Jasonred

Great! Then, may I suggest 3 more tests, involving modification? Repeat experiment, with tank having bravery of 120, then 130, then ummm, on a soldier with 120 bravery. And compare numbers. And in 3 tests, we will find out: a) If that's the precise formula, min morale= bravery-99 b) If it works for non-tanks. Oh, and maybe tank with 90 brave and 100 brave if you feel energetic. Unconscious tank??? HOW??? What weapon adds stun damage to a tank? THAT is the key. Once we find that out, we can reproduce this condition indefiniitely, since we all know how to reduce a tank's health to that stun level... Sectoids trying to mind control a tank? mmm... I don't see how that would occur, since sectoids can magically sense which of your team is the weakest psi-link, and target that person... your TANK had the worst psi defence in the squad? You must have had a squad of mutants! Or an all tank squad? Ah. Another test for zombie then. See if a modified tank with 2 psi strength and skill can be mind controlled. Or, heck, just 2 psi strength will do...

hmmm.... I'm uncertain how the flags work regarding unconsciousness. It just didn't deflag him since he was unconscious? Or more likely, the game created "unconscious soldier, alien afiliation". I know there's some weird stuff concerning how knocking units unconscious doesn't actually knock a unit unconscious so much as it removes the old unit and creates an object defined as an unconscious being... Your psi-weakling idea, sadly, will work... just not for very long. Why? Reaction fire. dum dum dum dum. Well... they will actually last if you stick them in really heavy armor, but I don't think it will end well, since your own troops will then just waste all their own AP blasting their ex-comrades, making them easy meat for the Sectoid rounding the corner with his Heavy Plasma... Worse case scenario: your mind controlled troops' dancing around in their faces irritates your Blaster Bomb toting Commander so much he (reaction) shoots them... at point blank. You could try blockading those decoys though. Have 2 tanks or 4 strong psi but also decoy troops. Plus 2-4 weaklings. Then hem the weaklings into a corner and make their guards face the other way. Now they can't move thus drawing no fire plus no wandering around the map. Quite resource intensive, just for some decoys, though!

I know a direct hit Heavy Rocket will kill even Super-Cyberdisks. So, maybe HE-packs should too? I remember very few weapons harming a Super Sectopod though...

Plasma Cannons (Lineage Plasma Cannons?) are the only way to get early air superiority. DO NOT bother with pea shooters; the alien ships will have massive armor that a lot of weapons have trouble penetrating. I have seen the motherships' shields get torn off by Megapol Hovercar machineguns, (shields get no damage reduction), but the actual ship hull itself is mostly impervious to enitre flotillas of normal craft. (the building defense forces). You also want to research alien weapons ASAP. Alien ship weapons. I am unsure of the exact flow of research tree. Hoverbikes, armed with Plasma Cannons, are actually quite powerful! Dance like butterfly, sting like bee. If I'm not mistaken, 2 top modded hoverbikes have more firepower than an unmodified Hawk. Stun grapples don't work through shields. Grenades do. So do toxiguns. And so does fire. And you don't get the shields if you destroy them, you have to circumvent them with said stuff. If you have psi capable troops, try to get the alien to drop his stuff. Also... if I'm not mistaken, factions upgrade personal armaments throughout the week, based on score and stuff. So COS can technically get access to top technology on Wednesday, days before the ALIENS get their hands on new supplies on Monday... heh. Especially funny if you've managed to capture and research the tech by that weekend... Aliens: Hah, with these newfangled Devastators and iinvisibility devices, X-com will never know what him them! X-com troops teleport in and drop piles vortex mines, then teleport out. Aliens: ... Remind me to drop a Overspawn on that COS temple... BOOM! And, if, like me, your main problem was the air superiority, and your ground forces were still the stronger, ignore any advice on lowering your score. Especially since, by the sounds of it, you are in financial straights.

Okay, not only do aliens gain a preference for Weapons over Psi based on probability of successful attack, but they also decide whether to launch panic attacks or mind control based on your psi stat. Since, aliens not only gain the ability to access every single stat your soldiers have, but they have working knowledge of every formula in the game implanted in their overmind... Using Psi on the most psi vulnerable soldier in your team, AND deciding whether to use panic or MC based on his defences is... mmm... and yes, all this despite never having even seen him. grr! Anyhow, yeah, I suspect you should use X-com to Psi attack aliens for future tests. Much less painful than the other way around! Cheers!

