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This game is too hard


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just kidding

Hello everyone, this is my first time i post here, i bought the access to the game a week ago and i couldnt stop playing it, but now, i'm concerned by some fact and i started being frustrated by some other things.

First off i'm using the stable build V8 , my main problem i think is the difficulty, or rather, the Aliens tend to snowball a little too fast:

I admit i may lacking of skills and the capacity to better maximize the effectiveness of my base and resources and i tend to focus on improve the main base instead of perhaps building other bases in the globe, after a couple of months, while i'm virtually with a lot of good weapons, veichles and Aircraft

(manage to get both the tank and the corsair in november), i start to lose control of the Nations and starting to waste a lot of income and money because obviously i dont have enough map control and without money i can't build any other aircraft, considering i'm starting to spawn landing ships and bigger squadrons of fighters and scouts.

My question is ... what i'm doing wrong ? should i focus on building more bases rather then improve my main base ? and other advice ? thanks, and sorry for my crap english but it is not my native language.

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Simple answer...The game isn't balanced yet.

They just did they're first bit of balancing in the new v19.2 Experimental build.

So you aren't doing anything wrong you could say...It's just the game not being balanced in the version you are playing.

Even though I played V18 stable and what I did was modify(mod) my own game so that I start with more money and things cost less.

Because one of the main downfalls of V18 is the really unbalanced price and build times for some of the items.Also the starting money in this version(V18) is a little bit low.

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I understand they did not bring the "balance modifications", but as my self-observation, I find things (mostly, not always) "as they should be", meaning with difficulties but balanced for most things.

I play on Hard difficulty, and played with steam V18 version

The game looked to me with lots of hardships but fine as it is.

It increases replayability a great lot.

And with less difficulty, the Ironman mode would be of almost no value.

I agree on Misterlock observations about prices, build times and starting money though.

Slight adjustments could be useful.

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I got thumped in normal level on the landing ship farm map I always used to hate in earlier builds. Teaches me not to spam smoke grenades really. I hate the map even more as now the aliens have a nice defensive wall to hide behind right outside their ship. Bah!

Not saying it's too hard, just wanted to vent and this seemed appropriate :)

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Two things to do:

First, talk about how the game's balancing and pacing feels for the difficulty level.

Second, you can run some of the balancing mods like the little mod which seeks to implement and experiment with some possible balances and tweaks and see what works.

You know...actually little mod became kinda a big mod...:)

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the map where the alien ship is in the middle of the map with the hedges around?Yeah...I hate that map to...I mean really...What farmer takes his time to actually build hedges and not...you know...work the fields...

Yeah, that's the one. Nice to know I'm not alone :)

This is X-COM, baby!

This is improbable farming methodology of the late 20th century more like! not as catchy... :)

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Playing on Veteran. There were 2 difficult missions. Boys from 2nd base, striking undamaged Cruiser with Ceaseans in the night (that was their third mission). And defending 3rd base with 8 soldiers under heavy attack in late january. Mixed team of Harridans and lizzrds in heavy armor. And 4 laser rifles, 2 machine guns and rifles against them. Few grenades and only basic armor.

Yes. that was hard. But not too hard.

The one real hard mission I had was in TFTD. I missed a moment and had no choice but strike the Alien base in late March. If not, I could loose a country. That time I didnt research sonic weaponry, only sonic pulsors (of course no vibrablades). Well my crew was out of ammo in the 4th turn of the second mission level. Than we went ahead. Taking all we can with thermal tasers. Collecting grenades from sunned enemies and blowing them with that grenades for they can not become unstunned.

We won. Something like 100 turns if I'm not mistaken.

That was really too hard. But not impossible.

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Thanks for your opinion, pal!

By the way I didn't want to be boastful. Just wanted to show, that yet in Xenonanuts nothing seem to be too hard. May be later I could taste Iron Man mode, when the game becomes balanced.

Another history from TFTD. I even wrote about it in my novel. I always liked to rename soldiers as known movie or book Heroes. So there were Johnothan Power, Mattiew Masterson, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Sinkler Fist, Staffa kar Terma, John Carter, Deja Toris etc... But some of names were too tricky to guess if it is man or woman. Well I made take off for my Triton-3 (3rd base near Neo-Japan) and sent to newly discovered alien base. Landed. Looked around. Made a shot... another... again. If you remember the only serious trouble (if you have advanced weaponry) were M.C. attacks on the first level. So my nearly freshest Seaman guys killed them all, took the clips and all loot they could carry (that was in 1995 I suppose, before the patch) and went on 2nd level. Which was not very hard to pass with Full-Sonic-Cannon style (as I like).

So in few month I get results of M.C. testing. No one had M.C. strength below 70. Even men with low bravery were nearly totally resistant to molecular control attacks.

That was beautiful. Best luck in all my UFO-like games.

