>do Aquatoid cruise ship mission on OXC
>soldier who got mind controlled ran off upstairs and I kind of forgot about him
>a few turns later he ended up running into an Aquatoid in an upstairs hallway with a stun launcher
>the alien stuns him, knocks both of them out
That was lucky. The mind controlled guy saved me a lot of trouble by accidentally finding that alien and knocking him out (and I'd wanted to fire him because he killed another soldier earlier in the mission while mind controlled).

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>>9740673
>>9740629
just a little FYI about shipping route/artifact sites in TFTD. the game has a fixed number of spawn points on the Geoscape where the missions can occur and there's a method to the madness. shipping route attacks only occur in the major oceans (which kind of makes sense). artifact missions occur in those plus the Arctic and Antarctic. there is also one spawn point for artifact sites in the Mediterranean and one in the Caribbean. the North Sea, South China Sea, and Sea of Japan never get either shipping route or artifact missions, any terror mission there will just be a port/island attack.

I've tried replaying the originals a few times but the 80 item limit and other such things (mostly bugs) eventually made me abandon runs and switch to the open source remake. I guess I don't have as much patience for bullshit now, at least while the remake is good enough.

>>9740854
Sometimes OXC is more annoying mosty because of the improved AI which means aliens don't get stuck in closets anymore. In the original games there's a certain reliability to things because you can memorize where aliens spawn in and where to find them while OXC makes it possible for the buggers to just roam all over the map at will and be a complete bastard to track down, especially if the alien panicked and dropped his weapon (if he still has it he'll try and fight your soldiers so you'll eventually run into him somewhere).

>>9740673
I did this mission twice because I forgot to save the first time. The second time produced the results in this post. The first time a panicked weaponless Aquatoid was running around everywhere. Seriously, that guy was averaging like 20 squares per turn. I finally got annoyed and just enabled debug mode to track him down. Don't feel bad about cheating a little because otherwise I'd never catch the alien and would just be chasing him in circles for the next 50 turns.

>>9740936
>improved AI
>a certain reliability to things
True, true. But the minigames you need to play with (re-)equipping your guys for missions eventually starts driving me up the walls. Also I add various mods to OXC which are more than just flavour so it kinda evens out.

I should add that several other OXC improved features can fuck you up:

>Deep Ones are actually dangerous now because their attack isn't broken
>they can shoot in huge arcs halfway across the map which wasn't possible in the original game and unless you're like 2 squares from them they couldn't hit you
>it's quite terrifying actually while Gillman terror missions used to be a joke (this also applies to Celatids in EU, they have the same arced attack but even worse because it does a whopping 140 damage and can once in a while break a UFO outer hull)
>aliens can actually use drills
>throwing arcs are improved so aliens can grenade you from angles that they couldn't in the original games
>aliens can reaction melee you (you used to be able to walk up to a Chryssalid and shoot him, whoops he can bite you at point blank range in OXC)
>you can't disarm psionic weak soldiers by just giving them a stun rod because they can actually use them in OXC and try to stun your soldiers
>some bug fixes to the map data eliminates a couple of handy cheats that allowed explosions to go through UFO walls and break parts of a UFO outer hull

>>9740997
>>you can't disarm psionic weak soldiers by just giving them a stun rod because they can actually use them in OXC and try to stun your soldiers
Worse yet, they can pick up weapons on the ground too so even if you purge their inventory it does fuck all in the long term.

>>9741126
OXC has an option to let aliens pick up stuff from the ground but you can turn that off and play like the original game.

>>9740997
it keeps a log of all your soldiers and what they've done. on my most recent TFTD playthrough in mid-month 5 i'd recruited a total of 83 soldiers and lost 57 of them. that's a whopping 69% casualty rate (would have been lower but I was slow to research Medi Kits)

>>9741393
Considering that I'm leaving X-Com operative psionics as is, I'd feel like I'm cheating a bit.

>>9741405
Your casualty rate will drop significantly once you have Ion Armor and Medi Kits. In TFTD at least, in EU not as much because Power Suits are somewhat weaker and ranged weapons roll up to 200% damage.

>Lobsterman island terror mission
>we're getting near the end of this
>two dudes are sitting in the back of the Triton because I didn't really need them and they only have Plastic Aqua Armor so too risky to send them out in the field
>suddenly out of nowhere an unarmed Lobsterman charges into the Triton and pinches them to death
>what? where did he...?
>oops he's one I knocked unconscious earlier--his drill is laying next to the Triton
>oh well, let's get him
>send a couple dudes over, take him out and we're done
That was actually hilarious.

>these two soldiers are just sitting in the back of the Triton probably playing gin rummy, reading a Hustler mag, I dunno
>Lobsterman bursts inside yelling "THIS. IS. SPAAAAARTTTTTAAAAAAA!!!!!"
>"what the? oh God no! ahhhgghhhhhhh!!!!!!"
No matter how many times you play X-COM you never cease to be surprised at the ridiculous stuff that can happen.

>>9740719
OXC removes some of the randomness of the original games.

>original game
>the target of a terror mission is picked at random; once the Terror Ship shows up, the game randomly draws a city to attack
>in TFTD also when you go to a shipping route mission it does a coin flip and you get a 50/50 chance of drawing either the cruise ship or the cargo ship
>OXC doesn't do this, at the start of a month it sets everything up in your save game including terror mission targets
>so you could easily edit your save file to force the terror mission to be in any city your want, or what kind of shipping route mission it is
>you couldn't do this in the original game, you could edit your save file to choose the region where a terror mission happens but you had no control over anything else, the game engine would simply select a random city to target or the shipping route type

>>9741489
some people say the cruise ship is more annoying but I dislike the cargo ship more because it's affected by day/night cycles while the cruise ship isn't and both sections start with a giant balcony where the aliens can just shoot you to pieces and you're completely exposed while the cruise ship sections at least have some cover.

