Braking Gnus posted:

Someone alert Chewbot, I've figured out where Carmen Sandiego's been hiding.

Braking Gnus posted:

Someone alert Chewbot, I've figured out where Carmen Sandiego's been hiding.

Bruceski posted:

Time's up, gumshoes! None of you figured out that the reason I tried so hard to save the world was so I could steal it.

AfroSquirrel posted:

Only stealing the world? I would have expected something a bit more ambitious from her.

quote:

As part of the strike team I was invited to see the interrogation of the Thin Man (this particular one we’d nicknamed “Skinny”). An old lady strolled into the alien containment center, thin but powerful, wearing sunglasses, a lab coat and a garrison cap. The Commander introduced her as “Dr. Cobra,” one of the last living people who had seen a sectoid from the original 1962 invasion. (Yes, apparently there were sectoids back then, but they were slaves of the Zudjari.)



Dr. Cobra circled around the glass tube with the Thin Man in it. He did his best to look unimpressed by it all, but she got his attention when she pulled a loving surgical chainsaw out from under the table and started going at a nearby Sectoid corpse like a an ice sculptor, many precision cuts all across its body. There was less splatter than you’d think, but enough to make everyone take a step back, including the Thin Man.



Then she pulled out a couple of big knives, a pair of tongs and I swear, a SPATULA and divided up what was left of the sectoid corpse and laid it all out like a teppanyaki chef, pointing out all the bits she had identified.

“I spent the first twenty years of my career cutting up freeze-dried aliens,” she said. “After a while there wasn’t much left to work with, except for a colony of wild silicoids hidden in South America, but I’ve memorized every organ. Looks like you’ve made some new enhancements to the race since then; very efficient little power cells. Think of all the powerful little things we could make with cells like that;”



“Lasers, for example,” said Dr. Vahlen. “We’ve been able to make laser guns for years, but we couldn’t miniaturize the power sources properly. Laser-guidance systems, as well.

“We’ve already learned everything we can from a LIVING sectoid,” said Dr. Cobra to the Thin Man. “Since it didn’t have a mouth, do you want to know how we interrogated it? We inserted probes into its prefrontal cortex!”



“But you can actually speak, so perhaps we won’t need to do that with YOU,” said Dr. Cobra.

Skinny grimaced but zipped his lip. So Dr. Cobra did the teppanyaki thing again with the corpse of another Thin Man. More carefully, this time. That started to really get under his collar.






“You’ve been mutated so far from what you originally were,” said the old doctor. “But I think I have an idea of what your kind must have once looked like. Something serpentine?”



“Am I correct?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said the Thin Man. “My predecessors were whatever they were, but I began as…this.”

“What is the higher power in charge of all these species, mutating and cybernetically enhancing them?” said Dr. Cobra. Silence again, but Vahlen just nodded as if everything was just fine and poked a button on her PDA.

“And I suppose you won’t tell us what, specifically, your kind has been kidnapping humans for, either…” Skinny stared more. “You don’t even know, do you? Is that it, you follow orders without understanding the reasonings behind them?”

“Questioning orders is…unnecessary,” said the Thin Man.

“Where do your superiors originate from?” said the Commander from the viewscreen. Nothing again, but Vahlen’s PDA went beep boop.

“Alright, let’s move on,” said Dr. Cobra. “How about technology? Is there anything you can tell us, say, about the operation of your vehicles?” They started showing the alien a slideshow of the UFO flight computers and their power sources.



Skinny didn’t say anything, but Dr. Vahlen poked at her PDA like everything was all right. She nodded at the older woman, who started to grin cruelly.

“Well, Mr. Thin Man, you have been most uncooperative up until now, but here is where things get interesting,” said Dr. Cobra.

“Your lips may not have moved,” said Dr. Vahlen, “but your brain lit up on our neuroimaging scanners with every question. We now know EXACTLY where to…’probe.’ Thank you.”



The facade broke. “NO! WAIT!” Then the big doors closed over him.



“Aaahhh…like old times…” said the old lady. “Well, it’s your show now, kid. I’ll help you chop up a few more cadavers for old time’s sake, but you don’t need me to drain their brains.”

