Argh, the terrain! The map layouts! It's so unnecessarily difficult to find anyone on those maps, there are tunnels (very often blocked by civilians), even the smallest maps have several levels, thousands of objects to hide in, under or behind. And those ships! graaaaaah!

That being said: I like every minute of it

Has anyone found a good way to deal with path-blocking civilians when you do NOT have a tazer? I tried to mindcontrol one and it worked, but in the next round the civilian was shown as an enemy. I had to shot him then.

You've got the ability to mind control already?!

You don't lose points for shooting "alien" civilians. I don't think you gain them either though, so it's up to you.

When you've learnt the spawn points where all the large units get stuck on the shipping missions... You know you've played too much TFTD.

Be warned: Trapped Xarquids use reaction fire to devastating effect. Don't forget your grenade equivalents.

Also, remember that TFTD is very glitchy when it comes to the research tree. Having your scientists work on the wrong thing at the wrong time can result in your becoming entirely stuck. I won't link you to one of the numerous essays about it due to spoilers, but Blade has already written a tool to fix your game should you take the wrong path (Not sure if that's integrated into XcomUtil yet. Are you using that this time?).

There's a trick when it comes to throwing grenades on the hilly sea bed terrain. If for some reason the game's stopping you from throwing to a perfectly legal location, move up by one level.

The terrain and line of sight glitches in this game are horrendous and there are a lot of glitch-prone areas that you might want to keep an eye out for. It's sad that they are present, but they can be worked around.

Get to know and love the Gas Cannon. You might not use it much later on, but it's still unique enough to stay useful in small quantities. I'm thinking in particular of the corrugated iron towers on port terror missions. If you accidentally destroyed the stairs and there's an alien in the tank that refuses to leave, a gas cannon with HE shells will let you get at it. Not to mention the fact that it's the only weapon that you can reliably deploy phosphor rounds with when out of the water.

- NKF

Yes, i'm using XcomUtil and the 2.1 patch, but as it seems the difficuty bug is not corrected. I'm literally flying through the missions and researches. This is WAY too easy for my taste even on superhuman. BombBloke, yes oddly the Mind controller was one of my first(!) researches, i think Xcomutil actually broke something in TFTD, i do have 3 bases only but have already researched the "12 bases" task!!!

Thanks for the tips, NKF, atm i'm using Heavy Gauss cannons mostly, though. As i said: TFTD on superhuman feels like Xcom (with Xcomutil) on Beginner level. I think i will have this game finished VERY fast...

Uhhh... WHAT? Something's wrong. TFTD should be horribly evil compared to UFO.

Maybe he just hasn't run into the Lobstermen yet. Or perhaps XcomUtil messes with the weapons to make them actually hurt things, I dunno... The Heavy Guass was useless, in my experiance. That said, having the ability to mind control early in the game would be bound to take the challenge out of it.

That "12 bases" thingy means you need to hunt down 12 special alien sites and trash them before the aliens can activate them. You'll be notified whenever the aliens reach one, but otherwise you've no means of detecting them. I don't think it has anything to do with how many bases you have (I would usually only build two over the course of an entire campaign anyway), and success/failure at each site probably only affects your score.

The plain vanilla Heavy Guass was no better than a cheaper quality mass-production variant of the sonic pistol. The sonic pistol by the way is a very fine weapon indeed!

The 12-base thingy is just a piece of the narrative. You'll be able to experience more than just the 12. It's just there to create a false sense of urgency.

As for getting MC early, you can get the lab's really early through a live Deep One or Calcinite terrorist. If you were focusing on the ion armor, you'll get the labs pretty early on. After that, you need the reader and a tasoth to get the disrupter. It's the appearance of the Tasoth that generally hold up the availability of MC Disrupters. Of course, this just means waiting for the very first colony to appear.

- NKF

Hm, just a thought, It could be possible that i myself broke the game when i used a soldier-editor to recreate my Xcom 1 troop in TFTD. Maybe i messed up the savegame?

NKF, i'm using the improved weapons option of Xcomutil, the Gauss works like the improved Laser weapons in Xcom now. And no Lobsterman yet.

