Let's Play UFO:Extraterrestrials Gold

[Thorondor]

Having a greenhorn recruit playing around with high explosive pineapples on their very premiere, Zombie? Don't know if that's callousness or just sky-high confidence levels on your part.

 

And so it is that Birdie got a "free" promotion - most likely due to the dismissal of her comrade-in-arms, as you say - but she's been around for quite a while now and not merely pushing pencils so I feel it is deserved.

 

On the front, usage of Triple-EW rifles by our foes looks to be on the rise, so let's just hope they remain cross-eyed.

[Zombie]

So I fired Vincent Price today as I wanted to hire a new rookie and didn't have any soldier space left. Let's meet my new recruit Amelia:

 

 

She's honestly pretty decent, but I'm not keeping her - she's here for getting other soldiers promoted. That's what my thought was originally. I just had a look through the game manual and found out that Warrant Officer isn't the highest rank a soldier can attain, the progression is as follows:

 

Rookie -> Private -> Private First Class -> Corporal -> Corporal First Class -> Sergeant -> Sergeant First Class -> Staff Sergeant -> Warrant Officer -> Lieutenant -> Captain -> Colonel

 

There's still 3 more ranks above Warrant Officer (technically two ranks if only one soldier can be a Colonel). So this firing and hiring thing probably isn't needed. Why my vets were getting promoted was most likely due to them gaining some xp during a mission nudging them past 1100 which is the level you need to get promoted to Warrant Officer. Probably should have checked my promotion topic in this forum as I even made a nifty chart for it too.

 

Aaaanyhow, let's get back to the game. It was time to finally visit that scout UFO I shot down. The aliens were Chasers, Destroyers, Observers and Preachers so a little mix of stuff. It was the usual strategy though: Chasers and Destroyers got shot with Ion Rifles and the Preachers and Observers had chem grenades thrown on them. No issues with them taking more than one grenade so I don't know what happened last mission. Baldhor got 6/7 kills while L'Kay killed one chaser early on as the LZ was kinda hot. EOM report:

 

 

Baldhor obviously got promoted and so did Ishantil (he had 1100+xp already but didn't do anything this mission except play with his alien life scanner so maybe sympathetic promotions are a thing after all - or most likely the soldier will get a promotion when the code is run at the end of a mission). First up is Ishantil:

 

 

One point in agility and vitality and the last three points into strength to get him to 93. The strategy for future promotions is to max strength out then divvy up the remainder of points into agility, vitality reactions and throwing and maybe a point into bravery if that works out. Next is Baldhor:

 

 

For him, priority is maxing out shooting so I gave him 2 points in that to get him to an incredible 99. Two points went into Strength to get him to 83 and the last point went into vitality. He should be pretty good now unless we suddenly need more strength to carry higher weight weapons. I wanna get the EEEW rifle soon maybe after I knock out a few more research projects like maybe this?

 

 

As Photonicinduction always says: "I want flames!" It's probably going to be like the chemogun so this might be another option for clearing UFOs or other specific aliens. Looking forward to this! Right after this I shot down another fuchsia colored scout UFO and was just about ready to send in the troops when a Battleship popped up. I let it do it's thing and this was the result:

 

 

So I'll have to get that landed Battleship after the Scout. No shortage of missions to run this month. The scout was next and for this mission I focused on my soldiers who were getting close to 1100xp as I want to get them a promotion. It was just Chasers and Larva so a pushover squad. EOM report:

 

 

Elmo somehow eked out just enough xp from 3 kills to get the promotion to Warrant Officer:

 

 

I put 4 points into Strength to get him to 93 and the last point went into Bravery.

 

So next up is that landed battleship and then the obligatory alien base miission. I might delay the alien base mission a bit until I have the flamethrower researched and have one produced along with some extra ammo. I'd like to get that phosphorous grenade researched too, but that may be pushing the envelope a little too far.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Amelia looks very young and fresh, Zombie. Well, she volunteered after all so whatever will be will be as they say.

 

All things considered she's very fortunate to have you as her Commander - no better survivability chances could she have asked for in this war than under your watch.

 

Besides, with a crack shot like Baldhor at her side she might even afford a miss or two.

 

Speaking of playing with fire you best not get too carried away if the recent past is any indication. That said, phosphorous grenades does sound appealing.

 

[Zombie]

My team went to take care of that landed Battleship yesterday. I found out through an unintentional reload that a crashed/landed Battleship/Battlecruiser may sometimes be underground and other times it could be on normal land with an actual UFO present. So that's a good piece of info to know if you don't like one battlescape map. I ended up on a above ground UFO with Vipons and Sentinels. It was kind of a pushover mix as my ion rifles and heavy ions can take out the sentinels easily enough and the Vipons were only carrying ion weaponry (pistols and rifles) so they were not too much of a threat.

 

Baldhor started things out with a 5-alien killing spree until I realized I wanted to get some of my vets promoted. Everyone had to disembark from the transport and I set them up with the folks closest to a promotion closer to the action to hopefully get them some easy kills. That worked out great and we cleared the outside within a few rounds. From my scanners, there were 3 aliens left on the first floor of the UFO and they just didn't want to move at all. So I had to send the whole team over there. The problem with the Battleship is there are (2) 2x2 lifts on the first floor so you need 8 guys to plug those tiles to prevent the aliens from coming down (Vipons are 2x2 units but I didn't test if they can make it down a lift with one person blocking it). There were two Vipons downstairs in the lift room and one Sentinel camped out in a room off to the side which were taken out quickly. After plugging the lifts, one of my guys with a scanner ventured upstairs to the bridge to get a head count for that floor (there were 5).

