featherwinglove

More Chapter 5... The approach to the downed alien craft was not uneventful, with three Caesans outside in the industrial park. The light scout went down in a parking lot, rolling two cars. Despite the caution, Tschannen had a close call with an alien rifleman. After Sokolova cracked open the alien craft, Anthony Webb hilariously missed the one alien inside with every round from his Pig, along with snipers Rob Evans and Colin Henderson before Sokolova slammed the door in his face. (OC: The odds of missing all of these is 10.9%.) After a couple of frantic breaths, she opened the door again and lobotomized him herself. Before they landed back at Mount Sinai, Uniforms 10 and 11 were picked up on Sinai's new radar over Africa, where they were causing lots of shenanigans, including a bizarre mass hallucination in the middle of the Sahara Desert (the wire report was "FOREST FIRES" and Wahlmer didn't know what else to make of it.) Condor Three was dispatched after Uniform 11 first, then switched to Uniform 10 when 11 suddenly landed. Charlie Two landed back at Mount Sinai to reload hypergolics before being sent to the scene (the dropship carries only enough rocket propellant to perform one point landing and one zero-length jump per sortie.) Unfortunately, Uniform 10 ran Condor Three to bingo fuel while weaving through Norway's mountains. General Wahlmer was expecting the approach status report from Charlie Two, the radio was silent. "Control North, Radar Sinai," a voice squeaks over the General's headset. "North, go." John suspects bad news is coming. "Eleven just took off and I've lost contact with Charlie Two, Sir," the radar operator reports grimly. It's several minutes of tense silence, the sun having just set at the landing site before another voice speaks. Charlie Two was expected to land next to Uniform 11 ten minutes before. "Crap, we're in the news," the broadcast watchman blurts out, piping a US cable news channel to the main projector. "-appears to be a military aircraft of unknown design. Once again, breaking news that an aircraft has crashed in Africa, apparently after being fired upon by a small alien craft scouting the Sahara Desert..." OC: I went on a KSP binge which is why I haven't written in a while. This post is short because losing a dropship kinda induced some writer's block.

Um... why not SPARTA!!! (That just makes me think, most ppl I've ever had at all my bases combined, including scientists and engineers is half of 300 )

Just because it would be freakin' hilarious. Especially since I rarely get melee to work properly.

I hope you didn't miss the game lying to me with "Run Windowed". As for the lack of customization ...why should games like Minecraft and 4X strategy games have them while squad-oriented global strategic defense simulators like X-COM and Xenonauts don't? KSP actually has an interesting excuse: It's rocket science. Literally. (KSP and Minecraft are actually about as different as two games can get, which is why whenever the headline "Kerbal Space Program: Minecraft in Space" appears, the entire subreddit collapses in laughter.) Also, I'm guessing you aren't too familiar with how to customize the difficulty in Minecraft, or you would have pointed out that it is actually pretty much the same as you do in Xenonauts: custom mods and maps ...well, Xenonauts doesn't have open source hot-moddable multiplayer servers. Yet. On the other hand, I've never been able to get the map editors to work - they open up and run, but I haven't been able to get them to do anything useful (and all I wanted to do was take the roof off a UFO submap so I could figure out which one was the 'alt'.)

Groom Lake, Nevada comes to mind, as does any number of "secret" submarine installations on the Kola Pensinsula (a lousy spot for a base). One of my favorites is Jabal Al-Lawz in Saudi Arabia. Whatever one might say about it being the Biblical Mount Sinai or otherwise, it is a very secure and secretive place. The Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and Cape Canaveral in Florida are both real-life spaceports and fairly convenient locations for Xenonaut bases. Another decent way to site three bases (not as good) is to locate them at Deep Space Network stations in Goldstone in California, Madrid in Spain, and Canberra in Australia. If you want even more of a challenge, put the prime meridian longitude station at its old spot in Johannesburg in South Africa, a scheme which would leave Europe, Middle East, and Soviet Union nearly impossible to cover.

Depending on what you assume is the tile size, something always gets absurd. One thing that I think would have been much better is if detecting aliens were treated differently than detecting terrain. So, yeah, maybe you can see the whole map right off the bat (since I have them all memorized...) which is in fitting with er... didn't they take a look out the windows just before they landed? But if you can't see the aliens right away when you see the terrain, that would make the game a lot more interesting. This could be used to introduce such things as sensor and stealth suits, motion sensors perhaps (I remember those in X-COM.) Actually, I did realize, and consciously knowing it's part of that "magic" (I'd use a different word) is why I haven't belly-ached about it. Just remember that it isn't so much about being able to change things related to difficulty, but simply telling us what they are. The damage indicators vanishing without anything in the manual or on the difficulty screen saying anything at all is what caught OP off guard.

