The X-Com Discussion

[RTM]

X-COM is a series of computer games, started by MicroProse in 1994.
~http://www.ufopaedia.org

Let's first talk about X-Com: Enemy Unkown/UFO Defense and how it would it's storyline and the like apply for our world. Would the representatives from the worlds most economically powerful countries create the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit or would the nations of the world try to take care of the 'Alien Menace' themselves? How would 1999-era armies and weaponry fare against the alien invaders, nevermind the general public's reaction to hostile alien species...

[PeZook]

If we take the actual world as per 1999, the "alien menace" is fucked and will have to resort to orbital bombardment.

In which case, of course, we're fucked.

[Vendetta]

Depends, do we get to replace the armies of the world with half blind drunk retards? That was the only thing that stopped the aliens losing immediately in the game.

[RTM]

Depends, do we get to replace the armies of the world with half blind drunk retards? That was the only thing that stopped the aliens losing immediately in the game.

If the game was realistic and the soldiers were actually able to fire and see normally, that would mean the aliens would be even worse, Mutons, Ethereals and Cryssalids especially.

[PeZook]

How so? Mutons depend on their armor - we can punch through that with heavy weapons. Chrysalids are freakin' melee combatants, so they don't matter. Let them bang on the sides of our armored vehicles

Only the Ethereals would be dangerous at all, but they're frail. We'd just use tear gas so that they can't focus and then slaughter them.

With night vision equipment, numbers, proper team tactics and armored vehicles, alien infantry doesn't stand a chance. Of course, X-COM's world has hypersonic stratospheric interceptors which we lack, so the aliens can just dominate us from orbit with impunity.

[RTM]

How so? Mutons depend on their armor - we can punch through that with heavy weapons. Chrysalids are freakin' melee combatants, so they don't matter. Let them bang on the sides of our armored vehicles

Only the Ethereals would be dangerous at all, but they're frail. We'd just use tear gas so that they can't focus and then slaughter them.

With night vision equipment, numbers, proper team tactics and armored vehicles, alien infantry doesn't stand a chance. Of course, X-COM's world has hypersonic stratospheric interceptors which we lack, so the aliens can just dominate us from orbit with impunity.

In the case of Mutons you either use heavy plasmas, large amounts of AP type of ammo to bring them down, or shoot them in the face before they shoot you. For the Ethereals, I don't think gas will really affect them much since they seem to be using telekinesis as life support and transportation. And as for the Chryssalids, they can take down Heavy Weapon Platforms (mini-tanks) in a turn and sprint very fast. What are the approximate dimensions of a single tile anyway? Because they can cross about twenty-three of them in a single turn and attack.

And let's not forget the main method of Chryssalid reproduction, it's damn fast...

[PeZook]

In the case of Mutons you either use heavy plasmas, large amounts of AP type of ammo to bring them down, or shoot them in the face before they shoot you.

In the game, X-Com only has pitiful weaponry. Just bring a dozen LAVs and a batallion of infantry.

For the Ethereals, I don't think gas will really affect them much since they seem to be using telekinesis as life support and transportation.

Uh...where did you get that from? Smoke inhalation brings them down, tear gas will fuck them up royally, maybe even just kill them.

And as for the Chryssalids, they can take down Heavy Weapon Platforms (mini-tanks) in a turn and sprint very fast. What are the approximate dimensions of a single tile anyway? Because they can cross about twenty-three of them in a single turn and attack.

So they are fast melee combatants. They will still have to endure weapons fire while sprinting suicidally at enemies armed with guns.

And let's not forget the main method of Chryssalid reproduction, it's damn fast...

They have to stab a soldier with their claws first.

[RTM]

Uh...where did you get that from?

Because the autospy report implies the Ethereals shouldn't even be able to live, and yet they do, and float and use psionics. And there's no mention of any cybernetics...

Smoke inhalation brings them down, tear gas will fuck them up royally, maybe even just kill them.

In-game?

So they are fast melee combatants. They will still have to endure weapons fire while sprinting suicidally at enemies armed with guns. They have to stab a soldier with their claws first.

