These are some excellent tips, much better than the usual super basic "75% shots aren't a guaranteed hit in case you weren't aware" or "Always have a backup plan" captain obvious tips. I didn't know about the idea of parking on person in indestructable cover, hunkering down, and maneuvering your other troops on a wide flank, thats genius! As is the one where you put 3 of your rookies on the roof, open the door with the fourth rookie, then drop your other 3 down behind the enemy when they advance on him! That said, for all that I see people talking about how amazing MECs are, my own experiences haven't matched the hype. They can't take cover and they seem to be harder to conceal behind shelves and such so they usually just get shot to pieces immediately by the enemy. I've looked at other people's videos to see how they use them and their MECs either get shot to pieces as well, or dodge the enemy shots and pull through (luckily). Heavies seem to be less of a liability by far since their rockets can take out multiple enemies, and a 10% chance of veering off is better odds than your MEC dodging thin man shots.
Thanks for the feedback! Yeah I tried to let known tips that are essential for impossible ironman over the general stuff but as for the mecs, the reason theyre so good is the flamethrower! If you get it before the second terror mission, chrystalids become trivial from the panic and it does enough damage to instantly kill thin men and sectoids. If you're good at hiding them, they should hold up the entire campaign and not get shot up or if you need to take overwatch since overwatch cant crit and you can heal it up. That and they don't die to even a thin man, max damage crit when you first get them, allowing them to tank a single shot if you need to save someone whose in half cover. Their health is also special because they can take small amounts of damage without needing to go to the medbay which could be a saving grace. Needless to say collateral damage helps on occasion when enemies are near explosives but its really the flamethrower. I had many campaigns where the mec saved me early game and the medic who i had with them was instrumental late game with their cloaking grenades since they could carry two. Lastly, mines are just godly but by the time you have carapace armor, the game becomes really easy even on impossible ironman so its no big deal. Hope this helps.
@@zethos177 Thanks! I usually go for cycling rookies to get as many heavies and assaults as possible. We can rockets thin men and floaters. Chrysalids I usually pull back a bit while keeping ym people together, this usually causes the chrysalids to cluster as they pursue us, then we put a grenade on them and shoot them with shotguns. Laser shotguns help a lot since they are guaranteed to OHKO thin men and grounded floaters. 2-3 assaults lets you mop up the final pod easily with run and gun. I'd like to add in that a good strategy for non-thin men non-mutons, if you have 3 assaults, is when you aggro a pod you pull back and stand an assault in indestructable full cover hunkered while your other assaults hide out of line of sight. The enemy advance and usually one overwatches while the others shoot. When they get close you run and gun in for point blank shots, corpses, no grenades used. Also much less likely to pull more pods since you pulled back from first contact so you are only advancing back to where you were before. Obv doesn't work for thin men since they spit at you so use rockets on those on first contact. Although I guess you could do it if your bait has a medkit equipped for poison immunity
So much great content, thanks. But for future reference, it was very hard to follow you because 1) the background noise of the scenes running was almost as loud as your voice; and 2) you tend to talk VERY quickly. Just some feedback for future videos.
Yeah I agree. Your words run together like mash potatoes. it's just a little annoying habit that could be taken care of with enunciations and slowing down the pace of your words. listening to you talk has encourage me to work on my speech issues.
Good video. I'm currently on my 3rd attempt to beat Ironman on classic. I can't imagine how much more miserable impossible is. That being said I do have some disagreements. I found it is vital to rush getting laser weapons. If you don't get lasers before your first terror mission, you are going to be hurting, as the aliens will start to severely outclass you. Even the lowly thin men are a big problem without laser weapons, since it usually takes multiple hits to kill them with the starting guns. I've lost missions because a shotgun at point blank range only caused 3 damage and left the thin man laughing as he blew away my assault squaddie on the next turn. Also, it's vitally important to get laser cannons for your interceptors or else they will start running into UFOs they can't shoot down. I'd say research priorities should be meld, then lasers, then heavy lasers, then carapace armor.
