OpenXcom Forum

OpenXcom => Open Feedback => Topic started by: g5-freemen on February 18, 2016, 10:59:08 pm

Title: Why so Hard?
Post by: g5-freemen on February 18, 2016, 10:59:08 pm
Hi. Just want to ask some question - WHY SO HARD TO PLAY?!
I begin New Game - Beginner difficulty. At the first terror mission (end of first month) i met 5 Cyberdiscs ! FIVE, CARL !!! How it possible?! I have only laser pistols and no armor. What i suppose to do? If i will play at Hard difficulty i will fight with Etherials at first mission?

Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: ivandogovich on February 18, 2016, 11:15:49 pm
Yup. Five Cyberdisks is hard.  You can kill them with Large Rockets, or even HE Packs.   

Alternately, you can do like I do, and just do a touch and go on a lot of early terror missions.  If you land (and optionally shoot a few badguys) and take off right away, you will still get a negative score, but it will be much less of a score hit than if you ignored the mission altogether.  I have no qualms about bailing if I don't feel strong enough to handle the enemy.  Ideally the first terror mission is Floaters, as they don't have PSI attacks, nor Cyberdisks, but the game doesn't always roll that way.
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: Meridian on February 18, 2016, 11:20:53 pm
Hi. Just want to ask some question - WHY SO HARD TO PLAY?!
I begin New Game - Beginner difficulty. At the first terror mission (end of first month) i met 5 Cyberdiscs ! FIVE, CARL !!! How it possible?! I have only laser pistols and no armor. What i suppose to do? If i will play at Hard difficulty i will fight with Etherials at first mission?

Hello there and welcome to the forum.

1/ There is no shame in aborting the first few terror missions.
2/ You will not face Ethereals on any difficulty. You can face only Sectoids or Floaters in the first few months.
3/ There are many ways how to deal with Cyberdiscs, even on Superhuman difficulty... just watch some LPers on YouTube... in general, HE packs and Large rockets are your best bet... both killing a Cyberdics in one shot almost every time.

Xcom is a hard game... at the beginning it may be frustrating, but you'll love it later when you get better.
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: g5-freemen on February 19, 2016, 01:16:13 am
Maybe i'm wrong, but as i remember in standart XCOM game at the beginning was not so much cyberdiscs at terror missions. And not so many sectoids from medium scout.
Or maybe i'm too old to remember old good times [386SX-20, 2mb RAM, 85mb HDD and monochrome green monitor]
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: Warboy1982 on February 19, 2016, 01:41:36 am
for what it's worth, i can say that this is all perfectly normal.
blame the random number gods.
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: yrizoud on February 19, 2016, 03:16:55 am
Maybe you had the difficulty bug, so when you play OpenXcom with a difficulty > Beginner, it's harder.
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Known_Bugs#Difficulty_Bug
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: Dioxine on February 19, 2016, 10:58:46 am
On Beginner, enemies only have half normal armor so Cyberdiscs can be taken down with enough hits from Laser Pistols.
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: Hythlodaeus on February 19, 2016, 10:13:53 pm
Use explosives and rocket tanks
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: NotCIAAgent on February 24, 2016, 04:10:52 am
In doubt, abort the mission. If you do, the negative score will be of the amount of civilians that died. If you don't, it will be that, minus the amount of soldiers you lost, plus the amount of aliens you killed, amount of artifacts recovered, and amount of corpses/captures.

In my experience, unless you can assure you will bring most of your boys and girls back to the base (tier 2 weaponry, armor, etc), it is better to abort. You will more often than not recover the score on salvage and ground assault missions, even with the country that had the terror mission.
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: DeltaEpsilon on February 24, 2016, 05:24:04 am
Many people skip the first terror mission if they hadn't managed to get laser weapons by the time it occurs.

Cyberdisc can be easily taken down by laser rifles and higher. Out of all terrestrial weapons, only large rockets are capable of tackling down cyberdiscs reliably enough. You may also try playing around with stun prods if you are suicidal.
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: nadir-1648 on February 24, 2016, 06:46:38 pm
Obviously, the most effective method is to pray for Floaters, but like everybody else has said repeatedly: It is both acceptable and common to abort the first terror mission. In January, you're outgunned enough against small UFOs, MOUT against heavily-armed foes while you have airsoft guns and pajamas is unlikely to work.

