Let's Play UFO Extraterrestrials - Finale

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Table of Contents
1.1: Introduction part 1
1.2: Introduction part 2
2: First blood
3: Night mission, terror mission, new enemies
4: UFO swarm and base defense
5: A swarm defeated, a commander caught
6: New duds and a new ride
7: Destroyers and sentinels
8: of Jetpacks and Battlecruisers
9: Preachers and EEEW rifles
10: Roster update and chemical warfare
11: Friendly fire
12: Earth ahoy!
13: Finale


Current roster:

Code:

Total soldiers enlisted 18/20, current free spots: 2

   Warrant Officers:
Storyfag

   Staff Sergeants:
Black
Pope Amole

   Sergeants first class:
Lightbane
Draco

   Sergeants:

   Corporals first class:
dextermorgan II

   Corporals:

   Privates first class:

   Privates:
Sov

   Rookies:

   Hopeful recruits:

Deceased:

Code:

anus_pounder, rookie
CrimsonAngel, rookie
Desmodus Rotundus, rookie
Fat Boobs, private first class
anus_pounder II, corporal
Warcupine, corporal first class
Ashery, sergeant
Medic, corporal
Bee, staff sergeant
The Thin Man, rookie
Warcupine II, corporal first class
dextermorgan, sergeant first class
Warcupine III, cyclops driver
The Thin Man II, private first class
DamnedRegistrations, staff sergeant

Missing after the assault on the alien Mothership, presumed dead:

Captain:
Eklektyk

Lieutenants:
Drakron
NewBee

Warrant Officers:
korenzel
Desmodus Rotundus II
Canus
Artricia

Staff Sergeants:
anus_pounder III
The Thin Man III
Donaroriak

Hammer pilots:
Warcupine IV
DamnedRegistrations2

Introduction, part 1

Having finished my LPs of the After- series, Desmodus Rotundus asked if I knew what UFO Extraterrestrials was and if it were worth playing or not. I told him it was sort of meh and that I wasn't sure I could stomach another playthrough anytime soon.
I went on to try and complete another LP, but found that I was too much of a wuss to simply blaze through it on hard difficulty, and as a consequence, that LP is now on hold.

Now I find myself returning to Desmodus Rotundus' question. Why not do an LP of Extraterrestrials, meh or not?
So here we go!
I'll start you off with the story:

Code:

Planet Esperanza - colonized by spaceship Magaleansh in 2020.
Many years have passed since the first colonists arrived Esperanza. Through hard work and determination, they gradually setup base on their adopted planet. Over time, leaders emerged, a government was formed, commerce flourished and the pilgrims from Earth eventually made the planet of the three suns their home.

But recently, a deep space monitor registered a strong and mysterious reading. Esperanza's scientists scrambled to investigate the disturbance and made an alarming discovery - a wormhole had opened close to their planet. And even more disturbing, something had come through... was headed directly toward them.

Concerns of an alien invasion abounded. In response, the United Government of Esperanza decided to send two recon ships, Lewis and Clark, to ascertain the truth. After two weeks time, the recon ships arrived the location of the mysterious reading... and, as feared, discovered an alien vessel.

But apparently the ship had somehow failed while en route Esperanza. It had crash landed on to a small planet in the system. The crews of Lewis and Clark landed on the surface, explored the crash site and recovered an alien computer and a chamber full of hibernated aliens.

Upon returning home, an analysis of the computer and of the aliens took place at The Esperanza Security Center. What the military scientists discovered was terrible news. Earth had been invaded and subjugated by alien hordes. They had plundered the planet's terrestrial resources and enslaved the humans.

Immediately an emergency council was called to decide what to do. The council quickly determined that the fate that had befallen Earth could befall them. They vowed to be ready if the aliens decided to invade. To defend against the aliens, Esperanza gathered the planet's best scientists, engineers, and soldiers and formed them into a single unit - the Counter Alien Force (CAF).

And it is on the shoulders of that force that the very survival of the human race now rests.

