Stuff you realized long after you should.

[Guest stewart]

Okay I'll start the confessions. After nearly ten years of playing XCOM, I recently . . .

1) realized that the game begins at noon on Jan 1. not midnight.

2) "discovered" that mountain battlescapes can have a 2 x 2 hill with a cave in it.

3) this is the really embarrassing one, that you can put 3 tanks in a skyranger.

 

Okay let's hear yours . . .

[Mark0]

aha..

thats mine.

its in TFTD.

 

when u r on a mission, and u have a men who is unconscious.

after liek 40 turns, if u go on him, pick up his body, put it back down, he will wake up.

i discovered that the hard way, by picking up a lobster man, he was asleep. he woke up on me cause i touched him.and he killed ma men

 

that was on a terror mission, it got up to 40 turns cause i couldnt find the lobster who was hiding.

 

 

and about Enemy unkown. i didnt know game began at noon,

but 3 tanks, yeah, even 4 goes in an avanger

[Guest [email protected]]

First time playing UFO Defense, it took me three days of blasting the side of a small UFO with incendiary rockets before I realized all you had to do was WALK into the UFO.....

[Star_watcher]

After about 6 monthes of playing xcom ufo defense, I finally figured out how to use the alien 'grav lifts'. Before that I couldn't complete alien base or really big ship missions.

[Guest Guest_Scipio]

Took me a long time to figure out that thermic lances in TFTD are the primary lobster killers. I had tried stunrods (wanted a live one for research) and usually i just ran my guy up to the lobster, stunned him once or twice, then got slaughtered on the lobster's turn. So I never bothered with thermic lances. Just piled grenades knee high around their feet, or blasted them with 4 sonic cannon hits. Needless to say, the lobster men racked up high kill scores on my hapless squaddies when they ran out of grenades or when 4 nades failed to kill one. After the discovery of thermic lances, they became, well, less scary anyways.

[Timil]

I realise that in TFTD, xcom agent life is as valuable than the equipment.

 

If you lose your tank, you will lose as much point than by having a death in your squad.

 

-----------------

 

I realise that alien are pretty stupid when they attack your base!

 

Instead of trying to drawn the base, they simply enter in it and kill the people THEN they let the water come in.. stupid isn't it?

 

----------------

 

I realise that people on a Terror site are nor surprise, nor afraid to see people in yellow armor in the town..

And they never attack or panic!

[Raid!]

Ok this is embarrassing, but none of you know who I am so I guess that makes it ok. I took me awhile to figure out how to add building facilities to a base, the lack of an 'ok' button and my own focus on just the facility menu are to blame. I kept selecting different things like Storage space, living quarters and Laboratories but the button below just said 'Cancel' I thought that you had to select the facility, hit ok and then place it on the map. And since it has been a long time since I played I was thinking that the game made you wait a month before building another base, or maybe I couldn't build a certain type of facility until an event in the game. It wasn't until my mouse accidentally jumped across the screen and I noticed the outline of the building.

[Guest stewart]

I was talking to my brother about the game once he said, "Uh, how do end the game?" I said, "Your research should have told you; you need an Avenger UFO that you build and you need to have researched Cydonia or Bust."

He said, "Yeah, I've done that but the game keeps going!"

 

He hadn't noticed the Cydonia button at the top if the screen.

 

 

You know, come to think of it, all this stuff could probably end up in a faq somewhere.

[Mark0]

for a goood good time i didnt find the cydonia button up there.

and what i was doing is trying to click on any stars arroudn the earth maybe i would go.

but inever knew the button, since when i wanted to cancel an avanger and saw cydonia.

took me time to do that.. i was like at a UFO sighting of 700, that was my first game. and beginner <_<

[the guardian]

on x-com 1:

 

realizing there's a cydonia button(gimme a break, i was 12): i just didnt realy notice the button, and my english back then wasnt that good(so it was basicly researching to look at the nifty pictures).

 

on x-com 2

 

realizing that researching the gauss technology completely, without researching any of the sonic guns, was a dumb move: i'd like to see YOU take out a squadron of lobstermen, with gauss guns.

[5parrowhawk]

The most embarrassing thing I realized:

 

Standing in fire is not a good idea.

