StarDestroyer.Net BBS

The reason they sometimes don't fire is because of the 'mutual suprise rule.' If you come around a corner, stop, and turn towards an enemy who is facing you, the reason he didn't fire is because BOTH of you are suprised to see them there. This doesn't always happen, but if you fire at him, he may get reaction fire on you. The solution is to pause that soldier, have EVERYONE ELSE send as much fire as possible down into that area, and completely liquidate the threat. Grenades are ideal for this, but against Floaters you may have to use massed laser fire. This is also why sending out tanks is good, and not using their guns. Use them as mobility--scout ahead, suprise an enemy, lay down fire, then back up the tank some, and face the front towards the enemy. Advance your soldiers behind the tank when the area is clear, and then move the tank again. One tank per fire team, and about 4-6 men per fire team. You want to dominate the aliens in the mid-game before they deploy Psi/MC technology, get the final battle tech ready, and then build up base defenses, get as many researchers and engineers as you can, and prepare for the long haul. Once you're taking too much shit from the aliens and their constantly sieging your base, take whatever research you've completed, put a squad together, and eliminate them for good. The final assault on Mars is much easier than most missions--you really only need a few men and some good mind control tech.

Also, there's no possible justification for encountering Tasoths and only having Gauss weapons in TFTD. Tasoth terrors don't start that early, not even on superhuman, so you should have Sonic Rifles by then, and ideally Molecular Control of your own. You want several hundred scientists as fast as you can afford them, because your money is absolutely worthless if it is paying for moronic weapons like the default plunger guns. Give everyone heavy cannons who can aim better than 50 or 60, forget the useless gauss weapons. Your first research topic would be better off as medkits, since those helpful even to the end of the game, then it should be Alien Grenades. Research the fancy armor as fast as possible (live Deep One needed), advance your sonic weapon knowledge to keep pace with theirs, and that's it. Don't bother with advanced subs until you can afford to start building them, since with 500+ scientists working around the clock you're more likely to run out of money than time.

If you're fighting Tasoth and only have gauss, I'd almost recommend starting over, as the game won't even be fun when facing those kinds of enemies with such bad equipment. Unless you've also got Mag Iron armor. In my savegame a few months in the most dangerous foes I've seen are Lobstermen, but I've already got all the armors, subs and weapons to research and finished the final city attack subject. X-Com does not let you enjoy it for very long, you really need to hit that tech tree like a twenty ton truck and get moving.

Gauss Rifles in TFTD are pretty important, even if they're nowhere near as cool as lasers in UFO. They're the heaviest weapon available with autofire, and are LEAGUES ahead of AP weapons or even heavy cannons if you run into Lobstermen. Melee weapons beyond the thermal tazer are hard to develop, given that you must capture a very rare terrorist alien alive to develop melee weapons.

But agreed on Sonic Pulsers. Totally vital. If only the throw range wasn't so reduced...

Still, I'd rather face Tasoths over Ethereals, and Tentuclats over Cryssalids.

Yeah, I've got my stuff together now, and Ion armour is carrying me through the battles, even if a couple of soldiers go crazy. I give the MC vulnerable soldiers weak weapons and they keep the MC off the real soldiers. I've got Sonic weapons and pulsers now, and a couple of bases with MC labs sifting through my soldiers. I still like to take some Gauss rifles for the autofire.

Just breezed through my first artifact site. I was lucky because the stage 1 exit was right next to the sub. I really need to hit up some alien bases soon I think. However I'm getting a bit bored with the missions tbh. As has been said, hanging back and sniping all the aliens from long range while you've got a tank or some grunts scouting makes the game too easy, and you've got Ion armour to cover you for any screwups. It's becoming a hide and seek game with some damn alien hiding in a closet somewhere.

