Xenonauts:Planetary Defense Simulator(Screw this, I'm playing Fallout instead.)

[the hacker]

more disposable troops

Disposable? Why are you so pessimistic?

[Ad Bot]

[tber123]

Disposable? Why are you so pessimistic?

All rookies are automatically disposable untill they atleast reach Squaddie Rank, which is the next step up from Rookie. Most XCOM Rookies have terrible-ish stats, and the aliens are all "factory made" and usually have better statistics than your rookies. In a average XCOM playthrough, rookies can and will die, and you can't always prevent that unless you savescum.

The biggest threat to XCOM Rookies is a UFO door, and exiting the Skyranger. Aliens love to camp the UFO doors, and they have better reactions than your troops. Its your turn, you order a rookie to open a ufo door, he gets killed instantly by reaction fire. Or the mission just began, and a rookie steps out of the Skyranger only to be shot to death by reaction fire. Smoke grenades are very useful in this game, as they reduce the chance of reaction fire.


Also, I'm playing on "Beginner" difficulty, but even that is a challenge. "Beginner" translates to "Hard mode", "Superhuman" translates to "Pure murder".

(That picture is not mine, but it fits. Notice how even the higher ranked troops can and will die, although in that case its usually from mind control or blaster bombs in the later stages of the game.)
This is someone else's results by the end of the  game.

[Legodude77]

Name: Bob Saget
Preferred love: Male
Personality: Bob Saget

[tber123]

Status update!





Next mission is going to be a "capture" mission. Characters with a underscore in their names are forum submitted.

Talia and Lee Hanson will exit the skyranger first, but they will throw smoke grenades to reduce the risk of reaction fire instakilling them. Both are armed with the Rifle and Laser Pistol. In fact, almost everyone has the laser pistol.

We also have a Scout Tank at our disposal. Very tiny, hard to shoot, can deploy smoke screens, and has a video feed. This is another great invention, as it can scout the place and warn us of alien threats.


Nameless Male Rookie shown below will be running around with a revolver he brought from home. Couldn't smack some sense into the poor kid.



Stalker will be running around with the Rocket Launcher. He is the dedicated "Blow stuff up" guy for now.



Nick Walter gets a stun gun and nothing else, and will be the first one sent through the UFO doors, because this is his punishment for not cleaning up after a incident with a alien corpse and a grenade.

500 Memes and Bob Saget both get Grenade Launchers and Laser Pistols. The grenade launcher can shoot explosives, smoke, and incendiary. The only useful one is smoke and explosives.



The Other Nameless Rookies will be running around with flamethrowers(72% chance of accidental Self Delete) and Auto Cannons loaded with HE rounds. Auto cannons are the best.



The mission begins. Talia and Lee Hanson throw down smoke grenades on the ramp.......

Any last words or comments before someone gets shot in the face, wether it be alien or XCOM trooper?

[the hacker]

Well, at least I have a nice ass. Can someone behind me confirm that?

[Legodude77]

Send rookies out first as cannon fodder.

[tber123]

Well, at least I have a nice ass. Can someone behind me confirm that?

No reply comes from any of the other male rookies for some reason.

Send rookies out first as cannon fodder.

Almost everyone is a Rookie. Everyone is cannon fodder. Including Bob Saget.

The "Nick Walter gets promoted for being mostly useless" update!



Right at the start of the mission, the scout tank malfunctions and begins shooting uncontrollably when it spots an alien. The rest of the troops open fire, but miss every shot(Lee Hanson manages to get a hit in, but the alien still stands.)



Alien down, everyone move up to the UFO. Lee Hanson throws a smoke at the door. Nameless Rookie with a revolver, Nick Walter, and 9mm, you are up first. Have fun. Revolver Rookie is a sergeant somehow.



Alien popped up to ambush us! Redshirt Charlie shoots it, misses most of her shots, but the alien is hit twice in the cape! That counts as a hit, right? It totally missed the flesh, but it put a hole in the cape. Stalker decides to blow up the alien, because we don't have Time Units to waste on aliens we can't hit from 3 centimeters away. The upper floor of the barn is destroyed.



