It is three AM.
Do you know where your OMFG UFOs are?
Because I do.
Meet: the Battleship.
Big, powerful, can take more damage than we can put out… for now. This is the battleship, the last UFO we need to shoot down to research the last X-Com craft. If only our Retaliators were fully equipped. Note to self, next time more engineers…
The purple craft to the right is pretty cool and I haven’t mentioned it yet… that is the UFO escort. The only thing it does is launch statis bombs at planes which cause them to freeze for a few seconds.
Finally… notice what the Battleship is doing here?
Yup! You guessed it. Party time at club X-Com HQ!
First thing to do is to move our squishes to the very back of the base, then we watch the possible passage points for the aliens. Almost everything is covered with advanced security stations so any aliens that make it through should be pretty messed up.
When aliens (or anyone) attack your base they always spawn around your hanger and your access lift, that is why our guns are positioned where they are.
This is what they can see right off the bat.
One of the few ways the AI in Apoc really fails is that they don’t use the right weapons against the security stations… Really, it is for the best. I don’t care if they waste Entropy ammo on machines…
I didn’t see it happen, so I can’t say for sure what caused it… but I am pretty sure only one alien weapon does this much damage…
The battle is almost over so let’s do a quick victory lap.
These are my scientists hiding in the bottom floor of a living quarters. They couldn’t even hear the battle from here and that is exactly how I wanted it when I designed the HQ.
This is one of the advanced labs (top left)… some of my scientist spawned here but because the security stations (bottom right) no aliens had a clear shot at them as they ran off to hide.
These are the security stations from the tactical map. Each has (had) 4 guns. The stars show guns that were destroyed, the circles show active guns.
A short time later the last alien dies and the UFO retreats, leaving us with a 527 point tactical victory. I was wrong about the damage to the base, it wasn’t new technology, must have just been a vortex mine.
Tuesday is raid day. I have been trying to find ways to raid more safely and so I’ve been experimenting with different strategies. This is my current one.
It doesn’t completely protect us from the bullshit “single rocket kill” (in this screen it did!) but I does give us the ability to take a single step back and let our shields charge.
A few raids later one of our most decorated vets, Sgt. Geen, is left exposed and dies to enemy fire.
The raids continue pretty standard. We lose 2 shields every three missions or so. This raid ended up going a little crazy. We had to hide out and let the dust settle, litteraly.
3,000 points and $80,000 later we stop the raids due to injuries.
Later in the day Daiblo, obviously inspired by our attacks, sends a couple of hover cars after Psyke buildings. Anytime a faction attacks another faction’s buildings, the police respond and that is exactly what they did in this case. Interestingly, it caused a 3 way fight between Psyke, Diablo, and Megapol. Auto cannon fire was going all over the place!
The UFO Battleship returns early Wednesday and X-Com craft scramble to meet it…
And knock it down with ease…
We load up 3 squads of 3 in the transporter for this mission. Battleships have kind of an odd setup. It is like the ship crashed into a sewer. There are two entrances, both of which are narrow tunnels. I know from experience that it is best NOT to go sprinting up to the door of this ufo. Instead we send one unit out at a time to look around the corner.
He takes a popper, kills two, then takes a second. He retreats and a second agent comes in to take his place. An explosion hits him as well!
He too pulls back. Another squad advances slowly and comes across the final alien weapon.
Meet: the Dimension Missile Launcher.
That is right! The aliens have a version of that thing Psyke has been using to kill our troops. It is extremely powerful and has very good homing.
On the south side of the UFO, squad 1 is covering the other exit. After killing a few enemies, Anja decides to clear any nearby explosives to avoid a chain reaction. When she turns around, she gets a nasty surprise.
Meet: the Megaspawn
Nasty foul creatures. Huge, lots of health, and built in weapons. They shoot a very powerful beam and a homing missile. I know they are dangerous alone; I have no idea how dangerous they are when they are chilling with two of their home boys. I have never seen three together.
These were the guys we were talking about earlier in the thread. Bringing one in alive is almost impossible… but it would get us so close to Toxin C.
Anja makes it away. A while later Jerick looks out to see if the situation has changed and finds himself the first victim of the dimension launcher.
