[X] My Assistant

[Tanegar]

Anybody want my extra copy of Civ5?

[_Pax._]

Damn you all, with your talk of tactics and base-building and awesome weaponry and alien-murderificating. I pulled the trigger. I drank the Kool-Aid. I prepurchased.

Chant it with me, now:

"Im-ho-tep .......... Im-ho-tep .......... Im-ho-tep .......... " ^_^

[Mäx]

Anybody want my extra copy of Civ5?

I can take if you dont need it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)
As i ended up not preordering from steam(because physical copy is ~12€ cheaper)

[Bigity]

Damnit I hate you guys playing already.


Well, more like jealousy but meh.

[taeksosin]

So is it everything everyone hoped and dreamed it would be?

[Tanegar]

Just finished my first session. The game is awesome. For those of you who were worried about the level of lethality, trooper deaths are a fairly regular but not crippling occurrence. I'm having a lot of fun.

I can take if you dont need it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)
As i ended up not preordering from steam(because physical copy is ~12€ cheaper)

Well, post your Steam ID, or PM it to me.

[Mäx]

Well, post your Steam ID, or PM it to me.

PM send and oh man am i jealous of you already playing, i have to wait still friday(well atleast ME3 and BL2 DLC:s had a global release)

[Tanegar]

Just ran into my first gaggle of Mutons. I gotta improve my weapons, those guys are tough.

[Sid Nitzerglobin]

Anyone else notice it taking a ridiculously long time to install off of physical disks? By current estimate it will have taken ~45 minutes to install to a 3 disk RAID0 of Raptors...

Edit: Wow, still installing an hour later.

[Tanegar]

Mine took an absurdly long time to "install," despite supposedly being "pre-loaded." I don't know exactly how long, because I went to bed and let it run while I slept.

Who's your MVP so far? Mine is Major Michelle "Boom Boom" Willis, Heavy. With eleven missions and twenty-six kills under her belt, she's an alien-murderizing machine.

[X-Kalibur]

Mutons and floaters at first, not so bad. Heavy Floaters, Heavy Mutons, and Muton Berserkers? All on one UFO? Needless to say I got split open sideways. I generally found injuries to be more common than death, especially after upgrading some armor. Although as my roommate found out, Chrysalids are pretty much impossible without some laser weapons.

[Tanegar]

I generally found injuries to be more common than death, especially after upgrading some armor.

Agreed. Better armor is always a high priority in my labs.

Although as my roommate found out, Chrysalids are pretty much impossible without some laser weapons.

This, I don't agree with. The first time I encountered Chrysalids, I only had firearms, and I found them challenging but by no means impossible. Laser weapons do make them significantly easier, however.

[_Pax._]

Yeah, I did a terror mission with a squad of 5 - two Heavies, one Assault, one Sniper, and one Support. And yes, the Chrysalids (I didn't realise that's what they were until I hauled the carcasses back to base), anyway, while they were attention-grabbingly tough? One shottie and one LMG burst to the face at close range, and WHAM, dead alien bug-thing.

[X-Kalibur]

Yeah, I did a terror mission with a squad of 5 - two Heavies, one Assault, one Sniper, and one Support. And yes, the Chrysalids (I didn't realise that's what they were until I hauled the carcasses back to base), anyway, while they were attention-grabbingly tough? One shottie and one LMG burst to the face at close range, and WHAM, dead alien bug-thing.

It depends on if they come after you or go and make innumerable zombies out of the civvies. I'm thinking I'm near the end now. I've got every autopsy performed, just a few more foundry bits to even out.

My MVP is by far my sniper. But here's the breakdown

Sniper "Low Rider" (I took the randomly generated names): 30 missions, 80 kills
Heavy "Devastator" 33 missions, 67 kills
Assault 1 "Septic" 28 missions, 58 kills (I keep her with a rifle)
Support 1 "Vixen" 25 missions, 20 kills (less heal oriented, more smoke and overwatch)
Assault 2 "Mad Man" 15 missions, 24 kills (Shotgun!)
Support 2 Missions 9, kills 6 (healing oriented, up to Major rank, replaced my original Colonel I used for healing, ironically he bled out, he was 20 missions, 20 kills)

The poor sniper is also my only psionic on the team. I really wish some of the others had been.

