Let's Play UFO:Extraterrestrials Gold

[Thorondor]

That pattern you've noticed in the arrival of scouting UFOs, Zombie, indicates they're doing their due probing for your vulnerabilities, likely verifying how long it takes before interceptors get on their case in different areas and how many at a time at each.

 

Scouts are nimble and probably faster than the battlecruisers but either way that should allow for an estimatation on their part (i.e. the AI's) pertaining your interception response times.

 

Your own escalation in air forces may or may not factor in as well, potentially triggering larger waves of UFOs, but I guess we'll find out before long how the game is rigged in that regard.

 

One thing is for certain, there's plenty of mopping up to do as is according to your latest sitrep, and therefore cash to be made and promotions to be had.

[Zombie]

On to the landed battlecruiser mission then! This time it was 5 Destroyers outside and the rest was Vipons. I made a slight mistake by removing stun grenades for the new-ish rookies a while ago figuring they need kills not stuns and thus they got proximity grenades instead, The seasoned vets still had them though.

 

Securing the perimeter of my transport was a bit difficult as there were destroyers to contend with. But they kinda filed in one-by-one so Kathlene was able to blast them away with accurate auto shots of the plasma rifle. Once the perimeter was secure my troops spread out a little bit to look for trouble on this golf course battlescape. We soon found it: two Destroyers off in the distance. With the first one revealed I think I had Birdie take an aimed shot at the thing to soften it up, then took aimed or snap shots at it with Kathlene until it dropped. Same thing for the other one.

 

The alien life scanner was helpful as it showed there was one alien (which I correctly assumed was a Vipon as it was a 2x2 unit) off to the right of the UFO outside. Phobos scouted ahead and I brought up Kathlene a little to get her into better firing range. When the Vipon was spotted Kathlene blasted it away. After this the life scanner showed there was nothing else outside so everyone made a beeline to the central lift section. Phobos opened the UFO door for Kathlene to kill the two Vipons inside with auto shots, then everyone filed in and plugged the lift so we didn't get any nasty surprises.

 

From the scanner it looked like there was one alien milling around in the South hallway of the UFO so we decided to go after that first. I sent a scout over there to open the door and take a peek. It was a Vipon commander again! There was a bit of a mad rush to find someone who had a stun grenade. I found them on my vets so they dropped one on the ground and Garland picked it up, huffed it over to the door and tossed the stun grenade on it. Luckily it got gassed out and collapsed.

 

The Vipons started to pour out from the North side of the UFO but Kathlene was able to mop them up easily. This is what the upstairs lift room looked like at the end of the mission:

 

 

All lined up like ducks in a row. The end of mission report was stellar again.

 

 

Yet another mission where all the kills were scored by Kathlene. Not only that but we were able to nab a Vipon Commander. I think we have 3 stockpiled at the base now. Not sure how many more I need so I'll keep collecting them like pokemon cards. I better level up Kathlene:

 

 

One point obviously went into shooting to get her to 99. Unreal. Then I put a point into Agility and Vitality and also tossed one in Strength to get her to 82. The last point went into throwing. It's still low but at least it's usable. Back on the Geoscape and what's this?

 

 

Another life scanner? Cool, but unneeded. Then again, two could be helpful for these battlecruiser missions as they are multi level. I could station one soldier with a scanner on the ground level and another above to keep an eye on all the aliens. Anyhow, back to base to equip more stun grenades, the other life scanner and probably switch everyone over to heavy plasmas. The plasma (ship) cannon research project is 99% complete so I'm getting excited for that to finish.

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

Back at it again! My troops just got back to base from their last mission so I thought I'd check the recruit pool to see if there was anything interesting in there. Found someone with 52+ in every stat and has a decent maximum shooting accuracy so I picked him up. Jarrett is the name:

 

 

He seems pretty good, but there's nothing which really stands out either. If he's going on the transport, someone else is coming off so I guess Phobos can take a breather and stay back at base. Did some reorganizing and gave almost everyone heavy plasma guns. Three people got plasma rifles instead: Jarrett because he's a weakling, and Ishantil and Kathlene because they will be carrying the alien life scanners and need an arm free for that. And I beefed up the stun grenades just in case we run across another commander. After all this I waited a few hours so the battlecruiser crash site would be in full sun. Before I could send out my troops my research into the plasma cannon finished. About time! My next project will be the plasma defense module for my base. Not that it'll make much of a difference, but because of the future topics.

 

 

So I started producing those plasma cannons en masse as I need 9 of them minimum. Anyhow, time to send out the troops since it's daylight at the crash site. After landing the first thing I do is check the alien life scanner so there aren't any nasty surprises nearby. There wasn't but I could immediately tell this was going to be a mission with Vipons and Larva from the blips. Not a cake walk but pretty close to it. I did the usual scouting with my vets and took primarily aimed shots with Jarrett. Clearing the outside of the ship went great. There were two Vipons camped out in the central lift on the ground level, but Jarrett took care of them with auto shots since he was so close. Then it was plugging the lift and using vets with high agility to open doors upstairs if an alien got close. We did come across a commander in the North hallway so my two scanner people tossed stun grenades on it. After that it was mostly downhill. Jarrett got critically injured by a Vipon but I was able to patch him up enough to get the kill. The final Vipon opened the door from the hallway and just stood there. Jarrett just strolled over there and took a point blank auto shot killing it.

 

 

So we got Jarrett his 4 promotions and nabbed us another commander too. Life is good. Time to allocate them promotion points.

 

 

I'm honestly not thrilled about how I allocated the points here. There was only so much I could do. Fingers crossed he'll get better next promotion.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

That poor final Vipon really drew the short straw there, Zombie. I mean, he outright opened the door to vendetta, as Jarrett had just been bloodied within an inch of his life by the other Vipon.

 

And the full measure of the punishment dished out was something one notices your recounting did not entirely go into - though the action log tells enough to infer it all: Jarret's up close and personal plasma rifle discharge hit the Vipon "in a weak spot". A merciful euphemism.

 

On the research front, at long last we have the gift of Plasma Cannons. So today another page is turned, high in the sky and we're eager to let fly in the very near future in a spectacle of bright colours.

