Battlefield Strategy In The Alien Dimension

[glen_es]

Hi everyone.

 

Have returned to playing Apoc since the 90s, was happy to see I could down load it from *the internet* and getting it running on XP. Years ago I won TFTD, and have won Apoc but only using TB, I never used RT. Only using RT now, it's great! And I'm finding it much harder to win gunfights with the bugs (which makes playing fun).

 

So anyway, I'm in the alien dimension and have had some "holy crap" gun fights. I've had to issue strategic withdrawal (run away!) commands in several buildings and limp home to heal up, then go back again. Getting clobbered by the dimension missiles, one after another, agents both shields destroyed, their Marsec flying armour gone, float down to earth and run and duck to an exit.

 

Being new to RT and reading many threads here, I've adopted a few tactics, please comment and tell me how you make these fights easy(ier) in RT.

 

- use android mules to haul in vortex grenades and send them after the orange teleporter tubes to take them out asap. Everybody else gives them close support, the mission objectives don't get undertaken until all teleporter tubes are gone.

 

- Advancing from one building to building to the next, harder one, I've been sending more troops to the battlefield - 12 to building one, and sent 18 to the UFO factory, last building I just took out. 12 soldiers fight (I just can't keep track of more than 2 6 man squads at a time), and 6 guys are in reserve (right at their spawn point) to go to the battle when a soldier is wounded or killed.

 

- Havin a hella time with cloaked skeletoids and anthropods with dimension missiles. My strategy now is to send a 6 man android (disposable) squad armed with a cloaking device, toxin gun (I only have toxinB) ahead to detect contact and look for teleporter tubes. Everyone has Marsec flying body armour (I like flying around) and fly one square above ground. Learned the hard way not to get too high, you can't see cloaked bugs on the ground. When they meet the bug battalion they split into teams of 3 and find cover, one team is usually closer to the enemy and is a spotter team to find cloaked bugs, the other team a sniper team to lay down kill fire from afar on bug after bug who pops up. My spotter team even under cover is hammered by dimension missiles, but can you do? You have to close with the enemy to engage their dimension and entropy cloaked missile firing troops.

 

- The last building, ufo factory, the huge battle took place in a big 'cavern' with two high entrances where my support troops were trying to get a crossfire going, but not as effective as needed, my spotter team down in the cavern was taking extreme fire up close, (EDIT add the word 'my') high entrance snipers took their toll and I won but lots of XCOM wounded. Was thinking later I should have came equipped with a 6 man squad all carrying dimension launchers and fight fire with fire, saturate the low ground where the cloaked bugs are hiding. I've seen the missiles loop around till they find somebody, hopefully not my spotter team!

 

- Just typing this out I realize it would be easier if I had toxinC for close quarters gun fights.

 

- I was trying to think how I could use smoke to cover my spotter team, but kinda defeats the purpose of them being up close, I want them to have good vision.

 

* Edit By Zombie: Removed site mention.

Edited September 25, 2007 by Zombie

[[NKF]]

Android mules

 

The mules should be your supplier. Do not use them for actual combat. Where possible, they should stay near one of the entrances, ready to hit the escape tiles if they are too heavily injured.

 

Get one or two other androids, or very powerful soldiers, load up on a few vortex mines and race out into the field, destroy the teleporter pads and then head back for a another handful of explosives and repeat.

 

When clear, move your androids to the next nearest exit area so that your resupply trips aren't as taxing.

 

Building progression

 

Just use your normal strategy for clearing buildings. Some buildings are harder than others, the difficulty does't necessarily increase as you progress. You can use any number of soldiers that you are comfortable with. There's no pressure to defeating the building, so if you think your troops aren't doing well, hit the exits. You can always come back for more.

 

As usual try to hit the teleporters as quickly as you can. This is much easier if you're familiar with the layout of the building. However, to say something that's quite contrary to that: take your time. The spawn pads do cause a lot of aliens to teleport in, but it's not a very rapid process so you should be able to knock out more of them than there are teleporting in.

 

If you see an a teleporter pad area swarming with aliens, don't try to get into a firefight with them. In tight corridors (like the large greenhouse in the alien farm), this is suicide. Back off, get to cover and try to pick off a few enemies that chase after you. Area effect weapons like stun grenades and incendiary rounds are best fired into the mob to break it up or just cause chaos. I often fall into the trap of trying to slug it out with 10 skeletoids at once in the greenhouse. The dimension missiles.... oy.

