After having read and participated in the
Scariest gaming monsters thread, I got an irresistable urge to replay a game that had me scared witless during many long nights of alien hunting. That's right, it's X-Com: UFO Defense. Or, as it was called here before the X-Com franchise got established, UFO: Enemy Unknown.
And as there are probably many people these days who have never played this gem of the mid-90s, I decided to use my new playthrough to write a Let's Play of the game so those who have never tried it can get some idea what they're missing. This will be mostly text, with images for illustration, so if you tend towards TLDR then this is probably not for you.
So, without further ado, let's play some X-Com: UFO Defense.
Index:
Part 1: Getting StartedAnyone familiar with X-Com (or easily bored) may want to skip the this part, as I do a lot of explaining the basics of managing the starting funds, initial basebuilding and getting your squad set for its first encounter with the alien menace, with only a little action at the end.
I will be starting this game on Superhuman difficulty. As this is the old DOS version played in DOSbox, it has a bug which was never fixed in an official patch which forces Beginner difficulty regardless of your selection, so for that to work, I've used the fan-made XcomUtil (
Link) tool to fix the issue and allow Superhuman to work as intended. XcomUtil also fixes a few other problems for the game in Windows Vista/7 via DOSbox, including the gamestopping Black Screen bug, so it is pretty much a necessity now if you want to play the original DOS version.
Besides that, I will be employing two other optional features allowed by XcomUtil. Specifically, I'll be using an option to rearrange the layout of the starting base to something which is remotely defensible, and I will be using the option to automatically, during the tactical mission loadout phase, equip my agents with the gear they used in the last mission, cutting down on time. The latter of those is a convenience change only and has no effect on the actual game, but the improved base layout does make defending against attacks significantly easier during the early game. I will defend this, however, by pointing out the fact that the default base layout is insane and should never have existed in the first place. Make of it what you will.
After choosing the difficulty, this is what you see. The Earth. And it is our job to protect it from the alien scum. To do this, we must first establish our base of operations. There are many options here - X-Com is funded by a number of nations, and they all want us to cover them, but we only get one base to start with. So do you cover a few big sponsors, lots of smaller ones, or somewhere in between? In addition, you will want to give some thought to maximising global radar coverage once you can afford to build more bases. As many as 8 total are allowed, but these are also the -only- places where you can site radars to detect UFOs, so keeping eventual radar overlap to a minimum while making sure as many of the landmasses are covered to as great a degree as possible is a bit tricky. Coverage over water is less important, and can be safely ignored if necessary.
I have chosen to situate my first base on the Crimean peninsula. This gives me radar coverage of all of Europe as well as Egypt, parts of Russia and a smigeon of India and Nigeria. Or rather, it will once I build a large radar system. As you will see in a moment, I start with only a small radar which has a range of 1500nm (that's nautical miles), whereas the large radar system I will be building has a range of 2250nm. I always site bases based on the longest possible detection range, as that is the only way to get decent coverage down the line given the 8-base limit. Other decent starting locations would be North America to cover the USA and Canada, or Eastern Asia to cover China, Japan and parts of Russia.
Here, you can see why I chose to site my first base as I did. Many countries in and around Europe are contributing to my budget, and while none of them can match the contributions of the USA, between them they add up to something like a third of my budget, all covered by a single base. And my interceptors have the range to reach East Asia, North America or the southern parts of Africa in a pinch, should they need to, though their time on station at such ranges will be very short indeed.
Here's my brand-new base. In the top row, you will see my three Hangars, each occupied by a craft - Two Interceptors for air combat, and one Skyranger transport to take my squad wherever they need to go. More about them later. Extending down the left side is the base Access Lift, General Stores, and the Living Quarters, followed by a Laboratory, a Workshop and a Small Radar going off to the right.
This is the improved, defensible layout I mentioned earlier. When the aliens attack a base, they can enter through the Access Lift and any Hangars the base might have, while your own troops are generally concentrated around the living quarters at mission start. As such, with this layout, you know where the aliens will be entering from, and the General Stores make a useful buffer and choke point between the aliens and your own defending troops. I will be improving further on this design later in the game, when money allows.
In the original layout, the two side hangars were at the bottom of the base, and the access lift in the center, meaning that in a base defense mission you would be immediately surrounded as well as having aliens drop down right in the middle of your base. Not good.
Top right you can see an overview of all X-Com bases. We have only the one, currently, but once I start to expand I can use those eight boxes to navigate between them, as well as see an overview of modules: green = completed module, and red = under construction.
Here I have ordered the construction of another general stores, another living quarters and the aforementioned large radar system that will allow me to cover all of Europe and the surrounding area. Last but not least, I'm building an Alien Containment facility, which will keep captured aliens alive until my scientists get around to examining them. Plenty other things I could build, but money is scarce at the start, and nothing more is badly needed at this point.
Worth noting is that base modules can only be built next to an existing module, and all modules must be connected to the access lift. Any modules cut off from the lift, for whatever reason, are destroyed.
My starting squad. You might think eight soldiers isn't a very impressive number for a global organization tasked with defending the Earth against all comers, but just think about what SG-1 managed with a meager four. Speaking of that... we'll need to give these guys some proper alien-fighting names.
