Tips for XCOM:Enemy Within Classic difficulty?

[Zhukov]

That strange gurgling noise you can hear somewhere off to your left is the sound of me swallowing my pride.

So I finally got around to buying Enemy Within and resuming my tumultuous love-hate relationship with XCOM. And it's kinda kicking my arse. I managed to muscle my way through ironman classic in Enemy Unknown a couple of times, but Enemy Within seems to have stepped up the difficulty a little on classic, while simultaneously making normal even easier.

So here I am, hat in hand, seeking advice from any of the Escapist's resident keyboard generals.

Specific questions:

- Any particular recommendations for build orders? EU taught me to rush satellite coverage first and foremost. Is that still a good idea?

- Any new early game upgrades that I should prioritize? My old preference was to get carapace armour ASAP before weapons or foundry upgrades.

- I'm used to skipping laser weapons entirely by capturing a plasma rifle and researching straight to plasma weapons from there. Is that still viable?

Any other general tips welcome.

PS. Yes, I know about the squadsight-sniper/assault-scout tactic. I refuse to use it because it's cheap as hell.

 

[asdfen]

base building / Resource management
-council countries are your main source of income. making sure none leave council is crucial (if you disagree or found another way to finance your campaign you can skip most of this section)
- Therefore building satellite coverage should be a priority. giving satellite launch order just before the end of the month may bring in more money plus you never know where you will need them the most at the end of the month. Full red countries leave the xcom project during council meeting. Covering whole continent with satellites gives bonuses same as starting bonuses for that continent. sometimes these choices are hard but they are up to you. Cover a full continent or try keeping more countries around.
- once satellite is launched protect them with a single craft as if you manage to shoot down every ufo detected it help your score/income at the end of the month. after 3 months(may/june) into the game you should start upgrading weapons on your craft and/or craft themselves.
-workshops are key to not going broke while building other buildings and purchasing equipment 7% reduction per connection doesn't seem much but once you have 3+ stuff starts to cost almost nothing
-do not sell alien corpses unless you must as some items require them for non research "research" and manufacturing other items. The only stuff that is safe to sell are damaged ufo parts and the stuff that game marked as non research essential like alien surgery/food/etc
-capturing and researching 1 of each alien species grant bonuses to research speeds. All the aliens are capture-able including the elite/heavy versions except for robots. the robots are very distinguishable there are only two aliens that are confusing one is floater (can capture) and chryssalid(cannot capture). bonus is specie dependent. Captured aliens also surrender their weapons.

Placement
- buildings can and should be linked vertically AND horizontally
- the power supply grid should be located around your steam spot(s) as I dig to to the nearest one and form a 3-4(sometimes more depends on steam and how research is going as there are advanced elirium power plants) power grid around first one available.
-link 6 satellite uplinks if you can mix up with satellite nexus as these are more space efficient. Figure it out through ingame menu how many more uplink slots you req through situation/launch satellite
-3+ workshops the more the better
- I completely ignore the labs as the research only net expensive arms and armor that I cant afford as I am spending all the cash on satellites and only pursue labs when I have build the satellites + officer training or have extra cash/power but at that point all the research is usually done anyways.

Battle Survival
-scope is your best friend as without it my troops do not seem to be able to hit anything. research Weapon Fragments
- in case the game screws you as it had on mine and you have 8+ snipers in original roster make sure to hire new recruits till you have the amounts of classes you need/want
-pick a tactic suitable to your person and refine it over course of the game. All 40 or so missions/battles/skirmishes/whatever you will encounter in single playthrough are extremely similar.
-once you finish with skirmish take your time and reload all your weapons before continuing
-it is advisable to save on geoscape before the end of the month and after every mission so you can reset/roll back if RNG mega does not like you
-have sniper with squad sight take up a good position elevated or just overlooking the whole map in overwatch mode before advancing
-another tactic is to advance a single troop. preferably assault with lightning reflexes. advance half of total move turn if resistance encountered just take a shot with sniper and then retreat your assault back into cover.
-berserker can be ignored when suppressed. This helped me in epic proportions on impossible.
-how I kill 3 enemy squads.
- aggressive way Single enemy is usually taken care of by sniper. I will kill another with assault and 3rd with another 2 squad members
-cautious way 1 with sniper 1 suppressed another I slowly wear down with people behind heavy cover while trying to flank at same time.
-mega cautious. everyone in heavy cover assault leaves to scout half a turn and pulls back if enemies are encountered. Assault because I can still shoot with him after moving twice.
-health granted by armor serves as buffer meaning that at the end of battle your soldiers will not take time to recover even after taking armor dmg.

