bovine_cannibal

1 & 2). Non-linear storyline (maybe alternate techtree) based on which factions you align yourselve. In terms of Aftershock, imagine taking a cultist route, or assimilating into the cyborg faction. "Resistance is futile." 6). Heathen! Nobody shall mess with the sacred commandment "Thou shall not use thy left hand." As much as it might go against the rpg spirit (of rolling dice until you get the stats you want and great warriors starting weaker than civilians), why not let you custom order soldiers. Suppose it gets prohibitively expensive as a countermeasure, its the future, your on an alien planet with a limited population, why not let you clone woody allen if you want to?! Instead of fixed backpacks, perhaps options. Ammo bandoliers, dual sword scabbards over the back instead of a backpack, or cargo pants from Old Navy. Honestly, I despise random maps. I find Diablo 1 & 2 complete bores, but Nox and Sacred... While I feel strategy and tactical games are better suited for random maps than action rpgs, I still almost never play randomly generated maps in RTS. I may be exagerrating my opinion mildly. Take a clue from freedom force and the sims and allow heavy support for either user models, skins, or meshes to customize their soldiers. Maybe in-game support such as many boxing or wrestling games have for making your own fighter? Select-A-Voice-Pack: Want all your soldiers to sound like sylvester stallone? How about Ozzy Osbourne or George W. Bush, or Kim Jong-il. How about the Beatles!

Dangnabbit. These are some good ideas, but why not have a little fun also. I want smart AND stupid ideas. Vehicles: modified clown car: will carry 20 troopers in a very small space. Serious: Unarmored hover platform/lift. Allow you to set up artillery, or simply ferry troops across a small lake. Then, there's ATVs. Amphibious APC? Vehicle: Breaching Assault Vehicle: Rams through the wall of a hostile complex and unloads troops on the other side. Obviously, it wouldn't breach everything, and might be somewhat slow. Politics: you're on a strange planet. Suppose your first contact is with the criminal underbelly of an alien society. Perhaps they hit you up for protection money until you establish a "reputation". Politics: French aliens dislike your politics, so your congressional body declares reticulan fries will now be called freedom fries. Politics: Diplomatic alliances through marriage (yes, thats a hot reticulan:P). Hostages (yes, I can smell the controversy), but not necessaily of the criminal/terrorist kind. I think historically some groups cemented shaky alliances by marriage or by guesting the other nobilities children. Party A would send their son to party B as a show of faith, and vice versa.

Stupid question: what were the 1.1 installation problems? I assume they mean the agi/dex swap problem, but I don't really know. I started my first game on 1.1 since I got the US release.

You may have noticed this in the news, but if not... Patch 1.2 is supposed to fix that so you can throw the shuriken and throwing knife.

I don't understand very well how the doppler and wargot scanners work. However, if you're interested in investigating the game files, I've found a couple starting points in unpacked\strategic\configs\stratgame\equipment\equipment.txt Doppler and Wargot scanner entries, respectively, are: ;#68 ;#235 Do a Find on these two lines, and you'll be taken to the proper places, at least in 1.1 unmodded. My educated guess (remember, only a guess) is that the Doppler scanner is stronger because it has a larger radius (50 vs. 30) under Influencer Influencer RECORD. Due to US release delays, lack of experience, and finals, and visiting relatives consuming my time, I haven't used scanners or even infrared yet. I am uncertain whether observation skills have any effect, so I'd like to add that question to this thread, though perhaps it has been answered elsewhere. In fact, I'd love a link to a thread explaining, in GUI and not mechanical/mathematical terms how scanners work. I've seen screenshots of infrared. Are doppler scanners just another view mode? Do I need to set them up? Does it have its own screen?

A bit of thought onto smart missiles or aircraft support, and possible gameplay mechanics to limit abuse while making gameplay more interesting. Imagine alternate objectives in the same mission. Obj. 1- kill all enemies, Obj. 2 - knock out AA turrets or warp interference generator. And tactical nukes would be a bad choice if you were on any kind of extraction mission, but would make for an insertion objective. Like the custom battles idea. I've often wanted a 'war games' or training mission mode to allow me to try things out, or understand what my tactics might look like from the other side, controlling both teams so I can play around with cover and other concepts. Oh, and what I was "smoking" was Godiva hot chocolate. Yes, I was TUI, typing under the influence.

Trained mutants! Ever want a pet chomper? Reticulan whipping boys Exploding muckstars New species of human: Brute. Gigantic, superstrong, unable to weild most equipment New species of human: Troll. Specializes in pyrokinesis. New species of human: Fanboi. Specializes in modding equipment. High defensive skill. New mutant: Giant Cockroach. What?! Didn't you think it odd that humans survived the apocalypse but these didn't? Get realistic enough, and they'd be scarier than any of these mutants. Random unique traits, inspired by arcanum or fallout tactics. I want bloody mess! And yes, I do expect bloody mess and plasma weapons to have a slight downside. Namely the complete destruction of equipment. Random unique trait 2, hypercaffinated. This character does everything faster. Turn that katana bug into a feature! Downside: need to keep producing coffee in your medfactories/biolabs. Random unique trait 3, Windows Cyborg operating system. Make your own jokes. Quadruple barreled laser shotgun: tradeoff between coherence(Range) and power. Atmospheric effects on weapons. Lasers excellent in a vacuum, useless in rain or smoke. Multiple environments - space, hi-g, lo-g (watch that grenade travel forever!), aquatic, dimensional rift (watch physics be bent and broken). Air support - call in strafing runs. Fortified enemy position? Tactical nuke it. Just make sure you control the airspace first. Shoes. Boots with a knife hidden in the sole for killing unconscious flatsters. Nikes- bring in the advertising revenue and provide a speed boost. Anti-gravity shoes: downside, low traction, every bullet can knock you around. Bio-gecko boots. Inspired by that wonderful lizard, your units can now walk up walls in low-g environments. Minigames- whack a wargot! Now with artillery. Easter eggs- Frogger. Cross the road while dodging traffic and rockets. Die, and die again. True to original. New weapon- soupersoaker 500,000. Loads napalm, acid, and water for those wicked witches of the west. I'm melting! New species- beastmen. Heightened sense, marks territory with acid urine (perfect for finishing off flatsters), and new smellovision. New training- sexchange operation. Disappointed by the amount of men in your army? Wish your male scouts were stealthier? Your female human commandos tougher? Get a sexchange. Fun for the whole family.

