X-COM thread...go!
TFTD could look spectacular with a modern game engine.
It's hard, very, very hard. Why? The devs were responding to feedback from UFO Defense players who complained that the game was too easy because it had the difficulty bug that nobody knew about. Certain additions to TFTD such as melee weapons were due to player suggestions as well. "Some of the aliens have melee attacks, so the player should also be able to use them."
UFO Defense never gets that hard even on Superhuman and it's almost a breeze once you know what everything does and when it does it. Knowing TFTD intimately will just help you survive a bit better.
>flying Chryssalids
>maps with bazillions of tiny rooms in them
>flying suits don't work on land
>more enemies can use psionics
>tech tree is a lot more complicated
>TFTD equivalent of laser rifles has ammo clips so you can't fire it ad infinitum
>all ranged weapons have fewer rounds in their clips than UFO
>two part base missions
>unscheduled cruise ship and trawler attacks that can happen at random with no prior warning
>mixed alien crews
>all alien bases have Lobstermen and Tentaculats manning them
>Lobstermen are damn near impossible to kill
>only Lobsterman commanders let you beat the game unlike UFO where any commander can be captured
>that genius who invests time on developing healthkits and whatnot
Silly boy, you can't kill aliens with medikits!
>>2784779
I, too, was waiting for the upcoming XCOM 2 to be set underwater, but sadly it's not.
>>2784843
>mixed alien crews
>>all alien bases have Lobstermen and Tentaculats manning them
I didn't know that.
>>2784858
That's one way TFTD is hella more complicated to play. The alien race that puts up colonies is only responsible for building and supplying them - the base itself will always be manned by Aquatoids, Tentaculats, Hallucinoids, and Tasoths (outside portion) and Lobstermen/Tentaculats (inner portion). The outer part of colonies uses a fixed layout so you'll always get the same map there while the inner part is randomly generated.
Also you get different terrorists on terror missions than you do underwater which makes things yet more complicated.
>>2784843
TFTD was definitely a better game, I loved it myself. Still remember the ride in the car home as a kid looking at the box 20 years later.
Some of that unpredictability could have used some tweaking, and some of the missions were just too long. It was great that the boat missions, for instance, were really hard, but it was more exhausting than anything. The multi-stage missions were just too long.
Lobstermen were a huge leap forward from Mutons though, no question. It was good that they forced you to adapt new tactics, unlike Mutons, who you could just shoot your way through with enough Heavy Plasma.
I'm still amazed by how good the AI was. 20 years later, AI still can't seem to do what it could in original X-Com.
>>2784913
Actually the AI in UFO is pretty shit. For example, the aliens not being able to pick up dropped items.
>>2784913
Mutons aren't really any threat at all unless it's an early appearance in April when you might still be using laser rifles. Their terrorists are also pretty much of a joke. An experienced squad with heavy plasma can just mow them down like ripe grain.
>>2784843
It can take hours to beat an alien colony or a cruise/trawler mission.
>knock some Lobsty unconscious
>while your back is turned, he wakes up
>spend another 40 turns searching for him in the maze of rooms on the ship
>since Lobstermen also can use melee attacks, they don't even need a gun to fuck your shit up
TFTD has more atmosphere than UFO for sure.
>graphics are quite grotesque-looking compared to UFO's clean blue-gray alien vessels/bases and disco floors
>UFOpedia descriptions of aliens are nightmare fuel
>game music is much creepier
Alien colonies in Terror as compared to UD are pretty bad. I can't imagine the sadists they had as game designers.
Didn't Kikoskia's TFTD playthrough spend like 5 videos on one trawler mission? Jesus fucking Christ.
>>2784843
>mixed alien crews
These involve strictly terror missions and do not occur until the later game. There's either Lobsterman/Tasoth or Aquatoid/Tasoth crews and the game draws them at random. Also the Transmission Resolver does not specify which crew type it is making it harder for you to prepare accordingly.
>>2784962
It also sucks at using Blaster Bombs.
>>2784843
the trick to beating TFTD is telling every terror and night mission to fuck off
>Aliens can shoot you while you're on the skyranger even after throwing a smoke grenade to the entrance
great game senpai
>>2785724
never had a problem with smoke grenades. apply liberally. They were all just aliens to me.
>>2785724
openxcom
set bomb height to 2
smokes now cover the 2nd story of your skyranger.
>>2785724
This can be solved by dropping a second smoke grenade in the Skyranger, but unless all your soldiers have power armor, they'll quickly pass out from smoke inhalation so you'll need to get them outside quickly. Actually happened to me on a terror mission. A Floater dropped the soldier who was carrying a primed smoke grenade so the thing blew inside the Skyranger and I had to rush everyone out before they became unconscious.
>>2785537
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp53tmMOaeQ
Here's Lord Finisher's TFTD playthrough. He actually does just that by exploiting the trick where you can stop, patrol, and move towards the terror site to burn time until daylight arrives. I've done it on UFO from time to time, but avoiding night missions in TFTD is far more important to your survival.
Also you'll want to avoid attacking colonies during night because of the outside portion (inside part it doesn't matter).
>>2786146
Alright I'll try that, though it does feel like cheating.
Gillman stun bomb just stunned my whole team except for my SWS.
...25 turns already, should I keep waiting until they wake up?
Turn 205 now and nobody's woken up yet. I know they were unconscious, and I know no grenades have been thrown at their bodies, so unless the Deep One hanging around the Triton quietly attacked them all when they were unconscious...
I dunno what's going on.
>>2787347
That's why you don't keep all your soldiers bunched up in a huge mass. Bad things almost always happen there.
wow I had pretty much my whole team watching this entrance to the space craft on time. door opens up grenade flies out, takes out team. shit was hillarious.
>arrive at terror site
>it's daytime and it's Floaters
>this is gonna be complete cake
>turn 2
>Floater strolls past the Skyranger and throws a grenade inside
>12 soldiers killed and the remaining two mortally wounded
...
>>2785246
>Kikoskia's
My man. I've actually only seen part of ShadowHawk2012's EU playthrough. Is this game really that shitty?
>>2784853
Ahh, but they have announced they will be offering extensive mod support. Waaaay more than the original. So someone could maybe... modify ittttt.....?
TFTD is actually more varied than EU, but the tactical maps are larger, so the battles take longer; and I think that makes it more likely to become monotonous after awhile.
You don't need to recover every alien sub that shows up. If you don't need the money/Zrbite/combat experience, then just ignore the crash site.
Terror missions are quite tedious to play through, especially the ship missions, but you can just arrive there and dust off. If you did well enough over the month, you won't get a negative rating. After you've recovered Deep Ones and Calcinites, you don't really need anything else from terror missions and the latter are optional and not required to finish the game.
>>2790647
>TFTD is actually more varied than EU
This is true because it added different kinds of terror missions, the terror species on ships and the ones on terror sites being different, artefact missions which are a kind of mix of terror sites and alien bases, the two-parter missions, and mixed alien crews.
On the other hand, colonies are a little less varied because they always have the same aliens manning them (Aquatoids, Hallucinoids, Tentaculats, Tasoths, and Lobstermen).
The trawler/cruise ship missions don't happen until later in the game and they can be a serious bitch when you have to search through 50 rooms to find that last alien.
You should be able to filch Zrbite from any landed sub just like you could pilfer Elerium in EU. Of course one way they made TFTD more difficult is that Zrbite can be found scattered around the ship and not just in the engines. On the one hand, if the power supplies blew up, you can still get Zrbite but on the other hand, you need to be more careful about destroying the insides of the sub.
Just like EU, one of the easiest sources of Zrbite is by raiding Supply Ships when they come to service colonies especially if they're manned by Gillmen (since alien commanders aren't present on supply ships, there's no risk of psionic attacks).
To speed it up:
Don't savescum, it's more fun anyway
Concentrate on the objectives in colony and artifact missions instead of trying to hunt down and kill all aliens
Avoid shipping routes and Lobsterman missions if possible.
Kill colonies by two pwt tanks and sonic tank for escort, this will also reduce ship activity.
6-8 PWT defenses will keep aliens from retaliating on your bases.