Class info
- assault class with shotgun is quiet a beast as they can move the whole 2 turns and then take action and shoot twice all in one turn and as enemies do not really roam much you can safely skip a few turns most of the time to reset cool down. Multiples stack well.
- sniper after getting squad sight try to keep them in positions where they can shoot at any point on the map unobstructed. that is usually somewhere with elevation skeleton/archangel armor can be of help to climb stuff. I wouldn't recommend having more than one at any given time in the squad. solo = awesome . Multiples of snipers I couldn't find much use for. For each his own thought.Double tap is preferable to inthezone imo
glitch - shots go through walls on xbox but only in overwatch mode and only on the initial alien moment when they run for cover right after being spotted for the first time. Perk of squad sight is required for this but with best available sniper rifle and perk that eliminates penalties for overwatch this is 1 shot KO on spotting a group of enemies so 1/3 difficulty reduction
-heavy class is great at killing robots and provide support. They can destroy cover and increase dmg from other sources. Have highest hp and can shoot twice per turn when not moving. Can obliterate tightly packed groups of enemies with their rockets. Multiples stack well.
-support class has advantages when doing overwatch and healing. Also can equip 2 accessories meaning they are your best choice as capture guy as they can still equip your choice accessories plus Arc Thrower. Multiples stack well.
plz chime in with your thoughts. I play max offensive so your stats are welcome


Panic managment
This is how I kept all the countries with me on classic/ironman
Launched at least 2 satellites a month. All of my money were spend on satellite uplinks/satellites. To finance this I've sold it all. Corpses/ufo power sources/flight computers everything as long as I needed the money I've sold it. Whenever engineers were available as mission rewards I chose that and also have built workshops to increase engineer numbers even further so I can build more satellite uplinks. I've researched primarily story missions till base capture was available. I did not do base capture until I needed world wide panic reduction at the end of the month. That saved me a few countries and gave me enough time to launch all the satellites. after the whole globe was covered I never had panic troubles. PS: Do not fail any missions till global coverage as panic penalty for that is huge. It is possible to loose a few countries and still easily win. As missions are random sometimes loosing a few states is unavoidable but you should try your best to keep them all as the rewards are grand. Like not loosing the game for instance
- missions that reduce panic: capture the alien base (-2: world wide)

Misc
-enabling autosave in options helps as it allows you to roll back 2-3 turns
- playing ironman for achievement purposes not for challenge you can sign out of your account before enemies turn is done and load the game to roll back a single turn. If you want challenge ignore this.
- for me a game last roughly 365 days and consists of 30-40 battles so plan accordingly

My observations on difficulty settings
- from my knowledge difficulty changes the following enemies get +HP/+crit chance/+accuracy/higher cover bonus/grenades are used more often. Player gets - screwed. Higher the difficulty nets more screwing At impossible you will encounter more horrible enemy make ups like all elite/mutton+driods ships
Ez - dunno
Normal - is normal. I started with this and it was challenging enough while working out the basics. I enjoyed it.
Classic - basically the same as normal for me as I played it right after normal and since I then knew my way around it wasn't that difficult.
Impossible I didn't like it much. My personal opinion accuracy should not have been tempered with as @#$@#$ green !@#!@# heads pistol snipe my squad from way across the map in best cover from bellow like it was nothing. The only way cover is reliable is with smoke grenades on impossible. If not for the accuracy I would've actually liked it. As is I however hate it and wont play it again.
Ironman - hate it. Sometimes you will luck out on a mission and have 10-16 dudes all spawn in the same spot and there isn't really much that can save you then. Restarting the whole game cause of that I wouldn't like except when maybe mixing it with normal difficulty or something.

this was my post on another forum for enemy unknown but it is still soli adivce for enemy within.

 

[Mutant1988]

If you're using any of the modifiers I highly recommend the randomized skills one. It makes it a lot more worthwhile to bring along and level up fresh troops, in the hopes of finding truly awesome skill combinations and it also makes you a lot more attached to your troops because of it.