Shadowgander popped out to see if there was an opportunity to move in from the north and took a combination of rocket shots and beams, barely making it out alive. After that Agents took turns popping out and taking some quick shots. It seemed to be working and then, all of the sudden; the aliens fled the combat zone and gave up the craft.
I was a little disappointed. We didn’t even get to kill a Megaspawn… but to be fair, the craft is far more important.
The only thing left to do was respond to the Alien drop. Here a massive chain reaction killed Sheb.
It is turning out to be a rough week.
Before the end of the day Wednesday, our scientists manage to develop the alien Air to Air missile known as the “disruptor inversion bomb”. Eventually we will put it to use, but for now there are too many other things to build.
As it stands we have a very low reserve of shields and toxin ammo. Plus there are still the other pieces of disruptor armor to build. Our Air force is ready to handle any threat anyways.
The Aliens return Thursday with something unexpected. They send in two bombers and two destroyers. One bomber be-lines for HQ and drops aliens who are executed without issue. By the time the defense of the base is complete, the bomber has been shot down by the Airforce.
I have no idea what the other three UFOs did.
The assault against the bomber went exceptionally well, netting us 747 points.
Later in the day we get a message I did not expect. We have run out of storage space at the HQ.
Earlier in the play through I did some research about how and when market prices drop. It turns out that if there is more than a set number of a type of item on the market, the price will fall something like 15-25%. Because of this, I have been holding on to the majority of Devastator Cannons and Psiclones.
When we ran out of space I offloaded the Devastators to the market, 63 units at $4,500 a piece to be exact, netting us $283,000.
I also did some digging and found this information.
5 soldiers to get 1 squad leader +4 Squaddies/Rookies
15 soldiers to get 1 sergeant + 3 squad leaders +11 Squaddies/Rookies
45 soldiers to get 1 captain + 3 sergeants + 9 squad leaders + 32 Squaddies/Rookies
90 soldiers to get 1 colonel + 2 captains + 6 sergeants + 18 squad leaders + 63 Squaddies/Rookies
135 soldiers to get 1 commander + 2 colonel + 3 captain + 9 sergeants + 27 squad leaders + 93 Squaddies/Rookies
As it turns out, “soldiers” includes scientists and engineers. We were sitting just below the 90 mark, so I hired on every staff we could find, including low skill egg heads. I’d like to hit 140 or 150 so we can get our commander.
Friday gives us another great technology from the Quantum Physics side. I never brought it up, but air craft can be equipped with weapon controls to make them more accurate. The best one the city has to offer is 30%, our scientists just developed one that gives us 50%. It will be a nice addition, when our Engineers finishing making everything else.
Saturday is raid day. It seems unlikely, but I would be very happy if we could end the week with around 9,500 points. Our engineers have just completed the raider load out, which now looks like this.
We have our units wearing Disruptor armor everywhere save the chest, where we elect to use the Marsec flying armor instead. If damage is too high we will have to build some chest pieces for the raiding crew.
After many many raids we finally stop. The tally is one dead agent and a couple of lost shields for $140,000 in gear and a few thousand points.
Late Saturday night the UFO’s return in the standard 2 assault 2 bomber configuration. When the dust settles our Airforce has shot down both bombers and one of the assault craft (without extensive city damage this time!), leaving us with 4 tactical missions against the aliens.
The first takes us to a hospital, where we perform gloriously against the aliens, defeating them without losing a single shield. More importantly, however, we sore high enough to push us over 28,000 total points.
I won’t say exactly why this is a big deal yet, but suffice to say it is.
That leaves us with two bombers and an assault ship…
In no time at all the bombers are both cleared of aliens and gutted. The second bomber looked like it was going to be trouble when a rocket strike took out a shield early, but Anja was able to find a replacement and complete the mission.
On the assault ship we had time to form a perimeter. It looked like this.
Now that is a perimeter! Also note our sexy half X-Com uniforms… poor over worked engineers. The mission went well, but not as well as the bombers. We lost several shields and a glorious chain reaction took out most of the equipment we could have salvaged. No injuries though.
The rest of the week is quiet. The Agents take a couple of days off while the engineers work around the clock to equip the squads.
End of the week score:
Senate gives us a $28,000 raise. Hot diggity daffodil!
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Topic: Complete: Let’s Play Ironman/Superhuman X-Com Apocalypse! (Read 119826 times)