T w e n t y S i d e d
The hangout is going up in the next few minutes. You’ll be able to see it at http://www.livestream.com/chocolatehammer once the stream is live.
The plan is: Josh will play X-Com in Classic (murder-hard) difficulty, and we’ll be naming our soldiers after people in the chat.
EDIT: Well, that was fun. Thanks everyone.
First mission:
McNutcase – Assault
Jokerman – Rookie
TJtheman5 – Heavy
Lovecrafter – Support
Second Mission:
McNutcase – KIA
Jokerman – Assault
Lovecrafter
Guyhere
Third Mission:
Jokerman
Guyhere – Sniper
TJtheman
Arthur Caldazar
Fourth Mission:
Jokerman – KIA
Lovecrafter – KIA
TJtheman – KIA
Arthur Caldazar – KIA
Bonus: Total party wipe!
Fifth Mission:
Guyhere
Doran DoranDoran – Assault
Irridium – KIA
Imposing Snail – Sniper
Sixth Mission: Terror mission
Mumakill – Heavy
Vipermagi – Support
Doran DoranDoran
Guyhere
Seventh Mission
Mumakill – KIA
Doran DoranDoran – KIA
Guyhere
Vipermagi
Eighth Mission: Abductions in Mexico
Lameduck – KIA
Guyhere
Vipermagi
Imposing Snail
Ninth Mission: Abductions in Canada
Deadpool – KIA
Saberdance – KIA
Vipermagi – KIA
Imposing Snail – KIA
Bonus: Total party wipe!
Final conclusion: Guyhere survived. Only him.
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Oh jeez Josh is playing sooo badly D:
Also when I see the Outsider in this im like ‘These readings seem impossible, this is a being of almost pure plot progression!’
This was sudden.
I should probably be ashamed and/or sad, but strangely I feel proud.
I got a sniper, so I’m pretty much a wargod now that I got corporal.
Woohoo! I’m in the game! And dead!
I got my 5 minutes of glory and then I got screwed royally by bad luck.
GG Xcom GG.
I died just as i was hitting my stride…
Gah. I’ve bought the special edition of XCOM, but I need to build a PC that can run it. But I can’t be bothered looking for parts and just play FTL on this crappy laptop. And if I can drag myself away from that I’ll play X-Com.
I was awesome. I threw the grenade that bought us another turn, and survived the exploding car.
And was then clipped while running to new cover.
Why did you run for new cover? :P exploded cars are better cover than unexploded ones (they can’t explode again!).
First time I have got to show up for one of these things for more then a few minutes and actually comment. Way too much fun. Do it again soon.
Will Josh be saving that safe file for future hangouts? Or will you guys most likely be playing something else? Would be awesome to see XCOM continued.
The current play through is pretty much doomed. They would probably have to restart.
So, if you look at that post, you’ll notice I was alive for 8 missions and attended 6 of them. The other two were total party wipes. This is because squadsight snipers are pretty much the best thing, and also because I got critically wounded at opportune times.
You are the smart man, you know how to take a bullet to live for tomorrow :)
Nonsense, it was because you were the bestest solider zat evar lifed.
Next playthrough, I am naming someone after you sir.
*salutes*
Just make sure it’s a sniper. I suck at heavy.
Most of my Snipers are female for some reason. It will be a rookie. Hopefully he turns out okay…
You think? I pretty much always go Snap Shot. Being able to move and shoot feels pretty great.
Squadsight is better later on, when a Sniper can actually aim. Sniper Rifle accuracy goes UP with distance, at least for a while. They can literally shoot across entire maps without any fear of reprisal.
The -20% accuracy from Snap Shot is BRUTAL. Makes it almost worthless…
I just feel that snapshot turns a sniper into a poor man’s assault. If I want to move and shoot, I bring an assault, or heavy or even support.
Gunslinger and a good pistol are almost as good as the penalised snap shot sniper weapon on the move. And sacrificing squadsight for the move and shoot ability hurts more than giving up damn good ground for the pistol boost.
I will name my next ranged character in Dungeons of Dredmor after you.
I salute your survival against all odds.
I now also feel compelled to buy the game. Damn you, Spoiler Warning!
At least I was somewhat effective before I kicked the can.
I made a pun so bad Jarenth said he would never listen to me again.
Also, Shamus said my name *squee!*
Could you unleash it on me too?
They were in a butcher shop, constantly on watch for any aliens that might pop out.
