PLAY MORE X-COM!!!

[OblivionKnight]

<Part 2>



...

Well, hopefully the civilian won't die.



Bad Hal!  Using a stupid civilian as cover! 

Actually, they do make ok cover, but I think it's just a funny picture >_>   



Back to more serious issues, I have Yakumo try his luck on the beast.  Sadly, it lives.



Then Capt.K does!  He hits but doesn't kill anyth...



...

...

...

Uh...I...

Somehow, Capt.K hit the civilian on the other side of Hal, killing him.  I...I'm at a loss for words here.  I've never seen such bad accuracy before. 

That'll cost us.  Capt.'s going to the probulation chamber later.  Well, time to end the turn... 



And Mr. Reaper ran over and killed the civilian near the gas station.  Damn.

But since there aren't any civilians there anymore, let's cause some wanton destruction!




No...




Bye, Mr. Reaper!



And to the far west of the map, I think we've found the last aliens.  At the end of the last turn, some screams and an explosion caused this little side of the house to get blown apart.

Well, I actually blew it apart!  But details.   



But I missed the alien, apparently, as more screams from this area cry out.  Well, let's hit the second story. 




Damn, must be nothing there. 



So the southern group advances... 



And there's the last bugger.  Heh.  Let's take him down. 






Jackpot. 



Somehow, we stunned one of the aliens (probably that last one), which would be great if I had built the Alien Containment a day earlier.  Oh well. 




Nice haul, again.  As you can see, a civilian killed by X-Com is worth -50 points each, while alien kills are -30 each.  All civilians alive are worth +30 points.  Still, that's a pretty good save overall, especially with no casualties.  Yeah, I'd actually say this mission is more successful than it looks at first glance due to that.

Also, CT is now the Captain of X-Com forces, while Zenny and Miasma get well-deserved promotions to Sergeant.

Well, Zenny might have killed one of his own soldiers, but it was Super - he was probably evil anyway. 

For promotions, the ranks go as follows (the instruction manual!  Yes, reading this has actually come in handy!):

Rookie (starting soldier)
Squaddie (rookie does something and survives a battle)
Sergeant (requires at least 5 total soldiers - best Squaddie becomes a Sergeant)
Captain (requires at least 11 total soldiers - best Sergeant becomes a Captain)
Colonel (requires at least 23 total soldiers - best Captain becomes a Colonel)
Commander (requires at least 30 total soldiers - best Colonel becomes a Commander; only one may exist at any time)

So for example, if you have 15 soldiers, you can have at most 1 Captain and 3 Sergeants.  The rest are either Squaddies or Rookies.  Right now, CT is our toughest soldier, so I'll be keeping her out of the next few battles, just to make sure everyone else gets a shot.  'Course, we also need more soldiers in general...but that'll be fixed soon.



Another haul of great stuff.  This is the usual.  Terror Missions are sadly a little less profitable than UFO recovery, due to there being no actual UFO to recover.  Still good for the coffers, at least.



And there's our wonderful squad of soldiers.  Since Psy and Cro didn't actually do anything last mission (which...there's no reason not to - if they fired at the ground, they would have become Squaddies), they're still Rookies, but that'll change next mission.

So, time to wait and get some more stuff done!





Speaking of stuff being done, it's time to reformat the base.



Now you see it...



Now you don't!  This base is infinitely easier to defend.  That red access lift is the only way aliens will be able to enter the main base, which makes it an excellent corridor to defend in case of attack.  Proximity grenades will make the base a pain in the ass to assault.



And now the containment facility is done.  If only I started it earlier...oh well.

But nonetheless, with it done, it's time to recruit some suic...I mean, brave soldiers for more fun times trying to capture the sons of bitches!



And while we're waiting for more troops to arrive, Alien Alloys research completes.  Alien Alloys opens up a huge amount of research pathways, including personal armour, new ship designs, and several weapons.  Hence, good to research them fairly fast.



And as you can see, there are a lot of topics to research.  This calls for more scientists!

Usually, you want to shoot for 100 scientists no later than the 2nd month, preferably 1st month if you can spare the money.  100 should get most things researched quickly and effectively, to keep your equipment up on par with the aliens'.  So...



Time to build some more space for them.






In the meantime, guess what?  Our suic...stunners are here!  Say hello Strago and the zombified versions of Snow, NEB and Ciato!  With all the other people wanting to be soldiers, I should have waited a bit longer to revive dead soldiers, but I was hesitating to think of girly names for everyone but Strago, so >_>

And now, to wait some more. 

And wait...damn, we need more radar coverage.  Next $2 million is going to a base in the Americas. 



Ah, speaking of money, it's the end of the month!  At the end of each month, the Council of Funding Nations (CFN) will meet with you to discuss your performance.  To lose this game, you have several options:

1) Have aliens conquer all your bases
2) Lose the final mission
3) Have a negative score (the value of which varies on difficulty) for 2 months in a row
4) If you're in debt over $1 million, there's a 50% chance the CFN will cancel the X-Com project, which means Game Over

Thankfully, we're doing great!  Each month you get the beginning funding (~$6 million) to pay for soldier/scientist/worker salaries, base maintenance costs, etc.  Any leftovers are added to your stores.  Now, we're getting ~$637000 each month, so we'll have more left over.

