Let's Play X-COM: UFO Defense!

[Peptuck]

Oh, and holy shit: you pulled off a counter-terror mission without suffering significant casualties. What the fuck? Last time I did pretty much what you did, and lost something like half the team before the end of it.

Honestly, I was amazed too. I was expecting easily 50% losses, and I suspect if we went up against sectoids (whose terror unit is actually pretty deadly) we would have taken a lot more casualties.

As it stands, floaters are the easiest opponents to kill in the game, and reapers aren't much of an issue as long as you either stay indoors (where they can't go) or don't move through tight quarters. They're nowhere near as bad as chryssalids.

[Zablorg]

WE MAKE GOOD TEAM

So what next? Do we try and blow up a ship or something? I want to plant a bomb in a sacrifice of sacrificial nature worthy of a film!

[Karza]

Yay, first melee kill . Brings back memories of my very first game of UFO, when I engaged a sectoid terror team midnight with only basic rifles. Ouch.

[weemadando]

The worst you can get is the unluckiness of having a major terror attack on a large city (London, NY etc) as one of your first missions. Landing with basic kit and suddenly having fucking Chrysalids raping your face? That sucks.

[Decue]

Damn, I'm better then I thought. Still alive and blowing things up to the left and right like crazy.

[Jett Tainer]

I've always wanted to be able to land multiple skyrangers, such a shame. Sometimes you've got 10, and the crash in range of all of them.
Also, para-drops would've been cool. Your guys would be scattered on roof tops at first, but then you get jetpacks.
lastly, Mines. As I remember, you couldn't plant mines.

I know who i'd be. I'd be the guy back at the base who designs what the commandos use.
I know I already do that, but I would love having access to x-com R&D, and alien tech.

You can make anything nuclear powered!
laser weapons!
Power armour!
Alien ceramics!
New heavy elements!
Your designing weapons to SAVE the earth!

Its an equipment designers wet dream.

[Jett Tainer]

Oh, and holy shit: you pulled off a counter-terror mission without suffering significant casualties. What the fuck? Last time I did pretty much what you did, and lost something like half the team before the end of it.

Honestly, I was amazed too. I was expecting easily 50% losses, and I suspect if we went up against sectoids (whose terror unit is actually pretty deadly) we would have taken a lot more casualties.

As it stands, floaters are the easiest opponents to kill in the game, and reapers aren't much of an issue as long as you either stay indoors (where they can't go) or don't move through tight quarters. They're nowhere near as bad as chryssalids.

I hated Chryssalids. But I discovered in some games, you can stun the civilians, and the chryssalids would ignore them.
Maybe I'm thinking of UFO or one of the other "knock offs"

[Vendetta]

I hated Chryssalids. But I discovered in some games, you can stun the civilians, and the chryssalids would ignore them.
Maybe I'm thinking of UFO or one of the other "knock offs"

You can stun civilians to make chryssalids ignore them, but if they wake up again they go hostile and have to be killed to end the mission.

When you get flying suits things get a bit easier, because you can just stay floating and they can't get at you (you just have to watch out for snakemen, but they're one of the less annoying alien types on their own).

The worst you can get is the unluckiness of having a major terror attack on a large city (London, NY etc) as one of your first missions. Landing with basic kit and suddenly having fucking Chrysalids raping your face? That sucks.

You shouldn't get a Snakemen terror attack for at least two or three months (Snakemen are the ones that pack chryssalids for terror missions and on battleships). Your first couple of terror missions will be either Floaters (easy-ish unless they chuck an inopportune grenade) or Sectoids (more annoying, will always have a Leader, so they'll have psionics and they pack Cyberdiscs, which are a bitch to take down with default gear).

Otherwise, terror attacks come regular as clockwork at the end of each month, unless you intercept the terror ship.

Terror missions are a bit of a pain in general, they give reasonable points if you can fight them off, but not much lewtz because there's no UFO, but if you can't fight them off they're the one that gives the most points for the aliens. It's always better to shoot down the terror ship and capture it's gubbins (though it's the one that's least likely to give elerium because they almost always blow out all the engines), which stops the terror attack completely (and is possible with two interceptors with 2x Avalanche launchers each).

[Vanas]

I can only approve of the artillery-like strategy being employed. If we flood the area with enough high explosives even the highly nimble, bullet-dodging aliens have no hope of escape. All the aliens died due to X-COM. Any civilians died because of the aliens.

[White Haven]

Never, ever, EVER put your main base in Antarctica. If you do, you start the game fighting Ethereals almost every time. Ethereals versus rifles REALLY REALLY HURTS.

Also: Captain, bitches, captain. CAPTAIN OF MISSILES.

