Let's Play: X-COM - UFO Defense

(update on previous page here)



SlimJimm sees another Sectoid in the north hanger, but ineffectually fires at him.



Since Merus and nunix started upstairs, we'll have to take a bit more time to get them into the action. Note that whatever weaponry you don't take is scattered around your base, which is a nice touch.



Enemy turn.



One Sectoid is spotted by PHILLIAM as it emerges from the plane hanger.



Another shoots SlimJimm in the back!

He survives, but is then hit by a mysterious force that is REALLY hard to screenshot! Is he okay?





Nope. He was psionically attacked by one of the Sectoids (that's bad). Psionics is really luck of the draw early on to defend from; the stat you need to defend against it is completely hidden until the technology opens. That he WAS affected at least indicates that SlimJimm is not the mentally hardiest of X-Com agents.

What happened, essentially, is that SlimJimm's mind was attacked, and his morale lowered. Morale drops as your comrades die, but this attack pushed it even lower. A low morale has a chance of either causing the unit to do nothing (using up all their TUs), or go berserk; firing randomly (and using up all their TUs).

Morale will recover over time, but there's a danger of a unit like this being somewhat perma-stunned. As long as an alien knows where he is, he can be psionically attacked, regardless of line-of-sight.

That sucks.



This shows SlimJimm's current status: he's bleeding (fatal wounds: 1), so will lose 1 health a turn, until he either falls unconscious and/or dies.

On the bright side, this is probably training his Bravery, so maybe he'll have more than 10 after the fight!



Tefari takes out that one that shot SlimJimm in the back.



Our new Rookie, shivam, pokes his head around the corner and sees two Sectoids!

Shivam has a Rocket Launcher.





X-Com explosions are the best. Hell of a first shot, two kills! Welcome to the team shivam.



PHILLIAM creeps forward, and tries to kill this Sectoid he saw. He misses; I would prefer a human unit to be firing instead, but I'm short on men and high on danger. We don't know (short of using a Mind Probe) which Sectoid(s) is using psionics, so killing everyone you see is a priority.



Mogri checks the north hanger: looks clear.



Merus gets downstairs, and will be able to pop out next turn. Opening doors takes a significant amount of TUs, but the cover they provide is excellent.

That Sectoid PHILLIAM shot at pops out and takes his own shots, but PHILLIAM lives.





I'd make fun of the misspelling, but I always spell berserk the same way too. SlimJimm spins in place, his blood lust making him so mad!



Shivam reloads...



...and Makkara sees another Sectoid - barely - in the smoke. Smoke does obscure vision for both sides, although the computer always seems to use it better.



Merus kills the Sectoid when Makkara fails to.



I'm going to have shivam inch forward when he can; his strength is unfortunately low and the Rocket Launcher heavy, so he's taking a small TU penalty.



PHILLIAM registers his first kill! Hopefully his only...



SlimJimm may have gone berserk this turn, but his Morale has risen back up, probably thanks to those Aliens we murdered. Barring a psionic attack, he should be a-okay next turn.



Nunix moves forward, tho I'll probably have her move towards the Access Lift.





Now Merus got psionically attacked! His Morale has dropped significantly. He's probably got a poor Psi Defense stat too.



Makkara sees yet another alien emerge from the smoke, but she doesn't need Merus's help this time.



I have Mogri and SlimJimm move up; PHILLIAM can handle the south-east hanger for now...

... I say too soon. Retreat! They can come to me.



I really like this hiding space.





PHILLIAM gets shot at from both sides! There are definitely aliens near the Access Lift.



Oh great.

Berserk? That's annoying, but unless your standing really close to the unit, the chance they shoot someone is low.

Mind control? Merus is, until it wears off, effectively an enemy unit.



Mind dominated Merus immediately murders Makkara. I wonder if that will show up in his "kill" count?



Tefari ensure the lift itself is clear, although there could be aliens on the other side (any of them). He ducks into one of the corners.



