protecting the earth (government vs)

[Simon_Jester]

How about 'because the only damage ever shown in the games is from internal explosions'? How do you even know plasma weapons make holes in people? It's very likely that they do not.

...Because they make holes in brick walls? Seriously, I can go to any ground mission in X-COM and literally demolish a brick house, one wall segment at a time, just by shooting a fire team's plasma weapons at it. It'll take a while, but I can do it, just as I could with rocket launchers or demolition charges.

Ditto with laser rifles.

It's absurd for you to propose that these weapons somehow don't work by shooting holes in things.

It's been shown that you think they're impressive because you're massively overstating what they are. Even 'going to Mars' is just 'turn on elerium powerplant and hang on'. Their weapons are scavenged from the dead. I'm fucking amazed.

Their weapons can be scavenged from the dead, but this is not required: it's totally possible in-game to outfit your soldiers with manufactured plasma weapons, even if it's inefficient to do so. Alien alloys can be made in arbitrarily large quantities without any captured material whatsoever- it's just more cost-effective to scrap captured UFO walls than to make your own.

The only thing in the game you can't make for yourself, given a large enough budget, is elerium.

On top of that, there's the interesting question of where the hell those laser weapons come from. You can research and equip your forces with laser rifles, your jet fighters with laser cannon arguably superior to with air to air missiles, and your little robot tankettes with laser cannon arguably superior to armor-piercing rounds from whatever the hell that gun is. And you can do all this without reverse engineering a single piece of alien hardware.

Even if you assume that's a fluke and X-COM laser weapons incorporate alien technology, they're not a direct copy of any kind of captured weapon, nor are they an obvious bastardization that takes parts from multiple items and makes one Frankenweapon out of them. That implies a much greater level of understanding than "hey, we figured out how to pull the trigger!"

[Stark]

...Because they make holes in brick walls? Seriously, I can go to any ground mission in X-COM and literally demolish a brick house, one wall segment at a time, just by shooting a fire team's plasma weapons at it. It'll take a while, but I can do it, just as I could with rocket launchers or demolition charges.

Are you serious? Are you saying that assault rifles also vaporise a building's walls? Because it disappears ingame, no debris, vaporised?

When a ship crashes after being shot down by fusion balls and plasma beams, the only damage it has physically is that caused by exploding powerplants. Oops.

It's absurd for you to propose that these weapons somehow don't work by shooting holes in things.

Except for how a plasma weapon would by nature burn more than penetrate, especially at low velocity, I guess.

Their weapons can be scavenged from the dead, but this is not required: it's totally possible in-game to outfit your soldiers with manufactured plasma weapons, even if it's inefficient to do so. Alien alloys can be made in arbitrarily large quantities without any captured material whatsoever- it's just more cost-effective to scrap captured UFO walls than to make your own.

Which ... proves... what? Aside from 'alien alloys can be made by 10 guys in a workshop', which is hardly making that sound like a hard code to crack. Even the powerplants are 'bombard elerium with particles', which while scifi stuff is understood as soon as they complete study on elerium.

I don't think people understand that finding a bizarre element inside a particle accelerator and shooting it with particles to discover gravity waves is really not very amazing research.

On top of that, there's the interesting question of where the hell those laser weapons come from. You can research and equip your forces with laser rifles, your jet fighters with laser cannon arguably superior to with air to air missiles, and your little robot tankettes with laser cannon arguably superior to armor-piercing rounds from whatever the hell that gun is. And you can do all this without reverse engineering a single piece of alien hardware.

The laser weapons on planes suck, and the rifles are so imba they were nerfed in the sequel. So what? It's the far-future of 1999, of course they have laser technology. Too bad then tech hits a total dead end without alien stuff; it's almost like practical laser weapons had already been developed in 1999 and XCOM just needed to work out how to build them themselves. UH OH! :V

Even if you assume that's a fluke and X-COM laser weapons incorporate alien technology, they're not a direct copy of any kind of captured weapon, nor are they an obvious bastardization that takes parts from multiple items and makes one Frankenweapon out of them. That implies a much greater level of understanding than "hey, we figured out how to pull the trigger!"