[Timil]

I realised recently that finally, you need a LOT of scientist to research the sonic cannon quick.. so they will cost less as you will make sonic cannon earlier in the game (dumb of me!)

[Bagatur]

it's not something i realized myself, but rather found out from postings -

when u hold a rifle and something else in the other hand, the firiring accuracy decreases i used to run around with a rifle and a cattle prod in the other

hand, wondering why the heck my guys suck so much at shooting

[PeterDragon]

Yeah, but I go with a weapon in both hands normally although it does decrease, but of course never human weapons like that.

[5parrowhawk]

Actually I do the same once my guys have decent firing accuracy. Hvy Plasma/Psi Amp, or Hvy Plasma/Blaster Launcher.

[War_Lord]

Well, very shortly after trying this I realized how dumb it was, but I continued to do it anyway (and I know Stewart is probably a fan of this): It's putting 2 pistols in your units hands. I didn't care how pointless it was, I thought the idea of my guy carrying 2 pistols around was so much cooler than just carrying one (and I decided the same about rifles, and it took me awhile to realize my accuracy was worse holding 2 of those).

 

As far as realizing things long after I should: In TFTD it took me quite awhile to realize I could just destroy the main device in the Alien bases instead of killing every single alien -this made for long games.

 

It also took me awhile to find the Cydonia button that everyone else has trouble with... it's just so different from anything else you do in the game, you just don't think about it or expect to have to do it.

[MarshmellowSoldier]

One thing I never realized to do, and which lost my a countless number of hours saving and reloading, was to throw a gas grenade out of the sky ranger to save your guys the trouble of being BLASTED TO heck when the map started with 8 aliens within shooting range of the ramp.

[c4t]

I have psi-lab, but I cant figure out what button to push to have soldiers train in them:(. Im still going through my first game on easy. I neeeed to get a psi lab so I can see who is has strong psi defense befor I attack some of the ethereal bases PLEEEAASEEE help me iv spent 30 minuts just clicking on buttons but I cant seem to find it.

[Brute]

i thought blaster bombs detonate at each waypoint, destroying everything in it's path

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i had problems in x-com apocalypse. First i couldn't find to put my soldiers in craft. Second, i couldn't figure out how to go prone

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:crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:

[LordT]

This is more of screwup the realisation:

Began my standard superhuman game in UFO Defense, buying stuff, selling crap, turning on the time-speed to 30min...

And after 20 days without UFOs realising... DAMN! forgot to research... DAMN!!

>Reset and try again

[Guest stewart]

I have psi-lab, but I cant figure out what button to push to have soldiers train in them:(.  Im still going through my first game on easy.  I neeeed to get a psi lab so I can see who is has strong psi defense befor I attack some of the ethereal bases PLEEEAASEEE help me iv spent 30 minuts just clicking on buttons but I cant seem to find it. 

You have to wait until the start of a month before soldiers can be assigned to psionic training.

[xQuarkDS9x]

Realizing after recently getting XCOM CE that I should never, EVER, research the TASOTH COMMANDER in TFTD until I bloody well had everything else researched.

 

It explains why in one of my recent games when the research had dead ended. :o

[Guest stewart]

Well, very shortly after trying this I realized how dumb it was, but I continued to do it anyway (and I know Stewart is probably a fan of this):  It's putting 2 pistols in your units hands.  I didn't care how pointless it was, I thought the idea of my guy carrying 2 pistols around was so much cooler than just carrying one (and I decided the same about rifles, and it took me awhile to realize my accuracy was worse holding 2 of those).

Actually, if you carry two pistols you firing accuracy does NOT decrease. Pistols are designated equipment not weapons by the game. The point is so you can still fire at something an be holding some equipment. If you hold two pistols, well, at least you defer the TUs for a reload until later.

[Jumjalum]

Actually, if you carry two pistols you firing accuracy does NOT decrease.  Pistols are designated equipment not weapons by the game.  The point is so you can still fire at something an be holding some equipment.  If you hold two pistols, well, at least you defer the TUs for a reload until later.

Cool....does that mean you can carry grenades/HE/light flares in your other hand and not lose accuracy?

