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

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

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.

Its basically your game already has all the dice roll results in a list that gets worked down for every action you or the aliens take that has chance involved, and its not moving your dudes on the map that counts, its having your other people do things that use up all the bad dice rolls on your list.

So you hit a spot in your seed where your dice basically rolled a bunch of 1's and you had to go through those 1's before you could hit a natural 20.

 

[DoPo]

So you hit a spot in your seed

I just want to clear up the terminology:

seed - it what initialises the state of the RNG. Most times, this would just be a number - how you get the number is a bit tricky[footnote]after all, if computers could do random numbers without RNGs, they wouldn't need an RNG[/footnote] but it's usually unpredictable enough.

sequence - it's the word you are looking for. The numbers that the RNG produces are known as a sequence or a random sequence. The sequence produced would depend on the seed - if you use the same seed twice, you would get the exact same sequence as a result.

 

[elvor0]

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.

Please no, those things are not mutually exclusive. Just because aliens exist in XCOM that does not negate soldiers inexplicably being able to shoot through walls and ignore line of sight. Fictional elements existing within a work does not mean EVERYTHING is game for whatever you want. Even a universe that has magic in it, still has to conform to regular logic and physics unless the magic is explicitly effecting that specific event, while applying to the rules the writer has written for magic within that universe.

Its basically "Superman can fly" vs "People don't figure out Clark Kent is Superman by virtue of having eyes".

 

[gmaverick019_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.

about 99% of the time this is when I save scum, otherwise I try to roll with the hits.

There was one time recently though where the enemies started off in absolute bullshit locations, and I hadn't even seen where the meld locations were yet. I had 2 muton elites and a mechtoid (first time seeing the elites, greatt....) spawn on top of this hill to the north side, and then the very next turn I had a berserker and 2 mutons be triggered west (not as big of a deal, wait for it...) AND THEN on the south side I had another mechtoid and 2 mutons trigger on my backside..

the RNG apparently hated me, because that was a perfect fucking trap, I was caught in the middle with nothing but a couple of trees that got blasted away the first turn, and I was a sitting duck at the beginning of the mission. I said fuck that and reloaded the mission, this time starting way off on the north side and picking off the groups one by one.

Besides that one time though I've pretty much stayed away from save scumming.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I can live with people getting hurt, but not dying. I save scum. There is no shame in it.

I think the one thing that pissed me off the most was that I had my Alpha team and my Beta team (they sub for when an Alpha is injured) all with Titan Armour and Plasma weaps, the rest of the roster is full with soldiers equipped with Titan Armour, laser weapons, scopes, med kits and grenades that befit their class. And on the mission where the aliens invade you HQ base, the only troops the game gives me besides my Alpha Team, are idiots with machine guns and flak jackets. Whatever happened to the dozen or so heavily armed troopers I have just filling up the roster?

Edit

Oh, and the enemies that can move, shoot, and then take an overwatch shot. That really grinds my gears, especially when their long range pistol shot kills a soldier. Quickload.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Please no, those things are not mutually exclusive. Just because aliens exist in XCOM that does not negate soldiers inexplicably being able to shoot through walls and ignore line of sight. Fictional elements existing within a work does not mean EVERYTHING is game for whatever you want. Even a universe that has magic in it, still has to conform to regular logic and physics unless the magic is explicitly effecting that specific event, while applying to the rules the writer has written for magic within that universe.

Its basically "Superman can fly" vs "People don't figure out Clark Kent is Superman by virtue of having eyes".

Plasma bolts passing through walls is not "inexplicable". It's the realm of science fiction. XCOM soldiers shooting ballistic weaponry "through walls" is a seldom-occurring visual bug.

The OP is complaining about an ALIEN shooting him through a wall/ceiling, and about needing to actually approach a beacon to set it off. Neither of these things should be beyond the reach of a reasonable suspension of disbelief. If you believe "magic" is required for either, I don't know how to help you. I was making an argument against expecting vigorous, grounded, gritty realism. Not "anything can happen, whee".

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.[/quote]

DoPo and Fieldy have explained it as best it can be explained. The random number generator pulls a result from 1-100. If you discover a moment in the sequence where it's generating a 1 (because a 99 shot misses) you can simply find another way to spend that one. Spend it on a shot to apply holo-targeting, or a flush shot. Waste it on a non-essential soldier taking a pistol shot (ammo is important!). If it's late in a turn and the activated pod is small enough, let the ALIENS have the 1% shot. Etc, etc. Through sufficient experimentation, the odds against hitting a sequence of numbers so low you can't make anything constructive happen is virtually nil.

