Strat

[Drew24]

Okay, so I bought a new computer, or should I say old computer just for the purpose of playing this game. I am quite excited, and Im dieing waiting for it to get here. I have both UFO and TFTD but havent been able to beat either fo them. Ive read throughout the posts that UFO seems to be easier, so I might have to try that one first, but I was wondering if there are any rules of thumb you must abide by if you wish to complete the game. As I recall from playing many years ago, I could never do good enough with alien control to keep my funds up, I had to just focus on keeping one region happy (usually the US) just to make sure i got some money. Evntually it caught up to me tho, and the world disowned me. So I was just wondering if anyone had any tips for either of two games. Thanks.

 

 

-Drew

[M. Hoz]

Don't buy more than you can keep,don't recruit more than you can use.

Production is different,you produce as much as possible,then sell for profit.

 

The rest =====> NKF.

[NKF]

No no no, as for the rest, refer to the rest of the threads in this forum (and the UFO forum, as the strategies are virtually universal)!

 

My main tip is: Keep at it. TFTD's hard, but it's not unbeatable with some persistence.

 

Now, some random tips off the top of my head:

 

Try and keep up a consistent positive activity score. When I mean positives, I mean get more activity points than the aliens. Nothing pleases the funding nations more than positives points. If you cannot handle some of the terror sites, at least visit it. Just leaving it alone will cost you more points than at least attending to it.

 

Attend to every site. Even if you don't complete them, at least try to kill one or two aliens that are skulking around outside the ship before dusting off. It doesn't really matter for crash sites, as you don't lose any points for abandoning it, and you get to keep any positive scores you got during the mission.

 

If a new and relatively small base of your is attacked and you know for sure you cannot defend it (say all you have are harpoons and you're being attacked by lobstermen), consider surrendering rather than fighting it out. Immediate surrender will cost you 0 points. Fighting it out will cost you the lives of all the soldiers you lose in battle, pushing the activity score into the negative. It's probably not the most honourable way of losing the base, but your activity points are at least not penalised.

 

Research. Keep it up, as the aliens in TFTD are much more skillful and hardier than their UFO counterparts.

 

In combat, don't rush unless you really have to. Take your time. Try to not use up too much of your time units when moving forward, as your reaction skill is influenced by your time units. If your reactions are lower than an alien's, the alien will get off a reaction shot when it spots you. To avoid this, try not to waste all of your time units when moving forward. Or, use coelacanths. They're expensive, yes, but after you've sold a few of your surplus sonic cannons, you won't even notice a difference whenever shelling out some money to replace any destroyed SWS systems.

 

If you can, try to set up some form of contingency plan in case a plan goes wrong (such as setting a few snipers who stay back with full TUs while the rest go ahead and secure an area. If something turns up, the snipers will be there to help).

 

Don't be afraid to retreat (tactically), as a victory isn't much of a victory if you lose most of your soldiers. That's not to say you have to retreat from the battle - though don't hesitate to do this if you really need to escape (or just want to abduct a very special alien or equipment).

 

In terror sites, concentrate on protecting your soldiers first before thinking about the civilians. You cannot help the civilians if you cannot help yourself.

 

In base defense, again, concentrate on saving your soldiers. The aliens aren't after your base. They're after you. So let them have the base, just take it back slowly bit by bit.

 

Use everything at your disposal. You might be a wizard at using a certain weapon, (like the sonic cannon), but don't underestimate the tactical advantages of the other weapons.

 

- NKF

[Pete]

Indeed - NKF == Master X-COM Strategist Extraordinaire!

 

TFTD isn't actually all that much harder, it's just trickier because there's more in the way of terror missions and artifact sites etc. It's generally a longer game.

 

UFO is usually difficult the first few times until you've sorted out a weapons loadout for your men that you find works best for you. Many people opt for autocannons and other heavy weapons, but I stick to lightly equipped squads early on in the game carrying rifles and two grenades - I generally have plenty of time units to play around with this way.

 

Until I research the alien weaponery, I generally only add the odd stun rod or lasr rifle to this arsenal, although some people swear by smoke grenades for cover - especially during terror missions so that you can manage to leave your ship without losing your entire squad before hitting the next turn button.

 

It's all a case of fiddling about really. Don't be afraid to experiment with different kit and whatever you do remember to spend almost all of your money on another General Stores, some Alien Containment, Living Quarters and a shed-load of scientists after you've restocked your armoury at the beginning of the game.

 

Research is the key to winning

[Drew24]

Wow, ya, that was always my problem before, not researching fast enough. But when i tried to overload with scientists, i ended up haveing more bills than funds at the end of each month, things just never worked out for me. Ill def keep the tactical retreats in mind, as i dont ever recall using the abort mission function ... ever lol. Or attending untimely terror sites just for the mere purpose of making an apperance. It all sounds like gravey, cant wait to start it up again just as soon as i help this dude fix his 486 so i can then buy it. ^^ But until that day, Ill probably be floatin around here. lucky for you guys .

 

-Drew

[NKF]

Scientist trouble, eh? Well, without cheating, the trick with scientists is to strike a decent balance.

