PLAY MORE X-COM!!!

[OblivionKnight]

Because so few of you have played the game it makes me SICK.  SICK.  SICK I SAY!

Anyway, I figured this would be an excellent game to LP.  X-Com is a classic and voted one of the greatest games of all time.  The depth the game exhudes is fantastic, and it's got huge amounts of replay value and exposure.  AND SO FEW OF YOU HAVE PLAYED IT!  So I thought this would be a great way to expose the game here.

Youtube video of the opening to save space and those with 56k a few thousand headaches with the large number of pictures I will have to employ early on:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=pX0Cm3N_n6k

So lets begin! With that out of the way, this first post will be a significant introduction to the game and how it works.  X-Com is a turn-based combat stategy/builder game, set in the late 90's.  Aliens from an unknown source are attacking the Earth, abducting civilians, performing experiments, killing the innocent, etc.  Their plans are unknown, but the governments of Earth have developed a resistance group to fight back against the aliens: The Extraterrestrial Combat Forces, X-Com.  Privately funded, the group's mission is to protect the civilians of the world, research the threat, and find a way to exterminate it.



Before the game begins, we need to choose our difficulty setting.  As you can see, there are 5 levels of difficulty.  Obviously, level 5, Superhuman, is the toughest.  The differences in difficulty lie in the number of aliens that appear on missions, their stats, the speed at which advanced aliens arrive (Mutons, Snakemen), and the diplomatic effects the aliens have on the governments of Earth.  It's been a while since I've played, and to make this easier to follow, we're going to go with Beginner.  This way, we can build up the game over time, and ease all you observers into the process of the game.



After choosing a difficulty setting, we're brought to what's called the Geoscape.  As anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of geography can tell, this is a map of the world.  The date and time can be seen in the center right of the screen, and below that are 6 buttons corresponding to times (5 seconds, 1 hour, etc.).  The game speed is defined by which of the buttons is pressed - obviously, time will move at the specified time-frame.  The default time speed is 5 seconds.  Below that, the globe icons allow you to zoom in/out.  Above the time settings is a list of buttons to press that allow you to view graphs and charts, as well as access the game options (saving, sound options, etc.).  But we'll get to that later.

If you'll notice the top of the screen, the game is asking me to place my first base.  When you begin the game, you must place a base for X-Com to operate out of.  You can place it anywhere in the world - Antarctica, South America, Africa, wherever.  The first base is free, but where you place it is important.  Since you're funded by the nations of the world, obviously, you want your base in a location where you can defend many of those nations.  The Arctic is a bad place, since penguins don't pay very well.  There are two good places to place your initial base: in Eastern Europe and the Eastern United States.  The United States is the largest funder of X-Com, so defending them is a good idea.  However, every other country in the New World pays pretty poorly.  Meanwhile, there are a lots of good paying countries in the European area, an a base in Eastern Europe can cover Europe, most of Asia, Africa, and even portions of the Americas.  A base in the United States, meanwhile, covers pretty much the Americas and minor portions of the Old World.  Hence, I decided to place the first base a bit north of where the mouse pointer is, right around where Moscow would be.  You'll see a picture of it later anyway. 



And thus, DLCom was born.  Welcome to our first base of operations!  To orient you to the mass of information: the majority of the space onscreen is taken up by the base view.  As you can see there's a grid section with buildings taking up varying amounts of space on them.  When you create your first base, this is what it will look like.  Each structure has a different function: the 3 large, 4-square pads are hangers, and in each of them is a vessel.  The top one has a Skyranger (troop transport), the lower left and lower right ones have Interceptors (to shoot down UFOs).  Below the top hanger are two other structures - the octagon-shaped one with a red square in the middle is called an Access Lift.  It's basically there to...provide access to the base.  It doesn't really do anything else, although if we made a new base, it would be the only structure we get for free.  The structure to the right of it is the Living Quarters, which is where our soldiers, scientists and engineers live.  Basically, think of them as farms in Warcraft terminology - to acquire more people, we need enough housing for them.  Below the Living Quarters is the laboratory.  Labs are where your scientists do research, which is vital to your survival in this game.  The more you have, the more scientists you can assign to research.  To the right of that is the Workshop.  Workshops are for your engineers.  You need workshops to build weapons, craft, etc.  The more you have, the faster you can build.  To the left of the lab is the General Stores.  General stores are just that - stores.  You need them to hold equipment you make or capture in battle.  Finally, to the left of that is a Small Radar.  Radars allow you to detect aliens.  The small radar has a 5% chance to detect an alien ship every 10 minutes within 300 nautical miles.  Without a radar, you can never detect aliens, and therefore, you can't really win the game. 

To the right of the base layout is the base status section.  You can see the base name, the area it's located (Europe), the amount of money we have, a bird's eye view of the base (and any others you might have), and a list of options to go through.  Let's check those options out, shall we?



This is the base information window.  Here we can see how many personnel we have, how much space they use up, and other stats (such as the monthly costs of maintenance on our base).  A general overall view of the base, basically.



This is the soldier tab.  Each soldier has a name and vital statistics as shown.  You can also see their rank, where they're assigned to, the number of kills they've made, missions they've flown, etc.  Now, for an explanation of the stats:

TU - Turn units.  This stat is basically how often a soldier can act.  TUs are expended when moving, firing, priming grenades, using psionics, etc.  It's a measure of how often/much a soldier can act in a given turn.
Stamina - A measure of how the soldier can sustain movement.  An exertion factor - the higher the elevation a soldier traverses, the more energy they spend, which equates to more TU spent.  Wounded characters will also expend more stamina, which equates to more TU spent to move.
Health - Obvious.  More allows you to withstand additional plasma bursts to the face.
Bravery - A measure of how BRAVE a soldier is!  The higher this is, the less likely a soldier is to panic in the face of disasterous, morale-lowering instances (for instance, if a bunch of your characters get killed).
Reactions - Illustrates precedence in combat.  High reactions prevent opportunity fire from defenders, and allow opportunity fire for, conversely.  They go hand-in-hand with TUs - high TUs and reactions allow lots of opportunity fire.  This stat is great for guarding pathways, as it allows your soldiers to fire on approaching aliens before they get a chance to fire at you.
Firing Accuracy - Firearm accuracy.  Self-explanatory.
Throwing Accuracy - Accuracy with throwing grenades and other projectiles not firearms.  Kind of not that amazing, as it basically only has use with grenades, practically.
Strength - Indicates the amount of junk a soldier can carry.  If they carry equipment heavier than their strength, they get a penalty to their TUs.

It's important to note that aliens have stats too, but you can't see them until you access Mind Probes (which is, admittedly, soonish). 

To make this fun and interesting, I'll be naming all my soldiers after DL members.  Now, who to start with...well, since I'm not sure of the sex of this soldier, I need to go with someone ambiguous...



There we go.  Now, you'll also notice that I've attached another word to the end of the soldier name.  This indicates their use in combat.  Those I'll get into a bit more later.  Usually, it's a smart idea to base their indication on stats (i.e., Scouts should have high TUs, Snipers high firing accuracy, etc.), but you can easily train soldiers up to high levels in whatever you want them to be, so this isn't a huge problem.  So, let's finish off the rest of the starting soldiers.  I'll go fairly randomly with names, attempting to keep sexes matching up properly if possible:









There we go.



As you can see, we start with 8 soldiers.  I've designated 4 snipers, 3 scouts and 1 carnage (i.e., explosives and mass destruction) soldier.  They're all rookies, and all are assigned to the same vessel for transport to an alien attack.  Hopefully, we'll have one of those soon.  As a note, if you die, I'll probably re-recruit you later, though I'll try to get everyone a stint as a soldier at some point.



This is the equip craft screen for one of our Interceptors (if you're wondering, both of them are equipped the same).  As you can see, this ship is equipped with Stingray missiles and a basic cannon for combat with UFOs.  Cannons are pretty much useless, except for ensuring you don't destroy smaller UFOs.  Missiles are the way to go early - they outrange several UFO weapons, and do decent damage, and aren't highly likely to destroy some of the smaller UFOs.  I'm not going to change the equipment on the Interceptors at the moment, as it's fine for now. 

I'll post information on some of the weapons/craft a bit later.  Right now, this is a basic background to start everyone off with.



And this is our other vessel, the troop transport Skyranger.  You can assign soldiers to the ship (all 8 of ours are assigned to it), as well as equipment (to a max of 80 pieces of equipment, including things such as grenades, rifles, stun rods, etc.) and personnel armour (which I don't have any of yet).  There's not much to do with it now, so we'll be leaving this screen.



This is what happens when we go to the Build Facilities section of base management.  When you click on it, the section on the right pops up, showing you all your options.  If you click on one, it will pop up with a window showing the cost, the time to build and the upkeep it costs to have it there.  This picture shows what I've already started building.  I'm building an additional 2 hangers on the top section (next to the first hanger up there), as well as a Large Radar (next to the small rader - small and large radars stack, with large radars having a a detection range of 450 nautical miles), a general stores below the lab, and a living quarters to the right of the workshop.  Why am I doing all this and spending huge amounts of money? 

Base defensibility.  When aliens attack your base (which, to be fair, won't happen until later), they can access your base from 1 of 2 areas - the Access Lift or Hangers.  If you look at the original base set-up, there are no defensible locations - aliens entering from any of the hangers or access lift can prowl throughout the base, and there's no real choke points of defensible locations, since your soldiers will be attacked from all sides.  Once the 2 hangers up top are done (in 25 days), I'll delete the two at the bottom, and once the living quarters are finished, I'll delete the other one, making the access lift a great choke point to defend in case of a base attack. 

