X-COM OpenXcom Thread

[oasis789]

- Little Bird is useless or its just me? It loses fights to stupid ass planes and can't even take down Ambulances. Seems like its only good for shooting down weak and very much slow and helpless civilian traffic.

You dont have the aircar? You can arm it with the cannon from highway house

 

[panda]

Little Bird has limited use during first spring, then you should have aircar -> piranha -> shark. It main strength is farming glamour IMO, going on with full bikini crew will net like free 30+k for any mission if you decide to sell glamour.

Ship performance greatly(and i mean GREATLY) depends on pilot. Catgirl with 150 firing and reactions will blow up a cruiser on a jetbike.

 

[oasis789]

I don't think you need to shoot down ambulances? They land because they need to do alien abductions. As in, abducting aliens.

jetbike is a dodge tank, one unlucky hit and it would be very painful to lose a maxed out catgirl pilot

 

[Endemic]

TFTD modding is fun:

 

[Average Manatee]

Looking at that gives me anxiety

 

[panda]

Yeah, pilot stats are super important.
Going to missions in certain vehicles and/or outfits grants you free extra glamour, selling "extra" for additional early brainers won't hurt IMO, as those speed up progress exponentially and allow you to farm more (and more profitable) missions. Ofc having 200 for bounty hunting brass badge is a must first.

 

[lightbane]

Pilots are important, huh? Well I set two peasants to pillot my Little Bird, didn't feel like using able hands for that. I mean, they're 50k a piece!

In XCF and Piratez plus similar mods, it's MANDATORY to have specialized pilots to... Pilot ships, especially interceptor types, ready at all times. If you're worried about their wellbeing, keep plane fighter pilots separate from all action other than piloting, and give them no inventory other than outfits that improve driving skills.

ait, you don't? Well, these ambulances seem content to pass me by. In fact, I'm in December 2601 and noticing a lot less craft landing and a lot more craft just zooming by and tanking my score.

As time passes, factions get more aggressive with you IIRC as the OG game, especially in higher difficulty levels, so you better hurry lest you have to catch up.

 

[Endemic]

Make sure to add those little annoying coves for Tentaculats to hide in, people love that.

I don't think anything will top the OG cruise liner in that regard.

 

[AgentFransis]

If anything then Piratez defenses are even more cheezable. As I said just run some gals through the tunnels and chuck explosives and grenades into the hangers.

I don't mind the tunnels. But the sewers are just shit. They take forever to trudge through to find anything. Also they're dumb as hell. These are the worst designed sewers in the universe. And a base that size doesn't fucking need sewers, just some pipes. Much better to just replace them with a second set of tunnels.

 

[Norfleet]

So, launching nukes part is fine then

Well, there's nothing that would physically prevent that. It would be an absolutely terrible idea that would almost certainly kill you, but it's not physically impossible.

 

[Endemic]

So, launching nukes part is fine then

Well, there's nothing that would physically prevent that. It would be an absolutely terrible idea that would almost certainly kill you, but it's not physically impossible.

If we're arguing realism why stop there:

-Why do grenades work the same underwater?
-Why don't the aliens just send 5 battleships at you on day 1 and crush you like a bug?
-Why is X-COM renting their interceptors and skyranger?

Obviously, the answer is this is a strategy game based on cheesy 1970s TV shows about UFOs, not a battlefield simulator trying to mimic real life perfectly.

 

[Average Manatee]

-Why don't the aliens just send 5 battleships at you on day 1 and crush you like a bug?

Aren't they just slowly awakening their race or something? I think this is the explanation for TFTD at least. Though it makes little sense that a battleship scouts around for a week and then leaves forever.

-Why is X-COM renting their interceptors and skyranger?

Corrupt military officials who want to make money but might need the aircraft back on short call if they actually go to war. You're buying Russian.

 

[Demo.Graph]

Not that much handwaving is needed, tbh.

-Why do grenades work the same underwater?

Grenades don't kill people. Gals do. Explosion is but a celebratory firework!

(I don't remember whether hand grenades can be brought underwater tbh. I think in TFTD it's stated that grenades are super special sonic something, in Xcomfiles you can't use them... I haven't played that far in Xpiratez)

Why don't the aliens just send 5 battleships at you on day 1 and crush you like a bug?

Initially they don't know whether you exist at all. Later they don't know where you're.
Craft may hide from sats and recon drones under the weather, in civilian traffic, in region-wide jamming or something.

-Why is X-COM renting their interceptors and skyranger?

Bureaucracy.
Also, I think they're not renting them. Monthly cost likely represents opex (fuel, everyday maintenance).
Modern fighter jets cost $50-150m per unit and $20-40k per flight hour (in prices 2016-2020).
Vanilla Xcom interceptor is $600k monthly, so about $900k in 2020 or 22-45 flight hours. You should easily reach that in a couple of intercepts.

