Let's Play UFO - Aftershock : Victory!

I forgot to mention this earlier and it's a semi-spoiler but good advice anyway. Highlight at own risk.

i must've forgotten that around a psionic a thought is as important as a word -and my cybernegro surely thought about what to do to a race consisting only of females

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Did Prosper work on this game?

I've tried something in this LP, that I haven't bothered with in my previous playthroughs of Aftershock. I've built defensives structures.
And now one of the territories proteced by a defensive structure has come under attack!



Not trusting the militia one bit, but curious to see how they compare with the militia you can encounter in help missions, we launch the mission.



A single human. Equipped with an assault rifle. If we hadn't taken the mission on, the territory would definitely have been lost.
Ohwell, let's take a look at the opposition. We order the troops to form a firing line outside this factory in which we start.



Bee, the first at her spot, sees a Wargot Power armour.



Nasty creature. Better aim for the head, some critical hits there will keep it down, make it almost harmless.
And soon thereafter.



Another power armour! That's a first in my playthroughs. It drops just as easily as the first though, and the two wargots that accompanied the power armours are no threat either.
Here's the glossary for the ordinary wargots and their scout drones.




Drones are quite harmless, but depending on the weapons they're wielding, you want to drop ordinary wargots quickly. Being knocked on your ass by exploding grenades or missiles can ruin your battleplan.
The mission briefing said it was a joint cultist/wargot attack, yet we've seen no cultists.. I send JoKa and Desmodus to investigate.



Ah, there you are. I send Gondolin and dextermorg to help clean up.



Easy peasy, just a few nicks in the armour.
Let's take a look at what new equipment has become available. The storyline hasn't progressed yet, I hope to advance it by the next update.
Plasma weaponry first.






The shotgun is quite effective as we saw in the last update.
Our scientists have also come up with a type of weaponry that's unique to the humans. We've seen neither wargots nor reticulans use this kind of weaponry.




It says non-lethal damage. That's not quite true. You can easily kill stuf with sonic weaponry. In my last playthrough, I remember a 9000+ damage critical hit from the sonic gun..
I tend to not use these weapons though.
We've also researched a bunch of new weapon add-ons which will help offset the poor accuracy of plasma guns for instance.






I've not depicted all accessories, the sniper scope for instance only fits on sniper rifles, and all snipers are already issued these. But the movement finder and underbarrel laser sights are new additions, which can be a great help in improving the accuracy of otherwise sub-par weaponry.
The cyborgs also get some love.
This is their default armour.



We've now researched an upgraded version.



Now, cyborgs wouldn't be much to look at, if you couldn't also give them new limbs..






These limbs give +1 to their respective stats. The advanced versions give a +2 bonus. You can also give a cyborg better sight.





I've given our sniper cyborg, Cassidy the reticule eye. The rest of the gang I've given infra-eye implants, to help spot those annoying muckstars.
Our psionics have also gained access to better equipment.
Psionic equipment is divided into several categories: circlet, collar, suit and vambraces.







Once I've produced them, Phoenix will get the Life-drain circlet, and Bee the Vivid image circlet. :twisted:






Bee has the trueshot vambraces, and Phoenix is in line to receive the life sink vambraces..







Phoenix will get the motivation collar, Bee the escape collar.



Both already have this suit of armour, which is the best available for squishy psionics. They'd better keep out of harms way.
Our pure-bred human troopers also get some new add-ons for their armour. Here is where wearing light, medium or heavy armour really makes a difference. Heavy armour comes with the helmet included, so it only has 1 add-on slot. Medium armour has an add-on slot for the chest piece, and one for the helmet. Light armour has two add-on slots for the chest piece, and one for the helmet.







So our sneaky gits, provided they have scout training (looking at you, JoKa and Sergiu64) will be getting sound dampeners and personal cloak fields, whereas most others will be getting the personal power shield. Except for Gondolin and dextermorg who gets infra-vision only, due to their armour slot being a helmet slot..
Finally, a quick look at the overview screen.



