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Subject: "XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"     Previous Topic | Next Topic
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Gryphonadmin
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Oct-28-17, 04:37 PM (EST)
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"XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
 
   LAST EDITED ON Oct-29-17 AT 02:33 PM (EDT)
 
(Also arguably a bit spoily for the early parts of the War of the Chosen storyline.)

Well, partially against my better judgment, I went ahead and got War of the Chosen, because in the various gameplay videos I've seen, the quality-of-life enhancements and general updatedness of the game seemed more and more worth putting up with still more cheaty NPCs and the goddamn zombie thing to get ahold of. I'm a few hours into my restarted campaign now, and on the whole I'd say it has been worth it, although there have been some pretty ragey moments. I am in particular not down with Blackarachnia the Chosen Assassin and her habit of basically just doing whatever the fuck she wants regardless of the game's rules; much like the "rulers", she puts me in mind of nothing so clearly as a godmoding Dungeon Master who is tired of his players' characters being so good at combat.

However, this isn't about the ragey moments. This is about the moments when it's been worth it.

First, a brief introduction to the dramatis personae of this particular campaign's version of the game's serial reality. I started with a pared-down version of the character pool I've developed over the last couple of years, omitting (for purposes of not crowding the roster too much) the guys from The Mighty Jingles's original-flavor series (including Jingles himself), the re-created Jaeger crew from my own Enemy Within campaign, and sundry others, but including my NXE gang and a few others.

As such, our Operation Gatecrasher (diversion phase) team consisted of:

- D.J. Croft, UK (retroactively not "Langley-Croft" for reasons that will be obvious shortly), first Earl Croft, presumably also last Earl Croft since the British monarchy/aristocracy complex no longer exists;

- Marina Kirishatova, RU, who may or may not have been in supermax in Russia before the invasion, despite the fact that her prepackaged bio shows she wasn't born yet when that happened;

- Shinji Ikari, JP, who still looks terrifying with his father's beard and who is still bizarrely cheerful despite everything that is going on around him; and

- Dr. Gordon Freeman, US, who is not bizarrely cheerful and indeed seems to be pretty royally pissed off by everything, because I have the Freeman's Mind voice pack installed. His wholehearted "Jeeeesus Christ!" when the ADVENT Officer missed him was the highlight of the introductory mission.

Sadly I messed up the "photobooth" tool at the conclusion of that mission, so we have only this shitty poster of the Gatecrasher-2 team.

Marina and Freeman got completely cut off, the stock slogan is lame, either Freeman or DJ seem to be having some molecular phase problems. But at least they're in front of an ADVENT Burger. Dr. Tygan seems to like that for some reason.

Anyway, moving right along. One of our first scanning jobs once we were free to move about the countryside with the Avenger turned up a group of rookies, and—by the grace of RNGsus—they were...

... Hat Films. Seriously, I did not arrange that; I don't know of any way I could have. The game picked three rookies out of the pool who hadn't already been either put on my initial crew or chosen for the "recruitables" list in the Armory, and it happened to be those three. There, as my very religious former personal trainer would probably put it, is your sign.

In the interest of not having just the one squad who are good at anything, I lined up the Hat boys for the next mission, which was one of the newfangled assassination jobs in the sewers.

They and their new friend, Rei Ayanami, seem pleased with the results.

(No, Rei is not a Skirmisher in this reality. She just wears that Shield Bearer helmet because, and I quote, "I kind of like it in here. It's private." She became a Specialist after this mission, eventually earned the inevitable nickname "Zer0", and has evolved into one of my go-to combat hackers, the other being Freeman.)

Various and sundry jobs later, the team had its first couple of bonds in place. I mentioned that I retroactively deleted the "Langley-" from DJ's name in this case. That's because he and Asuka, who was not on the first mission but was in the soldier pool on the Avenger when we got there, have a bond compatibility of 1.5 out of 10. (Which is not entirely out of character. :) Instead, DJ, who became a Grenadier this time around, ended up bonding with Ranger Marina:

... while Asuka, also a Ranger, became close personal pals with...

... Genki Sudo out of WORLD ORDER.

Sure! I can see that.

(I'm sad I couldn't find a business suit cosmetic mod for Genki's armor. He looks so out of place in the junk suit. Maybe it won't seem so weird when I finally unlock Warden armor.)

Meanwhile, Gordon found his soulmate in the form of a fellow beard enthusiast.

Despite the incredible grimness of the setting, we've managed to have some wacky adventures, me and my mismatched metafictional crew, because we live in a universe that is ruled by the mercurial whims of the RNG, and the RNG is sometimes very whimsical indeed. For instance, there was the first retaliation mission...

... in which, quite frankly, the Resistance rifle guys probably could have handled ADVENT without our help, despite the macho posing Smith's doing there. Then again, he's probably earned a little posing, since if you don't count the aforementioned Resistance guys, he was the mission MVP. The only alien who really gave the local guards any trouble was the Faceless, and it was no longer much of a problem after Ranger Smith went over and carved its facelessness off. Also, honorable mention to Otto Keller from my original X-COM play, second from left, who I'm going to give all the enhanced Mobility I can find in order to better replicate his ancient self.

You may notice Outrider from the Reapers there; by then we had done the incredibly long and rather tedious mission that brings her and Worf Mox the Skirmisher into the fold, and then ushers Mox immediately back out of it in a blatant Cutscene Win for the cheatiest of the cheaty NPCs. Sigh.

Mind you, getting him back was amusing. Asuka and Genki found out where he was off-camera (a mechanic that continues to entertain me, because it reminds me of that joke in Invader Zim where the episode opens on the aftermath of a titanic battle that is never referenced again), and then I sent the beard team and Elena in to get him back.

Now, one of the recurring themes in my video gaming career to date is that I am shit at "stealth" gameplay. In games where you can either sneak it or shoot your way through, I will pick shooting 99.9% of the time, because I know I'm going to bungle the stealth part and end up shooting my way out anyway. Missions in otherwise shooty games that are designed to force you to do stealth, as the only way through, are usually dead ends for me unless there's a way to cheat past them (I'm looking at you, that one mission in the original Deus Ex).

However, for Operation Ice Shadow (the Mox rescue), I decided to play along and try to keep it on the downlow as long as I possibly could.

... and that turned out to be the entire mission. ADVENT had no idea the team was there until a Skyranger randomly swooped down to collect them.

Further entertainments followed, including the "skulljack an Officer" mission, which ended with the building where it happened burning down because of liberal use of high explosives in the subsequent termination of the resulting Codex.

