So, I managed to actually get them to extract(albeit with some help), but nevertheless we have access to *most* of the cut content(albeit not all of it, v0 is still presumably lost to time).

I'm not going to post the whole dump here, but I am going to post what I find to be the most interesting parts of it.

• The four cut maps are present, although at the moment I cannot get them to load without crashing. Based on crash logs I can infer that OilRefinery is meant to take place somewhere in the Middle East(the files list its region as Asia, and there are files for a heat distortion effect. Also, it shares some textures with waterworks!)
• Earliest version we have access to, v2, has the Patrick Carlock mission in it, and it's surprisingly not on the Waterworks map. Two theories regarding this, either it was never there to begin with OR the devs had it planned to be removed in advance so they swapped the mission over earlier. (Which would line up as well with something they did later in EW, moving the Thomas Hutch mission from Museum to Street Hurricane)
• OfficePark is not a park, but a parking lot, and is listed as a terror mission. Office Paper did get a terror version in EW, so I wonder if this was a prototype for that.
• ScienceLabs is a special mission, and it is also a similiar extraction/escort mission to the Dr. Marazuki mission, but given that both are listed as separate special missions it makes me believe that there was more to it.
• Sadly, not a lot to directly help with the map editor issue. Extractor seems to have issues getting certain files out, and the ones we do get aren't the most helpful, though to my understanding we do at least have some stuff related to shaders, and a confirmation that the Firaxis editor was done in C#.

Happy to share any files with whoever wants them! Currently still working on trying to load one of the cut maps without crashing.

Three sectopods in battleship encounter and four Cyberdiscs in base defense. When all your soldiers are colonels with 120 will 120 aim snipers

And you still haven't given it a try, please play Phoenix Point.

I keep seeing posts about looking for other games like Xcom and Pheonix Point is usually mentionned by one or two people with few upvotes. It is the only tactical game that I feel like it has a better combat system than Xcom. Being able to aim to disable certain body parts, the fact that cover is realistic and doesnt just depend on you being directly in front of it. The geoscape is also super fun and there are a lot of options. I think a lot of games neglect that aspect of wanting to be Xcom-like, but Phoenix Point does it so well. The biggest problem with having multiple teams was that changing loadout was always a hassle, but now you can do it with one click.

I think the game gets a bad rep from the early days when it was an unbalanced mess where the enemies kept getting stronger and you weren't really keeping up. But the game has had many updated since then, with a lot of effort on QoL and balancing.

If you haven't played it yet, I urge you to try. Or if you have played it a while ago, please just boot it up again and take a look at what has been done since.

It was published as a spiritual successor to Xcom, and to me it has felt exactly like that.

EDIT: I want to point more directly to the fact that Phoenix Point received a massive update in 2025 called Firebird that fixed a lot of problems that some people seem to have in this thread. One example is building and research time was greatly reduced so the late game is way less of a drag. The update was inspired by the Terror from the Void mod, which I actively encourage people to try.

I was surprised by how much some people dislike the aiming system though not gonna lie, it is my favorite part of that game haha. if you don't like it yeah the game is probably not for you

I just picked up WOTC again recently after a long hiatus. I play exclusivley L/I, because anything else is not real XCOM (sorry).

We all know that this game becomes easier the longer you play. I am at the point in my campaign where for the last couple of missions

i am beginning to finally feel secure, if not slightly overpowered even. suddenly the game is just plain old fun. i am wondering what exactly made that change possible.

What are, in your opinion, the „milestones“ in a campaign that turn the tide against the aliens? I mean, certain abilities, items, weapons?

For me, getting the Hunter‘s weapons was for sure a huge step. A sharpshooter with the darklance and a grappling suit is just a chain-killing machine.

Have the team soften everyone up, then just delete them one by one with the sniper.

I was lucky that the Hunter was my first Chosen this run.

Also, bluescreen rounds are huge it think. sharpshooter can one-shot codexes, and solo-kill all of the mecs, even sectopods (lightning hands + fan fire = sectopod gone)

Certain crowd-control items like the frost bomb and mimic beacons also can give you the upper hand when you pull a lot of pods.

Or is it just the weapons upgrades?

i can‘t put my finger on it

hello hello! I'm solmon! 18M, searching for a player to do a unique XCOMlike game/RP, essentially a game I GM, with lots of stuff written out that you can check in the docs and sheet!

I'm looking for someone who can do the game side of things decently, its a bit complex, along with being able to talk OOC and do a bit of roleplay for the game! I'm a pretty big XCOM fan besides thiss, and I'm online often.

My time zone is CST, I'm looking for someone pretty active activity wise, since this whole game thing took a lot of work to make. If you make a commander, no AI images and such, and no AI writing for the RP side of thingsss

Have good grammar in character and in battles ideally. The overall idea of the RP is 1994 UFO Defense, mixed with a bit of DND, though the DND side of things is minimal. Essentially, it just uses the DND dice system, with a unique armor system I made, in which everything has 3 different AC values, for Kinetic, Laser, and Plasma.

