Messages

1

The X-Com Files / Re: Some of your most Bizarre missions?

« on: November 30, 2023, 08:27:50 pm »

Recently I shot down such a cool UFO. Averages, spans, flyers. He flew out. There are 30 legionnaire flyers on the map around UFOs. I was lucky with the respawn. The iron fist rests against the upper edge of the map with a ramp. Well, like, keeping a low profile, let's shoot back. And you know what? I pass the turn, and the basketball begins in the hatch of the iron fist. 10-15 plasma grenades per turn were thrown and delivered. They even threw and blew up one dog a couple of times. By the way, in my memorial there are two extreme agents killed just from this mission. On the plates of the spans, the Aliens always have the fiercest weapons. Even two photon spears taked.

2

The X-Com Files / Re: Ok so ... How is superhuman to be played?

« on: November 28, 2023, 02:36:08 pm »

350 scientists?! In the early game? Are you serious?! 

Don't listen to stupid advice. I am already close to the final of the game, I have recently become 75+90+10+10 scientists. And even so, I use 90% of their resources to study all kinds of shit. And so by 1999 I had 35+25+10 scientists. And then the whole game 35+25+10+10 . And I didn't feel any discomfort. This is a lot to explore the key techs and engineers of the aliens. Even if you have 9999999 scientists, it will make little sense, because they will have to study poop 95% of their time. And there will be no stopper for progress, since in addition to science, you also need to conquer resources and train fighters. This is usually the anchor, not the science.

3

The X-Com Files / Re: Ok so ... How is superhuman to be played?

« on: November 28, 2023, 02:24:08 pm »

Regarding intercepting. You don't need to do any intercepting before 1999. By that time you should have at least researched RAVEN and THUNDERSTORM, even if you haven't wanted to use the alloys to build one. If you don't, you're way behind the curve. It sounds like you're research is lagging badly. Remember, you'll need to have multiple bases with science labs, intel, and bio labs (35 researchers each) within a year or so, and improved labs on multiple bases before 1999. So, your goal should be at least 150-200 scientists within 18 or 24 months.

These requirements are infinitely overstated. I didn't hit anyone until 2000. And then no one is stronger than small UFOs for another year. It's nothing at all. The same goes for scientists. Before 2001, I had 35+25+25 scientists. And they were more than enough. In the part that I lazily play at work, there are even fewer scientists there. You can comfortably play three bases with everything you need.

4

The X-Com Files / Re: Ok so ... How is superhuman to be played?

« on: November 28, 2023, 02:14:24 pm »

First of all I really need to say how much I love this mod! Such an awesome work - so much fun - so much appreciation! A friend and I are ... at least trying to ... play it on superhuman ironman. Sure, it is super hard - but that's what it's supposed to be. We do like competitions  Played all of the old stuff again and again on highest difficulty without allowing ourselfes to save / reload. We started this mod some times again until we said: OK, now we've got it - and brought it quite far I guess. We're just allowing ourselfes to check new mission types for the "idea" (just take 2-3 turns, copy back, than we go "live").

But at our current state it feels like we're maybe too late in the tech-tree (what I can't believe) or the game concept just ... is a bit lagging.

First of all we're facing many UFOs we don't have ANY chance to intercept with our helis and one Arrow. We just wait for them to land, start the mission and almost every time immediatelly take of, since our poor weapons too have NO chance against thoes ... one eyed dudes (don't get their name right now). It feels a bit desperate ... but yeah, aliens are attacking the earth! We will get better weapons, it might be desperate in the beginning ... so ... cool for me. Just not having any chance to intercept them is a bit hard (meaning too hard  )

Second problem are the Hybrid bases. Protected by UFOs we first need to trigger and flee. Still OK for me. But my main point of criticism is the base mission than. We are starting in the middle of many strongly armed soldiers. There is no chance AT ALL to even leave the starting point. Everywhere way too many opponents right next to us with full TU just waiting for a reaction shot. And even attacking them the next turn is suicide. We need our TUs for reaction shot. So the best is to just stay on the walls in the lading room, skipping turn by turn hoping every opponent gets killed by reaction not being able to shoot our soldiers. It actually works most of the time. But that really doesn't feel like gaming any more. Am I mistaken here? Are we maybe doing something completely wrong? If we were starting a bit offside we could capture rooms and have a nice fight with the Hybrids. But right now it just feels like a messy game design (so sorry for saying that!  ). And I really don't see any chance in leaving the room. Like ... totally no chance  :'(

