Let's Play UFO:Extraterrestrials Gold

[Thorondor]

Preachers, curious about the chanting heard from the transport - "Oh when the saints, go marchin' in..." *double tap*

 

Experience counts for something, Zombie, and in this case your own is revealed by making such dispositions as setting up kill zones or the staggering of interceptors for synched arrival at the target.

 

Oh, they better get their act together fast at that downed battleship, because they're about to get schooled again, big time!

[Zombie]

This battleship was preachers and inquisitors again, which was good for xp obviously. Cleaning the outside was rather uneventful but we ran into something new on the inside. For some reason a preacher commander was camping out in the back room of the ground floor. I sent Kathlene over there with a chem grenade at the ready:

 

 

There were two preachers upstairs roaming around so I had OVNI (yes, he's still around just quietly acting as a rear commander) go up there to open a couple doors to get LOS on them. Bingo! Kathlene went up and tossed another chem grenade on them:

 

 

Dunno if it was bad luck, but the chemogun wasn't dealing decent damage on this mission so I gave up on it and used the particle rifle and chem grenades for the killing. Anyway, the mission was over so let's check out the result:

 

 

It's difficult sometimes to get two soldiers to approximately the same xp as low damage rolls mean more shots and more xp. I usually make it up on the next mission though. When we got back to the Geoscape there was a message waiting for me:

 

 

Well, cool. How about a eternal shield or auto doc though? I reloaded the end of the mission a bunch of times, but nothing else was ever recovered. It must be a fairly rare occurrence so I'll count my lucky stars that I got something at least. I tried out the thing last mission and... okay, it's not that bad. The best use I've found is to toss it behind an alien so as to prevent reaction fire from other aliens, or to toss it down lifts to eliminate the costly 8TU to go between levels. Could be used to quickly get down (or up to) places too or get a better line of fire around obstacles. Certainly is useful, but not exactly necessary for my style of gameplay.

 

End of the month of October which meant Halloween and end of month report. Everyone gave me a treat except for Thermos which used it's bag to give me a trick and lowered funding. I call foul, but it is what it is:

 

 

I decided I had plenty of cash on hand so I could probably build two more bases so that every region is occupied, but I found out that my trick of clicking on the "build new base" button to take a F12 screenshot in Steam with a full compliment of bases doesn't work. Bummer. I'm not giving up that workaround and besides, the game is almost over anyway.

 

Nothing happened for a while again, then I shot down a cruiser. Stupid Vipons and larva this time. Once I got rid of all the larva and roving vipons outside I noticed there was a vipon camped outside of a building. Part of my team headed over there to check it out. The old "Commander behind the door trick", eh?

 

 

I'm not falling for that one. How about an autoshot worth of particle rifle shots to the noggin from Mephistoex? After that, we went to get rid of the 4 vipons inside the UFO and it was all over:

 

 

A fighter (magenta colored) showed up so we shot that down nearly over my main base and paid a visit. Chasers and larva, ugh. The nice thing though was that after killing everything outside the last two chasers came-a-runnin to my team which made cleanup a snap. End of mission:

 

 

Then more quiet. Eventually we shot down a fighter and directly after that a black battleship. It was sorta headed for my main base so I sent out everyone within eye-shot of it to hopefully down it quick. I even sent out the two gold JAG's and one normal JAG from my main base to help. The battleship didn't stand a chance and somehow never even damaged any of my JAG's:

 

 

So next time we'll visit the battleship first because it's so close, then go to that cruiser. Please let there be xp!

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Poor rating?! A trick indeed - Thermos' leadership has been infiltrated by aliens, that's what it is, Zombie.

 

Not a great deal of luck in the bugs you're getting for XP farming purposes either. But at least you got a bonus personal teleporter thrown in as a little treat, so not too shabby.

 

Battleship sensor array operator contemplates a murder of interceptors coming at it from all sides. Turns to the Commander: "Sensor malfunction. There's probably nothing out ther..." *blamblamblam-crssssssh-brrrrn!!*

[Zombie]

My team went to that battleship to clear it out. Phantoms and Terror Floaters were the name of the game so hurray for xp! This was by far the toughest bunch of aliens I've ever encountered. Looking at the game event history log in the upper right I could see that particle rifle shots were registering sub-40 damage numbers quite often (sometimes singe digits - same issue with the chemogun and to a lesser extent the mark III chem grenades). So I think the game may be significantly inflating the armor of phantoms and terror floaters (I don't really see any difference in older alien types like destroyers). Just an FYI to anyone who wants to prolong the game a little to train up captains, you are probably better off going with what you got. Do as I say, not as I do. Who knows though, maybe I had a string of bad luck.

