Assistance required

[niord]

Hi all

 

I'm having a bit of a problem. I'm playing x-com becasue I had it many years ago, really liked it, and was never able to finish it. I'm not enjoying playing it, at all now but want to finish it. I'm having the problem that corporations frequently get taken over by aliens when I put the speed up becuase I skipped a few alien incidents (I'm totally bored of them and have captured all aliens). How can I stop corporations from going over to the aliens? The incidences of alien ground incursions are way too frequent, grindingly so. Any way to reduce them? I skipped a few and now corporations are going over to the aliens meaning my base will be invaded.

 

Are there any ways to make the cheats work with the windows version? I just want to get through this game. Holding alt and typing the cheats doesn't seem to do anything.

 

Thanks in advance.

[Bomb Bloke]

Ever notice that UFOs will, on occasion, hover over a building and beam stuff? When they do that, you can be sure that sending in the ground team is in order (don't expect to be given an alert every time an alien shows up - it doesn't always happen). Shoot the UFOs down before they can drop their payloads if you wish to skip the missions.

 

Furthermore, shoot down every vehicle in the cityscape that belongs to an alien-friendly organisation. These are also used to take over other companies.

[NKF]

If you hit the mission site immediately after the UFOs have beamed into the buildings, you can cut down the mass infiltration levels considerably.

 

To cut down on the ground missions, concentrate on shooting down all the transports (not just the type-3, but all ships that drop enemies) as they enter the city (ignore their escorts - they only guard the transports). During the battle pause often so that you can keep an eye on the transports that you cannot cover. Take special note of where they beam down their troops. Send a ground team to those buildings immediately and investigate.

 

After you've cleared the main sites, you still need to keep an eye on the surrounding buildings as some aliens will have spread to them. Leave a hoverbike or some expendable ship at the main site to mark the site. After that, let time run on for a few hours and go to your infiltration graphs and update it to list the top-10 levels of infiltration. Note which ones are highest. Go back to the cityscape, go to the top-down view of the city, select the organization tab and highlight the icon of the organization you want to investigate. This will put boxes around all their buildings. Send your ground team to the buildings nearest the previous drop-site and investigate. The enemies should be considerably smaller in numbers.

 

After you've cleared all the top sites, repeat this process for a few hours until the raise in infiltration starts to slow down or even drop down. Once this is done, you've cleared the city and can relax for the rest fo the day. Perhaps even the next few days if the random incident generator doesn't throw another alien incursion.

 

To get rid of this entire hassle forever, start researching and building hybrid aircraft as quickly as you can. Build a small fleet of Retaliators or even Annihilators if you've got the patience. Arm them with a minimum kit consisting of shields and (lots of) medium disrupters. and then launch an all-out raid against all the UFOs in the alien dimension. Destroy them completely.

 

For the rest of the week, you will get no more UFO apperances in the city, and will only have to deal with organizations that attack your bases. You are also forced to watch the the gang flyer attacks.

 

Remember to send your fleet back into the alien dimension on Sunday nights, near midnight. Once you end the day, some UFOs will respawn. Generally a mothership, battleship, a bomber and an escort. This will stop after you've destroyed their control center building.

 

Once you've set up this routine, the aliens will never enter Mega Primus ever again unless you let them.

 

- NKF

[niord]

Thanks guys. The importance of not allowing aliens to land stuff and that hostile organisations can do that are the lessons I have learned. However, I have no current solution to my problem which is that every time I hit fast forward, a flurry of companies go over to the aliens. I can't have this or ill have base invasions (fights I can't skip). I have sent agents to investigate the companies (having reloaded so they haven't turned yet) and I get a message saying the agents can't find any aliens and the company doesn't like me in consequence. How can I stop these companies from crossing over to the aliens, the situation being what it is? I'm not getting much UFO activity at the moment, very little at all so what is causing the problem? I don't think anything is landing troops I just think I'm being punished for skipping alerts previously.

 

Thanks in advance.

[NKF]

That's indeed the consequence of letting them spread out of control. That's why I frequently advise players to attack the infestation at the source and to never ever rely on the sighting reports beyond the first one the game throws at you. Handy things on account of the area marker, but they always appear during the advanced stages of the infiltration to not make it practical to wait that long.