 

 

Cloaked enemies

 

A few good tricks. If you can see where the attacks are coming from, have a firing squad of soldiers selected and force attack the suspected location. I like to toss a stun or incendiary grenades as well. This tends to break the ranks briefly.

 

Otherwise, hit the corners. Let the aliens chase you around the corner and then riddle them with toxin rounds or full automatic disrupter/power sword fire. Corners are by far your best friend when it comes to closing in on the enemy - or from retreating from long range enemy fire.

 

If you're out in the open, you can also try the wild strategy of spreading out and making a mad dash through the fire to get close to the enemy. As long as you don't get hit by entropy rounds, this is a surprisingly effective strategy. Unfortunately alien dimension buildings don't always allow you to do this because of the tight architecture.

 

Also, if dimension missiles are your worry - wear a full suit of X-Com disrupter armour. They are practically impervious to dimension missiles, but don't fare to well with direct hits from vortex mines. Once your shields are blown away, your disrupter armour will soak up the explosive damage until its durability wears out. This is a very good reason to have a good mix of ground troops and flyers in your group.

 

The last building

 

The last building's main objective is to take out 50% of the laser grid generators. The mass of aliens in the pit and the indestructable teleporters are just there to hinder you.

 

If you were lucky to get it, heavy launcher anti-alien-gas rockets are your best friend. They'll wipe out huge chunks of the skeletoids in the centre of the pit, and it can also damage the generators if you strike them.

 

Of course, you don't need the AG rockets, but they're a great help. Otherwise, dimension missiles, toxi-gun rounds and a hail of devestator fire is generally all you need.

 

Just remember to concentrate on the generators first. If you have enough soldiers starting all around the pit, you could probably even beat the mission without engaging any enemies. Just hit the generators, and hit the exits as quickly as you can.

 

Toxin-C

Not necessarily, as any toxin is quite overkill and highly adequate for close range combat. But it does make the whole ordeal faster, which is good if you're mobbed.

 

Smoke and Spotter team

 

Use smoke to mask your passage if necessary. Just remember to use your mobility to your advantage to get sight of the enemy.

 

Also, I'd probably recommend just one very mobile spotter than using a spotter team. Just be sure to move your rear fire team up to help the spotter when and where trouble strikes.

 

- NKF

[glen_es]

Hey thanks for the reply NKF, enjoy your posts on this forum.

 

- I adapted your mule idea, I had twin personal shields on mine and had them travel to the teleport sites and grenade them. They could carry 4 vortexes each (hand, hand, leg, leg) I get your point, an android with an empty back pack can carry even more vortexes.

 

I'd like to ask a couple of RT newb questions if I could

 

- In TB, stun grenades were deadly for knocking down heavily armed skeletoids and especially anthropods. In RT I can't seem to use them effectively, I get how they would work in an enclosed space like the tunnel in the AD farm, but in open terrain they haven't been very effective for me. During this campaign I tried and failed to capture a Popper at a ufo site with stun grenades, I saturated the ground, it ran thru the gas. Maybe my mistake was this, I was playing on slow time (no pause) and had agents lobbing grenades one after another at it, the gas maybe was dissipating far too much? Does it work better if you hit Pause, have several agents all throw stun grenades at the same time with the same detonation time? Is that the only effective way to get a thick green cloud in open terrain, thick enough to knock an alien down?

 

If I could get that to work, I see how your reco of stun grenading a concentrated area in RT would knock down at least some missile carrying enemies.

 

- Good idea on the corners have them chase then surprise them. Also good point about what's the rush, back off and see if they'll follow you to a strong point, so they'll be less concentrated on their terrain.

 

- In one building, pretty sure it was the one with the white blocks you have to destroy (building 5?) there is mostly open terrain, I had to use the rush and melee tactic with all 12 troopers against the bug's concentrated mass. I took pretty heavy casualties, some because my guys were flying too high, but it was nasty. I guess maybe casualties in the end game is to be expected, and in some ways, so what? The end is in site, no more encursions to deal with, you should have loads of super troopers back home to come back at them. I suppose even hire cannon fodder and use them as shock troops for a WWI over the top, CHARGE strategy. Use your vets to mop up the battlefield. I think I'll hire 2 squads of cannon fodder and CHARGE at them in the next building, the research says it's heavily defended (2nd to last building).

