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This game is fucking great. I gave it a try years ago but got intimidated by how seemingly complicated it was with all the layers to keep track of, but I tried it again today and now I'm hooked. The destruction is truly impressive, and I love what an absolute mess the missions can become as you desperately blow entire buildings apart apart trying to keep brainsuckers at bay. Most of the buildings I've gone alien hunting in so far I have left as infernos.
I do have two questions though:
1: is there a way to see hit chance?
and more importantly 2: how do I make money? I finished a whole week and was expected to get some money from the various organizations I am allied with but I got nothing. The only way I've managed to earn some money is by selling some alien tech but it hardly covers a few new hires.
You have to stay best friends with the government to get top alien dollar. From what I remember it is kinda a struggle money wise, but I like that aspect of the game.
This game is fucking great. I gave it a try years ago but got intimidated by how seemingly complicated it was with all the layers to keep track of, but I tried it again today and now I'm hooked. The destruction is truly impressive, and I love what an absolute mess the missions can become as you desperately blow entire buildings apart apart trying to keep brainsuckers at bay. Most of the buildings I've gone alien hunting in so far I have left as infernos.
I do have two questions though:
1: is there a way to see hit chance?
and more importantly 2: how do I make money? I finished a whole week and was expected to get some money from the various organizations I am allied with but I got nothing. The only way I've managed to earn some money is by selling some alien tech but it hardly covers a few new hires.
1. If you hover the cursor over the target while you are in shoot-mode, you should see the hit chance.
2. You only get funds from the government on Monday. You need to supplement that with the usual XCom sources (manufacture and sell, and selling alien equipment) or raid people you don't like for items to sell. The Cult is a source of Psiclones, but the gangs have quite a bit also. Marsec can give you advanced weapons sooner as well as elerium. Solmine is a source of elerium. Generally, though, raiding anyone other than the Cult is a bad idea unless you exploit the game mechanics and only stun the security detail rather than kill them and refrain from blowing things up.
It should be noted though, that the aliens tech scales to your total money gained (or something like this), so if you go raiding a bunch for petty cash, you'll run into harder aliens faster.
Although it's generally a good thing, because disintegrators count as higher tech than brainsucker launchers, but the latter are more dangerous (at least in turn based).
Apoc is probably the tightest of all x-coms when it comes to cash management, although it gets way easier once aliens start dropping metric tons of high value equipment and explosives, and you get to manufacture your own guns and ammo.
It should be noted though, that the aliens tech scales to your total money gained (or something like this), so if you go raiding a bunch for petty cash, you'll run into harder aliens faster.
Although it's generally a good thing, because disintegrators count as higher tech than brainsucker launchers, but the latter are more dangerous (at least in turn based).
Apoc is probably the tightest of all x-coms when it comes to cash management, although it gets way easier once aliens start dropping metric tons of high value equipment and explosives, and you get to manufacture your own guns and ammo.
Not money. Points. Don't raid the Cult too much too early or you will be facing aliens with Devastators and Vortex Mines before you are even close to ready for them.
Also, Apoc has a rudimentary market system in place. You buy a lot of an item, it will increase in price. If you sell a lot, it will decrease in price. You can end up selling items for less than the cost of manufacture if you sell too many.
Ins't the key for selling items to accumulate a lot of them before selling? Say, liquidate 30 Disruptors at once.
Also, reminder: Other orgs will be able to get their hands on alien tech if you sell it, or they're infiltrated by aliens. So if you, say, sell Disruptors, expect gangers and cultists to start being armed with them.
2: how do I make money? I finished a whole week and was expected to get some money from the various organizations I am allied with but I got nothing. The only way I've managed to earn some money is by selling some alien tech but it hardly covers a few new hires.
Raiding orgs is best way to do it.
Best orgs to raid are Cult (who will always hate your guts) and the gangs, they both have Psiclone. Do bear in mind that the gangs are pretty aggressive, so if they hate your guts, expect them to send frequent ilegal flyer attacks. Also, when you go investigate aliens in hostile faction turf, they WILL attack you, so you will fight not only aliens but also the orgs in the same map.
By the way, if you want to keep the government paying you well, try to avoid blowing shit up too much because that hurts the government's taxes.
Ins't the key for selling items to accumulate a lot of them before selling? Say, liquidate 30 Disruptors at once.
Also, reminder: Other orgs will be able to get their hands on alien tech if you sell it, or they're infiltrated by aliens. So if you, say, sell Disruptors, expect gangers and cultists to start being armed with them.
