SPOILERS-XCOM, since there very clearly needs to be a thread for that

Not Thrive
47

I did some spring cleaning.

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48

That’s a lot of XCOM :space_invader:

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It’s over half the previous thread. I should honestly have just renamed the original thread and moved the other posts to a new thread.

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Hey, @Omicron, is there any particular enemy that I should be aware of in the coordinates missions? Do I need a Psi operative or not for these missions? Are there a lot of mecs or sectopods in the said missions? And what item would be useful in these ops?
Also, I noticed that you’re the only user to have been promoted to Leader rank yet (except discobot). Why is that? With years of Thrive forums, I would have thought that many of the old users would become leaders.
51

You do realise I am not that experienced in XCOM right? But the missions usually contain just slightly stronger / more enemies than a normal mission, and depend on how far along you are. (For example, if you just encountered mutons you won’t find sectopods in the assault IIRC.) But still, take your strongest troops and just try. (Psi’s are not necessary, and their tech can even be skipped entirely.) XCOM’s built around taking risks.

As for why I have the leader rank, I feel like that’s more a question for @hhyyrylainen. Basically all I know was that I checked my page for some reason and saw the rank. IIRC it was more to test out what it was for and how it would work and stuff than for any bigger reason.

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I don’t know if that’s allowed, but I’m going to write a joke about the Elders.

Ignore if you love communist hamsters' sayings

The Elders are :belgium:tarded according to @Omicron and @Rednascar11!

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Hey, @Omicron! Here’s the next part :

Spoilummary
By the way, I just beat the coordinates missions, saw a gatekeeper, researched the gate portal and I downloaded a mod, which now allows me to evac without having to kill EVERY alien, so that I won’t risk my soldiers’ life for the 4-soldiers-slots-only achievement. Then, maybe I’ll play the game without the mod, unless it can be very useful in Ironman mode or legend difficulty. LOL! I just understood that 12 mobility represents 8 tiles/16 tiles dashing in XCOM 2 (7 tiles/15 tiles dashing in XCOM: EU)! Seriously, they should have made this mechanic more explicit! Even if they are showing the attribute in XCOM 2, they don’t really explain it (unless I didn’t see their explanation).
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Hey, I beat XCOM 2 now. Yeah!

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The Professor (AKA The Speaker, I call him “The Professor” because he looks like The Professor in Witcher 1) was arrested by the crowd (too bad they didn’t kill him), for they have discovered the truth about ADVENT and the belgiumtarded Elders. Thus, I continued the game and beat it. After killing off the Avatars, it seems the Elders were still alive while burried under the seafloor. Nested spoiler alert : XCOM 3 will be Terrors from the Deep Remastered.
Basically, I wanted to cover every region in the world for the achievement, but as soon as I completed the Avatar autopsy, the ADVENT network mission popped up and I took my chance at striking back, while I didn’t realize that I will only be able to complete the final mission after completing this operation. So, I was doomed to finish the game without the achievement. Too bad… . Oh well, now that I beat XCOM 2, I should soon update my PC from Windows 7 to Windows 10 (support for Windows 7 will end on January 14th in 2020). That way, I won’t have to worry about it.

So! What do you think about all that, @Omicron?

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You downloaded multiple mods over the span of the campaign to make it easier for you. That is considered cheating pretty bad tbf

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First, I don’t consider mods to be cheating unless it’s a dev console mod or that they make you too OP. Second, for half the game, I’ve played with only one mod (an aesthetics one, adding face paints). Later on, I downloaded a mod to make the game more guerilla (being able to EVAC without losing the mission as long as I complete the main objective; killing every enemies becomes an optional objective with that mod). So far, I evac’d 3-4 times. Thus, I’ve only used two mods so far (I generally like to play vanilla, unless the game is unbalanced or unfair). There were also some bugs made by the game graphic glitch gremlin AKA the glitch gremlin (see: THE NEW Miscellaneous Talk That Doesn't Deserve A New Thread Thread Thread), but they were usually unfair to me. Anyway, I proved you right @Omicron : the Elders are retarded.