And of course who can forget the "pick up the crates before ADVENT gets them, oh did we mention this city is long-abandoned and full of zombies despite the inexplicable sprinkling of brand-new crates?" mission, where, because that wasn't annoying enough, the Assassin showed up?

She's immune to overwatch in this playthrough, which makes her even more annoying than she already was. However, in this instance she did choose a very obvious piece of cover after popping up and shanking Mox, which made it pretty easy for Outrider and DJ (who by then had earned his callsign, "Longinus") to blow her the hell up. Which meant that whatever Bradford wanted to call the mission, we all knew what it was really called.

(For the record, the town in question was "Ruins of Kansas City", though which Kansas City was not specified and, in this context, is probably immaterial.)

Oh yeah, I also decided that we needed a proper medic, so I picked one of the randos on the roster who hadn't come out of the configured pool and started training her up for the role. Turner's first mission was a "hack the ADVENT container" job, which is ironic because that's a thing for the other kind of Specialist, but she got it done, helped out by the fact that—like his original vanilla-game incarnation—Shinji seems to be better at pistoling the bad guys to death than he is at rifling them.

Meanwhile, Hat Films were getting all the really glamorous jobs.

And then we got a Templar! His name is Victor. He's a bit intense and always wears a hockey mask, and on his first job for us (a retaliation mission), Starscream the Chosen Hunter showed up.

That poster tagline was the game's own work. I just added the qualification. Because I had to. Thank you, RNGsus.

You'll notice that Elena and Mox are on that mission together. They are pretty much always on missions together. That's because, I shit you not, this happened.

I guess it's true what they say: you get shot at alongside somebody often enough, you develop common interests. That's not bad for a couple of semi-NPCs who spent their first cutscene together seriously contemplating mutual murderation. Truly they are an inspiration to us all.

I think the bond mechanic is my favorite of the newfangled things in War of the Chosen, partly because it's a fun RP thing, but mostly because it's handy as shit. Remember the retaliation mission where the Hunter showed up? I had this great plan where Dr. Doom was going to shank him to finish off the mission, and then Vic rolled low damage and didn't quite kill him, which was very awkward since everyone else was out of moves except Ross, who had moved as far as he could without ending his turn and still couldn't see the sonofabitch.

But hey, you know how you can give your buddy your leftover action?

ROSS
I say Gordon, old chum, would you mind terribly taking this asshole out?

GORDON
Love to, pal, but I've only got a 24% chance to hit him from here. Although, hmm, I've got a shot of Combat Protocol left, I guess I could get Skippy to do it.

Yes, that's right, the Chosen Hunter's first brush with XCOM ended with him being executed by Dr. Freeman's flying taser.

That was deeply satisfying? But it wasn't the most satisfying Buddy Cop Moment I've had courtesy of the bond system so far.

No, that was DJ and Marina in the Conservatory with the Wrench "so listen, I know skulljacking an Officer really didn't go the way I told you to expect, but I really need you to shank a Codex now, I promise nothing super bad will happen this time OK - lots of love R. Tygan" mission. Because you know what happens when you skulljack a Codex, right?

Yeah, an Avatar shows up. And not the fun "four elements, pet polar bear" type, either. The kind with Eraserhead hair, lots of psi powers, and the ghost of an Ethereal lurking just behind it. (That's a cool visual effect, by the way, I don't remember it from my vanilla playthrough, but I suppose it was probably always there.)

In this case, it teleported in just as Zer0 was finished shanking the Codex (drawing the most adorably understated "... oh." from Rei, since I have her using a very taciturn voice pack labeled "Japanese Cynical Girl"), took stock of its situation, and immediately mind-controlled Marina.

I don't know if they've made mind-controlled squaddies able to use melee in War of the Chosen (IIRC they can't in the vanilla game), but even if they still can't, she's got a very heavily modified {rail|shot}gun that does a shit-ton of damage at short-to-medium range, and she had most of the team flanked, because I'd been so clever and spread them out to avoid the Codex's "ha ha your guns no work" trick for once. Sigh. (No good deed goes unpunished in XCOM 2, despite Merc's insistence that Firaxis is friend to all scrublords. :)

OK, don't panic, everyone. She can't move until their turn now, anyway. Zer0's done, Outrider's done, Mox is done and he's been completely useless this mission anyway. DJ. What've you got left?

Well, DJ could shoot the Avatar, but it's got so much health he won't kill it in one barrage unless he gets a critical hit. Ditto grenading it. He's also flanked thanks to where it popped up. There's decent cover over there, but he'd have to run and he'd end up right next to the mind-controlled Ranger.

... Who is his bestest buddy in the whole wide world.

So here's a thing about stage-2 bonds: the two soldiers who are in it remove negative psychological status effects (panic, disorientation) from each other if they're on adjacent tiles. I wasn't sure if mind control counted for that? But what the hell, it's a great opportunity to find out. Oh hey, it does! Well, that's handy.

Now, it was fairly late at night by this point, and I don't precisely remember what-all happened next. I have the sneaking suspicion that my memory is telescoping it all into a neater package than the game mechanics really allow for, though. I honestly cannot say for sure whether the status-effect thing mentioned above happens instantly upon the two characters coming into proximity, or if it's applied at the end of the turn, or whether a character recovering from mind control can act immediately or loses that turn.

I think it went down the way I'm about to describe, though, because I don't remember having to deal with any further attacks from the Avatar, which it surely would have made if another turn or two had gone by:

So. DJ just ran across the room and piled into cover next to Marina, which broke the Avatar's mind control over her. Now DJ's done too, because he had to run, but Marina's back, and she has the same problem as DJ. She could shoot the Avatar, but her gun isn't great at ranges that long, and she, too, wouldn't kill it. DJ's mag cannon has better odds of that. He'd have to get a crit, but he's got a better chance of hitting it in the first place at that range, and killing it instantly is less important now that there isn't a mind-controlled Ranger flanking everybody on the team.

OK, well, then—DJ, thanks for getting me out of that, have a third action on me. Please blast the Avatar in his/her/its face.

The Avatar was duly blasted in his/her/its face. Its reaction to that was to teleport to the back of the room, behind everybody... but then it didn't do anything. Why isn't it doing anything? Everyone's had a go now. Hell, DJ's had two. It should be hitting us with a Void Rift or something and seriously fucking up our day. Why is it not getting its turn?

Oh, right, Marina still has her second action. And that wounded Avatar just teleported to within walking distance of her. Excuse me. Avatar? My arc blade and I would like a word with you about that whole mind control thing. And I have a 10% bonus chance to hit you because DJ just shot you. Hold still. This might hurt a little.

