«

[Lt. Razak]

I finally finished the cloaking device and already fieldtested it in one of the local temples. Worked pretty well, now I'm engaging some aliens infiltrating S.E.L.F. or the Mutant alliance... can't remember. Anyway, they just appeared out of nowhere since the graph shows nothing and the city as been clean for days.
My new tactics are to fly to infiltrated buildings immediatly after the battle, then unload cargo / pick up ammo and fly to the downed ufo (I usually get only one). That way infiltration is at an all-time low and since there are less aliens to kill I actually managed to produce enough toxine B for permanent use... another dream comes true :evil:

Anyway, I've got the best scientists (total skill of 497 in a small lab) but there's too few of them. I'm working on the Ufo types again and I'm already recruiting more geeks and soon my second small lab should be finished. I want to get into that other dimension again.

Oh yes, about alien structures (I dimly remember some): When I destroy the UFO factory there won't be any new UFOs in the game right? So no more invasions in my city, no more giant fleets of UFOs cruising in the other dimension (provided Í shoot them down first ), correct? Right now I feel like giant dogfights and I'd hate it if the enemy ran out of craft before I've had enough fun...

[Sharp]

To get a large quantum physics lab you need to reseach alien energy sources. Quite suprised you havent got to it yet, especially seeing as most of the tech you will be getting needs a lage research facility.

If you get the cloaking device, you should arm one agent with it, have the agent equipped with a power sword and some High Explosives, then simply cloak, ambush some cultists, stab the lone ones, and the ones in groups just lay down an Explosive and run away.

Trust me, by the time you get to the UFO Factory, you will be wishing you wont get any more UFO's, Battleships are not very friendly.

[Lt. Razak]

I haven't met battleships yet Anyway, I'm getting very suspicious of the medium difficulty, the aliens seem to conveniently wait until the day after all the damaged x-com craft have been repaired. And since Valkyrie 2 was almost destroyed - the health bar was 1 pixel high - during the last encounter, I had a quiet and scientific week.
I'm working on the propulsion system at the moment, another wrong guess I suppose. I'll start on the energy source next, thanks for the hint.

After being able to use the cloaking field (I had a mere 100 pcfs in store by the time my scientists finally figured those things out) my real time tactics made the final transition towards the 'fat bastard'-mode; my 2 squads of 6 (now all with toxigun, pcf, disruptor shield and something for pyro effects) just find a nice tower or corner to sit on / around and wait. Then I switch of all the pause messages, set on double time and play a browser game on another computer. That usually sorts those aliens out :whistle:

Anyway, I don't ambush people, I just brutally gun them down with vastly superior firepower. Also, there is one Sectoid-Hybrid with a mind bender tied to her leg. When I need a scout I send her. She has been able to convince some aliens to drop all their stuff (explosives all armed) and run towards the rest of her squad.
Still, the psi control lasts less than a second, guess she needs more practice (Power 40, strenght 32, defence 38; she spent a lot of time in combat training so she could defend herself and keep up with the rest, now she's assigned to the psigym)



Edit: About battleships: What do they look like? Is it, by any chance, a purple disc (usual meaty texture) with a dome on top? By sheer coincidence I just have two of those and two green ones (with 2 domes) flying around my 2nd base burning it to the ground. So far I've lost the garrison of 10 soldiers (died when they tried to run to another building) and a few scientists (biologists) were killed when the building collapsed over their taxis (I transferred most of them to the main base, but quarters are full). Miraculously, those few scientists which had to stay behind in the building are still alive. After using almost all my heavy ordinance (including 2 retribution and 2 justice missiles) and heavy casualties (fortunately on megapols side, the attack was staged near a megapol arms factory and now there is a dozend (or was a dozend) police hovercars taking part) I've downed one purple UFO... now fire's being concentrated on a green one...
I'm just glad I have some financial reserves, I never really wanted to know how expensive repairs to a base are :ranting:
And there's nothing more depressing than loosing points for damage to the city and knowing that that was your base...

Now then, I have some alien invaders to repel :Titan:

....gits...morons... mongs....arghh issed:

Edit 2:
Final result:
One purple and one green UFO downed
A few Kilotons of alien equipment captured
A Megaspawn being gently encouraged to give me information as I write
10 dead soldiers - zero practical experience but they'd spent weeks in the training area...they couldn't have been that bad to deserve to die like that...
6 dead biochemists (4 got away via Taxi)
- 534 points for 'damage to city', that's a bloody third of the damage penalties I have accumulated so far

At least they didn't infiltrate anything, they were too busy burning down my base....

Edit 3:
My god! My god! My god! My god! The aliens are REALLY determined to flatten my base! Not 50m away from two really fat UFOs and one of the purple ones came out of a portal. How do I get rid of those fat bastards? (Description: Really fat, orangy-brown colour, have a big (!) red spot as a symbol on the static map). How on earth am I supposed to shoot them down? I just gave one of them all I had in store in terms of firepower (after a brave police car had downed their shields before being vaporised :eeeeeh: ) but I barely scratched them. After a while the aliens seemed to decide that they wouldn't want to risk the paintjob on their mothershipthingie and retreated :Brain: What am I supposed to do...? (5 days 'til I've got the big Qphysics lab, provided the base lasts that long :help: )

[Abi79]

Simple: just buy A LOT of vehicles which can shoot retribution and justice missiles (assuming you've got money). Also buy some ground vehicles and give them anti-air missiles. Also also ( LOL ) if you have many air vehicles tell them to go to that big space port thingy in the center or north of the town and when the UFOs come launch them from there.

