Alitorious

Well, maybe your blaster bomb took out the elerium . The first time I found out about this base block was on a mars assault a few years back. I brought heavy plasma with me, and manually went to the lift and aborted the mission to continue. For some reason, though, almost all of my heavy plasma clips either disappeared or had 0 ammo at the bottom of the lift! All I had, really, were some blaster launchers and grenades, as well as my hovertanks. Anyway, my squads were all set up. I had a battle force trying to locate and destroy the brain, and a combination of psi-decoys and unarmed soldiers spread out across the rest of the map. One of these soldiers spotted an ethereal with a blaster launcher. He chased after him, knowing that the alien wouldn't kill itself with its own BB. My guy chased the ethereal down a corridor and into a dead end. The ethereal then walked right up to the dead end, and disappeared. (This is also the point where I discovered for myself that Ethereals can fly ) I forget if it ended for good or ill for that particular soldier, though, but it is good to note that if you have a flying suit you can explore and make it over that particular base module.

This was years ago, back when I first got the game, so it may be a bit sketchy. Anyways, I was assaulting a sectoid scout. It was either a large or a medium - probably large. It was farm terrain. My strategy back then was to wait just around the Skyranger and peck off any aliens that come near with reaction fire. I was young then, so I was really scared of the game. (Obviously I was playing on beginner.) I noticed at one spot, at the farthest reaches of my guys' vision, it looked like a sectoid kept moving back and forth and back and forth - but I'd only see him moving one direction. He was in a rather open spot, around the outside corner of a barn. After a couple turns (none of my guys reaction fired) I sent someone up to check it out. Soon he spotted one sectoid, but didn't have the TUs to fire, so I used a rocket launcher guy back at base. Shoot. BIG alien death scream. I move the scout further up and see four sectoid corpses, all in a clump. I think then another nearby sectoid shot my guy. I don't remember why I reloaded that mission - perhaps to see if I could get that group earlier. I move my scout up, spot a sectoid, fire a rocket, big scream. I check out the carnage, and there are five sectoid corpses. I swear it. It might have been 10 or 12 years ago, but I'm positive I took out 5 sectoids in a clump with a single rocket. In all my following years playing, I've never again seen the aliens group up like that, with the obvious exceptions of camping UFO doors. To this day, I don't know what it was that caused that many sectoids to group together like that. But this was practically out in the middle of a field!

Hey, I thought you and Vet were scheming to set up a 3-person fanfiction frenzy! Where'd you guys go? Lol, I just thought of something: We could have a contest for fanfiction posting. Rules: First post by an author (all authors are elegible after fanfic starts) is worth +2 points. Posts with less than 1500 words (Maybe more/less?) are -1 points. Posts with less than a two post buffer between the previous post of the same owner are worth -1 posts. Posts with a two post buffer between the previous post are worth +3 points. Posts with a three post buffer: +2 points Posts with four post buffer: +1 point Posts with five or more: 0 points. If the post is in a good buffer range (2-4 post buffer) but has fewer than 1500 words, the post is still only worth -1. You don't get +2 buffer and -1 wordcount to get +1 points. It's -1. If more than a month (30 days) passes between posts, the buffer penalty/bonus no longer applies, and the first person to post gets a first-post bonus (+2 points). A person can even double-post (0 post buffer) and get the +2 bonus. In case that's a bit confusing, here's an example. Assume all posts have decent lengths (> 1500) with one exception. Trigger Posts Bomb Bloke Posts - First post: +2 points Alitorious Posts - First post: +2 points Trigger Posts - First post: +2 points Alitorious Posts - 1 post buffer: -1 point Bomb Bloke Posts - 3 post buffer: +2 points Trigger Posts - 2 post buffer: +3 points Alitorious Posts a short post (500 words) - 2 post buffer is overriden: -1 point. <One month passes> Trigger Posts - Buffer penalty overriden by month-duration. Trigger gets +2 points <One month passes> Bomb Bloke posts - 3 post buffer does not apply; Month-duration first-post bonus: +2 points Trigger posts - Buffer penalty overriden by month-duration. Trigger gets +2 points. Alit posts - 3 post buffer: +2 points. <One month passes> Alit posts - Buffer penalty overriden by month-duration first-post bonus: +2 points. Bomb Bloke posts - 3 post buffer: +2 points. Trigger posts: 3 post buffer: +2 point. At the end of this: BB: 8 points Trigger: 11 points Alit: 4 points Scores are tallied and reset at the end of each chapter, winner gets, uh.... bragging rights? A toaster? The way it's set up, if there are exactly 3 people all posting in order, they start racking up the +3s quickly. If you get 4 or more people, there's competition to start churning out those posts faster so you get a +3 instead of a +2. If posting stagnates, the +2 bonus is applicable to anyone, even double-posters! The buffer also encourages people to wait their turn, unless the fic is slowing down then the MDFPB applies. That means that someone can keep the fic going all by their lonesome, but it takes a while. (Months between posts.)