 

[Endemic]

"Aren't they just slowly awakening their race or something? I think this is the explanation for TFTD at least. Though it makes little sense that a battleship scouts around for a week and then leaves forever."

I mean you can handwave that their larger ships and more advanced species can't handle Earth conditions at the start, but the research entries imply otherwise with extensive references to mechanical and genetic engineering of alien forces. Really though, we all know it's done to gradually ramp up difficulty (except sectoid terror missions I guess).

"Initially they don't know whether you exist at all."

Even in the lategame only a single battleship attacks your base at a time. But you can get an early base defence in TFTD (at least on Superhuman difficulty), with the exact same single battleship worth of aliens. Retaliation missions also spawn one battleship.

"Also, I think they're not renting them. Monthly cost likely represents opex (fuel, everyday maintenance)."

It's the same as the initial cost, though. Otherwise I would agree. There is also zero maintenance cost for the interceptors you develop yourself.

 

[Demo.Graph]

Even in the lategame only a single battleship attacks your base at a time.

Well, if you want to go turborealism, then XCOM as a genre is completely unrealistic.

Nothing can save human civ from being exterminatused by asteroids.
Even if aliens need humans as a breeding stock for some nefarious and sexy reason, they can glass all industrial centers and then breed savages that should survive near the equator. (But XCOM Uganda Defense is not really a fun game to play, isn't it?)
Even if one supposes that aliens want to breed white women from industrialised nations (for some even more esoteric and sexy reason), then aliens may proceed to blackmail humans. "Submit your females or we shall glass your power plants, have fun in steampunk, suckers."
TFTD xenos could've crashed modern economy by cutting all the seabed cables and pipelines and stopping maritime shipping. Or nuking few shelf seas near the coasts of China, EU, USA, Japan.

The only realistic premise for XCOM-style invasions that I can make up is that aliens are forced by other aliens to fight half-heartedly. Probably because the real goal of the invasion is to lose and for its leaders to be guillotined.
Even if aliens come from a generation ship that went bad and they have no weapons to speak of, nothing should stop them from restoring their industrial base on the outskirts of the Solar system.

Well, come to think of it, there might be some other culturally-derived causes for aliens' strange behaviour. Maybe their religion forces them to act dumb. Or maybe they dump on Earth their criminals as a punishment. Or maybe invasion is one gigantic reality show. Or maybe they, like a god, just want us to suffer.

There is also zero maintenance cost for the interceptors you develop yourself.

Yaah, but in this case the cost might be abstracted in construction costs.
But rather Gollops probably hadn't thought about that.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I think Universe at War and UFO does it best.
In UaW the humans get absolutely wrecked and need other aliens to save them, and canonically in UFO humans can't even beat the "invaders" and end up allying with them in exchange for a Martian colony, because the invaders were so impressed by humanity's resolve to repel their assault.

In the Firaxcom game the explanation they gave was that the aliens were testing humans to see if they are valid hosts for the Ethereals. Which is kind of weird but ok.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

I thought the logic in the OG X-COM was quite simple: The Aliens prefer stealth and subtlety, and they harvest Earth like it's a farm. They can't come and take Earth Independence Day-style because they don't have the forces for it. It's not a large fuck-off alien fleet, it's a small operation based in Cydonia, dependent on Elerium Supply from outside the Solar System and limited in numbers. They are not interested in engaging in total global genocide for the same reason a farmer doesn't go to his huge farm and slaughter every single animal at once. It's a harvest, not a culling.

Don't forget, they want to harvest DNA from every living thing on Earth, especially humans. And as we find out, humans are very much OP in the X-COM universe, the only race able to match Ethereals in psionic power, but without the whole "being husks that shouldn't even be alive" thing.

When X-COM becomes a thing, their go-to strategy is Terror Missions to intimidate human governments, attacks against X-COM's bases and infiltration/subversion/diplomacy to subvert human nations.

In the inferior Firaxis remake, the aliens seem to come Independence Day-style, but seem to operate otherwise much like their OG counterparts.
In the OG game, its very much a shadow war, and meant as such. Small teams of elite forces fighting each other in secret battles across the planet, daggers in the dark, Men in Black and G-Men, all very X(-COM)-Files.

Heck, in canon, the civvies didn't even know it was going on until after it was over.

The aliens only start killing people en-masse once X-COM loses and Earth's nations are compliant



(and then you get, well, the world of X-Piratez. Through in Piratez Earth seems less "Alien Colony" and more "Nature Preserve/Open Air Experimentation Camp". Like a zoo in which the animals are allowed to fight each other)

 

[somewhatgiggly]

I thought the logic in the OG X-COM was quite simple: The Aliens prefer stealth and subtlety, and they harvest Earth like it's a farm. They can't come and take Earth Independence Day-style because they don't have the forces for it. It's not a large fuck-off alien fleet, it's a small operation based in Cydonia, dependent on Elerium Supply from outside the Solar System and limited in numbers. They are not interested in engaging in total global genocide for the same reason a farmer doesn't go to his huge farm and slaughter every single animal at once. It's a harvest, not a culling.

