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[Soulwynd]

They already start with two on hand and prime them up. After using both nades, I only waste one turn to have 2 more primed. It's not bad at all.

[Sowelu]

Hmmm.  Might be a decent strategy to have guys spend their first turn priming a couple grenades, then on the second turn, shove them into their shoulder pockets before drawing their guns.  I might have to try that.

...Then again, I also just hit on the great idea that I could dual-wield rocket launchers, so you might not want to trust my sanity.

(Snapshots have 55% base accuracy, x0.8 for dual-wielding, but only for the first shot because you can drop the empty one after you fire the first.  Aim for the ground floor of a farmhouse with your first shot, and you're almost certain to blow out the front wall of one of the floors at least.  Second shot can take out the other floor's front wall, or blow up whatever tasty snack you found inside!  ...And clearly, my rocket launcher obsession goes hand-in-hand with having a dedicated anti-psionics squad.  People who fight sectoid leaders and etherials don't GET rocket launchers.)

[MrWiggles]

I've been having a terrible time catching supply ships landing at a known alien base. Its driving me bonkers. I'm at the point where I need a constant supply of E-115 in order to progress.

I barely had the e-115 to make the flying suits, but I can't make plasma clips.

[Fikes]

The problem with primed gernades is that they tend to explode when your dood dies.

Many many years ago, when X-com was new and CD players were expensive, my little brother begged me to let him be one of my guys. I finally relented and gave a very crappy rooky his name. I loaded said rookie with 6 high explosives and walked him into the front door of a ufo. He threw one of the explosives, got shot a couple of times by a pistol (reaction fire) and was then wounded in the blast which killed all the aliens (thus winning the mission). He spend an ungodly number of days in the medical ward but by the time he was released, he was my highest ranking unit.

I have never "pruned" my units until later when I am getting them just to see if they have Physic abilities. I guess you could, but I always felt like getting 50 scientists and mass producing laser weapons was more important.

[justinlee999]

Also guys, I read somewhere that XComUtil supports UFO Extender, so that means you can run UFO extender on your DOS copy of the game, not to mention having some neat XComUtil too, BEST OF BOTH WORLDS!

EDIT:

I loaded said rookie with 6 high explosives and walked him into the front door of a ufo. He threw one of the explosives, got shot a couple of times by a pistol (reaction fire) and was then wounded in the blast which killed all the aliens (thus winning the mission). He spend an ungodly number of days in the medical ward but by the time he was released, he was my highest ranking unit.

HOW DID THE ROOKIE SURVIVE AN EXPLOSION IN HIS FACE AND GETTING SHOT 2 TIMES!?

[MrWiggles]

Alrighty. First alien base, and its a sectiod.

Fuck.

[Sowelu]

Also guys, I read somewhere that XComUtil supports UFO Extender, so that means you can run UFO extender on your DOS copy of the game, not to mention having some neat XComUtil too, BEST OF BOTH WORLDS!

EDIT:

I loaded said rookie with 6 high explosives and walked him into the front door of a ufo. He threw one of the explosives, got shot a couple of times by a pistol (reaction fire) and was then wounded in the blast which killed all the aliens (thus winning the mission). He spend an ungodly number of days in the medical ward but by the time he was released, he was my highest ranking unit.

HOW DID THE ROOKIE SURVIVE AN EXPLOSION IN HIS FACE!?

High explosives only have a radius of 6 tiles.  They do a 25-75 damage if you get caught by the very edge.  And of course, plasma pistols do from 0 to 104 damage.  So yeah, he must have been lucky with the plasma pistols but out of the blast radius, I'd say.

[Soulwynd]

Also guys, I read somewhere that XComUtil supports UFO Extender, so that means you can run UFO extender on your DOS copy of the game, not to mention having some neat XComUtil too, BEST OF BOTH WORLDS!

No, you can run xcomutils on X-Com CE and then you run ufo extender.

[justinlee999]

Oh... but I heard somewhere that installing xcomutils then only UFO extender makes it Vista/7 compatible... doesn't that mean it supports DOSBox? Or do you mean XComUtil makes the Gold Edition Vista/7 compatible?

[Soulwynd]

Not sure. My xcomutils dos one doesn't run on vista. Not sure if running it through the extender will make it load up. I seriously doubt it as it states it needs xcomCE.

[MrWiggles]

Well, that went pretty okay. Only one mind control, and 2 panics. 2 causalities, but 3 serve injuries. Half my team is gonna be in the med lab for more then a month. @.@

[Sean Mirrsen]

Oh... but I heard somewhere that installing xcomutils then only UFO extender makes it Vista/7 compatible... doesn't that mean it supports DOSBox? Or do you mean XComUtil makes the Gold Edition Vista/7 compatible?

XComUtils is nothing more than a complicated BAT script (well, that and a whole lot of extra goods), so it's not going to magically incorporate UFO Extender into itself. What it does do, however, is replace any call to Geoscape or Tactical with a call to UFOLoader, therefore preserving all the file changes done by XcomUtils, and getting the benefits of UFOLoader's memory hacking. Since UFOLoader won't run in DOS, you won't get UFO Extender's features in DOSBox, but you can and will get WinVista/Win7 compatibility, which is what I'm trying to achieve now. The main problems are getting the graphics and the music to work correctly. Extender's D3D mode fixes the graphics somewhat (garbles the aspect ratio a little, but nothing untolerable), and also supposedly fixes the music, which is what I'm trying to do now.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Doublepost ftw!

