Wednesday 31 July 2013

XCOM: Enemy Unknown Part 7 - Operation Lone Fear

I lost a little bit of video, which included two missions. I was able to re-record a bit of the second, but the first is lost forever.

While I was, ahem, inebriated, I apparently was shouting about getting more "party people up in this bitch". And right enough, five new soldiers arrived a few days later. But that was not the only new arrival at XCOM...


During a routine "rescue the important dude" mission, I had sent a rookie out with the new Arc Thrower. Sq. Hunter weakened the Sectoid and Rk. Ghalib went in for the stun...



...and now Dr. Vahlen has a new plaything at HQ. 

A few days later Bradford and I caught up with her.


For some reason her useage of the word "expired" is a lot more creepy than if she had just said "died". 


Bradford commented we had seen this before, but sadly I have no recollection (video loss)


This I do remember seeing. You see, when we had shot down the UFO this fella showed up. And then disappeared. Now, Dr. Vahlen wants us to capture it too.


The interrogation came with it a second success - BEAM WEAPONS.


I, naturally, set the research team to figure out a way we can make BEAM WEAPONS. Finally, the blaster from Star Wars is a little closer to reality. At this rate I could even have a lightsaber before I d...I'm digressing.


We also have the ability to manufacture S.C.O.P.E.s. This handy device gives our soldiers better aim. Naturally, our Snipers will get this. Speaking of...after the mission where we captured the alien...



Both Vargas and Roux made it to Sergeant rank. For some reason, they were assigned nicknames at this point. Sgt. Roux is now known as Warlock - because what he can do with his rifle is nothing less than magical.

Sgt. Vargas is known as Diesel because...err...it's a bad ass name?



Towards the end of the month we received more word of abductions. Unlike last time though - we had three different locations to choose from.


Australia, Argentina and Nigeria. I made the decision to go to Australia, as the panic there was higher than anywhere else.


I left Vargas back in HQ, it wouldn't be fair on him to fight in Australia while his home country is being attacked. Rk. White however was Australian - my thought process was that she would feel more focussed on defending her country. That was a mistake.


Now, since capturing the Sectoid, Sq. Ghalib had been training in the Heavy class. But of course, that didn't mean that he had to go about shooting his rocket launcher everywhere...


...but explosions are always cool. However, a certain someone was less than impressed...


God, it's like being scolded by my Mother. Except Vahlen's much younger and has a German accent.



I also found a new thing our soldiers will do - panic. If they get too low on health, like ol' Warlock here, they may panic and run off to a random location. This could have been very dangerous. He wasn't the only one. The last alien left gave us a lot of trouble. Ghalib, Verhoeven and White all failed to hit the alien (Ghalib couldn't even get into position to fire at it, so I had to settle with keeping him out of position). Sadly, this had lethal consequences...




That's the third soldier I've lost and it's not getting any easier. Luckily Sgt. Roux snuck up on the Sectoid from the other side and headshotted the bastard to Hell.



This was ridiculous - one death, three wounded (one gravely). I learned I would have to be more careful in the future.


Lieutenant Roux could barely speak on his hospital bed, but we got just enough to figure out he wanted to take the 'Disabling Shot' training when he was clear for duty. This would give him a shot that will effectively break the target's weapon - could be useful in a pinch.




WE HAVE LASERS! Now we can play laser tag with the aliens...DEADLY LASER TAG. Sadly, we didn't have enough engineers to build the rifle, but we did get a couple of Laser Pistols.


I gave it to Roux as an apology for almost killing him in the last mission.



A couple of days later, our new Workshop was built - bringing with it extra engineers. 

Sadly, the realisation that I could now build Laser Rifles wouldn't come to me until the 1st of April. Talk about an April's Fool.


I decided to give us an extra level to play with, so I ordered the building of a new Access Lift.

Now, at the end of each month I will be evaluated on my performance. I will also get extra rewards and such. This month...


GRADE A, SUCKA. HAH, if only Ms. Clark could see me now "You'll never be a grade A student blah-di-blah blah". SCREW YOU, I'm a Grade A Commander of AWESOME ALIEN KILLINGNESS!

And then I'd show her my giant gun. 

That's not a euphemism, we really did build a big gun...


 
The aliens should just go home right now.

