Let's Play: X-COM - UFO Defense

Good one tonight: I sent Skyranger-2 in, loaded down with eleven Personal Armoured troops packing lasers and plasma. I'd blown a Mutoid scout out of the sky and just needed a milk run to keep up the funding.

Imagine my surprise when I found a fully intact Large Scout and nine (9) unhurt Mutoid soldiers. Four of them hit my guys from behind cover, taking two before they went down. The last five made me work for it.

My door breacher got hit with reaction fire from a Small Launcher. The primed grenade in his hand made sure he stayed down. The next breacher came in firing, but only managed to kill one defender before going down in a hail of plasma. The next two entries managed to hit nothing but wall and floor. My "salvation" came in the form of a conga line of riflemen who would enter a room, kill a Mutoid and die.

I ended up trading five for five in the UFO and making it home with four brand-new Sergeants.

What should I have done?

Simple:

1. Move in force. I initially tried to take the UFO with the first five off the Skyranger, even after I saw that it somehow hadn't been damaged in the crash.
2. Put more guys through the front door. When I saw two Mutoids with HP and a Small Launcher in the entry, I panicked and ended the turn, thinking I should wait and line up more breachers. If I had put more soldiers through the door when I had the chance, they'd have gone up against aliens with few to no TUs left, instead of the firing squad they ended up walking into.
3. Make my own interior doors. I had multiple Heavy Plasma gunners in the ship, and I wasted them by marching them through doors like lemmings. What I should have done in the UFO entryway was set my laser troops in overwatch while the plasma gunners burned their way into the engine room. This would have let me hit the aliens from all sides at once.

Let's see if I learn my lesson. Current priority is capturing a live Sectoid Leader, which will open up the endgame in one move.

The following document is O-6 level classified.

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MEMO

FROM: CINC UNSPC-COMM
TO: CINC-XCOM

SUB: MONTH 2 EVAL

Commander:

WHAT THE HELL, SON?

Wait, let me start again. We'll do this btb:

Research: At the end of last month, you'd successfully researched Laser Rifles. I noted that you took about half of our second-month funding and put it into additional scientists, so it made sense that you immediately researched some more stuff. I didn't quite understand why you went with Heavy Lasers at first, but then when you researched Laser Cannons it made sense, as those sell for quite a bit on the open market as it turns out and require minimal effort on our part to build (1). Skipping over the two lighter alien plasma weapons and starting directly on Heavy Plasma was your next choice, and I expect feedback on progress on that front before I file next month's report.

Manufacturing: You built enough laser rifles for your entire squad, which is good - those things actually have stopping power, and it allowed you to free up a LOT of room in your stores by banishing clip-fed rifles from your armoury. After that, I noted that you were building a lot of laser cannons, but you only put one of them onto each of your interceptors... what happened to the other dozen? Does this tie into the fact that we had reports of the Russians loading a weapon of unknown designation onto their satellites? You DO know that, at some point, we're going to have to deal with all this ordinance of mysterious origin that's showing up on the open market? I'm sure you'll deny everything, but I know you're spending more than we're giving you in a given month. I do have my own accountants on staff here in S.I., you know.

Soldiers: Your recruitment drive was noted and appreciated. With one HWP available per Skyranger, it made sense that you want to keep your current unit small - you can't use more than ten on one mission. What I didn't like, however, was the way you keep pulling recruits out of peacekeeper training, paying us their contract buyout, and then returning them to us with no more of a discharge designation than "they can't shoot straight." Well, what did you expect? Not every soldier is going to be rated 65 or above in shooting, as much as you may like that in your ammo-wasting world. Also, we had some very disturbing reports that you engaged in unethical tactics in dealing with the terror situation in Bombay, but I'll deal with that below.