 

- Is the teleporter very useful for combat in RT? I can teleport in, attack, then oh, oh teleporter out of gas, I'm stuck. I was thinking in the next building of equipping a guy with 2 teleporters, one to get in, pause drop vortexes, switch to the unused teleporter unpause and jump out.

 

 

 

(Maybe these next questions belong on a separate topic/thread)

 

- A more general question, I read you recommended the CTRL click trick to a forum member for alleviating the tediousness of equipping troops. Can you tell me how that works, I hate restocking troops with toxin gas clips e.g. at my main base I have 12 troops on a Valkyrie, and 8 other troops also at that base, is there a short cut to give all 12 troops on the Valkyrie 6 toxin clips? What if some of those 12 troops already have 5 clips, do they end up with 11 clips? Another pain is switching 12 troops from guns to stun grapples for a stun raid, and then back again after I've run some stun raids. Any short cut for this?

 

Also, is there any command to tell all craft in cityscape to return to base? After a UFO fight, another tedious task, select craft, click return to base button, repeat 10 times.

 

Thanks again, Glen

[[NKF]]

Stun Grenades

 

It's hard to use stun grenades in RT, as you have to keep the aliens in the gas long enough to knock them out. However, the aliens are smart and know how to run away from the gas cloud, or they get smarter and knock it out with a smoke grenade. You can just throw more stun grenades to make up for it - they only carry one, you'll most definitely have more.

 

Multiple stun grenades set to go off at the same time do not work. The initial blast damage of the explosion only gets applied to the first grenade to go off. Stagger them a little so that the initial stun damage gets to stack a little. It's not much, but if you want to saturate an area, then this is the best way to do it. Keep in mind that the actual cloud densities do not necessarily get thicker with multiple grenades going off at roughly the same time. But if you want to expand the size of the gas cloud, spread the grenades out.

 

P. S: Don't forget that you can still use blast-on-impact in RT. Use the right click shortcut.

 

P. P. S: Some aliens like the popper should be knocked out with the stun grapples. The stun grenades are better for crowd control or knocking out shielded aliens.

 

Selecting Multiple Units

 

Well, it works like this. In the cityscape inventory screen, just ctrl+click on the potraits of all the units you want selected. Every unit you select will be highlighted.

 

Now, every time you pick up an object and place it, notice that n of that item will be deducted from stores. n being the number of agents you've highlighted. So if you had 6 agents, and you wanted to give them a toxigun, six toxiguns will be removed from stores.

 

When you place the item into its slot, all agents will equip that item in the same slot. If it's already occupied, nothing will be placed, so you won't stack ammo or replace whatever was originally there.

 

Also, every time you pick items off the inventory with multiple units selected, all objects in that slot will be picked up and placed in stores, even if the item is something completly different. This is a great way to un-equip a whole mess of soldiers and then equip them with identical equipment. Say you want to convert 12 completely unique soldiers so that they're all wearing disrupter armour, have one shield in the pack, four teleporters and dual devestators. First fill up all the empty slots with small items, then empty everything. Then put your desired weapon set on and voila, 12 soldiers with identical equipment.

 

You should have enough of the object you want to arm or else you won't be able to select it.

 

For Cityscape vehicles, selection is the same. ctrl+click on all the vehicles you want to give a group command to. All commands that you issue now will globally effect all the vehicles, like the disposition and height modifiers. Any existing weapons that have been switched off will remain switched off. The camera will follow the leader of the selection -that's the odd one out that's highlighted differently.

 

In manual control, you will mainly be controlling the lead vehicle. I think you can ctrl+click or just click to change the lead vehicle. Just experiment, you'll work it out quite easily. Anyway, in manual control, only the lead vehicle will move exactly where you want it. All other ships will move in the general direction, but will otherwise fly around the lead vehicle. When you attack, all ships will concentrate their attacks on the same spot. Brilliant to watch when it's done with medium and large disrupters.

 

 

Teleporters

Speaking of Teleporters, it makes sense to always carry two or more. Give up your medikit if you have to. By now you'll have the luxury of escaping to safe zones anywhere on the map, so you can even share 1 medikit with the entire squad. You can also sacrifice your second shield for the extra mobility offered by 2 more teleporters. Amazing stuff. Oh, you can even ditch your cloak shield for a fifth. A real munchkin's device, this.

