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Let's Play UFO - Afterlight: Conclusion

Start over and fix my mistake or carry on as is?

  • Fix the damn mistake! We want to see squishy grays trying to make themselves useful

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Just go on already. We don't care about no steenkin' aliens!

    Votes: 1 100.0%

  • Total voters
    1
  • Poll closed .

Azira

Arcane
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Codex 2012
@Ashery

I'm playing at normal/hard. The normal setting on strategic is primarily to allow for greater succes rate in automatically repelling alien attacks later, when we can construct the appropriate defensive structures.
As to the tactial difficulty setting, setting it to hard would lower the damage done by the team to 50%, instead of teh 80% currently, together with gimping our sight range and boosting that of the enemy.
I'm happy with the current difficulty, as I'm not playing currently to test my own stamina or wits, but to bring you an LP. And to be honest, I probably would've picked this difficulty anyhow. :M
And yes, managing supplies such as ammo and weapons can be a bitch. The batteries I scavenged from the reticulan mission? All spent. We're back to using our own weapons and ammo. :smug:
 

Kz3r0

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2008
Messages
27,012
Genevieve is developing quite well, as far I can tell from my limited understanding of this kind of games.
 

Ashery

Prophet
Joined
May 24, 2008
Messages
1,337
Azira said:
@Ashery

I'm playing at normal/hard. The normal setting on strategic is primarily to allow for greater succes rate in automatically repelling alien attacks later, when we can construct the appropriate defensive structures.
As to the tactial difficulty setting, setting it to hard would lower the damage done by the team to 50%, instead of teh 80% currently, together with gimping our sight range and boosting that of the enemy.
I'm happy with the current difficulty, as I'm not playing currently to test my own stamina or wits, but to bring you an LP. And to be honest, I probably would've picked this difficulty anyhow. :M
And yes, managing supplies such as ammo and weapons can be a bitch. The batteries I scavenged from the reticulan mission? All spent. We're back to using our own weapons and ammo. :smug:

Heh, the frustration was even worse because I didn't manage to research hyperspace gates until the middle of fucking Augest (For those that don't have direct experience, this is the tech that triggers the missions to destroy the gates. Without destroying them, you'll constantly get attacked through'em).

Not only that, but I neglected to get "Communication with Earth" until June, so I was forced to use the basic rifles against fucking beastman cannons.

In complete agreement re:tactical difficulty. I actually restarted early on once I realized just how frustrating very hard would be (Doesn't stop rollers from one shotting my fucking reticulans, though).

I'm curious as to the stats on the modded weapons, by the way. Ended up giving my snipers the first step of heavy weapon training just so they could use the laser cannon (Laser sniper rifles don't exist in vanilla. You're also stuck with a more cartoonish rifle instead of the model that shows up in the screenshots).
 

Drakron

Arcane
Joined
May 19, 2005
Messages
6,326
Azira said:
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.

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

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.

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

Azira

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Copenhagen, Denmark
Codex 2012
The mission on Mars is slowly gathering momentum. We've ceased our expansion for now, as we need better weapons and armour before getting properly to grips with the beastmen, so our primary focus at the moment is research and production.
When that's said and done however, there are still defensive missions to play out. I play them the same way each time. Find a defensible spot, and lure the enemies into ambush. As long as they trickle in one or two at a time, it works like a charm. Once I get better weapons, I plan on taking the fight to the enemy, as this tactic is starting to bore me, efficient though it may be.



In this mission, eklektyk took quite a beating, so he ran and hid behind the others, and got a chance to try our new medikits. They will prove useful in the coming conflicts.
After this mission, I get this wonderful little message that I'd been hoping for.



We can request more than mere info from the Laputians? :incline: We'll have to take advantage of this. Note, had we exchanged info with the Servants, we'd have gotten info, but never this chance to actually gain resources and stuff.
We dive directly into the diplomacy screen and start clicking buttons.




So, no reinforcements eh? This is why I don't play this game on Ironman. There are literally no reinforcements to get, so losing a soldier is a blow you cannot recover from. This is a slight lie, as you can get two more pure soldiers, should you lose someone from the team, but I loathe said soldiers, and you won't get to see them. The two other human reinforcements are already present as Blondie and chzr.
Anyhoo, we click on the Request Supplies button instead.