- I'm used to skipping laser weapons entirely by capturing a plasma rifle and researching straight to plasma weapons from there. Is that still viable?

It worked for me. Even if you do use laser weapons, you shouldn't really ever need to build any of them since you can get them from the new hostile faction a bit into the game.

One thing you might want to do is research plasma pistols and make sure that your undercover agent has one equipped before you send them out, as to not leave them completely useless in a fight.

The way I played I basically put all my focus on getting satellites up and had my troops use arc throwers at every possible opportunity, using grenades and rockets to bring enemy health down before capturing them. As a result, I ended up able to equip all my troops with light plasma rifles. But mind, I'm playing that on marathon mode, which might result in more fights and opportunities to capture aliens. I also savescum like crazy.

I never did end up finishing that playthrough. I really should get back to it.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Might seem obvious but a lot of people miss this.. Dont put all your eggs in one basket. Spread your experience through a wide range of soldiers rather than just using those same ones over and over. Especially in the easy early missions. If youre A-team is resting whilst a terror mission pops up you are fucked. This is also why SHIVs are actually pretty good, to pull up emergency replacements and also its better to lose one of those than a good soldier when you need to sacrifice someone.

 

[baddude1337]

Seems you beat EU already, so I'll give you some general Within specific pointers.

Make sure you take full advantage of getting MEC's and genetic mods ASAP. They are surprisingly cheap and available pretty early for the impact they have on the game. MEC's in paticular are good tank-type characters that you can leave in the open to take a hit to save a squadmate, and their kinetic strike is pretty effective against enemies with beefy healthbars. The high jump genetic mod greatly expands your tactical options and view of the battle, especially for snipers.

The new types of grenades greatly increase your tactical options, mainly the ghost grenade. Get the 2 slot upgrade quicky so you can carry a grenade and something else, like chrysalid armour.

DO NOT neglect EXALT and stealth ops. EXALT will constantly steal your stuff if you're not careful, keep scanning and have an operative ready for fieldwork all the time. Snipers with gunslinger and pistol specific perks probably make the best agents IMHO, as they can quite easily hold their own against EXALT with a plasma pistol. Still, you should never use them in direct combat unless necessary and they have your other troops nearby.

Not sure if you've ever used them or liked them, but SHIV's can be a good alternative if you don't want to risk too many soldiers in a mission. Flying ones especially are very handy with their suppression ability.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Specific questions:

- Any particular recommendations for build orders? EU taught me to rush satellite coverage first and foremost. Is that still a good idea?

- Any new early game upgrades that I should prioritize? My old preference was to get carapace armour ASAP before weapons or foundry upgrades.

- I'm used to skipping laser weapons entirely by capturing a plasma rifle and researching straight to plasma weapons from there. Is that still viable?

Any other general tips welcome.

PS. Yes, I know about the squadsight-sniper/assault-scout tactic. I refuse to use it because it's cheap as hell.

You want to sprint to your first MEC as quickly as possible. In an ideal world, you'll have a MEC on the squad before Portent (I believe it's impossible on Marathon but should be very doable at normal pacing). That is the first significant difficulty spike. The second is the Site Recon mission, and you'll want/need at least one very mobile and capable Assault for that mission, laser weapons or better, and a well rounded team.

Beyond that, EU tactics should apply. You're still looking for satellite saturation in order to enable higher funding as quickly as possible. You're still using cover the same way, you're still using explosives to confirm kills the same way, etc, etc. MECs are your biggest game changer, and they are in your favor.

If it's your goal to void making the game cheesy-easy, I'd stay away from the gene mods, a few (like mimetic skin) are just outright broken.

And I wouldn't sweat about squadsight snipers, they're still incredibly powerful and effective, but the game worked in at least one counter to them in the form of Seekers. They're not the standout kings of all creation like they were in the first game.

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

- Any particular recommendations for build orders? EU taught me to rush satellite coverage first and foremost. Is that still a good idea?

- Any new early game upgrades that I should prioritize? My old preference was to get carapace armour ASAP before weapons or foundry upgrades.

- I'm used to skipping laser weapons entirely by capturing a plasma rifle and researching straight to plasma weapons from there. Is that still viable?

Any other general tips welcome.

