X-COM: The Martian Solution

With the Brazilian base destroyed, it was time to interrogate the captured leaders and find out a way to end this once and for all. I kicked the research team into overdrive, and began to build more power armour and base facilities. I knew I'd be needing some more heavy weapons, and some base defences in case the aliens came knocking.

My interrogation turned up something very important. It appears that the local base of operations for the alien invasion is Mars. The base is well hidden, and must surely contain all the equipment required to control the numerous attacks on Earth. Finding this base, and destroying it, is the only hope for mankind. At the core of this hive-like alien society, must be a "queen bee". This is our final target.

Attacking Mars is way beyond my capabilities at this moment. First I will need to find the base, then I will need a new spacecraft capable of reaching it. Given the massive leaps in research that we have been making, and the new alien materials, it shouldn't be long before I have the tools I need to complete the task at hand.

The first piece of the puzzle: A replacement for the Skyranger. The Avenger spacecraft is our best use of alien technology yet. Faster, stronger and able to soak up a hell of a lot of damage. The research is the easy part though, building one will take a lot of resources and more crucially, a lot of time. It's next on my list after I give my soldiers an armour upgrade.

The next: The Hyper-Wave Decoder. A significant upgrade to our existing radar system, this will help us track all the UFOs that enter Earth's atmosphere. It also gives us information about their type, and their mission, allowing us to prioritise our targets. Coupled with that, all the roaming large UFOs around spurred me on to build some base defences: Plasma defence and a Grav shield. The grav shield holds the attacking UFO at bay, allowing a second round of defensive bombardment. Once I have the resources, I should be able to destroy any attacking UFOs without any need for a tactical battle.

While all this is going on, the day job continues. Saving the planet from the alien menace one UFO at a time. Generally those UFOs have been supply ships and battleships, which indicate there's another alien base around somewhere. At least one, if not several. Until a country drops funding, it can be quite hard to locate them, but I'm hoping that once the hyper-wave decoder is built I'll have a better time tracking them down.