OmegaTwo

OK, kill me. I'm sorry for not being able to get in the sim earlier today, but my connection hanged up at some point before 0830 (the time I awakened), and I couldn't connect until 1400. Also, the thing kept hanging up randomly until a few minutes ago. Sorry again.

Did anyone stated that carrying two pistols (one on each hand) gives you some good amount of extra ammo, since you can fire them with only one hand? That's why I prefer pistols! I use one for reaction fire and the other for snap shots.

Ko put his pen back in his pocket and his book back in his bag. He stretched slightly to get some kinks out, then walked over to where Dias was sitting. "Hey, Paulo." Ko sat down himself and shifted his rifle so that it wasn't digging into his side. Lifting his head up from his notations, Dias looked to Ko "Ah, hey... Derrick?" He still wasn't used to his colleagues names. "How are you going?" Ko grinned wryly. "Going ok, going ok. Patrols aren't finding much. We seem to have drawn the short stick with respect to action." Ko dug into his pocket for one of the pseudo-rancid food bars that they had been given. Dias grinned too, and, putting his datapad back in the bag, moved a bit to find a comfortable position. "Heh, tell me something, Ko. Did I fared well in that ship invasion? I know I'm not really a 'newbie', since I was in the Beta team before moving to Kappa, but I never boarded a harvester like that" Ko tilted his head slightly, as he did sometimes when he was thinking. "Well, you came out alive, didn't you?" Ko laughed slightly to himself. "Yeah, you did alright. You're not a combat newb, no, but the style is a little different here. It's all well and good for the HazardOps boys and girls to be getting bogged down - they have the firepower to get out of the ugly situations. We don't have that fallback, so we always have to be pushing. It's a bit different in outlook, that's all." Dias seemed thoughtful for a moment, and then grinned. "Oh, well... I guess I can get used to that. But changing subjects... I took a look into the older mission logs and weapon specifications, and realized something. Are you an engineer?" "Educated and trained in Canada, but not certified... I haven't exactly been back home to get my papers certified, you know?" Ko grinned slightly, but deep down the comment hit a bit of a sore spot. The choices made... "Why do you ask?" "I saw your name in the specifications of an auto pistol. Heh, I may be a 'combat medic', but that doesn't means I don't like weapons. In fact I always wanted to create my own firearm project, but I lack the skills and patience to do it. How much time it took you to design that pistol?" Ko grinned. "You don't want to know. A long time. I had been thinking and drawing and doing all sorts of stuff for the years we've been here. I played around with the elements based on pistols I knew about. I worked heavily with the Glock series, but man, they are ugly and apparently they've been pretty ugly in the past." Dias laughed. "Ugly, you say? Heh, VERY ugly! But prettyness never won battles as far as I know. There's a weapon back in my homeland that I must tell you... it looks worser than an ascidian doing strip dance, but it's one of the most versatile weapons I ever saw out of X-Com! Also, I think I need to congratulate the guy who engineered the paratrooper carbine here. This is some seriously good weapon" "The carbine, Scientist Har'du'lak, a good developer... and a good project leader, he drove his guys hard. But... uglier than... impossible! That's pretty damn ugly. What weapon is that?" Ko scratched his nose. What weapon could be that damn ugly? "Heh, that was a semi-prototype gun I was trained in the military school." Dias chuckled. "It was some kind of weird laser rifle mixed with a normal rifle. Wires all over it, weird lights bliping around, a 'bzzzzzz' sound everytime you put your finger in the trigger, and that thing was hard to carry around! Heh, the worse: even looking like that, the designers said they couldn't fit any cover in the weapon without rendering it unpraticable. It was rugged enough WITHOUT any cover or armor" He took some brief breath. "And it eventually made into full-scale production" Ko laughed out loud. "Good god. That's horrible. As you say though, I guess it works... still, I'd be scared to take that sucker anywhere where I thought it could be damaged. You don't want to be the one finding out that it wasn't as rugged as you thought." Ko grinned slightly as he thought aloud, "man, it's noisy too. Not good for us, sort of." Still laughing, Dias said: "Heh, I guess they at least got to remove some of the excessive wiring and sound before putting it into production, but it was still very ugly last time I got to see one. Can you imagine how bizarre is a weapon that can fire both laser and normal AP rounds?" "Bizarre is right. I wonder what the advantage is... I mean, really, a bullet or a laser will put down a man with the same efficiency. Well, nice to have options I guess." Ko thought about the bulk... He certainly