Let's Play UFO - Afterlight: Conclusion

Table of contents
1: Introduction
2: Cutting our teeth
3: Beastmen
4: A little package from home
5: A turd in the stream of time..
6: An alliance with some newcomers
7: Reticulans, interrogations and little green men
8: Martian archaeology, flamethrowers and robotic mayhem
9: Return of the Giant Space Walnuts?
10: Terraforming and plot exposition
11: Shall we be EXTREME, or tolerant care-bears?
12: Conclusion


Alright people! Welcome to my Afterlight LP!
Thank you to all of you who enrolled. I've modded the gamefiles to change the names, and those of you who provided a biography, I've also changed that bit of text. That was actually part of the reason this took me so long. The gamefiles take a very distinct view of the usage of " so I had to change some of those to ' and now everything works.
My Aftershock LP still isn't finished, but seeing as Aftershock and Afterlight takes place roughly around the same time in the UFO chronology, I though I might as well start this LP a bit soon. It will also give you people time to voice your wishes for training during the game.
There's so many choices. I will cover them in a short while. But let's start with the beginning shall we? Here you can watch the game intro, and I've also dug up this game trailer for you to set the mood.
Alright. Time to fire up the game!




Immediately, we're launched into a tutorial area, where the objectives are simple. Find a weapon, kill a robot, find one of your allies, kill another robot, and make it to your UFO. It's Kz3r0 and Juggernaut who are the starting crew in this mission, which doesn't give any experience as far as I could tell, so we'll just ignore it. It's only there to familiarize one with the controls, and I'll cover them more in our first real combat mission.
Once the mission is done though, our advisors pipe in. Guys, meet Drakron, yours truly and Dirk Diggler.











All this talking.. What they're saying is that apparently, our archaeological team (Andhaira who was killed, Kz3r0 and Juggernaut) uncovered some hostile drones, and we'd better prepare some weaponry. We have some equipment left over from when we left the Earth, and we can research this to create more on our own. The Reticulans helped us to Mars, started our settlement, and gave us a UFO to transport our troops around the planet.
Now on to the troops.



First up is T'Brow. In this game there's only 5 attributes for our troopers. How these tie in with the skills is explained on this page, beware however, clicking around on this site may spoil you on the game, so only go there if that doesn't bother you.
T'Brow would make a darn fine sniper if you ask me. She also starts with the minor reticulan anatomy skill.



Cassidy here is a strong, if not very bright guy. He'd be a perfect melee fighter or heavy equipment dude. He starts out with the minor stability training.



Juggernaut would make a fine heavy equipment soldier, not least because he already has the minor heavy equipment training.



Bee isn't strong. At all. She should keep away from the frontlines, hang back and shoot stuff from the distance. She doesn't start with any training yet.



Ah, chzr. That little cheat. Average stats all over is what you might think, but she starts with a very special skill, that I ought to have modded out, but I kept it just for the heck of it.



Yep. It can't be learnt. It's because this character is only supposed to join the team late in the game, when another of the team decides to retire. This skill is to enable Olga (her original name) to catch up with the others.
Now though, she's bound get a lead that's not easy to catch up with. For this reason alone, I might keep her out of missions, to let the rest of the crew catch up. A good rotation amongst the crew is probably a good idea anyhow.



Kenshiro, he starts with the scientist skill minor planetology.



eklektyk starts with the science skill minor medicine. Our resident healer you think? It depends on how eklektyk wants to develop his character I'm sure.



Kz3r0 starts with no skill trainings. A clean slate, much as Bee.



Shepard. Out to grab collars an kick alien butt. Another clean slate.



Blondie. Clean slate, training wise.



Shagwell. No trainings here either.



SoupNazi. Tech skill training minor surveyor. He'll be out building mines.



Storyfag. No skill trainings yet. Good strength. Another heavy weapons character p'raps?



Paccette. A clean slate.



Drakron. He has no soldier level, so he's stuck in the base. Starts with minor earth technology, so he boosts research in that area.



SMA. No training. I don't expect SMA to pipe in, so I'll choose training that I deem useful.



Kuroneko. No training either. She might make an appearance, but until then, I'll be making the training decisions.



Dirk Diggler. With that smirk, I could think of noone else to name this bitch. No training yet.



Kaiserin, our diplomat. No training. There were just so many unclaimed female faces. I wonder why?



Happy! Our storekeeper. He starts out without any training.



Yours truly, also trainingless.



Korenzel, who has minor civil engineering, meaning he can boost the rate at which new buildings in the base is built.

Alright, that's everyone who's currently available. Now you can get to mull over what kinds of training you want. We'll start with soldier training. Here's a list, it contains some minor spoilers, but I don't deem them important enough to put on the spoiler tag...

