- Location
- Australia
Good to see this back. Man that servo skull was awesome! Also glad to see that idiot that rammed the hovertank got killed. Thanks @NewAgeOfPower for writing up the plan.
[X] Plan Logistica
[X] Plan Logistica
XCOM: Enemy Within the Webway (XCOM/WH40K)
- Thread starter abacaxi
- Start date
- Crossover
WinterLantern
Smoked bird
- Location
- North England
We can 'upgrade' people!!!
*Flaps arms whilst running in a circle, accompanied by maniacal laughter*
- Location
- here
It's not quite back yet, but it's definitely not dead if I can help it.
I can't think of a better attitude for this kind of science.
By the way, there's no hurry on this since the next update won't be for a while, but you guys can pick a research/interrogation project too.
Edit: never mind, I missed the update to the plan.
Last edited:
- Location
- Nowhere
@abacaxi , does this count for this turn too?
Wouldn't it be better to wait a while before doing the upgrade? We're about to hit a new threshold with the Servitor number. Also, I believe it is not necessary to repair servoskulls anymore, as they will be repairing themselves from now on.
NewAgeOfPower
Engineering Pornagrapher Extraordinaire
- Location
- An Certain Hive of Scum & Villainy, known as NYC
According to my calcs, we will be receiving +16/+16 next turn. If we spend 5 servitors we will be down to 34, precisely enough to cap at 50 with Council.
WinterLantern
Smoked bird
- Location
- North England
Wait, did the barracks get updated? (Sciiiieeeeeennnnnccccccceeeeeeeeeeeee)
- Location
- Somewhere I shouldn't be
This makes me happy.
This makes me so happy I could watch someone else kill a xeno and still be smiling!
[X] Plan Logistica
Not quite yet. That's done during the mission phase. People we upgrade don't spend the week shooting at foul xeno heretic commies.
NewAgeOfPower
Engineering Pornagrapher Extraordinaire
- Location
- An Certain Hive of Scum & Villainy, known as NYC
I mean, everyone is invited to double check.
I've been grinding out average 84 hour workweeks every week for four months, so the probability of error is pretty high.
WinterLantern
Smoked bird
- Location
- North England
Do we have a satellite over the upper hive? I'm not sure what the asteroid means.
- Location
- here
The skulls that were already broken still need to be repaired, but all the intact skulls got the upgrade.
Yes.
It's supposed to represent your asteroid base HQ, back on turn 1 you parked it in orbit over Canopus IV. It guarantees you can't lose the Canopus IV coverage bonus, and counts as a satellite over Upper Hive that can't be shot down.
- Location
- Nowhere
I see. Unfortunately, I cannot into maths
20-1. Operation Vengeful Vengeance! Invade the xeno base!
- Location
- here
4 June 29,999
Commander! Great news! We've finally tracked down the location of the Coneheads' secret base! After all these months, we can finally launch our counterattack!
The lead we obtained in our last mission has proven most fruitful. The xeno base is hidden in a large mountain in the jungles near North Pole Hive.
It is truly ironic; the xenos were hidden from our holiest bioscanners behind the megafauna and carnivorous plants of Canopus V, and shielded from our most sacred exotic energy scanners by their own abominable technosorcery, but in the end they were undone by machines as simple as satellite cameras. And, I suppose, that primitive recaf brewer that our lay technicians required this past week to maintain a mere 20-hour workday. Truly, the Machine God works in mysterious ways.
Central Officer, once again your friend Bob was the one to locate our enemy. Given his repeated successes, and the fact that the Omnissiah obviously favors him (given that he has achieved these successes despite his pitiful lack of cybernetic enhancement), I am considering giving him an enhancement as a reward for his efforts. As you seem to be his closest friend, could you suggest something that he might like? A set of mechadendrites, perhaps? Youngsters always love the mechadendrites.
They do!
Er, I...think he'd probably be fine with just the usual credit bounty. No need to give him anything, ah, excessive. Really, please don't.
