Let's Play X-COM: UFO Defense!

[weemadando]

YEAH. Back to Captain. Where I belong.

[Karza]

Wait, I'm alive? I thought the second time was the charm, but apparently I got scraped off the walls and rebuilt again .

[Peptuck]

Wait, I'm alive? I thought the second time was the charm, but apparently I got scraped off the walls and rebuilt again .

Pah.

You think little things like repeatedly dying will stop our righteous vengeance against the xenos invaders?

[White Haven]

EVEN IN DEATH I STILL SERVE.

[havocfett]

EVEN IN DEATH I STILL SERVE.

Could we do that for a tank? Or just some random power-suited robo-troop? Anyways, sign me up for cannon fodder or a pilot if a position opens up.

[The Yosemite Bear]

we need to classify the advanced HWPs as being some sort of psi-shielded dread naughts...

[Peptuck]

Note: if you look closely, you can tell I was listening to Dragonforce while I was doing this update. There really isn't any music better suited to the amount of ass-kicking associated with this update.



Doctor Bear finished interrogating the muton captives while the team was en route back to Skynerfed with the new prisoners.

While the mutons proved "pleasantly resilient," in his words, he was eventually able to break them. When asked as to his methods, Doctor Bear replied with a series of mad giggles, and references to "two girls, one cup" and "Selene Dion." Several veteran men present at the scene visibly shuddered.

The field team had barely returned and offloaded our heavily sedated alien prisoner when we received an alert from Vodkaville and Perseus.






Another alien infiltration, this time in the Americas! There were only two funding nations in the immediate area, and of them, the United States was clearly of greater value to our operations. No doubt, the mutons intended to infiltrate the American government. The strategic loss this chief funding nation, as well as the risks of revealing our Perseus' location, prompted an immediate response.

Erik Von Nien's interceptor was scrambled, and PeZook and Coalition were dispatched from Vodkaville. However, we knew that while the various interceptors could easily down the lighter vessels, the battleship's weaponry outranged our interceptors' plasma beams and could pick them off with ease.

Our solution came in the form of Robo-Phred. His Firestorm screamed across the Atlantic at speeds that left NORAD collectively pissing itself. Like a wild, psychotic punch screaming across half a planet, he met the muton battleship over Alabama and did battle.



Human engineering prevailed. Robo-Phred suffered significant damage, but downed the battleship. Meanwhile, Erik Von Nien managed to down both the supply ship and the terror ship, while PeZook got the scout.



Cleanup crews were dispatched while our weary interceptors limped home.

Unfortunately (or rather, fortunately) the battleship recovery proved uneventful. Or, that is to say, it proved fairly eventful on the mutons' side, as power-armored humans with plasma weapons and blaster bombs descended from a craft of death to mercilessly massacre them while they stumbled out of the wreck of their wtfpwned battleship.

Once again, we used a two-pronged assault, with the bulk of our troops assaulting on foot while a small strike force in flying suits breached the top of the UFO using a blaster bomb and assaulted from above. We suffered no casualties in the assault.

Code: Select all

From Commander Michael Wong
To: Xenos bastards
Subj: lol aliens

Mutons? Mo' like SUCKTONS!

Thought for the day: God helps he who helps himself to the largest weapon.

The rest of August was mostly spent engaging UFOs in the air. We downed scouts, terror ships, and abductors. Wary of the dangers of chryssalid raep and sectoid mind raep, we steered clear of the abductors and snakeman terror ships, bombing them from the air to clear them away.

Note: In truth, I felt too lazy to clear the UFOs, so I left the wrecks behind.

Doctor Bear finished interrogating the sectoid leader. When we asked how he managed to avoid having his mind assaulted by the powerful alien, Dr. Bear replied that the sectoid did try to take over his mind - and immediately recoiled when it entered his brain. Having seen the man in action, we can understand why the xenos was so horrified.



Doctor Surlethe took much of biological data rcovered from the sectoid leader and analyzed it, and concluded that the psionic powers used by the sectoids could be harnessed and developed in human beings, if we constructed the proper facilities to implant, test, and train them.

Psi-labs have begun development in Skynerfed, with possible secondary facilities being deployed at Perseus to test the produced clones and other recruited troops. Also, per the suggestions of the troops, we have begun....additional construction operations at Skynerfed, with the awareness of the possibility of the aliens attacking our facilities.



If the aliens come, they will find us VERY well prepared for them.

In addition to this construction, we have established three new bases.





Explosivo, Something, and Lagerville are detection facilities, located in Argentina, Australia, and Kenya, respectively. Once these facilites are complete, we will be able to detect UFO activity anywhere in the globe, and to deal with xeno incursion locally.

We are considering establishing two more detection facilities, one in Antarctica and one in Hawaii, to ensure absolute coverage of the globe. Also, one of these facilities may be built as a backup HQ in case - heaven forbid - Skynerfed is lost to alien assault.

Finally, end of month report:







Our current strategic situation is solid. We've got excellent funding, good research going, we're finally breaking into psionics, and our security situation across the globe is as clear as it can get. If the aliens act in any area, we can intercept them or at least get our Skyranger with a strike team on the ground inside a day. I'd feel better if we had any local interception capabilities in Africa, South America, or Australia, but we should have that dealt with by the end of September.

