Xenocide Underway

[silencer_pl]

When we last left our Xenonanuts they were fighting Corvettes. If you are sick of Corvettes, I have bad news for you. Because Corvettes are here to stay for at least a month. So prepare for yet more Corvettes. Oh and did I forget to mention something about Corvette?

 

So right. We have another Corvette mission. And it is a night mission. So it must be pretty scary.

 

 

But we have experienced soldiers right now. And experienced soldiers know what to do. They move slowly and kill every alien they can see.

 

 

There be no glorious moment here. Every mission is Reach, Bang and Clear. There maybe deaths too. But not in this mission. Despite being it night mission, and everyone hates night missions.

 

 

Are you excited as me? Because we are going for another Corvette mission. In Arctic region. With rookies. Without armour. Fighting Caesans. And did I tell you that Caesans are bunch of cheaterous bastards, that abuse the line of sight?

 

 

No? Then ask those soldiers who where shot by caesan who saw them farther than their LoS allowed to.

 

 

But you can't because they are dead. 3 souls died. If you feel the excitement now. You are one sick bastard. Those were good people.

 

 

The eggheads have finally managed to fabricate alien alloys. This leads to better armour. Armour that may save lives.

 

 

Maybe now you are excited, because we will get better armour. How about I say we are going for another Corvette mission.

 

 

And it's more robots. I like fighting robots. They don't cheat like the little gray men.

 

 

However this mission was bad luck from the start. I had to redo it 3! times. There was a bug in one place. Once I've reached the breaching place, I've begun standard operation. However there was a tree. A tree that when blown up and a soldier was standing nearby crashed the game. All went smooth in the first 2 attempts. But on the third once I knew what was going on, this accident must have happened.

 

 

Cpl. Smith died, because of stupid tree!!!

 

 

The wolf armour is finally here. It is good armour, but was better before until a nerf bat was used. It still is good, but it's days of glory are long gone.

 

 

But before we even make one, there are more Corvette missions to do.

 

 

Reach, bang and clear. Simple as that. And no one dies.

 

 

The aliens also invade the places were we can't do a thing. All because some person thought that Xenonanuts are earning too much money. Ah those days when in November I had few millions in my pocket. There would be a third base there under construction. But right now, we are poor as a mouse.

 

 

So we must keep fighting those damned Corvettes. Because no one in right mind will take 35k easy money instead of 70k hard earned money.

 

 

And we get to blow some stuff.

 

 

And kill aliens.

 

 

And blow more stuff.

 

 

We even get to see some exotic places.

 

 

See some weird stuff - that's a zombie by the way.

 

 

And all of this to get money.

 

 

I'm sorry for being so boring. But that is how I feel about those damn Corvette missions. I wish there was more diversity. But all we get for now is more Corvettes. And cheating aliens.

 

 

At least the maps are fine. Ok I will try to be more serious.

 

So we have another Corvette. Unfortunately before we reach there it will be night. But we've dealt with night missions before.

 

 

We've gathered that we will fight Androns.

 

 

It should be easy, but there are few up north and the we have to get through the market. The androns have very good position over there and it took few turns before we could make any progress. Once we've taken care of the Androns in the Market there were few further ahead. Once we've killed everything that we knew about, the team moved towards the UFO as usual. But then there was a shot. A stray plasma bolt. So I've turned back few soldiers and started to search for the Andron that we failed to spot. The others were continuing to the UFO. We've searched every bit, but the alien kept hiding. And suddenly it happened. It moved out and shot Lt. Bernard.

 

 

It was still elusive as it took another few turns to take it out. Meanwhile the other team was clearing the inside of the UFO, which was left with only few aliens.

 

 

Lt. Bernard didn't make it back to base.

[silencer_pl]

Xenonanuts, xenonuts, how I hate you as much as I love you. To be honest, it's hard for me to write anything special. When it comes to both X-COM and XCOM, the missions are quite random, once you get small UFO, the other time you get big one, or Abduction mission. But here? Well it's just every mission is almost like the one before, except the map changes. But you can easily notice that there is little diversity here. The aliens start small and go big, no real randomness. We are still fighting Corvettes. The missions are mostly the same. Kill a bunch aliens outside the UFO, kill the rest inside the UFO. In the last days of beta, the lead designer also reduced the income, you get from loot. Which I personally think, was a bad mistake. We are currently at the end of 4th Month and we are struggeling with economy, when in X-COM we would have steady supply of cash.

