UFO: Aftermath Feature List

UFO: Aftermath Feature List
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SUMMARY
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In UFO: Aftermath, a new strategy game from ALTAR interactive, you assume the role of the Earth's last hope, the commander of the last, scattered humans left on the planet. It is up to you guide your forces through the planet's time of crisis, and overcome the alien threat.

Gameplay highlights include:
o Simultaneous turn-based combat: combines the best of the real-time and turn-based combat systems;
o Randomly generated tactical missions: Each playing field is unique, no two games are the same;
o Strong RPG elements: your soldiers will improve as they gain more experience, allowing you to make specialists like snipers, medics, and many more;
o Intricate, rich, and frighteningly alien setting displayed in full 3D.

GAME OVERVIEW
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UFO:AM combines deep global strategy with tense tactical missions, weaving them together with a compelling storyline and a richly strategic, RPG-like approach to each soldiers attributes and skills. In this section, we'll cover each of these important aspects in detail. Read on to learn more.

STORYLINE
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The day after tomorrow, a giant spacecraft approaches the Earth. Silent, it hovers ominously over the world, and begins to release great clouds of spores into the upper atmosphere. Rapidly multiplying, the spores soon darken the skies, and before long obscure the sun completely. In later days, this period will be known as the "Twilight".

Having reached critical mass in the skies, the spores begin to rain down, and over the course of several days, begin to clog the streets and bodies of water, smothering people in their homes, and burying animals in the wild. During the "Nightfall", as it would come to be called, most of the higher life forms on the earth were wiped out.

During the Twilight, all human responses were futile. Choosing caution over aggression, the governments of the world didn't realize how quickly the end could come, and were buried alongside those that they governed. A few, however, did survive, sealed in underground bases with stocks of food and oxygen. After several weeks, the spores seemed to have disintegrated, decomposing and settling into the soil. The world seemed safe again, for a time. This is where you come in: you must gather together the remaining peoples of the planet, find out what has happened, and, if possible, get your revenge.

STRATEGIC GAME
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In the strategic portion of the game, you must manage your bases, interceptions, and squads. Also important to the strategic portion of the game is the "biomass" - a slimy, tangled mass creeping slowly across the whole of the world. Territory is equal to power in the game - the more you control, the better your interceptor coverage, the faster you can do research, and the more biomass you can repulse. You gain territory by engaging in tactical missions, where your squads must engage the aliens and mutants face to face. Once you control a territory, you can decide what type of base you want there, Research, Military, or Biomass repulsion. Each kind of base has a noticeable overall effect on the overall capabilities of your forces.

TACTICAL GAME
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Most of your game time will be spent in tactical missions, fighting on the ground against aliens and mutants for the control of territories.

Combat system
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Tactical missions use our unique combat system, which features all of the best elements of both turn based and real time combat systems. You give orders while the game is paused, to avoid the frantic rush of a real time system. While paused, you can give your troops very detailed orders, taking as much time as you like. Once you are finished, you simply tell the game to start. Once the game is underway, you can pause the game at any point to update or change your orders, and the game will automatically pause when important events occur, so that you may modify your plans accordingly. Be sure to note that all of the combat happens at once, combining the finely grained tactics of a turn based game with the realism of a real time system.

Environments
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Each tactical mission takes place on its own, uniquely generated battlefield. We don't use templates, so each of our fully three dimensional game fields is totally different, so that you aren't stuck feeling like you're playing the same mission over and over, allowing for maximum replayability.

RPG ELEMENTS
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Each of your troops has a name, a portrait, and a set of statistics. Their skills are derived from these statistics, and each point that you put into any one of these attributes will have a noticeable effect on that soldier's skills. This way you can, with enough experience, easily make your soldier into what you want them to be, either generalists or specialists. You can make snipers, medics, heavy weapons soldiers, or any mix of all of these skills and more. It is very important that you do so, in fact, as a group of random, average soldiers who are good at everything and excellent at nothing will get chewed up as the opponents become tougher. You need to create a solid team with a good group of interlocking skills to win.

CONCLUSION
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All questions, comments, and suggestions should be directed to the UFO: Aftermath forums. Please read official FAQ before posting question. We welcome any feedback, and hope that you're excited about the game as we are.