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[Sean Mirrsen]

You do kinda hire engineers and scientists, except what you're actually doing is building them a cozy place inside your base to work in. I don't know where all the scientists and engineers you get as rewards go to, however. Maybe the supplying countries build their own little XCOM bases and them "giving" you four scientists instead amounts to giving you an off-site laboratory and four expert scientists to staff it. Something similar with engineers.

[Corai]

You can hire engineers and scientists. You just need to make them a place where they can do their job.

You do kinda hire engineers and scientists, except what you're actually doing is building them a cozy place inside your base to work in. I don't know where all the scientists and engineers you get as rewards go to, however. Maybe the supplying countries build their own little XCOM bases and them "giving" you four scientists instead amounts to giving you an off-site laboratory and four expert scientists to staff it. Something similar with engineers.

[Parsely]

You do kinda hire engineers and scientists, except what you're actually doing is building them a cozy place inside your base to work in. I don't know where all the scientists and engineers you get as rewards go to, however. Maybe the supplying countries build their own little XCOM bases and them "giving" you four scientists instead amounts to giving you an off-site laboratory and four expert scientists to staff it. Something similar with engineers.

I'm happy with that explanation.

[TCM]

*Quite probable. I blame that on my lack of alloys and elerium.
And once I fell behind, I couldn't ever catch up. That's a bit of a problem in single-player games; when you screw up, you generally want either a way to climb back into victory, or a swift loss. Once I fell behind on tech and was nearly out of alloys and elerium, there wasn't much I could do to stop my top soldiers from being killed.
The solution has more to do with resource management than difficulty curve, although some more intermediate alien species would be nice. Towards the end of the game, I was almost entirely going either "Oh good, it's just X" or "OH CRAP IT'S A Y!" There wasn't much middle ground, and I don't think that had anything to do with resource management.*

Yes, once you start trailing behind in the arms race, failure begins to become the most probable outcome. This is the kind of game where if you're in a no-win situation, you just have to concede defeat and start over. I've already had to do that once.
At the point I've gotten to now, I treat the Beserkers, Mechtoids and Cyberdiscs as middle-of-the-road enemies. None of them are particularly worrying, but I have to prioritize them lest I want my soldiers to start dying. And on Impossible, every enemy from Thin Men to the higher ranks becomes a "OH SHIT" enemy, and a lot of people like it that way.

*Yeah.
And while I'm here...what are alien weapons, armor, and so forth made out of? Why can't we melt those down for alien alloys, if the alloys from spacecraft hulls can be used for anything from armor to lasers?*

The humans can reverse engineer what they get, but can't melt it down or re-purpose it. Dr. Valhen comments on this a few times, as we lack technology that could do that.

*I suppose the big thing is that the arc thrower is basically a pistol, from what I can see.
That, and the backpack slot is a little bit silly. Why can you carry a thin nanofiber vest, a grenade, or a scope, but not all three?*

Then this game would become the Original X-COM games, where you can carry tons of things on your soldiers, and to compensate, the game will throw 30+ aliens at you in a normal mission.

*Noted.
And I know (I've read the TV Tropes page), but still...it sounds like it's pretty linear.*

Perhaps it's for the best. X-COM's inherent plot campy-ness is part of the fun in my opinion.

*Indeed. Still, it seems like it's focusing a lot more on the minor than on some kind of overarching theme.*

If you play the mission, you'll see why one zombie apocalypse mission in-game is more than enough.

*I don't know about the chrysalis thing. They remind me more of those wasps that lay their eggs in paralyzed caterpillars, or those wasps that lay their eggs in paralyzed tarantulas, or those wasps that--why is it always wasps? They're kinda jerks, I guess.
Ahem.
And yeah, I know that there's tradition and such. I guess most of the naming advice would be best given to the developers of the original X-COM.*

You have to imagine that it's the soldiers and crew (the first ones who are exposed to them) are naming these aliens, not the engineers and scientists.

