Invasion Postponed Until 2012

[Space Voyager]

How does the game compare with other games, most importantly XCOM and XCOM2? Was it worth the wait or has it simply missed its time window?

[Thorondor]

@Zombie:

 

Talk about a nail-biter, Zombie!

 

Kacy should really count herself lucky just to be alive, and with that many wounds one would think she'd be away for at least a month. Goes to show how good your med tech actually is already.

 

So, you took some hits and some stuff got scrapped but you came out the other side with plenty to take home and an XP boost. Not to mention an achievement to brag about.

 

Should the alien whoopin' continue like that you'll be making them rethink their reckless ways before long.

[Zombie]

How does the game compare with other games, most importantly XCOM and XCOM2? Was it worth the wait or has it simply missed its time window?

 

It's no XCOM/XCOM2 that's for sure. Closest approximation I can give from what I've played so far is a "watered down" version of UFO:Enemy Unknown. By "watered down" I mean it's lacking something in a specific area. For example, weapons. I'm still toting standard rifles around with slightly upgraded ammo, but there's just nothing else in the pipe from what I can see. Same deal with the aliens: they are still carrying photon weapons (pistols) just with slightly upgraded ammo. And I'm months into the game. At this time in UFO:EU you would already have lasers and would probably be researching Heavy Plasmas. Weapon selection is so "dumbed" down it's not even funny - it should be just the opposite where you have scores of weapons to choose from like in Silent Storm.

 

Another thing watered down is the research tree. To me it seems rather boring and scripted. UFO:EU was better as it allowed you all sorts of freedom to explore the tree without restraint or worrying about dead-ends or lock-outs like in TFTD. See, I know that the game wants me to research a UFO so that more research projects will be unlocked, along with new aliens, weapons and UFO's. So the game becomes harder. I decided that I'm going to focus on getting my soldiers leveled up first, so I'm just not researching anything. The game stays at roughly the same difficulty and I get to level them up and get a little more cash. I'm also upgrading all my interceptors to the best variants.

 

With the bad come the good too. I like the breadth of the grenades so far. There are a lot to choose from be it terrestrial or extraterrestrial loot-only upgrades. My only beef with that is the aliens just don't carry enough. It's not like you can manufacture the alien grenades either, you can only loot them off the battlescape. I like the air combat situation in UFO2:ET better than UFO:EU. In UFO:EU you are stuck with shooting down UFO's with your interceptors whereas in UFO2:ET you can "draw" the more powerful UFO's back to your base so your base defenses can help take it down. That's cool. I also like how shielding/armor works. I can grab a rather blah suit of armor, chuck on a couple shield units and you are in business. It's more customizable than say Power Suits.

 

- Zombie

[Space Voyager]

Thanks, Z. That sounds even worse than I was afraid it would be. I like your description of the good stuff but it just won't cut it in the long run.

[Zombie]

Kacy should really count herself lucky just to be alive, and with that many wounds one would think she'd be away for at least a month. Goes to show how good your med tech actually is already.

 

I think that by bandaging her up on the Battlescape it reduced the time she was in the hospital too. Without doing that she probably would have spent the month recovering.

 

More progress to report. Kacy is finally out of the hospital and joyfully reunited with her teammates. No rest for the wicked though, as I just shot down another UFO. Sent an updated crew to this one as everyone is back to full strength thanks to quick manufacturing turnaround on much-needed shielding units, ammo and terrestrial incendiary grenades (I love playing around with these, even though the power is lackluster it's like UFO:EU's Electroflare).

 

The mission went swimmingly as I had the trainees exit the dropship first so they got first crack at anything that went "bump" in the night. My officers deployed behind the semicircular "front" of rookies so they could mop up anything standing (or flying). Honestly, I don't think I even needed to bring the officers along as my 4-soldier training crew fared great.

 

 

Kacy was a one-woman wrecking ball killing 5. You know it's going to be a good mission for the trainees when they have to reload their weapons mid-battle which Kacy did. I think I could have got her a few more kills if I held the other soldiers back a bit, but you run the risk of biting off more than you can chew. Plus I wanted to train some of my other rookies a bit too (Corine got 3 kills herself which wasn't bad).

 

With all my soldier-centric manufacturing complete, I'm back at it producing upgraded interceptors. My base in Europe still has a legacy interceptor stationed there as a backup so the plan is to build the new interceptor, strip the legacy craft of all it's weapons and armor, sell it and finally transfer the new craft over and rearm. My strategy going forward is to build one new hangar at each of my three satellite bases as temporary storage of interceptors for the floating base (I think they take 3 hangars). Once I build the three floating bases (and get the achievement) I'll keep the hangars for eventual upgrades (I'm hoping there's a better interceptor to be researched yet).

