Need Afterlight Advice

[The Veteran]

Ok so my recent playthrough of Aftershock has been pretty well documented, now it's the turn of Afterlight.

 

I have to say I've got off to a pretty good start with this one, it seems very different to both Aftermath and Aftershock, a good think considering my serious dislike of the latter... It's immediately obvious from as early as the main menu that this game takes itself rather less seriously than it's predecessors with brighter colours and somewhat cartoony graphics. I like that, it takes me back to the happy days I spent playing Evil Genius

 

In the main game I was instantly hit by the size of Mars, very small compared to Earth in the previous games with some pretty huge looking territories. Mars IS smaller than earth anyway so that does make sense but I'm guessing the number of territories is probably fairly similar between this and Aftermath given that the oceans on earth cover 2/3 of the planet!

 

The base screen is pretty nice, clearly following the same style as the rest of the game in appearance, and personnel management is made simple and easy despite it playing a pretty large part in the game. Research is all dealt with on one screen, a vast improvement over Aftershock, and it's easy to assign topics and also to predict where they will lead in time. Production behaves very competently but is also very simple to manage making pretty much every aspect of this game's interface fairly intuitive.

 

The tactical segments also look pretty good and although there's still an element of repetition involved it makes sense here as we're on Mars! There are still multiple map types to play on though which is always good fun and they all look pretty great, improved no end by the large screen resolutions (replacing the single option in AS) and a massive zoom capacity which literally shows the whole field of battle at once.

 

Soldier controls are pretty unchanged and so far even the pathfinding has been behaving itself so perhaps Altar have finally spent some time on that front too! All in all I was pretty entertained by this game as I sat down to 'conquer' Mars and I whittled away a few hours shooting robots and building Geosondes and such.

 

Then there was a warp gate and some beastmen came out, fine so now I kill them and robots. Even with basic projectile weapons and no armour at all these folks were pretty easy. Until now...

 

So this is where my request for help and advice comes in. I'm totally on top of the game mechanics but I'm after some pointers from people who have played the game already. It seems every time I come across an issue I find a way to resolve it only for it to be replaced with another issue. My problems started with a 'kill single unit' mission in which a Beastman Captain was the intended target. He was the first beastman I'd seen that wasn't red and he thrashed me...

 

Of course this is where the first black mark comes into play for Afterlight. With no reinforcements available (from anywhere at all it seems) I've been reloading like crazy since I ran into this guy. I even left the game alone for a whole day yesterday as I couldn't think of a way to get past the guy in my current state.

 

Just to clarify the guy was up on a gangway hocking grenades at me. I've experimented with Drones already and they turned out to be a complete liability with low-tech components so my squad is just the original 4 troop with rifles. As a query, why is it that my Drone went up 3 levels in one mission but I never got to allocate any level up points for him? Is that normal?

 

So anyway, I came back to the game with a clear head and decided I should take the high ground so I stormed to platform directly above the Captain's last know position. Sadly he wasn't there, but the good news is he was down at ground level when I finally did catch up with him so even better! I figure 4 rifles on automatic fire from 2 stories up would make mincemeat of the guy while his grenades would be unable to reach that high...

 

So that plan didn't work out. Apparently he can fire with 100% accuracy even under intense weapons fire and 2 stories below my troops...

 

Anyway next tactic was to storm the guy so I charged all 4 troopers right up to him and went full-auto on his face (that is not to say I wrote a detailed account of it but rather rapidly inserted bullets into it) He still managed to knock out 2 of my guys on the way to him but the survivors ripped him to shreds before polishing off his bodyguards.

 

Job done.

 

I decided it was time for new weapons and armour at this point as I figure this guy must be the beginning of the next tier of enemies. So I stopped my expansion and cracked on with some R&D. Something strange happened at this point which I hope someone can explain to me. The Reticulans offered to give me 'Noble Metal 1' in exchange for 'crystals 1'. That confused me as I thought the former was a research option while the latter is a resource. I accepted but nothing changed... So what exactly did I agree to here?

 

Anyway, now I've got some good progress being made in the labs but not enough that I can actually do much about it. I'm on the way to better armour and I was thinking about trying out sniper rifles but neither are quite ready yet. I can manufacture snipers now (in theory) but I need 'precision engineering' first and I'm not sure what that is. IS it research or is it a skill that my tech guys can have? Either way I don't see it as an option anywhere so no sniper rifles... On top of this I can now mak LS ammo and heavy ammo for my projectile weapons but the blurb on the heavy stuff says it deals 'normal projectile damage'. Exactly the same as is said of the normal ammo I've been using up to now. So what's the difference? And more specifically, what's the point?

