It's me, or it's totally impossible?!?!?

[Istarion]

Well I just started playing UFO : AL some days ago, and I have the stupid idea of playing in hard difficulty (level 3/4).

I'm getting veery annoyed with this; after playing two or three days, and a little later than finding the beastmen, I'm just getting almost stuck, or at least It's too difficult for me.

 

I lost a lot of territories since I'm nearly unable to finish missions. I can only lie down with the soldiers, and wait for little tricks to get the missions done. And then almost all my soldiers have the suits broken (the first armored ones), and his life near death. Moreover, I fire with "sustained" fire my weapons, and this leaves me making all the time ammo cartridges in the production screen. And since my soldiers need healing, I must wait some times before fighting again.

 

My weapons are that projectile ones, and some grenade launchers, since they can stun the enemies. Yesterday arrived the "cargo from some site from some old friends". But these weapons doesn't help me much, they're slooow.

It's just that I'm bad, or what?!?

What do yoy recommend me??

Thanks for all in advance.

[Kret]

- Have you developed the Heavy Duty suit yet? It's a complex level research and requires major suit wearing, but it's a lifesaver early on.

- Have you allied with the reticulans? If so, have you traded some of your items for the psionic items? A reticulan with a psionic weapon can give great support from behind obstacles even if it's only doing stun damage.

- Have you researched medicine? It unlocks the minor toughness training for soldiers which effectively doubles the HP they have and I consider it a must-have.

- Even if you have the Heavy Duty suits don't become overconfident in them, keep using cover to minimize hits.

- Never let them outnumber or outflack the squad, find spots that forces them to squeeze a few troops (inside structures) and watch your back.

- Try to take high ground ASAP when possible.

- If you find one of your troops taking too much heat, you should consider falling back to a better postion. You might wan't to place a dynamite charge while falling back, they're cheap, deal a lot of damage and the 15 second delay allows for the pursuing BM to be quite near it when it detonates, but make sure you're far away or behind good cover tho.

[Istarion]

Thx for the reply!

Well, I can't do Heavy Suit because I haven't enough metal

[Kret]

When breaking alliance you must proceed to attack a territory owned by that faction, all resource trades will be cut (fuel, mineral, chemical, etc) but items that have been exchanged will be kept.

 

I train them in minor atheletics, but I use this more when using light/medium suits vs drones/reticulans as you can't run in heavy suits which I use for BM. In your case tho, running should help with dodging incoming BM grenades.

 

Chiefs? They are quite nasty, not only do they have much more HP than a regular BM but they're usually equiped with really good weapons. I try to deal with their support first, they're hard enough without other BM around. Exceptions to this rule is if you've brought a rocket launcher to the mission or a warp cannon. While slow the 1st one will manage to knock down the chief and those that were too close to it and the 2nd one tends to one-shot knock-out the chiefs.

 

Alchemists and Shamans are both hard to spot and even harder to hit than regular BM, but grenades will knock them down without much problem. You could also rush the Alchemists with Buzzsaws, but make sure they're alone. A way to prevent bombardment from Alchemists is to check if you have a platform above you, if so, you will ruin the grenades arch and they won't fire at you. BTW, BM grenades will have a hard time knocking your troops down if you're in Heavy Armor, so you should try getting the lvl 3 metals you need (4 units).

 

BTW, since you're having trouble with ammo and weapons you should try to focus in unlocking the BM weapons. If you haven't already, do a capture mission and hope the target is a soldier, retreat if it's something else or complete it if you think you can handle them. Do the alien biology research to unlock the pathology building, do the BM autopsy to unlock the BM anatomy training for the soldier (extra damage and critical hits) then continue with the interrogation facility research and build it and finally interrogate the beast. I defenetly hope you have some of this already to cut down in time and also hope you have the required resources for them.

[Istarion]

Now the game is a little crazy, what does the yellow mines mean? I have 5 metal territories, but only 2 for me O_o I traded only 1 territory with reticulans...

Those canons are great!! I finished the mission I won yesterday but without cheats A little save&load was involved , but at least I haven't used any cheat.

 

And those Shamans... what do they do?!? they die relatively fast, and get close to the troops, so I really like facing this enemy, as you said a grenade will make them jump.

 

Now I will try to unlock beastman weapons and see what they can do. I have that training because I have researched beastman autopsy. I'll train my soldiers with it (yes I have a lot of points to spend in trainings

[Kret]

Basically, the yellow filled resources will give you double the input than a grey(?) one when you build the mine.

 

Reticulans have very little HP and most hits will knock them down, but they can revive eachother quickly with their psionic healing devices so finish them off once they're down. Grenades work wonders with them, specially if they're tightly packed. Beware of their psionic attacks and their rocket launcher support. In heavy suits the explosive rockets will do little damage, but in light/medium suits they will knock your troops down. Oh, and when you see a slow moving WHITE rocket, get the hell out of there ASAP. You reallly don't want to be caught nearby when that goes off.

[Istarion]

Well, I attacked the reticulans, well I nearly humiliated them xD, a grenade makes them fly! so imagine what could happen if you throw 3... the pitty is that I've lost my own alien called Tabbie... it wasn't strong, nor good firing, he almost always ended the missions stunned, but he was one more in my team :S and he worked great as a healer xD

 

Who would you choose, reticulans or expedition?? to be logic, I would kill all reticulans, they attacked the humans, and expedition are the "good ones", but if they're gonna try to kill me later, I would continue with my treaty with reticulans...

Thx for the tips,

[Kret]

Well, since you've already attacked the Reticulan Rebels you might just as well keep your peace/alliance with the expedition. As the dialog went, you'll be needing all the firepower you can get vs the BM.