 

Right now I don't feel anything exiting in writing AAR. We have researched new fighter type Interceptor. It's really nice, but it cost 300k and we are currently spending all our money in equipment for soldiers.

 

 

After that I've went for Directional Thrusters which leads to new Transport type craft. Twice faster, and can carry 10 troops (or 12 can't remember).

 

 

The next wave of UFOs was of course another group of Corvettes.

 

 

We also got a landed one, which means more valuable stuff.

 

 

It had to be a night mission, because we don't have the privilege to wait for daylight.

 

 

We were fighting Androns.

 

 

And it was here where Cap. Peters died, because aliens are gits and can auto fire from big range without any problems. But when it is our troops that fire from close range they miss most of the time.

 

 

Did you see the location where they were? The position from previous picture is not even here.

 

 

Bullshit I tell you.

 

 

The next mission also was Androns. But at least it was daytime and no shenanigans were detected.

 

 

Except when Comd. Caron tried to blast those boxes blocking the side "entrance" to the UFO.

 

 

A cover tile ahead of the soldier doesn't block the shot, but if there are 2 seperate cover objects, the second one can. Ridicolous and even tanks that are 2x2 size can hit themselves just like that.

 

Really annoying sometimes this game is.

 

 

Another mission is in Arctic, with Caesans. Another bunch of cheating gits.

 

 

And this here particular fellow, had such a strong character shield that it took me few turns and few wounded soldiers to get to him.

 

 

And even if we will get better Armour our situation will not be better. Well Power Suits weren't everything immune, but I've seen more bacon saving from personal armour in X-COM, than in Xenonauts.

 

 

Once that wave was done. Guess what - another wave of Corvettes.

 

 

And this time I had to make a mistake. Can't be Mr Perfect every time. Although we lost that plane in battle it doesn't mean we lost it forever. No by the super magic, the debris from the plane will be collected in 3 days, and it will be repaired in base for another few days. So yeah we don't lose money, but it sure make the bird unavailable for quite a while.

 

 

But let's get back to those UFOs. And alien shenanigans. Like for example door opening from 2 tiles away.

 

 

Comd. Brianson is lucky today.

 

 

The next UFO was Caesan. I wonder how is it possible, that games follow this stupid X-COM rule that aliens can PSI attack you from anywhere, without knowing you are there. Ah yeas, you will say that X-COM had something called Intelligence stat. Fair enough. But in Xenonanuts aliens don't need this trick. Any Psionic capable alien knows without knowing your position and to add that, it can help other units to shoot at you without you seeing them. And they say aliens and Xenonauts have the same sight range during the day. Guess what - no they don't

 

 

And even suppressed can still be deadly if you don't kill it fast.

 

[silencer_pl]

Oh Xenonanuts, you're so good on the inside, but you are failing me on the outside. Or maybe I'm just that bad at describing action?

Anyways, from the last mission we survived another month.

 

 

I've decided to recruit more soldiers at base 2.

 

 

We definitely must watch out for Austrlasia and Indochina now. We also now can produce new dropship. And we will do so when the Workshops will be free.

 

 

And as always we have another wave of UFOs. We also have to watch out fro enemy fighter patrols. They will target any squadron in sight - including our dropship.

 

 

We are still fighting Corvettes, although from this month there should be change in UFOs.

 

 

Fighting Corvettes has become a habit. A not very exciting habit. After finishing this project I decided to sidetrack for a special purpose grenade called Electroshock grenade. It will replace all our grenades (except smoke). It will allow to stun and suppress normal aliens, and will be deadly for robotic ones. Same as in X-COM, you can't capture drones and Androns. However capturing live aliens gives a small damage bonus (5%) upon finishing their analysis.

 

 

Sometimes aliens get lucky and score that critical hit.

