Why There's No Multiple Bases in XCOM - Firaxis Q&A

[immortalfrieza]

Nah, confirmation bias.

OK, I fired it up and actually wrote my % to hit vs hit and miss. Overall it does seem to come out about right, I'm hitting roughly the shots I should be hitting. However of note is the distribution of the hits, including a 6 miss spree. 25% - miss, 45% - miss, 65% - miss, 45% - miss, 65% - miss, 45% - miss. 0.75*0.55*0.35*0.55*0.35*0.55 = 1.5%. That sequence should occur 15 times out of 1,000 and yet it feels more likely. I recall sequences of missing all four shots 2 turns running, with chances around 50%. Which neatly sums up the problem - it's not that the statistics are wrong, it's that limiting the game to 4 soldiers with only a single shot each makes for a TINY sample size given that the original game gave me 14 soldiers, each of which could potentially be spraying out 6 shots each. In the original if I miss 8 times in a row I move on to the next soldier. In XCOM if I miss 8 in a row my squad gets wiped out. This is also compounded by the problem that misses generally do very little. I can sometimes hit and destroy the cover, but I can't aim a low hit chance shot into the middle of 3 aliens and get hits on the one I wasn't aiming for.

So, yes - my feeling was confirmation bias but IMO it is still flawed game design.

There's a trope for games that tend to do things like this, naturally, several of them:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheComputerIsACheatingBastard

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RandomNumberGod

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FinaglesLaw

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UselessUsefulSpell

 

[Bindal]

Firstly, if your only using rookies, they will ALL be panicking once you lose 4 or 5 guys. Secondly, a higher ranked soldier isn't better, but he prevents people from panicking and since he's been in more battles, usually is a good enough shot to equate 3 or 4 rookies. He also is worth giving armour too, so theres that as well.

And when he dies, everyone is likely to panic.
And accuracy doesn't really matter, you barely hit anything even with an aimed shot due accuracy in this game being "how much the base firing arc of a weapon goes off", and said arc is pretty wide anyway.
Finally, shots take a percentage of TU and that percentage NEVER changes. So a maxed out character can shoot three autoshots, but so can a rookie.

So, yes, Rookie Zerkrush is the most effective way of play.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

I think apart from what everyone here has commented on, i think i would like a variety of levels. In the original and sequel you had desert and snow, and in the sequel, underwater and boats/ships. I think it would be nice to have a sequel to xcom2012 that is a combination of both original games.

An as an addition, maybe add teleporting similar to stargate. So when you question aliens or search ufos, you can get codes to travel to a variety of other areas. Like other alien bases in the universe, meet new aliens they may help you if you help them. Maybe the snakemen planet.....if you fail the mission then they become sided with the enemy, if you help them maybe you get new tech or new locations to visit or even a snakeman team mate to control? Teleport to other alien ufos - maybe ones that are different and gives you a chance of new weapons and armour etc.

I think the best thing about this series is the sense of what you can add and the sense of scope you add is limitless.

 

[Rack]

I'm probably about as annoyed as anyone about the "Pick one of these 3 missions" baked into the Xcom strategy layer but realistically they aren't going to dig all that up in an expansion. Hopefully they will make a sequel that bakes limited mission launches into the design and opens up the potential for things like building additional sub-bases but just slapping them onto Enemy Within isn't really going to be practicable.

This is a different spin on the PC of course where it's a reasonably cheap expansion, compared to the consoles where it's effectively a full sequel.

 

[Bindal]

I played the originals, and base attacks added nothing but plot holes to the franchise. Multiple bases were useless unless they were airfields or radar stacks. Which the new one covers.

You forgot Laser Cannon Factory to print some extra money.

 

[The_Darkness]

RE: The "Pick 1 of 3 missions" thing...

I like it. From a gameplay perspective.

It introduces an early race-against-time factor. You need to get satellites in the air ASAP to prevent abductions, and keep the panic levels under control - because as long as those triple missions are happening, panic levels are going to rise.
But getting satellites in the air (which prevents abductions in the respective country) requires a fairly severe investment, which means you have to balance this against getting armour for the troops, better weapons, etc. It lends a sense of urgency to the early game - and I like that. Having my back up against the wall is part of what makes this XCOM.

