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| Thread: X-com: Apocalypse | |
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greek_god_su...
Famous Hero
Bringer Of Light
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posted August 30, 2005 05:49 PM |
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X-com: Apocalypse
Anybody played this cool old game? I even managed to get it work in my XP. The idea of the game is very good, you protect a town from ufos in real time mode and sometimes (actually very often) you get alerts about suspects of possible alien landings somewhere in the city. This is when you are sent to investigate the area in a turn based (I think there was a realtime version of combat too) combat mode. You gather up and arm (there are plenty of available weapons there) your team and go to area from where the alert was made. One interesting thing in turn based combat is for example that automatic weapons can actually fire as long bursts as you want (you tap with your mouse every shot) unlike in eg. fallout or deadly games: jagged alliance, where there was no such thing as burst. The most interesting thing is capturing those aliens (with stun gun, or whatever it is called) and getting them home for autopsy.. With different alien bodies, you can research all kind of things to help you in next battles. Alien ships can also be carried to your base for further study. After all, this game has very much potential. But I donīt know if itīs just me, but I never made it so far in the game, because you get those alerts so freakin ofter you certainly wonīt have strength to fight them all. Tell me your opinions about this game, and any tactics are welcome too.
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After all, marriage and murder are not too different - one ends your life and the other is a crime
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Russ
Promising
Supreme Hero
blah, blah, blah
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posted August 30, 2005 09:50 PM |
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Tactics is EXTREMELY easy.
Do you have the alien energy guns that don't require ammunition? (I forgot how those are called - they kinda look like big clubs). But even if you don't, it is still ok. If you do - attack Psyche organization headquarters over and over. They are a crinimal organization that is hostile towards you anyways, so this won't hurt you in any way. Those alien guns kill any human in 1 shot. Every time you attack you get 1-2 psiclones (some sort of a drug) that you can sell for a lot of cash. So, once u have tons of cash u can buy anything u want and fight all those mean aliens. Also, the diffuculty of the game will increase enormously once the aliens get brain pod guns (they turn your soldiers into aliens) and destroyer UFOs (or avengers? or however they are called?). Those just f*ng kick ass. I had all of my fleet including like 6 of the biggest ships humans can possibly get fight it and that UFO owned most of them until I brought it down. However, once you start invading the alien city, the game starts to get boring since the aliens get much weaker and you get much stronger. i.e. after you destroy the UFO building, they cannot make any more UFOs, etc. This is where I quit. It was simply not fun taking over nearly defenseless alien town with my super-crew armed with super anti-alien DNA weapons, energy shields, etc.
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Vegetarian: Old Indian word for Bad Hunter.
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Russ
Promising
Supreme Hero
blah, blah, blah
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posted August 30, 2005 10:01 PM |
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This reminds me - I have to play it again  It is very addictive. Btw, try Jagged Alliance 2 - you'll like this one as well. It is just as fun but unlike X-COM the difficulty increases all throughout the game, so you won't have a time where it is too easy  You'll get your heads blown off with Armor Piercing Hollow Point rocket rifles, you'll get to fight the tanks, you'll get to be fired at with LAWs and mortars, etc. Oh, and I think that was some sort of a tribute to X-COM, but in a sci-fi mode you'll get to fight the aliens living in a hole, lol. Their queen gives you an armor enhancement that you can use to upgrade your spectra armor (a much better enchancement than compound-16) With spectra helm treated with queen bug slime, spectra vest with slime and ceramic pads in it and spectra pants with slime you get 100+% defense and you can take direct tank hits without dying (only 60 or so damage )
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Vegetarian: Old Indian word for Bad Hunter.
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greek_god_su...
Famous Hero
Bringer Of Light
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posted August 30, 2005 10:03 PM |
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I never got that far of getting into alien dimensions or whatever they are.. I just hate it when you canīt ever complete your researches without being intercepted by those alerts. I never get that far from start cause of the amount of alien attacks and when you must go to investigate them. Is it really normal that they attack so often or what? Is there any way to increase the time between those attacks?
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After all, marriage and murder are not too different - one ends your life and the other is a crime
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greek_god_su...
Famous Hero
Bringer Of Light
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posted August 30, 2005 10:07 PM |
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Jagged Alliance 2, was it the newer/newest JA?
I once had that old jagged alliance: deadly games, which was good too. Maybe I should try ja2 too, itīs just that I donīt have any money to buy games, maybe in future..
