Let's Play: X-COM - UFO Defense

We heal him up.

An aside: Injuries generally affect your character in the ways you expect; hits to arms will reduce firing accuracy while using that arm, hits to legs will make movement more difficult... but a weird bug in the game ties "Energy" to the Left Arm (rather than the Torso).

It's not a big deal, just kind of funny.



One of those aliens (the Soldier) we knocked unconscious gets up and runs for cover.



But there is no cover from Tomm Guycot.



TRAGEDY! StriderDL - with a fist full of reaction fire - gets gunned down. X-Com giveth, X-Com taketh away.





The final two aliens fall easily enough to Balrog and Falselogic.



The missions is of course, worth a ton of points.



Pajaro Pete finally gets the respect he craves.



And we break 20 million in on-hand cash!





I decide to spend it on some extra radar coverage in Australia and South America. It's kind of unnecessary, but what's the point of being a world-wide body with no oversight if you don't abuse the taxpayers who help fund you?



The Muton's try a couple of times to terrorize Earth. Muton Terror Missions are actually quite mild, but I shoot them down anyway.



I'll talk more about them in the second terror mission, because it's slightly more interesting.



The only thing I want to show is this alien (because none appear in the second terror mission): the Silicoid.

They're lamer than Reapers. They're slow, can only attack in melee, and are utterly forgettable.

You've forgotten about them already, haven't you?



The kill tally:

Tefari: 3 kills.
Tomm Guycot: 1 kill.
Nich II: 2 kills.
Balrog: 1 kill.
Gerad II: 1 kill.
Falselogic: 1 kill.

Falselogic endures.

A few more promotions open up thanks to some new soldiers I recruited that I haven't told you about yet.



Researching that Sectoid Commander opens up this, the final piece needed to reach the end game!



The aliens are pretty mad at me now, so they're sending Battleships to find and destroy my bases.



They don't find me tho (not that Floaters scare me).



Mutons - unlike the other races - get two Terror Units. The Celatid is their more "dangerous" one, but it still doesn't compare to Cyberdiscs or Cryssalids. They can spit a very powerful acid, but the "spit" works kind of like a thrown weapon, meaning it's harder for them to use than a weapon.



The Silacoid - as you've probably forgotten - is the other Muton terror unit, and it stinks.





This one flies right over our HEY AFRICA! base, but our Mind Shield keeps us hidden.



We're get a healthy amount of cash from the Earth now. The most surprising funder is France: they're giving more than the United States is, which is rare.

Psi training!



We only get one new Psi-candidate at SPACE CAMP, Torezelbaum II. For lack of anything better, we training some of our weaker-minded soldiers in order to boost their defense against psi attacks slightly.



We get even wilder results at HEY AFRICA!, with some candidates hitting single digits.



I decide to hunt down a Small Snakemen ship for some reason.

Kirin, Lucas, and Alpha Werewolf each notch a kill.



The second Muton Terror Ship!

But first... our new recruits! Maybe even our final ones with the way this game is going.

We also get our third (and probably, final) Avenger at NERV HQ to help fill our oceans with alien ships. But if anyone asks why San Francisco is flooding: it's "global warming."



The reason I wanted to show this Muton terror ship off is that it landed in the arctic. It's pretty rare to do missions there!



These maps are kind of neat as they have water, which you won't find in any other map (of course, not that it's that special). If there's one complaint I have to make in this game, is that once you've seen one farm/forest/desert map, you've seen them all. This arctic missions is a badly needed change of pace.



Here's a Celatid; they're not really any more dangerous than a regular Muton, but at least they're trying, unlike those Silicoids.



Mutons are the easiest race to use Psionics on; here we see a Muton Engineer who has disarmed himself after we induce panic into him. I will show off how you can take advantage of these guys to do some soldier "training".



The kill tally:

Lucas: 4 kills.
Alpha Werewolf: 4 kills.
djSyndrome: 3 kills.
Kirin: 1 kill.

Kind of top heavy I guess.



SO USELESS. I'm sorry I ever made fun of you Reapers.



With this, we can leave for the end game anytime we want. I want to at least show the last alien race tho...



As you can never "capture" a Cyberdisc alive, you get this by researching a Sectoid Medic.



These numbers mean: don't fuck with airborne Battleships.



I seriously have nothing better to research than the growing number of aliens I'm capturing.



