Hard times

[sp1ke]

So you buffed the dye grenades with XComUtil? Did you buff anything else?

 

Sadly, stunned aliens who get up are always unarmed and so very rarely any kind of threat. It's another the bugs that mean that those scary-feeling situations are in reality no danger. Which is a great shame.

[sp1ke]

You know that the aliens don't do Research right? :-) They invented everything they have, millions of years ago. What they are doing when they bring bigger guns is just responding to the escalating threat from the pesky surface-oids.

 

So on this mission I had a Gill Man about 2 tiles from a Sonic Pulser ground zero, survives, THEN takes a GC-HE in the face (direct hit), still survives, returns fire and kills one of my top officers, before finally having the decency to die in a GC-AP crossfire. If Gill Men are the easiest race, heaven help me when I get to the hard ones!

[Tsathoggua]

Not as such. Main thing I did was to use the feature to alter the layout of USOs, because it was all same old shit, different day, different heads to splatter.

 

the randomized layout thing, and actually realistic features like a navigator at the helm (aquatoid, last but one mission, trooper with a jet harpoon sneaked up behind it, didn't have enough TU to reload enough for a full burst, so pulled his sidearm and doubletapped the hapless aquatoid in the side of the head, three round burst from the dart pistol, point blank range. Last shot was superfluous, aquatoid dropped dead in its tracks, and never saw it coming, just as well, because it was packing some serious heat, by way of a sonic cannon.

 

Most of the changes made via xcomutil, have been of the style and realism type changes, other than buffing the dye grenades, because lets face it, they were shite as they started.

 

Did mess around with the gauss weapons, and the sonic pistol, seems sane enough that a pistol would be designed for autofire, rapid response is just whats needed in a sidearm. And it only gives as much advantage as it does make things harder when the bugs gain an autofire capacity that they had not otherwise. Unless you count rapidity of bio drone responses, those buggers really can let off a burst in the blink of an eye.

 

Buggered about mainly with the heavy gauss, otherwise I'd not get the research done for craft gauss and coelacanth/gauss because the heavy gauss was at best a bit of an improvement on gas cannon AP rounds. That and gauss rifle clip size, although still need ammo. Gauss weapons aren't LIKE lasers, so they shouldn't automatically gain the infinite clip size of the laser gain medium, which just needs power, assuming it isn't a chemical laser like a COIL or other excimer lasers, or those that need constant gas feed like copper vapor lasers, etc.

[magic9mushroom]

Uh oh! Should I be afraid, or very afraid?

 

You dodged the bullet.

 

Retaliation chance per shootdown increases with difficulty level, and before you get Large Radar/Wide Array Sonar up it's nearly impossible to stop the aliens from finding your base. My first attempt at TFTD Superhuman died a horrible screaming death that way when I got a Base Defence in mid-January before I'd managed to rearrange it into something defensible and while most of my Aquanauts were out on a mission.

 

20 Jan 2040. A long range picket Barracuda stationed in the Gulf of Mexico (as the graphs showed activity in the US Zone) picked up a Small USO. A pincer movement of Barracudas caught and downed the sub! My first mission with Alien Containment enabled. Tazers ho!

 

(Though actually there is little point capturing anything that is not either a terrorist or at least an MC user).

 

IIRC the aliens you need to capture are:

Deep One (Alien Origins, M.C. Lab, Ion Armour)

Tasoth (M.C. Disrupter)

Gillman Commander or Lobster Man Navigator or Lobster Man Commander (The Ultimate Threat)

Lobster Man Commander (T'leth, the Alien's City)

 

Don't bother trying to capture an M.C. capable Aquatoid; unlike UFO, you don't need a psionic alien for psionics (and thank goodness for that).