So you haven't attacked any alien bases yet. How much of a boost your old squad gives you depends on their psi powers, I suppose. Not having to train a fresh squad would make things a lot easier.

PSI isn't as useful as in Xcom, though. The inventory of the enemy units can't be accessed and you can't disarm certain units. The thing in my game that is incredibly easy is the research, though. It seems i do have only Einstein-clones as scientists

And no, no base yet. 3 terror missions so far (2 land, 1 ship) and ~6 or 7 sub missions.

You still retain psi's most valuable ability. Control of the unit. It's probably not much, but just you wait till you get lobstermen. If you haven't met them, imagine them as this game's equivalent of Mutons, combine a built in melee attack (only the Ai can access this) and toss in a few damage multipliers that give them insane protection that shaves off 50% of the more common damage types. Tough customers though these are, get a few of these under your control and you'll have utter tanks that you can throw back at them to soak up all the damage.

- NKF

I always seem to have trouble on Island missions with the "G" shaped maze underneath one of the hills. A civilian blocks the entrance and doesn't allow my men to enter. I usually end up blasting the civilian, entering the maze and using a slug of sonic pulsers to make sure there isn't an alien in that cubby hole at the end. (BTW, is there a weapon strong enough to punch through from above so that my men can just shoot at the alien instead of tossing sonic pulsers? Perhaps the Sonic Cannon can tunnel)? Anyhow, one time I searched an entire Island map and found the last alien in that underground room. The Aquatoid kept blasting my men as they tried to enter the room and I resorted to the sonic pulsers to finish it off (in addition to a particle disturbance grenade closer to my men as a early warning system). Still, it wasn't a happy scenario. Getting a look at that room from above would be a real help. Ah well.

- Zombie

Hmm. Perhaps a thermal taser would just knock the civilian unconscious? Never used it on civilians myself. From there on, it's pulser all the way. But yes, I think the Sonic Cannon would easily punch a hole through the terrain, however, the alien would almost certainly have full TUs at that point, so there's a high risk of reaction fire. So firing from a distance would be safer.

Gah, I remember that tunnel, and it's been so long since I last played TFTD it's not funny...

I seem to have a vague memory that aliens like to look towards nearby troopers. If that's the case, sticking a "decoy" above the tunnel could force them to face away from the forces you're about to send below.

I've also observed TFTD aliens try to sneak around structures in order to attack me from behind, so perhaps sticking a unit directly above the alien would cause it to nip around the corner (into the line of your waiting reaction fire)?

That G shaped tunnel brings back nightmares too. It's terrible when not only is there an alien in there, but there's one of those mono-gendered civilians blocking the tunnel - from the other end. Then the odd occasion where you throw your aquanauts in there one after the other like lemmings.

The last few times I played TFTD a few years back, I kind of got to the point where I just threw pulsers or pulled out the Gas cannon as a general rule for clearing the spiral tunnel.

Just thought of it this moment - those tunnels are for old war air raid bunkers, right?

- NKF

Air raid bunkers on an inhabited version of Easter island? Doubtful.

Ah, the thermal tazer, that might work to "persuade" the civilian to move. Funny how I love the Stun Rod in EU yet never carry the tazer in TFTD. I guess I'm always hoping there would be some way to get the drills first. I'll have to try placing a soldier on top of the hill to take the attention away from the alien underneath, but then again if my soldier blasts through from above and nails the alien in the noggin it's all over.

I just ran another Island mission with a civilian blocking the tunnel. After waiting about 20 turns and the civilian ends on the same tile I gave up and moved a whole group of soldiers in. Eventually my men were able to prevent the civie from ending it's turn at the entrance by occupying a few of the tiles around it. You know, if there was a starting weapon powerful enough, I'd use that to "dig" past the civilian and gain entrance to the tunnel system that way.

I guess the best option if you don't carry tazers would be to get MC skills ASAP. Then you just MC a group of aliens and let them blast away at the hill until it is swiss cheese, or send them in like sacrificial lambs to sap away reaction fire from the alien camped out.

- Zombie

I usually clean up all the top levels. By the time I reach those bunkers, most civvies in there got killed by the Aliens. No problem grenading that tunnel, then...