Re: The X-Com Files - 3.5: Whispers In The Dark

[Protagonista]

Well I just lost on 31 december 1999. Might as well upgrade to 1.5. Veteran HonestMan was too much It will be Begginer Savescummer from now on.

Here some stuff I learned: Dont sacrifice your agents trying to capture enemies alive.
Dont underestimate the range certain monsters can charge at you, all a monster needs to kill a rookie is just 1 attack usualy.
Wait for sunlight, no need for night missions.
You can abort missions with no penalty, do it if theres too many enemies.
Dont let Pink and Red zombies skeak up on you.
Black Lotus have enemies that WILL sneak up on you.
Look if an enemy is bleading by middle-mouse clickin on then, that means they will pass out in time.
Dart Rifles and its ammo takes forever to manufacture, but knockout granades are instant. Taser cannon sucks.
No need for workshops or engenieers for the first year and a half.
I only needed hazmat suits for a single mission in year 2.
Buy Blackops guns, no need to research other guns really, dont waste time reserching every firearm or meele you find.
Your dogs can kill humans from behind preaty easy.
Smoke granades are too unrealiable.

Is there no defense agains enemies tossing granades at your vehicle? Turn 1 all ememies have full TUs, so I get shot the moment my agents try to leave, but if I wait for turn 2, I can get everyone granaded.

sorry for the terrible english

[anothrgamer1234]

So, if you take too long to complete the Alien Hybrid arc, you could end up stuck with aliens embassies/special bases that cannot be attacked then? I'm still dealing with the cults right now, so I haven't dealt with Embassies yet.

You don't get the alien key (the one you decrypt yourself) from the hybrid arc at all. It's a reward from shooting down a specific type of rare UFO that only appears when an Embassy is present (the Envoy Ship) and then completing the crash recovery. That said, since you get only three decrypted keys in total (the one from the aliens, the Syndicate one, and the zombie one) you won't be able to do anything about embassies past the third one.

[Finnik]

Taser cannon sucks.

 

[Mathel]

Is there no defense agains enemies tossing granades at your vehicle? Turn 1 all ememies have full TUs, so I get shot the moment my agents try to leave, but if I wait for turn 2, I can get everyone granaded.

sorry for the terrible english

Three possible defences.

A) Shoot first. If you shoot them dead, they can't shoot back. Obviously, whoever shoots first has to be able to survive the reactions salvo.
B) Drop live smoke grenades on your feet. In theory, the enemies should be unable to target you.
C) Night missions. Humans can't see very well in the dark. But use flares, NOT flashlights. Flashlights show you, flares only activate after being thrown.
   
Note B and C only work against basic humans. Aliens and hybrids can see well in the dark and may be able to see through smoke.

[Solarius Scorch]

Hooray, new version. I will upgrade tomorrow.

Also, the Alien Key Decryption research last paragraph says:

"It is very likely that the aliens will change the encryption method if we attempt to storm it, even if we fail. And a successful assault will tell them how we got access to the underground facility, so this trick won't ever work again."

Does this really mean I can't destroy the second alien embassy? I just destroyed one in Australia and another one popped in Brazil. I even missed out on capturing those green ehtereals.

You can only get one alien key the normal way, but you can find more from special sources. I'm planning to rework it soon, but didn't want to deal with this before 1.5.

I was thinking about it when i saw in UFO pedia that these armours have camo-versions which look way cooler than the stock grey-ish XCOM color.
That being said, what i would like to see instead are colour/camo works for armours you have the longest in the game. Tritanium armour, Cyber armour, Power armour and the Juggernaut.
While Tritanium and Cyber armour looks badass enough. The Power armour could use a paint job so its not this grey-ish thing and the juggernaut armour so its not this ugly yellow plastic thing that looks like a toy.

But i guess such thing isnt important to do when compared to finishing other stuff like factions and their arcs...  But anyway, great work.

Honestly I don't know if filling the armour selection list with multiple variants of everything is a practical idea. I did it with the jumpsuit because I already had them coded in and didn't want to remove it.

Is there no defense agains enemies tossing granades at your vehicle? Turn 1 all ememies have full TUs, so I get shot the moment my agents try to leave, but if I wait for turn 2, I can get everyone granaded.

There is no fail-safe solution. It's a challenge every time. Mathel's suggestions are a good start.

[anothrgamer1234]

No need for workshops or engenieers for the first year and a half.
...
Smoke granades are too unrealiable.

No wonder you were struggling. You need workshops to make a lot of important stuff even before the aliens show up, and if you went that long without things like heavy tactical suits and healing gel then I can only assume you lasted so long because of sheer luck.

And smoke grenades are a lifesaver. They're unreliable only if you're using them wrong.

[tarkalak]

Well I just lost on 31 december 1999. Might as well upgrade to 1.5. Veteran HonestMan was too much It will be Begginer Savescummer from now on.

Here some stuff I learned: Dont sacrifice your agents trying to capture enemies alive.
Dont underestimate the range certain monsters can charge at you, all a monster needs to kill a rookie is just 1 attack usualy.

Yep.

Wait for sunlight, no need for night missions.

That applies for monsters and aliens. Against the human cults you are usually better off at night.

