UFO Aftermatch ----------------- UFO AFTERMATCH ----------------- Game Hints by Nicolas L. Clement (c) 2008 Hello :) This will be a simple series of hints destined mostly to help beginners on this game. It is a rather hard game and to manage to get the best options possible, I decided to make a short guide about a few hints that might help your workflow. ************************ [A] THE PERFECT TEAM ************************ The MOST important concept in this game is to have a "perfect team" for when you go in ground missions. It is in fact the only thing in terms of gameplay you can directly boost up so you better make the right choices here. The Utopia is of course to get all of your 7 soldiers at SUPER-HEROIC in every categories and have all the professions so that their skills are boosted up to the maximum. The reality is that you should aim to have roughly: 5 Snipers/Shooters 2 Psi/Healers/Demolition experts Even your two 2 psi/healers should be decent snipers so that they are not totally worthless. In the end of the game, you should be able to achieve all that, but for the difficult beginning of the game, you should learn to really maximize their potential. Here's how: ------------------------------ (1) MALCOLM & BRIAN RELOADED ------------------------------ The beginning will be hard so to have a good start in this game you better have two good soldiers right at the beginning. It is thus STRONGLY advised for you to take the tutorial mission when you begin so that you can get Malcolm and Brian freely (your two first soldiers) at the top. Furthermore, you should make sure that these two soldiers have a good potential (see further hints) so if you are not satisfied with their statistics, feel free to reload the game until you are satisfied with them. They are always randomized so you should make sure your happy with what the computer gives you. This will also stand true when you get new recruits. Always save right before you get some new guys and reload your game as long as you feel the new recruits are worth it. ------------------------------ (2) THE IMPORTANT SKILLS ------------------------------ There are many skills (Rifles, Handguns, Medical, Stealth, etc) that comprise of your soldier's abilities. Some are more crucial than others so you should focus your attention on the ones with the more stars. Marksmanship ***** Rifles ***** Handguns * Launchers * Throwing * The basic idea is that with weapons, the best combination is to equip ALL of your soldiers with sniper rifles and shotguns (Marksmanship & Rifles). Pistols are worth nothing in comparison, Launchers are too dangerous to use generally speaking and grenades are easy to throw even with a poor skill. Later on, you will get alien rifles which will use the "Rifles" skill which are arguably, pretty potent. When that time comes, you should forgo your shotguns and replace them with alien rifles (yet keep your sniper rifles). Psi Power **** Hit Points **** Speed ***** Dodging ***** The four "Defense Skills" are crucial so you should try to boost them all as quickly as you can (especially Dodging and Speed). There is nothing more pathetic than a soldier moving at "awful speed" so you should boost that. Dodging is highly important to avoid getting any sort of damage, Hit Points will improve your resistance to physical damage, while Psi Power is good to resist paralysis and other types of mental damages. As the game progress, Psi Power will become more and more important, but for the beginning focus on Speed and Dodge. Note that a high level in Hit Points will make you extremely resistant to damage so you should also maximize that slowly as the game progress. Observation ** Stealth * Since your character is by default always running, there's not much point to improve your stealth. Aliens will find you anyway... As for observation, it's not really important either. Just make sure you have ONE of your soldiers with uncanny high observation and you should be fine. (Note that since you will boost marksman and rifles quite highly, the chances are that these two skills will be maximized in the end anyway since they share similar requisites). Aliens ***** Medical * Capacity ** The "Aliens" skill is very important since it helps your soldiers to hit the enemies more effectively. Thus translating in more damage and being able to know just when to shoot them so that they fall on the floor incapacitated instead of dead (great for capture of aliens). As for "Medical", you should have only ONE soldier that acts as a medic with very high skills in that. For "Capacity", as long as you can carry a sniper rifle, a shotgun, a few grenades, some ammo clips and a good armour you should be fine. -NOTE- All in All, this hint is valid for all of your soldiers except if you want to have one or two "specialized soldier" that I would personally recommend. If you make a special soldier, make him a "Medic-Psionic" with high skills in