Daniel Saner (3503) on 8/29/2023 8:01 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

I have fond memories of playing this game as a kid. I was about 13 when I first played it, and I remember it being difficult, but not impossible to progress in. I think I made it around a third of the way into the island and definitely freed the second refinery, which is not little considering how quickly I usually grew tired of most games.

Now I wanted to play this game again, and I find it almost unplayably difficult, even on the lowest difficulty setting. I'm playing the same version I had back in the day, so it didn't get more difficult because I'm on a different patch or anything. So it must be that compared to 24 years ago, I must have gotten massively worse at this game. And I mean massively. I'm reading online and in FAQs that it should be no problem to capture 4-5 sectors per game-day even on the high difficulty level. I'm on Easy and I can capture about that many sectors in total before every mercenary that will still work for me is dead.

What the freak am I doing wrong, how are you supposed to play this game?

Of course I can't afford the better mercenaries in the beginning. I also tried playing with the pre-made team, thinking that the developers probably prepared at least a passably workable combination, but it's not better. When my mercs shoot, they have maybe a 20% hit rate, while all the enemies seem to hit 80% of the time or more. Which is extra bad because every hit does permanent damage which, with my poor medics, then requires taking about 3 days off entirely, with nobody really doing anything, to recover until they're fit enough again to take on another sector.

And because the mercs are so bad, shooting at enemies and then taking cover is not an option because of how few action points they have. Especially after they've been hit once, they usually have single-digit AP levels at the beginning of each round, which is barely enough for a clumsy shot and crouching down afterwards. So most of the time they're sitting ducks as soon as the first shots have been fired.

Not that cover does much, since about half of the enemies seem to carry grenades, which there seems to be absolutely no defense against and which will easily drop two thirds of a mercenary's hitpoints, which means he'll be a "patient" instead of on duty again for the next three days, if he survives, which is unlikely. Meanwhile, my own team doesn't even really manage to throw a grenade far enough to not have it blow up on themselves.

The strategies all say stuff like not to leave too many mercenaries at base for recovery, but even if I try to progress as carefully as I can, taking 1–2 sectors will leave more than half of my squad severly injured, so not having most of the team at home recovering all the time just doesn't work for more than a few days, the HPs just disappear several times as quickly as they can be healed.

I have no freaking clue how and why I'm so much worse at this game than as a teenager. My mercenaries keep getting mangled, and no matter how defensively I try to play to prevent as many injuries as possible, they're still way too many and too severe for progress in the game to be possible. Naturally, I also tried to play more offensively, maybe I was just more reckless at 13. But of course, that makes it even worse, my squad will be dead within about 4 combat turns.

What the heck?

What I'm mostly asking: is there a specific thing I'm doing completely wrong? Should I just splurge on experienced mercenaries from the beginning and ingore the level 1 characters entirely? Should I retreat more often when I make enemy contact? Am I somehow choosing the wrong order of sectors to head into? Is there an important feature I'm forgetting about?