Deraldin

That's what happens when you have the ability to engage from beyond visual range. And they only get stronger. On that note, I think I'm finally starting to learn how to play the tactical game on classic. It requires a much more careful management of your troops and a strong willingness to pull back when needed. Don't sit there and trade 45% shots with sectoids if you can avoid it. They have a better critical rate than you do. Overwatch is overrated. If you can see the enemy, he will kill you if you don't have the ability to kill him first. Pulling back behind corners and making them come to you along with judicious use of hunker down for critical immunity is absolutely essential.

Finally beat my Normal Ironman game last night. Lost a total of 4 soldiers over the course of the game. 2 were rookies that were one shot criticals. Another was a squaddie and the third was a captain heavy that had been with me since the beginning. I didn't lose anyone in the last half of the game, although there were a couple close calls including the time my major support was critically wounded by a muton patrol that managed to get one lucky shot off through low cover, suppression and smoke.

http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread.php?154266-XCOM-Enemy-Unknown-patch-notes-for-10-11-12

I haven't gotten much use out of grenades, but I think SCOPE was really helpful for all those 45% shots the rookies were taking. I still keep them on my snipers to help them out that little bit extra when they are shooting clear across the map. An extra 10% accuracy is always awesome. But grenades are great for guarantee kills, as well as blowing away cover. I have used them to just perfectly miss aliens, and it turns my 45% shot into a 60%+ shot with bonus chance to crit as well. I would have got a lot more use out of grenades if Thin Men didn't have 4 HP on Classic. Thin Man? Hell no! You get a grenade to the face before you try to poison me again. >_>

There is no conspiracy theory. 70-79% chance shots are actually <10% shots, but the game mislabels them. >_>

"This blog is open to invited readers only." Well played Sean Dunny. Well played...

I haven't gotten much use out of grenades, but I think SCOPE was really helpful for all those 45% shots the rookies were taking. I still keep them on my snipers to help them out that little bit extra when they are shooting clear across the map. I have a feeling that support troopers are going to be in high demand on my next attempt at classic. Gonna give smoke grenades a try... Current normal ironman is going well though. I just but I'm holding off on researching it for the moment. I want to set up the rest of my squad with Titan armor and I need to shoot down a bunch more alien craft for their alloys before I can get that. Money isn't it too short a supply anymore now that I have the globe blanketed in sats, although Egypt pulled out back in April. I've only got space left in the lowest levels of the base now.

Nope! Getting the XCOM classic: 3 guys at 75% all miss. There's a 1.5% chance that that happens. that target then crit hits my guy in full cover for 10 points of damage! Pew pew pew. Classic is making me reconsider the usefulness of the nano-fiber vest. It won't protect against that 10 damage crit, but it does prevent your rookies from being one shotted by everything.

I think you need 5 engineers to build workshops.

Lightning Bolt. The only spell in the game that is probably more dangerous to your own party than the enemy you cast it at. I've lost track of the number of times I wiped out my own party, or the enemy wiped themselves out when a miscast lightning bolt goes off and reflects back and kills everyone except the people you meant to target. Lightning Bolt was the non Wild Mage equivalent of a Wild Surge.

I really like this idea.

Maybe just force of habit?

Eh, I was fine with Candlekeep. Yeah you miss out on a bit of loot by not doing any of the quests, but it was such a small amount of stuff that losing out on it isn't that big a deal. It's all of what, 50 gold and a potion or two? Just grab the diamond in the tree and sell that off instead. More than makes up for any lost Candlekeep loot.

That makes more sense for her, then. I guess I can let the arrow guy pass since he's good eye candy. I do actually like the bow effects they were using and his seeming mystical ability to calculate/accurately hit a very fast moving target when he was barely even looking in their direction. I started to have the feeling he had special homing arrows or something.

I cheesed that fight and shot the robot from between two crates to the right of him. >_>

I can't remember which tier of skills it was, but I've been putting points into the category that deals with the turret. So hopefully that includes the HP for the turret as well. Even if the turret doesn't do much at higher levels, it's going to provide a good distraction for enemies to focus on so I can pick them off from a distance. You get turret health in the gunpowder tree with the longbow skill. Alternatively you can get the shield in the survival tree.

Okay, so not a huge deal, but what kind of weird resolution is 1650x1050? I'm grateful for something other than 16:9, but I wasn't expecting 11:7.

I really hope it's with more cutscenes and scripting. Like the real XCOM! I will end you. It especially gets annoying when you've gone through a particularly taxing fight and have zero ammo, but have no chance to look for ammo because as soon as you move new enemies (often the same tough ones) re-spawn right on top of you. I've taken to just running through areas ignoring all the enemies. Maybe toss a sentry turret down to kill them all while I get on my way.

No kidding. I finally got around to playing the demo and all it's done is left me wanting the full game more. I want to try a real mission where it's not quite so scripted. Agreed. They need to cut back the respawns a little. A lot of the maps have big loops and the respawn rate is so quick that you can just continually run in circles, never running out of things to kill. It certainly made that "Kill 100 bandits" quest go by quicker. I'm surprised that I'm not missing my soldier ammo regen as much as I thought I would be. I've definitely gotten low, but only rarely have I actually run out of anything except for that one time I tried using a Dahl sniper rifle. You just can't get enough sniper ammo SDUs to make those worth while.

Perfect.

As long as I don't have to sit through some tedious character generation/prologue thing like Fallout 3, I'm good. That thing was infuriating.

Yeah, that's definitely not Axton's voice. 100% Jack there. I think I'm getting closer to the end now. Got through the death field at Thousand Cuts, blew up a constructor and then my game crashed.

Oh god, that brings back memories. I loved reading those things.

How would that even happen? Like why would they even have those lines recorded in that voice?

Just got back from Dredd an hour ago myself. Only 3D showings here as well which meant that the only other person in the family that might have been interested decided to skip out on it. Figured I'd drop in tonight for the discount. Even managed to get through it with only a minor headache from the 3D so good evening all around!