 

The two in on the bridge were easy to take care of - one was shot from the lift upstairs and the next round a Vipon stopped right above partially standing on the lift. After that we tackled the other part of the UFO. There was one Vipon camped out in a room which we found by opening the door to the room, then I accidentally started to withdraw the scout and he was shot multiple times by the vipon (luckily it was only a ion pistol but still caused some damage). After getting him downstairs and patching him up, I sent up another soldier to take it out.

 

There were 2 Vipons left and since I haven't seen a commander yet I was guessing that's what these were. Next round there were indeed two vipon commanders upstairs with one blocking a door from closing. with another in that small room a couple tiles away. I tried tossing a stun grenade between the vipons to take them both out at once but it didn't do much damage and then one of the commanders shot my soldier. I patched him up too, then proceeded to toss stun grenade upon stun grenade on these two aliens to take them out. Must've been 6 or so, just take a look:

 

 

Well, we got them all in the end. The EOM report tells the story.

 

 

Three new Warrant Officers:

 

 

Everyone got 3 points into strength right off the bat and Stacia actually is maxed out on that now. For the other two points both Stacia and Duane got one each in agility and vitality. Jarrett's two points went into bravery and throwing. Any other promotions after this and I can put the rest into strength and then start to fill out the other stats like throwing and reactions. It's looking up.

 

Next up is of course the alien base and there will probably be at least 2 new warrant officers and maybe 3 if the aliens are the higher xp types.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Talk about smoking 'em, Zombie!

 

They didn't seem to take this much product to go under in previous times so I imagine there must be some crit factor in play that just wasn't kicking in on this occasion due to poorer RNG rolls.

 

They didn't deserve the charity of a stun in the first place if you ask me, having shamefully allowed one in their ranks such a lowlife conduct in battle - of shooting one of our troopers in the back repeatedly.

 

Well, the promotions are rolling in as expected so that's good. You should see to Owl as he seems to be taking a bit of a backseat on formal progression for quite a while. Unless you're eyeing him to be relieved of duty as well that is...

[Zombie]

Well, the promotions are rolling in as expected so that's good. You should see to Owl as he seems to be taking a bit of a backseat on formal progression for quite a while. Unless you're eyeing him to be relieved of duty as well that is...

 

Well, he has been quietly busy in the background. You can see in that last EOM report he had 2 kills. It's just that there is only so much xp to go around in a mission and you sometimes have to just focus on whoever is closest to that promotion. He played cleanup after most of the fun was over. I assure you Owl has not been forgotten.

 

As I mentioned earlier, I'm waiting on doing the alien base mission until the flamethrower has been researched and produced. Well, I just finished that and did a big overhaul on my team removing those who are warrant officers from the transport so as not to dilute the xp with unintentional kills. This particular alien base was populated with Preachers (doesn't like chem) and Telemats (doesn't like fire) so the Chemogun and Flamethrower played an integral part. But ion weaponry is still the go-to choice for a lot of encounters if the aliens get really close. We zoned in and I set up the two highest xp Staff Sergeants at the door in the anteroom one with the Chemogun and the other with the Flamethrower. Both had ion rifles as backup. As soon as a Telemat got close I tested out the Flamethrower:

 

 

The thing does incredible damage. I did a test just before this screenshot and the flamethrower blast took out the anteroom wall with no problem, so you have to be a little careful with this weapon. As soon as someone got to 1100 xp, they dropped the Flamethrower or Chemogun on the ground and the next lowest xp soldier picked it up. The Chemogun was the workhorse of the mission so there was a lot of turnover on whoever picked that up. Near the end of the mission there was two preacher commanders left. One came kinda close so someone took two snapshots at it with the Chemogun but the thing didn't go down. However, the Flamethrower finished it off. EOM report:

 

 

Four promotions is a great start, here's what I did with the points:

 

 

The "just" of points allocation was to max out strength and then any points which are left can go in whatever stat needs a little help. Owl is in the mix in case you missed it!

 

Back at base and the advanced laboratory finally came online so we put that to good use and researched the ion cannon (ship weapon). It's needed, but not critically so as I've been letting the big stuff do whatever it wants. It's more of a means to the end to get ion shielding as that is the critical element for survive-ability.

 

A scout came sniffing around the globe so I shot it down over land and sent in the troops. This time it was Chasers and Destroyers. Two different Destroyers came by so I tested out the Chemogun and Flamethrower on them. Here are the results:

 

 

It surprised me that they both could even damage a Destroyer - but both of them are about equally effective dishing out 100 points of damage. The Chemogun seems to be my preferred weapon as it works on just about everything and doesn't do any collateral damage. Anyhow, the EOM report was a little quiet as the remainder of my troops need quite a bit of xp to get to warrant officer.

 

 

No worries there, as the Phosphorus grenade was just researched so that should round out my loadout. Looking forward to trying that out too.

 

- Zombie

[Space Voyager]

Ehm, certain conventions might interfere... Though, those might apply to use in Human, not humane, warfare.

[Thorondor]

 

Heck, yeah, burn baby burn!!

 

Good to see Owl made the cut, Zombie, and in fine company too. Careful soldier rotation really is paying off.

 

Is it just me or does Phobos look like someone straight out of Mad Max (though the Cyberpunk angle could work too) on those "fire drill" screen caps? One thing's for sure, he's fit to heat things up some - firing on all cylinders and looking to have a blast!

