NKF:Talk

Welcome to NKF Talk. NKF once asked the question "What is NKF Talk?" - he didn't have a clue, so he decided to make it up as he went along. NKF Talk is now NKF's personal but ultimately temporary soapbox for ... well anything NKF jolly well wants, but it will be for X-COM-related articles in this wiki, that's for sure.

Note that there's an 'add to discussion' button at the top of the screen in the guise of a + symbol. Don't use it. For actual discussion, NKF recommends using any of the X-Com themed forums on StrategyCore and XcomUFO - where he frequents. There should be a wiki discussion somewhere on the X-Com forums, or just use the board's private messaging system if you're a member of the forum.

NKF is referring to himself in the third person for no apparent reason - although is rumoured to be absolutely bonkers, which explains a lot.

P.S: NKF is not NFK. NFK is some weirdo that keeps stealing NKF's thunder. Also NKF doesn't have any hidden psychological meaning, and are merely initials.

The NKF-Centric Notes of Doom

The first of the articles I'd like to see started is an "X-Com Apocalypse Starter's Guide", as I've been concentrating far too much on UFO and TFTD, might as well get started on the third game. I've written a lot about the subject on several different Apocalypse forums - it's high time to gather everything into one place. Where to begin? Time will answer that question. Hopefully not too much time.

~~Understanding the energy recovery formula for UFO/TFTD is currently high on my list.~~

An article on radars to explain everything you need to know about them.

Them Articles

Or rather, short paragraphs that will eventually lead to a larger article that may very well get a page of its own.

Radars

Radars - and Terror From The Deep's radar parallel, sonar - can be utilise in any of your bases. They are used for primarily for detecting enemy ships and then tracking them.

Each base comes with three different radar abilities. Short, Long and Hyperwave detection.

There are three different radars a base can have. A small radar, a large radar and the hyperwave decoder.

Multiple Radars?

Stub: To include: yes and no answers and why should you use multiple radars, with an explanation on why you should never use the base information screen to estimate radar scanning ability.

Phantom Radar

What is a Phantom Radar?

A base with a phantom radar, as I've coined it, is a base that is able to continue detecting ships without actually physically owning the radar.

This is achieved by removing your existing radars. The game will retain the base's radar ability until another radar, of any type, is built. Basically, you're retaining the ghost of your previous radar, or radars.

The modules themselves do not retain the physically ability to detect ships. It's The base itself has the ability, however the game only assigns (and recalculates, if there are existing radars) the strength of the scanning ability at the moment a new radar module is built.

If you want to test this yourself, start a new game and remove the default radar and let time run.

Phantom Radar Life Span

The life span of the phantom radar lasts until the next radar is built at that base. You will lose the phantom radar completely. To avoid this, build all the radars that you want before dismantling them, or make sure the new radar is an upgrade of the old radar.

Advantages

The advantage of removing the facility will be that you can downsize your base just that bit more, making it much easier to defend.

This can be a disadvantage if your entire strategy hinges around the lower level layout of the module.

Q: Is it cheating?

Depends on how you look at it. You did pay for the scanning abilities in the first place - and the cost of a hyperwave module is not cheap!

On the other hand, you no longer have to pay for the maintenance of the module. That's about as far as the cheating goes. I'd say it's cheating if you're having money trouble. If you're raking in more cash than you ever need to spend, it doesn't matter if you physically own the module or otherwise.

Q: Do I really have to do this?

No, but it's good to know. And it stops you from being startled if your base continues to pick up enemy ships after removing the radars. Actually, it's the whole purpose of this article.

X-COM Apocalypse: Starters Guide

An article by NKF

Preface

Starting an X-COM Apocalypse game can sometimes be daunting for first time players, even if they are veterans of the first two X-COM games. So, where do we begin? Well, before we begin, I want to say what this guide is not.

It is not a complete start to end walkthrough. It is only a guide to get players up and running in a new game. It is not meant to be a replacement for the game manual. While this guide may list a few keyboard and mouse commands, players are assumed to know most of the essential interface commands. And even if you don't, well, I'm not going to stop you.

Also, this guide assumes that you can actually get the game to run. It will not include tips on how to get it running on your current OS version. There are better sources for this sort of information.

