MARS MILITARY ACADEMY

[kazuma6666]

My tactics are not refined, but it's fun, more like a fps then a tactical game.

 

I got 2 squads :

1st squad is human + 1 ret, I use it to deal with martians and beastmen.

I got 3 heavy weapons troopers, most of the time 3 gatlings, but one of them can get his grenade launcher, the other two bring out a laser canon against martians. 3 snipers, 2 of them equipped with laser rifles the other equipped with a medikit too. All of them use light armors so they run fast. It's mostly rush and kill, well until the matriarch appears hehe. Those I mind control with my ret, they are very useful to deal with other matriarch or any beastman coming, since they got so high dodge. Plus, putting them in the line of fire with 3 gatlings firing, they get hit by stray bullets. when i'm done with her, i just bomb her with grenades. The medikit guy also have his inventory full of grenades to refill the 2nd heavy trooper. Martians are not so hard to deal with when you got 4 people with lasers and a ret (psychic attack works wonders, 1 hit + the dmg of any laser, and the martian is down). And I'm in alliance with them now too

 

2nd squad got 4 robots, 1 tech/soldier, 1 ret and 1 sci/soldier. drones are fast, that's quite interesting against ret. Those 4 robots have each 4 gatlings. Takes less then 1 second for any of them to drop a ret. I just let them explore forward, leaving the humans behind, and the rets try to mind attack them hehe. then they turn into pulp with 4-8 gatlings firing at them. I usually make 2 groups of 2 drones exploring north and south. They are fast enough if you put the right cards in them to dodge the grenades or rockets. Besides, rets use mostly psi rockets, and my drones don't car much for that! But really, really don't use robots to kill the beastmen... Alchemists are a pain, they tend to kill multiple drones, and let's not talk about matriarch... I accidentaly sent my robots team to kill a matriarch, and it was hell

[doctordark]

Just thought I'd add my 2 cents worth.....

 

Before I begin, I'll state that I'm not a modder or coder in any way, (and probably wouldn't recognise it if I fell over it). As there is so little game info available, my statements are based on perceived assumptions, through game experience, rather than studying the core code. So if any of you modders/ coders have access to hard fact than please feel free to correct as I'd be interested in the confirmation too. I also normally play impossible level, so to me a beast man soldier takes 2/3 shotgun hits to red-line, or 8+ rifle shots, and knockdowns are rare unless you can get your accuracy into the high 90's. I'll write this strat for this level and it should then be overkill for lower levels.

 

I dont use droids, as the research and production costs tend to, IMO, outweigh the advantages. Similarly, I don't use Rets, as they are just too much of a liability, though I could see how a 3 "man" Ret team that could mutually support each other would be very effective, particularly on the extreme enviroment maps.

 

I build my teams based on this philosophy:-

 

In any combat, battle or war, luck will always be a factor. Whilst specialisation allows you to better exploit good fortune, duplication allows you to minimise the effects of bad fortune.

 

In Afterlight, the replacement rate is so poor, that losses simply cannot be taken. Double criticals do happen, and if that's your only medic now lying on the floor, you could be in deep DooDoo. So, to me, duplication, far outweighs specialisation. The only specialisation I have is with the role of my 2 Squads, as this way I can be efficient with skill selection.

 

I tend to have Tabbie dropped on the first mission which gives me the Lasalle twins for a line up of :-

6 Soldiers, 4 Soldier/Sci, 4 Soldier/techs which breaks nicely into 2 squads of 3/2/2. These two squads are designed to fight, but are not limited to, the 2 main enemies that will be encountered during the game. Namely the Beastmen and the Rets (both factions). Each squad further breaks into 2 teams of 3 each consisting of 1 Sol, 1 Sci, and 1 Tech. The 7th person, the remaining Soldier, is a floater and can be used to reinforce either team.