And here is the detailed stats screen, which is also where you can edit the name of a soldier. The most important ones are probably time units, firing accuracy and reactions. Sadly, the very most important stat is not visible at this point in the game. These are good starting stats, by the way. In fact, these are utterly fantastic starting stats, and by far the best out of any of my soldiers. Only one name seems appropriate who someone who is likely to be my very most effective anti-alien operative...
Much better.
And here's the rest of them, with names to induce proper fear in any aliens they might come across. I'm likely to lose a number of them during missions, but luckily X-Com keeps a cloning facility on retainer, so I have access to an infinite number of replacement troops... as long as funds last, at any rate. As you may have noticed, I've also hired two more soldiers to bring the total to an even ten.
Those soldiers came from here. This is where all purchases and hiring of new staff is done. Before going to this screen, I went through my stores and sold everything but pistols, rocket launchers, smoke grenades, avalanche launchers for my interceptors and any ammo for the above. Why? Look at the total cost of purchases in this image. I needed to get rid of anything I would not immediately use in order to cover the bill for these essentials:
- Two more soldiers, the same two you've seen just before, for a total of ten.
- Twenty more scientists. You start with ten, but that is nowhere near enough. A lab can actually employ fifty, but since my living quarters hold fifty as well and I only have one as yet, which is shared between soldiers, scientists and engineers, this is as many as I can fit until the new one I ordered is finished.
- Three Avalanche launchers + ammo for my interceptors.
- Two Tank/Rocket Launchers, plus some HWP Rockets. HWP stands for heavy weapons platform.
- Some more pistols + ammo
And with that, I'm done.
And nearly broke.
Fortunately, research is free. Well, free except for the salaries for your scientists, but that is paid only at the end of the month so it doesn't concern me just now. I get my lab boffins working on developing laser weapon technology, which makes an excellent upgrade from the pistols I'm currently equipping my squad with. The other options here, medikits and motion scanners, each have their use, but none of them will help me kill the enemy... and those pistols I'm using now won't last more than a month or so before being thoroughly obsolete for everything but improving stats.
My glorious fighting vessels. Here, you can see that each of my interceptors is equipped with two weapon systems, while my skyranger has none. As it happens, the weapons the interceptors start out with are woefully underpowered, and I will be replacing them immediately with the Avalanche launchers I bought before. Additionally, I will load my skyranger with all ten troops, as well as one of the two rocket tanks I bought. The second is here to assist in base defense, and in case I get enough wounded troops to fit it on the transport while they recover. I'm equipping the agents themselves with pistols at the moment, as their high rate of fire coupled with modest damage lends itself well to training two important stats... something my agents definitely need to do now while the aliens are still just getting started.
In addition, the pistol is light, and not everyone in the squad has the strength to lug around heavy weapons yet.
But that will come, in time.
Time does not stand still, though... and the aliens have their own agenda.
While I was waiting for my new purchases and personnel to arrive - something which takes between twenty-four and ninety-six hours for items, and seventy-two hours flat for personnel - the following happened:
A very small UFO has been detected, and now I need to deal with it. If I ignore it, I will lose favour with my sponsor nations, and if I do too badly a couple of months in a row, they will terminate the X-Com project and the aliens will win. We don't want that, so I dispatch an interceptor to deal with it. As you may be able see from the map below the intercept screen, night is falling in Europe at this point. Had it been daylight, I would have let the UFO land and assaulted it without ever going through air combat, but night missions with an unarmoured and underequipped squad are... ill-advised, to say the least, and I try to avoid them where I can.
As it happens, it is actually a stroke of luck that this UFO arrived so early. This is a very small UFO, and if you hit a UFO hard enough, it will be completely destroyed leaving you no crash site to raid for loot. And if this UFO had arrived after my new weapon shipment had arrived, my interceptors would be carrying the heavy Avalanche missile launchers. Now, though, they're equipped with the much less powerful Stingray missile launcher, which is actually capable of downing a UFO this size without dividing all of it into its component atoms.
The above image shows the interception dispatch screen, where you can select any craft from any of your bases across the globe and direct them towards their targets. Of course, we only have the one base at the moment, but it comes in handy later. You may notice that the Skyranger only has five agents aboard. The reason is that the weapons haven't arrived yet, and five pistols plus a few clips from my starting stocks are currently the sum total ground firepower of the almighty, globally sponsored, alien-fighting X-Com organization. Good timing, aliens, I'll give you that.
Even so, it pays to be careful. I select the "Cautious Attack" option and, in another stroke of luck, my interceptor manages to get close enough to actually fire at the thing before the UFO takes note and accelerates beyond the interceptor's ability to follow. Even the very slowest UFO still has a greater top speed than the fastest fighter craft available to X-Com at the beginning of the game, and it is a fairly common occurance for them to just run away if you try to get close enough for short ranged weapons.
During air combat, you can also see a side view of what your interceptor is fighting. This is handy when assessing the threat level of the UFO in question, as there are several types of UFOs in each size bracket, and one medium UFO might be safe to close with while another could blow your fighter to bits. This one, though, is quite harmless.
And there it is. One downed UFO. First blood to X-Com.
In the next part, I'll be doing our very first crash site recovery operation, and after that hopefully manage to get all the stuff I have in transit before anything bigger drops out of the sky to cause havoc.
It may take a little while, though. This was more work that I had expected
[Edit] A number of typos fixed. Also a few minor additions.
[Edit] Images lvlshotted.
