Zombie

Swarm Leader Part 6 During the alien's last turn, some of our soldiers caught a glimpse of a Bonesetter above the UFO somewhere. So Pete's gonna teleport up there to take a look around: Nothing. Well, that's odd. Maybe it was a game glitch? Whatever the case, he will stay up there as overwatch. During the aliens turn the (invisible) Bonesetter Commander hits Pete with it's freeze weapon for 12 damage. He fires back doing 4 damage, and the second bullet looks like it'll be a hit too: It hit for 6 damage and the last did a decent 26. Now we have bigger problems as a regular Bonesetter shows up on the roof of the North side of the UFO: When it's our turn, the Commander can be seen so Pete will poke at it with the stun rod: It's a weak spot poke for 125 stun damage. Nightie-night commander, you're coming with us! See that hole in the roof next to Pete? There's a door in the roof where aliens can enter/exit. That's why the commander appeared out of nowhere. We are going to have to station one or two soldiers up there from now on just in case. Anyhow, CG teleports up there to patch Pete up with a Stimpack but finds that instead of 12 freeze damage, Pete only has 2 in his head: Not sure what's up with that. Maybe the Pale Blue Crystal absorbed that damage again? Not complaining one little bit. Pete still has plenty of APs left so he'll shoot at that other Bonesetter with U238 ammo: The first bullet hit for 50. 50! The second is on the way and it looks like it'll be a hit too: It does 11 damage and kills the thing (free death aura and all): Atta boy Pete! The next turn another Bonesetter comes up to check out what all the fuss was about: It shoots at CG but the damage was absorbed. When it's our turn, Pete will shoot at it: It was a quick kill with this great ammo and that was the end of the mission. Phew! That was a long one. But fun too. EOM report is excellent: Nobody seriously injured, a commander captured, 60 aliens killed and MTR has his promotion again, same point scheme as the last time: What's different this time is MTR had 12 more kills and earned himself 85 more xp in the process. Not bad at all. The real reason we redid this mission was because we didn't recover all the advanced ship parts as a reward last time. This time, we got em: And to verify, they are in our stores too: Much better! We'll be equipping these to more Thunderstorm interceptors when they are built. In the meantime, we have to visit that Light Cruiser UFO which we shot down recently (seems like ages ago after this past mission). So stay tuned for that next time! - Zombie

Swarm Leader Part 5 It's 11 turns later and not much has been going on. We hear doors opening a lot so there must be a few aliens left somewhere. When Crazy Gringo sticks his head in the UFO and looks down a long hallway he spots a lone Bonesetter. Time to shoot at it with depleted uranium 238 rounds: The first two bullets do 43 & 51 damage which kills it: Love this new ammo! Three turns later CG peeks in the other exterior UFO door and spots... what the heck is this? It looks like a Rider attached to the wall. Let's shoot at it: The first bullet hits for 58 damage which "kills" it. And the game thinks this is a cannon, not a Rider. Um, okay. And the game now thinks the inner door is open when Pete peeks in. Well, if it's open, there must be an alien present nearby so he'll toss a sludge grenade in there to probe the darkness: The strategy pays off as the gas cloud kills a Bonesetter for 73 chem damage: Three turns later and the chem cloud dissipated, but MTR spots another Bonesetter in there again. He'll shoot at it with Ultra ammo: It was a little back and forth shooting, but in the end he prevails: The next round Silencer sees a Trep at the end of the hallway which he'll shoot at: The first two bullets hit for 40 & 45 damage which kills it: The next round Nook looks in the left exterior door and sees an Iron Rattler in a hibernation spawning room which he'll shoot at: The first bullet hits for 33 which kills it: Subsequent bullets destroy the pod which creates a pretty purple cloud of gas: The next round there's another Iron Rattler midway down the left hallway. Nook will shoot at this one too: He hits for 28 & 34 which kills it: Six turns later and during the aliens turn a Trep shows up in the hibernation cubby on the left side. We reaction fire back but only manage to explode the pod: It looks like one of the bullets hit, but the game refuses to acknowledge that: The Trep then comes to the door where we're at and proceeds to hack at MTR but the damage was absorbed. He'll shoot at it then: Took two auto shots but he managed to kill it: In the last part of the mission we'll deal three more Bonesetters with one being the commander. MTR is promoted "again". And we finally recover our advanced ship parts. - Zombie

Sounds like a plan then. I only took two initial screenshots just to get an idea of what the map sorta looks like. We are at the corner of the map and the Southeast side of the transport is solid ground with some bridges or gangways connecting areas together: To the Northeast of the transport is all water baby: I didn't include a screenie of this yet, but the wall that rises up out of the water goes up another couple levels. This puts the team at a real disadvantage because the aliens hold the high ground. It's only Riders so far though, so there's not much of an advantage for them anyway. - Zombie

Swarm Leader Part 4 It's the next round now. Accounting Troll just got eyes on the North cannon on the roof of the UFO so The Veteran is going to mortar it: The blast does an impressive 148 damage which destroys it: Three turns later, Crazy Gringo teleports to the roof of the UFO to get a good look around. He spots the last two cannons up there: Teleporting does not alert a cannon to your soldier's position, so CG is safe as long as he doesn't move. The cannons also do not notice if you teleport away and out of view, which he does. Now TV can send a mortar between them: He hits one for 88 damage and the other for 93. Neither is destroyed, but it's close. Instead of wasting another mortar bomb on them, Nook is going to take a long range auto shot at the farthest: The first bullet was absorbed while the next two bullets both did a paltry 9 damage each. The cannon fired back and only managed to hit him for 2 damage. No biggie. But hey, why is he using the AK1 Ultra Ammo when he has the depleated Uranium-238 stuff? Oh, that's right, accuracy really suffers: The first bullet managed to hit for a nice 27 damage which destroyed it: Nook still has plenty of APs left so he'll shoot at the other cannon too: His first two bullets hit for 19 & 63 damage which destroyed it. Here's where he was shooting from: It's a good overwatch position as my team hasn't made their way over this far yet. Silencer runs over to him to patch him up with a Stimpack: Ten turns later and Pete finally joined CG in watching the doors to the UFO. When he entered from above (more on this some other time) he fell down below where he spots two Bonesetters. The closest to him is only a couple tiles away which means he'll crack out the U238 ammo to shoot at it: The first bullet hits for 62 damage and kills it: CG will shoot at the other Bonesetter: His first bullet hits for 69 damage which is a kill shot: CG can get back into safety in the anteroom, but Pete's almost out of APs so he'll have to stay put and cross his fingers that it's the right decision. As expected, during the alien's turn a Rider exits the middle room and shoots at poor Pete: The photon beamer shot was absorbed and when it's our turn again, Pete's in a perfect position to shoot at it: The U238 ammo does 43 damage which kills it: Pete teleports the heck out of there, and when CG goes in the door to glance around, he spots a Bonesetter in the middle room and an Iron Rattler a couple tiles away which he'll shoot at: The first bullet hits for a nice 88 damage which kills it. After that he decides to put his tail between his legs and retreat like Pete did by teleporting to the roof of the UFO: Glad he did, because he spots another Iron Rattler right where he was before: The thing doesn't come out to play for another 3 turns, and Accounting Troll will shoot at it because he's in a perfect position: The first two normal Ultra ammo bullets do 23 & 19 damage which kills it: Nothing happens for 4 turns so CG teleports in to investigate what the holdup is. It's just a normal Bonesetter which he'll shoot at: The first bullet hits for 78 damage and kills it: Love this U238 ammo! The other alien is a Iron Rattler outside which nobody can shoot at so we let it be. It comes along the side of the UFO where that other one was before: When it's our turn again, AT gets back into position to shoot at the thing: He hits all three times for 15, 1 and 37 damage which kills it: In the next part we'll deal with another Bonesetter and a whole boatload of alien hibernation spawns as well as an alien "cannon". We'll get into this more the next time. Update: I'm now #6 on the Steam leaderboards for UFOs shot down at 4498. It'll take 753 more UFOs shot down to get to #5 which will be a slog. I estimate that'll take till May 9-ish, assuming I have the time that week due to Mother's day that weekend. Might have to step up my efforts in the coming weeks to make sure I can keep up the pace. Oh, and remember when I mentioned that a UFO created a terror site in an ocean recently and thought that maybe it was a glitch? Well, it happened to me again today and this time I saved the game in a different slot and then sent in the team to see what would happen. Turns out it is a legit mission and has a new unique map type associated with it. I did take a couple screenshots in the first few turns for you guys to check out, but I'll wait on posting them. Do you want me to do only that or the whole mission? If you want to see more than the immediate LZ area I'd like to know beforehand as I have to take more screenies. - Zombie

