Help me enjoy X-Com

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I am glad to see Tamren's game is historically accurate. That's exactly how it went down.

Tamren wrote:

New turn. The "honour" of breaching goes to the new guy. Ubrakto opens the UFO door and... Looks down the barrel of a heavy plasma! A lone snakeman faces the door surrounded by 4 dead bodies! (must have been a hard crash) Ubrakto opens fire and blasts the alien with 3 laser bolts to the chest! The snakeman shrieks and falls!

We have the tools, we have the talent.

It's Miller time!

(Also, 'grats to Nightmare for being a badass.)

Nightmare wrote:

I am glad to see Tamren's game is historically accurate. That's exactly how it went down. :)

And here I was just happy to get called up...

Thats the funny thing about the redshirt corps. I get a subdivision of my troops who I am not afraid to take risks with. Consequently they either die horribly, die in a Blaze of Glory, or become a Legend.

Its now the 21st of March. Hot on the heels of our last mission the aliens attack Calcutta. I've shuffled the teams for this mission and brought our tank.

Tanglebones R
Ubrakto R
Blacksheep R/Tanker

Wandering Toaist Tanker
Mr Tomaytohead Assault
Psych Assault
Tamren Heavy
Nathanial Sniper
Pursuedbybear Medic
Milkman Medic

A lot of you have survived 5 missions or more, but don't actually have any kills yet. No damage done means no improvement to secondary statistics, so its important we spread the experience around. Our most competent shooters have been rotated to the bench and MrDevil dusts off his cannon to join us.

Mission Starts. We land and immediately are surrounded by buildings. Not good. Toaist rolls off the ramp. Plasma fire smacks into his treads from the east! Toaist is slightly injured! He whirls around and finds that we are surrounded by hostiles!
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Those damn civs are standing too close again, which rules out rockets. Davet hops off the ramp and takes aim at the first floater. His heavy cannon coughs and the shell hits the floater dead on! The floater stands firm! Blacksheep is close behind and finishes off the floater with a triple burst of laser! Turning he snaps off another shot and backstabs another floater!
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Next up is Milkman, he jumps off the left side of the ramp and crouches behind the back wheels. Snapping off a couple shots he manages to hit one of the reapers in the ass! Psych follows him and attacks the floater to the north, but can't get a hit! Tanglebones crouches halfway down the ramp and takes aim at the same floater! His third laser bolt impacts the floater in the right kidney and it falls with a wail! Mrtomaytohead moves up beside him and attacks the north Reaper! He makes 3 shots but doesn't get a hit!

Waaay back in the rear of the cargo hold, Nathanial crouches down and takes aim with his heavy laser. The massive laser bolt streaks over Tanglebones's head and hits the Reaper in the face! The laser superheats its tiny brain and its head explodes! The Reaper is killed instantly! (XCOMutil really buffed the power and accuracy of the heavy laser, I like to think of it as a Spartan Laser now )

New turn. The sound of plasma fire breaks out in every direction! To the south a civ standing in a house is shot! A floater rounds the corner of the same house and attacks, firing twice! The first bolt narrowly misses Blacksheep and impacts the ground. The second skims off the top of Toaists turret and scorches the paint! To the east plasma fire shrieks out of an alleyway and narrowly misses Milkman! The bolts fly past his face and splatter on the landing gear tires! To the south the reaper Milkman shot in the ass flees behind a warehouse. But another one appears and charges towards him!

And whups something came up, will finish the mission later.

What can I say, I always go for the alien ass.

Aaand were back. Tanglebones takes aim at the floater to the north. Out of 9 hits he can only land 1 and the floater is unphased! Mrtomaytohead opens fire next and finally gets the floater with his 7th shot! On the other side of the ramp Blacksheep sneers and shows them how its done. Downing the floater to the south with his first shot! Beside him Milkman points his laser pistol in the Reapers face and holds down the trigger! 9 shots later the Reaper is a perforated steaming wreck! Toaist rolls down the alleyway to the east trying to find the hidden alien. He succeeds and comes across a strange scene. A floater standing on the head of another?!
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*KABOOOM!* Toaist launches a rocket point blank into the floaters face! It explodes into gibs, but absorbs most of the blast. The other floater is unhurt! Blacksheep shoots a hole in the wall of the warehouse and he, Pursuedbybear and Mrdevil advance into the building. On the other side Cayne shoots a hole in a store wall allowing Ubrakto to get inside and cover behind a window.

New turn. To the north a civ fleeing towards us is shot from behind! Inside the warehouse Blacksheep blasts away at the wall and manages to reveal the floater! Mrdevil takes aim with his heavy cannon and shoots! Direct hit!
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Meanwhile to the west Ubrakto moves through the store on his way to the second floor. He suddenly spots another Reaper! Milkman moves around the corner to get a better shot and opens fire with his pistol scoring a single hit! Pursuedbybear aims out a window and tries to assist, but he is even farther away and pistols are bad at this range. Ubrakto fires 4 shots and manages to scorch the Reaper on the snout! Toaist plows into the remains of a nearby house and launches a rocket out the window! But its a difficult shot and he misses, the rocket impacts the store and knocks down half the walls. Forcing Ubrakto to dive for cover! Nathanial moves to join Ubrakto in the store, the second floor is a perfect vantage point. Everyone else fans out under cover of a smoke grenade.

