- Joined
- Aug 31, 2019
Let's Sperg Let's Play XCOM Terror From The Deep (Completed) - This is gonna hurt
- Thread starter L50LasPak
- Start date
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2019
I volunteer to do fuck all, PLUS black cross my squadmates with grenades!
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2020
I volunteer to valiantly die against a crab monster.
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2019
1. Near the Shore
As was common in the mid to early 90s, there was both a CD and a floppy verison of this game released. The only real difference viewable today is that the DOS version shipped with a slideshow intro instead of an FMV one, with flavor text added over stills of the FMV.
Christ what am I doing with my life.
I thought about opening this update with the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea theme or something, but on second thought that would probably make this game seem much more epic than it actually is.
Three screens in and already the Geoscape has seen better days. The terrain no longer carries any detail, as none of this game will take place inland. Some mild detail has been added to the oceans though. I can see what they were going for; here is an oceanographic map:
Low resolution of course, but you get the idea. The problem is that it still looks terrible. There could have been a lot more detail added to the map in my opinion. But then again this game was cranked out in like a year.
Since I couldn't think of much that's nautically themed that relates to the Farms, its time to dip into the movie references. Vulcania is Captain Nemo's secret base of operations in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, named only in the movie. Its location is also made quite clear.
(Screenshot from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1954)
The Solomon Islands do exist on this map, but only as a label when zoomed in on. Anyway.
I quickly set to work spending most of the budget on extra facilities and equipment. I want research to happen as quickly as I can possibly manage this time. I'll basically have to speedrun it to avoid being overwhelmed.
With our first shipment of arms also comes our first round of recruits.
@L50LasPak, @White Devil, @Niggermancer, @RIPRhongoBongo, @Honka Honka Burning Love, @McMitch4kf, @Dark Edea, @Kane Lives, @LullerDerbyRollin, @JongleJingle, @Overcast, @Corn Flakes, @Catgirls are Love, @Friend computer, @Genichiro, @Gimmick Account, @Considered HARMful, @SailingtheSaltySeas, @R00T, @NerdShamer, @Penne Dreadful
Gaze upon the fuckugly that is the aquanaut sprites. I equip as many troops with the Gas Cannon weapon as I can for the moment, for reasons I'll make clear later. This is more difficult than it sounds and about half of our troops are puny and must instead carry the Jet Harpoon Rifle, a weapon with a 10-round magazine, astonishingly poor accuracy and barely any stopping power.
I complete the first two technologies in the Gauss series. Gauss technology for those unfamilar with it is using electromagnets to propell bullets or other projectiles down a firing barrel, kind of like a railgun except a bit more crude. Its actually possible for a person to build a gauss weapon out of carbatteries and scrap wiring with today's technology, but it lacks the penetrating power of modern firearms so far. For what its worth the real world military seems to consider railguns superior.
Gauss weapons replace laser technology in this game. Its explained that laser weapons will not work underwater, but Terror Missions in this game take place on land and no explanation is given for why you can't use them there. Or why you can't use conventional firearms, for that matter. At least the explanation for no plasma weapons is sensible; there is no alien resupply bringing Elerium to Earth, so what little remains of it is too precious to waste on small arms. Gauss weapons will work both on land and underwater, but they require ammunition in the form of magazines unlike the unlimited laser weapons.
Research on the Gauss Pistol magazine is nowhere near complete and I wouldn't waste money trying to build any if it was. We get our first Terror Mission of the game, having failed to detect any alien submarines in our location.
Terror Missions take the form of three different battles now: Port Attacks, which function identical to Terror Missions from the last game, Shipping Terror which.... we'll get to, and Island Terror, which is theoretically the easiest to deal with but also has the highest potential for loss of civilian life.
Sort of phoning it in on the flying submarine names at the moment because I want to tie them to the nautical theme somehow. I name the second Barracuda Interceptor the ScubaTyce.
We'll have to hope our first encounter with the aliens goes alright.
I hope you like teal. Due to how color limitations worked for the original XCOM games, Terror From the Deep has a different palette from the original which also subsequently fucks with the tinting of the night vision colors. If you think having to look through a teal scope is annoying, I have to switch between two different color values depending on whether or not we're doing a land mission or water mission (I use value 7 for land and value 13 for underwater incase anyone is wondering).
The mood on the ground is pretty tense. The team is green as they can be and has no idea what to expect.
