Is it me or is this game difficult?

[Krautman]

Hi all,

first of all thanks to the developers for creating such a game & offering it to the public, if it were me running Games Workshop I'd give you all the support you deserve instead of threatening you with a lawsuit - especially since GW does nothing much to enable people any access to the SH board game, it's impossible to get where I live.

Anyhow, I was overjoyed when I downloaded AA and started my first mission, but it turns out to be way more difficult than I had anticipated. I usually try to have 3+ squares between me and these slimy buggers and having "overwatch" activated. But that didn't help much until now. Usually, my overwatch guy is able to take out one or two aliens - at most - when his gun jams and he is shredded to pieces. Even if the gun fires as it should, only about every second or third shot is a hit. It's impossible for me to devise any sensible tactical approach when my guys aren't able to take out more than two aliens. I've tried several missions - the "Onslaught" tutorial I did about 20 times and it generally ended with me having 5 or 6 aliens killed and all terminators mincemeat. Just one minute ago, an alien - the first I met in this mission - had to cross four squares to reach my guy. He was on overwatch. His gun jammed after the first shot, the alien approached and splattered him. Is that my rotten luck or what? How do you devise any kind of strategy, and how do you get your guys to be promoted when they are that unreliable?

[the_Fifth_Horseman]

The game was designed to be difficult, but the problem seems to be that you're taking unneccessary risks.

The aliens can each take six actions during their turn. 3 squares mean at least one very dead soldier. Two, if the alien is one step away from another soldier at that point.
Six or more squares away from the enemy is safe. Less than that when the enemy turn starts is death.

PS. Those are Orbital Marines in Spartan battlesuits. Not Space Marine Terminators. Don't call them that, or you're asking someone in the Games Workshop legal department to send us a Cease & Desist. Thank you.

[Killgore85]

Welcome aboard!

First off, you should really start off going through the whole tutorial campaign, if you haven't done so yet. It's very well designed and teaches you a lot about how to play. A lot of the stuff is already pretty intuitive, but even if you knew everything, it's still good practice, at a good learning pace (after the first couple super easy missions).

Secondly read the mission briefings. Skimming past them can make you do mission critical mistakes. Different missions have different requirements. Sometimes you need to kill a lot of enemies, sometimes not.

Your troops are ultimately expendable compared to the goal of a mission.

Your troops have flawed weapons, but they complement each other well in most missions. Have your troops support each other and it will go a long way towards the success of missions.

There's tactics and strategies all over the place here. With dev and betatester assistance, I have been working on a manual which has many of them (towards the end). As you would expect, it also has the rules and examples of how things work.

If you're in a rush, v1.6 of the manual has a link to it on page 1 of the Manual thread below yours (rtf version for Word or Office, pdf version link is on page 2). It's not quite complete, but it does have a lot of worthwile info.

v1.7 of the manual will be a complete version and will either be released tonight or tommorow. Barring any significant changes to the game, it should have pretty much anything you might want to know about how to play. When it's released, I'll remove the link for v1.6

[the_Fifth_Horseman]

Barring any significant changes to the game, it should have pretty much anything you might want to know about how to play.

Possibly apart from one or two borderline batshit crazy (but effective!) strategies I'm sometimes using. I'll continue the Let's Play starting tomorrow and will try to explain what some of these tactics are based on.

[awesomeshotdude]

Originally Posted by Krautman

How do you devise any kind of strategy...

1) Being super efficient with your Action Points and Command Points. Micro manage them to an insane level to get every ounce of worth out of them.
2) Just about always, it's better that doors remain open or are destroyed. This increases your lanes of fire and subsequently, the effectiveness of your ranged weapons. So don't ever close doors and always try to shoot them when you are moving or turning towards them.
3) You can move/turn and shoot, this is very handy so always use it against doors or aliens in your line of fire.
4) Before you hit the end turn button, try and have all your troopers more than 6 squares away from any alien. This is not always possible and if you can't stay outside the six square range, then stay as far away from them as possible.
5) If there is any chance that an alien will pass through the line of fire of one of your troopers during the aliens turn, place the trooper on overwatch.
6) Try very hard to have troopers supporting each other with overwatch during the aliens turn, it greatly increases your chances of killing aliens with overwatch fire as well as helping to protect against flanking moves by the aliens.
7) Try to have more than one trooper firing on overwatch into the same area whenever possible.
8- Use your flamer to block the approach paths of the aliens when necessary. If you do though, still take into account the 6 square movement of the aliens as "sometimes" they can survive the flames and move through them to attack you if they were inside the flames initially. They cannot move therough them though if they were not initially caught within the flames.
9) Keep your mission objectives in mind at all times.

[Krautman]

Thanks very much for the quick and comprehensive replies. I guess I'll give it another try and check the strategy stuff available on the forum, though my personal preference is with strategy games which depend less on luck.

Maybe I have been to passive, i.e. if there's three squares ahead of my Orbital Marine, then a corner, and behind that corner a blip, I always stayed where I was and switched on 'overwatch', if possible providing overwatch with several guys. The result was usually a dead alien and a dead Marine. From what I gather in your posts, it would be better to either withdraw further or to walk around the corner and attack the slimey fellas. I'll try that.

Just two more questions:

How many (%) of your guys survive a given mission, usually, or would if you were average players?

Could you incorporate a "save" feature? I.e., after each mission you could save your progress and your squad members? Or would that betray the tension?

[the_Fifth_Horseman]

Originally Posted by Krautman

How many (%) of your guys survive a given mission, usually,

Excluding complete disasters, this tends to oscillate between 80% and 100%.

Could you incorporate a "save" feature? I.e., after each mission you could save your progress and your squad members? Or would that betray the tension?

The progress is saved automatically every time you finish a mission.

[Killgore85]

It also 'saves' when you exit the game in the middle of a mission. The next time you start the game, it will take you straight to where you left off.

v1.7 manual is done.
Check this thread http://www.teardown.se/forum/showthread.php?t=1677

[Sgt. Barker]

The randomness of your fire (Carbine shots) is what gives Alien Assault such high replay value.

[Omega2064]

I think you mean mortality rate... heh.

[Sliver-Rako]

At the end of the day you're marines lives mean nothing, only the mission matters. If all of the marines have to die to complete the mission then so be it.

[Rowanthepreacher]

Originally Posted by Sliver-Rako

At the end of the day you're marines lives mean nothing, only the mission matters. If all of the marines have to die to complete the mission then so be it.

LIES! If you've got the rank bonus on, keeping good marines alive is essential. I went into mourning for five minutes when Sgt Ghasaan died, because the combination of Sargeant bonus and rank bonus made him nigh-invincible.

A high ranking squad will be much more effective than a rookie squad, thanks to the simple +1 bonus they get on their actions.

[the_Fifth_Horseman]

Quite true.