Let's Play UFO:Extraterrestrials Gold

[Thorondor]

It took quite a while, Zombie, but the time to splurge big finally came - a cool $20 million to put us just a neck ahead of the race. Well justified all the same.

 

Don't know what they were thinking with that clunker 'tortoise' armor. At this stage we have both great mobility (in all axis no less) and formidable shielding at our fingertips already. Don't mind if we're the hares on this one.

 

We've got a lot riding on that cheeky shuttle infiltration business though so it's indeed best if you don't leave any stone unturned before that or we risk becoming rabbit stew instead.

[Zombie]

This battleship took a long time to complete and I also decided to go a little more in-depth on what to expect on missions like this. This was the first mission with the new Devil Fish transport ship and also with the two vehicles (aka tanks). Don't know what I was expecting with the tanks, but they both spawn one behind the other inside the transport by the door. Not sure how I feel about this as that only leaves a single line of soldiers next to the tanks so you are stuck in single file unless you can rapidly clear a "safe zone" to deploy the two things out of the way. Might be better idea to leave the tanks off the transport and let your soldiers have free reign of all three tiles to spread out. That's my feeling at least.

 

I was able to determine via the alien life scanner that the corner of the map in back of the Devil Fish didn't have any baddies in it so I sent the two tanks over there along with OVNI on L1 and Galfar on L2 to keep an eye out for aliens in the air making their way over to us. Tommie had the third alien life scanner so he kept an eye on L0 (ground level). Worked great! This time it was Phantoms and Inquisitors which meant some decent XP. Mephistoex killed a couple Inquisitors and when he checked who the next contestant was it was a Phantom commander. He tossed a stun grenade on it but it didn't go down unfortunately:

 

 

Tommie was right there to stun it completely though. The next round a normal Phantom came over to see what the ruckus was about and spotted Mephistoex. Instead of shooting, the thing attempted to attack psionically (three attempts). It actually must've landed an attack as Mephistoex's bravery went down by a little bit. Interesting, as I thought the advanced mind shield blocked everything.

 

 

Obviously it was an easy kill. Quite a few more turns later and an Inquisitor came by. Just as a test I decided to see what it does to the best tank in the game. The result was quite shocking:

 

 

Now, theses tanks have decent armor and hitpoints which is great for overall protection but their biggest drawback is they can't be equipped with shields of any type to absorb incoming damage first. And the UFOpaedia doesn't say anything about how the armor handles each damage type. In any case, these things are big sitting ducks for AOE fire damage. Not only that, but if the initial damage happens during the aliens turn, the tank will take 4 more damage rolls at the beginning of your turn. All that damage adds up quick. Just an FYI in case you want to use these things.

 

About 30 turns later and we had managed to whittle the alien numbers down to about 3 on the outside of the UFO. There was one alien who was camping out at the front of the drop ship for turn after turn which I assumed was another commander. Decided to risk it and blindly toss a mark II stun grenade into the darkness where the alien was supposedly at. Whatever it was, it fell unconscious.

 

 

After killing the last two phantoms outside we made our way to the UFO to take care of the stuff inside. There were only three phantoms in and around the bridge room. Mephistoex killed the two close to the lift while Phobos tossed a mark III chem grenade on the one inside the bridge room proper. The last alien in the other part of the ship was gassed out with two shots from the chemogun by Scottie. EOM report:

 

 

Yup, that second phantom we stunned was indeed a commander. So word to the wise: if you have an alien that is camping out by your drop ship, it's almost certainly a commander. Don't go near it, don't try to positively ID the thing first, just blindly toss stun grenades on it till it's out cold. And what's this? Mephistoex finally got promoted to Lieutenant - about time! Let's allocate those 5 points:

 

 

Two points went into agility and one into vitality to get him to an even 98. The last two points I "tossed" into throwing (ba-dum-dum, I'll be here all night folks). Figured the extra accuracy would help him out more in the short term than bravery or reactions. Those last two can be back loaded in future promotions.

 

Back at base and I checked the research topic list to see if the two phantom commanders were present. Nope, no sign of them anywhere.

 

 

So that means my research into commanders is finished. Hmmm, I wonder if I can finally dismantle AC to open up another spot for something else. Might need to do a bit of rearranging the facilities again as I still need to squeeze in the advanced detection facility. I think that's the reason why I can't get decent intel on UFOs.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

It's a Phantom's very specialty to try and mess with your head, Zombie, so we can't say there was that much of unanticipated in that little liberty you allowed it.

 

The foul things can't complain you never gave them a fair shot - when they felt inquisitive about the tanks even.

 

Beyond all that, a stand-up kind of guy (*wink, wink* ) like Mephistoex deserves, well, a standing ovation for finally making the grade of Lieutenant after this long as the tip of the spear in the alien cleansing business.

 

It seems now is as good a time as any to do some tidying up of the bases. And staying on the lookout for any anomalies is always a good idea at this late stage.

