Welcome to our FINAL Special Edition "Creating Aftershock" Newsletter!

In this jam-packed newsletter, we'll be chatting with Martin Klima, Project Lead on Aftershock at ALTAR Interactive, who's brought us no end of cool stuff to drool over!

As always, we'll also be bringing you more from some of the other games we cover - the X-COM series and, of course UFO Aftermath.

Contents

Please select a section to jump to by clicking on any of the headings below, or push the boat uot and read the whole thing if you can handle it!

• Creating Aftershock
  
  
  • Martin Klima Chat
  • Exclusive Media
    
  • The NEW Aliens
  • Hands-On Aftershock Preview
  • Special Edition Teaser
  • Competition Winners
    
  • Pre Order Now
    
    
• X-COM
  
  
  • Fan Fiction Story Preview
  • New Pages
    
    
• UFO Aftermath
  
  
  • Preda's Conspiracy Theories
  • New Pages
    
    
• StrategyCore
  
  
  • Core Gear
  • Next Edition
  • Feedback
    
  • Unsubscribe

Creating Aftershock

Martin Klima - Aftershok's Project Lead, is the fourth and final person to be met with our barrage of questions. The photo to the left shows him posing next to Aftershock at E3 earlier this year!

1) Tell us a little about yourself - what is your name and where are you from?
Hello intrepid reader! My name is Martin Klima and I am originally from Bristol, UK. It's a long way from Brno where I'm presently stationed, and while Brno is a cosy little town, I sure hope I won't stay here for the rest of my days.

2) What is your job on the Aftershock team?
I am the Project Lead, that is, I oversee the development of the game and create its overall design (to be fleshed out by designers and programmers). It's best summed up in the words of poet: "Through all the thankless years/Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom.

3) What do you do in a typical day working on Aftershock?
It really depends on the stage of the project (and if there is one good thing about developing games, it's this: it's not a routine). Early on I spend more time creating the actual design document and framework for other designers and as the project crawls forward, more and more time is spent checking the actual overall progress and nudging the development forward.

4) What was the funniest moment for you when working in the office while working on Aftershock? Are there any office pranks you'd like to tell us about?
There is nothing funny about our office, mind you. We are all serious, responsible adults working in a professional environment highly conductive to the fast development of the cutting-edge quality software. Robert, take off your rubber gloves and let that thing crawl back to its fridge, NOW!

5) What additions in this game do you feel make it really stand out against other squad based strategy games, and it's predecessor – UFO Aftermath?
I’d prefer not to compare Aftershock to other games; that is for others to judge. With respect to Aftermath, I think Aftershock stands out almost in all areas: it is more complex, more tactical, more strategic, more RPG, more colourful, more difficult, with longer loading times and higher hardware requirements.

6) What influenced your particular part of the development? What sources did you get inspiration from?
These are too numerous to mention them all. Any game (just as any other creative enterprise) needs to draw inspiration from other works in the genre, and Aftershock certainly does. It is not about inspiration, though, it is about what you do with it.

7) What are your hopes for the future of the UFO series (without giving too much away)?
Well, my biggest hope is that other people than me will be involved with it.

8) To finish off, would you like to give a message to the gamers or anyone else out there?
Don’t worry, be happy.

Cheers Martin!


Media

There's so much packed into thsi newsletter that the stuff Martin gave us below barely breaks the surface.

After checking out the greenhouse model below (remember chaps - windows make poor cover!) and the sound effects, head on further down the newsletter to find out about a NEW alien species we know as the Wargots!

The graphics, sound effects and a whole host of screens fom the development process that budding modders may wish to have a look at (some of which are in the Wargot article below) are all available in one zip file in our files section here: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/files/?dlid=217



The NEW Aliens

In another BLINDINGLY good exclusive from StrategyCore, we're ecstatic to announce that there will be at least one more alien race in UFO Aftershock.

Now, very little is known about this new race, but undaunted by this, our very own Accounting Troll has written a piece introducing what we do know and what their role in the game could be. Read on to find out more!