 

To begin, basic training for everyone is minor suit wearing and minor toughness. Minor suit wearing will be needed in either team and the extra Hps, especially early game, are just too valuable to not take. All sol/sci get minor medicine, and all sol/techs get minor suit handling, minor surveyor later. Each squad now has 2 medically trained SOLDIERS (Yes my medics fight!) and 2 demolition/suit patching SOLDIERS (Yep they fight too!). After basic training, and with the development of heavy duty suits (in my case, after Light Battle Armour) the split occurs into Heavy and Light teams.

 

Heavy Team

 

This team is designed to take on the Beastmen on their own terms, they are close formation line fighters. Think Colonial Marines from Alien II. They can give some of the most intense Combats in the game.

 

Dressed in Heavy duty armour they absorb rather than avoid damage, whilst maximising firepower through proximity, rather than accuracy. Early armament is shotguns for the frontline, and hand (defence) grenades with projectile pistols for the back up guys. Although this load out will surprise some players, when used properly, it can take out most mid-game beastmen bases, though warp-canons at zero range can give you a one/two shot drop on rollers, which saves a LOT of shotgun shells. Obviously GL's give greater range, Kats and Gats are nice, and later become a neccesity, but as long as you can throw further than the effective range of your shotguns (Physical ability), and you control your enemy/combat zone so that he forms nice tight groups, the extra 7 grenades are far more useful than the launcher. The pistols are for a quick swap to drop the barely conscious "grey-liners" that dont justify the time for another shotgun blast, or to finish-off the almost deads, without wasting shotgun ammo or time.

 

Heavy team's primary role is BM base assault, but out of necessity "protected forces" is a secondary role, and you must be able to defend your territory in periods of high solar activity, especially in the high elevation areas to the West. Which means you've got to be able to face down not just the rampant BM's in that area but also the Expedition Rets too. On these defence missions the danger is getting caught in confined spaces (gantries) and being overun due to the lack of mobilty to react to, and reinforce, strong attacks from different flanks. The best solution here is don't try to defend a perimeter. On defence missions, the enemy's mission is still "kill all units" and you are strongest when grouped together.... go hunting. Use a skirmish-line or arrow-head formation to contact. Contain and suppress using GL's and RL's, split, out-flank and close for final assault.

 

Because the contact ranges will be longer, GL's are much more useful here, RL's with heavy suits are difficult to justify for space reasons, but carry one in the UFO, as some maps are perfect for stand off artillery. One rifle per team, just to attract the enemies attention, but again mainly shotguns and GL's, particularly if it's a Ret mission.

 

BTW Rets are far too easy....damage the first few and the rest start healing, but their load out fills their suit spaces so to change from an 8 space Psi weapon to a 4 space heal crystal, they have to put the psi weapon on the floor, and items are not subject to line of sight. This nulifies their greatest strength of reduced detection range, and all you have to do now is pop a grenade on any psi-weopon or RL you see, thus creating more casualities, and the appearance of more items. Is item LOS visibility hardcoded or can it be modded out? Personally I'd love to see a patch from Altar fixing this, as it would improve the game challenge immensely.

 

Core Skills for all team members are;-

Major suit wearing. Obviously

Minor stability. Knock downs at close range can be fatal. I believe it also affects accuracy when standing. Confirm?

Minor Ambidex. At close range reload/equip/swap times can be crucial, especially for shotguns, heavy weapons and GL's.

Minor Heavy-weapons. You're going to need to pack a punch, whether it's Warp's, Laser-cannons or Gatlings's, eventually all your squad will be carrying heavy weapons, and even GL's use mechanical mode. Major hvywpns can give GL's 100% hit accuracy for the increased chance of knock-downs.

Minor/Major BM Anatomy. I never used to take this, but I've recently started playing PetteriB's Alien Assault mod and where I was once facing 9 BM soldiers, I'm now facing 25..... I'm starting to appreciate it's significance.

 

Useful Skills for all members;-

Major stability. On the basis that they will start throwing grenades at you, and the damage reduction is useful

Minor/Major cover. Even these guys use cover to get close and fighting this close to the enemy and each other will cause friendly fire, and no one can take the 1600+ damage from a warp canon critical.

Major Heavyweapons. To speed aim time and accuracy. Later to reduce Emcumberance.