PS. Yes, I know about the squadsight-sniper/assault-scout tactic. I refuse to use it because it's cheap as hell.

Satlites are still good, I think.

For upgrades, not so sure.

WEAPONS.
First of all, Lazer weapons are few degrees cheaper than plasma. it will keep you sustained if you plan to dump all the money in to the satellites.
(6 Plasma weapons took approximately took entire monthly budget when I had full satellite coverage for all countries, I think. It also took 2 battleship-worth of elerium and alloys.)

Second reason to research lazer is those accursed Thin man.

P.S: If you think squadsight-sniper/assault-scout is cheap, You didn't see memitic skin yet...
This gene mod makes assault as twice as good and Squadsight sniper about 5 times better.

And I wouldn't sweat about squadsight snipers, they're still incredibly powerful and effective, but the game worked in at least one counter to them in the form of Seekers. They're not the standout kings of all creation like they were in the first game.

Ironically, only early form of counter, - other than group bunched-up overwatch - is battle scanners those snipers possess. it would be incredible if you know where to throw them - EXCEPT you do, because you can indirectly see them because you and stealthed seeker can't be in a same square.

 

[Rattja]

While I may have put most of my hours into the Long War, from what I remember this worked out really well (to the point of feeling somewhat broken).

First priority is get laser weapons and reach for as high aim as possible to take down stuff fast and easy.
Next step is to just hold on and prepare for later in the game where seakers starts to show. By then you should go into that stealth armor and stealth granades with the jump genetic mod. (For assults you may consider mimic skin)
Once your whole team can jump and stealth nothing should really be a threat anymore as you can just sneak up and kill them before they can do anything.

 

[loa]

Pooping out as many satelites as possible as early as possible is still the way to go.

Get a mec early.
Give it rocket boots, all of the tank abilities and the punching arm for extra mobility.
Heavy mecs are very good since the closest target can't crit them anymore which is a GODSEND and it also almost gets high cover aim penalties so no bs rng crits will kill your big guy.
The choice between grenades and medkits and expanded storage and repair servos is a tough one, this one should probably go for the aoe medkit and the repair servos.
Not wasting a turn for healing is amazing for a melee mec and so is the emp which gives you a free turn against sectopods. Take that over the mines.

Despite getting bad aim progression, the early mec still remains relevant late game since punching out sectopods is the best and fastest way of dealing with them so don't worry about that.
With overdrive, you can even punch twice if you didn't move your mec and if you bumrush the sectopod with the emp, you will not have moved the next turn.
With the foundry upgrade, you're looking at 18 total reliable punching damage in 1 round from 1 guy against a sectopod with its 50% damage reduction.
Nothing else in the game can do that.

Snipers aren't as relevant anymore, due to the high mobility play thanks to meld and most sniping spots being rather poopy.

Put your veteran sniper into a mec. He keeps all his aim and becomes an overwatch monstrosity.
Give him the punching arm too for extra mobility. Put grenades and mines on him.
You can lay down as many mines as you please and then blow them all up with a grenade for massive damage that can instakill a sectopod if you can set that up.

You'll probably not want to bother with the flamethrower although it can be a lifesaver in terror missions due to the guaranteed panic but it obviously won't work against all the late game robots and also limits your precious mobility.

Get a ghost grenade on a grenadier heavy!
They are super expensive but more than worth it.
Just move all your guys right into the face of a muton and tase him.
If you fail, you can just undo the mistake with a ghost grenade.

Don't bother with needle and gas grenades.

The 2 item capacity is now a foundry upgrade that unlocks it for everyone, not just support with deep pockets.

 

[Souplex]

Start in Asia, prioritize your satellites/avoid missions in South America. Deprioritize Europe for satellite deployment.
Once you have satellites over both south American nations you can blaze through your interrogations/dissections, and get research done quickly.

As always, the Assault's defensive tree is straight up better, with the exception of Double shot. Close and personal/lightning reflexes is the only choice that isn't obvious.

Ignore the haters. S.H.I.V.s are great. They have incredible mobility, as much firepower as a heavy but with far more accuracy, have tons of durability, and are replaceable.

For covert operations you want a pistol-specialist sniper with chameleonic skin.