I'll add: Chances for destruction seem to increase when both weapons hit at the same time. I seem to remember destroying many medium scouts with dual plasma beams, but not as many once I started using a plasma beam/laser beam combo. I think this needs testing, though.

I know this has been mentioned from time-to-time. Immediately after you finish a mission ammo is replenished, and loot is 'immediately' back at base for research and selling. Apparantly there's this lightspeed cleanup crew which restocks your Skyranger and disassembles the UFO to take it back to base before the Skyranger gets there. You can research it, sell it, transfer it, use it as material for manufacturing, etc, but how does the base get the stuff so fast? Kinda unrealistic, neh? Until I realized something: Maybe X-COM has really good accountants and quartermasters and that. Everything is actually queued up, and maybe takes days between processes. All you're seeing are the records, and actual movement and research and stuff goes behind the scene. Here's how I imagine it: The troops take a quick (and accurate ) inventory of the battlefield before they leave, and send this report to base. Storage space is allocated immediately for the items. Meanwhile, it could take days or hours for the cleanup crew to arrive and actually ship everything back to base. Because all the stuff is on the books, you can sell it right away. In reality, it might take days for the item to get out to the buyer and the money to 'physically' reside in X-COM's balance account. It doesn't matter, because the accountants take care of that right away. You get money on credit, and space is freed up in storage. It's all in the books, and in a few weeks everything works out exactly as planned. Research is also kinda virtual. You're able to start research from battlefield reports and similar alien devices in storage. You're able to sell the item, but the item itself just goes from storage into the science labs. The scientists will give it up once they're done with it. For all intents and purposes, though, the item's happily in the hands of the buyer. They've got a guarantee and insurance that the scientists will put the artifact back together good as new. So, that's how I see it. No magical clean-up-fairies. No scanning the artefact into the computers for the scientists. Just really good book-keeping. Of course, things are kinda funy when your base is assaulted right after a mission, and the items are magically there for the soldiers to use. Uh...? (Now, why don't those darn accountants factor in dirt-reclamation maintenance in their books. )

A non-biased list will have a sample that is very representative of the population of all gamers alive. Granted, we won't know how good our sample is unless we actually do survey every gamer alive. Well, okay, the list will still be biased if you ask what the "best" game is. But it will definitely reflect what the most popular/favourite games are.

Maybe have it so each person can rank their own top 10. This gives between 1 and 10 points depending how they were ranked. The total result is given by adding them all together. If you track these (anonymously of course!) this could give rise to other interesting statistics, like "50% of X-COM lovers also rated this game very high." Of course, the population of those who visit this site will give a very biased answer.

Woo! The guilt worked! My plan, it is unfolding beautifully... We will soon have more fanfiction! I mean, uh...

Try varying at what height the shooter/target is at, too. Like on bales of hay or skyranger ramps or something - see if that increases the chance of leg wounds or head wounds. (I just had a rocket launcher guy on the ramp of the skyranger hit the soldier in front of him with a small rocket. By accident, of course! Funny thing was: Rocket guy died, but the soldier in front survived! (Both were wearing personal armour). She was left with two fatal wounds on her head, but it was her under armour that seemed to take the hit. Or maybe that has more to do with ammo types - I'm pretty sure the rocket would have hit her head, and that's where the wounds were applied, but it was her under armour that got diminished because it was explosive type? Either way, we look forward to the results eagerly . Oh, and I think histogram and frequency distribution are the same thing. They show how many times a result falls into each class. A probability distribution would have the left side labelled as % chance (or a decimal). A line like you have is for continuous data, but stun damage in the game is discrete. You can't have 3.282 points of stun damage . So, a histogram should have full-width vertical bars instead of a line. The probability is actually dependent on the area of the result you want - in both histograms and Probability Density Functions (pdf). Either way, doesn't matter one bit. This is all for fun. I should get engineering classes out of my head!

If you want to get technical, Zombie, that graph is a histogram (or is it a frequency distribution?), not a probability graph. I just love seeing this kind of work, nonetheless. (Oh, and your sig is hilarious! )