>>9741502
Uh huh. Anyway in the original games as I said you never knew which one you were going to get while OXC pre-defines it at the start of the month so once it picks the cargo ship, you're always going to get the cargo ship unless you edit your save file. For example you don't have to bring electro flares if you know it's the cruise ship while you used to always have to bring them in the event you got the cargo ship at night.

>>9740719
after the early part of the game you hardly ever get anything but shipping/artifact missions which is one reason it's called Tedium From The Deep

>>9741420
In the original you can either roll out a hovertank before the gang or equip laser rifles on everyone, spot ayys and then autofire at them from outside visible range with the other 25 guys.

the AI in X-COM is actually really stupid and its actions mostly depend on what the player does

>>9741420
yet you also don't die as much in early game EU due to the damage rolls--sometimes a Heavy Plasma will roll 0% and not kill an unarmored soldier while in TFTD you will essentially always die.

so i heard you can get Lobstermen as early as February

>>9742747
You can but it's pretty rare.

>>9740997
the unlimited smoke is nice

>touch down at first TFTD terror mission
>I only have 8 dudes not enough to really fight this but I can still at least kill a Deep One, grab the corpse, and run
>mission starts off ok; I knock a Deep One out a few feet from the Triton
>now it's just a matter of running out and grabbing...
>next turn another Deep One walks into the Triton, all my soldiers fire Gas Cannon explosive rounds into him killing everyone in one giant blast
>mission over, Triton lost
Thank god I was not doing an Ironman run.

bump

god I hate those Atlantis/ancient ruin maps

It's a good idea to avoid shooting down UFOs to not get alien retaliation missions, but they don't always land. The larger ships normally will land except the terror ship on terror missions. On Superhuman you get up to a 20% chance of an alien retaliation when you shoot something down so a few shootdowns and you'll get retaliation missions up your ass.

>>9744169
I seem to get more retaliation missions on my playthroughs than even some of the Youtube ones I've seen

>>9743602
>all my soldiers fire Gas Cannon
Why would you equip everyone with them? I tend to equip everyone with dart rifles to reduce the significance of individual misses.

>explosive rounds
Why? There are no barns anymore. And bringing explosives to a terror mission is generally a pretty bad idea. You get penalized even worse for directly killing civilians instead of failing to stop the aliens.

>>9744336
Gas Cannons are pretty effective for the first month and a half of the game because you can kill enemies without a direct hit. What you do is carry half HE rounds and half armor piercing and switch to the latter for close range shooting especially inside a UFO. However, I try to get Sonic Rifles as fast as possible.

you won't be able to take on a TFTD colony until getting DPLs so you can bombard the hell out of the aliens in part 1

>>9743602
I remember watching Aulddragon's OXC playthroughs (he also did playthroughs of the original games years earlier) and he savescummed that like hell. usually if you're doing a playthrough video series it's considered common courtesy to not savescum. i am impressed at those who can do Ironman Superhuman runs though, especially on TFTD. I can't.

Alien bases get a regular visit from a Supply Ship, which is always crewed by the alien race that constructed the base and there is a 6% chance each day that the base will be visited by one. The ships always show up at 0:05 on the game clock. This means that depending on the region of the globe, they may always land during nighttime. If the base is between roughly Eastern Europe and China, it will always be in daylight.

Of course you can also farm Supply Ships if it's a Floater or Snakeman base (easy aliens with no mind control) and it's in the same region as your home base (otherwise you'll never catch the things before they take off) Just leave the base go and eat their Supply Ships. In TFTD if it's a Gillman colony.

>>9744169
Small scouts only land if it's during a Harvest or Base mission. The medium and large scouts usually land on most missions. The larger UFOs always land except terror ships in terror missions. On original TFTD infiltration fleets never land, but this was changed in OXC and the game does a coin flip with each ship so there's a 50/50 chance they will land.

bump

>>9745017
But just for shooting the things you have to pay insane TU costs, and reloading won't help matters either. And both the guns themselves and the ammo are really heavy.

Important differences between EU and TFTD:

The Barracuda has a shorter range than the Interceptor
Base defense in TFTD has a 110 item limit and aliens may spawn in your base
Alien infiltration fleets do not land in TFTD
The Battleship (TFTD Terror Ship) never lands and you can only fight one by shooting it down
The Dreadnought and Battleship have their weapon ranges reversed compared to the EU Battleship and Terror Ship--while it is possible in EU to shoot safely down a Terror Ship using two Interceptors with twin Avalanche missiles, trying to shoot down a Battleship with DUP torpedo-equipped Barracudas is extremely risky (but still possible) so you won't really be able to take them on until getting Sonic Oscillators.
The Sonic Oscillator cannot be researched until you've gotten all three Sonic weapons plus their ammo
You can stack grenades in TFTD for multiple explosions
Unconscious soldiers and aliens simply disappear in EU if hit by an explosion, while in TFTD they die and turn into a corpse (any gear laying next to them is still destroyed)
TFTD has several kinds of terror missions, with the Port/Island attack being equivalent to EU terror missions

