Let's Play: X-COM - UFO Defense

so i still have no idea what this game is actually about. is it a strategy game or an action game?

Every time I try to run the version from Home of the Underdogs, the graphics go all squished and wonky. Anyone have any tips on getting it to run correctly? I'm running Windows XP on a laptop, if that helps, 1200 x 800 screen resolution.

I was signed up to Gametap for a while, and all I played on there were the Sam and Max games when they dropped, and this. Never got far, am still not very good, but man is it a great game.

I say this a lot, but a DS version would be amazing. Slight graphical update, streamlined interface update? Presto.

Shivam: it's a strategy game. It mixes economic planning and sim-style base building with the small group, tactical style combat of Jagged Alliance and/or Fallout Tactics.

Edit: but not at the same time. That would be weird.

There's an icon in the XCOM folder that has patch in the title, which is what you want to boot XCOM from.

Man, when I tried it, it worked fine until I tried to do an assault on a shot down UFO and then the game crashed. Think running it in Compat. mode or in a window would fix it?

EDIT: Using XP Pro SP2 @ home.

Are you running the executable named "patch" or "fix" or whatever-it-is? I had the same problem, but that fixed it.

However, one of the more brilliant things about X-Com is that everything is related. I'll bring that up when we get to base construction later today.

I'm a big fan of just setting a team up with rifles and grenades to start. I hate having to think about where specific team members are at any given time, or that a HW guy wandering into an ambush won't be able to kill an alien without the backwash from his HE round taking him out in the process. I want every team member to do fight and do light demo work well, and if I need heavier support fire I'll rely on HWPs for that.

The way troopers exit a Skyranger also makes it tough for HW guys to be effective unless they're very early in your list of soldiers. Even though I take ten soldiers along on most missions at the start of the game, I rarely use more than five or six.

Once I have medi-kits, however, I tend to outfit a couple of medical specialists per team, with a (laser / plasma) pistol and medikit in each hand. The same philosophy is used when I get access to stun launchers.

Man, all this talk about ignoring terror missions or downed UFOs absolutely confuses me. Maybe I do a bit too much role-playing in this game, but I figure I'm the goddam heroes trying to save the earth - I better bust my butt to do all that I can. If I lose team members on a mission, so be it. They gave their lives for the greater glory of Earth. (Okay, I also make pretty liberal use of save and load during missions)

Also, Terror Missions give great money - all that alien equipment and corpses to sell off.

The GBA did get Rebelstar Tactical Command which was basically just the combat portion of X-Com. It didn't sell well, but it would be awesome if whoever did it then did a version with the sim/base-building/money management part of it too.

Re: Getting the game to run in Vista

I have heard either that it just doesn't work or will only work if your video card/display can natively do 640 x 480 in Vista. The GameTap version doesn't work for me in Vista.

Note that this game will have the same issues running in XP and Vista that the original has.

I got my DOS version up and running!

All was going smoothly (one shootdown, one extraction, engineers tinkering away on laser pistols) until I sent my team to extract a fallen Sectoid craft. The Sectoids triangulated their fire and used cover while my squaddies made like riflemen at Isandlwana. I assure you, their families were filled with solemn pride by their glorious last stand.

Time for a recruiting drive!

DAMN IT!!! The Winfix.exe works. That means two things.

1) All these years, I've been deprived of easily accessible X-Com because I was clicking the wrong icon.

2) I have another game to play. I'm currently working on FES, have Nocturne and Devil Summoner coming, am playing endgame Shiren, and just picked up Etrian Odyssey AND Contact. All because of Talking Time. All because all these awesome games are discussed all the time, and I can't help but buy them.

I'm a weak, weak man, and this is the wrong place to be for an intervention.

C'mon, KCar. It'll be fun. Just build one base, maybe research some lasers. No one'll ever know.

Yeah, got mine to work right after putting the patch exec in Win2k compat mode, and I'm thinking of forcing 640 res to see if that ends the annoying cut off on the left edge of the screen.

Also, my first ground mission was a success, though I took one casualty in the form of an idiot who got too close by accident and took a faceful of plasma. I didn't even use grenades, and just rifled them to death.

I'm enjoying this thread. I haven't played X-Com in years, and was never particularly good at it when I did, so this'll be neat insofar as it'll show me how I was supposed to be playing it.

What I'm finding interesting is that, between comments here and the various walkthroughs I looked up upon having my interest piqued, I'm finding that everybody has different and contradictory advice on how to play. For instance, how to prioritize terror (ignore unless absolutely necessary vs. priortize above everything else) and what weapons to focus on (lasers vs. plasma, rockets vs. no rockets). I find it neat because it shows there are a whole bunch of ways to succesfully play the game. None of which I stumbled on when I was playing.