[Zombie]

Well, the aliens sent a battleship near my main base for some Avonium mining. Can't let them get away with that so I sent basically everything I had nearby to shoot it down:

 

 

I had 4 JAG interceptors at Medie (with one still rearming) so those were sent out to help. One of my JAG's at my main base was damaged but it wasn't too severe. When I sent my team out this time I didn't load the tanks on the transport and wouldn't you know it, but your soldiers are automatically spawned 3-wide so you don't have to do anything. This time it was Vipons, Terror Floaters, Destroyers and 3 Larva thrown in to make it more interesting. Once we cleared the outside we immediately made our way over to the UFO. There were a couple Larva downstairs along with a Destroyer. An antimatter grenade was tossed between Larva's which killed them immediately and a chem grenade went on the Destroyer. After that, part of the team plugged the lift to the rest of the ufo while the other part went to the bridge room lift. Upstairs we actually found a lone Vipon commander milling around the bridge so it was killed with AKEW rifle fire. One of the aliens mis-shot during their turn and killed one of their own which was pretty funny. The last Larva upstairs was met with some more AKEW rifle shots and died easily. EOM report:

 

 

Wasn't enough xp for any type of concerted effort to level anyone up so the wealth was spread around (OVNI even got in on the action)! The bounty was sorely needed and we got a bunch of other items to sell too. Speaking of selling, I held another major fire sale again getting rid of most of my old laser, plasma and ion weaponry/grenades. Kept a few EEEW rifles around along with it's ammo and even kept some mark II chem grenades to use up. Plus I got rid of a good chunk of alien equipment too:

 

 

$11 million isn't too bad and there's still more to go so we aren't exactly hurting for cash anymore. But you know how it goes with manufacturing end-game stuff as it's all very expensive. As June came to a close it was time to check out the end of month report:

 

 

Kinda just squeaked by in the the green thanks to the state funding increases and fire sales. Is this level sustainable though? My thought is for sure no because once all the alien equipment has been sold off there's no way of replenishing short of going on missions which are few and far between. So we need to start thinking of cutting costs in some areas. In terms of upcoming costs there's some big ones building with the end-game modules for the star ship we are going to be completing. Here are the costs for just two modules:

 

 

It wasn't too long after that a scout came around. I think I found the trick to prevent the scout from being obliterated by the strong weapons: just send one interceptor to engage and that's it. If you send more, you'll have multiple Imperator missiles inbound at the same time which do too much damage at once. If you send one interceptor there might be two Imperator missiles which will get fired, but in between the cannons will be firing which do less damage but enough to take it down. That's what I did here and was rewarded with a mission (Chasers and Larva unfortunately):

 

 

It's not much, but it's at least something. Most of my soldiers are now in the 2100-2200xp range which is great but they are still a fair way off from another promotion. They need a lot more high-xp kills to get closer.

 

In terms of my main base, I did a little reorganizing again. I was able to remove the Alien Containment module without issue so that proves I'm done with live alien research now. In it's place I built a standard workshop. I figured once that was up and running I could remove the other standard workshop and build the advanced detection module.

 

 

Now I'm thinking what I might do is remove the advanced lab and build the advanced detection there. See, I'll be done with all the research pretty soon so there's no reason to have an advanced lab fully manned with scientists anymore. I can probably get by with a single standard lab to get the final topics researched and then remove the module completely and build something a little more useful like a defensive module. Might leave the extra wiorkshop there for a little bit until I start building the modules for the star ship.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Don't know if it was the mix of aliens in the battleship that made things interesting or the way that one alien got wise to the fact that stealing a kill from you prevented the XP gain that would make the enemy even stronger in the next encounter, Zombie. Getting smarter every day them critters!

 

Speaking of smarts you've put yours well in evidence here with that equipment fire sale. That was well anticipated indeed as the monthly report figures demonstrated. A bit of a close shave but those time-tested expert management skills came in handy.

 

Along the same vein, farming smaller UFOs - good stuff. Such finessing is going to be needed too as that star ship engine module cost verges on the eye-watering. And maybe you'll be able to get a bit of extra cash from the odd special rewards/bounties some of the states occasionally pay for downing the big nasties.

 

It's a delicate balancing act to keep our knecks above the water but we shall be the ones delivering the 'coup the grace'!

[Zombie]

Time to report my recent escapades with the aliens. I was just minding my own business in the Geoscape trying to get some starship parts researched and then BAM!:

 

 

If I could shoot that battleship down it would alleviate my monetary worries a bit. Wouldn't say it would solve the problem completely, but it would give me some breathing room at least. This wasn't even close to being difficult, let's call it near impossible as there were 3 red battleships, 2 red fighters and a red scout all on the globe at the same time. Not only that, but they all kinda spawned in as a group so they were taking pot shots at anything I had up going to the leader. Took some time but we shot it down eventually:

 

 

I can't just immediately send my transport over to the downed leader battleship as the other airborne UFOs would find me an irresistible target, so those other battleships and fighters have got to go (and quick) because downed UFOs don't last on the map forever. Lost a JAG in the encounters somehow so that was a costly mistake on my part, but we mostly cleared the globe:

 

 

That dumb scout UFO was buzzing around near the south pole (Syrtis Maior) so I didn't bother messing with it. It isn't going to make it up to the downed battleships for a while which makes it a perfect time to send out my team to take care of the leader. We zone in and find a super hot LZ with a crap ton of Preachers and Trilobites just out of visual range at the back of the transport. At this point I almost reloaded as this was unfair, but decided to give it a shot. I figured my best bet to kill all those aliens on turn 1 would be to carpet bomb the place with incendiary (for the Trilobites) and chem grenades (for the Preachers). Here's what things looked like afterwards:

 

 

Kind of a mess as you can't see the corpses through all the fire and gas, but you get the idea. One alien died in the mess during it's turn so that took care of nearly everything nearby. The next round the aliens had some payback as one of my soldiers was hurt by a trilobite and another by a preacher. They were patched up but didn't have much shields left so I had some of my other soldiers drop some on the ground to get them back into the game. After clearing the outside, it was time to huff it to the UFO to get rid of the stuff inside. Mostly all preachers with one lone trilobite holdout who was camped out not moving at all. For the first time ever I dropped a save at the end of the mission just in case something went wonky back in the Geoscape so I wouldn't have to replay part of the mission. Glad I did. EOM report:

 

 

Time to collect that $21 million reward. And there were some recovered artifacts too:

 

 

Personal transporters? Sounds interesting! At this point I hit the F12 button by accident to take a screen shot of the globe which caused the game to reload an old save state so I was glad I dropped that end of mission save when I did. After finishing out the mission again and entering the Geoscape I had a different list of rewards:

 

 

This led me down a rabbit hole of testing which is the reason why I took so long to post the recap. (Sorry!) From what I can tell, there's a list of reward items the game picks from for each successful Swarm leader event. The game picks (4) items off the list and you can get multiple items of the same type (up to 4). Guess I'll let someone else do the legwork to find out what specific items are on a list for each swarm event (unless I do another play thorough in the future that is), but the normal stuff is all here such as distortion field generators, guided missile types, eternal shields, alien life scanners, advanced ship parts and now teleporters and auto-docs. Took some screenshots of the last two so you know what they are:

 

 

I'm assuming an item or two are released at the end of each swarm event. So to condense this, if you don't like the rewards you got, reload the mission and try again. It's random though so you might have to settle for something less than ideal. Your choice. When I was in the reloading phase I pulled a great list so I'm staying with this :

 

 

You can bet these will be put to good use, especially for the front line troops. I'm assuming the Auto-Docs ("Auto-Doctors") can be hot-swapped between soldiers during a mission which would make them even more useful for leveling purposes. Can't wait to give them a try - probably on another crashed battleship.

 

- Zombie

[Space Voyager]

Ok, there are swarms, they are just not going well for the aliens...

 

But I don't see you cheating for better loot. If nothing else, the time investment would probably be too great just to get a slightly better reward.

[Thorondor]

Talk about high stakes, Zombie.

 

When all else fails the aliens throw everything and the kitchen sink at you in a cluster...erm... truckload.

 

Clearly they don't yet fully realize who they're dealing with. The gloves are fully off now though.

 

Despite the pressure of dealing with it all in one go, the resulting cash will indeed come in very handy (to recoup that JAG loss and maintanin a measure of financial viability at that).

 

Otherwise, Auto-docs for the win? I guess we'll see how effective they are, but track record shows you're way too good at field deployment to need that outside of an eventual tight spot or other.

[Zombie]

Otherwise, Auto-docs for the win? I guess we'll see how effective they are, but track record shows you're way too good at field deployment to need that outside of an eventual tight spot or other.

 

Well, I'm thinking they may be more important for the final missions. My front-line troops do get injured from time to time and it would be nice to forego the buddy system if I need to (soldiers can't heal themselves as far as I can tell). Critical hits are the things you have to worry about as you need to use medi-kit doses to remove them, so being immune to that would mean you just need to address the loss of health which this does too.

 

Back at base I did a little reorganizing of soldiers so some other troops could catch up on xp. Other than that, I produced some more particle rifles and akew rifle clips while I was waiting for the transport to refuel. Not going to switch completely over to particle rifles yet as the akew are still very functional in combat - but I'll probably switch over for the final missions where you need bigger clip sizes and better stopping power.

 

So I sent my transport over to the two shot down battleships and picked one. When it landed we were in the corner of the map (as usual) facing the battlefield with nothing around. That was surprising as I've been dealing with very hot LZ's lately. This time it was trilobites and chasers... hmm, that's a change for once. We stayed put in the transport and whittled the population down until about round 36 or so when the scanners showed a chaser and a trilobite moving to my troops. They stopped just short of being in visual range and about 2-3 tiles apart. Birdie went to get a bead on the chaser which was closer and tossed an inferno grenade between them. She killed the chaser but not the trilobite. Tommie then came out and tossed a mark III chem grenade but mis-threw it and ended up killing the trilobite anyway. Here's the aftermath:

 

 

After this there were no aliens outside so we dashed over to the UFO. We took care of a couple straggler chasers milling around downstairs, then plugged the lifts as usual. According to the scanners it looked like there were two chasers around the lift above which leads to the bridge. It's tough sending someone up there with fingers crossed hoping that the aliens are looking away so you can shoot them safely. For the first time I opted to attempt to send a grenade up there. Since some of my troops have antigrav units I thought this should be possible now. When Scottie tossed the stasis grenade up the explosion looked like it propagated on my soldiers downstairs, but no, it exploded where it should have:

 

 

I know chasers are pushovers but they must be pretty soft to mechanical damage. The next turn Scottie went upstairs and blasted the last chaser in the bridge and Duane went upstairs in the middle lift and took care of the last chaser on the mission:

 

 

See? Akew still does some good damage (at least against weak units), but particle is still better. EOM report:

 

 

Not many aliens so the bounty wasn't huge, but the chasers were carrying EEEW rifles and stasis grenades so that kinda made up for the lower funds. Back at base, it became apparent that we wouldn't be able to make it over to the other battleship due to taking forever to refuel. Even the scout which I shot down close by was out of reach. Well, let's sell some stuff then, this sale was from the last two battleships:

 

 

So that came to almost $1.5 million space bucks which increased my funds to nearly $80 million. And there's still a decent stockpile of alien UFO parts which doesn't make cash a huge issue for a little while. I'll be hanging on to the stuff just in case funds get low again at which time I can hold another fire sale.

 

Figured I show you guys what advanced ship parts do to a JAG when you install them. Before and after:

 

 

Makes them go 300 km/h faster and gives them 50 extra hull resistance and colors them gold. It's not much, but it's at least something. Right now I have 3 gold JAGs at my main base and have another set of advanced ship parts I can install on a different JAG somewhere else. Other than that, the engine injector research topic finished:

 

 

Not too expensive to produce, but you need two of these for the starship so it isn't going to be cheap in the long run. The text for this entry isn't written well though (at least I think it's hard to follow in spots).

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

It seems to me, Zombie, you can always count on Chasers to be hit on their weak spots.

 

Akew vs particle comparison - does make particle weaponry quite appealing at somewhere along double the damage as exemplified. I'd say further investment may have merit, in particular if you run into an unexpected difficulty spike in what you face (hey, you've seen how they can go brute force with sheer numbers if nothing else).

 

JAG upgrade: this goes to show you can't ever go wrong with a gold JAG. *ducks rotten tomatoes*

 

Speaking of winging it, that Centaurus engine injector appears to have been... injected with some dubious science, or at least, poorly understood in part by their own devisers: "the accelerators are constructed for extreme output and are supplied by annihilation source".

 

Let's just hope it all flies in the end.

[Zombie]

Another research project for the starship finished, this time it's the landing and storage platform:

 

 

All this researching got me thinking. Maybe I should start producing some of this stuff as it's going to take quite a bit of time, right? Turns out that for things that are used on the ship twice you only need to make one. Kinda odd, but it saves a lot of cash. Not only that, but most of the things I researched so far only take about 5 hours to make. Would be stupid to not take advantage of cranking this out now (or at least as much as I can). So I started to whack some of the things off the list (the game prevents you from manufacturing more than one item, once you make one it disappears off the manufacturing list and it's automatically installed on the ship).

 

Minding my own business on the Geoscape and thought the aliens are probably going to be hanging low for a while licking their wounds from the swarm defeat. Oh no, they decide to send two big ships: a battlecruiser on a mission of espionage and a battleship on (you guessed it) retaliation. It's like clockwork, you are successful in the swarm and the aliens get mad. I was able to draw the battlecruiser over land and my interceptors at Thermos shot it down so we'll have a mission there. Meanwhile the battleship was inbound to my main base:

 

 

Not going to mess with that at all. I didn't contest this and let it create a base defense mission. Kind of a letdown as it was Detroyers and Larva so not a lot of xp to be had. I did get OVNI involved in killing though, I need to get him some xp to get him to the next promotion level. The akew rifles were tearing the aliens to ribbons on this mission - lots of "weak spot" hits for kills.

 

 

Not many aliens for a battleship and no recoverables or weapons. At least it got a rating of very good. Directly after we got done with this it was back on the transport for that battlecruiser. Interesting to see so many big blobs:

 

 

Turns out this was Vipons and Sentinels. Birdie tried to get a bead on a Sentinel and got shot. And even the errant shots still flew into the transport injuring some other soldiers. Luckily all the front line troops had the Auto-Docs so it wasn't too bad. After clearing the hot LZ my guys killed a few more Sentinels and Vipons and then everything went quiet. It looked like there was one alien who wasn't moving a couple screens away so I guessed this was a vipon commander. Tommie got sent over there covertly utilizing cover and spotted it:

 

 

We took this thing out with a long range aimed shot. Simple stuff. I kinda found a bug during this mission too. Duane had a alien life scanner but didn't have an antigrav unit to get airborn. I forgot the last part and somehow found a way to get him in the air. Trouble was, he couldn't get back down and couldn't move either. So he was stuck there till the mission ended. EOM report:

 

 

There, that's more like it. More aliens, guns and stuff to sell. Still not a lot of xp to be had. Luck of the draw I guess.

 

Safely back at base, so let's check out my progress on the Centaurus starship thingy:

 

 

The Living Quarters research is about 80% complete so that'll be next on the production schedule. Pretty sure I can knock everything out in my next post and get that squared away. What I might do after all the research and manufacturing is remove both the advanced lab and advanced workshop and then build another hangar in their spot. Don't know if I need a hangar for the Centaurus so I want to be ready for that. If not, I was considering stationing another transport at the base so I don't have so much trouble with long refueling times.

