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Tarezax
Sep 12, 2009

MORT cancels dance: interrupted by MORT
For Long War starting class only matters for which perk tree you get. All stats except above-average will get reset upon augmentation, and every MEC type has the same stat progression as far as I can tell. So MECing is a good way to get better use out of soldiers with cripplingly low move or aim, or salvaging a soldier that's taken one too many trips to the emergency operating room.

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Filthy Lucre
Feb 27, 2006

Tarezax posted:

For Long War starting class only matters for which perk tree you get. All stats except above-average will get reset upon augmentation, and every MEC type has the same stat progression as far as I can tell. So MECing is a good way to get better use out of soldiers with cripplingly low move or aim, or salvaging a soldier that's taken one too many trips to the emergency operating room.

LW MECs have different stat progressions. For example, Jaegars have excellent aim progression (best in the game), while Goliaths have better hp progression.

For those that haven't seen it, Ufopaedia has a pretty up to date wiki for Long War.

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund
What are the requirements in Long War for each Officer Rank? I have a few Captains now and only one seems eligible for Major, even though they're all TSGTs or better. Is it based on number of kills, number of missions, or both? They all have like 16+ missions under their belts. That UFOpaedia wiki doesn't have this info on it.

Segmentation Fault
Jun 7, 2012

Fuzz posted:

What are the requirements in Long War for each Officer Rank? I have a few Captains now and only one seems eligible for Major, even though they're all TSGTs or better. Is it based on number of kills, number of missions, or both? They all have like 16+ missions under their belts. That UFOpaedia wiki doesn't have this info on it.

Soldiers need to go on five missions under their current officer role to qualify for a promotion. Your other Captains need to go on five missions as Captains before they can accept a Major promotion.

Filthy Lucre
Feb 27, 2006

Fuzz posted:

What are the requirements in Long War for each Officer Rank? I have a few Captains now and only one seems eligible for Major, even though they're all TSGTs or better. Is it based on number of kills, number of missions, or both? They all have like 16+ missions under their belts. That UFOpaedia wiki doesn't have this info on it.


Ufopaedia posted:

Any soldier that has the rank of at least Corporal, isn't a MEC Trooper or a Psionic and has participated in at least 5 missions can be promoted to Lieutenant as long as there is an open billet left. After that, further promotions, in addition to another OTS upgrade, require that:

The officer must have been on at least 5 missions (3 with Not So Long War Second Wave option) at his current officer rank.

Ufopaedia

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund
Is Breaching Ammo worth it? I can't tell if it's doing any extra damage with shotguns, but I keep taking it anyway... debating swapping over to Shredder Ammo since Mechtoids and Cyberdiscs are dicks.

Filthy Lucre
Feb 27, 2006
DR gets a 1.5 multiplier vs shotguns. So 2 DR becomes 3 DR, 4 DR becomes 6 DR, etc. Breaching Ammo eliminates that multiplier.

Shredder Ammo will probably add more damage overall, but it doesn't add damage to the shot that applies it. You would be dependent on the follow up shots for the extra damage.

I take both Breaching and Shredder Ammo on my Shotgun Assaults.

Zurai
Feb 13, 2012


Wait -- I haven't even voted in this game yet!

Late game mechanized pod leaders can get absolute tons of DR. I've seen Sectopods with like 6 or 7 DR. Of course, those aren't neccesarily the primary targets for assaults (I call in the MECs, gauss snipers, and rocketeers on those).

legoman727
Mar 13, 2010

by exmarx
holy poo poo gently caress this loving base defense.

I'm in the middle of september, and I've probably restarted this about 5 times now due to absolute bullshit. I'm still at 90% lasers, the game refuses to give me one of my medics (seriously twelve people), reinforcements keep getting wasted on blueshirts walking into mectoid overwatch and dying on their spawn-in, and oh yeah, one good run got ruined by Van Doorn dying to absolutely nothing. And did I mention the Sectopod in the middle of september?

The opening is hilariously luck based, but the real problem comes when the mech bay enemies spawn in. I'm usually too bogged down fighting the flying enemies to be able to stop them and then suddenly half a dozen mectoids all spawn in at once.

Any ideas?

