Messages

1

The X-Com Files / Re: X-Com Files feedback

« on: October 19, 2018, 02:59:28 pm »

Yeah, getting my party almost wiped out within two turns of engaging a handuful of Muttons and a single of those mechanized units that shot only once and then made itself scarce was an obvious enough message. It got reinforced some time later when I shot down a large lander with muttons and while I managed to take them down, I traded casualties one for one with them and almost all survivors ended up in the hospital for 20+ days. That was with some heavy saving and loading too. At least the synthsuits I got out of that mess made the rookies somewhat useful as something more than cannon fodder.

Ironically, on the strategic layer I'm doing great the last couple of months - 5K and 8K scores, primary from shooting down UFOs with the Thunderstorms. I got a bit of research too after successfully assaulting a reptiloid village, though bringing down the dragon turret was pain - ten turns of focused fire and lobing AT RPGs at it. Still at this rate I'm at a loss what I need to capture/interrogate in order to unlock research of alien weapons and better protective armour than the cyberarmour. While the synthsuits are neat, people in them tend to get one-shotted by muttons even more often than those wearing the cybearmour.

On the tactical level, there are issues. Right now I have two types of missions spawning. First, those that are walk in the park with cybearmours with people getting wounded only due to critical hits. Second - those against tougher alliens where without saving and loading like a champion my veterans suffer unsustainable casualties. There are a few mission types that are kinda in the middle ground - sectoids and floaters primary, where the enemy is dangerous however perfectly manageable as long as I'm paying attention.

Underwater missions deserve a special attention - bringing anything but veterans, even as expendable cannon fodder to reveal the enemies seems pointless because those simply don't have the TUs to do so before being shot by aliens out of sight. At best I'm losing couple of my best people each time I try to assault one of their lured ships and the only bright point was that I finally got enough salvage to build that Ironfist or something heavy transport. On the downside, I'm not getting more than couple of plastics per mission and after all my underwater adventures I just got enough for second plastic swimsuit. Is that intentional or am I just unlucky?

On a more positive note, I finally got enough floater corpses to recover grav modules and built my first hovertanks. Its debute was neat - they seem to make excellent damage sponges at least against floaters, which were the first UFO I shot after said tank was operational.

2

The X-Com Files / Re: X-Com Files feedback

« on: October 18, 2018, 06:17:42 pm »

Yeah, no luck on any of those. I did get the Jump Armour researched and can retrieve modules from drones and floaters, however no luck on actually building my own nor on anything that could unlock the rest. Right now I'm out of things to research and the next time I play I'll fill a Skymarshall with laser tank and a bunch of veterans with high Psi Strength and bite the bullet of assaulting that alien base.

On a different note, I finally got a mission spawned with an Exalt Master that I managed to capture. Unless one of those managed to get blown off screen, this is the first Exalt mission that had one of them which I didn't have to abort on turn one due to spawning surrounded and without adequate armour to survive the first two turns without suffering unacceptable losses. It's certainly the first mission with that kind of officer since early 1999 because once I got a few suits of cyberarmour available, I hit every Exalt mission that appeared. Now I just need to wait for their HQ to appear and the last of the four original cults will be dealt with.

As far as the Pulse Rifle goes - I did blow a few million on men and equipment for security and training in two new bases and once another easy mission spawns we'll see how useful they're in practice. In theory that 25% more damage is neat, however the three shot burst as deafult of the UAC Rifle seems to be better damage wise and the obvious stats of the weapons are same - accuracity and tu per snap and aimed shot. In fact that makes the Pulse Rifle auto fire usless in comparison - three shots with lower accuracity and unless I'm mistaken for more TUs than a UAC Rifle snap shot. That seems to imply that the UAC weapon should be a more technologically advanced and useful weapon, one that gets unlocked some time after the Pulse Line has been available for some time. I don't know if that can be really helped if MAGMA missions simply don't spawn early and often enough.

The one advantage the Pulse Rifle has is that its alloy ammo could be bought outright and is one less thing to mico-manage production wise. As far as the SMG and pistol go, I haven't gone to properly compare them to the FN P-90 and the UAC ones, which along with Balck Ops pistols are my to go training weapons for rookies until they can carry something heavier.

