Let's Play: X-COM - UFO Defense

I've got a base in Siberia I'm eyeing, but I'm training a cadre of psi-soldiers and trying to build an Avenger first so I can bring down the big hammer.

My squaddies are in the middle of taking down a Muton battleship when, on the enemy's turn, I hear the telltale report of a Blaster Launcher. I'm watching the purple football zoom around and mentally composing condolence letters when there's a huge explosion and an alien death scream. Moments later, the scene plays itself out again.

I have never been so thankful for shoddy targeting AI. If the bad guys were as good at using BLs as players can be, no one would ever get off the ramp.

EDIT: Muton #3 was much more skillful. Time to reload...

What happened? This is X-com! How'd the thread die?

...This must be why we'll never see a sequel, just can't keep anyone's attention

I think everyone who was playing beat the game. No hard feelings for the OP letting this die; this was pretty ambitious.

I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords.

LOL, they have to be at least somewhat competent they did get here...

They're not so bad. A few people go missing here and there, some cows get mutilated, occasional random death and destruction in a major city, but otherwise life goes on.


I actually think the real downfall of this thread was inability to get good pictures. Sven probably should have gone with the DOS version.

I was really enjoying the faux memo write-ups, and it's fascinating to read LP threads by people who are much better at their game than I ever was, but I'd agree that the inconsistent availability of images and consequent reliance on UFOpaedia stills had a lot to do with this thread's inaccessibility to readers who aren't series vets. If the Gametap or DOS versions are more screencap friendly (and are savegame compatible), I'd be willing to help out if Sven ever feels like picking this up again.

December 21st, 2012; days before Christmas.



New York. The end of the Mayan Calender.



The day our world changed.



The day our civilization met with extraterrestrial life.



Many called it the end of the world.



But funny thing about endings;



A very smart person wrote once that writing a good ending to a story is about knowing when to stop.



You continue any story too long, and it's no longer "happily ever-after".



Eventually tragedy strikes. Disease perhaps.



Financial Ruin. Divorce. Old age.



Payback. Revenge. Death.



But what the writer didn't mention, is that sometimes you keep going...



... and the story can change. Hope can come back.



New fortunes. New Alliances.



Rebirth.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Update 1: Introduction, and UFO 1 Mission
• Update 2: Soldiers, and UFO 3 Mission
• Update 3: Superhuman Base Defense
• Update 4: More Base Defense, CYBERDISKS!
• Update 5: TERROR in Africa, Diplomacy
• Update 6: A European Vacation, with Plasma!
• Update 7: Scotland Throws an Alien Party
• Update 8: Ranking Your Comrades
• Update 9: Time Jump! (Amendment)
• Update 10: This is a Nightmare!
• Update 11: Sunk their Battleship
• Update 12: Psionics and Chryssalids
• Update 13: Booooring
• Update 14: Getting Ethe-real.

Soldier Recruitment Drive!
Current and Fallen Comrades
Better Know a UFO!
Research the Area

Welcome to X-Com: UFO Defense! Also known in Europe as UFO: Enemy Unknown. Not to be confused with X-Com: Enemy Unknown because... uh, boy they really weren't thinking with that title.

X-Com often pops up on "best games of all time", and for good reason! While not a perfect game, like games such as Master of Orion before it, it successfully took some very disparate elements and somehow made them work together.



The heart of this game lies in it's tense missions, where your units duke it out against aliens with superior position, weaponry, and technology, but there are also Civilization-esq elements of base and unit management, technology, and research.

Sven's original LP was put on hiatus, and then Sven disappeared. I want to bring this game back to your guy's attention, because while it's lacking polish, it's still a fantastic game. I'm planning on including lots of screenshots, and as much analysis about the game's mechanics as I can (eventually) cram in. I won't be info-dumping right away, but keep tuning in; I hope to eventually explain everything.

I'm playing on Superhuman, Veteran, but fun fact: the game is full of some charming bugs, and one of them is that the difficulty gets reset to "Beginner" after one mission. I will be fixing this using a third party program.

We're going to be doing this "Ironman": if a unit dies, they die. No reloading of games.



The first decision to make it to determine where we set our first base up. A poll of #talkingtime determined that our first base would be in an unassuming location in Alabama.



The Aliens will never find it here.



The first matter is a bit of base management. We can see a zoomed-out version of our base on the left. At the top and bottom corners we can see three hangers, with a Skyranger (our troop transport) and two Interceptors (our attack fighters for downing UFOs).