Large Rockets rip Cyberdiscs to shreds, operate them in teams. The launcher operator himself, and a guy carrying extra ammo. It helps to aim for terrain near the target; it's much easier to hit that way, though the splash damage may hurt slightly less than a direct hit.
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: Slaughter on March 20, 2016, 08:07:06 am
5 cyberdisks is strange. Pretty sure Sectoid Terror Ships carry three, max.
Heavy Cannons with AP ammo can hurt Cyberdisks, but it takes a while.

Rifles can hurt cyberdisks, but its like trying to punch down a iron door.

Enviado de meu SM-G3502T usando Tapatalk

Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: Bloax on March 20, 2016, 08:33:51 am
5 cyberdisks is strange. Pretty sure Sectoid Terror Ships carry three, max.
Heavy Cannons with AP ammo can hurt Cyberdisks, but it takes a while.

Rifles can hurt cyberdisks, but its like trying to punch down a iron door.
I had 6 cyberdisc corpses after the sectoid terror mission I did in March of my little first-time play. :-)

Oh, and cyberdiscs only have 34 armor (everywhere) and 120 hp, so enough grenades should wear them down if you aren't hilariously unprepared both in crew and equipment departments.
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: Solarius Scorch on March 20, 2016, 01:45:18 pm
I had 6 cyberdisc corpses after the sectoid terror mission I did in March of my little first-time play. :-)

Yeah, but you play on Superhuman. :)

Oh, and cyberdiscs only have 34 armor (everywhere) and 120 hp, so enough grenades should wear them down if you aren't hilariously unprepared both in crew and equipment departments.

True, and also remember that if you play on Beginner, all enemy armour is halved.
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: DeltaEpsilon on March 21, 2016, 03:13:36 am
Quote
Oh, and cyberdiscs only have 34 armor (everywhere) and 120 hp, so enough grenades should wear them down if you aren't hilariously unprepared both in crew and equipment departments.

Only if you are playing beginner.
(https://i.imgur.com/wi6EcSW.png)

Don't even try it somewhere else.

(42 damage is because 50+40+40+40 = 170 full damage divided by 4 = 42.5 which is normalised damage to every tile of a cyberdisc)
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: Bloax on March 21, 2016, 03:40:48 am
A 42 damage weapon is a very bad representation of
((50*(50+1d100 - 1) / 100) - 34) + ((40*(50+1d100 - 1) / 100) - 34) + ((40*(50+1d100 - 1) / 100) - 34) + ((40*(50+1d100 - 1) / 100) - 34)) (https://anydice.com/program/7f27)

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/63152810/n/xcom/grenade_versus_cyberdisc.png)
You have a 75% chance of it going down in 5 grenades or less.
Surviving five turns and lobbing grenades onto cyberdiscs is a very comfortable solution to the problem when you consider that you're outgunned to high hell.

And that's implying you don't feed some of them HE-packs at some point instead of using a grenade.
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: DeltaEpsilon on March 21, 2016, 06:18:09 am
Quote
A 42 damage weapon is a very bad representation of
Yeah, well, I just didn't want to post 6 screenshots instead using respectively 50 damage, 45 damage and 40 damage to show approximate spread.
Guess I have to now.
(https://i.imgur.com/aXRS1FP.png)

It changes quite drastically for higher level cyberdisc while still being pretty hard at 45-50 damage.

...[I could implement a "4-tile mode" just for that though]
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: Bloax on March 21, 2016, 09:47:50 am
Well either way I'm not seeing what the whole "DON'T EVEN TRY HAHA" fuss is.

