Terror mission

[Relien]

Hi,

 

I've just started playing TFTD for the first time (I skipped it somehow back then), and I just entered my first terror mission. When I decided to abandon and restart it, the score screen showed several civilians killed by X-COM operatives.

 

I was quite sure I didn't kill anyone, so I experimented a bit and it looks like whenever there's a civilian killed by alien grenade (or some explosive of theirs, I don't know exactly what it is), it count as if X-COM did it. The penalty for that is -50/civilian, whereas normal civilian casualty is only -30/civilian.

 

There are 13 civilians, and they die quite quickly. If half of them gets killed this way, can I achieve something at all by fighting? Shouldn't I just retreat immediately and have only -390 penalty? It's quite frustrating that I get worse score for actually trying to save them, and it's even worse that I can't prevent it anyhow.

 

Is this a common problem? Is there any solution?

 

Also, a quick question about aquanauts - can bravery and reactions be improved somehow?

[Knan]

Also, a quick question about aquanauts - can bravery and reactions be improved somehow?

 

Yes, but mostly not intentionally.

 

Bravery => successfully resist panicing, even though morale is <50

Reaction => reaction firing at an alien during the alien's turn.

 

... surviving is usually a problem in both situations.

 

See https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Experience for (probably far too many) details.

[NKF]

Don't worry if those details in wiki pertain to X-Com UFO. TFTD uses the same engine so the mechanics are exactly the same.

 

Unfortunately, reactions are a little harder to train in TFTD than they were in UFO. Oh, it's done the same way. It's just that the aliens in TFTD tend to not move as much, so their initiative score tends to be kept much at higher levels.

 

---

 

As for your grenade dilemma, that is unusual. But I think I can make up an explanation as to what's happening there. All grenades that get generated in combat need to have an owner to belong to for scoring purposes. This flag is generally only set when your aquanauts throw the grenade. Otherwise, all ownership flags default to unit 0 in the unit list. Unit 0, by the way, is either the very first SWS on the ship, or the topmost aquanaut in the list of units on the ship. So when the aliens are blowing civilians up, the kill is credited to you for some strange reason.

 

This should not be happening. But it's the only plauseable explanation I can think of at the moment until some in-depth reseach can be done.

 

And no, there's no way you can save civilians that get spawned in the battle right next to an alien.

 

Visiting and aborting the terror site works a lot better than ignoring the terror site (instant -1000 pts). But attempting the terror site and leaving with a negative score still works because you'll be getting combat experience (on any remaining soldiers) and equipment off the dead aliens. I've played some terror sites where, in my opinion, I did very well, and everything went right except for the civilians croaking almost every turn. In the end I got a negative points, but otherwise, in all other aspects, the mission was a success.

 

Whether all this is worth it depend on how badly or how well you did the mission.

 

- NKF

[Relien]

Thanks for the replies and that link, it's great.

 

The grenade issue was probably quite a rare bug - I reloaded several times in geoscape before the terror occured and wasn't able to duplicate it, even if the aliens did use grenades (which wasn't too often). Anyway, I kept the save in case I (or anyone) will be interested someday.