Messages

1

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

« on: May 25, 2020, 10:35:56 pm »

I'm getting weird biome stuff. Mountains of New Orleans, deserts of Siberia. That type of thing.
I want to think swamps were added in the last few updates? Maybe that's what is throwing things off.

2

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

« on: May 17, 2020, 01:58:22 am »

Bug I found on the Surf Time mission. Like to use dogs for it, but there's this odd circumstance where I try to chomp a baddie and I get a "there's no one there" response. I think it's a terrain issue?

3

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 1.3: Sanity Check

« on: May 16, 2020, 06:12:17 am »

more of insight into X-Com - Council relations.

I'll admit I'm not very far at all, but I thought up something this morning exactly along these lines:
The mod's all about red tape, but who is causing all that red tape? Why do you HAVE to eliminate at least one cult before you can research promotion III? Well what I figured is that the UN bureaucrats are effectively deadlocked due to cult interference prior to the elimination of at least one. With evidence to back up the corruption of a handful of certain UN officials, their non-cult allies distance themselves quickly and throw their support behind XCOM. So even if the other cults are around, the deadlock is ended and enough of a majority now exists for all restrictions to be jettisoned. Pretty simple explanation.

Would be nice if something along those lines unlocked along with Promotion I, II, and III. Partial text from a meeting or recorded phone call about why XCOM is being so heavily stonewalled, even if you drag  a sectoid corpse right in front of them.

4

The X-Com Files / Re: Troop Deployment: Unfair?

« on: May 16, 2020, 06:05:14 am »

Yeah, it's pretty common for me to end up surrounded unless I'm in a corner (in which case I'm just backed into a corner).
Turn 1 is just free reaction fire for the enemy. You come marching down the ramp, and hopefully they miss. My current strategy is to draw incoming fire with four dogs (also good for scouting) and then follow that up with a shield wall. Probably not going to work once I tech past armored vests.

On one hand, it makes sense for the enemy to see you coming and get into position. On the other hand, it REALLY does not make sense to just park two feet away from the cult base's front door.

5

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 1.3: Sanity Check

« on: May 07, 2020, 10:30:15 pm »

Reaper Corpse being a prerequisite to the Cool Alien Gadget is a bug. No idea how this has happened, probably some trivial copypaste issue.

And yeah, in 95% of cases the Psiclone is your gateway tech to CAG.

If it is a bug, then how do I fix it? Reinstall?

6

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 1.3: Sanity Check

« on: May 07, 2020, 04:42:16 am »

I hardly need to tell the team XCOM Files is my new addiction, but that new addiction comes with one very severe frustration: namely, the research bottleneck created by Chief Engineer.

On paper it's simple enough. Get Reaper corpse, research 'cool alien gadget', then get Chief Engineer. Very simple.

In practice I have spent several games completely dry of Reapers up until the 1999 invasion, at which point I just quit in frustration. It seems to be pure luck whether you get the right 'strange creature sighting' mission or not, and I tend to get nothing but zombies. When I first started playing, I loved the sheer variety of these cryptids, but now I utterly hate them because these missions don't advance the tech tree in the exact but extremely necessary way that I need it to; and I'm just sitting on several (military assisted) crashed UFOs with parts and corpses; none of which seem to be interesting enough to any Chief Engineers because the right "cybermutant" hasn't come along.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the logic here. But please hear me out on my proposed solution:

The following are the dependencies for 'cool alien gadget':
- Obliterator (don't know why this is so low in the tech tree, never seen one)
- Reaper
- Sectoid Autopsy (surely seeing a literal alien that clearly cannot survive without artificial means given its vestigial organs should get SOMEONE curious as to all the alien tech out there)
- Orison goon, or related Orison object (this faction is the 'humans with tech too advanced for them' group, so why not have them segway into the alien tech tree)

I do think that you should earn your way up the tech tree, be reasonably able to make it to Promotion II before 1999, and furthermore not be conditioned to hate the cryptid missions simply because the sheer variety they offer is in any way a "distraction". I think we can all agree that the player should not sit there and say to themselves "if I don't get a reaper in this mission, I'm just going to turn off the game" over and over again; because that was very much my experience. Increasing the frequency of Reapers is not desirable to me, as I feel that Reapers should be a rare "wild" alien early in the game; despite the tech tree problems that rarity brings. Expand the prerequisite options, don't diminish the wow factor of Reapers.

Edit: It's a bug apparently.