 

As you've guessed, the first is used to jump into the action and the other to jump out. The teleporters dropped by dead aliens will continue charging, so if you warp into a hot zone and don't have enough juice to jump out, check the ground and do not hesitate to swap any teleporters that may have a stronger charge than what you're carrying.

 

If you don't mind saving the disrupter shields, or you're fighting the terror units, the teleporter revitalises the power sword considerably. You can teleport in, swap your teleporter with a second power sword, chop away on full auto, swap for a fresh teleporter and jump to safety. Lots of work, but also a lot of fun.

 

- NKF

Edited November 4, 2006 by NKF

[glen_es]

Wow, thanks for all the info! I quickly tested the multi-soldier equipment shortcut (ctrl+click) and it worked great. I also didn't know about the detonate on contact feature, thanks for the tip, too. Group control of vehicles in city scape will be very helpful as well.

 

---

Just finished the campaign. My ending made me laugh. I sent ~ 30 troops to the final building, I sent a squad off to fight at the teleporter and just ignored what ever they were doing while I had two soldiers knocking out the grid generators with dimension missiles. So finally I get the Building Disabled message, no casualties, great and I can go home. In the back of my mind is the briefing, be sure to leave quickly as the building will be destroyed. Click squad by squad to send them to the exit. Mass exodus. One guy's not moving, full health and is standing but not moving, what gives?

 

Then I notice he's in a blast crater, obviously caught one. I can't even turn him, he's frozen in one direction, he can shoot, full health, but can't move. This poor sap is stuck in the alien building that's about to detonate, everyone else heading home to glory. The game won't end unless I do something with this guy, in the end for the greater good of Mega Primus, he dropped his shields and Devastator Cannon and waited for skeletoids to teleport in and finish him off. He's shot and dies, X-Com wins! You don't hear this too often I bet, but thank god for the teleporter in the final building or I'd have the game stuck in limbo or will it make you lose if you don't get out of there after X amout of time? I checked to see if the guy had a vortex mine to blow himself up, but he didn't and I couldn't think of away for him to commit suicide.

 

It was too bad I didn't notice his predicament before everyone left. This guy was wearing all X-Com armour, no flying body suit. I could have thrown him a Marsec body suit and see if he could have flown out of his crater.

---

 

Could I get your opinion on something on RT game play and level of difficulty in the game? I won the above game playing almost exclusively RT, on the novice campaign setting (thought I'd learn RT on the novice setting).

 

So now I'm feeling frisky, I'll start a new campaign, this time jump 3 notches to the Hard setting (Back in the 90s I played TB but on the normal difficulty, first time now playing it on the Hard difficulty).

 

I'm into week 2 in this campaign, and something I really dislike about the Hard difficulty is the increased touchiness of the other organisations to collateral damage when I clean the aliens out of their buildings. I had a battle at the Nutrivend Hydro Farm, had my usual blast-fest to beat the aliens, I love collateral damage in the battlescape, this was great with glass falling everywhere. Then I check how Nutrivend is feeling about this gun fight - holy moly - they want $100,000 to restore relations from hostile to neutral.

 

Then, an alien transport appears, I down it and send my troops to take it. Yeesh, the Anthropods are cloaked, shielded, and using entropy missiles. I get clobbered.

 

Ok, it IS the hard dificulty setting. In TB, I could have won that ufo fight by flooding the doors with stun grenades to take out the Anthropods. Noting what you said earlier about stun grenades not being the killer in RT they are in TB, the best I could think of was using rocket launchers to take down the Anthropods, blast the heck out them. I replayed this ufo battle several times - tried troops in close, and replayed backed way off to snipe, but each time I'd lose men dead to entropy missiles from cloaked Anthropods. Thus my conclusion to blast the heck out of them with rockets and continue to do so until 1) I can start manufacturing shields for my troops en masse with multiple labs 2) I better get ToxinB as quick as I absolutely can so I can stockpile shields to supplement 1). I no longer can stockpile shields using stun grenades as I could in TB.

