Octopus Overlords

Just started playing and already got to a piss me off moment. Rescue a scientist on like the 3rd or 4th mission and I can't figure out where the evac zone is.

Seems like such a thing should be obvious. Maybe I'm just obtuse but I have looked everywhere for a blue box and I don't see one. Would be nice if they made it as obvious as where the scientist I needed to rescue was. That part was easy. Getting the hell out not so much.

Rip wrote:Just started playing and already got to a piss me off moment. Rescue a scientist on like the 3rd or 4th mission and I can't figure out where the evac zone is.

Seems like such a thing should be obvious. Maybe I'm just obtuse but I have looked everywhere for a blue box and I don't see one. Would be nice if they made it as obvious as where the scientist I needed to rescue was. That part was easy. Getting the hell out not so much.

There should be an icon on the screen that indicates it. So not only is the evac site lit up with blue flares, but you should be able to see what direction it is by rotating the camera towards a little running man icon. On rescue evac missions you also get an icon showing you exactly where the vip/hostile vip is, so you have 2 icons on those missions.

I don't know an easy way to describe it, but you should see a pretty obvious icon on the edge of your screen. Turning the camera towards it should show you where the evac is.

edit: Ah, I see you saw and followed the icon for the vip. The icon for the evac site is exactly the same, except the picture is different. As I said, I think it's a man running.
edit2: Ok, I'm on one of those missions now. It's a little hexagon shaped sign with a running man in the middle and an arrow on the outside of it pointing to the evac site. Should be visible at all times.

Found it. Was on the roof of the building the scientist was in. When they started dropping reinforcements on the roof I finally noticed it. I guess since it was on within the screenview I didn't get the hex icon and since I hadn't intended going up the building since there didn't seem to be a reason I never saw it.

Really enjoying the heck out of the game. Just finished the Dr. Chen mission and haven't done that much. Already have five sergeants. Growing to attached to my troops already though. I focusing ona medic specialist though who I hope will keep them all alive.

The drones are more fun than I expected. Nice balance, they help but not in any OP way. Lot of fun smoking robots.

Rip wrote:Found it. Was on the roof of the building the scientist was in. When they started dropping reinforcements on the roof I finally noticed it. I guess since it was on within the screenview I didn't get the hex icon and since I hadn't intended going up the building since there didn't seem to be a reason I never saw it.

I checked that because I thought that might be why you had a hard time finding it, but in my game the marker was still there despite having the evac site right in the middle of my screen. I'm guessing it had something to do with the camera focus being on the lower level of the building while the site was on a higher level. Wall transparency can be a bit wonky depending on how the camera is positioned. I'm still not sure why the marker wasn't visible though.

In any case, glad you found it. Have fun. I haven't sworn at a game this much in years.

That is what happens when you set the level so high.

I started easy so that cursing isn't required. I've actually been amazed at some of the spots I have managed to overcome. So far only lost three guys. Two of those being from the first tutorial mission which I assume are scripted to die. Didn't seem to be any way to avoid their deaths. The other (also a rookie) was on the very next mission when I still didn't quite grasp how the concealment changed the game. Let an officer walk right up on a couple of my guys thinking I would get first shot when he walked into the ambush. I just rolled with it.

The only save scum I have done so far was to reload at the point of finding the scientist once I figured out where the evac was.

Starting to wonder if making the Proving Ground right away was a mistake since you said you still hadn't built one.?.?

I used that first slot for it.

Surprised at just how much I am drawn into the story. I wasn't nearly as enthralled with it in XCOM but this one leaves me excited for where the story leads next and apprehensive about what I may face.

Hoping Stalker Jane doesn't get killed. Found a unique double axe thing as well as some bolt shooting contraption that has a +15 to hit. With the two of them she is very bad assed at least in the early game. Already got her to CPT.

I've only just started the campaign, but I find the writing and characterization atrocious. Hell, the head guy in the tutorial mission was directly responsible for the death of a couple of his troops, acting all cool and shooting that hybrid in the head only after walking up to him slowly, allowing for the reinforcements call to go out. Plus, the dialogue is all of the most hackneyed clichés from B grade action films. One of the reasons I loved the original (1994) X-Com was that I could create my own stories with the characters. I hate feeling forced into doing this mission or that, when I may want to spend a little time at the base. The original allowed me to play at my pace.

Rip wrote:That is what happens when you set the level so high.
Starting to wonder if making the Proving Ground right away was a mistake since you said you still hadn't built one.?.?

I used that first slot for it.