The Wargot's and their place in the UFO Universe

Several screenshots recently released by ALTAR (below) show how some of the files used in Aftershock fit together. They also have a shot of part of the weapons table. The weapons table reveals that you will encounter an intelligent race called the Wargots. The Wargots have a distinctive military technology which cannot be precisely replicated by human engineers, just like the Reticulan weapons in Aftermath.

The screenshots only list some of the weapons, and a few of their statistics, but the following weapons are known to be of Wargotish origin:

• Wargot plasma rifle
• Wargot machine gun
• Wargot grenade launcher

Curiously, the names suggest that Wargot military technology is based on the weapons humanity uses in Aftermath. However, the Wargots cannot be a human faction because if they were, it would be possible for human engineers to precisely replicate Wargot technology.

I have put forward three possible theories on this new enemy and how they are going to fit into the game.

Of course, it is possible that the Wargots are entirely motivated by a benign desire to help humanity. However, it would make Aftershock a bit anti-climatic if all you are going to have to do is to hang on until the Wargots turn up to sort everything out for you.


Employers of the Reticulans

Some of the technology used by the Reticulans, especially the bionode material, was not indigenously developed. This means that either the Reticulans acquired it through contact with other races, or that they are merely the hired hands of another power, a theory that was expanded upon in an earlier edition of the newsletter. If the Reticulans are the hired hands then perhaps the Wargots are their employers, and now they have turned up to claim Earth for themselves.

It seems odd that the Wargots would go to the expense of hiring Reticulan mercenaries to attack Earth as this adds a needless complication to their plan. Perhaps the Wargots thought that humanity would inflict casualties on the invaders, so they avoided loss of life among their own people by using the Reticulans as cannon fodder.

It is also possible that the Wargots wanted somebody else to take the blame for the attack on Earth. This would avoid retaliatory action against the Wargots by the interstellar community until it is too late. When the Council of Earth makes contact with the Old Greys, it is revealed that their government has despatched a military fleet to help humanity, so it is possible that their government managed to learn the identity of the invaders before the Qport was destroyed.

The final room in the lunar base in Aftermath is guarded by a species of transgenants that is not encountered anywhere else in the game. This species also has the unusual distinction of featuring in some of the official Aftershock artwork. It could be that they are actually Wargot envoys overseeing the Reticulan efforts. This would explain why they are in the most well guarded facility that the Reticulans have.


Local Rivals to the Reticulans

It is known that the Reticulans are only one of many intelligent races in the universe. The time since they developed space flight is described in Aftermath as several thousand years. As the age of the universe is thought to be around 15-20 billion years, it follows that the Reticulans are a relatively young civilization and they are overshadowed by their older neighbours. It is likely that the renegade Reticulan faction is motivated by the desire to turn their race into a major power in interstellar politics.

Any spacefaring race that finds out about the Reticulan experiments on Earth would try to stop them for fear of what the Reticulans would do with the power they will gain if the experiments succeed. However, some races might be tempted by the possibility of controlling this power for themselves.

If the Wargots are a local rival to the Reticulans, then it is likely that they had a covert presence on Earth even before the invasion as a close relationship between Earth and the Reticulans would not be in the best interests of the Wargots. It might even be that they have sponsored human terrorist groups and rogue nations opposed to the national governments in contact with the Reticulans. Conducting this policy would require them to have built a second Qport somewhere in the depths of our solar system. This sort of thing went on all the time in Africa during the Cold War.

When the Wargots found out about what the renegade Reticulans were planning, they would have allowed the initial invasion to happen so that they could gain useful data. However, their military intelligence operatives would have worked to ensure that the Reticulan plans never quite seemed to go as well as they should have done. At the same time, they would not have wanted humanity to win before they had collected all the data they needed.

Once they have obtained enough data to replicate the Reticulan experiments, their next step will be to ensure that they will be the first to build a Planetmind by wiping out the renegade Reticulans and then destroying Earth so that nobody else can obtain the necessary data.