didn't want to be the one carrying something like that, though every member of the team had multiple weapons. "Yeah, but it comes in handy when you're getting out of ammo, or when you must face some specific threats. The rifle could also fire HE rounds, but the clip was smaller, and I wouldn't risk to carry around explosive stuff right unde a laser core! Ammo cooking off is the least thing you want to see into the battlefield." Dias shook his head. "Anyway, the 'thing' ended up as the standard-issue rifle in my country! I can't understand how" He laughs. "You're from Brazil, right? Remind me to never hang around with your country's army, I might die laughing. They'd probably shoot me, but I'd probably still be laughing." Ko laughs a bit at the thought. "We've got our fair share of ugly looking weapons here too. If you ever have time, check out some of the Ascidian heavy weapons. Yeah, they are effective, robust, etc, but man, I can't imagine how anyone would carry them around." "Hah! Yeah, but never mess with our markmen! They're pretty good." Dias listened to the comment about Ascidian weapons, and grinned. "Weeell... it becomes easier to understand how they carry that when you realize the standard users are gorillas" "It's a matter of finesse. They don't have any when it comes to combat. That's what they learn from us..." Ko ignored a curse and the small rock that bounced off of his pack. "Finesse is the key to everything we do. We can get Alpha to come down and mow through the enemy and do all sorts of brute stuff, but our job is to get things done without destroying everything around." "I guess you're right." Dias dodged a second small rock that missed Ko and flew past him. "It's good to be stealth and to destroy the least possible amount of stuff. Specially when you're planning to USE the stuff later" He grinned, remembering his times in the academy. "That's why I left the military: blowing everything up wasn't with me" "It's just a slightly different brand of blowing stuff up here." Ko winked. "At least here, you can feel like you're doing something, and you are. Nobody is on a pointier, lonelier end of the stick than we are." Dias bursted up laughing. "You know what? I was thinking about the perfect weapon for the Alpha team in any stealth mission: supressed grenades! Then they could use all that hack-and-slash and bomb-them-all tactics they love without risk of being found" Ko laughed, then tried to suppress it. He coughed, only partially successful. "Suppressed grenades... Meh. You know what? Once you've made the critical noise, it doesn't matter how silent you are afterwards. When the crap hits the fan, you use grenades if you think you need to. Sometimes, and I stress sometimes, it can be necessary." "Well, yeah... it may be necessary, but having to run around with the aliens on your heels after a supposedly stealth infiltration mission is ruined by someone blowing the first big head he find with a grenade is not the kind of mission I want" "True, true, but Alpha wouldn't do that. They more familiar with all-out battles where the lines are cut and dried, and that's what they excel in. On a stealth mission, well, they wouldn't do that unless they were already in trouble. Man, it's been over a year since I've really fought with them... A long time." "I've only saw their mission logs and profiles. Heh, they got past some really weird situations, eh? Have we fought with them many times before?" "I mean, 'fought with' as in same battle, not as in shooting them. God forbid it ever comes to that." It had been... how long? "Wait, no, a couple of us did once. And there was onboard the Alien ship... so maybe we did a couple of times. It was always different. Good fighters, but finesse... that is key." "I know the meaning of 'fight with' in that sentence..." Dias replied, annoyed. "I'm not from an english-speaking country but I can understand you" Putting the rant aside, he grinned. "Hmm... I guess we could learn something from them too, but I doubt it could be any useful" "Sorry, you sounded like you might have interpreted it the other way, because we've done that on a vocal basis, ha ha. Anyway, they're on Paronnen now, and we are here... we don't even really know where here is. I wonder that..." "You wonder that...? Hmm... hey, that's true. We don't even know where we are" Dias sounded astounished. "Now I guess we'll have to work well if we want to get out of this planet here alive, and in one piece." Ko nodded briefly. "Well, we'll take care of our little piece of the operation. That's our job. We carry out our missions, hassle the Aliens a bit, but most importantly, we stay alive." Ko looked over quickly at a motion he saw in his peripheral vision. "Sorry Paul, I need to go bug Ghost. I think he's going to want us to pull something off pretty soon. We'll talk later, eh?" "Sure thing, Derrick. It was good to talk with you. Out of combat, you know... See you later." Dias picked up his datapad again and resumed reading his notes. So many new things to get used with, so little time...

