X-COM thread

I get the feeling that the devs never properly playtested TFTD.

>>2916325
Nah.

>playthrough of TFTD on Veteran difficulty
>it's mid-May and we're so far losing an average of 4-6 dudes per mission

Sounds about right.

>>2916028
You know that those missions are partially connected to your weapon research. The game won't give you Lobsterman terror missions unless you have Sonic Cannons researched.

>>2919108
I'd actually wondered about that because on different TFTD playthroughs, I would get a shipping route attack to open April and when I was still researching Sonic Rifles, I'd always get Gillmen but when I started the month with them already researched, then I always got Tasoths. Therefore it does seem that research of Sonic Rifles was connected to whether I got an easier or more difficult alien race.

Has anyone tried the x-piratez mod for the first game?

Would appreciate some feedback.

>begin July
>take out artefact site

That was easy and fun after almost two months of grueling colony/terror missions. The last one was a Tasoth island mission in the South Atlantic. Crazy, chaotic mess. Half the map was a charred crater from all the Bio-Drone explosions.

I usually always play UFO on Superhuman, but TFTD I draw the line at Veteran. You really don't want to ever play TFTD on Superhuman which is essentially suicide for all but the best players and even then, you will have to abandon missions regularly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEwfxSldXUQ&list=PLhu1IU-H0hU3Kt9kN11CwiI1PtR1iDXZ8&index=17

This guy gets six straight Gillman port/city attacks in a row? How is it I always keep getting trawlers full of Tasoths/Bio-Drones?

>take out yet another colony in the Caribbean
>after a hard-fought battle on the first part, the inner colony proves to be almost amazingly easy
>find the command center in the south of the map well away from the bulk of the alien force
>nobody dies and I don't run into any aliens the whole time except the dudes in the command center

That was nice. Because some of my previous colony missions had the command center in the north of the map and I had to fight some pretty brutal battles to get to it.

And quick tip for locating the command center - the game always stacks the big 16x16 modules on top of each other. So if you run into one on the first floor, take the grav lifts straight down to the bottom floor - you may find the command center there. Of course some maps have lots of 16x16 modules, others have only one per floor.

>>2920968
I was still regularly fighting Gillmen crews all the way up to August. Tasoth were more frequent in smaller USOs at the time, but I had previously only faced them on an Artefact Mission and a Tanker Ship Terror. My other Cruise Ship Terror (there were only two, on months 4 and 5 IIRC) was a Mixed crew.

>>2921338
OK, I was doing some more research on TFTD settings, mostly in wiki and the code. I was really surprised by several things that make probably the game much easier, if played quickly (the way you did). Also it makes the game very boring (tedious).

First and foremost: half of the alien bunch are crippled. We all remember Lobstermen, Tentaculats and Tasoths, right? They gave us the creeps. But the rest? I always thought TFTD had decreased number of aliens, which seems to be wrong. Where are they?

>Bio Drone
Probably one of the single worst enemies in the entire game, but melee weapons knock them out with no explodey. They have a melee attack, but it doesn't seem to work (bug?) so as long as they're right next to your soldier, they're totally harmless.
>Hallucinoid
Melee-only and laughably easy to kill.
>Deep One
Can't reaction fire and their attack has a max range of 7 squares.
>Xarquid
Has a powerful acid spit attack but incredibly slow and easily disabled with grenades.
>Triscene
Rarer than hen's teeth and also easily disabled with grenades.
>Calcinite
Melee-only so little to worry about here.
>Gillman
Minus flying, aren't they essentially the same thing as Floaters?

>>2921358
All the large four square aliens in X-COM are weak to explosives because all of their squares take damage. And yeah, Triscenes are extremely rare as they only ever appear on Tasoth-dominated mixed crew terror missions.

>>2921389
Last point - TFTD gets boring much quicker than EU for me because there's only four main alien races instead of five and colonies always have the same aliens in them unlike EU bases. TFTD has a lot more interesting/varied Battlescape maps, but it's rigged to always give you coral reefs et al 50% of the time.

>>2919147
Alien appearance ratios depend on how far you are into the game and also your tech level. Mutons never appear earlier than April, however the game also won't give you a Muton mission until you've researched Heavy Plasma. If you have only weaker weapons, you'll never see a Muton the whole game. Ethereals do not appear earlier than June or prior to you researching psionics.

TFTD it's same. Lobstermen won't appear until you research Sonic Cannons. Tasoths will perform shipping route attacks if you have at least Sonic Rifles but not other mission types until June or you researched the MC Lab. Also artefact sites will not appear until June or you researched the PWT launcher.

>>2921480
It is much more simple. It's linked to the game time, to the month elapsed. Lobstermen have a small chance of appearing in February-March for probe/infiltration/colony expansion. They begin doing terror attacks in April along with interdiction missions. Same thing, you will start getting shipping route attacks in April which may include any alien race although Tasoths seem to be the most common. Tasoths do not perform regular scheduled missions until June and they also take over doing interdiction/resource raid from Gillmen.