Sounds good. I'll just add a couple of things I've noticed through lots of hyperwave decode watching time. (Normally when you have the entire globe covered by hyperwave decoders - including Hawaii and Antarctica, the game's won. ) Missions are planned weeks in advance. Even when you reload from a previous date, you get the same number of ships with the same missions at the same locations. This means that you can reload to try to shoot down that Terror ship, but you can't count on the RNG to not launch the mission unless you go back at least a month. There are often several UFOs working on the same general goal. I'll call these 'campaigns.' All UFOs assigned to the same campaign will always have the same race and the same mission type. Most types of campaign have a scouting phase and an action phase, with the two exceptions being Research and Supply. Research campaigns are only scouting, and Supply are only action. The scouting phase is exactly what it sounds like. One of the three types of scout ships (Very Small or Small on radar) will go to the area and, well, scout. Alien Retaliation scouts will never land, but zig-zag the area to try to find your base. Alien Research, Alien Harvest, Alien Abduction, and Alien Base scout missions will fly randomly about a region and land in rural areas. Occasionally the same UFO will land at multiple locations. Alien Infiltration and Alien Terror missions will fly around populated regions and land in cities. They won't spawn a terror site or cause a country to defect. (I watched a large scout on an alien terror land in a city because I was curious to see how they'd get a full terror load out of an itsy bitsy scout, ) The action phase will always occur, whether or not all the scouts report back to base. However, a successful scouting mission will sometimes cause the schedule to move ahead of time and action to be taken immediately - Alien Retaliation comes to mind. Always shoot down those scouts! Alien supply missions are nice and simple - they come in, supply, probably stay for tea, then leave. What happens on Alien Retaliation and Alien Terror missions depends on if the scouts were successful or not. If none of the scouts found your base, the aliens send the Battleship in anyways but it zigzags around and won't find your base. They send a couple battleships before giving up on that campaign. On Alien Terror I'm a bit more hazy, since I never usually let them leave Earth alive . Sometimes the Terror ship flies around the populated areas, but never actually lands in a city and just leaves. Sometimes the Terror ship flies around the populated areas, then lands and terrorizes a city. I don't think I've ever seen a Terror ship zoom right in to a city - I've always been able to intercept them with Plasma Beam Interceptors. Alien Harvest and Alien Abduction usually send in two Harvesters/Abductors and land in rural areas. It might just be me, but Harvester missions seem to frequently be floaters (I've had Mutons I'm sure), and Abductors are frequently Sectoids. Alien Infiltration and Alien Base missions are similar, too. The aliens send in a huge flotilla consisting of scouts, supply ships, terror ships, and battleships. In infiltration they all land in cities (even the terror ship, but it doesn't terrorize the city). In Base they all land in rural areas. After some time, a base appears somewhere in the region - not necessarily underneath the Battleship. Individual missions themselves consist of three logical phases - reentry, operation, and reorbit. (Or is it just 'entry', because it's for the first time? ) In reentry the ship enters at some location on the globe - sometimes all the way on the other side of the Earth in some cases. It travels to its target location at maximum speed and maximum altitude, slowing down when it nears the region. Operation is, of course, outlined above. Reorbit is simple, too. The ship heads off in some random direction, speeding up until it's at maximum speed and maximum altitude. It disappears after some time (again sometimes halfway around the globe.) There are a couple differences in between them. Battleships en route to your base will head at maximum speed until they hit your base. Supply ships head directly to the base, but slow down enough for a Firestorm to catch them, but faster than an Interceptor. Ships on more exploratory, ziggyzaggy, flight plans (basically all the others, ) do a lot of their slowing down and speeding up during the zigzaggy. I've seen battleships go from 4800 knots to 5200 knots while making a 180-degree turn to reorbit. ...Oookay, that turned out to be more than a couple cents . Maybe if I get less lazy or if someone has time they can add this to the Wiki.

There we go - a post. Doh! I forgot to cover Bighorn and Grizzly! I was gonna do that! Oh well, I'm not calling freeze on them. If anyone wants to cover them and get them back to base and make Ramson's jaw drop at the sight of a Hurricane then go ahead! I hope no one minds me starting a new topic. I figured that way you don't have to split chapter 2 apart from chapter 3. An in case people miss it, I just put in there something about the laser guns. The switch does mean something more for the grunts to remember, but with the antiphoton stream turned off the laser's safe to use indoors - even as a cigar lighter if someone wants! But of course the efficiency will go way down - it will use more power and do less damage.

