The life goes on. More and more missions to do: crop circles in the Rockies, monsters in Mozambique, Church of Dagon base in Ukraine, and a monster terror attack in Kansas City. I won't send anyone from Guy Fieri base to Ukraine, but maybe monsters in Africa will be good for rookies to train on.
Kansas defense is a must, so let's go.
It's muckstars. There I was hoping we'll have a rest from being shot at.
Some agents got badly wounded, and in the end Ms. Plum was running around with her dart gun, looking for the last echinoderm menace. We've got one alive at least.
Will you look at that, claimed agents are moving up after a few randos conveniently died a fiery death. Something's going on, I swear it's a... C O N S P I R A C Y.
We've unlocked UAC craft cannons, but we don't have a single craft with guns. Whatever, it's just a matter of time until we're able to get interceptors. For now let's see what the EGGSALT master has to say.
The monsters in Mozambique are scorpions. On a tropical village map. I really really dislike those maps, mostly because of sneaky ratman brigands in XPiratez. Good thing those scorpions don't have crossbows and incendiary SMGs.
Whatever, I don't care.
Finally we know how dangerous the acid pistol really is. It's very dangerous and not only affects health, but also greatly lowers morale.
Let's interrogate the Black Lotus avatar next, since we went through so much trouble catching it alive.
We're in Dallas, hunting for a homicidal madman. If someone gets sent to the hospital for a whole month after this mission, I'll shit a house.
Edgy trenchcoat, wearing sunglasses inside, a shotgun. We've got him. Ms. House couldn't club him into submission this turn. It took like six zaps from a tazer to bring him down. Mr. Horses was the one delivering the final hit.
Oh, intel lady, you and your antics. And no, I don't want to see any ninja moves.
Eggsalt dweebs have an outpost just outside of Los Angeles. I imagine they're still pretty slaty about losing a base in Arizona and having its leader arrested, so let's rub it in even harder by emptying out this place.
Let's do it in style too. Explosions and swords go really well together.
These missions are still very lucrative $466k in cash, psiclone and trashy weapons. We could literally buy a plane with loot from a single EGGSLAT outpost.
Aliens made the pyramids, Stonehenge is a landing pad, Nazca petroglyphs are pictures of Ethereal dicks. Ilmenite confirmed. Giorgio Tsoukalos has been working with us for so long now, and nobody believed him until now. How sad, Alexa, play The X-Files theme.
There are some new captives to be questioned, so let's get them to the labs.
She has the right ideas on some things, but let's not overlook the fact that she chose the worst possible cult to get involved with. Seriously, those nerds could be done for in a month or so if their HQ wasn't a mansion. I hate mansion missions.
Syndicate security guard told us about this woman. Sure, tinkering with human genome is morally ambiguous at best, but is this woman so much different from Dr. Vahlen? That Dr. Vahlen whose first reaction on discovering meld was 'let'z enhance our soldierz wiv alien DNA'? That Dr. Vahlen who thought it would be a good idea to recreate a male viper when the only thing keeping them from taking over was the fact that they were all female (and ADVENT, I guess)? Millicent Weber did nothing wrong.
Oh baby! We got the sledgehammer from that crypt with the zamboni knight. A really swole agent can wreck a cyberdisc with this, although I wouldn't recommend it; cyberdiscs have a bad habit of exploding. The accuracy is bad, and the hits are very slow. It would take a superhuman to properly utilize this weapon.
Why did a scientist spend two days studying a skull we found in ancient catacombs? We're paying those nerds too much for the work they don't do.
Was this added just to use more assets from XPiratez? It does seem so.Let's find this Adidas factory and finally recover some durathread; maybe that will help us tackle the bases and HQs. We're not gonna end any cults before the alien invasion begins, but we did our best.
X-Com jumpsuits increase stamina and melee accuracy, but unfortunately they aren't armored. They do have some resistances, but they mean nothing if there's no armor to negate damage, especially when there are many enemies shooting at the same time, like in cult bases.We need to study a flame glove next.
