Panic Management

I've just had a read of this section and while it seems a well thought strat for Impossible, my question here is the following: does it focus on the differences between Classic and Impossible and provide general tips on how to survive on Impossible? To me that should be the center of this page but this section starts with the following:

"It is possible, if exeedingly difficult, to last out the first month (and hopefuly, a campaign) without losing any countries in Impossible. Required is luck, extreme skill and knowledge of the game, and probably a lot of save-state abuse. Slingshot (and Progeny, if in Enemy Within <need to check if it's usually late-month, I think my plan kinda depends on it being so>) is extremely helpful, and should be used if you have it."

If I just had started playing Impossible just this introduction would put me off reading the rest of the section since it seems to depend on a lot of factors to work, and there's too much uncertainty involved. What if the Council mission isn't on one of the 4 countries? What if you get a squad wipe in one of those 2 Abduction missions? And even some factors don't seem to have been tested:

"Month 1:

You'll want to build the two Uplinks to the left of the starting one.

Don't forget to dig if you need to, plus you'll need one Generator (§60, 5 days), ideally placed on the other side of the base, so it doesn't get in the way of your Sattelite block.

You'll need at least 4 Sattellites to save all at-risk countries, but the Adjency Bonus will give you a capacity of 8, so up to 7 more can be built"

How can you build 2 Uplinks in the 1st month if the 2nd one should require 25 Engineers? Or, where do you get §400 credits before the 10th of April to build 4 sats and then §60 + §300 for the Generator and 2 Uplinks before the 16th?

Also, in general, pages shouldn't also have personalized ("my plan") or even be signed - if you're still working on it, you should create a sandbox page such as User:Xuncu/Sandbox to develop work in progress.

Just my 2c. :) Hobbes 14:38, 5 December 2013 (EST)

Ah, hm. Well, the fact is I did it. I didn't even cheat by using the trick to go into negative power by lowering the difficulty, ordering construction, then putting it back up. Plus, I think someone just added that Uplinks are cheaper in EW. Started with Germany giving 160 credits (via New Economy), so start with 225 credits, and DUMPING nearly all the corpses that Impossible gives. Plus, with Engineers, I got satts down to I think it was §65 or §75 each; "buy 3, get 1 free." Though, as I noted, NOTHING else was built or bought that first month. Carlock was the COuncil mission I got (with Panic reduction, though not in the best spot then, but did save Austrialia from going to full in April) was another §140ish, woulda done better if the RNG let the Elerium Generator survive, because I sold the two computers instead, dumped in Elerium, like half the alloys (because once I got to use them; with that many Engies, I wouldn't need that many), and it's labeled "Impossible" for a reason, and I don't remember what/when I got for the council request. --Xuncu 19:41, 5 December 2013 (EST)

Wait, wait, I got it: "When then called it 'Impossible', they were talking about me!"--Xuncu 20:07, 5 December 2013 (EST)

From my calculations you still need to get 20 Engineers on March to build 2 Uplinks and that means building a Workshop, since you'll get 8 engineers from the Abductions and 2 from the Council mission. That's §130 for 1 Workshop (before March 5th, so that it is finished on time to build and finish the 2nd Uplink before the end of the month), ~§300 for 4 sats (before the 10th), §100 for 1st Uplink (before the 16th) and the 2nd Abduction mission also needs to happen before March 16th, otherwise you won't get enough engineers for the 2nd Uplink. You started with §225 + 20 Sectoid corpses (or §100) from the starting mission and the 1st Abduction but you need a total of §430 until the 10th for the 4 sats and 1 Workshop, if you want to build the 2nd Uplink. Unless you get lucky and the 1st UFO appears meanwhile, where do you get the remaining credits?

It isn't impossible, but this strat depends on too many factors the player can't control unless he/she cheats (both 2 Abductions having Engineers as rewards AND Carlock Council mission before the 16th AND only 4 countries being on Level 5 panic AND UFO before the 10th) - this is a best case scenario unlikely to happen in most campaigns, and doesn't really help someone who is trying to make the transition between Classic and Impossible. You state it yourself on the introduction: "Required is luck, extreme skill and knowledge of the game".

This should be instead in the Survival Guide (EU2012) or a general Strategies page. Hobbes 10:25, 6 December 2013 (EST)

I agree that this appears to be a Satellite Rush strat tailored for Impossible, which would be ok, if misnamed and not really in the right place. But IMO if published as a strat or build order, it should work with perfect play, but not require luck on the geoscape. Requirements such as "you must never use explosives and capture both a sectoid and thin man in the first month while wearing your underwear on your head" are ok, since they're technically possible in any play through. Requirements such as "Use New Economy and hope your starting country gives 60% more funding than normal and then hope your second abduction happens before the 16th and awards more engineers than normal with High Stakes" aren't really ok in a strat. Binkyuk 11:29, 6 December 2013 (EST)

Don't be so pedantic. In actuallity, perhaps "Classic vs Impossible" itself may be the wrong name? It's technically already addressed in Difficulty, so comparing them again is kind of redundant, even if it's extrapolated upon in this page. In comparison, the other XCOM Wikia has two straight-up "Guides for impossible", one for combat and one for strategy (also with redundancies and overlaps). I suggest that this page should, in fact, be a singular "Impossible Guide" (and as such, the plan I wrote (and the other if I ever get around to it) would be quite in place). And I repeat: luck-based, sure, and yet: I still did it on my first try. Option B was this 'supreme "luck"' one, which I wasn't even origionally going to write. Option A would have been the less "luck-reliant"/realistic one as it was what I origionally was only going to write before---- as you would say; I was saved by a winning lottery ticked jamming my would-be assasin's gun and then I fell out of a plane, caught a flock of geese, and used them to land safely into an orgy with all the hot pornstars ever. At most, all B really needs is to be pointed out that it's for EW, since the lower Engineers/Credit requirements makes panic management easier in general in EW than in EU.--Xuncu 05:51, 16 December 2013 (EST)

First, let's all cool down about this. I've been told before that I pay a lot of attention to detail (that's just the obsessive-compulsive me trying to get in control) and I understand it can be annoying to have someone always nagging but editing (as opposed to simply writing) is also about checking facts, in order to improve the work of others.

