the Small Launcher and the Stun Bombs? I admit, it wasn’t easy, especially if you’re hoping to catch a commander in a base where you’ve got to cross open ground and go up a lift and then try to hit the boss, and the boss has got a Blaster Launcher that can take out everything on the screen. I lost the most part of a squad trying to stun a commander at the top of a UFO once, he kept mind-controlling my peeps and they’d shoot each other (and they had the best armor in the game, too), but I succeeded. Was it worth it? I don’t know.
The way the weapons worked in the old game was, there was a range of damage that was determined randomly. What was reported as the weapon’s damage was the mid point — you’d actually get a result anywhere from half the listed damage to 1.5X the listed damage. I think that’s how weapons work in the new game, too, only armor is a lot more effective at stopping damage because the numbers are a whole lot smaller. A Muton Berserker with 20 or 25 hit points is a serious mass of trouble that you’re going to have to shoot with several soldiers before it’ll go down. And good luck trying to stun one! I succeeded, but only by loading a saved game over and over and hoping my luck would run good each time. It’s a touchy method of shooting it with pistols until it only has 1 or 2 hit points left, at which point your stun success skyrockets, and you’d also better hope you don’t roll 00.
inurashii
12 years ago
aw man y’all are making me want to buy XCom. But I gotta save up for Xmas.
Falconer
12 years ago
Sorry, Inurashii! What are you saving up for, for Xmas?
ShadetheDruid
12 years ago
Falconer: Eventually yeah, though I found that even the launcher wasn’t the easiest thing to actually get to work (again, probably me being rubbish). Though I suppose at least with the launcher, you didn’t have to run your people screaming at the aliens to do it (with an almost guaranteed chance of getting them shot in the process) like with the stun rods.
The old game was also really harsh for capturing stuff, the difficulty of actually managing to get a successful stun combined with the fact that if you didn’t capture a certain thing by a certain point, you were boned, because you couldn’t get the research you needed. Even if that’s the same in this one, at least it’s a lot easier to capture things now (especially at the start). There are some exceptions though I guess (i’ve only just started seeing Mutons and Chryssalids, so I guess I have that to look forward to). 😀
The blaster launchers were horrible too. And the constant non-stop mind control. And chryssalids popping literally out of nowhere and starting up a zombie party. And reaction shots killing things you just spent 20 minutes trying to stun. And people with terrible aim doing more damage to your squad than the aliens are.
Hah, the old game was fun, but the creators sure did love putting in a million ways to make you ragequit. 😛 And to top it all off, they made the sequel even harder.
Falconer
12 years ago
Yes, they made the sequel even harder, because there was a bug in the original that made the game default to Beginner regardless of which difficulty you selected, but the players didn’t know that, so they brought it up.
I fought a terror mission in the new XCOM that had, must have been 6 or 9 Chryssalids and nothing else. I shot all the Chryssalids with my new, nifty laser weapons and the single light plasma rifle I’d managed to scavenge, and a couple of zombies. None of my troops was hurt.
I was moderately proud of that. Chryssalids in the original game might have bid fair to give me nightmares, if I had any about media at all.
Vitamin D
12 years ago
@ seraph- Oh, I am so sorry. If I could fit you in my time traveling machine I would totally take you to pre-9/11 united states before the crazy took root and never let go.
Falconer
12 years ago
@Vitamin D — I worry that you might have to go back farther than that. You may not be able to get anywhere, at all. I mean, in the 90s the Rs spent so much effort trying to impeach the sitting president over nothing, nothing at all, only tribalism, privilege and entitlement.
timetravellingfool
12 years ago
Ah yeah, that. That was dumb, but not jesus rode the dinosaurs dumb.
And by normal I mean people who actually understand that being office means being responsible with that power.
Falconer
12 years ago
I think there’ve always been a jesus-rode-dinosaurs faction here in America since we found out what dinosaurs were. There was a point when they hadn’t taken over one of the political parties.
