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Assaults are my favorites. Because they're reliable. High risk, but high output. You just run-n-gun in and doubletap, which'll nearly always guarentee one alien down. You then either kill others that can get to them, drop smoke on the assault, or use supression fire on enemies to force them to (usually) skip their turns.

You can modify panic values in the ini files anyway, should you want to create an Impossible difficulty that was tactically Impossible but strategically Classic.

If you can make it past the second month in reasonable shape in impossible the tide starts to shift. I lost three nations in the first month thanks to the insta-panic-fuck of the spread of missions and lack of sat's to react with. An interesting note is that if you can afford to replace the sat it can be worth letting the aliens shoot it down on impossible since you can then launch a new one and clear the panic before the end of the month.

I found that I used more snipers in impossible than I did in normal. Once I got to six man team I was running three snipers, one assault on point with a heavy and support backing him up. The assault went down the close quarters tree and was my chrysalid insurance in terror sites. The rest of the time the heavy would soften the enemies up with grenades or rocket launcher and then the snipers would down them in threat order. Managed to finish impossible and get "Aint no Cavalry Comin'" with that team. The final mission was a joke compared to a bomb site.

Edit: The other thing to note is that I found it really important to be willing to fall back. Having the assault move up and then fall back once contact was made bought me time and space to work with to whittle down some of the tougher enemies as they moved in on the team. I also found that live capture was not worth it most of the time. I took three aliens alive the entire game...and when it came time for the base/overseer I swapped out one sniper for a SHIV and played it slower with the SHIV on point to soak the psi-crap.

I just built a Hover SHIV for the same reason. The MC enemies are actually crappier than I thought, but it's annoying that they decided to delete the Outsiders from the game once you beat the enemy base and replace it with the previously thought of "Supreme Commander" sectoid in all instances. I'm fairly certain they did it to make it easier to capture the little bugger and unlock Psi stuff you need to advance the plot, but it is not only anticlimatic to run into a Commander Sectoid at the end of the base (my big boss sequence is instead one little skinny grey orangutan who can occasionally spit at me for 2 damage) but to make it work they also had to fuck with the Outsiders as previously stated. I actually liked those guys, overall, and thought they could be up to something clever with the addition of them... but nope.

It galls me because it is sloppy design. Cinematically it makes no sense and mechanically it is sloppy. BLAH.

Here's an interesting thing for anyone who has gotten to the overseer UFO section or is interested in finding some battleships to invade:

Ignoring a small or scouting or patrolling UFO usually provokes a Battleship response a week or so later, which is great if you're looking to farm battleships or just looking to get the Fusion technology. However, the Overseer doesn't count, since it apparently couldn't give two shits about satellites. If you ignore it though you're still getting penalized for not intercepting a UFO. So not only do I get a penalty, I don't get a Battleship to fight. Would it have killed them to treat it like a the alien base?

Well, the upside is that even if you're penalized for ignoring any UFO contact, if you swat it down you get bonus for a UFO shoot-down. Since it keeps coming back at predictably common intervals, you can get several shoot-downs in a single month, slapping their shit out of the sky over and over. Kinda funny, but a solid way to delay the "Final Preparations" mission as long as you want. I don't get abductions anymore since the entire world is blanketed in coverage, and since I want to wait until I have ghost armor (because while Titan is good I really <3 the skeleton suit too much to downgrade to an armor blob), the tactic of flyswatting Overseers works well at delaying the game without penalty. I did a whole month doing nothing but grounding those things, just as an experiment, and got a good rank from the council for it. They'll give you a B if you let something else slip by, but they don't get ornery so long as you at least knock some stuff down.

Covenant wrote:I just built a Hover SHIV for the same reason. The MC enemies are actually crappier than I thought, but it's annoying that they decided to delete the Outsiders from the game once you beat the enemy base and replace it with the previously thought of "Supreme Commander" sectoid in all instances. I'm fairly certain they did it to make it easier to capture the little bugger and unlock Psi stuff you need to advance the plot, but it is not only anticlimatic to run into a Commander Sectoid at the end of the base (my big boss sequence is instead one little skinny grey orangutan who can occasionally spit at me for 2 damage) but to make it work they also had to fuck with the Outsiders as previously stated. I actually liked those guys, overall, and thought they could be up to something clever with the addition of them... but nope.

