[Let's Play] UFO: Alien Invasion

[Dave]

Guinness Book of World Records: First person to zap an alien in the 'nads -- Dave, 10:15, 23 April 2084, Puerto Maldonado, Peru.

[OmegaChief]

If we invent some form of better armour could I, as the apparent go to man for sucidially charging straight into UFOs, get the first copy of it?

Also we need to invest research into somthing with more dakka, my rifle has insuffiant dakka.

[The Vortex Empire]

Man, sure hope I get well enough to go back on the drop team soon. I need to kill more xenos!

[phred]

Alas. My first time up and I run out of ammo There will be a next time however, and I will get to slap an alien kill on the side of my interceptor.

Yes! I get my Interceptor. And people used to say I was wasting my time playing all those games, shooting alien spaceships. Now I get to do it for real!

I'm not sure how happy I am about the above excitement, since the reasoning behind phred getting onto active flight status is my death...

Considering the recent advances in cybernetic technology, I'm sure you'll be up and around in no time.

[Coalition]

Coalition looked around his room. As a pilot recruit he had been awarded a slightly larger room compared to the soldiers recruited for ground combat. Now that he was one of the ground combat soldiers, he supposed he should give up the room for one of the bunkroom beds, but not yet.

Reclining on the bed after showering from the mission, he definitely decided, 'not yet, definitely not yet'.

[JonB]

23:00, 27 April 2084
Hospital, PHALANX HQ
Turkey, GEU

I can't believe I'm writing this, but it's true. The last two missions were routine.


The first one can when we detected Xeno-8 over the English Channel. Phred was dispatched, but his intercept course would have the battle over the Mediterranean. I ordered that he fly parallel to the Xeno until the projected intercept was safely in the African interior.



He shot down the UFO, and the Firebird was dispatched at 19:22, 26 April to the crash site. The Eight members of the Dropteam killed the three surviving Aliens after a short skirmish, and secured the site until the MEA could take possession of the site.



The second Alien in as many days came up over the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia, landing in Heal before phred could engage. The Dropteam landed and chased the Tamen through a couple kilometers back to their ship where they were cut down, never setting foot in their ship.

We got back, and the base Doctor promptly dragged me into the recovery ward and started screaming at me. I wasn't sure what he was saying; he kept lapsing into his native tongue two out of every three words. What I did pick up was something quite... Oh, I'll just attach the image he waved in my face while speaking Maoi.



Short of it? 8/10 of our Dropteam members, including myself, are considered 'injured'. For the record, my injury is heavy bruising on my right shoulder from quote – Improper deployment of man-portable artillery – unquote. I held the rocket launcher slightly off center back in Heal.

Myself, VortexEmpire, OmniQ and Alison are all cleared for immediate deployment as mine and Vortex's injuries are more injuries of annoyance than anything serious.

Dave, Edi, Hawkwings and Coalition are all suffering from performance-reducing injuries, mostly to the extremities which limit their movement or combat abilities.

OmegaChief and ForceLord, our two best shoulders are confined to the hospital due to serious injuries taken in the line of duty.

The doctor reminded me that unless I lowered the quality of recruits, I would have more corpses next to Torben's in the morgue. SirNitram looked weird at that comment, but I paid it no heed. We needed more warm bodies, or there would be more cold ones.

I accepted that with grim determination.

Once the Doctor had gotten off his head of steam, Academia Nut stepped forward. “Sir, we have completed our research into the Origins of the Aliens.




Silence reigned in the Hospital.

“Fuck.” It was OmegaChief, from where he was laying, chest in a burn casing. A sentiment shared by everyone.

“In addition,” Academia continued, “We believe that these new arrivals are not an organized invasion. After the destruction of the Armada over Toronto, we believe, supported by analysis of UFO distribution in space-and-time, that these forces are reinforcements, perhaps no expecting the Armada to be gone. These aliens may be in as much confusion as we were.”

“That may be good news, but what the hell does that mean?”

“At this point, basic military doctrine would indicate that they need to find a place to re-group and organize their next actions.”

“They have a base. On planet.”

The dread was thick enough to cut. “It gets worse. We have no clue at this time what to look for or where. But we do have one possible lead.”

