TFTD Multiplayer Story

[The Veteran]

Yeah I think it's fair to pass on the baton for now I'm sure BB will have more time over the weekend and we don't want people to have to rush! Let's just see who's first to respond shall we

[NKF]

I won't be in a position to be able to do anything until tomorrow afternoon as it's 1.30am and I've got an airplane to put together and airbrush in the morning. Bomb Bloke will probably have had a chance by then, but if not, I'll take it up.

 

- NKF

[The Veteran]

An airplane? Do tell NKF, what are you up to :o

[Bomb Bloke]

Sorry folks, it's been work work work here. Have to dedicate my main machine to audio recording today, but I reckon I should have my commander hat back on tomorrow.

[NKF]

In that case I'll jump the queue and get my turn in tonight.

 

An airplane? Do tell NKF, what are you up to :o

 

This . A 1/144 Dodai YS from the 1980's Gundam series. Half a day later and I'm nowhere near finished. It's going to need a few days of attention at least so guess I'll break for today, have dinner and take my turn.

 

Actually that's not the only aircraft on my mind. Also been trying to work on an illustration of a Skyranger variant for a little project Bomb Bloke and myself have been working on intermittently. Just can't get the design to look right in my thumbnail sketches.

 

- NKF

[The Veteran]

Cool man, looks fun I must confess, Gundam is one of my guilty pleasures. I built the original Heavy Arms Gundam many years ago and I just think the whole walker/suit thing is awesome. Plus there's undeniably noone better at it than the Japanese! Have you seen the game 'Front Mission Evolved'? It's part of a franchise I think but this was my first run in with it a few months ago and I couldn't recommend it more! Was awesome fun and very replayable, albeit just so you can blow up more stuff but still haha

 

What about the 'ranger?!?! Are you allowed to tell us or is it a secret project I'd like a skyranger but I figured it's probably one of the hardest things to actually build so I'm sticking with what I already have lol

 

EDIT : Good work so far NKF, I think this is the longest chapter so far! Great work with the research though, it means I'll have armour for my next mission lol I'd like some more blasta rifles too though please so enough with the selling already Good luck with the terror mission! If you've not already done it.

[NKF]

Only played Target in Sight - but the fact you can use some of the weakest suits and still kick your enemies to death (after getting arms and head blown off) is strangely amusing. Don't like the auto-homing projectiles the enemies use though - makes long range cannon attacks ridiculously lethal.

 

What about the 'ranger?!?! Are you allowed to tell us or is it a secret project I'd like a skyranger but I figured it's probably one of the hardest things to actually build so I'm sticking with what I already have lol

 

Not a secret as such, it's the APC (working title Mudranger - but I'm inclined to just call it the Ranger). The Skyranger variant's only going to be an illustration. Got to find some way of explaining how a tank can travel at supersonic speeds after all!

 

Back to the game though, I just lost 10 exciting turns worth of notes and screenshots due to the game suddenly crashing mid-battle. Also I now have knowledge of the locations of at least 5 enemies. However, since they were literally metres outside the Triton and I took 4 of them down with absolutely no losses, I think it should be okay for me to start over and take them all again.

 

Got to remember to make periodic saves in the battlescape as well. Or better still keep the Geoscape and tactical saves separate.

 

- NKF

[The Veteran]

Yeah I think so lol, sounds good so far though keep it up! Think I'm going to fill another mission in my Apoc Maybe the Ranger could be a sort of hovertank rather than a standard tracked one. It's a bit unusual but would make it easier to get that stupidly high speed! Treat it as a kind of low-level VTOL system operating in 2 'hover-tracks' (that's trademarked btw lol) It can start up by lifting off the ground slightly to remove friction from the equation then use the same power-plant to propel it forwards at great speed

[NKF]

In the end it didn't really matter that I had foreknowledge of 5 aliens - it felt like an endless stream of them as the mission progressed. Will need to sift through the 42 or so screencaps I took and dump the redundant ones.

 

Main thing that bugged me were those unusual hiccups where my gas cannon rounds detonated in mid-air. Often near the rubble of the chain link fences. Not making up excuses for my avatar - he seemed jinxed to begin with. But Micheline seemed to have a clear shot with nothing in the way.

