/vr/ - Retro Games

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X-COM thread - Christmas edition Anonymous Fri Dec 25 11:42:22 2015 No.2874826 [Reply] [Original]

>recruit a bunch of new soldiers to replace casualties
>go after an alien colony
>most of the newbies turn out to have psionic strength of like 5 and immediately go berserk/get mind controlled and start shooting up everyone

Raspberries.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 21:23:53 2015 No.2875565 >>2874826 X-COM IS HARD AS FUCK, MAGGLE

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 21:26:50 2015 No.2875570 File: 994 KB, 675x3644, 1392782626616.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2874826

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 22:36:05 2015 No.2875673 If a soldier dies on a mission, do you automatically recover his gear at the end?

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 00:19:57 2015 No.2875794

>>2875673
If you clear all aliens from a map, everything (both your equipment and whatever the aliens were carrying) gets automatically brought back to base. If you abort a mission with aliens still running around, only whatever was in the abort zone/landing craft goes home with you.

I did this with a TFTD colony - cleared all the aliens from the first section, then decided to just bum rush the command center in the inner part. Stunned the Lobsterman officers, dropped a grenade, and ran like hell. Two guys got turned into zombies by Tentaculats and another got killed by a Lobsterman because I wasn't paying attention, but hell, I didn't care.

After aborting, I got to keep all the Tasoth/Aquatoid whatever bodies and equipment from the first section, but nothing from the inner colony since I didn't clear it. Still got over $3 million from selling them and saved a huge freaking amount of time than if I'd tried to clear all the Lobstermen in the inner colony.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 00:20:46 2015 No.2875797 >>2874826 I really want to get into this game but it's so slow paced...

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 00:26:10 2015 No.2875804 >>2875570 If I have a lot of rookies, I train them on small alien ships unless it's Lobstermen since you can't really beat them without experienced guys that have like 70 firing accuracy.

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 00:30:22 2015 No.2875810

>>2875797
Yeh TFTD is longer and doesn't lend itself to short speed-burner missions like UFO. On average, it takes 40-50 turns to clear the inner part of a colony (maybe even more on Superhuman) while a UFO Defense base can be cleared in under 30 turns.

It's not like UFO where your soldiers can essentially go Stallone/Chuck Norris mode and win by blasting the everloving hell out of everything with Heavy Plasma auto fire and Blaster Bombs.

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 00:37:55 2015 No.2875825

>>2875810
It is easier than UFO in one way which is that Zrbite shortages are almost never a problem unlike with Elerium. The game practically throws Zrbite at you since it's often found in locations of a USO other than the engines and Cruisers (TFTD large scout) always have intact Zrbite.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 01:07:47 2015 No.2875848 >>2875794 Awesome, thanks. Does knowing what you're able to sell just come with knowledge over time? Like I have some alien shit I've picked up so far but don't know if it becomes useful later with research or are materials for something else etc.

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 01:24:16 2015 No.2875873

>>2875848
>Does knowing what you're able to sell just come with knowledge over time? Like I have some alien shit I've picked up so far but don't know if it becomes useful later with research or are materials for something else etc.

No, you can sell any alien gear regardless of whether it's been researched or not.

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 02:39:51 2015 No.2876006

>>2875570
And then of course the worst rookies (the guys with 41 firing accuracy and 20 strength) usually end up making sergeant.

Or your elite officers with 70 FA and 45 strength have 10 psy strength so you can't take them along on colony missions or anywhere with psy-capable aliens.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 02:41:13 2015 No.2876013 >>2876006 I never fire soldiers purely for having shit stats because you can't see their psy strength pre-MC Lab. Guys who are bad at combat may end up being an elite psyker.

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 04:19:17 2015 No.2876141

>>2875810
In UFO you'll mainly want to use the Heavy Plasma. Plasma rifles have better aimed/snap shot but worse auto shot. Since TFTD is mainly based around the auto/snap shot, you'll want to use the Sonic Rifle for most of your troops. Sonic Cannons have worse accuracy (same as the HP) so they're only useful with soldiers that have high firing accuracy.

Another important point is that Plasma Rifles/Sonic Rifles become rare in the late game so you'll have a hard time acquiring clips from missions. In UFO, the PR completely vanishes from the aliens' arsenal by September. It's never totally phased out in TFTD, although they do become a rare sight. This means in UFO, if you want to keep using PRs late game, you'll need to waste Elerium manufacturing clips. This isn't so much of an issue in TFTD due to Zrbite being a lot easier to acquire. Also since Zrbite is so abundant in TFTD, you can easily afford to equip most or all of your squad with Ion Armor while in UFO Elerium shortages often force you to use Personal Armor.

I generally equip most of my TFTD squads with SRs and give SCs to sharpshooters. The SC's extra punch is vital when fighting (especially) Lobstermen.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 04:24:59 2015 No.2876145 >Playing DOS TFTD You deserve whatever ill happens to you.

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 04:25:00 2015 No.2876146

I find Lobstermen in colonies to not be that hard because they can't throw grenades, but fighting them in USO recoveries or terror missions is hell. Even just a small sub with Lobstermen is almost as hard as fighting Ethereals in UFO. Overall it's best to ignore small Lobsterman subs because the risk isn't worth the relatively meager recovery of loot from them.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 04:27:44 2015 No.2876148 >>2876145 It's just a screencap I randomly found online. I usually play the CE on an old XP box (it won't run on Windows 7/8) which doesn't have the bugs in the DOS version, except it does crash a lot on the Battlescape. Also the music is better.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 04:28:45 2015 No.2876149 >>2876146 Grenades stop being a problem once you have Magnetic Ion Armor.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 04:31:10 2015 No.2876152 >>2875565 That it is, especially TFTD. I don't think you can play it without savescumming.

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 05:52:51 2015 No.2876209

>>2875848
>Like I have some alien shit I've picked up so far but don't know if it becomes useful later with research or are materials for something else etc.

Essential alien weapons in UFO:

>Heavy Plasma
>Blaster Bomb
>Alien Grenade

Essential alien weapons in TFTD:

>Sonic Rifle
>Sonic Cannon
>Sonic Pistol (not to actually use, but you must research them for Sonic Oscillators)
>Sonic Pulser
>PWT Launcher
>Thermal Shock Launcher

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 07:07:06 2015 No.2876269 >>2876148 Stop being a retard and simply use OpenXcom. It supports TFTD since months ago. They even fixed the AI and the tech tree bugs.

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 09:10:55 2015 No.2876336

>>2875794
>I did this with a TFTD colony - cleared all the aliens from the first section, then decided to just bum rush the command center in the inner part. Stunned the Lobsterman officers, dropped a grenade, and ran like hell. Two guys got turned into zombies by Tentaculats and another got killed by a Lobsterman because I wasn't paying attention, but hell, I didn't care.

Did it with another colony, but the game decided to be retarded and put the command center in the north of the base where most of the aliens were, so I had a difficult battle. After bombing the Synonium Device, my guys ran for it but on the way back upstairs a couple of smartass Lobstermen decided to lob stun bombs at them. Result: Most of my squad was left unconscious and I had only four guys left when we got to the landing zone. I lost 10 dudes including many of my elite soldiers because of all that bullshit, but still got an excellent rating and all the alien junk from the colony entrance to sell.

Oh well, soldiers are cheap considering the score/loot you get from taking out colonies.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 10:12:36 2015 No.2876408 >>2876145 I'd assume you have it patched to V2.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 10:13:38 2015 No.2876409 >>2876269 I'm curious what AI problems were fixed.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 10:13:41 2015 No.2876410 I usually have my higher accuracy guys in the back of the map while my scouts spot for them. Pretty handy trick.

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 10:18:52 2015 No.2876417

>>2876409
The AI has trouble with the small, irregularly-shaped rooms in a lot of TFTD maps which leads to aliens getting stuck in them. Some other problems were fixed in OXC as well such as aliens not being able to use melee weapons because the AI code was just reused from UFO with no modifications so there weren't any provisions for melee weapons as they didn't exist in the original game. And a few other programming oversights like the AI not knowing how to pick up items off the ground.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 10:20:38 2015 No.2876421 >>2876410 Or, send your useless rookies with 41 firing accuracy in front as spotters.

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 11:09:12 2015 No.2876474

>>2875810
Every once in a while I check it out again, and get a little further, and do a little better. I imagine if it was 20 years ago I'd have played in much the same way and eventually just been good.

I think maybe that's the problem with games these days: Too many options. The slightest displeasure in the game in question and kids just put it down and never play it again.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 11:13:01 2015 No.2876480 >>2875810 Spamming Blaster Bombs is standard UFO Defense tactics, but the only place in TFTD where this really works is the entrance of colonies where you want to mow down all the psionic-using jackasses as fast as possible.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 11:23:09 2015 No.2876491 File: 324 KB, 1740x580, X-Com battles.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 11:41:23 2015 No.2876508 >>2875797 OpenXCOM UI improvements help a lot. OpenXCOM has TFTD support in the nightly build.

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 11:55:39 2015 No.2876523

>>2876152
I've completed both UFO and TFTD Ironman, on (real non-bugged) Superhuman. Learn sniper/scout tactics, mutual surprise, grenade relays, turn 20 camping, laser/gauss cannon manufacturing for profit, use smoke, motion scanners, farm colony supply ships, etc. Only the early game is extremely difficult, once you have multiple bases and good cash reserves you can recover from almost anything.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 11:58:56 2015 No.2876527 >>2876417 Alien terrorists can reaction fire in OpenXCOM too (including with melee attacks). This makes capturing a live Deep One in TFTD substantially more difficult.

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 12:11:10 2015 No.2876546

>>2876523
>Only the early game is extremely difficult, once you have multiple bases and good cash reserves you can recover from almost anything

UFO Defense early game isn't hard; TFTD early game can be quite rough since you can't touch Lobstermen or colonies until you have sonic weapons/pulsers. Also since infiltration fleets don't land, you can't shoot down the larger ships pre-Sonic Oscillators.
Worst of all is beginning April with a shipping route attack since you can easily end up facing Lobstermen, Bio-Drones, and Tasoths when you're still toting Gauss Rifles. Unless it's Aquatoids or Gillmen, you'll just have to hightail it out of there.

But once you have sonic weapons and PWT launchers, there's little to worry about and you can afford to skip terror attacks since the point deficit can be fixed by eating a few colonies/large ships over the month.