Some TFTD weapons cannot be used on land missions
You cannot fly on land; Magnetic Ion Armor just adds some additional protection for soldiers
Underwater missions have different terrorists than land missions
A live Lobsterman commander and navigator are necessary to get the Leviathan and unlock T'leth while in EU any alien species' officers would allow completion of the game
The Transmission Resolver is unlocked by researching Magnetic Navigation while a Deep One corpse is necessary to unlock armor; in EU it was possible to get armor by the first terror mission if you researched alien alloys quickly enough
The MC Lab in TFTD is unlocked by researching any live terrorist; it lets you screen soldiers' MC strengths but does not let you use psionic attacks, which requires a live Tasoth squad leader (in EU you need any live psionic-capable alien to unlock the Psy Lab and Amp).
Grenades take on a more prominent position in TFTD as they're the only effective explosive weapon you can use on land
TFTD has more terrain types than EU and on any terrain there is always a 50/50 chance the game will give you a generic coral reef or sea bottom map
All medium and large TFTD ships except the Battleship have DPL-toting aliens on them while in EU you only encounter Blaster Launchers on Battleships.

EU map sizes are 5x5 (most missions), 4x4 (small and medium scout), or 6x6 (base defense and part two in Cydonia).
TFTD map sizes are 6x6 (most missions), 5x5 (port/island terror, artifact sites, small and medium scout, and the crashed airplane map), or 7x3 (shipping route missions).
Some TFTD maps are fixed layout; these are part 1 of colonies, shipping route missions, and the crashed airplane map.

>>9745957
>A live Lobsterman commander and navigator are necessary to get the Leviathan and unlock T'leth while in EU any alien species' officers would allow completion of the game
i think this was done in purpose because in UFO Defense it was too easy to just grab a Floater commander from a Battleship in February and unlock Cydonia.

i never liked using tanks tbqh

>>9745957
>Some TFTD weapons cannot be used on land missions
Barring reaction fire. I fill forever remember the impression some rookie made when he fired a large torpedo on the surface at some shitty aquatoid. That time was a miss, but I didn't realize what has caused the bug so as I was experimenting to reproduce it later I got plenty of hitting obstacles or just ground a few tiles away.

>>9746269
Basic bitch tank in the original is great. It has decent armour, its cannon is actually good and it has enough TUs to fire it, it is immune to MC on the odd chance you get Ethereals early on, it is immune to stun so you can abuse the smoke bug if you're cheap, and best of all you can buy it right away.
Missile tank runs out of missiles way too quickly.
Laser tank is a meme by the time you can get it, unfortunately.
Plasma hovertanks are great because they casually eat everything but heavy plasma most of the time. While flying and having 255 shots of slightly weaker version of heavy plasma.

Coelacanth thingies can be okay here and there but die way too quickly and rarely perform well.
Displacers are pretty good but as the game overall is more difficult you just can't justify the research hours for a long time so once you get them your aquanauts are fsuperhumans in flying power armour wielding superior weaponry.

>>9746269
Forgot to add that the basic tank is especially good since if it doesn't actually die on a mission, it is instantly healed for free afterwards and ready to go right away. With zero maintenance fees unlike, say, interceptors.

>>9746373
>it is immune to MC on the odd chance you get Ethereals early on
They don't show up until month 7, no need to worry.

so in OXC TFTD it seems that aliens like to walk up on the roof of the Fleet Supply Cruiser and use it as a sniping point, but i never recall they did that in the original game

>>9745259
it seems that in TFTD they always arrive in daylight in the Pacific but the position of the continents on the globe might be different from how it was in EU

>>9746652
I had literally the first UFO, a small scout usually, be 1 Ethereal soldier. Followed by a medium scout with like 8 of them. It happens. Rare, but possible.

>>9746672
The game executable has a table in it that is used to select the alien race on retaliation missions at random but most versions of EU don't use it and instead the alien race is whoever's ship you shot down. That happened in Kikoskia's second EU playthrough because he had the Steam version and got a bunch of Ethereal retaliation scouts in like June or something when they're not supposed to show up yet. I've never played any version of EU that used the probability tables in the executable to draw the alien race at random for retaliation missions, nor does OXC do it that way. It does seem that the version of the game they had on Steam did it though.

>>9745957
Originally in TFTD base defense, the aliens (since it's a Dreadnought crew) that would be carrying DPLs are unarmed. in OXC they do have the weapons but of course can't use them. It does make it a bit easier to nab a DPL early in the game. I also never find aliens inside my base in OXC even though the map data is unchanged and all the alien spawn nodes for them to appear inside your base are still present.

Also regarding retaliations. If you successfully defeat the aliens and win a base defense mission, they may start over with another retaliation run on your base beginning with a Small Scout, but it seems to be a coin flip and doesn't always happen. I find TFTD base defense a little easier than EU base defense as you have an additional door between you and the access lift and nobody can use DPLs while EU base defense can become a horrible disaster once Blaster Bombs start going off.

>>9745957
Smoke is different on land and water missions. In land missions it works the same as smoke in EU. In water missions smoke does not give your soldiers stun damage, but it does slow their movement. Fires also always go out in one turn underwater so don't bother with incendiary ammo.

>>9745953
>Alien infiltration fleets do not land in TFTD
This was modified in OXC so that each ship has a 50/50 chance of landing.

bump

>>9740854
You can set 80 item limit for your Skyranger in OXC but it's just a limitation to how much equipment you can bring to a mission while the original game had a hard coded limit of 80 combined items for your squad and the aliens, which often resulted in stuff disappearing if you went over that limit.

