Getting Transtellar Onside

[DazzD]

Is there any way I can get a company back from an allience with the aliens? I was doing really well and then the aliens took control of transtellar. This doesnt really bother me coz I dont loose men on an attack. The only problem is I cant get scientists! I have just brought 5 more and they are all sitting at thier buildings waiting for a cab. Is there any way that I can pick them up?

[j'ordos]

You can raid them untill they ask for a settlement, or you can hope the aliens send in an overspawn and crush one of their buildings

 

the units already waiting at a building are stuck, if they can't reach the base. If they are still underway you can use the super-fast speed setting to instantly send them to base, even if they normally would be unable to reach it.

[[NKF]]

If your research and development staff ever stop moving while walking to your base, they'll be stuck there for good. One way to get around this is to hit the ultra fast time mode for a second right after you hire them. Your scientists should immediately 'teleport' to their destination, along with any other deliveries that are on their way to your base.

 

This is particularly useful to avoid your goods getting shot down by Megapol if they dislike your suppliers.

 

---

 

As for getting Transtellar back, heh, they're the easiest company to lose, so it might be hard to get them back. But that's not to say it's not possible.

 

How exactly did they withdraw? Were they 100% infiltrated by the aliens or did they just get fed up and decided to withdraw their support (you can tell if they're calling the alien's their "friends")? The last bit can happen if you deal too much damage to their buildings (both in the cityscape and especially the battlescape).

 

If they think the aliens are their "friends", this means they now like the aliens, but it doesn't mean the aliens have sided with them. You can still get them back, but they'll still keep saying that the aliens are their "friends" and will refuse cash settlements. This mainly involves you somehow convincing the aliens to demolish Transtellar's assets (mainly their buildings - the spaceport comes to mind). Either with evasive flying and letting their disrupter beams hit it (make absolutely sure you don't do any damage at all to their buildings!). This is to let them get angry at the aliens again (the game will still say they think of them as "friends" when you offer bribes, but that's only an error in the message that gets displayed. So don't worry about that). Therefore, on later successful missions against the aliens, they will hopefully start supporting you again.

 

Alternately, if the aliens drop an Overspawn in the city (giant Godzilla sized walking potato thingy with claws and a big mouth, absolutely brainless and gets killed by falling buildings incredibly easily), just let it go amok in the city as long as it's not running into your buildings. Your weekly score will take a minor hit, but you can easily make up for it in a mission. Hopefully the overspawn will have stomped some Transteller buildings flat. You can even get the Cult of Sirius to like you this way too... Note, if the aliens start blowing the city up with UFOs, leave them alone as long as they're not attacking your buildings. It has the same effect as letting an Overspawn go wild.

 

Then, as you win battles against the aliens after this 'unfortunate' event, the affected companies should start liking you more.

 

Now, for a company that is 100% infiltrated... hmm, I can't really say how it would react to the last two scenarios. I've never tried it before. The main trick is to not let the company get infiltrated in the first place - even if it's the Cult Of Sirius. You do this by always watching the top-10 infiltration list and investigating buildings near any previous alien drop sites that belong to the companies being infiltrated.

 

- NKF

[DazzD]

Good ideas! I'll give them a shot. Theres been loads of companies getting taken over. I kept raiding sirus and selling all thier equipment for money. I have now paid everyone one off so I have about 3/4 of the companies allied with me and the other 1/4 is with them. There's none left as netural.

 

I expected to loose 2-3 because of the sirus raids but the aliens have influenced far more then I thought.

 

Thanks for the ideas guys! Apreciated!

[Tuoppi]

If you want to transfer stuff after transtellar gets p*ssed off, just sell in one base and buy at other. Instant and free. Doesn't work with people though, although you get new try to the ultra-fast thing.

[[NKF]]

Alternately, manually transport the equipment over to the other base. If it's soldier equipment, have the soldiers you want to equip fly over to your base (either by flying a vehicle there or sending it over and then temporarily loading the soldiers into the ship), and then load them up with everything you think you'll need and then some. Then send them back the same way you did. For general equipment, just have the soldiers remove everything before making the trip so that they can carry as much junk as possible. Not too tedious if you arm multiple soldiers at the same time with the same equipment, like toxigun clips, shields or armour pieces.

 

If for some reason you separated your research facilities from your main assault base you can also tell your transport, after a mission, to land at the base you want all the goods to be dropped off at rather than send it back home. You'll get the option to unload equipment there. Same goes for captured aliens and corpses.

