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hi eagle,

i finally passed the alien maintenance building mission (apparently, i have to destroy all rounded shape column, and i found 4 'missing' collumn near teleporter).

[Rjak]

quick tip for those face suckers... *those what takes your char under controll*

If you go prone, they cant jump to your head.

Sorry if this was old tip.

[Eagle of Fire]

Those brain suckers are the reason why you should always carry a grenade on you. I myself always team my squaddies in pair in minimum for the same reason, so if someone get attacked from behind and he have one of those aliens on the head his teamate can shoot it for him.

If this fail or he can't do it for any reason, just take a grenade from the guy who is being brain sucked, prime it to 0 second and drop it. Your squaddie might be slightly bruised (having a full hp armor help not to) but the Brain Sucker will die from the explosion.

Note that the human weapon which fire really fast can kill one of those Suckers in one shot, and it is a very good reason to have some of those guns equipped in the early game. And it also train your rookies aim a lot in the process...

What I usually do is give those kind of usi to the rookies with poor aim, those with average aim I give them the big guns and those with incredible aim I give them the sniper gun. Then as they get better I simply drop the usi guns, since they tend to become obselete quite fast anyways. Fortunatly, since they train accuracy so much I still use them sometime, until the Aliens bring some personnal force fields to protect themselves. Then they really become useless, and you should have very highly trained squaddies by then who should be able to kill a fly at 50 metters easily anyways.

[Eagle of Fire]

Perhaps, but I never tryied it since it requires insane amount of money to make other organisations to get allied with you and that it's also extremely easy to lose that alied status. Just hitting a building owned by them might be enough to reconsider their stance, and you still lose the money you paid.

You certainly don't want to have organisations at war with you tough, especially Transtellar. Unless of course you like being attacked at your bases by those organisation and don't mind the extra challenge of needing to down all the organisation guards as well as the Aliens when you need to enter their buildings... :whistle:

As for Transtellar, if you get a war with them they refuse to allow you to use their transports or commuting system, effectively preventing you from getting new scientists, receiving new material and transfering material from base to base... Not something interesting to experience. :not_ok:

[ultranewbie]

heheh... I LOVE invading those temples... :manic grin: MONEY!

It's strange though.. I can kill hundreds of those green guys and their religion seems to keep having new converts...

Plus, it doesn't matter how poor they get - they still have enough money to buy those drugs.

And, your approval rating doen't really go down.

BUT as soon as you blow their temple up, you get told off for causing damage to the city. Humph.

OK... erm...

Can a road vehicle go off-road, like to a crash or something? I couldn't get it to, so I got mad and sold all the road vehicles.

Are security stations invulnerable? The aliens & co. shoot their little bombs at it, but it just keeps ripping them into tiny pieces.

Why do the interceptors suck in this game? In EU, a few interceptors could take down a battleship even with Stingers or whatever those wimpy missles were called, or one could do it with a plasma beam. But in this game, an interceptor would use all my money and just get blown up! I only use them for transport now.

[Eagle of Fire]

Originally posted by CMI Posted on Feb 1 2005@ 05:27 AM
Can a road vehicle go off-road, like to a crash or something? I couldn't get it to, so I got mad and sold all the road vehicles.

The answer is no, and I would say it was a good move to take the extra cash from the vehicles. I would suggest you not to sell the APC tough just in case your Skyranger get shooted down. It's still faster this way than to make your soldiers "walk" to the building.

Originally posted by CMI Posted on Feb 1 2005+ 05:27 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (CMI Posted on Feb 1 2005 @ 05:27 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Are security stations invulnerable? The aliens & co. shoot their little bombs at it, but it just keeps ripping them into tiny pieces.[/b]

Really depend of the Aliens weaponry VS your kind of security station. I've seen the default (first model available) version of the security station get destroyed so bad it actually destroyed the room and I had to rebuild it, so my answer to this question would be: they are not invulnerable.

<!--QuoteBegin-CMI Posted on Feb 1 2005@ 05:27 AM
Why do the interceptors suck in this game? In EU, a few interceptors could take down a battleship even with Stingers or whatever those wimpy missles were called, or one could do it with a plasma beam. But in this game, an interceptor would use all my money and just get blown up! I only use them for transport now. [/quote]
Because they are not interceptors. First of all, your Skyranger should not even engage the UFO's unless you want a deadly disaster to happen to your soldiers. Most of the time in my game that ship don't even lift off before the UFO's are retreating.

