Help me enjoy X-Com

Speaking of X-com games, why do people seem to dislike X-com: Apocalypse so much? Granted the scope is smaller, but I thought it was a improvement over the previous games in quite a few ways. (Best thing about it is that, if you are losing, a tactical battle, you have the option to just level the whole building and take the aliens down with you. )

Though I do have 2 major complaints:

Spoiler:

- The best armor doesn't give your troops the ability to fly.
- Towards the end game, the fights in the alien world feel like grinding.

That reminds me, I still have not finished that game... I wonder if I can find some mods to fix at least one of the complaints that I had.

Oh, by the way: earlier in the thread someone said "You can't get the soldier's stats when you're in tactical mode." Not true! Just click on the bar graph showing their remaining action points and health, and you get a full report.

You bastards have made me pick up the game I stopped playing last summer.

Prozac, if memory serves morale levels during a mission contribute to promotions. Try sprinkling the higher ranking officers around among the different bases so each team has a Commander, etc. I think that should bounce some ranks. That, and highering more soldiers and getting them greened in with a mission or two makes room for the dragons of the world to get heavier chevrons.

Also, completely forgot to mention smoke grenades. The are an excellent source of cover. Pop smoke by tossing one out about 3 squares from the end of the ramp before you even step off the Skyranger, really cuts down on the first row deaths. Drop one left and right of the ramp if yer really paranoid. Then, run for hard cover in groups with heads on a swivel.

Never thought of using the motion scanner before entering a UFO. So many lives... wasted.

Anyone got a few choice words on TFTD? I've never played before and have a hankerin'.

peterb wrote:

Oh, by the way: earlier in the thread someone said "You can't get the soldier's stats when you're in tactical mode." Not true! Just click on the bar graph showing their remaining action points and health, and you get a full report.

While it is true that you can view stats in tactical mode, I think he was referring to the equipment screen just after you land at the crash site just before you disembark from the vehicle(unless I missed another similar comment.)

Yonder, page 8 wrote:

Lastly I'd want to be able to easily see stats of any soldier during the loadout phase.

TFTD is a much more complete game in my opinion, UFO set the standard but the second time around the UI was much more polished, there were a couple more buttons that made things a bit easier. Also, underwater Alien figthing is ten times creepier all in all.
Apocalypse is great as well, I loved the art on that one, the crazy retro stetics, graphics are much better than the first two games, and the gameplay remains very much the same. I love it as much as the first ones, but from this one onwards, here be dragons.

IIRC the ranks of your troops are also capped depending on how many troops you have total. In my previous games I never had more than about 20 soldiers (because I never let them die) and as a result I never got a commander or colonel. The hard cap for soldiers is 250 I think.

TFTD is massively more difficult than the original. It also introduces annoying mechanics like weapons that only work underwater (and thus not on terror missions). And gigantic 2 and 3 map combat scenarios that take hours and only give you the loot from the last map. Since the number of items you take on the transport has not changed, this can cripple your troops for lack of ammo, get used to salvaging.

I beat it once on easy, but it still required constant save scumming and I wouldn't go back without installing the mod that makes gauss weapons have unlimited ammo.

peterb wrote:

Oh, by the way: earlier in the thread someone said "You can't get the soldier's stats when you're in tactical mode." Not true! Just click on the bar graph showing their remaining action points and health, and you get a full report.

True, but you can't get said stats when you're handing out equipment in the pre-mission inventory screen, so unless you label your soldiers carefully, you better hope you have photographic memory in terms of who gets what lest you waste TUs reorganizing your team's weapons after the fact.

Malor wrote:

Y'ever notice how, despite near-maniacal raving by Prozac, Quintin Stone never actually dies in one of his games?

I think this thing is rigged!

:)

I cannot confirm or deny these rumours... That is all.

Prozac wrote:
Malor wrote:

Y'ever notice how, despite near-maniacal raving by Prozac, Quintin Stone never actually dies in one of his games?

I think this thing is rigged!

:)

I cannot confirm or deny these rumours... That is all.

Prozac has a huuuuuuge crush on me. He sends me love poems and sh*t in private messages.