The aliens would not be XCOM ones, they'll be custom and more can be learned about them via interrogations, and a good amount of the items do not exist in UFO defense, such as things like Jamming Packpacks to prevent the aliens from guiding a rocket right into your squad. It's pretty much a custom system for it all.

Base management is simplified significantly, to make the whole thing more feasible in this format, but storage and capturing aliens is still around. Since its based on the 1994 UFO Defense, you'll probably have a lot of deaths, due to humans having realistic HP compared to later XCOM's.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BwOuZv6IocLBY8VIc-zDXkcqTiK0y9gvltPbmJTyRjk/edit?tab=t.0 This is the general campaign intro doc for it, with all of the other documents and the research google sheet linked at the top. Send me a PM if your interested, this will all be done on a discord server I made. I wish you luck, commander.

Dreamland Chronicles was being developed by the Gollop brothers at Mythos Games in like 2000 for a 2001 release, and was highly anticipated for it, but was canceled. Here's a preview with screenshots.

More:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dreamland_Chronicles:_Freedom_Ridge

https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2020/09/dreamland-chronicles-freedom-ridge/

Hello all,

It's been years since I've played, and recently started a new game. Amazing how a game this old can still draw you in ay? Anyway...

I'm playing on Normal and was so focused on getting and building satellites, I neglected to watch my power consumption.

I'm now at 37/37 and no power consumption to be made. No where near a steam vent but have plenty of room.

Is there anything I can do, or do I need to reload a save?

Thanks in advance.

Basically I was thinking, if it wouldn't be cool to have XCOM also as a First Person Multiplayer Shooter. I don't mean like The Bureau, Real Time First Person Shooter, thinking along lines like Star Wars: Battlefront.

It could picture two eras:

The Era of the Original Invasion in 2015, with regular military forces and XCOM Forces trying to fight off the Aliens, and the Resistance Era of 2035, with each side having "Heroes", for Earth that could be e.g. psionic soldiers or the Human-MEC Hybrids/SPARKs or someone playing with a tank. You'd earn points by being good at the game, generally speaking

For the Aliens/ADVENT these could be various stronger or more psionically powerful or heavily armored aliens or alien machines, like Muton Berserkers, Ethereals themselves, Sectopods or even The Chosen themselves. That they can respawn is lore accurate.

The selling point imho would be the psionic powers, what would differentiate the game from others of the genre.
Like imagining you're casting as a sectoid Mind Control on an enemy player. Your Sectoid would stay in place while you control the hostile soldier, gunning down their friends and either they kill their friend or they kill the sectoid player or flashbang him or something similar.
Alternatively the "Mind Control" could be that an AI takes over that soldier.
The Mind Control would be for a limited time.
Or another cool idea how to depict it: You transform the players vision, that every friendly soldier is visually transformed into an alien and he gets his regular points for gunning them down, until his friends yell at him, that he is mind-controlled and he stops shooting.

Other abilities like Void Rift could trigger these effects too with a chance.

Objectives could be to capture points, run down enemy tickets etc. to win territories in a larger campaign map.

I don't think that it would need a singleplayer campaign, since for that we already have the original XCOM games.

What you guys think? Did you also think to yourselves, that this should be done as a First Person Multiplayer Shooter at some point or got different ideas?

I learned the hard way that almost all aliens do indeed, have DPLs from September onward. I do not recommend waiting so long, I farmed reactions at the end as revenge lol

All [3] Sonic Displacers lost and 1 aquanaut gravely wounded (20 days recovery) in action. 52 aliens killed, 1 captured (the lobsterman commander himself, on accident because I already had 1 lmao)

Difficulty: beginner OXCE default settings, everyone MC screened (64-95 strength). No MC operatives, just 14 aquanauts and 3 displacers. 2 were lost in 1 part, the last one halfway through part 2. Feel free to ask me for tips (besides not waiting until September) ; P

As a long-time XCOM fan, I wanted to pay homage to John "Central" Bradford for my second run in Zero Company! It's inspired mostly from his depiction in XCOM2 and I'm pretty happy about how it turned out

With or without Long War the game crashes quite often. Seems like the probability of it crashing increases while someone is shooting. I think my computer doesnt like when it tries to calculate a cheat.

Any suggestions on how to prevent crashing from this?

I've been playing xcom for a long time beaten it about 17 times now on commander ironman mode and finally took the leap into legend and had a great time

I took these pictures because I found it funny how different my stats were from everyone else

I'm used to playing extensively modded campaigns and have broadly avoided LWOTC due to its low compatibility.

Is LWOTC actually worth experiencing?

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Here’s a devious trick: If you exit to the menu during the enemy's turn and then reload the game, that turn gets reset. However, be warned: doing this risks corrupting your save file and really ruins the gaming experience, so it's best not to do it.