INTRODUCTION
Hello everyone. Let my first briefly introduce myself since this is my first post on these forums. I’m nearing my mid-forties, I live in Slovenia, and I like to play strategy (and other) games. I have played X-COM and UFO Enemy Unknown over and over as a kid and discovered it again some 4-5 years ago. I have just completed my first and only vanilla X:CE playthrough on normal difficulty without ironman. From the outset I planned to play Xenonauts with X-Division mod since I like modded games and reading about X-Division mod I’m led to expect much higher difficulty and much deeper gameplay. I thought it would be a good idea to get myself somewhat acquainted with vanilla gameplay first – hence one vanilla playthrough.
This will be my first attempt at writing an AAR of any kind. It will also be my very first attempt at X-Division playthrough apart from a short sniff of 3-4 in-game days of gameplay. For this new game I have chosen NG (standard?) difficulty with Ironman, and I think all options as set by X-Division installer. X:CE version is 1.65/0.35.1 and X-Division 1.00.11c New Dawn.
What about your motivation for writing an AAR, you might ask? Well, when I played another game a couple of years ago read some AARs from various players and it was great fun reading them, especially when the player/writer had an interesting story to tell. IMHO what makes a good are somewhat developed characters and story plots, so I will try (and probably fail) to write up something in that vein. I don’t know if this kind of a written AAR thing is even interesting to anyone anymore because of YT, but it doesn’t hurt anyone so why not... I have an excuse to learn something new and write in English.
Regarding the additional lore, research, weapons and new mechanics of X-Division mod I have absolutely zero prior knowledge of it apart from reading some of the spoilers in mod descriptions. No videos about X-Division were viewed, so anything I write will be my fresh view of the game developments as they occur.
Finally, I’ve taken the liberty to name some characters that will be “contributing” to the story. The names might or might not resemble actual national/ethnical naming conventions and I apologise to anyone that might find my made-up names inappropriate in that regard. As final disclaimers, English is not my primary language, and I could be using some other language expressions wrong, so please bear with me on this…
Without further ado, lets dive in. We start with...
THE CHARACTERS
Military non-combat personnel:
General Hugh-Trevor Rhys-Martins
59, British
General, X-Division Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C)
calm, sophisticated and charmless with a rare spark of charisma
Yevgeny Klimentovich Voroshilov
51, Russian
Senior Officer, Executive officer to C-in-C and Chief of Operations (X-O/C-Ops)
son of a retired Soviet Union marshal; temperamental and loud
Kurt Reynalds
54, american
Senior Officer, Air Detachment Commander (ADC)
WW2 pilot (4 kills) and cereer officer; an Air Force man through and through
Luciano (Loukianos) “Lucky” Corelli
39, Italo-Greek
Junior Officer, Quick Reaction Force Commander (C-QRF)
believes in his soldiers, can get emotional (inherited this from his papa)
Andy MacGuinnes
36, Irish
NCO, Recruitment & Drill Officer
recruits tremble when he is around, but otherwise he is a fine fella'
Petra Horachkova
33, Chech
NCO, Communications Liaison Officer (CLO)
new face in X-Division, brought in to ease communications with outside world
Knut Mathiessen
47, Danish
NCO, Quartermaster
seldom seen outside stores and never without a cigarette (he makes certain nobody sees what he hides in his desk drawer)
Pedro de Gini
48, Spanish
NCO, senior radar operator
reliable and experienced
Anatoly Arkadyevich Shvetsov
33, Russian
NCO, Interceptor pilot
distrusts all western equipment
Junichi Akamatsu
34, Japanese
NCO, Interceptor pilot
son of a WW2 Japanese fighter ace
Horatio Gisbergh
23, American
enlisted, junior communications operator
off-duty he is seen around wearing headphones, listening to casettes on his brand new Walkman, or writing something in his notebook.
Combat personnel - soldiers:
Civilian personnel:
Dr. Amalric Dreyfuss
41, French
Lead X-Division Scientist
brilliant scientist and a pain to work with
Diego Vasco da Silva Magan
35, Brasilian
Junior Scientist
Silent, keeps to himself
Vitaly Kaganov
38, Ukrainian
Lead engineer
dislikes intellectuals
Veronika “Verka” Burszinska
47, Polish
Officer’s mess & kitchen assistant
a loving mother and wife, loves a good gossip