"Hey, Sanjay? You awake?" Daniel asked again of Sanjay Deet. Sanjay's form was slumped over a workstation, and beside him was an empty mug of coffee. "Huh... oh... yeah?" he looked at his empty mug with an almost betrayed expression. "You should get more sleep," Daniel chuckled. "But I was going to ask how the CAL interface is going?" They had made some progress in researching the integrated circuits built into the alien alloys. They appeared to be a crystalline version of the generic alloy. The biggest discovery, though, was that these crystal alien alloys, dubbed 'CAL,' were not only electrical conductors, but also near-perfect optical transmitters. The aliens had taken fibre-optics to the next level. "I need it to continue working on their computer console thing, you know," Daniel continued. "Oh, I finished the - what time is it?" Sanjay said, finally. "About four-thirty. Afternoon." Sanjay blinked while doing the math in his head. After a couple seconds he gave up and continued. "Where was I... I took a nap after I finished the prototype, you see. You can use it." Sanjay passed over an odd device, which appeared alien except for the soldiered components and pencil marks decorating it. "Have to get hacker to program computer to read it," Sanjay's speech started slipping. "I'll back to sleep now, thank you." With that, Sanjay once more slumped over the desk, and Daniel knew it would be a waste of time to try to wake him, so instead he examined the prototype. It was meant to take the combined electrical and optical signals in a CAL line and convert them into multiple electrical signals that could be read by a computer. Sanjay was thoughtful enough to put in four small lights - one of red, blue, and green to display the optical signal, and one yellow for the electrical component. That would be enough for now, Daniel thought. He could at least get something out of it. -------------------------- "All right, what did you call me up here to see?" Genega asked Theodore Dherzhin. They were currently in one of the surface hangars, which were much warmer than the underground ones. Currently only two aircraft took up space in the cavernous building - an out of place business jet and the Hurricane that crashed from Terrick's EMP. "Well, you asked for a report on the status of the Interceptor." "Let's have it, then! I don't have all day. Can we get this plane to fly again?" "Uh, yes and no." Genega crossly waited an explanation. "Structurally the airframe's sound. The airframe took minimal damage in the crash, and the engines, aside from having a bit too much sand in them, are fine." "That's the 'yes.' Now explain the 'no.' " "The electronics are completely fried from that EMP. The computer systems will have to be gutted and replaced. It's just..." "What?" Genega obviously didn't like the news, and he could sense more bad news was to come. "You see," Theodore continued, "This plane was designed to operate to operate in a nuclear warzone. That is, it should be shielded against electromagnetic attacks. It shouldn't have gone down." "Then why did it? These planes are expensive as it is" "Sabotage. Someone destroyed the electronic shielding." "Terrick." Genega grimaced. He never could figure out why he was conked on the head while all alone in the hangar. Terrick must have knocked him out so he could sabotage the high-tech jet and allow him an escape route. Unlucky for him it didn't pan out completely. ------------------------- "Okay, that's it" Dana muttered as she walked into the workshop where Daniel was working. "I'm putting switches on the laser guns so they can turn off the antiphoton mix and stop the complaints about them. 'Means less power but no radiation. I wonder if anyone ever mentioned to those knuckleheads how much radiation they get exposed to on a high-altitude flight? Much more than just firing a darn raygun indoors" Daniel didn't respond, being intensly focused on a particularly interesting component of the alien computer console. Seeing as he didn't answer, Dana tried again, louder. "I said - " "I heard you, Dane. Knucklehead mixes raygun.... but this... thing, here, now... come see." Dana could hardly believe what was distracting him. He was simply twirling one of the smaller components in circles, and watching a few blinking lights. "What is that?" She moved up, with a skeptical look on her face. "Part of the alien computer, probably a navigation console. This bit looked easiest to connect to Sanjay's interface. It doesn't draw much power, I can power it on a flashlight." Sure enough, looking around Dana saw a flashlight connected to a fibre-obtic tube, which was connected to the interface box Sanjay made, which was clipped onto the output leads from the device Daniel was moving around. After they discovered that the crystalline alien alloy circuits also acted like fibre-optic cables, a few scientists managed to get alien components working by shining bright light in them. Presumably the alien's power supply also generated a lot of light, but it would be a while before the scientists could apply it in laser technology. "It's probably a lot like running a sports car on lamp oil, I bet, but it works. But it must be some kind of sensor, maybe it detects energy or something. As I move it in the same pattern, the lights change the same way. 'Might have something to do with the fluorescent lights above or something. Maybe it's alien radar." Dana looked at the interface box, and sure enough the four coloured LEDs grew bright and dim and flickered as Dan waved the device around. "The weird thing is that it flickers brightly when I move it up and down, like this... but side to side it's dimmer. And if I rotate it just so... only one light flickers." "Hunh. Let me see," said Dana, and her hand shot out to grab the device. A trio of lights flickered in response. She stopped cold. Daniel just stared. "Did it just...?" Dana nodded. She drew her hand back slowly, watching carefully - the lights flickered slowly. Then she moved her hand towards the device and back again quickly. Sure enough they flickered quickly. "Dan, I think you just found your motion scanner." ------- "I think it's their altimeter or artificial horizon, just like in our airplanes," Daniel Morlone explained to Daniel Gomez. "Dr. Zager knew that their propulsion device affects their entire ship equally or the crew would just hit the walls at high speed when their ship changed direction quickly. Splat! But any inertial dampener would also affect a gyro like we use, so this thing can probably detect the gravity well independent of their own gravity field and use it to know which way's down. But it seems to be able to detect subtle changes in gravity fields that until now we had no way of doing so, but the math still holds true on this and we can code up a way to isolate the Earth's field and -" Photon held up a hand to silence Psawhn. "I'll read the report, don't worry. How soon can you get a prototype tracker?" "Not long. We already have most of the mathematics done. It should take a few days." "I want it in my hands by the weekend." Dan knew he could get it done sooner.

