Cazbol

Note that psi skill improves fast when its low but will improve ever more slowly as the psi skill stat increases. Once a soldier gets a psi skill over 50 you can expect a month of training in a lab to yield only 1-5 extra points. Heavy use of psi in the field will then be your primary means of advancing psi skill.

I've feverishly been playing TFTD for the last week and yesterday I encountered an alien tactic that I haven't seen in TFTD before and that I never saw in UFO. The tactic was total camping. I downed a large sub of Gillmen, the kind of sub with 3 decks and the entrance on the 2nd deck above some stairs. As always I carefully and thoroughly combed the area around it but without finding any signs of life. Finally I spotted a Gillman coming through the door and down to the stairs tossing grendes before retreating back into the sub. Another was firing from one of the windows in the back at the 2nd deck. Grenades and missiles dealt with them, after which all was quiet. I tried to blow up the doors and make holes in the hull with Aqua-Jet missiles and high explosives but that doesn't seem to work for the big subs like it does for the smaller subs. Sending the troops in, I found 2 Gillmen guarding the door but was able to kill them without taking reaction fire, thanks to the non-intrusive way of opening doors in TFTD. Four gillmen camped on the lowest deck and the rest are seemingly camped at the upper floor, which is the most dangerous part with small rooms and many doors. An ideal camping site. I'll deal with them after work today. Having played hundreds of missions in UFO and TFTD I have never before come across a mission where non of the aliens ever left their craft, and here there are probably around a dozen of them. Has anyone seen this kind of thing before? Have you come across any other rarely seen AI tactics in TFTD that aren't used in UFO?

There's no question about it, the aliens can know where you are without ever having seen you. The can mind control the guy in the back of the Skyranger on the first turn. In TFTD they can even mind control guys in the Triton even though its doors are closed. I somewhat suspect that there's a range within which they know where you are but that this range is unaffacted be obstacles and cover. The range could be unlimited though.

Another possible reason for the absence of the prisoner is that he has nothing new to reveal that you haven't already discovered. In that case the alien will just disappear and the day after the base mess hall will be serving a stew with some ingredients that noone seems to know what is. At least it works that way in UFO so I'm assuming it also does in TFTD.

Another beautiful thing about DOS is that it fits on a small part of a single floppy disk. Want to run DOS on a machine with Windows XP? Make a DOS boot disk, put in the floppy disk drive*, restart the computer and you now have a computer which runs under pure DOS. Go for DOS 6.22 if you can. * A floppy disk drive is the 3½ inch slot on you computer whose purpose you never figured out if you're born in the 80's or later.

I try to keep them alive but I don't take any major risks in doing so. If I find civilians in a building I may post a trooper to block the door in order to keep the civvies out of harms way. I also try to be very careful with explosives since I think you get -50 points for killing a civilian yourself. That's pretty much all you can reasonably do to save those idiots. It would have been a worthy improvement, if the civilians would run towards any X-COM operatives that they saw and tried to stay behind them. Also, a civilian inside a building that doesn't see an alien in the building should remain inside. I'm no programmer but it really doesn't seem like complicated piece of coding. I think some civilian pseudo-instinct for self-preservation would make you care more and thus make the missions more interesting. Cazbol

The Israeli example is a classic one, but not necessarily correct. If a man takes a huge risk saving a fellow male soldier it's heroism. If he does the same for a female soldier he's being overly protective because she's a woman. Women in the Soviet forces in WWII certainly proved themselves useful in combat. Cazbol

Sounds like the Crimea peninsula. In my first game where I didn't have much of a clue, I started my first base in my country of birth. That happened to be Iceland. Darn. I was out business by the end of February. But what do you know, in TFTD we have the Icelandic Union! I laughed my arse off when I saw that one. It seems to include Iceland, the Faeroe Islands and Greenland, which today have a combined population of about 350,000. They certainly top the list for highest funding per capita. Cazbol

