Tsathoggua

Some inspiration could be taken from bomb disposal tracked drone vehicles, controlled remotely. Something like a 30/40mm grenade launcher can fit on an awfully small chassis. Ammunition considerations are the primary factors, as well as armor thickness and power plant, depending on the power plant you can fit a lot of nasty hardware on something the size of a dustbin, and especially chemical weapons can be very compact yet give a lot of bang for buck *thinks back to the time he got sent diving out of the garage after inadvertently causing a mere shot glass sized beaker full of chloroacetone to erupt in an exothermic mini vesuvius. Or acrolein poured down the sink as a lil tyke, flushed down with HOT rather than cold water. Stupidly vaporising it and sending it right back up the drain in a virulent gutter-stinking and horrendous lachrymatory sewer-fart, as if the devil himself just sharted in a reverse trajectory. Damn well cleared the area. A tear gas nonlethal weapon could be useful for driving civilians out of areas that are about to end up as ground zero for something more devastating, or to flush them away from crossfire, or flush the bugs INTO the field of fire. Assuming organic units that breathe or have open sensory systems of some sort. If anyone wants input on NBC warfare and countermeasures, I'm your guy.

Well properly trained agents can get mighty high accuracy. My longer running game, most are running over 110% for aimed. No MC capability for any of them, damn tech tree, but they make up for it by having constantly trained, my current team, I have one base full of total rookies, trying to train them although they are dropping like flies, but my primary base, the squad is a displacer tank and a bunch of hard-bitten bastards that chew up nails and shit barbed wire. And MC or no MC, send the enemy panicking like crazy, because they are almost entirely armed with sonic cannons, gauss pistols for sidearms, packing pulse grenades, and in the other hand either drills, DPLs and as many shells as can be carried with a weapon in each hand, those guys often pack no sidearm, just a heavy sonic and DPL, or sonic cannon, vibroblade/tazer and gauss pistol, or sonic cannon, a bunch of grenades, a gas cannon and medkit. One of the team takes point behind the tank and carries a gas cannon and motion scanner. Anything pops up and isn't accounted for, out come the sonic pulsers and DPL shells fired into the dark. Getting quite good too, at if something does burst out and end up sitting next to my aquanauts, firing a DPL from afar, and having the blast radius end right on the enemy, and not touch the imperiled aquanaut. And I did not mean being on the receiving end of capital punishment. I meant as in, using a tentaculat's anal sphincter as a post box for mailing a DPL round express delivery Not being able to move far if you want to get off two cannon shots (experienced and strong aquanauts only, but some damn neat sniping is possible) I like gas cannons for dealing with the tentaculats though. One agent seems to think she is the reincarnation of rambo, charging the things with a GC in each hand and a drill in the backpack, raining HE and WP shells as she does, right and left alternating...with a satisfying *whump..whump...whump....spllat* usually. If not theres always sniper cover if she runs dry of TU. As well as two guys with DPLs who always move last. and potentially covering fire from the tank.t Gas cannons are great right on into the campaign imo, for experienced agents. Good for dealing with stunned low value targets too, just drag them to the same place pile up the bodies and send the whole damn lot straight to tartarus. Displacer/sonics are brilliant for base assaults. Theres no worry about running dry of ammo, so they work well for blasting holes in things and clearing a path, and with the three shots per turn, can LEVEL a tentaculat if it shows its beak anywhere near the operatives. Even tasoth and lobstermen don't stand up to that, blasting at close range.

Damn thats rare! I've only ever seen one sub-surface. EVER. And I've been at it since the first time I ever found a demo release on a pc mag. When gauss weapons had the same ammo capacity as lasers (actually, found TFTD first, and its always been my favourite out of the first two games, interceptor and the foetid aberration known as..err, shite, can't even remember the name that crappy robot arcade game thing. I always thought the calcinite exclusively marine.

