Let's Play X-Com: Terror from the Deep

[Zombie]

Good job Neptune! Nabbing that live Deep One was epic! And Sorry SV.

 

Here's a tip on throwing: if you are standing at the corner of a building, it's best to step forward one tile and then throw (so that the corner is at your back). Not sure what the angles the game allows a soldier to throw from a corner, but it isn't very realistic. Yeah, sometimes you don't want to step closer to an alien, so in that case you could walk a step 180 deg from the wall, throw, then walk back to the wall for cover.

 

I was a little surprised with what you did with that alien standing behind the Easter Island statue. You had a sniper on two rooftops with gas cannons, but only shot once. True, the alien was in excellent cover, but I would have kept peppering the statue with HE rounds till it was gone or the alien died. Aliens can take splash damage from HE rounds as long as it's in the blast radius.

 

By the way, I edited all your posts announcing a new episode to include an embedded YouTube video link (in case people want to watch directly from the forums here). You can do the same by clicking on the Special BBCode button in the post screen, select Media from the pull-down menu and entering the YouTube link in the Media URL field. Just remember to remove the 's' from https as the forums can't embed secured links such as those from YouTube.

 

- Zombie

[Nookrium]

 

By the way, I edited all your posts announcing a new episode to include an embedded YouTube video link (in case people want to watch directly from the forums here). You can do the same by clicking on the Special BBCode button in the post screen, select Media from the pull-down menu and entering the YouTube link in the Media URL field. Just remember to remove the 's' from https as the forums can't embed secured links such as those from YouTube.

 

 

Perfect! thanks, I was trying to figure that out before but I kept getting an error (not removing the "s" I assume)

[silencer_pl]

You don't need to enter special BBCode - just paste http link to youtube without special addons and it will automatically convert.

[Nookrium]

Guess what?? Another night terror mission!!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPgop8J6wYA&index=13&list=PL3Hfqo2_KOlfab7oDz4abWcCLAgMAA8Y0

[Zombie]

Well, that was interesting. First, run out of Sonic Rifle clips, then ignore somewhat sound advise to research TSL and research Sonic Pistol instead.

 

Ok, I understand your conundrum as you didn't have any high-damage weapons anymore. But you could have just went with Gauss Rifles + Sonic Pulser setup and it would have been fine 'cause you ignored those Lobstermen anyway (it was a good idea to do that btw as you were kinda painted into a corner). Personally, I wouldn't have equipped nearly my whole squad with the Sonic Rifles - one or two would have got a Sonic Rifle and the rest would have got a Gauss Rifle or Gas Cannon. Ammo management is a big issue early on when you can't do enough missions to make up for the usage, or said differently, you use more clips than you recover per mission for a net loss.

 

As for the Sonic Pistol, well, I never use them because the aliens phase them out quite quickly in favor of the rifles and cannons. Which means you'll eventually run out of clips and weapons to use and you'll have to manufacture ammo. Kinda defeats the purpose of switching in the first place (except maybe as an interim stop-gap measure). You have to realize that the clip sizes of the sonic weapons are all rather low. Sure, 26 sonic cannon clips sound like a lot, but that's only 13 clips worth of rounds the sonic pistol has. Let's just do a back-of-the-matchbook calculation between the three weapons on snap shots:

 

Sonic Pistol: 20 rds/clip * 80 damage/rd = 1600 damage/clip * 0.65 accuracy = 1040 damage/clip

Sonic Rifle: 15 rds/clip * 95 damage/rd = 1425 damage/clip * 0.75 accuracy = 1069 damage/clip

Sonic Cannon: 10 rds/clip * 130 damage/rd = 1300 damage/clip * 0.8 accuracy = 1040 damage/clip

 

As you can see, the damage/clip drops down steadily as you go from pistol to cannon due to fewer rounds, However, the Sonic Cannon makes up ground due to it's accuracy. Same for the rifle, though it's accuracy is a huge improvement over the pistol which leads to overall more damage. Of course, this calculation assumes the damage/rd is modified by the accuracy (which it isn't). Instead, accuracy measures how many rounds hit/clip. Taking this into consideration, all the weapons end up being around 1040 damage/clip.

 

The aliens never really phase out the sonic rifle and cannon, though eventually the cannon predominates by a large margin. So the cannon would be a better choice for a larger number of aquanauts except it basically cripples their movement if they shoot. It comes into more use once your team has the ability to MC aliens as you can shoot at them with impunity.