 

Every group of 50 scientists costs you something like 1.5 million per month. So a 100 is 3 million, 150 is 4.5 million and 200 is 6 million, and 250 scientists would cost you 7.5 million. 255 would be still be around that figure. Rember that you also have to pay housing and maintenance fees for the lab on top of this. Now, your monthly pay will definitely not be able to cover this bill until you bring it up a bit, so you will want work within your budget.

 

To start off, 50 should serve you well and shouldn't be too costly. After a few successful months, a 100 scientists would get your research up and running at a fairly decent speed.

 

If you want to work with more scientists than your allowance can handle, make sure you keep your cash box topped up every month by selling off all the surplus alien equipment, USO widgets and corpses. You don't have to keep most of the items in storage to research them. Just start the research projects and you can sell them all off. The only exceptions being the 'sub construction' store item and the 'M. C. Reader', both of which you must have at least one in storage in order to unlock their respective research.

 

I like to use small teams of 50 scientists and concentrate on very specific research projects and leave some of the less important projects for later. This saves a lot of money, keeps the size of the main base small, making it easier to defend. Granted, the research projects slow down to a crawl, but I guess that's just the price that has to be paid.

 

- NKF

[Drew24]

255??? is that the most you can have or something? When i first start off I usually got 20 as that was close to 1 million dollars, which is like 1/4 of what u start off with. but ur saying i need to get 50?? whewy. What about manfucturing ... and since were on the subject, military guys. I seem to find the 10 mechanists u start off with seem to do ok it takes something like 2 days 12 hours to make 2 gauss pistols. of which usually nothign will happen during that time, and when thats done, I can just continue to make them in incriments of 2 or whatever, so that way ill have some if aliens appear before I have all I wish to have. And what about research order just to start, when i orignally first tried it, before i started reading these posts, i was gunna try skipping gauss, and go straight to sonic weapons. However, it appears gauss is somewhat important in some scenarios, so ill add that in. but should it be first?

[NKF]

255's the maximum you can assign to any given project. If you assign more, the game tends to lose scientists. It's just a bug with the data types used for storing scientists and for counting those assigned to a project. Same thing goes for the workshops. So try to have no more than 250 scientists at any given base.

 

As for engineers (TFTD calls them 'technician's, but we'll stick to engineer), it's up to you. For starters, the first workshop will never fill all 50 engineer slots, on account of the build space requirements, so you might want to keep it under 40 engineers for a while. Additional workshops will be able to take the full 50.

 

The difference between the scientists and the engineers is that the scientists cannot support themselves, while the engineers can. You see, if you constantly build and sell equipment, the engineers will be earning their own salaries.

 

Yes, at the beginning, you'll not have too many and production is slow. Don't worry, work with them until some cash comes in and you can start increasing your workforce. It takes a bit of patience, but it's worth it. When you have a large enough engineer workforce, you'll be able ot turn a profit from continuous production after deducting the engineer salaries and workshop + living quarters maintenance costs. So, the larger your engineer force, the better. Two, three or four workshops can really turn a profit.

 

When you start building for profit, the best object you can build and sell this early into the game is the craft gauss cannon. It's expensive, but you can build them very fast and the cash return tends to be very large, making it very profitable. Medikits and particle disturbance sensors and gauss pistols are also pretty good. I've not tested this, but I think gauss pistol clips might also be quite profitable.

 

As for what research to go with, I'd recommend getting the gauss pistols and rifles to replace your harpoon guns and dart pistols. They're far superior in every way, and the ammo can be built very quickly. However, you don't really need them. You can actually get by rather well on the gas cannons alone for quite some time if your troops can carry them.

 

What I recommend concentrating on, after you get a few good weapons (and maybe the medikits) is to start on the armour - but this requires that you've obtained both a corpse and a live sample of a Deep One, an ion beam accelarator and one magnetic navigation unit. The last two can be obtained from an intact UFO. The deep one can only be obtained from a gill-man terror mission or X-Com base assault (at least this early in the game).

 

Once you get some decent armour, you might want to start concentrating on the alien weapons. I'd recommend starting on the sonic pulser because the aliens carry a lot of them, and they are hidiously powerful. You can then start on sonic weapons. There's no right or wrong way to go about them, as all the sonic weapons are better than anything you've got (pistol - large clip and rapid-firing, blasta-rifle - balanced, cannon - accurate and powerful). Have fun.

 

But that's only what I recommend. There's no reason why you can't just skip gauss and move on to sonic weapons right away if you want. It's really up to you.

 

- NKF

[Drew24]

so much to learn .... i just wish i could play lol. So makeing profit from technicians it is. I'da never thought of it .... the last time i played this game i musta been .... wow 12? a good 7 years ago. Thus my gaming intuition was not fully developed and i prolly didnt have the patience to ride things out. Just off the top of my head, I can recall pressing the "1 day" time just to skip ttime until a research project got done, when i probably could have been doing many other things. but was quite the long time ago. I havent been able to talk to my friend who's dad (the one who im buying the 486 from) has both my CDs (TFTD & UFO). thus i cant even play in super speed time just to get the mission resaults from the last mission, but id get in a good 30 min of playing. Why can't things just work like they're suppose to.

 

-|)rew

[M. Hoz]

Hmmm...

Maybe I should wait a bit before returning

to UFO then....