Should a single Cryssalid get through or a town of civilians get converted before the army gets there, the whole situation will go beyond FUBAR and then it's nuke em' all time. And if that doesn't work, you better hope they starve to death, which could happen in about a month or less since like hell an organism like the Cryssalid would be able to live long without a food supply.

[PeZook]

Because the autospy report implies the Ethereals shouldn't even be able to live, and yet they do, and float and use psionics. And there's no mention of any cybernetics...

Yet they die from bullets and lose consciousness from smoke inhalation and stun bombs. They're frail, and don't believe in gas masks.

Should a single Cryssalid get through or a town of civilians get converted before the army gets there, the whole situation will go beyond FUBAR and then it's nuke em' all time. And if that doesn't work, you better hope they starve to death, which could happen in about a month or less since like hell an organism like the Cryssalid would be able to live long without a food supply.

Huh...yeah, Chrysalids massacring a town of people would be pretty bad, but in-game terror sites are usually evacuated and surrounded well before X-Com gets there to stagger drunkedly in darkness bravely fight the alien menace, implying the aliens are usually in no hurry to start eating people.

It's irrelevant anyway ; Aliens could just threaten to wipe out our biggest cities from orbit if we didn't surrender, or unleash bioweapons on the world to conveniently clear out the planet (in fact, that's the sensible part of the various UFO: AFTERBAD series: aliens just kill us all from orbit with bioweapons)

[Nephtys]

The First Alien War as of X-COM isn't a conventional war though. It's more like a spy war, conducted with small groups of MiB and a handful of cleanup agents more than actual combat.

The vast majority of what would be important is kept off-screen. Negotiations between nations to show them that the alien threat was even real to begin with, to cover up the incursion of squads of aliens into populated areas to prevent mass panic, and to contain human duplicate infiltrators. The most overt action really is that of the aircraft, where those 'Interceptor' aircraft can apparently sustain Mach 3 for intercontinental distances.

Really, what can we do different? The aliens only appear in groups of at most a dozen or two. The crappy quality of your soldiers in the game can be explained as an abstraction. They're supposedly best-of-the-best special forces sent to kill 15 aliens in a city block that's cordoned off. You can probably assume that those troops are using NVGs anyway, since their night vision is about half of day vision in game terms anyway. Which makes sense for loss of situational awareness even with night vision equipment.

What makes the most sense really is that the alien's aren't prepared for a conventional war. Their numbers are limited, and their spacecraft are actually really terrible for combat. Their heaviest plasma guns have effective ranges of something like 90km in atmosphere against aircraft. They don't display any bombardment-capable ordinance. So their only shot is to terrorize people, and sign deals with governments using their infiltrators. The actual combat capability of the aliens on the ground is pretty much irrelevant as far as that goes.

[RTM]

So, basically, a semi-curbstomp battle in favor of humanity, X-Com or not...

It's irrelevant anyway ; Aliens could just threaten to wipe out our biggest cities from orbit if we didn't surrender, or unleash bioweapons on the world to conveniently clear out the planet (in fact, that's the sensible part of the various UFO: AFTERBAD series: aliens just kill us all from orbit with bioweapons)

I think the aliens in UFO Defense/Enemy Unknown couldn't afford to kill of large amounts of humans since they require them as food and test subjects. Other than that... *shrugs*

[Peptuck]

I always viewed X-Com as a war of subversion instead of a conventional war. The aliens want humanity and Earth intact, so they're focusing their efforts on subverting mankind's governments into allowing them to take over. Even with X-Com causing trouble, they're in a superior position and have the manpower and tech advantage. They can afford to keep their distance and try to fight quietly.

It isn't until X-Com shows up at Cydonia that shit gets real. I've always interpreted the whole "lose at Cydonia, lose the game" thing as the aliens suddenly realizing that the primitive apes on the planet are now able to actually strike back, and they switch to conventional tactics.

[Xon]

Their numbers are limited, and their spacecraft are actually really terrible for combat. Their heaviest plasma guns have effective ranges of something like 90km in atmosphere against aircraft.

Sure, but the UFO's are quite tought, never mind that even the slowest UFO pulls 3 times the speed of sound and the fastest (and also the largest) pull 7 times the speed of sound.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah. Aircraft that are supposed to be cutting-edge hypersonic fighter jets are a joke against anything bigger than the alien scout, unless they're equipped with energy weapons that only X-COM has the ability to make (and develops the ability to make, during the war).

