I just finished watching Meridian's TWoTS LP. The mod seemed interesting and likely I'll try it out. I haven't played OXCE mods before, just tested hardmode extension (a very good one also, IMO).
A key problem at least for me in TFTD, having played it dozens of times with superhuman and often with only a few saves, is that you get bored after (at the latest) mid-game (e.g. when you get MC disruptor); the rest of the game would go very smoothly in any case. The most interesting parts of the game have been early'ish phases where you still develop and you'll have to see how you survive and also balance a bit how you go about it.
The mod appeared to work around this by extending the early game phase quite a bit. It took a very long time to get even the gauss weapons (IIRC Lobsterman navigator if I didn't miss anything), even a bit too long. When nearing the endgame, there seemed to be somewhat nasty enemies, but they didn't seem to be required for progressing the game so you could ignore e.g. Freaks almost completely.
Based on Meridian's LP a few observations,
- Cyborgs and keeping regular aquanauts seemed to be a total waste of time and a major liability, being susceptible to enemy M.C. It was obvious that you should either shield your best aquanauts and additionally get some gifted aquanauts. Others would be just a liability. Given that significant amount of energy is needed for M.C. attacks in the long run, M.C. was less overpowered compared to the vanilla. I even wonder whether if it's worth bothering at all. By far the easiest and most straightforward way to finish would likely be to just shield your best already fully trained aquanauts at first chance and ignore the rest. I wonder if this would need some rebalancing to make the other options more relevant.
* what I would have wanted to see is attacking the mind worms missions with shielded aquanauts. Wouldn't that have been a very easy training session.
- There was quite a bit of late-game research, but a lot of it appeared to be rather useless - and you typically get it at the point when you are already bored and are just waiting to finish the game (or quit). To make research and items more useful, more of it could have been introduced earlier when it was still relevant.
- As a minor nitpick, lore-wise it's difficult to understand why mutants or other enemies (other than the aliens) were able to sonic pistols (lore-wise having to have the link to the weapon) while the x-com does not. As using sonic weapons has lore-wise made so difficult, it would be more in-line with that justification that random humans couldn't use them either - or you could figure out easier how to do it.
There were a few interesting observations of Meridian's playstyle, compared to some others I have seen (mostly superhuman/ironman, whether regular or speedrun). It was the first time I saw a strategy of not shooting down USOs at all (until infiltration missions), just doing landed ones. I wonder if this strategy works better in this mod, because getting sonic oscillator and the capability to shoot down e.g. large ufos comes much later. The typical strategy I have seen and used is to shoot down and/or go for the first 5-10 subs, after that just shoot them down and ignore the wrecks until you get a nice very large lobsterman sub, and/or a tasoth (or visit a base) or need more money. This would not work here, because you need to ramp up labs and production much higher to get through all the research and you need to earn much more money and do so regularly until you get gauss cannon to churn out the big bucks (Meridian, you should have researched and switched from sensors immediately). The use of covers in the beginning was impressive, but I wonder if the strategy would have worked with superhuman. Usually in SH the maps are so full of aliens that you can't typically walk in the open that much without smoke, or you will get shot by someone or multiple aliens - and the aliens have 12% better reactions and accuracy. For that reason I have personally gotten used to extensive use of smoke/dye; maybe even 20-30 grenades per mission. But even that doesn't help in certain terror missions where the aliens are located on top of buildings or subs unless you enable 3D smoke patterns. For some reason, Meridian seemed very reluctant or not even remember the possibility to use smoke/dye in mid-end game, even in cases where it would have helped a LOT (e.g. base defense chokepoints, and indeed many other challenges, such as the alien dungeon). This appears to be particularly the case in this mod, because many armors give you sonar so you see better even in smoke, yet the aliens apparently don't have it. I wonder if this was intentional to make the game more challenging or there were other reasons to skip smoking.