This was all based of the information about a reaper that we got from someone. I'm amazed that Dr. Vahlen can deduce so much from such limited data.
I know there was a lot of research and not much action, but bear with me for a moment, okay? This is Red Dawn's Super Krokodil. It makes you able to stop bulets with your forehead, and survive ridiculous car crashes. Do mix with alcohol.
The homicidal maniac told us that he went insane after stumbling upon a furry convention. Completely understandable, but it's not a reason to pull out a shotgun and go murdering random people.
Werewolves, as we've already seen, like to attack in huge packs and move too fast to take care of without heavy losses. They can also be alone and just waiting to be killed.
Finally action! Red Dawn base in Pakistan. Sike, you thought! We're running away immediately, because in the first turn there are at least six enemies who can kill us all and destroy our equipment. I'm no coward, I'm just picking my fights responsibly.
We've learned that the floating troll doll really is some kind of avatar of some kind of entity. Other than shooting lasers, it can also talk, and it talks the truth. Truth like...
...this. The avatar wanted to talk to its lawyer. If we're not careful, this may turn into Ace Attorney: Enemy Unknown. I hope Athena will get a bigger role in this one than in Spirit of Justice.
We can now locate Black Lotus HQ, but that will have to wait. There's a few research topics I'd like to finish first.
It's a research update today, it seems. Zamboni knights are almost human, including family jewels. Now we know that to dispose of them all we need to do is a swift kick in the nuts. Turns out hamon was never necessary.
Those guys have decent guns and nothing else. They're easy to kill, and their aim isn't fantastic either. They do seem to know some secrets a complete nobody shouldn't know, such as...
...the identity of a missing Team Magma scientist. He wanted to use lasers to wake Groudon up again, but his flight was intercepted by pirates who wanted to use those lasers to awaken Kyogre again. If they make us fight MiBs to save this guy, I'm gonna cry the Pacific Ocean.
When it comes to motivations, the Syndicate scientists are more like our upper management than our scientists. While they're non-combatants, they are still armed with BlackOps guns, so it's a bad idea to turn your back on one of them.
Ha ha, let's not try that ever. And no, it's not possible, unless power armor punches can somehow destroy a sectopod. If sectopods aren't required to win, the alien brain is an object, meaning it can't be targeted by melee.
With the scientist interrogated, we can progress The Syndicate plotline. First let's do Red Dawn Storm trade, because we should have done it long time ago.
Action, but just barely. More of a training mission for some of the newer guys from Harriott HQ than anything, with better agents watching over them.
I forgot to pack the full team, but six is enough for a warehouse. We did it easily.
We know where Adidas factories are. To hell with copyright laws, we're stealing their plans and making knockoff tracksuits.
An old man, only dangerous because of his commandos. He came with us peacefuly after his guards were defeated, getting himself a few points with us, but he's still going to jail.
D-daddy? He's Bill Clinton's friend, apparently, which makes him ten times more powerful than a regular daddy. Coincidentally, he's also none other than Doug Dimmadome, owner of the Dimmsdale Dimmadome, which further increases his daddy level by several thousands.
Now we can find EGGSALT HQ. It's a mansion, which means the only way to run away is to fight our way to the roof, hoping we don't get slaughtered by ninjas jumping out of 2x2 rooms, which there are thousands along the way.
Monaters! This time it's zambonis, not even a lot of them. Gotta put the rookies closer to the hatch for the next mission so they can get some of that tasty skill growth. Mr. Alpenhorn, Mr. Pollution, Mr. Enquiry and all other literally-whos won't even get out before the job here is done.
The rookie squad got into action anyway. We have time, and the more we train, the easier it will be at the base assaults.
I expected better accuracy gains than that... Extra TUs are great too, same with stamina and strenght.
Monaters! A single muckstar in the jungle. We quickly bagged it and went home. Please, game, give me something interesting!
A cool new toy! The standard laser rifle is deadly with its speed, accuracy, large battery, and of course laser beam. It's a straight upgrade over the BlackOps rifle, but we can't make those yet.