Engineering! First-year! Hard! Finals! Soon! Return! I will!

Well, I always thought that the skyranger was resistant to blaster bombs because then they don't have to worry about "how did they get home from Antarctica if there's a huge gaping hole in the Skyranger?" Keep in mind that if we're basing strictly on game performance, then there's a layer of indestructible dirt across the entire globe a few inches below topsoil/grass/floors, except in polar, desert, or mountain regions. There we have indestructible ice, sand, and bedrock. And as for the high weight of blaster bombs - that could be explained away as the mass of the antigravity and guidance systems, I guess. I did kinda like the idea of Avalanches being a nuclear weapon (such as a neutron bomb, which were designed as anti-tank weapons to be used in proximity to friendly forces - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb) However, thinking about it, the radiation is a big issue... but on the other hand Avalanches are very powerful. I'm torn on this. I do agree, though, that giving them spaceborne capabilities is a wee bit much. Same for the many different tracking systems. The shape of UFO hulls would be very visible to RADAR, unless alien alloys happened to be radar-absorbent (which we know they're not, because RADAR works in the game). Radar tracking will probably work for them as long as they're used for UFOs. Especially considering that they probably don't have countermeasures. Perhaps the cannons could be DU? (Of course, that would mean that trigger was going to blast off the helicoptor's rotor with anti-take munitions, unless we say it was loaded with conventional ammo.) And I don't quite what you mean by 30-70 kPa doing damage, considering standart atmospheric pressure (what you're probably at right now) is about 100kPa. Or do you mean a sudden change in pressure of 70 kPa? Change of topic, but something I've always noted was that laser/plasma weapons in the battlescape were always projectile, but in interception they're both beams - for both human and UFO weapons. Now, we know lasers must be beams because they travel at the speed of light. We can also guess that the reason it's drawn as a particle in battlescape is because the game engine just can't handle a beam, but in geoscape interception the game can handle the beam. Perhaps we could argue that, since craft-mounted plasma weapons are beams, then the soldier-mounted plasma weapons are beam-like as well. (I don't agree with this myself, actually, because it'll be too much of a leap of thought, and we've already written plasma in as projectile-looking things, right?) Unless enough other people decide that holding portable weapons of green-beam death is attractive, I'll assume not. So maybe we can come up with some reason to explain why plasma beams are beams.

Uh... since when is superheated hydrogen radioactive? The only antimatter reaction is within the plasma gun itself, which we can assume contains the radiation with its alien technologyness. Anyways, I figured that what we see as the beam was really dust particles being laser-ed. The whole radiation thing was caused by matter-antimatter reactions wherever the (anti)photons hit. However, considering the entire laser itself is handwavium we can go further and say that this specific reaction produces negligible amounts of radiation - at least the stuff we don't want. (Heat and light count as radiation, too) I always figured that plasma guns were just small quantities of plasma accelerated magnetogravitically (I believe it was Photon sent me a PM about it, waaaaay back when, about "magnetogravitic."). The plasma would have to be released at very high velocities because it naturally wants to expand. Plasma is, by definition, positively charged. And, just as "opposites attract," like charges repel. But I kinda figured that the elerium was used to superheat pellets of "any ol' matter™" which became the plasma. The majority of elerium is used to generate the gravitic and magnetic fields used to accelerate the plasma at ultra-high velocities. But, really, it would glow white-hot. Or maybe pale-yellow if it's cooler. I don't know enough about blackbody radiation to know if they actually glow bluish-white if heated further, or if that's specific to stars. The reason we don't see green stars, at least, is because green is in the middle of the spectrum. The percentage of frequencies looks somewhat like a bell curve, I assume, but when the peak is in the green part of the spectrum there are enough of other frequencies to make it appear white to human eyes. Actually, I might be able to explain the green. Perhaps some elerium plasma is ejected, as well. Because of the craziness of elerium, it would generate a gravitic/magnetic field/bubble/effect/crazything that contains the plasma and allows it a greater range. However, superheated elerium reacts with oxygen in the air and the combustion burns green. (Just like green fireworks.) It doesn't have to be diatomic oxygen (what we breathe), either, because the intense heat might split apart carbon dioxide. (I don't remember from chem if it can actually work like that.) Something else I wonder, though... in the tactical missions, every gun is drawn as a projectile, even lasers which we know must be beams. However, both laser and plasma cannons (and even the aliens' plasma weapons) are drawn as beams on the interception screen. (The same with the UFOPaedia art for the Lightning.) They must not be drawn as beams in battles because the game can't do it, but maybe plasma guns are supposed to be beams as well? End opinion: Lasers: look like golden beams, with intensity varying with particulate levels in the air. Golden, because that's what's in the game, and because the odd piece of floating sand, dust, smoke, bacteria, whatever, being vapourized/turned into energy may, from a distance, look golden. (If you looked up close it'd be many pricks of white, though.) Plasma: look like small, very bright, green projectiles moving really really fast. Several mach (or faster? 5%,10% lightspeed?) fast. Bright, because plasma is PDH. (Pretty Damn Hot) Green, because elerium-oxygen combustion is green. (Just like barium-chlorine combustion is green) Fast, because plasma wants to expand (our force-field container disappears because we're making green) As for sounds? The electronic components could make whatever sound we want, because the components fabricated out of unobtanium might make just about any sound in their operation. These could even be the "tzeew" laser and "bhwooo" plasma gun sounds. But the stuff itself - lemme get Plasma out of the way first. As I already said, plasma is PDH. So is lightning. Lightning makes thunder. So, I expect plasma travelling through the air would make a 'crack'-type sound, too, but lesser in scope because we're not superheating several kilometres of air here. (Hey, regular bullet-guns make a sharp 'crack'-type sound, too. ) Similar thing with laser, only it would be quieter because lasers tend to waste less energy. (They weave around air itself - but any particulates the laser lazerizes release a lot of heat which will still do the rapidly-expanding air thing that lightning does.) We can handwave and artistic-license this sound away and go for the sci-fi sound we want. So, really, sound boils down to if we want things to sound like "sci-fi" or gunshots. (Edit: I just read storm's suggestion of emission spectra. That's a really good idea to explain colour, too.)