 

 

While our both teams was flying towards their crash sites, aliens have decided to bomb LA to kingdom come. And we can't allow it. But first our Interceptors need to refuel and rearm from previous sortie.

 

 

This crash site I've decided to approach little differently. Since the sides are blocked. I've opened the main area and blasted it with rocket to make bigger room. This would allow others to target aliens few tiles faster. It didn't work out as I wanted, but still a win is a win.

 

 

For the second UFO, the side was already blown up. So instead of positioning troops, I've just rushed in with one force.

 

 

Another wave of UFOs.

 

 

While the main team can achieve flawless victory.

 

 

The second one, still must learn a few things. And most importantly get a better gear. But they are getting there.

 

 

While we were returning to base, aliens have decided to terrorize Vladivostok.

 

 

Without any delay, team 1 heads to the terror site and team number 2 will go for that other crash site.

 

Unfortunately the terror is lead by Androns, which means big trouble.

 

 

Although we were fighting Androns in Corvettes, Landingships also provide much higher ranking troops and weaponry.

 

 

Like for example that guy. See that big gun? It's plasma cannon. It's sort of aliens rocket launcher that pulverize everything it hits. And since I can't suppress those robots, well we are sort of fucked. Not to mention that this is high ranking soldier, so our lasers will be having trouble doing some damage.

 

 

I was all shaking when thinking what to do. It took some effort, but once I've begun to have upper hand is started to get easy. But that doesn't mean it still was easy.

 

 

Once the LZ was secured I still had to find more of them. And if one had plasma cannon, there could be other.

 

 

Slowly advancing forward, using almost our entire supply of ammo, and almost losing a guy or two, we've managed to corner last of the robots.

 

 

But the aliens still are proving that we are the underdogs in this war.

 

 

Next mission - second squad. It's night so got to be careful for ambushes like that.

 

 

From this mission I'm also using experimental part of the mod I was using, to change the layout of the UFOs. Mainly the Corvette. After my initial pleading and when the author had time to test it himself. He found out that previous design was not that good. This one is better, but way to easy for my book. Specially because of the AI (which you will see at some point later).

 

 

After that mission we finally have that grenade.

 

 

And some details on last aliens we've encountered.

 

 

Another mission brings us again to Siberian cold regions.

 

 

This particular alien decided that he can stand against our soldiers. Guess how this turned out. We of course captured him or one of his mates.

 

 

At long last new type of ship. Exciting isn't it?

 

 

And new aliens. Haridans - some sort of slave race. They are good shots, act like snipers and have flying suits.

 

 

And of course new old ones, which are tougher and meaner. I need plasma guns soon.

 

 

This new custom layout of landingship or cargo ship if you prefer. Consist of a cargo bay on the ground. But don't enter through the main door. Because there is death from above.

 

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And the above picture points towards the command room, where alien officer resides with his loyal guards. So don't rush in like an idiot. And yes those black holes allow to fire on the lower deck. I don't know why they have to be black. Probably engine limitation.

 

 

This UFO also give us new tech. Alien Armour Plating which will lead to better armour and alien reactor which will lead to plasma explosives (and other cool stuff).

 

 

On our way back to the base, the aliens launched another terror mission. Well since we are going back, we can get that crash site on the way.

 

 

[silencer_pl]

Before team 1 will get to that site, team 2 is also revisiting old UFO type that we fought would be gone by now.

 

 

Terror site number 2. It's again Androns, but this time we have more breathing space. And if we have more space, it can't go wrong.

 

 

Except when whole team is injured on the start Our medical department is overloaded by now.

 

 

Our next mission bring us to this forest map. The UFO is just right there to the left. But the path to it, is like a mine field.

 

 

And mine field + weak troops = God that was tough mission.

 

After team 1 returned to base, it was immediately send to another crashed UFO.

 

 

The aliens were spread out everywhere. Couldn't even safely proceed to breaching operation.

 

 

Once I've cleared all the rooms I hoped for mission end, but no. There had to be another alien hiding somewhere and being afraid to fight.

 

 

I had only 1 place to check.