 

Due to the very slow reload cycle of Ajax/Stingray it's just not worth trying to intercept VS craft at all. I am toying with keeping 2 Ajax launchers and only 6 torps and trying that loadout if I see a slow moving scout. I'm even thinking maybe a permanent loudout of 1 DUP 1 Ajax will be ok for this early stage of the game, maybe even reduce the damage on size S USOs to improve loot recovery. Then with an aggressive attack so that the DUP and Ajax fire at the same time, is there a 50/50 chance of an Ajax hit and a safe splash of a small scout? What that hinges on of course is whether both torps/missiles are processed simultaneously or sequentially. A long standing mystery.

 

DUP has more range, so it will always fire first.

 

You need Ajax or Craft Gas Cannon (and nothing else) to get Survey Ships down safely, IIRC. Luckily, the Barracuda outspeeds them, so you can actually get it in range (unlike UFO's Small Scout, which is nearly impossible to crash safely because all the weapons that can do that are short-ranged and it runs within seconds of the interception starting).

 

You know that the aliens don't do Research right? :-) They invented everything they have, millions of years ago. What they are doing when they bring bigger guns is just responding to the escalating threat from the pesky surface-oids.

 

So on this mission I had a Gill Man about 2 tiles from a Sonic Pulser ground zero, survives, THEN takes a GC-HE in the face (direct hit), still survives, returns fire and kills one of my top officers, before finally having the decency to die in a GC-AP crossfire. If Gill Men are the easiest race, heaven help me when I get to the hard ones!

 

People say Gillmen are the easiest largely because Aquatoids have more M.C. (Technician, Navigator and Commander as opposed to just Commander) and because Calcinites are generally more annoying than Deep Ones (though underwater it's reversed; Xarquid are far worse than Hallucinoids). Bog-standard Aquatoids in Cruisers and smaller are much easier than Gillmen.

 

As for the later ones... my advice is to get Magnetic Ion Armour in a hurry (it's about 30 points stronger than UFO's Flying Suit and actually gets some damage resistances), and to make a habit of bringing Tazers on every mission (replace with drills when you get them). Not just a couple, enough for the whole squad to use them.

[Tsathoggua]

Just in the cleanup phase of the first terror site of the campaign. Gill men, lots of gill men. Bagged a deep one, living and dead. Makes up for losing that 'toid medic, it got stuck in the walls of the triton when a trooper dragging it back just tossed it in a heap, that somehow transposed itself within the wall itself. and didn't appear on the recovery screen.

 

And the alien research aid/delay thing is applied. Interesting...very interesting mod, I like it. So far.

Tried to redo that medic mission, but it was a shitstorm of the worst kind, a writeoff, went with the buggered up aquatoid capture one, after two idiot rookies with gas cannons and some fool that obviously didn't know one end of a torpedo launcher from the other shot a large torpedo right into the squad, then some bug took the coelacanth out with a burst of sonic fire, and a pulser finished the lot off, bar one man, with a HJC and barely enough TU to walk two steps and pull a shot off, with a tazer and a couple of grenades. Called it for what it was, a monumental fuckup.

 

Terror site one was payback though. Not a scratch on the men so far, 7 man cleanup squad arrives, plus a tank/cannon.

The gill men wanted a rematch. And they got one. Not the one they wanted though. Two men with gas cannon/IC loadout, two forward strike teams with jet harpoons and lots and lots of grenades, advancing under cover, whilst my three recently qualified scout snipers, plus two elite snipers, that between them have racked up enough kills to be the envy of the whole squad, squatting under cover, and picking off anything that showed its face, and that face be other than human. At one point a gill man tried to take them both out by means of a sonic pulser, but failed miserably to toss it from out of the high rise building window, and the first thing the squad knew about its presence at all was the squeal of mortal agony and the fact that an entire floor of said building suddenly ceased to be, amidst a huge kablooey. Scratch one gill man.