[Zombie]

There wasn't much going on in the Geoscape which meant I could focus on research. The Advanced Laboratory more than doubled my research speed which means projects are cranked out in quick succession. I've been researching Ion Defense for a few days and it finally finished which unlocked a bunch of goodies:

 

 

About time! My interceptors are weaksauce right now and they can't do squat against battlecruisers and battleships. The Plasma cannon and green missile are good, but I'm still sporting laser shields. That needs to change asap so I immediately started on Ion shields. It didn't take too long to finish either:

 

 

Ion soldier shields? Sign me up, my troops have been running missions nonstop this past month so they deserve a little present too. In the meantime I started building Ion shields for my interceptors and equipping them right away. Money is no object - I have $30+ million in the bank so I can transfer stuff piecemeal. Another little project on the backburners finished too:

 

 

I really needed this too, chem grenades are fun and more powerful ones are even better. I started manufacturing these in between the ion shields. Anyway, I think a battlecruiser landed so the troops went out to take care of it.

 

 

No promotions, but I'm trying to give everybody who isn't a warrant officer some xp every mission. Back at base, research was happening at a frenzied pace and I finished ion shields for my troops and started on the Thunderbolt ship rocket. No sooner than I equipped all my interceptors with the ion shields and research into the Thunderbolt finished too. So now I was trying to manufacture the last of the ion ship shields, started on the soldier shields and on top of this the thunderbolts were needed. I kinda broke up the manufacturing up into two groups: 15 for the thunderbolt and 5 for the soldier ion shields so that way my soldiers and ships are taken care of at the same time.

 

Still nothing going on in the Geoscape so research continued, this time with the AKEW tech line all the way up to the AKEW Rifle:

 

 

This thing is fantastic as it's significantly lighter than the ion rifle and is more powerful too. The only drawback is the smallish magazine size but I'll tolerate that. My scientists needed something to do so I put them all on the plasma grenade. It's not as powerful as the ion grenade but still better than the brown pineapples I've been using up to this point. Besides, I have hundreds of these things (probably closer to 1000) in storage so I might as well put them to good use. And then it was time for the end of month report.

 

 

There were 3 poor ratings probably due to me letting those battleships do what they wanted until they landed. But, the drop was minuscule so there shouldn't be any trouble to turn that around this month. Meanwhile, my engineers finished production of the thunderbolt ship rockets so now all my interceptors are ion across the board. That should help tremendously when I go up against the bigger UFOs. A battlecruiser UFO showed up and my interceptors went after it and finally downed it in the antarctic region. Easily I might add, I don't think my interceptors took much damage if at all A scout UFO also showed up over my base with one upgraded interceptor so I sent it out solo. Mid-fight, research into the plasma grenade finished:

 

 

The nice thing about the plasma grenades is that you have a stockpile of them from missions so there's no need to waste time manufacturing anything first. All my soldiers get one now. That scout went down easily so time to send the team in.

 

 

Tommy is getting close to a promotion now, he's less than 70 xp short so I should be able to get him squared away when we take care of that downed battlecruiser. Phobos isn't too far behind I think he needs about 100 xp to get his promotion. Scottie is in the high-700 to low-800 xp level and Baldhor hasn't even cracked 500 yet so he's a way off. That'll change soon enough.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

That Advanced Laboratory has proven to be - quite literally - a game changer, Zombie.

 

The swift unlocking of considerable technological advances made you progress from a precarious position to one where you can both better defend and gain meaningful strike capability once again.

 

ANNA sounds like good fun, if you're not on the receiving end. And your researchers don't seem to completely agree with you on the subject of the AKEW rifle, claiming the ammo amount to be "comfortable" - well, maybe standing in the lab shooting dummies, without anything trying to actually rip your head off, slightly skewed their assessment.

 

November was on the dicey side at some points but you pushed through, to a rating of Excellent no less. Well deserved I say!

[Zombie]

ANNA sounds like good fun, if you're not on the receiving end. And your researchers don't seem to completely agree with you on the subject of the AKEW rifle, claiming the ammo amount to be "comfortable" - well, maybe standing in the lab shooting dummies, without anything trying to actually rip your head off, slightly skewed their assessment.

 

What's "ANNA"? The clip size for the AKEW rifle is 15 while the Laser Rifle and the Ion Rifle is 20 and the Plasma Rifle is a whopping 30. So it's on the low end, especially for something that has autoshot capability as that can chew through ammo like nobody's business. To combat this my troops have been rationing it by using snap or aimed shots for weaker foes and only using auto shot for times where an alien is super close or it needs to die "now". Part of my vets are still carrying the heavy ion so occasionally they will be called upon to kill something and also to create holes in walls or remove problematic "furniture" which is in the way.

 

So my guys went down south to play in the snow with that Battlecruiser. This time it was Destroyers and Larva. In the past Destroyers were a real pain in the ass, but with the menagerie of weapons I have they aren't so bad anymore. And the Larva are still pushovers as long as you can shoot them first. As before, in a snow landscape you have plenty of small trees to hide behind for cover so your soldiers can advance almost every turn. The outside was easy enough to clean up, but the problem was the inside as some destroyers seemed to want to camp in that NW room forever. I was lucky this time as one of the destroyers got caught standing in the doorway during my turn so the door into that room was wedged open. After tossing one of those new chem grenades on the destroyer in the doorway (insta-kill) I was able to toss one into the room too. It didn't kill anything, but one of the destroyers got caught in the gas and died after it's turn - that's why the kill count doesn't jive for the EOM report:

 

 

Tommie and Phobos both were promoted to warrant officer mainly because I kept using them for killing stuff. At the end Billi and Scottie took over because Tommie and Phobos had reached 1100+xp. Here's how I allocated the points:

 

 

Tommie was easy to shop for as I put 3 points into strength to max that stat out, then put one point in agility and the final point into throwing as I've been using that more often. Kinda the same for Phobos except the point for agility was added to strength to max that out. Both are pretty good now, though I'd like to increase agility, vitality and throwing. Next promotion I guess.