 

I use the Apoc game manufacturing bug (manufacture item on then off, then on, on, on, on, etc, you get the $ for the item each hit of enter) in the game to get all the money I want. But in week 2 when all you have to manufacture is the $700 bio module, that's A LOT of hits of enter to generate 100 grand for Nutrivend. This game bug I don't mind using, an Apoc game editor I did use years ago but I don't think I could be bothered now.

 

 

So end of ramble 1) I think I'm going to back off to the normal or even easy game setting so organisations will cut me some slack when I blast their buildings. I'll enjoy the game more 2) How do you get past the week 2 and 3 overmatched troopers predicament when playing the hard or even superhuman difficulty settings using RT (I know I need to start using the pause and drop everything trick when hit by an entropy missile).

Edited November 5, 2006 by glen_es

[[NKF]]

Well, first off, you'll be glad to know that alien technology is unlocked based on your score. When you hit certain score levels, the aliens get to unlock a new technology at the end of the week. Or was it the end of the day? I think the weekly refresh is more like it. Coincidentally, you can briefly downgrade alien technology by lowering your score below the technology's required number of points. Of course, few of us would want to do it this way.

 

Therefore, the trick to not getting hit by high tech aliens from the very start is to take it easy and have a steady rise in points at first until you can get your core technologies (toxigun, devestator, shields, etc). After that, do whatever you please. So, this means you have to cut back on early raids on enemy organisations. Some resource raids are fine, but don't over do them.

 

If you need to lower your score slightly, some cityscape damage is perfectly acceptable as long as your score by the end of the week is not in the negatives. A well placed retribution missile at a large cultist temple from a long way away often works. The cultists don't mind. Well... not much.

 

You will want to try and get used to making clean takedowns in neutral and friendly buildings. It's very tempting to pull out a mini launcher and go wild. I know. But keep the safety on these weapons on and make use of plasma beams, AP rounds, stun grapples and stun gas to the best of your ability. Use HE and Incendiary munitions sparingly. Again, you have to force yourself into this habit. That's not to say that you cannot use them. You just have to use them wisely.

 

As for your poor soldiers, do note that you can train them a little by having them arm stun grapples and then knocking over neutral rent-a-cops. It's not much, but it's something. You won't raise your strength this way. This can only be done through the training facility.

 

Speaking of stun grapples, they're a great clean way of knocking out humanoid aliens quickly until they start carrying shields. For the terror units, it adds a maximum of 80 stun damage to their health, meaning you can take them out of the battle 80 hitpoints earlier. If you get used to close quarter fighting, you'll find yourself using this a lot at the beginning.

 

----

 

One of the biggest problems you'll be facing on a higher difficulty level will be the higher number of enemies that'll appear in combat. The individual enemies are no tougher than what you'd get on the easier settings even though they may have stronger stats. The higher numbers however means that you'll be getting a much bigger weekly score than you would on easier difficulties. This can quickly accelerate enemy technologies if you're not careful.

 

How to deal with this? Well, hit each alien drop site immediately. This prevents the spread of aliens so you won't get too many missions to deal with. In the battle do the opposite. You could go easy on the aliens. Let a few of them escape if they want. These aliens will not last for long so even if they did increase the infiltration levels in adjacent buildings, it'll drop off very quickly.

 

The next thing you can do is to go easy on the UFOs. Shoot down one of each type - especially the Alien Transport - and go after it. Otherwise, don't go after them all and let some of them go about their way unless they're physically attacking your buildings. You'll still have to deal with the alien drops, but the points you would get for shooting down the UFO and taking out its contents will not be added to your monthly score.

 

Geez, I know it sounds odd having to suggest strategies on how to not defeat the aliens, but if you want to maintain a steady progression of alien technology, then you do want to keep things slow at first.

 

 

----

 

Shield harvesting can still be done with stun grenades. It's just not as easy. Of course, don't forget that you still have the toxigun, and the mind bender. You'll need to invest in a couple of hybrids with high base psi stats for this, but they're well worth the investment. I mean, when you can just ask the alien to hand its shield over to you, the whole ordeal of training the hybrids will be worth it.

 

Or just switch to TB and capture a few extra shields this way.

 

----

 

In the end, I highly recommend you play a Superhuman campaign. It's hard - but once you get the hang of it you'll not turn back. Well, you might just to play on the different cityscape maps. Give it a go anyway. It'll be a new challenge for you to tackle.

