Xcom - Enemy within... where do you draw the line as a player?

[KaraFang]

Evening all from the UK.

I recently bought the upgrade to Xcom = Enemy within.

Now, I normally play with the view that if I lose a soldier, then I keep going.

however...

I have noticed that Enemy Within on a few missions does things that are, frankly, physically impossible (for example, an alien with the basic blaster managing from the ground floor, to kill my sniper on the roof by firing through four floors of concrete + having no idea where she is).

So, I have taken to reloading when something is blatantly "Eh? in what physical realm is that possible?"

I also recently did a mission with chrysallids popping out of a whale carcas and was told to turn on the ships beacon... Which, considering I have trained soldiers, all wearing cams that transmit to Xcom base, essentually making any of their headsets beacons kinda pointless.

Let alone I came in a massively equipped plane, a quick jog back, that could provide me with any damn beacon I want.

But no... I had to send a soldier to certain death and fight a desperate retreat, despite being careful in my initial mission planning and actions.

THAT triggered a reload... to where I only lost one solider and I accepted that.

So, I ask other players, do you suck up blatant "what? how does THAT make sense?" or "Woah, yeah lets ignore physics here people" moments. Or do you reload like I do if the happening is just too ridiculous to accept.

(PS, I have currently lost four soldiers, and have barely started - so I do accept losses.)

 

[tippy2k2]

I play it on Iron Man mode.

Whether it is an act of God or my own stupidity; whatever gets everyone killed stays with everyone killed. Which super sucks when the game bugs out on me and kills someone in a way that shouldn't have happened (like the few times where a bad guy will shoot a soldier when the line of sight is not there).

They knew the risks when they were conscripted into tippy2k2's army!!!

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Plenty of people save scum in XCOM. There's no shame in it. For those unaccustomed to the game or tactical gaming in general it is often perceived as mercilessly difficult.

It's worth keeping in mind, however, that save scumming ultimately trivializes any difficulty, and it's worth learning to beat the game on its own terms. As to questions of dubious realism...it's a tactics game about alien invaders. The sequel features a snake woman with breasts. From the very first game in the 90's there's always been a sense of camp/fun in XCOM, which served as counterweight to the game's capricious brutality. I'd work on the ol' suspension of disbelief.

 

[KaraFang]

oh, often I do.... it's just sometimes, very slightly sometimes, I'm "WTF??" to the point I refuse and reload.

I keep having to remind myself that gaming is supposed to be fun... and while I like a challenge, I shouldn't let it overshadow fun.

 

[DoPo]

I also recently did a mission with chrysallids popping out of a whale carcas

Ah, Site Recon. I've got such fond memories of this mission. And by "fond" I mean that it totally fucked me sideways on my first three playthroughs.

But no... I had to send a soldier to certain death and fight a desperate retreat, despite being careful in my initial mission planning and actions.

Actually, once you get the logic of the mission, it's easy. Well, easy-ish. The absolute first time it shows up it's actually might be a bit early, probably quite early, but after that it enters the council mission pool and you may or may not get it near the beginning of the game, depending on how much the RNG hates you.

At any rate, the soldier you send forth can easily survive. The absolutely easiest way is to have a support soldier with Sprinter, so they'll be able to just high tail it out of there. The rest of the squad can provide cover in the beginning of the retreat.

There is also a strategy that's not immediately apparent, for you've been conditioned by XCOM to ignore it - you don't HAVE to take cover. In fact, you shouldn't be doing it - the only enemies that appear are the Chrysalids and zombies - both of which are melee and both of which are totally unaffected by cover. So you should be doing the maximum blue move and try to position it at the most advantageous place, disregarding cover and then acting.

Squadsight snipers can also provide support from the roof of the big building in the beginning (the one you start off facing) as they can see pretty much everything there.

So, I ask other players, do you suck up blatant "what? how does THAT make sense?" or "Woah, yeah lets ignore physics here people" moments. Or do you reload like I do if the happening is just too ridiculous to accept.