In my advanced older game that I kept for the weird 'medic cannon' triton loadout bug now I hear it can possibly be loaded and fired, and to make a good weapon at that, if a pricey one, I have been having to fight without psykers. Dealt with enough of them, but they were tasoth and aquaturd not human and definitely, definitely, absolutely not friendly, and 'dealt with' doesn't mean 'comprehensive dental plan' either. At least, not unless its the kind of dental work that comes from a GC round in the face I'd noticed hallucinoid damage resistance to drills, at least to the vibroblade, how do the thermic lance and heavy lance stack up in terms of damage done per strike? not that is, it really matters, the only thing hallucinoids are good for, is getting in the way of weapons fire intended for other aliens. er Just started the newer game I've got going, month II just beginning. Too early to have any MC anything whatsoever, not sure my men have even encountered MC. Seen a few aquatoids and gill men (squad leaders have MC capability don't they? or do they, If so its not very powerful seemingly), but they have generally been too busy being blown to smithereens/toasted by gas cannon rounds and grenades to be taking a break and concentrate their mental powers. And by the time they have spotted an x-com soldier, their mental powers have thus far been concentrated on the floor, buildings, USO interiors and any of their companions close by. The older one, research tree bug I think, pretty advanced in the game, enough to have captured some lobsterman commanders, and made them spill the beans (amongst other things), but no psionics bar the MC lab, not been able to research the MC disruptor or reader, The newer one, I've just not had the chance to do any probing. Although, really, I always thought it was the aliens who had a probe-fetish=D Getting paid back for the hammering I've been giving the aquatoid, gill men etc so far in the new one. Month II, Lobster man shipping lane terror mission and with nothing but a coelacanth/gas cannon, gauss rifles and a pistol or two, a gas cannon and 6 guys have thermal tazers. Plastic aqua armor all around though, but otherwise, the ordure is firmly lodged in the air redistribution system. Hades. Handbasket. 'Nuff said. Got some pulse grenades, those are the ONLY sonic weapon usable so far, dyes for coverage to exit the LZ, protect civvies until I can get someone close enough to zap them one (its for your own good, sir, but I've got to tazer you....) and for sneaking up on lobstermen and ESPECIALLY bio-drones. So far the only reason nobody HAS ended up wearing their lungs as a belt, is because of sheer dumb bastards luck, after three very close calls, not counting more than a few near misses. Two aquanauts got clawed by lobstermen, wearing aqua plastic armor, both of them required the cuntish crustacean to run a considerable distance, one of them taking a cannon round from a tank in the process from reaction fire, both getting close to inflict only a single blow, neither of which penetrated or even damaged the armor. The third, was a shocking survival. Doubletap from a biodrone, and not its 0% accuracy close quarters attack either, but two direct hits from the sonic weapon they pack! in aqua armor of all things. Two shots, one right after the other, provoked by gauss rifle hits, both the same guy, who shot, got shot, returned the favor and got paid back in kind, before the drones ran dry of TU, and were hit with a pulse grenade each, and then nailed with shot after shot after shot of gauss rifle and gas cannon, plus tank gas cannon fire, the aquanaut-portable version being loaded with HE rounds. Nobody dead yet, other than a few civilians stupid enough to run out of the smoke coverage provided by the dye grenades thrown at their feet, and not only run straight towards the lobsterman sniper meters away from them on the side of the second upper level deck that they couldn't have not seen, but actually leg it in front of both the line of fire, and the hail of gauss rounds, WP, and explosives, as well as GC/AP bolts from the coelacanth. If they really are so brainless, I wonder why I bother. Not sure how I'm going to pull this mission off with zero casualty rate amongst x-com personnel, because its taking between a clip and nearly half that again to put each lobsterman down, scavenging as many pulse grenades as I can find, and forgoing the usual tactic of blowing KO aliens up straight away, instead, taking high value targets only, and piling bodies up in heaps before blowing them to hell with the gas cannon, or burning them all at once. Questions: in the case of dual type weapons like sonic pulsers what kind of damage gets inflicted? is it HE or sonic? And how to lobstermen fare against incendiary ammo?

As for the grell...its obvious, TFTD programmers just pinched the creature, renamed it. Every trait is present, paralytic ability, tentacles, the rim of what look like some sort of sensory hairs below the beak, above the tentacles. I think its safe to assume its a beak anyway, even without the above logical analysis.

