The problem with that is plasma riffles will also kill anything but secotopods if both connect and heavies with HEAT ammo take care of sectopods.

I'm still on the fence about skele's sure I want them for my snipers and maybe for one or two others, but pound for pound extra hitpoints is more important to me then movement and defense. Fast mvoement just isn't enough of a priority because your so seldom on the clock and are instead rewarded for moving methodical.

Anyone know what the actual changes from normal to classic are? Trying to understand what playstyle changes i'm going to have to make before making the jump.

Lurker... think of it this way... that 1 extra HP doesn't need to be used if you don't get hit.

Skeleton armors power is the ability not to get hit... You get defensive bonuses for high ground and cover.

That +3 movement is big for actually flanking things to remove their cover while staying in cover yourself. So that +10 normaly turns into +20-40 defense. So instead you have +3 HP and the ability to make them miss you twice as often. Damage which doesn't connect is damage you don't need to soak.



So just to use an example... I have a medic in skeleton armor... it's 1AP move range is 12... I shoot a grapple to within that move range and end up on a roof flanking the target. Now I fire... I've removed his cover. (+20 to hit for half...) I'm on high ground (+10 to hit)... so I fire and probably hit... since I've swung the odds from 50/50 to 80/20. Meanwhile if I do miss... the suit gives +10 defense... and +10 defense more for being on high ground.. despite standing in the open I have a +20 to defense as if I were standing in half cover! (if I can get to half/full cover... this can easily be +40 or +60.. snipers with the half counts as full in skeleton are almost impossible to hit on high ground).

If we're talking about an assault... run and gun now you can cover 18 instead of 12 squares... huge difference early on until you can get the power armor which actually gives +10HP.

Remember peace through superior firepower is a viable defense strategy.


Also remember the game is percentile based... if your base odds to hit are 50%... +20% moves you from 50 to 70... If the starting odds to hit are 20%... -10% from the skeleton suit changes that to 10%... halving the damage inflicted. (50% -> 40% is a 20% reduction in damage).

Actual changes I know for the early aliens. Soldiers get -1HP, Thin men get +1 HP +10 aim (which yes, with their light plasma rifles makes them BASTARDS) all aliens get +10 crit chance.

Also seems to be more aliens, initial mission i think usually has 4 aliens, now seems to have 8 more often then not.

Eight? HA! I wish there was that few! I'm surrounded by grenade-tossing Mutons more often than not!

Part of the problem with that is the more you move the more likely you are to stir a new cluster of aliens. So unless your reasonably sure your fighting the last group on the map more often then not when flanking you just seem to kick up more stuff then you would have otherwise.

This is very true. On higher difficulties your best bet is to have a support with sprinter and skeleton armor move forward, stir up aliens, and run back into the Fog of War. Then set everyone else in position and overwatch.

Pretty much my method for Muton Berserkers. They have a free move at anyone who attacked them, so you just take one shot at them while rest of the team waits on overwatch. As soon as the Berserker gets in range, BAM! his 20 HP evaporate before he manages to do anything.

One containment is all you need... I rebuilt my containment in a different spot.

Then went out with two stunbunnies... I captured a muton elite and sectoid commander alive. Both were available for research afterwards. So you don't need one containment per alien like you used to in the old days.

The most hilarious bit from yesterday's session:
Terror mission. My support accidentally stirs three Chryssalids and manages to bail out in the nick of time... leaving the team's sniper (Michael "Psycho" Sykes, plasma-wielding British bastard) just barely out of Chryssalids' range. Luckily, there are two other team members on overwatch who take out two of the Chryssalids. Around the same time, a Sectopod locks on at where the sniper is standing.
Next turn: sniper uses the Skeleton Suit's grapple to escape to a nearby roof. Two team members fail to hit the Chryssalid, standing next to a pickup truck. Suddenly, KA-FUCKING-BOOM! The pickup truck evaporates, along with the Chryssalid. Nobody from my team gets hurt. Helpful Sectopod is helpful. Mission outcome? 14 civilians saved, the whole team survived (despite my combat-oriented support getting shot by the Sectopod).

Also, on a different terror mission, I managed to save 16 civilians out of 18, while armed mostly with Light Plasma Rifles, wearing Skeleton Suits and facing a Cyberdisc and at least two Mutonserkers. My whole team survived. There was a lot of running like crazy involved, to say nothing about my sniper sneaking right under a Mutonserker's nose and running across the whole map, and it ended in an epic last stand on a restaurant's patio.
Oh, and I love the Plasma Sniper Rifle. That thing can one-shot a Muton Elite, and if the sniper happens to have the In The Zone skill while rest of the team misses often with more damaging weapons and wrecks the opponents' cover, the results are killarious. Three shots in one turn, 10 damage each, at ordinary Mutons? Bwaaahahahaha!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/file...s/?id=102487526 - Battle Sensor hunch.