Yeah. Her nickname is now "Murder Inc".

(As noted, the above may have taken another round or so of maneuvering to play out, although if it did, I can't for the life of me remember what the hell the Avatar did other than get shot, teleport to an awkward position, and then get its junk chopped off by an angry Russian. The point, either way, is that we only got away with it as cleanly as we did because of the various bond bonuses DJ and Marina had.)

After all that, the other Codex and its two MEC associates were kind of an anticlimax—particularly when Rei hacked one of the MECs and the Codex wasted its turn trying to kill it rather than, you know, her. These Codexes, man, they're marvels of psionic-holographic technology, but they ain't too bright.

(They look like they're rehearsing to be the worst Village People cover band ever, don't they?)

So anyway, yeah, that's all been very exciting and amusing, and I'm sold on most of the changes to the game that aren't the actual Chosen themselves or the zombies. I haven't met Megatron the Chosen Warlock yet, I assume he's going to be very, very annoying, since a) he's a Chosen and b) he's a psion, which I'm guessing means he'll play kind of like an Avatar who also cheats like a Chosen. I need to level up Dr. Doom some more. Actually, I need to level the whole gang up, I have the "hunt down and terminate" missions available for the other two Chosen, but I can't do them because no one's high-ranking enough.

Oh yeah, also, I've discovered that you can have the introductory missions from the two XCOM 2½ DLCs, there are checkboxes for them in the campaign-start screens. Bonus, if you don't actually get around to doing the introductory "rulers" mission, the rulers don't appear. Which is nice. By the time I get around to kicking that off, I'll have decent equipment and decently-ranked-up soldiers to deal with that crap, and maybe the person who wrote the "Rulers Take Normal Turns" mod will have updated it to work with War of the Chosen. That's just about the only thing that would make me willing to pull that trigger.

(Can one of those things randomly decide to crash the same mission that one of the Chosen has randomly decided to crash? Because that would be one hundred percent bullshark shit.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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  Subject     Author     Message Date     ID  
  RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Mercutio Oct-29-17 1
     RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) drakensis Oct-29-17 3
  RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) StClair Oct-29-17 2
     RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Verbena Oct-29-17 4
     RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Gryphonadmin Oct-29-17 5
  RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Gryphonadmin Oct-29-17 6
     RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) StClair Oct-29-17 7
         RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Gryphonadmin Oct-29-17 8
             RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) ebony14 Oct-30-17 10
                 RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) MoonEyes Oct-30-17 11
                 RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Peter Eng Oct-30-17 12
                     RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Mercutio Oct-30-17 15
     RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Gryphonadmin Oct-29-17 9
  RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Sofaspud Oct-30-17 13
  quick update Gryphonadmin Oct-30-17 14
     RE: quick update Gryphonadmin Nov-01-17 21
         RE: quick update Gryphonadmin Nov-02-17 26
             RE: quick update Gryphonadmin Nov-03-17 29
             RE: quick update Gryphonadmin Nov-04-17 30
                 RE: quick update Star Ranger4 Nov-04-17 31
                 RE: quick update Gryphonadmin Nov-05-17 32
  RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Peter Eng Oct-31-17 16
     RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Gryphonadmin Oct-31-17 17
         RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) ebony14 Oct-31-17 18
             RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Peter Eng Oct-31-17 19
                 RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Gryphonadmin Oct-31-17 20
                     RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Mercutio Nov-01-17 22
                         RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Gryphonadmin Nov-01-17 23
                             RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Mercutio Nov-01-17 25
  RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Peter Eng Nov-01-17 24
  RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) MoonEyes Nov-02-17 27
     RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Gryphonadmin Nov-03-17 28
         RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) MoonEyes Nov-12-17 38
             RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Gryphonadmin Nov-17-17 39
  just for the record Gryphonadmin Nov-06-17 33
     RE: just for the record Gryphonadmin Nov-08-17 37
  Ha! Gryphonadmin Nov-07-17 34
     RE: Ha! Verbena Nov-07-17 35
         RE: Ha! Gryphonadmin Nov-07-17 36
  RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Gryphonadmin Dec-04-17 40
     RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Trscroggs Dec-04-17 41
     RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Peter Eng Dec-04-17 42

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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
898 posts
Oct-29-17, 02:45 AM (EST)
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1. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #0
 
   The consensus on how Firaxis has pursued the design iterations of XCOM2 throughout the DLC and now this expansion, which I've seen from a great many people and which I agree with, seems to be "everyone gets ludicrous, borderline broken shit. The borderline broken alien shit takes the form of them throwing what are essentially one-alien-armies at you; the borderline broken human shit takes the form of lots of hardware and lots of specialist skills, allowing you to be able to set up super fucking sick combos with each other that make your team punch way, WAY above its weight class. Have fun!"

And if you get really lucky, sometimes you end up with a one-man-army yourself. I've seen gameplay videos of people who high-rolled a bunch of highly synergistic traits on a guy sending them out to beat back ADVENT by themselves.

The Chosen and the Rulers engender a lot of really strong opinions; there's a lot of heat against them and a lot of love for them as well. It seems to come down to whether you view them as cool-ass puzzles to be solved or if you view them as simply being so out-of-place and so powerful that fighting them feels like an unfair punishment rather than a bracing challenge.

And they are out of place, or at least, they're something of a big design departure. X-Com has always been very, very hard if you chose to make it so. (Terror From The Deep was just hard, period, no matter what.) But earlier iterations sort of... spread that hardness around through the normal guys you encountered and through logistical challenges. Enemies that broke the normal rules of the game were somewhat unusual and usually only broke said rules in limited ways; if an enemy had an opt-out to the standard rules, that was their one trick, their "this is my superpower" thing. Unique enemies weren't really a thing except in extreme cases; the brain in the original X-Com, that souped-up Ethereal in XCOM.

The modern incarnation of the franchise sort of dipped its toe in the water with an explicit class system and talent trees. Exception-based design; "these are the rules, EXCEPT if you have a special power that lets you break the rules." As noted above, sometimes the enemies could do this too, but it was a light touch.

The XCOM2 DLC appears to be where they just went "fuck it" and dove right in. Crazy boss aliens who "cheat." They don't have one superpower, their one cool trick, they're nothing but superpowers.

That's weird. They've never really done that before. Even the Codexes and Avatar weren't like that, although in hindsight they were sort of a taste of things to come.