 

Anyhow, to make a long story short, I ended up using auto shots only of particle rifle ammo; snaps and aimed were off the table as they could lead to reaction fire if it isn't a kill shot. At least with an auto shot the aliens can't react to each shot and have to face the full barrage. I did use some mark III chem grenades to clear out the bridge upstairs by throwing them up there blindly. Took about 3 to kill two close phantoms, but the last alien on the bridge was a ground zero chem explosion which killed it. End of mission:

 

 

Mephistoex and Kathlene were both in the 5120xp range so they needed at least 60xp each to get promoted the next mission. When we went to visit the Fighter (I misspoke when I said it was a cruiser - edited my last post to reflect the change) it was Vipons and Destroyers. Both of my captains-in-training got enough xp for their promotion just by killing the aliens outside the UFO. As has been the case recently, the last two vipons on the UFO headed straight for my transport when their buddies were all dead. Since Mephistoex and Kathlene were a lock for a promotion it didn't make sense to give them any more kills so I sent out Galfar and Melia out to greet our slithery friends. End of mission:

 

 

Nice! And just in time! Let's check out how I allocated those promotion points:

 

 

Basically the same strategy with these two: max out vitality, put one point into agility and one in throwing. Because Mephistoex only needed two points to cap out vitality I tossed the extra point into reactions. I prefer soldiers with decent reactions as they can sometimes save the day if they are on overwatch and an alien appears out of nowhere.

 

Apologies are in order I guess too: I just realized my game resolution was set to 1024x768 for this entire playthrough so far when it can go higher. Oh well, at least my attachments aren't as big then so Pete can't complain.

 

Will continue on in a little bit. I want to do some testing on those guided rockets before heading to earth to finish off this game.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Kathlene and Mephistoex have earned their stripes, having sticked their necks out for long enough. Melia and Galfar can show their valor even more now that our enemies have been made worthier.

 

Kind of reminds me of The Borg in Star Trek's "First Contact" movie. Shoot them long enough and they're going to adapt, making your weapons ineffective.

 

The problem here is there's no more tech tree to climb, so, yeah, you should better explore the merits of the heavier variants of your weaponry, Zombie.

[Zombie]

So I fired up the game yesterday and fully intended on doing two things: checking out the "rares" guided mega rockets and setting my team up to go to the final missions. That was the plan at least. I gave Kathlene the rocket launcher and three types of the "rare" rocket types, then sped time up to hopefully get a UFO to shoot down to test the rockets out. We got more than we bargained for as a swarm surprised us. Most of the UFOs in the swarm spawned near my main base so I had plenty of firepower at the ready. We dealt with the leader first for obvious reasons:

 

 

With that out of the way my interceptors focused on the other two battleships and the other interceptors too far away to help picked out the small fry around the perimeter. In the end we downed two fighters/cruisers over water which might actually be an advantage because if they were downed over a territory then the governments might not be too happy with me leaving them sit while my teams hit the big sites first. This is what the globe looked like after the dust settled:

 

 

After saving, I sent out the team to one of the small ufos to test the rocket launcher (just a test mission - I'll do it later properly if we have time. Had to wait a few turns but eventually an inquisitor got inquisitive and came close. Check out the damage cloud of the guided chem mega rocket:

 

 

I could see this being pretty useful actually. For example the bridge on the battlecruiser where the aliens incessantly camp out and only ever leave when the rest of their buddies are dead. Or the bridge of the battleship where you can pop up the lift, fire off a rocket into the round room which would blanket the place in chem fumes. And situationally where there are groups of aliens (heck, you could even use it as a visible booby trap on known paths the aliens must take to get to you because it's almost too big to traverse through in one round). Anyhow, there doesn't appear to be any waypoint system to guide the rockets which is disappointing. You just shoot them at the target and the 99% accuracy makes sure it hits. Not sure they are appropriate for the final missions as the rockets eat up a 1x3 block of space in your backpack so you can only carry a total of 5: 3 in the backpack, 1 on the belt and 1 loaded in the launcher.

 

Before we left I wanted to test out the flame mega rocket on an inquisitor to see if it can damage them (spoiler: yes it can - 200+ damage worth). One of them got close by the port side near the cockpit of the transport and actually got some shots to make it through the crack between the side and top (much like the lightning transport in UFO:EU which was swiss cheese when you looked at it through the LOS filter on BombBloke's viewer). A few of my soldiers were damaged so you have to be careful with allowing inquisitors to get too close:

 

 

So this is the back story, the preamble so to speak of what is going on. I was expecting to wrap this up and now I'm obviously staying for a little longer. Because Mephistoex and Kathlene are fully promoted it doesn't make sense to have them do all the killing anymore. I was thinking this through and decided I might be able to promote two more soldiers to captain with all these UFOs on the ground. There should be plenty of xp with the leader and significant xp with the other two battleships (and if we can make it, the two cruisers/fighters). It's going to be tough with missions containing phantoms and inquisitors/terror floaters (inquisitors seem to be taking an average of two good shots of the particle rifle and the phantoms need a mark III chem grenade and a single shot of the particle rifle to kill). But all these ufos aren't going to have the same alien types either.

