Comments:

I've really been enjoying X-Force a lot. In my opinion, it is the best open-source game available. I'm working on my German. :-)

Questions:

Has anyone translated some introduction, documentation, FAQ, tips, tricks, etc. into English? I'm not doing so badly, but I have a lot of questions (that are probably already covered by the German material).

Why do the aliens come so frequently (I get one per hour, approximately)? Can I turn down the frequency myself?

If I shoot them down, but do not intercept them with ground troops, will there be negative consequences (besides the lost alien equipment and soldier experience)?

How do you kill aliens without getting shot yourself? I've taken to using proximity explosives, teleporting, and grenades tossed from around the corner to kill them safely. It seems that alien accuracy and power is always 100%.

They fire back before my shot (e.g. a granade or rocket) even reaches them.

Feature ideas/requests:

* Research descriptions.

Allow for more description of the subject to be researched before you research it (is it a new weapon, ammunition, etc.). I know that X-COM UFO was not descriptive either, but I think it would be nice for newbies.

* Translation.

For parts of the game that are not yet translated into English (or other languages), perform a software translation (for example, SYSTRAN or babelfish) of the remaining parts.

* Save/load during ground combat

Partial and other responses are appreciated.

--
Beef

About the save/load thing, there are pros and contras, lots of which have been discussed in an unrelated forum of another game:

http://ufo.myexp.de/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=717

So depending on the style of the game it can be a good or a bad thing.

I think that it gives more "danger" to the game when you can't save "in mission". But there's always the ability to save just before a mission :)

Just hope the program doesnt crash though

My english isn´t very good, but I will try to answer some of your questions. First thing, there will never be a possibility to save (it was talked about that befor, and this is the result).

Thats because the game is only a beta without a real story. In my opinion the only way to change the frequency is during start of a new game. There you can modify Alienangriffstag (if it is translated, it should be something like alien-attack-day) to change the frequency (hope I´m right with this point).

I think, you play Echtzeitmodus (realtimemode?). This mode isn´t supported any more. If not, you should try to hide behind walls after using granades (or beam away) or use mines. Later during the game you will get better protectors, so your soldiers can stand some hits.

I don´t understand this point. In my opinion it is alredy included (perhaps you don´t get the descriptions, because they are not translated to english alredy, so you have to play german for now).

Thank you for your responses.





Now I see, the descriptions are there.

Here is another question:

The mothership (mutterschiff) is hovering over my home base, and even though I have 3 powerful spaceships, they cannot win against the mothership.

It doesn't do anything except sit there and block me from going out, while other, smaller space ships are free to conquer the world (a week or so before game over).

What is a good strategy against it?

Thanks,

--
Beef

Thats not right. It only says, that Aliens/UFOs races would become erlier or later.


Whats version of X-Force you use or what date you have in game.

I think it would be really nice to be able to set the frequency of UFO appearances. I would prefer 1-2 per week instead of 1 per hour.



I am using Version 0.845 Beta 2 (released August 01, 2004). the mothership event occurs in the game on 13.04.2042.

New motherships should doesn't appear. Have you use the alpha versions before? There was an error which cause that motherships come to early.

I only used the alpha (22-07-2004) briefly, then I upgraded to beta 1. I think I started the game on beta 1, then upgraded to beta 2, and loaded my saved game. I could be wrong though.

I think so. The error that motherships comes to early was only in alpha Version. In beta version this error is fixed.

Have you enough credits to build a defend turret? Or wait. The mothership should disappear after some days.

Ähh Jim, I think it is normal, that a mothership occurs on 13.04.2042. It needs only 90 days (plus Ufoangriffstag) until they attack.
@beef: You should try out stronger weapons (XF AMV missle battery; in german you get a message, to research this weapon, some days (30?) befor the motherships attack.

Oops. My last stand of information was that motherships occurs after a year.

Yes, and I started researching it with my 40 scientists (3500 research ability) as soon as it came out, but it was only 50% by the time the mothership came along. In my next time, I'll try to have more scientists sooner, probably.

I didn't realize that building a defense turret would help -- I thought that was only for preventing ships from landing. (I thought I could take them on in my base on the ground). Without the turret, the mothership stuck around for several weeks and eventually all my countries went to 0 (whereas before, I had never lost support, only gained).

Thanks for the help!

If you equip a ship with 3 strong weapons, you should be able to shot down a mothership, without using XF AMV missle battery (for example you could try a XF AM missle battery or some strong lasers).

Gameplay:

I'd like a way to empty the stores without selling. I had a scourge of UFO's over land and picked up about 80 laser guns and light ammunition packs. I couldn't sell them until I finished research. Unfortunately, I also couldn't make engines for new craft, or ammunition, so my ships ended up shot out of the sky or sitting waiting for a motor. I lost by default - all because I couldn't empty the store!

Gampeplay:

When the stores are full or nearly so, removing an engine or weapons from a ship will result in their disappearance.

Gameplay:

My troops are collecting quantities of partial magazines (unresearched fusion magazine, unresearched heavy magazine, light magazines, sniper rifle magazines, Biotox magazines, rocket magazines). They can barely walk under the weight of half used ammo cartons :-) I have found that I can aggregate to make filled cartons, that I can put into stores. So I only get one partial magazines per type... but it is still slowing my team. X-Com:Apocalypse appeared to count every piece of ammo, just using a truncation to get the unit count of magazines. For example, if you shot half a magazine and ended up back at base, there may be no magazines in stock, but you'd get some or even all of the shortfall replaced from stores.