There are several structures I haven't built yet that I fully intend to - Alien Containment is vital, as you can't research live aliens captured during missions without one built.  But right now, it's not a huge problem.  Missile defenses are for protecting your base from invasion, but they're generally a waste of time, unless you have a base with no soldiers to defend it.  Base attacks, if you have a proper defensive structure, are actually good things - lots and lots of alien and equipment lot. 



This is what comes up under the research tab.  As you can see, there's not much to research now, but what there is is good.  This game requires you to research to win - researching gets you new weapons, craft, as well as allows you to win the game.  Researching early topics allows you to research more topics, as does capturing alien corpses and technology. 

My focus is always on laser weapons first, despite what Alex will argue with me over.  Laser weapons are pretty much inarguably the best weapons in the game - early research opportunity, unlimited ammunition, solid damage, accurate and sell very well (Laser Cannons can be manufactured and sold for lots of money on the black market).  They even the score very much with the aliens and their plasma weaponry.

Medkits are nice for healing soldiers that are wounded or unconscious.  Unfortunately, I don't find them that useful, especially early on.  In my experience, soldiers are very likely to die without armour, and they're pretty expendable early when they're all rookies.  Probably my last pick of the early research options.

Motion Scanners are good for night missions, as they show you movement of aliens.  These are great for when you're in unknown territory, and especially great in cities, where there are lots of hiding places that are hard to search, and where you can't always sacrifice soldiers to look place by place. 



Yep, starting lasers.  Since I only have 10 scientists, I can't do this as fast as I'd like.  As you can see, I have a total amount of lab space for 50 total scientists, so I'd like to get to that number as fast as possible.



And this is the Purchase/Hire tab.  Any Terran personnel or equipment (basically anything that isn't researchable) can be acquired via spending a bit of money on things.  As you can see, I'm buying lots of explosives (grenades, rockets) and electro-flares (for night missions).  Also, though you can't see it, I hired a bunch of scientists (20 more), which run a crapload of money (over 1 million!), but allow me to research much faster.  This takes care of pretty much all of my initial purchases to start the game.  This should get us started pretty well.



Right below the hiring/purchasing tab is the sell/sack tab.  Here, we can sell excess equipment and fire lazy personnel.  I'm selling all my Auto-cannon and HE ammo, as well as the weapons themselves, to make some money.  I'm not a huge fan of either, preferring rockets myself.  While they have uses, I'm going to stick with rockets for this, unless I feel like playing around with them.

Those are all the tabs in the base overview.  Now, back to the geoscape...



Clicking on the intercept tab at the top right corner of the screen opens up this window.  It shows all current craft in posession, as well as their locations, if they have weapons, their crew, and HWPs (Heavy Weapons Platforms, i.e., tanks) if applicable.  Since there aren't any UFOs to intercept right now, this tab is kind of useless, but it should prove useful once we actually detect some aliens flying around the skies.



This is part of the graphs tab, accessed from the geoscape.  There are a lot of graphs to show here - graphs showing alien activity in countries, across continents, interception data, income from countries over time, and other pieces of information.  Unfortunately, there's not much to go through now, so I'll not be going through every one of them now.  Suffice to say, looking at the activity graphs is really useful for figuring out where alien bases might be located, while the income graphs can show how alien activity might be affecting national funding.



Right below the graph tab is the UFOpaedia tab.  This is a giant encyclopedia about the game: alien information, weapon stats, etc.  It gets updated as you research and learn more about the game.  Right now, there's just about nothing in it.  We'll make use of it later.



And finally, the funding tab.  As you can see, there are a lot of countries providing funding to X-Com.  The USA pays the most by far, followed by Japan, France and South Africa.  To keep this funding up, you need to make sure you shoot down UFOs flying around countries, respond to alien terror missions, destroy alien bases located in countries, and overall just make the politicians happy by minimizing civilian casualties and maximizing alien killing.  This is why it's suggested to make a base in Europe - the Europe base covers a lot of high-paying countries, while the USA base covers pretty much just the USA, in terms of high-paying countries.

So that's the overview of the game.  With that done, I proceed to press the 1 hour button to speed up the game and wait for things to happen.  Usually, a UFO will pop up within the first couple days.  Meanwhile, you usually just need to wait to get everything on track (weapon purchases, research, etc.).  Nothing's really happened so far, but a couple days in...




All those weapons and scientists I purchased/hired finally arrived.  Immediately, I send the scientists to assist with laser research, and take stock of my equipment.



Laser research completes!  Wonderful!  From here, I focus on the laser pistol research.  Laser pistols are great early weapons - less power than the rifles, but much lighter and can fire far more often.  Also, unlimited ammo and faster research, so I could very well have them by the time a UFO comes around at this rate.  They're great on scouts for reaction fire, and otherwise are just overall better than the basic projectile pistols and rifles. 



Still no UFOs, but pretty quickly, the laser pistol research finishes.  As you can see, most weapons have 3 firing rates, though I'll explain them later.  The big on is the 25% next to Auto-Fire, meaning you can theoretically use auto-fire 4 times a turn.  Great weapon.



And with pistols done, I go to work on researching laser rifles, probably the best weapon in the game, period.  These are fabulous weapons for snipers and overall general use, with great accuracy and power.  I should probably have them researched by next UFO encounter.



We skipped this tab in the base description earlier because there wasn't really anything to show with it.  Now that I've researched something I can produce, it's time to show you what manufacturing does.  Pretty self-explanatory, really - you can see what item is being produced, the engineers working on it (following similar restrictions as labs with scientists), the units already produced, units to be produced, price for each unit, and time it will take to complete them.  So in a little less than 3 days, I'll have 2 laser pistols to dole out to my group.  Awesome.

And I do get that time.  It's the 8th of January, and nothing's happened yet.  No UFOs detected, nothing else going on.  The laser pistols do arrive, and as such, I go and set up the Skyranger with the new equipment.



Out go the old pistols, in come the laser pistols, more grenades, rockets and launcher, and remaining rifles and clips.  Plenty of equipment to arm my squad.  You can only put 80 items on a Skyranger (clips, rifles, grenades, stun rods...all inclusive), so while it doesn't look packed, it actually is: 61 items currently hold space in the Skyranger.  Granted, a lot of it is extra ammo and the like, but when I start getting more soldiers, space will be very limited.  This is why laser weapons are fantastic, as they basically cut equipment usage in half, not requiring any clips. 

So outfitted ship, and nothing going on.  Kind of boring until we get more stuff going on, so we're now just wait...



There we go!  Whenever a UFO is detected, it will pop up in a window like this.  As you can see, it's taken 8 days for something to pop up.  The indication of UFO-1 indicates this is the first UFO to fly over Earth.  This doesn't necessarily mean I've detected them - this could be UFO-4 and been the first one I've actually detected.  Size of the UFO is fairly obvious - larger UFOs have more firepower, more crew, and more loot.  The altitude illustrates whether the UFO is flying or not - in this case, it's landing on the ground, likely doing something (abduction, harvesting, etc.) nefarious.  Heading illustrates which way the UFO is flying, which helps with interception (send the fighter in the way of the UFO so it can catch it - early craft are much slower than alien vessels, so predicting where they're flying is important for actually catching them and shooting them down).  Speed, obviously is how fast the UFO is going.  Slower flying UFOs do different procedures than faster ones - generally, a slower flying UFO will be nearing its location (terror mission, supply mission, etc.).  Faster ships not only are generally larger, but indicate that the ship is going towards a location - this could be a base assault, a fly-by scouting mission or a vanguard for other vessels.  This ship is grounded, and it's small, so it's probably a harvesting or research mission.  More about those later.



And here, I sent out craft to recover the ship.  The light blue square in Europe is the base, DLCom.  The yellow dot right below it is the Skyranger, filled with soldiers.  The green X is the UFO, landed.  Real close to it is another yellow dot, one of the interceptors from DLCom.  I have it hovering over the UFO, just in case it decides to fly off before the Skyranger gets there.  This way, the interceptor will shoot it down, keeping it grounded so I can recover it.



It doesn't move.  Our Skyranger arrives.  It's time! 

And thus ends part 1, the basic introduction to the game.  Next post will be about the DL's first alien craft recovery!         

[OblivionKnight]

Welcome back, fellow alien afficiendos!  When we last left off, our intrepid band of DL do-gooders was heading towards an alien landing site, intent on eliminating the infestastion of extraterresticles (I made that up myself!).



At the beginning of every mission, this wonderful little window will pop up to explain just what needs to be done.  To put it short - kill or stun all aliens, collect the loot.  Just like an RPG!  Rank X-Com! 

Ahem.  As you can see, this is a ground assault mission.  When a UFO lands without being shot down (as was the case for this UFO), you get a ground assault mission.  A craft that landed of its own accord will generally have more cool stuff to loot than a UFO that was shot down (and subsequently damaged).  Since this UFO landed by itself, it's fully intact - which means more aliens and more loot.  Since this was a small vessel, it should be filled with about 3-10 aliens.  We'll see how this recovery mission goes.






Before each missions actually begins, you get a chance to equip all of your soldiers.  As you can see, soldiers have a lot of space to put guns, grenades, flares and other assorted toys.  Soldiers need equipped to actually do something - fists don't stand much of a chance against plasma rifles.  The aforementioned pictures show the set-up I'm using for the 3 designations of soldier I have right now - Scout, Carnage and Sniper.  They're all equipped in the same style I'd equip someone with that specific designation. 

