Let's Play X-COM: UFO Defense!

[Peptuck]

WHY DID I NOT GET PROMOTED

THIS IS NOT HOW IT IS

You're at least a sergeant, judging by one of the FIRE pictures.

I haven't been keeping track of ranks, except for Stark, who is Commander right now.

Naturally, Stark stays waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay the fuck in the back, where he can spew insults and snack on vegimite in peace.

[Peptuck]

Holy moley. I guess that's what I get for mocking those poor ground soldiers.

You survived, but not without taking a lot of damage. Perseus may take a few days to get your interceptor back up to speed.

I tried to move you in on the battleship using a cautious attack, but that just let the battleship smack you hard. We're gonna need Firestorms or Avengers to hope to swat those bastards out of the sky.

[Temjin]

First off, and most importantly, while this is still highly entertaining, I'm noticing a disturbing lack of me. Don't tell me I died and you didn't even mention it!

More seriously, any particular reason you put the pictures in spoiler tags?

[phred]

Piloting


Here, you can see the exciting new paths in the career of piloting X-COM has paved for mankind. With these new craft, our capacity to wipe the xenos scum from the sky is almost guaranteed, and we don't have to worry about the stateless nature of X-COM interfering with little things like bureaucratic oversight!

Does this mean I get my spaceship soon?

Is it time to sing the Doom Song?

any particular reason you put the pictures in spoiler tags?

Probably because they were to much awesome to be put straight on to the page.

[Peptuck]

First off, and most importantly, while this is still highly entertaining, I'm noticing a disturbing lack of me. Don't tell me I died and you didn't even mention it!

You're still alive. I sometimes forget to change out squadmembers.

That said, we killed approximately 73456234569820765896 UFOs over Brazil. Everyone's getting rotation to clean up.

More seriously, any particular reason you put the pictures in spoiler tags?

So you'd have to click them.
Spoiler

Starship Troopers ring a bell here?

Does this mean I get my spaceship soon?

Is it time to sing the Doom Song?

Piloting


Here, you can see the exciting new paths in the career of piloting X-COM has paved for mankind. With these new craft, our capacity to wipe the xenos scum from the sky is almost guaranteed, and we don't have to worry about the stateless nature of X-COM interfering with little things like bureaucratic oversight!

Does this mean I get my spaceship soon?

Is it time to sing the Doom Song?

In between Russian drinking songs, the engineers at Vodkaville are wiring ROBO-PHRED into the Firestorm's cockpit, yes.

[White Haven]

No need for a Firestorm for battleships, you just need to follow the officially-mandated ISO-OVERKILL standards for XCOM operations.

If cannon fire doesn't kill it, you are not using enough.

Besides, a four-interceptor flight bringing the pain in perfect unison is a thing of beauty. But yeah, one-on-one hurts. >.<

[PeZook]

Firestorms can bring down battleships by their lonesome, though, if you're willing to pay the price of a long hangar stay.

[Vendetta]

I'd be surprised if you could solo a battleship with a Firestorm. It'll do you in in about three hits, and will start firing before you're in range. At least two would be needed, so that it has to split it's fire between them.

Avengers can solo battleships with plasma beams, but they take an arse-reaming in the process, to the extent that it's nearly quicker to build a new one than repair it.

[Eulogy]

I'd be surprised if you could solo a battleship with a Firestorm. It'll do you in in about three hits, and will start firing before you're in range. At least two would be needed, so that it has to split it's fire between them.

Avengers can solo battleships with plasma beams, but they take an arse-reaming in the process, to the extent that it's nearly quicker to build a new one than repair it.

It's usually safer and cheaper to just let the battleship land, then go crash their party. Twin plasma beams can safely take out everything else, though, and battleships are pretty rare compared to all of the other ships that invade.

Fusion Ball Launchers match the batteships' range, but their embarassing ammo capacity, along with the fact that making the ammo costs elerium, means that plasma beams are indeed the best craft weapon in the game.

If you REALLY NEED to shoot down a battleship, send multiple Avengers with twin plasmas at it.

[Peptuck]

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.

[PeZook]

Huh? I suppose it depends on difficulty, but I pwned battleships with Firestorms regularly on Veteran.

[Peptuck]

This mission, described in three words:

X-COM, FUCK YEAH

[/u]

Starglider brought us in hard and fast, catching the mutons completely off-guard when we landed. We caught most of the aliens out in the fields, securing the area, and stormed off the ramp before they could get organized. The HWP came under fire the second it started rolling down the ramp. Hawkwings returned fire just as quickly, to discover something most disturbing.



Mutons are tough motherfuckers. That one took a direct hit with a HWP rocket and shrugged. Narkus ran down the ramp to give it a shot with his/her autocannon.



Fucking Radioactive Jesus Christ.



Finally, Robo-Dando Mk1 managed to kill the Mutonator with plasma fire. However, this muton resistance to high explosive death would prove most disturbing for the rest of the mission.



Hawkwings spotted another muton in a field some ways away, and lobbed a missile its way. It missed. Joviwan fired a plasma burst, managing to hit the muton dead center in the chest. The fucking thing smiled at us.



MJ12-1 wiped the smile off its face with three direct hits with his autocannon.

