Official Strategy Guide

[[stewart]]

So I walk into a used book store with the family (my wife was looking for a french text book) and bang right there in the front bin, the Xcom UFO Official Strategy Guide, 6 bucks. Grabbed that.

 

The thing is an inch thick; I didnt expect that. One thing that caught my eye was that it said as an invading ufo takes hits from the bases defenses the size of invading crew may be reduced.

 

Can anyone confirm that? If it is true then base defenses really DO have a purpose.

[Zombie]

The thing is an inch thick; I didnt expect that.  One thing that caught my eye was that it said as an invading ufo takes hits from the bases defenses the size of invading crew may be reduced.

 

Can anyone confirm that?  If it is true then base defenses really DO have a purpose.

Ah yes, there it is in black and white:

 

But later in the game, and at higher difficulty levels, you should set up defensive systems to prevent the UFOs from landing - or at least to reduce the number of invading forces by damaging their ship before it lands.

Well, you are in luck. The aliens just love me on Superhuman and always come to visit on a regular basis. Let me set up a scenario and test it out.

 

- Zombie

[[stewart]]

In this case I can literally say:

 

YOU da man.

[Zombie]

You're going to hate me for saying this, but defenses don't seem to reduce the number of aliens showing up on a base defense mission.

 

So the only game I had handy was a beginner level with Snakemen as the attacking crew The range given by the OSG (pg 300) shows a crew size between 9 and 15. My base had only one Fusion Ball Defense to prevent the Battleship from being destroyed. Now I started to run some trials.

 

After I gathered about 25 trials for each scenario (hit, or missed), I looked at the results. Both scenarios had a range between 9 and 15. In addition, the average was right around 12 for each experiment. From this data, I'm led to believe that defenses don't help to reduce crew size.

 

So why does the OSG say that? It’s probably embellishment to make defensive systems sound important, and maybe filler. It's also logical. But between the time constraints and the obvious lack of communication between the programmers and the guys at Quality Assurance, stuff like this doesn't surprise me much. :wink1:

 

- Zombie

Edited November 18, 2005 by Zombie

[[stewart]]

I suspect there are other "embellishments" in the OSG.

[Zombie]

And, you would be correct in that assumption.

 

There are a lot of things in the OSG that seem to contradict experimental evidence. Don't get me wrong, the OSG is a good read and a handy reference, but you have to take it all with a grain of salt. :wink1:

 

- Zombie