Mogri steps up towards the lift, and sees a Sectoid. He fires...



And kills one he didn't see! The one he was trying to kill survives however.



SlimJimm lands a second hit on that one, but it's still standing. This is pretty bad; with the two of them so close together, the chance one of em is killed next turn is pretty high.



I make room for PHILLIAM...



And give them some cover. And another one! We're probably not getting out of this unscathed...



Shivam sees EVIL Merus. He could try killing him, but mind controlled units will eventually return to their senses. Better to hide from his line of sight instead.



I think this could be a good spot...



Fingers crossed...

PHILLIAM is finally killed. Like a robot Jesus, he died so Tefari and SlimJimm could live.



Not out of the fire yet tho!





Merus returns to sanity. Normally, I would take this time to disarm him (then who cares if he gets mind controlled), but my plan will be to just keep him away from our other soldiers.







Mogri steps around the corner and gets two very nice kills.



Knowing there are still at least two aliens in the south hanger, SlimJimm takes some cover.



(Merus panicked this turn, but I didn't show it because it didn't matter.)



And good move! A blast of plasma whizzes by Mogri.



Mogri misses, so SlimJimm steps out.



And sees two! I decide to fire at the one behind, as the one in front is likely the one who used any available TUs on that reaction shot.



SlimJimm does it! Some fine kills all around!



And that's it! As far as base defenses go, that was somewhat tame; you can have twice that number of aliens, along with their terror units (and Sectoid terror units are bad news).

We lost two move lives, but grabbed a ton of new weapons to sell.



It's pretty clear that we'll need to do some work on our base; the current configuration would be overrun if more aliens were involved. We'll use the money we earn to try and start fixing that!

And that's another update! See you goons next time!

Third mission being a Base Invasion is crazy! You made out relatively well though...

Yeah, that was a close call! Good work.

Merus kills an agent and gets a promotion. I kill two aliens in one volley and get...?

FUN FACT: As of X-COM: Apocalypse, X-COM standard procedure has changed such that civilians no longer evacuate. You are left with squads of scientists and engineers that are not only unarmed but unarmable.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown does not allow the aliens to attack your base, maybe because the maps are not programmatically generated in that game, or maybe because the vertical base layout would be harder to work with in that game.

I've a feeling Enemy Unknown didn't include a base assault scenario (or two) because they ran out of time. That seems like something that super fans of the original would want to include, honestly. I'd be surprised if some expansion along the way doesn't add them back in.

Also this is what X-Com gets for advertising Space Camp in the papers. Seriously, who's in charge of publicity here.

TECHNICAL DETAILS: The aliens need to scout out your base, much like you need to scout out theirs, before they can attack. You can theoretically prevent a base assault just by preventing a scout from ever reporting back, but at this stage of technology, you won't be able to detect UFOs reliably enough, and by the time you can, you have A) larger concerns and B) other ways of dealing with would-be aggressors.

Yeah, I don't even have my Large Radar up and running yet; both this attack (and the next one ) popped up completely out of the blue; I didn't see the ship coming at all!

Oh sweet, not only did I not die horribly on my first mission out I managed to survive long enough to get a promotion!

Just setting you up for a greater fall!

Welcome back! No two bones about it: we're desperately low on manpower. If the aliens continue to throw themselves at our base, we're going to need to have plenty of dudes in case the worst happens: the base is attacked while we're out saving the world from aliens.



SlimJimm was of course injured last mission, and will be out for almost a month. And he didn't even get that Bravery boost I was hoping for! Sheesh!



Merus of course gets +10 Bravery. What a jerk! A beautiful jerk mind you, what with those amazing stats.



We pocket a million bucks off of selling alien weaponry that we're not going to be using/researching anytime soon. We might need to start selling some of that other weaponry too; there's a nasty bug in X-Com that only checks the first 80 weapons you have on hand when a base is attacked, ammo included. We should be okay (Laser Pistols are at the top of the list), but it's something to be aware of.