The invasion is beginning. Hopefuly the aliens won't come in too roughly, because I like my Earth not violated too much. We have a huge stash of money in case we need to spend some, and the council loves us. This is the start right now.
A witch decided to teach us some anti-psi strategies. It's a solid piece of advice, thanks witch lady.
Exo-bio-contamination in Siberia. This time it's not abominations, but rather bees. Yes, we can kill them with bullets. No, it's not effective, not even a bit.
This swarm fainted after the whole squad unloaded at it, then a hunter hit it from a hunting rifle. Another one passed out after Ms. Attention tried to disperse it with her heavy machine gun. That works.
There's an unusually large swarm of bees out there, and Ms. Windhurst just threw some napalm at it. I wonder if it likes it.
We've created firebees! We never should have played god! And it's just before we had a chance to face alien threat! And prom is tomorrow!
We were forced to kill one swarm, but Package kept the other one asleep with its fire extinguisher. The firebees died, fortunately. We've got swarmids and swarmid corpses, and a lot of stat gains.
A Chosen of Dagon decided to give us some lesson on Eldritch language. We can research it further to unlock interrogating deep ones, lobstermen, aquatoids and so on. Let's.
Some time later there was a monster mission with two scorpions. It wasn't worth properly documenting.
The first UFO of the invasion is flying over South America. This may or may not get interesting, so let's watch closely.
Well, it hasn't got interesting at all. It just hanged around and disappeared after a while.
Catacombs are for pussies, hives are where it's at. It's a cavern mission, unfortunately.
The flame glove is a MIND BULLETS gun that deals plasma damage. Right now we have no use for it, since we can't even see psionic strength until we build... something. Right now we can research parapsychology, which will help us to make the glove useful.
Oh yes, something to make taking damage more acceptable. No more 60 day waiting for agents to recover.
Black Lotus HQ is one of the least horrible ones, resembling a standard alien base. Starting from a relatively easily defendable position, and low ceiling that prevent throwing incendiaries far will give us some breathing space.
Narrow tunnels, zamboni ambushes, meager loot; this won't be worth it, but we need to do it. We need zamboni corpses to drain them of Monster.
No zambonis yet, but we've found a way down. It's much easier to show it on the map than on the actual field. I hate caverns so much.
First zamboni. There's something wrong about it...
It's got a gun! How will we ever defeat something as terrifying as a zamboni with a gun? What kind of weapon would we need to use to use to rid the world of such monstrosity?
A dog. Admittedly, it did survive two buckshot blasts from a light cannon, but the fact that a dog finally took it down is what mattered.
Here's the first ambush. This jabroni zamboni tried to gun all the agents down with his Colt, but unfortunately for him, his eyes have already been eaten by worms.
Those are ghouls, apparently, and judging by how much they like to shoot and shank people, they're of the Fallout kind. That means we can find their drug stash here.
Regular unarmored ghouls armed only with rusty swords. A good enemy for a dog. They're not really worth wasting ammo on.
Open sarcophagi and sinister grates. This is some kind of catacombs, which was to be expected. What is it doing so deep underground though? We're here to find out. Or not.
FUCK NO! A boomer! An explosion could kill everyone if we stay huddled together like that.
It's over, boomer, I have the high ground! Ms. Attention and Mr. Inquiry got it good, not hurting any agent with the explosion.
Mr. Silly's team found an another new kind of zamboni.
It's got giant zamboni dohoonkabhankaloos and a ranged attack. Zamboni of those kind are some of the most dangerous.
Not anymore. Should I keep someone around to make sure it doesn't wake up, or do we kill this thing? For now let's try to keep it alive. Half-alive.
Mr. Rantaplan got beaten up by a ghoul, but then Mr. Ash CAWSed the zamboni to death. That's what you get from hurting my dog.
A nest got cleared. It was a cluster of regular zambonis and a ghoul with a rad battleaxe and a soviet pistol. I don't need it alive, so let's put some more buckshot into its skull.
