[TFTD] South Pacific = Auto-Loss

[new_civilian]

After trying several times in a row to win a game with a starting base in the SouthPacific  I give up. You simply can not do anything there, I had 4 months with not one USO. North pacific? Fine. Atlantic? Fine. Mediterrenean? Very fine. South Pacific? Forget it.

Not sure what can be done about that as the area sems to be simply lacking enought points-of-interest for the aliens. Sooner or later in an otherwise flawless campaign you will run into a lack of resourses/research/rating points and the game is over.

Any thoughts?

[ivandogovich]

Are you using the Charts to patrol? 

Meridian played a similar game in his Super Human Hawaii Challenge with vanilla OpenXcom, and that is how he was able to find enough targets.

[Arthanor]

Yup, Meridian's LP would be a great source of inspiration.

Also, TftD regions are weird, you should look up the region maps. I know I once started a base in the Gulf of Mexico, which somehow is in the south Atlantic despite being well north of the equator. That meant the USOs went off way far away from my base (between Brazil and Africa, where the real South Atlantic is) and I never saw them. In general, building your starting base at the edge of a region is really bad as most activity is in the middle of it and you'll miss it.

[Starving Poet]

I don't know - I had a rough start in my current campaign in the East Sea - I saw a couple USOs, but I was literally unable to catch a single one.  I did most of my early game research via loot from terror missions.

Just so you know I'm not exagerating in terms of my barracudas inability to shoot anything down I'm now in November and have 30 total crash sites vs 120 landed ufos.

i don't want this to come off as advertising, but check out the first couple videos in this playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnh8c5HMxAXtyX6cQhJw8CQ907wJcMhwF

As far as points - one successful terror mission is more than enough points to get you through the month.

[yrizoud]

You have to *really* check the graphs, ie. at least 20 times per game day. Set speed to 30 minutes, and keep pressing G to open and close the window repeatedly. Keep your eyes on the lines, as soon as one raises, it means a UFO is active in a zone - take off immediately.

Heck, even in vanilla I did it. TFTD had a buggy button area in the menu, there's a spot where you could click to open the graphs and click to close. Click click click click click click.

[Solarius Scorch]

You have to *really* check the graphs, ie. at least 20 times per game day.

[BBHood217]

I have absolutely no idea what that meme means anymore.  Maybe that's why nobody uses it anymore.

[Solarius Scorch]

I have absolutely no idea what that meme means anymore.  Maybe that's why nobody uses it anymore.

It means "Fuck it, I'm outta here". Actually I thought this meme was the one of the last with non-ambiguous meaning, but apparently I was wrong.

Anyway, what's the point checking the graphs so often? It's not like you can react fast enough. Or maybe you can?

[ivandogovich]

Yeah, you often can.  Even if you miss the uso triggering it, subsequent ships in the wave maybe spotted in the recon patrols you can send there.

[Arthanor]

There's only so many alien missions active in a month and missions are tied to a region. Once you know in which region the missions are, you know where to patrol to get the USOs of that mission. Even if you don't catch the initial one which triggered the graph bump that informed you, you can catch the following ones.

But that's behavior informed by knowing game mechanics. With mission scripts, modern can have 16 missions going on at a given time and really mess with that foreknowledge.

[yrizoud]

Anyway, what's the point checking the graphs so often? It's not like you can react fast enough. Or maybe you can?

Detecting a ship 'as soon as possible' gives you a head start, it gives your slow transport a chance to catch a landed ship before it takes off, or before nightfall.

[Hobbes]

But that's behavior informed by knowing game mechanics. With mission scripts, modern can have 16 missions going on at a given time and really mess with that foreknowledge.

If there are 16 missions going on at a given time then you won't need graphs to encounter UFOs