 

UFO activity picked up in frequency and I shot down 2 cruisers and a scout. The scout I couldn't get to in time so that disappeared, but I sent in the troops to the closest cruiser. OVNI came along for the ride and instead of the heavy ion he got an AKEW rifle and a bunch of grenades. That's a good choice for support troops as they can carry more weight . The aliens on this UFO were Preachers and Observers so that was a change. Mostly we used the new chem grenades and the chemogun.

 

 

Baldhor finally got promoted to staff sergeant and the remainder of the kills were by Billi and Scottie. Point allocation for Baldhor:

 

 

It took me a while to come up with something decent and I eventually settled on giving him 2 points into strength (1 point shy of maxing this stat out) then put one point into agility, reactions and throwing (these last two were pretty low). I figure for his next promotion to warrant officer I can put the last point into strength and then put one point in agility, vitality, bravery and throwing. Possibly I might forego bravery and put two points into throwing - depends on how much I use the stat.

 

At base it was a quick turnaround, enough time for a pee break and to grab another chemogun off the rack and then it was back to business as there was that second cruiser we needed to visit. This time it was Vipons and Trilobites. I haven't seen those mini ufos in quite a while and I'm glad we had that extra chemogun instead of the flamethrower. We must've had some good damage rolls as the Trilobites all fell in one shot from the AKEW rifle. Inside the UFO part of the team assembled outside the door to the central room ready to breach. There were 3 Vipons in that room all camped out. During their turn, one Vipon opened the door. OVNI took a reaction shot and uncharacteristically missed all three at near point blank range. Then the Vipon clear across the room took a reaction shot at OVNI, hit once for minor damage then hit it's buddy near the door.

 

 

Some sweet Vipon-on-Vipon action right there folks, it's always nice when stupid aliens help you out by killing their own. Baldhor took out that Vipon across the room and you can see the outline of the last Vipon in the shadows. That one was killed by Billi to end the mission. OVNI was healed before we left so no wounded soldiers to deal with. Again, the soldier kill count in the EOM report doesn't match the number of aliens present due to that dummy Vipon killing it's own.

 

 

Scottie was promoted to warrant officer so it's points allocation time again.

 

 

Easy one as I dumped everything into strength to max that out. For his next promotion it should be easy too as I'll put one point into each stat that isn't maxed out yet. He'll be one of my best soldiers no doubt. Billi is still 150+ points away from promotion to warrant officer so that's going to take at least 2 missions, probably 3, to get her that. Baldhor is still lagging in points too and it's goint to take 10 missions or so to get him near (depends wildly on the number of aliens and their xp reward though).

 

Back at base we knocked out the plasma grenade and AKEW grenade with the beefed up research team and finally finished research into AKEW (ship) cannon.

 

 

I'm starting on producing these to replace the ion (ship) cannons but that's going to take a week to complete. There doesn't seem to be a heavy AKEW handheld weapon so the rilfe will have to suffice for now. My next research topic might be the AKEW defense to see if that opens up anything interesting. Oh, and I just shot down two scout UFOs with a cruiser after that so you'll know what I'll be up to.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

As per the UFOpedia entry about the Chemical Grenade Mark II, ANNA - or Advanced Nerve Neutralizing Agent - is the enriched nerve gas it contains, to breathe less life into alien organisms at your discretion, Zombie.

 

Well, as per your report, you've had a good chance to test out some of the new equipment and with satisfactory results.

 

That helping hand the Vipon gave us by zapping one of his own brought back to mind just how absent psi meddling has been in all of this activity. A relief to be sure, but it may be time to consider that side of things in research if we don't want our high-ranking, finetuned killing machines turned against us all of a sudden.

 

As for right now, cue in the AKEW goodness!

[Zombie]

Well, my team went over to the closest shot down scout and poked around a bit. Preachers and Observers were the aliens and they basically all trickled over to the transport without me having to send everyone over to the UFO to clear it out. They were very polite about it also coming in single file except for the last two.

 

 

I wanted Billi to get all the kills so that hopefully she could get promoted this mission, but those last two preachers coming in at the end made it difficult. Billi just didn't have enough time units to take both of them out so Baldhor took over. I probably could have reloaded to get it to work... it wouldn't have mattered much as she was still a little short of points. Unfortunate, but that happens.

 

After a quick stop at base to change some of the loadout it was time to get rid of that other landed scout. This time it was chasers and larva - about the easiest pushover squad ever constructed. That also means xp points are hard to accrue. It was difficult getting all the points to Billi but eventually she had enough points to be promoted so Baldhor cleaned up the last two chasers himself.

 

 

So Billi was the last of my team to reach warrant officer (except for Baldhor) which is a bit of a milestone. Let's allocate those points!

 

 

No tough decisions for this one as Billi needed 4 points in strength to max that out. The last point went into bravery to get her above 70. Promotions after this for any of my warrant officers are most likely going to be cookie cutter as there are 5 stats left and 5 points to allocate - so you figure it out.

 

The last UFO was a cruiser in the antarctic so we had to beef up our grenade selection a little back at base. I'm glad I did that because the LZ was super hot: 2 Vipons and a preacher. Those Chem grenades are a real lifesaver when it comes to groups of aliens as Baldhor took two of them out without even resorting to his chemogun. Scottie had to get the preacher though. This mission was a total mixed bag - a true who's who of alien types. There was even a lone Hallucinoid which looked kinda cute and cuddly.

