Whats the difference?

[Sicarus]

What is the main difference between these 2 modes - besides the fact that the aliens are more accurate whit their shooting.

 

Are there more Uso per month? And are all Subs Lobsterman?

[NKF]

Well, there are just a whole lot more aliens in combat. They get higher stats, from shooting accuracy to a certain additional percentage bonus to their armour. Also their MC skills are much more powerful.

 

Smaller USOs are much more prone to retreating than usual. The USO missions are much more aggressive, particularly the infiltration missions. Expect base attacks a lot earlier as their retaliation scouts are much more effective. Terror sites pop up like mushrooms - well, technically they do this on beginner as well.

 

Lobstermen or the Tasoth shouldn't show up any earlier than usual. When the alien races appear can be somewhat random as it differs from game to game and from player to player.

 

It makes X-Com UFO's hardest level look like a walk in the park. Every X-Com player should play superhuman once in their life. You'll love it. At least, once you get used to it.

 

- NKF

[Sicarus]

More Aliens per sub?

 

Yesterday I was counting the aliens per sub or mission and I came up with the following :

 

On veteran mode.

 

Dreadnought : 17 Aliens

Battleship : 14 Aliens

Scout : 7 Aliens

Escort : 4 aliens

 

Colony : 46 Aliens (both missions counted)

Cargo ship terror site : 46 aliens

 

what is it like then on Superhuman? 3-5 aliens more per mission?

[NKF]

That sounds about right.

 

It has to be noted that alien numbers in each mission are slightly randomised. I don't have the official strategy guide, so I cannot throw exact numbers at you.

 

Assuming TFTD uses the same number of aliens as its ship equivalents in UFO, your Dreadnaught for example can have between 9 - 13 aliens on beginner/experienced, 12 - 16 on veteren/genius and 18 - 22 on superhuman, and 0 - 2 terrorists on beginner/experienced, 2 - 4 on veteran/genius and 4 - 6 on superhuman.

 

You can check the X-Com Wiki's UFO Recovery page for more examples. We don't have the values for TFTD's ship at the moment, but it should give you a rough idea.

 

- NKF

[Gimli]

Having recently been playing TFTD I can only tell you I've had as much as 8-10 aliens on Escorts (same as in UFO). If you want a real challenge, try the Superhuman Ironman mode. I got very far this last time, but I got bored, I am supposed to catch a live Lobsterman/Gill man navigator, and I don't know where I could find them. Of course, I could go for their base, but my troops would get decimated even though I have 5 good psi guys.

Anyone know where I can find the mentioned navigators? I'm not much into wasting my troops and then not finding a navigator.

[Zombie]

I have the OSG for TFTD right here. The explanation for the number of aliens on a mission is very cryptic and doesn't go into much detail. (As always I might be reading more into the description than is necessary). But from what I gather it looks like this:

 

There is a defined minimum and maximum for each rank on a ship. For the lower skill levels (Beginner-Genius) the game takes the average to determine the base number of aliens for a rank. For Superhuman, the game doesn't use the base value - it only uses the max. In both cases, some ranks get a random number added to the base (or max) to arrive at the final number. Soldiers obviously have larger random numbers, while the other ranks get a 1. Terrorists fall somewhere in between. For instance, on a Dreadnaught the min number of soldiers is 4, max is 8 (for a base number of 6) while the random number is 4 (a number between 0 and 4 extra soldiers).

 

Assuming my math and understanding is correct, the totals for a Dreadnaught are listed below:

 

Beginner-Genius

Min: 11

Max: 27

 

Superhuman

Min: 22

Max: 29

 

One of these days I'll have to double check the numbers to see if the Beginner-Genius range is always the same. If that works out, I'll dump that info into the Wiki.

 

- Zombie

[NKF]

Having recently been playing TFTD I can only tell you I've had as much as 8-10 aliens on Escorts (same as in UFO). If you want a real challenge, try the Superhuman Ironman mode. I got very far this last time, but I got bored, I am supposed to catch a live Lobsterman/Gill man navigator, and I don't know where I could find them. Of course, I could go for their base, but my troops would get decimated even though I have 5 good psi guys.

Anyone know where I can find the mentioned navigators? I'm not much into wasting my troops and then not finding a navigator.

 

Don't worry about Gill-men navigators. What you want are Lobsterman navigators. Try some of the ships - the larger ships should give you an even better chance of finding one. Bring a M.C.-Reader with you for your convenience, or if your aquanauts are very good with the MC disrupter, use that instead.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

Navigators? Gill Man Navigators do not even exist, so go after ships with Lobstermen like NKF mentioned or Aquatoids. Heavy Cruisers, Hunters, Dreadnaughts, Fleet Supply Cruisers all have at least one Navigator (assuming the race has a rank of navigator). Synomium or Alien Colonies also have a few present. I'd much rather deal with Aquatoids than Lobstermen, but if only Lobstermen are showing up, be careful.

