14 replies to this topic

[Morganjs1]

Getting back into UFO after a while, and was doing reasonably well on beginner mode. Nicely developing squad, each with around 4 missions behind them and around 3-4 kills each. Just starting to get comfortable.

Then I had the most disastrous terror site deployment, I had to come on here and talk about it to make me feel better.

Skyranger touches down in rome for a night terror site attack. HWP rolls off the ramp and is immediately destroyed by plasma fire. Move the rest of my agents into position to exit, deploy a smoke grenade and manage to snipe a sectoid from within the craft. Not too bad so far.

I deploy my decent squaddies from the craft and also 1-2 rookies. My regulars manage to kill a cyberdisc and another 2 sectoids on the 1st turn, so all proceeds well.

I was keeping my sergeant in the dropship along with 2 rookies as I didn't want the ramp area to get too tightly packed.

Then it all goes horribly wrong when a rookie that is still INSIDE the ranger gets mind controlled, and lobs a grenade at his feet. Boom. 2 men dead. Similar story outside where I get an alien grenade in the face, killing 2 of my best troops.

My sergeant is still miraculously alive in the skyranger despite the grenade, so I decide its best to stage a retreat. I get another trooper back to the dropship and decide to wait another turn for my last remaining man to get back.

Yet again, an agent inside the skyranger gets mind controlled and shoots his incendiary rocket at the wall, engulfing the craft in flames.

Somehow, my grenade surviving sergeant also manages to shrug off a rocket and is still alive, despite being on fire and smouldering slightly.

I then bug out with 2 of my original 7 troops left.

That put me in my place anyway.
I love this game.

[j'ordos]

Hehe yeah I just had a classic 'open-the-transport's-door-and-get-reaction-fired-by-a-stun-launcher' on TFTD Good thing one of my troopers was still awake and could pull the one outside back in and abort. Really what you should always do is wait one turn (as suggested by NKF I think) so the aliens move around a bit. On the first turn they will always have full TUs which equals reaction pain

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

Hehe yeah I just had a classic 'open-the-transport's-door-and-get-reaction-fired-by-a-stun-launcher' on TFTD

I love that, it is awesome.

[Gimli]

Really what you should always do is wait one turn (as suggested by NKF I think) so the aliens move around a bit. On the first turn they will always have full TUs which equals reaction pain

What he said. In TFTD it's a bit easier as you're protected by a door, and apart from a few bugs, you're safe in the Triton. In UFO, you're immediately exposed to the aliens. What I do is to put a smoke grenade at the exit of the Skyranger. It's also why I don't bring HWPs on missions. Anyway, don't make the mistake of throwing the grenade. Just prime, go to the inventory and drop on the floor. When the end of turn comes, it will blow up and the smoke will be enough to protect you in 99% of situations.
Anyway, the aliens having full TUs on your first turn makes sense, because it balances the game. Otherwise there would be the possibility of you shooting down half the aliens in your first turn. Reminds me a bit of the tie-break in tennis. The guy who goes first has only one serve, then for the rest of it they both have two.

Psi on the other hand ruins a good deal of the balance, whether it's you using it, or the aliens. No wonder they fixed it in Apocalypse. I have to say though, the combat system in UFO (and TFTD) is pretty good, though it could use some improvements. Apocalypse solved some, but also introduced others. A good combination of both and a few more improvements would give for a superb combat system.

And I am also still struggling with terror sites. Especially in TFTD. This last one was Lobsters and their exploding friends, and even with all the care I took, in the end there were still two or three left before all my soldiers went down. And for the most part on account of that camper Bio Drone. Didn't even really leave the Triton. It's a shame too, as I had just devised a brand new and pretty effective tactic. :/

[NKF]

The incendiary rocket wouldn't have hurt your sergeant much since it works with incendiary's weird damage model. Unlike other weapons, it does a minimal amount of impact damage no matter how powerful the weapon. The strength only controls the spread of the flames, and the fire does its damage slowly over time. If you're wearing personal armour or better, you are very well protected against incendiary damage..