With our new living quarters complete, we can hire new people even faster! Let's check out our new soldiers:















Not all of these guys are winners, but I relaxed my standards a bit (specifically for Rai and kaisel) because I need warm bodies, and despite having ~50 Firing Accuracy, they're sporting some pretty good Reactions, so I'll take em.



I've never used these before either, but some people swear by em for base defense, so why not?



This is really important; we don't have the means to reliably capture aliens alive, but if we're lucky we can stun one of those Sectoids that have been demoralizing/mind controlling our units.



I also order more Laser Pistols to be produced, as we'll need to make sure we have some back at base in case the worst-case scenario comes true.

I hire 10 more Engineers to crank these babies out faster.

Our fourth UFO!



Shot to smithereens!



I decided to buy two more PHILLIAMs. One for our Skyranger, one for base defense.



Oh come on.

I won't go into the full details of this one, as it was pretty similar to the last one! Some highlights are below however.



Once again, I'm forced to ditch the plasma-weapons-I-can't-use for laser pistols.



What the? Who the heck is this loser?

I must have missed him while firing the chaft... well, I like his gump! Have two items you can't use buddy!



These Sectoids brought their "terror" unit along this time: Cyberdiscs! Cyberdiscs are big pains in the ass; we rushed our laser pistols specifically because these guys exist. They're similiar to tanks, except their main weapon is a heavy plasma. They have high TUs, great Reaction, and high health.

Traditional weapons (rifles, grenades) are pretty much worthless against them, as they reduce damage from them by 20% (and then you add their armour, which is pretty decent). They just won't have enough punch. They also reduce damage from high explosives (grenades, rocket launchers) by 40%, but as they take up 4 squares, each individual square can take damage. It's not GREAT but still your best bet if you're don't have laser weapons or are packing Heavy Cannons with HE rounds.

THIS Cyberdisc murders the heck our of Red Hedgehog. Guy didn't stand a chance! A poor way for one's first mission to go, but Red ended up being our only casuality, which is pretty damn lucky!



That same Cyberdisk killed PHILLIAM 2 as well.



Merus bumped into this guy when he tried to exit that little room on turn 2. I could have done some pretty heavy damage (maybe even killed this floating murder weapon), but that would have been suicide. Why?





Cyberdiscs have one last "fuck you" in em: they explode when they're killed. It's not a 100% chance thing, but it's generally pretty likely. If you're lucky, you can use this explosion to kill nearby Sectoids/Cyberdiscs, which almost makes up for all your soldiers they'll kill.



This was pretty good, the death of Red Hedgehog aside. We'll be able to make a pretty penny off the weapon sales. Still, I don't know if I can handle having my base attacked so often! I'm definately using the money I make here to modify my base some. I can't remodel it entirely, but at the very least I can hopefully reduce the access points for our alien friends.



Merus becomes a Captain. In case you were wondering, killing Makkara last mission didn't increase his kill count, but is also apparently didn't kill his chances for promotion either.

Here was the kill list from that last mission:

Merus: 1 kill
TK Flash: 1 kill
nunix: 1 kill
Mogri: 2 kills
Rai: 1 kill
Yimothy: 1 kill
Tefari: 1 kill
Gerad: 1 kill

OlliT: 1 Cyberdisc
PHILLIAM 3: 1 Cyberdisc

Unfortunately for OlliT, Cyberdiscs don't count as kills in game! I will rectify this on the scoreboard however.



Time to sell some of that sweet alien loot! And...what the...



OH COME ON SUPERHUMAN DIFFICULTY.

It's not even Februrary!

Blaster Launchers in frickin January. Geez, well, welcome back.

If you aren't familiar with X-Com, let me tell you about Blaster Launchers. Imagine an alien missile launcher that does twice the damage with twice the blast radius. That would be a pretty horrifying weapon on it's own.

