this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2025
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I go back and forth on it, but the main difference was that nu xcom was made in a way that learned from the mistakes of olde. Like you said, we all just sacrificed hundreds of newbies to the RNG gods until we had enough veterans for the important missions. Same with only ever attacking when we were more or less safe from consequences. It led to a very weird approach where it was increasingly obvious xcom (the org) only cared about the "named units" and screw everyone else. And any relation between that and real world militaries is purely coincidental.
Nu xcom was made with that in mind. There was a focused effort on making each individual soldier "matter". It was less "Oh no, we got lit up like a landing boat on D-Day. Ah well, grab their gear" and more "Shit. That sniper has 1 HP left. I need to protect her so that I have her later". Which... turned basically anything that wasn't a terror mission into a giant mess of overwatch hell. And that is why nu-2 had the god awful turn counts (and 1's DLC added the resource that expires).
And I would very much argue the opposite regarding your tactics/strategy distinction. nu is all about thinking about the long game. Because that Assaulter that just got got? That might mean you are sending rookies in a desperate attempt to not lose a nation. Which means it becomes all about how you play "on the ground" to survive.
I forget what game it was, but I remember a REALLY good interview with a developer for one of the modern squad games who talked about this (I want to say it was on 3 Moves Ahead?). He was completely aware of how so many games in the genre were about fielding five snipers and one sacrificial grunt. And that is what led to various special abilities and so forth to make every single class viable outside of the scripted missions where you are fighting a god damned panzerklein in a single room with no cover.
All that said: Fuck nu xcom for its cover system. It is so fricking annoying to figure out if the angle to an enemy means I want to have west or north cover...