So, Earth has been taken over by aliens, and these aliens aree now closing in on mankinds only colony, a planet they've dubbed "Esperanza". We're put in charge of the CAF and charged with the protection of the planet.
Sound familiar? Just wait until you see the actual gameplay.
The developers of Extraterrestrials are a group called Chaos Concepts, and their names sound czech or slovak some such (thanks Storyfag). They're working on a sequel to Extraterrestrials, slated for a september release this year.
Will I be doing an LP of that as well? Only time will tell.
Before we get to the actual game, take a look at the intro video. It's a beaut, ain't it? M: Gotta love that horrid voice-acting.
I'll split this introduction into two parts, so I can post this straight away, and let people sign up for death and glory.
The edition of Extraterrestrials I am playing is the Gold one, released last year, which has incorporated the most important mod out there, made by "B-man". In the un-modded game, soldiers were immortal, even when they took heavy damage and were taken down during missions, they merely required healing back at home base. With the Bman mod, soldiers can now die, among many, many other improvements. I'll also be playing this game on hard difficulty, but seeing as my general approach to these kinds of games is one of caution, I do not know how many volounteers I will be requiring. But at least 8.
So, sign up. Tell me what you'd like your callsign to be, what type of weaponry you'd like to wield if you have any preferences, and if you want to pilot a tank that might be arranged as well, though tanks do not improve with experience, and as such they are of limited use once the soldiers start racking up kills.

More in the next post!

Introduction, part 2

This is the screenshot heavy part of the introduction. As I alluded to in part 1, this game carries a lot of similarities to the original X-Com games. We'll get to that in due time however, first we need to setup the game.
First however, I'd like to point out that I sold my soul to the Devil to bring you this LP.
Yes. It's true. I made a Steam account. They sell the game for 4€, whereas the game on Gamersgate costs 18.95€ and comes with Starforce DRM. Faced with this, I decided to take the plunge for you, dear readers, and make a Steam account and rent the game through them. That's my beef with Steam, you not owning the games you pay for, but instead you lease or rent them.
No matter, I'm going to do this LP, and that's whats important. Not that I loathe myself right now and feel an overpowering urge to take a long bath. I'm sure that'll pass eventually.



When you start up the game, you're immediately transported to this screen. When you click the "play introduction", you get to see this delightful video I linked to in part 1 of the introduction.
Having done that, we click on the BMAN's ease of use settings.



Bman is a fan of the game who modded the shit out of it. Play the game without his mods and you have only yourself to blame. Install his mods though, and the game suddenly is enjoyable, and you don't feel the need to blame anyone anymore.
There's a lot of options here you can either turn on or off. I choose to let lightly wounded soldiers recover faster than those who go KO during combat.



I choose to let production take the time it should however. The default setting is 50% normal time, which would be popamole.



The base defenses in the unmodded game is indeed shite, and I decide to click enable for this part of the mod. Should I spend cash and time on building base defenses, I want them to actually make a difference.



We can also choose to gimp or pimp our soldier promotion rate. I choose to keep it at the normal rate.



This next option is purely cosmetic. I keep it disabled.



This option makes UFO missions slightly more interesting. The description speaks for itself I feel.



I also choose to make the appearance of commanders more common that it is in the vanilla game. Commander type aliens are more dangerous and should make for a more interesting game.



This option I keep disabled, as it'd fuck over the increased crew variety option.



Hyperwave decoders are good fun. They are not part of the vanilla game however, and this option lets us pretend we have one, if we have the proper buildings in the base. I see no harm in this, as the advanced type of buildings only become available in the late game.



It's only right and proper that a major should receive a higher salary than a mere corporal.



I'm not sure how much of an impact this option will have on the game, but spreading out armour options better seems to be a good thing, so I enable it.



When we blow shit up, we expect that shit to stay blown up, not magically made whole again when the mission is over and the salvage team reaches the site.



This way we can reuse proximity grenades. Popamole? Possibly. I suppose it would make sense however, to warn the salvage team where there are live grenades, and then they send in the EOD guys.



This one makes sense. If you wish to invade a planet and have a lot of fighters, it'd be silly sending them in piece-meal. Let them fly in formation to protect eachother.



This option I remember from my last playthrough. Once in a while, we get swarmed. Swarms are fun. They can rip your airforce apart easily, so you need to pick your fights. I choose to enable this option. Oh, and the unique equipment you can get as a reward is only slightly improved versions on already available equipment, IIRC.