Swarm Leader Part 3 It's now two turns later and there's yet another Trep, this time it's floating above the UFO. MTR will shoot at it: One auto shot was not enough to kill it and the second was a stretch too as there was two bullets that only did 1 damage. But he killed it in the end: Two turns later and now there's an Iron Rattler along the south side of the UFO. Silencer is on the roof of the building just next to it and he can toss a grenade down there somehow: The first DG1 only did 15 damage while a second did even less at 11 damage. Tough critter! Silencer's backup is Nook who is just a little bit closer. He's gonna try another DG1 on it: The blast does 32 damage and finally kills it: Two turns later and we caught a glimpse of an Iron Rattler rustling around some small trees. Crazy Gringo has to move a little to get into position but his long range accuracy sucks on auto shots so he's gonna try a snap shot: It's a non-critical hit for a mind-blowing 96 damage: From one extreme to the other. The next round there's two more Iron Rattlers spotted in roughly the same location as the last one. The problem this time is that there's a tree in the way of shooting at one so MTR will shoot at the obstruction first: With the tree out of the way he can now shoot at the alien: One auto shot was not enough again and two was just barely enough to kill it: This other Iron Rattler is in pretty good cover so CG is going to shoot at a tree obstructing his shot: The tree is gone and now CG has a choice between auto or snap shot: He decides on an auto shot. The first bullet hits for 11. The Iron Rattler somehow shoots back and damages CG for 3. CG's next bullet does 37 damage and kills it: Pete's gonna patch him up, luckily it's only a leg wound: CG is standing on a big equipment pile right now from all the killed Iron Rattlers that happened to end up in the same spot: That's a nice stockpile! The next round we spot an alien cannon on the corner of the UFO so TV will mortar it: The blast does 142 damage to the cannon which destroys it. The blast is big enough to reach another cannon which does 52 damage to it: Unfortunately, that alerted the cannon to TVs position which shot back at him damaging him for 10. AT ran over to help patch him back up. The scenario isn't as bad as it sounds as the damage is spread around everywhere except his chest: The next round CG is able to spot that hidden cannon and the big, scary central turret. This time when TV is going to mortar something he's in cover. He'll send one right between the two: The blast does a massive 164 damage to the central turret which destroys it, but only 65 to the other: There's been a lot of injuries so far this mission and I don't really feel like putting someone else at risk shooting at that surviving cannon so TV will waste another mortar bomb on it: This time the blast does 139 damage which destroys it: The next round there's a Rider straggler at the corner of the UFO which MTR will shoot at: His auto accuracy isn't exactly great but all the bullets hit and did damage which killed it: Join me next time for part 4 where we deal with the last few alien cannons on the roof of the UFO along with more Bonesetters, a Rider and of course another load of Iron Rattler spawns. Should be interesting! Update: I got to #7 on the Steam leaderboards with 4224 UFOs shot down. It's about 200 more to get to #6. All's going to plan. One little hiccup I ran into was that my base in Africa didn't have a detection section there anymore for some reason. Must've accidentally built a defensive system there by mistake. Funny thing was I didn't even miss it being there as all my other bases picked everything up. With it up and running now I feel a little bit better. Currently I'm toying around with an idea on a strategy to protect my main base a little more. My original plan was a "safety in numbers" approach where multiple bases help to protect the main base equally (Europe, aircraft carrier and Asia). All the land bases had 5 interceptors with the last four blocks taken up by workshops originally, and defensive systems now. That's a solid setup and it served me well. If I ever replay the game, I might just create a "dedicated protector base" like Accounting Troll is to The Veteran: AT carries extra mortar bombs and has good accuracy to shoot at anything that tries to mess with TV. Same kind of idea on the dedicated protector base: 6 hangars with 6 interceptors with the rest of the space space going to defensive systems and detection. All the other land bases will have 5 hangars with workshops. I've mentioned this before, but aircraft carrier bases are basically garbage. Don't build any. The worst thing about them is the max of 3 hangars. They just don't have enough firepower to cover an area decently. Thinking of selling it? You can't. The theory of them are good, but the implementation is horrid. - Zombie

One of the projects I worked on this summer was the small garage door that faces the driveway in the back. In one of my previous posts on the small garage door you probably remember the bottom seal was getting bad as some pieces had fell off due to weather. I did a little scraping on the lower section of it as there was some loose paint and such: And here's a closeup of the seal damage: It was pretty messed up. The foam bottom seals are kinda garbage but I haven't really found an alternative at the local hardware store. Anyhow, the next day I started removing the bottom seal and the roofing nails that affixed it to the door. Needless to say, the nails were very rusty so I had to use a locking pliers (vise grips) to help pull the nails out: Not fun at all. Here's the new stuff as it comes from the store: The roll came with a small package of short galvanized roofing nails, and that's usually not enough to prevent sagging of the seal. When I was at the hardware store I looked for a nail that would hold up a little better (like aluminum or copper or maybe even coated) but they didn't have aluminum or coated and the copper was stupid expensive, so I guess it's back to galvanized. No stainless steel roofing nails either, that would have been prime. The wood on the bottom of the garage door was really dried out and there were some soft areas in the wood too. I sanded the crap out of the bottom of the door and did a little sanding on the lower area too. After seeing that, I put on multiple coats of home-brewed wood preservative (boiled linseed oil + paint thinner + my leftover Thompsons Water Seal preservative). Lower area first: And the bottom (looking up): It soaked away really quick so I was able to prime everything too: Certainly better. I left it sit like this for a month and a half just so I could keep an eye on it in case more peeling showed up. Nope, looked good. I then painted the lower part of the door and the bottom with the final color. After that I installed the new bottom seal zig-zagging the nails and alternating between the short ones in the package and longer ones I purchased: It's a little wavy because I had to go around some obstacles/missing chunks of wood/soft areas. Here's what the outside looked like: To preserve the foam a little bit more I wiped on some Armor-All to make the water bead off and hopefully protect against UV light during the winter. - Zombie