Speaking about training, right now I do have over fifty people hitting busting their assess and hopefully by 2001 most of them will be useful for something more than cannon fodder. Experience from my third base where I started with a full rookie team in early 1999 - their training hasn't completed yet, they have about ten missions apeace under their belt and their stats are nearly doubled making them not entirely useless. They could actually take down a small shot down UFO with sectoids only suffering a couple of casualties when wearing Cyberarmours. Not ideal, but better than nothing. Still, when bringing newbies with comparable stats on tougher missions, they tend to die, fast. The reason should be obvious - a veteran with completed training and thirty plus missions under their belt might have enough health to survive hits that would kill less experienced people outright and thus they'll live to fight another day and have the potential to get even better even if they get grievously wounded and are out of action for a month.

Edit: Feedback on my disastrous attempt to assault the alien base. It turned out it was a mutton one so my precautiosn of pooling all my high psi strength veterans in one base and transport for that strike was superficious, though on a second thought facing mind control and other psioncis would have been better.

I went in with one laser tank and twelve crack troopers with Cyberarmour. Weapon wise - Arasakas 3K and 4K, UAC and Pulse Rifle with alloy ammo, one Black Ops Minigun with the same one light cannon with various ammunition one RPG trooper loaded with AT rockets and one Pulse SMG with assorted grenades, primary EMP in case of mechanized units as well as healing items.

The result on turn seven after heavy saving and loading to try different tactics? Three still combat capable troopers, two more panicked, two more dying on the ground. All I had to show for that was two dead muttons. One went down easy - a critical hit to the back I presume from an Arasaka 4K. The other ate reaction fire from four people - arasaka, Pulse Rifle, Pulse SMG and Black Ops Automatic sniper, proceeded to kill the SMG gunner and wound the sniper. On the next turn, all survivors shot at him, hit, he didn't go down and I finally finished him off with an anti-tank RPG. Then a Mutton leader with what looked like heavier armour came knocking and blew up all survivors of that group.

My second and larger group of my troopers, along with the tank - those faced one mushroom like mechanized unit that one-shot the tank then went to do its own business and then got rushed by three muttons, one with blue and orange armour. The end result of that encounter was that most of my people got dead with nothing to show for and only a pair of soldiers I sent flanking remained intact.

What kind of equipment would I need to take a mutton defended base without suffering crippling losses, much less the whole assault team getting wiped out with nothing to show for it? I'm at loss besides trying to load everyone with RPGs and AT rockets. Then I'll have to hope that they won't blow themselves up or run out of ammo before the base is secured. Trying to take things slow and letting the enemy come to me doesn't really work either - that's a recipe to get multiple people picked off one by one if I spread them out to avoid explosives or blown up en masse if they're close enough for concentrated reaction fire to has a snowball chance in hell of bringing down a single mutton.

3

40k / Re: Some misc 40k mod feedback

« on: October 18, 2018, 05:54:24 pm »

Good to know. Is it just me or did the new version nerf certain heavy weapons - sniper rifle and lance cannon are prime contenders. I played a few missions last night and the TU cost for snap shot seem increased so you can use it only once per turn so it's either one aimed shot if you have the TUs or a single snap one. I remember previously I was able to use two snap shots with sniper or about three or even four with lance cannon which was very useful in a lot of circumstances, especially against tough foes where volume of fire was better than a handful of very accurate shots that might not go through the armour anyway.

I got my first mission with Eldar last night too and they seem to fit - very dangerous glass cannons. Their shuriken weapons are deceptively dangerous. While the outright damage they cause isn't much, the amount of wounds that need healing ASAP is comparable to what Plague Bolters do. Facing such foes is one of the few reasons to bring more than one Appotecary/support servitor per mission - a single one of them simply can't keep up with healing ,especially if the fight gets protracted.

I got the first part of a space hulk mission finally complete before going to bed and it was neat. The Orks seem to fit - tough, have poor long range accuracity and I presume that they're very dangerous in close quarters, though fortunately I managed to panic those few who closed the range with incendiary ammo. The Nobs are nicely tough and took a lot of shots and power fist strikes to bring down. Facing a proper Boss is going to be interesting.