Hence why save scumming trivializes the game. I would expect ANYONE could beat the game on ANY difficulty through sufficient scumming.

 

[Souplex]

I play XCOM with "Fire Emblem rules".
If anyone dies, the mission is a failure, and I have to restart from the very beginning.
I could never play a game with as many bugs as XCOM on Iron Man.
I don't know why everyone complains about Chrysalids, Berserkers, Mechtoids, and Sectopods. They never gave me much trouble. Maybe it's that since they don't use cover the chance to hit them is higher so it's less about luck and more about tactics. It was always the Thin Men who gave me trouble.

 

[DoPo]

If you discover a moment in the sequence where it's generating a 1 (because a 99 shot misses) you can simply find another way to spend that one. Spend it on a shot to apply holo-targeting, or a flush shot. Waste it on a non-essential soldier taking a pistol shot (ammo is important!). If it's late in a turn and the activated pod is small enough, let the ALIENS have the 1% shot. Etc, etc. Through sufficient experimentation, the odds against hitting a sequence of numbers so low you can't make anything constructive happen is virtually nil.

Yep. Exactly what I found when I was playing with it. You can also eat up the 1 if you have a soldier with 100% chance to hit - it wouldn't matter to them and I've handed off "bad rolls" to my snipers to still deal something constructive. Assaults also work great - get them close enough and they'll have 100% chance to hit with the shotgun.

It's really not that bad. It not only not "impossible" to save scum, it's exceptionally easy. Also, it's way better than "normal" save scumming since it's at least a process where you need a minimal thought - if you just save/reload until you get a crit on each shot then save/reload the enemy turn until all of them miss, then that's a process that requires you to just not be braindead and that's it.

 

[elvor0]

Please no, those things are not mutually exclusive. Just because aliens exist in XCOM that does not negate soldiers inexplicably being able to shoot through walls and ignore line of sight. Fictional elements existing within a work does not mean EVERYTHING is game for whatever you want. Even a universe that has magic in it, still has to conform to regular logic and physics unless the magic is explicitly effecting that specific event, while applying to the rules the writer has written for magic within that universe.

Its basically "Superman can fly" vs "People don't figure out Clark Kent is Superman by virtue of having eyes".

Plasma bolts passing through walls is not "inexplicable". It's the realm of science fiction. XCOM soldiers shooting ballistic weaponry "through walls" is a seldom-occurring visual bug.

The OP is complaining about an ALIEN shooting him through a wall/ceiling, and about needing to actually approach a beacon to set it off. Neither of these things should be beyond the reach of a reasonable suspension of disbelief. If you believe "magic" is required for either, I don't know how to help you. I was making an argument against expecting vigorous, grounded, gritty realism. Not "anything can happen, whee".

Plasma bolts themselves phasing through walls isn't inexplicable no, but LOS detection in XCOM is screwy as hell. There are many times when a unit has no line of site what soever yet is still able to fire a shot, which is what the OP also spoke about, not just the plasma gun. It's immersion shattering and infuriating to be shot through 4 layers of concrete with no LOS, the Aliens may have superior weaponry but they still use normal eyes to see, and it is still unrealistic for it to happen, regardless of the being doing it being a Sectoid. The beacon? Yeah, I've no idea why the OP is complaining about that.

You also didn't expand your stance properly, All you said was "It's got aliens in it so suspend your disbelief". Now that you've explained your point I see where you were coming from. Usually when people make the point you did that I quoted, its because they're making the "fictional elements exist, ergo anything can happen" argument.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I don't have too many canonical problems - meaning, the canon of my current playthrough - because I save-scum like my life depends on it. Reloading a save doesn't reset the RNG seed, but it does dial your events back to where randomness could conceivably roll in your favor.

The only way to entirely reset your RNG per soldier is to reload his or her weapon. Abusing the reload mechanic during lulls can be a life-saver, honestly. If a sniper fudges two shots she shouldn't have in any decent circumstances, reloading usually allows me to up my chances to get percentiles above 70% by a considerable level.

I also save-scum when a long-term building or development-related decision bites me in the ass hours later, so my experience of the campaign is a schizophrenic mess where the post-Gatecrasher debrief sometimes happens after I've built the first instance of the Shadow Chamber.

 

[Silent Protagonist]

The rule I used was to only save at the very beginning of the individual missions so that if I wanted to reload after something stupid happened I would have to start the mission completely over which would deter me and encourage me to roll with some of the punches, particularly on the longer missions. I thought this was a fair compromise between hardcore Iron Man and excessive save scumming.

