Messages

1

Playthroughs / Re: Behind the Eight-Ball Playthrough

« on: July 19, 2018, 08:41:21 pm »

Sorry, ladies and gentlemen.

I made a grave error in only assigning 50 scientists to this playthrough. I made it to February of 2000 and hadn't even made it to interrogating anything beyond an engineer. Simply put, I got bored. I think I was at UFO 400 or something.

If anyone wants to try, I recommend 75 or 100 scientists just to avoid the drain.

I may try again with a slightly less psychotic set of rules.

2

Playthroughs / Re: Behind the Eight-Ball Playthrough

« on: June 23, 2018, 09:58:18 pm »

Break through!

November Report:

We were finally able to upgrade our weaponry with the addition of laser tanks and gauss rifles. Gauss gives us a major damage boost against the alien threat, and the breakthrough came after interrogating an Alien Engineer. Our scientists are excited to get their hands on more Engineers, and we have a whole lot of them in holding tanks.

We ran into a new type of alien which proved incredibly resistant to any armor piercing weaponry we had: Gazers. The infiltrated India, which became the second country lost in the war. Their heavy armor proved effective against our alloy bullets, and the gauss weaponry was not much more effective.

Ironically enough, alloy swords were incredibly effective, providing we could get close. Fortunately, Gazers are slow and stupid, often facing the wrong way. We took out the base in late November.

We are waiting the November edition of the Sectoid Parade, but are currently battling on multiple fronts.

1. In Central Asia we have floaters patrolling the area, most likely due to us shooting down their aircraft. We now have a stock pile of grav modules.

2. In South America the Sectoids are also patrolling in an attempt to locate our base.

3. We have had what we think are Hybrid convoys in Australia, too far for us to reach before they disband. The hybrid is a recently new enemy we face, and their use of human weaponry and methods is disturbing.

It is now December, and our scientists are busy researched handheld laser weaponry. We expect to interrogate more engineers and navigators afterwards in search of how the alien technology works. Maybe we can start using their own weapons against them.

Stats:

Private Reaver:
Maxed: Health, Time Units, Stamina and strength.
Missions: 44, Kills: 63

Reactions: 97
Firing Acc: 96
Throwing Acc: 78
Melee Acc: 81

Favorite weapon is a shotgun, followed by Alloy Sword

Starving Poet:
Maxed: Health, TU, Stamina, Strength
Missions: 37, Kills: 28

Reactions: 78
Firing Acc: 94
Throwing Acc: 81
Melee Acc: 59

We are on UFO 173 starting in December.

Personal Notes:
Reaction training works best after you can fly and sit behind UFO doors. Otherwise, take advantage of Silacoids and their slow reactions to get a boost. Once you are in the 60s and have enough accuracy to snap shot a shotgun at 80% or greater, you can start camping outside the door of slower reacting aliens. This is NOT recommended against Gazers. They take a bunch of shots to go down.
Everything I have fought so far is vulnerable to high explosives and large rockets. Ethereals, Mutons, Chrysallids, Cerebreal and Waspites have not come on the scene yet.

Alloy swords are a great equalizer against armored targets

3

Playthroughs / Re: Behind the Eight-Ball Playthrough

« on: June 20, 2018, 07:51:15 pm »

It is now the end of September. Who knew that Gauss Defenses and Gauss Cannon would take 25 days to research? And the Ironfist, Thunderstorm and the other craft would take 25 days? We are now at Alien Laser Rifle, with Origins and alien Navigator afterwards.


AAR: 9/30/2018

August was a month of activity in South Africa. September was a month of activity in the Arctic (Cthonites), North America (Sectoids and MiB), and the monthly Sectoid Parade in South America.

The Sectoids, for who knows what reasons, have decided to perform what appears to be infiltration missions in S. America. Brazil folded several months ago, but that does not stop them from doing it again and again each month. We have now dubbed it the Sectoid Parade. It involves several small ships, a supply ship, terror ship and two Battleships. They make a big show around the continent, land and then take off. We get our choice of what ships to assault, and it ends with free loot every time.

More unnerving are the activities in N. America by the MiB. They started sending in their larger ships on missions, and our alloy tech is slow to take down their armored soldiers. The Tac Sniper Rifle does well, as does explosives, but alloy rifle and shotgun rounds are becoming less effective.  Our main team has amazingly high reactions and shooting accuracy, so this has not been a problem. Our second team is not quite as fortunate. We're getting close to losing troops, and I fear what will happen if they go through another tech advance before we are able to catch up...

