Messages

1

Discussion / Re: 2.5 sucks completely

« on: April 29, 2013, 03:35:23 pm »

... The AI always knows where you are. This is common in many games as it's very difficult to create a challenging AI if they don't know where to look. AI improvements are always welcome, but it's a bit of a specialised field and hard to attract talent.

Maybe too simple, but how about setting the area of/around the phalanx ship as target for the aliens until they start seeing phalanx soldiers?
Another possibility would be to add 1 characteristic to each phalanx soldier's position: as long as it hasn't been spotted yet, set to 0 meaning the AI will ignore those position. As soon as the soldier has been spotted, set it to 1 and continue to give the AI full knowledge of that position. This sort of assumes that the aliens are clever enough to keep track of your soldiers after they've been spotted once.

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Discussion / Re: PHALANX base design

« on: February 24, 2013, 05:53:23 pm »

What also works well (for secondary bases where you don't need all the available space) is if you place hangars in such a way that the only way invading aliens reach your base is through 1 choking point. The same goes to whichever building it is again that has a loading ramp leading to an open door, I don't remember...
In practice this means clustering these buildings together to the far North-East of your base and leaving a stretch of open space South. To the West, leave open spaces for all but 1 hangar.

It's quite easy to keep the aliens pinned down in that choking point (1-2 soldiers with reaction fire can manage while the others make their way to the scene).

3

Tactics / Re: Keeping the Nations Happy in 2.4

« on: October 14, 2012, 12:41:50 pm »

Thanks for sharing, very insightful! 

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Tactics / Re: Keeping the Nations Happy in 2.4

« on: October 08, 2012, 11:24:50 pm »

...
and i get the impression that by selling parts of a dismantled ufo i get more cash than by selling it right after the mission.

Interesting observation, I've been wondering for a while what was the best way - other than that I try to disassemble as many UFOs as possible to get my hands on alien materials.
It would not be illogical that selling parts would be more profitable: one could maximize the profits on each individual part, there's no "bulk discount", etc. A bit like old books were cut up and sold as separate pages to maximize the profit

5

Discussion / Re: 2.5 dev questions

« on: October 06, 2012, 06:25:55 pm »

Are you sure you are talking about 2.5-dev here?

Fair point, a few missions further into the game I've now noticed that this is a big difference from 2.4

6

Discussion / Re: 2.5 dev questions

« on: October 05, 2012, 10:51:47 pm »

... Production for (a very small) profit will probably be implemented in the future, but we need to go through and set appropriate numbers. We're not interested in making it a core part of the game's economy, but I think we do plan to give your workers something to do all the time.

I think this will be changed in the future. At least you'll start off with more recruits on standard difficulty. Not sure if the rate of new recruits will change. Alien difficulty has recently been increased so soldier attrition is probably a bit off at the moment.

On the other hand you could argue that you can always give workers a few UFOs to dismantle (though I have no idea whether selling all its material and components is more profitable than selling the UFO as a whole)

I tend to ensure my soldiers are fully healed by the end of a mission. If for some reason the mission ended earlier than expected, I'll heal the soldier in the first turn of the next mission.

7

Tactics / Re: Picking up alien weapons

« on: September 29, 2012, 10:53:27 am »

Speaking of which, do we know if the game properly tracks returns if you run multiple missions? Say you run a landing, then stop at a shoot down on the way back, does the game remember to give you stuff from both? Or should the bird return home first?

From experience I'd say yes. I've often done 2 or 3 missions in a row before returning to base, to then see a whole load of alien equipment turn up, so I think the game remembers it alright.

8

Discussion / Re: Rich selection of maps

« on: September 29, 2012, 10:49:50 am »

And iirc this fix did not even make it into 2.4. 

That might explain why it took a good 150 - 200 missions to discover some new maps. Or in other words, if that fix will be part of 2.5, the maps that are currently rarely used will see more play 

9

Discussion / Rich selection of maps

« on: September 25, 2012, 11:09:28 pm »

Just wanted to share that I've been very pleasantly surprised lately by the wide array of maps that are being used in UFO:AI (especially now that I'm playing 2.4, even though most if not all of those maps already existed in 2.3)

I've finished a game in 2.3, coming across some of the more rare maps very late in the game which made for a nice change.
And now again, maybe 2 years into the game in version 2.4... just when I started to have the feeling that I was seeing mostly the same locations over and over again, I get a few maps I've never seen before in those hundreds of missions I've already gone through, featuring a different kind of lab, a small multi-storey house with a pool, ...
I even had one location that featured the metro station that was part of a very early demo where we didn't even have a geoscape yet, bringing back good memories.

Just wanted to say thanks to the developers and artists involved. All the work you've put into those locations is much appreciated and adds spice to the game!

10

Tactics / Re: Civilian-Kill-Count in 2.4?

« on: September 22, 2012, 11:52:36 am »

i wonder if the game creates the number of civilians in the ground battle map based on population density where you shot down the ufo?

then it would make sense to try to shoot down the ufo-s in less populated areas.
i mean, nations would certainly be happy if the ufo-s didn't crash in towns and cities with lots of civilian casualties.

I'd be surprised if the game kept that into account.
My feeling is that in 2.4 the first 2-3 months are particularly tough, after that it's getting better as you can afford building more bases that span more continents, get more missions, more cash, etc.
Like H-Hour says, jump on every mission you can, shoot down every scout and -if possible- every fighter. In the beginning I was hesitant to shoot down fighters since I didn't have the cash to loose too many aircraft; some nations dropped to neutral or even below in the first 2 months but I managed to crawl out of that hole, getting everyone to at least happy.

You'll indeed need more than 12 missions in 3 months... Do you have the cash to build at least some radars and SAM sites on other continents? Or even better, another base?

11

Tactics / Re: Picking up alien weapons

« on: September 16, 2012, 11:11:08 am »

It is a confusing message.

Related question - as I didn't manage to dig up the answer through the search function: how does the game determine the number of items that are picked up at the end of a mission?

12

Bugs in older version (2.4) / According to mission map, Vienna is located in Britain?

« on: August 23, 2012, 11:36:25 pm »

There was a terror mission in Vienna (and looking at the map it's indeed in Austria), a message popped up mentioning that the terror mission was in Vienna, Britain.
Consecutively, the mission map loaded was Britain, the one with the telephone cells and postal boxes.

Sorry, I don't have a ufoconsole.log as my pc crashed shortly afterwards - not related to the game. This should be easy to fix though, it must be in the decision point which map is loaded when.

13

Bugs in older version (2.4) / Re: Sudden mission quit

« on: August 23, 2012, 11:28:45 pm »

Just to add to this: not only is the mission sign still there, but when landing on it, the mission starts normally and doesn't take into account anything which happened during the previous run of the mission.

By the way, this bug also existed in version 2.3 on a variety of maps, to me it would seem it's not limited to certain maps.