Now imagine the missile was remote controlled such that unless there is a wall between you and the guy/alien with the Blaster Launcher, you're pretty much looking at dead units... save for the grace and mercy of computer AI.

Blaster Launchers are hella sweet to use, but it will be a bit before we can properly research them; we're going to want to finish researching Plasma Rifles (and their clips), but then we'll probably get to them.

(Base Defense missions just got a whole lot funner.)



In an effort to make Base Defense easier, I've sold off one of my hangers (the one on the bottom right). This has two effects; the first is to simply narrow down the points of entry, so there's one less flank i have to worry about. I thought about removing the north hanger, but I almost always have units that start right next to it, so it's actually not that bad.

This, of course, causes me to lose one interceptor, but it hopefully won't be too big a deal. Once the month changes, funds willing, I'm planning on starting a new base, which will itself be able to intercept stuff. It's actually a good idea to do this; it's easy on lower difficulties to get into a pattern of simply letting your original base deal with everything, but eventually the aliens will be coming pretty often; you'll need more than one Skyranger and better coverage over the earth to intercept most of them.



Checking the "UFO Activity" log, setting up some radar in Africa seems like a smart move; its gotten more action than North America has!

Some fresh recruits have joined us!









This is going to help immensely; with it, we might even be able to see the alien ships before they invade our base.



I finish production on the Laser Pistols, and start on Medi-Kits. They won't be too useful until we've got some better armour, but better to have some available in the off chance we get a bleeder.



Our Large Radar (I'm guessing) picks up this ship, grounded near California. No detailed recap: it was Sectoids (they love the month of January).



I took all our new recruits for some training. There were no casualities; it was pretty easy. The following kills were noted:

Rai: 1 kill
Yimothy: 2 kills
Gerad: 2 kills
Falselogic: 1 kill



And I didn't blow up all the Elerium this time. Elerium is pretty much the most precious material in the game; it's used in a lot of the good manufacturing, and unlike everything else you can't make it yourself.



Gerad rides the two kills he gets into a promotion.



It couldn't wait until February guys? It was only like, 40 minutes away!



I line up a full crew for this one; you don't mess around with terror missions.



Budget! I haven't talked about the monthly budget report, so here's the gist:

The conceit of the game is that you're a world taskforce dedicated to fighting the alien scum. Every country is pitching in money - some more than others - to see you guys win. If you deal with aliens well enough in a country, they'll increase your funding. Do it badly, and they might decrease it. Do it poorly (re: let the aliens carry out terror missions, or let them set up bases) and the aliens engage in "diplomacy", causing the country to back out of the project (with their funding).

The "Monthly Rating" is kind of a cumulative score of all your missions; destroying and "grounding" ships helps it too. The Aliens can perform actions too, that reduce your score, from minor reductions (ships flying over earth), to really painful (ignoring a Terror attack). If you score badly enough for two consecutive months, you lose the game. On Superhuman difficulty, this means scoring -500 two months in a row. You can see here that I'm way above that for now, but who knows what can happen on this difficulty.

This monthly funding will transport about $6 million into your coffers (minus your upkeep expenses), so it's a hefty chunk of your income. It also gives you some incentive to protect countries that (usually) fund well, like the United States and Japan. That said, you're almost guaranteed to lose some countries as you play. On Superhuman difficulty, it's pretty much to be expected. It will be gradual tho, and eventually you'll be making a LOT of money off of selling alien junk, so with a little manufacturing aid, you should be okay... especially if you take advantage of some game bugs (which I won't unless this game turns really sour).

(Alixsar dying is not an example of a game turning sour.)

Since it's a new month, I decide that now would be a good time to start a new base, this one in Northern Africa. With a Large Radar, I should hopefully be able to see some of what's going on in Southern Africa, plus get some protection on Europe. I think a base in Japan is probably next.

This base needs a name! I asked Falselogic in IRC for a name but he only gave me dumb ones.