 

I've done 1 training program towards suitwearing but need to do the next one before they can all wear heavy armour, got a few researches left before manufacture starts anyway... Another thing that's really PO'd me today is the fact that soldiers can't use medkits... Like EVER... What? So I have to bring a technician along into a warzone just so he can maneouvre a medical implement into a port on the troopers space suits? It's not open heart surgery is it? He doesn't even need to find a vein! Just point and click, something all soldiers are pretty good at! Is there any mod to allow soldiers to use medkits as personally that's a game breaker for me. Also can the toolkit be used to fix broken spacesuits? And does that have to be a techie too? I haven't tried yet so I'll ask here instead!

 

Right so there's a whole handful of things that are bugging me so far, this last one is the doozy though and I really hope I can do something about it (like a rebalance mod?)

 

The level I'm in now is to defend the first warpgate against yet another beastman attack. This time they have the big guns though and I can't keep my people in the green long enough to finish everyone off. Or at least I couldn't, I managed it in the end but then ran out of ammo... 300 rounds gone and mission still failed...

 

Based on my best estimate, I'm facing 5 alchemists, 2 shamans, 5 beastmen and a staggering 3 captains in this one mission. Ok, ok, 3 is not a 'staggering' number, but they're captains for crying out loud! Is it because I've killed all of their grunts so they have to send out squads consisting purely of officer material now?

 

Needless to say, all of the alchemists have grenade launchers and no matter where I go all three of them can somehow see me (probably those pesky smell detectors...) One of my troops is down to 75% red health with a broken suit so it's just a matter of time till I lose her and like I said, everyone is running out of ammo!

 

I'm down to the last 3 alchemists (I hope) and I was pretty successful in an attempt to charge them but I ran out of ammo so game over for me... Now I'm looking to miss the mission entirely because I just can't do it with the equipment available to me. I can't heal my troops without taking a technician along with me and even then he'll have to complete the training first. I can give the guys more ammo but then I'll still have to start the mission over and it doesn't guarantee victory. I can't lose any troops so it's a case of constant reloading when anyone dies...

 

I've only played a tiny bit of this game today and I've already had enough. If this was a real conflict, the Beastmen would crap all over this handful of humans and that would be it...

 

Are here any tactics I'm missing here? Is the sniper rifle worth having? Can I ever heal my soldiers without a bleedin techie? Will England ever win another world cup? Well, no... But seriously, advice on the other queries above would be great!

[yeni]

As someone who found Strategy Core while looking for Afterlight mods, let me see what i can answer for you..

 

** Minor Spoilers May Appear In This Post **

 

Reinforcements: you start with 12 humans that can run as soldiers (4 pure soldier, 4 soldier/science, 4 soldier/tech) - there will be a few more people who can join later, but the most i know of (aside from the drones) is only 9 more possible troopers, 5 of which will be pure soldiers.

 

A grenade throwing enemy is dangerous until you get decent midrange armor, or until you go into heavy armor - the Major Stability treining helps your soldiers to avoid grenade damage, i consider it vital to train that in my first 10 levels of training points if i'm not going into the heavy armors (heavy armor tends to limit your mobility, and your people need more space to stand in while wearing it - but you are much more resistant to grenades in even the early heavy armor)

 

For leveling up drones, i remember 1 or 2 "chip card" researches that allow you to build components that i think is how you level up drones ( I very rarely use drones myself, so i'm not sure here )

 

Getting better weapons and armor is one of my major early research goals, and i personally do like the sniper rifle ( one of the seemingly most popular tactics for Afterlight seems to be the shotgun rush, but i tend to end up with snipers and gatlings instead )

 

Precision Engineering is a base internal building, one of about 12 that just enable research or manufacturing; again i don't remember what tech it is attached to (the in-game help doesn't say, so just checking the Base screen every so often might help find out)

 

Medkits are used by soldier/science combo troopers, you do get 4 initially.

Toolkits for suit repairs and other things are used by the soldier/technicians, who are also the ones who can plany dynamite.

 

heavy ammo gets a damage boost (around 10-25%, it's not listed) over the standard ammo (it still does the same type of damage, it's just a bigger caliber) but it loses a little range - the Long Range ammo loses damage to gain range in the same proportions that the heavy ammo uses.

 

In the vanilla game, i try to have Rifles for everyone on my team by the time i'm facing beastmen, and take the max 6-7 soldiers on every mission.

