Help: X-Com3: Apocalypse

muxec · January 4, 2003, 11:59

People in my brief version of XC3:Apo directories "59Alien1" and "60Alien2" are missing. If you have the full version of the game please send me these directories (ZIPped/RARed). Thank you forward.

Juggler · January 4, 2003, 12:54

email?

DrSpike · January 4, 2003, 21:17

Ah, quality game.........very steep learning curve though.

Urban Ranger · January 5, 2003, 05:52

Not too bad if you have played XCOM

DrSpike · January 5, 2003, 06:24

Most people seemed to play real time rather than turn based (like the previous X-Coms) though, and I think the game was geared this way since a full turn based game would have taken months.

General Ludd · January 5, 2003, 11:02

Real time doesn't have a steep lurning curve. All you've got to learn is to not equip your men with explosives (nothing like shooting a brainsucker off your friend's head with a rocket launcher

), and then line them up and move them around like a mobile firing squad blasting anything they see.

DrSpike · January 5, 2003, 11:05

The game still has a steep learning curve though......because each new enemy is a surprise. Now they can all be dealt with once you have figured out how, but the game is unforgiving in that once you lose a fair few men it starts to go downhill.

Skanky Burns · January 5, 2003, 20:36

Apparently the best tactic in real-time mode was to equip everyone with 2 laser rifles (or sniper rifles or similar, I forget what they are called), and the accuracy penalty from using two weapons is negated by the weapon's own accuracy. Killfest.

Of course in turn-based, this will get you killed as you won't get many shots off before your turn is over. Equiping each person with an MP4000 (and 3 clips) then enables you to run up to an enemy in one turn and unload a massive amount of bullets using only 1 movement point per shot. Yay! Using this weapon in real-time mode, however, would mean your entire ammo supply would be used up within the first 5 seconds.

With either setup, stun graples are a must. It means that you can stop the blue explodey guys before they kill everyone, and the large snake things before they give birth to 4 smaller snake things (which would then kill half your squad immediately).

DrSpike · January 5, 2003, 20:40

Quote:

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
Apparently the best tactic in real-time mode was to equip everyone with 2 laser rifles (or sniper rifles or similar, I forget what they are called), and the accuracy penalty from using two weapons is negated by the weapon's own accuracy. Killfest.

Eh how does that work? You only shoot with one weapon....surely you get the same penalty shooting with 1 laser rifle when you have a second as when you shoot with 1 laser rifle with any other weapon.

Urban Ranger · January 5, 2003, 22:33

Real time? Bah. Turn-based is the only way to go. As long as you figure out how to outwit the brainsuckers, you are safe.

I miss them tank things from UFO though. It's messed up that they don't have them in this one.

Skanky Burns · January 5, 2003, 23:50

Not sure to be honest, but many people on an XCom forum I used to post on before its demise swore by this combination. I think they fire both at the same time, and 2 accurate weapons firing at once is better than 1 slightly more accurate weapon firing - you get twice as much firepower.
I can't verify this, however. Turn-based only for me.

Hopefully in the next version of XCom they will bring back tanks, they were sorely missed in Apoc. And the street vehicle tank was no worthy replacement.

ZargonX · January 6, 2003, 01:59

Hmm.. if I remember correctly, you could hold two weapons, but you could only fire one at a time. I always played in turn-based though, so maybe real-time was different. Ahh, yes, those little brainsuckers... I remember the first time I walked into a room, watched in horror as all of my soliders kept missing this freaky little think scurrying across the floor at them, then finding out what they did a bit too late...

Has anyone heard anyting about Freedom Ridge? It was supposedly a spiritual successor to the X-Com series, but I haven't heard anything about it in a while.

Sandman · January 6, 2003, 16:20

Ah, yes. I picked this game up for £2.99 at HMV. I can see why it was so cheap.

Dreadful graphics, and unbalanced gameplay.

Still, I played it for quite a long time, eventually getting to the alien homeworld. It was there that I finally got bored. I couldn't capture a live alien slime.

I gather that previous X-com games had you defending the entire world? Quite a climbdown to be reduced to one, primary coloured, city.

It took a while before I realised that long range sniping is useless, and getting close to the enemy with a machine gun, and later the poison dart guns is by far the best way to kill them.

It was one of those games where you can get quite attached to your troops, especially real 'veterans'. It's quite sad when they die, especially if it's heroically.

Sometimes a stray shot would cause a whole section of the level to collapse, resulting in my main weapons supplier hating me...

It was fun to go to the Cult of Sirius' headquarters and completely trash the place, stealing all their equipment, planting explosives in their computer rooms and killing their members.

I loved the flying armour suits. They ruled. Smashing into a building on the third floor was brilliant fun.

The multi-purpose guns with the various types of shell (armour piercing, explosive, incendiary) were a good laugh as well.

DrSpike · January 6, 2003, 16:52

It is dated now for sure......but it is a classic nonetheless. If you want a prettier game buy something more recent.

Raion · January 6, 2003, 17:01

Dreadful, but I still can play it in Windows 98SE. I would not want real-time though, although I have not tried it with a faster computer. The game still runs at the same rate in the City Scape, because it must use the clock of the computer. It does not run fast, and it still works.