[Zombie]

And the full measure of the punishment dished out was something one notices your recounting did not entirely go into - though the action log tells enough to infer it all: Jarret's up close and personal plasma rifle discharge hit the Vipon "in a weak spot". A merciful euphemism.

 

Hehe, that's why I posted the pic.

 

So today it's time to eradicate that base. For some reason Jarrett was not on the transport anymore when I reached the base (maybe because he was injured last mission, but when he got back to the battlescape he was fine) so I had to reload and send the transport out again this time with him back on board.The first time it was Vipons and Larva, but this time it was Destroyers and Sentinels. Harder for sure, you aren't going to get much cash due to the lack of alien weapons, but the biggest plus is that XP isn't hard to come by,

 

Besides a couple Destroyers and a Sentinel at the beginning (which Jarrett killed), nothing much happened for a while. I was keeping a close eye on alien positions via the alien life scanner too. Admittedly this was because my whole team was camped out in the anteroom but still it was awfully quiet. Eventually it picked up again. In between kills I had Kathlene shoot out some walls of the next room in order to create a proper "kill zone" where there is clear LOF. This helped out a lot as I rarely had to move Jarrett around for a better shot.

 

Jarrett was hitting a lot but causing little damage most of the time so he was really chewing through the ammo (and getting a ton of XP). The aliens were slowly whittled down to 2 or so. The second to last was a Destroyer which took a ton of shots just to get 25 damage on it. Had to wait till the next round where it got close to the door and then Jarrett was able to finally kill it. He had used up all his ammo so Kathlene tossed him a full clip and a clip with12 shots left in it. Instead of starting a new clip I loaded Jarrett's weapon with the 12 round mag. Luckily the last alien was a Sentinel which went down easily. Here's the carnage:

 

 

And the EOM report was rather boring except for Jarrett's kill count.

 

 

But he gained 3 more levels so 15 more points to spend:

 

 

Five points immediately went into shooting to get him to max, then one point each in agility and vitality and two into Bravery, Strength, Reactions and Throwing. He's better now. I'd like to get him leveled up one more time which would help a lot as I'd like him to have better agility and vitality and an extra point into bravery and strength wouldn't hurt either.

 

Still on the hunt for a decent rookie to train up as I just sacked another vet, though this might be the last one I do as I need to try to level everyone up to warrant officer eventually. Plasma Defense research is just about to finish so the next topic that opens up from that is a new ship rocket which I badly need. The plasma cannons are where it's at though, those things are lethal against battlecruisers. Zombie is a happy guy now.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Pain, devastation, death. The aftermath of every mission where aliens dare to go toe to toe against your forces, Zombie.

 

Your methodical approach delivers once again with a flooring 19-0 kills essentially using a single soldier to inflict the lethal damage. All that to the closing tune of $970.000 entering your coffers.

 

Which makes me wonder - the extra effectiveness of the plasma cannons may be a double-edged sword: saving you from losing or having to extensively repair our interceptors but simply obliterating battlecruisers could deprive us of the sort of income we've just seen.

 

I guess it all depends on how trigger-happy our flyboys get.

[Zombie]

Which makes me wonder - the extra effectiveness of the plasma cannons may be a double-edged sword: saving you from losing or having to extensively repair our interceptors but simply obliterating battlecruisers could deprive us of the sort of income we've just seen.

 

I probably shouldn't have said obliterated in the literal sense. More like damage quickly. Nothing is strong enough to totally destroy a UFO. So there will be ample opportunity to get funds with successful ground missions. Speaking of such, I just shot down a battlecruiser with the new plasma cannons:

 

 

If you'll notice the lone damaged interceptor has about 1/3 health left whereas before it would have been destroyed. Boiling it down it means that my interceptors are able to shoot UFOs down quicker. Would be rude not to go to this mission, right? Well, not much to report on it except the EOM report:

 

 

This battlecruiser contained Chasers and Destroyers. Because all of my men are mostly situated on promotions for a while it meant I could do what I wanted. I must have used 10 chemical grenades on the poor things inside the UFO. They didn't really kill anything, but they do some damage if it gets past armor which is funny - especially on the Destroyers which are robots.

 

Back at base there were not any recruits with 50+ for every stat so I had to wait on hiring.

 

Since I researched plasma defense I figured I should try to swap out my current defenses for this. Can't be done it seems if you remove, say, a laser defense and then immediately try to build a plasma defense (anywhere in the base - not just in the same spot as the laser). The game will immediately crash. Same thing if you destroy a laser defense and then try to destroy another base module. So I did some testing. I found out that if you destroy a module, go back out to the geoscape, then go back into your base you'll be able to build stuff normally again. No more crashes! It's not an ideal workaround but it gets the job done. I've been too chicken to try it out on my main base yet. I want to build an advanced detection module and an advanced laboratory too.

 

Now it seems like the aliens have rolled out a brand new battlecruiser design with upgraded weapons to match. Dang it all, just when I get a foothold the aliens claw it right back. And these weapons are scary stuff too - a couple hits with them and an interceptor is toast. I don't know if all the battlecruisers will be like this from now on, but at least the weaker stuff I can shoot down. I guess the only option is to let these brutes land and take them out on the ground. That I can still handle - unless the aliens are rolling out new handheld weapons too.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

I guess we have our answer regarding how big a retaliatory threat escalation is fielded given relevant technological advancement from a player, Zombie.

 

But it's not like we had any other option as it would fast become untenable not to go the way of Plasma (to simply keep increasing interceptor numbers wouldn't be feasible I think given how the expenses with repairs, maintenance/fabrication would skyrocket).

 

So, I believe you've got the right idea to cope with the new battlecruisers presently - evade and let land, then deal with what comes of it.

 

Time waits for no human in this conflict though, so it's best to start aggressively pursuing Ion grade weaponry unlock ASAP, costs be damned!

[Zombie]

I guess we have our answer regarding how big a retaliatory threat escalation is fielded given relevant technological advancement from a player, Zombie.

 

But it's not like we had any other option as it would fast become untenable not to go the way of Plasma (to simply keep increasing interceptor numbers wouldn't be feasible I think given how the expenses with repairs, maintenance/fabrication would skyrocket).

