How Many Raids Sound Right?

[GreySouIe]

I am new to this forum and I was curious, how many raids sound right? My current game is set to superhuman. I have raided basically enough in the first week to get 3 valkries and 6 hovercars. I have started my second base. I have started to see a few devestators on the aliens. I wish I would have had more of a running total for cash made. Anyway, hope this is enough info to go off of.

 

I used to play XCOM Apoc a lot on my old system and was highly disappointed that it would not work on my new system. Now after three and a half years, and using this forum I got it running on one of my new computers. I still don't have it going on my laptop, and I am not sure I ever will, but at least I can play again.

 

Last, I would like to thank all you that have posted different ways to get XCOM Apoc running on misc systems. Without this website it would not be going right now.

[[NKF]]

Welcome, the more the merrier.

 

How many raids? Just enough raids to get what you want, and no more than that, I'd say.

 

Alien tech release is based on your score, and the new tech appears at the start of the new week. Because raiding increases your score for every item you recover (and enemy guards you kill, if it's a hostile raid), you get more points the more you raid.

 

Just don't raid so much that you end up facing dimension missile launchers and personal teleporters by the end of the first week while you're still in the middle of researching your bio-trans module!

 

Just keep the raids reasonable and make sure your quantum mechanics are able to keep pace with the technology as it is released. Money for new and heavier vehicles will just start rolling in once the aliens start to use devestator cannons. You can harvest the cannons like anything after that. Same goes for other alien munitions that you may not use much, like boomeroids or vortex mines (I'd recommend hanging on to the V-mines for the alien dimension spawn pads)

 

Check out the following thread to get a rough tech release chart:

 

http://www.xcomufo.com/forums/index.php?ac...t=0#entry135642

 

- NKF

[Tuoppi]

I never did a single raid in my last superhuman campaign, and found the game to be much better so. The alien tech advancement and economical issues were nicely in balance, and the game difficulty was just enjoyable for me.

[GreySouIe]

Actually I started a superhuman game up with no raiding. You don't realise how spoiled you get to the extra cash flow. I am not doing bad, but I am not overwelming the aliens in the air either.

 

I tried out stun raids a little before this. I don't know if they were supposed to work the way they did, anyway, the results were to cheap for me to feel right using them. I never got shot at, and never ticked nobody off. I expected to at least get shot at.

 

Now I actually only use 3 saves. One is a glitched on that gave me more alien shields than would fit in my base.... I use that game to test stuff occasionally. One is a game that I decided to never raid any human corps. The last one I do as I please provided I don't feel like I am taking advantage of the AI.... such as using stun raids or buying vehicles to tear them apart and sell them for more cash than you started with. One of these days I am going to have to get rid of that glitched game.... I sort of feel guilty for using it, but I hate that I did not notice it before I saved it since I was pretty far along on that game.

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

to Tuoppi and GreySouIe:

I'm curious, how do you handle poor relations with several organizations, when you shoot down UFO's?

I probably would not do any raids if organizations wouldn't ask astronomic "compensations" (for damn what?! I haven't hit any of your buildings!) for shooting UFOs.

It won't be a problem, if among those weren't any useful ones like Transtellar (always) or Marsec (often). I just would hate to pay them that little amount of money I have in the beginning, which I could spend on 1 Hawk or something like this.

Or maybe, if you don't force the progress, relations arent spoiled that badly?

[[NKF]]

The organisations have this The Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend mentality - but note that the Enemy does not have to agree with it. So while Marsec is getting upset that you're attacking the aliens (they're rooting for the aliens because they're fed up with you for damaging their property/attacking their allies - and are currently seeing the aliens as the lesser of the two evils), the aliens don't feel the same way about Marsec.

 

So, you can actually get Marsec (and any group that's not totally under alien control) back on your side by getting the aliens to damage their buildings in the cityscape. This is very hard to do, but if you can manage it, the benefits are well worth it.

 

Basically, let the UFOs deal damage to their buildings by flying your ships near them while being attacked by the UFO. I really cannot offer much advice except that fast nippy vehicles like the hoverbikes work well, or if you're using a heavier ship, arm it with a missile jammer or cloaking device to send their missiles slightly off course.

 

If they ever drop an Overspawn and it's not stomping your bases flat, just let it rampage through the city. It'll eventually kill itself. You will have to make up for the lost points through missions, but this is a brilliant way of improving your ratings with the companies in a sort of 'I told you so-' manner. You can even get the Cult of Sirius to temporarily support you this way - but none of us want that now do we?

