Civilian

Awesome AAR, Herr Glum Just a question: Don't you have any tanks in that misson? ATGs are nice and all (they saved your day^) but tanks have the advantage of being armoured (duh) and mobile, so you are at a huge disadvantage against the russkies. And on top of that you do not even have any Tungsten's...

Just a quick update on the campaign: The first (well, and only) laser pistol is in service! Mr. Heston is not a good shooter, though, but I guess that will change soon. But his other skills are finally good, thanks to a lot of action. I changed back the scientist numbers to 1 as the last two researches were over amazingly fast (I had added the number of robots to the scientists). As the aliens destroyed more radar bases I completely disassembled those left to save me some money. However this wasn't such a good idea. As a result my monthly rating dropped enormously. Due to the lower detection rate there are less UFOs shot down, I hadn't thought about the risk of the score dropping too much... In the meantime I built 2 smaller bases close to the HQ base, one for storing unneeded artifacts and aliens, another will soon be my launch base for the interceptor. Hopefully that way I can lure away the aliens from my home base, as my fears became true and the alien base attacks have increased dramatically. Maybe I have to build another home base and disassemble the old one, the aliens already know where it is, so.... The two new bases will be defended by tanks only, supervised by a (pacifistic) robot Well, at least that's the plan, not sure if everything will work as intended. The two damaged robots are still not operational, but so far no other robot has been damaged. They will all carry a medikit soon, just in case. p.s: the paratrooper-bug comes and goes, not sure what causes it....

I have another feature request: There is a TFTD editor in the download section that allows you to edit soldier stats BUT with a twist: You have to pay for it! What about doing similar? Imagine: A hospital or shooting range function..... now how cool is that? And another feature request for the later, non-savegame editor functions: Editing the TUs needed in the inventory....

DOS-only person here. I have several CD-Rom's (original and from game magazines) of both EU and TFTD. Playing them in DOS-Box on XP. However, I prefer EU a lot over TFTD. (99% EU, 1 %TFTD)

Yes, I took a look at the available mods, they look great but are totally off the scale regarding game-balance. I thought about adding an Xcom-Alien race, GIMP can edit those DDS-graphics and the text-files should be no problem neither... But where to get good 2D-pictures of the Xcom-Ships? 3D is not a problem, there are plenty pictures available, but those are useless for GSB. FullAuto, what the hell is going on in that screenshot!!!!!

Good news! Transplanting the savegames into a "virgin" UFO folder , saving and re-transplanting them into the old folder seems to have cured the problem! And on top of that....: http://i46.tinypic.com/s4uzyr.jpg Many thanks for the Xcomutil.cfg tip, BombBloke! Btw, can Celatids fire through base facility corners/walls?

Sigh, the game is still unstable and every time now a tac mission starts one or two soldiers appear in mid-air our randomly outside the Skyranger. Robot Hobbes spawned in an house on the last mission and was shot right away by a muton that seemingly lived there... http://i49.tinypic.com/2a6w57c.jpg I did not save that mission and simply quit. I will try to copy the savegame into an unaltered Xcom folder, hopefully this will make the game stable again, if not.... well, I don't want to think about that too much, but it could mean the end for this campaign.

The most likely cause (like with all modding/editing) is a simple typo. However you might also want to check if the last wav files you added do have the same format that the other files have, check them for bitrate, stereo/mono etc. And if they are wav, mp3, ogg etc.

That's why I use three different shields. This probably also explain why the shield-mix is stronger than 3 shields of the same type. The loss of armor efficiency by stacking is rather low. However more than three Heavy Armors would be too much imo. I mean I want an Armored Cruiser with weapons and not a defenseless rock. About the tractor beam: I only put them on Frigates, Cruisers simply shouldn't waste their time with fighters

In my current campaign I have one guy called "Legend"and his 5 robot assistants. I gave those the names of people from this forum that helped me during the brainstorming for the campaign http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/Legend-t7826.html Btw, there is one of "Murphy's Laws" active in Xcom: If you give a soldier a name of a person you like, or maybe even your own name, it is doomed to die in the most terrible or humiliating way