This happens to me a lot. I found it even worse in UFO than TFTD and Half-Life is probably the worst. I jump in my chair, I kick my rudder pedals under the table and hurt myself, I knock things over on the table. I must be a nervous wreck. Now I tend to set the volume pretty low to reduce damage to my home. Cazbol

I go for research. It's especially important for me now when I'm playing my first game and don't now the research tree. I have 50 scientists (I earned them ) and make do with the 10 engineers that came with the base. I'd like to double the number of scientists and even get them up to 200, but I'll first build a second base with a full assault team, so the 50 scientists will have to do for now. Cazbol

My, aren't you being a little harsh on those poor recruits? It takes about one mission to raise the strength stat from 20 to 30. Just encumber the soldier heavily and let him run around someplace. His strength will shoot up after the mission. This is the last stat I'd ever consider reason for sacking. Cazbol

I'm thankful for all the small targets I get, and definitely shoot them all down. Discovering that D.U.P. torpedoes do no damage to large subs, I'm left with only the small fry to play with. I suggest you do them and enjoy them. Cazbol

My kit: 1 laser tank (in case the place was swarming with Sectopods) 2 plasma tanks 1 fusion tank All ten team members with psi amps, 70+ psi strength and 60+ psi skill. 10 of 10 in flying suits 3 of 10 with blaster launchers and 5 bombs. 7 of 10 with heavy plasma. 10 electrical flares 2 motion scanners (essential for base attacks) about 7 proximity grenades 5 medikits remaining cargo space filled with alien grenades The only thing I'd change is to add more motion detectors; probably 2 more. A few more electrical flares could also have come in handy. I'd reduce the number of grenades to compensate. I landed right next to the pyramid with the access lift, which didn't interest me because I was there to kill every single mofo on the planet. I startet by establishing a perimeter around the Avenger, using the pyramids as cover. The aliens started shooting at me out of the dark where I couldn't see them so I spread flares around the outer part of the perimeter and used tanks to scout the area until I found them. Immediately and effortlessly mind controllled everything I saw, including parts of the cyberdiscs which then killed themselves. Cleared every pyramid and every inch using prisoners as scouts. Three sectoids in a pyramid put up a surprisingly well organised defense making good use of cover but were soon controlled. Having taken control of all surface troops they were gathered in a groop and disarmed. The useful part of their equipment was distributed among my troopers and the prisoners then executed. Getting down to the base, I found out to my frustration that the two motion scanners wound up at the same access lift, meaning the team at the other lift couldn't see if an enemy was approaching. After a long wait where no aliens where to be seen. One trooper was therefore tasked with making his way to the other access lift with the much needed motion scanner. On the way she runs into a celatid. One mind control later the celatid spots another alien *zing* and another *zing*. In about 5 turns every single alien is mind controlled except for one Sectopod with gets blown up. My commander gets the honour of greeting the brain and presenting it with a gift to symbolise how much X-COM values alien products. One alien grenade placed before the brain. The brain was not too grateful but soon stopped complaining. And there was much rejoicing. Cazbol

It's april 2040 in my game, and the aliens just sent a fleet of subs into the North Atlantic, where I have 3 subs, each with 2 D.U.P. launchers. I sent one Barracuda after a large sub. In a careful attack it fired all 6 torpedoes with close to 100% hit rate but the large sub did not go down. Meanwhile the other two Barracudas engaged another large sub. Their careful attacks also hit with almost all torpedoes, i.e. 12 torpedoes with almost as many hits. The large sub just sailed on as if it got slapped with a herring. What does one have to do to sink those large suckers? I'd rather not have to do an agressive attack since the first time I tried it I lost a Barracuda and got a major score penalty. Cazbol

Congratulations Jellyfish Green. I just beat my first UFO game a few weeks ago and you did better than I (assuming you never reloaded). I didn't attack Cydonia until April 2000. The reason for the late attack was my late discovery of psi and the decision to wait until I had 10 soldiers with 70+ psi strength and 60+ psi skill. With a crew that strong the final mission was very easy, as every single alien got mind controlled and no X-COMmie got hurt (that same old boring super-safe strategy of mine.) I look forward to doing it all over again, but it'll be a while since I'll play all the sequels first. Playing TFTD at the moment is a bit of a change, having no psi, no armor and only gauss rifles. I just did an island attack in complete darkness and paid dearly for victory. Cazbol

