Thoughts about XCOM2: TFTD

[yarrow]

lesson for future is:

leave at least one of each item in stores at your research base

 

at the ... 'profit' ... of ~100K ( 1x sonic pistol + its ammo clip )

you cut yourself from best submarine weapon

was it worth? ( yes ... stupid questions EXISTS )

 

 

'loneliness' is normal for first level of T'leth

few aliens, few action, only run to exit grid

second level resembles alien colonies ( their second part )

only much more narrower corridors

 

I use brute force here, and about half of DPL ammo to get through this labirynth

and not enough aliens here have ammo ... to share with me

 

I suggest to use MC'ed aliens as expendable scouts

it is better to loose them, than to loose even tank

and they can help you to punch through the walls

no ... not with DPL, Deep Ones are useful in this role

 

 

I guess Coelacanth should do the job too ( absorb stun weapons )

Displacers rules ( of course )

 

 

good hunting

yarrow

Edited August 21, 2012 by yarrow

[kzsoci]

Usually, I do leave at least one item, I don't know why I sold the last one. But it's done.

 

Yeah, I always try to scout with the aliens, although it may backfire somtimes: if I send them out of line of sight, and for some reason I can't re-control them next turn, they may make som nasty surprises to me later (they still have grenades or the psi-capable aliens can MC us etc.). But I will do that, of course.

 

How can a Deep One make a hole in the wall? His normal weapon doesn't seem suitable for that.

 

OFF

 

Is it still a joke that "Budapeszt w Warszawie"?

[kzsoci]

Yes! Yes! I did it!

 

I destroyed the batteries of the Ultimate Alien and saved the Earth!

 

http://www.freeweb.hu/kzsoci/tleth3.jpg

 

This picture has been made just before shooting at the last energy pod.

 

Well, my last debriefing:

 

level 2 was quite dull. The map really was a maze, but we found the way to the elevator relatively fast. We hardly met any aliens (however, we saw a Xarquid at the yellow zone), and all of them were holding only thermal shok launchers. I can't say anything more about this level.

 

Level 3 was VERY dull, but it was a little bit better, though, because the map is totally linear. And we met some interesting aliens at the beginning: some aquatoids, deep ones, one tentaculat and so on. After shooting these 5-6 aliens, the great hiking began. We didn't meet any alien until the last room. In the last room we saw three Hallucinoids and maybe a tentaculat (but I can't say, if it was real, because it was a DPL explosion which left some traces behind like the remainings of a tentaculat - and the sound&music somehow crashed in the Dosbox just before finishing the game, so I wasn't able to hear the death sound). Well, beginner mode.

 

Oh yeah, I missed the part where I accidentally blew up both of my displacers at once... That was in level 3... Well, it didn't count much, but I was very angry at myself, because I always fired the DPL with great attention, but this time I wasn't careful enough.

 

That's it. An artefact site or a colony is MUCH MUCH harder, but I'm still glad that I finished this game. It was very fun, I liked it very much.

 

Thank you for your help during the game!

Edited November 12, 2011 by kzsoci

[yarrow]

my congratulations

 

I didn't saw the final alien chamber for a quite some time

 

Deep Ones can punch through walls much like Displacers/Sonic can

although its accuracy is terrible

 

actually only stage 3 is refreshing new

stage 1 resembles artefact site ( part 2 )

stage 2 resembles alien colonies ( part 2, too :D )

 

 

at this stage of game ( I mean elite team of MC masters controlling any alien you encounter )

Alien Colonies or Artefact Sites are of the same difficulty level

( and if you do colony milking as much as I do, colonies are even easier )

 

please also note that, colonies and artefacts appear earlier in the game

when it is much harder to complete them ( especially with no MC )

so ... this creates 'illusion', that they are harder

 

if you have any earlier saves you try them now ( after completing t'leth )

and you will see it for yourself

 

congrats again

yarrow

Edited November 12, 2011 by yarrow

[kzsoci]

Thank you!

