Let's Play X-COM: UFO Defense!

[fnord]

We're fairly certain the idiotic design of the Lightning came about by means of the hourly drunken vodka fests. High Command considered restricting Vodkaville's access to vodka, but declined, citing concerns such as "tradition" and "it would be a silly name if we didn't have any vodka in the first place."

Not to mention pretty pointless - engineers + idle time = much booze - much like the Lightning design in the first place.

I guess Dr Surlethe et al are cracking the Avenger code?

Is XCOM going to even bother prototyping the Lightning, or stick with Firestorms for rapid response and Skyrangers for troop transport until Avengers come on-stream?

[Peptuck]

We're fairly certain the idiotic design of the Lightning came about by means of the hourly drunken vodka fests. High Command considered restricting Vodkaville's access to vodka, but declined, citing concerns such as "tradition" and "it would be a silly name if we didn't have any vodka in the first place."

Not to mention pretty pointless - engineers + idle time = much booze - much like the Lightning design in the first place.

I guess Dr Surlethe et al are cracking the Avenger code?

Is XCOM going to even bother prototyping the Lightning, or stick with Firestorms for rapid response and Skyrangers for troop transport until Avengers come on-stream?

I didn't remember how shitty the Lightning was until I'd prototyped it already. I was originally going to deploy it against the alien base, but then I found out it only held twelve guys, and I thought it carried more. I sacked it immediately.

Working on the Flying Suits right now, but the Avenger is probably next on the list. 'till then, we're sticking with Firestorms and Interceptors, the former for taking out major threats and the latter for local area defense and patrolling. The sheer value of elerium alone means the Interceptors are very useful even late game.

I plan to establish at least two more bases, one in South America and one in South Africa, with a last one probably in Australia. That should have us covering the whole globe.

[fnord]

I plan to establish at least two more bases, one in South America and one in South Africa, with a last one probably in Australia. That should have us covering the whole globe.

Explosivo, SomethingSomething and LagerRebellion?

[Peptuck]

I plan to establish at least two more bases, one in South America and one in South Africa, with a last one probably in Australia. That should have us covering the whole globe.

Explosivo, SomethingSomething and LagerRebellion?

Those sound like excellent names

I'm considering establishing a second Skyranger and UFO strike team at Perseus, but the crew and aircraft we've got now works out pretty well. Our Skyranger can get troops anywhere in the world, and there's usually only one UFO down that matters enough for us to assault at any one time.

Its odd that we haven't faced a retaliation mission yet, either. Or that we haven't faced a single psionic attack yet, let alone acquired any psionics ourselves. This has been a very strange X-COM game,

[The Yosemite Bear]

Aussie Base suggestions: Drop Bear, Max Rockatansky, or something else.

[weemadando]

ROBO-DANDO requests transfer to head up operations in the Australian base.

Suggested name for the base:
Bruce

[Peptuck]

A heads-up: it'll be a while on the next couple of updates. I made a lot of progress....
Spoiler

BLASTER BOMBS FUCK YEAH

....but I don't want to strain my bandwidth and it'll take a while to do write-ups.

[Chris OFarrell]

You know, it really is too bad after a nation withdrawls from the project AND is found to have an alien base in the area, being in full collusion with the Xenos scum, that we can't blast their cities one by one with fusion ball ICBM's until they come begging on their radioactive knees to be let back in to the winning team...

No matter.

DEATH TO XENOS! I'll be chearing the troops on from my desk in the new Australian base, somewhere in the tech support section if possible so I can spend the day telling people to fuck off, where the only time I'll have to lift a plasma rifle is if Ando lets the bad guys in the front door due to their cunning trick of offering free Beer...

[Ford Prefect]

Can I have a Blaster Bomb?

[fnord]

No, you can't haz a blaster bomb.

Remember, if aliens terrorise Sydney or Canberra (can't remember which is in the game), don't save the civvy with oversized eyebrows.

[Peptuck]

No, you can't haz a blaster bomb.

Remember, if aliens terrorise Sydney or Canberra (can't remember which is in the game), don't save the civvy with oversized eyebrows.

.....we're supposed to save civvies?

I didn't get the memo. I thought they were just distractions to eat up the aliens' TUs.

[Coalition]

One thing I really like is that the craft are all balanced (though not their weapons, unfortunately)

Interceptors have good loiter time, are relatively cheap, and cost nothing to refuel, at the cost of monthly lease and being the slowest interception craft in the game. You can't really pick off a UFO with an interceptor until it slows down over the target area.