>>9740629
I did a trawler mission like that with Lobstermen. I beat the first part but just didn't have the manpower or armor to clear the second.

bump

>>9746724
>Fires also always go out in one turn underwater so don't bother with incendiary ammo.
Don't some aliens also have significant vulnerability to IC, like in the original? Or are sonic weapons just so busted that it doesn't matter

>>9747836
When I'm playing Open I'm not going to set item limits whatsoever, which is why I prefer it now. I won't bring too many items because why would I need clutter. Plus they can be blown up by accident as they're near the exit ramp usually.

What's your opinion on Xcom Apocalypse?
I've only ever played the two classic games and the first remake

>>9749304
I love a lot about the game but farming Syrius fucks both to keep them from snowballing and to get extra income gets tiring really fast.

Do most of you prefer TFTD to EU?

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Should I start with EU or TFTD? I've heard TFTD isn't as good, but I like it more thematically and I think the sonic weapons are really cool.

>>9749927
Other way around. The sequel was somewhat superficial and it shows a lot.

Just having "zrbite" be an alloy of gold and Elerium that works totally different from just Elerium, stockpiles of which should still be out there somewhere, was really lazy. So not only you get tangible proof that the thing can be alloyed with something but you potentially get tons of the stuff to experiment as you please and that leads to pretty much carbon copy of the 1st war tech tree?

Then the "most of 1st war equipment doesn't work underwater so you're not getting it". All the while you still have surface missions which are arguably more important for continuation of the X-Com project itself due to score.

Another problem is also related to "let's just reskin the original's tech tree and shuffle a few things around to make the game more difficult" is you still only get to use alien alloys (sorry, the totally different "aqua plastics" now, which looks even more like metal in USOs than it looked in UFOs), alien navigation and other such stuff in your own vehicles when you make pretty much clumsy imitations of their craft. Just the second coming of plasma AKA "gauss weapons" should have allowed to power human designs plated with alien armour and upgraded with various other reverse-engineered or even just grafted toys.

Then we have complete absence of vertical movement for your team on surface maps until displacers. Not only dusty old flying suits and hovertanks were all eaten by alien termites, not only all research into psi-amps and specifically Ethereals has just stopped for no good reason, but it's totally impossible to scale down whatever lets displacers to hover in the air. Because reasons.

I think I could continue if I tried to remember more but I don't hate TftD so I'd rather not.

>>9749939
The sequel is very hard. Due to a bug in the original the game did not remember the chosen difficulty so people chose Superhuman but it reverted to Beginner. Thus after players have complained at length that the game is too easy the sequel was made ball-bustingly hard even on the lowest difficulty.

>>9749939
TFTD would be considered a DLC today rather than a fully new game, but it’s still fun and the underwater locations, music, and art design are all great.
Personally I enjoy the more difficult rebalancing as well and the larger maps/different missions.

So I did an alien colony assault the other day, and I must confess this is the first time I ever tried doing a colony on OXC. It did exactly what I was afraid of--while in the original game the aliens are always on the north edge of the map and you can safely avoid them by not going there, OXC just places them anywhere and everywhere which combined with the improved pathfinding is quite horrible. You can get jumped by a Tentaculat lurking around every corner while that was not usually a problem in the original.

Also they fucked up the alien weapon loadouts for some reason so the Lobsterman officers have weapons when they were originally unarmed and some guys have drills which wasn't originally part of the equipment loadout either. That can be fixed by modifying aliendeployments.rul so the equipment loadout is consistent with the original game, but the aliens being spawned everywhere instead of just a portion of the map is bullshit.

So after a couple hours and a dozen or so Thorazine milkshakes I fixed my aliendeployments.rul to be consistent with the original game. I'm not sure but I'd be willing to gamble that some smartass OXC developer thought it was a good idea to make sure that alien colonies had 10-12 DPL-toting Lobstermen in them when originally it would be at most five on Superhuman (five soldiers with DPLs and some carry Sonic Rifles/Cannons if it's earlier in the game). After fixing this I did a test run, enabled debug mode, and looked around at the alien positions to confirm that everything was the way it should. There's a lot fewer aliens and the map has a lot more empty space using the original game's figures instead of the OXC guys' troll ones. I mean, you still have aliens scattered around the map and the Lobsterman commanders are not all nicely inside the command center like they used to be, so they get their pound of flesh either way.

Also the equipment loadouts for the technician and medic ranks on most missions were reversed. I guess some noob was filling those in by reading ufopedia and was doing it according to the order in the weapon loadout chart there and not paying attention to the rank numbers.

>>9747836
it also limited you to 20 squares of smoke/fire. i mean, EU had to fit in 4MB of memory.

So is there any reason not to research Heavy Plasma/Sonic Cannons as soon as you snag one from a mission? Feels like cheating to skip straight to them.

>>9751303
>Nooo why isn’t it still broken and bugged like the origional!!
OXC is what the developers intended as per Julian Gollops book.

>>9751930
>OXC is what the developers intended as per Julian Gollops book.
His team had nothing to do with TFTD and he didn't even like it when he saw it. They were working on Apocalypse at the time and couldn't fulfill Microprose's demand for a EU sequel in six months so it was farmed out to some other studio.

Actually the alien weapon loadouts in OXC were mostly the same as the original games, it was just that for colony missions they decided to "improvise" things by giving some enemies weapons they didn't originally have.

https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Artefact_Site

Also in artifact sites the original game could theoretically spawn up to 14 Tentaculats but there weren't enough spawn nodes for them. OXC spawns 0-6 on part 1 and up to 7 on part 2. This is an acceptable compromise solution because nobody in their right mind wants to have to fight 14 Tentaculats.