It might have been aesthetically better to dial them back a bit. I think they'd be more palatable to the people who really can't stand them if they were more boss-y; that is, if their presence in the world did something like give a global buff to their affiliated "regular" enemy type and if you wanted to strip that buff away, you hunt them and kill them. Hunting down and killing colossal powerhouses like the Rulers and the Chosen feels a lot better if you're engaging them on your terms, if the flipside to "they're a one-man army" is "I decide how and when I'm gonna fight them" rather than "they're just gonna show up for tea whenever they like."

I dunno. XCOM2 has been weird. It's such a great game, but it has these odd moments of blindness. Like the timed missions in the pure vanilla version of the game. That was such a brute-force way of solving a player behavior problem and its presence was jarring alongside so many other great mechanics.

> (No good deed goes unpunished in XCOM 2, despite Merc's insistence that
> Firaxis is friend to all scrublords. :)

Hey man, the Rookie difficulty setting is right there. :)

-Merc
Keep Rat


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drakensis
Member since Dec-20-06
311 posts
Oct-29-17, 04:36 AM (EST)
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3. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #1
 
   I will certainly credit the Alien Rulers - specifically the Archon King - with being annoying hard to put down.

I'd seen it before on a mission but it was a timed extraction VIP capture mission so I just legged it to the pick-up zone without letting any revealed troops get spotted.

Second encounter was a Retaliation mission and I'd handled the other pods without running down my consumables too much so I set an ambush up...

And when half my squad were stunned, disorientated or dead I went away and had a long hard sulk about RNG and the inability to hit with overwatch shots, except when a dodge does just enough damage I'm getting pinions rain down with no chance to avoid them...

Fortunately I wasn't iron manning and a second attempt had some much better overwatch shots, even if neither poison nor frost seemed to slow the Archon King down significantly. It got away, but since it had no armour left, only half its hit points and took a couple more reaction shots as it ran for the portal I'm hopeful it'll be easier to handle next time...

D.


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StClair
Charter Member
694 posts
Oct-29-17, 03:28 AM (EST)
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2. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #0
 
   >And of course who can forget the "pick up the crates before ADVENT
>gets them, oh did we mention this city is long-abandoned and full of
>zombies despite the inexplicable sprinkling of brand-new crates?"
>mission, where, because that wasn't annoying enough, the Assassin
>showed up?
>
>She's immune to overwatch in this playthrough, which makes her even
>more annoying than she already was. However, in this instance
>she did choose a very obvious piece of cover after popping up
>and shanking Mox, which made it pretty easy for Outrider and DJ (who
>by then had earned his callsign, "Longinus") to blow her the hell up.
>Which meant that whatever Bradford wanted to call the mission, we all
>knew what it was really called.

"How Not To Be Seen"?

("Ms. Assassin, will you stand up please?")


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Verbena
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769 posts
Oct-29-17, 08:24 AM (EST)
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4. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #2
 
   >>She's immune to overwatch in this playthrough, which makes her even
>>more annoying than she already was. However, in this instance
>>she did choose a very obvious piece of cover after popping up
>>and shanking Mox, which made it pretty easy for Outrider and DJ (who
>>by then had earned his callsign, "Longinus") to blow her the hell up.
>>Which meant that whatever Bradford wanted to call the mission, we all
>>knew what it was really called.
>
>"How Not To Be Seen"?
>
>("Ms. Assassin, will you stand up please?")

She was immune to Overwatch on my playthrough, too--that's a typically Ranger thing, so I was entirely unsurprised by it. In my game, though, she was vulnerable to explosions, so you can imagine how well her hiding behind cover served her.

------
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her


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Gryphonadmin
Charter Member
19212 posts
Oct-29-17, 12:21 PM (EST)
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5. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #2
 
   >("Ms. Assassin, will you stand up please?")

And now that we've finally found out where she lives, you can bet a squad will be popping by Harlow New Town real soon now.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Gryphonadmin
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19212 posts
Oct-29-17, 03:02 PM (EST)
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6. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #0
 
   Today I discovered that if you skip the "take a photo" thing on missions and promotions, the game will take one anyway, it just won't consult you about the staging or the tagline. Which is how this happened.

(Really, Smith? You got promoted to sergeant, I'm not sure that really qualifies you as The War King.)

The automatic captioner often does have an inflated sense of grandeur. For instance, this was about the most mundane mission available, and that was the tagline it chose for the photo. (I added the bit in white. :)

Accompanying Hat Films and Freeman on this mission was Zoey "Violet" Selvig, the first of our "conventional" psikers, who I'm pleased still have a niche despite the shiny newness of the Templar class. Templars are nifty, but they can't do Null Lance, which is still my favorite psi move in this game. It was not, however, that ADVENT patrol's favorite psi move, I suspect.

Later, on a similarly mundane mission, Starscream randomly showed up and demonstrated that, although immune to explosives, he's weak to being repeatedly shot in the face with a rotary plasma beam cannon. If you're keeping score at home, that's twice we've killed him, which on top of the three times so far we've eliminated Blackarachnia, makes for a pretty respectable soccer score.

(I adjusted the staging in this one only to put DJ and Marishka in crouching positions so that the people behind them were visible. That goofy thumbs-up Dr. Doom is giving was all him. Maybe he's trying to lighten up? "I zink ze young people enchoy it vhen I... get down, verbally.")

Also, please note that if you count defeating her in her original appearance as a "kill" (which the game did in the reward notifications, even though all you really do is reduce her to half-health and make her run away until she reappears for the Cutscene Win), Gordon Freeman has now killed two out of two Chosen we've thus far encountered. Which is not bad going for an out-of-his-depth particle physicist.

The real surprise in that photo is that Shinji was able to stand up and pose for it at all, given that (thanks to another one of Starscream's many cheap stunts) he ended the mission unconscious, bleeding out, and with a debilitating fear of clowns the Chosen. Seriously, as soon as he got out of the ICU he had to head straight into therapy, or the next time he sees one he'll apparently just hide.

Finally in this current batch, we have this.

That is psi-op number two, Adéle "Dread" Mercier, who was along with Elena and Mox on a covert op for the work experience when they got rumbled and had to run for it. This was an annoying mission, since it involved crossing what seemed like about 150 miles of Ruined Cityscape, mit vielen Zombie, to reach an extraction point. We were, however, assisted enormously by the fact that ADVENT helpfully sent a Purifier along for Mercier to mind-control. In a zombie-infested urban wasteland, the best pointman is an expendable pointman with a flamethrower. He was still alive when we evac'd, too, as was another one we ran into just before reaching the bugout point, so presumably he had some explaining to do if the two of them managed to defeat the horde of zombies we also left behind and get back to base.