Buy it here for free: (shipping and handling).

http://www.free-cdsoftware.com/gam.html?client=42434187

I see they have Civ II also there (free) except shipping and handling.

also a forum for X-COM is here: (if I may)

http://www.dwcs.net/xcom3/

Taken over for Freedom Ridge is UFO:Aftermath

Q3 - 2003 here:

http://www.ufo-aftermath.com/pages/headquarters.html

And fansite here:

http://www.ufoaftermath.co.uk/

Raion · January 6, 2003, 17:03

Oh, on the forum site above, click on the X-COM picture to really bring up the page. It was down awhile, and now it is back up.

Raion · January 6, 2003, 17:06

There are no such files in the Collector's Edition.

You must have something that someone else added to the game, and maybe modded it.

Raion · January 6, 2003, 17:09

The original game may work okay, but I have the Collector's Edition, but with X-Com 3 , I think, perhaps, they are the same. Except I am not sure about DX6.1 which was added to the first two games, so I am not sure about the third one.

Raion · January 6, 2003, 17:13

Ends at 58UFO in my game, and still one can run the agents around the Police Station with a Stun Gun to get some weapons, and raid Marsec to get maybe perhaps, mind shields that are suppose to increase PSI defense, although I did not find any there at the time I tried that.

Raiding the Police Station's is fun, as long as you only Stun Them, and other places that are friendly, but the Cult of Sirius you must be in Armor and have weapons along.

Skanky Burns · January 6, 2003, 19:35

I can confirm that the mind shields do exist, and are very useful in preventing your guys turning on each other in combat.

No waste my toxic darts ammo!

ZargonX · January 6, 2003, 21:09

Well, looking at the UFO: Aftermath gives me some hope. I'd really missed good squad-based games recently. That one looks like it's coming along nicely. Too bad it won't be until summer... I guess that just means I'll be playing a lot of Civ and Simcity4 in the meantime...

Urban Ranger · January 6, 2003, 22:25

Quote:

Originally posted by Sandman
It took a while before I realised that long range sniping is useless, and getting close to the enemy with a machine gun, and later the poison dart guns is by far the best way to kill them.

Can't remember now, but if that's true, it's sad. In UFO my soldiers eventually ended up with blaster rifles (something like that) and sniped from long ranges.

Skanky Burns · January 7, 2003, 03:21

Yes, that and the way-point missile launchers were the best weapons in that game.
In Apoc, the best weapons would be a toxigun with C toxin, the stun grapple or perhaps mini-launchers with toxic missiles. Once your soldiers are skilled enough though, you can hit an enemy quite far with a toxigun, although not quite as well as with a blaster rifle as in the original.

DrSpike · January 7, 2003, 06:21

Damn the missile launchers were cool, though in my game MARSEC(?) got annoyed with me or infiltrated and I couldn't buy any more ammo.

DrSpike · January 7, 2003, 06:23

Quote:

Originally posted by Skanky Burns

In Apoc, the best weapon would be a toxigun with C toxin. Once your soldiers are skilled enough though, you can hit an enemy quite far with a toxigun, although not quite as well as with a blaster rifle as in the original.

Didn't you have to have different toxins for different types of alien? I remember the micro annoying me. I used though plasma cannons you could research from the aliens, with some heavy explosives and grenades just in case.

Skanky Burns · January 7, 2003, 08:02

Nah, just different strengths. Toxin A was the weakest, B in the middle and C the strongest. And they don't hurt humans much either, only aliens.

I found this out when an alien (probably those pesky microbes) took over one of my soldiers minds. He emptied an entire clip into another soldier who was unimpressed, but also mostly uninjured.

This became a problem however when one of the gangs decided to invade my base...
* Sir, no effect whatsoever!
Thankfully I had stun grapples, and soon after that some captured weaponry.

DrSpike · January 7, 2003, 08:10

I remember first time I played I had a bug where I couldn't research the defensive shield you get just before you invade their homeworld, no matter how many aliens I captured. This annoyed me immensely.

Juggler · January 7, 2003, 09:39

speaking of which, I can't finish com:terror from the deep (second in series). I've been playing from the original CD but can't reach the alien boss and research some new technologies and I've been playing for weeks now. Still, the annoying alien colonies just keep popping up.

Is there some kind of fix to the game or is something wrong with my CD

?

DrSpike · January 7, 2003, 09:44

Terror from the Deep is notoriously very hard indeed.

Skanky Burns · January 7, 2003, 09:54

TFTD also suffered from a badly-though-out research tree. You needed to capture certain types of aliens (say, a snake engineer or whatever) before you could research other hardware. No explanation why.
There was also a very bad bug that in 2-level missions, all items from the first round were lost unless you carried them with you. This was particularly annoying considering certain alien-types were only found in level 1 of 2-level missions, and no matter how many you stunned or killed in that mission, this bug would mean you could never capture them.

Besides cheating, the only way to get all alien types researched was to capture alien medics. Like a needle in a haystack.