[Vendetta]

Never, ever, EVER put your main base in Antarctica. If you do, you start the game fighting Ethereals almost every time. Ethereals versus rifles REALLY REALLY HURTS.

Base location shouldn't affect what aliens turn up when. It starts out floaters and sectoids, then about march/april adds snakemen, june or july adds mutons, and ethereals show up last.

[Ryan Thunder]

I've always wanted to be able to land multiple skyrangers, such a shame. Sometimes you've got 10, and the crash in range of all of them.
Also, para-drops would've been cool. Your guys would be scattered on roof tops at first, but then you get jetpacks.
lastly, Mines. As I remember, you couldn't plant mines.

Indeed. The squad equipment was frankly terrible. 6.2mm automatic sniper rifles? "Heavy cannons" and auto-cannons?

Where are the MP5s? The assault rifles? The OICWs? The crew-served automatic grenade launchers? The LMGs? The shotguns? The M82s (Barret 12.7mm)? The claymores? The automatic shotguns?

[Peptuck]

Yay, first melee kill .

In my imagination, you did it by running up toward the floater, leaping into the air and spinning around, then stabbing it in the eye with your stun rod. Then, as it fell, your Spartan cape sprang out of nowhere and then artistically fell over its body.

I can only approve of the artillery-like strategy being employed. If we flood the area with enough high explosives even the highly nimble, bullet-dodging aliens have no hope of escape. All the aliens died due to X-COM. Any civilians died because of the aliens.

Bolded for truth.

Also: Captain, bitches, captain. CAPTAIN OF MISSILES.

Wait 'till next update.

WE MAKE GOOD TEAM

So what next? Do we try and blow up a ship or something? I want to plant a bomb in a sacrifice of sacrificial nature worthy of a film!

Well, the last thing we want is to blow up the UFOs. We still need to recover samples of elerium-115 and a UFO power core. Our best bet would be to catch one while its landed; then we could take it intact. Fortunately, our large radar array just went online right before the terror mission, so we have the capacity to scan a much, much wider area.

That being said, high explosive charges are being ordered...in bulk.

Working on the next update now. Photobucket is being a bitch about letting me upload pics.

[PeZook]

Where are the MP5s? The assault rifles? The OICWs? The crew-served automatic grenade launchers? The LMGs? The shotguns? The M82s (Barret 12.7mm)? The claymores? The automatic shotguns?

Yeah, and air support and real tanks and artillery and mortars...as if the game needed a vast pile of mostly useless weapons.

Come on. It's a simple squad tactical game made 15 years ago by two guys, and its tactical element just plain ain't that great. Adding MOAR guns won't solve the inherent problems (yay! I can totally shoot my friend standing RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME with an MP5 now!)

And if you want illogic, all you have to do is point out the fact that Earth can only provide X-COM with blind, deaf paraplegics as soldiers...

[Stark]

No, the quality of a game is directly related to how much nerdtacular military abbreviations it uses. Imagine simply having a generic 'rifle' and not telling us which manufacturing run of which design with which designation it is!

Ironically many of the attempted remakes have gone that route and given us 'Captian Fairypants invented the UFC-210x block 1 bis autotrooper plastomagnetic detonatron while serving in the korea-chan wars' and failing to deliver on basic ingame functionality.

Amusingly no turn-based tactical game of this type has ever reflected 'proper' gun distinction properly, so most of the retarded wankotard guns people add are totally meaningless in a mechanical context (for instance, the huge gun libraries of JA2 and Silent Storm, only four of which are worth using and 80% of which are variations on two statlines). No, it matters deeply what low-res bitmap is displayed when you 'spend' 'action points' to 'snap shot' the 'alien'.

[Vendetta]

Where are the MP5s? The assault rifles? The OICWs? The crew-served automatic grenade launchers? The LMGs? The shotguns? The M82s (Barret 12.7mm)? The claymores? The automatic shotguns?

They all had to get in line behind the frickin' laser beams and hot plasma death.

Which are far cooler.

Also, you use the generic "rifle" for about the first two missions, and then never speak of it again because you have frickin' laser beams, which are cheap to fire.

[weemadando]

No, the quality of a game is directly related to how much nerdtacular military abbreviations it uses. Imagine simply having a generic 'rifle' and not telling us which manufacturing run of which design with which designation it is!

Ironically many of the attempted remakes have gone that route and given us 'Captian Fairypants invented the UFC-210x block 1 bis autotrooper plastomagnetic detonatron while serving in the korea-chan wars' and failing to deliver on basic ingame functionality.

Amusingly no turn-based tactical game of this type has ever reflected 'proper' gun distinction properly, so most of the retarded wankotard guns people add are totally meaningless in a mechanical context (for instance, the huge gun libraries of JA2 and Silent Storm, only four of which are worth using and 80% of which are variations on two statlines). No, it matters deeply what low-res bitmap is displayed when you 'spend' 'action points' to 'snap shot' the 'alien'.