Well, you could always temporarily reassign Rick to whichever squad is going over there... (And I'd better get started on my continuation before I forget all my ideas!)

Well, even the Hurricanes have trouble keeping up with most UFOs until they slow down at their destination. Also, the Hurricanes go about 25-40% faster than the Raptors, so it's unlikely that if the two types of planes are deployed at the same time the Raptors will get any action at all. But I was never too sure about the idea in the first place, really. I was just trying to remember why I brought Davies up to the states in the first place. Oh, well. Maybe I just won't mention him doing anything. I did just realize what having four pilots and two planes can mean: Shifts! That way, at any given time they're guaranteed to be able to launch two alert pilots, though it does mean no more hallway racing to get the plane. And shame about the printing thing not working properly. At least I know how to find it if I need it again. Thanks.

"Just a second" yelled Patricia Keynes as she untangled herself from the mess of equipment that was her work station. To say she was in a bad mood was an understatement. Most of the video was wiped blank, except for the end - which looked like a blurry film of a street lamp. The door bell rang again. "I said just a minute! Just hold on for Pete's sake! God" She yanked her apartment door open to find a timid-looking man in a trench coat and fedora. The man constantly glanced at the hallways as he talked. He seemed startled by Patricia's appearance. Her hair was a mess, and there were sags under teary eyes. "Are-are you Patricia K-keynes?" She narrowed her eyes and nodded, now cool and alert now that her "weirdo" instincts have kicked in. "I heard you got some pictures of a real UFO. The one that the military crashed into the river last night." Patricia frowned. She didn't like where this was heading. "Oh, name's J-Jack. McCormick," said Paul Jasper, glancing up and down the hallway paranoidedly again. "I know the truth." Patricia started to close the door. "No! Wait! P-please? I just want to see what you have. That's all. I know it's good. Please? I know what you have is r-real. Although her instincts were on full alert, that last sentence the man said was exactly what she wanted to hear. She wanted to know that she wasn't crazy. She needed to know that what she saw last night actually happened. Her purse was beside the door. Without taking her eyes off the man, she reached over and put it on, plunging her hand inside and clutching the pepper spray. She slowly opened the door and motioned the man in. Yet again, he looked down the hallway before slipping surreptitiously inside. She closed the door behind him and led him to the VCR. "It isn't much," she said as she pressed the rewind button for a few seconds. The only good bit was at the end. She pressed play. It was fuzzy, washed out, and greyed out. For a few seconds, one could see a faint spot of light. Then the tape went to snow again before it came back, clear and fully focused, on a streetlight. Patricia rewound and paused on the faint spot of light. "Wow. I mean, w-wow," said so-called 'Jack.' "That's real, right there. 'You sent this in, yet?" Patricia shook her head, looking at this guy incredulously. "You should. I have some pictures, myself. I took them m-myself. That's how I-I know they're real, right?" From inside his trench coat he produced a few black-and-white photographs. Most of them were just fuzzy white spots on black background. One looked suspiciously like a photo of car headlights. It actually was. "But what you have is loads better" Jack pressed eject on the VCR without warning and grabbed the tape, hinting at running away with it. "Do you have any copies?" Patricia snatched the out of his hands, which probably meant no copies of the tape itself. She glanced at her computer screen. 'Jack' could see the image going through some photo editing process. The program was labelled "untitled," which meant she hadn't saved it to hard disk. "Can I please have it?" Patricia stepped away, clutching the tape to herself. She was not going to give up her last hope so easily. Her other hand gripped the pepper spray more tightly. "Then you should send it in. I'm sure any paper will take it in. E-especially the National Inquirer--" Patricia screamed and threw the tape at him. As desperate as she was, she wasn't that desperate so as to submit to that trash-infested steaming pile of pulp they called a news paper. If she sent to them her credibility as a reporter would vanish completely. The very suggestion was an insult. Jasper dropped the photos and grabbed the tape, then started running to the door as soon as he was able. He ducked in time to miss the next flying object the crazy lady found - her computer mouse. As soon as he was out the door, Jasper mumbled into the microphone planted on him. "Cut the power. She never saved the thing to hard disk." Only a few seconds later, all the lights in the apartment complex went out. Behind him, Paul Jasper heard Patricia scream again. He was no expert, but Jasper suspected that if this woman never heard the words "alien," "UFO," or "saucer" again, it would be too soon. ------------- "Hey, Dane, could you check this out for a bit?" Dana looked over to see Daniel clutching yet another blue sphere, now dubbed "Mind Probes" after everything they've seen them do. He was wearing a pair of very thick gloves, and because of that he didn't feel any headache. Dana seemed a bit calmer now. "Where did you get that?" she snapped. Calm was relative. "There's been three recoveries, so far. This is the last one." "Just don't drop it," she said icily. "Actually, that's just what I'm going to do. Watch." Dana gave the most interesting look of mixed shock and horror as she watched Daniel deliberately remove his hands and allow the last mind probe to fall. She stared as the thing, worth who-knows-what