 

Thought there was about to be a casualty, as a deep one popped out right in front of a trooper, feet away could have toasted him good and proper, but instead, stupidly, turned and walked away. Or perhaps it somehow remembered its human origins deep down. Not enough to save it from the hail of incoming incendiary shelling from a gas cannon-wielding trooper crouching down low, up in a high-rise buildings devastated second floor. Think there is a sniper on the upper floor though, gill man, seen him move but can't get a target lock. The two elite snipers are down low, covering the window, ready to put a harpoon through the head of said gillman if he pops it out long enough. He hasn't been firing, but again, can't pick him off from the ground, damn slimy green git knows he's being covered, but cannot send a man upstairs to blow his brains out, because there was a sniper on the second floor that HAD to be dealt with, and quickly because he was raining down sonic fire like he was hitting a murder pinata. And handy with grenades too, bastard, although thankfully none of them scored a kill, or even came too close. But anyhow, he had to be put down with extreme prejudice, no mucking about, one guy, up the stairs part way, tossing a magna-blast demo charge right under his feet. Poor civilians are going to have to figure out a way to claim on the insurance for half an obliterated building, and a gill man torso and shoulders firmly embedded within the ceiling. I shouldn't laugh at their misfortune....but HAHAHAHAahahahaa fuck. Thats not going to be fun when the weather gets hot, and stagnant, foetid, liquified gillman internal organs start to drip down out of a rotting green sphincter implanted in the roof. And god help them when the carass starts to bloat. Because its going to burst sooner or later, and someone is likely to get a shower of the worst possible kind.

[Tsathoggua]

Spike-depends on the critter. No fun having to babysit a KO'ed calcinite, deep one, or, worst of all, the dreaded tentaculat. Many aliens can just be watched by a lone guard with a tazer or later, shock launcher.

 

But fucked if thats advisable for the nastier customers. As for tentaculats...no way, they are too dangerous, I kill them on sight, and torch the corpse with incendiary rounds for good measure. The moment one of those toxic abominations turns up, all guns blazing, nobody moves or acts otherwise, until the creature is DEAD. Not just dead, but DEAD. Very, very dead, and staying that way. IF I have to deal with a live one, then its the tank's job to watch the bastard thing, specifically, by parking on top of it. Squish!.

 

And KO'ed psykers are still a threat, and should be remembered as such. Tasoth are some of the worst, since they don't hesitate to start laying it on thick with the MC attacks, prolific bastards they are.

[NKF]

Tsathoggua, if you've started playing the game with XComutil, a quick word of caution on the two-part missions:

 

XComutil introduces a fix for the equipment recovery bug that causes all equipment left behind (anywhere, including the Triton), to vanish from existence when you move to the second half. This bug affects the unpatched copy of the game. It is fixed in v2.0/v2.1 but XComutil doesn't discriminate and applies the fix to all the versions.

 

While the fix does work, XComutil may overdo it and send the ammo being carried by your aquanauts back to the base. So you may start the next part of the mission with little to no ammo on you.

 

As you can imagine, this would make the second half of the mission very challenging indeed!

 

If you find this is affecting you then the work around is to save just before moving on to the second half. Restart the game briefly without XComutil (the old way via terror.com) and get to the second half with all your ammo intact. Then relaunch the game with XComutil and continue as normal. As long as you've patched up to 2.0 or 2.1, then you'll recover everything that can be recovered.

 

-NKF

[Kir'jaeden]

You dodged the bullet.

 

Retaliation chance per shootdown increases with difficulty level, and before you get Large Radar/Wide Array Sonar up it's nearly impossible to stop the aliens from finding your base. My first attempt at TFTD Superhuman died a horrible screaming death that way when I got a Base Defence in mid-January before I'd managed to rearrange it into something defensible and while most of my Aquanauts were out on a mission.

Cunning Aquatoids have desided to end the war before it begins? Clever ploy! They should be met by mass PDGs.

My experience shows the aliens will find your first base very quickly. I recommend dismantle the first base to bare minimum rather than rearrange it .