Sorry for no posts yesterday, but life interfered.



Last time, we built a base in Michigan for a price of $850,000. Since the game I started is on veteran (in the Windows version, that's probably the fairest game for a newcomer), I've got $4.15 million left in the bank. First priority is to begin construction of a base; for those of you new to the game, here's what you have access to at the beginning.

Access Lift: How you get in and out. Due to the modular construction of your base, all facilities have to be connected to this somehow.

Living Quarters: Multi-story facility, can hold 50 personnel.

Laboratory: Research facility, space for 50 scientists.

Workshop: Production facility, can, at maximum capacity, hold 50 engineers. However, they need room to put the equipment they’re using to fabricate your toys, so different productions will take up extra room. However, get enough of these and we can even build full-size aircraft.

Hangar: Houses one aircraft, any type.

Small Radar System: This dinky little toy has a 5% chance of detecting overflying alien ships within a short radius.

General Stores: 50 storage capacity.

We also have the capacity to build the following facilities:

Large Radar System: 50% better detection range than the SRS.

Missile Defenses: Able to do 500 points of damage to attacking alien ships.

Alien Containment: A specially-designed environmental chamber that’s our best guess as to how we’d be able to keep aliens alive long enough for the eggheads to figure out how to interrogate them.

At the moment, your base just base the bare necessities: three hangars, one living quarters, one lab, one manufacturing bay, one storage room and one storage. Most notably, there's only one dinky short-range radar; we need to improve that, ASAP.

Unfortunately, X-Com is realistic about the time it takes to build structures, so if I want to have any shot of catching aliens later in the month I need to get started on a LRS right now. There goes 800k of the budget. I’ll need more room for personnel pretty quickly – so a new living quarters is 400K. I’m basically stuffed to the gills right now with equipment (to the point of needing some tricky inventory management to empty my Skyranger), so a new General Stores for $150k is badly needed. It’ll be done in only ten days, which is nice. Lastly, nothing – NOTHING – in X-Com stinks worse than capturing an alien early but not having any place to put him. So I’ll build an Alien Containment facility for $500k.

[There'll be a graphic here showing the way the base looks after the first build]

Notice how the rooms tend to fall: I don’t want too many rooms bunched up next to each other. It’s a very real possibility that this base is going to be attacked at some point, and I’m not going to be able to adequately defend it for at least half a year if not longer. By building in largely straight lines with as few units being beside each other as possible, I make it harder for invaders to run around and allow for choke points and easier security sweeps of the base. Unfortunately, most of the initial base is premade; my preferred base construction won’t be seen until we build a second base, where I have control over the access lift’s location and a blank canvas to work with.



Next, equipping the Skyranger:



I open up the “Equip Craft” screen and change the Skyranger’s load to all rifles and grenades, as we discussed earlier in the week. Interceptor-1 also gets the Avalanche missiles. Then, because I’ve just spent a couple million on base improvements, I need to start penny-pinching: I turn around and sell the Heavy Cannon and Rocket Launcher, and all associated ammo. I’ll also sell the AC-AP ammo, and pick up some extra AP-HE (why shoot one bullet when you can shoot one that EXPLODES?) and rifle clips, as well as some electro-flares. The Auto Cannon isn't likely to go out on a mission, but it's comforting to have it around.

Now, one KEY thing about X-Com that you have to keep in mind at all times: in the event of a base attack, only the first 80 items in your inventory will be available to be used by your defending soldiers. What that means is that stocking up on items isn't really recommended: if you have a whole pile of pistol clips lying around, the game will give you access to those but may cut off access to, say, laser rifles since they're lower down on the list. So NEVER keep weaker weapons around if you can avoid it. While I'm fine with rainy day planning regarding most things in this game, this is NOT one of them. It's better to order new supplies as needed, rather than stock up in one big bunch. I know that goes counter to most gaming instincts, but keep it in mind because it may save your most valuable investment one day.

Back to buying stuff for the Skyranger:



I also have to address the HWP issue. HWP stands for Heavy Weapons Platform – basically, a robot tank that is used in battle. They’re VERY expensive, but have the advantage of not drawing a salary, so if I keep one alive for a full year it’s basically already made back half its cost. And if it saves me having to pay $40k for a replacement soldier, it’ll pay its worth back even quicker. Most importantly: HWPs are always the first units off the plane. You’ll see what I mean in a couple days when we go on our first mission, but those first units off the plane are ALWAYS in deep trouble. Of course, the HWP isn’t immune (two shots from a heavy plasma rifle can take it out), but it *might* be able to take a shot. At this point in the game, my soldiers can’t.




