X-Com: UFO Defense
- Thread starter Dyret
- Start date
Early on, equip your interceptors with dual Avalanche missile launchers. This will enable one to take down anything up to a Terror ship (stay at long range using the cautious attack), and if you get two to gang up on one, a terror ship is easy pickings.
Now, research plasma weapons before you start to research new interceptor craft. Two Plasma Cannons mounted on an Interceptor will let you take out anything short of a Battleship. The only craft that can take out a battleship is an Avenger mounted with either dual plasma cannons, or a plasma cannon and fusion ball launcher. It will get pretty beat up doing this, though.
And when you find that base in Brazil, don't take it out, instead hit the Supply UFOs on the ground, so you get all the loot and easy training experience.
Now, research plasma weapons before you start to research new interceptor craft. Two Plasma Cannons mounted on an Interceptor will let you take out anything short of a Battleship. The only craft that can take out a battleship is an Avenger mounted with either dual plasma cannons, or a plasma cannon and fusion ball launcher. It will get pretty beat up doing this, though.
And when you find that base in Brazil, don't take it out, instead hit the Supply UFOs on the ground, so you get all the loot and easy training experience.
Good advice, and solid.
Base design advice, way overdue: build the bases in a shape like this:
H H H
E
Other stuff
H is hangers, E is elevator. The reason is that the aliens can only enter in those two module/expansions/you know what I mean. Building bases like that funnels them through a small area, making them easier to hit or set up a kill zone... or just set up proxies and let the games begin!
Anyway, they can only enter there and you can make them pay the butcher's bill for trying to get past that point if you move quickly.
Build fusion and plasma defenses when you start seeing a lot of battleships... grav and mind shields are also useful. Twice as many shots in a defense situation and not being seen in the first place are both very useful.
Base design advice, way overdue: build the bases in a shape like this:
H H H
E
Other stuff
H is hangers, E is elevator. The reason is that the aliens can only enter in those two module/expansions/you know what I mean. Building bases like that funnels them through a small area, making them easier to hit or set up a kill zone... or just set up proxies and let the games begin!
Anyway, they can only enter there and you can make them pay the butcher's bill for trying to get past that point if you move quickly.
Build fusion and plasma defenses when you start seeing a lot of battleships... grav and mind shields are also useful. Twice as many shots in a defense situation and not being seen in the first place are both very useful.
Dyret
Super Carrot!
I took out a base in India, and now its all nice and quiet in Brazil for some reason. The UK has sadly made a pact whit the aliens. But all of the other countries are satisfied.
I've taken down a few harvesters, Three alien bases, a supply ship, and a whole lot of scouts. I have armed all of my soldiers with stun rods and laser rifles, armorerd them with powered armor, built a firstorm with dual Avalanche launchers, and a avenger is soon finished. I think im going to win!
I've taken down a few harvesters, Three alien bases, a supply ship, and a whole lot of scouts. I have armed all of my soldiers with stun rods and laser rifles, armorerd them with powered armor, built a firstorm with dual Avalanche launchers, and a avenger is soon finished. I think im going to win!
The Firestorm is nice, but it has a very short range (but it's very quick) and uses E-115 for fuel. I'd rather horde the Elerium for fuel for the Avenger, and raw material to build plasma cannons where needed. Though, if you find a nice alien base, and start harvesting the Supply Ships that come in, you'll have more Elerium than you know what to do with (3 power supplies with 50 elerium each = 150 elerium per landed Supply Ship, plus all the plasma weapons and clips).
Not really important, but do you ever wonder who is buying all the stuff you sell? I had a base whose shops were making tons of laser cannons to sell, plus all the corpses after a mission. I could see some hick in a log cabin in Montana buying a ship-mounted laser cannon to mount on his pickup truck, but what would you do with a gross of dead Sectoids?
Not really important, but do you ever wonder who is buying all the stuff you sell? I had a base whose shops were making tons of laser cannons to sell, plus all the corpses after a mission. I could see some hick in a log cabin in Montana buying a ship-mounted laser cannon to mount on his pickup truck, but what would you do with a gross of dead Sectoids?
The canon word is black market deals, according to the history stuff that comes with Interceptor. Various militaries, criminal groups, that sort of thing are probably the ultimate end of the goods.
As for the corpses... don't know that. Collectors and eccentrics probably get at least some of them. Some are probably snatched up by museums. Remeber, you're not necessarily selling to a buyer, you're probably selling to an 'agent' or middleman who does the end dealing himself (all of this is conjecture on my part, btw).