Zenny's a Carnage soldier - he's equipped with a rocket launcher and a bunch of rockets.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take off his grenades, which really, really weighed him down.  If you give a soldier equipment heavier than their strength, they lose TU equal to the amount of excess weight.  Grenades, while light, add to this - in the case of Zenny, he's carrying 4 rockets and a bunch of grenades.  Not good for getting off a lot of shots.  This is pretty much the set-up I'll be using for a Carnage type soldier for a while, until I get Blaster Bombs. 

Scouts are set up similar to Miasma.  A light weapon and some grenades, but overall not heavily equipped.  They need speed - Scouts should generally be the first units to touch down and enter a battlefield, which generally means their casualties are high.  Should they survive, they should be used for leap-frogging - moving forward to spot for other units (Snipers in particular).  Grenades are there for some added firepower, and the ligher weapons, such as laser pistols, allow them to use reaction fire on exposed aliens, which should hopefully keep them alive a bit longer.  More equipment will eventually be added to the Scout arsenal - Motion Scanners and Mind Probes being the big ones coming up soon.  They're also the first soldiers I generally give Flying Armour too, as it helps them in their mission significantly, and also increases their survivability by huge, huge amounts. 

The Snipers are equipped like Ciato is.  They basically get the best rifle available (which...isn't anything special now, just a basic projectile weapon).  I also usually give them grenades too early on, as there aren't too many options.  Snipers generally follow far behind scouts, hiding behind cover, waiting for someone to show up so they can shoot them.  Later, they'll be getting laser rifles and heavy plasma.  Not too much interesting about them otherwise.

As you can see, Snow's equipped like a Scout.  Snow's also a girl, apparently >_>  But anyway, one thing extra you'll note is in her/his backpack - it's a Stun Rod.  This was an idiotic thing to add at this point, as I can't even bring aliens back to the base without an Alien Containment Facility, which I haven't build yet!  Anyway, back to the point, Stun Rods are used to stun aliens so you can bring them back to base.  This is required to win the game - you need to capture certain aliens to access certain technologies, as well as enter the final mission.  Sadly, it's kind of pointless now, and just weighing the poor girl down >_>

There are several other set-ups for troops I intend to use, but at the moment, there isn't much to do yet with them.  Stunners (focusing on knocking out essential aliens), Psicorps (focusing on psionics, i.e., mind control), Demolitions (a side-group of Carnage, designed to break down walls and buildings, usually equipped with grenades, high explosives and heavy plasma if possible), Medic (with medkits to heal wounded soldiers), and Salvage (grabbing equipment off of fallen soldiers so we can use it later) will all make an appearance later.



After equipping soldiers, it's off to the Battlescape.  The Battlescape is where the combat part of X-Com takes place.  This is the first thing you'll see upon touching down at a battle site.  All your soldiers start in the landing craft, which is, in this case, a Sky Ranger.  As you can see, there's a lot to go through here to start, so to save a bit of time and sanity and boredom, I'll be going through it all as it comes up.  So, first thing's first:

The bottom 1/3 of the screen is devoted to information about the character.  We currently have Miasma selected.  Right below her name is a set of numbers and bars that correspond to those numbers.  The bright green number corresponds to the top bar, and represents TU.  The burgundy number to the right corresponds to the second bar down, and represents energy.  The red number corresponds to the third bar down and represents health.  And finally, the purple number corresponds to the lowest bar, and represents morale.  To the left of the soldier's name is insignia representing their rank, which in this case is a rookie.  This insignia will also allow you, once clicked on, to access the soldier's status screen for more detailed information.  To the left of that are 3 red buttons, of which one is depressed.  The currently depressed one is the default for X-Com soldier movement - by pressing it, your soldiers will spend all their TU on movement as far as you indicate for them to move.  The other 3 buttons, by pressing them, will force your soldiers to move, but will stop them so that they have enough TU left to fire either a Snap Shot, Aimed Shot or Auto-Shot (from left to right, top to bottom, of the remaining red buttons).  More on them later.  On the far ends of the screen are boxes that correspond to the soldier's hands - in Miasma's right hand is a laser pistol, and her left hand is currently empty.  That's it for now.  The other buttons above the character stats I'll go over in time, as they're not hugely important now.



Well, I guess I go into some of that right away.  The 3rd button from the left on the top row is the overview map screen, that displays where everything so far discovered is located on the current battlescape.  The "X" on the map indicates the current soldier selected (Miasma, in this case), while the yellow dots indicate my other soldiers.  Obviously, the Sky Ranger is the large plane-like object all of the soldiers are currently inside of.  If you look at the northern edge of the revealed map, you should see a grayish object jutting out.  That's a UFO - in this case, a small one.  Each UFO size class has a unique set-up for the interior and exterior of the UFO.  This is a small UFO, specifically classified as a Large Scout.  We can't see all of it yet, but once we start exploring the Battlescape, we'll be able to see more.



Back to our wonderful scout Miasma.  First, I'd like to apologize for some of these pictures, as I didn't do a great job of catching action shots on them, so I'll be filling in what happened in several cases.  Anyway, if you'll notice, Miasma now has something in her left hand - this is a Smoke Grenade.



Once primed and thrown, a smoke grenade explodes, leaving a cloud of smoke, obscuring anything beneathe it.  Smoke grenades are a great tool to use when initially exiting any transport, especially, such as in this case, when the transport lands really close to the UFO.  Smoke grenades are great for concealing your initial advance out of the UFO, allowing your soldiers to exit without getting slaughtered by any aliens outside. 

This picture also serves to illustrate how grenades are primed in X-Com.  Setting the timer to 0 will have it explode as soon as your turn ends.  Setting the timer at 1 will cause it to explode at the end of the alien next alien turn.  Setting the timer to 2 will cause it to explode at the end of your next turn, and so on and so forth.  I'm setting this grenade to explode at the end of my turn, to ensure I have some smoke to move through and deploy.



Right after I prime and throw the grenade at the foot of the landing gear, it explodes, and I move Miasma out into the field of smoke.  When you move a soldier outside the transport and stop, portions of the fog of war become visible.  Smoke obscures this a bit (by a space or two), but it's well worth the cover.  She sees nothing, so I start bringing the rest of the troop out and setting them up.  Usually, a landing site is either completely empty, or you're under fire as soon as you land.  It's odd nothing's happened yet, considering how close we are to the alien ship.



This picture is 3 turns in.  Everyone's deployed, and a small party was sent out to the west (Miasma, Zenny, Super), while the main group heads to the east.  If you'll notice in the lower right corner, above Miasma's laser pistol, is a flashing red number 1.  Whenever your character spots an alien (i.e., it's in their visual range), a flashing number will appear in the lower right corner.  If there are more than one aliens in their visual range, multiple numbers will flash.  In this case...



There's the little bugger!  A gray alien with a pistol.  This is a Sectoid.  Actually, let's get everyone a better picture:

 

That's a Sectoid.  Anyway, yeah, little grey men.  The Sectoids are the frailest of the alien species, with stats about on par with rookie soldiers (barring their high reactions).  Generally, they are the weakest of the alien species, and the least threatening, making them the first species you'll usually encounter.  This is, of course, on small UFO missions.  When attacking a Battleship or a Base, Sectoids are probably the 2nd most dangerous of the alien species, and that is for one reason - psionics.  Sectoids are one of 2 races (the other being Ethereals) that can use psionics, and they can wreck you pretty badly with it.  They also bring along a pretty strong terror unit to their Terror Missions, but more on that later!

Anyway, we're here to kill the little bastards, so let's get rid of him!  Let's let Miasma take the first shot.

 

Clicking on Miasma's laser pistol brings up this lovely set of options.  This will vary based on weapon, but for most guns, you'll have the following options:

Aimed Shot - Highest accuracy, but also the highest TU cost
Snap Shot - Average accuracy, lowest TU cost
Auto Shot - Lowest accuracy, average TU cost, fires 3 shots at once

90% of the time, the best bet is Auto-Shot, if applicable.  3 shots at lower accuracy is generally much better than 1 aimed shot, plus you can usually squeeze 2 volleys in on a normal soldier's turn.  This is especially notable early on, when soldier accuracies are not that great, so the difference between 19%*3 and 33%*1 is very much not significant. 

So, I have Miasma fire off an auto-shot.  The results are as follows:



Badass.  Miasma gets the first kill over the game.  Good start. 

Also, yes - this is a stereotypical alien landing on a farm to rape and pillage cattle.  You can destroy haystacks, and blow up farmhouses if you feel like it.  Pretty much everything is destructible.  We'll play with that more later.

 

Meanwhile, NEB, our sexually confused scout on the eastern side, has found another alien.  The red number isn't flashing because I moved NEB back a bit to cover, and as such, NEB can't actually SEE the alien (and hence, can't directly fire at him), but he's still on screen.

 

Even though he can't see the alien to DIRECTLY fire at him, an auto-fire in the general direction with bad accuracy still connects!  The Strongest Woman in the World is giving Miasma a run for her money!  Also, it seems like the Scouts are proving themselves pretty worth it right now.  Currently, both NEB and Miasma have been using the brand new laser pistols, sporting better accuracy and damage than the original Terran weaponry, which is why they've proven to be the best killers so far.



Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end.  After ending the last turn, this little bugger snuck out from behind the UFO and opened fire.  The cursor is currently over our dear, departed comrade, Ciato.  Granted, I'm a bit to blame for that - she was the most exposed soldier out there, and wasn't crouching, so she was prime pickings for that Sectoid bastard.



As you can see, when you stand over a dead or wounded comrade or alien, you can access your personal equipment screen and see them and all their equipment lying on the ground.  Since I'm a cheap bastard, I've had Super loot Ciato's grenades.  I don't care about the rifle, as I'll be replacing it with the superior laser rifle soon.  Sorry Ciato!  You're the first casualty of the game ;_:



However, all is not lost!  Ye shall be avenged, Ciato!  The almighty Zenthor, wielder of the legendary rocket launcher, shall avenge thee! 



...or not.



But Dhyer picks up where Zenny fell limp!  The sniper scores a kill on the alien, scoring one for the non-scouts.  Also, actually doing what a sniper is meant to do - snipe things.  After this, I do some maneuvering, and decide to end the turn. 



Unfortunately, that turn ended in a similar vein to the one where Ciato died.  Dhyer was hit by a stray blast from another Sectoid (whom you'll see soon).  This screen is the status screen for each soldier, what you'll get to by clicking on the rank icon on the main Battlescape.  If you'll look below Dhyer's health, you'll see a 3 next to a term titled Fatal Wounds.  When a character is hit, there's a possibility they might be inflicted with fatal wounds, which basically means they will take damage to their health equal to the number of fatal wounds each turn until they die.  So, now we need to finish this map before Dhyer dies from his wounds.

You'll also notice on Dhyer's health a gray section of the bar.  This indicates smoke inhalation.  If you remember, our entire party was basically standing in a field of smoke.  If a character's health bar is filled up far enough with gray, they fall unconscious due to smoke poisoning, which is, for all intents and purposes, a form of stunning that works really, really slowly. 

Also, you'll note that the very bottom of the screen has bars relating to armour.  This isn't too important at the moment, as our characters have no armour, but we can make personnel armour for them.  The armour indices illustrate how much damage from a weapon can be absorbed before damaging a soldier's health.

Right about now, Alex is sitting there in his chair, reading this, and thinking to himself, "told him to research med-kits first".   



And there's the bastard!  Super, you're up!

Well, actually, he was already up, but is getting ready to fire another set of auto-shots, due to missing.



Simply put, he missed again, but our awesome Scout Miasma proves that girl power is here to stay, scoring another kill for the day.  That's 4 dead aliens, 1 dead soldier, and 1 mortally wounded soldier.  Not too bad so far.



There's a bit of missed action here, but the basis of what happened is that Miasma moved forward to do some scouting (and to loot alien corpses), and discovered two aliens (the corpses are visible, though hard to see through the smoke), whom she fired upon and killed with one volley of auto-fire.  The girl is on a killing spree. 



Speaking of alien corpse looting, this alien corpse is ripe for the picking!  Miasma is currently holding an alien plasma rifle in her hand, but since we technically haven't researched it yet, we can't actually use it.  Hence, it's called an alien artifact.  Later, once we've researched the alien weapons a bit more, we can start looting them on the battlefield for free weapon reloads.



Ok, two turns later, we end up in this position, approaching the UFO door, where Dhyer spots an alien right in front of him...



...and proceeds to blow his fricking brains out.



And now it's time to enter the UFO proper.  Entering UFOs is one of the most dangerous parts of any mission, especially before you get Heavy Plasma and Blaster Bombs to make your own doors in the sides of the ship.  This is a horrible set-up that I got into because I was trying to get lots of pictures and wasn't thinking.  This is awful UFO entry procedure, and I'll be sure to illustrate a better one later.  You see, alien UFOs can have several doors, or just one, depending on the size.  This is the only door in the UFO, and is hence exceedingly likely to be guarded well.  Anyone entering the door is liable to get shot and killed, and it's not unlikely aliens will just pop out, shoot, and pop back in to their safe ship.  Hence, usually the first person to enter a UFO will be a casualty, and it's best to send someone already wounded in that case.  So, Dhyer first!



And thus Dhyer charges into the fray.  Inside, he spots 2 aliens, one to his north, one to his west.  Right here's a dangerous time, as both aliens likely will be able to make reaction shots on him if he moves. 

A quick explanation on reaction fire: reaction fire is fire from a defender (the side not currently moving) in response to an action the other side is making.  The higher the reaction of the defender (the side not moving) compared to the attacker (the side moving), the more likely they are to open fire on the attacker, even though it's not their turn.  The more TU you have when ending your turn, the more likely you are to use reaction fire, fire more reaction shots (on the defender side), or prevent enemy reaction shots (attacker side).  That's a pretty basic explanation of it.

In layman's terms, Dhyer is currently within range of 2 aliens, so he can either attack or move.  Either could provoke an attack of opportunity and reaction fire from either Sectoid.



I move Dhyer into the little tiny corner of the ship to the left of the door.  The north alien does fire, but misses, while the west Sectoid doesn't fire.  Lucky break there.  Even luckier, I pull NEB into the fray, and have him aim at the north Sectoid, killing him.  The girls on this team are really holding their own.

You'll also see in NEB's left hand is a grenade, a proximity grenade.  After the kill, I have him toss it to the north door (it's a bit hard to make out, but it's above the Sectoid corpse).  This will come in use a turn later.



And pulling Snow up to the front, he scores a kill on the western alien.  The girls are really tearing it up here - Dhyer's the only guy with any kills to his name, and he's nearly dead!   



Two things happened between the turns here:

1) An alien came out of the north door, hit the proximity grenade, and went boom.  Score another kill for the magnificent woman, NEB.
2) Dhyer fell unconscious.  If you've looked carefully at his health as it deteriorates, you'll have noticed the grey bar taking up a larger portion of his health bar.  At this point, it's finally overcome his health, so he goes unconscious. 

Overall, Dhyer has a total of 2 turns left to live.  Finishing the game in fight in that time isn't impossible, so let's try!



I take the time to set my soldiers up to converge on the main control room of the UFO.  NEB is watching the north door, while Miasma, Clear Tranquil and Snow head through the west door.  If you can see, everyone is currently crouching at the moment.  Crouching is the best position to be in, as it increases your firing accuracy and decreases the firing accuracy of any enemies trying to directly hit you.  This also makes reaction fire a lot easier to set up.




Unfortunately, the alien remaining in the UFO comes out the north door and tosses a grenade at NEB... 

...which proceeds to explode at the start of the turn, killing both him and Dhyer.  That bastard!  3 dead soldiers and 9 dead aliens.  This UFO had the max number of possible aliens in it, which is pretty crazy this early. 

Ok, we're down a lot of troops, so it's time to start pulling Zenny and Super back to the battlefield.  Meanwhile, I set team Girl Squad's remaining members up to guard the door leading into the main control room. 



DO NOT PLACE YOUR SOLDIERS LIKE THIS.  EVER.

I misclicked, and ended up with Snow facing backwards, and the rest of my soldiers kind of caught where they were, due to door blocking.  A grenade would end them right then and there.  Hell, concentrated plasma would too. 



Thankfully, the alien decided not to do anything, which lead to this screenshot. 

"Hi Mr. Sectoid, my name is Clear Tranquil.  Do you like Peppita?"

"Foolish Earth toys are worthless!  Now bend over and get probed!"



"DIE SCUM YOU LIKE PEPPITA OR DIE KTHNXBYE!!!"



And that's the end!  After a mission is complete, a screen pops up to give you your score, as well as tell you how much loot you got.  Alien Artifacts are items such as the plasma rifle, stun bombs, etc., items that aren't originally Terran.  Basically, all this UFO amounts to is a lot of stuff to research - researching alien artifacts, as well as UFO components and Elerium-115 (a special element that powers all their equipment, that can only be obtained from UFOs or alien bases), opens up new technologies and ways to outfit your soldiers.



Soldiers also can receive promotions after battle.  Apparently, X-Com commanding officers are major Peppita fans, and decided to bless Clear Tranquil with the honour of Sergeant after one battle, and gloss over Miasma's awesome record of kills so far.  Oh well.  Promotions are good for morale (high-ranking officers keep morale high when the rank-and-file soldiers start falling), and also bestow other positive benefits on soldiers, including stat improvements. 

No, I have no idea what really decides whether someone gets promoted or not.

So there you have it, our first UFO assault completed!  Pretty decent - 3 casualties is more than I was expecting, but Ciato was the only one I really probably could have prevented easily, with better positioning.  Oh well, just means we recruit more soldiers later!

If you want to be a soldier, I'll try to add you.  Also, if you've died (NEB, Dhyer, Ciato), I'll do my best to resurrect you later, with a number next to your name (such as Ciato2), to indicated how many times you've died.  Will Ciato die more than Meeple?  Will Sei live up to his desire to end up accidentally killing all of his own squadmates? 

Find out next time, on X-Com: DL Defense!

[AAA]

Yay, it's back.

So if you finish the mission in time to save someone with a fatal wound, is there a recovery period or anything?

[Grefter]

O_o  You got 9 in a Large scout on Beginner?  Shit it is even variable numbers of aliens in ships?  News to me.

And yeah, Soldier rank means a lot, the stats of your Commander are phenomenal.  Rule of thumb is that the kills will get you promotions though.  I expect Mia will get a promotion next mission.

There is a recovery period based on the amount of health lost over the mission.  Wounds mean nothing to recovery time IIRC.