Thanks for the compliment! I will say I tried the laser gun route a few times on impossible and while it seems good on paper, your crit chance with the shotgun should be fairly high close quarters when flanking and if not, using two grenades and rockets seems to do the job fairly effectively to wipe out at least 1/3 of the map without a hassle, enough to make flanking and using the mec's flamethrower enough for the rest of the mission. I 100% agree the mec is a very strong rush early as the flamethrower allows you to have a non missing instant kill on thin men, floaters and sectoids along with great chrystalid crowd control for the first terror mission and it can grant you a single saving grace against enemy fire because of its health pool allowing it to tank a single thin man crit. I like the carapace armor because it can be given to every soldier unlike lasers which can only be given to a select few classes by the time the terror missions rolls in and helps avoid injuries from the few points of damage done by thin man poison which is really common. Just one thing I noted, usually skills come in quicker on impossible due to the higher enemy numbers leading to skills like rapid fire and shredder rockets being gained earlier to make up for lack of damage and also it gets you squad size upgrades faster due to higher ranked team leaders. Its not a full proof strategy because of how ridiculously stacked the game is against the player on this difficulty and chance to hit is unreliable at best with rookies in the early game but this strategy has given me personally the most success out of all of the ones I've tried. I'd love to see other strategies that work. And yes! Mid game interceptor gun upgrades are fairly good or you can start in north america and have a lot of them on station for cheaper!
I prefer to start in Africa for the 30% funding bonus. Well you obviously know this game better than I do since you've beaten it on impossible iroman and I haven't, but on my failed attempts, I found that lack of laser weaponry was the biggest problem. Thin men would just dominate me, and it really became a nightmare when Mutons showed up. Like I said, anything more powerful than a sectoid usually takes multiple hits from the starting guns. Unless thin men are hiding behind explosive cover like cars, it often takes more than one grenade to kill them. And regardless, sometimes it's not feasible to get into throwing distance without getting gunned down by reaction shots. Explosives are just too limited and situational to be something you can always count on to win the day. Laser are crucial because they are the one thing that enables you to reliably one-shot sectoids and thin men from long range, and two-shot tougher enemies like Chryssalids and mutons. Laser rifles are also a massive boon to your assault troopers, since without them assault troop with shotguns are pretty much useless from long range. Also lasers aren't as limited as you make them seem. Everyone uses them except heavies. Even snipers benefit from lasers due to laser pistols, which makes their reaction shooting at least passable until you get the opportunist upgrade. I agree carapace armor is good for the first terror mission, but I find lasers even better because that greatly increases your chances of blasting down thin men before they ever get a shot off. It also helps prevent you from getting overwhelmed if the Chryssalids manage to zombify a bunch of civilians before you find them, which is always a possibility. Another nice thing about lasers is that missed shots have a good chance at destroying enemy cover, meaning your misses still serve a useful role. The combination of a mec trooper supported by laser armed soldiers is a very strong amount of firepower in early game.
I was with you all the way until you said that 'meld' is among the first research priorities. If anything, the one addition with Enemy Within that has a similar 'DLC' effect as Slingshot is........ Seekers. The former brings the blaster launcher early, the latter, ghost grenades. Ghost Grenades I find make just about everything else, MECs, Augmented soldiers, icing on the cake... heck... even the Support class becomes redundant when you've got a Grenadier. Simply put, Enemy Within does not make the enemies' tactics drastically different, if at all, right? Does anybody feel that MECs and Augmented soldiers just serve to make _Enemy Unknown_ easier ?
@@philippealexis I only played the game after The Enemy Within expansion came out, so that's the only version I know. I find it's really important when playing on iron man classic to get a MEC trooper as fast as possible and build your entire strategy around him, since he can one-shot pretty much every enemy in the early-game.
I've actually found armor much more than lasers weapons in impossible. Keeping someone alive means I can get them to a high rank and even basic weapons can now allow double for shotty and mini gun. I have done lazer priority once when all I had was supports and assaults Alive. I haven't beaten impossible but I've beaten classic iron man a handful. Being much more aggressive lasar weapons were viable.
15:00 Outsiders have 70 aim on easy and normal, 80 on classic and 90 on impossible +10 as they carry light plasma rifles, so even on full cover, they have 60% chances to hit and deal 4-6, just punch him up with kinetic strike
WTF, Rob! Subjugation of the entire Earth and unfair percentage rolls are MY will and you question it?! Looks like your Enemy Unknown run is now Non-Canon and you're forced to play through your failure! (XCom 2 Impossible Ironman)
How about SHIVs? A SHiV with the starter weapon will always kill a sectoid in one hit and may be able to kill thin man in one hit without critical, both of which a soldier can't do on impossible difficulty. So if the beginning of the game is the hardest part then maybe SHIV is more useful than on other difficulty levels. I haven't actually tried it, just thinking.