 

So is it a good choice to switch research from TSL to the pistol? As a stop-gap, maybe. The TSL isn't a be all to end all weapon anyway. But, I highly suggest managing your ammo/grenades wisely especially if you are cherry-picking which sites you'll visit. And you may want to increase your manufacturing capabilities so that you can produce enough gauss rifle clips to supply your squad and/or manufacture things for profit. IMHO, research can wait.

 

The standard sonar and wide array sonar do stack with each other, so don't get rid of either until you get the Transmission Resolver which trumps both. Just don't go adding more standard or wide array sonar modules as they will not provide any benefit than what you have currently.

 

The death due to friendly fire was unfortunate as the guy you shot had a primed Sonic Pulser. However, you had soldiers in a position to run over and grab the pulser before it went off effectively saving an extra sonic rifle clip or two (plus the kit). Instead you run away. All you need is 8TU to grab something off the ground and put it into your hand!

 

- Zombie

[NKF]

Zombie, if you noticed the ammo count, there weren't very many shok bombs in storage. There were only 2 bombs. At this stage, having caught a live Deep One, switching to the sonic pistol wasn't a bad decision. Going on with the thermal shok launcher would've resulted in a great anti-lobsterman gun, but would not be of much use after firing a few shots. Back to the beginning, essentially. The pistol will research a bit quicker than the cannon, and you do need all three of the sonic weapons for the Sonic Oscillator and Sonic Displacer, so it's not a big diversion.

 

Usage-wise, I feel the sonic pistol will fit in well with neptunenook's play style until the cannons and Mag. Ion Armor are rolled out. It's good for mobile units that like to have other gear ready in hand like the grenadiers. It's certainly not as good as the Sonic cannon against Lobstermen (5 ~ 6 shots vs. 2 ~ 3) , but it will do more damage than the non-sonic weapons. It's a pocket plasma rifle.

 

The aliens do phase it out, but ammo's not a problem. The cannons should be ready by the time the existing stock is exhausted. And if absolutely necessary, they can be manufactured for 1 zrbite per clip. That's quite efficient considering you can easily recover 50 zrbite from downed cruisers.

 

- NKF

[Nookrium]

I knew I was gonna hear about it when I switched off the shok My thinking is, I'm worried about the lack of USOs I've been getting (Zyrbite & Plastics) and I really can't afford to skip any crash sites. But with lobstermen (which is all I've been getting recently) I would have to spend every clip and grenade I have just to take it out, leaving me with some Zyrbite & plastics, but less weaponry (and soldiers). I would much rather have the sonic cannons, but I figure the pistols should research rather quickly giving me something that will work on them for now. Once I have them it will give me a decent supply of reasonable weapons (I'm not a fan of the gauss so far) so I can take on those sites with a bit more ease.

 

That's what I was thinking anyways, I'm kind of assuming the preciousness of Zyrbite compared to Elerium in UFO

 

However, you had soldiers in a position to run over and grab the pulser before it went off effectively saving an extra sonic rifle clip or two (plus the kit). Instead you run away. All you need is 8TU to grab something off the ground and put it into your hand!

Yup, you're right... I didn't even think about just grabbing it

[silencer_pl]

It's a good thing you've turned to Strategy Core. Soon we will make you expert in X-COM

[Nookrium]

It's a good thing you've turned to Strategy Core. Soon we will make you expert in X-COM

 

Hahaha, I will take any help I can get... then ignore it and research Sonic Pistols

[Zombie]

Zombie, if you noticed the ammo count, there weren't very many shok bombs in storage. There were only 2 bombs. At this stage, having caught a live Deep One, switching to the sonic pistol wasn't a bad decision. Going on with the thermal shok launcher would've resulted in a great anti-lobsterman gun, but would not be of much use after firing a few shots. Back to the beginning, essentially. The pistol will research a bit quicker than the cannon, and you do need all three of the sonic weapons for the Sonic Oscillator and Sonic Displacer, so it's not a big diversion.

 

My bad, forgot he nabbed a live Deep One. Still, research was nearing completion on the TSL bomb anyway so it maybe would have got done by the next encounter with lobstermen. Or not.

 

Usage-wise, I feel the sonic pistol will fit in well with neptunenook's play style until the cannons and Mag. Ion Armor are rolled out. It's good for mobile units that like to have other gear ready in hand like the grenadiers. It's certainly not as good as the Sonic cannon against Lobstermen (5 ~ 6 shots vs. 2 ~ 3) , but it will do more damage than the non-sonic weapons. It's a pocket plasma rifle.