On the plus side, now we know where Blackarachnia lives, so once Marishka finishes resting up from the last mission she went on and Shinji gets out of therapy, we'll be rounding up the A-team and paying her a little visit.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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StClair
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Oct-29-17, 07:16 PM (EST)
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7. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #6
 
   >Gordon Freeman has now killed two out of two Chosen we've thus
>far encountered. Which is not bad going for an out-of-his-depth
>particle physicist.

I BELONG TO THE FREEMAN, SLAYER OF MONSTERS


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Gryphonadmin
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Oct-29-17, 07:21 PM (EST)
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8. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #7
 
   LAST EDITED ON Oct-29-17 AT 07:21 PM (EDT)
 
>>Gordon Freeman has now killed two out of two Chosen we've thus
>>far encountered. Which is not bad going for an out-of-his-depth
>>particle physicist.
>
>I BELONG TO THE FREEMAN, SLAYER OF MONSTERS

His rifle is named The Crowbar.

--G.
"This is The Crowbar. There are many like it, but this one is mine."
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
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zgryphon at that email service Google has
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ebony14
Member since Jul-11-11
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Oct-30-17, 08:46 AM (EST)
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10. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #8
 
   >>>Gordon Freeman has now killed two out of two Chosen we've thus
>>>far encountered. Which is not bad going for an out-of-his-depth
>>>particle physicist.
>>
>>I BELONG TO THE FREEMAN, SLAYER OF MONSTERS
>
>His rifle is named The Crowbar.
>

I was trying to think of a variation of Woody Guthrie's "This machine kills fascists" but I'm blanking this morning. "This machine opens skulls" maybe?

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."


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MoonEyes
Member since Jun-29-03
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Oct-30-17, 11:38 AM (EST)
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11. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #10
 
   Just a thought..."Aliens" as a replacement for "fascists"? Or would that be, I dunno...obvious?


...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"


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Peter Eng
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12. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #10
 
   >
>I was trying to think of a variation of Woody Guthrie's "This machine
>kills fascists" but I'm blanking this morning. "This machine opens
>skulls" maybe?
>
>Ebony the Black Dragon
>

This Machine Wrecks X-Rays.

Peter Eng
--
wrecks : x-ray :: trash : ashtray


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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
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Oct-30-17, 05:58 PM (EST)
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15. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #12
 
   >>
>>I was trying to think of a variation of Woody Guthrie's "This machine
>>kills fascists" but I'm blanking this morning. "This machine opens
>>skulls" maybe?
>>
>>Ebony the Black Dragon
>>
>
>This Machine Wrecks X-Rays.

Using its special laser, the Wrecks-Ray.

-Merc
Keep Rat


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Gryphonadmin
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Oct-29-17, 07:29 PM (EST)
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9. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #6
 
   >This was an annoying mission, since it
>involved crossing what seemed like about 150 miles of Ruined
>Cityscape, mit vielen Zombie, to reach an extraction point.

As an aside, I'm disappointed that the German word for Zombie is Zombie, and not something more poetic and compound-y, like, I dunno, Wanderntotesfleisch.

--G.
-><-
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Sofaspud
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Oct-30-17, 01:30 PM (EST)
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13. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #0
 
   Okay, so, what with all the "Wait, you did WHAT?!" moments that had cropped up in my previous reading about War of the Chosen, I'd pretty much decided to give it a pass or at the very least wait until it hit a Steam Summer Sale at like 75% off.

This post right here has been better advertising than any of the actual advertising I've seen so far, and now I'm probably going to be picking it up come payday.

--sofaspud
--and now I'm wondering what the bond compatibility between my MLP expats is going to be like.


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Gryphonadmin
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14. "quick update"
In response to message #0
 
   The power is unstable here today thanks to high winds, so I don't dare play, but last night before full crash interrupt I got halfway into the "snuff the Assassin" mission. It's going very well so far! Presumably mostly because the Assassin isn't in the first half of that mission. :)

Also, in the mission just before I decided to stop waffling and do that one, we killed the Hunter again. By which I mean Freeman killed the Hunter again. With Combat Protocol. Hey, he had 8 HP left and the only people who still had moves were Zer0 and Freeman's pal Ross. They both had shots, but at 37% to hit? Combat Protocol is 4 points of never-misses damage... even if it hadn't been almost poetically beautiful, handing Ross's action off to Gordon and double-teaming Starscream with the GREMLINs would have been the obvious choice.

But it was almost poetically beautiful, so that's a plus. :)

--G.
"Lily, what does GREMLIN stand for?"
"Nothing, it just looks cooler in all caps."

-><-
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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Gryphonadmin
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Nov-01-17, 01:14 AM (EST)
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21. "RE: quick update"
In response to message #14
 
   >The power is unstable here today thanks to high winds, so I don't dare
>play, but last night before full crash interrupt I got halfway into
>the "snuff the Assassin" mission. It's going very well so far!
>Presumably mostly because the Assassin isn't in the first half
>of that mission. :)

Breaking news at this hour:

The other half went reasonably smoothly as well. Her idea of summoning reinforcements was to call in a couple of Chryssalids that ported in right next to Dr. Doom and Marishka—which worked out for them about as well as you would expect, given that those two are our melee specialists—and her battery charger thingy proved extremely susceptible to being blasted all to shit with a beam cannon, leaving her standing there with her dick in her hand about six fewer health than the max damage Marishka's fusion blade can do.

Oh yeah, and her habit of going into stealth and ignoring overwatch worked out markedly less well with a Specialist who knows Scanning Protocol on the squad. :)

So that's one, and before I called it a night this evening, I launched the equivalent mission to crash Starscream's crib. Don't know if I'll get back to that tomorrow, but everybody's in position to start ransacking the joint as soon as I do.

In between, with everyone on the A-team exhausted from taking out Blackarachnia, I sent Hat Films & Friends in to knock over the original ADVENT blacksite, which, between one thing and another, I had never quite gotten around to doing. (War of the Chosen has a few optional starting configs, similar to the "Second Wave" options that Enemy Within added to the startup screen for the original game, and I'm playing with the one that makes the Project Avatar doom counter 24 boxes long instead of 12.)

That went... not entirely smoothly, but nobody died! On our side. Lots of somebodies died on the other one. Of special note: the Shield Bearer who got 86ed by his own Heavy MEC pal. Nice hacking, Gordon!

