The Challange(s you can invent)

[Windwalker]

Hello everyone. Me and my 15 year friend have returned to glorious game that is TFTD. We are having great fun while drinking and playing it. Last time an accident destroyed the stairs leading to second floor of a building in a terror mission, but luckily there was a high-ground near the second floor. (The island terror site, big building) We planted an explosive (thank god we brought that magna-pack) to destroy the wall and brave Hernandez who had cleared the first floor (and the stairs) with point blank Gas Cannon HE shots, dived in and proceeded her killing spree. Unfortunately, she was killed by a reaction shot from the sneakiest of all the Gill Man ever encountered, who was (literally) hiding inside a wardrobe.

 

Anyway, we are having lots of fun, so I am revisiting this great place... along with other places like wiki's. What my dangerously imaginative mind came up with was to invent new ways to make the game even more challanging (why?) and my very first idea is to complete the game without using any kind of alien technology in combat. Obviously, some research will have to be done to finish the game, but imagine never using a sonic cannon, sonic pulser, DPL, molecular control etc. Never ion armor, never mag ion armor... No displacer, not thermal shok launchers...

 

Is it possible? I want to try it but... Seems I need someone to push me for the very first step and create a new game.

 

Also on the subject, are there any mods, or other ways to toy with the games mechanics like enemy stats, enemy appearance rates, enemy sub combat / carry capacity, but most importantly, enemy AI behaviour?

 

Any other challanges you believe worth mentioning?

[Space Voyager]

Well, since you are already drinking and playing... The more you drink, the bigger the challenge.

[chiasaur11]

Technically, it should be possible. Barely.

 

Someone beat T'leth with only stun rods, magna packs, and gas cannons.

 

It was apparently a bit nightmarish.

[NKF]

I don't think I'd do well in one, but how about a drill challenge? Use them to solve every problem except destroying objects that they cannot destroy. Namely the synonium devices or the batteries for the sleeper's coffin in T'Leth (pick up or stow away a weapon for these).

 

I imagine it would be quite a hellish challenge to lose the ability to react and stop some attacks before they happen (crazy lobstermen, tentaculats, hallucinoids, etc)

 

- NKF

[silencer_pl]

Without armor you won't get far in the last level. There are aliens galore - deep ones, halucinoids, lobsterman , tentaculats will eat you. You could dispose deep ones and halucinoids with magma blasts - but lobsters are too tough and mag ion will give you comfort against their pincer attack.

 

I presume that you will not even get to the T'leth. By refusing to use any alien weapons you will have to use stun rods to get commander and navigator - and mostly you will want it from colony missions.

 

Although satisfaction of achieving such goal would be great, but I think the pain to get through will be too high.

[NKF]

Lobstermen would indeed by the biggest obstacle to a human-tech challenge (even if you did include Gauss weapons). They can still be prodded with tazers, and finished off with a magna-blast dropped on their bodies.

 

Everything else however will fall to enough GC-HE rounds and Magna-Pack's. Ideal for tentaculats, as they're surprisingly weak vs. explosives.

 

- NKF

[MhBlis]

I can testify that if would be nightmare but it is something you can do. Lobstermen will be an issue. If you do go human tech only get a tank and also make sure that all your guys are spread out but in pairs that walk 2 squares apart. Also spend the the first turn before even leaving the sub priming two grens and putting one in your backpack.

 

Don't play on anything beyond Veteran but even that will most likley end in failure.

[Windwalker]

Thank you guys! thank you!

 

Besides, I would like to apologize for rushing in with questions without having a good look at the forums first. I have located several similar posts and the path they lead me was great. I found many great tools and mods but did not have the chance to fire up dosbox to use them. My 64 bit win 7 was being a bitch about not running them.

 

Anyway, since you said the magic words "nightmare but possible" I decided to dedicate my useless life to something meaningfull and start doing it. I will try to take screenshots, saves and report them back in a post here in the forum. I hope it will be a worthy challange. Needles to say, I will play on superhuman, with human tech only, except for neccessary researches to finish the game.

