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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Challenge


Catwalk

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I have adhered to a challenge with the following rules:

 

1) No MC Disruptor

2) No Mag. Ion Armour

3) No DP Launcher

4) No reloading

5) No colony raids (attack a colony, shoot a few aliens, retreat with the loot and the XP)

 

I'm doing okay as long as I concentrate, but I do lose experienced soldiers on occassion. Scouting with tanks and rookies gets me through the early stages of the game, and Ion Armour + MC training lets me deal with most challenges. Tentaculats are a problem, as are DP Launchers. In colony missions I'm pondering whether to blow a hole to the exit with pulsers or go for one of the corridors. I prefer blowing a hole, it also lets my missile tank enter quickly and take out of some of the critters upstairs. PD Grenades work okay against Tentaculats, they seem to take them out most of the time. Any tips?

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I do that in ufo defense all the time. For instance, I don't build hyperwave decoders until I have all the ships. UFO Powersources wait until an engineer too, psi takes a backseat until I have an Etherial Commander, the list goes on and on. (Note: I don't do this in all my games... :P)
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  • 2 months later...
UFO defense would be a lot easier to play with those rules than TFTD. Anyway it sounds like a tough game if you play it on the superhuman level. I am not sure if you can finish a colony mission playing with those rules, cause even on the first level your guys will be mass MCed as soon as any of them walks out of the sub, and you are probably going to lose half of them by the time you get to the 2nd level, if you can at all, then no MC disruptor means you have to duke it out with the lobsterman there and those tentaculats are going to waste your guys. Your rule basically says no retreat from a colony mission so you will probably lose the Triton too. As for no magnetic ion armor, you probably can't afford it anyway playing with no reload on superhuman level. You have to finish a colony mission though in order to research the lobster commander that gives you the leviathan. I think some of the larger alien subs might have lobster commanders too. Not sure. Would be hard to capture them without MC.
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I'd be fine with most of those voluntary challenges except the no Mag. Ion Armour rule.

 

Does that include Ion Armour as well? Or are we only supposed to go in our skivvies? If we can use Ion Armour, it makes little difference anyway. It's just +10 damage reduction and levitation while underwater abilities that will be missed.

 

- NKF

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Oh I got it, if you really want a challenge, play with this set of rules:

 

1) Super human no reload

2) No Sonic, PWT or DP techs for either base defense, subs, aquanauts or HWP (Displacers not allowed, only Coelacanth)

3) No ion armor or magnetic ion armor construction allowed

4) No MC disruptor or MC reader for aquanauts, no MC generator, Transmission Resolver or bombardment shield for X-COM bases

5) No construction of Manta or Hammerhead allowed

6) No Vibro blade, TL, HTL, Sonic Pulsar or Thermal Shok launcher allowed for tactical combat

7) No particle disturbance grenade or sensor allowed for tactical combat

 

I think it will be a fairly challanging game, nearly impossible but hey, in theory aquanauts protected by aqua-plastic armor and armed with Gauss technology combined with thermal tazer, magna-pack explosive and torpedo launchers can neutralize any alien in the game, even the lobsterman can be killed with heavy gauss cannons, albeit you have to empty whole clips just to kill or disable one of them. As for sub combat, once you get the leviathan equipped with sub gauss cannon, they can shoot pretty much everything down too, if it's even possible to get a leviathan playing with those rules. Oh well, it's meant to be a challenge, :D

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why not just say "you may only use 2 soldiers total and you may only use pistols in tactical battle" if you really want them to lose.
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Hexeon, that's impossible. You can't win lobsters with those weapons :) Maybe if you would change the rules to that you can use sonic blasta rifle. Then it would be possible, MAYBE.
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Well, you're still allowed tazers. If you can sneak up on lobstermen, it's just a matter of stunning it and then detonating a light explosive and the lobsterman is instantly killed.

 

Seeing as the sonic pistol is on par with the heavy gauss, why not allow it as well? It's better in terms of speed and grip, true, but producing ammo is heavy on zrbite and the ammo itself is very scarce on superhuman. Compare that with the default heavy gauss with its cheap (relatively speaking) ammo that can be produced by the carton every day, it balances itself out just nicely. It also lends itself to the pistol-only scenario rather well.

 

- NKF

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Well those rules basically say no alien technology or particle disturbance technology (with couple exceptions, like plastic-aqua armor and MC labs are allowed), except for the leviathan which is needed to win the game. In theory it is possible to win the game, the key is that you would have to be real lucky that the funding nations don't terminate the Xcom project. Of course on the superhuman level with no reload, you can always use some luck, even without all those other rules.

 

As for killing lobsterman, you still have a few weapons that are partially effective against them: Heavy Gauss Cannon, Gauss Coelacanth, Magna-Pack Explosive, and Thermal Tazer. Torpedo launchers and torpedo coelacanth can in theory hurt them too, but limited by ammo, you can't really kill any with those. One thing to note is that on the superhuman level, gauss rifles and gas cannons are totally ineffective against the lobsterman, not that they worked with any adequacy in lower difficulty levels anyway.

