Help Me Making A Deciesion

[Polarbear]

Hello all!

 

I've registered just a couple of days ago, and let me tell you, your community is just great I'm glad I've found ppl who are still being active fans and players of my old favourite game

 

So where were I? Oh, the question. I'm quite early in the game. I've just sold my interceptors (well, should I say I quit renting them?) since they can't catch anything any longer and my firestorm has been completed a couple of weeks ago. It's equipped with avalanche and plasma cannon. Last night I detected a very large ufo (so a battleship, tho I don't have Hyperwave yet). I knew I shouldn't be doing it, but I was curious, so I made a savegame and went for it to see how long does my only Firestorm last against the kingtiger of ufos. My craft was taking damage really fast (no surprise), but at the end it slowed down. When the battle ended I thought I lost my FS, since it was all red, but no! The battleship was down and my FS emerged with 99% (!) of damage. That's bad, since repairs will take a painful amount of time (pleae note, this my only fighter craft ATM), tho I could use some Elerium (the battleship has 4 power sources, so I'm hoping for at least one undamaged) and I have yet to capture a commander, so...

 

If I leave the game as it is, I won't have a fighter craft for about a week (well a bit more. I know repairs could take even longer, but my avanger is the making and will be ready in 8 days ).

Or I could reload my previous save and leave the battleship be. What would you do?

[waynie]

i, and this is my opinion, would be inclined to keep going. in 8 days you will hve your avenger and it wont matter how long your firestorm is repaired for after that.

 

i am assuming that you only have one base and since you dont have the HWDec yet, it is possible that you wont see any action until after your avenger is completed. if a terror site crops up, you can still respond with your skyranger, right?

[[NKF]]

If you have any spare hangar room, I'd recommend getting an interceptor and transplant your plasma beam over until your repairs are done. But if my guess is correct, you won't have the space - assuming the 3 standard hangars, 1 for Skyranger, 1 for Firestorm and the 1 empty hangar for the Avenger.... Hmm. I'd probably wait out the 8 days. A lot could happen in those 8 days, but, knowing this game, it might be nothing at all. Then again....

 

In that case, you might as well head for the downed battleship, evade the blaster bombs and nab at least 2 - 3 elerium pods (100 - 150 elerium) from the wreckage, get some free alien loot and pad your area activity points. If you're not able to respond to anything in the following 8 days (either by attacking UFOs on the ground, or going to terror sites), you'll at least have a good amount of area activity points to offset most of if not all the alien activity points built up over that time.

 

Or if you don't mind selling the wrecked firestorm and replacing it with an interceptor, that's another option. Your Avenger's on the way at any rate, and you'll be without interception capabilities for a couple of days. But that's better than waiting the full 8 days.

 

I was going to go on and on about the virtues of keeping the interceptors around even when you've started to use the new ships, but I think I'll endeavour to keep this post short.

 

- NKF

[Polarbear]

Thanks for your advice, both of you :wink1:

 

So I went on as you suggested. With the battleship I wasn't too lucky: only 50 Elerium (it's better than nothing tho), captured a leader (tho I'm unsure how) and got blaster lauchers with ammo.

(About bases: my second base is under construction, the hangar is not ready yet, so I didn't buy any interceptors.)

But 3 days after the battleship mission, I detected a large ufo. Followed it with my skyranger (at the end I lost track, so had to take a guess on where it landed), and I got lucky. I didn't find the ufo, but found an alien base instead . Just perfect to get enough score for the remaining 4-5 days. It was a snakeman base, it was quite easy, and I got 150 units of Elerium at the end of mission

 

So it was definitely worth not to reload the game, though not the way I expected

 

Thanks again for your help

[Polarbear]

I was going to go on and on about the virtues of keeping the interceptors around even when you've started to use the new ships, but I think I'll endeavour to keep this post short.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

BTW, that sounds interesting. Actually I sold them because they have been too slow to catch anything lately. I equipped my last interceptor with plasma, but it didn't have a chance to use it... the ufos are just too fast. I just had to build that Firestorm. And with it, an interceptor is just an unnecessary expense. Well, for me it is

[Zombie]

Whenever I come across a Battleship and don't have the necessary firepower to take it down effectively (ie. multiple Avengers with Plasma/Fusion combo), I just leave it alone. There is no sense in sending a single fighter craft to its inevitable doom (or at least a lenghty repair time as you found out Polarbear).

 

If the mission were that important, the aliens would land. So this is what I usually do in your situation: wait. If the Battleship just buzzes around and then leaves, well, you didn't really lose anything. However, if it lands, I send in my troops. Yes, there are more aliens at landing site than a crash site. But the rewards far outweigh the danger: 231 Alien Alloys, 200 Elerium, 4 Power Sources, 4 Navigations, 24 Entertainment plus the numerous bodies and weapons recovered.

