[Scourge of Ages]

Following the bold steps of Shade, Polpolion, and Trashman, we have here the LP (my first ever) of the sequel to X-COM. Join us for drama, action, tragedy, aliens, shooting aliens, and aliens shooting X-COM soldiers! I'm starting this away from home, so I won't be able to add any of you to the squad (yet, but I'll take applications), though for a little while, you won't want to be. I'll be using the default names for a while, so if anybody has any suggestions for custom names, I'll put those in too.

I'll try to keep reloading when things go bad to a minimum, so any fatalities are dead for good, unless we party wipe. I'm using a mod, but mostly just for bug fixes and to re-equip soldiers for each battle.

Story: In 2039, alien activity started to pick up, again. We thought they had been vanquished after their *spoiler alert* defeat on Mars. A faction of aliens were sleeping beneath the ocean, and were awoken by a transmission from Cydonia. Anyway, they're back and causing a ruckus, so X-COM was reactivated and kitted up with the latest in sub-marine equipment, and sent out.

Speaking of that equipment, here's our primary rifle:

It's... basically an airsoft-dart gun. And don't get me started on the pistol variant... it's not good. There's a heavy cannon version, which is useful for lobbing explosive shells long distances. We'll see that a lot.

So here we go! Let's start a new game, and play on "Superhuman" difficulty because why not.

January 1st, 2040: We'll put our first base right here, and I'll call it "Blue Canary". If you don't know what a standard base looks like, it doesn't really matter; plus I'll post a picture of it later. Since it is a standard base, I take care of first things, first:
I built an extra Living Quarters, a Wide Array Sonar, General Stores, and an Alien Containment. Purchased/recruited 6 additional soldiers, 16 scientists, a cannon tank and ammo, 2 more HE gas cannon clips, 1 phosphorous (incendiary) cannon clip, 6 more grenades, and 2 tazers.
Equipped my fighter subs with all torpedoes and sold off the craft gas cannons. Those cannons are rubbish.

I put my scientists to work researching the underwater medi-kit. It's very sciency, I'm sure, which is probably why we have to re-research something we already had 30 years ago...

January 13th: Medi-kit research completed, and manufacture began. Researching gauss tech now.
January 15th: I lost track a little, and gauss tech has finished probably yesterday, gauss pistols are researched, and I begin manufacturing as soon as the medi-kits are done; I only finished 3.
January 17th: Living quarters done, 12 more scientists hired. We're getting a little bored. Wasn't there supposed to be an alien invasion or something? The soldiers are tired of playing cards.
January 20th: Here we go! Port attack in Bombay. That probably shouldn't make me happy, but it's something to do.

Triton carrier sub is dispatched post-haste! We're carrying, in addition to the starting equipment, 5 gauss pistols, the tank, and 2 gas cannons.
January 21st: En route, gauss rifles were researched. More on that later, for now we've got aliens!

Touchdown! Tank goes out first, and fulfills its role, as, you know, a tank. It heads south and around the front of the ship.
Well, looky there, our first catch. A Deep One, if I recall correctly.

Another soldier moves out and spots our second catch.

That there alien's called a "Gill Man". Javier Centeno, the guy carrying the HE cannon, takes two potshots out of the sub. Both shots... miss wildly. See the smoke from the explosion, just a little too far away to do any damage? Yeah.


Emile Gautier fires three rounds from his dart rifle, and scores a lucky headshot. BOOM! HA HA!

At the end of the first turn, all of my soldiers are safely deployed behind the cover of my sub. Except for the tank, but it's a tank so it should be fine.
The aliens use their turn to murder some civies.

Mean of them, isn't it.

That's all I can type right now but I've got a bit saved up, so stay tuned for the exciting conclusion! (And let me know if I need to cut down a bit on the exposition or number of images or anything)

[Scourge of Ages]

And now, Part 2: The thrilling conclusion to: The Battle of Bombay!

Our brave, autonomous tank moves forward, and spots another Gill Man.

He seems to be unarmed, but I can't take chances. The tank misses a little, that is to say, completely.