Haven't picked up the new one yet but I look forward to getting back into Xcom. Might have to wait for some of the bugs to be ironed out and maybe for the price to come down a bit. From what I hear modding has some great support this time around so that should improve the game's lifespan considerably. Personally I think I would like a mod that moved the hit chances to the extremes, like anything above 50 would become 90-100 and anything below that would become 0-10.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

EW kind of made the difficulty wonky, I thought. If you played it on classic (or whatever the one right below 'impossible' was) the game was WAY too hard at the beginning, but then sort of teetered off and got reasonable, so I usually started at whatever was below classic, and then cranked it up to classic after the first terror mission.

But yeah, I never played Ironman, though I avoided save-scumming if at all possible. I avoided Ironman for a few reasons:
-On a few occasions, I would be telling my Soldier to move someplace, and for some reason the cursor would magically move a centimeter or so as I'm clicking. So now instead of putting my guy in high cover, he's standing in the open. No bueno.

-Panicking. Luckily X-Com 2 seemed to fix this, but I despised how in EW (and EU), panicking would often cause your guys to shoot each other. The problem I have with this is that it's not like in a conventional army battle, where realistically Soldiers might lose it and start shooting at their own Soldiers since they look similar, but how hard is it to just point your gun in the general direction of the Mutons, Chrysalids, and Cyberdisks and start blasting?

-Secotopds. I HATED what they did with Sectopods in EW, because for some strange reason they drastically increased their defense, which means that somehow this giant plodding tank creature is able to more easily dodge your shots than a 3 foot tall skittering Sectoid.

 

[DoPo]

The only way to entirely reset your RNG per soldier is to reload his or her weapon.

1. I don't think there is an RNG per soldier. From what I've seen, there is one RNG that the game draws the sequence from.
2. I don't believe reloading progresses the RNG sequence. At least when talking about EU/EW - it seems that in XCOM 2 there are more actions that, for some reason, move the sequence - moving a soldier to point C instead of point B can result in a different outcome of the shot, for example. I thin one time I saw the sequence change depending on just the way I targeted enemies (tab through until I get the one I want, as opposed to selecting directly). I still believe there is a single RNG that the game uses, though. I've not really done any sort of in-depth analysis, though - not in the same extent as I had in EW.

-Panicking. Luckily X-Com 2 seemed to fix this, but I despised how in EW (and EU), panicking would often cause your guys to shoot each other.

Word of warning - a panicked ranger with Bladestorm would attack allies that pass by.

-Secotopds. I HATED what they did with Sectopods in EW, because for some strange reason they drastically increased their defense, which means that somehow this giant plodding tank creature is able to more easily dodge your shots than a 3 foot tall skittering Sectoid.

I think this is a design/animation/engine limitation. Defence is supposed to convey that this unit is hard to damage. However, it doesn't seem that the game has any way of showing that aside from not hitting which is not the same thing as the concept of defence - for Sectopods, Defence should mean that the shot hits but glances off ineffectively. Since the game doesn't have any way of showing this, they've gone with the "dodge" animation. XCOM 2 still has the same problem, however, it remedies it by not trying to do that. Enemies who are hard to damage, have armour, ones who can avoid a blow have dodge which gives them a chance to halve the damage received[footnote]yet, amazingly, they seem to be able to "dodge" an explosion when it's caused by the grenade on their belt being exploded by a psi operative...[/footnote]. Defence still exists as a stat but it's kept low in most occasions, so it's not like hulking giant enemies nimbly sidestep. The Gatekeepers are the only ones with a big-ish Defence stat who are also big-ish themselves, however, in their case, at least, one could argue it's psi defence that allows them to redirect shots or influence soldiers or something to justify it.

 

[KaraFang]

I just keep going. I like the iron man mode to force my "wtf" into "wtf should I do" lol.That's how it is with those kinds of games, I must have restarted completely 10 times before I actually beat it. It's probably worse with the procedural levels in xcom 2. There is no shame in reloading though, play it how you want.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

-Secotopds. I HATED what they did with Sectopods in EW, because for some strange reason they drastically increased their defense, which means that somehow this giant plodding tank creature is able to more easily dodge your shots than a 3 foot tall skittering Sectoid.