The prices change on Monday when the market refreshes. It takes into account either how many you sold in the previous week or how many of the item is in the market (I am not sure which one) plus a random variable, and changes the price accordingly. The initial price do not move until you start selling, so if you can, try to delay selling alien items and Psiclones as much as possible (as they can only go down) and then flood the market with them all in one go.
Other orgs will get their hands on alien tech sooner or later anyway. By week 5 or so, the Cult will start getting Disruptors even if you never sold a single one, and then they will start appearing in gang hands.
Thanks for advice to all. Think I mostly got a decent economy figured out. Government is surprisingly lenient considering how much damage I've done to recyclotorium and random warehouses, and padding that income out with raids on Church of Sirius.
Reading about the development of the game is pretty depressing, considering how much more depth they were aiming to have. Having the options to interrogate or assassinate the leaders of the various organizations, playing one against each other, which I presume would have lead to stuff like getting better deals and so on would have been nice, since as it is other than the Cult of Sirius they're all a bit superficial (from reading the wiki it seems every organization does have some minor to significant impact on your supplies, but it would be more interesting if there was more variation to your relations with them other than 1: you get the stuff from them or 2: they are hostile to you.) The whole concept of having a living city layer that goes about its business while you engage in X-Com missions is genius, despite it falling short of what they originally intended. It's a shame that as far as I know no other game has attempted something like this.
The government doesn't care if you blow up stuff so long as you don't blow up their stuff or people they are friends with, just like any other org. The recyclotron belongs to another org, IIRC (Nutrivend? I forgot). They are the ones who will be angry with you. Warehouses tend to belong to the guys supplying you with stuff. I'd check your standing with your suppliers, if I were you.
There is so much potential here for a great game that's just about a dysfunctional city. Forget about the aliens. Just make a game about some place like Beirut, where the cops are from one faction, airport security is from another faction, garbage collection is run by another faction, etc.
1. RT vs. TB totally changes the game. RT makes the non-humanoid enemies almost entirely trivial, but the humanoids get tons of shots at you and throw grenades constantly. TB makes the non-humanoids insanely hard if not played perfectly while the humanoids kind of suck shit and are easily overpowered. TB is more about a few super-soldiers being highly aggressive cleaning out maps quickly since the person with the turn has the advantage, while RT is more about getting out a good spot to surround buildings and camp with massed firepower to ensure nothing leaves the area alive. My advice is to just pick one and stick with it the whole game, then replay with the other type.
2. Reaction fire is semi-bugged. IIRC you can only use a maximum of 10-15 TUs or something for reacting. As soon as you hit end turn your TUs go down to this if higher. Presumably this was done as a band-aid fix because otherwise soldiers would empty their entire ammo pool with guns that only using 1 or 2 TUs for automatic fire, but it makes reacting very hard without very good soldiers since your reaction ability goes down with TUs. You basically need to set up reaction traps to get the crabs (one soldier in the open, multiple soldiers covering him ready to open up at point blank range).
3. Bug for TB: If your soldiers are in the middle of a movement animation it counts them as making a "move" action every time an alien moves, costing them stamina. Don't end turns with soldiers doing anything other than standing still. If you avoid this you can run almost constantly assuming you're keeping a dozen or so TUs for reaction and resting.
4. I recommend hovercars for your anti-UFO activities. They can take a hit for most weapons and usually get away to repair. Some recommend hoverbikes for pure disposability. Just don't make the mistake of trying to use "real" combat aircraft until you get shielding (Hovercars can take 1 shielding too which is nice). Early game I'd recommend the lasers and when they start failing to penetrate armor well you move up to the plasma and missiles. Note that since inventories restock each week it can be a good idea to buy up some ammo and weapons ahead of time to be sure you can upgrade your whole fleet when the time comes.
5. You only need to shoot down 1 of each UFO type to research it. Beyond that it's better to let them do their thing rather than waste valuable firepower and damaging the city trying to shoot them down. In fact it's a good idea to have your vehicles run around on pacifist mode drawing UFO fire towards buildings in the early game when you're not likely to lose any cars, this will cause the aliens to be more hated. This is the only way to get the transport corporation to like you long-term since they start with a small liking towards the aliens and it will snowball into hating you and loving them as you fight aliens, unless you can get them to hate aliens early on.
