UFO:Alien Invasion
General => Tactics => Topic started by: anonymissimus on August 29, 2014, 12:48:34 am
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Did anybody ever come out of this map saving more civilians than the two from the spawnpoints near the player's starting position (one near the red phone box, the other one in the backyard to the right) ? If so, using which tactics ?
The extremely annoying thing about this map is that it forces the player to waste its turn to move up the stairs. Killing aliens on first turn, posing as replacement target, throwing smoke at civilians, nothing helps or is possible. There's an evil wall to the left from the staircase, preventing shooting on 2 aliens that spawn on the plane with the playground. I still managed to kill 2 on my first turn this time (with grenade launcher, shooting over the wall), which is really a lot for this map. But 5 of 6 civilians died anyway, because the one from the backyard decided to pose by running upstairs to flee from an alien that killed my cannonfodder, instead of calculating that I would kill that alien anyway during my turn and allowing me to cover her in smoke. I once came out saving 50% of civilians, but only since there were only 4 of them - the two near to me survived. I recall that this map was already bloody in 2.4 even. Even more so in 2.5.
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picture of map would help... anyway i ususally save my troops. civilians are not priority. so i build my relationship with countries a lot slower...
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Yep, I remember that map. Well, it's pure luck and rush map. Yes, few times I was able to save more than two civilians, but half of my squad was near to death, but I also did a lot of retries so I don't bother anymore to be successful civilian saver on that map.
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picture of map would help...
It takes 30 secs to open a game in skirmish mode as I told you the exact name it has.
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it takes more than 30 sec... didnt know you can play it on skirmish.
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Yep, I remember that map. Well, it's pure luck and rush map. Yes, few times I was able to save more than two civilians, but half of my squad was near to death, but I also did a lot of retries so I don't bother anymore to be successful civilian saver on that map.
And what if you force yourself to never retry or reload ? So no matter what the battle result is, you have to accept it ?
All maps from the campaign can be played in skirmish as well (apparently). It's just that the player visible names make it hard to identify the correct map.
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I remember this map & from what I've seen posted a few times - don't worry about saving the civies (as Capt Kirk says in ST The Undiscovered Country - Let them die) as you won't take a big a hit as you think if you let them die - took the same attitude on just about every map. Also I try to use smoke to cover my first turn moving my team on the steps/bridge on the far side from the playground & pick them off from a distance then worry about what aliens are in the far back of the map behind the buildings
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you won't take a big a hit as you think if you let them die
It's annoying if you've already reached the maximum happiness. Once that one of those bad maps appears, all nations instantly fall below their funding maximum. Just because of one map, even though I usually safe many civilians. (There are 2 other maps where I loose most civilians most of the time, old mine and one of the port versions).
And it can have a great impact if you loose 6/8 civies on such a map early on, if the effect lasts until the next month change. And it actually continues, even if some other missions undid the damage.
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I end up saving more civies than I lose but I just don't go out of my way to try to save them directly. I save them in essence by killing aliens from smoke cover as quickly as possible w/o losing my soldiers
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You may be interested in the comments on the Map Revision (http://ufoai.org/wiki/Talk:TODO/Map_Revision) project in the wiki. The following comment appears under england:
This is a cool map, but the player start position is a real pain. Never get out of the bowl.
There are so many maps. And so many of them make for poor tactical combat. This project needs an army of mappers addressing this. But I believe ShipIt is the only one holding down the fort these days.
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You may be interested in the comments on the Map Revision (http://ufoai.org/wiki/Talk:TODO/Map_Revision) project in the wiki. The following comment appears under england:
There are so many maps. And so many of them make for poor tactical combat. This project needs an army of mappers addressing this. But I believe ShipIt is the only one holding down the fort these days.
yes but in windows i belive ufo radiant even doesnt work. tried and nothing happened. i know there were somo topics about ufo radiant, but it seems i cant find them...
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You may be interested in the comments on the Map Revision (http://ufoai.org/wiki/Talk:TODO/Map_Revision) project in the wiki.
So, does this mean that all maps are supposed to allow for an increase in nation happiness, and that there are not just some meant to annoy the player ?
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So, does this mean that all maps are supposed to allow for an increase in nation happiness, and that there are not just some meant to annoy the player ?
I think most maps were simply made for the game.
But I know about an exception. The "england" map was done just to annoy a certain player.
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The "england" map was done just to annoy a certain player.
Umm..lol.
Well, it's a serious question. Some maps could be intended to necessarily decrease nation happiness to make the game harder.