 

 

I just had Billi do the scouting when the alien blips got close, then Baldhor did the rest (mostly shots with his AKEW rifle). No promotions obviously as Baldhor is only sitting at 700+ xp. We'll get him there eventually. I've been looking at the recruit classes and so far nobody of interest has shown up. I have one more empty soldier slot and I want to fill that soon. EOM report in case you are interested:

 

 

Back in the Geoscape and we finished a rush research project:

 

 

Advanced mind shield is next on the agenda as my soldiers need help in the area of psi. We've been holding our own with 70+ bravery and killing aliens fast but that could change in the future so I want to be ahead of the game if that's possible.

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

Where was I? Oh yeah, minding my own business trying to knock out a few research projects and all of a sudden a battleship appears. And of course it makes a beeline straight to my main base. Darnit! This base defense mission was a cake walk because it was Vipons and Larva and there were only 10 of them. I mean, if you are going to force a base defense mission on me with Vipons and Larva, at least make it a little more difficult by spawning more of them, right? EOM report was lackluster.

 

 

Baldhor could have probably got 9 kills but I was too lazy to move him to the other hangar door. At the end of the day he at least got some unexpected xp out of it. Directly after ending the mission my research into the advanced mind shield finished:

 

 

10 of these were immediately manufactured for the soldiers on the transport and 10 more for the people back at base at a later date. Took a bit of work trying to get these things on every soldier but I got it done. At least they are covered for any psi attacks in the future. It just seems like whenever I complete a mission such as an alien base or base defense mission that the aliens decide to keep quiet for a long while. Maybe they are licking their wounds or something. Doesn't bother me, I'll forge ahead on research like these two for example:

 

 

I finished researching all those topics except the Long Lance, and even finished the EEEW personal shield. A nice thing about the EEEW rifle is that I've been collecting them (and ammo) all along so once the research was finished I was able to outfit part of my squad with them (the other part has AKEW rifles).

 

Still was awfully quiet and eventually we shot down a scout and sent in the troops. It was Preachers and Observers. One thing I noticed with these aliens is that there will normally be a couple camped inside the UFO. They stay put until you kill the last scouting alien outside the UFO, at which time both will come charging out to your troops (Vipons and Chasers inside the UFO will stay put). So when Baldhor killed the last alien outside the UFO (Observer with a chem grenade II) I pulled all my troops into a perimeter around the transport and had Baldhor kneel next to the gas cloud with his EEEW rifle at the ready. Result:

 

 

One preacher was killed with a reaction shot and the remaining one was picked off with an auto shot. That was the end of the mission.

 

 

Awesome! Baldhor had just enough xp to get to warrant officer so it's time to allocate those points. Here's what I decided on:

 

 

Two points into strength to max that out, then one point into Vitality, Bravery and Throwing. Baldhor's throwing was really atrocious even kneeling so he needs some help in this stat. Hopefully we can give him more points into that and maybe agility and bravery again.

 

Had some time again to research one of those Vipon Commanders which it revealed this:

 

 

I think I'm going to have my work cut out for me because if we are going to be assaulting the mothership at some point I'm going to need some better armor for my soldiers. I'm living on borrowed time with the Beekeeper armor, and I think something better might come along with alien commander research (at least that's waht the strategy guide suggests). It always comes up quick - the end of month report:

 

 

Everyone is back to fully funding the effort and are happy too. Can't ask for anything more. The last base I built now has 3 interceptors all up to date on weapons and shields. I also built an extra hangar at each base for the eventual new ship designs. Next month will be more research and possibly base expansion in a different area. I have the cash to spare now.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

You weren't kidding when you said the base defense mission was a disappointment, Zombie; I mean, a bunch of pushovers is sent your way and then they just give it a flat rating of "Good"? Bah, they're just being stingy.

 

At least Baldhor finally got his promotion on the ensuing mission. He was hitting pretty hard too, with that first EEEW rifle shot anyway.

 

Research continues at a very satisfying clip now, as evidenced by the discovery of the gargantuan Mothership. Do push onwards towards the Long Lance as I have a feeling it may prove important for even greater survivability of our craft and increasingly less repairs to deal with.

 

Big Momma best take care or it shall soon be under your crosshairs. Its training facilities can't hold a candle to your well equipped cream of the crop personnel and the heat is now on!

[Zombie]

You weren't kidding when you said the base defense mission was a disappointment, Zombie; I mean, a bunch of pushovers is sent your way and then they just give it a flat rating of "Good"? Bah, they're just being stingy.

 

At least it wasn't "OK" or "BAD"!

 

I read somewhere that completing research on ship missiles or cannons is a "trigger point" where the aliens would start to send stronger troops or bigger ships. So I started to research the long lance missile. Just after completing it (and I mean within minutes or an hour at most) the aliens sent a UFO swarm. So yeah, there is truth behind that. Quite possibly I should have just researched some "lower priority" (at least to the aliens) topics to knock those out quickly and maybe get some better armor or weapons first. But I'm neck deep in this pile so I may as well dig myself out.

 

There was no way whatsoever to take down the swarm leader Battleship, it was flying around in areas I don't have bases. And when it finally did get closer it just escaped into space. So no big chunk of change to collect, but that meant it was open hunting season on the rest of the swarm UFO's. I shot down a red cruiser first, then somehow took out a battlecruiser. There was another battlecruiser left and also a battleship. Since those two were flying away from my main base I took a gamble and sent out my transport to the crashed battlecruiser. The other UFO's didn't follow so I felt pretty safe in letting the team fight it out on the ground. My guys load in and are immediately met with a new alien called a "terror floater". Baldhor tossed a chem grenade on it which killed it. The gas cloud was still pretty thick during the aliens turn and wouldn't you know it but another terror floater ended up in the cloud causing it some damage.

