X-Com Apocalypse LP

[silencer_pl]

Vortex mine is not the only thing. Dimension Launcher can also get the job done.

[Nookrium]

One of these days...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG6-_zdBpbE

[Nookrium]

To the Warehouse!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyvrviuxsCg

[NKF]

Don't think I was able to get this in before you recorded that last mission, but: Stun Grapples, yes. You do want someone on the team carrying at least one for capturing an alien that you will be meeting soon. However one important point to remember: Stun Grapples do not work through Disrupter shields. It blocks the damage completely. Those guys stunning the flying Skeletoid would have knocked it out were it not for that.

 

At this stage of the game you want to either use stun grenades, destroy the shield, hope that the Skeletoid hasn't got a shield, or have someone make the Skeletoid throw its shield to you with mind control, then blast it with a Stun Grapple. Hang in there, you'll get one in time. If all else fails, you'll have lots of free time to train up a hybrid once you gain air dominance in the alien dimension.

 

edit: Before I forget, excluding the Skeletoid, the last few major aliens that you want to capture will have a lot of hit points. I recommend your stun grappler carry a Plasma Gun in the hip pocket as you'll want something to carefully reduce the target's health until it is weak enough to be knocked out. The Devastator and Toxigun are a bit powerful for this.

 

For research, the heavy disrupter and other items like the cloaking device and vortex mine should provide you with more immediate benefits. But if you're interested in the alien launchers, the Disrupter bomb is essentially a high damage missile launcher. Not bad, but it takes aaaages to build enough ammo for it. The Multi Launcher on the other hand is not well geared for anti-UFO use as it is designed to destroy swarms of small vehicles. The Stasis launcher is probably the more useful of the alien launchers for its freeze effect, though you will have to actively switch the launcher on and off to conserve the Stasis missiles as the AI is a bit dumb and will waste your limited supply of ammo on stunned targets.

 

 

Vortex mine is not the only thing. Dimension Launcher can also get the job done.

 

Far as I can remember, you definitely needed the strength of the Vortex Mine to blow them up, as the dimension missiles were just not strong enough. Of course, it has been a while since I last played an alien dimension mission. Can't hurt to try both. .

 

- NKF

[silencer_pl]

Far as I can remember, you definitely needed the strength of the Vortex Mine to blow them up, as the dimension missiles were just not strong enough. Of course, it has been a while since I last played an alien dimension mission. Can't hurt to try both. .

 

- NKF

 

Or you can pop up to my YT channel, and watch X-COM Apocalypse playthrough

[Nookrium]

The Next Battleship, luckily the Megaspawns were "friendlier" this time...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQB6P9-1w3c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqDUlrZ3EDA

[NKF]

One, two or three hits from the stun grapple would have done that first Skeletoid in. I was going to say that the shields had foiled your plan again, but I didn't see the blue crackle that you see when the shield blocks damage. Just plain bad shots? The Skeletoid you finally caught definitely didn't have a shield. Yep, definitely bad shots!

 

Bad luck with Spliffypuss getting stuck in the hole. Since they never completed the climbing mechanics in this game, the only way out is to fly. This is one of those occasions in the game where it's not a bad idea to take the defence hit and equip at least one person on the team with a Marsec torso unit. You can then take off the torso, throw it down to the stuck person. Then get the stuck person to toss their own chest plate up to the donor, then grab the Marsec torso and get out.

 

Though you could no longer walk around the hole, you can always grab a Devastator (or carry a Power Sword - they easily fit down the side of your backpacks with the shields) and dig yourself a tunnel through to the other side. Speaking of digging, you could have had Spliffypuss dig through to the sewer hallway. The hall floor was the same level as the pit.

 

The slowdown was caused by the huge number of tiles the game was trying to draw while viewing the upper levels. You can increase the framerate by using the slice view. That's the toggle button just underneath the map button. It's like the old view toggle button in UFO and TFTD where you can toggle between rendering the view normally or to render all the levels at once Apocalypse adds a third option that only draws tiles on the level you are viewing.

 

Aliens are marked as red arrows on the map. Your guy was standing over the Skeletoid so was covering it on the overhead map. Also note you have to be looking at the alien for it to be visible on the map.

 

That new weapon, the one that looks like a tube with a shark fin and the road cones, is the Dimension Missile launcher. It's the handheld version of the missile weapon that's on the Megaspawn.

 

Or you can pop up to my YT channel, and watch X-COM Apocalypse playthrough

 

What, and do it the easy way? You know me, I have to take the more convoluted path. I'll download something like XED and cheat in some alien artefacts and uber scientists.