Base Construction: You commenced building a base in North Africa at the start of the month using our funding, and I noticed that you've done something different with the construction - namely, you placed the entry lift up against the very edge of our excavated section, then built one hangar above it, a large radar below it, and a general stores toward the inside of the base. The second the general stores was completed, you virtually tapped your last dollar to build a living quarters. For a base with no soldiers or interceptors. Just what are you up to...?

Alien Contact: Compared to your first month, this was very quiet. You managed to intercept a very small UFO and destroy it, so my congratulations on that. However, the big engagement of the month was the conflict in Bombay. Per your directions, we had the Indian Army surround a ten-block area where we had reports of alien activity. You had your HWP exit the ship, and it immediately came under heavy fire from two positions. Your first soldiers off the ship managed to down one of these aliens, but the third - Sgt. Nakamura - was killed by an alien after she missed all three of her shots. The fourth soldier off the ship managed to kill her target alien. After securing the landing area, you spread out, and destroyed four of some form of giant alien dog that our scientists are begging to dissect for "research" purposes. Then you - and I hope this isn't true - had one of your soldiers wounded by fire from an alien in an entrenched home. You took this critically wounded soldier and - since you haven't developed those field surgery kits yet - armed her with a High Explosive before sending her into the house. The alien killed her, but when she dropped the explosive you blew up the house as well.

ARE YOU INSANE? That's not what we're supposed to do! I mean, sure, she would have died anyway, but I think you saw Aliens a few too many times growing up. Anyway, the Indian government thanks you for the success of the mission, but they want an explanation of the one civillian body that died from laser fire and not plasma. Yes, we can tell the difference now.

On the other hand, pass official kudos on to Sgt. Roy for her excellent idea to proceed through the narrow alleyways in Bombay's warehouse district by moving inside occupied buildings as cover, and then briefly poking your head out after shooting holes in walls. That cover is invaluable to a combat unit, and we're going to work on making it an element of training for all UN recruits we offer you.

Other alien encounters included two large craft in central Russia, which you refused to engage due to being unsure that your Interceptors could take them out. I'd tend to agree. Keep in mind, however, that we're probably going to need to capture one of these things at some point to figure out how to stop them. Unless you're just in this to make money, which I'm starting to suspect may be the case.

ACCOUNTING INQUIRY

I knew I shouldn't have put someone who used to serve in JAG in charge of this operation. Do you think you're being cute? I know what you did - yes, scientists are technically not in your jurisdiction if we're transporting them between two of your bases, as you sign them over to us for the trip for insurance purposes. And, yes, I know that technically their employment contracts only call for them to be paid at 12:01 AM on the first day of the month. But the fact that you transferred 40 scientists and 10 engineers between your two bases... saving $1,425,000.00 in salary... that now I have to pay for... I mean, you can't take advantage of the UN like that! Taking advantage of the UN is for people far more important than YOU! I'm going to have Tang look into the X-Com charter to see if there's any way around this issue, but consider yourself on probation until and unless the funding council specifically okays this.

Which I will see to it that they don't.

Upcoming Month:

Your plans to build a new base in Western China are approved, as is the purchase of a new Interceptor unit to place in AfricaLaunch. The Brits are antsy about something - try to figure out what. And stop it with the salary quirks, will you? It makes me look bad.

- Col. Moore, CINC UNSPC-COMM

END MEMO / EVALUATION [153003011999]

Unfortunately, that was probably your mistake right there. In that situation, you needed to use grenades (even though the first guy through died), as Mutons are remarkably tough to kill even with Heavy Plasma shots (they take at least two laser shots to die). Throw the grenade, retreat through the door. Repeat for at least three turns. Breaching the engine room wall doesn't help you much, because you still have to get into the bridge and that's the deathtrap.

If you're going to sacrifice anything, sacrifice the UFO Navigation units. Coming through the wall invites a firefight in the engine room, which you don't want under any circumstances.

Not quite - you still need to capture some type of Commander, which means at least one base attack.