And because I like it, I can headcanon the "Just one skyranger" thing:
A VTOL aircraft that can deliver a fast response team anywhere in the world in a matter of hours would be ridiculously expensive. I don't mind XCOM only having just one. To be honest, you don't see anything else like the Skyranger until you get Firestorms - and by the time that you are mass-producing Firestorms, you don't need multiple Skyrangers because you almost certainly have satellites everywhere.

As for other stuff:

Base defence... I'd like to see it. Defending your interceptor-bases from attack could work well, and getting to fight through the main base would be interesting, given the potential to hold fights inside the laboratories and workshops that you built during the game. But I'm not complaining if Firaxis decide to focus on other cool stuff.

Firaxis is right that the plot kinda falls apart in the late game - there's very little motivation to attack the temple ship, and it still doesn't make sense to me why using the Ethereal Device allows us to attack it. Furthermore the final mission itself is rather disappointing. I'm hoping Firaxis does something about that sooner or later.

FIX THE TELEPORT BUG!!! Seriously, I'm not touching Ironman mode until I can be sure that Sectopods won't suddenly appear in the middle of my squad, flanking everyone. On a similar note, fighting everyone but the Commander in the first room of the alien base wasn't fun either.

And.. seriously? I'm on X360. Why are they charging me to basically buy XCOM:EU again just to play the expansion? Couldn't they have put it as DLC on Xbox Live? Or sold it as a standalone, requires-XCOM:EU-to-play, expansion pack like DA:Awakening?

 

[Bindal]

And.. seriously? I'm on X360. Why are they charging me to basically buy XCOM:EU again just to play the expansion? Couldn't they have put it as DLC on Xbox Live? Or sold it as a standalone, requires-XCOM:EU-to-play, expansion pack like DA:Awakening?

They would have if they could, but apparently, the size of the expansion pack is way too large to be allowed as actual DLC (which it would be treated as).

 

[The_Darkness]

And.. seriously? I'm on X360. Why are they charging me to basically buy XCOM:EU again just to play the expansion? Couldn't they have put it as DLC on Xbox Live? Or sold it as a standalone, requires-XCOM:EU-to-play, expansion pack like DA:Awakening?

They would have if they could, but apparently, the size of the expansion pack is way too large to be allowed as actual DLC (which it would be treated as).

But there are ways to work around that. See the ME3 Citadel DLC, for example, which was also larger than the Xbox Live DLC size limit. (However, I do realise that 'Enemy Within's extras are probably even bigger than Citadel.) Alternatively, put the expansion on a separate, install-to-hard-drive disc that I can buy separately. Just don't make me buy stuff that I already have...

 

[Bindal]

And.. seriously? I'm on X360. Why are they charging me to basically buy XCOM:EU again just to play the expansion? Couldn't they have put it as DLC on Xbox Live? Or sold it as a standalone, requires-XCOM:EU-to-play, expansion pack like DA:Awakening?

They would have if they could, but apparently, the size of the expansion pack is way too large to be allowed as actual DLC (which it would be treated as).

But there are ways to work around that. See the ME3 Citadel DLC, for example, which was also larger than the Xbox Live DLC size limit. (However, I do realise that 'Enemy Within's extras are probably even bigger than Citadel.) Alternatively, put the expansion on a separate, install-to-hard-drive disc that I can buy separately. Just don't make me buy stuff that I already have...

You also seem to ignore that with Enemy Within, you can't continue your old saves. So, what if you want? Or what if you want to play without the addon? With your way, you either had to completely uninstall it and install it again later (sounds VERY convinient. Except NOT AT ALL!) or you just make it impossible to play without expansion from then on (again, not an option)

 

[The_Darkness]

You also seem to ignore that with Enemy Within, you can't continue your old saves. So, what if you want? Or what if you want to play without the addon? With your way, you either had to completely uninstall it and install it again later (sounds VERY convinient. Except NOT AT ALL!) or you just make it impossible to play without expansion from then on (again, not an option)

I'm not ignoring it, I'm assuming that a tick-box in the options menu could take care of it, with the game defaulting to Enemy Unknown if you load an old save. It's not like the Enemy Unknown code and mechanics are being overwritten by Enemy Within; they're still there, and it shouldn't be too hard to tell the console to just ignore the extra content.