I don't use the decoy launchers either as I prefer the Target painter. Btw, the speed of a cruiser is the very last of my concern, they aren't meant to be quick and if additional equipment can be added instead the choice becomes easy for me. The bare minimum is enough. If I can add a better engine without making the crew/energy requirements too big, ok, but the engines are really low on my equipment list Here a Federation Cruiser design I tested, notice the three different shields, the really heavy armor , the improved repair drones and even the reinforced power plants? It sure is hard to destroy, that makes up for the rather low armament. I put that guy in the front, it will act as a bodyguard for the weapon-carrying but more fragile ships in the back. IMO it is important to specialize but not overdo the specialization idea, though, because a little error can then result in the loss of all ships. http://i45.tinypic.com/2uy6gzp.jpg

Yep, I rechecked it (a third time) in the editor here: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/Cheat...nown-t7853.html and those are the male Asian graphics. But I admit that the difference to the female Asian graphics are tiny: They only added some lipstick and edited the top of the body slightly.

You seem to have a good hand with fighters: your equipment tips for the Heavy Tribe Fighter helped me a lot to make them usable. Maybe i can return this favour by giving you a good avice about cruisers and shields: Never use the same shield twice, instead vary between the three biggest ones, the ships are much more durable that way. I do not know the exact mechanisms behind this, but I tested it and it works. Here one of my latest and surprisingly strong ships: The Harmony Cruiser equipped as a "BeamBoat" (in contrast to "GunBoat"). It lacks long range weapons, but as soon as the enemy comes into medium range the 5 large beam-weapons start to fire at almost the same time. This concept worked so good that I am completely overhauling my other creations to give their weapons similar ranges, too. http://i50.tinypic.com/ouqg6e.jpg As the ship usually has too take some hits before it is in range it is equipped with 3 (!) Tribe repair modules AND a shield. However, once it is in range the battle is over rather quickly, luckily so far always for the enemy. As a general tactic I use 4 kinds of cruisers, one focused on missiles and rockets, one on Plasma (Guns), one equipped with Beam-weapons and one Multi-Purpose Cruiser. Usually I deploy them in mixed groups so that they can assist each other with their strengths. The shorter ranged ships in the front, the long-ranged weapons at the back, that way I can even save some module places on the later for more weapons. Frigates are support ships in my fleets, one Anti-Air (anti-missile) ship, one Support frigate with unusal modules and weapons, one multi-purpose frigate and a smal Gunboat frigate, that can operate from behind the cruisers with frigate plasmas. Fighers are my weakness so far, I can only think of two usages, interceptors to escort cruisers and heavy fighters to attack frigates, all medium and other fighters are redundant imo... General tips: Use a Target painter on your missile ships! You will lose maybe 10% of the fired missiles, but for that you will have 35% more hits. And always use different weapons (of similar type) on the same ship and match their ranges as much as possible!

Many thanks! It has been a while since I used an Hex editor, but maybe your info file helps me to find those values in the DOS exe...

All the robots are that way, but that is a male asian. At least according to my game editor And I am using the random floorplans. However as I am limited to smaller missions they are luckily not so difficult.

Ok, I see that you all played Xcom WAY longer and more often than I did. Oh and BombBloke, you were right about the Silacoids, tanks can target them. Not sure what caused me to think something different. Inn the last base mission everything worked fine. Maybe they simply missed too often in the first missions, the tanks' accuracy is lousy. The campaign goes on, it's december already and the first research still hasn't been finished, despite the fact that I allowed the robots to help with the research. Talkin about robots: Robot Catwalk and Robot BombBloke will be out of duty for a long time... http://i45.tinypic.com/axgqj6.jpg http://i48.tinypic.com/r1btle.jpg The heavy damage on BombBloke was caused by the game still being unstable during the start of tac missions: http://i50.tinypic.com/2dmb3ie.jpg Something else happened that was new to me , albeit I'm sure you Xcom professionals surely have seen it before. I saw something unusal when starting a tac mission... http://i48.tinypic.com/ip5x7o.jpg It was Elerium115. http://i48.tinypic.com/2cwjts.jpg Apart from this, everything is business as usual. I tried a Terror mission but despite a lot of kills the outcome was lousy as I had lost almost 1.500.000 bucks in tanks... http://i47.tinypic.com/2ujmseu.jpg edit: I lost one of my radar bases. And I finally went on to edit the xcomutil.cfg so that the medikit research will (hopefully) be finished this game year. Also the tanks accuracy was raised from 60 to 70 as the base missions dragged on forever due to their disastrous accuracy... Edit by BB: Please link if you must use large image sizes! These are 200kb a piece! Consider lowering the resolution of your screencaps, the game only uses 320x200!