*I was listed as having saved 0 civilians.*

Okay, I dunno. Game mechanics. You lose, you lose everything.

*How many aircraft do you know that are composed entirely of alien alloys, with elerium reactors and plasma cannons?*

The best we can do with that is the Firestorm, which holds 3 pilots at the most.

*I did not.
This brings up another question, though. If alien weapons destroy tanks in a couple shots, why don't they pulverize anyone wearing less than Titan armor? If we at least got a blurb about how there were multiple settings on captured weaponry or something that would be great, but there isn't any explanation beyond "Alright, you want all alien shots to be OHKO's? That's what I thought.*

The aliens are deployed via ship to each of their specific areas. It's definite that the ships can easily destroy armored vehicles in a couple shots. And if the ground forces had to take on a tank, maybe they couldn't one-shot it, but a combination of plasma fire from multiple aliens would surely blow it up before it could manage to get its own shot off. Even with armor on, 4-6 bursts of enemy fire from the standard Muton (who make up the largest bulk of the standard invasion force) is enough to kill just about any human. If the action were in real-time, I imagine a Muton squad could easily overwhelm a tank.

*It seems like this should have a lasting impact, though.
Yeah, curing cancer is nice, but what does that mean, worldwide? Are the Canadians glad you managed to give them such a panacea? Will...okay, this is a tougher example, but if you provide weapon and armor samples to various countries for them to reverse-engineer, surely there should be some effect from this? You're (ideally) beating up the aliens with these, why can't the locals? Also, this might convince me to actually complete some missions.*

Curing cancer means cancer is cured in Canada and will probably spread, though I imagine proper eradication of the disease wouldn't be able to start until the aliens are dealt with.
While normal soldiers getting armor and alien weaponry is nice, you still have to realize that every at X-COM starts out as an amazing super soldier. The "Rookies" you get are seasoned, top-of-the-class special forces veterans, with incredible accuracy, speed, discipline, toughness, etc. Thus, when your Rookie has a 45% chance to hit an alien with their assault rifle, the standard soldier making the same shot probably has a >10% chance at hitting, and this percentage would be much lower for police or civilians.

*I'm referring more to how little funding and whatnot X-Com gets without launching satellites or something, and how easy it can be to lose a nation.*

Nations are pretty finicky and self-centered, like actual people. Hey, what can you do about that? X-COM is a military group, so it's much better at killing things than convincing governments to fund them more.

*An argument that breaks down when you're just scouting the area.*

Standard X-COM Procedure: Rule of Cool.

*Isn't that the left mouse button? That didn't seem to work after the tutorial.*

Oh, PC Controls? Can't help you there.

*I'm just wishing there was some kind of in-game explanation for this stuff.*

You are the commander of X-COM, thus everyone in the organization assumes that you're smart enough to assume these things on your own. Like this very statement.

*Interceptors get used every few months, but you need four Firestorms to get a decent chance of using them.*

Um, what?

*The cost was less the money and more the...everything else, really.*

/Resources.

*I'm not sure what the logic of that 80% is, but they got really...repetitive. Which is basically what I'm complaining about.
And yeah, I'm aware that none of these concerns are ones likely to be addressed.*

Logic = Most people like them, so they're going to stay around. If you want, you could turn off the Action Cam.

*That requires me to wreck or autopsy one.*

I know they're big and scary, but they're really not that bad.

*Assuming you aren't putting much faith in your advanced equipment, the ability to take cover, or the ability to level up. And my SHIVs never seemed to last more than a mission for some reason.*

Not my area of expertise, maybe someone else can help you with that.

*A memetic quote from a Let's Play does not count as in-game.
Although it is, technically, an explanation.*

Is it from a Let's Play? I don't believe it is. The meaning behind the phrase is that it's just X-COM, and X-COM is what it is. Redundant? Yes. Best explanation? Yep.