 

[Quazimofo]

As kickass as a punching MEC is, you MAY want to consider having a second one with the flamethrower, because the flamethrower can one-shot chryssalids, which can either save your ass if you wind up over-extended into the maw of 3 of them, or can make terror missions heavy in the scuttling bastards cake. I remember one particular instance where I sprinted a flamethrower MEC and a couple supporting squad members forward to make some noise and pull the enemies off of civilians. One group of 3 chryssalids charged out and formed up within the flamethrower's arc of fire. Fwoosh. Next turn same thing. Fwoosh. Next turn a few floaters and something else showed up, and the rest of the squad was in good position by this point to tear them to shreds in a couple of turns. I don't think anyone was even injured that mission.

This was on classic difficulty too. I didn't get a whole lot of use out of that flamethrower, but that one mission could have royally fucked me if the chryssalids had even a single extra turn to get off any attacks and turn my assaults into zombies. Instead it was a resounding victory which kept me a council nation, got me some sweet sweet promotions, and a decent amount of cash to boot.

Start in Asia, prioritize your satellites/avoid missions in South America. Deprioritize Europe for satellite deployment.
Once you have satellites over both south American nations you can blaze through your interrogations/dissections, and get research done quickly.

As always, the Assault's defensive tree is straight up better, with the exception of Double shot. Close and personal/lightning reflexes is the only choice that isn't obvious.

Ignore the haters. S.H.I.V.s are great. They have incredible mobility, as much firepower as a heavy but with far more accuracy, have tons of durability, and are replaceable.

For covert operations you want a pistol-specialist sniper with chameleonic skin.

This too. Exalt, even in their upgraded state, is fairly easy to beat and thus a good source of income (and gear to a lesser extent) if you follow the basic rules of combat laid forth in Enemy Unknown, and a pistol specialist sniper with low profile is far and away the best choice for the covert operative. Once you have laser rifles, they are positively trivial (and also a fun use for your flamethrower mec if you have one)

The ignore south america strategy until they are about to panic then use satellites to calm them/get the bonuses to do all the interrogation in a single day is solid, but bear in mind they might completely ignore the continent for a long time. That said, it worked very well for me on my EW classic playthrough, so it's worth consideration at least.

You'll need to upgrade your S.H.I.Vs to make them worthwhile, but once you do hover S.H.I.Vs can kick all kinds of ass. for shits and giggles I made an all hover-shiv squad and they took no losses in a ufo landing against muton elites, a cyberdisk, and a sectopod. They can't replace heavies completely: holo-targeting and rockets are still incredibly useful, but they're still damn fast and damn powerful and it's fun as hell to have a squad who can all fly.

 

[Lucane]

For Classic mode go with your personal preference "Fast and Heavy"(bigger guns to kill quick) or "Slow and Steady"(tougher armor and stealth) A mobile medic is a godsend Snipers with a Battle Scanner are great for Seekers who can show up early on-ish.

Once you kill a few seekers and do research on them you can get a great item that boost health and blocks poison so no need for Nano-fiber if you can survive till then.

Like others have said MECs are great early on and even better later so I'd recommend either starting from Brazil for the Science shortcut or Asia for Foundry/Academy discount but plan on getting the other one next or Europe's bonus as the first 3 priorities since I've repeatedly been able to hold off on expensive Air support till after I've gotten the Northern bonus long before I got 5 Demons before scanning for the alien stealth ship.

Plan to capture the Outsider ASAP and wait on the base assault till your about to lose a country or two that you can't save with satellites because once you beat the hidden base a random occurrence WILL happen and you can never really know when it will happen without saving constantly.

Base Layout Design:
I've always had great success on maps that have a steam vent on the top 3 layers and start with getting a Thermal Generator(save that level for 3 Generators in a row Thermal and/or Elerium) above all else even satellites to have to clear out built rooms later to much.

 

[baddude1337]

Ignore the haters. S.H.I.V.s are great. They have incredible mobility, as much firepower as a heavy but with far more accuracy, have tons of durability, and are replaceable.

them worthwhile, but once you do hover S.H.I.Vs can kick all kinds of ass.

Good to see other SHIV fans, they are rarely used or mentioned, despite being very good when upgraded. And even when not all that powerful, they can help out lower level teams in council missions. Having a team of all MEC's and SHIV's is also pretty rocking.

