TFTD Multiplayer Story

[The Veteran]

Marked the 2 Survey ships as Downed but not attended. Seems they're the only ones to slip through our fingers thus far! I'm still searching for my USB/PS2 adaptor so by all means go for it NKF, good luck

 

Silencer, questions pour vous. Did the Escort and Heavy Cruiser land or get shot down? I'm going to try and keep the post above up to date so now seems the best time to ask! Also you said the 2 very small ones were destroyed right?

[silencer_pl]

Shot down and destroyed.

[NKF]

I'm amazed at how close we are to the end. With the Leviathan on hand, I've deliberately launched into the T'leth research so we'll have all the elements needed to launch the end-game.

 

Also we've got 17 highly MC resistant aquanauts, Munty, and a couple of Displacers. I think that's plenty to go and an kick over the Sleeper's coffin. The squad mainly needs a bit of fine tuning though, as most of them have rather dubious combat abilities due to their lack of experience.

 

- NKF

[silencer_pl]

I dare to say Munty could go alone.

[The Veteran]

I dare say Munty doesn't want to die in the aftermath of the mission I'd like to suggest (if we have a final squad formed now) that we givwe all of the troopers for the final attack avatar names. Will make a much better read if we feel something for everyone involved. Plus, everyone will die at the end of the game anyway so it really doesn't matter if they burn out a few turns early

 

I just found the adapter I need for the lappy so will try and fit in a mission later today. Give me a few hours and I'll let you know how I got on

 

Edit : NKF, correct me if I'm wrong but I think there must've been 2 different survey ships in your turn as Silencer ended his post with USO 76 and you encountered 5 more in your turn. That makes the survey ship and the 3 smalls you downed but also space for another one. Is it possible that the very small you destroyed was a different one? If not I don't understand where the extra one came from! I've already updated my post above with what I think must've happened, let me know what you think

[NKF]

It's possible the one that vanished near Australia really did vanish, and I picked up a second one as soon as the Barracuda arrived.

 

edit:

 

Just remembered I could reload the contents of silencer_pl's save into a separate save. So had a better look.

 

When I started my turn, I encountered Sub 77. The last Sub I played was Sub 80, as the next one to appear after my mission is 81.

 

- NKF

[MhBlis]

What I've been away for a week and no story love.

[NKF]

I'm going to go away in a weeks time for 3 weeks of overseas vacation goodness (first time in 10 years), so I'll probably knock out a series of turns over the weekend if no one has any objections. I suspect there might be a few big missions ahead too.

 

Also just realised I made a very big goof. I wanted to build a Hammerhead, but it seems I started work on a Manta instead. No matter at this point I guess!

 

That reminds me, I think Mr. Krumpet and Jade (in their present form) can be retired from combat. We've got plenty of elite aquanauts that haven't really made much of a name for themselves that we can assign forum personas.

 

- NKF

[silencer_pl]

Well that will leave me and BB for playing because Vet is currently busy playing Afterlight and probably didn't find his adapter for laptop

[The Veteran]

Well that will leave me and BB for playing because Vet is currently busy playing Afterlight and probably didn't find his adapter for laptop

 

haha you're half right I found the adapter exactly where I thought I left it but turns out there was stuff on top which I had to look underneath Anyway I booted up the lappy briefly but the screen was rather dark, not sure if it's dying or if I simply haven't used it for so long it needs some time to recharge.

 

Either way I have been rather busy with the After- series games lately but hopefully they'll all be over soon. Not enjoying this last one at all. Anyway, I'm not going to make any promises about future contributions but hopefully I'll have at least one more foray into the deep before the final sacrifice is made at T'leth!

[Bomb Bloke]

In a few days a research topic is completed though as it's redundant information, I don't get a report.

If you were to reload the game and run the clock again, odds are you would get a report the next time around. Not that it matters, just pointing it out as the bug that it is.

 

The psychological impact caused by killing these two aliens wasn't enough - the lobsterman in the balcony does a strange angle shot that kills Jeffrey. I understimated the field of view you can get from these balconies.

[NKF]

On the bright side, I've just got the monthly MC report in and we've got some good spare avatar material with scores in the 90's. Sadly tons of 1 digit to 20 scores as well.

 

Also I've been a bit preoccupied with preparing for the trip, but I've completed a series of routine cleanup missions in some rather exotic locations (cargo plane wreck and Mu ruins) and am going to cap it off with a shipping route mission. Will get the routine missions up soon and will post the shipping route mission before I leave.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

Must say the wings are a new one on me as well.

[NKF]

And there we go. My short burst of turns over. Hopefully that's progressed the game a little. Since I've decided to concentrate on my holiday and not worry about all the goings-on on the internet, video games, and some of my other pastimes like building toy robot kitsets, I'll see you all again in 10 days, give/take a day or two for jet-lag recovery.