More feedback to follow after the next gaming session.

4

The X-Com Files / Re: X-Com Files feedback

« on: October 18, 2018, 02:26:02 am »

Well, usually the tank goes out first to check if its safe-ish to go for completing the mission or if I should abort ASAP if my transport ended up surrounded. As far as sending the troopers out, that depends if there's enough solid cover and type of enemy. After I had a few missions with chupakabras/zombies basically swarming the landing site due to waiting, not to mention a floater kamikaze who blew himself up along with a bunch of people the moment I opened a door, sometimes it's best to get your people out on turn one so they could shoot everyone approaching from two onwards with full TUs.

In the first and only Mutton mission so far I had both of them with turned backs to the Skymarshall so it was safe to actually exit without getting shot. Things went downhill fast once I had my people deployed and opened fire. Those things simply didn't want to go down without liberal use of explosive or tremendous amount of bullets. I did research the synthsuit and indeed it looks like the perfect armour for rookies until they can carry heavy weapons by themselves and even then, it would be useful for the people hauling cannons and the Black Ops minigun.

What do I need for the advanced lab and to build laser rifle ammo anyway? Chitoid and Floater Leaders, soldiers and navigators didn't unlock it nor did the Cazer ones I interrogated. Hopefully when I finally bite the bullet during my next game session and assault that alien base it will be enough - I'm currently out of things to research and have scientists in four bases basically doing who knows what...

5

The X-Com Files / Re: X-Com Files feedback

« on: October 17, 2018, 10:25:26 pm »

I just unlocked the Pulse Weapon line after the MAGMA reactor mission - early February 2000. By this time I've had the UCA Rifles for close to an year an at least on paper they should be better thanks to the burst feature for comparable accuracity and TU. While the MAGMA missions were nicely different, from that Zombie outbreak, to the Robo-Tanks and the Reactor, by the time said missions spawned any weapons I got from them are simply obsolete.

Some more feedback - facing Muttons and those purple aliens, the Cazer or is it Gazer, with standard firearms - not a good idea at all. The punishment they could take and the ability to kill or knock out a soldier or two with reaction fire alone, consistently is very, very nasty. I just aborted the first large shot down UFO mission I went to. Two Muttons managed to knock down or heavy wound four people with reaction fire on turn one, then on turn two a heavy armoured one wounded a bunch more with either a launcher or grenade. Luckily no one died and I barely managed to retreat in the transport with my casualties and one mutton corpse - I simply didn't believe that there was any chance to finish that mission if I was losing a trooper either dead or wounded for every mutton I managed to take out. I did kill three in that mission, two of them with concentrate tactical grenade launcher/missile/tank fire and the other - seven people barely managed to wound him enough to knock him out before he could act on turn two and if he had been active he would have wiped out at least couple of troopers on his turn.

The Cazers - depending on range, one could survive six or seven people shooting him in the face with UAC Rifles, Black Ops Auto Snipers, Arakasa 4OOO, CAWS and UAC SMGs. Granted on that mission I didn't have alloy ammo deployed and that might have been enough to make it bearable. As it was, the only thing that prevented me from losing most of my people was a set of fences that ate a lot of plasma fire and the fact that the Aliens were content to keep the range open once they ran out of grenades.

I currently have a ton of alien weapons which I can't research and build so no joy gaining more effective firepower. That's the reason why I haven't gone after the alien base I have uncovered - I'm afraid I simply don't have the firepower/armour to pull it off without either cheating or saving and loading left and right.

6

The X-Com Files / Re: X-Com Files feedback

« on: October 17, 2018, 03:36:13 am »

The alien mercenary had a beam weapon that set everything in a large area around the target on fire. It was arbalest shaped and I actually don't recall what happened with it after completing the mission. I'll have to check what's laying forgotten in the base warehouse.