 

What are your infiltration levels, roughly, at this point? Have any of the graph lines gone past the 50% mark? If they're under this and not climbing too sharply, you might just have a chance.

 

Do you recall where the aliens were beamed down? You'll want to concentrate your searches around these buildings and all those that are nearby. Don't forget that adjacent buildings can also infect buildings adjacent to them, so don't be surprised if the source of the infiltration is two, or even three blocks away.

 

By the way, base attacks are just another event on the daily random event generator, which is how the UFO incursions appear. If you get a base attack and don't feel like dealing with it, if you have a save earlier in the day, you can reload it and something else may happen (or may not - which, funnily enough, is also an event that can happen).

 

If you do have to face the base attacks, it's actually easy enough to set up bases that are require no effort on your part to defend if you spread your operation out a bit so that your bases are smaller (in operational modules) and then litter the access points with plasma defence stations. Also only having one repair bay to cover the entire city cuts down the number of entry points in your smaller bases. With enough plasma modules, even though only 12 guns will be operational at any given time (in real-time only, they don't work at all in turn based) , they can easily reduce any invasion force or even eliminate them outright.

 

- NKF

[j'ordos]

It's also possible the Aliens performed a 'Micronoid rain' mission, where instead of a white tube blue sparks appear. These can cause an organisation to join the aliens regardless of any physical presence.

[niord]

Thanks guys.

 

Thanks to your advice I'm in much better shape and am in a postition to take the fight to the aliens. However I'm getting crashes when I try to do ground missions in alien buildings saying the game can't read the drive. Have any other people had this problem?

[ochre24]

What are your infiltration levels, roughly, at this point? Have any of the graph lines gone past the 50% mark? If they're under this and not climbing too sharply, you might just have a chance.

 

Related question - in my current game, Diablo is at 83% infiltration. Is there any way to get that number down?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

ochre24

[NKF]

Not sure of your odds of saving them from infiltration, but the only things you can do is to hit their buildings and clear out the infestation. Fast.

 

Do you remember the location of the last few places the UFOs dropped troops into? You'll want to investigate Diablo buildings closest to these sites. (Use the overhead map and select the Diablo icon in the organization's tab to highlight their buildings)

 

- NKF

[localhosed]

I find that shooting down ufos as fast as possible, any ones that can transfer troops, helps keep the need for tactical missions down a little.

I think someone gave me this tip from the internet, if you haven't tried it - you can park vehicles in any buildings close to the dimension points where aliens come through. (send to building button) Ground vehicles can be a lot more effective that way especially with j'ordos' Roadwar mod. It helps air vehicles too, they'll be able to attack almost immediately.

But it doesn't always work, the points that aliens come through can change position, and I have been too lazy to determine in what circumstances and how often that happens.

[Kret]

Every time I played, they changed the moment a new incursion started, but they would still be near the previous position of the portal so the strategy still works. I usually send a number of vehicles that maches the number of air ports each building has available.

 

I should try that roadwar mod, it was a huge letdown to see those tanks getting blasted just because the road was gone.

[NKF]

True, shooting down the transports quick is definitely a good way to keep the infiltration numbers down - since no infiltration is caused to begin with. But it has its fair share of problems too.

 

As pointed out, the gates shift. So you have to either split the forces up 3 ways and move them about the city regularly as the gates move, and re-park them one per launch tube. Or you spread your forces thin but have them scattered all around the city so that you can counter every eventuality. One is tedious (and you can't use save/reload to assist - it rerolls the daily random events each time you reload), the other doesn't always work depending on what nearby forces you can muster at short notice.

 

The other is whether you can shoot the transports down fast enough (more ships, better firepower, etc) and then there's damage to the city.

 

I think early on it's a lot more practical to attempt a bit of both - shoot down what you can, but do not over exert your air forces too much. Clear out the few ground sites as quickly as best you can.

 

Later on, once you have some good tech like the medium disrupters and some shields, you can start shooting down UFOs and be more selective when you let them drop aliens.

 

With interdimensional aircraft, you can go right to the source and wipe out the UFOs in their home dimension and never -ever have to worry about alien attacks in Mega Primus again. That is, as long as you destroy them regularly each week, or destroy their command center. Then it gets boring.

 

- NKF