This week starts out a little different. No dance at all. We have much more money than we had previously and lots of stable ways to bring it in. So… we go raiding.
We found a backup chip for RAM and installed it in a new bot. The results were fun to watch if not promising.
The raid was good tactically (only the flying rocket got injured) but we didn’t get any good loot out of the deal.
While we let the hornets’ nest settle a little bit, our researchers develop what is truly one of the most important technologies in the air war.
Meet: The Retaliator.
This is a great craft. It can mount big guns and plenty of equipment. It will be the basis of our air fleet for at least the next couple of weeks. Engineers will start building them straight away. The most important thing about it, however, is that while it is not the most powerful craft we can build, it is powerful enough to take on every alien craft we will see for a while. Also it costs $35,000 to build, compared to the Hawk which costs $105,000 to buy.
Speaking of alien crafts, they return with their current favorite 2 assault ship 2 bomber combo. We don’t even bother, electing instead to fight the battle on the ground.
They end up in a factory… Oh well, we cause less damage now at least. We set up at some likely transit points and wait… getting a new surprise after a bit.
Does that guy seem all like… clear? The aliens have brought to bear a new and annoying technology, the personal cloak.
This thing is frustrating because it makes the aliens much harder to see. If our men can’t see the aliens, our men can’t shoot the aliens.
To make matters worse, I never considered them very effective for human use… Oh well, minor annoyance, nothing more.
It does drive home the fact that mid range is the sweet spot to engage the aliens at this stage of the game. Far away enough to give us time to kill Poppers and close enough that the poor accuracy of the Toxigun doesn’t totally screw us.
The Aliens return late Tuesday to give us free points, I mean, make a deposit in a factory (ugh) and a warehouse. Soon we can really start knocking them out of the air whenever the show up! But for now Nathan has to sit tight.
The factory mission borders on effortless. The aliens are cleared in a slow and steady way.
The Warehouse mission, on the other hand, gives us a surprise.
Meet: The Entropy Launcher.
This thing is the worst. It will take away 1/3rd of your shield. If you are unshield it will coat your unit in an enzyme that DESTORIES their equipment. Can you believe that shit!? Gah, what a bunch of dicks.
If a unit get’s hit with this their only chance is to strip naked and hide.
Here is another good reason this thing sucks a bag of dicks.
Before he died, the antropod fired one off and missed. The missile then turned around in mid air to take a second pass at our units. I think all missiles have some homing to them, but the Entropy’s is way over powered.
Regardless of that noise, the mission is a huge success and a couple of the new weapons are brought home for our Biochemists to research.
More for simplicity than anything else, some of our more experienced units are moved to Armaments and the force there is declared to be our raiders. Geen, Bulldog, BunnyBeth, GlyphGlphy, and Euch-R-Jane are the B12’s that make up our raiding force.
The raiding force is using Marsec chest pieces to enable flying.
We decide we are going to continue raiding until we run out of shields. On the second raid BunnyBeth proves her worth by taking over an important enemy.
If the enemy were closer here, I’d probably have him drop his equipment and run back. There is no rocket ammo on the market and we could use some. However since he is so far away, I have drop all his extra rounds, shoot his bud, and then drop a short fuse grenade, destroying his ammo supply.
We continue to raid. After 6 attacks BunnyBeth is killed with a ridiculous double rocket to the face.
In total we raid Psyke 8 times, finally depleting our stockpile of shields and returning to base to rest. All said and done, the raiding brought in well over $80,000.
Later Wednesday we get a couple of calls to alien sightings. It seems kind of odd that they are showing up in town for apparently no reason, but we go after them none the less.
Early Thursday we get another gift from the Quantums.
This is the same shield technology we use on the ground, but now we can use it on our aircraft! It isn’t game changing, but it will be a nice addition. Good timing too, because early Friday the first Retaliator rolls off the assembly line.
It isn’t fully equipped yet. We need one more medium disruptor. When the next one comes out it will need a full load out of 3 beams and a shield.
This is why we had to build the second base. There are a lot of projects we want to stay on top of. We need more disruptor shields, Toxin Bs, crafts, and craft weapons.
The aliens return late in the day to trade a Bomber for our disruption shield and some pretty hilarious damage to the city.
We gear up and head in for the tactical mission. Once there, we form a standard perimeter and gun down any aliens foolish enough to exit. A couple of minutes in, we get a surprise, a new alien type, the Micronoid(failed to save the screen shot, sorry).
I thought these guys only showed up in the last two UFO Types, but it looks like I was wrong. He is a little green pile of goo. His trick is that he does a very powerful psiconic attack.
We decide to capture it alive, you know, for !!SCIENCE!!, and charge squad 1 in. After knocking the gooball out we find our selfs standing on a pile of grenades. All too late we see the alien throw a vortex mine.
There was a big chain reaction, it took out two shields. The worst part, however, was that it also blew up an Entropy launcher which hit Ajna. Without a shield she had to drop all of her equipment and run for the exit.
The battle continued for a while, but no one else was hurt. In the end we brought home both living and dead specimens of the goo-ball and our Biochemists got to work right away.
Raids were a mixed bag this time. We lost Euch and Bulldrog as well as a nameless rookie, but kept on pushing. Eventually we ran out of steam and had to stop, but not before capturing another huge load of loot. We hold on to the psiclones (up to 31 of them) and sell off everything else for $82,000.
Incase you are wondering, we do need the money. Our balance has bounced around a lot all week. The things we are manufacturing are very expensive.
Very late on Sunday the Quantums gave us another great gift.
Meet: X-Com Disruptor Armor
This is the last step in Agent load out for a while, but it is a good one. It comes pretty close to doubling the armor value of our troops and should make them impossible to one shot.
The ONLY problem with this armor is that it is a bitch to make. It takes forever! You have to make all 5 pieces! Our engineers are up to the task though. “Just add it to the list,” they say wryly.
With that the sun sets and the week ends. The Senate throws a kegger in our honor. I won’t go into the details but they give us a hell of a raise.
Raiding did a lot for us this week. It not only allowed us to continue to produce our advanced weapons and promote many Agents but it also was a major contributing factor in our score and, therefore, our raise from the senate.
7,000 points in a week is insane. If we can get 10,000 next week there is a chance we will see the last of the alien technology.
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Topic: Complete: Let’s Play Ironman/Superhuman X-Com Apocalypse! (Read 115203 times)