The disadvantage is that HWPs don’t gain experience. My soldiers do - specifically, they gain more experience by doing stuff like killing aliens. So I don't want my HWP to fire if at all possible. As a result, I’ll buy a HWP-Cannon, and 35 rounds (it carries 30). The missile-equipped HWP that's available at the start of the game isn't a bad option - it gives you plenty of stopping power without sacrificing mobility - but for the sake of this game, I went with the cheaper option. Hopefully I won’t need to fire more than five rounds with it all month - if I did, that means I've screwed something up.

Doing all of this purchasing, selling and assigning of equipment is actually tricky at the start of the game, as your storage unit is usually close to full. Once you sell off some of the more useless equipment lying around, that gets a bit better, but for the first ten days you're going to be a bit hamstrung.

LASTLY, before we visit the HR department for personnel evaluations, we need to get the boffins going on a research project. Right now, we have three options: Laser Weapons, Medi-Kit and Motion Detector. For the moment, I’ll start them off with Motion Detector (remember to assign all ten scientists to the job). This isn’t as useful as Laser Weapons will be in the end, but Motion Detectors are useful for one reason: they’re free money, fast. A motion detector costs $34k, but I sell that back to the UN for $45,600. $11,600 profit for something that doesn’t take all that long to make and requires no material input. I’ll do an economic comparison between the MD and some other high-earning manufactured items later in this thread, but it’s fine for now.

I could hire some more scientists, but until we get some cashflow in every ten of them is another $300k off the bottom line. With my aircraft costing me an exorbinant amount of money at the moment - $600k / month for the Skyranger and 500k / month for EACH Interceptor – I need all the cash on hand I can manage, as I’m beginning each month over $2 million in the hole (although my UN funding makes up for that for the most part at the moment). That $2 million will become an important figure as time goes on.

Phew. No one ever said X-Com was friendly to get going with. I'll edit to add some pictures tonight, and then...

NEXT: report of the first X-Com field deployment.

This game sounds like Dwarf Fortress in space.

Don't forget that your soldiers will drink any water available, but they prefer alcohol and will drink it exclusively if they can. Also be careful when digging around volcanoes lest you unleash hordes of demons! I can't wait until one of your engineers is taken by a fey mood...

It's not that bad - it's really a bunch of very simple systems that interact in incredibly complex ways (the base design being the best example of the bunch).

The bit here was practically automatic for me, but explaining and justifying all the decisions took far longer than I anticipated.

I thought the first base came pre-built? With two hangers at the bottom, one at the top and all the other stuff bunched in the center? Which of course makes for a terrible base to defend. Did they change that in the windows version? My secondary bases were always built like you said strung out with the access point dividing the everything from the hangers... though I usually loaded a game if my base got attacked.

Probably the most elegant description of X-Com I've ever heard. Like Sven said, once you understand the mechanics behind the stuff, the game practically plays itself.

Ah, combat mode. Last night I watched a Cyberdisk eat three salvos of grenades and HE cannon shots before dropping. My own soldiers are armored with tasteful flightsuits and tend to die screaming when the bad guys give them a nasty look. X-Com makes you feel the gap between alien tech and your own.

RPT: Yuzo, S [RK] [SN, TH]

TO: CINCXCOM

SUB: RECV UFO-1 JAN 99

Commander:





We received word that one of our interceptors had downed a UFO in Arizona. The ship was classified as very small, and per your standing orders that all crashes are to be investigated if available in daylight hours, we sortied at 0900 and landed at the crash site at 1242.



Per X-Com policy, the squad was uniformly equipped with rifles and grenades for all team members.



There were only eight of us in the ship; we deployed in standard formation, with two soldiers exploring buildings on either side of the Skyranger while one walked underneath the plane, using it as cover from any potential fire from above the ship.



An alien was spotted south of the plane. I have attached a close up from our satellite coverage:



Sir, pardon me for asking, but do you know what that thing is? It was brandishing a giant rifle of a type that none of us have ever seen before. And it was one ugly thing... it looked like a stick figure with a melon jammed on top of its neck and painted brown. How the hell could that thing even survive with so little room for organs?



I decided to use a grenade on the alien, as there did not appear to be a clean shot and it wasn't looking our way. The throw was successful, and the alien collapsed to the ground moaning like a badly scratched CD. After further scouring the area, we located the alien ship - a small unit - and confirmed that there were no other aliens in the immediate area. We called in the cleanup team to take care of civillian restitutions and attempted to return the alien to base.