The Octagon with the red square inside is our lift; this is how units (friendly or otherwise) enter. The building to the next of it is a living quarters, where our soldiers, scientists, and Engineers live.

Just above our two Interceptor hangers, we have a Small Radar (for detecting UFOs), a General Stores (for... storing items), a Labratory (for research) and a Workshop (for crafting stuff).

I will get a further explanation about all of the menus on the right eventually, but for now we're only going to worry about a few menus. From top to bottom:

1) Build New Base: Set up a second (or third, or....) base elsewhere on the planet. Bases only have so much room, radar has only so much range, and since our ships need to travel to where they want to go, we'll eventually build at least four more over the course of the game.

2) Base Information: Information about your base.

3) Soldiers: See information about all the soldiers (your combat units) who are stationed at a base.

4) Equip Craft: Add soldiers/weapons/items to your transport units, and different weapons to your Interceptors.

5) Build Facilities: You won't get too far with just your initial facilities; here's how you can "expand" your base.

6) Research: Assign scientists to research new technlogy, or to interrogate Aliens.

7) Manufacture: Get your engineers to craft something, usually for your units to use. A good source of money late in the game.

8) Transfer: Transfer personal and/or items to another base. Useless right now.

9) Purchase/Recruit: Buy something, will ya'?

10) Sell/Sack: The opposite of above.

11) Geoscape: Exit to the world map. Time stops in this menu, so you have to be outside to "progress".



Our personal! Hmm, these guys and gals all have something in common...

I will save a further explanation of Soldiers for a future update. Right now, just now that they're the initial 8 soldiers the game tosses to us, and (with perhaps one or two exceptions) they probably suck.

If you want to "have" a soldier in our X-Com unit, I will have details after this update.





Our Interceptors are initially equipped with a 50mm Cannon which stinks. We're going to replace one with more missiles, because high explosives are everything's mortal weakness.

We'll also remove some of the junk loaded onto Skyranger 1.



Until more General Stores are built, you'll find you'll be pretty tight on storage room. We're going to want to purchase a bunch of stuff, and to do so we'll need space!

The Stingray Launcher and Cannon are aircraft weapons that we'll be replacing with more Avalance Launchers that we will soon purchase. Pistols are pretty worthless, and Heavy Cannons (while not bad) take too much effort to use well. Rifles will work in the short term.



Getting some more Soldiers and Scientists are a must; we've only got enough room for 22 more, so we'll hire 7 new soldiers and 15 Scientists to bump our research. We're also purchasing a Tank, because they're very useful. They need 30 "shells" to use (whether you plan to shoot aliens with them or not), but hopefully we'll never have to fire one, for reasons I'll get into later.

(Yes, I know the buy/sell screen isn't necessarily orderly.)

Not seen: we're purchasing a few more grenades and some flares. Grenades are a pretty reliable weapon in the early game, and flares are a must for night combat (note: you never WANT to fight at night if you can help it!).



We also add on some new facilities; you'll quickly run out of storeroom unless you build some new ones, so we're building two for now. We're also building another living quarters (so we can hold more Scientists), an Alien Containment unit (needed to interrogate aliens), and a Large Radar (so we get some better UFO detection).

Note that you have to build next to other completed facilities. This is actually a bad layout if there is ever a UFO invasion, but we'll deal with that if we have to deal with that.



We start researching too. We'll use our ten scientists for now, and add the 15 we ordered when they come. I normally skip Laser Weapons, but I've heard a lot of good things about them, so we'll be trying them this LP.





Once done with our base management, it's back to the Geoscape to waste some time. If you're playing using DosBOX (and you probably are!), you might need to fiddle with the speed in order for stuff not to go too fast. With few exceptions, the game will allow you to slow down time to 5 second increments when an event happens, but I like to use 5 or 30 minute ones anyway.

Time of day is pretty important when dealing with missions; the "sun" does regular intervals, so paying attention to it is important when deciding to go on missions.



The stuff we ordered starts arriving! Different items take different times to ship, so we'll get everything slightly piecemeal. With our new Avalanche Launchers however, we can start upgrading our craft one at a time in order to be able to take down UFOs.

(Upgrading them both at once is asking the game to send a UFO your way when both your fighters are out of commission while their weapons are refitted.)