RIP - in terms of building. Here some tips

1. Put a workshop (engineers) in the center column in either row 2 or 3. Basically you put an engineer in a workshop, this will create two gremlins that can staff adjacent rooms (up, down, left & right). Rooms include radio rooms, awcs (advanced weapons...something or another), gts (guerrilla tactic school), and psi labs.

2. Build priority should be Guerilla tactics school (buy the bigger squads first if possible when opn), AWCS, then proving grounds or radios.

3. When starting just have your guys dig away as much as possible, you get free stuff when you clear a room.

Newcastle wrote:

Rip wrote:That is what happens when you set the level so high.
Starting to wonder if making the Proving Ground right away was a mistake since you said you still hadn't built one.?.?

I used that first slot for it.

RIP - in terms of building. Here some tips

1. Put a workshop (engineers) in the center column in either row 2 or 3. Basically you put an engineer in a workshop, this will create two gremlins that can staff adjacent rooms (up, down, left & right). Rooms include radio rooms, awcs (advanced weapons...something or another), gts (guerrilla tactic school), and psi labs.

2. Build priority should be Guerilla tactics school (buy the bigger squads first if possible when opn), AWCS, then proving grounds or radios.

3. When starting just have your guys dig away as much as possible, you get free stuff when you clear a room.

That makes sense. I built the Tactics room second. On the left side. Then I needed a power relay so almost done with that on the right. By then I will have the next center room clear which I plan to be a workshop, then it can staff the proving ground. I figured the combat room that needs an eng would go 2nd level left side(to get staffed by the workshop) then something else that needs an eng on right.

I'm assuming those two power sections on the bottom can give me a better power option than relays. Planned on clearing out all the rooms as fast as I can so I can put them in some logical arrangement. Hopefully this playthrough on rookie will educate me enough to know what the layout plan will be for playing on a harder level when I inevitably restart.

At least that is what normally happens. Although my first playthrough is going well enough I may actually finish it out. Still haven't lost anyone since second mission and have 14 soldiers. About to go ahead and buy the second squad size upgrade. Already got all the other most useful g-tactics upgrades.

Already skull-jacked a dude and have a skullminer almost built.

Yep, time to restart. Went to grab(abduct) some VIP dude and all was well, just about to run a guy up and subdue him when this hippo looking ruler dude shows up. Proceeds to kick the crap out of my entire squad.

Now it wasn't my best guys because I through a couple trainee squadies in when I noticed the difficulty said easy. Still four officers and a couple squadies just got rofl stomped. Every time I would move or shoot he would bum rush someone else and just pound them. OMFG, He had three different bars of health.

jztemple2 wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:Fingers crossed one of these speeds up the time spent sitting around in the skyranger after a mission.

Ah, there is a workaround for this... but it comes at a price. If you press the Caps Lock key you can end that sitting in the Skyranger. The catch is that supposedly sometimes it can cause the game to crash, which means you'd have to reload your last save or autosave and replay the last turn. I've never had it crash on me when I used it, but YMMV. This hint came from the developers when the game first released, but not "officially".

This works and I have never had it crash the game after about a million times. Ymmv.

w00t. Just had a six man team complete a vip rescue on the last turn with my last guy just reaching the evac site on his last tile range. The entire team was in sprint mode for the last 3 turns. No reloading, only taking cover if it was available at the end of their sprints. Map geography was brutal. Diagonal from starting location to prison cell, then diagonal to the evac site. Couldn't have been more terrain to travel across if it were designed specifically for that.

Unreal fight and flight. 3 members of the team were shaken going in, so chances of a panic destroying the mission were high. I had no choice but to take them, no one else was available. As it turned out, the mission ended up being a flawless, and all 3 shaken were restored, now with bonuses to will.

Drinks are on the commander.

Just finished my first run through the game. Played the entire way on normal which was a decent challenge but not crazy hard. I tried not to reload during most missions, but occasionally I would reload if something crazy happened or if I died doing to not knowing a game mechanic. I think I ended with 4 squaddies having died (one in the last mission).

At the end of the game, it compares your game to (I guess?) the average completed game around the world. Clearly people must reload more than me since the average number of squad members dying was 0 and the total number of days squaddies spent in the hospital was about half of my total time.

Unfortunately during the last mission

Yeah, I interpreted the final scene the same way.

I've caught myself wishing that one could turn evil and join the aliens. They make a pretty convincing argument, and having a couple of alternate boss levels would really enhance replayability.