Niggermancer encounters our first alien hiding out in some shack. The alien is a Gillman, the basic foot soldiers of the aquatic alien army. Their only special ability is somehow being even more useless and less threatening than Floaters from the last game. He opens up on the alien, but the first blow doesn't take.
Fortunately I'm there to back him up. Looks like first blood goes to me again this game, I swear I didn't plan it like that.
Civilians are getting picked off left and right. Here you can see the two types that populate island missions: fat Samoan stereotypes and tall bikini models. Did I mention this island is off the coast of Alaska?
Here we encounter the Gillman Terror Unit, the Deep One, named directly after HP Lovecraft's Deep Ones. This will get confusing later, but explaining it now would be a spoiler. Honka doesn't have a great angle on this thing so I have Overcast lob a grenade at it, which does the trick.
Honka to my surprise encounters a second Deep One and manages to avoid getting killed by it long enough to take it down. Meanwhile my squad finishes securing the loveshack or whatever the hell its supposed to be.
Overcast, Kane Lives and Ghost of Null manage to pin down a third Deep One to the south and waste it.
We're actually feeling pretty good right about now. Another Gillman and the fourth and probably last Deep One go down.
Things take a turn when I order @White Devil to press the attack rather than retreat when up against this lone Gillman. A full auto burst from his Jet Harpoon fails to kill the target, and the Gillman wastes no time turning around and melting his face off with its raygun.
In the same turn @Dark Edea is picked off from the darkness by a sniper. I'm not aware of Gillmen having particularly good night vision, but it certainly seems to be better than that of our troops right now.
Kane Lives frags what I think was Dark Edea's killer.
I give chase to a Gillman that sliced two civillians clean in half with some kind of melee weapon and successfully take it down. We've taken some casualties but so far we're still in control of the situation.
I have the troops spread out in a skirmish line with me at one end and Corn Flakes on the other. I should probably have considered that whenever they do this in movies it never ends well.
The skirmish line is broken almost immediately when @Honka Honka Burning Love is sniped.
I regroup with Ghost and muster a kill team. Kane Lives, unable to find cover, is hit by the same sniper is left holding on to life by a thread.
Corn Flakes manages to get up the hill the sniper is occupying, but misses the shot. I have him take cover.
Kane Lives, despite having more of his blood on the ground than in his body at the moment, manages ot prime a grenade and relay it to Overcast. Unfortunately Overcast bungles the throw and the alien is left unharmed.
The alien takes the time to gun down @RIPRhongoBongo.
@Corn Flakes moves in for the kill, but the alien shakes off the bolt and kills him as well.
The hill turns into a total warzone as JongleJingle frags the hilltop sniper. Another one pops out from a hole in the bottom of the hill and shoots me dead.
When it rains it pours. @Kane Lives expires the same turn. Its too much for Niggermancer to bear.
Dear Leader isn't going to sit on his ass while his entire team gets shot out from under him. With JongleJingle stil in the fight to the north, Dear Leader moves up and takes out the alien.
A firefight breaks out in the narrow corridor. JongleJingle puts two rounds into the alien but it isn't enough. He has nowhere to go to escape the enemy's fire either. He hears Dear Leader yell from behind him to duck.
Using JongleJingle's last 5 Time Units I'm able to clear just enough headroom for Dear Leader and eventually McMitch to fire over his head and take out the Gillman.
The numbers are in. The mission is a disaster. Half of XCOM's number lost, no live alien captures, and all 12 civillians on site were killed by the aliens. Command is pissed. The Council of Funding Nations is not the late 90s pre War on Terror governments we know from the last game either, but full on cyberdystopias that have neither the patience or mercy to allow the XCOM project to continue if it does not benefit them.
Next time: Let's hope I can turn this ship around.
As was common in the mid to early 90s, there was both a CD and a floppy verison of this game released. The only real difference viewable today is that the DOS version shipped with a slideshow intro instead of an FMV one, with flavor text added over stills of the FMV.
Christ what am I doing with my life.
I thought about opening this update with the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea theme or something, but on second thought that would probably make this game seem much more epic than it actually is.
Three screens in and already the Geoscape has seen better days. The terrain no longer carries any detail, as none of this game will take place inland. Some mild detail has been added to the oceans though. I can see what they were going for; here is an oceanographic map:
Low resolution of course, but you get the idea. The problem is that it still looks terrible. There could have been a lot more detail added to the map in my opinion. But then again this game was cranked out in like a year.
Since I couldn't think of much that's nautically themed that relates to the Farms, its time to dip into the movie references. Vulcania is Captain Nemo's secret base of operations in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, named only in the movie. Its location is also made quite clear.
