User talk:NKF

NKF:Talk

Welcome to NKF Talk. Pardon the mess.

The NKF-Centric TO-DO-List of Doom

• "X-Com Apocalypse Starter's Guide" - kind of there. Kind of not there. Perpetually.

UFO Base Kit

The UBK is a transclusion template I created so that you could plug base layouts into your articles and discussions. Go see the template and its documentation at Template:UBK to see how to use it.

Test of Gallery markup

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Now with adjustments

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Note to self: The new wiki software is really case sensitive these days! A good thing in one respect.

Smoke Grenades

IMO they're only useful turn 1. And even that goes out the window if you have a tank. A tank is worth it in the early game, if only because it draws alien Plasma Pistol fire away from your squishy unarmoured dudes. Later on, though, when you have armour and the aliens switch to Heavy Plasma, tanks become less useful and you can bring out the Smoke Grenades. Magic9mushroom (talk) 00:02, 22 August 2014 (EDT)

Like the tank (or 4 rookies, for the budget conscious), the smoke grenade is just another tool at your disposal that you can use depending on how you like to play. The smoke grenade is certainly most useful for the initial deployment, but that's not so say that is the only time you can take advantage of it. I know I've had many occasions where I managed to save a bunch of soldiers that were stuck out in the open in full view of some aliens by throwing a smoke grenade between them. The Smoke Grenade page has some scenarios listed. NKF (talk) 03:26, 22 August 2014 (EDT)

Four rookies die to four plasma pistol shots or one alien grenade. A tank can take either and keep trucking. It's also faster.

I guess Smoke Grenades are okay if they're pre-primed and kept on the shoulder straps. Otherwise there's too big a TU cost to use opportunistically. Turn 1, on the other hand, you're not doing anything anyway because of all the full-TU aliens.

At least we can agree that Dye Grenades are terrible! Magic9mushroom (talk) 05:59, 22 August 2014 (EDT)

I'd take the tank myself as it has plenty of merits, and the later Plasma Hovertank/Sonic Displacer are superb. However those that prefer 4 rookies do argue that they are cheaper, can spread out, carry more weaponry and still take the 4 (or more) shots to dispose of. Those that live through can go onto greater things. The tank just needs one bad roll of the die and it ends up a very expensive afterthought. Bit of a RTS peon pumper meat grinder mentality going on here methinks.

Grenades are in the same boat as the smoke grenade and do cost a lot to use. That's probably why they are best relegated to the support units that back up those on the front. Then again, front-line units carrying pre-armed grenades are handy for ninja-style retreats. NKF (talk) 16:21, 22 August 2014 (EDT)

Well, like I said, the main advantage of the tank is against aliens with Plasma Pistols at the very start of the game. A tank's front plate is guaranteed to survive at least 7 Plasma Pistol shots even if they all roll absolute max (which they won't), so you can park it on the opposite side of a UFO hatch to your firing line, close in, and draw fire from the aliens coming out until they use too many TUs and get reaction-fired to death (since on Superhuman, alien Reactions are usually high enough for them to avoid taking reaction-fire from stepping out of the hatch alone). In addition, you don't lose a huge amount of firepower by going with a tank right at the start since its cannon does twice the damage of Rifles. Once you've got lasers, the tank starts to hurt your firepower significantly, and once you've got decent armour and the aliens start using heavier weapons the defensive qualities of the tracked tanks go down the drain.

HWPs do have something of a renaissance later on when you get Avengers and are running into the 80-item limit, since a hovertank, while not reaching anywhere near the firepower of four Heavy-Plasma-equipped soldiers, does have more firepower than four soldiers without guns. Hovertanks/Launcher also don't count their ammo against said limit.

In TFTD it's a whole different kettle of fish thanks to the existence of Tentaculats and the lower fire rate of Sonic weaponry. Displacers/Sonic are absolutely essential due to their ability to lure Tentaculats - taking Artefact Sites without them is almost impossible thanks to That Goddamned Room. There's also the lower clip sizes making the 80-item limit an even bigger problem.