and was the last one on base, accelerated towards the floor in slow motion. It bounced. Daniel barely caught it as it rose back to the exact height he let it go at. He gave her a few seconds for it to sink in. "I was lifting it off from a table with these gloves when it slipped from my hands. I don't think it would have broken - it only fell a little bit onto the table - but I was surprised when it bounced the few centimetres back up to my hands. Then I remember that we couldn't get that other one open before that other soldier dropped it. Remember, we just couldn't get through the casing? That's how I knew it would survive a bounce to the floor. But watch this." Daniel moved over to the nearest clear counter, then dropped it merely a palm's width to the counter. As before, it bounced to the exact height it was before. "Now, I do wish we knew where the first one was, 'would make these tests a bit less risky. Look what happens when I take the gloves off." Daniel did so, and held the sphere just above the counter again, doing his best to ignore the headache that comes with these things. He dropped it again. This time, however, the sphere didn't bounce at all. It just started rolling, instead, but Daniel picked it up before it had any danger of falling off the counter. He turned back to Dana, who seemed to be avoiding his eyes now for some reason. "But it seems to have different properties... when people hold it or are near to it... Just like Zager... said... it has something to do... something with mental... something." Daniel tried to ignore flashes of images of Dana carrying him back to her room that were materializing in his head. The two long ago agreed that they didn't think of each other that way, so why was he thinking like this right now? Wait a second... Dana wasn't carrying him in these visions... Daniel looked down at the mind probe in his hands. "It was you who took that first one" Daniel exclaimed. Dana shifted guiltily, looking like a little girl caught in her mom's make-up supplies. "I was going to bring it back..." ----------------- Donald Ramson tried his best not to look directly at the woman glaring at him from across the desk. On either side of her were two men who seemed to be there for the sole purpose of intimidating him. At least in the case of the guy on the left with the scarred face, it worked. He quickly tore his gaze away from him and back to the woman. The girl was asking him questions about the UFO, mainly. Ramson answered truthfully, considering there was no point denying what happened. It felt rather eerie to Ramson, having his wing mate shot down by god damn aliens. Aliens! It felt like a dream, but some rational part of him knew it had to be true. There was no explaining away the empty bunk that belonged to Ryan. Standing behind Valerie, John Pickering carefully studied the man in front of him. It hadn't been too hard to find out who was in the air when the Terror Ship came. After figuring out what had happened, Genega decided that the man would be a valuable asset to have, but it would ultimately be up to Pickering's discretion whether or not to pick him up. So far, Pickering liked what he saw. Ramson had a good head and good instincts, proven by how he evaded the alien weapons. He looked at his watch, the predetermined signal for "keep him." "Well, Mr. Ramson. I've made my decision," said Valerie Deacon. They still had to keep up the pretence that she was the head honcho here. "We're not from the CIA, as we first said. We're from X-INV, the extraterrestrial investigations unit, which is a part of X-COM, the extraterrestrial combat unit, which, in turn, is a United Nations program. We have been investigating the recent increase in alien activity, yet only recently changed our charter to include the combative aspect. Part of this aspect includes aerial interception of the alien intruders. "That is where you come in. You're a top pilot, and already have experience against these aliens. In short, we would like you to come on board." Pickering could see the man mull it over in his head. He knew what the man would decide. The chance to avenge his wing mate would be too much for this man. "Yeah," Ramson nodded. "I'm in." Valerie smiled. "Good." The two stood up and shook hands. Outside waiting for you is a man called Davies. We'll sort out the details with your commanding officer. ------------ "Twenty seven" Dana called out triumphantly. Daniel nodded glumly. Yet another score for Dana - seven versus his three. "I think that's enough," Zager said, writing something more down on his clipboard. "You can give it a rest for now." Synchronised, Daniel and Dana both put down their mind probes and started massaging their sore temples. Under the supervision of Dr. Zager, the two were playing a little 'mind game.' Each one would try to think of a number whilst simultaneously trying to pry the other person's number out from their heads. Whoever first shouted out the number the other person was thinking. "Hey, don't feel too bad, Dan. Women are just better at these kinds of things," Dana smiled smugly. It was gratifying to see Dana actually happy for once - a rare sight after the new year. Daniel was just about to voice a complaint when Zager interrupted. "Do keep in mind, Ms. Farber, that you have had much more experience with the mind probes than Daniel here, and you two have been close friends for quite a long time." "Well, maybe I should try against you, Pat," Dana smirked, using a shortened form of his first name to try to get under his skin. "Absolutely not. I'm the observer. It's out of the question." Dana was sure he just didn't want to touch the things. Maybe she should find out if that was true, actually... "Hey, hands off, Dane" Daniel warned her. Even without using one of those things he knew what she was thinking. She gave him back a playful look, but there was something in it that Daniel didn't recognize. It worried him a little.