 

[silencer_pl]

So Xenonauts, same as Long War, there are at least twice more battles ahead, so I will have to compress the time. In general it goes like this:

 

UFO wave, shot down every UFO possible, go to the mission. Rinse and repeat. The Ground combat is like, find the aliens outside the UFo, breach the UFO, kill everyone inside. The aliens are always in same spots inside the UFO, so once you've seen one battle, you've seen them all.

 

The last mission, was the final UFO of the last wave. After a while we had another wave of UFOs.

 

 

Team 1, having the faster Dropship will of course do the majority of the missions.

 

 

And this small one for team 2. It will take them a while to get there.

 

 

The research of alien sniper rifle, allows us to finally think of plasma weapons of our own.

 

 

After that wave, I've gathered enough money to fund another base. It will be on southern borders of Japan. It will cover rest of Russia, Asia, and Northern Australia.

 

 

And again we are greeted with another wave of UFOs.

 

 

Team 2 gets also occasion to head towards landed UFO.

 

 

With the last wave, aliens have deployed new type of Fighter. It has tremendous frontal power, but it's rotation speed is slow, so it only takes to outmaneuver it and attack from rear/side. But single Condor will not be able to defeat it, while Corsairs will make short work of them, unless you are dumb enough and will go head to head.

 

 

Another UFO wave.

 

 

And we finally have our first plasma guns. We also need to research the heavier stuff too.

 

 

Another UFO wave to go.

 

 

Our month report states, that Austrlasia is on the verge of resigning. Let's hope the aliens will avoid it until I could prepare base 3.

 

 

Our money is limited, so I can't order everything. And this base will only contain interceptors. Maybe later I'll move scientists there.

 

 

In January we should see Large UFOs, but for now, it's same drill of Landingships.

 

 

With rapid fire plasmas done, our Corsairs should dominate most of the UFOs. We now need Plasma Explosives, so we need to study Alien Reactor.

 

 

We had longer brake after last UFO.

 

 

With the next wave aliens have sent a squadron of heavy fighters.

 

 

The Corsair just obliterated them without any sweat.

 

 

And the next wave have brought our first Large UFO - Cruiser.

 

 

The Cruiser is the UFO, where alien leaders reside and we may encounter more elite units.

This is standard approach to the Cruiser. With Fire In the Hole mod, the main doors, are permanently shut. I need to use breaching charge to open this entrance. There are also 2 ways in the corners of the UFO, but at this time I wasn't aware of them.

 

 

This UFO also houses new alien artifact - Anti gravity generator.

 

 

And this is the upper deck of the Cruiser.

 

 

Remember that Fire in the Hole mod, changes the layouts of the UFOs. Vanilla layout is a bit different.

Our first combat for this Large UFO went OKish.

 

 

Soon after, we have researched Plasma Explosives. They pack quite a punch. And our Foxtrots will be able to take down those larger UFOs with ease.

 

 

With that done, we need to go for the armour technology. This little tech will unlock, the best interceptor, transporter and power armour.

 

 

But for now we will have to focus on more UFOs, because all those fancy upgrades will require money, which we are constantly in need.

 

 

With another Cruiser UFO, we are presented with a new type of aliens. Wraiths.

 

 

Their unique ability is to teleport in short distances. In betas, they could teleport anywhere on the map, but the teleport ability costs lots of TUs, so what they did in betas was to teleport in front of the player and get killed. Within last days, they were limited to I think line of sight.

 

 

This guy in red, is the Caesan Leader. He can mind control your soldiers. In vanilla it's pretty broken, because he doesn't need to know where your soldiers are, because he will know either way. So unlike in X-COM, your troops don't need to be detected. The only defense against PSI attacks is your bravery skill, which even if high, it still was not enough. I however am using mod that modifies few things, making the PSI not as dangerous, but any morale effects are more dangerous to your soldiers, and recovery is also harder.

I tried to capture him, but run out of grenades.

 

 

 

[silencer_pl]

Similar to Long War, this also is extreme long and the missions just never end. Well I wouldn't have to do this if I didn't have 2 assault teams. But you know how it is, wanting to do everything. And strangely no one complains that you can't afford for more than 1 team like in X-COM, but there was plenty of butthurt when XCOM hit the shelves. Go figure.

