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


Nookrium

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Compared to the last supply ship assault, you seem to be doing a far better job clearing the outside area in the dark.

 

I quite like the design of the supply ship. It makes you feel more like you're assaulting a fortress rather than an alien submarine. The tendency for the aliens in the command centre to be minimally armed has nothing to do with it. ;)

 

- NKF

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Those drills are absolutely fantastic, it would have been nice to have had them several months ago wink.png

 

Yep, the drills really are quite handy against Lobstermen and the occasional high-HP terror unit... especially in close quarters combat situations. Well, it looks like you have all the drills researched now so that means it's decision time. Do you want to be more mobile, be able to get into areas quickly and dish out decent damage? Or are you more after taking it slow and careful and putting down insta-kill bursts of damage? Normally, this decision is made for my soldiers by this point, but for you, it's still kinda questionable which weapon is the better choice. MY feeling is that the Heavy Thermic Lance will probably be better overall as your soldiers really haven't trained melee much. No worries about this though, if you don't have enough for everyone, the Vibroblade is still excellent. I did some research into the drills a while back here, so it may be interesting to check that out. :)

 

Anyhow, you're off to T'Leth, so good luck. My best advice is to arm to the teeth, ration your ammunition in the first two parts and go for broke in the third. Take it easy and try not to rush too much. If you make it through a part here's a small checklist to make sure you're ready.

  • Rest up. Exhaustion carries between levels, so make sure everyone is up to full Stamina.
  • Heal up. There's nothing worse than entering a level with a soldier bleeding out.
  • Load up. Reload your weapons with fresh clips.
  • Clean up. Move scavenged weapons/clips to soldiers who can use it.

- Zombie

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As a small addendum to the stats presented in that discussion thanks to new information obtained a little later, TFTD uses the 50% - 150% damage roll instead 0 -200%. That doesn't affect the findings much.

 

If you haven't yet launched the T'Leth mission by the next video, don't forget to build a few extra Vibroblades so you can arm more of your troops with them. Or just fill the gaps with the other drills. You've already seen how fast the basic drill is, with each attack costing 10% of your TUs.. The other two are 15% and 20% respectively, so they're all quite quick.

 

That disoriented lobsterman that jumped out of the command centre really got quite a reception. You don't get to see reaction shots in this game as much as you do in UFO, but the few you get can sometimes be spectacular. If they work, of course. wink.png

 

The Dreadnought scouting for your base was a bit of an anomaly. Normally the wave starts with smaller ships and increase in size if you are successful at shooting down each one in succession. They gradually use bigger ships until Dreadnoughts are sent out just to scout. It will not attack your base, but if it's successful then another Dreadnought will appear later to attack the base.

 

- NKF

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Nah, all you need is like 4 aquanauts. Fill the rest of the ship with displacers. Whether they are sonic or PWT. The sonic displacers can break through walls. And NO that is NOT a spoiler. Dude, Mike, take like 3 cuts, use mine as the official suggestion and see how easy it is. Haha.
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  • Rest up. Exhaustion carries between levels, so make sure everyone is up to full Stamina.

I just finished recording it a little bit ago and I think this was the biggest foe over all. It's a massive place with what seems like very few aliens about, I was expecting hordes of all types but it seemed to be more of a maze with the occasional enemy sprinkled throughout. I'm assuming with a harder difficulty there would have been more action, but I don't think I would have made it this far if I'd gone past veteran ;)

 

 

If you haven't yet launched the T'Leth mission by the next video, don't forget to build a few extra Vibroblades so you can arm more of your troops with them. Or just fill the gaps with the other drills. You've already seen how fast the basic drill is, with each attack costing 10% of your TUs.. The other two are 15% and 20% respectively, so they're all quite quick.

I had planned on waiting a bit before heading in, but with the 80 item limit I had to really trim down the equipment. I ended up bringing around 10 drills I believe, still my favorite weapon btw :)

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Nah, all you need is like 4 aquanauts. Fill the rest of the ship with displacers. Whether they are sonic or PWT. The sonic displacers can break through walls. And NO that is NOT a spoiler. Dude, Mike, take like 3 cuts, use mine as the official suggestion and see how easy it is. Haha.

 

I was wanting to write up an amusing response to this - but I stopped and thought about it. grin.gif

 

You would need a generous portion of the tanks to be Displacer/Sonics. The first map would involving creating a line of death and destruction to the exit.

 

The next one can be quickly dealt with if you know the shortcut and just shoot your way through the walls to the exit (cryptic hint: tentaculat, rail, ledge). This is where the sonic tanks are needed.