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After all, marriage and murder are not too different - one ends your life and the other is a crime
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted August 31, 2005 11:42 AM |
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This is my game!
I finished it on superhuman (hardest) difficulty with no reloads. That was pure hardcore But at about 80-90% into the game, the ending does become too easy. The first half is very challenging though.
I think the game had an excellent potential, but certain aspects were underdeveloped. Nonetheless, the game is great and requires the best management and battle tactics.
You get alerts rms because aliens are wandering in the city. They can wander the city when UFO deposits them into a building (you can see a beam from UFO into the building when it does that). So shoot down the UFO before it deposits the aliens, or if it did deposit them, investigate the building with your men. Go to all alerts to kill off the remaining aliens. Once there are no aliens wandering the city, you will get no more alerts.
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You can wait for others to do it, but if they don't know how, you'll wait forever.
Be an example of what you want to see on HC and in the world.
http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com
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Russ
Promising
Supreme Hero
blah, blah, blah
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posted September 01, 2005 07:56 PM |
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Edited By: Russ on 1 Sep 2005
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How did you manage to do it without any reloads whatsoever? What if a brainsucker gets your best guy despite all the precautions you take and then he kills half your crew? Even if he doesn't kill anyone - I hate having to shoot one of my own. I play with no reloads as well, but I save it before each battle anyways just in case this happens.
Btw, Jagged Alliance 2 is the new version, and it has a much stronger RPG side to it. You have to overthrow a dictator in a 3-rd world country. You start by selecting your own stats (yes, you get a guy to represent yourself there ) and hiring some mercs, then you get dropped off the helicopter and you start fighting the map, sector by sector. You can train militia in the towns you take, interact with the locals and do them favours to get some sort of a reward, etc.
And I made a small error in my tactics post - the organization you have to kill is Cult of Sirius, Psyche is the organization that buys psiclones that you loot there. So, do NOT go hostile to them. As soon as you start, raid their main temple 10-20 times and you will get money, training and some plasma guns from the crazy fanatics. Build more labs to speed up the research and set up another base right away - it will be filled with advanced workshops to build snow and vehilcle repair bays for repairing your vehiles. (Ground units are 100% useless - sell all of them and only buy and upgrade valkyrie interceptors or better). Equip your interceptors with better engines, weapon controls, lasers and plasma guns. The one that you use for transporting your troops should obviously have cargo bay and biotransporter in it as well.
I've started it yesterday on superhuman and it ended up in me sleeping for 2 only hours tonight
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Vegetarian: Old Indian word for Bad Hunter.
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Russ
Promising
Supreme Hero
blah, blah, blah
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posted September 01, 2005 08:21 PM |
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By the way, is there a way to asjust mouse sensitivity in X-COM? Because it is quite annoying. The mouse is 10x slower than normal, so whenever I switch to and back from X-COM I have to adjust to the new mouse speed.
Also, is there a way to make the sound work? Like set up a virtual soundblaster somehow?
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Vegetarian: Old Indian word for Bad Hunter.
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted September 02, 2005 12:32 AM |
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Heh, it's either reloads or no reloads. If the best man gets brainsucked and half the crew dies, that's what happens, must keep going. If the best aircraft is shot down and there's no money, must buy a cheap phoenix or a ground transport vehicle and let UFOs rule the skies, looking out for where they deposit aliens. Once UFOs go back to their dimension, I send the men to investigate the infiltrated buildings. All until I can afford an aircraft next week. If a base gets destroyed - same, must keep on playing. Or if the whole crew dies and the vehicle has to head back empty. Hardcore 
Android soldiers are handy for hardcore games when only few good soldiers survive. So don't ruin relations with the android organisation 
For starters I like laser sniper rifles. Then disruptor guns (free ammo) must be researched ASAP like you said.
Sometimes a bunch of hoverbikes can bring a ufo down, or phoenixes loaded with missle launchers. Ground vehicles are so useless it's almost a game bug - when road under a heavy tank is destroyed, the tank disappears regardless of how much hit points it has left.
I didn't use the Marsec flying torso armour in the last game - flying soldiers are much more vulnerable and the Marsec torso is a lot weaker than the heavy Megapol one.
