Video Games

[Zinegata]

Yeah, I mostly meant the convenience stuff. I fucking loathe the 'pods' structure for alien groups, ESPECIALLY that free move to cover. Aliens surprise you? Welp, somebody's gonna die. You surprise the aliens? They instantly get to redeploy to meet you. It's only in XCOM2, with the half-ass 'concealment' mechanic, that you can actually surprise the xenos and waste them, and you can do that all of ONCE per mission. And even then, you don't get any sort of 'ambush' or 'surprise' bonus, so even if you set up the ambush the way you're supposed to (set up all but one squad member in overwatch, use the last one to take a deliberate shot to start the party, watch the aliens scatter into all those overwatch shots), half the fucking time, all of your stormtroopers MISS. Even with all the time in the world to set up their shots. You basically never actually get to feel like you have well trained troops, because they fuck up piss-simple ambushes.

Pods are gamey but hardly unfair. If they spot you on their turn they get a free deploy to cover but cannot open fire. If you spot them on your turn they get a free deploy to cover but have to wait until their turn to shoot.

So spotting them during your turn is fine so long as you have actions ready to shoot them. Them spotting you on the aliens turn is even better since they cannot fire, so you essentially get to shoot at them with all your actions on your turn.

Its gamey and a bit counter intuitive, but its not unfair. Indeed the alternatives are spreading out aliens so much that the fights are mostly meaningless attrition - as was the case in old xcom - or a giant lemming train of attackers that will result in a pile of dead aliens or an overrun team as in Jagged Alliance 2.

Ranger concealment and long ranged scanners also allow you to plan out pod activations; as in making them deploy in cover towards a detached soldier but exposing them to flanking by your squad.

[Kaelik]

So spotting them during your turn is fine so long as you have actions ready to shoot them.

The problem is that this is stupid and makes class choices weird. For example, Phantom Rangers actually can't take overwatch shots on a deploying pod. Specialists always get their overwatches, but sharpshooters have to sit still for a turn to get the not shit overwatch shots, meanwhile anyone with AoE is just told to go fuck themselves. Also Psions don't want to overwatch shot because they want to use abilities, so they sort of get hosed, but their abilities are just so much better they are fine.

That's weird.

[PhoneLobster]

The problem with pods is the reasons they exist.

Reason 1) Not having to program Alien AI. Which is unfortunate because having alien AI would be really fucking nice to have.

Reason 2) Game Balance Made EZ. See, the XCOM game designers... don't like X-Com. I mean what? You can take between 1 and 14 soldiers on a mission and during that mission you might outnumber aliens 14 to 1 or be outnumbered 8 to 1 or whatever in any given turn based on who is in contact with who? HOW BALANCE? WUT DO? Oh I know, design it like pulling Mobs in an MMO instead then it's simple you have a fixed (mmo sized) party of 4-6 player controlled characters. You come into contact with a fixed size group of fixed power aliens (easily) balanced to be about exactly 1 turns worth of challenge for your entire (very fixed) number of player controlled characters. Rinse and repeat and if you ever meet two pods at once you aren't playing the game as intended and FUCK YOU.

Reason 3) A complete lack of respect for the very concept of turn based strategy. The entire concept and the balance around it relies on not actually taking turns The aliens take no turns until you see them, but then they cheat and jump in with a half turn right away to make sure that they meet the minimum flat balance point speed hump they are designed for. But then if you want to you know, win, you follow the first and second rules of XCOM, rule 1: Never Activate A Second Pod before you kill the first one, rule 2: Kill the pod you just activated before it gets to act ever. So the aliens generally don't get real turns either because you managed your pod triggering carefully and killed them all before they get real actions and if they do you are basically fucked.

The entire optimal strategy of the game is to manage pod activation such that you always have the resources to wipe a pod immediately on contact. The incredibly rapid attrition from EVER letting aliens actually act pretty much insures this.

This means that basically every encounter in XCOM 1 and 2 goes "keep entire squad bunched up, if you don't trigger a pod on your half moves make sure you don't trigger one at all that turn, when you do trigger one blow it's cover with a grenade and kill them all before they act, REPEAT".

That's what I do and I have never exceeded those annoying mission timers yet. Hell I've only ever even finished up on the last turn of the timer twice. You know why that is? Because that's how the game has been designed to be played and it is shit game play. The original X-Com was better than that by accident.

[DSMatticus]

Observation: if someone uses the word fair or unfair to describe a videogame mechanic, 90% of the time they've said nothing of any value whatsoever.

First off, in the context of PvE games describing something as fair or unfair is not an interesting or meaningful statement. PvE games are almost never symmetric. Fuck, even before we begin discussing substantive combat mechanics you have to remember that the player is expected to win dozens of missions in order to complete the game while even one loss can be catastrophic-reload-or-lose territory. Even the mission objectives themselves are asymmetric, with the player having to do random shit like protect civilians and capture aliens and so on and so on. It's not fair, it shouldn't be fair, and often can't be fair to begin with.

Second, it's really obviously not fair. When you engage the enemy, the enemy gets to interrupt your actions with a defensive action of their own. When the enemy engages you, you do not get to interrupt their actions with a defensive action of your own. It is literally not fair. As above, whether or not it's fair is meaningless, but insofar as the word fair means anything at all this mechanic is not it.