The first time I beat the game, I stopped playing Ironmant (I had been doing so until then) and tried to reload only if the mission went really bad (total wipe) because of my stupidity or if the game bugged. That's how I managed to beat it. And here is a warning - you'll get armours that have a grappling hook attached, so you can quickly climb buildings and such. This is really buggy - I lost a soldier to it once, which prompted me to drop Ironman and use saves. What happens is that you can use it to hook to a ledge and normally the soldier just immediately goes there, this takes a move action but it's fine - you can often traverse more than a single move action thanks to it. However, there is something like 10% chance of the soldier NOT going to where you pointed. Where they go appears to be random - they could grapple hook a completely different ledge and reel in the opposite direction. Bonus points if that activates a pod and you get wiped because of it. It sometimes just delivers them somewhere you didn't want or intend, or even could go. Other times, they'll do something completely broken, like grapple hook underground. That's how I lost my first soldier to the grappling hook. No, my sniper wasn't dead - she was just completely useless for the entire mission, since she couldn't move, she couldn't see anybody, nor could she shoot, nor could she do anything. And that happened on, like, turn 2 - I was down a soldier before I could even see any aliens. Which eventually caused my defeat. Since then I started saving every time before grapple hooking and reloading if it glitched.

That's a big reason for why I managed to finish the game. Another reason was that Site Recon didn't show up or at least it did very late in the game.

 

[Longview]

I platinumed Enemy Within....I must of used 300 different saves

 

[Zhukov]

I reload for misclicks. Like when I accidentally double-tap the grenade button instead of the overwatch button (because the game insists on moving the buttons around between soldiers. Whose fucking idea was that?) Or when the game get all finicky with multiple layers of elevation under a ceiling and my soldier ends up in the wrong place.

Sometimes when the line of sight mechanics screw me over. Whether or not a soldier will be able to see a certain enemy from a prospective position is often a guessing game. Thank god they added an indicator in the sequel (which, unbelievably enough, still sometimes gets it wrong. Apparently even the game itself can't reliably predict its arcane line of sight rules.)

Fun fact: you can effectively reload in an "iron man" game. The game only saves at the beginning of the players turn or when you quit the game. Alt-ctrl-delete, force quit, restart the game and you'll be back at the start of your turn.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

I reload for misclicks. Like when I accidentally double-tap the grenade button instead of the overwatch button (because the game insists on moving the buttons around between soldiers. Whose fucking idea was that?) Or when the game get all finicky with multiple layers of elevation under a ceiling and my soldier ends up in the wrong place.

Sometimes when the line of sight mechanics screw me over. Whether or not a soldier will be able to see a certain enemy from a prospective position is often a guessing game. Thank god they added an indicator in the sequel (which, unbelievably enough, still sometimes gets it wrong. Apparently even the game itself can't reliably predict its arcane line of sight rules.)

Fun fact: you can effectively reload in an "iron man" game. The game only saves at the beginning of the players turn or when you quit the game. Alt-ctrl-delete, force quit, restart the game and you'll be back at the start of your turn.

Don't even have to Ctrl+Alt+Del. Alt+Tab minimizes the game. I'm guilty of doing that before, mind you. Mostly on misclicks, but still.

 

[DoPo]

Thank god they added an indicator in the sequel (which, unbelievably enough, still sometimes gets it wrong. Apparently even the game itself can't reliably predict its arcane line of sight rules.)

I had a fun one just now - according to the game, if I relocated my soldier I wouldn't be able to see a berserker. I should have taken a screenshot, since I was going to move the soldier on the immediate next square. No obstacles between them, either. When I did move my soldier, there still was line of sight so not a big loss.

But there was another time. It was really bad - there was a group of chrysalids ahead of my squad and, quite predictably, I wanted to kill them before they reached me. thing is, according to the game, one of my soldiers did have line of sight if they ended inside their blue move. However, upon arriving there, it turns out there is a giant tree blocking the view. I'd have loved it if the game didn't lie to me then.

Another time it lied about enemy sight indicators. Either that or my soldier was struck with stupid mid-run because my concealed soldier could most definitely see which squares were watched, in the path preview he also most definitely didn't path through these squares but chose to walk just outside the area. However, upon executing the move, the enemies saw him. I'd have also loved it if that hadn't happened.

