On Nathan’s recommendations, we’ve stripped the Interceptor to add speed, and changed the weapons to more powerful ones. We also brought in more bikes.
Sheb is piloting the only turbo bike with a Plasma gun.
I think this is the best plan. I expect to lose a couple of the bikes, but I don’t expect to lose the Interceptor. At the end of this week we will be able to upgrade the Interceptor weapons and pass the rendors down to any remaining hoverbikes.
We are also going to fight air combat a little differently than I have ever tried. Two turbo bikes will go in first, in full defensive mode. Hopefully the UFO will fire at them, leaving the other four bikes and the interceptor to fly in on full aggressive. It is a gamble, but so is everything.
All of our vehicles are in position near one dimension gate. They are hiding in one of my favorite buildings to launch an ambush from.
Because it is so tall, we get immediately get above the sky line and open fire and because it has so many ports, everything can launch at once.
Once everything is in place, we fast forward until the UFO’s show up… They do just before 2pm.
See anything unexpected? We end up with the same 3 scout 2 probe attack as before. Nathan and friends shoot everything down but two of the scouts have a chance to attack a building. Turns out I can command the world alien defense force but can't figure out what day of the week it is.... No matter...
I guess that means business as usual.
The first mission was pretty par for the course; three serious injuries from multiworms but no deaths and we didn’t find any sign of aliens on our second mission.
We get some bad news before the sun sets.
If you go back to the very first post, the two buildings with lines pointing to “Mark my words, they are trouble!” belong to these assholes.
Meet: Transtellar.
These guys don’t seem important at first glance. They don’t manufacture much, so why is it a big deal if they go hostile?
I just hired Shigeru Miller. Units don’t just pop out of thin air, they have to come from SOMEPLACE (what do you think this is, some kind of game?). Since most of the people we want to hire don’t chill in the slums, they have to make it across town. To do so they take autotaxis.
This is the Taxi our newest meatshield is in. Notice who owns it?
Remember that Transtellar actually likes the aliens AND the that we have a tendancy to MISS UFO’s and blow holes in their rather fragile walkways. They dislike us for now, but it won’t be long before they are openly hostile.
If/when we go hostile with Transtellar we lose the ability to take taxis. Generally speaking units can walk using people tubes, the problem is that if the tubes are broken any unit we hire gets stuck. It isn’t so bad for soldiers, we can just order them to go to a building and pick them up in the interceptor. Scientists on the other hand, are doomed.
The only way around this is to set the speed to fast forward as soon as you hire a unit. It is a bit of a cheat, but one I accept. I “roleplay” that the interceptor goes out and gives them a ride. Seems logical.
With midnight brings the technical end to week one (sorry for the confusion) and a budget flip.
The senate is GENERALLY pleased and gives us a 10% bump in pay. Not bad. Don’t our cash reserves look lovely?
Until we have to pay people. Damn. I liked the first number better.
New things come on the market for the first few weeks. Of note here is the famed Hawk Air Warrior, and the Megapol plasma gun. It isn’t on the level of the heavy plasma of old, but it is still a fine weapon. As well as any new items, any items that were on the market get restocked, meaning our ammo problem has come to an end.
We spend $5,000 filling up our guns and another $1,400 on recruits, then send our air craft back to their ambush point to wait.
While we do, Diablo pulls a dick move and comes after Psyke with some hover cars, wrecking up the city in the process. Eventually the aggressors are destroyed and we hit “fast forward” once more.
At 4 o’clock biochemists finish their research on the alien genetic structure and open up the number one most awesome tech for research. It is a tech that will change everything… once we have an advanced lab to research it in. We will come back important bio-tech 3 of 4.
But before the aliens can show up to hurt the humans, we elect to hurt ourselves.
This time it is Psyke going after Megapol. Check out the destruction on this one.
FINALLY around 8pm, it happens.
There it is guys. That needs to crash land, now.
The problem is, it brought a friend.
Meet: The fast attack UFO.
This thing is a major bitch. One of these can give a Hawk a run for its money. The problem is, there is never only one of them. They will spawn in as an escort and follow their buddies around, blowing the shit out of anything that comes in to help out. Once a transport (the purple UFO) drops its dudes off in a building, the attack craft will find a new UFO to escort.
Welcome to Alien Air tech level 2. Damn. They even skipped level 1!
Nathan’s plan works well. The two defensive flying hover bikes manage to distract the transport and attack craft long enough for the rest of the squad to launch and a few seconds after the UFOs appeared, the sky was filled with gun fire.
Early in the fight the Fast Attack craft lands a shot on Nathan’s interceptor, but it isn’t enough.
The purple people eater has fallen. All guns on the fast attack.
But it is for naught. The armor of the UFO was too thick and it managed to cause enough damage to our Interceptor to make Nathan flee the flight. All X-Com craft duck for the cover of buildings, and allow the 3 surviving UFOs to retreat.
Unlike the previous X-Com games, UFO missions are not randomized. Each craft has a single map. This is the map for the Alien Transport.