Swarm Leader Part 2 It's the next turn and we've just spotted an airborne Trep which MTR will take a snap shot at: The bullet did 47 damage which didn't kill the thing so he took another which dealt 45 and killed the thing: Four turns later and now there's a Rider by the side of the UFO in the usual spot. Pete is going to take an auto shot at it with his 96% kneeling accuracy: The first bullet does 30 damage and kills it: All his other bullets would have been hits too had the thing not died. The next turn we see two aliens. The first is an Iron Rattler which MTR will auto shoot at: The first bullet hits for 44 damage and kills it: Easy stuff. The second alien is an airborne Trep which NKF will take a long range snap shot at: The first shot only hit for 20 damage but his second hit for an impressive 63 which killed it: A couple turns later we spot a Bonesetter behind a wall. Nobody has a shot on it but MTR can toss an incendiary grenade at it: It only does 20 damage so his next grenade will be a sludge: That does 42 chem damage which kills it: During the alien's turn an airborne Trep shows up along with an Iron Rattler on the ground in the usual spot. When it's our turn, MTR will auto shoot the Trep: His first bullet hit for a very decent 55 damage which killed it: He wanted to kill that Iron Rattler too but there was that support column in his way. He moved around a bit and found a spot where he could at least toss a DG1 grenade at it: The blast only did 20 damage so now Pete's going to have to mop up the mess by shooting: His first bullet hits for a pitiful 10 damage but it was enough for the kill: During the alien's turn, an Iron Rattler shows up in the usual spot by the UFO. It shoots at CG for no damage, so he shoots back at it hitting for an incredible non-critical 74 damage which kills it: Excellent! During the alien's next turn another Iron Rattler shows up in the same area but shoots at MTR this time. The damage was absorbed so he shoots back: The first bullet hit for only 2 damage, but the second hit for 56 which killed it: A couple turns later there's another airborne Trep which MTR will take a snap shot at: That hit for 17 which wasn't enough so he took another snap shot which did identical damage and still didn't kill it. May as well take an auto shot at it this time: The first bullet hits for, you guessed it, 17 damage, but that was finally enough for the kill: In the next episode, it's gonna be more Treps and Iron Rattlers. And I didn't care one little bit as it's easy xp for the soldiers. Edit: I'm currently #8 on the Steam global leaderboards with 4010 UFOs shot down. It's only 52 more to get to #7 which shouldn't take too long. After that though, it'll take 425 more to get to #6 (at my current rate that's mid-April sometime). I will mention that the min number of UFOs I need to shoot down everyday to reach #1 has dropped to below 30 (~29.8 or so) which means significant progress has been made. - Zombie

Understood. I think I may have it on a different computer, if I find it I'll add it to the files section. - Zombie

Hello asefede, The MP3 music files for TFTD are in the "Other" category in the TFTD files: X-Com 2 Soundtrack (SB16 MIDI FM synthesis, ripped to MP3). - Zombie

Swarm Leader Part 1 Just to note, I pared this down quite a bit from what it was and it should still be readable. This mission had a lot of aliens present and with the spawns from the hibernation vats there was quite a bit of action. For this reason I'll include a good chunk of the screenshots as it may be interesting. Anyhow, we zone in and Crazy Gringo steps off the transport and immediately spots two aliens. The first is a Bonesetter on a walkway at the building next to us. Crazy Gringo will shoot at it: That 62% auto-shot accuracy of his really hurt when it came time to put lead on the target as he missed quite a bit, but at the end of it he hit twice for 29 & 85 which killed it: The second alien is another bonesetter who is on the roof of the building next to us. Nobody has a shot on it due to the ledge surrounding the perimeter, but The Veteran isn't fazed by that with his mortar: The blast killed the bonesetter but also hit something else for 2 points of damage. So he sent another mortar and killed that hidden unit and damaged something else for 3: I later learned this other hidden unit was an alien cannon on the roof of the UFO. Makes sense in retrospect. There was a lot of alien activity during their turn and we currently see two more. First is a bonesetter on the ground nearby. AT is going to shoot at it: Almost all the bullets hit but they either were absorbed or did single digit damage. That ain't gonna cut it mister! Now I'm gonna have Silencer shoot at it: The first bullet hit for 33 damage and killed the thing: Mr Reliable! The second alien is an airborne bonesetter and FA is going to take a snap shot at it with heavy photon beamer ammo loaded: The first two snap shots missed, but the last hit and did 61 damage which killed it: There's actually another Bonesetter we spotted in a tower. It's got a ledge around it so nobody has a clear shot at the thing. Gimli is going to take an auto shot at it with heavy photon beamer ammo hoping that will open things up: The shots missed the ledge and hit the alien a couple times for 52 & 7 damage which killed it: During the aliens turn a Rider popped out on the roof of the tower. When it's our turn, FA is going to shoot at the ledge hoping to again, open things up: That worked which created a big enough area for MTR to take a snap shot at it: It hit for 38 damage which killed it: Great teamwork guys! During the alien's turn an airborne Bonesetter appears just north of the transport which MTR shoots at (you can probably make out the bullet just to the left of the tree in the darkness): It does a decent 48 damage but doesn't kill it. When it's our turn again, MTR will auto shoot it: He hits all three times for 3, 6 & 11 which kills it: Nice shooting! Three turns later we spot an alien cannon which TV will mortar: The blast does 131 damage which destroys it: A couple alien turns later CG reaction fires at a Rider on the ground just west of the transport, and it's gonna be a hit: It does 63 damage which kills it. A couple turns later there's another Rider just north of the previous one which MTR will take a snap shot at: The first bullet only hit for 22 damage which didn't kill it so MTR shot again which hit for 32 and that did it: Eight turns later a Rider popped out of the side of the tower and shot at AT with normal photon beamer ammo: It hits him but the damage was absorbed. He then shot back hitting it once for 6 damage. When it's our turn again, CG will snap shoot at it: It hits for 31 damage which kills the thing: There's another alien visible to us which is a Rider on the ground by the side of the UFO which AT will shoot at: He hits for 23 & 29 which kills it: Join me for part two where we start to encounter the first wave of alien hibernation spawns consisting of Treps and Iron Rattlers, with one lone Bonesetter thrown in just to make things interesting. - Zombie

