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[1.65/X.CE V0.35.0] X-Division 1.00 Beta (1.00.11c)


Charon

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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.

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I don't think Reuban's requirements can be met even at the lowest difficulty. I'd say the minimum requirements should be Jackal armour, some Laser weaponry or Division if you can't access Laser until then, and some experienced troops who can carry loads of important stuff like rockets, ammo and grenades.

Alenium grenades and rockets are also good to have. That said, in my current campaign I managed to down the first Terror carrier, but I have beaten this mission on easy and normal each once before, if only barely in the very first campaign.

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4 hours ago, Borak said:

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.

Yes, Unusually Ruthless Reuban is my brother :cool:

You're probably playing it wrong. Since you have 8 million starting money, use it. I do it like this:

Day 0: First base: build Workshop, Lab, 4 Hangars, Garage, Living quarters. Recruit soldiers, scientists and engineers

Build 4 additional bases

Day 5: First base: Order 3 Condors and Chinook

Day 10: First base: Recruit more scientists and engineers

4 additional bases: build at least 3 Hangars each, 1 Radar each. One base get also Living Quarters and Garage.

Day 15: Locate AWACS and Chinook into one additional base. Also some Condors from first base go to one additional base. All those additional bases also buy 1-3 Condors each.

Day 20: Radars are ready. From this on, 5 bases with radars so...

Stunning Sebillians with sticks only sucks. Use Stun gas and/or Shotguns. Also there is no much need to stun Sebs early, as 5 Caesan guards are enough for 8 Fox armours.

1 hour ago, Dagar said:

I don't think Reuban's requirements can be met even at the lowest difficulty. I'd say the minimum requirements should be Jackal armour, some Laser weaponry or Division if you can't access Laser until then, and some experienced troops who can carry loads of important stuff like rockets, ammo and grenades.

Alenium grenades and rockets are also good to have. That said, in my current campaign I managed to down the first Terror carrier, but I have beaten this mission on easy and normal each once before, if only barely in the very first campaign.

Older save from my current campaign:

Version: X-Division 1.0.0.10

Difficulty: NG+2 ("Veteran")

Date: 9. October (just about when first Terror battleship arrives)

Current equipment: HE Alenium rocket*20, Precision laser MK-1*4, Laser pistol MK-1*9, Laser minigun*4, Incendiary grenade *20, Chemical grenade *60, Alenium grenade*40, Fox*8

Special materials count to manufacture all of those: Fox 16 Alloys+32 Light fibre, Laser weapons: Pistol*9, Precision*12, Miniguns*24

Total: 61 Alloys and 32 Light fibre. Not problem at all since capturing Scout gives around 10 Alloys + more from disassembly.

So that is very manageable. When it comes to research, I made some compromises. Only Division weapon I have is Heavy machinegun (for Hunter). Concentrating on Lasers, just finished researching Advanced lasers. When it comes to Light fibre count, for 8 Fox armour you would need only 5 stunned Caesan guards. It seems I didn't stun any Sebillians so far.

What I wrote is possible with rapid development. Looking back I had 7 bases running on mid November. 9 bases on early January (2 bases are named "Factory" and "Laboratory", those names tell all about them).

You may also ask how I could have 9 bases already. Current date is 26. January. I have total 86 Hangars on my bases (aircraft count is less  than 40 though). I have shot down every ufo since start of October (except two heavily escorted Landing ships, no need to shot those down anyway). Like I said, if you say what I wrote is not possible, you're playing it wrong.

Edited by Ruthless Reuban
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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.

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I have to agree with the Ruthless dude ;)... It is very much possible, I also play on NG+2 and no cheating. How he is doing it, is the same way I do it too, with some differences. 

As a new player you may not know the best and fastest path to aquire these things before the first terrormission comes. If you need some inspiration, you can check out my channel on youtube (I have runes in my name, so should be easy enough to find) or Charons, we are both playing on NG+2. Dagar also has a channel, he plays on NG. 

I cant deliver links because I am using my phone, and this post has already taking too long now. Stupid phones :D

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30 minutes ago, Borak said:

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.

You can shoot down UFO's even without radar coverage. When airliner is shot down or forests burn, it's pretty certain UFO caused that one. What you do next? Some UFO's fly away but that's why you (should) have Asieru and Foxtrot. If you get only Sebillians, you stun Reaper bull and get Chemical grenade. Starting squad do not take risks, they shoot from back with heavy or sniper. Rookies take all risks and like I said, rookie + Shield + Chemical grenade is very deadly combination.