I hate colonies too and like to be rid of them as quickly as possible, but if I get one that's built by Gillmen, then I'll leave it up as an easy source of loot from the supply ships, plus good way to train rookies.
>>2790665
Why you would even do that? The small cruiser ships, the dick looking ones, for some reason or another rarely have their ion accelerators blow up if they crash, which means you can get an easy 50 Zrbite from almost each one of them, and at the same time hamper the alien missions. Zrbite and Aqua Plastics aren't even a problem, storage space is.
For everybody using OpenXCOM, you can turn off the annoying UI animations by changing src/Interface/Window.cpp line 30 to:
const double Window::POPUP_SPEED = 1.0;
This will make it act like the original did with a fast CPU (the animation was intended, but speed was uncapped so it went too fast to see).
Am I correct that you can't learn psionics from an Aquatoid like you could with Sectoids in EU?
>>2792210
It's true. You learn psionics by capturing a live Tasoth (strangely even a soldier will work although they can't use psionics). Aquatoid engineers, navigators, and commanders can all use psionics but you don't learn it from capturing them for some reason. Same with Gillman commanders, they're psy-capable as well but of no use for learning it.
>>2792218
This is one thing that makes TFTD harder - more aliens can use mind control. Aquatoids even on small ships are capable of it while in EU, you never had to worry about Sectoid scout vessels.
>>2784853
It'd have been Apoc if anything considering the guys behind XCOM love Gollop and he had nothing to do with TFTD.
>>2784492
I just started a TFTD Superhuman Ironman attempt. I already did UFO SH IM, it can't be that much harder...
I've done two missions so far, landed aquatoid subs. Heavy casualties but making good money from the loot.
>>2792340
>started a new game
>faced a few small scout vessels with no terrorists or PWT launchers
Yeah you just wait until you have to attack a colony full of Superhuman-grade Lobstermen.
>>2792406
Lost the game already. This is much harder than UFO.
>>2792526
Beginner mode TFTD is about comparable to UFO on Superhuman.
>>2792210
You learn how to make a MC Lab just by researching a live Terror unit, ANY terror unit. You can screen people a lot early.
>>2792340
Wait for your first Terror mission and your end of the month resume. That's the real hard part. And get sonic weaponry researched as soon as you can, from March and on it's Lobstermen season, and everything but sonic, stun and melee is outright useless.
Well I never played TFTD before, so I decided to give it a spin. The underwater battlescapes are pretty-looking and everything has more detail than the flat, brightly-colored EU graphics. On the other hand, the color palette is very low-contrast meaning that it's hard to tell where everything is. It does seem that the underwater missions are a bit easier because there's no farm buildings and fences to annoy you, plus the TFTD Large Scout usually has holes blown in the side if the power supplies exploded.
The game does force you to revise some strategies that worked so well on EU. For example, the TFTD equivalent of the auto cannon and rocket launcher won't work on land (I use these regularly in EU until getting heavy plasma/Blaster Launchers).
In EU, you will normally want to build three bases - in Europe, North America, and East Asia which will cover the majority of your funding nations. TFTD's map layout makes this unnecessary. A base in the North Atlantic covers the US and Europe both at once so you only need one other facility in the East Asia/Pacific area.
>>2792737
Really, February since if a colony gets built, you're going to have to fight Lobstermen although they're not common until April.
I hate Lobstermen more than any other alien in the entire X-COM series.
The first encounter, armed with gauss rifles: 14 soldiers 12 hits! 0 kills! It shoots back killing 1 soldier....K
Second round: I move several troops up in support and pour fire into one Lobsterman! Zero kills! It throws a grenade at me and kills 8 guys!
Then its friends show up now so its 6 on 3. And now I can use the gas cannons I brought. Zero kills!! They snipe 4 guys!
I swear repeatedly and move whats left of my squad back to the triton.
>>2794012
Gauss rifles just don't cut it against Lobstermen. You should instead research sonic weapons ASAP. Or try using a Themic Lance or stun bombs - they hate those.
>>2794017
Lobstermen are easy to stun yes, but beware that they still have melee attack if they lose their weapons. Sonic cannons dispatch with them pretty handily, but the best advice is to avoid taking on the orange devils entirely in February-March. If you get a colony built early in the game, leave it alone until April except to maybe plunder its supply ships if they're crewed by Gillmen.
Also of course Ion Armor greatly improves your soldiers' survivability.
>>2794021
Stun a Lobsterman? Just drop a grenade on it. Even when they're not unconscious, grenades are still a decent method of dispatching with Lobstys. They usually won't kill them, but should do enough damage that your troops' shoulder arms can finish the bugger off.
>>2794017
Don't use the heavy thermic lance btw the regular one works almost as good and is much lighter.
>>2794023
Not really, no. Lobstermen are resistant to explosives just like Mutons in EU. The sonic pulsar (TFTD equivalent of alien grenades in EU) won't do too much damage to them, the more powerful high ex does some. Thermic lances=easy knockout.
TFTD starts to get a _lot_ more difficult in April when Lobstermen start making regular appearances. You'll get taken by surprise pretty badly after months of fighting pudding-cup Aquatoids and Gillmen. They can appear even in February-March, but it's rare. Generally speaking, don't fight Lobstermen if you're not tooled out for it. Especially if you happen to get them in February-March.
And of course all colonies are manned by Lobstermen, which means if you get one built early in the game, limit yourself to looting its supply vessels and don't attack the colony itself until April-May.
I've never OHKOed a Lobsterman even with a Sonic Cannon.
>>2794036
Depends on the difficulty level. On Beginner mode, all aliens have 50% less armor than higher levels, so you should be able to OHKO them pretty easily.
First time I encountered these I managed to knock one out, sent a guy over to pick the 'specimen' up and move it away from the fighting so I could research post-mission...fuck, why didn't someone tell me that Lobstermen have a melee attack.
Just knock a bunch of them out with a stun bomb. Then drop a grenade on their passed-out bodies.
Triscenes make you want to cry. TFTD's version of the Sectopod.
Until you realize that they really, really hate grenades. ;)
Sonic rifles are generally better than the sonic cannon, but later in the game the aliens don't use as many of them so it can be harder to get clips. Unlike UFO Defense where the plasma rifle completely vanishes in September, the aliens never stop carrying sonic rifles.
Late game most aliens have sonic cannons and in colonies, all of them have blaster launchers although this can be somewhat of an advantage since they can't reaction fire you.
>>2794012
>Second round: I move several troops up in support and pour fire into one Lobsterman! Zero kills! It throws a grenade at me and kills 8 guys!
That's why you pay the price for bunching your troops up in a huge mass.
How are you supposed to deal with aliens hiding at the top of your air-lock? I just lost a base defense because a deep one was hiding there and it killed anybody who came near. I couldn't get a grenade up there. In retrospect I could have swarmed it with a lot of expendable aquanauts all at once. Any other option?
>>2794213
The fuck did this happen? Deep Ones can't even reaction fire you.
>>2794109
Sonic cannons are only useful for elite-level soldiers with high firing accuracy and strength.
>>2794248
I'm playing in OpenXCOM if that makes a difference. I'm pretty sure it was a deep one (gillman terror unit), although I've never successfully recovered one alive or dead so maybe it wasn't. But it doesn't match any other alien in the wiki so I'm pretty sure it is a deep one, and they definitely reaction fire in OpenXCOM.
>>2794250
Sonic Cannons are excellent sniper weapons. You should only fire them beyond line of sight at aliens somebody else spotted. Strength doesn't matter because your snipers don't need to carry anything else because they should never get near an alien.
>>2793946
Alaska and Neo-Mexico are also immune to alien infiltration similar to Russia in EU.
UFO Defense has the Superhuman Antarctica Challenge. In TFTD, this would be the Pacific Challenge where you put your only base in the North Pacific, a region with no funding nations.
I actually thought Antarctica in TFTD has no funding nations, but actually it does. The region overlaps part of Australia and Brazil.
>>2794259
You know that you can't beat the game without both live and dead specimens of those guys.
>>2793948
Fuck those colonies. Unless I feel prepared and I have all the stuff I need to tackle them (good armors and weapons), I leave them be. What matters is getting those terror missions and cruise/cargo ships sorted out. Now those matter a lot more in your monthly resume.
