Downing large subs early in the game

[Cazbol]

It's april 2040 in my game, and the aliens just sent a fleet of subs into the North Atlantic, where I have 3 subs, each with 2 D.U.P. launchers. I sent one Barracuda after a large sub. In a careful attack it fired all 6 torpedoes with close to 100% hit rate but the large sub did not go down. Meanwhile the other two Barracudas engaged another large sub. Their careful attacks also hit with almost all torpedoes, i.e. 12 torpedoes with almost as many hits. The large sub just sailed on as if it got slapped with a herring.

 

What does one have to do to sink those large suckers? I'd rather not have to do an agressive attack since the first time I tried it I lost a Barracuda and got a major score penalty.

 

Cazbol

[NKF]

Yes, they are real buggers to shoot down. Sadly, DUP torps aren't going to be of much use against the larger ships.

 

What you need is a sonic oscillator, fast. Concetrate all your researchers on getting the three sonic guns and their clips done as quickly as you can.

 

In the meantime, there's nothing much you can do except engage the large ships on the ground, er, seabed. You could even send in a lot more barracudas, but your best bet is still to get an oscillator.

 

Watch out for the dreadnaught (you'll recognise it immediately).

 

- NKF

[PHOENIX]

Stupid battle crusiers... They take all the fun away from everything! But yeah, sonic oscullars will work, however, sometimes you may need another baricuda there with ya, and have both attack it the same time. And not even that will work at times... But for now, concentrate on getting the sonic weapons done and go after the small alien ships. They're much easier to kill. Happy Hunting!

[Sgt. Strike]

Anyone know how many barracudas, or mantas, it takes to down a Dreadnought? I ran into them, but since I have kind of restarted the game, or at least have gone back to research stuff better.

[NKF]

TFTD's Dreadnaught == UFO's Battleship. They almost look the same too.

 

A couple of Leviathans with dual sonic oscillators generally work quite well. A few Hammerheads are also quite reasonable, as they can withstand more blasts than the Barracuda or Manta can.

 

Consider the PWT torpedo launchers too.

 

Manta's aren't recommended unless used in packs, so that shots are evenly distributed among them.

 

Barracudas cannot even withstand one shot from the Dreadnaught's cannon. So if you do want to send them in, make sure they're not the first ship to open fire.

 

- NKF

[jrink]

Sometimes early in the games it's possible to follow the large ships around with a barracuda and your triton without attacking it, and waiting for it to land instead, then landing the triton over the top of it and having your fun blasting aliens.

 

Otherwise it's usually a whole lot of reloads.

[Sgt. Strike]

If you do use 'Cudas, consider using all that you can. Have them come from two different bases, as well. I think I might do something different, myself. NKF, have you tried making a base with three interceptors and no Triton or other type of carrier, and have a few soldiers there to defend the base? Let me know if that might work. I'd like to be able to run one base that is research, and have defenses, and about ten soldiers, along with some coelath, or even displacers, preferably sonics, and an alien containment. One with the above, except in place of labs, workshops. And the rest interceptors bases, except for one other, that's where it has three tritons, or even Leviathins. All would have alien containment, as well. Think that may work?

[NKF]

You're proposing a sort of interception base right? Well, they're feasable. Very economic too (if you just use one interceptor per base). I build them all the time.

 

For me, the satelite bases are usually a small base with all the necessary bits to maintain a small squad of heavily armed defenders, a good radar or two, and at least one interceptor. I don't bother with the defense guns though. Never do these days. See, once they locate your base, they'll not stop attacking it until at least one ship manages to deploy its troops into the base.

 

Although I wouldn't mind a Mind Shield/MC Generator, but I never get that far into the game before starting a new campaign these days.

 

Now, these bases are for single interceptors. I took the idea a little further and started a campaign where the primary base only has one hangar for the troop transport.

 

Almost on top of the base is another one which houses three interceptors and a huge supply of troops. This base acts as a decoy for the primary base, an interception base and as a buffer to store soldiers. See, transferred soldiers get there a lot faster than if you've just hired them. You also get a chance to screen them with a psi-lab/MC-lab before sending them off into combat.

 

So far so good. Works quite nicely. The primary base becomes smaller and easier to defend with experienced troops, and the interceptor base, while large, has a whole army of rookies to defend it. The only downside is that I lose one base slot.

 

I'd recommend that your research facility be centred in the base where your primary assault team is located. That way it can get access to any new tech as soon as it become available. I like to decentralise my workshops to make the main base even smaller.

 

Oh, and by the way here's something interesting I noticed about HWP/SWS's in relation to defending a base.