Cyberarmour, it might not be a big upgrade to the Personal armour, however compared to the alloy vest? Even when using the shield variant people with the alloy one often get wounded by good old fashioned bullets. In comparison, that only happened to three people so far while storming the lower level of a Syndicate underground base. Frankly, the survivability factor once I got the cyberarmour compared to the previous ones is off the charts, though do note I outright skipped the personal armour. Currently most Earth based threats I'm facing are low threat - Exalt, Syndicate, Cult of Apocalypse.

In comparison, the alien missions I've attempted - said armour is barely sufficient to keep someone alive through a hit or two on average, however that's still an improvement compared to the alloy vest. That was highlighted by the two underground alien bases I assaulted that saw roughly a third of the squad dead with at least half of the rest out of commission for about a month or so. Aliens with explosives and those purple blobs don't mix well with close quarters. Often my people lacked the firepower or the reactions to bring down the enemy before they either got blown up or meleed to death. In contrast, one lucky bastard survived intact through enough punishment to wipe out the whole unit so RNG has been up to its usual shenanigans.

Speaking about aliens, I managed to respond to two Terror missions with a full Skymarshal complete with a laser tank, twelve veterans with cyberarmour and the best Earth weaponry money could buy. The only thing lacking was alloy ammo for everyone - at that stage I was still busy making armours to dedicate production to it.

The first I had to abort after turn two and finally just loaded a previous save. It was those purple overgrown sectoid-like aliens with body armour covering only their torso along with thin purple disk. I managed to kill one of them with a Black Ops minigun bursts in the back from point blank range, by using alloy ammo. In contrast, six people shooting at anonther one from the front couldn't bring it down for two turns and then he kinda shot them all to pieces. Needless to say that one was a wash.

The next terror mission was my first encounter with the snakemen and their overgrown iguana pets. That was a weird mission - basically half my squad along with almost the whole map got burned down by the end of it along with all the civies. In both those missions, the firepower I have access to barely cuts it and it's not much better weapon wise. Just to rub insult to injury, I have a load of captured alien weapons I couldn't research at this point, much less build.

On the bright side, I finally unlocked the various sound blaster research so the next time an underwater mission with aquanoids spawns I might actually risk it. I had to reload the last one after a veteran unit got shot to pieces before they could come close enough to the enemy to see it... and that once again highlight the issue with replacing soldiers - too much of a bother at this time to simply accept a mission gone south for no real gain and not simply reload an earlier saver and skip it alltogether. RNG doesn't help - I had a four month spell this night with only a handful of safe training missions with just a couple of enemies in them.

As far as on base training goes, I do have the facility in every base and for the first couple of years ran double of them in the two bases I had. Right now I have one each in four different bases training forty people and I'm in the middle of building a fifth base, which I might load with rookies.

On a different note, I found my first proper alien base and haven't decided if risking an assault and thus provoking the enemy would be prudent - for all intents and purposes three of my own operational bases are quite vulnerable to assault. I might just monitor it and go after supply ships and see if the Thunderhawks armed with avalanches and stingrays can bring them down - I've been using them lately as escorts and to hunt down small UFOs. Speaking about UFO's, the first time the aliens attempted to intercept a fully loaded Skymarshal returning from mission was hair-raising. It was a good thing I had a Thunderhawk waited in each base at that point or it would have ended in tears and a lot of closed casket funerals...

Magma stuff... With the exception of the Heavy Cannon, I didn't find it very useful. What was it again? The Thrasher Heavy Shotgun and said cannon, I don't recall receiving another weapon from them. Perhaps it was just the way the maps spawned, however I never had an opportunity to see the shotgun shine and as far as the cannon goes - the people I had with them during the harder missions didn't live long enough to show me what it can do and against terrestrial opposition various other weapons seem to be more versatile. Or it might have been RNG again. Perhaps it would shine with HE and other special types of ammunition, unfortunately, it's been some time since I faced a mission I found those particularly useful.

Difficulty - I'm playing on veteran.

One thing that better armour helps tremendously is when the transport spawns surrounded by enemies. For the first two and half years that was almost always a prompt to immediately abort the mission, which in fact accounts for almost half of all Exalt ones that spawned, which as I said is bloody rare. Now that the aliens are becoming quite explosive happy, a cyberarmour is the difference between multiple people dead and a reload or a mission I might actually complete during the first couple of turns. In the same vein, there's a ton of difference in surviving light plasma weaponry compared to the alloy vest. From what I saw the last couple of nights, the cyberarmour was worth it spending most of '99 to obtain it for basically everyone and I'm even keeping a few spares in each base in a case of an alien assault, though I hope that between Thunderchiefs and laser defenses, I can deal with that on the strategic level.