Third, it's fucking lame. It means your positioning is ultimately kind of fucking meaningless except insofar as you learn to cheese the system/AI, because when you find the enemy they're just going to reposition themselves anyway. A big part of the combat is actually just a big fucking sham meant to make you feel like you're doing something, but a big chunk of the work you put in is going to be immediately invalidated as soon as the actual engagement starts. That's cheap and lame and boring, which is a far more important consideration than whether or not it's "fair."

[Zinegata]

The problem with pods is the reasons they exist.

Reason 1) Not having to program Alien AI. Which is unfortunate because having alien AI would be really fucking nice to have.

And old Xcom is better? It was just individual aliens moving around and shooting or reacting. Jagged Alliance 2 lemming'd everyone towards you and made the enemy turns last 5 mins, and ended with the enemy team dying to your fire zone or enough of them survive and overrun your team.

The reality is that coding a good game AI isn't going to make the game better. Indeed if it was really good it will just make people realize they are actually pretty shitty commanders.

Reason 2) Game Balance Made EZ. See, the XCOM game designers... don't like X-Com. I mean what? You can take between 1 and 14 soldiers on a mission and during that mission you might outnumber aliens 14 to 1 or be outnumbered 8 to 1 or whatever in any given turn based on who is in contact with who? HOW BALANCE? WUT DO?

Thats not a balance issue. The issue is that most old xcom missions ended up as games of "look for the lone sniper" which is really boring.

Reason 3) A complete lack of respect for the very concept of turn based strategy.

This is like the most meaningless complaint ever. Strategy is literally about understanding and exploiting the system. Rage ranting that a game doesnt have strategy based on the rule set is again conflation of your (probably almost non existent) strategy skills.

The actual "issue" with pods is that they represent a point of assymetry in the rule set. The aliens don't play by the same rules. The thing is games do that all the fucking time and many are made better for it. This is doubly true withh fundamentally single player experiences like Xcom.

And the harsh reality is that pods are necessary otherwise the human player is screwed. Even the best Impossible players of Xcom 1 give up if thy end up activating 3 or more pods, because the 2 actions per soldier hard limit pretty much ensures that the human player is doomed when they have 12 actions spread among 6 soldiers total versus 24 actions spread among 12 aliens.

Indeed there are many ACTUAL turn based games where enemy troops aren't podded. Again look at Jagged Alliance 2, and in that case they turned off a massive early game counterattack because the humans just kept getting overrun. They turned it on again in the 1.13 mod and those battles rapidly devolve into hoping that the enemy kindly arrives in groups of only 5 at a time - the actual number a squad can reasonably deal with - instead of outright throwing 50 guys which just results in an inevitable wipe; which is essentially podding.

Worse, you keep pretending that old xcom isnt even worse in this regard. Aliens have ZERO coordination in old xcom. You will be facing them in 1 or 2s for the most part. It is rare you will even see 4 in one room. Against whom you can deploy even MORE soldiers. If you're pretending that a series of 4v4 fights in new Xcom has no strategy then you mus be utterly delusional to think old Xcom required more strategy when fights there were generally a series of 8 vs. 1 fights in your favor.

[Zinegata]

Second, it's really obviously not fair. When you engage the enemy, the enemy gets to interrupt your actions with a defensive action of their own. When the enemy engages you, you do not get to interrupt their actions with a defensive action of your own. It is literally not fair. As above, whether or not it's fair is meaningless, but insofar as the word fair means anything at all this mechanic is not it.

Except that the rule is in fact an advantage for the player, contrary to most newbie complaints it is an advantage for the aliens. It is not as you claim a meaningless discussion of fairness, but rather many players fundamentally misunderstanding that the "free alien cover" move in fact is WORSE for them and doesn't actually get X-com soldiers killed unless the commander is being very careless.

Again: Being forced to lose a turn of shooting in exchange for being able to jump into cover is worse for the aliens. They are in cover, but if the opponent has actions left then they cannot respond and must simply eat all the enemy fire. Indeed, if the pod was triggered in the alien turn, the human player is guaranteed to be able to respond to the pod with all of his actions.

No experienced Xcom player will trade an entire turn's worth of shooting for getting into cover. You'll instead have players complaining that their soldiers are cowardly wimps hiding in cover when they should be out shooting.

Third, it's fucking lame. It means your positioning is ultimately kind of fucking meaningless except insofar as you learn to cheese the system/AI, because when you find the enemy they're just going to reposition themselves anyway. A big part of the combat is actually just a big fucking sham meant to make you feel like you're doing something, but a big chunk of the work you put in is going to be immediately invalidated as soon as the actual engagement starts. That's cheap and lame and boring, which is a far more important consideration than whether or not it's "fair."

Not really; as with most rules it merely requires an adjustment of tactics.

All it really means is that you should avoid triggering pods when most of your troopers have no actions left; so that you can re-position in response to their duck-and-cover. Which is pretty much what the Impossible-level players do anyway.

Being able to surprise pods just turns the game into a Spot check roll; because then most of the battles would just be out-of-concealment ambush. It would be little different from Jagged Alliance 2 players who abuse Night Ops where 3 guys solo an entire base with 20 soldiers. You might feel like a badass, but from a gameplay perspective it's even more boring since you're just ganking small groups one after another with no real risk.

Really, pods get a lot of hate but there has never been a solution that was ever proposed that could fix it. Most suggestions will just result in the fruition of Lanchester's Law and gamers whining they are being wiped out every single mission by a horde of enemies; when in reality as little as a 25% advantage in numbers on the alien side will often already result in a heavy loss at best or an outright massacre at worst. It's no different from a DM who doesn't divide encounters per room and instead forces the heroes to fight all the defenders of the dungeon in one room.