One of the big changes in TFTD is the weapon accuracy and rate of fire. None of the alien weapons have autofire anymore, so there's no hope of spamming thousands of shots downrange into a target. And Gauss? Autofire is worthless. Inaccurate, expensive, and requires you to use worhtless goddamn Gauss Weapons. A gauss rifle does the same damage as the sonic pistol, fires less often, and is less accurate. Furthermore, no enemy is weak to Gauss, and most have a resistance to it, making it unlikely you can even kill a Gillman in one shot from a Gauss Rifle. For the same cost in Time Units you could kill three of them with a Pistol. If your soldiers are the ultimate sniper badasses, okay, Gauss might be useful against Gillmen, Aquatoids, and Walls. But beyond that, it's worthless. Tasoth take 70 percent from Gauss, meaning a Heavy Gauss will need to hit him at least twice, and the accuracy is shit. With a rifle you'll need to score at least three hits on a Tasoth to down it. And Lobstermen? Don't make me laugh. You may need to hit as many as SEVEN GODDAMN TIMES to kill a Lobsterman with a Gauss Rifle, and even require FIVE hits with a Heavy Gauss. That's doing full damage, mind you. Gauss is shit. Seriously, the Heavy Cannon is an accurate weapon which can fire flaming or exploding bullets, will help train you to use your soldiers more cautiously, and can two-shot a Gillman while also obliterating the Hallucinoids that follow the Aquatoids on occasion. It's available from the very beginning of the game, so your soldiers can go to war carrying a gun capable of vaporizing your early competition, and then instantly begin research on sonic weapons to eliminate the Gillmen with pistols. Game over, you could easily win the game with Sonic Pistols and Grenades. Gauss is a trap. The only reason you would ever be carrying a gauss weapon while the Lobstermen attack is because you were foolish enough to waste time researching gauss instead of getting Sonic Pulsars and Sonic Blaster Rifles.

Because of this lack of autofire though, the Sonic Blaster Rifle remains an extremely viable weapon for the entire game, even if Lobstermen will make you want to use the Cannon. Gauss is pointless, but the Blaster rifle is a gift from Xenu. Thing is though, Tasoth, Gillmen, and a bunch of other guys are actually WEAK to the sonic gun. A sonic rifle, my UFOpaedia says, does around 95 damage. Tasoth have around 130 hitpoints on average. That means a one sonic rifle hit will nearly kill a Tasoth, and two definately will. Gill men are vulnerable to it too, and have lower hitpoints, so they usually die in a single hit. The value of the Sonic Rifle over the cannon is huuuuge though. Why?

Sonic Cannons get an accuracy 80% snapshot for 50% of your TU's, which is awful. You may as well always Aim Shot, which is 115% accurate and costs 70% of your TU's. The damage is 130 points.

Sonic Rifles get an accuracy 75% snapshot for a mere 40% of your TU's, which is fan-fucking-tastic. You can pivot a little bit of you have to and get off two highly accurate shots, or maybe pop out of a door and fire twice. Someone with a Sonic Rifle can therefore be expected, on average, to put out more firepower per turn than a cannon. And if you have all turn you can fire a snap and an aimed, which is 110% accurate and costs 60% of your TU's. The damage is 95 points, which is not bad at all, more than enough to kill your average dork.

Sonic Pistols are suprisingly decent, doing around 80 damage and getting a 65% accuracy snap shot for 30% of your TU's, letting you hose out three shots per turn under optimal conditions. However, 80 damage is just below the threshold for optimal damage even when you take into account the adjusted damage will be like 90 from the weakness to sonic most things have, and the designers specifically did it that way.

You see, a Gillman has between 80 and 120 hitpoints, and takes a smidge more damage from sonic. So a perfect shot from the pistol will core a normal Gillman and he's toast. But a lousy shot might not do enough, and a higher difficulty level Gillman will take a hit and have a third of his hitpoints left. Against a Tasoth you will need at least two hits to bring him down. Worst of all, against a Lobsterman you will need at least three, though nearly always four, which is more than one round of fire. That's no good. A sonic rifle, by comparison, can kill a Lobsterman in two hits on average, which is one round of fire. A sonic cannon can paste a Tasoth in a single shot, but it can't down a Lobsterman in one turn of fire if you even have to turn slightly, so I'd say it is also not ideal. They are great support guns, and I usually have two in a team of six, but the three guys using rifles and one using a pistol and a grenade or a pistol and a MC device of some sort are the real heavy hitters when the lobsterman shows up out of nowhere.