Our biggest challenge right now is dealing with battleships; though Phred was able to down one with his Firestorm, the Firestorm is still out of commission even at the end of August; the same advanced alloys that make it so damn durable are also what makes it so difficult to repair. Unless we build more Firestorms, we may have to simply let battleships land, which could be disastrous if they are conducting infiltration missions, as the incident in Brazil has already shown. And even with multiple Firestorms, our Elerium-115 reserves are not limitless.

That said, we're doing great. Not a single alien mission was allowed to be completed, and we've thoroughly foiled xenos efforts at infiltrating our funding nations' governments. We've got good financing, excellent funding, our spnsor slove us, and we're well on the way to ataining total battlefield superiority through the abuse of psionics. We've got this war in the bag.

Right?

[Temjin]

While the mutons proved "pleasantly resilient," in his words, he was eventually able to break them. When asked as to his methods, Doctor Bear replied with a series of mad giggles, and references to "two girls, one cup" and "Selene Dion." Several veteran men present at the scene visibly shuddered.

Woah! Woah! Hold on there! While the aliens are killing civilians left and right and trying to enslave humanity, don't you think that's taking things a little bit too far? Surly just regular ol' torture is enough!

[fnord]

So me and the boyz are gonna be real busy - time for more spirits, I think - I'll take two bottles of vodka as a weekly ration.

I didn't see enough POINT BLANK DETH this update. Good to see my learned colleage, Dr Bear, has discovered at least one psionic counteroffensive strategy - let the sucker in and grin while it gets mind raeped.

Skynerfed looks like it's going to be a stone cold bitch to defend, with what you're building allowing the xenos to attack on a fairly broad front and have a decent chance of flanking forward forces.

Explosivo, Something, and Lagerville are detection facilities, located in Argentina, Australia, and Kenya, respectively. Once these facilites are complete, we will be able to detect UFO activity anywhere in the globe, and to deal with xeno incursion locally.

YOU MANIAC! Lagerville was supposed to be the AUSTRALIAN base!

[The Yosemite Bear]

So me and the boyz are gonna be real busy - time for more spirits, I think - I'll take two bottles of vodka as a weekly ration.

I didn't see enough POINT BLANK DETH this update. Good to see my learned colleage, Dr Bear, has discovered at least one psionic counteroffensive strategy - let the sucker in and grin while it gets mind raeped.

Skynerfed looks like it's going to be a stone cold bitch to defend, with what you're building allowing the xenos to attack on a fairly broad front and have a decent chance of flanking forward forces.

Explosivo, Something, and Lagerville are detection facilities, located in Argentina, Australia, and Kenya, respectively. Once these facilites are complete, we will be able to detect UFO activity anywhere in the globe, and to deal with xeno incursion locally.

YOU MANIAC! Lagerville was supposed to be the AUSTRALIAN base!

I simply thought of 4Chan, and the Septoid leader was asking me for Razor Blades.

[phred]

And that, ladies and gents, is how its done.

I think I need to be reassigned to either America, or Australia after I get repaired, seeing as that's where the Xeno scum seems to be focusing their efforts.

[Peptuck]

Skynerfed looks like it's going to be a stone cold bitch to defend, with what you're building allowing the xenos to attack on a fairly broad front and have a decent chance of flanking forward forces.

Aside from making the batlte more interesting, those are plasma defense batteries. Four of them (with two more once the connections are established) which will be more than enough dakka to down any alien ship trying to fuck with us.

The last open space is going to go to a Gravity Shield, which will double the effectiveness of all base defenses, which means we'll have the equivilant of TWELVE plasma defense batteries.

Any alien getting through that will have earned the advantage in hitting our base.

Explosivo, Something, and Lagerville are detection facilities, located in Argentina, Australia, and Kenya, respectively. Once these facilites are complete, we will be able to detect UFO activity anywhere in the globe, and to deal with xeno incursion locally.

YOU MANIAC! Lagerville was supposed to be the AUSTRALIAN base!

Beauraratic error. We will ship extra lager to Lagerville to make up for it.

And that, ladies and gents, is how its done.

I think I need to be reassigned to either America, or Australia after I get repaired, seeing as that's where the Xeno scum seems to be focusing their efforts.

You and I think alike. I'm planning on transferring the Firestorm to Perseus, along with a good hunk of our elerium, to keep the USA clear of incursion.

[fnord]

Skynerfed looks like it's going to be a stone cold bitch to defend, with what you're building allowing the xenos to attack on a fairly broad front and have a decent chance of flanking forward forces.

Aside from making the batlte more interesting, those are plasma defense batteries. Four of them (with two more once the connections are established) which will be more than enough dakka to down any alien ship trying to fuck with us.

The last open space is going to go to a Gravity Shield, which will double the effectiveness of all base defenses, which means we'll have the equivilant of TWELVE plasma defense batteries.

Any alien getting through that will have earned the advantage in hitting our base.

Ah, supplementing the Porta-Raep with Turbo-Raep?