Brrr.

— Captain Cameron Watkins

FoolyCharged posted:

I'm too lazy to count, so just out of curiosity: does speedball have enough seeker corpses to make a complete mockery of everything left in the game?

Flesnolk posted:

You captured the only Muton that's shown up so far, how'd you get a corpse?

Speedball posted:

Speedball posted:

You mean the invisibility grenades, or the mimetic skin? The skin doesn't require seeker corpses, just a shitload of money and meld. The grenades are pretty expensive too, though, but I can afford one as well.

Omobono posted:

The 2nd most glorious research credit, in my opinion. Or 1st, because you ought to have plasma toys by the time you capture the other one.

Did Snakemen appear in The Bureau? Nice X-Com reference anyway.

Speedball posted:

Thinking that Eva will be our designated grenadier as soon as I can spare the item slots, including utility grenades.

It still hasn't stopped being funny to me that the shy one is in charge of blowing up the most poo poo. Totally didn't plan for her to become a heavy but it works for me.

Redeye Flight posted:

Snakemen didn't appear in The Bureau, but there are references to the Thin Men being very reptilian both in bone structure and skin (you can see it around their collars and cuffs if you look close enough).

Bobbin Threadbare posted:

I believe that Thin Men were always intended to be references to Snakemen from the get-go.

FoolyCharged posted:

The invisibility grenades. They let your entire squad run around in the open taking point blank shots with no repercussions. And you get so many uses of them per mission with grenadier/deep pockets that it's just downright ridiculous. Mimetic skin is also really good, but I've found that I don't use it all that much because it's in competition with the grenades.

scalded schlong posted:

They also have Sid Meier's hair.

Gabriel Pope posted:

The super jump is terrible because it's easily obsoleted by other mobility options and it's mutually exclusive with an incredibly useful gene mod, but it's stupidly fun so I always put it on a bunch of guys anyhow.

Feinne posted:

I don't know, I think the other leg mod drops off in usefulness really quickly. Like it'd be good very early on when you basically have no armor and it will apply whenever someone takes a hit at all but once you get later in the game it's basically just reduced hospital time because even if you DO end up down into your regular health bar healing back up to the top of it won't stop a Muton+ from killing you. Jumpylegs meanwhile are generally superior (and are at worst equal) to grappling and since you can use them in Titan Armor you're less likely to end up in hospital.

Plus the other leg mod is only good if you're getting shot, whereas jumpylegs are good for getting better shots at aliens and for bypassing terrain to get the gently caress out of their line of sight.

Flesnolk posted:

You captured the only Muton that's shown up so far, how'd you get a corpse?

Feinne posted:

I don't know, I think the other leg mod drops off in usefulness really quickly. Like it'd be good very early on when you basically have no armor and it will apply whenever someone takes a hit at all but once you get later in the game it's basically just reduced hospital time because even if you DO end up down into your regular health bar healing back up to the top of it won't stop a Muton+ from killing you. Jumpylegs meanwhile are generally superior (and are at worst equal) to grappling and since you can use them in Titan Armor you're less likely to end up in hospital.

Plus the other leg mod is only good if you're getting shot, whereas jumpylegs are good for getting better shots at aliens and for bypassing terrain to get the gently caress out of their line of sight.

Bobbin Threadbare posted:

Even if the interrogation isn't fatal, what else would they do with a live alien? Throw it in Gitmo for indefinite detention? Ain't no alien signed the Geneva Conventions, plus most of them have had their ability to make moral decisions surgically or genetically removed.

Gabriel Pope posted:

You have medkits too you know! The other leg mod lets you get a seriously wounded soldier back into fighting condition with one medkit application instead of 2-3.

I can see jumpylegs being more useful if you're playing boring snipermans but I like to kick in doors and shoot aliens in the face.

Speedball posted:

That's the beauty of this game's balance: so many good options, never enough resources to try them all out at once.

Speedball posted:

While also filling a role that was only implied in the original X-Com: a type of alien that looks like a human. Some of the research lore from Original X-Com says there's such a type of alien but we never see it.