 

Actually with these rules the Tasoth soldiers would present a greater challenge than the lobsterman, because although they have less armor, they do have more health and their leader can MC so you have almost no chance of winning until you can pull all the MC talents from all your bases and let them train together for like 4 to 5 months in several MC labs. You need to hire like 150+ aquanauts for a project like that, of course the aquanauts that don't qualify can be used as scouts, aka cannonfodders. I wonder if they will still think $240k a year is worth it when they find out that the statistics for Xcom agents is pretty much a 90% death rate on any given month, not that I am a bad commander or anything. heh. It's wonderful that in none of the Xcom games people ever quit.

 

By the way, if you build like 18 gauss defense for your base, it can actually repel most alien base attacks, even against the dreadnaught. Of course that would also cover half of the base and only leave you with 18 slots left, and if you keep the 3 sub pens you start with, you will only have 6 slots left. So you might want to dismentle a sub pen or two later when you start building those wonderful gauss defenses. I think it's pretty cool to have half of your base covered in gauss defense though. Your base would basically be a huge gauss platform waiting for alien subs to come. It will be so cool. HAR HAR HAR

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Regarding tasoth, the tasoth don't have the 1/2 damage reduction modifier against AP, HE, Gauss and Sonic that the lobstermen get. So, technically, the lobstermen have more health than the tasoth.

 

Because the tasoth don't get the reduction modifier, you'd be surprised at what weapons can take them out. In a very recent superhuman campaign, I was able to clean their clocks with gauss pistols (short range bursts) and gas cannons armed with HE shells. I was rather surprised at how easy they were to take out with such gear (okay, let's admit, it's pathetic gear, relatively speaking). The only trouble I had was against lobstermen, in which I had to switch to stronger weapons. Curiously enough, you can actually hurt the lobstermen with GC-HE shells. Not that you can hurt them much, but you can.

 

- NKF

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EDIT: These values are now outdated. The damage modifier for the lobsterman can be found on the TFTD damage modifiers on the X-Com Wiki

 

*does math*

 

If we work the damage formula backwards, you'll find that we need a weapon that does more than 48 damage in order to penetrate the lobsterman's front, rear and side armour. For under armour, you need a weapon that deals more than 24 damage. Anything equal to or under these values will not even have a chance at breaching the armour.

 

Superhuman lobstermen wear 24 armour for front, rear and sides. 12 for under. Obviously, they wear less on easier difficulty levels.

 

You'll notice that the numbers I listed are exactly double the armour levels. This is to compensate for the half damage modifier they get. Therefore, if we have a weapon that does 80 damage hit the lobsterman's front armour, it will only deal 0 to an upper limit of (80/2) - 24 = 16 damage. (FYI: This is for the sonic pistol).

 

If you don't have sonic weapons, it looks like attacking their under-armour is your best bet. Magna-pack explosives should pack a fair punch. Do note that every time damage is done, the armour level can be reduced. This will make the next attack much more potent. If you're using grenades, remember that you can detonate them all in a stack (which is not possible in UFO). Make use of this.

 

- NKF

Edited by NKF
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  • 2 weeks later...

It takes about 5 magna-pack explosive or large torpedoes to kill a lobsterman so basically it's an ammo limitation. Gauss rifle is practically useless against a lobsterman, you can score an entire clip of 15 direct hits and the lobsterman can come out of it unharmed. The calculation is not all that dependable cause I know it takes like 4 sonic pulsars to kill a lobsterman on the superhuman level (takes 2 if you really really luck, but most of the time it takes 4).

 

I think the math you use is not right, for a lobsterman the damage is more like quartered, not halved. Anyway that dinosaur alien on land is the toughest to kill in the game without using explosives. You can kill it with just one sonic pulsar, but it's almost immune to almost all AP/sonic/gauss fires. One time I shot at it 10 times with a sonic cannon, I think it lost like 5% of its health and like couple armor points. It was insane. Then again TFTD beginner level is about as hard as superhuman on UFO defense, so it's crazy anyway playing on TFTD at superhuman level with no reload.

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  • 2 years later...
Question: do you need hight MC skills to get resistance agains MC attack? Or hight MC strength is enought?

Both psionic strength and psionic skill work in tandem to provide resistance. Though the strength rating seems to play more of a role than skill.

 

I had aquanavts with 80+ got panicked, but i did not train MC skills. Just MC lab to learn the strength.

In the case of panic attacks, a soldier's Bravery level also plays a huge role. A high bravery reduces the probability the unit will panic from a successful attack. ;)

 

- Zombie

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High bravery generally equates to a slower loss in morale from panic attacks. Which is a Good Thing™, but you should concentrate mainly on Strength and Skill to prevent the panic attack from even occuring.

 

If your 80+ MC strength soldier is having lots of grief, I suggest training skill up. This should boost your defence sufficiently that the aliens start to avoid using MC on you.

 

- NKF

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  • 10 months later...
As for TFTD challenges, a Vibroblade-only game (and before you get the vibroblade, the tazer/grenade combo) is easily the greatest fun I've had in the last few years of playing TFTD. (and its the only aspect of TFTD I wholeheartedly love. If only UFO:EU had the melee weapons... that'd be ahsum :x)
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I've come back to TFTD2 after a while, playing a simple Veteran no-reload game, and things are really tight. I went through an entire month finding no UFOs whatsoever, I even ran out of things to research because the aliens simply weren't showing up on my side of the globe. I tried scouting but those barracudas don't go very far :P

 

Now that I have a transmission resolver things are picking up a bit, but I'm severely lacking in funds, barely scraping by with Gauss-Cannon manufacturing...

 

Fun though.

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  • 2 years later...

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