42 replies to this topic

[Sorrow]

Oh God, what a massacre! I just lost my 5th Terror Site mission!

[NKF]

Stick with it. Once you get used to it, it's hard to go back to the easier levels.

- NKF

[Sorrow]

I'm not going back . It's just, wow, I didn't know it was so brutal . It's weird that for all these years I was prevented from seeing the true level of brutality of X-Com XD .

[yarrow]

5th? .... hmmm

I understand 1st sectoid terror can be a challenge, but 5th?

shouldn't you have at least laser rifles + personal armor as standard?
perhaps with 2 heavy rocket snipers
and heavy grenadiers ( 40+ strength ) using high explosives

hmmm .... interesting
can you 'extend' your story from the beginning

hmmm ... bad start perhaps?

yarrow

Edited by yarrow, 31 October 2012 - 07:08 AM.

[Sorrow]

5th? .... hmmm

I understand 1st sectoid terror can be a challenge, but 5th?

shouldn't you have at least laser rifles + personal armor as standard?
perhaps with few heavy plasma snipers
and heavy grenadiers ( 40+ strength ) using high explosives

hmmm .... interesting
can you 'extend' your story from the beginning

hmmm ... bad start perhaps?

yarrow

Well, modded game.I made a mod that makes the economy make more sense - I set following values with an assumption that 1$ in game = 10 real $ - renting a skyranger costs 1 million $, renting an interceptor 3 million $, most of guns are much less expensive, though "rockets" (extreme accuracy suggests that that they are guided missiles) are more expensive. It's much more difficult to make money by selling alien guns.Also, I changed damage values basing on GURPS Ultratech. HE and I ammo for heavy cannon and auto-cannon is now much less powerful. Lasers are gimped - they are weaker than normal guns. Oh and I decreased accuracy of most of weapons a bit.I'm also using custom city maps from this site:http://area51.xcomufo.com/They have much bigger buildings and more of them. They are a nightmare to fight on, especially with Chrysalids.I actually already had Power Armour researched but I don't have enough elerium to build it (sold it all when I needed to replace a Skyranger once).Personal Armour doesn't protect from heavy plasma and Chrysalids and that's what I faced in last two terror sites.

[3llense'g]

Well, modded game.I made a mod that makes the economy make more sense... HE and I ammo for heavy cannon and auto-cannon is now much less powerful. Lasers are gimped - they are weaker than normal guns. Oh and I decreased accuracy of most of weapons a bit. I'm also using custom city maps from this site:http://area51.xcomufo.com/They have much bigger buildings and more of them. They are a nightmare to fight on, especially with Chrysalids.

Cheating: you're doing it wrong!

[Sorrow]

Well, modded game.I made a mod that makes the economy make more sense... HE and I ammo for heavy cannon and auto-cannon is now much less powerful. Lasers are gimped - they are weaker than normal guns. Oh and I decreased accuracy of most of weapons a bit. I'm also using custom city maps from this site:http://area51.xcomufo.com/They have much bigger buildings and more of them. They are a nightmare to fight on, especially with Chrysalids.

Cheating: you're doing it wrong!

::

[kevL's]

*Good show, old boy! /Brit


myself i just halved all sale prices as a quick & dirty attempt to bring the economy under control; it works but i see there's room for improvement !

[Sorrow]

To me it was just a question of scale. Generally stuff like modern fighters is horribly expensive and Air to Air missiles being much more expensive than infantry rifles.