Well, lately I've been using the low psi-strength veterans as pilots and as the poor bastards who get the most risky jobs in any mission I bring them to. As far as extensively screening rookies and being able to actually afford it, it wasn't until shortly before I actually got the cyberarmour available that I got the funds for something like that. Hell, I'm currently building two bases at the same time and just spent close to two million for troops, HWPs and gear in one of them alone. The second I think I'll be making into a dedicated training center. That became an option after couple of months that saw nearly a third of my veterans gutted in exchange of two ungerground bases, one "successfully" completed terror mission which saw the whole map wrecked so bad that nuking the place might have been better and a few underwater ones that got on average 50+ percent dead squaddies. On the bright side, I netted some valuable material and captives not to mention tow months of 5K score and combined increase of funding that came close to 10 million.

7

The X-Com Files / Re: X-Com Files feedback

« on: October 16, 2018, 04:27:09 pm »

I didn't have one available during my first two underground missions, the third - against spiders went really well thanks to cyberarmour all around and the last two I played last night - let's just say that everyone was too heavily loaded with the best available firepower including explosives for such luxuries and I used a laser tank for blasting my way in.

I'll ask again, what the hell do I need in order to manufacture alien laser rifle clips? Finally being able to field those weapons would simplify my logistics situation tremendously.


Now some more feedback now that I had a bit of time to think about my last night's session while at work. Two balancing issues centered around luck.

Depending if you know what to research and what missions to push.... and being lucky actually getting them, the position in the campaign late '99 can be radically different. While cyberarmour did help tremendously and is the main reason I didn't scrap the playthrough and likely left the mod for greener pastures due to not being willing to grind through the first two years of light cult activity and alien lifeforms, once I knew what I actually needed, I had to spent months skipping a lot of missions and letting the aliens do basically what they wanted until I actually got the item I needed to unlock precise alloy shaping and thus the research necessary for the cyberarmour. It really didn't help that the mission types necessary were among those that in my experience spawned the least.

Now that leads to another issue, directly related with when I unlocked the cyberarmour and the time necessary to outfit my strike teams with it. By the time that happened, the aliens upped their game and I once again find myself in the unpleasant situation of being outclassed on the ground, which leads to the second issue - troop replacement. Once I had a full strike team, after a few months when in my three bases I my scientists being lazy, underworked and doing God knows what, I finally began tackling the various alien terror mission, shooting the odd UFO, going underwater and underground.

The point? While I did get some nice new loot to research, I lost nearly a third of my veterans in the spawn of a month in two underwater missions, one terror, the first I faced the sankement and those overgrown iguanas of theirs and bloody hell, the underground alien outposts - those in particularly were hell where my two best achievements after save-scumming like a champion were a lost laser tank apiece and no less than three or four veterans. That in theory is good, fighting in close quarters against explosive totting enemies and those overgrown slimes that are bullet sponges should be tough and generate casualties. The issue? It will be at least half an year to an year until I'm able to recover from the losses and that's an optimistic scenario. Ever since I took out the Lotus HQ a few months back, thus leaving only Exalt from the original four cults, the available missions where I can send mostly rookies were scarce. I've got an eight man newbie team in my third base that after an year of deploying all over the world hunting alien lifeforms that they can reach with a Dragonfly and lately a Hawkeye, they're still too fragile and green to even think about sending into anything serious.

So once again, any chance of hiring better soldiers at worst after Promotion III comes around? The biggest issue I have here is twofold - a long grind to make newbies worthwhile and to add insult to injury, the missions they can handle are the dullest and least fun... when those actually spawn. In the meanwhile, I have to curtail operations against the enemy, which incidentally includes going to some of the more engaging missions when they spawn or risk entering death-spiral as far as my troopers are concerned. That's not a fun way to play.

