“By Primus, you mean the first one wasnt hard enough?”
You’re the last man left in your squad deep in the hold of a cargo ship, your final electo-flare is buring out, the lobster men are closing in, and you’ve got one sonic pulser left…
I actually still play this game. I have to disable a heap of stuff on my video card so that it can run, but it is alot of fun.
1.) I tried to keep people in fire teams of 3-3-4 or 3-3-2-2 depending on the scenario and of course one tank. Don’t spread your troops out too much when getting off the skyranger, but don’t bunch them up too much either. Spread out they get sniped and bunched up they get grenaded (is that a word?). I had a nightmare of a mission where a floater was actually above my skyranger and when it was the alien turn he just casually dropped a grenade amongst my guys…that was an ugly scene.
2.) laser weapons. Hands down. Plasma weapons are far better damage wise but they require an ammo clip. Unfortunatey if you fire one shot from a clip it is considered used up at the end of a mission. So you can run out of clips, requiring you to manufacture more, which in turn means that you’re diverting elerium from other projects.
3.) Research any navigators and either a sectoid leader or any ethereal. Navigators will give you the ability to research the hyperwave decoder. This is a base improvement that allows you to see the destination, mission, class, and crew of an alien craft. It also works without using radar so you can demolish those and replace them with it.
The sectoid leaders/etherals will give you psionics. How you use them is really up to you. I use it mostly to weed out weak minded fools, and give me a chance to turn a few aliens. I had a friend however that chose to focus exclusively on that. His troops never left the ship, instead 4 plasma tanks would emerge and spot aliens, he’d take over those aliens, they’d see other aliens, he’d take over those aliens, and so on. Then he’d have them shoot each other.
To get those two types of aliens I’ll sacrifice any amount of troops. If you don’t get psionics fairly early you’ll lose alot of troops when your supposed friends are taken over. This is especially bad against the ethereals.
4.) in the center of some land mass. Ships shot down over water don’t give you anything of value. Preferably the US or Europe for financial reasons.
5.) I start a second base either in the first month or second month. I slowly build it starting with the lift, general stores, and a hangar. As an aside try to build your bases so that choke points occur. I put all my hangars along the top and the only thing touching them is the lift. Aliens can only invade your base through the hangars and the lift. By creating it in this manner you avoid being flanked.
As for the sequel I never really played it much, just enough to get the impression that it was ufo defense under water. The third one was total garbage.
Oh, and you can manage to get by without any funding. I don’t remember my exact numbers but factoring in use of materials, space, time, and money you can support any number of bases by manufacturing and selling laser rifles. Rifles were the best because they didn’t use any strategic resources. I prefer not to do that since I play the game to kill aliens, not be an arms dealer, but it can be useful and it keeps your lazy engineers occupied.
I’ve decided to buy this game but was wondering whether to get the first or the second one. After reading this thread I’m leaning toward the second one since it’s harder. Which do yall think I should get considering I’ve never played them before?
Cletus, there is a “Collector’s Edition” CD-Rom that has the first 3 games on it; UFO Defence, Terror From the Deep and X-Com Apocalypse, which I never got all that into myself.
In fact, here’s one for sale on ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3043172286&category=41079 (and no, I’m not the seller!)
Avoid personal heavy lasers. They aren’t that accurate, & don’t work as well as a burst from a laser rifle.
Consider building a laser tank. Ammo free, & seems to be more accurate.
And Missile Tanks are a great buy! Fast, mobile, hard-hitting, & an area weapon! And immune to Mind Control! Cheap at twice the price!
A friend of mine ran the numbers and it turns out that laser cannons are the best way to keep your engineers busy.
Also, bring stun rods along as soon as you get alien containment. The next large scout you see, let it land, kill everyone outside, and stun everyone inside. You’ve probably grabbed a navigator, who can teach you about Hyper-Wave decoders, which are much better than radar.
Huh, robertliguori, I was just rushing in here to say that I had run the numbers and found that a Fusion Ball Launcher was the most profitable way of keeping engineers busy. However, you do need some Elerium on hand for those, so if you’re short that, then I’d recommend laser cannons.
I’ve never been a big fan of stun rods - I usually wait until I salvage a stun bomb launcher and then just go to town with that.
Come to think of it, I never completed Terror from the Deep - I recall something about having to go through a dozen 12-layer alien bases before getting to the final base … oh, it was years ago. I do remember burning some rice while playing a terror mission on a cruise ship when the game first came out. Funny, that.
Good rice, too.
Stun weapons.
Worth discussing.