 

The aliens do phase it out, but ammo's not a problem. The cannons should be ready by the time the existing stock is exhausted. And if absolutely necessary, they can be manufactured for 1 zrbite per clip. That's quite efficient considering you can easily recover 50 zrbite from downed cruisers.

 

I never use the Sonic Pistols as I consider them a waste. The Gauss Rifles basically serve the same purpose, have autoshot capability and excellent accuracy. True, they do less damage than the Sonic Pistol, but you can overcome that with grenades and Sonic Pulsers if need be. It's fine for Gillmen and Aquatoids. Against Lobstermen though, all bets are off unless you can soften them up with copious amounts of HE damage and then finish them off with the Sonic Rifle. Normally, if I see a Lobsterman craft and don't have tons of Sonic Pulsers and at least Sonic Rifles, I ignore it. There's no way you are going to be beating a bunch of them with just greenhorns, a little armor and Sonic Pistols either.

 

Using just the Gauss weaponry, some Sonic Pulsers and a couple Gas Cannons are enough to cover Aquatoids and Gillmen. Conserve your Sonic Rifles for times when you really need them, like terror missions or Lobstermen/Tasoths. That's my point. You can get by with just this setup, if you are comfortable micro-managing ship loadouts, manufacture Gauss Rifle clips like they are going out of style (actually, yes they are), and ignoring things you can't touch anyway.

 

If I were in Neptune's shoes, the Sonic Cannon would have been next for the simple fact that if my men ran out of ammo they could always scavenge cannons off the corpses (I'm sorry to say this isn't going to happen much with Sonic Pistols). Heck, once I have the cannons researched and are using them, I frequently will grab one off the ground and use it instead of reloading the one in my hands (takes 10 TU to drop a weapon to the ground and pick another one up and 15 TU to load).

 

Again, that's my strategy, and mileage will vary greatly depending on environmental conditions and ocean depth.

 

And a small suggestion, at the end of the month you normally get a terror mission. This we know. The issue comes up when you bring Gas Cannons with HE rounds and can't shoot them due to harming yourself, civilians or both. Next time, try AP rounds. You can get up-close and personal with it if need be and still snipe from a long distance and do nearly the same damage. When civilians aren't present and you are doing an alien ship, the close quarters can make the HE rounds impractical if you aren't wearing armor that can block the explosion too. Either bring some AP rounds or scavenge off corpses for something that isn't HE.

 

- Zombie

[silencer_pl]

Another useful tip: Unload all ammo from sonic guns at the end of mission (you have to guess if you have killed the last one though).

[Zombie]

Neptune did that in episode #11. Not sure if he's making it a habit though.

 

- Zombie

[Nookrium]

Neptune did that in episode #11. Not sure if he's making it a habit though.

 

- Zombie

 

Yeah... I wouldn't use the word habit

 

 

 

So for research after the pistols, should I go onto Sonic Cannons - Shok - Ion Armor? (in that order) or should I get the armor before the shok?

[NKF]

Your choice really, they're all great options.

 

Ion Armor is the next great equaliser in this game after the Sonic Pulser. However completing all the sonic weapons does give you a whole selection of readily available fire power to choose from. More importantly the Sonic Oscillator, this game's equivalent of the Plasma Cannon. Being able to down subs easily might be handy to get past this string of terror sites.

 

Speaking of which, you may want to expand your detection abilities and add some listening/intercept bases soon. There has got to be more than just terror sites!

 

 

 

I never use the Sonic Pistols as I consider them a waste.

 

Ah, I used to think the same way about the laser pistols.

 

Just from the raw numbers, and the practical inconvenience aspect of the aliens phasing them out, the pistol doesn't look as great on paper as the others, but believe me they're not as wasteful a weapon as you might think. On a fairly decent (and often kneeling) aquanaut, it can be quite a deadly weapon. It's worth noting that until you get some decent armour, they do tend to account for a good portion of the deaths on your team caused by alien reaction fire.

 

There's no way you are going to be beating a bunch of them with just greenhorns, a little armor and Sonic Pistols either.

 

I wouldn't be too harsh on the sonic pistol. Let's look at some of the numbers.

 

Damage-wise Sonic Pistols do 80 damage and Sonic Blasta Rifles do 95. Taking into account the Lobsterman's 50% damage resistance to Sonic, that's 40 and 47.5 average damage. The min-max damage for the Sonic Pistol is 20 ~ 60 and the Sonic Rifle is 23.75 ~ 71.25.

 

So while fighting Lobstermen with just Sonic Pistols lacks a bit of glamour, you only really need about one extra shot to do the same thing you can achieve with the rifles.