I said…
(â–ªâ–â–ª)(â–ªâ–â–ª)>┌■-â–
(┌■_■)
Looks like they’re on a steakout.
YEEEAAAAHHHHH!
(For our non-English-as-native-language readers, who may not get that, the pun is on the term
stakeout.)Watching Josh play is often painful as always… But still hysterical.
For anyone new to XCOM:
Labs are worthless. So are Scientists.
Engineers are amazing. They make all Facility Building and item manufacturing AND purchasing (i.e. Satellites, Generators, Laser guns) CHEAPER. Two of them side by side give you rebates (you get a percentage of money AND resources used back. 7% per Adjancency bonus).
Lifts are expensive, cost energy and have a monthly upkeep. Do make them unless you have to.
Interrogations make research goes by a LOT faster. Most notably, Sectoids cut Beam Research in HALF. Thin Men cut UFO research (which leads to Satellite Nexus) in HALF. Get the Alien Containment ASAP.
South America bonus should be your first course of action. Should save you a month’s worth of research and it only takes 2 Satellites.
Gunslinger is just plain BETTER than Damn Good Ground. 10% just isn’t enough of a Boost. That 2 damage turns Pistols into Assault Rifles even WITHOUT any Foundry upgrades.
Sell crap. In higher Difficulties you fight WAY more aliens, which is offset by WAY more bodies to sell. Most bodies are WORTHLESS (they can be used for one time boosts for Interceptors. They are worthless early and late game, only useful mid game) so sell them galore. UFO generator and Flight Computers are more useful, but mostly late game. Do NOT be afraid to sell them (you don’t need that many anyways). Might set you back later, but it will ensure you GET to a later.
Josh didn’t get to this point but… Rush to the first Story “mission” then STOP. Doing a story mission will lower panic across the WORLD by 2. Use this as a panic button so to speak. Once panic gets unmanageable, do the mission. You may want Laser Weapons and Carapace/Skeleton Armor for this though.
Don’t name your Rookies after me. They tend to cause team wipes by rushing ahead like idiots then panicking and making their friends panick…
EDIT: JPH, seriously, the game isn’t that tough. Keep the Tutorial on, play through Normal. It’s not that bad. Classic is ROUGH, but Normal is pretty forgiving. Just never, ever Dash. Just move, Overwatchif there is no one around.
Rebuttal: I accidentally went for way too much scientists, and as a result every interrogation and autopsy only took two days at best. This renders South America completely useless.
SA is certainly at best a good 3rd continent to get the bonus from. Africa and North america just offer so much more money. And the main reason SA tends to come before europe or asia for me is that it just takes less satellites to do so.
When did you get that many scientists? Odds are by then you could have interrogated and autopsied everyone.
Consider the first month or so, you have to autopsy and interrogate Sectoid, Thin Man and Floater. Even at 3 days each it is still 18 days. And this is early game creatures with late game times.
Add in Mutons, Beserkers, Elite Mutons, Sectoid Commanders, and Ethereal, and even at 2 days a piece, it is 20 more days. Chrysalids, Sectopods, Drones and Cyberdisks add another 8 days.
That is a total of 46 days of research.
Wait forgot Heavy Floater. 50 days of research. That is a LOT.
Another rebuttal. Since I have started pursuing the “all engineers all the time” approach, my squads have been getting slaughtered. The mutons show up while I’m still researching carapace armor and laster weapons. You have got to stay on the research train. Yeah, it means you get your satelite nexus up a little later and the satelites are more expensive. Sell a couple extra dead aliens and get one with it.
Also, it’s very important to slowly retreat if you’re facing a stronger alien force. That way you won’t accidentally engage another group or two while fighting the previous ones. Force them to come to you and you won’t have to face too many aliens at once.
Thanks.
I was mainly concerned about the difficulty of the game because I’ve never played the original X-COMs.
I know the feeling but I hadn’t played the original either. Quit my first playthrough after stabilizing because I felt I lost too many countries and low tech. Quit the second because I felt I lost too many soldiers. Third playthrough lost no countries and less than half a dozen men. Did an Ironman playthrough and then Classic Ironman and only lost one country there. There is a learning curve but it is not very steep…
I was the last to die, making my final stand as cars exploded around me, aliens crawled out of the woodwork and the RNG sealed my fate.
At least I didn’t panic.