[list=A]
[li]Use Stun Rods.[/li][li]Stun Bomb launchers are worthless. Ignore them/ do not bother to research them. Yopu may get the answers out of a prisoner, that’s cool. If you do, & you can snatch one up off the ground, & bag an Alien, more power to you. But don’t bother building/keeping any. Sell 'em.[/li][li] Actively decide to capture aliens on a given mission.[/li][li]Pick a small ship. A scout, large or small.[/li][li]Arm 1/2 of your force with laser pistols in one hand, stun rods in the other. The remainer of the force gets lasr/plasma rifles or heavy weapons.[/li][li]The Pistoleers go into the ship, en mass.[/li][li]The rest clear the area.[/li][li]Do not bring Stun Rods on a City Rescue op. The weight will slow you down. If an alien drops a Stun Bomb Launcher & ammo, & you know how to use it, you can pick up one or two at the end of the fight.[/li][li]Once in a while, an alien will get knocked out by weapons fire. This will get you one or two captives. This helps.[/li][li]Add a few Stun Rods to Alien Base Raid Teams, but not many. You might get lucky, but it’s better just to kill everybody.[/li][li]When your Base is raided by Aliens, use your stun rods. Hell, some of your people may not have any other weapons.[/li][li]Do not use Stun Rods in the dark. The risk is too high. Just kill everybody.[/li][/list]
Stun bomb launchers are good for terror missions when you are worried about killing civvies. Just remember that stunning a civvie pisses him off.
Also, kill Chryssalids pronot. If you drop one without killing him, drop a grenade or two on it, or dedicate a soldier to wait for it to wake up. You won’t regret it.
Now that I’ve played a bit of it, I’ve found stun rods not worth the effort. You have to get right up next to them, and those little ****ers are armed with plasma weapons. No thanks.
I did manage to create the stun bomb and launcher and it works like a charm.
[quote]
Normally, terror sites will stay around for about 24 hours, so you can always wait around a bit until the sun rises before landing. This will help you greatly.[/quote
FWIW, Terror sites do not last twenty-four hours. They last about eight. Which means if they strike at midnight you may be able to wait for morning but if they hit at dusk you’ve got to attack then.
I wanted to thank everyone for the advice and my game is going well. The worst thing that has happened is that I’ve lost India(my base in on the Central US/Canadian Border), but the other states are increasing funding.
Is there anything wrong with not going after a large UFO if you are not a full strength(the tank is low on rockets and thus can’t come, several troops are recovering from injuries)? It seems like a great oppurtunity, but but the Harvester ships have been giving me enough trouble as it is. I did manage to capture an alien leader, but my PSI-OPS isn’t operational yet.
A good strategy to keep a terror site “open” longer (i.e. until daylight) is to send a fighter interceptor to it; it won’t be able to land, and will return (sometimes before reaching the site, if out of range), but as long as one of your ships of any class has targeted the terror site for interception, it will remain on the map.
Landing at a terror site at night is a crappy option; by the way–it is better to land at a terror site, do nothing and leave, than to not respond to the terror site at all. You’ll still lose points, but fewer than if you simply ignore the terror site altogether.
I am such a geek.
Yes and no. It may cause a country to get a little more upset with you for not doing anything about the UFO in their airspace, but if a country has already abandoned you, then there’s no real worry.
However, countries are fine with you shooting down a UFO and leaving the crash site untouched - they just get antsy about UFOs that aren’t intercepted. If my soldiers are too injured to handle yet another battleship raid, then I’ll shoot it down (sometimes over the ocean if I’m fed up with ground combat) and go about my business.
All this talk of the game has made me want to play it again but I have a brand new PC and here is what happens when I tried to play it.
I put the cd in the drive and found the install file and ran it.
No problem.
I found out how to get a command prompt in XP. I went to the MPS/ufo dir and started the game.
I was really suprised that it just started with sound. I just chose soundblaster pro off the set up menu and that worked fine for sound f/x. There was no music.
The intro played but when it got to the choose a location for the base screen, whenever I clicked on a spot for the base the window minimized and an error message popped up with the options of close or ignore. If I ignored it simply went back to the command prompt C:mps\ufo. Also when I used the mouse to spin the globe to choose a spot the globe spinned really really really really fast.
So is my PC too good to play X-Com?
I think we are missing the most important part of the game. What is your base called?
treis hailing from Base Kick Ass and my expansion Base Fuck em Up
I’m sorry, Treis, but all your base belong to us. 
Seriously, I’m usuing a military method, my two bases being “NAmerCom” on the Us Canadian Border and “EuroCom” in Central Europe(not quite operational).
Anyone doing a Bush naming scheme, like “Base Noble Eagle” or something like that?
Thanks Rodd Hill.
Give 'em hell, Cletus!
There’s hours of fun (and frustration!) in that box!
Meatros, does your TFTD ever just crash out? I have an IBM P4, and for some reason (usually on a port Terror mission), once in a while, the damn thing just crashes back to my windows screen. No harm done, since I save a lot, but…
Anyone else rename your top squad? Like “Brittany Spears has died of a fatal wound” or “Mother Theresa is under Molecular Control.” Good for a hoot, anyway.
I disagree with the dissing of stun weapons in TFTD; it’s the best way to deal with the otherwise nearly unstoppable (at that point in the game) Lobstermen, and you need to capture live aliens anyway.
Maybe they work better in TFTD, but they seem to suck hard in the first game.
Luckly I’ve gotten an alien navigator(as well as a previously captured leader), so I’m not sure how much more capturing I need to do.