IIRC the aliens you need to capture are:

Deep One (Alien Origins, M.C. Lab, Ion Armour)

Tasoth (M.C. Disrupter)

Gillman Commander or Lobster Man Navigator or Lobster Man Commander (The Ultimate Threat)

Lobster Man Commander (T'leth, the Alien's City)

I recommend to avoid immediate researching of species which can give different results in research tree. Because there are subtle bugs in research tree.

From some moment, game begins to check if a captured creature can give a new entry in UFOpaedia. If not, captured creature is killed automatically despite of mission debriefing results or Alien containment presence. Critical: game does not check if new research can be unlocked!!! So the situation like in attached savegame could come:

 

XCOM needs for live Deep One to get an Ion Armor etc. Gillmen attack XCOM base. The base has alien containment. 2 Deep Ones paralysed. Bug: finish the last gillmen. Deep ones counted as live in mission debriefing, anyway, appear as dead in base store. Therefore live Deep One could be spawned only by editor.

 

So It would be reasonable firstly catch a pack of them, then research them as need come.

game_3.rar

[sp1ke]

I recommend dismantle the first base to bare minimum rather than rearrange it

That is such a good idea! Why didn't I think of that? It costs $500K just to move the sub pens, so, for that money, quite right, why not just start a new base somewhere else right from the beginning? Take the starting base. then immediately build a new base, and do all your extra building in that base I guess. Is that what you do?

 

So the situation like in attached savegame could come

I'm sure you have checked this but is it possible that your alien containment file (ALIEN.DAT?) is full and that's why the game is killing your captured aliens? I think that file has a maximum number of entries.

[sp1ke]

Most of the changes made via xcomutil, have been of the style and realism type changes, other than buffing the dye grenades, because lets face it, they were shite as they started.

That seems fair.

[sp1ke]

I got careless on the Cruiser mission and lost 5 guys to the first Aquatoid I saw. It threw a pulser into my bunched up squad. The mission as a whole only had 5 'toids so it was a "draw". On well.

 

The Council loves me even if the Aquatoids don't. They all raised my funding and to celebrate I installed TFTD Extender for a bug free, high quality of life experience in February.

 

This was a weird one - contact 8 was spotted touched down a few hundred nautical miles north of me exactly 2 seconds before midnight on the 31st of Jan. I'm not sure I've seen that before.

 

I built a third base in the Indian Ocean as the graphs show Antarctica, Africa and the Indian Ocean very hot with alien activity. I think I will do what I have done is other games which is to maintain more hangers than craft and move a mobile pool of craft and troops around the world to wherever the action is.

[sp1ke]

I did another Cruiser mission vs Aquatoids, this time only 2 losses, again to an alien with a grenade. I must avoid bunching up. Apparently 2 aquanauts next to each other counts as a 'bunch'.

 

I am very tempted to turn on the TFTD Tech Tree option that will allow me to research Aqua Armour direct from Aqua Plastics and Vibroblade direct from Vibroblade. Especially as I just captured a Vibroblade (1 Feb).

 

Oh crumbs now (3rd Feb) I have an Island Terror site and only 5 active Aquanauts. The replacements are 11 hours away but the site goes away at sunset in about 8 hours time. Woe is me!

[magic9mushroom]

Cunning Aquatoids have desided to end the war before it begins? Clever ploy! They should be met by mass PDGs.

My experience shows the aliens will find your first base very quickly. I recommend dismantle the first base to bare minimum rather than rearrange it

That is such a good idea! Why didn't I think of that? It costs $500K just to move the sub pens, so, for that money, quite right, why not just start a new base somewhere else right from the beginning? Take the starting base. then immediately build a new base, and do all your extra building in that base I guess. Is that what you do?

 

I build a second base at the beginning, but I don't make it my "main" base. I only build one new Sub Pen at the first base, and move the other Barracuda into the Sub Pen at the second base.

 

And no, it's not guaranteed that the aliens will find your first base quickly*. Floating Base Attacks proc off interception, not missions, so it's quite possible to avoid them if you just avoid interception (until you've got Wide Array Sonar and a defensible base).

