kylan

It seems that at the start of any campaign, the alien activity usually focuses in a specific funding territory each month. Ideally, you would want to be right in amongst it, or in a neighbouring territory, precisely to snap up as much loot as possible. I don't usually restart because of a lack of activity, because I think there's a number of missions which are set, or 'pre-programmed', to occur near your base, wherever it is. The problem is that the radar you start with, the small sonar, is a piece of junk, and often misses these missions. So I tend to go off the graphs which update alien activity in real time. Some missions, I think, can occur anywhere, others occur near your base.* It so happens that in the Let's Play I've started uploading (see the playlist at http://www.youtube.com/ODTxcom), that the alien's zone of choice in January is the Caribbean, and my base is in the Mediterranean, meaning that I can just about reach the activity there. I don't think I actually manage to shoot anything down, though, and I would've struggled but for the fact that there's quite a bit of activity in the Med towards the end of the month. Most importantly, however, I had a base defence in January; and as per base defences, the aliens brought some pretty big technology with them. Occasionally, you don't get a Gillman/Deep One terror in January, and that can really screw things up. My own personal view is that the Let's Play I've started to upload is pretty uneventful, but it might be useful for someone unfamiliar with the game who is routinely slaughtered. I'm figuring out a series of 'challenge' missions which might be more interesting… I'm thinking that I should have a best of three match (2 ship terrors & an artefact site) with my ten best troops at the start of June. These ten troops will be unarmoured, and are barred from using MC, though they will already have decent MC defences. Perhaps I might bar them from thermic lance tech., too—undecided. And then, simply, play to the death. * e.g. there's definitely always a very small ufo near your base on day 1, & possibly another towards the end of day 3. I'm pretty certain that within the first three weeks you're guaranteed to have both types of small sub (escort and cruiser) land in the vicinity of your base.

Yes, you're right about the 0%, but it will succeed eventually ... somehow. Often during terrors you can hear a biodrone melee attacking a civilian (and failing), turn after turn, but after about ten turns it scores a hit and moves on. I guess it can perform many melee attacks during a turn (a sheer guess, ten or more?), but when it does hit, I've never had anyone survive it. The 0% thing is quite an obvious 'bug' which I'm sure must have been spotted during testing. It makes me wonder whether the makers decided to leave it at that because the biodrone was so tough in other regards. Obviously, shooting it whilst stood next to it in a melee attack presents its own difficulties.

I think the scariest moments I had were generic aquatoid missions when I first started playing. It was the long periods of silence and build-up, to that music, which created killer suspense, while in truth I had no idea what I was doing. I resorted to game saving after every turn. Before I started playing myself, I was entranced by watching my dad play it, shortly after the game first came out. He was playing scout ship with lobstermen but, for whatever reason, he was still stuck using the default equipment from the X-Com supplies. Anyway, I think he somehow cleared all the lobstermen with the exception of one or two in the ship, which was on an open plane. As his troops approached in a large circle, however, they were picked off one-by-one, as the lobsterman peeped out of the door of the ship, took a shot, and disappeared back inside again. During this time, the lobster was subject to a tremendous amount of opportunity fire from Jet Harpoons and Gas Cannons, but to no avail. Finally, after losing about 5-6 troops, my dad struck upon the idea to throw a proximity mine in front of the door. Of course, at this I had no idea what a proximity mine was, so you'll have to imagine the novelty factor, but at the end of turn, there was the sound of a door rattling open, a loud BOOM, then something that sounded like a wounded elephant as the lobsterman disappeared in a cloud of smoke. Suddenly, from being quite tense (we had been playing so long that the room was now dark) we pissed ourselves laughing.

To be honest, all of the above. :-) I've just finished recording a full length LP, but it turned out to be suspiciously easy. I had plenty of missions (and therefore money) in the first two months which meant that my tech tree was well-developed by the time of the first ship terror (the first difficult mission, imo)*. And it also turned out that the MC resistance of my main squadron of troops was unusually good when the MC stats came in at the end of April. I was thinking that perhaps, from the spectators' point of view, watching a few close missions might be more interesting, or at least suspenseful. Anyway, I might begin by posting the whole thing and then add some miscellaneous missions where things don't go quite as planned. The thing is, there's quite a bit of editing, as I recorded everything through Dosbox and I have to chop everything up into 10 minute segments and perhaps convert the format (my video editor makes a smudgy mess out of Dosbox's zmbv format). * My rules for a TFTD LP stipulate playing some of the more difficult missions. I WILL reload on April 1 to ensure I have a mixed ship terror, and on May 1 for a lobsterman/biodrone ship terror, and on June 1 for an artefact site. Of course, occasionally, I get pwned, which is all part of the fun, but on the LP above, I already had the Sonic tank and thermic lance by Apr 1, which meant I was never really in trouble. I think it would be more interesting, or sadistic, to watch how I fare without these tech.

Hi folks, I've been trying to record a TFTD Let's Play (Ironman, Superhuman) to upload on Youtube and I'm at the point where I'm wondering whether I should upload what I've got or give a game another whirl. I'm not so sure about the watchability of an entire campaign, particularly as things get easier towards the end, so I was thinking maybe individual missions instead. (In particular, I want to upload a ship terror which I butchered and which goes very close.) Anyway, over 3 or 4 campaigns (some which I abandoned for no particular reason) I've recorded quite a bit of footage, and I've made a compilation of some odd & bizarre moments here. Clicky. Apologies for my noobishness, as always.