13.
Down Deep
We've only lost one country so far but you may have noticed a problem. These Alien Colonies are essentially unassailable, at least with the numbers we have on the Triton right now.
In mean time we can content ourselves with taking down smaller vessels.
I'm not sure if its part of the game's internal logic or not, but there seem to be long periods in Terror From The Deep where aliens will avoid overt USO activity, leaving your score to decay from the numerous Alien Colonies on the map rather than direct action.
I'm not sure we'll need this weapon given the Lobsterman vulnerability to psionics, but I research it anyway as we're running out of shit to work on. You'll notice it has an absolutely retarded name much like the Sonic Blasta Rifle.
Even worse, I've somehow managed to get us to run out of Zrbite. I finally had the money to start production on Magnetic Ion Armor, but its run out of resources at 27 suits. I split the reserve I sent over to Shark Trip so we have just barely enough to fuel the ultimate craft when we build it. Raiding supply ships as they land is an option but that will be somewhat difficult to do since we don't have any bases within our immediate detection range.
Research completes on the penultimate craft and the second technology required to unlock the final mission.
Its at this point I run out of research pertinent to the plot. A quick wiki check reveals that you cannot research either the ultimate craft or the final alien without first capturing and interrogating a Lobsterman Commander. Great.
Speaking of live alien capture, the ammunition for the stun launcher completes shortly after. I pour research into random alien equipment to give the scientists something to do.
Attempting to follow a supply ship to its destination reveals another Alien Colony just outside our detection range off the coast of northern China.
Well, we need that Commander, don't we?
I've never beaten an Alien Colony mission and frankly I have no intent on trying. I suppose a veteran XCOM player with far more patience than me can beat an Alien Colony with just 14 marines but I certainly can't. Once we get what we've come for we're ditching. Its also a good idea to just leave this colony up anyway so I can farm supply ships from it.
Much like Artifact Sites, Alien Colonies are in two parts; one on the ocean floor and another actually inside the base itself. This place crawls.
You will notice every alien soldier visible in the screenshots is armed with a DPL. That's because
all of the enemies in the first stage are armed with fucking DPLs, with the exception of a few Technicians armed with melee weapons. If you approach this mission without psionics, you're fucked.
The virtually unlimited DPL ammo available from mind controlled troops proves invaluable in both thinning the enemy ranks and blowing out entire walls of the confusing alien architecture at this base site.
Am I just seeing things or does that relief statue in the upper righthand corner look like a woman with a huge rack? This game is fond of telling us how much the aliens interbreed with humans, but its an odd choice given they reproduce through cloning or whatever.
What at first appears to be a huge alien advantage turns into a liability as their morale starts to break down.
As aliens run out of ammo or drop their weapons they are eliminated. I'm still not ambitious enough to attempt controlling the Tentaculats which remain the largest threat on the map.
What's particularly remarkable about this situation is that we've managed to put the enemy into such intense disarray just by mind controlling a mere two soldiers.
I have TerribleIdeasTM, Radical Cadre and The Valeyard begin supporting our two hapless alien scouts, ordering them to kill anything not worth the effort of taking over.
Resistance from this point is truly pitiful. Once deprived of their bullshit advantage, the aliens fold like a house of cards.
The seafloor is ours. We didn't even lose anyone.
This is the Alien Colony interior, which is brightly lit unlike the Artifact Sites. Already you can get an idea of how twisted this artitecture is. Just about every room has at least three entrances and there is one Z level above every room to allow for Tentaculats to float around unimpeded.
Screenshots 1 and 2 reveal that what I thought was a statue is actually two alien computer terminals clipping into each other due to how corners work in this game.
As if that's not enough, all of those blue spots on the floor are grav lifts. The Alien Colony goes down at least
two more Z levels, with multiple examples of these grav lifts in about half of every room on both the first and second floor. It is literally impossible to lay down an effective field of fire that covers every possible entry point, unless you cluster a bunch of marines together which invites total party kills from grenades, DPL bombs and stun bombs.
The name of the game is thus letting them come to us, and mind controlling every Lobsterman that gets within visual range. The enemy AI doesn't actually understand the importance off command units at all. In Terror From The Deep in particular, the AI has a tendency to treat its commanding troops as elites causing them to bumrush you with their most valuable units. I intend to use this dynamic to my advantage. It does this regardless of difficulty.
@MoffAlbert is ambushed and killed by a melee enemy, but I don't see a frame of him turning into a zombie. I have a theory now about what they enemy was, which is a missed opportunity to gain some extra research. I have to actually come back ot this fucking place.
Incase you doubted me, literally the second enemy we see is the Commander, who personally sortied out to meet us with a stun launcher. It takes the combined effort of all four of our psionic officers to whittle its morale doubt, but eventually it gives and we seize control of it.
I stun it just incase the game fucks up and won't count it as a capture if its still awake.
And that, as they say, is that. I may return and destroy an Alien Colony once I have the maximum amount of troops to do it with, just to say I completed one of every mission type in the game.
I'm rather surprised to see that there's no penalty for retreating.
Research takes no time at all with our massive science staff. For the record, in the original DOS version you needed a second Commander to research if you hadn't fulfilled both research trees by the
team you first research one. This was at least acknowledged to be a bug.
There are rather few USOs flying around right now which is a bit concerning. It must mean alien activity is occuring somewhere we don't have any detection over.
Might as well keep the team in practice.
At this point we can reliably predict whether or not we can take over an alien. Pocket Dragoon is almost always a guarenteed success, while Dear Leader and Willy score a success about 50% of the time. HiramtheGrift scores a success more often than not, but he still remains with Time Units below 75 so he can only perform two attacks per turn. He's not far from being able to pull three though.
I fail to get a shot of the other victory screen, but there were no casualties and no promotions.
Our score is starting to lag due to the alien inactivity. Once I get the ultimate craft researched and built I probably shouldn't waste any time launching the final mission before our score drops back in to the negative.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Next time: undoubtedly the worst fucking mission type in the entire game.
material.