---

Alright, 4 things for you guys. First is the most obvious. Research! You can see in the above image what's available to poke at, and I will accept voting until Thursday, which is my next planned update day.

Second – I've reached the point where I'm not going to do detailed write-ups for every mission, unless something happens – like new weapons, someone dies, or the next couple captures, something like that. It'll cut down on the size of the posts and let me move a bit faster.

Third – I have bad news. In the current Stable Build of this game, 2.3.1, the cost of building an item is the same as buying it from the open/black market. Exactly. For everything. Have a look at these two pics:




You see here that the EM Rifle costs 2000c whether we build one or buy it. One of the programming goals of version 2.4 is to make the X-COM staple of building things then selling them on the Black Market a possible route for profit. That means that the Chinese Base (which is still the basics) needs to be re-purposed and thus renamed. You guys need to advise me on what to do with that base.

Fourth – Would you guys mind of I hired generic grunts with generic names to keep you LP'ers alive, or go hardcore and get you all killed, only to be resurrected / cloned / cyborgized / identical twin / alien infiltrator'd as the case may be? (Or Option 3 – convince more people to join as meat shields!)

For the record – here is everyone on the Ground Team:
JonB:

Dave:

VortexEmpire:

ForceLord:

OmegaChief:

Edi:

Alison Krasue

Hawkwings

Coalition

OmniQ


Decisions to be made guys. Thursday noon is the deadline.

[phred]

Yes! My first kill! I drop em, they bag em.

Obviously the live alien needs to be 'interrogated' first. After that, dunno. As for the Chinese base,would it be worth it to have a dedicated listening post/interceptor base? I'm not entirely certain if the game works that way, but it might be useful to have a base that's just a radar/interceptor there and another in, say Argentina or something. Possibly with storage to refuel and rearm the transport as well.

I have no problem with generic soldiers to help take up the slack if no one else does. However I would suggest making them all clones or something, name them all bob1 - 2 - 3 or similar.

[FaxModem1]

Due to costs and the fact that designs have already been given to the Chinese for easier manufacturing, I suggest we make this an HQ for our interceptors.

Also, for research, we need laser weapons, and we need them now, otherwise we'll be falling into the trap of only researching alien technology and not keeping our options open.

As for grunts and manpower, I believe I have just the thing. They're from a Star Wars cosplay convention in Tokyo, but I think they will work here.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/HK-51

[Agent Sorchus]

Well if you need more meat-shields I guess I can be persuaded. But I demand a Machine gun and combat knife.

Edit: have you experienced a glitch where the textures for walls and interiors fail to load, because it has been hell trying to run through the game with out being able to see the walls?

[JonB]

Edit: have you experienced a glitch where the textures for walls and interiors fail to load, because it has been hell trying to run through the game with out being able to see the walls?

Welcome to the Party, Sorchus!

I have seen that error reported on the Bugs section of the forums, but have not encountered it myself. Have you looked there for an answer?

[Hawkwings]

Yes, we do need to get around to laser weapons soon, but we should interrogate the alien first.

[Dendrobius]

I'll sign on as a grunt. Can I please be sent first into close quarters with a stun baton? I prefer my xenos ass-kicking be done personally. Failing that, at least I drew fire away from more valuable members of the team...

[HMS Sophia]

Bob and his clones is always a good way to go for extra meat.
On the other hand, we need cyborg pilots!

[OmegaChief]

I suggest a mixture of Clones and ressurected cyborg crewmen. Bonus Points if the clones are all slightly off/simple.

Also I second the Interrogate the Alien, then go for Laser Weapons, see guys if we'd have researched this when I wanted to, we'd have known about this sooner! But nooo no one wanted to listen to me.

Also I have the highest Mind stat, this does not bode well.

[Torben]

Don't know if my vote counts, what with me being a meat popsicle and all, however, my $.02:

Cybernetic/Mind Transference to resurrect KIA (yes, I am biased )
Clones as meat shields, second the simple/odd sentiment.
Interrogate the shite out of the live alien, then get some layzurs to play with.

However, if this is some sort of fascist state where corpses don't get a vote, well, I hope you all feel a cold draft as I wander the baes's halls.

[Kryten]

If you need new recruits, you can sign me up.
EM or sniper rifle please, and micro shotgun.