 

Anyway, currently I'm in the early days of March. Our research has improved with new Transports and Interceptor.

 

 

Although Marauder is ultimate fighter-bomber craft - it's not the ultimate interceptor of the game. However we are lacking funds and engineers have other things to work on - like more guns for our soldiers. Both teams however received their Valkyrie dropships.

In defensive department we have the final armours of the game.

 

 

The Predator armour is so heavy, that you can only use Machine guns with it, but the TUs to use them is reduced to ~55%. There is also one other gun that can be used with Predator Armour, but that is a secret for now.

Sentinel is your Flying Suit equivalent - except in Xenonauts you can't shoot while flying. There was other flying suit that I could have, but didn't bother of going for it. Right now, both teams have their copies of Predator Armour so my Machine Gunners are extremely deadly now.

 

I see your excitement about those armours. Although they are good, let me tell you now the sad story. The values you see, are moded by me. I've returned the original values from beta time, because I don't approve the nerf that was given to them. In vanilla Predator armour has value of 70 and Sentinel of 60. You say that is high value. But that is a little above average damage of Plasma Rifle. More - every shot resisted or not reduces the value by some amount (can't remember how much). There are 4 weapons that can 1 shot kill you. I know that in X-COM you also could be one shot killed. Was it fun? No. TFTD changed that and most frontal shots to the armour was not fatal (except head shots or arm / leg shots). Even my improved values don't guarantee from being 1 shot killed. Let's talk about those 4 guns:

 

1. Heavy Plasma - yes it's called heavy it does high damage. It's base damage is 65, it has amour mitigation value of 30, which means if it hits vanilla Predator Armour it's base damage would 65 - 40 = 25. Ok nice reduction but in general rule aliens do far more damage. The damage varies just like in TFTD 50-150% - 150% adds 33 more damage so total output should be 60 damage if you are totaly unlucky. Human soldiers have health ranging from 35-70 upon creation and can be trained up to 100 which is hard, because you gain 1HP every 5 points in other skills. So average soldier of 50 health will be killed. Not fun. With my improved values you are still hosed, but have more margin on survival. Also Insane difficulty adds 20% on everything alien, so the damage is much higher.

 

2. Sniper Rifle - super accurate on high accuracy aliens - base damage 40 - mitigation 99!!! It's just ridiculous - it bypasses all the armour you have like you don't need any armour at all. Add with bonuses and I have witnessed on my soldiers 80 damage! The soldier like hade few HP more.

 

3. Battle Rifle - base damage 80, mitigation 30 - like it needs any mitigation. The pure damage is enough to kill you standing.

 

4. Plasma Canon - damage 110. It's alien rocket launcher thing. Good luck in surviving that. And aliens rarely miss with this thing.

 

--- Now let's compare in other direction.

 

Most high level aliens have 150-200HP + bonus from Insane. That's 50-100% more than max Xenonauts can have and on average 100-200% more. Their armour is their HP. The highest tech weapons Xenonauts can have deal 105-120 damage - even critting for 150% you won't 1 shot kill the toughest of aliens and we know how often we get highest damage comparing to aliens. How is that fair? Even in X-COM you could 1 shot kill Mutons. Of course in TFTD Lobsters required 2 shots from Sonic Cannon, but you could 1 shot stun them and be done.

 

The rooster of my top soldiers may look strong but the amount of damage aliens can dish out just makes me sad and most of them are still wearing Wolf Armour.

 

 

The second teams looks more "natural"

 

 

So remember in the future only hire those soldiers who's HP are at least 60.

 

 

I have ranted about the aliens damage and stuff, but what I do in return. Increase the alien numbers because I felt the missions were like a choir. And look what I did.... Went overboard with the amount for the scout UFO... In general I've increased the amount of aliens by 20-50%. It's more challenging now at least.

 

 

In combat department we are still fighting Cruisers, although I should have now be getting the biggest of the UFOs now. I'm also cursing myself that I didn't allow one of the landingships to make alien base. Alien base gives you 2 techs - one is some sort of Hyperwave decoder the other boost your output of labs and engineers. The next UFOs I will have should be able to construct bases.

