Kharille

has anybody followed the later works of Julian Gollop? I wish he'd stick to PC, doubt I'd buy a nintendo 3ds or whatever that is but have a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Gollop Games Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars (2011) Rebelstar: Tactical Command (2005) Laser Squad Nemesis (2002) The Dreamland Chronicles: Freedom Ridge (cancelled) Magic and Mayhem (1998) X-COM: Apocalypse (1997) UFO: Enemy Unknown/X-COM: UFO Defense (1994) Lords of Chaos (1990) Laser Squad (1988) Rebelstar II (1988) Rebelstar (1986) Chaos (1985) Rebelstar Raiders (1984)

You know, all this work was based primarily on Julian Gollops work. Has anyone played his 80's works? Some of the features were established back then, the turn based shooting strategy. In Rebelstar you could actually interact with the terrain more. I'm sure you can get the spectrum emulators if you want to play Rebelstar.

TFTD. Played it for a while, got a lot of bases set up, and wondered how the heck I was supposed to get much in the way of advanced technologies. When someone suggested capturing live aliens my thoughts was... "That's stupid."

Its another game by Julian Gollop. It's been out for a number of years and I hear they recently released a new version with a single player mode. I've just gotten into it after holding the 2 player version for a year or so. It's quite fun. You send instructions on how you want your pieces to move and the computer calculates what happens. Different gameplay but still quite fun. Just a little slow on the single player version for me.

Master plan? Superhuman difficulty. Charge rookies around and forget about building them up until I get psi lab which will be around September unless I manage to find a sectoid leader. Lasers then Avenger and then psi.

Before lasers I tend to give all my troops a rocket launcher and 1 rocket. Thing is I always go for the maximum troop load so theres plenty of ammo to go around. The troops are very mobile and make good scouts.

Yeah, even though my officers tend to be in the power armour they tend to queue up behind two rookies to ensure that any stray shots get stopped. Actually, can I change the definition to using rookies as 'cover'? When they spot an alien they move out of the way just so that the officer can get his shot off, preferably over the head of a crouching rookie.

That's why I fly in Avengers. Sure they might kill 15 of your guys in the first turn but I'll be one of those damned rookies that appear way down at the bottom of the 'soldiers' list. Advance all the way to Commander from there....

I always go for early Avenger. It's important to me to be able to catch and eliminate all UFOs even if it means 95% troop losses.

played Rebelstar Raiders. Played Rebelstar (Which was hard to acquire for the spectrum. I remember back then it was a pain to have a 2nd tv that was 2nd hand and screwed up black and white. Laser skwad was one of the most amazing games for the spectrum 128. Lords of Chaos was just as divine. Brother mentioned that UFO was coming out. Played the demo. One heck of an effort. Numerous rookies that got killed quickly. I remember all I did was get the powererd armour guy to run in and out of the skyranger and shoot anything within range. Easy to complete. Then my first game with UFO.... Amazing stuff. Took a while to develop the Avenger. Now that is my first priority with laser weapons. I can imagine the time invested in building up to that... Amazing game......

Heeey.... now that is IDEAL. Now I can work on improving the bravery of my officers.... Bit low but its better than having masses of rookies panic and shooting in all directions.

What is wrong with shooting them whilst they're under mind control? Should I always wait until the following turn before I floor them with plasma? Do I lose the experience if I mind control them once and kill them the next turn?

I haven't managed to get apocalypse but is there anyone who would deny the value of an RTS over a turn based game? I spend most of my gaming time on other turn based games like civ and similiar games. However, the amount of micromanagment gets tough. It's difficult to have a computer play a good AI but it would be nice to be able to delegate to officers who will lead their own troops. Maybe sometime in the future it would be possible to assign squaddies to competent sergeants who all vary in their specialities. Sniper unit here, assault unit there, heavy support units for anti 'tank' action. Maybe some medics with varying degrees of risk taking/willingness to operate under fire. I also play mechcommander 2. I still feel that the absolute control is annoying. Why not the aggressive loner who never retreats? Or the cowardly soldier who breaks when he thinks hes overrun? Gaming becomes more about evaluation of troop personalities. The occasional wild disobedient rambo character might actually be worth saving even if he pisses off the commanders.

Maybe we end up becoming the new lieutenants who serve the brain directly. You know, those sectoids use some human genetic material. Maybe they're very similiar and the alien equivalent of humans whereas what we saw in the ending was the genetic trash that gets rejected and dumped in earth. They have to have something consistant to field. The only psionic capable units are either Ethereal, sectoid or humans. That puts us pretty high upcompared to those other races. I also love those master of orion type games. They ought to try something like that for xcom. I've played birth of the federation, MOO, MOO2 and some others. I'm sure it would be fun to have some kind of interstellar strategy game on xcom.

Received my copy of the strategy guide from ebay today. Fun reading. Just reading through the alien descriptions when I thought about how aliens were often enslaved and modified. The Floaters and the Mutons. Both appear to be some other alien race who were conquered and modified genetically or cybernetically. So, what if the humans were enslaved? Would we become some kind of four armed non-psi capable being? What would be our terror unit? Laser tanks? Just a thought. They really didn't expand on this 'other' alien race thing in the later xcoms right? No intergalactic freedom wars or anything. Maybe a master of orion 2 game based on xcom would be fun. They've taken that idea and reused it for startrek, galactic civilizations. Why not xcom?