Baby Steps: Starting the game

Starting a new campaign is generally a simple task of picking the right difficulty level and jumping right into the action. Fair enough. But then there are some nutters out there that make a real deal about it. If you file yourself under this category, this chapter will be of some assistance. And even if you don't, it can probably give you some insights that'll help you along the way.

Choosing a Difficulty Level

If you have absolutely no qualms in actually starting the game, skip ahead to the next chapter, or read on.

The main reason to deliberate on what difficulty level to play is often an easy one to answer. You just want to have an easier time, or you want a challenge. In Apocalypse, the difficulty level is more than just a simple stat increase for your enemies. Here are some things to consider when deciding on a difficulty level:

Score Progression: The main reason is to decide how toned down your opposition will be. On easier levels, the sheer size of the alien forces you'll encounter will be much smaller, and their stats will be weaker. However, this also means that your score progression will be slower. On the other hand, on harder levels, you get points faster because of larger alien forces. Score controls the release of alien technology, so you tend to obtain technology a lot faster on harder levels, assuming you don't take an overly passive approach and avoid all combat.
The Map : Difficulty will ultimately influence the type of map you are to play on. On easier levels Mega Primus is a small scenic city that is easy enough to manage, but as the difficulty is ramped up, the city turns into a sprawling Megapolis. This is more for aesthetics than for practical purposes. But it does control the next point.
Base Sites: The more difficult the level, the more base site locations you'll have open to you. On the easiest level, you can only build up to 6 bases, while the hardest level gives you 8 possible locations. Unfortunately, not all bases locations are equally distributed around the city. While not necessarily a problem, it does mean refuelling and rearming ships and soldiers and then redeploying them to the right locations can become a bit of a hassle.

Your first base

You cannot officially choose your starting base or the layout of the pre-built base modules because base selection and initial module layout is random.

Luckily, you can meddle with fate somewhat by doing a base scrum. Restart the game on the difficulty level of your choice over and over until you get the base configuration that best suits your needs.

Note: Don't spend too much time doing this if you don't get the results that are desired. While you can eventually get any one of the base sites in the city, the chance of actually getting most of them beyond the set of the first four or so common base sites is very slim indeed. Getting the perfect base site that you want along with the module configuration, and personnel will be very difficult to get. You cannot get everything, so pick one that is acceptable and get on with it. You'll have plenty of opportunities to redecorate and rearrange your base. But most important of all, have fun. If you're not having fun, then what's the point?

Real Estate

Bases are differentiated by corridor layout and the topside building that the base is hidden under. The top-side portion of the base will also determine how many launch tubes your base will have. With a bit of pre-planning, the number of launch tubes are not particularly important, but we'll come to that later.

There are only two types of buildings that X-Com bases can be built in. Slums or warehouses.

Slum: A slum block can be huge, massive even on some maps. But they are very weak and any small section that is damaged can collapse other sections in a domino effect. In short, slums are very fragile. A section of slums can easily fall to even the lightest of mis-fired rockets, and if there are any other slum buildings that are connected, they too will fall. On the other hand, slum blocks often feature large building areas.

Warehouse: Warehouses are smaller, but they are tougher and can withstand more damage than a slum block. They are also more aesthetically pleasing to the eyes. Unfortunately, not many warehouses offer specious building areas.

Corridors

The beauty of the various corridor layouts lies not just in how much expansion potential is available, but in how the layout can be utilised in base defence. Each one is better suited for one purpose than another.

Small layouts are the best for defence as you can force attackers into chokepoints. However they lack the space to allow for constructing a multi-purpose base that has a little of everything - forcing them into specialised roles. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. The main headache is deciding which facilities to decentralise and move to a new base.

Bases with large wide open layouts offer the opposite. With more space you get more room to build facilities, but your six teams of soldiers and technical staff will be spread all over the base. If the base has a repair bay, your defence modules will have to spread thin to cover both the repair bay and the grav-lift. As the game can only operate so many defence turrets at any given time, attackers will be able to break through the defence guns a lot easier and possibly infiltrate the base.

Grav-lift locations can also make or break your primary base as they are fixed. Take their locations into consideration as well when choosing a layout.

Weigh up your options and go for the base that you think would work best.

Getting into the thick of things

So you've bought your base, and you're happy with it. Good. You've taken the plunge and are now able to actually start playing the game. Hurrah!