 

For vehicle equipment, just load the items onto a ship, fly to the destination base, strip the ship of everything but the engines (if it has any), send it back for some more, and so on. Weapons that need ammo automatically get one full load, so it might be an idea to send all the weapons that need ammo on a ship with multiple hardpoints. Personally, for these, I'd just buy a new load of ammo. For disrupters, shields and the like, well, it's easy enough to make a pit-stop at the supply base, load up and head back home again.

 

As for techs, you might as well hire a new team of techs if you decide to move your research/manufacturing elsewhere while Transtellar's sulking. I find that provides the least headaches. Granted, you might lose your finely selected team of 100 skill scientists, but it isn't necessarily as bad as it seems.

 

 

I forgot to mention in my earlier post: While you can force Transtellar into demanding a cash settlement with a bit of violence, your relations with them will be a lot more strained after this and it'll be even easier to lose them later should you do anything wrong to anger them. Yes, they may show that they're neutral, but that doesn't mean they like you better than they like the aliens (the relationship matrix is hidden, sadly). Note attacking them in the cityscape has many more repercussions than attacking them in the battlescape. You can make a lot more enemies this way (or friends). I recommend the battlescape.

 

But, if you have Retaliators and Annihilators, shields and medium disrupters, you can probably use a bit of violence to get them to demand a cash settlement. Pay it. And then launch an all out attack on the alien dimension's UFO fleet. Once blown up, send in a mop up crew every Sunday night to blow away any new UFOs that spawn. This will completely throw the wacky political side of the game out of the window, and you'll have technically won the game. By now all you need to do is systematic destroy the remaining alien buildings and you are done.

 

- NKF

Edited December 30, 2004 by NKF

[Tsereve]

Well, w/o teleporters, "systematically destroying" the Megapod building isn't a walk in the park. I completely depend on teleporters in there and in the last building (win within 10 games seconds!). But back on-topic.

 

If the aliens have fully infiltrated an orgnization, I don't think it's possible to get them back--at least, it's never happened in my games, with two Overspawn and a Battleship attacking Marsec within the same week. If you don't have any moral problems with looking at hidden game files (e.g. using Midnight Editor to see diplomacy) without changing anything, that's one way to see these relationships.

[Guest Azrael]

I never got the damn teleporters

[Tsereve]

I had just finished the UFO-building building (kinda funny, building building?), and I decided I could finish the game just fine, so I made a copy of my game and used Midnight Editor to give me one teleporter. I still haven't had the time to go through and win w/o teleporters, but I did manage to use the 139 manufactored teleporters (in addition to the one I cheated for) to destroy all the DG Generators within 5seconds, using the other 70 teleporters and another 5 seconds to escape.

 

In the aftermath movie, why would the idiots use an Annihilator to carry an army?

[Guest Azrael]

What would you use?

[Tsereve]

Since my Final-Building strategy is to use (and end up killing) 36 soldiers, Biotrans is the only option. And strategy also involves losing 28 of those soldiers.

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

Mine is losing 35 of those soldiers and having the last one pick up the devastator canon of his fallen comrade and blow up the last standing generator (but this is a story already told).

 

Anyway, in terms of Transtellar, all I can say is, screw them. Really. If they don't like you, just forget about them and let them be. Use the above mentioned tips to transport stuff you need and hire new scientists if you need to transport them.

 

Another thing, if you can survive without an organisation for some time, do not pay them any money when they ask you to do so. I find that once I start the periodic alien dimension wipe out runs, every organisation start turning over to my side (except those that I use as training grounds for my agents).

 

I guess since the aliens end up blowing as much stuff as you do in the cityscape, most organisations (or rather, all that are not infiltrated) are quite angry with them, and when you periodically wipe out their entire fleet, everyone start liking you more.

 

Again, screw transtellar. They are a bad company for transportantion anyways (in my recent game, megapol has declared all out war on Transtellar, so if I use them to transfer my stuff, guess what happens to my stuff when there are a ton of police cars patrolling. I know, I could just hit ultrafast to prevent this, but I like watching my stuff being transported from one base to the other).

[[NKF]]

Unfortunately, any damage done in the battlescape is always attributed to you. Whether or not you did it. So an alien firing off a few dimension missiles in a warehouse can be very bad news for you indeed! Even if you go in on a stun raid to borrow some elerium or a suit of armour, for example, if the guards damage the building in any way during your stay (That annoying "Pass the primed proximity mine" game they like to play...), the company might sometimes come forward and demand some money from you after the mission (well, the damage is often minor, so this would be a gradual build up of damage a series of missions).

 

Just thought I'd mention that.