We've also spotted another Gill Man, but he's behind cover and we can't get a clean shot. Javier applies some explosives to remove the cover,

and the other cannon guy moves up and blasts him. This guy's name's Victor Dudeski. I'm going to have to name somebody else "Broski" just to balance this out.

Moving on, we spotted another Gill Man lurking behind a yellow dumpster, and shot him a lot with a gauss pistol for another kill.

Do you remember this guy there? We still hadn't removed him, and now it's time.

I have a soldier inside our flying sub prime a grenade, but he's just short of enough TUs to lob it over the sub. So Gerard there, the soldier with line-of-sight, just shoots him.
The tank spots another Deep One along its path, and blasts it.

We're done, so it's the aliens' turn now. A sonic bolt comes out of friggin' nowhere, and Javier is down.

He will be missed, but we can mourn later; there're aliens afoot!

All right, my turn now, jerks. One of my soldiers who had gone around the back side of the map spots that same Gill Man from before up on the roof, shoots him, but fails to kill it. Did I mention the airsoft rifles we're using?


And there's that scum!

That's the one that must have hit Javier. Two of my soldiers' shots go wide, and  the Gill Man laughs at them. But do you remember the other soldier holding the spoon down on the live grenade? He throws it, hoping for a good secondary explosion from those barrels. On this screen, the grenade is the little pink spot sitting on top of the crate.

Surprisingly, my guy also has enough TUs for a snap shot, and is able to put the alien down early. It's a good thing too, because the grenade didn't do squat.

As my tank fights deeper into the map, it sees another Deep One,

shoots at it but misses. The shot hits the barrel that was close by though, which explodes enough to kill the alien.

Oh, this one again. Two soldiers auto-firing is enough to finally end him.


The aliens are up again, and on their Hidden Movement we spot two of 'em in a really sweet position.

A couple bursts from a dart rifle doesn't scores enough hits on either Gill Man to do much damage, or to detonate the barrels. A burst from a gauss pistol does, however.

Toasty.

The thing about Deep Ones is, they don't carry a normal sonic weapon like Gill Men and Aquatoids. They have a sort of biologically grafted weapon. It's short range, and fairly inaccurate; the discharge travels in an arc from the Deep One's head, and it looks like it's just spitting green stuff at you. Sorry I didn't get a screenshot of that actually happening. Anyway, Andrew narrowly avoided getting spat to death on the aliens' move, and turns about to face his attacker. He fires, and misses. He hits the barrel though, which is enough.


Victor moves up, spots a lone Gill Man, and blasts it through a fence

The tank moves up to clear out a shack, and is treated to a nice pair of aliens.

The Gill Man goes down, but the tank doesn't have enough TUs to get the Deep One. A soldier with a tazer moves forward, planning to knock it out from behind.

On the aliens' turn again, tragedy strikes! There's an alien hidden somewhere, and he shot my guy in the open.


Back to me. More business as usual, mounting casualties aside. See a Deep One, shoot it. While clearing a shack, see a Gill Man, kill it.
I didn't see exactly where the shot that killed my guy came from, just the sort of general direction it came from, so I sent my tank further south to find the naughty Gill Man, and on the aliens' next turn, he reveals himself!


The Deep One that was left alone in that shed isn't content sitting still, so pops out and spits at Estella.

It's not very effective, and combined reaction fire brings it down.

I order the tank to try to shoot down the wall to get at the sweet nougaty alien inside, but it doesn't work very well.

I'll keep my soldiers on that side of the building under cover, until the situation is dealt with, I can't spare any additional casualties if I can avoid it. I've got somebody coming up from behind.

He should be able to sneak inside while the tank has the Gill Man pinned down, and taze the alien.

Some more scouting, and we spot an Deep One on the second floor of a warehouse (look among those crates in the lower-left corner of the screen). After enough firepower gets poured in, it dies.


Another shack, another Deep One deep-sixed (I've been wanting to say that for a while now )


Gill Man Squad Leader Has Panicked and lost all his TUs. So sad. My guy runs in and smacks him in the face with a tazer.