[StealthSigma]

Anyone else notice it taking a ridiculously long time to install off of physical disks? By current estimate it will have taken ~45 minutes to install to a 3 disk RAID0 of Raptors...

Edit: Wow, still installing an hour later.

A couple of reasons but it sounds like bandwidth is your problem, either between the Optical drive and the mobo or between the mobo and the raid controller. I was a little confused at first when you said discs for a physical copy. It's been awhile since CDs have utilized and most games can fit on a dual-layer DVD (<~8GB).

I just saw that the HDD requirements for it are 20GB. How many discs is the game?!

--

Mine took an absurdly long time to "install," despite supposedly being "pre-loaded." I don't know exactly how long, because I went to bed and let it run while I slept.

Steam preloads are encrypted so when the unlock is given the bundle needs to decrypt and run the installation. If the install is 20GB that can take a bit of time depending on your system.

[Tanegar]

I'm finding I won't go out without two Support medics. Every Support trooper gets the perk that lets them use a medikit three times per mission as soon as they reach that level. My Heavies are my go-to killers, despite still having regular LMGs, although now that everybody else is sporting laser weapons, that's beginning to change. I have exactly one Assault trooper, a Major who was one of my original batch of Rookies; his job is to tote an Arc Thrower and make attacks of opportunity. For a long time I eschewed Snipers altogether, after my one-and-only died early one, but now I've got two more and I'm starting to use them.

My standard team composition, now that I'm up to fielding six-man teams, is two Heavies, two Support, one Assault, one Sniper.

[LurkerOutThere]

Oh god this game is so hard. I'm not playing ironman but i've eschewed save scumming for the most part. I've actually only had a couple of casualties so far but all my guys are pathetically low willpower because of getting criticaled out. I should have prioritized armor sooner. Fortunately one of my support medics had a decent will power and was discovered to have psi potential once I got started.

I've actualyl restarted the whole game like 3 times. On the whole it seems fun but I think they swung a smidge too hard at the limited resources cocnept especially since your so discouraged from selling corpses in many cases. Also my first play through I didn't realize you could get the continent bonus for a continent by getting satellite coverage on the whole continent. That makes South America a really bad startign zone as it's only got two countries to cover and by the time you need the bonus you should have enough satelites to cover.

Other general lessons learned: Fuck scientists, get engineers, at every opportunity. Lack of scientists means you can't research as well, lack of engineers pretty much much makes you dead in the water expansion wise. You should always be building satelites and uplink facilities and getting the upgrade to satelite nexus should be a high priority. Plus live captures on aliens means you get a research credit which pretty well closes that science gap.

Also found out why the aliens seem to be shooting so well all the time early. Light plasma has a 10% accuracy bonus, mine now.

Also now that i've got my hands on plasma/lasers heavies seem a bit underpowered. Sure the one i've got up to major is tough as all hell, but he can't really damage anything and suppression seems really underwhelming.

[X-Kalibur]

I'm finding I won't go out without two Support medics. Every Support trooper gets the perk that lets them use a medikit three times per mission as soon as they reach that level. My Heavies are my go-to killers, despite still having regular LMGs, although now that everybody else is sporting laser weapons, that's beginning to change. I have exactly one Assault trooper, a Major who was one of my original batch of Rookies; his job is to tote an Arc Thrower and make attacks of opportunity. For a long time I eschewed Snipers altogether, after my one-and-only died early one, but now I've got two more and I'm starting to use them.

My standard team composition, now that I'm up to fielding six-man teams, is two Heavies, two Support, one Assault, one Sniper.

That screwed with me for a while too. Research the Laser Cannon. It gives you access to - Laser Sniper, Heavy Laser, and Laser Cannon for interceptors.

<edit> one of the later abilities for heavies is to deal damage on suppression equal to tech level of the weapon used. So LMG = 1, Laser = 2, Plasma = 3. This can be a huge boon for capturing aliens later (as 3 HP is nothing) but is also a great way to take down a weakened alien you have a crap chance at hitting with a normal shot. Boom, HP gone + they are suppressed.

