Expedition bother

[Preda]

Good day once again, for it is I.

 

I'm going to get to the point. I've been playing since yesterday, 'cause that's when I got the gme. The Grey's expedition has landed, and has decided that I am not to their liking. Two hotspots have appeared, in addition to one be the Beasts. One has env hostility greater than what I can take. I started communicating with the greys, as soon as they landed. I am required to break the old treaty with the rebels, but when I click the break button, nothing seems to happen.

 

Will the Expedition accept peace if I defend my territories? And why can't I break the treay. Will I lose the two alien soldiers if I do that?

 

Oh, one more thing: Of the three hotspots that exist in my territory, I can fight in none. The Expedition troops are way too powerful, and kill my troops before I can get a visual. As for the Beasts, well... They're called Alchemists, but those grenades make them more like the Wg Power armour in terms of versatility.

 

Good to be back.

[Charon]

I guess you will be able to make an alliance with the expedition even if you defend your territories. However I've not done that - I simply broke alliance with rebel Rets and attacked them. This allowed me to make an alliance with the expedition and they peacefully retreated from my land to their base No need to fight.

 

If you attack rebel rets you will lose two greys they sent to you at the beginning of the game. But you'll get 3 greys from the expedition instead, wich is a bonus for me since 2 of them have scientific skills.

 

About tactics against your alchemists and rets - RUN FAST.

Give some guys katanas or shotguns, run close to alchemist/ret and that's it

For rets 1 katana/shotgun hit is usually enough. Alchemists are a bit tougher but still not a big problem if you keep moving aroung instead of waiting for the approaching grenade with an open mouth

[Kret]

Welcome back Breda err, Preda (sorry, I really felt like bringing back that mistake of mine).

 

Anyway, to breakup and alliance/peace status with a given faction it's not enough to just click on the corresponding button, but you have to actually attack a territory of the faction. Many people have claimed that it doesn't say this anywhere in the manual or game, but in fact, if you leave the tutorial tips on you will see a text that does say so.

 

Now, dealing with reticulans. Early on I depend on grenades for several reasons:

[-]Reticulans are weak against explosives
[-]Explosives guarantee a knockdown of any reticulans caught near the center of the explosion
[-]Explosives hit several targets at the same time and reticulans tend to bunch up.
[-]Explosives aren't affected by the 'low target profile' that makes reticulans hard to hit with aimed weaponry

 

Once you develope shotguns and grenade launchers you can use these in tandem, by having half or your troops bombard the locations of reticulans and the other half storm in with shotguns to finish them off before they get up.

If you can use drones, then they work quite well as decoys while revealing enemy positions, but they won't stand much reticulan laser fire.

Reticulans are hard to spot, except for another well trained scouting reticulan.

 

As for the BM Alchemists, there's some options to deal with them:

[-]Speed. Keep your troops moving and attack the alchemists at close range while they reload.
[-]Resilience. Boost the HP of your troops (minor toughness) and put them in heavy suits. You will rarely see someone get knocked down from an explosion in one of these.
[-]Stability. If you train your stroops in the minor and then the major of this training your troops should resist the shockwave even in the lightest suits.

 

I tend to use the 1st two options as I have never needed the 3rd. Also, you can use your own grenades against the alchemist to knock him over to get some breathing space between it's attacks.

[Preda]

So, status report, I guess:

 

Right, then. I am progressing faster than I anticipated. I am now facing those b****y Matriarchs and have discovered that my heavy armour suits no longer do the job. Do lasers work against the Beasts?

 

Also, how long until I can use the Beastly weapons? I've interrogated both the commander and the shaman. What else?

 

Buzzsaw launchers are fun. I had quite a few laughs against those plant bastards.

 

Can humans use psi weapons? I hear that you need a Ret to interrogate for that, but I only had one mission with that objective and got beaten up bad by those little albino dolphins. Then I switched to drones and began applying a 'kill every Ret' ideology on every mission.

 

I want a Ret battle armour, but those might as well be made out of the wood of the True Cross for how hard they are to get. The expedition wouldn't offer one even at gunpoint, so HOW?

 

As I stated above, those blue suits are getting beaten, but I don't have a level 4 Chemical flow ATM. How can I get more chemicals, now that one of my mines is under attack from a Beastman legion of Hell, armed to the teeth (do they have any?) with cannons and big guns and damn near impervious to Ute and Benat's shotgun blasts, with the only decent way to get them being the use Diego's warp cannon(s) before a Matriarch starts pummeling him into the newly-terraformed Martian soil.*pant*pant*

 

And another thing: Am I supposed to go into space AGAIN? Will it turn out that phobos or the other sattelite are 2 dormant mymecols that have been arm-wrestling(?!) eachother for the past millenia? No, waint, don't tell me, I don't want no spoilers (I'm serious, spoil me and youi're dead)

 

Will radar stations prevent attacks on my installations?

 

Hmm, I'll think about something else to rant for my next post, but 'till then, answer these questions for me please. And thnak you for reading my mindless babble to this point...............................Here.

 

EDIT: Right, I've got something: don't spoil me, but will those reinforcements from Earth be of any actual use (like high level people, or more warp?)

 

And another thing: I've captured quite a few of the Martian artifacts, but none can be researched. What gives?

[Kret]

Ok, no spoilers.

 

Lasers against Beastmen? Yes, specially against the Matriarchs, get them ASAP. Until then, you can lob grenades at the feet of Matriarchs and while it won't do much damage, they will be spending a lot more time dropping to the floor and getting up than shooting at your troops.