One terror mission inmy last game, turn two for me .... I moved one soldier, and stirred up SIX Chrysalids (two groups of three). Thank god for excessive use of overwatch, two of them died lickety-split. However, when moving a Heavy to flank another target? Another spawn of Chrysalids. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I "woke" no less than eight chrysalids in a single frelling turn! And I didn't have any advanced armor yet!!

Two things saved me. ONE, I was playing on "easy". TWO, I had just upgraded everyone but the sniper to Laser weapons (the sniper had a laser pistol, but I was still researching Precision Lasers).

My team survived, we rescued 12/18 civilians, and killed all eight chrysalids (and the six zombies they spawned, AND three Thin Men), winning the day and earning a chance to change my underwear with a modicum of dignity. ;D

My solution is a sniper with double tap. Use the increased crit chance ability. I regularly shave off 19 or 20 hp.

--

I had a killarious mission yesterday while play. I had recently built my Hyperspace Communication Beacon, or whatever it is called, and got a V. Difficult mission. The enemy I had to deal with include 12 Sectoids. That's it. Sectoids which deal 2 damage a hit to my guys. Assaults who have around 22hp with Titan armor. Heavies and Support that have 20hp. Snipers that have 14hp. I had fun on this mission.

I also have gotten 4 psi gifted troopers include my top sniper (funny story, both my top snipers are Israeli). I wasn't too pleased by that at first when I saw the initial ability, but it's actually been a lot nicer than I would have expected. It makes my sniper much more useful during UFO missions when you just can't get those long shots aligned up.

Just recently took out the cloaked ship. Total casualties so far 5 troops (x2 Squadie, x3 Recruit) with a total of 1 kill and 6 missions among them plus one of those mobile cover tank things that I lost in the first mission I deployed it on while getting a feel for its capabilities.

Heh i had a Council mission to protect councils database in the end stages of the game, opposition being ~16 thin men who have 3hp, my 2 heavies with heavy plasmas and damaging suppression fire both took out 3 thin men with one supression (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif)

These are the sort of battles where I have fun with rocket launchers.

My elite psi sniper has over 75 kills now. More than twice any of my other colonels.

I've found that tag team kiting the berserkers works pretty well too. I just keep hitting them from alternate directions and he ping pongs around w/o ever actually getting in range to lay down the hurt. 2 Colonel Snipers w/ Double tap seems to make most things pretty trivial as well as long as I can get them well positioned and I don't do anything stupid.

That chrysalid terror mission was a total pain in the ass for me. I finally just gave up on trying to save all/most of the civillians and embraced the zombie apocalypse rocket launcher style.

How much is left of the game after using the Ethereal Device? I'd like to complete a few more Foundry projects before the end game, is this locked out after I use the Gollop Chamber?

It warns you that the Gollop chamber starts the endgame.

Yeah that's why I asked (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Just a single big ass mission then?

To put it mildly.

I'm leaning towards restarting, owing to a fairly serious strategic error early on: I kept using the same troopers over and over again throughout the early game, which leveled them up fast, but means that now they're my only high-level troops, with everyone else being Squaddies (and that only because I bought the Squaddie upgrade at OTS). I've got four Colonels, a couple of Majors, a couple of Captains, and everyone else is a Squaddie. One bad mission, and I'm hosed.

Pff!

Do a mission with x6 SHIVs.

Yeah, I wish they would have done something to fix that.

I had the same thing happen to me, but it was all chrysalids. When the second group spawned, two of the three ran away from the group and just went to town killing civilians, who then turned into zombies, so there was just this long flow of zombies shambling down the street that took too long to kill. (Even at one shot kills, it's slowing you down just to shoot at them) By the time I offed the last Chrysy, There were only 5 folks left. Even if I wanted to replay that mission, Im not sure I could handle it differently. If I chose to ignore zombies and sprint ahead, there's a good chance the chrysy charges one of my dudes and zombifies him.

I got three countries back out of the Council, I'm chronically underfunded and UFOs are flying up and down Africa, the only continent without an XCOM fighter contingent. That and the tutorial. I think I'll start from scratch, this time with no tutorial to offer me underpowered starter characters.
I'm gonna miss Psycho, Typhoon and Bonesaw, though. A badass crew if I ever saw one.

Deploying a Satellite reduces panic in a country by 2. That leads me to believe that you can tactically deploy satellites to help with panic or you can deploy them in mass to get funding levels up. I never really paid attention to the grey market early on. Most, if not all damaged alien bits can be sold without worry since they aren't used in research or engineering. There's other alien components that can be sold as well like stasis chambers and food. It's a nice supplemental income but those are only gained when you go after UFOs.

Had full satellite slots, no money and barely any equipment. I couldn't save that anyhow. Bad early-game decisions (no satellite over the US for example) bit me in the ass really badly.
But a Firestorm with a plasma cannon fucking up a battleship with two shots was something I haven't expected.