Indeed, most "gun-porn" games end up sucking, because there's so many fucking guns in there that you hardly ever use any but your favourite (as mentioned by Stark), and often the devs try to put in some bullshit balancing mechanics so that the assault rifle you start with is totally outclassed by this other assault rifle which you want in the end. Then if we're talking tactical games, then it means "your gun breaks down every 2 minutes, so you need to constantly maintain/clean/unjam/just buy new ones.

Personally, I like the simplicity and abstraction that X-Com has. It doesn't get bogged down in pointless minutiae, thus leaving it free to bog to you down in other minutiae.

[Stark]

In a scifi game like this, I'd actually appreciate EVEN MORE massive disctinction between weapons, rather than 1000 different 'laser rifles'. LASER RIFLESKI, +5 reliability! Amusingly, UFO is too primitive to even reflect different weapon classes properly, since it's only got AP cost, accuracy and ... size? No bipods, no reliability, no real penetration, no 'ready cost', etc. Even JA2 is more sophisitcated, and it's not an accident that it has a better (although still broken) way of distinguishing between weapons and overall classes.

[Vendetta]

no real penetration,

Actually, penetration is an issue, it's based on the armour value. Power Armour, for instance, can take anything up to a laser pistol to the face without suffering any damage at all.

It doesn't actually matter much, due to the ridiculously high damage of all the alien weapons, but it's there, and it will at least save you when the guy with the weak psi defence gets mind controlled and sprays his squad with not-so-friendly fire (because you've made him the frontline mook with the laser pistol and stun prod, to heroically capture alien navigators, leaders, and etc. natch).

[PeZook]

But it's an SMG! It's quite obsolete for military use today since we have carbines, but every game needs a pistol, an SMG and an assault rifle, right?

To think the purpose of X-COM was to accurately model squad tactics and equipment of modern Earth ANTI-ALIEN SPECIAL FORCES is kinda...misguided, I think. For crying out loud, it's a game where X-COM operatives can level entire city blocks with indiscriminate fire and people still praise them as saviors of humanity

Also, your very special forces can somehow hit the guy they're kneeling behind in the back (even though it would require planting the barrel right smack in the middle of his backside ), can't hear movement, are not protected by cover, they can see the enemy and be unable to actually shoot him, don't have night vision googles of any sort, can be mind controlled when not seen but can't do the same to the enemy...

[Stark]

Actually, penetration is an issue, it's based on the armour value. Power Armour, for instance, can take anything up to a laser pistol to the face without suffering any damage at all.

It doesn't actually matter much, due to the ridiculously high damage of all the alien weapons, but it's there, and it will at least save you when the guy with the weak psi defence gets mind controlled and sprays his squad with not-so-friendly fire (because you've made him the frontline mook with the laser pistol and stun prod, to heroically capture alien navigators, leaders, and etc. natch).

Oh, I meant terrain penetration/richochets and other bullet physics. The armour system is hilariously broken, but that's not what I was talking about here; a game like Silent Storm can differentiate between weapons much more clearly because it has a much more complex method of showing what they can do (and cutting a building down with an LMG is hilarious).

[Vendetta]

Oh, I meant terrain penetration/richochets and other bullet physics. The armour system is hilariously broken, but that's not what I was talking about here; a game like Silent Storm can differentiate between weapons much more clearly because it has a much more complex method of showing what they can do (and cutting a building down with an LMG is hilarious).

I doubt you could do much with bullet physics in 1994. X-Com couldn't cope with more than a few cells of smoke (after a couple of explosions it simply won't spawn more smoke).

It does have terrain destruction with a few variable hardnesses and different terrain destruction properties for weapons, which is about all you could have hoped for back then.

[Stark]

Yeah, no shit; that's why the game doesn't have more complex firearm modelling, which is why having 100 different stupid guns is worthless mechanically, which was my point. If you think you're explaining to me the state of the art in 1994 you're insane.

[White Haven]

Never, ever, EVER put your main base in Antarctica. If you do, you start the game fighting Ethereals almost every time. Ethereals versus rifles REALLY REALLY HURTS.

Base location shouldn't affect what aliens turn up when. It starts out floaters and sectoids, then about march/april adds snakemen, june or july adds mutons, and ethereals show up last.

The thing is, Vendetta, that doesn't apply if your first base is in Antarctica. Don't ask me why, but 90% of the time, if your first base is there, you'll start with Ethereals. Dunno if it's a bug or an easter egg, but there it is.

[Tasoth]

I would like to toss in my name for being slapped on a poor, poor alien munchie.