XCOM Enemy Within: First Impressions

[BloatedGuppy]

Nearing the end of my first EW playthrough, I must say I have very mixed feelings regarding MECs.

On one hand, they have definite strengths - high damage, useful abilities (Grenated, Punch/Flamethrower, EMP for Sectopods), they are fast (Foundry upgrade + Kinetic module), tons of HP (with self-repair). However, their downsides are an issue...

Relatively low Aim stat is the glaring issue for me. Since I can't equip a SCOPE one a MEC, this really bites me in the arse. It's not so bad if I convert a high-level Sniper, but even then I can feel the shitty aim. What use is a 13 damage Particle Cannon if it misses all the time?

Convert higher level soldiers. You keep their Aim and movement bonuses. When you convert, say, a squaddie, he levels up and gets aim comparable to a Heavy (so, crap). If you're playing NCE then you can have some very high accuracy MECs running around. Which is to say nothing of the fact that Kinetic Strike and Flamethrower never miss.

Next is the cost. Put simply, a MEC is insanely expensive, both when it comes to cash and Meld. In fact, for the Meld price of a single MEC upgrade I can fully Gene Mod a soldier and have some spare change left. And it's not cheap when it comes to cash either, though that's less of an issue later on.

You need to weigh the suit cost against the cost of armor for the trooper in question. Especially at the point of the game where Titan armor is just starting to get rolled out, all the alien tech and cash tends to be a bit tight. MECs draw on Meld, which is typically plentiful at that time, and cost in less in cash per armor than a regular troop.

Then there's the fact that they kinda suck early game. I'm glad that some of you have success stories with a heroic MEC holding off whatnot, but people have those stories with other classes. In pure numbers MECs don't really start to outperform regular troops until Tier 3 tech.

They're phenomenal early game, especially since you can easily get them out pre-carapace armor, meaning they have 3x the survivability of a regular troop, along with being immune to things like Chrysalid poison or Thin Man spit.

No cover. This makes me think that they would be VERY squishy at higher difficulties. Let's be fair, the best defense is not getting hit in the first place (which is why Skeleton armor > Carapace armor), and MECs will be hit. If they stand back and try to snipe, the aforementioned shitty Aim comes into play.

They are not. Both my Colonel MECs lead the charge on every mission and sponged up damage like champs. They make great mitigation tanks. I had them go head to head with everything from Berserkers to Sectopods and only very rarely even came close to losing them.

Don't get me wrong, I do think that a fully upgraded MEC is superior to a non-psionic, non-genemodded Colonel of pretty much any class. But I'm not sure if it's worth the cost. And I'm even less sure that it would outperform a fully gene-modded psionic.

I had a fully gene-modded Assault who was leading the squad by 40+ kills when my two MEC troopers became regulars on missions. By the end of the campaign they'd both lapped him. Gene mods are great. MECs are better.

Frankly they border on being crazy OP.

 

[squid5580]

Meld is gonna get me killed. And nice to see the council is still paying us with change they found in their couch, cheap bastards. I wonder how much the countries are paying them for them to give us a whopping $300 monthly allowance.

 

[ERaptor]

MEC's are fkin awesome. Not only are they tanky, deal a ton of damage and get nifty upgrades, but they also finally enabled my bloody revenge against those godforsaken Crytsallids. Every aggression I ever built up against these di*ks vanished promptly after i Falcon Punched 3 of them trough Walls in one mission. Rot in Alien Hell Sucker!

I dunno if its just me, but MECs are actually so good that Genemods seem...laughable in comparison. The Genetic modification just seems like babystep improvements, compared to a hulking Mechasuit who kills Mutons with a guruanteed 12 damage melee punch, that makes Bruce Lee cry himself to sleep every night.

MELD is a fun addition. I tend to take 1 Rookie on every mission, after i unlock max size for my mission squads. Not only do i feel my roster with Squadies that way, I also have someone on my squad as a suicide Meld-grabber should the need arise.

The only real gripes I have are: The Panic thing they didnt fix. It annoys me that luck determines where missions and abductions take place. Its absolutely possible to loose a bunch of countrys with no way of doing anything against it. I Lost China early on, because I missed one UFO and the game refused to give me even one damn mission there. After EXALT was introduced they promptly upped the Panic even more by sabotage, whereafter I lost the country.