 

*Unless you've triggered the bug where AKNOW.DAT isn't cleared properly at the beginning of a new game. In which case, the solution is to clear it manually, not to adjust your playstyle around it.

[Kir'jaeden]

That is such a good idea! Why didn't I think of that? It costs $500K just to move the sub pens, so, for that money, quite right, why not just start a new base somewhere else right from the beginning? Take the starting base. then immediately build a new base, and do all your extra building in that base I guess. Is that what you do?

Yes, generally it is my strategy. Though I forced to build some modules on default base like spare liv.quarters, spare stores, alien prison. Eventually, staff and equipment move to new specialized bases - soldiers move to the strike bases, scientists and engineers move to "think tank" base.

I'm sure you have checked this but is it possible that your alien containment file (ALIEN.DAT?) is full and that's why the game is killing your captured aliens? I think that file has a maximum number of entries.

How it could be possible? In posted savegame, prisons of all bases hold only 2 creatures totally. Additionaly, game kills stunned soldier and DOs, but puts in prison gillman technician. If the prison entry overflow appears, then game would kill all prisoners, right?

[Kir'jaeden]

Floating Base Attacks proc off interception, not missions, so it's quite possible to avoid them if you just avoid interception (until you've got Wide Array Sonar and a defensible base).

I disagree. Since I dislike interceptions overall, I sack all Barracudas in first month and build only Hammerheads and Leviathans. So I do not perform many interceptions for long period of game. However, aliens launch many retaliations on my head. Often it starts right after succesfull colony assault or artefact site purging. They react on XCOM rating peak, I think. And it does not matter which XCOM actions do this.

 

Unless you've triggered the bug where AKNOW.DAT isn't cleared properly at the beginning of a new game. In which case, the solution is to clear it manually, not to adjust your playstyle around it.

You mean some hex editing? Then it must be done right after new game creation. I guess it is too late when a dreadnought comes?

[sp1ke]

30+ turns on that Island mission. It was tiresome but I only lost one dead out of the crew of 5. Something like 28 aliens killed. It was a cool mission. I think actually if I had gone in with 10-15 aquanauts I would have lost more, because I would not have been as careful. I did go through nearly all my pulsers though. I have less than ten left out of thirty I started the battle with. Still, they are easy to come by. I did lose my tank, right at the end, to a Gillman with a grenade after it was already badly damaged. Oh well. At least the aliens were beaten back and paid a price for their terror mission.

[Tsathoggua]

For a gill man terror mission, don't you find 30 pulse grenades just takes up more item space on the dropship than is needed? because you should be able to capture what else you need with half that. I like to let the bugs bring some of my weaponry for me...they just aren't too fond of handing it over, so they need...persuading; persuasion being an incendiary shell in the face and a grenade chucked up the stairs of some building, right underneath some hapless gill man's green, slimy reptilian rear end.

 

Or more amusingly still, a grenade set to go off after the end of the enemy turn on the floor underneath, using the IC round to drive the gillman running down the stairs....straight into the sonic pulser&magna-blast demo charges you set there previously. Leaving nothing but a lot of ringing ears (the green ones probably divested of their heretofore attached owner:P) and the enemy's loud of equipment/weapons if all goes well, nicely scoured of any guts and night soil by the shockwave coming from the detonating HEs. Crude, sneaky, underhanded and messy...but highly amusing.

[Tsathoggua]

Alpha team, suit up, we got company.

 

Barracuda Warbird-1 just downed a USO, of light-middleweight size, aggressive attack was necessary, ran out of ajax torpedoes and had to close in and get in-your-face, emptying some 60-80 rounds from the gas cannon mounted as a last-ditch backup weapon before the enemy bird was brought to heel.

