It was exhausting. It took 21 restarts, and more than 100 total hours of play. But, I finally did it, and got to rub it in my stupid best friend’s face, who thought he was better than me because he beat classic ironman before I did.
His response?
“Cool bro.”
Yeah, I know. Totally worth it!
Now I get to pick up what’s left of my life after neglecting it for the past three weeks. I think/hope I still live with the same woman. Looked through the mail and didnt see any divorce papers, anyway.
I sure hope she was paying the bills and feeding the dogs while I was busy.
Please take a moment to mourn the loss of “Roadblock,” the most decorated of the brave soldiers who paid the ultimate price in defense of her squad mates. She was a hell of a rocket-toting alien curbstomping badass in her time. A seriously ridiculous series of events led to her being exposed and alone among a group of 3 heavy floaters and two mutton elites. Anyone who’s played xcom, especially ironman mode, knows just how close I came to having to replace a monitor with a fist-shaped hole in the screen.
Congrats!
I’ve been playing I/I on Enemy Unknown whenever I can find the time. I think it’s a lot of fun. I’m certainly enjoying it more than my C/I run. I got pulled in by Beaglerush’s I/I series on Youtube, which I’ve plugged on the boards before. Funny, tightly edited. Have you seen it?
That was actually the first I/I series I saw on youtube. He played a much tighter game than I did, and had fewer strategic issues than I did. I had 6 countries withdraw from the council by the end of month 2!
One month, an EXALT cell in USA caused panic, followed directly by an abduction mission, followed by a satellite being shot down over USA. Canada, USA, and Mexico were all on the verge of withdrawing and causing me to lose a game with something like 50 hours in. I got extremely lucky with a terror mission (the same one where Roadblock died, God rest her soul) and I had a spare satellite to launch right at the end of the month to bring the panic back down to reasonable levels. That was as close as I came to failure after the first two months.
I can’t quite bring myself to try Ironman. I make an effort not to reload when things go poorly, but I also am not willing to tolerate living with an accidental misclick that has disastrous consequences. And I recall one encounter where a group of mutons somehow spawned in the middle of my squad at the end of my turn. That earned a “bullshit” yelled at the screen and a reload.
He can’t possibly have had fewer strategic issues than you. I mean…he did lose
Beagle does play a pretty tight tactical game, more than anything though, I like how he edits the missions down into very watchable segments.
What I really hate about my own playthroughs is when I’m trying to time the construction of the satellite or uplink just right and somehow manage to miss the 20 day or 14 day deadline. AGH. Not even losing an entire skyranger full of levelled up soldiers puts me off more.
Y’all do realize that the devs themselves figured that Ironman Impossible was only theoretically beatable, right ?
Congrats, you lucky devil !
Even with Ironman on, you can hurriedly alt+tab out of the game and thus restart your turn, long as you do it before the aliens’ turn is over (since that’s when the game autosaves). Fact is, the reason I’m posting and not playing right now is that I just had* 3* people miss 70% hit/60% crit shots on a flanked Sectoid ; only for him to retaliate on the only rank 3 guy I have (and lone Assault I got so far, too), in heavy cover, hit, crit for 6 damage with a fucking plas pistol, dead.
So I needed an urgent little time out, is what I’m saying :).
Heh. When I started, it certainly felt like it was literally impossible, but these days I can get at least to the end of the second month pretty reliably. At which point I make some silly mistake on the geoscape and don’t feel like playing further. I’m also playing on a really old xp machine which barely runs the game, so delicate timing on the geoscape tends to be easy to mess up.
True, but that really defeats the purpose. I’d started falling into that trap, but realised I may as well not play Ironman at all. I still sort of cheat, by replaying my first mission if I lose any of my people. Coming out of that first mission with four squaddies can make all the difference between being instantly launched into a spiral of disaster and…being launched into a spiral of disaster a few missions down the line
Ouch. I feel your pain. Think I’ll go kill a few sectoids and say it was to avenge you. Yes. That sounds about right.
I call it “Ironman Lite” - it won’t fix you out of the geoscape where the RNG is just as harsh as the tactical one, and it won’t fix you out of a longstanding tactical clusterfuck. But yeah, you can get tempted to use it as pure scumming and still have to be a bit disciplined about it - I won’t reload if I made a dumb-dumb, or if a guy gets killed in a way I feel is fair game, or even if I fail a mission. I *will *reload a misclick, or complete bullshit like that sectoid thing, or what happened to me just now despite it being hilarious :
So, first Terror mission. No laser, no armour, but I do have 5 spots and a pair of fairly XPd MECs so I feel tentatively fine. I roll the “alley” map, which I think is the same as the Council mission where you have to escort the corrupt politico. Or it could be a new one - most of the action happened at the spawn so I’m not sure. Anyway, long story short : long alley in front, tall buildings on each side, and a lone car in the middle.
I huddle most of the team around the car as it’s the only cover within move+OS range of my spawn. I send one rookie forward to secure the lone civilian I need to save and scout ahead. He runs into a trio of Floaters, one of which immediately bounds on top of the right building overlooking the car, flanking almost everyone. No ladder in sight, nobody has better than 50% to hit him and oh yeah, Chrysalids joined the party. Fuuuu… **
BUT**, thinks I with glee, I’mma try out them there newfangled rocket boots ! Up goes the punchyfist mech, awesome ! I put him behind the Floater so as not to draw fire from the street, you never know, these things are bullet magnets. PUNCH ! FORE ! The dead floater soars majestically into the air, draws a perfect parabola… and lands smack on top of the car. Which explodes, killing everyone else. Wooops.
So I didn’t know that could even happen, now I know, abort, abort retry !