Its a beak, for certain. Heres why I think so: Human visual spectrum at least, is no use down there whatsoever, bar detecting bioluminescence from fish. No UV spectrum radiation so terrestrial insect-like vision modality is out, UV simply does not penetrate to the depths of the ocean in any meaningful way. Although that said, trilobites had eyes, and indeed very advanced ones, and not just for a bug either. Marine life other than pinnipeds and cetaceans are ectotherms very often, and would be unlikely to show up on anything but the most efficient thermal imaging amplification, other than via differential analysis, I'd think animal IR sensing would be absolute, and nowhere near as sensitive as electronics can provide, such as a pit viper, or snake would easily be able to detect prey, but wouldn;t for instance, be able to detect weather the creature targeted was comfortable, or sweating a bit. At least I don't think so. No idea what the result of pointing a thermal imaging camera at a poikilothermic species would be (variable to a degree depending upon environment, but capable of some thermal selfregulation. A combination of chemical senses, maybe IR maybe not. Active IR would give away a hunter (where a thermal camera is used with an IR light source, although there is a difference between thermal imaging and simple IR. Passive/active IR is the greyscale-looking type of night vision, whilst the other is what you'd see in the 'predator' films, the alien's heat vision mode.) Other things would be the pressure and movement like taste, such as our earth analogue, would be found in reptiles, the jacobson's , organ of snakes, and chemosensation can be very, very VERY sensitive, moth antennae are capable of detecting a few molecules of pheromone from the opposite sex from miles away with their antennae, as hormones in other species too are released in small quantities to bear action upon sites distinct from that of release, generally you don't need much at all. Diffusion will be slower in water but nevertheless chemotactic signalling must work in an aquatic environment, unless solitary creatures like octopi come together to breed using instinct, but if not then they must have some way of signalling others of their species over long distances and vast quantities of water, so diffusion of chemical signals is the logical choice, unless a creature is capable of generating something like electrical pulses (torpedo ray, or in fresh water, the electric eel or electrophorus, it wouldn't surprise me if the hunting type discharge isn't the equivalent of a bomb going off, seeing as how something like a large torpedo ray can put a person flat on their arse. I'd think the limit is the size of the creature and if it can shield itself from its own jolt or not, always wondered how simple stacked cells like the discharge system of electric fish doesn't result in a bilateral transmission back through the cells via conduction in what is basically a bag of electrolyte-saturates water with some squishy bits in it (I.e the cytoskeletal architecture of cell membranes and their contents, the result is conductive all over..so I don't get how such creatures avoid shocking themselves) although I don't think either actually signal to others using their discharge, but given the sensitivity of some creatures to EM emissions then if your sensitive to electric or magnetic fields the shock-discharge would be deafeningly loud at a fair distance . the lateral line of fish, plus electroception, possibly gravity and magnetic. On the ufopaedia (website, not game) the wound left by a tentaculat is described as hickey-like with a central slit, isn't it? They are described as finding their way with the ability to target even in complete darkness too. making me thing they navigate by means other than visual. Sounds like a octopus bite to me. Never been bitten by an octopus, but I've seen the beak close up. VERY close up, since I was scuba diving in turkey around 2001-2002, and after picking up a large snail shell to examine it, found there wasn't a snail in there but a baby octopus, about the size of my clenched fist in the body, excluding tentacles. The little devil promptly shot out, and clamped itself on my face, right over my mask. Although no harm done, it wasn't aggressive in the least, and once gently detached from my face, by the diving instructor/guide then it was content to just investigate me, scooting around more or less where it felt like, was quite playful seeming even, which isn't particularly surprising given the intelligence of many cephalopods. I'd have thought it would have squirted ink if it had felt as though it were threatened. I haven't eaten octopus since actually, because of that. Kinda liked the 'lil guy. I still eat squid though. squid won't win mastermind any time soon thats for sure. Big ones like giant and colossal squid possibly, but small ones really are thick. Stupid enough you don't even need bait on hooks for squid, they'll often just throw themselves on a bare hook. Theres one of Attenborough's sea life (blue planet series I think) docu's, where squid fishing like that is shown, using multiply hooked lines, with no bait whatsoever, and the swarming squid absolutely zerg rush the bare hooks and catch themselves en masse. I kind of object to killing something quite so intelligent as octopi out of hand, when there is a far less intelligent alternative. Although I'd still sooner they not have to suffer, I still need to eat, and I'd not make it two hours as a vegetarian let alone a lifetime, since I don't eat vegetables, I'd go very, very hungry. But squid certainly won't be winning any prizes for their intellect any time in the forseeable; If they did, then they'd stop tasting so good as calamari:P Also, eyes are only of use down there if they either operate on an entirely different spectrum than ours, and many fish eyes. The only light down there is that generated by bioluminescent organisms, of which there are many in the depths, both used for predation and evasion thereof (such as angler fish) Never forgot that incdent, and I doubt I'll forget either, its one of about three incidents in my life that I think I'll probably remember right until I'm either old and decrepit enough that I shoot myself to avoid dementia (assuming its incurable by the time I reach old age, if I reach it at all), or die of old age. The other two being when I was much much younger, having the gas maintenance guy come in, because my family and I could all detect a , gutwrenching, godsawful putrescent, stygian reek of domestic gas supply, and assumed a gas leak. Guy didn't find a thing, spent ages well nigh tearing his hair out in frustration, and eventually left, stench or no stench because he just couldn't find a leak anywhere. Turned out their wasn't one at all, but in the warmth behind the pump of the fridge/freezer, somehow the spores of one Phallus impudicus (well more than one, there was a luxuriant clump of the things, and a big cluster of nearly-sprouted witch-eggs too) All growing like a miniature forest of severed, shit-covered penises, straight out of the carpet. There must I presume have either been some sort of organic debris there to feed off and germinate, or maybe the carpet was natural fiber I don't know. Thankfully I didn't get the blame, despite being the most likely suspect, because my dad would come with me, taking me hiking when I was really too young to go out on my own, let alone get public transport to forests too far to walk to, and I taught him quite a bit of what I know, as I was learning it, in the field of mycology (first picked up a copy of Phillips' when I was 3, which is the age I learned to read, in fact used that book to teach myself to read a lot better, as kids books don't cover technical terminology if intended for that age, and as such, were completely unsatisfying (so I'm told, I actually refused to read them, in school, for that reason, that they were beneath me, and apparently I saw them as patronizing and got really pissed off at attempts to force the prechewed, predigested garbage type kids books down my throat when I had my OWN books, that I WANTED to read and which were far better for teaching me anyway, for the reason of actually holding material to be learned, as opposed to simply repeating the words, parrot-fashion.) So he shared in the suspicion as to who tracked those spores back into the house haha. ONE of us at least, was the one to have done it, but neither of us has a clue which one, and we never will. We have laughed our arses off for years about that. Wasn't quite so funny while we still couldn't find the source, because it truly was abominable, you can detect a single stinkhorn from hundreds of yards away, the stench goes an awful long way, emphasis on the 'awful' part (if you haven't seen one walking in the woods some time, then to give some idea how bad the compounds that cause that smell are, I've experimentally managed to contaminate an open area the size of a football pitch with a mere few drops of mercaptans (where sulfur replaces an oxygen in an alcohol or phenol, the modern term is thiol, mercaptan comes from the latin 'mercurium captans', meaning to capture mercury, as sulfur, and in paticular thiol groups have a great affinity for Hg, in fact heavy metals often exert a lot of their toxicity via the means of binding reactive -SH groups in such aminoacids as cysteine for example, and by depleting glutathione thereby inducing reactive free radical species formation. The low-weight thiols are awful for the most part, although some are small enough to be volatile yet still pleasant smelling, grapefruits produce some such substances for instance. And once, had an unfortunate accident that caused some such horrid thiol and alkyl sulfide products derived from a modified vitamin B1 I'd ingested, as metabolic degradation products. Had to wear the same set of clothing until it dissipated, spent HOURS in the shower and it couldn't be touched. Burnt nearly everything but my shoes after, although some could go in the outside bin, bagged up. People actually crossed to the other side of the street while on my way up to an unavoidable doctor appointment (had to, since I have to take strong pain meds for a knee injury, screwed up hips too, the knee at least, isn't going away, and blowed if I'm willing to sit there and endure the withdrawals from suddenly stopping solely to save a few people some very, very offended nostrils. And besides, suddenly dropping my anticonvulsant med, as it has dual purposes, also a potent sedative/hypnotic, not a benzodiazepine or barbiturate, but it works at the same GABAaR allosteric binding site that the barbs do, so a sudden withdrawal would have been and would still be damned unpleasant at best, although I don't take a high enough dose to result in a fatality, I'd about as soon french-kiss a chryssalid, or apply for a biodrone organ-donor card.