 

- NKF

[silencer_pl]

All civilians saved - that is pretty amazing. Good job NKF and have fun on your trip

[Alienated]

The Veteran wrote:

If we have noone with armour and our best weapon is still gauss rifles it can wait but once we have aqua plastics armour and sonic weaponry why not try?!

I did my latest alien colony mission in my solo campaign without a reload. I (I mean the able seaman Solo) simply walked in among tasoths and tentaculats. If you don't make much noise (alien deathscreams), then the aliens almost ignore you somehow. You just should make your stops (end turn) at spots no alien faces including right behind a tasoth. When I originally made up my mind to play a solo game, I thought I might need a lot of stuff, dye grenades, flares, extra clips, etc., but now I have completed four colonies and four artefact sites so far, and I believe I may need nothing else but a loaded gauss rifle to shoot down an alien or two in the way rarely and destroy the alien device. Solo has only three kills and, as almost all aliens now use DPL, I don't have to kill any more to avoid reaction shots. The inside of colony is almost always without a reload. I of course have to reload some times elsewhere to get an optimal map for the walk-in (waltz-in) but I usually get the same situation for the second stage of the colony and Solo is always put on the same exit area (the closest to the command center; there are two and the other is worse because you have to cross a dangerous labyrinth to the command center). The two-stage missions take a dozen turns average. If you want to play a geoscape only game, then a solo game is better for obligation missions than a 14-sardines Triton, I mean it takes fewer reloads because it is very hard to hide and keep alive 14 aquanauts. It is like when you seek the last alien on a base, just the way around. Therefore an aquanaut in diving suit with gasuss rifle is a potential threat for alien colonies and bases. Especially colonies because you can tackle one as many times as you wish. This can be played in iron man mode too, just hide an aquanaut in the Triton in case your infiltrator gets raped by a tentaculat on the way. You always get a MIA negative score that way because of the aborts but you are still excellent in total. The latest time I got an additional eight points for four artefacts recovered (total 508) because a DPL-tasoth happened to stand on the exit area when I aborted stage one. It frightened me at the first sight and I checked my general stores whether I obtained alien stuff; you know I must not sell such because I follow a strict funding-nations income conduct. Fortunately you don't obtain items from stage one in the PSX version, only the scores. By the way, Veteran, you write "noone with armour" instead of armor, which is all right, but neither the English nor the American write noone instead of either no one or no-one except in Clint Eastwood movies.

 

Bomb Bloke wrote:

I haven't documented the relevant tiles in TFTD, though a quick check in MapView shows me that it's much the same setup. All the tiles flagged as "important" are on the upper floors where no one ever goes. I assume if you blow them all up you'll lose the module, though I haven't specifically tested it.

This brings me memories. Lately I tried to have Solo defend my base out of curiosity. I had shot down a dreadnought (among other subs) and forwarded time to see whether I might get a floating base attack. (This is a routine procedure for each alien sub downed-destroyed because I don't want to do such missions because of the conduct. If the surveyors show up few days later, then I just reload and shoot it down again. I wouldn't mind shooting down base seekers but I don't want to get a bugged FBA mission with a dreadnought every second day even if I could build missile defenses in theory.) Before I could have detected any base seeker, I got a direct base defence mission pop-up. I didn't want to reboot the PSX, so I just waited until the battlescape loaded, just to see what alien race did the colony expansion out of curiosity. I see aliens rarely in this campaign after all. And once the map had been loaded, why not play an iron man solo base defence mission just for the fun and thrills?

 

SIREN 1 (the base) looked like this:

PPPPPP

PPPPPP

XXALPP

XSGWPP

PPPPPP

PPPPPP

 

P = sub pen, X = empty, A = access lift, S = standard sonar, G = general stores, W = wide array sonar. (Veteran players quickly recognise the default base map with the workshop and laboratory removed with hangars and WAS added. By the way, currently a hangar is built in the place of standard sonar.)

 