As for the corpses... don't know that. Collectors and eccentrics probably get at least some of them. Some are probably snatched up by museums. Remeber, you're not necessarily selling to a buyer, you're probably selling to an 'agent' or middleman who does the end dealing himself (all of this is conjecture on my part, btw).
cff
Kilk'dymga'qith laq Ik'vikvi
Dyret said:
You won't. What difficulty are you playing at?
And yeah - Sectopods are worse, but they are ESPECIALLY vulnerable to laser rifles, so again not that spectacular. Ethereals are bad, but only until you know how to handle them (don't want to spoil anything here). Then they are about as bad as Sectoids for me.
Dyret said:
Besides trying and trying and ... not really much you can do. You might of course try to get alien based craft for yourself ASAP. Only problem is that they need Elerium to fuel. But there is a semi cheat (it is not a cheat, but I'd call it a loophole to get quite some Elerium supplies so that shouldn't be a problem either).
First off, about saving and reloading... that's not the way to play the game! The true way to play the game is to have your soldiers dying left and right until you can research appropriate technologies. Not allowing any of your guys to die so that they'll advance to become supersoldiers is just unrealistic. You should be playing to get as many of your soldiers killed as possible, while still winning the mission (or even failing a mission once in awhile). I'm not one of those hard-core freaks who say you can never roll back a bad result (these games are supposed to be fun, after all), but you're cheating yourself of some of the visceral enjoyment if you allow your guys to be perfectly safe by knowing you'll always resurrect them if they get hurt. This approach also has the Darwinian benefit of weeding out the troopers who suck. If they didn't survive the mission, they weren't good enough to stem the alien invasion anyway. Do you want to have subpar agents with humanity on the line?!?!? Besides, it's usually cheaper to hire (and pay) new agents than to equip them with the best stuff, bwahahaha.
OK, that said, the reason why X-COM can be so easy at times is because there's a bug in the save game code. Apparently, the difficulty level isn't saved properly, so you can be playing on superhuman, but as soon as you save and reload, bam, it's back down to supereasy. There are fan utilities to fix this, but it was unbelievably never addressed in an official patch. So if you want to play on superhuman for real, look up one of these X-COM utilities and try it out. Or you can play TFTD, which can be freakishly hard/tedious sometimes.
Next, finding the base in Brazil... Brazil can go to hell! Arrrr! (Just kidding, Edfilho.) Anyway, there are four major approaches to this. First, research, research, research. Your basic interceptors aren't going to be able to go head-to-head with a battleship, ever, as they're too weak to take more than 1-2 hits, and generally don't have the range to deliver a lot of hits before they bite it. Second, use multiple interceptors against a single target. A whole swarm might have a chance of downing a battleship, especially with improved weapons, although you'll lose a few. Third, send a troop transport on the scouting mission instead of an interceptor. They can loiter longer, so they have a better chance of finding bases and stuff. Plus you can send them in right off the bat when you find the bad guys. Fourth, just ignore the base and write off Brazil, focusing on the ultimate end game elsewhere. Concentrate on containing them while you exercise option #1. If you're too weak to intercept their probes, rely on your transports to tail the bad guys and send the troops in take down the big ships after they land. This also has the benefit of resulting in more loot, since the UFOs land intact.
BTW, where the corpses and stuff go is alluded to in some of the fiction Microprose released as a sort of teaser for TFTD. Basically, most of it is shipped off to government labs and stuff for military research, especially after X-COM is dismantled following the first invasion. Sorta an allusion to the whole Area 51 conspiracy nut type thing. This material was incorporated into some of the background material for the follow-ups, including Apocalypse and Interceptor.
Speaking of sequels, I'm kinda peeved that none of the prospective 3 "X-COM 4s" that were in the works actually made it out to completion (although I hear the PBEM X-COM Lite is a blast, provided you can find anyone to play with). I guess the projects suffered from a lack of focus, as making a solid follow-up to X-COM is what people really wanted, not 3 different types of games all set in the X-COM universe. Although that 3D squad shooter thing looked like a real winner, they probably could have released a half-assed effort and still raked in some bucks.
OK, that said, the reason why X-COM can be so easy at times is because there's a bug in the save game code. Apparently, the difficulty level isn't saved properly, so you can be playing on superhuman, but as soon as you save and reload, bam, it's back down to supereasy. There are fan utilities to fix this, but it was unbelievably never addressed in an official patch. So if you want to play on superhuman for real, look up one of these X-COM utilities and try it out. Or you can play TFTD, which can be freakishly hard/tedious sometimes.