Um, as I was saying, commander, we have a clear shot at the Conehead base. Given that the xeno forces are currently attacking our hive cities again, and that the Spiky Bastard is probably shadowing one of the attacking forces so he can ambush our response squads again, our analysts think that the base should be lightly defended right now. If we can take the base out, we might be able to undercut their whole operation! Maybe even win this war today!
That said, we also need to respond to the Coneheads' current movements.
Fortunately, we're in a good position to do so. The Coneheads launched a major assault on Canopus III, hitting both Hive Manassas and Hive Quezon, but our satellites spotted the Conehead Gates opening and we scrambled our Marauder Bombers in time to hit both Gates and inflict light casualties on the Coneheads before they reached cover in the hive cities. Still, that leaves two mixed squads of Conehead Grunts and Laser-Face Coneheads attacking the hives, and Canopus III is begging us for assistance.
We also disrupted a smaller attack on Riks'Hive on Canopus I; a squad of Conehead Jetbikers is attacking the hive, but our Bomber damaged them and cut off any reinforcements that might have been hiding behind the Gate.
We're also getting reports of what looks like the beginnings of another EXALT riot at North Pole Hive on Canopus V. Fortunately, the hidden xeno base is far enough outside the hive that those idiot cultists won't be able to interfere if we attack the base.
Which, uh, I assume that we will. It's your call, Commander, but I strongly recommend that we send our best soldiers to destroy that base.
The Mechanicum concurs with Central Officer Bradford's recommendation.
Tell the soldiers to bring me back some new test subjects, won't you, Commander?
All we need are your orders, Commander, and we can get this operation started.
What are your orders, Commander?
QM note: Well, that hiatus was longer than I expected. As an apology, I'll put all the rambling I saved up in a following reference post where it won't bore people who just want to read the quest.
Edit: Added enemy composition.
Commander! Great news! We've finally tracked down the location of the Coneheads' secret base! After all these months, we can finally launch our counterattack!
The lead we obtained in our last mission has proven most fruitful. The xeno base is hidden in a large mountain in the jungles near North Pole Hive.It is truly ironic; the xenos were hidden from our holiest bioscanners behind the megafauna and carnivorous plants of Canopus V, and shielded from our most sacred exotic energy scanners by their own abominable technosorcery, but in the end they were undone by machines as simple as satellite cameras. And, I suppose, that primitive recaf brewer that our lay technicians required this past week to maintain a mere 20-hour workday. Truly, the Machine God works in mysterious ways.
Central Officer, once again your friend Bob was the one to locate our enemy. Given his repeated successes, and the fact that the Omnissiah obviously favors him (given that he has achieved these successes despite his pitiful lack of cybernetic enhancement), I am considering giving him an enhancement as a reward for his efforts. As you seem to be his closest friend, could you suggest something that he might like? A set of mechadendrites, perhaps? Youngsters always love the mechadendrites.
They do!
Er, I...think he'd probably be fine with just the usual credit bounty. No need to give him anything, ah, excessive. Really, please don't.Um, as I was saying, commander, we have a clear shot at the Conehead base. Given that the xeno forces are currently attacking our hive cities again, and that the Spiky Bastard is probably shadowing one of the attacking forces so he can ambush our response squads again, our analysts think that the base should be lightly defended right now. If we can take the base out, we might be able to undercut their whole operation! Maybe even win this war today!
That said, we also need to respond to the Coneheads' current movements.
Marauder Bomber I-1: [??? +15 (bomber on a bombing mission) +25 (Air and Space bonus)] = ??? vs. ???. Moderate success. Conehead Gate destroyed, Conehead attack weakened.
Marauder Bomber III-1: [??? +15 (bomber on a bombing mission) +25 (Air and Space bonus)] = ??? vs. ???. Moderate success. Conehead Gate destroyed, Conehead attack weakened.