ProfessorBooty
Jan 25, 2004

Amulet of the Dark

legoman727 posted:

holy poo poo gently caress this loving base defense.

I'm in the middle of september, and I've probably restarted this about 5 times now due to absolute bullshit. I'm still at 90% lasers, the game refuses to give me one of my medics (seriously twelve people), reinforcements keep getting wasted on blueshirts walking into mectoid overwatch and dying on their spawn-in, and oh yeah, one good run got ruined by Van Doorn dying to absolutely nothing. And did I mention the Sectopod in the middle of september?

The opening is hilariously luck based, but the real problem comes when the mech bay enemies spawn in. I'm usually too bogged down fighting the flying enemies to be able to stop them and then suddenly half a dozen mectoids all spawn in at once.

Any ideas?

Last time I did base defense I didn't bother with medics. Everyone I could outfit with lasers had two medkits, and those who had to take ballistics had a scope and a medkit. The exception to this was my support engineer, who had bangs and chems.

The base defense mission is one (of many) reasons I build up a bare minimum of 5 HEAT gunners. I think in the last base defense I chose 5 heat gunners, 2 disabling snipers, 2 support engineers, 2 infantry.. And I forgot the last one. Unfortunately medics just don't pull their weight, and neither do rocketeers. With snipers you can use strike rifles as full squadsight isn't terribly necessary and the snapshot utility is helpful.

Edit: My last slot was a MEC. MEC didn't make it to battle unfortunately :(

ProfessorBooty fucked around with this message at 07:16 on Jan 27, 2015

Zurai
Feb 13, 2012


Wait -- I haven't even voted in this game yet!

I got super lucky in my base defense (I guess I should say my first base defense since you can get multiple in LW) because the fliers decided to trickle in one by one, allowing me to concentrate on the mech bay and vents enemies. I also got my MSGT Pathfinder and my gauss sniper in my initial crew which helped a ton.

Corvinus
Aug 21, 2006

Zurai posted:

Late game mechanized pod leaders can get absolute tons of DR. I've seen Sectopods with like 6 or 7 DR. Of course, those aren't neccesarily the primary targets for assaults (I call in the MECs, gauss snipers, and rocketeers on those).

I think the max baseline DR any alien gets is 8, for Temple Ship Sectopods and the Uber-Ethereal. These fellows also have SAA and/or Absorption Fields. At the Plasma tier I stop using shotguns and my lategame Assaults are of the heavy-rifle, non-CCS/CE variety.

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund
So... if I were to MEC one of my TSGT Scouts... would he lose all of his ranks, too? It's kinda unclear what they mean by reset all skills... I get that it will reset the Aim and health and all that, but I wanna know if he'll go straight to being a TSGT Pathfinder.

trucutru
Jul 9, 2003

by Fluffdaddy

Fuzz posted:

So... if I were to MEC one of my TSGT Scouts... would he lose all of his ranks, too? It's kinda unclear what they mean by reset all skills... I get that it will reset the Aim and health and all that, but I wanna know if he'll go straight to being a TSGT Pathfinder.

MECs require more XP to level, so you lose a few ranks when you chop your high-level dudes. I think it is worth it because some MECs are not really that good unless they are high level.

A TSGT should become a corporal or sergeant MEC.

trucutru fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Jan 27, 2015

Sulphagnist
Oct 10, 2006

WARNING! INTRUDERS DETECTED

If you chop a TSGT Gunner he becomes a TSGT Goliath. Experience gain is reduced (I believe) and this is why it's preferrable to chop high ranking troops.

trucutru
Jul 9, 2003

by Fluffdaddy

Antti posted:

If you chop a TSGT Gunner he becomes a TSGT Goliath. Experience gain is reduced (I believe) and this is why it's preferrable to chop high ranking troops.

Really? I must have been smoking something at the time I was chopping my dudes. Sorry about the misinformation then.

Walton Simons
May 16, 2010

ELECTRONIC OLD MEN RUNNING THE WORLD

Indecisive posted:

Fog of war on terror missions DOES kill civilians - each turn one or two civs you haven't located can randomly die to simululate undiscovered aliens killing them. Not sure if it can happen to civs you saw but didn't walk up to or if it keeps happening after you activate the last pod, but I think not.