Sweet.. chookfucking... jesus... that's almost enough dakka. Now if you added another plasma battery or two, then Skynerfed will halve the gap to enough dakka. ("Madness? THIS .. IS.. SKYNERFED!")

Not to mention the battleship confetti littering the countryside. Great way to crank up a massive monthly score on an ongoing basis - they keep coming until a base assault is defeated on the ground.

[White Haven]

You really have to wonder how X-COM stays covert after great big goddamned storms of green death begin ripping the shit out of something coming down out of the stratosphere, which promptly does its best noonday sun impression and rains unknown material all of hundreds of square miles of countryside.

This is not a weather balloon.

[The Yosemite Bear]

No that was the Aurora Borealas, what third time this week and were located in the southern hemisphere?, *waves had*

These are not the droids you are looking for*

[Eulogy]

Once psionics come online, you can pull a little trick to give green troops extra training. Mind Control some poor bastard (NOT terrorists though, as they have built-in weapons, or anything psionic), force it to drop everything in it's inventory (scroll through the inventory screens of your own troops until you come to it), and park it somwhere where your power/flying suited guys can face it. Surround it, have it pick up a laser pistol, and wait for reaction fire. Laser pistol shots cannot penetrate the front plate of pristine power/flying suits, so it's an easy way to gain reaction experience. Aliens without weapons or psi won't do anything, so don't worry.

I expect amusing antedotes.

[Peptuck]

Took me a while to do this one. I blame jury duty and RE5.

-------------------------------------

At last. At long last.



We've got a shot at the xenos behind this entire war. The Ethereals themselves have shown up, unable to countenance the repeated defeats their minions have suffered at humanity's hands. Robo-Phred downed their first scout over the United States, and we moved in to deal with the survivors.



Deployment was fast and brutal. We were worried about the Ethereals' vaunted psionic skills.



Robo-Dando: CLOAK-WEARING BITCHES DO NOT KNOW ABOUT MY STUN BOMB LAUNCHER.


Temjin downed these two singlehandedly.


And then he got the last one through this orchard. The trees were subsequently questioned by X-COM, but they were tight-lipped. Zablorg torched them for their insolence. We've watched The Happening. We know they're up to something.





Yawn. Another battleship. Phred downed this one with less than a quarter damage to his Firestorm.





Standard battleship clearing followed. Team Death From Above went in to the upper floor. Autocannon and plasma cannon roared, and mutons were slain in their multitudes whilst Stark sneered in contempt.


Team Death From Below slaughtered the mutons stumbling from the wreckage. The only notable event was Vanas wrecking this muton so hard it vanished:



And.....

The Iron Muton.


It took a plasma bolt and passed out. Then it got up, and Wautd shot it with a rocket.


Fucking Christ.


Yeah, that last rocket only knocked it out, again.


Any muton that tough deserves to live.


On the research front, Chiefs Fnord and Academia pulled their heads out of the vodka long enough to design this: a psi-amp which can be used by our psionic troops to target their mind powers against the aliens. It won't be any good until we've tested the troops for psionic ability, which also won't happen until the psionic labs are finished, but hey. Its progress.


Autopsies by Doctor Surlethe on the captured Ethereals revealed much.


Interrogations by Doctor Bear supplemented this, though it appears we only captured soldier-rank Ethereals. Still, by our knowledge of the aliens' caste system and social structure, these soldier Ethereals are high-level enemy troops, the elite of the elite. Their mere presence has shown X-COM's effectiveness against the invaders.


Perseus tracked a muton supply ship halfway through September.



It looks the mutons are....

Wait, no. No. I am not making a CSI Miami joke here, no matter how tempted I am to do so. No sunglasses, no YEEAAAAAAAHHH, no Horatio. Fuck you, CSI Miami. We should just let the mutons HAVE Florida.

.....ah, screw it. Let's go stomp some xenos throats.

[weemadando]

It's OK. Michael Weston, Crockett and Tubbs will stop the Mutons.

In the meantime I need to daze more Ethereals with FIREPOWER.

Yeah. Psychic don't count for shit when I hit you in the face with a bomb does it?

[Hawkwings]

Ahh yeah, here we go. My tank needs (in addition to more guns of course) some sort of dozer blade/flail/buzz-saw monstrosity in order to better, eh... stomp throats.

[Peptuck]

Incidentally, we need fighter pilots for Something, Lagerville, and Explosivo.

[Formless]

Then count me in. All the major action seems to be happening in the skys anyway.

[Peptuck]

Then count me in. All the major action seems to be happening in the skys anyway.

Pretty much.

I'm holding off on raiding enemy crash sites now unless they're battleships, at least until we get psionics running.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Am I contributing much anymore, and how the hell did I interrogate those robe wearing guys, probably took away their robes, and kept the lights on....

[Starglider]

Then count me in. All the major action seems to be happening in the skys anyway.

Hey, I've been waiting the entire game for my moment of truth; piloting the Avenger to Cydonia

[Darmalus]

I'm all for hurtling myself at high speed in a flying device built by someone who can't pass a sobriety test at any point during the day, sign me up!