Marauder Bomber III-2: [??? +15 (bomber on a bombing mission) +25 (Air and Space bonus)] = ??? vs. ???. Moderate success. Conehead Gate destroyed, Conehead attack weakened.
Marauder Bomber III-1: [??? +15 (bomber on a bombing mission) +25 (Air and Space bonus)] = ??? vs. ???. Moderate success. Conehead Gate destroyed, Conehead attack weakened.
Marauder Bomber III-2: [??? +15 (bomber on a bombing mission) +25 (Air and Space bonus)] = ??? vs. ???. Moderate success. Conehead Gate destroyed, Conehead attack weakened.
Fortunately, we're in a good position to do so. The Coneheads launched a major assault on Canopus III, hitting both Hive Manassas and Hive Quezon, but our satellites spotted the Conehead Gates opening and we scrambled our Marauder Bombers in time to hit both Gates and inflict light casualties on the Coneheads before they reached cover in the hive cities. Still, that leaves two mixed squads of Conehead Grunts and Laser-Face Coneheads attacking the hives, and Canopus III is begging us for assistance.
We also disrupted a smaller attack on Riks'Hive on Canopus I; a squad of Conehead Jetbikers is attacking the hive, but our Bomber damaged them and cut off any reinforcements that might have been hiding behind the Gate.
We're also getting reports of what looks like the beginnings of another EXALT riot at North Pole Hive on Canopus V. Fortunately, the hidden xeno base is far enough outside the hive that those idiot cultists won't be able to interfere if we attack the base.
Which, uh, I assume that we will. It's your call, Commander, but I strongly recommend that we send our best soldiers to destroy that base.
The Mechanicum concurs with Central Officer Bradford's recommendation.
Tell the soldiers to bring me back some new test subjects, won't you, Commander?
All we need are your orders, Commander, and we can get this operation started.What are your orders, Commander?
Pick up to 4 and write in a [ ] Plan.
[ ] Send a squad to take out that Conehead base. Let's end this war today!
[ ] Send a squad to Hive Manassas. We can't let a major incursion go unchallenged.
[ ] Send a squad to Hive Quezon. We can't let a major incursion go unchallenged.
[ ] Send a squad to Riks'Hive. It's possible that the large assault on Canopus III is a diversion.
[ ] Send a squad to North Pole Hive. We can't let the xenos distract us from punishing their human collaborators.
XCOM has a Cybernetics Lab and a Genetics Lab.
[ ] Test a soldier to see if they have what it takes to become a Dreadnought (costs 1 Meld per soldier). Soldiers can take multiple tests each turn.
[ ] Turn some lucky soldier into a Dreadnought (costs 200 credits and 2 Meld per eligible soldier).
[ ] Test a soldier to see if they have what it takes to become a Bone'ead Ogryn (costs 1 Meld per soldier). Soldiers can take multiple tests each turn.
[ ] Turn some lucky soldier into an Ogryn (costs 100 credits and 1 Meld per eligible soldier).
[ ] Send a squad to take out that Conehead base. Let's end this war today!
[ ] Send a squad to Hive Manassas. We can't let a major incursion go unchallenged.
[ ] Send a squad to Hive Quezon. We can't let a major incursion go unchallenged.
[ ] Send a squad to Riks'Hive. It's possible that the large assault on Canopus III is a diversion.
[ ] Send a squad to North Pole Hive. We can't let the xenos distract us from punishing their human collaborators.
XCOM has a Cybernetics Lab and a Genetics Lab.
[ ] Test a soldier to see if they have what it takes to become a Dreadnought (costs 1 Meld per soldier). Soldiers can take multiple tests each turn.
[ ] Turn some lucky soldier into a Dreadnought (costs 200 credits and 2 Meld per eligible soldier).
[ ] Test a soldier to see if they have what it takes to become a Bone'ead Ogryn (costs 1 Meld per soldier). Soldiers can take multiple tests each turn.
[ ] Turn some lucky soldier into an Ogryn (costs 100 credits and 1 Meld per eligible soldier).