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 12:18:06 2015 No.2876558

>>2876523
>farm colony supply ships, etc

This isn't really as easy as it sounds. For one thing, until getting advanced craft, you usually can't catch supply ships unless they're in the same region as your base. Also supply ship piracy isn't a terribly good idea unless they're crewed by Gillmen (or Floaters/Snakemen in UFO).

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 12:21:08 2015 No.2876567

>>2876546
>But once you have sonic weapons and PWT launchers, there's little to worry about and you can afford to skip terror attacks since the point deficit can be fixed by eating a few colonies/large ships over the month.

Important point about colonies. You don't have to clear all the aliens except maybe one time to capture the Lobsterman officers. On all subsequent colony missions, just rush to the command center, bomb it, and run. Also make sure to clear all the Aquatoids and shit from the colony entrance so you'll still have some loot to bring home and sell.

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 12:26:12 2015 No.2876573

>>2876558
The TFTD supply ship is hella easier to clear than the UFO supply ship though. Heck, the TFTD terror ship is a lot easier to clear as well. On the other hand, Dreadnoughts are much worse than the UFO Battleship because they're a literal labyrinth inside.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 12:36:45 2015 No.2876589 >>2876523 >I've completed both UFO and TFTD Ironman, on (real non-bugged) Superhuman But have you done the Superhuman Antarctica challenge? >one base in Antarctica >Superhuman difficulty >no savescumming allowed - if you lose the Skyranger, oh well

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 12:37:48 2015 No.2876590 >>2876558 >you usually can't catch supply ships unless they're in the same region as your base If it's an easy alien type then it's worth building a small base right next to the colony so you can always catch them.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 12:40:15 2015 No.2876593 >>2876589 No, my strategy has always involved large numbers of bases (and I lost bases on both my winning runs), so that sounds much more difficult.

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 12:52:13 2015 No.2876621

>>2876590
>>2876558
You need to learn timing. Alien bases/colonies get one supply ship per week and it always spawns on the Geoscape at 0:30 hours. However, the game clock uses GMT so they sometimes will always land at night and other times always during day depending on what part of the world the base is in.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 12:55:51 2015 No.2876629 >>2876621 Also UFOpedia erroneously says that supply ships go too fast for an Interceptor to shoot them down, but I saw an LP on Youtube where one gets shot down.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 12:57:47 2015 No.2876632 >>2876508 >OpenXCOM Thank you based anon. This could be what I've been looking for

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 13:15:32 2015 No.2876652 OXC is nice because it fixes the base defense Battleship bug which you can't work around unless you either let them into your base or edit XBASES.DAT.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 14:01:12 2015 No.2876723 >>2876421 That's the idea until they stop sucking ass.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 14:11:56 2015 No.2876739 Can't believe I'm 27 years old and just started playing this game. Feel like I've wasted my life until now.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 14:14:19 2015 No.2876743 >>2876006 The trick is to have your phy shit soldiers equip with rifles and personal armor so that they can shoot the shit out of each other all day without dying.

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 14:15:59 2015 No.2876745

Murphy's Laws of X-COM:

1. Your elite captain in a Flying Suit and 70 firing accuracy will invariably have a psy strength of 5 meaning that when you go after a larger Sectoid ship or something, he goes berserk and starts shooting everyone two turns into the mission
2. Your elite captain in a Flying Suit and 70 firing accuracy will invariably get shot dead by an alien two turns into the mission
3. You can have soldiers lined up like British redcoats blazing away at an alien, but despite firing 10+ shots, all of them miss or fail to kill him. The alien of course will have 250% accuracy.
4. The first or second small UFO you shoot down in January usually triggers a retaliation mission which leads to a Sectoid Battleship barreling into your base with its 10 soldiers that have no armor and conventional rifles.
5. You will always have exactly one too few TUs to fire off a shot, throw a grenade, or heal a fatally wounded soldier who is now going to die next turn.
6. Even with saving TUs for a snap snot, your soldiers still won't reaction fire and instead just stand there like dummies as a Chryssalid is advancing on them
7. Given the opportunity, aliens love camping in or behind a building/room where they have unlimited reaction fire awaiting anyone who approaches

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 18:13:54 2015 No.2877132 What does researching corpses even do?

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 18:38:31 2015 No.2877163

>>2877132
In UFO it's completely useless. In TFTD you need to research a Deep One corpse before Aqua Plastics (you'll also need a live Deep One later), a Calcinite corpse before Vibro Blade, and a Gill Man corpse before Thermic Lance.

Deep Ones are rare late game, and Calcinites are rare all the time, so don't waste a chance to collect them.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 18:43:55 2015 No.2877174 >>2877163 >completely useless It's worth 60 points, so it's better than leaving scientists idle.

Anonymous Sun Dec 27 00:30:19 2015 No.2877741

>>2877163
>Deep Ones are rare late game, and Calcinites are rare all the time

Aquatoids only have a 10-20% chance of performing a terror mission every month. It's not like UFO where Sectoid terror attacks can be disturbingly abundant (goddamn I hate those things so much). And then by June, you may get artefact sites instead of terror which is underwater so no Calcinites.

The reason the game designers did it? Probably because Aquatoid terror is piss-easy compared to Sectoid terror, mostly thanks to terrorists that are melee-only. It's rare to ever lose soldiers to Calcinites/Hallucinoids.

>>	Anonymous Sun Dec 27 02:34:52 2015 No.2877909 >>2877163 Also any live terrorist to get the MC Lab. But you can't build MC Disruptors (TFTD's version of the Psy-Amp) unless you recover a live Tasoth.

Anonymous Sun Dec 27 03:27:47 2015 No.2877972

TFTD is a lot harder than UFO in some ways, other ways they made things easier.

>Zrbite is really freaking easy to obtain compared with Elerium
>better balance between the different alien races - there's a huge gap in UFO between Ethereals and everyone else as far as difficulty is concerned
>Tentaculats don't appear on terror sites, eliminating one of the worst aspects of Chryssalids
>getting alien officers to beat the game is easier since only Lobsterman ones unlock T'leth - they're probably the single most common alien race in the game and they get stunned so easily that you can pick up a live Navigator almost without trying, also Lobsterman commanders can be pretty easily captured in any colony unlike UFO where capturing live alien officers often makes you want to bang your against against the wall
>psionics are unlocked with common, easily-obtainable aliens as opposed to the frustration of capturing a live Sectoid officer
>the TFTD supply and terror ship are much easier to clear than the UFO ones
>since PWT launchers don't work on land battles, you're safe from having one blow up half your squad during a base defense

>>	Anonymous Sun Dec 27 09:53:24 2015 No.2878275 >2015 >There are people who don't use openXcom when playing these games

>>	Anonymous Sun Dec 27 14:34:35 2015 No.2878690 >>2877972 >better balance between the different alien races - there's a huge gap in UFO between Ethereals and everyone else as far as difficulty is concerned There isn't a gap between Lobstermen and the other TFTD aliens?

Anonymous Sun Dec 27 14:39:34 2015 No.2878698

>>2878690
There is, but beating Lobstermen is mainly a matter of proper tactics. Ethereals can only be beaten by luck, which is to say having soldiers with high psy strength. What I mean is, beating Ethereals depends on a stat that the player has no control over unless he cheats with a save game editor.

>>	Anonymous Sun Dec 27 15:53:20 2015 No.2878824 File: 58 KB, 640x480, ufo2p_000.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Hey guise what's going on? I really liked X-com Apocalypse. It was flawed, but it was fun.

Anonymous Sun Dec 27 16:30:50 2015 No.2878893
File: 76 KB, 680x480, ayy defense.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Recently started a new x-com playthough, and just noticed that you can use the graphs to know where aliens can fly if you load three days earlier. It's kinda neat to not lose too much monthly points

pic I made with a lot of love

>>	Anonymous Sun Dec 27 16:38:25 2015 No.2878901 Is there a mod or tweak that let's you see an items stats on your inventory screen instead of having to go to the ufopedia?

>>	Anonymous Sun Dec 27 19:11:31 2015 No.2879135 >>2878893 >you can use the graphs to know where aliens can fly if you load three days earlier. Could you tell me more about this?

Anonymous Sun Dec 27 21:29:02 2015 No.2879381
File: 29 KB, 1920x1080, screen000.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>2879135
Sure. I'm attaching a screenshot to explain better

Graphs are updated everyday with information about where the ayys flew the last day. Now, since it updates one day after, it means that the aliens are gone already. So, if you load the day before, there's the chance where you can find the ships. I use three days since it makes me skip really boring days, and it's enough to make an idea of what day the ayys will be

Now, it depends if you have save scumming activated or not (if you use openxcom). If not, ufos will always appear in the same location

After you took care of that, use a skyranger, or a ship with a lot of fuel, and send it to patrol one location. If you're lucky, you'll find the ufo and the rest is up to you

How to read the graph? it's easy. It'll grow slower with small ships, but it'll stay still if ufo activity is gone. If it keeps growing, it means that several ships, or larger ships, are patroling the location. If it keeps high enough, like pic related, it means that you'll have a inminent Terror mission

I'm talking about experience, of course. Probably another anon can tell you more accurate things

Anonymous Sun Dec 27 21:40:26 2015 No.2879413
File: 27 KB, 1920x1080, screen002.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>2879381
I probably didn't say it very clear, since english ain't my first language, but I'll try to clarify

The bar only grows if there's ufo activity, but it doesn't decrease when you take care of it (it only does the next month, when every activity resets). The bar only gets stuck. You should only take care if it starts growing again

Anonymous Mon Dec 28 00:07:10 2015 No.2879698
File: 57 KB, 1920x1080, screen000.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Should I attempt the whole mission, or just abandon? I've only got men with Gauss weaponry, and it did negligible damage to Tasoths, and I've heard that Lobstermen are much tougher than them.

Anonymous Mon Dec 28 02:25:50 2015 No.2879884

>>2879381
>How to read the graph? it's easy. It'll grow slower with small ships, but it'll stay still if ufo activity is gone. If it keeps growing, it means that several ships, or larger ships, are patroling the location. If it keeps high enough, like pic related, it means that you'll have a inminent Terror mission
>I'm talking about experience, of course. Probably another anon can tell you more accurate things

Actually the way the graphs work isn't the type of UFO, but rather the mission it's on. Missions like abduction and terror cause them to show high activity because each ship on the mission nets the aliens a huge score. For comparison, research missions get them only a little score.