 

I carefully scrutinized my non-colonels to see who would be good candidates for promotion. What I want is "best bang for the buck": where the soldier is pretty proficient already but just needs a point or two in vitality to max them out in that stat, one in agility and a high throwing (78+ so I'll only need 1 point in that ) and the last in reactions. The best I came up with are Melia (93 strength-max, 67 reactions, 80 throwing, 96 shooting-max) and Jarrett (95 strength-max, 60 reactions, 80 throwing, 96 shooting-max). Galfar would be the another guy as his stats are quite similar (just 92 strength-max) and Duane is a pretty good candidate too (very high vitality and agility, so I would just need to focus on throwing and reactions with him).

 

You have to draw the line somewhere though. The soldiers on the transport right now are the creme de la creme of all my soldiers on the payroll, so they are kinda the best already. I'm just eking out the last few points to round them out. Should've really hand picked my final squad much earlier to allow me time to promote everyone all the way to colonel but I was still training up other new recruits which held promise (Baldhor and Mephistoex for example). Oh well, it was a good learning experience anyway something which I can use in UFO2:ET.

 

I already finished the swarm leader battleship mission last night so I'll do a recap of that in my next post. I just figured I'd set the stage first for what was going on so that we're all on the same page.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Curious Inquisitor, meet the mega rockets - chem or flame - whatever's your speed!

 

As you say, Zombie, the AoE on those things could be really useful for crowd control or area denial / covering your six in a bind. Just make sure when firing that any possible misses will hit far, never near.

 

Scene-setting: check. On the ball and useful. Colonel material well scoped.

 

Lead the way to the swarm leader battleship extravaganza!

[Zombie]

Ok, so we zone in to that swarm battleship and holy moly again. I couldn't believe how many red blips were on the mini map!

 

 

Inquisitors and Phantoms obviously. And they completely surrounded the LZ making things even more difficult. In cases like this where you have an extremely hot LZ, it's very important to eliminate as many aliens which might be close enough to make trouble for you next round. And then every round after that try to whittle the numbers down. You don't have to go too far out - just focus on whatever is in your visibility cone (or rectangle). Anything that happens to wander in there is probably going to be low on action points which gives you a chance to take some sniper shots (or auto shots). When we got the numbers down to manageable levels (aka everything was inside the UFO) it was time to make our way over to the UFO. This is what one part of the battlescape looked like:

 

 

There's 13 visible dead aliens in the pic and more to the north which didn't fit in the screenshot. There were three phantoms on the ground level of the UFO all in the room with the lifts. Melia and Jarrett polished them off with auto shots (for the first time ever I actually had to dip into my spare clips in order to reload. Then we plugged the lifts and Melia knelt down on the lift leading to the bridge and put a mark III chem grenade in her hands at the ready. This was the situation next round:

 

 

Back down we go, we'll have to toss the chem grenades from below. Melia's grenade drew reaction fire (it killed only one phantom) so Jarrett tossed his chem grenade up there to polish the two off. Then Melia went over to the other lift and took out the last phantom upstairs at point blank range to make sure every shot connected and the mission was over.

 

 

16 kills apiece for Melia and Jarrett and they are both at the 4045xp level (they started at the 3400+ level so about 600 xp gained for each in one mission). It'll take a while to get to 5200 but if the next battleships have even half the xp it would still only take 6 missions. For the special reward I've been reloading the mission to see if I get anything better. This was about the best I could do so far with maybe 20 reloads:

 

 

I prefer personal eternal shields over the Distortion Field Generator (DFG) but I might have to take what I can get. The two auto docs are nice too. I'd like to have those over the DFG's so I'll reload a bunch more times to see what I can get. Otherwise it's onward to the other battleships.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Them silly buggers sure wanted to party, Zombie.

 

A scenario of death and devastation that could be of your very own forces had you not pulled off such a successful sortie in that situation.

 

Thirty two aliens mopped up and that was probably the UFO's entire contingent (no deaths from it being shot down). Such battleships do live up to their expectations.

 

Much trouble but how sweet the rewards - keep them coming then!

[Space Voyager]

Out of curiosity... how many hours went into this playthrough?

[Zombie]

Out of curiosity... how many hours went into this playthrough?

 

Steam claims 231 hours so far, but that includes my time testing, reloading over and over, AFK or just messing around before the playthrough started. So maybe 200-ish hours?