I've always imagined the war as one where the aerial battles mostly take the form of "crap they're flying around at will and we can't intercept them, and even when we do it's a good way to lose planes." Shooting down one large alien craft using conventional military forces would require swarming attacks that would be the equivalent of spear-armed tribesmen charging a British square, accepting massive casualties to get in close and deliver enough hits to put the more advanced opponent down.

As a result, the military equation is ludicrously unfavorable on the aerospace front: if they actually put any effort into attacking the military-industrial complex they could gain total air supremacy over Earth eventually, because our jets and defensive AA weapons are manufactured in a small number of facilities we can't protect. So once they start taking us seriously they don't really have to fight on the ground or nuke us from orbit; they can fight the same kind of war the US fought against Iraq in 1991, nailing our own defenses on the ground with surgical strikes and leaving us unable to fight back to any good effect. At that point their lack of suitable quantity of ground forces becomes less relevant.

The nature of the ground action in the game implies a considerable amount of handwavium; there's no other way to explain why anyone would call in X-COM forces from such a great distance instead of just rolling over the alien terrorists with their own troops.

One amusing idea I heard is that the aliens' presence, even from the non-psychic species, causes enough mental distortion that most human beings just wander around helplessly in a daze: note the behavior of civilians on the X-COM battlefield. If most soldiers do that too, and you have to pass rigorous psychological screening just to qualify for X-COM ground forces, that would help to explain why it's impractical to just garrison the cities and roll in with an army battalion every time an alien terror squad rears its head. Because 90% of your troops will, statistically speaking, wind up doing the same useless idiotic crap the civvies in the area do, like wandering into your line of fire and blocking your troops' movement.

[Nephtys]

I personally saw the ground combat parts of X-COM more like the local army has secured off the block in this terror zone, or the random outcropping where the aliens were spotted. Now X-COM arrives on-site, where their team of super duper commandos (who, despite their massive issues, are superior to normal troops) move in and clean out the aliens. If a larger force appears, either it causes too much destruction (terror missions), or the alien saucer bugs out at detecting a regiment approaching as opposed to a single small squad transport (UFO assault).

The only weakness in this idea is UFO Recovery and Base Assault... but I suppose we can assume base assault is a single squad transport due to possible alien defenses that can do lots of damage to a mass attack.

[PeZook]

I personally saw the ground combat parts of X-COM more like the local army has secured off the block in this terror zone, or the random outcropping where the aliens were spotted.

That's stated outright WRT terror zones in the blurb right before your brave retarded drunks stagger into the area

Now X-COM arrives on-site, where their team of super duper commandos (who, despite their massive issues, are superior to normal troops) move in and clean out the aliens. If a larger force appears, either it causes too much destruction (terror missions), or the alien saucer bugs out at detecting a regiment approaching as opposed to a single small squad transport (UFO assault).

Since we're in the business of rationalizing X-COM's massive issues, I like the "aliens fuck with people's minds" explanation the best, even though there is simply no evidence for that in-game

The problem with "the aliens just bug out after detecting a regiment approaching" explanation is, of course, that there is no way to know if the human aircraft want to land and deploy troops or just drop a bunker buster on the UFO and be done with it. Allowing enemy aircraft to approach and land a hundred metres from your irreplaceable starship is kind of stupid, however you spin it

The only weakness in this idea is UFO Recovery and Base Assault... but I suppose we can assume base assault is a single squad transport due to possible alien defenses that can do lots of damage to a mass attack.

Or something like "Fuck this shit we're funding those stupid assholes let THEM do the dying."

Naturally, this raises a problem of a FAILED base assault. If a country isn't on the alien dole, they'd want to wipe the base out if it managed to repel an attack by X-COM - if only to secure the goodies for themselves.

Or we can just say the entire alien war is a drunken hallucination.

[RTM]

Now X-COM arrives on-site, where their team of super duper commandos (who, despite their massive issues, are superior to normal troops) move in and clean out the aliens.

The highlighted part made me think a bit, and remember a certain part from an X-Com fanfic. I had an issue with how fast the X-Com troopers improved their attributes very fast and in a matter of months were able to shoot faster, more accurately or even reaction fire at the slightest movement.