 

Now we attack at daybreak as soon as the lighting conditions are optimal, the tank is onboard, the men are ready, with a few presents from Alpha base, a pair of new hydrojet cannons, third gas cannon, and some new grenades from the boys working in the science division....you'r going to like these, lads

Just don't get anywhere close, the kill radius is FAR in excess of the magna-blast grenades your used to using...........

Alpha team, Go! Go! Go!

[sp1ke]

Well, I don't know about you, but when I have 5 rookie aquanauts with starting weapons and no armour against 25+ aliens, I need as many sonic pulsers as I can get. We recovered hardly any from the battlefield - almost all of those carried by the aliens were either used against us or destroyed by explosions. I would say without a doubt that the 27 sonic pulsers in the boat were the difference between victory and failure. Considering that our best direct fire weapon, GC-AP or CG-HE, was getting a kill less than half the time, pulsers were the only way to inhibit return fire from the aliens.

[Tsathoggua]

Ah, I see.

 

Similar situation here.

 

Although by now the men, at least most of them, rotating in a couple of rookies at a time, 2-3 green men, (pun intended;))

are now quite seasoned. Alpha squad is, at least. Beta team is made up of those in training, accompanying alpha squad, charlie team is back at base and rotated between two men in alpha, a third in beta.

 

Just took the new sonic pulser research to the field, and boy did it equalize!

Gill men, cruiser-sized vessel, lots of small twisty airlock-like passages. One squaddie exploring those, carrying a jet harpoon and a stunner entered a passageway with a wall jutting out, separating the two doors at either end, providing cover, but not much, decided to see "what's behind door number two?"

 

CONGRATULATIONS! you win two gill men, and as a Brucie bonus, a shiny new sonic cannon and blaster. Albeit a few inches past your face, narrowly avoiding liquifying half your skull.

 

(aquanaut retreats behind cover wall, 'panting' heavily, if one can be said to pant with lungs full of liquid, muttering something very rude in ASL sign. (Commander here is somewhat fluent)

 

Rests a turn, kneeling down and covering the passageway with his rifle, then primes the dirty great big satchel charge he's carrying, rests again behind that doorway, no longer kneeling so as to be ready to leg it the hell out of the way the moment its loose out of his hands, primed for detonation on impact.

 

Guy tosses the charge the second he opens the door, spins round, dives round the corner of the tunnel and back out of the other end of the access shaft, nicely held open for him by one of the team's heavy weapons specialists, a girl armed with a hydrojet cannon, covered on her blind side by another hydrojet gunner in training, although good enough with it, and a gas cannoner/HE, but who'd stowed the cannon in favor of a squat little pistol captured off a gill man felled a few minutes prior to the demo-pack induced shitstorm in a teacup, just as well too, because the aquanaut who'd just lobbed the charge, using that bit of cover to shield from any fragments from the blast, just about got out in time to duck out of the way of the overpressure, only to nearly run into a blast from an unseen gunner, who the HJC gunner caught onto, as did the girl with the pistol and stunner, the shooter from the other chamber in the USO missed, barely, standing behind some sort of greyish sphere on a pedestal thing, in partial cover. HJC rounds blasted first the back wall, then took the cover out, to a volley of shots from the captured pistol. Damn....thing made short work of the gill man sniper, who was carrying a large weapon, didn't see what exactly, but thats probably just as well

 

Dropped the sniper, then the charge went off, to a LOUD , and very pained-sounding high pitched shriek, like rusty nails down a blackboard.

Moments later, the lightly armed (well, in terms of weight, but packing an awful lot of punch compared to even the squad gas cannons and armor-piercing rounds from the hydrojet) pistol-packing chick, a real stunner, too went to check the scene, after having a backup cover her standing, whilst she ducked down, dye grenade overhead for cover. No need. The corridor was empty. Just a few bits of the tech formerly carried by the two gill-men, now no longer in evidence anywhere. Corridor was a blind passage, bar a small alcove sealed off by a door, empty of anything of interest. The two gillmen had both been atomized by the huge satchel charge going off from just behind the door.

