Crafty

Kinda reminds me of the most fun I ever had playing this game. First game I played all the way to the end, before I really knew what I was doing. I think it was on intermediate level. The final moment of the game I had exactly four survivors in Cydonia, ready to shoot the alien brain. Everyone else had been killed but these four dudes had been with me from the very start and had seen it all. Good times. So yeah, Ironman all the way.

You're crazy, but I really am interested in how a 3x3 base would look in a base defense mission. If I have twenty soldiers camping out, and a battleship drops by, is there room for everyone to spawn? Will I have ten targets in sight from the opening frame? Could I end an assault in one turn using only alien grenades? I'm so doing this for my next base in my current game. For the sake of science.

Not sure if this is really rookie hall-of-fame material, but a funny moment in the game I just started. Squad of rookies busts into a large scout, drops the two sectoids inside, and then moves to position by the two doors. Once they're in position, I end my turn. Apparently, one of the sectoids was merely unconscious, and gets up, winds his way through the four rooks at the door on the left side, opens the door, and walks on through. They all had plenty of TUs remaining, but not a single reaction shot was fired. I just picture this whole tac squad just sitting there, focused on the door, while a sectoid casually walks right through them, saying, excuse me, pardon me, coming through... It was an epic rookie fail.

My first nominee, Sarah Blake. First ground mission of the game on superhuman, January 8. Medium scout. First half of the troops head out, take out a few sectoids. Blake, carrying a rocket launcher, shuffles up to the door of the Skyranger in a backup role. Next alien turn, a sectoid fires from a nearby building, shoots out a wall, hitting nobody. Blake's response? Reaction fire with a small rocket through the window of the building to kill the bastard. I nominate Sarah Blake for the rookie hall of fame.

Wow, this thread went pretty far afield of what I thought it was going to be about... Anyway, I think it should be an update of the original game, keep the same storyline, but improve the game. Some thoughts: 1. Make it so that any troop can develop psi-defense, but make it very rare for one to be able to master a panic attack, even more rare for one to be able to mind control. Developing psi effectively ends the game unless you swear ahead of time not to abuse it. 2. I'd like a feature on higher levels where the aliens can intercept your transport in flight and shoot it down. Then you're starting a mission shorthanded, with the aliens conducting their own recovery mission. Of course, you could attempt to have escorts for your transport, or have a dogfight with the avenger, but still, another dimension. 3. I think if a funding nation bails, and you have a base in that country, you should have to move everyone out and close down the base. On the flip side, have situations where a funding nation pays you a bonus to put a base in their country, and a monthly bonus to keep it there. 4. Update to include modern real-world weapons. There's no reason our boys shouldn't be able to rock the AA-12, for example. Make it more appealing to just go with what we've got rather than develop new weapons research. 5. In higher levels, have e-115 diminish over time, like it has a half-life. Create some urgency on the player's part, encourage aggressive play. Just a thought.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR111801172...d=1236&cs=1 http://www.variety.com/article/VR111800400...d=3628&cs=1 As you may recall, X-Com was based largely on the old British tv series in the 70s, UFO. They're making a movie out of it! Good times. Of course, this is bad news for my own screenplay based on X-Com...

Now that I think about it, I think I did shoot another UFO down on the Norway coast. It was pretty cool, had that weird mountain terrain with caves in it. Look, I'm not going to sit here and pretend I didn't have a few drinks in me.

Playing on superhuman, more than half the time, the first UFO I get is a landing near my base, not a shootdown. I recover it, get some E-115, and head back. Every time this happens, and I do mean every time, I get a base invasion by January 5 or so. I can handle the floaters, but that's too early for sectoids and cyberdiscs, sorry. Of course, if I ignore that first UFO, it's smooth sailing no matter how many UFOs I shoot down. I'm starting to think that having E-115 is some sort of trigger. It's not as simple as shootdowns -> base assault.

Just a thought, but mind control is the most dangerous thing about ethereals, and I don't see how mind control works into a shooter. BUT, ethereals are also telekinetic, so why not have them able to use this to throw objects at the player, or have them able to throw the player himself? That would be uniquely disorienting.

Hola. I was trying to prevent an alien infiltration of South Africa yesterday, shot down a terror ship and a supply ship. Figuring more were on the way, I sent a firestorm from AfriCom to patrol over the country. Thinking the very-small ufo emissary theoretically could head to one of the cities, I parked my firestorm directly-ish over Pretoria. I waited for it to run out of gas, but it didn't. The fuel was at 0%, but it was fine just hanging out. During the patrol time, it detected a new alien base, which I promptly took down. After about 10 days, the month ended, and SA was lost (along with Japan and France, you bastards), so I recalled the firestorm home. Is this unusual? More importantly, is there any utility to parking your fighters out there? I didn't check to see if the firestorm had the juice to intercept a ufo after it was at zero fuel, I'll have to try that...

Well, actually, wouldn't it make more sense that my score was positive and flipped around to an extreme negative? I mean, if I had a negative month, I don't think every nation would have increased funding. Anyway, February was good, score of +2400 or so, so looks like I'm back on track.

I just had the exact opposite occur in January, 1999. Actually it was a pretty solid month, check my post: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/index...?showtopic=6564 . So, my score was NEGATIVE 268 million and change, but all nations were happy and my funding went up 700k or so. I'm worried that if the glitch happens again next month, I'm fired!

It's the collector's edition for windows.

Actually thought the first month went pretty well. On superhuman, shot down and recovered 3 ufos, won the terror mission (at considerable expense in manpower), researched up to laser rifles, and got the second base started in east asia. Even captured a navigator from a small ufo. My score? Negative 268 million! The nations were happy, upped my funding about 700k, what the hell is this all about?