AfterShave: Melee focused expansion pack. Smells like mint. Adds blood. AfterHours: In order to eliminate all graphics slowdown, the sequel will take place in complete darkness. Alternatively, they come up with an ASCI Text version of Aftershock a la NetHack. Die, letter M! Shoot, C! Marketed at TI-83 calculators everywhere. My own suggestions AfterCubed? Its not X-Com. I said this before, its still not X-Com. When will you learn its not... Ah screw it! AfterLife? Ever wonder what happened to those cultists you killed? Beware of the 72 virgin Morelmen.

Who is this "Altar Games"? I thought it was "Altar Interactive"?

Damage Types VFS INFO Simplified The following information is taken from unpacking gamedata.vfs. \strategic\configs\stratgame\equipment\dmgtype.txt I've eliminated many lines and formating that are only useful for modders. From a fractional perspective, lasers are the most effective early game weapon for captures. They apply 10% of their damage as permanent, 70% temporary, 20% stun. Soft ammo applies 20% permanent, 65% temporary, 15% stun. Blade applies 35%, 65%, 0%. Surprisingly burn and explosive types only do 10% permanent damage. Since enough permanent damage causes death, and enough temporary damage causes bleeding, this makes lasers theoretically more efficent from a capturing viewpoint.

A bit more on capturing aliens & trangenants in the early game. I almost always use reticulan laser rifles, sometimes even in an aimed burst. The combination of low damage, low enemy resistance, and high accuracy/low recoil/great range makes this a very flexible and dependable weapon for taking out unarmored opponents of any species, though ammo is sometimes difficult to come by, sometimes plentiful. On the tougher mutants, I often have three level 1 soldiers aim bursts at the target, especially ones I have a feel for how many hits they can take(experience, not a scout, though see enemy hitpoints ability would be useful). I have to do this on slow, but with care, a few single shots and a bit of luck, you won't even need a medikit. When I'm in a more pressing situation, I just burst fire until they drop, and immediately cancel fire. While the latter may need a medikit, morelmen take a lot longer to bleed to death than my puny humans. My first priority after incapacitating the target is to take down any hostiles that have me pinned down to my position. I don't want to lose a soldier to capture a relatively insignificant mutant, after all. Note that I don't necessarily take down all hostiles, just the ones posing an immediate threat. My second priority is NOT healing the mutant, but getting a soldier by its side, ASAP. It is very handy to know whether I need a medikit at all, or whether I just have to wait for the stun to wear off. If its merely a matter of stun, having a soldier next to it means I wont have to shoot a few more rounds into it. Many enemies take a lot longer to bleed to death than my puny humans. Once nearby you can see the exact temporary damage and bleeding damage, so I can provide a pretty good estimate of how long I can risk not healing the target. Here's where my plan branches. If I've got the spare time, I take out anyone who poses even a minor threat to the capture. Once I start the healing, the capture will come under enemy fire. Since you'll maybe be healing 80/100 hitpoints of damage, you'll stop the bleeding, but a good breeze could knock the victim back down, and waste 5 seconds of healing. If the situation is urgent, I prioritize healing and consider using other soldiers as meatshields, standing between the target/healer and enemy fire. If you are using expendable level ones, and win the mission, meatshields are a viable tactic. While cyborgs have better default energy protection, humans make the best meatshields because it will only take 50 lowtech to replace them, though the cost will go up even for level ones, later in the game. Of course, the downside is that the humans aren't happy about being used as suicide troops. Fortunately, I rarely need to mooch resources off of the human faction. On a completely different note: Capture missions can actually be easier on veteran than the lowest difficulty. That is, as long as you don't die. Doing 40% more damage can make the difference between killing a target and merely incapicitating it if you are using any weapons meaner than a laser weapon, and not firing single shots. On veteran, I don't have to worry quite as much about how many rounds I pump into my target as I would on newbie. Of course, newbie would allow more caution and hence allow you to slowly wear down a target. General comments: I would love it if cenega/altar modified the pause options to include icapicitation of enemies. I might turn it on and off in options, but it would be wonderful on these capture missions. With lower level soldiers and low powered weapons, criticals aren't as much of a threat. Obviously, the above advice and weaponry isn't as effective once the enemy starts launching rockets at you. NEVER try to capture an alien with a shotgun, if you must, hope you miss and only do weaker scatter damage.

I'd tried to submit this news, but it gives me a 404. Anyways, for UK, version 1.4 has been released. The offical download link is only up at Cenega as of 2:11 A.M. EST (or -5 GMT). http://www.cenega.com/index.php?action=news&idnws=79 Download links It comes in two tasty flavors. For upgrading from the retail version, the full one weighs in at ~14 MB. The diet lite version weighs in at ~4 MB, and works only if your current version is 1.3.