Author Topic: [LP]Hardmode Expansion - Glory or death! (Likely much of both)  (Read 116805 times)

Offline hellrazor

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Re: [LP]Hardmode Expansion - Glory or death! (Likely much of both)
« Reply #165 on: October 31, 2016, 10:14:04 am »
Its nice to see you starting to use HEs, how ironic my guy equipped with them. It was a bit disappointing that I was overlooked for the promotion to Captain after I saved the day against that Chryssalid.

...anyways looking forward to you base raid (Alien bases tend to be LOL a lot of the time). :D

Jeah i am also looking forward to it, since he now has better equipment, better teamplay between his soldiers and experience in screwing up :P

Offline Lion66six

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Re: [LP]Hardmode Expansion - Glory or death! (Likely much of both)
« Reply #166 on: October 31, 2016, 11:39:10 am »
Jeah i am also looking forward to it, since he now has better equipment, better teamplay between his soldiers and experience in screwing up :P

Haha thanks mate :-)

Always good when you have people supporting you :-)

Very experienced at the last bit. Anyway, who wants the next episode? Only 13 views of episode 27 :(

Offline hellrazor

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Re: [LP]Hardmode Expansion - Glory or death! (Likely much of both)
« Reply #167 on: October 31, 2016, 01:36:42 pm »
Haha thanks mate :-)

Always good when you have people supporting you :-)

Very experienced at the last bit. Anyway, who wants the next episode? Only 13 views of episode 27 :(

How to improve your LP'ing:
 - Read out the research Topic (the UFOpaedia screens)
 - Proper Intro/Outro
 - Swearing :D

Watching a LP takes time, also it helps to set the right tags on the videos. So they are included to other videos over openxcom.

For the Screwups you so far had you are doing okish.
Get Lasers before June or you will really be in trouble!
But you already are Your next Terror Mission will probably a Snakemen one and you know what that means rights?
It would be a good idea to grab some incendiary grenades for blocking doorsways, pathways and such.

Offline Lion66six

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Re: [LP]Hardmode Expansion - Glory or death! (Likely much of both)
« Reply #168 on: November 03, 2016, 10:22:29 pm »
Right, next episode is up:

Please find it right here.

[LP]Hardmode Expansion [EP28] - Smack that base again - https://youtu.be/yCtsDPcyuNc

I'm sure much discussion will be had on this one after its been watched. Its a good one!

Offline ohartenstein23

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Re: [LP]Hardmode Expansion - Glory or death! (Likely much of both)
« Reply #169 on: November 04, 2016, 05:01:16 am »
Oh man, what a rollercoaster of a base assault.  Establishing a great beachhead with rockets and proximity grenades, pushing out to eliminate resistance only to be slowly picked off, and then the desperate retreat.  Damn that was rough.

Alright, the tactical advice:
  • Keep on using all the explosives, you've got a good thing going there
  • Never right on a corner.  Never stand right there. Always at least one tile away
  • You have all the men at the beginning, don't split them off to go one by one into the embrace of oblivion, or even two by two.  You might be outnumbered over the whole base, but make your corner stacked in your favor
  • Lights! The base counts as night work, so you need fire or flares for those darkened hallways
  • At this point, you might as well just send groups of rookies with rockets and see who survives, rather than chewing through your talent

Offline Zyzyfer

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Re: [LP]Hardmode Expansion - Glory or death! (Likely much of both)
« Reply #170 on: November 05, 2016, 10:50:57 am »
LOL!!! Well as I said alien base raids are always LOL.  But was exiting episode nevertheless.

To add to what was already said:

1. Teamwork- stick together as already said- linking up the two x-com groups should be your first priority.

2. You should get in the habit of finishing your turn with any trooper on the front in smoke cover (this means all troopers excluding perhaps the sniper(s) and launcher/heavies should have minimum- one-to-two smoke grenade in his inventory). Too many times you end your turn with guys totally exposed & at times from multiple directions.

3. Vanilla its 20 turns (but your mod might be different), before aliens know your position. Albeit from my assaults on large ufos- whereby I tend to wait outside till most of the aliens come out after turn 20, i still get aliens not shooting when smoke between trooper and alien (albeit i might have to test this more but still good idea to get into habit of not leaving any trooper on front without smoke cover).

4. Never stand in front of elevators/lifts (even more when not under smoke protection- but just don't do it period), elevators are good locations for proximity grenades/HEs (you might want to prime your HEs to explode on turn 1 (instead of turn 0 ),  throw HEs then hide behind corner wait till alien turn, once the HE explodes rinse-repeat this way you can cover the lift indefinitely/until you run out of HEs- or just use prox grenades.

