Skie

I agree with everything here... This stuff may have already been said, I haven't read the whole thread...but... On the topic of the repetative tactical missions and delegation, I always thought that X-COM protecting one continent (at the first) felt out of place. I really think if X-COM were to be updated, it'd be cool if the countries/continents had their own anti-alien groups. This would actually add to gameplay in multiple ways... 1. When bagging a big nasty UFO, you could request another country provide some co-op support. Obviously, they could decline. 2. The other anti-alien groups could request assistance from your team. Obviously, you could decline. 3. 1 & 2 but for base defense. It'd be nice if the base missions didn't work like "well, the alien ship landed in the same location as our base so we opened the doors and let 'em right in." It'd be much nicer if it took the aliens some time to engage in combat. 4. The other anti-alien groups would bag the aliens for their respective areas (eliminating a lot of the repetition). 5. Research isn't so static. The other groups would be doing research as well and possibly a story element would be that the results of the research are shared. 6. Resources aren't so static. It'd actually make sense that you'd sell/trade elerium-115 (I think that's what it's called) to another group. Some other things I've thought about... Your squad should really be the elite. Given current technology they should have a birds-eye-view of the battlefield prior to going in. FOW would still apply though. Things like the parachute cams and other conveinences of modern warfare would be awesome to have. A possible off-shoot, would be like a what if aliens attacked in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Low tech X-COM might be kind of cool. With things like the terror missions, it'd be cool if the civilians would at least fight back a little. I mean, there'd be more than a few gun-toting civies. It'd also be nice if the aliens in the terror missions would have destruction of the city as one of their goals. Taking buildings down and that kind of thing.

I switched to a soldier and punched down the door before going into combat. Having the SMG helped, but I still had to reload a few times (saved it after beating down the door so I didn't have to re-do that each time). There were a couple times I bled to death after defeating all the enemies. Is there a way to switch back on being able to view the random encounters? I figured I'd stumble onto them if they were hidden, but this has yet to happen and I wouldn't mind the loot and XP from them.

I recently finished S2. I got the point where there were PKs, and started getting a bit bored. When I finally came back to the game, I only had two missions (with the final mission being short and overly easy) left to get to the end. So, time to move on to S3... I decided to do a custom difficulty. I set everything to 100% (I figured, 100% must be the way the game was meant ot be played) and toggled it to allow me to save anytime. For my character I decided to go with a Medic. I noticed in S2 the medic had a melee tree for their perks, and I thought it might be fun to make a hack 'em up medic (I wasn't sure if the hide skill was going to hurt me here). So, I start the mission, pick up the gun, proceed upstairs, shoot a gun 7 times in the head (which doesn't kill him) and have to switch to fisticuffs. At this point my medic fails to hit anything, but the ally NPC manages to finish off the one baddy that took 7 shots and kill another. So, I now have a knife and we head outside to find a baddy with a gun. So, I start swinging the knife at him (missing more often than not), and after two enemy turns my medic has been killed. So, I guess first what I'm wondering is how successful a butcher type medic would be. And, second if I should be ramping down the difficulty some and/or just taking a different class like soldier, scout, or grenadier.

I'm playing through the game for the first time, and my engineer, "Doug", seems pretty useless. He's pretty decent when it comes to combat and it's pretty fun tossing dynomite at enemies to blow them up, but when actual engineering skills are needed he's pretty worthless. I even tagged the more engineering type traits hoping it'd help him out, but it hasn't. I've used up all my lockpicks trying to open doors and crates, and at this point I just burst the door down. The one mission that he's detected traps he couldn't disarm most of them. I just ended up tossing a grenade into the house and watched it blow. Making traps and laying mines seems useless, because most missions are on the offensive. About the only use I can see for them is to lay a bunch around a building, toss a grenade and see if the building tumbles. Another thing I find silly is that the wire cutters require a ridiculously high engineering skill. This seems like it should be a fairly straight forward item. Apparently proper use of high explosives is much easier to learn than wire cutters. So, I guess what i'm wondering is if there's really any point in taking an engineer along. It seems to me a second sniper, scout, or soldier would be much more valuable than my engineer. Oh, and OT, I realize throwing knives work well for stealth. But, is there much point in these once you get a silenced SMG? I have yet to be detected for bursting someone with a silenced SMG, even on the off chance it takes more than one burst. In fact, it seems the better route because by the time I'm within throwing range, a short burst is usually acurate enough to kill 'em.