AcidBoot

IMO the biggest danger with Aftermath is that it's going to be real time and quasi real time. A bit like a mix between Baldur's Gate and Laser Squad Nemesis. I think it's a real shame that so many games are drifting from "pure" turn based games in favour of the glam of real time. OK... LSN is still, strictly speaking, turn based, but there's a large degree of unpredictability involved. I suspect that the same kind of unpredictability will follow through in Aftermath, possibly more-so, which is a real pity in a game where it might be nice to preserve your forces somewhat. OK, I'm not exactly TopDog at LSN, but even if I win by a land slide I typically lose about half my force. True, some of you players lose half the guys you send on any given mission in XCOM, but that can hardly be considered a "good" result.

I use MoSlo. I only have the shareware version, which can only slow things down to 1% of normal, but that's fine if your CPU isn't faster than about 1.2GHz. My main PC is a 1800+ XP, and it runs a bit too fast on that, but it's playable. I mostly play on my laptop, which is only a P2-300.

I'm going to have to go Firing Accuracy. Dead bug-eyes tell no tales. Also, there's nothing to replace the satisfaction of punching a hole through a roof top alien from clean across the map. Beyond that I'd TUs. Particularly when breaching a UFO, high TUs are a godsend. A high TU unit can be redeployed to any part of the battlefield quickly, and is more likely to get away with stepping into a room, letting off a bit of burst fire, and (and this is an important part) getting back out again.

Engineers are pure gold!!! In all seriousness, if you have 2 living quaters, 2 workshops, 14 soldiers, and 86 engineers (plus whatever else), and you get your engineers building laspistiols round the clock... The income from selling the laspistiols will way more than pay for everything on the list. All my interception bases also get a big arse compliment of engineers. Why shouldn't the base make profit? The laspistol is the best thing to make for money (possibly bar some late game items, by which time cash is irrelevant) The profit margin per item is low, but they are very quick to build. What would you rather... $100K once, or $5K 30-40 times? After the first month my expenses far out weigh the income from the nations, until about July-August, when my funding begins to catch up. The engineer's laspistol antics make up the deficit and then some, and so everything I capture and sell is profit to be used for expansion and building "real" gear. The other advantage of having a sick amount of Engineers is how quickly you can kit out your men with the latest gizmos. Just invented flying armour? No problem! All soldiers will have their very own set in just a couple of days.

If I'm taking on mutons and really don't want to take losses I pretty much sit back and let 'em have it with blaster launchers. Why enter a UFO when you can just punch a hole in it and rain explosive death? Of course it is more fun to go toe to toe, in which case close range plasma rifle autofire seems to work OK, provided you have enough guys. I save up the hard hitting weapons for when I face the mutons. You seldom need plasma weapons or blasters against anyone else. Apart from that, NKf's tips seem to bear out my experience. Aliens can definately shoot up and down larger lifts. What I find funny is when they try to use a grenade. I don't know if it is possible to make it work, but grenades always hit the elevator "floor" and hence stay on the same level as the thrower, in my experience anyway.

I have a copy I'd be willing to sell. golgotha@iprimus.com.au Thing is, I'm in Australia, so postage may be an issue. Say $10AU (~3 pounds or $6US) + postage? Pretty reasonable...

Prox grenades are great on defence missions. Best of all they don't take up any of your 80 item limit. Sometimes if you have too much gear at a base though, you may not have access to the items you want when arming, and will have to collect them from the stores mid-mission. Generally they are less useful, but still fun, in other misions. Once you start getting psi attacked though, cut back on thier use. You don't have the time to sit about waiting for the aliens to get stupid.

Yes, it seems the British are destined to be traitorous dogs who capitulate like a Frenchman confronted by a German. The UK is by far the most common country to go bugeyed (possibly for dramatic purposes as the game is from the UK - abit like all those Jap shows where Japan has been/becomes totally destroyed). Who cares if a country packs it in? All the country's combined don't contribute as much money as either the sales of alien artefacts, or a properly set up engineer program. $1M per month? Don't waste my time! Oh sure, we'd all like an extra ivory back scratcher, but come on...

Funnily enough, just yesterday I had the exact opposite. I found one bugeye hiding in a barn clear across the map, and every other alien was onboard the ship. Thing is it was a crashed Lg scout, the reactor had blown, but there were no less than 7 suriviors on board! Cool thing is, all but one of them were facing away from the door, so it was pretty easy to gun them all down that turn with a four man fire team. I have never had such an easy time clensing a room with so many aliens without resorting to explosives.