Introduction/TL;DR version: Ceasan Leaders murder!! So, a tutorial specifically on dealing with Ceasan cruisers and up is in order, I do believe. To start the technicals, I've found that the leaders on Ceasan cruisers and up will reliably induce friendly fire every other turn either via hallucination (which leads to zerky-berks) or mind control. I discovered there was a medal for dropping the leader while it was doing the mind control thing, and recently, had a somewhat normal zerky-berks go really horribly wrong: buddy had a damaged hedge between her and her chosen zerky-berks target, which was particularly berzerky: two wraiths beamed in right in front of her face, and there were two Predator kit friendlies to her left on the other side of the hedge row (*real* hedge row, not strange square black hole just in front of it teleported into oblivion by the cruiser's submap.) And there was a crap-tonne of heavy smoke between her and these two Predators. And *after* these two wraiths beam in, she gets hallucinated, selects the more distant Predator when she zerky-berks, and drops him with two hits out of three shots from her Mag Pistol at extended range (i.e. just over 10 tiles) through heavy smoke. I rage quit for the night and will try the mission again from the start shortly. Rule 1: When in doubt, just airstrike it. I'm not going to do this for Blue Crimson because I don't want to bless those characters with too much leading knowledge (that would be bad fiction, IMHO - if I lose a dropship in the process, so be it), but generally, yeah. Airstrike is the safest option. Load up with extra stink bombs, shock bombs, and cattle prods and go after a Sebillian Leader instead. Rule 2: Make sure your armor is ahead of your weapons. Ceasans are weak, so you can go back to lasers or even ballistics and still fare well if your packing hull-grade assault shields and Predator/Sentinel armour (beware Sentinel's 360deg view causing ppl to berzerk on friendlies behind them.) I didn't do this in the above epic fail, but I didn't expect the to work on Predator armour, even with a Mag pistol (well, I sorta followed the rule - the pistol was the only Mag weapon on the field; the four Predators on this mission had two plasmas and two lasers.)Rule 3: Put hard cover between your troops whenever possible before the end of a turn where you're expecting a psionic attack. I've noticed that troops that can't even see a target will not shoot when they berzerk. (It also wastes TU in mind control scenarios making it less likely the alien will find another friendly with enough TU left to make the kill.) To do this, you need to plan your turns judiciously, and play quite possibly quite a bit looser than usual in the early breakout phase, preferring to expose your troops to the enemy rather than each other in some cases. Rule 4: Use smoke. Use walls, hedgerows, buildings, etc. to separate Preds and Sents between turns, and have the Predators carry and shake off grenades for your Sents (or whatever else might be) to use. Unfortunately, after a psionic attack occurs, the action induced by the enemy happens on *your* turn, after something like half to two-thirds of the smoke has dissipated, so it is not very reliable. Rule 5: Use shields. About the only safe way to have assault troops near each other is to have them face each other with shields prior to the end of a turn. This was the idea for breaking into the craft in the example scenario, except that the second assault trooper hadn't caught up yet: Assault trooper far ahead cracks open the main door so one of the Predators could hail the central room (it's the version with the reactors in the wings, yay!) The other (more distant) Pred was going to take the starboard wing. They're going on security patrols for the next attempt... Rule 6: If you're desperate (i.e. two 90%+ shots miss in a row), suppress or stun friendlies that might otherwise die or kill their friends. It sure beats losing them, and it's not as bad if they panic or flee instead of zerkyberks or alien control. (I'm saying this despite the fact that nearly every time my troops break and "flee" it is almost always towards aliens!) Rule 7: If you can spare them, waste the next turn's TUs. Drop the weapon and pull out a medkit. You can also unload the weapon by right clicking on it. Dropping the weapon is enough to protect against simple zerky-berks, but an alien doing mind control is smart enough to pick it up, walk a few tiles, and take the shot. Rule 3 is more important, however: I've noticed the alien is not particularly good at finding friendlies if it can't already see them. Rule 8: Learn the cadence. I saved this one for last because ppl tend to forget more stuff in the middle of a lecture than at the beginning and end (does your prof know this???) The Ceasan Leader can only do a psionic attack every *other* turn, not every turn, giving you a handy breather between attack turns where you can advance without having to protect your troops from each other. (I'm not 100% certain, so please point out if I'm wrong!) Pay attention to failed psionic attacks, especially late in the mission after morale has built up.

Please, please don't kick me for advertising, sir... someone did that.

I want to make sure you didn't miss something I said in what you appear to be responding to: "make sure that invalid inputs don't lead to a crash." I'm not a particularly well qualified individual for saying such a thing, but I will admit that I took four terms of a DeVry Computer Information Systems program that would have given me a B.Sc in Computer Science had I completed the full nine terms. I thought I had learned input checking the hard way, but experience with software, especially Xenonauts, teaches me that perhaps I didn't learn it as hard as most actual programmers (i.e. I've never actually had a programming job ) I started getting into making my own headers quite early and figured out C's built-in input checking capabilities (e.g. investigating what "fflush(stdin);" was for and how it worked), which lead to me writing my programs (never large enough to challenge the resources of x86 real mode) with robust modules that communicated with each other in specific ways. Whenever it was possible (and in a couple cases where it wasn't) to send a function an input that could crash it (and by extension, the rest of the program), I had the function vet the input and return a NULL before it had the chance to blow the core or otherwise piss off the OS. This sort of checking led to the remarkable situation that nearly everything I wrote "exited properly" when it crashed, leaving an output telling me almost exactly where I screwed up. I imagine that if my career developed, it is very likely that fine tuning well-tested and mature code would probably include removing input checking from functions in the inner loop code of release software, but it didn't get that far. The built-in ease of doing this in Java probably goes a long way in explaining why Minecraft has been so stable for me until it started disagreeing with my system's lamentable Crestline GPU. One of the things that testing for and vetting input ranges allows me to do boldly is experiment with the entire range of inputs just to see what sort of wacky and wonderful glitches might result without fear of . Both Minecraft and KSP appear to be written in this way, such that doing unusual things doesn't crash the program, but leads to results that players now describe as "classic". Minecraft generates obsidian when you place redstone where it would generate cobblestone in an empty block. The astonishing thing about this video is that it still appears to be the best cast redstone portal tutorial on Youtube ...the only one, which might have something to do with it. Nearly every Minecraft video I watch is far better than those I make myself. For Kerbal Space Program, I present what I call Khandresekhar Limit: (Note: I named it after the real Chandresekhar Limit, where a white dwarf can't get any heavier because the electrons within it can't exceed the speed of light. Their movement generates the pressure which keeps a dwarf star from imploding from its own gravity. Their real-life motivation, the quantum (or Heisenberg) uncertainty principle is approximated by standard-issue floating point uncertainties in the game manifesting, in this particular case, in the unholy collection of "cubic octagonal struts" that is Scott Manley's IQ Minmus rover. The "speed of light" is imposed by Deadly Reentry g-limits, and is much higher (and proportionately more hilarious) in vanilla KSP.)