The overall problem here is that Enemy Within forces me into a dilemma. I don't believe an expansion pack is worth the price of a full game. I'd be willing to pay £15 for it (the current price, on Amazon.co.uk, for the PC expansion), but I'm less keen to pay £25 (the current price for the X360 version). I probably will spring for it, especially if Enemy Within has fixed the teleporting aliens problem, but the larger principle... bothers me. Even if it does only boil down to a £10 difference.

 

[Bindal]

Then next time don't buy it on a console?

And no, it wouldn't be as easy as a simple checkbox. Even on PC, Enemy Unknown is going to be treated as a seperate game so far that you have to launch it seperately if you want to play without Enemy Within.

 

[Rhedd]

Seriously, I don't think anyone gave a shit about the xcom story of all things.
That thing was flat as cardboard. It was all about the challenge, the gameplay.
I would be content if the next xcom had no story at all but deep gameplay on multiple levels.
They barely scratched the surface in enemy unknown in that regard.

Still better than the story of the original, where the Aliens invaded because and the gameplay was most effective with "ROOKIE ZERKRUSH!"

No idea what people are on about with that. If you threw rookies at them, you ended up with less elites, reduced morale for everyone and massive recruitment bills. The only time it was useful is if you all equiped them with stun rods in order to capture aliens. Even then, it required a lot of tactics because at medium to long range, it didn't matter how much rookies you had, they were going to be slaughtered if you tried charging them.

Nope, always works. Morale is pretty much a non-issue as maybe two or three guys panic, out of 14. Money is not an issue thanks to your near-infinite money created by Laser Cannons you're constantly going to produce. And elites aren't a problem because they weren't that much more useful than Rookies, either as they deal the same damage, can shoot exactly as often and also die just as easily.

In fact, it's the only way I ever play and it is incredible successful. I've even seen an LP, where the guy not only did nothing BUT that, basically - he also had only one base and placed it in the worst possible location (south pole). Still, he managed to nearly win and lost solely due the fact that his "only one base at southpole"-tactic caused him to be a bit slow on the capturing. (And the fact that he was unable to consider using Stun Launchers in a base so he could try capturing a commander)

I did a playthrough of the original using rookie rush: it worked, but it wasn't my chosen strategy. For me, however, the possibility of tactics like the rookie meat-shield don't detract from the original; they're exactly why it's the better game, at least in terms of gameplay ownership and replay value.

In the original you could devise your own tactics and use them accordingly, but in Xcom2012 I've found myself using essentially the same strategy every time I play. I shuffle my 4-6 man team around the map in a single group and when I encounter enemies I have a standoff firefight. I rarely flank or rush enemies because there's a good chance of "activating" more groups of enemies. And I never split into teams, because a 2-3 man group simply isn't capable of handling most situations, especially with the 2 action point limit and without the options of aiming/burst firing. The original just gave so many more options on how to handle any given situation - including Rookie Rush.

And, yeah, manufacturing laser cannons, or anything else for that matter, could break the latter half of the game, but again it was a tactic to be discovered. Most people were on their second to third playthrough by the time they figured it out and really exploited production. At that point, more power to them.

If Firaxis wanted multiple bases, but also wanted to dissuade people from exploiting production they could have easily made changes such as: narrowed profit margins; putting in place a fluctuating market so that there's always the risk of your current batch becoming worthless; limited materials; or simply supply and demand which would see prices drop the more you sell of an item. Heck, I always thought it'd be cool if the weapons you sell on the black market came back to bite you in the ass somehow, i.e. they end up in the hands of terrorist organisations (Exalt?).