Weapon Skills
Ambidexterity
Minor - 2 Points - Faster reloads
Major - 3 - Allows use of two identical one handed weapons simultaneously

Sniper
Minor - 3 - Improves speed and accuracy of sniper guns and may use extraordinary precise shot mode when using a scope on sniper rifle
Major - 4 - Allows body part targeting when using a scope on a sniper rifle

Heavy Equipment
Minor - 2 - Soldier can use heavy weapons
Major - 3 - Improves aiming and aiming speed with heavy weapons and can carry more weight

Gunman
Minor - 2 - Improves accuracy when using one-handed ranged weapons
Major - 2 - Improves speed and accuracy of all snapshots (not only one-handed weapons!)

Skirmisher
Minor - 1 - Increases melee damage and accuracy
Major - 3 - Improves melee combat, dodging, throwing

EM weapon handling
Minor - 1 - Soldier can use EM weapons
Major - 2 - Improves aiming and aiming speed with EM weapons

Plasma weapon handling
Minor - 1 - Soldier can use Plasma weapons
Major - 2 - Improves aiming and aiming speed with Plasma weapons [this training doesn´t work, its a proven fact]

Anatomy Skills
Reticulan anatomy
Minor - 2 - More damage and increased critical hit chance vs Reticulans
Major - 2 - Even more damage and increased critical hit chance vs Reticulans

Beastmen anatomy
Minor - 3 - More damage and increased critical hit chance vs Beastmen
Major - 3 - Even more damage and increased critical hit chance vs Beastmen

Martian anatomy
Minor - 2 - More damage and increased critical hit chance vs Martian
Major - 2 - Even more damage and increased critical hit chance vs Martian

Misc Skills

Cover
Minor - 1 - Decreases chances of being hit when behind cover.
Major - 1 - Decreases chance of being hit by friendly fire.

Athletics
Minor - 2 - Allows running (only in light and medium suits)
Major - 2 - Increases movement speed

Stability
Minor - 2 - Soldier is harder to knock down
Major - 2 - Soldier avoids rockets

Suit Wearing
Minor - 1 - Allows soldier to crouch and lay prone (only in light and medium suits)
Major - 2 - Allows soldier to wear heavy armor. Running while wearing heavy armor is impossible. The high environmental resistance (6) of heavy suits can be critical in the early game before you start terraforming Mars. Available once Heavy Duty Suit is researched.

Toughness
Minor - 2 - Increases hit points
Major - 3 - Further increases hit points. Character can still move when health is all red.

Leadership
Minor - 2 - Increases movement speed of nearby units. Radius of effect is determined by the leader's charisma
Major - 2 - Increases resistance against psionic attacks of nearby units. Radius of effect is determined by the leader's charisma

Stalking
Minor - 2 - Gives stealth bonus
Major - 2 - Gives greater stealth bonus


Now, each levelup lets you increase one of your starts, but also affords you one more point to spend on training, once you have enough points for whatever training you desire. So you need to plan out your characters with care. The number next to the skill denotes how many points that costs. So for instance, if you want major sniper training, that's 7 points total (expensive, but worth it IMHO).
I'll let you think about all this for a while, you can either give me a detailed plan, and I'll follow that, or you can just say what kind of character you want (heavy equipment, melee, sniper, assault rifle trooper, etc), and I'll tailor it in said direction.
Welcome to Mars!

I made an oversight. I provided you with the soldier trainings, arguably the most important ones, but I shouldn't neglect the technician nor scientist trainings, so here they come. Bear in mind, that only troops that have the appropriate class can train in the corresponding training classes.

Science trainings

Misc Trainings
Medicine Minor - 2 Points - Gives a boost to research speed with medicine technologies. In combat, enables the use of basic medical equipments.
Major - 2 - Gives a larger boost to research speed with medicine technologies. In combat, enables the use of advanced medical equipment. Available once Advanced Medicine is researched.

Alien Biology
Minor - 1 - Gives a bonus on interrogations and autopsies. Available once Alien Biology is researched.
Major - 1 - Gives a larger bonus on interrogations and autopsies. Available as soon as the minor version is available.

Planetology
Minor - 3 - Not only provides a boost to your scientist's research speed where planetology techs are concerned, but speeds up building of geosondes.
Major - 3 - Gives a larger bonus on researching Planetology and speeds up building geosondes and upgrading Terraformation stations. Available once Terraformation is researched.

Races Technology
Earth Technology
Minor - 3 - Gives a bonus on research speed of Earth technologies.
Major - 3 - Gives a larger bonus on research speed of Earth's origins. Available once Earth Technologies is researched.

Reticulan Technology
Minor - 2 - Gives a bonus on research speed of Reticulan technologies.
Major - 3 - Gives a larger bonus on research speed of Reticulan's origins and slightly improves attacks using Reticulan Weapons

Beastmen Technology
Minor - 2 - Gives a bonus on research speed of Beastmen technologies. Available once a Beastman interrogation is performed.
Major - 3 - Gives a larger bonus on research speed of Beastmen's origins and slightly improves attacks using Beastmen Weapons.