I still prefer the cannon later on in the game, once the aquanauts are experienced enough only the weight matters really, because they get good enough eventually to attain between 110-120% accuracy even firing two handed, more or less removing (IMO) the advantage of the faster pistol with the heavier damage. With the pistol the you'd have to plug a tentaculat with both shots, possibly the third if your pretty unlucky, whereas with the cannon shot no.1 usually is enough to take the tentaculat out. I don't think I've ever seen one survive two cannon shots to need a third though. And tentaculats, and 'pleasant' generally shouldn't even be allowed to share a seabed together, let alone a sentence. The only sentence that is shared with 'pleasant/good' and tentaculats, is a capital one. Displacer/sonic tanks do have the advantage of a hefty magazine capacity though, and can get off three shots if they have full TU, so you can afford to have them simply blast their way through if something gets in the way, that sonic turret can make a pretty good mess of most internal wall structures in a base second floor. Far better to have one displacer at least, for breaching entryways if nothing else.Takes a few shots, and isn't as dramatic as using explosives, but at least you get more death for your dollar once you punch a hole in a wall separating your teams from a room full of hostiles, letting off the DPL round you would have used to breach the walls off on the interior side, you still get your Bloody Big Hole, but at least doing it that way the wall doesn''t insulate the enemy from the blast and you get body count as well as blown in walls. I sometimes use the strategy of taking two sonic tanks, and loading the remaining men only with DPLs, a couple of stun launchers, a few stun rods/medkits, one motion scanner and the rest DPLs, ammo, gas cannons ( my aquanauts like using them right on throughout the war, using a WP or HE loadout..and pulse grenades. Anything gets in the way of the tank gets either blasted through by the tanks, or blown to kingdom come by sappers a pair of drills is helpful just in case ammo runs low, but generally reliance is on capturing enemy weapons after mowing them down with overwhelming force

Haha nice. Bet the little bug bastard didn't see that coming Presumably its only possible with rounds that have very narrow sprites. Or is it more of a 'clipping' thing? Saying this because it sounds like the phenomenon carries over to TFTD if you can see a contact through the tiny gap in the 'windows', but of course, no laser weapons, and the sprite for the gauss rounds, at least from the pistol and rifle is shorter and quite a lot WIDER than the really narrow, elongated laser beam sprite. Maybe a jet harpoon or dart pistol might be able to do it. But seeing as how bases are usually crawling with tasoth...well would you fancy taking on one a tasoth with bugger all but a dart pistol? Definitely not going to kill something capable of routinely shrugging off a sonic cannon blast, or even on occasion, a direct hit from a disruptor pulse round, whilst stuck in a bug infested bathyal hell hole? rather you than me! Never tried slotting a bug through a window with a carefully aimed sonic/gauss round, my usualy tactic is just to slap the critter stupid enough to stand next to a wall with no gap between it and whats coming, with a disruptor pulse round aimed to the outside of the wall, right next to the bug. Often enough it either does a respectable amount of damage, or kills the alien outright, depending whats there and how tough it is, how much damage taken from the shell etc. And it if doesn't, its not wasted because now you have a dirty great hole in which to pour in troops or more heavy artillery. A couple of blind shots, programmed to follow the path of the long 'arm' sections can be handy, without opening up the doors, to catch anything hiding out in there near the external door ends without having to risk reaction fire if its a sonic weapon or stunner being carried by a critter hiding there. Cowardly, to shoot them in the back without ever seeing them alive? Sure, but it works, and efficiently at that! Although in my relatively newish game, I'm currently getting paid back Lobsterman and bio-drone terror site, armed with nothing but a gas cannon, gauss rifles+1 gauss pistol, pulse grenades and a coelacanth. Got some plastic aqua armor at least, and some thermal tazers. Something tells me this is going to get very ugly, very quickly. If its anything but a bloodbath I'll be surprised. Chances are its going to turn into a game of sonic grenades, stealth and thermal tazer whack-a-mole, using the tank for scouting. Thank CHRIST its not fully dark. And that whilst I could bring none with me, because theres no ammo researched yet (on it now) the team can at least use sonic pistols. if captured from a dead or KO enemy. The problem is creating those in the first place. Lobstermen are resistant to gauss and HE aren't they? at least they are vulnerable to stunning weapons. Haven't got any drills yet, haven't SEEN a calcinite yet. But the problem is reaction fire from those damnable lobsters unless hitting the area close to them with HE fire from the gas cannon.