The fu*ked up difficulty curve. The early game likes to completely destroy me multiple times on classic, but after i cross a certain point, it gets laughably easy. I cant really pinpoint the exact moment, but eventually high level soldiers combined with a lot of Squadies in reserve just outperform even the stronges Alien units. I think it would help if the alien army also had some form of "Level", so weaker units like Sectoids and floaters catch up to late game as well. I tend to plow trough hundreds of the poor guys, without even the remote risk of loosing someone.

 

[veloper]

I dunno if its just me, but MECs are actually so good that Genemods seem...laughable in comparison. The Genetic modification just seems like babystep improvements, compared to a hulking Mechasuit who kills Mutons with a guruanteed 12 damage melee punch, that makes Bruce Lee cry himself to sleep every night.

Don't overlook the clever uses of genemods. A soldier with mimetic skin can act like a invisible spotter for a sniper and you can take as long as you like and try as often as you like, to snipe the aliens with impunity. That's even beter than a MEC.
Mimetic is so good it almost feels like cheating and it could use a nerf.

I'd say an assault colonel in titan armor + chitin (27 HP) + immunity to criticals, still makes a for a better tank than a MEC colonel in a paladin suit (28 HP) + max 33% damage. The assault class can use cover when necessary and can also ignore the first alien reaction shot.

Once the stronger aliens start to roll out, like elite mutons, I protect my MECs more, putting them outside immediate lines of sight more often and trying to avoid firefights where they cannot one-shot/punch aliens within one turn. Grenades and mines are still very useful tools though.

MECs mostly make the early game a bit easier in those missions where you really have to hurry.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I'd say an assault colonel in titan armor + chitin (27 HP) + immunity to criticals, still makes a for a better tank than a MEC colonel in a paladin suit (28 HP) + max 33% damage. The assault class can use cover when necessary and can also ignore the first alien reaction shot.

There's a point in the game where you basically start steam rolling everything regardless of your group makeup. The great joy of MECs is they're abnormally powerful at a time in the game when you're still quite frail and vulnerable. You can easily get them pre-carapace armor even, and their toolset is like nothing else in the game at that point.

They're game changers when you NEED a game changer.

Mimetic skin is totes OP though.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Yeah that seems to be the biggest problem so far, with or without Enemy Within. The problem is that the campaign isn't time-restricted like, say, FTL, which means you can just take your time, research everything, do easy missions over and over and after a while you're assaulting the first alien base with a completely decked out squad with Plasma weaponry, Titan armor and max level on all 6 of your troops. And since you didn't assault the alien base until then that means you never saw a hint of Ethereals or Sectoid Commanders. And the rest of the campaign just becomes tedious busywork as there's no researches of note left and no cool things to do beside getting one of your squad to max level psionic.

What the game needs is for aliens to be an actual threat that can bite you if you take too long before you act.

It was a problem with the original too. In all honesty it's also a problem with Civ, although it's a problem stemming back to long before Firaxis became shepherds for the series so it's hard to lay all the blame at their feet. It's a gripping challenge right up to a point, and then everything snowballs hilariously into a cakewalk victory.

Enemy Within is a fine expansion that really beefs up the early-mid game. But it also helped underscore the weak end game that has been there since the beginning.

 

[veloper]

I'd say an assault colonel in titan armor + chitin (27 HP) + immunity to criticals, still makes a for a better tank than a MEC colonel in a paladin suit (28 HP) + max 33% damage. The assault class can use cover when necessary and can also ignore the first alien reaction shot.

There's a point in the game where you basically start steam rolling everything regardless of your group makeup. The great joy of MECs is they're abnormally powerful at a time in the game when you're still quite frail and vulnerable. You can easily get them pre-carapace armor even, and their toolset is like nothing else in the game at that point.

They're game changers when you NEED a game changer.

Mimetic skin is totes OP though.

Yes, that's basicly what I said.
Early game is where MECs perform best, but when you're in no hurry (no terror sites or a timed mission) a mimetic soldier + a squad-sight sniper will easily take care of everything anyway.
Mimetic even lets you steal all the meld early. I won't use it anymore, to make the game challenging again.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Yes, that's basicly what I said.