 

I can already feel the thrill (and the fear) and I can foresee some serious changes in my gameplay. I believe I will be able to get some additional money for selling every equipment once I research them. I also foresee I will need some capable man and women to properly handle torpedo launchers, and throw magna packs.

 

Can some experienced veteran enlighten me more about how the flames work? And I need one more confirmation (I can try this one out but it would take time) can torpedos breach walls and/or uso walls? I am positive on magna pack destroying walls in teror missions.

 

Stun rods will be handy I presume... Also as someone mentioned, I may prepare some primed magna-pack carrier suicide bombers for some tough enemies... would be costly, but also may come in handy.

 

Oh god I am about to fill my pants... I was just imagining an alien colony in my head and trying to get my man to the central elevator room... oh god... oh god!

[NKF]

You don't actually have to visit any colonies to win the game, if that's any consolation. Just find a Lobsterman Commander from any other ship that carries a Commander, and you're all set. You can even get them in base attacks, at least I've met one in Superhuman.

 

As for flames: In short, fire damage is weird.

 

The short of it is:

 

weapon strength = how large the blast area only. Basically all incendiary/phosphor weapons do the same damage.

 

Impact damage = 0 or 5 - 10 damage (and unit catches fire), also affects every unit standing in flames. X-Com units(only) standing in smoke will take stun damage.

 

Ending turn in fire = 1 - 12 damage

 

Flames sticking to unit = 5 - 10 damage per turn (per flame for large units). Also will last 1 - 5 rounds.

 

Taken from:

 

https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Incendiary

 

 

- NKF

[silencer_pl]

The only good part in your challenge is that you didn't mention Ironman mode

[Windwalker]

Ironman mode? What is that? Is there something like that?

 

I followed the link for the fire and it's effects, valuable information there... But it's all for EU. Perhaps most (if not all) are also true for TFTD.

 

Will start today. Wish me luck (oceans worth of luck)

[Bomb Bloke]

Ironman is where you simply do not reload the game unless you're required to for technical or scheduling reasons (eg, the computer crashes, or you had to stop playing to go to work etc).

 

That is to say, when your squad gets hit with a disruptor pulse on the first alien turn, you don't reload... you buy a new Triton, a new squad, and you carry on.

 

Some players take it as granted that this is how one should play the game, but even those who would usually accept the odd loss are tempted to go for the reload button when half their squad bites it. Then there are those who reload whenever any soldier goes down.

 

TFTD is basically EU with knobs on. The numbers won't always match up, but most of the technical effects (eg zombie hatching) are the same between games.

[Space Voyager]

Sooo... nobody likes the drinking challenge?

[Windwalker]

Of course I will not reload in case of a disaster! If so, where is the sense of challange? It's obvious with enough (too the number may be too high) number of reloads, you can come out of almost every situation, espeically if you are saving on different slots.

 

Don't know... I never reloaded even my best men died when I played years ago. We didn't reload when Hernandez died either... we were very sorry, especially my friend since he was holding the mouse and gave the order to move that particularly nasty spot where the gill-man reaction-killed her. And before that, we both were in love with her as he did some magic juggling with HE gas cannon ammo in a very confined space, making carefull aim and calculations of blast radius to kill an enemy in cellar, and two more in dining hall, saving another aquanaut who was left without TU's and in front of aliens in the process. (Hence the destruction of the stairs) And we were talking about her, how we were going to promote her and how she was going to get the first of all equipment. She was going to be our special love...

 

Then she died... Two stories above the kitchen she slaughtered three aliens, and one story above where she killed another one. Her kill per bullet ratio was over 1.0! And she died...

 

That night, with the help of some alcohol, we couldn't do anything but talk about her and her ceremony... We sent to various friends SMS messages and facebook sendings saying "Hernandez died." Nobody understood what that meant, especially in the 3:00 AM of the night... But we did not reload. She was dead. Gone. Thats why the game was so good and why we were still playing it after all these years, instead of fancy 3d games.