Despite how it looks like it's a lot of money, it won't last another month or so.  Once we get another base and some more advanced technology in place, we'll need other ways to pay for things.  Thankfully, it's ok for now.



And it's February!  And thus, the end of this update.

Thanks for watching!  Any comments would be greatly appreciated.  Updates now will be a bit faster, as I'll be highlighting things you've seen before (UFO recoveries), and only going over new things in-depth. 

Watch the stars, and keep fighting the good fight!

DLCom wants YOU!  Join the battle and save the human race!

More information, next time, on DLCom!

[OblivionKnight]

Oh, and next post will require a new page, so more comments = good! 

[AAA]

Huh, I didn't think my namesake had done anything yet.

Keep it up, OK, this is very interesting.

[Fudozukushi]

The Blood God is satisfied.

Also he is pleased with the suicide soldiers.

[Grefter]

More things OK missed/neglected to explain the awesomeness of!

Auto cannon's rock the house.  I don't know if he has describe Heavy Cannons, they are essentially Auto Cannons that hit harder and are single shot, they suck because the Rocket Launcher and Auto Cannon exist (Rockets do it better, Auto can Auto shot which is THE firing mode you want to use pretty  much all the time).  OK underrates the AP rounds, they don't explode and damage the environment still, so pre-lasers they are the weapon of choice for controlled breaches (which OK doesn't seem to do instead opting with the blow out the whole building method).  Great tactic in terror missions.  Why run around a building or shoot through windows when you can walk through the wall?  Lets you keep cover and whatnot.  You should still use windows for scouting and shooting where you can.  The HE rounds are just pure sex, smaller more controlled explosions that you can autofire with, great stuff.

Which reminds, you should arrange your use of cover based around windows in Terror missions, aliens pretty much shouldn't catch you off guard by shooting at you through a window >_>

Aaaaaand finally OK hasn't explained that Aliens run on the same morale system that your soldiers do!  They can go berserk and panic under the exact same circumstances your characters can.  It happened to the last alien on that Terror Mission.  If you look on the ground you can see there is a Plasma Rifle just lying around on the ground near the alien (and he dies on top of another that you can see after the fence is destroyed).  The alien has paniced which forces the enemy to drop their weapon and run away.  At least another one also has unless OK destroyed some bodies.

Which brings up one of the flaws on the AI for aliens, they can't pick anything up, so a paniced alien is an effectively dead alien (matters more with Psi since the first command you can effectively use is Panic Unit which makes them take a massive Morale hit, it is also what the aliens do to anyone with moderate psi-strength IIRC).  This has a down side though in that you still need to track the fuckers down after they panic and you only have their movement sounds to base it on, which sucks balls on a Base mission because bases are pretty huge and full of hidey holes.  You learn to predict where they will be after a while though.

Anyway, the Morale system brings up a really cool thing to point out.  Often the aliens will sit in ambush for you right at your landed Skyranger,that innitial rush out can be pretty suicidal at times (Say against Sectoids with their hax accurate Cyberdiscs, which happen to be one of the aliens with the highest accuracy in the game, so they are downright brutal early on).  You take a few casualties and it reaks havok on your troops, it isn't all that uncommon to have a terror mission that has gone south end up with a couple of panicing soldiers and maybe even one going Berserk (which is normally one of the highest causes of X-Com killed civilians, someone going berserk with an HE loaded Auto-cannon is not pretty).  On the other hand, Terror Missions have enough aliens in them that you will really start to see the Morale effects on them as well, after the first 6 or so alien deaths Terror Missions really just kind of basic clean up work clearing house to house.  They should be fairly dispersed now that you have the ambush at the sky ranger cleared and their morale taking a massive hit.

Exception to this being Snakeman terror missions because in a mission with Chrysalids then every second of the mission until all Chrysalids are down is not in easy mode and is more than just basic clean up.  Oh and if you somehow manage to get an Ethereal Terror Mission you are in for a tough one, but it is rare.

I love this game.

OK is right though, Reapers are devastating on paper and suck hard in game, they really do have a phenomenal amount of TU (most of the Terrorist units do have more than regular aliens though) and if they DO get up close to you and go to town it can probably take out 3 units in a turn after running a fair distance.  They are really easy to get caught trying to attack units they can never reach though and it isn't all that uncommon in Terror Ships (if you shoot them down before they start a mission) and Battleships or Base missions for them to spawn somewhere that they can't get out of (Terror Ships are especially bad for this).

[Yakumo]

Hey, cool, I killed something and it wasn't a good guy!  *eyes the Cap'n*

[Nitori]

Hm, cool update. Would be awesome if Tal died, but you can't have them all~

[Otter]

Needs more Heavy Rockets being fired into the middle of gas stations.

[Grefter]

That tends to be kind of redundant.  What you want to do is clip the edge of a gas station with one, or the actual building part of one do that you hit 1 gas pump.  More area hit.  Very little survives explosions of any kind and whatever does is probably going to pass out pretty quickly and not be able to aim very well thanks to the smoke screen.

[Captain K.]

What?  I thought we didn't want any witnesses left alive.  <_<  >_>

[Smashy]

'25 posts per page means we aren't on a new page yet + needs more Smashys making enemies berserk via Panic UnitBeep' bump-like post thingy.

[AAA]

Word.

[Xeroma]

This thread reminds me that I need to get back to X-Com sometime. Just... all sorts of other stuff on my list >_>;