Anonymous Mon Dec 28 02:29:10 2015 No.2879890

>>2879698
Yes, definitely do abort. You can't beat Tasoths without sonic weapons. That first shipping route attack in April can have any alien race performing it, so you can easily end up with something you're not ready for at that point of the game.

t. unless you get Aquatoids or Gillmen, run the fucking hell away - you can just do missions over the month to make up the negative score

Anonymous Mon Dec 28 02:42:59 2015 No.2879903

I did a shipping route attack once. It was in April and had Tasoths/Bio-Drones. I had Sonic Rifles but not yet SCs. Well, I cleared the first section fairly easily but never did get all the aliens from the second part. I guess the last ones were in cargo containers but I couldn't figure out how to get to them (IIRC the ladders leading to them had gotten blown up). So I took my remaining guys and aborted.

After that I just land at the things and dust. Fuck that shit.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 28 03:41:35 2015 No.2879962 >>2879890 On Beginner/Experienced, you can sometimes take Lobstermen with gauss rifles, but on higher levels you'll be lucky to take 2-3 points off their health per shot.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 28 04:10:33 2015 No.2879994 >>2878824 I like it a lot too. I was so pleased when I figured out what was going on with the brainsuckers before the scientists did. Also, totally beating the shit out of the cult of sirius non-stop for a week to get money was a hoot.

Anonymous Mon Dec 28 08:51:27 2015 No.2880254

>alien colonies just keep on popping up like dandelions
>blew up two colonies in the North Atlantic, there's a third there, plus another in the Mediterranean
>as we're preparing for a mission, a Lobsterman scout passes by en route to the South Pacific where yet another colony is in the works
>head off to the North Atlantic colony
>we're not piddling around this time; two guys are carrying PWT launchers
>blast the tower part of the colony entrance since that's where most of the psykers are
>luckily it seems I don't have too many guys with weak psy strength
>send wave after wave of xenos to their demise
>finally the psionic attacks stop - must have killed all the Tasoth squad leaders
>one rookie gets slimed by a Hallucinoid
>you ass
>after some careful maneuvering, take him out
>some aliens keep randomly disappearing b/c we went over the 80 item limit
>the last alien standing is a panicked Tasoth soldier outside
>into the colony
>one group spawns near the north of the map where aliens hang out
>this could be bad, but apparently none of them show up
>one of my officers gets surprise reaction-fired and goes limp
>he's dead because there's no way my other guys can get to him before he bleeds out
>rush down to the basement
>the command center is near the north
>fuck
>well it turns out that the place isn't that well guarded, so we slip in there, stun the Lobsty commanders, drop a grenade, and run
>meanwhile, the wounded officer expires
>accidentally forgot to pull my grenadier from the command center so he dies when the Synonium Device blows up
>oh well, he was just a useless rookie
>get everyone out to the entrance lifts and dust off

Five guys died. Fairly costly.

Anonymous Mon Dec 28 09:15:01 2015 No.2880292

>Tasoth Survey Ship performing an interdiction mission in the South Atlantic
>we'll just see about that
>instead of blowing it up, I have the Triton follow it and see if it lands
>and it does - we have mission
>ok it's a small scout, there's only alien, not much to worry about
>and it's a lava map
>spot the Tasoth behind a hill
>throw a grenade over there
>he doesn't die and he also shoots a rookie and knocks him unconscious
>fix the poor bugger up with a med kit, then turn around and spot the daemon
>he's already injured from that grenade blast so one shot is all it takes

The rookie was largely ok - only nine days to recover.

Anonymous Mon Dec 28 09:22:25 2015 No.2880303

>shoot down Lobsterman large scout
>I have a lot of rookies and they need leveling up - let's do it
>fire a PWT missile into the alien ship
>nothing, but I did destroy the front door
>send rookie around the north end of the ship and he's dropped by a reaction shot
>most of the aliens are in a wide open plain to the north of the ship
>the nice thing about these flat sea bottom maps is that there's lots of room for long-range sharpshooting
>have my guys crouching on little hillocks and blazing away
>the map is flat and open enough that one guy almost on the other side of the map can still hit them
>back in the rear, my PWT guy is shooting rounds at the Lobstermen to soften them up
>after we knock most of them out, an alien in the ship shoots a rookie dead
>fire another PWT missile into there but nothing happens other than demolishing more of the walls
>end turn
>the Lobsty walks into a little corridor
>fire PWT missile there and destroy the walls
>move my guys in a little closer, spot the alien, and drop him in one shot

Anonymous Mon Dec 28 13:27:17 2015 No.2880637

>next up, Lobsterman terror in San Fagcisco
>difficult building-to-building combat ensures
>since most of the boys now have Ion Armor, we manage to survive grenade attacks that would have been fatal in the Plastic Aqua Armor days

>afterwards, we're running short on Aqua Plastics and Zrbite (losing an average of five dudes every mission and having to replace their armor will do that to you)
>Lobsterman supply ship shows up in the South Pacific
>whoa, I hit the jackpot
>chase it until it lands
>after more bloody mayhem and another five bodybags, we scoop up 150 Zrbite
>having Magnetic Ion Armor and dual PWT launchers does make things a lot easier than they could be though

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 28 15:05:41 2015 No.2880818 >>2879884 Oh, probably had something to do with more ufos patrolling at the same time then. Thanks for the information

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 28 16:13:58 2015 No.2880940 >>2880637 What difficulty setting are you on? I'm curious.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 28 16:18:05 2015 No.2880948 >>2880940 Veteran. I've never tried TFTD on Superhuman - I'm scared to.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 28 16:22:45 2015 No.2880954 I really wanna learn to play this game but have 0 fucking clue what I'm doing each time and end give up 15min through

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 28 16:24:23 2015 No.2880959 >>2880637 Also since there's a Tasoth interdiction mission on the way, that means more big ships chock full of Zrbite. Yay... Tasoths are easier to kill than Lobstermen, but they do have psykers on everything but the smallest ships.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 28 16:26:03 2015 No.2880962 >>2880954 UFO or TFTD?

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 28 16:39:05 2015 No.2880984 TFTD had a bug in it that, I don't know if this is fixed in OXC, but the game accidentally gives you a map with a Survey Ship when you shoot down an Escort and vice versa.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 28 16:44:03 2015 No.2880990 >>2880954 http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Starting_Your_Shadowy_Paramilitary_Organization

Anonymous Mon Dec 28 18:16:02 2015 No.2881147

>>2880959
Ok then. One of the Heavy Cruisers showed up. I cleared the thing and got another 150 Zrbite despite most of my elite Magnetic Ion Armor soldiers getting possessed by mind control and shooting everything/running around like idiots. Luckily they didn't do much damage mostly because I kept my other guys marching towards the ship and tried to just ignore them. Too bad the guys with good psy resistance were mostly squaddies with shit firing accuracy, Sonic Rifles, and Ion Armor (meaning they can't fly). Making all that Sonic Rifle ammo/Ion Armor really burns through your Zrbite so I won't say no to a large ship.

And yes, aliens carry PWT Launchers on medium and large ships while in UFO Defense you never have to worry about Blaster Bombs except on a Battleship/alien base.

Anonymous Mon Dec 28 18:35:58 2015 No.2881178

>>2880984
Uh huh. I usually play the Collector's Edition on an old XP machine and after learning about this, I downloaded a little patch that fixes it. Started a new game to try it out and sure enough, the first alien ship I went after had the correct three-room Escort.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 28 18:59:41 2015 No.2881210 >>2881178 >Uh huh. I usually play the Collector's Edition on an old XP machine >inb4 that OXCfag comes back He's in every thread shilling OXC. I believe he must be one of the people who worked on it.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 28 20:12:37 2015 No.2881310 >>2881210 Are you serious? There's no reason not to use OKC at this point. Don't be thickheaded. Why do you "shills" people ruin every thread?

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 28 21:01:31 2015 No.2881412 File: 334 KB, 1920x1080, sDkmm1j.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Average Terror Mission

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 28 21:12:52 2015 No.2881439 >>2881412 >That screencap I don't feel as bad about blasting the nearest buildings with incendiary rockets 2/3rds of the time now.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 29 00:42:01 2015 No.2881812 I'd probably get OXC if it just had a full res screen and normalized cycle rate. But it sounds like it has a lot of gameplay "fixes" and crap, so screw it

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 29 05:07:26 2015 No.2882251 >>2881310 I've nothing against OXC, it's just that when one guy keeps posting stuff like >>2878275 multiple times in every thread, you figure he's someone who worked on the project.

Anonymous Tue Dec 29 09:04:57 2015 No.2882256

>>2881812
>But it sounds like it has a lot of gameplay "fixes" and crap, so screw it

There's a bunch of cheat options added like the ability to ignore line of fire, but you can disable them and play straight like the original DOS game except with bug fixes.

Anonymous Tue Dec 29 09:08:55 2015 No.2882262

>>2881412
Too bad you can't cause that level of devastation on TFTD terror sites because they nerfed the blast radius of grenades and PWT launchers don't work on land.

And that's not close to the worst terror mission I've ever seen. I played a Superhuman Ethereal terror mission at night. Now that was a holocaust beyond belief. I had two guys with Blaster Launchers and four bombs each and they used all of them. I mean, there was nothing left of the bottom half of the map.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 29 09:12:42 2015 No.2882268 >>2877972 Don't forget about the ability to open doors without walking through it. That feature wasn't in the original. Saves so much pain.

Anonymous Tue Dec 29 09:14:12 2015 No.2882272

Chasing UFOs until they land is a good way to avoid unwelcome alien retaliation missions, especially in the early game and also guaranteed Elerium recovery. Of course they don't always land, especially the Small Scout which I'm pretty sure only lands on base and harvest missions. The bigger UFOs always touch down except Battleships on retaliation and Terror Ships on terror missions (they land during infiltration ofc).

Anonymous Tue Dec 29 09:14:35 2015 No.2882274

>>2881812
Most are optional. The nightly build has an option for re-enabling the 80 item limit, although in practice managing the item limit is mostly just busywork. The other big change is melee/terror unit reaction fire works now, and there's no option to disable it. Also aliens not getting stuck makes a difference to turn 20 camping because you don't ever have to circle round the UFO to shake them loose, and it makes TFTD terror missions less tedious.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 29 09:18:20 2015 No.2882279 >>2882268 That was added in TFTD. If you consider it cheating in UFO you'll have to not use it manually, because there is no option to disable it. >>2882272 Another big (but optional) change is that it defaults to TFTD 50-150% damage, not UFO 0-200%.

