UFO Afterlight

Conflict revolves around the territories that patchwork the Martian surface. The more of these you control, the more resources you have at your disposal to spend on base enhancement and the equipping and training of your band of bold refugees. Initially conquest is dead simple. Just roll a vehicle into an unoccupied region and it's yours to develop. Problems arise when the neutral areas run out and claimed territories start getting infiltrated. When a message comes through that one of your regions has been invaded it's up to you to rustle-up a posse from your base personnel, kit them out, and get them onto an outbound shuttle (the 'UFO'). This vessel then chugs across the spherical strat-map (the 'geoscape') and touches down, triggering the start of delicate combat choreography of the Jagged Alliance variety.

Actually the skirmish choreography doesn't have to be JA-like or particularly delicate. Afterlight can do slow and turny, fast and fluid, or anything in between. Essentially, you choose when you want the action to freeze. Want breaks every time a team member gets hit, a new threat is detected, or a move order is completed? Set the appropriate pause parameters in the options menu and you've got them. After complete fluency? Just deselect all interruptions. The system is great once you've got the hang of it but can be rather alarming at first. By default the game pauses at every possible juncture meaning firefights are horribly fragmented until you've adjusted the settings.

So that's the grand strategy and the tac level side of things - what about the RPG and management dimensions? Well, assuming your away team gets home, it will arrive back with pocketfuls of experience and training points. These can be used to inflate a range of core stats (dexterity, strength, intuition, etc) and enrol on courses at the base's educational facility. Over time individuals, including droids and the odd alien recruit, can be moulded into all kinds of specialists. For every stealthy sniper, beefy shotgun thug, or psi-resistant medic you fashion you also need to nurture a similarly capable backroom boy/girl/thing. Scientists and technicians research new blueprints, man the workshops that turn those blueprints into equipment, and crew the vehicles that drive out into the dusty wastes to build the mines and chemical plants that produce the raw materials to supply the workshops that swallow the spiders that catch the flys that... errr... Oh, you got the idea. Boffins and erks are vital to the functioning of a flourishing Mars outpost.