6. Ideal smooth tech/base progression is to have the 2x2 biology lab started by week 2, the 2x2 physics lab started by week 3, and (ideally multiple) 2x2 manufacturing labs started by week 4.
7. Raiding Orgs is a bit OP and tedious IMO. I find the game economy to be very finely balanced if you don't raid or limit yourself to once a week on Sirius.
8. There's a somewhat annoying bug that can also become a free money exploit:
Bought items are sold for 100% of their current value. Bought vehicles are sold for 100% of their current value + 100% of their current weapon value... but 0% of their current weapon ammunition's value. So selling a car loaded with missiles means you lost the missile value, however buying cars that come with missiles loaded means you got the missiles for free, to be sold separately.
9. If you want to see hybrids and androids hireable you need to be more than 0-friendly (on a -100 to +100 scale) towards the mutant and android faction. Unfortunately this is randomized on start and if you roll them starting at -3 or something you'll never see their soldiers the whole game even if they appear neutral. So you might need to throw a bribe their way, or startscum until you see their soldiers hirable day 1. Androids are amazing, hybrids are ehh since psionics are ehh.
10. You can land multiple craft of troops at a building and investigate with as many people as you like. However the area size does get bigger past a certain number so you might not want to do this.
1. RT vs. TB totally changes the game. RT makes the non-humanoid enemies almost entirely trivial, but the humanoids get tons of shots at you and throw grenades constantly. TB makes the non-humanoids insanely hard if not played perfectly while the humanoids kind of suck shit and are easily overpowered. TB is more about a few super-soldiers being highly aggressive cleaning out maps quickly since the person with the turn has the advantage, while RT is more about getting out a good spot to surround buildings and camp with massed firepower to ensure nothing leaves the area alive. My advice is to just pick one and stick with it the whole game, then replay with the other type.
2. Reaction fire is semi-bugged. IIRC you can only use a maximum of 10-15 TUs or something for reacting. As soon as you hit end turn your TUs go down to this if higher. Presumably this was done as a band-aid fix because otherwise soldiers would empty their entire ammo pool with guns that only using 1 or 2 TUs for automatic fire, but it makes reacting very hard without very good soldiers since your reaction ability goes down with TUs. You basically need to set up reaction traps to get the crabs (one soldier in the open, multiple soldiers covering him ready to open up at point blank range).
3. Bug for TB: If your soldiers are in the middle of a movement animation it counts them as making a "move" action every time an alien moves, costing them stamina. Don't end turns with soldiers doing anything other than standing still. If you avoid this you can run almost constantly assuming you're keeping a dozen or so TUs for reaction and resting.
4. I recommend hovercars for your anti-UFO activities. They can take a hit for most weapons and usually get away to repair. Some recommend hoverbikes for pure disposability. Just don't make the mistake of trying to use "real" combat aircraft until you get shielding (Hovercars can take 1 shielding too which is nice). Early game I'd recommend the lasers and when they start failing to penetrate armor well you move up to the plasma and missiles. Note that since inventories restock each week it can be a good idea to buy up some ammo and weapons ahead of time to be sure you can upgrade your whole fleet when the time comes.
5. You only need to shoot down 1 of each UFO type to research it. Beyond that it's better to let them do their thing rather than waste valuable firepower and damaging the city trying to shoot them down. In fact it's a good idea to have your vehicles run around on pacifist mode drawing UFO fire towards buildings in the early game when you're not likely to lose any cars, this will cause the aliens to be more hated. This is the only way to get the transport corporation to like you long-term since they start with a small liking towards the aliens and it will snowball into hating you and loving them as you fight aliens, unless you can get them to hate aliens early on.
6. Ideal smooth tech/base progression is to have the 2x2 biology lab started by week 2, the 2x2 physics lab started by week 3, and (ideally multiple) 2x2 manufacturing labs started by week 4.
7. Raiding Orgs is a bit OP and tedious IMO. I find the game economy to be very finely balanced if you don't raid or limit yourself to once a week on Sirius.
8. There's a somewhat annoying bug that can also become a free money exploit:
Bought items are sold for 100% of their current value. Bought vehicles are sold for 100% of their current value + 100% of their current weapon value... but 0% of their current weapon ammunition's value. So selling a car loaded with missiles means you lost the missile value, however buying cars that come with missiles loaded means you got the missiles for free, to be sold separately.
