So I finally got around to play this game I so eagerly anticipated almost a year ago.

Playing Iron Man on Normal difficulty, started with the tutorial. Turns out that that is a mixed blessing - you will always lose 3 of your squad members in the first mission, and you can't access a lot of options (like starting regions other than US or Europe) in the first few missions. Still, a relatively minor inconvencience.

So I take the initial survivor and call him Rinox - he levelled up to become a Heavy. Then I got around to naming all the rookies in the pool after you guys...Satis, Peltz, Shiny, Derf, Pevil, Ganz, O'Cram, Lacessit. I customized most of their looks to more or less match your actual appearances, but given the limited options I didn't try too hard. Kinda sad that you can't change their nationality; but eh.

The first initial team was Rinox, Satis, Peltz and Derf. Satis died on the first real mission. He was hit by an alien and critted, instadeath. Peltz started freaking out and shot me in the freaking back, then regained his composure.

Next few missions went smoother. Shiny joined the roster, and everyone gained promotions. Rinox kept killing peeps as the only person who knew how to use a gun, but the rest slowly started to get into their groove, Derf and Peltz in particular. Derf was promoted to assault (more or less fitting), Peltz support (idem), and Shiny became a sniper. But my God, she was a shitty sniper at first. Would miss every 50-60% shot with either her sniper rifle or pistol. At least she was carrying a med pack, so she was still useful.

Then I had the first UFO recovery mission...everything went pretty well, until Peltz came under fire and started freaking out. Ran pretty much straight at an enemy, tried to shoot it in the face but missed, then was killed by the enemy next to him. Shiny, who was close by trying to heal him, freaked out and fired a shoot at the first alien she saw. Unsurprisingly (back then), she missed.

So that was Peltz down too. Probably not the greatest start to the game for me...especially given that it's iron man. After that the missions kept coming. With mostly me and Derf spearheading the missions, Shiny got into her groove and started hitting more targets. She's becoming an important part of the team now. Pevil and Ganz both stepped in as rookies, and made good first impressions. Ganz killed 3 (!) aliens on his first mission, as a rookie, and Pev was quickly promoted to Sniper. Unfortunately she is going to playing second fiddle to Shiny for now because of that.

Oh, might mention that O'Cram also made an appearance. In a mission where he didn't do especially much, he was promoted to Assault. So now I have a family assault squad. I loved giving O'Cram the greenhorn the stun baton to capture aliens btw haha. For those who don't know: you need to move in close combat to stun and capture an alien, which can be incredibly dangerous. And since he was the most expendable part of the team...

I'll see if I can get some pics up later. As a closer, Rinox, Derf and Shiny all earned their nicknames already. Rinox is the de facto squad leader and was given "Kingpin", Derf is appropriately named "Mustang" and Shiny errhhmm I forgot it now. I'll make sure to tell you next time I play!

Haha. Good to read that my character isn't a complete loser.

Big LOL @ Ocram expendability.

You write up intrigues me and makes me want to play the game, but is this X-Com?

Well it's not exactly like the original, but I would argue that most of the differences I've seen so far are simplifications of needlessly complex systems of the original. It's also a lot easier to see what the consequences of your research are and your decisions are explained a little better, so unlike in the original you're not completely fumbling in the dark on your first few games.

I certainly like it, and most people I know with me. Peltz didn't like it because of all the bugs he experienced but I think he's playing it again. Anyway, I'm only a few missions in so maybe Satis (also an X-com vet) would be a more dependable source of information on this subject.

Your character is a pillar of the team atm, probably THE most important one as he's the one to go in, spot enemies and take risks to shotgun them in the face. My heavy is good but doesn't have the same "in yo face" abilities, he's more of a suppresor.

So yeah...a few more missions in, and I just had a complete squad wipe (first team, too). I think it's pretty much game over for this run (it was iron man) then, but that's ok, it was more a way for me to learn the ropes anyway. Also, I seemed to be increasingly low in funds as the game progressed...I couldn't really do anything anymore, had to wait for the pie in the sky (council money) and hope I was going to survive enough missions until I got there. Apparently, I didn't. And I accidentally didn't put a new research project up for at least 10-15 days, which is probably pretty deadly in the long run as research is the only thing that doesn't really cost anything! So yeah, I made mistakes which probably ended up costing me quite a bit. Any tips on the money situation though? There didn't seem to be much I could do but hope for well-paying missions and the end of the month to get some money back.

