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sinanjuOr you do if you've ever played X-Com: UFO Defense.
That game came out in the nineties. I loved it then, and I love it now. I'm playing it via the Steam website, which enables me to play it on my Windows 7 system despite the game being a fossil of days long since past.
In X-Com, you're tasked with defending earth from hostile aliens. You start with one base, two underpowered Interceptor fighter craft, a Skyranger (for delivering your soldiers to the battlefield), and a handful of soldiers, scientists and engineers. You have to: scan the skies; try to shoot down UFOs; send your soldiers to fight the aliens (and recover alien prisoners, corpses, and gear); upgrade and expand your base(s); research said corpses, prisoners, and gear; reverse engineer improved weapons, armor, and tools, and eventually take the fight to the aliens.
All on a meagre budget, which will be cut if the funding nations aren't happy with your performance. Fortunately, there are workarounds. Once you've developed the technology for building laser cannons, you dedicate a workshop or two to churning them out in trainload lots, and then sell them off. (Don't ask who's buying them all.) In short order, you'll have so much money (literally tens of millions) you can buy anything you want. Except the alien element Elerium (aka Unobtainium, Phlebotenum, etc.)
That you get from capturing alien spaceships and bases (mostly) intact. Speaking of which, I just discovered an alien base on earth. Which means I have to send my guys to attack it. If I'm lucky, it hasn't been there long and won't be a very tough nut to crack. If I'm unlucky, my guys will get slaughtered. (In which case, I shut down the simulator, yell at my soldiers to do better next time, and try again. That is, reload the saved game....)
It's fun. And being able to play this game again is, I have to confess, one of the advantages of going back to a Windows machine.
That game came out in the nineties. I loved it then, and I love it now. I'm playing it via the Steam website, which enables me to play it on my Windows 7 system despite the game being a fossil of days long since past.
In X-Com, you're tasked with defending earth from hostile aliens. You start with one base, two underpowered Interceptor fighter craft, a Skyranger (for delivering your soldiers to the battlefield), and a handful of soldiers, scientists and engineers. You have to: scan the skies; try to shoot down UFOs; send your soldiers to fight the aliens (and recover alien prisoners, corpses, and gear); upgrade and expand your base(s); research said corpses, prisoners, and gear; reverse engineer improved weapons, armor, and tools, and eventually take the fight to the aliens.
All on a meagre budget, which will be cut if the funding nations aren't happy with your performance. Fortunately, there are workarounds. Once you've developed the technology for building laser cannons, you dedicate a workshop or two to churning them out in trainload lots, and then sell them off. (Don't ask who's buying them all.) In short order, you'll have so much money (literally tens of millions) you can buy anything you want. Except the alien element Elerium (aka Unobtainium, Phlebotenum, etc.)
That you get from capturing alien spaceships and bases (mostly) intact. Speaking of which, I just discovered an alien base on earth. Which means I have to send my guys to attack it. If I'm lucky, it hasn't been there long and won't be a very tough nut to crack. If I'm unlucky, my guys will get slaughtered. (In which case, I shut down the simulator, yell at my soldiers to do better next time, and try again. That is, reload the saved game....)
It's fun. And being able to play this game again is, I have to confess, one of the advantages of going back to a Windows machine.