5. Don't rely on reaction fire- if you moved your guy- you can be he/she wont react (if he has poor reaction stats under 50 then forget about it). So really no point in leaving just enough time units for x1 snap shot in the hope of reaction fire because 99 out of 100 when that alien comes through your trooper's gonna get shot at first- albeit thing start turning to your favour somewhat once your reaction stats hit 100+.


Offline Lion66six

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Re: [LP]Hardmode Expansion - Glory or death! (Likely much of both)
« Reply #171 on: November 06, 2016, 11:27:40 pm »
Thanks all for the comments. I'm starting to wonder if I can actually get this base, if it was even possible for me to get it.

With that in mind, i would like to set a challenge.

If anyone can beat that base using the men available from this saved game, then I will donate £20 to the openxcom fund.

Saved Game Link : https://pastebin.com/XpTb9vtE

Rules:
1) It has to be the next mission, no playing for another month and then going for it with better men.
2) It has to be recorded and uploaded to youtube. No breaks or splits etc during the mission. No save scrumming etc.
3) Hellrazor can't do it, since he is the beast at this mod. Or if he does, thats cool but won't trigger the donation.

This gives me a few things. A better understanding of how I could beat this base. The confidence to continue this lets play. Hellrazor some balancing consideration. As I see it at the moment, you have around 10 turns to kill all aliens before you get wiped out. Its turn 7 or 8 they became aware of where all my men where located, and started hammering me. Then downhill from there really!

Let me know if anyone accepts this challenge!

Offline hellrazor

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Re: [LP]Hardmode Expansion - Glory or death! (Likely much of both)
« Reply #172 on: November 07, 2016, 01:13:24 am »
Thanks all for the comments. I'm starting to wonder if I can actually get this base, if it was even possible for me to get it.

It is totally doable. You need to be aggressive, the more enemies you kill, the faster they panic.

With that in mind, i would like to set a challenge.

If anyone can beat that base using the men available from this saved game, then I will donate £20 to the openxcom fund.

Saved Game Link : https://pastebin.com/XpTb9vtE

Rules:
1) It has to be the next mission, no playing for another month and then going for it with better men.
2) It has to be recorded and uploaded to youtube. No breaks or splits etc during the mission. No save scrumming etc.
3) Hellrazor can't do it, since he is the beast at this mod. Or if he does, thats cool but won't trigger the donation.

I could do that, but i just moved into my new apartment yesterday, still lacking proper internet and here are a lot of things todo. as you surely understand.

This gives me a few things. A better understanding of how I could beat this base. The confidence to continue this lets play. Hellrazor some balancing consideration. As I see it at the moment, you have around 10 turns to kill all aliens before you get wiped out. Its turn 7 or 8 they became aware of where all my men where located, and started hammering me. Then downhill from there really!

Let me know if anyone accepts this challenge!

I changed the cheatTurn for alien bases to 7 from 20. Cydonia is even funnier, since there cheatTurn is 0.
There have already been a lot of tips given to you, especially leaving your men exposed/visible to the enemy.
Loosing a couple of men isn't that big of a issue. You can always recover from that.

In close quarters rifles, shotguns supported be heavy canons or Autocannons are very good.
Reapers can be taken out by 3 shotgun shots with alloy ammo max, or 2 or 3 auto fires from rifles.
or proximity mines, incendiary grenades can safely blocks path for up to 2 turns. I wouldn't bother that much with explosives, like normal grenades or high explosives, your throwing is range is limited indoors anyway.

A good tactic, for example is to have firelines for your rocketeers, thats even possible in alien bases.
Your troop movements needs to be organic, X-com is like chess. At least i see it that way.
It is not only important how you move your troops in the current turn, but also what kind of option they will have in the next turn.

Why not wait a turn before storming a room until soldier 2 or 3 has arrived?
Pop into the room together, secure unmanned paths with proxies. Grenade relay helps a lot with that, but you are using instant grenades.

You also have motions scanners, you can gather a lot of information with 2 correctly positioned motion scans at the beginning of turn. knowing a reaper/cyberdisc approach is useful.

I might consider changing the cheatturn setting in the future, if people find it really to unbearable. On the other side its "Hardmode" for a reason :)
« Last Edit: November 07, 2016, 01:17:34 am by hellrazor »

Offline Lion66six

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Re: [LP]Hardmode Expansion - Glory or death! (Likely much of both)
« Reply #173 on: November 12, 2016, 04:14:40 pm »
So anyone else other than Hellrazor taking up the challenge?

Offline Meridian

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Re: [LP]Hardmode Expansion - Glory or death! (Likely much of both)
« Reply #174 on: November 12, 2016, 04:22:10 pm »
So anyone else other than Hellrazor taking up the challenge?

I would, but I really can't at the moment. Maybe in 3-4 weeks.