Alien Supply Vessel Part 5 During the alien's turn a Mega on the North side of the UFO shot at MTR with it's chem weapon doing a massive 24 critical damage to him. Ouch! He still alive though so it's payback time: The first bullet hits for 53 damage and kills it: MTR uses the remainder of his APs to huff it over to Gimli who is going to patch him up: What you want to do is cure any critical wounds with the medkit first (in this case one critical is in the right leg): Once you clear the critical wound, swap over to the stimpack to heal the damage: There are a couple reasons for doing it this way. First, the only piece of equipment that can cure criticals is the medkit so it doesn't make a lot of sense to waste those uses up on clearing damage. Secondly, stimpacks can be purchased for cheap off the black market. If you use up all the healing capacity on it I think it disappears (same with the medkit) so it's cheaper to buy new for cheap than to manufacture. Anyway, MTR was unfortunately wearing Tundra armor which provides no protection from chem which is a bit of an issue. There's another alien spotted icon and it's the Mega Commander who pays a visit to Pete. It's not visible, but Pete can target it with the stun rod so he'll try that: It does 74 stun damage which is nightie-night time for the commander: During the alien's next turn another Mega shows up on a catwalk between some buildings to the north. It ran out of APs so Silencer is going to shoot at it: His first auto shot only managed to deal 6 damage to the thing so he's forced to shoot again: He only managed to do 15 more damage to it so now NKF is going to throw an incendiary grenade at it: He kills the mega when the grenade hits for a critical 69 fire damage: The other alien spotted icon is an Iron Rattler along the west side of the UFO which Nook is going to shoot at: The first two bullets do 16 & 15 damage which kills it: During the alien's turn another Iron Rattler shows up alongside the UFO in nearly the same spot and because Nook still had plenty of APs from last turn he gets to auto shoot. The first two bullets do 17 & 12 damage with the third bullet on it's way: That last bullet only did one damage and killed it: That means Iron Rattlers only have 29 health. During the alien's last turn, Gimli shoots at a stray Trep on top of the UFO with his photon beamer: That killed it and ended the mission. The EOM report is surprisingly good news: We killed 41 aliens, stunned a commander, MTR suffered no ill effect from being gassed out for 24 damage and healed, and he earned himself a promotion to boot. Let's allocate his points: Two went into both strength and shooting with the last going in throwing. He'll require another point in both strength and shooting to max those stats out and he still has 4 promotions left. Beast mode activated! We got a pretty good reward for eliminating the swarm: It's at this point when I realize that the stockpile of advanced ship parts at my main base isn't as large as it should be. Some are missing. Eventually I figure out that the game only allows you to keep 4 at your main base, any more you "recover" are lost. You have a few options to remedy this issue: Sell the excess. If you're really low on cash these sell for $500k which is a good chunk of change. I would not recommend this though. Equip them on your interceptors. If you are having trouble shooting down UFOs with your Golden Eagle interceptors, I guess this is an option, but there's a better interceptor on the horizon (Thunderstorm) which is better served with them installed as the UFOs only get bigger and more formidable. If you have Thunderstorms at your main base already, install the parts on them. Transfer any excess to other bases and install there. Highly recommended. As long as you keep your main base with 1 part or less in inventory you will recover everything, and that should be the goal. I'm not really sure how many you can have in inventory in other bases (requires lots of testing and a big investment of time obviously), but even if it's capped at 4 you can still stockpile them at different bases till you have a use for them. So now I have to do something. I'm forced to reload the game and replay this mission. The main base has Thunderstorms so let's install. There's a button under the Bombs area you have to click on: And this is what the Thunderstorm looks like with the parts installed: There's a nominal increase in fuel speed and armor and the interceptor color changes from a blue/silver to gold/yellow. With all the Thunderstorms upgraded, I'll transfer the last part to Europe: And now I have to replay the last mission in order to recover all the advanced ship parts. 😞 I don't think you guys want me to go through that turn-by-turn again so maybe I'll just recap it with some highlights in my next post. - Zombie

Alien Supply Vessel Part 4 It's a couple turns later. Accounting Troll peeked around the corner of the UFO and finally spotted the two cannons at the far side but was hit by the closer one for 3 damage. The Veteran will drop a mortar bomb between them: The blast does an impressive 118 to one and 103 to the other, but doesn't destroy either. Figures.Technically someone could have probably shot at both to finish them off, but TV needs some xp so another mortar is readied: This time the blast does 115 and 61 damage which destroys both: Time for CG to patch up AT: With AT all patched up we notice something inside the UFO: Looks like a Rider. It doesn't come out to play so CG teleports on the roof of the UFO to get eyes on the big central turret: He teleports back to safety and now The Veteran will mortar it: It's a weak spot hit for 192 damage which destroys it: AT's little scouting expedition also revealed the outline of the last UFO cannon on the northwest side so the next round TV will mortar that too: The blast only does 94 damage: Do we waste another mortar bomb on a cannon that only needs 30 more damage to be destroyed? I think not. Besides, I have Silencer perched on a rooftop to act as a spotter or sniper: His accuracy is only 68% at this distance, but I figure he's probably pretty safe where he's at in case he can't destroy it: He hits for 17 & 15 which destroys it: Fine shooting there, soldier! Then nothing happens for 20 turns. We don't really want to search that area to the north of the map as that place is a deathtrap. But MTR spots a lone Trep and he can't resist shooting at it: It shrugged off 44 damage from the first auto shot so he shot again with the first bullet doing 31 which finally killed it: Ten turns later and Pete summons the courage to peek inside the UFO where he finds a Mega ripe for target practice: The first bullet hits for 44 damage and kills it: Join me next time when we have a little trouble with a Mega, have a face-to-face encounter with the commander and clean up the remaining aliens. Edit currently #11 on the Steam Leaderboards for UFOs shot down with 3543. It'll take another 200 to get to #10, and 100 more to get to #9, and 100 more to get to #8 and about another 100 to get to #7. After that is where the real work begins. - Zombie

Well, it's been about 70 days since January 1, and I'm assuming that's when Steam starts tallying your days played. However, my streak started sometime in December but I doubt those days will count. Alien Supply Vessel Part 3 Three turns later now and Accounting Troll reaction fires on an Iron Rattler along the east side of the UFO, and it looks like his first bullet will be a hit: This bullet hits for 50 damage and kills it. Easy stuff. Next alien turn a Trep comes flying in and lands right in back of Pete who's kneeling facing a wall. When it's our turn, Pete's gonna have an easy shot: He hits all three times for decent damage and kills it (and he's even using the normal AK1 purchased ammo too): Crazy Gringo steps out of his cubbyhole in the UFO to take a peek around and spots an Iron Rattler near the west side of the UFO. 83% accurate standing auto shot - no need to kneel here: He hits for 25 & 55 damage which kills it: During the alien's next turn, another Trep shows up near CG. He reaction fires at it, hitting for 20 & 19 damage and missing the last shot: When it's our turn, AT sneaks forward to shoot at the damaged Trep: The first bullet hits for 39 damage and kills it: What's the other alien spotted icon? Well, he spotted the other alien cannon on the UFO. You know the deal... TV will mortar it: The blast hits for 78 on the cannon and 96 on the other nearby cannon: No sense in mortaring it again as Pete is in a perfect spot to shoot at it: The first bullet hits for 59 damage and destroys it: Three turns later an Iron Rattler rounds the corner of the UFO and makes a beeline to CG: He's not getting involved in this mess, so we'll have Pete do the honors: He hits all three times for 40 total damage and kills it: Meanwhile, Silencer has made his way to the roof of the building he was in and we can just barely make out the outline of the other UFO cannon. It's pre-damaged and it isn't going to need much to destroy so Silencer is going to risk it by shooting: His second bullet hits for 36 damage and destroys it: We can barely see the outlines of two more cannons: We really need to get eyes on them first before mortaring so join me next time for more cannon destroying and weakling alien killing. - Zombie

