quasarstrider

It was fixed in the patch, unfortunately. But at least the Enhanced Heavy armor now seems to weigh 20kg instead of 40kg in the tactical game. The patch made the game harder by making MP-7 more feeble. The Reticulans in Bio Armor are damn hard to kill. Their rockets are still too much. Had a defend base mission the other day, 8-10 aliens coming at me down a long corridor, some in Sky armor, some in Bio armor, using Warp, Laser, Rocket, Psi weapons. I only had Sky armor and Enhanced Heavy armor with good Human weapons in my arsenal, except for good sniper rifles. Tried all sort of tactics, pinning them and using the flamethrower, using grenades, combos of that with MP-7s, planting 4x snipers at the end of the long corridor, etc. I always kill about half of them, but then my crew starts dying one by one. Sigh.

Ugh. Do they really all come at you at once or just after you shoot rockets? I notice area of effect weapons tend to draw aliens from far away. When that happens to me... area of effect or no area of effect weapons... I just reload and try again.

V1.2. Playing on HARD. It was quite boring. Did one of those easy peasy transgenant missions, brought one shotgun and all the shotgun ammo I could carry (besides some regular weapons and ammo to actually finish the mission, shotguns are lame). Then I spent some 15 mins doing 'A', right-click, 'A', right-click... give shotgun to someone else, rinse and repeat. My fingers got a bit sore, but they are ok now. I wonder if Uzis are better. I think they have more ammo per clip, so you can make loads & loads of AIMED firings. I'm assuming the XP is just per shot and has nothing to do with damage or anything. But my fingers ache just from the thought.

I just wonder what kind of armor you people are using... I have my entire team on Sky Armor at the moment, the only really dangerous thing the Reticulans have against me are some versions of rockets, not all. But they haven't switched to Warp Weapons yet. Is that it? I noticed the stats for Warp weapons are better in V1.2... I need to do some base defense or alien base capture missions right now so I can get my hands on Bio Armor. Oh and gotta get that node. The slimy biomass is all over South America. I own North America, Europe, Africa, both Poles, half of Asia at the moment.

Just spent some boring time shooting all the shotgun shells all my men could carry. Got slightly over 10000 xp for my trouble, 3 guys leveled up. Not that bad.

That works fine until you have to kill one hidden in a confined space. Last time that happened to me I had to lob lots of grenades to kill it :bomber:.

Heh, had a mission recently where I had to kill 14 Reticulans. Geez. The ammo alone was just too much. Then I went on another mission, capture alien base, as soon as it started I had 3x aliens on my back and 4x in front of me, 3x of them shooting heavy plasmas, aarghh!!! I gave up. Where are the when you need them?

Kewl stuff. I had already done the Chrysalid trick about 3x, watched the entire evening news on TV each time. That was how I got 3 guys with HEROIC carrying capacity and good stats elsewhere (my lovely pack mules), 3 guys with HEROIC speed & handguns, etc. Node Watchers also do Paralysis so it is likely you can use the same trick, but I haven't tried it there yet. The other trick is new to me. Gotta try it on the next mission, my pack mules can carry plenty of shotguns in their backpack. :inlove:

No less guns please. I have 20 bases and am running out of ammo fast. I dunno if it is because of HARD or because of V1.2. But then again, I mostly stick to MP-5 against Transgenants and MP-7 against Reticulans, so... Gotta love Heckler and Koch in this game.

Brian (the 2nd guy) is good. Some of the Slavic guys are good too. I found the Indian accents a bit funny... but passable in a "Goodness Gracious Me" kind of way. Most of the Southern Merkin accents were terrible. I have nothing against those kinds of accents, but they do not sound like the real thing, more like a distorted version of the real thing. Don't let me start about their dialogue either. Must... kill... Malcom... :devil:

It doesn't have anything to do with time like that. It is random. I have got it both ways. Remember all those restarts I made ? Some were of variant 1, others of variant 2. I won this time at variant 2. However when I played on Easy using V1.1, I got variant 1 and won regardless. Why? Because the MP7 had increased range. I think it is probably possible to win variant 1 if you have strong enough armor, lots of medikits and G11s. Steyr is too weak.

Actually I thought the management was fine. You spent a lot of time in X-COM with those things and it didn't add up very much. The maps could be a bit bigger and have height. You should be able to enter inside buildings, since the close support weapons are so much better than the rest. Do not forget to bring motion detectors back! I think the assault rifles should be beefed up a bit. They are too weak except for the G11. Also, the collapsible weapons should have a deploy option instead of constantly having to unfold them before firing. Some of the heads also could use some work, more detail, not to mention the voices of those fake southerners. Malcom... yuck! Oh and the psionic attacks are just way too strong in this game. They should add those depletable bars of energy like X-COM had for psionic defense instead of just rolling some dice. That way it would take some hits before being posessed.

