It was combat reduced down to simple math. No chance to dodge, you either went down with the first shot, or you survived it and went in for the kill while their power cycled. There was just something unsettling about that laser the aliens used. He had felt the same way in the dog fight in Stockholm a few weeks ago. The pair went on their intercept trajectory, and Condor-1 felt his whole body tense up. “I’m with you.” came Condor-1’s reply, sounding for all the world like an American radio host or TV personality, rather than a fighter jet pilot. “UFO sighted, preparing to intercept!” she called out to Condor-1, her accent very thick and very Russian. Home base had been about to recall them when the UFO suddenly veered hard to the West, enabling the pair of planes to take on a new intercept trajectory. It’s moving fast, too fast for them to overtake it. I've certainly got some pet peeves that can really turn me off to a story I was otherwise enjoying, so I can hardly throw stones out of my glass house.Ī pair of F-17 Condors cruise along on the path towards their target, a UFO detected a few hours ago. If having a sub-optimal firearm being used takes someone out of the story, then that's just a matter of personal taste, and there's nothing wrong with that. In all seriousness, though, I just threw together the extra xenopedia entries for fun (and to prevent myself from info-dumping about them in the chapters themselves, as anyone who's read my other content can tell you I have an unfortunate tendency to do), they're not a peer-reviewed research paper. I'm sure there are plenty of people who still think the ballistic entries are a bit dumb, and to that I suppose I'll say that there were plenty of weird or dumb things in the actual game, so I guess you could say I'm just trying to recreate the Xenonauts experience lol. There could be firearms that would fit the bill better than what I've chosen (in fact, I would be incredibly surprised if there weren't) ,but I'm not going to be able to include a firearm that I am not even aware of. This is a rule that I probably broke for the later entries like the sniper rifle and the machine gun, but I did just throw this together on a whim, so I hope everyone can cut me some slack.ģ) I had to actually know that they existed (or discover them while researching). For example, I originally wanted to use the G18 as the sidearm for the xenonauts, but to my dismay I found that it wasn't even around until 1986.Ģ) They had to have an above-average volume of fire compared to most similar weapons, to account for the kinetic barriers. The guns I chose usually had to meet three criteria:ġ) They had to actually exist (or at least be in testing phase) around 1979. I also figured that the pump-action feature could potentially allow them to cycle between different types of rounds on the fly to account for different situations, although I admit I'll need to do more research on whether or not that would actually work before I'm willing to actually feature it in the writing. Only super iconic guns like the SPAS-12 get their own wikipedia page to peruse). Researching individual shotguns is a pain in the ass, as it turns out. I considered other options, but I ultimately decided on the SPAS-12, mainly because of aesthetics, I will admit, but also because it's a more "modern" option than other autoloading shotguns available at the time (that I was able to find, anyway. I decided that a semi-automatic shotgun would be preferable to the pump-action mossberg used in the games, because they would likely need multiple shots in very quick succession to be able to buckle an enemy's shields. My primary consideration when throwing together the weapons list was the kinetic barriers, and what weapons (that would also be available at the time) would potentially be effective against an enemy that has shielding technology capable of deflecting projectiles. Click to shrink.Well, the enemy being fought here is different than the one from the actual games.