Original Xcom isn't perfect, but I would have preferred Firaxis put the time into rectifying its problems rather than just cut the features whole hog. My opinion, anyway.

 

[Master_Fubar23]

Snip.

Try playing on classic instead of easy.
regular guns don't work past month 1-2. If you don't have lasers by the first terror mission you are screwed.

How about try to do some research before talking out of your ass and insulting someone please. I have my steam profile linked to my escapist account so you can check my achievements and see that I passed the game on classic mode, not easy. You?re only screwed by the first terror mission if you quite honestly suck. I had no problems passing it with no laser weapons. Heck, I only bothered to get a laser sniper rifle when it became available.

And in every xcom its been very explicit that huge militaries couldn't do anything. In fact, XCOM was never a huge military because a 1 on 1 fight is stupid.

XCOM only puts the best of the best on finding a weak spot in the alien war machine:
every. single. time.

You?re right it wasn?t a huge military but when XCOM can only field 4-6 men/women at a time of the worlds ?best of the best?, that?s just a disgrace. Over 7 billion people on the planet and out of all the governments it only takes 10 soldiers (only lost 4 soldiers in my play through) to end the enemy threat? Bullshit.

XCOM 1: destroy the cloning labs in cydonia by destroying the master brain.

XCOM 2: locate the downed mother ship and destroy those cloning labs by destroying the master brain.

Then the best of the best pulls a desperate zero dark thirty mission where you shoot the alien equivalent to bin laden and humanity is forever free.

Sure, and where do they do that? ON MARS!(in the original) Not on some ship hovering over the ocean that ANY modern jet can fly to.

That's it. All multiple sky rangers ever did was enforce the "regular militaries can do this fine" idea that huge numbers and tech beats an army of infinite power. The 1994 continuity went against its entire story by having a standing army work.

40-60 troops is hardly a standing army, actually its not a standing army at all, it?s one platoon (the amount of troops I used in the original). This also happens to be about .00025% of the entire world?s active army. So no it didn?t enforce that regular militaries could do it since you lost 90% of the soldiers you sent out with basic weapons. With laser tech the ratio got better and once the troops had armor it got slightly better. It?s not until you research plasma and power/flying armor tech that you start bring everyone home and sometimes not even then. Also the plot in the original X-Com shows that the aliens only sent scouts first, so basic soldiers would be able to fight them. They then start launching terror attacks as a distraction for them to build a base. Attacks get more frequent and harsher. The craft they send in are more powerful and mobile bases. Then it?s a race against time, you need to attack the home base on Mars before you get over run. A single nation can't do all the research and manufacturing needed while governing over a country. Lastly, the point that a standing army can?t fight the enemy effectively is due to international borders. If say the US sends a force to China to help/deal with the aliens and if something goes wrong then there could be a war between nations as well as aliens. Also, if individual nations became too powerful by having all the tech that could make other nations scared and attack said nation or said nation could become power hungry and attack the other nations of the world. This can?t happen with a small force of 60 soldiers or less that I used in the original X-Com.

Multiple bases were only radar or interceptor bases. That was their only purpose in the original. In fact, I beat the original game using only a single base.

I didn?t say anything about one base, I said one Sky Ranger. Though you are wrong, if that's how you wanted to play your game then that was your choice. My other bases were actual bases: radar, interceptors, factories, living quarters, AA, etc. but the main had two transport craft. So I could literally cover any part of the world if there were multiple attacks. Unlike the bullshit of the new XCOM where you pick one place out of three to save and give the middle finger to the other two. ?Sorry Australia and Russia I have like 14 guys here but I can only send 4 to cover Brazil. Peace out.? That is the worst thing possible in a game about fending off an alien invader and its completely retarded. You know why they did that? Because they were lazy and couldn?t come up with a way to make their game work with the rest of their bad decisions.

Having your ONLY base found OUT and attacked means you LOSE. There is no way you can recover from that. Why?

You lose that way if the player is incompetent and didn?t leave any soldiers to defend the base. Also only having one base for everything limits your ability to defend since you probably won?t have AA placements to fend off base attacks. And the saying, ?don?t place your eggs in one basket? is said for a reason.