Hey. These figures mean that Zombie's formulas that he gave are WRONG. Your figure show that a soldier with 100 psi strength and 0 psi skill DOES seem to have some pretty good defence against mind control, doesn't he? Besides that... I am also guessing that the game uses the same formula for X-com mind-controlling aliens as aliens mind-controlling X-com? (could easily be wrong, but I think it's a reasonable guess). So, I've noticed that it makes quite a big difference when trying to control aliens with weak psi strength compared to high psi strength, regardless of their psi skill. In fact, very few aliens in the game have psi skill higher than 0. So, you would probably notice if all other aliens were all equally easy to Mind control/panic. They're not. Look... here's the easiest way to do the test. Psi control the aliens, don't have the aliens psi-control X-com. It's a lot less finicky than the other way around. uf. Second, first round of tests should ALL involve aliens with Psi Skill of 0, ie normal aliens. When extrapolating graphs and such, it's ALWAYS very nice and helpful to know the intersect values of X and Y. Zombie's formula's most serious flaw is that: (PAD) = (PStr * Pskl/5) for all intents and purposes = (Pstr/5*Pskl) or (Pstr*Pskl)/5 or whatever. In other words, that formula would mean that Pstr and Spkl are equally important, and just divide the result by 5. Why didn't anybody else comment on these formulas, and say "I think these are wrong". Guys, yes, Zombie and NKF are the most hardworking guys in terms of formulas and experiments, plus Zombies a moderator, but they're *not always right*. unitref[056] ... never changes? so... sorta like "initial psi skill" huh. hmmm. Any idea what this figure is used for? hm. Though if it never changes... I doubt that the game uses the "initial" value instead of the "current value". So I guess this figure is effectively non-important.

Psi-Amp? Strategy? ... In what way do the two words mix? ... I'm speaking from experience, too many games where I sack everyone without 80+ psi strength, and give a Psi-Amp to everyone with 90+. brrr... I like the "Xenophobic" challenge some people came up with. Earth based technology only. Researching alien artifacts is ok, but no using or manufacturing them. The "pacifist" challenge also intrigues me. Stun only! wah. Hmmm... I suppose Psi-Amps in this case might turn the campaign into something... quite interesting. For a while anyhow. hmmm....

... Gah! For a minute, I thought I could do something with the "pre-rollover funding" and "post rollover funding", but, even with that, you'd have 2 million gain... Hmmm.... AH! I have an idea! you... made a mistake somewhere! ... no? Rechecked figures, they're all correct? It's not a wild goose chase? mmm.... okay, what did you cheat in involving staff? Let's figure out if you didn't add some mystical plane dwelling scientists and engineers who are drawing paychecks from their alternate dimensions... And it's not 2 million lost... it's 4 million lost. Possibly 5.3 million. (since you should have GAINED 2-3.3 million)

collpase on top of you? How? Since when is there even a "ceiling" for COS temples? The best you can do AFAIK is, yes, cause the side wall to collapse, and the ground floor to collapse into the basement. That's about it. Oh, Hydrofarms, those are pansy easy to collapse. The time consuming things are like knocking over entire corporate buildings... cause certain walls and tiles, even Devastators take 3-8 shots to "roll" a powerful enough shot.

If all else fails, just send them on that mission anyhow! ... I can't remember, but maybe the first bit of research isn't "sleeping chamber" but "alien building" or something.

.... offhand, my guess would be... salaries? Or did you include those in maintainence?

I don't think it occurs to most people that such a thing is even possible. Cause you have to... let me try and remember.... ah, I forget exactly, but you take the biggest engine, the lightest ship (in other words, you use the beginning ship instead of your Super Avenger thingy), strip off the good armor and stuff, and stick on those Engine killer beam thingys. Added bonus is the ridiculous amount of salvage you get, since you ONLY ever damage the engines.

Eh? What version are you using? For some reason, when I try that, I find that strange things can support the building... like a pane of glass can keep half a building standing, stuff like that. COS only has temples, which AFAIK are impossible to collapse. Only to do major damage to.

Haha. The worst explosion I've seen was caused by me guarding the exit of an alien ship. Forgot which one. Anyhow, plenty of Anthropds and Skeletoids lugging premium gear. Vortexs and boomeroids and devastators. Huge pile of munitions builty up in that area. Then... a Anthropod started to throw a boomeroid. But was shot before he could complete the throw, and dropped it where he stood. BOOOOOOM. ... I reloaded cause of the huge financial loss there, though. Aargh! All that nifty tech! Multi-worms are only trouble on TB... cause the newborns get FULL AP, and thus plenty of reaction type attacks and moves. On RT, Auto-cannon Explosive rounds toast them easily.

The Megaprimus Project is under research during Interceptor, so logically, Apoc is a bit after Interceptor. The whole POINT of the outposts, AFAIK, is that they're supposed to mine Elerium. Those outposts are sort of cowboy towns, with civilization centred around Elerium mines. Solmine is owns the mining rights for these outposts, or something. Anyhow, they're the company which takes the excess Elerium from your space mining outposts and sells it back on Earth. In Apocalypse, since when was there an Elerium shortage? I seem to remember being able to buy tons of the stuff off the open market, not exactly cheap, but not exactly a "rare and elusive" item. Plasma weapons are just fine to use on ships before you get Alien tech. And, as I said on another topic board, when you modify your ship to fly BACKWARDS faster than any alien ship can fly forwards, and you have the longest range weapon in the game, there's nothing to stop you sniping everything into oblivion... That's the easy way to kill phantasms. Other than that, those Phantasms eventually run out of cloaking power and decloak for a while.