Xcom, very late to the party

[Unimatrix11]

The door of the UFOs is always visible IIRC - so it´s either on the south-side or the east-side. It is always closed at the beginning of a turn (it auto-closes at the beginning of each) and to walk through it, position a soldier in front of it and then simply try to walk to the other side of it - it will open automatically. It is a little hard to see at first, but once you have seen one, you will know what to look for. It can also be seen on the map: Where it is, the otherwise solid wall of the UFO is perforated - one pixel missing on each side of the door. I suggest you do a complete walk around the UFO - there really is no trick to it - you will see it. EDIT: Dont look for a hinge, AC.

This whole thing gives me another idea: UFO-online. The player community trying to avert the alien threat in one massive global online game. Forming teams throughout the timezones, each commanding a base, helping each other out with ressources and such - it could become the biggest purely co-op game ever (and a test run for things to come ).

[Alinestra Covelia]

The Terror missions are so hard it's not worth bothering with. Each failed attempt easily eats up an hour of my life.

Sorry, Nairobi and Kinshasa.

[Garth Vader]

You'll lose a lot of funding.

[Lord Avalon]

I dug up my X-Com notebook. My naming convention used letters (except for capital I and lowercase l, which look the same, and capital O which looks like zero) for stats, where most letters represented two values - three at the upper and lower ends, but the most important stats I kept as numbers: Time Units, Bravery, Reactions and Firing Accuracy.

So Grigoriy who had Time Units 53, Stamina 57, Health 36, Bravery 30, Reactions 51, Firing Accuracy 62, Throwing Accuracy 59, and Strength 23 became Grigr53iC3.5162.ia Rk

Marginal Bravery, but it's early in the game, and his Reactions are good, so that's why he's still around.

I can see at a glance the relative value of soldiers. I kept a chart for equipment.

Hmmm, "a" actually represents 4 values, 20-23. I hate "a"

[El_Cid]

Yeah doors into ufo's will always be on a facing of the hull you can see(you can also make your own doors when you get blaster bomb alien tech - just stand well back!) - the big ufo's use a kind of lift mechinism, but the door entrance in the hull is always the same, somewhere on the south west/south east facing.

Lord Avalon for one of the most complex naming conventions! I just don't understand it!!

Terror missions(infact all missions) are always nearly impossibly tough in the early game if you play on any setting other than begginer(there was a bug in the unpatched game that meant all levels played as begginer - this was fixed in the patch(1.4 was the latest i think)).

Yesterday I started a new game(on my old rig - cool music, proper speed ) and chose experienced, as i am i think. 2nd mission, a landed ufo nice and easy, no shooting down to do. end result = total death of my squad(8 guys).
I was just up against greys, but very quickly two of my best shots were killed. then it was just an awful progression of desperate battle where my shots seemed to miss far too often and the aliens just picked me off with double shoots of green plasma.

It ended with just 3 of my guys in the ufo, 2 flipping in and out of madness/insanity(so i couldn't controll them). The final door opend into the heart of the ufo and 3 beady eyed greys greeted my stun rod guy.

1 grey was freaked out also and had dropped his weapon(i had lobbed a grenade at him(which he survived!) in the outer hall way), but had stood right inside the door, the other two were fine and packing 1 plasma rifle and a heavy plasma.

Stun guy stunned - freaked out grey fell. Plasma killed stun guy. My other two crew did stupid things(going crazy etc) and both plasma grey and heavy plasma took them down. Game over.

So i'm going to start over again today and will try harder! a wonderful game - so tense! so soul destroying when it all goes pete tong! so rewarding when you make progress

[Unimatrix11]

Lord Avalon, you sir, are a geek! I dont get it either, btw. I think i got the rough idea, but still wouldnt be able to duplicate it - if i wanted to, that is .

Thanks for the AAR, El_Cid - very entertaining . The way things went, maybe refusing to be controled by you wasnt so insane, after all, uh? Had they only had the mental presence to run away, also....

[Alinestra Covelia]

Yeah, one thing I don't like is when your transport craft lands at a site, you have the option of equipping your men - but there is no way of toggling the stats interface to find out what they're actually good at. In the current terror attack, I'm just giving the heaviest weapons to the most experienced troops in the hopes that they'll survive a bit longer.

For terror attack equipment, I'm packing three rocket launchers, three heavy cannons with high explosives (although it's not clear how to unload the standard ammo and reload the HE ammo - right now I'm just shooting off the standard ammo and loading in HE). The three most experienced team members are carrying medi packs and motion scanners. I've put about 12 people in the squad, and some of them are using the largely-obsolete pistols and rifles, but most others are using laser pistols.

I've already lost the most experienced member of my crew, but I'm hoping to get her back using the medi pack.

[Father Beast]

Yesterday I started a new game(on my old rig - cool music, proper speed ) and chose experienced, as i am i think. 2nd mission, a landed ufo nice and easy, no shooting down to do. end result = total death of my squad(8 guys).

.....

