I always feel uneasy when I think about XCOM’s enemies. Sectoid Commanders, Mutons, and Cyberdiscs are the thanks to the countless men and women I’ve lost to them. Much to my horror, developer Firaxis Games didn’t think the aliens were enough punishment, so it decided to add a new kind of foe who, unlike the ones mentioned here, is very much from our planet.The XCOM: Enemy Within expansion (out Nov. 12) introduces us to Exalt, a nefarious organization that’s clearly on the alien’s side. This is in addition to the new weapons, mech class, resources, and other adjustments Firaxis announced. PC players can download it for $29.99, but XCOM fans on consoles will have to grab it on disc in the XCOM: Enemy Within Commander Edition for $39.99.Nothing will carry over from your old save files. Instead, you start a fresh campaign featuring the alien invasion story from last year’s XCOM: Enemy Unknown with the new content built-in.Let’s take a look at why Exalt is so deadly.
Image Credit: 2K Games Meet ExaltLike XCOM, Exalt is a paramilitary organization that operates in the shadows but its goals are drastically different. It believes that the aliens’ genetic experimentations are a good thing — in fact, it wants to help them — and it wants to rule the world. Exalt sends sleeper cells to different countries (the same ones XCOM monitors) to advance its pro-alien agenda.To combat this threat, XCOM now has access to Global Covert Operations, a branch of missions that sends in a single plainclothes soldier (armed with nothing more than a pistol and a grenade) to secretly investigate the cells. Completing these missions earn you clues to the whereabouts of Exalt’s headquarters. Once you find its base, you can send in a squad to destroy the organization once and for all. XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Is it possible to stun a Sectoid Commander? I was able to supress him and move in for the stun. He had 2 Hp left which gave me 80%. How can I remove mind control from my soldier? I can confirm this now. I finished a Psi tree and it does not include a way to get rid of the mind control. Kill or stun the enemy. If you make the enemy panic, it might drop the mind control in a panic but. Good luck with that. Browse other questions tagged xcom-enemy-unknown or ask your. The Bureau: XCOM Declassified Edit Aliens Edit. Sectoid Outsider Outsider Elite Rocket Sniper Sniper Elite Phantom Scout Shield Commander Tech Commander Minion Commander Psion Commander Infiltrator Axis Origin Muton Elite Muton Mechs Sectopod Aircraft Drone Advanced Drone Gunship Titan XCOM: Enemy Unknown Edit Aliens Edit. Zombie Sectoid. The Gatekeeper Achievement in XCOM: Enemy Unknown: Stun an Outsider - worth 10 GamerScore. Find guides to this achievement here. (The stun starts out at a 70% chance if the enemy has 3 health. I've tried twice now to stun an EXALT operative.failed both times. Considering how quickly X-COM converts alien tech into human-usable. And if you do still manage to get an enemy down to like 1-3 health, you have a 95% stun rate. That being said, I ended up capturing a lot of aliens with the default Arc Thrower, though there were a lot of awkward situations where I was whittling down health using pistols so I didn't accidentally kill what I was trying to capture. You can also try to ignore them. While letting Exalt run freely will hurt you in the long run, defeating them is optional — the extraterrestrials are still your primary objective.“This gameplay is something that we felt XCOM needed, in the sense that this is a campaign that the player controls the tempo of, to a certain extent,” said lead designer Ananda Gupta to GamesBeat. “Unlike the alien invasion –where UFOs will come in, you shoot them down or fail to, abductions and terrors occur, and you have to deal with them using what you got — here, you can choose your tempo. You can choose your posture with respect to Exalt.”. Image Credit: 2K Games Why Exalt is such a painFighting Exalt adds yet another strain to your limited resources. If the sleeper cells go unheeded, they will disrupt XCOM operations every chance they get: Propaganda missions raises a country’s panic level, Sabotage drains some of your cash, and Research Hack delays any projects you’re researching at the time. The best way to stop them from carrying these out is by revealing their locations before they can act. You can spend some cash to expose them with an Intel Scan — causing them to look for a new place to hide — or you can avoid that expense and wait until they launch one of their operations, which ends up revealing their location anyway.When you know what countries the cells are in, you can start sending in your covert agents. They need time to gather intel, and once that passes, you have to send a squad to extract them. But Exalt won’t let you go that easy, so you’ll have to fight the cells in turn-based battles (you control both your squad and the agent you sent in earlier ). Enemy Within randomly chooses one of two objective-based modes in these situations. In Covert Extraction, the agent has to hack into Exalt’s communication relays (disabling Exalt’s main attacks for one turn) and get to the extraction point alive. Covert Data Recovery is a King of the Hill-style mode that has you protecting a series of control points while killing all the Exalt troops in the area.The guys I fought against in the demo were regular Exalt soldiers — some have genetic modifications, or G-mods, a feature in Enemy Within that upgrades your soldiers with new skills in a Genetics Lab. These guys carried the same sort of weapons as I did. Later on, you’ll face elite Exalt soldiers who have better equipment and G-mods you don’t have access to.“We did do a lot of work on Exalt’s A.I.,” Gupta said. “They combo their abilities and use their explosives a lot more smartly than the aliens do. We wanted to create a new combat experience.”