I'm shocked. I'm playing at the difficulty level of superhuman ironman. Before that, I played on the veteran Ironman, and I successfully completed it without making a single download of the game. I play without perfectionism. There's nothing to shoot down UFOs with - I don't shoot them down. There's nothing to kill thick armored enemies with - I avoid them. Thus, I am already smoothly entering the late stage of the game. Now I have the best weapons and armor, but there is no avenger yet, and I have not yet caught the commander of the ethereal in order to move on to the final missions.

Why did I decide to write this? I was hurt by the complaint about the hybrid headquarters. This mission has always been perceived by me as one of the key ones for the transition from a beggarly state to a state where you stop counting money. It is very light even with armor and armament 2 promo. You just need to reenter a convenient resp, and shoot the maximum of the nearest enemies with a resp. It can take 50+ moves. But it's not scary.

Really difficult missions, this is the headquarters of a syndicate or an alien colony with a mixed composition. I passed the syndicate headquarters only on the third attempt (I lost 2 full aircrafts of veteran fighters), and only with the help of psi control. And I've been putting up with two mixed colonies for a year and a half in the game. Although I could beat them at the current level, I suspect that my losses will be unforgivable. Both colonies have the same composition: cry-mut-gaze-ethe-sectop + 1 alpha cryssalid.

And now I got spartanism, and the game turned into an easy walk. It's pointless to make things easier.

5

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.1: Lights in The Sky

« on: November 25, 2023, 09:42:04 pm »

Yes. The chance is so slow that sometimes this takes very long time (in my recent campaign, over 6 months) to get the reward. This seems a bit unfair, but it's up to SS to fix. It would be trivial to raise the odds to say, 50 or 70%.

Before that, I would remove the 40 od bonus for spartanism. This breaks the game very much.

Or change the penalty to psi strength. That would be more interesting.

6

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.1: Lights in The Sky

« on: November 25, 2023, 02:09:54 pm »

No, you always get spartanism from researching the parcel. You're confusing this with the monthly chance to receive the parcel after defeating the syndicate, which is 25 %:

  - type: STR_SYNDICATE_MYSTERIOUS_PARCEL
    eventWeights:
      0:
        STR_SYNDICATE_MYSTERIOUS_PARCEL: 100
    researchTriggers:
       STR_SYNDICATE_TESTAMENT_DECRYPTED: true
       STR_SYNDICATE_MYSTERIOUS_PARCEL_RECEIVED: false
    firstMonth: 0
    executionOdds: 25

....

 - name: STR_SYNDICATE_MYSTERIOUS_PARCEL
    cost: 3
    points: 3
    needItem: true
    destroyItem: true
    lookup: STR_SPARTANISM
    dependencies:
      - STR_SYNDICATE_TESTAMENT_DECRYPTED

This means that sooner or later, but the package with spartanism will be a reward for the defeated syndicate.

7

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.1: Lights in The Sky

« on: November 25, 2023, 12:39:37 pm »

Please explain. I defeated the syndicate, and I received a package with spartanism. I looked at the database a bit, and found that the chance of unpacking spartanism from the packege is 25%. Does this mean that I am very lucky, or am I wrong and spartanism is a guaranteed reward for defeating the syndicate?

8

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.1: Lights in The Sky

« on: November 19, 2023, 11:03:54 pm »

I got to the alien invasion on my 1st playthrough but took a break. I feel it was going quite well, I was able to get 2 interceptors available with railguns the day they invaded, and soon enough had 3 and that japanese alien ship. Starting getting some UFOs down but then stopped playing

But I feel I would like to start all over, this time trying to do ironman as best I can so I can feel more accomplishment now that I better understand the tech tree of getting to promotion III

Some questions:

1. What is the best way to avoid or survive the grenades on first 1-2 turns coming out of a ship? This is the main cause of reloads. It was depressing to have a first turn pass on the same old cult manor map , and have some kind of grenade kill your best troops. I was able to get better at surviving this by having good enough accuracy to kill most visible troops at first turn, but with leaving troop transports? What should be done? I did get a habit of throwing smoke but it sometimes is not enough

2. How do you aquire the railguns for your troops? I was lucky in my playthrough to aquire some type of research for it early so I had railgun cannons for my interceptors, but had no way to give them to my troops, not having aquired an actual troop style gun. Is it perhaps in the under ground missions? Or do only certain aliens have it? I just like the idea of them and would like to know where to find them in the first place. I had lasers and sonic weapons and had yet to find one

3. Is tonfer better than the starting beat stick?

4. Is it a bad idea to shoot down every small UFO? I read comments year ago on youtube that it is like hitting a hornet nest and best to leave most of them alone if score can manage this.

