Admiral Harkov

Decided to reinstall and give it a new chance. One correction from my original post: you do have the chance to have more than one interceptor and have them based on different continents, I missed the option back then. Once one knows not to ask it any seriousness in the way of environment using it's fun to play. But because of that I doubt it has any replayability value once one has beaten the hardest difficulty. I stand for my final score as X-COM game, but on its own I'll give it a rating of 6.5 as at first. It would go up to 7.25 if it has replayability.

First of all, my apologies in case I should have posted this in a new thread instead of this; but since it's the one about it I'm posting. I've thought to test the extender in my Steam game, to play it after my current emulator game with xcomutils is done, as I found out this had a few neat things of interest. And it is indeed a great mod!. There are two settings I don't see in my file, oneis the TFTD doors and the other is the reordering soldiers in craft. I've tried adding the lines "TFTD Doors=1" and "Reorder Soldiers In Crafts=1". The first I forgot to test in the mission I ran to do that (man, this game is too immersive ) but the second doesn't work. If I understand the ufopaedia article right, I'm supposed to hold the left mouse button for a while and then the soldier will go to the top or the bottom in the craft crew list; but when I do that all happens is that when I release after more than a second, I'm sent to the soldier's stats screen and he stays in the same place of the list. Thanks in advance.

Played a while and... I'm disappointed. Maybe not as much the Istrebitel but I would not have bought it. Add the cover is a joke. And killing aliens shooting through UFO walls with regular bullets, ?. (The alien in question was by a door, so I thought it was a little glitch and overestimation of alien error showing body around even though I expressed it this way- Edit) There's too many different choices of design in which I still am with the original. No buying, infinite ammo that shouldn't be, unloading done in safe area, no inventory, no more than one interceptor, no managing of how many engineers/scientist for each task, no picking items from battlefield?... Set it much below the original for my taste. Still, the one video I saw they didn't spoke of a remake, but a reimagining so it was to be expected a series of significant changes. So if one forgets about comparisons it's still a decent game, though I wouldn't rate it very high. But if comparing, there's so many things that have been taken away from what could be hoped to see in the game and what has been added is not good enough. I guess the thing will be see if I start calling the game something different and forget about the original, which I will keep playing, and see if that way I enjoy it. Judged independently as a game, from what I've seen, which is just a few missions in: 6.5/10. Compared to original: 2.0/10 Subject to change as I play more and discover new positives or negatives. EDIT: Soldier shot through the other with no harm. There's no friendly fire!. Ok. So the cover is more of a joke that I thought. It's not that it gives up to 25% when enemy is right behind a door and only might be showing a small fraction of his body. It's that you can shoot an alien with regular bullets all through a solid UFO wall. Imagine one big square and in the lower right a smaller square, so the bigger could be made with four of the small. Now you have an square and inside a wall right-center and another center-down. Imagine now a door in the second third of the down-center wall. Well, now imagine my soldier more down than the door in the small room and the enemy behind the wall of the big door that is the right-center wall. My soldier shoots her LMG... and kills the alien. (Also, how's that she could see him? It was a solid wall, it's not like that was one of those screens of energy that aren't obstacles to anything). Also, before that, I had my soldier walk right to the square beside the alien to shoot. What do you think was the chance? 25%. So cover is worse than a joke, it's a fraud. Use the environment? Ha!. All there is a set of pieces with attributes to attack that are to be placed in the board that has squares with bonuses to defence without regard to space in which the piece is and that's it. That would be enough by its own to ruin the game as a member of X-COM series, so imagine with the rest. This is something completelly different that have been given the X-COM name through using as enemy pieces the figures and names of X-COM's aliens. So many things taken down and the new things are just "special missions" (that's a good idea) and 90% is just graphics, cutscenes (oi, better tension of looking the same custcene of them unloading that the real tension of unloading on area of unknown degree of safety) and voice acting. For a game that is just squares with defensive bonuses and no regard to spatial considerations, location of walls, direction or attack or anything else beyond "your char's on a +25 Defence square in a +25 Defence stance shot by a char with a +25 Aiming Mode action" I don't need so many graphics and so many actor models and whatever else. And when the original made so many calculations to consider environment, there you couldn't kill an alien with a bullet through a wooden wall, not even a plasma shot, with just 15MB, I sure as heck don't want to spend 12GB of hard disk space on a game that takes less than the minimum calculation. So, as X-COM iteration: 0.5/10. As standalone game: 3.0. The standalone score so low is basically because they make you expect, I don't mean the "faithful to original X-COM" bit, but a tactical turn based game in which one was expecting space would be taken into account, some serious LOS algorythms, some serious take of cover. This is a game with futuristic weapons with the type of play of Fire Emblem games and weapon ranges infinite that limit possibility of attack to crude LOS and distance instead of X squares away from char. Your char is in a bush square and gets +10 Def +1HP +1something and the enemy a -15 to attack. If they had sold it honestly like that, then I might have a better opinion of it and even maybe play it a little bit more. As it is, I'm taking out of my hard disk. The only good side is I preordered from Steam and got Civilization V which I didn't had and had some interest in getting sometime. What these guys would have wanted to do was a film, not a new game.

