X-Com terrorizes megaprimus

[PillarSoldier]

Well, here in my megaprimus X-Com terrorizes the city. However I am wondering what the effects of all this agression will be, besides getting raided, which I see as saving me the time of raiding someone else for weapons and points. Anyways, anyone know the best orgs to raid as far as what you get off the ground and what can happen if they hate you (I mean besides the manufacturing orgs)?

I have been mostly raiding COS, Sensovision, and Energen (loads of elerium), but who else do you guys like to trash their buildings??

 

Also one other question - anyone know exactly what causes increase in the different attributes of your agents??

I am pretty sure either volume of shots fired or number of hits scored from shots fired increases acc??? (M4000 agents increase quick)

 

Well, tips would be much appreciated.

[Blehm 98]

If Xcom3 works anything like the first two then hitting the enemy increases all stats a random amount, i noticed that my 4 stun soldiers who did stun raids only(two mutants as well) had stats beyond the level of some android stats(very high reactions and firing accuracy, and high TUs and stamina as well), so those raise stats

If you attack someone enough, they lose money, which is very satisfying after you are busy leveling a procreation park and accidentally level the hospital next to it in the process, only to watch Sanctuary clinic lose a million+ in dollars

Best to attack are:

Sanctuary clinic - these give you elerium pods as well as standard weapons to sell for money

CoS and maybe other gangs, but they are very hard in the beginning without good weapons - give you weapons to sell and rockets and launchers, so they are good for high level weapons

Nutrivend - they are very fun to raid, especially malls - i think these guys might have elerium pods as well, but i know you can take what you steal and sell it from their dead bodies

Your avatar is hauntingly familiar, although it is probably coincidence

[Jasonred]

I sometimes raid the old apartment buildings, usually belong to the gangs. You need to have disrupter cannons and vortex mines for this...

Now try levelling the entire complex from within the combat map! heh heh heh.

Be more amusing if weird game physics didn't allow a wall section to hold up 10 tons of building. Eeg.

 

Best orgs for what can happen if they hate you... eh, well, in terms of poilitics, you can try to see who's allied to who in your game, and conversely, who is ENEMIES with each other. Now you can make one side LIKE you by demolishing their foes. A site of a lot cheaper than bribing the one you want on your side. Very handy to keep the mutant alliance on your team, and the taxi service too!

 

No mutants if you annoy them, no androids if you annoy those, no transport for troops, goods, or even sending stuff within your orgs if you annoy transtellar!!!

 

This is very irritating sometimes, especially when the alien send out their Overspawns which ?randomly? destroy things on the map. This will cause equally randomish corporations deciding they love/hate the aliens now! (since actually demolishing entire large expensive buildings tends to push aliiances huge in either direction)

 

Only base training seems to raise strength. Psi is similiar here I think.

 

No reason to knock of people's money... unlike you, everyone else has lines of credit. They can be bankrupt and have funds of -$10000000 when you check them on the ufopedia, and it won't stop them buying equipment, arming troops, sending out raids etc etc. Pointless.

 

In fact, it's detrimental to bankrupt them, since it means it'll lower the taxes the pay the government. AND, having the government poor is bad, since they fund your jobs. At this point, some jokers will pipe up that you shouldn't be relying on government fuding yada yada, but as I keep saying, it's VERY irritating to have the governement stop funding you whatsoever! Keep in mind that once funding hits zero you can never raise it again. Which will happen if the govenrment itself ever hits $0 or less, even if their reserves recover.

[NKF]

I'm one of those jokers who will tell you to not rely on government funding. But don't misunderstand - that's not to say you should not protect the people that pay for your base maintenance. For any endeavour that requires a huge investment of cash,you should indeed rely on what you are able to accumulate and sell off rather solely rely on government funding. It just doesn't produce enough income over the short term to cover huge expenses, but it does keep your general housekeeping in order.

 

Now, if you were to keep the alien UFOs in the alien dimension in check, then you can easily rely on government funding by just letting the months fly by.

 

- NKF

[Kriptor]

Now you can make one side LIKE you by demolishing their foes.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That's a great idea! Who are the enemies of the "precious"(Transtellar, marsec, self, MA, etc.) organisations?