This theory gives rise to the possibility that more intelligent races will become embroiled in the war for control of Earth and the secrets it possesses. Some will launch a direct military attack while others will use trickery by claiming to be the guardians of humanity. Others may decide that Pandora’s Box can be closed for the overall good of the galaxy if Earth is quietly destroyed. It is also possible that while the Reticulan government is officially appalled at the invasion, it will be happy to take advantage of what the renegades have done. Humanity’s prospects of survival seem bleak indeed.


Intelligent Transgenants

The transgenant species encountered in Aftermath do not possess any recognizable form of intelligence, and they were purely driven by a desire to destroy the remnants of humanity. Even the humanoid transgenants are unable to open doors or use group tactics.

However, the transgenants are not simply random mutations but distinctive species. Also, the autopsy reports on the plectons and sporeblowers revealed that they were biomechanical creations and not mutations of indigenous life forms. This means that there is intelligent design behind the transgenants; somebody or something designed them for a specific purpose.

The screenshots and artwork that ALTAR have released show that there are going to be several new transgenant species in Aftershock. This means that the Reticulans or whoever else was responsible for designing the transgenants are still at work. Presumably they would have studied the combat reports from the first few years after the Fall and noted that the ability of the humanoid transgenants to use human and Reticulan weapons made them highly dangerous, despite their lack of intelligence.

It could be that one of the new transgenant species possesses both intelligence and the ability to use tools and weapons. If so, this would be the most dangerous transgenant species of them all.

This theory explains the similarity between Wargot weapons and the weapons humanity uses in UFO: Aftermath. However, it would require the Wargots to have built or refitted some arms factories in remote regions of Earth.

It is possible that the Reticulans have completed their experiments on Earth, and the Wargots are a leaving present to make sure that humanity never recovers from the invasion. It is also possible that the Planetmind has become self aware and it wants to get rid of both humanity and the Reticulans; the Wargot army having been created and equipped for when the opportunity arises.


Hands-On Preview

Our very own Olav "Slaughter" Lognvik was on his holidays earlier this week and stopped by ALTAR Interactive's offices in Brno. Whilst there, he got to play with the latest build (somewhere just before the gold-master version) of the game and we flogged him until he wrote a report.

Don't worry though, he knows it's for our reader's (you) benefit, and he's not going to press charges.

The preview is so thorough though that we can't possibly fit it into this newsletter along with everything else - instead you'll have to head over to the main site here: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/ufo/pg/aspreview1

Special Edition Teaser

Interested in finding out what's in the Special Edition version? Well, we can reveal (thanks to Martin) that a cool UFO Aftershock comic will be one of several neat things it contains!

Check out the page we got our grubby little mitts on to the left!

Cheers Martin!


Competition Winners

After three and a half weeks and much nail-biting by some entrants (who I'm sure can't wait to find out whether they won or not), we can announce who the winners are.

Before we do that though, we'd just like toexplain how the winners were picked for the benefit of the other entrants. All correct entries were gathered up and assigned a number from 1-71 (71 being the total number of correct entries). We then used the time-tested method of emailing Martin Klima to ask him to pick three numbers between 1 and 71 inclusive. These three numbers correspond to our three winners below:

• First Prize - Sam Overend - Congratulations!
  Prize: A Signed Collector's Edition of UFO Aftershock PLUS an original boxed copy of X-COM: UFO Defense
  
• Runners Up - Subdane and Mike (from soulfield.net) both win a copy of UFO Aftershock each

All three winners will also receive a signed UFO Aftermath t-shirt and a signed UFO Aftermath poster.

So... to those who didn't win -at least we've let you know early enough that you can still pre-order the game well in advance [shameless_plug] There's a handy link below for that [/shameless_plug]

If you want to be kept informed of any future competitions then simply make sure you stay signed up to this newsletter. We may not be running any for a while, but when we do, it'll be full of cool prizes and you'll be among the first to know about it!


Pre-order Now!

