Editing XCOM (section)

==UFO: After[Blank] Trilogy==

The (almost) first X-COM clone.

A separate trilogy that was made before the other remakes, straight after oldschool XCOM. Has features that was undeniably adopted by Phoenix Point and XCOM 2012 remake such as starting in post-invasion ruins, experience points spent on increasing stats rather than training a stat by action, add-ons to weapons, modifications, portable turrets, friendly, but technologically-ideologically distinct factions with unique units, equipments and resources spent on buildings/units/equipments.

'''Ufo: Aftermath''':

Fallout meets XCOM.

The game starts on a different level than the others. On day one, a swarm of UFO's sporebombed earth and destroyed most of humanity. You start as a single soldier gathering survivors and taking over an old military base, clear the surroundings of mutant creatures which are transgenic amalgams. 

Restoring the base, plundering old earth weapons from bases and gathering survivors, the player reactivates old airbases and eventually downs a UFO with old fighter jets with kickass cinematics straight out of Ace Combat. Eventually the aliens turn out to be "Reticulans", just Grey aliens from Zeta Reticuli star system. Storyline and several interrogations later we learn the Greys were USA's buddies after a pair crashed to Roswell in 40's, trading art and culture for technology. Around that time, something worrying happens on the world map: a wave of biomass starts expanding from a certain point, destroying everything in its way. 

Eventually, restoring bases, survivors and gathering equipments reveals the aliens are grooming a biomass jungle with psychic properties to cover the planet and husband transgenic creatures from corpses and animals. (this plot point is directly adapted to Phoenix Point)

Extended campaigns against the Aliens, fighting, and retrofitting their technology earns the player an offer from the Aliens: apologizing for the inevitable scientific experiment on your planet and an offer of peace with a guarantee of safely evacuating all humans off planet to a beautiful orbital station, so the biomass experiment can go on. The sequels happen post-surrender but any human worth his salt will refuse and fight to death to PURGE THE XENOS FOR MANKIND AND EMPEROR.

If you refuse, you keep fighting and expanding and holding the biomass at bay just enough to ransack surviving cosmodromes and satellite launch sites for parts to retrofit an UFO to storm the Moon, where the aliens keep some...sort...of...hive. Destroy it and it's over.

Crunch-wise, very forgiving in logistic terms, but ''far'' more complicated than XCOM(and clones) in damage types and armor choices; a weapon type named "Warp" deals almost no damage to unarmored people, but absolutely '''murders''' heavy power armor wearing men. There is no concept of money or resources but number and location bases. Worldwide, you expand and take abandoned bases whenever they pop up. These bases are then chosen (and can be changed) wither exclusively for military (troop deployment from the player's unit pool and UFO interception), research (each speed up research progress), development (producing some equipment and/or applying technological theories) or Biomass Repulsion(because any base swallowed by it is permanently lost). Unit-wise, 7 is the maximum team size, and ammo reserves matter, as does damage type so it's best to keep an arsenal of various damage outputs for different enemies, as well as setting up unique armor/weapon combos such as a twin-SMG plus light armor to hit and run, or power armor with collapsible quad cannon turret for heavy duty murderfuckdakka and a small plasma pistol for backup. Sadly, ballistic weapons are limited in game, as manufacturing blueprints are no more: you can only produce some laser and plasma from scratch, but not that juicy G3 or Kalashnikov, which is very bad because short range weapons are utterly useless.

'''Ufo: Aftershock - The Alien Boogaloo''':

Aerial combat is no more. From now on, it's squad-based ground combat with a mix of Total War and Civilization on the strategic map.

Remember the surrender offer we got in the earlier game? Canon-wise, seeing the biomass spread like mad, provisional Earth Government accepts and Humanity is evacuated safely by the aliens and even given many goodies and supplies. Biomass ends up covering the planet for...an...experiment.

Except not really. 

Biomass reaches a certain amount, screams, giving painful signals reaching to cosmos and dissipates. Laputa orbital station falls into a civil war and some guys jump down Earthside in a pod, only to discover the biomass scream didn't destroy the world as expected. There are a lot of survivors and local wildlife, more than enough to rebuild civilization at city-state levels as well as two separate friendly factions with unique gear and resource types helping you rebuild, Psionics and Cyborgs. Cyborgs are men who are compatible with replacement cybernetics with no tissue rejection and adaptability to electronics. Psionics are Eldar-like women who can use mental powers, influenced by the biomass' psychic scream and developing mental powers with delicate crystaline artworks. [[Crunch]] hint: cyborgs are for pure tankiness and psionics are the wizards.

