NKF Posted February 25, 2003 Report Share Posted February 25, 2003 I was thinking -- the soldier accuracy stat is really just the soldier's efficiency with the use of any particular ranged weapon. The same can be said with all the other combat skills. As for random thoughts: tactical: - HWPs suffer 4 times as much from explosive weaponry, due their wider surface area. However, they are the only units in the game that are completely immune to stun attacks. Therefore, they can be used to disarm aliens with stun launchers by charging towards them -- hopefully, getting close enough to get the alien to knock itself out. - Terran HWPs outclass rookies in all aspects except in firing, throwing, reactions and psi-skill. Their weapons, with the exception of the heavy laser, are generally less useful than their handheld counterpart -- however, they can carry more ammunition. - Hybrid HWPs outclass high ranking veterans in every manner except firing, throwing, reactions and psi-skill. Their all-round armour rating is superb (roughly 130 or so -- much better than the flying suit) - HWP ammunition is recovered after the battle if and only if the tank survives. - If an alien has an armour rating higher than your current weapon's stopping power, retreat or find another weapon, as your current weapon will deal little to no damage. (Actually, this might be more useful in TFTD -- due to the watered down terran weaponry. Also, in TFTD, many of the aliens have certain weak spots in their locational armour that you can take advantage of. In UFO, it isn't really that noticeable, but it is there. Not sure how this one will apply) - X-Com soldiers don't get to use just any grenade. Grenades used by X-Com not only have variable timers, but they also have a special mechanism that prevents them from detonating until they've been left on the ground for a few seconds (you can say the final countdown timer is reset every time it's picked up). Thus enabling the grenade relay. However, if a soldier is holding onto a grenade and is killed, or stunned, the grenade will drop onto the ground. If it isn't picked up in time, it'll be set off. (You might want to also mention how every grenade looks the same so it's very difficult to tell which one is armed and which one isn't) - X-Com proximity mines are special in that they will only detect lateral movement. Vertical movement will not set them off -- therefore, in this way, you can escape from it or reposition an armed mine. A unit inside the mine's detection radius can safely step away from it, but never towards. If a unit is standing on the mine, stepping away from it will be counted as stepping towards the detection radius. - The aliens are stupid. Rock stupid. They just don't know how to pick up their own weapons after they've dropped them without some 'special' guidance by you or whomever armed them before the mission started. - Units can only use reaction fire if an enemy unit is in line of sight. In other words, if the alien cannot see you, it cannot shoot you. A spotter can be used to locate the aliens. Once located, snipers can pick off the alien without having to worry about return fire from that particular alien. If the spotter wants to shoot at it -- it's recommended that the spotter step back a few tiles until the spotter cannot see the alien before attempting to shoot. Same goes with throwing grenades. - The mind probe: Many uses. Appraising the alien's combat prowess, and determining how exhausted the alien is. Also, useful in determining the rank of an alien in order to select what aliens to capture in order to not fill up the containment module with redundant aliens. - Throwing and successfully hurting aliens with grenades exercises a soldier's hand-eye coordination. This not only improves throwing accuracy, it also helps the soldier shoot a lot straighter. (don't ask how, it just does) geoscape: - Quartermasters: Keep what you need, sell what you don't. Unless going for specialty weapons like sidearms and stun infilctors, every soldier doesn't need ten rifles. Same goes for excessive alien UFO components and alien alloys. - Suggest stockpiling rare items: Elerium, plasma pistol and rifle clips. - When starting research projects, your scientists will be able to obtain enough information to research the desired item and will no longer need a sample in storage, as enough data has been extracted from the item for the scientists to perform a thorough analysis. These projects can be safely put on hold by not assigning anyone to them until they are needed. (By starting a project, I mean you have to actually start it but don't assign anyone to it. Just having it appear on new-projects-to-research list doesn't count) - Base disjoint bug and suggestions on how it can be avoided. (Of course, use the apropriate jargon, and make it sound less like a bug) - Tank armament: A tank needs ammunition to be loaded onto the troop transport. However, for use in defending a base, if there's a shortage of HWP ammunition supplies in storage, a tank will get a complimentary supply of ammunition, which you get to keep if the tank survives. (you can always say the X-Com supreme high command or whatever has its own personal cache and sent it to the base prior to the attack, and part of the reward for saving the base is keeping the ammunition). - NKF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BladeFireLight Posted February 26, 2003 Report Share Posted February 26, 2003 That last part on the tank's geing free never has worked for me under 1.4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NKF Posted February 26, 2003 Report Share Posted February 26, 2003 You could try arming one of your non-primary bases with rocket or fusion hwps and not buying/building any hwp ammo for