Let's Play UFO2:Extraterrestrials

[Zombie]

Time for a new playthrough of this game now that I finished UFO:Extraterrestrials Gold. Seems like my Gold edition playthrough had some mods enabled so this time I tried to make it as vanilla as I could. Here's what the Geoscape mod screen looks like:

Differences:

1. Lightly Wounded Soldier Recovery Speed: Kept this at 4x since it makes sense that lightly wounded soldiers aren't in the hospital as long as unconscious soldiers.
2. UFO's Travel In Packs: This was enabled in my Gold playthrough so I disabled it here to change things up.
3. UFO Swarms: Again, another Gold mod mechanic I like as it gives rare items.
4. HWD Mod: If you have the advanced detection module built (and certain topics researched) you can see the alien race in a UFO and also it's mission type and destination.
5. Soldier Limit: Bumped this up by 2 to 32 so that I can still look at the new recruit class.
6. Hire Soldier Cost: If you lower the price to $0 (Mod Disabled) you can't hire soldiers anymore so I increased it to $1000.
7. Hire Soldier Delay: Normally soldiers are immediately put into the hospital when hired, this mod allows hired soldiers to be used instantly.
8. Varied Soldier Names: If you disable this mod some of your soldier's names will be an error message, so I left it enabled.
9. Better Soldier Stats: Soldier stats are lower than in Gold by about 10 points so this brings it back to that level I'm used to.

And now the Tactical mods:

1. Recover Partial Clips After Combat: A Gold mod I kept in place because it makes sense.
2. XP Bonus for Successful Mission: Another Gold mod I'm used to so it's staying in.
3. Enable Burst Reaction Fire: Yet another Gold mod which is useful and almost a necessity.
4. Sight Ranges: Everyone, soldiers and aliens have identical sight ranges, no cheating.
5. Alien Bounty Reward: Changed this to $30k per alien as it was in Gold since that's what I'm used to.
6. Soldier Placement: Manual because I need to be able to control who gets off the transport first for xp training.
7. Encumbrance System: Made it the same as in UFO:EU, the whole min strength limit was too restrictive on certain items like armor.
8. Inventory AP Costs: Meh, put these all to 0 so that it's easier managing stuff on a mission.

Other than that, the game resolution has been changed to 1600x900 pixels so screenshots are a little better. So I start the game and the first thing I need to do is:

Hell yes I do! Where to you may ask?

Russia of course. Placed it East of Moscow so that it covers a good chunk of Russia while still being close enough to the other areas in case interception help is needed (whenever I build a new base that is). The issue with the North America Brotherhood starting base location is that there aren't a lot of areas which can help intercept and shoot down UFO's (same with South America and to a lesser extent, Africa). I'm also going to be building new bases further inland away from the coast so that UFO's have a greater chance of being shot down over land. The more inland a UFO crashes, the quicker my team can get to it. That's the theory at least.

First order of business is to start research on something, in this case, the medkit:

I'm not convinced that shielding is going to be more beneficial early on as the ability to patch a soldier up on the battlescape will keep them out of the hospital for less time. The other thing I need to address is my initial soldier prospects because mostly all of them are garbage. I need to hire some new soldiers stat. so I sorted by 50 in everything except for bravery which I kept at 45. Here they are (changed the names to forum regulars). First up is Thorondor:

Space Voyager:

NKF:

And last but not least our fearless leader, Pete:

That should be enough to get us started at least. After we get through some missions I'll start sacking the soldiers with low stats and hopefully hire a new batch to fill the ranks. Little by little it'll get sorted out. There's one other thing we need to do and that's base facilities. For some reason the Laboratory costs an astronomical $3.8 million which means that's not an option (yet). So this is what I came up with:

From left to right on the bottom row:

1. Hangar. With a new base a fair way off on the horizon, we need more planes to down UFOs currently. An extra interceptor should help in that.
2. Two Cannon Defenses: Whereas in Gold the defenses only activated from a direct imminent attack against the base, in UFO2 the defenses will shoot at any nearby threat so they act sorta like another interceptor in practice.
3. Workshop. Quick build time and not crazy expensive like the Lab so we might as well prepare for the eventual need to produce something quick (like the medkits) in a reasonable amount of time.

Other than that, it's the standard strategy of prepare, then wait. So hopefully something happens soon. Stay tuned for the next episode.

- Zombie

[Space Voyager]

Incredibly, you manage to find the will for this right after the end of the previous AAR. Not that I complain, at least I have something interesting to read. Real world is a failure in this regard.