I don't think anyone has claimed laser weapons are based on alien technology except you; it's just not very impressive, especially compared to the claims of manufacturing super space warships. Protip - the Avenger is a piece of shit in most scifi universes, and is impresive only insofar as it is Earth's first interplanetary craft (which is probably more a navigation and fuel problem than anything else given elerium gravity drive).

[Bakustra]

What level of understanding? We can make lasers today. Just build a bigger one, and presto! A laser pistol! All they need is a better power source (and there is an option in the Xcomutil program to make lasers require Elerium and Alien Alloys) for the thing. That's not really something new, unless there's some fluff in a tie-in novel which makes them a phased-array laser or something equally improbable.

Using game mechanics like being able to shoot out walls... well, in that case, why does it take three or four wall-busting shots to take down an alien? Why are Chryssalids so much tougher than any other alien, and why don't the aliens skin them for armor, then? The problem is that UFOs are never damaged externally when crashed, though they often have internal damage from their power source exploding, and the largest UFOs can't be destroyed by interception at all.

Ten guys in a workshop can build plasma guns... but "canonically", they could also have scavenged them and the aforementioned option also disables being able to build plasma weaponry. Canonically, they could have built a dozen Avengers and Cydonia was a mere coup de grace. Or they could have launched a suicide mission on Cydonia as a last stand following half their funding joining the aliens. Even building the plasma guns is more mimicry than anything else, since they have to research each one individually.

[Gunhead]

How about you're an idiot and we only see damaged ships when the reactor has blown up which is a game mechanic to make obtaining elerium harder? I mean fuck, maybe that is the way ufos are brought down. You aim for the reactor and when power loss becomes too great the ship crashes. Yep. That's it, fit's the bill. This would leave the exterior pretty much intact and all serious damage would be caused by an internal reactor explosion. Armor piercing beams. Physical damage proven.

So, ok. It's a matter to energy conversion reactor using elerium as fuel, with conversion ratio of 99% or there abouts. Happy now? Now that I took a second look at it, it's fucking irrelevant is anti-matter somehow involved. The reactor converts, by all reason elerium, directly into various forms of energy.

It seems I should have used simpler terms. You just dismissed every single possible engineering problem that can come up when working with unknown technology, which amounts to you having an opinion which to me equals jack shit. I'm fucking amazed. I mean you seriously think I just accept there we're no major technological obstacles to overcome because you say so? Riiiiiight. Even if the only real hurdle was understanding and reverse engineering a device that converts matter directly to energy, to a degree we can produce our own, that alone is impressive.

-Gunhead

[Bakustra]

How about you're an idiot and we only see damaged ships when the reactor has blown up which is a game mechanic to make obtaining elerium harder? I mean fuck, maybe that is the way ufos are brought down. You aim for the reactor and when power loss becomes too great the ship crashes. Yep. That's it, fit's the bill. This would leave the exterior pretty much intact and all serious damage would be caused by an internal reactor explosion. Armor piercing beams. Physical damage proven.

So, ok. It's a matter to energy conversion reactor using elerium as fuel, with conversion ratio of 99% or there abouts. Happy now? Now that I took a second look at it, it's fucking irrelevant is anti-matter somehow involved. The reactor converts, by all reason elerium, directly into various forms of energy.

It seems I should have used simpler terms. You just dismissed every single possible engineering problem that can come up when working with unknown technology, which amounts to you having an opinion which to me equals jack shit. I'm fucking amazed. I mean you seriously think I just accept there we're no major technological obstacles to overcome because you say so? Riiiiiight. Even if the only real hurdle was understanding and reverse engineering a device that converts matter directly to energy, to a degree we can produce our own, that alone is impressive.

-Gunhead

They likely don't understand how a plasma gun works, since you need to research each plasma weapon separately, rather than deducing the principles and then building them. They definitely don't understand how alien metals are constructed, since you need them to build stuff. Their ships start out as carbon copies of UFOs, they duplicate alien power sources too... I don't think that the methods portrayed in the game really demonstrate super-impressive technological skills when compared to groups like SG-1 or what people tend to assume about XCOM.

Why is it solely game mechanics that large UFOs cannot be shot down and small and medium UFOs can? That's the main thrust of my argument about weapons capabilities.