Next, finding the base in Brazil... Brazil can go to hell! Arrrr! (Just kidding, Edfilho.) Anyway, there are four major approaches to this. First, research, research, research. Your basic interceptors aren't going to be able to go head-to-head with a battleship, ever, as they're too weak to take more than 1-2 hits, and generally don't have the range to deliver a lot of hits before they bite it. Second, use multiple interceptors against a single target. A whole swarm might have a chance of downing a battleship, especially with improved weapons, although you'll lose a few. Third, send a troop transport on the scouting mission instead of an interceptor. They can loiter longer, so they have a better chance of finding bases and stuff. Plus you can send them in right off the bat when you find the bad guys. Fourth, just ignore the base and write off Brazil, focusing on the ultimate end game elsewhere. Concentrate on containing them while you exercise option #1. If you're too weak to intercept their probes, rely on your transports to tail the bad guys and send the troops in take down the big ships after they land. This also has the benefit of resulting in more loot, since the UFOs land intact.
BTW, where the corpses and stuff go is alluded to in some of the fiction Microprose released as a sort of teaser for TFTD. Basically, most of it is shipped off to government labs and stuff for military research, especially after X-COM is dismantled following the first invasion. Sorta an allusion to the whole Area 51 conspiracy nut type thing. This material was incorporated into some of the background material for the follow-ups, including Apocalypse and Interceptor.
Speaking of sequels, I'm kinda peeved that none of the prospective 3 "X-COM 4s" that were in the works actually made it out to completion (although I hear the PBEM X-COM Lite is a blast, provided you can find anyone to play with). I guess the projects suffered from a lack of focus, as making a solid follow-up to X-COM is what people really wanted, not 3 different types of games all set in the X-COM universe. Although that 3D squad shooter thing looked like a real winner, they probably could have released a half-assed effort and still raked in some bucks.
Dyret
Super Carrot!
The TFTD base attack missions are hell!
TFTD is a real challenge, like real strategy games is supposed to be, not like UFO Defence where your lucky if you meet a really challenging enemy while playing
It reminds me alot about System Shock though.
And for UFO, their battleship is at the bottom of the pasific.
That avenger is a really useful tool. I took out another base in france. But ufo activety in Brazil is starting to increase again, as Geebot said, Brazil can go to hell. I have no intension of doing more fighting there unless they start terrorising people. (Or send in a juicy supply-ship )
TFTD is my favorite.
TFTD is a real challenge, like real strategy games is supposed to be, not like UFO Defence where your lucky if you meet a really challenging enemy while playing
It reminds me alot about System Shock though.
And for UFO, their battleship is at the bottom of the pasific.
That avenger is a really useful tool. I took out another base in france. But ufo activety in Brazil is starting to increase again, as Geebot said, Brazil can go to hell. I have no intension of doing more fighting there unless they start terrorising people. (Or send in a juicy supply-ship
)TFTD is my favorite.
Dyret
Super Carrot!
I finished UFO defence tonight.
At the end only three of my soldiers was alive(3 of 7)
And two of them was under alien control. So sgt. Adam Watson had to kill 6 etherals, two of those acidbag critters, one of his own men and of course the big brain itself all by himself. (Why didn't he fall under enemy control?)
At the end only three of my soldiers was alive(3 of 7)
And two of them was under alien control. So sgt. Adam Watson had to kill 6 etherals, two of those acidbag critters, one of his own men and of course the big brain itself all by himself. (Why didn't he fall under enemy control?)
Dyret
Super Carrot!
I prefer a small "hardcore" team instead of a big team with lots of unreliable cowards.
And one of my soldiers was badly shot up during his last mission(two plasma shots and a grenade) and was stranded in sickbay. My plan was to wait until he had recovered, but then pissed of snakemen and the chryssald friends started parking their battleships on my base. After being attacked by 6 battleships i thought my best option was to hit mars while i still had the chance. But the most important reason was that i was almost out of elerium.
And one of my soldiers was badly shot up during his last mission(two plasma shots and a grenade) and was stranded in sickbay. My plan was to wait until he had recovered, but then pissed of snakemen and the chryssald friends started parking their battleships on my base. After being attacked by 6 battleships i thought my best option was to hit mars while i still had the chance. But the most important reason was that i was almost out of elerium.