[Thorondor]

Reporting for duty, Commander Zombie!

[Zombie]

7 hours ago, Space Voyager said:

Incredibly, you manage to find the will for this right after the end of the previous AAR.

Gotta start while the previous game is fresh in my mind yet.

Something finally happened, and that was our cannon defenses were built and ready to go:

Couldn't have come at a better time as the extra hangar hasn't been built yet. At least I'm covered with firepower aspect. Not much happened after this except:

Finally! Medikits are crazy expensive to produce though so I have to be a little careful and make only a couple to start. About a day later our radar picks up a UFO over Australia. I'm not scrambling interceptors way out there unless it's absolutely necessary so I wait to see where it's headed. Right to us it seems:

If you look close you can see the cannon rounds heading to the UFO. I let the cannons do their thing for a little while in order to soften the UFO up, then bring up the interceptors to finish it off:

That's the only way to take down UFO's with minimal losses. I got lucky it was headed directly near my main base though. The nice thing about cannon defenses (or any type of base defensive module) is that UFO's can't destroy them unlike interceptors. The drawback is pretty obvious: if the UFO doesn't come near your base the defenses will not fire. I still maintain they are necessary. If and when I get missile defenses I'll build one underneath the block of cannons and then we can upgrade the modules as better systems become available,

I'm not sure at this point how long I'll keep the extra hangar around. In the short term it'll be a necessity but once other bases start to go up it will lose it's appeal (unless there's nothing better yet).

Anyway, I got my soldiers kit taken care of so we can leave, but I'm waiting till morning for better visibility. In my next post I'll recap the mission as I took a lot of screenshots. In Gold, I rarely took mission screenshots because of the bugs and the hassle of the work around. The screenshot problem has thankfully been fixed in this game so you'll be seeing more pics from the mission (at least if something interesting happens).

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Your early base setup preparations paid off quite nicely, Zombie.

Our first serving of aliens awaits. Lock and load, rookies!

[Zombie]

We zone in and it's a snowy battlescape which was kinda nice. I'm very, very familiar with this map from my pseudo-playthrough a year ago - I don't think it ever changes any except for the season and time of day. Long story short, I pretty much know where you have to be careful. So I send out Thorondor and SV  to camp out along the building while Pete and NKF set up a little perimeter around the transport. Everyone else stays put in the craft. We didn't have to wait long and an alien comes barging out of the door:

The alien was probably out of TU so it should be pretty safe to utilize snapshots instead of autoshots. Thorondor is up:

Decent damage and good accurate shots, Such a nice thing after dealing with particle resistance in Gold. We spread out a little bit and not much happens for a few rounds. Then Pete comes out of nowhere and reaction shoots an alien dead:

Good man! (You can see the alien corpse at the very top of the screenshot). Again not much going on for a few rounds, but the aliens are moving because I hear doors opening. (The sounds in the game are very directional so if you hear a door opening to your left there's going to be an alien there. I highly suggest wearing headphones to make it easier to discern a location). Anyhow, there were doors opening in the building where Mr T and SV were camped out and it popped it's head out of the door to investigate. Thorondor shot it dead and SV went into the building to investigate upstairs.

After finding nothing upstairs, SV rejoins Thorondor at the back of the building while Pete takes cover in the door by the lift just to make sure nothing sneaks past us. SV acts as a spotter and Thorondor inches along the side of the building until we get visual on an alien just outside the door to the UFO. Thorondor again takes some long range snap shots which kills the thing:

We still hear non-UFO doors opening to the left so we know something is up over there. SV eventually get's eyes on the thing but doesn't have a clear shot on it so Thorondor does the honors again (you can see the body to the left of the double doors):

Thorondor was out of TU but nothing happened during the alien's round so he made it through. We slowly make our way over to the UFO and camp outside the door looking in after every alien turn to make sure nothing is close. I brought a rookie over to help with the semi-dangerous task of door duty. NKF is still diligently holding down the perimeter by the transport and Pete keeps a close eye on the side of the UFO by peeking out of the door. UFO doors were opening a lot but we never saw anything so SV went in to investigate:

He got really, really lucky that the reaction shot from the alien didn't do squat against our rudimentary armor. Because the alien probably used up it's initiative SV felt pretty safe in taking snap shots which eventually killed the alien:

He had enough TU to get out of there so he lived to tell a good story. Meanwhile, Pete decided to come out of hiding to cover the side of the UFO. An alien stumbled upon him, but it was too late as Pete's reactions were too high:

You can probably see the blue outline of the kit the alien was carrying just north of him. Two reaction fire auto shots and two kills, that a boy! Meanwhile our team outside the main door to the UFO haven't seen any activity lately so Thorondor and SV make their way inside the doors to the left to cover the door there. More doors opening and when SV turns around he was face to face with the last alien:

A gimme kill right there. Still thankful the alien didn't open fire on us though (or toss a grenade), otherwise things would have turned out differently. EOM was really good:

Everyone was promoted to private due to the 20xp mission bonus while Thorondor and SV got Private First Class. A couple of the greenhorns we had along had fairly decent stats so I might keep them and rename them. Here's the first two:

Kizzy got a point in vitality, strength, and throwing and 2 into shooting. The goal was to get strength above 55 and shooting above 60. Next was Tova:

Same criteria, but I needed to put 2 points into strength to get her to about 55 while I dumped the rest into shooting to get her to 61. Passable at least. Next up was Pete:

One point in strength and throwing and the rest into shooting. Happy with that. Next is NKF:

I kinda misallocated the points here and stuck 2 into strength, one in throwing and 2 in shooting. But he's still a rookie yet so I can fix that in the next promotion. Space Voyager is next:

Since I had 10 points to spend I dumped a full promotion worth of points into shooting, put one on agility, vitality and strength and two into throwing. He's shaping up nicely. And finally the man of the mission, Thorondor:

Mr T's shooting was decent already so I only put 4 points into that, then one into vitality, agility and throwing and 3 into strength. I figured we needed one strong guy to carry stuff as everyone else is pretty weak. Overall, this mission was pretty easy, and very successful in terms of promotions. Can't ask for a better outcome considering it's the first mission out of the gates.

Back at base things are looking up too. Our hangar and workshop finished building so I put all the engineers in producing medikits. I purchased another interceptor and slapped on a missile and a cannon so we are good to go in that area:

One issue was I spent a lot of money (I was actually in the red for a little bit) so I sold our tank. I don't really use them much anyway so it wasn't a big loss. I can always get another one for base defense duty if necessary. My researchers finished with their shield project so I put everyone on...

Photon Tech. Yup, we need better guns as these weakling aliens aren't going to be around forever. This is going to take a while to finish though. It's the end of the month though (how time flies) so let's check out how I did:

I couldn't help the Asian Syndicate even if the UFO just passed through their airspace. I guess the governments get a little excited by getting a glimpse of a UFO. Oh well.

Next on my plate is addressing the soldier situation: I need to sack those I don't want and get enough good ones to staff my transport (and maybe a couple extra). Other than that, I need to produce some shields for my soldiers yet and hopefully by that time there will be another UFO to shoot down and visit.

- Zombie

[Space Voyager]

I must say... I'd date me! Also, a nice outfit.

[Thorondor]

I was born a straight shooter, so just point me in the right direction, Sir! ?

Drinks all around for a job well done. I'm feeling pumped. *nudge, nudge*

Can scarcely pronounce the buggers' names but they're not to be given a chance to chat, so no big loss there.

Here's to some more seek and destroy!

[Zombie]

Our radar picked up a UFO in North America so it's time to get over there.

I did have a look through my soldiers and sacked a bunch of them and the best of the bunch I renamed (welcome to Slaughter, NoX and Silencer). I think there was a lone recruit I picked up with 50's in every stat and the same thing for the next recruit class so keep an eye out for them. I send the transport out and cross my fingers that the UFO doesn't take off before we get there. It doesn't, but we are stuck doing this at night which isn't ideal. When we arrive we try to disembark but ran into an alien:

NKF takes a few snapshots at it but only connects once, so Space Voyager has to finish it off:

The next round an alien shows up so NKF gets out his grenade. Perfect throw and it kills the alien too:

During the aliens turn Silencer and Space Voyager both reaction shoot at an alien that showed up. Silencer killed it, so Space Voyager's three shots sailed off a little bit and killed another alien in the darkness. Two more show up at the end of the round:

Silencer was camped out at the corner of the transport and was in a perfect position to take aimed shots at both aliens. Amazingly he killed both:

Space Voyager reaction shoots an alien during their turn, and then NKF snap shoots at an alien in the same location. It hits, but the alien shoots back and somehow NKF's armor is enough to shrug it off. He takes another snap shot and kills it off:

Seven rounds and everything is dead. That's gotta be some sort of record. Let's check out the EOM report:

Lot's o' promotions again! I'm not covering Grey Fiend as I sacked him after getting back to base. Slaughter is first:

One in agility, vitality and throwing with 2 in shooting. Seems good to me so let's do the same for Silencer:

71 for shooting should help out a lot. Well, NoX is up:

I just gave him one point in agility, vitality, strength, throwing and shooting. It's nice to have a well rounded soldier, especially with high perception (reactions). Actually, let's make that two as Space Voyager gets the same treatment:

It's such a good mix, we might as well get Pete in on this too:

NKF didn't want to be left out so yeah:

Well, that was successful. Not long after we get back to base and our research finished:

I guess I'll go with the Photon Beamer (pistol). I'm not going to be using a pistol, but this is the only way to get to the stuff after it which I'd like to get to eventually (better rocket defense and photon defense). Both topics take forever to complete with only 10 scientists so we'll be waiting on these until we can afford another lab. Besides, there are a couple low hanging fruits we can knock out quickly which will lead to a quality of life improvement for our soldiers. Anyway, not much happened again till a couple days before Valentines when we shot down a UFO almost over our base again:

Doesn't get better than this as we can wait till it's light out, then shoot over there, knock out the mission and be back in time for dinner.

- Zombie

[Zombie]

23 hours ago, Zombie said:

Doesn't get better than this as we can wait till it's light out, then shoot over there, knock out the mission and be back in time for dinner.

Ok, I should have mentioned this earlier, but all these UFOs so far have been alien recon vessels which I think are equivalent to UFO:EU's medium scout in terms of crew compliment. And the newest soldier to our team is Bomb Bloke so give him a nice welcome. He has the honors and disembarks the transport first and sees his first alien:

He kills it and the rest of the team files out and tries to get into cover as best they can. Two soldiers get hurt by alien fire: Slaughter and Pete. They both kill the aliens but there is one hiding in the dark somewhere so we have to be careful. Even though everyone is carrying a shield, it can't totally protect you. Slaughter and Pete are patched up the best we could so hopefully they will be ok (Slaughter's morale was affected though and that can't be fixed without kills):

 

Somehow Silencer was able to reaction shoot an alien during their turn and we find out why the LZ is so hot: the ufo is within throwing distance of us:

A critical hit nonetheless. During the aliens turn we spot one next to the UFO so NKF takes three snapshots and:

Meh, I had to get Slaughter to kill the thing for him. Oh well, NoX gets in on the action with a reaction shot during the alien's turn and on the final turn Bomb Bloke finished off the last one:

6 turns, not bad. Let's check the EOM report:

A bunch of promotions again. Silencer, NoX, Thorondor, Pete, NKF and Slaughter all had the same point allocation: 1 in agility, vitality, bravery, strength and shooting. I figured I needed to start addressing bravery but I didn't want to ignore any of the other stats (especially strength and shooting). Here they are:

Because this was Bomb Bloke's first promotion, we had to focus on strength, throwing and shooting:

Another successful mission and nobody was seriously injured either. Can't complain about that. After getting back to base our research finished:

Fantastic! Let's take a look at that Photon Beamer just in case:

It has better damage than the Alien Killer rifle, but it suffers in accuracy. Right now we have soldiers with 60-70 shooting accuracy so if you combine that with the Photon Beamer's accuracy we would take a hit. Not to mention that ammo can only be picked up on the battlescape which might mean shortages. Nope, we are going to pass on this. Not sure what is going to happen next so stay tuned.

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Well, lookie here - if it isn't the Bomberman himself! Welcome aboard mate!

Now, we may need more than a BB gun to send them aliens packing you know. Though we shall leave it to our capable leadership to better provide for us in that department.

Preferably sooner rather than all that later, eh, chaps? I can't imagine our bubble wrap shielding taking much more than glancing blows from those high tech boomsticks.

But here's what I say - come as they may we're not let'n'em stay, right lads? I'll drink to that!!

[Zombie]

On 9/21/2022 at 10:32 PM, Zombie said:

It has better damage than the Alien Killer rifle, but it suffers in accuracy. Right now we have soldiers with 60-70 shooting accuracy so if you combine that with the Photon Beamer's accuracy we would take a hit. Not to mention that ammo can only be picked up on the battlescape which might mean shortages. Nope, we are going to pass on this. Not sure what is going to happen next so stay tuned.