 

------------------------------------

 

Onward to the game again, I reloaded countless number of times to see if I could get a better "rare" mix than the 1 Distortion Field Generator (DFG), 2 Auto Docs (AD) and 1 Personal Eternal Shield (PES). Nothing really exciting except I had one reload with 1 AD and 3 PES. Perfect, right? Well, actually no. See, when I went to equip the stuff I found out I only really needed 2 PES. Sure, you can carry multiples of these and they should stack but not all of my guys had an Auto Doc yet (I needed 2). So now I was locked into needing a specific quantity of each which is nearly impossible to get through reloading. In the end I went with what my first decent reload gave and considered it a done deal. Two soldiers will not get an auto doc and one doesn't have a personal eternal shield so it'll have to be good enough.

 

Really, the "ideal" loadout for everyone for the final missions would be 2 Personal Eternal Shields (since they stack you would get 100 shielding which recharges after combat) plus one Auto Doc and 1 Distortion Field Generator (25% harder to hit, doesn't stack with more distortion field generators). And with that in mind, if any of you ever decide to give this game a whirl, I would highly suggest kitting out your soldiers with rare drops as early in the game as possible. And do not skip shooting down swarm UFO's, like ever, otherwise you'll miss out on the rares. Total number needed for a 10-soldier team is 20 PES, 10 AD's and 10 DFG's which means at a minimum, 10 swarm UFOs shot down and visited. Prepare for that and once you get everyone kitted, send them out to the final missions.

 

I had a mini-marathon and polished off all those swarm UFOs still on the ground.

1. Battleship #1: Phantoms and Terror Floaters so hurray for xp.
   
2. Battleship #2: Vipons and Larva, ugh.
   
3. Cruiser: Chasers and Sentinels. At least there was a little more xp with the Sentinels.
   
4. Fighter: Vipons and Hallucinoids. Forgot the EOM screenshot so kill me.
   

It really helped I had two transports as I switched to the spare when fuel got too low. If you think about it, you could technically split up your killing squads into two groups and have them permanently loaded on a transport so they are ready at a moment's notice. It's not critical though. Anyway, then it went quiet for a little bit (as usual it seems). Until a black Battleship spawned south of Medie, so I sent out everyone close by to take it out:

 

 

This time it was Preachers and Telemats so there was some xp to be had. EOM report:

 

 

Both Melia and Jarrett have 4760+ xp after all this, so they are making progress on their promotion. I figure 400 xp gained through mission kills should be sufficient for a promotion as the remainder can be gained through the +20 xp from completing a mission. Now I have to hope for a few more UFOs. Next up might be a smaller UFO and then the End Of Month summary should be after that.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

A countless number of reloads is not statistically relevant - or at least that's what Spock would say.

 

Suffice it to say there's enough of a distribution of the items in each sampling that you might get more of what you want if you reload a sufficient number of times, which can be a good thing.

 

You've taken care of swarms adeptly enough but you have made it so you have ample means to do so, which makes me think rare items are bound to be a pain to get for the average player, which is not undue but may simultaneously hamper their ability to perform in the endgame.

 

Which we'll soon see how demanding is or isn't even with your current equipment loadout.

[Zombie]

On 8/23/2022 at 6:41 AM, Thorondor said:

You've taken care of swarms adeptly enough but you have made it so you have ample means to do so, which makes me think rare items are bound to be a pain to get for the average player, which is not undue but may simultaneously hamper their ability to perform in the endgame.

I'll respectfully disagree. Not vehemently though. UFO swarms are an integral part of the game (at least that's what I think). So as a player you have to plan for that or face the consequences of ignoring. In the beginning part you need the money to fund manufacturing so you really must not only shoot down the swarm leader but also visit the crash site. Byproducts of that is xp for your soldiers and the guarantee of rares from the swarm leader.

 

Also remember the UFO's in the swarm you'll initially encounter will be at max a battlecruiser (not a battleship) so it'll be easier to down them. There will be weaker aliens to face too. Another thing to remember is that I didn't know about rares when I started and cluelessly took what the game gave me (which was shite... like the guided rockets). If you start out by cherry-picking the best possibly group you can you'll be light-years ahead of where I'm at now. I'm playing catch-up.

 

With that said, if you can't get a decent mix of soldier-only carried rares (like the Auto-Doc, Personal Eternal Shield and Distortion Field Generator) the ship parts is also a good choice and the alien life scanners make missions much easier. Don't forget that sometimes a random UFO might spawn a rare too which is where I picked up a good selection of items. You can't reload to try to get a different hand dealt but everything is usable in the end.

 

------------------------------------

 

 

With the forums being down for upgrading yesterday I had plenty of time to play so here's the highlights:

 

Green Battleship: A real who's-who of alien types such as Destroyers, Terror Floaters, Observers, Chasers and Phantoms. Not a bad chunk of xp as most aliens were of the greater xp type. EOM:

 

Magenta Fighter: Terror Floaters and Phantoms so a decent chunk of xp. The usual killing spree by Melia and Jarrett. EOM:

 

And then right after that a Black Battleship consisting of Phantoms and Observers. You have to realize that with all the xp in the previous missions Melia and Jarrett were on the cusp of a promotion and only needed 40 xp so once they got what they needed the bulk of the killing was left up to Owl and Duane. EOM:

 

Time to allocate those 5 points!