 

- NKF

[xalien]

Or was it the end of the day? I think the weekly refresh is more like it.

 

In my last game I started doing stun raids from the very first minute and that first alien that comes through the alert 2 hours later was already armed with a disruptor gun. So maybe your score is checked and alien tech adjusted before each of their missions?

[Robo Dojo 58]

In my last game I started doing stun raids from the very first minute and that first alien that comes through the alert 2 hours later was already armed with a disruptor gun. So maybe your score is checked and alien tech adjusted before each of their missions?

I have found the alien tech instantly follows the score. One mission the aliens had no teleporters, then I hit the score boundry. The next mission, half of the aliens had teleporters.

 

It's very important that you get two of each research facility, so that your tech can keep up with the aliens. If you are pushing the score really hard, you might even have enough money for three. But yes, don't try to do everything on day one. Spread it over a few weeks.

 

Speaking of stun grapples, they're a great clean way of knocking out humanoid aliens quickly until they start carrying shields. For the terror units, it adds a maximum of 80 stun damage to their health, meaning you can take them out of the battle 80 hitpoints earlier. If you get used to close quarter fighting, you'll find yourself using this a lot at the beginning.

I haven't found this to be true. I've been able to eventually down big guys with nothing but the stun gun. It takes me about 20 or so hits, and empties several guns, but I've found it possible.

[[NKF]]

I've only ever managed to deliver twice the stun grapple's base damage value (40). It won't get any higher than that. If you could compound stun damage beyond that, it would be the best non-humanoid weapon in the entire game. Alas, it isn't. Yes, I have tried it against aliens like the psimorph and the queenspawn with multiple soldiers and dual grapples over a considerable period of time. I even used a mind bender to keep a check on the stun damage.

 

Still, it can't hurt to get some more opinions on this. There might be something I'm missing.

 

- NKF

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

A well placed retribution missile at a large cultist temple from a long way away often works. The cultists don't mind. Well... not much.

I'm 100% sure that "Chain reactions" of falling structures don't affect relations with an organization, and as far as I know, don't affect the score either. I mean that only whether you hit a building or not and whether you destroy a targeted tile or not is taken into account. When your hit causes the whole building to fall, it's treated as a single hit score- and relation-wise.

I want to say, that it might not be a good idea to use powerful long-range weapons to do a "score damage". Well, you will do a lot of city damage in several overpowered hits, but don't lose much score and will be left with no more buildings to shoot at.

In my opinion, your goal is to place more hits - use less powerful weapons, and shoot more carefully.

As for stun grapple damage:

NKF, obviously, your experience differs from experience of other people. I'm also pretty sure, Stun Grapples can take down anything up to Megaspawn. I think we can talk about some version differences.

[[NKF]]

Any city damage done by you should be enough. I only mention hitting the cultists since damaging their buildings won't affect your relations with the other organisations, unless some strange alliances have been made. The long range option is meant for early on when your ships will easily be clobbered by the mass of enemy ships. It gives you enough time to make a quick retreat to the nearest launch tube.

 

edit: By the way, speaking of chain reactions, there's a base in the superhuman map that you can buy that's shouldering two slums on each side. Start a new game from this base and get your Wolfhound to fire a missile at your own portion of the slums and see what happens. From what I can remember, the neighbours didn't particularly appreciate the renovations.

 

Just to be clear about the stun grapple, so I know we're all on the same page here: I'm referring to a continuous stun grapple attack against an unhurt enemy unit with lots of hitpoints. No physical damage. You can certainly take down high hitpoint enemies if they're hurt enough - that cannot be disputed.

 

A good control scenario would be to have an all-android team clobber the last remaining psimorph with grapples. Or even the queenspawn. That's even more of a fish in a barrel.

 

- NKF

Edited November 7, 2006 by NKF

[Robo Dojo 58]

Maybe there's a difference between real time and turn based for the stuns? I primarily do the turn based game, where I think NKF has more of a thing for the real time stuff.

[glen_es]

Thanks again for the response NKF.

 

Maybe there's a difference between real time and turn based for the stuns? I primarily do the turn based game, where I think NKF has more of a thing for the real time stuff.