I totally forgot that there is an upgrade to our AK1 ammo which is similar to the Photon Beamer but to get to that we have to research the Nh'Teal alien. Not a problem as we just finished a topic:

Hopefully research doesn't take too long but right now we've been doing fine with the starting weapons. Back on the geoscape and we shoot down yet another alien recon vessel near our base:

It'll be getting dark soon so we'll wait till dawn to assault it. We wait a few turns and then Bomb Bloke and his buddy NKF disembark on one side of the transport while Slaughter and NoX take a position along the other side. Bomb Bloke sees an alien but can't shoot it because there is a wall in the way. NKF is here to help so he shoots out the wall which gives BB a clear aimed shot:

A few turns pass and eventually a Trep shows up along the other side of the transport so Slaughter takes it out with two snap shots:

During the alien's turn Slaughter connects with 2 shots against another Trep but doesn't kill it. No matter, he finished it off during our turn:

And then the next turn yet another Trep shows up for Slaughter to kill:

That's right aliens, just slowly file over to us so we can kill you one at a time in a leisurely fashion. BB and NKF advance a little and take cover near the front of the transport and spot a Nh'Teal along Slaughters side so you guessed it, another kill:

Ok Slaughter you big showoff, time to give someone else a chance. BB and NKF continue their advance till we see the UFO so they head straight over there (along with NoX and Slaughter too). Slaughter kneels in front of a wall and faces the door to the UFO while BB takes a position along the side. During the alien's turn we had a little action:

Slaughter gets hit twice for exactly 1 damage then reaction auto shoots the Nh'Teal but doesn't kill it. Bomb Bloke was itching at the chance for another kill so he runs around the corner and it hit, but the damage was thankfully absorbed. He was then able to kill it and get back to safety around the corner:

Slaughter was kinda in an exposed location where he was (which I'll freely admit was a mistake on my part in a haste to get the mission over) so I backed him up a little bit so he was at least blocked by a wall. During the alien's turn two Nh'Teals show up:

Bunching up now, eh? BB was able to toss a grenade over there to kill both aliens:

Nice! NoX was able to reaction shoot at a Nh'Teal during their turn but only connected once with minor damage. When he tried to back off the alien shot back but the damage was absorbed:

The mission ended with BB tossing another grenade over the roof of the UFO to kill the thing. EOM:

Only 3 promotions this time, first being Space Voyager:

He was actually pretty good the way he was. Shooting was decent so I checked to see how many points it would take to max him out in that stat (5). I didn't want to do that so I put 4 points into shooting and since bravery was a little low I tossed a point in that. Slaughter was next:

For him I put 3 points into shooting and one point in both strength and throwing since he was a little low in those. Slaughter is actually pretty close to another promotion anyway so we can bump him up more. BB is last and he was promoted twice so 10 points to spend this time:

He got one point in Agility, Vitality, Bravery and Strength, then 2 into throwing since he did a good job with that this mission and to round it all off 4 into shooting. He's definitely going to need some more points in the first 4 stats as they are low yet and shooting could be better too.

Back in the Geoscape and 4 days later we shot down another alien recon vessel. Still in the Russian Federation but East of us this time. Guess we'll be doing that next after it's in daylight.

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Taking hits and mostly shrugging them off. Who would've thought.

Still, this hit rate on the receiving end is higher than we're accustomed to.

Best not to push our luck overmuch, Zombie.

[Zombie]

I sent out the team and the battlescape wasn't exactly daylight, more like dawn. Whatever, we have a job to do. It's a snowy landscape map which I'm familiar with so the usual strategy is to cover that door to the building as there's always aliens inside:

See what I mean? Not only that but BB killed an alien a fair distance away with a reaction shot. That's why I like soldiers with high reactions because as long as they have action points left they will get a volley off. There were more door opening sounds coming from the building so Silencer opened the door to see what was going on. 2 aliens just inside the door, that's what's up. I then realized that I wanted BB to get some kills and tried moving Silencer out of the doorway to get a clear shot. The Nh'Teal shot him but the damage was absorbed again. With the aliens out of initiative, BB could go over there and finish them off:

The next round NoX took out an airborne Trep with 3 long range snap shots:

A few rounds later BB and NoX have moved up to cover the immediate area around the UFO. We got a couple nibbles:

BB is kneeling behind the pipes to the left and NoX is kneeling down behind the pipes to the right. BB takes out the alien on the right with an auto shot with no problems. NoX had some accuracy issues with his auto shot and one shot detonated a fuel drum but no harm done luckily:

BB then moved up to the corner of the UFO while NoX went around the corner to where BB was previously. A Nh'Teal came out of the UFO and took a shot at NoX. It sure looked like it hit him, but the game thought no:

No complaints from me, NoX killed the thing and the mission was over. EOM:

Crikey, nearly the whole squad got promoted again! In the interest of brevity, I'll just say that the usual point allocation was in effect: any combination of 1 point in bravery, strength, and/or throwing and the remainder in shooting. For example Thorondor:

And Bomb Bloke:

Shooting is coming along nicely for these two so we'll eventually have to start putting points into agility, vitality, strength and throwing to round them out. When we get back to base our research into the Nh'Teal alien finished:

Before we go on let's take a look at this alien:

Time to start research on the new ammo:

It's always a good feeling to start research on a new ammo or weapon to improve your killing chances. Every little bit helps. A while later we see a recon vessel heading to the USA so the interceptors are scrambled over there. Just after they shoot the UFO another one shows up there and is shot down too:

We'll have to take these out next time. Hopefully we can visit both!

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

The Nh'Teal alien kind of looks more robotic than biological in the render (presumably due to the chitin-like exoskeleton bits).

Also, in the research intel they're curiously leaving out any considerations regarding possible genetic modification as the species' origin.

We're of course only too happy to bring additional specimens of more species to the autopsy table in order to help develop a broader picture regarding the potential source of our opponents.

All strictly in the interest of science, naturally.

[Zombie]

A short update today as I had a marathon session so it has to be broken apart somewhere. We landed at the right UFO and start deploying around the transport. Plenty of spots to hide as it was a farm map, and that also meant the aliens could be anywhere in that mess. NKF reaction shot a Trep and hit 3 times but didn't kill it during the aliens turn and then we get visual on another Trep and Nh'Teal up on a roof:

Space Voyager was in the process of trying to kill the Nh'Teal on the roof, but wasn't fairing much better initially. He eventually killed it and then NKF went to town on that Trep on the ground. He finally killed it. The only person who had a clear shot at the Trep in the air was Thorondor and he was able to it but with 4 snap shots. Unreal.

Pete (the soldier kneeling behind a hay bale on the left) saw some activity straight ahead during the aliens turn and got a visual on a Nh'Teal. The bales were blocking a clear shot with bullets so he tossed a grenade over there. It didn't quite land where it was supposed to, but the explosion was still enough to kill the thing:

Worked like a charm, go Pete! Silencer shot at a Trep during their turn but didn't kill it. He finished it off during our turn though:

Not much happened visually during the aliens turn but doors were opening a lot so there must be some left in the UFO. Bomb Bloke got into a decent location were he was in cover but still had a visual on the door to the UFO. A Nh'Teal appeared:

Because he was in cover he didn't have a shot at the thing, but he had grenades. It wasn't a good throw but was enough to kill:

During the aliens turn there was a lot of door opening going on and eventually a Nh'Teal came out to visit. Grenade time for BB again, this time a better throw:

There was a door on the ground floor open in that building so I had NoX on overwatch to make sure nothing would sneak up on BB from behind. A Nh'Teal appeared in the break in the hedge and I had NoX do the honors:

The last alien who was in the UFO but came out was killed by BB, again with a grenade. EOM:

No promotions but that's ok. Back in the Geoscape and the research into the ultra AK1 ammo finished:

Lower accuracy than the normal AK1 ammo but more potent. I was just reading up on this as I was unfamiliar with the 7.62x51 and it turns out this was the replacement to the popular .30-06 round the US army was using till the Korean War in the M1 Garand rifle. The .308 Winchester (mostly used in hunting rifles and almost identical to the 7.62x51) was released by Winchester to the civilian market to capitalize on the opportunity. Interesting stuff.

Anyhow, the next mission will obviously be the other UFO in Canada. Stay tuned!

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Putting the aliens out to pasture is always a pleasurable activity. BB was clearly having a blast. ?

Shooting at cans is good fun too but since we're well past that sort of target practice it's nice to have ammo with some actual stopping power. Or so we hope.

Time to check out some quality maple syrup next then...

[Space Voyager]

Look, I don't care about them aliens, just keep'em promotions rolling in my direction!