It galls me because it is sloppy design. Cinematically it makes no sense and mechanically it is sloppy. BLAH.

I wrote off the lack of outsiders as something to do with the fact that, following the base run, the otherdimensional aliens knew humans could a) capture their energy-being guys, and b) reverse-engineer strategically important artifacts from them, so they voluntarily stopped putting their avatars into a position where they could be compromised.

Of course, my suspension of disbelief is a goddamned eight-lane, four-tower bridge, so I have no problem painting a veneer of an explanation and then not thinking about it.

The really curious thing, to me, was how they were left out of the final mission's silly Litany of Aliens.

I'd hypothesized that the "energy beings" were the projections from the hyperwave tranceiver device captured at the Alien base. Once the aliens lost that, they couldn't easily replace it and thus had to command the ships locally.

They also appear in the XCOM shooter game stuck in production limbo, I've heard.

I just finished the game.

Saw the ending.

Welp, that was stupid.

hmmm who is the worst offender in terns of raping our good faith...

The Yosemite Bear wrote:hmmm who is the worst offender in terns of raping our good faith...

What do you mean?

talking about gaming companies that we love to hate/abuse us poor gamers

They didn't really abuse us with this one, but I do gotta say the ending bit is rushed and flat. I haven't finished the very end zone yet, but I can tell it will be atrociously poor.

The Yosemite Bear wrote:talking about gaming companies that we love to hate/abuse us poor gamers

Probably Bioware.

Just because a game is full of bad ideas and broken shit doesn't mean its 'abusing' anyone's 'faith' (unless you're a brandslave idiot in which case you've got bigger things to worry about). It's just plain old not a very good game and doesn't require or deserve any histrionics.

Just play something else, like Dishonoured or RE6 or FIFA.

Zinegata wrote:

The Yosemite Bear wrote:talking about gaming companies that we love to hate/abuse us poor gamers

Probably Bioware.

Actually I was under the impression that the blame for ME3's rushed ending was EA's fault, it sure wouldn't be the first time EA has railroaded a company into releasing something to early and fucking it up in the process.

Because Bioware's writing had nothing to do with it!

gigabytelord wrote:

Zinegata wrote:

The Yosemite Bear wrote:talking about gaming companies that we love to hate/abuse us poor gamers

Probably Bioware.

Actually I was under the impression that the blame for ME3's rushed ending was EA's fault, it sure wouldn't be the first time EA has railroaded a company into releasing something to early and fucking it up in the process.

No, EA actually gave Bioware an extension. It was entirely due to Bioware's writing and egregious mismanagement of the project.

Jesus, how did they manage to fuck up the last 20 god damned minutes? the first 20 hours where fine, great even, but that last 20 minutes was just... inexcusable...

gigabytelord wrote:Jesus, how did they manage to fuck up the last 20 god damned minutes? the first 20 hours where fine, great even, but that last 20 minutes was just... inexcusable...

You talking about XCOM or ME3? Either could apply.

Covenant wrote:

gigabytelord wrote:Jesus, how did they manage to fuck up the last 20 god damned minutes? the first 20 hours where fine, great even, but that last 20 minutes was just... inexcusable...

You talking about XCOM or ME3? Either could apply.

ME3, however apparently XCOM made the same mistake, from what everyone is telling me.

ME3 is a good game with an ending nerds don't like.

XCOM is a shit game with a laughably, outrageously lazy and shit ending.

There's a little gap here. Seriously look up the XCOM ending, it's not bad narratively or because of themes, it's bad because it clearly took six minutes to make and SUCKS.

Stark wrote:ME3 is a good game with an ending nerds don't like.

Let me state that I was perfectly happy the extended edition that was released afterward, to clarify things a bit, but if you're referring to the ending before that, I have to disagree, unless you caught something that I didn't, it seemed rushed and not to well thought out.
If you have a different, but valid opinion then I'm all ears

Stark wrote:XCOM is a shit game with a laughably, outrageously lazy and shit ending.

There's a little gap here. Seriously look up the XCOM ending, it's not bad narratively or because of themes, it's bad because it clearly took six minutes to make and SUCKS.

Oh god, that was bad.

Pretty sure Stark is just talking from a mechanical standpoint, since he generally thinks the storyline is terrible. But this is not an ME3 thread so let's not go down that road.