Talk:Saving

I wasn't aware that anyone played any X-Com game without saving and reloading. Why would you do that? I don't think it makes the game fun at all if you can expect your soldiers to die every few missions at the start of the game where your technology sucks hardcore. In fact, at the start of a game I will tolerate only minor injuries. By the early-mid stages of the game, whether the first, second, or third, I tolerate no injuries whatsoever. I use all ten save spots and save every time a significant event happens, which could even be moving a few of my guys before I'm going to move another one into a potentially dangerous, unscouted area. Or it could be after I kill an alien. In Apoc, I won't accept even a deflector shield going down. If a shield fails, time to load to an earlier saved game. Those things take too long to manufacture, so I look at them like health, and if the health reaches 0, time to reload.

I don't spend all kinds of time building up a guy into a super-soldier just so that he can be killed by one bad turn, haha, that seems funny to me. I didn't even realize anyone would play an X-Com game without this technique. It just seems wasteful otherwise.

JonathanLB, think of it as an ironman playstyle if you like. There's an entire genre of games (rogue-likes) where save-load is explicitly cheating. Here, it's merely an out-of-game "difficulty switch".

To put things mildly, as long as you're playing against the default AI, and actually understand the default AI, the only thing preventing almost never losing supersoldiers is that there's no in-game roster swap utility. It's a fairly common deficiency for savegame editors to address for XCOM1/XCOM2, and I suspect it will be figured out for Apocalypse before long. -- Zaimoni, 13:49 4 August 2008 (CDT)

P.S.: on talk pages, leaving a signature is generally good style on (almost) any wiki.

Hey, I apologize I don't even know what a signature is. Do you mean just signing my name or how do I go about doing that? I wasn't trying to be rude. I registered to the Wiki with my real name and all so I'm not trying to hide! haha. I wasn't really understanding your entire post, I mean I can see how if you were wanting to make the game super challenging you would do this, but actually with X-Com 2 that game is so tough anyway even with save-and-load, it's not really necessary I don't think. The start of the game, at least, is brutal, terror missions where you're still using darts. Ouch!

I think I differ from many players because I don't agree that the "fun" from the game is making it challenging and having your guys die, etc. I feel the fun is getting to the point of utter domination where each mission is fairly easy but still entertaining and fun, and so you train your soldiers to be really awesome and have the ultimate fighting squad. At least, for me that has always been the most fun. When I first played X-Com it was one of the earliest games I played for the PC, I was I guess maybe 11 or 12, not sure, and having beaten the game several times back then and yet again now that my friend gave me DosBox, I always enjoy the process of training my soldiers to be amazing combat units. I just restarted X-Com 2 because I never beat that game without cheating, I found it too difficult when it came out. I hope I can do so now with save-and-loads but even then it can be tough. I just lost a soldier in a terror mission without realizing it, I have no idea how, I must not have been paying attention but one died. Oh well, early on, probably didn't have much gained experience it being the third mission and all but still I was surprised. I used to use that Hexedit cheat, where you could hack the soldier profiles and make them have 255 time units (FF), 160 health or something (AA), I don't remember exactly, but I never got far in the game without cheating so now it's time to do it at least what I consider the honest way, albeit still with save-and-loads. So, uhh, signature would be I guess: -JonathanLB 23:52 4 August 2008 (PDT)

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The X-Com games are hard, so it's not surprising that lots of players will need to to save/reload the game. But it's not impossible to play through entire battles without once saving.

In a way, it's a mental shift. With save/reload immortality, you can throw caution to the wind and just win. By throwing away the ability to save during a battle, you have to learn to be more careful with how you play. You may lose a lot, but that just means you have to start thinking about why you lost and what you can do better next time. You might even start trying new things that you may have ignored in the past. For example, if you've never used grenades or HWPs - it might be a change to start trying them.

There's nothing wrong with getting attached to your super soldiers - you just have to start getting used to playing really well with your brand new to mildly experienced troops to supplement your super soldiers so that they stay that way. Lose one? Any number of your troops has great potential, and this can be cultivated very easily by letting them get some combat experience over a few battles.

You compensate for the increased difficulty by playing and understanding the game better - your improvements will start reflecting in your ordinary no save restriction games.

Why not try my 'solo floater base assault' campaign. It's a practice mission that is a combination of both save/reload immortality and playing by ironman rules in the battlescape.

In essence, the challenge involves finding a floater base or to make the challenge easier, just pick a floater or snakeman UFO, save the game. Load one of your troops and arm the soldier with just one laser pistol. Launch the mission and see how far you can go without saving or reloading during the battle. When you win or lose, reload the game and try it again. And again. And again.

That's probably not your definition of fun (I mean, beating an entire float base with just one pistol? *yawn*) , but I still recommend at least trying as it is excellent practice.

Later on try different variations in equipment, such as using a more average soldier, or throwing in some grenades or swap the laser pistol out for a basic rifle. Maybe start going with a small squad instead of just the one soldier. (Note, if you want to use the basic pistol - make sure you at least have over 15+ clips - I almost beat it this way once, but ran out of bullets on the last floater)

But after all that, it's really your choice on how you save/reload your game. If you are comfortable where you are, then there's nothing wrong with that at all. -NKF 06:13, 5 August 2008 (PDT)

While it's quite true that each person will enjoy one playstyle over the other, it's worth pointing out that the best legends come from those games where the load button is never used.

My first superhuman level game was played without re-loading. At one stage, I was near losing - I needed to capture a Commander and pronto. I couldn't afford ANY new equipment, and the only alien base I knew of belonged to Ethereals.

I charged in with most of my troopers holding spare stunrods, lost all but two or three units, and ended up escaping via the access lifts. But I got that Commander. >:]

You just don't get "epic" battles like that when you rely on the save button all the time. Instead you end up with your units never stepping away from the drop off point, using mind controlled aliens as scouts... The battles turn into a chore.

Still, each to their own. I used to prefer the save/load method myself.

- Bomb Bloke 23:44, 5 August 2008 (PDT)

I do not usually save/load as it is just like NKF said; you do not progress in skills as much and your soldiers become immortal. Also, I consider it a blatant and overly easy method of cheating if used excessively.

The purpose of the game is lost, as you lose nothing and gain everything. But the to each his own-rule applies always. Still, against ( serious ) human players you simply couldn't save/load, but we do not ( yet, hopefully... ) have a serious multiplayable X-COM game.

Unless you consider X-COM Email a serious attempt...

-Karp 01:08, 20 August 2008 (PDT)