 

Remember that reticulans aren't really front row soldiers, even worms show up with more HP than them. Always keep them hidden or at least behind your troops. Don't let them get hit by explosives, as you've seen for yourself, they drop like flies when hit by explosives. I like to focus my soldier reticulans in scouting as their psi-vision is great, particulary at night when you have no techs to make night-visors. Note that at least 2 of the types of BM are almost undetectable via psi-vision tho.

 

And no, buildings have no maintenance whatsoever, you just need to meet the building requirements to start construction and that's it.

[Istarion]

Well, I played a little more, and I improved a lot!! It's not as difficult as it seems (well, it's difficult but not so much). You suffer a little when the beastman improves, and you can lose a lot of territories; but after a while, if you get that great "heavy suit", and train thougness, your soldiers become very unkillable

 

And more about, the "weapons that some old ally gives you" work great! There are better than I though!

 

Just patience, and organize your troops, don't make run as mads through the enemy lines; cover them, and try to defend from only one direction, your burst fires will catch them down And support the soldiers with some grenades, they work great!

 

Thanks for all! I will post new comments about my progress

[Space Voyager]

A little save&load was involved , but at least I haven't used any cheat.

A little? And don't be embarrassed. The game simply doesn't allow playing without the saving and loading. Even on easy... Ever since I found that out I have a hard time getting back to play the otherwise great game.

[Istarion]

Yeah I agree XD, but since I've got the heavy suits, well, missions are a lot easier! I only use save&load when a soldier dies, and this only happens when they are unconscious with an enemy near them, or the missions where the number of tough enemies is huge and they come from every position around your soldiers...

But now grenades aren't that great, they just work on specific enemies :S just research advanced weapons, and improve the "standard rifles", as they will be better than beastman ones

I must admit, however, that the difficulty level of this game is not well made, it just jumps from baby-easy missions, to nearly-impossible ones at start, and when you are better, you can do a mission in 2min, or in 2hours O_o, that's not fair... well at least the game is quite funny

[Yanlin]

Shameless advertisement:

 

you might want to consider using a mod that makes the game more fun and those pesky addons more viable.

i'm not gonna say more then: look down!

[Preda]

Friggin' Hell! This game is beyond elaborate! I was reading through the posts and I say it's INSANE! The level of complexity seems quite awe-inspiring here. I have yet to decide wether that's bad or good, tho'.

[Yanlin]

really? i find it extremly simple. or were you just sarcastic?

 

here's the key to winning: don't postone missions! the excavation sites are IMPORTANT missions down the read and you'd want to be facing helpless crawling drones in them and not spider bots!

 

oh and btw. you sig is false advertisement. i've seen better. i just can't remember where.

[MoonDragn]

I am playing the game on normal difficulty and it still wasn't that easy. I had to bump and scrape every step of the way so far on my first try. Most of my soldiers have lived through every battle except for the little reticulan named tabby that got wiped on my first encounter with a BM Chief.

 

I think my problem was not researching any of the weapon trees early on. I had only the stock weapons and what I traded with the reticulans. As a result, I ran out of ammo during one point of the game and had to use the scientific laser for a few battles til I could research the projectile weapons.

 

Right now my guys are still rocked by the alchemists every time they show up, chiefs and captains are still tough but at least I have the warp cannon to slow them down. However, theres no mission where I don't come out with at least one unconcious soldier.

 

It would help if I could build a shooting range but because of shortages, I can't build anything. I have a rather large territory but too much fuel and metal and not enough of anything else. How do I get more energy?

 

Every day I get invaded by the BM and I lost one territory so far, an important chemical mine that further messed up my supplies. I only have 2 mines. The threat level of the taken over territory is 7 day 8 night so the chance of taking it back over with my pathetic force is slim to none.

 

I'm just going to have to find other mines and territories til I can build up enough forces to fight them.

[MoonDragn]

Well I finally restarted over and figured out what my problem was. I let the aliens take important territories early on the last game and that proved to be my downfall. This time around I dominated the map and went out to get every single territory that was available which resulted in my technology to be on pace. Still missing a few key technologies but I own most of the world right now.

 

I absolutely steamrolled the rebel Reticulans after the expedition showed up. They are pushovers for my team, I have two guys in a heavy suit that shrugs off their rocket attacks and even my scout gets up after being knocked unconcious by the rockets and kills a few more of them. In fact she's my best soldier right now. Armed with two projectile pistols, she racks up most of the kills in every fight. She even managed to go one on one with a matriach and took down 1/2 of its health before getting rocked. Back to the reticulans, they have a hard time controlling my team cause I have two soldiers with Major Leadership. They usually go down in one hit by our soldiers and I don't even bother to use grenades or explosives on them.

 

Beastmen are still a problem but now only when I'm overwelmed by a whole mass of those grenade chucking guys. The warp cannons takes out the captains and the chiefs nicely given me a chance to win. Now that I'm fighting reticulans I have no shortage of ammo for my reticulan rifles/rocket launchers either.

 

Overall the game was just so much better this time around. Now I need to go train all my workshop people cause its taking way too long to build anything.

[Space Voyager]

That's good to hear! I'll start anew as well when I get the time.

[MoonDragn]

Last night the Martians showed up, and in the first try in fighting them, one martian took down half of my team. I had to restart over after I figured out that those guys resist lasers and projectiles. I loaded up all of my guys with rockets and dropped them off by my reticulan soldier. He just kept firing rocket after rocket at the martians and took them all out. Was alot of fun.

 

I'm still waiting for my heavy armor to be produced so some of my guys can wear it. The medium armor is almost finished research too and pretty soon my guys will actually be able to withstand more hits without having to rely on heavy artillery and fast scouts with pistols.

 

Its a shame there was no tanks in this game and I haven't made a single mech yet to see how tough they can be.