It is perfectly viable (grenades have a low weight and low cost) and certainly a lot less dependent on people that can actually shoot.
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: yrizoud on March 21, 2016, 11:43:05 am
Unless the discs fly. (default explosion height 0)
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: psyHoTik on March 21, 2016, 05:17:03 pm
Unless the discs fly. (default explosion height 0)
Large rockets are you friends :) And since item limit no longer apply (unless you turn it on but it's you decision then) you can use them with no restrictions. Just have one soldier standing in Skyranger at the Pile o'Guns and throwing rockets to launcher operators below. Remember that reloading a weapon always costs 15 TUs, so it doesn't matter if you load rocket from the ground or from backpack. Launchers have high accuracy so making aimed shots from afar, out of 'disc sight range, typically do the trick. Don't forget about smoke screen.
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: Savior20061 on March 31, 2016, 11:03:03 pm
I had 6 cyberdisc corpses after the sectoid terror mission I did in March of my little first-time play. :-)

Oh, and cyberdiscs only have 34 armor (everywhere) and 120 hp, so enough grenades should wear them down if you aren't hilariously unprepared both in crew and equipment departments.

On a landed terror ship (infiltration), I encountered six cyberdiscs. It pissed me off. I was using rocket tanks and lasers by that point. The rocket tanks don't exactly shred discs, but they do well. My heavy lasers were sometimes able to one shot them. I was only playing on Veteran level though.
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: hellrazor on April 01, 2016, 05:27:33 pm
On a landed terror ship (infiltration), I encountered six cyberdiscs. It pissed me off. I was using rocket tanks and lasers by that point. The rocket tanks don't exactly shred discs, but they do well. My heavy lasers were sometimes able to one shot them. I was only playing on Veteran level though.

On Superhuman they have Armor 38.
Also who cares about 6 vanilla Cyberdiscs. Piece of cake.
If you want it really hard, play Hardmode Expansion (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,3550.0.html) in Superhuman.
That would make that up to 15 Cyberdiscs, if you are extremly unlucky :P
Or let Sectoids be joined by some Sectopods and some Mutons, to complete your Terrormissions fuckup :)
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: alienfood on April 10, 2016, 08:52:54 pm
Use expletives and rocket tanks
FIFY
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: g5-freemen on April 10, 2016, 10:35:09 pm
On Superhuman they have Armor 38.
Also who cares about 6 vanilla Cyberdiscs. Piece of cake.
If you want it really hard, play Hardmode Expansion (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,3550.0.html) in Superhuman.
That would make that up to 15 Cyberdiscs, if you are extremly unlucky :P
Or let Sectoids be joined by some Sectopods and some Mutons, to complete your Terrormissions fuckup :)
Cheat Engine - is the best friend in that situation. And Nobody, Never and Ever will fuckup you :)
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: Snow on April 25, 2016, 12:53:19 am
I'm going to add to this. I've had a bit of experience now so far, but what's funny is after restarting the game.. I easily end up with all my soldiers dead in the very first mission. Naded to Hell with alien nades and sectoids with seemingly infinite time units and high reaction. In one round I watched as one sectoid killed several soldiers in just one turn.. after I fired at it only once. Another time I had 2 groups flank a UFO, a nade flies out of the darkness and blows up one unit. Four more aliens inside the ship come out and blast/nade the second group to oblivion.

What's strange is in my last game - where I was half way into the first year, I was easily picking off sectoids and stronger aliens - even with soldiers not wearing armor. I actually attacked a fallen UFO with a full crew of un-armored soldiers by mistake.. I forgot to give them armor. Easily took out tons of aliens with nades - no shots fired.. except at my soldiers.. most of which missed and those that hit.. didn't kill them (as far as I remember anyway).

I wonder if the AI get's dumber for the first types of aliens you encounter as you continue to fight stronger ones?
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: Xtendo-com on April 25, 2016, 06:39:21 am
Snow
Use smoke grenade. It's very useful thing. Significantly increases survivability.

I easily end up with all my soldiers dead in the very first mission.
Remember my first attempts...
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: DeltaEpsilon on April 25, 2016, 07:30:08 pm
Quote
I'm going to add to this. I've had a bit of experience now so far, but what's funny is after restarting the game.. I easily end up with all my soldiers dead in the very first mission. Naded to Hell with alien nades and sectoids with seemingly infinite time units and high reaction. In one round I watched as one sectoid killed several soldiers in just one turn.. after I fired at it only once. Another time I had 2 groups flank a UFO, a nade flies out of the darkness and blows up one unit. Four more aliens inside the ship come out and blast/nade the second group to oblivion.