5. Is it really so bad to leave missions unattended if you don't need the people or the items in them anymore? As long as dont start going too low on score? youtube playthrough years ago, they had so many missions and so many UFOs that they ignored probably more than half of them, yet still won the game. I wonder if this is still viable? (They would sometimes land somewhere and immediently abandon for no negative score). I do know some missions start to really get annoying to do for the 20th time

6. If you shoot down a UFO and do not go there later, is this negative score? Is this worse than just leaving it alone for score? What is best practice for UFOS that you do not care too much about or perhaps that is too difficult at the moment

There are many ways to deploy relatively safely. My favorite is to send dogs to their deaths. I wouldn't be surprised if more than a thousand dogs died in my current passage on the Ironman superhuman.  But the death of the best agents is inevitable even so. As well as the imminent death of entire crafts with full squads and arsenals. Canceling or ignoring missions is not a problem, it's a necessity. There is no way without it. Often you have to balance on the verge of collapse, but cancel missions or ignore them. And the most important advice is to play without looking back at whether it was possible to go a better way. On Ironman, too much is decided by chance.

9

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.0: Beyond Human

« on: November 18, 2023, 06:31:27 pm »

For what it's worth, I'm kinda in the same spot here (SH). February 2000. I've researched everything, even the MIB commander. Essentially the only thing I need to progress to the endgame is Ethereal commander: because this is missing, I can't hijack MIB-Alien communications and can't get to the MIB lunar base and progress from there onwards. In this case, the chances of ethereal retaliation mission is (only) 33 %.

Some months there have been the ethereal retaliation mission, but most of the times they haven't found my bases. Arbiters seem so tough that I don't think you can shoot them down even if you deployed 4 tormentors (but I could be wrong, didn't test this). So shooting down the arbiter and getting the commander that way does not seem to be an option.

I've already dealt with one Ethereal retaliation against my base earlier, but trying to find the commander among all the ethereals was a pain (no visual clues - in contrast to most other alien commanders). And there were 20+ sectopods crammed in the hangars (essentially every hangar square was filled by a sectopod). If you need to capture the commander, you can't shoot shrapnel rockets and need to deal with them some other way. If I bothered to continue this campaign, I guess I'd have to try to kill them off with lasers the next time and not use explosives at all.

Maybe there should be other and/or more probable ways of obtaining Ethereal commander to progress to the lunar trail. I've already had two lunar missions (UAC base and MAGMA cosmonauts), so it shouldn't all that difficult to find the rest on the moon. Or just require any alien commander for this (preferable), so that you don't get locked out of the late game so easily.

The current requirements are somewhat strange in any case, because Cydonia or Bust requires any commander, Ethereal GM and Lunar colony. But you can't the latter two without ethereal commander in any case. So there is actually no point in obtaining and researching any non-ethereal commander, and you'd probably want to avoid that because doing so  triggers researchRetaliation (15 % per month).

Strangely, in my last playthrough, I didn't have any problems with capturing the Ethereal commander. I passed the company on medium difficulty on Ironman, and did not make a single download. Protecting the base is generally the easiest way to get any prisoner. I always do defensive construction by cutting off the hangars and elevator from the rest of the base with modules with surveillance cameras. I throw smoke into this module, and through the smoke, on a tip, I completely safely destroy all unnecessary enemies, leaving the prisoners I need alive. Thanks to such tactics, there is no difference which of the enemies is against you. But I always have several dozen dogs on any base for reconnaissance, and there are also enough agents to use all sorts of utensils like a brain probe.