Someone mind explaining this one to me (again)? I only just built and staffed a new base in Europe and low and behold, I discover an alien base in the Sahara Desert. I send my army of rookies to attack it and I thought I had the advantage seeing how it was staffed by Floaters and Reapers. Well, long story short, only two of my peeps made it to the base's control room where I proceed to take out the enemy computers. Once they were gone, I hit the end turn button thinking I'd collect my just reward in spite of my losses. Then I clicked it again. And again. And again. Well, this didn't look good, so I grabbed the unconscious Floater Leader and made my way back to the extraction point, thinking I could at least salvage something out of this. I was wrong once again. Although I got credited for destroying the base, all my operatives were recorded killed and my Skyranger lost in spite of the fact my people were standing right where they should have been when I clicked the evac button. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

I think that usually means that you missed an alien somewhere?

Yeah Ratboy, you have to kill (or incapacitate) every alien. Also be aware that a stunned/unconscious Alien MAY regain consciousness, that's why they're usually best safely stuffed in your backpack

Bah, I was nearly finished with writing up my first mission after action report when I blue screened, the game is saved, but I was writing the report in Wordpad and it's all gone.

In other news I tested out making a video of the mission during the UFO breaching and it worked really well, I'll have to see how I can get it to you guys, it may finally be time to make a Youtube account.

Have any of you tried Xcomutil? It's almost worth the effort to setup just to get the better default base layout.

I don't remember there being an alien base retreat bug in XCom1, but it wasn't in TFTD.

Breaching is fun. In XCom, if you breach blaster bomb rounds diagonally, they tend to explode nicely inwards. For ships with 3 decks, send a round to breach the middle floor near command, then a second round in and up, wiping the 3rd floor command centre. Less or no PSI control in two blaster bomb rounds. You can slag a battleship in 70 blaster bomb rounds, but it takes a while.

In Apocalypse, you generally breach the UFO at the disruptor emplacements, most of which require a flying squad, using disruptor cannons or vortex mines.

TheWanderer wrote:

Never thought of using the motion scanner before entering a UFO. So many lives... wasted.

Just be forewarned that it's not magic. I stopped using them because the aliens don't always move.

It floors me that a game this old can make a 10 page thread.

*shrug* Its X-Com.

Am I still alive, Prozac?

InfluenceDevice wrote:

You can slag a battleship in 70 blaster bomb rounds, but it takes a while.

Who in their right mind would ever use 70 blaster bombs in one mission?

While I get the occasional itch to play UFO Defense and Apocalypse, my TFTD disc has remained untouched since the day I saw the credits roll the first time. I only finished it to say I did and get any bit of story I could out of it. The sad thing is, I spent months searching for the game at retail stores back in the 90's.

Now, Apocalypse, the only real issue I have with that game is there is one game stopping problem. If you miss a capturing certain UFO type that only appears for a short while, and do not get a chance to research it, you can't finish the game. I think that's what happened to me my first try with the game.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

Now, Apocalypse, the only real issue I have with that game is there is one game stopping problem. If you miss a capturing certain UFO type that only appears for a short while, and do not get a chance to research it, you can't finish the game. I think that's what happened to me my first try with the game.

That seems to be the case for the previous two as well, It happened to me with Apocalypse and TFTD. Still, well worth wasted hours

"Did I ever tell you about the time Keith and I got abducted by Aliens?" Ellis asked, "We were out cow tipping, you know, where you sneak up on a sleeping cow and push it over before it wakes up? We were on our third cow when we saw these weird lights in the sky--"
"Ellis, sweetie," Rochelle interrupted, "is now really the best time?"

The Sky Ranger settled roughly to the ground. It was crewed by Bill, Francis, Louis, Nick, Ellis, Rochelle, Coach, Mario, Zoey, and Kirby, and backed up by the Rocket Tank Mako. They were the tip of the spear against the alien threat, the elite fighting force of the two week old XCOM.

This was their first mission, the only UFO that had previously been detected was too fast for the interceptors to catch, so when the local police force called in this grounded UFO on the Spanish coast the Sky Ranger scrambled from GWJ to reach it before it lifted off. It was vital that the techs recover an intact alien space ship, but winning a victory was even more important. The governments and people of the XCOM member nations needed to know that the organization had what it took to face this threat, and the troops needed to know it as well. The fact that their first mission would take place at night was an unfortunate result of this urgency, but the elite of XCOM were trained to fight in every environment, at any time.

The Mako rolled down the ramp into the quiet night. It did not detect an enemy presence, but its low-light sensors were sadly lacking. Bill and Francis walked to the back of the craft and threw their flares out into the darkness, everything looked clear. The Mako rolled up towards the front of the Sky Ranger while Bill and Rancis jumped off the ramp, crouching beneath their ride. Louis and Nick followed them, throwing their own flares out in front of the craft and taking up defensive positions alongside their comrades.

