I have two Avengers with plasma beams sufficient to take down 3-4 very large ships each. What happens is that I am just sittin there in the globe view and then all of a sudden it says aliens have landed. Should I set up some plasma defense or something?
I’ve already got heavy plasma fully researched, plus all the weapons in the plasma family other then the rifles/clips and pistols/clips.
I’m just not sure if I should bother with plasma rifles/pistols.
I’ve pretty much just been using laser rifles, but one guy on my squad usually just carrys a heavy plasma in case I need it.
Personally perfer a HWP with rockets.
“I think that alien is hiding inside that building, Sarge”.
“Have you tried going in after him?”
“Yes, Sarge. It’s too dangerous”
“Very well. HWP, Bring down the wall”.
HWP fires a rocket and most/all of the wall of the building disappears in flame and smoke.
Simple and effective.
I’m sure that farmer is pissed, but at least we evicted the aliens from his property…what was left of it.
Though, I will often use my laser rifles to create a small door for quick entry to a building, or through a hedge.
i’d always build my bases such that the barracks guards the corridor that leads to all possible entrances, then i would welcome the attackers as it is usually a matter of holding the bottleneck. (much easier to defend, and you don’t have to travel as far to haul the loot back) by the time i tire of their attacks i would have that much more money to build base defenses.
Skeezix reminded me of the time during the apocalypse - there was a corporation that fell on the bad side of our management politics so i had my units load up on grenades, incendiaries etc and proceded to investigate a ‘possible alien infestation’ or some such in one of their big warehouses and proceeded to demolish everything in sight. we got the aliens for sure, but i didn’t find out the exact impact our little romp did on their account books. it was fun though.
Well, since I was infected too, here I am, playing in the third difficulty level (can’t remember its name). Took me a while in the beginning to remember my old playing style, but as soon as I got laser rifles it’s turned to a downhill stroll.
Couple of issues:
-
Can’t get that patch from xcomufo.com to work. I have to disable DirectDraw everytime.
-
Can’t get moslo or turbo to work! I’m using the lowest settings for movement and shots, and it’s ok, but the scrolling is lightning fast. Thus, I’ve taken to using the map to navigate myself more than a few squares away from a soldier. It’s an Athlon XP 2000+, I really can’t understand why turbo and moslo are not working. Anybody else with this issue ?
-
There SHOULD be a “load game” option from inside the battle screen!
On to gameplay: -
I’ve been using laser rifles, even in battleship fights. If you have a nice tactic and flying suits, nothing apart from alien control can do you harm.
-
IN FACT, using plasma rifles when there’s a chance that one of your guys might get alien controlled is downright dangerous. One of my best guys seems to have very low psi-strength (haven’t developed psi-labs yet, but all the attacks focus on him, and they’re working also), and I just let him fire his laser to my guys. It just can’t penetrate flying armour. The sad thing is that I’ll have to fire him, and he’s got 80+ AP, with more than 70 kills in 30-40 missions.
-
Does anybody remember if the Plasma Cannon uses Elerium when it recharges ?
The nice thing about this game (as compared with TFTD) is that you don’t have to actually scan a huge map to get over with a mission. I hadn’t played it for years, and boy, these small maps are a delight, whereas TFTD’s huge maps got really frustrating.
What is the name of your .exe file. I obtained the games from “another source” (I own it as an MSDOS game, but Windows XP doesn’t seem to like it, so I feel completely justified in doing this) and the executable was called UFO.exe. To use the fix I had to rename it to “UFO Defense.exe” (or something similar. I am not at home to check).
Don’t forget that there are only two structures that the aliens can use to enter the base - the access lifts and the hangers. Check out the following design (5X5 grid, E=empty, A=access lift, B=other Base structure, H=Hangers. Don’t forget the hangers take up a 2X2 grid:
BBBBB
BBBBB
BBBBB
A
H H H
This way, your aliens can only enter through “A”, leaving them ripe for the picking. It is true that you end up with four unused spaces, but if you run out of room and want to build more stuff, build another base.
Oops. It’s a 6X6 grid, not 5X5. My bad. This now leaves you with 5 unused spaces, which is still pretty livable.
Well yes, I read about the .exe file having to be named UFO Defence.exe (as opposed to UFO.exe), tried it, didn’t work.
Oh well, worth a try. Have you tried spelling it “defense” and with “defence”. You may have an incorrect spelling. That’s the only thing left I can think of.
Well, I really hadn’t thought about it! I just checked a dictionary and yes, it seems that it can be spelled both ways! I always spelled it as “defence”. Gonna give it a try this evening. Cheers, you may have solved my problem, I’ll let you know!
fingers crossed
It worked alright! The scrolling’s fixed too. Soooo nice! You’re a lifesaver (my soldiers’ lives, that is :D)!
Excellent news. Glad to be of service.
Just to be a nudge…
You do have the option, in game, of adjusting the scroll speed on the combat map. I b’lieve it’s a question mark symbol on the control panel. Player and alien movement speed, as well as map scrolling speed can be adjusted.
However, if the rest of the game’s running too fast, you’d need moslow to handle it anyway, so mebbe it’s a moot point.
HPL sez:
If you’ve got the plasma cannon (the ship mounted weapon) then I wouldn’t bother. If not, I’d say do so, just because it’s the most useful of the ship to ship weapons, IMO.