The usual 1 point into agility, two in vitality and one in both reactions and throwing. Both soldiers are at 84 throwing now which should be really useful. Melia has 71 reactions which should be good for front line overwatch duty. And as expected the end of the month report came:

Finally everyone is happy!

In the meantime I also shot down a Blue Battleship in Medie and a Tan Battleship over eastern Ilyria so those will be next. I just decided that I'm going to get Owl and Duane promoted. Might as well as these battleships should give them a start. And who knows, a swarm might even show up again. That would be prime as I could kit out my last two soldiers decently. That's the plan right now.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Consider me enlightened then, Zombie.

If it's such an integral part of the progression curve by design, that not only tackling them is feasible earlier on but rewarding and a means of growth, it does away with the notion of potentially walling off some players with a difficulty spike. It's mostly about preparedness and not ignoring those swarm leaders out of fear of being melted. 😉

Fast forwarding to your more recent accomplishments - congrats to Melia and Jarrett on their promotion and that shiny new green all over (yep, that's a whole lot of green *badabing!* 🤪) monthly report!

Owl and Duane, your number's up. Look alive!!

[Space Voyager]

On 8/23/2022 at 3:50 AM, Zombie said:

 

Steam claims 231 hours so far, but that includes my time testing, reloading over and over, AFK or just messing around before the playthrough started. So maybe 200-ish hours?

 

BLOODY HELL! Kudos for sticking with the game... 

[Zombie]

It was a flurry of activity in Esperanza both from me and the aliens. First up was that blue battleship which turned out to be a mix of just about every alien race: Trilobites, Phantoms, Chasers, Larva, Hallucinoids, and Vipons. Wow. Duane and Owl took it like champs again EOM:

You know, the one alien I haven't seen since the beginning has been the King Larva (basically the Larva's bigger and nastier brother). Dunno what happened to them but I'm kinda glad they haven't made themselves visible. At the end of this mission both Duane and Owl were at 4100 xp. Next up was the tan battleship which was nothing but Destroyers. Can't complain about that at all. EOM:

Easy stuff. XP is now at 4320-ish. As always, things got quiet for a little bit but then a cruiser popped in for a visit. Phantoms and Inquisitors were the aliens of choice so we had some decent xp. EOM:

Ending xp for our two man killing squad was 4500-4600. By this I mean that Duane was 4540-ish and Owl was in the low 4600's. This isn't that big of a difference if you have missions with high xp aliens though. Which was happened next - a black battleship with Phantoms and Inquisitors. EOM:

The last phantoms upstairs in the bridge were kinda spread out. One of them was camped out on the lift so I had Duane kneel down and face it then go up. Point blank autoshots are deadly. It triggered some reaction fire from another Phantom (which thankfully missed) so Owl went up there and killed it with an auto shot. The last phantom in the room got a mark III chem grenade. The other two who were roaming around upstairs were killed easily. Ending xp was in the low 4900's.

Meanwhile there was a cruiser buzzing around near my main base so I sent out some JAG's from Pulsar and Medie and managed to get it to follow the Pulsar JAGs up north over land. Then I had the Medie JAGs engage along with the 3 JAGs at my main base:

Might as well visit this now. Turns out it was stupid Chasers and Hallucinoids so xp was severely limited. EOM:

Because it was pushover aliens, we only did snap shots which worked out well. So 13 aliens provided only 100 total xp, just enough to get both of my trainees 50 xp each to get them to 4950. See how difficult it is to gain xp with pushovers? Well, at least I got both Owl and Duane within a couple points of each other which should make it easier to keep them close.

That was enough for one day, but I did speed time forward to see what was in the pipe. Possibly a blue battleship and another cruiser. Depending on alien types we might be talking promotions next post so stay tuned.

 

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Such a flight of the bumblebees and all for Chasers and Hallucinoids. They're leading you on, Zombie.

The two promotion candidates are on the fast track all the same. Let's see if your little time manipulation exercise will land you what you need when they're actually on the clock.

[Zombie]

There is some variability in alien UFO's and missions so when I sped time forward it was a magenta colored battlecruiser (not a battleship) and seconds later a fighter. I sent out my JAGs from Patria and Pulsar and easily shot both down.