 

[JaKandDaxter]

Honestly, I play on the easiest difficulty if a choice is available. I don't care about having a big challenge for most games. And have gotten to a point where I just want to finish a game. Have fun and soak up the story, and move on to the next one. Time is precious, and I desire to finish games I like above all.

So for Enemy Unknown, I didn't want the additional work of replacing dead soldiers. So I quit and redid the battle if someone died. But given how X-COM 2 is, I may have to accept losing some soldiers along the way. Just also read injured soldiers have to sit out if you reverted to a previous save.

 

[freaper]

I try to restrict my save scumming to bug related deaths. If a soldier gets killed by anything other than a demonstrable bug, I keep the results of my actions.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

Don't worry, the sequel gets worse with it's reality-breaking powers when it comes to hitting and missing.

Spoiler: large picture

Generally I'm fine with that kind of thing, though it can get a bit ridiculous when your MEC trooper spins 90 degrees and fires off randomly, just so he can miss the 98% shot chance against a Chryssalid 2 squares away (note to self: never make Heavies into MEC troopers. Good god is their aim terrible). I'm running around with Power Armour using Plasma rail-guns and psionic powers, I can't really quibble about physics taking a smoko.

As for save-scumming, I've been kinda off and on with that in the first one. I've pretty much only done it whenever it's been a blatant 'fuck you' - like say, missing a 98% shot from 2 squares away - but if it's something like, a 60% chance to hit or somebody with high Will getting mind-controlled, I just roll with it.

Site Recon was a pain in the dick though. First time it showed up I barely had laser weapons, so I only got one soldier out of there. Second time it showed up I just... didn't go. Next time I get around to it I might not bring any heavies, just Snipers, Supports and Assaults.

...And maybe some Archangel armor.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

You lose the game long before the game over screen appears. If I find myself in a place where losing the soldiers would mean trying to fight sectopods with rookies I am definitly reloading rather than throwing those hours away. (Oh my god they mind controlled my colonel ranger and she killed everyone with her sword I couldnt stop her!)

Also misclicks.

It may not be hardcore enough but In my old age I care more about fun.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

Ok I'll just come out and say I generally have 1 or 2 soldiers who I deem my favorites, per playthrough. And I'll usually reload if one of them goes down for good. Other than that, I would only reload if I did something I didn't mean to. It just happens sometimes, and that's why I don't play Ironman.

Specifically to OP though, that whale carcass mission is a shit of a thing if you aren't prepared, or don't have laser weapons at least. I'd say damn near impossible. I also lost one soldier on the evac phase of that mission, never encountered anything that difficult up to that point, the 1st time round I pretty much game over'd there.

What's worth watching if you haven't yet is Zemalf's hardcore Ironman playthrough of that mission (and entire game), that man is a living Xcom genius, not losing a single country or soldier throughout. Really worth a look, though he does commentate it's thoughtful, careful planning not yelling shit into the mic.

 

[Broderick]

I generally draw the line when the game screws me in a statistically improbable manner. Like for example, 4 soldiers missing 85% shots, then getting crit killed in full cover, causing the rest of the squad to panic and essentially kill themselves. When stuff like that happens, I tend to say "fuck this, im reloading". I love the hell out of the games, but damn do they make me rage.

I recently had a point in xcom 2 where my grenadier missed a 90% shot against a sectoid, after which the sectoid proceeded to mind control my ranger. I moved my squad as far away from him as possible, but unfortunately the mind controlled ranger was still able to run up and melee kill the grenadier. Thankfully that was the only casualty of the mission, but damn did it feel a bit contrived.

 

[NeutralDrow]

Plenty of people save scum in XCOM. There's no shame in it.

That actually works? The one time I tried save scumming in Xcom, it was because my soldier missed a 75% chance to-hit with a shotgun, and his target was about to kill and reanimate a civilian...but every time I reloaded, he kept missing the shot, even when moving closer to a 99% chance. Only on the twelfth attempt, when I moved him to literally point-blank impossible-to-miss range did the shot actually hit.