 

- NKF

[The Veteran]

Well it wasn't cheap in lives dude but it was as you say still a victory for XCom! And again, the tank is still alive too lol I'm seriously considering not taking it with me on my next mission to avoid further embarassment. I can't afford to pay for 2 of the buggers, struggling with the repayments for the first one

 

Anyway, BB up next, let's hope he does indeed have his commander's hat on tomorrow! Good luck BB and good work NKF, I know how you feel about the avatar thing too! At least I got one kill before falling though, maybe I'll have armour next time to help out

[Bomb Bloke]

Regarding the MudRanger, you can read much of its history here.

[NKF]

I didn't start them but I suspect the big pile of Gauss Rifles that were commissioned were for quick fund raising purposes. They double as Nerf™ guns with the right ammo.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

I was thinking Grossbeer was churning them out in case we needed them later, but I suppose they can be used to make a buck when the engineers aren't otherwise occupied. Now medkits are unlocked we can make a little more money out of those. We could also grab the motion scanners if it looks like we can get them working long term, as those can be researched just a little faster then the gauss cannons that provide the best income.

[The Veteran]

It seems to me we're worrying an awful lot about money when we don't really have an issue with it. I mean we're going to have a whole host of items to sell in due course as our research improves. We'll sell the gauss weapons once we have a full sonic arsenal. Old craft weapons will go once sonic oscillators come along. Armour will be made obsolete a few times tso that will go in due course. And that's only the manufactured goods. Every mission we do will reward us with a host of saleable items. Let's be honest, there's not a single item in the game that can't be ebayed is there? Capture a nice big USO and we sell the plastics, engines, navigation, corpses, weapons, and the fuzzy dice hangin in the mirror.

 

Anyway great mission BB, one of the shortest and most successful so far I'd say Who's next, silencer isn't it? Let's hope he has no problems with the savegame as that's cropped up as an issue twice now. Will have to wait and see I guess :s

[silencer_pl]

Nah If I recall you are fourth in the line Vet. I am the last after crazy photon - but gross has the final voice here.

[The Veteran]

Ooh you're right :o Just taken the lappy apart lol will put it abck together and give it a blast. Wish me luck

[The Veteran]

I've just finished my mission but I'm sure it can't possibly have taken me 3 hours can it :s I'm going to start on the write up now but... Well it'll take a while, there's an awful lot of content!

[Crazy Photon]

Yay, got the save file, I gotta go out now though, but I should be able to play tonight!

 

EDIT: Done on the geoscape part, but before I start barbecuing some aliens, I noticed that we almost have critical mass to build a new base, we should we expand to?

[NKF]

I usually halve the globe first with my second base placement. That is to say, build the other base on roughly the opposite side of the globe. I vote somewhere in South East Asia or in the Pacific just off Australasia perhaps?

 

Just rereading through BB's mission: I was partly aiming for the MC Lab research when I started the Ion Beam Accelerators. I needed to get it out of the way before work could be started on the Deep One. Would be nice to get the screening process underway. Not looking forward to the onslaught of MC attacks we're going to get in time.

 

In general: Good work on the missions so far guys. I don't know if anyone's noticed, but we've been blazing through a superhuman campaign on some tough missions with absolute or near-absolute new recruits. Not many are surviving but we're still doing pretty good.

 

- NKF

[The Veteran]

Not many? lol I think I just came out of a mission with a 1 in 4 survival rate At least I didn't kill the tank this time though haha

 

But yes we are doing very well, keep up the good work chaps

 

EDIT : Another terror mission already? What's the deal with these guys! I hope this doesn't set the trend for the rest of the game... Who was it that mentioned 1 terror mission each month? Is that the way it's meant to work or is it just the average?

 

Also, I don't think the 2part mission bug seems to exist as on my mission we recovered 37/42 alien corpses. Or is it just equipment that is effected...

[NKF]

My experience differed a bit with the multi-parters and I was losing my spare Gas Cannons. But I've got so many variations of the game installed (v1, v2, v2 xcu, v2 floppy intro, v2 cinematic intro, etc) that I could've been running the test on any one of the v2's! And/or perhaps my method of ending the second part may have been at fault.