You probably tank for too long. Aliens gain full knowledge of where your soldiers are at Turn 20 therefore you can expect a grenade to the face even from an alien who never even saw you.
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: Arek_PL on April 26, 2016, 12:35:36 am
actualy begginer is not that hard, until turn 20 but if you rush for personal armor and medkit alien grenades should be surviveable

on begginer grenades and rifles is more than enought to take down cyberdisc
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: Solarius Scorch on April 26, 2016, 12:45:43 am
I've played a couple tactical games and to be honest, the first X-Com seems to be the easiest. TFTD is significantly harder, mostly due to anal design of maps and in general using every trick in the book to impair the player but not aliens.
The hardest? Silent Storm series, hands down.
Jagged Alliance 2 isn't a walk in the park either, but still not quite as bad on average.
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: Snow on April 27, 2016, 12:29:15 am
Snow
Use smoke grenade. It's very useful thing. Significantly increases survivability.

I'm going to start doing so. I was avoiding smoke grenades for awhile and just attacking brute force - like yesterday.. I had no choice. Aliens were terrorizing Madrid. The skyranger lands with the doors open to 2 floaters and one reaper within eyesight. Stepping off the ramp, 2 more floaters to the left and in a small park, 2 more reapers. Luckily all were bad shots. Tossed nades everywhere, bit my tongue and survived. Took em all out. A floater goes through a door and opens in on one of my unsuspecting soldiers. I fire at it from all sides killing it. I move South to find the rest of the aliens with my unit nicely spread out. Two floaters open fire from windows of 2nd floors in 2 buildings. Two more appear along with reapers who seemed to suddenly show up. One got too close. Killed it with fire and nades. Entered the buildings and luckily the floaters missed most of their shots.. stunned 3 of them. I lost 3 soldiers. It was a tense battle, especially for just the 2nd (aliens terrorizing) ground mission since I restarted the game.

You probably tank for too long. Aliens gain full knowledge of where your soldiers are at Turn 20 therefore you can expect a grenade to the face even from an alien who never even saw you.

Yea, I've experienced this a few times. Sometimes, you land so far from the UFO that it takes multiple turns to finally get in close quarter combat. The little bastards favor staying inside the ship and ambushing you. But the joke's on them, because it's stun city :D.
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: DeltaEpsilon on April 27, 2016, 01:33:37 am
It is also worth pointing out that aliens will also gain full knowledge of everyone in the map at/after Turn 10 [TEN!] if only 2 aliens are alive.
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: Xtendo-com on April 27, 2016, 07:36:32 am
It is also worth pointing out that aliens will also gain full knowledge of everyone in the map at/after Turn 10 [TEN!] if only 2 aliens are alive.
He just has a full knowledge of everyone on the map (see attached file.) :D

I'm going to start doing so. I was avoiding smoke grenades for awhile and just attacking brute force - like yesterday.
Aliens can't shoot even if they known your position without visual contact. Except if you play psyHoTik's alien snipers (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,4421.0.html) experiment, but in cheat turns they anyway can't shoot without scouting and noticing you.
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: hellrazor on April 28, 2016, 10:14:17 pm
I've played a couple tactical games and to be honest, the first X-Com seems to be the easiest. TFTD is significantly harder, mostly due to anal design of maps and in general using every trick in the book to impair the player but not aliens.
The hardest? Silent Storm series, hands down.
Jagged Alliance 2 isn't a walk in the park either, but still not quite as bad on average.

Silent Storm is awesome! I always dreamed Xcom on Silent Storm engine. All the neat details the realistic physics.
Title: Re: Why so Hard?
Post by: Solarius Scorch on April 28, 2016, 10:53:15 pm
Silent Storm is awesome! I always dreamed Xcom on Silent Storm engine. All the neat details the realistic physics.

Oh damn yes.