QM note: Well, that hiatus was longer than I expected. As an apology, I'll put all the rambling I saved up in a following reference post where it won't bore people who just want to read the quest.
Edit: Added enemy composition.
Last edited:
- Location
- here
For reference:
So, yeah, this quest isn't dead. Sorry for the delayed update; my medical emergency turned out to be a bit worse than expected, then I was on medication that made me too lazy to do much for six months, and after that I was just regular lazy. But I got better, except for the laziness, and now this quest is back.
And I have quest news.
The good news:
All the time off from quests gave me plenty of time to think, and occasionally I thought about this quest. And I made a few changes that I hope will be improvements.
Most of those changes are to things you haven't seen yet, so I won't bother you with the details, but one change was to the mechanics for final boss fights. The old mechanics made it possible for you guys to have several final boss fights in a row, which could possibly cost you enough soldiers to make the Bad End more likely, so I redid them.
The bad news:
Updates on this quest will probably be a bit slower for a while, I don't think I can manage the two-updates-per-week schedule I used to keep.
The 'Results' updates involve churning through a lot of simple, boring math, and then a whole lot of formatting to make the 'Combat Numbers' spoilers legible for whoever may be reading them. Between temporary side effects of my medication and learning lazy habits, I'm probably going to finish those 'Results' updates more slowly than I used to.
I recognize that this is my fault for designing a quest that's so heavy on math and quest rules; I'll just mark that down to first-time QM mistakes and try to learn from it. I can at least promise that I don't plan to let my bad design kill the quest; aside from the fact that most of everything through turn 50 is already prepared and I don't want to waste it, I still like this quest and want to see it through.
The could-be-good-or-bad news:
I got an idea.
I've had enough time to step back and look at this quest objectively, and I now recognize the obvious facts that quests are easier to play when the players don't need to learn a bunch of quest rules, and are easier to run when the QM doesn't need to do a lot of math.
While I was in recovery I got an idea for a quest like that, and even after ignoring the idea for a few months it didn't go away. So, I'm gonna make rookie QM mistake #2 and try to run two quests at once just to get the idea out of my system. It'll take some of my time, but even if I didn't do it this quest would update more slowly anyway, and I hope two quests that update regularly will provide as much entertainment as a single quest when it updated quickly.
And that's it for my rambling. It's been a while since the last update, so if you've forgotten something about the quest that you want to know but don't care enough about to look up, feel free to ask.
So, yeah, this quest isn't dead. Sorry for the delayed update; my medical emergency turned out to be a bit worse than expected, then I was on medication that made me too lazy to do much for six months, and after that I was just regular lazy. But I got better, except for the laziness, and now this quest is back.
And I have quest news.
The good news:
All the time off from quests gave me plenty of time to think, and occasionally I thought about this quest. And I made a few changes that I hope will be improvements.
Most of those changes are to things you haven't seen yet, so I won't bother you with the details, but one change was to the mechanics for final boss fights. The old mechanics made it possible for you guys to have several final boss fights in a row, which could possibly cost you enough soldiers to make the Bad End more likely, so I redid them.
Old version:
Killing the boss' unique followers fills up a meter. When the meter is full, the final boss fight happens on the next turn.
New version:
Killing the boss' unique followers fills up a meter. Final boss fights happen at fixed intervals; whichever boss' meter is the most full is the boss you fight.
Killing the boss' unique followers fills up a meter. When the meter is full, the final boss fight happens on the next turn.
New version:
Killing the boss' unique followers fills up a meter. Final boss fights happen at fixed intervals; whichever boss' meter is the most full is the boss you fight.
The bad news:
Updates on this quest will probably be a bit slower for a while, I don't think I can manage the two-updates-per-week schedule I used to keep.
The 'Results' updates involve churning through a lot of simple, boring math, and then a whole lot of formatting to make the 'Combat Numbers' spoilers legible for whoever may be reading them. Between temporary side effects of my medication and learning lazy habits, I'm probably going to finish those 'Results' updates more slowly than I used to.