The first turn where you don't leave the ship is a good time for you to deploy your smoke grenade at the base of the ramp, and perhaps get a few grenades armed and ready to be thrown once you move out the ship.

Recently it was confirmed that the aliens definitely provide a grace period where they won't use their psi for a set number of turns (which also appears to control whether the aliens will actively head towards your troops). 20 is just the base number of turns - although I wouldn't rely on it 100% with regards to psi as it could be adjusted +/- depending on various other factors . In any case, this still means that you should be fine for a number of turns at the start. If you can successfully mount an aggressive attack during these first few turns, you should be able to turn the tide in your favour before the psi starts hitting your troops.

- NKF

[Gimli]

Or you can use the weapon drop "cheat".

[HybridVision]

I'm pretty sure that before you find out your troops' individual PSI strength the game allows aliens to MC any of your troops.

Because I mark every soldier that gets panicked or MC'd with a "-" symbol after his name. And, sooner or later, ALL my troops have a "-" attached

I can't believe I'm just getting really unlucky. More likely, without PSI labs, any soldier is effectively a PSI weakling.

[NKF]

The game automatically hides the psi stats when Psi Skill is below 1, so all studying in the lab does is add to the soldier's psi skill.

Psi Skill does add to defense as it gets better, but certainly doesn't have as heavy an impact as Psi Strength. Psi Strength is a constant for all soldiers regardless of whether they've had any lab time or otherwise. So if that's low, they will get Panicked or MC'd easily.

Marking off units that get mind controlled or panicked is a good method of sieving weak psi units until you get more accurate results by spending a month in the labs. Unfortunately one of the biggest problems is deciding what to do with the weak psi soldiers that you've spent a lot of time to build up. Let them go, phase them out and let them go, or reassign them to guard duty? Hard call.

- NKF

[Aknazer]

Also ANYONE can get Panicked/beserked, not just Psi weaklings (though the stronger they are the closer they have to be). I have a game on superhuman and I have been using sectoid leaders to train up my bravery and even my 100 psi strength guys can get panicked (though it generally takes several turns of standing right next to the alien). All of their skill is only at 1 since I'm doing it w/o actually using psi.

[NKF]

Keeping the skill down just to train bravery is not a bad idea. If skill were 100, your psi strength would behave as if it were 130 - or thereabouts. I guess keeping your distance is the key.

Never did see a need to max bravery myself, but could still be handy if you want to max your stats.

- NKF

Edited by NKF, 23 January 2009 - 06:38 AM.

[Admiral Harkov]

Yep, I myself am finding not sacking the 10 bravery people as advised in several places.

Granted, I've got a couple panicking in the harder missions, though like 90% panicks have been caused by psionics not demoralization, and this happened a bit ago with a 50 bravery colonel instead of one of the 10 bravery rookies O.o

[3D Master]

Heh, that mission is nothing, imagine stepping out of your craft and having 2 cyberdiscs, and 4 sectoids all within firing distance of you stepping out, killing you the moment you step out of it, or the smoke; and having no personal armor, no plasma weapons, no HWP's only a few laser rifles and rocket launchers to help you with. You're guys are dead before 4 turns are over.

[johnb10000]

On the first turn I clicked on my of my solders to start moving him and suddenly there was an explosion and everybody in the landing craft was dead. I didn't even get a chance to see what kind of aliens I was fighting.

[NKF]

Were you using proximity mines at all in the last mission? That could very well be the cause of it. The game stuffs up a bit with its proxy mine handling and something explosive on the equipment pile in the Skyranger may have been turned into an armed mine by mistake.

- NKF

[johnb10000]

This happened years ago so I can't remember if I was using proximity mines in the mission. I have had lots of bad experiences with the proximity mines and the bug so I stopped using them.