How Do You Play?

[Seriffi]

I'm used to play games in hardcore more (like diablo2) so when my hero/guys die, it's for good and i'll start over or smth. Question is.. Do you always just load game when one of ur team members die? The game goes on even if your whole team gets killed so I think player is supposed to gather himself and recruit/equip a new team and go again. I did it in x-com apocalypse! I only saved the game when I quit and loaded it when I started playing again. Sometimes brainsucker possessed a guy who was with me for the last 20 hours and was very experienced but I still didn't load. I just grinned my teeth and replaced the lost character. I think it's much more realistic and makes the game more challenging and one must play more carefully.

Do you think this is possible in u:a? I've only recently started playing and i've heard that there are very hard, almost impossible missions that require zillion tries. Do you think there are enough recruits/equipment to complete the game without save/load abuse?

[CPT.Beefheart]

Whithout the power of loading saved games I'd be totally naked... ???

 

But it would be more realistic, and a little bit more frustrating. So I guess I'll keep on loading and salute your merit.

 

Regards,

 

Beef.

[steelclaw]

I normally just reload if a whole bunch of my guys get nuked. (Those alien rocketlaunchers can be quite annoying. Particularly indoors.)

Otherwise just keep playing.

[bowles]

I was trying to play on a 'if he dies, he is dead, no reloads' basis, but when my ENTIRE TEAM started getting wiped out by plasma rifles etc. etc. (this is before the russian mission - just on UFO retrieval) i had to reload. Why play whe you know u can't win?

[Pete]

It's not even remotely likely that you'd be able to do it in this game... This is purely because tehre just wouldn't be enough recruits at a high enough level in the game at any given point to replace your slaughtred soldiers.

 

Personally I like the fact that you are forced to reload. If my squad didn;t gt wiped out at least twice a day when I play, I'd think the Reticulans had gone soft.

 

They're supposed to be super-hard gits with superior technology, so more power to them if they wipe out my team, but I ain't gonna restart the entire game after getting as far as the Russian Base mission when there's a perfectly good save 'n' load system built in

[alaric]

the alien bases and small ufo's can be extremely dangerous Mostly because it's cramped, so your snipers etc isn't at full potential. That's when i pull out any sort of shotgun, grin and hope for the best. Well, unless they aren't waiting for you directly at the entry with plasma guns and whatnot, then i just sigh and probably abandon the mission.

[Sinai]

Since restarting the game on normal(previously playing on hard) I haven't reloaded. I made it past the old greys mission and only lost a total of 2 men(and that was because I was being stupid)...then things started to get a little hairy.

 

I lost my first full team a few missions back when 3 aliens, one with a rocket launcher, one with a microslug, and one with a warp rifle decided to all show up at once inside a ship from two different directions. You have to get used to a few things. First, try to delegate any mission that involves entering a ship, because that's when you usually lose men(as an aside, successrate in delegated missions seems about the same for all difficulty levels). Second, if you do lose men, heck, it's not as great as a loss as you'd think, the game will always keep you above a certain number of troops, and if you just delegate every hard mission for awhile you're usually back up to speed shortly. Third, be ready to bail out of a mission, even if it means leaving men behind. Fourth, don't squander that bio armor on low level guys or the scouts. If a guy is a raw recruit, don't pamper him, he's just fresh meat, save it for if he actually manages to survive. I anticipate losing even more men, especially in some of the story meat grinder missions, but I'll try to stick it out.

 

But, hell, I sure as heck wouldn't try it without loading on hard, I felt like I lost my entire squad every third mission on hard. And I must admit, on the original, whenever those bastards sniped more than 1 guy before they left their avenger, it was time to hit the load button. Or when the aliens mind controlled my man with the blaster bomb...I suppose I should count myself lucky they didn't fire the blaster bomb inside the avenger.

[Seriffi]

Ok then I am not going to ever finish the game = I can play it for as long as I like >) .. Now the question is: Can aliens win you? I looked when my friend played and there was that biomass thing in the ground and his base was attacked. He survived the attack as he had pretty good tech and superb guys as he had loaded always when he lost a guy (he even had malcolm and brian alive) but if you lose your group there, will the base be lost? And when all bases are lost then will I lose?

[alaric]

Hehe, side note, malcolm and brian immediately got the boot from my squad. Brian had some abysmally weird stat combo and I didn't know that much about the leveling process then, and malcolm had an annoying voicecet and looked really strange, so i kicked him out too.

[Antic]

With respect to reloading - At every point in time, there are several possible ways that things might progress. For every "hero" story, there had to be times when that hero might have died. Had the hero died, there would have been no story (or a short boring one...) I like hero stories . When someone dies, I regard it as, "well that's what would have happened if I went that way, but fortunately [reload] my guys are much smarter than that... they're heroes! They're the Arnies of Aftermath" (except they're not governor's of california yet, but maybe after they destroy the alien threat they'll be a future for them in politics...)

 

My view is, reload - try the game. If it's too easy there are other settings, or reload less. Personally, I find it frustrating to spend ages on building a guy up to find he gets killed by my dumb mistake. Although, knowing I'm never going to lose anyone can be a bit boring too.

 

I think you choose to play however you like - it's a game after all. Noone will condemn you for "cheating" the pc - you're not doing anyone any harm, just choosing the challenge that you enjoy most. Marvellous friends pc's aren't they? They never refuse to play unless they're too sick or old, and don't mind losing again and again and again...

[shrapnel]

I've only played for an hour so far and only lost one guy (Malcolm - which was ok w/ me). =)

 

I'll probably not reload unless I make a total mistake or do something accidentally. I noticed that replacements start to come w/ a few levels already at a certain point so they'll be somewhat competent. I agree w/ the poster that mentions just to delegate the harder missions till you train up the replacements to an effective level. Seems like the best way to go.

 

So unless I do something completely stupid which I tend to do when playing at 4am =) or do something I didn't mean to do then I'll not reload casualties. There will probably be exceptions but overall the dead shall stay dead in my game.