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[lumin]

I don't think anyone has suggested it yet, but I actually like the UFO series (Aftermath, Aftershock, Afterlight).

They're not nearly as deep or atmospheric as Xcom, but they are pretty fun in a casual sort of way.  It's actually nice not to have to worry about a lot of micromanagement.

[Sowelu]

"Your Highness, I have great news!  We've taken back Drassen!"

*SLAP* *SLAP*

"Elliot, you idiot!  Getting something back that is already mine is not good news!  It should never have been lost in the first place!  Now get out of here and leave me be."

[Gunner-Chan]

Wait till you get to Deidrannas doorstep. XD

[Muz]

I don't think anyone has suggested it yet, but I actually like the UFO series (Aftermath, Aftershock, Afterlight).

They're not nearly as deep or atmospheric as Xcom, but they are pretty fun in a casual sort of way.  It's actually nice not to have to worry about a lot of micromanagement.

I was reading this thread from the first page (designing a tactics game myself) and I was going to write that! The UFO games are not X-Com, they have depth in a different way. X-Com was remarkably shallow in some parts. UFO games did a lot of things right which I'm afraid to say with all the X-Com fanatics around here

But micromanagement can be quite nasty with the UFO series. I'm probably playing it wrong, but there are times when they really beat you down and at some parts of the game, a bunch of aliens would gangbang your high-level team with plasma blobs, instakilling you as soon as you enter the mission.

[mendonca]

It is, but if you do things right it's an awesome experience. If they attack at night and you have your men set up right it's a damn cakewalk though.

Reading the Bears Pit forum (as Goron's link), people have been known to rig the borders of the Drassen map with C4 for the counterattack.

This sounds ever so close to cheating.

I'm absolutely convinced it would be fun though.

[Sowelu]

Jesus!  How do you GET that much C4?  I mean, I know of course you can sequence break, but Drassen is supposed to be the first city you take!

[mendonca]

Jesus!  How do you GET that much C4?  I mean, I know of course you can sequence break, but Drassen is supposed to be the first city you take!

yeah, good point.

Maybe the spawn points aren't that random?

I think as well you only trigger the counterattack when you actually take all of drassen, which means you can get yourself fairly kitted out, sat with 2/3 of the town?

Ooh, just thought, can you not alter the Bobby Ray's settings on 1.13? Buy it all in?

You'll have to excuse the ramblings, I only ever played 1.12, the thought of 1.13 scared me.

[Sowelu]

*starts a new game in Novice with no huge counterattack*

I don't have skills.  >:x

[Gunner-Chan]

You don't HAVE to take Drassen first. In fact lately I take that town with the hospital first, followed by the military town.

[Keiseth]

You can, if I recall, disable the counterattack with the program that comes with 1.13. An INI editor. I'm also told the counterattack only occurs if you take Drassen straight down the line, so maybe if you started at the mine and worked your way up? It sounds like a coincidence, but...

[Goron]

Dang I was out of town all weekend and missed much of this discussion... to catch up:

Number one - the Drassen Counter-attack is on by default but easily turned off. If it is too much, don't play with it. The inieditor is great for adjusting those things. Or you can dig through the actual ini file yourself.

Really good people (not me) can fight and win the drassen battle on the field, without being 'gamey' or 'cheating'. I can't. I manage to kill 2/3, maybe more of the force before something goes wrong and I turn a corner into an ambush or something and lose half my squad. As such, most people do one of three things
1) retreat the fight before it gets too bad, or
2) hole up in a building, and shoot the enemies as they walk through the door, or
3) Don't take all of drassen until later. The counter attack is triggered when you take all three sites. You can take two, and then move on, or just go elsewhere first. In my current game, I went west to San Mona (good place to make some quick money...) then Chitzena (sp?) for my first mine.

Choice 2 works pretty well as long as you have plenty of ammo, and enough mercs. I usually do that, hole up in a building, and wait for them to walk into my bullets. As a note, if they stop coming into the room to get shot by you, fire once or twice at the wall, it will bring more:-)
Then, if you are playing with the enemies drop all option on, you can walk away from that battle with enough equipment to really get a good start.


I'll take this moment to suggest everyone read through all the ini options in the editor for 1.13.  There are a lot of things you can turn on/off up/down etc.
I, for example, like to play with all of Headrock's HAM settings on (suppression, autofire modifications, tracer modifications, to say a few), and usually on high (allowing me to send 10 rounds of automatic weapons fire over someone's head and it will essentially sap all of their AP for the next turn... but then, they can do that to me too ). I also like to put up the damage multipliers pretty high...