Odd lack of discussion here, but anyway. I have found a decent-ish way of playing XCom CE in a way at least roughly reminiscent of DOS XCom, and with all the fixes.

Firstly, you'll need both the latest XComUtils and UFO Extender (assuming you already have whatever version of XComCE). This will set you up with the bulk of the most important fixes and features. I'll touch on setup in a moment, but first another thing. You'll need the disk, either physical or image, of the Playstation version of X-Com: UFO Defense. This is because, for whatever reason, the MP3 Music function of Extender seems to go CTD on a lot of people. For me, it worked on one setup, and didn't on another, so it's all a little hazy. The disk solution is easier to do, though it does require to pop it into the drive every time you want to play.

So, final list of things you need:
1) A copy of X-Com CE
2) The latest beta of XComUtils
3) The latest version of UFO Extender
4) A disk/image of X-Com for the PSX.

Setup:
Copy Utils and Extender into your X-Com directory. Open the UFOExtender.ini file. Here, change the following as described, and others to your preference:

• Under "[Equipment Screen]", change "Show Stats" and "Auto Flares" to 1.
• Under "[Music]", change "Apply" to 1, and change lines ";Source=PSX CD" and "Source=MP3", so that they instead read ";Source=MP3" and "Source=PSX CD" (note semicolon). Change the "CD Drive" value to whatever letter the drive you'll use for the PSX CD is.
• Under "[Bug Fix]", set all values to 1.
• Under "[Mod]", set "D3D" and "Scale Mouse" to 1. Set "Screen Ratio" to a value that fits your screen (more on that below).

To determine the screen ratio value, first see if your screen width divided by screen height is above 1.6. 1.6 is the value of 320/200, the original resolution of X-Com. If it's exactly equal 1.6 (or reasonably close), put 1 as the screen ratio. A very widescreen monitor (1366x768) will have a higher value. For those, your screen ratio formula is ((width-(height*1.6))/width)+1. (Such as, for a 1366x768, you get (1366-(768*1.6))/1366+1=(1366-1228.8)/1366+1=137.2/1366+1=~1.1004. The standard windows calculator works great. Don't trim decimal numbers, copy the whole thing.) For screens with less than 1.6 ratio, swapping around width and height in that formula should work.

Now, once you've done that, run XcuSetup.bat. Once it's done making backups, you'll have a string of questions thrown your way. You can enable anything that suits your fancy, I'll just outline the things you need answered a certain way.
"Split EXE" - Answer "Yes".
"Windows 7 Compatibility Fix" - Answer "No", you'll be running Direct3D.
"Seb76 UFO Extender" - Answer "Yes".
"Game Fixes" - Not sure if Extender provides the same functions, but answer "Yes" just in case.
From there, almost everything's up to you. I recommend using the BattleField And Terrain generator on conservative settings (answer Yes, then Yes, No and No as the prompts come up when you reach it), but refrain from using the same generator for Alien Craft Floor Plans (comes right after it), as it'll make every UFO recovery an exercise in frustration.

There, your setup routine is done. Pop the PSX CD into the drive or mount the image, and run the "RunXCom.bat" file in the game's directory. Enjoy the slightly refurbished music of the PSX remake, and hope nothing crashes except those pesky UFOs.

I'm currently playing on this setup. Not sure what's up with Rifles in my DOS version (6% TUs for a snap shot?), but here the Rifle is properly outclassed by the LasRifle. Not quite great, but still neat. The Heavy Laser though... seriously, someone considered it a bad weapon? Well a bad weapon maybe, no burst fire. But as a tool? Seriously, nobody noticed it has more damage per shot than the freaking Heavy Plasma? With no ammo to worry about? It's the first thing you acquire (unless you race for the HP first thing) that's capable of punching through internal Alien Base walls. I've yet to try it on a saucer's external wall though. Now that I got Plasma Rifles, I keep at least two people in the squad armed with HLasers, just in case I need the extra penetrating power. I suspect I'll keep them even when I switch to HPlasma, in a support/fall-back weapon role.

[Pandarsenic]

In normal X-COM, only a Blaster Bomb can breach an outer UFO wall. :c

[Sowelu]

Huh, never played a version where the Heavy Laser did more damage than the Heavy Plasma.  In the basic version, HL is 85 and HP is 115.  They have essentially the same snapshots (some soldiers can fire HL thrice instead of twice if they don't even turn), but in aimed fire the HL takes 75% TUs for 84% accuracy, and the HP takes 60% TUs for 110% accuracy.  It really is no contest at all.

Impact (non-explosive) weapons do 25%-75% of their damage when striking a terrain object.  To take out a standard inner UFO wall you need to do 80 damage, which you can do at the upper end of vanilla's heavy plasma about 10% of the time; outer UFO walls and some 'security' inner walls need 100 damage, which HP can't do.  You would need a projectile weapon with a base damage of 134 to destroy them.  Blaster bombs do the trick, but in vanilla, literally nothing else can breach outer walls, period.  Don't expect high-explosive charges to do you any favors even against inner walls, by the way; the different explosives formula means they won't be taking down any UFO walls anytime soon.

EDIT: ninja'd