sandstig

According to the footer on the forums page, they're using IPB 1.3, which was the last official freeware release from Invision, if I'm not mistaken. It's possible that their version of IPB has undergone a number of mods which might make it a little more time-consuming to port it over to the 2.x versions of IPB (which they'd have to purchase a license for) or some other freeware alternative.

Hopefully it follows Stardock's model... not Steam.

I'm running it on a 32MB Mobility Radeon 9000. The game runs fine, and my card's pretty old. I do experience rather long loading times though, but I've got 1GB of RAM. Are you guys saying the loading times have more to do with the vid card than the proc, ram and harddrive? For those of you on more modern hardware, a 128MB GeForce 6600 on an Athlon 64 3500+ with 1GB of RAM for example, how long does it take you to get into the tactical part of the game?

Other than the things everyone else has already suggested such as larger, random maps, ability to rename squads (groups), I'd like to add: 1. Shorter loading times. (Heck, even with 1GB of RAM you spend a few minutes waiting for a tactical mission to load ) 2. Ability to station your troops in different bases. Thus, your troops in London, shouldn't show up when you're viewing your base in New York. 3. Larger transports allowing you to carry more troops. 4. Pseudo-military rank structure, with higher ranking troops giving a morale bonus... and a morale penalty when they get killed

By original, I meant the original game in the genre of strategy/tactical games involving aliens and UFOs, as Space Voyager so aptly put. Much like I would use the term original to describe Command and Conquer: Tiberian Dawn when referring to RTS games that deal with current and near-future equipment such as Act of War: Direct Action and Command and Conquer: Generals. Cpl. Facehuger, do you ever find yourself missing the Simultaneous Action System (SAS) when playing UFO: Enemy Unknown (X-COM: UFO Defense)? After playing both Aftermath and Aftershock, I've sort of gotten used to it, and although it takes a little away from the time you spend with your troops, I've come to appreciate the amount of orders I can give. I find it a little ironic that we have SAS in a game where you can manage seven units at most, wheras we were managing up to 26 in Enemy Unknown/UFO Defense without its aid.

The forums are working for me now. Can one of you guys in North America try doing "ipconfig /flushdns" in your command prompt, then load up http://forum.ufo-aftermath.com/ and see if that works? Edited to add that the rest of the ALTAR sites seem to be up for me as well.

Actually, I don't think either of us called it a sequel. I believe we're both well aware of the fact that this game is not part of the X-COM license... doesn't mean there aren't some things from the old X-COM games we'd like to see done in other games (such as the sequel to this one) in the future though.

Try posting about it and see if they respond... the announcement on their forums mentioned that even their e-mail was down. What ISP are you on btw?

Yeps, that's the same one we're trying to access. All we get on that site is the generic message from IPS when we go to http://207.44.240.82/. Must be some kind of odd DNS issue then. I can't access the site from a server hosted in Texas either. root@mercury [/]# host forum.ufo-aftermath.com ;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached root@mercury [/]# nslookup > forum.ufo-aftermath.com ;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached Edited to add, I still can't access the sites when I use OpenNIC's public DNS servers instead of my ISP's.

Still down for me as well, and I get the same results when typing in the IP address. I wonder if we'd be able to get through if we knew what alias they were using on that box... http://207.44.240.82/~ufo-aftermath or some such

Well, it surpasses the original in MANY areas... but I really miss having 3 avengers per base and tons of squadies in each of those ships Considering I'm only using a Mobility Radeon 9000, I'm surprised the game itself runs pretty well on my system, although the load times sure are pretty long and I've got 1GB of RAM. Agreed that more terrain diversity, larger maps and the ability to get rid of excess equipment would've been great... I really hope that's something they put into Afterlight... that and maybe the chance to load multiple squads on multiple craft and really build the 12x12 bases we had in UFO: Enemy Unknown

The announcement on their forums said it had to do with hardware issues, so I guess we shouldn't be too worried.

