Azira
Arcane
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!
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!