 

The last level would see a reduction in tanks, but you can win this mission very quickly with the XComutil map. Considering XComutil wrecks this map, this is easy. The original map would require most of the surviving tanks to be DPL tanks with all their ammo. This is crucial.

 

- NKF

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Let's see...

 

Vibroblades can't deal any damage to the front of normal Ion Armor (132) even on a maximum roll. That's including the Ion/Mag.Ion's +10% vulnerability to drill damage. It can do damage from the sides as long the rolls don't fall under 100%, since it can do 80 (+8) and the Mag Ion's sides are 80.

 

The Heavy Thermic Lance can do damage to the Mag Ion armour front plates (142) on average rolls (100%). Although this is survivable as it does not deal a great deal of penetrating damage. Once we start moving into above average rolls (100% ~ 150%), you can start getting one hit kills thanks to the very high base damage. A 125% roll will kill an aquanaut with 60 or 61 hp for example. The numbers would look like (150 * 1.1 *1.25) - 142 = 64.25. Drop the fraction and that's 64 damage.

 

I'm not even going to run any numbers for Plastic Aqua or the standard diving suits - you'd be mincemeat.

 

I certainly hope OpenTFTD doesn't introduce Reaction Drilling - that would be very unfair indeed. wink.png

 

- NKF

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Now imagine when Open Xcom will be TFTD ready and aliens will be able to use the drills themselves - you will start to hate them as much as you hate lobsters. I assume you did the tests NKF - how is magnetic ion armour facing against the drills? One shot kill ?

 

I don't think anything will be able to match my feelings for the lobsters :)

 

 

 

 

Here we go...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypTUEJNdVro

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Another suggestion...uh well kinda late now, but would have been to add a couple of 'Nauts and load their inventory up for use specifically as mules. Ya know? Medikits, 'Nades, extra ammo, toilet paper, makeup, umbrellas. You know, important stuff.
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Do you have issue with my equipment or is this just a general statement?

 

Well, hauling along useless Chem-flares was one issue (and trust me, I kinda made that mistake the first time I went to T'Leth as I was expecting it to be dark like in EU), and I wouldn't have faulted you for reloading the game to pack something more useful like say, more Medi-Kits or Sonic Cannon Clips. :P The Medi-Kits for the stim shots to help with exhaustion and the cannon clips because, well, you know what NKF told you about the final part. Another little gripe is packing along Sonic Pulsers. You hardly ever use them anyway, and with the advent of DPLs they are almost obsolete.

 

I was a little confused why you didn't pick anything up off the corpses except for a DPL bomb or two. I don't think stuff left on the ground gets added to the inventory screen at the start of the next level so all of it was lost. The final part you'll use probably use nothing but Shok Bombs and DPLs so you better stock up on them in part 2. Grab them with any soldier, you can worry about where the stuff goes at the re-equip screen at the beginning of part 3. Just make sure that you equip the ammo on your soldiers, otherwise the game will spawn it randomly about which is a real headache. If you are worried about MC, I'd still equip the bombs and on your first turn you can dump them on the ground or give them to a mule with no weapons to toss to you when reloading is needed. Part 3 is go for broke time: fire off DPLs every round as preemptive surgical strikes, and the Shok Bombs/drills and Cannons can clean up whatever is still standing. yes.gif

 

And don't worry, the "maze" layout of part 1 gets even worse for part 2 and 3. :D

 

- Zombie

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To be fair on Nook, he's not particularly familiar with T'Leth so can be forgiven for any mistakes in the initial equipment set up. And from what I've seen, while not the most ideal, should be sufficient to clear T'Leth.

 

I've only seen the first 3 minutes of the recent vid, but I agree that you should be scrounging up and hauling along what ammo (especially DPL ammo) as you can as you proceed through the base. This is the last mission so you may as well use what is available to you.

 

Oh, and the pulsers, just to look on the bright side, can be considered a safety guard for completing the requirements for the last mission in the event of ammo running out.

 

- NKF

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Oh, and the pulsers, just to look on the bright side, can be considered a safety guard for completing the requirements for the last mission in the event of ammo running out.

This was exactly the reason for bringing 22 pulsars, I knew we would be able to scrounge plenty of shok ammo along the way, but just in case everyone will carry 1 grenade so having at least 8 by the end won't be an issue.

 

I wasn't sure how effective DPL's would be in the next 2 levels which is why I wasn't picking up much of their ammo, I'm always wary about firing them through the tiny corridors of a base. The shok ammo could be quite useful, and I grabbed a bit of that, but I was having such luck with the melee I supposed I skipped over a few I probably shouldn't have.

 

And yeah, so much for the flares... luckily I only brought 3

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