This is hard (and buggy,lol)

[Aralez]

Downloaded the new version (1.26) and oddly it is more unstable and crashes more often than 1.25. Still, it's acceptable and the game is very good.

 

There are some differences, though. Accounting Troll mentioned some in his (1 year old) thread.

 

Snakemen are deadly, they have an accuracy of 100%, only if you manage to surprise them they will sometimes miss. Your soldiers will die in one shot (without armor). What surprised me even more was the fact that the Aliens do use "unusual" tactics, in my first terror mission a snakemen threw a grenade in the Skyranger!

Chryssalids are somewhat "tame", they die rather easily.

Sectoids, well i saw only 2 so far, they seemed to be very weak and slow, one died from flames of a incendiary round. Haven't seen any other Aliens yet.

 

The weapons seem to be slightly different, too, you can fire more often (one of my soldiers could kneel, fire 3xautofire from his laser and still had some time left. HE and INC rounds seem to be VERY effective, same for smoke grenades. Unlike in the original Xcom you can't see very far through smoke, the tiles three fields in front of you stay black.

 

The new soldiers seem to be less talented than in the original game, but maybe that was coincidence.

 

Interceptions are a bit different, too, Avalanche launchers do have a capacity of 2 missiles only (each), but they seem to do more damage.

 

The basemanagment feels different, too. Your starting base has a small radar only and you can't dismantle some installations. Tanks do feel weak.

 

Basically the game looks, feels and smells like Xcom but the weapons seem to be more balanced, a good possibility to test new tactics. What i especially liked was that some Xcomutil improvements for the default game found their way into Pocket uFO: e.g. Your squad equipment seems to be saved.

 

You can load during tactical missions, nice! And you can access the stats of your soldiers in the equipment screen! You will have no choice of the difficulty setting, though. There seems to be only one difficulty: VERY DIFFICULT! Several times i lost the whole squad in tac missions, those Snakemen are something to fear!

 

Apart from the crashes (mostly when loading and starting tac missions) i discovered a funny bug: In each terror mission there was one brown-haired female civilian attacking my troops! One time she even entered the Skyranger! She seemed to use a melee attack , the animation was the same as the chryssalid attack, but it did no damage. And she did not show up as hostile either. (no Alien-detected-symbol).

 

Maybe it is my ex-girlfriend?

 

The translation/text is a bit glitched, there were "Mounthly costs" and similar things. Nothing major, though.

 

Nice and worthy Xcom version. And as it is free there is no reason NOT to try it imo.

[Aralez]

lol, another terror mission, another Stalker-Attack:

 

https://images7.pictiger.com/thumbs/f1/e44bd2c37a81747494d0c61807fdd2f1.th.jpg https://images7.pictiger.com/thumbs/6c/324a9a7efc9fa5aa3e04c96de590a36c.th.jpg

Funniest bug ever!

[Aralez]

Ok, this is getting weirder and weirder: Now i do have several civilians attacking me and to my surprise a chryssalid joined my squad!!!

https://images6.pictiger.com/thumbs/50/21f77ac265799fdc052f95d2d8486b50.th.jpg https://images6.pictiger.com/thumbs/82/04ad095459fcbb2d5fb785a8d5229a82.th.jpg https://images6.pictiger.com/thumbs/0e/4f7228f9b55eac90a19356a75a5c090e.th.jpg

 

Picture Gallery with PicTiger

 

When i returned from the last terror mission i realized a new soldier called Chryssalid in my list. He has some interesting stats. He can activate grenades but can't throw them, so i use him as a scout which drops armed grenades in the equipment screen. Haven't tried guns yet, but i doubt that he can use them at all (0 accuracy, ouch).

 

My guess is that the Chryssalids/Zombie part of the game is broken, sometimes the humans seem to be imune to their attacks, the civilians that attack me are however aggressive right from the beginning of the mission.