 

Normally, i bring minimum 2 soldier/science combo soldiers for heals (need medicine science training) and 2 soldier/tech combos for explosives and suit repairs (needs tech trainings for each of those) and later i make sure the combat techs learn minor driving (needed for a fun late game weapon) and minor automation (for drone repair)

 

As for rebalance mods, i played the vanilla game once then installed ShadoWarrior's rebalance mod, available here in the downloads section ( https://www.strategycore.co.uk/files/index.php?dlid=546 ). it's not quite complete, but that's only a couple of placeholder techs that have nothing to gain from researching them - it's fully playable as it stands, and i much prefer how parts of the game feel with it installed

 

for other mods, PetteriB's Martian Assault mod gives a very *cough* target rich environment, with a text file that can customize how rich it gets. i also use His Advanced Missions mod, which also has a config text file - and in my opinion, it needs some reconfiguration (targets on capture/assassinate missions need to be much braver, and i like to turn off the allied assistants, i had pathing interference from them in a mission that cut me off from the logical place for a firing line on that map... )

 

(edit) P.S. - A) for the missions in the Cydonia territory where the first gate opened, if i need to turtle i get on the highest ground, off to the side from where you start

and B) if you really want all soldiers able to use medkits, the easy solution would be to add scientist to all the soldiers as a character mod - i don't know if a non-scientist can be modded to use medkits

[The Veteran]

Thanks for the advice yeni! I hope you decide to stay with us here at StrategyCore, we always need more like you

 

I think my tactics will probably be similar to yours as the game progresses with Sniper rifles and gatling guns looking pretty swish so far. The main reason I asked how good they were was so I could avoid wasting a lot of time on training, research and manufacture of the things if they turn out to be rubbish! I like to have my whole team with a single weapon set rather than mixing types, debatably not a very tactically sound idea but it works fine as long as you pick the right layout to follow!

 

I now have the original four soldiers with major suitwearing and major toughness. The former allows them all to wear heavy armour (I forget the exact name of the one they have right now, all armours seem to be almost identically named!) and the latter means I can continue fighting for twice as long as they won't become unconscious once their health hits the red.

 

Of course my big problem remains that I still can't heal them without bringing along techies and scientists so as far as I'm concerned they've still messed up in that aspect. It makes some sense that your run of the mill soldier wouldn't necessarily be competent at suit repair but not that they're unable to use an automated medkit to keep themselves alive. No military outfit in the world enjoys the idea of sending non-combatants into hostile situations so I don't see why Afterlight forces us to do so. I know they can be soldiers as well but frankly I need my techies and scientists back at base for research and stuff. Just like the soldiers themselves I've not been given any clues at all so far as to why I can't have more of these guys. Especially as the game constantly points out that we can work in multiple labs and workshops simultaneously, but never once explains where to get the eggheads from to do it...

 

Sounds to me like sniper rifles with heavy ammo might be good but my troops don't seem to be very perceptive so far and sometimes won't even spot the enemy until they're already under fire. Their stats are already at outstanding for everything so I wonder if I need to invest some of the research teams efforts into some form of detection system? I already have the smell and heartbeat detectors from the beastmen...

 

Since my original post I've come up against the expedition Reticulans on top of the beastmen and apparently they will only consider peace with me if I'm NOT at peace with the others... Hmm. Well that's ok I guess, makes sense after all. But while these guys are super weak targets, their psi attacks are quite troublesome in the field so I'd rather be left free to concentrate on the Beastmen right now. The reticulan rocket launchers are horrible too, had one of them on a hilltop firing off a round every few seconds in one mission. The guys never stood a chance... This is one of the situations where snipers would be useless as none of the troopers could see the attacker despite knowing exactly where he was.

 

Anyway, I've put this game away right now. I don't dislike it so I'll go back to playing it soon and hopefully have fun doing so but the features don't feel quite balanced to me. Mostly I think it's down to the fact I don't understand the research tree so it's mostly pot-luck what advances I'm getting! The enemies on the other hand are getting their upgrades regardless of how well I progress so it's a bit of an uphill struggle. I'd say that was a really good thing if it was possible to recruit new troopers from somewhere (like, I don't know, the 10,000 colonists in cryogenic stasis?!?!) but as it is the game is just one long reload while I lose more and more territories to my enemies and try to research good enough technology to fight them off. Sigh...

 

About modding my troops, how can I edit my soldiers to be scientists as well? All I want to do is allow them to use medkits so I don't really see it as being a cheat, just a workaround for a stupid feature. I won't do the same for techies as I think it makes sense that troopers can't repair their damaged suits in the heat of battle. Any soldier who can't use a medkit is a sorry excuse though and frankly hasn't finished basc training. So that, I want to change before I return to the game!

[yeni]

i have been lurking here for a couple years, i just never had anything i really wanted to say til now (aside from a bad pun or two) - i found the site looking for afterlight mods and info, as i recall

 

i noticed i forgot your question in the first post about the "noble metal for crystals" trade - both noble metals and crystals are resources, but you have to do a research of the same name to see them in territories for mining. Also, if you didn't have what you were supposed to trade, the trade gets cancelled, i don't know why it sometimes offers trades that you can't complete (and for some things, trades can be a bad thing - if you trade away a level of fuel, for instance, you can have trouble getting to a vital mission unless you go to war with that ally...)