Martian Technology
Minor - 2 - Gives a bonus on research speed of Martian's origins. Available once Martian Archives is researched.
Major - 3 - Gives a larger bonus on research speed of Martian's origins and slightly improves attacks using Martian Weapons.

Technical trainings

Surveyor
Minor - 3 Points - Increases the rate at which your engineers complete mining station and allows them to use the toolkit to disable mines in combat.
Major - 3 - Further increase the rate at which your engineers complete mining station and speeds up military station (Radar) as well.

Automation
Minor - 2 - Increases the engineer's contribution to robotics construction and their equipment and allows them to repair drones and control drone when approaching in combat. Available once Battle Drones is researched.
Major - 3 - Further increase the engineer's contribution to robotics construction and enabling to control drone from distance in combat.

Weaponsmith
Minor - 3 - Increases the engineer's contribution to production of weapon, accessories and ammunition. Available once Firearms is researched.
Major - 3 - Further increase the engineer's contribution to production of weapon, accessories and ammunition. Available once Advanced Firearms is researched.

Civil Engineering
Minor - 2 - Increases the engineer's contribution of building at the home base. As new buildings come up fairly infrequently, it's inadvisable to give this to more than one or two engineers.
Major - 2 - Further increase the engineer's contribution of building at the home base.

Suit Manipulation
Minor - 2 - Increases the engineer's contribution to production of spacesuits and allows them to repair spacesuits in combat.
Major - 2 - Further increase the engineer's contribution to production of spacesuits. Available once Heavy Duty Suit is researched.

Driving
Minor - 3 - If a character with this training is in technician's or scientific buggy, the vehicles will travel faster and (soldier/techs with this training?) can use homing missiles (e.g. lightning ball) in combat.
Major - 2 - Drones near this character will move faster and will have less delay when moving in combat.


There. Now you should be suitably prepared to list your preferred trainings. Now, I'd better see about posting a proper update to my Aftershock LP..

I am not an expert of this kind of games so I will just list the training that I would like, for the rest do as you see fit.
Being a mixed class Melee/Assault rifles as soldier training, and,as scientist training, Martian/Reticulan technology, minor emphasis on Earth technology, I am not interested in Beastmen technology so avoid it completely if possible.

Blodnie wants to keep a distance from the ITZ, so she'll go with something like:
Military: Sniper, Anatomy skills, Stalking, Leadership.
Science: Medicine

Increase Attributes and other Skills as you see fit.

Make me a typical heavy weapons guy, toughness and heavy armour etc, and whatever training I need to use the biggest gun available at the time

at eklektyks pathetic willpower - of the Commisar bloodline!

Happy will take care of weapons....he likes guns.

Kenshiro's incredible intuition makes him a good scout, I think. Give him skills to improve that like Athletics, Stalking and so on. For science skills give him healing and whatever you think that will improve research speed.

I vote to start researching for projectile weapons before anything else. Contrary to other x-com games, in Afterlight ballistic weapons are useful until endgame.

What mods are you using, btw?

juggernaut said:

at eklektyks pathetic willpower - of the Commisar bloodline!

Click to expand...

:sigh:

with that dipshits stats there is only ONE way to proceed:
make him a pathetic/cowardly MEDIC! and on weapons training he probably can handle beeing sniper [anything else is too far out of his reach]
consider this my sugestions and U can change watever U like with them for the beterment of Da team and greater LULz of this LP!

Yeah, do sniper+anatomy training for the T'Brow. Then maybe defensive stuff like wearing suits. Dunno how effective those special weapon skills are, are there sniper plasma rifles for example?

Let me at 'em heavy guns!

Also, being a scientist/soldier, I volunteer to become an expert on... interrogation. Go with alien biology please. I guess it is only fittinh that Storyfag will fill a similar role to Azira in my UFO LP

Bee should go for a Sniper position, I guess.

I seriously feel sorry for the poor bastards who took the Reticulans.

Nothing like watching a lone roller cruise through my defensive line while getting shot at by three snipers and two gatling guns to fucking one shot my Reticulan support. Only reason I'm even bringing him along is because my other soldiers are too injured to risk (And they can't just hide in a relatively safe corner and harass from outside LoS). Guess I should just double my number of hospital wards (To eight) to prevent any future healing backlog from forming.

Oh, and just a note, major suit wearing and minor toughness are pretty much requirements for every soldier. Thanks to the radiation mechanic, everyone will need access to heavy suits from time to time (Unless there are normal suits that reach the same level of radiation protection, but I've yet to run into any). It's possible to do missions outside your protection range, but they're a pain in the ass to micromanage.

For the sake of entertainment potential, I hope someone goes for a high speed build that utilizes dynamite offensively. Doesn't have to be their primary duty, but it's hilarious to watch when it works. It's not all for the sake of entertainment, either, as it can help bridge the gap when you get caught underteched.