 

The 10% drop in accuracy is noteworthy, but you make up for it by being able to fire off three snapshots a turn. If you do the probabilities, the chance-to-hit-at-least-once-per-turn makes the pistol on par with the snap shots for the rifle and cannon.

 

On a different note, I just noticed the Sonic Pistol's aimed shot matches the Sonic Cannon's snap. At least in speed. In accuracy the pistol does +5% better. This means the pistol technically has two flavours of snap shots and no real aimed mode. Makes sense really, it's a pistol - not a sniper rifle.

 

edit: Yes, I do know that last paragraph sounds a bit silly and probably nonsensical. It's deliberate. Honest.

 

- NKF

[silencer_pl]

Once you have Sonic Cannon, TSL is not that important unless you decide to attack alien colony, so I would personally got Ion Armour before TSL. I also admire people who decide to use thermal tazer.

[Nookrium]

The second part of the terror site

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VchEM9ctluI&list=PL3Hfqo2_KOlfab7oDz4abWcCLAgMAA8Y0&index=14

[Space Voyager]

Painful, all this dying... Mine, that is.

[Nookrium]

yeah, Space Voyager has had a rough go so far...

[Space Voyager]

As obviously cannon fodder, I feel abused.

[silencer_pl]

What was the music played during last alien hunt?

[Nookrium]

It's called "Extinction Level Event". It's in the free music section of the YouTube video manager.

[NKF]

Despite the self inflicted losses, that last mission went all right. Now a couple things:

 

I was crossing my fingers that the vanishing ammo bug wasn't going to strike now that I'd convinced you to switch away from using Xcomutil for this LP. Glad it didn't strike. I can have a sigh of relief.

 

Gillmen squad leaders aren't important, but you do need a live gillman for the drill tech. Hang onto it until you've recovered a Calcinite corpse and have unlocked the Vibroblade.

 

Gas Cannons are outside toys. At least, they are until you're stomping around in Ion Armor. However, for that bit with the Gillman on the middle platform of that storage area, you could have solved it easily by getting Hanibal to fire a GC-HE round up the lift from where he was standing. It would have been safe as the explosion would have hit the level above.

 

If your aquanauts find themselves standing near an alien at the start of their move, which happened a few times in the ship mission, it is sometimes a good idea to spend a few TUs and walk right up next to the alien before shooting. This almost ensures your shot will not miss. Almost. It's a great way to maximize the efficiency of Gauss Rifle auto fire. It's safe to do this stunt if the alien is looking away, or if you know it can't fire back (from a M.C. Reader probe).

 

The general slowdown you were experiencing is normal. On big and complex maps, TFTD re-draws a heck of a lot of tiles every game frame when you're viewing the upper levels. This includes all the hidden tiles underneath the level you're viewing. This is noticeable on base defence missions considering the entire lower level of the base is blocked out with solid blocks.

 

Speaking of base defence, I better give you a heads up: It was a good idea to move your sub pens to the top of the map. But for some reason the sub pens don't have as many alien spawn points as the UFO hangars, so the odd alien will spawn deep inside the base. Sometimes a few paces from your aquanauts out in the corridors! So take care to carefully inspect each aquapod as you travel through the base. You'll have fun with the blast doors though. There's lots of them. They help segment off the base so you can keep most fights confined to small areas and not worry about long range snipers.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

A couple notes. No more pistol bashing, I promise!

 

Ringlbert came around the corner of a shipping container, took reaction fire from a gillman carrying a sonic cannon and survived. Staring face to face with that alien, Ringlbert took a snap shot with his gas cannon and missed, thus precipitating another reaction fire shot from the gillman and died. This was an unnecessary death IMHO. The sonic cannon has 50% TU cost to snap shot reaction fire, which means an alien can fire twice in a round assuming it doesn't have to move or turn. If it moves or turns, the alien harmless. Space Harrier was in a perfect position to come around and shoot the alien in the back. Even if he didn't kill the gillman, it would have turned around to look and then found itself with not enough TU to perform another reaction fire. Mistake #1. Mistake #2: if you have a big weapon (rifle or above), take everything out of your spare hand (looks at the chem flare) otherwise it'll lower your firing accuracy by 20%. Did you even notice that Ringlbert had 19% snap shot accuracy? Let's pretend that you didn't recognize these issues. Ringlbert had exactly 48 TU which was enough for an Aimed Shot but you had him take the Snap Shot and he missed. I guess you were hoping to kill the alien and then move back under cover? See, sometimes it's better to spend all your TU on an aimed shot (even though in this case it was only 29%). That was mistake #3.

