1 Mission X-com

[Robo Dojo 58]

The goal of this challenge is to rely completely on the funding nations to complete the game. Due to the tech requirements that you need to ultimately defeat the game, you must assault at least one UFO to get the research topics that you need. It is understood that you must engage in the final two missions to beat the game.

 

The rules for the challenge are as follows:

- You are allowed only one ground assault. This assault must be a battleship.

- During this battleship mission, you must capture 3 live aliens: An extra(preferably a navigator), a leader, and a commander. They are needed to unlock the research topics for the final mission.

- You must recover at least one intact power source, one ufo navigation, 1 alien alloy, and one elerium pod. This is the minimal necessary materials needed to build the Avenger, fuel it, and beat the game.

- You can not sell any spoils from the mission. Considering how few you'll have to work with, there's little you'd want to sell anyway! If you need the space, you better destroy what you don't want in the mission itself.(I.E. corpses)

- If your home base is assaulted, you must abandon the base. You get one mission, no freebee shipments from space! You can keep base assaults from happening by not shooting down UFOs nearby, shooting down retaliation scouts(they don't land), shooting down assault battleships(very low, very fast, radar will rarely spot them), and with adequate base defences (but they will eventually get through). The mind shield helps to keep your base hidden, as well.

- Shoot down UFOs! This is your only defense against the alien menace, and to keep your score high enough so you don't lose funding.

- Blaster bombs get one waypoint (direct fire). This is so that you don't beat the final mission in two turns, which is possible otherwise.

- You can not manufacture then sell equipment. None of that laser cannon nonsence. Your funding must come from the funding nations, and the funding nations alone.

- Landed terror missions are to be left alone.

- Alien bases are to be left alone.

- No MC, no psionic labs. Period.

 

Some tips:

- You'll only have up to 200 elerium with which to arm your final mission, build tanks, build+fuel the Avenger(12 fuel), and keep the skies clear. Spend it wisely!

- You can not destroy bases, but you can stop them from being built. Shoot down the convoy (which usually has two battleships...) before it lands to stop the base. I think that only one ship actually builds the base? Not sure about that one.

- Shoot down terror ships before they land! Those terror missions cost you tons of points and will lose you countries fast.

- Tanks can't be MC'ed, which is vital for the final missions.

- A fully loaded blaster tank takes 65 elerium total. 40 for the 8 ammo, and 25 for the hull. You can only really afford one.

- Every research topic you take inches you closer to defeat. Time is of the essence!

 

This will be difficult campaign, spanning at least a year, likely two. Chances are if you are lucky and all goes well, you'll barely beat the game with no money, UFOs flooding the globe, your home base under constant siege, a majority of nations who abandoned hope, and a rag-tag squad who is nearly wiped out at the end. As it should be, at least as the in-game story tells it. Best of luck to all those who take the challenge!

[Empyrean]

Shooting down Battleships with Interceptors and non-Elerium based weapons is impossible. Seems to me that your best shot at winning this sort of scenario is to catch a Battleship on the ground early, make the necessary captures using earth-based tech, then launch your assault on Cydonia as early as possible, before some retaliation mission comes by and wastes your base.

 

By the way, you need two power sources for an Avenger, not one.

[Robo Dojo 58]

Shooting down Battleships with Interceptors and non-Elerium based weapons is impossible.

200 elerium is enough to make plasma based craft weapons. Not many, but it will make a few should you have a dire senario. You only truly need one or two to handle most UFOs. Battleships will be rough. They'll be the timer ticking down to your defeat, for the most part. That's why you get the first one for free!

Seems to me that your best shot at winning this sort of scenario is to catch a Battleship on the ground early, make the necessary captures using earth-based tech, then launch your assault on Cydonia as early as possible, before some retaliation mission comes by and wastes your base.

Yep. That's kind of the challenge. A majority of ships are known to land, so shooting down a battleship will not be necessary. You will get a base building mission by month 3 at the worst. They always come with a battleship or two, and those battleships will land. There are only a few ships which are hazardous:

- Scouts that don't land. They're often affiliated with retaliation missions, which are made to search for your base. If they do suceed, you've pretty much lost, so shoot them down ASAP. They can come in other sizes too, but scouts are the most common. A scout must succeed in finding your base before you get assaulted, just make sure they don't succeed.

- Terror ships. 80% of the time, they're coming after a city(sometimes they don't later on). They should be shot down to preserve your funding.