 

i've been known to use 7 snipers with heavy ammo at some stages of the game myself, but be warned, heavy (and long range) ammo takes about twice the build time per clip that regular ammo does - if you have the build capacity, then enjoy!

 

for the perception issue, i have a habit of training one or two of my people heavily in perception early on at the expense of accuracy and such - they spot for the sharpshooters until everyone starts maxing their stats out

 

about the expedition, yes the psi makes them nasty to fight - but drones against them can work wonders, if you have that research ready. The guy on the hill is more the perception issue than sniper rifles versus other guns, to my knowledge there is no detection boost other than raising your stats .

 

when the expedition arrives, i usually end up allying with them and going on a crusade against the little gray SOBs that tried to destroy Earth.. they don't use psi nearly as much, so it's also easier going (and a great sounds of reticulan laser clips, if you still use them)

 

i have found all the detection devices in the game to be minimally useful at best (and the same goes with mine removal.. boom!). (there were some mods made very early on that rebalance the vision ranges, there are 2-3 in the database here and they make spotting enemies much less frustrating - it's not like technicolor aliens blend in well with the sand color! - and those mods can be added safely to a game in progress, i believe)

 

as for waking up people from the cryogenics, it's written in the story somewhere that the waking process takes about a year, so it's not much help

 

for a character mod, it's easy to do if you have the modding tools (i use sigget's VFStool command line program, found it on the official forums some time ago), you add 1-2 levels of scientist training to the soldiers in the character.txt file (in gamedata.vfs, then in folder path units / configs - if you want to, you technically could also start them with medicine training as well (minor for basic medkits, major to use the later advanced first aid sets) ; however, as the medkit was something researched since the Cydonia ambush, i don't do that myself). If you don't want your soldiers to be able to do research, it might work to just assign the soldiers the minor and major medic training in a character mod without any scientist levels - or that might make the game glitch as bad as removing the soldier class from Gene or Diego does, as they're needed in the tutorial

 

if i understand correctly, a new character mod would normally require a restart to use, fair warning

 

about the "everyone uses the same weapon" , it's not that bad as long as you pick a weapon wisely, i have done it with the rifle and the sniper rifle, but the sniper does fire single shot only and slow fire rate, meaning you can end up getting dogpiled. It works well with shotguns, too, but i don't use that as a matter of personal preference - i try to not run towards the crazy aliens with guns, i'll shoot them as they charge instead! I do try to have everyone using the same suits all the time, so in a game i pick either the light/medium suits to research & build or i go into the heavy suits (more protection, but also more research, production, soldier training, and is 3x3 not 2x2 on the battlefield

[The Veteran]

Is this a joke? Just gone back to the game intending to break off my alliance with the rebel greys and make peace with the new expeditionary forces. Turns out I can't though... How does that make sense? I selected 'break treaty' from the diplomacy screen and immediately all other option like offer and demand resources etc. disappear. We're still allied though and the only way to change it seems to be to attack them outright? Well what if I don't want to? And believe me I don't! Right now these expedition guys are attacking my territory so I want it to stop. If I just end up declaring war on these other greys though it'll be exactly the same situation!

 

And how exactly is it that I just killed 19 reticulans in a single mission with at least 4 more left alive yet the mission wouldn't end? How many of these pricks are there? I have FOUR soldiers for crying out loud and even they spend half the mission under enemy control! I seem to have finally reached a point where I can handle the beastmen yet I'm now under constant attack by reticulans. Why are they attacking me anyway? The expedition guys I mean. We've already had first contact and they were apologetic for the aggression of the rebels. But now they're going to kill us anyway... This game is a complete mess, I'm yet to find a single aspect of it that's actually balanced...

[yeni]

The two Ret factions are mortal enemies, basically, so you have to go to war against the rebels to prove your peace worthiness to the expedition - In my opinion, it's worth it, the rebel reticulans have a small fraction of the psi strength of the expedition, so it shouldn't be nearly as bad.

 

I believe it was intended for you to use some of the soldier/science or soldier/technician people as soldiers, so you can field a full team (i always do as full a team as allowed, and try to have 2 of each hybrid). They can still be assigned to the labs/workshops some of the time, when not healing or training. One other way to get more human soldiers is the minor exploit of taking Tabby and Oggie, the rebel reticulans that join you, out on a mission one at a time and let then die, which triggers some of the human kids to show up (so does having your own people die). You also could use a character mod that has the 4 kids enabled at the start.