9. If you want to see hybrids and androids hireable you need to be more than 0-friendly (on a -100 to +100 scale) towards the mutant and android faction. Unfortunately this is randomized on start and if you roll them starting at -3 or something you'll never see their soldiers the whole game even if they appear neutral. So you might need to throw a bribe their way, or startscum until you see their soldiers hirable day 1. Androids are amazing, hybrids are ehh since psionics are ehh.
4. I disagree. Hoverbikes are amazing. Set them to defensive and they dodge just about everything and missed alien shots will piss off other orgs. That is one of the advanced tactics you can use. Have the hoverbikes hang around people you want to love you at the lowest altitude and watch the aliens blow up the poor schmuck's building trying to get your hoverbikes. I find hovercars to be the worst of all worlds: Too big and slow to dodge shots effectively, too fragile to take hits.
5. Killing UFOs before they drop troops is better than having to run around buildings trying to find and kill them, hopefully before they run away. Hyperworms in confined spaces is a nightmare waiting to happen, and poppers...
7. The other reason to raid the Cult is to season your troops. I usually have all my newbies do a baptism of fire. They get sent into a temple solo armed with a machinegun, 4 spare clips, 2 stun grenades and 2 normal grenades. Their mission is to kill everyone. Each newbie have to undergo 2 raids before he is allowed to face aliens in the field.
8. You won't get much this way. Maybe 10-20k, and maybe the first week only. After you start selling, the ammo price will drop. The standard loadout of vehicles means about 40-50% of weapons are lasers, and those don't have ammo. Of the rest, most will be hoverbikes and the cheap minigun ammo, and you'd want to keep Janitor (hovercar and Valkyrie) and Prophet (Air Hawk) missiles and elerium (Air Hawk) rather than sell them. By the by, you also get some fuel that way when you unequip engines to sell off.
9. I find both androids and mutants to be useless. Androids don't improve, so my human soldiers will eventually outclass them significantly. Mutants are completely useless, having low physical stats and psi being pretty useless.
4. I disagree. Hoverbikes are amazing. Set them to defensive and they dodge just about everything and missed alien shots will piss off other orgs. That is one of the advanced tactics you can use. Have the hoverbikes hang around people you want to love you at the lowest altitude and watch the aliens blow up the poor schmuck's building trying to get your hoverbikes.
Hovercars are nearly as unhittable and don't die when 1 shot hits them. I've survived until the end game never losing a single hovercar, with bikes you still lose a few eventually. While bikes are cheap initially when you start putting expensive weapons on them they are suddenly not cheap. Hovercars are also simply more efficient at getting firepower in the air, 2x the weapon slots, better accuracy, ~3x the HP and armor for only about 1/3rd more credits (hovercar's price being inflated because it comes with better weapons).
I'm 90% certain that the aggressiveness setting does nothing except determine when they shoot. I spent a quite a lot of time trying to test out strats for fighting UFOs to figure out that it was all random and nothing really mattered.
5. Killing UFOs before they drop troops is better than having to run around buildings trying to find and kill them, hopefully before they run away. Hyperworms in confined spaces is a nightmare waiting to happen, and poppers...
If you go immediately the infestation is fairly weak. Multiworms are best dealt with via stun. Poppers generally aren't a problem if you have lasers. Better to do those missions than to have Transteller hate you.
Of course it's great if you can shoot down UFOs without harming the city (starting lasers don't do much), but eventually you'll have 1-3 weeks where it's expected to feel like you are "losing" the air war since the missiles/ammo required to shoot down high-tier UFOs becomes incredibly expensive, does massive damage to the city, and you're never able to truly protect everything. At this point your ideal move is to just bunker down doing land missions and throw 100% of everything you have at each new tier of UFO to down them once and get their tech.
7. The other reason to raid the Cult is to season your troops. I usually have all my newbies do a baptism of fire. They get sent into a temple solo armed with a machinegun, 4 spare clips, 2 stun grenades and 2 normal grenades. Their mission is to kill everyone. Each newbie have to undergo 2 raids before he is allowed to face aliens in the field.
8. You won't get much this way. Maybe 10-20k, and maybe the first week only. After you start selling, the ammo price will drop. The standard loadout of vehicles means about 40-50% of weapons are lasers, and those don't have ammo. Of the rest, most will be hoverbikes and the cheap minigun ammo, and you'd want to keep Janitor (hovercar and Valkyrie) and Prophet (Air Hawk) missiles and elerium (Air Hawk) rather than sell them. By the by, you also get some fuel that way when you unequip engines to sell off.
