... and take up four crew slots, each.

yup, what you need now is Snipers ! Snipers with WINGS, Wings of STEEL !

that and try and funnel them into a doorway for some heavy Rocket goodness, sure Civilians will die horribly, but what's fun without a little collateral damage ?

I seriously need to re-install this now

Steam has 'em for sale, in versions that work with a modern OS too.

is there a DLC worth buying yet ? I'm not paying good nuyen for uniforms and haircuts DLC

Dunno about buying - but my version had the "bonus" haircuts, etc. Also, SPACEMARIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSS.
Sorry - had a fit when I went into the customisation options. Also, I think that having the medic in fluro pink makes ofr easy identification in a chaotic firefight.

Especially if he's a gruff, scary-looking Yakuza with pink hair and matching Pink Fu-Manchu Moustache.

I've found the nickname system is really...oddly apt. Like my insane close-quarter guy - Werewolf (Has killed 3 Chysylisks point-blank due to luck and my horrible positioning, no damage) and my Frenchie female sniper "Demon", who has shot more icky alien things wanting to lay their eggs in her teamates than any other. She became a Major when the rest on rotation made Corp.

God, this game is horrible. The waiting the resource management, the tapdancing chess until you research plasma and then the scrabble for funds as you launch protection over nations that are likely infested with mind-altering aliens....must sleep...

-Tir

Hey! Watch that stuff! That's a copyrighted name now.

Trademarked and has been so for some time.

Because GW is a gigantic bag of dicks.

Their trademark only applies within the miniatures and a few other areas including video games. All trademarks need to be narrowly defined as to what areas the apply. They don't have trademark over it when it comes to literature. Someone could publish a computer brand named Space Marines without infringing on the trademark. Trademarks are to prevent other people from marketing products in a way that would make people think the product is produced by the trademark holder.

The owners of the trademark must aggressively defend it otherwise they will lose it. Call them a giant bag of dicks but the law basically requires them to be a giant bag of dicks and litigate on any possible trademark infringement or else they lose it.

They have a trademark that also covers literature in the UK. As far as I have been able to find out, they do not have one that covers that in the US


Instead of actively litigating, they can also defend their trademark by issuing licenses to use it.

This wasn't a required defense of their trademark.

GW has recently moved into publishing eBooks - so they sought to de facto EXPAND the scope of their trademark to include eBooks. It was a land-grab, nothing less.

So I stand by my statement: GW is a gigantic bag of dicks.

They are well known for being extremely aggressive with their lawyers, sadly. A lot of fansites for Warhammer and Blood Bowl have either closed or been forced to change names, over the the years.

Not to mention the fact that their shitty plastic miniatures are more expensive than their older pewter ones. What's up with that nonsense? (I'm accounting for inflation somewhat).

Plastic injection can produce product faster than using pewter molds so it requires less facilities to produce the same quantity. All molds have an anticipated lifetime (plastic is shorter than pewter) and that cost will be shouldered by the customer.

Hence my point - why am I paying more for inferior quality?

StealthSigma mentioned shorter mold lifetimes, but the most likely answer is corporate greed. Costs for models going up by significantly more than inflation is pretty much an annual thing for GW.

For reason I thought he was referring to the lifespan of the figure, not the mold itself. Good catch. But again, their cost is lower while ours is substantially higher. This is why so many people moved over to Warmachine...

okay folks, back to XCom. (We totally need someone to make a miniatures game of it!)

Staying off topic, if anyone's looking for some cheaper Warhammer figures, they should consider Mantic Games.

This .... this would actually be a workable product, I think. A hero-clix like approach would be great for it. Maybe make it so the figures can have weapons swapped out without special tools and such; then you can sell just weapon packs - like, a Laser Weapons set, with one of each laser weapon, and one Laser-armed disk for each class (including rookie) ...