[Zinegata]

The problem is that this is stupid and makes class choices weird.

It's gamey and at times counter-intuitive. This is different from stupid.

For example, Phantom Rangers actually can't take overwatch shots on a deploying pod.

The premise of a Phantom Ranger is that they want to remain hidden even after the rest of the squad is revealed. If you want your Ranger to shoot, tell her to shoot. Overwatches have a poorer chance of hitting anyway despite being taken against enemies without cover. Indeed...

Specialists always get their overwatches, but sharpshooters have to sit still for a turn to get the not shit overwatch shots, meanwhile anyone with AoE is just told to go fuck themselves.

Overwatches are a distinctly suboptimal option in the rule set. The rule set in fact is very biased towards shots taken as an action - not as a reaction - for both sides.

Ironically, overwatch is still comparatively buffed compared to the old Xcom, where the chance of triggering overwatch at all was random.

Finally, the biggest mistake most newbies make - which is partly an interface issue - is that they move a soldier, make them do an action, before moving to the next one. In the absence of a sighted enemy, the action is often "overwatch".

You should not do this. Move a soldier, then select your next soldier by pressing Tab and move him/her without doing any action with your first soldier. Keep doing this until everyone has moved. If they all don't encounter an enemy, then make them all overwatch.

If you do find an alien sometime during your turn, you wouldn't be able to shoot at them using overwatch but you can use their abilities - e.g. have the Grenadier fire a grenade at the nearest alien to wound him and wipe out his cover to give your other soldiers a better chance of finishing it. Or use your Specialist's second action to move into a flanking position - he can't shoot but he gets a free overwatch on the alien in a flanking position. Or have the Ranger activate Run & Gun to get a virtual move-and-shoot.

This is also why there's a tendency for experienced players to give their snipers squad sight and just park them on high ground - snipers should not be on overwatch duty ever because the accuracy penalties for a moving target and being within a minimum range will cause it to miss anyway (Cone of Fire is awesome for ambushes though). Ideal sniper doctrine is taking active shots from high ground (accuracy bonus, buffed by perks) around one sector away (no accuracy penalties); as these have a reasonable chance of hitting and killing even enemies in cover.

[PhoneLobster]

Yep. Zinegata drank some pretty strong Kool-Aid.

Everything wrong is right everything up is down, the shittest mechanics in tactical turn based games are really the best and everyone who disagrees is just a backwards philistine that does not appreciate an UNQUESTIONABLY GREAT GAME!

[Zinegata]

Yep. Zinegata drank some pretty strong Kool-Aid.

Everything wrong is right everything up is down, the shittest mechanics in tactical turn based games are really the best and everyone who disagrees is just a backwards philistine that does not appreciate and UNQUESTIONABLY GREAT GAME!

So I'm guessing your entire life is still an utter failure given that in your, what, decade or so in the Den you are still unable to actually address any actual examples or arguments and instead think childish name-calling makes up for your massive ignorance and stupidity?

It doesn't take any talent to call someone stupid because you feel like it. That you keep thinking otherwise is why you've failed at everything in life and you're stuck trying to argue your insipid arguments in a board most X-com players don't care about. Anywhere else they'd be laughing at you.

[Kaelik]

It's really hard for me to take seriously someone giving tactical advice in this game. It's so fucking easy I'm genuinely confused. So far across two playthroughs, both of which have all the regions unlocked, and at least 8 Colonels, and a bunch of psi ops, I've lost... Like 5 soldiers.

In both of them I have a bunch of Superior weapon upgrades and Personal sims scattered around the troops.

[DSMatticus]

Except that the rule is in fact an advantage for the player, contrary to most newbie complaints it is an advantage for the aliens.

Being forced to lose a turn of shooting in exchange for being able to jump into cover is worse for the aliens. No experienced Xcom player will trade an entire turn's worth of shooting for getting into cover. You'll instead have players complaining that their soldiers are cowardly wimps hiding in cover when they should be out shooting.

First off, where the fuck do you think the goalposts are? I don't actually care if the activation system becomes an advantage once you learn to game it (i.e. only ever activate enemies on the start of your turn so you get full first strike). Not only do I not care, it is not even remotely relevant. You said it was a fair mechanic, and I told you it wasn't, and now you're straight up admitting it's a mechanic that favors the player. Your "rebuttal" is actually just a straight up concession. Yes, you're right that I'm right; it's not fair.

Not really; as with most rules it merely requires an adjustment of tactics.

This is the most meaningless thing anyone has ever said about anything ever.

XCom 3: There is a button you can push that instantly wins the mission.

DSM: "It's fucking lame."

Zinegata: "Not really; as with most rules it merely requires an adjustment of tactics. Push the button."

I get that you apparently like new XCom's optimal gameplay (how?), and while that is ultimately a matter of taste (or lack thereof), dear god everything you've said in defense of it is fucking vapid. You are not making any attempt to discuss the merits of the mechanic, you're just describing it (in response to someone who already explained exactly the same thing and then bitched about it, no less, so I'm a little unsure what you think you're contributing). If I described food poisoning to you, you wouldn't call it an endorsement.

[MGuy]

Zin I'm gonna be honest... I don't get how your arguments are arguments. Most of it is telling everyone that old Xcom is worse and that regular players aren't good strategists so games that force you to learn to be a better strategist or lose are bad 'cause ???.

[Zinegata]

Zin I'm gonna be honest... I don't get how your arguments are arguments. Most of it is telling everyone that old Xcom is worse and that regular players aren't good strategists so games that force you to learn to be a better strategist or lose are bad 'cause ???.