*I feel like your actions in the world should leave a lasting effect on the world. If you give Egypt advanced weapons and armor, they aren't so easily frightened by aliens and/or they have a chance to "complete" abductions or something in their territory (preventing terror from rising). Giving corpses that leads to medical advances should...I dunno, I just like it better if your choices have lasting effects past "Ooh, money!" or "More engineers?"
Also, it might encourage me to actually complete some. "No, 36 Alloys are not worth $241. Go away."*

No matter how many laser guns and armor suits you give a country, it won't make their soldiers any more efficient, just possibly more deadly. That would require some sort of mass training regime, which would be impossible in the current circumstances.

*Makes you wonder what they did to the Ravens.
And why no one ever asks for Interceptor-related equipment.*

They probably Science'd the Ravens until they were really good fighters.
The Dr. Shen and his engineers are way too fond of their creations, along with their accompanying tools, to give them to anyone.

*It felt that way for me, at first.
As time went on, it began to feel like someone was trying to reduce production costs by splicing a bunch of stock footage together over a green screen or something.*

Turn off action cam.


Hey GWG, is there any chance you could upload some footage of you playing a mission of X-COM onto a public video sharing site like Youtube? If we saw what you were actually doing, you could get a lot of really useful advice.

[10ebbor10]

I think he just got it from a free weekend, or I got confused.

On a side note, while we can't disassemble weaponry, it's kinda silly that we can't blow them up either. In my  current game I have a shortage of weapon fragments, but abundant alien alloys and elerium...

[Sensei]

I don't understand why you'd need weapon fragments once you can make alien weaponry.

For the materials, apparently.  Though you'd think just alloys and eludium would do.

[EnigmaticHat]

They probably need advanced components.  Elerium is, as I understand it, what makes the plasma while the alloys are the metal of the gun.  But there might be other components besides the ammo and the body of the gun that humans can't make.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Crosspost from the dying thread!

So a squad of five head to a crashed medium UFO. Expecting sectoids and thin men I send two recruits along to become squadies.

There were a few sectoids and then once u reached the power sources THREE mutons jump out a peg my first recruit, Gretta Karlson, she dies and then I realize 'shiiiiit' so I begin falling back to the entrance, my support 'Kazuko Smokes Ogawa drops a smoke to cover us. I have my heavy and assault 'Emilo The Tank Castillo' and 'Kojo Bishop Baloya' respectively give cover fire so my second recruit Grannis Lekas could GTFO.

Bishop gets pegged in next turn as well as Grannis, leaving me with The Tank and Smokes. They run back to the evac zone when I realize. Maaaaybe I can win this, so I have them take cover, and by next turn they were fully loaded and on over watch.

Three floaters awaken and charge us, The Tank gets off his shot, bringing one down. Smokes pegs another with her Laser Rifle and it falls. Cue one more turn of over watch and we get the last down.

Instead of doing the tactically sound choice of retreating, I send them back to the UFO over many turns and begin firing at a muton that was separated. It threw a grenade at us and Smokes panicked, taking The Tank down and soon got shot herself.

Personally, I consider it a win considering how badass it was.

XCOM EU(2012)

Opinions? Anything I could've done other than retreat that could've saved the situation?

Dunno. More data would be nice. Weapons? Armor? What was the claimed difficulty of the mission?

When you complete an abduction mission and you're rewarded with a soldier, or money, or engineers/scientists.. Where do they come from? Do you rescue them from the area? Or does the specific country give them to you as a gift?

I'm pretty sure it's a gift. It makes the most sense.

EDIT: Also, I understand why paying for upkeep of personnel makes sense, you can't just not pay these dudes just because the world's going to end.. But again, the world as we know it is, for all practical purposes, "ending." You'd think you'd get a few volunteers every once in a while. But nope. Every talented person in the world is a freaking mercenary. >.>

I think at least part of that money is going into "basic" training. Those training dummies ain't gonna pay for themselves, you know.