Makes sense, I had seen the guy, near the spawn, but he'd fallen back into the fog of war as I had a really good position to attack the last pod, which I hadn't seen yet, and I just thought he'd be fine and I'd get him automatically once I killed the last pod. I now make sure I grab at least one civilian as early as possible.

e: On Long War, what happens if I lose all the countries on my starting continent? It now makes sense for me to concentrate on getting coverage of North America rather than dividing my interceptors, but I don't know what will happen if I lose all of Africa.

Walton Simons fucked around with this message at 13:01 on Jan 27, 2015

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund

Antti posted:

If you chop a TSGT Gunner he becomes a TSGT Goliath. Experience gain is reduced (I believe) and this is why it's preferrable to chop high ranking troops.

Sweet. My first Scout got the nickname Prototype, and now he will fittingly become my first MEC. :haw:

I've also decided that only female Infantry will become Valkyries, since the majority of my Infantry are women anyway.

Disillusionist
Sep 19, 2007

Walton Simons posted:

Makes sense, I had seen the guy, near the spawn, but he'd fallen back into the fog of war as I had a really good position to attack the last pod, which I hadn't seen yet, and I just thought he'd be fine and I'd get him automatically once I killed the last pod. I now make sure I grab at least one civilian as early as possible.

e: On Long War, what happens if I lose all the countries on my starting continent? It now makes sense for me to concentrate on getting coverage of North America rather than dividing my interceptors, but I don't know what will happen if I lose all of Africa.

Nothing bad. You don't lose the continent bonus. In fact, one common strategy is to start as Asia for the foundry bonus, but only build satellites and interceptors over North America. That way, you can quickly acquire the best two bonuses in the game with minimal effort.

Apple2o
Mar 25, 2009

by Pragmatica

(and can't post for 9 years!)

Disillusionist posted:

Nothing bad. You don't lose the continent bonus. In fact, one common strategy is to start as Asia for the foundry bonus, but only build satellites and interceptors over North America. That way, you can quickly acquire the best two bonuses in the game with minimal effort.

I will probably be restarting my long war campaign and doing this; I started Africa and i'm getting so butchered in the air war it's high time to call it quits this run. Also I didn't know you could trade bodies and captures for stuff :aaaaa:, I put off xenobiology till September.

Also how is training roulette for long war? It seems like it could be alot of fun but i'm worried I might get boned due to a shortage of HEAT ammo or something.

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund

Apple2o posted:

I will probably be restarting my long war campaign and doing this; I started Africa and i'm getting so butchered in the air war it's high time to call it quits this run. Also I didn't know you could trade bodies and captures for stuff :aaaaa:, I put off xenobiology till September.

Also how is training roulette for long war? It seems like it could be alot of fun but i'm worried I might get boned due to a shortage of HEAT ammo or something.

I feel like you could get some awesome combos with Training Roulette, like an Assault with HEAT or Sprinter on an Infantry. I'd say go for it... There's a mod on the Nexus specifically for LW that reveals a soldier's training tree, so you could screen out your lovely combos or just rank them up on the side to MEC them.

wolfman101
Feb 8, 2004

PCXL Fanboy

Teddles posted:

I think that Africa's a good place to expand mid-late game as your third/fourth continent, around the same time that you get started on late game research.

This depends on difficulty. I think Africa is clearly the best starting spot on normal because it gets 300 more dollars to start than NA. On impossible, Africa only gets an extra 170 so I am not so sure.

Beef Hardcheese
Jan 21, 2003

HOW ABOUT I LASH YOUR SHIT


Is there a general guide to early LW strategies, or a greater breakdown of in what situations various techs are better or worse?

I started out my second game in North America for the aerospace bonuses, with a goal of solidifying control over NA airspace before worrying too much about the other continents. It's mid-June at this point, and the US, Canada, and Mexico are well into 4/5ths of the way up their individual panic bars. This, even though the worldwide panic level is very low (Egypt was scripted to leave, and China will be leaving any minute now after a pretty miserable performance on a terror mission). No other country has more than two panic bubbles. I'm only up to UFO #13, and while I've managed to shoot down about half, the others have gotten away. One time a UFO managed to survive all six interceptors, which left them out of commission and unable to respond to the next 2-3 that came by. I've been trying to tech towards Advanced Aerospace Concepts with only a couple of detours (for story-required techs and Beam Lasers).