A pre-loaded Small Launcher does a lot of the same stuff a pre-armed Grenade does, and has the upside of taking the "suicide" out of "suicide bomb". There are a lot of ways to use those things. Magic9mushroom (talk) 21:49, 22 August 2014 (EDT)

Small Launchers are certainly quite handy beyond just capturing key aliens, and the Thermal Shok Launcher in TFTD is scary indeed. But they have their own share of drawbacks as well. Deciding which to use to get the best result for the task at hand is all part of the fun I guess. NKF (talk) 03:18, 25 August 2014 (EDT)

Geocities site?

Hi. I suppose there's a good chance you might be the "nkfarma" who at one time had a page i found linked on the strategycore forums -- specifically http://www.geocities.com/nkfarma/temporary/lsc_lure.html . Did you ever manage to get those geocities pages moved to a different host? -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 11:47, 9 April 2015 (EDT)

The same. It has been a while, but I did manage to save some of the content. After reviewing it though, it was mostly trivial stuff. My most important work that was on the old Geocities page, the TFTD Research Tree Bug Avoidance Guide, survives in its current form on this wiki. NKF (talk) 02:53, 10 April 2015 (EDT)

Okay, i trust your judgement on this, even though my curiosity still makes me want to read through all that other "trivial stuff"...

As for the revert issue, your first paragraph about it is just as sensible as i presumed any admin would be. Contacting Spike just for this is not worthwhile IMO, since he's been inactive since August and this really is quite "trivial stuff" too. It's not too big a deal if the sections stays or goes... I reverted merely because i'm an inclusionist (as you might have guessed) and favour preserving all information, even if obsolete. As the saying goes, "Those who cannot remember the past are [more likely] to repeat it." -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 07:25, 10 April 2015 (EDT)

The files I recovered were mostly the media files. Some .gif and .jpgs. Mainly game screenshots and a few fan-art scribbles I did on the back of some envelopes. Two zip files containing UFO save files, one being my "Solo Floater Base Assault Challenge" and one labelled scratch.zip. A no-base start file. I still use the challenge save on occasion to relearn how to play after long periods between games. There is a html file called The Deep One Dilemma - which was the basis for research tree bug avoidance guide. Also a grenade guide I had started but only ever got round to writing up the grenade relay. That's about it. NKF (talk) 23:15, 10 April 2015 (EDT)

Pile of calcs

So I did a thing and I think it's fairly important, but I'm not really sure where to put it or what to link to it. I'm thinking call it Weapon Effectiveness (TFTD) and stick a link to it in Weapon Analysis; is there anywhere else you think it should go? Magic9mushroom (talk) 19:32, 27 April 2015 (EDT)

I did give this some thought as you were compiling the data. It can certainly be included on the Weapon Analysis page. However, I'm also thinking that the information is quite relevant to TFTD so could also take a place on the main TFTD menu. For example, if you look at the UFO section's technical section under data tables, there's a Kill Modelling subheading that follows slightly similar lines. I am however starting to wonder if that fits the data table category. Perhaps a sub heading under Analysis might be best? NKF (talk) 01:57, 28 April 2015 (EDT)

To the layman this appears nothing more than a brick wall of data; most of it is not relevant to user play in any meaningful way. Even though some wounded aliens have reduced accuracy, too many are just as dangerous at 1HP and don't care about average damage in the slightest. A player is going to care about two things- The odds of a weapon dealing ZERO damage, and the cumulative odds of continuous fire killing a target. For example null 20%, OHKO 20%, 2-hit 50%, 3-hit 90%. On the extreme end maybe knowing how many hits for a 98% kill rate can be useful. Those values are FAR more useful as it informs the player of how much firepower he needs to have ready against any particular threat. Oh, and if a target is totally immune, drop the numbers. It's IMMUNE. -- Bobucles Apr 28 2015

Well, the difference between this and all the data tables currently there is that this is a set of calculations rather than raw game data. And it's less like the weapon analyses we have than part of the framework on which they're based. I think I'll stick a "See also" in the TFTD section of Weapon Analysis and link it on the main TFTD menu. Magic9mushroom (talk) 06:14, 28 April 2015 (EDT)