This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
About the only truly-irrecoverable squad wipe in the original (besides Cydonia, of course) is if your main base gets raided early on. This is how I lost my first attempt at TFTD's Superhuman difficulty: a 1 January FBA proc wiped my base while my Triton and main squad were out (because I might be good, but I'm not good enough to beat an Aquatoid Dreadnought crew with three guys), and while I didn't lose immediately from last-base-killed (because I'd placed another at game start) there wasn't enough time to get my second base operational before I lost from poor score.
While you do need substantial amounts of equipment/training to fight Ethereals, by the time they show up you should have a worldwide interception grid, which means that if you're stuck without an Ethereal-ready squad, you can just stop fighting Ethereal missions until you have one (with perhaps an exception for an Ethereal Small/Medium Scout, if you haven't gotten a psionic capture yet; they aren't too bad). You won't lose from poor score, because shootdowns themselves give bucketloads of points and if you're shooting down incoming UFOs the aliens won't score from succeeding at their missions (in particular, because you're shooting down the Terror Ships, they won't be able to create Terror Sites, which means no massive penalty for ignoring/fleeing from them). Quite recoverable, if tedious.
I haven't actually played the remake, to be clear, and that "mostly" was doing some work because I did know about soldiers being less expendable and there being more hardcoded-game-over missions.
EDIT: "Craft is lost" is painful enough that it's usually not worth risking one, but there are cases where I think optimum play is to take substantial chances of one. The most notable is the first Sectoid terror site in UFO, which will be an absolute ball-buster of a mission (this is the only mission in most games of UFO that approaches Cydonia in relative difficulty; early base defences can be worse but are rare) but which is your first chance to get a Sectoid Leader capture. It's worth taking a substantial chance of failure, including craft loss, to get that capture; you don't know when you'll get another chance and you really want psi to at least be in the works when the Ethereals show up in July. In TFTD there aren't many cases where it's both an incredibly hard mission and a chance to get something rare. The first Terror Site is quite hard, and is technically the only guaranteed appearance of Deep Ones, but there's an 80% chance to get Deep Ones in both the February and March Terror Sites so it's probably not worth risking a wipeout; the first Aquatoid land mission (and thus Calcinite corpse chance) isn't quite the horror show of the first Sectoid terror site in UFO (due to Calcinites being a hell of a lot weaker than Cyberdiscs, and due to a lack of need for rank identification/live capture) so while I think it's probably worth risking a craft loss if you have to (to get drills for cracking open Lobster Men), and I have thus risked it, you usually aren't in dire enough straits that it's necessary (at least, not if you're as good at the game as I am, and if you're not playing some kind of challenge run). There are, of course, plenty of hard missions in TFTD, but most of them can be aborted without missing out on anything irreplaceable.
I guess you're a lot better at the actual "UFO defense" part of UFO defense than I ever was lol. I always struggled with the air war, and couldn't have pulled off dominance like that with interceptors.
Basically, just drop bases in Germany, North Dakota, Beijing, South Africa, Argentina and Tasmania, and give them all Hyper-Wave Decoders (I beeline HWDs immediately after the no-brainer Laser Rifle; I usually deploy the first three bases with Large Radars but wait until HWDs for the last three). This is cash-hungry, but because it lets you recover more UFOs it pays off very fast. Normally I only keep three Interceptors and wait until Avengers to have interception everywhere (because I don't do much interception, preferring ground assaults when possible, and because you need advanced craft to shoot down Battleships anyway), but if I were on the back foot like that and I didn't have Avengers I would spam them (they arrive in four days and Plasma Beams build fast). And yeah, there's a bit of micro with sending Interceptors to where the UFO is going rather than directly at the UFO to avoid long tail chases.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link