 

In RT recently I've had two androids each armed with twin stun grapples pin a Psimorph and stun the heck out of him for 3 or 4 minutes. They couldn't bring him down. My experience is the same as NKF, this brought down the Psimorph's hit points only. After all the continuous stunning, I had to add a long range shot from a devastator cannon to stun it.

 

It's been a while since I've played TB, but I remember for Megaspawns and Psimorphs I always had to soften them up with explosive rounds or Toxin before I could stun them with stun grapples.

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

Luckily I got a good chance to test the stun issue. I've downed an Escort, which had a Megaspawn inside.

I also had a team of 6 androids equipped with Stun Grapples.

Here's a panicked Megaspawn inside:

Checked his health:

He's got 141 health and a critical wound. But 141 is way more than max 80 stun damage people is pointing out and it's unlikely a wound could remove 61 hitpoint in several seconds.

However, the Megaspawn is quickly stunned with Stun Grapples auto-fire:

I also have 2 savegames ("before" and "after"), but they're quite big (1,5 mb in ZIP, that's from my 4,6 mb attachment limit), but I can still post it, if somebody asks for it.

So, in MY VERSION I'm now 100% sure I can do more than 80 stun damage.

[[NKF]]

For what it's worth, I managed to run a test myself on a clean install of the game - so it has not been sullied by any editors to skew my findings. Loaded up a just-started superhuman game that I never got round to completing (this was a challenge where androids with power swords were the only form of allowed direct damage).

 

While doing so, I ran a test on the relations hit caused by chain reaction building collapses. No, it doesn't look like any relations are affected if the adjacent building gets knocked down when your own building is destroyed by yourself. My previous attempt was happening during a big firefight in the area. Still not sure why a GLM missile was able to blow up the slums - 1 GLM rocket isn't enough to knock down a section of the slum complex. Unless of course the wolfhound came out guns firing all the while it was leaving the garage. Anyway, I digress. Loaded a superhuman game, yadda yadda yadda.

 

I launched a mission in real-time. I very quickly got into quite an unusual situation where four solders are standing around two multiworms. The multiworms seemed confused and had stopped firing back, so I made a quick save. Switched off the safeties for all eight grapples and started pounding away the nearest multiworm. A game minute or so later, they're still going at it. I haven't got a mind bender to check the actual health level, but one doesn't need a mind bender to see that the targeted multiworm was still upright. The unit focus pointer was still on it. A game minute later the multiworms decided enough was enough and got out of the rut and proceeded to slaughter the soldiers. I reran this test from the save a couple more times and had the same results.

 

 

Now that I think about it, I wonder if this is a case of stun resistance based on alien species? Hmm. I might have to go through storage and dig out the old P133 and see if any of my old saves are still on it.

 

- NKF

Edited November 8, 2006 by NKF

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

I forgot to mention that this game is on medium difficulty. Maybe the difficulty level affects stun limit?

My game isn't modified by any editors. Only a No-CD patch is applied (for some reason the game refuses to recognize the CD I always used to play with), and the game is run under DOSBox. I don't think a No-CD patch could remove the 80 point stun limit.

NKF, I'll post my savegame later, can you post yours? I'll check it on my system, you will be able to check mine. And we'll figure out if it's version or difficulty difference.

[[NKF]]

All right. Give me about a day or so. It's late in my part of the world, and I need to figure some means of transferring the files between my computers that doesn't involve a floppy disk (let's just say my computer has a taste for floppies ). The USB connector on my flash drive has also decided to give up the ghost. Why is it these things that I hardly ever use work perfectly when I don't need them, and the moment I want to use them, they let me down? Don't worry, I'll have it zipped up and ready to post.

 

- NKF

Edited November 8, 2006 by NKF

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

OK, here are my savegames:

Stun_grapple_test_BT_Tony.zip

[[NKF]]

Here goes, my rather pathetic test game. Stroke of luck I remembered I had a spare flash drive tucked in my laptop case.

 

Oh and glen_es, sorry for temporarily hijacking the thread. We need to get to the bottom of this or else the world will turn into a ball of cheese.

 

- NKF

save.zip

[[NKF]]

Aha!

 

I'm partially right. I think.

 

My biggest FUBAR so far has been that I've been quoting the wrong number at you. What I just realised was the the stun grapple does 90 base stun damage.

 

90!

 

Thank god for tooltips! So that means we're looking at a 180 health stun grapple cut-off. I was close! Well, okay, I was off by 100...