Edit - Oh yeah and your entry into the Large scout is kind of sloppy as well.  Place people in the corners near the entry way, kneel and cover the opposite door, move 2 people into the area just behind the wall to cover an alien running out, then next turn you leap frog a couple of people into right next to the door.  You have both possible entries covered with minimal risk on turn 1 and on turn 2 anything that walks out either door is looking at 5 guns.

[AAA]

Also, considering her name, you should make Clear Tranq, if she survives that long, the go-to person for capturing aliens.

[Yakumo]

Heh, maybe if I read this thing I'll figure out what the heck I was supposed to be doing in this game.  I tried it once but couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do other than kill aliens, like capturing them or anything like that or anything about unlocking other missions.  Was still pretty solid.

[Lord Ephraim]

Is this game as full of clusterfuck of micromanagement of even the tiniest of details that will kill you if you don't read about billions of FAQs?  Either way, it did look fun when OK actually started to fight I guess.

Miasma will fuck up aliens.  Meeples and Zenthors better watch out.

[Ranmilia]

I told you to research medkits first!

(Serious explanation - fatal wounds are the most annoying things ever, being able to save your soldiers is a huge improvement in cost and unit building efficiency, it sucks when your promoted units get popped by some jerk with a plasma pistol and then slowly die while you can't do anything.  And if you go lasers first you're going to be waiting for a much longer time before you can put your engineers to work building anything - and it'll then be hard to fit meds into your busy gun production schedule later.  You get your guns a little sooner, but at what cost?  At what cost, man?!)

Mind probes, coming soon

Good luck on that one, I never find any until midgame or later.

NEB needs to get a stun rod and become the true Strongest Woman in the World ASAP. 

I also like using grenades to assist UFO entry.  A smoke at the entrance or some folks with primed frags ready to toss in the door can be very nice.

Nice thread!

[Fudozukushi]

There isn't enough death to satisfy my bloodlust!

[Grefter]

Speaking as someone that learnt the game when he was 9, Eph.  No the game does not require massive knowledge or a FAQ to play at all.  It is really quite a simple game mechanically.

There is really only one thing to micromanage and that is your Elerium stocks (used for fuel for good ships and for alien weapons).  Cheating to fix that and money isn't really a slight on anyone as a gamer I think.  You play it for the tactical missions after all.  Money isn't really a concern outside of the early game either.

For the stop governments getting pissy, it is easy, shoot everything down, do missions, they get happy.  Do your job and it is a non-issue.

That is essentially the game Yakko.  You stop the aliens, research stuff.  Get research enough to fly to mars and take out their base of operation (the whole Mars operation is a tactical mission to end the game).

[Taishyr]

...well, I'm sold. Should try this sometime.

[Grefter]

I tell people to play this game for fucking years and it takes OK to play it to get interest?

Faaaaiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllllllllllllllllll.

[OblivionKnight]

Yeah, X-Com can be played very basically.  The only parts that really require some work are capturing certain aliens.  Which isn't too hard if you're willing to sacrifice some soldiers. 

As Gref says, money isn't a huge issue once you get going.  Raiding a UFO gets you a crapload of stuff you can sell for money, and manufacturing weapons to sell on the black market also works wonders (Laser Cannons are the win for that).

Mind Probes...are usually one of the first things you can acquire, as they're common on all scouts (Small, Medium, Large).  How odd.  Oh well.

Max aliens in a large scout is 10, which I got for this mission.  To be fair, the UFO landed intact - had I shot it down, we'd probably see 5-7 or so.

Next mission I'll be sure to show proper UFO entry and other tactics.  I was so worried about missing pictures I made a few mistakes.  Anyway...next post should be around the New Year, so happy fun times are ahead!

[Yakumo]

Well, I played for a while, kept getting my ass beat in ter ror missions, and couldn't figure out what exactly I was supposed to be trying to do to make the game move along, so I just kinda stopped since nothing really seemed to be changing. >_>

EDIT:  Why must this censor fail so? -_-

[Grefter]

Terror missions are freaking hardcore.  It is part of what makes the game great.

When you are new to the game they really work well at capturing the feeling of terror and confusion of aliens attacking a town full of civilians while you try and take them all out.

They are pretty hard and kind of harsh pre-flying suits but it is totally worth it for that feeling.

[SnowFire]

Hmm.  Interesting that you seem to praise Laser equipment better than Plasma equipment.  While Laser stuff certainly is better as far as space on the Skyranger, I upgraded anyway to Plasma pistols when I could research them under the assumption they'd be better.  But maybe not?  Huh.  (I seem to recall keeping some Laser equipment anyway due to the space problems).

I got X-COM for 5 bucks around ~6 or so years back and gave it a whirl on my old P200 which was still entirely too fast for it.  It was fun, but I think I might have bit off more than I could chew- I think I started on setting 3 (hey, it's the one in the middle), and just after I built my second base (divvying up my squad of veterans and recruiting some newbies to fill out the ranks) I had to deal with a landed large UFO (at least two floors).  That was my first run-in with psionics.  As it happened, one of the newbies with low (brave? will?  whatever psi-defense is) was also the guy with the rockets.  This happened on turn 3 or so while I was still pretty clumped up having just exited the Skyranger.  Yeah, kiss half my squad goodbye with no earthly chance of finishing the mission.  Well, it was a good run, and I did manage to complete one of the famous night terror missions (complete with badass melee monster running down the middle of the street that took about a zillion shots to kill).  At least I think it was a terror mission; it definitely was in a town with civilians.

[OblivionKnight]

Mmm...

In terms of statistics, plasma beats laser in pretty much everything except ammo.  Part of the reason I hype lasers are:

1) Unlimited ammo - this makes them fantastic for base defense (80 item limit!), and means you don't have to worry about using up ammo plastering things with shots
2) Early, quick research - as you can see, I had laser pistols by the first mission
3) Laser Cannons are the most profitable weapon to manufacture and sell - easy way to make money, once you can get a manufacturing base going
4) Don't require elerium to be made - just money and time
5) Do pretty much anything - they have great killing power; they're the best early weapons to take down Cyberdiscs, they do well against Sectopods, they break down pretty much any barrier (except UFO hulls...but only Blasters can pierce them anyway), have great range, accuracy, auto-fire enabled, etc.

Plasma pistols are good.  Part of the issue with plasma weapons is that aliens switch around what they carry.  Plasma pistols are good, but eventually, aliens carry nothing but Heavy Plasma, so you'll eventually be manufacturing them on your own, which requires rare materials.  Once aliens transition to nothing but Heavy Plasma (around the time Mutons come in to play), then I usually start to make a transition to Heavy Plasma (but I still keep lasers around, especially the pistols on scouts, and for base defense).  Lasers I feel are generally overall the MVP weapon, though plasma (Heavy Plasma specifically) are technically better. 

Ah, psionics.  Completely evil in your hands, completely insanely hard to deal with when used against you.  Yeah, you need to gang-bang aliens with stun rods and get a hold of it as soon as possible (which means hitting a Sectoid base if you can), as Ethereals mess you up badly if you don't have psi-trained soldiers. 

Course, then you get access to them, and you can finish every mission with one soldier with no armour, and no weapons but a psi-amp.  Ah, so much fun...

Yeah, Terror Missions are always at night, and a lot of fun.  I have a Terror Mission (Daylight) coming probably in the 4th update (need to play through it - update 3 is everything after the 2nd battle to the start of the terror mission - I'm trying to do a month in 4 updates, if possible). 

X-Com is tough, even on the early levels.  It's all about management and adapting to situations.  It's what makes it awesome.

Also, glad to see people are enjoying this.  Should have another update soon.     

[Taishyr]

Grefter: I'm a zoner. If you don't, say, post it in its own shiny topic? I forget with 10 seconds 95% of the time.

[OblivionKnight]

I apologize that this came later than I expected it to.  The wonderful holidays and other stuff going on (yay being 24 years old) got me distracted, plus I had a lot of pictures I was pruning to make this update less damaging to those with 56k.  Thankfully, now that a lot of the basics are out of the way, these updates will be a lot faster, and I can do fewer pictures and just focus on major stuff.

Anyway, we now return to your regularly scheduled alien slaughter.  With free rice cakes.



After a successful UFO ground mission, our valiant team of DLCom soldiers came back 3 down, but 9 aliens dead.  The sad fates of NEB, Dhyer and Ciato will be remembered for many battles to come. 

But hey, look at all this cool stuff we got!



Everything from Elerium-115 and below was salvaged from that UFO mission.  As you can see, it's a lot of stuff.

Elerium-115 is the rarest item in the game, but also one of the most valuable.  It's an element not found on Earth, that can only be found from alien UFOs and bases.  It's used as fuel for all non-Skyranger/Interceptor craft (the Firestorm, Lightning and Avenger, which you'll see later), and as a key component for many awesome pieces of equipment (Flying Suit, Blaster Launchers, etc.).  Suffice to say, this stuff needs to be hoarded and used intelligently.

The plasma weapons (rifles, pistols and heavies plus the clips) are alien-derived weapons.  The Heavy Plasma is one of the best weapons in the game - high power, great accuracy, large clip, and later, it's the only weapon aliens will equip themselves with.  While I will generally insist that lasers are overall the best weapon in the game, once aliens start carrying exclusively Heavy Plasma, you want to switch over to them - the damage is radically different, and they can break through most terrain, which is a great advantage.  Also, once aliens start carrying them exclusively, you never need to manufacture ammo or weapons - just loot a battlefield, and you're armed for another mission.  I can't use them right now, but once we do some research, they'll be ours to use against our alien foes.  No alien weaponry can be used by humans until it's been researched, so we'll still be using the good old-fashioned lasers and projectile rifles and grenades for a while longer.   

