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Skitso's random thoughts on 19 stable


Skitso

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I started a new game and I'm getting along much better in ground combat this time around, as I have managed to keep my key soldiers alive pretty well. I feel the beginning of the game is getting a bit tedious and the game desperately needs more structure and guidance.

It's November 20 now. I have crash site 22 going and not a single terror site or alien base or anything yet (is this normal?). Raiding a light scout after a light scout and few scouts. There's not nearly enough variation there.

I also feel that the amount of UFO's is a bit overwhelming at times, but this might be intentional. I have 2 bases, one in europe with 4 condors and one in central America with two condors and I'm missing about half of the UFO's. Air combat seems a bit too difficult maybe... A scout with two small escorts seems to be too much for me, not to mention a landing ship... I probably need to build a couple of foxtrots. How many aircrafts / hangars you people have? I feel I have too few, even if my first base is full of them already :)

Otherwise, great game! I'm hooked! :D

Edited by Skitso
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Thanks for the thoughts. I've only read the first page but it's useful to have new player thoughts. I think the game might be a bit too hard at the moment on normal, as you suggest. We'll look into it before release.

EDIT - naturally, not having read page 2, I failed to realise I'd already replied to this...

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You're at about the point in the game where terror missions/bases finally start happening. The air combat in this game is kind of weird, as it's at a point where it's brutally punishing until you figure it out... at which point it's an absolute cakewalk (although still one that is fairly hard on mistakes, especially with early planes).

Coincidentally enough, my game is also at Nov 20th. I'm currently running pure Condor, sitting on two bases with 4 per base with laser cannons for all of them. I pretty much kill everything that spawns in my radar range (missing about 1 contact per two weeks).

Some general air combat tips. You can have full manual control over all your planes: speed, weapons, direction of travel, all of it. This is not shown openly in the game, so a lot of people miss it. The single most important control for a Condor is the roll/dodge button. Condors are quite fragile, so dodging alien missiles is absolutely key to surviving. After that, it's simply a matter of learning to kill UFOs efficiently. If you're willing to take a little damage, disabling your missiles and using cannons to kill alien Fighters leaves you with more overall damage output which in turn lets you better kill escorted UFOs. For example against an escorted Scout, two Condors can each kill an escort with their cannons, and then while the one being targeted by the Scout kites it (gamer term for "running away while the enemy keeps chasing you") the other two Condors can close with and kill it with missiles/remaining ammo. I'm hoping to get some video tutorials posted next week sometime.

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Chris, I posted this earlier, but I also think the game is too hard on "Normal". The current "Normal" probably ought to be whatever the next harder step is from "Normal". I seriously doubt someone that played the game on Easy once or twice then moves up to "Normal" is going to be successful. I think they would be surprised at how difficult "Normal" is comparatively. That being said I think we/you should finish balancing everything with the current settings then turn down the difficulty for "Normal" and "Easy" (or whatever the novice setting is.) I think simply reducing the number of aliens on the various mission and the number of UFO flights will probably be the easiest way to turn it down. I know other people have different ideas on that, but those are very easy to change without having to rebalance everything.

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I agree air combat could be a little more forgiving on normal and also I think there is a bit to bigger leap when you do alien base and base defense in how hard they are at least you not boxed in in most terror missions like you are with bases.

My first alien base I opened the door and most my squad died haha and then 2 or 3 panicked, never mind base base defense haha missile launcher hit so I thought there wouldn't be that many.

First try they would hide and i had to go find them and lost quite a few men.

second go I opened the doors and they all charged my men good god it was a wipe haha.

I wish I had lasers haha.

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Okay, I finally got my first terror site. It seemed to take a bit too long for it to appear as light scout and scout missions started to get really tedious already (to the point I thought theres something wrong with the game as it felt its not progressing). The terror map was one from the community map pack and I literally had to search almost half an hour for the last alien that was hiding in a small toilet. Not so cool. I suppose Xenonauts could use a similar system to point out the direction of a last alien that was used in the new Xcom?

As i have save spammed earlier missions this time, the terror site difficulty (with androns) seemed more in line with earlier missions as I had better soldiers, couple of wolf armors and laser weapons. The terror mission (night time) was really tense and suspenceful, so good job there GH!

Overall more dense indoor urban map was a great variation after 30+ open desert/arctic/farm maps. The game needs much more these, felt great to get ambushed by an alien though a window. :)

Also, AC is still a bit confusing and tough.. maybe we get to research foxtrot too early as it seems it's no good against smaller ufos and atleast I automatically thought it would be an upgrade over the first aircraft which it's not.

Edited by Skitso
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Also, AC is still a bit confusing and tough.. maybe we get to research foxtrot too early as it seems it's no good against smaller ufos and atleast I automatically thought it would be an upgrade over the first aircraft which it's not.

Against Lt. Scouts and Fighters Condors are better because they can dodge the incoming fire and their cannons are really effective against small ships. The trick is to use your Condors to destroy enemy fighter escorts then use the Foxtrots with TORPEDOES to destroy the larger ships (anything from a Scout on up.) Some people use two waves to attack large ships, one wave with just Condors to shoot down the escorts and another wave with Foxtrots to destroy the now unescorted large ship. I like to use mixed groups even when there are no escorts because the Condors can draw the fire of the big ships and dodge while the Foxtrots just fire their torpedoes and leave. That's a little more forgiving because if you accidently get a Foxtrot too close it's as good as dead. Never, ever, send only Foxtrots up against fighters or light scouts. Edited by StellarRat
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The terror map was one from the community map pack and I literally had to search almost half an hour for the last alien that was hiding in a small toilet. Not so cool. I suppose Xenonauts could use a similar system to point out the direction of a last alien that was used in the new Xcom?

Was the toilet door open or closed? I'd like to know whether the alien decided to hole up, or whether he spawned in there and decided he was happy where he was. I don't think I've seen aliens close doors, anyway.

Map makers define the spawn points on the map; in my playthroughs the aliens seem to move about if they're inside most of the time, but if there are any aliens camping then I agree that's not cool, and I'll change the spawns. Playing hide and seek was one of my gripes with Apoc, so I'm happy to stamp it out.

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Skitso do you play SS13? On the LLA server?

nope. Must be someone else. Or could it be me... i'm too skitso to know :P

Alrighty' date=' I'll fix that. I'll probably have a go at what Aaron says he's going to do with the official maps as well.[/quote']

So what's that then? Something to do with the spawn points?

Edited by Skitso
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Ah, Space Station 13. Some fun memories from there. Once the mods put a Light Grenade (Mom and Dad Save the World. Disintegrates whoever picks it up) in one of the tunnels but didn't mention it. Cue lots of piles of clothes...

I'm looking forward to the fanmake upgrade.

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So what's that then? Something to do with the spawn points?

Yeah. You can see the post here. At the moment, I've set the aliens to spawn pretty much all over the place, with some inside the buildings because they used to run straight out. I'll alter it so that the aliens are more on one side of the map, and probably have civs inside of buildings and not aliens. One of the reasons I've been placing alien spawns inside of buildings is that they seemingly prefer to be outside, but since that's no longer the case I need to change the spawns.

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Regarding of AC, I'm suffering a bit from "sticky keys" syndrome. For example when I try to select a plane by clicking it's small icon on the map, the game very often doesn't select it but gives an order for the last plane to move there or to move the map around. Anybody else suffering from these imprecise controls in air combat?

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This is definitely a problem, but using the hotkeys will solve it. F1-F3 select planes 1-3 and F4 selects all planes as a group. Note that if you use F4, that the planes will move in formation (desinations all evenly spaced from each other) unless you select an enemy target to converge on.

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