aenemic

yeah, that's what I had in mind for the research. not minor differences but not too big either. taking some random alien technology as example again, you could either use it for purpose of developing new weaponry or defensive equipment. so you can affect the way you play the game more. the foreign politics is a nice idea too. I could see Earth divided into like 10 different regions with their respective government and you would really have to struggle to be able to protect them all and be on their good side. at the same time, if a region suffers from a lot of UFO attacks they might ask you to sign a contract with them instead of the other way around. added to this, all regions will have different relations to each other which means you have to be careful who you choose to side with.

wow, just read through this entire thread and it's getting me damn excited hoping for the best! my only wishes for a new x-com game would be that the graphics are kept simple and clean. Silent Storm is perfet use of 3D graphics. UFO: Aftershock did it pretty bad. can't see shit in that game. as for the story, I think it's gonna be pretty hard to keep building on the story of the three previous games. that's what most people want obviously, but where exactly would it be going? also, a game like this needs to start off pretty basic. I didn't like how Apocalypse started off with all that advanced technology already. here are some ideas I got just reading this... you don't actually know you're fighting aliens right away. well, you as a player know obviously, but the game treats you like you don't know. aliens are coming to town and they're taking over the minds of humans. this causes riots in the streets and civilians attacking important buildings around the globe. the aliens are staging an attack and doing this to confuse an weaken us beforehand. it gets so bad that the governments have to take serious action and put in all their available military forces to defend themselves. you're playing as one of the commanders in charge. at first you'll only fight mind probed human mobs and military units going crazy. then you find more and more hints and finally UFO sightings are being reported. through research you put two and two together and you realize it's worse than expected. this allows for a longer game with more to discover and more variation in game play. also, the increase in difficulty might be a bit smoother than the earlier games. the game is set in the near future. not too far into the future. technology is still pretty much what it is today, with some improvements and some new technologies close to being fully developed. gives you a lot of research options right away. and when you discover alien technology it will change things a lot more than before. no more jet planes going around the world in 30 mins. you'll need to develope a lot more advanced aircraft to be able to hunt UFO's. your only chance of downing them before that is with ground missile defenses. as for researh, there could be different branches you'd have to choose from. most things would always be available for research, but a few things you have to choose which are to research and develope. I can't come up with a good example right away, but let's put it like this.... you find some new alien technology and you research it. now you get the option to research two different ways to use this technology. the one you don't choose to researche will become unavailable for you for the rest of the game. of cours this won't apply to anything necessary to complete the game. but I think it'd do a lot for replay value. let's say there are only 3 such occasions with each having 2 options... just that would lead to a total of 10 different research combinations. as this is alien technology we're talking about, the human scientists are pretty clueless about it and this means they won't find all different uses for it. just look at how slow research is going in real life. so yeah, that's that. I'm bored as hell, that's why I even bothered doing this, haha.

to add a bit... I've been playing some more and now I think I'm stuck for the second time because I haven't done EXATLY what I'm supposed to do or have done something in the wrong order. I'm not sure. but it seems like I have to start all over yet again. so this game isn't just hard when it comes to fighting. it's damn hard to tell what to do and what not to do to keep the plot line straight. I was under the impression that you could do things pretty much whatever way you wanted, but that's not true at all.

I started out on a 1.82 (I think) difficulty setting. I kept the 66% enemy VP's, AP's and damage. but I upped their levels to +3 and lowered player damage to 100. and I get my ass kicked over and over again. the main problem is that you're always thrown in the middle of a group of enemies right away and barely have a chance of even finding cover. hell, in the first fight you face 5 enemies standing like 2 steps from you. if you don't take 3 or 4 of them out in one single turn you're screwed. this is repeated several times and it only gets harder. and another mission for example.... I just got my first partner in the group and we're to capture a cargo truck. I start out at one corner of the map and my buddy at the other. he faces 4 enemies right away and I face like 6 or 7. they all run straight at me and all I have to take cover behind are trees. trees they can shoot right through. took a whole lot of reloads to get the few grenades to make perfect hits and to make those headshots count. I don't really know what my point is... I just feel like complaining a bit. there is not much tactics involved at all, you just gotta be lucky and reload until you do the exact right thing that will keep you alive.

