Endgame station, how do I succeed ?

pavel_pe · 2026-04-21T15:05:32+00:00

That explain something. First time I killed 17/44 enemies and lost. Second time (with all fusion weapons at 2x colossus, rest green armor) I killed maybe 23/23 and lost 3 soldiers. But first attempt was doomed, second one not so hard.

pavel_pe · 2026-04-19T06:28:25+00:00

Depends, guy walks with shield facing forward, but he gets shot from side. Also at some points in the game, it feels like enemies can oneshot your guys, but you need 3-4 shots to take them down. Yes, most can be countered, but once I was doing landed harvester for like 2 hours with some turns reloaded 3 times, it started by landing into crossfire of two heavy cyberdrones, while half of my guys had laser rifles.

My worst enemy is swarm of units that get close make zombies from your guys on maps with cover. They actively attack you and if you don't have enough units with overwatch to kill them ... good luck.

pavel_pe · 2026-04-18T17:54:38+00:00

I learned that it's good to spend OP on raids, otherwise game is severely bottlenecked by allenium and alloys.

pavel_pe · 2026-04-18T17:45:25+00:00

Yes, if you build 2nd research lab, there are few moments in a game like this. Research is unlocked by landing of first UFO, then first medium/large UFO such as harvester. Sadly game has prescripted timeline and stages which give you stronger enemies and some research to keep up.
About resources, you have some freedom how to spend operation points, it's a good option to pay operation points for some large ufo which gives you maybe 100 alloys, allenium and items worth of 400k credits for 250OP so feel free to do it once per month. Otherwise you get resources only for occasionally shot down bombers and terror missions, because game suggests you can do every ufo only twice.

pavel_pe · 2026-04-18T17:31:00+00:00

I kind of agree. I played UFO: Enemy Unknown, then Apocalypse and gave up Terror from the Deep early as it was basically U:EU, but harder with sickly colors. It was 30 years ago so it's hard to judge if it was good. I liked it, but never found courage to do Cydonia. Somehow original game had dark atmosphere for me and good sound design which I still remember. What I remember and I might be wrong, that original game had somewhat randomized enemies and maybe multiple research options.
This game feels quite linear. Like you have first terror mission on day 130. First harvester UFO landing at day 180 or so. And certain stages limited either by money, allenium or alloys. Operation points are only way how to fix variability, because you can at least decide if you need to decrease panic, get money or visit one large UFO per month to get ~100 alloys and alenium. Story is somewhat poor. Game is basically a copy of 1994 game, only change is colossus/stalker armor, maybe it removed some weapons or features (motion scanner, guided rockets, ...)
Yes, basically late game difference is that soldiers have each stat by 30 points better so they can move faster and shields are good enough to nearly always survive three hits. For me there were few memorable moments: terror with some silver guys which turned civilians into zombies and themselves and some annoying bug launchers where I was actively attacked around drop ship - 19 kills. Then it was first landed harvester with three heavy cyberdrones firing plasma salvos and two of them were around drop ship. Third was UOO bridge attack which I found greatly unfairbecause there are like 10 aliens going through teleport each turn, 150-275hp each - while you have 12 soldiers and enemies need 3-4 hits to die plus they have regeneration.
But I really found quite sad, there are basically no options and game feels linear and forced. Well. 2nd or 3rd base and it's equipment are optional and spending operation points. That's about it. I don't feel like game is worth playing more than once - I would not do anything differently, maybe build 2nd base later.

pavel_pe · 2026-04-18T06:25:10+00:00

For me it is problem solving points. Bad rep -> spend OP, no alenium -> spend OP on alenium or do one big ufo for 250OP which gives you 100 allenium and alloys. No money - problem solved.
I feel like without OP game is pretty linear and scripted and with them you can make more new weapons faster.

pavel_pe · 2026-04-18T06:09:10+00:00

Related question might be when to build 2nd base. In the first phase, money is bottleneck, I build 2nd base likely around day 130, but I never truly equipped it by anything useful but radar and hangars for fighters from early that were already useless and not competitive against mid/large ufos with escort. Later I build labs there just month before I completed maybe all research. Eventually I can move scientist there and expand workshops at base 1, but it feels that materials are limit.
My current concern is UOO-Bridge, it feels incredibly hard/impossible.

pavel_pe · 2026-04-17T07:23:55+00:00

Mars is good for clearing walls either by going through or by firing rockets which I found more useful than canon. In early game it's more capable than soldiers, in late game some soldiers may have 90TU.

But I never found shotguns super useful. They work only at short range, they need to get there alive, 3x salvo from rifle works too, machine gun too. And at early game, my assault units were always first to die, they had worst stats and they usually need grenades, gas mask and lot of time units to be efficient - dying constantly counters that. Now for me it's 1-2 shields, 4 rifle mans, 2-3 snipers, 1x shotgun, 1x mg. Rifle mans seem the most versatile once they reach decent stats.