 

 

Gotta love those 2x2 units as they are very susceptible to AOE clouds. And these things provide some awesome xp at 40 for a kill so it's a way to start edging our way to a new promotion. Besides these big units there were also some smaller blips on the map which I was curious about. Next round I found out it was Phantoms.

 

 

These remind me of preachers except a lot more dangerous. They have great armor, some sort of built-in EEEW gun and psi too. They tried to get through my psi defense but were way too weak to even make a dent so it's a non-issue. Great xp for killing these units though so that helps.

 

Clearing the outside of the UFO was easy enough as you can concentrate firepower on an alien to quickly knock it down. The middle lift area was a little problematic as there was a terror floater and two phantoms guarding it inside. The chemogun was meh on them, but chem and phosphorous grenades were where it was at. Of course, now there was a semi-persistent AOE of chem and fire inside the lift room so you have to wait for that to dissipate before sending in the troops to plug the lift.

 

Upstairs was tough. Nothing wanted to move at all. We ended up taking a chance opening a door and blindly tossing chem and phosphorous grenades inside until the phantoms died. Once we cleared out the upstairs all of a sudden a phantom appears from in the bowels of the ship below. I knew I should have plugged that lift too. Turns out this was no ordinary phantom, it was a commander. We ended up tossing 4 stun grenades on it till it passed out.

 

 

So these phantoms appear to be somewhat immune to stun. That's good to know in case we run across these things again. EOM was, well, "EXCELLENT" so I'll take that:

 

 

No promotions but most of my soldiers have recently got to warrant officer so it'll take a while. OVNI isn't too far off though so you'll probably be seeing more of him. Back at base there's still that red cruiser to take care of but one of the battlecruisers landed so that will take precedence. And I found out that the airborne battleship is about to land too. I'll be busy clearing these off the map therefore I may be a little late in posting a progress report.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Terror Floaters and Phantoms. You're scaring them now, Zombie.

 

It was about time we got some fresh meat to grind for research purposes anyway. And, luckily, they can't get in our heads, which shows the merit of your swift measures to equip everyone in that area.

 

What is it they say about a target-rich environment? Well, the ducks are lining up.

[Zombie]

I've got a lot to cover so let's dive right in to our team already at the landed battlecruiser. Kind of a nasty surprise when we loaded in:

 

 

Darn preacher commander! With a commander this close (and most likely sitting on a full agility bar) doing anything is going to draw reaction fire. So I had two choices: 1) kill it and prevent reaction fire but lose out on capturing it or 2) try to stun it and take the damage as a cost of doing business. I chose 2 mainly because my shields are better now and I have plenty of guys with stun grenades. Baldhor throws a stun grenade at the preacher which explodes, alerts the thing and it fires it's chem weapon into my transport as expected. The damage wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be so Billi tossed her stun grenade which knocked it out.

 

 

All but two of my soldiers are standing inside a chem cloud. If I'd end my turn right now my soldiers would probably all take chem damage. So it was time to mass evacuate the transport and wait till the cloud dissipates. I set everyone up in a long firing line facing where the aliens would be coming from with Birdie a few tiles ahead as an advance scout. Besides the preachers, there were trilobites too (those mini UFO type things). Some trilobites and preachers came into visual range of the firing line and OVNI dispatched them all with his 67 for reactions and AKEW rifle. I eventually had to back him off by a few tiles to give the other guys a chance otherwise he would have single-handedly killed everything. Glad he's on my team, that's for sure. The inside of the UFO was difficult (as always) but this time part of my team moved by the less used door upstairs and picked off the preachers as they filtered up from below. After they were gone the aliens on the other side moved into the central room where it only took a couple chem grenades to kill them off.

 

 

OVNI got promoted, awesome! Here's what I did with him:

 

 

I didn't realize he was so weak so I ended up putting everything into strength. Not ideal, but now he can carry whatever he wants. He's fast becoming my favorite soldier. With that done I totally redid the transport loadout so some of my soldiers who only had ~1100 xp got a chance to participate in the upcoming battleship mission. This time it was chasers and larva underground. XP was very limited to come by with weakling aliens but we got some new faces to help out.

 

 

At least there was some good money from the alien bounty to make it tolerable. The next mission was a shot down cruiser with preachers and telemats. It was a very long mission. After clearing most of the map there were 3 aliens left on the ground level (2 inside the ship and one outside) plus two more in the bridge of the UFO upstairs. Because the lone alien outside the UFO wasn't moving much I knew it must be a preacher commander so my team had to carefully set up a stun zone inside the building it was in. With the commander taken care of it was time to storm the UFO.

 

I tried a completely different strategy this time (specific to cruisers). In the past I'd try to take out the aliens upstairs from below then back off. But the aliens left on the ground floor would get alerted and come storming out of their rooms with guns-a-blazin'. This time I sent exactly 4 soldiers upstairs to kill the two preachers and plug the lift, and all my remaining soldiers were stationed outside the UFO in a kill zone. So after the preachers were killed upstairs the other two preachers downstairs came running and got as far as the anteroom of the UFO. Stacia (who was upstairs plugging one tile of the lift and was carrying a chemogun) came downstairs, opened the door to the anteroom and blasted the two preachers away with the gas which ended the mission.