And as my calculations clearly show, you'll need only about 7-8 UFO captures on first 35 days (1-2 has to be Caesans) to have enough materials for first terror mission. That's not too hard.

But yeah, luck sucks sometimes. I had to wait 1.5 months on second phase to get first Matergy PISTOL. I had cannon, minigun etc but not lowly pistol. And so couldn't research Matergy tech.

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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.

 

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41 minutes ago, Borak said:

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.

 

That 7-8 was average, half of them may be light scouts. Also if you only need one strike team, weapon count on my example could be half. So that makes alloy count: Laser weapons: Pistol*4, Precision*6, Miniguns*12. Total: 22. Include 16 from Fox, that makes 38 alloys. That makes around 4-5 UFO's that is much less than one per wave. Also after day 20 there will be at least 3 waves before first terror ship and with 5 bases with radar coverage 1-2 UFO captures per wave is pretty normal.

There are many possible tactics. This mod has solution to almost every "problem". Question is to find solutions to those "problems".

That's why I said getting 8 Fox armours for first terror missions only require 5 alive Caesan/Sebillian guards. That is much less than 1 per mission. Later on doing every ground mission is not necessity but depending on difficulty, it helps.

Edited by Ruthless Reuban
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It's better to give a trained soldier better gear later than to equip a replacement rookie with shiny gear now. Thus, stun if you can do it with limited risk, kill most of the time, and splat (i.e. destroy body and equipment) if you must. Terror crews in particular may benefit from a rather heavy splatting with missiles in the beginning to reduce the pressure to a survivable level, after which you can switch to "regular" killing, and then go for stunning as the number of enemies thin out and you happen to get suitable encounters.

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5 hours ago, Ruthless Reuban said:

Older save from my current campaign:

Version: X-Division 1.0.0.10

Difficulty: NG+2 ("Veteran")

Date: 9. October (just about when first Terror battleship arrives)

Current equipment: HE Alenium rocket*20, Precision laser MK-1*4, Laser pistol MK-1*9, Laser minigun*4, Incendiary grenade *20, Chemical grenade *60, Alenium grenade*40, Fox*8

Special materials count to manufacture all of those: Fox 16 Alloys+32 Light fibre, Laser weapons: Pistol*9, Precision*12, Miniguns*24

Total: 61 Alloys and 32 Light fibre. Not problem at all since capturing Scout gives around 10 Alloys + more from disassembly.

So that is very manageable. When it comes to research, I made some compromises. Only Division weapon I have is Heavy machinegun (for Hunter). Concentrating on Lasers, just finished researching Advanced lasers. When it comes to Light fibre count, for 8 Fox armour you would need only 5 stunned Caesan guards. It seems I didn't stun any Sebillians so far.

What I wrote is possible with rapid development. Looking back I had 7 bases running on mid November. 9 bases on early January (2 bases are named "Factory" and "Laboratory", those names tell all about them).

You may also ask how I could have 9 bases already. Current date is 26. January. I have total 86 Hangars on my bases (aircraft count is less  than 40 though). I have shot down every ufo since start of October (except two heavily escorted Landing ships, no need to shot those down anyway). Like I said, if you say what I wrote is not possible, you're playing it wrong.

Nice! Yeah okay, I concur, it definitely should be doable if you know what you do. I basically tech whatever I feel like, and especially do not know what leads where. That said, on NG, I get by pretty fine I'd say, so I'd at least contest the "you're doing it wrong" part, not in the strict sense of the words, but in the implied "If you are not following this path you are doing it wrong" sense.

Links to the Let's Play series:

Charon's NG+2

Svinedrengen's NG+2

My own NG, no first Terror mission as carrier got downed

Coffee Potato's NG, to show you that you can play this game even if you screw up royally.

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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.

 

 

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So amidst the chaos, I'll try and change the subject.  How is the next version coming along?  I remember seeing a video showing a checklist for captured alien types, so I know something exists.  Its been a few weeks since, so I'm left wondering just where exactly things are.  Not asking for a precise ETA, I get that its a spare time project, just trying to get a sense for it.

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Download.png.60c86afe942cd50372eecde1bce2f812.png
X-Division official

On 3/19/2019 at 11:16 PM, Ion Mage said:

So amidst the chaos, I'll try and change the subject.  How is the next version coming along?  I remember seeing a video showing a checklist for captured alien types, so I know something exists.  Its been a few weeks since, so I'm left wondering just where exactly things are.  Not asking for a precise ETA, I get that its a spare time project, just trying to get a sense for it.

ETA: Never. The official development has been concluded as of version 1.00.01 .

