NickAragua

You need to explore more excavation sites.

Well, right now, I've allied with the *spoiler*, so I've got a total of 10 scientists. 2 of them are up to par with my soldiers in terms of combat ability, so they 'part-time' it in the labs. Otherwise, I have one lab full of experts in the field of research, and one lab which I tap for people to go out and build geosondes/excavation sites/etc or train. The main tenet though, is the lab full of experts. For example, let's say you're researching "Firearms", an Earth technology. This will go faster when one or more of your guys in the lab have "Earth Technology", Major is even better. So, whenever I research something, I reshuffle the lab/training guys to maximize the number of guys with training in its field working on it. Unfortunately, I only have 9 engineers, so I pretty much have to have one of two workshops not full. This is usually the one that's producing non-essential stuff, like extra small-arms ammo and weapon accessories. Otherwise, same principles apply. Also, the other thing that I will try on my next run through is to make sure that groups of four guys have similar training, and that I never have more than four guys with the same training. So, for example, four guys with Earth, Reticulan and Planetology training, and four guys with Medicine, Martian and whatever else.

Of course, I don't think I've ever let the presence of a civilian or twenty near a sectopod stop me from nuking it anyway - yeah, I take a hit of 50 or 100 points per civilian, but unless I'm trying to play some sort of "save civilians" challenge, I could care less. On the harder difficulty levels, there are enough UFO recoveries/etc to compensate for the loss of a few hundred points of civilians...

I think the key thing is to not take the gameplay too literally. If you did, then it follows that the "Best of the Best" of the world are attacking the aliens without any of the tools available to the modern military (recon aircraft, air support, snipers, body armor and helmets, etc.), and yet have the ability to instantaneously disassemble and transport UFOs back to a base half a world away. Meanwhile, landed alien ships allow X-Com skyrangers to land within as little as a hundred feet of them without so much as a peep, and attempt to "terrorize" human cities with population in the millions using 10-15 aliens. Additionally, the aliens always descend into the suburbs, and limit their activities to a (roughly estimated) 1000-square-foot area, and finally, are unable to mount any sort of tactical coordination despite having achieved interstellar travel. So, with that in mind, the scale would be fairly small. Maybe not as small as depicted in the game (again, "terrorizing" a major city with 15 guys?), but fairly small for the most part. When we're talking about assaulting/recovering a UFO with 10 guys on board, you're fine with a single skyranger. An alien base? Two or three. Terror site? The local army probably helps (I'm just glad they abstracted the negotiations part - "What do you mean we can't fly our guys over Turkish airspace?"). X-Com isn't a massed infantry charge unit, it's a spec-ops unit. In the beginning, you'd probably have a horrendous casualty rate per mission (I generally have about 20-30% of a squad dying on superhuman against an equal size force, and yes, that's a horrible casualty rate for a modern military force, especially given that X-Com is basically the best of the best of the spec-ops). Also, contrary to game mechanics, beyond a certain point, throwing more scientists at a problem does not necessarily solve it faster, nor does throwing more engineers at aircraft construction make that go faster. This isn't a frigging assembly line factory in Kamchatka or whatever, it's a high-tech research and manufacturing facility. 250 people dissecting a single dinky little sectoid? Yeah, right. 200 guys working on making a single laser rifle? Please. Anyway, out of all that rambling, I would say, over the course of AW-I, X-Com consists of under a thousand soldiers, and three times as much support staff. Additionally, I'm sure that many times more people than that are indirectly involved in helping X-Com (weapon manufacturers, the guys who buy sectoid corpses for $20k apiece...) The aliens, of course throw much more material overall at the problem, but X-Com has the advantage of concentrating force in a specific area.

Another version of aftershock with no starforce? Sign me up! Well, actually, don't. I already paid for mine. Heh.