‘Drugs?’ Hammond said incredulously. ‘They’re all on drugs?’ he asked in astonishment.

Janet Fraser nodded. ‘Various kinds’ she confirmed. ‘None of them showed up on any routine screening though a few were clearly developments of compounds I’m partially familiar with’ she said. ‘If I had to guess they’re probably taking a combination of experimental performance enhancing drugs and have been for some time’ she told him. ‘I was doing some random testing of blood samples checking for traces of off-world viruses or bacteria and I noticed something odd about all the samples from X-COM personnel’ she said. ‘I had their samples put through a mass spectrometer and found all sorts of things that shouldn’t have been in there’ Fraser told him.

‘You mean like steroids?’ Hammond asked.

‘Yes there’s at least one anabolic steroid in there’ Doctor Fraser confirmed, ‘but there are also Erythropoietin-like hormones which increase both the number of red blood cells and the individual ability of those cells to carry oxygen’ she said. Additional chemicals appear to have a neurological effect on how the fight-or-flight reflex is triggered, and possibly increase aggression, and amongst other physical performance enhancing drugs there are several types of Nootroopics.’

Hammon frowned. ‘Nootropic?’ he queried.

‘Cognitive Enhancers’ Doctor Fraser explained. ‘They improve brain function’ she continued, ‘improved memory, faster reaction times, increased awareness, focus and alertness’ she listed then paused. ‘Haven’t you ever noticed how some of the X-COM people sometimes seem to have this “ready to pounce” look about them?’ she asked rhetorically.

[PeZook]

Yeah and in my fanfic, I just assumed it was all a gamey abstraction

[Simon_Jester]

Now X-COM arrives on-site, where their team of super duper commandos (who, despite their massive issues, are superior to normal troops) move in and clean out the aliens. If a larger force appears, either it causes too much destruction (terror missions), or the alien saucer bugs out at detecting a regiment approaching as opposed to a single small squad transport (UFO assault).

Since we're in the business of rationalizing X-COM's massive issues, I like the "aliens fuck with people's minds" explanation the best, even though there is simply no evidence for that in-game

Aside from the behavior of civilians in the combat zone, you mean?

[Temujin]

I always loved the concept of X-Com, but the game was less than stellar. And it certainly didn't get better in the later games (Haven't tried the UFO games though).

Was it ever clear how much it was officially inspired from the UFO TV Series, because there certainly are some parallels. I remember enjoying the novel (though it's been a while), and thought it would make a good SG type series.

[CaiusWickersham]

[fanboy]But . . . but it's the best game EVER!!!!!!111111!!1111!!! There will never be another X-COM game like the first !!1!!!!!!1111111 How DARE you speak such blasphemy!!!!! WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!11111!!!!!1111111!!!!!![/fanboy]

Okay, that's done. Seriously, even on this board we got the ones who think it's the greatest thing since sex and the ones who rag on it. It's just a game, just relax.

And yes, I will be starting the TFTD Let's Play soon. I added on the X-COM Util to make things more . . . tolerable.

[PeZook]

To be true, the game was truly excellent for its time, and most modern UFO games have proven to be utterly incapable of replicating what made its mechanics good, and/or removing the bad parts.

[Batman]

XCOM:UFO Defense/UFO:Enemy Unknown', to a lesser extent 'XCOM-Terror from the Deep' and, despite the stupid biotech angle, 'XCOM: Apocalypse' were awesome games even if game mechanics meant the XCOM soldiers were abysmally stupid. I don't care how bad a shot you are, how do you miss a piece of ground right in front of you? Repeatedly?
But yes, from a realism standpoint the aliens get curbstomped on the ground and own us from the skies.
Same deal for TFTD, basically. Our military can eradicate them on the surface, but underwater, there's jack all we can do to them without XCOM technology.

[White Haven]

The whole 'miss the ground in front of you' bit came from the lack of a range calculation in X-COM. That's also why you can make a startling number of shots from across the map, through an orchard, and through seven open windows. If only I'd known about that lack when the game was new.

[Vendetta]

Also, once your squaddie's accuracy got high enough it was actually impossible for them to miss, no matter how improbable the shot.