Anonymous Tue Dec 29 09:21:26 2015 No.2882280
File: 18 KB, 350x195, CruiserL1.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>2877972
>Zrbite is really freaking easy to obtain compared with Elerium

The main reason for this is that unlike UFO, it's not found exclusively in power supplies. Cruisers are a guaranteed Zrbite source since it's contained in the ball things in the back of the ship, so as long as you're not stupid enough to fire a PWT launcher into them, you'll always get 50 Zrbite out of a Cruiser. They're also the most commonly encountered alien ship in the game.

I've never had any serious problems with running out of Zrbite in a TFTD campaign.

Anonymous Tue Dec 29 09:25:10 2015 No.2882285

>>2882272
>The bigger UFOs always touch down except Battleships on retaliation and Terror Ships on terror missions (they land during infiltration ofc).

TFTD makes it a little harder since infiltration fleets don't land which means you can't take on the ships without shooting them down. This also means the only way to fight a TFTD terror ship is by shooting it down since they never land voluntarily. Also because the TFTD terror ship's weapon has longer range than the UFO terror ship, you can't safely shoot them down with a Barracuda pre-Sonic Oscillators (two Interceptors with twin Avalanches can safely take down a Terror Ship).

Anonymous Tue Dec 29 09:31:25 2015 No.2882292
File: 26 KB, 416x120, Escort and Survey Ship.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>2882279
>Another big (but optional) change is that it defaults to TFTD 50-150% damage, not UFO 0-200%

TFTD's small scout sometimes (like 25% of the time) survives DUP torpedo hits while the UFO small scout is KOed by anything bigger than a Stingray.

Also like I mentioned earlier, the game is actually bugged. If you go after a small scout (the Survey Ship) in TFTD, you get an Escort on the map while if you go after an Escort, it gives you a Survey Ship. There was a patch to fix this.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 29 09:35:21 2015 No.2882297 >>2882292 It's damage for battlescape weapons not craft weapons. It makes early game a little harder because it means you'll never survive without armor.

Anonymous Tue Dec 29 09:37:18 2015 No.2882298

>>2882292
I actually did shoot down a Survey Ship with DUPs on my current campaign. Unfortunately one of my ensigns who was also one of the original 10 soldiers I started the game with got capped approaching the thing. One of the rookies then shot the party responsible and took over as ensign after the mission.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 29 09:39:50 2015 No.2882304 >>2882297 Also it makes the late game easier because you're less likely to be one-shotted even in best armor, but late game is easy already so on balance TFTD damage model makes the game harder.

Anonymous Tue Dec 29 09:41:34 2015 No.2882308

>>2882297
I do notice that in TFTD, soldiers with Aqua Plastic Armor tend to not survive grenade attacks as well as in UFO when they have Personal Armor. Once you have Ion Armor though, you have little to worry about. Did a Lobsterman terror mission where my squad got pelted with grenades a couple of times and only the scrubs with APA got killed/badly injured.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 29 09:45:08 2015 No.2882314 >>2882272 My current TFTD campaign had a Tasoth Interdiction mission and when the opening Survey Ship showed up, I just had the Triton chase it because I know they land on Harvest/Interdiction missions.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 29 09:46:09 2015 No.2882318 >>2882304 Once you have Flying Suits and Blaster Launchers, you're just about invincible.

Anonymous Tue Dec 29 09:47:10 2015 No.2882321
File: 115 KB, 1360x768, screen002.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>2882292
Definitely bugged those escort ships are like clown cars. My first mission in a tftd run involved killing 9 Sectoids packed in that tiny thing. I'm using the resulting battle as a wallpaper right now.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 29 09:49:19 2015 No.2882325 File: 102 KB, 1360x768, screen003.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2882321 Same run. A rock saved this lucky solider

Anonymous Tue Dec 29 09:55:11 2015 No.2882337
File: 44 KB, 201x122, Escort.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>2882321
The Survey Ship has only three spawn nodes so in the unpatched game, you'd always have one alien camping inside with infinite reaction fire. I patched my copy of TFTD so now I get the correct ship.

My current run...I went after an Aquatoid Escort and got a nice fat Darwin Award. Sent a rookie in the door, found two aliens, shot one with Gauss Rifle auto fire, then did likewise for the other one. Killed the alien, then hit one of the power supplies which blew up and killed the soldier (also lost the Zrbite in the ship).

I illustrated that here. The Xes are the aliens and my soldier and the line shows the path of that shot into the power supply.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 29 09:56:39 2015 No.2882339 I never figured out how maps in TFTD work. It seems as if the terrain you get is totally random (coral, wrecked ship, lava, etc)

Anonymous Tue Dec 29 09:59:29 2015 No.2882342

>>2882339
It's a weighted random, however the region of the Geoscape does influence what tileset you get. For example, if you do missions in the middle of the Atlantic, you'll get lots of lava maps while the North Sea and Antarctica always give you a Research Station and the Mediterranean has lots of ruined ancient city maps.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 29 10:00:40 2015 No.2882346 >>2882342 The area around the East Coast of the US and Canada also seems to give you a lot of airplane wreckage maps.

Anonymous Tue Dec 29 10:03:11 2015 No.2882350
File: 62 KB, 695x405, new_map.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>2882342
I think they set it up that way because the middle of the Atlantic is a very geologically active area while it also makes sense for the Mediterranean to have ancient ruin maps.

Anonymous Tue Dec 29 12:48:02 2015 No.2882576

And now I present - The Gillman sub from Hell

>intercept large scout
>dump all of my DUP Head Torpedoes into the thing, but most of them miss, the sub fires and damages the Barracuda, and I have to disengage for running out of ammo
>maybe I can get it when it lands
>the thing touches down next to Iceland
>save game
>send the Triton there...and game crashes and exits out to Windows
>okay...
>reload and try again
>game crashes
>I guess these aiyys really don't want to fight me I'll have to skip it
>the sub takes off and then lands again off the east coast of the US
>oh well let's try this again
>save game
>land and we have mission
>turns out to be a sunken freighter map
>move soldiers along and shot out of nowhere
>can't see where it's coming from
>he gets plugged on the next turn
>finally see a Gillman next to some ship wreckage
>all my incompetents fail to tag him so I just toss a grenade
>it explodes and doesn't kill the alien, but one soldier drops him with a lucky reaction shot
>we clear the ship pretty easily, but then an entrenched alien shoots one of my best officers dead
>another officer throws a grenade there, but the alien shoots him too
>the alien is then blown up by the grenade but I lose my dead guys' equipment in the blast
>outside, there's 3-4 more Gillmen in the various bits of sunken ship
>we manage to take them out, but another soldier dies in the process
>ultimately four died however we got a fully intact Cruiser with all of its internals to sell for $$$

Damn, these aliens were good. They tried every strategy they could think of including crashing the game.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 29 13:52:16 2015 No.2882734 I can guess the TFTD devs didn't do a lot of playtesting. >Lobstermen can show up in February when you're still toting Gauss weapons that do like two damage to them

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 29 16:51:35 2015 No.2883084 >>2881812 >M-Muh purism You have grown so accustomed to bad AI and bugs that you don't even want to enjoy fixed and more convenient gameplay. openXcom is literally classic X-Com only better.

Anonymous Tue Dec 29 17:54:29 2015 No.2883184

>>2882734
Lobstermen have a 10% chance of doing a Probe mission in February/March and 20% chance of colony/infiltration. These are the same appearance ratios that UFO had for Snakemen. The problem is that TFTD only has four main alien races, so the devs used Lobstermen to fill in the space that was taken by Snakemen, except that they're Muton levels of tough (UFO never gives you a Muton mission until April when you generally have Heavy Plasma researched).

You recall how hard it is to kill Mutons with laser weapons. Now try killing them with a weapon that has clips with a mere 15 rounds.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 29 17:55:47 2015 No.2883189 >>2883184 Is it Mew-tuns or Mew-tohns? I never quite figured that out.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 29 17:59:17 2015 No.2883193 >>2883184 Lobstermen will die to 2 or 3 alien grenades, and you get a lot more alien grenades in TFTD.

Anonymous Tue Dec 29 18:00:07 2015 No.2883196

>>2883084
>You have grown so accustomed to bad AI and bugs

I agree, although OXC did make some changes to the AI such as being able to pick up items from the ground and Deep Ones having reaction fire. I've never heard anyone complain about the lack of these two features in the original AI. :^)

Anonymous Tue Dec 29 18:08:25 2015 No.2883214

>>2883193
I don't usually have alien grenades until May, however that's just because I'm in the habit of doing this in UFO where they're somewhat less important.

In UFO you'll rarely use grenades once you have Blaster Bombs, but TFTD requires you to use tons of them because A. gas cannon HE rounds are the only other explosive weapon that works outside of water and B. Lobstermen will be getting stunned left and right in a typical battle, so you need to grenade them.

The only time I really use grenades in UFO after getting Blaster Bombs is to take out an unconscious Chryssalid. The alien grenade is not even as good of a demolition tool as the High Explosive due to its lower power.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 29 18:10:25 2015 No.2883216 The nice thing about Sonic Pulsers is that they take a really short time to research so you can add them to your arsenal quickly.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 29 21:24:31 2015 No.2883553 I don't think I'm using grenades correctly. Well I know I'm not because I never use them. Feels like it takes too much TU to prime and throw so i just shoot instead.

Anonymous Tue Dec 29 22:53:52 2015 No.2883715 [DELETED]

>>2883553
Grenade relay. One soldier primes the grenade and throws/drops it, another picks it up and throws it. Be careful with time units so you always have time to pick it up before it explodes, and don't accidentally throw it under somebody with no time units left. This way you can have your best thrower throw up to 3 grenades per turn, and you can keep your grenade primers away from danger.

Anonymous Tue Dec 29 22:55:52 2015 No.2883725

>>2883553
Grenade relay. One soldier primes the grenade and throws/drops it, another picks it up and throws it. Be careful with time units so you always have time to pick it up before it explodes, and don't accidentally throw it under somebody with no time units left. This way you can have your best thrower throw 2 grenades per turn, and you can keep your grenade primers away from danger.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 30 06:38:28 2015 No.2884289 Does alien sub depth in TFTD actually affect anything?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 30 06:47:08 2015 No.2884295 >>2884289 As far as I know, it doesn't affect anything except the color palette on the Battlescape.