 

As for the Megapod chamber... that's the one with those big large pink mushroom things right? I find it to be just the same as the other buildings, really. But that's just me. The building that gets me is the alien farm. Well, mainly the corridor leading into the central greenhouse, but that's only because I tend to rush things too fast and get swarmed in at the entrance.

 

- NKF

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

It's strange then that Transtellar later got friendly with me while I did nothing that would actually please them. Didn't pay any money or anything. I did raid two organisations I had never raided before, maybe there was some interaction there.

 

Anyways, that corridor leading into the greenhouse kinda gets on my nerves too, since they can pretty much swarm out of it (what with the skeletoids flying all over the place and all). You also have to go up 4 (or 6? can't remember exactly) floors up once you clear the corridor and then go down another set of floors. Then you have that lovely garden where a few skeletoids and psimorphs greet you. It's almost like a tedious chain of obstacles in put in your way to delay you from finishing the mission. Maybe we should have more maps like that (most buildings are rushes through a mostly plain map).

[Tsereve]

Alien Farm= destroy all those annoying white cubes, right?

 

I found the Control Center much harder, mostly because you have to keep most of your force waiting while a few agents go up the lifts and blow up the thingies. Cover or no cover, you're going to get hurt.

 

The Farm's pretty open, which is cool. My guys have excellent accuracy (usually all around 85 when I arrive @ Sleeping Chamber), so this really gives me the advantage. I just fly my crack Toxigun squad up to the highest level, face them in the right directions, auto-fire + aggressive mode, and let the toxins fly. They each have about 160 shots on them, so it's fine ammo-wise. Meanwhile, my all-android (only the best, however) Devastator squadron destroys all cubes. Both help out with the reinforcement pads. Easy enough.

 

I never found out where the last cluster of cubes is. I've killed all hostile units on all but the final building. Is there something wrong with this? And where was that last cluster? I spent 30 real-time minutes (20 game-time minutes) searching for it before coming across that last Spitter.

[Guest Azrael]

Since my Final-Building strategy is to use (and end up killing) 36 soldiers, Biotrans is the only option.  And strategy also involves losing 28 of those soldiers.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I always sent my Annihilator armada to finish off the job.

[DazzD]

Is this a final mission that you d00ds are talking about?

[Exo2000]

The Alien Dimension

 

The Alien Farm is the one with all the hanging vines. The white blocks are the control center, the green/yellow mushrooms the airfactory, the funny multi-beds the living quarters and so on.

 

I've found you only actually have to blow up about half the things, I'm pretty sure. After you do that, the generators can't send energy or recieve it, so, eh, it's useless and best to get out after you disable 2 sides (but they cannot be sides opposite each other, only next-to each other) then leg it.

[[dipstick]]

picking up on what NKF said:

 

do you actually get compensation requests from companies for destroying property?? I have really gone overboard on some missions, and no request!

[[NKF]]

My guess is that it depends on their level of disposition towards you at the time. They might like you a lot say 100%, and your damage may only have reduced this to, say, 96%. It may not be enough for them to issue a request for compensation. Perhaps if it goes low enough that it's close to switching over to the next disposition level down, then they'll issue a request. (note, none of these numbers are visible to the player)

 

Or perhaps the level needs to be close to neutral?

 

This is just a wild guess, mind you.

 

I've just to got say this again while it's still fresh in my mind: Whatever happens, if you think you've ticked someone off and think that they might issue a request for cash, wait for it rather than bribe them right away. This avoids double dipping, as they'll still issue a request for cash if you bribe them up to an allied state. This is worse because after you've paid, they'll go back to neutral again. This means spending more money to get them back as allies.

 

- NKF

Edited February 8, 2005 by NKF

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

I think this requesting money thing is pretty much random, because you can load to the exact same save spot and have something different every time you play it (even though you don't do anything different). One time you have organisation attacking another org, another time someone offers you a treaty, illegal flyers attack some place, etc...

 

Although there is something interesting, certain events are set in stone (so not everything is random). I think an organisation attacking you is pretty much preordained and can't be avoided by save/load.

 

There are certain conditions for asking bribes though. The first is, the organisation should be at least unfriendly against you. Second, I think you should have recently done something to make them angry. Your months old enemy will not ask for a bribe, but a recent enemy usually does.

[Sinscale17]

I think NKF might be right. I've noticed usually when declining bribes that they only request when they're planning on dropping a spot. First time I raid the cult in a game, they request (and are laughingly sent away) settlement, they become hostile and don't usually ask again, same with the gangs I tend to enrage.