Because people, especially PL, aren't describing old X-com accurately.

There are people like PL who think Xcom is a great strategy game. They are wrong. It was a great game, but in terms of strategy it's actually really easy once you figure it out after 1 or 2 playthroughs. It's easier than the current-gen Xcom.

Take for instance the "pods" issue - which PL is ranting about. PL claims the pods are bad because instead of fighting all of the aliens on the map, you instead "trigger" a small group of aliens at a time. So battles in New X-com are mainly 4 vs 4 affairs - one squad for the good guys, one squad for the bad guys.

The problem is that it has always been that way. The difference back in old Xcom is that there wasn't an animation that accompanied the "discovery" of a pod. Instead, old X-com simply separated the aliens into such diluted groups that you will usually encounter only 1 or 2 of them at a time. So instead of 4 vs 4 fights, most old Xcom fights were actually 8 Xcom troopers versus 1 or 2 aliens. Each individual alien acted on its own without any coordination from the others.

In both cases this makes a whole lot of fucking sense because DMs don't throw an entire dungeon worth of defenders at the characters in one go. This why dungeons are divided into rooms. Both new and old Xcom in fact implemented mechanics to do this.

Unfortunately the solutions PL proposes - based on his fantasy remembering of old Xcom - will have him toss out the individual dungeon rooms and have the PC fight all the defenders in one go. Jagged Alliance 2 1.13 already tried that. It is not fun and in most cases will just demonstrate why Lanchester's Law is a real thing - the side with more guns simply wins. The pods in fact exist to protect the player from facing actual impossible odds every mission.

And in any case, what's more tactically challenging - a 4 vs 4 fight, or an 8 vs 2 one?

There is a reason why PL didn't respond with anything but slurs. He knows that most of the even the old time X-com players have actually come to accept and understand why the changes were made and how they aren't actually such a big change; or how it actually tightened the game up for the better.

[Zinegata]

First off, where the fuck do you think the goalposts are? I don't actually care if the activation system becomes an advantage once you learn to game it (i.e. only ever activate enemies on the start of your turn so you get full first strike). Not only do I not care, it is not even remotely relevant. You said it was a fair mechanic, and I told you it wasn't, and now you're straight up admitting it's a mechanic that favors the player. Your "rebuttal" is actually just a straight up concession. Yes, you're right that I'm right; it's not fair.

You never bothered to read the post I was responding to, were you? You just saw the words "fair" and pounced for TGDMB upvotes. For reference:

I fucking loathe the 'pods' structure for alien groups, ESPECIALLY that free move to cover. Aliens surprise you? Welp, somebody's gonna die. You surprise the aliens? They instantly get to redeploy to meet you.

No, the alien "free cover" mechanic does not work that way. It in fact hobbles the aliens. The aliens can't even shoot at you when they "surprise" you by moving towards you, so how is anyone going to even die?

So how did it feel masturbating all over the place?

[Zinegata]

It's really hard for me to take seriously someone giving tactical advice in this game. It's so fucking easy I'm genuinely confused. So far across two playthroughs, both of which have all the regions unlocked, and at least 8 Colonels, and a bunch of psi ops, I've lost... Like 5 soldiers.

In both of them I have a bunch of Superior weapon upgrades and Personal sims scattered around the troops.

Oh, it's pretty easy right until the highest difficulty; my total death rate is 3 including 2 from the tutorial. Hence the constant references to Impossible-level players.

You also don't have to be coy about why you don't want to take the advice. But it is rather obvious you were Move-Overwatching like almost everyone inevitably does in the beginning. It's not something to feel bad about; as I said the interface tends to encourage you in that direction.

[PhoneLobster]

There are people like PL who think Xcom is a great strategy game. They are wrong. It was a great game, but in terms of strategy it's actually really easy once you figure it out after 1 or 2 playthroughs. It's easier than the current-gen Xcom.

Where do you even get this stuff. X-Com was a great tactical game. The strategy section was relatively minimal but had some options, and importantly, better than XCOM but that isn't exactly hard because XCOM's approach to strategy was "Fuck That With A Stick".

Not to mention what the hell? Difficulty and quality aren't the same thing what the hell is wrong with you?

So battles in New X-com are mainly 4 vs 4 affairs - one squad for the good guys, one squad for the bad guys.

The problem is that it has always been that way. The difference back in old Xcom is that there wasn't an animation that accompanied the "discovery" of a pod. Instead, old X-com simply separated the aliens into such diluted groups that you will usually encounter only 1 or 2 of them at a time. So instead of 4 vs 4 fights, most old Xcom fights were actually 8 Xcom troopers versus 1 or 2 aliens.

What the... basically none of that is remotely true. I mean like NONE of it. The conclusions OR your rather insane factual claims, it just plain isn't. A lot of what you've been saying about the original games has been pretty gross misrepresentation, but at this point it's just fucking lies. I know "nuh ah" isn't much of an argument, but you are flat out pulling shit out of your ass here.

In fact it's so fuck out there at this point I'm pretty much convinced your knowledge of the originals basically amounts to second hand internet shit talk by the modern era's fan boys in some dark sticky corner of the internet.

There is a reason why PL didn't respond with anything but slurs.

