Messages

1

The X-Com Files / Re: X-Com gameplay and setup questions

« on: Today at 07:12:02 am »

A) Middle click enemy. Then middle click armor / weapon, after you research it.
B) No idea what's not working for you. Yes, you should be able to just open vehicle inventory while vehicle's "active" tile (one of the four) is on item pile. No submods needed.
C) Hyper & trajectory for faster bullets. Resound / Remusic once you get tired of hearing the Dagon theme for thousandth time.
D) It depends on settings. You can make it same as OXCE, or "unbeatable".

[Spoiler]

2

The X-Com Files / Re: Help with Troop Ship mission w/ 15+ Cyberdiscs

« on: Today at 06:58:14 am »

That's a lot of questions. Are you sure you want the answers instead of finding out yourself? That's one of fun things about XCF.

Does stacking multiple smoke grenades in the same place create more effective cover?

I dunno, but smoke dissipates and weakens over time. And you can "refresh" it.

For weapons, I dunno what your progress is, even if it's 1999. Here's some notes on usability.

Spoiler Weapons:

The go-to weapon is laser snipers.
Throwing knives/stars are more of a "fun" weapon. Throwing ax, on the other hand, is unironically decent weapon, it can one-shot stuff you'll be struggling to shoot to (e.g. mib grunts, hybrid small and big drones, syndicate walkers). And 1999 is usually all about pestering mibs, so... keep an eye for some axed cavemen to get it.
There's fire extinguisher rounds for chempistol that make it handy little extinguisher for saving your burning soldiers. Very relevant when fighting against plasma in personal / cyber armor.
Plasma weapons/small launcher: sell, it's still a long way to researching and using them. And even then most of them are not very useful.
Staff of heart grip: it's lethal version of psi amp, decent psionics can kill from beyond the walls. Handy in underwater or in dreamscape.
Sonic pistol is decent on land, sonic rifle or cannon for underwater (need more punch for actual sea-dwellers).

Melee: Photonic spear is good on dedicated melee. Photonic blade is the holy grail if you can find it.
Otherwise it's kukri / wakizashi or mostly just plain punching / electric clubs.
Remember, you need to capture ~10 alien leaders / 20+ engineers to get to the "good" tech.
Punches to alien skulls make wonders there and pick up where EMP fails.
Blops: Macro SMG / Smartgun / Sniper rifles. Pistols to train rookies.
UAC: I somewhat like chaingun. For space you use lasers / plasma.
The rest: sell.

Spoiler More questions:

1. None. Tactical Grenade Launcher / Rocket Launcher -> Advanced rocket launcher / Mortars.
TGL is best anti-human weapon, decent sectoid capturing tool. The rest are situation-specific.
2. Not really.
3. Scoped. Should use none of these past promo 2, though.
4. Not all weapons scale from weapon's power, e.g. smoke has fixed 0 damage. Incendiary usually has fixed 5-10 damage, Napalm actually scales from power (50-150%).
For grenades, the difference is marginal - incendiary grenade has slightly more powerful aoe (damage doesn't drop off from center), napalm grenade is more powerful at ground zero blast, but drops off to the sides.
5. Yes, the aircraft rockets are basically garbage. Stingrays are at least buyable, so it's "best". Upgrade to mass driver cannons, then/or to gauss, but... they're not too good on slow and fragile ravens.
Once you build improved lab, you'll get some intermediate ship, same way as kitsune. That. That's the upgrade.

3

The X-Com Files / Re: Help with Troop Ship mission w/ 15+ Cyberdiscs

« on: September 14, 2024, 03:21:36 pm »

I'd advise to ignore it. It's an optional late game encounter. It's beatable at your tech, but most likely isn't worth it.

In general, "peek-and-shoot" tactics work. Cyberdisks and sectoids aren't exactly hard enemies, but dealing with them under turrets is tough. 
Turrets don't see through smoke well, but they'll shot at you if you stay there due to sniper-spotter. They can one shot any soldier or HWP (to the point of unfixable - if their corpse disappears you won't be able to restore it) and they're tough to take down.

You need to fire at them from smoke or from cover using arc weapons. Some guy in a synthsuit chucking trit shrapnel charge at the turret can usually one shot it. Some people like to setup mortar HE shell squad - you'll need enough space and at least 2 guys to do it. You can just shoot them with decent (~100 power) weapons, but this may take a while and you need many shots per turn - their shields regenerate somewhat fast.