them. Then see what happens when the base gets attacked. If any of the hwps survived the mission, check your stores and see if you've got any HWP ammunition. For me, I've never seen my hwps start a base defence mission that weren't at full ammo capacity, both in 1.4 and 1.4CE. I first noticed this in TFTD where, during a base attack, my brand new gauss coelecanths had full magazines even before I started building the SWS Gauss clips. - NKF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JellyfishGreen Posted February 26, 2003 Report Share Posted February 26, 2003 Blade, you are worthy! Spew forth about fireteams and cover fire! As always, NKF-sensei's comments on HWPs leave me enlightened and in awe. For explanations of some of the points he raises I would say: - Prox grenades use a ring of ultrasound sensors to detect (1m range) and none of these sensors face up. (Grenade weighted like a weeble.) Note 1m range is why grenade should be 1m away from door, not right beside it where it detects door opening the slightest crack. - Soldiers can shoot farther than visual range once they stop and look through the scope on their rifles. Spotters tell them where to look. If within visual range, they just fire from the hip. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox Posted February 26, 2003 Report Share Posted February 26, 2003 This topic is picking up quite nicely... Who needs pictures for stuff? Someone should jot down some generic things I should take screenies of, and I'll do it. Also, how do you convert the screenshots to .bmps? I can only look at the screenshots in internet explorer, i have no other viewer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox Posted February 26, 2003 Report Share Posted February 26, 2003 Dahhh I can't upload images either. How do you do that without a webpage? Can't you just upload from your hard drive? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slythe Posted February 27, 2003 Report Share Posted February 27, 2003 I don't believe you can 'attach' an image and upload it to this site, only provide a link, otherwise things could get overloaded quick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NKF Posted February 27, 2003 Report Share Posted February 27, 2003 Fox: I'd suggest getting irfanview. It's an adequate image viewer that can open and convert a good number of common file formats. https://www.irfanview.com/ Or you could try getting the GIMP ( https://www.gimp.org/ ), or a shareware copy of psp7, but they might be a bit too big to download for the simple task of file conversion. Tucows has a number of other image viewers and image manipulation programs that you could have a look at. https://www.tucows.com/ - NKF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobbweb Posted February 27, 2003 Report Share Posted February 27, 2003 <----can you people see my avatar? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox Posted February 27, 2003 Report Share Posted February 27, 2003 No Cobbweb, we can't see your avatar. Thanks NKF for the viewers, I'll check it out. But is there any way to upload the images? Slythe says no, and he's probably right. I don't know how to make webpages for crap, so I really can't link any pictures. I'd need to upload them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JellyfishGreen Posted February 27, 2003 Report Share Posted February 27, 2003 Fox: check my WWW link and you'll see just how spartan webpages can be. I think I use less than 10 different HTML tags. If you also have no webspace, you could email screenshots to me and I could host them on my free (ad-bedecked) Geocities site. I'm a fair hand with irfanview. Unless NKF has beaucoup webspace. JFG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NKF Posted February 27, 2003 Report Share Posted February 27, 2003 Well, if necessity demands it, I've got a few gaps in my Yahoo!Geocities website that I could fill in. Still we'd better just wait and see how many screenshots are required. Here's a thought -- just for the atmosphere of the document: should the screenshots be in monochrome or in colour? Monochrome would go well with the document if it was done entirely with the Courier font, a few ink blotches and the occasional red classified stamp. On the other hand, colour has its charms, but it would make the resulting document just a tiny bit larger. Just a reminder: Yahoo!Geocities doesn't support off-site linking of images, so you might want to make a html page and put all the pictures in that and then link to the html file instead. - NKF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BladeFireLight Posted February 27, 2003 Report Share Posted February 27, 2003 I vote for black and white. What types of images are we talking about? If the manual is written befor the alien war get well underway the alien ships would not have been photographed. Or if they have I think ony the outside should be shown Also I can get images of any terrain .map file or entire battle scape from saved games with no units visible. With any layout any one wants.. (If you want a imposible map sets, ie. a forest next to a farm. I can do that to but it takes time [ to bad i cant do that ingame]) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox Posted February 27, 2003 Report Share Posted February 27, 2003 Oh, I think I see where this is going. I was under the impression this manual would be for the GAME, but it looks like it's going to be more of a fanfic. Ok, then I don't think there should be screenshots in that case... But if anyone ever wants to do another guide like Kasey Chang, (which we most definetely should... his guide kicks ass but it is sort of old and outdated...) we should put screenshots in it. An adobe acrobat version of a new guide