I’d like to thank Jarenth for nominating me, and Josh for ensuring that I died humiliatingly. Also, the memorial wall said I went on three missions? I guess I was cremated and you scattered my ashes on the third mission or something…
You were a renamed survivor of the opening mission, remember?
Oh, right, Shamus didn’t count that as a mission. Gotcha.
I only rename soldiers when they gain some class. Rookies are disposable.
Fourth Mission:
Well that escalated quickly.
Is this gonna get saved at all?
It’s saved on Rutskarn’s stream archive as “XCOM1”, “XCOM2”, and “XCOM3”. There is, however, no way I know of to archive the chat.
Chat is totally the best part.
Three Panel Soul on XCOM: http://threepanelsoul.com/2012/10/15/on-surplus/
I mostly depended on black-market weapons sales.
Same here. On harder difficulties I would offset the income loss from early-game nation dropouts by setting my engineers to mass-produce heavy lasers and then selling them en masse. Kind of disappointed you can’t do that now.
I always assumed alien sushi.
This. Except once chopped up, can anyone really tell the difference between alien and earth sushi? :p
Sure. If you eat it and go into anaphylactic shock, it was alien sushi since your terran biochemistry isn’t used to it and your immune system responds appropriately.
Or you have seafood allergies.
Either that, or since they have vastly different biochemistry you can’t digest it at all, so you can eat as much as you want and never get fat! No wonder alien sushi is so popular!
Well, I think we all know what has to be done. Josh must do his darnedest to /KILL/ Guyhere. He can not be allowed to survive against the aliens when so many have perished.
I’m really glad I managed to show up, even if I was four hours late. :)
A very odd time for anyone outside of the US; Sunday morning to Sunday night.
We had a number of people from Australia who quite enjoyed their noon-time to afternoon fun.
And they got to blow Chris’s mind, which must’ve been fun.
I only managed a couple of hours, but that was a lot of fun, as usual. I’m glad to see you guys are still doing these occasionally.
Well that was fun!
Missed out on getting my name in there, but maybe that was for the best considering the kill list up there!
Well, I had no idea this was even going on until I randomly visited the site two and a half hours in. I had a lot of fun but eventually gave up because I was getting a banner ad that made noises that wouldn’t go away after I closed it, and which would endlessly proliferate… refreshing the page just got me the same ad again.
I stayed for two hours but then it was two hours past twelve, so i needed the sleep.
Well, I was spectacular in my uselessness. I managed to die on my first mission without killing a single alien. Go me!
And yet you still cost 10 million double-dollars.
I guess you weren’t all you were quacked up to be.
(Then again, maybe it wasn’t your fault. With Josh’s playing you were all sitting ducks out there :P )
Such a shame that mumakill died so. The champion of the LOTR references in the hangout.
At least he went down in a blaze of glory!
Also Mumakill death left the team without a heavy on the next map. Pretty hard to overcome like a billion thin men and mutons with no rockets.
Yes. Clearly my single rocket would totally have saved josh in that mission. I still can’t believe that thinman was there and then he also god damn crit me… would have survived otherwise.
Josh was screwed with or without me though…
Missed it, but I hope I can come next game. Gonna name myself Scrotie McBoogerballs if you continue this XCOM game.
Disappointed I had to leave before you had a chance to name one of the girls after me…:)
What I want to know is:How come Josh is so lucky?And if I sever his foot and wear it on a chain,will I get some of it?
Dibs on his spleen!
We leave his spleen out, so we can kick it around the base.
Ahem.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You may now try to divine the course of my last UFO recovery.
Well, I see that overlong text no longer breaks through the side of the comment box. That’s something.
Missed the hangout, watched about an hour or so just now.
@Shamus, I also color code my soldiers by class. Assault-Red, Heavy-Yellow, Sniper-Blue and Support-Green. I had a few misplaced moves where I thought I was moving one class when it was another, and color coding them has fixed that. I also assign items based on class. Assault-Arc Thrower, Heavy and Sniper-S.C.O.P.E. and Support-Med kit.
It’s funny how everyone has their own code. Myself, I go for Camouflage green for the snipers, bright pink for the support units, yellow/blue for assault (~sonic the hedgehog colours) and white for the heavies (because their accuracy reminds me of stormtroopers).
And red for rookies. You can guess why.
Red Heavies, white Supports, black Snipers, blue Assaults. Only class color I picked at random was the blue.