That sounds nice! :incline: Hope they bring some goodies for killing aliens. :M
We've not laid idle here on Mars though, and we've managed to research and produce our first suit of heavy armour. Cassidy gets the honour of taking the virgin voyage in it. :salute:



The suit gives him 50% resistance to bullet damage, but makes him a larger target, prevents him from crouching or going prone, and he cannot run, only walk when wearing the suit. Yet, the added protection makes up for this. :smug:
In our base, we've finally gotten enough resources so we can build a second lab.



This will be vital for our efforts to stay on this red rock of a planet. You just have to remember to move some technicians into civil engineering, when you've commissioned a new building, or you're going to wait forever.. :M Anyway, we're quickly running out of room to expand our base, so we start a new research project in the freshly built lab.



It's going to take a while though, as the secondary lab is very lightly staffed at the moment. Only yours truly is working there, as we've got 3 scientists bettering themselves in the university, one scientist out on an away mission, and Korenzel is doing technician duty. :salute:
While waiting for research to complete and a spaceship to arrive from Earth, we send the grunts to do some more defensive missions. Even though I've installed a mod to reduce the number of attacks, I still get plenty it seems. Must research some kind of deterrent..






Due to different skillsets, I've sent Blondie along as our resident soldier/scientist instead of eklektyk, and Storyfag fills in for Shagwell, as the former can wear a heavy suit. This setup seems to be working nicely for now. :salute:
The event we've been waiting for finally fires.







Cute, Korenzel seems happy with the supplies, and Diggler wants more of the BFGs, yet Drakron, the spoilsport claims it's not feasible to build more..
Let's look at the supplies first.



So you can see our fuel level is increased by 1 via a trade agreement with the reticulans, and now our noble metals level is also increased, this time for free, via the supplies we got from Earth! Not too shabby, though I could've wished for more. :M
Let's look at the weapons that got Diggler all hot and bothered...





Yowza! :yikes: 999 damage? I think I'm in :love: Cassidy and Juggernaut gets the two warp cannons. Unfortunately, we'll never get any more than these two, and they can only fire 6 shots per mission, but the raw damage.. Mhmmm...
We’ve far from taken Mars as our own planet, but with this backup package from home, we’re certainly looking better than when we first encountered those robots. :bro: I’m not going to post an updated roster yet, as nothing solidly interesting has happened yet, but I plan to do so in the next update.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,156
Note, had we exchanged info with the Servants, we'd have gotten info, but never this chance to actually gain resources and stuff.
Odd, if I remember correctly in my playtrough I exchanged infor with the servants, obtaining the knowledge of how to use shotguns (a very useful weapon in my opinion, better than the rifle) and yet the Latonians still gave me resource. Maybe in the modded version it works differently.
 

Azira

Arcane
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Messages
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Codex 2012
Alright people. Seems I might have messed something up when I edited the names of the soldiers. :M
I'm now at the point where the team has been joined by a pure scientist-class gray, the only gray whose name I didn't edit. The other grays that were supposed to join the team so far hasn't.
This means we'll not get to see grays or utilize their unique powers. I'm of half a mind to re-edit the proper files and start all over. There might be some slight differences in your builds when I reach the same point in the game as I am at now, but we've only just begun so it's still feasible to start over. But what do you guys say?
Yay or nay? Start over, or continue as is?
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,156
Start over only if there are worse bugs than this one (btw, when the Laputa ship arrives and you receive these 2 cool warp cannons, if I recall correctly another new soldier joins you as well, right??).
 

CrimsonAngel

Prophet
Joined
Oct 2, 2007
Messages
2,258
Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong
I would say start over.

WE NEED GRAYS....
OH and Drones GIVE me a drone named BOB!!!
 