Solo was placed on the "streets" of WAS, so I turned around to see whether aliens could see me and shoot. There was nobody so I still had the possibility to get killed before I could get a glimpse of the race. I went in the downstairs lobby of the WAS and camped. There were frequent door noises without an alien seen and as there were only four more facilities with doors at all, I had to conclude I was defending the wrong place. Therefore I moved over the general stores. I soon found the first alien in the downstairs lobby, it was a gillman. It seemed I didn't have to die anyway because I had a gauss rifle with two extra clips against those weaklings. I shot the gillguy and "began a camp" there. I shot some more aliens by both auto-shots and reaction shots. There was a squad leader among them who failed to die so I put the body under me to wake it up. Two turns later it was executed. There was also a soldier fainted by shot in the sub pen but I left it there for a while and moved toward the standard sonar because the door noises died whereas somebody kept sonic cannoning the upstairs apparatus. By the time I got there, there was only one square remained and I was wondering whether I might have a standard sonar afterwards in case I won this battle. The guy stopped vandalism and the hidden movement started to last for an annoying half an hour (some kind of bug) and I was considering rebooting the PSX. As I was already near, I kept on playing. I shot the guy just from the stairs and killed a deep one on the street too. I returned to my collection of dead bodies, especially to the faint soldier in order to excecute it with the 1 piece of ammo left in the gauss rifle before I recharged (reloaded). I took it to the camp in the general stores. Two turns later (while waiting for the soldier to wake) a gillman opened the door on me. I (Solo) opened fire but the gillman survived the one last shot from the magazine and killed me with a sonic cannon blast. If I had had a reloaded rifle, I might have got a second reaction shot to slay my killer. I knew I was winning the battle because I was already breaking their morale, I guess. Damn it!

 

The other story is several years older, in one of my first TftD campaigns. I heard a thermal shok launch and a boom in a base defense mission. I thought it was a berserker aquatoid. I also found the unconscious body on the map. However, I also noticed a dint on a drum in the laboratory where the stunned guy laid. I did not abort and load game though I smelled trouble. It turned out in the end of mission that the little brat was able to demolish my laboratory by the silly dint on the drum, for an ugly empty space was looking at me on the base map in the geoscape. I had to redo the mission from the strange shot. If my memory serves me well, I was able to reproduce this kind of demolition by my own soldiers in spite of that shok bombs are known to do no damage to objects. It seems those drums on X-COM bases are different somehow, so be on guard!

 

NKF wrote:

Far as I can remember Dreadnaughts and (as many have already experienced) Fleet Supply Cruisers have DPLs. Not sure about the Battleship, but most of the others should be DPL free.

Battleships and small subs are DPL free, the others are not. Actually you can find more DPLs on a Hunter than on any other sub.

 

NKF wrote:

Gillmen can indeed reach commander rank. They get a whopping 50 MC Skill, which is equal to the MC Skill of an Aquatoid Commander. Though not quite the equal of the Aquatoid Commander (the gillman has lower MC Strength), it's still quite a nasty alien to meet. Just glad you don't meet many Gillman commanders!

 

I guess it's because they become scarce that you don't get to see many missions with a commander present. Boat missions are the most common places I recall having run ins with them.

Two-stage terror sites just have the same alien staff per stage as normal terror sites and battleship crash sites have therefore without a commander. Only a dreadnought may carry a gillman commander. Probably you have fought too many gillman and tasoth ship terrors and made an association.

 

 

To address the whole topic, I have finally read through this and the AAR topic... BIG read, for sure. I am glad you used screenshots instead of motion picture. Addicted X-COM players know anyway what was going in the battle by seeing a few screen shots therefore a whole motion picture isn't neccessary. It is a turn based game after all.

 

I miss some screen shots about some geoscape operations. I don't recall having seen one single graphs about alien activity for example. It might have been quite informative to some of us if the commanders had posted the graph of total alien activity on seas and particular activity on seas where there was significant activity in the end of month.

 

And I guess the commanders should have posted every USO alert pop-up, just for the sake of other commanders, or at least the information about the USO in order every commander could have seen what was going on in the waters. For example The Veteran made a summary in which there is a mysterious USO interception:

GB V.Small ?? - Downed Survey Ship

An alien sub without registration number? How come... The numbers are continuous, therefore the report of the interception is false (it did not happen) or it did happen though in a different time, I mean the game was reloaded for some reason and the survey ship wasn't detected (and intercepted) in the second run. Well, I don't care much, however, I wish to know what happened exactly because I too was making a summary how many alien subs the commanders failed to detect.

 

Now I have got to the next one by this. I believe you, commanders, made significant errors in the geoscape. As you did great job in the battlescape, I am not impressed by your geoscape operations.

 

One major (hazardous) error was to shoot down alien subs in iron man mode. Early in the game you have usually a lousy standard sonar that fails to detect alien subs too often to be safe, therefore a base attack might have happened anytime during your goings and comings to crash and terror sites causing an immediate defeat. Many campaigns end this way even if they are forgotten quickly. I think it is a greater chance game than attacking a battleship with a pair of Barracuda-DUP Heads. Almost every alien sub lands except the survey ships that don't make many victory points to alien side by their short scouting tracks anyway; they just may as well be ignored and only the landed USOs should be assaulted by transports. If I took it properly, you operated with only one (1) Triton all the way? No wonder you missed so many subs. Of course the amount you intercepted was enough to push you through the monthly rating but I think this isn't something to be satisfied about. Doing fewer missions means less income, especially in the beginning. You worked with 50 scientists, you could not have had more anyway. As you got an alien colony expansion in April, you could have attacked T'leth in May already. The only reason not to do that is to wait until you obtain the vibro blade technology, and you unfortunately didn't get the opportunity, that's nobody's mistake.