“Smartly” is a bit of an understatement — they’re relentless. Every time I had my XCOM soldiers near each other, Exalt never failed to lob a grenade or shoot a rocket at them. Best collection.Portal 2 Logo, download free in high quality. Two of my guys died before I realized I needed to keep them further apart. And whatever advantage I had from the beginning quickly disappeared as more and more Exalt reinforcements came in after I hacked the relays. Coupled with catastrophically poor shots from my team (apparently, I was the first person to miss with a rocket launcher that day), I had no choice but to make a hasty retreat.Sadly, not everyone made it back to the plane. I made the hard decision to leave my sniper behind because he was too far from the extraction point and an entire squad of Exalt men were practically breathing down his neck.Sorry, buddy. It was for the greater good. What are your tips for being successful?.Focus on engineers over scientists. You must reach X amount of engineers to build new Satellite uplink rooms. ![]() (The number grows with each room.) You never have to reach 'X amount of scientists' for anything-more scientists just mean faster research times. You'll get enough scientists 'Naturally' through the course of the game.Your arc gun is useful if you can get close enough to use it. Most of the enemy classes can be stunned, and the enemies give you research credit and their weapon when they do. You should make plans to stun one of each new enemy the first time you meet them.You shouldn't base in South America, but it should be where you launch your first two satellites. Doing so will make all your autopsies and interrogation instantaneous. By doing this, and focus on engineers like I said above, you will typically have everything researched by the end of July on normal.Edit: One last general tip. You're new, so I say play 'Soft Ironman'. This means you don't check the iron man option, but you don't reload when a trooper dies or misses etc. Dire circumstance is what makes this game fun. So live with your bad tactical choices.But you should reload when you miss-click, or you pressed the wrong button because you're still getting use to the UI. You'll find in later missions on some of the ships you can accidentally make your guy sprint up to the roof even though you were trying to click a square inside the ship. Once your comfortable with the UI, Ironman all the way. Explosives: Use them early, use them often. And every time Dr. Vahlen yells at you, laugh at her face and fire off another rocket. If your rookie has a 45% chance to kill a Sectoid with gunfire, but a 100% chance to kill it with a grenade, why take the chance?Here's what the game doesn't tell you: when you kill an alien with gunfire, after the mission ends its corpse and some Weapon Fragments are added to XCOM's stockpiles. If you kill an alien with explosives, the fragments are destroyed but the corpse is left intact. Xcom Enemy Unknown DownloadThe trouble is, early on corpses can be very useful (each can be sold on the Gray Market for a small amount, just don't sell too many because certain items and upgrades cost alien corpses to buy) while you won't have a shortage of Weapon Fragments (used to 'buy' certain research and Foundry projects) until June, at the earliest.One more thing: XCOM has what can be called a 'reverse difficulty curve.' Early on the game can be challenging (especially if you're playing on Classic or Impossible), but if you can make it to June with a solid core of veterans XCOM becomes drastically easier.And about base management: Adjency bonuses are important. It's critical that you create a 2x2 square of Satellite Uplinks (with adjancy bonuses, you get 12 satellite instead of 8) and, if there is no steam in the first 3 'layers' of XCOM's base, important to get a 2x2 square of Generators. Overall, your absolute first priority is to expand XCOM's satellite coverage. Every covered country contributes a hefty sum to XCOM's coffers, the aliens cannot launch Abductions in countries with satellite coverage, and if you get coverage over an entire continent you get that continent's bonus (example, launching in Argentina and Brazil gets you 'We Have Ways'). Build a satellite in March ASAP, and every month after that build another uplink and 3 satellites, keeping in mind the power costs and engineer requirement (you can't build a second uplink until you have 10 engineers, the third until you have 15, the fourth until you have 20, etc.). Don't launch any satellites until the end of the month (a day or two before the Council Report), because when you launch a satellite doesn't affect monthly income, while the later you launch the less likely you'll be surprised by countries reaching 5 Panic (and threatening to leave the XCOM Project) and Requests for Satellite Coverage (there's a chance some country will offer you $200 to launch in their airspace in the first few months).When planning Satellite launches, 3 things to consider:-Income: The US and Russia offer the most money. Mexico and Australia offer the least; everywhere else is in between. All else equal, go for the country that offers the most $$.-Prior coverage: 4 Satellites in Asia gives you the 'Future Combat' bonus, while 2 satellites and Asia and 2 in Europe gives nothing. In addition, to protect 4 Asian satellites you need 1 Interceptor, while protecting 2 Asian and 2 European satellites requires twice as many jets, doubling maintenance and armament costs.