 

Remember to keep one hand clear for weapons which are 2-handed to avoid the handedness penalty, kneel when you can to maximize accuracy (+15%) and make yourself a smaller target, and also take advantage of shots to the back as aliens have lower armor values there.

 

The Deep One up on the left... could you have tossed a grenade up there instead of shooting... and missing due to the railing? Another issue is letting an alien be for a while. The aliens in TFTD are actually pretty intelligent. Letting them sit round after round while you plink away at railings and containers just gives them time to formulate a strategy. Just because it hasn't shot at you, it doesn't mean it never will. Take your shot and get under cover.

 

Tengu with full TU standing the floor above the alien on a lift - with a railing and barrels nearby. He takes a snap shot (43%) hits the railing with the shot and dies. First of all, he didn't have any armor. If he did, he would have probably survived as the shot hit a few tiles away. Second, why not take the aimed shot? 64% is better than 43%. Not saying he would have done any better with an aimed shot though. Maybe you could have tossed a grenade down there if the accuracies were not high enough? You had plenty of guys below, maybe you could have fired HE shells at the ceiling and gave the 2 aliens some splash damage? Edit: sniped by NKF, see his post above.

 

Unfortunate, shooting out the steps so you couldn't get to those upper shipping containers. I always wished those steps could take more damage than what they do. Oh well.

 

Otherwise a good mission.

 

Gillmen squad leaders aren't important, but you do need a live gillman for the drill tech. Hang onto it until you've recovered a Calcinite corpse and have unlocked the Vibroblade.

 

I'm sure he has a Calcinite corpse already, just hasn't researched it yet. Don't you need a Gillman corpse for the Thermic Lance though?

 

- Zombie

[silencer_pl]

Judging for the amount of tips you get from Zombie and NKF, maybe you should do a video with co-comentary with one of them, where they help you with one mission. Preferably for another terror mission or large sub.

 

Also as Zombie said - ufopaedia confirmed - you need Gilman corpse for lances.

[Nookrium]

Zombie, I liked it better when you were just pistol bashing

 

Speaking of base defence, I better give you a heads up: It was a good idea to move your sub pens to the top of the map. But for some reason the sub pens don't have as many alien spawn points as the UFO hangars, so the odd alien will spawn deep inside the base. Sometimes a few paces from your aquanauts out in the corridors! So take care to carefully inspect each aquapod as you travel through the base.

 

Thanks for the heads up, that may save a few lives

 

Gas Cannons are outside toys

yeah, I remembered the tiny rooms on the ship terror sites but I forgot to swap out the ammo. I've been keeping the other rounds around for a mission like this (and mostly a base attack)

 

Remember to keep one hand clear for weapons which are 2-handed to avoid the handedness penalty, kneel when you can to maximize accuracy (+15%) and make yourself a smaller target, and also take advantage of shots to the back as aliens have lower armor values there.

 

I caught that as I was re-watching it, I didn't catch those flares in their hands at the time. It was indeed a dumb mistake...

 

Ringlbert came around the corner of a shipping container, took reaction fire from a gillman carrying a sonic cannon and survived. Staring face to face with that alien, Ringlbert took a snap shot with his gas cannon and missed, thus precipitating another reaction fire shot from the gillman and died.

 

yup, I should have used Space Harrier to deal with him. I was assuming the blast radius of the HE would take him out with the snap, then I could jump back behind the cover. I hadn't fully explored around those containers so I wasn't sure if there was another one able to pop out. (Hanibal later explored that dark spot)

 

Tengu with full TU standing the floor above the alien on a lift - with a railing and barrels nearby. He takes a snap shot (43%) hits the railing with the shot and dies

The plan was to take a quick shot and get behind cover since he was pretty exposed up there, however I noticed after rewatching it that even with the aimed shot he still would have had enough TU's to jump back.

 

Every time I rewatch these I always catch myself thinking "just throw a grenade!", one of these times I'll finally do it when I should (then blow myself up because a palm tree is in the way)

 

 

 

Judging for the amount of tips you get from Zombie and NKF, maybe you should do a video with co-comentary with one of them, where they help you with one mission. Preferably for another terror mission or large sub.

 

I'm game, not really sure how a co-commentary ep would work though...

 

You'd think with all the help I would do a better job of keeping the aquanaut Zombie alive Speaking of, would you (Silencer) or NKF like an aquanaut counterpart?