If you’ve got heavy plasma researched, you generally don’t even need to take one with you. Just pick one up from a downed alien, stick the laser rifle in your backpack, and blaze away. If nothing else, this makes a decent arguement for researching the plasma rifle, as well. It makes all the “spoils of war” available to you right on the battefield, in an emergency. Also gets you around the “number of items” limit on what you can bring along in your troop transport.
And then shijinn sez:
For pure destructive fun, X-Com Apocalypse is great. It can be unbalancing to gameplay, though. Once a group becomes hostile towards me, or to the Goverment/Police (provided those two are still allied with me) I don’t even make a pretense of an alien investigation. I just wait for a lull in alien appearences, and raid the hostile group/company’s buildings. Combat experience for the troops (and a great way to build up your Psi-troops abilities with little risk) plus a cash bonus for the stuff you don’t destroy in the raid. Of course, I tend to spend the first ten game turns just blasting holes in the walls and equipment, waiting for the security forces to come to me, but then I’m not big on fighting fair, when I’m on a budget. 
I’m using the patch now, and the scroll speed adjustment option works fine. Before using the patch though, I had the scroll speed adjusted to the minimum setting, and it still was lightning-fast. Now I don’t even need moslo or something, all the speed adjustments work fine. The only thing that remains so fast is all the other animations, like the arrows above the soldiers’ heads, or the power source of my Lightning ship. Not much of a hassle, though, I can easily live with that. Oh, and the clock spins too fast in geoscape mode, but it doesn’t affect my gameplay.
I’m gonna re-start X-Com Apocalypse when I’m done with UFO. I remember it was much more difficult that the two first ones, so many different options affecting the course of things, but in the end, it all boils down to grabbing a weapon and killing that blasted alien-or-human-not-of-my-side. I have the old version, but I tried it some days ago and it seems to like XP.
Oh, I’ve got plasma cannons. Wouldn’t use anything else 
Now I’m working on building new craft to mount them on(the firestorm is at least fast enough to catch most ufos without having to wait for them to bank).
I usually don’t mess with alien bodies during a mission. My objective is to A.) Kill and occasionally B.) Capture aliens. I don’t like to get distracted from that task and I don’t like to rely on my enemy for firepower, particulary when I can hold my own with the stuff I brought with me. Hell, I don’t even use much of what I do bring, so the item limit is not a problem.
The rest, I let the clean-up team handle( or whoever it is that cuts the UFO up and brings it, plus all the weapons and bodies, back to my base).
Plasma cannons indeed are the best ship-to-ship weapons, but I still have one or two interceptors hanging around with old weaponry like stingray and maybe cannons, just in case I run out of elerium (interceptors don’t use any, of course) or in case my elerium supply runs low and I’m in desperate need of a downed alien ship without blown engines. I’ve noticed that old weaponry does far less damage to alien ships, thus enabling me to capture far more useful stuff.
Well, I’m keeping some interceptors around, but I’m aiming for something like 1 interceptor and 1 firestorm per any particular base, as far as shooting them down goes.
Eventually I’ll have the avenger, but by the time that one is built, I’ll be ready for the little trip to mars. I have set up a little base soley dedicated to constructing ships, so I don’t have to wait something like a month with an empty hanger before I can use the new ship.
Good times, this game.
Some Pointers:
#1: Money should never be a problem. You can sell lasers for more than it takes to create them. Accordingly, you should have a huge engineering department.
#2: Sell your avengers immediately, they cost you like 120,000 a month, and more importantly, you should NEVER shoot down an UFO. Why? They’ll land eventually, and you can capture everything intact, including that precious, precious elerium. How? When your radar picks up a UFO, send your skyranger to intercept it, and when it does, click on the minimize button in the upper right hand corner. Your skyranger will then just follow it around and not intercept. When the aliens finally land to do their buisness, you’ll be right on top of them. This is crucial.
#3: The only shot you should take it autoshot.
#4: A neat trick with blasterbombs is to take 15-20 with you, and just leave them in the ship. Leave the guy with the launcher in the ship, and you’ll be able to snipe anything on the map with him.
#4: If a guy panics, kill him. If a guy gets mind controlled, kill him.
#5: Hire more men than you can use; the amount of high level promotions is directly related to the amount of men you command.
#6 Don’t worry about killing civilans in terror missions. It will hurt you, but the mission will be overall positive if you succeed.
#7: There’s a certain kind of ship, supply I think. Watch them, as they only go to alien bases. They’ll cruise along, and then suddenly vanish, send a ship to that location and have it patrol for a couple hours. Lo and behold, a base will be discovered.
#8 You can extend the length of a terror raid by sending a unit to it, but then changing it’s course midway to a location a couple of hundred miles away, but then bringing it back to the terror site, but then sending it away, etcetera. Not 100% perfect; The terror mission will end eventually, and your ship might run out of fuel.
#9: Overall, be ruthless with your units. If for any reason you don’t like one, kick him out.
But yeah, the not shooting down crafts is crucial. You’ll get like 400 alien metals for each ship, which is worth 1 point each. Capture 5 ships, get 2000 points at the end of the month, which will heavily impress everbody, and you’ll get a ton of bonuses to boot.
#10: Oh yeah, it’s a bit of a personal decision, but save like a bastard during combat
Yeah, blaster bombs are fantastic. I amused myself…and people watching me play by setting the waypoints in such a way as to have the missile circle the alien a couple times before hitting him. Childish perhaps…but amusing all the same.