Individually, most of the enemies I encountered were complete pansies. In the beginning, until I figured out to use laser weapons on them, Flatsters gave me a little trouble. Cultists were also difficult initially, as they had range and armored cyborgs, whereas all I had was a couple of shotguns. By the time I encountered the wargots, they were total pushovers, especially since they couldn't seem to hit the broad side of a barn. The only wargot weapon posing even a mild threat was their long-range grenade launchers, which they'd use to shell my snipers' positions, when they weren't busy hitting overhanging pipes or highway overpasses. The first powered armor I encountered was stuck in a ditch. I'm not even kidding, the guy couldn't move out of the area he started in! So, I had my sniper peg him with the .50 cal from across the map. The starghosts weren't even dangerous, they were just really annoying. By the end, I got so pissed off at the 7-day research window for that last research, that I just ignored every single attack on my territory - only lost 10 or so resource spots. So, overall, I'd say that the human enemies are the most difficult - the early game cyborgs totally wiped the floor with my squad, for example. Now, I just have to play the game on 'hard' difficulty, maybe apply some mods.

Heh, here's some more fun stuff: Why don't the aliens rebuild destroyed structures in their dimension? They seem to regrow infinite numbers of aliens and mothership UFOs just fine... Where do the cultists get the money to rebuild their temples and launch assaults on my bases when they're a million dollars in the hole? I smell tax fraud... Why is it that the government terminates the project responsible for the DEFENSE OF THE ENTIRE PLANET because of a 500-dollar debt? Can't I get a tax break or something like the cult does? On the subject of the Marsec M4000, that piece of crap is useful only for killing brainsuckers. Ditto for the lawpistol. Anything that takes more than one hit to kill a brainsucker is simply not worth carrying around. Why bother giving the civilians AI when all they do is run around aimlessly without weapons or equipment of any sort? Still, for some reason, very fun game.

Nah, I don't think the game is that detailed. I suspect the scientists are generated randomly, the only thing that impedes the hiring process is if some people, who shall remain nameless (*ahemoverzealouspilotsahem*), destroy every road and people tube leading to your base.

Yep, it's easy. All you have to do is click the little button that normally lets you select firing mode (single shot or burst fire) until it shows a little |--> or something like that. That's the grenade. [Edit] And I also didn't read the whole post before answering.

I just finished the game (that last 6 days with nothing but starghosts was so damn annoying), and a thought occured to me - I never even came close to losing the game (only time I even lost any guys was at the beginning, when a flatster ate one). Is there any way to lose the game? And, if so, do you get a little fmv?

Yeah, I've seen wargots lob mortar shells from across the map. This usually happens when *any* of their units have a bead on my guys. I guess it's a sort of "spotter calling in the artillery" thing. In fact, that's the only time when wargots did any serious damage to my squad, was when they started shelling my position with incendiaries (and one or two actually hit the general area), so I had to mount a charge under fire towards the mortar guys. Additionally, yeah, I guess those underground bases are "ceiling-free". What they probably do is build them in a huge cavern, and just put wall partitions up... like in an office cubicle. heh.

**spoiler** = starghosts, of course. I stumbled upon this little gem while being bored having to go into a mission, kill 5-10 starghost units, and that's it. Let's face it, those guys aren't any fun to fight, and win my award for 'most uninspired visuals within UFO:AS'. Maybe if they didn't look like basic geometric shapes, they'd be a little more intimidating... Even the Wargots, who look considerably like predators, are still fun to fight, just 'cause they go flying all over the place. So, I noticed that if I ignore the starghost attack, the territory reverts ... to mutant control! Which means, instead of fighting basic geometric shapes, you can fight reticulans and mutants. This is especially fun if you've already taken over the world already and have no more mutants to shoot... ::sniff:: Of course, this is prior to the reticulans crash landing and the "second wargot ship" showing up. From what I understand, the starghosts eventually do something with your territories other than revert them back to mutant control...

Yeah, I can actually get much more resources just by asking the friendly faction for resources, rather than raiding their territory.

Well, I 'pull' in the sense that I tend to have secured fallback positions where an outnumbered recon element can run back to. Or, at least, I establish one as soon as I see that my recon guys are outnumbered. A lot of the time though, I don't even have to pull, as the bad guys seem to come charging in whenever they hear one of my guys unload an M60 or Barett on some poor schmuck. At that point, it seems foolish not to have my guys waiting in ambush.

Nah, I don't 'think it fixes any of the rag doll stuff or explosion slowdowns. However, it does make a couple of game balance tweaks and fixes for issues that would be annoying if you wanted to use that aspect of the game. Remember Altar, not all of us have computers with dedicated PPUs (Physics Processing Units)