 

- Zombie

[Space Voyager]

injected with some dubious science, or at least, poorly understood in part by their own devisers: "the accelerators are constructed for extreme output and are supplied by annihilation source".

 

Let's just hope it all flies in the end.

 

Perhaps it is just beyond our understanding!

 

and colors them gold.

 

This is the most important bit!

 

I'm soooo funny.

[Thorondor]

 

@SV: he'll be here all year folks!!

[Zombie]

So I played ahead a little bit the other day to check some things out. You don't need a free hangar for the Centaurus which is a huge plus. Also, you aren't forced into the final missions once the Centaurus is complete - you can prolong the game if you want. There's a button which comes up to send your troops out for the final big push even before your research into that beacon has started. Haven't tried if you can send the troops out anyway or if the lack of the beacon prevents you from going.

 

The Centaurus (along with your troops and transport) arrive at Earth where the last missions are. From the Centaurus you embark on the different missions around the planet. There's a lab on board because you need to research some things you learn so you have to keep an eye on the research topic list to make sure you aren't missing something important. I ran the first mission and it wasn't so bad - mostly like an alien base where you can camp out in the anteroom and wait for the aliens to come to you although I did have to leave the confines there as some of the aliens wouldn't engage until you got closer. I left it at that as I didn't want to spoil the surprise too much.

 

The question I have is what do you guys want me to do? When should I go? Should I play around on Esperanza to hopefully level up OVNI to Captain (~400xp) or Colonel (~2600xp which is probably out of the question unless there's a sudden influx of high xp missions). Most of my other soldiers are getting close too but that would take more time to complete as the xp is getting spread around. Or should I immediately send my troops to Earth and get this thing over with? Or swap all my interceptors over to JAGs or a different metric? Let me know.

 

If your answer was to leave immediately, I'll just need a little time to kit out my final team as I might need to manufacture something. The main thing is that whatever is on your soldiers is it, you cannot reequip. So that means I need to temporarily turn my soldiers into mules (see why strength is important) to beef up on ammo and grenades.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

The way I see it, Zombie, unless you get some more of those special drops from large UFOs (i.e. Autodocs, personal teleporters, etc) Esperanza has little else on offer except a plodding leveling affair.

 

By all means kit out our troops to best effect and get OVNI to Captain, just so you have one, and because it sounds feasible without much further ado if you have him exclusively doing the kills for a while.

 

Rank is bound to mostly have an effect on morale and the rest is really down to your commanding skills and the squad's damage-dealing potential to face whatever is to be found on Earth.

 

The fabled blue marble that is our cradle beckons mightily despite all dangers that now unduly plague it and heed its call we shall afore long, for we must.

 

[Zombie]

Sounds like a plan then. I'll stick with Esperanza until whatever happens last: OVNI gets promoted or we get another swarm. Most likely it'll be OVNI getting promoted as xp has been hard to come by. I'll definitely need to produce a couple more JAG interceptors to help out with shooting stuff down though. And I might even produce another transport to get OVNI into more missions too. Remind me to place him on the transports to exit first so he has the best opportunity for killing.

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

Well, I didn't have to wait very long and a greenish battlecruiser came by for a little mining expedition in Seathopia (the "state" just East of my main base):

 

 

I waited till the UFO was well inland and then sent out my 4 JAGs from Medie to intercept. As soon as my JAGs fired off their first volley of missiles, I immediately sent out my interceptors from Seathopia which meant that as the missiles from this second group were reaching the UFO the cannon rounds from the first group were inbound as well. Talk about a quick cleanup:

 

 

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that I reorganized the interceptors at my bases so that every base has at least one JAG. Had to produce a couple of them and hey, why not another Devil Fish transport for my main base too:

 

 

With that done, my main transport was sent out to take care of the battlecruiser. Unfortunately it was stupid Vipons and Larva again so XP was very limited. OVNI was taking it in stride as usual and proceeded to nearly clean up the entire outside of the map of enemies except a Larva which was tough to shoot from him (looking back it maybe would have been possible if I withdrew everyone close to the larva and moved OVNI closer, but meh, it's not like 5 extra xp would get him to a promotion). There was one Vipon milling around the northeast side of the UFO so OVNI and Galfar chased after it hoping to get it in a crossfire situation. No dice, the thing ran away like a scardy cat clockwise around the UFO. I stationed Galfar along one side and ran OVNI counterclockwise until he spotted it a couple rounds later.

 

 

In the same pic you can see the corpse of a dead Vipon which was one of the commanders we found. Clearing out the inside of the UFO wasn't too difficult since I have some decent strategies to follow. The only thing that threw me a loop was the sound of the last larva inside the UFO which sounded more like a Sentinel than a larva. EOM report:

 

 

OVNI was a real workhorse but there just wasn't enough XP available to level him up. He's getting close though:

 

 

Maybe another mission and that'll do it. In the meantime I produced some more personal particle shields and a 5 more jet packs just so all my soldiers can get one. As that was completing a scout UFO came by to do some espionage. Sent out a lone JAG to take it out which worked out perfectly:

 

 

Sent in the usual team and this time it was Phantoms and Inquisitors. About time we get some XP! OVNI got to work early and killed a couple phantoms and earned enough xp for his promotion. There were more aliens on the map though so Galfar got in on the action and so did Lashunda. There was one phantom which only OVNI was close enough to get a clear shot on so he took it. EOM report:

 

 

Let's allocate those points:

 

 

One point into agility and vitality seemed like an obvious choice so I put one point into reactions to get him to 71 and the last two into throwing to get him to 68. Not perfect, but I'm sure it'll be enough to make throwing useful. In a perfect world I'd play a bunch more missions to get him the next promotion but that's still 2000 xp away. But I can't let him off without getting his kill count to a nice even 100.