[NKF]

It varies from game to game. Watch the headlines for any Transtellar X'ed by Y (or Y X'ed by Transtellar) messages. Just remember that attacking the people they dislike will also make their allies dislike you as well.

 

Now, if you go ape on the city and attack anyone and everyone - and not die in the process - you'll guarantee that half of the city will hate you (opening yourself to a huge number of possible raiders) while the other half will love you to bits. Now, if the needs ever arise, you can make all of the organisations swap positions by attacking your allies - then repeat as necessary, unless there's nothing left to destroy. As long as you can survive the consequences of your, uh, unusual persuasive strategy, you could just get by this way for a short while. But, by the time you get enough firepower to actually make this strategy feasable, you'd be far better off just wiping out the UFOs in the alien dimension on a regular basis, and ignore the politics altogether.

 

- NKF

[Jasonred]

If you want to find out aliances quickly (*more or less only!*), you can save game then try attacking the precious, and see who likes you now.

 

More or less since the game has separate stats for A likes B vs B likes A. It's prefectly possible to have one sided relationships. mmm.

 

As for not depending on government funding, mmm, well... go ahead, why not set yourself an challenge for your next game, the "no-gov-funding game"? Just piss off the gov so bad they revoke funding, then later reset the alliances. Try going through the entire game without the extra, I dunno, 3-5 hundred k a week it can build up to? I mean, chump change compared to the highly lucrative manufacturing and psiclone raids, right?

 

I dunno, maybe I'm bad at handling my in-game finances. But for me, the 400k x say 40 weeks of campaign, or about 16 million does have SOME pretty significant impact... When I keep my funding I don't exactly end up having reserves of 16m spare cash lying around, so I suspect if I hadn't had that money in the first place...

 

Still, makes me wonder. About what proportion of your income do you guys apportion to gov funding, how much through alien missions, how much through raids, how much from manufacturing... those kinds of figures? Just wondering!

 

I'll be rather sad if I hear that gov funding was less than 1/10th or something... for me it's closer to 1/3 or so.

 

NKF, no offence meant back there. What happened was one time I was asking how to stop the government going bankrupt from building damage and dropping X-com funding. And someone replied that I "shouldn't rely on government funding anyhow." .... I was annoyed. To say the least.

 

 

What you've actually stated there sounds more like "don't rely ONLY on government funding" ... which of course, I have to agree with completely! ...

[Accounting Troll]

Generally speaking, most organisations tend to dislike rivals in the same industry. The following feuds always devlop in my games:

 

Megapol v Marsec

Gravball League v Sensovision

Technocrats v Extropians

 

As the game progresses, feuds tend to get more serious when an organisation starts to get angry with organisations that attacked its allies and launches retaliatory strikes. Thus the corporate backers of the Technocrats will start going after the Extropians. Remember that this is a city where law and order are collapsing into anarchy as the aliens stregnthen their hold in our dimension.

[NKF]

Offended? Me? When? I hate smiliies but there are times you really need them.

 

The govt. funding helps in the early games when you really don't have any reasonable or regular source of income. I mean, buying and selling Stormdog parts at full market price (as opposed to the discounted price for standard issue parts) can produce a reasonable income, but only on a weekly basis, and the best way of getting money out of it (hoarding Anti-Air Guard bullets) takes time.

 

Myself, I find that at the start, my biggest form of income does indeed come from the government for the first couple of weeks. As the aliens have no sellable loot to talk about, and I don't go raiding anyone, I get nothing from it. Selling Stormdog parts is only pocket change. The AA bullets I gather from that don't bring in any profit - and are a long-term investment, so they don't bring any immediate income. Stolen equipment... um, I only steal a power sword or to and that's that - I'm perfectly happy to wait for the rest to appear on the market.

 

Later in the game, government funding accounts for my general housekeeping and a bit of pocket change. Stormdog selling, now that all the parts are down to 50% of their price, no longer reaps any profits. Loot from alien missions and the occasional raid on the cult only bring in a meagre amount of income, but an income nonetheless. Production sales bring in no profit as there's nothing that's worth selling. The AA bullets - when I decide to sell them, provide a one-time only benefit. I can repeat gathering the bullets a few more times and still get a sizeable profit, but it tapers off in the end. The usual raid on an enemy organisation for freebie helps with the consumables.