I'm trying to figure out why my panic is so high; the only EXALT activity has been to steal tech, and I haven't failed any missions yet. Will the aliens focus on a continent that you're actively trying to build up and defend with satellites and interceptors?

Loel
Jun 4, 2012

"For the Emperor."

There was a terrible noise.
There was a terrible silence.



Just had a hilarious/tense fortress assault. The final boss room had a 100 hp mega sectopod. I lined up my three MEC-3s and punched it to death while it injured/crit half of my remaining squad.

Scapegoat
Sep 18, 2004
Going to have to restart after 4 months in. Really good missions but terrible geoscape. Lost my starter satellite so was crippled for ufo shootdowns for nearly a month. Even once I got it back (and a few more), couldn't get any UFO's so slowly ran out of alloys which crippled my research, laser weapon builds and foundry projects. Plenty of cash from abductions but there are only so many scopes and shivs you can build.

Walton Simons
May 16, 2010

ELECTRONIC OLD MEN RUNNING THE WORLD

Disillusionist posted:

Nothing bad. You don't lose the continent bonus. In fact, one common strategy is to start as Asia for the foundry bonus, but only build satellites and interceptors over North America. That way, you can quickly acquire the best two bonuses in the game with minimal effort.

Wow, ace, going for that when this run ends. Thanks! Although with my record of keeping satellites safe, I wouldn't call it minimal effort.

LowellDND posted:

a 100 hp mega sectopod

:stare:

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund

Beef Hardcheese posted:

Is there a general guide to early LW strategies, or a greater breakdown of in what situations various techs are better or worse?

I started out my second game in North America for the aerospace bonuses, with a goal of solidifying control over NA airspace before worrying too much about the other continents. It's mid-June at this point, and the US, Canada, and Mexico are well into 4/5ths of the way up their individual panic bars. This, even though the worldwide panic level is very low (Egypt was scripted to leave, and China will be leaving any minute now after a pretty miserable performance on a terror mission). No other country has more than two panic bubbles. I'm only up to UFO #13, and while I've managed to shoot down about half, the others have gotten away. One time a UFO managed to survive all six interceptors, which left them out of commission and unable to respond to the next 2-3 that came by. I've been trying to tech towards Advanced Aerospace Concepts with only a couple of detours (for story-required techs and Beam Lasers).

I'm trying to figure out why my panic is so high; the only EXALT activity has been to steal tech, and I haven't failed any missions yet. Will the aliens focus on a continent that you're actively trying to build up and defend with satellites and interceptors?

You should never be sending all 6 birds up on one UFO... don't even bother trying to shoot down Medium or larger until you have laser cannons, and even then you shouldn't really bother.

Put Stingrays on everything because Avalanches suck.

Use Scouts to level up troops on and always beat on a Fighter that's flashing and flying High - that means they're coming for your satellite.

If the ship is NOE that means it will probably land, so don't send birds after it.

Always go on Terror missions.

If an Abduction is in a low panic country and has a low cash payout and you aren't hard up for money or have a lot of troops out, SKIP IT. Not worth exhausting your troops.

The exception to the above is if it's the first one of that month and you need captures... usually they're Light or Moderate and you don't have to worry about an Outsider, so they're a good way to, say, bag a Floater so you can interrogate it for Aerospace research credit.

If you have UFOs and an Abduction up, always prioritize the UFO... more Alloys, and you might get sweet, sweet power supplies.

Research Xenobiology first, then bum rush for Advanced Beam Lasers so you can get Cannons. After that it's flexible, but personally I'd say get Xenoneurology and then go for Carapace, so you can get to work capturing jerks earlier and then just hanging on to them until you need to interrogate them... Early missions are way easier to capture on reliably, and the mission load is more manageable such that you can risk your guys (not fatally, just wounds) to bag a Sectoid, so you can later research Cybernetics (MECs) faster. Muton interrogation also rules. The only mostly worthless interrogation is Thin Men... their autopsy is loving amazing, though.

Get a Foundry early (whoever said it's pointless is WRONG) and research Metallurgy ASAP. You will thank me later.

