Recovering Lost Continents

[Victor_Tadeu]

So... is it possible?

I lost a continent just in the third month. And I even destroyed an alien base there, they still surrendered to the aliens... Can I recover it?

[TacticalDragon]

So... is it possible?

I lost a continent just in the third month. And I even destroyed an alien base there, they still surrendered to the aliens... Can I recover it?

Yes it can be recovered

[Victor_Tadeu]

Seriously!? Good! How? On the obvious way? Putting a base and kicking the alien ass there whatever I can?

[MrPyro]

Yes it can be recovered

No it can't. There have been various requests/discussions about how it would be a cool feature, but as far as I am aware none of them have actually been implemented.

[legit1337]

Once a region is gone it is gone forever. There is no coming back from surrendering to the aliens.

[Victor_Tadeu]

Wtf... this sucks. It basically punishes you too hard for all the game for something you cant handle at early game. Worst than that, I think it's to late to change since the game release is just in one week.

I could think it's intended, like "you will lose continent during a playthrough as you also will lose soldiers", but with the economy as it is now, an eternal struggle, this only makes the things even worse. That 'cause I'm playing with a mod that enhances your economy and still is a big hit... in the vanilla game it is catastrophic!

Edited May 23, 2014 by Victor_Tadeu

[KevinHann]

I don't think the economy is that punishing, mate. It is a matter of priorities, if you don't ignore the importance of providing worldwide coverage to jump at fancy gear more quickly, you should be fine. I had all regions covered with 3 bases as early as month 2 and economy is nowhere near an issue, I'd even like it to be more challenging. If you would like a simple clean path to a flawless game Xenonauts will probably disappoint you but it is essential that grave mistakes remain as punishing if not even more. Knowing you can't just "fix" what you broke at a latter stage adds to the tension of trying to avoid it in the first place.

[Victor_Tadeu]

I always tries to cover most of the world before setting up new gear, it's my priority. I really dont know how do you manage to have 3 bases convering everything in 2 months. Putting only bases will do no good, since you will need radar, hangar and interceptors there, and a single interceptor can't do anything and I dont think only 3 bases are enoguh to save all continents. Generally I struggle with only 4 bases, shooting down and doing every ground missions with every UFO I can, and still I'm broke before month 6 and had to contain spending and building new bases is no way an option.

Plus to that... recovering lost continents would be a cool late game feature, maybe even if it had special missions on it. I know it's to late for it but maybe in the future if Goldhawk decides to do some expansions or DLCs for Xenonauts.

I'm thinking to try a new game with new bases placements, like Central America, North Africa and the middle of Asia, but still Australasia will be unprotected.

[KevinHann]

Don't know if there was a significant rebalance in the experimental builds but I'm comfortable with three bases firing down Corvettes already on my Veteran playthrough I started two days ago. Of course it took some time to get all the hangars filled so I had to let go a few of the early UFOs but those shot down were enough to keep nations happy. I had a few regions in the red in first month review, all of them were green in the second - but one which stayed white. Although I spent a lot of time trying to position all three bases the best possible way in terms of 3-radar coverage.

[legit1337]

Agreed. I have 3 bases up by the start of month 3, no problem. 2 of the bases even have fully kitted out strike teams.

[KevinHann]

I had one team in Europe and one in North America in my Normal playthrough but they felt redundant so I'm going for a single European team in Veteran this time. Can't cover all Crash Sites so I have to airstrike some but it's not that bad so far. Will reconsider if required when the heavier UFOs appear.

[Victor_Tadeu]

Starting Coverage Option 1:

I think the best starting coverage should be something like this (Central America, North Africa and China).

Each base with two radars and three hangars at minimum. 4 radars and 4 hangars when possible and North Africa with 5 hangars (two dropships, I like to centralize assault teams).

Europe, North Africa, Central America and Asia are mostly safe with small blind spots. The partial coverage of North America, South America and South Africa may be enough for keeping them from defecting in early game. Australia still out whatever...

Starting Coverage Option 2:

On that one I tried to cover all the continents at least a little. Central America base stay on the same place, but I moved the european one to Middle East and the China one to Papua New Guinea in the Oceania islands. The problem is that, apart from assault team, most bases cant help each other even with the Foxtrot.

In my current game I have four bases (I wouldn't deploy them in the same way again).

One in Europe, one in North America, one in the middle of Asia and one in Australasia. The asian one is capable of supporting both Europe and Australasia with Foxtrots, while it can be helped by both of them granting me excelent UFO shotdown rate. The North America one is isolated. I had two dropships in Europe and they seems enough for ground missions accross the world (so far).

Europe have 3 Condors and 1 Foxtrot, Asia and North America have 2 Condors and 2 Foxtrot, Australiasia 2 Condors and 1 Foxtrot. All bases have 2 radar awway (Asia have 3) and is guarded by, at least, 10 soldiers and 2 missiles barrages.

My economy is struggling... but not at the point to end the game.

Edited May 23, 2014 by Victor_Tadeu

[Caaygun]

The second one is my standard go. It covers all possible world cities in foxtrot range by month 3 when you might get a random remote aerial terror site in yakutsk or new zealand. It's kind of forced in veteran. I put the east base in philippines as opposed to australia.

[crusherven]

You couldn't recover lost countries in the OG, either, FWIW. And in that case you could lost a strong supporter just by missing a single alien infiltration mission (or by being unable to stop a battleship from landing). Sometimes bad things happen.

[KevinHann]

It would have been a nice expansion to the original if losing funding region resulted in something more than just losing funding, like new types of missions while trying to get it back, and/or it affecting your gameplay directly with land assaults (attacking your base, border military bases asking for assistance to hold off invading infantry troops, hostile local forces aiding the aliens while you try to capture cities, etc).

That's actually expansion material so fingers crossed the game will make it there, whatever Chris and the team decide to put in it if it comes to that.

[Victor_Tadeu]

It would have been a nice expansion to the original if losing funding region resulted in something more than just losing funding, like new types of missions while trying to get it back, and/or it affecting your gameplay directly with land assaults (attacking your base, border military bases asking for assistance to hold off invading infantry troops, hostile local forces aiding the aliens while you try to capture cities, etc).

That's actually expansion material so fingers crossed the game will make it there, whatever Chris and the team decide to put in it if it comes to that.

+1

I think the same.

[mrsisk]

You also can't regain lost countries in XCOM:EU/XCOM:EW. It's kind of part of the legacy.

As for economy, I've realized that you can earn far more $ from ground combat (well, a significant amount anyway) than you do from country income. So when it comes to base placement, I try to cover as much land area as I can, rather than focusing on the number of countries I cover.

I don't know if this is a sound strategy or not. My current stable game play through is in mid-December and I've got 3 bases up and running: USSR, USA and N. Africa. I was late to the weapons research game, so I don't have lasers yet and will only have my first Corsair by the end of the current month...but I'm probably going to skip over lasers altogether now as I've got all I need to move on to plasma weapons. Kind of up in the air about that because I'm not sure exactly when I'll start seeing heavy fighters and it would be nice to have gatling lasers before then.

Anyway, base placement...My strategy is to be able to shoot down as many UFOs as possible. If your bases are covering too much water (as I think your Option 2 is, Victor), then you have to expend a lot of jet fuel tailing UFOs until they are over land. Which means a lot of times you're going to run out of fuel before you can down them, which is a loss of about $20,000 to $120,000 per UFO (based on the income I'm seeing from small to medium UFO ground missions)...not to mention the resources captured.

But so far it's been working for me...mainly because I save spam all the time. I play that way because my main goal is to see all the game content, not to prove I'm a big hairy man. I can tell that by looking in the mirror.