Actually I believe that those dark, bubble-shaped structures on USOs DO provide some visibility, at least, oddly enough, visibility inwardly. I say this because earlier today, X-com received reports of an alien base facility having been located somewhere in the vicinity of the south china sea, and of course, tooled up the men, loaded the triton with soldiers and the coelacanth (gas cannon, I don't use the coelacanth/torpedo launcher, because it only carries a measly 8 rounds or thereabouts. This is a relatively newly started game, and at a stage having JUST encountered a very few lobstermen and a handful of tasoth (at that time in the game, I don't mean in the base itself, I didn't find both on the upper section of course). But taking on the first level of the alien facility, NOBODY had entered the interior of the seabed-section first level of the hive, but on starting to send as many troops as possible to get themselves pressed flat against the walls, ready to attempt breaching the walls with explosives. The weird thing was, one of my men, or possibly the tank/gas cannon spotted a tasoth, on the INSIDE of the base, stood just behind one of those dark rounded wall sections, and apparently, said tasoth must have been one of their squad leaders, because whilst both the two fireteams and the coelacanth were situated outside, the inside of the base remained dark and out of visibility, but the numerical indicator specifying a hostile sighted to the bottom right of the screen showed 1 bug spotted,clicking this centered the tac screen on the interior of the base, highlighting the tasoth. (The only reason I know it WAS a tasoth and not another species is the squeal it made when the team retreated to gain enough breathing room to unleash a nuclear firestorm of explosives, breaching the base through the south face of the wall north of the triton LZ towards the bottom left of the map, shelling with incendiary and HE gas cannon rounds whilst sending in teams, SWS taking point, gas cannon wielders immediately behind, most other aquanauts packing gauss rifles, sometimes gauss pistols as secondaries, stun rods and pulse grenades, with a handful of dye grenades, a pair of magna-blast packs and a few proximity mines for those times when an entryway or exit left packing a nasty surprise for the next unfortunate slimy little aberration to pop a head round that booby-trapped door with the squads heavy weapons men sat patiently waiting behind the place with grenades primed and torpedo launcher/gas cannon/hydro jet cannons all loaded full of HE and WP rounds. Surprise surprise....critter pops through door, finds the mined entryway goes off in his/her/it's face (assuming it HAS a face mind you), and while its busy floundering around in shock, assuming the first explosion was insufficient to ensure a kill, the teams, supported by the tank, open up, calling down living hell made flesh upon the poor unfortunate bug son of a bitch So those things are windows, I think. Its not very common to get a look in, but it happens. I've only had my team spot a bug that way a handful times. Although the next base and respectably sized subs (larger than, and usually not inclusive of cruiser size, due to the internal structure of the cruisers, perhaps?) But there can have been no other explanation for locating a bug in a USO or base facility which has only been approached from the outside, and no psykers involved, at least, no human psyker.