Fuzz fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Jan 27, 2015

Apple2o
Mar 25, 2009

by Pragmatica

(and can't post for 9 years!)

Fuzz posted:

I feel like you could get some awesome combos with Training Roulette, like an Assault with HEAT or Sprinter on an Infantry. I'd say go for it... There's a mod on the Nexus specifically for LW that reveals a soldier's training tree, so you could screen out your lovely combos or just rank them up on the side to MEC them.

Aw that's no fun though. Do you know where I go to mod the ini's for air war repair and stuff? I want the tactical missions to be hard as balls but the air war stuff is bullshit and not fun most of the time.

Sulphagnist
Oct 10, 2006

WARNING! INTRUDERS DETECTED


Disabling Shot, HEAT, Chem and Shredder are your best friends. I'd rather deal with a pod of a monster Sectopod and three drones than three Heavy Floaters any day.

Disillusionist
Sep 19, 2007

Beef Hardcheese posted:

Is there a general guide to early LW strategies, or a greater breakdown of in what situations various techs are better or worse?

I started out my second game in North America for the aerospace bonuses, with a goal of solidifying control over NA airspace before worrying too much about the other continents. It's mid-June at this point, and the US, Canada, and Mexico are well into 4/5ths of the way up their individual panic bars. This, even though the worldwide panic level is very low (Egypt was scripted to leave, and China will be leaving any minute now after a pretty miserable performance on a terror mission). No other country has more than two panic bubbles. I'm only up to UFO #13, and while I've managed to shoot down about half, the others have gotten away. One time a UFO managed to survive all six interceptors, which left them out of commission and unable to respond to the next 2-3 that came by. I've been trying to tech towards Advanced Aerospace Concepts with only a couple of detours (for story-required techs and Beam Lasers).

I'm trying to figure out why my panic is so high; the only EXALT activity has been to steal tech, and I haven't failed any missions yet. Will the aliens focus on a continent that you're actively trying to build up and defend with satellites and interceptors?

To add, I would say that having a ton of panic in your home continent and little panic elsewhere is a good thing, because as mentioned before you can never lose your starting continent bonus, even if all of the countries withdraw from XCOM. It also helps because having a bunch of missions over your home continent allows you to do more missions, leveling your soldiers faster while also granting you more resources.

In my experience, the aliens do seem to focus on one continent at a time*, though it's not always your home continent. I had one recent campaign where 10 out of 11 terror missions all targeted Australia, and the other Asian countries saw a lot of activity as well.

*This isn't to say that they won't conduct missions outside that continent, but that they will expend most of their effort on one.

As for the air war, the strategy I use is:

- Ignore medium and above UFOs until you have laser weapons and aerospace techs
- Use aggressive stance when engaging, but retreat once your interceptor suffers 1/3-1/2 damage.
- Leave three birds undamaged to take out any fighters (small UFOs that flash on the map) that might show up
- For fighters, it is often enough to damage them to the point where you can see multiple "explosions" going off on the battle screen; this is a recently added feature to LW that indicates when the UFO has surpassed 50% damage. In most cases, these ships will retreat without shooting down your satellite.
- On the other hand, losing satellites isn't a terrible thing depending on where you are in the game. If you keep one satellite as a reserve, you can quickly replace any that are shot down. This works if your air force is still small and/or highly damaged, and if the resulting panic spike won't hurt you too much.
- Try to get the air techs as soon as reasonable, but don't force the issue. I wouldn't recommend shorting your ground forces in technology and foundry upgrades by expending your research and resources too heavily on the air game.

Finally, as far as panic being high, there could be multiple reasons:
- Have you lost any satellites?
- Terror missions will obviously raise panic, even if you successfully complete the mission.
- UFOs that you fail to destroy or severely damage will often bomb civilians, which raises panic. This sounds like a likely culprit considering how the air game is going for you.

Panic is far less worrisome in LW compared to vanilla, though. It has less impact on your money, and lost countries can always be brought back into the fold. Really, panic is the worst when it results in a country withdrawing that costs you a continent bonus and you don't have the capability to quickly recover the country.