But you can download the unoffical version which is unoffical:

 

im legally blind to the fact that this version exists.

Edited by Charon
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Download.png.60c86afe942cd50372eecde1bce2f812.png
X-Division official statement

9 hours ago, Ion Mage said:

So who exactly is working on the unnofficial release?  Your saying your legally blind to it yet are the one who made the post there...

Officially and unoffically nobody. And what @Dagar said. Yet this versions seems to pop up here and there. It contains work of @PALU and a lot of other people.

That is as far as I can make an offical statement.

Your initial question was about the ETA, this should answer it, the rest are the things which you have to make your own mind up upon, i think.

 

I think it has been pretty confusing when i make official statements, and when i blabber as much nonsense as everybody else on this forum. To remedy this, and to make it clearer when official statements are made, they will be tagged with the green armour symbol at the top.

Edited by Charon
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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!

 

 

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1. If you bring it down some of them are killed in the crash. I don't know if just damage affects terror mission, although base attack missions see an enemy casualty based on damage. Note that crashed terror mission attacks tend to be more dangerous, however, as there are few locals to soak up damage/delay the enemy, and there doesn't tend to be as much cover as in a terrorized city.

2. Carriers can be shot down. However, there are certain combinations that are not intended to be possible to shoot down because they are escorted by extremely dangerous craft. "When" is subjective. I think it's possible to do it with starting craft (assuming there are no murder escorts) if you're prepared to have a lot of them shot down, but I have never tried that myself.

3. A single remaining alien is capable of slaughtering any locals, so yes, pulling out of a terror mission is a failure. Pulling out of a UFO attack mission is a failure as well. In both cases you can salvage marginall amounts of gear by placing it in soldier inventories. Note that any dropped gear (including inside the drop ship) may get lost, so don't free up inventory space by dropping valuable weapons on the drop ship floor!

4. I use heavy save scumming at the "easiest" difficulty and terror missions are a pain (I don't get real terror missions any more as I shoot the craft down, but the downed craft I'm currently slogging through is plain silly (and I'm still not sure I'll make it). I'm just waiting for the final piece of the puzzle to be made available by the RNG to enter the end game, so that's at the very end of the campaign. I haven't failed any terror missions (or downed terror craft), though (save scumming and an exploit!).

Note that every kinetic/energy hit wears down armor, so even if all the damage was resisted, the shot still removed a small amount of armor (15% of the nominal damage), so resisted hits still contribute towards the damage of following hits. Smoke is useful to block enemies from firing at you, forcing them to come closer before they fire. It may buy you time and can protect you from long range shots.

I made a test of a Division Mk-3 rifle vs a normal Andron, and it took over 30 hits to kill it (save scumming to make sure every shot hit using aiming to increase the accuracy from abysmal to lousy. Two soldiers were participated in firing at a camping Andron, and no other enemies were active outside of the (non terror) craft at the time, so I had plenty of time). I believe the first damage was cause around hit 22.
Thus, kinetic weapons contribute marginally against Androns, but it's better to aim them at softer targets (they're useful against small drones, for instance).

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Hi guys,

So I've played all the way to the fourth phase without shooting down a terror carrier or terror/base assault dreadnought... and now I just keep getting my planes' butts kicked by battleships & dreadnoughts accompanied by interceptors.

By missing out on terror/base assault ship cores, have I screwed myself by missing out on some of the other aircraft? In posts and lets plays it looks like there are many planes i'm missing (lotus, firebird, contrail, merlin, night owl, archelon...), some of which can be acquired before phase 4.

Or does someone have tips for taking down dreadnoughts & battleships with furies/marauders/hunters? (the lets plays mostly focus on the ground game) Thanks so much!

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At least the Lotus and Archelon depend on technology acquired by researching specific terror wrecks (and the Archelon requires material as well). There are many technologies (weapons as well as aircraft) that require you to bring down a particular craft, so it shouldn't come as a surprise. The Contrail was uncovered quite late for me (I think it was a bit into phase 4), at which time the previous interceptor craft really wasn't up to the task.

I take down craft escorted by alien interceptor craft by first taking out the escorts with a full wing of repurposed alien interceptor craft (of as late a type as I can muster) and then I send in bomber craft to wear the main craft down (for the cases where the escorts are major craft I use bombers throughout). The human interceptor craft are used exclusively to deal with wings of 3 alien interceptor craft, and I'm still not sure it wouldn't have been better to use repurposed alien craft for that task as well. It can be noted that I find escorts of the very last alien interceptor craft to be very hard to deal with: I haven't been able to take down any of them without losing at least one of my craft. The second last one was a lot easier to deal with, and Hunters should be up to the task [I'm using Short Circuits as their weapons, and used Focus Blast (if I remember the weapon development order correctly) prior to that]).