Great wraup-up of your current progress, but please explain to me how you managed to save 1+ million dollars in transfers of personnel? In game mechanics I don't quite understand what you did?

Thanks for the softball question.

It's pretty much exactly as noted in Col. Moore's report - X-Com only charges you monthly salaries (and maybe even lease installments, although I didn't personally check that this time around) if the personnel are actually assigned to a base when the clock strikes midnight at the end of the month.

SO, if, say, you build a second base... and you then build a living quarters... and you then transfer 50 scientists to that second base at 2350 on Feb 28th... and they're still in the air at 2400... their salaries aren't counted against your bottom line, because they're not assigned to either base yet. You pay about one scientist's salary in transferring them back and forth to the original base, but that's a drop in the bucket when it comes to reducing your biggest monthly expense.

(The UN custody thing is my little bit of fanfic explanation - all it is is an exploit. It's not particularly egregious in my eyes.)

One thing to watch out for as the game moves along: they weren't too smart about calendar dates after the first year. In my "advanced" game, I just got finished playing Feb. 2000.... which goes until the 31st.

That is awesome. Like, SUPER awesome.

Wait until I start pickpocketing aliens.

any idea when we'll be able to see some pics? I know your camera phone isn't working right now, but your base layout interests me

Will you be reseraching mind control when you get the tech, and will you be using it? Is anyone else here who is playing through doing so? I always found it fairly effective to have one or two guys with a high psych rating sit in the ship and take over a grunt and have him do all the killing for me, or just blow himself up in the middle of his friends...

For the base layout, imagine the rows labelled with letters and the colums labelled with numbers: eg A1 is the upper left corner.

Basically, A1, A2, B1 and B2 are my hangar.

C1 is the access lift, C2 is the general stores and C3 is the living quarters.

D1 is the radar.

H H
H H
L GS LQ
R

What I'll be doing is expanding the base as follows: down from R to the bottom left corner, where I'll put another hangar. Right from LQ to "wings", with living quarters as the "spine" and my radars / labs / defences elsewhere. There will NEVER be any structures touching the Hangar aside from the Lift and General Stores (a necessary evil in this case, because I want the base to expand fast enough to pull off the scientist exploit and I also want some emergency storage).

(Yes, unlike my original base this one'll eventually be defended. Important, because I don't plan to have soldiers stationed here for a while.)

Why? Because Aliens can turn up in one of two places during a base attack: the hangar or the lift. My soldiers, on the other hand, ALWAYS spawn in the living quarters. With this design, all I have to do is make my stand at the General Stores and prevent aliens from penetrating further into the base. Much High Explosive is used in this scenario.

On the mind control issue: ARE YOU NUTS? Mind Control is the The Great Equalizer. In fact, it's the point in the game when you basically are guaranteed to win. Six PSI Squad members armed with laser pistols and grenades and three good HWPs is usually enough to win any game of X-Com, and it can probably be done with even fewer but I'm being conservative.

Ok thanks for the base clarification that is usually how my bases were constructed though I only ever had the lift touching the hangers with a row of nothing between them (hangers and everything else). I'm not nuts, I used PSI troops I was only wondering if everyone did or not

I finished the game without ever using PSI troops. Well, I think I might have had one trained PSI troop on the final mission.

EDIT: That was the first time I played the game. The second time, I was mind-controlling like you wouldn't believe.

Wut wut? Is that the sound of plasma cannons tearing apart a base fleet? It is it is! I already took out the Baja base, and netted myself a coupla floater officers including a navigator, and the hyper wave research option looks kinda important, so that's what I'm doing.

Right now I'm in the process of assaulting a downed Muton terror ship from the base fleet I kicked apart after having survived a snakeman scout ship run.

Compared to the Hyperwave Decoder, radar is like having a blind man feel out the ship and then yell to you what he thinks he's touching.

I always get the HWD at the earliest possible opportunity (at great cost to my cattle-prod wielding squaddies.)