>>9752158
https://github.com/OpenXcom/OpenXcom/blob/master/bin/standard/xcom2/alienDeployments.rul

it places between 1-7 each Hallucinoids and Tentaculats.

>>9750630
>but the aliens being spawned everywhere instead of just a portion of the map is bullshit.
This should be possible to change somewhere as well. I've seen it while looking at one of the bigger mods.

>>9751602
In TftD you need to research all three sonic guns and their ammo to get the best stuff. In the original more or less but you eventually get enough free research hours to check every box.

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>Prime grenade
>Throw it
>It misses my target completely
>It lands at the feet of one of my guys
>Not enough time units to pick it up
>Move him, try to pick it up with another guy
>Not enough time units
>Not enough time units to move him off the grenade and let someone else pick it up
>Death is imminent
I know I have no one to blame but myself for this situation, but it will not make clicking end turn any less painful.

>>9749309
But Apoc has dynamic difficulty. If you keep farming Sirius the stronger aliens will show up earlier

>>9752861
>dynamic difficulty
It's buggy and resets all the time from what I remember. And stronger aliens are not as bad as fucking enemy valkyries being sent after your scientists in civilian flying taxis.

>>9752861
Dynamic difficulty was a feature they intended to have in EU but couldn't get it to work and that was the cause of the difficulty bug that would always reset the game to Beginner mode.

>>9752635
They need to fix another OXC issue which is that in the original games in alien bases some of your soldiers start on the floor in the base down below the grav lift. They don't spawn there in OXC, they're all just on the grav lifts. Also OXC doesn't seem to spawn aliens inside your base during base defense like original TFTD did. That needs to be fixed as well. The part with the aliens only spawning in the top half of colonies also appears to have been intentional as a way of making things easier on the player (once you realize the aliens are only in that portion of the map you can just avoid it). These aren't bugs either, they're intentional features of the games that OXC doesn't implement.

>>9752635
what was this mod again?

>>9753306
40k.

>>9753229
oh

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The marked spot originally had a spawn node for the big four square terrorists, consequently if you fought a Battleship with Aquatoids or Gillmen, you would always find a Hallucinoid or Xarquid here. OXC changes this to just a regular spawn node. In the original game it made sense because you could never actually encounter an intact Battleship, the interior would always be gutted so you could just walk in there and kill the Hallucinoid/Xarquid. Since in OXC it's possible to fight an intact landed Battleship on an infiltration mission, you don't want to get a 2x2 terrorist spawning in that room because it'll get stuck there and if it's a Xarquid it will just reaction fire anything that enters the room.

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OXC also adds a spawn node that wasn't originally present to this little balcony which results in an alien that hangs out there and cannot actually leave it, but will use it as a sniper's nest. Once you realize this however you can just use the "throw a grenade up through the floor" trick to kill him, at least if it's an Aquatoid or Gillman. Won't OHKO a Lobsterman or Tasoth of course and there could also be a Tentaculat but he's harmless since he can't get out of there and has no way to get at you.

>>9753245
I looked at this with mapview. The spawn nodes for aliens to spawn in your base in TFTD are there but disabled. The spawn nodes for soldiers in the alien bases are present but OXC doesn't seem to actually use them.

bump

Apocalypse wasn't that good; a lot of half-baked ideas that didn't work out even though a few things like paying for damage you caused to a city were neat.

>>9754740
The city itself is like half of the game's problem. Ground vehicles meant for combat are confined to the fragile narrow roads for some reason and that pretty much nips their potential usefulness in the bud. Also flying vehicles aren't smart enough to position themselves right before firing so that missed shots won't go into some hospital or whatever. It's like the pilot doesn't live in the same city, reliant on it for everything.
But what is there is pretty good.

>>9754009
Never mind, I re-checked. It was in front of the stairs.

bump

bump

In EU you need 30 soldiers to have a full set of ranks up to commander. TFTD had only required 24 soldiers but it appears to be 30 in OXC.

>>9740854
Week long UFO Defense on steam for years now.
The 80 item limit is kinda of an ass in some games. Really though once you get a decent team built up of psi-soldiers you really only want the best armor on them. With the amp they can only hold a laser pistol that takes no ammo at all. Otherwise just start with laser rifles/heavy lasers. Late late game the heavy laser is better for downing enemies that would take multiple laser shots, but even the pistol on a high stat character with reaction fire will tear up a lot of things and your guys might survive a plasma hit or two with best armor. If you got a psi-amp though you don't actually have to worry about anything besides blaster launchers and reapers sneaking up on you. Really you're suppose to rush even though it feels good to build up tech and things, a alien base that has a commander on the upper level can teleport a blaster launcher down to the second level and annihilate all the cover so you get one chance to rush the command center before everything but the teleporter is destroyed and you can't move to the teleporter without getting hit and then survive the second hit once you teleport up the elevator to close the distance to attack that guy. The aliens never running out of ammo is really one of my biggest gripes with the game. lasers are an early game find but can last you to late game. Once you research plasma you can use the stuff you loot, so hoard plasma pistol ammo you get (tempting to sell off but worth the 80 limit later on with a psi amp, it stops spawning a lot) Otherwise laser pistol/rifle/heavy and loot as you go. There is always stray chance a plasma weapon will kill your best armor, but there is always the stray chance your worse armor can survive a blast. I've had guys in flying suits die one hit, guys in spare alien alloy armor survive with injury from a hit. On average though flying armor you can take a full auto blast and survive, while alloys you'll probably die if you get hit once.