Alien Supply Vessel Part 2 It's now the alien's turn and we catch a glimpse of a Mega moving around a rooftop next to us: Nobody reaction fires at it and when it's our turn nobody really has a chance at shooting at it due to the pipe that runs around the roof line. Accounting Troll can shoot at part of the pipe hoping he'll destroy it: Actually, the shots are missing the pipe and hitting the Mega instead. Unfortunately, all the bullets are being absorbed so far: The second auto shot was a mirror of the first. Keep going: The first bullet does 18 damage and the second does an incredible 72 which kills it: There's another alien visible which turns out to be a pBoP above a rooftop to the south of us. Nook somehow has a shot on it: Unfortunately, he doesn't have enough APs to get into cover afterwards, so it's a no-go. During the alien's turn the thing shoots at Full Auto damaging him for 2 with the second shot being absorbed. I mean, I'm not an expert on stuff like this but even I know it's probably not a very good idea to shoot at FA even if he has normal photon beamer ammo loaded. The first reaction shot from him looks like it'll be a hit: It's a critical hit for 71 damage which kills it. Crazy Gringo has just spotted an alien cannon so TV will mortar it: The blast only does 68 damage: Someone please explain to me how normal photon beamer ammo does 71 damage while a mortar does 68? Well, ok. If the game thinks I'm going to waste another mortar on the cannon it's severely mistaken. I'm gonna play the odds and have FA shoot at the thing instead: He hits for 42 and 70 which destroys it: See? Sometimes you need to switch things up in order to get the result you want. It's five turns later and we've made a little progress searching the map. Silencer has entered the building below that pBoP from a few rounds ago and found a Mega in the "lecture hall" which he'll shoot at: He hits all three times damaging it twice for 3 with the last shot getting absorbed. The thing then magically moves a few tiles away, shoots at him, but it was thankfully blocked by the chairs: Silencer wisely retreats. On our next turn the Mega is still in the same place so Silencer will shoot at it again: The first bullet hits for 43 damage and kills it: During the aliens turn an airborne Trep shows up to the northwest of us. Someone with a photon beamer reaction fires at it. I'll give you one guess who: Nope, you're wrong, it's Gimli this time. And he's able to kill it easily. Three turns later and we now spot an Iron Rattler along the east side of the UFO: Crazy Gringo is hiding in a cubbyhole but finds that if he walks one step out he can throw a photon grenade at the thing: The blast does 24 damage but doesn't kill it so CG retreats. When it's our next turn the Iron Rattler comes a little bit closer to us so this time Pete's gonna come out of cover to shoot at it: The first bullet does 8 damage and kills it: Yup, we are into the thick of alien hibernation spawns right now it seems and that's going to continue for the next part of the mission. So stay tuned for that next time as we try to get some "garbage time" xp for some soldiers. - Zombie

Not even close man, you've got me beat by a mile (kilometer, whatever). Right now I have just about 470 hours on UFO2:ET. I may only have like 370 hours in the actual AAR, the other 100 hours have been going into shooting down UFOs to up my rank on the Steam Leaderboards. Oh, and to keep my streak going for the number of consecutive days played. (Last year was 42 days in a row, this year it's currently 70). Alien Supply Vessel Part 1 This is going to be a long mission so it'll be broken up into multiple parts. How many I do not know yet as I'm still cutting screenshots (took way too many). Anyhow, this mission is on a human military base map (not sure). We deploy in the usual way and see nothing. During the aliens first turn a poisonous Bird of Prey (pBoP) appears to the left of us and deploys one of it's poisonous Sentinels: Neither do anything. When it's our turn again, NKF (who is rocking the newly researched depleted uranium AK1 bullets) is going to shoot at the pBoP with a ridiculous 99% auto shot accuracy: The first two bullets do an unreal 68 and 43 damage which kills it: This ammo is fantastic! Well, let's have him shoot at the p-Sentinel too: The first two bullets are critical hits for identical damage (67!) which kills it (and the buggy game mechanic kills the pBoP again and the other p-Sentinel. Caught the death explosion which is kinda pretty actually: That was it for this turn. During the alien's turn, Crazy Gringo reaction fires at a Mega with AK1 Ultra Piercing ammo (not the U238 stuff) with the first shot being absorbed: All his shots hit but were absorbed actually. And now we see no less than 4 aliens. There's a Mega in the air behind the pBoP which was killed earlier so NKF will shoot at it: He hits it for only 32 and 7 damage, but that was enough to kill it: There's another pBoP in the air which Accounting Troll shoots at and kills (this is the aftermath): That Mega CG shot at but did no damage to is still lurking in the same area so Full Auto cracks out the explosive photon beamer ammo to shoot at the railing: Everything missed unfortunately. But there's also another pBoP on the ground so he'll shoot at that instead: The first blast does a massive non-critical 72 damage to the thing: The next blast is equally as explosive as the first and kills the thing which reveals another pBoP behind it in the air. FA is one AP short of being able to take an auto shot so he'll take a snap shot at this one instead: It does a darn good 64 damage but doesn't kill it. Crazy Gringo is going to shoot at that Mega he hit before with reaction fire but the damage was absorbed: He hits it for 18 & 34 damage which kills it: He still has plenty of APs left so he'll shoot at that pre-damaged pBoP: He hits for 8, 2 & 34 which kills it (death animation free of charge): During the aliens turn, a Mega appears where that pBoP was before. It doesn't move, so when it's our turn FA will shoot at the wall in front of it with his trusty explosive photon beamer ammo: One shot connects with it dealing 57 damage and killing it: Another one bites the dust. These damage numbers are all in our favor this mission so far - hope it keeps up! Join me for part 2 next time where it's more of the same as the aliens have flooded the LZ it seems. - Zombie

Light Cruiser Part 2 It's five turns later. Part of the team has taken refuge in the right room but during the aliens turn an Ice Queen opens the double wide door and hits Nook with her freeze weapon for 17 damage. He shoots back but so far everything is getting absorbed: His last shot was absorbed too. The Ice Queen then shot at him again for 6 more freeze damage (ignore the combat log in the following pic, the damage happened during the aliens turn, not ours). Crazy Gringo is going to fix him right up: After Nook is back to normal, he's going to exact his revenge by shooting back at it: Took two full auto shots, with the second to last bullet hitting for 27 damage which kills it: Pete now opens the other door in the right room and spots another Ice Queen behind some equipment. Nook still has plenty of APs left and an axe to grind yet so he will toss an Inferno grenade at it: It only does 29 damage so now Pete will shoot at it: It took a lot of auto shots with the final bullet finally dealing 28 damage which killed it: Six turns later another Ice Queen "appears" (not visible in the pic, but it was briefly visible when it moved earlier). Silencer reaction fires at it but can only manage to damage it for 8 with the other two shots getting absorbed. The Queen then freezes MTR and now it's going after Pete: After freezing Pete it then shoots at Silencer: It's a critical hit for 24 freeze damage. Darnit! When it's our turn (again, the combat log is wrong when the damage happened) we spot the thing near the double door to the right room. Gimli is getting tired of this mission so he loads up heavy ammo into his photon beamer and prepares to shoot: He killed it and ended the mission (with 2 people frozen and one critically damaged mind you). I was a little worried about everyone but the EOM was glowing: Well, it was glowing to me at least. Nobody was wounded or missing so at the end of the day I considered this a resounding success. What was even better was that we recovered an advanced ship part from the wreckage: Can't argue with that. Not long after, another load of 3 Long Spear Launchers finished production: 14 hours later a "swarm" is detected, which turns out to be a single supply vessel over Canada: I send out interceptors from Europe, Africa, South America, the aircraft carrier and North America hoping something will get in range quick enough to help out: The interceptors from Europe and the aircraft carrier were the only ones able to help, but they took it down without much issue: As the UFO crashed, you can really tell how much faster the Thunderstorms are compared to the golden eagles (especially the ones from South America): Because the crash site is in daylight I'm going to send out the transport ASAP. Before I do that, I equip NKF with the best stuff, just to be on the safe side: He's a real monster and carries plenty of grenades, clips and shields for any encounter. He still has plenty of strength leftover so I give him a mortar too. As the transport is nearing the crash site, a light cruiser shows up over Russia where I scramble the interceptors there and later from the aircraft carrier and Europe too: We shoot it down easily: So stay tuned for that mission next time. Edit: currently #13 on the Steam leaderboards for UFOs shot down with 3278. Kinda didn't make my quota of 32 UFOs shot down the last few days as I've been busy and tired. But I can make that up. If a swarm is slated to appear, save the game when they arrive. Then let the UFOs fly around till they get into range of one of the bases. Usually the defenses there will be able to either soften a biggie up or take it out completely. Keep watching and maybe another will be shot down or severely damaged at which time you can send out the interceptors to clean up the rest. - Zombie