Vanilla, you don't hire soldiers, as soldiers cannot die. I want to be able to hire more meatshields, so I don't mess with this option.



This one also makes sense to me. Let's have a slight delay when hiring new meat.



More names mod. This probably won't matter, as I'll be relying on you people to sign up.



This I also do no mess with. Standard attack sounds like reasonable default behaviour.



Beefing starting stats for soldiers? Popamole! I turn this off.



Next tab in the mod settings pertains to the tactical combat. I won't be commenting all the options here however, only those I change.
Losing a whole clip if you've only fired a few shots seems asinine to me, so I enable this option.



This option guarantees that everyone who sees combat gains experience, even if they don't make any kills. We need people to improve if we're to survive, so I don't mess with this option.



This option is what disables soldier immortality! We take the middle option here, as we want our soldiers to be in risk of permanent death, but we don't want them dropping like flies.



In the vanilla game, UFOs that had been shot down showed no damage at all. This mod changes this, and will also damage aliens inside the UFO at the time of the crash, similar to the original X-Com games.



This option lets us earn money by killing stuff. I set it to the lowest available number without disabling it outright.



I choose to make the AI smarter. I want to have a challenge here, I want to be at risk of actually losing soldiers if I get careless.



I could make the last aliens go hide, but I hated having to hunt for the last little sectoid in Enemy Unknown, so I untick this option.



Encumbrance system FTW!



Floating numbers! Wooo...



More numbers and info! This will help me keep track of impressive feats of combat, should any occur and need to be documented.



And the final option on this page I fiddle with makes pistols more useful and tweaks rifles and shotguns a bit.



The last tab only pertains to performance tweaks. This might be important if I still had the same computer I did back in 2007 when this game was released, but I've upgraded since then and choose to keep everything as "pretty" as possible. Which isn't saying much as you'll soon learn..
Alright, that seems to be it, let's start a new game!



We choose hard difficulty of course.



And are immediately transported to the geospace screen. We don't get a choice of where to put our first base. It's always put in the "Ilyria" province. At the top of the screen we can adjust the flow of time. In the bottom we see several buttons, the first of which is the UFOpedia.



It looks an awful lot like X-Com, doesn't it? The next series of screenshots is of the UFOpedia entries on our currently available base buildings.












The laboratories and workshops come with a complement of 10 scientists and 10 engineers respectively. You won't be managing living space for R&D in any other ways that by building more labs/workshops. Living quarters are only there for your soldiers.



This here is the only available mechanized unit we have at the start. Good armor and hitpoints, nice damage, and sweet accuracy. What cripples them is they do not gain experience and cannot improve. Oh, we'll get access to better tanks later, for sure, but a kill made by a tank steals xp a soldier could have gotten. So I'll be steering clear of tanks for the moment.
Next up are the weapons available to our troops.











All soldiers start out with rifles, which are good all-round weapons. Their main strength is their accuracy at a range. I will be designating some soldiers as point men, and they will get shotguns, for clearing the insides of UFOs.
I'm not good at remembering to use grenades, but the proximity grenades sound promising, so I will try to use these in the upcoming missions. As to how I intend to capture live aliens, I will probably use stun missiles, as getting the drop on aliens and using a stunrod is a dangerous thing to attempt.



This is the standard armour our soldiers can use. It's OK at the beginning but will soon become next to useless. We can bolster our defenses however, using these.



I have no idea yet however, how effecient these puppies are, but I'll issue every soldier with one for our first mission.
Another necessary tool is this.



Don't leave home without it.
There are two types of aircraft available from the start, an interceptor class, and a transport.




The starting base comes with two interceptors and one transport. The basic armaments aren't too impressive.





We'll have to research something with more oomph, if we're to reliably down UFOs. The power shields are standard equipment, and we'll get to research improved versions down the line, to increase survivability.

Having gone through the UFOpedia, let's take a look inside the base.



In the top of the screen, there are a bunch of buttons. The left-most takes us back to the geospace. Then comes soldiers, aircraft, research, manufacture, buy/sell, transfer and finally UFOpedia. Next to these buttons are shortcuts to the other bases, as we build them.
Let's look at out soldiers.










As we can see, everyone is in the basic armour, has a rifle, two extra clips, 3 grenades and a stimpack. Their stats vary and are randomly distributed from start. As they gain experience, we get to choose which stats to increase. More on that later.
We also start with a tank.