 

I think it's time for me to verify the particulars of this bug. Time to inflict critical wounds with a text editor.

 

- NKF

[The Veteran]

best way to check is for Crazy Photon to check the inventory and see how many medkits came back from the mission though I don't recall if I took all of them with me or left some at base... But anyway some of them will have been dropped by the 6 troops that died in part one so you can use the number that returned from part 2 to determine whether or not we recovered all of them. No bodies were destroyed so all items should have remained. I did get the 'not enough equipment to fully equip squad' message though so who knows.

[NKF]

I went through various scenarios and different game versions. v2 has definitely fixed the bug. V1 suffers from it (and for some reason introduced Tasoth and Biodrones in the mission you played).

 

Looks like I've gone and tested it the first time on V1 when I should've been doing V2! I suppose there's not a lot you can glean from a directory that's simply labeled 'TFTD' when storing multiple versions!

 

Anyhow went through the scenarios on the colonies too just to be sure. Even if you abort the second part with all your troops on the exit pads, everything on the first part is collected. Only thing I haven't tested is what would happen if you completed the first part of a colony by lifting off with a small team on the exit pads. Does suggest aborting the second part can be useful in some circumstances since you collect all the stuff collected in the last mission.

 

Makes me wonder why XComutil (or at least the old version) attempts to send stuff from the first stage home?

 

Oh, well, false alarm then. You can also rest assured I'm definitely using a V2 for this game.

 

- NKF

[Grossbeer]

heya guys!

it seems it was a pretty sucessful weekend here at XCOM HQ

 

nice work indeed with the 2parter! i guess we now lure some lobster out of hiding with that kinda score

 

The gauss rifle thing... i guess i have accidently ordered to build rifles instead of ammo, but hey...^^

 

I think the next base should be near HQs, because we can then team up barras 4 at a time if we encounter large ufos. addidtionally i think we should make the 2nd base our workhorse with 6 workshops and 250 technicans.

and (to ensure save base defending) a good layout. This will take lots of time anyway so we can start now. tho i dont exactly fancy any location where to place the base i recommend following base layout:

 

G G R R R R

G G L L R R

G G L L L L

G X X X X X

G A S S S S

G X S S S S

 

A=airlock

S = Sub Pen

G = general stores or other stuff (like defenses radar...)

L = living q

R = workshops

X = nothing

 

greez

[The Veteran]

Thanks GB, turned out pretty well if you don't pay too much attention to the body count

 

I'm with NKF on base placement, we need to maximise our area of operations and we can't do that if we have 2 bases right next to each other. I'm also completely against this whole manufacture+sell thing for money but it seems to be cropping up in every post. There hasn't been a single point so far when we've been struggling for cash and we've been getting through troops and equipment at a hell of a rate so that suggests to me we simply don't need it to survive the game. I know everyone will tell me it's going to get a lot harder and things will be more expensive and it's nice to have more money just in case but it seem a bit like a cheap trick to me.

 

Now don't get me wrong, by all means our techies should be kept busy but I'm not going to be part of a game where we build a whole base just to pump out items which we then sell to the general public. Beside being unnecessary and unfair it's totally unbelievable. The world is I believe in quite a mess at this point, so economy won't be great anyway but will even disregarding that fact what kind of secret organisation goes around selling state of the art high tech weaponry to just anyone while the planet is already under attack from aliens? In TFTD XCom is still a relatively secret force so the process of selling in itself isn't easy but presumably the bulk of recovered items go to the funding nations as a sort of confirmation that XCom is doing well and also a technological return for their investment in maintaining the organisation.

 

And yes I know the same system existed in UFO, it was stupid then as well and I think it's a complete cheat to build a base full of workshops just to make money. I'd build a nice secure base on the other side of the world with maybe 3 subpens to start with (2 barras 1 Triton) then move down to 2 of them once we have combat-transports to replace them with. Use the access lift as a chokepoint then do whatever we want with the rest of the base to make it self sufficient. A few stores and living quarters for the troops and their loot, a few training rooms when we get that far, a few more workshops but not too many and maybe more labs if we need them.

 

But that's just me I guess...