>>2794023
Lobstermen have 70% resistance to explosives. And then there is their armor value. They can survive a direct hit from a DPL, and they will if they feel inclined to.
Explosives don't mean shit for Lobstermen. Unless they are stunned and on the ground, because then they are considered as a ground object, with moderate damage resistance. Then you can kill them with a pulser, although you also lose whatever they dropped that is not more sonic pulsers.
>>2794965
My current game it's March and I have a colony up and running not far from my base, but I'm not gonna go near that thing until I have everyone armed with sonic weapons and possibly PWT launchers. On the plus side, it was put up by Gillmen so I can just loot the supply ships for the time being.
BIG difference from UFO Defense where if you get an alien base constructed in February and you just rush in, shoot a couple of Floaters with your laser rifles, and you're done in about 15-20 minutes.
Best way of handling colonies is just firing a PWT round into the Synonium Device chamber and then dusting off ASAP.
In Lord Finisher's TFTD LP, about 30% of the entire series is spent on one freaking colony and he's only playing on Beginner mode (ie. 14 aliens max).
>>2794321
Yes, that's why I was making such an effort to capture one. It turns out that the OpenXCOM devs consider their lack of reaction fire in the original to be a bug, and won't change it. But I guess this compensates for the removal of the 80 item limit, so overall difficulty isn't much different. Melee units can reaction attack in OpenXCOM too.
>first terror mission of the game
>bring stun rods to bag a live Deep One
>touch down and there's a Deep One a few squares from the Triton
>wow that was lucky
>stun him and then go to work on the rest of the mission
>after cleaning out most of the aliens, there's still more left and I can't find them despite exploring virtually all there is of the map
>eventually find a Deep One hiding in the lower left corner of the map and kill him, but there's still another guy left
>after several more turns, we hit turn 20
>I'm hoping now the aliens can see us and this douchebag will come out from his hidey-hole, but no
>finally get tired of this bullshit, grab one of the Deep One corpses, load it into the Triton, then pick up the unconscious Deep One and load him into the ship
>dust off
Yeah fuck that shit. Besides, I got what I came for. Also one of my soldiers ended up MIA because the game decided to be retarded. I had her standing on the second floor of a building and for some reason, could not move her without the game crashing.
Colonies are probably the single worst part of TFTD and the biggest difference over UFO Defense.
Avoid shooting down Lobsterman ships as much as possible so you don't trigger a retaliation mission because a Lobsterman base defense is not something you want to deal with. If you shoot down their terror ships to prevent a terror mission from happening, sure, but other than that try not to do it.
>>2794264
I don't think this is actually true because I checked ACTS.DAT and it does have infiltration enabled for those regions. On the other hand, Eurasia, Arabian Bloc and Africa Corp should be immune to infiltration because there's no MISSIONS.DAT tables for their regions which means that alien missions cannot occur there.
I suppose it is a slight advantage that sonic weapons have no auto fire because the aliens have a harder time landing a shot on your soldiers, although of course you also have more trouble hitting them.
>>2796415
Also in general, avoid fighting Lobstermen on anything bigger than a medium scout.
I'm not completely sure how TFTD determines the terrain type for underwater battles. UFO just has several terrain types (farmland, jungle, ice etc) but in TFTD it seems like the terrain is just picked at random.
>>2796464
I think it has to do with the depth the alien sub is travelling at. The faster it's going, the greater the depth. Deeper and shallower water has different terrain features. Shallow water would be those maps with wrecked airplane parts laying around, medium depth has rocky ridges and coral, and deep water has weird lava flows and stuff.
I'm not sure why they did it this way and didn't just make it that there's terrain with different depths like continental shelves because it doesn't make a lot of sense to shoot down an alien sub in the middle of the Pacific and get shallow water because the thing was travelling at like 600 knots.
I don't think I'd play this thing unless it was modded with XComUtil. Or on Beginner, with a printed hint sheet in front of me.
Multi-level alien bases and terror missions? Blaster Launcher free for all? Nerfed laser weapon equivalent? No auto shot on alien weapons, and so many TUs used up for every little thing?
Aliens built like walking battle tanks all over the place?
I wonder if they even bothered to playtest this thing pre-release.
>>2796647
>Aliens built like walking battle tanks all over the place?
Infact Lobstermen have the same stat distribution and resistances as Mutons, the reason they're so much more of a headache is the fact that you can't just pepper them with heavy plasma auto fire. All ranged weapons in TFTD have fewer ammo rounds in their clips and the equivalent of heavy plasma carries only like ten shots per clip and doesn't have auto fire.
And ofc Lobstermen also have melee attacks if they lose their weapon.
Some aliens in TFTD are pretty much analogous to UFO Defense ones.
Aquatoid=Sectoid
Gillman=Floater
Lobsterman=Muton
Tentaculat=Chryssalid
Triscene=Sectopod
Hallucinoid=Reaper
Bio-Drone=Cyberdisc
Others don't really have a clear equivalent. For example, Tasoths have similar stat distributions to Ethereals and begin showing up at the same point in the game, but they have an abbreviated set of ranks similar to Mutons and also bravery of like 10 which makes them really freaking easy to panic. Also the grunts cannot use mind control, only leaders.
>>2796702
Lobstermen = Mutons on steroids?
>>2796702
Lobstermen have a much better armor, especially regarding damage resistances. That's why they can resist so much, even if their actual armor is not that higher than a Muton and their health is actually lower than a Tasoth, they can mitigate lots of damage by reducing it with their serious damage resistance. That's why tacking them with the correct weapons is critical.
>start of April
>surprise trawler mission!
>it's Tasoths and Bio-Drones
>oh goody
>clear the upper deck relatively easily
>lower deck's another story
>after something like two freaking hours, I cannot find the last Tasoths for the life of me
>I know there's two left because I get a message that a soldier and squad leader have panicked, but where the fuck are they
>finally give up, march everyone back to the entry point, and abort
I noticed that they did make some refinements to the UFO Defense engine like if you drop a grenade on an unconscious enemy, they get turned into a corpse instead of just disappearing. In UFO, it also didn't count blowing up unconscious aliens as a kill however it does in TFTD. Also if you abort a mission, you still get to keep all alien artifacts although not corpses or unconscious aliens unless you manually put them in the Triton. Your own equipment goes MIA as well if you abort.
>Lobsterman terror in the Mediterranean
>well at least it's during the day
>mission goes fairly better than I expected and I take out most of the enemies without much difficulty (everyone is packing sonic weapons for the first time)
>last alien left is a stubborn Lobsty camping near a tower thing
>he manages to shoot one guy and grenades three more dudes before he's finally brought down
A consequence of which I lost six dudes total and ended up with a Poor rating. That's one of the iron rules of X-COM - whenever you have a really good mission and you're about to wrap things up, the last alien always ends up grenading you or firing off a blaster bomb or it's a Chryssalid and he zombifies three dudes in a row (two of them being your elite captain and sergeant).
>>2797406
SPENDING 75 TURNS SEARCHING FOR THAT LAST ALIEN HIDING BEHIND A CRATE REALLY SUCKS. FUCK THAT SHIT.
Cruise ship missions are tolerable, but trawlers are a unique level of hell. They will twist your sanity and make you wish you were never born.
>spend, I dunno, 2-3 hours doing a trawler mission
>I've lost track of time by this point
>reflect on how this isn't UFO Defense at all
>good lord, this isn't UFO Defense
>just click on the mouse, move units around, shoot at aliens when I see them
>I'm practically running on autopilot by this point barely even aware of anything
>nothing but sheer adrenaline keeping me going
>my mind is completely gone
It took me 50 fucking turns to find a Deep One hiding on a cruise ship mission. Fuck that shit.
Still think colonies are worse. After what seemed like hours trying to track down the last alien which of course remains completely static so you can't find him with a motion detector, I finally had enough and just booted up XComUtil. Found out that it was a Tentaculat hiding in a 1x1 room.
>>2797129
Lobstermen hate melee weapons especially the heavy thermic lance will make lobster bisque out of them.