First Mr. Drama got shotgunned by a ghoul and had to run to Package to get healed, then Ms. Attention discovered a ghoul warrior with a FN FAL.
No no no no no! Two agents were killed by an infector and turned into zambonis. Re-killed one of them and the infector, but the other infected agent is still dangerous.
Mr. Coast was beaten up by ghouls. Ms. Windhurst shot the unarmed ghoul, then picked up a rusty blade and killed the armored one.
Three dead is an acceptable outcome here. Two killed by an infector, Package destroyed by a vanilla zamboni. No idea why we didn't get live ghouls, but a strix is more than enough to compensate.
This is not a real weapon. It has very poor accuracy, and can only be used from an adjacent tile, which makes it really unreliable. The pickaxe, however, has a considerable power bonus and a terrain damage multiplier, meaning that a strong agent can reliably break walls with it.
Secret files. Other forces mean MiBs in this situation, I can smell it. I don't know what new she could tell us, seeing how we just captured a zamboni thot, but she could be in possession of some ultra secret files.
Bees in Australia. I decided to fly away, leaving civilian to their doom. Fighting bees is tedious with ballistic weapons.
Giorgio Tsoukalos wants me to take drugs to learn the secret of MIND BULLETS. This research on its own does nothing other than unlocking metapsychology research. Obviously it's a way into psionics, and I want that.
Milkor MGL is worse than the regular grenade launcher because its accuracy doesn't allow to reliably deliver grenades to the desired location. It's a little faster, but not fast enough to make up for slowness.
And yet you failed to get any questions answered when interrogating a Syndicate security guard. Maybe psychiatry isn't your cup of tea, mister whatever-your-job-is.
This was from a Syndicate scientists. Good, because we won't have to catch those freaks anymore. Bad, because the Syndicate seems to have really deep connections. Get it? Deep like deep ones.
Pimpin' ain't easy. That's mainly because the pimp cane lacks in offensive department. Or does it? It doesn't rely on strength, and the bonus from melee accuracy is really good. I'd compare it to our tonfas if it wasn't for lower accuracy.
Nice job, Giorgio. Now that Aquaman no longer has the monopoly on talking to fish, we can capture and interrogate deep ones if we ever get another soul harvest. I hope we never will, because I'm still traumatized after what happened last time.
Some ancient porn mags from a long-forgotten crypt. They will certainly provide us some... insight into our undead enemies. You know, what drives them, what they fight for... I want them delivered to my office as soon as the scientists finish writing up the report. You know, I want some of this insight, nothing more!
Anyone up for pillaging an amish village in Ukraine? Or is it in Belarus? Doesn't matter, we're cleaning up regardless.
We've caught our first priest right now. I don't expect him to tell us anything important at this point, but that's another entry in the UFOpedia. It went very well from then on.
Speaking of mad science, I wonder what Elon Musk was up to in 1999. Let's see:
Can we sue him if we're a secret organization? If so, should we wait until X.com becomes big until we start milking? Or should we leave the man alone so he can reclaim alien bases on Mars for humanity in 2025? Wait, will Elon Musk create Marsec in the future? It all comes together.
I'm glad we're not connected to this whole Inter-net. I thing it's just a trend that will be gone by 2005.
Oh yes, the battle axe. Ridiculous power, good speed, decent accuracy AND one-handed. We're buying a few of those. We'll be the only military organization that still uses battleaxes in late 20th century.
Super-Krokodil makes your flesh peel off your bones just like the regular stuff, but if you can deal with that, it makes your remaining muscles so powerful you can wrestle bears without having to stop squatting. We should be able to detect drop points and steal some.
Two large UFOs over the US. They're tryin to make us lose Bill Clinton's funding, which we shouldn't allow. Unfortunately we have no way of shooting down a paper plane, not to mention a large UFO.
This is a very large one that landed in Canada. I sure hope it's not a terror ship, because we can't handle cyberdiscs right now. Mr. Horses mowed this sectoid down...
While Ms. House killed another one, showing amazing accuracy with her minigun. We should wait a turn, now that the immediate danger has been eliminated.