Shagwell has good dexterity (*wink wink*) but pathetic strength..hm.
soldier training: major suit wearing, minor toughness, major beastman anatomy and major sniper
technician training: minor suit handling and major automation (there are no other useful trainings for field technicians, iirc)

and i'm still miffed about chzr getting Olga after me calling dibs, she's the best (and cutest) out there

keep up the good work, will follow your LPs closely

@Kz3r0, spekkio, juggernaut, CrimsonAngel, Storyfag and Crooked Bee
Your requests have been noted. I hope to do your replies justice by supplying with an update soon.

@lightbane
I'm using the stressless mod that reduces the amount of defend missions, to preserve my sanity. And I'm using ShadoWarrior's rebalance mod to spice things up a bit. Finally, I've also installed a minor mod that increases the odds of getting Expedition armour in trade.
And worry not, earth firearms is top on the list for research.

@eklektyk
No reason for the long face. You might start out with poor stats, but you are only level 2 as a soldier. Those stats will improve quickly, so the Commissar can go any way you'd like. I'm thinking shotguns and big-caliber weapons later on?

@Sergiu64
I don't recall any sniper plasma weapons, but ordinary sniper weapons are definitely useful into the end-game.

@Ashery
Yes, rollers can be a bitch. I usually manage to deal with them though, so I'm not that worried about the squishies.
And a light-suit with high environment protection will be available later. It's not imperative that everyone gets major suit wearing, but let's see how things pan out shall we?
As to your suggested build, that will be taken into consideration.

@JoKa
You had already chosen one character. Calling dibs doesn't roll with me.
Shagwell will make a fine figure of herself, don't you fret.



I am not making any promises, as I'd like to update my Aftershock LP first, but I hope to update this LP sometime during the weekend.

@Azira
My filthy green alien scum character will be joining way down the line, but to make it easier to plan ahead, I'll chime in now: I have a melee ninja character in mind - the green swordsman build. Barring regeneration, he's still on the squishy side, though. Think you can make him useful and keep him alive, at the same time?

Azira said:

@eklektyk
No reason for the long face. You might start out with poor stats, but you are only level 2 as a soldier. Those stats will improve quickly, so the Commissar can go any way you'd like. I'm thinking shotguns and big-caliber weapons later on?

Click to expand...

hmmm sounds promising
me always likes some hot shotgun action
U may proceed with this line of improvements for Da Nju Commissar

didn't know about the quick learning skill, lol

joka: well, since bee took samantha first...



apparently everyone wants to be a sniperfag and because you're not playing ironman no need to play it safe... make me shotgunfag with light/medium armor (by building a lot of terraforming stations, most mission won't need heavy armor env. protection and for those few you will shuffle soldiers anyway.)

playstyle is simple: run in a group of enemies and you'll kill all of them with point blank snapshots before they'll be able to ready their weapons. it works p. much whole game against everyone except martians, matriarchs and mechs (against whom you'll have other team members or katana). it's extremely deadly against most beastmen, light mechs and reticulans... since she'll be one of the few with high speed and no heavy armor, you can make her explosives expert with dynamites for quick 'destroy object' missions.


trainings:

major athletics
major gunman
minor ambidextrity
major beastmen anatomy
major toughness (not priority but always good to have)
minor stability (same as toughness)
major skirmisher (for backup katana against matriarchs, martians and other enemies with bullet resistance. low priority)



optional (depending on spare skillpoints, and your playstyle):

major reticulan anatomy (since you'll be joining expedition, you can eliminate all yellow reticulans quickly which would make it a waste)
major martian anatomy (with martian alliance and mod decreasing enemy attacks, there probably won't be enough martian fights to warrant this skill)
minor suit wearing (only if you find crawling and crouching useful, probably not needed for this running shotgun maniac)
major leadership (only if you'll lack leaders)
major stalking (only if you find 'stealth' useful)
minor plasma (only for endgame annihilator because it will probably make all other weapons obsolete)

@Multiple Sarcasm
I'm fairly confident I'll be able to make use of him without killing him off straight away. My playstyle suits well the swift and invisible swordsman.

@eklektyk
He will be the bringer of death!

@chzr
Very nice and detailed build. I will jot it down and follow it to the letter.


@Everyone
I hope to post an update tomorrow. My Aftershock LP is nearing the end, and the Afterlight one needs some attention. M:

chzr said:

apparently everyone wants to be a sniperfag ...

Click to expand...

Not me, I am a technobabblefag that stays at base.