Woah there. I put plenty of content out there about why the modern XCOM games have serious problems. Just because I don't choose to respond to your worst crazy bullshit by doing anything other than pointing out it is crazy bullshit doesn't let you get off saying that's ALL I've said on the matter. Not to mention YOUR primary response to all criticism of what you initially and without any support claimed was an "UNQUESTIONABLY GREAT GAME" has amounted to "everything in the past was shit and every criticism of this thing in the present is wild eyed nostalgia".

[Zinegata]

Where do you even get this stuff. X-Com was a great tactical game. The strategy section was relatively minimal but had some options, and importantly, better than XCOM but that isn't exactly hard because XCOM's approach to strategy was "Fuck That With A Stick".

Old Xcom has the impression of a great tactical game, but actually sucked when you understood its mechanics.

First, again, the aliens are generally spread out. If you keep your squad together you will be ganking aliens 8 vs 1/2 most of the time. The only reason why fights often end up unfair is because a lot of impatient players split up their teams to cover more of the map to find the aliens faster, so instead of 8 vs 1/2 ganks it became 4 vs 1/2. The thing is there are no time limits on any X-com mission. You in fact should not split up and methodically search as a group.

Even then, weapons had no maximum range in Xcom. This means that a soldier with a pistol can shoot at an alien spotted on the other side of the map. Not that you would ever use pistols, because the math pretty much dictates that everyone should use auto-fire even from long range because there were no range penalties to hit.

The aliens moreover will not come to each other's aid. If they do it was an RNG accident. The only deliberate movement by the aliens is if you manage to enter and capture the UFO - in which case the aliens, without any coordination, will happily march one at a time towards the UFO to be massacred by your team.

You will suffer casualties in old Xcom primarily by alien reaction fire - a random roll when your Xcom soldier moves into LoS of an alien soldier. It's more pronounced at night because the aliens have superior view range at night (but you can pretty much dictate most missions to be daytime), and it's even more pronounced among newbie players who panic and try to hide their troops into cover rather than shooting the alien spotter.

Why? Because the alien cheats and can "remember" the position of a spotted Xcom trooper for several turns after spotting, even when the Xcom trooper hides out of LOS. This is how aliens can seemingly keep shooting at Xcom even when they're not within LoS. That's why optimal old Xcom doctrine was to stay together and FIRE EVERYTHING at the first thing they spot until it's dead - killing an alien breaks the "cheat" LOS; and to operate in the daytime so the aliens don't have a spotting advantage.

What the... basically none of that is remotely true.

The only time aliens bunch up is inside a UFO or in specific rooms in base missions. The vast majority of the time you will encounter them in singles or in pairs. That's the reality that you keep denying and why pretty much the entire X-com community has already left you behind.

Indeed, here's a google search result featuring a whole ton of old Xcom screen shots:

https://www.google.com.ph/search?q=xcom ... fo+defense

None of them show a screenshot with multiple aliens outside of a UFO. The maximum number of aliens on screen is this one:

http://www.abandonwaredos.com/public/ab ... /ufo-5.jpg

Which has 3 guys inside the small UFO; or the minimum size of a pod in the new Xcom. And this is clearly an impatient player because he tried to rush the UFO with just 2 guys when the SkyRanger can carry a dozen guys.

Indeed, a lot of the great stories in old X-com were born because people played it so suboptimally. If those two guys took the UFO on their own it would be a tale to tell. But from a tactical perspective it was the wrong move. And if they had done it the correct way tactically, it would have been a boring wait to bring up all members of the squad before just burying those two Sectoids with a dozen troopers.

(And that assumes you don't just use lots of high explosive to crack open the UFO).

Woah there. I put plenty of content out there about why the modern XCOM games have serious problems.

No, you complained about pods without realizing they're the equivalent of dungeon rooms. Ranting a lot of nonsense does not change the fact that they remain nonsense.

Pods were not necessary in the old Xcom because the aliens were too spread out and uncoordinated that you were, in effect, fighting small groups at any given time; often just 1s or 2s.

Without pods you would be fighting 12 aliens with 6 troopers all the time in new Xcom. And these aliens would actually have way more coordination than in old Xcom so your team would end up dead.

[PhoneLobster]

I was right wasn't I these are second hand canned group think arguments you got from modern XCOM fan boys aren't they.

[Zinegata]

I was right wasn't I these are second hand canned group think arguments you got from modern XCOM fan boys aren't they.

Nope, this is you being stuck in the 90s. X-com has moved on. Design has moved on.

And you are still misremembering what old Xcom actually was:

http://www.abandonwaredos.com/public/ab ... /ufo-5.jpg

You rarely encountered aliens in more than 1s and 2s, and if you do it's almost always just in the UFO where your full squad of 12 should easily bum rush them.

Seriously, this is the kind of force Xcom can field right at the start numbers-wise (they do have a plasma gun):

http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/ori ... 7-ufo2.gif

So how those 3 guys hiding in the UFO should pose a great challenge really owes more to people making up overly elaborate stories for their old Xcom playthroughs.

[PhoneLobster]

I found screen shots of 4 and 5 aliens. And that's just on a single screen. In a game with comparatively long sight and attack ranges and aliens that would leave rooms and move around, roam further AND could shoot you if they found you on their turn, or even just make mind control attacks without direct LoS, limiting your insane argument to one (low resolution no zoom) screen worth is a bullshit measure. One that someone who had played the game would not make.