 

It seems to me none of the commanders used the graph and relied only the sonar systems to catch the fish. I believe the proper thing to do in an iron man campaign in the beginning is sell the Barracudas and buy two Tritons and aquanauts. One Triton is always at the base and the others patrol the waters with alien activity. I know it is more comfortable just to forward time by the hour or day until you get an USO alert pop-up but the geoscape game isn't a card game dealing out aces to you. You don't have to pay base guards, create choke points, and build missile defences as long as you intercept landed (touched down) USOs only. Just think about it. Even if you have a garrison on your base, either an aquatoid or a gillman base attack may be a total disaster due to MC jobs of commanders and aquatoid navigators. Who the hell can tell the aquanauts' MC strength in an iron man campaign in January or February? If your MC strong men happen to get killed (about 10% of the whole garrison means one or two guys), the rest is as good as sushi.

 

Bomb Bloke wrote:

I've got no idea why, but I find the second base has no defences AT ALL.

This summarises the hazard thing quite well.

 

Other mistake was to cancel production. I believe there is a button to reduce the number of items to produce during production and there is also another to reduce the number of technicians allocated. For example you produce armour, twenty pieces and three of them is already finished, you can cut it short to reduce the number to produce to four. Another solution is, if the workshop space allows it, to leave one (1) technician allocated to the 20 pieces of armour and allocate the rest to a new project. Later you can return to the armour project. Cancelling production is burning cash always and wasting material (plastics and zrbite), too, sometimes.

 

There is a "trick" to free store space if the workshop space allows it. You start several different projects that take quite much material. For example (Q=quantity, A=technicians allocated):

					 Q  A
displacer/sonic	 3  1
displacer/launcher  2  1
mag-ion armour	 20  1
sonic oscillator	4  1
PWT launcher		8  1
PWT torpedoes	  16  1
gauss rifle		10 15
gauss rifle clip   20 14

You can see only the gauss project is active, the others are practically frozen. The commander has seen only gillman (or aquatoid) surveyors reported by the transmission resolver for the month so he started to prepare a "light infantry". He knows he is once going to need the other items listed so he used up a part of the required material in advance. There is usually some extra workshop space if you have one workshop and one living quarters on the base because the aquanauts share the place with technicians. This way the workshop can virtually function as general stores too.

 

 

I wonder whether you want to do this multiplayer game again. If so, I have some ideas. The new rules:

1. superhuman difficulty;

2. iron man mode (i.e. without time machine);

3. without M.C. disruptor and with M.C. Lab to screen your squad;

4. without the scout-sniper "tactics" (i.e. the shooter may not shoot at a target s/he can't see);

5. grenades may be thrown only at targets spotted or seen by the grenadier (this implies the aquanauts aren't linked together by a radio in conference mode);

6. DPL may be shot at any located alien by officers only (squad leaders: ensign, lieutenant, etc.) who gather reports from the scouts directly and DPL may be used by rule #5 otherwise;

7. both DPL and a grenade may also be used to test areas (this somewhat eliminates rule #5 because no one can tell if the player makes an aquanaut use a grenade to test an area or consciously kill an alien spotted or seen by another aquanaut, alas! it can't be helped);

8. you must care for the capacity of general stores and alien containment (i.e. you must sell things if you discover the contents are above the limit, tipically after battles and during production and you may not research other items than prisoners until the base keeps more than ten aliens per coop);

9. you may not exploit other glitches as well (e.g. you may not patrol-intercept with 0% fuel);

10. you may not train aquanauts (I guess there may not be opportunity anyway with these rules).

 

When Bomb Bloke started to empty jet harpoons at lobster men to train accuracy, the entire campaign has got abused in my eyes. Why not leave alone wrecks of small therefore trivial alien vessels and distribute some points to accuracy by a hex editor according to the number of not-done crash sites? It is a direct cheat somehow but, in the result, it isn't worse than training. This gives me memories of times when I kept catching lobster man supply subs at a colony and equipped lobster men with dart guns (by using M.C. disruptor) and positioned my aquanauts in mag-ion armour nearby the dart gunner but on level 1. When the lobster man on level 0 started to fire at the aquanauts out of reach, they returned fire from also dart guns (or were that gauss pistols?). Both accuracy and reactions were trained though neither then nor now I can tell why I had to do that.

 

I haven't included the next thing in the rules and here it comes: let's suppose there are six players who can exchange save files and reports through the net. There is a commander on duty who plays the geoscape operations for a month of game time. After a month the next player is drawn giving the old commander of duty a chance to repeat a month but in this case he may not be commander on duty in the next rotation unless everybody happens to be drawn to repeat (slim chance).