Imagine your base is a small town in the outskirts, and lets see how your small town fares when the full force of every single military in the WORLD attack it at once.

Spoiler alert, you will die from the infinite amount of aliens coming down on you. base attacks were the worst thing in the original xcom in terms of actual story.

Spoiler alert, you must not have played the game for shit and no, base attacks weren't the worst thing and in fact added to the story. First of all, the aliens were only as infinite as you let them be since you could end the game within a year or two in game time. Secondly, the X-Com base was hidden and well-fortified underground. So it?s not like the aliens could fly overhead and carpet bomb the base like any other above ground base. Thirdly, if I was an alien attacking a planet and my main enemy was incompetent enough to only have one base, I sure as hell would commit all my forces to destroying that base, sending in wave after wave if I had to. Hence why you shouldn't just have one base. Multiple bases keeps the enemy guessing which one is the one that would hurt the most if lost and gives you an out to move personal/equipment to another location if the base cant be defended. Also see above where I mention you don?t have enough room for everything in one base. Just because you can do something doesn?t mean you should.

"aliens can attack your base, but no matter they will only stop at 10 aliens and no more even though they have infinite amounts of troops and supplies."

I played the originals, and base attacks added nothing but plot holes to the franchise. Multiple bases were useless unless they were airfields or radar stacks. Which the new one covers.

If you played the original game and did researched everything you would know the aliens don?t have an infinite amount of troops and supplies. They had to fly their supplies from Mars to Earth and abduct humans for protein material. So shoot down enough supply/clone ships, they get pissed, attack your base, and depending on how many AA defenses/troops you have in base determines if the attack succeeds or not. If the attack fails they can?t continually throw enemies at you, so they have to attack cities that are easy targets, lure your soldiers out of your base, then attack when it?s vulnerable. The new XCOM has so many plot holes it puts swiss cheese to shame. Not to mention the new XCom is just bad, almost Homefront level bad.many AA defenses you have determines if the attack succeeds or not.

 

[Bindal]

...

And I always find myself sending out a group of rookies, roaming the map in one group, with one or two scouts for other directions in the original. I don't even bother taking cover or anything, I just send them as far as possible every single time - quite the opposite to how I act in the new game.
Same for weapons: Laser Pistol, Laser Rifle, Heavy Plasma. That's all I research because why bother with the rest when those are the most effective ones? Laser Pistols do fine early on and you have to research them anyway, Laser Rifles are surperior to all ballistic weapons due the fact they have infinite ammo and by the time you can use Heavy Plasma, you probably gathered so much of them from alien-corpses, you don't need to build either the gun or the ammo.

...

And you're a prime-example what's most wrong about the original game. It's zealot-like fanbase, that try to justify their pointless hate against a good game solely because the game is different by making stuff up.
Just for the last point: No, the aliens in the original HAVE infinite resources. If you don't bother attacking Cydonia, they just send more and more UFOs to Earth simultaniously until you just can't keep up with it anymore, being basically the equivalent to a killscreen.
And it is never established, WHY they attack. Even if you beat them, that "Master Brain" talks some non-sense about "how the aliens created the humans" just to get blown up. Why begs the question why they INVADED then? There was no reason. Also, it's 1999 in-game. Heck, even by the release in 1994, the premise of the aliens being from Mars was silly and unbelivable. We send tons of things on that thing by then and even had the darn planet mapped out! Don't you think, that we would have NOTICED that there is a giant alien base on there? (So much for "Plotholes" - the original is nothing but that)

 

[Jburton9]

So in then 1994 edition, Aliens did not wait around, they were on the move. The screen went black, you had to Listen for clues, was that metal they were walking on, yes that was definitely a door opening nearby, etc You had to pay attention to the screen when it would blink on. When one of your troops had line of sight, the screen blinked on and you quickly tried to find land marks before it goes dark again. After that you take what you know and guesstimate where the baddies are now.