Since Apocalypse is so open ended, I cannot possibly tell you what you must do next and where to go from there. This you must decide on your own.

Initial Housekeeping

The first thing you'll want to do after purchasing your new base is to inspect the goods. We'll start with the base screen. Bring it up and have a look at what's there.

A look at the base

In the base screen you'll have access to the various other key trading and management functions. For now, let's concentrate on the base. Look at how the existing modules are placed. It's a mess, isn't it? Initial module placement is pseudo-random, so it will not always end up in a very desireable layout.

You will have all the facilities that you need to get you through the first week or so at your disposal. You don't need to build any more at this stage, but you may want to plan ahead and think about what you would like to build. If you want to rearrange your base layout to something more manageable, such as moving the quarters and labs to a safer location, you can start building them now and then dismantle the old facilities when they are built. Defenses shouldn't be a major priority at the moment as long as you keep a low profile and not make too many enemies.

Tip: hovering your mouse over your facilities will bring up additional information about them, such as current capacity.

After you've done your tour of the base itself, let's head on to the garage and inspect the vehicles.

A look at your vehicles

You can inspect your vehicles from the vehicle inventory screen or any menu that lists all the vehicles and soldiers in the current building. The vehicle inventory screen provides the most in-depth view of your ships, and should be used for all vehicle inspection and modification, while the building vehicle lists are very general and are mainly used to allow access to the vehicle inventory screen for a specific vehicle.

You'll have a small fleet of starting vehicles to play with. A Valkyrie interceptor, curiously fitted with a different engine than the standard issue engine, a pair of Pheonix hovercars, a Stormdog and a Wolfhound APC.

All the vehicles are divided into two classes, ground and air vehicles.

Ground Vehicles: Ground vehicles are restricted to travelling on the road, and suffer from the limitations of the road, which means they cannot get to any off-road sites, like UFO crash sites. They are very limited for use in UFO combat and are severely outclassed by the air ships in this role. This is unfortunate as some of the ground vehicles come with very high class cheap cost weapons, such as the Anti Air Guard cannon standard issue mounts on Stormdogs and any one of the three turrets that can fit onto the tanks. This means pre-position of road vehicles is of great importance. Road cars are also susceptible to instant death when they go off the road, making them less than satisfactory as front line attackers as more often than not, the road under the car will be destroyed before any damage is done to the car. Road vehicles do excel at providing intercity transportation to and from terror sites, although a lot of players prefer to get an additional air ship to fill that role.

Air Vehicles: Air ships are the bread and butter of your Cityscape forces. Any ship you are assigned can provide multiple roles, from transport to interception. Air ships are not restricted to the road, but they can suffer almost instantaneous death if they are caught underneath any falling debris.

Here are some thoughts on your starting vehicles:

Valkyrie Interceptor: The Valkyrie interceptor is built for intercepting UFOs. However, in actual practice, the Valkyrie starts off quite well, but in the long run is quite a poor interceptor due to its low expandability, weak hull, size and small weapon mounts. It does however have larger weapon hardpoints than a Pheonix Hovercar, allowing for larger weapons like the Lancer laser to be mounted. If used correctly, it makes for a great troop transporter or even a support fighter.

Pheonix Hovercar: The Phoenix hovercar is best thought of as a smaller variant of the Valkyrie. It may be smaller, but that's where its strength lies. Because it's a smaller target. it's able to dodge more incoming attacks than the Valkyrie and even if it's destroyed, it's easy to replace. Mixed with Hoverbikes, Hovercars can provide adequate air power for early UFO encounters.

Stormdog: The Stormdog, like most road vehicles, isn't particularly noteworthy except that it comes with a standard issue anti-airguard cannon, which provides fair firepower against most of the early UFOs. The Stormdog can be used as a transportation vehicle, but it cannot carry any storage modules. For actual transportation of soldiers and goods by road, the Wolfhound is far better suited to such a task.

Wolfhound APC: The Wolfhound suffers from the same fate as all road cars, so there's little to say about it except that it's designed to carry troops and haul equipment from terror sites. The Wolfhound provides superb intercity travel, making it a great secondary or tertiary troop transporter at the start of the game.

The remained of this section and the following headings are just stubs for the time being.

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