[kevL's]

yeh I'll have to spend some time actually looking at those prices 'realistically'

I like your idea of $1m for Rangers & well say 2.5m for the Interceptors (mine tend to go down in smoke due to upgraded Terror ships). Someone suggested multi-$k prices for Avalanches and Stingrays so that's in too.


something i noticed about halving sale prices is that most manufactured items simply won't sell for profit (was losing cash before i noticed that ... and laser pistols profitted only $2k per). So it's gonna be a chore to balance that out down the road,

[Sorrow]

Some example prices:
Skyranger: 1,000,000
Interceptor: 3,000,000
Stingray Launcher: 17,000
Stingray Missile: 30,000

Rifle: 200
Rifle clip: 10
Auto-cannon: 1500
AC-AP Ammo 20
AC-HE Ammo 20
AC-IN Ammo 20
Rocket Launcher: 10,000
Small Rocket: 4,000
Large Rocket: 4,500
Grenade: 5
Proximity Grenade: 20
Electro-flare: 2

Selling prices:
Heavy Plasma: 20,000
Plasma Pistol: 2,500
Elerium-115: 500
Blaster Launcher: 30,000
UFO Power Source: 250,000
UFO Navigation: 80,000
Laser Rifle: 4,000

[kevL's]

T'anks man,

will def. bounce my prices off your list when the time comes


-> save to file.

[Sorrow]

Oh God! The Chrysalids, these abominations that should have never existed! They killed everyone! And their offspring bursts from those who they killed! Such a horror! What blasphemous experiments could bring such vile things to life? Their creators must be utterly depraved and godless!

Edited by Sorrow, 01 November 2012 - 12:52 PM.

[yarrow]

What blasphemous experiments could bring such vile things to life?

designers of xcom

what mission was that?
don't blame others!
YOU! allowed them to come close

yarrow

Edited by yarrow, 02 November 2012 - 12:23 PM.

[Sorrow]

What blasphemous experiments could bring such vile things to life?

designers of xcom

what mission was that?
don't blame others!
YOU! allowed them to come close

yarrow

Terror site. I didn't have heavy plasmas yet. I was keeping them at distance along with a bunch of snakemen and then something went wrong and one of them ran up to my soldiers and managed to turn two of them into zombies. And then it was basically game over, because these things are horribly resistant. I remember stuff like High Explosives failing to kill them.On next terror site half of my troops had heavy plasmas and they blasted every one of them.Anyway, now I have problems with alien bases. There are three of them and the two that I have attacked so far had psionic aliens which wreaked havoc with mind control. So far, I made 4 attacks and all of them ended with 90%+ losses.

[yarrow]

because these things are horribly resistant

laser rifles, large rockets, high explosives ARE able to do the job
( in unmodified game )

yes, losses are very high in the first psi mission
my personal is at least 50% ( expected ) losses

you didn't say what races you fought agains,
but ...
you can just wait for supply ships first ( no cyberdiscs / sectopods )
just grab psi alien and abort mission
( you will return later with psi scanned soldiers )

if you fight against sectoids than you can try this
pistol + personal armor combination
( and some stun weaponry of course )

using this combination
you can kill sectoids with pistols, but when they mind control your soldiers
he won't harm any others since personal armor is immune to pistols.

of course in alien base you must get some heavy rockets and high explosives
to take out those cyberdiscs

I prefer to put on the ground any heavy weaponry ( and grenades! )
at the end of my turn, and pick them up in the beginning of my next turn

basically you are trading reaction fire / more vulnerablity in enemy turn
but you are safer from psi attacks

if you don't mind abusing eploits, than use elevator shielding bug

please also remember that, you can stun any mind controlled soldier
if he survives it will be returned safely to base

try to look for: 'XCOM UFO: UFO-13 Terror Ship 1/2' on youtube
he fights with only starting weapons

yarrow

ps.
where is the older full editor?
so I can insert links easily
( and emoticons, and so on )

Edited by yarrow, 03 November 2012 - 01:10 PM.