 

Possibly, though I do think with the reserves of cash I have on hand and the untapped stockpile of plasma weaponry (which could be sold for more cash) at my main base that it would be doable. As I said before it's not so much having more interceptors at my current bases, but rather having more interceptors closer to my main base to help and that requires more bases to be built. The combination of base building and manufacturing multiple interceptors + plasma cannons + laser shields would take a while to complete anyway and I'm sure in that time there would be plenty of ground missions to visit and extract more cash to fund the expansion.

 

Time waits for no human in this conflict though, so it's best to start aggressively pursuing Ion grade weaponry unlock ASAP, costs be damned!

 

I'm doing the best I can! Seriously, I don't know the research tree for this game so I don't know how to even unlock the ion line right now. My guess is I probably need to research the plasma grenade yet as that's the last plasma "thing" left. We'll find out soon enough.

 

Edit: I just looked this up and it requires a dead destroyer to start research into ion. God only knows I have plenty of these.

 

So, I believe you've got the right idea to cope with the new battlecruisers presently - evade and let land, then deal with what comes of it.

 

Yup, that's just what I did:

 

 

Sent my troops over there and found out quickly that it was Chasers and Hallucinoids - the biggest pushover group you could ever hope for. I'm not passing up a chance to wipe out the UFO with those odds. Sweeping the outside was easy as it was in a desert/tropical landscape where there were plenty of "palm trees" to hide behind for cover. When I reached the UFO it looked like a gigantic Cruiser so this wasn't a battlecruiser as I initially thought - it was something else more sinister. The EOM report was again rather ho-hum as nobody got promoted.

 

 

Not a big deal but there were some new alien artifacts recovered: a Cryo Unit, Energy Accelerator and Space Flight Computer. Definitely a different ship. Back in the Geoscape and what's this?

 

 

Well, that's nice! I have two of them already but my soldiers aren't going to complain about more shielding. The only thing they are going to complain about is who is going to get it. And here again, where there is smoke, there is fire:

 

 

That's going to be next on my list of things to do. As for what's going on back at the base I'm currently researching the "Green Thorn" a plasma-based ship rocket which I need desperately to compliment the cannon upgrade for my interceptors.

 

 

Turns out that UFO I just visited was a battleship not a battlecruiser - I must've just seen "battle" and assumed it was a battlecruiser. So these are the things to stay away from if at all possible. I really need either a new interceptor design or a new shield to make it more fair to engage with these beasts.

 

Since it was Monday it was time to check the soldier pool to see if there were any good recruits. Finally got someone halfway decent:

 

 

Bravery and strength are a little on the low side, but I'll be putting points into them anyway. Reactions, throwing and shooting were all pretty good though. Since the alien base is next I guess Melia is going along for the ride. Alien bases are a little bit easier than UFOs which are outdoors because you can stay somewhat safe in the anteroom for the whole mission if you want. That'll make it easier on training him up.

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

I might as well make this a double header today. First thing was to equip my new rookie Melia. He only has 51 strength so it was a real challenge. He obviously had to get a plasma rifle and a beekeeper suit of armor as those are necessities. I also really wanted him to carry the Personal Eternal Shield as that provides 50 shielding (which is equivalent to 8+ laser shields) and it also is only 20 weight units while the same amount of laser shields would weigh 48 (don't ask me why I still equipped him with 3 laser shields anyway, probably didn't read the description close enough). On top of this I wanted him to carry the Distortion Field Generator too (makes it 25% harder to hit and it weighs 15 units). Not really sure if this was necessary as he was already carrying the Eternal Shield but he was going to be the only person getting shot at, right?

 

Long story short, he was at his limit for weight without getting encumbrance penalties. Everything else had to be stripped off of him: Stimpack, Advanced Medikit, extra clips for his plasma rifle, grenades etc - he was bare bones. I figured he wouldn't need the stimpack or Advanced Medikit as he was the one doing the shooting and can't heal himself anyway. I have 3 other soldiers carrying plasma rifles so they could be the mules who carry the extra ammo and if he needed grenades my heavy weapon guys could drop them on the ground for him to pick up.

 

So we head out and get squared away in the anteroom of the base. I started off with my usual strategy of waiting till something wandered too close, then shooting at it with Melia until it was dead. Well, turns out there were two new alien types on this map: Preachers and Observers and they seemed to be fairly resistant to plasma weaponry. Not only that, but Melia couldn't shoot himself out of a paper bag. He resorted to aimed shots only for like 5-6 points of damage each and then someone else would need to mop up the mess and kill the alien taking the points away from him. This went on for a few rounds.

 

I thought on it for a while and decided to mine the next room with proximity grenades to soften the aliens up a little bit, but that didn't amount to much if he couldn't damage them decently. As a last resort I had him toss a chem grenade on an alien if it got within eye-shot and wouldn't you know it but that seemed to kill them quick. Ah-ha! Now I have a strategy.

 

Had to scramble around trying to set something up for him. I had almost everyone drop their chem grenades into one pile on the ground where he would normally kneel in and also dropped a couple plasma rifle clips and a few proximity grenades for good measure. Now when an alien was spotted nearby I had a vet open the door and Melia would pick up a chem grenade off the pile, throw it on the alien and it would be dead. A few of my heavy weapon folk shot out some of the pillars and structures in the next room to make it easier to toss the grenades around in there, but other than that there wasn't much setup.

 

 

These two alien types seem to either take full damage from chemical gas or may even be susceptible to it (meaning they take higher damage). Without the chem grenades I wouldn't have been able to get Melia a lot of XP to level up so they were a real godsend. Near the end of the mission when there were only 3 blips on the scanner there was one alien camped out in the room to the right (East of my troops) who refused to move. Okay, so my vets shot out part of the wall to get an eye on him. Turns out it was a Preacher Commander. Preachers are kinda dangerous as they shoot a type of chemical gas and also wage warfare on soldier bravery. And they are probably resistant to stunning because I had to dump three stun grenades on it before it passed out. A couple rounds later and another Preacher Commander came by so we had to toss some stun grenades on it too (I used up all my stun grenades my guys had and a good portion of the chem grenades too). The last alien was just a observer who was killed with another chem grenade.

 

 

Don't ask me why the kill count doesn't jive, must be an accounting error. Even with the lowish kill count, Melia was still able to jump 6 ranks ahead so it's time to allocate them.