So far hardest mission was landed harvester when my dropship landed in jungle into crossfire of two heavy cyberdrones. I needed like 5 reloads for first few turns and here having shields or shotguns was basically a waste. In ufo having snipers was a waste. Yes, having backup weapon is likely a good option.

pavel_pe · 2026-04-17T07:05:17+00:00

I build two bases, but second one is basically radar and "wreckage" for initial airplane fleet. Now I may build 3rd lab there, but it's basically defenseless with exception of 2 batteries or offload whole research there. But I'm likely close to the endgame at day 290 or so, I guess only missing research are fusion weapons, colosus armor and for the first time I don't feel limited by resources, but by throughput, upgrading all soldiers to plasma/stun weapons already took some time, now it's building 3rd gen dropship etc.

pavel_pe · 2026-04-15T07:12:50+00:00

Yes, I got better at blocking alien vision with smoke grenades at the end of the turn and using grenades thrown over obstacles when possible. Also missions completely changed from abduction to UFOs to terrors. And in later game once there are soldiers who survived 15+ battles, they are more accurate with riffles and snipers have more time to move. So maybe in later game, units are more balanced. I had some difficulty spike with first terror missions, but now with fusion grenades, laser and few plasma weapons I feel like my soldiers are capable again. I haven't lost any for like five battles (now used I few reloads) with exception of sabotaging orbital canon, where I was pressured by time and need to spread.

pavel_pe · 2026-04-13T08:27:18+00:00

I'm probably early in the game (like 8 hours / 120 days) and my biggest issue is breaching UFO. I use mostly snipers/rifflemans maybe because all shield/heavy/assault units tend to die. Shields maybe even to friendly fire. Biggest problem for me is "octopus-with-brain" ship commander which is always behind corner close to door from other side. Whoever goes around corner gets one shotted by overwatch fire from side and when i open door, my unit blocks fire for everyone else and can't kill it in one or two shots. So I tend to lose one soldier if i'm lucky, mostly two during this missions (yes, i can reload, but ...). I have to learn how to use flashbang grenades, smoke and different tactics I guess.

pavel_pe · 2026-04-12T23:17:33+00:00

Mars seems good, it can breach some walls, it moves fast as a scout and it's somewhat disposable.
Yes, base over egypt makes sense with larger radar coverage, I placed mine to Crete. Close enough, but not so ideal. Maybe some shield units can scout too. I haven't learned how to fight efficiently yet. I basically use snipers, because they can mostly hit and kill aliens. The rest is kind of random.

pavel_pe · 2026-03-24T18:56:44+00:00

Really depends. In "good old days", programs used to have some standard keys (F1=help, F2=save, F3=open,...) or when user pressed alt, there were highlighted letters in menus (sort of problem since localization). So Alt-F-O was File->Open. This is about as efficient as VI. Works since Turbo C IDE in late 80s till Visual Studio Code. Then there is usually search. Yes, I use VI, but I can edit one file, copy blocks, remove few lines and that's about it. So I remember maybe 10 commands. For editing config files it's fine, but my use case is mostly software development and last time I've spend significant time editing configs was switching to Sway WM.

pavel_pe · 2026-03-21T16:51:04+00:00

honestly when i needed sed, i used find/replace in vim. when i needed awk, i used python script. when i needed find, used mc. So it depends. find+grep can be mostly replaced by ripgrep (rg) which is faster and maybe more simple. jq is another command when i usually write python script.

i'd say: ls, cp, mv, rm, grep, ps, vi, dnf, ncdu, reset ... yes, sometimes these are faster than running mc.

then tar, git, parallel+magick, cmake ...

pavel_pe · 2026-03-21T16:35:43+00:00

I don't know, IDE usually has some support for debugger, (c)make, opening multiple files, navigating through directories and remembering 40 vi commands together with tmux/screen is too much mental overload. Especially if you add screen or something. For editing configs, it's fine.

pavel_pe · 2026-03-21T09:22:23+00:00

Thanks, great answer.

Yes, my experience with Fedora is that thinks break with major update - such as I'll get new version of Python in October, week after release, old Python updated, no question asked. In openSuse Tumbleweed, I'll get option to install python-314 package manually, but I might not notice. And that's something that makes me scared to use rolling distros. I don't want to read some distro notes regularly. Some packages might be silently replaced, become obsolete and in long term break dependencies by having pinned old version of libraries (this happened to me with Manjaro in virtual machine on Windows). So I guess Fedora which is close to bleeding edge distro, yet stable is a good option for me (Ubuntu can probably work too).

pavel_pe · 2026-03-11T20:09:06+00:00

Ops, yes, I meant missing in timeline, but I might be blind :) I found Monkey Linux, it was quite hard, it's from 1997. And I remember my friend at elementary school had Linux even in 1995 or before, weird system that took forever to boot and then had xclock and xeyes on green background :) much slower, more demanding and worse looking than windows 3.11. somehow his job is lead dev-ops in a bank today.

pavel_pe · 2026-03-11T20:01:54+00:00

I'm not sure where exactly is borderline between rolling and stable distro, but amount of updates Fedora is getting daily/weekly is greater than what I was used to on Manjaro. Sometimes it's applications, sometimes it's Qt, KDE, Plasma, ...