On deck first was the magenta battlecruiser which (surprise!) was a mixed bag of alien types (not a who's who, but close): Vipons, Larva, Phantoms, Hallucinoids, Inquisitors and of course Chasers. Mostly the aliens were of the pushover type so xp was again very limited. EOM:

Ending xp was just inside the 5100 level. Close but no cigar. I was hoping the fighter UFO mission would have better xp aliens but oh no, it was just Chasers and Larva. EOM:

Ending xp was (wait for it) 5150. Come on! So I had to speed time forward again. This time a black battleship spawned in the arctic ocean north of my main base in Ilyria. It appeared to be heading south though (possibly to my main base) which was the good news. I scrambled my JAGs from Pulsar and sent them to patrol over my main base. Same deal with the JAGs from Seathopia and Media, all those went to patrol over my main base too. When the battleship finally got close it was in for a rude awakening as I also sent out my three JAGs from my main base to help:

Yeah, there's no way you are getting around that defensive line. I was pretty darn proud of successfully guessing where the UFO was headed but failed to realize the battleship was technically still over water when it was downed:

Somehow the game still considers this on land. Ok, I'm not going to argue about that as my killing team needs xp for a promotion. In preparation for this, I gave Galfar and Birdie the killing loadout while Owl and Duane got the "support" loadout. Luckily the LZ wasn't hot so I was able to shift Owl and Duane to the far back of the ship. The aliens were Phantoms and Terror Floaters so one kill was all it took to get my soldiers their promotion. The rest of the killing fell on the shoulders of Birdie and Galfar. Birdie did get slightly injured (which was fully patched up on the battlescape but the game doesn't think this counts as a clean bill of health) EOM:

Ending xp for Duane and Owl was almost exactly 5200 points. Can't cut that much closer. Let's allocate those points!

Duane's vitality was already maxed out so he got one point in agility, one in reactions and three in throwing to get him to 85. Owl needed a point in vitality to max him out there, so with the remainder he got one point in agility, one in reactions and the last in throwing. I'm happy with that. Reactions are still low so these two aren't going to be frontline troopers more of a support team: Owl as a sniper and Duane as a mule due to his high strength.

By the way, Birdie and Galfar started out with 3830-ish xp and after their first new mission both are 4100+. Shouldn't take too long to get these two promoted so I'll quickly whack that out. The end of the month (and year) summary is fast approaching so I'm assuming that'll be the next thing of importance to happen. I'm hoping for another swarm but that might not happen. Fingers crossed on that. Otherwise we'll get these two soldiers promoted, figure out a final loadout and then head to the final missions on Earth.

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

The Black Battleship from the void tried to blot out the sun at our main base only to meet its own doom, thanks to Commander Zombie!

Shallow waters still counted as land? Not going to be complaining about that.

Our ranks strengthen, gaining in power and skill, theirs falter and fail to stop us from ramping up for a crippling blow. But what surprises await us still as a new year approaches?

[Zombie]

I sped time forward a little bit and indeed, it's the end of month report. So let's take a look at that first:

Now it's Pulsar who was unhappy with me. I shot everything down and visited every site too, what more can I do to make them happy? Jeez it's almost like being married. More time speeding and this time it was another magenta battlecruiser. Popular color lately. After shooting it down we went to pay a visit and it contained Preachers and Telemats. Cool, haven't seen either of those in a while.

Galfar used the Chemogun on a few preachers and even a telemat out in the field and it worked great (1 shot, 1 kill). However, when we got inside the last two preachers came running to the main lift room and stopped (one was a normal preacher, the other a commander). Galfar went up there and blasted the commander with a couple shots from the chemogun and for one shot the damage was absorbed. Really? I did some testing on the preacher commander against the chemogun and indeed, it's sometimes absorbing the damage outright (I estimate 50/50 in terms of taking damage vs. not). I forgot to save so Galfar used a mark III chem grenade instead and it did some damage but not enough to kill so he ended up using his particle rifle to finish it off. EOM:

Ending xp for Galfar and Birdie was 4300. The next mission was a fighter (normal tan color though) which I shot down in the antarctic region. When we zoned in (night mission on snow) I just had to take a screenshot because it looked so cool with the lights of the transport illuminating the area.

This time it was Chasers and Hallucinoids. Bah! We polished them off with Birdie doing most of the killing because she was so far behind Galfar. EOM:

Ending xp for Birdie and Galfar was 4350. Yeah, that was a waste. At least I got a cool screenshot out of it though. Then it got busy on the geoscape I shot down a cruiser near my main base and a scout over the antarctic region, then another black battleship spawned in and it looked to be heading to my base (in a beeline route). Yet again, I sent all my JAGs from my neighboring bases to patrol over my main base to greet it. Same deal, the battleship had no idea what it was up against and it got blasted out of the sky so fast I had to do a double take to make sure it wasn't destroyed.