Azira

Arcane
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Codex 2012
Well, I decided to do a quick overhaul of my own personnelmod.vfs, and unlocked the alien characters right from the start. To keep some feeling of chronology though, I'll hold off actually using and/or training them, until I would've gained access to them in the course of the game. :M
 

chzr

Scholar
Joined
Jun 26, 2010
Messages
1,238
Azira said:
Alright people. Seems I might have messed something up when I edited the names of the soldiers. :M
I'm now at the point where the team has been joined by a pure scientist-class gray, the only gray whose name I didn't edit. The other grays that were supposed to join the team so far hasn't.
This means we'll not get to see grays or utilize their unique powers. I'm of half a mind to re-edit the proper files and start all over. There might be some slight differences in your builds when I reach the same point in the game as I am at now, but we've only just begun so it's still feasible to start over. But what do you guys say?
Yay or nay? Start over, or continue as is?

they will leave you when you attack reticulans (which you will have to do to ally with expedition that will grant you the aliens you renamed)...
 

Azira

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Copenhagen, Denmark
Codex 2012
@chzr
The first reticulan allies never showed up, and when I allied with the Expedition, only the pure scientist showed up, he was the only gray I had not renamed. I clearly messed something up, but I didn't really care about the first two reticulan allies, as I knew they'd leave eventually. But when our permanent allies were a no-show also, that's when I was a bit annoyed.
 
Joined
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Traveling both time and space
If you really don't mind replaying/reposting all the stuff you already did, and really want to get those greys, go for it, otherwise continue with this one. In other words put my vote down on whichever you prefer, works for me either way.
 

spekkio

Arcane
Joined
Sep 16, 2009
Messages
8,278
I just wanna post that I did vote, but I'm not gonna spoil how, since I'm not an attention whore.
That is all.

:obviously:
 

Azira

Arcane
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Codex 2012
Once you get the hang of it, modding Afterlight (and supposedly the other games in the After-series as well) is surprisingly easy.
As I wrote in an earlier reply in this thread, I redid my own mod and added the aliens in from the beginning. They're just taking up space in the base though, as they will only be brought into the fold at the time where they would have joined, had I modded nothing.
I am almost at the point where I left this thread off before discovering said flaw in my modding attempts, so I expect to give you an update later this week. I will not be re-uploading screenshots from the new start however, so there'll be some inconsistencies. :M

In short, I went ahead and did these changes about 2 hours into the poll, when only two people had voted (and they voted for). If you don't like it, bad luck. :mca: You'll just have to roll with it. :smug:
 

Azira

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Codex 2012
Sadly our intrepid colonists on Mars encountered a hideous turd, happily bobbing along in the stream of time, and in order to not soil themselves unduly they backpedalled.
This in turn caused reality to back on itself in unexpected ways until it finally straightened out. As a result, not everything is as it was, but nearly enough so as to not upset the Auditors of Reality who have refrained from taking action so far.
In other words, welcome back to this LP, where we left off. Sort of.
Some things have changed. People still have the same names though, and follow their paths of self-improvement set down by you readers, but we'll now visit them at a slightly different point on that path.

First off, I'd like to more properly introduce you to the main antagonists in this LP. The Beastmen. They come in different varieties that have the decency to also sport different colour schemes, to make distinguishing between targets easier.
First off is our ordinary beastman soldier.



The threat this one poses is negligible. He is armed with the beastman pistol, short range, low damage.
Of a different threat caliber entirely, we have the Shaman.



This gaily coloured beastman is also armed with a pistol, but he loves sticking acid-damage causing ammo into the loading chamber, which makes him a much bigger nuisance. Paired with this, he also runs around healing beastmen you've knocked down but not entirely killed. A high-priority target. Take him down before he inflicts too many Damage over Time (DoT) wounds on your team, or you'll regret it.
Then we have the captain.



He wields a rifle, and he will continue fighting even when his health is in all red. You need to put him down for good. A larger threat than the ordinary beastmen, but I still target shamans before captains.
Not captured in a screenshot yet is the Alchemist. Quite annoying, as he wields a grenade launcher which lobs grenades in a trajectory towards your people, meaning he can fire on you from behind walls. Fortunately, grenades travel quite slowly through the air, allowing you to move people out of harms way, if the attack is made from a sufficiently far away.
Then we have the Chief.