Saturday 27 July 2013

XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Part 6 - Operation Hidden Druid

Alejandro Vargas, despite lying in a hospital bed in our medical bay, was awarded the corporal badge - the first XCOM soldier to do so. It wouldn't surprise me to see him be the first colonel.



He chose to learn the 'Bullet Swarm' skill, allowing him an extra action if his first action was to fire his weapon.


Sq. Verhoeven decided to specialise in the support class. Thus she gets training in how to efficiently use a smoke grenade. At time of writing, I've yet to see her actually use it.


The council stuck true with their word and rewarded us with some credits and some scientists.


In addition, we received an extra satellite. Bradford suggested we deploy it right away. I wasn't in the mood to argue.


Right now, the only satellite we have operational is over our HQ in Germany. Each country we launch a satellite in will pay us an extra bonus at the end of the month. In addition, the more satellites we have operational in a continent will mean bonus rewards (as you can see, Europe is giving us an extra 2 scientists a month). Launching a satellite will also decrease the panic of that country. Taking all of this into account...


...I decided to launch the new one in China. This was pretty much my apology to them for leaving them to fend for themselves as I protected USA a few days earlier.

I immediately ordered an Interceptor to be transferred to China. Once I had finished this task, I came across Bradford having a fairly heated discussion with Dr. Vahlen.


To this day, I still have not received this trophy. I had even built a shelf for them and everything. Of course, I needed Shen's help to set it up - damn IKEA.

Oh yeah, and Vahlen wanted us to capture an alien alive, but that's not the important thing here. I want my trophy.



While Bradford still wasn't too sure, Shen managed to convince him.


If we learn how to communicate with it, we can interrogate it and hopefully find out why they are attacking us and from where they are from.

So it was agreed, we must try and capture a live alien. We'll start with the Sectoid. First we have to build an alien containment facility...


...and then officially order Vahlen's team to research the 'Arc Thrower', which will stun weakened aliens into unconsciousness. Hopefully. If it doesn't...I don't want to think about it.


However, the action wasn't just happening at HQ...some of it was happening in our own backyard...


Our satellite over Germany picked up an alien craft. Time for our interceptor, Raven-1, to get to work...


This was my view. I pretty much had to order the Raven to attack the UFO while having the option to abort if they got too damaged. That didn't need to happen, as 0.2 seconds later...


It was the strike team's turn to get down there.


While Vargas was cleared for duty, I decided to keep him at base and give a new Rookie a chance - Rk. Andersen from Norway.


The main goal for this mission was to see what kind of technology powers the alien craft as well as the material it used - and hopefully one day we can reverse-engineer it for our own purposes.

Other than that it was a fairly uneventful mission. Did everyone survive?


There was Norway everyone survived.

I feel awful now.



Mission Stats

Rk. Jorgen Andersen - 1 Kill - KIA
Sq. Victor Roux - 2 Kills
Sq. Amber Verhoeven - 0 Kills
Rk. Scottie Hunter - 2 Kills - Wounded


Roux is quickly becoming our most efficient killer - it helps that he can shoot from a long distance. He decided to go the "Squadsight" route with his promotion - he can now shoot at any target that another soldier has eyes on.


Verhoeven's new skill is "Covering Fire", which is a very useful skill with Overwatch - instead of attacking when her target is moving, she will also retaliate if someone attacks her while she's in Overwatch. She didn't manage any kills in this mission, so I'm not sure why she was promo...


Err...Amber?


AHHHHHHHHHHHHHMBER, I'M SORRY.


Moving on from the horror show, my fellow countryman also earned himself a promotion. He decided to specialise in the assault class - or as he put it - "I want to do what they do in Call of Duty". He learned the Run & Gun skill, basically letting him have one extra action after Dashing. It could be useful in certain situations.




Lots of great loot, hopefully some of this will come in handy. It's been a long fortnight, so a couple of the soldiers organised a little party. As Commander, I feel it is my duty to remain sober.

[Editor's Note - The next paragraph is almost intelligible. The words "party hard" and "vodka" seem to come up a lot though...

...the next day though...]

Ugggh, my head. It feels like I've got a rave going on in my head. And for crying out loud Vargas managed to be sick all over my desk. That's the last party we're ever going to have at HQ.

[Editor's Note - It wasn't].

Some joker also changed my computer's background. My eyes are still adjusting so I cannot see what it is at the moAHHHHHHHHHHH