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Author Topic: X-Com Files Mod, Superman, Ironman-ish  (Read 211876 times)

Offline tarkalak

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X-Com Files Mod, Superman, Ironman-ish
« on: July 31, 2020, 11:41:20 am »
I am going to play X-Com Files on superhuman and somewhat ironmanish. I will have backups and revert if I manage to missclick or do something very stupid.

Starting off: I have built my first base in Svalbard, but I will pretend they are on Franz Josef Land. According to our good soldier Ċ vejk Austro-Hungary wanted to have some colonies too, but somebody had already taken all the good spots, so they started a colony there that freezes next winter. In reality the archipelago was found by an Austrian polar expedition.

Anyway, it should give me good range to most of the North Hemisphere and (hopefully) Osprey range to the Church of Dagon HQ, and all others. Second base will probably be in South Africa, or South America, or some Antarctica spot. Third will be somewhere in the Far East.

EDIT: Lets add some house rules. Number 1 is from the beginning, next ones will be noted from when they take effect. Number 2 and 3 are introduced in https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,8430.msg146973.html#msg146973, but also are in effect since the beginning.

House Rules:
1. No armed grenades in inventory, except in hand. Does not apply to flares, flashlights and similar stuff that doesn't go boom. (EDIT: I know that there is an options to make grenades still go boom in inventory, but I prefer to have a little room for mistakes.)
2. Also all "Fuck it" last minute before leaving shots are mandatory. Unless the ammo is extremely expensive or other lame reason.
3. All missions  that can be attempted must be attempted unless there are serious reasons not to. Like lack of agents or no egress available on a tough mission. Being horribly outnumbered and having no chance of success are not serious reasons. At least most of the time. Doesn't apply to suicide interceptions of course.

EDIT: Let's add some trivia too.
1. The superman in the title IS a typo, I wanted to write superhuman, but oh well, I will not change it.

EDIT: Let's add some description of the starting weapons. And lets do it just as they get thrown out.
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,8430.msg130961.html#msg130961

EDIT: Notes:
1. The X-COM turn number x will usually be mixed with the Enemy turn x-1. I.e. the first half of the picture is enemy turn then x-1 we start X-COM turn x. That will not be the case all the time, but I made a habit of doing it that way.

EDIT: I will divide the story in BOOKS and Chapters. These will be determined by some huge upgrade to our equipment or stage of the game. My perspective, not just the promotions.

BOOK I : Newborn-COM
Chapter 1: The Age of the Pump-action Shotgun and some pistols.
Chapter 2. The Epoch of the Kevlar Vest.

BOOK II: Toddler-COM
Chapter 3: The age of the Shotgun shotgun, Magnum and Desert Eagle
Chapter 4: The Age of the Double Barreled Shotgun
Chapter 5: The age of HUMVEES and Beaches!
Chapter 6: The age of DA HELIKOPTA!
Chapter 7: The age of the DOG!
Chapter 8: The age of the Smoke Grenade, PSG snipers and M-14.

BOOK III: Childhood
Chapter 9: The epoch of the Armored Vest.
Chapter 10. Terminator 1. The rise of the Scout Drones.
Chapter 11. Terminator 1. The rise of the Scout Drones. Cancelled.
Chapter 12. The age of the Knockout Grenade, Dart rifles and pistols, THE HEAVY TASER and Dog Durathread vests.
Chapter 13. The age of the BlackOps stuff. Well some of it. BlackOps Sniper Rifle and maybe pistol too.
Chapter 14: Terminator 1. The terror of the Scout Drones. Relaunched!
Chapter 15: The Long Silence when nothing happened.
Chapter 16: The Return of the Playthrough.
Chapter 17: The age of the Dragonfly.
First UFO Catch of the day, uhm, year or two
Chapter 18: The Age of the UAC Pistol and UAC Rocket Launcher. Some UAC Rifles too.
Chapter 19: The Age of the 007. Spypistols and CAWS too.

BOOK IV: Adolescence
Chapter 20: The Epoch of the Osprey.



EDIT: The list of Ironmanish moments. (I.e. cases where I did reload for some reason.) TBD

The list of outright outrageous cheatings.
1. Giving Survivor Commendation for a failed mission. I felt that it was in the spirit of the commendation. link. Aaand, she died on the next missions. Survivors do not survive for long here.

EDIT:
This playthrough isn't intended to be a full blown tutorial, but here are some tips and tricks:
1. Running and Strafing. Pressing Ctrl while moving will move the Agent faster at the expense of more Energy. If you move just one tile, though it will be treated as strafing, i.e. the agent will move without changing direction, but it will take more TUs.
You may need to enable the option Alternative Move methods in the settings.
2. Pressing Alt will show the direction in which all known units are facing. Any unit detected by Mottion Scanner only will be shown with a smaller arrow pointing down.
This is useful in night combat as well or if a unit is vissible, but his tile is not explored.
3. The game has Night vision for the night missions. Press and hold Space to show it or press Scroll Lock to toggle it. It is purely cosmetic and allows you to see better what is going on in night missions.
I have found that the default key bindings are not good and have changed it such that Spacebar toggles between normal and night vission. You can also change the color of night vision.
« Last Edit: July 02, 2022, 01:28:26 pm by tarkalak »

Offline tarkalak

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Re: X-Com Files Superman, Ironman-ish
« Reply #1 on: July 31, 2020, 11:58:14 am »
BOOK I: Newborn-COM
Chapter 1: The Age of the Pump-action Shotgun and some pistols.