Unfortunately, our containment facility was not completed yet, and the alien died while in our custody. I hope you were serious about the Geneva conventions not applying to extraterrestrials.



Your evaluation is noted. We have returned the alien artifacts to the research department for their examination. The team seems confident, and we look forward to the new trainees joining us at the end of the week.

Also, thank you for the promotion to Squaddie. I'll try to do well with my new role.

[END RPT]

Note that even though they're still classified as "artifacts"...



... I can sure as hell sell them. Off this list, the most important thing to get rid of is the Mind Probe, a truly useless device that earns back big money when sold. It's enough to pay for 10 scientists this month.

My requisitions come in, and I set up the second Interceptor with Avalanches as well. A couple of these will pretty much down any alien ship I trust an Interceptor against at this point, but I hopefully won't be having to splash too many ships. I'll explain why when we see our first real crash. The spare Stingray missiles get sold, but the launchers will prove useful in a little while, so I hang onto them.

The HWP I ordered earlier arrives, and gets loaded onto the Skyranger. Come Jan 10th, my General Stores are finished, and my scientists are also done with researching the Motion Scanner. I set my engineers to build 20 of them to keep them busy.



Okay, a word on the Motion Scanner: it's practically useless, as all it tells you is that there are aliens on the other side of a door. But that's about it, which makes it better to just walk through a door and hope for the best in most cases. I'll try to point these out when I have an actual door breach opportunity. The advantage of the motion scanner is that I can make a nice profit on its manufacture and sale, and this income is much needed early in the game.

Almost immediately afterwards, I get another UFO alert - this is a "small", which could mean anything. Odds are good that it's another Sectoid ship, though. It shows up in the middle of the night, but I wait it out and it lands somewhere near the Rockies in the early morning, at which point I send out the Skyranger. Landing is in a bit of darkness, but it should be tolerable.



My new HWP proves its worth right away by absorbing a couple of reaction shots from an alien, and by following those backwards I spy him hiding upstairs in a building.



There's the bastard (geez, I need a better cell phone camera - the alien was in shadows on the second floor of this building). I unload a trooper who gets lucky with a snipe. There's another alien facing away from me - takes two agents offloaded from the Skyranger before I can kill him off.



That's everyone outside the ship, but to be safe I send a couple of soldiers around to check the alien bodies. Good thing I did - the one I thought was dead on the second floor of the building isn't quite so dead. Since I haven't used a grenade yet, I choose this moment to do so and he blows up real good.



Meanwhile, I also have a breach team at the front door. They get lucky - a very stupid alien wanders out, and is killed by a reaction shot. Note how they're all on one side of the door - NOTHING makes you feel worse than having soldiers on either side of a door, then one's reaction shot missing and killing the guy on the other side.



The next turn, I wander inside and shoot the last alien. I then undertake two tried-and-true X-Com habits:



(1) walking to the back of the UFO and looking around. You'll never believe how often the game won't give you credit for seeing an alien if they're behind the power source in the middle of the room.



(2) Checking all alien corpses and unloading their weapons - otherwise, the clips would be lost.

That's another clean mission, which is nice.

Bravo on no casualties! My early missions usually have bodycounts resembling a SAW sequel.

You might want to expound on the classifications you're giving your troops.

Oh, I thought this thread was about X: Beyond the Frontier.

That said, isn't Rebelstar Tactical Command a close spin-off?

You take the weapons out to save the clips? I never even thought of doing that! Though I can see how it'd save on ammo later on... I don't know how many times I ended up killing my own guys with reaction shots, because I was setting them up on both sides of doors, etc... you never see that happen in movies...

Yeah I hated those missions where you had to hunt down that one alien who was hiding in some ridiculous spot you already thought you'd checked...

Generally:

SN = Sniper, given to soldiers with initial shooting accuracy above 60 (above 55 if the initial recruits are particularly pathetic). Reaction times being good helps here.

SC = Scout, best category is time units so more movement points. Helps to have higher strength. Scouts will also become Medics later in the game, as medi-kits have set TU counts for usage.

Beyond that, I try to note the best two categories (or one if they're already SN or SC) just as a shorthand way of remembering what each soldier does. TH if they're good throwers, BR for high bravery, etc.

It's a spin-off of the missions, but by taking away the administrative / strategic front-end, you really gimp the game. Rebelstar's waaaaay too linear if you've played X-Com.

Only faced four Sectoids thus far - nothing to write home about. But on the next mission....

That's the abattoir I came to see!

My Fire Emblem senses tingled like a fairy-friend when I read this.

Congratulations on a good opening game -- and by the way, the memos from your squad are a *really* nice touch.