[Sorrow]

because these things are horribly resistant

laser rifles, large rockets, high explosives ARE able to do the job
( in unmodified game )

I think it's a bug in the 1.4 version. Because the autopsy says that they are vulnerable to HE, while in editor I saw that they have 80% vulnerability, so HE is actually less effective against them.
I had Chrysalids, High Explosives and Large Rockets unmodified, they still resisted them.I increased their vulnerability now, though.
Anyway, I'm restarting the game as I decided to increase value of Elerium and Elerium based items.

try to look for: 'XCOM UFO: UFO-13 Terror Ship 1/2' on youtube
he fights with only starting weapons

Just watched it. He was saving every turn obsessively then got massacred just before entering the UFO and immediately reloaded.
It makes me wish that doing stuff like that would make aliens reload game every time something goes wrong. Just imagine winning a terror site and then game reloading.
Also, take in account that I'm not reloading, so average life expectancy of my troops is 2 missions.

ps.
where is the older full editor?
so I can insert links easily
( and emoticons, and so on )

Yeah. I hate these new forum softwares that base everything on javascripts. I have to choice between forums slowing down my comp and not being able to use full features.

[kevL's]

... as I decided to increase value of Elerium and Elerium based items.

++

try to look for: 'XCOM UFO: UFO-13 Terror Ship 1/2' on youtube
he fights with only starting weapons

Just watched it. He was saving every turn obsessively then got massacred just before entering the UFO and immediately reloaded.
It makes me wish that doing stuff like that would make aliens reload game every time something goes wrong. Just imagine winning a terror site and then game reloading.

It also looks like he was getting *extremely lucky* with those rocket shots! But if that's his playstyle i don't mind,

ps.
where is the older full editor?
so I can insert links easily
( and emoticons, and so on )

Yeah. I hate these new forum softwares that base everything on javascripts. I have to choice between forums slowing down my comp and not being able to use full features.

mine's ok. Not sure what i left turned on

[Sorrow]

This time I had a great start. Captured two UFOs, shot down and captured another one and chased away 2 others.
The aliens got really butthurt about this and paid me a visit with Cyberdisks.
I had about 14 soldiers in base and had over 10 large rockets, so the base item bug hit me hard - I had no grenades.
Still, I just turned the corridor leading to hangars and access lift into a killzone. I hid agents in the rooms in that corridor and they were jumping out and shooting entering aliens from close range.
In the end of the corridor I had 5 agents and a HWP waiting for anyone who would survive.
It was a massacre - I think I killed 10 aliens that way. The mind control wasn't very effective - I think I lucked out and had good agent psi resistence. They were "working" on one agents for 4 turns without effect. Then they stopped coming. I had to counterattack because they were still using psi.
The bastards were waiting in the entrance of the hangar - 3 cyberdisks and 3 sectoids firing on anyone who would try to do anything. I killed one with grenade in next turn I lost my HWP, my Heavy Cannon guy got mind-controlled, killed the Rocket Launcher guy, then got killed by aliens and then the defence collapsed, mass panic, mind control, sectoids going deep into base and executing defenceless troops who dropped their rifles in panic.

I think I'll stop playing for some time because I'm tired with inspecting and renaming new soldiers.

[kevL's]

but that's xCom!

On the playthrough before my current I got a base attack by the sectoids too. Only, the Ranger was out so there were only 6 guys in coveralls with rifles (cyberdisc on the near side of the access lift w full TUs). Mind control rendered the situation useless, on my 6th reload I just looked at it and started a new game ...

You can bypass the 80-item limit (even for Base Defense) by using statstrings plus XcomUtil's auto-equip command line:

>xcomutil game_X eqp [wrt]

take heart? soldier names

Edited by kevL's, 05 November 2012 - 05:10 PM.

[yarrow]

He was saving every turn obsessively then got massacred
just before entering the UFO and immediately reloaded

yes, It was intended as an example of playing using only earth based weapons
not as an ironman run

Also, take in account that I'm not reloading,
so average life expectancy of my troops is 2 missions.

personally in my ironman runs
there is no such thing as life expectancy!

everyone is expendable until ... I got my psi elite force.
( this is especially true, when on the first 'psi-capture' mission )

Of course I tend to keep alive soldiers as much as possible
especially good snipers ( 68+ ) and good grenadiers ( 38+ strength )

but as Sun Tzu wrote:
good general must take care of his men
but cannot be afraid to take losses as well

in the end ... they are ALL sacked
as any other psi weak soldiers ... with no mercy
( psi troopers gains experience much faster anyway )

because I'm tired with inspecting and renaming new soldiers

that was the reason why I wrote xcsedit
I posted it on the forum, but since I don't remember the text tags
you will have to search the forum by yourself

massive renamer/sacker should be his second name

yarrow

ps.
yes, there is only one soldier stat that I care of

Edited by yarrow, 05 November 2012 - 08:25 PM.