All I can say is that it's not happened to me never, either with the DOS or the collector edition versions.

I don't know what part is when it makes to test it's on Steam, you may try copying the XCOMA subfolder somewhere else and download dosbox from their page and see if that way it loads. Copy also cd.iso from xcom apocalyppse/ folder as that's the iso image (you have to mount it to run it, maybe not once you install and copy all the files).

A good one is this by our brazilian comrade Hobbes (there's a thread about it in here). And thanks for the link, checking in a while.

I think a large scout is enough to get that. I think in my last game in superhuman (had been taking a long break in the middle) I found a live psionic capable sectoid during my first month (also a navigator), and if I haven't been able to train psi until May it's because the economical status prevented me from building the psi labs any sooner, though I did get the hyperwave decoder, hence so far I just avoid ethereal missions. Weird, though, that in one it took three turns to see they were ethereals I only got one soldier attacked once (and resisted) within the six turns that took to look out, find two ethereals, kill one, stun the other, return with the live alien to the skyranger and dust off. But I'm with xcomutils, so the superhuman bug should have been solved and be playing in true superhuman. As for beginner level, I didn't find them to be such an incredible pain. Sure, they were and I used to get one or two soldiers MC'ed, but they never stopped me, even in base assault missions. I went all the way to Cydonia and killed their hive mother without having hyperwave decoders or even psi training. Well, the Cydonia mission was a massacre, I went with the whole 20 soldier + 1 hovertank and in the end I had only five guys standing, but only two losses were due to MC'ed soldier (which I killed, as my policy in that game was to shoot at controlled soldiers, "if your MC'ed you're no longer in our side and are considered for all accounts as one more alien, sorry bye.").

Best quote ever! I personally hate the rocket launchers, even when I assign them to my strong men, they still end being too slow. In theory that wouldn't be a problem, since I tend to move slowly; but even so they cause me frustration, among other things because they tend to be one of the last in the skyranger queue so I usually find that when I would have use for them, they're not in the front and others have to take the job they were meant to take, because they won't arrive to a proper place in time. And if I think to give it to one of the frontmost men, sharing the load as needed to avoid encumberance, it ends being too restrictive for my movements. I may move slow and careful, but still the need to keep in throwing range is disrupting to my operations.

I tend to do fine with terror missions (as long there's no chryssalids), even in superhuman with sectoids+cyberdisks with just a couple of laser pistols, one HWP rocket one guy with three small rockets and one with an autocannon. My trick is simply go slow, very slow. First tank leaves and does a look out of the immediate environment, then there's a few options: A) The tank sees no aliens. Start deploying the soldiers, by pairs. First two move to a rear landing gear each, standing so the gear is between them and the more likely route of approach by aliens, haven't had many times use of it, but the gears have stopped a few shots meant for my soldiers. Next turn, the tank advances further up to act as an advanced watch scout, the two guys from the rear gears go to the front gears and two more leave the skyranger to get in the rear, those inside move to the edge. Next those in the front gear move to the closest obstacle and the other two in the rear move to the front giving space for the next ones. Naturally, in some maps the soldiers move directly from rear gears to closest obstacle when going to the forward gears doesn't make sense. The tank sees aliens. This opens two choices: B.1) Alien is facing exit and fear that a soldier could get shot by reaction fire. I let the tank kill it and then continue as usual, moving the tank more, for scouting. B.2) Alien is not facing exit and I am confident of no reaction fire, I make one of the two front soliders shoot at it. If he can do from inside the skyranger he stays inside. Once the pairs are out, then they start to move, slowly from obstacle to nearest next obstacle, always making sure there's enough left for reaction fire and ducking, and the minimum force for any given route is two pairs. I never sent a pair of soldiers alone, and hence you can imagine no way in heck I'm letting a single soldier alone. Only way of that happening is if his three route companions are killed. And I always do so that any place needing watch is being in the LOS of at least two of them and also that no two have the same angle to shoot at each place, that means no to in a straight line parallel to the direction of their movement. Of course, there's still the terror mission that ends with too many losses, but generally I tend to not lose more than two soldiers, three if I've done some stupid move (there are times I can't hold myself from thinking that taking a risk may be worth and end losing the soldier having achieved nothing with that move).

If it's still going and open for enlistment, Mr. Luke Harkov files a petition to be recruited.

((Gah, away for a while, will read when I got time to))

llo. Right zombie is, mispelled I did. 'Im teh knig fo imsplelign. Tkae taht hamster Yoad.

Hnadle: Hsrkov Gender: Male. Roles: Fire support and supression.

http://photobucket.com http://www.imageshack.us http://www.freeimagehosting.com I don't know about reliability though, as I don't use them much. Photobucket may see problem with some of the images posted, though, like the one about lady Hills. Flickr has a limit to the number of images you can upload, so that's ruled out. P.S. - Now it seems every image has deleted. Don't let them be lost! Pleasepleasepleaseplease!

I don't find the homepage or a download site, so uploaded it here