Update 2X-COM Commander’s Log – Robert Steinbach - March 7 2084; 1335hOkay, I got my drink. Now where did I leave off…?
Oh right, at the mission. On the way back from the site, the alien corpses started decaying to dust – literally. Apparently they decompose quickly when dead, giving us nothing to study. I got the biochemists to start work on analyzing the corpses (whatever’s left of them) and creating a bio-transport module to store them safely.
The quantum physicists have also started research on the dimension gate, which is their name for these triangles in the sky.
And of course the engineers are slacking off. They claim that they’ve got nothing to manufacture, so now we’re paying them to sit around and watch Sensovision soap operas.
So I ordered them to take the hovercars and report on the dimension gates, just to have them do something useful. The first gate is here, south of the Senate.
The second gate is outside of city limits, at the northwestern end of the city.
The third gate is next to the Marsec arms factory and near to Nutrivend’s Hypermart Zone, a prominent retail complex. All three gates are far apart, and our vehicles would take a long time to intercept UFOs as they come through. This will have to be solved somehow.
X-COM Commander’s Log – Robert Steinbach - March 7 2084; 1415hWith a few greasing of palms here and there, we have ‘convinced’ Megapol to let us ‘borrow’ some parking permits. X-COM vehicles are now allowed to park at any building under ‘city business’. I mean, technically we’re protecting the city, right? Anyway, I used these permits to move X-COM aircraft to better tactical positions –
- namely, near the gates. The cars and bike have been split into three squads, one per gate. We can now respond to any threat within seconds.
Also, the engineers wired all the control systems into a central computer. I can now order these cars around from the safety of NAS Base.
X-COM Commander’s Log – Robert Steinbach - March 7 2084; 2230h
We had our first UFO incursion earlier.
A UFO materialized out of the gate. These UFOs are huge – nearly three stories tall and 30 meters in diameter. Their internal volume is comparable to that of the biggest UFOs in the First and Second Alien Wars. The Ethereals have obviously spent the last few decades improving their ships.
I ordered the vehicles in squad three to engage immediately. The onboard AIs come preprogrammed by Marsec to include aerial combat techniques, and can function as a swarm.
Then another UFO showed up at gate one, which has drifted right up against the Megapol station. Why they don’t launch their craft to defend baffles me.
Squad one was ordered to attack immediately.
In the meantime, two more ships appeared at gate three. One of them was the same as the first, the other was an oblong vessel at 35 meters of length.
Another oblong vessel appeared at gate one. There were now five alien craft in the skies of Mega-Primus.
Squad one performed admirably, bringing down one UFO within seconds and targeting the other.
The AI went slightly overboard, completely destroying the other with a pair of Janitor missiles.
Back at gate three, things didn’t go as smoothly. The oblong UFO appeared to be an escort, moving to block our missiles targeted on the further UFO.
Since squad three seemed to be outnumbered, I ordered squad two to intercept the third UFO heading west.
Squad three managed to shoot down the first UFO just as it began engaging some type of beam weapon.
They wheeled around and destroyed the escort in a few shots, before going for the third UFO.
The UFO paused over a Superdynamics Flyer Factory for a moment.
This allowed our missiles to catch up and blow it out of the air.
We had shot down five UFOs with only minor damage to one of our craft, but we now had to clear five UFOs before the aliens escaped into the city, where they could cause major harm.
The Skyranger, our strangely named Valkyrie, was dispatched to the first crash site.
We were expecting a hard fight. All we had were a bunch of new recruits, up against however many aliens could fit inside that thing.
To everyone’s surprise, no aliens came out to greet us. In fact, there was no visible entrance on the UFO’s leathery hull. Scanners on the Valkyrie showed no signs of life within the ship.
So we had the entire ship airlifted back to base.
The other ships were also the same. All aliens appeared to have been killed in the crash. They were all airlifted into vehicle storage.
These UFOs are like no alien design we know of – the entire ship appears to be coated with a layer of biological matter. Perhaps this is some unknown form of protection that allows them to travel through the dimension gates?
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Topic: Let's Play X-COM: Apocalypse! (Read 37472 times)