Yesterday the US signed a secret pact with alien forces and withdrew from the X-Com project.

Your choices consist of winning the game or restarting, I fear. Sven may have a more reasoned response.

PS - I once beat the game after losing every funding nation outside of the US. I had, however, hacked all my soldiers to be unstoppable badasses.

Yeah, I started a new game myself, since I'd learned a fair bit about things, and my old game wasn't going terribly well. Things went south pretty fast on a Terror mission involving a few Chrysalids, which quickly became a lot of Chrysalids.

Yeah, uh, if you're not close to the end game or don't have a great manufacturing/profit base going and are very careful with the rest of the countries, you may be screwed.

This happened to me, too. I had been struggling to keep my bases financed, but since I had a cadre of engineers dedicated to pumping out laser cannons to put out there on the grey market for international weapons runners I had been keeping my finances in the black. But once the good ol' U.S. of A. cozied up with the greyskins, even my willingness to sell hyper-advanced weapon technology to any petty dictator who would pony up couldn't keep my operations afloat.

I recommend a re-load from an earlier save. I was able to go back and take out a shipload of sectoids in the Minneapolis area that I had skipped before. I guess it was the casualties that had made the U.S. cave in to the aliens the previous time. Once I took out that ship near the Twin Cities Uncle Sam decided that if X-COM was only about throwing money at a problem that it was worth spending taxpayer dollars to stay in the game. This suggests to me that the programmers knew a thing or two about politicians. ;-)

I was already moving towards the endgame, having captured and researched a Leader (the second highest-ranking alien), so I launched an all-out offensive on the alien bases that I knew existed to capture a big shot ASAP. I missed my chance on the first base assault when my intended target tried to shoot a Blaster Bomb straight down a transporter on the second floor and blew himself up along with his own control room. You'd think that an alien versed enough in interstellar warfare to earn the rank of "Sectoid Commander" would know how to point and shoot a projectile weapon correctly, but no dice.

The second strike went down much more smoothly, after Commander Tatyana and her 97 PSI Strength ordered her greyskin counterpart to march directly into Stun Bomb range. A quick mop-up and a week of research later, and I'm ready to win the whole thing, USA or no USA.

That's the way to do it! I'll play the Misfits' "Mars Attacks!" extra loud in your honor when you pull it off.

Man, I lead an assault on a Sectoid battleship. It went much better than I thought it would, especially since they were some cases of enemy friendly fire, and the Leader drove himself berserk trying to panic one of my guys. I only saw about 10 sectoids and 1 explodo disc thingy. Also didn't see anyone equipped with a football launcher, so that made my day. Best news: only two wounded and my tank miraculously survived a hail of heavy plasma fire.

Psi-tech, here I come.

EDIT: Also, damn, plasma beams tear the hell out of stuff you shoot down. I had an Interceptor down a small scout and the only thing that was left of it was a half-dead snakeman and the floor of the hull.

To your LP Sven? I'm waiting for more memos and harrowing tales of hard won victories against the alien menace... Also I want more strategery from a pro!

Those missions are satisfying to the soul. I consider them payback for all the wet-your-pants terror inflicted on the player during the first two months of play.

Sorry, folks - it was a long weekend up here and I was in Montreal. There'll be plenty for your Memorial Day reading pleasure, I promise.

Something the game doesn't tell you: The HWD acts as a 100% radar in addition to its decoding capability. Once you get it, you're fine to disassemble all your other radars and replace them with other units (for your main base, this will be when you want to start installing plasma defenses or fusion defenses if you have access to them)

Depends on how secure you are in Europe, and how well you can exploit the scientist movement trick. But that's a BIG chunk of your funding gone in one fell swoop, and if your main base was there it's more annoying to keep track of everything.

Aliens can't shoot straight down an elevator shaft. That's a nice thing to know in any situation where it's paradoxically safer to stand in the elevator than right next to it.

Although not great for the bottom line... no Elerium makes X-Com upset.