The local military sends soldiers and vehicles out all the time. They're just not good at it. Did you not notice all the missions with burned out husks of tanks and fighter helicopters lying everywhere?

I did not.
This brings up another question, though. If alien weapons destroy tanks in a couple shots, why don't they pulverize anyone wearing less than Titan armor? If we at least got a blurb about how there were multiple settings on captured weaponry or something that would be great, but there isn't any explanation beyond "Alright, you want all alien shots to be OHKO's? That's what I thought."

It was like that in the original. I guess the developers of this one just didn't want to put their players through the frustration of seeing their colonels equipped in the best armor in the game get one shot by a sectoid.

Well, duh. I think I covered that with the following:

...there isn't any explanation beyond "Alright, you want all alien shots to be OHKO's? That's what I thought."

Also, the Open Door command is straightforward. Stand next to door. Press door button. Door opens.

Isn't that the left mouse button? That didn't seem to work after the tutorial.

It should be working. Can be a bit finicky at time but I use it all the time.

Good for you. Wish it worked for me.

The humans can reverse engineer what they get, but can't melt it down or re-purpose it. Dr. Valhen comments on this a few times, as we lack technology that could do that.

...Then how are chunks of spaceship hull repurposed into laser guns, armor, alloy cannons, etc?

*I suppose the big thing is that the arc thrower is basically a pistol, from what I can see.
That, and the backpack slot is a little bit silly. Why can you carry a thin nanofiber vest, a grenade, or a scope, but not all three?*

Then this game would become the Original X-COM games, where you can carry tons of things on your soldiers, and to compensate, the game will throw 30+ aliens at you in a normal mission.

I'm pretty sure there's a middle ground.

*I was listed as having saved 0 civilians.*
Okay, I dunno. Game mechanics. You lose, you lose everything.

Maybe I'm asking for too much, but a justification for these little details that don't make sense would be nice.

*How many aircraft do you know that are composed entirely of alien alloys, with elerium reactors and plasma cannons?*

The best we can do with that is the Firestorm, which holds 3 pilots at the most.

Your point?
The problem isn't that you can't easily make a second Skyranger--you can never make another Skyranger, even with low panic and satellites in every member nation and more credits than you can count.

The aliens are deployed via ship to each of their specific areas. It's definite that the ships can easily destroy armored vehicles in a couple shots. And if the ground forces had to take on a tank, maybe they couldn't one-shot it, but a combination of plasma fire from multiple aliens would surely blow it up before it could manage to get its own shot off. Even with armor on, 4-6 bursts of enemy fire from the standard Muton (who make up the largest bulk of the standard invasion force) is enough to kill just about any human. If the action were in real-time, I imagine a Muton squad could easily overwhelm a tank.

I saw people talking about a "tank depot" map and mentioning that the tanks would get destroyed with two or three (I don't remember which) hits from alien weapons. Like, the light plasma rifles.

Curing cancer means cancer is cured in Canada and will probably spread, though I imagine proper eradication of the disease wouldn't be able to start until the aliens are dealt with.

What, Canada's hoarding the secret to curing cancer? Jerks.

While normal soldiers getting armor and alien weaponry is nice, you still have to realize that every at X-COM starts out as an amazing super soldier. The "Rookies" you get are seasoned, top-of-the-class special forces veterans, with incredible accuracy, speed, discipline, toughness, etc. Thus, when your Rookie has a 45% chance to hit an alien with their assault rifle, the standard soldier making the same shot probably has a >10% chance at hitting, and this percentage would be much lower for police or civilians.

And what about giving carapace armor and plasma rifles to Navy SEALS or other special forces?

Nations are pretty finicky and self-centered, like actual people. Hey, what can you do about that? X-COM is a military group, so it's much better at killing things than convincing governments to fund them more.

I dunno, "We need that money to stop the aliens from killing us!" sounds pretty convincing to me.

Standard X-COM Procedure: Rule of Cool.

Once or twice, maybe, and when the noise isn't going to alert aliens.