One last alien is alive in the barn! Rook40 and that rookie with a revolver open fire, and Revolver Rookie gets another kill. He isn't a boot camp reject, thats for sure.



Everyone clusterforget around the ufo while the Scout Drone goes in to robot hell scout the inside of the UFO. The scout spots two aliens in the control room, and quickly dispenses smoke to save its own life.



Sergeant Revolver Rookie moves in carefully, and kills another alien with that godamn revolver of his. Holy crap, he must be a protagonist, because only protagonists make accurate shots like that in movies. 9mm and Nick Walter follow him. Lee Hanson and Talia move up, and so does a nameless female rookie with the flamethrower.



Lee Hanson somehow kills an alien with spray and pray, and accidentally shoots the computers in the control room of the ufo. Flamethrower Rookie gets roostery and charges the cape-wearing pink alien, only to trip and waste her Time Units getting back up. The Scout Tank, however, discovers a alien power source or something.



A burst of gunfire, a scream, someones body falling to the ground, someone urinating uncontrollably(if you died with a full bladder, the same would happen to you). Revolver Rookie and Nick Walter charge in. Nick Walter manages to tase the alien, but it won't pass out. The team resorts to beating the alien within an inch of its life. 500 Memes somehow manages to break his laser pistol in half trying to bash a alien's skull in.

Revolver Rookie and Nick Walter get promoted, despite the fact that all Nick Walter did was tase Revolver Rookie by accident(didn't get to screenshot that) and a alien(by accident.) Lee Hanson killed atleast one alien, and yet he doesn't get the promotion. Stalker is the dedicated Blowup-Ologist, and yet blowing up an alien with a direct hit is not promotion worthy. I'll have to speak to the idiots giving out the promotions.



Revolver Rookie gets a rename because so far hes the best shot on the team. Also look at the statstrings.

Bonuses and random pretty stuff to distract you



This is the intro of the original XCOM.



This is what I mean by doors being dangerous to rookies. Picture is from the XCOM Lets Play by Guavamoment.



This is what it looks like on my screen. On smaller screens such as tablets/phones/anything not 2560x1660(probably), it won't be 3 images in a row. It will just go straight down. Thats a shame.

[Cybertails1998]

500 Memes and Bob Saget both get Grenade Launchers and Laser Pistols. The grenade launcher can shoot explosives, smoke, and incendiary. The only useful one is smoke and explosives.

eyyyy 500 Memes is my name and blowing stuff up is my game

anyway make mo' laserpistols and/or whatever we can make. unless this is another "just wait for thing to happen" situation like last time

[Legodude77]

Build more laser pistols and magnums because they are totally the best.

[grunterdb1951]

Lee needs a rail cannon or something

[tber123]

Lee needs a rail cannon or something

How did you know I have the Railgun modification? That weapon only carries 5 shots and is kinda heavy-ish.

Build more laser pistols and magnums because they are totally the best.

K.



We don't have enough storage space, so we will be constructing two general stores, each able to hold 50 things like corpses, weaponry, and whatever alien materials we salvage.



UFO detected, another small one.



Rook40 gets a sniper, Redshirt Charlie gets to test our laser rifles(and miss every shot), and 9mm is the dedicated grenade spammer.



Another female rookie gets a flamethrower. Lets hope Flamethrower Rookie doesn't get herself killed like the last one.



HOLY stuff GREY ALIENS!

Nick Walter manages to somehow miss with a taser, but the second shot knocks the alien to the ground and doesn't knock it out.



How the hell does a MACHINE pass out? Grenades are tossed.



The grenade bounces off the wall and blows up only the Scout Tank. What a shame. The two female rookies with Auto Cannons move up while Bob Saget tries to snipe the grey aliens with a laser pistol. Nick Walter manages to restrain the grey alien he knocked over, and keeps it hostage upstairs, his stun gun ready to fire again.



