sangrahl

The saga's going great... Easily pushing forward to my favorite 'chaptered' Xcom writing. Kansai Arc rocked... as did Unknown Menace... But in covering the wide expanse of the full campaign, the wrenching pseudo-reality felt glazed over to me. (For single-serve reading, Fullauto's pieces are top-notch.) The hardest part for me is knowing it's still the 16:20 hours on the 23rd, and there's still a long ways until 23:30 on the 24th for Gearhead to drop in. My love of Bradbury's 'Mobile Infantry' just ensures that XCom's Powered Armor has a special place in my heart. (And as adreneline-pumping as the knockoff movie may have been... they killed a piece of me to see the amor left forgotten.)

I had the same 1st encounter with a Vipon Commander. My problem: He was outside and behind one wing of my Ranger. (Sniped 4 guys just exiting the craft... 5th guy got winged and was able to shove a Explosive Rocket down his throat... ::sigh:: I forgot to replace the load w/ Stun prior to mission launch. GAH.) Worst nasty surprise was discovering that Bman was studious with his coding of the XCom Alien Cyberdisks... Nuked 5 guys during a Breach'n'Sweep of a downed Fighter.

There's currently a bug related to the upgraded radar developed by CySlider (CTD upon loading a Tactical Map a second time in a session)... A patch is available on the same ufo-scene forum in a lower thread dedicated to Cy's Radar Mod. (found here.) Considering that these mods are purely fan-made, and almost wholly playtested on the fly, there is an amazing turnaround on both new updates and bug fixes. If not for Bman, and now CySlider (radar) and Baldhor (hire/fire upgrade), I'd have left UFO:ET behind to gather dust on my shelf; another wasted $30 to follow after so many others.

http://www.ufo-scene.com/plugins/forum/for...wtopic.php?1576 Bman has posted on ufo-scene the 3.10 release of his "Ease of Use" Mod. **Requires the official patch, and his additional Multimedia upgrade mod (available on the same DL page) and is not compatable with CC's separate sound fix patch. I'm not one for massive cut/paste posts, so I'll just leave the link to his ufo-scene forum post (above) for the feature list, and a direct link to his DL Page, here.

I think the closest you could get to that would be a "special rules" session of UFO2K... (I personally haven't given '2K a try, yet... But, I will admit that it's my own lack of PvP prowess that has kept me from embarassing myself.) Personally, I use a combination of XComUtil and both an executable editor (for changing weapon stats and text strings) & save-game editor (troop stat adjustment)... along with ufoeuet, and Mok's voice files. (I've considered trying BB's Custom Uniform mod, as well, but I'm afraid it might cause the game to try and collapse in on itself... I've already had a few oddities pop up in-game.)

Beats me... looks like it got eaten by the board, somehow... Luckily, I originally typed into Notepad... (and remembered to save) Not much lost, really... but annoying, none-the-less.

After finally getting UFO:EU back up and running again (and mildly infuriating the wife with playing the same game that infuriated her back in '94-95... "It's 3am, hon... come to bed." "Can't sleep. The chryssalids will get me..." ::*boom-boom-boom* of AC-HE fire in the background:: "Hah. Take that, crab-boy." "Ugh, G'night, hon." "Night, dear."), I've begun reading up on alternate gamestyles and perusing the available fan-fics in my off-time. Between Skonar, FullAuto (you both seem to bounce off of, and compliment, each other well), and now Hobbes (slowly working through The Unknown Menace) I've been pulled headlong into the world of X-Com and "plausible" role/gameplay. Between Skonar's technical saavy (I honestly can't wait for Project:Gearhead to touch down in the Siege of NYC), FullAuto's meat-n-bones portrayal of internal headgames (I was spoiled by Spoils of War's introspection and solid, yet disheartening, end), and Hobbes' take on global intrigue/cooperation (I love the die-hard adherence to 90% of UFO's canon, though I will admit that it's slow going due to the dubious translation to english and strategycore's utter destruction of many punctuation marks and words-per-post limit that neutered a few longer chapters) not only is the game more tangible, but truly darker and inherently hostile. Self-imposed limitations ("Heavy" Earth Weaponry is Powered/Flying Armor-use ONLY; Flying Armor is restricted to a single Heavy Weapon at a time; Psionic Operatives restricted to one-hand weapons and Personal Armor; Transport for cleanup/retrieval must be in the air and en route ASAP to limit possible civilian exposure.) and edited 'improvements' (More powerful HC-Rounds; faster AC fire; improved explosives at cost of encumbrance; manually increased Strength & Energy for Powered soldiers to wield their artillery), gives the feel of no-holds-barred warfare against the gathering Alien presence. By the time Power Armor-clad troops are leveling farms in Europe or deforesting acres of