(Screenshot from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1954)
The Solomon Islands do exist on this map, but only as a label when zoomed in on. Anyway.
I quickly set to work spending most of the budget on extra facilities and equipment. I want research to happen as quickly as I can possibly manage this time. I'll basically have to speedrun it to avoid being overwhelmed.
With our first shipment of arms also comes our first round of recruits.
@L50LasPak, @White Devil, @Niggermancer, @RIPRhongoBongo, @Honka Honka Burning Love, @McMitch4kf, @Dark Edea, @Kane Lives, @LullerDerbyRollin, @JongleJingle, @Overcast, @Corn Flakes, @Catgirls are Love, @Friend computer, @Genichiro, @Gimmick Account, @Considered HARMful, @SailingtheSaltySeas, @R00T, @NerdShamer, @Penne Dreadful
Gaze upon the fuckugly that is the aquanaut sprites. I equip as many troops with the Gas Cannon weapon as I can for the moment, for reasons I'll make clear later. This is more difficult than it sounds and about half of our troops are puny and must instead carry the Jet Harpoon Rifle, a weapon with a 10-round magazine, astonishingly poor accuracy and barely any stopping power.
I complete the first two technologies in the Gauss series. Gauss technology for those unfamilar with it is using electromagnets to propell bullets or other projectiles down a firing barrel, kind of like a railgun except a bit more crude. Its actually possible for a person to build a gauss weapon out of carbatteries and scrap wiring with today's technology, but it lacks the penetrating power of modern firearms so far. For what its worth the real world military seems to consider railguns superior.
Gauss weapons replace laser technology in this game. Its explained that laser weapons will not work underwater, but Terror Missions in this game take place on land and no explanation is given for why you can't use them there. Or why you can't use conventional firearms, for that matter. At least the explanation for no plasma weapons is sensible; there is no alien resupply bringing Elerium to Earth, so what little remains of it is too precious to waste on small arms. Gauss weapons will work both on land and underwater, but they require ammunition in the form of magazines unlike the unlimited laser weapons.
Research on the Gauss Pistol magazine is nowhere near complete and I wouldn't waste money trying to build any if it was. We get our first Terror Mission of the game, having failed to detect any alien submarines in our location.
Terror Missions take the form of three different battles now: Port Attacks, which function identical to Terror Missions from the last game, Shipping Terror which.... we'll get to, and Island Terror, which is theoretically the easiest to deal with but also has the highest potential for loss of civilian life.
Sort of phoning it in on the flying submarine names at the moment because I want to tie them to the nautical theme somehow. I name the second Barracuda Interceptor the ScubaTyce.
We'll have to hope our first encounter with the aliens goes alright.
I hope you like teal. Due to how color limitations worked for the original XCOM games, Terror From the Deep has a different palette from the original which also subsequently fucks with the tinting of the night vision colors. If you think having to look through a teal scope is annoying, I have to switch between two different color values depending on whether or not we're doing a land mission or water mission (I use value 7 for land and value 13 for underwater incase anyone is wondering).
The mood on the ground is pretty tense. The team is green as they can be and has no idea what to expect.
Niggermancer encounters our first alien hiding out in some shack. The alien is a Gillman, the basic foot soldiers of the aquatic alien army. Their only special ability is somehow being even more useless and less threatening than Floaters from the last game. He opens up on the alien, but the first blow doesn't take.
Fortunately I'm there to back him up. Looks like first blood goes to me again this game, I swear I didn't plan it like that.
Civilians are getting picked off left and right. Here you can see the two types that populate island missions: fat Samoan stereotypes and tall bikini models. Did I mention this island is off the coast of Alaska?
Here we encounter the Gillman Terror Unit, the Deep One, named directly after HP Lovecraft's Deep Ones. This will get confusing later, but explaining it now would be a spoiler. Honka doesn't have a great angle on this thing so I have Overcast lob a grenade at it, which does the trick.
Honka to my surprise encounters a second Deep One and manages to avoid getting killed by it long enough to take it down. Meanwhile my squad finishes securing the loveshack or whatever the hell its supposed to be.
Overcast, Kane Lives and Ghost of Null manage to pin down a third Deep One to the south and waste it.
We're actually feeling pretty good right about now. Another Gillman and the fourth and probably last Deep One go down.