You could always lob incendiary rounds at Lobstermen since fire ignores armor.
>>2798879
True but incendiary (phosphorous in TFTD) rounds are not very useful in water missions because they tend to only stay lit for like one turn.
I just hate cruise ships, don't know why though.
Cruise ships are hardest if you happen to miss that one closet with a Lobsterman hiding in it, but things aren't as difficult if you methodically search everything room-by-room. Cargo ship is hard to clear, especially if grenades make damage to the stairs and you don't know how to get to top of the ship.
>>2798885
>>2798885
The cargo ship's second level can be a pain especially if the aliens take out the stairs leading to the top of the cargo containers in the starting area. And ofc you can't use PWT launchers outside of the water so you pretty much can't even figure out where the bloody aliens are, 'cause they always seem to camp out up there.
I had a nice round of Hunt the Wumpus on a Heavy Cruiser (TFTD's version of the Harvester). After clearing all the aliens from the outside and in the sub, I still had one holdout somewhere. Swept the outside again, nothing. Swept the sub, nothing. Then I found an elevator lift that I couldn't go down, so I figure he's in there. Unfortunately how the fuck am I supposed to get this guy since I can't shoot down the elevator lift. I waited turn after turn, even well past turn 20 since I figured he'd know where all my guys are and come after me, but no, nothing. That Tasoth wouldn't budge. I was getting desperate at this point, so on a whim a tossed a Sonic Pulser near the room (outside the craft) to see if that would make a hole big enough to see through. Bingo. There the prick stood. Killed it with Sonic Cannon head shot. Quite annoying to say the least.
Colonies really suck, but you don't have to actually kill every alien in the place. Just blow up the Synonium Device, move everyone to the exit zone, and abort. You can't get out of trawler missions that easily.
Unfortunately you have to do at least one colony mission to get a Lobsterman commander unless you're able to nab one from a Dreadnought.
Where do I find M.C. Readers in TFTD? I just cleared a touched down very small USO with no explosives, and the single alien didn't use explosives, but I still didn't find a M.C. Reader. I thought all very small USOs had them.
Is there any way to play X-COM or TFTD co-op? I don't really have any idea how it'd work, but sometimes I think, "You know, it'd be fun to play a single campaign with some of my buddies instead of everyone playing a separate one."
>>2800258
I could see competitive play where each player manages their own XCOM organization and whoever does better receives more funding. Coop could only really work if both players had access to the same funds, maybe each player could oversee one or more bases/regions.
>>2800298
That would actually be pretty cool. Each player is given an X-COM base to manage, less resources than a standard game because you only get one base. Goal is not only to combat the alien threat, but do it more efficiently than the other guys.
I know X-COM The Two Sides had one player play as the Aliens and the other X-COM, but I felt it was a little lopsided in balance. X-COM fought a strategic war while aliens simply fought a tactical one.
>Playing TFTD, Expert
>Shoot down alien sub on the first month.
>I've got two tanks and six seamen, explore the outside of the crashed sub, find no one.
>Shots coming from inside the sub kill two guys, so I quickly form a firing line and await the enemy to pop their head out, throw a flare inside.
>Next turn, single aquatoid shoots, kills two more guys.
>Return fire with the remaining two guys, nothing but misses from a kneeling position.
>Breach the hull with two tanks flanking the single aquatoid, they both miss their shots.
>Aquatoid kills both next turn, then proceeds to kill another guy with reaction fire before being taken down by the final remaining seaman.
>Mission ends, final tally 1 alien killed, two tanks, 5 men lost.
Debating if I should restart or not, I can't afford to replace the tanks.
>>2799992
In UFO Defense, the small scouts always have a mind probe on them but not in TFTD. I think the reason for it was because a small scout in UFO is worth so little in terms of loot that the devs decided to just throw in a mind probe because they sell for big bucks. Kind of a token prize you get from taking on small scouts.
TFTD's small scout is about the same size as a medium scout (although it still only has one alien), so you get more loot from it and they presumably didn't think it was necessary to include a mind probe. In fact the TFTD small scout can sometimes survive DUP torpedo hits while the UFO small scout gets blown up by anything bigger than a Stingray missile.
Also if you didn't know, mind probes are always carried by alien engineers (technicians) and navigators (squad leaders). Unlike UFO, the medium/large scout in TFTD don't have engineers at all and Aquatoid engineers can also use psionics.
>>2800402
Yeeeah, that's a reset scenario.
>>2800428
Medium scouts in UFO Defense actually don't have engineers either, they're only found on Large Scouts and up. But in TFTD, only the bigger ships have them.
The M.C. Reader is also much more important to your research efforts than the Mind Probe in UFO. First of all, you have to research the M.C. Lab before the M.C. Reader or you can't research the latter at all (you must have a M.C. Reader in storage when you research M.C. Lab). You also need one on hand to research the M.C. Disruptor and Generator.
Thus, the correct research path goes M.C. Lab -> M.C. Reader -> M.C. Disruptor/M.C. Generator.
One thing that always bothered me about X-COM was that you never see a local military fight against aliens in terror missions or anything else. It's like anything regarding aliens is completely left up to X-COM, when in reality, I'd bet every nation would be independently pursuing their own defense and research in addition to X-COM doing so as well. I get that shooting down UFOs and investigating landings is probably difficult for most nations outside of the US, Russia, and China, but I'm sure Europe would pull funding from wherever to revitalize their military to ensure they could investigate landings within their borders.
If anything, it'd be nice to see normal soldiers attempting to help you during terror missions, even if their usefulness goes to pot after a few months.
>start of April
>get shipping route attack
>my dudes are still just armed with gauss rifles
>go to the damn thing and immediately dust the fuck off
>besides it was a (shudder) trawler
Fuck that shit. I'll just make up the point deficit through missions over the month.
How do I gitgud?
>>2800501
I attempted an attack on a touched-down medium size ship and they had MC users+blaster launchers (late March). I didn't stand a chance. And that was enough to put my score negative for another month and lose the game.
It seems in TFTD you can't get MC unless you don't need MC.
>>2800534
>I attempted an attack on a touched-down medium size ship and they had MC users+blaster launchers (late March)
Ok, an Aquatoid Heavy Cruiser/Hunter (TFTD's version of the Harvester/Abductor). No different from fighting a Sectoid Harvester in that they can mind control you. TFTD makes it a bit worse though since Aquatoid engineers have psionics as well while UFO only the leader can do it.
I also was not aware that PWT launchers appear on medium ships.
I find MC in TFTD slightly less annoying because many of your weapons have no auto fire which limits the amount of damage a mind controlled soldier can do.
Alien subs in TFTD aren't quite the same as UFO's ships. For one thing, they're slower and it's easier for the Barracuda to catch up with them than the Interceptor with UFO Defense ships. The TFTD terror ship also has a more powerful weapon than the battleship (Dreadnought).
On the Battlescape, subs are not as tough as UFO Defense ships and the Sonic Cannon can penetrate outer hulls while in UFO, you cannot do that without a Blaster Launcher.
What the optimal base location build order in TFTD? So far I've been starting in the mediterranean.
>>2800589
Put a base in the North Atlantic and one in East Asia. That should cover most of your funding nations.
Aquatoid terror missions are pretty rare, but they're also cake compared with Sectoid terror missions mostly because the Aquatoids' terrorists are melee-only (both on land and underwater).
>>2800607
Gillmen in some regards are worse because they can take a bit more damage and the Deep One's weapon is pretty powerful. Also if you take on a Gillman Battleship/Dreadnought, you have to fight Xarquids which, while not much of a threat from an offensive standpoint, are built like tanks and almost unkillable (they have a huge amount of resistances and are only weak to melee weapons).
blump
Consider yourself lucky if you manage to catch a Lobsterman Dreadnought b/c easy route to a commander instead of the bullshit of assaulting a colony.
>>2800556
TFTD replaces Harvest missions with Alien Interdiction which is more-or-less the same thing, but the aliens don't score as high for it (they get about the same score as a Research mission).