The black screen was the most annoying thing EVER in any turnbased game. Why the heck can't I still see the battlefield? There is NO good reason to.

Well because it is true line of sight, you only get to see where your troops are looking during - alien - movement phase. This places weight on line of fire and over watch as something to stay on top of. Unless you have some kind of drone overhead that is always looking down perfectly you will likely not see the aliens moving about. Even so, if you did manage to have a drone then they would shoot it down anyways : )

 

[The_Darkness]

Then next time don't buy it on a console?

And no, it wouldn't be as easy as a simple checkbox. Even on PC, Enemy Unknown is going to be treated as a seperate game so far that you have to launch it seperately if you want to play without Enemy Within.

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree here. I'm failing to see why the presence of an Enemy Within expansion DLC installed on an X360 would make it impossible to play the default version. As far as I'm concerned, it's a problem of implementation, nothing more.

And there are various reasons why I play on Xbox 360 as opposed to PC (and various games that I own - Dark Souls, Halo, Star Trek Legacy - where I'm aware that PC players got a raw deal when console players like myself didn't). Telling me I picked the wrong platform isn't exactly helpful.

I'll be a lot more understanding of this if it turns out that the PC download of Enemy Within is something like 10GB+. That's something I really wouldn't want sitting on my hard-drive, and something that would take ages to download, especially if it had to be broken up into pieces for Xbox Live. Since the game is going to be frequently switching between "Within" content and "Unknown" content, I'm well aware that an expansion-disc method will never work. You'd be changing discs every minute. So if the Enemy Within expansion really is large, then I'll accept that Firaxis made the best choice here.
So, for whatever it's worth, I apologise (to Firaxis) if I've been judging them a bit prematurely. And despite the (probably excessive) discussion about pricing on different platforms, I am definitely looking forward to playing Enemy Within.

 

[Master_Fubar23]

...

snip

...

And you're a prime-example what's most wrong about the original game. It's zealot-like fanbase, that try to justify their pointless hate against a good game solely because the game is different by making stuff up.
Just for the last point: No, the aliens in the original HAVE infinite resources. If you don't bother attacking Cydonia, they just send more and more UFOs to Earth simultaniously until you just can't keep up with it anymore, being basically the equivalent to a killscreen.

I think the prime-example of what's wrong with you is your inability to read. I said the aliens were as infinite as you let them be. So if you could learn to read beforehand that would be great. In the game the story/research stated the aliens did not have unless supplies and that they were hurt just as a normal army would be. Hit the supply lines and the war machine gets screwed. With gameplay on the other-hand, the aliens would attack endlessly but that is due to the limitations of a game being made almost 20 years ago. As such the aliens are only as infinite as you let them become as you can end the game as soon as you have the craft and suits to operate on Mars. Hence, aliens are only as infinite as you let them be.

And it is never established, WHY they attack. Even if you beat them, that "Master Brain" talks some non-sense about "how the aliens created the humans" just to get blown up. Why begs the question why they INVADED then? There was no reason. Also, it's 1999 in-game. Heck, even by the release in 1994, the premise of the aliens being from Mars was silly and unbelivable. We send tons of things on that thing by then and even had the darn planet mapped out! Don't you think, that we would have NOTICED that there is a giant alien base on there? (So much for "Plotholes" - the original is nothing but that)

Try getting to Mars and losing. The cut scene tells you exactly why they invaded. Also wow... your incompetence or naivety is astounding. IF there was life on Mars, do you really think any world government would inform mankind? The same mankind that has portions of is species that hates other humans for their skin color, what some believe/think, discriminate against the opposite sex, etc. The list goes on and on, so how can you even think for a second that a government would inform the general public of aliens. Aliens that are more advance than us and if who are on another planet, what would stop them from destroying every itch of the surface of Earth if some redneck decided it was "huntin" season for some greys that were on vacation. Also, coinciding with the plot of X-Com which was to keep the alien treat hidden from the public, NASA or whoever would not have let any of the public know if there was a base on Mars. Lastly, the enemy base wasn't out in the open on the surface of the planet. (so much for your "so-called" plot holes)