The Ranger had put down right alongside a barn to the north. A bright ball of plasma shot out of the barn and burned into the side of the Mako. The small grey alien that fired it hid back behind the brick wall of the barn. The tank operator fired his rocket at the bale of hay by the entrance, knowing that the blast would engulf the sectoid. Unfortunately he was off the mark, hitting the wall instead. The bricks vanished in the explosion and the structure shuddered, but remained standing. The sectoid, sheltered from the blast, could be seen standing within the haze. Louis fired a burst towards the alien, but the shots went wild. Blinking dust and smoke from his eyes he fired another burst, this time cutting the alien down.

The edge of the spacecraft could be seen to the south, the team split into two groups to pincer the craft from the west and east. The Mako took point to the West; the soldiers followed behind, slowly leapfrogging each other to crouch behind one spot of cover to another.

Another bolt of plasma shot out of the darkness, once again scorching the Mako, which was unlikely to survive another blast. An electro flare thrown from the rear did not expose the threat, so the Mako fired blindly into the darkness. There was no sign that the rocket had hit its mark, but the blast and smoke must have confused the alien, as there was no return fire.

Louis, holding up the rear guard, ran to the flare he had thrown earlier. Scooping it from the ground he let it fly with a long pass, it flew over his comrades, the Mako, and into the next field. The flare revealed another foe, rapidly blinking to adjust to the bright light. The Mako swiveled its gun to cover the creature, but did not fire. Orders were to let the soldiers take the kill if convenient, to give them more combat experience.
“I hate aliens,” Francis growled, firing a burst that struck the alien between its large eyes.
“Nice shot,” Louis complimented.

The Eastern front progressed more slowly. Rochelle struggled under the weight of her rocket launcher, and Ellis could barely carry the Autocannon. As they approached the ship an alien came into sight. He fired at Rochelle, who saw the shot travel in slow motion as it flew straight for her chest. The splintery explosion that followed removed all traces of the fence that Rochelle had been hiding behind. She gulped, silently thanking her instructors for conditioning her to always take any available cover.

Mario fired a retaliatory shot at the alien, though it hit the ground short of the beast the alien skittered back behind the ship.
“I can still see it,” Ellis said, “he’s right around the corner.”
Rochelle nodded and fired her rocket into the ground just past the UFO, she was rewarded by a shriek of pain from the dying alien.

The team regrouped at the entrance to the UFO without further trouble. Ellis and Rochelle dropped their heavier weapons to draw pistols. The troops were forbidden to use explosives within the ship unless absolutely necessary, the techs needed the ship intact.

They burst into the ship to find a large, empty room. There was a doorway at either end of the far wall, the team gathered at each door to prepare for simultaneous reentry. The team on the left burst once more into an empty room, this one much smaller than the last. Kirby, however, had different luck, he had no sooner opened his door than a ball of plasma sizzled past his nose. Hearing the fire Louis kicked down the second door ran into the room as well. There was a single alien in the room and Louis snapped a shot at his back, missing. Kirby took a step forward to clear the doorway, stepping right into the alien’s next shot. Luckily it was only a glancing blow, Kirby dropped to his knees and dropped the alien with a burst from his rifle.

The three rooms they had covered wrapped around a fourth room in the center of the ship, an alien came out of that room now, downing Louis with a solid hit to the torso.
“Oh no,” Zoey moaned, “not Louis!”

Ellis and Mario moved into the control room to join Kirby. Ellis threw his smoke grenade at the entrance of the fourth room, hoping to give them time to reorganize. The alien returned, shooting this time at Kirby with a near miss. Kirby returned fire, hitting the alien, but not killing him. The next plasma bolt hit its mark, but Kirby was miraculously still alive. In his surprise, however, his return fire missed the alien, nearly striking Ellis instead. When the third bolt hit him Kirby finally slumped to the floor.

Mario rounded the corner to take down the threat. He was behind two aliens in the smoky control room; he dropped to his knees and fired a burst to no effect. His second burst of fire struck and killed both aliens.

There were no more aliens to be found in the smoky ship and its surroundings, XCOM had won the first victory for humanity, but at a high cost.

TheWanderer wrote:

That, and highering more soldiers and getting them greened in with a mission or two makes room for the dragons of the world to get heavier chevrons.

Oh no, man. I'm just smack talking. Trying to add some flavour to the unfolding saga. Be the discontent soldier that's always passed for promition that makes a still at the back of the barracks out of a faulty flying suit.