launchers. Compared to the others, he won't be a gun-blasting hero and will probably stay in the back all the time, but it will be perfect to heal wounded soldiers, to destroy walls/structures with a rocket launcher and grenades AND most importantly, to be able to dominate the mind of enemy aliens (which is nearly VITAL when you board an enemy spaceship). ------------------------------ (3) THE TRAINING SYSTEM ------------------------------ Furthermore to skills based on attributes, you can also improve them by training at a base. This takes a rather long time (1 day 12 hours) though so you better plan before you train soldiers. Personally, I like to keep a small team of 3 or 4 active for ground missions while the other 3 are training at the same time. When the training is done, then switch the trainees with the field soldiers. The professions will boost you of +1 in 4 skills so it is very much worth it (especially the first profession). BUT what you must know is that if two professions improve the same skill you won't have +2 in total. You will only keep one of the bonus. EX: SNIPER and SOLDIER both offer "Rifles +1". If you become a sniper you will get the bonus, but after if you also want to be a soldier, the rifle bonus will be grayed out (since you already possess it). Now bear in mind that all of these professions are worth it EXCEPT "Scientist"! The reason is that all these professions at least offer one unique skill bonus except SCIENTIST (yeah I know.. poor game design on their part) so you should avoid becoming a scientist unless you have nothing better to do with your time... Here is the list of unique skills: SNIPER "Marksmanship" SOLDIER "Handguns" GRENADIER "Launcher" PSIONIC "Psi Power" SCOUT "Stealth" MEDIC "Medical" SCIENTIST NOTHING!!!!! Also bear in mind that all the professions have a minimum requirement which is harder or easier for some professions (SOLDIER being probably the easiest). So when you improve your attributes, you should not only focus on what boosts the skills you want but also what could give you the pre-requisite for all professions. Here is a good table that you should print out and keep next to you when your soldiers gain a level and it's time to boost stats: Average Good Very Good STR SOLDIER GRENADIER -------------------------------------------------------------------- AGI SOLDIER SCOUT -------------------------------------------------------------------- DEX SOLDIER GRENADIER + MEDIC -------------------------------------------------------------------- WIL SNIPER PSIONIC PSIONIC + SCIENTIST -------------------------------------------------------------------- INT SNIPER + MEDIC -------------------------------------------------------------------- PER SNIPER + SCIENTIST SCOUT -------------------------------------------------------------------- So for instance, if you want to become a SNIPER, you should have your skills of WIL and INT at "average" and PER at "good". In conclusion, it is clear to see that any skill above "very good" won't help you to get more training and that you need to have "average" in every stats and "good" in PER at a minimum to hope getting training. Thus, you should try to make sure that all of your soldiers are well balanced to get access to all of the training available (except the worthless scientist of course...). -------------------------------------- (4) MAKE UP A SMALL TEAM TO BOOST XP -------------------------------------- You have the possibility to have 7 soldiers at once in ground missions. And even though this might seem great to have a full platoon, you must realize that the experience you gain will be spread among all active members. Thus if you gain 2000 XP and you have 4 soldiers, each will get 500 XP, while if you have only one soldier, he will gain the full 2000 XP all for himself! Even more importantly, you can ONLY HAVE 7 SOLDIERS ACTIVE IN A TEAM so there is *no reason* to keep more than that in your base. A common mistake will be to have 12 soldiers or even to dismiss some soldiers that participated in missions. Do -NOT- do that. Every missions count and all the experience should go toward your "Perfect team of 7". My personal advice would be to not even go with a team of 7 since it will take them too long to boost levels and besides you don't need 7 people to finish a mission (unless it's a really hard one). I've often managed to finish missions with only 2 guys or sometimes even one! In fact, I often sent Malcolm all alone until he became a super-soldier at Level 15 with SUPER-HEROIC in virtually every skills. Arm this guy with a badass weapon and you can be sure he can take on an entire army without getting hit (since he has high dodge), without taking damage (since he has tons of HP and can even heal himself), and can shoot anytime/anywhere since he got perfect weapon skills. It is of my opinion, that it is better to have one or two superheroes instead of 7 losers. As an little bonus hint, to make