Cthulhu au Paste (My first game "play by play")

[Roland117]

Well, it's the first time I've really played TFTD in almost half of my life (more than a decade). I'm so rusty you could make thermite using my x-com skills... But anyways, here's the skinny:

 

Game setup:

Most base and battlescape effecting edits from xcomutil

Human weapons use no ammo (gas cannon is set to HE, hydro jet uses phosphorous, torpedoes are unchanged)

Superhuman difficulty

 

Game Start:

Day 1: Research Gauss tech, re-arrange troops and gear onto a barracuda. Loadout is the 4 best recruits (they gen'd well) with 2 harpoon rifles, a gas cannon , and the hydro jet cannon.

 

~4 hours later, check the graphs, bugs are moving nearby, passing through eurasia, so i start a patrol with bacu 1 (barracuda 1 for future reference). 3 minutes later, contact with a really small ship, which bacu 1 downs with a single ajax. Cue Mission 1!

 

Tactical:

Turn 1 - Send out my gc and 1 harpoon soldier, find out i'm completely on the bottom corner. gc takes cover behind wing, the hr moves out and scouts.

 

~Turn 6 - Scoured most of the left half of the map... slowly... and found nothing. Send out the other two aquanauts, they move NW. The first hr soldier I sent out heads SE towards the right corner

 

~Turn 8 - HR soldier (who's name I found out after checking "Christel Mederow") slowly advances towards last building in the right corner, and promptly releaves himself as he stumbles onto a single aquatoid. Cue auto-fire, and luckily 1 dead aquatoid. Mission ends with Mederow gaining promotion to ensign!

 

Day 2: Early today, I notice activity levels increase near the bahamas. Several hours later, I have a confirmation that they are REALLY getting busy (jumped up in activity to around 60 within 4 hours. Wait for the baca to refuel, then send it out. Day 2 ends with the statement that bacu 1 doesn't have enough fuel to even reach the US from Neo Japan...

 

Day 3: Activity in bahamas caps out at ~80. Activity in nearby Mexico caps out at ~40.

 

Days 4-10: Absolutely no activity what so ever. Not even a peep. Finish research on most of the gauss weapons tree. Starting the ammo clip for heavy gauss for ship gauss cannons. Then day 10 hits, and they have a small ship nearby X-COM Korea/Japan. Send out bacu 1. It fails to hit with the first atack, then the USO pulls away. It lands a half our later, and our second battle begins!

 

Tactical:

Turn 1 - send out my trusty gc and nameless rookie. We're in the top corner, so rookie goes SW, gc goes SE. Turns out there's a

 

Turn 2 - Sending out Ensign Mederow. Special care is given to him, since he's actually managed to kill something, and his skills may prove usefull. He moves SW along hard cover points. GC encounters a hollow structure, and the alien responsible for rookies' death. First kill goes to the gc soldier as she blasts the alien to miniscule bits, then enters cover.

 

Turn 3 - GC attempts to blast open structure, but has no LOS. Attempts to aquire a better shot meet with Aquatiod resistance, and gc dies horribly.

 

Turn 4 - Seaman Bakeovich, armed with the Hydro Jet, moves towards hollow structure, CAREFULLY. Mederow continues SW.

 

Turn 5 - Bakeovich gets a bead on the entryway to the building, and auto-shots it full of fiery goodness. No melodious screams, but a deep feeling of safety is felt. Mederow spots an aquatiod standing in the open, fries it with an aimed gauss rifle bolt to the enlarged cranium. The floating brain debris reminds him of the dangers at hand in being in an open sniping position.

 

Turn 6 - Bakeovich heads SE, going around the outside of the structure, pauses by some pillars.

 

Turn 6.5 - Aquatoids must not like being set on fire, because 2 shots ring out from back by the structure's entrance, blasting 2 of the pillars apart. Bakeovich swears he's never drinking again after today! Thankfully, it's agonizingly slow death by immolation remedies the situation.

 

Turn 7 - Ensign Mederow contemplates the loss of half of the squad, and understands that he's dangerously close to the combat loss threshhold. But he decides to press on, with more dedication to cover. Also, he primes a grenade, as the previous alien apparently came from another hollow structure.

 

Turn 8 - Bakeovich leaves his sniping platform, and heads SW. Finds evidence of hollow building, so he waits. Mederow slowly creeps up to the door, but can't find a good spot to toss the grenade. Upon getting infront of the door, he spots an aquatiod staring northward. Over-reacting (and fearing more 'toids are in the building) he throws the grenade to the middle of the room and ducks back behind the wall. An explosion, and 1 scream are heard.

 

Turns 9-11 - Slow clearing of the map, with an aqua jet auto-fire into a structure just to be safe. No door noises, but last place is the alien sub. Which looks just like a little scout or light ship. Until I find out that xcomutil has changed the layout completely. F***. This is not going to be fun...

 

Turn 12 - Bakeovich moves in, opening the first door, then the door on the right. Two seperate aquatoids. A pair of close range snap shots ends their lives, and wins us some nice loot too!

 

That's all for now. I'll record the rest as I play. Cya!

[Space Voyager]

Good luck - and DO NOT PANIC when you meet them Lobstermen!

[Roland117]

Gas crap... Lobstermen... Well, I had a bit of a goof up, so I'm kinda going to probably not play that one again... I was using the baracudas for transports, and I sold the starting triton, not even 2 hours before a terror attack hit on the other side of the world... Thankfully, the only save I have for that game was more than a week before that incident, but I'm rather ashamed of myself...

 

Started playing that save again... Only to find that even with 50 researchers, it will take more than a month to research medkits... So I'm going to change that out, and then start a new game. While I like the xcomutil notion of captured aliens help with research, it's darn near impossible to catch live aliens, espeicially on superhuman difficulty. So, getting rid of that, and starting a new game!

 

Going with the same settings as before, I'm just going to use a different strategy for getting live aliens... And that's using up a lot of dead soldiers to get them...