There are a lot of game progress settings too, like how many enemies can be on the map, how frequently they spawn, what triggers them to spawn, etc.
Bear's Pit is the place to go to learn more about all that.


God I love this game...

[Sowelu]

I turned the Drassen counterattack off and started over on easy.  And discovered "Oh hey, you can actually heal bandaged wounds over time with doctoring, you don't have to wait!"  Very useful.

Also, when I got that counterattack my first time, I took the mine first and airport second, so it's not only when you take it in order.

Realized this game that, since the priest moves, you don't have to take the middle part of the city at all, theoretically.

Militia are awesome.

I'm having a lot of trouble finding good automatic weapons My IMP has just run out of 10mm ammo.

[Goron]

I'm having a lot of trouble finding good automatic weapons My IMP has just run out of 10mm ammo.

At the early stage of the game don't expect to succeed with many good autos. They can be hard to find, and unless its 9mm you will have a lot of ammo issues.
I always hate how the game defaults your IMP to start with an mp5/10 or a (6.5mm?) PDW... that ammo is near impossible to find, and then by the time you take the airport and have the money- its not worth buying ammo in 10mm or 6.5mm.

My current game is tough, cuz I have all the suppression settings set pretty high- so I find myself firing 12-15 rounds from my auto's a turn. That depletes ammo quickly... Like you, I am running on 10mm (managed to buy a mag at Tony's though) and I have TWO guys eating through .45... Pretty soon I will be using pistols, I think
Even with enemies drop all turned on, it can be tough getting the right ammo in sufficient quantities... especially when they shoot most of it during the fight.

[Sowelu]

I wanted to give myself something to look forwards to when I bump the difficulty up, so I have the store's stock set on "normal".  Thus, you can't buy 10mm from the airport at all, and the only guns offered so far are a couple of SMGs that both use 30-round clips of 19mm, while the store only stocks 15-round clips of 19mm.  So my team is using mostly 18mm machine pistols with 20 round clips (that I can actually buy in quantity).

I went south from Drassen to try and take the next town and the next mine, and ran into a military base where they're chucking grenades.  Grenades!  That's crazy talk!  Plus, being armed with normal rounds and glasers while the enemy was apparently loaded with crazy armor, I'm doing like 3-5 damage per hit with my entire team for like six hits before I decided to go back to my last saved game.  I need to find another mine that isn't in the middle of a city full of death.  I've got four AIM mercs that are halfway through their two-week contract, and I'm going to need a way to pay them...

At least Drassen is so full of militia now that I feel comfortable leaving it alone.

[Goron]

you can combine 15 round magazines into 30 round magazines. And the other way around.
If you take a 15 mag, drop it in an smg that holds 30, it will fill it halfway, then drop another 15 in (or even partial mags) and it will fill to 30. Then, unload the smg and the 30 will be in one 30 rnd magazine.
Alternatively, drop a 30 rnd mag into a 15 rnd pistol and it will fill the gun, then unload the pistol and it will be in a 15 rnd magazine.
There are some 1.13 keyboard shortcuts too, that depending on some alt/shift/ctrl key combination, you can drop a stack of ammo on a gun and it will automatically put the ammo into the appropriate sized magazines *NOTE: be careful with the key combo because alt/ctrl/shift of some sort will delete the item and/or sell the item (depending on your ini settings), so be sure to look up the right combination.

I am hoping someone will mod 1.13 (or make an optional add-on to it) that will actually make magazine sizes relevant. Make it so that you have ammunition, and magazines, separately. That way you need 30 rnd magazines which you can then load with the appropriate ammo. So you will actually be able to carry empty magazines.
Right now they have some AP penalties for trying to load guns with wrong sized magazines, but I'd like to see magazines be unique items in addition to ammo.

Also, Sowelu... lose the glaser quick and get AP. Glaser against a blackshirt is like throwing pebbles at a wall.

Grenades!  That's crazy talk! 

Heh... yeah. especially when you need to get in close just so your early weapons are near in-range. Learn to appreciate cover hard core. That and flanking. Outflank them before they outflank you. Smoke grenades are also a godsend if you have them.
My first purchases from Bobby-Rays tends to be medical supplies, night vision, and smoke grenades.


EDIT:LOL, I see the thread title changed
*walks over to a check list...*
*scans list...*
*checks off Hijack an internet thread and turn it into a Jagged Alliance 2 thread, which is right above Two chicks at the same time*