-Panic: You don't want any country leaving the Council, but on Classic and Impossible it's unavoidable and sometimes it's better to grab an important Continent Bonus (Africa, South America, and Asia) than to prevent a country from leaving the Council. There's little reason to try and keep countries in your home continent from leaving (you're getting that continent's bonus anyway), and North America and European countries are also somewhat low-priority (because the NA and Europe Continent Bonuses aren't as good as the others). Are you completely new to the game?It heavily depends on what difficulty level are you playing on. Normal difficulty can be considered 'easy' and it will help you to learn the game and prepare for higher challenges. Classic difficulty is very challenging and is not recommended for beginners. Impossible difficulty is literally impossible for anyone but the veterans.This game is different from any other game in the market in a way that the hardest point is at the very start. If you survive the start of the game and progress, everything gets gradually easier and easier.Focus on satellites. Your goal is to launch 3 satellites every in-game month. Xcom Enemy Unknown ModsThis is the single most important thing in the game, the driving priority that can't be ignored. The more satellites you launch, the easier the game becomes (continents with full sat. Coverage stop panicking). Always launch new satellites a few days before the monthly Council report, not earlier.Despite what the tutorial has told you, use explosives liberally (especially on Classic and Impossible difficulties), until your main weapons outclass them. It helps avoiding unnecessary casualties in the early game.In early game the most useful unit would be a Heavy trooper with a rocket launcher. As the game progresses, snipers overtake them. In the very endgame a couple of colonel snipers (with squadsight) are invaluable. That said, every soldier class have their own strengths and are completely viable.Enemy Within DLC is basically an expansion of the game and, despite its exorbitant price, is actually really worth getting. Be advised, on Classic and Impossible difficulties it is considerably harder than Enemy UnknownPlay with 'Ironman' option enabled. XCOM is meant to be played this way only. Despite what the tutorial has told you, use explosives liberallyThis can't be stressed enough. If there's an active alien and you're using your last soldier for the turn, if you have a poor chance to hit the alien, finish it with explosives. If you can avoid it, never let the aliens actually get a full, active turn in.Play with 'Ironman' option enabled. XCOM is meant to be played this way only.Don't do this, the game is too buggy. Unless you're a masochist or you're experienced enough to play through the oddities. Don't do this, the game is too buggy. Unless you're a masochist or you're experienced enough to play through the oddities.I have over 400 hours on XCOM EU/EW playing exclusively Ironman and I have never had any gamebreaking bugs (besides multiplayer).The only real way to enjoy the game is to embrace your mistakes and their consequences. Being able to reload after every Thin Man crit or your own ill-considered positioning or misclick just makes everything dull and pointless. Xcom Enemy Unknown StunWhat's the point in playing the game you can't possibly lose?. Have you never left clicked on a meld container and had your soldier move, instead of activating the meld?I did, but that's not a bug. That's my own inattention to detail - if there is no icon present when you mouseover, the soldier will move. Just pay attention, it's not like the game is timed.Same thing applies to multilevel maps. I don't really understand the general opinion that it's a bug. When you mouseover the tile (and stop moving the cursor around, dammit), the game displays exactly where the unit will end up and even what path is he going to take. There is no excuse for misclicking. There is no need to click in a rush, you can spend an hour considering your next move if you so choose.There are a few tiles on the larger UFO roofs, where you can't move unto, because the cursor automatically descends to a lower level, but that's just the name of the game and no amount of reloading will fix this. Pay attention. Xcom Enemy Unknown GuideThanks, I just started playing so there're probably a lot of Things I don't know abou thtis game. This sounds a bit as though it is about pvp (while re-reading i relized ther're probably some enemies ahead that can stun me- i haven't gotten very far yet and am keeping from researching too much for sake of not havin too many Spoilers)? I'm only playing single Player, and I should have been more specific - what I meant was if i stun an Alien in the campaign- like lets say my 5th Mission:) (pretty much as soon as I get the arc thrower I try to use it), do my recruits or soldiers get xp for the stun, the same as if they had just killed the Alien?I've read that unless I destroy my Alien prison cell or just dont get one, I don't get Alien corpses if I stun them, so once I have no use for it I should destroy it. I know I get Alien weapons instead of weapon Fragments etc, but I'm just wondering if my stunning them would hinder my leveling up my recruits n soldiers.I appreciate the Response Kordaus, I know I'm like half a decade late or so when it Comes to playing xcom, and it seems there's a lot more to this game yet to enjoy:). Stunning does not give the same XP as a Kill; and will not advance your soldier's kill counter.However stunning a low-level sectoid is one way to obtain a plasma pistol; instead of having it explode when the sectiod is killed. Likewise for whatever weapon(s) other aliens may be carrying. Of course this reduces the number of 'weapon fragments' you get (for manufacturing).You can get corpses for autopsies (or whatever) without a containment facility; it is live aliens for interrogation that you need the containment facility for.
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