 

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Alternately, find out who hates Marsec and start raiding them. Be careful as this can make their friends unhappy with you. If it's one of the three organized gangs, all the better. Everyone dislikes the gangs at first - until Apocalypse's wacky politics come into play through the mid and late game. Just imagine Megapol or Lifetree raiding the senate. Madness!

 

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If all else fails and you cannot get Transtellar and Marsec back - don't worry. It's not the end of the world. You can still continue.

 

Transtellar can be worked around. You can manually transport soldiers. For techs, you're better off buying a temporary team or purchasing them at the base that you intend to convert into a research/workshop base. For unresearched equipment, manually have your ship land at the research base after the mission to drop off the equipment into the research base's stores.

 

Marsec can be trickier. Soldier equipment is easy enough to obtain by attacking the cult. Ships and ship weapons will prove to be more difficult - and you may have to rely on Megapol weapons. If I'm not mistaken, Bolter lasers are Megapol issue. They're decent enough until you can capture a Medium Disrupter.

 

You don't have to intercept every UFO that comes through the gates with the exception of at least one Type-3. You just have to handle all the terror unit drops to make up for the incursion points. This reduces the amount of collateral damage done to the city - keeping everyone relatively happy until you can build up enough air firepower to take on the UFOs.

 

- NKF

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

Thanks for good point about getting UFO's make some damage to the organizations's buildings.

Never thought about it. I've beleived that more damage Alien ships do to the city, less content are those organizations are with my job. Turns out to be completely the opposite...

Such a strange logic the creators of the game had, I'd say...

I was trying to make flawless interceptions (as I've written in a neighbour topic, I was lucky to get 2 DG's outside the city, so that's not very hard).

OK, next time the city will lie in ruins after Alien intrusion, maybe theese idiots in Marsec will see how valuable are my services.

[SleepyWu]

at one time I used to have a pager, connected to the game server. It could notify me if someone entered the server or challenged me

[komninosm]

I used the midnight editor to check out what the organisations relations to each other was, like how do xcom see transtellar and vice versa, or how do transtellar see the aliens and stuff. There were 2 variables for each side. What did that mean? Does transtellar always start the game with a few points disliking you and a few points liking the aliens (about 5 to 10 %)?

Hmm what would happen if you set the aliens to love xcom and vice versa? What if you set the aliens to love everyone. Set everyone to love everyone. No more raids and infiltration? Just happy picknicks, in the park... with brainsuckers?!

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

Well, while multiple raids on CoS and craft buy/strip/sell feature are more like "dirty tricks", IMO, but checking something with editors is already cheating, which I don't like much.

I'd rather prefer to have more fair options to check realtions (other than watching who is rading whom, which is not very informative) and affect them (other than paying them money).

What is still strange is that I've tried paying Transtellar till it's my ally, but when I attack next UFO, relations quickly go down to Friendly and so on. I don't think that initial relationship between Transtellar and Alien are better than my "Allied".

Well, anyway, this evening I'm going to try to get some organizations pissed off with Aliens.

Edit: a question, that just now got in my head:

OK, all damage inside a buildeing is treated as X-Com fault, no matter who caused it. What about hitting/killing people? Is it again "my fault"? This happens quite often in real-time - for instance, if a Spitter, who was firing at my agents, hits (or better kills) a civilian (they're big fans of running in the line of fire), will the organization go less friendly with X-Com or with Alien?

Edited April 19, 2006 by Bullet-Tooth Tony

[[NKF]]

Hmm, there's something really funny about that. With the exception of you obviously causing harm to the rent-a-cops, the people in a building don't really matter to the organisation. Let me elaborate.

 

Civilians - the company doesn't really care about them - nor does it care who harms them. You'll probably also notice how the aliens completely ignore the civilians. And if you haven't, just try and watch them. The aliens only ever kill the civilians when they are caught in the crossfire.

 

Guards - Unless you obviously cause harm to them, they don't care what happens to the guards. That is to say, if you open fire repeatedly on the guards, they'll get angry and your relations will suffer very badly. That is the case for normal raids on non-hostile organisations. Now, if you get the guards to die by way of critical wounds, the company doesn't take much notice. To do this, you have to use mind control on a guard. Have the guard drop all valuables (particularly shields when the market gets flooded with them once you hit a certain score level) and then have them leap off a very high ledge (j+click over the ledge you want the unit to jump) and immediately break your psionic lock on the target (just open the mind bender panel and pick another attack). Getting the guards to commit suicide this way is a bit nasty, but you will not get the blame for it.