 

The player who plays the commander on duty has his avatar in the game, a high rank officer, he must not die. He may go to battle and risk his life though he shouldn't because he gets all scores in the month anyway. The other players do the battles and they get the scores after their battles won (or lost). Of course the commander on duty (COD from now on) plays the battle if he decides to go to battle (in the lack of troops) or the base is attacked. The COD may use the avatars of the other players as common soldiers but he may not man a craft with more than one avatar if he isn't also among them as non-CODs may not command each other. The COD may choose which player-avatar he sends to battle and with what equipment (e.g. he may send an avatar alone equipped with a dart gun against lobster men but he aren't interested to do that because he also gets the probably low score after the disastrous battle). The COD may discriminate among the avatars/players, i.e. he sends always a certain player to do all the missions in the month to give him a lot of scores but this can be turn out the wrong way as missions can be lost and as all missions in the month can be lost. Actually a player can win without doing one single battle if the others do negative total scores and he as a COD and the others do excellent work in a particular month. The winner is the one who scores the most victory points for X-COM. If the campaign fails due to defeat at T'leth or other reason, there isn't a winner.

 

All in all, the player should detect and intercept as many alien subs as can be when he is COD and he must at least stay alive in battles when he is squad leader. The COD is absolutely free to do anything (just as Bomb Bloke wrote "when it's my turn... it's my turn"). As he may possibly be COD in the next month, he should prepare the operations to the next month duly (e.g. building hangars).

 

Abnormal victory points farming is forbidden. For example you may not shoot four-unit terrorists down with shok bomb and kill them with a grenade because it scores four times more. You may not transfer items between stages in two-stage battles to duplicate scores.

 

The documentation of the campaign may very well be the same as before. Concentrate on informative reports on alien activity (alien subs detected or not with proper dates), mission casualties, eliminated aliens, and so on. It may happen the game logs unefficient or false data about these. Later we can decide what to do about contradicting data. The saved game is always passed by the COD to the squad leader in turn #1. The squad leader checks out whether his avatar is the appointed squad leader and starts (resumes) mission. This means the COD equips the squad accordingly to the aquanauts' attributes and ranks. This just makes the COD's attention firmer about equipping a craft. Actually every player can do the same mission parallelly but the official outcome is the appointed avatar's deed.

 

The COD's choice for a squad leader may be determined by the leader's playing style (if the COD wants a really good score, optimally the maximum, then he will choose a leader who does not blow up the 3/4 of the map in unneccessary caution, and if he wants a sure mission without casualties but anyway, then he will choose one who blows it up) and the presence of the players (e.g. "Are you ready right now, silencer?" "Yes I am." "Then I am sending the triton with you on board. And don't let me down. Here's the save."). If the COD does not want to spend a week/month/year in real time on the geoscape work, then he frequently enquires who is watching the topic to deal out missions fast.

 

The avatars are chosen by the promotions in the game regardless of gender, attributes, and all. The very first mission is the COD's mission, his avatar must be the promoted seaman, the first one in the row if there are many. If the entire squad is lost, then the player playing the COD loses this one so soon. If there is at least one survivor, even if it is a seaman, the player must be that until the next mission (also played by the COD in that case) when somebody is promoted. If there are two ensigns after the first mission (optimally), then the second ensign is automatically the player's avatar who plays the appointed squad leader for the next mission. It may happen that the players' avatars are M.C. weaklings. That's their own problem. It is always the squad leader who decides when to abort mission and there is only one mission that can't be aborted, T'leth. The COD may not sack the others' avatars, not even by accident. The COD in the first month should hire so many aquanauts that the promotions could give enough promoted seamen for avatars though it is not neccessary because there may be fewer missions to do than players early on. As soon as there are as many promoted aquanauts as many players, the avatars must be dealt out to players by either agreement or draw. After that a sudden death may happen to anybody. Wounded avatar may not be next COD whereas wounded COD may remain COD. COD may not command a base defense mission on other bases because he just isn't there. If other bases have no avatars (or pre-avatars) under alien attack, the COD must abort the mission even if there are a hundred seamen and fifty tanks ready to fight. Tanks may not be avatars. If an avatar is lost while transferred on a base under alien attack or on wound recovery on a base under alien attack, then he is MIA and lost this one quite soon. It may happen faint aquanauts disappear in the last turn (alien turn) of a successful mission without notice. Reload is allowed to end the battle differently to undo such casualties, especially when they are avatars. If a squad leader is under alien control, panicked, berserk, or stunned, then the player may not abort mission, and I guess he turns MIA after abort in the first case anyway. If the squad leader dies in battle, he may still command the squad but he may not pass commander info on another aquanaut (i.e. you may not use DPL based on info before the death). And he may also abort the mission just as it is to cause huge negative score to the COD as he has just undone his total scores. If the COD dies, typically in base defense, then a new COD should be installed by either agreement or draw who may receive the 50% of the monthly score even if he does either its 1% or its 99%. Therefore if several CODs die in a month, then the player who plays the new COD until the end of month (and survives the campaign) receives the 50%. Anyway, I expect all players to survive the campaign and the total scores to decide who is the winner and not the deaths. The COD decides when to end the campaign (i.e. when to assault T'leth). If he is winning by his scores and the Leviathan is ready, then he shouldn't wait until the tides turn. If he isn't winning but wants a certain player to win (who is currently winning), he still may assault T'leth but in that case he should choose the other to be squad leader. It isn't nice to go to T'leth just to fail and lose the campaign in order to prevent others to win. It just makes no sense. So, by my standard logic, the T'leth mission is going to be done by the COD himself and is not going to be delegated to a squad leader to mock it up somehow. Battles are scored to players during the month in which T'leth is done. The COD, however, gets his scores in the end of month even if he has fought battles too therefore the winning COD already has his winner scores at the start of month in which he assaults T'leth. (The month repeat comes at good time here.)