Hey, you know what? There aren't any references at all to what Davies looks like! The best reference I can find is in JFG's Character Guide: "Kyru-Kai foil for Trigger." So... I make my own stuff up about him, kay? Edit#1: (Hey, something else I've noticed: Whatever happened to the "print topic" option? That thing was really handy!) Edit#2: Actually, there's 2025 words right there. I decided to just post what I have and finish up some of the other stuff I'm working on. Still to go are Pickering&Co vs. The US Diplomats, Davies + Ramson fetching a couple F-22s (I'm actually going to throw in some description of Davies here! Gasp! Shock! Awe! omgwtfbbq!?!?), and the eventual discovery of how to make motion tracking work. (I know how I'm going to do this, actually.) About the Hurricane: Wouldn't it just be easier to airlift that crashed one back to base and patch it up? If Terrick was contemplating flying it out, it can't be in that bad shape. I don't know if we have enough hangar space for a third Hurricane; I was just figuring the F-22s would use the regular air base part of Pine Gap. I figure that Genega might want a couple of the next-best things he could get in case of emergency, and those two Raptors are it. But if anyone else thinks that it's a bit much bringing in those planes, just say so. And I might take a break from my own characters for once and help out with the battle. (Heh heh... flamethrowers + reapers? Anyone else thinking what I'm thinking? )

Oh, yeah, I remember doing that before, only this time the interceptor was already engaged, but minimized, and I maximized it the exact time that it landed. Maybe it's just "you think you're gonna land? Nuh-uh! Take Plasma Beams" or something.... Only that was with an Avenger... A UFO outrunning the interceptor on ground? Heh heh... Was it a medium scout? Maybe it just landed on its side and just started rolling along realy fast?

Yeah, I should get me a post in while I have a week of break. Here's a hint to any of you post-secondary wannabes. Do not get sick, unless you don't want to survive. It's not even a matter of choice. Oh, and Brute's dead. There kinda was a whole, you know... big... thing about that? And I'll start me typing up something right now. Maybe bring in Bighorn. (Which would make... 4 pilots and 1 plane, now? ) So, yeah. Me. Post. Ignore the assignment due electronically 25 hours and 43 minutes from now.

I did reference finding one of them balls in the first alien recovery . So there'd be more than one.

Well, funny thing about electronic devices that stop working when they get wet... you see, they tend to stay stopped working even after they're dry. And Pickering and Co. should be landing in America abouts now, no?

I mean, I've seen it on the end where I'm mind-controlling the aliens. On the same mission, with the same person, mind controlling the same alien, the farther away the alien is from the soldier the less likely mind control will work. (Try a soldier of strength >80 and skill about 20) I can only assume that this is also the case for the other way around.