mason

Well, there's only one of him, so the fight is a lot more predictable than O&S. Manus is overall harder & more damaging, but with O&S it's tricky to predict how their individual A.I.s will combo together and adjust to that random factor. With Manus, as chaotic his movements are, everything he does is telegraphed and avoidable. Which means if you're finding it hard to avoid his attacks, you gotta study him further.

Fight him a few times without ever attempting to land a hit. Don't worry about beating him and just accept that you're going there to eventually die. Instead use that time to observe his moves, and experiment with avoiding them as long as possible. After a while you should be able to read his tells, which will go a really long way towards surviving the battle.

This is true of all bosses. If you do your homework and just go to observe rather than fight, it goes a long way. There'll still be twitchy mistakes. Even after I memorize a boss, I get hit all the time because my brain and fingers aren't in sync. At least I understand exactly what went wrong and how to avoid it, even if my reflexes might fail me.

P.S. Dumb question, but have you tried summoning a certain NPC? But then again, you may prefer to accomplish it alone. Either way, it's an option.

@BisonHero: @BisonHero said:

@Tennmuerti said:

So now I'm trying Classic. I play cautiously, but once I uncover a cluster of like 3 Mutons, that's it, my squad is guaranteed to be wiped. I just can't deal with them on Classic, where A) enemies have bullshit accuracy and crit chance compared to Normal, and B) their AI is better, so Mutons use their grenades with alarming frequency, and no-miss-5-damage-also-I-destroyed-your-full-cover is the worst fucking thing imaginable, even when I space out my troops.

...

Any suggestions? Against Mutons specifically, I guess?

Regarding mutons, I've found they can either be hard or easy, depending on the map and how you choose to move through it. I find the key is being defensive and forcing them to run across your overwatch.

Mutons are predictably aggressive and run around a lot, so you can be sure they'll come to you, especially once you've been spotted. If you run out to meet them, you're playing right into their hands. While I sometimes will run up to them with a shotgun, its only once I'm confident it won't reveal more mutons by surprise.

If you already know mutons are out there (like from sound cues), set up a strong reinforced position and let them come to you. Set up fortress of high cover, but try not to stand too close together. If they're staying out of view, send out a scout to attract them then run the scout back to your overwatching companions. They'll come to you and hopefully get smoked. Also, because you're not on the move, your snipers and heavies will have their full abilities available which can make or break the next turn.

As for sending out a scout, because you may need to run for cover, never dash when scouting. Move once and use your second action for overwatch if you don't spot them. If you do spot them, use that second action to run back or hunker down. Hunker down is actually useful if you can't get back to a safe place. It'll protect you from crits, and hopefully the scout has high HP to absorb a grenade. Doing this, the scout may take damage, but there's a good chance of survival.

Can't quite be this patient on terror missions with mutons, but even then, I employ a looser version of scouting, doubling back and letting them run into overwatch.

XCOM is a rare game in that it really punishes you if you're drunk, tired, distracted or stressed. On ironman, it's not unlike being a little out of it and then choosing to get behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. Making that choice can cost lives. Don't do it. Oh, if only XCOM could put you through some kind of roadside test before loading a save.

Does anyone have a story of playing when you're not calm & focused and things going spectacularly bad?

...

Don't know what compelled me, but I tried to get in a game before work. A landed UFO mission with 20 late-game enemies. Not an easy one and I was in a rush, but fool that I am, I was going to try push through it in under 15 minutes with my B-team.

It went okay at first. Instead of going through the front door, I decide to get all my troops on the roof of the ship with plenty of high cover and open space. I keep scouting from on high, but for 6 turns it's nothing but hidden alien activity & overwatch. Then a muton and berserker shows up below, we rain death, and I'm feeling good about my high ground position.

Then next turn, a cyberdisc shows up, I'm unable to take off his last HP and then everything goes pear shaped. He shoots, misses and in one fell swoop destroys the giant block of high cover around me, and makes a huge hole in the floor. Almost every alien in the ship spots me from below and in one turn I'm surrounded on all sides with crappy cover. An Ethereal on the right of me, a sectopod across the gap (they can apparently climb ladders?), 6 floaters above, 4 elites shooting from below, and the cyberdisk hanging back and shooting yellow death lasers.

Now I really have to head out for work, but I can't leave things like this. So after a few valiant turns, I manage to kill all but one floater still on mind-control. But the losses are heavy, even after reviving 3 times with medkits. Could have went worse, but I left for work late and still feeling regret. XCOM is not to be underestimated.

What about if you go into flight mode starting from a spot that was already high ground? For example being on top of a train car or bus and then hovering a little higher. Do you uniformly lose those bonuses the moment you take flight, no matter what the starting position was?

A follow up:

So I've seen first hand that you DO NOT need to find a Battleship to get the power core required for this weapon. In my new ironman run, I just shot down and explored a "very large" UFO that didn't have the battleship designation. A previous poster said the same thing, but I can confirm this is true.