An upgrade to the Captain. Also likes fighting on when his health is all red. He sports an even bigger rifle and can be a really painful opponent, as the AP ammo in his gun has a tendency to puncture spacesuits, also causing DoT, though not as much as the acid ammo will. Here's what the Big Rifle looks like.



Later on we'll meet other beastmen types, but these are what we've seen so far.
In this new reality, the expansion has been more agressive, which in turn has led to a larger reserve of resources for production, but also more territories to protect. This is a look at the current Geospace.



The Reticulans occupy the yellow territories to the south. They've not had much of an impact so far and can be safely ignored due to our alliance with them.
The red territories are occupied by beastmen, who are altogether much more aggressive. I've even let a few territories fall to them, to save our troops from some fights early on when our gear wasn't too impressive yet. White territories are neutral, often occupied by robots who seem annoyingly bullet-proof. Take plenty of ammo if you wish to seize robot territory. Or build some lasers, as they penetrate the robotic hides more easily.
If we take a look inside the base we also see some alterations.



It has been expanded. We've added three warehouses, to store excess fuel, metal and chemicals. We've also had to build a new dome, to house the different smaller buildings that facilitate the more advanced research and production. On the left hand side, we have the sattelite with the data-uplink. Below that we have our aqueduct ending with a water-tank addition. Below that, our solar panels have been upgraded to a fossil fuel power station.
Inside the domes, we've built quite a few buildings aside from what we start with: an additional hospital ward and additional lab. A shooting range, pyrotechnics range, tactical range, Mars simulation, pathology department, drone assembly and a chemical plant. All these buildings enable more advanced research, training and production, and space is at a premium, so you have to consider what you need the most. A new lab, or more hospital wards? So far, it seems to be working for me with just the two hospital wards, but we currently have room for quite a few more, should the need arise.
If we take a look at the overview tab, we can see just how different this timeline is with regards to resources.



The only thing amongst what we've currently researched, which we cannot build yet due to a lack of resources, is the laser cannon. All else is within our reach! :salute: Of course, as our research progresses, we'll invent even more destructive toys, that will require more resources, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. M:
Speaking of research, I decided to take screenshots of the "completed" tab in our research screen. If you're curious as to what a specific research topic has of practical implications, feel free to ask. There are still many more research topics to explore, and we're still in the early part of the game.






At this point in the game, the spaceship from earth has just arrived, carrying the warp-cannons and extra resources. In the other leg of the trousers of time, our resources did not permit us to produce sniper rifles. Now though, we're already hard at work.



Of course, to fully take advantage of these weapons, we need to also manufacture sniper scopes, and issue the customized rifles to people with major sniper training. :smug:
So, let's take a look at how the roster looks after our temporal hiccup.



T'Brow has finished Major Sniper training and is almost ready to start major beastman anatomy training. I decided to go for sniper training before anatomy this time, as the resources permitted me to produce sniper rifles sooner than anticipated. :salute:



Cassidy knows how to handle the heavy weapons and wear heavy suits. He's a tank. I just need to give him major anatomy knowledge and minor toughness, and he'll steamroll through the beasties. :salute:



Juggernaut is already training for major beastman anatomy. Together with the warpcannon, I expect him to be able to bring down almost any opponent in a single shot. :incline: :salute:



Bee has her major sniper training, but like T'Brow, she does not quite qualify for major anatomy yet. I expect her to rather quickly gain the experience needed though, once she gets a sniper rifle. :salute:



Kenshiro has been kept in the labs this time around, maybe not as honourable an occupation as making mush out of beasties, but his contribution to our research has been quite frankly indispensible. :salute:



eklektyk has been dividing his time between killing and researching and spending time in the sick-bay. The AI likes targetting whichever soldier/scientist that has medicine training. :incline: eklektyk doesn't have heavy equipment training yet, as his training time has been sparse, but once we're joined by some aliens, he'll have fewer shifts in the lab. He's quite deadly with the shotgun as it is. :salute:



Kz3r0 is another of our soldier/scientists that have been kept in the lab. She's doing a terrific job there, which is why she hasn't been in the field to be shot at yet. Haven't decided if she's going to be taken for a few fights or not yet. :salute:



Shepard, ever designing new ways of dealing death. :salute: He's specialized in the grays' technology, quite handy at this early part of the game. He'll get to collar-grab later.