Those scientists we mail-ordered arrive too, so we add them to our current LASER research. Note the "Laboratory Space Available" number: each Laboratory only has enough room for 50 nerds at once. To have more than 50 scientists (and we'll want more eventually) we'll need to add more Laboratories.

We will eventually add at least 100 more, but not at this base.







Our first research item finishes, and it opens up the ability to research Laser Pistols. We want these, so we set our 25 geeks to the task figuring our how to shoot small lasers at aliens.



We also get our Tank. It's added to craft like the Skyranger just like rifles and grenades are. By request, we'll call this Tank "PHILLIAM".



WARNING: Our first UFO has been detected!

UFOs have different "missions" that determines their behavior. We won't be able to tell what this one is up to without some future technology. This one is likely just scouting.

If a UFO's altitude is listed as "very low", it's probably looking at landing. It can be very profitable to "take" an undamaged ship, but since this guy is flying too high to make us believe he's planning on landing in North America, let's just shoot him out of the sky.







We send Interceptor 1 (with our Avalanche Launchers) at the enemy. We catch up with it somewhere around Southern Ontario.

The last screen shows what is basically a small mini-game; our ship (at the bottom of the green screen) and the alien ship (at the top) are facing off against each other. Again, we'll talk more about this later, but here's the basics:

The green "dotted line" on the screen shows the range of our weapon, which in this case is two missiles, with three shots apiece. Both your ships and enemy UFOs have weapons with a fixed range; beyond them, neither ship can attack the other. We can exploit this later, but for now we'll just use our "Aggressive Attack" to close with the ship as fast as possible: we don't want this UFO getting away, and as it's faster than us, if it runs we'll likely not catch it again.



One pair of missiles is enough.



We equip our craft for this mission. Skyrangers have enough room for 14 soldiers, with Tanks taking up "four" of those spaces. With 8 soldiers, we'll give them one rifle and one clip each. Needing a second clip, even in longer missions, is pretty unlikely; we'll either be dead or they will by the time we empty a gun clip, and worst case we can scavenge off the bodies of our dead comrades.

We take the Rocket Launcher (the strongest weapon in the early game), and two grenades for each unit (which is probably overkill; one each should be fine). Finally, we bring four flares. We should be able to reach the crash site before the sun sets, but just in case (and so I don't forget later). More than four is probably overkill.





Your ships take time to reach places, so remember to account for travel time if necessary so you can land when the sun is still up. This time the sun is nipping at our heels, but I think we should be okay.

They'll show you different screens depending on the "mission", but everyone basically boils down to one objective: kill or capture all the enemy aliens.



The game can be weird about giving units items, so we have to give SlimJimm this rocket launcher manually. He's last in the order, to help ensure that he doesn't step off the plane and explode his fellow units accidentally (it can happen, I'm told *cough*).



I hand flares out to our first four units just in case. If I was SURE we'd be landing at nighttime, I'd put the flares in their hands so they could toss them ASAP.



Behind you loading screen guy!



First things first: your aircraft has some windows right at the back! The leading cause of death in this game is probably getting shot by Aliens as you move off the plane. The units closest to the back of your ship won't have enough time units (TU; it's represents by the green bar under Makkara's name, as well as the green number "45") to get off the ship and do something meaningful, so get them to peer out the window. You'll rarely see anything, but vision in this game is VERY important!

We can see in the top right that we landed near the enemy UFO. The smoke around the ship indicates that the UFO's core is shot, which is too bad (it's worth a lot of money intact), but not too surprising.



Our tank, PHILLIAM will always start near the exit to the craft ahead of our soldiers, and is a fantastic unit to lead the charge. Tanks have immense movement and a lot of armor (so they can take shots that your human units can't), so use them to scout out where enemies are.

No matter where you tell a unit to move, it will freeze and let you give it new order if it sees an enemy, such as what happened here. The red "1" indicates that PHILLIAM can see one enemy; more would be indicated by more individual numbers.



PROTIP: click on the red number in order to centre on the enemy unit.

It's a Sectoid! Not surprising.

Sectoids are the most common enemy units in the early game, and - with some exceptions - are the weakest enemy unit you'll come across. They're still dangerous however! All enemy units carry Plasma weapons, which will almost assuredly kill one of your units in one shot, whereas your own Rifles often require two or more hits to kill them. On top of that, Plasma weapons are a LOT more accurate.

Never underestimate a lone enemy in this game!