Same problem here. Forum's stopped working just now, but the rest of their sites have been down for over a week now I think. I wonder what's taking them so long to get their website up. I mean, surely hosting with a temporary mirror wouldn't be too costly?

Not sure if it can really be called a bug, seems more like a badly thought out feature. Would've been nice if there was a warning when you research the blueprints, pretty frustrating if it's the first time you're playing and this happens to you.

I've got USGs, still no laser sights though. Will see if I can build gyrostabilisers once I get laser sights.

I'll see if I can research them again once I build some USGs and lasersights. If I still can't build gyro-stabilizers by then, I guess I'll just find a way to edit the savegame. Anyone else had similar experiences? According to the tech tree that Thaq posted, this isn't the only time you have to be careful with what you research first: Basic Weapon Lab Researching Blowpipe Blueprints will remove Airgun Skills if you haven't already researched it Researching Firearm Accessory Blueprints will remove Firearm Accessory Operation if you haven't already researched it Researching Basic Mine Blueprints will remove Mine Operation if you haven't already researched it Detection Lab Researching Basic Cloak Blueprints will remove Cloak Operation if you haven't already researched it Researching Basic Scanner Blueprints will remove Scanner Operation if you haven't already researched it Energy Weapon Lab Researching Plasma Weapon Blueprints will remove Plasma Weapon Operation if you haven't already researched it Jet Propulsion Lab Increased Laputa Speed and Increased Laputa Range are mutually exclusive, then again, at least the descriptions of these two items in the Research screen warn you that "this could prevent us from further upgrades" Psionics Lab Researching Psi Weapon Blueprints will remove Psionic Weapon Operation if you haven't already researched it

Playing the game for the first time and not downloading the tech tree, I started wondering why I couldn't build any gryo stabilizers. Turns out I need to research "Firearm Accessory Operation" before "Firearm Accessory Blueprints". Is there any way I can research "Firearm Accessory Operation" again without having to start the game from scratch?

That does leave some holes, since considering they were able to mimic it for human use, and they do have enough technology to keep the aliens alive, they should have been able to develop armour for your new comrades. Besides, wouldn't the new ash-coloured recruits be able to lend some input on the development of new armour? OT: Really looking forward to Xenocide 1.0. Btw, is it true that Firaxis now owns the license to X-COM?

tyty03, try the mix of snipers, MP7 and assault rifles the guys here have been suggesting. Draw the aliens out and ambush 'em. Concentrated fire with hard damage works wonders. Oh yeah, as most of the guys here have already said, don't forget to pack some shotguns for the internal portion of the mission.

Grenades, incendiary rockets and sniper rifles seem to do pretty well against them. Best thing is, they can't move, so you can just keep shooting and scooting.

bowles, who said this was a remake? My understanding from what I've read and what I've been playing is that this is an entirely different game influenced by the ideas of the original X-COM developers from Mythos. You're right though, if somehow the original developers managed to secure the X-COM license from Atari and managed to make a remake of the first game, then perhaps we'd be seeing some much higher scores. Maybe in a couple years we'll actually see X-COM: Genesis being resurrected. Anyway, getting back to the topic, I think the game grows on you once you give it a chance. I read the reviews from a lot of game sites before finally getting my copy, but I've learned over time that although reviewers may think a game sucks, it may not necessarily be the case for me. There were some annoyances with the game initially, but after playing it the second time, I only realized how long I'd been playing it once the sun started shining into the bedroom... thank heavens it was a Saturday.

Cpl. Facehugger, I think it has something to do with the fact that the Sun Armour, Sky Armour and Bio Armour in your inventory are actually items your engineers have produced and are suited to human rather than Reticulan use. It would be cool if you could salvage the armour taken from the Reticulans you massacre, but I guess they assume that armour filled with holes isn't gonna be of much use. (OT: I'm excited about Xenocide, i haven't seen a tactical component to it yet though, is this already in existence?)