Saving money on ammo is just as good as getting free money. Also the price changes per week are pretty weak, and you'll actually get more cash once the higher tier interceptor unlocks.
9. I find both androids and mutants to be useless. Androids don't improve, so my human soldiers will eventually outclass them significantly. Mutants are completely useless, having low physical stats and psi being pretty useless.
Androids ignore headsuckers, priceless for TB. Still godlike stats elsewhere. Should be the vanguard of any group, ready to tank popper hits or go into melee with stun guns vs. Hyperworms or w/e with their massive HP keeping them intact if something goes wrong. No one wants to risk seasoned warriors with tons of improvement like that.
Man Androids are great. Immune to Brainsuckers and Psi, good stats from the onset, etc. They're practically crutch characters early on. They don't improve, but they start being good enough. I generally task them to Heavy Weapons work and give them an autocannon or rocket launcher.
I don't remember it, but are Androids immune to stun 'nades?
Androids take stun damage as normal (except psi stun, obviously).
They are great for carrying a bunch of crap though. Everyone gets slowed down with every item you give them, only strong characters can carry a bunch while still moving well. Accuracy is the only stat that trains quickly (and that androids don't do well in), but for everything else it's hard to beat them. Autofire with the explosive autocannon shells is a great way to clear things up. Their high HP is also great since Apocalypse starts you out with enough armor to ignore most damage, they can often take a ridiculous amount of punishment before the aliens are packing devastators. If you take an Android loss you just pick a new one up a day or two later.
4. I disagree. Hoverbikes are amazing. Set them to defensive and they dodge just about everything and missed alien shots will piss off other orgs. That is one of the advanced tactics you can use. Have the hoverbikes hang around people you want to love you at the lowest altitude and watch the aliens blow up the poor schmuck's building trying to get your hoverbikes.
Hovercars are nearly as unhittable and don't die when 1 shot hits them. I've survived until the end game never losing a single hovercar, with bikes you still lose a few eventually. While bikes are cheap initially when you start putting expensive weapons on them they are suddenly not cheap. Hovercars are also simply more efficient at getting firepower in the air, 2x the weapon slots, better accuracy, ~3x the HP and armor for only about 1/3rd more credits (hovercar's price being inflated because it comes with better weapons).
I'm 90% certain that the aggressiveness setting does nothing except determine when they shoot. I spent a quite a lot of time trying to test out strats for fighting UFOs to figure out that it was all random and nothing really mattered.
5. Killing UFOs before they drop troops is better than having to run around buildings trying to find and kill them, hopefully before they run away. Hyperworms in confined spaces is a nightmare waiting to happen, and poppers...
If you go immediately the infestation is fairly weak. Multiworms are best dealt with via stun. Poppers generally aren't a problem if you have lasers. Better to do those missions than to have Transteller hate you.
Of course it's great if you can shoot down UFOs without harming the city (starting lasers don't do much), but eventually you'll have 1-3 weeks where it's expected to feel like you are "losing" the air war since the missiles/ammo required to shoot down high-tier UFOs becomes incredibly expensive, does massive damage to the city, and you're never able to truly protect everything. At this point your ideal move is to just bunker down doing land missions and throw 100% of everything you have at each new tier of UFO to down them once and get their tech.
7. The other reason to raid the Cult is to season your troops. I usually have all my newbies do a baptism of fire. They get sent into a temple solo armed with a machinegun, 4 spare clips, 2 stun grenades and 2 normal grenades. Their mission is to kill everyone. Each newbie have to undergo 2 raids before he is allowed to face aliens in the field.
8. You won't get much this way. Maybe 10-20k, and maybe the first week only. After you start selling, the ammo price will drop. The standard loadout of vehicles means about 40-50% of weapons are lasers, and those don't have ammo. Of the rest, most will be hoverbikes and the cheap minigun ammo, and you'd want to keep Janitor (hovercar and Valkyrie) and Prophet (Air Hawk) missiles and elerium (Air Hawk) rather than sell them. By the by, you also get some fuel that way when you unequip engines to sell off.
Saving money on ammo is just as good as getting free money. Also the price changes per week are pretty weak, and you'll actually get more cash once the higher tier interceptor unlocks.
9. I find both androids and mutants to be useless. Androids don't improve, so my human soldiers will eventually outclass them significantly. Mutants are completely useless, having low physical stats and psi being pretty useless.