10

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.1: Lights in The Sky

« on: November 15, 2023, 09:49:23 pm »

I have since then found out that plasma sniper rifle is the most reliable way of one-shotting mutons (far away). The downside is that it takes so big a chunk of TUs to fire (you can essentially never fire two shots), so if you're looking for total DPS, turbolaser sniper rifle provides the biggest punch. And I agree, gauss sniper rifles are also surprisingly good overall at the point you've obtained lots of power suits (with the same caveat as plasma sniper rifles: inefficient TU usage).

Also, to avoid most problems caused by mutons on open areas, I strongly suggest skipping turn 1 completely (except possibly throwing smoke) and deploying out only on the next turn. Like most aliens, mutons have aggression 2 so once they get the chance, they waste a lot of their TUs running around. So it makes sense skip the first turn crossfire with full TUs.

Now while I'm at, here's a huge tip (that I discovered myself only in this campaign) for those interested: Thanatonautian Manus is an extremely useful mid-game PSI weapon to take down armored enemies, especially heavy MIBs (always seems to one-shot them), but it also works on many others. With 90-100 PSK it is very accurate and makes tremendous amounts of damage with 0.1 armor effectiveness (with the only limitation being range 20). Felt almost cheesy using it.

This manus has an explosion radius.)) It can be guaranteed to kill sectopods with a single shot. We need to try it out)).

11

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.1: Lights in The Sky

« on: November 15, 2023, 08:16:08 pm »

I wonder, what are the best ways to deal with mutons in open areas?

They are very tanky (125+ health and 28+ armor), and have reasonable reactions and firing accuracy. Usually taking one down takes 2-3 hits which is liable to cause you casualties or at least serious wounds. If they weren't 60% resistant to KINETIC, bigger gauss weapons might do the trick, but I don't think any main gun is likely to one-shot them. And if you don't deal with all of them quickly, the snipers are likely to fire back or throw explosives.

Their major weakness appears to be a very low PSI strength, so inside confined areas I guess mind control or panic should wreck them. But this is not really an option in the open areas.

It's strange, but a Gauss sniper rifle, even with a coefficient of 60%, hits Mouton with one shot much more often than a turbo sniper rifle. What is even more paradoxical, the Gauss sniper on sectopods is also more effective than the turbo sniper rifle. This is according to my humble observations.

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

« on: October 20, 2023, 10:14:03 pm »

I found it rather surprising that battle axes are one handed - or at least they have no 1-handed penalty (like, for example, katanas have). The weapon looks rather big though. This makes the battle axe a very good weapon. You don't need to drop you main gun to improve accuracy. I wonder if this is an oversight.

And these axes chop down anything. Earth bloks, any walls, even the sky, even Allah. In our small x community, a bardish is something like a meme. In some missions, agents use these axes to cut tunnels. And in some, they pave the way directly through anything. It even becomes sad when in a late game these axes are changed to plasma knives.

13

The X-Com Files / Re: Tamed Minotaur

« on: October 20, 2023, 08:29:24 am »

Minotaur taming appears to be less useful than I had hoped. In base defense, they wake up from the corpses after turn 1. The "corpses" spawn in some random square with equipment. This is probably due to engine limitations on how it is achieved. This means that they have no useful equipment, and it is essentially impossible to find anything they could actually use (like an axe) from all the loot. Their weaponless attack is puny (about 50% chance). I suppose they could only work to some extent on bases which have very limited amount of loot or storage. Or for scouting. Or your agents will need to prepare by being equipped with a spare weapon that can be given to the minotaur(s) in later turns.

Wow!!! During the defense of the base, the corpses of the minotaurs remained lying dead. I was so hoping to use two minotaurs, but they didn't get up. Maybe I did something wrong?

14

The X-Com Files / Re: Tamed Minotaur

« on: October 20, 2023, 08:25:20 am »

Faced with the fact that he could not stun antman Queen using stan rods. Surrounded by a crowd, beat several turns. The fighters had
high melee accuracy. There were many sounds of an effective hit. But Antman Queen has never even turned gray colour from electro damage. This is strange, since usually a few effective stun rods hits were enough for him. A bad accident is also excluded, since the stun rods have a 50-150 spread.

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The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.1: Lights in The Sky

« on: September 15, 2023, 11:58:24 pm »

The question was how to deal with the demonic circle, not ghosts!

Wow. Is there still some kind of demonic circle with a trigger?