[The Veteran]

Well I've lost the rebel reticulans now but I'm not planning on using the 3 expedition ones I have so what happens if they should meet an untimely demise? I got some new girl Rita who is soldier/tech and I've been using her with a buzzsaw to save on ammo but now she's heavy armoured up and a pretty decent trooper. Still can't use a medkit mind and I don't have enough metal to build her another sniper rifle (seriously? I need 4 metal mines to build a gun?)

 

I don't have enough mines for very much at all if I'm honest. Now that I've developed all of the territories in my possesion I'd like to build another lab to keep the eggheads busy but I don't have the resources. To be honest there's not too much research to do right now anyway though so it can wait.

 

Anyway, I'm yet to kill anyone but the rebel retics (who should actually have NO psionic powers at all based on the aftershock story) haven't attacked my territory even once since I changed alleigances. Still getting lots of action from the beastmen but I can just about handle them now, getting an average of 24hours in sickbay after each mission though...

 

The sickbay thing is really starting to bug me as it means 90% of he game is spent on defensive missions and my expansion is very slow. I now have everyone with sniper rifles though and have taken out 3 of the 5 visible warpgates. Can anyone tell me how many there are altohgether and if anything happens when I destroy them all? I really want to put an end to the beastmen once and for all as it won't be long till I face the martians now. I'm hoping they're friendly

 

The planet has just got to 50% terraforming so it's not all bad, research is starting on gatling guns today as well so I may try them instead of snipers at some point and see how good they are. Snipers are ok but very slow and seeing as the only tactic the enemy has is the bum rush (I rarely see a single enemy, usually 4 or more in a clump!) I woulkdn't mind turning on the lead hose for effect!

 

Will see how I get on today, at least both sides are pretty well matched right now, although the scaling is ridiculous. Just had a fight against beastmen where there were 20 of them to 4 of me. 7 of them were captains and 3 were chiefs. Can you say nayhem?! It seems that I only destroyed the warpgates that bring in the lower ranks as the better my troops get the better theirs get. That seems completely stupid to me. If these captains have no troops under their command then they aren't really captains are they? More like squaddies...

 

Anyway, I'm surviving for now but yes, the scaling SUCKS!

[The Veteran]

Ok I'm done with this heap... Seriously I was pleasantly surprised with how my time in this game started out but it's gone waaaay downhill ever since!

 

It seems Altar has actually managed to take the boredom and repetition out of this game pretty well (heck even the story doesn't suck quite so bad!) but the balance between human and alien sides is just non-existent and the levelling system is unbelievably bad!

 

I'll break it down a little before throwing this title out of my game room (second time already for Afterlight)

 

Firstly, all of the stuff I said I liked, I still like. The only thing that is making this game literally unplayable for me is the lack of balance. Take the alien races and compare them to the human technology available when we meet them...

 

Robots, start off as a pretty fair match but quickly become easy. The mechs appear to even things up later and after that come spider robots but the robot faction never really comes close to catching up with human development.

 

The rebel reticulans, the ones from the start of the game? I didn't fight them until pretty late on but I can safely say they would be an absolute walkover if not for the insane abundance of them on every single mission! I managed to completely wipe out this faction in only 4 or so missions but every single one of them pitted my four troopers against more than 20 enemies. Given the reticulan tactic of hiding inside domes by the dozen and then sending out lone soldiers who are then continually healed, I found these battles to be reeeeeeally long on occasion but still not particularly challenging... The only real risk from these guys came from when they managed to take control of my troops but as long as you take out the controllers fast that's not really an issue. Also their copious use of missiles gave my unarmoured troops some trouble early on but again it wasn't that bad when you offset it against the technology available to you by the time it actually becomes necessary to fight these guys.

 

Onto the expedition reticulans now. I've only fought these guys twice so far, once when they lnded and invaded my territory and again just now when I declared war on them. Both times I've been in awe of their psionic powers and I don't really understand how it is they're controlling my men when noone can even see them. In my last game (the one that made me go 'pff - ALT F4 time') I had 4 out of 6 troops under alien control but every single reticulan I could see was holding a missile launcher. There was only one with a control device and he died instantly. These guys also seem to have some ferocious ammo for their missile launchers and my entire team was almost instantly obliterated in this last attempt, despite heavy battle armour and seriously high levels and stats. The reason I declared war on these guys is because the rebels are extinct, Martians are hiding and the Beastmen are cheaters. I thought I could quite easily get rid of these new reticulans and add a few new territories to help deal with the Beastmen but nope! It seems these guys are capable to heal from off-screen (literally I couldn't see anyone with a medgun thing but all the KO'd rets were getting back up again instantly) and MC without any form of vision on my guys. Meanwhile my team of 6 highly trained snipers with computerised scopes and such couldn't even take them down as quickly as they were appearing. WTF?