 

 

I put 7 points into both shooting and also strength to get those usable. And I gave him 5 points in bravery as these preachers can be tricky (I should probably finish my research into the mind shield so I can defend against these types of attacks in the future). The rest of the points were allocated around with the most going in agility and vitality. A couple more promotions and he should be good to go. And it was the end of the month so let's see how I did:

 

 

Everyone is maxed out and happy which means a bunch of extra cash. I was very pleased with this report as I was worried about UFO flyovers causing civil unrest. So there you go, a recap of an alien base mission along with some strategies in case anyone decides to try this game out sometime.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

How about that, Zombie, a sneaky Battleship!

 

Gotta love some of those "exotics" recovered from the ship. I'm thinking the components will make a difference research-wise at some point too. My imagination was captured by that Energy Accelerator but it turns out that was a logging error on your records and it was only a dull Energy Accumulator. *sigh*

 

We welcome Chemical warfare Sergeant first class Melia Mccardell as he properly greets fellow newcomers Preachers and Observers (sounds like a church choir group name, but maybe they're cultists of some sort with more down to earth indoctrination of a different kind to pass on to our puny, pliable minds).

 

The end of month report was very satisfying indeed given how you had to deal with rather adverse conditions towards the end with a necessary spike in expenses and still came out well on top of things, in the green over $3.5 million.

[Zombie]

We welcome Chemical warfare Sergeant first class Melia Mccardell as he properly greets fellow newcomers Preachers and Observers (sounds like a church choir group name, but maybe they're cultists of some sort with more down to earth indoctrination of a different kind to pass on to our puny, pliable minds).

 

Cultists? Yeah, that's a good one!

 

Yesterday my research into the Green Thorn rocket finished so I manufactured 13 of them (kind of a weird number, but I needed 9 for all my interceptors and I built 4 extra for when expansion happens). I built 4 extra plasma cannons as well just so I'm covered there. Here's what my Storm interceptors look like right now.

 

 

It was kinda quiet around the globe but there was one fighter which I shot down over land with the new weapons. My crew went in to mop up the mess and it was kind of a mixed bag of aliens. There were a couple Chasers (one looked to be carrying a new type of weapon), a lone Vipon, one Preacher, a couple Observers a Hallucinoid and a new alien called a Trilobite which looks like a miniature UFO. It shrugged off a lot of plasma rifle hits but I was eventually able to wound it somewhat and took it out with the Heavy Plasmas. EOM report:

 

 

So that new weapon was a EEEW rifle, got it. I remembered this weapon from the last time I played this game way back.and it's got some kick to it. Speaking of new weapons, back at base my research into the Destroyer finished in record time which opened up the Ion line. I just ran time forward and got to the Ion Pistol.

 

 

Still quiet on the globe, so I started and finished the Ion Rifle too.

 

 

Swapped out the plasma rifles for the new Ion rifles as soon as they were produced. It was very odd to me that there was absolutely zero alien activity, normally the UFO's would be buzzing around my bases like mosquitos. I then went on to Heavy Ion, and it was the same as before: dead quiet.

 

 

Just as I finished researching the Heavy Ion and a Battleship appeared. There's no way I'm going to take any chances shooting that down even with my new plasma ship weapons so I let it go. In the meantime, I started production of the Heavy Ion and it's clips. Got enough produced to equip my transport and no sooner than I did and the Battleship landed. This will be the litmus test. Will be doing this tonight.

 

I took a screen shot of that new Trilobite alien as I got that researched in the time I was equipping my ship and waiting till I had daylight (that Battleship was in the air for a very long time too).

 

 

Looks like this alien is susceptible to Chemical so you can bet I beefed up the number of chem grenades I carry into a mission now. The Ion weapons will be fairly effective as long as I score high enough on the damage rolls (at least against this type of alien). Who knows what alien types this Battleship has, my guess is it'll probably have a new type.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Sweet looking Storm interceptors you've got there, Zombie. I'm sure they'll prove to have more of a sting now that they have that Green Thorn on their side.

 

And it's heartening to see how much you've managed to fast-track Ion tech weapon research during the unexpected lull in alien craft activity. Triple-E-W entry logged!

 

Those new Trilobites seem to pack a bit of a punch, so keeping a healthy distance and not relying overmuch on their main weapon's supposed lack of accuracy is bound to be for the best.

 

The battleship rests still, as if awaiting - it's sink or swim for those who dare approach it, unaware of whichever otherworldly entities may yet roam within its bowels...

[Zombie]

Today I sent my troops in to take care of that landed Battleship. They load in and were immediately met with a new alien, called a Telemat. I didn't know what abilities these things have so I did a little save-reload just to check. Turns out that they have some sort of launched chemical weapon (doesn't seem to be super potent like my chem grenades but I wouldn't want to get caught in an auto shot worth of this). So it was easily killed with just plasma rifle fire, and we also found a Vipon hiding behind some metal duct work which was dispatched with a chemical grenade. Well, at least I know what I was up against.

 

We spread out and do a little exploring because I want to know if this starting area is a "safe zone" - meaning there is only one way in or out. Turns out, yes, it was safe to completely spread out to the left side and there was also a short E-W hallway connecting our section to the rest of the map. At the ends of the hallway it looked like those connected into other corridors (no big rooms or anything). My immediate thought was to mine the ends of the hallway with proximity grenades as an early warning system and then have some troops in the middle who were able to throw chem grenades or shoot anything that made it past. (Oh, before I forget, I found a way to safely trigger a proximity grenade: toss a chem grenade on it or nearby).

 

It took a few turns to do the scouting and in the meantime a couple more Telemats paid a visit as well as three Vipons. It looked like the Vipons were carrying the new EEEW rifles so I had to be a little careful around them - no messing around, 100% all business. Once we got rid of the first flush of aliens my guys mined the hallways and retreated to the safety of the room we were in. The trap was set so now it was a waiting game. One Vipon killed itself on one mine so we mined the hallway again (there is nothing funnier than hearing the death scream of a Vipon when it is killed by a proximity grenade)! Yeah, proxy mine kills don't get the points awarded to anyone, it's more of a strategy to whittle down the alien numbers to a manageable number.