We're going to make THIS base more defensible. With an access lift here and any Hangers to the north, we'll leave the aliens with only one access point: through the General Stores to the south.

We could use a leg up on research, so we'll eventually add a ton of laboratories and scientists here.





Another UFO is detected; this one gets blown up over the sea, which effectively "destroys" it. No biggie; we're still off to fight that terror mission anyway.



We get lucky really as this Terror Mission will be conducted during the day. In general, fighting at night is something you avoid at all costs; the reduced vision makes missions twice as difficult. Craft that are shot down can be usually be ignored until day breaks.

Not so with Terror Missions; they only last a short period of time, and ignoring them is really bad. If you must arrive at night, you have to suck it up and arrive at night.

If you aren't in any shape to deal with one, send your Skyranger to the site and then immediately take off; you'll still lose a chunk of points, but ignoring it outright is -1000 compared to the few hundred you'll likely lose otherwise.



TERROR.



One thing I wanted to mention: Xcomutil (a program which fixes a few bugs - like the difficulty one - and gives you a bunch of cool options) automatically gives you vision around your Skyranger when you land. It will, unfortunately, miss some stuff.





Like there are four aliens lounging around nearby! But that's why we brought PHILLIAM 3.

These guys aren't Sectoids: they're Floaters! I am okay with this.

Floaters are pretty similar to Sectoids with a few key differences. First, they can awkwardly fly, allowing them to get on top of roofs and stuff pretty easy. Second, they're not psionic in the least, so there's no fear of them dominating our minds. Thirdly, their terror unit is crap next to the Sectoids "Cyberdisc"; their "Reaper" is basically like a Starcraft Ultralisk, except slower, stupider, and unlike Marines, your guns are super effective!



A rough start; shivam tries to hit the Floater near the house... and does! But it's not enough to kill the Floater, who immediately retaliates and kills shivam. Bummer. Sorry dude.

It's tough to see units you've named after people you genuinely like die Why couldn't it have been Alixsar?









Our other soldiers manage to take the lot of them out tho.

Like aliens, humans run around in Terror Missions, completely ineffectually. They'll literally run in circles near aliens.

The aliens will attempt to kill them, which is negative points for you. But don't go out of your way to save them; they're not worth it.

(Ice Cold)



Alixsar grabs Shivam's Medi-Kit... just in case.

(He didn't need it, but it's a good idea to scavenge anyway.)



The next Floater we find is on the edge of the map, in an alleyway. Yimothy manages to land a shot, but not a killing one...



... and the narrow alley makes it really difficult for anyone else to gain line of sight. The Floater lives for the next turn, ducking into the alleyway at the edge of the map.



Meanwhile, Rai enters a house.

Twins?







Moving PHILLIAM 3 around, we find this one Floater trying to be very sneaky.



Rai takes a direct approach:



Through the wall. Learning when (and what) terrain to shoot to gain line of sight is really something that just comes with practice, but it can come in real handy sometimes.



You can't see Gerad, but he's off the south-west of that picture, sniping that Floater through two windows. What a shot! I'd need to check the video (I've recorded all the battles), but I think that was his first shot too, on a burst.

(If I ever get technically inclined, I should string a X-Com soldier death reel together. I've got all of your deaths meticulously recorded on my hard drive. Oh yes.)



We end up dragging PHILLIAM around to check out this alley. He absorbs a reaction fire shot, which is perfect.



StriderDL finishes him off with little effort.



OlliT enters this warehouse when...



Ambushed!

He dies



On our next turn, we try out best to see the asshole, but no luck.





Kaisel tries the front door, and finds the alien with his back turned. Don't now why Yimothy didn't see him through the window, but sometimes cover in this game is weird.



THAT WASN'T ME.





This jerk must have tossed a grenade. While Yimothy is suffering from some smoke inhalation (both soldiers and aliens will pass out if in smoke for too long), he's still okay to shoot this guy. Don't know what the alien grenade was supposed to be doing... maybe it killed a human.



