Topics

1

Discussion / Disassembly time

« on: July 27, 2010, 07:55:22 am »

I'm don't think I understand how UFO disassembly works.  Right now, I've got 5 harvesters in a yard and I've selected one to disassemble.  On 12/6, it's showing that there are 553 hours remaining.  I play for a while and then check again on Dec 10th, but it's only showing 7 hours less (446).   I'm confused... 

2

Tactics / Snipers vs Medium-armored aliens

« on: July 19, 2010, 05:41:46 pm »

In the early months, I had good luck with a combination of Riot Shotguns/Flamers for close work, Laser Rifles & GL for Mid-range, and Sniper Rifles/RL for long range.

With the aliens moving up to medium armor, I've dumped the Shotguns in favor of a Plasma Blade/Plasma Pistol combo.  The Laser Rifles, while requiring a lot of hits to take down an alien, are fast and accurate enough that I feel they're still worth keeping for mid-range work.  And the GL when fitted with PB Grenades is simply devastating.  However, I'm stumped on what to do for long-range fire.  The RL is still generally effective, but the Sniper Rifle just is doing enough damage for the TUs required.  I tried the Bolter, but it's even worse at long range.  As a result, I've currently removed my sniper-skilled soldiers from all my teams, but I don't want to fire them completely if there is a better sniper rifle down the road since so many of them have gotten good. 

So, is there a more effective sniper-type weapon that can be eventually researched (maybe the coilgun)?   

And also, if I *do* fire them, will they still be available later for re-hire once I find a better weapon or is there a chance that they won't be available anymore?

3

Mapping / Problem getting uforadiant set up

« on: July 16, 2010, 08:02:10 pm »

I'm following the Mapping for Dummies guide and I'm having a problem getting started under Windows XP.  The directions say:

When you load UFORadiant it will ask you for the engine path. This is the path to the ufo.exe file which should be in the base folder where you installed the game. If you've bypassed this without setting the path, you can set it in the editor by going to Edit > Preferences... and selecting the Paths option under Settings.

However, I also get asked for "compiler binary."  Is this ufo2map.exe?   I tried that and it then goes ahead and seems to load normally (i.e., I can load the subway map and I see it with textures), but when I try to select a texture on the right-hand panel, I get a dialog box titled Loading Textures with the clicked on texture (e.g., text_mattn/) quickly followed by an error message:

"GtkGLExt-WARNING (recursed) **: cannot create GdkGLContext aborting..."

Then it shuts down.  Any ideas?

4

Discussion / Some gameplay questions

« on: July 14, 2010, 06:30:12 pm »

I have a handful of general questions I'm hoping I can get some answers for:

1) Is there any way to get the messages displayed during the battles to re-display?  I hate it when one of my people gets killed and the message goes by so fast I can't tell who it is.  It's mainly an issue when I'm trying to decide if the person that got killed is good enough to be worth retrying the mission.

2) Does picking up alien equipment mid-mission have any effect on the amount of material you're able to collect?  I'm at the point where I'm spending as much as the countries are giving me, so selling mission loot is my main source of income. 

3) Is there any way to make money other than money provided by countries and selling mission loot?  I know in the earlier versions, you could make stuff and sell it, but it looks like that's a break-even proposition at best in 2.3.

4) Can you halt work on a UFO disassembly the way you can halt work on research?  I just finished a UFO disassembly but my antimatter containment isn't ready yet so I lost the antimatter.  However, when I went back to a prior save and stopped the disassembly, I lost all the progress I'd made.

5) I've got tons and tons of dead aliens, but I can't figure out how to get rid of them.  I know in the original UFO, you could sell the alien corpses, but I don't see any way to do that.  Is it possible to run out of space?

5

Bugs prior to release 2.3 / Stunning - bug or WAD?

« on: July 11, 2010, 03:54:09 am »

Not sure if this is a bug or not, but I wanted to check before entering a bug to make sure it's not supposed to work this way:

When attempting to stun an alien, I hit him with a stun rod and he just took it without getting stunned.  I'm now standing right in front of him and out of time units so I write off trying to stun him and just send in another soldier with a flamethrower to finish him off.  The alien goes down, but instead of being french fried, it was stunned.  Is that how it should work?  Is lethal and non-lethal damage totaled to decide when the alien is incapacitated?

6

Tactics / too many interceptors shot down

« on: July 08, 2010, 03:42:41 am »

Another noobie question:

I'm stuck in June with plenty of money, happy countries, but no sparrowhawk launchers left to buy.  I can try to make some, but with a UFO flying by about every 3-4 hours, I'm losing them faster than I can build them.  I'm sending up two stilettos at a time with sparrowhawks.  I'm researching aerial lasers but I haven't found anything better than sparrowhawks.

I've read that you shouldn't try to take on harvesters (maybe that's my problem), but I can't figure out how to tell one UFO from another.

7

Discussion / swapping aircraft between bases

« on: July 07, 2010, 06:32:40 pm »

Is there any way to swap aircraft between two bases when all the hangers are full?  IOW, I have 2 small hangers filled with Stilletto 1 and 2 in Base A, and 2 small hangers filled with Stiletto 3 and 4 in Base B.  I want to move #1 to Base B and #2 to Base A.  Is there any way to manually launch an interceptor (without a UFO target) so that I can can have an available hanger to do a transfer?

8

Discussion / primary vs. secondary weapons

« on: July 01, 2010, 05:22:50 pm »

First, having great fun so far (had one of those "OMG - it's quarter 'til 3 and I have to go to work tomorrow!" moments last night

My question revolves around primary vs secondary weapons.  I noticed that certain weapons are listed as "primary" (e.g., Assault Rifle, Sniper Rifle, Flamethrower, Rocket Launcher) while others are listed as "secondary" (e.g., Machine Pistol, Submachine Gun, Micro Shotgun).

Is there any specific qualities to being classified as primary vs secondary or is it just a convenient way to group the weapons?  I thought maybe the game was trying to hint that you shouldn't use an SMG as your main weapon or something.