And, princessbonbon, I’m a Carter baby but I’ve heard lefties who’re old enough to remember opine that they’d never thought they’d miss Nixon. I mean, the man founded the EPA and worked on school milk programs.
Falconer
12 years ago
Oh, and Mittens said he’d crack down on China (speaking of Nixon reminded me). Isn’t there a protest right now because Bain Capital is moving jobs to China?
I was born in the last year of Carter’s presidency and I have heard the same things-Nixon was a crook but he, like many crooks, had redeeming qualities.
And yes, there is a protest over Bain Capital skipping the US.
We Hunted The Mammoth
(Even though this is an open thread, I feel like i’m butting into the middle of a conversation, so apologies everyone 😛 )
Falconer! How’s XCOM treating you?
I was going to hold off on getting it, but I know someone who has it. And when they’re all like “it’s really good, i’m having lots of fun, weee”, it slowly wears away at your willpower.. So I ended up crumbling under the pressure and bought it.
It’s so fun. O.O So far i’m loving how they’ve revamped it, and avoided things that were frustrating about the original (plus all the new stuff they’ve added). I think I might also be developing an unhealthy passion for the Overwatch ability.
Someone’s thinking with portals!
I have run for office in a Republican district TTF, it is not as simple as you think it is.
Nor does it help if the person making the stupid statement does it after the time to file the proper paperwork. Well okay it helps them but not anyone who would run against them.
@Shade: Wait til your sniper gets the ability to shoot any alien any member of your squad has a line of sight on (unless there’s something in the way). Heee!
It’s been fun so far, and frustrating at the same time. I never have enough money, and satellites and satellite uplinks take so long to build, and I’m worried I’m going to lose my panicking countries. I’ve decided to restart once because I think I made a bad start.
It also feels familiar. The aliens are recognizable, and delightfully remixed.
When you develop new weapons, they’ll play a cutscene of a scientist trying one out. Pay attention to the target they’re using.
aworldanonymous, I’ve got a shirt like that. http://www.cafepress.com/mf/30222985/cthulhu2012_tshirt
And there’s more from where that came from…
Falconer: Yeah, when I first saw that ability I was like “there’s no way i’m not choosing that”. I giggle every time I have my snipers somewhere with a good vantage point, in Overwatch, and an alien decides it’s going to have a go at moving somewhere. Boom!
I’m up to the point just before you go attack the alien base, and I have a full squad of six (for my squad, I went with two assault, two snipers, one heavy and one medic-focused support), all with laser weapons. I have the same money problem and I also still need more materials to research stuff so I can actually move forward. Kinda stuck at the moment until I can actually get in the base.
I don’t feel like i’m doing too bad at the minute, but in classic XCOM style, it will probably go very wrong, very quickly, very soon. 😀
I love how they did the movement most of all. In the old games, it was easy to mess movement up and leave your people with not enough action points to do anything like reaction shots (well, I might just have been really terrible at the game 😛 ). But in this one it’s simple and easy to know what your people can and can’t do, and being able to control their readyness for reaction shots is the best thing ever. That and your people (and their skills/equipment) actually matter, rather than just being faceless mook waves with useless armour that get insta-gibbed by Sectoids with plasma pistols.
Also, a way to stun things that doesn’t make me want to cry! Stun rods can burn in hell. 😛
Didn’t you ever get the Small Launcher and the Stun Bombs? I admit, it wasn’t easy, especially if you’re hoping to catch a commander in a base where you’ve got to cross open ground and go up a lift and then try to hit the boss, and the boss has got a Blaster Launcher that can take out everything on the screen. I lost the most part of a squad trying to stun a commander at the top of a UFO once, he kept mind-controlling my peeps and they’d shoot each other (and they had the best armor in the game, too), but I succeeded. Was it worth it? I don’t know.