 

[DrOswald]

That strange gurgling noise you can hear somewhere off to your left is the sound of me swallowing my pride.

So I finally got around to buying Enemy Within and resuming my tumultuous love-hate relationship with XCOM. And it's kinda kicking my arse. I managed to muscle my way through ironman classic in Enemy Unknown a couple of times, but Enemy Within seems to have stepped up the difficulty a little on classic, while simultaneously making normal even easier.

So here I am, hat in hand, seeking advice from any of the Escapist's resident keyboard generals.

My guess is that your difficulties are coming from the long term gain short term loss strategies you are used to using backfiring. This is why normal seems easier: you are able to deal with the short term loss and get to the payoff, but you can't in classic.

Specific questions:

- Any particular recommendations for build orders? EU taught me to rush satellite coverage first and foremost. Is that still a good idea?

Satellites are not as important to rush, but the reason why is kind of subtle. EW messed up the difficult curve even more, and now the early game is far harder than the late game. Satellite rushing is a long term gain, short term loss strategy. But the game gets easier in the long run, so you don't need the resources then, you need them in the short term to get up mecs and such. This will make the late game harder, but it is already easy so that isn't much of a problem.

See, a satellite will take at least 2 months to pay off. This was always true, but you could fairly easily get by until in EU until the payoff came mid to late game. I EW the early and mid game aliens have been greatly buffed, so you need those resources to deal with it.

You do still need to get up sats at a steady rate, but it is not nearly as important as people will tell you. Most players have been completely unable to unlearn their satellite rushing behavior from EU, so you will still get tons of players that insist that if you are having a hard time you need to rush sats harder, which is the opposite of what you need to do.

- Any new early game upgrades that I should prioritize? My old preference was to get carapace armour ASAP before weapons or foundry upgrades.

Get mecs up and running very first thing. I generally go lasers next, because a dead alien is an alien that can't shoot at me. But I play extremely mobile and aggressively compared to most.

- I'm used to skipping laser weapons entirely by capturing a plasma rifle and researching straight to plasma weapons from there. Is that still viable?

Yes, but again this is a long term gain short term loss strategy. Laser weapons are a cheap and easy way to buff up your troops, and in EW the early and mid game enemies are much stronger where as the end game aliens didn't get much of anything new. I think they were balanced around making laser weapons more important. For example, exalt are pushovers if you have laser weapons, most of the time they will be one shot by your troops, but if you are still using conventional weapons you need to hit twice. Same with the seeker, you will typically need two conventional weapon shots to kill one while a single laser shot usually does the job. And if you are fighting a mechtoid getting past its shield each turn will eat up a large % of your damage using conventional weapons, but far a far less % of your damage using laser weapons.

If you can manage skipping lasers you will have a massive advantage late game. But really that is not important because early game is harder.

Any other general tips welcome.

PS. Yes, I know about the squadsight-sniper/assault-scout tactic. I refuse to use it because it's cheap as hell.

There are more things to research in EW compared to EU, so research credits matter more, which in turn means the south american bonus is more powerful. Consider trying a run where you go for that bonus early and you prioritize capturing aliens (but do not start there.)

Alloy shivs are good for the cover they grant, for the alien tendency to target the shiv because it is not in cover, and for its auto regenerating health with Sentinel Drone.

MECs are light cavalry, not tanks. Do not treat them like tanks, that is what alloy shivs are for.

Genemods will turn your kill squad into a god squad, but the effects are minimal until late game. Better to go for MECs first.

Decide early on which continent you are going to let go to hell. I recommend Europe if you do not start there.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Snip

Oh right...

If you left "Aiming Angles" on in the options, you're going to have a hell of a time with the first few appearances of Thin Men. They were already ridiculously accurate. With Aiming Angles on, they can snipe you from across the map.

If you are playing with Aiming Angles, you have to treat each standing Thin Man as a dead soldier. Do everything in your power to eliminate them the turn they appear.

 

[veloper]

Don't skip lasers! Laser weapons are more than sufficient for the mid game and they are also cheap, while fancy plasma tech requires you capture a live, armed alien first and put it in a new holding facility and research some of the more boring techs before you may even start.
That's a big investment in time and money (and an extra risk in the early game), when you should be focusing on getting a MEC, better equipment, more engineers and satellite coverage.

