Am I A Cheat?

[kai]

Whenever I play UFO, I always reserve a save game slot for the start of every groung mission and a few others for interesting events. I always reload the saves when I lose a team member.

 

Is this considered cheating or being creative in the tactics dept?

[bevan]

some people call it cheating, unless you are a new player and getting a grip on the game then you get some slack with reloading

[kai]

Well there is the fact that the game occasionaly terminates for no reason after moving soldier or ending a turn but my main reason is to build up experienced troops (and I was sad enough to name one aft4er myself so I guess I wasn't ready to see my player killed)

[bevan]

well then that is cheating so you need to call it "enhancing your gameplay". I do it when my girlfriend dies or there is no awesome way i die (eg. in a huge explosion or while taking out a few aliens before i die)

[LTNS]

I still stink at the games, but i am MUCH MUCH better than when I started. Now, I just wait until the first month is over. I only save an retry after that if i completely bombed a terror site. Dont feel bad about doing it, its an advantage!

[NKF]

Yes indeedy, save-reload immortality is considered cheating by most players. But, hey, not every player is a tactical genius that can sit through a battle in just one sitting without once messing up. Well... I can, but only after several hundred tries!

 

If you feel this moral dilemma is weighing you down too much -- consider an alternative. Before starting the mission, save in the geoscape rather than in the battlescape. This way, if you do mess up and decide to reload, you'll start on a fresh map and everything will be new again. You can always think of the last battle as a battle simulation. No harm in practicing, right?

 

- NKF

[kai]

That can be a double edged sword, you never know where you will apear.

 

I remember a few occasions in which my troops enter a terror site and unfortunately end up landing in an ambush where there are several aliens and/or terror weapons right in front of them. If you are luck, you can take down a few but after one or 2 turns, it turns in to a full scale massacre!

 

I've decided to start a new game where I will avoid this save load immortality, although I will probably end up cursing the Mutons even more than ever :devil:

[LTNS]

Ripped off from a southpark song. "Ohhhhhh!!! What would Ozzy Osbourne do if he were here right now? He'd bite a bat and scream F.U. and thats what the Ozzman would do" Remember that and swaering at the muttons will be much easier!

[The Veteran]

*cough* spam *cough* :hmmm:

 

It's not cheating Kai. It's reloading... Reloading is not cheating, it's completely different... It's still widely cursed by the advanced [aka.addicted] XCommer but it's not the same as cheating...

 

NKF is right though. All you need is practice then you too can join the ranks of the non-loading immortals

[JellyfishGreen]

It's an option, so it's up to you how you play the game. After all, the creators made a button for it. However it means you can use the results of previous attempts to know _exactly_ where the aliens are hiding, and conduct a flawless and uncannily prescient operation, which is unrealistic.

 

Anyone who's spoken on this subject here considers saving in the Geoscape just before the Battlescape ground mission to be perfectly acceptable. The forces are the same but the terrain layout and alien placement get scrambled. This, as NKF once said, gives the aliens a chance. You have to scout them out like everyone else before shooting them, which is more realistic.

 

So its up to you if you want to gain experience. And very good if something weird happens and you want to share the game with others. And of course we all have to sleep. But as I once said, saving and reloading in the Battlescape would disqualify you as a competitor in the XCOM Olympic event.

[kai]

Maybe I just need to make better use of the motion tracking device?

 

Have a roookie at the back of the skyranger equiped with just a motion tracker (and possibly a pistol/laser pistol)

 

Allthough generally, save/load immortality does engourage one to take somewhat stupid risks and develop brainless strategies.

 

One good tactic at least is having 2 lines of troops covering the doors to a battleship, close enough to get good shots but far enough to aboid being shot/devoured/incinerated/impregnated (delete as needed)

[Fox]

Ha ha the motion tracker... (everyone moans as they've heard me say it a million times) Dude, this thing is my fav. It will save more guys than you can know (I keep EVERY soldier equipped with one on thier belt in the beginning of the game, then later I just give it to my scouts).

 

Keeping a guy with one in the back of the 'Ranger is an ok idea for maybe the first or second turn, but after that you have to get a few guys setting up perimeters and motion tracking arcs. What I mean is, get 3-4 guys in all directions of the Skyranger, doing 1 track per turn, and progressively moving forward. On UFO missions, any blip that you see that isn't and X-COM soldier (verified by comparing with the overhead map) IS an alien, no doubt about it. So just feel free to nuke the area with anything possible

 

Back on topic: When I was a newbie, I would save and reload. I still do very rarely, like when I BB goes into my Skyranger on the first turn.

[Mouse Nightshirt]

Nah, I don't save and reload ever, mainly due to the fact that as I have the PSX version, the saving and loading times are prohibative (It takes near 5 minutes to save, reset and reload.)