Offline Lion66six

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Re: [LP]Hardmode Expansion - Glory or death! (Likely much of both)
« Reply #175 on: November 12, 2016, 04:23:18 pm »
I would, but I really can't at the moment. Maybe in 3-4 weeks.

No worries :-)

Offline Drasnighta

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Re: [LP]Hardmode Expansion - Glory or death! (Likely much of both)
« Reply #176 on: November 13, 2016, 12:20:01 am »
I have no ability to record/upload to YouTube to verify, unfortunately... 

But with long nights with my toddler not sleeping, I've been playing it off and on...

...  I did managed to do it (3 survivors)...  But I doubt you'd be much comforted by the 18 failures that took on the way...  >.>

Offline hellrazor

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Re: [LP]Hardmode Expansion - Glory or death! (Likely much of both)
« Reply #177 on: November 13, 2016, 01:27:24 am »
Would anyone mind if i switched some equipment around for my try?
Mainly switching in some Rifles and Autocannons...

Offline Dioxine

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Re: [LP]Hardmode Expansion - Glory or death! (Likely much of both)
« Reply #178 on: November 13, 2016, 08:59:35 am »
I'll give it a shot. Won't record it, just for the hell of it - the supposedly "unbeatable" mission got my interest. It's Alien Base 2, right? I messed a bit with loadout, but only used what was already on the Skyranger (dropped some useless rifles in favour of OP shotguns). We'll see how it goes :)

EDIT: What a mission! In short, I failed. Got some turn 1-3 setbacks (Just 3 guys spawning on the second elevator - and thus getting wiped, Kjotleik first; Warboy mis-throwing a grenade and killing 2 guys), then it was a slow, slow grind, killed 23 enemies, it was going OK till like turn 16, when my numbers dwindled below 8 and I couldn't operate two squads to full capacity. The biggest problem was the lack of flares onboard, which meant a lot of cheap shots from the dark (I lost at least 6 people to that).

I cleared about half of the map. Secured extreme corners with my 2 thin 3-men squads, but had no one left to cover the middle (than unfortunate spawn of 3 men separated + warboy killing Niculinux and Riemaia). That wasn't the biggest problem - once I was down to 3, it's only a matter of a single mistake. Meridian, Lion and Max Damage fought well in the NE corner, with HC, shotgun and launcher. They died about turn 20, after Lion mishandled a security tower. Then Max died, but took assailant with him - had a primed HE charge. Meridian launchered another from point blank and was killed last, when trying to run. Lion avenged his death few turns later, when yet another Floater triggered his proxy trap.

About the same time the second group lost SupSuper to a Cyberdisc and was down to Warboy, Ivan and Maltloaf. They fought on for several turns more, before being blastered all at once.

Highlights included Ivan tanking a Cyberdisc salvo and Warboy dodging another from point-blank. But Ivan earlier face-tanked a Reaper attack :) And of course a ton of good work killing aliens, but that's rarely remembered :)

About enemies, yeah, Cyberediscs have a ton of HP and furry friends are reeel fast; but handling both is a matter of a proper formation. Also the aliens all have insane Reactions, never once did my soldiers react, even with half their TUs. But that's just Hardmode lore you need to learn before adjusting tactics. Out of 14, 1 dead from reaper, 1 from cyberdisc, 2 from Warboy, 3 from BLaster, 6 shots from the dark and one from a Floater actually outplaying me.

About weapons, autocannons, that I didn't have, maybe? Tons of raw damage, but I didn't need that kind of firepower. The one HC I had was pretty solid, the shotguns were great and the main weapon I used were grenades - Alien and proxies (no instant grenade bullshit ofc). Rocket launchers were quite useful, especially dispatching furry friends and clearing rooms; the fact that they're too weak to one-shot Cyberdiscs limits their usefulness. Rifles were completely useless, but it is to be expected when fighting in close quarters; I could use powerful SMGs instead. Autocannons would also be great if they had buckshot shells.

Armor is a joke, but at least it doesn't incur much penalties, so I guess it's fine.

Big problem was severe lack of trained personnel. Except for Warboy and Meridian, most of these men shouldn't be sent into a combat zone, much less on such a tough mission. Suprisingly lack of medkits wasn't an issue (only 3 wounded: Warboy, Meridian and Ivan, and only Ivan from enemy fire).

Oh yeah and it was my first time ever playing Hardmode :)
« Last Edit: November 13, 2016, 11:10:40 am by Dioxine »

Offline Lion66six

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Re: [LP]Hardmode Expansion - Glory or death! (Likely much of both)
« Reply #179 on: November 13, 2016, 12:51:54 pm »
Would anyone mind if i switched some equipment around for my try?
Mainly switching in some Rifles and Autocannons...

Of course, go for it!