Redshirt Charlie is sent out first to be plasma bait. Unfortunately, nothing interesting happened. The ufo was spotted, and the team quickly moved up....

4 minutes later



Look at that crap. Lee Hanson just tried to walk 5 steps and tired out. Completely logical game mechanics.



Flamethrower Rookie rushes into the ufo and burns everyone inside to death. I've never heard aliens scream like that. Flamethrower Rookie proposes we see how tasty cooked grey aliens are.



Flamethrower Rookie is now known as PyroRookie.



Oh god. The Heavy Laser. The absolute worst crap that the engineers came up with. It has no auto fire, the aimed shot eats up too many Time Units, and the only good thing about it is that it can destroy walls in one shot instead of 2-3.

Days passed by with no ufo activity. Lets get a update on the research and production....



We interrogated an alien and learned about the "Hyperwave decoder". I have no idea what that is, but we now know how to build one. Also, we should probably research where the aliens came from after we research weapons.



Things are going well for XCOM so far.

What happens in the later stages of the game? (A preview of things to come if this thread gets that far)




Alien concentration camps, mind control spam from humans, and Snakeman roosterfighting in the ring gone horribly wrong. A grenade ended up killing everyone present.

Oh, and also purple armor.

TL:DR Things are going way too well for XCOM, and we haven't even seen a Alien Terror Mission. Obviously, there must be a Alien Terror Mission coming up soon, because dynamic difficulty + doing way too well in the early game so far.

[Legodude77]

Have alien BBQ.

[tber123]

Opinions vary on Gray Alien Steak. (The troops don't know the proper name of it yet.). Some troops(Pyro Rookie, AKA the one that roasted all the greys to death) love the taste, while others instantly vomited.

[the hacker]

Aliens taste like insects.

[tber123]

The Council Of Funding handicaps is very pleased with us, and have increased funding by...only that much. Its time to build a new base. This base is going to be used for storage.



Holy crap! Another ufo! Lets shoot it down an---



Wow----



Another UFO!

*Cut to the UFO exploding and crash landing in the middle of a small town, killing most of the residents*



Redshirt Charlie gets a Heavy Laser, because she never asked for this. What a shame.



Scout drone GO! Three Greys spotted, spam grenades!



Pyro Rookie spots a Grey opening the door to a house. She quickdraws the laser pistol and uses the power of Auto Shot to eventually kill it.



One of the female rookies with the Auto Cannon kills a Grey. 9mm, meanwhile, throws two grenades at the roof and the store.



Bob Saget somehow kills the Scout Drone with FRIENDLY FIRE. He wasn't even aiming that low, and he still manages to hit the damn thing.



The two grenades 9mm threw explode, killing both of the aliens.


Wrong End 1: Entire team killed in less than three turns

Revolver Rookie(Aka "THE Rookie") spots the ufo doors.  Everyone moves up to the UFO doors, and all hell breaks loose.


Pictured above:Grey Alien leaping out of the ufo doors and firing full auto, killing half the team

*CHOOMCHOOMCHOOMCHOOM* "AAAAGGGH!" *CHOOM CHOOM CHOOM*


He was 3 years from retirement. Won't anyone think of the unborn children?



At this point, weird stuff happened. One of the rookies started to panic and started shooting wildly, somehow managing to hit teammates behind her.



The rookie instantly committed Self Delete after realizing what she did.




Rook40 began panicking too, but she instantly calmed herself down.... And began to open fire on her teammates, killing all of them. Rook40 then ate her own gun and pulled the trigger.



This is a major blow to XCOM. All of our current troops just died in two sweeps. This cannot be allowed to happen. Quicksave/Quickload will commence now.....



What the hell just happened? Everyone died, yet they are still alive? Why are we back at the skyranger again?

What really happened ingame:Sectoid used Auto Shot, gets 3 kills in a row, I accidentally misclick and cause one of the Auto Cannon rookies to use Auto Shot on her teammates, then they started panicking. I went along with it and forced Rook40(Who didn't panic) to open fire on her teammates, and then I aborted the mission, causing everyone to appear as Missing In Action.