[TabulaRasa]

I always like to save and reload, it takes a few seconds for me. I reloaded the start of the cydonia mission about 3-5 times ! I always save before I enter a terror mission, so i can load it and then the map is reset .

[Niml]

Hmm i used to but now i just try and save as rarely as possible... high casualties but im getting better now so the death rate for my soldiers is dropping quite a bit.

[Privateer]

Well, here are my $0.02. I'm a newbie with the game and I do save/load in some situations, but I also have to give credit to those who say that it kills the fun. It does. If you're invincible the mission becomes a chore rather than an adventure. Still, since a lot of things in the game are random, sometimes the odds turn all the way against me and it stops being fun. I mean, who likes getting their $1,000,000 hovertank or their experienced soldier blown to bits on the very first turn by a lucky interrupt? Who likes an alien grenade right into the middle of their squad, who are tightly packed just after disembarking on the first or second turn? Or how about a trigger-happy alien just popping up from the door that five people watch with their guns at ready and proceeding to kill three of them without so much as getting a scratch on him? Those are all things that can and do happen to me and that warrant a reload IMO and I think I will keep reloading in situations like that no matter how many times I play.

[JellyfishGreen]

In my next game, I'm going to take those bad situations and make the best of them. So what if I lose three experienced soldiers/a hovertank/half the squad? Soldiers do improve quite quickly and replacements are cheap. Maybe I can rally a victory after all. (If I do get discouraged on Superhuman, though, I'll make allowances.)

[NKF]

What I do to help me get around the loss of the occasional soldier:

• Don't get too attached to the soldier. This is very hard to do, as you'll often get a few soldiers that stand out above the others.
   
  
• Spread the experience out a little rather than let one soldier get all the glory. At least make an attempt to let everyone have a chance at hitting an alien. If possible have a lot of soldiers and rotate them regularly. This way, even if a few soldiers die, you'll still have a few others that are as good if not better.
   
  
• Ration the types of armour that is handed out. It's easier to accept the loss of a rookie in personal armour than it is to lose one in a power suit.
   
  
• Don't be ashamed to accept the fact that you cannot win a battle and do not be affraid to perform a tactical retreat. I retreat all the time when I first meet the ethereals but don't have a psi-lab.
   
  
• Get used to playing with mostly average starting level soldiers. Strangely enough, I find this makes things a lot more unpredictable and exciting. It's a lot of fun when everything goes right even though you're controlling a bunch of complete incompetants.
   
  
• Chant: "It's just a game"
  

- NKF

[Psy Guy]

I save at the beginning of every tactical battle on the PC version (game likes to crash on me when i move my first dude). The only think i find a reload exceptable is when they nade your ramp killing everyone onboard and right at the landing site. (HEY! I told the commander that we should of paradroped into the sector) The aliens like to get cheap with nades and blasters. (turn one on battleship assult, sectoid leader fires blaster from top floor of battleship through elevator system out recently opened door (thanks to a sectoid trooper), up to my ramp killing my tank and 6 troopers). Lossing troops in regular combat is good clean fun but taking advantage of the fact that the game unload troops from a ramp is a low blow to humanity. Why can't we have the elevator?

 

-Psy Guy-

(UFOs are much roomier than that skyranger)

[Rattler]

I save every turn and reload when ever something lame happens, like my computer crashes or when one of my men get's wasted by his own teamate

[kai]

Reloading is usefull if the game suddenly exits for no reason :hmmm: but I'm using the save/load much less now (only when I do somthing phenominally stupid)

 

I tried it with TFTD, attacked an escort ship (probably equivalent to large scout), none of my people had gauss weapons at that time, half the squad got slaughtered!

 

(maybe I can find the weakest, most useless soldier/aquanaut, give them 2 magna pack explosives/detonation charges, send them in to the alien ship with the trigger on 0 and watch him get slaughtered yet still exact revenge)

[TabulaRasa]

So do the grenades/explosives go off at the time you set them even if they are in the soldiers hand? In my version for the game (collectors edition) they dont go off untill you throw them or your soldier dies. I also have another version of TFTD, its the same with that. So i can set the grenades to 0, and only throw them right when I need them, so i can kill or at least ingure an alien without it being able to move and still leaving time units to fire.

[Crazy Photon]

You are right Alain, it happens the way you think. Kai meant that he'd use a suicidal squad. He put the trigger on 0 so that when the aliens kill him he'll drop the grenades with the already known consequences

[kai]

Never fails (well maybe when mutons are involved)

[Ki-tat Chung]

ya. the kamakazi attack. you can do it with any x-com game. fill the backpack with explosives, prime 'em all and your on your way to being on par with Japan in WWII! (no offence to Japs intended. i like Japan! they make cool stuff! [like anime, manga and computer things!])