Inevitable war with the reticulans? (and will I loose my own rets eventually?)

[mur'phon]

By inevitable I mean either A: that they'll declare war on me eventually or B: that I'll be forced to do it in order to get enough resources. Basically I seem to be unable to get enough resources while trading with them, and have no way to break the agreement without declaring war. What is weird is that I produce more than enough of the resources in question (metal and chems), however it's not added to my storage (yes I know the storage space is limited, however before the trade agreement I could store enough for my needs). I'd rather not fight them as it doesn't make much sense from a story point of view, but without the metal for heavy suits (and domes), I'm having trouble dealing with environmental hazard.

 

Either way, am I bound to loose my rets whether or not I go to war? I rather like the scientist/soldier in my squad, and I heard that if I keep him in the science buggy, he'll leave as soon as I ally with some new rets. And before you ask, yes I used the search function and checked the (few) guides I could quickly google.

[Danimal]

I finished this game last year, simply put, yes, go to war with them. They are hogging all the better resources areas, are easy to kill with cinetical weapons and soon the good reticulans will arrive and force you to choose sides.

Since the first reticulans you find are the bad guys who enlaved and defiled earth i think its an easy choice, also you get replacements for the reticulans that will desert you when declaring war. So dont get fond of the first ones and wait to receive the new good ones later.

 

The one thing i didnt do in this game is to keep my alliance with them, and support the mutants on earth (evil side?) did someone do that?

[mur'phon]

Well, I kinda guessed they aren't the good guys, however this isn't made clear in game yet so it feels weird/selfish to go to war with them because I can't break trade any other way since the only thing bad they have done is to not share all their data with me. Also, like I wrote, my problem isn't lack of resources per say, but that my agreements with them means I can't utilize all (i.e I have 6 metal, but only 2 overall because the rets take the third one), so if there is a way to break the agreement without war, it'd be nice. Still I'd like to keep the scientist/soldier since he is high level and quite useful for scouting/using psi weapons from behind cover. But if the replacements are high level, I guess I don't mind as much.

[silencer_pl]

A little bit of spoiler. If you want to have early war with rets - kill the 2 aliens you get - you will have 3 new humans. 2 soldiers and soldier / medic. Thus you will be in + in men output.

 

I only played this game on impossible and trust me - keeping the alliance until late game is very wise since you will be expanding in other directions.

[mur'phon]

I already knew about the replacements for rets, and was planning on doing it, but only if I can't break the trade agreements any other way (fortunately easy to justify story wise). However I'd ideally like to keep them because A: one ret is a trained scientist soldier so unless the kid is high level, I loose out B:the ret is, well, a ret, and thus has those nice psionic abilities (especially the fact that you can target enemies he detects without spotting them is nice) and can use psionic goodies and C: I don't really need another soldier that much.

 

Again, my *only* reason for declaring war is because my trade agreements prevent me from getting enough metal/chemicals, so if there is a way to cease trade without going to war, it'd be great.

[Danimal]

you people are overthinking too much this game, you want their resources? kick them out of there, i played the whole saga and this guys raped raped earth in so many ways and times they dont deserve to keep living

Just wait for the arrival of the good reticulans, this "bad" reticulans are not worthy neigthbours and by the time the good ones arrive if you declared war before to the bad, you will almost have destroyed them all and the good rets will be confined to just an area and wont take any resources from you in the rest of the game. Also rets are easier than beastman to kill, so take advantage of the earlier game phase to take as much land as possible, since later kicking out the beastman can be really hard.

[yeni]

Personally, I keep the first reticulan alliance until the second group arrives ( before that, there's expansion in other directions ), and I try to pick one territory for the new arrivals to own that I'll have surrounded by my lands - so no expansion for them! I do let Tab (the english nickname for the original pure soldier reticulan) die on the first aqueduct mission, mostly as a point of style to rename that territory (Tab's Song sounds much better to me than Acid Plains for what will eventually be an ocean next to your base..). The original reticulan soldier/scientist will leave as soon after war is declared as he can, but he can't leave while he's assigned to the science car and it's outside the base (i guess because noone tells him about the Great Yellow Reticulan War, lol)

 

As for the level of new arrivals, the kids are usually level 2, the nonhumans you get later are higher levels (and not all the same level), but i've never had them be high enough level to compete with my main squad's levels (level 8 when you're 16 just doesn't cut it), and with the limitations they have in suits & equipment, I just use humans all the way through usually. The new arrival levels could be edited in the character stats files, as I remember, just don't forget to make their stats match their level unless you want them to have too high or too low stats

 

I have had in mind a mod to make the human built robots available from the start and cut WAAAY back on the number of human soldiers (to 4 total, i think), so you can't field a full team without robots (or having both rets and martians on your team). I envision the typical team in that being 5 robots, 1 soldier/scientist, and 1 soldier/tech. I just don't know yet how to mod the weapons file for the initial robot scientific laser that would be needed.

 

One other point, remember that you collect resource units, but use resource levels - it takes 20 or 21 resources coming in to get resource level 7, for instance. I try to not trade away any resources to anyone i plan to stay allied with, because you're trading away a resource level - unless i am SURE I'll never need that resource at level 7. The overview has a summary of the units you collect and the levels that translates to, with trades also shown, down at the bottom left - i think the unit totals needed for the levels are 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, and 21, going from memory.