Back near the docks, a lady aquanaut throws open a door to find a civie huddled in a corner, probably terrified out of his wits. Or perhaps I'm attributing too much AI to a 4 MB game?

How's it goin' sailor?

On our next turn, she moves up to see yet another alien on another second floor warehouse.

She shoots, but misses, and ducks back behind the cover of that shed that had the civilian inside.

I have another soldier in position, he'll flank the Gill Man.


Alas, on the alien's turn, he goes berserk and fires wildly at any target he sees. Unfortunately, instead of a harmless crate or something, he picks my guy that he can see through the window. It ends about as well as you can expect.

That's him, the mound of teal green near the top of the screen, being not alive any more. But Andrew climbs up, and shoots the offending Gill Man in the back. "This is for Jonesey!" (I forgot his real name, sorry dude)

And that's that for this mission.

All in all, it was a pretty good first mission, considering we had no armor, and mostly starting equipment. We got 21 aliens, and only lost  3 X-COM operatives. 8 civilians were saved too, that's gotta be worth something...
And we got loot. We'll look that over when we get back to base.

That's all for now, but I'll try to post at least one mission per week, unless I find some extra time. I didn't realize how long one of these takes to put together. And seriously, if anybody has some advice on how to do this, I'm all ears.

[Colonol Dekker]

Alas, no advice, but a request........

TO BE A SENIOR RIFLEMAN !

[TrashMan]

Make me a heavy gunner. The heaver the better. I like big'uns, and I cannae lie!

[SpardaSon21]

If there's a shotgun, I want one of those.  If not, I'm fine with being your average rifleman.

[Scourge of Ages]

Dekker: Rifleman... Check
TrashMan: Cannon guy... Check, but you might have to carry a rifle for a little bit in between having gas cannons and sonic cannons
Sparda: No shotguns, so rifleman... Check

When I make fresh episodes, you're all in, and you'll show up after I finish going through the buffer I have saved.

[Scotty]

I'd like to be a pilot of whatever kind is used in this game.

[TrashMan]

TrashMan: Cannon guy... Check, but you might have to carry a rifle for a little bit in between having gas cannons and sonic cannons

As long as there's a lot of Dakka.

The bigger the caliber OR hte more rapid hte fire...either will do.

[Scourge of Ages]

I'd like to be a pilot of whatever kind is used in this game.

I tried, but there's no way to rename a craft, that I could find. However, since at least one soldier is required to be able to fly transports to and from missions... Congratulations! You're a rifleman!

[Scotty]

You can't rename pilots?  That's dumb.

[Scourge of Ages]

Eh, it is what it is. And there's not so much "pilots" as "names of ships". So, it's only Barracuda-1 or Barracuda-2, etc.

Moving on, we have a couple of short missions and a lot of research progress.

First order when we get back to base after that big mission, is to replenish our funds a little bit. Interestingly, each alien corpse sells for 20k. Who's buying alien corpses? What do they use them for? These are silly questions, and the answer probably rhymes with "Sushi".

But we have money, so that's good.

A few days later, my scientists finish research on the gauss rifle clip and started on the Deep One corpse. If I recall correctly, this should lead to something very useful. A couple of days later, the research is finished, and... YES! Aqua plastics! Started on that.


We got a nice injection of funds at the start of February, and immediately spend a bunch of it. I know that in the future, I'll be needing a second workshop and another living quarters, so up they go.

Hey, there's the base I was telling you about. Everything is either pretty straight-forward or not particularly important.
And also with those funds, I finally hire enough scientists to take the total up to 50, and 3 more soldiers to replace those lost.

February 5th: I have enough gauss weaponry to  completely replace all my jet-harpoon guns, so they're out. I order 10 more technicians to help with production in the near future. Even the few times when there's not things I'll be needing, manufactured stuff always sells for a profit.

February 8th: We researched plastic aqua-armor, but I can't produce any without aqua plastics. Those are typically recovered from enemy subs, but since we haven't so much as spotted any, we're forced to manufacture our own plastics. They don't cost anything but money, so it's cool.

