The Exquisite Corps: XCOM: Enemy Within - Part 17

@blipp18: Glad someone got to this before I could.

Always double-tap. Always lightning reflexes. Always +2 pistols.

I thought you were screwed, Navarro. Nice work.

yeah but they havent exactly come up against anything with enough HP to make it a no-brainer skill yet, so i can forgive them.

I appreciate Vinny's abilities and tactics refresher at the start, more of that in the future, please.

Oh, and for the love of God BUILD THE FOUNDRY already. You have completely lapsed on that one and should have built it ages ago.

I always think Don Rickles is Don Cheadle.

Taking this opportunity in the first episode of this series' return to say BUILD A FOUNDRY.

The things you'll get from the Foundry will blow your goddamn minds. You're going to be hitting some difficulty spikes soon and you'll wish you had that stuff.

Hey @vinny and the rest of the commanders, you guys seem completely oblivious to how EXALT works and how it has been negatively impacting your campaign. Here is the briefest summary I could come up with:

I'm estimating some of those time spans, but I think I'm fairly close. While the other missions in the game (abduction in city, terror in city, crashed UFO in countryside, etc.) just randomly appear and then you deal with them, DO NOT think of EXALT missions that way. Yes, they eventually appear on their own and force you to complete them, and you could blunder your way to the end of the game like that, but that only happens because you failed and they've already attacked you. You should be using the intel scan button in the Situation Room to uncover EXALT and do the covert missions before they ever attack. So far you have done this exactly zero times.

Here are the two most recent times EXALT has disrupted your campaign because you have not proactively thwarted them at all:

Notice that the EXALT attacks took place about 20 days apart. The time between attacks can randomly vary, but if you want, use 20 days as a rough estimate.

While researching Abby's notorious Guided Fusion Launcher (whose original research time was estimated at 22 days, I think), EXALT hacked your research, and "undid" 11 days of research. This effectively resulted in the total research time for the project being 33 days. That's a dramatic setback, in a game where the enemies get tougher each month and you need to make steady progress on gaining access to better equipment.

The time where they recently stole $26 looks negligible, but that is only because you got lucky and $26 was all the money you had left at the time. I've seen them steal hundreds of dollars at once (it seems to only be a percentage of your cash on hand, though it's 100% of your cash if you have very low amounts at the time they hack you), and you don't get reimbursed upon completing the EXALT covert mission; the money is just gone. Aside from research loss and money loss, EXALT can also raise panic.

The commanders have quickly buttoned past most of the explanations of what EXALT is doing, so I hope this helps you understand it a bit more!

@df:

- Help civilians before taking down enemies.

Zhang was like Jose Canseco saving all the lady's things from the fire in that episode of The Simpsons. Vinny was the lady. It was comical how out of position he was after all that civilian saving; it's a good thing they just had that one pod of floaters left.

A couple additions:

-Overwatching before the end of a turn (and in fact overwatching on the first move of a turn)

-Wondering whether you need to be in the circle to save a civilian

-Not checking shot chances before overwatching

-Being okay with dashing into unrevealed areas, but not into areas where they've already killed everything

"Or let him die, because he refuses to take two steps forward."

Motivational Commander Vinny's had enough with the civilians of Earth.

Welcome back, Exquisite Corps. And well done to Commanders Navarro and Caravella for a difficult mission well done.

I'm a big fan of In The Zone. It's great for taking out smaller enemies especially melee enemies. It's easy to setup with grenades, rockets, etc. The only minor issue (which is more of an issue with snipers in general tbh) is that it can lead to Dan taking a lot of the kill xp which isn't great early on.

That being said, I'd always have two snipers. One with ITZ and the other with Double Tap. I highly recommend researching ammo conservation as soon as you can and maybe consider doing genetics on your vets instead of squaddies. Great episode as always.

Oh wow. Abby spells 'commander' with one m.

I thought this was it when the second cyberdisc popped.

Alex' streak continues.

You really did your homework for this episode, Vinny. Good job =]

Yeah, people in the comments are losing their minds over the Foundry, but a lot of the upgrades there are pretty minor and you can do without them for quite a long time. A lot of runs, I would just do the SCOPE upgrade, get Ammo Conservation, and get Tactical Rigging to have more items, and leave basically everything else in the Foundry on the backburner until the back half of the campaign.

WELLCOME BAAACK COMMANDERR!

"You know what happens when we presume, you make a pres out of you and me... wait that doesn't work".

I love that in 2018 it totally does.

Abby's intro maybe my fav so far. Gonna have some wet food now in Dirt Bikes honour.

They need to do the base assault mission next episode. I don't think they should have even seen a Muton at this point, they wasted so much time researching that fusion launcher which they haven't even used.

Either way I'm very excited for them to lose and move on to Xcom 2, my personal GOTY for 2017.