Firestorms are ridiculously fast, but cost a lot of elerium to use regularly.

Avengers are insanely tough and can hold a small army in their holds, but take elerium and months to fully repair after tangling with battleships.

Makes interception a careful game of priorities.

The only advantage Firestorms have over Avenger is their earlier arrival and faster construction time. Once you have Avenger technology and a dedicated manufacturing base, just churn them out.

Now if someone modified the three ships lke this:
Firestorm: 3 weapons
Lightning: as is, but make it the fastest in the game
Avenger: reduce its speed to be slower than Lightnings, but give it good endurance

That would be interesting. The Avenger has basically been modified for long-range operations (needed for Cydonia mission), but cancarry the most troops and tanks. Firestorms are great for killing enemy ships. Lightnings are the fastest transports you have, but they only have one gun, and cannot carry tanks.

[Vendetta]

The only advantage Firestorms have over Avenger is their earlier arrival and faster construction time. Once you have Avenger technology and a dedicated manufacturing base, just churn them out.

But then, once you have Avengers and a base that can manufacture them in a sane amount of time, you have won the game.

[fnord]

.....we're supposed to save civvies?

I didn't get the memo. I thought they were just distractions to eat up the aliens' TUs.

With eyebrows that big, John Howard has to be some sort of human-alien hybrid.

[Peptuck]

Intelligence acquired from our various captives gave us a good idea of what we were going to be facing once we arrived. The alien base would no doubt be defended by elite muton troops with their associated support elements....whatever the fuck those things were. Recognizing that we were to engage in a lot of tight, close-quarters battle, the assault team went in with a pure infantry force; for all the firepower a HWP allowed, the tight confines and explosive-resistant nature of our foes led High Command to order equipment optimized for tight corridor combat.



MJ12-1 led the charge for his part of the squad, and ended up right between two mutons.



Well, this is an auspicious beginning to our enterprise.





Some rapid assaulting by the rest of the squad led to the elimination of the two hostile mutons.






Robo-Revan and Covenant entered from their end of the alien base, and caught a few mutons distracted by that fracas on the other side of the base. They cleared out the mutons and led the way for the rest of the troops to deploy.

Narkus and Robo-Haven did some recon.






Narkus found some interesting stuff.



Robo-Haven found incoming plasma fire.



Zablorg, guided as ever by that most basic human need, searched this area that appeared to contain nothing but processed food and captured experiments for the aliens. He found another of the flying kidney aliens and gunned it down with POINT BLANK DETH.



Robo-Rhoenix, meanwhile, jumped a muton. For the most elite of our enemies, these guys seem not that difficult to defeat if you get the drop on them, and these mutons clearly didn't expect us to be hitting their base.



Recognizing the design of the corridors near where Robo-Haven was downed, Stark led the charge to secure the area that was clearly the alien command center.



By the time we reached the command center, it turned out that we'd killed everyone in the base. Disappointing.

Post-mission analysis: Nearly flawless victory. Only two casualties who can be easily replaced, and a huge boon to our various coffers and resources. However, the most valuable item we recovered from the vast bounty of recovered goodies....



Squee.

[Karza]

Nice work. Just remember to inform all personnel that no matter how much they look like footballs, Blaster Bombs shouldn't be used in that capacity. Vodkaville especially should not receive or manufacture any BBs at all.

- So, how exactly did the engineering bay and half the base along with it get blown to ratshit?
- Um, well, we had a few bottles of vodka and those doohickeys that really look like footballs and... er...

[PeZook]

Don't worry, Russians don't play american football. Just don't show them wrong movies before their latest drinking binge and you should be fine.

[White Haven]

Easily replaced.
Easily replaced.
EASILY REPLACED

[Peptuck]

Easily replaced.
Easily replaced.
EASILY REPLACED

We could rebuild Zablorg from the tattered skin and bloodstains of a Chrysalid infestation.

Compared with that, replacing a single gaping, smoking head wound is child's play.

[Eulogy]

Speaking of which, is my new clone body done yet?

[Vendetta]

Easily replaced.
Easily replaced.
EASILY REPLACED

We could rebuild Zablorg from the tattered skin and bloodstains of a Chrysalid infestation.

Compared with that, replacing a single gaping, smoking head wound is child's play.

After all, most X-Com agents don't use their heads for more than headbutting the necks off of beer bottles.

