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Difficulty setting broken?


NewbieKenobi
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So I played all the Xcom games back in the 90's and was fairly good. Picked up the 360 version recently and love it!

 

Started first game on Normal, totaly wrecked my base layout (got that figured out now) and screwed up my soldier skill trees (got that figured out too now).

Panic levels rose and I decided to restart the game to get a better feel for it.

 

Also, being a sucker for the "story", I set difficulty to Easy for the first playthrough. Yeeeaaah I know it's silly, but hey....

 

But instead of rockin' I got my sweet a$$ handed to me!!! After 2-3 ingame months 13/16 soldiers are badly wounded, research is in a crawl, ran out of money long ago, no improved armor, no lasers, panic levels are rising fast, more like 8-9 aliens on each mission than the claimed 5-6 and they all shoot like Clint Eastwood while my soldiers couldn't shoot the water even if they were standing on the bottom of the ocean...

 

And the missions just won't stop coming to let my soldiers heal up. Now I have a terror mission with rating Very Difficult on my hands and I have only 3 active soldiers...

 

I'm not new to these kind of games and I'm not new to Xcom. But seriously, could the difficulty setting be broken? It feels like the game got HARDER when I started a new game and lowered the difficulty, not easier... Mabye the game got stuck in a higher difficulty mode?

 

And don't say "Hey, that's Xcom" because that's not it...

 

The aliens crit shoot my soldiers all the time, they use advanced tactics and LOTS of abilities and grenades, on an earlier mission I encountered 2 Mutons, the second time I played it there were like 5 Mutons!!! At the same time!

 

Things I as understand it is not supposed to happen on Easy... In my first 4-5 months ingame playthrough I never saw one grenade and I saw an alien ability like 1 or 2 times, tops...

Edited by NewbieKenobi
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It takes a while to figure out how everything works. My first play through I struggled a lot and barley got through it.

 

Now that I've played through the game about 6 times, playing on Classic(hard). I had plasma weapons before I even ran into berserker's.

 

Once you play through the game a few times and figure out what you need to focus on in terms of panic, resources and soldier upgrades, you will look back and laugh at how you ever struggled.

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As far as combat goes, full cover is one of the most important commitments you can make as a commander. Even on Easy, your squad will be sliced up without it. Advance slowly and engage enemy squads one at a time. If you get impatient and move too far forward in a turn, you risk pulling more than one squad, which can be painful. Also, snipers with squadsight. They are marginally useful on close-quarters maps like UFOs, but everywhere else they are OP.

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When your squads ranks are low, I usually have everyone sporting scopes because low ranked guys can't hit the broadside of a Mutons big ugly ass. Remember to stay in cover, cover provides an aim penalty towards the enemy shots and your soldiers have 0 defence unless wearing specific armors. So without cover the enemy has like a 99% chance of hitting you. (enemies have missed shots against my uncovered guys before, so it can't be 100%)

 

To see this penalty, click the L stick when you are targeting an enemy and it will show you the percentage break down of the shot you are going to take.

 

Ways to improve your squads chance of hitting a shot.

 

Height Advantage - Aim +20%

Get in Close - Aim between 27-32% (best I've ever gotten)

Scopes - Aim +10%

Flanking - (being behind an enemy, their cover shield turns from red to yellow when you have them flanked) I believe this is +30%

 

 

 

This is the Squad I personally use and it's always worked out great for me.

 

2x Snipers

2x Support

1x Heavy

1x Assualt

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