Androids ignore headsuckers, priceless for TB. Still godlike stats elsewhere. Should be the vanguard of any group, ready to tank popper hits or go into melee with stun guns vs. Hyperworms or w/e with their massive HP keeping them intact if something goes wrong. No one wants to risk seasoned warriors with tons of improvement like that.
4. My experience has them getting badly damaged and fleeing in the very first fight with the alien scouts and probes. A hoverbike swarm, however, can withstand a couple damaged and still be in shape for the next incursion two days later while the cars would still be in the repair bay.
5. I tend to get hyperworms (not multis) coming around a corner and mangling a soldier before you can do anything. Little bastards are fast and long range in TB. Shooting down UFOs isn't a problem with a hoverbike swarm each armed with a Bolter laser. Once you get 12+ of the little bastards with upgraded engines and defensive stance, they can plink anything to death. I am using hoverswarms at low altitude (and therefore shooting upwards while the UFOS shoot downwards) well into the alien bomber stage (whose multimissiles make me laugh so hard as they blow up three buildings with one shot and making me friends across the board). It is only when I start getting shields that I stop using hoverswarm and send in Air Hawks with medium disrupters and Lancer lasers. I don't bunker down. I take out every last flaming alien ship that comes out of those gates
7. Just don't sell stuff. I make it a policy to never sell ammo of any kind (except land vehicle ammo) and buy every last bit of ammo I can. They are my bank :D The real reason I do the raiding is for the improvements to my soldiers so that they don't miss all the time and die horribly the first time they see an alien. The machinegun gives the best stat improvement because your accuracy increases every time you pull the trigger, and the MG has the lowest damage and the highest rate of fire.
8. The price changes can be pretty bad. I recall losing money selling alien containment modules after I sold too many. That said, I only use lasers and disruptors on my ships these days and don't sell the extra ammo, so I can't tell if it makes that much of a difference. I recall it not being that great back when I was using that to get more money. Nowadays, I get enough to get by just raiding the Cult and selling their guns.
9. I don't have that much of a problem with headsuckers in TB. Mind you, I play sniper style, so I generally have 2/3 of the team on overwatch while the rest advance. They tend to catch the surprise runner that the aliens love to throw at you. I recall an alien transport assault where I had 2 Anthropods firing brainsucker launchers at my guys. 4 of the damned things popped and I though my point man's had it, until the rest of the squad opened up with laser rifles and took out all 4. After that, I was a lot less scared of suckers.
Thanks for advice to all. Think I mostly got a decent economy figured out. Government is surprisingly lenient considering how much damage I've done to recyclotorium and random warehouses, and padding that income out with raids on Church of Sirius.
Reading about the development of the game is pretty depressing, considering how much more depth they were aiming to have. Having the options to interrogate or assassinate the leaders of the various organizations, playing one against each other, which I presume would have lead to stuff like getting better deals and so on would have been nice, since as it is other than the Cult of Sirius they're all a bit superficial (from reading the wiki it seems every organization does have some minor to significant impact on your supplies, but it would be more interesting if there was more variation to your relations with them other than 1: you get the stuff from them or 2: they are hostile to you.) The whole concept of having a living city layer that goes about its business while you engage in X-Com missions is genius, despite it falling short of what they originally intended. It's a shame that as far as I know no other game has attempted something like this.
I wonder if one of the original ideas was that X-COM must actively work against other organisation(s) to remain effective against aliens that get more and more powerful over time. However, what remains that economy of X-COM 3 is fucked. Playable, doable? Yes indeed, but I think wonky economy is one thing that alienated reviewers and players from X-COM 3 more than 'Dick aliens' and suck things criticised by press regarding graphical representation back in the day.
Graphical presentation of aliens may leave a bit to be desired but IMO it was always functional like in previous X-COM games. So I dare the claim that economy and unfinished aspects relative to that caused XCOM-3 to become such a forgotten classic. We never got the game it was really supposed to be.
Thanks for advice to all. Think I mostly got a decent economy figured out. Government is surprisingly lenient considering how much damage I've done to recyclotorium and random warehouses, and padding that income out with raids on Church of Sirius.