Once nice thing about UFO missions is that they have pretty harsh choke points. Everyone can stand here and wait for the Aliens to make the first move. It is a pleasant change.
The Aliens don’t make us wait too long. After a bit the northern door opens and Antropods come streaming out. Previous missions have only had one of two of these blue meanies, in the first 4 seconds of gun fire we see at least 4.
They are also favoring disruptor guns, but can’t land a hit before we mow them down. All is well.
And then we catch sight of something that will plague us from this point forth (I feel like I say that every mission).
Meet: The-
Actually… You know what? This guy deservers a better introduction.
Yes, that. Meet: The Popper.
Fuck these guys I hate them. They run at your units at high speed and explode. That is it. This one, the first one we ever saw, took Sata from full life to death and Jerick down to half. These guys are amazingly dangerous.
The kicker? If you shoot them with AP ammo (the only ammo we use other than sniper rifle) they explode! I think poppers have killed more good men than any other alien or weapon.
That was a good example of the dangerous situations you get into with poppers. We had two brain suckers and a popper running at that squad. There just isn’t enough time to kill all of them. The result? Dead troopers.
In the end, the aliens died and we recovered the UFO, but only 2 soldiers made it through the mission without being injured.
The UFO that survived infected a set of slums next door so a team is sent there, returning within the hour with injuries and more disruptor guns.
To cap off a very successful day, our scientists finally cracked the code of the disruptor gun. We’ve recovered 4 from the aliens, so our engineers set about making 2 more to equip a full squad.
Tuesday is a day of rest and recovery. Engineers and researchers are hard at work while soldiers enjoy some much deserved RnR.
Wednesday morning Nathan leads the fleet out to their chosen ambush site.
It is late Thursday before the aliens are welcomed back to our dimension with a hail of plasma and auto cannon fire. Much like earlier in the week, we manage to down one transport while the other slips through and drops aliens. We lose no bikes but have a few days worth of repairs on the Interceptor.
Our ground forces gear up, but this time they have a new toy.
Our engineers managed to fill the gap just in time and we are ready to roll with a gun that doesn’t take ammo and doesn’t cause poppers to explode.
The UFO mission was executed as planned with one squad each covering the north and south exits. It was largely uneventful, although Biag had to be evacuated. He survived with 5 health.
The whole crew had to be swapped out to deal with the attack on Megapols rescue station, so the mission consisted mostly of rookies. The mission starts out poorly as they manage to miss a charging popper, who detonates directly into Jacen’s face. Fortunately his armor absorbs most of the blow and he is able to continue fighting.
Squad one gets into some light combat, killing an Antropod and a few of his brain suckers when they come across something new.
Meet: The Boomeroid.
This is the first of two alien grenades. It is an interesting one, as it will hop towards movement and then explode. While it does represent new technology, it isn’t too much of an increased threat.
The biggest thing to watch out for now is a chain reaction. Grenades will cause other grenades to go off in Apoc. This means that a pile of dead antropods means a pile of live grenades. A pile of live grenades could mean a small explosion becomes a mushroom cloud.
All of that aside, there is one thing I like most about the aliens getting grenades. Throwing them back. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, it is generally good for a laugh. Boomeroids are the most fun to do this with, as I always picture a battle hardened soldier snatching one out of the air, as it hops towards him, and throwing it right back into the antropods face.
Uh huh, uh huh… so far so good. Note that the box around it means that it is infact primed and ready to blow.
GlyphGlphy doesn’t have a lot of options so he throws it straight in the air. The explosion is strongest at the middle, so every little bit helps.
(Picture note: the number in the bottom middle of the screen show what z-level of the map you are on. We are looking at the highest point, 7 stories up)
At the height of its parabola, the grenade detonates, and the flames don’t even touch our heroes.
Pro move GlyphGlyph.
All in all a mission good enough that I thought I would share.
Plenty of B12 promotions.
On Saturday Nathan once again ordered his fleet out to an ambush site. While they were waiting X-Com received a call that aliens had been sighted, in all places, at the mall.
With most of our response craft in the field, a single squad loaded up on turbo bikes to take a look, expecting a smaller than average force.
It was a miss calculation. They took heavy fire but persevered, defeating the aliens and clearing the mall.
Within a few hours the UFO’s returned. There were 2 fast attack craft, as anticipated, but this time only a single transport. Perhaps the air war was more effective than we hoped… a heartening thought.
The transport was shot down while it was depositing Aliens, so it is probably best to watch the site closely rather than send armed troops to trash the place.
We did, however, send armed troops to trash the UFO.
The mission was going alright until some bad commanding on my side left Jacen exposed to enemy fire. He did not come home, and will be missed.
With that low note the week came to an end. The Senate was “generally” pleased again, and offered a similar increase in pay.
The last few items trickled onto the market and the world looked forward to another exciting week.
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Topic: Complete: Let’s Play Ironman/Superhuman X-Com Apocalypse! (Read 115577 times)