Cyberdisks can be one-shot with EMP, but only next to ground. Sectoids can be mind-controlled for extra recon.
From your arsenal laser snipers are probably best at this point. I don't remember which vulnerability turret shields have though.

4

The X-Com Files / Re: Tips for cave missions

« on: September 13, 2024, 07:18:57 am »

The most important thing in caves is a motion scanner. Dogs/rats have it as builtin action or you can make a few. Scanning allows you to see incoming enemies from beyond the walls, while being covered by said walls. Nuff said.

After scanning, use alt / alt+ctrl to highlight scanned dots. Scanners pinpoint enemies horizontally. If the enemy on different floor, it will still give a dot. You may then pinpoint the floor by bringing a rat or hybrid to the dot - they'll see the enemy above/below with their short psi-sense.

Scanners mostly trivialise many such missions - HQs, underwater, caves, ships, bases, etc.  at the cost of some effort.

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Dogs are good for scanner alone, but they also have some anti-camo, some heat-vision (anti-smoke), decent night vision. Rats have all that increased.

Furthermore, dog's bark "damages" enemy TUs, thus 95% (5% is damn chupacabras) of incoming melee threats will be stopped by a decent full-TU dog. And they're pretty good in melee, being a sectoid's nightmare in right hands.

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Chtonites enjoy beating beaten into submission - synthsuits are very good for such missions if you have them. Silacoids are "weak" to HE, so use explosive rounds. I kinda like autocannon - AC-HE.
For Dim X outside, tactical grenade launcher / gas works wonders on spitters / megaworms / anthropods, but may need experience playing with smoke. Flys / whatever else is better dealt with HE rounds, IIRC.

5

The X-Com Files / Re: Advanced Itelligence Idea

« on: September 11, 2024, 08:47:47 am »

Underwater will appear so much you'll get sick of it.
Alpha will also appear. Maybe not Alpha Wolf / Cat - they're somewhat tricky to get. These are basically alternative ways to get psionics - besides that, it's just a werewolf mission with one special guy.

There's a whole syndicate arc later, in which (among other things) you catch lab scientists, interrogate them to research monsters (like spikeboar). And at the end of the arc you'll be able to just buy quillbow components.

And of course there are plenty of missions just to grind troops (e.g. just complete asylum ghosts, enabling non-stop ghost arc). You can get like 40-60 maxed ninjas up to 1999 which is enough to steamroll the campaign on any difficulty.

Having said that.
----------
I checked ruleset:
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Ruleset_Reference_Nightly_(OpenXcom)#Mission_Scripts
and there a couple of interesting rules:
itemTriggers   A list of items that can influence the execution of this script. Similar to research triggers; checks the presence of items in the base stores (not anywhere else).   -
facilityTriggers   A list of base facilities that can influence the execution of this script. Similar to research triggers; checks the presence of a facility (in any xcom base).   -

So it seems you can on/off a particular mission on your own discretion if you want to, by manufacturing/buying/finding a trigger-item and then selling it, but need to check up on that more.

6

The X-Com Files / Re: Advanced Itelligence Idea

« on: September 09, 2024, 01:17:29 pm »

Impossible under current engine. Nuff said.

Having advanced intelligence center basically means you've graduated past most possible RNG screw-ups, such as that one last safehouse / outpost. So RNG-correcting at this point is questionable. What needs correcting, exactly?

Most "RNG" missions are interesting in the case that they've never spawned before. Researching "- you have made some researches like having researched rats to be able to trigger a rat mission" pretty much means this mission has spawned before, you've got some relevant stuff from there "rats", and thus such mission is completely uninteresting.

There are however some "farming" RNG missions - e.g. you may want to farm aforementioned rats, bats, sectoids, osiron stuff, etc, which you may want more of. But personally i'm fine with them being RNG.

---

As for correction of early RNG. Technically, mission spawning is controlled by triggers. Some are set permanently, most are enabled/disabled once you progress through the plot (by researches). Most  triggers spawn missions randomly. It's possible to make triggers that are 1) certain 2) work only a few times 3) guarded behind research of some item perhaps.