I just cleared my first TFTD Superhuman Ironman nighttime terror mission. Cost 9 aquanauts, but I still got a positive score (and a live Deep One). My strategy was to hide inside the Triton all the time, wait for aliens to come near (checking the particle disturbance sensor) and throwing grenades at them. Luckily none of the aliens had blaster launchers, which could have been disastrous because one alien did make it inside the Triton.
I did it. I actually did it. I cleaned out a colony and bagged a Lobsterman Navigator/Commander combo all in one marathon sitting. It took something like three hours while an EU base on average takes 25-30 minutes to beat.
Lost four dudes. One guy got killed early in the mission when a mind controlled soldier lost it, another was turned into a zombie by a Tentaculat, the third got shot by a Lobsterman, and the fourth was unconscious from a stun bomb so I just left him there. He was way the fuck on the opposite side of the base from my other guys and I already had my Lobsterman commander, so w/e. I sure wasn't going to spend another 50 turns hunting down the last Lobstermen (I figured at least two were still running around) and trying to revive him with a med pack. I blew the Synonium device up, marched everyone to the entry lift, and got the hell out of there. I also noticed that the vast majority of the aliens seemed to be on the third floor in the vicinity of the command center and I encountered maybe two total on the first and second floors.
I didn't have to actually do all this, incidentally. A Lobsterman infiltration mission was starting up in my backyard and I could have just waited for them to send a Dreadnought and gotten a much easier commander grab. That alien colony had been there for a good three months though and it was starting to bug me. Besides, you get a huge score boost for taking them out.
>>2801242
You can actually do a modified version of the "bum rush" tactic from UFO Defense where you just send everyone to the command center, destroy it, and dust off. In TFTD's case, don't bother with the first and second floors of the colony, just make your way to the basement where the Synonium Device is.
I love that *splorch* sound that Hallucinoids make when you kill them.
>>2796723
Aquatoids are about comparable to Sectoids except that their engineers also have mind control ability.
Gillmen are mostly like Floaters except some minor stat differences and of course they can't float. Gillman commanders have mind control, but you'll rarely ever encounter them.
Lobstermen have the same health/armor stats as Mutons but their reactions, speed, firing accuracy, and psionic resistance are a good 50% higher.
Tasoths have slightly higher speed, reactions, and firing accuracy than Ethereals and twice as much health, but less armor and lower psionic stats.
Bio-Drones have 50% higher speed, health, and firing accuracy than Cyberdiscs but lower reactions and psionic resistance. They can use a melee attack in addition to a ranged one, but it has really, really low accuracy.
Tentaculats are a little bit faster and have more health than Chryssalids and much higher psionic resistance, plus they can fly (float), BUT they don't appear on terror missions.
TFTD maps are _much_ bigger than EU maps. Each of the three floors in an alien colony is as big as an entire EU base.
Unfortunately, underwater, you'll spend most of your time either in a coral reef or a bland sea floor. The game is literally rigged to make these appear far more often then any other type of terrain, regardless of which area of the ocean you've landed in.
(Different types of sea floor in the Geoscape view (which is a garish mess, by the way) do lead to different types of terrain, they just have about a 50% chance of sticking you in a reef/empty seafloor map instead - unlike EU, where if you land in a desert, you get a desert).
Then there's the beautiful but waaaay too large (and completely non-random) cruise ships. In the late game you'll be quite tempted to just let the aliens kill everyone on board rather then slog through another half hour (or longer) session looking for aliens hidden behind cabin doors. Again.
TFTD has a ton of "non-shadable" colors in Battlescape mode, which can't be used to draw the actual map. Not so bad under water (as you expect everything to be tinted green/blue/turquoise), but on land things get pretty garish. It also sets most all font colours to white, for some reason.
TFTD has a lot more sprites for units. Animations are increased no end, especially for tanks and the larger alien units. There were even unique sprites created for zombie soldiers, though these were never actually used in game.
TFTD drop ships have no visible landing gear. Your soldiers start at ground level, not having to walk down a ramp, and can hence use the ship for cover much more effectively - you don't have to worry about fire on all sides, especially since you'll usually start off on either the left or right most sides on the map. Furthermore, they also have functional doors.
TFTD has a more complex research tree. Unfortunately, it doesn't actually add much - it just makes it more complex by adding dependencies (mostly centered around aliens). For example, in UFO, if you want to get the better armors you need only research the components. TFTD forces you to research the Deep One aliens as well. Note that TFTD's research tree can also be "broken" under many circumstances, making the game unwinnable without hacking.
And finally, TFTD asks you to accept that your soldiers can't swim unless they have magnetic ion armor and can function underwater indefinitely with a punctured diving helmet. Granted, EU had no opportunities for swimming but that just kind of rubs me the wrong way.
Another important difference vs EU - the ships on TFTD alien infiltration missions never land and you can't go after them without first shooting the things down while in EU, they land in cities (makes sense - there's no cities in the ocean to land at). So yes, that includes Dreadnoughts.
Also the TFTD Battleship and Dreadnought have reversed offensive capabilities. Battleships attack aggressively and have a 140 damage weapon meaning that only a Leviathan can go one-on-one with them. For comparison, the Dreadnought has a 120 damage weapon and does not attack aggressively meaning that a Barracuda with DUP torpedoes can go against it safely, except that Dreadnoughts still have the same damage capability as the UFO Defense Battleship meaning it will be much harder to take them down without Sonic Oscillators.
Result? The only way to fight a Battleship in TFTD is by shooting it down since unlike the UFO Defense Terror Ship, it never lands.
>>2801242
And now you learn the painful truth that infiltration fleets in TFTD don't land. You'll have to pray for Lobstermen to set up a base for that to work.
>>2801242
Plus late game all aliens in colonies carry blaster launchers.
>>2784913
>Lobstermen were a huge leap forward from Mutons though, no question. It was good that they forced you to adapt new tactics, unlike Mutons, who you could just shoot your way through with enough Heavy Plasma.
TFTD on the whole is a lot more tactics-based and requires more finesse than UFO Defense where you can win by just brute force (auto fire, demolishing anything and everything with Blaster Bombs, etc)
Winning terror missions is pretty critical for your early game scoring because you can't really take on large ships or colonies (or anything with Lobstermen) until at least mid-game.
How the fuck do you kill Lobstermen? I've recently gotten into TFTD and in one of the mission I was investigating a downed UFO/USO, my men deploy out of the Triton and I start to secure the LZ one of my men spots a Lobster man. "Okay this shouldn't be too hard". I say as I command the man who spotted it to auto fire on it. One hit and it's still standing. I then bring in two other men who snap and auto at the Lobsterman. Three hits, not a scratch. "Okay, lets bring in the heavy support." Gas Cannon, Hydrojet and Torpedo Launcher All fire and all hit, small rocket, and several blasts of AP impact against it's hard shell. "Ah, fuck." I then bring in another two and there shots finally finish off the Lobsterman, it goes down and thankfully the mission ends as the other Lobsterman was already dead.
Is there an easier way to kill them early on in the game and whats the best way to kill them overall - in ranged combat preferably.
>>2802519
Even with a sonic cannon it can take a few hits. Just try and get melee weapons.
First off, Lobstermen resist explosives so don't bother with them although sometimes multiple grenade blasts can be used to soften them up.
Lobstermen are also really freaking easy to stun. Once knocked out, just drop a grenade onto their body and you're done.
Melee weapons also make minced meat of them since they ignore armor. If you manage to get an Aquatoid terror mission early in the game, you can research a Calcinite corpse and quickly use melee weapons.
If you're desperate, gauss rifles and heavy gauss can kill them. Sonic-tech is a lot better though. Well, considering the sonic pistol is way better than the heavy-gauss in almost every aspect, it's not surprising. Sonic cannons and the blasta-rifle are generally more effective.
Go Sonic Cannon and Sonic Pulsers! Using humanoid weaponery on lobster men is pretty much useless... Research the alien stuff as fast as possible. I'm not too sure if the Gauss technology will do anything to the lobsterman, but I'm sure its better than using the other weapons you start out with.
You can take out Lobstermen with gauss weapons if you really have to. I remember in my last TFTD run, I went after a Lobsterman Dreadnought trying to set up a colony in February and I only had gauss rifles, on Superhuman. That was an epic battle and a great bloodbath that cost me 9 of my 14 soldiers (did I mention that there were also Tentaculats on there?) but well worth it for all the loot you get from a Dreadnought, plus I nabbed the commander. :)
Anyway, I don't recommend facing them with gauss as they take half the damage.
