Borak

Has the map reveal for terror missions been removed again? I tested 40 turns, no reveal. As if at the end of a terror mission what you need is camping Sebillians..

Ah, I guess if I dislike repetitive game mechanics I am not 'hardcore' I respectfully disagree, but just giving my feedback.

Thanks for the comments. a) My point was it's tedious and reduces aliens to color-coded Pokemon gotta catch them all powerups. The fact it's trackable with effort doesn't make this effort fun. b) I never said you use alien technology directly. You didn't in vanilla either. This is not the point I was making. I said in order to utilize alien technology, that you may have 1000 examples of, to any degree, you need to have it explained to you by an alien. c) Just in my opinion, it's more annoying than it is dangerous. d) See a). Soldier stats - The caps are too high, starting values too low, therefore range too wide imo. Spiritual successors are not obligated to refrain from improving on the original. Terror missions - Elite soldiers have little to do with it. Equipment effectiveness and enemy resistance to your current technology do. If avoiding doing the terror missions is the best option, this doesn't seem good game design. Here you have a game element that requires effort to develop that the best strategy in-game is to avoid. As mentioned, having an airforce capable of shooting them down takes at least a couple of months, and then you need luck to have the ufo within range of multiple bases so you can hit it with several waves. Until then, you need to contend with boring slogs through terror sites (and save scum, lets be realistic). Once you have the airforce necessary, you get to avoid this bore. Difficulty - As I said, I find the difficulty well balanced apart from the terror mission insurmountable spike that is definitely not worth doing without save scumming.

Mauser cannons on Asierus are very effective on early alien fighters. You can usually take down 3 of them with 3 of yours without losses with very basic tactics of running over them enmasse. With a bit of care and rolling into your firing arc from the side you can take them out with no damage. Basically at the start of the game you need to be doing every crash site to get the resources to build planes.

Just some general feedback on aspects of the mod from the point of view of a new player. This will apply only to the first 3 months as that's where I am so far. Alien resources system for production - It's ok, but I think there's too much detail. Having to go back to the workshop all the time to build/deconstruct something else gets tedious. Live alien / specialist based research system - I don't like this better than the original system. Obviously it's a big part of the mod so not going to be changed, just giving my opinion. There are a few problems with this system - a) It necessitates stunning specific aliens who may or may not show up conveniently (or alive). There are so many variations, it's hard to keep track of which ones you still haven't got. If you get unlucky, an important line of research can be severely delayed / not available, even if you've been familiar with the particular technology for a very long time in-game. This is not interesting difficulty in my opinion, just annoying. b) From a lore perspective, I find it very contrived. You take these aliens back to your base and 'torture' them for information? You need a lot of technobabble to explain how you're supposed to communicate, why these lifeforms would respond to torture, and why, faced with 1000 examples of a laser rifle, for example, you still can't have any chance of using that technology until an alien in a certain color shirt or armor configuration explains it to you. None of this makes much sense to me, and lessens the psychological impact of the aliens, turning them into so many different colored power-ups you need to collect. c) Setting up to stun a particular alien takes time, but not a whole lot of skill. It seems like fake difficulty to me, and fairly boring. I agree that there should have been more necessity and opportunity to stun in the base game, over and above a few command units. But I think this mod swings the pendulum way too far in the other direction. d) Stunning aliens is less satisfying, for me, than killing them with your cool new weapons. This may be personal preference. Weapon /Range rebalance - I like most of this. The weapons are cool, and the combat range adjustments have enhanced the tactical game. I don't like so many similar variations though. Mk1, mk2, mk3, and different ammo for all of them. Just clogs up your weapons screen for not much gain. Also assault rifles seem much worse than any other weapon type, at least in ballistics/lasers which is where I am. Soldier stat / Experience system - This has improved but introduced other problems. While accelerated stat gain has the effect of making rookies useless for less time than before, it makes them more useless out of the box. Also I'd like to see the stats capped and the range of possible stat differential between professional soldiers reduced. It makes no sense to me why a veteran could ever carry more than 3 times as much weight as a rookie, or move more than twice as far in the same period. It also seems now that soldiers are more or less interchangeable because experience is the only relevant factor. I no longer say 'well this guy has good reflexes, so I'll make him an assault specialist' or 'this guy has good accuracy but low strength, so he'll snipe'. It's just 'This guy is a rookie, so he sucks at everything, this other guy is a veteran, so he's great at everything'. Difficulty Balance - Terror Missions I like the difficulty and I think it's well balanced for ironman apart from terror missions. Continuing on the theme of previous posters, I think there is a balance issue with these. Firstly I agree with Charon that they take far too long. It's just a slog. I am enjoying the game a lot, but it's getting to the point now where I can't be bothered doing another hours long terror site. This is regardless of the difficulty. The missions themselves are not just hard, it destroys the balance of normal missions. As previously mentioned in the thread, in some instances it is not even clear if it's possible to bring enough ammo to complete a site. I have to laugh at the 'rewards are based on how many civilians survive, engage the enemy in the field!' tip. As if when playing a terror site at NG+2 you would have the luxury to care about civilians. You are pinned near the dropship at pain of squad wipe for several turns, by which time civilians are dead. That's it, in fact it's the best case scenario. There is no 'advancing tactic'. The missions are so long (hours) and there are so many enemies that inevitably you'll get bored and make a mistake, or just get unavoidably unlucky, lose a couple of guys, resulting in possible squad wipe. This heavily encourages save scumming. In fact I'd love to see a successfully completed terror mission with no casualties at NG+2 ironman that doesn't use exploits. There is not even the, admittedly arbitrary, reprieve of 'air recon' on 20 turns. Now, after miraculously surviving a grueling 3 hour mission, you need to take your squad (extremely slowly, or you're dead) fishing for random stragglers. Blow up that building, or you'll be sniped. Rinse and repeat. It's not fun. That the penalty for failure is the same whether you kill 90% of the enemies or don't attempt the mission at all makes these missions absolutely not worth attempting unless you're save scumming. Lastly, they cannot be avoided by shooting down the UFO, at least for the first couple of months, unless you happen to have multiple bases in the spawn area and can throw foxtrot waves at it. Basically terror missions are starting to ruin the game experience for me and feel like a chore. Well that's it for now, will have more complaints soon . Not to sound negative - think the mod is very good. Would be interested in writing some lore.