I've never used Firebirds, Merlin, or Night Owl. I unlocked the Lotus early, but the resources to build it were scarce (only terror craft provided the Extreme critical component until phase 4), so my bombers were generally Drakes. It's possible to bring down all the major craft using Drakes, but you need an awful lot of them. About the only good thing about Drakes is that they can be rearmed in a sufficiently short time to make two sorties if attacking from a nearby base, but as many late craft have unavoidable attacks that wear away at craft you may or may not have them in a sufficient shape to actually be able to take off again (or survive the second sortie, for that matter). By the time I unlocked the other bombers I started getting the resources to build Lotus craft.

Unfortunately, changing the loadout of craft takes too long to be useful, so you have to equip you craft according to what you think will be the most useful against what may come up in the next wave. This has resulted in me using mines exclusively, as that's the only weapon that can be used against all major craft, while missile usage is suicidal against many of them. Using proper deployment of mines it's possible to wear down all major craft and survive the encounter (although one craft require an annoying special tactic of exiting via a corner of the map or get shot down by an extremely long range missile: it took much frustration to figure out why retreating craft were killed after leaving most of the time and even longer to find a way to avoid it).

Each major craft has its own properties, so you need to use different tactics when deploying mines against them. For one I had to make several (ideally 4, I think) close U shaped flybys (exiting the engagement and then return again) to deploy the mines so they'd hit, enabling dropping of mines only in a narrow stretch of the path. In other cases you'd get the craft to chase the bomber while its dropping mines, etc.

Since I'm using mines exclusively, it's extremely important to have the latest mine technology. You also need to have a sufficient number of bombers to actually be able to deploy the mines (as well as being in range of the target). If I remember correctly it takes 13 Stealth Mine deployments to bring down a Mothership, so you can do it with 13 Drakes (they'd be in a very poor shape when leaving the engagement, but they'll be repaired by the next wave), or 7 sorties of a craft that's capable of deploying 2 mines at a time, or 5 Archelons (which probably won't happen). Note that bombers without countermeasures are next to useless late in the game, as there are few craft that don't sport missiles.

I've got 6 "regular" bases that sport a full wing of interceptor craft (currently Contrail), a full wing of repurposed alien interceptors (currently Alien Interceptors with a small number of Heavy Alien Interceptors), and 3 bombers (Lotus, with some bases having an Archelon), plus a drop ship. In addition to that, I have 3 support bases that have a varying number of somewhat outdated Drake bombers that I don't plan to replace except with Lotus craft that occasionally are replaced by an Archelon on a "real" base.

I'm sure there are other ways to deal with enemies, but I've found a way that works for me, and given that resources are scarce, I haven't been in a position to engage in experiments. In my thinking, the important thing for a bomber is the number of mines it can deploy while still being equipped with countermeasures. Sure, faster, nimbler, or more resilient is nice, but getting hit by major craft major weapons tends to be lethal regardless of resilience (there's one craft in particular that's fast enough that it's a bit of a struggle to get away from it once you've deployed the mines. but it's still possible even with a Drake).

Edit: It should be made very clear that success for me is very dependent upon save scumming. There are probably people out there who can repeatedly follow a working pattern without making mistakes, but I'm not one of those. Also, it takes a fair number of attempts to figure out how to deal with a new craft (or recall how to deal with a known one at times). I'm playing at the NG level, but without the air game nerfing mod. I'm also not above letting the game auto resolve fights that should be won and save scum when that fails (but there are certain fights that the auto resolve claims have a 0% chance that aren't that hard to win with proper tactics, and, conversely, cases where auto resolve gives you 100% chance when it isn't possible to deal the required amount of damage manually).

Edited by PALU
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@PALU

Dude... amazing reply. So helpful, so detailed - thank you, man. 

I'm doing an 99% honestman runthrough so the savescumming isn't an option (I say 99% cuz I allow myself one reload per ground mission if shit goes horribly sideways. Like when I learned that roborexes explode... with 7 of my 10 soldiers within the blast radius).

Sounds like I need to be grinding cruiser/carrier missions for the parts to build my airfleet numbers waaay up (sounds like you have 6x9=54, I have 40, and some are older and practically useless), especially more Drakes, and I need to get some better mine tech (I'm still on mini-mines, I feel like I'm tossing pebbles at these UFOs). 

Thanks again!

Edited by dipmonk
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