Did the Russian base again, this time on HARD using V1.2. Wanting to hurry as usual, only had in stock 3x Enhanced Combat Armors, 1x Enhanced Combat Helmet, 1x Sun Armor, 2x Heavy Armors, 6x Enhanced Light Armors. Despite having 20x bases: no Gatlings , none of the decent Accuracy International Rifles, however plenty of Handguns, some Steyrs, etc. 5x of my troops had Excellent running speed and 2x had Heroic running speed . I had to restart from scratch 3x times until I could get a squad layout that worked ???. Tried the all sniper approach. No good with the crap rifles I had. Got creamed every time. Tried with a couple of Steyrs, no good. They could target me too easily. Tried rockets: too slow, weak and short ranged . Thought about doing it in stealth with just one of the Heroic running speed troops, but that didn't have enough alien splattering to my taste . Then I thought I should take advantage of the speed of my troops. This was the layout: I had 3x Enhanced Combat Armor folks, 1x Sun Armor, 3x Enhanced Light Armors. 6x had MP7s, 1x had a Rocket Launcher, lots & lots of Medikits and Grenades. Started the mission. First move was running like hell to get some cover behind the closest hut near the entrance, so I could exploit my near range power. Then one of my Heroic runners lured the Aliens nearby to where my troops were hiding. Creamed 4x Reticulans like that. My Heroic runner alone killed 2x more standalone Rocket Reticulans. I ran around and around them until they fired, then got real close and killed them before they could reload :devil:. My rocket guy got pinned by 2x aliens, because I made a stupid mistake, and managed to kill 2x Reticulans all by himself after wasting all his rockets . Heal up, rinse and repeat. A couple of sneaky aliens got hidden in the shelter near the entrance to the 2nd level, a couple of hand grenades taught them better :bomber:. In the base: it was a matter of running counter-clockwise and killing any Reticulan which showed his ugly face. Only had to kill 3x. Used some more Medikits. Mission acomplished! Got 5x guys in the hospital for several days, but that's life.

LOL . I made a horrible mistake above. Where I said "I leave him alone unless I have something better to kill", it should actually be "I leave him alone unless I have nothing better to kill". Ahem.

I just think the rotation after the zoom should be a bit slower. I usually zoom on aliens anyway just to see which weapon they have so I can kill the ones with nasty weapons first. For example: if he carries an Alien Laser Pistol I leave him alone unless I have something better to kill. If he is carrying an Alien Microslug Accelerator I kill him with extreme prejudice.

I guess you didn't research the Enhanced Armors when you should have. They are pretty nice, on the level of Sun armor with increased defense against Paralysis and Exception if you get one of the Enhanced Psi Helmets.

Ah, right. Now I get it. The Warp weapons usually have a slow firing rate so you probably can shred them with the Gatling in time. I guess Warp Medikits would take care of any Warp Weapons damage that manages to pass by. I generally prefer the fast approach. Fast squad, fast weapons. Kill before they move. I only used Gatlings in the Retribution mission and in a base Mission once. Boy, that base Mission was a cakewalk. One guy mowed down 5 Reticulans with minor injuries.

If that Reticulan had an Alien Microslug Accelerator I will buy it. In V1.2 that weapon has 1/3 the damage. Before... It was even more powerful than the Gatling!

Lots of HARD and fast power. MP7, FN P90, G11, Gatling, etc. I had 5 MP7 people using Bio Armor. That will wipe the Reticulans. On second thought, don't use the Gatling. You need Heavy Armor for it and in the second part the Reticulans are chock full of Warp weapons, Rockets, etc. Stick to MP7s and Bio Armor. Bring one Psionic to re-posses your crew back just in case. For the last room, at least bring some Incendiary Grenades, a couple of Flamethrowers or something.

They also made the Alien Microslug Accelerator 1/3 as powerful. It used to go through my men in Bio Armor like as if they were butter, now it does not.

The equipment you give to your soldiers before they leave in the chopper for the mission is their standard equipment. Then they go to the mission and you may pick up new weapons from the dead aliens, etc. However once they go back to base and land, their standard equipment gets reloaded. You need to reassing new equipment to them.

Let us examine that weapon in detail: WEAPON CZ Skorpion vz.83 WEIGHT 1.3 kg SKILL HANDGUNS AMMUNITION 9MM PARABELLUM AIMED BURST MAX. RANGE 18 m 11 m EFFECTIVE RANGE 8 m 3 m DAMAGE 128/4 224/7 RATE OF FIRE 51.2/ 1.6 rps 224.0/ 7.0 rps DAMAGE SOFT CAPACITY 20 RELOAD 2.00 s WEIGHT 0.5 kg I will describe the DAMAGE for AIMED mode. Once you understand that, you will understand the others. If you fire once in AIMED mode you are firing 4 rounds of ammo with a total DAMAGE of 128. Fine so far. The problem is there are more things to damage than the damage per firing. Assuming ammo was unlimited, imagine each firing takes 10 seconds (RATE OF FIRE = 0.1 rps) and does 100 of damage. By the time you fired again you would likely be dead. If however each round takes 2 seconds to fire (RATE OF FIRE = 0.5 rps), you could fire 5 rounds in the same 10 seconds, giving a total of 500 of damage. That is what the RATE OF FIRE numbers indicate. They tell you the damage inflicted per second and how many rounds are fired in that second on average. So "51.2/1.6 rps" means that, on AIMED, you are inflicting 51.2 of damage firing 1.6 rounds on average every second. The RATE OF FIRE damage, together with the clip ammo CAPACITY, clip RELOAD time and rps (rounds fired per second) are the most important numbers. You want to kill your enemies as fast as possible so they don't damage you back. Hence the higher the damage per second the better. This weapon has a damage per second on AIMED of 51.2. I hope I made myself clear?

Actually, SLAW range was extended somewhat, but RPG-7 range remains the same.

Give me an example.

Yeah the ranges are funny. But then again, with the mapsize being small like it is, if the ranges were like in real life you could hit aliens half a map away with a MG.