Anonymous Wed Dec 30 09:50:14 2015 No.2884529

>>2882346
>>2882342
Every region of the Geoscape has a specific tileset associated with it, however the game also rigs it so you'll just get coral/sea bottom 50% of the time. Certain areas have only coral/sea bottom.

Thus the eastern Mediterranean always has ancient ruins, the mid-Atlantic always volcanoes, the east coast of the US crashed planes, the North Sea research stations, and so forth.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 30 10:01:45 2015 No.2884559 >>2884529 I hate those coral maps but the sea bottom ones are nice because the wide open spaces make it really easy to shoot at stuff unobstructed.

Anonymous Wed Dec 30 11:50:58 2015 No.2884709

>Gillmen attack NYC
>in a horribly messy nighttime battle, seven soldiers perish
>there's a Deep One still hiding somewhere but with 60% of my squad dead, I decide to screw it and just pull out
>grab a Deep One that I'd stunned earlier and dust off
>Terrible rating, lost most of my experienced troops and their equipment, two of the survivors were badly wounded
>but I got the all-important live Deep One so I don't care
>and as March ends, I still get an Excellent rating for the month
>replacement troops arrive just as a Lobsterman scout shows up to begin the next terror mission
>I shoot it down, but my inexperienced rookies aren't fit to go up against Lobstermen so just ignore the crash site
>also I still have to deal with Aquatoid retaliation for shooting one of their ships down back in February
>pair of Aquatoid Dreadnoughts show up, fail to locate my base, and that's that
>meanwhile, my Asian outpost detected an Aquatoid Hunter on a resource raid
>shoot it down off the Chinese coast and we has mission
>roll up the aiyys like a carpet, push inside the sub, and then the last bugget decides to suicide bomb my squad with a grenade, wiping out four dudes instantly

Anonymous Wed Dec 30 11:53:48 2015 No.2884715

>another Hunter shows up, it's shot down, we load more troops on the Triton, make a few Sonic Blasta rounds in the workshop, and we're off
>this time the aliens don't stand a chance
>Aquatoids getting mowed down left and right
>soon they start to panic and drop their shit
>this time I don't lose anyone - successful mission is successful

Anonymous Wed Dec 30 15:09:09 2015 No.2885086
File: 210 KB, 1440x720, TFTD terrain.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Alrighty then, I present the complete TFTD terrain map showing which regions have what stuff in them.

Remember - the game is set up that you'll still get generic coral/sea bottom 50% of the time on any map (the areas marked "coral" give you those maps 100% of the time).

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 30 15:25:52 2015 No.2885118 any tips for dealing with shipping attacks?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 30 15:27:39 2015 No.2885123 >>2885118 Here's my strategy - anything on a shipping attack other than Aquatoids or Gillmen is instant land and abort.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 30 15:56:19 2015 No.2885180 >>2885086 I don't get the reason for the ruins in the Antarctic.

Anonymous Wed Dec 30 16:27:39 2015 No.2885242

I really wanted melee weapons but was never able to get them. I played until September before giving up; I never could get a Calcinite. I'm not getting terror missions anymore, just artifact sites and all UFOs are crewed by Lobstermen now. Beating them is hard without massive PWT launcher spamming.

Anonymous Wed Dec 30 19:33:30 2015 No.2885646

there's any way to put custom shaders on OXC?
theres only scanline 3x and 4x, where i would like to have a 2x option, and i also would like to have the interlaced CRT shader but without the screen curvature.
in fact if someone had done these two i'll be grateful

Anonymous Wed Dec 30 19:54:39 2015 No.2885689
File: 16 KB, 230x300, 1430896850507.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>May opens with a shipping route attack
>ok...
>touch down and it's a trawler mission
>and I don't know what aliens we're facing either
>spot a Tasoth
>ok it's Tasoths and Bio-Drones apparently
>as we're deploying, one soldier spots an Aquatoid on the upper deck
>fucking shit, it's a mixed crew mission
>this...could be interesting

The aliens on the first part weren't too hard to clear except an entrenched Xarquid that was on top of a cargo container in such a location that he couldn't be grenaded. We just had to shoot him instead.

>spot some brown blobby thin...oh god no, it's a Triscene
>toss a grenade up there and he's done

>second part
>my sucktastic troops struggle to hit one lousy Calcinite (strangely there weren't any in the first part and I also didn't see any Aquatoids in the second part)
>by this point, half my squad has either been wounded or are insane and useless from mind control
>the four guys I have left who are tough enough to resist make their way upstairs
>chase around the now-panicking Tasoths
>with their squad leaders dead. we're finally safe from mind control so the weaker half of the team can get back into action
>find a Bio-Drone in a cabin room
>try stun rodding him to no avail
>luckily he's right next to my guy so he tries to use that melee attack they have that has like 2% accuracy
>next turn, stun rod him into slumberland
>and grenade the douchebag
>meanwhile, another soldier heading upstairs finds a Triscene and grenades it
>the last alien left is a Bio-Drone camping in a room with unlimited reaction fire
>I'm obliged to use a rookie soldier as a sacrificial lamb to absorb his reaction shots so the other guys can finish him off

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 30 19:58:30 2015 No.2885702 >>2885646 >interlaced Why? The original hardware was progressive scan. Interlacing is disgusting.

Anonymous Wed Dec 30 19:59:30 2015 No.2885705

>>2885689
And then all my hard-fought victory was for nil because as soon as we got home, a Lobsterman Battleship attacked Reykjavik. We couldn't go there even to dust off because the Triton took too long to refuel from the trawler mission, so we had to ignore the terror attack and get a 1000 point penalty.

But I have an alien colony to take out next, so that should erase the point deficit.

Anonymous Thu Dec 31 00:00:12 2015 No.2886106

Are there any good mods for UFO? I love the game, but I just always find it boring that at the end of the game, Heavy Plasma and Blaster Launchers overshadow virtually every other weapon in your arsenal, aside from psionics

I've never played TFTD. How is it in terms of weapon variety and viability?

Anonymous Thu Dec 31 00:16:28 2015 No.2886121
File: 668 KB, 3575x2289, FMP_Tech_Tree_by_Meridian.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>2886106
tftd is pretty much ufo, the only differences are melee weapons, launchers not being usable on land, less ammo and more TU cost across the board, and plasma weapons not having auto fire

as for mods, fmp... adds. your feelings about this tech tree will tell you whether or not you'll like it.
http://www.openxcom.com/mod/final-mod-pack

Anonymous Thu Dec 31 00:21:42 2015 No.2886127

>>2886106
>Are there any good mods for UFO?
There's a shitload of mods for OpenXCOM. Lukes Extra UFOs is good because it adds a lot of extra UFO layouts for variety and doesn't change game balance.

>I've never played TFTD. How is it in terms of weapon variety and viability?
It's better than UFO. Melee weapons are fun and good. Gas Cannon (Heavy Cannon) is better. Gauss (Laser) needs ammo and isn't as good. Sonic (Plasma) doesn't have autofire. You often use the smaller weapons for speed. PWT Launchers (Blaster Launchers) don't work on land.

>>	Anonymous Thu Dec 31 00:32:26 2015 No.2886141 >>2886127 I have trouble wrapping my head around the TFTD tech tree names. It doesn't seem as intuitive as UFO. Is there an equivalency cheat sheet?

Anonymous Thu Dec 31 08:22:41 2015 No.2886446

>>2886121
>>2886106
Differences in TFTD versus UFO:

*Unlike lasers, gauss weapons require ammo clips and you must manufacture them
*TFTD's terror ship (the Battleship) has a longer range weapon than the UFO terror ship and it also has more power (140 HP) meaning you cannot safely shoot them down without Sonic Oscillators
*The Dreadnought's weapon is weaker (120 HP) but has the same range as the UFO Battleship.
*You can now reserve TUs for kneeling
*Infiltration fleets in TFTD do not land - conversely this means that the only way to fight terror ships is by shooting them down (since they only appear on surface attack/infiltration missions)
*Doors can be opened (via right mouse button click) without walking through them or using TUs
*Grenades and Gas Cannon HE rounds are the only explosives that work on land missions
*Only Lobsterman officers allow you to beat the game unlike UFO where you could interrogate any alien officers to unlock Cydonia
*Aliens carry PWT launchers on large ships while in UFO they're only found on Battleships and alien bases
*More aliens can use psionics - Aquatoid technicians, navigators, and commanders, Gillman commanders, and Tasoth squad leaders
*Aquatoids and Gillmen do not unlock psionics; any live terrorist lets you research the MC Lab, but only a live Tasoth unlocks the MC Disruptor
*In UFO, if you grenade an unconscious alien, his body simply vanishes. In TFTD, the alien dies and his body is replaced by a corpse. Any gear he was carrying gets destroyed.

Anonymous Thu Dec 31 08:23:43 2015 No.2886448

>>2886446
*You now get melee weapons - a Calcinite corpse is required for the Vibro Blade/Thermic Lance and then a Gillman corpse for the Heavy Thermic Lance
*Sonic weapons have fewer rounds per clip than plasma and no auto fire
*Flying suits do not enable you to fly on land - you only get the benefit of added armor protection
*You must research all three sonic weapons to unlock Sonic Oscillators while UFO requires only Heavy Plasma to unlock the Plasma Cannon
*You must research Zrbite before you can research PWT launchers
*In TFTD base defense missions, some aliens will spawn in your base, not just the hangars/access lift
*Transmission Resolvers are unlocked via researching Magnetic Navigation rather than an alien navigator (except in the v1 DOS TFTD)
*Aqua Plastics are unlocked via researching a Deep One corpse
*A live Deep One is also required for Ion Armor and advanced craft and it must be researched in the correct order (Magnetic Navigation -> Zrbite -> Ion Beam Accelerators -> Deep One -> Sub Construction)
*Thermal tasers are significantly more important than the stun rod in UFO since until researching melee weapons, they will be one of your primary anti-Lobsterman weapons
*TFTD has three kinds of terror missions - surface attacks work just like a UFO terror mission where the aliens send a sequence of ships (medium scout -> large scout -> terror ship -> terror ship) and shooting the last one down prevents the terror attack from occurring. Unlike UFO, surface attacks can either comprise port or island attacks.