Thanks to extra movement speed and lowest damage potential, Support makes the best Arc Thrower…
I have a strict policy: rookies get the arc thrower. I MAY sometimes give it to an Assault, if I think I might need to tank to use it, but normally? Rookies only. Heck, I just took out a large saucer, and the sole rookie was only there to tote the arc thrower so I could stun an Outsider and progress the flippin’ story. I wasn’t expecting him to survive, but he did (and became another blasted Heavy, because I really don’t need more than one Sniper)
And because I didn’t pre-order, I’d have to pay $5 to colour-code my soldiers. I’m undecided on whether I want to do that.
I got one for free. but before I got it I used to color code people’s hair. Didn’t look as cool, but it worked…
I have a strict rule: no alien is worth a soldier. So the assault lead gets the arc thrower. If it it is possible to safely stun the alien, then the leader will attempt it. If not, shotgun.
I don’t color code by role, rather I code by team. Team 1: Assault Leader, Heavy Cover, Support Medic, and a 4th member. Team 2: Sniper, Spotter. And then I choose colors based on my mood. Red team and Blue team are common.
I’ve lately been experimenting with 3 teams of 2 -keeping the Sniper element, but breaking the assault team into a heavy team and an assault team. The Heavy Team provides cover while the Assault team makes entries.
Of course, how many times have these teams gotten all mixed up in the middle of a firefight…
for me its all imperial stormtrooper white
Incidentally, I’d like to point out that I didn’t care about the late timings (I’m from the UK). Last night was still tremendous fun, and if staying up is the cost, then so be it.
Please, please do more of these events. I used to skip Livestreams on the basis that I could simply watch them later, but after seeing the PAX D&D game live, plus your Left 4 Dead/XCOM streams, I now know that the chatbox is about half the fun :).
The main problem for me with watching the streams live is that I can’t go any higher than “Low” resolution without the stream skipping intermittently. So seeing what’s going on is pretty much impossible, and I have to treat it mostly as an audio cast.
Chat is fun though. *Really* fast, though.
Yeah, I found this to be a greater issue with the Left 4 Dead stream. It was a bigger problem there, since that game is very fast and hectic to watch already, adding in pixelation just made things a manic, ever-changing blur.
XCOM is much easier to follow on Low, especially since the commentary gives context to the blobs of colour on screen.
Right, except that I was interested in which of our soon-to-be-dead chat-named squad members was doing what, and *that* was too hard to see. Whenever someone died, I had to ask chat who it was…
You all had a conversation about the things that are wrong about the way mind control works in XCOM, and I’d just like to add my own two cents about another massive flaw it has.
When an alien is mind controlled it counts as an ally. Your troops can panic, and will receive a morale debuff from seeing the alien die when it’s under your control. This will lower their Will for the rest of the mission. This just makes no sense to me as getting them killed or having it commit suicide with grenades when they’re under your control seems by far the best way to stop it from getting a free hit on you when the mind control ends. Not to mention, it also draws fire from the rest of the aliens.
However, it seems like the game thinks using it as a tactical advantage by considering it expendable is something the player should get punished for.
Ouch, that sucks.
If anything, mind controlling an enemy ought to give a morale *boost.*
I think we can class it as a bug. The original had a number of hilarious mind control bugs of its own, though I think it lacked that specific one. But you could mind-control a four-square unit and it would kill itself with reaction fire, or you could mind control it four times, and you could get into the inventory of aliens you controlled even though you weren’t supposed to, and if a zombie died under your control then the Chryssalid would be permanently under your control. Stuff like that.
Yeah, the control 1/4 of a cyberdisk and make it shoot at itself bug/feature was hilarious. Though, in the case of that particular enemy, it could be that it has 4 pilots.
After watching this… oh, yeah, easy difficulty it is! :D
(At least for the first playthrough, to boost my ego for the inevitable defeat to come after amping the difficulty).
Go with normal, it’s easy enough for a new player. You have to work to fail a mission even on that difficulty. There is a huge divide between normal and classic.
Ah, missed it. You should do a post on Twitter when you do these kind of thing. It’s the only part of the internet that reaches me even when I’m really busy.
Thanks, that was fun. Only go to stop by for an hour or so, but it was a blast. I thought this game sounded silly when y’all were talking about it; but seeing how much of it is tactical, turn-based, squad-level sci-fi combat, it has moved to my must-have list.
I loved the “Three-fifths is an irrational number?” response. The problem isn’t so much irrational numbers as irrational commentators.
Thanks for putting this up guys! (as well as putting up with this?)