@beartaco: They'll just fail the timers or get wiped every mission, get frustrated and quit. XCOM 2 is way less forgiving and more mechanically intense than this game. Alex is playing it way too safe (hunkering down and overwatching all the time, sometimes even with no pods activated), while Dan and Abby are too reckless. They need to get better with this game first. Also, as weird as it is, on Ironman you are allowed to replay story missions immediately after you fail them.

@gunflame88: Ironman only allows you to replay DLC missions, so it's been a debate from Episode 1 whether or not they'll accept defeat at the Xcom Base Assault mission, but at this point I don't think they'll even make it that far and I'm okay with that. Accepting defeat, and taking the bad ending in Enemy Within was honestly one of the most satisfying videogame moments I've experienced. Knowing that you're persisting in a battle that you truly cannot win is an experience that no other game has provided, and knowing that it's canon going into the infinitely better sequel is incredible.

@bisonhero: That does help! Thanks for the info.

"I don't think you really used pistols on her much."

She's only the agent you've sent in on Exalt missions every time, armed with only a pistol.

To be fair, XCOM is notoriously unclear about where you have to stand in order to be "inside" a circle, either for rescuing civilians or healing a soldier. Graphically you can stand on a square that LOOKS like it is more inside the circle than out and still not be in. I wish the games were more clear about this.

So glad this is back, you guys. So glad.

I wonder how many of the things that Vinny has said he should look into, he actually has. He mentioned the continent bonuses this episode, let's see where that goes.

Thumbnail's got me shook...

Maxim 20: If you're not willing to shell your own position, you're not willing to win.

I could not get into xcom 2 at all

@porousshield: Did you play with War of the Chosen?

So happy to have this back!!

I think one thing to keep in mind, in terror missions, killing all the aliens saves all remaining civilians. So it may be better to not go out of your way to save civilians that are not in any immediate danger.

Noooooooo double tap! Hahaha

I'm so glad its back!

@beartaco: No. Too poor to afford it and not exactly jumping at the chance to buy dlc for a game I didn't particularly enjoy.

I love this series but Alex your gonna regret not having double tap when late game happens.

@porousshield: I think the general consensus is Xcom 2 = bad, Xcom 2 War of the Chosen = very very good. As someone who's only played War of the Chosen and put it as my favourite game of 2017 I'd probably agree. It's an incredible sequel to Enemy Within.

Yeah, Vinny's "observer" role has really just been thrown out the window, he's absolutely a second player at this point.

@duskulblaka said:

I care about stuff like this the most. It's not like I'd ever expect pro gameplay but they still don't understand a lot of the basic mechanics and still think dashing is never ok. I enjoy a series most when people generally get the mechanics and the suspense is coming from the strategical and tactical choices.

Just let Vinny play

I don't know if these tips will ever be seen but her goes:

1) BUILD A FOUNDRY. When it's built, focus on improved medkits, ammo conservation, tactical rigging and chitin plating.

2) Never move forward and discover new ground on the last turn.

3) If it's a choice between a soldier getting hit/killed or blowing up the alien, blow up the alien.

4) Move mechs the same distance as a regular soldier, only use their extra movement distance when you engage the enemy, then get in among them and cause chaos.

5) Only launch satellites to save a country that's in the red panic wise. Only launch them a few days before the council report/end of the month.

6) When encountering a sectopod, a disabling shot perk on a sniper is your best friend. A fully kitted out assault with an alloy cannon and rapid fire is it's worst enemy.

7) If you want to create an ultimate end-game team of badasses, outfit an entire squad (assault/sniper/support/heavy) of rookies with secondary hearts from the gene lab, by the time they hit colonel they'll demolish anything because they'll all have will in the 95-105 range.

8) An assault with an alloy cannon+close and personal+rapid fire+ghost armour is some of the best fun you'll have in the game.

9) Experiment with hybrid builds, for example: you can turn a support into a door-kicking semi-assault (sentinel/rifle supression/smoke and mirrors/combat drugs), you can turn a sniper into John Wick (snapshot/gunslinger/battle scanner/low profile/double tap) etc etc.

10) Use an emp cannon to shoot down ufos, you'll get more resources from the cleanup mission because the ufo will come down largely intact.

Hope that helps, love the series and the site. Thanks guys!

YES! That would be hilarious. I mean, I know it's been a while, but COME ON MAN. Haha. This series can be frustrating to watch, but the good usually outweighs the bad.

In which Alex straight up blows a hostage to smithereens.

@sharkman: no, you were right.

Hunkering down is pretty much useless except with unarmed VIPs you have to rescue.

I prefer my Corps to be exquisite rather than hard.

keep on presuming alex, so you and vinny can become the pres

Honestly, that went much better than I had anticipated. I had anticipated 3 countries withdrawing from the XCOM Project, but in the end only one withdrawing is manageable. I also expected a greater loss of personnel.

RIP Don Rickles though, because Alex sent him out without any equipment at all and he is going to be very vulnerable during the recovery mission.

Have never managed to get to situation where i have 3 countries on the red, one having a satellite., is still red.

that's pretty impressive.