Light Cruiser Part 1 Time for this light cruiser mission! It's bad news from the start as there's an Ice Queen on the roof of the building next to us. I was able to bring Nook, Silencer, Crazy Gringo and Pete into the building with very little problems except for Pete getting frozen once. Not a problem as we shoot at him to unfreeze. What to do now though: One option is to end the turn here and hope the thing decides to stay put. With it this close we have to do something to clear the LZ as best we can. MikeTheRed comes off the transport hoping to toss a grenade of some sort up there, but is immediately frozen. NKF will shoot to unfreeze: He takes another step and is immediately frozen again. As before, NKF will shoot to unfreeze him: MTR is then able to move a couple tiles closer only to be frozen again. NKF has enough APs left to unfreeze him one more time: MTR cannot get any closer without being frozen again so he's forced to throw an incendiary grenade a little short... hoping it'll be enough: It only does 14 fire damage and he's immediately frozen again. Annoying, isn't it? Sorry MTR, but we have to leave you be as you are much safer frozen during the alien's turn. We are able to unfreeze him during our turn but because his APs are still low he's unable to move yet. During the aliens turn an Ice Queen shows up near him and tries to freeze him again (caught the animation this time): When it's our turn, we want to get rid of this thing ASAP as we have been unable to clear the LZ yet. CG decided that stunning was the best option but when he steps out of the room to get into range he is frozen too. We unfreeze him and now he finally can stun it: It's a massive critical hit dealing 146 stun damage: There's another alien visible though. It's only a Rider down below. Silencer is seriously contemplating tossing a DG1 grenade down there but his accuracy isn't exactly great: He decides against it in the end because we want to unfreeze MTR and hope he can escape this freeze/unfreeze cycle. After he unfreezes MTR he notices another Ice Queen on top of the building next to us again: Or maybe it's the same Queen as on round 1. We don't know for sure. During the aliens turn MTR observes another Rider come down the lift by that other Rider: And then it looks like another Rider shows up too: The Ice Queen comes to the edge of the roof but doesn't freeze MTR for some reason. When it's our turn, he'll toss a sludge grenade up there: It does 67 chem damage and kills it: Oh, and there's a Rider that came up the lift to the platform we need to take care of. Nook will shoot at it from the building: The first two bullets deal 16 & 11 damage which kills it: Silencer is now going to toss a DG1 grenade below at one of the Riders: The blast does 25 damage which kills it. Time to toss another DG1 near the other Rider he can see: This blast does 54 damage and kills it too: No incidental damage to the explosive barrels so we have that as a fail-safe in case it's necessary. During the aliens turn another Rider comes up the lift by the transport but is met with reaction fire from Accounting Troll. His first bullet hits for 44 damage which kills the thing: Nothing much happens for the next few rounds as we are focused on clearing (and holding!) the North side of the map. When that area is under our control an Ice Queen exits the UFO and just stands there. The Veteran thinks it's time to mortar it: The blast does a decent 110 damage and kills it, along with setting off more explosive things: It's 19 turns later and we're pretty confident that any aliens that are left are inside the UFO. One of the breach teams have opened the inner door and noticed that the door to the room on the right is open. CG is going to toss an inferno grenade in there hoping to catch something in the blast: Nothing. We also toss a sludge grenade in there too just for good measure. Still nothing. The next round Pete goes to investigate and finds an Ice Queen at the end of the hall. He'll toss an Inferno grenade on it: The damage was absorbed so CG comes in to shoot at it instead: The first bullet is absorbed while the second does 14 damage and kills it somehow: I think we must've damaged it with the fire and chem clouds last turn, but the game didn't report it for some reason. Anyhow, stay tuned for part 2 where we deal with glitchiness galore but prevail in the end. - Zombie

Before I continue with my playthrough, I'd like to take this time to address the above quote plus give some "notes from the field", oddities etc. First up, my defenses are so stacked that they can take down an entire swarm of heavies to battlecruisers: Didn't have to lift a finger on this one at all, of course, all the UFOs happened to get between my main base, europe, and the aircraft carrier where they all got mowed down. Here's something interesting/funny/potentially buggy: I was unable to shoot down a battlecruiser UFO headed to Antarctica for a terror mission. It created a terror site in the ocean: There isn't an island there or anything as far as I can tell. And I didn't want to send in a team to take care of the site in case the game crashed. As I said before, swarm rewards can get out of hand quick: A hundred million for shooting it down and an equal sum if you destroy the site. And the other day I got to the edge of max funds: Because as soon as I shot the swarm leader UFO down over water, the funds switched to negative: That's 2^31 - 1 with the last bit for the signed integer. The game didn't really seem to mind the huge negative funds at the end of the month either: The next month it switched positive again: After a few months of this I get one of the end-game fail screens: Here's the deal: if you want to shoot UFOs down to get on the Steam leaderboards, ideally you'll want all land bases. Those bases should have hangars, base defenses and workshops too. Why workshops? Well, you need to manufacture expensive stuff to bleed off funds. There's a couple options here, and I haven't figured out which strategy is better yet. First option is to manufacture long spear launchers because they are the most expensive non-airplane in the game at $348,800. Just put in a standing order for manufacturing 1000 of them at each base. That should eat up funds pretty quick. Option two is to manufacture an interceptor (my guess is the Golden Eagle would be the best) then have it engage a big UFO so it'll shoot it down (don't equip it with anything). After it's gone, manufacture another one. Kinda finicky but it will eliminate funds from the game. Or ignore swarms. This is sorta an option, but your base defenses may accidentally shoot down the leader. I guess the last (and easiest) would be to reload the game from an earlier save when you are getting close to maxing out funds. Right now I'm #17 with 2956 UFOs shot down. To get to #16 I need to shoot down 100 more which is pretty easy. - Zombie