Don't forget, they want to harvest DNA from every living thing on Earth, especially humans. And as we find out, humans are very much OP in the X-COM universe, the only race able to match Ethereals in psionic power, but without the whole "being husks that shouldn't even be alive" thing.

When X-COM becomes a thing, their go-to strategy is Terror Missions to intimidate human governments, attacks against X-COM's bases and infiltration/subversion/diplomacy to subvert human nations.

In the inferior Firaxis remake, the aliens seem to come Independence Day-style, but seem to operate otherwise much like their OG counterparts.
In the OG game, its very much a shadow war, and meant as such. Small teams of elite forces fighting each other in secret battles across the planet, daggers in the dark, Men in Black and G-Men, all very X(-COM)-Files.

Heck, in canon, the civvies didn't even know it was going on until after it was over.

The aliens only start killing people en-masse once X-COM loses and Earth's nations are compliant



(and then you get, well, the world of X-Piratez. Through in Piratez Earth seems less "Alien Colony" and more "Nature Preserve/Open Air Experimentation Camp". Like a zoo in which the animals are allowed to fight each other)

Well in Xpiratez, the Aliens are a sort of bureaucratic empire in decline. They respected local governments enough so collaborators maintained rule over other humans, but the empire is also big as hell and fighting somewhere else and in decline so much that Earth has become more and more independent, plus a backwater, and its loyalty is maintained by a overseer collaborator organization and local regional ones below that, with the threat and social fear of a alien fleet maybe coming by if Earth gets too uppity.

Which is a very nuanced and probably realistic way of handling a Galactic empire. Just because Aliens can run around the galaxy does not mean it'll be A) easy, B) Cheap (though Xpiratez has such casual interstellar travel to allow rogue human smugglers to move around, so it's not hard but it's still probably not like getting a car, but more like, an actual oceangoing vessel - either legitimately or stealing one and maintaining it) and C) will last forever at maximum efficiency.

Though both versions suck for their reasons of the invasion. Even if (as OG xcom implies and states) Earth and Mars are biocompatible worlds, these fucking grays can cross planets but need to harvest Earth for...food? While Firaxis has the aliens playing with speshul human dna and psionics. Both could be sorta better. Again, Xpiratez, Earth was probably just a way for some Ethereal General to get more 'glory' and bitches on his dick for conquering a planet and they moved on, or it was a strategically important system once, but not anymore.

yea I'm nerdin' out about this, but I'm a nerd about those things.

 

[Norfleet]

Though it makes little sense that a battleship scouts around for a week and then leaves forever.

Maybe it has to bugger off to go do Alien Empire Things. Sort of like how the Enterprise can only spend a single episode dealing with a given podunk planet before it moves on.

 

[Demo.Graph]

I thought the logic in the OG X-COM was quite simple: The Aliens prefer stealth and subtlety, and they harvest Earth like it's a farm.

That's exactly the point. It's a naive premise.
If aliens can blackmail human governments, they don't need to conduct stealth raids. And they can blackmail humans with a threat of asteroid bombing.
If aliens want some generic human DNA, they don't need to preserve human industrial base (because with it humans might become a threat). And they definitely don't need to preserve human satellite network, observatories and military industry.
Aliens should've bombed shit then demanded slaves under a threat of more bombing. Xcom would have had nobody to fight except other humans. And if Xcom winned some battles, their reward would've been more bombing. It's pretty much what USA did in Japan, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Piratez are kinda more realistic in this regard, yeah.

 

[Endemic]

There is also zero maintenance cost for the interceptors you develop yourself.

Yaah, but in this case the cost might be abstracted in construction costs.
But rather Gollops probably hadn't thought about that.

Vanilla game's economy is just strange in general and breaks down once you have sufficient engineers churning out laser weapons to sell. Although even just selling alien gear is extremely lucrative (superhuman actually makes this more silly if you survive long enough). I don't know if Piratez and other total conversion mods rebalance the sell prices\manufacturing appropriately or not, didn't play them much.