Next VERY IMPORTANT thing is personal disruptor shields. If you don't get them in time, aliens will destroy you with their Entropy missle launchers which devour armour and leave your men unarmed and unprotected. You must stun aliens in order to get their disruptor shield. When you stunned one - run and grab the shield (like a giant magnifying glass) and put it into soldier's backpack, because the alien might recover. Then at the base, take the shields out of soldiers' backpacks and put all your efforts into researching it. It is the most important development.
Next one is toxin guns - research as many aliens alive and dead as you can, then you can research and make toxin guns that bypass aliens' shields - killing aliens fast, harmless to X-Com, plus you get to collect heaps of free shields! Some aliens are hard to capture alive, such as the huge megaspawns which will blast anything to meat with their guns and missles.
You also have to be careful when selling alien equipment - the more you sell, the cheaper the buying price will become. So accumulate lots if you can, and then make a killer sale.
I've played it on XP - found instructions somewhere to fix the mouse and sound, don't remember now, it was a long time ago. I also got a small laptop that runs win98 so I can play it there
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You can wait for others to do it, but if they don't know how, you'll wait forever.
Be an example of what you want to see on HC and in the world.
http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com
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Russ
Promising
Supreme Hero
blah, blah, blah
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posted September 02, 2005 06:29 PM |
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Quote:
If the best aircraft is shot down...
Never happens to me I always overkill when I fight aliens. On week 1 I send my 3 valkyries armed with plasma and weapon controls after 1 probe, on week 2 I send 2 hawks and like 6 valks after transport ships, etc They never stand a chance. If one of my ships gets more than 1/2 damage, I turn it around and run, I may lose a valkyrie to bigger ships on week 3, but it is nothing when you got like 5 hawks and more 10 valks left.
Only times when I reloaded was when, say, I open a door and a brainsucker jumps me. I guess I could make it hardcore, and use androids, but their aim is SHIIIIIT!!! I don't have fun when my fights are 3x as long just cuz the dumbass can't hit the target.
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For starters I like laser sniper rifles. Then disruptor guns (free ammo) must be researched ASAP like you said.
But before you use them - make sure you train your aim on the cult of sirius in the very beginning Machine guns own them. Your agents' aim won't be as good in the beginning, so, running up close to them and pounding them with the machine guns is the best way to kill them fast and to train your aim. The machine guns only take 1 action point to shoot on automatic fire!!! Also, when you raid sirius - the only thing that can hurt you with your armor are heavy missiles and grenades, so when you do the machine gun rush on them, they never get a turn to fire it and if they react while you are shooting, they won't fire it so close to themselves.
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Sometimes a bunch of hoverbikes can bring a ufo down.
Hoverbikes, eh? When I was playing the game yesterday, the police went after psyche's hoverbike with like 4 hovercars. But the bike was manoevring between the buildings, so all they hit was buildings. Then I see a police hawk and a valk join them, just to hunt down 1 hoverbike, lol. They've destroyed half the city before they shot it down. And when I say 1/2 the city, I am not joking!!! It was on superhuman too, so the city was f*ng big. I was LMAO as I saw all those buildings going down. That's far more destruction than the aliens could possibly hope to do to the city!!! What a fine piece of police work, lol! Then Diablo raided some factory and Psyche attacked the police station, so I had some more fun watching it. Then the government went for Diablo. So, now it is week 2 and the city lies in ruins, lol. I think I'll add my bit to it and test my nukes on Cult of Sirius temples (I think they got off too easy during those police wars).
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I didn't use the Marsec flying torso armour in the last game - flying soldiers are much more vulnerable and the Marsec torso is a lot weaker than the heavy Megapol one.
True, but sometimes it is a good idea to keep 1-2 guys with it when you raid a multi-level building (5-7 levels). You don't want to spend hours climbing the stairs just to see an empty top level and climb all the way back. And when you have personal shields, it is almost a must-have for every soldier.
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I've played it on XP - found instructions somewhere to fix the mouse and sound, don't remember now, it was a long time ago. I also got a small laptop that runs win98 so I can play it there
For anyone who still has this problem - I fixed it yesterday - you need VDM Sound utility. It emulates all of the old sound cards and it has a small utility that lets you adjust the mouse settings for DOS games.
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Vegetarian: Old Indian word for Bad Hunter.
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greek_god_su...
Famous Hero
Bringer Of Light
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posted October 13, 2005 03:47 PM |
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Thanks for participation and tactics, but I just found out I donīt have the game anymore. I would have liked to try it again using your tips.
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After all, marriage and murder are not too different - one ends your life and the other is a crime
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