But the screen shots thing is stupid. This game is OLD this game is "before posting screenshots to the internet" old. It is ALSO a game which had a serious bug with game difficulty where in most (idiots like you with an overrated idea of their own skills and how easy the game was) who played and won at the harder difficulties never even knew that the difficult setting was broken and they were ALL actually easy difficulty. There probably isn't a harder difficulty screen shot out there, or even if you notice the repetition and the massive preponderance of "14 starting guys with no upgrades in a skyranger, literally the easiest screen shot to make without actually playing" indeed ANY particularly representative range of screen shots at all.

I suspect still you never played this game. You certainly never played this game on the actual harder difficulties. I can fucking assure you even an intact scout, the second smallest UFO in the game, could frequently contain more than 4 aliens.

But really the whole thing is stupid. You keep trying to make the argument about how "bad" a game which was incredible for its very distant and backward era was as a giant deflection of how bad a game that has no fucking excuse because it was made fucking yesterday is.

[Zinegata]

I found screen shots of 4 and 5 aliens.

Oh yes you claim to have found a handful of examples so you are now saved from the embarrassment of Google - you know a website that can't care about this little spat - showing zero examples with more than 3 on any given screen by a completely objective search query of "Xcom UFO Defense".

Meanwhile, here's a handy chart showing the number of actual aliens on an average UFO:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... clnk&gl=ph

At the highest difficult level the UFO I showed will feature a grand total of... six to nine crewmen. Assuming that none are killed in the crash.

So how exactly are you regularly fighting groups of 5+ aliens on maps much bigger than the new Xcom? At least 2 or 3 of them are in the UFO, so you're actually just talking about 4-7 aliens spread across the entire map!

For additional reference, the capacity of the start-of-game SkyRanger is 14. But yeah sure all the old Xcom players with big mouths like you are badasses who endured such terrible conditions in the early game... despite having a nearly 2:1 advantage in manpower in the worst case scenario even in the earliest missions.