 

 

No promotions, but I spread the xp around to those who were low and I learned a new strategy of dealing with aliens in a cruiser. An even safer way would be to flood the anteroom compartment with chem grenade gas (and maybe fire too) so that when the aliens come running they would get hurt or killed by standing in the cocktail. I'll probably try this sometime.

 

Back at base again and research finished:

 

 

So now I'll have a new fleet of interceptors to construct. Luckily I can strip the current interceptors clean of weapons and shields and just transplant those on the new ships and I'll be ready to go. Still no new armor for my troops. I honestly have no idea what I'm doing wrong. The only thing I can think of is maybe I locked myself out of it somehow (akin to the messed up research tree in TFTD). I'll try some things on the side to see of I can can get the waspkeeper armor unlocked.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Now there's a reception worthy of note, Zombie.

 

I think you've already fully justified the use of chemical warfare. I'm not going to shed any tears if it hurts the invaders (who brought such weapons to bear in the first place) more than it does us. Their very leadership is inviting it!

 

Buffing up OVNI into even more of a weapon of mass alien destruction is bound to ramp things up for them nicely. Maybe put him on first to exit position and see how they like it next time.

 

And all hail the coming of the Exterminator!!

[Zombie]

Continuing on, my team went into that alien base. First time I forgot to save at the start of the mission and the aliens opened the door to the anteroom and about 5 phantoms let a barrage of fire into the room killing some and severely injuring a few more. I called foul and restarted and remembered to save at the start. Lesson learned. What I did find out though is that you have to be very aggressive dealing with Phantoms as they can mess you up in a hurry. The trilobite terror units seemed to be the weaker of the two and provided my guys with a moment to collect their thoughts and forge ahead. For this mission it was all about getting some of my troops to at least 1300 xp. When someone got past that level another soldier with lower xp took over killing. Quite a few of my soldiers got into the action.

 

 

This was the greatest number of aliens I have seen on a mission yet. Got some decent cash too which is going to come in handy. A little while passed and we shot down a scout again. Mishmash of aliens but mostly larva and preachers. We took care of them easily.

 

 

I was rotating soldiers on and off the transport as they got to 1400+ xp so that's why you may be seeing a diverse mix of people. And finally my research into the Exterminator interceptor completed.

 

 

Now it was a mad rush to manufacture them, transfer them to the other satellite bases, take the weapons off the old Stormbringer interceptor, sell the old Stormbringer and rearm the Exterminator. Selling the Stormbringer nets $381,800 space bucks so that offsets the increased cost of the Exterminator. I ended up selling some more recovered plasma and ion weapons just to keep my cash approximately the same. While this was going on a Battleship started buzzing around in Patria just NW of my main base and eventually landed and created a terror site.

 

 

My first terror site. Had no idea what to bring along so I kinda mixed stuff up with an equal number of soldiers carrying AKEW and EEEW rifles. This is the message that pops up when you spawn in:

 

 

Terror missions cannot be patiently waited out, I'm sorry. You have to get out there on the first round and try to kill as many aliens as you can in order to save the civilians. When I checked my "alien" life scanner it showed the civilians were basically all surrounded by aliens (Chasers and Trilobites). Next round there were only 3 civilians left and the round after that all the civilians were gone. So much for protecting them, I ended up just holding the area around the transport until we killed everything.

 

 

Yeah and I got a "Very Bad" rating to top it off. It's just not fair. At least give the civilians some weapons and body armor and have them hide somewhere safe not intermixed in the fray. Hope this isn't going to come back and haunt me in the future, but it should be better than ignoring the terror site completely.

 

Back at base it was more manufacturing the new Exterminators. Eventually all my bases have the new interceptors:

 

 

And each base (except the main base) now has 4 Exterminator interceptors so that should help out immensely. I might plop down another two hangars at each satellite base at the end of this month which would make 6 at each base. Still want to expand and add another base somewhere yet... I'm thinking Pulsar as that can cover the south part of Patria and the west part of Ilyria.

 

Meanwhile another scout was shot down with the new interceptors (have I mentioned they are awesome yet? Well, they are). Sent my transport over there and it was preachers and trilobites again. We cleaned the place up quick except for the two preachers inside the UFO but they made a beeline to us when they knew thair buddies were all dead. I found a new way of training soldiers to gain xp:

 

 

The "just" of it is to toss weak grenades on the aliens. You'll get credited with the hits from the splash damage and if you leave enough time units you can still shoot after the two thrown grenades or you could toss a chem grenade and finish the alien off for good. Works decently and its a way to get rid of all those useless grenades in your inventory.

 

About half of my soldiers have 1500+ xp and the other half are sitting in the high 1400's range. A couple more missions and I should have everyone in the 1500's. !880 is the next promotion level so we are still a ways off of that but 300 xp isn't too hard to accumulate with the tougher aliens as some of them award 40xp/kill.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Ambushed by Phantoms - headline material right there, Zombie.

 

And it seems weirdly opportunistic to have this early show of force happen the only time you've neglected to save upon start. Furthermore, staying on the subject of surreptitious meta backstabbing is what you referenced, "Stealth and patience will prove the keys to victory"; while all victims are already herded into a kill box.

 

Larger alien numbers, a terror mission with no other outcome than a bad one and things generally getting hairier by the mission.

 

Those slick Exterminators couldn't have come any sooner. You've got the right idea regarding the more of these the merrier because eliminating threats in the air could avert those loaded missions from tarnishing your records come month's end.

[Space Voyager]

You know, for a time I resented the similarity of this game to the original X-COM. But the more I think about it, the more it is a testament to its ingenuity and lasting appeal. I'm starting to like this game and you're to blame, Z!