Shagwell is training to be one of our snipers. She's also a very proficient technician and has been taking shifts in the workshop when our other technicians were learning how to better construct armour and weapons and whatnot. :salute:



SoupNazi is out in the field building mines and missile-stations, to defend our territories from attack. While this might not seem very glamorous, it is vital for our effort. :salute:



Storyfag is fully trained to equip both heavy armour and heavy weapons, plus he knows a few tricks of how to hurt the beasties. Like Shagwell, he's also been helping out in the workshop now and then. :salute:



Paccette rides with SoupNazi, building mines and missile batteries. Having technical abilities, you're just too much of an asset to be risked in the field. That might change once we have consolidated our grip on the planet though. :salute:



Drakron. When he isn't in the lab tending his research, he's bettering himself in the university. For now, he has focused on earth technologies and planetology, two major research areas. :salute:






SMA, Kuroneko, Diggler and Kaiserin do their time in the lab and workshop respectively. Their efforts are appreciated. :salute:



Happy, is happy. He's a major weapon smith, which drastically increases the speed at which he produces new weapons and ammo. :salute:



Yours truly. Spending most of my time in the science buggy, expanding our territory by building geo-sondes. Any spare time is spent in the lab.



Korenzel, our civil engineer. Really, you only need one technician specializing in civil engineering, but having that one specialist is definitely worth it! He's also found time to become an expert weapons and armour crafter. :salute:



chzr. Taking full advantage of her innate skill to learn quickly, she's soon becoming the machine of death we expected her to be. Armed with a shotgun, she can kill most enemies before they even know she's there. :salute: It's always prudent to have allies closeby though, in case she surprises a larger group she cannot down in a few shots.



Finally Blondie, who has done her leadership training. This affords protection from psionic attacks, which I expect will be very useful indeed shortly, once we start popping grays. :twisted: She can also almost start her sniper training. She's a little machine of death. :salute:

Once you get to the point where you can produce your own shotguns, do so! They are ever so useful, not only due to their damage output, but also because you can often knock down enemies with the blast. This doesn't seem to work very well on beastmen, maybe due to the hard tactical difficulty, but the damage output still means that if you have three characters concentrating fire on a target, said target soon drops.



250 damage potential, compared to 38 from the FN2000 rifle that you can produce as your first weapon. The rifle has longer range and burst mode, but once you get your speed trained, possibly coupled with athletics skill, the lower range of the shotgun quickly becomes less of an issue. Use them. You won't regret it. :salute:



Ah, and the warp cannons... :love:
In this screenshot, Cassidy is wearing the life support heavy armour. It has the highest environmental protection score available, but slightly poorer damage protection.



I have yet to produce a heavy battle suit, but we won't have to wait long. :smug:
There are so many entries here in the weapons and devices section, I decided to take screenshots of most of them. Let's start with the robots.



Yep, we can now produce robots. I made a promise, and the first one will be named Bob. Due to the production line being filled with rifles and ammo presently, we'll have to wait a couple of days game time, before Bob rolls off the assembly line. He'll be worth the wait though. :smug:
The rest of the screenshots I will give you is of the remaining equipment. You cannot directly see the stats of the weapons, as you need to equip them individually for that to display. Quite a hassle. But I thought this'd give you an overview of what is currently available for manufacture in our base.
















Any requests? If so, I'll try to fulfill them. In the next update, I hope to show you some more enemy types, advance a bit in the storyline and show you some of our alien allies. :salute:
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,156
One thing that took me a while to discover (especially because the game does not tell you at all), is that you can only capture xenos to investigate and later use their weapons if you have at least one free space (as in, one less person in the UFO). Still, it was quite fun to use the beastmen's weapons against them, you should try it at somepoint in the game.

PS: Be sure to betray and exterminate these rebellious greys as soon as possible :twisted:
 

Kz3r0

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2008
Messages
27,012
If I am more useful at the lab let me there.
:salute:
 

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