If you don’t want to enter the competition, you can still pre-order your copy of Aftershock in advance by clicking on the image below:

X-COM


Fan Fiction Story

What follows is an excerpt from FullAuto's fan fiction story - The Spoils of War

Mac watched the man walk. He was unsteady, but no more than if he was drunk or wounded. He didn’t have the shuffling gait of a zombie. Mac put his finger on the trigger, just in case.
Abruptly, the man staggered across the pavement and sat down on the bonnet of a taxi. He laid back, smearing dirt across the shining yellow paint. He was muddy, and a dirty bandage covered his right forearm.
"Survivor from the Park." Mac moved his finger to outside the trigger guard.
"Maybe we should warn him." Perry suggested, looking over his shoulder at Mac.
"Sure, run down there and give him directions, Perry." Parker’s tone dripped acid sarcasm. "Better still, go give him a gun. Your gun."

The story can be found here: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=4249.It's not complete yet, but please feel free to leave any comments and words of encouragement for FullAuto in the X-COM Fan Fiction forum here: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/index.php?showforum=20


New Pages

We've now merged and put online the X-COM articles from our previous newsletters. You can find them easily on our site in the X-COM section by clicking on the UFO: Enemy Unknown heading and clicking on the relevant page.

For simplicity's sake though, they're also listed below for those of you that may not have read them all.

• Weapons in Enemy Unknown
• Alien Races in Enemy Unknown

Many thanks to FullAuto for taking the time to write such informative and amusing pieces!




UFO Aftermath

Weapons Guide

Accounting Troll strikes again - this time with an overview of Psionic Weapons in Aftermath.


Psionic Weapons in UFO: Aftermath

Although the Reticulans have a limited psionic ability, they need mechanical devices to enhance and focus this ability in combat. Some of these devices are extremely powerful when properly used. Your soldiers can learn to utilise their dormant psionic abilities to turn these devices against the invaders.

Before you can use psionic weapons, you need to capture at least one psionic weapon from the Reticulans and then research psi weapon operation. All psionic weapons utilise the psionic skill in their operation. It is usually a good idea to turn one or two of your soldiers into psionics specialists.

No transgenant species possesses a higher nervous system. This means that the humanoid transgenants cannot use psionic weapons. It also means that all transgenant species are immune to mind control attacks using the psi projector, although other psionic weapons work against them.

All psionic weapons use an integral power cell that cannot be replaced or recharged during the course of a mission. They are automatically recharged when your squad returns to a base. It is a good idea for a soldier equipped with a psionic weapon to carry one or two more in his backpack.

Psionic helmets give good protection against psionic attack, however there are two drawbacks. A psionic helmet cannot be used in combination with heavy armour or with the hybrid version of any of the alien armour systems in the game. Also, psionic helmets do not give any protection against other forms of attack. This means that a soldier equipped with a psionic helmet is left vulnerable to most weapons in the game. Psionic helmets should only be used in missions against the Biomass transgenants.

The psi stinger is a small alien weapon that works by temporarily paralysing its target for a few moments. Other than that, the target is unharmed. In practice, it is identical to the integral weapon used by a chrysalis, except that the range is lower.

The range of a psi stinger depends on the psionic skills of the operator and the amount of time a target remains paralysed depends on its willpower.

There are a couple of situations in which having a psi stinger can give your soldiers a breathing space.

- The interior of a UFO is often very small. The entire crew will rush your squad, and the mission will often be decided in a matter of seconds. In these circumstances, a soldier equipped with a psi stinger can earn his pay by temporarily paralysing any Reticulan with an area effect weapon.
- In missions against the transgenants, the helicopter pilot sometimes dumps your soldiers in an unfavourable location, such as next to a deathbellows.


This is an alien assault rifle that utilises the psionic skills of its operator to inflict physical damage to a target. The Reticulans first use it when the Area-51 mission appears on the map.

There is no true burst fire mode with a psi blaster. When a soldier is ordered to use burst mode, he will fire the psi blaster more quickly by spending less time aiming it.

This is one of the weakest weapons the Reticulans have. Range barely matches that of the weaker human assault rifles, and the damage potential is somewhat less. It is not worth any of your soldiers with this weapon.


This is the only human made psionic weapon in the game. Like the alien psi blaster, it harnesses the psionic skills of its operator to inflict physical damage to a target. In order to build a psi crusher, you must research psi principles, which becomes available once you have researched psi weapon operation.