PHILLIAM spots another Sectoid behind the downed UFO when it turns around.



The one to the left is a smaller threat because our Skyranger will give us plenty of cover to use against it. Not so much this new one, as it can fire directly at the rear of our ship where we'll all be. We bring AlexB down to try and fire at it.

A quick note on movement: each move takes TUs to use. X-Com's maps are split into a fairly standard grid, with several "height" layers, the latter of which won't see too much use in this mission (but will on later ones). A step in a solid cardinal direction takes 4 TUs, a diagonal 6 TUs, and turning in a different direction costs 1 TU each. I'll explain movement in more detail in a later post, but it's important to ensure that you have good vision of the battlefield, and to not squander your TUs.

Note also that AlexB can't "actually" see the Alien (i.e. there's no red number in the bottom right), but because we know where it "is" (thanks to PHILLIAM) we can take shots at it. There are a number of reasons why you'd want to do this, but the biggest is that if you can't see an Alien, it probably can't see you, and if it can't see you, it can't use retaliation fire against you. This is important!

Lets try and take a shot.



Most weapons have three modes: Aimed Shot (one shot, high accuracy, high TU use), Snap Shot (one shot, medium accuracy, low TU use), and Auto Shot (three hots, low accuracy, medium TU use). The TUs a "weapon" uses depends entirely on the unit; these are "percentages" of the unit's max TUs, so if AlexB's TUs went up (as they will as she survives missions), the TU "cost" of shooting a weapon will go up too.

In a Rifle's case, an Aimed Shot takes 80% of a unit's maximum TUs, a Snap Shot takes 25%, and an Auto Shot takes 35%.

In general, Auto Shots are the go-to "attack", because - for their TU cost - they have the best chance of "hitting" a target. For only 5 TU's more, we have about (what I'm calculating, perhaps badly) at about a ~45% chance that at least ONE of the shots will hit. Not all weapons have an Auto Shot feature, such as Rocket Launchers, and in those cases sometimes an Aimed Shot is worth it. Snap Shots will happen, particularly as reaction fire.



The formula for whether a unit hits or not is actually pretty complex for this game, but in general, the listed accuracy can be considered a "direct hit" on a unit, and doesn't change with distance to a target. Being closer to a target DOES make it easier to hit however, but at this range you won't notice much of a difference. However, the game does take into account cover; in this case, all we really manage to do is shoot some dents into our ride.



Merus comes down next and tries his hand at shoot that Sectoid. He doesn't have much luck either. Most starting units have terrible accuracy scores, and these ones are probably no exception. Rifles aren't really known for their accuracy either, so that isn't helping.



As Merus ducks for cover, he finds another Sectoid just south of the ship. Stars and Bars! They've got us surrounded!



Grants tries his luck...

... and is successful, taking the Sectoid down with the second of his three shots! We hear a death scream, indicating that we outright killed it (this can be important). That takes care of one of them..



We move the rest of our crew to the entrance to exit the Skyranger next turn. You can get everyone off your ship at the first turn, but I prefer playing it safe and keeping the last two rows nice and safe inside.



During the enemy's turn, the computer will move the enemy units around. Unless you have vision, you'll have no idea where an enemy moves to, although you can sometimes hear clues (such as doors opening) that give hints.



If you can see an enemy, you can get an idea of where they are (although not necessarily with perfect accuracy). This guy is a new Sectoid that we didn't spot; it fire ineffectually and takes cover behind his own ship.








AlexB! Our first casualty

There's not much that you can do sometimes; Alex was behind some cover, but without any armour the chances of surviving a plasma blast are pretty slim.



The one behind the Alien lands a couple of hits on our tank, but it's still good. The aliens are likely using Plasma Pistols, which can kill a tank with enough lucky shots, but the tank will often simply absorb all (or most) of the damage as long as they only hit it from the front.



Our turn!



Ringworm takes a shot and...



Success! That's two.



We use our tank to get some vision of this guy, and see if any of the units we've moved under the Skyranger can get a shot. This Sectoid is on top of a small hill, so we might not have line of sight...



But Grant manages to see enough of him to score his second kill. He's on a roll!



We move everyone else against the ship or behind the wheels of the Skyranger for cover. We might have to breech that UFO, but first we need to deal with that Sectoid still outside.

On the Enemy's turn, the Sectoid lands a few more shots on PHILLIAM before retreating back to cover.