For starting weapons I will use the Pump Action Shotgun until I get the normal one and for pistols it will be Colt (for 30 dmg) and Glocks (for training and good fire rate, might replace it with Beretta though.). And of course we research Logistics. And I decide to build a second gym to train more agents for the future.
« Last Edit: September 26, 2020, 07:08:56 pm by tarkalak »

Offline tarkalak

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Re: X-Com Files Superman, Ironman-ish
« Reply #2 on: July 31, 2020, 12:09:43 pm »
And our first mission pops up, I haven't even got my guns yet.

A few moments later ...

And here is our team. Armed to the teeth. Very small teeth.
Also if Mulder or Scully gets killed I will rename some other agents. They are like Persian immortals in 300.

EDIT:Or the 300s themselves, since they were the Spartan Kings bodyguards and replaced as needed..
« Last Edit: December 17, 2020, 07:22:48 pm by tarkalak »

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Re: X-Com Files Superman, Ironman-ish
« Reply #3 on: July 31, 2020, 01:02:46 pm »
How to do Strange Creature deer hunt.

Follow these 3 steps and you too can impress the ladies with your mad X-Com-poth skillz.

Step 1. Clear the landing zone.

Offline tarkalak

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Re: X-Com Files Superman, Ironman-ish
« Reply #4 on: July 31, 2020, 01:20:17 pm »
OK, we will show these Shamblers a trick or two next time, M'KEY.

Score: 0
Rating: Sufficient

Even the council feels moderately indifferent about our performance.

In other news this is sufficient for our agents to jump rank to Senior Agent.
« Last Edit: August 05, 2020, 10:03:16 am by tarkalak »

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Re: X-Com Files Superman, Ironman-ish
« Reply #5 on: July 31, 2020, 01:29:19 pm »
We finally get that vaunted Logistics, so we can concentrate on getting some Bio Labs maybe.

And we get agents Number 7-10, so they could too start training.

And Murder decides to impress us with his majestic designated drunk driver skillz so we had to quietly dispose of his car. Next episode he is driving a Van.

EDIT: Murder is misspelled Mulder. Let's hope he justifies it.
« Last Edit: August 11, 2020, 10:25:27 am by tarkalak »

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Re: X-Com Files Superman, Ironman-ish
« Reply #6 on: July 31, 2020, 01:34:28 pm »
Somebody else gets to the crops. Damn, they smoked all the pot too. The council is unhappy, they just used their last reefer.

Offline tarkalak

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Re: X-Com Files Superman, Ironman-ish
« Reply #7 on: July 31, 2020, 02:48:17 pm »
Belay that. Scully's gonna drive the Van, Mulder will show mad shooting skillz instead.

Offline tarkalak

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Re: X-Com Files Superman, Ironman-ish
« Reply #8 on: July 31, 2020, 02:49:09 pm »
Ahem.

How to do Strange Creature deer hunt.

Follow these 3 steps and you too can impress the ladies with your mad X-Com-poth skillz.

Step 1. Clear the landing zone.

Step 2. Meet superior force.
Step 2. (and a half) Get a rookie killed. MANDATORY

Step 3. GTFO, GTFO, GTFO!

Like a PRO!  8)

1 goes before 2, so -52 should be a legendary score. X-Com:Aliens 0:2. We will settle it in the second half.

EDIT: It would have been cool to keep a picture before Kozan got killed with a little speech bubble "Watch this!" near his head. Aaah, missed opportunities.
EDIT2: These monsters are modelled after the spikeboar from Diablo and have ranged attacks. They are amongst the few enemies on this type of missions to actually be dangerous.
« Last Edit: August 05, 2020, 10:06:10 am by tarkalak »

Offline tarkalak

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Re: X-Com Files Superman, Ironman-ish
« Reply #9 on: July 31, 2020, 06:41:08 pm »
Forget about Medicine and Bio Labs, we need Kevlar, pronto.
« Last Edit: July 31, 2020, 06:48:42 pm by tarkalak »

Offline tarkalak

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Re: X-Com Files Superman, Ironman-ish
« Reply #10 on: July 31, 2020, 06:49:44 pm »
In other news, some wild UFO appears over Europe. The B team decides to go cracking. Red Shirts at ready.

EDIT: And as I was typing the above, they decide to come visit Franz Joseph land for some polar bear shots. What a coincidence.

I decide to chicken out and wait for the dawn. Then I realized, that it is winter so the dawn wlll come in a few months. They slip this time. Ha, what is the matter aliens, chicken?

But next time, ooooh next time, we will have Ospreys and MIG-31s and Rookies galore. They don't stand a chance.
« Last Edit: July 31, 2020, 11:15:35 pm by tarkalak »

Offline tarkalak

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Re: X-Com Files Superman, Ironman-ish
« Reply #11 on: July 31, 2020, 07:02:42 pm »
UFO-2 Shows up. So Franz Joseph Land counts as Arctic and all the first month aliens will show up in the Arctic. In winter. In the dark. We might have a chance if the Van is near the edge of the map.
« Last Edit: July 31, 2020, 11:16:11 pm by tarkalak »

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Re: X-Com Files Superman, Ironman-ish
« Reply #12 on: July 31, 2020, 07:03:43 pm »
Yeah, run from Berettas.

Offline tarkalak

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Re: X-Com Files Superman, Ironman-ish
« Reply #13 on: July 31, 2020, 11:24:44 pm »
Two mission pop up at the same time.

Dagonist Aprihension and Cattle Mutilation. Coincidence!? I don't think so.
« Last Edit: August 05, 2020, 10:07:13 am by tarkalak »

Offline tarkalak

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Re: X-Com Files Superman, Ironman-ish
« Reply #14 on: July 31, 2020, 11:35:13 pm »
So I took pictures of the crew, but I forgot what mission it is. I think it is the aprihension.
« Last Edit: July 31, 2020, 11:40:36 pm by tarkalak »