Softie

I'm terrible for self-imposed limits - e.g. in Skyrim I insist on only using weapons and armour I craft myself from ore I've mined and leather and fur from animals I've actually hunted and any enchantments bestowed on them by me. Takes forever but is oddly satisfying. I've got so daft in Xenonauts about ensuring that every soldier is as well developed as possible before launching Operation Endgame that I must be viewed as at best pragmatic by the general population. In seeking to improve reflexes I deliberately look for Sebillian and Reaper incursions in industrial settings and use ranged attacks on any Sebillians with area-effect weapons whilst leaving Reapers to infect as many locals as possible to increase the number of targets for overwatch fire. It's very effective but a little piece of your soul dies...

Crikey. That was a marathon. I spent a few days grinding through missions to build up stats and ended with everyone maxed out for TUs, Strength and Accuracy and had Reflexes ranging from 58 to 81. I gave the lowest 4 Reflexes the Magstorms and everyone else yomped in with a full inventory of clips for the Mag rifles which reduced the Sentinel troopers to 72 TUs. I had 3 medikits and 2 plasma charges so was carrying 386 magazines (including those loaded). The break-in went smoothly with both generators knocked out by the plasma charges but some grotty luck with dread meant that I had to fight a delaying action against the reapers whilst the rest of the squad cleared the ante-chamber and throne room. I straight away set about clearing lanes of fire in the throneroom by moving the furniture out of the way...alright, I atomised it with the Magstorms: I fired off remaining bursts on MagStorms and got the gunners to teleport out of there. We then settled in for the slaughter which culminated in this: My final rounds have just been fired and the weary but exultant troopers have teleported to safety. Here is the final tally: That's right, 1,763 aliens killed with top scorer on 281 (no medal but at least he got a boost to his reflexes which made it all worthwhile). We expended a staggering 4,632 rounds with a kill rate of 38% (that's about 2.63 rounds per kill). Reapers? Schmeapers!

Sigh. I put this to the test and can tell you 2 things for certain: 1) 10 Mag-Storms go through Operation Endgame like sh*t through a goose 2) You can't get those gribblies to line up nicely for burst fire to match the kill ratio of reaction fire from rifles - it's futile in the main corridor and in the throne room they catch you in the only place where they line up. Hilariously, however, I dutifully packed a grand total of 2 plasma charges (1 for each sentinenel) so as to maximize ammo capacity and flung them on the generators after wiping the remains of the sibellian's off my boots, as you do. I set the timers to 2 so as to avoid the embarrasment of short throws and stood back to admire my handiwork. One went off leaving a satisfying pile of smouldering shards where the generator had previously stood but the other went off doing seemingly no damage. In a towering rage I summoned the full maturity of my 47 years and put 3 rounds rapid-fire into it. Kaboom! Didn't expect that. As a dedicated follower of Dranak's hilarious campaigns I remember when his grenades failed to destroy them and thought I was knackered as his very dead heroes were in the same circumstances but we all got home alright. Next time is the big one. I have my squad pretty well maxed out on stats and intend to sail comfortably over my previous record. I'll be sure to take plenty of snaps this time and show you the final score card...there ought to be a medal struck for 200 kills in one mission

Thanks guys, although I think OCD has a lot to answer for. I was musing on how the end game could be tweaked so that the Chief Engineer and Chief Scientist have to come with the team. The alien fail-safe isn't to crash-land the ship but to realease the gribblies to charge for the teleporter which is set up to transport them to a major city. Teleporting such an enormous number of lifeforms over that distance will completely drain the ship's power source leaving it as a drifting hulk, hence why it isn't used normally for attack. Our Boffin and Bodger have to race against time breaking the coding on the alien transporter so that once the last human teleports to safety it changes its alignment to send the chittering horde straight into THE HEART OF THE SUN. You therefore have to hold back the purple waves long enough to complete the work (presumably with suitably sarcastic remarks from the Scientist who is my hero). The length of time you need to hold out would vary on game-setting but would certainly add an edge as failure to realign the portal would mean curtains for planet Earth.

I have been concentrating on the ground war attempting to train some super-troopers for the ultimate Operation Endgame (no fun in cheating the save file - it has to be honestly earned). I was slightly baffled by the trouble I've been having with enemy interceptors. I had 1 Corsair at each base to control the little varmints but seemed to have unusual trouble clearing the skies. When they sent a Vic of heavy fighters in I sent up 3 Marauders and got ready to collect the Alenium. When bits of Marauder started raining from the clouds I realised something was seriously amiss. It seems that my failure to research rapid-fire lasers meant that the aircraft armourer was not prepared to load Mag Storms on the hardpoints until first receiving written orders to bypass intermediate developments. Must be the same joker who insisted that the British 94mm AA gun was for use against aircraft no matter what those pesky Germans were doing with their 88mm guns (they had enterprisingly produced 100,000 rounds for our guns in the expectation of capturing some). Now that the administrative foul-up has been rectified, UFOs are once again resembling collanders once we've got through with them. Not a mistake I will be making again.

