The Exquisite Corps: XCOM: Enemy Within - Part 08

Love this!

Did they... Did they forget that you can move up and THEN shoot?

Good work Alex! That's a tough council mission (especially on higher difficulties), with the randomly spawning Mutons.

As for the overall campaign, they are perilously low on alloys since they've missed two UFO missions (one happened earlier over a continent they hadn't moved an interceptor to, the other one they missed was this episode because their interceptor didn't have the firepower to shoot down the larger abduction ship that appeared). They're also low on alloys because Abby and Alex keep selling alloys. Having no alloys makes it very difficult to buy any equipment other than like, accessories and very basic early game equipment, which they already have more than enough of.

Hopefully the next UFO mission is a small scout or large scout, either of which they can shoot down with current interceptor loadout, then they must use the gained alloys to build laser weapons for their interceptors. If the next UFO is another abduction ship, they're probably going to fail to shoot it down (again) unless they get like 1-in-a-trillion lucky and their fighter hits every shot while dodging every enemy shot. I suppose they could build multiple interceptors per continent, but the maintenance on that is expensive and I don't recommend it.

*ATTENTION WATCHCOMMANDER VINNY* Please stop the other commanders from selling alloys, elerium, or weapon fragments. You need a constant supply of all of them, and alloys/elerium are only gained from finishing UFO missions or killing certain robotic enemies. If the commanders must sell something, have them sell whichever alien they have the most corpses of. The sell value of alloys, elerium, and weapon fragments is intentionally low to discourage you from selling them.

Because of this series i played this game again last month after so many years (i can't believe it's been 5 years since this came out) and finished the campaign and let me tell you guys, i was obsessed with this game. I'm not saying i was playing it perfectly but i played this one a lot back in the day. And when i tried to play it again last month things went bad pretty quickly. I lost 6 countries in early-to-mid game but i still managed to turn things around and finished the game easily (normal difficulty-ironman). I think right now you guys are in a lot better position than i am. Just don't lose your hope even if some of those "on-the-edge" countries leave the X-com project. I believe this series will have a happy ending.

Put Dan's brain into a Bionic Commando swing arm, and recruit his wife to use it to save the world! Or don't. I love this series. Good work, Alex. Looking forward to next week.

Welp for anyone who thought Vinny was in on the joke the opening pretty much clears it up (spoilers he wasn't). I still wish Langzone didn't have to be an abomination for the sake of someone else's ego. He's been a recurring character on this website longer than Dan has even though he hasn't made as much content (most of which has been bad in my opinion). Anywho good job on command this week Alex. I'm shocked that I still remember who Greg Mueller is.

Gonna be the naysayer and support the decision to armor the sniper; in missions like this, where the enemies are coming to you (as opposed to the more offense-oriented ones, like downed ships and abduction missions), a dude can show up right on your sniper's ass.

That said, here's a handy rule of thumb: always move your sniper last. They do awesome damage from extreme range (especially with squadsight, like Abomination has), so, if you stumble upon an enemy while your other guys are advancing, the sniper can probably still take them down!

Also, please make MECs. You'll thank us. They have stupid HP, awesome equipment and abilities, and let you hack the arms and legs off of an uppity soldier. Make sure you use a squaddie or higher, though! They get a bonus ability based on their class, and rookies don't have a class.

EDIT: "It's tough to capture someone..." -Vinny

Especially when you make no attempt to do so. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

This was all Abby! (she does her own intros... she's that good)

cant wait for Dan's turn :D

@vinny: You should totally make Dan and Alex do their own intros. I look forward to the stick figures and smash cuts.

The ghost of Dan should start possessing (infecting?) other members of the team, turning them into abominations, half themselves, half Dan.

If we posit that they have 3 people alternating the play sessions once a week (that's each person playing once every 3 weeks) then they're playing pretty well imo.

All praise to Abby then for this series amazing intros! If this is the kind of quality we can expect for some future series, and just in general, she was a fantastic hire. She's done an absolutely excellent job!