 

The guy I'd really like to get to Captain is Baldhor as his stats are very robust. Would be nice to have two team leaders for the final missions just in case the squad needs to get split up for some reason. We'll see what UFO activity comes our way and play it by ear. Speaking of UFOs, a battleship came by to retaliate but I sent out everything close by to shoot it down instead:

 

 

It looks like the crash site is in the ocean, but if you zoom in all the way it's just barely on land (maybe on the beach, who knows). So we'll be tackling this the next time. Might as well update you on the Centaurus:

 

 

It's just the Generator module which is left and my 40 researchers are nearly 50% complete on that so it should finish soon. Then my engineers can produce it and we should be almost ready to go to the final missions - well, I'd like another shot at a swarm to get some good rewards first and maybe level up Baldhor in the process.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

 

Had to chuckle at that Benny Hill-like runaround that Larva gave you, Zombie.

 

With the extra aircraft expenses you've made it was fortunate that battleship got shot down over land. Let's see what bugs you'll be facing on that one. And, rejoice, Captain OVNI on deck to impassively oversee others' acts of bravery from this point on.

 

Can't fault you for taking good care to properly prepare for the final stretch. The wretches will get their due when the time is right!

[Zombie]

Back at it again now that things are starting to slow down at work. So I started on that battleship in late April and got a few turns in - wasn't too hard as it was chasers and trilobites. Little xp with the chasers (5xp) but at least the trilobites offered more (25xp). Baldhor got in on the action early killing a trilobite and Rx shooting a chaser that came in for a close encounter. Gotta love those weak spots:

 

 

After some more kills things got quiet, the aliens kept their distance or withdrew into the UFO. There was a big blip milling around in the air so it must be a trilobite. Eventually it made it's way closer and on the ground and Baldhor was in a perfect position to use an inferno grenade on it:

 

 

Too bad there aren't stronger fire grenades like the chem variants, but then again, it's easy to get caught in the blast if it goes off too close. They still do decent damage though which is why my soldiers have at least one. Once the trilobite was gone it didn't look like there were any aliens outside the UFO anymore so everyone deployed (1/2 along one side, 1/2 along the other side). Glad I did that as a chaser came bolting out of the UFO right to my second team. I let Kathlene handle it, then it was a mad dash to get to the main door to meet up with the rest of the team.

 

Another chaser was hiding out in the long room along the right side so I sent in Kathlene and Baldhor to keep an eye on the door. Kathlene killed the thing when it peeked out stealing the kill from Baldhor but I didn't mind as I'm planning on getting her a promotion too. Why? Because her stats are probably second best among all my soldiers. Anyhow, after killing everything on the ground level, we plugged the lifts as usual. I did a little test by tossing a chem grenade on the lift upstairs leading to the bridge because it looked like there were two chasers camped out there:

 

 

It's a viable strategy if you don't want to go upstairs blind hoping the aliens are looking away from you. In the end, I just sent Baldhor up there alone and three snap shots later all the chasers were gone from the bridge (all the chasers were looking away). The last chaser was in the other part of the UFO so Kathlene took care of it and the mission was over:

 

 

We got some nice cash out of it and a bunch of things to sell too. Above all, we got some xp for a couple soldiers. Back at base and our research into the generator finished:

 

 

After producing the last part the Centaurus was finally complete:

 

 

I took a screenshot of the geoscape to show what the button looks like:

 

 

So even though the last research project into the spaceship isn't complete you can technically send your troops to the final missions. Strange, not sure if this is WAI or a bug. No time to dwell on that though as a fighter UFO was shot down close by which we took care of (this time it was trilobites and preachers, yay xp)!

 

 

One kill went to OVNI to get him to an even 100 kills in his career. Nice! The rest went to Kathlene and Baldhor again.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Hitting the spot is where it's all at alright, Zombie.

 

It may be unintended but I just found your train of thought description of "Too bad there aren't stronger fire grenades like the chem variants, but then again, it's easy to get caught in the blast if it goes off too close." quite mirthful. It's like that back and forth between wanting to burn all them bugs to the ground basking in the firelight and then stopping just short enough at the realization that wholly fulfilling such power fantasies could well get your own a mite too singed.

 

Well handled textbook cleanups otherwise.

 

And so it is, due to your unyielding perseverance, that the countdown to the flight of the Centaurus interstellar spaceship went from far-fetched dream to imminent reality!

[Zombie]

So I had a green battleship show up for some forgotten reason (probably avonium mining) which I shot down and sent in my crew.

