Just one more day.. (X-COM)

[Batman]

Well that should have been retroactively so I'm not doing all that hot in the smarts department myself.

[Dark Silver]

Technically Josh, you met Batman a few years ago...SDnet, remember?

And I have little doubt, old friend, that you will find ways in your tequila soaked mind, to kill my avatars in the game.

It's one of the few things you were good at

[Josh]

I was referring to Havoc, actually. Bats and I used to spar all the time back in the day. Alfred used to chip in more, but he's taking it easy these days.

Man, I'll get the game in a while but I'm still wading through Borderlands 2. Bullets for everyone!

[Batman]

Alfred wasn't exactly a teenager when we started this foolish crusade and that was 73 years ago. Plus he possibly hates the New 52 even more than I do and every time he comes out and comments on my posts it's a tacit admission that the New 52 exists and is the Status Quo for the DCU. As long as remains in the drawer, he can pretend we're still safe and sound in the Timmverse.

Also, two actors playing him in 1.25 awesome modern iterations of the myth are dead and what with us being fictional characters we don't know what if any the effects are (though the death of Heath Ledger doesn't seem to have affected the Joker much so far, unfortunately).

[SirNitram]

Tev's death was the beginning of the end. Assaulting UFOs became more and more deadly with upgraded Mutons and Floaters, and before we could complete the Firestorm to get the Overseer down to our level, X-COM drowned in panic and downed satellites. Final mission was Darek(Heavy, suppression spec) and Batman(Sniper, long range spec) backed up by drone-tanks trying to stem the tide of Chryssalids in D.C... The failure meant the US withdrew from the project, and X-COM was shut down.

[frigidmagi]

You know, what happens when XCOM shuts down? Is Earth surrendering? Are all the nations pulling out and starting up their own programs? Is XCOM being replaced with a plan B? Are pigs rising up to contest with the aliens for overlordship over humanity and the Earth?

[rhoenix]

You know, what happens when XCOM shuts down? Is Earth surrendering? Are all the nations pulling out and starting up their own programs? Is XCOM being replaced with a plan B? Are pigs rising up to contest with the aliens for overlordship over humanity and the Earth?

"Plan B" in this case being "well, the reason those nice, friendly aliens attacked in the first place was because of that pesky XCOM group," and shutting XCOM down in favor of a new dawn of peace and understanding of the alien visitors.

Just remember, Chryssalids are involved with the "peace and understanding" part. I'll leave their precise role in such things to your imagination.

[Charon]

Just bought XCOM, and without having read this thread I started to change my vets nicknames to LibArc personalities. Marcao (Heavy) led an assault against an abduction in Ottawa with Charon (Assault), Hotfoot (Sniper), and Lady Tevar (Support) and another Assault guy where I faced my first Mutons and kicked their asses with a rocket to their faces. Charon got pinned down for a bit and shot to pieces, but Tev healed him up before she got critically injured and went down, but Charon managed to sneak in and stun the last muton to bring the combat to a close and get me a captive. Four Floaters, Two Sectoids, and Three Mutons down.

After that, Frigid Magi (Heavy) led a sniper, an assault man, and two rookies on a rescue mission in Japan that quickly went pear shaped when the Thin Men showed up and started poisoning everybody. Took out 8 of the fuckers but they killed my sniper (who had been badly poisoned) at the end of the mission. One of my rookies and Magi himself were down to one health left, and my assault guy was injured. Of special note however is my Chinese Bad Ass Mother Fucker of a Recruit who took down 4 of the Thin Men personally, giving her the current highest kill to mission ratio (Magi has the second highest, with 10 kills and 5 missions under his belt).

[Josh]

Sounds like Magi's heading for another promotion to me.

[Charon]

Actually he isn't.

