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Topics - Mattdo

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XPiratez / I finished!
« on: June 05, 2016, 02:35:38 pm »
Whoo! Finally!

Some stats:
According to my memorial, I had 144 non-auxiliary deaths. Which is about the same as the number of kills my best units had.
Time taken: let's see, I started playing in early April I think? (I lost fairly quickly the first time I played, but restarted.) Call it two months and an average of, say, three hours a day... Maybe 180 hours?

Favorite weapons:
Battle Rifle with Plastasteel bullets (until I got better stuff, my standard weapon of choice, accurate at range and damaging enough to take down non-power-armored foes.)
Spiked Mace (for enemies with tougher armor)
Electro-Whip
Vulcan RFG
Tornado Mortar
Plasma Destroyer
Heavy Plasma gun (I was surprised to find this can be used one-handed...)
Heavy Plasma Pistol
Mono-claws
Flechette Multicannon
BFG

Final mission report:
Spoiler:
The last battle was actually pretty exciting. It was going pretty smoothly, until I spotted the goal, and sent as many of my units as I could down the corridor towards it. At that point, despite me using a team consisting entirely of gals with high voodoo strength, I nevertheless suffered five mind-controlled in one turn. This was followed by some very nasty explosions and deaths, inflicted by one another. I was left with enough of a team to try to enter the final room after that, but one of the entrances was blocked by an invisible enemy standing vertically above me, and the other by a mind-controlled ally in an Annihilator suit, a veteran of countless battles. I gritted my teeth and moved one of my remaining warriors up behind her, and auto-fired into her back with a heavy plasma gun, killing her and clearing the way. (I didn't bring any Stun weapons to this battle - I hadn't intended on taking any prisoners.) This created an opening for an injured gal in a Superhero suit to move up and attack. There was a Star God in her way, so she moved around it, only to spot another one, and another. Finally, with two stamina left, she had a clear shot, and fired her Big Fraggin' Gun at the target, ending the battle.

Most heroic character not on final mission:
The interestingly-named Pussy Shiva. Normally it was her job to stay in one place and fire the mortar. This caused her to score a lot of kills and raise her accuracy sky high before I had training facilities. When a pogrom went very bad, she picked up a battle rifle and went out alone to finish the job. She picked off around five enemies: one shot, one kill - and saved the lives of a bunch of unconscious gals. Later I found she had low Voodoo strength; ultimately she was retired to base-defense duty.

Amount of save-scumming: Varied. After that battle, things were so grim it stopped being fun, and I started undoing some of my mistakes to get things back in balance. Later I developed some rules: I'm allowed to reload if the wonky ship damage readout causes me to lose a battle. I'm allowed to reload if one of my supposedly one-hundred-percent-accurate area-effect weapons inexplicably blows up my own team.

Amount of hacking: Some, mainly to allow me to meet a Star God Coordinator. I really think the mission generation system needs significant improvement. My save file had this in it (except when I modded it temporarily to "race: STR_ETHEREAL" so I could actually finish the game):
  - nextWave: 1
    type: STR_MISSION_SWAY_GOVT
    region: STR_AUSTRALASIA
    race: STR_FLOATER
    missionSiteZone: -1
    nextUfoCounter: 0
    liveUfos: 0
    uniqueID: 37
    spawnCountdown: 33180
  - region: STR_AUSTRALASIA
    race: STR_SECTOID_NONCOM
    type: STR_MISSION_SWAY_GOVT
    nextWave: 4
    missionSiteZone: -1
    liveUfos: 1
    nextUfoCounter: 0
    uniqueID: 56
    spawnCountdown: 90
This caused me to experience a never-ending flow of idiot enemies constantly sending fleets of ships to sway the government of Australia even though it had turned against me long ago. Maybe someone could code up something like:
region: STR_RANDOM
race: STR_RANDOM
to keep the game varied?

Thank you for this engrossing mod. Now I am going to never play it again so I can get my life back.

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XPiratez / Things I wish I'd known earlier
« on: June 05, 2016, 01:37:57 pm »
Some of these depend on game settings.
Add your own below, or correct me if I've got any wrong.


You can Control-click on an object to drop it from the inventory screen.

You can Control-click when moving to sprint.

You can Control-click when firing to try to shoot through walls.

You can hold down Alt to reveal the location of enemies your characters have spotted if that part of the map isn't revealed.

Grenades won't explode in your hand if the time runs out.

You can throw things further indoors if you're crouching.

Enemies have all their time-units reserved for reaction fire on the first turn of battle, making popping your head out dangerous. Wait, or use lots of smoke (not that I ever did) or send an expendable scout out first to draw their fire.

Reaction fire only works via snap shot attacks - auto-fire-only weapons are useless.

If you fire even a single bullet, you will always lose the entire clip after a battle, unless Statistical Bullet Saving is enabled in the menu.

Some creatures are near-immune, or completely immune, to Stun damage - though you can still capture them in other ways (like if you have a weapon which inflicts another type of damage plus bonus stun damage).

'Invisibility' just means you can only see the target on the diagonal.

Make sure you have some explosive weapons for tough enemies - someone on the roof of your ship with a Mortar can destroy tanks from long range without even needing to see them.

Doubling the number of Brainers on a research project doesn't double the speed - it's more efficient to split them up across multiple projects.

Early research projects with unpromising names like 'Flintlocks & Bombs' are essential pre-requisites - these are more important than, say, researching the same type of prisoner multiple times.

'Superhero' allies may not seem very good, but they're worth testing to destruction.

You can't have too many Damaged Grav Units or Power Armor Parts. If you can get those by robbing a prisoner, that's more useful than ransoming them. On the other hand, plasma weapons take such a long time to learn to use, you can just sell off the ones you find early on; there will be plenty more later.

Make sure you understand the difference between the vessel weapon slots. Early on, the Seagull launcher is available, but horribly expensive. Heavy weapons are generally pretty great, but most fast interceptors can't use them.

The minimize button in the top left of the ship-to-ship combat window causes time to continue passing, allowing you to attack a single foe with up to four ships.

Just because you shoot down a ship, it doesn't mean you have to assault it. There's no shortage of potential targets, and you get better loot attacking intact ships that have landed on their own.

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XPiratez / Finding Star Gods
« on: May 30, 2016, 01:48:49 pm »
Where do I find a Star God Coordinator? I've shot down a Star God Battleship, Corvette and Cruiser without finding one. I've found one Star God Operative. (I don't seem to be able to research him... bug?)

I'm willing to hack the save game file if that's what it takes. I'm ready for the game to be over now. I have over a hundred million in the bank and I've run out of other stuff to do.

4
XPiratez / Line of sight oddity to watch out for
« on: May 28, 2016, 01:52:28 pm »
1 Arrived in a previously unexplored leg of a cruiser... Seems to be clear...

2 Well, I still have a few turn units left...

3 I think I'll move around to the far side of the glowing thingy to take cover in case anyone follows me down...

4 Aah! Where did you come from? How come I could see the floor you were standing on through the glowing thingy, but couldn't see you?

(The part of 'my favorite scout who would have been brutally murdered' was played by 'expendable mind-controlled minion'. We thank him for his assistance, and for the synthmuscle mesh we were able to retrieve from his body.)

5
XPiratez / Capturing Armored Beastmaster
« on: May 06, 2016, 03:01:32 pm »
Is there anything widely available that can stun a beastmaster without destroying her suit first? Stun weapons seems to damage the suit. Choking damage seems completely ineffective. Even the psychic attacks I've tried haven't helped.

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