- Infiltration missions. It's nigh impossible to distinguish them from normal missions without a hyperwave decoder, as they can come in practically any size and flight pattern. But it is necessary to shoot them down to preserve your funding. Sometimes an infiltration mission comes as a huge convoy (like with base missions). In these senarios you'll just have to bite the bullet and lose the country. It shouldn't happen too often though, at least you should be able to carry on.

The rest, can be kind of safely ignored. Don't let them fly free, by any means, but they aren't as dire.

 

By the way, you need two power sources for an Avenger, not one.

No, you don't. You can build them for 16 elerium. A single elerium pod is enough to make two power sources, along with fuel and 2 to spare. Notice how there is only one manufacturing restriction, that is you can't do it for profit. You can build everything (restricted by elerium) should you get the tech and manpower for it.

 

Don't forget that the captured battleship comes with a healthy complement of troop guns and ammo. With that HUGE help, you will have just enough resources to have a squad with power armor and alien tech(with lasers), along with a hovertank or two for the final mission. I don't think anyone here will say that such an equipped group stands no chance for the final missions. The challenge is lasting long enough with limited funding to get there.

 

Don't be so negative, Empyrean. I never said it was going to be easy!

Edited September 1, 2006 by Robo Dojo 58

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

I suggest to use an editor to add some more starting money, funding and/or extra stuff. Otherwise it's hardly possible, IMHO.

In the beginning you're pretty much doomed for big negative score, unless you're super-lucky to get all alien activity in the area you've built your base.

You will need to expand ASAP, get more intercetors (at least 2 per base), since your Geoscape score is your only hope not to lose the game. You can hardly afford to let a single UFO complete its mission.

You start with about $4M cash, $6M monthly funding and $2M monthly expences. But your monthly payment will inevitably drop to about to $4M or so.

I don't know about scientists - on the one hand they cost A LOT of money for you, othe other - without them yor research will be incredibly slow.

I think without extra help in the beginning aliens will press you down.

[grommet]

Heh...I decided to try this out...and have already lost!! That first-day small scout apparently scanned the base (I picked him up on radar virtually right over my base...then watched him slowly outrun the interceptor I sent after him)...come day 3, a battleship came a callin'...

 

Oh, well...lets try that again, shall we?

 

I was wondering...can we 'shop' for a race for the battleship? Since you said no Psi-Lab, that means I can't screen my guys for defense...and Mars could be unwinnable if you had bad luck & wound up with a buncha Psissies. Can we look for a Sectoid or Etherial battleship so that we can 'screen' soldiers in a Darwinistic fashion? Besides...if you were unlucky enuff to get a muton battleship, there would be no Leader or Commander!!

 

Grommet

Edited September 1, 2006 by grommet

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

For that add a new rule - you have the right to abort the Battleship mission if you see Mutons there and try another one later. Though It's very unlikely your first landed Battleship belongs to Mutons - you don't see them very early.

[[NKF]]

I'm not going to even pretend that I am capable of completing this challenge - I can't. But I must ask - can this challenge be completed? I mean, has anyone actually successfully completed this challenge? Or at the very least achieved all the conditions necessary to reach Cydonia?

 

- NKF

[Empyrean]

Psissies.

Word of the day.

[Robo Dojo 58]

I suggest to use an editor to add some more starting money, funding and/or extra stuff. Otherwise it's hardly possible, IMHO.

...Cheat... Seriously, if you don't want to take the challenge, then don't do it. It's not for the faint of heart. A fully intact battleship is worth several million in necessary supplies(even if you can't sell the stuff, you will need it). That makes up your increased starting funds.

 

I'm trying out the challenge myself. I lost some income in the first month. But I have one base with a small radar, and another base under construction for a large radar. My crew is 14 rookies, 25 scientists, and 10 engineers. They'll have time. Near the end of the second month, I found a floater base mission. I was only able to shoot down the small accompanying UFO, the two supply ships will have to get away. But I'm assaulting the battleship. It's not easy to take a battleship-even a floater one- with nothing but human tech and some laser rifles! I already lost a few rookies on the initial deployment. Not to mention the 3 floaters I'll have to capture. If I'm successful, I'm scrapping the skyranger(+$500K/month!) and most of my troops. Wish me luck!

 

For that add a new rule - you have the right to abort the Battleship mission if you see Mutons there and try another one later. Though It's very unlikely your first landed Battleship belongs to Mutons - you don't see them very early.