Thanks for the info on the 'medic cannon' You mean...it fires D.U tipped torpedo TUBES, as opposed to their torpedoes? Damn thats nuts. Firing an entire torpedo launcher at the enemy. Does it have to be a torpedo launcher loaded with DU-tipped torpedoes? or is it just loaded with DUP head launchers without torpedo launchers. Or third option, torpedo launcher loaded with or without rounds, but doing more damage one way or the other? So its a known glitch? I found no references to it on the UFOpaedia site online where other glitches were discussed. (don't mind my use of the slightly different acronyms here and there, I am infinitely more used to chemist's acronyms and slang/in-house terminology than military although I do take a fair interest in military tech generally speaking. Thankfully I made sure to keep at least one save of the glitched game, because I want to see if that medic cannon can be fired. So, its possible that in some circumstances it is capable of being fired? And the base environment, must have been a glitch or oddity then because I've never made it to T'leth. I CAN'T have seen them there because ,my troops have never BEEN there. Ever. I have been playing since the first playable demo first came out, and I still have been locked in a bloody, vicious, messy war of attrition against the bugs. The base like environment WAS a base, OR an artifact site. One or the other, not T'leth. As for the pathetic hallucinoids and armored vs vibroblades, well lobstermen are armored to the eyeteeth, and tough as rusty nail chewing gum, but 8 or 9 times in ten just a single vibroblade strike is enough to put them down for good. Damn cheap way of taking the things out too, especially comes in handy when going commander hunting, Nailing the three lobbies in there with the vibroblade after some crazy fruitcake charges down the hole, stab, stab, stab after destroying the synomium device first, to avoid any nonfatal stunnings resulting in the body being blown to hell when the synomium device takes whats coming that way in the form of a disruptor pulse round, sonic pulser or gas cannon HE shell (I don't use the GC armor piercing rounds other than those that you get given for free at the beginning of the game, once those armor-piercing gas cannon rounds are spent, I don't buy more, only mainly phosphorus rounds, and some HE shells. I like to use the HE bolts especially down in artifact sites, where there is often a heavy infestation of DPL-armed aquaturds that love to pop their heads out and send a DP round wherever you least want it, trying to use MC to designate targets, the sneaky little svinyas. The tasoth they frequently are to be found working alongside, do it too, but only the leaders are MC capable, whereas a lot of aquaturds can be at least capable of probing a target and finding a place to open a can of high explosive worms. The gas cannon rounds are cheap, can carry plenty of them, do respectable damage and you bet that any anorexic sectoid gone moldy that pops it's fat little head out of a door or window, or hides close to something destructible is going to have that head popped permanently with a large caliber HE or willy pete-tipped gas cannon slug *grins evilly* Not too shabby against tasoth either, although it usually takes two shells to ensure a kill. Not bad, considering I've seen the (albeit not all too common) odd tasoth actually survive direct hits from DPL rounds (speaking collectively, I do not mean to imply I've seen a tasoth take TWO disruptor pulse rounds and yet live, I mean that I've had missions in which several DIFFERENT tasoth each took a DPL round, and a direct hit at that and survived to take a second, which in each and every single case that my men have ever gone on to launch a second round, the result was tasoth-flavored slushpuppy. Not, mind you that if you found such a critter you could actually EAT it, deep sea creatures are very unlikely to ever be edible, of any species whatsoever, because to survive the pressures found at such depths and whats more to avoid freezing to death/freezing solid the creatures found in the oceanic depths have to come up with strategies to avoid those fates, and the typical way of doing it is to saturate their tissues and possibly bodily fluids like their blood and in the case of invertebrates presumably, haemolymph, with ammonia and di/trimethylamine. So I am told, giant squid for example absolutely stinks like rotting cat piss, courtesy of all the NH3, (CH3)2NH and (CH3)3N. Not, unsurprisingly enough, that I've ever had the occasion to be close enough to a giant or colossal squid to try sniffing one of either species, much less make calamari out of them, or for that matter even seen one. Would love to some day, but I don't think it very likely. Although I've a pretty damn good idea what they smell like, I use triethylamine more than tri/dimethylamine as either a catalytic base in things like the knoevanagel/Henry condensation, or if using acyl halides as acylating agents, as they release plenty HCl gas [or other hydrogen halide, I just happen to use more acyl chlorides than bromides, can't think of ever having anything to do with an iodide, or even remember if acyl iodides are stable for that matter, so I just think of the di/trialkylamine bases as hydrogen chloride-suckers to trap the waste as its formed and in so doing, avoid burning substrates, foulling up acid-sensitive projects etc. And those amines smell AWFUL, especially trimethylamine, think a mixture of cat piss soaked into litter thats had the chance to stand around in warm weather for a fair while, and really old and putrid rotten fish. Something tells me that no aquanaut would want to hold a lobsterman dinner, not more than once anyway, *pictures new seamen getting hazed by being offered a big plate of lobsterman claws* 'mmm...thanks, you even cooked me my first kill personally, Commander,.....' ''no worries, you earned it, after all you did just charge that lobbie with only a magna-blast grenade and a harpoon rifle, run out of ammo and managed to ram your dart pistol right in its mouth after jumping on its back and putting a dart straight up through the roof of its mouth into its brain, you earned that, and your promotion straight to ensign, never mind able seaman' *newly promoted ensign takes bite, gags, coughs, and spews his insides all over the base walls and floor* (curiosity...presumably thats pronounced something like 'telex', if going with r'yeh'ian linguistic pronunciation? that sounds more like a phone or internet service provider than the grisly lair of a Great Old One. that said 'relex' sounds like a term for either genitalia or possibly the order of a chain-smoking, croaky masseuse, as in 'lie down now and r'yleh' <tagged onto the end of post because of my stupid psychotic laptop mousepad and keyboard, its in remark to xarquids and t'leth. Lol I actually just typed that as r'yleh. Oops. The game designers were obviously as big a set of lovecraft fans as I am

DEFINITELY have seen a xarquid on a base. Or it might have been an artifact site, but one or the other. I took note of it, because I've only EVER seen a handful, literally, I could count them with the fingers of one hand, maybe one or two more, since TFTD first came out, Bought the game as soon as I first found a copy of a playable demo somewhere as a kid, where your armed with gauss weapons and a coelacanth, the type armed with the big gas cannon bolt thrower, no alien tech, tactical only mission facing tasoth, Gauss weapons on the demo, oddly, had the same infinite ammo as the laser weapons in enemy unknown. has such couldn't have installed it from the CD. Not that I particularly give a damn about paying for software, as a rule I try my hardest to avoid ever doing so, if I CAN download what software I require, I do. Not well off to begin with financially, and all my spare money, thats earmarked for the lab. Whats this TFTD extender? I'd like to de-nerf the hallucinoids, as they stand (or, rather, as they float, like living loogies) they are pathetic, and more of an irritation and waste of ammo than anything elses. A lot of the time they don't seem even to bother attacking in melee and just sit there sucking bullets. And irritatingly enough they seem to be quite resistant against at least the vibroblade; I have just restarted the game for a few reasons, was getting some really weird bugs. Like my primary triton being armed with 1/0 weapons, the 'weapon' being 'medic' shown as a purple rank badge with commander's chains. with an ammunition capacity of two, but without any rounds for it Wish I could have found a way to load the thing, it actually showed up if I sent that triton out to engage a USO in flight, but without any 'medic shells' I obviously couldn't start firing medic-commanders out of the triton's ghostly torpedo tube. (that kind of puts a whole new meaning on the idiom 'to get fired' from your job, does it not? I know militaries need to enforce discipline, but surely, thats a little bit harsh, even for a trooper being sacked. Launched out of a torpedo tube headfirst, smack bang into a USO full of perdition only knows what kind of vicious alien aberrations, or simply, squished against the hull, potentially splattered, twisted, stretched, crushed, snapped in half or several of the above due to the gravity field modulation employed by the alien craft engines. Or possibly just irradiated by the ion beam accelerators, like that russian guy who accidentally got hit straight through the head by the beam from a particle accelerator (it happened, guy survived, IIRC it was a cyclotron, although it may have been a synchrotron, guy accidentally had his head in the way of the path of the beamline and it was turned on while maintainance was meant to be happening. d