Ha! Yes... What do they do with those corpses. IMHO I sell them to hollywood as cheap special effects in B-grade sci-fis I figure I have also sold enough las-pistols to rearm the US army and marines... why aren't the pulling thier weight, rather than slinging me a measly $12M per annum?

Good lord, Aziraphale! What an odd assortment of gear! In future try to keep a base well stocked with decent weapons! As has been said; prox-grenades are great on defence missions. Chuck em near hanger entrances, and around the elevator. You can wait a really long time for the bozos to trip them up. I like to have 2 plasma defence modules, and one of those forcefield do-hickeys that lets you fire twice before they land. That stops the battleship most times. If you want be real sure, use blaster defences! Of course what I really like is to let 'em land and to kick seven kinds of alien goo out of them. I find that on easier levels, once you beat back a couple of ships they don't give you any more grief. On harder levels they typically try again every 1-5 weeks, usually at weaker bases.

I go for laser rifles first, then straight up the armour path ASAP. I like all my guys in flying armour. I know a lot of people bag this and favour normal power armour, but I like the tactical flexibility, and I think the extra protection goes a long way. I like Hyperwave decoders, but they are hardly critical. If money is an issue, don't get them. That said, I have never had much in the way of money issues after Feb'99. First few missions I sell ALL artefacts. Infact, the only things I don't sell are elerium & blasterbombs. I build up a moderate supply of alloys(300) and alien grenades(30), and I try to keep at least 4 powersupplys in store until I have built all the new craft I want. As I approach completion of flying armour research I will hold onto plasma gear so that I can aim towards plasma cannons. I also generally keep a stockpile of P-rifle clips at this stage. I only actually use P-rifles on important or difficult missions. Hiring lots of engineers can be profitable. Just put them to work pumping out las-pistols. They have an excellent capital return per workhour. I like to have two workshops at every base, and about 95 engineers per base too. This fixes up your cash quick smart, and means that when you want to actually produce something specific, you can do it very quickly. This extra cash also means you can pretty much hire as many scientists as you want. I do not use tanks on away missions. I keep a couple at each base, incase of invasion, and I typically get a plasma HWP each base once able. Fact is... a HWP takes up four slots, and is seldom as powerful as four guys. In terms of PSI labs, I will build one as soon as I'm able. At that stage I basically double the number of troops I have. Usually by that stage I have two teams of 14 on opposite sides of the globe, so I get 1 lab for each of those bases. I will train the combat weakest first, then work my way up. I don't care if someone is bad at psi provided thier accuracy is high. If a trooper has an accuracy <60 and is psi defence weak, it's goodnight (for that matter, generally anyone with an accuracy <55 I sack unless they show remarkable psi talent. I don't go in for psi in a big way. Mainly I just do it for defensive purposes. If someone shows top potential in both strength and attack I will actively train that person, but I'll usually only do it once or twice if they are a top shooter. I find that I'm usually ready to attack Cydonia before a proper psi training schedule can be completed.

I always get a bit haughty when someone turncoats. Actually, the UK has switched on me almost every game I've played recently. Ultimately though, the funding you get from any one country is insignificant, and that's all thier allegiance means to you. Realistically there's no reason you'd need more than one base. Why shoot down so many UFOs world wide? Most often your guys don't have the time to take care of all the clean up work, and you really only need one team. So really, beyond the first few months, any effort you make to protect any country is for purely aesthetic reasons.

I guess I'm just too humane... I'll go out of my way to save the civvies. Not that the brainless ingrates deserve my attention...

Well, is he remaking it or reverse engineering it? If it is an actual remake, then there'll be new algorithims for everything anyway, so the higher res will make zero impact on the dev time. I was toying with the idea of doing a remake using DirectX, but I became rather daunted by the amount of graphical and sound work required. It would have been quite expanded, with many elements borrowed from Jagged Alliance 2, as well as full on hand-to-hand stuff. Anyway, it's too much coding for it to look like crap because of my god-awful art, and way way too much work over all to do everything to a good standard as a one man team. If I had a sound guy, one or two art guys, and maybe an extra coder, I'd be on it like white on rice.