 

It took quite a few turns of killing but eventually it looked like we were in a stalemate with the remaining aliens (maybe 6 left: 4 Vipons and 2 Telemats). Because we were dealing with Vipons and had some of them camping out I knew two of them must be the commanders. There was one in the NE hallway parallel to the room we spawned in so one of my guys went over to check - I just wanted to verify it was a commander before wasting a stun grenade on it. Yup it was. Instead of throwing the stun grenade immediately which will draw reaction fire (especially true with camping aliens), I backed my soldier off by one tile behind a wall, then threw the stun grenade next to it. It didn't knock it out, but the dumb commander just sat in the cloud for it's next turn and passed out.

 

Now we were down to two aliens left on the map: a Telemat and probably a Vipon commander. The NE hallway was unmined at this point so a Telemat made it's way over to us: Melia couldn't see it but threw a chem grenade in the general direction then took a peek and saw it was still alive. One auto shot later and it was dead. The last alien alive was a commander and it made it's way over to us stopping right inside the remnants of the chem grenade cloud.

 

 

Oh you stoopid commander, now you are injured and out of TU standing in front of my whole squad what will happen? Melia threw a stun grenade on it which did a little stun damage, so Jarrett tossed another one on it and it finally passed out. EOM report:

 

 

So 2 aliens were killed by my proximity grenade traps, and the two commanders also don't count as kills so that's why the count is off by 4. At least Melia got enough xp to get promoted again. This is what I came up with.

 

 

I originally put a point into agility and vitality, one into strength and 3 in shooting. Trouble with that is shooting is not maxed out. So I ended up maxing that out with 4 points and the last point went into strength to get him to 83. I'm happy with that. In the future I think 80+ strength is the benchmark to aim for as mid-to-high 70's means you may have to leave some things back at base or give them to "mules" to carry. Then again, it'll probably work out if I give the "weaklings" the EEEW rifles as those are super powerful and can be shot with one hand.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Why so much hostility, Zombie? The Telemat just wanted to spice up that awkward first contact business by increasing the recreational potential of the situation for your troopers; you know, dusting some stuff with alien mushroom powder.

 

This lack of understanding on our part is further evidenced by the Vipon Commanders' clearly intentional behaviour. They have a real appreciation of such chemically-enhanced gifts and simply want to end things on a high note - as in, a joint extra-planar experience, bro.

 

Whatever, they jived to your music in the end and that's all that matters. There's no stopping now, look ahead, the crowd is jumpin' at HQ, so pump it up!

[Zombie]

I went back into the mission to grab a screenshot of that Telemat just so you guys know what it looks like.

 

 

I don't know how many of you are familiar with television show Stargate SG1, but this alien looks sorta like that zat gun the Goa'uld carry (called the zat'ni'katel). Pic:

 

 

Anyhow, back to the game where I found a very good recruit.

 

 

No sooner than I picked her up and I get a UFO Swarm warning. Darnit, this isn't going to be fun. I was able to taunt one of the red fighters to come a little closer and my interceptors were able to down it. Same thing with a second red fighter. Well, this isn't so bad after all. The battlecruiser was a little more difficult to take down as I had to piggy back 2 sets of 3 interceptors and even then two of my ships were seriously damaged. The swarm leader was a Battleship and I was hoping I could repair my damaged interceptors enough to get them back into the fight, but before I could another Battleship shows up near my main base and makes a beeline to it. My base defenses were both able to hit the UFO and damage it a little bit but not enough to prevent the dreaded base defense mission. This was a cakewalk as it was just Chasers (carrying EEEW rifles though) and some Preachers. I ran it just like an alien base mission, except I defended one hangar - one group on each of the two doors. The alien life scanner helped a lot as I was able to know when to open the doors to shoot. EOM report:

 

 

No promotions, but I defended the base and that's all that matters. The new rookie was not brought along unfortunately, and I really should have because I could have got her some easy kills. Oh well.

 

Back in the Geoscape and it was time to tackle that Swarm Battleship. (I could have probably let it go but you'll lose out on that big reward). It was kinda in the middle of all my bases so I thought I could send all my healthy interceptors over there and they would reach it at the same time and down it. Nope, the thing caught wind of my activity and focused on one group first. It took out one interceptor in three hits then turned it's sights on my second interceptor. By then my main base interceptors showed up but not before that second interceptor was destroyed. Finally my third base interceptors showed up for the fight and were able to help take the thing down. Lost a third interceptor in that engagement but got a nice hefty reward.

 

 

So I'll be manufacturing some interceptors it seems. Luckily I have some Green Thorn Missile launchers and plasma cannons ready to go. There was only one downed fighter on the map yet so I sent in the troops (with the rookie aboard this time). Another mixed bag of alien types. The LZ was very, very hot with a Vipon, Hallucinoid, Chaser and a Sentinel. The rookie Lashunda was able to pick off the Chaser and the Hallucinoid with an aimed shot and a snap shot respectively. The rest of the crew had to take care of the other two. A larva showed up a little later and Lashunda took an aimed shot and killed that too. Nothing happened for a while until I saw a blip approaching. I moved Lashunda closer but in cover next to the wall of a building. The alien was a Preacher. Luckily she had a chem grenade on her as that took it out immediately with 70 points of damage. One of my other troops must've caught the eye of a destroyer which was drawn back to the transport. Lush took a very long range aimed shot at it and killed it. Wow.

 

There were 4 more aliens left on the map - all inside the ship. There was a chaser camped out in a room to the right of the center so one of my vets ran over and opened the door while Lush tossed a chem grenade in there. Not much damage was done, but it adds up after a while. She finished it off with an the other chem grenade. Now everyone plugged the lift to the bridge upstairs. Lush got injured by a preacher up there but was able to kill it somehow and go back down below to get patched up. One of my vets polished off the Vipon up there. The last alien was also a Vipon who was (up to this point) camped out in the room directly north of the central area. Of course it decides to move now and was able to injure Kathlene but she killed it with a reaction shot. EOM report:

 

 

Lush only got 7 kills so her XP was a little lower than my normal rookie but that still adds up to 25 points to spend. This is what I came up with:

 

 

She's 2 points away from maxing out shooting and one point away from 83 strength. The rest may be going into agility and vitality but this depends.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Yeah, you're right Zombie, that Telemat thing does evoke SG's exotic weapon. The thing doesn't seem very fit for locomotion if you ask me, but I suppose we can write it off as some kind of anti-grav tech assisted dealy.