As I said, it doesn't gain experience even though there's a human driver, so relying on the tank to kill a lot of enemies isn't the most effective way to improve your troops.. It can serve as a forward scout and damage sponge however.




Here we see our two interceptors. They're identically outfitted and ready for action. They will see that soon enough. The transporter isn't visible here, as it can carry no guns nor energy shields.



This is the research screen. We have one lab, so we have 10 scientists available. All resources are pooled towards laser research at the moment, though in retrospect, that sensor bomb sounds quite interesting. I might shift research to that before we get started proper.



We have nothing to manufacture, as we have yet to research anything. We have 10 technicians, due to having 1 workshop.



In the buy screen, we order some stunrods and energy shields. I don't plan on using the stunrods yet, as we have no alien containment, but we might as well buy them already.



The transfer screen. As you can see, we can transfer interceptors and their armaments, and nothing else. As is, having only our starting base, this screen is rather useless at the moment.



I decide to order the construction of an alien containment facility and an extra lab. Should I build an extra workshop as well, what do you think?



I decide to kick the tank out of the transport, and ready all the soldiers for our first engagement.



When this engagement will be, I do not know, but I expect it to be soon.



Finally we have the monthly report overview. Our economy looks solid, but only the scientists seem to be claiming a daily wage. I suspect this will change shortly, and it might put a dent in our income.
I'll wrap all this up with a few pictures of Esperanza.






We can place one base in each territory for 9 bases total. Our first expansion will likely be on the other side of the globe, to give us better coverage and tracking capabilities, and also a second place to launch interceptors from.
For the moment however, we anxiously await the aliens' first move. Do we have any more volounteers to fight the good fight and kill some aliens?

Signing up anus_pounder I. Whatever you want, though sniper would be preferred. Tranny if possible.

U can count on Commissar Eklektyk as always! Preffered weapons change but manner of killing stays constant!

Black reporting in to save butts once again.
Preferably some kind of an assault rifle because fuck i aint afraid of dying!!

Sov the conscientious objector reporting!

I only use non-lethal means of defense and patch up my allies with my trusty medkit!

Commander Lightbane is ready to kill some xenos... Again. I don't care which weapon my soldier will use (although if I recall correctly, the shotgun you start the game with is not only more powerful than the rifle but also more precise, even at long range).

Give me a pistol in one hand, a grenade in the other. I'll supply the deathwish.

If you're playing with soldiers "made of glass", expect a lot of people to die once you hit the second tier of enemies. Even before then, death can come pretty quickly.

I have mixed feelings about B-Man's mortality implementation. On one hand it makes the game closer to X-Com, but on the other the game is obviously balanced with immortal soldiers in mind, as enemies grow extremely strong and armor costs and manufacturing times are huge.

Sign me up as a pure grenadier, load me up on defensive grenades and pump up strength and throwing accuracy if I manage to get promoted.

If you need some more cannon fodder sign me up as well.

Got to love the logic in that intro, just because he couldn't harm the ufo, it must be indestructible

How could I resist signing up to another UFO game? Is there any way I could help with interrogating prisoners?

Also, being a member of the Codex's Polish population, I can say that:

is not entirelly correct. They're Czech, I'd say. Perhaps Slovak. World of difference between these guys and Poland

Signing up as a shotty whore, or whatever the current weapon of choice is for being up close and personal

That intro was truly terrible.

Sign me up as close quarters combat specialist.

I will join.

Heavy Weapons the bigger the better.

Pope Amole is always ready to evangelize some alien filth, so he's always eager to become an X-com recruit.

I will sign up as well.

Glad I asked for a grenade in my off hand.

It also clearly claims that it does not support an autoshot mode, yet it has stats for accuracy and timeunits use in burst.

There are many things about this game that is cringeworthy.

First blood

Now that the introduction is done and we have a nice batch of volounteers, lets start the game and see some action!
We have only to wait a few days before we spot the first UFO.



It's a scout, a relatively small UFO not posing much of a threat. Immediately, we scramble our interceptors.