[Zombie]

So I built an extra hangar at each of my bases yesterday. I know I was talking about adding two but Exterminators cost a fair whack of gold pressed latinum and my bankroll has gone down by quite a bit. I also wanted to build a new base so I plopped one in Pulsar. A new base starts with a Hangar and Power Plant below it. Once the power plant was built in 5 days I was able to build another hangar below that. At that point the top hangar would be finished in 7 days at which time I could build a hangar on either side of it. But you can't build the lower right hangar until the lower middle hangar is built in 12 days. In order to expedite expansion I built a temporary missile defense to the right of the power plant as it has a 8 day build time which means I can build another hangar below that 4 days sooner than waiting for the lower middle hangar to be finished. Just a little trick I picked up in UFO Defense which thankfully translates to this game as well.

 

Then a battleship shows up. Not good. What did it want though? Base defense mission obviously.

 

 

My lone missile defense hardly did any damage but I think it actually decreased the number of aliens which spawned which was nice. It was Phantoms and terror floaters which isn't easy but you can get some decent xp for killing them. I gave all of my soldiers with 1400+xp a chance to kill something and I ended up with everyone reaching 1500+xp. Nice! No promotions again though.

 

 

After that the game stuttered a little bit so I knew the EOM report was being built. Result:

 

 

Of course, Syrtis Maior wasn't happy with that terror mission fiasco and reduced funding significantly. Now I'm wondering if I should have built a base there instead of Pulsar. Oh well, it is what it is. I've been researching a whole bunch of small things to eliminate them from the list to see how I could get better armor. One of the cool things to come from this is:

 

 

I wanna try this soon as that 200 damage will cut through most resistances with sheer power. And my units can walk over it without setting it off. Not much was happening and the only thing that showed up was a scout which we shot down and visited. Phantoms again:

 

 

At least we got some cash off it. It'll help with building those Exterminators. I had my scientists researching the sentinel and they finally finished unlocking something cool:

 

 

Another thing I want to try out soon. Might help with locating aliens on different levels methinks. Anyhow I finished building 3 Exterminators for my older satellite bases and built another 5 which went to the new base Pulsar:

 

 

Yup, that's the stuff right there. Moar is always better. Plus they are close to my main base to provide protection from battleships who are hell bent on staring another base defense mission. I mean, you haven't been successful in a base defense mission yet, why bother sending more? A battlecruiser stopped by and I looked at what it was supposedly up to:

 

 

Espionage? Oh no you don't!Shot that down so quick the aliens didn't know what hit them. That's the power of Exterminators.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

A "suspended nuclear explosion" should be the holy grail of any weapons research program, so be sure to give your eggheads a special bonus for that, Zombie.

 

Oh, wait, they're already walking away with most of your cash, so cancel that.

 

Fortunately we're dealing with alien masterminds whose concept of a stealthy espionage operation is by means of slender battlecruirser deployment. As long as they stick with that our lethal new tech shall remain just that - a deadly secret.

 

Now just tell the nerds to stop playing with those prototype personal jet packs, will you? They're not James Bond and the test propellant is highly explosive.

[Zombie]

Time to visit that Battlecruiser. Besides the cash, it does give a soldier xp which they all need. I did the usual and put the lowest xp soldiers at the exit to hopefully gain more by being where the action is. Tommy was in the lower 1500's to start which is the lowest of all my soldiers and I really wanted to get him in the low 1600's. Welllll, not with half the aliens being Chasers and the other half Destroyers - there just isn't enough xp on the map to get anyone too high. But that means the mission will be quick. After a few Chasers were dispatched by Kathlene it was Tommie's turn. I saw two blips approaching the transport from the front via the alien life scanner but could only get eyes on the chaser near the right engine nacelle. Tommy fired a single auto shot and this was the result:

 

 

You just gotta love shots like this. The aliens line themselves up perfectly and the weapon is powerful enough and accurate enough to take down two aliens in 3 shots. This didn't seem to phase the aliens though. With Battlecruisers you are always going to have to gain entry to the ufo in order to kill all the aliens. I did mine a doorway with one of those new stasis proximity grenades but the Chaser overran the thing before it had a chance to go off. Granted, the throw wasn't in the best spot so that may have had something to do with it too. At the end we did a good job. (The kill count doesn't jive because there were two destroyers that died in their turn standing in chem gas+fire).

 

 

Just before the end of the month and something finished researching:

 

 

About time! I've been wanting better armor for almost a year in-game and finally have it. It's very expensive to manufacture so to save costs I only produced 10 suits for the soldiers on the transport and that's it - no extras. I'll move the suits around so at least the transport is covered. I don't really need suits for everyone in most missions because only a small number of soldiers are directly participating (aka the two in the back of the ship playing around with their alien life scanners). In case anyone is wondering, you just need to research the advanced alloys and I think the advanced flight control from the battlecruiser to open up the Waspkeeper. Before I could even produce any the EOM report was on us:

 

 

I thought for sure that Syrtis Maior would have started to increase funding again but they must have an axe to grind with me so that may be next on the list where a base will go. Pulsar also isn't funding it's max but that may change due to the Exterminators.shooting everything down. Well, more research finished:

 

 

This is a 12-man transport so you can bet I'll be manufacturing one of these for my troops very soon! And what's this? More research:

 

 

Nightwolf? Wait, didn't I just research an interceptor? Guess I'll be slowly rolling these out little by little. Can't do a complete switchover like I erroneously did with the Exterminator. How was I to know there was a better interceptor in the wings? Might do a complete switchover for one base and see how the Nightwolfs do against Battleships.

 

- Zombie