So very early on you can research the pretty much end-game weapon, whereas in X-Com you had to wait for Heavy Plasmas or settle for Lasers if you're a crazy min-maxing bastard--or just want to win. Lasers are pretty good, but Plasmas are still my favorite weapon, except if your team is full of psionic incompetants, in which case I prefer the laser pistol due to the fact laser pistols don't even scratch flying suits.

Just give up, use XComUtil, and get the improved gauss weapons.

The Improved Heavy Gauss is one of the better weapons in the game, since it's basically a somewhat-less accurate, slower-firing heavy plasma, which makes it leaps and bounds better than just about every gun in the game even with resistances factored in.

XComUtil's iGauss weapons and the other stuff make the game a lot more fun TBH. I don't recall if they had an alternate not-bullshit research tree, though.

If you're going to use X-Com Util and modify the Gauss Weapons to make them "leaps and bounds better than just about every gun in the game even with resistances factored in," then why not just set the difficulty lower so it won't matter? You can muck around with Gauss if you like, nothing's stopping you. They're not efficent, but it's not like they're incapable of killing things.

Thing is, you don't need Gauss. Even if Gauss weapons had the exact same stats as the sonic weapons of the same catagory, they'd still be mostly worthless. Gas cannons do enough damage to kill any Aquatoid, get 8 shots per clip, and can fire explosive rounds--which more than make up for your early soldier's accuracy. Two shots will kill most enemies until Lobstermen, and by then you'll have lots of sonics, so you're basically good to go. Gauss research is a distraction from Sonic, which has greater longevity and ammo is easier to come by.

The simplest way to make gauss desirable is not to change any of the attack characteristics, just triple the ammo per clip. They fire in bursts quite often, so just give them enough ammo to safely do so. You could also remove the ammo requirement entirely I suppose, making it like a Laser, which is handy. The iGauss isn't a bad modification, but really, even so, the Gauss just aren't needed. When I did my Ironman I used the XComUtil function to make sure the difficulty stayed on Superhuman past the first mission, since it stupidly resets to beginner otherwise, making the game a joke. But I modded their ammo back in, I just doubled it. I rarely ever used the things except to cut through walls, but I did find that made them a bit more usable, since I really did do a lot of wall breaching.

Holy shit finally got done writing this update.

The opening days of March were positive for X-COM. In order to curb alien incursions in the region and calm the fears of our Chinese funders, a new base was established in Southeast Asia.



Welcome From Earf is little more than a glorified listening post; it is doubtful we'll ever expand there more than to add a hangar and some general stores for an extra Interceptor's armaments. Its main use will be to monitor the region, as well as the Indian Ocean and part of Australia for alien incursions.

A small UFO was spotted early on over China. Phred's interceptor brought it down easily enough. The assault-and-clear was standard fare; the team cleared the surviving floater crew easily enough, though once more we failed to capture either a power source or alien fuel. Doctor Surlethe is theorizing that the alien’s cores are exploding due to the sheer manliness of our weaponry.

No casualties were suffered, though our eager use of HWP rockets meant that we had insufficient rockets to rearm the tank upon return to base. Safety interlocks do not allow the tanks to be deployed unless they have a full load of missiles, to which Commander Wong sent a letter of complaint to the tanks' manufacturers. The letter in question contained strong language regarding several dubious anatomical activities, as well as a number of crude but most emphatic drawings.

A couple of days later, two new contacts appeared.





Contact with UFOs significantly larger than anything previously encountered resulted in numerous sets of underwears being browned and/or yellowed.

High Command dispatched one Interceptor after each UFO; phred's was tasked with pursuing and tracking the larger one, but was under orders to not engage unless necessary. Coalition, meanwhile, tracked down the smaller UFO. Several Avalanche missiles later, the UFO was downed over eastern China. The larger one, meanwhile, landed, dicked around for a bit, and then ninja'd the fuck away from us when we weren't looking and disappeared over the Arctic.

Without any HWP rockets to rearm the tank, the Skyranger was instead loaded with a large, well-armed infantry squad consisting of our very best soldiers, moving out with orders to level the landscape before them in order to secure the UFO.
Note: In lieu of decent screenshots, because fuck me if I got any good ones for this operation, things will be presented in a more...prose format. Also, lol MSPaint

Terrain:



"CRY SOME MORE!" The most beautiful Zablorg thundered down the Skyranger's ramp as it settled onto the ground and immediately opened fire of the floater hovering just north of the landing zone. It vanished in a fusillade of human-ordained divine justice.