matter worse if you come upon a "rescue mission" which often pops up when you have to rescue a jet plane pilot who got shot down by aliens, then you *CANNOT* go with 7 soldiers since you need one "free space" for that pilot to be rescued. This really took me by surprise when I had a team of 7 guys and could not go on a rescue mission (and yes, that pissed me off...). So, again, try to send a small team (3 or 4 is a good number) while the others are training at the base. Then switch them so that nobody get left behind. In the end, you should not be able to train anyone anymore and all of your 7 soldiers should be rather kick-ass. Still head my advice, don't go with more than 6 soldiers on a mission since you never know when a jetplane is going to crash and your right in the neighbourhood to rescue him. Thus, I'd say: Create a team of 6 super soldiers as your standard team and keep one extra at the base that you can bring over for super hard missions. --------------------------- (5) THE PERFECT EQUIPMENT --------------------------- -Weapons- I talked about it earlier. But I'll mention it again. In the beginning of the game, you don't have much choice. UZI, Shotguns or pistols. Do yourself a favour and get shotguns. They are the only weapons that make enough damage to kill your enemies (especially if you have only 2 guys) and besides shotguns are part of the RIFLES skill (which you should boost as I mentioned). As soon as you get access to sniper rifles though you should carry one along with your shotgun. That way you can shoot enemies at a distance without them hitting you back! It might be a bit weak in damage but it has a definitive strategic advantage. Then when you need to cause strong carnage, just switch to your shotgun in your backpack. This combination of weapon is perfect, especially for small teams. Obviously, when you get better sniper rifles or better shotguns get those instead. To be clear with you, even though I was tempted to use those great alien rifles, as soon as I got the "Accuracy International L115AE" sniper gun, that is all I carried for the rest of the game. 7 soldiers with that rifle shooting at the same target is enough to kill anyone at 71m. Even against the aliens, the laser guns are worth crap since their armors are very good against their own technology. -Belt- In your belt you should carry two ammo for shotguns and two ammo for sniper rifles (or ammo for alien rifles). Then one frag grenade in the middle of the belt. And for the 4 other spaces left, you can either go with: * 1 Medical kit (If you have the skills and carry capacity for it) * 4 additional frag grenades (they do pack a punch and are strategic) * 1 Alien Gadget (Psi weapon or something along these lines) -BackPack- As mentioned earlier, you put your secondary weapon in it. And could even put the Medical Kit there (since you only use it in calm situations after all). -Armor- Always try to go with a light enough but sturdy armor coupled with the best helmet you can get. Thus start with the "light armor" and when you get it, switch to the "combat armor". At one point you'll have the "Heavy Armor" which looks real tempting, but the problem is that it prevents you to duck or to RUN!!! So I would personally avoid it at all cost since it turns you into a sluggish slow bastard (even if you have heroic speed). On the other hand, eventually you will develop gyro-weapons that can ONLY be used with the heavy armor so at that point you can see if you like the tradeoff or not. Personally I prefer to run across the screen.. Not only does it permit you to try to avoid the explosions from alien rocket launchers and alien plasma launchers, but it also takes less time to finish missions if you run at top speed that way :p. Eventually you will have the option to boost your armors through research and this should be encouraged. The enhanced version are a lot better. Also you might be tempted with Psi Helmets which are supposed to protect you against psi attacks and paralysation? Well sadly enough, it doesn't seem to even help a tad.. On the other hand, they do offer a bonus against the Warp attack that many aliens carry as sidearms. So this could be a good consideration. And then you get alien armors... Seriously, the only major threat I felt in this game were the reticulans aliens due to the fact that they carry deadly laser, plasma and warp weapons which fires at an insane speed. They also tend to carry rocket launchers which are super deadly. As for the "mutants" at the beginning of the game, well they typically only fight with earth weapons with poor range or at melee combat. These guys you can easily dispatch. So you should not worry much about soft or hard bullets in the long run. Laser, Plasma, Acid, Warp and other nasty effects though are quite deadly, and this is what Alien Armors excell against. So as soon as you get the option to manufacture the "Basic Alien Armor" do so. Only produce one