Gameplay:

The early alien weapons seem a little too strong and their strategy a little too weak. They bunch up, almost all start in the far corner and if you beam an unarmoured agent with good vision to the far corner, you can usually wipe out the unmoving, collected gaggle of aliens with a rocket (or two). Given the strength of alien weapons, in-fighting weapons (knives and the electro-shock weapon) probably shouldn't feature in the default kit provided at startup.

Gameplay:

In the "automatic dog-fighting" screen (when you have an air battle and can't be bothered), you have two implicit columns - on the left is the X-Force ship and the right has the UFO. Why not put the strikes and effects in their respective columns, making it easier to scan? Consider using color coding to represent hits and misses? Some kind of SFX would be good during these... hooks for those modders to tweak, please!

It is a remarkably addictive game, except for the lockups during alien movement in the tactical screens. Amazingly good job - thanks.

Gameplay Thought.

Ground missions are incredibly hard in the early stages of the game, and laborious to fight through in the end stages of the game.

Could we get some kind of cede to army button, where you let whatever the home country is kill the aliens and collect the loot themselves. you get 0 points from it, but it means your not having to spend hours killing those 5 transports you just shot down


Also, the payment you get for helping countries against UFO swarms seems rather low. It doesn't even cover the fuel unless you are using AM engines

I used to play X-com TFTD and I liked this game a lot. So I also like this one... and I played it for hours too.

This is what I got right now:
- about 20.000.000 of cash
- 8 bases with +/- 10 advanced turrets each
- about 10 intrepid destroyers, one is armed with three upgraded AMV missiles, to shoot down motherships and the unbenannt ships, the UFO's have 0% chance to survive.
- about 25 soldiers, most soldiers have 100% skills.
- about 200 scientists concentrated in one main base (17000 research points); i have done all resarch, except the "unbenannt" weapon upgrades (137200 research hours!?!).
Question: How do I get the construction plans of some items to research them (they belong to the specific country).
- about 250 technicians securing the cash-flow.
- the confidence of all countries is very high

But after all, i think TFTD was much more fun to play... OR there is still a lot of work to do for Jim...
Here are a few reasons:
1. If you shoot down a UFO over the sea, there will never be a ground combat mission. It is very easy to distract a UFO (if you have a fast engine): if your ship gets close enough, the UFO will chase your ship and once over the see, engage battle.
I liked to play the undersea ground combat missions of TFTD with the specific SFX.
2. If you have a base on top of the world (center of the north pole) and this base has a few advanced turrets, all UFO's that appear after a "country message" will be shot down by this base, because they always appear near this location. Then you just have to wipe the aliens out with your soldiers. If you play it smart, these are the only ground combat missions that you will have to play (see point 1).
3. Would like to see a 3D ground combat space. Where are the move UP and DOWN buttons for my soldiers? ... Big set-back to my opinion.
4. Louiswu is right: How do I get rid of the ammo in the backpack of my soldiers? They have so many that they have almost no time units left. Some ammo I cannot store in the craft and/or the base. Irritating. Tried this: put all the bad ammo on the ground and threw a grenade on it.
5. This game is, except for the beginning days, not a real challenge to me. The only strategy that really works is to have as many scientists and technicians as you can, as soon as possible. If you research the alien artefacts first, your storage facilities won't get filled with items you cannot sell. To have more money, destroy all UFO's over land. Your soldiers will do the job, fill your craft with alien weapons, and sell them.
6. You cannot save the ground combat missions, but they are a real joke. I mostly use anti-alien grenades. They are very cheap, I buy 100 at once. After I throw a grenade, I immediatly teleport the soldier back to craft (30 TU must be left). After all, the aliens have no chance, no matter how strong they are.
7. The scanners make gameplay too easy. You immediately know the position of the aliens, you can teleport your soldiers one-by-one where you want, and kill the aliens instantly. Also, because most aliens come in groups of five, you can kill up to 25 aliens in one turn (using grenades ore alien-lightning mines). And if they are only weakened, you can use the electroshocker. (I always have a soldier with one shocker in each hand, to finish the job...)
8. If you have 8 bases, 20.000.000 cash, everything researched,... there is no challenge to go on playing. Except making more money.
9. I also don't know why there is a limit of 8 bases. It's quite irritating when you have loads of cash.
10. Many FX still need improvement, so at this time, one should still choose to play X-com TFTD instead of this game.
Especially the ground combat missions: they all look the same. I also liked the UFO's in TFTD, i used to put a soldier on top of it; if an alien would come out, shot it down. These missions in TFTD were really tactical and more of a challenge.
11. Soldiers have 100% skills after they have killed 50 aliens or so... They improve too fast and are too soon at maximum skills. Also, after improvement, you can't distinguish the original skills anymore (see TFTD).
12. many many more little remarks...

Still lots of work to do, Jim, but not a bad try.

Bruno

Research the things that fill up your stores first. If you should empty them without selling, you will lose a lot of cash.
If you loose b/c your stores are filled, too bad... It's only a matter of good strategy.

;-)

Sorry Bruno, but after all your nice "analysis" you simply haven't "analysed" the FULL NAME of the game yet = ALPHA-Version! ...if you know what that means...



so long...

MemTronic

I suppose that the idea behind remaking TFTD is "to improve gameplay". If so, then could u please point those "possible" improvements to me...