The psi crusher has slightly lower range than its alien equivalent, but it inflicts considerably more damage and it is much lighter.

The psi crusher is sometimes useful in missions against the Biomass transgenants, but there are far better weapons for missions against the other transgenants and the Reticulans.


NB: Psi projectors do not work on transgenants.

This is the ultimate psionic weapon in the game. It is designed by the Reticulans to allow its operator to temporarily gain complete control of the mind of a human soldier. Once you can get some psi projectors from the Reticulans, you can turn the tables on them. Ordering a Reticulan soldier with a microslug accelerator to turn on his comrades is one of the highlights of the game.

Psi projectors are among the equipment that the Reticulans start using when the Kasputin Yar mission appears. Although they are rare at first, they become more commonly available as the game progresses. At first the only place where you can pick up a psi projector is in the interior of an alien base. Losing a couple of experienced soldiers in return for your first psi projector is a good exchange.

The range of a psi projector depends on the psionic skills of the operator. How long the target remains under control depends on the willpower of the target.

If one of your soldiers manages to take control of a Reticulan then his mind is entirely focussed on controlling the Reticulan until it breaks free. He will not even notice any other Reticulans in his vicinity. This means that the soldier will need to be protected. The upside is this applies to the Reticulans, so if a Reticulan takes control of a soldier’s mind, your other soldiers can sneak up on it.

The psi projector is one of the few weapons that works through walls. This means you can use scouts to find a Reticulan, while your well protected psi projector operator takes control of its mind.

If one of your soldiers falls under alien mind control, he will immediately look for your other soldiers and attack them. There are several options for dealing with this problem:

- Use a psi projector on your soldier. If successful, he will immediately regain control of his mind. Sometimes the aliens will launch another mind control attack on your soldier, and an odd kind of duel will develop.
- Find the Reticulan operating the psi projector and kill or disable him before your soldier does too much damage.
- Get away from your soldier until he comes to his senses. Unfortunately, the aliens will usually just mind control him again.
- Order the rest of your squad to attack the errant soldier until he loses consciousness. This is rather hard hearted and leaves you with one less soldier to fight the Reticulans, but it might be your only choice if you don’t have any psi projectors and the soldier under mind control has a powerful weapon. If you have a medic on standby, your downed soldier will be able to return to the fight under your orders.
- Abort the mission. This is an extreme option as you will lose the soldier under mind control, as well as the chance to capture a psi projector. A good strategist can recognize when to cut and run in order to keep the majority of his soldiers alive. Nobody said the good guys have to win them all.

Fans of the X-Com series will probably recognize the similarities between the psi projector and the X-Com psi-amp. The psi projector is nowhere near as powerful as the war winning psi-amp of X-Com Enemy Unknown. It is more like the watered down psi-amp of X-Com Apocalypse; a useful weapon to have, but not one that will practically guarantee victory.



Preda's Conspiracy Theories

WARNING: SPOILERS WITHIN

The Reticulan Culture

The Glossary section defines Reticulans as ‘culturally swarm-minded’. This term is usually confused with the term ‘hive mind’, but the two concepts are very different.

A Hive mind is a form of collective consciousness strongly exhibiting traits of conformity and groupthink. What is important is that a hive mind ALWAYS has a Queen, or an absolute leader of some sort, to which all individuals of the hive are linked (bees and ants are the best example). This makes a hive easy to destroy, because you basically just have to kill the ‘Brain’, wich leaves the rest of the hive disorganized. Reproducing through parthenogenesis hints that the Reticulans used to form such a collective conciousness at their origins.

A swarm mind is a large, self-organized group of individuals that have no centralised control structure dictating how individuals should behave, so that local interactions between individuals alone lead to the emergence of global behaviour. The swarm literarly organizes itself, and is therefore leaderless and harder to destroy, and also much more efficient.

So: the Reticulans seem to have formed a hive-mind in the past, but then re-educated themselves to become a swarm and lose centralised control, thus becoming far more resistant.

In my opinion, the researcher’s idea of a Reticulan Queen "calling the shots" was wrong, the females being merely molded into the swarm, and being of no greater importance than a male. This leads to my second ‘theory’: that the objectives of the Moon Mission were NOT Reticulan Queens.