Next, this page started as a simple comparison between both difficulties but I agree with you that it has grown up to the point where it should be simply a guide to Impossible. But to me the best guides (gaming, travel, etc.) are those that are divided into two sections: a general one, just to get acquainted with the subject and get a general overview of the path ahead; and then a section to go wild with all the small and possibly interesting details that you might find on the way. And in a game that has a lot of replayability, luck and trial and error, a 'step by step' description is risky since chance can simply throw the entire plan out of the window. The fun part is really to have players come up with their own solutions rather than pointing them to do A, B and C, which considering how unforgiving Impossible is, can be completely impossible until players get used to the new tactical reality.

Finally, there are two (or three) strategies for EU (and EW) that have been pointed out since EU came out: Satellite Rush and Alien Base Rush. Both are designed to survive the initial months regarding panic levels but many times I've found that I've had to switch between both during a game or take delays due to unexpected events. Both strats still apply for Impossible, I've won my first games (on EU and EW) using them. I've also made my own personal twist on my last Impossible EW game, where I tested to see if it was possible to assault the Alien Base on April but it's so luck dependent that right now it's something for experienced players only, not someone starting to play Impossible. To conclude, I think we need two pages for both these strategies (Satellite and Alien Base rushes), since they apply to all difficulty levels, explaining the general idea and then contributors can go wild on the details or their own twist about them. Hobbes 07:43, 16 December 2013 (EST)

Well, the naming problem is easily solved with a page move. I think this page could be moved to Impossible Guide (EU2012) as is and it'd be a perfectly accurate description of the page. I like Hobbes' overview of panic management - it concisely points out the problem (4 countries in red at end of March. what do?) and gives 2 possible ways to deal with it, and a quick summary of what you need to get it (money by when, second abduction by when, and both abductions awarding engineers), without going in to too much detail, and I think it fits better in the early section of the page. Xuncu's stuff can be added back in at the end in a section called Satellite Rush Details (a sub page is probably overkill), with a bit of a tweak so it doesn't restate what's said earlier. Binkyuk 07:57, 16 December 2013 (EST)

Panic Management Move

I'm moving the content of this section here, although it should be in a strategy page as I mentioned above after some major editing. I'm going to redo this section making it more general rather than relying on luck for everything to happen. Hobbes 22:28, 11 December 2013 (EST)

Just keeping it on my sandbox. Last time I worked in a similar online 'group project', it was translation work, and made the mistake of letting two transcrips exist; I made a direct translation (awkward grammar and wording inlcuded, since intonation loses a lot in translation), and a 'localized' version, told them to only used the localized: idiot used a mix of both because it "looked nice"--- in a language that they admitted they did not fully understand. -_- --Xuncu (talk) 18:03, 4 January 2014 (EST)

Target Audience

There technically isn't any strategy or tip that wouldn't apply to other difficulties or couldn't be put in one of the other more general pages. So this page does have to narrow itself down to a specific audience and ideally it is the "beat Classic going for Impossible player". The main issue I have with the current content is that it often is just restating Alien Stats differences with a naive thought as to how it definitively matters (like Zombies, yes they have more hp but it practically doesn't affect your decision making much). Similarly, the Know The Map section just lists a bunch of maps, it doesn't actually go into any strategy, nor is there anything Impossible specific you can say about any maps. If there is a page about map traversal/planning, it would be helpful to just defer to that if it needs to be mentioned.

I am thinking of cutting a lot of fluff and also include a reference to other pages like Tactics (also want to edit those pages) so that things are more distilled and therefore relevant. I like the class pages like Assault or Heavy where it just provides on-topic tips related to the class and their abilities in neat bullet points. I also think Difficulty is great, it does not need to be repeated how much panic will rise or that four countries will usually panic on first month, that would eventually be obvious. Or if it's not obvious, it can be clarified in Difficulty? The Impossible Difficulty page is not for a beginner, so they shouldn't have to read the trivial statements, but I will try not to remove specific statements (for now) that maybe I might think were obvious but is at least saying something related to a Classic -> Impossible difference in gameplay. Parogen (talk) 15:17, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

So far, the only thing I can think of that the page should contain is the "two shot hypothesis", the fact that Impossible missions have more aliens than other difficulty modes (2 more than Classic in abductions, almost all ufos have more aliens in total) and the abduction mission panic change compared to Classic. All of which to emphasize differences that an aspiring Impossible player should realize, if they had not. Other tactics/gameplay tips should belong in Tactics (will revamp) or similar pages.. since any "Impossible tactics" would work for all difficulties regardless. Parogen (talk) 13:58, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Wow, checking the game values, the game modes are named Easy, Normal, Hard, and Classic. Impossible is true Classic, "Classic" was in fact not the true balanced mode. My theory all along was that probably during game testing they found it's too hard and hence the name change. The whole reason for the canon story, I had always thought before this, was that it was biographical; they found out people could not beat their true Classic.

It all makes sense. On Classic, as long as you have the base understanding of hq panic, you can save all countries without a sweat. As well as my "two shot hypothesis" idea. It made more sense thematically and game design wise to force you to lose one in April, why wouldn't they for an alien invasion... Whole game is rng, of course it is also rng to save all in Impossible. Parogen (talk) 00:28, 18 April 2025 (UTC)