And afterward, Trott and Smith were friends, which meant I couldn't resist throwing a bit of Hatter dorkiness on the poster.

In between that and launching the Hunter mission, we had a couple of routine missions, one of which was kind of annoying, since it was one of those stupid "pick up crates that are mysteriously lying around a ruined city" ones and, as always with those, there were zombies a-go-go. Worse, most of the A-team and Hat Films were still Tired from the Assassin job and the blacksite raid, so I ended up sending a fairly ill-assorted group without much of a theme, most of them toting borrowed equipment. I did not have high expectations for that mission.

Well, friends, I'm here to admit that I was wrong about something. When the stars align,, if you get the right mission on the right map, late enough in the game that your guys have decent weapons and decent upgrades on those weapons, a useful palette of skills, and a trick or two...

... I almost can't bring myself to type this...

... the Lost can be pretty fun.

One of the many Modern Zombie tropes they conform to is that they're attracted to loud noises, particularly explosions (much as they are in Left 4 Dead). After the first time you fight them, there's a sonic gizmo you can research that exploits this further. In certain situations, both of these techniques can be combined to extremely good effect. For instance, on this particular Hijack the Chests mission, the last ADVENT pod was a couple of advanced troopers (standard chumps, just with more HP and a point of armor) and an Archon (badass alien, looks like the hood ornament from the Reticulan equivalent of a 1920 Pierce Arrow). They were clumped up in the ruins of a department store, but even one of Otto's plasma grenades couldn't kill any of them, let alone all.

However, it could knock them all down to a handful of HP and interest the approaching horde of Lost in their location more than ours, a change of priority that Asuka was then able to emphasize by tossing one of the sonic gadgets in there next to the Archon...

... at which point we could all sit back, relax, tag nearby crates, and let a couple dozen zombies beat the aliens to death for us. When it was all over, they'd killed enough of them, and gathered them together well enough, that Mercier could wipe the remaining Lost out with a Void Rift and voilà, mission complete.

Between that, and the yes-I-am-a-big-enough-man-to-admit-it exhilarating last-stand-ish thing the gang fought with a previous wave of Lost in the parking lot of said store (before tripping the Archon pod), I'm... well, not completely sold, but I have no trouble saying out loud that that particular mission was a lot more fun with the zombies than it would've been without it. When your guys have guns with expanded magazines and autoloaders, you can stretch that "free action on kill" business out almost indefinitely, and that last encounter was comedy gold.

Although having gotten that much action on a simple shopping trip did strike whichever squad member designed the after-action poster as more than a little bit silly.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Gryphonadmin
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Nov-02-17, 02:28 AM (EST)
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26. "RE: quick update"
In response to message #21
 
   LAST EDITED ON Nov-02-17 AT 02:33 AM (EDT)
 
>So that's one, and before I called it a night this evening, I launched
>the equivalent mission to crash Starscream's crib. Don't know if I'll
>get back to that tomorrow, but everybody's in position to start
>ransacking the joint as soon as I do.

So yeah! That did end up happening tonight...

... and it was hilarious.

The squad: DJ+Marina, Rei+Violet, Mox+Outrider. One level-3 bond, two level-1s. Marina had the Assassin's gear. We arrived in the second room and immediately ran across a Heavy MEC and one of those morphing things I can't remember the name of. (Not a Faceless, those things that look like robot ninjas.) Rei used Haywire Protocol to shut down the MEC so that the rest of the squad could focus fire on the robot ninja, which made it not terribly challenging to bring down. (I don't actually know what those things do, every time we've seen one so far we've immediately murdered it, but Tygan seemed really impressed by its corpse, so I'm guessing they're bad news if you don't pwn them instantly.)

Start of the next round, I decided to move DJ up to flank the shutdown MEC, which would be coming back online in the following round, so that he could be sure and kill it. Unfortunately, I moved him a little too far up and tripped the It's Starscream! cutscene. He proceeded to move forward, past DJ, and up onto one of the balcony things in the middle of the room, where Mox and Elena were at the other end crouching behind a box.

I thought about reloading the autosave and starting the round over so that I could take care of the MEC without triggering him, but then I figured, well, what the hell, he just walked past DJ, I might as well take the shot. If he misses I'll reload.

DJ's beam cannon has a Repeater on it. This, as some of you may know, is a weapon mod that adds a chance to insta-kill the target, regardless of how many health it has.

The status message you get from that, in the same place as the flags that tell you you got a critical hit or applied a debuff or whatever, is Executed!

So that was richly satisfying, so much so that I decided I could not in good conscience reload. I would just have to rely on the rest of the squad to keep DJ from getting ventilated by the MEC, which would have him flanked when it woke up. It would mean giving the Chrome Monolith an extra round to heal Starscream up, but, well, better that than getting our heavy mauled.

The MEC was duly dispatched before it had a chance to wake up, at which point Starscream (just as Blackarachnia had before him) spawned a couple of Chryssalids in to waste our time units. Or, well, they would have wasted our time units if they hadn't spawned so close to Marina that she just, you know... killed them. You would think the game would know not to drop melee units right next to soldiers with Bladestorm, but it's 2 for 2 on doing that in these missions now.

Anyway, that, and judicious use of Teamwork on the squad members with the most firepower to shorten the time required to destroy the Chrome Monolith, meant that Starscream only had 38% health when he was forced to respawn. Still, every time we've run across him before, he's done significantly more harm to at least one member of the squad than Blackarachnia ever managed to do, so I was braced for the possibility of Problems when he reappeared. Can't count on DJ's Repeater to execute him every time.

He ported in a short distance behind Rei, who was on Overwatch, and made for the high ground. "... oh," she said...

... and then turned around and casually murdered him.

Rei's gun (which, since the plasma rifles arrived, has been named "Reigun", because I am five) doesn't have a Repeater. She just critted him in the face. :)

We haven't even met Megatron yet, so we didn't get a reaction dialogue from him after the fact, which is almost too bad. (I also didn't get a second "The Elders Are Not Very Happy About This Shit" cutscene, I'm not sure if there isn't one or if that, too, is a function of the fact that we haven't encountered the Warlock yet.)

So, yeah! That was pretty entertaining. I'm not really doing justice to how casual Rei's voice pack made her execution of the Hunter feel. The "Japanese Cynical Girl" voice is incredibly taciturn and unflappable. Even when she gets shot, she just very calmly says, "Itai." ("Ow.")

Shortly thereafter, we got a call from our pals the Skirmishers, asking us if we wouldn't mind collecting some important information that had to be left behind in a Resistance haven. A Resistance haven which was abandoned because it was overrun...