 

- NKF

[silencer_pl]

Consider that a temptation to walk the dark side path

[Nookrium]

Forgot to post this one in here... putting the new craft to the test

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MebVlfBBSeE

[NKF]

With the alien dimension gates, ships enter one at a time in the same order they entered from the other side. If you want ships to enter faster, split up your forces between the three dimension gates. That way up to three of your craft can materialize at a time.

 

If you waited and let your shields recharge, you could have easily wiped out all the UFOs in the alien dimension with just that Retaliator. You've got all day in the alien dimension, so take as much time as you need.

 

You're nearly at that point where you can control what UFOs are left in the alien dimension at your leisure. Use this to selectively leave behind any UFOs you want to shoot down and capture in the city. UFOs will respawn every week between Sunday/Monday. So if you want to destroy any newly spawned UFOs, go in on a Sunday night. UFOs will stop respawning after you destroy a particular alien building, so be sure to capture one of those green Bomber UFOs and the alien in it before then.

 

With the long range of the Disrupters on your new advanced ships, there's a new strategy you can employ for air combat. Sniping. It can be much more effective than actively ordering your ships to 'attack' a UFO. You've probably noticed the little dance your ships do where they are attacking. They will fly up to a UFO, turn around, move away a bit, turn around and then repeat the process. Basically not shooting half their time and wasting their rate of fire. Since you have plenty of space to move in the alien Dimension, what you can do is move your ships to hover some distance away from a UFO and have them all face towards it. Go aggressive and watch your ships unleash rapid long range fire on the UFO while it is in their firing cone. Think of it the same way you operate your agents on the ground where you have your agents spread out, kneel and snipe at an enemy until it goes down.

 

Consider that a temptation to walk the dark side path

 

As a long time contributor to Ufopaedia.org, I've often had to use editors to set up test scenarios when a handy save wasn't available. You could say I've always been on the dark path.

 

- NKF

[Nookrium]

Here's the next 2

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMmJu0ecGwk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kQcyhnjIE

[NKF]

Yes, getting hit by multiple missiles can hurt. Part of the problem though is coming from the patchwork suits with the Megapol parts. I suggest doing a mass unequip and assign complete sets of X-Com suits to the agents going on the missions.

 

Your Annihilators have not been officially 'moved' to the main base, so they are still treating the manufacturing base as their home when you tell them to 'return to base'. Go to base transfer and move them to the main base to make it official.

 

If you're looking for something for your large workshops to build, try the small ship shields. They're always nice to have in good supply. Short of that, more X-Com armor parts.

 

The cloaking field is just a missile jammer and is indeed very large. You're better off with more shields or the missile jammer you can buy from Cyberweb.

 

On the alien dimension buildings, treat them the same way you treated the second part of a TFTD alien colony. Destroy the objectives then either escape with everyone, or wipe out all the aliens.

 

- NKF

[Nookrium]

I'll throw these past ones under a spoiler tag since I'm so far behind...

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUul1_A2FLs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQIPIQcxdX4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIbVwshmD2I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY4LNq4wNcA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQZR8j5YQqM

 

 

 

These Alien dimension sites are rough, so much unseen fire and the dimension missiles are tearing me apart.

[silencer_pl]

Rushing to the alien dimension can be painful. It's strange that you don't have teleporters yet. It would help against those dimension / entropy missiles

[NKF]

Only half way through these but:

 

Funny thing about paying off the Mutant Alliance - the very next mission, the Alien Food Chamber, would have fixed your relations with them had they ended up hostile. The Mutant Alliance wanted you to rescue the sectoids on this mission. I think you get the bonus either way.

 

Most of your ships had their guns turned off. So they were taking a bit of a beating from the weaker ships you were trying to destroy.

 

That Assault ship was blinking randomly around since it has a ship teleporter. It only works if physical damage is taken, and you cannot control the destination. A bit of a rubbish upgrade to be honest, but useful on the UFOs. The handheld - now the handheld teleporter will break the game. You'll love them when you get them - so much that I think you'll end up ditching your spare shields just to carry more of these. They're the last piece of technology that you can unlock, and the score requirements are pretty high. If you just keep up with wiping out the UFOs, you'll reach that easily enough.

 

The bulbs you were after were the larger more explode-y ones. All those little ones that burst into stun gas are mainly decorative and don't count towards the mission success.

 

The orange re-enforcement pads should be the first thing you target in each alien dimension building. Blow those up and you're good to go. I tend to save the vortex mines just for these.

 

For the Bombers, I think they may not be visiting as there aren't sufficient escort ships to accompany them. Leave some Fast Attack or Escorts alone and just go after the Assault, Battleship, Mothership and the small fry.