Minor/Major skirmisher. You will after all be very close to the enemy. Can someone mod me a patch where I can put a dagger in the under barrel mount of a rifle/shotgun? I love the thought of a bayonet charge with these guys, and it would be so useful in the early game where reload or equip times can be huge.

 

Skills for individual members:-

Due to the nature of their combat style, every member must be capable of standing in the Line, generally rotating 2 firing whilst 1 reloads, so, skill wise, there is very little variance between each individual member. The only Skill that stands out here is Leadership. Each 3 man team gets an NCO (Minor leadership) for the movement bonus, and the floater is the Officer (Major Leadership) for when (and if) your planning on significant Expedition missions.

 

Core Skills:-

I find that because the skills are so cross-tied with the 5 attributes, it's difficult to actually have specialist skills. I'd love to have the "Big lumbering Meatshield" or the "Nimble minx" but, I find the reality is that the Meatshield ends up half a map behind everyone else, and the Nimble Minx is dead, coz she's only got 150hp's and was planning on dodging behind the Meatshield. It seems that well-rounded characters survive better than specialists. There are however priority skills and these can be defined based on combat tactic.

For the Heavy team, Constitution stands out, as does Physical and Mechanical. However Aiming, Snapshot, Dodge and Speed can all be extremely useful.

Also never underestimate Scouting, as the ability to see your enemy before he sees you, allows you to better control your combats and this will save you an awful lot of Hitpoints in the long run.

 

My personal line-up for Heavy team is this:-

Team 1, Diego, Oliver (NCO), Gene.

Team 2, Harald, Mark (NCO), Vera.

Floater, Samantha (Officer)..... She's just too bossy to not be in charge.

For Vanilla this fits well with initial skills, and also maximises the "friend threatened" function.(though I find it's too short duration to be any real use!)

 

OK...on to....

 

Light Team

 

These guys are the "thinking mans" infantry, your special forces. Surgical in nature, they are the sword rather than the mace, and to play them successfully, it requires a high level of personal tactical ability. Although initially they start off quite slow and weak, they will eventually be your most experienced and useful squad, and personal preferance, I find they're more fun to play and have far more utility than Heavy Squad.

 

They definately start off as the 'B team" doing robot missions, and the occasional BM pipeline, when heavy team is down for healing. Later, they can do the Low hostility BM defences, but because heavy team aggressively attacks BM territories, there aren't many of these. Early game, it's things like Cydonia, excavations and territory expansion that form the basis of their experience. Though if you choose to expand East or North, the hostility is lower there, so options for experience are increased. These guys come into their own with the advent of the first Ret war, and the minimum criteria I have for this is Metals 3, Noble Metals 1, Crystals 1, Advanced Firearms, Rocket Weapons, and Domes (for 2 workshops). This gives Shotguns, GL's, RL's, Sniper with scope, and the ability to produce continous amounts of Shotguns shells and Defence grenades. I personally believe that your ability to do war shouldn't be limited by supply. The hardest part is getting the experience to be effective in the limited time available. Genarally around Level 10/11, My target time is the ending of the second high solar activity period, about 1 week after the Expedition turns up.

 

Because this team is more fluid and multi-role than heavy team, it's difficult to give them a basic Load-out, very often it's target, mission and map specific. It also changes drastically with technology so to avoid waffling, and leave some mystery, I'm only going to consider the time upto and including the first Ret war, the greys to the South that is.

 

This gives Light Battle armour and a basic issue of 2 grenades and whatever medical or technical devices their class requires. Everything else gets thrown into the ufo boot and is chosen when you see the shape of the map you'll be fighting on. Is there a way to tie a specific map to a specific location? As it seems strange to fight 3 successive mine defence missions at the same location, on 3 wildly varying maps, where even the method of mining is clearly different. As a basic UFO fit out against Ret's, I use 4 rifles, 4 shotguns, 3 GL's, 2 RL's, 2 Sniper, 4 Pistols. Fill with grenades/ammo/medikits/mine dismantling kits to about 90%, as this gives space to allow you to capture Ret contact mines, which are highly useful for your Heavy team. The awkard part here is that you have to make sure that 2 people don't select the same rifle or ammo pack. Check that what you've selected has been picked up, and that nothing has been left on the ground, as it could be really embarassing, and possibly fatal later.