Ethereals! That's who I'm looking for!



The first one just gets blown to pieces because it's a tiny ship and I'm shooting Plasma. Next one for sure!

Here we see our sad scientists with nothing to do. At this point I could lay them all off, but there are a few topics left to discover (we will discover them).



Two weeks and more "global warming" later...



We shoot the craft down near where it all began: Ohio*. Ethereals are the strongest race in the game, with superior stats in everything besides Health (Mutons have them beat there). You do not want to take Ethereals lightly; if they don't pick you apart with weapons, they'll use the fact that every Ethereal is psionic to wreck your day. We bring only soldiers with a high Psionic Strength to fight these guys.

*note as a Canadian my U.S. Geography is not very good. May not be Ohio.



Case in point: our first CASSIUS off the ship...



... is blown to pieces.



By a single Ethereal!



I'm taking him home with me.



This should have gone bad seven ways to Sunday, but luckily it didn't.



Odd note: there were six aliens, but only five seats on the ship. Where does the sixth alien sit?

Austin gets all three kills on this mission.



If you haven't captures a high enough ranking Sectoid yet, this will be your chance to get Psi-labs, although you really don't want to wait until now if you can help it. Better to lose some soldiers capturing a psionic Sectoid than to wait for these guys to show up. Knowing which soldiers can battle mind control and which can't is just too important.



Ethereals are kind of cool. They obviously spent more thought on these guys than other aliens in this game Silacoids.



We've now pretty much have world-wide radar coverage! These bases will probably be nothing more than an Access Lift, a Hyper Wave Decoder, and a Mind Shield.



$ $ $

And to end the update...



Junky psionics in SPACE CAMP!



And Jesus Christ kaisel II in HEY AFRICA!

(Balrog joins Nich II in the "never ever fighting psionic beings ever" club.)

So that's where we stand: we've got pretty much everything we need to tackle the end game. I'm probably going to show off a couple of tricks/cheats (and perhaps some fun with psionics), but otherwise we're clear to go. No need to recruit any new players!

Any requests before we enter the end game?

See you next time!

Do Terror from the Deep when you finish this?

Holy crap, I was expecting kaisel II to have like a 1 in psionic strength.

I'm helping!

That's totally, like, Pennsylvania and not Ohio.

Pretty close for a Canadian though.

Nah, that's Virginia or Tennessee or Kentucky or something. Too far south for Pennsylvania or Ohio.

Apologies, but I'm once again dealing with a strange X-Com bug. The game is not letting me transfer soldiers to other bases, despite there being ample room (and they'll even let me hire new ones!).

I suppose worst case I hire a bunch of soldiers and then use Xcomutil to "turn them into" the soldiers I have but it's still kind of frustrating.

Also: apparently the Muton species has disappeared forever, because I no longer see them, which sucks because they're the best for training!

- Eddie

Aw man, I was wondering why I hadn't seen my guy in action for a while...and then I realized that I had missed the January 1st update.

Well, if you need any more rocketmen, I have always wanted to be Iron Man...

Fuck yeah I got the brain power!

I should have started reading this thread sooner. Awesome

I'm finally back from vacation!

And I'm dead!

But I was a pretty lady in life.

Welcome back! Sorry about the delay; life caught up to me after Christmas. This will be the FINAL update, save for a short post with some "cheats" you can do in game to get an advantage.

I managed to "fix" the strange bug that was preventing me from transferring soldiers from one base to the other. Well, not really; the game wouldn't let me transfer 15 at once, merely four at a time. This game can be weird sometimes!



We've spent most of October (and until we're prepared to launch here in November) simply shooting down enemy craft. We've got enough Elerium stores that we can safely do this. As before, we try and shoot them down over the water, but we ignore them if they do end up crashing on land. We've only got one goal, and that doesn't include losing valuable soldiers in random missions!



One of the quirks of the endgame is that you can only bring 80 items (the limit in X-Com) with you on a ship. This pretty much makes bringing more than 20 soldiers impossible; you'd use 40 spaces on guns and ammo alone! Once you add Medi-Kits, Psi-Amps, Blaster Launchers and Flares (the first mission is in darkness) you leave little room for anything else. I bring along two CASSIUS Hovertanks to scout.