 

This competition should not be taken for an official test as anybody can cheat it easy as pie though if you win and you do it without cheat, then that may mean something to you, some kind of confidence. You can never be proud of it because no other than you can be sure of your honesty.

 

Now what about it?

[Bomb Bloke]

It turned out in the end of mission that the little brat was able to demolish my laboratory by the silly dint on the drum, for an ugly empty space was looking at me on the base map in the geoscape.

I took a look at the map, and the single table with the dead alien thing on it (made up of two tiles) is the only thingy that needs to be destroyed to take the lab out (compare this to the UFO labs, which have tons of tables). I experimented with a shok launcher but was unable to damage it that way. Putting an alien next to it and shooting the tiles with sonic weaponry caused them to explode, knocking the alien unconscious but not damaging any other structures.

 

One major (hazardous) error was to shoot down alien subs in iron man mode. Early in the game you have usually a lousy standard sonar that fails to detect alien subs too often to be safe, therefore a base attack might have happened anytime during your goings and comings to crash and terror sites causing an immediate defeat. Many campaigns end this way even if they are forgotten quickly.

It's quite true that it's more efficient not to shoot down the first few subs, as they'll usually land within Triton range (giving easy access to all sub components without any worries of the power supply units detonating). But hey... whatever the players at the time thought fun.

 

Early base attacks would've probably just made us stronger, however. We hired extra troops fairly early on, and TFTD's early "terror units" are nothing compared to UFO's Cyberdiscs.

 

The basic mindset was this: We were gonna win regardless, so efficiency wasn't the top priority (nor did we have the same ideas as to what efficient meant). As it stands, we effectively won a long, long time ago, so really all we're doing at the moment is forming X-COM into the most powerful force it can be.

 

I wonder whether you want to do this multiplayer game again. If so, I have some ideas. The new rules:

.

.

.

Now what about it?

This seems to essentially boil down to a month-by-month game, where the player who earns the most points over the course of the campaign wins? I can forsee something like that being attempted, but I'm not sure the majority of players would want to follow such a large amount of rules.

 

This gives me memories of times when I kept catching lobster man supply subs at a colony and equipped lobster men with dart guns (by using M.C. disruptor) and positioned my aquanauts in mag-ion armour nearby the dart gunner but on level 1. When the lobster man on level 0 started to fire at the aquanauts out of reach, they returned fire from also dart guns (or were that gauss pistols?). Both accuracy and reactions were trained though neither then nor now I can tell why I had to do that.

Er, the disruptor doesn't allow you to equip aliens. Perhaps you've confused those battles with a UFO campaign, as the psi-amp does grant that ability?

[Alienated]

I experimented with a shok launcher but was unable to damage it that way. Putting an alien next to it and shooting the tiles with sonic weaponry caused them to explode, knocking the alien unconscious but not damaging any other structures.

Maybe I didn't observe things properly. Maybe the PSX version is different. Maybe my memory fails me. It was years ago after all. I am unable to test it because I have not a saved campaign right now with the thermal shok launcher researched. The campaign I currently play does not even have a laboratory. And it may have happened that the shokker aquatoid just stood beside the thing, another one shot. But I will definitely test it as soon as I have a campaign with the stuff.

 

Er, the disruptor doesn't allow you to equip aliens. Perhaps you've confused those battles with a UFO campaign, as the psi-amp does grant that ability?

I strongly believe you can access alien equipment in TFTD too as you rotate combatants in the inventory menu.