[Sorrow]

How do stat-strings work?

I re-visited all the damage values basing on old GURPS books and G3G weapon system. Lasers are stronger (in old GURPS ULTRA-TECH they are very weak but get an ability to burst fire with damage of whole burst counting against armor). I removed auto-fire from them.
Also, I increased the aimed fire accuracy and decreased snap shot accuracy with pistols losing being less accurate overal but more accurate with snapshots and heavy weapons being horribly inaccurate with snap-shots.

[kevL's]

/statstring


XcomUtil implements auto-equip soldiers in a couple of ways. I'm far from an expert but at least i've gotten it to behave as I like. Originally, iirc ( v.6.3 ) you had to create a textfile 'xcomutil.eqp' in the UFO main directory. in it you write up equipment loadouts like so

// Cannoneer ac-he (c2) Str 35+ //
/c235
RH1:Auto-Cannon:AC-HE_Ammo
//LS1:Electro-Flare
LS2:Alien_Grenade

The double slash is simply a comment. RH1: means Right Hand ( the 1 is redundant but whatver ). Auto-Cannon:AC-HE_Ammo means put an auto-cannon loaded with he shells in the right hand, on entering Tactical combat phase. LS2:Alien_Grenade means put an alien grenade on the left shoulder, 2nd slot. etc.

The line /c235 is the equipment declaration: if I append /c235 onto the end of a soldier's name he will get equipped with that loadout on entering Tactical. The flare, above, is commented out waiting for a night mission ...

While the 80-item limit is not enforced, the 170-item max for battlescape IS enforced. If your xcomutil.eqp file exceeds the design specs soldiers will go into battle without all their equipment. Corpses will disappear, all the usual 640k RAM stuff happens. Gotta keep those loadouts pruned down, and the equipment needs to be available at usually the base your soldiers take off from

There is more info available in XcomUtil's doc, under the EQP switch.

Later versions allow auto-equip to be set up through XCUSETUP.bat - I used to have to save the game at Turn 1 of tactical, then exit and run that command line from my last post, but now RUNXCOM.bat does it automagically if the option to auto-equip was turned on with XCUSETUP. So that's good.


3 issues:

1. it doesn't seem to work automagically for Base Defense. So i fall back on the Save->Exit->run EQP->Load method of the old system and it seems to work fine. All that clutter equipment in the base gets temporarily removed and the soldiers get their proper loadouts.

2. creating an 'xcomutil.eqp' file. It's suggested that your first .Eqp file should be created using the EQL switch from the command line, on a tactical savegame directory that has soldiers already equipped and labelled. See the XcomUtil doc. Edit it as you like later ... btw the REN switch will automatically label soldiers according to XcomUtil defaults.

3. i've experienced a rather bad bug in 2 separate games, where equipment gets taken from the wrong base. Or worse, goes back to the wrong base after combat. This can be dealt with by simply transferring the equipment back to its proper base IG, but when it happens to me i get fed up and hexedit the game files until it works properly again - statstrings are simply too handy to not use.


hth

Ps. i think we need a formula for weapons, that takes into account TUs, Acc, wt. & damage - such that all weapons become an almost equal tradeoff with others: pistols, fast but inaccurate and low damage; lasers, good long range (aimed) but at an expense (perhaps speed); plasma, good damage but heavy; etc. ah well

[Sorrow]

I wonder if superhuman is really worth it. I think it really goes over the top with the amount of aliens. It is nice to meet 5 aliens in one map sector and get shot to death but for example in base defence missions I experience the disappearing body bug.