But it didn't kill US and that's really what's important.



That's the mission! The Floaters apparently brought zero of their crappy terror units. Which is probably too bad, as that was pretty much the best map they could spawn on. Most terror missions are pretty cramped, but that one was pretty wide open.



A string of promotions! Now Merus is a Colonel!

... there's a joke about a coconut in there I think.



Whatever-that-city-was-called is saved! GO TEAM.

Oh, uh, let's not forget shivam and OlliT's sacrifice for what's-it-city.

And that's an update! I'll be recruiting more soldiers, so hopefully we'll see another few new names on the list. See you next time!

BTW if I don't get a GOOD name, I'm calling the base "Hey Africa!"

What are you talking about? That IS a good name.


Hey, Africa! Are chryssalids scary?

Nooo, I am dead! But thankfully avenged by the brave and handsome Kaisel.

One thing I forgot to write in the recap: I honestly don't know when I killed a human during that mission. I re-watched it twice; never heard a death scream. Weird!

The Skyranger landed on him. Oops!

Sure, sign me up! What's the worst that could happen? Besides getting blown up or lasered by aliens, I mean.

Nerd Nest is perfectly serviceable for a base that will have nothing but eggheads in it.

You just earned yourself some door opening duty for that comment son.

Sounds about right commander! You're always pampering rookies like Alixsar and Oscar!

You totally got me killed on purpose! Did it off screen and everything!

Welcome back!

Another day, another "bake sale" at the local "farmer's military supply store".

It turns out February is completely uninteresting. Perhaps after all the love they gave me the first month, they've decided to cut back?



I end up hiring enough scientists at SPACE CAMP in order to use up every bit of laboratory space I've got available. I should be using Plasma Rifles in about two weeks!

Out of a dozen men and women, a pair of new recruits joins!

(it was a pretty sorry batch.)







We finish researching Plasma Rifles. These guys are going to be awesome! For comparison, the Laser Pistols we were using had the following stats:

Power: 36

Auto: 28% Acc / 25% TUs
Snap: 40% Acc / 20% TUs
Aimed: 68% Acc / 55% TUs

So while they take more TUs to use, Plasma Rifle shots are a lot more accurate, and deal over twice the damage. In other words, our "stopping power" has just increased dramatically. Cyberdisks will be little problem with us packing these bad boys.

Of course, we need to research their ammo first before we can use them, so I get my scientists on that.





It will be a few months before this base is operational. I'm getting a Large Radar and a Housing unit now, with a Laboratory and another Housing unit to follow.





We shoot a Sectoid ship down over the Yukon. CANADA. AGAIN.



I'm trying to spread out the mission love, so we'll be bringing along our rookies and other units that have only a mission or two under their belt. I haven't played the 2012 "remake", but while carefully raising units into combat gods in this game isn't really required (equipment and technology will get you a lot further), it's still a good practice.



No big recap on this one, although I did underestimate how long it would take to get there, and ended up in a night mission, which sucks!

My standard practice is to give the first four people off the ship Electroflares straight in their hand for easy throwing. You see, nighttime imposes pretty harsh vision penalties, so you have to be really careful; the computer is VERY good at retreating once it's seen you, and then bombarding you with plasma from the darkness. Electroflares can increase your chances of not walking into a death trap.

Ideally, you throw them ahead of your advance; flares are not used up once thrown, so you can just keep picking them up and throwing them ahead of yourself.

Highlights:



Grenades!



More Grenades!



The death of Oscar Hudson. Drat. Sure your stats sucked, but he really kicked some ass, killing three of those Sectoid jerks before one took you out.

(Of course, that was because I had him open the doors and charge ahead.)



The death of TK Flash. Okay, this was my own darn fault, but I thought that between you and Alixsar, one of you would reaction shot that guy!

If it makes you feel any better, it took three plasma fueled shots to take your ass down, which is pretty damn impressive!