February 13th: Finally, finally, we spot our first sub. It's a very-small, and I send Barracuda-2 up ('Cuda-1 carries the heavy torpedo, which will one-shot a very-small, which I don't want).

There it is, and pretty easily, it's downed. We wait until dawn and send out the transport.
By this point, we have enough gauss rifles and pistols to outfit the whole 10-man squad

Heh, Emilio Estavez.

Here we go. Tank and three soldiers move and fan out.


There's the ship, just south of ours.



It's a sunken airplane map, and I know the aliens love to hide on the top levels.

Sure enough, the tank spots one.


The tank is absorbing fire from the alien, but it's ineffective. I've got a guy sneaking around behind, and hits the critter with a tazer.


Oh, that was the only alien here. Mission complete!


February 14th: Research on Sonic Pulsers (alien grenades) is complete.

And I start research on that captured alien.

February 15th: We've spotted another very small sub and send Barracuda-2 after it again.

We're led on a merry chase across the Atlantic and South America. We can't engage over land due to being armed with only torpedoes, so we catch up and finally shoot it down just East of the Cape.


When the transport lands, we spread out in standard formation, flowing around the craft. It's a nice coral reef map, offering lots of nice cover.


An alien is spotted, but the terrain around it is not revealed; sometimes this happens. It's OK, because my Javier can still hit him from here, and he does.

That was the only one on this sub, so it's Mission Complete again.

February 16th: We researched that Aquatoid. They're pretty freaky lookin'

This gives us access to a new research called Alien Origins, which we begin.

[Scourge of Ages]

February 21st: Small sub spotted in the mid-Atlantic. Barracuda-1 is deployed, it's the one with the D.U.P. heavy torpedoes. As my craft closes in, we get a good look at it.

Our sub goes on the aggressive, and unloads all its D.U.P. Head torpedoes, but don't get enough hits to sink it, and the little bugger runs away.

February 22nd: As Barracuda-1 continues to chase the enemy sub down, the research on Alien Origins pops.


While that's interesting enough, it's not particularly immediately important. I finally catch up and shoot down the alien, with only one torpedo to spare.


Triton out! Well, it's a nice peaceful lava map. Fortunately, the terrain isn't dangerous, so long as we don't step on any of it. It's impossible to step on it.


There's an Aquatoid pretty quick who gets sniped (snope?) by a sweet shot from Lieutenant Andrew. Moving forward a bit more toward the downed sub, another alien pops out, shoots one of my soldiers twice and does almost nothing! That's the wonder of armor!


I can't get a clean shot through the half-open door, and Andrew couldn't quite get a grenade through the opening, it says he can't throw there. So he's holding the spoon closed on a live grenade (this happens a lot, but it's cool). My torpedo guy fortunately is close enough and puts a beautiful shot right through the door.

It's his first torpedo ever fired and he gets it right on the money. Ka-BOOM!


Meanwhile, another squad happens upon a pair of Aquatoids hangin' out. One of 'em dies pretty easily.

But everyone else around can't even get close enough with explosive rounds to hit the second. Lyudmila misses wide with Phosphorous rounds, and just sets some rocks on fire. Andrew's live grenade gets tossed right next to him, detonates, and inexplicably doesn't do squat, except irritate the critter.

I'm all set to absorb some sonic pistol shots, but I guess the alien panicked or something, and all he did is run and hide.

Another round of useless explosives later, and 6 little pistol rounds from across the map takes him out.

That should have been everything, but the mission hasn't ended. There's one left, somewhere. I scouted the whole map, and it turns out that the last one standing was actually really close to the sub. Rookie gets him, and that's that.

February 28th: Another small sub is spotted, and Barracuda-1 busts it off the North American East Coast. Triton crew goes out and brings back another load of aliens. No casualties, but nothing really interesting to report either.


Bonus Preview of our next episode!

February 29th: Aliens launch port attack on Tokyo. Oh no! Triton away, as always.
March 1st: On the way to Tokyo, the month rolls over and we get more funding. And a small sub is spotted near our base and shot down easily. We'll deal with that one later.