Reading about the development of the game is pretty depressing, considering how much more depth they were aiming to have. Having the options to interrogate or assassinate the leaders of the various organizations, playing one against each other, which I presume would have lead to stuff like getting better deals and so on would have been nice, since as it is other than the Cult of Sirius they're all a bit superficial (from reading the wiki it seems every organization does have some minor to significant impact on your supplies, but it would be more interesting if there was more variation to your relations with them other than 1: you get the stuff from them or 2: they are hostile to you.) The whole concept of having a living city layer that goes about its business while you engage in X-Com missions is genius, despite it falling short of what they originally intended. It's a shame that as far as I know no other game has attempted something like this.
I wonder if one of the original ideas was that X-COM must actively work against other organisation(s) to remain effective against aliens that get more and more powerful over time. However, what remains that economy of X-COM 3 is fucked. Playable, doable? Yes indeed, but I think wonky economy is one thing that alienated reviewers and players from X-COM 3 more than 'Dick aliens' and suck things criticised by press regarding graphical representation back in the day.
Graphical presentation of aliens may leave a bit to be desired but IMO it was always functional like in previous X-COM games. So I dare the claim that economy and unfinished aspects relative to that caused XCOM-3 to become such a forgotten classic. We never got the game it was really supposed to be.
I don't get the part abut the wonky economy. I never found a problem with it. The more you sell, the less you get back. That is pretty standard progression for a basic economic model.
Thanks for advice to all. Think I mostly got a decent economy figured out. Government is surprisingly lenient considering how much damage I've done to recyclotorium and random warehouses, and padding that income out with raids on Church of Sirius.
Reading about the development of the game is pretty depressing, considering how much more depth they were aiming to have. Having the options to interrogate or assassinate the leaders of the various organizations, playing one against each other, which I presume would have lead to stuff like getting better deals and so on would have been nice, since as it is other than the Cult of Sirius they're all a bit superficial (from reading the wiki it seems every organization does have some minor to significant impact on your supplies, but it would be more interesting if there was more variation to your relations with them other than 1: you get the stuff from them or 2: they are hostile to you.) The whole concept of having a living city layer that goes about its business while you engage in X-Com missions is genius, despite it falling short of what they originally intended. It's a shame that as far as I know no other game has attempted something like this.
I wonder if one of the original ideas was that X-COM must actively work against other organisation(s) to remain effective against aliens that get more and more powerful over time. However, what remains that economy of X-COM 3 is fucked. Playable, doable? Yes indeed, but I think wonky economy is one thing that alienated reviewers and players from X-COM 3 more than 'Dick aliens' and suck things criticised by press regarding graphical representation back in the day.
Graphical presentation of aliens may leave a bit to be desired but IMO it was always functional like in previous X-COM games. So I dare the claim that economy and unfinished aspects relative to that caused XCOM-3 to become such a forgotten classic. We never got the game it was really supposed to be.
Well, not everything is lost, Open Apoc is not exactly done but it's "feature complete" already (meaning you can play it like the base game but it lacks bugs report and modding support) so we might get the final version at some point ( one? two years?) and then, no doubt the skilled and passionate X-COM community will hop in to add quality content.
OpenApoc is an open-source re-implementation of the original XCOM: Apocalypse that requires the original game files to run.
OpenApoc is under development, in Alpha state (this means playable but not all features implemented) Here whats left.
Porting to a new crossplatform open-source engine
Porting the game to any platform you like (windows, linux, android etc)
Unlimited modding capabilities, which was not possible in the original
Unlimited possibilities for game finesse
Added Skirmish module
Added full debug system
Added full hotkey system
Added more than 40 improvements already
Support for more modern screen resolutions
In mods we can restore cut gameplay mechanics and Julian Gollop's ideas (creator of the X-Com series).
The project has Mr. Gollop's support!
We needs more programmers, so we finish the project faster. Help us bring more attention to OpenApoc!
I don't get the part abut the wonky economy. I never found a problem with it. The more you sell, the less you get back. That is pretty standard progression for a basic economic model.
9. I don't have that much of a problem with headsuckers in TB. Mind you, I play sniper style, so I generally have 2/3 of the team on overwatch while the rest advance. They tend to catch the surprise runner that the aliens love to throw at you. I recall an alien transport assault where I had 2 Anthropods firing brainsucker launchers at my guys. 4 of the damned things popped and I though my point man's had it, until the rest of the squad opened up with laser rifles and took out all 4. After that, I was a lot less scared of suckers.