[Zombie]

All righty, let's visit that recon vessel in Canada! Most of the team disembarks and during the alien's turn we immediately see an airborne Trep:

Slaughter was in a perfect position to take some potshots (aka snap shots) at it. Took 3, but he eventually took it down:

We spread out a little more trying to cover all possible directions an alien could possibly come from. There are certain buildings and areas that are alien havens and it really pays to double, or even triple-cover those. Pete reaction killed a Nh'Teal during the aliens turn and then we see a Trep on the roof of the building near us:

Space Voyager took 4 snaps at the thing finally killing it:

I was starting to worry a little bit because if he didn't kill it we didn't have anyone else in a decent position to get a clear shot. Also was worried about alien resistance to our ammo but I think it was just bad luck on our damage rolls. A couple turns later and Slaughter and NoX both take out a Trep each:

At this point I was pretty confident that the North end of the map from the transport was clear of aliens. I sent Silencer and another soldier inside the building to the West of the transport to cover the door back there and wouldn't you know it but a Nh'Teal came sniffing around looking for trouble. Silencer killed it easily with the first shot of his auto reaction shot:

All was looking up, but in my haste to expand the perimeter I broke the cardinal rule of clearing out the building first. After realizing this I had Thorondor go in there to cover things (he was out of TU so was a sitting duck). Somehow a Nh'Teal barges in there next round but ran out of action points to do anything leaving Mr T a gimme shot:

At that close range he killed it easily. Crisis averted! That spooked me a little, so I moved up a soldier to sorta cover the door to the North while Mr T tried to cover the lift. And during the aliens turn another Nh'Teal came down from the lift and was killed by Mr T:

Another crisis averted. Since Mr T was near the door he opened it during our turn to reveal a Nh'Teal milling around to the West. NoX took a super long range snap shot and somehow managed to kill it with a whopper of a damage roll:

Unreal, what a beast. By this point I started to advance Bomb Bloke just so we had someone with a good arm nearby to cover the UFO's door. Another Nh'Teal was inside moving around and somehow got itself into a pickle when it ran out of action points trying to get out the door leaving it locked in the open position:

Almost a gimme. BB took an auto shot at it which ended the mission. EOM report:

Everyone got promoted except for NKF (sorry)! Now for the point allocation part. Because all of the soldiers were within a few points of maxing out shooting that was the priority stat, and after that bravery, strength and throwing. But this varied a little, here they are:

I guess the main takeaways was that Space Voyager was pretty low in Bravery so I focused on that stat. I'm going to have to give him more in that stat too along with strength and maybe throwing. Mr T is a beast at 102 shooting. Silencer is 99 in shooting but his bravery is still low at 58 so he's going to be more of a sniper than anything. And if you thought 58 bravery was bad, NoX clocks in at 54 so he's really low, Slaughter is a real beast having 70 throwing and 100 shooting so he'll be great all-around. BB is also solid, though he needs more points in throwing and vitality. I'd like to make him more of a grenadier because of his potential for throwing accuracy but we shall see if that works out.

It's the end of the month so time for that report:

Russia and North America were happy due to our activity, but almost everyone else reduced funding a little probably due to the constant fly-overs by UFO's. That's ok, this was just a test to see how much the governments would tolerate in terms of UFO activity. We'll have to focus more on expanding our presence and carefully picking fights over certain countries. It's still early though and right now we have some pressing problems which need to be addressed. More specifically, since we have some cash now we probably should expand our research capability in order to make more headway on projects. Time to build that super expensive second lab:

That's good, as the projects only get longer from this point on. It's going to take over a month to finish construction though - this isn't an instant gratification scenario. And now funds are low so we need to be careful with spending. Luckily we shot down two more recon UFO's: one in the arctic and one near our base again...

We'll work on those next!

- Zombie

[Space Voyager]

6 hours ago, Zombie said:

I guess the main takeaways was that Space Voyager was pretty low in Bravery so I focused on that stat.

Frack, how did they know?!?!!? I doubt you should change that stat or any connection to real life will be lost.

BTW, my actual throwing abilities are crap.

[Von Nah]

Heyo! I just created an account and wanted to let you know that I'm cooking up a rebalance mod that puts in cut content (weapons, aliens) still present in the game's geoscape.xbg file:

Zombies (recolored by me) 

New Eagle HWP

Y'all should also check my first mod out: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1049850/discussions/0/3380536561724370257/

It adds, among other things, missing alien armor stats from UFO: ET Gold

You don't need to start a new game after installing it, but I'm not 100% certain if you get the Iron Rattler research project. 

[Thorondor]

@Von Nah:

Hi there, and welcome to StrategyCore! ?

I have to say, your in-the-making mod is looking rather swish. Keep up the good work.

::

@Zombie:

Very much feels like they're putting a freeze on early game progression. What with the high facility costs plus time to build and slow research.

There's no way we're going to expand fast enough to cover the other Poor rating nations' airspace within a month's time like this. No matter, they're still contributing to the overall pie as is.