 

To unlock ALL Beastmen weapons for use you need to capture and interrogate the lowest of beasmen, the soldier. The capture missions are somewhat bugged, but you should eventually get another go at capturing one, so keep an eye out for those missions.

 

Only reticulans can use psionic weapons in this game, altho there's a mod that adds psionic training for humans that would allow them to do so if you're interested for a future game. The exception to this rule is psionic warhead reticulan rockets, but the ammount of damage they deal is actually related to reticulans psionic skill level which humans lack an thus will cause very little damage if they use it.

 

You should try to develope the next heavy armour suit that offers little enviromental protection but improved combat protection, particulary against projectiles.

 

For expedition battle suits you'll need to have some martian EMP grenades aswell as some human made EMP grenades. Not something easy to adquire.

 

As for chemicals, you seem allied with the expedition, then you should be able to take the territory south of your base that is owned by rebels for a 'yellow' chemical deposit, that plus the 'blue' chemical deposits found SW and NE of your base should bring your level up to 3. From here you'll be needing either 2 yellow mines or 4 blue mines (or a 1y + 2b mix). Unfortunately, you'll have to fight your way to the other side of the planet if you want to reach the best chemical resources. Your best option is to upgrade your current mines to advanced mine types (double output), but it can only be done after reaching a certain terraforming level. You could go further south into reticulan rebel territory in search of more chemicals as I haven't scouted their territories well.

 

The basic radar won't stop raids made against your territory, but it will increase the "life time" of the mission which gives you more time to prepare for it if your troops are badly injured. The upgraded radar stations do have a chance of destroying hostile forces that try to attack that territory. You will be informed in the log about such events.

 

The 2nd reinforcement ship seems to take longer to reach mars and it is a key element for completing the game. Other that this... well, you'll find out, but focus more on what you can produce yourself rather than what Earth can send you.

 

Could you specify what martian artifacts? I wan't to make sure what you're talking about before I start wrting about something that might spoil it too much for you.

[Preda]

Dear God, but I haven't seen a beastman soldier in (game) moths! I only find chiefs, captains, matties and shamans and alchemists now. I still have a few capture missions around. Is it certain that one of them will have a soldier to capture? If not, I fear I will need to mod the savedgames. Can that be done?

 

As for the artifacts... I'll look at the names and tell you.

[Kret]

Keep trying, one will eventually target a BM soldier. Don't worry too much if you don't complete all research topics before winning the game. I don't think many players managed that the 1st time round (I know I didn't).

[Preda]

Well, I want to try...

 

Anyway, I DID get a beast soldier to puke the facts, so that part of the problem is down.

 

I need to know another thing, however: do I need to interrogate a reticulan? I have all sorts of related technologies, but I can't remember if I interrogated one. Give me one of the technologies it unlocks, please. Power sources? Laser principles?

[Kret]

Only the rebel reticulan commander is required for a research topic and it's a dead end topic that doesn't unlock anything.

[Preda]

I've taken over a territory with a large base, but at most it was easier than other ret missions. Isn't that their main base? It was south of my base, and pretty close by.

 

What's that research called? I want them all, but I can't find another ret capture mission.

 

I've researched Mars inhabitants, and they said something about myrmecols, but those were never mentioned until then, so how could Ramirez know of them?r

 

Thses are the Martian artifacts: UW696, RP771 and NE 106. How do I research them?

 

And another thing: I got a message saying that a new special mission is available, but I found none. I think I lost that mission with the martian hostage. Did that one hold any importance?

 

Last question: Can we modify saved game files with that tool that worked on the other 2 games?

[Kret]

Yes, territories with a special structure in them are home base to the corresponding faction. You'll find one for each one of them. Unfortunately, the missions that you can get in them are standard missions except for one faction (I won't reveal which one).

 

The research that requires a reticulan rebel commander is "Psionic Healing"

 

Remember that at the beginning of the game you shared data with Earth. Some info should be available from the Laputa about the myrmecol.

 

You can't research those items individually, but with all 3 of them you should be able to research 'martian written language'.

 

The rescue hostage mission is not important for completing the game, but it does gain you another alien you can use for the cause.

 

There's a couple of special missions. Check the top left of the globe view, just bellow the date counter. Do you notice any new button there? It only appears after completing a required research.

 

Yes, you can extract and repack the contents of the savegames with any of the available vfs tools. Just remember to make a copy first and that savegames require that the MD5 Checksum be recalculated after repacking.

[Preda]

Well, I've got 'moon mission'.

 

Can the game be edited to give me another go at that rescue mission? I really want all the researches. Of course, it would be best is someone else did it... I lack proficiency with those tools.

 

I've already done the martian language research... funny, I never noticed.

[Kret]

That moon mission is one of the special missions you can get. If you click on it you should either have a confirmation window about going to one of the moons or a warning about lacking the required UFO improvement that you get from a research..

 

It should be possible, there's 3 flags (one for each rescue) that are marked as TRUE once the mission is generated. If we change these to FALSE it should be enough to make the game regenerate the corresponding missions. Note that this could risk crashing the game if any of the missions are still active on the globe.

[Preda]

There is no need. The mission spontaneously regenerated, and I now have Olive(?) in my squad.

 

The Reticulans are down to only 2 territories from what I can see, although there might be a few more behind those. Any chance that I will get that mission? If not, I will send you the files for editing (if you want to, of course).

[Kret]

It seems that you can adquire up to 3 martians from rescue missions and you only have 1 go at each rescue attempt. They probably kill the alien after some sort of interrogation. I think you've completed the 2nd rescue but not the 1st.

 

I don't mind checking your savegame and editing now that I know where to look for the flags. I'll PM later with contact details.