 

Actually this is the first game ever that is better because of the bugs

 

About the Chryssalid sergeant: Maybe he was unconscious and as i had no Alien prison yet, the game put him into my squad? I will try to zap more aliens and see if they join my troops as well. No alien containment for me atm!

 

More unusual stuff:

 

-Sometimes soldiers reaction-fire on dead aliens (killed by a former reaction-fire from another soldier in that turn)

-In one instance i could walk through a closed door. The door was open and i stood directly behind it, when i entered the room, the soldier pushed the door so that it closed and walked through it.

-When you use grenades during a mission they will miss from the Skyrangers storage in the next mission, they are not refilled at the base.

-There is no "No line of fire" message, you can waste all your AP shooting at obstacles.

-Aliens use grenades and seem to be much cleverer, they'll search for your troops. However they do use grenades in small buildings (with themselves in that building), and in one case i saw a Snakemen stunning himself with a small launcher shot

-Snakemen with Plasma weapons are extremely accurate. 1 shot means 1 dead soldier. Only if they are "surprised" they will miss sometimes. Snakemen are actually so dangerous that you will be glad if your enemy is ONLY a chryssalid!!!

 

You will have to use slightly different tactics in this game, but that isn't a negative thing imo. Pocket UFO breathes some fresh life in Xcom. I love the cute bugs, as strange as it sounds they add to the game.

[Aralez]

Had my first alien base mission, here the result:

https://images6.pictiger.com/thumbs/14/d479d8b2b4bf088a1acca4ca5c72b014.th.jpg

 

Yep, you see 3000+ alien alloys. After selling all the stuff from this base i was 9 millions richer.

 

Saw my first mutons, Celatoids, Silacoids and Cyberdisks, unlike the Snakemen and Chryssalids they are similar to their PC Xcom brothers, only a tad deadlier. No wait, the cyberdisks are weaker, they do have no reaction-fire as it seems. But they are deadlier in "active" mode.

 

So far no other alien has joined my ranks, but the civilian attacks continue. In the next mission i will bring a stunrod with me to get rid of those stalkers

 

Chris, the Chrysalid sergeant, has learned to throw grenades, he's invaluable, his high speed combined with a load of AP make him an awesome scout/assassin. In the base mission he killed ~10 Sectoids and 2 Cyberdisks, without any gun, only grenades and his speed were used.

 

Destroyed a base, lost a base. A new alien base has been discovered. This time i can use Blaster Launchers...

[Bomb Bloke]

My guess is the game gets confused as to which units are on which side when civilians get thrown in the mix. Or perhaps it's just a terror mission thing, I dunno. I do know that even if Chysallids join your side in the original UFO (and I'm pretty sure you can arrange this thanks to an in-game exploit concerning mind control and zombies), they won't come back to base with you.

 

Also in the original, when you complete a base mission the amount of alloys you take home are equal to the amount in the map - Divided by 150. It's a division of 10 when facing a UFO. Whether the difference is intentional or not I dunno... You'd expect bases to give more alloys then they do, but without the high division you get enough out of one base to last you a game and then some...

[Aralez]

Hmm, now after losing one of my bases and seeing the higher costs of everything, i'd guess they made it on purpose. Maybe the civilian attacks are a feature, too? I remember that 2 regions were "dissapointed with my performance" in the monthly report, maybe you get attacked in Pocket UFO when you have a terror mission in such a region?

 

Hmmm, nah, don't think so, it feels more like a bug.

 

As for the Chryssalid, i didn't have any PSI stuff yet, so i think you are right about the game getting confused. What was strange was the fact that the Chryssalid couldn't use any weapons in his first mission (he could activate grenades but not throw them etc) but seem to have learned to use them now.

 

A thought, what happens if a zombie gets accidently hit by an alien weapon and dies, does the newborn Chryssalid maybe change his loyalty then? I have seen/heard quite lot of Alien suicides (accidents) in Pocket UFO, especially with grenades.

 

That would maybe explain why they weren't used by the Aliens in such a big scale in the original game. Perhaps Microprose saw the problem and decreased the usage probability of grenades?

