The Exquisite Corps: XCOM: Enemy Within - Part 38

Noice!

Start betting on who has the gift!!

dang is that a darren korb joint, it's bumpin

Alex analyzing strategy will come into play in the next and final episode.....

I really hope someone or somethree dies or/and a country pulls out this episode, not rooting against youse guys it’s just better when things aren’t going way smoothly.

I kinda hate the decision to make the last episode a group instead of just Dan his recklessness and sense of humor makes for the best episodes and if anyone would fail it would be him and then you can do a group one with what’s left, like I get youse guys want to do good but that also just leads to hypercompetency at the sacrifice of pure entertainment.

To be honest, leveling up the psi abilities is probably going to take a while, and Patrick is a squaddie so just forget about him. It'd say you've meandered along for far to long for it to be worth getting into now. And you'll probably need 2-3 more missions to get meld for Letterman. At some point you just have to roll the dice and go for the final mission.

Oh man, I was so worried throughout this episode as they just skipped over the Alien Grenade in the Foundry. Happy to see they finally thought about it by the end. And, yeah, they really should train those PSI soldiers up a bit before taking on the final mission. Not that it's by any means impossible to do with low level PSI guys, but some of those PSI abilities are pretty cool.

I'm scared on what Dan will do with all of this money he has. I hope Vinny pushes him in the right direction. I'm glad Alex got a lot of gear and they found to psy power soldiers.

Hyped for that next episode!

Great job Alex

I love the intros.

I really dig the personal reports but what I realised I love even more, is Vinnys editing.

This version of Patrick Klepek is endowed with psychic power by his handlebar moustache. Its way funnier levelling him up and having Patrick save the world, especially to see Dan's conflicting reactions to it.

Finally, Dick Tracy gets to go on an actual mission!

I was just giddy thinking that the final mission was going to fall exclusively on Dan but it's definitely much more wise and will be hilarious in its own way to have all three commanders attempt the final mission together. What a fantastic series this has been.

Some episodes are a little dull, but this is by far my favorite series.

Dunno if this has been brought up before but the Gollop Chamber is a nice little reference to this guy.

would love to see an alternate timeline version of Exquisite Corps where Vinny didn't share his advice and influence, wonder how far they would have gotten.

indeed. love this series, alex and vinny doing strategy is some of my favorite shit

I mean ... there were a number of occasions where he actively discouraged them from doing the right thing - like not taking down that UFO that eventually lead to Alex' F rating and two countries leaving the project. Of course he also reminded them of looking at the soldiers' gear before taking on a mission which it seemed they forgot about with a frightening frequency, but all in all, I'm not sure if it would actually have made all that much of a difference. I'm sure each one would've had at least one catastrophic mission, but I'd think they may have learned a bit from that and had a better fundamental grasp of the game mechanics later on, and at this difficulty level it would certainly have been possible to recover from 3-4 lost missions.

The Time has come. Either you roll the dice and do a mission with a noobie Psy soldier or you farm random encounters with the psy soldier for levels. But considering the difficulty your playing on, it should be doable.

Zhang, Abomination, Jason, Bike & support. The tough choice will be choosing the 6th element considering in what play-style you wanna go with. Picking another assault would be a good choice since you will have 2 run and gun with alloy cannons, or picking letterman since he is tanky and has a AoE heal.

You guys need to pay close attention to the equipment and skill that will be put in play.

I know you guys can do it, and I hope the General receives great advice from his Lieutenants.

What a season, what a season. Great series. Hopefully Alexy Quest will be as entertaining.

The end is near! I can't wait for the next episode, and it's a great idea to have the whole team on for it.

@vinny: IMPORTANT!!!!!!! Activating the Gollop Chamber will give your psychic istantly all the ranks in the psy-tree and lock him for the final mission, so use Zhang for it and not Patrick for whatever any other reason: you would be forced with a squaddie in your team.

I was thinking it was more like Part 138.

I know this series has probably gone on longer than expected but I am very happy you all have made it to the end. It's very satisfying watching everything finally come together and having all the memories along the way. I'm glad Dan got to finish off Exalt but I don't want the pressure of him having to do the final mission, I love the idea of everyone coming together for it.

I also agree, I don't think it's really worth it to post-pone and try to level anyone up. The only possible thing that might be worth it would be to get some of those gene mods, and honestly, you could just ignore missions that pop up while you wait, you are at the end game now anyway so rising panic won't matter. Good luck Commanders!

Boo, no need for all 3 commanders. Leave the final mission for THE FIXER!

Vinny coming with the hot tips like getting those mech guns and using collateral damage as something else than just guaranteed damage.

Very happy that Patrick Klepek got his moment in the sun at last. Also, that Alex Council Report payoff was great!