Second, you are fighting over a city, not a hundred miles over the sea or the ground. Supersonic planes would not be welcome and allow me to remind you that you been hired by the Government of that city to get rid of the Aliens, so it does make sense that you don't use them. What you can use is armored version of civil fying cars and ships which can (in theory but not in this game) fly as well in space than in the sky, so it makes sense that they are also slower than supersonic planes.

Even tough, your ships easily outmaneuver the medium to large UFO's and the Speeder Bike can easily outmaneuver the small ones. Since you can't count on either stealth, power or endurance (like in UFO), you'll have to gamble on speed and agility to survive in this kind of duel. All the ships comes with an engine which can be "upgraded", depending of the available engine space. As a rule of thumb, all engines can be "upgraded" at least "once", meaning that for example the Speeder Bikes can get a turbo engine which is slightly bigger than the original, but still fit in the little engine square. I would advise you to get better engine for all your crafts (I always do myself).

Here is a quote of an earlier post of mine in this thread which could be usefull for you:

Originally posted by Eagle of Fire Posted: Dec 11 2004@ 10:37 AM
The smaller and lesser UFO's are unmanned and won't require a fight. You'll just recover them. I usually only capture one of each of the smaller UFO's and then don't bother and make them explode in the air when I encounter them.

From past experiences, I am pretty sure that it does make a difference when you actually destroy Alien Ufo's. It doesn't take them much time to build new ones (perhaps a month max for the bigger ones?) but it does seem to buy youself some time and change the way the AI act. If you are very successful at the beginning, you will encounter a lot of bigger and bigger Ufo's until your current technology can't fight them without stupidly high losses. But then again, when you grab their own technology it really give you a boost!

The best strategy I have found so far to fight those Alien crafts is to take something like 5 Hover Bikes and set them to fight at the highest elevation possible and as close as possible to the target. You can change the stance of each craft when you select them on the CityScape. The Hover Bikes are stupidly hard to hit for the Aliens because they are so small and so maneuverable, and most of the time the Hover Bike will simply dodge the beams which would have teared your biggest ships appart without a problem. This allow your bigger ships (like the Phoenix Hover Car for example, which is cheap but virtually armorless) to stay further the front line and throw missiles from a further distance. Most of the time they won't even come under fire unless you are really fighting lots of UFO's at once. Also make sure that your Troop Transport is far from the action and safe. It's easy to lose it to bad luck if several Alien Crafts decide to fire at it at the same time.

Usually, I always make crafts which are 50% to retreat and repair. Crafts cost a lot in this game and losing them only to down a Ufo is not worth it. You can still use a craft being repaired on an emergency mission later on, and if Air Superiority fail then send your squaddie and eliminate the Alien threat from the ground.

The strategy mentionned above (with Hover Bikes) works quite well against Metropolis crafts as well, but is less effective due to them almost always having aiming missiles equiped and due to the fact that they are more maneuverable than most UFO's. They also really pack less of a punch, so unless you are unlucky retreating at 50% health will usually save your crafts anyways.

Don't overlook the Hover Bikes power. Their seemingly powerless guns really add up when they team up. Have 10 of them and you'll see them tear into a bigger UFO shield in no time. Plus they are really hard to hit and are cheap to replace.

Random tip #2: Always upgrade the biggest engine available to each of your craft. If you buy a bunch of crafts at the same time (or at the beginning of the game), you can actually take the engine of one craft and put it in another knowing it's the most powerfull one they can bear (because of the size of the engine square). For example, if I remember well the Phoenix Hovercar engine is the biggest engine a Hover Bike can be equipped with, so don't sell those and use them on the Hover Bikes you'll purchase. I think the same thing happen to your troop transport VS your Phoenix Hovercar but I don't remember well. Anyways, reason for this is that you want power and speed, and since you will be placing aiming equipment on those crafts and that it add weight and lower your engine power and acceleration (slightly), you have no choice if you don't want to suck the UFO's exhaust vapor trail. It also greatly help in combat. Maneuvrability is really your friend until you build your own crafts later in the game since your craft armor is very weak against the Aliens weapons.

Random tip #3: always make your crafts to fly and fight at the highest altitude unless you have a really good reason to do otherwise. Until you actually fight with beam weapons yourself, the aliens have the bigger guns... And a stray fire from those babies if it hit the base of a random building will usually result in having the building flattened completely. This will irritate the leaders of that faction to no end, taking their strance VS Xcom down each time. Plus the Government (which fund you) always get angry when anything on the city is destroyed and this goes against your weekly score. If you fly high the UFO usually fire at your upward, and you can save friendly fire on the town this way.