Vib Rib
Jul 23, 2007

God damn this shit is
fuckin' re-dic-a-liss

🍖🍖😛🍖🍖

LowellDND posted:

Just had a hilarious/tense fortress assault. The final boss room had a 100 hp mega sectopod. I lined up my three MEC-3s and punched it to death while it injured/crit half of my remaining squad.
Punching seems like a bad idea because at that point the sectopod is all but guaranteed to have shock absorbent armor which reduces damage from close-range sources, which would include punch-happy MECs.

Walton Simons
May 16, 2010

ELECTRONIC OLD MEN RUNNING THE WORLD
Just had my first LW mission abort, a 'swarming' abduction, and they weren't kidding. I dealt with 3 floaters and wounded a Muton from the off, which retreated. Then 4 Thin men turned up, then 4 more, then three floaters, then the Muton came back, with me having barely advanced from the spawn. With very little good cover, just a few cars, and acid being used in abundance, blunting any attack I had, I opted to get the gently caress out. Mission failed, but I just feel relieved to have got away.

Echophonic
Sep 16, 2005

ha;lp
Gun Saliva

Vib Rib posted:

Punching seems like a bad idea because at that point the sectopod is all but guaranteed to have shock absorbent armor which reduces damage from close-range sources, which would include punch-happy MECs.

Are you sure about that? I thought it was another perk that reduced melee damage, as Beagle found out a few weeks ago when his Goliath got punched for like 17 damage by a berserker.

World War Mammories
Aug 25, 2006


Vib Rib posted:

Punching seems like a bad idea because at that point the sectopod is all but guaranteed to have shock absorbent armor which reduces damage from close-range sources, which would include punch-happy MECs.

This morning I read this post and thought to myself "you know, it's April 2016 and I still haven't seen a sectopod with any perks besides Cluster Bomb/Cannon Fire/Hit and Run. Huh."

Of course, this afternoon I embark on a landed large UFO, some kind of supply ship, LZ right up by the cockpit, I'm prepping a breach when I hear something to the right:



Not pictured: two dead seekers and the pod of five mutons that got revealed when I moved up my gunner.

The little one's a factory standard, but the big one's got eighty-five health, the usual sectopod perks, Sentinel, Light 'Em Up, Repair Servos, Reactive Targeting Sensors, and motherfucking Absorption Fields.

he;lp

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund

Walton Simons posted:

Just had my first LW mission abort, a 'swarming' abduction, and they weren't kidding. I dealt with 3 floaters and wounded a Muton from the off, which retreated. Then 4 Thin men turned up, then 4 more, then three floaters, then the Muton came back, with me having barely advanced from the spawn. With very little good cover, just a few cars, and acid being used in abundance, blunting any attack I had, I opted to get the gently caress out. Mission failed, but I just feel relieved to have got away.

Yeah, LW will sometimes throw a crazy mission at you to bait you into over extending. A lot of the strategy for the mod is to accept that you can't win every fight and know when to cut and run. Once in awhile you'll get lucky with positioning/damage and win, though.

I had a late August terror mission like that last night, there were 4 pods of Lids and 3 Mechtoids with about 10 Sectoid bros on that lovely little burning ice cream parlor map that Beagle got as his zombie mission in the Live and Impossible vids, except I got lucky and started in the back, right by the ladder to the roof. I got everyone up there immediately and the Lids all rushed me at once, I had a C team but had 2 Engineers (one was just a LCPL without HEAT, though) so judicious explosives + exploiting CCS took care of that, then I power slammed one Mech with my HEAT Engineer and Gunner and the rest were able to finish it off, then the second rushed me right away and I had to Disabling Shot him and flee back up to the roof and bombard him. Then the last one barreled out right as I thought I was done and he was already merged and his Sectoids all clumped up but I needed to save my last HEAT for him, so I went hyper aggressive and just rushed him... got through by the skin of my teeth. Somehow didn't even take any hits, to boot.