38 bases out of, I believe 39 possible. Almost all territory under our control, yet we're running a deficit. It's expensive to research the interesting stuff. Yet, our surplus in ordinary supplies lets us trade with the psionic faction regularly and make up for our shortfall. As is also readily apparent, it's the tracks that are expensive, but without the tracks, we could only have a single base for all our production and research needs, and that really wouldn't work.
Now, back to playing so I can advance the storyline and we can get on with the mindfuck.

I tend to not use these weapons though.

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There is one really annoying enemy that Sonic Gun excels against and it's also useful in capture missions (but not against Reticulans, they tend to be too squishy) so I always keep one in my close combat troop's backpack.

a secret code!

Last update was of poor quality, and I apologize for this.
In this update, I hope to remedy this a bit. We'd been playing cat and mouse for a while with the cultists and wargots, but even pressing the cultists hard goes nowhere, as the wargot ship gives them the capability to do deep strikes into the heart of our territory. Our PR guy sums it up like this.




Build a spaceship and board the giant space walnut? Sounds like fun!
Our researchers agree that there must be some wargot code system or somesuch hidden in cultist territory.



We just need to figure out where to get those codes. They've probably stashed them somewhere hidden, and it'll take me forever to...



Nevermind.
Assaulting this temple should be a challenge at least.

...

I was hoping to continue the update at this point, but imgur is bugging out on me, so I guess it'll have to wait. Maybe tomorrow, possibly later. Until then

Looking good.

How close are you to the end?

You know, I can't actually remember where it ends, but I'm confident I'm fairly close, as there's almost nothing left to research.

2-3 updates to go , not much more i think. but i never finished AS because the cultist temple mission bugged out on me

I've finished the temple mission, gotten the codes, am about to build a spaceship, and have just encountered a new alien race!

All this and a bit more in the next update!

We were left off a bit abruptly in the last update as imgur decided it suddenly didn't like me. It has changed its mind while I were at work apparently, since I am now again able to upload pictures. Did I hit a monthly limit or something?
Guess I'll never know.
Anyway, we were getting ready to assault the cultist temple and get hold of whatever means of communication they have that enable them to coordinate with the wargots. The theory is that this piece of equipment will enable our researchers to come up with a plan to boad the Giant Space Walnut.
Here's the layout of the temple, we don't get a choice of where to land.



I quickly come up with a plan of action. We're facing the big building in the eastern part of the map, that's probably where our objective is. But there are buildings north and south of our positions I want cleared ASAP, to prevent an ambush.




I send JoKa and Desmodus off to search the northern buildings, and Claus bravely volounteers to search the southern. Claus encounters 4 enemies, but he manages to pick them off one at a time without losing too much health himself.
JoKa and Desmodus do not encounter any enemies in the north, and are quickly redeployed to help in the assault against the main building.



dextermorg is sent to the ground level to deal with the inevitable stragglers that seek to flank us, while being covered by our three snipers, korenzel, Bee and chzr that also overlook the main entrance to the main temple building. Inside we spot our objective.



Everything goes smoothly and entirely according to plan, except for JoKa being singled out by angry cultists and nearly dying before the snipers can lay a covering hail of fire.. Here we see Claus with the Wargot-cultist code, if you notice JoKa's healthbar, he just barely managed to stay conscious.



All enemies are by this point defeated, and Claus leisurely strolls back to the landing craft.



Our PR guy thinks happy thoughts, and our researchers have interrogated a live Wargot.




So! We can now start building a spaceship, to take the fight to the wargots! All is not peaceful on our little globe however, and soon one of our base-territories is under attack. This is the first time I do a base-defense mission in this LP, the other defense missions have been in mining-territories.
That's not the only thing unusual about this defense mission however.



Storyfag spots an enemy, the likes of which he hasn't seen before. Quickly, re-plots his route to take him back near the others in the team, and he spots more weirdness.



It's a new race. I wonder how they have arrived? Spiders and Defenders aren't the only new types of enemies around on this map.



Here Storyfag has switched to a plasma shotgun to deal with one of the enemies. Why do you ask? Here's where having a top-tier scout (or prior knowledge of the game) comes in handy.



The SG Cloud is completely immune to projectile damage... Fortunately, it remains vulnerable to energy damage, and is taken down with a few shots of super-heated plasma.
Our PR guy is less than ecstatic with these new enemies.