Oh, thanks for the answer Danial. Now, about the results... I agree showing only Min, Max and Average damage, since the Median is pretty obvious and the Mode is random (so it can't figure in a final results table). Plus, I'm terrible with big tables (I can't follow the lines correctly), so the less numbers the better for me.

I think I might have lost the post explaining it early in the topic, but what are those "Median" and "Mode" values?

Hmm, wow! Exponential sending costs? That's why I liked XComApoc more. At least the bases were so near one from another that I could transfer stuff without extra costs. Anyway, nice way to discover a glitch.

Zombie, I must say: your calculations (not to mention your perseverance) are impressive... kudos to you!

I think that a sniper rifle could be a modified armor piercing rocket launcher, with less weight/size (comparable to a X-Com Rifle), more accuracy (+20%), lighter ammo (10 bullets/clip), same TU use, whole-map range and no splash damage. Better than having to carry that encumbering rocket launcher around and having you soldier running out of stamina every two turns. Sounds good enough?

Battleships only? You could clean the entire battlefield with one of those if you had enough ammo! And better than the Blaster Bomb, because there is no friendly fire!

Thank ya Ghost! I'll be there (maybe not at the correct time, since my timezone is a bit weird with daylight saving time, but I'll be there).

I doubt about the "inteligent" part, but yeah... strong soldiers are good grenade launchers... and, considering that the X-Com rifle have auto fire, it would work either like a MP5 or a M4...

Yeah, found a client... now, what is the server and channel? And the timezone? I'll need to make preparations to ensure I'll be in the channel in the right hour.

A good background can make everything be possible... even such weird combinations! but Trooper/Medic is better... having firepower to eventually kill an enemy and then help a wounded fellow is good enough for me.

Well, Trooper/Medic is pretty cool for me... Even a totally specialized Medic/Engineer (if there is something like an engineer in the game) could be OK for me... I'm wanting roleplay, not frags! XP

Eh... I still needing a mIRC client... can't find "Trillian"...

Nah... no Psi-Amps... my style is more "drop a few grenades, run for cover, shoot, shoot, shoot, advance, do it all again". Worked fine with me until I reached Cydonia. Then I needed to go Kamikaze (my greatest use of Blaster Bombs... something like: "Hey, a Sectoid! Fire! *BLAMMOOOO!* Less one sectoid... and all those guys that were hiding near him..." pretty funny, having scavenged Blaster Bombs to share and spare...).

Hey, he might be using windows, but I'm in a Mac and needing a way to play TFTD (I have the original DOS version CD). Is there any DOS version or DOS emulator that runs in MacOSX?

Well, having infinite amounts of people to recruit as soldiers, I don't think you are going to miss your downed guy... heh, things can't be perfect anyway... Ah, yeah... just remembered of a situation I needed tactical help: That was a Terror Mission, and my team was loaded with: - 1 Plasma Rifle + 4 Clips (5 guys) or 1 Rocket Launcher + 3 HE Rocket + 1 IN Rocket (2 guys) or 1 Laser Rifle (1 guy, my "sniper") - Laser Pistol (all of them) - 2 Alien Grenades, 2 Grenades (all of them), 1 smo - 1 Medkit (4 soldiers) - Personal Armor (the first one you manufacture... I can't remember the name, all of them) - 1 Motion Scanner (two of them) They were all above-average soldiers, with good accuracy and reaction scores, and I didn't wanted to lose any. The thing was: as soon as my transport landed, I got two Heavy Plasma Sectoids facing the back of the Skyranger, one Sectopod to the left, two Reapers hiding in the warehouses in front of the Skyranger's exit, and some Plasma Rifle/Heavy Plasma Floaters and Snakeman around, not counting the civilian personnel. I think there was also a hidden Chrisalid somewhere, since I got two zombies coming in the next rounds. Needless to say, I got really, really PWNED in that mission. The Sectoids looked like their inventary was full of grenades, because they kept exploding and exploding, and mauling my soldiers. The Sectopod shot two of my men in only one turn, and the Floaters and Snakemen just wrecked total havoc of my troops. I survived for fifteen turns, and ended up with only three guys (two of them with less than half their full health), inside of a warehouse, with the two reapers closing for the kill. i aborted the mission and reloaded the game. I just want to know one thing: how the hell could I at least make my soldiers to exit the Skyranger without being anihillated by plasma bolts and alien nades?

