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

[DeltaEpsilon]

1998 arrived and I jist got science lab, but no osprey yet.

A manor appeared , but it seems difficult go get close and I hear they are difficult

Shpuld I ignore it until osprey ?

Depends on which manor it is and how good your soldiers are. A manor is doable with even 6 good soldiers and proper armor, if you can take out the terrorists. Additionally, it also completely depends on which map you roll. There is one that makes a manor very easy and one very annoying one.

You should not enter the manor itself, just stay outside and do reaction traps. Do be aware that starting from second tier you may also get elite soldiers spawning in. The danger with them is that they like to spawn very close to you with no easy way to react to them.

[Fiskun1]

When you have several missions on the Globe screen at the same time, it is very inconvenient to navigate in them ...
It would probably be a good idea for the screen to be centered on the point with this mission after clicking on the mission line.

[tris85]

Lately I've noticed that holdingt Alt-Key shows an arrow above the head of my agents (their view direction). In combi ation with dog's scout (e.g. for Ninjas) I can see the arrow on the position where the enemy is (without actually seeing him). Sure I could and sometimes did count the fields. But that makes it so much easier... Still it sometimes feels a bit abusing. So long story short: is this an expected behavior? Or am I abusing a mechanic not intendet for this - or maybe even just a bug?

[Juku121]

You can right-click to center on a mission marker. The game auto-centering would be annoying, IMO.


ALT highlighting enemy positions is a feature, even and especially for Motion-Scannered fellows (although their Z-position should remain unclear).

[tris85]

Ah, cool! Ok! Did not notice the unclear Z-axis yet, but thats fair! Thank you for your information! Was afraid I could maybe unbalance the game using this mechanic.

[Fiskun1]

You can right-click to center on a mission marker. The game auto-centering would be annoying, IMO.

Thanks for another valuable tip! Now it's much more convenient.

[theophilos]

Depends on which manor it is and how good your soldiers are. A manor is doable with even 6 good soldiers and proper armor, if you can take out the terrorists. Additionally, it also completely depends on which map you roll. There is one that makes a manor very easy and one very annoying one.

You should not enter the manor itself, just stay outside and do reaction traps. Do be aware that starting from second tier you may also get elite soldiers spawning in. The danger with them is that they like to spawn very close to you with no easy way to react to them.

How do I get to the manor at all? I seem to get intercepted some way, although I am new to air combat in xcom in general. I sent an empty helicopter to it just to see what would happen

Do the extra troops spawn at a side of map or do they just spawn, right next to you? I do have good troops to send at least

[DeltaEpsilon]

How do I get to the manor at all? I seem to get intercepted some way, although I am new to air combat in xcom in general. I sent an empty helicopter to it just to see what would happen

Do the extra troops spawn at a side of map or do they just spawn, right next to you? I do have good troops to send at least

It's an alien base. You need to discover it. Find where the enemy craft spawns in and check if there is a city close to it. Send a car or something to the city and just patrol there for a couple seconds, you'll find the manor.

[Juku121]

If the question was how to get through the air defences... You can either kill the defenders (but it's a crapshoot until you get proper aircraft yourself; still, even a minigunned-up Little Bird can score against a MiG sometimes), bait them away with a sacrificial or just fast decoy, or merely wait until they either drift off or despawn. New air defences take a while to respawn (a week or so?).


The reinforcements spawn at the map edges (or close-ish) away from your starting edge. Do note that this means they can spawn in a corner adjacent to your starting edge, so that might not be as far as you think. Otherwise, they do keep some distance from your agents (at least 10 tiles or so).

But in the end, they still spawn in with full TU, so if your people are close to their spawn area and/or within their newly established line of fire, that's still a bad turn waiting to happen. Tier 3 manors have several waves of reinforcements, which is why they're extra bad.

[tris85]

New air defences take a while to respawn (a week or so?).

Hey, question concerning this: does intercepting air defences increase month rating?

[Juku121]

I don't see why not, these are technically UFOs and have score entries. Can't test in-game ATM.

Now that I look at them, it seems UFOs proper have had their scores halved compared to vanilla, for some reason.


Note that once you get interceptors that can reliably take down cultist craft, you can use these to train pilot stats. Even going as far as having four craft gang up on one enemy so everyone can get XP.

[tris85]

In my last savegame with the latest 2.x version I researched some body mod where I could send my Agents to hospital a few days and they received some hp and strength. Was this removed or what am I missing? Dont remember the name so I cant look it up in the wiki and dont want to spoiler myself too much so I dont want to search for it. But could really need it right now

[Juku121]

Well, I can reassure you that no transformation has been removed at least since 2.5.

If you're thinking about what I think you're thinking about , you likely haven't either researched the right things, or have just missed looting a certain... substance. Or maybe sold it.

[theophilos]

Hello lo wo refuge popped up, but I still only have tasers and the starter electric stick 😂 (any shotgun with Stun ammo is my main method of stunning but hard to hit ninjas)

Should I bother trying to capture him? It appears the mission will never come again if I don't go there

My plan if not to capture him is to just throw fire everywhere, because I also lack motion scanners to find ninjas , and to jist kill him but I worry about the fire destroying the objects he might have?

To get a ninja I flash-banged him then piled with sticks , but I doubt I will survive doing that here

[theophilos]

Do people actually use dragonfly?

Why use it over osprey, just because it 1k more miles?

Also I am a fool. I got a deep one corpse by chance very early in gane by random event. I did autopsy but never bothered with alien biology. Lo and behold early 1998 military shot down ufo and I got almost all of then stunned. If only I had researched alien containment! Didn't expect to see a ufo before 1999