Oh, and one other thing that happened on the final mission (which I assume was a glitch):

OK, just made the mistake of wandering onto the steam workshop. Found 1.5GB of must haves.

Might as well if I am going to start over. Looking forward to seeing how good the JA2 character pool is.

I'd really like a The Unit character pool, but it seems everyone is more into doing Star Trek and comic book/movie hero pools.

Eventually I will download all the OO ones but I want to save that for when I know what I am doing and of course after I manage to design Rip Uberspecialist.

It's the average number of successful hacks reported world wide that makes me question those stats the most. I can see people reloading when someone dies, but in order to get as many hacks as is reported would require constant reloads after failed attempts. That level of save scumming is intolerably tedious to me.

Lost my primary sniper early on a base assault mission. I'm just too aggressive and had positioned her for next turn when another soldier activated a pod.

In any case, I realized she had my only skulljack on her (I brought it just in case, wasn't planning on using it). Well those things cost money but worse, another 5 days in the proving grounds for a new one. So I hauled her body across the entire map, setting her down during fire fights. Net result, I got my skulljack back.

Huzzah.

10 hours left before avatar project completes. Either I skulljack a commander on this mission or I lose the entire game.

Wish me luck.

Taking a break to do some chores first.

Ouch.

I wouldn't have the stamina you have to keep starting over. I love the game, too. I just couldn't do it.

Rip wrote:Yep, time to restart. Went to grab(abduct) some VIP dude and all was well, just about to run a guy up and subdue him when this hippo looking ruler dude shows up. Proceeds to kick the crap out of my entire squad.

Sounds like the alien ruler. I assume you did the mission w/ a bunch of snakes and so forth, thereby enabling the rulers to be let loose. Best advice I have for you is:

-dont do the begining snake mission until about early mid game. Make sure you have upgraded some weapons, armor etc. You can control when they start. Make sure you are ready. I would do Shen's last gift mission ASAP, then wait a while. Then hit the Snakes mission.

-make sure you bring those battle scanners when you have activated the rulers. They will show up on the missions. When they do, you kind of have to turtle forward until you see one of them. When they do activate you have to really, really plan your moves. EVERY, i repeat EVERY action you take will enable the alien snake to take an action/reaction. You fire, it moves. YOu move it moves, you reload (i am pretty sure it moves), you heal someone, it moves. YOu get the point. So how do you deal with it: first of all when it pops up if you can drop it 30-40% of its health it will flee. So you really want to plan out how you hit the thing. Obviously its best if no other mobs are around. But battlescanners should give you a heads up that its around; also pay attention to the sounds in the FOW; i think they can tip you off if they are around, or at least that another pack of stuff is around.

Any action that's listed as a "free action" doesn't trigger the alien ruler's retaliatory action. So, the free pistol shot from the sharpshooter, the free axe throw. The 'alien hunters' specific weapons also have a chance of stunning the guy for a bit. Also, if you are anticipating seeing a ruler, bring a freeze grenade and give it to your heavy weapons guy (the one that gets a 2x grenade slot). That'll put the bad guy on ice, letting you get off three free actions per freeze (and those actions better be "shoot the bastard" or "evacuate"). I also hear good things about "damage over time" effects and flashbangs as they relate to the alien rulers - the DoT stuff ticks off every time they take an action, while the flashbangs last for however many real turns (so each of the guy's actions will be relatively crap).

NickAragua wrote:I also hear good things about "damage over time" effects and flashbangs as they relate to the alien rulers - the DoT stuff ticks off every time they take an action, while the flashbangs last for however many real turns (so each of the guy's actions will be relatively crap).

DoT's and Overwatch fire are massive helps to these bosses. Give your Specialist with three different Overwatch abilities bullets that cause "Burn" damage when they hit, and they can chisel off a 1/3 of the health bar by themselves without causing extra actions from the Alien Ruler. Acid helps, too, to shave down their Armor values.

I had a game in progress when I bought and installed this DLC, and I was never presented with a "Trigger" mission. I just had special guns in my inventory and big nasty bosses up my nose. Thankfully, I was already into 2nd tier equipment when I did this, or I would have been really miserable. I cam very close to killing the Berserker Queen the first time I met her, too. Almost got that achievement.

Oh yeah, isn't there an ability that gives your guy auto-overwatch if he sprinted?

Newcastle wrote:

Rip wrote:Yep, time to restart. Went to grab(abduct) some VIP dude and all was well, just about to run a guy up and subdue him when this hippo looking ruler dude shows up. Proceeds to kick the crap out of my entire squad.

