House Rules

[Pocus]

I'm not saying I prefer my home compared to any other places here (well can be true though).

 

Are you using some house rules to have the game more interesting, immersive and challenging?

 

For example, we know we can farm endlessly the Cult or any other factions so to rack basically unlimited money. How do you play with that? My House rule is to not raid a given faction building more than one time a week, unless the faction has a positive balance where I allow me a 2nd try.

 

Any others?

[Elros]

Just refraining from anything that could be considered cheating.

 

No reloads, no stun raids and no editors.

 

Oh, and I have to raze every building owned by nutrivend to the ground whenever it's rebuilt, and always burn every single plant on the hydrofarms if I'm raiding. That'll teach them to kill my best agent.

[[NKF]]

I've a few simple rules that I try to observe.

 

- No saving or reloading during the battlescape. The whole mission must be played in one sitting unless I need to leave the game for one reason or another.

 

- Don't get to attached to your soldiers. This helps break the save/reload habit to recover lost troops.

 

- Stun raids: These days I try to avoid them since I've started to use the stun grapple more in the starting portion of the game. I do steal a power sword or two at the start of the game though, as their release date is way too far out for comfort.

 

- Don't get upset if aliens escape the battle. It's preferred.

 

- No heavy explosives in ordinary missions. Exceptions are during recovery missions, base defence, attacking enemy organisations and alien dimension buildings. This is a practical rule as ANY damage caused to a building is attributed to you.

 

- Except for the Type-3, if the UFO is too much to handle, let it go.

 

These aren't really rules, just habits, I guess.

 

- NKF

[Elros]

I find that if you've strong enough willpower it's preferrable to get attached to your soldiers. Greatly improves the experience. If a game has you close to tears from anything other than frustration it's good.

[Pherdnut]

House Rule: Don't eat the Homborgers.

[Nepereta]

I don't use stun raids, apart from on Sirius early on and that doesn't count because they want to return fire.

 

I used to have a rule of non-devastation of mission buildings in alien infestation missions. But recent missions have been rather rough so I have been hitting them pretty hard with lots indirect 'cutting through walls' fire.

Edited June 28, 2007 by Nepereta

[[NKF]]

Do you do this in buildings belonging to enemy organisations or neutrals\allies? There's no problem if it's an enemy building, but if the building belongs to a neutral or ally organisation, they'll take notice of the damage.

 

In fact, just from observation, they take more notice of the building damage than the death of any civilians or how many aliens you were able to kill in the mission. Bunch of ingrates, I'm sure, but that's just how the game makes them think.

 

- NKF

Edited June 28, 2007 by NKF

[Nepereta]

I will damage neutral/friendly buildings if I believe reduces downtime of my squad.

[Sorrow]

My house rules:

-I alway use my X-Com 3 Revisited mod.

-I don't reload except for continuing game and crashes.

-I don't make stun raids.

[NRN_R_Sumo1]

My rules, Do whatever the heck I want, but no redoing missions or reloading for ships

Ill admit to reloading after a base got bombed and my units all died, its fairly hard to play without them ..

[glen_es]

I'm bored with stun raids to raise money, so I now use an editor to give x-com 10,000,000 credits at the start of the game. This obviously doesn't make the game more challenging, but I find it makes it more fun. I hate scrounging for money.

 

A couple of things I'm going to play around with

 

1) Use AK's example and set a limit on how many agents I take on missions. The way I have been playing, as soon as I get the Biotrans or a Hawk I can free up for troops, and take 15 or 16 agents, I don't sweat much in missions. I pretty much always overwhelm the enemy with a wall of fire power. Not sure what I'll set the limit at, maybe 6 or even 4 agents if I can and see if that's more fun.

 

2) Going to play around with apocutil to boost the number of aliens in the game. See if I can make it through a whole game with aliens at 250% of normal.

[Aiki-Knight]

My "house rules":

 

- No stun raids on friendly corps. It just wouldn't work in real life, and that just bugs me. I limit raiding to orgs that deserve it: Cult, gangs, enemies, especially those who attack my bases.

- I attempt to minimize the collateral damage of killing civilians in the crossfire. Where possible, I'll hold fire and/or stun civilians. XCOM agents appear to wear badges - they have a pseudo-police responsibility to protect the society that relies on them to defeat the aliens. When things are really hairy, civilians do get killed, but never by choice or negligence.

- I get totally attached to my agents. And I don't reload. If this were real, those agents would be my fellow agents. When I was in the army, lots of high-ranking officers didn't give a "darn" about the troops. It was crap (don't even get me started). My agents are family. When they die, they die, but not if I can possibly help it.

- I don't use the "widget 65535" cheat. It's crazy.

- I only use editors to edit soldiers' faces and ranks, such as when there are captains with 20 kills and a corporal with like 50. I don't edit stats, missions, or kills.

- No one goes on a mission without armor, a medikit, and a primary weapon. Sidearms alone aren't satisfactory.

- I never, never hire androids. Just a personal thing. I don't know any androids in real life. Plus, as a long-gamer, I don't like that androids don't improve.

- If the cult or a gang is attacking a non-criminal org's buildings and that org can't defend itself, XCOM will shoot the attackers down. Drive a Hawk with three lineage cannons, set to aggressive, right up to a hovercar, then allow it to fire. Kaboom.

[NRN_R_Sumo1]

Oh, and I never do stun raids either, Didnt know about the "Widget" thing

Ill use an editor only to increase the difficulty of my combat, such as multiplying the ammount of aliens in a Cult Building or in a map I like, such as the malls or Globogyms.

Occasionally Ill use the editor to put in a crapload of Ammo on one of my solo missions only profiles, but thats the only real cheating I ever do !

Those missions are for practice anyways.

I WILL SURPASS NKF IN AWESOMENESS! ..someday :'(