[Batman]

What level of understanding? We can make lasers today. Just build a bigger one, and presto! A laser pistol! All they need is a better power source (and there is an option in the Xcomutil program to make lasers require Elerium and Alien Alloys) for the thing.

It either requires a greater level of understanding than 'how to pull the trigger' if they need do need alien technology to do it (for which their is exactly zero in-game evidence) or it indicates power generation/storage technology massively ahead of modern day Earth. In 1999.

That's not really something new

Which is why laser infantry weapons are all over the place today. Oh wait. And since we know pretty much all about how M/AM reactions work, an operational Warp core would be no big deal. I mean it's not like net gain fusion power has been just around the corner for half a century or something. We knew all about gunpowder in the 1600s. I note a curious lack of anybody toting assault rifles.

Using game mechanics like being able to shoot out walls... well, in that case, why does it take three or four wall-busting shots to take down an alien?

Because they're that tough?

Why are Chryssalids so much tougher than any other alien

Because they're that much tougher than any other alien? (they aren't, BTW, they're putty compared to the Lobster Men of TFTD).

and why don't the aliens skin them for armor, then?

That'd be the part where their ordinary hull material is massively more resistant than Chryssalid shell? The real question is why can't they be arsed to wear body armour.

The problem is that UFOs are never damaged externally when crashed

Um-they routinely are. That'd be all those destroyed hull sections you can get in through?

though they often have internal damage from their power source exploding, and the largest UFOs can't be destroyed by interception at all.

The only UFOs that can be destroyed are the tiny ones period. All of the others crash. So what?

Ten guys in a workshop can build plasma guns... but "canonically", they could also have scavenged them and the aforementioned option also disables being able to build plasma weaponry.

Err no it doesn't. Have you actually played the game? Guess what, whithout a single UFO being shot down in eons, as long as you have Elerium-115, you can build plasma weapons. Yes, XCOM positively DOES have the ability to do so.

Canonically, they could have built a dozen Avengers and Cydonia was a mere coup de grace. Or they could have launched a suicide mission on Cydonia as a last stand following half their funding joining the aliens. Even building the plasma guns is more mimicry than anything else, since they have to research each one individually.

So, the plasma cannon is mimicry of-what, exactly, given that the largest weapon they find to reverse engineer is the Heavy Plasma?
Not that I see why this is relevant-they clearly ARE able to reverse engineer alien technology in an astoundingly short amount of time, AND can build on it.

[Stark]

How about you're an idiot and we only see damaged ships when the reactor has blown up which is a game mechanic to make obtaining elerium harder? I mean fuck, maybe that is the way ufos are brought down. You aim for the reactor and when power loss becomes too great the ship crashes. Yep. That's it, fit's the bill. This would leave the exterior pretty much intact and all serious damage would be caused by an internal reactor explosion. Armor piercing beams. Physical damage proven.

Or the impact of crashing. Oops.

[Batman]

They likely don't understand how a plasma gun works, since you need to research each plasma weapon separately, rather than deducing the principles and then building them.

They DO understand how plasma weapons work thanks to being able to build ship and base defense weapons they never get their hands on. They need to research infantry plasma weapons individually to be able to produce identical copies. Vee, that comes as a shock.

They definitely don't understand how alien metals are constructed, since you need them to build stuff.

Patently wrong. Once you've researched them, Alien Alloys can be manufactured with zero access to alien resources. You just gain so much of them from crashed UFOs anyway that it's generally not worth the effort.

Their ships start out as carbon copies of UFOs, they duplicate alien power sources too... I don't think that the methods portrayed in the game really demonstrate super-impressive technological skills when compared to groups like SG-1 or what people tend to assume about XCOM.

Really. How many Naquada generators, Zats, staff weapons or Death Gliders did the SGC build during season 1?

Why is it solely game mechanics that large UFOs cannot be shot down and small and medium UFOs can? That's the main thrust of my argument about weapons capabilities.

Err-each and every UFO can be shot down... That's how you tend to get most of your alien materials, you know?

[Simon_Jester]

...Because they make holes in brick walls? Seriously, I can go to any ground mission in X-COM and literally demolish a brick house, one wall segment at a time, just by shooting a fire team's plasma weapons at it. It'll take a while, but I can do it, just as I could with rocket launchers or demolition charges.

