Carpa Bob

For me the Biomass starts in Antartica and Australia, so no real loss there then. As to the which came first question, I personally aquired a node from a planter long before I finally got a mission on the biomass that gave me a Sample. I would suggest that as soon as the CoE sends the message that they have detected the biomass both items are available, and its just down to chance as to which you get first.

I recently restarted, but before I did I had researched as far as the psi crusher and I'm pretty sure its description was that of a weapon designed to damage the enemy not control them.

Unfortunately no amount of planning ahead stops you from being wiped out in the first ten seconds of a mission due to facing superior Reticulans numbers and weapons. After just scraping through the Russian missionI found myself no longer able to attack alien bases or infiltrate downed UFO's, as my armour and weapons are no longer a match for the aliens. Even the Transgenant missions are iffy as the Morelmen are starting to use the alien rocket launcher. I have decided to start a new game on easy setting in Europe, I was playing with the default profile. I am hoping my experience so far will lead to a better research strategy the will leave me competative even after the Russian mission.

I finish this down to pure luck more than anything else, as I don't seem to have half the stuff everyone else is using. Of my seven troops I only have enough armour to give one person Alien Sun Armour, two people got Heavy combat Armour, one got Enhanced light Armour while the rest got bog standard light armour. Weapons were pretty much standard fair, basic alien laser rifles, sniper rifles two standard rocket launchers and two people with grenades. I got lucky with perimeter of the base as only 3 Reticulans ambushed me, which I cleared up quickly, then found that all the others were grouped together on the other side of the base walls. So I just lobbed grenades over taking most of them out. Once I was in the base I just took my quickest runner and sent him down to pick up the records and run back to the exit. Took a couple of reloads to find a path down to the records that didn't have reticulans in the way. I also gave him one heavy weapons soldier and one SMG soldier for support. The difficulty has switched in the same way as someone flicking on a light switch. Case in point, I had two alien base in territories next to each other. I take the first one with relative ease, as it followed the pattern of all the others (i.e 3 guards on the surface who you can take out with sniper rifles). Send the team to attack the second one, but before they reach it I get a message telling me the Russian mission is available. I reach the base where I am instantly assaulted by 5 Reticulans wielding advanced weapons and armour that I simply cannot penatrate, they wipe me out in 10 seconds at most. Lucky for me I was able to reload to just before sending my men out, and chose not to do the mission. Even luckier the base gets captured anyway by my allied soldiers.

Serves them right for not landing on the right side of the Thames :alien2:

Well yes actually, you just have to follow the advice of 'Captain John Ferigad' who posted earlier in this topic. I believe I also noticed someone in the Tech Support forum complaining because one of his soldiers was pinned on all sides by trees on one mission. There should really be something in the code to check that there is a clear path between the starting point and objective when generating the layout, as well as keeping the entry point clear.

Unfortunately I don't really want to wait for another team to get around to capturing London. At the moment the only bases I have are in North America, Canada and just creeping into South America. The only other expansion option I have at the moment is a base in Pearl Harbour. Its not that I think Pearl Harbour is jinxed or anything, I'm just not in a hurry to control a base surrounded by nothing but ocean. The random map generator can throw up some interesting setups. I went from being stuck on the wrong side of the river in London, to being practically on the bases' doorstep with no river in sight.

I have split my squad up once when investigating a UFO. I took four of them into the ship and left three outside as it was a little crowded inside. Once I completed the mission and got back to base all my squad were there. Maybe its just and Area 51 thing.

Well thank god for this forum, I ran into the same trouble with London though I was a little luckier. For me the aquire base mission generated straight after completing a mission in the London area, so no big loss of time for me. I mean how hard is it to land a helicopter on the right side of the river. I would shoot the pilot, but what with humanity fighting for survival I decided against it. Now my next biggest problem is that five minutes after aquiring the base, the aliens invade it. Guess they really don't want me to get a foothold in Europe.

I have a pretty basic firewall running, and when I'm connected to the internet and I put the Play disc in I get the following message, 'LAUNCHER.EXE' from your computer wants to connect to crl.microsoft.com [207.46.243.152], port 80 What exactly is the UFO play disc looking for over the internet, as I have denied it access the few times it has tried.