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[RustKnight]

Alien assault is a very obscure tactical turn based squad marine alien survival thingy to begin with.
And when i say obscure i mean really, since i didn't find it here on bay12!

What makes this game special is it's perma death, squad that suffers all sorts of scars and damage, promotion and decorative distinctions on them.

As you can see I'm not too good of a game describer and I feel like I'm doing more harm than good to the game's reputation so just head on here and get the game.

http://www.teardown.se/

(BE SURE not to click on the Alien Assault 2, or Alien assault - left 2 die; those have to do with the first AA)

Really want to hear your guys opinion on this one!

[Robsoie]

You can change the link to get directly to the actual Alien Assault game page :
http://www.teardown.se/alienassault.html

It's past its prime, but it had a lot of success when it was released, as originally it was a conversion of Space Hulk, but for legal trouble they had to change it to another name and edit things here and there to avoid a nasty C&D

Surprising there wasn't a Bay12 thread before.

Alien Assault had a lot of new campaigns and mods to change the squads on their board, unfortunately most of it has been lost with time as it's been several years.

Fortunately some people saved most of those files, and you can find them here :
http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Alien_Assault

It's still a very good game if you're interested by the Space Hulk gameplay, i sometime still launch it and get some fun out of it.
But beware, it's -very- dependant on luck unfortunately more than your tactics (your characters randomly jamming at the worst possible moment), meaning that replaying a mission if you apply the same tactics , you can obtain a great victory or a complete failure.

A workaround to get rid of this heavy luck factor is a cheat code but as a side effect it makes some mission a bit too easy if played with, i would have prefered if it was possible to simply lower the jam chances instead of getting rid of them.

Now if you're lucky you'll enjoy the game, if you're not, it will be stupidly frustrating, so be prepared to lose missions after missions and then win one despite you have done exactly the same thing (as there's not much different tactics to use, the maps being usually small and the corridor very narrow, luck will be the deciding factor most of the time).

Something to keep in mind is that your bulky heavily armored guys are ridiculous in melee, any aliens that will melee them will kill them.
Only the squad leader is actually capable to kill an alien in melee (squad leaders having some bonuses) , but even them will fall if you focus on melee, so don't let the aliens approaching if you're trying to keep your guys alive (and good luck with the jam factor).

A couple screenshot of the final mission of the fan campaign recreating "Sin of Damnation" in which you need to survive long enough for the gaz to take effect and kill all those aliens infesting the ship


notice the "Jinxman" award on my sergeant, that's because that guy had an unbelievable amount of jamming, and still survived (only thanks to him being covered by friendly) , something very rare as usually jamming once = 1 dead guy.



I was really surprised to have lost none in this mission
Despite the Jinxman, that guy did an amazing carnage.

[RustKnight]

Ah, the screenshots posted seem more like the space hulk series.
All in all i prefer the actual graphics the creators made. But i know the guys that like space hulk would really apreciate them.
Anyway i guess this game would make some people happy.

It's easy to learn hard to master sort of thing. And as Robsoie said it is luck dependent. The way i like to play is that you can't get a perfect cut of the game. You have to try different tactics till you get it right, but even then some bad things can happen.
Keep in mind that some maps are more "fun" than others.

[Robsoie]

Yes, on the screenshots i'm using some of the fan mods, the default Alien Assault troopers do not look like that.
Here's a couple of unmodded game i saved from early playtimes :


On this later mission of the tutorial (don't be mistaken, the tutorial is a real campaign, meaning that while it seems easy, later mission will annihilate your squads) in which my last 2 survivors manage to achieve the 2nd objective, the burning of the content of some room


I lost some of my veteran (you will rarely keep people alive through several mission, good you don't have a limited pool of troops in a campaign, it would be insane)

Another mission of the tutorial campaign, in which closing doors is very important to contain the neverending spawning aliens (unlike your side, aliens have infinite troops in each mission)



edit : you can find the Alien Assault manual here :
http://www.nohighscores.com/wp-content/uploads/old-images/bill/Alien_Assault_MANUAL_v1_7.pdf

[RustKnight]

There was also a way to make all the troopers look like the sergeant, as in helmet-less, if anybody is interested

http://www.teardown.se/forum/showthread.php?t=1212

This is the thread

There are two unofficial features in Alien Assault allowing you to make custom squads with male and female soldiers. To activate this feature you edit the settings.txt file in the squad's directory and one or both:

"ONLY SERGEANTS" - make all soldiers look like sergeants (no helmet)

"ALLOW FEMALES" - will make 50% of the soldiers be females (needs modifed names.txt, sprites.bmp, death sounds and VO (optional))

[Zangi]

Well, when you consider it... only beefed up muscle men go to die.  So... I'm pretty safe from being sent to the killing fields.

Watching these posts.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

It's a shame so much of the game is luck-based and the tactical options are so limited. It would be nice to see very infrequent jams and higher alien skill or whatever. Makes me think a difficulty slider isn't the way to go anymore, you should have a slider for enemy speed, accuracy, damage, morale, and population. Then sliders for randomness of events and how frequently those events are detrimental vs. beneficial.

[RustKnight]

Actually they are in production for an Alien Assault 2, who knows maybe it will be far more interesting.
As far as i've heard they are adding even random level generators so... The future sounds promising.

[Robsoie]

Seems like from the few i gather from their Alien Assault sequel board there will be some kind of meta game layer on top of the tactical battle one, with a galaxy map and spaceships moving around even when you're not playing.

Some of what i read sounds very ambitious, i hope they'll manage to keep working on it.

For the most adventurous of you, you can even try a (very) early build to see what the galaxy map is about.
http://www.teardown.se/forum/showthread.php?t=3964&page=2

[itisnotlogical]

I used to really like this, but I got fed up with being screwed over by bad luck. If it were more "crunchy" and less luck-based I'd totally be down to start playing again.

[Robsoie]

Use the HICKS code that get rid of the jamming.

Don't worry, you'll still be left with your troopers accuracy failing when you count on them not missing a shot, you'll still get your troopers 1 hit killed in melee, so the challenge even if slightly watered down will still be there (though some missions may become a bit easier), but that's a big luck dependant factor you remove like that.

[RustKnight]

I also tried some "multiplayer" games.
It involves someone to open up a team-viewer connection open the game, and then simply play by turns with each's marine.
There are even some maps where you have 2 squads.

I thought it was very cool where you can't talk with your ally but only guess his intentions and try to help him, or help each other. Hard core mute tactics !

[Xantalos]

Hmm. PTW.