You can abort missions with no penalty, do it if theres too many enemies.
Dont let Pink and Red zombies skeak up on you.

Yep.

Black Lotus have enemies that WILL sneak up on you.

Use dogs for the motion detector if there is lots of cover (HQ) or scout tanks in the open. Scout tanks have 5 anticamo, which means that they see them 9 tiles away, rather than 4 for everyone else. Also at night, they are not harder to see, so no reason not to go at night to impede the rest of their team.

Look if an enemy is bleading by middle-mouse clickin on then, that means they will pass out in time.

Yep. Probably 5 turns later after shooting half your team and spotting for all the enemies. Finish him.

Dart Rifles and its ammo takes forever to manufacture, but knockout granades are instant. Taser cannon sucks.

Shhh, Solarius might make the grenades take longer to manufacture.
Taser cannon isn't bad, just unwieldy, I mostly used it on the Black Lotus Avatar, after having someone bring it from the transport.

No need for workshops or engenieers for the first year and a half.

Nope. You need them for the healing gel, knockout granades, etc.

I only needed hazmat suits for a single mission in year 2.
Buy Blackops guns, no need to research other guns really, dont waste time reserching every firearm or meele you find.

I disagree. Black ops stuff is either unique and good, or way too expensive replica of something that you already can buy. FN-FAL and G-11 are better that the black ops rifle. Also research of guns is fast and gives you points.

Your dogs can kill humans from behind preaty easy.

Yep.

Smoke granades are too unrealiable.

Depends. There are two things to take into account:
1. Some enemies can see through smoke with thermal vision. That is mostly aliens.
2. When you hit, but not kill, someone, he spots your agent. If he is a spotter, every sniper on the enemy team will see you and return fire.

Is there no defense agains enemies tossing granades at your vehicle? Turn 1 all ememies have full TUs, so I get shot the moment my agents try to leave, but if I wait for turn 2, I can get everyone granaded.

Dispersal, smoke, night combat. I.e. what Mathal said. There won't be any challenge if they didn't have grenades.

sorry for the terrible english

Heh, I could only answer in kind.

[Mrvex]

Now i know what "Visual damage indicator" means and good lord it is  a feature i never knew i wanted.

Now i know if i am damaging the target or not... or if my troops will get wounds when the ayy turn ends.

[The_Shaikan]

So I have been enjoying a long campaign so far in 1.5 but I feel like I found a recursive tech dependency and wanted to ask if I am misunderstanding something.
The invasion of 99 is well underway and I am holding on but I am now stuck fighting tiny ships and hiding from anything above small because I can't research further.

Optronics requires Alien Optical Processor
Alien Optical Processor depends on UFO Navigation, Alien Electronics and Alien Multitool
UFO Navigation depends on Alien Power Systems and Optronics.

So in order to progress in the tech tree, I need to research things I need to have already researched in order to research them. 

[Mrvex]

So I have been enjoying a long campaign so far in 1.5 but I feel like I found a recursive tech dependency and wanted to ask if I am misunderstanding something.
The invasion of 99 is well underway and I am holding on but I am now stuck fighting tiny ships and hiding from anything above small because I can't research further.

Optronics requires Alien Optical Processor
Alien Optical Processor depends on UFO Navigation, Alien Electronics and Alien Multitool
UFO Navigation depends on Alien Power Systems and Optronics.

So in order to progress in the tech tree, I need to research things I need to have already researched in order to research them. 

Most tech comes from RNG rullete from engineer and commanders/leader integoriation. Pretty much majority of the best gear comes from them so keep capturing commanders and engineers and make them talk. Make sure to expend trashy RNG reward like ship types with navigators first before wasting engineers and commanders because they can roll for it too and its quite enraging that you got "Small scout" info when you could have rolled for Anti-matter contaiment...

So get a mind probe to one of your guys and check who is who because the most common alien (Sectoid) is identical to each other before you capture them.

[Solarius Scorch]

Good catch on the circular dependency thing. I really should have been more careful. Fix is on the way.

[tarkalak]

Now i know what "Visual damage indicator" means and good lord it is  a feature i never knew i wanted.

Now i know if i am damaging the target or not... or if my troops will get wounds when the ayy turn ends.

And the natural question, can it be disabled?
I didn't see an option in the Options menu, but I do miss stuff that is under my nose all the time.

[Solarius Scorch]

And the natural question, can it be disabled?
I didn't see an option in the Options menu, but I do miss stuff that is under my nose all the time.

You can just delete HitFX-basic.rul to disable the indicator.

[Mathel]

About the optronics...

I researched them, as I upgraded a running campaign, so I already had the dependancies.
But how do I get them? I need a unit for every power suit now, and they do not seem to drop from UFOs.

Edit: Sorry, found it. Manufacture->Components->Alien Navigation disassembly gives 7 Optronic parts from 1 navigation

[xcomfan]

Version 1.5 has been released.

- 1.5:
[...]
- Added handobs for Small Shotgun, AKSU-74, AKM and Shogg Hammer.

Thank God! Finally that startin small shotgun...Hurra!

Oh, and before updating, sell all your AKM, AK47, AKSU and Groza clips, or you'll lose them.

..why?