[Alienated]

You are right, Bomb Bloke. I took a look at the UFOpaedia in TftD where the upper level of a facility is pictured. As I saw the inspection table or what in the laboratory, I could remember me testing whether the destruction of the table can destroy the lab as well. But the drum (with the dint) can't be seen anywhere in the lab, so it has got to be the workshops. There are two such drums or what, orange coloured, in the workshops.

 

Early base attacks would've probably just made us stronger, however. We hired extra troops fairly early on, and TFTD's early "terror units" are nothing compared to UFO's Cyberdiscs.

I read your base defense mission in the EU AAR and it seems your main problem wasn't the cyberdiscs but the psi attacks. Such base attack may have happened earlier causing the loss of the only base. Such an early attack may have happened in the multiplayer TftD game too. I agree cyberdiscs are nastier than calcinites and deep ones, but cyberdiscs can't get on the upper levels of facilities. If you keep your soldiers up there and fight the sectoids separately, a sectiod base attack can be easier than an aquatoid one. And as dangerous cyberdiscs are in the open as clumsy they can be in close combat. They can be fired at without punishment at corners and doorways because they often happen to have no line of (return) fire (they are too big). After they have been weakened that way, you can finish them by stun rods next turn(s). Of course they are still nastier than calcinites but bio-drones are even nastier.

 

As I recall, The Veteran was against additional bases asking "what's the use of them?" One use is you have reverse bases ready to resume X-COM activity without interruption in case your main base happens to be attacked and razed. As long as you have enough money, it is foolish not to build several bases, even all the eight available. Basic facilities such as hangars, general stores, and living quarters are dirt cheap. You don't have to keep X-COM craft all there because you are supplied in a few days whereas building hangars take long enough to make an inactive and terrible month. Detection units aren't cheap but you can detect and intercept alien subs without a detection facility whereas you can't detect AND intercept alien subs without a hangar. And the loot from the extra alien subs you detect and intercept from your extra bases covers the cost of the extra bases. I completely understand the aspect of The Veteran becaue such additional bases are usually idle but sometimes aliens are more active than usual. In ironman mode it is better to be safe than sorry. I usually reload from certain situations though I too build many bases because I can (as silencer_pl wrote: "Assigned all aquanauts in HQ to training because we can."). I feel more confident when I have a network of bases containing an army of aquanauts and a fleet of barracudas anyway.

 

I have to praise the idea of putting the first base in the North Atlantic. I guess several players do this because the USA, the prime funder, is nearby. The better reason is the North Atlantic base placement costs a lot (around 900000$) which cost isn't in effect in the case of the first base. The North Atlantic is the only place that can't be screened properly from a cheaper area because the areas nearby are also costly. The Mediterranean can be screened from Africa (cost: 500000$), namely from the Suez Bay. The North Pacific can be screened from the South Pacific and the Sea of Japan, the South Atlantic from Africa (somewhat away from Cape Town), the South China Sea from the Sea of Japan and the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean from the first base in the North Atlantic and from the South Pacific, the Antarctic from Africa, the Indian Ocean, and the South Pacific, the North Sea and the Arctic from the first base. The Arctic is rather in darkness (or rather in silence) but it is actually just a ring of water and the alien subs tend to make their rounds in the ring and can be found by sent patrols when alien activity is rising there. Oddly enough the game designers put a dry land on the north pole whereas the forecasts state the northern ice sheet may be gone by 2040 with the fact the Arctic is navigable by submarines even now.

 

The basic mindset was this: We were gonna win regardless, so efficiency wasn't the top priority

Maybe the game is too easy for such a team. That's why I recommend the many rules for difficulty. And the commander of duty for a month (or two) theme gives an additional taste to it. As you, commanders, don't agree in some things, you don't have to after all because the COD game is both competitive and co-operative. You don't beat each other but the aliens, the A.I., that is. When I read the title "multiplayer TFTD", I thought it was a special on-line TFTD version, one player commands X-COM, another the aliens (I guess such exists) and was not interested for the beginning. I feel there is a little competition in the current campaign already, not expressed, not discussed, not announced, not measured though I sense it in the praises like "Good job." Who misses to gain some self-confidence from that? However, we can as well say "Lucky job" instead of "Good job" in most cases because the commanders get missions with random difficulty, and each mission has its risks. But when you command X-COM for a month while you can do scores in the battlescape too, there is an average difficulty and result of all. And there is the constant enigma of when to risk what as the players are present in the game virtually. For example a player sees he is losing, he sends four barracudas with DUP-H torps versus a dreadnought, makes it crash and recovers the site by himself and makes a turn in the scores optimally. (By the way, charging a dreadnought that seeks your base isn't so hazardous because a failed base defense mission makes you lose the four barracudas anyway and maybe more.)

 

I got a bit wordy again... It's probably because I can't do anything about it but encourage future players to do a hot-seat COD campaign with the increased difficulty rules. Maybe I suck at that too.