Anonymous Thu Dec 31 08:24:44 2015 No.2886451

>>2886448
The second type is the shipping route attack which occurs starting in April and always immediately at the start of a month - no ships precede these and they cannot be prevented. These are two part missions on either a cruise ship or a trawler and the layout of the map is fixed, not random like port/island attacks. Shipping route attacks may feature any alien race on them as well while surface attacks do not feature Lobstermen in the early game or Tasoths/mixed crews until June.

The third type is the artifact site which occurs starting in June, again at the start of the month and cannot be prevented. This is not a terror mission per se, but more like an alien colony that disappears after a few hours. It is a two part mission with a mixed Tasoth/Aquatoid/terrorist crew and your object is to either kill all aliens or blow up the Synonium Device. You get a massive (-700) penalty for failing to defeat artifact sites and an even bigger (-2000) penalty for ignoring them.

The first three months of the game will feature exclusively surface attacks with Gillmen/Aquatoids. In April, Lobstermen will begin performing surface attacks as well and the game may pick either surface or shipping attacks for the month. From June onward, the game will randomly pick between surface/shipping/artifact and Tasoths/mixed crews will also begin performing surface attacks. The game generates a maximum of 12 artifact sites and after that, does not give you this mission type again however you'll probably beat T'leth long before it ever happens.

Anonymous Thu Dec 31 08:25:45 2015 No.2886452

>>2886451
*Underwater missions feature different terrorists than land missions - Aquatoids have Calcinites on land and Hallucinoids underwater, Gillmen have Deep Ones on land and Xarquids underwater, Lobstermen have Bio-Drones on land and Tentaculats underwater, and Tasoths have Bio-Drones on land if it's a shipping attack, Triscenes if it's a port/island attack, and Tentaculats underwater.

Mixed crews come in two types - one is the Tasoth/Aquatoid crew with Bio Drones as well as a singular Triscene/Xarquid/Calcinite. The other type is the Lobsterman/Aquatoid crew with Bio-Drones and a single Deep One. The Transmission Resolver does not specify which crew type is on an alien ship. If you shoot down a Mixed Crew terror ship, the surface terrorists get replaced by their underwater equivalents.

*Colonies - unlike UFO alien bases, TFTD colonies are two-part and contain a fixed group of aliens. The first part will always have Tasoths/Aquatoids/Hallucinoids/Tentaculats and the second part will always have Lobstermen/Tentaculats. The alien race that builds the colony will only be responsible for supplying it.

The first part of colonies is fixed-layout and your aim is either to kill all aliens or get your soldiers to the entry lift in the center. The second part is randomly-generated. Either kill all aliens or blow up the Synonium Device in the command center (you don't get to recover any loot from the colony unless you kill all the aliens though). The second part of colonies is huge, 3-4 floors with each one being the size of an entire UFO alien base.

Anonymous Thu Dec 31 08:26:46 2015 No.2886456

>>2886452
*T'leth has three parts and you cannot save your game in the final part
*The Geoscape's terrain works a bit differently and not as intuitively as the UFO Geoscape. In UFO, if you shoot down an alien ship in a forest, you'll get a forest. In TFTD, each region of the Geoscape has a specific terrain type associated with it (volcano, wrecked airplane, Atlantis, etc) however it's not obvious from the map and also the game still has a 50% chance of generating a generic coral reef/sea bottom Battlescape anywhere you fight. Certain regions have only the coral/sea bottom map.

Anonymous Thu Dec 31 11:40:38 2015 No.2886732

/co/ here

My favorite game of all time is Civ 4 (with all expansion packs and mods), I have been playing turn based strategy games since Sid Meier´s Colonization, and last year I clocked 300 hours in Fire Emblem Awakening (hard classic) on the 3DS my kid uses one month every 2 years for Pokemon.

Shouls I give a try to X-Com? What about the New X-Com that is being released?

Anonymous Thu Dec 31 13:59:33 2015 No.2886938 [DELETED]

>>2885705
I actually didn't have too much trouble beating the trawler mission as opposed to the last time I tried doing one of them. Had to savescum a few times because of bullshit deaths, but I managed to get through it pretty fast just by being aggressive and searching the upstairs rooms on part 2 as quickly as possible.

Now, I have no particular moral qualms with savescumming because TFTD especially is a very, very cheap game that loves to do things like your elite officer rounding a corner and being reaction-fired by a Bio-Drone.

Anonymous Thu Dec 31 14:05:12 2015 No.2886947

>>2885705
I actually got through it pretty quickly compared to the last time I tried doing a trawler mission. Had to savescum a few times because of bullshit deaths, but TFTD is a very, very cheap game that loves doing stuff like a Bio-Drone reaction-firing your elite officer when he rounds a corner so I have no moral qualms about doing it.

Besides, I still had several wounded guys and only 4-5 soldiers were still usable and not weak to mind control.

>>	Anonymous Thu Dec 31 14:10:10 2015 No.2886960 >>2886947 My personal bane is Thermal Shock Launchers. I hate those things with a passion you cannot even begin to comprehend and they're vastly more common than the Small Launcher in UFO.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jan 1 01:01:02 2016 No.2887903 >>2886732 Yes you should play X-Com. The old game plays like an alien invasion simulator, where as the new one is very much a video game.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jan 1 07:33:11 2016 No.2888273 >>2887903 point and click strat game versus generic COD clone

>>	Anonymous Fri Jan 1 07:34:42 2016 No.2888274 >>2886446 And one other thing. The promotion/rank system in TFTD is slightly different in that you need only 20-ish soldiers to have a commander while UFO requires at least 30. Also commanders can get demoted and replaced by a guy with higher stats.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jan 1 17:33:28 2016 No.2889124 File: 364 KB, 1920x1080, muton2.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] How'd this guy get up here? Did he walk across from the roof?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jan 1 17:36:09 2016 No.2889129 >>2889124 He could have. I dunno. Floaters and Ethereals have a tendency to get stuck in the top floor of buildings because the AI doesn't know how to move them down staircases. I've often found 3-4 Floaters all piled in the loft of a barn.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jan 1 18:30:35 2016 No.2889232 >>2889124 >no armor >laser rifles >mutons How badly did you fail that mission?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jan 1 22:58:07 2016 No.2889693 >>2882321 Are there patches for TFTD and EU? That is the nicest fucking screen I have ever seen. I can't play the originals any more because of the issues on my steam version.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jan 1 23:01:37 2016 No.2889698 >>2889693 http://openxcom.org/ Nightly build version supports TFTD.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jan 1 23:17:42 2016 No.2889721 >>2889232 Most of my guys had plasma rifles or heavy plasma, just 3 or 4 had lasers. So the mission went pretty smoothly. I'm also only playing on Experienced.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jan 1 23:20:27 2016 No.2889729 >>2889698 Fuck, really? Last I hard that shit was still being poked around on.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jan 1 23:32:37 2016 No.2889745 >>2889729 I played through the whole of TDTD in OpenXCOM recently. Twice the game got stuck on "Hidden Movement" (island terror mission), but I just closed the window and continued from the autosave and it worked then.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jan 2 00:02:24 2016 No.2889778 >>2889745 Hmm, how does the nightly build differ from the 1.0 installer right now?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jan 2 01:03:04 2016 No.2889859 hp;y shit xcom, glad i wandered in this board. still play this and TFTD to this day.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jan 2 15:04:27 2016 No.2890794 >shoot a Sectoid in the face six fucking times with a laser rifle before finally dropping him >naturally he OHKOs your dude the first chance he gets

>>	Anonymous Sat Jan 2 15:09:10 2016 No.2890803 File: 9 KB, 320x200, 2te3Y8c.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Any tips on getting soldier diaries on openxcom? It sounds like these should be part of the current build, but I'm not finding them.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jan 2 19:18:36 2016 No.2891289 >2016 >still playing X-COM with the old shitty, bug-filled DOS versions

>>	Anonymous Sat Jan 2 19:28:03 2016 No.2891306 >clean out two Sectoid terror sites without getting mind controlled more than like once I must be getting amazingly lucky and taking out the leader in the first couple turns each mission or...

Anonymous Sat Jan 2 23:04:39 2016 No.2891716

>everything's going crazy nuts
>have three alien retaliation missions going at once, Floaters in my home region of Europe, Floaters searching for my radar base in China, and Snakemen searching the Middle East

The Snakeman ones I ignored since there's no base in Central Asia so they'll just go home empty-handed. The Floater ones on the other hand...I was going nuts shooting down scout ships and ignoring them for the most part as I didn't want to get troops killed for a UFO that would probably have the power supply blown up (besides, I had plenty of Elerium from a Floater Battleship+base mission).

I did finally go after a Snakeman large scout on a research mission and had the damndest time trying to remove an entrenched alien in a shed. He killed two soldiers and wounded a third before he was brought down. None of my clowns in uniform could seemingly hit the cocksucker.

And then as April ended, a Sectoid Abductor showed up in East Asia however I decided to just send them into the drink. There'll be another two on the way so I'll get those once my new recruits have arrived.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jan 3 14:31:04 2016 No.2893395 Did OXC ever fix the spawning node bug in terror missions? If you play on Superhuman, a lot of times you only get 14 aliens and no terrorists because some tilesets like the city park have only one spawn node.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jan 3 23:08:55 2016 No.2894319 >successful cleanup of a Snakeman supply ship in the African jungle >only one guy dies Feels good man.

Anonymous Mon Jan 4 01:15:27 2016 No.2894528

Especially in the early game, it's often a life saver to only attack landed UFOs so as to prevent retaliation missions. However, UFOs don't land on all mission profiles.

Small scouts only land on base and harvest missions. Since anything bigger than a Stingray blows them up, they're quite rarely encountered.

Medium and large scouts always land except on retaliation missions. The larger UFOs always land as well except terror ships on terror missions and Battleships on retaliation.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jan 4 01:28:30 2016 No.2894549 Large scouts are probably my least favorite UFO to fight. They're just annoying and not interesting or challenging to clear.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jan 4 16:33:08 2016 No.2895573 Started a new Enemy Unknown game on my PSP, I'm pretty noob at this so I lost all my men + ship on the first mission. Is it advisable to upgrade/buy shit before going on my first mission or should I just use better tactics?

Anonymous Mon Jan 4 17:09:09 2016 No.2895627

>>2895573
First of all, immediately start researching laser weapons on the first day of a new campaign. Pistols and heavy cannons are useless; sell those. Don't fight missions at night in the early game; if you shoot a UFO down, wait until morning. Always reserve enough TUs for a snap shot.