The Moon Mission objectives

In the second part of the Moon Mission in UFO: Aftermath, you have to neutralize two series of artifacts: some that look like incubators of some sort, and the so-called Queens (in Accounting Troll’s opinion).

The Incubators

These, in my opinion, are incubators in which Biomass nodes are allowed to develop. The creatures within look very much like the ones in the UFO’s central containers and the Biomass nodes in certain tactical missions. The Reticulans probably used themselves or some other Reticulan lifeforms to create these nodes with the green liquid present in Planters. The nodes were then put in the transport containers at the Planter’s center. The Planters then took them to Earth and landed at their designated locations. The container was opened, and the crew abandoned the ship, wich was to be buried by the growing biomass field. If you look closely at the nodes in Biomass missions, you will see the container, the adult node, and whatever’s left of the planter.

The Final Objectives

In Accounting Troll’s opinion, these are the Reticulan Queens. But, if you look at them, you see that they are in fact biomechanical, with pipes running through them (you see this especially after you destroy them), and that they pay absolutely no resemblace to the Reticulans, although Queens should look at least similar to the average individual. These two facts lead me to believe that they are actually the ‘teats’ mentioned in the last CoE message: non-Reticulan organisms that generate the Biomass node material, the green liquid I mentioned above. In my opinion, these were encountered by the Reticulans in their space expeditions, and probably caused the creation of the renegade faction. It is logical to place these teats on the moon, where no human primitive barbarian could go.

Conclusions

The conclusion is that destroying these teats, the remaining Biomass nodes, the Moon Base AND half of the Reticulan’s fleet determines them to give up their Planetmind project and leave the Solar Sistem for good. So much for 50 years’ worth covert operations.

Thanks Preda!



Fan Fiction Story Preview

An excerpt from cracking fan fiction story from Accounting Troll called "Chronicles of the Interregnum":

"We can't win, get out of here!" shouted Edward to the unseen militiamen. Edward ran to the nearest cover - the small valley of Dale Brook. The stream flowed down to the north and then the east, meeting the sea in the town. Hopefully it would provide the cover Edward needed to get away. As Edward quietly picked his way downstream, he heard the sound of the Oerlikon and some small arms fire from the fort. Then there was a series of explosions and the guns of the fort's defenders fell silent. Edward hoped that at least some of them had survived"

The full story can be found here: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=2502.

Comments are happily received in the AM / AS Fan Fiction forum here: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/index.php?showforum=27


New Pages

Accounting Troll has spent many long hours putting together a VERY cool Transgenants section. It has stats and tactical info on each of the 20 enemies and goes into a huge amount of detail. Check it out below:

• Transgenants

You can also find online the Aftermath articles from our previous newsletters. They're available on our site in theUFO section by clicking on the Aftermath heading and clicking on the relevant page.

Tthey're also listed below for those of you that may not have read them all.

• Pistols
• Rifles
• Personal Defense Weapons
• Reticulans
• Conspiracy Theory

Many thanks to Accounting Troll for digging up so much detailed information - it'll definitely come in handy!




StrategyCore

Core Gear

You can now buy mouse mats, t-shirts and mugs with various humorous StrategyCore wordings on them. This is only the start of what we hope will be an amusing little line of things you can buy that aren't just pretty, but are also useful.

Check out our online shop here: http://www.cafepress.com/strategycore

We're also very much open to suggestions for amusing taglines and ideas to put on the gear, so if you have something amusing in mind, we'd love to hear about it here: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=4269


Next Edition

Well it's very sad, but that's it from out Creating Aftershock series. From here on in we're not setting dates for future newsletters (all the staff just sighed with relief), though it's likely we'll send out a short newsletter around Aftershock's release date.

Stick around - our newsletters are always full to the brim with cool articles and interesting news!

Feedback

We want to know what you think – what you liked and what you thought could have been better. Let us know what you want to see more of. Your voice could shape future editions, so give us your feedback here: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/pg/contact remembering to select Newsletter Feedback from the drop-down list.