Prozac wrote:

Yeah Ratboy, you have to kill (or incapacitate) every alien. Also be aware that a stunned/unconscious Alien MAY regain consciousness, that's why they're usually best safely stuffed in your backpack :D

Actually, to the first, according to the UFOpaedia:

Destroying the contents of the room on the second floor of the Command Center renders the base destroyed for all intents of a base assault. Specifically, you must destroy all 16 sections of the 4 purple octagonal tables (normally these are UFO Navigations). A single Blaster Bomb to the upper level will usually set off a chain reaction: if you hear 16 explosions in a row, you're all set. If you abort the mission after destroying the Command Center, the mission will end and the base will be destroyed. Be sure to move all your troops onto the green tiles in the "exit areas" on the upper level. Any troops not on a green tile (including those on the red lift tiles in the exit rooms) will be counted as MIA.

I guess my two people were on the red tiles not the green ones. As for your second, even in the backpack they're not secure. As I was trying to make my way out, the guy dragging the Floater Leader turned and suddenly out of nowhere saw another Floater. I used the stun rod and tried to stuff him into the backpack only to a.) see the backpack was now empty and b.) see that the Floater I had stunned was indeed the Floater Leader, who must have woken up and crawled out.

Tamren wrote:

TFTD is massively more difficult than the original. It also introduces annoying mechanics like weapons that only work underwater (and thus not on terror missions). And gigantic 2 and 3 map combat scenarios that take hours and only give you the loot from the last map. Since the number of items you take on the transport has not changed, this can cripple your troops for lack of ammo, get used to salvaging.

The underwater-only weapon limitation didn't bother me as much because the weapons affected by it are all heavy ordinance weapons that wouldn't necessarily be your first choice for a terror mission (where the combat is above water) anyway. That being said, the rest of the commentary about the absurd length of the alien artifact and/or shipping route missions is completely spot on.

The UFO vs. TFTD decision is a hard one for me: I recognize that UFO Defense is the superior overall game, with much better balance and far fewer quirks in difficulty and management, but I always find myself revisiting TFTD whenever I get the X-Com "itch." Part of that is completely due to nostalgia; as I said earlier, I played TFTD first and made my way to UFO Defense later on, after I had already fallen in love with the core gameplay. Part of it, though, comes from the advances that were made; I do think the more Lovecraftian alien design in TFTD (e.g. Tentaculat, Deep One, Bio-Drone) is a bit more fearsome and -- even though it sounds completely minor -- the ability to open a door without going through it is huge from a tactical standpoint.

OzymandiasAV wrote:

the ability to open a door without going through it is huge from a tactical standpoint.

I was wondering about that! I started playing UFO Defense against last night and couldn't figure out why this didn't work. I guess that explains it.

lethial wrote:

Speaking of X-com games, why do people seem to dislike X-com: Apocalypse so much? Granted the scope is smaller, but I thought it was a improvement over the previous games in quite a few ways. (Best thing about it is that, if you are losing, a tactical battle, you have the option to just level the whole building and take the aliens down with you. )

I love Apocalypse as much as the first X-Com. I think the main complaint is that, if you play the missions in turn-based mode, they can take hours. But the pausable real-time combat in Apocalypse is so good. I've never seen a game with real-time tactical combat done as well as in Apocalypse, nor a game with better destructible environments (equip your squaddies with a disruptor gun in each hand, set them to autofire, and watch what happens).

Stumble blindly across site, see X-Com thread, read entire thing, join site, make pointless post, start a new game of X-Com. Yeah, that's my day so far.

30+ years of gaming (ever since I saw that Space Invaders game rolled into the pizza place next to my mom's office and I watched them plug it in, was hooked then), and X-Com is IMO still the best game ever made. Awesome.

For some reason I never played TFTD. i don't know why. I own it, since it was part of the pack i bought to get XCOM Gold, but I didn't ever spend more than a few hours in it.

I spent more time with Apocalypse, but it had a hard time running on the machine that I owned at the time. I had a lot of CTDs and eventually gave up. I'm very surprised that there's folks who like Apoc better than UFO.

How the heck am I going to clear my pile when you bastards keep throwing old stuff back on it!?

So I picked up the X-Com pack at Direct2Drive because their version is DRM free. Breaching doors is every bit as frustrating as I remember it. First UFO door I tried to enter - 5 dead soldiers. Of course I did things over again and managed to complete the first mission with only two deaths! I'm ready for a Wiiware version with "easy mode" attached.