I recognize that this is my fault for designing a quest that's so heavy on math and quest rules; I'll just mark that down to first-time QM mistakes and try to learn from it. I can at least promise that I don't plan to let my bad design kill the quest; aside from the fact that most of everything through turn 50 is already prepared and I don't want to waste it, I still like this quest and want to see it through.
The could-be-good-or-bad news:
I got an idea.
I've had enough time to step back and look at this quest objectively, and I now recognize the obvious facts that quests are easier to play when the players don't need to learn a bunch of quest rules, and are easier to run when the QM doesn't need to do a lot of math.
While I was in recovery I got an idea for a quest like that, and even after ignoring the idea for a few months it didn't go away. So, I'm gonna make rookie QM mistake #2 and try to run two quests at once just to get the idea out of my system. It'll take some of my time, but even if I didn't do it this quest would update more slowly anyway, and I hope two quests that update regularly will provide as much entertainment as a single quest when it updated quickly.
And that's it for my rambling. It's been a while since the last update, so if you've forgotten something about the quest that you want to know but don't care enough about to look up, feel free to ask.
Beyogi
and a fairy
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well it's back from the dead. Anyway good about the boss thing, we were starting to fight them every other turn.
I think attacking the base is a no-brainer. Now there's the question if we let the Coneheads get away with one attack or if we leave chaos riots alone. Both is bad, but both Rick's hive and North Pole hive are pretty safe on the unrest meter. Taking out the conehead base might also cause some global reduction in panic.
I think attacking the base is a no-brainer. Now there's the question if we let the Coneheads get away with one attack or if we leave chaos riots alone. Both is bad, but both Rick's hive and North Pole hive are pretty safe on the unrest meter. Taking out the conehead base might also cause some global reduction in panic.
- Location
- Somewhere I shouldn't be
Yay! It's back!
- Location
- here
I'm a bit out of practice with this quest, thanks for catching that. Conehead squad compositions have been added.
If you mean the base and the cultist attack, yes, you can send a squad to each place.
If you mean generally, then not yet. You'll get an item later that will let multiple squads coordinate, that's how you'll get the firepower to take the bosses out for good.
I'm afraid that's not going to change, the rule change was to prevent back-to-back final boss raids where three different squads each have to fight the boss.
At the moment you're still getting hit by a boss once each turn. One you take a boss out for good, the training wheels come off this quest and each remaining boss will have a 1/3 chance to attack each turn. This quest would be too easy otherwise, we're already about 40% of the way through and you all haven't had to use a single reroll yet.
It will, across all five globes too.
I can see how there might be trouble ahead, but the idea's been stuck in my head and I can't get rid of it. Hopefully it won't be too bad, the only part of this quest that drains my energy is grinding out the math to get the combat results.
I'll try not to burn out, though. I'm still not at 100%, so I'll be pacing myself. Feel free to /boo and /itoldyouso in both threads if you want
- Location
- Australia
I'm gonna be honest, I feel apprehensive at the prospect making a plan. There large amount of variables and mechanics means it's particularly difficult unless you're familiar with the system, and even a year ago when it was fresh it was only because of large amounts of copy+paste that I managed to put out plans. I love reading the updates but actually having to make plans is not something I enjoy.
- Location
- here
You've hit on one of the main reasons I'm looking into starting a second quest. I recognize that having too many rules and mechanics is a design flaw in this quest; I'd like to run one where players don't have to learn mechanics, and can make plans based on common sense alone.
Would anyone object to me making a new rule to streamline things here? Anyone who wants to make plans the old way can still do so, but anyone who hates mechanics can just assign soldiers to groups and ask to QM to optimize their loadouts.
- Location
- Nowhere
Yes please, this new rule would do wonders.
Beyogi
and a fairy
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah honestly, I'm kind of out of the game. So that would be very helpful.