 

Well, anyway, let's see where this leads us. There might still be version differences, but this might clear up some confusion.

 

Can't believe I forgot the grapples did 90. Where'd 40 come from? Proof I haven't played Apocalypse in yonks.

 

Blue-Tooth-Tony, if I'm not mistaken your megaspawn had less than 180 health. That would explain the instant stunning. If you get some time, try and corner a psimorph. Your team should have no trouble with getting it undamaged.

 

I went to your shot down mothership to run one more quick test and got the same results as I had with my multiworm. The megaspawn got a generous mouthful, but remained upright all the while it slowly slaughtering the three grapplers.

 

By the way, before that, I think I must've come across a few unshielded skeletoids, since I was decking all of them flat with three of your androids. Can I also just say what a brilliant RT-anti-popper tool the stun grapples are? Halted a convoy of 5 poppers in their tracks with the same androids. Man, this has reminded why I like them so much.

 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go into the corner and laugh uneasily for a while.

 

- NKF

Edited November 9, 2006 by NKF

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

In that Mothership I got 2 Psimorphs in the main hall unguarded. Attacked them with Android team...

And was unable to knock them out! Having loaded them with Stun Grapple charges, had to use lawpistols to bring them down.

OK, NKF, looks like your stun limit theory have been proven to be true. Now I'm convinced.

Though, a limit of 180 points makes much more sence.

[glen_es]

Oh and glen_es, sorry for temporarily hijacking the thread. We need to get to the bottom of this or else the world will turn into a ball of cheese.

- NKF

 

Hey maybe the cheese world thing was the REAL eco disaster that caused Mega Primus.

 

No worries about thread hijacking, this apoc talk is all good.

[glen_es]

I just finished another campaign, this time on medium difficulty. I devised a new strategy for the alien dimension that worked very well for my style of play. I was thinking I should try fighting fire with fire.

 

I armed 3 soldiers in each 6 man squad with dimension missile launchers and 5 extra missiles. I took 4 squads to each building, meaning I had 12 soldiers with dimension missile launchers, and 72 missiles to fire at the aliens.

 

Worked like a breeze, I had a total of 2 soldiers wounded, none killed between buildings 2 and 10, no game reloads. Building after building I slaughtered them. My missiles took them out before they could launch entropy or dimension missiles back at me.

 

It seemed like the game gave me the advantage of being first on the draw in the battle of missile launchers, I think because 1) my guys were all cloaked and 2) several missile toting soldiers gave me the overwhelming advantage of firing volleys of missiles.

 

Also in each squad of 6 were 2 soldiers firing ToxinC, and 1 vortex mine 'mule'. The mules were loaded down with 4 vortex mines, one mule could take out one of those vile 4 pad teleporters.

 

Every one except the mules were cloaked, the mules trailed behind and destroyed the teleporters once the area around a teleporter was more or less secure. Everyone had a Marsec flying suit, you can travel quicker to the teleporters by flying than running.

 

One important thing is to have everyone carrying a missile launcher to have high Psi defense - either an android, or for humans do quick in and out raids with the mind shield activated to get their psi defense up to 100%. The other thing is to have the dimension missile toting soldiers to lead each squad. These tactics prevent friendly fire missile casualties.

[Aiki-Knight]

NKF, quick question:

 

What are the "terror units" you speak of in Apoc?

 

That's something I miss from X1 & 2: real terror missions.

 

I have to say that you guys do some interesting combat styles: the sword-saint with the power sword and the teleporters, and the stun-trooper. I've only used stun grapples to take down species I needed; the rest of the time, I've left them back at the base. As for power swords, my best troops carry them for those moments when a skeletoid or arthropod bum-rushes an XCOM agent, presumably to bite down with teeth. It would be nice (but no big deal) if XCOM agents could use the power swords more like real swords - it'd be much more impressive (and satisfying) to watch.

[[NKF]]

Yeah, unfortunately the swords are just short range energy blasters. Kind of a rip off, but ah well, they're still one of the most powerful non-explosive weapons you can get early in the game.

 

As for the terror unit classification, I suppose they're almost all terror units, with the exception of the two humanoid races that can use tools and the micronoids. Everything else, especially the megaspawn, seems engieneered to be some form of terror inducing weapon.

 

- NKF