The following three images are our line-up! Psionics will be flying all over the place in the final missions, so we bring along anyone whose gifted (80+ Psionic Strength, marked by a "*") as well as competent (50+ Psionic Strength, marked by a "!"). Having the space to do so, we also take Tefari (Our Commander) and CaptBlasto (one of our two Colonels).

This turned out to be a mistake. Oops!







Our final mission line-up is:

Austin
Gerad II
ajr82
Mightyblue
Mogri
Rai
Tefari
Meditative_Zebra
djSyndrome
Soren Highwind
CaptBlasto
Guidenstern II
Nodal
kaisel II
shivam II
Yimothy II
Droo
Pajaro Pete



Launching to Cydonia is awkwardly done via the intercept menu.



There's no take-backs from here; once you launch you're in the endgame, and you can't come back. Losing is not an option.



You've got two options for "winning" in this mission: kill all the enemy forces, or bring as many units as you can to the access lift in the stage and hit "abort mission".

The first mission is essentially a Sectoid terror one, except with less cover and little light. And more psionics, I guess.



X-Com... IN SPACE! I have everyone in power suits, but your soldiers will survive just fine without them (our soldiers are like Batman). Our first CASSIUS immediately sees a Cyberdisc. As there is no point in saving enemies for X-Com kills at this point, we try shooting it down with tank lasers.



It doesn't turn out very successfully, although at least we've drained it's TUs now.





djSyndrome steps out and gets the kill.



Guildenstern II scouts ahead looking for trouble, and finds this Sectoid lounging in a crater.



CaptBlasto gets him.

We toss flares out well ahead of us (this is easy given the relatively barren terrain), and light-up a second Cyberdisc.







Rai and Tefari double-team him, well out of range of its retaliation fire.



I'm asking for trouble crowding everyone like this, but 18 soldiers won't do be any good sitting in the Skyranger.



I get Tefari to drop his weapon, but I accidentally use too many TUs with CaptBlasto. Dropping a weapon only takes 2 TUs, but movement can easily eat that up if you're not careful.





On the enemy's turn, our second CASSIUS gets torn up but what I believe was a Sectoid shot.



This guy, I think. Nodal aims carefully (to avoid shooting a friend in the back), and nails him right in the face.





Shivam spots three (!) enemies as he continues to scout ahead.



He draws fire from one of these Sectoids as he kneels down to present a smaller target, but the shot goes wide.



Another Cyberdisc rests menacingly to the left.





CaptBlasto and Gerad II pepper it with shots until it does down.

CaptBlasto and Gerad II pepper it with shots until it does down.





Soren Highwind, meanwhile, gives not two fucks to these guys.

You always feel good when one of your guys spends his turn killing two aliens.



Rai, approaching the closest structure to the AVENGER, spots a Sectoid hanging out in the doorway. He "shoots" him a friendly hello.



Meanwhile...







We've brought plenty of Blaster Bomb ammunition, and use it to "sweep" just beyond our line of sight. We hear at least one good death scream! It's kind of a smoke em if you got em' kind of situation at this point, and this will go a long way to ensuring our survival next turn.



shivam II gets hits by one shot from a Sectoid that steps out of the darkness, but his armor shrugs off all the damage.



He then shows the Sectoid how this game is played.



Guess who forgot to drop one of the two resident "psionic adverse"'s weapons?





djSyndrome goes down...





... then Yimothy II.



Sadly, at this point I can't play nice with our dear CaptBlasto; he's unlikely to break the Mind Control until we can kill those last Sectoids, so I make the executive decision to bring him down.

Sometimes you've got to make hard choices you know?



Rai makes an easy choice.



Everyone we've brought has enough Bravery to not be too torn up over the death of three comrades in a single turn, but we can hopefully keep the casualties to just that.





Continuing to advance to the north-east, we find another Sectoid, who kaisel II shoots down.





Just in case, although I hear no screams.



This jerk was just outside the blast!





But not outside this one. Gerad II is so much better than Gerad I.



Apparently they can't make doors correctly on Cydonia; one of our Blaster Bomb hits from earlier has put a small crack in the wall that allows Shivam to see this jerk. It's even harder to see that that alien is in the midst of dying from that amazing shot shivam II made through the door crack.

(I never get a good shot of it, but the lift we want to head towards can be seen in the bottom left.)



*whistles*



X-Com explosions are the best.