Yeah, that could bloody well work. And would leave room open for even more options than the PC game currently provides - armored vehicles, off-map assets, etc. For both sides even. Plus various terrain items, especially big packs for various-sized UFOs.

...

I might be willing to pay the kind of big money a quality miniatures game entails, for that!

let's just slap it on Kickstarter and be damned with the lawyers

Given that this team lived up to their hype about their game (unlike a more recent franchise by Gearbox... COUGHALIENSCOUGH) they might be totally down for someone using the license to make a tabletop game.

Re: Models - I've seen a guy (Via Reddit, fark, I forget) that made a full Alien Terror Mission Map in 1/16th scale. (Farm buildings, etc)

Easily doable, but electronic models are easier to mass-produce for the masses rather than the yummy heavy moulds.

What I'd like to see is user-content maps.
Can you imagine the utter, utter bastardry of your fellow man using the X-Com tileset? I'm just imagining an alien crashland in a city with multiple terror-mission objectives- ginormous cash, loot, yep, but with only 6 meatbags....yeah...ooooow. Just non-stop Chyrisisk waves and Grey men/Sectoids (that chew up the ammo)

I'd really like more deploy spaces, frankly. The immense firepower difference between 5->6 makes the game a lot less horrible. 8 Deployable minions would make my mostly-sniper teams a bit more diverse:P

Or at least make the SHIVA bots take up 1/2 a deploy space, upgradeable to 1/3. 5 soldiers, 3 robots...mmmm....

-Tir.

So, apparently we can expect an awesome sounding expansion come November. I'm totally psyched.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/08/21/xco...tons-of-details

Also, really amusing to see my thoughts on Enemy Unknown units then vs now. I play them fairly differently now although the overall style is the same.

Mostly the sheer overpowered-ness of Ghost armor, which is being rebalanced with this expansion (crit chance only +30 rather than +100)

They're nerfing squadsight. Motherfuckers. >_<

It's not that much of a nerf though. Just killing crit unless you headshot. And improving Snap Shot along side that means you'll have a sniper for outdoor missions (squad sight, HOOOO!) and one for terror/abduction missions.

Personally, I hope they remove the bloody obnoxious artificial difficulty of higher difficulties. Lowering my soldier HPs? Fine, I can deal. Not capping max active aliens? No problem! Giving them all a bonus to hit and crit that is flat? Fuck right off.

Why don't they simply trademark "People Doing Things"?

It's a huge nerf, because a lot of Snipers' damage potential comes from the huge critical hit bonuses of their weapons and the huge accuracy of their class.

The regular sniper rifle has a +25% critical hit chance. The laser sniper has a +30, and the plasma sniper has a +35%. One out of four to greater than one in three shots for snipers is a critical hit based on their weapon stats alone, irrespective of any other modifiers such as catching an enemy out in the open, such as elevation.

The sniper rifle's base damage is 9, same as an alloy cannon or the plasma LMG. But it will consistantly outperform the plasma LMG, because (a) Snipers can actually hit things, whereas Heavies can't reliably shoot something in melee range, and (b) critical hits make their damage more often 18 than 9. My colonel snipers typically have a critical hit rate of greater than 50% - that's not "random getting lucky" rates, that's "MMORPG statistical damage buff" rates.

So it's a massive, massive nerf.



Yeah. Making the computer into a cheating bastard is just asinine.

I get what you're saying, and you'll still be able to attain your crazy crit levels with the sniper rifle through squad sight with headshot. It's a reasonable balance mechanism. Especially with snap shot having it's accuracy penalty reduced to -10 from -20. I feel like it's all going to be related to them wanting to speed up the gameplay from move up with single action, overwatch if no aliens, repeat.

Le sigh. Why does every game have to be fast-paced? I'm perfectly fine with move-overwatch gameplay.

You can still play it slow, you'll just potentially be missing out on some new materials. Many times I've had much better luck being gung-ho (even on impossible) and pushing my luck by sweeping around and attempting to flank from many positions. At least once I (yet again) get skeleton armor. I really love that stuff... until ghost armor.