 

Also a last note for today for those who haven't begin to play. Install Dynamic UFOs mod. It will randomize the waves with UFOs just like in original X-COM. You will get bigger UFO even in starting days so it will keep things more interesting, also the amount of crews also is more randomized I think.

[silencer_pl]

It's still March from the last update, we are fighting now Massive type of UFOs. Mostly Carriers, sometimes Battelships, if aliens decide to terrorize the cities or bomb our bases. Main HQ, and the base over the Central America now has 3 Marauders which means, they can response to almost any threat. The soldiers will now slowly be getting Sentinel Armours. Base number 3 was staffed with new scientists, and the ones from base 1 and 2 will be sacked on the end of month (because we can't transfer them in normal manner).

 

 

I've also finished my update on a somewhat re-balanced mod on alien count. In vanilla loadout, there are maximum of 20 aliens on largest of UFOs. In general that made fighting a bit easy, but on the second hand there mostly top tier aliens. What I did was, increased the number of aliens by 50% and added more lower ranked soldiers and reduced the Elite ones. After all not everyone can be Elite. Imagine if Terror Missions or Battleship were full of Sectoid / Etheral Commanders only or at least 75% of them. Now the fights are more tense, but the possibility of being brutally 1 shot raped is reduced. And no one likes to be 1 shot raped. (I've heard that there are those kind people - but are they people if they like that?).

 

In the research department we've focused on the knowledge of what the aliens want from us.

 

 

So, in order to get the ultimate answer we need to capture live Preator. Who is Preator and where can we capture him?

Well glad you've asked Sunny Jim. This is here Preator (notice the similarities to Etheral).

 

 

It's alien that can kill you by just looking at you. I'm not kidding - he has unique gun that deals 120 damage and has armour mitigation of 60. So yeah good luck on surviving. Also the mere presence of this aliens generates Dread effect, which means some random soldier will lose few TUs on the start of the turn. In above terror mission, we were lucky that he spawned in front of our drop zone.

The Preators can be found in huge alien bases or in Battleships. Battleships have only 2 type of missions - Terror Sites or Invading Xenonauts base. Luck be with us, we have alien large base in South Africa, but our soldiers are mostly wounded and I have troubles with collecting 12 soldiers with 100% HP

 

 

The aliens also are deploying Strike Cruisers UFOs. There are bigger version of bombers and need 5 plasma torpedoes to be shot down.

 

 

With that terror mission also came last type of alien - the Heavy Drone. It looks similar to Medium Drone, but it's gun is quite deadly.

 

 

So how do you fight in downed Carrier UFO?

 

First you have to breach the massive count of aliens that are protecting the entrance.

 

 

From Xenopedia you should have noticed that there are 3 entrances - from the front and two from the sides, and we can make 3 more additional entrances using the breaching charge, but without the flying suits, the standard entrances are good enough.

 

Once you enter the UFO, first you have to check the storage bay. There is extremely high chance to find aliens.

 

 

On the second floor we can find the fusion reactor or hyperdrive - can't remember right now. There should 1-3 aliens on this floor.

 

 

The next floor is simple transit floor to the last one. There also can be 1-2 aliens.

 

 

The last floor is the command room.

 

 

There is also second layout, more cramped and more dangerous and personally I don't like it.

 

[silencer_pl]

Ok this is it. The last update.

 

Our path to victory leads through invading this alien stronghold that we were aware of. Having alien base as soon as possible is very crucial. It contains 2 base upgrades that are very important.

 

The base we were invading is Sebillian base. You can tell it by fighting Sebillians or by this unique some sort of spawning room.

 

 

There are all sorts of nasty things done in the base.

 

 

Also part of this base - since it's fortress we are also here to capture live Preator. There are 3 sizes of bases - small, medium and large (fortress). Small ones are created by landingships and with each successful supply mission will become larger. Fortresses are already created by Carriers.

 

The Preator will be always in the command room and strangely he wasn't interested in killing us. Good thing though, because his boss gun can kill any soldier with 1 shot. Not fair.