 

- NKF

[jgatkinsn]

FYI, even though you haven't yet posted the video here of the alien farm mission, Devastator cannons do take out those white cubes in the alien farm. It just may take anywhere to 3 to 5 shots per big cube. Slow, I know, but effective if you're out of vortex mines. Also, I think your dimension missile hit underneath the platform missing the cubes, because you guy was at a weird angle to be making a shot at it. I won't spoil anymore other than be prepared to cringe a lot or in the case of my son, hid his face underneath a couch pillow.

[silencer_pl]

Don't worry, Nook only pays attention after the fact.

[Nookrium]

Here's those 2 Alien farm missions, not the most pleasant experience for the troops...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cnwItBZB6o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7OwcQq399c

[jgatkinsn]

At least you got the win! Now time to prime the cloning vats....

[NKF]

The farm was quite brutal, but perhaps more from disorganization and lack of experience in dealing with the alien buildings. Nothing from first hand experience to learn though.

 

First of all, like many have already put in the comments: Devastator cannons work for destroying the mission objectives. The marshmallow cubes just had a fair amount of hitpoints on them. Your Vortex mines really should be saved for the re-enforcement teleporters or for wiping out large mobs of enemies like you've been finding.

 

Shields - you've got lots of people carrying three shields. Share them around if you have anyone running around without any.

 

Entropy - like Silencer said in the comments, take your equipment off after you've been hit by it. Not before. Also as you finally realised, entropy missile's gimmick is to eat the equipment you are carrying. Including your grenades, which then sets them off. Also I don't recall if you were hit by an entropy missile, but taking your armour off cost you your last two soldiers right at the end.

 

Random explosions - you were on a mission where some of the re-enforcement pads were spitting out Poppers. Obviously you'd get random explosions. The smoke clouds were concealing them.

 

Not being able to see enemies - they've got cloaking devices and there were lots of smoke clouds around. Level the playing field by using them too. With the cloaking devices, even if aliens do seem to be able to see you first, you won't have to go searching far to reveal them. Notice how effective Zombie became at dealing with the cloaked enemies after he started using one.

 

Finally, when you temporarily drop equipment on the ground so that you can do something with your other hand - don't forget to pick the item back up, You've reduced your firepower on numerous occasions, and in one case you left a Vortex mine on the ground that subsequently blew up and destroyed your shields.

 

For other things, your Retaliator has three medium disrupters and is only carrying one shield. You probably should swap them with the Small disrupters on the Annihilator. Better to have the bigger guns on the more protected ship.

 

Now that you've got plenty of time to use during the week and a fair amount of money is flowing in, you might want to re-organize your manufacturing base and move most of the facilities away from the access lift so that all your agents and techs don't start right next to the lift again. Though your focus is indeed more on the alien dimension now, your bases are still susceptible to attack from those hostile to you.

 

- NKF

[Nookrium]

This ones a bit on the boring side, but I think 2 weeks of rebuilding was necessary (Plus Silencer would have yelled more if I jumped straight back in)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugJ18vRCNFQ

[NKF]

After that last mission, a rest is well deserved. I do find your weekly UFO spawns a bit odd though. At this stage of the game, you generally see something like a Mothership/Battleship, bomber and fast attack ship show up each week.

 

- NKF

[silencer_pl]

It's only for your own good.

[Nookrium]

Back to the action. First step, destroy the spawn spots!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOzfWd2FAGU

[NKF]

This one was a much smoother run.

 

You need to hit the re-enforcement pads directly or at least 1 tile away. They're quite tough. And yes, the orange bit is what you have to destroy. You'll find green ones in the final mission. These cannot be destroyed.

 

So lots of dimension missiles will eventually destroy the re-enforcement pads. That or perhaps get a critical roll. Space-wise, I think the vortex mine is probably still the more practical of the two.

 

Notice how easily you dealt with the Megaspawn. It wasn't firing back because it couldn't see you thanks to the cloaks.

 

The objectives are generally better dealt with Devastators. However, if you do want to blow up your vortex mines in mid-air like you were doing here when there are no handy ledges, then you need to use the grenade timer and time it just right that the grenade explodes while it's still sailing through the air. If you ever get Anti-Alien Gas grenades, you'll find this trick very useful. It also works with stun grenades when you want to get mid-air Skeletoids.

 

Your surviving soldiers are starting to max their accuracy. Once you get the maximum of 96 (or was it 98?), the toxigun should have identical accuracy across all three firing modes. This is very nice.

 

- NKF