Try a program called Mailwasher. It enables you to bounce selected mails to make your address seem unvalid, blocks selected senders, and blocks any keywords that you don't want in topics (for instance: mortgage, loan, diploma, porn*, sex*, FREE etc.) It obviously doesn't eliminate spam but it sure as hell cuts down on it. It also has the sweet advantage of being free. You can download it at www.mailwasher.net. Cazbol

Have you considered multiple (2) operating systems on your computer? I haven't tried it myself but I've heard it's easier than it sounds. I had a link to a guide somewhere. I'll post it if I can find it. Cazbol

[snipped even more reloading gibberish........] Afterall they have the save option in the tactical options menu. What would be the point of allowing mid-mission in tactical if they didn't intend for you to be able to load it? [......snipsnipsnipsnip all that reloading gibberish.] No sooner do I stop following this forum than the reloaders crawl out of their holes. What a sad, sad thread. Reloading will only be "fair" once the aliens can restart missions where they've lost troops. The point in having a save option in tactical missions is to be able to do the missions in more than one sitting. Some of these missions can take several hours if you're being careful, as you have to be if you want your men live through other means than cheating. That's why you can save, turn off the computer and come back again. The reason for the absence of the load button in tactical combat should be pretty straight forward for those who can bear the thought, but is often discussed as the great unsolvable mistery. The load button isn't missing. What's missing is the an extra level of difficulty right below "Beginner", called "Whaaa Momma", where all soldiers are invulnerable to save the reloaders some time. :dontgetit: Cazbol

I said 4-6 times a week but it varies greatly. At the moment I may be playing TFTD just about every day. When I got my new 1.9 Ghz computer and with it all the new games that I couldn't run on my trusty 133 Mhz, the frequency of playing X-COM dropped to less than once a week. Finally finishing UFO and starting TFTD rekindled the enthusiasm. Furthermore, getting Neverwinter Nights for the 1.9 Ghz means my better half :inlove: has taken an interest in the computer, so I have to spend even more time at the old one where X-COM is king. Cazbol

I'm just making the transition from UFO to TFTD, which shouldn't be hard since TFTD is but a UFO mod. There is however one thing I don't understand. Next to the 4 buttons that reserve TUs for various types of shots there are two new buttons. On the right side there is a button that adds 4 points to the reserved TUs for kneeling. One the left side is a button of the same shape with a slashed through picture of a man and a 0 beneath it. The only thing I can get this button to do is to deplete all the TUs. Am I missing something here or is there some value in this button? Cazbol

As if the last of the three isn't interesting enough? :inlove: Surely we could also play with guns, throw grenades (who has the highest TA?), drive tanks and all the other fun stuff you do at a military base, right? ---------------------> Cazbol ............................ and a reloader

Going on a hypothetical vacation to the UK from Denmark or Iceland is by no means a major feat. However, bringing my fairly large PC, a 19" monitor, keyboard etc. would pose some packing problems. Unless some near bankrupt netcafé can be found, I'd just have to consume alcohol, poke the players with make-believe stun rods or insult the reloaders. Cazbol

There is a slim chance that I might make it. England (or rather London) is very high on my must visit list, so I could perhaps attend if the timing is in my favour and if it isn't held in some outhouse on a remote island. June and late July would probably be best for me but I can't be sure. What could be hypothetical activities at such a hypothetical convention? Would it just be the consumption of alcohol and the poking of others with imaginary stun rods? Cazbol

I voted no. In my defense I'd like to say that I only started playing TFTD last week, so cut me some slack. Cazbol

I don't mean to be too pushy, but is there some estimated time for the upstart of the new Unity? Some of us are getting restless and need to get our butt kicked. Cazbol