X-Com: UFO Defense

[Durothil Skyreaver]

Does anyone happen to have any good strats for this game. Relearning it again and I don't remember shite.

[brinstar]

kill aliems don't die research weapons

[Harrison]

Go straight for heavy laser, and don't underestimate the need to have a pistol in your other hand. Those leftover time units can save your ass with a snap shot from a pistol.

Get armor ASAP. Try to get landed UFOs as quickly as possible to get intact power sources.

Towards a certain point you will want to make sure all of your bases have plasma defenses AND soldiers in them. They assault a base with no soldiers and you automatically lose it.

[vonkaar]

Immediately, like on day1, build at least 2 more general stores and an alien containment. If you are playing on a hard difficulty, you'll want some additional radar stations (large radar array). Build bases where the money is... no reason to put a base in Hawaii. Use your interceptors as mobile radar stations. If you think there is a lot of activity in Brazil, but you aren't catching anything on radar, move one interceptor near Rio and have it patrol until it runs out of gas. When it returns to refuel, send Interceptor2 out to the same location. Hopefully, you'll find a base or a large (base building) ship and you'll save a country this way.

Drop all soldiers with a bravery under 30. I basically buy new soldiers every month and drop those with shitty stats. Bravery is really important.

Med kits - research this quickly. You'll get to know your team and it'll suck when your commander gets eaten. X-Com EU is way easier than TFTD so this doesn't happen as much. In EU, you'll have an easier time keeping your super-soldiers alive. ESPECIALLY with a few high time-unit medics out there.

Research is key, especially on harder difficulties. By month 3, you will be seeing Mutons and if you don't have hard weapons (heavy laser, plasma+), you'll never kill em.

On your interceptors, ditch the auto-cannon quickly. Totally worthless.

Very newb concept, but... sell your alien shit like crazy. Corpses, ammo packs... ESPECIALLY early on. If you have 20 plasma rifles and 300 clips, but don't have the research to use em... sell them! Before long, you won't even care about your monthly funding - hawking alien hardware will be your primary source of income. One thing I never sell - stun grenades and blaster bombs, because you'll use these up later on.

Once you get blaster-bombs, you'll have an easy way to knock out bases. I send just a few guys down below the elevator shafts. A couple blaster-bomb commandos and people to cover them. You'll get to know the topology of bases eventually... send a scout ahead to find the command center and head back. Then, fire blaster bombs to clear holes in the walls... then blast away. Just need to blow up the 2nd level of the command post to knock out the brains. Blaster bombs can do this easily. Then, get your guys back up the elevator and - easy win. You can also use this tactic on base-building ships. Fire a blaster bomb on top of the ship to knock a hole in the armor. Then, you can fire blaster bombs 'blind' into the ship to soften it up before you get inside. If you are poor, don't do this because you are destroying all of your pricey alien hardware. Same with bases - a completely cleared out base is worth a LOT of money - but sometimes you just want it gone.

My normal research order is:

Laser Weapons
Med Kit (then start manufacturing these)
Laser Pistol
Alien Alloys
Personal Armor (manufacture 11ty billion of them)
Laser Rifle
Heavy Laser

by now, you'll have alien hardware, so...
Heavy Plasma Rifle
Heavy Plasma Rifle clip
Elerium (this might be the alien fuel tech from TFTD, but whatever the alien fuel is... research it)
UFO Power Source


you get the hang of it... I'll post more as I think of it. I have a save-game that I've played for 15 years... this has been my #1 favorite game almost since I got into gaming.

[Harrison]

It's good to see people love it as much as I do.

[vonkaar]

I've made hundreds of posts on here about Microprose turn based games... I guarantee that even all of the hours I spent in EQ don't compare to the time I've put into these games. X-Com is still my favorite though. Quick top-ten list:

X-Com EU (aka Ufo Defense)
Civilization
Master of Magic
Master of Orion
X-Com TFTD
Civilization II
Master of Orion II
Colonization
Civilization IV

hmm...
Railroad Tycoon
Pirates...

Basically, "the rest" of the Microprose franchise, or anything Sid Meier worked on. Alpha Centauri, etc. They were all good.