Rather than equipment carried, what's actually more important here is tactical deployment, as this is dictated by battle plan, based on map type, which affects what equipment you carry. As stated previously, this squad is much more fluid when it comes to deployment options, and each individual should be tailored to allow more specialised (but duplicated) roles, without losing tactical utility.

 

The 3 basic deployments I use are:-

 

1) Contact. Pretty much the same as Heavy Team, using skirmish line, and carrying rifles, shotguns, dual pistols and GL's. Used for most Ret villiages.

2) Stand-off. Uses 2 forward scouts for sniper spotting and calling in fire missions, this can take down the bulk of enemy forces without risking high casualty rates. Good for BM defenses, and multiple missions from one UFO trip.

3) Stealth. Similar to Stand-off, but uses 3 forward scouts, whilst the reserves quietly secure your exit route and stand ready to supprt should the forward guys get bumped. used primarily for night Ops on the more surgical missions like destroy object. If your using PettoriB's Advanced missions mod, it's great for Steal object missions and identifying your assassination target's location before he escapes.

 

Because skills are a lot more customised in this team, I'll do line up before skills so that you can see the reason for some of the skill choices I make. Each function is listed respective of the above deployments, and I think most people can work out individual skills from here.

 

Team 1

Claude;- Soldier/melee, Sniper, Sniper/melee.

Benat (officer);- Soldier, Hvy Wpns, Hvy wpns/Mine layer/clearance.

Tad (dual wield);- Soldier/medic, Scout/Medic, Stealth scout/Medic

 

Team 2

Pierre;- Soldier/melee, Sniper, Sniper/melee.

Hikaru (officer);- Soldier/medic, Hvy Wpns, Hvy Wpns/Medic.

Pauline (dual wield);- Soldier/tech, Scout/Tech, Stealth scout/Mine layer/clearance.

 

Floater

Ute (officer);- Floater, Sniper, Stealth Scout

 

Note 3 people have Major leadership, which is quite a high proportion, but you will be fighting Rets, and this gives Psi protection to all members with each deployment. Also Mine detection and clearance is important for the scouts on the way in, as this clears an escape route should you need to bug out.

 

Core Skills for all team members are:-

 

Minor/Major Athletics. Speed and Mobilty are the key, you simply don't have the armour to stand and fight a protracted battle.

Minor cover. Large rocks and tractors are your friend.

Minor Stabilty. Knock downs are annoying, embarassing and can be fatal. Although grenades can be out-run, at higher levels they seem to happen from projectile weapons with annoying frequency, and this one may just save your characters life.

 

Useful Skills for all members;-

 

Minor Ambidex. Less so for snipers, Yes for Hvy Wpns, Requirement for Dual Wield.

Major toughness. Useful for staying on your feet when criticaled, and almost a requirement for your scouts.

Minor/Major Stalking. This one is real useful, but doesn't come early enough IMO. It should be a requirement for scouts, and by late-mid game all your guys should have at least one level in it.

Reticulan Anatomy. Don't bother, it's 2 skillpoints and 2 days spent studying the effects of a well placed grenade on Reticulan Physiology. Ute has it, and when asked to comment on course content replies "NONSENSE!!". Her friend and fellow Ret Vet sums it up quite simply "Rets?... BANG! BANG!"

 

That's basically it. It's a build Strat rather than a tactical guide, on that issue take Blue Blood's advice and read up on modern military tactics, it's what the game has been designed around. Control your combats, Concentrate your firepower, open up the angles and close. I read somewhere someone complaining about how Afterlight favours short range weapons. Most modern assault rifles have an effective range of 300m, a section effective range of 600m, but the reality is, most infantry engagements take place at 50m or less, don't be afraid to close, just make sure you have a couple of grenades and at least one other member backing you up.

 

Oh and have fun!!!

 

Good Luck

[Space Voyager]

This post alone could count as a tactical walkthrough... Nice.