Now lets all play the "How many comments does the episode a lot of us assume we are going to skip next week get?" I'm gonna start small and say..250. Prize for the winner-TBD

AhhhHHHhhhhHHHH at selling weapon fragments, alloys or elerium. Don't do it! They are basically the 3 main resources after money.

Everyone really needs to remember to check all available shot options. Taking a shot at the first target without checking the rest is just bad strategy.

Can someone shoot the Muton? Anyone? Mueller?

Well, things have gone well for 2 videos in a row now. The real Waluigui starts here.

@artisanbreads: Yes, there is a way to see a soldier's abilities in mission. It was good to point this out. Vinny should take note of this and encourage his commanders to use it, especially since they only play XCOM once every three weeks!

Jeff G & B need representation!

(also not capturing that muton tore my soul apart)

1) 8 episodes in and they still can't tell all of the time whether they are dashing or not. There is a colour difference!

2) PLEASE STOP RELOADING WHEN YOU DON'T NEED TO.

3) I don't get the constant need to dash the sniper. Just have the sniper sit at the back and pop people off.

@cagliostro88 said:

Every Muton that spawns in that mission is immediately on overwatch. Running up to it to stun it is possible, but you're really rolling the dice on hoping that their overwatch shot misses. At this stage of the game, if a Muton hits you with a full size plasma rifle, it would probably instantly kill whoever it hits unless the damage roll is the lowest possible number. Maybe the guys wearing carapace armour would survive a hit, but the guys wearing regular armour (the rookies) would almost certainly die to a single hit from a Muton.

An Assault with Lightning Reflexes could evade the overwatch shot, but Alex didn't have one. Agreed that Muton interrogation is really good if you can get it done early.

What part of "all experiments have been cancelled" didn't you understand?

Did anyone else noticed we got audio from the Abomination himself in this video?

Great Job Alex and Abby! Obligatory note: Sometime you need to think of your sniper (depending on the perk setup) as a powerful turret, rooted but deadly.

Things are really looking great for the team, i kinda wish someone would throw caution to the wind, to spice things up...

..

.

OH Wait Dan's next.

This series makes my Mondays a joy it's always tough at the start of the work week

Still a few risky moves (like exhausting all the other soldiers turns before moving Swery into undiscovered territory, and hey presto activating new enemies), but otherwise a well executed mission.

Another top quality into too. I hope we see a supercut of them all eventually.

Another killer intro! The music is always fantastic.

The Process Truster eagerly awaits Dan's next session.

@lanechanger said:

Perhaps, but I fear it's still not good enough to keep the feature going for long. They've been getting by because the game has thrown them a few softballs, eventually but sooner or later it's going to serve them up something really nasty (I remember a level that was basically a courtyard filled with 10-12 mutons, including my first berserker) and it would be nice if they had a fighting chance at least.

Oh yeah, I make no claim as to whether they're playing well enough to beat the game. I imagine they will eventually make a dumb move and reveal 3 pods at once with a sectopod and a cyberdisk in the future that will wipe out their A team (especially having not picked up HEAT ammo!).

I'm just saying, for playing pretty much once a month and having 2 other players wipe various members and pick different talents and build different things, I'm impressed they haven't lost more.

They are doing pretty great now! The only thing that I can see going badly is that they can't buy enough upgraded weapons/armor because of their lack of alloys, and getting alloys will be hard because of their lack of upgraded fighters. Still, they are doing way better than i expected.

Yeah, you really have to have your upgrade and tactics shit together once the game finally phases out all Sectoids/Thin Men/Floaters, and progresses to the point that Muton is the lowest tier enemy you fight.

The aforementioned 3 easy types of enemies deal low damage (Sectoids especially), always die in one hit to laser fire, and have a decent chance of dying in one hit even to default ballistic weapons. Mutons and above, on the other hand, deal very high damage, very rarely die in one hit to laser fire, and generally laugh at ballistic weapons unless it's your sniper or assault getting a huge crit.