Alright ladies and gents! Sorry for the longish wait, but I scrambled to finish my Aftershock LP, so I could concentrate fully on this game and not do a half-assed thing of it.
We have saved Earth and now the time comes to claim Mars in mankinds name.
This third game in the UFO After-series differs from the previous two as much as Aftershock differed from Aftermath. It has in areas gotten more complex, and other areas it is simpler.
Training soldiers cannot be done until the appropriate technology has been researched and the buildings in the base has been built. You only get one base this time, the territories you claim can be sites for mines or excavations. Excavations can help your research later in the game, and the mines decide what you can and cannot build, including weapons/armour and buildings both.
There are 7 resource types in this game. Sit tight, because now it gets wordy:
Water, important. Lose your water supply, and it's game over. Water comes from the north pole via a waterpipe. This can and will be attacked, and you have to respond quickly.
Energy. You can increase this via trade and power plants. Having lots of energy is a prerequisite for many important base buildings.
Fuel determines your UFO's radius of action. It can be mined and traded for.
Chemicals are important for the production of medical items and certain weapons. It is mined?!
Metals are important for the production of weapons and other equipment. Mined.
Crystals are required for the production of optical devices such as scopes. They can be found in mines. We need to research the proper tech before crystal deposits can be found and mines be built.
Noble Metals are a requirement for many of the more advanced buildings and items. They can be found in mines. Again, cannot be found or mined before the required tech is researched.
In Afterlight, you don't get a resource income to manage. How many mines you have determine your level of said resource. Basic items need only level 1 or possibly 0 to produce, more advanced stuff can require level 6 or 7, which is the highest. Mines come in two colours, ordinary and yellow. The ordinary mines produce 1 unit of said resource, the yellow 2. This can be further increased later by building advanced mines.
Now, it's not as simple as 7 territories with metal mines in them give you resource level 7 for metals. No, it follows this chart:
0 = none
1 = tiny, level 1
2-3 = small, level 2
4-7 = limited, level 3
8-11 = adequate, level 4
12-14 = large, level 5
15-19 = impressive, level 6
20+ = opulent, level 7
You can trade to receive extra resources, trading for a resource increases your level by one, trading one away drops it by one. So, if you have 15 metal mines but manage to get a trade agreement netting you one more metal, you're bumped straight from level 6 to 7. The reverse is also true, so you need to think carefully before accepting any deals in which you trade away your resources..
Managing these resources is the most important, and can be the most frustrating aspect of Afterlight. Mines are random from game to game, and it's quite possible to be screwed over, so if the RNG doesn't like us, we might never be able to produce miniguns..
Enough words! Let's see some screenshots.



Our geospace screen shows us the territories we currently hold and have explored by building geosondes (the blue rectangular buildings). The two red rings are missions we can take. The white flags denote territories we have yet to explore.
In the top of the screen we can access the different management parts of the game. On the left and right hand sides of the screen are drag-out sliders with a red bar that starts blinking, if one of our advisors has something he or she wants to tell us but is not urgent.



This is the base overview. We see a big structure in the middle, formed like a cross with blue/purple things on the roof. That is supposedly our cryogenic monument holding the 10.000 colonists in stasis, waiting for us to terraform the planet.. Immediately to the left of this is our water reservoir. Below that is our power generator, currently solar panels.
The rest of the screen holds various buildings that we can post our people in, such as a hospital ward, the tech-bay where the crew that builds our mines reside, the science bay where our geosonde-builders hum along, civil engineering, the university for training science skills, the polytechnics ward for training tech skills, the laboratory and a workshop. There's currently free space to build additional buildings, but we lack the resources for that as you can see in the right part of the screen. Building an extra lab requires level 4 energy, level 2 metals and level 2 chemicals. This is achievable, but it'll take us a little while.



Here I've opened the message boxes from the other important parts of the base management. Currently, as this is the start of the game, there are no messages to display.



The overview screen tells us what territory we currently own and what there is of interest in those territories. It will also show us if there's been built a mine (put a "house" around the resource symbol) or there's been an excavation. We'll be returning to this screen in later updates.



The research screen. Currently we only have one lab staffed, and they're immediately put to the task of making some blueprints for basic human firearms. Only people with science levels can staff laboratories. If a soldier/scientist is staffing a lab, and then sent on a mission, he or she will not contribute to research while away, so no exploit there.



Now we have our production screen. Currently we're very limited both due to having researched nothing, but also due to us having no resources really to speak of. Lucky for us, dynamite doesn't require any resources.



Here we see Happy overseeing our storage. Nothing much in here to speak of yet. This is where we go to compose personalized weapons, once we make some add-ons. :twisted:



I've skipped the people screen as we saw that in the introduction, and also the squads screen for now, where you can designate who goes on missions. Here, we instead take a look at the equipment screen. It's important to remember to give your crew weapons before you send them on missions. It's quite embarassing to have to tell them they need to beat up the enemies using their bare fists..



Finally, the diplomacy screen. This holds nothing of interest to us yet, aside from the fact that we have a Laputian contact. Unfortunately, it does not seem to be working at this time.
This screen explains why.



Our phone seems to be dead. We need to build a new one.
Well, back to the Geospace screen.



Here I've clicked one of the territories currently outside our area of control. It holds a yellow fuel deposit.. I want that. But to access the territory and be able to build a mine, we need to first build a geological probe, or geo-sonde.



Here I've tried to choose one of the visible missions. They're both currently outside our range.. We need fuel, darnit!