Light Cruiser Part 2 Instead of trying to clear the entire map of aliens (including the 2 huge underground levels of the base), I decided that this time we'd try something a little different. I sent part of the team down the lift to the North of the UFO. It goes directly to the "door level" of the UFO so there's very little excess walking to get there. And because of the moat, I could station soldiers around the top of it as elevated snipers. Took a while to set up, but it's far faster than searching everything. It's 11 rounds later and Nook tries to take a peek at the UFO door and was shot at by a Mega which thankfully missed him: Instead of pushing his luck, he wisely retreats which allows TV to set up a mortar: It only hits for 34 but is just barely enough to kill it: A couple rounds later we spot an airborne Mega. Accounting Troll will take an auto shot at it from above: His first three bullets did nothing special in terms of damage, but the next bullet hit for 25 and killed it: There was another Mega right behind it which is now visible so AT will shoot at it too: It again took two auto shots to kill the thing only this time the damage was more in the beginning: There's one more Mega by the door to the UFO. Suppose we could've tossed some grenades on it or something first, but TV has a itchy trigger finger with the mortar: The blast was enough to kill it and end the mission. EOM report: Yeah, nobody was promoted this mission, but we did it safely and rather quickly which was nice. Back at base, it's time to fire the "old" Kret for the new one as the end of the month is approaching fast: With "her" gone, we wait to see what the end of Month report looks like: Not too bad actually. We had a lot of expenses across the board trying to build up the new base in Africa, but had plenty of cash to fund it and our rating with all the states is either "Good" or "Excellent" now. Africa gave us a nice bump in funding due to our base and we maxed out funding with them too. Back in the Geoscape and there's another Light Cruiser detected over Canada. I immediately send out the transport as the crash site will be in daylight, and then send out the interceptors at the base in North America to engage it: It went down easily as it came closer to the base which allowed the defensive systems to fire on it too: Join me next time for that mission. Edit: I'm now #18 on the leaderboards with 2839 UFOs shot down. It'll take 120 more to get to #17, and an additional 50 to get to #16 which will put me just over 3077 UFOs shot down. After that, each rank will be about 100 more up to rank #7. Beyond that is where the ranks start to spread out quite a bit and will take quite a bit of work. In other news, I just had a swarm reward of $100+ million: Plus an additional $100+ million for destroying the crash site put me just above $200 billion space bucks for a short time. The game didn't break yet. - Zombie

Light Cruiser Part 1 This is a "moat" map where there is water surrounding the UFO and a significant multi-level underground "base" which finally exits at the front of the UFO doors. This is my least favorite map type so I tried reloading a bunch of times but the game seems intent that this is the only option. No way I'm going to search every last nook and cranny in the underground base so we'll wait it out instead. On round one, Pete spots a Mega and he's able to toss a cryo grenade on it: It's a weak spot kill for 83 freeze damage: Atta boy! The next round we can see a pGehe across the bridge from Pete. I'm not going to risk getting him injured so instead of shooting at it, we'll have The Veteran mortar it: The blast hits a hidden unit for 26 damage and does 30 to the pGehe, neither which is a kill: Well, let's mortar it again! This time it does a pitiful 8 damage to the hidden unit which thankfully was enough for the kill, and it also does 55 to the pGehe which kills it too: Four turns later and we spot another pGehe in the same relative area as the mortar blast. Pete's right there, but again, I don't want to bring him out into the open only to get gassed by the pGehe. Not only that, but he's alone and has no backup so getting medical help after a mishap is out of the question. Luckily Accounting Troll is on a position to shoot at it: He hits all three times for 13, 9 & 23 which kills it: The next turn there's another pGehe visible which is hovering above the moat. AT again has a shot on it: He hits for 18 & 25 which kills it: It's 9 rounds later. Nothing much going on since the last kill except I have 2 soldiers backing up Pete with one across the moat. We have a bigger problem right now as a pGehe somehow made it across the moat on it's turn. Gimli reaction fires on it with his photon beamer: Everything misses, but when it's our turn I'll have him shoot at it again: He hits once but the damage was absorbed. The pGehe also shot it's chem weapon at him but silly thing, you are too far away: He shoots again, this time hitting twice for 23 & 40 damage which kills it: Ten turns later and Pete & co are surprised by a Mega during the aliens turn. MTR reaction fires at it with the first two bullets being absorbed: The last does 47 damage and kills it: Join me for part 2 where part of the team makes it down to the UFO as advanced spotters while the rest provide help from above. - Zombie

There will not be a post on the next mission today, sorry folks. I can say that I accomplished my goal and got to #19 on the Steam global leaderboards for UFOs shot down at 2655. So that makes 159 UFOs shot down today (which is kinda an effort as it's not a steady trickle of UFOs - it's nothing at all punctuated by spurts of activity with the odd swarm thrown in for good measure). My cash reserves are back up to a hefty $1.6 billion space bucks too. Kinda wished I didn't start this till I completed a bunch of swarm ground missions and nabbed some more advanced ship parts. I mean, it's not horrible running with 50% upgraded Thunderstorms and 50% stock, but it would be nice if all the Thunderstorms were the same in terms of speed and damage capacity. Right now I have to babysit the normal Thunderstorms if the UFOs are picking on them and withdraw them manually so they don't get destroyed. Got very, very close a few times. - Zombie

It's now a couple days later in the Geoscape and our research into the pGehe finally finished: New ammo for our rifles! About time! Before we get into that, let's look at the pGehe's description and stats: They are almost completely immune to chemical and shrug off mechanical damage except for the most powerful hits. Pretty terrifying, but it has no protection against freeze or fire. Glad I produced all those incendiary and sludge grenades. We need another research project and this new depleted uranium ammo sounds like the ticket we need: Three days later and still no UFOs. But our heavy rocket defenses finished construction in Africa: Let's take a look at the base now: In order to produce more Thunderstorm interceptors, one of the production bases needs an open hangar spot. For that reason I moved another Golden Eagle interceptors to Africa so that we have a base capable of shooting stuff down. It'll still be 7 days till we have full manufacturing capability, 14 days till the first photon defense and 24 days till the last photon defense, but we do have 3 heavy rocket defenses to rely upon in case things get dicey. Not even an hour later and our research into the U238 ammo completes, and a light cruiser UFO shows up: And a new transport too? Yes, please! Let's compare the three ammo types for our rifles starting with the "standard" store-bought AK1: And now the Ultra: And finally, the U239 ammo: A lot more damage, but a smaller clip size and rather horrible accuracy. Do you see why high shooting accuracy is a necessary stat for soldiers now? Yeah, the game pigeon holes you into one strategy and that's it. Shoot or be shot. Time to pour all our research into the new Pegasus transport: And let's start cranking out the new U238 ammo: Had to stop production on the Sludge Suit of armor to manufacture the new ammo, but what is more important? A suit of armor for one soldier or ammo for a bunch of soldiers? To quote Spock: That light cruiser UFO wandered a little too close to our base in North America and was immediately shot down by the defensive systems there: It's nearly light there so I send out the transport not having produced enough new ammo for everyone: Hope that doesn't come back to bite me later. But I did give the new U238 ammo to the soldiers with the highest shooting accuracy so hopefully that offsets the ammo accuracy problem. Join me for the light cruiser UFO mission next! - Zombie