I have all the same complaints as the OP (especially irked by inaccurate tips - I hate it when games lie to me.) Nowadays, I will load and pull interceptors from Terror missions to prevent a base attack. If I can't stop it (i.e. if it ever happens in Blue Crimson), I will fire scientists and engineers from other bases and transfer the soldiers I don't want in the fight out. This is essential because a chock of sixteen will CTD the game in the deployment phase every time (I wish I knew why.) (Normal UFO breech procedure: First turn - open door, damage and suppress as many hostiles as possible, close door. Second turn - repeat if necessary, always making sure to end the turn with the door(s) closed. Final turn - rush in with shield/pistol and shotgun troops to get the last few.) I can't close the doors in my own base when my soldiers lives are depending on it??? How does it work on a normal day then?????

Chris, just because I almost never tweak KSP difficulty presets, and never actually play any full games with such tweaked presets, doesn't mean that I don't want to see them. It certainly doesn't mean I don't want them to be visible; I want to know what "Easy", "Normal", and "Hard" mean, and even if they couldn't be adjusted in KSP, being able to see them is extremely useful. There is very, very little in Xenonauts to indicate what "Easy", "Normal", "Veteran" and "Insane" actually mean. One of the very first things I did was start a new game in each to see if there were any changes in starting funds or base configurations. For the others reading this thread, I'm going to say this was very unrevealing! Chris, please remember that when I lay down money for a game (heck, even when I don't - yay fog.com), I'm not looking for your intended experience, I'm looking for my intended experience. To this end, Minecraft is today, very, very different from what Notch imagined it would be. While there is obviously some agreement between what Notch intended and what the players intended, it was ultimately the latter that drove its development and success. Ask yourself this: Why did you make Xenonauts? Why isn't Xenonauts an exact clone of X-COM? Does the fact that some aspects of X-COM (e.g. the grenade relay) irked you play into this? (By the way, one of the things I really miss about X-COM vs. Xenonauts is the ability to throw literally anything - it took a particularly gifted soldier to be able to throw an autocannon more than one tile. Most commonly, I threw ammunition. I still transfer ammunition between soldiers in Xenonauts, especially in the Predator/Sentinel era, which is why I keep noticing this inability to throw it.) Also, support for every possible combination of options would be both a motivation for and result of a robust game design that took care to make sure that invalid inputs didn't lead to a crash - it would also make it easier to expand content, such a having twenty types of interceptors with extended range missiles and omnidirectional gun mounts. The windowed mode checkbox never works, no matter how much lower I specify the resolution than that of my desktop (e.g. 1024x768 doesn't run windowed on a 1280x800 desktop.) If you want it that way, the checkbox should grey out, indicating that windowed mode is not available at the selected resolution. Of all the games I have ever played, Xenonauts is the only one that behaves in this way that pisses me off so much - this includes a couple of games from the 1990s that implemented their own windows environments in DOS protected mode!