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

Was just fooling around in-game yesterday and found that researching Alien Hibernation unlocks the "Stunning Gun":

 

 

So that kinda changes my strategy a little bit. I poured all my resources into researching hibernation and the stun gun and started manufacturing them for my soldiers. My strategy up to this point was trying to build those 3 interceptors - of course you need a shield, cannon and missile weapon too and those always come first. Now I'm manufacturing stun guns so the interceptor has to wait a bit.

 

A word to the wise: if you are primarily using AK1 Ultra Piercing ammo on missions, you better make sure you keep an eye on your stockpile closely. You don't want to end up using photon beamers as they are heavy and the standard rifle ammo is weak against most everything. This is especially true if you are training rookies because they will waste bullets like nobody's business. Suppose you could give rookies the standard AK1 ammo and let them spray and pray because of the bigger magazine size (30 vs 22). Anyhow, some other things to keep an eye on is soldier shield units, med kits and manufactured grenades as they can get depleted quicker than you think.

 

All this researching started to get me thinking I knew very little about if I was missing anything. Found a topic about this on the Steam forums and it turns out, I am missing some topics. Chalk that up to my stubbornness to research UFOs. Got it, lesson learned... sorta. With the new knowledge my team set out on yet another mission. This was a tough one: 21 aliens total so had to use my best team for the job. My "commander" in-training seemed to always be in the right place at the right time (his natural game-given name was Vincent Price I kid you not) and ended up getting 5 kills and another promotion.

 

 

With promotion you need to spend 5 ability points on the different stats. I maxed out his shooting, dumped 2 points into strength and the final point into agility.

 

 

Hopefully that is good enough for end-game. I know that strength is a really important stat as everything weighs a lot, and as for shooting, I think it's helpful to have a standing (not kneeling) auto shot accuracy of 99%.

 

My 4 trainees are progressing nicely. I thought my team was good enough the way it is, but I happened to visit the hire screen and couldn't help to grab a couple new recruits again. I'm a sucker for soldiers with only a first name so I hired this greenhorn named OVNI (yes, all caps) along with another one with only a first name. I put him as the first one off the ship for missions so he can get in as much target practice as possible. If you take it slow and give them backup, trainees can be valuable team members.

 

 

8 kills (40xp) and who knows how many single points of xp for hitting an alien added up to a double (2-rank) promotion. Of course Kacy added another couple kills and jumped a rank as well. So it's looking up.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Well, that gun is a stunner if I can say so myself, Zombie.

 

You know, I think the game's devs are having a good bit of fun with trooper names. That fresh recruit you say is simply called OVNI? That acronym is the portuguese direct translation of UFO. You call them UFOs, we call them OVNIs. True fact.

 

And once again we see Kacy showing she's got what it takes. Here's what she has to say to them aliens: "Payback time!"

[Space Voyager]

True fact.

 

Is there another kind? I can have the court read it back to you!

 

I just had to, reminded me of Few good men.

[Zombie]

You know, I think the game's devs are having a good bit of fun with trooper names. That fresh recruit you say is simply called OVNI? That acronym is the portuguese direct translation of UFO. You call them UFOs, we call them OVNIs. True fact.

 

Well, I'll be. The one guy who can answer my question, have I mentioned you are awesome lately? Well, you are. Sure you aren't a dev?

 

I better google those other one name wonders I come across, they probably have other meanings. Now that I think of it, in the first game (UFO: Extraterrestrials) I could've sworn there was a Vincent Price too.

 

Edit: ran UFO:ET and not only is there a Vincent Price but also a OVNI too.

 

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Hehe, I had quite the unfair advantage there, Zombie.

 

It's public knowledge that the developers have had to deal with a tight budget, but that doesn't mean several nationalities aren't involved all the same so I'm thinking it's quite possible they have an assortment of such "easter eggs" as a result.

 

Who knows what else they've planted in there in plain sight like that. No direct input from me, mind.

[NoXTheRoXStaR]

Has there been any recent patches since launch?

[Thorondor]

To my kowledge, n0x, the most recent official patch was released on the 24th of October. But since Zombie has the game installed he may have more to say on the subject.

[Zombie]

Yup, that's the latest patch. I should mention I never experienced "blocked last aliens" or "ghost aliens". Those sound like game breaking bugs though.

 

- Zombie