Unreal Tournament Alpha

From the Wikipage:
"AI/behaviour of aliens is different. - Impossible to 100% exactly mimic original AI."

The FAQ mentioned that "savescumming" doesn't work (anymore), so I am wondering what that means?

I notice now that on OpenXCom landbattles, if you save and reload a save game, the next enemy turn will always turn exactly the same. Enemy makes exactly the same shots, they hit or miss exactly the same and make exactly the same damage. It is as if the next enemy turn is already decided beforehand, what will happen in it. It doesn't matter how many times you play the same enemy turn (through loading the game before it), it always turns out the same.

I presume that is intentional, in order to curb reloading the game as many times until you get a favorable result, but I wonder if it worked the same way in the original? Maybe I'll ask in the X-Com subforum...

Hitman: Plutonium Runs Loose

-Assassinate Boris the gun runner onboard a heavily guarded ship docked at port, and disarm his nuclear bomb.

*Spoilers*

Drop sniper rifle when you start the mission, sneak up and shoot first guy, steal his outfit, strangle next two guys, shoot guy who is alarmed by body of third guy, run back and pick up sniper rifle, snipe guy on roof, snipe two guys guarding first checkpoint, drop sniper rifle, strangle next two guys, run back and pickup sniper rifle, snipe two guys on patrol, shoot four dogs, drop sniper rifle, strangle guy on patrol, shoot guy who's alarmed by dead body of previous guy, shoot guy standing near checkpoint, run back and pick up sniper rifle, shoot guy on roof, shoot two guys guarding second checkpoint, shoot guy who's alarmed by those two dead bodies, drop sniper rifle, strangle and shoot next two guys patrolling the dock, strangle and shoot two guys guarding warehouse, sneak up and shoot guy guarding the getaway car, strangle and shoot guys guarding second warehouse, run back and pickup sniper rifle, shoot two guards patrolling targets ship, shoot two guys on lookout posts, drop sniper rifle, strangle guy by dock, take his outfit, sneak on board ship, find nuclear bomb (It's on the very lowest level of the ship behind the engine room), kill target and bodyguards, disarm nuclear bomb, kill everyone on board, pilot ship to escape.

The last parts are totally interchangeable with omfg, and or kill everyone, or dying.

That level is one of the most epic in any game ever...just the stress and tension from the fear of fucking up and dying when you get onto the boat after all the effort so far...something no game with "save anytime" can ever replicate. Live or die by how you play and suffer the consequences when you mess up- a mans game!

It changed the way I thought about what made a good game forever- well action stealth types anyway.

Anyway, I'm into the closing stages of Freedom Force myself.

Continuing my Gothic binge, I've started Gothic 3.

Finished Sacred 2 and played Quest for Infamy. Now I'm trying to beat Wasteland.

Metro 2033 Dexux (the 10th time I re-start it)
BG: EE with the latest patch, and I have to say I like it a lot
Invictus (that I bought when released) and I'm enjoying it a lot

Also started playing Gothic 3,could never play it before though.Using the community patch and alternative balancing play.Wonder which skills i should choose.

Well, I merely meant to test-drive Sunset Overdrive (one of this months GWG titles) for a little bit, and I ended up spending way more time with it than intended. That said, being somewhere in the 50%-75% range story-wise I think I'm done with the whole thing. It's decent enough I suppose, but the combat and the whole combo system gets awfully repetitive. *shrug*

Therefore I jumped onto Saints Row 4 (another GWG title). Heh. I'm actually enjoying that a whole lot more. It's easy to tell this started out as an expansion. Lots of familiar sights just with some different gameplay. Its absurdity tends to mesh better with it than Sunset's Overdrive repeated attempts to break the fourth wall - the latter not being all that funny. Yeah, so I'm having a good old time with that, but I can't see why people prefer this one over SR 3.

I guess I am starting to get the hang of how to play X-Com (OpenXCom). My landing team already has personal armor and plasma rifles so things are looking better now. I missed one terror site incident though, but generally countries seem to be satisfied with me luckily. I just built my third base (one in US, one in Europe, one in Australia).