So i'm going to start over again today and will try harder! a wonderful game - so tense! so soul destroying when it all goes pete tong! so rewarding when you make progress

That has happened to me so many times, except I play on beginner. I actually do better when I shoot them down, as if it's wimpy enough that I can shoot it down, then I have a chance on the ground. I think maybe they get a bit damaged and demoralized in the crash, too. No idea if that's actually true.

AC, I wish I could just pass up those terror missions, but I will lose funding. Then again, I lose funding just as bad when I fail a terror mission as when I just don't go, so it's a lose-lose situation. Maybe we need a way to gauge the difficulty so I know which ones to go to.

[Main_Brain]

You cant go in with Rocket Launchers and AutoCannons. Think of the Children!

[Unimatrix11]

Well, or be ready to face some tough decisions...

[Lord Avalon]

Lord Avalon for one of the most complex naming conventions! I just don't understand it!!

I forgot to say I put rank at the end, so Rk = Rookie.

I left 4-5 spaces for name, because I didn't want to go completely barcode, but adding rank, there's not enough room for all numbers, therefore I used letters, low to high, aA to zZ, leaving out the ones I mentioned.

You cant go in with Rocket Launchers and AutoCannons. Think of the Children!

Maybe she is - better dead than ... um ... er, gray?

Also she said heavy cannon. I rarely use those. I might if there's a really early mission before autocannons arrive, but otherwise they're reserve weapons, which eventually get sold off. While highly accurate, they're very heavy and only single shot (low ammo, too, IIRC). I don't always use autofire, but prefer to have the option. If an alien should pop up at point blank range (but fortunately at the end of its move, so your soldier is still alive), you might want to have autofire to get an extra hit in, just to be sure. (I hate it when you shoot aliens, and they don't die or get incapacitated. ) Or if you're entering a ship, and there's a target-rich environment.

[El_Cid]

You cant go in with Rocket Launchers and AutoCannons. Think of the Children!

Well definately the citizens you are meant to protect - each one dead counts against your score(so effects how well the mission turns out in terms of funding down the line.).

I did raise an eyebrow when i saw her mega death dealing kit out - but can understand it, terror missions are very tough.

ok so here is a very typical opening section of the game for me, until i've got this admin done i'm not happy to start the game:

1. setup base - Xcom1 in alps(or maybe usa).
2. go to equip craft screen, pick skyranger and remove pistols+ammo clips.
3. pick interceptor-2 and replace cannon with avalanche missile, this becomes my heavy attack craft.
4. exit to base menu screen and view 'soldiers'. change names.
5. build large radar, laboratory, aliencontainment, living quarters,general stores
6. sell: 2xinterceptor 'cannon', pistols+ammo, 1xheavy cannon, rocket launcher+ammo.
7. buy: 2xsoldier, 20xscientist, 5xavalanche missiles, 5xHC-HE ammo, 1xHC-I ammo, 5xAC-HE ammo, 1xAC-I ammo, 10xgrenades, 3xsmoke grenades, 10xproximity grenades, 3xstun rods, 10x electro-flares.
8. Save Game.

New game started by me after my last disaster. Experienced mode again, and so far i've completed my fourth crash site without total wipe out on a mission.

I have noticed one thing, on Beginner you lose on average maybe 1-2 guys per mission, sometimes none.
On Experienced i seem to lose 2-4 on average, and always atleast one. Even so i'm surprised, and pleased, that i'm developing a couple of decent troops(1xCaptain, 2xSergants). Ok most are in hospital currently, but now i have a tank rocket launcher to act as armoured scout and heavy fire power.

things are looking up.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Well, I made it through the terror mission. I shot my way through walls and blew up entire buildings to nail every last one of them. The lesson I learned was this: FAR better to save your own crew than to minimize civilian casualties.

At the start, when your crew is really wimpy and a single hit will usually take them out, it's far more important to kill the enemy before they can get a shot at you. This means rockets and other one-shot weapons. On two occasions, there were Greys hanging around corners. Rather than try to pop round and maybe take an auto-shot to the chest, my squad members just fired rockets into the corner, demolishing the walls and neutralizing the enemy.

Also, I've noticed that Rockets are the best weapon to use for the non-Grey enemies (you know the ones I mean).

The Auto-Cannon slows down my crew member to an agonizing crawl. The Heavy Cannon does not, so even though it's got a much lower firing rate, I give it to my high-accuracy people to use. Usually one shot from that is enough to destroy a Grey.

Medi-Kit is useless at this stage. One shot will kill a team member, and so the healing never comes in useful. Yet.

First month in, every single country approved of the job we were doing and gave us a hefty bonus. I used it to found a base in Cuba, with one interceptor and one dropship, and a long range radar. The intent is to try to cover both USA and Brazil. The main problem will be manpower - I don't have enough people to fully populate the dropship, which is a problem. In my experience, you do really need the full complement of 14 soldiers per dropship to even stand a chance in the Terror missions.

There also appears to be no point to putting down extra Manufacturing and Research in the second base. You may as well centralize that sort of R&D work.

[Garth Vader]

Eventually you will want enough manufacturing and research capacity that you don't have enough room in your primary base.

[Unimatrix11]

Only experiences from games in progress, please, Garth Vader.