New turn. The unseen floater to the north shoots another fleeing civ in the back! South at the house another terrified civ flees and opens up the alleyway for Toaist. Rolling forward he gets a much better shot off on the Reaper and his rocket hits the beast in the neck! Reaper down! Northwest of us is a wide open road with no cover. Tanglebones tosses another smoke grenade. Tomatohead advances to a lamp post and gets shot! The plasma blast hits him in the chest but the armour holds! A second blast streaks towards him and obliterates the lamp post he sheltered behind! He spots the offending floater and opens fire, blasting the alien in the chest with his first shot! Alien down.

Tamren advances to the west, this time outside of the store. He spots another Floater far to the west in front of a house. He calls the target back to Nathanial who takes aim with his heavy laser. *SKPEW!* The laser bolt smashes through centre mass and the wall behind! The floater collapses, a smoking hole in its chest! The remaining squad members begin sweeping the south area.

New turn. Not a sound... There is so much open ground in front of us, everyone moves to cover and waits for the tank to scout first. To the south Psych advances and spots a reaper! He throws a grenade and shoots the reaper twice in the leg! Tomaytohead and Tanglebones advance as well, using Toaist as moving cover.

New turn. Still nothing sighted. Psychs grenade explodes but the Reaper is enraged and charges forward! Its moves in front of one of the store windows and Nathanial takes the opportunity to shoot it twice in the flank! Reaper down! Ubrakto scans the area from his second floor window and spots a floater. Unbelievably the floater Nathanial shot in the chest earlier is up again! But not for long, Ubrakto lands a shot and puts it down for good!

New turn. Somewhere out of sight another civ is shot! There are only 2 unexplored areas on the map, a warehouse to the north and a house in the southwest corner of the map. Toaist rolls south and spots the last floater by the house! Up in the store attic Ubrakto cuts a hole in the wall with his rifle. Nathanial aims out the hole and fires a shot! Its almost perfect but hits a pillar of remaining wall just short of the target!
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Nathanial tries again and his aim is just as good! The heavy laser bolt smashes the floater to the ground!

Mission Complete. We bagged a total of 14 aliens and saved 7 civilians out of a total of 13. No injuries other than Toaist who got burned a little.

I'm amazed at how well our basic body armour is performing. Its actually doing something for once!

What difficulty are you playing on? It really should be set to Genius

MrDeVil909 wrote:

And Wandering Taoist, you seriously need to name your tank. Have you no sense of drama?

If anyone can come up with better name for me than RokkitDaddy, I'm alright with that.

The Nightmare Situation persuaded me I have to fire the game up. Right here, at work.

Ninth time's the charm

It's nice to have the Wiki now, no more blindly researching tech that isn't a prerequisite for the tech I want "RIGHT NOW!". Also capturing the right aliens alive to unlock a new tech: Navigators, Engineers, Psi-capable-Aliens (still need me one of these).

Jumped right in on Veteran (figured the middle one was right).

PS: I do love these battle reports; keep 'em coming.

Poopypants! Ah well. I was hoping I'd go out in a blaze of glory (or shame as the case may be). But I guess a meaningless shot out the window death is all I get.

So, MoonDragon jr. has submitted his application to the X-Com forces to follow in his father's footsteps.

Sheesh, took me long enough to be able to finally hit something!

Love the AARs. But I have my own problem...

First mission, how the heck do I get in this:
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door fail.

Are you modding? Never seen that happen before. In any case just blow up the sand dune. A grenade aught to do it. If that doesn't work try a rocket. They always leave craters if they hit a hillside.

No new mission today, got distracted playing M&B. Nords rock!

Woohoo, researched Plasma Beam; makes downing those UFOs so much easier. Flying suits are next.

Finally dropped into a game of Two Sides after screwing around with the aliens for a bit before realizing no opposition. Man what a difference a coat of paint makes. I think I'm going to finally be able to play this game the whole way through.

Prozac wrote:

What difficulty are you playing on? It really should be set to Genius :D

It IS on Genius! Things are much tougher now. Floaters can sometimes tank 2 rifle shots to the chest and it can take more than 6 rifle shots to down a single reaper.

Things are happening much faster this time around. The last game I ran there were months when nothing happened at all. But we are barely through our second month and the missions are piling up fast.

clever id wrote:

Love the AARs. But I have my own problem...

First mission, how the heck do I get in this:
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door fail.

Please don't tell me you went into a fight without some kind of high explosive.

No modding, first mission, didn't bring a HE pack. It was a landed UFO (VS I think) that I intercepted until it took off then shot it down, although the UFO doesn't show signs of being shot down. Anyway, I unloaded 8 grenades, two clips from a cannon, and 4 large rockets. Not a scratch on the darker orange/yellow pyramid that looks like a dune but isn't. First time I've really wished I had a HE pack.