Eww, laser rifles? Those things are terrible. The best weapon in the game is the MarSec Machinegun. It unleashes a hailstorm of 1 TU bullets, with very low collateral damage, so you can just hose the entire battlefield in dakka. It's the ideal weapon for the noob trooper, because the percentage-based TU cost means that as your trooper levels up, it suddenly jumps to 2 TU per shot and your ability to spew lead drops sharply. At that point you become a Heavy Weapons Guy, at least until you get the Toxiguns, which restore 1 TU shooting.
I compulsively raid. For some reason there are not constant aliens to shoot. What do you do when you have no aliens, and yet your troopers are collecting paychecks with nothing to do? Well, you're given a set of enemies you can thrash, so, time to go raiding! I mean, THERE IS LITERALLY NOTHING ELSE. I'm not paying you guys to sit in the base, go kill something! If we were not meant to be constantly raiding, WHY ARE THERE PRESET ENEMIES AND A RAID BUTTON?
I compulsively raid. For some reason there are not constant aliens to shoot. What do you do when you have no aliens, and yet your troopers are collecting paychecks with nothing to do? Well, you're given a set of enemies you can thrash, so, time to go raiding! I mean, THERE IS LITERALLY NOTHING ELSE. I'm not paying you guys to sit in the base, go kill something! If we were not meant to be constantly raiding, WHY ARE THERE PRESET ENEMIES AND A RAID BUTTON?
It's broken because you can raid a single building a hundred times in one day if you wanted. Past a point the difficulty is trivial and it's just an infinite money and XP exploit. Apocalypse is clearly an unfinished game and raiding is a part of that, there's no downside and it trivializes the rest of the game.
And by this, you mean the explodey guys explode on THEIR guys, because they can't get close to your guys due to the SHEER WALL OF DAKKA. Aliens cannot dodge hundreds of bullets fed downrange, they will be mowed down like grass.
It's broken because you can raid a single building a hundred times in one day if you wanted. Past a point the difficulty is trivial and it's just an infinite money and XP exploit. Apocalypse is clearly an unfinished game and raiding is a part of that, there's no downside and it trivializes the rest of the game.
Well, yes, but the thing is, the game trivially encourages you to do it. There's literally nothing else you could be doing at that given moment, it is the only button you have which will do anything! I think part of it is that your car doesn't have to go back to deliver the loot, thus there is nothing stopping you from repeatedly pushing butan until all your guys have become injured. If you had to transport your loot back in your car, that would, at least, add a time component, and maybe you would need some kind of truck to haul your loot on.
But the basic concept of constant raiding is trivially presented to you by the game: From the moment the game starts, you're presented with enemies that hate you, and some currently unemployed shooty dudes. You're told to fight the aliens, but none of them have showed their faces right at this very second. What else can you do with some unemployed shooty dudes?
It's broken because you can raid a single building a hundred times in one day if you wanted. Past a point the difficulty is trivial and it's just an infinite money and XP exploit. Apocalypse is clearly an unfinished game and raiding is a part of that, there's no downside and it trivializes the rest of the game.
The game is raiding heavy already, it's also one of the main critique against it and you want to launch a hundred raids a day?
Well, if you do, you deserve everything you get from xp to virtual cash and the huge waste of your time.
Seriously, if you raid too much, they only have shitty weapons, and no expensive loot, i know i tried the first time i played the game and you get less psyclones or none at all if you raid the same building too often, like 3 times is too much.
Of course, i could be wrong, that's how i remember it and i'm certainly not going to check it now but if you want to raid a sirius compound a hundred time in a single game time day, please write down a loot table.
It's broken because you can raid a single building a hundred times in one day if you wanted. Past a point the difficulty is trivial and it's just an infinite money and XP exploit. Apocalypse is clearly an unfinished game and raiding is a part of that, there's no downside and it trivializes the rest of the game.
The game is raiding heavy already, it's also one of the main critique against it and you want to launch a hundred raids a day?
Well, if you do, you deserve everything you get from xp to virtual cash and the huge waste of your time.
Seriously, if you raid too much, they only have shitty weapons, and no expensive loot, i know i tried the first time i played the game and you get less psyclones or none at all if you raid the same building too often, like 3 times is too much.
Of course, i could be wrong, that's how i remember it and i'm certainly not going to check it now but if you want to raid a sirius compound a hundred time in a single game time day, please write down a loot table.
There is definitely no end to the amount of loot you can get and I'm 95% sure it doesn't degrade at all with successive raids, though it is random. Factions can be millions in the red and the maps still provide the same stuff (scales their equipment to the tech level but otherwise doesn't change). The gangs are much better than Sirius.