And it turns out that we've managed to kill all the aliens on the surface! We lost both tanks and three men, but that's still plenty to attack the final mission with.



This is it! The final mission in the game!

(There is no score screen, as score is completely meaningless at this point I suppose.)

Since we kept stripping Falselogic of his weapon, he starts this mission empty, so we give him Mogri (our best psionic)'s weapon. That they don't scavenge supplies before heading into the enemy HQ seems to be a flaw in X-Com protocol; they should change that should aliens invade us again in the future.



Gerad starts the mission facing a Celatid! This is the only mission in the game with a mix of aliens. It's essentially a Ethereal base with Muton and Snakemen terror units roaming about too.



Celatids aren't the least dangerous enemies to face here (that honor continues to go to Silacoids), but this is no time for mercy.



Chryssalids! These guys aren't really too bad as long as you approach the mission methodically.



Step 1: shoot the ones you can.



Step 2:







Mind Control the other ones. Aside from Ethereals (who have a high Psi Strength), Chryssalids should be your choice for mind control fun this mission!



Check out the TUs on this guy!



Nothing over here...





I hate searching these spaces for aliens, so I send this guy up to check on one. We'll be more than prepared for when he wanders back down.



As normal, most of our guys start near the top, but I manage to find enough hiding spaces to get the majority down on the ground floor.



Guildenstern II sees our first Ethereal sneaking around.

Another fires a Blaster Bomb...



Into the darkness. Can't complain about this!



We then see him creep forward a bit.



Another Chryssalid sneaks down that lift, and wanders around a bit.



He doesn't get close enough to our guys tho.



Guildenstern II otherwise sees a coast that is clear.





Bamph!





Zap!



P--hey where did that Chryssalid go? Soren goes to retreat when...



... he (read: I) find out that energy doesn't recharge between this mission and the last! Whoops. Hope that Chryssalid is feeling strange!



This is the door we want to get to. Like Alien Bases before them, the "final" room is in a predetermined structure.



I try blasting a hole in the rear for kicks (it doesn't work).



No aliens hiding here tho.

Exploring where that alien Blaster Bomb exploded, ajr82 finds another Chryssalid.



Our Mind Control attempts fail...





.. so ajr82 just feeds the Chryssalid plasma instead.





Soren Highwind?



You're a lucky guy. Not as lucky as Loki was that one time, but pretty lucky.



Guildenstern II still sees no threats.







A strange lifeform I don't remember "ever" "seeing" before steps out, prompting Mightyblue to shoot it to death.



"I wonder what they do?" wonders everybody.

I guess they're just around to act ineffectually.



Guidenstern II shoots the ground in frustration, and hears a death scream from near the corpse of the that Ethereal he shot earlier.



Our Chryssalid friend from earlier (now, no longer our friend) pops out of that room.





He lunges for Austin, but Austin has been waiting all day for this guy to appear; two reaction shots later and the Chryssalid gets taken down.

(Austin is still high on the impending promotion he's sure to get for saving the squad from the murderous CaptBlasto.)





Nodal gets another kill. This mission has gone easy on me what with generating all these useless Silacoids.

* * *





Slightly more, but not really that troublesome Celatids appear to "avenge" their Silacoid brothers.



You can see here my feeble attempts to dig a new hole to the alien supreme commander, but I run out of Blaster Bombs and effort.





This Celatid walks into a TRAP! But Meditative_Zebra can't get a good enough hit in to kill it.



Meanwhile, ajr82 spots a lone Ethereal just standing there without a weapon. It's pretty unusual for aliens to panic...

... but we try (and fail) to shoot it anyway. Weaponless Ethereals can still use psionic attacks.



We hide ajr82 behind the corner.



Meditative_Zebra finishes the job.

Nodal is raking in the kills on these weaklings.



With little else to use our TUs on, Mogri tries to cause some panic in this Ethereal.



You can never really tell if it works unless a message pops up (it won't always), but I'm confident we've gotten this guy to continue to despair.



This guy! This is a Sectopod, the Ethereal terror unit. They're like a Cyberdisc, except trading a bit of mobility for a ton of armor. These guys can take a real beating, even surviving direct hits from a Blaster Bomb on occasion!



Not that dissuades me from using a Blaster Bomb on this guy; in a base these guys will wreck you if you try and fight them head on, and the odds of a one-hit kill are still pretty good.











