Won Game

[Star Adder]

I hereby announce that on January 15th 2085 my team from my South America Base managed to successfully invade an alien base near Recife and hence won the game for me on normal difficulty. At that time I had 6 Bases, all nations were exuberant and I had nothing more to research except the Herakles heavy transporter. 

After that I reloaded the game from a save shortly before the transport hit the base, withdrew it, and let time pass without any further UFO interception performed. Then, in march I got the research proposal for Alien Strategy, and after that XIV, the human enemy, the new dropship (forgot the name) and UFOs in orbit before my financial ressources were exhausted, and I had to quit in September.

I have two questions now.
1) Will the winning condition change in later releases (as I guess it will) - because it would be quite unsatisfactory if you miss the last stages of the game because you're performing too well against the alien threat?
2) When I clicked the XIV map button, I noticed a greenish spot with a ring around it in one of the seven seas, but when I hovered over it with my aircrafts nothing in particular showed. Shouldn't something pop up there?

And one suggestion for further releases: Please show a hint when hovering over the XIV map button that states whether you're going to deactivate the map or activate it upon clicking. Later the green spot was gone and I couldn't determine whether the map is active or not anymore.

Oh, and another thing: Since it's a no-go to intercept harvesters and I could easily shoot down any fighter with two stilettos carrying normal weaponry (didn't even need a particle canon), I see no point in building the alien tech based fighters. Did build one Stingray though, and it took me aaages to amass enough alien materials to build it. Even with three bases containing 30 workers for UFO disassembly.

[H-Hour]

The timing of campaign events and research is being worked on at the moment. The late game, especially, is barely implemented and poorly balanced/timed.

[Star Adder]

Ah, thanks for the heads-up! All in all it was a cool gaming experience though.

But I was soooo disappointed when there was no Santa reindeer sleigh UFO on Dec, 25th or fireworks on 31st! ;-))

[msal]

2) When I clicked the XIV map button, I noticed a greenish spot with a ring around it in one of the seven seas, but when I hovered over it with my aircrafts nothing in particular showed. Shouldn't something pop up there?

Same happened to me but when i hovered over my game crashed.

[Wirelizard]

Oh, and another thing: Since it's a no-go to intercept harvesters and I could easily shoot down any fighter with two stilettos carrying normal weaponry (didn't even need a particle canon), I see no point in building the alien tech based fighters. Did build one Stingray though, and it took me aaages to amass enough alien materials to build it. Even with three bases containing 30 workers for UFO disassembly.

The alien-tech fighters armed with laser and particle beam cannons and armour can successfully engage Harvesters, just so you know. Getting all the alien materials together does take ages, but it's worth it!

They're also fast enough that you can, with a bit of luck, arrange to intercept those Harvesters while regular Stilettos assist and add their fire. "Ambushing" a Harvester with a couple of Stilettos and a Starchaser or Dragon is a lot of fun.

Vaguely on-topic, does anyone ever bother with the Saracen?

[tb87670]

First of all I am at June 10, 2084 in my game. First time I played, but let me say I easily took down 3 harvesters on my first playthrough by June. I did find a trick to make Stilettos work against alien fighters and harvesters very effectively after losing my first Stiletto to a fighter 1v1: I decided to pair them up. So each of my bases always has 2 Stilettos and a Firebird. Load them with 2 missile racks, the Shiva cannon with HEI rounds an ECM and targeting computer. I found polymer armor slowed them down too much to be useful, the speed advantage comes in play against alien fighters.

So, when I see an Alien fighter if I am lazy I will just send 2 Stilettos and boom they kill it reliably without casualty. If not lazy I will send 1 Stilettos and the moment it goes into missile range and launches a missile I pause the game, tell it to retreat, play slowly until the missile is reloaded and then tell it to attack again, kiting right outside the range of the alien ship weapons. This works well with 1 Stiletto against an alien fighter, and if you can get ahead of a harvester you can fire 3-4 salvos of missiles while trying to run before you are in range of the alien weapons. Using this trick as I said above I downed 3 harvesters by June, the hardest part is actually lining up in front of them to shoot them from the front.

[Triaxx2]

I found that arming Stilettos with Rocket Pods, armor, and targeting computers lets me send a pair to smash Harvesters. Works well.