 

If you ever get yourself into a pickle because all your fighters are in the repair shop (and will be there for a long time), don't worry. All is not yet lost. I'd save that $600,000 for a temporary Interceptor, and put that money to build future Avengers. But what happens if there is a flurry of alien activity and your Firestorm still isn't repaired? Here again, wait it out. If the alien missions were important, the UFO's would land. Then just go after the largest craft first. If time permits, visit the other landing sites too. The score you obtain from the completion of a single larger UFO landing site will offset any score the aliens managed to get from all that activity combined.

 

- Zombie

[[NKF]]

Interceptors are indeed slow - for an interceptor (I really wish they'd given it a different name). But unlike the more powerful hybrid fighters, the interceptor has them all beat in one aspect. Fuel efficiency. Relatively speaking, the interceptor stays up a lot longer than the advanced ships - and fuel is free! (Well, it's part of the lease at a flat rate, I'd imagine, but oh well).

 

The monthly lease for the interceptor is pocket change once you start selling off your surplus heavy plasmas. Toss in a single plasma cannon (or two), and it will be able to shoot down everything but battleships.

 

They do have trouble catching up with UFOs, but that often happens mainly while the UFOs are in transit from one location to the next (as opposed to being in the target country and doing whatever it is they were sent there to do). The best strategy I've found is to station the interceptors near the UFO's destination rather than send them out to chase after the UFO across the continent. This involves building several radar/interception outposts at strategic points around the globe. They're cheap and are easy to replace if they get wiped out.

 

You'll find that even with one interceptor per outpost, neighbouring interceptors can easily come to the aid of any other interceptor that are in need.

 

But the idea's not to cut out the advanced ships from the picture. The inteceptors will be doing all the easy work that the advanced ships really couldn't be bothered handling. They're kept for much more important tasks that either require brute force or require either a rapid interception or troop insertion.

 

I've been using this strategy for ages now, and it's worked very well. I also find that I only ever build a single Lightning (don't argue) and a single Avenger per campaign these days - the Interceptor network makes the Firestorms a bit redundant. But that's just the way I've come to play this game.

 

---

 

And now for some wisdom of the well pickled:

 

Alien bases. They are a rich resource of practically everything. You can raid the base as much as you want, and as long as you don't destroy the base by destroying the command centre (or all the aliens), you can run in, grab whatever you want, run out and repeat the whole process again a while later! Zombie here's gone a bit overkill with his patented 'smash and grab' technique and can easily make more points in a single month than I can in a game year.

 

The other thing about bases is the supply ships that dock there a few times a month. A regular ship that always lands at the same place. No terror units or blaster bombs. Each successful assault nets you more activity points than the alien base can generate in a month. Also, direct ground assaults on ships do not provoke retaliation as much as shooting them out of the air. Oh, and 150 elerium per supply ship.

 

By employing this ... uh, harvesting, strategy you can easily skip or outright miss a few UFOs (except infiltrators), what with all the activity points you can generate.

 

Is it cheating? Well, not quite. Well, true, you don't have to shoot anything down to get it, but all the benefits you get are earned with your own sweat and blood. You stick your neck out as you do on every other mission. It's really just a method increasing

 

Trust me, you'll get really good at taking out supply ships or raiding alien bases. Also, if you do really well, you can completely ignore what I said earlier about the interceptors, as you'll be up to your ears in cash and elerium - and if you keep it up, you'll have more than enough of both to enable you to use Avengers exclusively.

 

- NKF

[Selmak]

I have a related question. Floaters are sending a big contingent to Europe (Inflitration mission) and I can't shoot any of them down except the smallest. On the other hand, I have two Skyrangers that I could use in a ground assault, so my question is, if I'm looking to get some decent scoring, do I want to nab both battleships, or take a battleship and a supply ship?

[Zombie]

Go the Battleship route and forget about the Supply Ships (unless you have the time).

 

Battleships almost always have a larger crew compliment then a Supply Ship. More crew = more points for killing them = more weapons/artifacts to recover. Also, the amount of materials you can recover from a Battleship is more than a Supply Ship. "Materials" are: Power Sources, Navigations, Food, Surgery, Entertainment, Exam Rooms, Alloys and Elerium-115.

 

While this isn't exactly the same idea, I recently figured out how much money you could make off of visiting each ship type. For all intensive purposes, more money = more points. Please see the Ufo Stats, Is it worth to sacrifice you men thread.

 

In addition, Battleships are the craft traditionally assumed to do the actual infiltrating. If you knock these out, it may be possible to stop the entire mission from succeeding. There is no proof that this is what actually occurs, but going after the bigger ships is always a better choice.

 

- Zombie