 

 

Stupid vipons and hallucinoids again which meant not a lot of xp. I focused most of the killings by the hand of Baldhor as I want to level him up to Captain. But Galfar got in on the action as well as Lash.

 

 

Not too long after that and another battleship (normal colored) stopped by (I think to retaliate against shooting down the green one). It spawned over open ocean all around so I sent in all the interceptors from Thermos to greet it. They just so happened to engage it by my base in Syrtis Maior. Sounds like a "gimme" to me because while the UFO was focused on the Thermos group I sent up my interceptors from Syrtis which started shooting at the back of the thing. Great implementation of tactics and strategy:

 

 

When my crew showed up at the crash site it turned out to be a mixed bag of aliens so there was at least a little more xp to be had. Baldhor did part of the killing and a few of my other soldiers shot some weakling larva, vipons and chasers just to make the mission go faster.

 

 

The vipons and chasers were carrying EEEW and ion weaponry so I can sell that for some cash as well as the UFO components (gotta do a fire sale sometime as this stuff is starting to build again). Then it went quiet for a while. Nothing was happening so I took the time to reequip my squad so the guys doing the killing had the chemoguns and mark III chem grenades. Then the aliens sent in a cruiser (which I shot down) and a scout. Shot that down too obviously. But now I had two UFOs on the map to visit.

 

I went to the cruiser first as it has the better possibility of loot, but it was just vipons and larva again. I saved when I got back to the geoscape and checked to see whether I could send the same transport out but the other scout UFO would disappear before the transport could fuel up. Here's where the second transport comes into play. (A nice little strategy tidbit I found out is that you don't have to take soldiers off a transport and then load them on the second, you can do that at the same time when you click on where the soldier is located). This time it was phantoms and inquisitors which meant some decent xp. Baldhor got in most of the kills and Mephistoex also got in on the action at the end as the last two phantoms showed up at the same time. All that killing got Baldhor his coveted promotion:

 

 

I had a hard time figuring out how I was going to allocate the 5 points though. I wanted to make the biggest splash as I could because I'm getting close to the end of the game and another promotion would take too much time. This is what I came up with:

 

 

The way I play, agility really isn't a major stat as I normally take it slow except when my soldiers make the final dash to get to the doors of the UFO. I still put a point into it though and as always, "con is not a dump stat" so a point went into vitality. Three points were left. Would a point into bravery help any at this point when I have these mind shields? No. What about reactions? It might, but I think the biggest impact would be to allocate all the points into throwing. I know I'm going to need that as I'm constantly tossing grenades.

 

So that's where it stands presently. I'll see about leveling up some more soldiers if there are opportunities to do so. It all depends on the alien types obviously.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Your mastery of airpower causes them no end of pains, Zombie.

 

And it seems they're happy to fuel your fire with more "retaliatory" action which only results in further shaming. But do vat-grown creatures even have an inkling of what that may be?

 

It matters not as Captain Baldhor rises to new heights in ability as well as rank and shall soon resume delivering the harsh lessons such invaders must be schooled in!

[Zombie]

Well, a blackish battleship stopped by for a visit. It spawned over Thermos and flew west to Seathopia which was supposedly heading further west to Ilyria where my main base is located. So as it neared land I sent out the Thermos interceptors to engage. As soon as the UFO fired it's first shot, I sent the interceptors west instead of south to hopefully prevent the shot from connecting. That works sometimes and it did in this case too. With the stupid UFO focused only on my Thermos interceptors, I sent up my interceptors from Seathopia which fired shot upon shot at the thing with impunity. Here's what the setup looked like:

 

 

Now, here's the thing: the UFO focuses all of it's shots upon only one interceptor so I'm going to test out another scenario soon. What I'll do is pick one of those JAGs and send it out to engage with the UFO one-on-one first. After engaging and then fleeing, I'd then send up the rest of the interceptors from the base to shoot at it. My guess is that they should be safe while the UFO is busy shooting at the initial JAG. In fact, once the UFO is engaged on that JAG you could send as many ships as you can to take shots at it. Might be a viable strategy when you need to take down the big stuff or when your weapons are weak (if that's the case then prioritizing shielding before weaponry should be the focus). Anyway, even sending out an entire fleet as a decoy isn't a terrible idea.

 

Needless to say this decoy strategy worked pretty good and the only time my interceptor took damage was when the UFO was destroyed and my guard was down (there were still shots inbound though so you still need to babysit the interceptor to help dodge these garbage-time shots). As my interceptors began to head back to base a pop-up appeared (shots from my interceptors are still seen):

 

 

Finally the Centaurus research is complete! Let's take a look at the UFOPaedia entry:

 

 

That should be it now for research. I don't see anything on the list anymore:

 

 

Without the need for scientists anymore, I'll discuss end-game main base reorganization in my next post. It's not a huge concern anymore obviously, but I think if we look at what we need at the end, we can pre-plan a build to hopefully make the transition easier. Please don't use my playthrough as a guide as it's far from perfect.