Stun Bombs...this is extremely surprising and wonderful.  Well, partly.  Stun Bombs are the ammunition for the best stunning weapon in the game - Small Launchers.  These weapons fire a projectile that explodes, dealing very high area effect stun damage.  They make capturing aliens infinitely easier.  Your only other options are damage (via weak weapons like pistols, hoping not to kill them, but to wound them so they lose consciousness), smoke inhalation (which takes ages and requires an alien that sits still) or Stun Rods (which require a few brave suicid...I mean, a set of brave warriors to charge the aliens you want to capture at melee range and taser them).  Unfortunately, I seem to have not acquired a Small Launcher, just the ammo.  Either there was no Small Launcher on the vessel (doubtful, but possible), or my judicious use of explosives destroyed it on the ground (which...might have happened with that prox grenade NEB tossed near the end of the mission).  Damn.  Oh well, we'll probably find one later.

The Mind Probe is a great scouting tool, and it also sells for craploads of money.  Using a Mind Probe will allow you to see the alien's status screen - basically, the alien's vital stats, as well as its rank.  The rank is important, as you need to capture certain aliens to unlock the final mission.  Certain ranks also unlock different research options, some of them very useful.  Alien ranks can be thing such as soldiers (shoot things), medics (when researched, reveal information about other alien species not yet captured), navigators (when researched, allows construction of the ultimate radar, the Hyperwave Decoder) and others.  A nice tool that I'll be implementing as soon as I get a capture squad up.

When aliens die, you can also do things with their corpses, like research them, which will give you a bit of information on the alien species, as well as pretty pictures.  They're best to just sell (who'd want to buy an alien corpse, I have no idea, but hey, it pays the bills), as the research of corpses isn't vital to finish the game, and takes up time for researching prettier things, like weapons.

UFO Power Sources and Navigation are used to manufacture new vehicles (like the aforementioned Avenger) based on alien technology.  They do need to be researched, so unlike corpses, you want to keep them around both for research and for the actual construction.

Alien Alloys are about what they sound like - the metals used in their UFOs and other assorted technology.  Alien Alloys are a gate to other alien technologies, particularly personnel armour, so researching them is a pretty important first step in getting the Terran forces up to par with the aliens.

As you can see, I'm selling a lot of it.  I'm keeping at least one of each of the weapons to research, as well as one of the corpses for the same purpose (if I get to it).  As for Elerium-115, Alien Alloys, UFO Navigation, and UFO Power Source, I'm keeping them all, as I'll need them later for manufacturing purposes. 





With all that extra money, it's time to spend it!  As you can see, I'm using it to enhance my base.  Since we need more soldiers, scientists and other personnel, another Living Quarters is a needed.  50 people sounds like a lot, but that space is used up fast.  Also, since I forgot to do it earlier, an Alien Containment facility is being placed.  Alien Containment facilities are required to bring back live aliens to base to be researched.  When I talked about capturing aliens earlier, to get those technologies and access the final missions, the alien needs to be alive.  If you want psionics?  You need a live alien.  If you stun a live alien, but don't have an alien containment facility, the alien dies.  Simply put, we won't be capturing any aliens for 18 days.

As you can see, I'm still waiting for the hangers to complete, so I can destroy the bottom two and make the base a bit more defensible.  Thankfully, aliens are highly unlikely to attack the base this early, so we should be perfectly fine until they're done.




Of course, we also need more soldiers, since we kind of lost 3 last mission.  I'm recruiting 5 more, to bring our squad up to 10.  We'll need more later, once we have more equipment to play with, but right now, we're good. 

Oh, yeah.  Screw you, Living Quarters space limitations.  This is the military - can't a few guys sleep in the same bed to save some space and money?



And the scientists should be busy for a while!  All that stuff we brought back can now be researched!  I'm still working on Laser Rifles, but once they're done, I'll be going for Alien Alloys so we can get personnel armour on our troops as soon as possible, hopefully before the first Terror Mission.




After that, it's back to the Geoscape to wait things out. As you can see, the General Stores at the base finished, which means we can hold more loot, which is always nice.  In addition, all our soldiers just arrived, so let's train them and give them names!





 

Welcome Meeple, Cmdr., Sei, Trips and Tai to the group!  Snipers and scouts have been done already, so let's talk about the new designations.  The medic, Trips, is kind of pointless at the moment - I don't have medkits.  When I make medics, I usually only keep one medic per base, and send them on every mission.  They usually get a laser pistol if applicable and med kits, with accessory weapons if needed (long-range suppporty-stuff, like Mind Probes).  Unfortunately, I don't have them researched yet, so Trips will be sporting a rifle and doing covering duty for a while.  Sei...well, I wanted to do his request for the low brave soldier that kills his own allies, so ther he is.  He'd actually make an excellent heavy weapons user (high strength), but for the moment, we'll keep him as demolitions...which, like the medic, won't be getting much use at the moment, as he doesn't have much beyond grenades now.

It's kind of stupid to make two designations with little to no use at the moment, but they'll come into their own time soon.  One thing that usually happens later is reassigning soldiers - for example, Sei could become a carnage soldier later, or Cmdr. a Sniper, depending on how they work out in terms of stats and what I decide I need in the squad.  But we'll see about that. 



And here's the group, all packed into the Skyranger for deployment on the next mission.  3 scouts, 4 snipers, a medic, carnage and demolitions soldier make a decent starting group for combat.  Granted, the medic and demolitions will be used more like a scout/sniper hybrid anyway.  Early on, this will probably be the mainstay of your group - snipers, scouts and carnage - before you get access to cooler weapons and more tactics. 



Incidentally, we need more lasers.  Laser Pistols are fantastic, and I want more of them.  Conventional weapons, minus explosives, will start to show their age at the first Terror Mission, and be especially useless come the 3 month turn, so phasing them out is usually a high priority for me.  Right now, I want as many laser pistols as possible, and I'll be doling them out to my best soldiers.

Anyway, back to waiting on the Geoscape.  Soon...



 

Yay!  Living Quarters are complete, and we get laser rifles researched!  Yay!  Kickass!     

 


With that finished, it's off to researching Alien Alloys so I can hopefully have personnel armour by the first Terror Mission.  Also, goodbye laser pistols!  I have plenty of them, so they'll be going to scouts and other assorted soldiers.  It's time to get some laser rifles into play for our snipers.  Manufacturing time and costs are a bit longer, but I should have several finished very soon.

And with that, back to waiting. 

...

...

...

Wow, slow month.  Usually, there's at least another UFO...



   

There we go.  This is looking to be a really slow month - only the actual, second UFO to fly the Earth so far.  Anyway, this UFO in the second picture can be seen flying in the air.  It was detected in Africa, and is flying northwest.  In the third picture, you can see where it landed - in Iceland.  Another UFO I didn't get to shoot down.  Which is good, as there's more loot in a downed ship, but I want to show everyone the interception screen.  Oh well, maybe later.

Anyway, you know what time it is...



Skyranger is equipped.  We didn't get the laser rifles finished like I thought we would, but 5 laser pistols should be plenty for our more experienced squad members.  We're also packed with rockets and conventional weapons, as well as plenty of grenades. Time to see how they fare.

 

Haven't shown you this screen before, but clicking on a unit in-transit (such as an Interceptor or Skyranger) will bring up this screen.  It shows the max speed of the vessel (if you look up, you'll remember the UFO is going at nearly 1100, while the max speed of this Skyranger is 760), the fuel capacity (as a rule, Terran craft have a lot more fuel than alien craft, but are slower) and any weapons it's armed with.  You also can set them to go after a new target, or patrol an area.  If you've lost tracking of an alien craft, sending them to patrol in the area you think it went might allow you to uncover the UFO.  This is also how you find alien bases, by patrolling an area of high activity with a ship for a while.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

 

Time to land, bitches.





Just a look at what our outfitting is for the medic and demolitions soldiers.  As you can see demolitions is getting a lot of greandes, while the medic looks like a sniper.  Nothing too special.

Zenny has a slightly different payload than last time.  Last time, he was armed with small rockets for his rocket launcher.  I recently sold all the small ones, arming Zenny only with large rockets and an incendiary rocket.  Large rockets are about 33% stronger than small rockets, and cause much more collateral damage (i.e., bigger boom-boom).  Incendiary rockets are 10% weaker than large rockets in terms of raw power, but deal incendiary damage, so in practice are about on par or a little weaker than small rockets.  But the nice thing they do is make a huge blast radius of fire, which lights up the battlefield and slow cooks aliens to a crisp.  Mmm...



With that out of the way, it's time to start the battle.




It's snowy.  Apparently, Iceland really is covered in ice and snow.  Who would have guessed?

Anyway, this time, we're in the northeastern corner of the map.  The UFO isn't visible yet, so we'll be doing a full map sweep for this mission.  This time, I'll show you how to properly do it >_>

As an added note, you'll also notice that it's dark out.  Dark times mean that you're more vulnerable to the aliens - your vision is cut by about 50%, but the aliens still have full range of vision, making cover and proper lighting, as well as good squad formation, paramount to success.




