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?