PHILLIAM is still a-okay tho; not to ruin the Math, but a Plasma Pistol only has about a ~10% chance of actually dealing any damage as long as the shots hit the front armour. The rear armour is still sturdy, but the chance of it being damage by a plasma pistol rises to about ~40%.

This is true for enemy and human units too; the armour in front is usually always the strongest, although in the case of Sectoids and Humans, that isn't saying much. Humans have a base 12 armour from the front (standard issue X-Com attire), and Sectoids have about 4 on this difficulty. That's why most shots tend to be pretty fatal for them, while our Tank only has it's paint scratched.



We move PHILLIAM up to spot the Alien, and to hopefully draw more of its fire.



In the meantime, Makkara is going to try and blow this jerk up.









There are two things to know about grenades, the second thing being really important. The first is that the timer "goes off" at the end of X turns, where X is the time you set. I don't find setting a long timer to be that useful, and usually just set the timer to 0 and toss em.

The second thing you need to know is that a grenade that you carry will not explode until you drop it (either by throwing it, or otherwise). Priming a grenade always takes 25 TUs, so you can save yourself some time by priming one on one turn, and throwing it the next. Or by priming it, dropping it (which costs little TUs) and then moving, allowing someone else to move onto that square, pick it up, and throw it. Heck, you can throw a grenade around like a hot potato to get it where you need it to be, although using more than two soldiers to do so is probably a waste of TUs.

You can set a grenade to 0 on turn 1 in this manner and simply carry it around if you want, but that can be dangerous: if the unit is killed (or knocked unconscious), the grenade will go off at the end of the turn.

In this case, Makkara has enough TUs to prime the grenade, toss it into the square next to the Sectoid, and duck behind the ship for cover. Grenades are stronger than Rifles, and deal damage in a small area. They're really useful in the early game because units tend to be a lot more accurate at tossing grenades where you want them than they are at shooting aliens with junky weapons.





We take cover in case that alien takes some shots at us, and move to flank in the worst case scenario.



X-Com explosions are the best explosions.



Rats! It survived. On its turn it takes a shot at PHILLIAM but misses.



Grant, kneeling (which increases accuracy slightly), and from behind the cover of one of the Skyranger's wheels, tries to get his third kill...

... but his shots miss.





And the alien retaliates! Units (yours or the computers) have a chance at using retaliation fire if they haven't used up all of their TUs at the end of the turn.

That sucks! His firing accuracy was probably aces. Grant, you at least killed two of those bastards before they got you. Not like that AlexB punk.

Makkara avenges Grant, but her shot only knocks out the alien. You obviously can't tell because there is no sound in screenshots, but this one didn't scream when it fell. For most aliens, unconscious is as good as dead; aliens drop all their items when they are knocked out, and if they don't bleed to death, they'll be completely defenseless when they wake up since they refuse to pick up items.

(Some aliens have built in attacks, but Sectoids - or at least, THESE Sectoids - do not.)



We get into position to breech the UFO and end our turn...



... and the mission ends! Any sectoids inside the ship must be of the "dead" kind. Our Alien containment facility is still under construction, so we put a bullet in this one's oversized head and bring its corpse back to the base.



Here's our score for the mission. We don't get any bonus for that one alien we "captured" (nor does it count as us killing it), which is too bad, but it's not a big deal. The seven corpses indicates that there were probably a small number still inside the UFO. Those 21 Alien "Artefacts" the stuff those aliens were wearing, which is probably mostly just plasma pistols and clips for plasma pistols.

Losing Grant and AlexB gives us -40 to our score. Honestly, losing just two units on a mission is pretty good!



And promotions! Rank generally means very little in this game for how good a unit is, but the one place it does count is for unit morale. I'll go into morale another time tho.



And that's the mission! Now to fly home and see what goodies we got..

... I think I'll end the update here. But before I do that, what do you say TT: Do you want to (hopefully) be on my winning X-Com team?

X-COM WANTS YOU

Here's how new units are going to work:

1) Only the best units are going to be kept, with the exception of the eight you get at the start of the game. I'll go into soldier statistics next update, but rest assured your unit won't be killed because your unit is incompetent. You'll be killed because the game is lethal and unforgiving!

2) The original eight soldiers, plus PHILLIAM, were all named after departed TT forum users; nine individuals who have a ton of posts, but haven't been active for months (or in some cases, years). They weren't "screened" beforehand, so they'll likely be the worst units who will die quickly/open UFO doors for us.