 

I don't really have much earlier saves, because I save very often; although, I haven't been reloading at all at the late part of the game. But it gives (or gave... ) me a sense of safety.

 

It's true, the last artefact site was very easy with MC (especially the first part), but T'leth was nothing at all: the AI shot at me only TWO TIMES during all three parts, both of them were thermal shok bombs against the displacers. You may experience at least SOME resistance at colonies, artefact sites.

 

It's a pity that XCOM: Apocalypse isn't very sympathetic to me. So I have to replay XCOM1 & 2 at harder difficulty levels and/or without reloading.

Edited November 12, 2011 by kzsoci

[Sorrow]

Congratulations!

 

Damn, I don't remember Artefact Sites. What they were about?

Edited November 13, 2011 by Sorrow

[kzsoci]

Thanks.

 

Artefact sites revealed themselves once a month (in my game, at least). They were to be assaulted at once, otherwise you lost lots of points like terror sites. The mission was a twoparter, first part was like Mars in UFO: EU, there were some pyramids, one of them was the entrance to the artifact site. Aquatoids, Tasoths, Tentaculats and Hallucinoids were there. The second part was inside the site, and you had to kill every alien or destroy the synonium device. The same aliens were there like in the first part.

 

The so called Tentaculat Hall was kind of the toughest part of the whole game: the elevator to the synonium device was in the middle of a big lounge, but there were some Tentaculats in lodges one level higher: if you entered the hall, the tentaculats attacked at once.

Edited November 13, 2011 by kzsoci

[[NKF]]

Good work on that too. Now if you decide to restart the game, I highly recommend skipping the intervening difficulty levels and go straight to Superhuman. It will be a good experience.

 

Also I agree that the individual maps for the T'Leth mission don't compare to the individual maps of the colony/artefact site. The maps aren't as tall either.

 

- NKF

[kzsoci]

Thanks. Will do. But I think I'll try UFO again, first, because I haven't been playing that one since March. How can I actually see, if the difficulty-mode-bug is repaired or not? I have a version that doesn't require to run Dosbox , that's what I know right now.

 

Anyway, I'm among those who prefer TFTD to UFO: the whole atmosphere is a lot creepier and more serious, although, UFO also takes itself very seriously (which is very good, but it could also have been very ridicoulus). Someone wrote in this forum that UFO looks like a comic from the 60s, and that's so true. I'm not disgusted by the yellow and pink walls, and I'm not bored by the everything-is-blue seabed. The aquanats, aliens look cooler in my opinion.

 

One more question (like Columbo): is the angry looking octopus you see in the alien chamber, the ultimate alien personally? Or that's only a relief on the tomb?

Edited November 15, 2011 by kzsoci

[[NKF]]

If UFO is akin to a 60's comic book, then TFTD is a bit like an old B-movie monster film with a naval theme. There's something cool about cheesy stuff like that.

 

As for the difficulty bug in UFO, if you've got the Windows edition of the game, then it is fixed. For the dos version, there are various in-game ways you can use to check. UFO appearance rates increase (quite noticeable between beginner vs. superhuman), number of aliens in a UFO, etc. The one I like to use is to check the armour stats with a mind probe. On beginner the armour value is always half that of all other levels.

 

If you've got a separate copy of the game installed for use with XComutil, copy the save from your vanilla copy into the XComutil copy, then run XComutil from the command line on your savegame and it'll often show some stats about the save, including the difficulty level. Make sure that your save is made after playing at least one mission, as that's where the difficulty bug will kick in if it is present.

 

- NKF

[kzsoci]

I don't use XCOMutil (actually, I don't know exactly what it is, I just see its name in this forum all the time ).

 

One more thing about TFTD: the music is very good. It creates a very creepy atmosphere. Maybe it's like if it was the score of a cheap horror movie (just like you mention), but it's very different to BE PART of a horror movie from watching it. The UFO geoscape music was more quite neutral, but the TFTD geoscape tunes are more nerving (in a positive sense) or suspending. I love one of the interception themes as well, just like the underwater battlescape music. The dry ground battlescape music is not so good, though.