8

The X-Com Files / Re: X-Com Files feedback

« on: October 16, 2018, 12:50:38 am »

A question and some more feedback.

What do I need to produce Alien Laser Rifle ammo? I had the rifles themselves and the clips researched for months, I'm able to build laser cannons for my aircraft as well as laser HWPs - both tanks and hover and would soon be done researching the laser defense. I just got cyberarmor built for most of my people and decided to build some laser rifles to help with logistics so I could remove some of the various mid to long range weapons I have cluttering my deployable craft and bases, I got some rifles built and got the unpleasant surprise of not being able to make ammo for them - all I have is two clips I captured during an UFO mission a few months back.

The Cyberarmour makes a huge difference and allows a lot bolder gameplay, especially when capturing enemies are concerned and as importantly, in underground missions, which up to that point were suicide without saving and loading as if there was no tomorrow.

Mission wise, range continues to be an issue, especially in the Americas. All Exalt missions that spawn lately have only people I've already captured enough of for them to no longer show in the research tab for interrogation and no joy with finding anyone who can unlock their HQ.

A note about the T'leth Embassy -  I had my first underwater mission earlier tonight and it almost turned into a complete disaster because it put a bunch of rookies I had in the Skymarshal for training into the submarine and ignored most of the ten experienced agents I had inside to babysit them during missions. Perhaps a note that not only you shouldn't bring dogs on such a mission because they will drown but only the soldiers who will fit in the submarine and no extras? Having five of the nine divers as newbies was very, very painful.

I did have two head-hunter missions tonight and the experience was very different. First, it was Master Lo - the Ninja trainer. I did get him alive with only one casualty - he used his super special, ten thousand times folded Katana to turn Amenyst, the base's Robo-Tank mascot into scrap. It was hard persuading my squaddies to bring him in one piece after that. I had to promise he'll be subjected to all the fun and games my Intelligence officer could think of to make them see reason.

Next, it was that alien assassin fella and he accounted for the first casualties I suffered, if you don't count poor Amenyst, since equipping most people with Cyberarmor - throwing grenades across the whole map after I had all his drones shot down was an unpleasant surprise.

On a related note - perhaps interrogating those special people if someone gets to all the trouble to bring them back mostly intact should give some info about them? In the Ninja trainer's case I got a short blurb that it might be a good idea to keep my people far away from each other if I'm facing psionic enemies and in the assassin's case, a dossier about a MiB affiliated agent, that gal who is supposed to be able to mind-control multiple people at the same time and has influence over multiple governments. Nice touch, however wouldn't it have been better if we actually learned something about the people we just interrogated too, after potentially going to some significant trouble to bring them in intact in the first place?

All things considered, those head-hunter missions were a nice touch, however, especially in the assassin's case, it was a very good thing it spawned after I had Cyberarmour otherwise he could have wiped out most of my people with his grenades without seeing a trace of him.

Now for an issue, one that the assassin mission highlighted. That was the fourth time since I began deploying tanks that said HWP got stuck into the transport unable to exit because there was something spawned right at the ramp. I had to either use its cannon, which would have blown up a lot of weapons I had in the transport, or let it sit the mission out. I tried to clear the trashcants with a trooper armed with a CAWS with AP ammo, it didn't get the job done.

Can anything be done about this? The only alternative is to keep just enough equipment in a transport to arm the people I'm bringing at any given mission and that's simply too much of a bother, considering that depending on the type of mission, expected terrain and how experienced the people I'm bringing are, the loadouts could vary quite a bit. It simply takes too much time to load and unload equipment before and after each mission to bother with not practically having most of a base's arsenal loaded in the transport stationed there.

9

The X-Com Files / Re: Bugs, crashes, typos & bad taste

« on: October 13, 2018, 10:33:58 pm »

Same here. Do you need a save from just before the crash?

10

The X-Com Files / Re: X-Com Files feedback

« on: October 12, 2018, 08:45:41 pm »

It is.

First impression of the new version - it loads orders of magnitude faster on the ancient laptop I'm using for old games. It usually was up to five minutes until it loads and processes everything and earlier tonight on the new built - less than a minute.