You are the commander of X-COM, thus everyone in the organization assumes that you're smart enough to assume these things on your own. Like this very statement.

1. By that logic, those research blurbs are completely wasteful too. After all, the Commander should know that stuff!
2. That's lazy work. If things seem off, I expect some kind of explanation or at least acknowledgement.

Um, what?

Did you notice the part where the Firestorm I made just sat in the hangar, gathering rust?

Logic = Most people like them, so they're going to stay around. If you want, you could turn off the Action Cam.

I meant the logic of the people who really liked their game being interrupted to show the same frikkin' snippets a zillion times.
And I highly doubt you'd find people who would argue with the Action Cam results being more varied.

I know they're big and scary, but they're really not that bad.

Scary is enough. Especially before you read TV Tropes/the wiki and realize that their high-health disk forms can't deal any damage.
Think about it. You've been playing through the game, getting more and more dangerous foes. With the exceptions of the inversion of thin men and sectopods, and the weakness of the floaters, the less human the aliens are the more terrifying they tend to be. And you see this featureless disk floating around with 16 health, way more than anything you've faced.
You run, not wanting to test its offensive capabilities. It unfolds into guns and one-shots a soldier. I think it's a bit forgiveable that I didn't notice the change in health.

Is it from a Let's Play? I don't believe it is.

Originally, yes. Or so I've heard.

No matter how many laser guns and armor suits you give a country, it won't make their soldiers any more efficient, just possibly more deadly. That would require some sort of mass training regime, which would be impossible in the current circumstances.

Just like X-Com can't train its soldiers with these weapons that function almost identically to slug weapons on the user end.
Oh wait...

Hey GWG, is there any chance you could upload some footage of you playing a mission of X-COM onto a public video sharing site like Youtube? If we saw what you were actually doing, you could get a lot of really useful advice.

Maybe if I figured out how to do that with FRAPS or something. Which I haven't even opened since I did that Spore LP.

I think he just got it from a free weekend, or I got confused.

Who, me? Nope. Also, free weekend? I could have gotten XCOM without paying $20?

On a side note, while we can't disassemble weaponry, it's kinda silly that we can't blow them up either. In my  current game I have a shortage of weapon fragments, but abundant alien alloys and elerium...

How the heck did that happen?

That makes no sense, seeing as humans are literally creating a copy of the plasma guns. IIRC, it says they have no idea how they work, they just know that they do.

That's why they need certain bits from the aliens' plasma rifles. Things that let them avoid causing horrific collateral damage, for instance.

[TCM]

*...Then how are chunks of spaceship hull repurposed into laser guns, armor, alloy cannons, etc?*

I dunno. Science. Go ask a science person or something.

*Maybe I'm asking for too much, but a justification for these little details that don't make sense would be nice.*

That is a bit too much actually. Sorry.

*The problem isn't that you can't easily make a second Skyranger--you can never make another Skyranger, even with low panic and satellites in every member nation and more credits than you can count.*

The Skyranger is so good though. Too good to replicate. It took years. Billions of dollars.

*I saw people talking about a "tank depot" map and mentioning that the tanks would get destroyed with two or three (I don't remember which) hits from alien weapons. Like, the light plasma rifles.*

There's your answer then.

*What, Canada's hoarding the secret to curing cancer? Jerks.*

Nope. Doctors just seem to have trouble explaining the procedure for eliminating cancer when they're doing it in the middle of a country being bombarded by alien ships.

*And what about giving carapace armor and plasma rifles to Navy SEALS or other special forces?*

They do...okay, according to in-game stuff. Still, they're not even as good as the X-COM rookies. Those dozens of soldiers at your disposal are quite possibly the best soldiers in the world.

*I dunno, "We need that money to stop the aliens from killing us!" sounds pretty convincing to me.*

Hey, it's Nationalistic Pride, I didn't decide it. Talk to Obama 'bout it.