of those, just to have access to the better armors such as "Sun Armor", "Sky Armor" and then "Bio Armor". At that point, I would personally either go for the blue Sky Armors or if you can wait it off the Bio Armor which is the best armor in the game in my opinion. To help you a bit make a logical choice on what to research and produce, here's a comparison of the best choices at the end of the game: Enh.Combat+Helm Enh.Combat+Psi Enh.Heavy Bio Armor Soft 95% 65% 75% 50% Universal 65% 40% 65% 45% Hard 40% 20% 55% 40% Burn 40% 40% 60% 55% Laser 30% 30% 50% 75% Plasma 25% 25% 40% 70% Warp 40% 60% 30% 55% Exception 15% 95% 10% 70% Heal 0% 0% 20% 0% Paralyze 20% 100% 20% 65% Weight 12kg 11kg 20kg 3kg So as I mentioned, Soft, Universal and Hard bullets are not much of a concern so you should not let this validate your decision. Any of the above armors are totally decent against those. What really matters though are Burn (acid+explosion), Laser, Plasma and Warp. And the armor that excel practically in all these fields is the Bio Armor. It also offers quite a decent amount of protection against mental attacks, no malus for healing (of which the heavy armor has) and is the lighter of all of them which can permit you to run as fast as you want. In conclusion: The Bio Armor is the best choice, but takes a LONG LONG time to produce so unless you have tons of engineering bases, this might not be a plausible option for you. In the meantime, you could produce Enhanced Combat armors coupled with Enhanced Psi Helmets as they take less time to create. Also the Sky Armor is decent enough (especially against laser and plasma) but rather useless against everything else. Finally you got the Enhanced Heavy Armor which is good only if you want to use the super deadly "Gyro-Weapons" and don't mind being a slow bastard. Note that you cannot use a helmet with any Alien Armors or with the Heavy Armors. *spoiler alert* You will have the possibly to rescue two friendly grey later on and even though they lack the potential to use human weapons or human armors of any kind (even the alien based ones). However, by default, their silver lab coats have these stats: Soft 30% Universal 30% Hard 30% Burn 30% Laser 70% Plasma 50% Warp 35% Exception 30% Heal 0% Paralyze 40% Weight 1kg ------------------------ (6) HOW TO WIN BATTLES ------------------------ Tip #1 = Gang Bang = ---------------------- This game *IS* challenging (even at easy difficulty) so the best advice I can give you is that if you have multiple soldiers, do gang-bangs. Do not try to corner the enemies while you lure them or anything strategic or tactical like that. The artificial intelligence is not strong enough for that I think. Just try to distance yourself the more you can from your enemies and gang-snipe them with the sniper rifles (3 or four snipers shooting at the same target is quite deadly). Or if you want to PULVERIZE an enemy, gang-shotgun them. 4 shotguns blasting the same enemy will leave it's impact ;). When you have alien rifles, follow the same gang-bang strategy. In essence, go one enemy at a time since even a "wounded" enemy is still as deadly as a fully healed one (not too realistic there..). Tip #2 = Let them come to you = --------------------------------- Try to let THEM come to you. Don't rush them, wait for them in the shadows of a corridor and then GANG-BANG WITH SHOTGUNS!!! They'll love you for it ;p Tip #3 = Grenades = ---------------------- Do not underestimate the role of grenades. I know that I don't particularly advice you to improve your skill in them (since they are easy to throw). But it is not to say that they suck. The simple frag grenade patch a wooping 550 points of explosive damage that is quite deadly in itself and can also hit multiple enemies at once!. Furthermore, they can be shot over walls or structures so they are very tactical especially when you know an enemy is behind cover. Finally, they can blow up walls and cars so you can breach the area to create a new passageway. Oh yeah.. frag grenades are also free. So if you feel like making a crazy grenadier with 20 grenades, go right ahead. It's a dangerous soldier to have around and will only attack at short range but MAN will it kick-ass! Also note that a gang-bang of grenadiers will be insanely powerful... 