 

Conversely, them UFOs are no slouches and they sure brought on the pain by turning three of our interceptors into mere cinders in short order. Fortunately there's that reward for swarm wipe to take the edge off but the balance of power still shifts against us for longer than would be desireable before we're able to restore our interceptor count.

 

On the field, I'm liking freshly minted Sergeant LKay's ability to land those shots on target. Hopefully her injuries won't keep her from realizing her full potential where she belongs - the front lines.

[Space Voyager]

Seriously, Telemat and no tele-psychic abilies? Oh come on, what a deceit.

[Zombie]

This is probably going to be a longer post as I played a few hours yesterday and tried to touch on the highlights. Not much was happening on the Geoscape portion which was surprising. A scout was buzzing around so I shot that down and sent in the team. As usual a mixed bag of aliens - variety is the spice of life, right? This time my team didn't disembark from the transport, they all hunkered down and kept a close eye on the alien life scanners for anything that ventured into snap shot range of L'Kay (see, I can create names just like Stargate ). Anyhow, I was able to mop that place up like nobody's business even able to get an auto shot in on a Destroyer who came right up to the door (probably to borrow a cup of sugar or something annoying like that).

 

 

Yup, L'Kay got all the kills. It was easy peasy as the aliens came to us on my terms, not theirs. And she got promoted again too so time to spend more points:

 

 

Two points obviously have to go into shooting to max that stat out. After that I chucked a point into strength to get her to 82 and one point into bravery so she's 70 or above. And because "CON" is not a dump stat, I put a point into vitality too.

 

Back in the Geoscape and my research into a very special weapon finished.

 

 

A chemogun? Yummy, this sounded fantastic, especially for all the aliens who are showing up who are susceptible to chem gas. Not only that but it's a gun that shoots chem gas that is more powerful than the normal chem grenade. Sign me up, so I produced a few of them and a bunch of ammo for it too. Had to wait for a few hours but eventually we shot down a scout again. My excitement was increasing. I assigned L'Kay to get that weapon just to test it out first. As before, we just hunkered down like cowards and waited for any close by alien activity on the scanners. A preacher came by so time to test it out. The result:

 

 

It certainly has the power to take out aliens like this in one shot. I'm not sure how low the damage rolls can get though so you'll need to have someone to back you up with a normal weapon (or a strong throwing arm). I noticed something strange though: in the ufopaedia entry it shows the chemogun has a snap and an aimed shot option, but in the battlescape it only has a snap shot. Not sure what's up with that, but in practice the snap shot is plenty as it's accuracy is 99% when you get into range to fire it.

 

The drawback to this weapon is the feature where you need to get within a ~5 tile radius of an alien to be able to hit it. Farther out than that and someone else will have to take care of the alien. Alternatively, you don't want to fire the gun off at point blank range either as chem gas can hurt you too. So you are stuck in this butter zone and everything else is either too close or too far. And I'm not sure about willy nilly reaction firing with this thing as that could get dangerous really quick if an alien is close to some of your troops. For this reason, I had L'Kay drop the chemogun on the ground before the aliens turn just to be on the safe side. I'm not leaving her naked (aka without a gun) so I had one of my scanner people drop their plasma rifle in the same tile so she could alternate between the two. Glad I did because an observer came to see what was going on.

 

 

L'Kay dropped the plasma rifle and picked up the chemogun and fired. This time I caught her in the act so you can see what it looks like in action.

 

 

It doesn't look like it's going to hit the alien, but this is just the firing animation. After the firing sequence is when the chem cloud is spawned on the target and the damage rolls happen. So it's like a delayed reaction type of thing, where you are wondering if the alien is going to be dead or alive. It's honestly a little unnerving.

 

After a few more aliens are gassed out the last two blips on the map make their way to the transport. Uh, oh. I kinda misjudged how close the aliens were and they came right up to the door and fired in a barrage of actual fire inside my ship. Two darn preachers. At least nobody got killed or passed out. Since these two were in range of the chemogun they got a taste of it.

 

 

This just shows that you can kill multiple aliens with one shot. Anyway, now I had to patch everyone up. Luckily the fire didn't get to the very back of the transport and most of it was absorbed but there were a few soldiers which took crit fire damage. That was the end of the mission though so EOM report time:

 

 

Another promotion for L'Kay:

 

 

I had a few options here. Since her shooting was already maxed out it made the job a little easier. I decided against giving her some more points into bravery as there are specific shields which protect against psi (I'm getting close to reasearching those fully). So I decided she would be the mule: 2 more points into strength to get her to 90, then I put one into agility and vitality and a token point in throwing. I'm happy with this.

 

Back at base, only Tommie was hospitalized so I really dodged a bullet (or fire) this time.

 

My final thoughts on the chemogun: It's a situational weapon in open areas. Most time you can't get into range to use it unless there is a lot of cover. Then there's the issue of what happens if the shot somehow doesn't kill the alien? Now you are stuck only 5 tiles away from a very angry alien. So you need to have backup (a soldier with a real projectile gun), ideally two backups. That's a lot of resources tied up into one weapon.

 

On the other hand I could see this thing being advantageous for clearing the inside of UFOs... especially the battlecruisers where there are lots of rooms where multiple aliens congregate together. Another place is base defense missions or alien bases. For both you can camp out behind the saftey of a door and then snap shot an alien with it. Handy! A potential drawback (which I didn't test out fully) is that it seems like you can't shoot the gun off and expect the game to render a gas cloud if there wasn't an alien there. It might work against terrain but that needs testing. So you'll still need to have chem grenades on hand to gas out rooms without opening doors.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

That fire hazzard episode came close to becoming a right roasting, Zombie.

 

Goes to show one won't want to be tempting fate by leaving all assets canned for long like that as tables can quickly be turned against us.

 

Regarding the new Chemogun - while it's appealing that it can instakill a target more often than not, I too would be wary of using it as a primary weapon given such strict operational distance allowances and the microing involved in safekeeping from reaction fire mishaps.

 

That nerve agent may be overly unnerving even for those wielding it. I'd also hate to find out what happens when one of those backpack reservoirs gets pierced.