Upon touchdown, my tank heads out and around the front of our craft, he reveals one Gill Man, and spots two more aliens, but they're hidden. The tank doesn't fire immediately.


Lyudmila exits the Triton and spots a Gill Man with a sonic cannon. She very carefully takes aim and fires a burst of 3 rounds, and misses horribly. This doesn't draw any reaction fire, probably because the alien would have to see the action to react.


Emile Gautier steps out, fires three rounds, and hits with one. The shot doesn't do much to the tough alien, except get its attention. This does draw two shots of reaction fire, one of which goes wide, and the other hits Lyudmila squarely. She doesn't stand a chance in only plastic armor, and dies.


Emile fires again and puts an end to that alien. This doesn't bode well. The score is 1/1 so far, we'll have to work on our k/d ratio.

[Scourge of Ages]

Combined fire from the tank and soldiers clears the immediate area around the Triton of threats, and I begin to fully deploy soldiers. During the aliens' Hidden Movement phase, we spot one carrying a sonic cannon moving around to the North-West.


South of him, is an apparently unarmed Gill Man. That means he's likely an Engineer, and would be very useful if captured alive.

I start to run my primary stunner, Javier, in that direction to get into position.


He spots a Deep One, but Emile takes it out so Javier can use all his time units to run. Moving forward, Javier spots that Gill Man from earlier, and a Deep One to boot, right in his path.


He fires, but is unable to kill the alien. Nobody else has a clean shot or enough TUs to save his bacon, so I do the only thing I can do: I move my tank in between the Gill Man and Javier, to tank.


The plan works well, and the tank absorbs a sonic cannon and sonic rifle hit from another Gill Man, and is still alive. Unfortunately, Javier gets shot by a different alien hiding in a warehouse office to the North-East of our sub. It's only a pistol wound, but it's fatal, and Javier dies.

Next turn, the tank is able to kill the cannon-wielding alien, and my other stunner, Miguel, is able to shoot the previously unknown Gill Man with his gauss pistol.


Estella attempts to use some HE rounds from her cannon to blast open the warehouse where I know that Gill Man is hiding, but she misses and just sets some trash of fire instead.


On the aliens' turn, a sonic blast comes out of frikken' nowhere and kills Emile.


While my soldiers down there scramble to find the source of the blast, Estella spots a different Gill Man on the third floor of that warehouse. Perhaps to make up for her terrible aim earlier, she puts a round right through the slit window and into the alien's face. It explodes.

All that's left behind are some burning boxes, smoke, and gill chunks.

One of my greener Able Seamen, Deborah Aguila, moves forward, and spots the Gill Man who shot Emile.

She fires, but misses. The Gill Man fires back, killing her.

Miguel has managed to get up to where the unarmed Gill Man was.
   
He hits it once, but the alien is still standing. Miguel backs out of the shack to wait for next turn, and spots a Deep One hiding right in the other corner.

He can't kill it, so the tank moves up and takes a shot, but that doesn't kill it either. We'll just have to hope that neither of those aliens have figured out how to open doors, or either Miguel or the tank are likely to die.
And it works! On their turn, the aliens stay kindly on their side of the gate.

The Gill Man sniping at my soldiers near the sub is still there, being all threatening. So next turn, rather than taking chances, Emilio Estavez throws a sonic pulser from his position on the wing of the Triton to where he knows that  Gill Man is hiding.

We'll have to wait to the end of the turn to hear if it works or not.

Back to Miguel! He opens up the sliding gate, runs in, stuns the Gill Man.

And then he shoots that Deep One and kills it. That's enough for that turn, I think it worked rather well.

The grenade goes off and I listen for the telltale SCREEEEEEEEE of a dying Gill Man; and there it is.


While that worked perfectly, it turns out that the Deep One that Miguel shot, was in fact not the same one from previously. It was still hiding in that little room, and killed him on the aliens' turn. Astra Donski was nearby and came in and finished the job.