Are you serious? Are you saying that assault rifles also vaporise a building's walls? Because it disappears ingame, no debris, vaporised?

I'm not arguing for vaporizing anything. But there's damn sure a hole in the wall afterwards, because you can march soldiers through the wall afterwards.

If before the wall gets shot, a man cannot pass through the wall, and afterwards he can, I think it's a fair bet that there's a hole in the wall on account of the shot. I don't care where the wall went, or what would happen if the wall was a spherical mass of iron, or anything else. But this is caveman-level thinking here; I know you love your sneers but you only make yourself look like an idiot by getting it wrong.

If shooting a brick wall with a weapon turns it from something a man can't pass through into something he can pass through, then by golly that weapon makes holes in brick walls.

It's absurd for you to propose that these weapons somehow don't work by shooting holes in things.

Except for how a plasma weapon would by nature burn more than penetrate, especially at low velocity, I guess.

And the burns on the brick wall allow troops to pass through it freely. Yes. I see now.

You're being so willfully obtuse about this stuff that even I'm not willing to indulge you any more. If you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, and don't feel any obligation to make sense, why bother?

Why is it solely game mechanics that large UFOs cannot be shot down and small and medium UFOs can? That's the main thrust of my argument about weapons capabilities.

Err-each and every UFO can be shot down... That's how you tend to get most of your alien materials, you know?

To be fair, large UFOs can't be shot down without alien technology- they outrun the fastest jets available, and if you do manage to engage the beasts, no human-tech aircraft can survive long enough inside their weapon range to put them down with lasers, nor can any such craft carry enough missiles to put one down at longer ranges.

[adam_grif]

Are the X-Com games worth it? Assuming I've never played any except whichever one had you flying space ships around (a demo or shareware version nor something came with an ancient PC of ours), which one should I start with?

[Gunhead]

Are the X-Com games worth it? Assuming I've never played any except whichever one had you flying space ships around (a demo or shareware version nor something came with an ancient PC of ours), which one should I start with?

I think you're talking about XCOM interceptor, which I think pretty much got a cold reception from critics and fans alike. I haven't played it so I really can't tell a whole lot about it.
The original squad based tactical games are pretty dated, which is not surprising considering the first one came out -94? me thinks. The XCOM Apocalypse has the best combat system of the three allowing you to choose between real time combat with pause option or a turn based combat. I like the first and the third one best, but I've played both when they came out originally so there's a lot of nostalgia in them for me.
The first one is a good place to start, but getting it for a fair price require some digging. I bought the whole XCOM package from steam for less than 5€, which is a good price for little bit of nostalgia. They're fun, but just so you know, today you could get better graphics and UI if they we're made into browser games.

-Gunhead

[Gunhead]

Alien space barns have a lot of internal space which makes them resistant to penetrating attacks. If the penetrating attack doesn't hit anything critical, like controls, power generators, crew or anything that might explode when hit, you just made a hole through a wall. Achieving total destruction in the air would be difficult and mostly pointless since it's much more effective to bring the sucker down by attacking the navigation equipment, power generators or by killing the pilot. The small scout, this being the second smallest craft the aliens field, has a surface area of 50-60 square meters. In game this is usually the largest craft that can be totally destroyed in air. Dual hit from a fusion ball launcher will destroy a large scout, but that would be total waste of ammunition.

-Gunhead

[Simon_Jester]

Are the X-Com games worth it? Assuming I've never played any except whichever one had you flying space ships around (a demo or shareware version nor something came with an ancient PC of ours), which one should I start with?

I would argue that you should start with X-COM: UFO Defense, but you'll need a DOS emulator to run it.

[Batman]

Actually, there's Windows versions of UFO Defense and TFTD. Unfortunately, they look exactly like the originals, i.e. not so hot on a modern screen (can't remember if you can run them windowed and anyway they don't seem to work on 7 (XP was fine)).
And I agree you should start with XCOM:UFO Defense, if only because it's the first one. TFTD actually didn't offer much in the way of different gameplay, it was essentially UFO Defense with different graphics and a lot more annoyances (near indestructible Lobster Men, finding the last alien in ocean liner missions, no developing armour unless the right type of alien showed up). Apocalypse, though, is IMHO definitely worth it, and seems to cooperate moderately well with modern OSes.