 

 

After the mission we got analysis of the alien bases. After receiving this report, we can perform upgrade on our base. The upgrade improves our laboratories and workshops by 50%. Pretty cool if gained very early.

The other upgrade you get is the Quantum Cryptology Center. It's sort of Hyperwave Decoder, but it doesn't replace the radars. The only bonus for this is to know the the race of aliens. The mission is not that important like in X-COM, because you will always get alenium.

 

 

Since we have the Preator, there is only one thing for us to get. And that is a Battleship UFO. After few more missions, the Battleships start to apppear.

 

They are massively large UFOs and also contain Preator commander.

 

 

Upon entering it, on the ground floor we can find, hyperdrive engine and fusion reactor.

 

 

On the second floor we can find anti-gravity generator.

 

 

The last floor contains of course the command room and a special device called Singualirty Core. It's a very powerful artifact that will allow to manufacture a very powerful weapon and interceptor.

 

 

Right now we have everything we need to last us till we will be able to lunch final mission.

Finishing research on Fusion reactor gave us Fusion Explosives.

 

 

Researching every other missing alien weaponry gave access to final tier of our Weaponry - Mag Weaponry.

 

 

It makes short work of aliens, but not as short as aliens can deal with us using their best weaponry.

 

But that is not the final final ultimate thing we can get. Researching the singularity core gave us one more thing.

 

 

The Singualirty Cannon - it's the most destructive weapon ever created. It's sort of blaster launcher of Xenonauts - except it isn't guided but it's accuracy is pretty high.

 

 

It's major drawback, that it's extremely heavy and even soldier in Predator armour will be slowed down. Just remember to not overload him because reloading takes fixed amount of TUs.

 

We also could research the X-120 Fury (Which is clearly based upon SR-71 Blackbird). It's the fastest airplane we can produce. This and above weapon require 1 Singualirty Core - so you need to fight those Battleships if you want the most powerful weapons.

 

What is also unique about the Fury? This weapon.

 

 

The Fury just annihilates the targets to the point that there is nothing to recover - a simple "I win" button.

With everything in position we could finally start researching the endgame mission.

 

 

 

So the operation endgame is a simple mission. Destroy two generators, kill the leader and get out. But don't dally to long or you will be swarmed by Reapers.

 

 

The generators are close to our starting position and the starting position is guarded by lots of Elite Androns and Sebillians.

 

 

Once they are killed there is nothing to stop us from destroying the generators. The team splits in 3 parts. 2 of the squads go for the generators, while the other tries to push trough to the commander. The main area is guarded by Caesans. Once we've killed everyone, there is only the final Commander to be killed.

 

 

Just be careful not to damage the door behind him, because in current version there is a bug, where damaging the doors makes them unopenable. It was supposed to be fixed. Once the commander is dead and doors are intact, remaining soldiers can run for life. When last of the soldiers escaped this end game screen appears.

 

 

A little anticlimactic ending. But there you go Xenonauts in a nutshell.

[Thorondor]

You gave them aliens quite a run for their money there, silencer!

[silencer_pl]

Yeah it cost me a lot of sanity though.

[Space Voyager]

You made it look easy... Was it? Seriously, was the game a challenge or a pushover? And most importantly, will you play it again?

[silencer_pl]

The beginning is easy. The end is ridiculously unbalanced. Aliens will always have advantage over you in ground combat. There are so many technical "bugs" that the farther you go, the more frustration meter rises. There are people who praise this game - well good for them. For me this game has light years distance before it can compete with X-COM or XCOM. Some mechanics are good, but the rest isn't well thought out.

 

Will I return? Maybe in a year I'll try XNT mod. Right now I want OpenTFTD. Steam says I have played it 255 hours majority of it was during beta stage. XCOM I have 350 hours.

[Zombie]

It's alien that can kill you by just looking at you. I'm not kidding - he has unique gun that deals 120 damage and has armour mitigation of 60. So yeah good luck on surviving.

 

I had guys wearing Predator armor survive a direct hit before (though I was playing on easy so maybe the damage of his weapon is less). It's brutal though.

 

Also the mere presence of this aliens generates Dread effect, which means some random soldier will lose few TUs on the start of the turn.