 

My experience with Reticulans is new though, it's the poxy beastmen that are really grinding my gears and in essence the problem here is not limited to the race but actually applies to the entire game. Right at the start when beastmen are new it's not too hard to combat them, just a bunch of redshirts with pistols. It's still a good match against unarmoured noobs with rifles but you get my point. I was absolutely horrified when the grenade launchers came onto the field for the first time (along with captains, chiefs, alchemist and shamans) and I had no armour on my boys... I proceeded to get them some battle armour (whatever the first one is) and then went back out and figured out a few tactics for killing the guys. I employed a full auto bum rush with rifles for the grenade problem in the end... Just as I got the hang of these guys though, the redshirts practically vanished overnight and enemy numbers just kept going up. I posted earlier that I was shocked to see 3 captains in a single mission, I now get between 8-10 of them along with the same number again of other beastmen. Again, technological advances allowed me to just about stay on top of them, conceding a territory every so often while I upgraded weapons and armour. Thing is though, they never stop getting better the beastmen, so my woes don't end. At this point I still have a team of 4 men because THERE AREN'T ANY MORE ANYWHERE! Apart from the 10,000 people in stasis of course... I now have a team of 6 who are practically maxed out on stats and training, each at level 20+. Sadly the beastmen keep trumping me continuously and I'm now facing 3-6 red matriachs per mission, these bitches are seriously badass! Sniper rifles have about 10-20% hit chance with a stationary matriach at 10 paces so by the time she's dead so am I. I tried getting everyone gatling guns but they're also woeful against the scab, plus the added penalty of being incapable of firing accurately beyond 5paces... Now I'm back on snipers with computerised scope and I've finally figured out precision fire. Still crap... My troops seem to be getting worse with every stat increase I give them while the beastmen just keep getting better!

 

Now the global problem that I mention in above rant is the fact that this game has been incorrectly constructed. It sees the player continuously assaulted by multiple enemy races, all of whom are permanently slightly better than we are. But it also makes it impossible to continue playing the game if any of your people die because there are no more reinforcements... Right...

 

Aftershock had a pretty good system for obtaining new people from the friendly factions in the game, why could we not have a similar feature in place here to allow the waking of soldiers and scientists in stasis? But then we'd be constantly fighting with teams of level 1 rookies and the whole RPG system would be a complete crock (wheras currently it works ok so long as noone dies)

 

So my question is this, why the hell did Altar decide, for the third time running no less, to mangle all of these incompatible features into once broken game? I believe there are something like 6-8 'replacement' characters through the course of the game if the internet is to be trusted. In a game where you'll be lucky to escape a mission without losses (certainly this late in the game) how does that make any sense?

 

If they wanted to have the beastmen be forever more numerous and better armed than the player then that's fine, but the player needs a way to combat this like being able to hire new troops! It honestly defies belief that any designers thought it would be a good idea to mix these elements in one game. To have characters rely so heavily on RPG style stat increases and yet to subject them to situations with such a high mortality rate. What were they thinking?!

 

Before someone tells me 'perhaps you just aren't good at this type of game' shush. I've been playing REAL strategy games WAY longer than Altar has been makibng shitty ones so my tactical prowess is not in question here. The problem is more the fact that this game doesn't really provide any opportunity for tactical gameplay at all (surprise surprise, just like the last two...) The maps are two small to allow any kind of good positioning of troops and too cluttered for sniper rifles to work effectively. Shotguns and gatling guns are great when you get close to an enemy but that's virtually impossible this late in the game, plus the enemy has shotgun equivalents which are significantly more powerful and numerous. In every game of this genre we're used to being outnumbered but having played most of this game with only four decent soldiers available to me I can tell you it's no fun going up against 20 enemies who are ALWAYS stronger and better armed than me. Add to this the fact that the enemy AI is AWFUL too. They seem to have just one tactic which is to assemble all 20 of their troops in a massive ball and then roll it directly towards you until the mass of enemy flesh either crushes or smothers your largest available force of 7 men.

 

It's crap...

 

I think it looks good, mostly sounds good, interface is a vast improvement over the first two, R+D much better, personnel much better (except the drastic lack thereof) world map much better.

 

But sadly the most important thing is the tactical segment. I mean seriously why even call it a tactical segment if there are no tactics involved? Same as the last two games but in Aftermath and Aftershock there were only a few key points where we found ourselves overpowered and outgunned. Afterlight seems to take a sick pleasure in ensuring the Beastmen are always so far ahead of me that I can almost see them on the other horizon.