Meanwhile excepting the earliest missions the new Xcom has around 6+ aliens to throw at your initial squad size of 4. At higher difficulties, it's more like 12+ aliens versus your 4. They have an actual numbers advantage in the new Xcom instead of the other way around.

~~~

Oh, and for reference:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... clnk&gl=ph

Here's the battleship (end-game ship) crew numbers - which maxes at 28 for the highest difficulty.

Trouble is, the thing also shows the actual map of the battleship - and a quick count will reveal it has at least twelve different distinct rooms and corridors. That's an average of just over 2 aliens per room; assuming maxed crew count, no aliens killed in the crash, and all the aliens are inside.

But yeah sure squad vs squad combat with 5+ troops per side was totally the norm in old Xcom. Instead of squad vs aliens in 1s or 2s that everyone without rose-tinted glasses actually remembers.

In a game with comparatively long sight and attack ranges

So not only are you a poser, you're a poser so bloody ignorant that you don't even know some of the basic mechanics of the game. Hence the tone of utter desperation in trying to pretend I never played the game.

The game does not have "comparatively long sight and attack ranges". It has infinite attack range and a very limited sight range. This is again why you should just murder anything you spot. Spot determines what can be shot. If the alien is dead it cannot spot.

This is again why I pointed out night spotting and the cheat sighting. You are so fucking clueless you don't even know basic mechanics that can be found on free guides on Gamefaqs and are obviously one of those paste-eaters who thought their X-com playthrough was a demonstration of their own strategic brilliance when in reality it was just a series of incompetent plays that would be chuckled at by actual old Xcom experts.

and aliens that would leave rooms and move around, roam further AND could shoot you if they found you on their turn, or even just make mind control attacks without direct LoS, limiting your insane to one (low resolution no zoom) screen worth is a bullshit measure. One that someone who had played the game would not make.

And how are any of these features that make for a tactical game? Again the aliens are moving on their own without coordination. Opening doors is not a feature when they do it randomly and just drop clues that you should just level that farm house with rockets. The CPU randomly moving stuff around like a retard is not a challenge; it's an RNG that punishes people for tripping over Trap cards.

Old Xcom was in fact not squad vs squad combat. The reality is instead this: You are just sweeping the area for random snipers.

It was novel way back in the 90s, and it was memorable when your trooper died to an unspotted alien. But it's 20-fucking-16 already.

Indeed, the aliens moving around randomly is a big reason why players kept losing patience and kept splitting up their huge squads of 12+. The challenge isn't fighting the aliens. The challenge is finding the damn aliens so you can quickly kill them and finally end the mission. This is why the new Xcom cut down on so much of the bullshit micromanagement of the old game that talentless hacks like you kept mistaking for strategic brilliance.

Hunting down a couple of spread-out snipers with a 2x manpower advantage in your favor is not tactical brilliance. It's busywork when you finally get past the fucking 90s and realize that it gets really boring to check out every copy-pasted barn after a while. And it gets intolerably boring when you reach the end game and are forced to do a dozen such missions every in-game month while waiting for the Avenger to finish.

[PhoneLobster]

Oh yes you claim to have found a handful of examples so you are now saved from the embarrassment of Google - you know a website that can't care about this little spat - showing zero examples with more than 3 on any given screen by a completely objective search query of "Xcom UFO Defense".

I was waiting for your attempt to discredit my claims on that one.
First one is four aliens in the second smallest scout in the game.
https://crpgbook.wordpress.com/review-i ... o-defense/

Only four? Well YOU are the idiot moments ago proclaiming it was at most fucking three.

Oh look and further down the screen on the same fucking page a single shot with 4 aliens and 4 alien corpses in one shot. Are they chrysalids? So what, your stupid arbitrary metric you pulled out of your ass that means next to nothing is broken with an 8 alien scene.

That was one page, that was virtually the first page I came across after your fail at google fu. I didn't even try hard that was seriously "X-com 4 aliens" search material.

But oh hey when YOU look up the fucking numbers...

At the highest difficult level the UFO I showed will feature a grand total of... six to nine crewmen. Assuming that none are killed in the crash.

You actually fucking manage to proclaim as if it proves you right the fucking figures I quoted to to you you fucking idiot. You remember? Like 5 fucking seconds ago in the post you were fucking replying to you moron, back when I talked about the second smallest UFO in the game often having more than 4 aliens in it. As in more than your "only ever three at once" bullshit. Or hell back in the mists of time when I mentioned a potential 8 aliens?

6 to fucking 9. Your own number. Is not you winning this argument. It is you conceding you were wrong. That is the second smallest UFO in the game. That UFO is one room in size As many as ALL the aliens CAN be (rarely) found inside their UFOs. As many as more than half are FREQUENTLY found inside LANDED ufos that have NO CASUALTIES despite your attempt to talk it down with "survive the crash" bullshit.

You are wrong. Your own words are an admission you are wrong. Shut the fuck up before you make more of a fool of yourself. I mean it's still irrelevant to your failed attempts to defend a poor modern game, but it's still you being fucking wrong.

(oh and while we are here. Yes. in the originals there were less live aliens in crashes than in landings. NOT I note a thing in XCOM where there are the same numbers of the same aliens in crashes and landings. Yep.)

But yeah sure all the old Xcom players with big mouths like you are badasses who endured such terrible conditions in the early game... despite having a nearly 2:1 advantage in manpower in the worst case scenario even in the earliest missions.

YOU are the one running your mouth of about "truly understanding tactics/games" (while being wildly wrong on basic things like numbers of enemies) and how difficulty is the sole arbiter of why your favored modern variant of the game is better.

I have never made any such claim. The old X-Com games were more fun and more interesting, and for their eras were also relatively impressive from a sheer technical and creative standpoint (unlike the modern one).

But unlike you, clearly, with the language you have been using. I do not mistake winning a game, or even doing so on a hard (and hard to obtain thanks to errors and rare patch files) difficulty in any way makes me a bad ass.

I tell you what though it was fucking FUN. And it was fun that you could play attrition war, sustain casualties, win a tactical battle anyway, and not have to restart the fucking campaign like you might well want to do in modern XCOM because there 4 deaths can be enough of a hit to your six man team of veterans that it isn't worth fucking going on.

There may be players out there who mistook the feeling it gave them of being a bad ass with being a bad ass. But in the end the important thing here is that it was a game, and unlike the new one it felt pretty bad ass when it let you throw 14 men at your early UFOs and drag back 2 wounded guys and a disassembled scout worth of alien loot and corpses.

You meanwhile just continue to have major issues dealing with mistaking difficulty for a good game, or an enjoyment of a game that permitted casualties and attrition with being somehow a bad player or a blow hard like yourself.

They have an actual numbers advantage in the new Xcom instead of the other way around.

Well, actually not really because of the whole Pod thing. Which you know YOU just told us was the proper way to play and a good thing equivalent to how BRILLIANT completely discrete dungeon rooms suddenly are. I mean fuck man you just came off the back of "Pods are awesome because they break the enemies up into bite sized chunks"... and now you are turning around and attempting a contradictory "but actually when I blow hard about how much better I and the modern game are because we are so hardcore difficult SUDDENLY it's not about bite sized pods it's about the whole map encounters I just called stupid!"

Do you not see how fucking stupid the double standards you inexplicable fanatacism is bending you into are?