The way the weapons worked in the old game was, there was a range of damage that was determined randomly. What was reported as the weapon’s damage was the mid point — you’d actually get a result anywhere from half the listed damage to 1.5X the listed damage. I think that’s how weapons work in the new game, too, only armor is a lot more effective at stopping damage because the numbers are a whole lot smaller. A Muton Berserker with 20 or 25 hit points is a serious mass of trouble that you’re going to have to shoot with several soldiers before it’ll go down. And good luck trying to stun one! I succeeded, but only by loading a saved game over and over and hoping my luck would run good each time. It’s a touchy method of shooting it with pistols until it only has 1 or 2 hit points left, at which point your stun success skyrockets, and you’d also better hope you don’t roll 00.
aw man y’all are making me want to buy XCom. But I gotta save up for Xmas.
Sorry, Inurashii! What are you saving up for, for Xmas?
Falconer: Eventually yeah, though I found that even the launcher wasn’t the easiest thing to actually get to work (again, probably me being rubbish). Though I suppose at least with the launcher, you didn’t have to run your people screaming at the aliens to do it (with an almost guaranteed chance of getting them shot in the process) like with the stun rods.
The old game was also really harsh for capturing stuff, the difficulty of actually managing to get a successful stun combined with the fact that if you didn’t capture a certain thing by a certain point, you were boned, because you couldn’t get the research you needed. Even if that’s the same in this one, at least it’s a lot easier to capture things now (especially at the start). There are some exceptions though I guess (i’ve only just started seeing Mutons and Chryssalids, so I guess I have that to look forward to). 😀
The blaster launchers were horrible too. And the constant non-stop mind control. And chryssalids popping literally out of nowhere and starting up a zombie party. And reaction shots killing things you just spent 20 minutes trying to stun. And people with terrible aim doing more damage to your squad than the aliens are.
Hah, the old game was fun, but the creators sure did love putting in a million ways to make you ragequit. 😛 And to top it all off, they made the sequel even harder.
Yes, they made the sequel even harder, because there was a bug in the original that made the game default to Beginner regardless of which difficulty you selected, but the players didn’t know that, so they brought it up.
I fought a terror mission in the new XCOM that had, must have been 6 or 9 Chryssalids and nothing else. I shot all the Chryssalids with my new, nifty laser weapons and the single light plasma rifle I’d managed to scavenge, and a couple of zombies. None of my troops was hurt.
I was moderately proud of that. Chryssalids in the original game might have bid fair to give me nightmares, if I had any about media at all.
@ seraph- Oh, I am so sorry. If I could fit you in my time traveling machine I would totally take you to pre-9/11 united states before the crazy took root and never let go.
@Vitamin D — I worry that you might have to go back farther than that. You may not be able to get anywhere, at all. I mean, in the 90s the Rs spent so much effort trying to impeach the sitting president over nothing, nothing at all, only tribalism, privilege and entitlement.
Ah yeah, that. That was dumb, but not jesus rode the dinosaurs dumb.
You have to return to 1976-that was the last time the Republicans had a bunch of normal people running for office from the President on down.
And by normal I mean people who actually understand that being office means being responsible with that power.
I think there’ve always been a jesus-rode-dinosaurs faction here in America since we found out what dinosaurs were. There was a point when they hadn’t taken over one of the political parties.
And, princessbonbon, I’m a Carter baby but I’ve heard lefties who’re old enough to remember opine that they’d never thought they’d miss Nixon. I mean, the man founded the EPA and worked on school milk programs.
Oh, and Mittens said he’d crack down on China (speaking of Nixon reminded me). Isn’t there a protest right now because Bain Capital is moving jobs to China?
I was born in the last year of Carter’s presidency and I have heard the same things-Nixon was a crook but he, like many crooks, had redeeming qualities.
And yes, there is a protest over Bain Capital skipping the US.
heehee: http://www.romneytaxplan.com/
It being an open thread I guess this is place to announce I have a wordpress blog now.
http://pecunium.wordpress.com/
Cool! 🙂
Nice! Let me dart over there and say hello.
So… apparently Romney’s son went on record as saying he wanted to physically assault the president for the debate.
@Skyborn Rocket: Was it Matt Romney?