4

Playthroughs / Don't Bring a Tank to a Swordfiight

« on: June 17, 2018, 12:44:27 am »

So I had to start over. It is now August in the game. We're about 30 missions in, roughly.

A 50 scientist count really starts dragging out after awhile. We just now were able to research Elerium, and are starting on larger Gauss weaponry. We have encountered Cthonites, Anthropods, Sectoids (lots and lots of Sectoids....), Floaters, Reptoids, Snakemen and now the MIA. We have radar and troop coverage in the Northern Hemisphere and South America, where the Sectoids seem to live.

The Sectoids took over South America, and we lost Brazil. They then took over South America again twice more, but forgot to build bases the final two times.  A daring base raid allowed us to capture Commanders, Leaders, Medics, Navigators, Soldiers and 0 Engineers. We caught a Snakeman Engineer later, so our research is pretty much set for the next year. The order goes like this:

Alien Soldier -> Unlocked Research -> Navigator -> Unlocked Research, Engineer, Leader, Commander, etc. I figure we'll be done with the Navigator and mid-game aircraft by the end of August. We might get Gauss and Laser tech by the end of September. Then it's on to whatever order of advanced tech the leaders and commanders unlock.

After Action Report: Don't bring a tank to a swordfight.

We've been at the same tech level for three months. Inroads into alien power sources and elerium have yielded little results, and our paltry team of scientists is growing frustrated by the day. The world now worships the aliens, so recruiting more scientists is impossible. Fortunately, alien alloy tech has allowed us to overcome everything we have faced so far. Anything super-tough fell to our large rockets and heavy explosives.

We received reports of a terror attack in North Africa, and quickly flew across the sea to intercept. What we found waiting for us was not aliens, however, but humans. Their armor was similar to ours, except they lacked the ability to fly. We quickly used that to our advantage, popping up over buildings and fragging most of them with grenades. Their weaponry included weaponized laser technology attached to heavy weapons platforms, and gauss rifles. I'm curious how their technology is on par or more advanced than ours, but we were not able to capture anyone alive to interrogate. Our gauss research has yet to yield anything small enough to carry onto the battlefield.

We ran into a problem with their placement of tanks. It seems like they built the tanks in place inside buildings too small for them to escape. Two were found in a stable, one in a farm house, and the other in a small warehouse. The stables was destroyed from explosives, and those two tanks were felled by well placed high explosive charges.

The other two were very limited in mobility, and a couple of our soldiers, Reaver and Starving Poet, decided to see if Alloy Swords were able to puncture the armor of a tank. Their daring experiment proved a success, and we felled the last two tanks via sword. If we run into armored targets in the future, we can rest assured that simply walking up to them and hitting them with swords is the way to go!

End Report.

5

Playthroughs / Re: Behind the Eight-Ball Playthrough

« on: June 11, 2018, 03:25:50 pm »

Sad to hear. Well I had fun! 

We will try again soon. I'm going through a bit of a transition in life at the moment.

Sorry to sound harsh, but having just one save for a campaign is just begging for trouble.
No idea why you people do this, it should be obvious to everyone...

Noted. I learned my lesson.

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Playthroughs / Re: Behind the Eight-Ball Playthrough

« on: May 25, 2018, 04:58:51 pm »

This playthrough is over. My .sav somehow got deleted in the middle of the game. Could not save in the backup mode or whatever it switched to. Decided for a clean reinstall.

Edit: Now that I've done a clean install I'm starting over. I'll post missions once I get myself caught up research-wise.

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Playthroughs / Re: Behind the Eight-Ball Playthrough

« on: May 23, 2018, 04:59:44 am »

The Adventures of Wimples, Private Reaver (injured), and a Starving Poet (injured for an extended time)

February to March report (I got a good bit of playing time in. February was mostly out in the Pacific, which I ignored. I got a terror mission and one more elsewhere. March was focused in South Africa with the Cthonites. Nothing major happened except Reaver keeps getting shot. I'll have decent armor soon...)

Our research up to March 25th unlocked several areas, including utilizing Alien Alloys to upgrade our standard armament. I decided to go with ammo first, and then armor and aircraft. We will see how long it takes.