It's been a very rough month as budget shortages have left me seriously behind. I am attempting to make up for my lack of putting satellites up now, during this month, but the budget shortfalls have meant that as more and more vicious enemies come into play, I have comparatively weaker and weaker tech to throw at them and to take the hits. The enemy have brought out the cyberdisks and Mutons are becoming more prevalent and the effect on my troops has begun to show. This is the bloodiest single month of my fight against the aliens

Magi went down when he got caught up in the crossfire of two mutons while defending England from abductions. Tev and Marcao were nearly killed when I accidentally got them too close to one another and a cyberdisk dropped a grenade on them.

The next mission was against a landed UFO in Egypt. Charon, Hotfoot, and an Assault Man, a Heavy, and my Chinese Support went in. My Chinese badass got caught in the hailstorm of fire from a cyberdisk and died. Then my heavy accidentally woke up three mutons and got caught in fire from all three of them, it took all three of them to do it, but they killed her too. Some slight good news though was that one of my Assaults ranked up and now can have a nickname. Still mulling over who he's gonna be.

It has been a dark month for XCOM, but I have a ton of resources now and will have three satellites in the sky before the turn of the month, hopefully giving me the resources I need to properly outfit my men.

[Josh]

Then he died like he wanted, underpaid and in the ranks.

[General Havoc]

Jesus, am I the only person who's been having a comparatively easy time of it?

I mean, it didn't start out easy. Casualties were thick in the first few missions, as I had to take a gamble on one of my missions and let two of my soldiers die of poison in order to save the others. Resources were tight, very tight, to the point where my research teams were periodically giving me unending shows of new, wonderful tech that I could not afford to put into play at all. There was a mission where my men could not afford to bring a medpack with them. Dark days. And meanwhile we had three different nations go ape-shit and threaten to leave the council, all three of whom were pacified only by the skin of our teeth.

But then... all of a sudden... everything fell into place. My researchers unlocked the secret to the alien plasma weapons, which meant that the small arsenal of Light (and eventually standard) plasma rifles I had accumulated were suddenly in-play, nearly tripling my forces' firepower. The British asked me if I would provide them with a dozen light plasma rifles (which I had on hand) in exchange for a truly obscene amount of money (thinking of reconquering the British Empire, are we?). Using that cash, I dampened down the terror with satellites, which fed back into even more money, and managed at length to outfit my most elite soldiers with the best armor money could buy. Having done so, they began to spend less time in the medical wing, which let them gain more and more experience, and become all kinds of more lethal. By the time Muton variants and Cyberdisks showed up, my men, to my astonishment, were more than ready for them. Hotfoot had become a supermedic, capable of restoring 10 health per medipack use, and my "capture team" of Cyncat and Rhoenix (Assault and high-mobility Support, respectively), were outfitted in Titan Armor and wielding Alloy Cannons and Plasma Rifles. Four or five times in a row, we encountered a brand new type of enemy and brought a living specimen back on the first encounter, which only kept the research machine chugging. Meanwhile, the addition of first Carapace, then Archangel, and then finally Ghost Armor made Marcao and myself, the team Snipers, into high-ground-hugging death machines, and the successful recovery of our first plasma machine gun gave Garvin all the firepower he needed once the really nasty shit like Sectopods showed up. It only got worse once I determined, through careful testing, that Frigid, Cyncat, and myself all showed Psychic potential, and managed to get all three of them into high levels of psionic badassery. This left weaker enemies unable to hide from us even with cover, and stronger ones unable to materially mess with us psychically.

We're now preparing for even bigger missions that may result in our ignominious deaths, but I'm actually feeling pretty confident. X-Com's finances are in excellent shape, the Council is brimming over with praise for our efforts, and my core team is comprised completely of hard-boiled Colonels, veterans of dozens of battles, each armed and equipped with the finest gear and technology known to man. Below them are a second team of men (Tev, Tortoise, Nitram, Steve) who while not quite as veteran as the A-team (Captains and Majors), are certainly more than capable of pulling their weight. Fully half of the team is psychic, with a track record of obliterating even the heaviest alien units in existence. And while not everything has gone smoothly (White Haven was brought down in a terrible disaster in Hong Kong, when a dozen Mutons ambushed our offload point), at least half of our ops now result in not only no casualties, but no injuries to the personnel, ensuring that everyone is ready for the next operation.