 

With that said, there's a battleship on the ground so I sent in my team. It was Preachers and Telemats so finally some decent xp! I ended up spreading the wealth around a little bit between most of my soldiers. For the most part, cleaning the outside was a cake walk, but inside I had a minor lapse of strategy when I sent a soldier to shoot a preacher when the door to the room was open allowing the alien to reaction fire. Remember: move first, then open doors! Not too much else to say about it except to show the EOM report:

 

 

No promotions, but there may be one soon if I can get my team into some more missions. With this being the end of July in-game, I was expecting a swarm to show up. Nope, nothing. Oh well, guess I'll wait another month then. Besides, it'll give me time to level up more of my team. Here's the monthly report:

 

 

Everywhere I had a base those states were happy. The last two gave me a poor rating, but it wasn't that big of a loss. I can live with that. Onward we go yet again.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

 

And so it is, Zombie, that you reintroduce the fine art of the wild goose chase.

 

Giving that battleship the runaround in the manner you described (using a JAG to sting and then lead it off) may well work, just as long as it can sustain the hits that it takes, otherwise being the sole focus of aggression will cost you (not only funds but time to replace).

 

The Centaurus is a rather crazy technological achievement, delivering intergalactic flight no less, especially seeing as it's "Extracting power from spacial essence itself". That should be enough to tickle most scientists silly but the real kicker is that ending bit "We now believe our work has been completed", to which our operatives might respond "How about putting that faith to the test yourselves - you'd be prime candidates for a maiden voyage; just think of all the data you can gather!"

 

As for Stratos and Peloponesia's funding dip amidst all the rest, that's borderline irrelevant. You have the means and the drive to push it all home!

[Zombie]

Now, here's the thing: the UFO focuses all of it's shots upon only one interceptor so I'm going to test out another scenario soon. What I'll do is pick one of those JAGs and send it out to engage with the UFO one-on-one first. After engaging and then fleeing, I'd then send up the rest of the interceptors from the base to shoot at it. My guess is that they should be safe while the UFO is busy shooting at the initial JAG. In fact, once the UFO is engaged on that JAG you could send as many ships as you can to take shots at it. Might be a viable strategy when you need to take down the big stuff or when your weapons are weak (if that's the case then prioritizing shielding before weaponry should be the focus). Anyway, even sending out an entire fleet as a decoy isn't a terrible idea.

 

I did a little testing on this both yesterday and today. What I found out is that you need to at least get an interceptor (ideally a JAG upgraded with advanced ship parts so it can stand toe-to-toe with the big UFO's) within eye shot of the UFO so that it focuses on that. Once it's the primary threat, you can fly it around randomly to try to dodge any shots from the UFO, but from what I've seen, those are homing shots and can't be dodged. At least this is true for Battleships, didn't test this out against any other alien ships.

 

The thing to remember is that you'll want to engage the battleship with other interceptors asap because time is of the essence. My suggestion is to fly to your closest base or midway between a few of your bases, then when your other interceptors get in range, stay still and just shoot.

 

Without the need for scientists anymore, I'll discuss end-game main base reorganization in my next post. It's not a huge concern anymore obviously, but I think if we look at what we need at the end, we can pre-plan a build to hopefully make the transition easier. Please don't use my playthrough as a guide as it's far from perfect.

 

I'll just post a pic of my current base to see what it looks like:

 

 

Can anything be pared down or eliminated to make more room? Not really (though this should be tagged with a huge asterisk as it depends on how you play or what you find more important). On the top line of the base (starting from the left) we have

1. Command center. You need this and it can't be sold so you're stuck.
   
2. Living Quarters. Necessary? In your main base, absolutely as you need soldiers to go on the final mission.
   
3. Hospital Ward. Necessary? Maybe not if you are careful in keeping soldiers alive, but this is like a backup in case the unthinkable happens to a high ranking officer.
   
4. Power Plant. Absolutely necessary, cannot be sold or deconstructed.
   
5. Workshop. May or may not be a necessity - it depends on what you are building yet and if you have an advanced workshop.
   
6. Surgery. Much like the Hospital Ward it isn't a huge necessity if you keep your soldiers alive and uninjured, but that never happens. Best to have this so your soldiers can get back on the job quicker.
   

So what about all these hangars? Well, I like having two transport ships available as you'll be able to visit more UFOs. What about the other two with JAGs? Your main base is intentionally crippled right from the start so there isn't much room for a lot of stuff, do you want to skimp on interceptors? I sure don't, as it is I'm heavily relying on my other bases to take up the slack. Ok, there's the last hangar at the bottom being built, necessary? Nope, not necessary. But I'm going to be switching all my interceptors over to JAGs soonish so you need an extra hangar to house the things. Advanced workshop necessary? Yes as you'll need to produce things at a reasonable clip. Advanced Detection? Need that? Technically no. But I don't even have a normal detection module built anymore and if you somehow detect a UFO you'll get no information from it at all. It's just nice knowing where a UFO is headed so that you can send out your interceptors strategically.

 

So after all the JAGs are built, I could remove the hangar at the bottom, then build 4 particle defense systems in it's place. But at this point in time, defensive systems are kinda a waste as they take too long to build and I have all these interceptors which are able to shoot down inbound retaliation battleships, and even if a ufo makes it through, my soldiers can mop up a base defense mission pretty quick/easily. I possibly might remove the lone normal workshop at the top and build a normal detection module there to see if it stacks with the advanced version.

 

Oh, base headache woes!

 

- Zombie