Of course, some members of the "Cult of Cyric" sometime accuse Xcom to fly around their buildings in purpose when fighting bigger Alien Crafts... Which always been soundly refuted by the Xcom Leaders. That's what war is about, you will have friendly fire sooner or later... ... ... Ahem...** :whistle:


Happy hunting!

Well, after three earlier failed attempts to capture a personal shield bearing alien alive I decided to go for broke and assembled a special strike team to assault a ufo and either succeed or perish to a man/woman.
It was going quite well and I decided to move in close after taking out the poppers. Then I noticed a green missile cruising towards me :help:
Ironically, this was the time I met my first entropy missile. I succeeded in the end, but I lost three brave soldiers (including armor) to those damn missiles - tactic suggestions anyone ?

For those of you who wonder why I slugged it out close and personal with heavily armored and shielded aliens, you must stun one of the aliens with a personal shield otherwise you will never get it and you're basically doomed. Personal shields are also the only thing that protect against entropy missiles as far as I know. And the silly sods refused to come out of the ufo so I had to go in and get them

On a side note, contrary to earlier posts I advise your vehicles to fly low instead of high when intercepting ufos. When firing at ufos they generally aim high and when they miss your laser/plasma whatever beam stands a much lower chance of accidentally blowing a building to bits. It generally saves me around $40000,- on bribes to transstellar after each battle k: Even better, the aliens will be firing downward, ensuring lots of damage to the city which is good for your public relations :evil:

A final tip, when engaging ufos, always use a pair of hoverbikes to lead the attack. The ufos will tend to engage them and they are extremely hard to hit. While the ufos are levelling the city shooting at and missing your bikes (which is good for your public relations) your heavily armed hovercars can move in and blast away at them at their leisure.

Cheers,
Lodewijk

p.s Question : if I overclock my dosbox (say 20000 cycles), will this make the game run slower than if I run it at a lower rate ?

[Eagle of Fire]

Entropy missiles are overated. As soon as you will equip your squaddies with personnal shield you will never fear those again. When they hit a shield they don't do progressive damage, only hit once and bring the shield to about 2/3 or so. Also entropy missiles are guided to their target and it's extremely easy to lure a missile in a wall, an object or even sometime another Alien.

For the shields, you can actually carry more than one shield at a time. I don't remember well but I think that only one work at a time. If it fails then it get destroyed so I remember dropping the shields to the ground when they were about to die. By doing so only a grenade or something with enough explosive power could destroy the shield when it's on the ground and if you win the mission the shield will return as loot just like any other equipment at the end of the mission. Plus shields regenerate over time so if you find yourself low on shield just return back where you left it and you should have it back on full strenght. Either that or keep rotating soldiers with low shield to the back row so they can regenerate and keep those with still strong shield to the front so they soak up the damage.

Shields are also overated. They are not that hard to overcome and you can easily kill Aliens without damaging the shield with bio-toxins guns. I hardly ever need to make some myself once I get those guns. Usually I always have many in reserve.

If you want a destroyed city it's up to you but I myself hate to see highways destroyed and waiting forever for them to be rebuilt and to be able to get those new recruits to my bases... I never really noticed if the UFO destroying the city bring organizations to your side but I do know that it goes against your weekly score so I always tryied to have the city damaged to a minimum. This include as well my crafts than the UFO's. It really depend on your style since I usually don't kill UFO's unless it's needed or easily downed. By the end of the game it's something else though and your strategy should change accordingly.

Answer: if you overcycle your DOSBox then it will begin to go slower after reaching your CPU max power peak. You might experience sound sluttering too if you do so.

[Mr. Barman]

Originally posted by Guest@Feb 10 2005, 12:33 AM
And the silly sods refused to come out of the ufo so I had to go in and get them*

you dont always have to go into the UFO to get the last of the aliens. what i do is sit outside each entrance to the UFO with my men and wait for them to come out. i wait till the flow of aliens charging out has stopped and then i send in 4 soldiers into to clear out the last few aliens.


by the way, how do you guys set up your squad at the very start of the game when you've got no alien technology at all? Personally, i get 11 humans and one sectoid/human. 4 of them get the Marsec Flying Suit Armour with the Laser Sniper Rifles, 4 get 2 machine guns each, 2 get dual mega-whatsit pistols, and the last 4 get auto cannons with 2 extra clips of AP, HE, and IE rounds.

and is it just me or is the mouse sensitivity in x-com crazy low?