 

Damn....that aquanaut was a complete nutcase, dropping that thing right at his feet, primed to go off on impact and relying solely on the seawater arresting the descent of the blasting pack to get out of there alive. But he did. Just. Dropping the charge rather than throwing it at the two bugs to avoid alerting them and drawing fire, then spinning on his heels and getting the flying fuck out of that hole!

 

WHAT a mess that left behind.

 

Only other eventful happenings after the initial approach and fight towards the USO, A short distance from the LZ, but infested with a few gillmen carrying rifles, and one with a load of grenades and some sort of blade weapon, none of them got to do much, only casualty was a minor injury (relatively speaking) caused by an own goal from an inexperienced trooper with a gas cannon. Thankfully not a fatal accident, but only by luck. And the tank shot at several times by a gill man rounding the southeast corner of the USO, instantly reacted to by a trooper who'd been camping a patch of dense rocks with lots of little hidey holes and different heights to pop out from, burst of HE fire from a hydrojet, all three rounds connect, two with the gill man and one with the USO outer hull immediately to the rear resulting in nothing at all, not even the unfortunate, and short-lived bug's equipment remained, that I could see, assuming it had had any from the outset, if it did then the entire lot, gill man, weapon and equipment had just been neatly erased from the face of the earth. Davy Jones' took his due for the mission.

 

On the way to a terror site now, after having a really narrow, messy intercept attempt, all three fighters dispatched to a large vessel, big enough that one hit almost obliterated an interceptor, tried attrition tactics, launching DUP heads, and backing off, but even the three interceptors together couldn't down it. Damned thing seems to have dropped a cargo of...well....don't know what but the squad are about to find out................

[magic9mushroom]

I disagree. Since I dislike interceptions overall, I sack all Barracudas in first month and build only Hammerheads and Leviathans. So I do not perform many interceptions for long period of game. However, aliens launch many retaliations on my head. Often it starts right after succesfull colony assault or artefact site purging. They react on XCOM rating peak, I think. And it does not matter which XCOM actions do this.

 

Yes, some can proc in later months without interceptions. But I'm speaking of January here, and it has been my experience that Alien Retaliation/Floating Base Attack in January only happens if you intercept. Or if the aforementioned AKNOW bug is triggered, sending a Battleship/Dreadnought to your main base some time in the first couple of weeks. (IIRC, it only happens if you have a lot of bases and a battleship/dreadnought scheduled to attack one when you start a new game. I forget whether it clears by itself, but once cleared it should stay cleared until triggered again.)

[Tsathoggua]

Never had that happen magicmushroom, but if it does, that sounds like a nightmare. Battleships/dreadnoughts are such a nuisance, damn near impossible to down with starting. human weapons, just tried downing a battleship with three interceptors mounting two pairs of DUP heads and one DUP head/ajax and almost lost all three. Luckily had a weapon mount added to the triton, A single DUP head, primarily for defense, but it ended up that aas my ONLY interception-capable craft for a LONG time whilst repairs were conducted on the three barracudas, , which considering the severity of the damage to the interceptors (almost totally destroyed, got no idea how they managed to escape with and crawl back to Alpha base at all.

[sp1ke]

Yes taking down a battleship with just DUPs is hard. Even if all the DUPs hit they may well not generate enough damage to down the Battleship. You have to be hair trigger on your attacks and on your disengage. There is also a curious observed phenomenon that USO/UFOs seem to do more damage, faster, when you team up on them with a flight of interceptor craft. Not them I'm recommending engaging big ships with one craft at a time. You still benefit from the UFO/USO splitting its fire amongst multiple XCOM craft, just not as much benefit as would be expected.

[Tsathoggua]

One barracuda doesn't stand a cat in hells chance.

 

How does doing more damage, faster correlate with benefit from splitting fire between targets?

[sp1ke]

As I said, you still benefit from the USO splitting its fire between your attacking interceptor subs, just not as much as you would expect.