The best.



And we get a secret Ethereal too! Double Christmas!



On ajr82's turn, we can indeed see that the Ethereal in question has lost his marbles, given our strange ability to sense weapons without line of sight.



He doesn't want to seem to move...

...so ajr82 gives him a push.





Not making the same mistake twice!





We move two units in position to assault the source of all this alien nonsense.



Pajaro Pete meanwhile, finds a "reload". I didn't end up needing to use these, but more Blaster Bombs are always welcome.



We keep Mogri outside, no need to put him in harm's way.



Soren gets ambushed!







It takes three shots of Heavy Plasma, but the tough old bastard kicks the bucket. Sorry Soren Better than being Chryssalid food I suppose.



I decide that mind controlling this guy would be good, so as I move to select Mogri...



... I of course misclick, sending Meditative_Zebra (and his TUs) into the proverbial garbage.



Whatever!

Let's see how the enemy likes it when I control THEIR minds.



Scouting with aliens up lifts is the best.



Looks like that Ethereal earlier might not have been the only one to panic.



This is the Alien Brain; to win the game, you need to destroy one of the four "squares" it occupies. It has minimal armor (40) so this isn't very difficult. In fact, with a little knowledge of the terrain would could have had Blaster Bombs in here probably by turn 2.







Rather than waste the TUs, I take the time to use our mind controlled friend to take out some more of the opposition. I credit these two kills to Mogri, because it only seems fair.



SECRET TRICK: You can't normally access the alien's inventory but if you enter the inventory of one of your soldiers and cycle through...



...you can find em. They look kind of strange as they game will display an armor-less X-Com soldier, but you can drop their weapon easily.

Note: don't touch anything but the weapon if the alien has less than 2 TUs. The game sometimes bugs and stacks a bunch of items in the left leg slot. Without sufficient TUs, you might be put in a position where you "pick up" an item, and can't drop it somewhere else. If this happens, you have no choice but to forcefully quit the game (without saving of course)!



He doesn't need this Heavy Plasma rifle anymore I don't think. Not with his race coming to an end like this.



I try mind controlling this guy but he's made of sterner stuff I guess.



Look how close we started to them! If I had known, I probably would have just punched a hole into the room with Blaster Bombs....







Rai ends one Ethereal...

Meditative Zebra gets the other one.



Nothing stops us from shooting the blazes out of the Alien Brian now!



















What no credits!?

Well, that's the game folks! It truly is a classic for its time! Below is everybody's final (some, more than others) tally:

THE SAVIORS OF EARTH

Mightyblue: Squaddie. 15 missions, 19 kills.
Gerad II: Sergeant. 15 missions, 12 kills.
Mogri: Captain. 14 missions, 19 kills.
Nodal: Sergeant. 14 missions, 14 kills.
Pajaro Pete: Sergeant. 14 missions, 10 kills.
Kylie: Squaddie. 13 missions, 4 kills.
Destil: Sergeant. 12 missions, 10 kills.
Nich II: Sergeant. 12 missions, 10 kills.
Rai: Captain. 12 missions, 9 kills.
Alixsar: Captain. 12 missions, 8 kills.
Stiv: Sergeant. 12 missions, 6 kills.
BEAT: Squaddie. 12 missions, 5 kills.
sraymonds: Squaddie. 12 missions, 4 kills.
Kishi: Colonel. 11 missions, 12 kills.
Red Hedgehog II: Squaddie. 11 missions, 10 kills.
jpfriction: Sergeant. 11 missions, 5 kills.
Epithet: Sergeant. 11 missions, 2 kills.
Austin: Captain. 10 missions, 16 kills.
ajr82: Sergeant. 10 missions, 14 kills.
Falselogic: Sergeant. 10 missions, 13 kills.
Tefari: Commander. 9 missions, 14 kills
Meditative_Zebra: Sergeant. 9 missions, 10 kills.
PapillonReel: Squaddie. 6 missions, 0 kills.
Olli T II: Squaddie. 5 missions, 2 kills.
Lucas: Squaddie. 4 missions, 11 kills
Alpha Werewolf: Squaddie. 4 missions, 6 kills.
Balrog: Squaddie. 4 missions, 5 kills.
Tomm Guycot: Squaddie. 4 missions, 8 kills.
kaisel II: Squaddie. 4 missions, 2 kills.
shivam II: Squaddie. 4 missions, 11 kills.
Droo: Squaddie. 4 missions, 2 kills.
Kirin. Squaddie: 4 missions, 2 kills.
Torzelbaum II: Squaddie. 4 missions, 0 kills.
Guildenstern II: Squaddie. 3 missions, 3 kills.
Son of Sinistar: Squaddie. 2 missions, 0 kills.