 

In the much later stages, government funding continues to pay for the housekeeping. Stormdog reselling will have stopped completely. Income from gathered loot, now that the aliens have bigger weapons, start to pick up. I may choose to nominate a particular alien weapon and hoard them for a while like I hoarded the AA bullets. Usually the devestator. Gather up to 100 and at $7500 a pop, that's an instant $750000. Production income start to pick up, now that hybrid aircraft production is available - they always reap plenty of money seeing as they always sell for twice the amount you spent on producing them. However most of this money goes back into producing consumables - i.e. personal and small ship shields. Raids on enemy organisations only occur when I'm after a few freebies or after a bit of on-the-job training.

 

After I obtain dominate of the skies in the alien dimension, that's pretty much it - the money just rolls in and I take my sweet time finishing the game.

 

That's not an exact breakdown of how I go about keeping X-Com up and running, but it's close enough.

 

---

 

Accounting Troll: Anarchy indeed. I mean, think about it. If you play long enough, the alliances get rather wacky. Sancturary clinic raiding the government, nutrivend raiding general metro. Megapol raiding evonet. Marsec raiding the Gravball League... Argh, play too long and you'll be living in a 'world gonne madde'.

 

- NKF

[Jasonred]

Oh, yeah, anarchy supreme! The trouble is, any action by one corporation will strengthen/weaken it's ties across the board! The gangs are pretty notorious for this, as each corporation will prefer certain gangs to others (and Megapol hates them all). In other words using the games in game diplomacy levels 0f -100 tro +100 each way, most corporations go from around -10 to +20 to each other... all the way to -90 and +90. Really irritating is when the ALIENS send in an overspawn, it demolishes say Megapol and governent, and now Transtellar starts loving the aliens! (If I'm not mistaken that the gov and Trans aren't fond of each other). Now, you shoot down the overspawn and some alien ships.... BOOM! Transtellar protests you attacking their alien pals, and you have to bribe Transtellar for diplomatic reasons!

 

... This was one major outflow of my cash, now I think of it! Making sure that Transtellar, Marsec, Mutant Alliance all love me... and any other suppliers I might need at the time...

 

I never resorted to friendly raids, even to get equipment not on the market yet... well, MAYBE a "stealthy theft" raid, but no stun raids! However... it doesn't take long at all for the Cult to declare eternal emnity with me, and at that point, they're fair game for daily multiple raids. (our alien friends? die traitors die!!!) Which gives me a hefty early cash boost, AND pumps my weekly score up, so I can pretty much expect the maximum raise in government funding next week.

 

Once you have domination of the skies in the alien dimension, you'll REALLY feel the loss in government funding. Not just cause you feel like sitting back and relaxing while steady income trickles in, you'll also feel the loss of alien missions! Aargh!!!

 

Seriously though , I think that weekly $400k is a lot to miss out on. That's over 50 devastator cannons man!

[PillarSoldier]

hmm i remember back when this topic was about which organizations to attack...lol naw its all good, anyways thanks for the tips guys, man it is awesome that this game still has such dedicated fans now like 8 years later. If only someone could make a new version of apoc with multiplayer, it would have such a tight online community. oh well...

 

btw im having trouble with transtellar, its freaking driving me nuts, every game i play they always start hating me with no prevoking on my part. What can i do to get these fags to come around?? its such a pain without them....i know they arnt to fond of megapol, lol by a little experimentation, but man i dont think they hate anyone else...i dont know what to do, im about to just snap and go start killing them...

[Jasonred]

Why, that's simple. Attack Cult Of Sirius, and perhaps choose one of the gangs, the gang which is "sided" with, hmmm, hopefully Transtellar and the mutant alliance.

 

Robin Hood time. Steal from... the evil, give to... the suppliers of goods and services.

[Accounting Troll]

Transtellar are always pre-disposed to dislike X-Com at the start of a new game. I think the game designers had intended to have some of the corporate executives in league with the aliens from the start, a feature that was dropped from the final game.

 

There is one alternative to paying them off or hitting somebody that Transtellar doesn't like: provoke the aliens into damaging a Transtellar owned building during a UFO incursion.