Note: The strength stats of our experienced troops are getting high enough that we can arm just about all of them with autocannons without any problem.




Vympel spotted another muton, and in what was rapidly becoming a common occurrence, managed to tickle it with his heavy plasma gun. It took another burst from MJ12 to drop this muton.



Robo-Dando kept proving his supreme cybernetic badassery by killing this muton outright with a plasma bolt.



Commander Stark spotted another muton, which was wading through Zablorg's autocannon fire like a light spring shower. He dropped it with a plasma bolt, and beyond, noted the massive alien battleship.



Robo-Dando just keeps piling up the fucking corpses.



Hawkwings let out a yelp of surprise when this muton staggered to its feet, apparently deciding the minor bruising it was getting from our rain of high explosive shouldn't distract it from its early-morning jog through a field of concierta wire, followed by a mild breakfast of nails and broken glass.



Joviwan put it down for good.




Meanwhile, Robo-Zablorg and Robo-Shepp discovered more disturbing news: several of the mutons we had been dropping with massed fire were still alive. Bricks were shat, and the armory crews will no doubt be complaining about cleaning out the suits when we get back.



The squad prepared to assault the UFO.



Hawkwings led the way and WHATTHEFUCKISTHATTHING. It looks like a fucking flying kidney.



It died all the same, though.

Note: It says something about the level of ass-kicking here when we don't even bother mentioning the muton that Joviwan casually executed in the corridor.




Robo-Haven ditched his rocket launcher for close-quarters battle, and found this thing wandering around on the third floor. It took three autofire laser bursts to kill.



The squad swept and cleared the first floor of the battleship. meanwhile, outside, Stark and Zablorg ran back to the Skyranger to grab stun bomb launchers so we could keep the unconscious EPWs secured.



Whoa. Trippy.



Joviwan, at the bottom of this lift, proved a well-placed shot to mutons' nonexistant nutsack was just as effective on them as it was on genitalia-imbued humans.




Covenant dropped the last muton on the upper floor, while Zablorg and Stark spent several rounds finding the stunned but recovered mutons on the ground and putting them back under.



Post mission analysis: X-COM! THE XENOS-KILLER! YOU'LL HAVE SO MUCH ELERIUM! TWO HUNDRED ELERIUM!

This was quite possibly one of the biggest fucking hauls we could have asked for. As tough as the mutons were to drop, they were ultimately easy prey, and we suffered no casualties. We bagged three prisoners, four UFO power sources, a virtual armory of alien weapons, and more elerium THAN YOUR BODY HAS ROOM FOR.

Joviwan and ROBO-DANDO are getting commendations for basically killing everything that moved and then teabagging the corpses.

We also managed to recover a single blaster bomb. No blaster launchers, sadly. Maybe the terror ship will have one . . . .

[Vendetta]

Get an interceptor tooling around Brazil. Almost certainly that infiltration was successful, so look for that base, so that X-Com can track muddy bootprints into it's nice carpets.

[Hawkwings]

NO CASUALTIES?!?

This calls for a celebration! Party in the HWP control room!

Seriously, that was some awesome ass-kicking there.

[Peptuck]

Get an interceptor tooling around Brazil. Almost certainly that infiltration was successful, so look for that base, so that X-Com can track muddy bootprints into it's nice carpets.

Missions aren't successful unless the UFO lifts off.

That said, infiltration is designed to turn a country against X-COM, and killing the battleship behind it isn't guaranteed to stop it. We won't know if the infiltration was successful until the end of the month.

We'll step up Skyranger and Interceptor patrols anyway, and set up our next monitoring station in South America. If there's a base, we'll find it.

[Zablorg]

I find the advertisement below us hilariously appropriate

[Vendetta]

Missions aren't successful unless the UFO lifts off.

Infiltration missions are a little odd, as are alien bases. You can destroy the ships and prevent the aliens scoring for the takeoff, but still have the base planted or country infiltrated. It actually toggles that as soon as the final wave arrives (Alien Base missions are the same, the base is created as soon as the battleship appears).

I wouldn't be surprised at all if there is an alien base in or near Brazil.

[phred]

You TOOK a battleship with no casualties? That's some serious awesome right there.

I dont think I ever pulled that off, even in easy mode.

[Erik von Nein]

Well, guess nearly getting my ship blown in half was worth it, then. Go massive awesomeness!

[Eulogy]

Fitting theme song for X-Com?

Badassery aside, what's our current roster?

[Karza]

Was the leader/commander among those live aliens recovered?

[Peptuck]

Was the leader/commander among those live aliens recovered?

Nope.

Next update:

-New craft!
-New research!
-New dissappointments!
-Hot UFO on Interceptor action!
-PERFIDIOUS TREASON!
-You have no chance to survive, make your time.

[The Defenestrator]

Was the leader/commander among those live aliens recovered?

There's no such thing as a Muton leader or commander.

[weemadando]

Oh fuck yeah.

I feel the need to quote Ultimate Force:

"Two in the mouth. Job done."

*edit for irony* - I am actually listening to the Tour of Duty soundtrack while catching up with this thread. Awesome accompaniment.

[Ford Prefect]

That's pretty amusing. 'Haha, oh yeah, these mutons keep eating our fire, but we just keep feeding it to them.'