Update on my superhuman follies. The second effort is going much better, now have five bases up and running, developing some pretty serious psi-types, and nearing blanket global coverage so as to avoid ethereal terror missions. Except for the mission that went down last month. Flew in, thought I'd give it a go with a couple of psi amps and a full avenger crew. Unloaded my weak psi dudes to soak up plasma, and got a couple of kills out the door. Also mc'd an ethereal who was pretty close to the avenger. The alien turn... well, I'm saving some salary at least. 5 dudes got mc'd, two dudes in the avenger go berserk, and after a whole lot of friendly fire I'm flying my ass out of there with 14 of the original 26. Thank god my psi capables didn't get shot. Even if I get to the point where I have a loaded avenger with high-psi soldiers (which in previous games means I'm ready for the final mission), I'm never doing an ethereal terror mission again. It's just too much pain.

Yes, that's all well and good. Unless, of course, you're getting attacked before you can build stores, quarters, anything. Here's my theory on what happened. I foolishly got the base attacks started by shooting down 3 ufos from my US base in a pretty short period of time, and neglected to put any troops on site. The first WestCom was overrun, no defense took place. BUT, when I kept trying to rebuild the base, it was pretty much in the same area, and the aliens were still sending battleships for the first retaliation. As the first retaliation doesn't officially end until there's a battle, it never ended. I figured that once the base was destroyed, they'd stop retaliating, but I guess I figured wrong. Still, on the current (second) attempt at superhuman, the aliens really are on a whole different level. Every month has at least one retaliation/base assault and one terror mission. Why am I getting attacked on April 29, and then again on May 3? Not cool. I mean, it's a lot of money and weapons getting dropped off, but come on, I'd like to have some stability around here.

Yeah, problem is that the subsequent retaliations would occur before I could even get the quarters built, let alone the hangar. Plus I had nothing that would come close to taking on a battleship. (Besides, I've yet to get any ship, even a later model, to catch a battleship en route to a base invasion. Is that even possible?) Anyway, I've scrapped the game, not because of this bug (my plan was to build up bases elsewhere and wait for the non-stop retaliations to cease in the US), but because on a base defense in Europe, I was getting killed by reaction fire from a dead floater. I took it as a sign from God saying "Restart", so I did. Is it possible that the aliens went into overdrive, triggered by the freakish early capture of the floater commander?

Finished up games at veteran, then genius, so nowhere to go but superhuman. So far, things are going ok! End of the first month, I was expecting a terror mission ... got a base assault instead. Much to my delight, the attackers were floaters! Fortunately, I'd been manufacturing laser pistols, and had enough on hand to equip most everyone on hand. Suffered some losses, but in the end, much booty was retained, and, although I wasn't using stun rods, found I had captured a live alien. Alien containment was built about two days prior. Floater Commander. Yeah, he'll be chilling out for awhile. Next month saw two terror missions, but one of those was floater as well. The sectoid mission was way more painful, of course, especially when I had to execute my mind-controlled best soldier. Patrick Stewart, just like the dude on Star Trek. Four months in, I've built my fourth base. Technically fifth, as WestCom in the US got overrun undefended in March. The main thing I'm appreciating on UFO recovery missions is not to get too attached to my guys. edit: Every time I rebuild the base in the United States, it gets overrun by aliens before I can even get living quarters built. What gives?

That's the right limb, not cover the full screen. Will try your fix, thanks. edit: When I go to the option to dick around with the refresh rate settings, XP gives me one option, 60 Mhz, and notifies me that if I mess with it, it will damage my hardware. Surely I'm not the only person running this game on XP that has this problem.

Ok, everything's running just fine, but it's not full screen. Running X-Com Collector's Edition on Windows XP. Windows recommended that I go to properties/compatability and change the aspect to 680x480, but alas, nothing changed. Advice? Gracias.

Here's what the guide said... "3.4 HOW DO I DESIGN SECURE BASE EASY TO DEFEND? The most secure base design that I can think of is this one: XXXXXX X.XXXX X.XXXX A..... HHHHHH HHHHHH . . . "Basically, put the access lift off to one side of the map and try to isolate that and hangars from the rest. "There is one catch: sometimes, there's a bug in the game that eliminates some doors that leads you to the rest of the base. Without rockets and blaster bombs to "dig", you can't kill the aliens in the other section and thus cannot finish the battle at all." . . . Good advice, of course, but the "catch" is off. It has happened to me a couple of times in base defense where a hangar is cut off from the rest of the base. After a thorough search, I sent the entire team to the nearest room to the hangar. The error in the guide is that you don't need blaster bombs to "dig". You can cut a precise path with heavy plasma. It takes some doing, but it's not all that. I guess I've been wondering if you could do the same thing with alien base incursions. That is, don't bother going down the elevator, instead tunneling across to the control room. Sure, you're spending scads of ammo, but has anyone tried this? BTW, very new to the game, and grateful that this forum exists!

Thanks a ton to both of you. I think it was Netscape that was causing probs. Now I shut it down and it's all good.

Hey, any help you can give is greatly appreciated. Playing X-Com: UFO Defense, the Collector's Edition. Computer is a Dell Inspiron 1100, using Windows XP with SP2. I've had the game for about a week. Every time I start playing, whether I'm in battlescape or the global view, the color of everything -- or sometimes just certain parts of the screen -- will change color and basically be unviewable. It looks like a negative of a photo, or maybe all the black is taken out of the picture. I am running this with the dxdiag fix as opposed to any patch.