the thing is, I DON'T want any of that comedic stuff. this just isn't the right game for that. it totally ruins the atmosphere. I want my soldiers to be dead serious. not dead. dead serious. and they should sound like they know what they're doing, not like it's the first time they hold a gun. maybe one or two witty remarks when they kill an alien, but that's it...

haha, I downloaded it and listened to the samples.... this time I laughed my ass off in a GOOD way. sure, this definitely doesn't sound like a trained soldier either, but at least it had humour and wasn't annoying. shit.... it was hilarious actually

someone should make a mod. take sounds from other games or something. if I knew how to do that shit, I would.

yeah, I think this is worth a thread of its own (even though there seems to be very little posting going on around here). anyways, I'm really enjoying the game, but s***... the voice acting is a MAJOR turn off. I said this in another thread as well. these are trained tough soldiers. why do they sound like f**king whimps or characters from a cartoon?! the idea with accents is great, but they all sound damn lame now. so anyways, I want my soldiers to sound like real troopers. if they kill an enemy, they should shout "target down, sir" or something like that. not "I THINK I got him" or "that's one less of them to worry about", sounding like they're reading from a paper and adding their weirdest possible accent. and when they spot an enemy.... "target in sight" or "enemy spotted" would work great. not "watch out for that Gray"... the main problem is the tone of their voices. they always sound too damn calm and the accents just make me laugh. I don't really get the feeling that I'm leading a bunch of trained soldiers into combat with alien forces... does anyone agree, or am I just being silly here?

well, I can finally add my story here first time I tried this mission I met a group of enemies in the "forest" outside the base and they killed all my guys in no time. so I waited a good while to try again... second time I move up to the wall immediately and positioned my guys on either side of the gate. two snipers and a grenadier on one side and three guys with close-ranged weapons on the other. I was just about to move in and see if there were any enemies as one of them take a step outisde the gate and is vaporized before I could even blink. so I decided to just stay there and see if I could lure more enemies out. worked pretty damn well. when finally no more aliens would come out, I went in and had to pick off two long ranged ones. those two hurt me A LOT, but I had lots of medi-kits. once in the base, I decided to equip two runners with neosteads and a bunch of medikits and just run like a maniac and get the files. met LOTS of aliens on the way, but I managed to trick all of them around corners and take them up cose worked very well.

well, I usually move all my soldiers as one single group and have mostly long-ranged weapons like sniper rilfes and steyr aug's. I can pick off most enemies in no time. especially since I usually concentrate my fire instead of spreading it out. I also have a grenadier for groups of enemis and a guy with a shotgun if the enemy would get dangerously close. what I have problems with is enemies with rocket launchers. those really fuck up my group tactics. but I meet those in bases or ufos 99% of the time and usually get up close with the shotgun and assault rifles before they can do much damage. long ranged hard damage seems to be the most effective anyways.

I'm not sure if it's my graphics card though... all other games I'e tried on this computer have a tendancy to crash every now and then. I think I got rid of the problems that actually had to do something with the game. not it's probably just my computer being a bitch.

yeah. but I actually think it was like that even before I installed the patches.... yeah, it was.... I had problems with the game crashing at the load screen of almost every mission for a while and I reloaded A LOT. and every time I got a new recruit. this is why I looked for a patch. and the problem is still there.

everytime I load a game now the first thing that happens is that I get a new soldier. every single time. is this supposed to happen or is it a bug? I really don't see why they would make that happen.... and it's pretty damn annoying actually.

updated the drivers and I'm having slightly less problems. it runs a lot smoother and I don't get any error messages. but it does freeze every now and then. oh well... I'll have to live with it.

hmm... I just installed new drivers for my video card.... we'll see if there's any difference now...