... by the Lost.

This mission spawned with a SITREP condition I had never seen before, "The Horde". With this SITREP in force, no ADVENT forces appear on the mission—only fucktons more Lost than usual. And this was one of the "eliminate all hostiles and open the box" missions.

RNGsus giveth, and RNGsus taketh away. :)

Team C dropped into the ruins of the Guadalajara metro (I didn't realize Guadalajara had a metro IRL, but in fact it does) with orders to do exactly the opposite of what you normally have to do on this kind of mission. There would be no EVAC. They genuinely had to kill all the zombies.

There turned out to be 45 of them.

I'll tell you what, the fact that Genki and Dr. Doom both have weapons that don't require ammo came in very handy. And once again, the Lost proved to be considerably more fun than I was expecting them to be, owing to the conditions of the mission. Yes, I had to kill forty-five of the damn things with a six-person squad, but there was no third party shooting at us while I was trying to get it done, so it was fine. Well, except for the part where Doc Turner accidentally set Asuka on fire. But she put her out immediately thereafter and no real harm was done!

(I'm still not sure how she did that. There must have been some environmental hazard that reacted to her Overwatch fire or something.)

Going to be a while before we get another Chosen mission, given that we haven't even found the Warlock's territory yet; but we're going to have to start going after Project Avatar sites in uncharted lands soon, so I'm sure we'll be encountering him any day now.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Gryphonadmin
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Nov-03-17, 10:13 PM (EST)
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29. "RE: quick update"
In response to message #26
 
   As an aside, I saw the "HOLY CRAP, THAT WAS A LOT OF ZOMBIES" poster on a bus shelter during a subsequent mission on one of the Urban Slumscape maps. It tickled me inordinately.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Gryphonadmin
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Nov-04-17, 02:39 AM (EST)
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30. "RE: quick update"
In response to message #26
 
   LAST EDITED ON Nov-04-17 AT 02:40 AM (EDT)
 
FROM: Z.P. Gryphon (commander@xcom.resistance)
TO: Warlock (megatron@advent.alienworldgov)
SUBJECT: Re: Your pitiful attempts

>Your pathetic covert operatives will never find my stronghold.
>I, on the other hand, will find YOU very soon indeed. Wherever
>you hide, whatever you do, you will be returned to the Elders'
>service without delay.

Dear sir,

WE'RE IN UR BASE KILLIN UR MANS

As I believe the young people used to say before the war.

Rgds,
Cmdr. Zebulon P. Gryphon
XCOM

P.S. We're using your dead pals' guns to do it, too. Fuck you.


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Star Ranger4
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Nov-04-17, 12:41 PM (EST)
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31. "RE: quick update"
In response to message #30
 
   >
>WE'RE IN UR BASE KILLIN UR MANS
>
>As I believe the young people used to say before the war.
>
owie... ya got me good G, I was taking a sip of coffee. Even though I *SHOULD* know better after all these years.


Of COURSE you wernt expecting it!
No One expects the FANNISH INQUISITION!
RCW# 86


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Gryphonadmin
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Nov-05-17, 01:44 AM (EST)
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32. "RE: quick update"
In response to message #30
 
   LAST EDITED ON Nov-05-17 AT 01:48 AM (EDT)
 
And that's three.

Weak to close-quarters fire and Templars? Welp. To be honest, DJ rolling another Executed! on his Overwatch shot when Megatron respawned and tried to move off his teleport-in point was kind of overkill, since we wrecked the Chrome Monolith before it had a chance to give him back more than, I dunno 8 HP or so, but still, it was gratifying.

For all that he was the most hyped, the most annoying dialogue-wise, and the most irritating to deal with on the one (and only one, because we didn't even enter his territory until the other two were dead) street mission he dropped in on, he went down the easiest when we crashed his crib. PROTIP: In your next incarnation, maybe don't step down off your taunting platform and into the square right next to the Templar.

After that, I decided to start clearing out the pre-Chosen DLC missions, starting with the one that doesn't cause a new set of cheaty minibosses to drop randomly into missions.

Lily is a terrible shot and for some reason can't wear decent armor despite the fact that we've got an infinite supply of it lying around the Avenger by this point, but Gordon seems to like her. Also, I don't think it's entirely fair that SPARK-001 didn't get to be in the poster.

For no reason I can determine—he never even got shot at himself, let alone wounded—Mox decided he was Shaken after the mission and had to spend 20 days cowering under his bed. Gordon had a similar (and similarly inexplicable) reaction, but his meltdown only lasted one day, which I consider perfectly in character for him, since I'm using the Freeman's Mind pack.

--G.
"Why are we bombing?! There's nobody here! Why are the soldiers bombing each other?! Is this real?! I just wanna go home!"
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Peter Eng
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Oct-31-17, 12:31 PM (EST)
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16. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #0
 
   "...the "skulljack an Officer" mission, which ended with the building where it happened burning down because of liberal use of high explosives..."

I suppose that technically, it doesn't qualify, but I would retroactively designate that mission as "Operation Lovely Angel."

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.


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Gryphonadmin
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Oct-31-17, 12:54 PM (EST)
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17. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #16
 
   >I suppose that technically, it doesn't qualify, but I would
>retroactively designate that mission as "Operation Lovely Angel."

No, the poster tagline notwithstanding, that was totally our fault. And by "our" I mean DJ's.

--G.
"You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!"
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ebony14
Member since Jul-11-11
427 posts
Oct-31-17, 05:57 PM (EST)
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18. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #17
 
   >"You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors
>off!
"

DJ (points to doors lying in the street): Mission bloody accomplished.

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."


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Peter Eng
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1436 posts
Oct-31-17, 07:02 PM (EST)
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19. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #18
 
   MOX
Shit! I can't believe it!

DJ
What?

MOX
YOU BURNT THE FUCKIN' BUILDING!

DJ
I had to blow the door! What do you want?

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.


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Gryphonadmin
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Oct-31-17, 07:58 PM (EST)
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20. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #19
 
   LAST EDITED ON Nov-01-17 AT 05:29 PM (EDT)
 
That makes me think of the unsettling subtext of the "cyborg super-soldier" scenario from Enemy Within.

SHEN
The MECsuit's targeting computer has reaction capabilities far in excess of anything the human nervous system can perceive, but the cybernetic interface provides Sergeant Sato's conscious mind with the illusion that she is selecting and choosing to engage the targets.

BRADFORD
(horrified)
You made a machine that Sato only thinks she controls?!