Just had a thought... If I take 2 Sentinels with plasma charges to knock out generators and then 10 Predators with 33 mags each I can make sure I have no TUs for reaction firing and instead let the reapers get into the chamber on their turn and use my movement to line up as many gribblies as possible to get a greater kill-ratio. I could hopefully get 2-3 in a burst and with the extra ammo from the Predators I should easily manage close to 2,000. Could be brown-trousers time letting the damn things get close but will be a lot more proactive than letting the riflemen reaction-fire.

This is where they still had a couple of magazines left each. Bear in mind that the corpses in the doorway are literally hundreds deep. I sometimes had MAG Storms in echelon to either side (to avoid shooting each other when adjacent) but found that you get a better kill-ratio with rifles (4-6 instead of 3). The cleaner is going to have something to say about this...

I tried to do that but stupidly managed a fascinating shot of my desktop. I have the game saved just before the end so will figure out how to get it right and post it.

Did some more missions to improve reactions, strength (every magazine counts) and accuracy, got the 4 MAG-Stormers to leave as soon as the break-in battle was finished so they basically acted as mules for ammo and settled down with the 8 MAG-rifles to eventually kill 1,357 out of 1,400. Top scores were 200 and 198 with 2 of them not making triple figures. I won't be doing that again in a hurry. Had to send out scavengers to pick up alien grenades just to keep going by the end.

I'm not going to pretend it was terribly exciting after the break in battle what with all the hidden movement but the carpet of reaper courses was most impressive. I hate to think what would have happened had an alien turned up with an area-effect weapon whilst the "thin blue line" was mowing down the reapers. The most entertaining aspect was managing ammunition. Since my riflemen had various reaction and accuracy combinations I found that 2 of the worst shots had the highest reaction scores (since they had started as shotgunners in an assault role they had only needed to shoot a few times on missions as it tended to be pretty final when they did) and now they were typically blazing away 4 times a turn but often failing to hit. I had some very accurate soldiers with slower reactions who usually mopped up but when the reapers bunched and then came in as 10 or more instead of the usual 4-6 a turn it came down to the 2 soldiers with lousy reaction times and because the reapers had got really close to trigger them they always fired multi-shot. This meant I had variable ammunition usage so faced worrying situations when everyone was close to empty at the same time - it certainly kept you on your toes but was very satisfying when soldiers were dropping magazines and shifting position so someone on empty could dash in and replenish just in time to stop the next wave.

The limited visibility for Predator armour is a major drawback as is the way they smash door mechanisms. A balanced mix of Sentinel armoured Mag riflemen and Predators is my preferred set up. My experience has been that Predators won't reaction fire when down to last burst whilst Sentinel armour troops will spin 180 degrees to shoot and use multishot for close targets so they look after one-another. I just finished operation endgame and tried to beat my previous record of kills. I had 4 Predators lugging mag-storms and 31 mag reloads each with 8 Sentinels with mag rifles, medikits and as many magazines as they could carry without dropping below 80% TUs. I carried 2 plasma charges for the generators. Cleared the map and then hunkered down in front of teleporter where Predators offloaded 10 magazines to each rifleman. During the ensuing massacre we despatched 986 aliens (mostly reapers of course) before teleporting out when last rounds had been fired. My 8 riflemen had each killed in excess of 100 aliens but the highest scoring Predator had only 42. This shows how much more likely riflemen are to reaction fire with good visibility and underlines how the Predator is best used as an offensive weapon. Oddly enough, the limiting factor on my kill ratio was that many of the riflemen had relatively low accuracy since the Predators had done so much of the killing leading up to final mission.

When I first finished I got told that I'd killed 82/118 aliens and wondered whether there was a limit so replayed it. I used every magazine and grenade and had every trooper carry extra rounds for the Singularity Cannons although I lost one of the two gunners when they blew themselves up with a poorly aimed shot. 392/412. They just keep coming as the text warned. Actually lots of fun dropping magazines and switching positions at the end to keep as many troopers firing as possible - those common magazines are a God-send. The gribblies have just enough TU to reach you but not stick you so the last trooper to leave emptied the final rounds as a burst killing 2 and then hopped through the teleporter. At one point I thought the numbers has started to rise for spawning but it must be when the gribblies who visit the molten remains of the generators rejoin the stream in the corridor and you get hard-pressed for 2 or 3 rounds. Shame the Magstorms didn't get to do much with so many Mag rifles reacting first; they also seem reluctant to react if they are down to final 10 rounds and only seemed happy to react after being moved. Now it'll be all about doing it with style. That grenadiering lark sounds like fun.

Just had to say hello as a new Xenonauts player. I'm an Xcom veteran from the old days and have continued playing on DosBox periodically ever since. One of the great pleasures from the originals was the clanking sound when troops exited the Skyranger and the squelchy sounds of the rubber boots in TFTD. This always helped compensate for the blocky graphics and added extra immersion. I got that exact warm glow when I first reloaded some improved weaponry in Xenonauts with that delightful "powering up" hum. The alien chittering and howling is every bit a match for the originals and the music imposes the same levels of dread and paranoia late at night. The ultimate testament is that I now get a red alien head on the edge of my vision whilst walking outside when I used to get the red box with the number. Great job.