You know, I'm not sure what research it takes to get shivs but it could be a possibility. This was the strategy that worked most often for me and you would be taking away research from other things but shivs are decently strong brought alone. Theyre great because theyre expendable, have high damage and suppression with okay aim but they get most of their stats from equipment upgrades. I think shivs are best when youre losing and need to replace soldiers on the geo map but maybe it could work. Keep in mind that month 2 has a lot of powerful enemies showing up though and a soldier is more versatile vertically, getting aim bonuses and grenades. Great working in tandem. Imo they can slap mutons pretty hard if you desperately need damage since they show up shockingly early. Let me know if someones tried it, cool idea!
You do not have time to do it. Mech with flamethrower is much better than SHIV, and after first 2 horrible months game gets way easier if you still alive.
Hi Rob, you may want to like turn based games. So, do you think you would do a long play or a brief play for the UFO2Extraterrestrials Battle for the Mercury? It is a turn based strategy sticking to the XCOM:UFO Defense gaming system. I would provide you with the Steam key in return.
ai knows where snipers are, overwatches, everything. but they will play stupid if someone hunkers down. i think it considers the fog created by hunker down as 'safe'.
old thread but basically Holo targeting should only be on your second heavy which includes suppression plus mayhem. The other way for heavy is bulletswarm+ shred rocket and so on. After this it's more or less can't go wrong with the build after sgt+.
On PC version Tab cycles to the next soldier, even while the previous soldier is taking the action you just told them to, and Y is the hotkey for overwatch. So, once you have your squad in position you just quickly alternate Y Tab Y Tab Y Tab Y. Big time saver once you are used to the flow of the game. You can do the same with hunker down using K.
After beating EW on normal, I hit what seemed like a small wall on classic. Thanks for all of the helpful tips, I had no idea about the conga line!
A thing about target extraction: You don't need to kill all the aliens, you can extract your squad and the mission is still considered a success.
This fact alone helps reduce panic in I/I
It's a bit hard to rush the VIP though
These are some excellent tips, much better than the usual super basic "75% shots aren't a guaranteed hit in case you weren't aware" or "Always have a backup plan" captain obvious tips. I didn't know about the idea of parking on person in indestructable cover, hunkering down, and maneuvering your other troops on a wide flank, thats genius! As is the one where you put 3 of your rookies on the roof, open the door with the fourth rookie, then drop your other 3 down behind the enemy when they advance on him!
That said, for all that I see people talking about how amazing MECs are, my own experiences haven't matched the hype. They can't take cover and they seem to be harder to conceal behind shelves and such so they usually just get shot to pieces immediately by the enemy. I've looked at other people's videos to see how they use them and their MECs either get shot to pieces as well, or dodge the enemy shots and pull through (luckily). Heavies seem to be less of a liability by far since their rockets can take out multiple enemies, and a 10% chance of veering off is better odds than your MEC dodging thin man shots.
Thanks for the feedback! Yeah I tried to let known tips that are essential for impossible ironman over the general stuff but as for the mecs, the reason theyre so good is the flamethrower! If you get it before the second terror mission, chrystalids become trivial from the panic and it does enough damage to instantly kill thin men and sectoids. If you're good at hiding them, they should hold up the entire campaign and not get shot up or if you need to take overwatch since overwatch cant crit and you can heal it up. That and they don't die to even a thin man, max damage crit when you first get them, allowing them to tank a single shot if you need to save someone whose in half cover. Their health is also special because they can take small amounts of damage without needing to go to the medbay which could be a saving grace. Needless to say collateral damage helps on occasion when enemies are near explosives but its really the flamethrower. I had many campaigns where the mec saved me early game and the medic who i had with them was instrumental late game with their cloaking grenades since they could carry two. Lastly, mines are just godly but by the time you have carapace armor, the game becomes really easy even on impossible ironman so its no big deal. Hope this helps.
@@zethos177 Thanks! I usually go for cycling rookies to get as many heavies and assaults as possible. We can rockets thin men and floaters. Chrysalids I usually pull back a bit while keeping ym people together, this usually causes the chrysalids to cluster as they pursue us, then we put a grenade on them and shoot them with shotguns. Laser shotguns help a lot since they are guaranteed to OHKO thin men and grounded floaters. 2-3 assaults lets you mop up the final pod easily with run and gun.
I'd like to add in that a good strategy for non-thin men non-mutons, if you have 3 assaults, is when you aggro a pod you pull back and stand an assault in indestructable full cover hunkered while your other assaults hide out of line of sight. The enemy advance and usually one overwatches while the others shoot. When they get close you run and gun in for point blank shots, corpses, no grenades used. Also much less likely to pull more pods since you pulled back from first contact so you are only advancing back to where you were before. Obv doesn't work for thin men since they spit at you so use rockets on those on first contact. Although I guess you could do it if your bait has a medkit equipped for poison immunity
So much great content, thanks. But for future reference, it was very hard to follow you because 1) the background noise of the scenes running was almost as loud as your voice; and 2) you tend to talk VERY quickly. Just some feedback for future videos.