Over the next couple of turns, I send two soldiers to flank the warehouse with the hiding Gill Man in it, and elsewhere, Lieutenant Andrew Northcott scores a magnificent aimed shot from clear across the map, and through light obstructions, to plant an explosive cannon round in the face of another Gill Man that had been dueling with my tank.

From here out, it should have been a simple mop-up. But it was not. Andrew came off his overlook to engage the warehouse-hiding Gill Man. He shot the alien once with a armor piercing round, but it didn't kill it. The Gill Man returned fire, wounding Andrew. He sustained three critical wounds, and was knocked down to only 8 health.

Each critical wound depletes one HP per turn, so he has 3 turns to get some medical attention. He runs north toward Astra Donski's position, and she changes course to meet him with her medi-kit.

Emilio finally sneaks around through a secondary entrance to the warehouse, and pumps three rounds into that Gill Man, ending his reign of terror.


On the next turn, Andrew collapses from smoke inhalation and pain from his wounds, but Astra is close enough and is able to administer aid.

Three heals and a stimulant later, and Andrew is back on his feet.

As Emilio heads back to check out that back room of the warehouse, an alien inside reaction-shoots him.


On the aliens' turn, that same alien comes out the other door and hits Estella in the head.


Reeling from the losses, Astra just throws a grenade into the back room, obliterating the scum. From that point, it's only a mop-up operation. And victory, but at a great cost.


Lyudmila,  Javier,  Emile,  Deborah,  Miguel, Emilio, Estella. You will all be missed. I can't help but feel partially responsible for the losses. If I had paid closer attention to the aliens' moves, and had planned a little better to keep my guys out of danger, perhaps some of these deaths could have been avoided. Or perhaps it was just one of those things.

The final k/d ratio is 18/7. Not good when you have about 14 soldiers protecting the whole planet.

Suddenly under-manned and under-equipped, we allow the downed sub nearby to languish. I don't know what happens to them if you don't recover them, but eventually, the crash site just disappears.

[Scourge of Ages]

March 10th: Replacement soldiers have arrived, and enough armors have been manufactured for all 10 soldiers. A small sub was spotted in the Atlantic, and Barracuda-1 dispatched.


It's heading South, and it doesn't look like we'll be able to catch it on a single tank of gas. Sure enough, 'Cuda-1 catches up, but it escapes immediately, and my sub hits bingo fuel shortly thereafter. Barracuda-2 and the Triton are dispatched (so that I could land and attack during daylight if it's shot down), but the alien ship goes out of range and tracking is lost on it. All ships return to base for refueling. Alien sub 6 resurfaces soon, over North America. Barracuda-2 is on the case, and after a brief battle, shoots down the alien. It's a new model, one I haven't seen yet, this game.


The Triton lands around dusk, just in time to not be too dark to operate. It's a fairly mundane mission. Only aquatoids about, and the rookies make a good account of  themselves. There's only one loss, a rookie who died to a sonic pulser. We captured 2 live aliens, but I don't know what their roles were; they must have been knocked unconscious in the crash.

And so ends the pre-recorded buffer! Finally! Next up, we get the whole custom squad out.

March 14th: Small sub spotted, 'Cuda-1 out. The alien sub escapes, my sub runs out of fuel, and Barracuda-2 can't get there before it disappears. It comes back by our base on the 17th, the fool!, and I go after it again. A fierce battle ensues, but despite taking minor damage, Barracuda-1 prevails and shoots down the alien.

Before dawn even rolls around, another small alien sub pops up near my base. Barracuda-2 chases it to the southern coast of Africa, and dual torpedoes knock it down.

The Triton takes off for the first crash site once dawn... dawns.


On mission start, the tank goes out as usual, followed by Dekker and Sparda, and TrashMan on the next turn. It's another volcanic map.

During the aliens' turn, we spot one moving around behind a hill.


Dekker's nearby, but opposite of another hill. He primes a sonic pulser and hocks it over.


The grenade explodes quite well, and on the next turn the tank surveys the damage. Two bodies! And check out the chunk missing from the hill too.