[Guest stewart]

You mean you haven't been doing that? I'm just teasing.

 

That is correct sir!

 

Anyway.

 

Here's something I JUST realized now. In the Mars base brain room, when you step in the front door on the lower level, the brain is actually RIGHT ABOVE YOU. So you just need to step in and fire up, never mind going up the lift and plugging the 7 Etherials up there. Sure the floors in the way but if you're on Mars by now then that shouldn't be a problem.

[LordT]

Still, using a blaster launcher on the final "boss" isn't quite as fun as going in and crash the place eh?

[Devatar]

OH GOD, NOT THE HILL!!!

 

I've had to restart countless missions coz of that dang cave in the hill. (I only realized it was even there about a year after starting to play x-com)

[Guest stewart]

You to huh? I mension way up that I had been in the game for many years before I ever found THE CAVE. My guess is that a lot of people have had this experience. My theory is that since mountain terrian is rare in the geoscape there are so few mountain mission that that couple with random terrain generation gives the results we observe. or in this case don't

[Extralucas]

So...

 

I didnt know and still do not know about caves in mountains - and I'm not going to know

 

I have used heavy lasers thru all game... Only few days ago i realized that 25% on laser rifles stats doesn't mean accuracy but TU cost

 

I discovered since my last playing and finishing UFO (killed brain in big blaster explosion ) that making autopsies at all costs is extremly stupid...

 

I realized that seting interceptor agresive and ataking some weak wepons against bigger UFOs is suicide

 

I realized too that runing straight ahead Sectoid with stun rod without using mind probe to check is it worth of suicide, is stupid thing too.

 

I realized that using HPW against Ethereals without moving soldiers from skyranger as long as possible is good tactic.

 

At last I know now how to improve soldiers stats, revive unconsius aliens and dont worry about capturing another useless muton soldier.

 

During my last game I have known how Medi Kits and motions scaner important.

 

I understood that building more than 1-2 bases have sens

 

And that one embarass me most:

I thought that one radar shows you ALL ufos around globe

 

 

Much of mistakes, huh?

 

(Im still surprised that I have even survive to fight on Cydonia - BTW I had problems with finding this button too...)

[Nemesis]

Dumbest things....

 

Not throwing the high explosive far enough, or not enough tu's to run far enough.

 

Sectoid with stun rod suicide?!?....No, attacking Reaper with stun rod (took 4 guys at once) with no armour and rifles. That is suicide (one man left of the 4).

 

This wasn't dumb, just annoying. I got a sectoid unconcious by shooting him in a base, but I knew I couldn't finish the base before it woke up. So I parked a tank on top of him. It didn't work.

 

Found out the barrels in the hanger are full of fuel and not a good thing to use a cover.

 

Built one missle defense thinking it would stop a battleship from landing :: .

 

Attacked a battleship with interceptors. All destroyed. :crying:

 

Thought soldiers were lost to psionic attacks, so I shot them.

 

This wasn't dumb, just lousy timing. Soldiers finish cleaning up a battleship in England and head on their way back to the USA. They did the mission one man short. That man was dragged out of sick bay and had the daunting task of defending the base all by himself because the skyranger was TOO SLOW the cross the atlantic in time.

 

Maybe to be continued.....

[Trevelyan]

Im just starting apocolypse, and i am probubly doing a shitload of stupid things, but right now i cant tell the difference...

[Nemesis]

Guess I will continue.

 

Previous was all UFO....now for TFTD.

 

I did not the missions were longer, not enough ammo is a bad thing.

 

Realized standard human underwater weapons don't mean they work on land.

 

The towers on the harbor terror missions where the aliens like to hide, I had the hardest time getting in there (on colletor's edition if it makes a difference). When you climb the stairs, the last step that you can't see will only let you up it if you click below it and not on it.

 

Civilians are still stupid.

 

Clips do not hold as much ammo as UFO clips did.

 

 

 

 

Why not.....Apocolypse

 

NEW FEATURE Buildings do not hover in the air, consequently, they do squish your soldiers. Aliens knocked some pillars out and brought a balcany down on four soldiers, killed three instantly, fourth died at the end of the alien turn.