[Arlos]

I agree about Microprose turn-based games. I STILL play MOO2, and obviously play Civ4. I still remember finding the Future Tech bug in Civ 1 a long time ago. Basically, if you got to Future Tech 73 on the max difficulty level, the game would break and act as if you had insane levels of pollution going on even if no city anywhere was producing any. Oddly enough, I never got THAT into X-Com. Dunno why. Just didn't have anywhere near the same replayability for me that stuff like MOO, etc. did.

I also played a ton of SSI turn-based games: Panzer General and all of its sequels and spin-offs.

Oh, and Heroes of Might and Magic series.

Now I want to go find and install my old Baldur's Gate 2 and its expansion pack and run through that again....

-Arlos

[vonkaar]

Hehe Civ1 was insane. I freaking lived in that world for probably 4 years.

I never saw that bug... that's pretty crazy. I still have my Civ1 disk... floppy disk, that is. Came with the original manual with the lame copy-protection inside the front flap. Beating it on emperor before 500ad with 8 civs... that was epic. I think I could only do that if I played the Russians on 'world'.

I soooo love HoMM. HoMM2 was my favorite. The latest one (I think HoMM5) was pretty good though.

Arlos, did you ever try out Disciples? It's a lot like HoMM and there are loads of expansion packs for it.

I haven't played MOO2 in forever. I'll probably install it tonight. It will look like CRAP on my 28" monitor =(

[Arlos]

In Civ 1 what I would do to run up my score is wipe out all but one opposing civilizations, and leave them with 1 city in the crappiest geography I could find. Then, completely fill in all of it's potential resource tiles with my troops so it starves down to like 2 population, and can't build anything. At that point, I made sure every single available square of useful land was in use, and just went berserk with growth. I could generally get battleships by something like 1000 AD, tanks by 1400, and have the space ship 1 build away from launching by like 1920 or something. 80 turns of doing nothing but tech research and growing the population is what let met get THAT many future techs built, then I had to spam out 800 workers to clean up pollution as it happened, but still ended up losing points cause the fake pollution caused global warming.

HOMM 5 is pretty good, I hope they're working on 6. I wasn't too thrilled with 4, I think it was, where the heroes could actually fight as units on the field. Eventually you got to the point where the hero was so buff, you didn't NEED an army, they could wipe out any conceivable opposing army solo, just about. Kinda ruined the difficulty curve of the missions after that happened. Oh, and it REALLY ruined the difficulty of some of the end missions where you had what, 5 or 6 uber-level heroes at once?

A game I am tempted to check out is this one: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/elv ... ead-review it sounds pretty interesting.

Disciples 2 seems familiar, but I can't say that I've played it for sure. Played so many over time, that I just don't know. heh. I remember SOME other turn based strategy fantasy game I used to play, but can't remember the name now.

Oh, if you haven't tried it for your MOO fix, Galactic Civilizations II is pretty good, give it a try.

-Arlos

[Drem]

i love HoMM games. 3 was my favorite but 2 is pretty classy. 4's also not bad imo. 5 is sorta meh

also i love shogun total war. i haven't played any other total war games but i don't really feel like i need to

i missed out on x-com tho. i only played that a couple times for a few minutes. maybe after this huge plethora of unbeaten games that i've accumulated, i'll give it a shot

PS: rollercoaster tycoon is a great game

[Harrison]

Rome Total War with the barbarian expansion is a lot of fun.

It's hard as fuck too at first until you get tactics down.

[vonkaar]

See, I missed out on the 'total war' franchise. It looked cool, but... shrug... I guess I was playing something else.

I loved Galactic Civilizations. I played it for a while... but... it didn't stick for me. I mean, I can't remember anything about the game, so it must not have been so amazing. MOO1&2, on the other hand, I know like the back of my hand.

[Tikker]

Just got Xcom working on my psp (popsloader 4.01 if anyone else is interested)

pretty neat so far, sat and watched Durothil play his game for a bit, to get a bit of an idea of how the game works. looks like it might be a good time waster

[vonkaar]

The best tip I can offer is -> Love your soldiers. Don't see them as disposable cannon fodder. They get SO good in the later game. Leave them with sufficient time units and they'll own anything that walks by... immune to mind control... it's badass.

[vonkaar]

Anyone else almost to tears with excitement over all of this?