[MhBlis]

Take screen shots and write it out as a story. So each mission is written from the view point of the squad.

ala

Like This Jimmy's on the list

[Windwalker]

I already did the first mission, with a very-below-average skills squad. Got two of them killed in an extremely nasty situation. I have taken some screenshots, however I feel I missed alot of good stuff going on. I will try to write a walkthrough-ish post which will undoubtedly lead to my ultimate demise, but it will be an honor to challange the game like that and... die horribly...

[Windwalker]

Allright, first trial was a disaster. But not because of no-alien tech approach. Because of several differences I noticed of the version I play now with the one I played before...

 

My Coelecanth has 100 TU's, and my Gauss weapons do not require any ammunition. When I noticed that I just decided to go and find my old cd back. And I did! Boy it's old, and there are lots of scrapes on it but it still works. As a result I will have to start again because there is no challange in unlimited gauss clip size, and the ultimate spotter machine. So this re-start has nothing to do with the unlucky incident of a gill-men throwing incredibly destructive sonic pulser on my triton and killing half the squad waiting inside for deployment. (after surviving three grenades... I have an avi file of this special specimen... I will ty to share...) And another cannon wielder sniping my only man with 50+ accuracy.

 

This version seems to come with a dos-box backbone and has the options to take screenshots, record a video and create an album with the screenshots you take. It also handles some dos-box properties like screen size and format. Also includes all the manuals, and has the EU too. But it seems whoever did this also went ahead and modded the game to make it easier/more balanced. Added to what I wrote above, I also noticed my triton has a weapon slot on it. And the equipment screen remembers which aquanaut has which weapon from the last mission.

 

Does anyone know about this version? Is it good? What else it offers? How can I keep the equipment screen fix without the rebalancing mods?

 

Thanks.

[Jman4117]

The 100TU tanks, unlimited gauss ammo and weapons on the Triton sound like xcomutil has been installed. What executable are you using to start the game? Is it the default one or the batch file that xcomutil makes? As far as I know you should be back to normal if you start from the original terror.com if xcomutil is what is messing it up.

[Bomb Bloke]

I'm pretty sure many of those changes, once in there, won't go away if you just use a different executable - though it's certainly true that many of them will've been implemented by XCU.

 

Just installing XCU doesn't do all that, though, you have to specifically tell it what you want. It can also be used to make the game much harder.

[NKF]

A plain vanilla copy of the game is preferable. One option you could try is to get the v2 patch and install it over your copy. That'll provide you with clean executables untouched by XComutil. You may however be left with the 'expanded' Hammerhead and Leviathan maps, and the clipless gauss weapons.

 

Another option (which you may want to combine with the above) is to get the latest 'beta' verison of XComutil, install it over your current copy and then run its installation program.

 

The latest beta release does a good job of undoing most of the extra stuff it adds to the game (and hopefully older versions), and leaves only the necessary fixes like UFO's difficult bug fix. It then lets you pick which of the XComutil mods you'd like to have installed, so you can pick some of the less gameplay-influencing features like auto-naming.

 

- NKF

[Windwalker]

I still have the CD, so I think I will make a new install on my PC, than install XcomUtil over it and just keep the equipment fix, if it's possible. Although in truth I have doubts that my aquanauts will have a high survival rate so it wont make a difference.

 

But first I will take NKF's advice and try to see what my options are.

[MhBlis]

You could actually just have a copy that used some of the other editing programs around. If thats true you're going to run into all sorts of issues if they didnt do it properly.

 

I'd say go for a clean copy and edit it yourself then you know what is going on.

[silencer_pl]

Sooo... nobody likes the drinking challenge?

 

Don't bet on drinking with Poles and Russians

[Jman4117]

A drinking challenge would be awesome if you recorded it for youtube. Every dead aquanaut, you take a shot...

[silencer_pl]

Yeah but before you run the game you should warm up and have at least 5 in you