UFO: Aftermath - Page 14

sabrewolf · November 22, 2003, 17:48

the thing i don't like about the difficulty levels is the fact that difficulter doesn't mean better strategy, but more luck. i had a mission, where 4 chryssalys and 4 other big creatures spawned right next to me. my super striker guys couldn't hit them frequently, the SMP-guys weren't near enough and the sniper guys were paralysed before they could take down the second enemy. it was a 100% loss.

hard shouldn't mean "get killed earlier", but "use better strategies"... but no strategy works in such a situation

Snotty · November 22, 2003, 17:57

Have you tried aborting the mission when you find yourself in such horrible situations?

I must confess to only playing on normal difficulty, and still not having finished it. Theres plenty here for me to come back to. I imagine I will have a frenzy of c3c and them settle back into playing the 2 alternately. I have left my various thoughts on the official message board and hopefully some of them should be picked up.

Some are calling for more helicopters etc but I dont really see the need. With one you can do most of the missions and it lends the game a greater focus.

sabrewolf · November 22, 2003, 19:51

snotty: check out the official forum. there's a mod where you can increase the chopper speed.

mostly irrelevant, but good if you start in europe or asia and have to get to area 51 without taking 4 days for the whole trip. or 6 days for each trip to vostok (south pole).

Skanky Burns · November 22, 2003, 23:32

Enemies spawning right next to your squad is really annoying - there is nothing you can do about it and you can lose your whole squad basically due to luck. Hopefully they will eventually address this issue.

Snotty · November 23, 2003, 05:08

Yeah, how hard can that be to fix. I dont mind a baloonfish to the face if Ive got a slow guy to open a door, but it would suck to just lose my team like that.

I tend to be ok with the chopper speed. I take a lot of pride in stringing together the early missions without having to return to base. One time, I was on my 6th transegent mission in a row and I got 4 free bases for completing that one mission.

Dual wield pistols......

Skanky Burns · November 23, 2003, 07:41

... would make pistols viable in the late game, and not just before you get your first rifle.

Agreed with the chopper speed.

Snotty · November 23, 2003, 09:48

When I was playing my duo I found pistols to be pretty useful. It fits in the belt so you can drop your rifle and quickly draw it, they fire fast and can decimate at short range.

I just cant be bothered with the micromanagement with a full squad, and all the front rank end up with a neo in their pack anyway.

Raion · November 23, 2003, 12:44

I think in all the games that I have started (about 5 and even one on hard) that I only had one mission that had an alien in the face. It was a sporeblower, that I missed, maybe 2 missions, well, whatever. When faced with an alien that close, I abort, and lose the mission but so what, another mission will come up again in that general area, so better than losing a squad, and maybe it was done for that reason.

Its an alien game, and as for going to Area 51 from Europe, that mission will stay on the map, and other will come up, so in that game, that mission can wait until I get there and even have teleporatation.

So, that did not bother me, and as to difficulty, there is less better weapons to be had, and limited weapons, and more aliens on the harder difficulty levels.

I just got pretty good at giving commands down there, so I know they know what the squaddies are doing.
Now I got so many, that are around the same level, it is hard to decide in the medium game, who to limit for the experience of being one of the top picks. I mean the earlier squaddies usually have more experience, but then I have about 5 or 6 others that are just a couple of levels down, and I need to pick the ones I want to give them more experience, I guess, although that is another question, and I am training some of the others on some of the other missions that occur.

I just had to fly up back north from South America, and then there is another mission down there now for a base, but I think I will head across the ocean or over the north pole, like Santa Claus.

Have not even had any UFO's that much lately, so I expect the biomass or something is going to kill me in that game, in a little while when ever I get to finding it.

Snotty · November 23, 2003, 17:59

I noticed a disinct drop off of ufo numbers as I started pileing up the bases.

The difficulty shift wasnt so bad last time. I saw the russian area 51 pop up and I knew I would struggle with any further alien missions. Luckily they only had sky armour this time. Before I had seen sky and bio turn up at around the same time.

Snotty · November 24, 2003, 17:46

Any idea what the biomass trigger is? Number of bases perhaps? Also it doesnt seem to start spreadin right away. I thought knocking all the planters out of the sky would slow it down but it only tends to appear in a couple of patchs anyway....

Sabrewolf, happy with your 400?

sabrewolf · November 24, 2003, 18:06

yessss.... 400, my record!

biomass doesn't start before area 51. and in my europe starting game i at least had about 20 bases by then. i think it started earlier in my american started game.

if anyone feels like, you could delay area 51 until you have the whole world that may be fun

btw: my first base got attacked when reaching 16 iirc.

Raion · November 25, 2003, 14:01

Just had another one in the face when landing at a mission and it was a deathbellows. I had the squad leave that mission, as it was only clearing out an area, and I am sure it will come up again, I guess, or something like that. Area 51 is waiting in the medium game, and although I thought about waiting, I have to go, to do some research that is needed there, so I doubt if a player can wait on that, as research is needed to continue.

Snotty · November 25, 2003, 14:21

I had a base attacked at about 6 bases. Playing Europe I found an alien base in England which sent out one ufo for me to shoot down, and then sent a planter to attack paris! I was shocked to see it so early but the mission was easy enough.

sabrewolf · November 26, 2003, 16:51

i at last took a more careful look at the scenery.
usually i just look from top and a few times take a flatter angle to see if there's a line of fire or if there's a hill in the way.

here some nice discoveries.

