[TFTD] [Expansion] TWoTS+ Release (v.2.62)

[Avenger_Cannon]

Are there any research dead end / soft locks  in this mod?

[psavola]

Are there any research dead end / soft locks  in this mod?

There is no research that I'm aware of that blocks you out of future progress, if that's what you mean.
Obviously there are a lot of things where your progress is locked behind researching X, and sometimes it may be challenging to get X.

[Avenger_Cannon]

There is no research that I'm aware of that blocks you out of future progress, if that's what you mean.
Obviously there are a lot of things where your progress is locked behind researching X, and sometimes it may be challenging to get X.

Ok ty, I'm abandoning my last two week run because I can't get sonics and mind worms hit through LoS limiter and then when I tried to do a new game without MC the mods broke so now I can't play at all, not sure what to do.

[psavola]

Ok ty, I'm abandoning my last two week run because I can't get sonics and mind worms hit through LoS limiter and then when I tried to do a new game without MC the mods broke so now I can't play at all, not sure what to do.

It will take quite a while to get sonics and that is heavily dependent on RNG. You might need to go the first year or more without them if you don't get a chance to capture a live bio-drone early. You don't really need them in battlescape, because gauss (especially sniper rifles) is good enough, but you'd like to get the applied tech for your crafts.

The MC is easier less RNG-dependent. The easiest early way to get mind worms is to go on the mind worm terror mission with a couple of drones and a couple of aquanauts, who just throw out pre-primed stun grenades on the enemy units on turn 1 and then are probably knocked unconscious. The drones can pick up the stunned mind worms, come back to the craft and abort.

In TFTD vanilla you deal with MC by sacking the agents which have low PST and then recruit and keep only the best PST agents. This will not work in this mod, because the enemy MC is much stronger. You will need to enable MC Shielding transformation on your aquanauts to make them (almost) immune to enemy MC. This will require slowly acquiring alien implants, which you can get from certain missions and very large UFOs. It takes a while. But by the end of the first year or so, you should have been able to build up a pool of 10-15 aquanauts which are MC shielded and can do those missions which would be otherwise be impossible to deal with.

[Amoebka]

Mind worm missions can be trivially done with SWS, you don't need MC-shielded soldiers at all. Even a pair of Coelacanth/Gas can do it on SH most of the time (have to ration ammo accurately though, and avoid zombies). Turtles are much safer beause they are zombie-proof (mostly), and even one Squid is a free win, because it flies above zombies, can reload, and has enough armor to tank locusts.

[Avenger_Cannon]

Ok so playing on Beginner and lost within a year because all the terror missions spawned on the opposite side of the globe from my base and by the time I finally got another base going I got -853 monthly rating and lost after save scumming a lot on a base assault from Lobstermen and only having a single drill weapon.

[psavola]

A neat trick: terror missions don't despawn if they are targeted (like vanilla). On some secondary base it's useful to buy a SONAR BUOY which is extremely slow and use  it to target a mission you can't get to at the right time (day/night/etc.). It will take multiple days or even a week for the BUOY to reach the destination, and you have that much time to deal with it (provided that there won't appear a hunter-killer to destroy the BUOY).

The alien retaliation missions against your bases can be brutal. Especially if you get lobstermen but don't really have the equipment to deal with them yet. In most of my superhuman ironman campaigns I lose a secondary assault base multiple times.

Another neat trick. You can place bases in areas where the aliens won't spot you. In my campaigns I usually put the first base in the atlantic near the US and the second base in the northmost pixel of the Suez Canal. I've never had the aliens attack the Suez Canal base.

[Avenger_Cannon]

Not able to do anything with this advice but thank you, I mostly am just doing some save scumming because it feels like the enemies are rapidly teching up while I'm very slowly researching, I think I should have been spending more but I wanted to save up but I think that was a huge mistake and should have been playing a lot more around selling my gear and loot instead of whatever I had been doing that was clearly wrong.

[psavola]

You will want to ramp up the reseach fast and have roughly 100 scientists around May timeframe. Of course this depends a bit on luck; if you get multiple small subs, you can get millions by selling the stuff you don't need yet. You will also need to do some live captures rather early. For early live captures, watch out in particular for aquatoid navigator, to unlock gauss technology. Once you have gauss sniper rifles, you stand much better chance against aliens (except lobsters). Once you get gauss, you can ramp up the research a bit more if you want. You can find the important things you need in the tech tree viewer.

[Avenger_Cannon]

Also I want to make a suggestion so that alien barges don't take 20 hours of playtime to complete, please make the threshhold for bug hunt lower because I've been looking for what I assume is an alien on the outside surface of the ship for over 40 turns now.

[murkhach@centrum.cz]

Also I want to make a suggestion so that alien barges don't take 20 hours of playtime to complete, please make the threshold for bug hunt lower because I've been looking for what I assume is an alien on the outside surface of the ship for over 40 turns now.

Barges is quite big and demanding missions , and I like the map and  difficulty.  BUT they should appear much more LATER in STORY.
For me they could have similar purpose as a mobile base and have a prerequisite of synonym-device
More to it I suggest to fill them with custom mixed crew 
  (enh aquatoid soldier, aquatoid medic, aquatoid technician, tasoth leader, tasoth guard squad leader, halucinoids, xarquids)

More over to it, the TASOTH GUARD LEADER could be associated with some further research  or as prerequisite for unlocking  alien codes and  than alien dungeon

[psavola]

It's true that Alien Barge mission is usually a newbie trap. There's roughly 80 % chance it's aquatoids or heavy aquatoids, and by the time it appears, you can't really deal with it until you have MC-shielded your aquanauts (and at the point it starts to appear you usually don't have that yet, at least in an extensive fashion). If you use the ammo in a very conservative fashion or play with lower difficulty, you may be able to handle it if you have three gauss turtles. It's a no-brainer if you get Gillmen (10 % chance). Nagas are also doable (10 % chance).

[Amoebka]

Barges are very doable if you have enough exosuits for the whole squad. Early on most aliens there are armed with shard guns. Mind control is surprisingly harmless if you use harpoon weapons - exosuits are impervious to them, while aquatoids die easily. Hallucinoids are the only real issue, you need some heavier weapons on reliable peoples' backs.
I've done plenty of early barges on SH, and I would much rather fight aquatoids than gillmen. Xarquid oneshots are much harder to avoid.
MC-shielding is, again, an overkill. Nothing before the ancient dungeon truly requires it.

[psavola]

I suggest redoing item categories "Surface-only items", "Dual-use items" and "Underwater-only items". When equipping the craft, these categories are not useful. When going on a mission, if you use the item filter you need to check both dual-use and the environment-specific item list to figure out what you want to bring along.

At least from the point of view of equipping the craft, it would be far more useful to have categories "underwater items" and "surface items" (i.e. items that work on the surface, and items that work underwater). Dual items would belong to both categories. This way you would only need to browse list once. This is how it has been done in X-Com Files, for example (items may have even half a dozen categories for different mission types).

If there is some specific use for current division of items, the existing categories could be kept and "Both surface and dual-use items" and "Both underwater and dual-use items" categories added instead. But I suppose this would just cause more confusion.

[Amoebka]

IIRC multi-stage missions can sometimes have surface restrictions for one part and underwater ones for the other (biolab, for example). The dual-purpose filter can be useful there.
Overall agree, though. "Surface" should include surface-only and dual-use, "underwater" should include underwater-only and dual-use, and "dual-use" should include dual-use only.