OUR FALLEN HEROES

CaptBlasto: killed by Austin. 13 missions, 9 kills.
Soren Highwind: killed by an Ethereal. 11 missions, 16 kills.
reibeatall: killed by a Sectoid. 11 missions, 12 kills.
StriderDL: killed by a Sectoid. 8 missions, 7 kills.
Yimothy: killed by a Floater. 7 missions, 7 kills.
kaisel: killed by a Cyberdisc. 7 missions, 5 kills.
Gerad: killed by a Sectoid. 6 missions, 9 kills.
Yimothy II: killed by CaptBlasto. 6 missions, 6 kills.
Merus: killed by an ill-placed grenade. 6 missions, 5 kills.
Son of Sinistar: killed by a Cyberdisc. 6 missions, 3 kills.
MCBanjoMike: killed by a Sectoid. 5 missions, 5 kills.
djSyndrome: killed by CaptBlasto. 5 missions, 4 kills.
nunix: killed by a Sectoid. 5 missions, 3 kills.
TheSL: killed by a Sectoid. 5 missions, 1 kill.
Dizzy: killed by a Cyberdisc. 4 missions, 7 kills.
Loki: killed by a Sectoid. 4 missions, 6 kills.
Calorie Mate: killed by a Sectoid. 4 missions, 5 kills.
SlimJimm: killed by a Floater. 4 missions, 3 kills.
Guildenstern: killed by a Sectoid. 4 missions, 3 kills.
namelessentity II: killed by a Sectoid. 4 missions, 1 kill.
LancerECNM: killed by a Sectoid. 3 missions, 5 kills.
Zef: killed by a Snakeman. 3 missions, 4 kills.
ringworm: killed by a Sectoid. 3 missions, 3 kills.
Oscar Hudson: killed by a Sectoid. 3 missions, 3 kills.
Makkara: killed by Merus. 3 missions, 2 kills.
shivam: killed by a Floater. 3 missions, 2 kills.
McClain: killed by a Chryssalid. 3 missions, 2 kills.
Octopus Prime: killed by a Floater. 3 missions, 1 kill.
TK Flash: killed by a Sectoid. 2 missions, 2 kills.
Olli T: killed by a Floater. 2 missions, 2 kills.
Junk: killed by a Sectoid. 2 missions, 2 kills.
Torzelbaum: killed by a Floater. 2 missions, 1 kill.
namelessentity: killed by a Floater. 2 missions, 1 kill.
Sven: killed by a Sectoid. 2 missions, 0 kills.
Adrenaline: killed by a Sectoid. 1 mission, 4 kills.
Nich: killed by a Cyberdisc. 1 mission, 3 kills.
Grant: killed by a Sectoid. 1 mission, 2 kills.
alexb: killed by a Sectoid. 1 mission, 0 kills.
Red Hedgehog: killed by a Cyberdisk. 1 mission, 0 kills.
Brickroad: killed by a Floater. 1 mission, 0 kills.
Sarcasmorator: killed by a Sectoid. 1 mission, 0 kills.

# of PHILLIAM tanks destroyed: 10 (Sectoid x4, Cyberdisc x2, Floater x2, friendly fire x1)
# of CASSIUS tanks destroyed: 4 (Floater, Ethereal, Cyberdisc, Sectoid)


I'll try and get some neat tricks up soon! Thanks for your participation!

See you next mission!

Jesus christ, I get near the highest amount of kills and I'm still a damn squaddie?

You should have killed more teammates!

I believe celebrations are in order.

Also, that looks like you only lost about 50% of all your X-Com recruits. That's honestly pretty good!

Luckily for Earth, aliens would never again set foot on it's surface, or oceans, leading to a peaceful and pleasant future for all inhabitants.

Never. Again.

Yay! Yay! Wonderfully done Eddie!

Now do TFTD! =P