To give an idea how rare they an xarquid are, I've seen perhaps 3-4 x the garquid and a handful more triscsenes since \tftd first came out, and bar a year or two i'vve been playing since then. \triscene are RARE, xarquid though, they are almost nonexistent, but dangerous when they do appear due to their damn fast, accurate sonic beam, like a big bulky bio drone. And they have a nasty habit of being smart and sneaky as hell made flesh, and they like to hide out and snipe with that damn cannon of theirs. First time I ever saw the tricene though I admit it shit me up a little, seeing those two craft PWT cannons mounted on it,, thankfully its only smart enough to use sonics and play the role of tank/meat shield. Albeit a meat shield with decent reactions and a big cannon, Not as dangerous as the xarquid though, if they were more common, they would be a bloody nightmare instead of sought after hunting trophy for the Triton's walls. Especially on something like a base assault or artefact site, which I think is the only time I've ever seen xarquid, in a base. Only EVER seen a couple of them though but they can put up a pretty good fight unless you have DPLs, which of course can be sent in from afar and dropped right up the arse end of the thing, if the bug is getting too arsey to stun. Getting close enough with stun rods/vibroblades is a certifiable nightmare. PTSD all round for the squad I bet.

Got two troops that I usually use for clearing the areas while scouting bases/artefact sites with the displacer/sonic. brother/sister going by the pics and surnames and the harrison siblings have survived since they were first hired, and they are by now almost as mean and hard-boiled as the tank. Mag ion armor the entire team (year 3 by now), the female's loadout is as a heavy weapons expert, goes in carrying either disruptor pulse launcher and small stun launcher, plus as much ammo as can be carried in her inventory, or a sonic cannon and either two loaded launchers and a vibroblade plus stun rod and a ton of pulsers. Typically makes a hell of a mess, even after my stupid laptop and its fruitcake mouse pad left her with just enough TUs to launch one of her rockets, as an attempt at taking the swarm of tasoth/lobstermen/tentaculat shes just blundered into if without a vibroblade, down with her at close range, right up in the face of the enemy. Shes meant to go down in a blaze of glory, taking them all with her only to instead be left in a charnel ground of a colony section surrounded by corpses. She very rarely misses an aimed shot with the sonic cannon either, having stupidly high accuracy stats. Kind of a hybrid sniper/heavy weapons/even drill berserker (as in 'berserkirgang' rather than 'gone berserk firing at teammates, the kind that had she and her similarly psycho brother want to charge 3 tentaculats alone but for a tank far away enough to make it as much a danger TO as support OF them with nothing left but a drill....this chick has obviously never heard of mr Charles Darwin, but he has it seems never heard of her either. Can't believe she survived the first fight,let alone two years thus far. \the brothers just as bad, he has a habit of packing only two gas cannons,wielding one per hand, one loaded with HE shells the other WP rounds, a drill for emergencies, a bunch of grenades and charging in like a complete nutcase, spraying shells from each GC alternately wherever the thickest concentration of the worst. Neither is MC capable due to the research bug, but they HAVE spent more than a year in the MC lab training, so good luck to anyone trying to MC THEM, you'd get better results possibly trying to take over the displacer and have less chance ending your psionic attack with smoke pouring from your ears and your eyeballs looking at your frontal lobe, an aquatoid commander or some hard nut to crack like apocalypse psimorph might stand a chance. IRL the aquatoid would die trying likely enough, burnt out like a broken lightbulb. Psimorph on the other handi I think would be a real close one that none of the squad would put money on. I think she'd probably keep it distracted long enough for one of the team to pop a rocket up its rear end, or keep it tied up unable to use its psyker capabilities to attack the squad or to aid their own, but tracey harrison wouldn't be doing so either, being busy with the psimorph, the skeletoids would be useful weapons while the anthropods minds would probably end up dead or in a nursing home being fed mush through a tube. Not really much to say about her brother, too unsubtle to panic , doesn't fuck around and can shoot straight, whilst his sister cant establish the psionic connection herself but can make a mess of anything that does first, the brother is just ..well about as subtle as a HE and and incendiary loaded gas cannon in each hand, while carrying a vibroblade and a huge pile of pre-primed pulser grenades. .Might not be the sharpest tool in the box but he knows how to squash bugs alright. Those two must have been in the only unit to survive the first lobster men bloodbath when they showed up wielding mixed sonic rifle and heavy sonics vs one guy with the teams two gas cannons and no armor for anyone, best the team had was the cannons and sonic pistols/pulsers First multiple crew member scouts when the lobsters showed was a massacre, took the ship but at the expense of a battered few survivors .

iirc the Tasoth were originally planned very differently, so I read although ive no idea how. Also is it only me that sees this or do tasoth in tactical missions take on a distinct masculine or feminine look (for a reptillian hell spawn at least) depending on how the fin crest faces? And we do have those^ they are called lawyers:D

I get the same problem, but limiting CPU cycles via dosbox (win7, shit as it is, I like it as much as I'd have liked to attend sunday school with jimmy savile if im honest) Problem seems to be the system is just too fast even with the CPU limited to the point the game interstitial screens load slowly the scroll speed still runs quicker than the fists of a meth-twacked mantis shrimp. (4 gig processor, 16 of RAM.) Tried the trigger scroll but to no use because I'm using a laptop, and one with a psychotic, unstable basketcase of a mouse pad..