Ok, no problem. One quick question though: Are the tank weapon stats located in the exe? Or are their weapons linked to human equipment?

Yes, fighter torpedoes are rather useless. I will try your cruiser killer layout in one of my next games, thanks FullAuto! http://i50.tinypic.com/2n1rvqe.jpg

Wow, now THAT was a quick reaction! The "restore to original values" function is very good! No need to make a backup then. Sigh, I can't download the file, both sites state that the "huge" 260kb file is too much for them and their servers are too stressed. Will try later... Anyway: Good work! I have lots of ideas about things an editor could do, but i think the idea for your editor was to be a good, basic editor with a nice GUI. So I gonna post my more advanced and maybe even impossible wishes in Hatfarm's XcomHack thread here: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/index...?showtopic=7589 However, feel free to use any of my ideas p.s. Maybe you could join forces and develop an editor together? p.p.s: Those links do not work for me....

Yes! Though: I haven't found a good equipment for their heavy fighter yet. I sometimes wish fighters in general had more options, one can only choose between two lasers and two projectile weapons. The later are rather useless because of the slow firing rate and their odd combination of maximum range/minimum range. And if you use the target painter most fighters are turned into unarmed units as they only have one weapon slot. If anyone has some tips...

I have 6 feature requests! 1. What about the possibility to edit Tank weapon stats? There is not one GUI editor available (well at least none I know of) that can do that. On a second thought: Do tank weapons use the stats of the human weapons? 2. What about the possibility to delete the memory of the aliens about already discovered human bases? 3. What about the ability to give tanks other weapons? A stun tank would be nice to have. Or imagine an AC tank with INC ammo.... 4. What about the ability to change the TUs needed to prime grenades? or to use the StunRod? 5. What about the ability to give smoke grenades or flares a damage? It would be cool to turn the SG into an early stun grenade or the flare into an INC grenade. 6. Something very difficult and advanced: What about the ability to remove certain maptiles from the random selection during map generation? edit: I will maybe register later at the other forum.

Hey, nice work with the GUI! I have a small proposal: One can edit stuff in the weapon edit section that are not weapons (Civ Male, Civ Female, etc) , this could be confusing for some people. Better remove them from the list. Apart from that: Cool!

So this wasn't as unusal as I thought? Ok, I'll trust you superior knowledge about this game. Still, it was an unusal mission. A full crew, with an downed but undamaged ship on a completly buiding-free farmland terrain, how often do you see that combination? And I knew about the random map tiles, but a completely building-free farmland terrain was new to me. It was much easier to fight on that map, I liked that very much. ...Hm, when did I play XCom for the very first time.... I don't remember exactly, but I know that it was on the Playstation 1. And that it took ETERNALLY to load... gosh.

The Tribe http://i48.tinypic.com/r8fjbm.jpg

Hm, the game has become somewhat more stable but still is not entirely healthy. I had a tac mission with a downed small UFO and one of my soldiers started in mid-air. Maybe the game tries to simulate paratroopers? Interestingly the terrain (farmland) was without ANY buildings, there were only trees, fields and shrubbery. I haven't seen something like that in all the years of playing Xcom. Here two screenshots: http://i45.tinypic.com/21erhpk.jpg http://i47.tinypic.com/e99fmx.jpg The mission itself felt strange, too. All the sectoids were equipped with the Heavy Plasma (usually there is one medic with a stun launcher or someone with a plasma rifle) and were formidable shooters, they destroyed 2 tanks easily. Also the tiny map had 9 sectoids in it, quite a big number for the second smallest (and crashed!) UFO after the 1x1 scout. An interesting sideeffect: The small terrain change made the game feel totally different. It felt like an addon or something... cool!