As our soldiers swarm over the map, we spot the enemy sub. We know there's at least one alien hiding out in there. And Dekker spots another Aquatoid wandering around outside, sneaks up on it, and shoots it until it dies.


While my soldiers form up around the sub, Son of Dudeski puts explosive rounds through the gap in the hull.

If there's any aliens near that gap, they're going to be well pinned down. That's the theory anyway, I'm not sure the AI is smart enough to stay pinned down.

Anyway, we storm the sub, and Rakshasa spots him first, and she gets the kill.

[Scourge of Ages]

Guess what! I've been sitting on this update for a week or so until I had some more to show, but I'll just put it up now. Remember, I'm still accepting applications!
Now without further ado, let's get back into it:
When we last saw our team, we had just handled a small sub crash, and had another lined up for the taking. We go to it after waiting for daylight. It's mostly a standard mission, with slow advancing and eliminating aliens by the numbers. Near the end of the mission, Rakshasa spots an Aquatoid around the bow of the enemy sub; she lines up a shot, drops to one knee to aim, and the alien takes a snap shot at her. Even at that range, it hits, and she drops.
Dekker shouts “nooooooooooo” and tosses a grenade over the ship, and blows that jerk to flotsam. The team storms the sub and finishes off the rest of the aliens for a successful mission.

Back at base, everyone takes some rest while the Triton is re-equipped. Ravana is assigned to the empty spot, and the last three gauss rifles are finished producing; the team is fully equipped with two gas cannons and HE rounds, two pistol/stun rod combos, and 6 rifles.

As we wait for the next thing to happen, research on the transmission resolver is complete. This will work much better  than just my standard sonar arrays, and production begins a few days later. I'll consider building a sensors/attack sub base next month.


A few days later, two separate very-large subs are spotted a few hours apart. I don't even bother attacking either one, as my ships would be extremely likely to not survive. I will follow them, however. It's possible they're supply ships, and I could get a lead on an alien base if my sub is close enough. They come around and leaves again a number of times, and I can never see where they're going or where they've been.

A few days later, a medium pops up, and I send my subs at it. It goes down surprisingly easy.


As we move forward toward the enemy crash site, I notice something on the first alien move.


The weapon that one Aquatoid is holding is bad news. That is an alien torpedo launcher, equivalent to the blaster launcher from the first game. I spot at least two others moving around. I find this understandably distressing, but fortunately none of them fire.

So I set upon them, and begin the dirty business of dispatching aliens. I was able to get all three rocket launchers, but there were a few others still alive: some looked unarmed, one was carrying a stun bomb launcher. The stun bomb alien kept trying to shoot my tank, which did nothing, as it is a tank.


Then, a strange thing happened. An alien threw a grenade, but not at my guys, it landed right on one of the surviving aliens.
Thumbnail's broken for some reason

Alas, on another turn, an alien on the wrecked top level of the alien ship throws a grenade at one of my soldiers, which kills Luci, and critically wounds Son of Dudeski. Luci was carrying the medi kit, so Spardason runs up, grabs it and heals Dudeski up, while Dekker and Scotty put some fire into the top level of the sub to clear out the trouble maker.

Did I mention that we're under constant psionic assault? Because we are. Mostly Son of Dudeski and Dekker are the targets. That explains Dekkers low morale and subsequent panicking like a girl. Seen here:


Anyway, here we are storming the staircase leading up into the sub.


And here's the team kicking down the doors and shooting aliens. Broski takes down the last alien for a mission complete.




Oh yeah, everyone, how's the thumbnail thing working for you all? Is it ok, or would you rather just see all the full size pics like in NGTMs-1R?

[jr2]

Sign me up. Rifleman, I'm sure you saw my post in the other thread.

[Polpolion]

Sign me up for whatever. Also I'd prefer bigger pics just so I don't need to click to see the detail.

[CommanderDJ]

Sign me up too. I wouldn't mind shooting things.

[Scourge of Ages]

Heh heh heh. Got it, jr2, Polpolion, DJ.

[Ravenholme]

And me