[Bomb Bloke]

You are right, Bomb Bloke. I took a look at the UFOpaedia in TftD where the upper level of a facility is pictured. As I saw the inspection table or what in the laboratory, I could remember me testing whether the destruction of the table can destroy the lab as well. But the drum (with the dint) can't be seen anywhere in the lab, so it has got to be the workshops. There are two such drums or what, orange coloured, in the workshops.

Ah, yep, that'll be them. I took a look at the game files, and those two drums are the the only two tiles that need to be damaged to destroy the entire base module.

 

I read your base defense mission in the EU AAR and it seems your main problem wasn't the cyberdiscs but the psi attacks.

Indeed. The bottlenecks gave the sectoids a huge advantage there. Personally I prefer to surround the hangars with as many modules as I can, leaving them in their original positions - this allows me to easily bombard them from all directions on my first turn. That and a small squad of tanks takes care of most incursions.

 

(By the way, charging a dreadnought that seeks your base isn't so hazardous because a failed base defense mission makes you lose the four barracudas anyway and maybe more.)

Indeed, but the main problem there is that the things move at top speed - even though they're heading towards your craft, you still have next to no chance of catching them!

[NKF]

I'm just 2 hours back after spending 18 hours between planes and hanging around airports, and I feel like my body is acting several seconds after I've done it, so I think I need to rest a bit before I dig into any of the discussions since my last saw this thread, but I do want to say this:

 

Alienated, I honestly feel that best missions in this AAR will were the early to mid missions where the challenge was very real (and some of us had to re-learn the game as we went). At the moment, we've hit a plateaux where we can already launch and beat the final mission with the aquanaut team we have already assembled (or as BB said, just send Munty and let him sort it out). Basically we've hit the peak of the excitement, and now we're just procrastinating and finding ways to keep the game going with this team building. Exploits or not, there's not a lot to gain than what we've already got or can easily gain as it is.

 

Also, I do want to say that there's no guarantee that any of us are actually doing what we're reporting. We could be faking it and saving/reloading like mad, and deliberately faking deaths just to add drama to the reports. A very real possibility. Really, each player in this game can only be honest to themselves and report as honestly as they can. I try to be, and I expect my colleagues are as well.

 

But, you never know!

 

If you suspect that to be he case - then my advice is to join the game (perhaps not this one, as it's reaching its end). That way, then you'll know in your mind whether or not your own reports were played by the rules or otherwise. You just have to put a bit of trust in the participants, and have a bit of fun along the way. That is, of course what this event is all about.

 

 

PS: I very well could be be confused about the Gillman commander on a shipping lane mission, as many of my "ancient" memories of this game were from a time when I only had TFTD with XComutil installed. Its map/race randomisers has caused many of my previous assumptions to be quite false. That's why I'm rather loathe to use it for serious games these days.

 

- NKF

[Alienated]

Indeed, but the main problem there is that the things move at top speed - even though they're heading towards your craft, you still have next to no chance of catching them!

I mean the dreadnoughts seeking the base and not attacking it. If you make the seekers (survey ship, escorts, cruisers, and dreadnoughts) crash, the base doesn't get attacked by a good chance. I guess this is the first phase of base defense. The next phase is only for Leviathans, charging the attacker dreadnought. The third phase is the sonic/PWT defences. The last phase is the personal randezvous in the access lift and the sub pens. And the phase before the first phase is leaving moving alien subs alone.

 

NKF, I don't suspect reloads and such tricks still I believe they are possible. Well, suspect means something like that anyway... I just hardly believe there could be any fun in such a campaign if the players cheat. I for one prefer reading about the dramatic missions to smooth ones. Maybe it was Bomb Bloke who DPLed the tank in the lobster dreadnought assault just to have a good story to tell. I could forgive that.

 

However, something surely happened in the case of the survey ship and I was curious what because survey ships are good indicators for alien missions. You get almost as many survey ships as many missions. An extra survey ship in the picture means several missing (not detected) subs. It is really hard to estimate the efficiency of an iron man campaign with ghost subs.

 

Unfortunately I can't join such a multiplayer game because my home machine isn't connected directly to the WWW (it has several advantages). I could upload save files, maybe a few screenshots too; the problem is the game itself. It is too sizey to be portable. And I am a quite console man, I play a lot and sitting before a PC all day long instead of laying in the bed all day long isn't my wish.

[sp1ke]

Wow, what an epic thread and epic multiplayer game! What a shame I was not here on Strategy Core then, I would have loved to have played. It sounds like you all had loads of fun, particularly in the early and mid stages when things were still pretty scary.

 

In fact, the thread is a mine of useful information on tactics. I may work my way through it to update the basic strategy guide on UFOpedia.org.