Real world batthyscaphe type submersibles for really REALLY deep water exploration, like the trieste, the one they sent down the mariana ocean trench, which is iirc, about 7 miles down, need to be spherical to withstand the pressures involved, have thick walls, titanium is the usual material, and the windows are toughened plexiglass or possibly glass, not sure if ordinary glass can be used, and they are just a few inch in diameter, whilst being about a foot thick to avoid being crushed. u might repulse water equal to the mass of the craft, but there will always be far more to rush in and take its place, in the deep ocean that would overwhelm more or less any power supply.

Also, try sending displacer tanks right up in the face of the lobsters carrying a visible shock launcher, they often still fire it point blank, not affecting the tank at all almost all of the time (I just had a sonic displacer tank STUNNED for the first time ever today, but before I could send someone to look over it and search it for a weapon, etc. Some inconsiderate, innacurate shooting swine managed to screw up and let a disruptor pulse launcher off in their own face, right next to the KOed tank. Unfortunately having to play it on a laptop with a really crap touchpad, oversenstive and has troops running round corners like complete morons, having no idea whats lurking round there quite often, going haring off doing things they were never meant to do.

Been fighting the current campaign, on difficulty setting 3 for a game time of over 2 years now. Not one has shown itself, nor has the xarquid. A good way to get the ufopaedia entries, is to get everything else, living and autopsy, then keeping two medics in reserve, research those after leaving no other options for the critter to spill when its interrogation is finished. IIRC in the original first game, its the ONLY way to get the cyberdisc and sectopod 'alive'.

Another good trick that avoids approaching the thing from below is to shoot those windows out from a distance, then drop a disruptor pulse round down the hole. you bbetter be a good shot, but if your lucky one or more of the commanders due to the insane hardcase nature of lobstermen may only be knocked out. To be dragged back with your team, or possibly all killed outright. Its worth destroying the synomium device as a first priority in a surgical strike, then sticking around to slug it out to the last bug. Good idea to bring along a coelacanth or better yet a displacer/sonic tank, those pack an awful lot of ammunition and do a respectable amount of damage, plus being somewhat resistant even to lobsterman claws and sonic cannon fire, and more or less immune to those pain in the arse tentaculats (best way to deal with them is use the displacer tank/s as scout/s to take point and follow up with thermal shock launchers, gas cannons loaded with HE shells, and disruptor pulse launchers. I usually load 3-4 men with vibroblades due to the effectiveness against lobstermen and somewhat against tasoth. each also packing a sonic cannon, spare clip, medkit, one soldier at random with a motion scanner, for those annoying bug hunts where some cowardly little swine hides somewhere needing a change of underwear taking hours to root out. And against the tentaculats, chances are your team will find a lot of disruptor pulse launchers, plus spare rounds for them in the first section, I like to tool everyone not carrying a drill/shock launcher/sonic cannon combination, or not with a stun rod and gas cannon, dark holes invite disruptor pulse rounds from afar, reserving the heavy weapons guys for reaction fire and the very last to move. Sonic tanks can scout a long way and do survive well the outer edges of such a blast. They work great to draw fire, only to move off round a corner next turn whilst a squaddie sticks a disruptor pulse round or a couple of sonic pulsers, or a hail of gas cannon fire using HE and willy pete rounds (why they specified the use of WP I do not know, if you can't store it in sealed amps under inert gas then white phosphorus is actually best STORED under water, It doesn't keep burning under water, you'd want thermite grenades for that, now that stuff really does keep going until it feels like stopping or its bunt through everything it touches, leaving a slag of red hot oxides and molten metal everywhere. Copper oxide thermite actually explodes unlike the other variants. Wheras I've only seen white phos ignite spontaneously when I've withdrawn some from its container full of water and left it to warm up in the air (or whilst distilling it in vacuo, and then having some get loose, when its warm its pyrophoric enough, and if ignited, is sure as hell intense. Damned awful stuff even the tiniest speck of a burn will mess you up good, through the toxicity of the stuff. Had a bad experience there once, after getting a a little tiny bit on the arm, left that arm shaky and almost parkinsonesque for a month at least, couldn't pick up a knife, fork etc, and definitely couldn't write. That, was from a little bit of the stuff not all that much larger than about 1/4th the size of a 4mm BB gun shot. Hurt like hell, but the toxicity of the stuff was the worst by far.) Those rounds shouldn't work under water at all, although its nasty enough on land.xp The gas cannon HE or incendiary shells do work well for lowering the health of a tentaculat enough to stun it. You really, really don't want to let them live once they are down though, just dump another HE round or sterilize the locale with explosives, the more the merrier. Those things can never be TOO dead. Or stun them, revive the blasted things with a medkit, and then hit them with drills, or just hit the KOed tentaculat with a grenade or HE round while its down. Go pop a grenade right up the backside after recovering a living specimen and a corpse