In fact, the reason why I wiped was because out of three missions offered, I chose the "very difficult" one for some money haha. The other two were "moderate" but only offered scientists, and I had scientists coming out my ass.

Buttt...let's start with the beginning!

I continued where I left off, and kept doing missions and improving my base. Also rotated a B team on some easy missions when I had the chance. Here's some pics of the CK people back when they were all still alive.

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/108 ... 208C88BE4/

Strangely, O'Cram aka "the guy we send in when it's too dangerous for the vets" survived everything thrown at him and quickly rose in the ranks. He was responsible for stunning 2 live aliens and capturing them, and formed a great team with Rinox (heavy) and Derf (also assault). He probably earned the coolest nickname too, "Cash".

So all went pretty well...cleaned out a few UFOs, some difficult missions, some storyline missions too. One sad event was Shiny, the main sniper biting the dust. She was posted at a UFO entrance while the other squad members were rooting around inside, and more or less got ambushed before the rest could come back out. RIP Shiny.

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/10833 ... F2C17503F/

J stepped in, and did a pretty good job, but of course lacked the skill of his predecessor because he was much greener still. Everything sailed along fine with this team, until that faithful day...we started without Peltz, the experienced support/healer because he was still injured from the previous assignment. That was a sign. So Lacessit, the only other support guy I had and a complete newbie had to come along. Bad idea.

Basically I barely advanced forward and I ran into 3 mutons + 6 floaters, on both sides of the map. They immediately trap me in the middle, between some parked cars too. What followed was a series of lucky hits for them, and a series of crappy misses for me. J suddenly couldn't hit shit anymore, Lacessit panicked the first time he got hit, and Derf was critted (but not down yet) on the first engagement. Ugh. I fired Rinox's rocket launcher into the muton/floaters on one side which did some serious damage, but not enough to stop a muton from nading the car that Derf had retreated to...car explodes, Derf is critically wounded. Meanwhile, Lacessit is panicking still, Rinox is trapped on supressing fire and J keeps missing targets. Next round, the car O'Cram is behind explodes (he was pinned down by floaters) and he's a goner. Rinox tries some desperate attacks but is critically injured as well. Lacessit has only one revive being so green (FUCK) and basically has to choose between letting Derf or Rinox bleed out. Derf is closest and less exposed, so he is revived...and shot almost immediately. Lacessit is shot on the same turn, J FINALLY hits the muton on that flank and then gets raped by the last remaining floaters (out of ammo, and no time to reload so had to hope to get lucky with his pistol). The end.

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/108 ... 88F5B3CAF/

I'll start a new game soon, sans tutorial this time!

Also I'll see if I now somehow can upload pictures to make this a little easier to follow, but probaby won't be able to.

Just to see how I'd fare I did another mission on the first game, with Peltz as the only veteran (he missed the tragic mission because of an injury). Surprisingly, he did rather well with a team of rookies and green soldiers. Lost 1 soldier, but other than that no problem.

Still, I decided to start a new game now that I know the mechanics (especially about base management) a bit better. I also read up on some tips and apparently the sattelites are the key to keeping your budget under control. Good to know.

I'll report back after the first few missions!

I like the sound of this game... but irreversibly losing your men sounds heartbreaking to me :*(

You can avoid losing the soldiers you like if you save, of course. But this was on ironman.

So, the new game was started...most of it went smoothly so far. My main heavy Rinox is kinda meh (very average aim) but he's still packing shitloads of explosives and a boatload of HP so whatever. The most important thing about this game is that Peltz and Satis became two top notch snipers with incredible aim. They operate in tandem on my most dangerous missions, taking down anything in their sight. Since they both have the "squad sight" ability activated they are even more deadly when I push up with the rest of the team.

Shiny and Lacessit are the only casualties so far, a sniper and heavy respectively. Both were insta-killed on a critical hit, and there was no way to recover for them. Derf became assault again but was heavily injured on the 2nd or 3rd mission. We managed to pull through before he died, but he spent a long time in sick bay and has lost a good chunk of his composure after that...his willpower is rather low. Not good for an assault soldier! I'm trying to get him back into the game by keeping him a little out of harm's way in some smaller missions, but it's not always easy.

