Bay 12 Games Forum

I'm not being a "hater", I'm not even a massively devoted fan to new- or old-com, but by removing a little thing like permadeath, meaningful progression and, oh, I don't know, the possibility of failure they have completely excised anything that made X-Com, X-Com.   

Seriously, I wasn't "waiting in the wings" to complain about the game, I was as ready as anyone to get foolishly excited for a SWAT-style X-Com game set in some whacky future city. But then that first dot-point shat all over everything good about the franchise, soooo... might as well make it a mobile clicker game at this point, what with them going for smaller markets or whatever.   

Game over still counts as failure, yes? (Different sort, I know). Perhaps more relevantly, the gameplay preview showed that squaddies put in the 'bleed out' state can end up with injuries, which require cash and recovery time to clear up. Assuming there's some time pressure, that could create enough of a punishment to work.

(There are android troopers that can fill in for troops if needed - they lack specialties like the named squaddies, but can presumably shoot a gun okay.)

Quote from: Dostoevsky on April 14, 2020, 03:49:22 pm

Edit: Just a back-and-forth system with the potential for fiddling instead of proper initiative, looks like?

Ah, is the OP misleading then? ‘Cause I’d do I’m happy to edit it.

Nah, don't worry about it. You suggested watching the gameplay trailer, which was indeed worth it.

I dunno man. Maintaining peace among different factions in one single huge futuristic city featuring alien-human hybrids from past alien invasions? Seems pretty Apocalypse to me.

Hopefully it does go that direction, but my impression from the trailer seemed more of translating the nations into districts - that is, they don't necessarily interact with one another, you just need to keep them each from getting too panicky.

Regardless, the impression I'm getting from this is that if you liked the combat engine in the more recent XCOM series, you'll probably enjoy this. I'm honestly a bit undecided on how proven the XCOM battle engine is for my personal tastes, but at this price point I may give it a whirl to see if the added complexity pushes it over the top.

Off-hand, there's a specific map that takes place in a twisty cave that branches (that's mostly one floor, thankfully) where you have to deal with The Technomancer. Who is a bastard to keep unconscious without killing her. (I ended up surrounding her with ~6 gals and repeatedly punched her in the face for 20 turns as the rest of my group finished the place.) Pretty sure it shows up as a Red Mage mission.

I thought you weren't supposed to capture the technomancer and/or don't get anything special for a capture v. a kill? That is a mission you need to do for that chain, but capture is optional.


Anyways, I'd argue X-Piratez is so chock full of content it's okay for certain arcs to be less common / challenging.

In addition to what everyone else said, what difficulty are you playing?

The hardest difficulty ridiculously buffs enemies and is generally reserved for having a bad time (in my opinion), lowest difficulty does a similarly huge debuff against enemies. The middle ones generally (I think?) only affect enemy numbers. So if the numbers are overwhelming, tuning that down some does help without making things too easy.

I don't think I saw below, but -- don't expect to get a decent combat ship for a while. You can technically get some ramshackle combat ships pretty early, but they won't easily defeat anything tougher than civilian shipping.

Also, try to get familiar with ship speeds/behaviors/etc. Better base sensors will help a lot with this, but even without one can get a sense of what sorts of vessels to steer clear of.

Steam Marines looks like Into the Breach/X-com. Has anyone who played it tell us more about what it is and how it plays?

I played it... 6 years ago. For 2 hours. I wish I could remember more about it, but for whatever reason it just didn't 'click' for me.

Tried booting it up again just now, and it crashed my computer. Reinstalled, followed the stickied instructions for solutions to the problems I faced (black screen, can't get out), and nothing worked. Looking at the support thread shows several recent users facing the same problem.

If you've got an older setup it'd probably still work, I guess? They are working on a sequel now, though it's in 3D.

My only objection is that Stamina does not regenerate while traveling. You literally have to sit inside a town and let time pass to regain smithing stamina.

That's why I'm guessing it's meant to be 'time spent forging' - makes you sit in town to simulate the time you spend using their forge. Of course, in practice it's more like some sort of replicatatron that spits things out then needs to recharge (while you hand-crank or something, I don't know)... hence why it's odd like that.

From an 'actually playing the game' perspective, I agree it's not fun as-is.

Where are you finding mods?

Nexus is where I've gone. There's probably better places, though.

99.9% of companions seem to get base 60 in the combat stats, and 60 in one or two other stats like Riding, Roguery, Scouting.....

So not super high, and slow to level, but higher than the player starts with. You'll know an intended combat monster when they have 120 single hand skill.

Guess I've gotten lucky then? I have: Urgil the Lucky (90 in all melee, 75 bow, 60 other); Ariada the Wanderer (150 in one/two, 170 polearm, 100+ in ranged & riding, 90 athletics); Litka the Shieldmaiden (150 one, 200 two!, 140 polearm, 100 bow/throw/riding/athletics, 80 crossbow); and a healer with 60s.

No idea if companion names/backgrounds are set v. random, but that serves as some illustrative. Note that the better fighters there have no good noncombat skills, though - Urgil's got tactics and the healer's got healing (of course), but the others have nada.

They can level really slowly, but I just noticed -- leveling is based on gaining skill points, not amorphous XP. Chances are they won't be using noncombat skills much, especially if they have no skill to begin with, but at least you can give them some SP by letting them do a bunch of refining/smelting?

For those talking about in-battle AI, try using the F6 command during your next battle. It assigns the group (or all groups, if you have all selected) to be handled by 'your sergeant' (i.e. the AI). Also shows in the lower-left all the commands being issued to them - it's a pretty active AI, and seems to do a decent job the few times I've done it.

When I'm playing on foot it seems a decent choice to assign your cavalry to it, for example - will e.g. harass or protect your flanks while you worry about more immediate things.

On the board games, each culture supposedly has their own. Only done the Imperial and Battanian ones so far -- not a fan of (perhaps just because I'm not any good at) the Battanian one.