Fire Emblem's probably the closest equivalent to X-Com, with the whole "once you die, you're dead for good" gameplay mechanic.

I tend to only really do it with Heavy Plasma, as each of those clips is worth three E-115. Do it five times and you've saved enough of the stuff to make a Flying Suit.

Doing the same thing with any soldiers you leave on your jet would also be advisable, at least until you get laser rifles and eliminate the need to keep clips around. Which reminds me, since I didn't clarify it above: after getting the Motion Detector research done, I moved the scientists onto Laser Weapons, and I think they got that done before my next mission.

There's a story behind that particular mission.

I can't think of a better place to ask this:

Novosibirsk is under an attack by alien terrorists. I'm saved about 24 hours before the attack begins (I'm assuming the UFO has already spawned because no matter how many times I reload, the attack occurs.) My squaddies are armed only with starting equipment and they're facing down Sectoids with Cyberdisc backup.

I've played the mission five times or so now and my casualties run close to 50% in the opening turns, higher when a Cyberdisc spawns in front of the Skyranger. Normally I wouldn't think twice about skipping this, but Russia's a major sponsor and I'd hate to lose it so soon. Little help here?

tl;dr: ISO TERROR MISSION HELPS PLOX.

The aliens inexplicable love for Novosibirsk is always baffling. I think that's a city that gets attacked in at least 50% of the games I play (South Africa also gets hit hard).

First, a couple of questions:

(1) Are you seeing the UFOs on their way in, or is it just popping up as a terror site? If you can get an Interceptor out there early with enough arms on it (six avalanche missiles MIGHT do it) to shoot the terror ship down. Even then, it might not hurt to stick a couple of Interceptors above the city as a combat air patrol and sacrifice one in a suicide attack if you're sure losing the terror mission will mean losing Russia. It'd help if you had something better than Avalanches to do this with, though.

EDIT: Scratch this, I was getting the terror ship mixed up with the Abductor. You'd have to hit with twelve Avalanches to take it out, which is near-impossible unless you've bought a third Interceptor. Plasma is basically mandatory to take it out.

[I need to point out a button I NEVER used when I first played the game - the little "minimize" button at the upper of the intercept radar. Pressing that can lead you to trail a UFO for a while, and even get multiple interceptors firing on the UFO at the same time. This is pretty much the only way to take out a Battleship.]

(2) I know I belittled them when running down the weapons, but maybe have the first two troops off the ship packing a high-explosive-armed missile? That way, if you can see the Cyberdisc at least you may be able to kill it. Have the second two carrying an extra rifle, and throw the spare rifle to the guy with the spent launcher so that you keep your troops at full fighting capacity.

Unfortunately, Sectoid terror missions are really annoying at the best of times because you run the risk of psychic attack as well as being tracked down by the hard-to-kill Cyberdiscs. I'd say to skip it and hope that Russia doesn't leave the alliance whole cloth. Odds are good they won't - the aliens have to run a specific type of mission for a country to leave, and it usually takes a couple of successful terror raids on a funding country to trigger that one.

[Ranking of potential terror attacks from easiest to hardest: (1) Floaters (2) Ethereals (I know it's almost counter-intuitive, but their "big gun" aliens are the weakest of the bunch) (3) Sectoids (4) Snakemen.]

[NOTE: I don't recall ever getting a Muton terror mission.]

So, yeah, skip it and live to fight another day. It'll hurt your score, and Russia will likely cut funding, but one bad score isn't fatal. Heck, as long as you don't get a "TERRIBLE!" monthly rating even two bad scores don't necessarily mean the end of the world.

Skipped Novosibirsk on your advice and only had a -222 score ("OK") at the end of the month. Lost $22,000 from Russia, but I'm looking alright for the long run.

Thanks!

Dang, I got involved in a bloodbath last night. Downed a small UFO in New Mexico/Mexico and found out it was packed to the gills with Sectoids wielding some sort of wide range stunner gun in addition to heavy plasma. By gills I mean eight, and the second I popped out of the Skyranger I was under fire. Took about 70% casualties, but the best part was annihilating a poor bastard sniping from the second story of a building with a grenade tossed through the hole in the wall.

The one right after that was almost as bad, since I was playing cat and mouse with about six Floaters and the Skyranger plopped down in the open next to the UFO. I actually had to go into the UFO and clean out three of them that were hiding inside. Lost most of my new recruits on that one, and three of my vets were wounded besides.

But your game has certainly beenan abattoir! Damn isn't buying new recruits getting costly? Especially since they're stats stink? If it's early I guess it doesn't matter as the troops you're losing are all rookies anyway, but later on losing squad members becomes very painful, better just to reload...