 

You can do this by getting some hoverbikes to fly at the lowest altitude setting in the vicinity of a Transtellar owned building. When the UFO fires at them, there is a good chance that it will accidentally damage the building. If your trick is successful, a message will appear saying that Transtellar are under alien attack, and some Transtellar aircraft will rise from the building and attack the UFO. Remember that if relations between X-Com and Transtellar have dropped to hostile, Transtellar will also attack your vehicles.

 

Aftetr the aliens have attacked Transtellar, any mission you undertake against the aliens will cause Transtellar to like you a little bit more.

[NKF]

That works wonders if it's an Overspawn, as it doesn't care what organisation it plows into - as someone said, there can be one-sided alliances. When it did that in one of my games, I got the cult of sirius to start liking me after defeating the aliens in a few missions after the rather hilarious crumbling of the Temple of the Apocalypse.

 

It disturbed me out so much that I started raiding them to realign the natural order of the cosmos back onto the straight and true.

 

Transtellar, by the way, is the most susceptible company to turn against you in the whole city. They also own the most property in the city, so every little people tube link or grav-road you damage tends to tick them off just that much. Well, it's not as bad as actually hitting one of their buildings, but it does add up.

 

Transtellar offers convenience in transporting goods and tech staff between bases. That does't mean you cannot transfer everything manually, or drop off new specimens at the research base directly. You can indeed live without them, but the lack of public transort (apart from the people-tubes) does make itself quite apparent if you're transferring huge quantities of items and tech staff between bases.

 

But don't worry too much about them going hostile and saying that the "Aliens are our friends". Through various circumstances (probably forced circumstances), they can still be made to dislike the aliens - although they'll no longer take bribes (and still proclaim the aliens as their "friends" - but that's just a logic error).

 

- NKF

[Jasonred]

The trouble with the "realigning the order of the cosmos" is... the alienworshippers still hate the aliens. Worse, each time you attack the aliens will make COS like you more... eheh.

 

Without Transtellar, I don't think you can purchase equipment or staff that have to be delivered, can you? Nor can you transfer non-soldier staff, methinks.

 

Troll, your idea is BRILLIANT! My next game, I shall apply that all those expensive (in terms of bribes) corporations.

 

Carrying that idea forward to the next level, why not attack a Temple of Sirius, and trick the flotilla of craft to accidentally fire on Transtellar buildings? (or mutant alliance, Marsec, etc etc.) Overall, I'm fairly CERTAIN that I cause the COS the most damage over the course of the game, what with them being my live targets and training dummies...

[Accounting Troll]

I would imagine the poor Cultists must get REALLY confused when you rescue the Sectoids from the alien dimension. Just imagine what would happen if a Sectoid turned up on Sensovision and praised X-Com :mad:

 

Suppliers such as Marsec and Megapol have their own air transport vehicles, so you can still buy things even if Transtellar hates you. Scientists and engineers can travel to your bases using the people tubes, but they can sometimes become marooned if the network has been damaged by recent fighting.

 

Stirring up a feud between the Cult of Sirius and the major corporations is positively EVIL It would be wonderful if raiding the cult netted you some experience, surplus equipment AND made up for you accidentally demolishing the spaceport in the last alien incursion

[Jasonred]

The thing is, I'm unsure whether accidentally hitting another building with the "self defence" flotillas counts as attacking a building. Otherwise, we could set up some insane armageddon air battles: use a tricked up hoverbike, attack the COS, fly near to Transtellar so their shots miss and cause Transtellar to send out their own armada, attack Diablo and fly near to Megapol, try to keep you hoverbike alive... and hopefully you'll get a raging nonstop firefight!

[Jasonred]

Oh, and COS don't worship Sectoids and aliens from 1st & 2nd war... they worship the NEW aliens. (obviously, they cannot be "gods" if X-com defeated them with now outdated weapons). As far as I can see, COS doesn't even have much diplomatic ties with Mutant Alliance.

 

And Mutant Alliance DOES fall in love with you for rescuing the Sectoids.

[NKF]

They're xenophiles and probably worship all alien beings. It's just that by now the sectoids are jut not the 'in' aliens anymore, having been around for quite some time. I mean, I bet you some of the captured sectoids are born on earth (well, cloned would be a better term)... and where do you think the hybrids come from? Some of the cult members are probably hybrids, so sectoids are indeed old hat. Ever see the sectoid-head shaped tiles in one of the temple basements? I think they're regretting that now.