[Coalition]

Coalition looked down at the copy of his report. Apparently the time he had spent on base practicing with the assault rifles had been well spent. He barely remembered killing the two aliens on the past few missions. He also saw a list of requests for research projects, and figured that they needed more intel.

Putting in an email to the director's anonymous survey program, he suggested interrogating the alien.


OmegaChief - think hard

[Vehrec]

I'll sign up to defend the Earth-and I'll also request that you put five scientists on every research project. The wacky comedy option, yeyup.

[OmniscientQ]

OmniQ stops by JonB's office.

"Sir, I'd like to thank you again for picking me to join up against these aliens. I'm sure you had a long list of volunteers to wade through, and I won't let you down. As for that EM rifle... I'm impressed. That thing punched holes straight through the inner bulkheads on an alien ship. On top of that, we have IR goggles that'll let us see the body heat of a xeno from behind those very same bulkheads... Well, I'm sure I don't have to tell you were my mind is going with this.

Oh, I heard the eggheads were arguing about what to spend their time on next. Personally, I love the sound of having our very own rayguns. As bad-ass as the EM rifle is, I can't wait to find out what kinds of cool shit you could do with a man-portable laser weapon. On the other hand, though, we DO have a live prisoner. If we can just get it to talk to us, we might be able to negotiate some kind of cease-fire. I always love new hardware, sir, but I don't love using it in combat if I don't have to."

Having put in his two cents regarding our next research in favour of interrogation, OmniQ heads down to the rifle range to get some quality time in with his EM rifle, trying to figure out how fire it reliably even with a pair of IR goggles in place. He intends to not miss, next time.

[The Vortex Empire]

Let's interrogate the xeno. We need to know where these things are based so we can get in there and kill 'em all.

[Hawkwings]

Hawkwings files an anonymous report to the Director.

"I've seen some strange behavior from this new guy, OmniQ. He's an odd one, always talking about things like 'negotiation' and 'peace agreements' and such. Now I'm no expert, but it doesn't take one to know that this is BAD for the team. Important stuff like 'team morale', 'espirit de corps', 'bloodlust', and 'xenocide' are endangered by this sort of thinking. I recommend immediate transfer out of X-COM PHALANX, or if that isn't possible, immediately and permanently assigning him to the 'human shield' team position."

[The Yosemite Bear]

can we develop liner accelerators?

[JonB]

We already have the Electro-Magnetic Rifle, which is a man-portable Rail Gun. There is an upgrade deeper in the tech tree, but we'll need a couple things from the Alien's first.

[SirNitram]

After the comment about Torbus in the morgue, I was about ready to be found out. I'd moved the body to my personal lab space days ago. It had to be kept refrigerated, but thankfully no one had embalmed him in a hurry. Unfortunately, Barnest's body was not so easily recovered. I'll have to work from the last scans to reconstruct his mind. This left me in an unpleasant position: Barnest would be the easiest, but I had no idea how his mind would interact with his new body. If sanity would remain intact; if a mere medical scan could do it.

But that was three days ago. Getting out of the base for a few days was hard; with a live alien and our discovery of FTL, Academia had wanted me front and center. I had done my best to spin the trip as 'prototyping' a new-generation interceptor. In many ways, it was right.

Barnest's scan-copy mind had been hooked up to computers simulating the interceptor for the past two days. Did he gets bored? Angry? I have no way to know. Not until I fire up my prototype.

I have dubbed her Phoenix. With a few switches thrown, I will restore life to the dead...

[Academia Nut]

Academia Nut stumbled from his chambers with the worst hangover he had ever had. Not from celebration, but because his work schedule demanded he look into alternatives to sleep. One trip to the local purveyor of beverages saturated in caffeine and other sundry chemicals and he had discovered that unfortunately he should have asked for a glass bottle rather than a plastic one. He was thus recovering from temporary blindness due to methanol poisoning and the subsequent near ethanol poisoning used to flush the toxins from his system.

All for a work schedule set to confirm that they still had no fucking idea where the aliens were coming from.

Looking down at the options presented to him, he said, "Since we actually want the damn thing to survive interrogation, could you assign me to working out the plasma pistol? Otherwise interrogation is going to involve a 9 Iron in the the mood I'm in right now."