[White Haven]

Dammit Vendetta, the beard has to grow somewhere, and I'd rather it was there.

White Haven, Man Enough To Shave With Muton Plasma Fire.

[Peptuck]

Been a while since I updated. I blame Project Origin and Spring Break.

Operations following the destruction of the first alien base were normal.









We intercepted and destroyed a number of alien scouts, along with a floater harvester. Our plasma beams are so powerful that they often destroy even large scouts outright.

The rough kill count thus far stands at:

Coalition: 16
PeZook: 14
Tasoth: 6
Erik Von Nien: 5
Robo-Phred: 10/2

Plus or minus a few that I might have forgotten. Out of 61 encountered UFOs thus far, that's a pretty solid shoot-down rate. The only vessel we didn't drop was a floater battleship that we lost track of over Australia.

Chief Engineers Academia and Fnord managed to pull their heads out of the bottles long enough to have a brainstorm: strap a UFO navigation system onto a power suit.


Unfortunately, these Flying Suits cost a painful amount of elerium to build, so their use will only go to the most experienced and capable soldiers in our force.

Code: Select all

From: X-COM High Command
To: All X-COM Personnel
Subject: Usage of new flying suits

Whichever of you stupid fuckers decided it would be a laugh riot to go zipping around over Berlin in the new suits shouting Warhammer 40,000 quotes and waving a chainsaw is going to be cleaning latrines with their faces.

Ha, ha. Yes, you're an Assault Marine. Very funny.

Thought for the Day: When in doubt, kill it again.

After downing UFO-61, a sectoid abductor, we decided to test out our new toys. The mission objective here, aside from recovering UFO components, was to take a sectoid officer alive. We knew from previous battles and interrogating the prisoners that sectoid officers remained on the upper floors of sectoid terror ships, harvesters, and abductors. Further, testing of our new "blaster bomb" weapons showed that we could potentially breach the outer hulls of a UFO with a well-placed bomb. A cunning plan was devised.

The main bulk of our troops, a five-man fireteam led by Robo-Decue and supported by Hawkwings in the Laser HWP, would launch a ground assault on the abductor, as usual. Meanwhile, two of our rookies would be armed with blaster bomb launchers. Their job would be to breach the roof of the abductor. The final team would consist of a three-man raiding squad armed with flying suits, consisting of Robo-Dando, Robo-Zablorg, and Commander Stark. Once the roof of the UFO was breached, they would swoop down inside, stun the sectoid officer, and bring him back to the Skyranger.

It was an ambitious plan. A solid and doable one, but it relied on speed, precision, and skill. Those were not X-COM's strong suits.

As soon as we got off the Skyranger, we took fire from a barn west of our landing zone. Erik-t tested his new blaster bomb launcher.





Sweet Jesus.



Erik_t followed up by putting another blaster bomb into the roof of the abductor. We breached a small hole, and the flight team moved in, while the ground team handled sweep-and-clear on the ground as normal. Several sectoids were spotted and quietly eliminated before they could report our positions.



Something....happened to Stark as we neared the UFO, and he veered off, dropping his plasma rifle. As Robo-Zablorg and Robo-Dando prepared to breach, suddenly, they came under fire from Stark's laser pistol!

Their augmented brains responded quickly, remembering the aliens supposed telepathic powers, and they dropped down inside the UFO.


Zablorg spotted a single rather surprised sectoid in the "bridge" section of the UFO, and stunned it with POINT BLANK STUN. The moment that happened, Stark seemed to recover his wits, and followed the team inside. We checked the body, and found....


Mission accomplished. Standard X-COM beatings followed. However, there were still several sectoids inside that had survived the ground team's assault, and were spotted inside the UFO's second level.



Erik_t dealt with them in a manner most point-blank and deathly.

I didn't get a screenshot of the aftermath, but you can guess what it looked like.



Post mission analysis: X-COM, FUCK YEAH.

The psychic attack on the Commander caught us off-guard, but we were lucky that Stark only used his plasma pistol, and not his rifle. The laser bolts simply deflected off our troops' armor. HighCom has placed him under temporary quarantine until we can determine if the psychic attack has had any residual effect on his psyche.

[Starglider]

Entertaining stuff, I'm glad you're continuing this. It does seem to be getting a bit easy though. No Ethereals yet?

[Peptuck]

Oh, I'm betting the ethereals are right around the corner.

Hopefully, by the time we deal with them, we'll have a solid psionics corps ready to go, at which point the game is practically over.