Yeah, but only with headshot, which means your chance for critical hits is going to go from ~65% twice a round to ~50% once every two rounds.

That's a very steep nerf, and you're right - it is part of their "Stop being a coward and do something risky" gameplay push. I'd like to find the guy who had this idea and strap a rifle over his shoulder and send him to Baghdad circa '08 and tell him to go ahead and "Be risky" and "Push quickly" if he still thinks it's a good idea.

>_<

They made a game where doing anything other than "single move into cover -> shoot/overwatch/pull back" is a stupid, stupid idea, and now they want you to do things which are stupid, stupid ideas. Well, sod that.



Yeah, me too.



"Sure, you can still play the game the way you used to, but you'll be missing out on half of the point of the new expansion 'cause you'll never get any Meld because you're not willing to risk your team getting horribly raped by taking a chance on where the aliens will be. Oh yeah, your guardian angel just got beat in the cunt with the nerfstick, too."

But they are adding more options to be able to move and stay in cover. Such as assaults who take up close and personal rather than LR being able to move up, free shot, and then take their second move into cover, almost like having a run and gun. One class is supposed to get the option to add cover to an area. All classes being able to have multiple item slots (which to me just means everyone gets a scope and grenade...)

I suppose if they gave us a real skyranger to take into the fights, loaded up with 12 soldiers (or 8 and a tank) it would be a much different story.

Or, hell, here's an idea, eliminate the fog of war where it doesn't make sense. Where it doesn't make sense meaning "Anywhere we can have real-time satellite and drone imagery."

Where are our drones, huh? The aliens are 100% inept at jamming radio-frequency commo, or they'd jam our signal to XCOM Command. So why don't we have MQ-9 Reapers in the air offering fire support?

The fog of war is a hold out from the old XCOM games. I don't really have a problem with it. Maybe the pods in abduction/terror missions send out a field that distorts vision over a long range.

I want the Ground Control 2 dropship

Some narrated gameplay footage for you all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkeJhlkQgpE

The pre-order is up on steam for a slight discount for anyone who is intereted. (Also Thief 4, but that's for another thread)

Get my Cyborg on when that comes out!!!

While I'm excited for the MECs, I'm more excited for the implants. Allowing all of my people to either run further or leap tall heights without the grapple (allowing for easier cover too) will be awesome.

I should probably download and actually play this game at some point. Got it as a gift but the 10 GB download and my monthly download limit aren't friends. Maybe in November.

Is Enemy within going to be like a second campaign or does it just add to the existing one?

Add to the existing one.

It works like the DLC for Civ V in that they get folded into the main game. The original campaign (as far as I know) isn't going to be changed too significantly in terms of the story.

OK I'm close to finishing the game as it is as was hoping the new DLC would extend the game past that point. Looks like I might be better off starting a new game.

Yeah, you'd have to restart a new campaign for the new content in Within to kick in.

Also, new trailer.

Looks like we got a new set of enemies, HUMAN ones, a group called EXALT. Also, they're implying the return of Base Defense Missions.

Total Biscuit has a review up with 2 missions and shows off some stuff. It's interesting and I'm super excited now. Less than 2 weeks to go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Vbj0C1KKwE

Hah! The one case where the cybered characters dominate everyone!

Imagine what the debates would be like if SR had a CyberRun problem instead...

I like how the MECs can take a ton of damage but they are going to end up taking a lot of down time as a result.

Interesting that TB mentions how easy that MECs make missions when you first get them, when I saw in a different hands-on preview from Kotaku (this was several months back, but w.e.) mentioned how their two MECs got easily taken out. Then again, they were fighting aliens, so I dunno...

But yeah, the MECs and the gene mods seem...a little bit TOO good, in my opinion. Well, we'll see how things pan out, epecially when you start to hit late-game...