Here's to hoping we can ride this momentum to the end.

[Charon]

Well the month of hell is over and boy howdy was it bad. A total of 4 losses, and considering how I'd lost no more than one a month before that (minus the three you auto-lose from the first mission) it was pretty ugly. Worse yet, South America has pulled out of XCOM entirely. It was a tough decision to make and I had the satellites to cover them and bring their panic down, but decided that the future finances of XCOM were more important.

So coming into the new month my satellites were up before the change over and I went from 240 a month to 600. Most of it is spent now, but it has allowed me to seriously bulk up. My air fleet is up to two on every continent where XCOM has a presence, and I am working on my first Firestorm to come up. I have enough specialized armor and plasma/laser weapons to fully outfit my squad and with the upgrades I bought I will now drop with a full squad of 6 and spend half the amount of time that they normally would in the medcenter when wounded. In addition several excavations have begun to make room for further Satellite uplinks, workshops, and power generators.

[frigidmagi]

Arrggghhh! Stupid computer! Stupid Game! WORK DAMN YOU! Or at least give an error message so I know what's wrong and can fix it!

[Josh]

Whelp, as usual I'm late to the show, but with a 2K credit and an Amazon sale I went ahead and made the plunge.

I'll be lucky to have it installed by tomorrow, but soon I'll find out what all this talk is about.

I will do everything in my power to get Frigid promoted as often as possible.

[rhoenix]

Whelp, as usual I'm late to the show, but with a 2K credit and an Amazon sale I went ahead and made the plunge.

I'll be lucky to have it installed by tomorrow, but soon I'll find out what all this talk is about.

I will do everything in my power to get Frigid promoted as often as possible.

Just add the word "Frigid" when you hear the word "Commander" in the game. It's what I do.

[Josh]

"Imperious Lord Commander Frigid" has a real ring to it.

[Dark Silver]

He's going to murder the lot of you when he gets back from holiday you know.

[White Haven]

Naah, he's an officer now.

He has people for that.

[Josh]

Naah, he's an officer now.

He has people for that.

Downside is that we can't use the 'split up, he can't catch us all' tactic anymore.

[frigidmagi]

Downside is that we can't use the 'split up, he can't catch us all' tactic anymore.

Please, I'm a combat engineer. I don't need people to do my killing. I have explosives for that. Split up all you want, the claymores will get you anyways. At least you'll feel like you accomplished something before you died.

[Josh]

Please, I'm a combat engineer. I don't need people to do my killing. I have explosives for that. Split up all you want, the claymores will get you anyways. At least you'll feel like you accomplished something before you died.

But you mustn't get your hands dirty, sir. You have the the afternoon social to attend.

Don't you worry, I'll take care of all this sordid business.

[frigidmagi]

But you mustn't get your hands dirty, sir. You have the the afternoon social to attend.

Ah, Josh. You poor damned ignorant fool. Murdering you via high speed metal is my afternoon social. I would threaten to burn Texas to the ground afterwards, but really would anyone notice?

[Josh]

But you mustn't get your hands dirty, sir. You have the the afternoon social to attend.

Ah, Josh. You poor damned ignorant fool. Murdering you via high speed metal is my afternoon social. I would threaten to burn Texas to the ground afterwards, but really would anyone notice?

Oh oh, now this shit's getting personal motherfucker.

[Josh]

Whelp.

Tev was the first to buy it, got flanked by some dirty degenerate alien sumbitch before she even got to headshot anything with her new-found snipery-ness.

In other news, Scottie and Allen are stone-cold fucking killers, though Allen has a tendency to go in for paid days off with flesh wounds.

Also Frigid is getting promoted with customary aplomb.