Mojotronica
Expect Irony.
X-Com: UFO Defense is one of the best games ever made. It's only real weakness was that it would take so loooong to finish each mission, and each game consisted of dozens and dozens of missions. Easily could consume 100 hrs to finish a single game.
But that weakness was part of it's charm, because after having controlled all of those soldiers turn-after-turn, mission-after-mission you would get to watch them develop, and you were sort of forced to pay attn.
To help me to control my soldiers I added notes to each of their names -- a point system to let me know at a glance how good they were and a letter indicating how strong they were. That way I could more easily assign soldiers in need of experience to missions and equip the strongest with the heavy-duty stuff.
Then I became fascinated with keeping track of the soldiers seniority, so I replaced their given name with their date of hire. That way I could tell how many of the soldiers I was given with Base 1 had survived, for example.
Then I started having a lot of duplication in surnames, so I developed a system for naming each soldier based on it's appearance. I created charts that I could use to determine it's nationality and likely name. Each surname was unique.
Also I plotted out locations for each of my bases based on their ultimate radar coverage, so that I could protect the most sponsoring nations with the least amount of bases. I found Geneva to be the ideal loaction for Base 1 -- it could protect more actual dollars than any other. (The USA, for example is too big to cover entirely with one base -- there was a good chance that it would fall to the aliens before I had the chance to expand.)
Sometimes I really crave that experience -- the joy of seeing a good soldier promoted from Rookie to Squaddie and entering into contention for higher promotion, watching as weak soldiers becomes strong, and the emotional response when a soldier who had been around for awhile falls in battle. I miss it.
But that weakness was part of it's charm, because after having controlled all of those soldiers turn-after-turn, mission-after-mission you would get to watch them develop, and you were sort of forced to pay attn.
To help me to control my soldiers I added notes to each of their names -- a point system to let me know at a glance how good they were and a letter indicating how strong they were. That way I could more easily assign soldiers in need of experience to missions and equip the strongest with the heavy-duty stuff.
Then I became fascinated with keeping track of the soldiers seniority, so I replaced their given name with their date of hire. That way I could tell how many of the soldiers I was given with Base 1 had survived, for example.
Then I started having a lot of duplication in surnames, so I developed a system for naming each soldier based on it's appearance. I created charts that I could use to determine it's nationality and likely name. Each surname was unique.
Also I plotted out locations for each of my bases based on their ultimate radar coverage, so that I could protect the most sponsoring nations with the least amount of bases. I found Geneva to be the ideal loaction for Base 1 -- it could protect more actual dollars than any other. (The USA, for example is too big to cover entirely with one base -- there was a good chance that it would fall to the aliens before I had the chance to expand.)
Sometimes I really crave that experience -- the joy of seeing a good soldier promoted from Rookie to Squaddie and entering into contention for higher promotion, watching as weak soldiers becomes strong, and the emotional response when a soldier who had been around for awhile falls in battle. I miss it.