Chapter 5: First Blood The "morning" of September 14, the contact alarm wakes up Marshal Kisberg a few minutes before he normally gets up. The time is 21:40Z. "What is it?" he says into the phone. "Uniform 4," the duty officer replies, "You better get up here, we have a tiny one south of us, coming straight at the base at 972 knots." "On my way," he grabs his uniform and heads out the door in his pyjamas. Well, not really pyjamas, he just grabbed a set of combat fatigues, so he looks almost like a trooper ...except that none of the actual troopers are as pudgy. When he arrives, the duty officer reports, "Uniform 4 is following Condor 1, so I don't think it's a missile." "Vector Condor 2 for lead intercept instead of pursuit," the Marshal orders, "It is just a bit too fast to catch up to if we wind up tailing it." The alien fighter turned out to be remarkably agile, dodging both Sidewinders, but the Phoenix-like heavy missiles it fired back with were easily evaded by the Condor, and the cannon was enough to shoot it down. Much as the Condor ripple fires its Sidewinders to catch UFOs while they're stabilizing after an evasive maneuver, the Condor was nearly hit by the second missile after dodging the first. The US liason seemed very impressed by this victory. Apparently, it was a similar craft that shot down the Delta rocket once it left the atmosphere. The Marshal would not like to test any other Earthly craft against this fighter in its home element, and is happy the Condor seems to be a match in this one. Shortly after midnight, there is a contact report from Iran the new team over at Mount Sinai find particularly grating. It is so close to them a Condor would have been able to pick up the camel-stealing bandits on its radar scarcely after taking off. Dr. Sneidly delivered his report on the live Sebillian study during the operation, starting with some disbelief at the effectiveness of using flashbangs to knock such a beast all the way to an unconscious state. "There are two significant medical benefits from this study," the scientist explains, "The first is that drugs the Sebillians always have from their implants to keep stem cells in their bloodstreams also work on humans. This will revolutionize the treatment of leukemia." "Whoopey ding," the Marshal rolls his eyes. "The second is the protein cascade that rapidly turns ascorbate and chitosan into solid bone tissue," he says. "What's that good for?" the Marshal asks, turning to face him again. "Our medkits," the researcher smiles, "The clots formed by the new bandages I made will now form almost bulletproof armoured scabs on the portion exposed to the air. This effectively doubles the effectiveness of our battlefield medkits, which should increase our troopers' effectiveness." The medical doctor beside him, Dr. Chapelle, adds, "It makes removing them for surgery much more difficult. I've ordered a new bone saw." "The also improve the effectiveness of the word 'effective'," the Marshal smiles, returning the paperwork. He orders that five of the science teams should work on the alien biology project, and ten should tackle the relatively simple alien pistol. The Charlie lands at the light scout's crash site in Ontario after sunset, the team not wanting to give the aliens the entire night to wait for rescue. The industrial area is well lit by street lights in most places, and the troopers carry flares. The downside is that this is the rookie chock. The right flank team of Hudson Martin (assault) and Takeshi Endo (sniper) spot the craft and a Ceasan guarding the door less than two minutes after touchdown. They hold up while the balance of the right flank team, fruitlessly searching the northeast quadrant for caution's sake, catches up to them. Left flank assault man Dieter Weber and his partner, sniper Klaus Lange, spot number two in a lumber yard on the left flank, along with the security guard he had just killed. Some fire coming from the dark near the alien craft's starboard side hit the wall sniper Alma Lindberg was hiding behind. No one could figure out whether it was aiming at her or Hudson Martin. It was Lindberg's signal that broke up, despite the hard cover. Some jaws in the command center dropped as Martin's shoulder cam showed number one motionless on the concrete just after the second flashbang went off. These Ceasans were surprisingly fragile. Two minutes later, after Lange got number two, number four inside the craft is popped by assault man Boris Belinsky after doing significant damage to his shield. In the meantime, Hudson Martin carefully searches the electrical substation suspected to be the hiding place of number three. When he got up the stairs to check the second floor offices, he closed the door by accident [OC: It's that right-click-to-look stupidity. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's had it happen.] When Hudson finally got in, he traded fire with the Ceasan rifleman over one of the desks, but could not hit the alien at point blank range. Four rounds of return fire vaporized his shield and killed him, despite a health rating of 65. Dieter Weber got into the room mere seconds too late to save Hudson, but got the alien with two shots from his pistol. "Dang," the Marshal grumbles to the General as the Charlie lifts off, "He was the best candidate in the second class." He then starts to go over some paperwork. "Marshal," the General says, "You don't seem to be taking it too hard. Are you okay?" "About him, yes," Matthew answers, "Humans confirmed dead or captured so far: 362. Of them Xenonauts: one." The command center was soon busy handling air traffic as both new aircraft to be transferred to Mount Sinai arrived at about the same time as the operational Charlie got back from its mission. The $34 million the remains of Uniform Five were auctioned off for advanced the construction of the first Foxtrot, but there is still a ways to go. At midnight Greenwich time starting September 16, the dropship and interceptor ordered for Mount Sinai departed on schedule as the new base reported ready to receive them. By this time, the alien craft harassing the Middle East had apparently left. The alarms started going off with Europe and South Atlantic Anomaly news wires (the SAA is where Earth's magnetic field dips unusually low because the magnetic axis isn't quite centered inside Earth's core.) Condor Three was launched to escort Charlie Two the rest of the way to Mount Sinai, where the soldiers to man Charlie Two had already arrived on their US Air Force jet. "Uniform Six over Hudson's Bay southerly course," the radar operator announces just after midnight starting September 17, "The usual 756 knots." "Condor One," The Marshal points to the intercept operator. "Charlie One as well?" he asks, "Sun's still up over here." "No," Matthew sighs, "I'm concerned the entry phase for this wave isn't finished, and if they drop a fighter on us, we're screwed if it shoots her down." Shortly before two o'clock, Condor Three, sent to investigate a news wire in the North Sea reported in. The console operator patched Matthew into his report: "...it's just sitting there on the ground in Switzerland." "And Charlie Two is still in its ferry flight," Matthew grumbles, "Let's hope it stays put, then." The interceptor can't shoot a target on the ground for various reasons. Before then, Charlie One landed northeast of Uniform Six and the advance went about as routinely as such things go until David Stopple (with a reflex rating of just 40) cracked open the alien craft's door and got a face full of plasma from a Sebillian guard and a pistol armed helmsman, falling under the rising white cloud of his vaporised assault shield. He didn't make it. "Guiness, patch me into Charlie Two," the Marshal elbows the procedures/communications operator to his left before grabbing the phone handset from his console. He then instructs the other dropship, "Guys be extra careful on this one. We lost David Stopple on the Uniform Six mission. They caught him at the craft door at close range." "Yes, sir," the troops acknowledge. "I'm going to be a little more standoffish on this one, guys," the Marshal explains, "Don't let that take you by surprise." The Marshal is relieved at the central console by General Wahlmer, whose regular duty shift is beginning, and heads over to the ground ops primary console.