Oh, will you look at that, it is a terror ship after all. We should recover the sectoid corpse and its stuff and bail. Cyberdiscs are scary without lasers.
These nightmarish machines can be killed! They can be beaten!
I can't believe it worked. Mr. Horses obviously couldn't get back to the plane with the corpse on time, so we just concentrated all firepower on the cyberdisc. It blew up big, leaving no wreck.
Oh. Mr. Horses and Mr. Silence were both incinerated. We did recover the corpse, though, and the score was still positive for killing two sectoids and a cyberdisc.
A small UFO just on our doorstep. There's no way cyberdiscs are involved in this mission. Let's go for a round two.
That's more like it. A classic flying saucer for us to take. Jost gotta take care of the crew.
It was a risky strategy, but I wanna get one of those grey, bug-eyed bastards.
First Ms. Mantle sniped the sectoid from the Big Meat to get the shields down, then Ms. Burnt tranqued the alien with a dart rifle. Mr. Anklet hasn't been shot, but a missed reaction shot set the ground under him on fire.
Ms. House jumped into action and killed two crewmen, fortunately missing the reactor. There's at least one more, probably in some very inconvenient place.
Here it is. It's got a plasma rifle and a very onvenient position, despite my guesses.
Ms. Mantle couldget it without moving out of the plane
Another one, this time with a canister launcher. We get it, we get the UFO.
It tickled someone's brain. I think this may be a commander. We should get Ms. Burnt and her dart gun in there.
Mr. Post disabled the shields with two shots from his rifle, then Ms, Burnt got to stunning. Ms. House healed the alien, and while she was there she checked its rank. It was just a soldier.
The first sectoid woke up and made Mr. Jaw go berserk. Fortunately he was in the field, far away from his fellow agents. Mr. Post put the sectoid back to sleep using his rifle.
Some very important items, such as elerium, alien alloys, and the UFO power source. Most of the loot was sent to Guy Fieri HQ for study.
A familiar ship landed in Florida. Familiar, because I've downed hundreds of them in XPiratez. This time it's manned by sectoids, not the Trader's Guild mooks, so it will be much harder.
Two sectoids hiding in the woods killed, the one trying to check out what's going on got a glancing shot at Mr. Post, but then got killed by Mr. Jaw who also hit Ms. House with his minigun. Ms. Burnt, healing, now.
Preparing for breaching. We should have taken CAWSs instead of all those long-range weapons. I believe we'll do well regardless.
Ha, a sectoid engineer survived Ms. House's salvo. We're healing it up and bringing it home.
Hello there! This lad fired his gun twice at Ms. House and hit both times. By some sort of miracle, our agent survived two streams of plasma, so we tended to her wounds and had her take revenge.
Nothing that interesting, other than the engineer. We couldn't stop large ships, but the loss of those two small ones will be a good first warning to the aliens.
A gimmicky sniper rifle. It's very weak, and gets power bonuses from reactions rather than accuracy. It can be concealed for those few missions where concealed weapons are actually allowed. It's garbage.
Uh-oh, big tiddy zambonis can produce their own Monster, and feed it to other zambonis. I DON'T want to know how they do it. All that matters is that we can now kill them without worry.
Cool secret files, very informative. What's her connection to the fish amish? Maybe the scientist on this case couldn't find anything interesting and just slapped 'The Church of Dagon' on the report so I don't fire him for wasting my time?
I can't believe there was an EGGSALT agent trying to shoot at us with this monstrosity. It's obscenely heavy and obscenely powerful with the bonus applied. The drawbacks are that the minimum skill to use it well is 70, and it's slow and not in any way versatile. Before we get to the point where we'll be needing such firepower, we'll be fielding mass drivers and/or lasers.
Cult of Sirius? It's supposed to form around dimensional gates after the world gets invaded for the third time. Or will it form around the Star Gods after they conquer Earth? It shouldn't exist yet either way.
Remember when we tried to do that in a truck? Or was it a helicopter? We could try again with Diner & Dive. Hah, like we could actually take down a shrine.