550 damage x 7 = 3850 Damage in a splash radius... wow Tip #4 = Psi Domination = --------------------------- When you face mutants only guns really make a difference, but when you get to the point where you face Reticulan Aliens, you will soon realize that they are a NIGHTMARE to deal with. Especially since they are highly armored and tend to use crazy weapons that make radius damages (such as rocket launchers or plasma launchers) that can literally kill your entire team in seconds! To make matter worst, you often have to face them aboard their spaceship or in their bases which have the most annoying architectural layout ever imagined. And since they don't really seem to care using rocket launchers among tiny corridors in suicide attacks, you will often wish to never have set foot in their domains. The best strategy I can give you for these times is to have your psionic soldiers use a "Alien Psi Projector" on the enemy aliens and mind control them to either shoot their comrades or disarm themselves (by accessing their inventory) and put them in a position where you can execute them easily. Personally, I used two soldiers armed with two Psi Projectors in each hands (for more ammo, since these guns cannot be recharged unless returning to base). Then I "possessed" one alien, made him run to his friends and since this alien can now see other aliens, you can use your second psi soldier to "possess" another alien (yes the psi projector can shoot through walls!). If you can get an alien that has a rocket launcher, kamikaze him to his group of friends and pull the trigger. Mwah ha ha... ;) ************************ [B] GENERAL HINTS ************************ ---------------------------- (1) TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE ---------------------------- This is an Alien invasion people! The last thing you should do is to let your soldiers stay at your base and chill while playing poker! I'm not exactly sure how the game's difficulty curve works, but one sure thing I can tell you is that as the game progress, enemies will become stronger, better equipped and more numerous. The lame-ass mutants of the beginning armed with pistols will eventually get armed with alien weapons and the aliens themselves will be nearly unstoppable after a while. Case in point: I first started a game in Europe and waited a long time until I got to Area 51 (america was far). When I got there.. there were aliens equipped with weird rocket launchers, disintegrators and all sort of WAY too powerful weaponry compared to my guys who still had cheap guns. I got literally pulverized in a matter of seconds!!! Second game, I tried in America (the good choice btw). As soon as I could go in Area 51, I got a completely different story. The aliens had simple laser pistols and I managed to take it with only 3 soldiers with two fingers in my nose. The moral of this story is that every second counts. If you have a mission to do then do it. As soon as it's done? Go do another one. Never let your soldiers wait in vain, never let research & development do nothing with their time, constantly try to improve your guys, do the "key missions" such as Area 51 as SOON as you can, etc... Otherwise, you'll regret it :p ------------------------ (2) START WITH AMERICA ------------------------ Sadly enough, even though the game seem open-ended, it is quite linear. Throughout the game, you will have some "key-missions" that if you do not do will prevent you from doing more research (which in turn will make you stuck with cheap earth equipment and be outclassed very fast). The first important mission is "Area 51" which takes place in America. It is thus imperative that you reach this as soon as it is available. As surmised earlier, if you fail to take it fast enough, it will be overun by supremely-equipped aliens. The first game I did I chosed "Europe" as a starting point (a personal favourite). And even though I felt everything was going great, when I reached Area 51, I realized I was doomed. As a result I restarted a new game (which pissed me off) in America. Sure enough I reached Area 51 quickly and managed to finish the game without problems. So the moral of this story is when you start a new game, do yourself a favour and go with America. -NOTE- Please do note that there are a LOT less cities in America than in Europe, so even though you start in america you will have a though time to make scientific and engineering bases since it's a hard territory to defend. As such, try your best to expend your territory toward Europe so that you can reach the european bases quickly. When you do, you'll see the insane number of bases you'll capture and finally be able to do some good research and development. :) Besides, the second "key-mission" is in russia... keep that in mind. ---------------------------- (3) UFO BATTLES ARE RANDOM ---------------------------- Another quick tip. When you send your jets to shoot down UFOs, these battles are totally random. So always save your game before they attack and reload if you dont like the outcome. Also, try to always make sure the UFOs crash on land instead of water. If they land on earth, you can go do missions to go kill them. If they land in water, you got one less mission (experience points remember?). ------------------------------------------------------------- (4) HOW YOU SHOULD PLAN YOUR EXPANSION AND MINI-WALKTHROUGH ------------------------------------------------------------- First off, to "expand" you need to do missions in that area until you get a mission about either capturing a terran base or an alien