OK, the game will be here by tomorrow. Made it through January. 4 UFO Assaults, 1 Terror Mission. Death count is sky high, but I had my reasons.
The game itself:
game_1.rar 16.31K
26 downloadsWarning! The game will probably load without Seb76's executable but I don't know if there would be issues afterwards. Please use Seb76's Extender for compatibility!
The ini file with all bugfixes and a few mods enabled (this is not an Extender itself, just the ini file):
UFOExtender.rar 2.12K
19 downloadsThe mods are for convenience only (More Smoke, Reorder Soldiers in Craft, etc.) and do not alter gameplay in any way.
-----------------------------------------------X-COM PROJECT MONTHLY REPORT--------------------------------------------
Base "Domodedovo" is located in Moscow, Russia. Another base, "Vault 1x", is built in the middle of USA.
Score: 1228
Funding change: +550,000
LOSSES:
17 X-com soldiers killed.
Ah, well... Rookies
STAFF:
40 scientists hired
20 engineers in transit (hired them in January, 31th. Should have done it sooner)
13 soldiers in Skyranger, 3 are wounded. I guess that means 25 soldiers were hired this mounth. Costly.
MISSIONS:
1 Terror Mission
4 UFO Assaults
RESEARCH:
Laser Weapons completed
Laser Pistols completed
Laser Rifle completed
Motion Scanner completed
Mind Probe in progress - Unknown
MANUFACTURE:
13 Laser Pistols produced
4 Laser Rifles produced
2 Motion scanners in production, estimated completition time 1d/13h
Buy/Sell/Transfer operations
Too many things to mention. I think this section should be skipped entirely. You can load the game and check the general stores for details.
Suffice is to say, I bought 2 AC with HE and IN rounds for both killing and litting the battlefield. Then I learned this does not always work and bought 20 flares to boot. 2 Rocket launchers for Heavy Weaponry. Loads of grenades and explosives. 4 Stun Rods for Navigator hunting (failed). Selling alien equipment freely - I won't need Navigation Panels or Power Sources any time soon. Sold all Plasma Pistols and corpses, but kept the Plasma Rifles.
There are about 5 aliens in Alien Containment module, none of them of any value.
Bases:
Base "Domodedovo" - constructed Alien Containment, General Stores, Living Quarters, Large Radar. 2 Hangars are in progress.
Base "Vault 1x" - constructed General Stores and Small radar. A Hangar and Living Quarters are in progress.
Overall, it was somewhat an unusual start. First UFO was located on Jan 1st in Europe and flew all the way to South America (apparently, it was on a terror mission). Floaters at night, and before I had any means of "night vision"... oh, the horror!
Actually, it went not that bad - only 2 soldiers were killed and one severely wounded. There was a moment when one of my scouts located an alien in the building, but used all of his TUs in the process. Then a sweeper walked closer and tried to shoot the floater from a window and missed. Not wanting to lose 2 soldiers, I ordered my Rocketeer, who was covering behind a wall of the same building, to walk away three or four tiles and shoot the wall in a suicide attempt to clean the line of fire for my "snipers". Miraculously, he not only lived through the blast, but also dodged all the bullets! That's one lucky bastard! Also, being in a hospital, he escaped the fate of the initial crew, who all died in 3 subsequent missions.
As for the dead... well, I knew storming a Medium Scout holding a Heavy Cannon armed with explosive bullets wasn't safe for health, but somebody had to do it.
The soildier might have actually survived the ordeal, had it not been for the third alien lurking behing a Power Source. Well, this is going to happen alot while I am playing.
The second mission was on Jan 9th, sectoids in a Medium Scout. The first rookie to disembark the skyranger located an alien just 5 tiles away and missed with an autoshot. A fate well deserved.
Other than that... one of my men took 2 hits from what I figured was a Plasma Pistol and lived. (That also happened a lot in this game, both for me AND the aliens, who sometimes required 4 hits from Standart Rifle to go down... unconscious!!
And not just once or twice!) Having not researched medikits and being a meritocrat that I am, I decided that my wounded are to be given a privilege to enter the UFO first wielding an AC loaded with HE rounds. In he goes, and spots 3 Sectoids with their backs turned like this:
-----
/ \
/ \
I PS (X) I
I I
\ (X)(X) /
\__ R __/
He fires at the furthest alien with an autoshot hoping to hit those who are close to him in the process... and MISSES WITH ALL 3 SHOTS. That's right, 3 misses at point-blank range. That's some marksmanship! Thankfully, it is very difficult to miss completely with HE rounds and the targeted alien died to collateral damage. The sniper was annihilated next moment. 2 X-COM deaths and no Elerium. Oh well, I've seen worse.
Next mission was... I do not really remember, when. The Large Scout flew over Europe and landed somewhere in the North Pole. I was expecting an easy ride and even the night time didn't scare me. The problem made itself terribly clear after a couple of turns: the map was so flat that I had no valid targets to shoot IN rounds at! That was something I totally didn't expect!
As my troops were slaughtered from the dark corners of the map, I had to resort to using my own soldiers as living torches!!
Boy, they weren't happy! As I started spotting aliens, they became the new targets. After cleaning the map I barged in the UFO... and got my share of Heavy Plasma almost immediately. Strangely enough, it seemed like it was shot from somewhere to the north. Another two soldiers entered the UFO in the same turn, one of them died to reaction fire from the same alien, and the other headed straight for the northern door... to find no one there.
And only then I turned around and realised that the alien was standing 1 tile to the south from UFO's main door! What about the direction the shot came from? Was it a graphical glitch or just a lack of attention on my part? Other than that, there were no more casualties. 4 men dead, two wounded.
Bought many, many flares after that mission. Better safe than sorry.
Somewhere late in January I spot another UFO, and that is where things have gone very, very wrong. See, I wanted to get me a Navigator. I've done it numerous times, there shouldn't have been any major problems (apart from the time of the day, that is, night), or so I thought. Had only 2 Stun Rods, another set arrived 30 minutes after take-off.
Stormed the UFO, stunning every alien I see while blasting everything on the outside to oblivion. Lost 2 men to Large Rocket misfire and another one to incorrectly executed grenade relay... with a proximity grenade (a funny one!
). Then inside I shot one of the aliens with reaction fire, and by Murphy's law that had to be my Navigator! 6 men killed, 2 more in hospital.
Terror mission was launched shortly after in South America. Floaters. Fortunately, my skyranger was slow enough to arrive just minutes after dawn. I played the mission like I always do, that is, shouting CHAAAAAARGE! and running in the midst of my enemies with primed explosives on my belt. Amazingly, this actually paid off - I cleared the site in 8 turns with only 3 men dead and 7 civillians saved (out of 12 ). My only soldier with the laser rifle prototype scored 5 kills - field test was a success!
That's it. Nothing else of interest this month.
As for the rules - well, I am personally agaist the idea of estimated playtime or other artificial restrictions. I suggest playing a 1-Laboratory-per-base (1-Workshop-per-base?) challenge instead, it will increase playtime without putting a set limit to it. I also propose that going to Cydonia should be consentual, but should not be delayed further than 3 months from the moment someone announces they are ready to deal with an alien threat.
Edited by Nevill, 02 June 2009 - 10:30 AM.