“Fire teams, fan out,” Colonel Haven shouted as the fourteen-man squad stormed down the ramp. “Staggered line, five meter spread, moving east toward the crash site! Ohma, ‘Dando, secure that house. Vendetta, Alfonso, with me south, we’re clearing those orchards!”

“Colonel, possible cover one hundred meters ahead. Looks like some farm buildings,” Private Thunder reported.

“Weapons teams, update the insurance policies,” Haven ordered. With mad laughter, Vanas, Zablorg, Wautd, and Decue opened up, unleashing volleys of explosive shells and rockets at the pair of farm buildings. Wood splintered and shattered, and high explosive ripped through the empty structures, hurling debris into the sky and filling the area with smoke and dust.

“Cover neutralized,” Vanas reported.

“WE MAKE GOOD TEAM!” shouted the ambigiously-gendered Zablorg, flipping his or her gorgeous locks over one shoulder.

To the south, Ohma and Weemadando advanced, laser pistols and stun prods in hand, closing with the house. Both men quickly lined up outside and bashed down the door, with Weemadando circling around outside and Ohma bravely facing down the monstrous alien horrors in close combat with his tazer-on-a-stick.

As Weemadando circled around the building, he spotted a floater on the south side, rising up over the building to see why God himself was punching the everloving shit out of the farm. The answer never came, as two laser beams punched through the grotesque alien’s chin and sent it flopping into the corn field.

“Lotta smoke,” Karza reported as he and MJ12-3 moved ahead toward the wrecked buildings, with Ryan Thunder and Vanas right behind them. “Wish we had a tank for spotting.”

“Well,” MJ12-3 said, moving over the smoking, almost-glassy dirt, “if Hawk would be sober for five minutes we would-”

Tink-tink.

Karza never got the chance to wonder how a grenade rolling in dirt made such a Call of Duty-esque tinkling sound, as his body was vaporized along with MJ12-3’s.

“Floater in the orchard!” The warning had barely sounded before the floater in question, hovering over the trees to get a shot wit its grenade, became two distinctly separate objects. Its disparate halves, smoking from the massive, blinding laser beam, dropped to the grass.

Sniper Stark, still standing on the Skyranger’s ramp, sneered in stereotypical contempt at the alien’s corpse, and strode down to the grass, heavy laser in hand.

“House clear, called Ohma as he walked out onto the roof of the building. “I’ve got a good line of sight on the roof.”

“You’re going to play sniper on the roof with a pistol?” Weemadando asked as he jogged up behind Haven’s team.

“Hey, physics exploit, its a legitimate strategy,” Ohma said over the radio, his voice carrying his shrug along with it.

“Quiet down, keep your eyes open,” Haven ordered as his team moved through the field and swung east toward the UFO crash site. By now they could see the thing clearly: it was huge, three stories tall at least. By far larger than any of the small scouts they’d been killing thus far.

“Vendetta, you see anything?”

Vendetta’s answer was cut off, along with his face. A floater two hundred meters away, at the bare edges of their vision and hiding in the shadow of the UFO, blew his head to ashes. Haven snapped up his rocket launcher and fired, hitting the side of the UFO and shredding the alien.

“Vendetta!” Alfonso shouted, running to his side. “No! Your Guy Fawkes avatar was too awesome to suffer such a fate! WHY IS IT ALWAYS THE BEAUTIFUL ONES?”

Meanwhile, the remaining half of the squad moved through the smoke and dust of the ruined buildings. Private Ryan Thunder took two steps into the smoke, and then started convulsing.

“Oh, God! Smoke! My one weakness, aside from death!” he then fell over unconscious.

Note: Seriously. Ryan set one foot into the smoke, and then BAM! “RYAN THUNDER HAS FALLEN UNCONSCIOUS”.

Decue grabbed Ryan’s unconscious body and started hauling it out of the smoke, while the rest of the squad pushed through the deadly clouds of dust and came into sight of the UFO.