First thing's first - Miasma needs to lay down a smoke screen so we can exit the skyranger safely.



In Miasma's left hand is an item called an electro-flare.  Let's see what this does, shall we?



Where there is darkness... 



...there is light! 

Electro-flares light up an area of darkness pretty effectively.  They're cheap, reusable and valuable for night missions.  Now we can see that previously dark area as if it were day!



Further deployment around the Skyranger reveals we're fighting another Sectoid-filled UFO.  Time to take the bastard out...



...and the Aiel redeems himself from last mission's failed shooting.  Good shot! 

As a random note, the Skyranger makes excellent cover at the start of a mission.  The landing gear allows you to cover at least 8 soldiers pretty effectively, and the exit ramp makes a great vantage point to hold as well.  In areas with low initial cover (like...Iceland or Arctic areas), your transport makes great initial cover.



If you look really closely, you can see the edge of the UFO.  We're pretty close to the UFO, but there's still a lot of the map to be explored.  There are usually several aliens outside the UFO on any given map, though the largest amount of aliens typically will make their stand in the UFO itself.  Time to illustrate some squad tactics at work while we comb the map!









These 7 screens are a quick collage of splitting the squad into 2 groups of 5 and widening the front via smoke and additional lighting. 

The 5th picture shows our northern group: Sei, Cmdr.K, Meeple, Snow, and Clear Tranquil (demolitions, scout, sniper, scout, sniper) working to comb the northern part of the map.  They'll head north and swing west, meeting up at the western edge of the UFO.

The 6th picture shows the southern group: Super, Zenny, Mia, Tai and Trips (sniper, carnage, scout, sniper, medic), who will move south and set up a defensive perimeter around the UFO entrance while waiting for the northern group to meet up with them.

In the 7th picture, it's hard to see, but on the ground is an electro-flare and a smoke grenade.  When advancing over open ground, laying a smoke field to advance through helps to conceal movement and keep casualties down.  It also makes a great field of cover for entering buildings or UFOs, as it conceals your soldiers and allows a safer entrance to the UFO.



While the southern group is slowly advancing to the UFO, the northern group suffered a casualty.  The effeminate Snow, Brazilian Scout, was slewn by a plasma blast from the north.  You can't see his body now, but it's right above the lower right soldier (Meeple).

<Part 1 - Part 2 of the update in the next post>

[OblivionKnight]

<Part 2>







And here's how we find him.  This is a display of typical squad teamwork - have a soldier light the area up, have a scout move forward to scout for enemies, then shoot him dead with someone.  Ideally, I should have used Clear Tranquil or Meeple to snipe him, but this works.   




Meanwhile, the southern group's smokescreen advance is going along well.  Tai tossed a proximity grenade near the UFO entrance.  When holding position and watching a single entrance-way, proximity grenades are wonderful.  You should always place them one space away from a door - if an alien (or anyone, really) walks up to a door of a UFO and the grenade is right next to the UFO door, the grenade will blow up harmlessly, with the door taking all the damage.  Tossing it one space in front of the door will cause it to explode on an alien as soon as they exit the door.

Unfortunately, Tai missed.  >_>  The grenade's 3 spaces forward of the door.  Oh well.  We'll toss another there next turn. 



Aha!  Sectoid!  Let's see if Zenny can blow the thing to pieces.  We haven't had him fire a shot yet.





...oops.

Large rockets, as stated earlier, have a much larger blast radius than small rockets.  Zenny had large rockets equipped.  The resulting explosion killed Super. 

On the plus side, the Sectoid died!  2 deaths so far this mission, 5 total.  Need to remember the blast radius on large rockets next time >_> 

So, southern group has basically secured the UFO entrance, which is a good start.  Now, back to the northern team...   










Northern group moves through and encounters nothing.  It's completely quiet.  I ended up killing a bunch of pictures here to save space >_> 

Everything is quiet - no aliens anywhere else on the map.  Whenever you run into a map like this, moving in squads to cover all of the map is important - if an alien sneaks behind your squad with a blaster launcher because you didn't cover part of the map, then you're going to suffer some heavy casualties.  Moving methodically through the map is the best way to effectively clear everything and prevent unneeded deaths.



As you can see, the map's been covered.  All that's left is to enter the UFO and clear it out.




Back to the south, you can see that the smokefield I laid has finally dissipated.  Both groups are stationed off to the sides of the UFO entrance, and just awaiting the order to enter. 



First, a new smokescreen.



And a brave little alien decides to step out.  This is why smokefields are nice - the Sectoid came out of the UFO and fired pretty blindly, missing everyone and not even coming close to hitting anyone.  Using smokefields before entering any high-profile area (UFO doorways, moving through an alien base, etc.) is highly recommended.



First, dead alien.

After this, I do the rest of the turn by moving everyone a bit closer and preparing to charge the UFO. 




You can kind of make it out in the 1st picture, but there are 2 Sectoid corpses at the doorway.  One of them came out after I ended the previous turn and fired 3 shots at Meeple. 

As you can see, Meeple survived with no damage.  Damn man - the Meeple is on FIRE!

Now, who to enter the UFO first...eeny, meeny, m...ah, screw it. 




Sei's first.  He meets up with a Sectoid and blasts it to pieces. 





Here, we're setting the rest of the group up for the UFO assault.  This is a much better example of setting up than the last UFO assault - covering fire of the main entrance ways aliens can pop out of is provided, which allows for reaction fire when aliens decided to pop out of the doors for a sneak peak.

Seeing nothing, let's enter the top door and see what we can find...




Mmm...ok, 2 of the buggers.  I think Cmdr.K and Sei might end up dead here.  I've unfortunately moved them too far without cover support, blocking a doorway (so I can't bring any up), standing up, and with 2 hostiles in front of them.  Here comes our 3rd and 4th casualty...



Except he lives!  As does Sei!  The Sectoids fired 4 rounds of auto-fire, missing with every shot.  Lucky.  Very, very lucky.





And that, as they say, is that.  2 dead soldiers (promotions and soldier experience helped, as did general better tactics) with just as much loot makes for a better mission than last time.  Success!



Huge amounts of loot, which equates to lots and lots of money.  Almost $2 million earned is a great haul for a mission.  Great success overall.



We need more soldiers and scientists!  6 more soldiers will put us up to 14, which is the max that will fit in a Skyranger, while 20 scientists more will max out our current laboratory space, allowing us to research a hell of a lot faster.

A few days later, in come our new soldiers and scientists.  Everyone welcome:








Hal, Cromage, Tal, Captain K, Psy and Yakumo.  Hal's stats are pretty obscene for a rookie - max Brave, near-max TU, excellent accuracy, etc.  Yakumo, if you'll notice, is another Carnage soldier, so we need something for him to play with.  So, I guess it's time to show off a little more about the game, and go buy a weapon I said in the first post I wouldn't use...



The auto-cannon, with all 3 types of ammo - armour-piercing, incendiary and high-explosives.  This should be fun to play with.

So overall, pretty good - we're doing well.  While I'm a bit surprised there have only been 2 UFOs so far, we're doing really well - money's good, soldiers are getting experience, we've got a good set of tactics coming down, what could possibly go...



...shit.

Terror Mission. 

This should be fun. 

Every month, the aliens will choose a random city to terrorize.  This entails one of the 5 main alien species coming into a city and slaughtering civilians.  Each of the main species is assisted by another race, specific to the main race attacking.  This early, we're either going to fight Sectoids (with their nasty Cyberdiscs) or Floaters (with their pathetic Reapers).  I'm hoping it's Floaters - Floaters and Reapers are the weakest species in the game, and therefore the easiest to deal with early, when your technology is generally below-par.  Thankfully, we have...




Laser rifles now, as well as plenty of explosives to deal with anything that comes our way.  We're pretty well set up, but Terror Missions are generally of a different style than other missions, so we'll have to see how this goes.

Unlike with UFO crashes or ground missions, it's absolutely necessary that you go after a Terror Mission - if one of them goes without a response, you're liable to lose huge amounts of funding.  So this requires an immediate response - our Skyranger is filled with soldiers and weapons, and it's time to kick some alien ass.




Ready? 

We'll see next time, on X-COM: DL Defense!

[AAA]

Why do I have Guile Hair

[Fudozukushi]

Why do I have Guile Hair

Why shouldn't you?

Also the Blood God is dissatisfied with the lack of human death.

[Grefter]

Most people have Guile hair.  Also note the variety of names in the generator, also note the internal consistency with the names.  There is a variety of popular names from lots of regions in the game that are in different fields so you get a global feeling of recruitment.

You can use unresearched alien weapons with Reaction shots on alien turns.  Useless but funny.

OK neglected to mention two things.  Researching corpses gives you good flavour text for the aliens and hints at weaknesses in the aliens, different weapon types are more effective against certain ones, so it is worth keeping 1 corpse until you have researched them.  Other than that they are a free 20k cash, which is pretty freaking sweet.  Other thing, Laser Pistols are the only weapon in the game capable of taking 3 Auto shots in a turn IIRC, which makes them great spamming weapons, 9 chances to hit things each turn is pretty good.

[Smashy]

I'm looking forward to your first base defense. Just had my first one ever. In the second month. While the Skyranger was returning from a mission.

*insert infinite hate here*

[OblivionKnight]

Welcome back!  Short time since our last update!  Like I said, these should be coming out a lot faster now.

Anyway, where were we? 



Oh yeah.

Aliens are attacking Lagos.  Are YOU a bad enough dude to save the...Africans? 