I think this is a design/animation/engine limitation. Defence is supposed to convey that this unit is hard to damage. However, it doesn't seem that the game has any way of showing that aside from not hitting which is not the same thing as the concept of defence - for Sectopods, Defence should mean that the shot hits but glances off ineffectively. Since the game doesn't have any way of showing this, they've gone with the "dodge" animation. XCOM 2 still has the same problem, however, it remedies it by not trying to do that. Enemies who are hard to damage, have armour, ones who can avoid a blow have dodge which gives them a chance to halve the damage received[footnote]yet, amazingly, they seem to be able to "dodge" an explosion when it's caused by the grenade on their belt being exploded by a psi operative...[/footnote]. Defence still exists as a stat but it's kept low in most occasions, so it's not like hulking giant enemies nimbly sidestep. The Gatekeepers are the only ones with a big-ish Defence stat who are also big-ish themselves, however, in their case, at least, one could argue it's psi defence that allows them to redirect shots or influence soldiers or something to justify it.

I know, I sort of figured this since EW didn't really have "armor" per se (high armor just meant more and more health bars), and the developers probably didn't want to give the Sectopod 40 health bars that took up 2/3rds of the screen.

Still, it just looked ridiculous when my guys would make what should have been an easy shot at this massive tank thing, and it would somehow "juke" out of the way.

 

[Yopaz]

The way I play it I save once at the beginning of the mission. If it goes south I will reload to the start, but I do not save during the mission. I also save before accepting a mission as I sometimes screw up the loadout of my units after they've been wounded and put out of action. I actually played it earlier today... was wondering why my sniper suddenly sucked. He was using the default sniper rifle on a late game mission.

As others have said, play it your way, the game is supposed to be fun so don't impose rules on yourself that make you frustrated.

 

[DoPo]

I think this is a design/animation/engine limitation. Defence is supposed to convey that this unit is hard to damage. However, it doesn't seem that the game has any way of showing that aside from not hitting which is not the same thing as the concept of defence - for Sectopods, Defence should mean that the shot hits but glances off ineffectively. Since the game doesn't have any way of showing this, they've gone with the "dodge" animation. XCOM 2 still has the same problem, however, it remedies it by not trying to do that. Enemies who are hard to damage, have armour, ones who can avoid a blow have dodge which gives them a chance to halve the damage received[footnote]yet, amazingly, they seem to be able to "dodge" an explosion when it's caused by the grenade on their belt being exploded by a psi operative...[/footnote]. Defence still exists as a stat but it's kept low in most occasions, so it's not like hulking giant enemies nimbly sidestep. The Gatekeepers are the only ones with a big-ish Defence stat who are also big-ish themselves, however, in their case, at least, one could argue it's psi defence that allows them to redirect shots or influence soldiers or something to justify it.

If the defense stat is meant to convey extra armor absorbing damage, then why not just give the Sectopod more actual armor so that it actually absorbs more damage? That's actually a stat now.

Yes, but armour wasn't in EW. Heavy armours for XCOM soldiers just added a bunch more health and that's it. Hence why I said it was a design/engine limitation - the developers clearly didn't plan on this feature being needed, hence the game didn't actually include the concept. You can't use something that doesn't exist.

Moreover, there was sort of an "armour" feature but it was more frustrating rather than an interesting mechanic - Sectopods would only receive half damage from everything. With the additional toys in EW, that ended up not enough to keep them alive, hence why they added the buff to defence. Again - design and engine limitations at play.

In XCOM 2, there are way more interesting ways of handling these situations than just making enemies giant balls of health and dodging. They can have armour, which mitigates damage, but can be bypassed by some abilities or stripped off with some attacks. Mechanical units in particular also have some extra vulnerabilities you could use against them like the Haywire ability or the bluescreen ammo. It's quite more interesting to deal with them now that you have a wider variety of toys to play with. Is your hacking specialist off? Well, perhaps a psi operative could stasis the sectopod for a round to allow you to regroup. Or you can EMP grenade them to disable their weapons. While a threat the sectopods are more manageable now and don't need the "MOAR HEALTH! MOAR DEFENCE" treatment.

 

[Emanuele Ciriachi]

I LOVE this game, and I beat it on Impossible Ironman - it's actually much more accessible than one might think.
Some mechanics may be counter-intuitive, but once you learn the rules it's just a matter of applying the right tactics... except the first two missions. The first two missions will be an absolute slugfest of trial and error.

Having said that, I still reload misclicks.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

I save scummed once while playing enemy unknown, after I hid half my squad behind a car only to have it blow up like it was painted with jet fuel
I felt like there should have been a memo about that or something