Beef Hardcheese
Jan 21, 2003

HOW ABOUT I LASH YOUR SHIT




Thanks for the tips. Is there any way to see what the odds are as far as being able to take down a UFO? Considering how you get so much information going on missions, (hit percentages, info-checking for abilities, etc), the air game is maddeningly vague. I did lose my satellite over Canada at some point, and I think it was right after that that I made the mistake of going 0/6 with interceptors, which led to the UFO train right after. It's easy to miss the "UFOs bomb targets in [country]" messages that pop up on the planet screen, especially when you're also getting spammed with country requests and soldiers getting out of sickbay. I've been trying to get more live captures, in anticipation of the research bonuses I can give (and give to countries when they request them; I noticed those popping up shortly before I quit my first game). Overall this game has been going better than my previous one, despite the UFO and satellite issues. The steam square layout isn't as bad, they're not on complete opposite sides of the base but linking them up is pretty much out of the question.

I've been taking just about every single mission that comes up, even the low-panic, low-payout abductions. I see them as opportunities to get squaddies levelled up. I wasn't aware of the "always keep home continent bonus" rule; that meshes pretty well with what someone else just pointed out about starting in Asia and going for NA satellite coverage. I really hate to skip terror missions, but sometimes it seems like the best option... Since failing a mission counts as ignoring (the country in question immediately leaves), and I've had some really bad maps where I activate two pods of enemies before I see even a single civilian. I usually try 2-3 different squad comps and multiple angles of attack with each before giving up entirely, though.

Zurai
Feb 13, 2012


Wait -- I haven't even voted in this game yet!

Beef Hardcheese posted:

Thanks for the tips. Is there any way to see what the odds are as far as being able to take down a UFO? Considering how you get so much information going on missions, (hit percentages, info-checking for abilities, etc), the air game is maddeningly vague.

This wiki is about it. There's nothing in-game although there is a mod which works with Long War which gives UFOs a damage display exactly like your interceptors have (filling with red to represent damage percentage) which I recommend. It's on the Nexus, I'll see if I can find it again.

EDIT: Here is the UFO damage display mod.

Zurai fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Jan 27, 2015

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund

Zurai posted:

This wiki is about it. There's nothing in-game although there is a mod which works with Long War which gives UFOs a damage display exactly like your interceptors have (filling with red to represent damage percentage) which I recommend. It's on the Nexus, I'll see if I can find it again.

EDIT: Here is the UFO damage display mod.

As a bonus, the UPK patching program can install and then uninstall the mod, so you can put it in when you research Advanced Aerospace or specifically the satellite aiming bonus, just to pretend it's given to you as a research project. Honestly, I kinda wish the Long War guys would implement it that way, that would be rad as hell.

Bholder
Feb 26, 2013

Fuzz posted:

As a bonus, the UPK patching program can install and then uninstall the mod, so you can put it in when you research Advanced Aerospace or specifically the satellite aiming bonus, just to pretend it's given to you as a research project. Honestly, I kinda wish the Long War guys would implement it that way, that would be rad as hell.

They will in B15

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Disillusionist
Sep 19, 2007

Beef Hardcheese posted:



I've been taking just about every single mission that comes up, even the low-panic, low-payout abductions. I see them as opportunities to get squaddies levelled up. I wasn't aware of the "always keep home continent bonus" rule; that meshes pretty well with what someone else just pointed out about starting in Asia and going for NA satellite coverage. I really hate to skip terror missions, but sometimes it seems like the best option... Since failing a mission counts as ignoring (the country in question immediately leaves), and I've had some really bad maps where I activate two pods of enemies before I see even a single civilian. I usually try 2-3 different squad comps and multiple angles of attack with each before giving up entirely, though.

You only fail a terror mission if all civvies are killed, even getting 1/20 is a "success" although it results in a large panic hit. I'm pretty sure countries won't auto-withdraw after a successful mission, even if the panic puts them over the limit. I could be wrong (haven't played in a while), but I thought countries only withdraw at the end of the month unless they are raided by a battleship or if you fail a terror mission. I would only recommend skipping terror missions if you don't need the continent bonus AND if you have a bunch of dead, wounded and/or low-level soldiers. I still wouldn't make a habit of it though because I'm pretty sure every successful mission for the aliens boosts their tech. By all means, though, if the terror mission is going south don't hesitate to retreat.

In my experience, having enemies activate before I see civvies is an ideal outcome :v: because my strategy for terror missions is kill all enemies ASAP. I don't focus on rescuing civvies because it usually results in putting my troops in harm's way, and I can live with a big panic hit if my troops stay out of the sick bay.

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