LEVEL UP YOUR PSI GUYS BEFORE DOING THE FINAL MISSION!

I get Alex and Vinny's confusion because "High Cover" really should be called "Solid Cover." The waist-high pod thing is not HIGH, but it is SOLID.

Love the progress being made with this series. Last 3 episodes have felt much less wheel-spinning.

I've always looked forward to these every Monday but for the first time I'm like "whaaat I have to wait a whole week!?"

Feels like the 00's when weekly TV dramas that kept you hooked were a thing.

@cdude9590 said:

Are you suggesting they should spend a half a dozen episodes treading water just to level up Patrick? Zhang will do fine with the rest of their top team, and his PSI abilities will be maxed out regardless when he uses the chamber.

They're right though, the full shield is intended to mean high cover. For whatever reason, the devs made those green alien abduction pods really short and stout even though they're supposed to be high cover, so visually it seems like bullshit that they count as high cover, since Mutons seem to tower over them.

Most other high cover objects are indeed quite tall (tractor trailers, 10+ foot walls, trees, etc.). Lots of high cover is indestructible like the alien pods and (inexplicably) trees, but if you have high cover from standing beside a normal brick wall, that wall can be vaporized by weapons fire or explosions, leaving you completely out of cover. High cover/low cover doesn't directly imply solidity, though almost all low cover is destructible, while only some high cover is destructible.

@vinny In the end game, the missions start giving you more Meld. So you have 70 now, and I believe all missions give you a minimum 30 Meld at this point in the game (assuming you get both cannisters; if you whiff on both cannisters, I think you magically still get 10 or 15 Meld). One more mission could potentially give you enough Meld to upgrade Letterman's MEC suit. However, some missions don't have Meld, such as Terror missions (where you save civilians) or Council missions (where you rescue a VIP or defuse a bomb). Before you actually start the Gollop Chamber final mission, you should probably spend all your remaining money and Meld, either on Letterman or an assortment of gene mods.

Also, Improved Pistol I, II, and III are different upgrades. One improves crit chance, one improves accuracy, one improves damage. You were meant to gradually do them throughout the campaign (the first one is very inexpensive), but instead you ignored them and then confused yourselves at the end by thinking that III was strictly better than I and II.

Also, although the game never tells you this, the psi soldier that you use to activate the Gollop Chamber automatically has his psi ranks maxed out, probably because playtesting showed some players end up in your situation where you finally find a psi soldier after building the chamber and don't want to spend the time grinding up that soldier's psi level.

Also, the point of Archangel Armor is to get to the highest elevation and then stay there hovering for most of the mission and have very long sight lines (I believe any time a friendly or enemy unit is flying, they get 20% defense as if they were in partial cover, so don't worry about them being out of cover). You can take most normal actions while airborne (shoot, reload, overwatch, grenade, etc.) other than hunker down. There's no need to land at the end of every round like the commanders have been doing for the past 2 episodes. If you want to just land on ground surfaces every turn, you're better off skipping Archangel Armor and giving your snipers Ghost Armor instead, which has the same grappling hook as the obsolete Skeleton Suit but the Ghost Armor has better stats and grants limited-use invisibility.

Ah, yes. I spent my summers at Lake Bodé as a child.

I am totally okay with them doing a few more missions to get the levels/meld they need and ending the series on an even 40 episodes.

I really hope they do XCOM2 after this. This series is the whole reason I bought a subscription.

I felt really queasy when you talked him out of taking close combat specialist. Should be fine, though.

It's good to see Alex busting out those flawless missions, and meld at that!

It's heavy floaters and possibly mectoids and sectopods that give you 5 meld each, and at least floaters appear in almost every mission at this point of the game.

Whose man is this?!

Archangel armor isn't great, but you want that Ghost armor.

Still the best thing on GB!

@north6: Archangel armor is situational but can be very OP. If your sniper has squad site and in the zone they can just float in place and clear the map. The way they've been using it, to just move them to higher ground, is less useful than flying all the way up and getting an aerial view.

Do they have any medals that they can award? I know they did an episode where they did give away several, but I thought you kept earning them as you played.

Base damage 9-11.

Seems pretty good.

My two cents: I think each commander should get one more episode before getting together to take on the final one. That should allow them ample time to do some final upgrades (not to mention draw this series out longer instead of the sudden end we might be getting).

I like how they keep calling Norm Macdonald "abomination" just because he's the sniper.

Give Overseer Caravella control for the final mission, it’s Vinny’s time to shine!

@citizencoffeecake: Fuck yeah, what a great idea! Make vinny play while the others tell him what to do.

Ohhh, that's where that Meld is coming from. Never knew that.