It's unfortunate that a muton mission won't get you what you need. Yeah, you'll have to abort if you come across them. Odds are though, that you'll have a sectoid or floater base mission before that. Those will work fine, so you shouldn't really have any problems.

You will need to expand ASAP, get more intercetors (at least 2 per base),

Two per base? Are you crazy? You can't afford that! Advanced warning will do far more than throwing more interceptors at the problem. After the battleship mission, you will eventually have access to plasma cannons, which can deal with the majority of threats. You only need one or two to cover most of the skies.

 

. Can we look for a Sectoid or Etherial battleship so that we can 'screen' soldiers in a Darwinistic fashion?

Creative! That's pretty much all the screening you'll get, aside from shooting down mutineers on the final mission. However creative use of smoke, hiding troops from each other, tanks, and mass destruction will protect you from most PSI dangers. It's only bad once your troops are spotted out, so leave no witnesses! Even though you're only allowed to fire blaster bombs in a straight line, do not let that deter you from using them en masse, especially to storm the final control room. It only takes one wounded agent with a grenade to win.

 

The nice thing about this challenge, is that it's REALLY fast to attempt one. Ground missions are what take up the most time in X-COM. Here, you only have to fight and manage your limited resources from the geoscape. It's not like you'll lose dozens of hours of invested time if you lose.

Edited September 1, 2006 by Robo Dojo 58

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

What skill level are you playing?

[[NKF]]

I suppose it doesn't particularly matter, but there are obvious benefits of choosing easier or harder levels. On superhuman you get more loot on account of more aliens spawning in combat, while on beginner you get less loot but the battle will be shorter.

 

I mentioned this in another thread, and it occured to me that it might help with this challenge. Dummy bases. If you've got free base slots that are not being used, position them around your main base. You can dismantle them later when you need them. But while they're up, they'll provide an extra target for the retaliation scouts to pick up. I won't guarantee that this will save your base 100% of the time, but it does improve the odds.

 

- NKF

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

As far as I have noticed, on higher difficulty there are better chances to get some terror sites early on. This can be deadly for this kind of game - since it's very hard to detect and intercept Terror ships in the beginning.

For dummy bases - I think in this scenario more radar/intercept all over the Earth give you much more benefits than wasting 3 base slots for extra protection of a single one.

[[NKF]]

Oh, certainly, I agree with you there on having more radar/intercept outposts. I wouldn't recommend 3 dummy bases, by the way. That's too many. 1 or 2 dummy bases should be enough.

 

From experience, I've found that five to six radar/intercept outposts along with your main base is more than enough to cover the globe with plain vanilla interceptors. This leaves one or two free bases that can be utilised in other ways.

 

Until you can decentralise your main starting base, you're going to need to keep the aliens away from it for a while. Gathering all the tools necessary to raid your battleship shouldn't take too much time. And, once you finally raid the battleship, you'll want to keep that base as safe as you can. This is where I see that dummy bases can come in handy.

 

Thinking about this challenge some more, you could sack all your soldiers and engineers right away. The scientists can stay on until they've researched all that they can and then have them leave. You're not going to be able to research or build anything until you capture the battleship, so you can probably save a heap of money by only purchasing staff on demand (Just-In-Time staff acquisition!). This does mean you are penalised by having to pay some money to re-hire your staff, but the amount of cash you save up over the months should just about cover it.

 

You can probably extend this to the unused facilities like the labs, workshops and alien containment module. I don't extend this suggestion to the radars (for those thinking that the phantom radar trick can help fill the petty cash tin).

 

- NKF

Edited September 4, 2006 by NKF

[Shotgunner]

It certinly seems possible, but I really doubt it. If you allowed a maximum of say 5 or even 10 gound assaults(including alien bases) then we'd have enough resources to build what we need, but still be limited - with limited ground assaults, we'd have to pick and choose - do we do the first nine, so we can get a jump start on the xenos when we finally get a battleship, or do we wait until after the battleship mission so we can stock up on elerium and other supplies?

 

I would definetly attempt this challenge with the above modification, but not as Robo Dojo originally worded it.

[[stewart]]

Here's a challenge as well.

 

Final mission, rookies equiped only with purchaseable equipment, purchaseable tanks allowed. Psionic require psionic amplifiers which must be built so no go.

 

If you can do this then nothing else in the game matters.

[Shotgunner]

I got another challenge - a no explosives game - no grenades, BLs, HE Packs, RLs, or HE/Incindary ammos. Also, you can not shoot/blow up gas stations in terror missions.