Chapter 4: Suppression Marshal Kisberg arrives in the command center a few minutes before 18:00Z on September 8 to answer the contact alarm. "What have you got for me, Major," he asks the duty officer. "A marine dead zone off the coast of Vietnam," he answers, standing as the Marshal relieves him, "Confirmed alien by the Australian Navy." As Matthew takes his seat, he moans, "Dang near our antipode. I hope we get something in range." At 20:45Z the Major, now at the radar station, reports, "Marshal, contact Uniform Three on radar heading zero-three-zero Manitoba. It's a seven-five-six coming right at us." "Condor Two," the Marshal says into the intercom mic, "Get that thing out of my sky if you please." Since it's mid-day, he gives the troops their first ever fast scramble, hoping to catch them before the sun goes down. At 21:35Z, Condor Two reaches Uniform Three and shoots down the third light scout the Xenonauts can claim. Even though it's still Saturday afternoon in the industrial park where the Charlie touched down with its characteristic hypergolic personality, the mission is booked on the ninth because it's just seventy-five seconds past midnight in Greenwich. OC: The first run was flawless, but lost due to a crash on the debrief screen. The replay was a bit more interesting. A Ceasan rifleman in an office building to the Charlie's left was brought down by Jenkins and Andersen through the glass of bus shelter and office windows, and the mission was uneventful for the next two minutes, when the number two Ceasan rifleman was spotted just outside an engine shop to the south. Center assault man Julian Tschannen cracked open the shop's northern door and dropped a smoke grenade in the middle of the shop as left flank assault lady Lynn DeJong went for the building's eastern entrance. [OC: I've reckoned upper right as north for this mission.] The alien went east around the building, stuck his rifle muzzle through the fence coming off the southeast corner, and hosed DeJong from less than thirty metres away. "I've lost DeJong!" Dr. Chapelle yelps, he and his comm tech turning to the engineering oscilloscopes. "Dead?" Matthew stands, looking over his shoulder. "No data," the comm tech answers. Matthew sits back down and depresses the microphone switch, "DeJong, can you hear me?" She doesn't answer. "Command from Jenkins, good sight picture on the hostile," comes back instead. "Get him!" the Marshal orders. Jenkins' grainy video from the shoulder camera shows the alien taking multiple hits and falling away, with DeJong apparently cowering under her shield to the right next to the door. "DeJong!" the Marshal demands. "She's moving," Jenkins reports, the picture very lousy with interference from the alien weapon and the smoke coming from the grass around her. "Doctor, how is she?" "I don't know, sir," Dr. Chapelle reports, "The equipment is malfunctioning." It's been nearly two minutes since they had any data. In the meantime the center unit secured the engine shop's interior while the right flank unit secured another engine shop to the north. "I'm alright," DeJong reports at last. A few seconds later, data comes back on her vital signs, which are elevated, but strong. She wasn't even hit. [OC: The alien suppressed her one turn, and the return fire from Jenkins suppressed her on the next turn. I was surprised she didn't have a morale event.] In the meantime, the mission progressed around her, number three being in a machine shop just west of the northern engine shop. Gorski dropped him through the window from surprisingly long range. He and Henderson were the only ones not to converge on the alien light scout. Even DeJong got there along with everyone else. Tschannen slipped in the flashbang, then DeJong and Sokolova rushed in to execute the two Ceasans inside before they opened their huge eyes and uncovered their tiny ears. After reviewing the third mission, the three brightest minds on the topic, Marshal Matthew Kisberg, General John Wahlmer, and Doctor Gabriel Sneidly [OC: Yes, named in part by Scott Manley] were wondering why the action was coming in bursts. The Xenonauts had very deliberately equipped their troops with miniature cameras and radio helmets to help coordinate them, along with a staff nearly twice as big in number in the control center to maximize their effectiveness in the field. They concluded that the aliens were doing something similar, resulting in astonishingly fast-paced, but apparently "turn-based" combat where one side moved while the other was receiving orders from a command that had a very good view of the battle's "big picture". "So, where's their command center?" Kisberg asks. "I somehow doubt that they rely on populated command centers as we do," Dr. Sneidly suggests, "But it's hard to tell since their radios are so advanced compared to ours. It appears their shannon efficiency is actually more than unity. Either that, or the alien soldiers are far smarter than they appear and somehow work using a hive intelligence. Possibly both." "Shannon efficiency?" Wahlmer wonders. "It's named for Dr. Claude Shannon, of-" "Never mind that," Matthew raises a hand to interrupt Gabriel, "This is a not a lecture on information theory. The question is how do we get a more useful prisoner?" "I believe the aliens have an equivalent of you two," pointing at the Marshal and General, "to command their ground forces much the same way as you do. An alien officer of some description." "And how do we identify this 'officer', might I ask?" the General grumbles. "I'm expecting that a ship containing such an officer would be communicating with the fleet with much longer and less frequent radio signaling," the Doctor replies, "Since he would be commanding his troopers locally, he'd only need to communicate with the fleet every few minutes instead of troopers requiring commands every few seconds as we've seen so far." The phone rings [OC: almost literally, as the message popped up on the Meron while I was finishing the above paragraph!] and it is grabbed, "Kisberg." "The personnel you hired just got here, sir," the hangar officer replies. "Okay," the Marshal answers, "send the engineers to Olaf Rumerov, and I'll meet the troopers on the range after the Charlie gets back." "Yes, sir." Click. "So, this 'officer'," the Marshal continues, "I think we can agree that if we're going to attempt to flashbang one into submission, we'd have much better chances with the Ceasans than the Sebillians." Both indicate their approval, and the meeting ends with the straightening of notes and the upending of coffee dregs. As the General and Marshal exit the command center and turn right towards the hangar row, the Doctor turns left until Matthew grabs the epaulet of his lab coat. "You're not leaving me stuck answering the baby blue question, Gabriel." The Charlie is loaded with eight of the eleven new guys, a mix of four assault, three sniper, and one machine gunner. A few frag grenades are issued among the flashbangs to the strongest of the troopers. At midnight starting the eleventh, the command center at Mount Sinai is finished. The Marshal orders five hundred million dollars worth of facilities to be built immediately, half of which is the radar installation to the south. The living quarters are to the east, workshop to the west, secure storage beside the radar station, and two hangars to the north. Above Dr. Chapelle's objections, Kisberg insists that the medical center can wait until next month. Dr. Sneidly quietly enters the command center and politely beckons the Marshal to the conference table. Leaving a Colonel in the command seat, Matthew comes over, "What's up Gabriel?" "I'm ready to hand off development of the new Foxtrot interceptor to Engineering," he says, unrolling the new aircraft's plans. It looks like an Arrow but has Russian engines. "It's quite a kitbash," the scientist explains. "The Arrow's tooling was completely destroyed when it was canceled, so we scanned it using a pantograph. As impressive as the PS-13 Iroquois engines were supposed to be, they weren't quite ready when the project was canceled, and their tooling was destroyed. We tracked such an engine down, but reverse engineering the tooling isn't so easy, so we called up the Soviet Mikoyan-Gurevich Bureau for a solution. They forwarded us to the Soloviev Bureau for their new D-30F6 engine, which I might say, bears more than a passing resemblance to the PS-13. The prototype's J75-P3 has no hope of getting this heavy an aircraft off our runway." "What about weapons?" the Marshal asks. "We stole the radar and Phoenix missiles from Grumman's F-14 Tomcat pretty much as is," Gabriel explains. "To keep the weight down, the wing structure's a bit on the weak side, so if anyone attempts the sorts of evasive maneuvers they're used to in the Condor, he's going to rip the wings clean off. Fortunately, the missiles have a lot of range, and with the size of the aircraft and extra metal surrounding the vital systems, we figure it can take about 50% more of a pounding from the enemy before losing performance." "Thanks, Gabriel," Matthew says, "You brought Olaf up to speed, yet?" "Please," the scientist huffs, "Please brief the grease monkeys for me. I can barely stand them." "The Sebillian, then," The Marshal orders. "As punishment?" Gabriel wonders as he stands. "I'd like to make you think that," Matthew smiles, "But to be honest, that was already the plan." Unfortunately, the accounts ran dry early in the construction of the inaugural Foxtrot as the Condor and Charlie aircraft were ordered to fill the freshly completed hangars and wait for their transfer to the new base at Mount Sinai. Hopefully, it won't be until October before the aliens start sending down their larger ships.