 

It's not just a single soldier that gets hit with dread per round though. I frequently see a maximum of 4 soldiers being hit with this per round:

 

 

The exact amount of TU lost is a flat 30% reduction which you can see from the screenshot. I also dug around in the game files and it's defined as 30% also. There's nothing more infuriating when half of your squad of 8 soldiers takes a 30% hit in TU. I'd like to mod it so the alien can't do any more than 2 dread attacks per round but haven't been able to find any info on it.

 

Well, I finally finished the game the other day! (On easy, I wanted to test the waters a bit and try to fill up the UFOPaedia as much as possible).

 

Let me preface this by saying that I totally neglected Geoscape strategy for a few months and just went after stuff I knew I could shoot down at my main base. It was only later that I realized that my second base didn't have any detection facilities (gee, I wondered why there wasn't any UFO activity near it). I started a third base when I realized that mistake and built it up significantly with a couple hand-me-down aircraft, 3 radars, one of those Hyperwave thingies, a hospital and even a plasma defense system. All went fine until the aliens came to attack it. I only had 4 soldiers there (and all rookies mind you) and defending with that setup was out of the question. So instead of letting the aliens take it, I tore it down and transferred everything out. Lesson learned.

 

Because I never rebuilt my third base, the area was being overrun with aliens and the block was on the verge of pulling funding completely. I already had 4 that had dropped out so it was make or break time. My hand was dealt and there wasn't anything I could do about it except launch the final mission with a fairly decent squad and hope for the best. I went in kinda blind (but read silencer's warning about the door issue) - I brought along 4 snipers with Mag Sniper Rifles, another soldier (Kit Sanders) with his trusty Mag Rifle, 2 soldiers with the Mag burst weapons and a final soldier with the Singularity cannon (the heavy weapon folks in the Predator armor acted as mules and carried extra reloads). Finally, I brought along the hovertank with the Mag railgun (so 8 soldiers + tank).

 

The mission started out easy. After dispatching the guards in the hallway, I sent 2 soldiers to each side to deal with the power sources. I didn't realize that the darn things were explosive so one of my heavy weapons guys bit the dust when he was caught in the blast. One down. My soldier with the singularity cannon was with this guy and was therefore without reloads. He tried to make it out, but the first wave of aliens had already entered the side rooms so he took one for the team and fired point blank into a group of three baddies. Two down. My soldiers on the other side were doing a little better (they were alive past the destruction of the power source), but when one was turned into a zombie it started to go pear shaped fast. Kit Sanders tried valiantly to hold off the wave long enough for the last heavy weapon guy to make it out but both were zombified.

 

Meanwhile, my other team of snipers + tank were making progress to the main chamber. One of my snipers was severely wounded by an alien plasma blast and eventually died just as he was getting to medical help. 3 soldiers (all snipers) + hovertank left. My tank with the Mag railgun was wreaking havoc on the aliens and my snipers picked off whatever else was still standing. There was only one alien standing between my team and the uber-alien. They quickly finished it off, but my tank only had one shot left on it's railgun, so it had to back off for a round outside of visual range. Next round it found the uber-alien and killed it with it's last shot (luckily it hit, the railgun was iffy with accuracy for some reason). My team couldn't huff it out of there in one turn, so they ended up leapfrogging over another: two on overwatch for the pursuing aliens while the third ran ahead. Once we were close enough, everyone made a mad dash to the door for the win. Mission summary, in case anyone is interested:

 

 

Win screen:

 

 

And epilogue:

 

 

So there you have it. Not the best finish, but I at least got some of my soldiers back home safely (the tank made it too)!

 

- Zombie

[silencer_pl]

1. Dread, maybe they have changed it after I have finished? You probably played on 1.5+ version ? Or maybe I didn't notice.

2. The doors were fixed after I have finished - so you shouldn't be worried there.

3. Looks like they have added the flavor text in the next update after I have finished.

4. Yes on Easy you take less damage. On Insane you take I think 20% more? I don't remember if the damage deviation is 50-150% or 0-200%. I believe Veteran is true Normal level, where AI is not penalized and player doesn't have bonuses.