Also throw a smoke grenade out when you touch down on a mission and don't step outside until turn 2 because aliens on turn 1 have full TUs+reaction shots.

My standard EU startup procedure:

>build new hangars at the top of the base to replace the original ones - these make the base easier to defend
>buy two soldiers and 20 scientists
>start researching laser weapons
>give each soldier a tag designating his strength - /S for Sniper if he has 60+ firing accuracy, /H for Heavy if his strength is at least 30, and HS if both. That way you won't accidentally give weaklings hefty weapons
>buy four large rockets, eight high explosives, at least one AC incendiary ammo round, and eight flares
>sell the pistols, grenades, heavy cannons, and auto cannon AP ammo
>re-equip the Interceptors with twin Avalanche missiles and sell the Stingrays/cannons

>>	Anonymous Mon Jan 4 17:12:53 2016 No.2895635 >>2895627 thanks a lot bro

Anonymous Mon Jan 4 17:13:10 2016 No.2895636

Another pointer - the first month of the game always has a Sectoid research mission in your home region and a Floater/Sectoid terror mission in a random region. During February, the game proceeds with normal mission types.

The January terror mission is usually Floaters, but may sometimes also be Sectoids in which case you should just abort immediately - you don't want to face Cyberdiscs before your soldiers have personal armor.

Anonymous Mon Jan 4 17:15:19 2016 No.2895640

After recovering the first UFO and selling the junk for money, I then start making laser weapons. If you do it right, you should have at least some guys with laser rifles by the first terror mission. Standard rifles are pea shooters; get rid of them as soon as possible.

Anonymous Mon Jan 4 17:17:44 2016 No.2895647

>>2895627
Also I start by building a general stores, living quarters, and an alien containment. You also need to gang probe an alien navigator with stun rods to get the Hyper Wave Decoder. I usually get one from one of the large scouts in the first month of the game. It's not always easy and you often have to savescum several times.

Anonymous Mon Jan 4 17:20:19 2016 No.2895653

>>2895627
When I have the second living quarters built, I hire four more soldiers and 10 engineers.

During February, I get up to 24 soldiers, 38 engineers, and 50 scientists and hire the full 30 soldiers by April. Eventually you should have 70 engineers and 100 scientists.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jan 4 17:23:50 2016 No.2895659 TFTD works similarly, but I sell off the dye grenades and rocket launcher. Unlike heavy cannons, the gas cannon is highly useful since it works outside of water while the auto cannon and rocket launcher do not.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jan 4 17:25:02 2016 No.2895661 I phase out auto cannons and rocket launchers in EU by the time I have heavy plasma+Blaster Launchers except maybe I keep one auto cannon to shoot incendiary rounds if it's a night mission.

Anonymous Mon Jan 4 17:43:37 2016 No.2895697

>>2895573
Use Scout/Sniper tactics.
High reaction = scout
High firing accuracy = sniper
Scout goes out to spot an alien. Snipers fire on it from outside the alien's visibility range (20 tiles, or less with smoke). Kneel and don't hold another item in your off-hand if you're using a 2-handed weapon to get better accuracy. Scout retreats to cover if the snipers fails to kill the alien. Pay attention to positioning so the snipers always have a clear shot, but don't bunch the snipers up too much. Use multiple scouts so no aliens can sneak up on you. Scouts never shoot except at the very end of the mission if you're doing reaction training.

Anonymous Mon Jan 4 18:16:18 2016 No.2895739

>>2895627
>>give each soldier a tag designating his strength - /S for Sniper if he has 60+ firing accuracy, /H for Heavy if his strength is at least 30, and HS if both. That way you won't accidentally give weaklings hefty weapons

OpenXCom has a feature that does this automatically. It's somewhere in the settings, can't remember. But very helpful.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jan 4 18:27:37 2016 No.2895757 And after a mission, be sure to check your soldiers' stats to see if their strength/firing accuracy improved so you can tag them properly.

Anonymous Mon Jan 4 18:35:06 2016 No.2895763

One thing I do is give my rookies generic names. If they level up, they get a proper name. That makes it easy to pick them out.

I usually name my rookies "Barack Obama XX" where XX is a number designating when they were recruited. So, the first ten soldiers in a new game are Barack Obama 1-10 and each successive recruit gets a higher number. I think the record I set was 97 soldiers.

Basically, the reason is because "Barack Obama" is generally used as a synonym for "worthless garbage" and so rookies have to prove themselves in battle before getting a proper name. And if you've ever played X-COM, trust me you know just how useless rookies are except as meat shields.

Anonymous Mon Jan 4 20:08:33 2016 No.2895891

>>2895573
The beauty of the game is mastering the learning curve. Xcom is kind of a few mini games wrapped around an srpg. Improving in any area is going to carry over into the others. Once you break the game, you'll wish you were still in the trenches volleying fire with ayy lmao scum. So don't try to coax out too many spoilers.

Anonymous Mon Jan 4 21:32:05 2016 No.2896062

>blow up a Snakeman base in Africa
>lose my colonel in the process

Shame. I use a lot of Pokemon names, so I had Groudon and Kyogre and they were from my original ten soldiers. Kyogre made colonel, Groudon was captain. After he got shot down by a Snakeman, Groudon leveled up to colonel. But I still don't have a commander yet because I've never yet gotten through a mission without any casualties (you need 30 soldiers to get a commander).

After that, I took down a landed Sectoid large scout on the far northern tundra of Russia and lost four long-time squaddies due to reaction-firing aiyys inside the front door.

Then a Sectoid Abductor showed up, so shoot it down in Kazakhstan and gopher it with the aim of nabbing the leader. Well, I only lost two guys but ended up killing my quarry in the process and since both UFO power supplies blew up, I also didn't get any Elerium.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jan 4 21:54:53 2016 No.2896092 you guys should play enemy unknown

>>	Anonymous Mon Jan 4 22:24:31 2016 No.2896146 >>2896062 But not worried about it since Abduction missions always send three ships, so I have more opportunities.

Anonymous Mon Jan 4 22:31:25 2016 No.2896162

>>2874826
> Oh I beat X-Com, what could go wrong?

> Early game mission, hunting down some fucking gillman shits. Wipe them all out, taking only two casualties. Level doesn't end, there's one fucking left somewhere.

> Start combing the map standard tactics style to flush it out. No go. Finally send one trooper inside a sand bunker thingy that's just three left turns to see if there's anything inside.
> Instant fatal reaction shot.

> Rally the men, bomb the area with grenades, move in to kill. Doesn't die, I lose one man rushing the room. Four men left.

> Reaction shot, perfect accuracy attack shot. Two men left. Bomb the fuck out of the thing again with even more grenades.

> Try to clear the bunker, miss all my point blank shots. Everyone dies. Total Wipe.

> Uninstall.

Yes, I was mad. No, it probably wasn't the game's fault I fucked up.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jan 4 22:34:27 2016 No.2896167 >>2896162 I normally try to avoid savescumming, but I'll do it if some ultra-cheap bullshit like that happens.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jan 4 22:48:44 2016 No.2896185 Little tip. The game supports up to 24 characters for soldiers' names, but only allows you to enter 20. You can manually edit SOLDIERS.DAT to have 24 character names.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jan 4 22:51:21 2016 No.2896191 >>2895891 Even when you know how it works, you can regain the feeling of fun by playing on Superhuman Ironman.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jan 4 22:53:29 2016 No.2896197 >>2896162 >I lose one man rushing the room. Load him up with primed explosives first. Worst case at least the alien dies too.

Anonymous Mon Jan 4 23:20:45 2016 No.2896237
File: 39 KB, 343x193, 9-largescout1.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

The circled areas are good to drop a grenade into since explosions go through diagonal walls. Quick, dirty way of taking out the aliens on the bridge. After I have Blaster Bombs, I like to shoot one into these walls, especially if the UFO entrance happens to be on the opposite side from the Skyranger.

Anonymous Tue Jan 5 00:34:20 2016 No.2896330

Alien retaliation...a good way to avoid this especially early game is going after only landed UFOs.

Any time you shoot down a UFO, there's a chance you'll trigger a retaliation mission which will either be in the region you shot it down in or the home region of the X-COM craft that did the shootdown. Retaliation missions begin with a Small Scout and progress through Medium and Large Scouts and if they still don't find your base, the aliens will send two Battleships before giving up.

Whenever a retaliation scout passes over your base, there's a chance it will be "revealed" to the aliens and the bigger the base is (more facilities) the higher the chance. Once the base is located, a Battleship appears and beelines straight towards it at full speed, initiating a base defense if there's at least one viable soldier present, otherwise the base is automatically destroyed. The base is also destroyed if all soldiers in it are killed/incapacitated or you abort the mission. Aliens do not directly score for destroying bases, you merely lose all of its inventory/personnel/craft.

Base defenses in UFO Defense are bugged, meaning that the game fails to clear the flag in XBASES.DAT if the attacking Battleship is destroyed, resulting in endless Battleships charging into your base until a base defense is initiated or you shoot down the Battleship with an X-COM craft. Some players prefer to not build any base defenses as a result, unfortunately the idea of having to fight an Ethereal base defense is pretty painful.

Aside from normal retaliation missions triggered by shooting down UFOs, starting in September, the game also schedules one retaliation mission per month in all regions that have an X-COM base in them. In this case, the alien race is drawn at random instead of being the same race who's ship you shot down.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jan 5 02:51:13 2016 No.2896538 >>2896197 I did that. The gillman kept killing the two guinea pigs I sent in at a diagonal angle, but the grenades weren't going around the corner. I still don't understand that shit.