Our second terror mission involved the grays. I hate the grays. They brought along buddies as well, which seem relatively well armored. Our advanced weaponry was still able to take them down, with medium effort.

Our Production base in Antarctica is halfway operational and starting to add to our income. We were able to start working on a base in South America.

The main instigators of March was a new alien: Chtonites. They seem to be more armored than Grays or Hybrids, but they can't fly like the floaters. We ran across them in two missions in South Africa where our AWAC was patrolling. Reaver took some damage and had to be patched up later. That is when they struck a city. We lost a soldier, but found the Chtonites nothing to write home about. Their accompanied unit appears to be a big blob of molten rock that...eats people. Regular ammunition proved ineffective, but explosives worked well. Their undersides appear to be particularly soft, as our grenades did a large amount of damage.

I hope to have all of the alien alloy technology unwrapped by the end of April. If our scientists can be believed, we will have advanced aircraft, interceptors, armor, bullets and melee weaponry. They will probably want to research the new alien first, however.  Once that is finished we can take a look at some of the strange equipment we keep finding on their craft.

8

Playthroughs / Re: Behind the Eight-Ball Playthrough

« on: May 22, 2018, 02:19:48 am »

The next mission they weren't trying to keep a low profile

The Adventures of Wimples, Private Reaver, and a Starving Poet (Injured 2 days)
AAR 10: Things Just Got Ugly
Terror Mission 1: Paris

We had never seen the aliens attack a city before. Thinking about things on the flight home, maybe we shouldn't have waited until daylight. But I wonder how many more soldiers we would have sent home in body bags. We lost two random people and Phwoosh this round. Phwoosh was a true friend and hero, and we awarded her the highest of honors posthumously. Many of our good soldiers were wounded in the assault on the mansion. I wonder if this was a setup. We are also hearing of heavy alien activity in the Pacific, but we do not have bases or AWAC coverage of the area at this time. Budget cuts, they say...

9

Playthroughs / Re: Behind the Eight-Ball Playthrough

« on: May 19, 2018, 05:54:46 am »

The Adventures of Wimples, Private Reaver, and a Starving Poet with explosives
AAR 9: Outnumbered 5 to 1
Alien/Alien Hybrid meeting

Something is seriously messed up. Our next report of alien activity was slightly outside of London. Rather than a UFO, we landed next to a mansion. A mansion full of aliens shooting....human weaponry? The aliens sort of looked like us as well. I'm not sure what is going on, but it seems like the alien threat started long before the UFOs we started spotting in the past few years. For a force of this size to accumulate that much weaponry and a large house unnoticed is an amazing feat.

Fortunately, these hybrid aliens are terrible shots and even worse soldiers. We took some shrapnel hits, and Starving Poet got shot in the head multiple times, but nobody died. Starving Poet will be in the infirmary for awhile. There were no less than fifty aliens with four grays mixed in. We did get attacked mentally a few times, which leads me to suspect that the grays had some leaders on site. We will need to capture one eventually.

With such a target rich environment, it was a good time to test out our new explosive weaponry: Heavy Cannons and Advanced Rocket Launchers. They performed extremely well. I want to see how they fare against armored targets at some point.

Starving Poet recorded 10 kills this mission, even with his head wound.
Private Reaver killed 7, and I killed 10.

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Playthroughs / Re: Behind the Eight-Ball Playthrough

« on: May 18, 2018, 09:44:39 pm »

I could always stuff them with HWPs. I have yet to use any in this playthrough.

Latest mission was Hybrid/Alien meeting. Two more corpses to research, then containment, then alloys.

Or should I include Alien Entertainment/Food/Surgery/Examination Room as part of the corpses that must be researched first? Choices, choices.

11

Playthroughs / Re: Behind the Eight-Ball Playthrough

« on: May 18, 2018, 06:48:02 pm »

The Adventures of Wimples, Private Reaver (currently insane), and a Starving Poet (also insane)
AAR 8: Why is my mind jelly?
Landed Lab Ship

We finally faced a true threat from the grays. This was the second biggest ship we had seen, only to the ship that landed and assaulted our base mid-January. It was shaped like a giant steering wheel. Our soldiers reported panic attacks right away, and were unequipped or given tasers without ammunition. The situation became critical very quickly, as five of our soldiers became ineffective, running around the forest without weapons like chickens with their heads cut off. It became 5 on....however many aliens were inside the ship.