So - make some "LOTUS SAFEHOUSE LEAD" item, tie it to unlock safehouse spawn trigger that will work once; sprinkle the item at apprehension mission or something (at map, or probably better in loadout of cultists there). As a result -> player completes mission, sees item -> researches it -> has a guaranteed once-per-campaign spawn of a mission (next month after said item is researched).

7

The X-Com Files / Re: Iron Man Tips for Mid+ game

« on: September 01, 2024, 05:52:36 am »

You can win the game without a single terror mission - you can skip them as long as you can handle the score drain (and you can). Yep, just arrive and abort tough missions until you're ready.

Also, pay attention to radar coverage and airgame - terror ships ain't too hard to take down.

Big turrets (and sectopods), like those in terror missions, can one shot overkill (leaving no corpse to retrieve and repair) any armor, including tanks and sectopods. To deal with them, use cover, smoke, throwable / arc weapons (sharpnel charges, mortars), PSI puppets / expendable targets / meatshields.

Then play as it goes. In many places, game got easier compared to years ago. Generally, when played "properly", mid-to-late game is harder to lose troops than early game. Yet, you can lose (lots of) troops and still win, it's fine. Shield elites with meatshields / dogs - it's entirely possible to beat the game at ironman / superhuman without ever losing these two or three soldiers that you really care about.

8

The X-Com Files / Re: Issues with mision generation

« on: August 18, 2024, 10:04:51 am »

IMO, first months performance is basically meaningless, unless you're aiming for fastest HQ (~mid-97) or something. The RNG can screw you over several times with either bad safehouses / slow military envoy, bad outposts / slow osprey, bad promo 3 prereqs (caves / deep ones), bad alien gear ( multitool), etc.
Perfectly hitting all of those is pretty much impossible - and the game doesn't expect it to be the case. It doesn't matter much - you aren't going to outtech aliens unless you really know what you're doing - getting perfect RNG ain't the part of it.

9

The X-Com Files / Re: A question about mind shield

« on: August 16, 2024, 05:50:43 pm »

Mind shield halves chance to discover your base every tick (IIRC 30 minutes?) that UFO flies over your base. Nothing more, nothing less. Compounding results from more - 1/3 chance at 2 shields, etc.
A base that was once attacked (as in - ground battle defended) actually "disappears" from alien radar and needs to be discovered again to be attacked.

10

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire

« on: August 02, 2024, 09:19:59 am »

I'd vote for at least disabling spartans and hires on superhuman  .

11

The X-Com Files / Re: Enemies have full TU on first turn

« on: August 02, 2024, 03:08:38 am »

If the single extra "press turn" is the greatest critique you can muster, must be a very good mod 

12

The X-Com Files / Re: The Joy (Pain) of a Terror Ship

« on: July 19, 2024, 06:38:44 am »

Never thought XCF would be such an emotional endeavour.

Found the savescummer! 

13

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.3: Mysteries Ancient And New

« on: July 11, 2024, 01:07:34 pm »

It's somewhat real issue and it does plague early game. But early game doesn't matter much and you can definitely play around it via tactical escapes and night ops. And it CAN be more fun instantly engaging enemy and skewering them from shotguns, instead of searching for them for ten turns. I'd say don't bother.

14

The X-Com Files / Re: Randomized starting item: Early Gauss rifle

« on: July 01, 2024, 12:03:01 pm »

https://xcf.trigramreactor.net/master/article/STR_CHIEF_ACCOUNTANT_INTRODUCTION

I guess moneybag for free $500k is the best, cash-wise and overall. None of weapons are usable without ammo, but you may get ammo from e.g. osiron crate sometimes - I remember getting magneto-gun and using it at some point.
It's also instantly researchable, getting you Cool Gadget research (usually get this from psiclone). But mainly these are unusable and better sell them.
Alien Alloy Welder/Alien Multitool are hard to get and are possible roadblocks to getting Improved Lab later in the game, so are kinda cool.

15

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

« on: June 30, 2024, 08:35:59 am »

Well, browing tech three or wiki sounds like metagaming, which is a kind of cheating. Nuff said.

Buuut, I wouldn't recommend fully "blind" XCF experience to anyone. E.g. 1) History: Xenonauts -> Armored vest. Huh? I understand the shield, but the vest itself? 2) Eth commander.