[V18 stable - salvaging alloys for constructions] bug or imbalanced effect ?

[thixotrop]

Hi there,

in my current game I can't salvage alloys from crashed ufos, because I don't see any crashed ufos anymore. In the beginning of the game (no Foxtrot, no Alenium weapons) I could shoot down some ufos and send my "salvage team" there.

Now with Foxtrots and Alenium missles and torpedos I can shoot the ufos down (heavy fighter or other small and medium sized vessels) but no crashed ufo will appear; hence no alloys to salvage.

Maybe the Alenium weapons are too powerful and the ufos vaporised in mid-air...but wait can't be, because the larger ufos are not possible to bring down due to their massive armor, even with three Foxtrots and two combats (home for reloading and back) they are nearly invincible. I would need three combats but the ufo always escapes before that.

Thus my assembly of the Corsair is stopped in the middle as I don't have any alloys.

Note: There was no notification why it was stopped, maybe the remaining amount of alloys were sufficient to produce smaller items like plasma rifle but not for the corsair. A message should tell me that...was waiting for ages until I have seen the production time did not change anymore.

Also I never find landed ufos and have to hope on Terror missions or Alien bases (only one found up to now) to get some of the rare alloys.

So I think my current game will end soon as I can't get alloys from crashed ufos and can't update my jets and armour due to alloy shortage.

Is that a bug, an imbalanced effect or just the end of the game as I wasn't fast enough to update my weapons/jets as there may be time for that?

If I was too slow, I don't know what I should have changed as money is always short in the beginning.

[Matthew]

I'll forward your notes to Chris, he will look into the balance.

[Chris]

It's because the balance in V18 isn't particularly good, unfortunately. The Experimental builds have improved / smoother balance (along with more crashes), but I'm afraid the balance probably won't be perfect until release as it's still something we're working on.

[4Aces]

Hi thixotrop,

The game has random elements, and there are some periods of the game right now that will go through 'dry spells' with no good UFOs to shoot down. There are many types of UFO that do not create a mission for you to recover. Fighters (including Heavy and Interceptor versions), Bombers, and Strikecruisers all just disintegrate. It also sounds like you have a lack of active radar, possibly only one base? More bases means more UFOs, at least in v18. This is a necessary evil, otherwise the UFOs would terrorize the world and you would lose all funding long before you could get a second base running (with aircraft).

So, there are four ways you can improve your game. One is to watch for those new items that appear on the map and send your jets to those areas if they are over land. They are telling you that a UFO was there. The second is to tail any non-disintegrating UFOs that you encounter over water and hope the head over land. As soon as they do, click on the Squadron and tell them to Engage (it does not always work automatically), and do not worry if it says the UFO went into the sea, the mission will be there if you were over land. Thirldy, if you are really desperate for supplies, then save the game every 12 in-game hours and if no UFOs appear near you, then reload and do it again. Since the UFOs appear (approximately) every three days, you will get used to the schedule. This is a good practice to get used to right now, as the random generation can either give you little, or suddenly hit you with an armada on one country. But that is why this is a early Beta. Lastly, Terror mission have a UFO right beside them. If you wait until the last second before landing at the city, you can re-target to the UFO and take it instead (with all that goodies). It solves the Terror mission at the same time. Make sure to save before you try this though, as it can take a few attempts to get the timing just right.

As soon as you run out of materials for a production queue, it will issue a pop-up on the Geoscape (global map) warning that Production was halted on 'x' due to a lack of 'y'. You may not have received the warning since it sounds like you were producing two things as once at the same base, which might be a bug (especially if the Corsair was the second item on the list).

The build queues do not pre-allocate materials for anything in the queue beyond the current item, so if you were building two Corsairs and some weapons, then the first Corsair would start (using up those Alien Alloys), but the weapons might use up too much and the second Corsair would not be able to start. You are correct in your assumption, if there is only sufficient Alloy for weapons, then that is what will get built. As soon as the Alloy levels are high enough to start the Corsair project, it will begin however those engineers are just waiting around doing nothing without the materials. Personally, I would just focus all your engineers on a single project (per base) and get that finished as quickly as possible. That way you have something that can be used right away, instead of having twice as much at 50%.

[thixotrop]

@ Matthew and Chris

Thanks for the answer.

@4Aces

I didn't know about the desintegration of the ufos, it was just a wild guess. Thanks for clarification.

Actually I have two bases up (middle east and middle america, Kuba or so). I have lost USA and Russia due to funding issues and lack of active aircrafts. Though I still wonder about Russia with two terror missions succeeded and lots of ufos destroyed or followed, maybe Russia is too big for one connected base only.

How do you send aircrafts to loacations when there is nothing to intercept?

I think I have read it somewhere here, that it is not possible. My memory may be crowded, but I think "UFO:Enemy Unknown" had this feature....or I mismatch that with one of the clones: UFO:After--something.

For each base I have one radar room. Is it possible to double the radar range with more radar rooms? I never have seen an upgrade to the initial radar technology.

I have seen the ufo laned near the terrorized city but always feared to engate it and loosing the city. I will try that next time.

The engineers are regularly focussed on one project only. As the corsair took too long I left one engineer in place and the rest for weapons. Hence they have "reused" the alloys from the corsair project, as I guessed and you described it.

Thanks for all this information.

I may be "too enthusiastic" to report such things here, but honestly I really really like the game and want to help eradicate errors, even small ones. Because I know from my engineer life that the small errors will always annoy you most. And as you are in the beta testing it is better to know as not to know.

Edited July 19, 2013 by thixotrop