>>9749939
EU is typically the remake,UFO defense the original by gallop. TFTD is a completely different beast. It was done by a different developer that hired gallop, it's WAY harder. >>9750048
It's sort of like a stallaris DLC the original pack sucks so bad it probably can't compare against DLC power creep. It's changed enough between the alloys and population changes that they should have just made a sequel to do that stuff. Instead it feels like a spiteful master of orion 2 game that the devs go back to nerf the base game features adding points to picks and renaming everything until it's a totally different game and you can't find hardly info on the first and it's all about the latest failed game and the popular one, but you should be able to understand the general premise even though none of it really applies to what you're actually doing. TFTD is a lot harder than the original, and changes stuff to ocean than land masses. The first won't make you better at the second. TFTD requires a special kind of masochist that can memorize things a lot better. You got some things that don't work on land battles. Not trying to throw shade or anything I just think UFO Defense has a better game balance and less confusing features. I get squad wiped all the time on TFTD and constantly have to restart. EU is usually more of the remake, I beat it easily on console but the steam version for some reason I suck as much at TFTD and never seem to make any progress on and end up going back to classic UFOdefense xcom.
>>9752735
If I had a beer for every time I did that I'd maybe have a better excuse for why I did it, sometimes proximity grenades are really handy. They're great early game because they build up your accuracy when things get hit by the explosion but it gets annoying you can't blast a hole into a ship trying to pile on high explosives instead of having to rush into a choke point. Even that one really fun game spin off had that problem what's it called falconaughts?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uESIQx2Gpg

I don't fucking believe it. He made this LP how many years ago? And somehow Youtube feels the need to stick on this "Potential disinformation within" tag because he made one joke in the video about global warming.

TFTD can be a real bitch early game because the damage roll for ranged shots is 50-150% rather than EU's 0-200% roll which means you will die most of the time if you have less than Ion Armor. Conversely once you get that your casualty rate falls off a lot. It's also easier to get Zrbite than Elerium as all Cruisers (the TFTD Large Scout) have 50 Zrbite even if you shoot them down, so there's not much reason to use Plastic Aqua Armor after early game. You also will not survive a Lobsterman or Tasoth battle without Ion Armor as you can't OHKO them most of the time and your soldiers will need to be able to take hits. Bio Drones are especially nasty as they have insane firing accuracy and can hit your soldiers 3x in one turn. Late game TFTD is quite easy as soldiers decked out in Magnetic Ion Armor are pretty hard to kill. Arguably it's easier than late game EU because the 0-200% damage roll means soldiers in Flying Suits can get one shotted easily.

>>9756889
One of the unloved parts of TFTD was the tendency of aliens to get trapped in closets and you have to spend 30 turns finding them. This was a programming oversight as the AI code (largely unmodified from EU) was not able to deal with the game's numerous small rooms and cubbyholes resulting in aliens spawning in rooms that they cannot get out of, but OXC fixes this and eliminates bug hunts.

>>9756968
I never found that a problem, like I mentioned before I binge drink and try to workout before sunrise when I'll get a lot of sun burn. If I sober up for a day or two and go exercise, then play the game for the rest of the day till I start drinking or pass out.Realistically you're probably not suppose to max out a unit and you get new units to jump into that closet to die, it builds up the stats of the other units. It's so much easier buying a shiton of recruits hoping they have reactions stat, than buying a shiton of recruits hoping they have the right profession. Jesus it's depressing watching the thing you fought for slightly erode and told you're more than useless and the entire profession being phased out. I mean even if you're going to jump into a room the reaction stats of a recruit are typical abyssmal to an alien and you can't even hope to train them unless they start with a maximal stat in that, in addition to psych testing. It's nearly depressing as being in the military for real like you'd assume they should be better at this except they're conscripts, or foriegners that the press has to talk up for existing because it's too expensive to equip individuals.

to be honest EU had a significant balance of play issue with Ethereals and their terror buddies being way too overpowered compared to everything else. Tasoths are sort of TFTD's equivalent to Ethereals but only the squad leaders have psionic ability and they panic very easily due to their only 60 bravery.

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>>9757009
yeah true

>missclicked and accidentally shot the commander in the head
Still ended the mission with a Terrific! Rating and only 50% losses

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X-com if he real

>>9756683
Sounds like you might want to make a mod incorporating all those changes.

>>9756838
>Really though once you get a decent team built up of psi-soldiers you really only want the best armor on them.
You still want at least a few medikits and preferably one on every agent because if they survive with like 5 HPs and 8 fatal wounds it sucks if your "medics" are too far away.

>With the amp they can only hold a laser pistol
You can always just swap the psi-amp with whatever you have in the back slot. I've found laser pistols to be way too weak and inaccurate to use them.

>Late late game the heavy laser is better for downing enemies that would take multiple laser shots
Kind of, but then its high TU cost and lack of autofire also make the cost of missed shots too high. I've only brought about 2 or 3 of them in addition to the standard loadout of psi-amp+medikit+laser rifle to alien base missions to more reliably snipe sectopods.
The only enemies worth worrying about that laser rifles struggle with are mutons and cyberdisks. Even sectopods might just go down from 2 laser rifle hits.

