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[The Fifth Horseman]

First, please post in English. That way people around here can actually understand you.

Second, there are more requirements than just kills and mission score for your soldiers to advance. You also need to have a certain number of soldiers (I _think_ that was 30 for a commander) and there are also restrictions to how many soldiers can advance beyond Squaddie. These are based both on your soldiers' mission/kill ratings and on how many soldiers you have (so the players don't have a strike team built entirely of Sergeants or Captains).

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(the_fifth_horseman @ Feb 9 2007, 02:21 PM) [snapback]278622[/snapback]</div>

First, please post in English. That way people around here can actually understand you.

Second, there are more requirements than just kills and mission score for your soldiers to advance. You also need to have a certain number of soldiers (I _think_ that was 30 for a commander) and there are also restrictions to how many soldiers can advance beyond Squaddie. These are based both on your soldiers' mission/kill ratings and on how many soldiers you have (so the players don't have a strike team built entirely of Sergeants or Captains).
[/b]

I seem to recall a strategy guide i read a long time ago:
There is one Sergeant for every 5 other soldiers.
One captain for every 10,
One Colonel for (i guess) every 20
I believe one gets a commander for a force of 30 soldiers. However (here i am sure):
there can always be only one commander.

The game promotes the "best" non-rookie soldiers regardless of their PSI-Strength.
So you should sack weak minded officers for their own protection!

[Japo]

(Now that I re-read this I see I misunderstood some of the questions but I guess they're answered now.) I've been replaying this and found that I hadn't mastered the tactic (of course most important) part of the game. The only game I had the time of patience to finish was the first I ever played. I've quitted, hopefully temporarily, even the game I was playing currently, but before I managed to learn some facts about tactics in the game. Well many people may have figured this out already but I guess I'm bored, so here are two more cents.

The "reactions" stat is not that important, I personally think now that it's one of the least important, far behind shooting accuracy, TUs, etc. It governs only things your soldiers do during the aliens' turn, and you must lead the squad so that the important things happen during your own turn. Don't leave them out in the open or in long non-cleared corridors, go from behind a corner to behind the next one each turn; if you can't avoid it, deploy some smoke in front.

As you can see when you make a soldier watch into an unexplored region, a soldier's line of sight (LOS) is 90 degrees wide. Whenever you encounter an alien during your turn and he's inside your moving soldier's LOS, you get to act first. No matter how low your reactions are, or how high the alien's, during a given side's turn that side always has priority. After the encounter, once you move further, or fire and the alien survives, or throw a grenade, or move a second man into the alien's LOS, though, the alien gets a chance to act provided you're within his LOS or you have called his attention shooting at him --I leaned to think that he could lose that chance if he failed a reactions check just like it works for you during the aliens' turn, but in my experience he always gets to act. Of course if you move in a way that you come into an alien's LOS without his being into your own LOS, even its being your turn you can't act if you don't see the alien and he'll blast you.

The only things you must keep in mind are the shape of the LOS, and that you must move in a way that nobody can see you without your seeing him beforehand or at the same time. Some examples (yes I know I've got too free time):

LOS of a man/alien looking north:

**.........
** .......
****.....
**** ...
******@

It's bad to stay right behind a corner. A man (@) is looking north, an alien (A) comes from the east during his own turn:

**** A
****@+----
**** |XXXX
**** |XXXX

Both see each other at the same time, it's the alien's turn, so the alien blasts the human. Looking north-east won't help since the corner prevents the human from seeing more to the east that if he's looking north.

It's best to end the turn one square behind the corner:

**** A
**** +----
****@|XXXX
**** |XXXX

If there's an alien beyond the corner, he won't see the human and therefore won't be able to harm him unless he turns the corner; and if the does the human will get a chance to shoot him provided a reactions check is passed.

When it comes to moving from cover, it's a bad idea to turn corners in the obvious way:

****@**A
****.+----
****.|XXXX
**** |XXXX

If there's an alien behind the corner but not right behind and looking west or north-west or south-west, the human comes into his LOS while the alien is outside the human's LOS --the alien blasts the human. It's the opposite case as the previous one.

The safe way to turn corners:

****@**A
** . +----
**.**|XXXX
**** |XXXX

The human moves north-eastwards and no alien will se him before he sees the alien. Being the human's turn, he gets to act first even if the alien is looking at him.

Of course motion sensors help big time in these situations. Also the LOS extends for 20 squares for both you and the aliens --even if you see the landscape farther away, there could be aliens there and you won't see them. So if you're advancing and see for example a cyberdisc far away, you know that if you shoot at it, it will shoot back even if you hit it --you won't kill it because it takes so many hits to kill. But if you shoot with soldiers who are farther away, or even if you step backwards one single square (until you're 21 squares away of the cyberdisc) and shoot with that same soldier, the cyberdisc won't fire back since it's not seeing you.

[FoxURA]

I downloaded this game for Win 95 and the X-Com exe does not work. Actually the exe does work but the colors are extremely blurred and I can make out about 4-5 images of the mouse arrow accros the width of the screen. Was my download corruped?

The other exe, UFO does work but I think the game timer seems to be going too fast. Has there been reports of this game running too fast on newer computers?

[another_guest]

Sure, it does run too fast on recent pc's.
You can either download the dos version and run it through Dosbox, or run a slowdown utility (Turbo for example) next to the windows version.

[FoxURA]

Just for the sake of comparison how fast is the game clock supposed to go versus actual time?

Oh, and is Turbo the slow down program you use? I would prefer to stick to stuff that has a good reputation as opposed to any random program on the net claiming to be a slow down program.
Also, could you post a link for Tubo? I am having trouble finding a link for it.

Nevermind, I found the Turbo download finally.

The only problem is that it says it is for Win 95, will it work fine with XP?

[another_guest]

I've got Turbo and it slows down my pc under XP. It's one of the best-known ones so I guess it's ok...

I think in geoscape view (when you see the globe) if you click the 5sec button, that the game time should increase with 5sec for every second real time.

[FoxURA]

Yeah... I am pretty sure that the time goes by faster than than that. I'll have to check the time with a stopwatch or something.

[another_guest]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(FoxURA @ Mar 5 2007, 06:51 AM) [snapback]281890[/snapback]</div>

Yeah... I am pretty sure that the time goes by faster than than that. I'll have to check the time with a stopwatch or something.
[/b]

Oh well, it doesn't have to be exact, no worries if it goes twice that speed or so.
The idea is just that if you click '5 sec' that the in-game time advances so slowly that you have plenty of time to give commands to your aircraft, in time to intercept ufo's or land at a crash/terror site...

Hello All.

I should express from my heart that this game is in my Top10 list of all video games I've played. I have played a zillion of games since beginning of '80s, believe me. k:

There might be ppl who find the initial start a bit hard to get used to, but they will be missing hell of an action if they give up. Just get some more scientist for research and get into the action, addiction is guaranteed in very short term once you get the basics.

After around 5 years, I have been restarted recently and played it for about 20 hours in total during last weekend, during which I had to prepare 2 essential presentations for work. I ended up hovering in PowerPoint around 3 a.m. on Sunday.

Quit the game after long hours' play to get back to real life and you might find yourself hesitating to use all of your Time Units while doing regular things at home!

Anybody else with this funny T.U. confusion in real life just after quitting, I wonder ???

Do not start playing this game unless you have 1 week's free time with no responsibilities. You can literally get fired from work.