Here's the battleship (end-game ship) crew numbers - which maxes at 28 for the highest difficulty.

Trouble is, the thing also shows the actual map of the battleship - and a quick count will reveal it has at least twelve different distinct rooms and corridors.

OH FOR FUCKS SAKE MAN.

You JUST NOW IGNORED YOUR OWN POD ARGUMENT AND SITED WHOLE OF MAP ENEMY NUMBERS TO MEASURE YOUR EPEEN.

Now suddenly it's back to breaking them up into rooms, not really a major issue with the mobile aliens in the original, and something YOU fucking just now were calling the direct equivalent of pods.

Stop having it both ways you dumb fuck.

The game does not have "comparatively long sight and attack ranges". It has infinite attack range and a very limited sight range. This is again why you should just murder anything you spot. Spot determines what can be shot. If the alien is dead it cannot spot.

Pro tip. Original X-Com did not have infinite sized maps.

This is again why I pointed out night spotting and the cheat sighting.

Oh for. Cheat sighting really? I wasn't even going to bother, but that's just you know, SOME sort of primitive group AI going on there. Not perfect but, lets remember better than the NONE that the modern game has.

Aliens share sight and information? Like you do? and remember stuff, and do interesting things? HOW FUCKING DARE THEY! A game released in 1994 used an imperfect AI short cut that produced a really appropriately feeling game experience FUCK THOSE GUYS!

What the hell is wrong with you?

You are so fucking clueless you don't even know basic

No, just unlike you I DO NOT make the mistake of thinking pedantically describing various details is in and of itself an argument. I especially don't make that mistake when say, claiming that 1 room UFOs with anywhere up to 6-9 aliens inside them proves my claim that you never encounter more than 3 aliens at once.

Again the aliens are moving on their own without coordination.

Oh for fucks sake you JUST NOW described co-ordination and called it a "cheat" and here you are, mister fucking no short term memory claiming the aliens had no fucking co-ordination.

The CPU randomly moving stuff around like a retard is not a challenge; it's an RNG that punishes people for tripping over Trap cards.

Which game do you think you are even describing here. The new one or the old one? Because seriously. Do you just completely not understand the criticisms people are leveling at the new game made in an era of significantly more advanced game AI knowledge and desktop computer assets.

Hunting down a couple of spread-out snipers with a 2x manpower advantage in your favor is not tactical brilliance.

Again with your stupid blow hard tactical brilliance bullshit you are pulling, like your initial and now backed down from claims about alien numbers right out of your ass.

When you shot down a small UFO and knew there were going to be next to no aliens and you had a genuine advantage big enough to outweight the tech disparity and so on was an interesting and different encounter.

So fucking what if it was easy. It was also brief and also not the only fucking encounter in the game. It was a single low risk low cost, low time investment, low reward encounter that added diversity and enjoyment to the over all game play.

XCOM not being able to do that IS a deficiency.

And it gets intolerably boring when you reach the end game and are forced to do a dozen such missions every in-game month while waiting for the Avenger to finish.

Fairly sure you didn't have to actually do the crash sites if you didn't want to. But wait a second, what exact ground do you think you are standing on over repetative missions considering, lets again remember all this attacking a game from 1994 that you are doing is an attempt to defend a modern game that itself has some major issues with repetitive missions.

Ones which unlike the old game lack the sort of variety and diversity, like variable asymmetric advantage and disadvantage, you were, again, attacking just five fucking seconds ago.

I mean holy fuck man. Get your fucking story straight. Decide what you are even attacking or defending. Pick some numbers to defend and stick to them instead of openly admitting you were wrong but calling it fucking victory.

[Zinegata]

Phonelobster, you realize your picture of a mere 4 aliens has them all inside the UFO yes?

https://crpgbook.wordpress.com/review-i ... o-defense/

What I actually said earlier was the following:

The only time aliens bunch up is inside a UFO or in specific rooms in base missions. The vast majority of the time you will encounter them in singles or in pairs. That's the reality that you keep denying and why pretty much the entire X-com community has already left you behind.

Emphasis mine.

In short, your entire life is still a miserable failure and clinging to your fake achievements in old Xcom does not change that. Funnily, you don't even seem to realize having 4 aliens clumped like that is a blessing because that entire room can be "solved" by one grenade.

Oh, and you also ignored...

1) Maximum number of aliens in an old Xcom early mission was 9, versus Xcom squad size of 14.

2) In new Xcom the maximum number of aliens can reach 12+ in the highest difficulty level early game, as opposed to Xcom squad size of 4.

3) Maximum number of aliens in a UFO mission in old Xcom is 28, divided among a minimum of 12 rooms and corridors averaging only just over 2 aliens per room. That's right, in the end game you actually just saw an average of 2 aliens per room in the biggest and most well-manned alien ship.

I don't have to cite any further figures to a loser who thought his X-com plays made him a strategic genius. You aren't even a good old Xcom player and it shows. This is why you have to hide out in the Den instead of facing the music elsewhere.

Instead you're precisely the kind of asshole that makes the old Xcom players look bad to the kids who are playing an actual more challenging game where they are actually outnumbered 2:1 in most missions.

And it was fun that you could play attrition war, sustain casualties, win a tactical battle anyway, and not have to restart the fucking campaign like you might well want to do in modern XCOM because there 4 deaths can be enough of a hit to your six man team of veterans that it isn't worth fucking going on.

No, what was fun for you was your delusions - You deluded yourself into thinking you were a strategic genius for "managing" a make-believe secret organization which is why you allowed yourself to be drowned by its pointless busy work.

In reality you were a moron spending too much time on a game that could be completed in 2 turns by one soldier carrying a blaster bomb.

Truly skilled old Xcom players who understood the game competed to finish it in the shortest in-game time period possible and with zero casualties. Dragging out the war because you wanted to keep living in your fantasy world doesn't make you a strategic genius. That fact you suffered total party wipes just shows that you are incompetent, and that the game is kind enough to throw so many resources at you that you can recover. If you weren't such an ass about it we'd be polite to you and say "You just like to take your time".

But you didn't refrain from being an ass. You instead actively dissed the game based on your delusions and outright lies. And you wonder why Firaxis pretty much ignored dinosaurs like you when they knew that following your "advice" leads to Xenonauts - a more "faithful" remake that nobody is going to play because we don't live in the fucking 90s anymore and people wanted a truly playable tactics game instead of hide-and-seek with guns.

The new Xcom revived a genre for a reason. It's not a nostalgia cash-in as you cynically describe. It was successful because they knew that catering to YOUR nostalgia was fruitless to begin with; because the X-com of your imagination never existed to begin with.

[PhoneLobster]

Your "advice" leads to Xenonauts - a more "faithful" remake that nobody is going to play because we don't live in the fucking 90s anymore and people wanted a truly playable tactics game instead of hide-and-seek with guns.

I never called for a faithful remake. Just not a shit remake. Hell even just a remake with slightly less utter bullshit like the Pod mechanic in it. Because however much you try to put lipstick on that pig you are the only one who wants to make out with it.

You are arguing with someone you are imagining. And also with yourself regularly about alien numbers. Apparently.

Seriously your inside UFOs diversion attempt isn't working. You embarrassed the shit out of yourself with the "never more than 3 aliens at once... except for 6-9 aliens at once" shit. You don't get to live that down.

[Stahlseele]

i heard rumors about xenonauts 2 maybe coming 2017