*1. By that logic, those research blurbs are completely wasteful too. After all, the Commander should know that stuff!
2. That's lazy work. If things seem off, I expect some kind of explanation or at least acknowledgement.*

What can I tell you, wrong game to be asking those questions.

*Did you notice the part where the Firestorm I made just sat in the hangar, gathering rust?*

That's because your Firestorm can't be sent after enemy ships if you don't have satellites up to find those ships in the first place. If you play efficiently, you'll get a lot of use out of your Firestorm.

*I meant the logic of the people who really liked their game being interrupted to show the same frikkin' snippets a zillion times.
And I highly doubt you'd find people who would argue with the Action Cam results being more varied.*

Eh, people like it.

*Scary is enough. Especially before you read TV Tropes/the wiki and realize that their high-health disk forms can't deal any damage.
Think about it. You've been playing through the game, getting more and more dangerous foes. With the exceptions of the inversion of thin men and sectopods, and the weakness of the floaters, the less human the aliens are the more terrifying they tend to be. And you see this featureless disk floating around with 16 health, way more than anything you've faced.
You run, not wanting to test its offensive capabilities. It unfolds into guns and one-shots a soldier. I think it's a bit forgiveable that I didn't notice the change in health.*

But you just gotta' shoot it a bit. 16 Health, that's what, 5-6 shots even with its defensive capabilities? And yes, I know of the insta-Soldier kill, that happens to me playthrough when I discover the Cyberdiscs. And did you ever play far enough to even encounter the Sectopods?

*Just like X-Com can't train its soldiers with these weapons that function almost identically to slug weapons on the user end.
Oh wait...*

How do you know they're identical? Have you ever fired a plasma gun? Maybe it's super hard, and you can't refute that unless you try it yourself.

*Maybe if I figured out how to do that with FRAPS or something. Which I haven't even opened since I did that Spore LP.*

Cool.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Yet you cannot disassemble your guns to get them back.

True.

I dunno. Science. Go ask a science person or something.

As a science person...if a metal can be reshaped from plates of UFO hull to things like gun parts and alloy cannon ammo, it can be melted down, since at minimum partial melting of the metal would be required for such changes. If it can be melted, armor made of such a material could also be melted.

That is a bit too much actually. Sorry.

What, that half an effort be spent trying to justify the strange stuff?
It wouldn't be hard. Mention that the armor is actually made of mundane alloys. Have a note at some point in the plasma gun reverse-engineering process that the aliens' weapons have multiple settings. Mention that X-Com has various sanctions put on it by the Member Nations, mention the standards it's expected to uphold if it doesn't want funders to withdraw their funding. Is that so hard?

The Skyranger is so good though. Too good to replicate. It took years. Billions of dollars.

Says you. This fact isn't really hinted at in the game. And, overall, if it takes three days to make a new superjet and less than a month to make one on par with or exceeding the capability of the spacecraft of aliens with untold centuries of lead on us, forgive me for thinking that a simple long-range high-speed troop transport is within X-Com's capabilities.

There's your answer then.

And it opens up new questions. If it takes only three shots to make a tank explode, how can anyone survive one? Again, an offhand comment would have explained this. The aliens have multiple settings on their plasma rifles, ones for blowing up tanks and ones for wounding humans. It even fits with the aliens' motivations.

Nope. Doctors just seem to have trouble explaining the procedure for eliminating cancer when they're doing it in the middle of a country being bombarded by alien ships.

Yup. Them alien bombers are really disrupting worldwide communications, as shown by the complete absence of alien bombers my Interceptors can shoot down and the way news reports of abductions from around the globe get to X-Com fast enough for them to react.

They do...okay, according to in-game stuff. Still, they're not even as good as the X-COM rookies. Those dozens of soldiers at your disposal are quite possibly the best soldiers in the world.

Where do they come from? What makes them so awesome?
And wouldn't a few dozen near-Rookies in carapace armor and wielding lasers or plasma guns do better than 4-6 rookies armed with the same, and level up much as our Rookies do?