 

....Of course there was this one mission that all the aliens decided to hide in one room that fortunatly (for me) had room below it. Missiles are a wonderful thing to have around. :uzzi:

 

Collapsing buildings in the city scape not only hurt your score, but destroy your vehicles.

 

Raid a temple of the cult, they ask for money to improve relations, and you pay!!!!!!!!! You can't improve relations, ever. It even says that in the UFOpaedia!!!!! :whatwhat:

 

Vehicles that use the road are useless. Why drive when you can fly.

 

Weapons!?!?!? Here we are farther in the future, and we still use bullets. Where is my heavy plasma gun?

 

A whole fleet of hoverbikes armed with missile lanchers works great, at razing the city.

 

That little two-legged blue thing (popper) is more dangerous than I thought.

 

The really really big alien was more dangerous than I thought too.

 

Can't transport alien bodies without biotransport.

 

Doors open up by just walking up to them. There went some of my old tactics.

 

Tell ground vehicle to attack a building, and it enters the building, it is destroyed. (done against on of the temples)

 

No matter how much debt the cult gets, they don't dissapear. (Had them in millions of dollars in the hole)

[Kaiser]

I sent a rookie out from the avanger - he got shot.

I sent another one out - he got shot

I sent a colonel (didn't think very much at the time - he got shot.

[Mustang]

When I started playing I thought to aviod getting controlled by aliens that my agents have to wear no armor. :freak:

 

 

:uzzi: Mustang678

[Deimos]

For a long time I never realised that there a wind effect of sorts as I never used to use Incendiary ammo or grenades. That was a pretty cool realisation for me.

[Guest stewart]

Okay this is embarrasing. I used to carry stuff back to the skyranger before I realized you could just leave it on the ground and it would be automatically collected at the end of the mission.

[Trevelyan]

For UFO:

 

- Thinking that if i researched corpses asap i would get something

- Thinking the Cyberdisks were invincible and tried to avoid them during the whole mission

- After realising i can take one down... i decided that if i captured one it would be really cool ::

- Giving Heavy explosives to someone with 20 stregnth to throw is NOT a good idea... especially the TUs you used to throw were your last

- Trying to load Grenades into the small launcher (hey, i thought that would be a cool addition)

- Realising that rushing after the guy with the primed nade died to kill the alien was a bad thing (didnt know primed nades on dead guys blew)

- Finding out that tightly grouping your guys together is not a good idea, especially when they are in T-shirts

- Thinking Personal armor made my dudes invincible...

- Buying tons and tons of intercepters is not a great idea

- Buying cannons for all my fighters (see above) my first game and finding out that they SUCK

- Throwing a nade on top of the grays THEN shooting him before it blows is kinda pointless

- I CAN GET TANKS!?!??!?

- Realising i can build better stuff

- Just about finding everything about this game has been a funny and fun time!

[Extralucas]

DID YA KNOW:

You can view stats of an aquanaut in TFTD by pressing his rank on equip screen.

[Trevelyan]

if you tell me the same for UFO defense i will have to hurt myself...

[Extralucas]

In Ufo Enemy Unknown (don't know anything about Ufo Defense) there isn't any rank icon next to soldier name on equip screen, so I suppose you wont have to hurt yourself

[Trevelyan]

to bad...

[Anthonius Runeblaze]

First time playing the game, I realized that moving your soldiers out of the Skyranger and into a large cluster is NOT a good idea (Alien Grenades, anyone? Ouch.)

 

--

 

Further along that same branch not long after the first incident (and related to it, actually,) I only realized that you could tell your units to fire by clicking the weapon icon when my friend informed me about it. I had always figured you set it for auto shot down in the bottom left and hope you fire on the aliens when the turn ended. Whee!

 

--

 

An Interceptor fighting against a battleship is a bad idea. However, I did find that it was possible to shoot down a battleship with a single interceptor armed with a single plasma cannon, if you use Agressive attack, and have a lot of luck (accomplished it once. I don't ever expect to do so again. "KAMIKAZE!!") The realization? Attacking downed battleships with a skyranger with a crew of 8 armed with rifles and no armour or other equipment is also a bad idea.