 

[Norfleet]

That's exactly the point. It's a naive premise.
If aliens can blackmail human governments, they don't need to conduct stealth raids. And they can blackmail humans with a threat of asteroid bombing.
If aliens want some generic human DNA, they don't need to preserve human industrial base (because with it humans might become a threat). And they definitely don't need to preserve human satellite network, observatories and military industry.
Aliens should've bombed shit then demanded slaves under a threat of more bombing. Xcom would have had nobody to fight except other humans. And if Xcom winned some battles, their reward would've been more bombing. It's pretty much what USA did in Japan, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Well, there's one scenario this kind of thing could happen: What if what the aliens are doing is actually illegal under alien law, so the aliens are required to keep it on the down-low lest they bring the law down on their heads? An advanced alien empire could thus have alien criminals engaging in this kind of activity on backwater planets, which, while illegal, passes without notice as long as nothing too overt occurs. Thus, abducting a few primitives and harvesting their delicious DNA passes without being noticed, but nuking a primitive species would be too scandalous. If the aliens manage to subvert all of the Earth's governments, they'll have crossed some sort of legal paperwork threshold that lets them begin operating openly and legally.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

That's exactly the point. It's a naive premise.
If aliens can blackmail human governments, they don't need to conduct stealth raids. And they can blackmail humans with a threat of asteroid bombing.
If aliens want some generic human DNA, they don't need to preserve human industrial base (because with it humans might become a threat). And they definitely don't need to preserve human satellite network, observatories and military industry.
Aliens should've bombed shit then demanded slaves under a threat of more bombing. Xcom would have had nobody to fight except other humans. And if Xcom winned some battles, their reward would've been more bombing. It's pretty much what USA did in Japan, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Well, there's one scenario this kind of thing could happen: What if what the aliens are doing is actually illegal under alien law, so the aliens are required to keep it on the down-low lest they bring the law down on their heads? An advanced alien empire could thus have alien criminals engaging in this kind of activity on backwater planets, which, while illegal, passes without notice as long as nothing too overt occurs. Thus, abducting a few primitives and harvesting their delicious DNA passes without being noticed, but nuking a primitive species would be too scandalous. If the aliens manage to subvert all of the Earth's governments, they'll have crossed some sort of legal paperwork threshold that lets them begin operating openly and legally.

That's kind of the premise of UFO Aftermath.
The Aliens who invaded Earth and terraformed it were doing so without permission from their empire, and in the second and third game the Reticulan Empire actually sends a fleet to Earth and Mars to arrest the criminals.

 

[Demo.Graph]

That's exactly the point. It's a naive premise.
If aliens can blackmail human governments, they don't need to conduct stealth raids. And they can blackmail humans with a threat of asteroid bombing.
If aliens want some generic human DNA, they don't need to preserve human industrial base (because with it humans might become a threat). And they definitely don't need to preserve human satellite network, observatories and military industry.
Aliens should've bombed shit then demanded slaves under a threat of more bombing. Xcom would have had nobody to fight except other humans. And if Xcom winned some battles, their reward would've been more bombing. It's pretty much what USA did in Japan, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Well, there's one scenario this kind of thing could happen: What if what the aliens are doing is actually illegal under alien law, so the aliens are required to keep it on the down-low lest they bring the law down on their heads? An advanced alien empire could thus have alien criminals engaging in this kind of activity on backwater planets, which, while illegal, passes without notice as long as nothing too overt occurs. Thus, abducting a few primitives and harvesting their delicious DNA passes without being noticed, but nuking a primitive species would be too scandalous. If the aliens manage to subvert all of the Earth's governments, they'll have crossed some sort of legal paperwork threshold that lets them begin operating openly and legally.

That's kind of the premise of UFO Aftermath.
The Aliens who invaded Earth and terraformed it were doing so without permission from their empire, and in the second and third game the Reticulan Empire actually sends a fleet to Earth and Mars to arrest the criminals.

Well, the specifics may vary due to all the handwaving... but my take is that if aliens were able to "sneak in" 3-5 stories high battleships with interplanetary drives that plasmaball human aircraft and raid cities (see intro to XCOM) with all the associated radio chatter, they surely should've been able to sneak in some asteroid impacts.

- Those dust clouds, Mr space senator, are there because Mon-keigh are throwing rocks at each other! Yes-yes, they're infighting, the barbarians. Does your excellency desires more mucus wine?

 

[Gumsmith]

Further Piratezposting, March of the second year:

- Is there any point to the Piranha? I could cash in some Jack tokens to get it but as a pistol it seems inferior to the Confederate Eagle.

Piranha is an aircraft tho
I guess you mean the Silver Snake. At full power it's stronger than the Eagle but the difference isn't that significant.
Lokk'narrs are nice since unlike peasants they know how to shoot straight and are cheaper than gals. Still I only keep about 10 of them around to go on their exclusive missions, which you'll definitely want to do as well since a lot of short gals only missions get you some very rare shit. Camouflage isn't reliable since the enemies can see whoever shot them for the rest of your turn, theoretically Lokk'narrs high reactions should help them avoid retribution but it gets messy if the guy you shot is a spotter and his sniper buddies are around.