Off I send the tech buggy to build geo-sondes, and the tech-rover to build a fuel mine. Soon I have one in the Acid Plains. Lovely place..
Now though, I can access the mission!



Time to draw some blood! I wait for day, for better visibility, and since there's currently no rush. In the meantime, our research into firearms completes, and we see that we indeed are in need of more resources.



No metal = no guns.




We accept the mission, and soon our UFO is enroute to the mission area! We can queue missions if we want to, but if our soldiers are hurt, or we pick up loot, they cannot heal, nor can we drop off the loot unless we return to the base first.



Kill all hostiles. Simple, I like it.



Here I've made my first mistake. I have gotten so used to my super soldiers (you know who you are ) from Aftershock, that I divide the team into three groups. It's better to have them close together here in the start, to concentrate firepower on one target at a time.




T'Brow and chzr in particular take some hits, but this being the first mission, we emerge victorious. Not that Juggernaut also took 3 hits, while his buddy Cassidy took none. Guess we know who's the lucky one, eh?



No loot though. At least we got a fair amount of xp. We need to start producing our own guns and ammo though, our supplies are not going to last.



chzr takes up our only hospital bed once the team returns, but she's quickly fit again, and the next in line gets some medical attention.




Ruh-roh. Our water supply is threatened. If we fail to deal with this, it's game over..
But before we do this mission, another one pops up, and I go for it. I'm waiting for the tech-rover to return, so some of our soldier/technicians can come along for the waterline anyhoo, might bash some alien skulls in the meantime.




This is a kill mission, but here we only need to kill the troops marked with red arrows.
Unfortunately, all the reticulans in this mission are armed with laser weapons which has longer range and better accuracy than our troops. Therefore I decide to set an ambush. :twisted:



It works perfectly, even though I have to use live bait to draw the grays to our ambush. Noone dies though, which is my goal. If I lose a teammember, I cannot just recruit a new one. Lives are costly in this game.



Juggernaut gets the most experience for this mission, which I find very fitting, as he was our bait. I let him kill off the stunned aliens, so he could claim some kills. This mission, contrary to our first lets us bring back loot!



Three laser rifles, 4 laser pistols and a butt-load of ammo! Very nice indeed! This way I might not have to play hide and seek as much in the future.
The reticulans are impressed it seems, as they want to parlay.





So they're having trouble, are offering technical knowledge (unlocking new research topics), and even offer us some resources on top of extra weapons? Score!
With a smile on our faces, we redistribute the seats in the UFO and set out to repair our water line.



Our resources have improved a bit, and we get a weather report! Weather is important later, as it can increase the environmental hostility of some territories. Our current suits protects us in up to hostility level 3. Higher than that, and our troops take constant damage while in battle..





We kill the offending robots, repair the water line, and bring back the wreck of one of the drones! We also see that chzrs "fast learner" is quite an asset. I have to cycle her to the back of the line, or she'll be a superhuman overshadowing all the rest.
Though I am happy with the results, I urge caution, as we expect the robots to attack again, and next time it might be further away.



Drakron and Korenzel reminds us that we need other resources aside from fuel. We're still in the semi-tutorial part of the game it seems.



They get their wish though, as we build a metal mine which boosts our resources in that area to level 2.
Drakron really wants us to go back to where Andhaira died. Did I do screenshots of the tutorial mission? Maybe I didn't.. It starts with one of the crew dead, and you learn the basic controls in that mission. For shits and giggles, I named the dead crewman Andhaira.



Now, I leave you of with an overview of the technologies we've researched thus far. We're only a very small fraction into the game, yet our production line is starting to churn out important stuff such as rifles, ammo and medikits.



I'll just revisit one of the earlier pictures to explain a bit about the combat controls.



At the top of the screen we can access the system menu to save/load, and under this is the time-control buttons. Then we have the abort and objectives buttons, that lets us, well, abort the mission or view the objective..
Further to the right, still in the top of the screen we can see what level we're currently viewing buildings at. We can alter this using the arrows next to the icon, or use the pgup/pgdown buttons. Then we can toggle vision modes, currently only normal available, and toggle the camera to follow people if that's what we want.
Next to the character portraits in the bottom, on their left, there's the stance control, movement control and attack control rows. As we've not trained athletics nor suit wearing yet, we can only walk standing. Later we'll be able to run and crawl, go into a crouch or prone. We can tell the character to attack the ground, attack an object, or hold their fire if the chance of hitting is too low.
Directly underneath these rows are a couple of buttons for T'Brow. Currently selected is aimed single shot. Under that is burst snap shot, burst aimed shot and melee attack buttons. Switching between modes takes a little time but not much.
On the right side of the portrait, we can order the selected character to move, attack or interact. These commands are rather superfluous, as the characters automatically choose the appropriate command when you right-click. If you click on an empty tile, they choose a move command, if you click on an enemy, they attack, and if you click on a door, they interact with it (open or close).
Below these are commands to put people into overwatch, swap their weapons (if they're holding two one-handed objects such as Juggernaut is) and reload.
Below the weapon icon is commands to either pass their turn, clear their order queue, or delete their last order in the order queue. To the left of the weapon icon is the ammo gauge.
Some of the characters have trained in skills, and these trainings are displayed to the right of their portrait. To the left of the portrait we can see what stance, movement mode, current action, and weapon setting they have.