What can I tell you, wrong game to be asking those questions.

I do my best to hold up all games to the same standards. Also, if you're going to give your aliens a motivation that explains the unusual invasion pattern, driving the whole story, is it that hard to also add in a couple side notes that patch up other plot holes while you're at it?

That's because your Firestorm can't be sent after enemy ships if you don't have satellites up to find those ships in the first place.

It had more to do with the fact that there weren't any UFO invasions in Europe, as far as I could tell.

But you just gotta' shoot it a bit. 16 Health, that's what, 5-6 shots even with its defensive capabilities? And yes, I know of the insta-Soldier kill, that happens to me playthrough when I discover the Cyberdiscs.

In the other enemies, and games in general, offensive capabilities tend to scale with health. The two-health sectoids are weaker than the three-health thin men are weaker than the I-forget-health floaters are weaker than the mutons are weaker than the cryssalids. How was I supposed to guess that the same didn't apply to these mystery disks?
The one-shotting thing didn't help.

And did you ever play far enough to even encounter the Sectopods?

Ahaha, no.

How do you know they're identical? Have you ever fired a plasma gun? Maybe it's super hard, and you can't refute that unless you try it yourself.

Well...the principles are the same. Point this end at enemy, pull trigger, repeat until you need to reload. The designs of slug, laser, and plasma weapons are mostly the same...and you know what? That makes sense. You don't want to design weapons radically different than what they're used to, you want to give them as close to the firing experience they're used to as you can.

Cool.

Don't hold your breath. I have no immediate plans to begin another XCOM game, in part because I have little free time. Maybe tomorrow and Monday, but if not then I dunno when I'll have enough extended free time.

[TCM]

-stuff-

It's really Bradford's fault.

[GreatWyrmGold]

There's a reason they made you Commander after that first mission: So he wouldn't be in charge of anything important.

[TCM]

There's a reason they made you Commander after that first mission: So he wouldn't be in charge of anything important.

It's actually Canon that Bradford ruined the plot.

X-COM People: "Hey Bradford, shouldn't we inform the Commander that-"

Bradford: "SHUT UP NO DON'T YOU KNOW HOW THE MILITARY WORKS BUB I'VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR 12 YEARS JUST BUILD MORE RIFLES."

[Parsely]

I always imagined Bradford as being a huge dick to all the personnel whenever the Commander Dr. Shen or the German lady weren't around. Cutting off fingers for stealing rations and handing out lashes whenever someone forgot to put the box of Scopes on the Skyranger.

Those power plants? Man-sized hamster wheels. Thousands of them.

And the mechanical arms on that assembly line are actually just real people sticking their arms inside an empty shell.

The workshops are actually just rooms filled with orphans making Niké tennis shoes.

Hey! No wonder everything costs like 10$ to make! Good work Bradford!

[umiman]

I always imagined Bradford as being a huge dick to all the personnel whenever the Commander Dr. Shen or the German lady weren't around. Cutting off fingers for stealing rations and handing out lashes whenever someone forgot to put the box of Scopes on the Skyranger.

Those power plants? Man-sized hamster wheels. Thousands of them.

And the mechanical arms on that assembly line are actually just real people sticking their arms inside an empty shell.

The workshops are actually just rooms filled with orphans making Niké tennis shoes.

Hey! No wonder everything costs like 10$ to make! Good work Bradford!

I don't understand how this makes him a huge dick.

If people were stealing rations and failed to properly load my equipment on this freaking last ditch attempt to save earth, you can bet punishment would be a lot more severe than minor limb removal or lashings.

And if what it takes to manufacture stuff at pennies is orphan power. Then great. He found some way to tap useless things for huge energy at low cost. He should be rewarded. Again, we're dealing with the fate of the world. Orphans and individuals are irrelevant.

Though it's been explained that the $10 is an extrapolation. Why would you want to see $10,000,000 every single time. All those extra zeroes are erroneous.