Don't know what it is but somehow I feel like I could shoot for anything right now.

[Zombie]

14 hours ago, Space Voyager said:

Frack, how did they know?!?!!? I doubt you should change that stat or any connection to real life will be lost.

BTW, my actual throwing abilities are crap.

Had I known that earlier I could have allocated points differently, but I'm too far ahead now.

5 hours ago, Thorondor said:

Very much feels like they're putting a freeze on early game progression. What with the high facility costs plus time to build and slow research.

There's no way we're going to expand fast enough to cover the other Poor rating nations' airspace within a month's time like this. No matter, they're still contributing to the overall pie as is.

Theoretically, I could force the next progression by researching the alien recon vessel. But the way it stands I need the better base defenses, ship cannons and photon grenades before we trigger bigger ships and different alien types which may be more difficult to kill. Plus is doesn't hurt I'm training up my soldiers yet. So we're probably better off waiting for a little bit.

Time to visit that ufo in the arctic region. I start by sending out a few soldiers to get familiar with the map and we can tell right away the UFO is close by:

NKF kills off the Nh'Teol with a few snap shots and then during the aliens first turn Pete killed a Trep. And then a Trep showed up just North of us:

BB killed it with a single snap shot. A round later and a Trep comes out of the UFO:

NKF killed it with some snap shots and then a couple rounds later a Nh'Teol appears just North of us and another one just West:

NKF really didn't have a clear shot at the one North of us so he tossed a grenade on it instead. Thorondor was closest to the alien just West of us so he tossed a grenade on it too:

Pete got a reaction shot off on a NhTeol during the aliens turn killing it and then one snuck up behind Slaughter injuring him, but he killed it:

After patching him up, the last Nh'Teol was killed and the mission was over. EOM report:

About time NKF gets his promotion. Let's allocate those points:

A couple more points into shooting and I think it'll only take two more to max him out in that stat. The rest went into bravery, strength and throwing. Before our transport could even get back to base another recon vessel showed up and was shot down nearby:

Awesome! Love these crash landings near the base as it makes it so easy to get to the sites. Let's go to the older site first. Turns out this was an airport map so as usual we spread out and take cover behind anything that seems sturdy or blocks a clear line of fire. A couple turns in and Slaughter kills a Trep and then Thorondor takes another one out who was on a rooftop:

Nice shot by Mr T. And he had enough time to duck behind the hedge nearby. A few rounds later and Silencer kills another Trep behind a helicopter:

The bodies are starting to pile up northwest of us so we assumed the UFO would be around there. Nothing is showing up though even after multiple turns until Space Voyager sees a Nh'Teol camped out behind a hedge. He didn't have a clear shot so he tossed a grenade on it instead:

Crap, that took away part of our cover. Oh well, it's time to spread out a little bit anyway. The control tower and terminal are just north of us and I know without even looking (or hearing) that aliens would be inside. NoX went over there and eventually found a Nh'Teol camped out in a room:

Easy kill with an auto shot. Meanwhile Slaughter was making sure the control tower was free of aliens and once that was done he went out on the roof to get a better vantage point of the surrounding battlescape. Eventually we got up enough nerve to steal a glimpse of the UFO, and wouldn't you know it but there was a Nh'Teol right outside the door:

Silencer killed it easily. Meanwhile NKF was camped outside of a door for a number of  rounds with no activity, but then the Nh'Teol's came crawling out of the woodwork and NKF killed two of them in the same round with reaction fire:

Not very smart. The last alien came running out of the UFO trying to surprise NoX kneeling behind a fence, but Slaughter was tracking it the whole way from his rooftop vantage point:

Easy auto fire kill by NoX and the mission was over. EOM report:

No promotions, but a lot of the soldiers have a decent chunk of xp now so somebody will probably get enough next mission. That will be the other UFO nearby so keep an eye out for that soon.

- Zombie

[Space Voyager]

7 hours ago, Zombie said:

Had I known that earlier I could have allocated points differently, but I'm too far ahead now.

 I was joking, except for the throwing, that I really do suck at. But hey, I already look much better than in RL, so I may just as well throw better, too.  

[Thorondor]

- Nh'Teol Zed to the other, roughly translated: "Get to the choppa!!"
- NKF: "Fat chance, maggots!" ?

And still in the smarts department, if you check that screenshot where SV's grenade took out part of the hedge, someone was, intentionally or otherwise, blocking someone else's emergency response vehicle from being able to back out of the parking spot.

Way to know who you can count on when you're in a tight spot. ?