>>9756889
>EU is typically the remake,UFO defense the original by gallop.
On /vr/ we don't need to dance around names to avoid kids thinking it's about the new games. The original was called "X-Com: UFO Defense" or "UFO: Enemy Unknown" depending on world region, so anons calling the first game "EU" is perfectly understandable. I used to call them "X-Com" and "X-Com 2" years (apparently decades) ago online, but this works too.

>>9756947
That's what people get for thinking that what they call "AI" today is actually intelligent.

>>9756963
>Late game TFTD is quite easy as soldiers decked out in Magnetic Ion Armor are pretty hard to kill.
More like because same as in the first game once you get enough psionically strong agents you effectively win.

Deep sea aliens are kino and I don’t care what you say

there's some improvements in TFTD like each alien species having its own death noise and each of the four main species gives you something useful for research (Aquatoids=melee weapons, Gillmen=armor, Lobstermen=unlock T'leth and beat the game, Tasoth=psionics).

>>9756963
It's pretty rare to get wounded soldiers pre-Ion Armor as they usually die when hit. Also Medi Kits can be researched very quickly so there's no excuse to delay getting them. You use 16 Zrbite to make one suit of MIA but Cruisers are the most common USO type and always yield 50 Zrbite whether shot down or not.

>>9756947
Lord Finisher's X-COM LPs were like the Bible. I learned a lot of strategies from them but he never went back and made a modernized OXC playthrough like Yeti, Aulddragon, and Kikoskia did.

Triscenes in OXC are really mobile while they seem to just sit in place in the original TFTD and don't move at all.

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Man, how I wish OpenApoc was finished. But that project will still take several years to complete.

The OXC AI is a little smarter about grenade use; for example it won't try and throw grenades at flying soldiers like the original did nor do aliens try to throw through a wall and blow themselves up when the grenade lands next to them. I've seen occasional mishaps like an alien blowing himself up in a terror mission trying to grenade a civilian but it's a lot less frequent.

>>9758873
>e-celebs
no.

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The marked room can sometimes have a 2x2 terrorist spawn in there and get stuck. If it's a Cyberdisc or Sectopod trying to clear the thing can be a royal PITA since it will just reaction fire anyone who walks in there. However OXC did change the spawn node here to prevent 2x2 terrorists from spawning in that room.

>>9756963
I've seen Sectoids (health: 30) take multiple heavy plasma shots and not go down presumably because low damage roll. and sometimes a Muton (health: 130) dies in one hit. the TFTD minimum 50% damage makes more sense because you're not being asked to suspend disbelief and suppose being shot in the face magically does no damage whatsoever to you.

>>9760129
don't aliens get more health on higher difficulties?

>>9760131
TUs/energy/firing/throwing accuracy/psionic skill/reactions go up but health is always the same. Also on Beginner aliens have reduced armor. Most higher ranking aliens have more health, although Sectoids are always 30 regardless of rank.

As TFTD does minimum 50% damage, things are a little different.

>Aquatoids
Anything more than a Harpoon Gun is a guaranteed OHKO as they have only 30 health.
>Gillmen
They're a bit sturdier especially the higher ranks and weapons below a Sonic Cannon sometimes don't OHKO them.
>Lobstermen
lal. Sonic Blasta Rifles are the minimum to kill them, even so expect between 2 and 5 hits depending on the alien's rank and how much damage is rolled. They won't even drop from a direct DPL hit as explosives do only 50% damage to them. With Sonic Cannons 1-3 hits is usual to drop Lobstermen.
>Tasoths
They're pretty sturdy with 115 health but weak to Sonic weapons. Most other stuff does reduced damage. A Sonic Pulser will kill them if it's a direct hit but usually doesn't if the blast is off to the side.

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Is there anything more stressful than getting down to one soldier left vs an unknown number of aliens?
>>9758495
Biggest improvement is the sub VS the skyranger since not only can you climb on top to use as a firing platform but aliens can’t just fire directly inside anymore and mow down your squad.

>>9760174
>>Lobstermen
Lances kill them pretty reliably in a few hits but you do have to close the distance.

>>9760362
>Biggest improvement is the sub VS the skyranger since not only can you climb on top to use as a firing platform but aliens can’t just fire directly inside anymore and mow down your squad.
I've had plenty of disasters where an alien walked into the Triton and threw a grenade or everyone blasted him with Gas Cannon HE rounds and killed themselves in the process, or an alien fired a stun launcher inside and knocked everyone out.

>>9761285
Not even him, but getting agents slaughtered in an Avenger is just business as usual unless you keep a tank parked inside at all times. Even then a grenade aliens might throw in would kill more than just the tank anyway. Tritons are a definite improvement. They're just not perfect too.

>>9761285
>>9761360
In a Skyranger, rather.

>>9761285
also original TFTD had an issue on land missions where your Triton's walls could get blown up by grenades but this doesn't happen in OXC due to fixes to the map data

>>9740629
How does PC version differ from Playstation? I want to play it but don't want to deal with DOS bullshit, what will i lose besides muh fps?

>>9761726
it's largely the same thing but the PS1 has some cheesy CD music, you can open doors without walking through them, and the final alien base in Cydonia has a fixed layout and isn't randomly generated

It always seemed to me that the graphics artists on TFTD had no concept of color theory. seriously the graphics have some major eye rape color clash.

>>9758873
>>9756947
He had a lot of trouble getting an alien commander in this LP because it was on Superhuman and in alien bases there's not enough spawn nodes in the control room so the commander will spawn outside somewhere and you end up blowing him up during the mission. Eventually he got one from a Snakeman base defense.

