Posted April 18, 2010
My actual questions are at the bottom, so feel free to skip ahead if you don't care about my backstory.
I'm in the mid-to-late stages of UFO: Aftermath, and it ain't goin' well. Everything was going fairly smoothly, at first; no transgenant was a match for the survivor-warriors I'd trained and equipped, and for the greys, while tough, could still be taken down with good tactics and the right weapons. The only trouble is, I think that the game has grown ahead of my characters.
It started a little after I finished the Area 51 mission. I started encountering larger numbers of aliens with better weapons, including some nasty warp-based mind-control beams. Initially, I could still take these on, mostly because by then everyone had high-powered rifles and some laser weapons, but then I started encountering aliens in Sky Armor and Bio Armor, with rocket launchers and other weapons that could kill my most heavily armored guys in 2-3 shots. These, too, I managed to (barely) beat, via liberal application of rocket and grenade launchers. But at the same time, the Biomass appeared, and a huge clump of it turned up right in the middle of North America, where about half my bases were. Before I could get the biomass repulsors up, about a quarter of my military-industrial base got eaten.
The war started going downhill. Miraculously, I managed to find some heavy machine guns and collapsible weapons in the Stalingrad military base, so fighting the aliens who were equipped with Bio armor and superweapons was manageable, but I had to save and reload several times to get through the Project Dreamland mission without getting anyone killed, and almost all of the guys I sent in had to be hospitalized anyway.
Now EVERY battle I fight is against these ungodly strong aliens who tear through my armor like tissue paper and always outnumber me. Any engagement is largely determined by who shoots first, and almost the entire squad is in the hospital right now. Half of my bases are converted to biomass repulsors, and the remaining half (mostly located in Europe) are in danger of encroaching biomass from Africa in the south and Asia in the east. Oddly, South America is largely untouched, but for some reason I never get the opportunity to build new bases there. I honestly don't know now if I have the resources to win the war.
Long story short, after all that I've seen and done, I think it'd be a good idea to start over, because I think I'm losing. Before I do that, though, I have some questions I need answered.
1. First and foremost: are the key "events" in this game (increasing grades of transgenics/aliens, the coming of the biomass, UFO attacks on bases) completely random, run on a time trigger, or running on an event trigger?
I figure that if there's an event trigger to these things, then I can exploit it: I can purposefully hold off on doing plot missions like Area 51 until I've conquered multiple continents and have a strong industrial complex to back me up. However, if there's a time trigger, then I'm obliged to race around doing as much as I can in as little time as possible. If it's random, I might be able to cheat my way through with multiple savegames to fall back on if events start looking unfavorable.
2. What can I do to guarantee that I get better technology sooner?
I don't EVER want to have weapons or armor that are very inferior to the enemy's. I know now that some technologies don't appear until their prerequisites are discovered, and how the research system works, but I would like to know if there's any tricks to being able to get things like Enhanced Heavy Armor early, because I desperately need it.
3. What did I do wrong?
I have no idea if I was just unlucky or if I made some serious tactical blunders in my overall strategy. I tried to research and develop everything I could as soon as it became available, with priority given to things that would make the war effort easier. I tried to seize bases first and do other types of missions second. I developed my soldiers with the specific intent of training them to be "Excellent" in every way. Then the Biomass just fucked everything up. It's preventing me from expanding any further, and I don't know how it got started growing right in the middle of the USA, and without better armor and/or weapons I don't know if I can keep going with the plot. I'd like to know what, if anything, I could have done better.
I'm in the mid-to-late stages of UFO: Aftermath, and it ain't goin' well. Everything was going fairly smoothly, at first; no transgenant was a match for the survivor-warriors I'd trained and equipped, and for the greys, while tough, could still be taken down with good tactics and the right weapons. The only trouble is, I think that the game has grown ahead of my characters.
It started a little after I finished the Area 51 mission. I started encountering larger numbers of aliens with better weapons, including some nasty warp-based mind-control beams. Initially, I could still take these on, mostly because by then everyone had high-powered rifles and some laser weapons, but then I started encountering aliens in Sky Armor and Bio Armor, with rocket launchers and other weapons that could kill my most heavily armored guys in 2-3 shots. These, too, I managed to (barely) beat, via liberal application of rocket and grenade launchers. But at the same time, the Biomass appeared, and a huge clump of it turned up right in the middle of North America, where about half my bases were. Before I could get the biomass repulsors up, about a quarter of my military-industrial base got eaten.
The war started going downhill. Miraculously, I managed to find some heavy machine guns and collapsible weapons in the Stalingrad military base, so fighting the aliens who were equipped with Bio armor and superweapons was manageable, but I had to save and reload several times to get through the Project Dreamland mission without getting anyone killed, and almost all of the guys I sent in had to be hospitalized anyway.
Now EVERY battle I fight is against these ungodly strong aliens who tear through my armor like tissue paper and always outnumber me. Any engagement is largely determined by who shoots first, and almost the entire squad is in the hospital right now. Half of my bases are converted to biomass repulsors, and the remaining half (mostly located in Europe) are in danger of encroaching biomass from Africa in the south and Asia in the east. Oddly, South America is largely untouched, but for some reason I never get the opportunity to build new bases there. I honestly don't know now if I have the resources to win the war.
Long story short, after all that I've seen and done, I think it'd be a good idea to start over, because I think I'm losing. Before I do that, though, I have some questions I need answered.
1. First and foremost: are the key "events" in this game (increasing grades of transgenics/aliens, the coming of the biomass, UFO attacks on bases) completely random, run on a time trigger, or running on an event trigger?
I figure that if there's an event trigger to these things, then I can exploit it: I can purposefully hold off on doing plot missions like Area 51 until I've conquered multiple continents and have a strong industrial complex to back me up. However, if there's a time trigger, then I'm obliged to race around doing as much as I can in as little time as possible. If it's random, I might be able to cheat my way through with multiple savegames to fall back on if events start looking unfavorable.
2. What can I do to guarantee that I get better technology sooner?
I don't EVER want to have weapons or armor that are very inferior to the enemy's. I know now that some technologies don't appear until their prerequisites are discovered, and how the research system works, but I would like to know if there's any tricks to being able to get things like Enhanced Heavy Armor early, because I desperately need it.
3. What did I do wrong?
I have no idea if I was just unlucky or if I made some serious tactical blunders in my overall strategy. I tried to research and develop everything I could as soon as it became available, with priority given to things that would make the war effort easier. I tried to seize bases first and do other types of missions second. I developed my soldiers with the specific intent of training them to be "Excellent" in every way. Then the Biomass just fucked everything up. It's preventing me from expanding any further, and I don't know how it got started growing right in the middle of the USA, and without better armor and/or weapons I don't know if I can keep going with the plot. I'd like to know what, if anything, I could have done better.