Chapter 3: Second Time Out Dr. Chapelle remarks on the inadequacy of the base's tiny infirmary incorporated into the living quarters, with Dr. Sneidly of the research group there to frustrate Matthew with an alliance. The new fifty million dollar medical facility is authorized before the dropship even gets back with the catastrophically injured Bergdahl. Matthew also fits out the spare troopers, Corporals Julian Tschannen, and Rob Evans, with, respectively assault and sniper kits. Tschannen can handle a machine gun, but Matthew wants to replace Bergdahl's shield first, despite Ross Jenkins' pair of kills with the powerful M60E3. At the end of the first day, Matthew returns early for the beginning of his second shift. General Wahlmer relays the displeasure of the funding regions they were not able to protect, a projected loss of $10 million in regular funding, and 138 dead or missing, including 31 in North America. Just over an hour into Marshal Kisberg's second duty watch, Dr. Sneidly arrives with the unnerving assessment of DSN and telescope searches conducted so far, which includes the conclusion that the alien craft produce much weaker radar echos than their size would indicate. People looking at the same craft at the same time with Goldstone's DSN radar telescope and the 200 inch Mount Palomar optical observatory disagreed wildly on how large it was, and the tentatively dubbed "Carrier" type went up from six thousand tonnes to over a hundred thousand tonnes, far larger than the one that was downed in Iceland. "We have conclusively identified over three thousand separate craft on orbit around the planet, with several times that amount of additional probable signals." "That's just great, Doctor," the Marshal groans, handing the clipboard back to the scientist, "Get to work on that live one. Try to figure out what they want, please." After the research department head departs, he slowly sits down and rests his head in his hands. After a thankfully uneventful twelve hours, Dr. Chapelle returns with his report on the autopsies performed on the Sebillian bodies recovered from the battle of Uniform 1. They are essentially bipedal dinosaurs with rifles, and their cold-blooded eyes are adapted for seeing in infrared, meaning that smoke won't hinder their accuracy. Fortunately, except for the one that got incredibly lucky with Bergdahl, they don't have much resolution, and that's why their aim sucks. Chapelle speculates that they can heal so fast that it is significant in battle. In a wound he initially thought was several hours old, he identified one of Ross Jenkins' first burst rounds, which hit the Sebillian only thirty-seven seconds before DeJong finished it off. Part of the reason the Charlie dropship's capacity is so reduced from its incarnation as the C-130 Hercules is because it carries a pair of huge Quadruplex recording machines, one for video, and one for data. Wahlmer and Chapelle rapidly sort out which Sebillian he was talking about. "I want you to find out how they do this," the Marshal orders, "although I might have a higher priority if I can get it." Turning to Wahlberg, he says, "Any luck with the Canadians?" "It seems incredible now, but yes," the General reports, "They were hiding a CF-105, it's already on its way here." "Good!" the Marshal cheers, "As soon as it gets here, tell Dr. Sneidly, we have it to help out with his interceptor proposal." "Uh, sir?" Wahlberg grimly points out, "They managed to get a prototype over to the cruiser in Iceland back in the day. Because it was going just under Mach 2, it got closer than any other plane. Unfortunately, the poor thing was vaporized, leaving just a trace of the flight computer's power supply and one film exposure that was barely clear enough to confirm it was from this plane." "We'll have to do that magnesium thing, obviously," Matthew sighs, "It should work, since the Arrow has half the wing loading of a normal fighter, including the Foxhound Sneidly originally asked for." As soon as the living quarters were completed on September 6, the Marshal hired five engineering teams to fill up the workshop in anticipation of the new interceptor, and eleven new soldiers with impressive enough evaluations. "The idea is to get them ready for the second base," he explains to Wahlmer. Shortly after he had signed that off, Dr. Sneidly walked into the command center. "How's your captive doing?" Matthew asks. "Actually rather well," the researcher says, handing his boss the clipboard. "Ah," the Marshal taps on the report, "Here, I read 'once it had become clear that no more could be gained from questioning the creature, one of my team handed it a pistol and ordered it to kill itself. It promptly complied, splattering its brains across half the containment tank.'" "Yeah," the scientist scratches his head, "Just after I wrote that, he stood back up and started asking for orders again. It now appears that it missed its own brain and healed up within a few minutes." "Remarkable, after the mess it made of Bergdahl," Matthew sighs, sitting back down. "Oh," the scientist continues, "and before you get too excited, reproducing the suicide effect on the battlefield is completely impractical-" "I'd rather be able to get my injured trooper back in the field as fast as this brute got back up," the Marshal drawls. "I'll see what I can do, sir." The scientist turns to leave. "After you're done with the Arrow and Foxhound though," the Marshal finishes, "I suspect those Condors aren't going to cut it for much longer, and it'll do us no good if we can't shoot them down." The Marshal then thinks of something and grabs the phone, hitting General Wahlmer's extension, "General, how quickly can we get aircraft into Sinai after the hangars are finished?" "Three days, Matthew," John answers, "The world's military/industrial complex is overhauled for this war, and were ready to go the moment we were activated. It seems entirely too slow right now, huh?" "Yeah," Matthew groans, "Which is why I'm going to ask you, once the hangars are complete at Sinai-" "Three days, I already-" "Let me finish, please," the Marshal growls, "How long would it take us to transfer aircraft from North America