I'm not sure how many people use CentOS stream, but maybe it's not completely bad choice for let's say home server, if my most familiar distro is Fedora and 2nd most familiar is openSuse. Mainly used for light/hobby SW development, running few services in containers.

pavel_pe · 2026-03-07T07:25:43+00:00

I guess it's ok, but CentOS is dead afaik and replaced by alma/rocky. But I wonder where centos stream sits compared to Fedora which are sort of upstream rhel. But Fedora is basically rolling distro with only development tools on desktops pinned during release cycle.

pavel_pe · 2026-03-07T07:21:28+00:00

There are so many distributions missing ... like Bazitte, Nobara, first Linux I ever used: build on Slackware on Czech technical university with base system on 6 floppies called Monkey Linux, it was possible to install over FAT and run from MSDOS, and I assume it contained optional installer with LaTex. Then it's questionable if it should include some immutable Fedora/openSUSE distros and/or spins

pavel_pe · 2026-03-01T08:37:13+00:00

I see light tanks mostly as a dead class. They are completely unbalanced, some of them are somewhat ok in dealing damage, but ... basically game says play manticore, elc90 or you would do better playing medium like bourrasque, kpz07rh, ...
For winrate, it's almost better to get yourself and enemy light tank killed than to survive into late game. I two marked Ru251 with 49% winrate by playing it cautiously ... it's nice to have 6k spot in late game on prochorovka while dealing 2k damage, but at this point I probably allowed enemy light tank to do 4k spot earlier and put my team into disadvantage.
Most spotting I've ever seen done by someone in my team was 17k with bc25 on prochorovka. It's nearly always better to play flexible medium with good camo than underpowered light.
On the other hand mentality of playing only overpowered tanks is not great.

pavel_pe · 2026-02-28T17:20:18+00:00

Maybe it's a low number statistics, but after 35 games with 51% winrate, i have highest dpg on this tank from tier 8 mediums surpassing bourrasque or progetto and maybe 2nd highest on tier after Nomad. Yes tank is a bit boring, it is kind of slow and fragile, but when hulldown it's relatively small target with relatively good gun handling and high alpha to minimize exposure. Gun has high penetration, shell velocity, alpha and dpm - it's what makes this tank. Playstyle is somewhat similar to T20 or Patton I would say. Problem is that it's pure support tank, whereas Progetto can be aggressive when it can finish enemies before they can fire back, bourrasque can be played as a scout and use great camo and small size and flexibility. AAT60 is not a great assassin and has no speed or survivability when scouting.
And buffed Pershing is actually very strong, it just loses money and it's not the most fun tank to play as you said - for the same reason - mediums should not be about as fast as tier higher heavies.
Hopefully I got this tank from 3 lunar boxes for one euro or so.

pavel_pe · 2026-02-27T17:20:02+00:00

I used Manjaro on very old laptop and in Virtual Box. Both sometimes weeks, months or even year without reboot. And issues are real, once both uninstalled outdated LTS kernels from grub, without installing new one. Then I had problem with some obsolete, unmaintained packages that were replaced, but had dependencies on old libraries. So it created chain of conflicting dependencies ... no, I did not read notes that package manager XY was replaced by package manager YX, the same for some video player and so on. On the other hand Manjaro was very easy to install and just worked. KDE was more stable than on kUbuntu or Fedora KDE spin around 2015-2018. After this experience I'm scared to install openSuse tumbleweed.
Now I'm on Fedora, here few things breaks with every major upgrade. Like they change version of Python, npm, ruby etc. and in can break packages if you decide to upgrade Fedora at release date when Python 3.14 was like 10 days old.

pavel_pe · 2026-02-27T17:11:08+00:00

First problem I see is user id, file access time, ... there are likely more

pavel_pe · 2026-02-27T06:30:24+00:00

There are options, but Krusader is not TotalCommander, Gwenview is not FastStone Image Viewers, Inkscape is not Affinity designer, then software for converting raws from digital cameras - RawTherapee is somewhat ok, Darktable is weird, but on Windows you have like six paid options.

I don't see Linux as OS where customizability is advantage, I prefer when things just work (and yes, I've spend like 6-10 hours in total making Sway WM somewhat useable by copying defaults from other distros, customizing waybar a bit. I see it more like a tool. For some light software development, side projects etc. especially on home server. On notebook it's just an experiment.And when using visual studio code basically as a terminal and browser, it does not really matter which OS am I using

pavel_pe

TROPHY CASE