would kick rear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hobbes Posted February 27, 2003 Report Share Posted February 27, 2003 Fox, The stuff I've been writing so far has been to help with the game, not for a fanfiction and I think the rest of the others here have that purpose as well. As for Kasey Chang's USG I think that all of what's there still remains valid about the game. So far I've been refraining from using stuff that it's already on the USG already because I believe that it would be better if we could come up with something new about the tactical section, defining the basics of combat. It won't be a magic formula to beat the aliens every time. But it might help rookie players to understand some basic concepts of the game and for the veterans take conscience of stuff that they probably were doing unconsciously and never thought about. As for the time in the war where the field manual is located I believe it could be placed right at the beginning, after there was a couple of encounters with the aliens and the strategists had the time to analyse the fighting. And I could use a number of screenshots to illustrate some military tactics I'm writing now. Black and white images with red stamps "TOP SECRET" sure sounds neat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox Posted February 27, 2003 Report Share Posted February 27, 2003 Kasey Chang's guide is not out of date... I shouldn't have said that... but old it is. I think us guys at the command should put together something new, like Kasey Chang's guide. But like you said Hobbes, it should revolve more around basics of combat, like general tricks and hints... Grenade Relay, blaster launcher tactics, etc. I'll be posting my "Door Phenomenon" later sometime today, maybe tomorrow, to add to the guide. I'll see if I can figure out a way to make a crappy website so I can post pictures... heh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slythe Posted February 27, 2003 Report Share Posted February 27, 2003 This all sounds like a great idea! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BladeFireLight Posted February 28, 2003 Report Share Posted February 28, 2003 Are we still going to use some images?? Thease images are large so I'm linking themUrban Battlescape Lvl4Urban Battlescape Lvl1 I can see sections of them being used for tactical examples. sutch as:using availible cover.. or going up a stair case with out getting shot from behind... Any interest in smaller locations that are paticularly dificult tacticaly?-Blade FireLight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NKF Posted February 28, 2003 Report Share Posted February 28, 2003 The insides of alien ships and some of the more interesting alien base modules might be nice. Which reminds me -- Identifying elerium pods. The large 20x20 alien base module with the 4 upstairs store rooms has one room with two power units in it, but only one has an elerium pod. A close-up of both power units would make a good way of identifying the pod. I think I had one... But if anyone wants to get a new one, well, all the better. - NKF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BladeFireLight Posted February 28, 2003 Report Share Posted February 28, 2003 All my images are not from the game. so I dont have any one with elerium or units on screen i'm sure some one else hase one. Here are some Ships and a base modual. https://bladefirelight.home.attbi.com/images/ufo_110.jpgMedum Scout https://bladefirelight.home.attbi.com/images/ufo_120.jpgLarge Scout https://bladefirelight.home.attbi.com/images/ufo_130-1.jpgHarvester Level 1 https://bladefirelight.home.attbi.com/images/ufo_130-2.jpgHarvester Level 2 https://bladefirelight.home.attbi.com/images/ufo_130-3.jpgHarvester Level 3 https://bladefirelight.home.attbi.com/images/ubase_00-1.jpgAlien Base Command Center Level 1 https://bladefirelight.home.attbi.com/images/ubase_00-2.jpgAlien Base Command Center Level 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spaceman42 Posted February 28, 2003 Author Report Share Posted February 28, 2003 Heh. I guess I've been cut out of the "chain of command", then... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BladeFireLight Posted February 28, 2003 Report Share Posted February 28, 2003 Spaceman I dont think you've been removed. I just think the project took on a mind of it's own.. still for this to really come to life some one with some writing skill hase to compile the whole thing. from what the rest of us put in. -Blade FireLight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hobbes Posted February 28, 2003 Report Share Posted February 28, 2003 *pins a general's star on Spaceman's lapel* "What are your orders sir?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NKF Posted February 28, 2003 Report Share Posted February 28, 2003 Every successful project needs its project champion. Someone to keep the thing going. Myself, I'm okay with the brainstorming bit, but my prose and organisation is terrible -- which is why my own little project is taking forever to put together. Moving on: What about some of the more dodgier tactics? Like throwing grenades into walls[1] , throwing items up through ceilings, or the bug where non-flying soldiers can walk right through walls and other solid furniture objects? How will these 'features' fit in? - NKF [1] They're not really walls, at least not in the same sense as normal walls -- no that doesn't sound right either... oh well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BladeFireLight Posted March 1, 2003 Report Share Posted March 1, 2003 NKF: I have never see'n any of theoes features.. care to inlighten me? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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