XCOM EU My EPIC FUN battle Vs the Ethereal Alien (video)

[Ichthyic]

"But I am still playing around with the ability builds for supports and assaults. Not finalized what I want to do with those two yet. "

 

FWIW, I found you only need one medic, so have one of your supports all with left side abilities, and the other with all right side (excepting sprint, which in testing always ended up being more valuable to any support unit). Since I like to use supports with sprint and ghost armor as scouts, it was much better to build my assault unit as pure offense, all right side abilities except for lightning reflexes.

 

worked out quite nicely. Your "suppression grenadier" support unit helps to buff against psi attack too, and can act as your primary live alien nabber, drone turner, or SHIV repair guy.

 

I balanced my heavies in a similar fashion to support, with one being an offensive rocketeer with shredder, and the other being designed primary as an AOE suppressor. this combo of balanced support/heavies with dps coming from shotgun assault and sniper with double tap worked really well all the way through the final mission on Classic.

[Rhodryn]

Looking at the list of abilities for the support, I know pretty much what I want to do now. I think I am going: Covering Fire, Field Medic, Revive, Dense Smoke, Sentinel.

 

I would have liked to have the option for Rifle Suppression, but I feel the ability to keep my squad numbers up with Revive is possibly a tad bit more importent. That's the only "difficult choice" for me with the support. Keep my troops up and running, or suppression to keep some aliens in place and/or intentional chance at cover destruction to open up for others to get a better shot. That's almost the only reason I use suppression at first with my Heavy, to have a chance at destroying the enemies cover. Later on I do use it for damage as well with taking Mayhem as the Heavies final skill. But for the Support? Since it does not do any damage I am a bit hesitent with it.

 

Normally I don't really like "wasting" an action on stuff like suppression, throwing a smoke grenade, etc. Basicly anything that does not do actual damage to the enemy. Because I prefer to have as much damage dealing lead/laser/plasma/etc as possible in the air, trying to actually kill the enemy, rather then letting them live even for 1 turn longer. Granted that is not always the best choice, but most of the time it's as effective as suppressing or smoke grenading... if not more effective. One less alien alive is one less alien with the ability to injure/kill my troops, that's how I tend to look at it.

 

I think I go sort of by these two quotes from the old 2nd edition Warhammer 40K books (so some 20 or so year old stuff):

 

"Identify your target. Concentrate your fire on it to the exclusion of all else. When it is destroyed choose another target. That is the way to secure victory!"

 

And:

 

"Do not strike until you are ready to crush the enemy utterly, and then attack without mercy, destroy every vestige of resistance, leave no-one to work against you."

 

That has always been sort of how I play games (where it is possible atleast). Sneak around, gather "intel" on the enemy, find their movement patterns, figure out how that combines with all other enemies movement, find the best place to take them out, find the best place for my character/'s to be to be able to pull it off, preferably from as far of a distence as possible.

 

And once I am done doing that I pick the "perfect moment" to start... which usually results in sheer and utter destructive violence in as short of a time period as possible. So one-shot kills if possible.

 

I prefer spending 5-10-20+ minuts doing it this way. Then taking 5 seconds thinking "Enemies? CHAAAARGE!", then running and gunning my way through waves and waves off enemies, and probably be done with that particular encounter in less then a minute or two.

 

It's a reason why I prefer playing a Sniper in pretty much all modern/sci-fi games. Both because they are often a garanteed one-shot kill, and because I love making those really long shots... you know... "reach out and 'touch' someone" from across the map or something. :D In Fantasy games I tend to go with Sword + Shield + Heavy Armor instead... I still try and sneak though. ;D My main character in Skyrim is just that, a guy who sneaks around... in heavy armor... taking the enemy out one by one by sneak attacks if possible... he's good at it to. If that fails... charge...

Edited October 22, 2012 by Rhodryn

[Ichthyic]

" but I feel the ability to keep my squad numbers up with Revive is possibly a tad bit more importent"

 

meh, not in my experience, but then I tend to be very cautious in how I deploy. If you're more... ambitious... and like to rush things a bit, yeah revive might come in handy on longer missions.

 

"Normally I don't really like "wasting" an action on stuff like suppression, throwing a smoke grenade, etc. Basicly anything that does not do actual damage to the enemy. Because I prefer to have as much damage dealing lead/laser/plasma/etc as possible in the air, trying to actually kill the enemy, rather then letting them live even for 1 turn longer. Granted that is not always the best choice, but most of the time it's as effective as suppressing or smoke grenading... if not more effective. One less alien alive is one less alien with the ability to injure/kill my troops, that's how I tend to look at it.

"

 

something tells me you haven't even tried suppression. It works almost as well as "panic" to limit an alien's actions. ...and it never misses :)

Edited October 24, 2012 by Sir_Toejam

[Beaviz81]

By the time you get to the Etherals you should have soldiers at least with the ability to mind fray, I tend to have mind control. Then the recipe is really easy. Mind Control Elite Muton standing next to the thing, and fire a rocket at the Etheral. Next capture-time, and after that I just shoots the Etheral two times with rockets to get rid of the bugger, must admit I would be more apprehensive if I risked having my rockets redirected at my face, as a shredder blowing up in my face would hurt a lot, never mind when I get blasta launchers (something I never understood the use of in the original game, but now they are right there in my playing-style).

[KoaBosk]

These are the two types of support that I use, a Medical and Combat Support.

 

Medical Support: Sprinter, Field Medic, Revive, Combat Drugs, Deep Pockets (add Stim pack), Savior

 

Combat Support: Covering Fire, Smoke and Mirrors, Rifle Suppression, Combat Drugs, Deep Pockets (add grenade or alien grenade), Sentinel