[Radoteur]

For a long time I never realised that there a wind effect of sorts as I never used to use Incendiary ammo or grenades. That was a pretty cool realisation for me.

Wind effect?

 

I never had problems with any of these sorts of thing. I read the manual and did a few test runs to plan my strategy before actually playing. And scanned over the strategy guide.

 

I did find something pretty cool, though. Apparently, if one parks a tank in front of the door to the UFO, they are trapped. At least it worked for a sectoid. I heard the door opening sound every turn, and checked with motion scanner, and found little to no movement, so it was trying to get out, but couldn't. So I had my way with his stunned buddies.

 

"Shoot me, will you! I'm going to throw you off the roof, again!"

 

I was initially scared of jumping off the top of two story buildings and the sides of the Skyranger's ramp fearing painful and sudden death, but clearly these men can fall from great distances and not even feel a thing.

 

Another thing. Don't jump off a building down to the ground, if there is no way out. I got two of my soldiers stuck that way. Stupid farms.

I didn't think about shooting down the fences, but my rifles probably wouldn't have made a dent.

 

Something I haven't tried. Jumping from a building onto a fence. Might prove to be interesting.

 

Don't have a bunch of guys next to the UFO door ready to barge in and my HWP/Rocket Launcher ready for opportunity fire. Sure, it killed the alien, with about three of my guys.

 

No, standing on the other side of a door with a human won't stop them from getting through. Instead, they just shoot my precious soldiers point blank.

 

Surrounding Cyberdisks, then autofiring them to death doesn't work. Apparently they make a big explosion that doesn't feel good.

 

Hmmm. I lose points when the aliens kill civilians?

What if I kill them?

Nope, doesn't work.

[Mustang]

Rockets hurt your own soldiers too

 

You can shoot the guns :uzzi:

[cheeses-of-nazareth]

I first played TFTD on the Playstation - there is a bug in the PS game that puts the "T'leth" button right in the middle of the geoscape instead of at the top of the screen - so when I wanted to take on the final mission against the aliens I would normally just end up sending my ship to partol somehwere in the middle of the ocean - I restarted the gamethree times - almost giving up on it completely - until one day - just for fun I clicked the empty space next to the cancel button at the top of the screen where the T'leth button should have been - hey presto it worked DOH!!!!!

[j'ordos]

In TFTD, equipping my entire squad with Hydrocannons. Works great when attacking an UFO (sure, my men were a little slow but firepower makes up for it;)

Next in line: Terror mission. OK, launch Triton and lets kick some butt

Evacuate Triton, spot alien, select the cannon and click auto-fire, click alien. A nice text box comes up:"This weapon only works underwater". ... AAAAAAAAARRGH! (OK so I had two guys with a pistol and a thermal tazer)

Edited June 12, 2003 by j'ordos

[defireman]

That A tank can kill itself, even without explosives.

 

Once I had this laser tank and sent it up to the 2nd storey of a small barn. Then I blew a hole in the 2nd floor wall and moved the tank out of the hole back outside.

 

I didn't realize that there is a low wall at ground level, one tile from the building.

 

Tank went out, dropped to ground, and GOT STUCK IN WALL.

 

Ok, so I tried to shoot the wall to free the tank, but then the tank killed itself. Boohoo. And it was expensive.

[Yoni]

I played Terror from the deep before ufo so I didn't really know everything about how the game worked when I started.

Anyways, what I was late to realise is what things needed to be researched first. When I first encountered lobstermen I tried to shoot them with all the regular weapons but they wouldn't go down. When I killed one with six rockets I started calculating how many rockets I would need for a whole ship of them. I was planning on killing them with lots and lots of rockets.

It also took a while before I knew what they were. It was a dark mission and I couldn't get very close to them. They looked very alien before I found out they were Lobsters.

[UnknownWarrior]

TFTD, the (brutal) memories...

 

In TFTD it took me a while to find out how to research(I played TFTD first)

I also ran into the same problem as J'ordos

And then, I ran into lobsters and could only kill them by lobbing pulsers at them.

After all that I quit

[[dipstick]]

When I first played XCOM1 it never occurred to me that you could actually get into the UFO, I used to camp outside for 50 or 60 turns, then gather all the stuff and leave when I got bored.