I felt like re-affirming your point by restating it, and the forum does not allow me to go "hear hear" or give you a +1 or anything. You'll have to cope with the occasional paraphrasing in a display of agreement.

 

[squid5580]

So is there a doctor in the house? I have 1 support out of 80+ agents. Lots of heavies if anyone wants to trade.

I am gonna find and kill every exalt member til I find the D-Bag who set my plasma sniper back by 3 days. Speaking of which can anyone tell me what the green X by the countries when doing an intel scan is?

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Speaking of which can anyone tell me what the green X by the countries when doing an intel scan is?

It means that country has been ruled out as a location for the Exalt base.

Speaking of which, the Exalt base can be in red/alien controlled countries, regardless of their lack of little checkbox.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

So is there a doctor in the house? I have 1 support out of 80+ agents. Lots of heavies if anyone wants to trade.

I am gonna find and kill every exalt member til I find the D-Bag who set my plasma sniper back by 3 days. Speaking of which can anyone tell me what the green X by the countries when doing an intel scan is?

I've kind of faced the opposite problem in my EW playthrough on Classic. Usually I am struggling to keep two of every class at the highest possible level, but in EW there are so many missions in the mid-game (the usual abduction/terror, UFO's, loads of council missions due to Slingshot and that other mission line with Anette Durand and EXALT on top of that) that I'm swimming in soldiers ranked Captain or higher. For the early game I had a single assault, but by now she could easily be replaced by at least 2 other soldiers.

 

[Dodgeboyuk]

here is my Recipe for the best covert agent

sniper (with gunslinger)
plasma pistol
improved pistol upgrades from foundry
gene mods inc second heart and the health Regen one
and medals!

this allows for dealing damage and avoiding/surviving damage (because the operative has no Armour)

also big bonus if that operative has psionic powers later game

 

[Jandau]

Yeah that seems to be the biggest problem so far, with or without Enemy Within. The problem is that the campaign isn't time-restricted like, say, FTL, which means you can just take your time, research everything, do easy missions over and over and after a while you're assaulting the first alien base with a completely decked out squad with Plasma weaponry, Titan armor and max level on all 6 of your troops. And since you didn't assault the alien base until then that means you never saw a hint of Ethereals or Sectoid Commanders. And the rest of the campaign just becomes tedious busywork as there's no researches of note left and no cool things to do beside getting one of your squad to max level psionic.

What the game needs is for aliens to be an actual threat that can bite you if you take too long before you act.

It was a problem with the original too. In all honesty it's also a problem with Civ, although it's a problem stemming back to long before Firaxis became shepherds for the series so it's hard to lay all the blame at their feet. It's a gripping challenge right up to a point, and then everything snowballs hilariously into a cakewalk victory.

Enemy Within is a fine expansion that really beefs up the early-mid game. But it also helped underscore the weak end game that has been there since the beginning.

To be fair, the original didn't have that problem, at least not nearly as much. It did have a weak midgame, when you're well settled with Lasers, Plasma and basic Armor, merrily slaughtering Snakemen and Floaters. But once lategame rolls around, you slowly start to get drowned in waves of Ethereals (and the Ethereals from the original were a legitimate threat, not the lolfest from EU/EW) while countries start to drop out of the XCOM program, one by one with pretty much nothing you can do about it. Yes, perfect play and cheese strats can overcome even that, but the point is that it's still damn hard. There's no time limit on the game, but it slowly starts grinding you down more and more if you take too long. You can still do all the research and get a well built squad, there's plenty of time for that. You just can't get to the same level of pointlessness as you can in EU/EW (all countries under sats, zero damage taken in every mission, etc.).

 

[squid5580]

here is my Recipe for the best covert agent

sniper (with gunslinger)
plasma pistol
improved pistol upgrades from foundry
gene mods inc second heart and the health Regen one
and medals!

this allows for dealing damage and avoiding/surviving damage (because the operative has no Armour)

also big bonus if that operative has psionic powers later game

Give him mimetic skin you will never lose lol. In one of those king of the hill missions I camped him in the protection node and had tons of exalt all standing around but couldn't hack it. My team was just to far away to make it there and clear out 6 of them in 3 turns.