Yeah I agree. Your words run together like mash potatoes. it's just a little annoying habit that could be taken care of with enunciations and slowing down the pace of your words. listening to you talk has encourage me to work on my speech issues.
Nice content. But please pause in between phrases and sentences. I feel like I'm watching zero punctuation. You also tend to murmur and trail off.
Audio mixing was funky on this one boss
You are a savior, I wanted to finally beat this but could only get to the third mission but this seems to working
I really love the description about the Outsider. LMAO.
Damn i never thought about skipping council missions. I just lost my A team on bomb disposal on classic ironman...
Good video. I'm currently on my 3rd attempt to beat Ironman on classic. I can't imagine how much more miserable impossible is. That being said I do have some disagreements. I found it is vital to rush getting laser weapons. If you don't get lasers before your first terror mission, you are going to be hurting, as the aliens will start to severely outclass you. Even the lowly thin men are a big problem without laser weapons, since it usually takes multiple hits to kill them with the starting guns. I've lost missions because a shotgun at point blank range only caused 3 damage and left the thin man laughing as he blew away my assault squaddie on the next turn. Also, it's vitally important to get laser cannons for your interceptors or else they will start running into UFOs they can't shoot down. I'd say research priorities should be meld, then lasers, then heavy lasers, then carapace armor.
Thanks for the compliment! I will say I tried the laser gun route a few times on impossible and while it seems good on paper, your crit chance with the shotgun should be fairly high close quarters when flanking and if not, using two grenades and rockets seems to do the job fairly effectively to wipe out at least 1/3 of the map without a hassle, enough to make flanking and using the mec's flamethrower enough for the rest of the mission. I 100% agree the mec is a very strong rush early as the flamethrower allows you to have a non missing instant kill on thin men, floaters and sectoids along with great chrystalid crowd control for the first terror mission and it can grant you a single saving grace against enemy fire because of its health pool allowing it to tank a single thin man crit. I like the carapace armor because it can be given to every soldier unlike lasers which can only be given to a select few classes by the time the terror missions rolls in and helps avoid injuries from the few points of damage done by thin man poison which is really common. Just one thing I noted, usually skills come in quicker on impossible due to the higher enemy numbers leading to skills like rapid fire and shredder rockets being gained earlier to make up for lack of damage and also it gets you squad size upgrades faster due to higher ranked team leaders. Its not a full proof strategy because of how ridiculously stacked the game is against the player on this difficulty and chance to hit is unreliable at best with rookies in the early game but this strategy has given me personally the most success out of all of the ones I've tried. I'd love to see other strategies that work. And yes! Mid game interceptor gun upgrades are fairly good or you can start in north america and have a lot of them on station for cheaper!
I prefer to start in Africa for the 30% funding bonus. Well you obviously know this game better than I do since you've beaten it on impossible iroman and I haven't, but on my failed attempts, I found that lack of laser weaponry was the biggest problem. Thin men would just dominate me, and it really became a nightmare when Mutons showed up. Like I said, anything more powerful than a sectoid usually takes multiple hits from the starting guns. Unless thin men are hiding behind explosive cover like cars, it often takes more than one grenade to kill them. And regardless, sometimes it's not feasible to get into throwing distance without getting gunned down by reaction shots. Explosives are just too limited and situational to be something you can always count on to win the day. Laser are crucial because they are the one thing that enables you to reliably one-shot sectoids and thin men from long range, and two-shot tougher enemies like Chryssalids and mutons. Laser rifles are also a massive boon to your assault troopers, since without them assault troop with shotguns are pretty much useless from long range. Also lasers aren't as limited as you make them seem. Everyone uses them except heavies. Even snipers benefit from lasers due to laser pistols, which makes their reaction shooting at least passable until you get the opportunist upgrade. I agree carapace armor is good for the first terror mission, but I find lasers even better because that greatly increases your chances of blasting down thin men before they ever get a shot off. It also helps prevent you from getting overwhelmed if the Chryssalids manage to zombify a bunch of civilians before you find them, which is always a possibility. Another nice thing about lasers is that missed shots have a good chance at destroying enemy cover, meaning your misses still serve a useful role. The combination of a mec trooper supported by laser armed soldiers is a very strong amount of firepower in early game.
