cheeses-of-nazareth

any old gits like me out there might remember a 1960's live action sci-fi show by Gerry Anderson called UFO .... ( I watched re-runs in the 80's - I'm not THAT old ). it tells the story of an underfunded international covert paramilitary org set up to fight a barely understood alien threat; using secret bases around the world (and one on the moon) with both air interceptions and ground forces, and backed by science teams back at their main subterranean base. Does that general plotline sound vaguely familiar to anyone here? If you've not seen it I recommend you look it up, it's equal parts cheesy 60's future kitch (purple wigs and silver catsuits a-go-go!), and grim gritty sci-fi drama.. but the real news is that there is a big screen remake in the pipeline. http://www.cinemaspy.com/movie-news/offici...-goes-live-352/

How do you know that that was the intention? more info please

These have no function in the game and cannot be researched - at least as far as I know. Have any of you clever people who spend time looking at the Xcom code figured out what this is / or was supposed to be for yet? I'm guessing that it might have something to do with the Tasoth Commander bug as I seem to remember something in the Tasoth Ufopedia entry about be ing able to re-animate dead Tasoths.

I've been looking into this some more, and my feeling is that it seems to be dependent on the location that the invading craft reach before being shot down - it appears that if I get a fleet of ufos on an infiltration mission to say North America, if I shoot them down well before they reach that continent - even if I shoot them down over land and don't assault them - the alien's mission will not be completed. However if I shoot them down over North America - even if I shoot them down off the coast, or assault every craft as it lands/crashes and immediately take out the alien base that is inevitably built as a result of the infiltration mission, the chances of the aliens mission being completed are much higher ( presumably there is still a random element in this with multipliers added dependent on difficulty level)

Quantifier - that's interesting - what version of ufo are you playing ? The last time I experimented with checking kills from nades and BBs was a while back on my playstation version of ufo - and kills from both weapons were definitely not logged as kills in the soldier stats. Since then I have been playing CE/GE on my pc and have not experimented - perhaps this aspect of the game has been (quite rightly) fixed since the old days.

Yes a great combination - although I am beginning to worry myself that your pistol fixation may be catching

I'm going off topic a bit here but just to extrapolate on the points raised by NKF and myself about raising stats, there's a clue for newer xcom players in the things we said as to how you gan max out your soldiers stats as quickly as possible. For the very safest way to do this you will need to have a few soldiers with strong enough psi attack skill to mind control most things first time everytime, take a couple of them and a bunch of soldiers that you want to train up on a mission against some aliens - mutons are probably best for this with snakemen my second choice because both can survive plenty of hits from weak weapons. Arm the soldiers with standard xcom pistols and as much ammo as they can carry ( but keep a couple of stonger weapons in reserve just in case). Find all of the mutons you can - cull an appropriate number so you have a manageable amount left ( I normally keep about 4-5) - then completely disarm them- including grenades - then get them to stand directly next to you pistol armed xcom units - do not shoot them yet though, while they are under your mind control any hits you make on them will not count - once all of your soldiers are in position, end your turn. During the aliens turn they can't harm you as they should all be under mind control - however this will wear off when their turn ends and your next turn begins - now you can shoot them - regardless of the fact that the pistols will probably do pretty much zero dammage to the mutons, you will still score a good chance of a stat increase with each hit ( so the more hits you do, the better chance of a really big stat increase you get - so you see why I suggest using the weakest weapons?) I'm currently experimenting with this to increase reactions as well, however I have found that it is MUCH more difficult go get off a reaction shot if the aliens are unarmed - this probably has something to do with the fact that the chances of getting off a reaction shot seemed to be based not only on your soldiers reaction score but the % of TU's it takes for the weapon they are carring, to fire - i.e the less TU's it takes the greater chance of a Reaction shot - I reckon the solution to this is to let the aleins keep thier weapons, but remove the ammo :-)

Sadly Quantifier could not be more wrong the real answer is almost exactly the opposite kills from nades and BBs DO NOT count as kills for the soldier firing / throwing the weapon in their soldier stats - I'm not even sure that a kill from a grenade or BB would promote a rookie to a squaddie - so no increase in stats is earned at all. while a hit / knockout from a stun bomb will not rack up a kill in the soldiers stats, it will increase that soldiers stats in the same way as if they had scored a kill, and will improve the usual stats in the same way - i.e firing accuracy/TU's reactions ( if it was a reaction shot) etc

funny - that's exactly what GWB said

NAH!!!! you want one of these: http://www.ussubmarines.com/submarines/phoenix_1000.php3 anyone got a spare $78,000,000 ?

I guess this is one for the all-knowing NFK, but how does the Xcom game actually determine if the aliens have completed a mission? For example in a recent game I detected a Supply ship over europe on an alien base mission to Asia (i.e a mission to build a base not a supply mission to an exisitng base) -at this point in the game there were no alien bases in Asia - I immediately launched a fully manned and equipped Avenger to deal with it, shot the craft down over europe and launched a successful ground assault on (no casualties) - then detected another supply ship and a battleship on the same mission over Asia this time - both were shot down and both were assualted on the ground immeidately as they crash landed ( I have 4 avengers with assault squads). In short I shot down every craft and killed every alien aboard those craft before they got any opportunity to do anything However a quick patrol of the area after I had taken out the craft revealed that an alien base had been built. I'm sure other players will have noticed that this sort of thing happens a lot so the question is how did they build the base - I could not have missed any other craft as the base was about an inch ( in standard geoscape distance from a base with a HWD, and covered to the north west east and south by other bases all with HWD's - so I can't see how anything could have slipped though my detection net. was there anything I did wrong - or the aliens did right that ensured that they completed the mission?

Lokis - I don't mean to be a killjoy but you will get much more enjoyment out of the game by working that stuff out for yourself - and it will become self-evident how many power sources you will need very shortly

I have to agree with the "The-damage-to-the-UFO/power-sources-is-randomly-generated-when-the-battlescape-map-is-spawned-and-has-nothing-to-do-with-number-of-hits-or-type-of-weapon-used-by-the-attack" school of thought. My copy of Xcom used to crash a lot in the battlescape screen so I would always save just before touching down at a crash site ( or any battle site for that matter). In the event that I would need to reload, I almost always saw SOME difference in the level of damage to the downed ufo ( and I always use firestorms with twin plasmas as my primary air attack craft)

btw - this is absolute crap - the more scientists you have, the LESS time it takes to complete research. Proof: at the beginning of a game hire 16 scientists on jan 1st - set the 10 scientists you have to research laser tech - when your new scientists arrive, research status will show as "Good" - add the 16 scientists to the project and immediately ststus will change to "Excellent" - ergo - more scientists = faster research

well spank my arse and call me Shirley !!!! - I've been playing Xcom for almost 10 years (well maybe 7) now and thought I knew pretty much everything there was to know about the game - but I never knew that you could actually gather the elerium in the battlescape screen.