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It sounds good. Are we ever going to start using HWPs again?
In Soviet Russia, Civilization Micros You!
"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
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antisocialmunky Wrote:Are we ever going to start using HWPs again?
If you like HWPs, feel free to go for it. 
I am not a huge fan of HWPs myself, especially the early purchasable ones. I prefer to have more bodies, since it makes it easier to have several multi-soldier fireteams working the battlescape.
The later HWPs can be pretty cool, especially the Hovertank Plasma.
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uberfish Wrote:The ramp opened to reveal a floater 50 feet away. Scooter and Shiningone were on the ramp and started wildly firing their lasers, Shiningone claiming the kill.
Next turn Shiningone hopped off the ramp to the right, spotted another floater 40 feet away in that direction and got another kill. We were off to a good start.
Damn, I'm good!
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OK, thought I would post a little XCOM game background for our readers who are wondering what the heck is going on. 
XCOM (the e Xtraterrestrial COMbat Unit) is a secret organization established by an alliance of nations to investigate and deal with the growing alien threat to earth. As the commander of XCOM, you are charged to find the source of the alien menace and destroy it, doing whatever is necessary to protect earth and humanity from alien incursions and terror.
There are four ways to lose the game, and only one way to win it. You can lose by:
a) Losing all of your bases to alien assaults
The aliens will search for your bases if you cause them too much trouble; if they find one, they will send a battleship to attack it. You fight an all-or-nothing base defense against the alien force, and if all your soldiers die the base is destroyed and all facilities, stored weapons and equipment, personnel, etc. are lost. This is a good reason to always have reserve soldiers at your bases, and build additional bases so one bad defense fight can not wipe out the entire organization.
b) Running a cash deficit two months in a row
Council of nations funding and recurring expenses (salaries, base upkeep, aircraft rentals) are calculated at the start of each game month. If your finances get too far out of line, and you do not have a cash reserve from missions, etc., then you can go into debt at the start of a month. If this happens twice in a row, you are relieved as commander of XCOM.
c) Scoring very badly for two months in a row
At the end of each month all alien activity and XCOM activity worldwide is summed up as a total number of net points. Alien activity (including activity you do not see because we have no bases or radars in many parts of the world) counts as negative, while XCOM missions and UFO shoot-downs count as positive.
If this number is too bad (threshold varies with difficulty level, for our Superhuman game it is -500) two months in a row, you are relieved as commander of XCOM.
Normally this should never happen, as even a few successful missions can pile up hundreds of positive points. But disaster missions (especially complete team wipeouts or near-wipeouts) can cost a lot of points. Not responding to a terror mission at all is also a huge negative; you should always respond to a terror mission even if you just immediately take off again on turn 1. You will still get massive negative points, but it will be hundreds less than failing to respond at all.
Fourth possible way to lose is a spoiler:
Now after all this discussion of losing the game , how do you win?
To win the game, XCOM must find the source of the alien invasion and destroy it. Finding out the reasons and source of the alien invasion requires research, lots and lots of research. Interrogating live aliens (represented in game as research projects once you being back captured aliens to your Alien Containment module) is critical, and we will eventually need to capture high-ranking alien leaders to learn the final secrets about the aliens.
More will become apparent as we continue the game. Or you can read the spoilers now.
Next time: Let's talk about these aliens. Who are they, anyway?
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The ShiningOne Wrote:Damn, I'm good!
Was that spoken in a Duke Nukem voice?
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I'm back with some more XCOM background for our readers who have not played the game, or have not played it in many years and do not remember.
Just who are all these aliens attacking earth, anyway?
So far in our game we have only encountered 3 types (races? species?) of aliens. There are 11 types overall (plus a 12th special type), organized into 5 major types and 7 minor types. Each minor type is associated with one major type, and act as servents/allies for that major type.
The types we have encountered so far are:
Sectoids (major type)
These are the traditional Roswell-style little grey men: short and scrawny with hairless grey skin, over-large heads, and pupil-less black eyes. The Sectoids are the weakest of all the aliens in combat, but they have one horrifically dangerous ability (which we have not yet faced in our game): high-ranking Sectoids have Psi powers, and can terrify, drive berserk, or even take control of XCOM soldiers.
There is very little worse than having one of your soliders suddenly fall under alien control and start blasting his fellows with that expensive heavy plasma you gave him. Except maybe having a soldier with a blaster bomb launcher fall under alien control....  Total team wipeouts can happen this way, especially if the mind control happens early when most of the assault team is still bunched together at the Skyranger.
You will hear a lot more (a lot more, mostly negative!) about Psi as the game advances.
Floaters (major type)
Physically Floaters resemble human torsos with an alien machinery pod sticking out where their legs ought to be, wrapped in a pink cape.
The Floaters are the next-to-weakest alien race, and are only slighter better than Sectoids in combat. Floaters do not have Psi powers, but all of them can fly. This allows them to lurk in many places one might not expect, and can be tactically difficult to deal with on the battlescape.
Reapers (minor type, serve Floaters)
The Reapers are a terror unit associated with Floaters, meaning they show up during terror missions, alien base assaults, XCOM base defense, and some large UFO missions. Reapers are large (4 tile) furry bipeds with huge jaws, who attack by biting. They have no ranged attack or special effect, making them the weakest terror unit in the game. However, Reapers partly make up for this by being the toughest aliens overall -- it takes a lot of damage to bring down a Reaper. Fortunately they are big targets, and like all 4-tile units they take damage for each tile from explosives (HE rounds, grenades, etc.). Reapers are also vulnerable to fire. Overall, seeing Reapres and their Floater masters during a terror mission is actually something of a relief.
I will post more about other alien types as we encounter them during the game. A bit of meta: we could see the Sectoids' minor type, the Cyberdisk, at any time. We could also start seeing the next major alien race, the Snakemen, and their minor allies the dreaded Chryssalids.  Very, very bad news Chryssalids are....
What other things are people interested in hearing about? What questions do our readers have? I'll try to answer any requests, and hopefully other team members will chime in as well. Maybe we can get some of you to try the game yourselves -- it really is great fun. Despite all the deaths.
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There's a rule of XCOM that states: "If a reaper can get stuck on something, it will."
I've only ever lost tanks to those things.
In Soviet Russia, Civilization Micros You!
"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
March 7th, 2011, 01:30
(This post was last modified: March 7th, 2011, 02:05 by The ShiningOne.)
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haphazard1 Wrote:Was that spoken in a Duke Nukem voice?
Yep, it was. Glad you caught it too. I guess my Duke Nukem impression is better than I give myself credit for.
The background info is much appreciated. Great job as always.
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Awesome reporting, uberfish.
Personally I laughed a lot at this line:
uberfish Wrote:"I hate you so much. REGOARARARARAR"
Don't know why y'all were so surprised by my resurrection. Obviously I chose to protect myself. 
March 7th, 2011, 02:05
(This post was last modified: March 7th, 2011, 02:28 by The ShiningOne.)
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Accidental double post, so I'll ask a question about XCOM that was in the back of my mind to make up for it.
With the crazy amount of deaths in XCOM is equipment >, =, or < experience/trooper stats? Is it normal on superhuman to maintain high casualty rates until the end game? On that line, does the better gear just make up for your team being mostly composed of rookies (even near the end)? While the veteran fighters wouldn't fair much better than the rookies because the gear is more important. Or does the gear just end up helping to lower the death rates and allow you to get more seasoned characters. Then do the experienced fighters end up making a difference more than the gear and new recruits would? I don't remember if something similar was asked or answered already. If it was let me know and I'll go back to find it.
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