 

Transtellar's withdrawal of service is a pain, but can be dealt with. New tech staff are impossible to transfer, so it's best to just buy a new team at the new location and hope for the best. Though it would be best to reuse the top researchers, a bunch of 60 - 80 skill workers can still do the job. Newly hired tech staff on the move can be stranded due to a broken link in the people tubes. They are generally unrecoverable because they have no movement controls. It may pay to hit ultra-fast temporarily while they're on their way to have them automagically teleported to the base. Equipment that you wish to transfer can be transferred manually (i.e. plug them into soldier slots or equipment slots, travel to the other base and unload everything) - or have your ships come to the supply base for resupply. New research can be dropped off at the research base before your transport heads back home. About the only real loss would be the fact that new staff will no longer have the luxury of travelling by taxi.

 

---

 

We haven't really drifted off topic as we are speaking of ways of how to tamper with the alliances.

 

But to answer the question of who to attack, my recommendation is

 

1. The cult.

2. The gangs. It pays to be on good terms with Diablo if you like their incendiaries - this is incredibly easy if you're attacking their enemies.

3. Anyone who gets on the bad side of all your allies and does not supply you with any practical benefits. Had it happen to odd companies like Lifetree, Evonet (rather amusing on the Superhuman map), Nutrivend and even the Gravball league. Idiots. Amazing how many of my allies stood up to me after Nutrivend's failed raid on one of my bases and started to retaliate against the malls.

4. One of the two political parties. Extropians or Technocrats. Who are you going to vote for?

 

- NKF

[Blehm 98]

In midnight editor, there are two parameters

what is the first and what is teh second

 

I once wanted to have fun and set marsec and megapol to enemies

well, in the beginning, while buying my ammo, i had more than half of my equipment destroyed in the massive battle between marsec ships and megapol police cars hovercars

 

It wasn't even funny, just watching lasers and missiles flying all around

I wasn't happy, i lost a good 30K worth of equipment in that battle

[NKF]

I am of the belief that the two values are for the cityscape and the battlescape. Of course, I was adamantly advised that I was wrong and that they are just twin values.

 

I'd like to stick by my interpretation, but there is also the possibility that the other value is vestigial and has no use whatsoever. For example, in UFO and TFTD, all items have two weight values, but only one weight value appears to be used by the games. The old X-Com games in particular appear to be littered with unused values.

 

Just give them a test and see how they react. Try it on the aliens. Give one value 100 and the other 0. Go into the alien dimension, see what the UFOs do to you, then see what happens in the battlescape. Then repeat this but reverse the values.

 

- NKF

[Blehm 98]

hmmmm, i had a feeling that the second might be a general area where they like to hang out, or maybe a max in the feelings, because CoS always has both parameters close to the top....

i wonder what would happen if i set CoS to hate aliens, aliens to hate CoS, and then allied with CoS

[Jasonred]

Unlikely to be twin values, since I've seen one value positive and another negative. I mean, the hey? Or am I misunderstanding the meaning of "twin values"?

 

Also hence unlikely to be battlescape and geoscape. Or you'd have situations where Marsec was nice and friendly delivering stuff to you but shot bullets at you when you went into their buidlings. And the whole bribing process seems to reflect their only being one true "diplomacy level"

 

hmm... vestigial sounds possible. Though both values seem to change over the course of the game...

 

Muh... I'm going out on a limb here, but maybe it's the "how I react to other's actions on this company" Like, you know how if you attack, say, the Technocrats, some corps will like you a little, some will like you a LOT, some hate you more, some less? I think that's controlled by the second value.

 

Will check it out if I have time.

 

... Just thought of something. What if the aliens are no longer hostile to X-com for some reason? Can you wander around in their dimension doing stun raids? ...

[Blehm 98]

actually, you could, as long as you don't hurt any aliens at all while your blowing up the targets, the aliens won't touch you

[Jasonred]

Alright then.

 

Cause... we all know that Megapol is enemies with the aliens, and so is the government I think.

 

So... is THAT one way to make the final mission ridiculously easy?

 

Blow up all the government and Megapol buildings, and march into the alien dimension as their best friend?