“Okay, there’s the UFO,” Wautd said. “Let’s hold position here and wait for the rest of the squad to finish securing the area, and then we can-”

The door to the UFO opened, a floater poked its head out, and shot MJ12-2 in the neck.

“No! My sub-par cloned breathing tubes!” he cried. The other squadmembers, too shocked by the fact that he could shout like that with half his neck turned to vapor, let the floater run back inside the ship, making rude gestures as it did so.

Decue got Ryan Thunder out of the smoke, just in time for him to expire. Filled with MANLY RAGE, Decue rose and opened fire on the nearby barn. The rocket lanced through the window and blew up inside, killing another floater who was preparing to send an email via Blackberry to its little floaty children showing off the beautiful landscape of eastern China.

You bastard.

Ohma caught up with Weemadando, Alfonso, Haven, and the recently shortened Vendetta, in time for the Colonel to send all the expendables - er, assault troops to clear the building south of the UFO. Off they rushed, tazers and laser pistols in hand. Halfway through the field, they caught sight of a floater outside the building, hiding in the shadows, and opened fire with a gusto and relish.

They neglected accuracy.

The floater looked up in shock, dropping its copy of the Wall Street Journal, and returned fire with its heavy plasma, infuriated that someone would interrupt its daily checking of stock quotes.

Ohma dropped to his knees, blinking, his torso vaporized, and realized that he’d died a rookie’s death, as he’d always feared. He opened his mouth to let out a death cry, but then was hit in the back of the head by a rocket.

“Oh, fuck,” Haven said, wincing, and grabbed a second rocket.

“That fire was distinctly unfriendly!” Weemadando shouted, completely uninjured due to rolling a natural 20 on his reflex save and having multiclassed in rogue. Alfonso, meanwhile, said little, beyond the pattering plops of gibbled meat raining down around the farm.

Note: Yes. Haven’s rocket fell short and hit EXACTLY where Ohma died, killing Alfonso and somehow not hurting Weemadando, though I think he might have been out of its burst radius.

Meanwhile, outside the UFO.....

“HOW DOES LITTLE MAN SPEAK WITHOUT THROAT?” Zablorg asked, as they all loitered around the entrance to the UFO.

“I dunno,” Stark said. “Call Mythbusters.”

Elsewhere, the floater stock broker said something about consolidating its investments and buggered off back inside the building. Letting out a cackle of glee, Haven loaded a large rocket, while Weeadando ran the hell away from the field of smoking death. As the floater speed-dialed its advisor, thinking it should expand its portfolio with some diamond shares, the rocket punched through the window and hit the wall beside it. Thus ended its efforts to get its teenage floater children through college on a stable investment fund.

You guys are assholes, you know that?

Meanwhile, back at the UFO.....

“Uno!” yelled Wautd, holding up a single card. Cursings and mutters followed.

“THIS GAME IS HARD!” Zablorg complained.

Finally, Haven and Weemdando caught up. Launchers were loaded, autocannons were prepped, tazers were tazified, and they prepared to breach the UFO with their admittedly reduced numbers. The door flew open, and a floater came in sight. Sneering contemptibly, Stark blew off its head with a contemptible sneer.

“Move inside! Secure the first floor! Rockets, switch to sidearms!”

The squad poured into the room, shoving down the hallway, which was choked with.....SMOKE!

“No, my delicate nasal passages!” Decue cried, and keeled over when the smoke caressed his nostrils.

Meanwhile, the rest of the squad charged through the lower levels of the huge UFO. They found a room that looked like a dissection chamber, complete with a dead cow in the middle of being cut apart, and various other rooms, marked by laser fire. Once again, it seemed, X-COM had proven too badass for their own good and had destroyed the UFO power source and fuel.

“TO THE SECOND FLOOR!” Zablorg yelled, and they charged into the next level, up a mysterious elevator-like device in the middle of the downed vessel. Upon arrival, they found themselves in a section of the ship containing numerous body parts and processed organs. Quick on the take, Zablorg guessed their purpose.

“THIS IS WHERE ALIENS MAKE SANDVICHES!”

The squad found two elevators on the second floor, and split up. Zablorg, Haven and Stark took one, while Vanas, Wautd, and Weemadando took the other. They rushed up to the third floor, finding empty rooms at opposite ends of the ship, and a single chamber in the center. The fire-teams stacked up, preparing to breach. Close combat weapons were readied.