The UFO is downed in short order, and our interceptors only took light damage. All this is done real-time. There's a chance of attacks missing their mark, and later on it can pay to keep track of what interceptor the UFO is firing at, and then order said interceptor to fall back if it's taking too much damage. Losing an interceptor is costly, especially if you have to manufacture new weapons for the replacement, so care must be taken. This early in the game however, we can just let the combat resolve itself without interfering.
With the UFO down, we now send in our troop transport.






We get to change the loadout of our troops, should we so desire, before we launch the transport. We decide to go with the loadout people have asked for, and where there were no specific requests, I've let people keep the rifles that are standard equipment.




The transport lands, and the battlescape loads.




Immediately outside the transport, we spot our first alien, a "chaser". It hasn't spotted us, so we have warcupine try and hit it. He doesn't. So we order korenzel to throw our visitor a little gift..




I decide that I like throwing grenades. As you can see, korenzel made a kill and got 5xp for his efforts. Merely wounding one of these chasers nets you 1xp. More advanced enemies are worth more xp, but we only get to face those later on.




The troops fan out, and I hit the end turn button. In the enemy turn, a purple hovering alien spits corrosive acids at Bee! She takes a serious hit, but remains standing.



Eklektyk exacts revenge and kills the "larva".
We advance a bit further, and another larva appears.



anus_pounder I and Eklektyk takes it down between them, while Eklektyk breathes a sigh of relief, as the enemy caustic attacks hits short of its mark, and the spray is too light to damage his armour.
On the following turn, another chaser shows up and fires at anus_pounder I...



Down? On the very first mission!?



Eklektyk steps up like a true bro and takes bloody vengeance!




Chastened by this loss, we advance more cautiously, unveiling another of the larva aliens.



Again, Eklektyk's aim is true!
Sov, the useless pacifist bastard runs in and tries to heal anus_pounder I, only to receive this message:



It seems it's too late for our comrade in arms. She will be pounding no anuses it seems.
On the next turn, shit hits the fan.



Eklektyk spots another chaser, fires and misses, and is almost out of ammo and time units, so he beats a hasty retreat.
Lightbane tries to hide behind a pillar, but is discovered by another chaser and shot in the back.



korenzel pays the bitch back with a grenade. korenzel even has enough timeunits left to throw a 'nade at the other chaser Eklektyk spotted last round.



Another kill, and the mission ends!



On the mission results screen it's confirmed that we lost anus_pounder I, but since we wrapped the mission up right after Lightbane went down, he lives to fight another day.
Just the one loss, maybe we got off lucky?

Eklektyk and korenzel are both promoted, and I get to distribute some stat increases for them.



Eklektyk improves on his shooting accuracy. I want him to be even deadlier than he has already proven to be.



korenzel pumps throwing accuracy and strength as requested.
Back at base, we take a look at our wounded soldiers, and see it'll be a while before Lightbane is ready for combat again.



30 days. Enjoy your R&R soldier!




Bee and Eklektyk, who took a glancing hit on the last round of the mission, are much more lightly hurt and will soon be up and about again.
We can also see that Eklektyk has 23 xp, for 3 kills, 3 wounding hits, and surviving 1 mission. I'm not sure where the cutoff point for promotion lies, but I'm happy that we have someone on the team now who has a semi-decent accuracy.
Having completed our first mission against the aliens, we also have some new research topics.



It seems we cannot research the plasma weapons yet. Maybe I need to capture a live alien first? I'm not sure. What I remember from playing this game some time ago, it pays to capture alien commanders, but the common soldiers seem not to matter, so we might as well just kill those.
In any case, as our containment is yet to be finished, I will be using lethal force until it seems feasible to try and capture some live specimens. That is, when I'm certain I've got the upper hand in a mission.

We let time run past, and complete a few research projects.






I start a production line manufacturing sensor bombs, but wind up selling them as our funds are running low. It's a good thing the end of the month is near.
Almost at the end of the month, the second UFO sighting is reported.




This time the UFO tries to run, and we chase it to the south pole where we finally down it.




We launch our troop transport, and see that it is night-time as we open the hatch. A night-mission. How many troops will fall this time, and will we see new and even more dangerous aliens this time?
Stay tuned and find out.

signing up again

Fear insures loyalty! Where do you need me? Just give me some pistol and sword/stun rode and I'll teach those xeno bastrards the lesson.