 

Again before we put the technology gap down to my playing style, I only have 5 things left to research and have over half of the planet in my grasp. All of it's fully developed (except radars, pff to them) and the terraforming is coming close to 70%. So yes, I know what I'm doing, I would even enjoy doing it if the game allowed for failure. In real wars there are some missions that you fail. In Afterlight though it's just not possible to give an inch. You lose territory, no more resources. You lose a soldier, no more men.

 

Pure crap, can't believe I bought this but now I have to finish it... Honestly and I thought I had problems with Aftershock! It actually turned out alright in the end. But this?...

[ERISS]

Altar thought all players reload a game when a soldier has been lost, for players love their toons. So, devs made a game with almost no reinforcement, as they felt they were not needed... Devs put some personnality in each soldier.

[The Veteran]

Yes they did, but strategy games don't need personality, they need strategy! If they've designed this game around chronic reloaders then they've really missed a trick because that is NOT the right demographic for an RTS title! They should've made a game that DIScourages reloading not ENcourages it! I used to reload all the time when I lost soldiers in games like this, that was about 16 years ago though and I realised when I was still pretty yound that that's not the way these games are meant o be played. Sadly I haven't played any true strategy games that agree with me since the late 90's, certainly no developers have been releasing hardcore RTS games since we ticked into the 21st century. I think it's a real shame that titles with such a lot of potential are being so significantly dumbed down these days. Besides, the lack of reinforcements is only part of the problem I mentioned, the ever advancing Beastman race is a whole different topic, most notably the uber-units like the red matriach and the fact that it spawns 5 of them per mission...

 

Seriously, Aftermath was ok, Aftershock ended up being average, this is just ridiculous. Did they bother with play-testing it on all 4 difficulties or was it 'time constraints' again like in AS?

 

Honestly, these guys couldn't develop a tumour...

[yeni]

if you should play Afterlight again, i strongly suggest that you look at some mods - vision mods for one, to make the spotting less one sided, and i definitely recommend shadowarrior's rebalance mod, and if you want to be able to make more soldiers, i noticed a "reticulan mod 2.0" in the file section here, it allows you to make cloned soldiers... As for Rita, if i remember she can come up as either a soldier/scientist or a soldier/technician, i think it picks the one based on what you are shorter in. I agree, healing is painfully slow until rather late when you research and build the upgrade to it - but that doesn't unlock until after your second or third beastman capture mission.

 

One thing i do to minimize defensive missions is i leave a gap of neutral territories on fronts i'm not trying to expand, the DMZ helps there (and the radars give you 2 days to respond to a defense mission instead of one, plus they seem to often take place in a beautiful shooting gallery of a map.)

 

yes, matriarchs are mean, the only things i know of with decent hit chances against them are melee weapons (and the wenches usually plant a mine at your feet when you do that) and sniper precise shot doing "body" called shots. yes, the red ones are bad, but there's one last slightly worse one, the green matriarch.

 

As for the global situation, normally you exterminate one reticulan faction and stay allied with the other, after the martians arrive you can figure out how to make peace with them also - the only permanent enemy is the beastmen,

 

i don't think anyone on this site has reservations about your experience, and i agree, some maps sniper rifles just don't help much - there's a reason that most FAQ writers for this advocate a shotgun rush ( train athletics early for run speed, wear the best light suits you can, and charge! ) Every AI opponent will have its quirks ( just how much do the x-com sectiods need to use the lavatory, anyways? )

 

On the scaling, my personal record for matriarch corpses brought home from a mission is 10, but that was a advanced missions mod fight that had a wave of reinforcements arrive after the main fight ended. As for adjusting the scaling - one of PetteriB's mods had an option to have scaling run solely on game time progression instead of a mix of factors, ((edit - it's in the Martian Assault Mod, the Alternative enemy power level calculation algorithm (turned off by default in the config text file))) Even if you don't use that mod, it can help just knowing how scaling is calculated.

 

and you do make a good point about medkit use, i may have to try making a character mod where all soldiers that don't have scientise are assigned minor medical then see if that breaks the game. ( if it works, i'll let you know)

[The Veteran]

Thanks for the post Yeni, nice to see my rather one sided view on this game isn't getting totally blasted right away I knew about the green matriarchs but I'd seen somewhere that they were 'easier to hit' than the red ones. I guess you disagree or you probably wouldn't call them harder Either way I'm yet to meet them but I have seen the 'boss' alien which is a big worm.

 

The last few missions I've done took advantage of the semi-infinite ammo housed in the super-powerful warp cannon. The destroy item missions are very easy with these and I've destroyed 2 warpgates now with this hit and run strategy (only 2 hits needed!)