That's a lot of writing. I'll stop here. Until next time.

One assault rifle, one revolver and one semi automatic pistol ? I seriously hope the arsenal will expand a little more than that.

Yeah, you really start out with shit for armaments. You also get two reticulan laser pistols, one scientific laser (rubbish) and a buzzsaw melee weapon.
Needless to say, we're seriously outgunned at the start, so the priority should always be research into better firearms.

Click to expand...

I see I inflicted a lot of hits and damage, yay!

Azira said:

Yeah, you really start out with shit for armaments. You also get two reticulan laser pistols, one scientific laser (rubbish) and a buzzsaw melee weapon.
Needless to say, we're seriously outgunned at the start, so the priority should always be research into better firearms.

Click to expand...

Fun fact: You can royally screw yourself over weapon wise if you play the game blind.

What difficulty are you playing on, again? I found the game to be satisfyingly challenging on very hard/hard (strategic/tactical) for a blind playthrough. Definitely has its frustrating moments, though, and I stopped playing ironman fairly early on (Seriously, fuck rollers. While I'm at it, fuck whoever's bright idea it was to add paralyzing ammo). Beyond the frustration, though, I found myself constantly short of supplies well into the midgame, although this was at least partially because I was playing blind. I also didn't have the same luck you had with getting that reticulan mission. Three laser rifles along with 25+ batteries is *huge*.

On with the LP!

Alright, the tutorial part of the game is over and done with.
Last time, Drakron thought it would be a good idea to return to the excavation site, but cautioned that we migh need to bring soldiers..





This turns out to be a good idea, since the area is positively swarming with robot drones, and even one large bipedal robot, marked as a Mech.
Once the Mech is down, something happens in the centre of the circular object.



No matter how great your meta-gaming knowledge, the waves of hostiles that pour out of this gate cannot be stopped, you just have to beat feet back to the UFO and take off. My meta-gaming knowledge afforded me this insight, so I drew back my troops before killing the Mech off.



This did not save eklektyk from taking some heavy damage though. He made it back, just barely. The events at the excavation site cause quite a stir back at the base.




(note that these conversations play out on the geospace screen, with each character piping in from one of the drag-out boxes on the side of the screen. For the ease of reading and to cut down on the number of screenshots, I just to the "story meetings" section of the glossary, where they're transcribed to)
The Beastmen do not seem susceptible to diplomacy though. We'll have to fight them 'till the end of this game..
On the plus side, we've managed to build our sattelite, so we can hopefully soon contact our mother planet.




The people we do contact seem an unsavoury bunch alas. I take Drakrons advice and do not tell them anything.




When I try to requisition resources or reinforcements from the "Servants", they just give me talk. Right. I don't trust them.
Our researchers have dug into the ground, trying to discover why there seems to be fossil fuel available on Mars.




Biomass? That sounds fishy... I wonder if we'll have to deal with more Giant Space Walnuts?
Our researchers have also researched the phenomenon that occured at the excavation site.




Alright, move in, bomb some shit, and hightail it out of there! I think we can handle that.



The game does some handholding here, marking the object we need to destroy with a large red arrow. No surprise, as it's the same thing they did in the previous two instalments.




A couple of beastmen are unfortunate enough to stand within view of our team as we disembark from the UFO. They're quickly dispatched. A bit further ahead, we see a swirling vortex of wind it seems.



It's supplied with a nametag and a health bar. Ominous.. I think I'll avoid it for now, as bullets seem to simply pass through it harmlessly, and it has no red arrow designating it as mission critical.



Inside this cage, our troops hear something scampering about. Also something without a red flashing arrow above it, and since it seems to be stuck in the cave, we ignore it.
Shagwell makes for the marked object, drops a stick of dynamite by it and




*boom* Back to the UFO we go. Mission succes.
Our researchers have in the meantime been hard at work on sifting through the data our alliance with the reticulans afforded us. Note, we were supposed to gain some allies in the form of squishy troops when we entered the alliance, and no troops are forthcoming. Maybe I broke something when I altered the game-files, we'll know for certain later. If so, I'd like to apologize to those who wanted to be represented by aliens.




Those bastards are holding the juicy stuff back from us, and they're sitting on resource-rich territory.. We'll take them down a notch or two soon. For now, we'll just let the resentment simmer...
We let the team handle some defense missions, in one of them we take a closer look at the beastmen, and see a new iteration of them, a "Captain".




