🚀 go-pugleaf

What with me being off ill from sixth form with shingles, I've been playing
TFTD.  Lots.  It's the only X-COM game I've not cracked (in the completion
sense) yet, so here we go...

Okay, usual stuff, blah blah, toddling around shooting down UFOs, having my
DUP-armed Barracudas chewed up by large UFOs, and so on.  Then came the
first TFTD cool thing (tm) - my first terror mission!  Hmm, tricky.
Fortunately, gillmen and deep ones are a pushover compared to later
nasties...

My first shipping mission was a passenger liner.  I think I saved about 75 %
of them, with a single casualty.  But that was only against feeble shit like
gillmen, calcinites and other pansy-assed stuff.  It was much, much worse
taking on Tasoths on a cargo ship.  But I still did it, albeit with more
civilian deaths (about 40 % dead), and four casualties.

I had to pull out of a third ship mission.  I cleared the first deck with
only two men down, but the turn before we went down below one of them got
controlled and I lost him... additionally, two of the seven who went down
(I'd left the coelacanth on board and so only had ten men; d'oh), had
panicked the turn before and had no weapons.

Incidentally, I can't emphasize enough how damn useful that coelacanth was.
First thing out of the sub, pick off a few bugs, soak up incoming fire, and
so on.  Also accounted for many kills, and scouted out many others during
night missions...

Moving on, I did wax my first alien base today.  The upper level was
delicious.  First turn, disruptor pulse launcher out of the triton - greased
two tasoths and two aquatoids who'd been standing *inside* a building!  I
love TFTD and it's windows / vents.
I  also got shitted up on turn three or four when two of the vast jellyfish
things (still don't know what they are; don't tell me :-)  ) burst out of a
building and BOTH finished right next to some of my troopers.  Still, on
that first level, I lost... hmm... NONE of my fourteen aquatoids, although I
confess to reloading saves (never did that before on TFTD) when disruptor
pulses blew five or six of my core aquanoughts away.

Down below was weird.  I was expecting an undersea citadel packed out with
hundreds of aliens (I killed 23 bugs on the surface alone, for heaven's
sakes - whilst all of my guys 'n' gals got to the lift, the last two alien
soldiers - somewhere on the map - kept panicking <g>)... but for the first
thirty turns, I found nothing.  Then I found one brain-thing (uhrm...
<thinks>... nope, can't remember what they're called; no weapons but
powerful psis) and grenaded it (out of boredom <g>).  By this time 80% of
the map was uncovered.  Then I ran into my first lobsterman.  TWO disruptor
pulses and *it was standing*!  Fricken' hell.  Fortunately, it missed the
guy it shot at since it's accuracy had been bitten deeply into by fatal
wounds.  My 'naught shot back, killing it.

Then, things went mad.  About eight lobstermen erupted all over the map...
three of them I found in the synonium (sp?) device.  They were easy to kill;
I even captured one of them (the Commander, woah).  But the others... one I
greased with my Commander (Shaun Green; how convenient that the trooper
named for me got promoted.  Shame he's a crap psi; he's gonna become a
liability)... before the others tore into my troopers.  Lost three or four
aquanoughts before I turned things around and splatted them.  My 'naughts
were all over the map when they burst out, you see, so my troopers were
going in there in ones and twos... <shudder>.
>From there, it was a cake walk... just had to find the last cowering
brain-bug and the last lobsterman.

I think four or five casualties and one wounded is a fair exchange for one
base's worth of equipment captured intact, one alien colony knocked out, and
one captured lobsterman commander, hey?

On the subject of characters from the group, I named the original crew after
AGX regulars.  A few notables:

Me.  Still going, as the Commander.  But not for much longer; he's a below
average psi.  Not a liability yet, but he's not going on the T'leth mission,
I'll tell you that...

Off the Rails.  You miserable f*ck.  Damn fine soldier, but the courage and
psi-strength of a toad.  You were lost on a shipping mission - you got MC'ed
on the turn we went to the second level.  MIA...

Robert B - woah!  Best psi of the starting lot.  Plenty kills, plenty
experience.  Bright future ahead...

Andy.  You were doing great, but unfortunately you were one of the fellas
chomped up by the first few lobstermen.  On the bright side, you killed two
of them and wounded another, and had 20-30 kills to your name beforehand...

There were others of you named in the first crop, but nothing notable
occured to those troops.  There's only me and Bob left now.  <sniff>  No
save-reloading for me!

Wow, I just wrote all that?  Blimey.

--
Shaun Green | http://www.shaungreen.co.uk
Violence begets violence, hate begets hate, sarcasm begets sarcasm.