The player starts clearing mutant creatures from the wilderness, establishing cities on Earth gathering resources, conquering territories to mine resources and connects them with monorails, building cities, buildings, factories, research buildings, just like civilization and any other RTS run-of-the-mill game. The environment has more or less recovered as well, and older military stockpiles and alien wrecks can be mined for components which we cannot produce ourselves.

Then a third civilization, the cultists who worship the aliens, tame and assemble old biomass parts and stuff start declaring war, complicating things a bit. So far it's typical Total War expy with combat on squad level rather than XCOM...

Until the cultists are reduced to a certain level, and we get a warning from Laputa station that an object is approaching earth in relativistic speeds. Several shat bricks later, we get an alien race which are like Warhammer Orks named Wargots shout threats and pour out of their spaceship to settle Earth and conquer. In the meantime, some of your own personnel in Laputa also lead a rebellion for some "power of love". And cultists buddy up with Wargots and tell you to fuck off. Last but not least, some Wargots board your orbital station as well in a fanatical crusade!

Creepy but interesting, several combats, research and brick shitting later, we finally get some lore in action. The Wargots for some reason were riding a giant hollowed out asteroid to conquer Earth for...a holy war...? At this moment the research focus turns on the spaceship, and Laputa Command shits more bricks when a SECOND, exactly same looking asteroid sized ship arrives, spewing a "civilization" of energy beings and quasi-psychic metallic constructs we dub "Star Ghosts" and it's a merry free-for-all on Earth. Less difficult if player pre-emptively sends a specialized ship to destroy the Wargot Asteroid Ship with a very, very, very long campaign, knocking out the Ork expies' "crusade". Fun Fact: any territory "conquered" by Star Ghosts are cleansed of all life, lost forever, and their mothership is smart enough to escape any boarding attempts and stays way away from Earth. So it's about holding the line until a miracle happens. And it does.

All the chaos and terror eventually has a twist in the shape of a giant mothership full of...Reticulans! For some reason, their leader wants to talk and is terribly apologetic, feeling sorry for the pain humanity went through and swears the earlier game has nothing to do with them. He then mentions the Reticulan Queen has sent a big aid package and says the "rebels" actually rode an asteroid-shaped transport and came here.

It eventually dawns on us that the "asteroids" are nothing but giant psychic monsters named Myrmecols "dueling" and "teasing" each other's crew treated like adopted pets for...some...reason. We'll learn that in game three, but it's righteous vengeance time now.

Rallying partiarchal Cyborgs and matriarchal Psionics, local humans, friendly Aliens and our crew, we cleanse the planet as much as we can and finally send a party to the Moon to kill the Reticulan Myrmecol and stop her interstellar booty call that caused a fucking extinction level. At last, Reticulan aliens make up for their psychically enslaved rebels' injury on Earth, help humanity take its place in the universe, and we can have some hope for humanity.

The game is much more forgiving than the last game but less than the first. Though instant game-over conditions don't exist, recruits now cost resources to be paid to their families, other factions let you recruit too at a heavy price for experienced warriors, and the third Myrmecol boogaloobois, the Starghosts permanently disable territories if they take over... Still it's far more user friendly. 

The last base is especially easy, the Reticulan Rebels reduced to little more than half-starved, psionically fried militia your units should not even bother firing at and slap aside.

But what happened to Mars? Laputa command mentioned some humans were settled there...

'''Ufo: Afterlight - The Martian Weeaboo Boogaloo''':

During the events of Ufo: Aftershock we turn to Mars. Reticulans settled 10000 humans in cryo-sleep to Mars, and started a rudimentary terraforming effort with highly automatized resource systems, water coming from the Martian north pole. Just when Laputa falls into civil war, Mars base loses contact, and strange robots attack the polar aquaducts, forcing the skeleton crew to learn how to handle a gun. Then there's the Reticulans who want to help and even send some "men" to help but do you really ally yourselves with the assholes who started all this? You can fight the Reticulan neighbors to conquer them violently for an early game hell which WILL pay off later on.

That game is much more unique, with VERY limited crew (some of which even will eventually retire from fighting and producing, dedicating themselves to preparing cultural legacy for the eventually waking colonists) and a stupid time limit of 540 days for no reason (patchable). On the other hand, combat is smaller, and deaths are very problematic. What's more, most crew will be used in working, producing, clearing Martian soil and placing terraforming equipment as we seem to be more like combat engineers than a military force.