>>9762085
I like it, looks like some 1970s deep sea documentary colour style

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>>9762527
Specifically jacques cousteau

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Just did a terror mission and I was woefully ill equipped, nearly everyone got wiped except one who made it to the skyranger and ran away
Cyber disks tore appart my soldiers who mostly only had laser rifles and my only heavy weapons guys got mind controlled and panicked
Really need some easy small UFOs to balance my budget, but I keep failing to catch them recently.

>>9763424
Cyberdisks remain a massive pain for a long time. I think it's a fairly good choice to just pull back everyone and lift off as soon as you realize it's a sectoid terror mission until you have flying suits and at least plasma rifles.

>>9763435
I didn’t lose anything valuable at least, but I’m so poor right now because I’ve gotten barely any missions lately

>>9763549
Are you looking at the graphs? Send patrols to where the activity is the highest maybe.

>>9763574
I think I need to upgrade my planes, I keep getting outrun

>>9763696
Unfortunately in both X-Coms you only get upgraded craft that run on Elerium. But you'll absolutely need at least one to win anyway so might as well.
There are also mods, definitely for the first game. On a side note, mods now slowly bring OXCE's UFO Defence closer to how Alien Invasion is. Such a shame that the project died.

>>9763424
Early game Sectoid terror missions can be pretty brutal especially if they're at night. It takes several hits to plug a Cyberdisc with a laser rifle, but the good part is when they blow up them often kill adjacent aliens. Also re: mind control. The Sectoid leader will MC you on terror missions although fortunately he's the only one and if you get lucky and kill him early in the mission you'll solve that issue.

>>9763736
i'd probably just abort and take the penalty

>>9756889
Ufo Defence was the american name, in europe it was called Ufo: Enemy Unknown which is the name I know it by and prefer. I usually write NuCom1 & 2 to refer to the new ones (negative sentiment intended)

>>9749927
They are practically the same game. I view TFTD as the challenge mode of EU. I like them both, but EU is a tighter and better game, while TFTD is fun when you've played EU to death and can beat it without trying

>>9763736
>but the good part is when they blow up them often kill adjacent aliens.
And the bad part is they often hunt in packs, probably due to the engine struggling a bit with creating paths for 2x2 units, so taking out one can initiate a chain reaction that wipes out civilians, stunned sectoids on the ground, equipment on the ground, your agents, nicks a gas station, turns a full half of the map into a roaring hellscape.

>>9763736
In TFTD Aquatoid technicians can also use psionics though their psy ability is weak so they can't really do anything unless you're within 6 squares of them. The navigator (equivalent to a leader in EU) is unarmed on terror missions so he's easy to spot and take out to stop mind control crap.

A Superhuman terror mission can have as many as 10 Cyberdiscs but you typically won't get that many due to lack of spawn nodes.

>>9746689
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Alien_Appearance_Ratios

The probability tables for retaliation missions were in the original EU executable but don't appear to be used.

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>>9763768
it's like SMB and SMB2j

I watched FrozenFoxy's EU LP and he had UFO Extender which adds some extra crap but seems to have been the original v1.x of the game because it had the old style alien death sounds where Sectoids sound like Godzilla when they die.

>>9765246
i never remember that

>>9765254
The original buggy floppy disk release of EU had different alien death sounds. The more familiar CD release had bug fixes and the death sounds most people are familiar with. TFTD 1.x also had some bugs and differences such as needing a Lobsterman navigator to research the Transmission Resolver.

I recall that EU 1.x also would cause you to lose ammo clips at the end of a mission if you fired any shots from them while this was later changed to the clip having to be half empty before it's considered expended. You would have to unload all your guns at the end of a mission to avoid losing the clips.

i hate nighttime terror missions, i really do

>>9765246
I remember. UFO Extender had options like random UFO crashes and ability to "read" a landed UFO's navigation units to detect what mission it was on (it would tell you at the end of the mission).

>>9765264
>The original buggy floppy disk release of EU had different alien death sounds.
And not just that, the UI sounds were better as well. The new ones sound kinda like someone is dragging a wet rag across some rough surface.

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>>9765246
see >>9760027

the "throw the grenade up through the floor" exploit still works in OXC, i should note. it can come in handy in some situations.

i like apocalypse more than any other xcom before or since. vehicle combat is actually fun instead of a weird minigame. building and maintaining an actual fleet of aircraft that you can control to fight the ufos feels so much better than the weird minigame of the other ones. the environmental destruction is great fun. i even like the real time combat.

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>>9765246
He never actually finished that and the pacing on his LP was very brutally slow.

It seems that in some versions of EU you get loads of stunned Reapers while other versions this doesn't happen.

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>X-COOM

>>9768420
I always feel a bit lost when an LPer names soldiers after video game characters in games I don't happen to know.

>>9761830
Does the PS1 version have the difficulty bug where it resets you to beginner after the first mission or whatever/

>>9768745
No. Only the DOS version of EU had that bug.

The Collector's Edition added a new fun bug with Blaster Bomb waypoints where you can't aim them straight up or down a level or the missile will just fly forward. Sometimes this would work to your advantage as aliens would accidentally blow themselves up (not that the AI is that good at aiming Blaster Bombs anyway, but...)

>>9768762
the AI only knows how to use a single BB waypoint. in the original games at least it would often try to shoot soldiers through a wall and the alien would get blown up. this might have been fixed in OXC. apparently in OXC soldiers or aliens can fire a BB off when they go berserk which I don't recall was possible in the original game.