[Bomb Bloke]

I'd recommend noting down anything you consider a bug. If you can work out what conditions cause them I'm sure the developers would appreciate the info.

 

In the usual game units improve with each mission (Depending on what they actions they take - Mind control attempts, for example, increase psi skill). So maybe he's gained stats he wouldn't normally have, the lack of which prevented him from throwing stuff?

 

Check out his stat sheet and see if it reveals anything. The original version marks off how much each one has improved, with any luck this one does as well.

 

It's... possible... that friendly fire got you your new unit, but I doubt it. It's easier coding wise to say "let all new Chryssalids be aliens" then it is to say "let all new Chryssalids be on the team opposite to the one that spawned them". The extra work involved would make it seem more then likely that the "bug" was intentional.

 

As for the grenade thing, I'm not sure... Aliens are bright enough not to kill themselves with Blaster Bombs, but they do often frag themselves (or perhaps just other aliens?) with grenades. An easy "fix" would be to limit their usage, but it may just be that aliens only like to use them against groups of targets or something (though they could easily afford to use them against lone agents, this would make the game a lot harder!).

 

Incidently, Mythos made UFO after Microprose rejected their initial offering (Laser Squad). TFTD was a Microprose game (as Mythos wanted to create a true sequel, not just a rehash, Microprose took over in order to make a quicker buck). Luckily the original creaters were involved in the third title (though even that was rushed out the door unfinished).

[Aralez]

Yes, i will compile a list of bugs after i finished the game. Atm, i encountered my first floaters (my second allien base mission), they are (compared to the original game) tougher, more accurate and throw grenades. Still, Snakemen are far more evil. The Rippers are still useless

 

Sectoids are pathetic, they can't hit the broad side of a barn and the PSI attacks are rather seldom.

 

The game crashes sometimes when entering a mission or when loading a saved mission during a mission. Oh well.

 

Gonna finish my base mission later, i'm curious how many stuff i earn this time. The base is very big and there are a lot of those gark grey alien entertainment tiles, more than in any base i have seen in the original, must be the Disney World of the Aliens

 

p.s. Yes the Chryssalid improved a LOT, see here:

https://images7.pictiger.com/thumbs/e8/a89b1af9d3dcab33fea2bb3f9513dbe8.th.jpg

However, he seems to have lost some of his APs.

[Aralez]

Sorry for not posting, but my Samsung HD died and i lost all the game stuff on it. Luckily i had backups of the important stuff. This was the second HD crash for me. I once lost a Maxtor 40 GB and now the Samsung.

 

Oddly my very old Western Digital HD works without problems, albeit those are considered to be unreliable by some people. Well, not by me.

 

I bought a Hitachi 320 GB HD now, i hope it is a good one (*knocks on wood*)

[Slaughter]

Sorry to hear that! Luckily I never had a HD crash *holds breath*. I've been very happy with IBM disks back in the days. WD has also been good. The Hitachi I've had in my Notebook is good too.

 

On a related note we (Dell that is) has started selling flash based harddrives, so the days of crashes may be coming to an end.

[Knan]

Right. We'll still have electronics' self-destructive tendencies to deal with. And flash wears out, after a certain number of overwrites. You'd be surprised at how quickly that can happen, considering windows swapfiles and such.

 

Not to mention careless throwing of thunderbolts by Zeus, Thor and their ilk, always amused to see puny humans and their works scattering.

[Aralez]

IBM and Hitachi, thanks, Slaughter will keep that in mind for the future Knan, now that you mention it, there was a heavy thunderstorm here some days ago....

 

Anyway, i have to admit i was amazed to see how stable and fast the XP installation was.

 

14:00 My HD dies, i go to buy a new one.

14:45 I have a new HD and arrive at home.

15:45 I do send first emails with a fresh XP.

17:00 Everything is back at normal (minus the games)

 

I remember my first Win95 installation, back then it took a whole day with two people, because of the many errors and hardware problems. Microsoft really improved here drastically, have to give them that.