[kevL's]

time for me to 'fess up. I don't play SH because it has too many aliens. It's not so much the difficulty, as there's just too many aliens that it breaks my belief. So i play a beefed up version of Genius (including extra aliens w/ XcomEd, but not quite as many). On larger ships and base missions i still have to use XcomUtil DXC (delete extra clips) and sometimes other tricks ...

[Sorrow]

Well, technically speaking, a big ship like battleship or terror ship could have very large crew. Like 100 aliens.

[kevL's]

maybe with OpenXcom

( but there always seems to be that 'compression factor' between real numbers and IG numbers, idk )

[Sorrow]

So, it's still alive?

The main problem would be that it's not a proper scale for fighting against tens or hundreds of enemies. Stuff like that is for tactical games like Close Combat or Armored Brigade.
So, there's a problem - from one side it would be realistic to have 100 or even 200 aliens on a battleship from another side, it's bad to have 20+ units per side in a skirmish game.

On the other hand it would be nice to be able to generate 50 or so civilians in terror missions.

[kevL's]

On the other hand it would be nice to be able to generate 50 or so civilians in terror missions.

! - think of the implications

[yarrow]

I wonder if superhuman is really worth it

you must be joking

- yes you MUST be -
superhuman iron man runs its the ONLY games that I play

as NKF suggested earlier

Stick with it. Once you get used to it, it's hard to go back to the easier levels

to me its not hard ... its just ... impossible

dissapearing items bug is more damaging in alien bases/colonies
than in base defence missions

I tend to get more items ( including bodies )
when I put many items on the same square
I also try to kill 4 squared aliens on the same squares

however, it only 'delay' the bug not eliminate it

yarrow

Edited by yarrow, 09 November 2012 - 11:44 AM.

[Sorrow]

Yeah. I'll simply decrease the amount of aliens in Base Defense.

On the other hand it would be nice to be able to generate 50 or so civilians in terror missions.

! - think of the implications

I wonder if it would be possible to do.

[kevL's]

( hehe @ yarrow )

logically, there's going to be a basic value in Tactical.exe for each mission type ......




EDIT
heya again,

i just took a look in XcomEd v.95 and under 'UFO Crews' it looks like there's complete access to #spawns for all mission types!

Edited by kevL's, 09 November 2012 - 12:44 PM.

[Sorrow]

I'm using it for decreasing the amount of aliens in base missions. I don't see the amount of civilians, though.

[kevL's]

oh. my bad

[Sorrow]

Too bad no one from the modding know-how guys seems to be active any more.

[kevL's]

am glad for the resources they left available


I'm playing a way more interesting game on account of it.

- seems a few guys have dug deeply into the source code, and if a guy *really* wanted to increase the civies hey ... but it won't/wouldn't surprise me if it's as simple as changing a value in a textfile with OpenXcom. I hear that all rulesets are just modular .Ini files

[Sherlock Holmes]

Back to the "I just discovered superhuman" topic, "what a massacre!" is right. I just fixed the difficulty bug with xcom util, and so am now experiencing real Superhuman for the first time.

I do fine when raiding UFOs, but so far both terror missions and the base defense mission have been utter disasters. Usually the cyberdiscs shoot up my team before I can get my heavy weapons guys (rocket launchers) out of the Skyranger, and shoot too quickly or are too far away for Hi-X to be effective. The first terror mission were floaters, which I thought would be easier. And it was...the reapers didn't kill anyone (unlike the cyberdisks) but they did distract from shooting the floaters. Of course, it was dark and I had neither flares nor anything incindiary (no one can explain why the loadmaster was not immediately sent to a radar station in Alaska).