Things take a turn when I order @White Devil to press the attack rather than retreat when up against this lone Gillman. A full auto burst from his Jet Harpoon fails to kill the target, and the Gillman wastes no time turning around and melting his face off with its raygun.
In the same turn @Dark Edea is picked off from the darkness by a sniper. I'm not aware of Gillmen having particularly good night vision, but it certainly seems to be better than that of our troops right now.
Kane Lives frags what I think was Dark Edea's killer.
I give chase to a Gillman that sliced two civillians clean in half with some kind of melee weapon and successfully take it down. We've taken some casualties but so far we're still in control of the situation.
I have the troops spread out in a skirmish line with me at one end and Corn Flakes on the other. I should probably have considered that whenever they do this in movies it never ends well.
The skirmish line is broken almost immediately when @Honka Honka Burning Love is sniped.
I regroup with Ghost and muster a kill team. Kane Lives, unable to find cover, is hit by the same sniper is left holding on to life by a thread.
Corn Flakes manages to get up the hill the sniper is occupying, but misses the shot. I have him take cover.
Kane Lives, despite having more of his blood on the ground than in his body at the moment, manages ot prime a grenade and relay it to Overcast. Unfortunately Overcast bungles the throw and the alien is left unharmed.
The alien takes the time to gun down @RIPRhongoBongo.
@Corn Flakes moves in for the kill, but the alien shakes off the bolt and kills him as well.
The hill turns into a total warzone as JongleJingle frags the hilltop sniper. Another one pops out from a hole in the bottom of the hill and shoots me dead.
When it rains it pours. @Kane Lives expires the same turn. Its too much for Niggermancer to bear.
Dear Leader isn't going to sit on his ass while his entire team gets shot out from under him. With JongleJingle stil in the fight to the north, Dear Leader moves up and takes out the alien.
A firefight breaks out in the narrow corridor. JongleJingle puts two rounds into the alien but it isn't enough. He has nowhere to go to escape the enemy's fire either. He hears Dear Leader yell from behind him to duck.
Using JongleJingle's last 5 Time Units I'm able to clear just enough headroom for Dear Leader and eventually McMitch to fire over his head and take out the Gillman.
The numbers are in. The mission is a disaster. Half of XCOM's number lost, no live alien captures, and all 12 civillians on site were killed by the aliens. Command is pissed. The Council of Funding Nations is not the late 90s pre War on Terror governments we know from the last game either, but full on cyberdystopias that have neither the patience or mercy to allow the XCOM project to continue if it does not benefit them.
Next time: Let's hope I can turn this ship around.
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- Joined
- Feb 10, 2019
- Joined
- Nov 21, 2019
Oh captain my captain, can I get in on this one as well for reinforcements? Fully prepared for death by squaddie.
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2019
My body is ready to die.
First mission was great, very well handled take down on 3/4s of the force, then then Annie Innsmouth frags half half the squad with a bit of high ground.
To think, half way through reading this I thought we were going to make it through the first mission with out a casualty.
First mission was great, very well handled take down on 3/4s of the force, then then Annie Innsmouth frags half half the squad with a bit of high ground.
To think, half way through reading this I thought we were going to make it through the first mission with out a casualty.
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2019
For reference the reason I stopped at 23 recruits was just because that's all there was like three hours ago when I opened the game up. I'm still collecting names in a word document though.
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
Dead on the first mission! Nice!
This is the real X-Com X-Perience, boys!
This is the real X-Com X-Perience, boys!
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- Jun 25, 2020
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- Aug 29, 2019
Radical Cadre
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2020
Aw heck yeah I'm in!
TURN IT UP, BULLET SPONGES! WE'RE BACK IN BUSINESS!!
TURN IT UP, BULLET SPONGES! WE'RE BACK IN BUSINESS!!
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- May 8, 2020
wtfNeedSignUp
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
Wow that was a spectacular bloodbath on the first mission. Not disappointed.
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2019
Fire up the vat and extrude me into a troopersuit, boss.
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2015
On one hand, the land environment was helpful for gas cannons as even if you barely missed a shot with a gas cannon there's possibly nearby terrain that can splash damage onto the aliens so the shot wouldn't be a total waste. On the other, it's still a terror mission with rookies and it's TFTD, so it's going to get worse before it gets better.
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
If by "we scraped by" you mean "we had to scrape what was left of our soldiers off the floor with a spatula", then yes.
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- Dec 23, 2020
It is joyous. In victory we envy the honoured dead.
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2021
I remember playing this when it was new.
Save before moving bros.
Save before moving bros.