[[NKF]]

Any restrictions on lasers and heavy plasmas? I've known a few players who've play exclusively with one or the other and could care less about grenades, medikits, psionics and all the other neat and useful amenities we're used to. And, as has been pointed out elsewhere, you can very well play the game all the way through with either weapon.

 

- NKF

Edited December 25, 2006 by NKF

[Tsereve]

What if you miss and hit a gas station? Gotta reload?

[Arrow Quivershaft]

Apologies for the thread necromancy, but I have managed to successfully complete this challenge on Beginner mode! A team of several soldiers in Personal Armor and one Hovertank/Launcher managed to assault Cydonia on Jan 1st, 2000 and defeat the Brain on a hail-mary shot from the tank. XCom was almost a million dollars in the hole. I have attached my game saves to prove that I adhered to the challenges presented.

Proof_of_1mission_Win.zip

Edited May 23, 2007 by Arrow Quivershaft

[[NKF]]

Bravo. I don't have the patience to try such a thing, but it's great to see it realised.

 

I've always liked how this game lets you get away with some things, but I can just hear the bar being raised a few notches.

 

- NKF

[Arrow Quivershaft]

The fun thing about this challenge is that I did it in only a few days, since the tactical missions are what take up all the time. I'm actually going to try it on a harder difficulty level quite shortly, as soon as I finish a repeat of the task where I correct some mistakes I made the first time. For example, I maintained three Interceptors(too expensive, and 2 can usually do the job), built a second Laboratory(100 scientists is too expensive to maintain, and with how long it takes those 14 engineers to roll out the Avenger, you don't need them anyways) and for some stupid reason classified Plasma Beam tech as 'extraneous research'(When its anything but.) Edited May 24, 2007 by Arrow Quivershaft

[Arrow Quivershaft]

Here's a save game file from my third time at this challenge; it's Experienced difficulty. There's about 4 million in the bank, with most tech researched. Everything is in place for the final Cydonia assault, and there's almost 100 Elerium in storage for discretionary use. The attack force presented is 10 soldiers in Power Armor, armed with either Plasma Rifles or Heavy Plasmas(I have enough of both) along with 4 Rocket Tanks. The one caveat is that I was unable to capture a Blaster Launcher from the aliens, so you'll have to do without BBs or Hovertank/Launchers.

GAME_1.zip

[Robo Dojo 58]

Wow, that's amazing! I'm glad to see it's actually possible. I'm afraid I wasn't able to beat it myself, and with my recent change in hardware I need to dig around to find the game again.

 

As for the confusion with MC, you can definitely research them to get access to the mind shield. That is, if you can afford the time out of your slaving scientist's schedules. You just can't use the Psi Lab, and thus the PSI amp for the final mission. Mind Control would cheapen it too much IMO, with a hard beginning it just wouldn't be right to have an easy mission at the end.

[Pherdnut]

I'm fairly certain that on Superhuman the convoys don't even need to land for a base to be built. Once they show up, the base is automatically there. I don't think the difficulty bug ever got fixed for the PC version (I don't have the X-Com Collector's version - not sure if it got fixed in that).

 

On multiple occasions on the psx version, I've picked up convoys the second they showed up (Hyperwave detector) and blown every one of them out of the sky. When I patrol the area the base still shows up.

 

I've beat the game with human tech only (aside from the Avenger required to get to Cydonia, so it's definitely feasible to pull it off with laser weapons. This was quite a long time ago (probably a decade - ) but IIRC I had a mix of guys with laser rifles, heavy lasers and the stronger guys carried RLs with an extra rocket reload. I made extensive use of motion scanners. They're quite useful when they're not bugging out on you.

 

Also proximity grenades easily do a number on sectoids and floaters and still work to soften up tougher targets while doubling as a way to alert your agents to the presence of aliens moving in from unsecured areas.

 

While there aren't many attacks your agents will survive without armor, a couple medkits never hurts for those glancing plasma hits and lesser explosions.

 

Psi is of course a major issue. You really have to figure out who is strong against it through trial and error while keeping your fingers crossed that the weaker guys don't manage to kill off your stronger guys when they get panicked/controlled. It's awfully painful to have to let go of your stronger agents when they appear to have next to zero psi defense.

 

I highly recommend a human only tech approach to the game as it will hone up your tactics something fierce. The luxury of powered armor is all the more meaningful when you don't have to crawl through every mission taking every precaution to avoid casualties.