I just assumed Xcom had some kind of feature where it saved the result of a roll, or something, to prevent scumming.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

That actually works? The one time I tried save scumming in Xcom, it was because my soldier missed a 75% chance to-hit with a shotgun, and his target was about to kill and reanimate a civilian...but every time I reloaded, he kept missing the shot, even when moving closer to a 99% chance. Only on the twelfth attempt, when I moved him to literally point-blank impossible-to-miss range did the shot actually hit.

I just assumed Xcom had some kind of feature where it saved the result of a roll, or something, to prevent scumming.

The random seed is fixed (although there's a second wave option to make it re-generate in EU/EW), but that doesn't mean you can't game it. As you discovered by moving your soldier until a shot DID hit. Stubborn players can groundhog day a turn for as long as it takes to get optimal results.

 

[NeutralDrow]

That actually works? The one time I tried save scumming in Xcom, it was because my soldier missed a 75% chance to-hit with a shotgun, and his target was about to kill and reanimate a civilian...but every time I reloaded, he kept missing the shot, even when moving closer to a 99% chance. Only on the twelfth attempt, when I moved him to literally point-blank impossible-to-miss range did the shot actually hit.

I just assumed Xcom had some kind of feature where it saved the result of a roll, or something, to prevent scumming.

The random seed is fixed (although there's a second wave option to make it re-generate in EU/EW), but that doesn't mean you can't game it. As you discovered by moving your soldier until a shot DID hit. Stubborn players can groundhog day a turn for as long as it takes to get optimal results.

Even then, it wasn't an optimal result, since it didn't work until I parked the soldier next to the alien (right in danger range), and made the shot literally an auto-hit. Since the last dozen had missed despite being anywhere from 75% to 99% chance of hit, I assumed it was impossible to actually game.

 

[Pseudonym]

Evening all from the UK.

I recently bought the upgrade to Xcom = Enemy within.

Now, I normally play with the view that if I lose a soldier, then I keep going.

however...

I have noticed that Enemy Within on a few missions does things that are, frankly, physically impossible (for example, an alien with the basic blaster managing from the ground floor, to kill my sniper on the roof by firing through four floors of concrete + having no idea where she is).

Ah, one of those moments. "NO. THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!"

So, I have taken to reloading when something is blatantly "Eh? in what physical realm is that possible?"

I also recently did a mission with chrysallids popping out of a whale carcas and was told to turn on the ships beacon... Which, considering I have trained soldiers, all wearing cams that transmit to Xcom base, essentually making any of their headsets beacons kinda pointless.

I only did that mission once or twice, as at some point I went back to EU without EW and now I'm playing XCOM2. However, what worked pretty flawlessly for me was sending guys with grappling hooks. They can get out quickly. I think a lost a single soldier once in that mission due to some critical hit early on and the other time all six soldiers survived. I also believe that there are pretty much only zombies and cryssalids in that mission so you can run without having to worry about cover too much whilst having your squadsight snipers provide support from out of range of the cryssalids. I thought the mission in month two where you have to take some guy with you whilst 15 thinman snipe all your best soldiers was far worse in EW.

Let alone I came in a massively equipped plane, a quick jog back, that could provide me with any damn beacon I want.

But no... I had to send a soldier to certain death and fight a desperate retreat, despite being careful in my initial mission planning and actions.

Well, XCOM isn't much of a storydriven game. There are many things that don't make sense, such as why we don't just have 20 skyrangers to drop in 150 soldiers spread over 5 different locations if need be. Or the fact that the XCOM project has to worry about having the funds to recruit itself some new rookies. Or the fact that these countries send their garbage tier soldiers to help me.

THAT triggered a reload... to where I only lost one solider and I accepted that.

So, I ask other players, do you suck up blatant "what? how does THAT make sense?" or "Woah, yeah lets ignore physics here people" moments. Or do you reload like I do if the happening is just too ridiculous to accept.

(PS, I have currently lost four soldiers, and have barely started - so I do accept losses.)

I play Ironman. I typically either don't savescum at all (self-imposed or by means of an ironman feature) or on rare occasions I safescum my way to victory.