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/ ... known.aspx
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/ ... -xcom.aspx
etc

Sid fucking Meier... Firaxis... X-Com reboot. Seriously, if Skyrim, Fallout4, CoD4, HoMM6, Diablo3 fucking WoW 2 or wtf ever omg-I-hate-to-play-it game all came out on the same day as this new X-Com game, I wouldn't even care. They wouldn't even register. This is my #1 all-time favorite game being redone by my favorite studio, with the 'godfather' blessings of my favorite designer (tie with Miyamoto). Can I get a hell yeah? Anyone else out there with me?

[Durothil Skyreaver]

As long as they don't gut the complexity of the original it will be great. But if they do, I'll just play Xenonauts when it comes out.

[Lyion]

Given Civ V was a pretty big disappointment to me, I'm not holding out a ton of hope.

Xcom was good stuff, but not sure it'll translate well. We'll see. It was one of my mainstay 90s games. Heck, were you even old enough to play the original game back in 94, Vonk? I didn't know too many kids with PCs back then. I was 24 when it came out and was splitting time with this, Might and Magic, and trying not to waste money on AOL and The Sierra Network... Oi Vey that seems like yesterday....

[Durothil Skyreaver]

If it does end up sucking, check this out.

http://www.xenonauts.com/

[brinstar]

Given Civ V was a pretty big disappointment to me, I'm not holding out a ton of hope.

Xcom was good stuff, but not sure it'll translate well. We'll see. It was one of my mainstay 90s games. Heck, were you even old enough to play the original game back in 94, Vonk? I didn't know too many kids with PCs back then. I was 24 when it came out and was splitting time with this, Might and Magic, and trying not to waste money on AOL and The Sierra Network... Oi Vey that seems like yesterday....

my classmate had a neighbor whose grandson came to visit every summer, he had a COMPUTER with a MODEM and we spent hours on xcom

but it was fucking hard as shit

mostly we just played Legend of the Red Dragon on some other kid's BBS

[Zanchief]

Man you guys have put me in the mood for some classic PC gaming.

Anyone remember this old gem?



How about this one.



One more that I played way too much of at Snero's place.



Good times...

[vonkaar]

I was 15 when X-Com EU first came out and I was hooked from the start. I played all of the Microprose TBS games back then, mostly starting with Civilization. I got this with my first PC, a Packard Bell 486 DX33 with 4Mb RAM (4x 1Mb SIMMs) and a 210Mb HDD. I got my first W2 job the next year as a PC tech at Best Buy when all of the first "Multi-Media" titles were coming out. I certainly remember agreeing with people complaining about the massive disk requirements of games that were asking for 20Mb local installation, and being completely flabbergasted at Meridian59's unheard of requirement for something like 100Mb. Anyway, yes... I was definitely a big PC gamer back then. PC games is actually what got me interested in 'computers' from day one. They are probably the reason I'm in I.T. today... got a job at Best Buy, then CompUSA, then desktop support and... the rest. Move my way up but it started with the Packard Bell.

We had an Apple IIc before the Packard Bell, an IBM PCjr before that, and an Atari 400 before that. I can remember games on all of the platforms but I didn't REALLY get into PC gaming until the 90s on that 486. It came with a 2400 baud modem but my uncle sent me his old 9600 when he upgraded (at a cost of $3k IIRC) to a 14.4k. DFW was really big on BBS' back in those days and we all had a nice community for a while. I even got my own phone line for Christmas in 94 because I spent so much time online (annoying my giant family). blahblahblah... yes, I was 'around' in those days of PC gaming.

Also, Civ5 is just fine. I do see Civ4 as the masterpiece but I still enjoy Civ5 immensely. The game evolves, there wasn't anything more to do to Civilization after Civ4 besides make it prettier. Civ5 is the next step forward. It's certainly polarizing... I never find any Civ fan that's on the fence about it.

[Tossica]

Nerds.

[Lyion]

Civ 5 was a buggy, overgraphic'ed ripoff of Civ 4. As a game it is fine. It is not in the same league as Civ 4, and was a huge disappointment to me.

I was working in Dallas then and actually hosted a Phaze BBS with a friend out of my work office downtown. We shut it down though when we started playing UO. I had my uber ISDN in my home in Coppell back then.

[Tikker]

.

[Durothil Skyreaver]

There's still days where I think about firing up some UO

Need a good custom server. The game is SO different from what it started as.