 

- Zombie

[Gimli]

Oh no, there's lots of Aquatoids, they're constantly sending scouts after my base, but nethog's tech tree said Gill men or Lobstermen. But if Aquatoids work, I'll just let them attack my base... Now htat I think of it, I think I have a live Aquatoid Navigator, which didn't yield results. Or maybe it's the research order again. Well, in the worst case, I'll go after the Lobstermen.

[NKF]

The only navigator that'll yield any useful information will be the lobsterman. In fact, it's only used in two occasions.

 

1. In early versions of the game to get Magnetic Navigation. V2 and the CE versions don't need it. .

2. You can substitute the lobsterman navigator for the first lobsterman commander in the T'Leth research branch.

 

Just for your reference, there are only a few aliens you'll ever need to capture to win this game.

 

Any live alien. One live Deep One (can substitute for 'any live alien'). One live lobsterman navigator or commander. One lobsterman commander (or two, if you haven't got the navigator). These aliens are necessary to get you to the final mission. Also note, the Deep One fulfils the Terrorist requirement for the M.C.-Lab. Multiple birds with one stone, that.

 

For misc. research, you need one live Gill-man of any rank for the midway point in the drill research, and one live tasoth mid way through the MC branch. You don't need any other live aliens unless you want to fill in the gaps in your ufopaedia.

 

I'd now like to do a bit of shameless advertising for the TFTD Research Tree Bug Avoidance Guide (wiki version) that I did many years ago. This is the wiki version. As yet, no effort has yet been made to polish it up - so it might be hard to read at the moment.

 

- NKF

[Gimli]

Hmm, then nethog's tech tree (scroll to the bottom) must be incorrect, because it says I can use a Gill man navigator to get The Ultimate Threat.

[NKF]

Well, it might be worth trying out if you capture a few. I don't ever remember getting any gillmen navigators myself. Squad leaders were always in abundance.

 

- NKF

[Gimli]

Well, I caught a Lobster navigator so that settles that. On a related note, I remember that researching the Tasoth Commander caused not getting the Leviathan, does the same apply for the Aquatoid commander?

Also, I find it interesting that aside from these few special research items, the navigators don't give you anything useful in research. To be honest though I can't think of something useful they could give you.

[NKF]

Yes, they should've just left the navigators as a prerequisite for the transmission resolver like navigators were for the Hyperwave Decoder in UFO.

 

The Aquatoid commander shouldn't cause any problems. The Tasoth commander on the other hand used to prevent the Leviathan from appearing after you've fulfilled all the prerequisites. So you were forced to research the Leviathan first before you did the Tasoth commander if you captured one (preferably after getting the T'Leth launch button as well). Thankfully, as of v2 and CE, the Tasoth Commander will no longer appear in the research list, even if you hack one into containment.

 

- NKF

[Sicarus]

Well this is strange on the PSX version, on all dificulty levels you needed the Lobsterman navigator to research Magnetic navigation, but not on superhuman????

 

Anyway, I am quite liking this dificulty setting, I do have to be extremely carefull with aquanauts and double or triple team on all things.

 

So far so good, but problem now is that Lobster are already starting to show up, and I haven't encountered any aquatoid terror site yet. I guess I will have to wait for them to attack my base.

 

I am now doing a Shipping lane Terror mission with lobstermen and bio-drones - nasty.

I allready on the second mission now and only one trooper slightly wounded.

 

I did notice that the aliens have a more "Rambo attitude" now.

Biodrones charging in to do HTH attacks? And the lobstermen with shooting once then advancing to perform HTH only to be dropped by my reaction shots.

 

Yes this i getting interesting, whats next? - Tasoth Base Attacks?

[ReCo]

on beginner difficulty i could saw all alien ships,

on superhuman alien use mainly Dreadnaught and Escort, i sometimes see battleships and cargo, but i havent seen Hunter

 

on superhuman, aliens attack your bases like crazy, about once per day (and almost always with Dreadnaught full of Lobsterman), ive been attacked a few times by Tasoth and Gillmen

[NKF]

Good lord, the base attacks aren't as bad as the 2-parter ship missions! I don't mind the 2-parter missions, but the sheer number of them that Superhuman throws at you can drive you slightly bonkers!

 

The best part about TFTD's base attacks and terror missions are the complete lack of DPLs and Tentaculats on missions that are out of the water. Which kind of makes them easier - just longer. Then the game throws a artefact site at you, and they have both tentaculats and DPLs. This game is very temperamental!

 

- NKF

[ReCo]

Quite interesting... i have noticed that that are not so many artefact site and terror missions - only a few per month. Obviously i hunt down most of the enemy terror battleships so that may be the reason.

 

Tentaculats are nasty but using 2 or 3 Sonic Displacers help a lot in most missons. The beasts usually surround my tanks while my soldiers snipe them with ease. The problem appears in alien colony missons where the usefullness of Discplacers is greatly decreased. Its nice to create 2 or 3 men teams so they can cover themselves in case a Tentaculat or 2 appears out of nowhere.

 

The fact that Tentaculats have insane number of TU make them very hard to kill with low or mediocre reaction skill. So train that ability as fast as possible.