Hey, I do that too! Not the Bush naming scheme, that is, the military method.
Also, my EuroCom is always smack dab in the middle of Budapest.
Ah, I always wanted to get into this game. But I’ve foud that I have a hard time going to old-school graphics unless I played it back in the day.Odd, isn’t it - I have no trouble playing Final Fantasy 4, but I can’t easily get into , say, Seiken Densetsu 3.
Actually your OS is too good to play X-Com. Windows was never fond of old DOS games.
However, there’s a collector’s edition out, it consists of UFO: Enemy unknown, Terror from the Deep and X-COM: Apocalypse (I don’t remember if it includes the other game released with the “X-Com” brand). These editions are reworked so as to play in a Windows environment. If you can’t find it in the shops, you can always try KaZ… coughcough* …oops, ehm…
Oh, and it’s quite possible that you’ll have to disable DirectDraw acceleration if you want it to run on Windows XP.
That is the version I have but I got it a while back. The readme file talks about WIN 95 but that does not do me a lot of good with XP.
I wish they would come out with an update with a more modern combat.
I’ll see what I can come up with, Zebra. I’ve got the same ‘windows-ized’ version (as well as a pile of original 3.5" floppies) and I ran it fine on Win98, but haven’t yet tried on XP Pro.
I usually designated the following roles in the squad with a prefix:
Team Leader
1 or 2 Medics
1 or 2 Snipers
Heavy Weapons with rockets or Blast Bombs
and a number of 3 man entry teams or patrols
Everyone above rookie gets a cool name from an action movie (Col John McLain, Maj Rybeck, etc)
X-Com also lends itself to a number of tactics:
Suicide Bombers - Nothing clears out the aliens like strapping a couple satchel charges to a lone rookie and sending him in the front door of an alien ship or a house.
Snatch N’ Grab - Later in the game you can blast open the bridge of a battleship, stun a leader and whisk him away for interrogation.
Blast Bomb Firebase - Basically, you get a couple of guys loaded down with blast bombs with a couple dudes providing security. Just lob the remotecontrolled bombs at anything that moves.
Also, early in the game you could do some great things with fire.
Ah…they don’t make games like X-Com anymore.
Thanks for everyone’s help. I’m to the point in the game where I’m really enjoying it, rather then dreading the next mission.
I really love Power armor and Laser Rifles(I have some heavy plasma, but haven’t used it much yet), and my interceptors can now tangle with most alien spacecraft.
Just a couple more questions.
- What is the difference between PSI-Skill and PSI-Strength, and which is more important.
2.How do I get Fusion(Blaster balls?)?
- When do I know if I’m ready to assualt an alien base?
PSI-Strength is a fixed number that will not change. PSI-Skill can be trained and will go up each month the soldier is in psi-training. This is the part of the game where I weed out the inferior soldiers that I have – if you have a low PSI-skill, out the door you go, otherwise you risk being mind controlled and turned against me.
At this point I usually fire the soldiers with lowest psi-skills, and buy more soldiers and put them through training. Ultimately I only have soldiers with psi-skills of 90 or higher.
To answer the question, though, your Skill is your current level of training, and your Strength is your innate ability. (I hope. I may be backwards. Only one stat will improve in training, though.) I feel that the fixed unchanging stat is more important.
These are two different things, actually - Fusion Balls for the interceptor-mounted Fusion Ball Launcher and the Fusion Ball Tank, and Blaster Bombs for your foot soldiers. The answer: capture blaster bombs in combat, then research them with scientists and build them with engineers.
This depends a lot on your personal ability, the difficulty level of the game, the circumstances of the alien base, et cetera. I’ve raided alien bases with six soldiers armed with personal armor and laser rifles, and I’ve also done massive raids with a dozen guys with flying suits, psi-amps, heavy plasma, and four hovertanks. Save your game, give it a shot, and see if you can pull it off.
The objective of a base raid is to destroy the command center - so if you do that and pull out, you won’t have to slog through the entire place and kill every alien there is.
Ooooo…I Like it.
Almost forgot. Later in the game, I found that I would capture more equipment then I would ever use. You can finance your enire operation simply from selling second hand plasma rifles. Never fired and only dropped once!!
amanset, I believe I just soiled myself, and now I know what European gamers feel like when their release dates are a month or two behind the US.
By work here is done. 
from the frontpage:
followed amanset’s link - i don’t know… the soldier’s portrait looks decided creepy to me, and what’s up with the term ‘‘Simultaneous turn-based combat’’ anyway. pausable real time combat is not turn-based combat and the idea is neither new nor unique. the rest of the features offer nothing new for a game by today’s standard and it isn’t full 3D either, supposedly you can only zoom in and out and there are only one level (i.e. no stairs) to the game. not very exciting.
They did mention panning about, though; what more 3D are you looking for? (Other than stairs, of course, which I admit are a glaring omission.)
Given that there’s nothing else to scratch my tactical squad-based itch with (and the indefinite shelving of Jagged Alliance 3 still nags at me) I’m going to try to satisfy myself with this.
from the gamers europe review linked on the site.
not that i fancy 3d but with the limited ‘features’ and apparent similarity to the original it looks like an old game before it’s released. in any case you’re right, this will serve to stave off the hunger pangs as a direct result from reading this thread, especially if they do the rpg aspect well.
You know, on second thought and after reading the reviews, that new UFO game doesn’t so hot. Dated graphics. No multistory structures. I have a feeling it may be yet another glossy copy of a classic that doesn’t quite match up to the original.
What someone needs to do is make a version of X-com that keeps EVERYTHING from the original (no matter how trivial), give it the graphics of Halo, and just add more depth.
A multiplayer version of X-Com would be cool too. Be the aliens or humans. I don’t know.
Fixing the interface would be nice too.
How about the abilty to:
[ul]
[li]Load games from within missions[/li][li]Make it possible to cancel out of saving[/li][li]An Undo button(for one action) would be nice, particulary when you are done moving one trooper, try to select another, but miss and accidently send the first trooper walking all the way over to the next one, wasting the action points and putting him in danger[/li][li]design a better way of using grenades and perhaps motion trackers[/li][li]Change the medkits so they can be used on the trooper holding it, not just his buddy[/li][/ul]
There was at least one more, but I can’t think of it at the moment.
I’m guessing they handle it similar to the Fallout Tactics series. The action points are generated continuously, based on agility (more agility = more APs per unit time). Each action takes up a certain amount of points, and the guy can’t do anything expect wait if he uses up his AP pool.
The downside of this is it’s a mess trying to control the entire team. You end up pausing the game a lot; I’m not a big fan of this.
Here’s my experience from installing on XP Pro and playing last night:
Dug out the install CD from the X-Com collection, with 1&2 on one cd, and Apocalypse on the second cd. Popped it in, let autorun work its magic, chose to install them both, canceled product registration, and said to myself, yay!
Launched X-Com 2 via the start menu (I installed it to the default location) and the graphics were heavily distorted. I recalled this was a DirectDraw rendering issue from when I played on Windows98 (and as jtull mentioned earlier in the thread, and googled around until I found xcomufo.com, where I downloaded a workaround .exe that allowed me to launch the game without any visual problems. (Or you can just run dxdiag.exe and turn off DirectDraw, then turn it back on when you’re done playing.)
I didn’t have any audio problems or gameplay issues. So, well, I’unno.
Thanks!
Not only are we heading into a 3-day weekend but I’m taking next week off aswell so instead of sitting in my underware getting my ground to a pulp by Civ III, I can now fight aliens!
Sweeeeeeeet