[Bigity]

I just had a thought, in that the XCOM engine would make a pretty decent squad based game for any genre really, kind of like the old Silent Storm games.

[_Pax._]

I'm finding I won't go out without two Support medics. Every Support trooper gets the perk that lets them use a medikit three times per mission as soon as they reach that level. My Heavies are my go-to killers, despite still having regular LMGs, although now that everybody else is sporting laser weapons, that's beginning to change. I have exactly one Assault trooper, a Major who was one of my original batch of Rookies; his job is to tote an Arc Thrower and make attacks of opportunity. For a long time I eschewed Snipers altogether, after my one-and-only died early one, but now I've got two more and I'm starting to use them.

My standard team composition, now that I'm up to fielding six-man teams, is two Heavies, two Support, one Assault, one Sniper.

OTOH, I've got three Assaults, one Support,and one Sniper. Mainly because, well, that's what I have, period. The three-for-one on the medkit is nice, though. I'd love to replace one Assault with another Support, or failing that, a Heavy.

My Assaults are the killers for me. Run-and-gun means I that on turn 1 can move up a long way, and still go into Overwatch - providing cover as the rest of the team moves into position. later, they can either use that to get a good, solid flanking position to burn an enemy down with, or, dash-and-overwatch again to "shift flanks" if necessary. One is still the FNG, but th4e other two also both have the "free reaction shot against anything that gets within 4 squares" skills, which is GREAT for burning down Chrysallids.

My heavy - still has an LMG, I'm hoping there's a laser equivalent real soon - is my Suppressing Fire guy. If there's an alien somewhere I can't get to easily, and noone can get a good shot on it? Suppress, dash, kill. But the LMG is getting outdated, especially against floaters; they can dodge bullets. Laser beams, not so much. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

The sniper is getting to be deadly - especially now he has a laser weapon, and the skill that lets him shoot based on team-mates' sighting. He's my cleanup guy.

That screwed with me for a while too. Research the Laser Cannon. It gives you access to - Laser Sniper, Heavy Laser, and Laser Cannon for interceptors.

Actually, the Sniper comes from Precision Lasers.

[X-Kalibur]

You are correct, my bad. The Heavy Laser might come from that as well, I really forget at the moment. I have everyone using plasma now.

That said, 1 heavy is absolutely mandatory on your squad and I'll tell you why - HEAT rounds. Doing double damage against cyberdiscs and sectopods is essential (and it doubles the damage of - suppression fire and rockets in addition to normal shots). Also, holo targetting while it sounds useful, is generally less useful than it's counterpart, which lets you potentially fire twice, fire and suppress, fire and reload, or fire and overwatch (which with a later perk might mean 3 shots in a round. Fire and then overwatch can get two shots).

<edit> Actually, when I get home I think I'll put together a post detailing the perks and their usefulness. Both perceived and having seen in play use.

[CanRay]

*Sniff* RIP "Diesel", you were with me from the first Tutorial Mission, and lasted until ambushed by six Floaters and a spitting Thin Man.

Stupid doctor wanting the idiot aliens ALIVE...

[Tanegar]

I should probably be farther along in my weapons tech than I am, but I kept prioritizing autopsies over new guns.

Speaking of autopsies, the autopsy reports keep talking about getting more information in the field with "Unit Analysis View." What is this? There's no shortcut listed for it in the key bindings.

[X-Kalibur]

I should probably be farther along in my weapons tech than I am, but I kept prioritizing autopsies over new guns.

Speaking of autopsies, the autopsy reports keep talking about getting more information in the field with "Unit Analysis View." What is this? There's no shortcut listed for it in the key bindings.

Autopsies and interrogations are quick and often give credit toward other research projects.

[_Pax._]

You are correct, my bad. The Heavy Laser might come from that as well, I really forget at the moment. I have everyone using plasma now.

No, strangely, Precision gives you the laser Sniper and the laser .... Shotgun. *shrug*

<edit> Actually, when I get home I think I'll put together a post detailing the perks and their usefulness. Both perceived and having seen in play use.

I eagerly await that post. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)