I still employ the ambush tactic, as it's highly effective, and lets us mow through the enemies one at a time. It's just a matter of finding a suitable place for an ambush. Not all maps have a building such as this one.
The Captain is wielding a beastman rifle. That packs a punch. One hit and eklektyk loses half of his hitpoints. Ouch. Good thing he had three friends already unloading bullet after bullet into the captain, as one more shot would've ended the poor Commissars life.
We're treated to some mission end screens, the top one being from the above mission.





After a couple of days spent doing heavy researching and defending our territory while slowly expanding, we receive an incoming message from Earth, this time from some more likable fellows.






Drakron certainly seems to be taken with these people, and I see no apparent reason not to work together with them. They certainly seem a whole lot more mentally healthy than the last bunch. So into the diplomacy screen and click the appropriate button.





Mhmm.. More juicy data for Drakron and friends to sink their mental teeth into.
I go through our stores and see we've actually got a piece of equipment we can use to customize one of our weapons. I stick an accelerator on one of our rifles, and give it to Blondie.



It seems it raises the damage potential by about 10%. Not bad. We decide to test it in combat.




Nice, but we'll need to research quite a few topics before we're able to produce more on our own. And we seriously need to look into better suits. Not only for protection against physical harm, but also because the solar activity has increased.



Our current suits only provide us with environmental protection level 3, so we scramble to produce something better, and we soon have a slight improvement.



If we're careful in how we time our missions, and stay in the territories with a low natural hostility setting, this suit will do for now. But we're at work producing something even better. This Transport suit has the advantage of not requiring any specific training to use though, and it's easy to produce. Plus, it literally holds the double amount of pockets (double the inventory size) for every soldier equipped with it. More space, more ammo, happier soldiers.



Once we complete research into these Heavy Duty Suits, we'll make a comparison, and of course produce some suits for those in the team that qualify for wearing them.
We've managed to research laser weaponry as well, but we lack the resources to start prouction yet.



A shame, as I'd really like to field some laser cannons.. Ohwell, deposits of both crystals and noble metals have been spotted, we should be able to produce our own lasers soon. M:
Here at the end of our current update, I thought I'd let you see how the roster is looking. Note, that since I know we're going to be fighting a lot of beastmen, again and again, I've started people training in beastmen anatomy, to increase our damage against them.



T'Brow knows how to hurt them. Beastmen and reticulans both. Her athletics training lets her run, as long as she's not wearing heavy suits, which she isn't trained for anyway.



Cassidy really wants a heavy weapon, and will get his wish as soon as one becomes available. He's also training to wear heavy suits, but the major suit wearing skill only becomes available for training in, once we've researched it.



Juggernaut has the same wishes as Cassidy, and I hope to grant them very soon. Juggernaut has been cycled out of the combat team for some missions, that is why he's lagging a bit behind. This will change as soon as I build a second lab, for then our soldier/scientists may find themselves doing lab duty..



Bee is very fast, and very deadly when it comes to beastmen. She'll get her sniper training as soon as it becomes available, but until then she's still deadly using an assault rifle.



Kenshiro is out building geo-sondes to expand our territory. Not the most glorious of tasks, but vitally important.



eklektyk is also very fast, and he's training to become even faster with pistols and rifles/shotguns both. He's often the one targeted by the enemies. I don't quite know why, maybe because he's the only soldier/scientist currently in the away team, and he has trained in the use of medicine?



Kz3r0 has been helping out in the lab, when some of the pure scientists were educating themselves at the university. She's majored in alien biology herself, so she's the one we turn to when we get a new critter to dissect, so we can better learn how to kill them in the future.



Shepard hasn't seen combat yet, for some unfathomable reason. He has contributed greatly to our research and helped us get better weapons though.



Shagwell is fast and deadly. Not quite as much as Bee, but Shagwell knows how to handle dynamite as well, so she's very useful.



SoupNazi is our main mine-constructor, out in the tech-truck making sure we have resources for our weapons. A dirty job, which he seems to excel at.



Storyfag is going for the heavy weapons as well, and he's ready to train for major suit wearing as soon as our researchers make the breakthrough.



Drakron is our main researcher. His strengths are currently earth tech and planetology research.






SMA, Kuroneko, Diggler and Kaiserin I will refrain from commenting on, as I doubt they're following this LP.



Happy is a top-notch technician. He hasn't trained in any tech fields yet, holding off until weaponsmithing becomes available.



Myself, out in the science buggy building geo-sondes. Why? Because we needed a scientist/technician for the combination of driving skill and planetology skill, the latter for quicker building for geo-sondes.



Korenzel, our civil engineer. Currently helping out in the workshop, but quick to jump to the task when we need new buildings constructed.



chzr. She's just scary, what with the fast learner skill. Once we get the second lab running, I might have to use her more, to fill out all slots in the UFO. Her high hitpoints value means I usually use her as a spotter. A position fraught with danger, but which is indispensable.



And finally Blondie. Going straight for the know-how of hurting the enemies.