Haven counted down. Three seconds. Two seconds. One-

The door opened, a floater poked his head out, and then shot Colonel Haven in the chest.
“HAVEN? HAVEN?! HAVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN!?”

Zablorg grabbed Haven’s body and, cradling it in one hand, rushed into the next room and fucking hosed the three Floaters lurking inside, killing all three in one burst of MANLY TEARS.
Meanwhile, forgotten and alone, Decue died a pathetic, choking death due to smoke inhalation on the last turn.

Man, you guys are dicks.

Terrain afterwards:


Post mission analysis: FUCK THAT SHIT. We are never going anywhere without tank support EVER AGAIN. Also, SMOKE = BAD.

Also, you guys are dicks.

I find it amusing that the floaters only killed like six of us, and most of that was due to reaction fire and the fact that our own reaction fire blew. lol smoke inhalation.

LOOK AT ITSY BITSY TUMMY WOUND

IS LITTLE HAVEN MAN LIVING?

That is pure awesome. It always makes you wonder when the enemy kills less of you than your own soldiers do. And wow, that must have been some really noxious smoke.

Nyoooooooooooo!

I...still...function!

I suppose this would be a good time to sign up as cannon fodder. I'd ask for akimbo laser pistols, but sadly that would be stupid.

yes, we are going to get even more 40k and build you a dreadnaught.

I LIIIIIIVE MOTHERFUCKERS!

Rogue-guy strikes again!

and unlike whitehaven your not being put into some sort of lifesupport suit....

I wonder if they will cyborg him next....

The Yosemite Bear wrote:and unlike whitehaven your not being put into some sort of lifesupport suit....

I wonder if they will cyborg him next....

Well, thanks to MJ12, we already have access to the Perseus complex....

I'm sure we can patch up a few holes, throw in a couple of devices of questionable legality and/or functionality....and see what happens.

Protip: If the enemies don't have psykers among them, never assault a large UFO directly. Just line up half a dozen infantry 15 squares away from the doors and wait till doomsday (which usually comes after turn 20 when the aliens get bored and start coming out looking for trouble), shooting any shithead coming through. Vanishingly small chance of casualties, good marksmanship and reaction training.

Karza wrote:Protip: If the enemies don't have psykers among them, never assault a large UFO directly. Just line up half a dozen infantry 15 squares away from the doors and wait till doomsday (which usually comes after turn 20 when the aliens get bored and start coming out looking for trouble), shooting any shithead coming through. Vanishingly small chance of casualties, good marksmanship and reaction training.

Alternatively, always carry weapons that can blast through UFO interior walls. Without XComUtil that's pretty much just Heavy Plasma and Blaster Launchers, but with it you can use High Explosive as well (Which will breach outer or inner walls). It's less easy to be surprised if you can see through the wall and don't have to risk walking through doors into reaction fire death.

Karza wrote:Vanishingly small chance of casualties, good marksmanship and reaction training.

Also, horrible boredom

Nice update and nice to see that

Haven’s rocket fell short and hit EXACTLY where Ohma died

If I were Haven I wouldn't be so quick to call it friendly fire but rather an unfortunate coincidence. Perhaps Ohma's body just happened to start spontaniously combusting miliseconds before the missile impacted.


What? It could happen...

wautd wrote:If I were Haven I wouldn't be so quick to call it friendly fire but rather an unfortunate coincidence. Perhaps Ohma's body just happened to start spontaniously combusting miliseconds before the missile impacted.


What? It could happen...

WHAT?! That's not what happened! I died a hero's death! Bravely facing down the alien menace! That you'd even try to retroa- *missile hits head*

Smoke inhalation? Are you serious?

That's just sad.

He was obviously an impostor.

Must have been already injured, or just camping in the smoke. It does between 1-3 stun damage a turn, so the least it will ever incapacitate an uninjured X-Com soldier in is about 8 turns (you go unconscious when your stun damage exceeds your current health).

new equip job, gas masks, ala deathcorps of krieg....

Power suits are smokeproof, although that's probably far into the future unless Peptuck suddenly decides that armor is priority number 1.