 

[Zhukov]

In an ideal world, you'll have a MEC on the squad before Portent (I believe it's impossible on Marathon but should be very doable at normal pacing). That is the first significant difficulty spike.

Ugh. Portent.

That mission has been the cause of several ironman rage quits. God damn bloody thin man drop-squad bullshit patrol. However, now I know the sequence so well that I can just cheese through it with prescient overwatch usage.

The second is the Site Recon mission, and you'll want/need at least one very mobile and capable Assault for that mission, laser weapons or better, and a well rounded team.

Heh. Just got done with that mission before coming back here to check the thread. Almost messed it up because I didn't realize the bugs were going to just keep respawning. So I was up to my waist in the fuckers before I even hit the button. Fortunately I had three Assaults with me, one of them fairly high level, so managed to run-and-gun my way out.

And I wouldn't sweat about squadsight snipers, they're still incredibly powerful and effective, but the game worked in at least one counter to them in the form of Seekers. They're not the standout kings of all creation like they were in the first game.

Oh, I still use them. It's just that I refuse to do the run-and-gun, spot, squadsight-snipe, retreat, overwatch routine. (Not a fan of abusing invisibility either.)

Despite the nerfs the choice between Snapshot Sniper and Squadsight Sniper still feels like choosing between a shitty Assault or the righteous fist of an angry god.

If you left "Aiming Angles" on in the options, you're going to have a hell of a time with the first few appearances of Thin Men. They were already ridiculously accurate. With Aiming Angles on, they can snipe you from across the map.

If you are playing with Aiming Angles, you have to treat each standing Thin Man as a dead soldier. Do everything in your power to eliminate them the turn they appear.

Sounds horrible. Luckily I don't use any of the second wave settings. Most of them seem to amount to, "Hey, let's make the game even more dependent on dice rolls."

Fuck thin men though. Seriously. "Oh, I see you have done absolutely everything in your power to put the odds in your favour. Well then, if my painfully accurate weapon will not serve, allow me to spit unavoidable poison for guaranteed damage instead!"

 

[BloatedGuppy]

That mission has been the cause of several ironman rage quits. God damn bloody thin man drop-squad bullshit patrol. However, now I know the sequence so well that I can just cheese through it with prescient overwatch usage.

Portent broke my first Ironman game over its knee, and seriously crippled the second, but I was able to recover. As you say, subsequent plays became easy because it happens the same way every time.

Oh, I still use them. It's just that I refuse to do the run-and-gun, spot, squadsight-snipe, retreat, overwatch routine. (Not a fan of abusing invisibility either.)

Ah, I see. Yeah, that kind of excessive cheesing is best saved for impossible, where it is a requirement.

Despite the nerfs the choice between Snapshot Sniper and Squadsight Sniper still feels like choosing between a shitty Assault or the righteous fist of an angry god.

There have been times I've fancied a Snap Shot sniper, to the point where I've even considered grooming one, but it is still the widely inferior choice, yes.

Sounds horrible. Luckily I don't use any of the second wave settings. Most of them seem to amount to, "Hey, let's make the game even more dependent on dice rolls."

Fuck thin men though. Seriously. "Oh, I see you have done absolutely everything in your power to put the odds in your favour. Well then, if my painfully accurate weapon will not serve, allow me to spit unavoidable poison for guaranteed damage instead!"

Yes and no. Of all the second wave options, Aiming Angles and...the one that randomizes starting attributes and growth, can't remember what is was called...are the ones I feel are more or less essential. Aiming Angles makes the gameplay and the functionality of cover feel FAR more natural. If you're at an angle where you can see 90% of the alien, but you're still "in front of" his cover, the game will treat him as though he is in full cover. With Aiming Angles on, he gets significantly reduced cover. It makes it far more intuitive.

It just presents a problem with Thin Men due to high native accuracy and extreme mobility. They'll take advantage of you and pull off some jaw-dropping snipes. So in the early going, before you have appropriate armor, you HAVE to kill them the round they appear, or someone is going to die. The spit is actually a huge relief.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Yeah I gotta agree with the idea that you need laser weapons. Like omg how can you survive that long with conventional weapons?

Pro tip if you end up with a bunch of Exalt Laser Weapons equip your rookies with them for just in case of a base assault. Don't leave good equipment unequipped on somebody before base assault happens!