to Sinai?" "Ah," the General realizes, "Sorry for interrupting you. I don't have an exact figure, but ballpark 36 hours for a Charlie, which isn't so good. A Condor should be able to get there in 12 or so. But, we don't have the hangar capacity here at the moment." "Hangars are cheap," the Marshal says, "If we get started on ours, the aircraft should be arriving here just before Sinai finishes theirs." "Good idea, sir," the rustling can be heard even over the phone, "I've already started the paperwork." The General is with the construction crews laying out the hangars in the caverns when the contact alarm goes off. "Do we need to evacuate?" the foreman asks. "No," the General grunts, "We've drilled you enough you should know the difference between the contact and evac alarms. Do you have enough executive input to get started?" "Yes, sir," he answers. "Then get going," the General hands him back the plans, "My duty shift begins in thirty-six minutes." Uniform Two, of the same apparent type, killed its orbital velocity over the Yucatan Peninsula, dropped into the atmosphere, and then proceeded north at the type's usual 756 knots, across the Gulf of Mexico towards Texas. Once the General has returned to the command center, Matthew briefs him, then loosens his tie. "Sir," the General says at the Marshal's back as he turns for the exit, "I really think you should command the ground mission." "I agree," Matthew replies, turning to face his second-in-command with half open eyes, "but that won't be starting until dawn at the site. I can get some sleep before then." Once again, the interception and shootdown is easy, but the craft settled into a small town's industrial outskirts. News reports placed another craft over Pakistan, within the future radar and interception radius of the new base at Mount Sinai, which is not yet ready. The General also fielded a call from a rich guy named Paul Tracy who wanted to loan an island he owned in the Philippines, and wanted to name the Xenonauts stationed there after the US Air Force demonstration squadron, for whatever reason. John Wahlmer didn't think it was worth waking Matthew for, and decided to write him a note, just in case he forgot about it later. [OC: I thought the movie directed by Johnathan Frakes was quite forgetable, and watched it because I was a Trekker, not a TB fan.] The chock on the Charlie was quite impressed by the landing, which managed to clear some trees and settle into an empty parking lot without even knocking them over. They were not so impressed by the Tercel half on the grass nearby. "I call it a Ceasan," Dr. Sneidly remarks of the red shirted humanoid Sargeant Andersen described just as the ramp dropped. "I call it a Talosian," someone remarked, getting a chuckle from every Trekker in the command center, including the Marshal. The head of research was obviously not a Star Trek fan. Gorski answered its pistol shot with a hail of fire from his Pig, and the Xenonauts secured the landing quadrant within a few seconds. Shortly thereafter, the sounds of plasma fire indicated that the immediate area was quite thoroughly infested, as though, once again, the small craft was shot down in its mission area. After a flashbang from Tschannen, Andersen got the day's second kill. Henderson managed a terrible shot on the third with his sniper rifle. He was too close to Sokolova to take machine gun fire, but the plucky assault trooper closed the gap and put two rounds into the blue-shirted Ceasan, which had just vaporized the wall of the warehouse between itself and Sokolova trying to get around her shield. Rounding out the second 'turn' before the aliens were likely to start shooting again Novikova put some smoke down on the left flank between the unseen sound of an alien rifle and the troopers distracted by the number two alien. DeJong ducked between two rail cars to the south, beyond which there was some smoking grass where one of the alien's shots had just landed. The still unseen number four fired two shots across her bow, apparently at an unseen non-X. She dropped her still perfectly good shield and yanked out the shotgun before jumping the coupling. 42m being a bit far for a shotgun, she wounded and suppressed the alien, but was now in deep trouble as he raised his rifle in her direction. Before he could get his shot off, two flashbangs and a smoke bomb came over the rail car from behind DeJong, and Andersen missed with a no-scope from the other end of the western rail car. It was enough that the alien's panicked discharge against DeJong was thoroughly bad, and the Marshal's sigh of relief could be heard throughout the command center as she reported blasting it into oblivion at point blank range. Despite all this activity on the left flank, it was Sokolova and Jenkins who found the craft on the right flank, in the northwest quadrant. Tschannen covered DeJong while she recovered her shield and pistol, just in case the engine shop in the south still had more hostiles while everyone else closed on the craft. For the next minute the only shots fired were Jenkins trying to open the craft door from the warehouse window using his machine gun. He succeeded with the second burst, giving Henderson, rounding the north side of the warehouse, a chance to trade fire at some three hundred metres with the alien inside. Henderson scored an unlikely hit, wounding the alien, which luckily missed. Sokolova is suspicious of lucky moments, and rushes the door, shield up, to get a flashbang inside before he can get off another shot. Gorski followed up with a smoke grenade. "I lost my sight picture," Henderson complains. "Let's hope he did as well," Gorski replies, "or your family's about to be notified." He's probably right, as the alien seems to be waiting out the smoke. "Novikova, if you'll do the honours," the Marshal intones grimly. Two pistol shots are heard before she replies, "It's done." Tschannen and DeJong's tense search of the engine shop and rail loading area turned up nil. Negotiations with the various US government departments and contractors netted $34 million for the haul, saving 300kg of alien metal for the Xenonauts. General Wahlmer handed out four promotions.