 

I'd love to see a mod where all soldiers can use medikits but fairly obviously I will NEVER be playing this game again once it's over! Even with mods to fix the big problems it doesn't have enough good features to make me want to play it for any longer than I have to in order to send it over to the completed pile! Besides, modding communities should exist to 'improve' games not 'fix' them.

 

If there's anything that could save this game I think it would be a mod that reduces experience needed to level up your people but also caps their maximum abilities lower (so as to make them easier to replace and combat the chronic reload issue) and also allow for base expansions to house more people dependent on the level of terraforming. For example, when the world is 25% terraformed we can be given the opportunity to upgrade the living quarters in the base and then 'wake up' some more people. Give it a 24 hour cooldown to wake up new troopers to ensure you can still get in a pickle sometimes but make it possible to escape from said ordeal. Also necessary if we were to introduce mortal characters would be the ability to give them some sort of military training that granted experience rather than skills. That would help create an average team quickly without having to go through too many very difficult battles with a team of rookies! Maybe some research could allow you to train the people you're about to wake up so after that 24 hours they wake up at level 10 or something? (level could even be dependant on how far you are in the game)

 

The beastmen need to have far less top-tier units in battles, like a real fighting force would have. Say 1 captain to 3 beastmen with a maximum of 3 captains at any one time unless accompanied by a chief who can command 2 captains hence doubling the army but keeping it full of relatively weak troops. The AI needs fixing too so that all of the enemy troops don't start within 2 yards of each other, immediately making it impossible to escape injury free due to the insane amount of firepower they have concentrated all in one spot. Start the troops further apart and don't allow the AI to group them up above 2 or 3 individuals. The reticulans could use a similar solution to prevent them all hiding in the same house (think my record so far is 12 rebels in 1 dome...)

 

Anyway, I have my own method of dealing with defence missions since the odds became so impossible. I've just been cheating to get rid of them I still have to go to the missions but a simple console command wipes all the enemies out and I leave with healthy troops and no frustration. Sadly, the troops still gain experience from these missions (quite a lot sometimes) which I don't like one bit as that strikes me as REAL cheating that will affect the late game. Frankly though if it helps me complete it I really don't care. A gatling strategy doesn't work, sniper strategy doesn't work, mixed strategy doesn't work. I never bothered to build shotguns but I'm pretty sure if I did it still wouldn't work.

 

It's mostly my fault I guess for not just playing on normal (which everyone says is 'too easy' but I was expecting the extra difficulty in the higher levels to be comparable in terms of strategy and tactics. If I'd realised that strategies and tactics didn't actually play any part at all in this game I probably would have just gone with easy to get it over with.

 

Anyway, I'm feeling a bit rough today so I won't be playing for a while but hopefully when I do I'll be able to counter the omnipotent reticulan expedition. Are there any mods I can implement now which will fix the line of sight mod or is it a case of 'if one sees you they all see you'? I've been careful not to use the 'kill_enemies' cheat to end any conquest missions as that would be stupid in my opinion, but if I can't combat these greys fairly (due to lack of any protectiion/detection devices) then I may just blast through these missions to get them off my planet.

 

Will let you know what happens when I meet the martians

[ERISS]

they've really missed a trick because that is NOT the right demographic for an RTS title!

It's not RTS, even you can play it RTS-like. It is meant to be often paused. If you don't pause enough, sure you will easily have deaths as our toons don't have AI.. So, I repeat I think these games are just not for your taste, that's why they anger you.

SAS

UFO: Aftershock uses the Simultaneous Action System (or SAS for short) for controlling your squad in combat. The basic premise of the system is a simple one: you have to plan a string of actions – go here, take the gun, fire at the enemy – for all your soldiers and then press the Run button. Your squad executes your orders until one of the following happens:

- One or more soldiers complete all planned actions.

- Some planned action cannot be completed (e.g. the enemy hides and it is no longer possible to attack it).

- Something important happens (e.g. a new enemy is spotted, a soldier is attacked, etc.)

- You pause the game.

Whatever the cause, the game stops running and the soldier 'responsible' for it (i.e. the one who completed the plan, whose plan was interrupted, or who spotted the enemy) informs you. You can now review all your plans, amend them as needed and then run the game again.

See the Options Screen to modify actions when the game pauses.

[yeni]

the line of sight mods would be loaded when a tactical mission starts, so should be addable to a game in progress. (i think - check readmes for the mod in question to be sure) I do recall that the Advanced Missions mod could be added and removed during the course of a game, which is why i think vision would be fine.

 

If you have the drones researched up, i hear they work wonders against the expedition - having no mind to be psi controlled is the best defense!

 

if you want a tip for use against the martians :

 

very vulnerable to melee, lasers work pretty well also