Now, I’m going to begin a game in Commander difficulty. Good luck @Omicron!

Omicron : Wait, what?

I’ve played on Commander for a while and I haven’t had any trouble, plus I’m doing the Exquisite Timing achievement. Speaking of that achievement, is that a reference to Independance Day?
I’m already near the very end of the game! I’ve followed a guide and it works! Now, I’m about to assault the blacksite coordinates! I wonder if I need to finish the game at July 1st or before July 1st?
Speaking of the blacksite coordinates, beware. Save files have a tendency to corrupt easily on that mission, and it makes your game crash for just reloading a save sometimes. I also encountered a :belgium:ing sectopod. What the hell? A sectopod on May? Sectopods are supposed to appear on August. Did anyone else have that bug too?
The playthrough is done! I played the game on Commander difficulty and I got 5 achievements at once! Even though, I still had to savescum to get these. Anyway, I won!

SPOILERS CUTSCENES FROM XCOM 2!

LONG LIVE THE RESISTANCE!

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Hey, @Omicron, I wanted to ask you a question. What would you think of a possible XCOM 3, which would probably be a remake of “Terror from the deep” according to XCOM 2 last cutscene?
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Would be cool, more XCOM is more better, but I’m currently more looking forward to Phoenix Point

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Speaking of Phoenix Point, wasn’t Phoenix an area in Arizona where there were multiple reports of a strange light in the sky?

Change of subject: I began a game on Ironman (XCOM 2) for the achievement while following this guide;

The guide says that if a soldier dies or gets shaken on the first mission (Gatecrasher), you have to restart the game. Thus, I had restarted my game plenty of times until I got tired of it; I downloaded an Ironman backup mod :sweat_smile:.
I encountered the same problem on Witcher 2 Insane difficulty. It’s a hardcore difficulty adding a sort of Ironman effect making it so that if you die, you can’t reload your save, so you have to restart the whole game. You have no idea how many times I had died before I downloaded the “anti-ironman” mode to be able to reload my save. With that mod enabled, I died like only 3-4 times. It’s probably because I was less scared of restarting the whole game all over again. The backup mod does the same job.
On Operation Gatecrasher, I only savescummed once to avoid Jane Kelly’s death. Then, neither Ana Ramirez (vanilla character), Peter Osei (another vanilla character), Jane Kelly (you know who it is) or Dude I don’t remember the name has died on the first mission. The mod really made my first ops way easier; avoiding the ‘restart the game’ function.
Speaking of the vanilla characters, I added Osei and Ramirez in my character pool, but a bug occurs with their biography. When I was on Windows 7, Osei had no bio while Ramirez had one, but with the wrong description (wrong name, wrong nation, etc.). Now, on Windows 10, the same thing happens, but both characters have the wrong bio. Have you encountered that bug @Omicron?
P.S.: Another questionable character is the Den Mother. Who is she? Is there any wiki about her? All I’ve seen are poetic songs and this steam discussion:
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So you did not play ironman mode? Seriously dude if you’re going to make a mod that removes the entire point of ironman mode, why play ironman mode?

That’s literally just the codename for ‘leader of a haven’. There’s nothing special about her, and she dies within the first couple minutes of finding her.

No.

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61

In fact, that mod is only there to reassure me, so that I’m not too stressed out about restarting the whole game all over again. I’ll try to limit its use whenever possible. So far, I’ve only used it once (in the start mission, because I was tired of restarting everytime I lost a soldier right at the beginning). To answer your question, I’m playing Ironman only for the achievement, but I’m trying to do it ‘more legit’ than what I did on XCOM: EU. Not entirely legit, but restarting an 80 hour ironman run is not fun. I would probably have done it without a mod if there hadn’t been any difficulty restriction for the achievement.

Spoilummary

She didn’t die. If you had finished the game, you would have seen her in one of the final cutscenes alive and well. But as asked in the steam thread, why was Bradford so happy to see her?

EDIT : If Thrive comes with ironman, I hope we will be able to play another species if we go extinct without hindering the achievement condition.
:-]

EDIT 2 : Hey, @Omicron. There’s one recent XCOM game we haven’t talked about. What do you think about The Bureau: XCOM Declassified ?