I'm going to lead off by saying that I believe Goldhawk got more right than wrong with Xenonauts, and that it is a good game overall. Now, a couple carriage returns and a deep breath... ...Xenonauts has been a demonstration of how to get several things inexcusably wrong, and my least favorite is that I check "Run windowed" in the launcher and it NEVER runs windowed. If it is unable to run windowed and they know (and I've discussed this with Chris, I know they already knew) the checkbox should be either greyed out or nonexistent. The program lies to me, and I'm offended (lying hardware and software is condemned in the Bible at least five times!) Other things are less offensive, but when I'm used to playing games that have the features that I like (Minecraft, Civ4, GalCiv2, X-COM: UFO Defense, X-COM: Apocalypse, Doom 3, and my all-time favorite Kerbal Space Program), the lack of granularity in the difficulty settings in Xenonauts is quite grating. (Granted, this is also an issue of Doom 3, but it is well excused as a linear shooter.) There is a heck of a lot of room on the screen for a panel that exposes all the options and shows the four existing difficulty levels as presets. One of these could be the starting state of the invasion ticker, which could lead to the truly "Insane" starting with Corvettes. Others, such as starting funds, starting base configuration, starting squad stats, general starting stats (imagine leading troops into battle with starting stats 20-40), the progression of each stat with experience (e.g. slow down or speed up experience progression - I've noticed that reflexes and bravery are essentially frozen.) Or, imagine for your first mission, with no ("Basic") armour and derpy ballistics, facing top-grade elite forces emerging from the light scouts. I'd call it " ". I'd love to be able to adjust labour rates in science and workshop. My non-story Veteran game has 39 science teams (down from 60, I laid a bunch off) sitting around twiddling their thumbs waiting for the first Dreadnought while a total of five (soon to be six) fully loaded workshops are in a mad panic to build enough Marauders, armour, MAC - sorry, MAG weapons (cue Halo theme) to equip three bases. Changing these balances could be quite interesting. And, of course, hit indicators.