Currently the problem is Elerium, which is needed for manufacturing lots of advanced things. Yeah I get it, I can't produce nor buy it so I am somehow supposed to rob it from the aliens (I think I originally got it when I raided an alien ship which had landed, but now I have run out of it already, more is needed for stun grenades, more plasma weapons etc....). Reading some FAQs, apparently the easiest and best way is to try to locate alien supply ships going to alien bases, not quite sure yet how that works out:

- How can I tell an alien aircraft is a supply ship?
- Should I shoot them down, or just follow them until they land, and then strike?

At least the X-Com agents now located one alien base in Australia, so maybe I should leave it intact and try to attack any alien ships landing near it...?

I still don't like the land battles that much. Whenever a new terror site is reported, I give a huge sigh as I know it will mean yet another 2 hour land battle where I slowly comb the area for any aliens, trying not to get hit by their shots... Wasting my time. I wish those land battles would be much shorter and smaller, say like the turn-based battles in Gorky 17 which usually don't last longer than around 2-10 minutes. The X-Com land battles are just too drawn-out.

Hitman: Mission 11 - The Setup

Another cool mission to assassinate a doctor set in an asylum. I was a bit stumped until I realized you have to talk to the crazy people to show you how to get to the next mission.

Then it kinda goes insane, not sure if I'll be able to beat the last mission.

One way to notice supply ships is that the radar indicates them as 'large'. They're always worth following because either they are landing/creating a new base, or they are on an infiltration mission which you definitely want to stop. If they've landed somewhere then there's a good chance there's a base nearby, or one under construction so remember the spot. In fact it's worth having a couple of radar-only bases around the globe so that you can more or less track their activity worldwide and in so doing discover several bases / stop infiltration missions.

You can shoot them down but you'll risk losing some of the Elerium in the process, though you'll probably recover a lot unless you use very powerful weapons to shoot it down. The Elerium can be seen inside the actual UFOs : it's those glowing orange vertical tubes. They're in smaller UFOs too, but are easily destroyed when a UFO crashlands. One way to increase the likelihood of salvaging Elerium from a downed vessel is to not inflict too much damage to it in a dogfight. A UFO crashlands as soon as it is 50% damaged, and from what I've seen it looks like the more severely you damage the ship during the dogfight, the worse for wear it is once you find it at a crash site. Eg a small UFO taken out with cannons only is likely to survive the crash landing relatively intact, as is a medium UFO taken out with a cannon and stingray. But if you try to down either with Avalanch missiles or worse, then you run a significant risk of finding little more than a skeletal wreck at the crash site.

Tanks, use tanks. They're incredibly useful on land battles for scouting because they're expendable and may survive 2/3 hits. You can research and create better tanks than the starting ones. Also, try to train two or more snipers if you can, and keep them crouched at the back. Snipers have saved my soldiers lives on countless occasions. Oh yes, and one more thing, so you don't fall into the same trap that I did: play with many soldiers (at least 20) all with good stats - fire newcomers with bad stats. The reason is that you'll want to relegate those soldiers to base defense that turn out to have poor psi stats, but you only discover that late into the game once alien mind control comes into play.

The Hyper-wave decoder is useful, and an improvement on the other radars in every way as far as I know. But you don't need it or to catch ships or anything. What makes it so useful is that it gives you extra information about UFOs, not just their sizes. Still, even if you only know a UFO's size, it's behaviour can indicate what it is. Large ships on their way to big cities are probably battleships on a terror missions, whereas large ships repeatably going to the same spot are likely supply ships building or resupplying a base.

If you're light on Elerium, equip one interceptor with only a cannon and a stingray, or two cannons, and then have it aggressively attack very small/small/medium UFOs so that it quickly closes the distance for its cannons to come into range. If the killing blow is provided by a cannon shot, then the UFO should survive the crash landing relatively intact. You could also try to equip on interceptor with two cannons, and the other with two stingrays, and send out both to attack a small/medium. Let the one with the stingrays attack first, and have it disengage the moment one of the stingrays hit. Then let the one with cannons finish it off.

I didn't find it all that necessary to farm bases. Once you hit one or two supply ships, you will have enough Elerium to keep you busy for a while. Even a relatively intact medium sized vessel will give you a lot.