SHEN
No. It's more accurate to say I've made a machine that only thinks it's Kasumi Sato.

--G.
-><-
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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
898 posts
Nov-01-17, 03:20 PM (EST)
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22. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #20
 
   Every time you put together something like this I wish you'd try your hand at a techno-horror or horror-inflected urban fantasy story at some point, Ben.

I remember when Azula fought a whole train full of the multiplexed demon bodies of Lavrenti Beria. That was pretty creepy.

-Merc
Keep Rat


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Gryphonadmin
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Nov-01-17, 04:17 PM (EST)
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23. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #22
 
   >Every time you put together something like this I wish you'd try your
>hand at a techno-horror or horror-inflected urban fantasy story at
>some point, Ben.

In the interest of full disclosure, that's a paraphrase of a scene discussing how the cyborg system in the RoboCop remake works. "No, I built a machine that thinks it's Alex Murphy."

--G.
-><-
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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
898 posts
Nov-01-17, 10:11 PM (EST)
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25. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #23
 
   Ah, I see. The sentiment remains even though it is now kind of a non-sequitur.

Also I gave the remake a pass, but that line is solid enough to make me wonder if I should take another look at it. It has late-era Michael Keaton in it, and I generally have found that his "I'm old, but goddamn it I can still act" career revival has been full of gems.

-Merc
Keep Rat


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Peter Eng
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1436 posts
Nov-01-17, 05:58 PM (EST)
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24. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #0
 
   After thinking about voice packs for a bit, I am tempted to read up on the creation of same, and borrow a copy of No Cure for Cancer from the library. I once used that as a source of voice samples for one of the Baldur's Gate games, and I imagine I could do something similar.

The major sticking point is that I would have to buy XCOM 2.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.


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MoonEyes
Member since Jun-29-03
733 posts
Nov-02-17, 09:49 AM (EST)
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27. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #0
 
   In re the voice pack thing...is there anyone out there who has used the Bob Ross voice-pack? Because the thought of that thing is almost mind-breaking, to me.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"


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Gryphonadmin
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Nov-03-17, 10:04 PM (EST)
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28. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #27
 
   LAST EDITED ON Nov-03-17 AT 10:04 PM (EDT)
 
>In re the voice pack thing...is there anyone out there who has used
>the Bob Ross voice-pack?

"Oh yeah. Let's get crazy. The paint salesman is in town today."

--G.
-><-
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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
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MoonEyes
Member since Jun-29-03
733 posts
Nov-12-17, 01:16 PM (EST)
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38. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #28
 
   .... ow


...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"


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Gryphonadmin
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Nov-17-17, 01:28 AM (EST)
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39. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #38
 
   >.... ow

Or there's this one.

--G.
-><-
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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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Gryphonadmin
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Nov-06-17, 08:17 PM (EST)
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33. "just for the record"
In response to message #0
 
   LAST EDITED ON Nov-06-17 AT 08:18 PM (EST)
 
I think it is entirely unfair that the other two "rulers" chose the next two missions after Operation REGAL BEAST to crash, particularly since one of them was the Codex Brain Coordinates one. I mean seriously fuck you guys, six Chryssalids, a Gatekeeper and the super-redundantly-named Archon King in the same mob? Poor Dr. Doom just wanted to see what was behind that tree! He was in the infirmary for ages.

--G.
ok that might just be because he's a big girl's blouse
-><-
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Gryphonadmin
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Nov-08-17, 06:54 PM (EST)
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37. "RE: just for the record"
In response to message #33
 
   I miss the old suit-up music. I know it still plays when you're on your way back from the mission, but it's not the same.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Gryphonadmin
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Nov-07-17, 01:57 AM (EST)
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34. "Ha!"
In response to message #0
 
   You know those missions where the aliens shoot down the Avenger and you have to send a team out into the wilderness to blow up a jamming tower, while at the same time the aliens try to storm the ship?

I got one of those tonight.

One of my boarding ramp turrets could see the jamming tower. So... that was easy! Seeya later, shitlords!

--G.
"And you guys said the turret room was a waste of space!"
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Verbena
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769 posts
Nov-07-17, 09:45 PM (EST)
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35. "RE: Ha!"
In response to message #34
 
   Sweet! My problem was the exact opposite: I only ever got that type of mission once, it was scripted as a UFO strike since none of the Chosen ever managed to find me, and it was long, long before I ever had the turret room. More's the pity.

------
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her


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Gryphonadmin
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19212 posts
Nov-07-17, 10:43 PM (EST)
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36. "RE: Ha!"
In response to message #35
 
   >Sweet! My problem was the exact opposite: I only ever got that type of
>mission once, it was scripted as a UFO strike since none of the Chosen
>ever managed to find me, and it was long, long before I ever had the
>turret room. More's the pity.

Yeah, the Chosen weren't involved in mine either, but for the opposite reason: the RNG never rolled the "UFO hunts the Avenger" Dark Event until after the Chosen were all dead, which meant luckily I'd had the Defense Matrix for some time by then. Long enough that I had started to feel a little silly about it—I suspected that the devs might have removed the original vanilla shootdown mission from the game when they added the "Chosen hunt for the ship" mechanic.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Gryphonadmin
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19212 posts
Dec-04-17, 02:11 AM (EST)
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40. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #0
 
   >(Can one of those things randomly decide to crash the same mission
>that one of the Chosen has randomly decided to crash? Because that
>would be one hundred percent bullshark shit.)

UPDATE: They can! AND IT IS.

--G.
for fuck's sake, Firaxis
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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Trscroggs
Member since Apr-26-16
16 posts
Dec-04-17, 11:59 AM (EST)
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41. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #40
 
   That's like being a Rebel and having Thrawn's fleet show up in orbit...and then a minutes later having Vader show up and asking Thrawn, "Where do you want me?"


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Peter Eng
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1436 posts
Dec-04-17, 12:00 PM (EST)
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42. "RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"
In response to message #40
 
   >>(Can one of those things randomly decide to crash the same mission
>>that one of the Chosen has randomly decided to crash? Because that
>>would be one hundred percent bullshark shit.)
>
>UPDATE: They can! AND IT IS.
>

Now I'm imagining what would happen in a slightly more comical universe.

"Hey! You can't ambush these XCOM scum! I was here first!"

"You and what army, Chosen Egomaniac?"

"This army, Archon of Redundancy!"

*mayhem ensues*

"Man, I could use a bag of popcorn and a Dew right now."

"I want a video camera. Central's never gonna believe this."

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.


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