I readed about the TFTD trick of using a grenade to "scare" the aliens out of their hideouts... if it works in Enemy Unknown too, just throw one or two grenades in the floor right over the sectoid's position, then have your team ready to reaction-fire at anything that opens the door. Or, in a more evil way, you could lay some proxies in front of the door and wait for the bighead to come out and get exploded! XD Even if the trick don't works, grenades exploding around drop morale (even without taking damage), so the more nades you throw, the greater the chance of having a panicked (thus easily stunned/killed) sectoid around

Well, I could take the Sniper/Medic or Sniper/Trooper (if there are any slots avaliable). And indoor missions do have some sniping possibilities (like long, narrow corridors or shooting from one building to another)... Hell, sniper rifles can be used like normal (but clumsy) rifles. Anyway, why do snipers carry sidearms, if it is not for such situations? Combined with a good marksman, even a pistol can become a headshot device of doom! (OK, I may be abusing, but I played too much HALO to left the pistols behind!)

Strong Bob: Trillian? Uh, didn't know that trillian is a mIRC client too... DragonHawk: hmmm... Stax died, uh? Well, I guess I'll make another character. Is there any Sniper/Sniper spot free? And I would aprecciate if you send me the logs via e-mail if you can. And about my English... let's just say that I had plentiful of time to chat with people over english-speaking forums... I wrote more things in English in three weeks than in Portuguese through my entire 2004 year! (But I still need pratice...)

Weapons - Laser Weaponry: 7 I like no-ammo weapons... and it helped me a LOT when I played first time, because I screwed up with my researches and took ages to get plasma weapons. - Plasma Weaponry: 9 Plasma rifles forever! Heavy plasmas only in desperate situations, like base defenses or colony invasions. - Small Launcher: 10 Considering that I like to have all aliens researched, I must use this weapon. - Blaster Launcher: 2 I research it, but usually don't take blasters in missions. Scavenging the from dead aliens is better. I never needed to use that much firepower, only in specific situations (like invading landed very large ships or alien colonies) - Alien Grenade: 10 Yeah, there comes a time that normal grenades just don't cut anymore.... then I switch to Alien Grenades (and I don't use many grenades per mission, so I usually have a large stock of these). Equipment: - Psi-Amp: 0 Never used. - Medi-kit: 10 Are you kidding me? The Medi-Kit is irreplaceable! Each soldier must go to missions with one of them. - Motion Scanner: 5 Useful to find hidden aliens... or to know that there is a reaper just behind the door. - Mind Probe: 0 Never used. I'm not into psichic stuff. Armour: 10 All of them are useful. I lost the count of how many times I thanked God because my soldiers were using armor. HWPs: 6 I rarely used them... never got comfortable with a big mobile target like that crawling around, even when they can shoot blaster bombs.

*beginning transmission* Hey, is this thing on? *pokes the communicator, image gets clear* Private Robert Stax reporting back to duty, sir! I went throught some connection issues that limited my connection for almost a year, but I am now ready for action. Ready and with more English skills. Yes, you heard that right! No more (or at least much less) weird and handicapped phrases! Putting the conversation aside, I must ask a few questions: 1 - Is XCAS still operational? 2 - Why am I getting a "Forbidden" message everytime I try to access the XCAS site? 3 - What happened while I was out? Since I can't access the site I can't see the logs... 4 - Do anyone here know where to find a good mIRC client that is compatible with MacOSX? I'll be glad if someone answers me that questions, and will return to simming ASAP. Stax logging out! *message ends*