HOWEVER...this UFO did appear right after I let a scout ship escape. So after seeing this happen twice, I'm convinced that the way to get the big ships to show up is to let these small scouts escape so they can report to the locations of your satellites to their mothership. Once the mothership comes satellite-huntin' shoot it down and scoop up the goodies inside.

The best part is that this doesn't have to be a late game acquisition. I got this to happen mid-game, right after the base invasion.

Valkyria Chronicles is definitely the most similar thing I've played to the new XCOM, but I feel that XCOM is a lot better balanced of an experience.

I liked Valkyria a lot, but I ended up cheezing the whole thing by using mostly scouts and running up on troops and shooting point blank from the back. If I didn't do that, I'd never be able to finish the level quick enough to get a high mission rating. Their rating does not reward careful tactical play. It just wants you to be fast.

Not getting a high mission rating meant you wouldn't get enough experience to level up your troops and keep pace with the story missions. Since you can't replay missions, you'd be forced to grind out the same boring training missions over and over. Fun game, but the experience system is way flawed.

Final Fantasy Tactics is my other go-to tactical game, especially with the difficulty mod that makes the game a lot deeper and more balanced. It doesn't feel all that similar to XCOM, but managing troops, getting better gear, chess-like movement and all that. It has a bit more in common with old X-com, but still it's a classic.

Okay, so the bomb goes off at the end of turn when the counter is still 1. So why then would it prompt me to abort or continue the mission, and then kill my soldiers the second I press abort? Why even give me the option to leave if they're destined to die anyway? Also my guys all screamed and died BEFORE it even showed the bomb going off. The order of things were just bizarre.

This game can be weird and glitchy sometimes. Yesterday I also had an injured soldier ragdoll and his body fell off the edge of the UFO into a no-man's-land below. This isn't a physics based action game, so it's ridiculous that the game sent my soldier to bleed out in the abyss below where there's no way to save him. I chalked it up to an insta-kill that was not quite instant.

I just lost my entire squad, and I have no idea why.

This was the first bomb defusal mission I ever had to escape from. Normally they're manageable but this time I was using low level guys and faced a wall of thin men on high ground. I had the worst luck and missed nearly every shot. Eventually I ran out of ways to reduce the counter. So I hauled ass to the evac zone.

As soon as the first soldier gets there the game asks me "continue or abort?" I say continue because I have 5 more guys who need to get in the zone. Now all of my guys are in the evac zone and it's 1 more turn until the bomb goes off. Once again the game asks "continue or abort?". I say abort. Immediately after pressing the button all my 6 of guys die. Just like that. Then it shows the bomb going off. WHY??!!!

Anyone else had to escape a bomb mission? What was I supposed to do?

@clush said:

• Don't be afraid to go balls out when you need to. This applies to fighting sectopods and chrysalids more than anything. Rather than hoping to hit your 35% shots from cover and hoping said cover will save you on their turn, get right up in their faces and throw everything you got at them. If you need to leave cover to finish off a sectopod, that's almost always the way to go.

Normally yes, if I see a big baddie that has to die ASAP, I may get in its face for better accuracy and shoot until dead. I'll even do it outside of cover if there's no other way.

But it should be said that rushing in all of your soldiers is a bad idea (unless you're absolutely sure it's the last enemy on the map).

It's imperative to leave a couple of soldiers in that can cover you while the rest of the team bum rushes. As your attackers close-in there's a risk of stepping on an unrevealed portion of the map and thus triggering new enemies. If you use up your final soldier going for a killing blow, and happen to reveal enemies, then next turn your dudes are sitting ducks.

Only played Classic w/ reloads and Normal Ironman so far. But I found most of these points to be true.

Especially this:

@Dredlockz said:

• Never Dash on a single move: If you're planning on dashing in one action, always move in two steps. It's the same result, but with the added bonus of being able to backtrack to your original cover if you spot something you don't like.

This is the cornerstone of scouting and defensive play. It should be a no-brainer, but I think a lot of players use the dash prompt because it's there. It's a trap. Saving a move to retreat if necessary really does keep soldiers alive. Especially with aggressive aliens like Mutons. Get back into a reinforced position and let them come to you. Can't rely on this as much with terror missions, but even then one should never dash into an ambush with no way out. Even Run n' Gun should never be triggered as the first action. Move once, then activate RnG if needed.

@Dredlockz said:

• Start in Asia: Then get Africa, and then North America if you can. Don't start in Africa because it only takes 3 satellites to cover Africa and the bonus isn't as good in the first couple of months, it takes 4 to cover Asia so its worth having the perk right off the bat. Europe seemed like a good choice at first, but I went through my whole game without making any labs (until the end when I was raking in the big bucks), you only need more scientists, and you can get those from satellites on any country, or from mission rewards. You really only need a workshop or two tops to finish the game

You're speaking of your preferred strategy here, but I also found starting in Asia, then moving on to Africa works best. Getting foundry and training academy perks cheap and early makes the first half of the game a lot easier. By mid-game, your research, interceptors and engineering barely require a continent boost to keep pace. All you need is more money rolling in, which is where Africa starts to shine.