And here is the EOM report from the last mission: Pete, buddy ol' pal, congrats on your promotion! Let's do that first: Obviously, two points went into throwing to max that out at 98, then two points went in bravery to get that to 70 with the last going in vitality. As an addendum, throwing only reached 96 when you look at Pete in the soldier tab of the game so I'm not sure where those two points ended up in the end. Maybe a rounding error? Who knows. He's still a beast though. Back in the Geoscape and I finally finished manufacturing that VT3000 fighter shield at my main base that has been on pause for months and months: Still have to get rid of that VT2000 shield yet and then I'll have the manufacturing screen clear again. Before I start on that, let's crank out a few shields for our soldiers: Not long after this our main manufacturing bases completed another 3 long spear launchers: And with those complete, I equip them on a Thunderstorm at each base and then transfer the interceptors to Africa since we have 3 hangars open there (technically 4 now): A couple days later and our research into the Raven battle armor completes: Here's it's description: I can confirm that the battle armor does indeed add the armor values here to the Raven vehicle's armor. We aren't going to manufacture this right away for a few reasons: We haven't been using the Raven yet It requires a bit of coin and time to manufacture Currently we are doing production runs of Incendiary and now sludge grenades for our soldiers And just because (I kinda know what is in the pipe and don't want to clog up manufacturing space on something unneeded right now). As for what we are going to research next, I think we'll go back to the pGehe again: About two days later and our last Hangar in Africa completed construction. I immediately transferred a Golden Eagle over there and started manufacturing another Thunderstorm at a different base: A couple days later our Golden Eagle is ready to go at Africa and our two workshops completed construction so we can build two more: Join me next time for more Geoscape stuff, I'd stick around because it's starting to get interesting now. Oh, I'm currently #21 on the Steam global leaderboards for UFOs shot down at 2496. My goal is to get to a solid #19 tomorrow as that only requires 103 UFOs shot down. After that it'll be a little bit of a slog to get higher, but once I get to 3000+ it shouldn't take too long to shoot up quite a few notches. There are 312 days left in the year and if I average 32 UFOs shot down per day then that'll get me to #1. It's a long shot, but do-able. - Zombie

Light Cruiser This mission is on a non-maze desert map. We haven't had one of these in a while so let's do this. Round one and we've already spotted a Rider which Nook is going to shoot at: The first bullet does 27 damage which kills it: On the alien's turn a Rider shoots at NKF with "heavy" AOE photon beamer ammo: NKF somehow shrugs it off and then shoots back at it with the first bullet doing 22 damage. Another bullet is coming though: It does 20 damage and kills it. The last shot would've been a hit too but the Rider is gone now: A couple turns later and we now see an airborne Bonesetter. NKF is in a perfect position to shoot at it: He hits once for a decent 50 damage with the next shot being absorbed and the last missing: So he shoots again and the first two bullets were absorbed while the last does 25 and kills it: So this was turn 3. We spread out and search nearly the entire map but find nothing. It's now 24 turns later and we've just entered the UFO. We open the door and see a Bonesetter just inside. Sure, we could have shot at it, but I didn't want to risk getting the entire team injured if the things shoots back with heavy photon beamer ammo. So Pete walks up to it and will stun it instead: It's a weak spot jab which does a massive 122 stun and knocks the thing out. The door leading into the center of the UFO is open and I'm not sure if this Bonesetter opened it or a different one did and is lurking. CG will throw an inferno grenade in there just to be sure: Nothing. Seven turns later and we've finally spotted another Bonsetter in the center of the UFO. Silencer will throw an incendiary grenade near it: The damage was absorbed somehow, so now Nook is going to feed it a sludge grenade: It only does 8 chem damage so we wisely retreat. The next round there's a Rider near us. That's like a gift so Nook will shoot at it: He hits for 9 & 31 which kills it: Four turns later and we somehow can see a Bonesetter in the darkness area of the UFO: At this point I really should have reloaded the game as this is obviously a glitch. But the ref says "play on" so we wait. During the aliens turn NKF shoots at it and hits for 40 damage: I know how absurd this looks, so just pretend for now. His second bullet hits for 44 damage and kills it. Another Bonesetter shoots at NKF and MTR with heavy photon beamer ammo which hurts NKF for 5 damage but MTR shrugs it off. NKF then shoots back and hits for 10 damage: Never mind the missing UFO walls, they are still there. His next two bullets were both absorbed. MTR shoots too with his first bullet being absorbed too: You can actually see he's hitting something where that red dot is, it's just not visible. His next bullet does 45 with the last doing 16 damage which kills it. This is the first time I was ever able to capture the last kill in a mission in a screenshot, so enjoy: And that was it. We got through the glitchiness with some tremendous shooting from NKF and MTR. Next time I'll cover the EOM along with part of the happenings in the Geoscape so stay tuned for that! - Zombie

It's at this point I decide that instead of staying on the pGehe research project that I'd go back to the Chem Monster. Why? Well, the Chem Monster is already 43% complete. It does lead to something else (which we'll cover in a bit) and the pGehe wouldn't finish till much later in the month anyway (low hanging fruit theory is in full effect here): Back in the Geoscape again and our main base has been cranking out manufacturing projects like mad. Most are "one-and-done" as I was worried about not having enough consumables for my troops. First it was some more of those cryo grenades, then a couple shields for my soldiers, and now a short run of sludge bombs for the mortar. Why I bring you in is because we also completed another long spear launcher too: And not long after, the heavy rocket defense finished construction in Africa: Time to head back there as we want to build another photon defense: After the sludge mortar bombs project completed, I started a run of 6 explosive mortar bombs as we use quite a few of these per mission. Well, that run just completed: Here, let's check out my inventory of stuff back at the main base: That's a nice even 50 explosive mortar bombs which makes me feel much better going into larger UFO missions as it means we'll have plenty of firepower available when things get dicey. Plus, we have 20 sludge bombs now, 30 cryo and 25 sludge grenades too. We'll have to beef up our supply of these soon as these get used quite often now. Our two hangars in Africa just finished construction now: It's a whirlwind of activity there as we are trying to build it up as fast as we can to help with shooting down UFOs. Well, with the Hangars complete we can now add two more heavy rocket defenses to supplement the existing heavy rocket defense and the two photon defenses which are quite a way from completing: No sooner than we get back into the Geoscape and now we spot a light cruiser UFO heading straight to Africa. The interceptors from Europe are scrambled to catch it before it comes too close: Once the missiles start connecting it's all over: You can probably see a heavy missile from Africa's defense is inbound too. While we are waiting for the site to be in daylight our research into the Chem Monster completes: As always, let's check out it's description and vitals: Pretty terrifying. Completely immune (or nearly so) to chem, mechanical armor is 80 which means all but the best damage rolls will do anything. The best things against it is fire and freeze, and at range the only weapon that can do that is the rocket launcher. Luckily these things haven't been all that common recently, and in fact, I think the game is probably eliminating them from crews. We need another research project and this time it's going to be the new Raven ("tank") Battle Armor: Granted, we haven't used the Raven tank at all yet as we need the spots to train up soldiers. I did use it in the past "off-screen" so to speak and was not really impressed with it. The rocket on it was powerful, but because it's damage is typed as mechanical, most aliens have some sort of armor against the blast anyway. It's armor was just "okay" but I'm hoping this upgrade will fix that. Is it better than 4 soldiers carrying mortars? No way. (Same theory in UFO Defense where the Blaster Launcher was uber powerful, but at least in that game you had plenty of room on the Avenger to put a hovertank on). No, I'm thinking this may be useful for base defense missions and maybe alien bases. We haven't had either (yet), but it's better to be prepared. Anyway join me next time for that light cruiser mission. I should be able to fit that all in one post. After that it'll probably be another two parter in the Geoscape as a lot of things happened again. - Zombie