By the way the only game I didn't pass on superhuman, was Interceptor. I simply hated to see that my wingmen die in seconds when squad of 5 Phantasms are ahead. I could use maneuvers against them. Shoot one by one and then hyperspace. But winning all the war in one fighter simply impossible. I could not even imagine what could be the final mission, which I probably could fly super-avenger with big-cick-ass-nova-bomb on-board. It is nearly zero chance to win with no wingmen. I played Interceptor to Victory 3 times. Only on 'Veteran'. 'Genius' and 'Superhuman' in Interceptor were really UNBALANCED. IMHO.

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The ground missions are challenging, but the air missions are pretty insane.

Until they balance the game, this is what I suggest you do. Go into the manufactures.xml and edit it with notepad. Decrease the cost and build time. I think theres an aircraft.xml file around as well (Can't see because I am at work) and triple the damage output of the weapons. Then you will have a fighting chance.

Its not cheating, its balancing.

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1. Skip lasers

2. Do all ground missions

3. Rush your 2nd base in the US (first should ALWAYS be in the mid east covering USSR, EU, parts of Asia)

4. Cheese the crap out of foxtrots and allenium torps.

That's how you 'win' V18 the easy way. Foxtrots with Allenium torps can knock anything out ezpz and ballistics do more than enough damage to take most anything out for a few months.

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lol I will clarify. 3 Foxys with a full compliment of allenium torps can destroy any ship in game ezpz. Just target the main ship while going at min speed to max range between you and interceptors. Once you're payload in on its way to pain city jackup your afterburners and hightail it out of there. Escort your choppah with some condors and you're fine.

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I agree about ground missions being challenging, but air missions being harder, and currently unbalanced and too hard.

Although, I have to say I don't mind air missions being too hard.

This puts me under heavy pressure and with a goal to keep a strong fighter budget ; and with pressure when I want to send fighters to down something. Were I be able to down every UFO around, I would have the opportunity to loiter around and would become just bored and with no possible way to replay the game with satisfaction (since I would have beaten it) and to have some great fun with new attempts. That's the reason why I actually would have wanted to avoid the pieces of advice dropped here or there, telling us which strategy will be a perfect WIN situation. ;)

Also, I have to say that having the opportunity to risk a Chinook and its men being downed in the air by aliens (happened to me once !) is great fun. I escorted it actually, but the escort was underequipped; it fought hard but got wasted (quite the epic way!). On an Ironman game, seeing your Chinook and men downed is actually a fun, memorable experience, since I still managed to recover and keep the fight after that.

Again, I agree about some points regarding balancing of costs and build time, but nowhere close to tripling damage etc. I place this not to oppose your own experience and suggestions, but for the devs to also notice we care about the gain and great advantages this difficulty causes.

If Xenonauts became an easy / average challenging game on Veteran, its value will drop and even more will the goodness of Ironman.

But now that I have said all this... we still all underline the problem of air combat unbalancing status! :)

Right now, I think its more on the funds parts that we might lack to address the possible fighter hardships, and that the construction times might be too long. I think construction times shall be reduced less than currently when we add engineers over and over (diminishing gains) but that global time may be shorter too, and of course global cost of fighters ; maybe by about 30 %

Also maybe increase the possibilities for the player to have "air bases" with an affordable maintenance costs? Or maybe not, as it could allow players who dominate the air to just dominate the entire Earth ?

The devs know.

And yes : It's XCOM, Baby ! :D

Moreover, it's Xenonauts, and it's so wonderful.

(although, I have to admit, the name still has to fight me to stick)

Edited by Telparion
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Vanilla V18.# wasn't actually that bad on normal mode as long as you spread fast, know your techs, and don't put any money into Corsairs/vehicles. Sounded like a lot of people's problems came from slow expansion, which was probably due to expenditures in non-"necessary" areas like vehicles and maybe not selling enough of their alloys/alenium right off the bat.

Had a rough patch in Dec/Jan but that was my fault for being slow to get Marauders out. Didn't have enough of an engineering base the first time through, second time I did. I did do a lot of save and reloads, though, to figure out the absolute minimum amount of aircraft/guns needed to shoot down any given type of UFO without taking damage. Though that's all out the window now in v19+

Anyway, mostly it just felt like it required a certain playstyle vs actually being too hard/resource scarce (which is what it sounds like 19.2 is running into).

Still burning through On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness 4 Insane, so will get a chance to try the new builds once that is done!

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I actually think that Marauder take they're sweet ass time to repair...I mean 86 % Damage out of a battle and it takes a whole freaking day to repair?I mean goddamn...And that's only light damage...I never went with a Marauder down to something like 40%...I wouldn't wanna even imagine the repair time on that...

You would actually think that since you got all this nifty tech...and you actually managed to build ultra powerfull ships...your engineers and research dummies in the lab would of discovered some new tools for repairing...

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Wow, so many replies.

Alright, i want to thank each one of you for the advices i gotta say i improved a lot, and with that mod posted i'm starting to getting the hang of it.

Thanks again, i have great expectations for this game and cannot wait for a complete release

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