One of the first aliens we killed had a golden ring around its head. We do not know the significance, but the mental attacks slowed somewhat after it was killed.

Not having the manpower to enter the ship and clear it, we stayed outside and listened for the door to open. Each time it did we sniped the aliens. After awhile two more of our soldiers became mentally unstable. One of them died, while the other one was able to drop their weapons before succumbing to panic.

We have learned that once we killed nine to ten aliens that the aliens themselves will start panicking. This worked in our favor as aliens walked out one by one without weapons. We gunned them down. Once the aliens were dead the mind attacks stopped. This is a seriously disturbing development.

Our managers were extremely happy with the results of the mission, as we made 3.6 million dollars from the sale of the aliens and their stuff. Their love for money is going to get us all killed at some point...

12

Playthroughs / Re: Behind the Eight-Ball Playthrough

« on: May 18, 2018, 03:38:22 pm »

I finally got a promotion! I guess I'm a PFC now? I'm enjoying how long I was still a rookie. If you don't hire too many more soldiers, I might get stuck at squaddie rank.

I'm not sure whether to staff soldiers in my expansions or just use my one team to intercept as many missions as I can. If I go with the budget cut theory then I'd just have one squad of troops for everything and you'd remain squaddie for eternity.

I'm still trying to figure out how to assault a Lab Ship. Going inside was a squad wipe. The people upstairs had better firing angles than I did. I may just hang outside and snipe everything to death like I usually do. I could always chuck proximity grenades up the lift to thin the ranks and then try getting in... I've got four out of ten people that aren't being messed with psionically...of the six that were, two are dead, two are in the Skyraider and Reaver and Starving Poet are wandering around the forest.

13

Playthroughs / Re: Behind the Eight-Ball Playthrough

« on: May 18, 2018, 04:28:45 am »

So the Lab Ship is going to be a do-over...


The first turn went like this:

Starving Poet - under alien control. (It's always the one carrying the rocket launcher...)

Second turn: We all got out of the ship, lost a guy to reaction fire after kiling one and hitting a second. Killed the second Sectoid. Starving Poet killed a second guy with reaction fire using the rocket launcher. He gets mind controlled again and then kills captain clark and himself. Reaver then goes berserk and blows himself up with a poorly aimed high explosive round from a heavy cannon...

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Playthroughs / Re: Behind the Eight-Ball Playthrough

« on: May 18, 2018, 04:13:01 am »

No terror mission or Lab Ship in January, meaning I'll likely see both in the beginning of February.

Find the January Monthly Summary attached, along with soldier stats.

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Playthroughs / Re: Behind the Eight-Ball Playthrough

« on: May 18, 2018, 03:58:06 am »

The game needs a proximity high explosive, alien proximity grenade, and proximity blaster charge. The proximity blaster charge should be particularly expensive and have a small blast radius so it only kills the thing that stepped on it.

Sounds good.

The Adventures of Wimples, Private Reaver (Back in action), and a Starving Poet
January 29th.

We had two engagements since the last time I was able to write. The first was a few floaters inside the fastest small UFO we have ever recorded. We couldn't get close to shoot it down, but it did land in Spain. We lost a soldier to injury, and I almost died after the floater tanked two of three shots from me before I was able to shoot more. We really need heavier weaponry...

We welcomed Private Reaver back into the fold and immediately detected a small UFO landed in Spain. Why Spain, we will never know. It was the middle of the stinking night again, and the grays were ready for us. Immediate fire drew our attention to not one or two, but FOUR grays right outside the craft to our left. Rockets from Nunnery and Starving Poet disposed of them all, fortunately. We were able to clean up about eight aliens before randomdude#4 was shot and killed. Private Reaver, feeling good after killing one gray, tossed a flare to expose the perp. I was able to put him down with a carefully aimed shot. He eventually woke up later to be gunned down by Reaver.

After the Reaper corpse was researched I immediately split our scientists into two groups: Tactical Sniper Rifle and Heavy Cannon. We are producing some rifles now, and they promise me that heavy cannons will be shortly behind. From there I plan to split them on auto cannons and advanced rocket launchers. That should keep them occupied if we meet a new group of aliens. From there we will need to research topics that help us develop a containment area so we can start capturing and interrogating live ones. I'm suspicious our scientists are unionized, and not in a good way. Upper level management is keen on making sure we sell every piece of alien equipment we get lest we research that and use it against the aliens themselves. I smell a rat...