Now I had some choices to make. Should I go after the UFO's in succession to how long ago they were shot down or play it safe and go after the cruiser and battleship near to my base. I'll play it safe as I need the xp. First was the cruiser. which was Vipons and Larva. One interesting thing I found out that you get 2 extra xp for killing a Vipon commander vs. a normal Vipon.  For preachers there's no difference, but I think you get 10 xp more for killing a phantom commander (40 vs 30 xp). It was a long mission as the Larva were kinda staying near the UFO so we had to do some urban guerilla warfare to kill them (aka shooting holes in walls to get LOS on them). EOM:

More aliens on this map so ending xp for Birdie and Galfar was 4450.

That was enough fun for one day so today I'll tackle that black battleship and that scout (if it doesn't disappear). I'm hoping for some decent xp missions though the last few have been almost intolerable.

- Zombie

[Zombie]

12 hours ago, Zombie said:

That was enough fun for one day so today I'll tackle that black battleship and that scout (if it doesn't disappear). I'm hoping for some decent xp missions though the last few have been almost intolerable.

More "fun" today! First up let's go to that black battleship. This time it was Phantoms and Inquisitors - fantastic! Birdie and Galfar started clearing the outside of aliens (an inquisitor and a phantom), but it soon became very apparent by the alien life scanners that all the aliens were actually inside the UFO. Not only that, but our transport ship was directly next to the main door of the UFO so it was only a short hike to get there. I set Birdie and Galfar to the right of the door at a 45 degree angle about 10 tiles away and a dedicated scout to either side of the door. It wasn't long before some Inquisitors got inquisitive:

Aww, isn't that cute they are stacked one on top of another. Birdie and Galfar each got a freebie. Doesn't get much easier than that. We had to withdraw one time as Galfar was injured by a Phantom (he took a hit to firing and throwing accuracy so he had to do his killing closer). Before we knew it the UFO was clear and the mission was over. EOM:

Ending xp for Birdie and Galfar was 4788 which was great. Unfortunately, Galfar was stuck in the hospital for one day:

I tried speeding ahead a little to see if he would get patched up before the scout disappeared, but nope. Guess it'll just be you Birdie, go get em! When we landed it was again Phantoms and Inquisitors.  Birdie took out two Phantoms on the first turn (the LZ wasn't exactly hot per se as the two aliens were out of visual range but I'm not taking any chances being one soldier down). When everything outside was dead by Birdie's hand the last two Phantoms came running over and were both killed on the last round. EOM:

Ending xp for Birdie was 5048. Not quite enough for a promotion but that's ok as Galfar wanted a little time to catch up. Back at base and Galfar finally was healthy again so I loaded him back on the transport and waited. Took a little bit but a magenta fighter spawned east of Seathopia and a normal looking battleship spawned north of Patria and this one looked to be heading South again. Could it be? I pulled all my JAGs and stationed them over my main base as a precaution. Sure enough, the thing was headed in that direction.

You would think the aliens would learn not to mess with my main base but they are nothing but persistent. No sooner than we shot this battleship down but a black battleship spawned almost directly over my main base with all my JAGs at the ready. Not a good idea aliens.

After downing this battleship my JAGs took out that magenta colored fighter UFO halfway across the globe. Where do we want to go to first? Since dawn was hitting the black battleship crash site let's do that first. We zone in and wait a couple rounds to see what aliens show up:

Not very smart again. Since Galfar was behind in xp let the killing spree begin. (If you are wondering why almost all my soldiers are looking away from the exit it's because I don't want them kill stealing via reaction fire). It took a while to clear the outside as a couple Phantom commanders started to camp just out of my visual range. One took some pot shots at Owl when he got close to get a bead on the thing, but Galfar tossed a mark III chem grenade on it and then an auto shot. The other commander took 2 mark III chem grenades. Birdie started doing some killing again since Galfar caught up and pretty soon the mission was over. EOM:

Well deserved Birdie and Galfar! Well, let's allocate those points again! First up is
Birdie:

The usual point spread with one in agility, two in vitality (now maxed out) one in reactions and one in throwing. Same deal for Galfar:

 

Excellent stuff! Ending xp for both is 5300. With my whole transport filled with Colonels I could head out to the final missions, but I have a couple UFOs to clear out yet. Might as well take off Galfar and Birdie and load on Lash and Ishantil to do the remainder of the killing (both are at 3090xp).

I should probably mention that these two have some decent stats already, in fact they are probably good enough to use as-is. But I'd like to get them a promotion so that I have a couple extra soldiers to pick from for the final squad. Both might be final mission caliber material. So I'll try getting them leveled up and maybe a swarm will show up in the meantime. (I doubt a swarm would happen this month anymore due to all the alien activity already but you never know).

So that's the news.

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

End of month report: maybe the alien worshipping cults at Pulsar were unhappy with your performance and managed to lobby some politicians, Zombie?

Anyway, as your lovely screenshot on your previous post demonstrates, our troopers are staying chill for disco night and ready to strutt their stuff as always right from the landing strip.