 

And as for getting the aliens to hit the guards - well, to tell the truth, I don't know what would happen in this situation. Getting the guards to appear is rare enough, but getting the aliens to hit the guards too - now that's very difficult indeed.

 

Still, shows you how much value Mega Primus' companies put in their employees and customers.And even if they do matter, the effects are hardly noticeable. I mean, they care more about the building and its furniture than the people in it.

 

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komninosm: I've always been of the belief that one value is for the cityscape and the other the battlescape. If you can edit them, you might as well fiddle with them and see what effects you can bring about. In a separate save, of course.

 

- NKF

Edited April 19, 2006 by NKF

[Tuoppi]

to Tuoppi and GreySouIe:

I'm curious, how do you handle poor relations with several organizations, when you shoot down UFO's?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Basically i keep quiet until i have enough resources to win. If you raid no-one you will get less enemies. (I think that transtellar likes the cult for some reason) and i don't buy expensive hawks and such. Hovercars and bikes with prophets and lineages can shoot down lone UFOs up to bomber class with acceptable losses. (Just to get research items) Swarms of more than 2 are better to evade. Just get enough agents and deal with ground combat until you get retaliators.

 

At that point you are pretty much independent anyway, thanks to the hoard of alien agent stuff and can afford selective bribing if some damage occurs.

[Pherdnut]

The cult hardly ever seems to raid you back, so they seem like a pretty safe source of income and gear. You actually start the game pretty well funded and can get a lot of vehicles. I usually like to kick the game off by raiding every single temple before the first UFOs show up. I probably hit every temple about twice a week until I'm finally shooting down UFOs big enough to make serious cash off the gear. With my style of play it's rare that I let more than one UFO get away and I'm disappointed when that happens so I put a lot into getting a large interception fleet.

[[NKF]]

Raids from organisations is one of the random event - and apparently a rare one at that. As a random events also include events such as gang vehicle attacks, one of the X verbsY messages, UFO incursion, nothing, etc, you're not going to get too many base raids each time an event occurs unless the random number generator says so. In any case, the cult appears to raid more often than nutrivend. Goodness knows what's their beef with me.

 

By the way, why raid all the temples? Why don't you just raid the same temple (Say Temple of the Apocalypse on the superhuman map) as many times as there are temples, and just say you did?

 

- NKF

[Pherdnut]

I was never sure whether temples deplete in agents and items as you hit them repeatedly. The psiclone certainly seems less plentiful the more you hit them. So just to be safe, I always hit 'em all. I wish you could set ground cars to automatically search & destroy enemy vehicles on the roads. That would be fun to watch.

[[NKF]]

Psiclones never deplete the more you attack a building. They're just randomly created, so it's the luck of the dice roll, really. And some cultists have been known to grab random items and then leg it to the exits, so you won't always get all the loot.

 

As for the auto hunt - yes, that would've been nice. The closest I've ever done was to make a series of Stormdogs and blazer turbo bikes 'attack' each other. The autopilot will not attack an ally vehicle, but will chase after it.

 

The end result is a hilarious car/bike/tank chase as they roam all over the city trying to chase each other (imagine a cat or dog trying to catch its own tail). Provide your own car chase sound effects for the best results. As they are intent on attacking each other, they ignore enemy vehicles.

 

This is an utterly useless method of patrolling the city automatically.

 

Then you get utterly bored of this once the novelty wears off.

 

The next best thing is to just use hybrid ship and station them ALL over the city in pairs with bolter lasers (to avoid too much collateral damage). Place them at important road intersections and have them park back to back so they can cover both directions.

 

By the time you can do this it's a bit pointless, but you will certainly open fire on every hostile vehicle that pass through your barricades.

 

- NKF

Edited April 28, 2006 by NKF

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

to Pherdnut:

All buildings have infinite equipment and personel. And even if you burn and blow the entire building (in tactical mission), in the next raid you'll get it fully repaired and with fresh reinforcements.

I wonder, what if those guys I'm killing each time in temples are not Cultists, but only workers the Cult hire to clean up the mess after a previous raid? When they see my agents, those poor fellows garb weapons and try to defend their asses?

So, I just raid the temple, which is closest to my base.

to NKF:

About automatic patrol to hunt hostile vehicles:

Never tried it, but what if you get some road vehicles and give them a destination off the road? They'll be unable to ever reach the point, and my guess is that they'll be moving around it forever.

Edited April 28, 2006 by Bullet-Tooth Tony