Their arrival has prompted an interesting development with our old pals, the reticulans however. They now come in armoured varieties, and have new toys at their disposal. They fall just as quickly as usual to an enraged, katana-wielding Storyfag though, so the combat is quickly concluded (forgot to take screenshots).



It's the warp rifles that are interesting here. If we compare them with our current most powerful energy weapon, the plasma rifle, we see that these new toys are very promising indeed.




We cannot make our own yet though, as some nebulous research topic needs to be completed first. I guess it has something to do with the new race.
Also, we seem to be nearing the end-game. Before I launch the spaceship for the Giant Space Walnut attack, I will post an updated roster. Bee, for instance, has completed all her chosen three trainings. She's quite a killer now. And she's not alone.

hmm End is Near??

ITz is upon US!!

The Sonic Gun is superior to Plasma when dealing with Starghost Clouds, try it out. Usually it knocks it down in one hit and kills in 4-5 (less with criticals).

eklektyk said:

hmm End is Near??

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Were those silencers I saw on my deagles?

I forgot to include the image of Claus carrying the code..

That's been fixed now. And yes, Desmodus, those were silencers, to make you stealthy..
Switching to accelerators though, as silencers... Don't see the point to them on hanguns really. When you're that close, the enemy spots you, whether your gun is silenced or not.

And as dextermorgan said. This is the unmodded game, I've reached the top-tier in tech, which is the warp rifles.

Last time we'd just encountered a new species of enemies called the Starghosts. Precious little was known about them, a shortcoming we make up for in this update.




Once our researchers on the Laputa has made these observations, doing autopsies (and with regards to the Starghosts themselves, mere field observations) of the new species becomes unlocked.



The Starghosts themselves appear to be the masters of this race. Despite this knowledge, killing the single Starghost that always appears in the combat missions, does not seem to weaken the other creatures. So the 'ghosts themselves are relatively low priority targets.




Stars and Spiders are both melee fighters. The spiders are by far the strongest, but due to their speed, I find that stars are in general more dangerous.



The Hover was the creature I had to dissect to be able to research warp weaponry. They attack from a distance and can cause a good deal of damage, but are relatively squishy. A couple of soldiers concentrating fire on these things can bring them down quickly.



Defenders are mostly a nuisance. They can absorb quite a deal of damage, but on the plus side, what damage they deal themselves is neglible.
Having killed and performed an autopsy on an SG Hover, we can now finally research and produce warp weaponry of our own:




I have yet to test them in battle, but I look forward to knocking down walls with the resonator.
I leave you with a screenshot of Storyfag laying down some hurt at point-blank with a plasma shotgun.



This is the highest amount of damage dealt in a single shot I've seen so far. Impressive! Needless to say, the wargot died immediately.

Now I'm off to work. I hope to be able to play a bit and possibly produce an update for your viewing pleasure tomorrow.

These warp rifles lack auto fire, it's a major drawback. Do they also have the reloading problems they had in Aftermath ?
I've played the game a little and snap shot auto fire is really the way to go. Aimed shots just take too long.

The warp rifles do indeed lack autofire, and yes, that is a drawback. Their high base damage and range make up for that somewhat though. They're slow to aim, but can be reloaded in the field. I find they're a handy backup weapon.

The next update will include the roster, the launch of the spaceship assaulting the Giant Space Walnut, and I hope, some plot exposition you will find wonderfully unexpected.

I now have 86 screenshots waiting for upload, and I'll post the next update, which won't be the last.
We could make do with a new page before I plaster the thread with 14Mb of screenshots..

Azira said:

I now have 86 screenshots waiting for upload, and I'll post the next update, which won't be the last.
We could make do with a new page before I plaster the thread with 14Mb of screenshots..

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Intelligence: So you want us to bump this until we reach the new page? Ok, BUMP.

Bump!

And yes, warp weapons are underpowered, just as they were in the previous game. That's one of my biggest gripes with these games - you end up using SMG's, AR's and MG's all the way and into the endgame because "advanced" tech is mostly crap.

Bumpity bump.