Birdie and Galfar are naturally feeling like the new Dolce and Gabbana with their trendy fresh stripes and taking them to town to mingle is just the ticket.

The aliens may not be in the mood for the meet and greet but since they keep trying to crash the party at our home base they can't complain about the repeated crash and burns.

They're just going to have to get with the program because the heat is still very much on with you at the helm!

[Zombie]

So I was hemming and hawing trying to decide what I was going to do next. One one hand I wanted to try to finish the game before September 6 as that was the start date of this topic. On the other hand there was still stuff to do yet. When I loaded the game up today I fully intended on going to the final missions. But I thought it would be stupid not to check if a UFO swarm spawned soon. I ran time forward and indeed a swarm is kinda slated to show up around the 24th of January 2110. Well, that solves that little problem, we are continuing on folks!

First up is that battleship. It was encouraging initially as we met a couple Telemats milling about. They aren't a ton of xp (15) but it's better than chasers (5xp), right? Speaking of such, yup, you guessed it, the main race in the battleship was Chasers. That made things a little more difficult as one Telemat kill is equivalent to 3 Chaser kills so I had to keep a close eye on Lash and Ishantil's xp so nobody would pull too far ahead. Duane picked the short straw and was selected for door duty and promptly was injured by a chaser with a EEEW rifle. No lasting ill effects though so it was nothing to worry about. Here's what the EOM looked like:

Ending xp for both soldiers was 3180 so only 90 xp for each. Ouch. After returning to base we headed out to that fighter. This time it was Phantoms and Terror Floaters, and there was a fair whack of them to contend with too. Our transport was walled in by buildings on two sides (and the end of the map on the other two) so the aliens were very resistant on getting close. To facilitate faster killing a couple soldiers tossed some incendiary grenades along the wall which opened things up nicely. One Terror Floater was stationed inside the building and Lash ran up there and auto shot it dead. Other than that, we also got lucky when a Phantom tried shooting at Ishantil and missed badly which gave Lash the ability to kill it with a chem grenade and an auto shot. EOM:

Exactly half the number of aliens as the last map and yet the ending xp for my two soldiers was 3350 - nearly a 200 xp gain for each. Nice!

There might be another UFO coming up before the swarm (could be a cruiser type - though nothing is set in stone). So I'll try to get to that tomorrow as well as the swarm.

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

A fairly predictable swarming of killer aliens has just become a good thing, what is this world coming to, Zombie?

Well, line them UFOs up and I'll grab my popcorn!

[Zombie]

First thing that happened was a teal colored battlecruiser spawned over the ocean. It looked to have a heading over the south landmass of Patria (so Greenland-ish area) so I sent some JAGs over there to patrol. Sure enough, the thing headed almost straight to the group of JAGs:

I mean, how stupid are you aliens? No sooner than we shot it down and a black battleship spawned over the ocean and looked to be heading to Pulsar (or my main base). The JAGs went to patrol between the two and the battleship heads straight to us. That's another gimme:

I actually restrained myself from engaging the battleship too early to make sure it was fully over land. Since it was closer and nightfall was approaching I decided to visit that first. Recall that Ishantil and Lashunda were sitting at 3350 xp when the mission started. It turned out to be Phantoms and Inquisitors again, Fantastic! For the most part it was an easy map. The only hiccup was when Ishantil went upstairs to the bridge and accidentally picked a snap shot instead of a burst shot to take out a phantom. It promptly shot him, but luckily no permanent injuries. EOM:

Ending xp for my two person killing squad was 3600 which was awesome. When we got back to base I immediately sent the transport out to the battlecruiser. Another mixed race loadout for the aliens: Trilobites, Phantoms, Vipons, Terror Floaters, a lone Preacher commander, Destroyers, Larva and even a Hallucinoid, Wow.

I have been employing a lot of incendiary grenades as of late because they damage some terrain types. I toss a couple around trees and cactus to destroy them and clear an open killing area for my team. Works great. I could probably use normal grenades for this too, but with incendiary the fire sticks around for a few turns which can damage aliens.

Anyhow, we cleared the map of all the alien scouts but there was one blip that refused to move along the north side of the map - must be a commander. Lash and Ish went over there to investigate and it was a preacher commander. Lash basically used up all her time units on killing the thing with 2 chem grenades and an auto shot:

The thing shrugged off the chem grenades which shocked me but at least the particle rifle still deals decent damage. There were only 4 aliens upstairs in the UFO so that area was cleaned up quick. EOM:

Ending xp was 3900 on the head so we are making good progress on a promotion. These two UFOs turned out to be a godsend due to all the xp - I was only really expecting a single cruiser or fighter.

It looks like nothing else will happen until the swarm spawns in (yep, this is guaranteed at this point). I might reload a few times to see if I can get it to spawn near my main base to make things easier. We shall see.

- Zombie