EDIT: And next time play on novice, like me. It's strange, but aliens have stopped coming. I wonder why ? :evil:

EDIT EDIT: Ten to fifteen pink UFOs are heading towards my base. Scramble all vehicles.

[Eagle of Fire]

Don't try to tackle the biggest Alien ships until you are ready. And this usually mean when you have your own Xcom made crafts with Alien plasma tech to back you up. And don't forget the shields.

Until then, buying a lot of Hover Bikes to keep that big floater busy (and of course flying at highest altitude to get the shots from the Alien ships to the sky instead of the ground) might help you somewhat.

I just hope they don't want to level your base(s) right on because if it's the case and you can't defend yourself, you're pretty screwed. No base mean gameover.

P.S.: Don't use ground vehicles unless you really want to waste your money. I tryied them once and I don't see how they could even hit a barn in a corridor lost in the middle of nowhere while they are running straight at it.

[Sharp]

Battleships, they are big and red and can kill most of your vehicles in seconds. The big purple one with a dome I believe is the Alien Escort Ship, it doesnt actually have any proper firepower except for a very annoying missile which disables your vehicles which make them easy pickings for any other UFO's in the area.

Also, 10 to 15 UFO's ???? You must be really bad at killing them then, UFO's which manage to retreat will just come back to haunt you with more buddies.

The only ground vehicle I use is the Wolfhound APC, and thats only for raids as it can hold a lot of equipment, its more efficent fuelwise then the valkyrie.

And I dont know how youve managed to make your valkyries survive in battle, they dont have a lot of armour and hitpoints and they get shot at easily, I suppose you could arm them with duel retributions and tell them to return to base after firing thier shots. Leaves more space for your skyhawks with more conventional weapons.

[Abi79]

After I deployed my Hover Bikes (~20) and my flying cars many of the UFOs retreated and only 2 brown UFOs and 3 pink UFOs remained. I downed the 2 brown UFOs and 2 pink UFOs, the other retreating. Now I'm attacking a downed brown UFO. Wish me luck.

BTW, they were trying to destroy my base. Every UFO was heading towards it, but their luck ran out.

@Sharp: I'm not bad at killing them, but I haven't been attacked 1 and a half week(s ?). (and I counted them again; there were only 9 UFOs; I looked on the minimap and saw ~15 because there were some Cult of Sirius vehicles around the city; I gotta attack them more often)

[Lt. Razak]

I couldn't agree more... play it, play it, play it

Anyway, THOSE are the battleships then, nice to have finally met them. My Valkyries had the occasional brush with death, still they were lucky so far.
Against the battleship I used
6 Hawks, weapons:
2 Retribution
2 Justice
6 Prophet
2 Lineage
5 small disruptor beams
1 rendor
2 Valkyries, weapons
Lancer 7000, Janitor
3 Hovercars, weapons
Bolter 4000, Janitor (Janitor has been replaced by rendor)
Well, thats my fleet. And I can't afford any more ships right now, I'm desperately working on alien UFO-tech and I'm still building the big Qlab. 4 days left.


P.S.: Stationing my fleet at the starport might be a good idea actually. However, once some UFO flew over it (a type looking not particularly dangerous) and leveled a quarter (2 Landing pads + road, launch sites an perimeter wall) of the starport. It took 5 days to rebuild and transtellar was pissed . And I still don't know what happened. The UFO just flew by while my fleet was still in the process of launching...

[The Fifth Horseman]

Well, I played the game a fair bit through the weekend. Go VDMSound!

Right now, I am on third week (second difficulty level) with a couple of killer soldiers and a lot of hardware, but all of the sudden a horde of UFO's is coming out. And more advanced ones too... ouch. I just hope my 23 soldiers will stand to the task (one psi-mutant freshly recruited, abour 14 humans - some with killer stats - and the rest androids).

The trick earlier described with the stun grapple raids on allied organizations did really work. It takes some time to do right, but... I did it a few times on Psyke. Lots of goodies.

Also, raid Sirius with four soldiers only with Medikits/Stun Grapples. They do really well, if you don't go right in the line of fire. CoS got really busted on the very beginning, these morons... And don't forget the "dirty" full-scale assaults on their temple... lots of kills, explosions and incendiaries... :evil:

[Lt. Razak]

I'm just finishing the 8th week. So far I have about 20 to 25 dead soldiers. The only recent casualties were those 10 poor soldiering souls hit by the collapsing northeast tower of my base during the alien attack. I can't decide who was worse off, those soldiers or the 4 top scientists sitting in their taxis trying to evacuate while the garage caved in.

I've just started researching the inter-dimensional probe, hopefully soon I will need neither valkyrie nor hawk, neither lineage nor retribution but all alien stuff mounted on an annihilator.
bring it on, alien scum :karate:


Oh yes, if you want nice cityscape fights with lots of explosions, just watch the "illegal vehicles"; the raids staged by the criminal syndicates. Great fun without getting penalized for it.