The game puts emphasis on much more customized units, equipment and even modifying the add-ons of the add-ons of add-ons, as well as the terraforming itself. On low level Martian atmosphere scale, even glancing hits can leak oxygen from the suit, necessitating a retreat and repair lest the character chokes on CO2. Movement will be clunkier until the atmosphere allows for lighter suits, and eventually, going bare-faced on Mars.

Fighting the robots reveals a "gateway" ruin. When triggered or on day 56, the gate activates and spews a very angry army of humanoids with advanced polymer and non-metallic technology intent on reconquering Mars like some punk-apocalyptic tribe. It's like UFO:Aftershock but no stockpiled resources, much like Civilization 5's constant flow of materials from resource territories connected with an automated monorail. 

Retrofitting and rediscovering weapons technology, and fighting the new ant-like "Beastmen" the player discovers the rest of the whole plotline enough to make the most stoic gamer say [[Meme|"Oh yeah, it's all coming together"]]. The punchline comes after visiting the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos which were...that's right, Asteroid sized.

Apparently the Reticulans who ruined Earth were psychic slaves of the Myrmecol which landed on the moon, who was a female. She made the Reticulan Science Expedition rebel against the home planet, travel to Sol, disable Earth civilization and coerce them to [[/d/|cover the planet with her self-replicating secretions]]. The fem-jaculation, after reaching critical mass, summoned male Myrmecols in an interstellar booty-call to fight for the female, each of whom brought their psychic pet crew for a RTS multiplayer session of "who brought the best fighting civilization" game.

But, [[HFY|humans being humans]], we beat all three with our savage mental endurance(and some freak mutations of cyborgs, psionics and friendly Reticulans). Which brings us to Mars.

Phobos and Deimos were, as you see, Myrmecols who had mated with another female(or died, we have no idea each being quiet). The revelation is staggering: Mars' surface was once verdant, beautiful...and for some reason, it has plenty of fuel underneath...Which proves the researchers that another Myrmecol came, [[/d/|gushed her secretions all over the planet]] and called some males across the cosmos who eventually became Phobos and Deimos. So who were the survivors? We find out after another long campaign and treasure hunt, contacting Laputa, cultists and Reticulan Queen's friendly armada along the way using a big-ass antenna. It gets funkier when Reticulan Fleet lands on Mars, forcing you to choose between the much more powerful armada or your neighbor Reticulans, which you hopefully betrayed and killed off not to look awkward. Then an underground Martian city is revealed, bringing green men with Antennae who speak in polyphonic garbles and claim they are "Martians".

A chain of skirmishes, awkward moments, plot dialogues and research adventures later, the plot unfolds.

Mars' original inhabitants turn out to be the Beastmen, who escaped the planet to another dimension/or/planet with the gates, hatefully building up for centuries, if not millenia, evolving from cavemen to quasi Viet-Cong guerilla chemical experts of polymers, evolution and drugs when the female Myrmecol came to the planet(pun intended). The winning male's civilization, the green men were released from psychic enslavement either as a reward or their male died too and built a city and went to sleep. Now everyone has woken up, settled on Mars and Beastmen want to retake their homeworld with no diplomacy possible. As time passes, Beastmen assaults will increase in intensity and at the day 540, they will unleash such a legion from their exile world that it will be counted as game over. Presumably.

The player invents a very powerful virus tailored against the "Beastmen", virus-bombs the main fortress and destroys every gate to block wherever the Beastmen are coming from as the final mission. Of course, any gamer worth its salt would have slaughtered the green "Martians" alongside them because why would you bother leaving a competitor in the solar system? Especially a FUCKING XENO.

The last game, as mentioned earlier, is very, very unforgiving. Equipments have more customizations, less diverse damage types and has a greater emphasis on melee combat to the point that [[The Book of Weeaboo Fightan Magic|agility-max characters with twin katanas can destroy entire armies while dodging lasers and beastmen poison bullets]]. And yes, the [[Weeaboo|finest melee weapon is the katana.]] Good thing is you can damage or outright destroy attacking aliens with missile batteries off map before the battle has started. Bad thing is as Mars terraforms, you can move faster and more comfortably. So do the aliens. And you start losing some rich territories to flooding as seas form, as well as getting attacked constantly, and worse, have a special lifeline called water supply, which, if gets compromised for too long means game over. Have fun while your 12 man roster is trying to fix the plumbing as you are tag-teamed by robots, martians, other martians, greys with penis laser cannons and your central base is under attack.

Plot-wise, it's extremely deep, and being made just after XCOM oldschool, all three are worth playing.