All the other CK suspects are in the lower ranks but certainly have contributed so far. Pevil, Ganz, O'Cram, they're all there.

Worth watching for the commentor. Got a good laught out of it.

Update:

The game started out relatively well, with most of the squad gaining experience quickly and this time I had a fairly good grip on the finances too.

As mentioned before, the backbone of the team were/are now Satis and Peltz who acted as a sniper duo while the rest gained ground. They would shoot most stuff before it got a chance to move, was a lot of fun. The team was doing well with Rinox on heavy, O'Cram support (medic mostly, but made quite a few kills), Derf and a friend of mine on assault and then the aforementioned two snipers.

But then Rinox got killed in a fairly unlucky way...even his massive amount of HP couldn't protect him from three successive crits in one turn, from fairly weak units. Ganz stepped in next mission but was killed almost instantly, leaving me without a decent heavy...hardly ideal now I was starting to meet some of the more challenging opponents. In the end I got a new heavy with lieutenant rank as a reward for a sidemission but I'm not happy with her at all. She's pretty meh.

So...tactics changed a little, with assault having to take the brunt of the attack and the snipers cleaning up from the back. All went well until one mission. A UFO had landed somewhere, and my starting position was basically an almost open field with very few places to hide and absolutely no way to flank. It was a massacre: Derf, Pev and Peltz were killed before we even managed to get into the UFO, as almost all enemies seemd to have spawned close to each other.

Peltz' death in particular was ragequit material: cyberdisc floats up from halfway the map, and instacrits him for 12 HP. Dead. I'm surprised I managed to clean up the rest of the map with Satis, my 1337 assault and the heavy. Those two were injured too, so I was effectively left with only 1 active veteran soldier for a while...needless to say I declined a mission or two then.

The problem now is that I have a team of 2-3 incredible veterans that I have to stuff with 3 complete newbs. I put a fancy plasma rifle in their hands, given some advanced armor and see if they survive. Turns out on most missions, the answer is "no they don't".

That brings me to the final mission I played just now. Fairly close combat, with a half squad of rookies, and I run into...2 cyberdiscs and 5 mutons (1 berserker). The end result was an almost complete squad wipe: the rookies were killed almost instantly, which left my assault (now a colonel), a rookie sniper and Satis (also colonel). Then a muton got the assault. Satis and his rookie sniper buddy managed to finish the mission, but I may be done for.

For all the fancy weaponry I have now, I don't have any competent squad members. Satis is an absolute beast, though. 35 kills, 107 aim, 91 will, colonel. But he can't do it alone. We'll see.

(also, anyone have any tips for fighting cyberdiscs? They seem to instakill most of my team members, have tons of hP and get healed too. I usually just focus fire them and hope they don't kill anyone before I can kill them, but that can't be right)

Another question: how do I name people with just one name? The game always asks for a first and last name, and won't let me leave a field blank (it reverts to the original name). Any ideas?

So I did an assault on an alien base and whatever was left that was half decent got wiped. Satis bit the dust this time too, died last at the hand of a muton berserker. As I now have money, sattelites and great equipment but nothing but inexperienced soldiers I'm pretty much stuck.

I should probably start a new game again, as this one will become extremely hard to win now.

Oh yea, for those who haven't played it. At one point in the game you have to use an alien artifact with a gifted soldier. In order to do so you need any random soldier with max psi abilities and have them WEAR PSI-ARMOR. With a growing kill count of 200 and more and entirely wasted Saturday i found this out after deciding to google the problem of not finding that super gifted soldier.

I didn't actually have a problem with that part. I swear it tells you as much in-game. But to each their own.

Oxy... the cyberdiscs aren't a big deal as long as you engage them at range. If I know there's one flying around, I would usually just be sure to position my snipers in a good spot so when it popped out, I could get at least two good sniper hits in I didn't actually get disabling shot most of the time... I opted for the other one that gives you free attacks.

I don't think you can name people with single names. What I did in my game was leave their first name alone and change their last name to what I wanted. John Satis, Kim Satis, Hans Satis, etc.