Lobstermen eat gauss for breakfast! They just plain suck. My advice.......Shoot accurately shoot often, with any weapon
They take half damage from gauss? Craaaaaaap! What's the freakin' point of gauss weapons then?
Lobstermen hate stun weapons, so be sure to pack those if you're going to be facing them. Besides, gauss is fine for taking on Aquatoids/Gillmen and helps conserve your sonic ammunition.
Simply put, Lobstermen are weak to stun weapons, they resist explosives, but are vulnerable to melee since those bypass armor. Gauss does neutral damage to them, but their high health and armor means that you're essentially firing a BB gun at a stone wall.
The advantages of gauss are that the ammo doesn't require Zrbite to produce and helps you conserve sonic clips when you take on Aquatoids/Gillmen which can be easily downed with them.
I remember the first time I played TFTD... things were going pretty well, I was mowing down Aquatoids and Gillmen left and right, then I downed a small sub, and got my ass kicked by like four Lobstermen that were made of indestructium.
Personally, I've never really developed any particular strategy for using the HTH weapons. I just have everyone carry a sonic gun and a vibroblade of some sort and pull it out whenever a HTH attack would be more suitable than a ranged attack. In many confined spaces like the colonies and inside buildings, you tend to get a lot of chances to use them. Like the pleasure cruise mission for example. All those room cubicles and that little closet near where you start where there's almost always one alien waiting in one of the alcoves.
Recently, from a strategy I developed in UFO for approaching aliens, you can get someone to use the MC Reader to examine the alien's stats before you try to rush up to them and poke them with your drills. No TU's means no alien opportunity fire.
Also, some aliens tend to walk about carrying vibro blades of their own (and four sonic pulsers!). They really don't know how to use their own drills -- So you might as well walk up to them and, uh, demonstrate. Don't do this with lobstermen, of course since they also have melee attack regardless of whether they're carrying a HTH weapon or not.
I've also noticed a lot of aliens walk about with absolutely no weapons on them. Usually alien engineers (technicians). Just be careful, since aliens tend to put their weapons away after throwing a grenade, so its hard to tell if they really are unarmed or otherwise.
Oh, and don't forget the alien's sense of self preservation when it comes to using PWT torpedoes. The alien carrying the launcher won't shoot at you if you're standing right next to it.
>>2801376
>Also the TFTD Battleship and Dreadnought have reversed offensive capabilities. Battleships attack aggressively and have a 140 damage weapon meaning that only a Leviathan can go one-on-one with them. For comparison, the Dreadnought has a 120 damage weapon and does not attack aggressively meaning that a Barracuda with DUP torpedoes can go against it safely, except that Dreadnoughts still have the same damage capability as the UFO Defense Battleship meaning it will be much harder to take them down without Sonic Oscillators.
Not exactly. The Battleship's weapon is more powerful but still has a short range, thus SOs can indeed take them down.
>1st April, Lobster Man terror mission
>4 Biodrones right outside the triton
>Sonic pulser does nothing
>2 hits of thermal taser does nothing
>Sonic cannon does nothing
>1 Biodrone makes it inside
>Sonic cannon reaction fire actually kills it
>Biodrone explodes, everybody dies
Way too much score deficit (March was negative too) to recover now, might as well give up.
>>2802519
You used every single type of damage they are resilient against. Use Sonic weaponry and try to move your guys in loose squads, so you can still have a decent backup if you miss the first time, while moving cautiously in order to pick them singularly.
Whenever I've played TFTD, I always without fail get a shipping attack on April 1st, although supposedly there's still a 40% chance of an island/port terror mission.
If you didn't know, the game sets a flag in LOC.DAT to determine if the terror mission for the month is port/island, shipping, or artefact. The first gets an entry in MISSIONS.DAT and is preceded by alien ships, the others aren't.
>>2802631
>terror mission
You're supposed to abort terror missions immediately.
>>2805159
That's an easy way to lose the game to negative score on Superhuman.
>>2805163
Superhuman is easier in some ways because the large amount of aliens per mission results in bigger scores and more loot to sell.
>do Lobsterman terror in April
>three dudes die, another three wounded, and I somehow end up bringing home eight (!) live aliens
I had sonic rifles, but not yet cannons. Once you get sonic cannons, Lobstermen are pretty easy to take out. On this mission I had guys lined up like a freaking firing squad blazing away. You need at least 3-4 sonic rifle shots to take down a Lobsty, the problem being that your incompetent as fuck troops end up missing 75% of the time.
>clean out alien colony, bag Lobsterman navigator and commander, and get a huge haul of loot for over 1100 score points
>lost five dudes - two KIA and three counted as MIA because they were unconscious at the end of the mission and apparently unlike UFO, soldiers who are out of it are considered missing
>one of them was an elite officer
I had the good luck to somehow acquire a PWT launcher from an earlier mission so researched it before going after the colony. Made everything quite a bit easier.
I just got a base defense mission in TFTD on January 17th. My new defensive layout sub pens haven't built yet so I doubt this is survivable.
>>2807179
Since it's probably Aquatoids and Calcinites, you don't have too much to worry about aside from mind control. Besides, if you beat them you'll get early PWT launcher and melee weapons.
>>2807059
Did I mention that Lobstermen can survive a point-blank PWT round? I saw it in that colony mission with my own eyes.
>>2807059
TFTD equips PWT launchers on all larger alien ships while in UFO, you'd only find them on Battleships and base missions. Also after a certain point, all aliens in colonies have PWT launchers.
>>2807270
I did take on a Fleet Supply Cruiser and that's probably where I got it from. I know I found a PWT launcher in my inventory and had no clue how I acquired it, but then I guessed it was from that supply ship mission. Glad I did have it to research because sure made my life easier when attacking that colony.
>>2807263
Aquatoids are IMO easier than Sectoids because their terrorists aremelee only.
>UFO Defense
>colony gets built in February
All you need is personal armor, med-kits, and laser rifles and you're good to go.
>TFTF
>colony gets built in February
Gotta wait a few months until you have sonic weapons, sonic pulsers, optionally stun and/or PWT launchers. You get negative ratings in the meantime but you're not exactly given a choice either. At least if it got built by Gillmen, you can just loot their supply ships until you're ready to go at the actual colony.
Colony missions are a lot slower paced than UFO base missions, at least the inner part. You spend most of the time wandering around empty rooms for many, many turns without ever encountering any aliens. It takes around 40-50 turns to clear the inner part of a colony while UFO bases are about 15-20 turns.
A few TFTD protips:
1. The primary objective in colonies and artefact sites is destroying the Synonium Device. You don't need to take out every alien in them to win.
2. Avoid night missions and Lobstermen on anything bigger than a medium scout
3. Supply ships are a very great source of plunder especially if they're crewed by Gillmen - in fact even better than EU supply ships because the layout is easier and you can acquire PWT launchers from them.
4. Melee weapons are ideal for shipping route missions because lots of close-quarters action
5. If you're facing Aquatoids or Gillmen, you can just use gauss rifles to conserve sonic clips
6. Don't give sonic cannons to soldiers with firing accuracy under 60
7. Navigation consoles in alien ships contain Zrbite so be careful not to destroy them - this is one nice feature of TFTD compared with EU in that you'll usually get some Zrbite out of a crashed ship.
8. Lobstermen hate stun and melee weapons
9. You only need two bases - one in the North Atlantic and one in East Asia
10. The game does tend to put alien missions close to your bases - this is also true of EU
>>2807263
>aside from mind control
It was aquatoids, I only had 9 aquanauts (8 more on route), and I lost a lot to MC. I killed a few aliens with GC-HE and grenades (no sonic pulsers yet), but there's 32 of them on Superhuman so really I don't see how I could possibly win that early. Maybe I should shoot down scouts instead of looting them touched down to hope to delay the retaliation until the new sub pens are built.
I also notice with alien colonies that most of them seem to spawn in the north and northwest of the map.