For example, the reason Dan blundered through his last episode with relative success was that he got a UFO mission that was inexplicably almost entirely Sectoids (and like, 2 Seekers and the obligatory Outsider), despite it being IIRC the 3rd UFO to appear in the campaign (and at least the 8th or 9th mission overall). That is the softest of softballs, given that Sectoids and Seekers are pretty much the lowest damage enemies in the game (not counting Drones), so the Outsider was the only real threat in that entire mission.

I dread to think how Dan's next mission will go now that he'll probably be up against at least a few Mutons, though maybe he'll somehow get a Very Easy abduction mission and just fight a bunch of Floaters.

Every time they took "Dave" up into cover instead of just putting him into overwatch was a little painful to watch.

Sweet, that 40 minutes a week where I scream at the screen that isn't the NFL.

Really wished they did something with Cybernetics and not leave it in Dan's hands.

Excellent stuff, Commander Navarro and Watch-Commander Caravella!

Also, glad to see the end of Dan's diabolical medical experiments. Don't let him take an Arc Thrower into the Barracks, Vinny! #WeWillBeSwatchingYou

I cant help but think that Alex and Max would be interchangeable in these eps the way Vinny keeps 'guiding'.

Instead of spewing my tips in the comment section, I'm just going to say I love you guys. I love you guys, I love you guys. You made me start playing this game again, which makes watching this even more frustrating. But I love you guys. I love you guys.

I just want you to know... I love you guys.

Nnnnnnng... your sniper has squad sight, don't sell alloys and fragments, you can move and shoot, check all available targets, don't spread out your squad too much, having a heavy do extra damage to machinery (instead of an extra reaction shot) might come in handy later, make sure you can take down those ufos (having satellites over a country's continent opens that continent up to ufo attacks), don't p...

I'm sorry. I love you guys.

Don't forget that Zhang is a Grenadier, so give the man some grenades!

Maybe if facilities weren't constantly being built, demolished, and then moved, the money issue wouldn't be so dire.

You guys are going to regret not taking Heat Ammo. Heavies also tend to have the worst accuracy so having two reaction shots isn't as beneficial as it sounds.

If you were using a controller, that elevation wonkiness with the train wouldn't have happened.

Knowing Dan he probably will; if he's smart he'll ignore the next mission in this storyline that comes up, since it'll be in a day or two and he won't have any good units. Him getting an abduction mission would be the best possible outcome, though; if he gets any sort of UFO mission it's almost a sure thing he'll kill the outsider again.

I had this mission a couple of days ago in my save; they were so much better equipped with their weapons in this and still they got several people injured; my sniper was several ranks higher than theirs, but still, you just put them on top of the train and it cancels out the mutons, even with ballistic weapons. I wonder if anybody after the fact realised that Abomination was pretty much functionally useless for that mission.

Snipers have been functionally useless the whole series because they have not figured out how to use them yet. In my opinion, its because they keep charging them forward for no real reason, nullifying the use of the sniper weapon itself. Then they end up hunkering down or pointlessly reloading. They rarely put them into overwatch with the pistol either.

I would normally have my snipers sit at the back and overwatch constantly, and I don't think I would have been able to complete the game otherwise. They really need to figure out quickly how to best use the sniper, otherwise they are done.

I would say that if you're going to move your sniper every single turn (for no reason, to boot), maybe you don't want a sniper in the first place.

Disabling Shot on the sniper is a great, low-damage way to deal with any of your own guys who get mind controlled. Keep it in mind!

I love how this series is just Vinny telling them what to do

@dg_nick: Right?! :D

Swery65% continues to crush it.

They passed about 30 times over the AUGMENT SOLDIER tab in the base menu and by the end I had foam coming out of my mouth. Make Austin a robot!

I think you guys may be overstating the difficulty of this game a bit. At least on normal. Maybe ennemy within is just so much more difficult than the original but when I played the game when it came out I had one soldier die during the full campaign.