JOKE EDIT :

Jokes from Bob Lennon on XCOM 2 beginning - 13+ years old

Bradford: You must have a headache.
Bob Lennon: I need a couple of beers and [girls]. Especially [girls].
Bradford: Tygan extracted an implant from your skull.
Bob Lennon: I knew I couldn’t count to ten anymore.
Bradford: I’m glad to see you back, Commander.
Bob Lennon: Start with two blondes. Twins if possible.

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Because he thought she died and was sad about that?

That still defeats the whole point of ironman mode? Seriously why try to go for an achievement of you’re removing the entire reason for it being difficult? That kinda defeats the whole point of achievements, since you’re kinda losing most bragging rights, ngl.

It’s not exactly a great game, but it is fun.

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True. belgium 20 characters limit… no just kidding, I have another thing to discuss.

Yeah, it was fun when you knew about AI’s reactions to grenades. But the idea of making an XCOM in the cold war is very interesting. Though, the only part I hated was the ending. I mean…

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The scenarists tried to get rid of the protagonist (Agent Carter) to replace him in the ending. Why in the hell would they do that? I mean, what’s the point? To belgium off the players? It’s just a bad idea to replace the protagonist, it just :belgium:s the story. You play most of the game with that character, so why getting rid of him in the ending?

By the way, did you finish that game or did it have the same reverse difficulty issue as the other XCOM games?

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Sorry for double posting, but I wanted to post a “wiki-guide”.

Story timeline

xcom2StoryTimeline
xcom2StoryTimeline1517×2071 206 KB

Possible pods timeline

March

  • Troopers
  • Officer* + Troopers
  • Officer* + Lancers
  • Sectoid* + ADVENT

April

  • Muton* + ADVENT
  • Viper* + ADVENT
  • Sectoid* + ADVENT
  • Officer* + ADVENT
  • MEC* + ADVENT

May

  • Sectoids
  • Sectoid* + ADVENT
  • Berserker + ADVENT
  • Vipers
  • Viper + Aliens
  • Viper + ADVENT
  • Advanced Troopers
  • Advanced Officers + ADVENT
  • ADVENT Shieldbearer

Code: “*” means that the said enemy is the pod leader.

Purchase timeline

March

  1. Flashbang (35$)
  2. a. GTS-Vulture (75$) //right after GTS is built
    b. Mindshield (45$ + 1 Sectoid Corpse)

Build timeline

March

  1. Guerrilla Tactics School (85$)
  2. Advanced Warfare Center (80$) //after Alien Biotech is done
  3. Proving Grounds (100$) //after Officer Autopsy is done

Research timeline

  1. Modular weapons
  2. Alien Biotech
  3. ADVENT Officer Autopsy //when AWS construction has started
  4. Magnetic Weapons

Did I forget anything?

Note: I think I’ll read the game’s code to predict what will happen. :-]

Sources:

Note: I should look at DefaultGameData.ini, XCOMGameState_MissionCalendar (line 1916)

Very interesting topic about enemy appearance:

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But they didn’t replace the protagonist. They replaced the shell containing the protagonist. That was kinda they entire point of the story, that you weren’t playing as Carter, but rather as the Ethereal possessing carter

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Oh, I thought they were just spiritually coexisting with each other and that Carter was tired of it. I understand now. Still, I feel bad for Carter. He looked so bad@$$. Though, it’s kind of a weird scenaristic choice to play as an alien in an XCOM game.

P.S.: I see that this was one of the only XCOM games you played to the end. I am proud of you.

EDIT : I think I’ll stop my ironman run, make myself a guide in this thread with my previous post and restart the ironman game by strictly following the guide.

RE-EDIT: Hey, I found another guide.

What do you think about it @Omicron?

Nevermind, I found some glitches and one of them would be very scary on an ironman mission.

What do you think about these glitches, @Omicron? Could they really ruin my ironman playthrough? I mean, the flanking bug is kinda scary…