[Space Voyager]

I must caution against the use of bio weapons. ANYthing could go wrong there.

[Zombie]

It was that time of the month, finance report incoming:

 

 

If you are wondering why Seathopia suddenly started to fund an extra $292,501 it's because I built a new base there and apparently that increases the funding cap to $780,000. It's totally needed as my main base can't handle all the UFO activity by itself. I didn't build it on the coastline but centralized inland and almost as far west it could go so as to be closer to my main base in Ilyria.

 

 

As another benefit, any UFOs which happen to fly overhead will be downed over land to give my troops some more training opportunities. As for why I put it in Seathopia instead of a closer state like Media or Stratos, well, I wanted this base to be able to help out my satellite base in Thermos too. This is probably the way I should have started my base building strategy, but I was playing according to UFO:EU where it's more important to spread out early. Back at my main base I finally got around to doing a little housekeeping by building an advanced laboratory.

 

 

Hopefully this will speed up research when it's finally built. I'm not falling behind per-se, I just need a little extra push to finish off some necessary projects (like the Ion ship cannon). Meanwhile back in the Geoscape there was a little bit of excitement as a greenish cruiser stopped by, which my interceptors shot down without any issue. Before I could send out my transport a scout materialized and also a darn battleship. My main base interceptors were sent out to shoot down the scout and I sent my transport out to deal with the cruiser.

 

One minor adjustment I made to the loadout was to remove the medikit from L'Kay and instead carry the chemogun in her backpack with an ion rifle as her main gun. Some of my other soldiers are carrying extra ammo for it just in case. I just have to make sure she never goes anywhere without a buddy to help heal her in the event she takes damage.

 

So we load in and there is a chaser and a Vipon somewhat close by. L'Kay takes out both with her ion rifle. I'm not sure what type of landscape this was supposed to be but I think maybe a military base or something along those lines as there was an outside and also inside areas. A preacher was directly by the nose of the transport which we allowed to get closer so L'Kay could get that kill too (ion rifle auto shot - in hindsight she should have probably used the chemogun but it worked out anyway). There looked to be a Vipon by the nose of the transport as well so I sent L'Kay over there to investigate. Bad idea as the Vipon immediately took an reaction auto shot at her with it's EEEW rifle. Luckily only one shot connected for 3 damage but we found out it was a commander.

 

 

Here again, in hindsight I probably should have gassed the thing into submission with a stun grenade but I guess her trigger finger was itchy and it was shot dead. This was a very long mission as my team had to carefully search the buildings inside and then "hold" those positions (which had exterior doors) as the rest of my team went to the next area. Nothing we couldn't handle outside as it was two preachers and a destroyer in the west of the map and a chaser and a trilobite outside the UFO in the middle. We surprised the aliens outside the UFO by shooting a hole in the wall which was kinda funny.

 

When everything outside was dead it was time to breach the UFO. Chemogun time! Before I went in though I did some tests with this thing. It does produce a chem cloud if you shoot at terrain or even the ground so that's good to know. L'Kay gassed a Vipon who was upstairs in the bridge but couldn't make it back to the safety of the crew who were covering the door leading to the central area.

 

Of course whenever you get stuck in the middle, the aliens are going to start pouring out of every room to take a pot shot. Needless to say L'Kay was hit a couple times with EEEW rifle fire from a chaser so she had to back off to get healed. I wanted her to get the kills so I let the aliens turn start. You guessed it, a Vipon opened the door and took another shot at her with the chaser missing all it's shots. She was healed yet again and then decided to blast these two away with the chemogun. Bad idea as the gas cloud enveloped the aliens and her. The aliens died and I had to quickly heal her up again before the mission ended. The EOM report was funny saying L'Kay was wounded by L'Kay.

 

 

No promotions but I did learn some important things about about the chemogun and my dumb oversights. I really need to take some time at the beginning of a mission to gather my thoughts and formulate a plan of attack instead of rushing in. And then do that after every turn too. That can get a little tiresome if a mission lasts 70+ rounds though.

 

Back in the Geoscape and my interceptors took out that scout over water so there was nothing to visit there. The Battleship was left to it's own devices and it eventually seized control of Peloponesia.

 

 

So you know what that means for my next installment: a battleship mission an then and an alien base. Oh joy.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

October 2108 was another great month, Zombie.

 

They can very well sing you praises as you run a tight operation indeed. I did notice you've practically doubled your spending with technicians but that's going to be par for the course with all the manufacturing that is necessary, particularly given how steadily new tech availability is driving equipment refreshes.

 

Looking at your main base, it strikes me as rather amusing how close crates are allowed to sit near the ships, particularly the transport, as the only way that would ever work, even with automated take-off and landing is if no air was displaced by such manoeuvres or otherwise everything was bolted to the floor.

 

And, yeah, your latest tactical got a touch too hairy there for L'Kay at spots. Some lucky misses saved her bacon this time but it's true you'll have to further pace yourself in these longer missions with more deliberate deployments.

 

This also ties into your loadout strategies as I think you're eventually going to have to make some choices regarding what is worth bringing along or not based on how micro-intensive some things are versus actual on the field benefit.

[Zombie]

This also ties into your loadout strategies as I think you're eventually going to have to make some choices regarding what is worth bringing along or not based on how micro-intensive some things are versus actual on the field benefit.

 

At this point I haven't made any major changes in loadouts. The chemogun in the backpack and an ion rifle in one hand for L'Kay is just about perfect as it allows her to pick and choose which gun to use depending on alien unit and distance. Other than that, I have standard stuff that needs to come along at all times like medikits, shields, chem grenades, proximity grenades and stun grenades. My soldiers use all that stuff on a fairly regular basis... not every mission of course but enough to keep the stuff on permanently. Case in point, I shot down a cruiser and sent my team in. We quickly determined it was Vipons and Larva and killed everything outside except for three blips which I assumed were all inside the craft. Wrong, one Vipon was at the far side of the UFO and refused to move much and when I sent L'Kay over there to investigate it was a commander.