 

You only need ammunition (for those that take ammunition) when you send the tanks out to attack something. When your base is attacked, they get a free load of ammo. Amazing...

 

- NKF

[Sgt. Strike]

I knew you may some answers, NKF. Anyway, right now, I have all my bases as interceptor/troop bases, with the first two as research/workshop. One is the research, the other is the workshops, and all support personnel. I'm a little far into the campaign to change everything, but I may decide to change for the next go around. What I may end up doing is having one base that doesn't have any outward defences, one hanger, for transport, and the rest of the space divided up between living space, stores, ac, and labs. As well as the MC-labs. This way, it won't be used as a fighter base, and won't be attacked. I may have a radar/sonar there to keep track of alien movements. Then I will have a second base similar to this, where I would use workshops in place of labs. Have two bases for transports, and the rest are interceptor bases. I'm still thinking on this, yet.

[NKF]

Well, that's all part of the fun. Experimenting.

 

Here's a thought:

 

While a base with only transports won't attract as much attention to itself, and this is a good thing by the way, it is still detectable.

 

See, if any of the interceptors from other bases shoot down an enemy ship near your recovery base, their retaliation scouts will start scouting the area and will eventually find it. And they don't care if your interceptors originated from that base.

 

- NKF

[Sgt. Strike]

Actually, I was thinking about putting a transport/MC-lab base, with stores, and stuff like that somewhere remote, and make sure no USO gets knocked down nearby. But use that to take out downed USO's, and bases, etc. Maybe one other hanger to have two transports, available.

[NKF]

That's a good idea actually. In UFO, my production base is in the south pole, and rarely ever gets attacked. Okay, so once I found it was right next to an alien base, but that's coincidential...

 

But yeah, that's an idea. You don't need to be near the crash site to land at it, as there's usually plenty of time to get there. Also, terror sites, artefact sites and whatnot, will always stay up as long as one of your ships continues to target it.

 

"Wait, wait, don't panic, we're on our way! No? No we have to head back, but don't worry, another ship is on its way! Just stay frosty till it's there." Repeat ad infinitum.

 

The only thing I can forsee is that you'll not be able to quickly assault UFO/USO's that have landed.

 

So perhaps a small quick-response recovery team should still be in the thick of things, but only for emergencies. Nothing special, perhaps they could use a hammerhead/lightning or maybe a leviathan/avenger if your zrbite/elerium is plentiful, so you can still perform interceptions without having to build an extra hangar.

 

- NKF

[Sgt. Strike]

That's why I'm going to have a small strike force, still, at each base, with an MC lab there as well. Gotta protect the bases, still.

[Gilesy]

It takes time and money but i try to have all my bases with at least 2 subs and 1 strong team,with Mc lab and tran resolver,and about 2 or 3 bases with research labs,also the bases with the weakest squads i do have a few sonic def, with that the aliens will never get the better of you, all you have to do is keep making your solders stronger by using MC, just line up the aliens and shoot them down,I allways have 1 or 2 very strong solders on every team in case the s**t hits the fan,

[s2firestar]

Well, these subs are wery annoying (magyarul kurrrrrr*a idegesítõek :angel: ), but a HEX editor can raise that

problem. 20:10/30 FFFFFF will add as many P.W.T. as you want. But if you don't have any, you only should

wait untill it lands somewhere... .

[Sgt. Strike]

Which file is that? I'd like to know.

[tijm6140]

How do you attack with multiple subs at once?

[NKF]

Just leave your ship in stand-off range and hit the minimise button. Let the next ship come within range and repeat the process until you have the number of ships you want. There's an upper limit of four ships per enemy vessel.

 

Finally just click on their minimised icons to bring their intercept controls back.

 

- NKF

[tftd fan]

Ahh, well, back to the topic issue...

 

Targeting large USO's is a hard thing to do, but not really impossible.

The strategy i use to apply is to engage three or four barracudas aginst the alien ship, all of them armed with DUP head torpedoes. Sometimes it works. If not, reload it. It might work.

 

In the other hand, going after a large ship early in the game can bring you lots of strategic problems, for two main reasons. First, I supose you don'[t have MC capability in this stage of the game, so get prepared for great losses in the recovery mission. Second, once striking a large ship, the aliens threat raises its operations in great path, so expect harder times.

 

My sugestion is to hit them with the DUP head torpedoes and let them land, them go to the recovery mission (probably at night).

REMEMBER, this will not avoid the consequences I wrote above, so going after them is by yr own risk.

 

Give research team time to get all tech in order to get the sonic oscillators. This is the best thing. And do not worry for the large ships, the game will not get hard on you unless you provoque it.