I was with you all the way until you said that 'meld' is among the first research priorities. If anything, the one addition with Enemy Within that has a similar 'DLC' effect as Slingshot is........ Seekers. The former brings the blaster launcher early, the latter, ghost grenades.
Ghost Grenades I find make just about everything else, MECs, Augmented soldiers, icing on the cake... heck... even the Support class becomes redundant when you've got a Grenadier.
Simply put, Enemy Within does not make the enemies' tactics drastically different, if at all, right?
Does anybody feel that MECs and Augmented soldiers just serve to make _Enemy Unknown_ easier ?
@@philippealexis I only played the game after The Enemy Within expansion came out, so that's the only version I know. I find it's really important when playing on iron man classic to get a MEC trooper as fast as possible and build your entire strategy around him, since he can one-shot pretty much every enemy in the early-game.
I've actually found armor much more than lasers weapons in impossible. Keeping someone alive means I can get them to a high rank and even basic weapons can now allow double for shotty and mini gun. I have done lazer priority once when all I had was supports and assaults Alive.
I haven't beaten impossible but I've beaten classic iron man a handful. Being much more aggressive lasar weapons were viable.
Long answer: this video
short answer: don't
The only problem is patience. Conga lining for 3 hours just to beat the first mission ain't it chief
15:00 Outsiders have 70 aim on easy and normal, 80 on classic and 90 on impossible +10 as they carry light plasma rifles, so even on full cover, they have 60% chances to hit and deal 4-6, just punch him up with kinetic strike
WTF, Rob! Subjugation of the entire Earth and unfair percentage rolls are MY will and you question it?!
Looks like your Enemy Unknown run is now Non-Canon and you're forced to play through your failure! (XCom 2 Impossible Ironman)
I played Ironman two times and both time every soldier died and no one ranked up. Fuck Ironman.
Love the seeker tip, this is hilarious
okay now our secret technic to rescue the earth! follow me! conga conga CONGA!
Nice tips. Too bad that the game music is louder than your voice.
Seakers can be seen when tiles you normally can occupy are inaccessible.
How about SHIVs? A SHiV with the starter weapon will always kill a sectoid in one hit and may be able to kill thin man in one hit without critical, both of which a soldier can't do on impossible difficulty. So if the beginning of the game is the hardest part then maybe SHIV is more useful than on other difficulty levels.
I haven't actually tried it, just thinking.
You know, I'm not sure what research it takes to get shivs but it could be a possibility. This was the strategy that worked most often for me and you would be taking away research from other things but shivs are decently strong brought alone. Theyre great because theyre expendable, have high damage and suppression with okay aim but they get most of their stats from equipment upgrades. I think shivs are best when youre losing and need to replace soldiers on the geo map but maybe it could work. Keep in mind that month 2 has a lot of powerful enemies showing up though and a soldier is more versatile vertically, getting aim bonuses and grenades. Great working in tandem. Imo they can slap mutons pretty hard if you desperately need damage since they show up shockingly early. Let me know if someones tried it, cool idea!
You do not have time to do it. Mech with flamethrower is much better than SHIV, and after first 2 horrible months game gets way easier if you still alive.
Why are you not posting anymore?
Hi Rob, you may want to like turn based games. So, do you think you would do a long play or a brief play for the UFO2Extraterrestrials Battle for the Mercury? It is a turn based strategy sticking to the XCOM:UFO Defense gaming system. I would provide you with the Steam key in return.
ai knows where snipers are, overwatches, everything. but they will play stupid if someone hunkers down. i think it considers the fog created by hunker down as 'safe'.
hey so Holo Targeting heavy is bad?
i have heavies and they are trash for me, can;t believe they perform on impossible
Yeah second shot < +10 aim for sure
old thread but basically Holo targeting should only be on your second heavy which includes suppression plus mayhem. The other way for heavy is bulletswarm+ shred rocket and so on. After this it's more or less can't go wrong with the build after sgt+.
Thanks, some very useful tips.
How do you overwatch so fast? My guys take like a few seconds before the next soldier can do anything, so annoying...
On PC version Tab cycles to the next soldier, even while the previous soldier is taking the action you just told them to, and Y is the hotkey for overwatch. So, once you have your squad in position you just quickly alternate Y Tab Y Tab Y Tab Y. Big time saver once you are used to the flow of the game. You can do the same with hunker down using K.
heyyo rob so any plans on making new videos id love to see more!
Who is the best base in the game?
Best base in the game is ... Israel. No... Wait... They're actually Europeans, right??
Then... North America.
@@philippealexis damn times fly...
My guy, what happened to you? :(