 

 

If I wouldn't have had stun grenades along I would have lost out to capturing it. And I wasn't expecting a commander to be along on such a small UFO but I guess it means that as you progress in the game that commanders are a lot more common. The EOM tells the story:

 

 

Unfortunately that landed batteship took off before I could send my team back out. But the base was still there. Back at my base I was mostly wasting time to get L'Kay fully healed so I also fired another soldier (Wally Huzzard). He wasn't bad by any means but his Bravery was on the low side and his strength was 77. It might have worked in the end but I want my core group to have enough strength to carry basically any gun and wear any armor without encumbrance penalties. I could do better, assuming the hiring gods look favorably upon me.

 

With everyone healed up and ready to go, I sent the team in to take out that alien base. When we loaded in and looked at the alien life scanner it was all small units. Running ahead a few rounds and it was preachers. So L'Kay got her chemogun ready and I let Melia take care of throwing chem grenades. The room to the South of the anteroom was walled in so my team took a round and blasted one wall down to create a open kill zone. It looked like there was a main type of hallway which ended at the back corner of the second room so Melia would toss chem grenades by that hallway when an alien blip appeared there which took out a few aliens. L'Kay took out the rest with her chemogun or a chem grenade.

 

With 4 blips on the map left and none seemed to want to move much I moved L'Kay and Melia into the room off the anteroom and waited there. That seemed to encourage the remainder of the preachers to make their way over to where my team was. Melia took out two with a chem grenade and L'Kay blasted the third with her chemogun. The last alien made it's way over to the door to the anteroom and we found out it was a commander.

 

 

L'Kay tossed a stun grenade on it and got a "critical hit" with 66 stun knocking it out. The EOM report was interesting:

 

 

Melia killed 5 and L'Kay took out 11 and Garland got the promotion for not doing anything. I think that had to do with me getting rid of Wally Huzzard. Well then, time to allocate those points:

 

 

I put two points in strength to get him to 90 then tossed a point into agility, vitality and throwing. Much better. Bravery is 70 which is ok because eventually we'll have shields to defend against mind games. Back at base again and we shot down a fighter and a scout so that's going to be next on my list.

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

Time for a little update. I fired another one of my vets who had sub-70 bravery and sub-80 strength as I'm trying to weed out the worst offenders in a bid to create a team of near gods. Took a while to get a rookie with somewhat tolerable stats (in this instance I reloaded the game over and over to get a fresh batch of rookies to pick from as that saves a bunch of time - cheesy, I know). Welcome to Baldhor:

 

 

He's not perfect, I would have liked reactions and throwing to be above 53 but this is the best I could find after 50 game reloads so he'll have to do. His maxed out shooting is (I think) 99 which would be great. Anyhow, we just shot down a cruiser so it's no time like the present to get him leveled up.

 

Baldhor can't carry much due to his rookie level strength and it was a near nightmare to babysit this guy when the LZ is hot with preachers. He rolled out and came across a preacher within throwing distance and he had 1 chem grenade on him so he tossed it on the alien which did do decent damage but not enough to kill outright (maybe the throwing stat affects damage potential of grenades or maybe its really bad luck with damage rolls). One of my vets had to drop some chem grenades on the ground so he could pick one up and throw it. This time the preacher was killed. It was like this for the next preacher as well as they seemed to require 2 chem grenades to take them down. I think the next time I kit out a new rookie I will not give them any extra ammo besides what they have loaded in the gun and instead use the strength for more chem grenades. Spare clips can be carried by the vets and those can be thrown without anything exploding.

 

After the left side of the transport was cleared of preachers, Baldhor switched to the right side where the majority of my team was clearing a safe zone for him to get into position. The map appeared to be a hospital complex with one main building and two smaller buildings. He knelt down by one corner of the medium sized building for some protection. A couple chasers came by and he took them out easily with aimed shots. But there was a chaser who was causing havoc on the other corner of the building taking pot shots with it's EEEW rifle at one of my troops who was hunkered down behind a car for cover. The chaser was hidden in the shadows and I couldn't get near enough to gain a positive location to shoot at it so the other alternative was to throw grenades on it. I had exactly one high explosive grenade present on the map carried by a vet. He ran over to Baldhor, dropped it on the ground and Baldhor picked it up and threw it in the general area where the chaser was and killed it. Lucky. Suppose I could have used chem grenades too, but those don't do a heck of a lot of damage to chasers.

 

The rest of the mission was basically clearing the inside of the UFO. There were 2 chasers camped out on the bridge upstairs which one of my vets scoped out first then I sent Baldhor upstairs to take them out with his ion rifle. With the bridge cleared, I sent a couple more vets upstairs to plug the lift so aliens couldn't go up. The 2 remaining chasers who were downstairs tried to get at my vets who were camped out in the foyer but one was met with heavy ion fire and died. The last chaser was next to the lift so Baldhor went down and took it out at point blank range ending the mission.

 

 

So he got promoted and so did Birdie who did diddly squat. First we'll allocate points to Birdie.

 

 

Her shooting was also already maxed out so I had some more options to spend the points on. Strength was 82 so I put two more points into that to get her to 90. Bravery was at 69 so I put one point into that to get her to 73, then I put one point into vitality and throwing. If it wasn't for the promotion to Warrant Officer she might have ended up on the cutting floor with my recent firing spree. Baldhor had 25 points to use so this is what I came up with for him:

 

 

I could have put 11 points into shooting to get him to 99, but in the end I cut that to 9 points which got him to 93. That's plenty for this first round of promotions. I put 5 points in strength to get him to 75 which is usable. Four points into bravery to get him to an even 70 seemed good and the rest between agility and vitality. Besides the untouched throwing and reactions he's a solid soldier.

 

With my recent firing, hiring and promoting of rookies it seems like that sometimes causes sympathetic promotion of vets who are along on a mission to Warrant Officer status even without doing anything. Maybe you need to get vets to a certain level of xp to be eligible for promotion. I think I'll be exploring this more in the near future. If I can get all the vets I want to keep to to 1000+ xp (not sure what the exact level is anymore) then bring them along on a mission with a rookie who is getting trained up they will get promoted to Warrant Officer. I might only need to train the rookie up to plain Sergeant before firing them to start the process all over again. I wouldn't have to be so picky with the stats of these throwaway rookies either as all I really need from them is decent strength, shooting and throwing - just enough to make the process easier.

 

- Zombie