base. Typically, it takes about 2 missions in the area for the base mission to appear. So in order to achieve that, you either let the computer randomly give you some mission in nearby territories about recon or elimination -OR- you shoot down alien vessels in that area so you can go with your soldiers secure the crash site. The first method is rather random and 90% of the time will be on an adjacent territory. The second method needs luck as well, but also require a good approximation of WHEN to launch your jets after the UFOs in order for them to crash-land where you want them to go. (Assuming of course you DO crash them lol). Either way, try to do as much missions possible, not only for the good experience, but also to expand your territory as quickly as you can so that you can have more bases (especially important for research and development, but also to have military bases to land your chopper at). *SPOILERS ALERT* [A] As I mentioned in General Tip #2, start with AMERICA so that you can reach Area 51 quickly. [B] Importantly, you should research teleportation as fast as you can since it will permit your troopers to "lift off" from any military base across the globe. This becomes imperative quickly. [C] Then try to progress as fast as you humanly can toward Europe so you can get the multiple bases there so that you can switch the majority of them to Research and Engineering. [D] Your next big mission is in Russia (near Europe) so plan ahead your expansion toward there and do that mission as soon as available. [E] -IMPORTANT- You will eventually get warnings of the "Biomass" that is expanding. In my game, this appeared in south-eastern Africa, west of India and on the hard to reach Antartica. So eventually plan your expansion toward these areas so you can do a regular mission over the bio-mass (base capture missions won't count). Also note that if you try to capture a base in a biomass area, you will simply loose the base automatically unless you have already researched the Biomass Repulsors. Under which cases, the base will automatically become a Biomass Repulsor base instead of the typical military base. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO DO OTHERWISE YOU WONT BE ABLE TO FINISH THE GAME!!! SO GET THAT BIOMASS SAMPLE BY CRASHING AN ALIEN VESSEL ON TOP OR PRAY THAT YOU GET A MISSION ON THE BIOMASS!!! YOU NEED THIS SAMPLE!!! [F] As you keep researching, you will come to the knowledge that there are some friendly greys on Earth. This will trigger a mission north of India to go rescue them, so plan your expansion over there. (NOTE THAT YOU CANNOT GO WITH MORE THAN 5 SOLDIERS ON THIS MISSION) [G] With your Biomass sample, research everything you can about it until you finally discover the Biomass Repulsors. Then switch the bases near the affected biomass as biomass repulsor bases (a new choice of base) which will repulse and destroy the biomass. This will really save your bacon :). [H] At that point, you should nearly have the entire earth under your control and should prepare yourself for the final battle on the moon. So boost up your soldiers, equip them with the best armor, the best weapons, research everything that remains and finally... [I] If you either received the Reticulan Offer or rescued the friendly Greys, this mission will eventually pop up. The spaceship "Retribution" has landed and you need to go inside and grab the Alein Key (no typo here). It is essentially a base mission where you need to go grab the key and bring it back to the green area. Note that the spaceship can land anywhere on the map, so this is random. [J] Go on the moon but make sure you carry explosives with you (grenades and a rocket launcher are perfect) since you will need to blow up stuff. At the entrance, its rather easy as its an open space so just snipe every aliens. Inside the crater, it's basically a alien base. Your first objective is to go blow up the cloning vats (grenades work wonders). When you destroyed them all, your second objective is to go in the main room. Beware when you do as there are about 6 octopus like creatures waiting for you and they can be quite resistant. You should try to blow them up. When the coast is clear, you have to blow up 3 "computer screens" of sorts. The first one, I couldn't blow with a grenade so had to use the rocket launcher. When all three are ashes, you just finished the game. Here is a quick rundown of the essential missions (As soon as you can do them, do so! Otherwise you wont advance further). - Area 51 (North America) - Russian Base (Europe) - Biomass sample (South-Eastern Africa or India) - Friendly Grey rescue operation (India) - Biomass research to place those repulsors and save the planet - Spaceship "Retribution" (random) - Moon mission There you have it in a nutshell. These tips should help you tremendously to finish this difficult game. Hope you had fun with it. Good luck. This document Copyright 2008 Nicolas L. Clement