Last night, at the second terror mission, the first trooper got out of the Skyranger and found two cyberdisks about four squares away. He dispatched them with Hi-X (and himself, sadly). The aliens countered by mind-controlling one of my snipers in the front of the plane, who then killed herself and most of the team with one shot of HE. The remaining five troopers, who had yet to even move, promptly panicked and I had to abort. Second failed terror mission in one month.

In the base defense mission, I funneled all the sectoids through a chokepoint and blew them up with proxies. Killed 11 and lost 1. But they stopped coming down the hallway of death. I waited many turns and concluded there was only one or two left and headed for the hangars. They aren't stupid: the cyberdiscs were camping the door. I took the two out with rockets, losing many troopers in the process. I then gave my troops a long break to rebuild morale, and then found MORE cyberdisks camping in the other hangars. I had lost the rocket launchers by then (my fault: I had too many soldiers with armed proxies, who then got shot and their proxies killed other troopers who walked too close) and could not get anyone in position to shoot the cyberdiscs and so lost the base.

Superhuman is HARD!

[yarrow]

It is normal to loose game quite few times
when you first start to play 'ironman-superhumans'

I lost more than 10 games ( perhaps much more )
before my tactics improved enough
( reloading abuse destroys your ability to make mistakes )

read again ( and repeat if nessesary )
reaction fire triggers on ufopaedia.org

and abuse mutual surprize rule

most important of all
BE patient, ACCEPT defeats
( this is called ... learning process )

yarrow

Edited by yarrow, 19 December 2012 - 06:18 PM.

[Sorrow]

In the base defense mission, I funneled all the sectoids through a chokepoint and blew them up with proxies. Killed 11 and lost 1. But they stopped coming down the hallway of death. I waited many turns and concluded there was only one or two left and headed for the hangars. They aren't stupid: the cyberdiscs were camping the door. I took the two out with rockets, losing many troopers in the process. I then gave my troops a long break to rebuild morale, and then found MORE cyberdisks camping in the other hangars. I had lost the rocket launchers by then (my fault: I had too many soldiers with armed proxies, who then got shot and their proxies killed other troopers who walked too close) and could not get anyone in position to shoot the cyberdiscs and so lost the base.

Superhuman is HARD!

These ambushes are awesome.

[NKF]

Having experienced the second-to-the-hardest difficulty level in the new X-Com game, I must say that Superhuman in the original was hard, but at least when you got wiped out, you were wiped out fairly.

- NKF

[Sherlock Holmes]

Having experienced the second-to-the-hardest difficulty level in the new X-Com game, I must say that Superhuman in the original was hard, but at least when you got wiped out, you were wiped out fairly.

- NKF

What's unfair about the new version?

[kevL's]

from what i understand (i don't play it but have been following 2k forum since release) ...

- in this game, the original, if you get a wipe-out or something goes really bad, I can sit back scratch my chin and say "oh, shoulda done that different, hmm okay, I get it that won't happen again then"

- in the new game, 'your mistakes' are hardcoded in the program. ( barring mods/fixes, and of course after having reached a certain level of skill )


Perhaps NKF can elaborate better,

[NKF]

There's lots of minor things. Many involving the disparity in the to-hit chances. The one that's been bugging me a lot at the moment is that they get to teleport and effectively tele-frag your chaps.

One of the games combat features is that it will move mobs (they generally move and activate in 2 ~ 3's) of aliens randomly around the map. Generally this is fine, until it sends an active group of aliens right amongst your soldiers (who get to shoot instantly), or if it causes an alien you'd chased into a one-door room to vanish and sometimes show up behind you. It's a bit like how the aliens in Apocalypse must feel when the player gets the personal teleporters.

Granted, these two games aren't that easy to compare 1:1, but at least when you slaughtered in the original, they slaughtered you on fairer terms. That is, their weapons operated on the same mechanics as yours, and they had to approach you to get at you.

Still enjoying the game mind, but when stuff ups happen, the effects are harsher.

- NKF

Edited by NKF, 21 December 2012 - 01:04 PM.