My Playstyle On Superhuman

[reckoner]

Yo. I just wanted to share how I play the majority of my missions on the hardest difficulty level. I am by no means an expert; I'm sure there's room for improvement, but this allows me to run successful campaigns most of the time without reloading at all - nowadays I always play ironman.

 

The key to my strategy to survival in the early game is using the Coelacanth Gas Cannon tank to be the scout - it's the first thing I buy on Jan 1st. Although it's far inferior to the researched tanks later on in the game, it can take a couple of hits, sometimes more, sometimes less before it's killed. It's got a lovely 100 time units which is ideal for sweeping an area safely.

 

I cannot imagine playing without this thing. Without it I'm almost guaranteed to lose aquanauts, and I can't stand losing aquanauts. Replacing it every time it's taken out gets expensive so I'm not careless with it. I move my tank forward only a few squares at a time, leaving enough time units for a couple of reaction shots. Sometimes if cover is available I'll just use up all the time units to make a fast sweep across the battlescape.

 

If my lovely tank spots an alien I never fire the tank's cannon unless I have no other choice. Instead I use aquanauts who are still using my Triton as cover, who can't even see the alien directly, but will probably have a line of fire and use them to snipe. This helps increase their stats while putting them at minimum risk. I use Gas Cannons at the early stages, upgrading to Sonic when possible, sometimes Gauss depending on my mood.

 

If all of my Aquanauts have failed to hit the alien, which with rookies can happen, then I'll use the tank's cannon, which will comfortably kill Gillmen, Aquatoids, Deep Ones, and possibly others in one shot, and you have up to 3 shots on that thing.

 

So instead of having my aquanauts impersonate Jack Bauer / Chuck Norris / Insert Super Hero Here, I play cowardly with snipers. It almost feels like cheating because using this simple tactic some missions go so well, my men aren't even shot at. Losing my tank costs me 420,000 dollars - the price of ten aquanauts - but it's worth 10 aquanauts!

 

There are a few circumstances where tanks can't help, such as finding an alien inside an alien sub (though they can usually explore damaged ones), and for these, sacrifices may be necessary. During my early TFTD career I didn't like tanks at all, but I found after giving them a try - and combining it with a sniper strategy, I was able to play higher difficulty games with a far higher success rate.

 

Sorry if this seems obvious to most of you veterans, but for others who are like I was and thought that Superhuman was IMPOSSIBLE, try the tank tactic and see if it helps. If your tactics are completely different and work as well, or better I would love to hear them.

[[NKF]]

The tanks are useful. Always use them when I'm playing the game seriously (aka play the game until the point I can launch the last mission). TFTD's above-water limitations and the ridiculous gauss ammo black hole for the Gauss Coelecanth really limits the choices you've got compared to their UFO counterparts, but you're still fairly well served by the GC/C and the Sonic Displacer.

 

Excellent expendable scouts - but as you've pointed out expensive. Lots of players prefer to just buy four throw-away rookies. Though they're not as good as the tank, there's four of them and there's always the chance that one or some of them might pull through and make it as a very good aquanaut. Then again, they aren't without their flaws, as they'll be susceptible targets to mind control and tend to be one-shot-one-kill targets until they've got some armour.

 

It's really how you want to juggle your cash and what chances you want to take. It's an important decision in the early game were money is scarce, but later on money becomes less of a problem.

 

- NKF