Yeah, the longer you go the more you learn to fear a Blaster Bomb as the biggest threat to your team.

Blaster Bombs have cut my personnel costs in half over the last few missions! Thanks, Blaster Bombs!

Seriously, it's horrible. The closer you get to the Leader/Commander, more likely you are to run into a BL-wielding baddie who will kill you, himself, the Commander, your squad, the cows outside... Once, back when I was first starting out, I lost an entire squad to secondary explosions because they stood too close to those explosive desks when a Blaster Bomb detonated.

You should have said something! I was hanging about yesterday feeling idle, we could have made trouble.

The following document is O-6 level classified.

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1999040118:40

MEMO

FROM: CINC UNSPC-COMM
TO: CINC-XCOM

SUB: MONTH 3 EVAL

Commander, we are disturbed to learn that the aliens are apparently making progress, in spite of what we presume to be your best efforts.

Base Construction: You started construction on the new base we discussed in Central Asia, which should give us the ability to monitor activity in what appears to be a very highly-trafficked (1) UFO area. I presume that with the additional workshop being built at your primary base, you’re intending on building something bigger – but what, exactly?

Research: You have completed Heavy Plasma research, which allowed you to construct Plasma Cannons. This research was followed up by researching Small Launchers and Stun Bombs. Given the results of your missions this month, I feel compelled to question this decision – just how long are you planning on sending out soldiers into the field with nothing protecting them save for their combat uniforms? I recognise the problem you face, but really, your casualty rates this month were just short of unacceptable. You’ve completed research into Personal Armour and the UFO’s power sources, so Power Suits are available. Please try to use them… after the failures of this past month, we’re having a bit more trouble with recruiting.

Manufacturing: The Plasma cannons were quickly completed – I think your engineers were happy to be building something a little more important than those Laser Cannons you keep trotting out. I accept your reasoning for using two cannons on every Interceptor – as our ships can’t keep up with most alien craft and need to do as much damage as possible. You turned a respectable profit on the Laser Cannons for the remainder of the month. Your manufacture of Laser-HWPs appears to have gone smoothly, and I gather this resulted in increased efficiencies within your base.

Missions: Compared to the prior month, this was a busy session for you. I know you probably don’t want me to re-hash the details for you, but I feel it is my responsibility to point out where things could have been done better.

a. Your first mission was to recover a downed UFO that Interceptor-2 had knocked out of the sky in a test of its new Plasma Cannon capability, after it became apparent that the UFO had no intentions of setting down under Interceptor duress. Your squad landed, and came under heavy sniper fire from a nearby building. Certain units retreated inside your ship, while one soldier bravely entered the building and attacked the alien at point-blank range. However, the alien managed to wound the soldier before dying, and due to the lack of proximity of a medical facility I’m not having to meet her family for a bereavement visit tomorrow. Thanks for giving me all the bad jobs, by the way. The remainder of the mission was a standard breach operation.

b. Your second mission of the month was… how can I put this mildly… FUBAR. A total, complete disaster. While I applaud you for managing to tail that large UFO all the way to what looks like a base in the Urals – and, yes, we’ll be talking with the Russian ambassador before long – things could certainly have gone better upon landing. First of all, you lost two soldiers to sniper fire when the Skyranger landed, which I accept was a difficult position but nothing you can’t normally deal with. What makes things worse, however, is that you then proceeded to lose five more soldiers AND a tank unit in the process of taking the UFO. I don’t know what happened in there, but from the debriefing of the three survivors from what I gather is that one of your soldiers lost their wits during the initial portion of the breach when they spotted an alien, and stared randomly shooting lasers around the rest of the group. I’m sure you’re right, and that soldier was not responsible for their actions, but nevertheless you’re going to have to submit to an investigation regarding your orders to put the panicked soldier down via friendly fire. And, no, I don’t believe your story about the soldier being under “alien control”, whatever that excuse you gave me was. The only good thing to come out of this debacle was that we were successful in capturing our first three aliens using those new Small Launchers you have our team equipped with.