 

FWIW: I managed to get the Samsung HD to work again (as a slave drive) and could recover the rest of my data!

But i removed it asap from my PC, i know that it had cluster-errors (the last warnings told me so) and i simply do not trust it anymore.

 

A question: Does anybody use the S.M.A.R.T. function of the HDs? I saw that it wasn't enabled on mine, but i am afraid to break something when enabling it in the BIOS. Any experiences?

[Knan]

Enable it! It catches somewhere between 1 out of 10 and 1 out of 3 disk failures, a little time before they happen. (But 2 out of 3 failures still happen without warning.)

 

If SMART says your disk is dying, believe it. The manufacturers do, and replace the disk if it's under warranty, even if it's still technically working.

 

https://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/ ... also recommended. I've contributed a little bit to it.

 

Yes, I'm a professional sysadmin. Why do you ask?

[Aralez]

Gee thanks! Downloaded the tools and will enable the function in the BIOS!

https://www.cheesebuerger.de/smiliegenerator/ablage/351/327.png

[Slaughter]

I replace harddrives more or less on a daily basis thanks to S.M.A.R.T, so I agreed

[Aralez]

https://www.cheesebuerger.de/smiliegenerator/ablage/351/371.png

[Azrael Strife]

That the first time you reinstalled XP? wow, I've reinstalled it like 10 times throughout the years And yeah, big improvement over the old Win95/98, practically self-installs and configures, it's real nice.

[Slaughter]

If you like the XP installation, you'll be AMAZED at the Vista installation! It is image based, and thus quite a bit faster. In addition you make all your choices in the start, and then come back to the PC installed and ready to go. It is neat! (though Linux distros has had this for 10 years or more...)

[Aralez]

Yes, this was the first time i reinstalled XP on my PC. This was the most stable OS i ever had. It started as a small XP with only SP1 installed and my old graphiccard and modem and joystick. And all the time it never failed, during all the updates. Albeit a soundcard driver update (wrong version) almost messsed it completely up. Back then i had to use the repair function.

I am a bit afraid of Vista, though, because of the decrease in performance. And because of "Never change a winning team"

 

So for now i bought a XP Home Edition with SP2. The OS from above was a recovery disk system only, so the death of the HD meant the death of the OS, too.

[Bomb Bloke]

Although it's Dos support comes and goes, the Home version is neutered beyond use, and the default setup wastes a lot of system power, I've come to quite like XP. Haven't yet needed to re-install it on my own computer (despite the replacement of just about every part except the main HDD over the past few years).

 

That said, I hated the early versions, and I still think the 9x series was superior in a couple of ways (ScanDisk has been destroyed since then, for example, and modern versions of Windows are a lot less tolerant of faulty hardware). Don't think much of Vista at the moment either, really, but with time it'll be patched to a state where it's indisputably the best Windows based choice for a modern PC.

[Aralez]

Yes, scandisk is useless now. And XP does not run certain older Windows games (Chaos Gate, Xcom Apocalypse etc) but still it is the most stable OS i ever had.

 

Anyway, i reinstalled Pocket UFO v.1.26 and so far no bugs, no crashes, no odd behaviour! I wonder if the file got corrupted last time and if my faulty HD caused the problems?

 

But the difficulty level is still extreme, I'm 2 1/2 months in the game, already lost one (interceptor) base, had a base defense mission and there are already 2 alien bases visible. There were 2 terror missions i could not reach because the skyranger had not enough range and the funds are dropping and dropping...

[Bomb Bloke]

I thought the SkyRanger could fly just about anywhere. It's got a greater distance capability then any craft in the game, doesn't it?

[Aralez]

In Pocket UFO the Skyranger can fly ~45% around the earth, the Interceptors ~25%. This is one of the things they copied from the XcomUtil changes i guess. Unluckily both the terror missions were in the unreachable areas, grr.

 

Which reminds me to take my daily dose of Pocket Ufo now!