1st one:
mayan statue? impressive detail level!

sabrewolf · November 26, 2003, 16:52

bad neighborhood

you may not want to raise your kids in this region

sabrewolf · November 26, 2003, 16:56

now what was this engineer thinking?

placing a wind power station in the middle of a forrest? and just 20m behind a gigantic rock?

but this picture also shows how creepy it can get. if you were to turn down the brightness it can be quite scary.

i was scouting around looking for the last enemies. there were 2 deathbellows left which i only discovered after being right near to them. fortunatly not a problem with super heroic running speed

Snotty · November 26, 2003, 17:15

That mayan things really cool. Never seen anything like it.

I tend to look at thing a bit steeper than 45 degrees. It sucks me in deeper if I have a flatter angle than just top down. It all gets a bit to strategic if you just look from the top all the time.

I also noticed the incredably high mortality rate of American basketball players

Raion · November 28, 2003, 14:09

Never seen one of those Mayan statues.

But a lot of scenary, and it is random.

Raion · December 4, 2003, 03:11

From Martin on the other forum and with some mods now, and work being done, but when Altar is done with it instead of players, I do not know:

From Martin of Altar:

Hello everybody,

please let me express our support for mods here. We are really impressed by the level of support and commitment our game receives from people like you. I must say Thank You again.

For the distribution of patches:

1. It is even now possible to use the system you suggest. If you create a file named "cfg.vfs" and place it in the same directory where you have gamedata.vfs, the files in the former will be preferred over the files in the latter. This is not an ideal solution (we would like this to be more general, so that you have multiple mod files alongside each other), and that's the reason we didn't make it public sooner, but now, seeing the level of support here, I think even this may be useful.

2. We are working on a collection of modding tools: beside the vfs packer and unpacker, we shall also publish the documentation for the configuration files, the documentation for our propriatary 3D format, a tool for converting binary saved files (mostly 3D models) into text files, and a tool for creating custom missions.

3. There will be also a patch that will make the game support the modding better (allow multiple mod.vfs files, allow loading custom missions).

Hope this helps.

Martin

Hang on to your aliens!

sabrewolf · December 4, 2003, 10:37

raion,
many existing mods can be used with the Aftermath Lua Plugin Engine (ALPinE) and it's easy to check them in/out.

unfortunatly own moddings (i've made lasers and warp a bit more powerful... it's a joke that sniper rifles (specially accuracy international) are still the best option - even on the endmission) aren't importable that easy.

looking forward to this tool coming up (whenever that is...)

sabrewolf · December 8, 2003, 18:35

(bump)

anyone still playing this?

ravagon · December 8, 2003, 20:26

Hmm. Well, I've just started with it (Had a few problems getting it to work properly at first), have played it for a couple of hours and need help.

Firstly, the game's just brought up the first pair of missions that look as though they'll give me a new base if I complete them. I don't seem to be able to delegate these so the only 2 fit soldiers might have to go it by themselves (3 others were hurt in the last mission when I ran into an ambush).
Will those missions still be there in a couple of days if I wait until the others are healed or can I go in with just the two?
I have no additional tech yet (nor do I even have a research base) and only a single G3 rifle with 3 clips - Otherwise I'm still using the assault guns you start with.

Oh, and could somebody pleeease tell me there are hotkeys for restart time in the tactical missions.
Having to move the mouse to the top left corner and click on the arrow each time is driving me

Snotty · December 8, 2003, 20:30

The space bar is the saviour to all your pausing ills. As for the missions, they may stay a few days if you need them to. There is no need to hit the delegate button as they will be auto-delegated if they run out of time. Good luck, and have fun.

As for me, conquests has eaten all my play time. I keep trying to harness that beast of a game, and yet it draws me further into it

Skanky Burns · December 8, 2003, 20:41

I use minus and plus. The number of times I have pressed spacebar to pause the game just after the game automatically pauses...

With plus you can set the speed you want as well.

ravagon · December 8, 2003, 21:26

Ta muchly.

Btw, has anybody tried a mod that allows you to manufacture ammunition for 'human' weapons other than those you start with?
I found one and was going to install it - producing bullets for those weapons you happen to find doesn't really seem like cheating ...

sabrewolf · December 9, 2003, 04:27

ravagon,
you get more soldiers after getting a certain amount of bases. you can get a base by either going down there and eliminating everything or by winning 3 other missions in the same zone... in that case you'll get the base automatically.

i wounldn't recommend delegating missions. you may want to do them later... and if you don't, they'll get delegated further after some time. i try to do all missions, except pilot rescues (i don't like leaving one guy at home - i need all of them on the harder missions) and maybe those on antarctica or australia (5 days flying in each direction just isn't fun)

Snotty · December 9, 2003, 04:32

Urban pilot rescues are the easiest missions ever. You start on your exit square and the yellow pilot box is often spitting distance away. The pilot will get waxed if you dont clear a path (the slow fattie

).

Due to the way you build up influence in an area, I almost pray for my pilots to be shot down so I can have an easy mission and maybe boost another area.

Main_Brain · December 9, 2003, 06:20

I even didnt implent the Fighter Upgrades a long Time.
3 Missions in a Place = Instant Base
And you can easily manage at least 2 Pilots be shot down at bigger Ships.

Dont send Mig's though.
They rule :=)

Raion · December 10, 2003, 03:14

Might look at the difficulty level since the default profile on mine was "Hard", and it is.

It sounds like you may have just started the game, and it starts on hard. Name a new profile and start on easy, or at least medium, because it started driving some people to reload all the time, since that is the way the game is.

Then you can set where you want to start also in the game.

Raion · December 19, 2003, 14:18

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

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

Just got the UFO:Aftermath news-letter, and it had some very good news. Here's a quote:

Aliens screaming for next patch!
--------------------------------
Please visit our website next week, when the patch 1.3 with alien sounds,
support for modding tools and more issues will be available for download!
The official modding tools will be released soon after the patch.

Is this a great Christmas present or what? Merry Christmas and a happy new year to everyone!

Thanks to Bucksnort for the heads up!