c. Your ignorance of the alien attack in Siberia has been deemed allowable, as you were still waiting for reinforcements.

d. In your last mission, you encountered a new type of alien, one dressed in a hooded orange robe. They apparently attempted to use a small launcher against your forces, but missed. Your termination of this threat was much more to your usual standard with no casualties taken and a full alien ship recovered. We have issued promotions for the new members of the squad, and your remaining veterans will be pleased to see their new ranks. Try not to get this team killed as quickly.

Personnel: I noted that you over-requested soldiers again – your standards appear to be increasing, as this time you sent back anyone who was not rated 55 or above in shooting accuracy. We are having more luck with drawing talented recruits into our program, as your reputation is spreading through military backchannels. You added to your engineer complement again this month, but now THOSE personnel have gone missing in the last 24 hours. I’m sure they’ll turn up, but accounting doesn’t like this.

Overall, not a great month for you, although that didn’t really get reflected in your funding other than Russia. Now that you have some money to your name – even with that additional Interceptor lease coming onto the budget today – what are you going to do with it?

/s/

Moore, Col., CINC, UNSPC-COM

Postscript: That memoranda you sent to me with a proposed idea for an X-Com-backed squadron of flying saucers was the best April Fool’s joke I’ve heard in quite some time.

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(1) The amount of UFO traffic in an area is visible by checking out the Graphs tab in the Geoscape screen. Try to keep an eye on it when you’re choosing your third base – it may be more useful to place a base covering Australia or South America if alien activity is higher in those areas. For this game, there was clearly something going on in terms of flights over Europe and towards Asia, so I chose that as my base.

(2) The lack of armour isn’t me being mean and treating my soldiers as bullet-catchers. Well, not ENTIRELY… in this case, when I don’t know what my soldiers’ respective PSI strengths are, I never have any real idea of whether I’ll have to put someone down before they decide to throw a grenade at a group of other operatives. With all my troops sporting laser rifles, I don’t think I’d be capable of killing an alien controlled agent wearing power armour. And while I lost some good people on that mission, it’s inevitable that a bad one like that sneaks through when going after a Sectoid supply ship. The good news was that the remaining troops who survived MUST be decent PSI soldiers, as the game “cheats” a bit and has aliens automatically go after weak PSI troops they know the location of. So the soldiers who survived without getting brainbuzzed must be relatively strong.

Also, since I don't know which soldiers will have high PSI strengths I won't know which soldiers are going to be on my "A" teams at the end of the game. I usually have one ship with a PSI-ready crew and a second (based in Asia) equipped with all my stragglers who are comfortable taking out Mutons / Snakemen / Floaters but not Sectoids or Ethereals.

Really? I mean, I noticed the psychic thing to an extent, but my luck with my primary team draw meant that I had most of my guys within the 60-70 range for PSI strength and I've got one guy with 92. I know I had a lot of trouble with a Sectoid Leader trying to PSI everybody when I assaulted a landed battleship, but after awhile the Sectoid kept trying to PSI the guy with a 92 rating (not that I knew it at the time).

You know it takes six or seven shots with a laser rifle to down a Power Suited soldier? The best part was that I didn't even kill him. I just shot him so much he collapsed from subdual damage.

That is lucky - my advanced game wound up with my three most experienced troops (a Commander amongst them) drawing a 3, a 12, and a 9.

Mind you, thanks to having something like 80 troops on staff in anticipation of PSI research starting up, I also drew two 100s and about twelve in the 90s. Owing to my cheapness, I then fired my vets because, well, they just weren't cost-effective.

Once again, sentimentality and X-Com do not mix. I'm on a break after blaster bombs turned a ship assault into a Michael Bay explosion megamix. At least I'll have time to powerlevel and beat Chaos.