@PALU Thanks for all the info.

Few questions about terror missions - 1) Can I reduce the enemy count by damaging the carrier? 2) When can I expect to be able to shoot down the carriers outright? I came across a thread where some were shooting them down but then another comment that they are not actually intended to be capable of being shot down. 3) Is the reward/penalty all or nothing? i.e. if I kill every alien except one, then pull out, is the penalty the same as not having attempted the mission at all? 4) The Andron/Drone combination seem just about unbeatable for the first carrier. I can unload a laser minigun point blank and they still have a chance to survive. Other laser weapons need time to wear them down with a lot of full resists, by which time you're swamped. Can't imagine ballistics. Anyone have any joy taking them down in October? Thanks!

Doing ok now. I guess the main point is that all starting firearms are entirely useless apart from shotguns. I can throw further and more accurately than I can snipe.. So I switched out for grenades and rockets. Also I'm not used to having to do every crash site. Like the mod so far, guess I'll just have to be more patient and play it on and off.

7-8 ufos is more than one per wave, and they'll need to be scouts, not light scouts. Watching an ironman runthrough now. Charon I think? First mission loses three guys and abandons.. Second mission everyone has shields and batons, beats on everything one by one while exploiting large shield hp. I guess this is the way to go, doesn't really look fun to me. And a bit silly. That production is tied to alien materials even more so than in vanilla looks like it means doing every single ground mission is a must. Also not very familiar with the resource system but it seems live enemies give 8x of some materials compared to corpses. So stun, stun, stun.

Ok cool, I'll check it out.

Followed your build order almost to the letter in the game in question. You don't have radar coverage outside of one base and awacs until Sep. 20th earliest. So, if you miss ufo waves, which isn't unlikely, you're screwed. If the ufos just fly away from your condors until they run out of fuel, or over water, you're screwed. If you get nothing but sebillians, you're screwed. If you lose some of your starting squad who can barely hit and have to blood useless rookies who can definitely not hit, move, nor carry anything, you're screwed. This is the impression I'm getting. Of course, none of this applies if you save scum. If I just save/reload any deaths or before waves to ensure perfect outcomes then yeah, it's doable.

Are you the brother who's ruthless but not unusually so? Really I should have all that start of month 2? I've got my guys outfitted in Jackal, that's about it. No alloys for anything else. Have only one functioning base for most of the first month, so if UFO waves miss it, well no chance of any alien materials, which you need to build everything. Also scout ufos can be lethal particularly if sebillian. Your rookies suck badly, so losing any of your starting squad trying to stun sebillians with a stick it is hard to recover from. Generally I don't see that I can progress in this mod on the difficulty its balanced for without save scumming.

Has the difficulty been increased in recent versions of this mod? Reason I'm asking is I had a terror mission at the start of month 2 and it's basically impossible. I have watched youtube vids of players experienced with the mod and they are not using any tactics I don't. I don't see any way I could 'improve' to have a chance at a terror mission at this stage. Massive escorted ufo that can't be shot down with starting tech, hordes of ballistic resistant regenerating sebillians and reapers with fat hp. I took out a few with mass grenades and flamers before one of my guys went down and the entire remainder of the team panicked. Not that it would have made a difference, but it was pretty funny. I don't save scum but I doubt this mission would be doable even if I did. So am I supposed to ignore these missions and just lose the continent?

Thanks for the explanation and great work putting all this together

Thanks for the replies guys - I'll take your advice and trust the mod has balanced this, and it sounds like it has. Just to satisfy my curiosity - why the reflex stat is set significantly lower than the others - is this to lessen possibility of reflex fire and alien reflex is also lowered? Or does reflex raise much faster / it's balanced for equipment multipliers? I guess now I am like that guy who wants to know the end of the movie instead of watching the movie..