Sounds like the alien ruler. I assume you did the mission w/ a bunch of snakes and so forth, thereby enabling the rulers to be let loose. Best advice I have for you is:

-dont do the begining snake mission until about early mid game. Make sure you have upgraded some weapons, armor etc. You can control when they start. Make sure you are ready. I would do Shen's last gift mission ASAP, then wait a while. Then hit the Snakes mission.

-make sure you bring those battle scanners when you have activated the rulers. They will show up on the missions. When they do, you kind of have to turtle forward until you see one of them. When they do activate you have to really, really plan your moves. EVERY, i repeat EVERY action you take will enable the alien snake to take an action/reaction. You fire, it moves. YOu move it moves, you reload (i am pretty sure it moves), you heal someone, it moves. YOu get the point. So how do you deal with it: first of all when it pops up if you can drop it 30-40% of its health it will flee. So you really want to plan out how you hit the thing. Obviously its best if no other mobs are around. But battlescanners should give you a heads up that its around; also pay attention to the sounds in the FOW; i think they can tip you off if they are around, or at least that another pack of stuff is around.

Yea, figured it out. I had forgotten all about the Viper King I had killed early on and didn't realize he was part of the DLC. I went around and read up on it now. Funny thing is I am at that point in my replay and it is way harder than I realized with my first (tutorial) playthrough. I think I just got lucky the first time by having someone get lucky with a repeater cheese kill. I don't recall it being over 4 or 5 turn/reaction sequences before I killed him. It wasn't until the Berserker Queen attacked my in the middle of a rescue VIP mission that I realized how bad it was. To make matters worse the VIP was triggering her so I wasn't even getting a turn every time she reacted.

I think I decided to hold off going after the viper this time till I get a couple three guys with repeaters and a grenadier that can use the freeze grenade twice. The snake I can handle if I work it hard enough I think but unleashing the other two to drop into a mission on me is something that will take some time to be prepared for.

I started my first ironman game last night. So far, so good: two missions with only one injury and no deaths. But man the game is so much more stressful (especially the damned timed missions). Any advice for an ironman run?

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:I started my first ironman game last night. So far, so good: two missions with only one injury and no deaths. But man the game is so much more stressful (especially the damned timed missions). Any advice for an ironman run?

Don't screw up! What difficulty are you playing?

Normal. I'm not sure I would have a chance on veteran ironman.

I was surprised at how well my veteran ironman game went... but it was also my 6th full campaign.

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:I started my first ironman game last night. So far, so good: two missions with only one injury and no deaths. But man the game is so much more stressful (especially the damned timed missions). Any advice for an ironman run?

Hilariously I recently started a non- ironman commander game and remarked to myself how not stressful and easy it has been.

It is pretty easy. Those aliens couldn't defeat my ability to reload!

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:It is pretty easy. Those aliens couldn't defeat my ability to reload!

That superpower let me run a 4-man campaign to get the Steam Achievement for it.

I do have to complain about one thing. The entire loot drop pickup mechanism sucks. I see no reason to tempt people to sprint to a spot on the map to grab loot before it vanishes.

I found a couple lines in an .ini that collects loot from 10X the distance. So far I have collected every one the moment they drop. Hard enough to get good PCS/weapon mods, no reason to insert a ridiculous mechanic. I want to fight not play easter egg hunt.

And it doesn't really make sense for loot to disappear after three turns. Did that gun modification just melt into the ground?

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:And it doesn't really make sense for loot to disappear after three turns. Did that gun modification just melt into the ground?

It generally forces you to make poor tactical choices with little planning - a disaster waiting to happen. I do agree that they should sit there forever until you pick them up at your discretion. Or, as Rip does, just pick them the hell up from 100' away and call it a "mission reward"

It is purely a game mechanic, in that it's designed to reward you for playing aggressively. That's basically it. It's just another mission timer in mini-form.

The timed missions were a PITA during my first game and I can only imagine how much worse they'll be in my ironman game. They basically require you to run at least once or twice a mission. And running often = dead squaddies.

Yep. Enjoy.

OK, question.

It seems that Psi-Ops can learn more abilities than they can actually fit on their bar, so I guess you can't use the ones that don't show up? Is there any way to decide which ones are on the bar? I had domination but went to use it in a fight and it wasn't there, I assume it was replaced by something else I trained her for.

As far as I know the bar just gets longer. I have several non-psi soldiers who have lots of active skills plus 1 from the hidden talent (you get a randomized skill from someone else's tree when you level up and have an adv war center) and the bar is about twice as long as it is at the start of the game.