3) You can put your name in the queue to become a Soldier, or remove it, whenever you like, with the knowledge that without advance notice, your name might be attached to a unit I "create" when starting an update, meaning that it's too late to remove yourself from the queue.

The initial queue will be comprised of the top posters from TT. If you wish to add (or remove) yourself, just post:

CURRENT X-COM QUEUE

1. Mogri *recruited!*
2. Tefari *recruited!*
3. shivam *resurrected!*
4. TK Flash *dead!*
5. Olli T *resurrected!*
6. Rai *recruited!*
7. Yimothy *resurrected!*
8. Gerad *resurrected!*
9. Red Hedgehog *resurrected!*
10. kaisel *resurrected!*
11. StriderDL *dead!*
12. Falselogic *recruited!*
13. Alixsar *recruited!*
14. Mightyblue *recruited!*
15. Dizzy *dead!*
16. CaptBlasto *recruited!*
17. namelessentity *dead twice over!*
18. Destil *recruited!*
19. Son of Sinistar *resurrected!*
20. Torzelbaum *resurrected!*
21. Austin *recruited!*
22. MCBanjoMike *dead!*
23. ajr82 *recruited!*
24. Octopus Prime *dead!*
25. Nich *resurrected!*
26. Soren Highwind *recruited!*
27. Epithet *recruited!*
28. Nodal *recruited!*
29. Guildenstern *resurrected!*
30. Brickroad *dead!*
31. Calorie Mate *recruited!*
32. Kishi *recruited!*
33. Sarcasmorator *dead!*
34. TheSL *dead!*
35. reibeatall *dead!*
36. Meditative_Zebra *recruited!*
37. Adrenaline *dead!*
38. LancerECNM *dead!*
39. Zef *dead!*
40. McClain *dead!*
41. Kylie *recruited!*
42. Stiv *recruited!*
43. JUNK *dead!*
44. Loki *dead!*
45. jpfriction *recruited!*
46. Lucas *recruited!*
47. Alpha Werewolf *recruited!*
48. djSyndrome *recruited!*
49. Kirin *recruited!*
50. BEAT *recruited!*
51. Pajaro Pete *recruited!*
52. sraymonds *recruited!*
53. Balrog *recruited!*
54. Tomm Guycot *recruited!*
55. PappilonReel *recruited!*
56. Droo *recruited!*

Sign me up, and make sure my psi defense isn't terrible.

This is the new best thing.

Eddie, I think you have a problem.

That said sign me up and keep the tips and tricks coming.

Also this is probably a dumb question but have you heard of OpenXCOM? When I get around to playing this that's probably gonna be what I use.

You need warm bodies? Sign me up.

What's that you say?

Travel the world?

Meet new and interesting life?

Where do I sign!

I'm pretty sure I wanna be a part of this.

I will join the army.

Laser weapons are quite good in the early game - especially the pistols as they are quick, accurate, and do reasonable damage and aside from your first few missions, you don't tend to find many plasma pistols. Laser weapons are also the best way to take down sectopods. And finally Laser Cannons offer the best ROI of any piece of manufacturing in the game.

That said, I usually research Medikits first as it takes awhile to get to Laser Cannon and Medikits provide a good enough ROI to start playing money-making game right at the beginning.

---

Also, feel free to put my name down. Are you going to be pre-screening soldiers before naming them? (Hiring them, checking their stats, then sacking them if their bravery isn't high enough?)

I could use an editor to simply give soldiers the stats I want, but in the spirit of the game I will be mass-hiring soldiers, and firing the ones whose stats are terrible. There's no magic formula, but in general, TT soldiers will have a Bravery >= 40, and a Firing Accuracy of ~60.

Unfortunately for Mogri, I won't be checking for Psi Defense with an Editor, so he'll simply need to live for several months and hope the game ws generous enough to him.

Yeah, using only in-game means is what I meant. I was just double-checking that you wouldn't actually name people unless they pass muster. (Sorry Mogri, you're a pathetic wimp. Back to latrine duty for you!)

I've always loved the comic-booky background pictures in this game.

Sign me up Eddie.

Maybe after reading your LP I can actually get a decent idea of how to play X-Com, instead of fumbling around and giving up.

Sign me up for cannon fodder!

Put me in the queue...

I was tempted to just edit the post and put myself at the top... There's got to be some perks for being the LP Mod.