[yarrow]

as for music

the one from the playstation version is much better to both original files

originals are just a simple midi files, which you can play on your windooze

 

follow this link for playstation music in .mp3:

http://www.xcomufo.com/x1music.html

 

and follow this, to find how to apply it:

http://www.xcomufo.com/index.html

( X-COM on youtube section )

 

good music adds quite A LOT !!! to playing ufo

 

 

and below is the explanation what XComUtil is :

http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=XcomUtil

 

yarrow

[kzsoci]

Hi,

 

I'm back.

 

I began a no-reload campaign in "experienced" level. It didn't go too bad, I mean, I was able not to reload, when I accidentally blew up two aquanats with the grenade thrown by one of them and such, and usually, I won the battles. The problem was that the AI did not send any USOs to the range of my first base's sonar. I've seen in the graphs that there were some alien activity in other regions, but patroling submarines weren't able to detect anything. Until April I faced two or three small USOs and two terror sites. That means: no cash from selling the stuff, bad ratings at the end of the month, no cash to build further bases to detect more USOs. I did not like that. In April a colony was detected, and then I got the third terror site. Well, by then I had already captured a living deep one, so I only had to kill all aliens. I was able to do that with ONE survivor (from ten) against gill men and deep ones... One monster was hiding next to the embankment, I wasn't able to throw a grenade there or blew it up with GC-HE. Well I solved it, but I considered this too unfair. I went to the colony with a new assembled team, but they all were swept away in like two turns. So I quit this campaign.

 

I've started another one with the same intention. Well, it is going much better, I meet more USOs, but the first terror site was very difficult: resort island at night with gill men. The Coelacanth (which may be the most difficult pronounceable English word) was destroyed, but there were no more casualties. Then troubles began... No USO in whole February, just a port attack at the end. I was lucky, I could go there in daylight.

 

And there I met the first Calcinite of my entire life! I am so happy. The bad thing is that the main race is aquatoid which means they are going to molecular control my platoon. :( But this event made me to write this comment.

 

Oh, BTW, I've seen the multiplayer "hotseat" game on Strategycore which was earlier mentioned by NKF. It's really cool.

Edited August 16, 2012 by kzsoci

[[NKF]]

I'm told Coelacanth is pronounced See-La-Canth. A large bony marine fish. Personally I like Co-Le-Canth better.

 

- NKF

[kzsoci]

Yeah, I typed it into a speech synthesizer earlier, and it said the same way. But still... I prefer the Hungarian name of it: bojtosúszójú hal. But actually, I don't remember how they translated it for the rather poor Hungarian version of the game, I'm sure it wasn't that.

[kzsoci]

Hey.

 

I was very proud at myself, because I was able to handle the situation with only one XCOM-casualty. Hooray! Alas, I got -134 points, because 15 civilans died and only 2 survived... Damn it. And this was at the end of the month, so I got negative points at the overall evaulation. :S

 

Anyway, now that I have some dead (and living) calcinites, I am going to research these vibro blades and other melee stuff. Can somebody write some points why to use them because I fail to see their usefullness, as the thermal tazer is worse to use than thermal shok bomb, so seem the ranged weapons much better.

[[NKF]]

Just wait until you get to fighting Lobstermen indoors on those two-part ship missions, inside big alien subs like the Dreadnought, or the interior colony levels. You'll love them to bits. Lobstermen also take good damage from them.

 

The Virboblade is very fast compared to the Thermal Tazer, so you'll often find that may be able to save more TUs by walking up to an enemy and drilling a hole through them than to chance firing a sonic cannon snapshot over a short distance. Use the heavier version to fight big terror units.

 

When using them, try to find out what type of weapon the enemy are carrying before charging. The sonic cannon for example is expensive to fire so often leaves the alien helpless to retaliate during their turn. A blasta-rifle or sonic pistol however will likely see the enemy retaliating. Using the MC reader to see the remaining TUS helps heaps in this respect.

 

- NKF