Personally I find the first part of colonies worse because of the mixed alien crew and the fact that you have psionic-spamming Aquatoids and Tasoths everywhere. The inner part of the colony is easier in terms of survivability, just really freaking long.
You get a 5 point penalty for every day that an alien colony is operating, however a supply ship heist will more than make up for it.
The first colony you visit should have as a priority capturing the Lobsterman officers, but all later colonies you just need to destroy the Synonium Device although you won't get to recover any loot unless you clear every alien from the place.
am i the only one who liked UFO: Aftermath?
the atmosphere and the enemies, combined with the struggle you face for me seems the most sensible and awesome of all the XCOMish alien invasions
>>2784913
>>2801620
You guys are so wrong. If there's one thing TFTD is about it finesse. You certainly need to be more cautious while playing it, heck A LOT more cautious, but that is only due to the fact that every feature in the game was massively shoehorned in order to ramp up difficulty.
The result was an abomination of difficulty that far from finesse, it requires the crudest and most grueling sort of tactics to beat, i.e, blow up everything with explosives, use transporter doors for protection, wait for turn 20 for aliens to go after you, and so on.
TFTD suffers from horrible AI that gets stuck in corners. The infamous "monster closets" from the trawler missions are nothing but a resulting bug from AI being unable to properly navigate small rooms, forcing you to look hunt for every last alien in every small cramped room only to have you shot with reaction rife the second your soldier misses a shot at point blank (also far more common to happen than of UFO:EU).
Then there's the mission structure. 2 and 3 parters of labyrinths small houses, narrow corridors and that fucking 2nd level ship mission that spawns all your soldier in the exposed part of the hull, with no cover whatsoever and will all the aliens ready to practice duck hunt on your aquanauts from the level above. Getting your troops alive from that particular mission is a sheer stroke of luck or many many reloads, as GuavaMoment testified himself.
In short, UFO:EU might have had it's shortcomings, but it was way more entertaining, engaging, and less frustrating then whatever TFTD had to offer.
>>2813094
>If there's one thing TFTD is about it finesse
And I meant to say "it's NOT about"
>>2813094
>practice duck hunt on your aquanauts from the level above. Getting your troops alive from that particular mission is a sheer stroke of luck or many many reloads, as GuavaMoment testified himself.
I agree. Trying to beat TFTD without savescumming is impossible.
>>2807583
>All you need is personal armor, med-kits, and laser rifles and you're good to go.
You passing UFO:EU as easier as it is. Sure on anything from Beginner to Veteran it might be like that, but if you play on Genius or Superhuman you are bound for a very nasty surprise if you try a base assault with only lasers and personal armor. Against Sectoids, you'll get psi-raped and maimed by cyberdisc reactions. Against Snakemen there's Chryssalids. Only Floaters can be deemed as "easy" and even then you won't have a good time if you're playing on Superhuman.
>>2813102
It is doable. I've seen it done on Ironman Superhuman on OXC. What happens is, the best players just skip those missions altogether.
>>2813107
You can just abort ship attacks and make up for the point deficit over the month, but running away from artefact sites nets you a 700 point penalty which is significantly harder to compensate. You'd need to take out an alien colony or a couple big USOs to make up for that.
>>2813114
Yeah, but then again it's easier to deal with artifacts by the time you get to them, then dealing with the second level of trawler missions.
>>2813104
I've beaten Snakeman bases in February-March with only laser rifles. It's a little difficult because Chryssalids can take a beating, but definitely possible. In TFTD it's all-but impossible to beat colonies until at least May.
I don't understand how you can beat TFTD on Superhuman solely based on your limited ammo supply. Colonies have up to 28 aliens most of which are Lobstermen that need at least three shots to kill (factoring in missed shots). You'd run out of clips before clearing the place.
>>2813128
Explosives, PWTs, and drills. Displacers also help a lot, since they have tons of ammo.
>>2813132
Lobstermen resist explosives and I've even seen them survive point-blank PWT blasts, although it will at least soften them up a bit. Melee weapons work nicely provided you can get a Calcinite corpse which a lot of times isn't possible due to the rarity of Aquatoid terror sites.
>>2813136
FWIW, Calcinites also show up on Aquatoid base defense missions so you may get one that way.
>>2813124
I did not say it's impossible, but it's certainly not the cakewalk described.
>>2813128
You can't scavenge clips from dead aliens?
>>2813148
After a certain point, all aliens in colonies have PWT launchers. Even before that, many of them will have stun bombs or sonic cannons. I normally give most soldiers sonic rifles and only the better guys with high firing accuracy get sonic cannons.
The problem is that sonic rifles get rarer in the late game and you'll have a harder time scavenging clips from missions, although the aliens never totally phase them out like the plasma rifle in UFO.
I usually always play EU on Superhuman, I couldn't imagine trying TFTD with it.
>>2813128
that's why vibroblades and thermic lances exists,
probably.
>>2813705
I've been attempting TFTD Superhuman Ironman. On my 6th try, I have made it to May with two defendable bases (with SWSs for psi-immune defense), each with a Transmission Resolver and a Baracuda equipped with dual Sonic Oscillators. I have a MC Lab in production and a MC Reader ready to research. Sonic Oscillators + Transmission Resolvers means you can shoot down everything and never worry about score. As soon as I can get Gauss Cannon manufacturing up for unlimited money the only remaining serious danger is the final mission. All that remains is to capture the lobsterman commander, finish the research tree, and train up an elite MC user squad.
I once lost a UFO SH Ironman game on the final mission, so I can't relax yet, but getting air/sea superiority is a major turning point.
>>2815243
Why even bother with that, all you'll ever need to make money will come from selling sonic stuff/excess aqua plastics. Money is by far the last problem in TFTD after the first months.
>>2815260
Money has been the limiting factor since the beginning, even selling almost everything I salvaged and relying on Gas Cannons and ordinary grenades (until lobstermen showed up). On Superhuman difficulty you can get a negative score month even if you win every battle because you were unlucky with detection/intercepts. You have to expand and research aggressively from the beginning.
>>2815243
Now if you can try the Superhuman Pacific Challenge (build only base in the South Pacific, Superhuman, and you can't savescum in the middle of missions)
>>2815260
Protip: Colonies yield a ginormous amount of loot, more than you get from EU bases because there's two separate parts. If you can clear all aliens from both sections, the payback is huge.
>>2815270
>On Superhuman difficulty you can get a negative score month even if you win every battle because you were unlucky with detection/intercepts
This is true, however the game does tend to put alien missions near your bases.
>>2815429
>you can't savescum in the middle of missions
>implying you can savescum anyway
"Ironman" means "no save except to save your progress before quitting". This is the only fun way to play, and OpenXCOM has an option to enforce it. I don't see how this kind of game can be enjoyable without the tension of knowing you can't undo mistakes.
I normally avoid savescumming unless something amazingly stupid happens like a soldier gets mind controlled and drops a grenade in the middle of the Skyranger.
>>2815447
Playing Ironman is the quickest way to learn not to let that happen. It's one of the few counters the aliens have to the aquanauts camping in the Triton. The game would be unbalanced if they couldn't.
>>2815447
This becomes less of a problem when you get power armor, at which point you're pretty much safe from grenades except at ground zero.
I won't touch alien colonies until I have sonic cannons and sonic pulsers. PWT launchers are nice if you can get one early in the game.
Grenades in TFTD lend themselves to slightly different uses than EU. For one thing, they're your primary method of demolishing structures on surface missions where you can't use PWT launchers. They're also important for taking out unconscious aliens. I end up using grenades a lot more in TFTD while I use them in EU only sparingly once I have Blaster Launchers.
>>2815469
Grenades are my primary weapon before I get Sonic Cannons. Don't underestimate the power of the grenade relay (and careful with the timeunits, you don't want to miss a throw and not have enough time to pick it up).
>>2815469
Especially Lobstermen because they're still a hazard even if they lose their weapon. Also of course stunning is one of the best ways to take out a Lobsterman so you'll be dropping grenades on their bodies a lot.
Same deal with stun weapons. You will be making much greater use of them in TFTD. In EU, you have only three occasions where you'll ever need them which is capturing an alien navigator/leader/commander. Not so in TFTD where it's necessary to take them along any time you fight Lobstermen.