Mmm...somehow just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Anyway, Terror Missions are fun.  In these missions, one of the five main alien species lands in a major city (...again, Lagos...what the hell?) and starts killing all civilians in sight.  Along with the main species (such as Sectoids or Floaters), you'll also fight an additional race of alien that's only found on Terror Missions with that particular species (and other places, such as alien bases, but primarily on Terror Missions).  These additional races are generally "terrifying", hence the name - giant walking robots that look like AT-STs, miniature flying saucers, giant bipedal monsters, etc.  These new aliens usually require slightly different tactics than a basic UFO assault would entail, as they don't use typical weapons (like plasmas), and have differing vulnerabilities to weapons.  Suffice to say, it's fun.

In addition, civilians will be running around during the battle.  Usually, there are around 10 or so by the time you make it there (though supposedly, the faster you make it there, the more there are alive - the max is about 16, but I've not been aboe to confirm this myself).  You want to protect these civilians if you can - they're worth a lot of points.  If aliens kill them (or if you kill them, which is worse), you lose a good deal of points.  Of course, if it comes to your own soldiers or aliens, safe your men first - I'd rather not lose my Blaster Launchers, thank you very much.

So yeah, time to show you what it's like.       



But first, let's equip our newest carnage soldier with that auto-cannon.  Auto-cannons have 3 types of ammunition, like rocket launchers. 

AP - Armour-piercing.  Not too different from a basic rifle, except more powerful.  He's currently got them in his weapon now, but I'll be tossing it after the battle is over, as they're generally worthless compared to...
HE - High-explosives.  Now we're talking!  Not as devastating as a rocket, but you can auto-fire with this gun, and it has a larger ammo clip, evening the score quite a bit.
IN - Incendiary.  A great way to light up the battlefield.  Again, worse than a rocket, but can auto-fire and has more ammo stores, so it's probably about equal again.

Anyway, as I said, Yakko will be armed with the AP rounds for this mission, just because.  They'll be tossed afterwards.




Start of the mission!  As you can see, we're in the northeastern part of the map, at a corner again.  I like being at corners - it means you don't have to worry about moving in certain directions, and can fan out a lot quicker and with better support.  Of course, it also usually means you can be cornered a lot easier, so I guess it's not all good.  But with good squad tactics, it makes the exit and scour portion of the battle a lot easier.

The usual squad tactics apply, so... 



Let there be smoke!



Well, that was convenient.  This is what I mean about sometimes being ambushed when coming off your transport when you're at the corners.  Miasma has found the alien invaders, which happen to be two species we haven't seen before.  So...




Floaters and Reapers, respectively. 

Floaters are the other type of alien you'll face early on, besides Sectoids.  For all intents and purposes, they're Sectoids with slightly better stats.  They also have the ability to, well float/fly in the air.  We might see that later.  The other difference between Sectoids and Floaters is that the Floaters do not have psionic potential.  This difference is one of the major reasons Floaters are considered the weakest of the alien species.  They're basically Sectoids that can fly (which...the computer doesn't use as effectively as it could), but lack psionic abilities, one of the Sectoid's most unique abilities.  Hence, they're generally not anywhere near as dangerous in general.  This also holds true on Terror Missions, due to...

The Reapers.  Reapers are the Terror Unit of choice for Floaters. 

They are also the WORST.  ALIEN.  IN.  THE.  GAME.

Reapers are theoretically a good unit.  They're fast (high TUs), they do a lot of damage with a low TU cost attack, and they have the highest health in the game of any unit.  Sounds pretty good for Floater support, right?

Nope!  Reapers have a couple glaring weaknesses. 
First, AI (I do want to take some time to complement some of the AI in X-Com - aliens that are supposed to be smart, like Ethereals, generally act smarter than other, dumber races, like Mutons) is awful.  This is because Reapers are the dumbest units in the game (they're huge dogs, basically).  They're good at going after civilians, but sometimes will just stand in place in front of your troops, or not even attack them. 
The second problem with them is that they're big.  They get stuck between buildings and can't make it through small doors at all.  In addition, this makes them really, really easy to hit - rookies with 20% firing accuracy can hit these things with auto-shots with little problem. 
Third, they're melee units...against 95% ranged attackers. 
Fourth, they cannot resist psionics very well at all, making them easy to take over.
Fifth, they take 70% more damage from explosives and incendiaries.  I love explosives, so this is not good for them - especially so in urban areas, where there are plenty of fun things to blow up that cause lots of collateral damage.

So yeah, this is a much preferred first Terror Mission compared to Sectoids and the nasty Cyberdiscs they bring along with them.  I usually like to get personal armour before the first Terror Mission if possible, but with Floaters and Reapers, this isn't too bad.  This should be pretty easy.  Time to take these suckers down.   

]

...well, 5 soldiers later, they're dead.  Clear Tranquil did a great job of shooting below the landing gear to Miasma's side to hit the floater and kill it.  Once again proving just how awesome laser rifles are.  Good job, girls!


 

A bit to the southwest of the transport, another Floater rears it's ugly head-thing, spotted by Tal.  A few shots from Yakko's fine and dandy auto-cannon, and the sucker goes down. 

Sadly, it's just AP ammo, so there are no pretty explosions ;_;



Troop deployment and perimetre expansion is good to go!  Mia, Tai, Yakko, Meeple and Trips are in the northern group, with Cmdr.K, Zenny, Tal, CT and Sei with the southern squad.  There are still 4 soldiers in the Skyranger (Hal, Capt.K, Psy, Cro), for support if needed.  It's usually a good idea to advance slowly out of the transport, so as to not invite an alien grenade to the face of half your squad.  Once the zone's clear, further deployment can occur.  I usually keep a few in the transport to move with whichever group needs more support, or to investigate buildings or whatnot. 






And to the south, our wonderful scout Cmdr.K finds another Floater.  I have Cmdr.K stop and Tal fire a few volleys at the alien.  Unforunately, Tal manages to do nothing but shoot up the fencing.  Thankfully, CT gets the kill (and I even got a shot mid-death animation!).  Really need to get her to stop killing everything - she's sucking up all the experience.  I'll probably leave her out of the next mission.

The northern group, meanwhile has found nothing so far, besides a few civilian corpses and screams.

I might add sounds for the next Terror Mission - whenever a civilian dies, you get to hear them scream.  It's bloodcurdlingly delicious.



Start of the next turn, more screams, and the southern group again spots a Floater.  Unfortunately, the house is in the way.   

 

But not anymore! 

While killing civilians is penalized, causing wanton destruction of property is not only perfectly acceptable, but also encouraged!  Not even aliens can survive a collapsing roof rife with fire and big boom-booms.  It's a good way to clear dangerous fire-points, and take out barricades or open up a field of vision that was previously blocking your path.



And the scout scores a kill!



Meanwhile, the northern group spots something...but wait!  It's human!  Hard to see, but there's a human next to that gas pump.

Which is probably one of the worst places to stand in this case, but oh well! 

 

Urban warfare can be dangerous.  You can see and fire through windows, from either side, and aliens do use houses and other buildings as places to hide.  Several times I've passed a building, only to end my turn, have an alien pop out of a door or fire through a window, and kill a soldier or two.  Houses, especially two-story houses make great vantage points, and are easily defensible.  That's one reason I like explosives, as taking down a house that aliens are using for cover is much easier than entering it straight up.  Thankfully, there's nothing in this store, so we're safe for the moment.  Still, as you can see, there are lots of other places that aliens could pop out of at any moment.

 

Another shot of the northern group, reinforced by Capt.K and Psy.  City fights are usually rife with places to take cover and snipe from.  Proper cover fire makes it harder for aliens to sneak up on you.  I think the northern group is pretty safe, but it's best to be careful.  We'll play around with them a little more next time.



Meanwhile, southern group's getting all the action.  But...I thought there was supposed to be an alien here.



Hmm...




Oh yeah!  Floaters can FLOAT!  Who would have guessed?

Floating makes them a little harder to hit, and immune to ground explosions.  It's a somewhat neat trick, but this guy's out in the open, so there's no real cover for him or any way for him to really take advantage of his height here.



As I said, CT should probably be kept out of my next mission.



Northern group's still pretty quiet at the start of the next turn, but Southern Groups' just getting hammered with aliens to kill.  Two of them!




Tal downs the cocky floating Floater, but the Reaper survives the turn.  Thankfully, I'm not worried about getting killed by a freaking Reaper.



And finally, northern group runs in to something.  Now, THIS Floater is being a little more intelligent.  He's using the cityscape to his advantage, limiting the fields of fire from our soldiers.  Thankfully, we're also shielded from him a bit, but at least this one stands a chance of actually doing something.  I move our troops around a bit and end the turn.

As expected, no deaths from the Floater to the north.  I think I've been fired at maybe once or twice so far.  Huh.



Back to southern group, let's see if Zenny can pick on this Reaper's weakness to explosives...




Beautiful.



And there's Cmdr.K, taking cover behind a tree.  Hey, it's decent enough cover at the moment. 



Damn civilians!  You'll die if I want to blow those things up!  Oh well.  Let's take care of that northern Floater, shall we?




Hal once again proves his mettle as administrator of the DL, shooting down the Floater like an invading Lamer.  Bravo.



DAMN STUPID CIVILIANS! 



Uh oh.  Really damn stupid civilians.  Time to turn this Reaper into a pile of burning flesh too...

<Part 1 End - Part 2 in next post>