Anonymous Tue Jan 5 20:17:15 2016 No.2898020

>twas a sticky summer evening when X-COM's finest touched down to investigate a Muton scout taken down by the Interceptor at our North American outpost
>as the sun went down, the Skyranger landed in a tranquil stretch of farm country in the Midwestern US
>Captain Mr. Krabs fired off a few incendiary rounds and the rest of the team threw out flares to illuminate the night
>Cow, Eminem, and Geodude along with two rookies spread out and spotted the first enemy
>he was quickly gunned down in a burst of hot plasma fire
>as we moved southward around two farmhouses, more Mutons emerged from the dark and did meet the same fate
>Geodude made the ill-advised decision to push into a barn by himself and ran face-to-face with an alien
>luckily he proved a quicker shot than the Muton and a perilously close call was avoided
>another Muton ducked for cover in the other outbuilding and after one of the rookies failed to hit him, Eminem finished the job
>the squad approached the UFO, which despite being taken down by our Interceptor's twin plasma beams was devoid of any obvious damage
>Eminem and Mr. Krabs, as the ranking officers on the field, decided that Cow was to go into the ship first
>this was done with a wink and a nudge - a week earlier, X-COM had cleared a downed Sectoid terror ship and Cow ended up being mind controlled and repeatedly went berserk
>as you can well imagine, this act of insurrection was not looked upon kindly, so the hope among our officers was that Cow would die a quick death from reaction shots the moment she stepped into the UFO

Anonymous Tue Jan 5 20:20:41 2016 No.2898031

>Cow opened the hatch, discovered a lone Muton inside, and opened fire
>two of her three auto fire shots missed and the irate alien returned fire with his plasma rifle
>Cow however was well-protected by her Power Suit and the shot simply deflected off the front of it, after which she fired a fatal burst of auto fire into the Muton's well-muscled torso
>at this point, footsteps could be heard off in the distance which turned out to be a Muton the team had shot earlier, but got up
>Geodude quickly finished him off

Mission over with no fatalities and another 50 Elerium added to our stockpile. Also Cow, whom we tried our best to kill off, got an extremely undeserved promotion to sergeant, replacing Zombie who got his brains splattered by a Sectoid during the terror ship mission.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jan 5 21:29:48 2016 No.2898169 UFO Defense gets almost too easy once everyone has power armor/heavy plasma/blaster bombs.

Anonymous Tue Jan 5 21:42:04 2016 No.2898207

I have been quite unsuccessful in all my attempts to bag a Sectoid leader. Went after two Abductors and failed on both of them. First time I apparently killed him, the second I forgot to pack the stun rods.

Third time I shot down a Terror Ship in India and ended up completely demolishing all the upper floor thanks to blowing up Cyberdiscs inside. Since none of my soldiers had Flying Suits, they couldn't get up there and I had no choice but to simply fire a Blaster Bomb into the bridge and kill off the leader.

Anonymous Tue Jan 5 21:47:39 2016 No.2898216

I should add, I've been getting a lot of Sectoids on this run - three terror missions so far, an Abduction mission, and a Research mission way out in the Pacific where my Interceptors couldn't reach.

Some runs the game gives you nothing but one alien race for months. Like you could get Snakemen upon Snakemen and never see a Muton the whole game.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jan 6 15:35:42 2016 No.2899741 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTN_KUX91Vo&index=9&list=PLhu1IU-H0hU3Kt9kN11CwiI1PtR1iDXZ8 Nice TFTD Superhuman Ironman run...except he still cheats by using XComUtil to disable mind control.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jan 6 15:41:26 2016 No.2899760 >>2899741 I forgot that unlike in UFO, your TFTD craft can get blown up by grenades. For some reason though, only on surface missions - underwater they're still indestructible.

Anonymous Wed Jan 6 20:08:00 2016 No.2900330

Ion Beam Accelerators explode when shot, which is an added danger in TFTD (UFO Defense power supplies don't do this).

>>2882337
This ship is particularly dangerous because aliens are usually next to the IBAs meaning that if you go inside and take a shot, you end up hitting them, blowing up the Zrbite, and killing your soldier in the process.

Anonymous Thu Jan 7 00:25:21 2016 No.2900716

>start of March
>Aquatoids plop down a colony in the North Sea
>those supply ships and that Dreadnought are so tempting, but I can't because a terror mission is coming up
>which also proves to be Aquatoids
>not a bad move because I can get a Calcinite corpse
>besides I can just pirate the colony's supply ships any time
>unfortunately this terror mission is harder than expected
>normally Aquatoid terror is piss-easy, which is why the game doesn't do them very often, however, my squad is very under-experienced because we've done all of three USO recoveries so far and I never finished the first terror mission due to being at night - I just grabbed a Deep One corpse and aborted
>it's incredibly frustrating when your ranking officers have firing accuracy of like 48 and 52
>also it took forever to get to the MC-using jackass in the top of one of those tower things
>you have no idea just how satisfying it was to fill his skull with gauss rounds
>lost five guys but hell, it's always nice to get a Calcinite corpse for melee weapons
>and we can just train our guys on those supply ships I mentioned

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 7 00:45:22 2016 No.2900730 >>2899741 >disabling mind control pussy

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 7 00:53:37 2016 No.2900743 >>2900730 Yeah... Now I'll savescum like hell and sometimes it's the only way to win, but damned if I have to be such a pussy to disable MC with XComUtil.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 7 02:06:55 2016 No.2900796 What are the best places to put bases?

Anonymous Thu Jan 7 02:16:18 2016 No.2900807

>>2900796
In UFO Defense, your main base should be in Europe or North America with an auxiliary base in East Asia. Ultimately, you should have three up which will provide near-total global coverage.

In TFTD it's a little more complicated. Good main base locations are North Atlantic, North Pacific, South China Sea, Sea of Japan, and the Mediterranean. It should be noted that the last is the most expensive region to start a base in so you may prefer to put your main base there since it's built for free. Say, a base in the North Atlantic, a second in the South China Sea, and a third in the North Pacific to cover the West Coast of the US.

I myself probably would not put my main base in the Mediterranean for the simple reason that it's full of those Atlantis maps which look cool but they're a tremendous PITA to fight in. The North Atlantic is mostly volcano terrain which is considerably more open.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 7 03:48:20 2016 No.2900885 >>2900807 Also the game does tend to put alien missions near your bases.

Anonymous Thu Jan 7 07:18:06 2016 No.2901017

>begin April with...uggghhh, a shipping route attack
>and I still have nothing but gauss weapons
>ok I'll go there and if it's anything other than Aquatoids or Gillmen, I'm just going to dust the hell off
>touch down and find that it's a trawler
>why do I always get those but never a cruise ship?
>so just what horrors await us on this floating tin can
>step off the Triton and spot...a Gillman
>aw man, now I have to actually do this mission
>I was hoping it would be Lobstermen so I could have an excuse to flee
>play it real cautious using mostly aimed shots to conserve our gauss rifle ammo (on regular terror missions, I'd just spam auto fire)
>luckily Gillmen have the worst reactions of the four main alien races and Deep Ones can't reaction fire at all, so we can shoot them without too much concern about getting shot back
>we lose three soldiers and I only have to savescum once, after a grenade attack mangled part of my squad
>918 points more than enough to make up for the alien colony near England, which will have to wait for better weapons before I go after it

Anonymous Thu Jan 7 14:19:59 2016 No.2901479

>>2899741
>>2900730
To be fair, it disables it for the player too. I don't know about TFTD, but in UFO mind control was absurdly unbalanced in favor of XCOM (once unlocked, of course). Made the end-game as easy as you like. Completing the last stage without leaving the first room level of easy, mind-controlling strings of ethereals.

Anonymous Thu Jan 7 16:44:11 2016 No.2901817

>>2901479
>>2901479
>To be fair, it disables it for the player too. I don't know about TFTD

It works about the same way except you need two separate aliens (a live terrorist and a live Tasoth) to unlock both the MC Lab and the MC Disruptor. I also think TFTD is a little better balanced since it doesn't have anything as absurdly bullshit as Ethereals.

>psy-capable EU aliens
Sectoid leader, commander, ALL fucking Ethereals
>psy-capable TFTD aliens
Aquatoid technician, navigator, commander, Gillman commander, Tasoth squad leader

I did a nighttime Superhuman Ethereal terror mission and it was probably the single most horrifying X-Com battle I ever played. Which is to say I had to level 60% of the map with Blaster Bombs to win. I am not kidding. There was an east-west road bisecting the map and everything north of it was completely untouched, but everything south was just totally gone in the most literal sense of the word.

I've actually never even attempted an Ethereal base mission or a larger Ethereal-crewed UFO. I just ignore them. You can win if everyone has Flying Suits, Blaster Bombs, Heavy Lasers and you used the Psy Lab to find out who has high psy strength (or maybe include some weaklings as b8). But who wants to go through that much effort?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 7 18:42:16 2016 No.2902016 I don't think there's any alien in the entire X-Com series that I hate more than Bio-Drones.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jan 8 08:02:23 2016 No.2902850 >>2901817 The way you win against an ethereal base or the final mission is having a bunch of godlike psi guys, and wrecking their shit with chain mindcontrol and blaster bombs before they can do it to you.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jan 8 20:21:49 2016 No.2903901 >>2901817 Lobstermen are annoying sure, but at least they give you a fair fight. The only way to beat Ethereals is relying on a stat (psy strength) that you have no control over and you can't see unless your soldiers spend a month in psy training.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jan 8 20:26:39 2016 No.2903913 >>2902016 There's a trick for beating Bio-Drones. If you stand directly next to them, they'll always use their melee attack which has like 2% accuracy. Then you just stun rod and grenade them.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jan 8 21:15:18 2016 No.2904016 >>2901817 You know, I've never had a TFTD battle that could match my greatest EU battles for sheer devastation.

Anonymous Sat Jan 9 01:00:59 2016 No.2904376

>>2904016
I've had terror missions on EU that looked like the battle of Stalingrad. Only TFTD one that came close was a port attack with Lobstermen (ofc it had to be Lobstermen) that involved my squad moving from building to building for cover and getting bombarded repeatedly with grenades (since most of the boys had Ion Armor, it was not a big concern).

Anonymous Sat Jan 9 22:21:09 2016 No.2906281

>try twice to take out an Aquatoid supply ship landed at a colony and fail because I can't find the last alien

Also I found out that lava maps require no nighttime illumination. Bretty cool game feature.

But now that I have Sonic Cannons and Thermal Shock Launchers, it's time to actually take out that colony. I'm not gonna enjoy it, but I have to do it.

Anonymous Sat Jan 9 23:32:23 2016 No.2906417

>Aquatoid retaliation Dreadnought buzzes my base
>oh god, they found me
>shortly afterwards, another Dreadnought is heading right towards my base
>BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES, MATEYS. THROW ALL BALLAST OVERBOARD
>quickly hock my useless auto cannons and gauss pistols
>beat the invaders in a surprisingly effortless battle that got not one soldier killed, only a few guys knocked unconscious with Thermal Shock bombs

That was incredibly easy. I did not think that would be so easy especially compared with the bullshit you have to deal with in EU base defense missions.

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