Or the development philosophy could (should) be that there are tactics so that all maps can be won without this happening.
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Umm..lol.
... Some maps could be intended to necessarily decrease nation happiness to make the game harder...
Thats not the case.
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You simply need enough firepower to decimate any alien in one turn if you see it. Yeah it's pretty damn hard. But that's the only way it will ever work. See them kill them back. You can use tactics sometimes after u secured the civilians, but before that you can't really do anything. I don't even know why nation happiness decreasing when there wasn't even a single UFO in their nation...
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You simply need enough firepower to decimate any alien in one turn if you see it. Yeah it's pretty damn hard. But that's the only way it will ever work. See them kill them back.
Well precisely that doesn't work on this map. Or the others I mentioned.
If it's the case, the map becomes indeed easy. A visible alien is a dead alien, most of the time. An example is forest, where often all aliens on the map are visible right from the start. I almost always kill most aliens right away on my first turn, the remaining ones bleed, panic or go mad rage, no matter how heavily they are armored. It's no problem to safe all civilians on that map.
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You want ugly? I've had aliens pop up on top of the playground wall and lob a grenade down on my troops during the first alien turn. Nothing quite like starting your second turn with five dead soldiers and two aliens covering you with close range plasma rifle RF.
Perhaps if the map were a bit larger with a little more room down below and a building basement that opened onto the lower area.
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Worst map for my playstyle? Luxury resort is the winner here. One alien often spawns on the roof overlooking the dropship, ready to rain fire or grenades down, doubly worse if armed with a plasma blaster. You have 3 lines you can assault over; one leading up a doubling back stairway to an exposed semi blind alley often with aliens just around the corner overlooked by 2nd floor windows, one leading to the centre of a map through a basement which you exit towards the already mentioned blind alley or to the third line of assault, which is a small stairway leading to a wide open area overlooked by alien firing points in ground and second floor windows. Other aliens spawn in good cover behind buildings far from you, and will pop out of cover as soon as you leave troops exposed. My only successes on this map have involved lots of reaction fire luck with shotguns and my own plasma blasters, liberal use of fire and smoke, and more than one melee kill when things get desperate.
Honourable mention has to go to the secret depot, which often has a number of aliens in firing positions overlooking the automatic door triggered by putting a soldier there as a reaction fire magnet. Smoke can make their survival more probable, until they rush the door, or an alien appears on the roof above the door and wipes your squad with a grenade, plasma blaster fire or some fully auto rounds of some sort.
I have also recently begun to hate the archaeological dig. There are so many points a single alien could entrench themselves and be a right pain in the ass.
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Luxury resort can be won with little losses and all civilians surviving. Seems you are entering the building ? Hide valuable soldiers and civilians in lots of smoke, leave a few expendable soldiers crouched in the open to lure aliens out of cover. Snipers are useful to hit through walls, grenade launcher to shoot over obstacles such as the edge of the rooftop. Then you can still kill a few aliens on your first turn, though they are often only 1 or 2 on this map. I go into the building only once there are at maximum 1-2 aliens left.
Archaeological dig belongs to the easiest maps at all, the reason being that most aliens spawn down in the tunnel, while most civilians spawn in a way you can be between them and aliens. Set up too defensive points, one near the small pathway southwest, the other near the giant stone structure in the middle in the north. As always, stay smoke covered, scout out of the smoke each turn and kill anything visible. That's safe, since there's enough area around your smoke which you can keep free from aliens each turn while civilians hide in smoke too, behind or near to you. Snipers can shoot through the walls of the ruins and through the ceiling of the tunnel for the last few aliens which have been wandering around there since the mission start.
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I put some time into this one. Still far from perfekt, as there is too much open space around. That´s what it looks for now:
(http://www11.pic-upload.de/20.12.14/8ap5ngug36qx.png) (http://www.pic-upload.de/view-25603746/ufo15.png.html)
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looks very nice.
does anybody knows if editor works in windows? becouse i cant get it work.
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Since the time of my complaints, I've managed to save all civilians on this map too. Depending on starting positions and especially number of aliens...if there are only 6 it can work. Thanks to looking up alien spawn points with radiant, hehe, shooting blindly with grenade launcher, and placing cannon fodder attracting the shots. (This cannot be cheating as I could be the one who created the map so I would know spawn points anyway.)
@ShipIt
The most important factor why I call this a "bad" map are the relations of spawn points of aliens, civilians and soldiers. They should be in a way that the player can draw the alien's attacks away from the civilians onto himself. That's problematic in the current 2.5 version as aliens can shoot at civilians much more easily.