11

The X-Com Files / Re: X-Com Files feedback

« on: October 12, 2018, 05:50:48 pm »

Yeah - each type of alien, cultist, etc, once. Like sectoid soldier, engineer, navigator, the various types of cultist. After that, if you're unfamiliar with the potential to unlock new research topics and get just flavour text in interrogating some type of captive again it's natural to conclude that what you'll continue to receive by repeating it until you've ran out of it or it begins to repeat itself me thinks. I've done five or six repeated interrogations of various captured cult members both officers and lower ranked ones and all I got was very amusing but ultimately useless feedback that led me to conclude that I shouldn't be doing that until I didn't have anything better to research at the time.

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The X-Com Files / Re: X-Com Files feedback

« on: October 12, 2018, 05:34:32 am »

I played very little vanila before finding openxcom and mods. Most of my X-Com experience has been with Enemy Within with the Long War mod. Needing to interrogate the same type of captive multiple times is a new for me and compared to every other type of research is counter-intuitive. If I got a new type of research unlocked the few times I did it I might have thought of doing it repeatedly. As I didn't I believed that it was just a nice flavour feature of X-Com Files. To add to that, the other mods I've tried - FMP which I played for some time a few years ago and more recently the WH40K one, in neither of them it occurred to me to interrogate the same time of captives multiple times.

13

The X-Com Files / Re: X-Com Files feedback

« on: October 12, 2018, 12:50:05 am »

Yeah, interrogating them once. After that it's entirely possible for a player not to think of interrogating the same type of captive again. The first time I did it was actually by accident and after all I got was an amusing blurb from the staff I discarded doing so again unless I had captives available and nothing else useful to research. I'm I the only one who did the same before?

14

The X-Com Files / Re: X-Com Files feedback

« on: October 11, 2018, 09:41:59 pm »

You're welcome! Those are just my impressions. Some of the root issues probably are due to luck and engine limitations. I could have gone for more bases earlier however considering that I was caught up on the vital research which I had available I didn't see the point. Later, when I had the spare money the alien invasion was a few months out and I concentrated on scrapping everything but two Dragonflies and getting the best interceptors and weapons for them that money could buy only to get unpleasantly surprised by the weapon restriction. Still, those early planes, the MiG-31 and the first Interceptor were perfectly able to kill everything I sent them after, which as it turned out later was counter-productive when those Sectoids came to visit one of my bases and managed to tear apart, largely through mind control and insane reaction shots basically all non-wounded soldiers I had.

Keep the great work!

By the way, will you put a prompt in one of the next versions that interrogating the same types of enemies multiple times could net something more important than amusing stories from the base personnel? If I was aware of that, it might have changed the playghtrough dynamic more than a year back and led me to some different conclusions of what was a good idea to do/build, including a secondary base or two to house captives awaiting interrogation. There were a few months I got a lot of cult missions back to back with a significant number of captured Dagon and Red Dawn personnel, including all kinds of officers that I ended up selling because I saw no other use of them once their type was interrogated once.

Don't get me wrong - there was a period that I was interrogating low level captives while everything I had available for research was weapons and weapon requisition of stuff that I deemed obsolete, that was shortly before Promotion III while I was building up my forces for the Alien invasion and I did it solely for the amusing blurbs which by itself were worth it at that point compared to what I could get by selling those captives.

15

The X-Com Files / Re: X-Com Files feedback

« on: October 11, 2018, 03:57:10 pm »

Well, the next time Exalt/Lotus spawns I'm dropping a Skymarshall chock-full with veterans on their vests, with a few dogs and tanks. I'll probably sell one interceptor for the five man covert vehicle for when Osiorn covert mission spawns too. Meanwhile I'll hopefully have something worthwhile to research from the Cyberweb mission I just finished during my last game session and I do have a cyborg factory ready for assault next game.

As far as alien engineering goes, the only thing in that vein I had was a sectoid engineer that I got alive during my first successful landed mission - that one in fact lulled me in a false sense of security because I got out of there with five alive captives and only two dead rookies I used as scouts. On the alien missions that followed, things went downhill in a major way.

We'll see what it will take to unlock the precise alloy research.