[Stark]

If you play them, Grif, don't forget to use a launcher that doesn't reset your difficulty to 'very easy' when you save. Frankly, I think a lot of this XCOM wank comes from this bug - the game is actually quite difficult on 'normal', but due to the save/load whoring in the game most people don't realise they've been set back to 'very easy'.

Personally I don't think the games are worth it. If you want tactical play or strategic management, Jagged Alliance 2 does both better (with the fanpatch 1.13, a thousand times better). The only thing XCOM has over other games is the novelty of interceptions with Top Gun music and research; but both become more tiresome than anything else after the first (interesting) hour of the game.

And it's FUCK UGLY. The art was made by the coders in 1991. It shows.

[Batman]

I wouldn't call them fuck ugly, but UFO Defense/TFTD DO look decidedly subpar by modern standards. But then they weren't all that hot graphics wise when they first came out. They had a certain comic book charm to them, but high end, they were not.

[Stark]

Dude are you for real? 'Sub par'? Rainbow Six Vegas 1 looks 'sub par'. System Shock 2 looks 'sub par'. UFO doesn't even get on the fucking green. Sure, people can tolerate it (especially people as old as I am), but don't sugar coat it. Remember - the battles looked crap even in the 90s. I can't imagine your average gamer ever having played a game as ugly as UFO.

Of course, JA2 looks better, has more sophisticated AI, more tactical options, better handling of altitude, night, etc.

[Batman]

And completely fails to be an XCOM game.
Note that I never claimed XCOM looked good. In fact in the very post you responded to, I said XCOM/TFTD weren't all that hot even by the standards of the time.

[Stark]

So why did you claim it was only 'sub par'? Do you even know where the par is currently set?

If you were paying attention I already delineated the differences between JA and UFO; if you really must have a geoscape and research you have to put up with ugly. If you're happy with a map screen and a shop, you can play a better game.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Dude are you for real? 'Sub par'? Rainbow Six Vegas 1 looks 'sub par'. System Shock 2 looks 'sub par'. UFO doesn't even get on the fucking green. Sure, people can tolerate it (especially people as old as I am), but don't sugar coat it. Remember - the battles looked crap even in the 90s. I can't imagine your average gamer ever having played a game as ugly as UFO.

I don't think the graphics were too bad by the standards of early 1990s. Most games were still made by teams of less than 10 people at that point and not having a dedicated graphics designer was probably more common than having one. We also have to remember that they were designed for standard VGA, meaning only 320x200 pixels resolution and 256 colors. The 640x480 VGA "hi-res" mode that now is known as the VGA resolution had only 4-bit (16) colors, so it was not used in games apart from some strategy games with a spreadsheet-like interface.

That said, there is no doubt that they were seriously outdated even by the end of the decade. The introduction of VESA BIOS graphics modes and then Windows DirectX gaming from 1995 on made the graphics of most early 1990s VGA games obsolescent almost overnight and then shortly after that came the 3D revolution.

[Batman]

There is, technically, not a limit to 'sub par'. The question is the extent of how sub par it is.
And no, I do NOT have to put up with ugly, though you're of course free to feel that way. Maybe we're working with different definitions of ugly.
XCOM/TFTDs graphics definitely look seriously dated, and weren't top notch back when the games were released to begin with.
Does not equal ugly to me. And yeah, JA2 had better graphics and better AI (computer games got better as time passed. Vee. Big surprise.). This is relevant to a discussion of the XCOM games how, exactly?

[Uncluttered]

I think you guys are focusing too much on game mechanics. It looks rather myopic.

@Stark: Next thing you know, you're is going to say XCom could never defend the earth, because they can only move in 45 degree angles, allow only 12 soldiers, and have to take turns.

@Bakustra: This isn't a cargo cult. Reverse Engineering a working plasma rifle, means you have to understand how it works.
If you look over this thread about chinese made copies
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... &start=150
You can see some good examples of duplication first, and innovation following soon thereafter.
Yes, its clear the aliens know the technology better, and can engineer more nuance. It makes perfect sense to copy these closely, allowing you to learn the nuance.