>>2784492
Can someone help?
Ive reached a dead end, I have bases all over the globe, Im a full year in
I cant find any alien bases and ive only run into 3 battleships on my current playthrough.
I have not yet had an Entheral or Muton encounter, how can I break this stalemate
>>2815502
You probably fucked up something badly. Are you playing the original game? If so, you should just switch to OpenXCom, especially now that it's compatible with original game saves.
>>2815502
Sometimes you don't encounter them. I've had games where I got nothing but Mutons for months and then other ones where the game seems to have totally skipped them.
>nighttime Lobsterman terror mission
>lose six dudes
>this is just on Beginner mode
The circled area is a good place to crack open with a PWT launcher as it allows you to just march right over to the entry lift.
Pro-tip: When an Artifact Site appears, actually read the text box and don't just click it away and assume it's another Colony. Artifact Sites are like Terror Missions, only with even bigger score penalty if you ignore them. My score probably would have passed the Terrible threshold if I had just landed and immediately left. I'm now worried about losing on score with another bad month.
>>2817329
>soldiers have no armor in a fucking colony
This guy is an idiot.
Any tips for late-game colony missions when all aliens get PWT launchers?
>>2817669
Equip all soldiers with flying suits and don't bunch up. If your guys are floating around, they'll be a lot harder to hit with a PWT round.
You can't float around in the inner part of the colony, but there's bazillions of rooms you can hide in. And again, do not bunch up. I cannot overstate how much the AI is designed to punish you for that.
Camping really works great against Lobstermen. I just cleared a touched down Lobsterman supply ship at night. I only sent one guy out and had everybody else snipe from the Triton with Laser Cannons. You can fire over people if they're kneeling, so you get at least 6 shots per turn with good positioning.
>>2817809
I guess this depends on you waiting until Turn 20 for the aliens to all come at you like Pickett's Charge.
Interestingly, I do a trick like this in EU bases - camp out in the entrance lifts, go down, shoot aliens, then head back up. Eventually you'll have decimated their ranks. I should note, this trick does rely on an exploit in the Collector's Edition whereby the aliens can't shoot Blaster Bombs up at your soldiers (in the DOS version, you'd be in trouble). Can be used handily on Floater/Snakeman/Muton bases.
>>2817845
I had to wait past turn 100 to get all of them.
Melee weapons are nice for taking Lobstermen, Triscenes, and other walking tanks except you can't get them without a Calcinite corpse and Aquatoid terror missions are not exactly commonplace.
>>2817865
Triscenes (thankfully a rarely-seen enemy) will require the Heavy Thermic Lance on higher difficulty levels. Barring that, they hate grenades due to very soft under-armor. You may want to dust off the Magna-Pak Explosive instead of sonic pulsers due to its greater power.
>>2817870
IIRC, you never encounter Triscenes on shipping route attacks, only port/island.
>>2817872
I think you're right. Shipping attacks Tasoths have Bio-Drones with them and Triscenes on port or island missions.
BONUS
These are prototype sprites
John Reitze made in 1991.
And some other never seen before prototype sprites for x-com.
>>2818173
I kind of wish X-COM had MIBs on their forces, perhaps for some sort of covert work.
>>2818223
Yeah, me too.
I actually really wanted to play a x-files version of x-com when I was younger. Something where you have to start by investigating ufo-crash sites or paranormal activity with a squad of fbi agents and from that on further widen the scope to global stuff.
But have the first 5 or 10 hours of the game be really basic stuff.
Probably because I also loved the start of x-com the most, when you investigate downed alien ships in farmhouses.
Am I going fucking crazy or is the Enemy Unknown Geoscape music fucking dynamic?
>>2818508
The music in the DOS version or the Collector's Edition?
not sure how this will be received as it's not /vr/ but what do you guys think about xenonauts? i enjoy it and yet it's lacking some of the charm and tenseness of the original in my eyes
>>2818961
Too streamlined for my taste, they copied but cut everything deemed unnecessary from X-COM. You could argue that they did what XCOM did and try to make the game better, but I don't really like it.
Health for both sides are too bullet spongy, probably because they wanted medics to be more useful.
Interceptions are gimmicky, might be fun for a bit and you can cheese out some of the stronger UFO squads with it but I end up auto-ing most of them.
I don't have a problem with the graphics but I know some do and I can't blame them for it.
>>2818816
openxcom
>>2818172
Awesome!
hello
>>2818961
It's pretty bad. It has lots of LoS and height problems, almost all the alien races appear in the first months and then get their stats beefed up, making them almost interchangeable, weapon tiers that are exactly the same save for ramped up damage, and they are required due the aforementioned alien stat scaling, very shaky firing accuracy rules, where a bush in your line of shot can give you a -20% chance to hit penalty, little to no destruction, reaction fire still rewarding camping and especially aliens, making breaching a drag, psionics being only an alien thing, with all the oh so balanced and fun features like being capable of targeting your guys from out of sight.
But the worst, personally, is the strategic layer, or better the black hole that is the airgame. They put too much importance to that annoying minigame, and it's too much of a deciding factor, especially for getting founds. In both the original and the new X-Com, the deciding factor are your field battles, and the strategic part gives you a context to them: intercepting stuff is important, but you can ignore something, if you nail the monthly terror mission it can be an acceptable overlook. Most of the strategic time spent in Xenonauts is about intercepting, and allowing even a few ships to land and do their missions is incredibly damaging. You can lose easily a country that it's favorable to you if a random bomber does his strafing runs on it and you aren't ready. And losing a game not because you are losing tactical battles, frankly the big reason of these games, but because you are not giving proper attention to a minigame (which is almost entirely skippable, a good thing because there's so much of it) is really lame.
Another X-Com clone to add to the pile, I guess.
>>2818223
iirc the original design had them, but microprose stopped the idea because they already had another MIB game in the making, so they didn't want the two games to overlap.
in the end that game was cancelled and ufo came out without MIB (but you still can see MIB-looking guys on some of the menu windows).
>>2820710
One of the mods for OpenXCOM adds MIB into the game, they're basically another "race" of enemies, but they have their own missions, including their own style of base.
>>2820710
i've heard that before but i never found out about the source or what game was it.
Late October in my TFTD SH IM run and I finally get M.C. Disrupters. Later than I'd have got Psi in UFO. I lost 3 Tritons trying to get a Tasoth from a colony, so I just built a lot of detection bases and found a normal Tasoth sub. I already have a few high M.C. Strength troops, so maybe now I can survive a colony.
>>2818508
No. There are only two tracks that play randomly. Furthermore, there's a MIDI bug which is unsolvable even in OpenXCom that loops and piles some of the midi layers nigh-endlessly. If you're on CE soundtrack, it might be a good idea to switch to get the dos version running in OXC and pick the adlib soundtrack instead. Otherwise you can just get any soundtrack converted to .ogg in Fenyo's website.
>>2818173
Robin made a mod for OXC with one of those species. Check it out.
http://www.openxcom.com/mod/gazer-alien
>>2820771
I swear to god though I get audio crackling and garbled speaking through my headphones that sounds almost as ifthe aliens are trying to listen in on what I'm doing
It started a little over halfway through the game, usually happens right after missions and while doing certain base management things. Definitely seems to be triggered by doing actions, won't happen if I'm just sitting at the geoscape screen. Also, audio in game has a weird effect on my headphones, adjusting the cord makes the sound go in and out during the scenarios I described above even though I never half to do that with them when using the computer outside of xcom.
>>2820776
You might want to check you shrink, get some new headphones, or stop playing x-com together, if you're that paranoid.
>>2820782
desu I just assumed it was the coolest feature ever and left it at that
The aliens do try to seek out your base anyways so there's that
>>2820745
You know you can get MC lab from researching any live terrorist.
>>2820921
I already got one (although you have to find a MC Reader first or you will never get MC Disrupters. Maybe OpenXCOM fixes this but if it does I consider it cheating).
>>2820924
You should get one from a mission at some point. I also can't understand how you could lose three Tritons trying to capture one lousy Tasoth.