I ended up unloading all my heavy ammo with no effect so I loaded up and left with a whopping 10 score. FWIW, I saw one other complaint on the internets of an unopenable VS ufo.

Man, maybe it took a death to wake my ass up. Now I'm smoking good instead of a smoking pile of ash! Go team Tamren!

Nothing much happens after the mission. We ran out of tank rockets so I ordered some more. I started production on some laser cannons. Laser cannons as craft weapons are kind of meh, not bad but not fantastic either. On the other hand they are the most efficient item for our workshops to make in terms of man hours to profit ratio.

The next day on the 25th we spot a large scout UFO very close to our base and shoot it down. Since its currently night I wait until sunrise before we launch the mission. But just before I can tell the skyranger where to go, we spot a second UFO, this one a small scout in the same vicinity. That UFO is shot down without incident. So now we have 2 wrecks to investigate. We are tackling the large scout UFO first and our teams remain the same. Our workshops also completed work on some motion scanners and I am giving them to all assaults and redshirts.

Mission begins. Its early morning when we land in a farmers field. Good thing too because I just realized that we have only 1 flare left. Flares can be reused but are vulnerable to explosions, I'll order some more. Anyway right off the bat we have a snakeman staring into the skyranger! Can't have that. So Toaist launches a rocket! Direct hit to centre mass! The snakeman is obliterated. Toaist then scouts around a bit, knocking holes into buildings to reveal the inside and flattening a nearby fence to let infantry through.

New Turn. Toaist advances and spots a snakeman standing beside a large farmhouse. A single rocket blasts a huge hole in the house and the snakeman disappears in a shower of gibs! It seems safe enough so our infantry begin to disembark.

New Turn. Toaists rockets have left a huge swathe of craters and smoke clouds. Everyone uses them to advance to the north where the UFO sits. Nathanial moves into the barn to take position on the second floor.

New turn. A snakeman appears in the gap between two buildings and attacks! But hits shots are wide and splash against a nearby wall. Toaist knocks the corner off both buildings with a rocket, exposing the snakeman behind. Pursuedbybear opens fire with his pistol and downs the snakeman in a single blow with his 5th shot! Everyone else keeps on advancing. 2 farmhouses and a barn form a diagonal line facing northwest. The UFO sits at the top of this line, and we must check each building as we go.

New turn. Suspiciously one of the doors inside the nearest farmhouse hangs open. Tanglebones advances and spots a snakeman through the open door! The snakeman is taken completetly by surprise and Tanglebones shoots him in the flank! Alien down!

New turn. Mrtomaytohead shoots a hole in a nearby fence and advances on the second farmhouse. Tamren preps a demo pack and prepares to demolish the south wall of the UFO. Tanglebones and Ubrakto begin searching the second floor of the first farmhouse.

New turn. The demo pack blows a hole in the UFO! Tamren shoots a couple autocannon rounds inside and Blacksheep advances on the hole. The farmhouses seem pretty clear, so we form up to breach the UFO.

New turn. Tamren activates his motion scanner (after swapping out his heavy cannon, which isn't much use indoors, for a laser pistol) and gets a single hit in the west wing of the UFO. First to breach the door is Mrtomaytohead. He bursts through the door and... Finds a snakeman facing the other breach with his back turned! Good thing I didn't have Blacksheep go first! Mrtomaytohead guns down the snakeman from behind! He and Psych move up to the inner door. Meanwhile Backsheep and Tamren move into the other entrance and prepare to breach the bridge.

New turn. Tamren checks his scanner again. Gets a single hit in the engine room. No hits on the bridge, but that doesn't mean its empty! Tamren and Blacksheep wait until Psych and Tomaytohead can get into position on the other side.

New turn. This time Blacksheep is the one to breach first. He charges into the bridge, and finds another snakeman looking the wrong way! (lucky again!) He flanks the snakeman and guns it down! On the other side Tomaytohead breaches and finds the bridge clear. That leaves the engine room.

New turn. Plasma fire hits the wall above Psychs head! Psych whirls around to find a snakeman standing inside the UFO! Where the hell did he come from! With the alien staring him in the face Psych decides not to fire! Tamren moves to assist and flanks the snakeman from the side! A single pistol shot is all it takes and the snakeman falls!

New turn. A snakeman emerges from the engine room! Before Blacksheep and Tomaytohead can react, it turns around and heads right back inside! Tomaytohead grabs the stun stick from his backpack and charges after it! The snakeman is tazered twice from behind and falls!

UFO secure! We have salvaged an almost complete large scout. (the hole we blasted in the side destroyed a unit of metal). We bagged 7 aliens and captured one which I am almost certain is an engineer.

That last snakeman must have been hiding in the tiny alcove in the south wing of the ufo. I'm going to make it standard policy to grenade the area in the future...

My method of storming UFO's always involves lots of grenades. Prime grenade for 0, open door, throw grenade and run like hell! Move up to the next door and repeat.

Tamren wrote:

New turn. Plasma fire hits the wall above Psychs head! Psych whirls around to find a snakeman standing inside the UFO! Where the hell did he come from! With the alien staring him in the face Psych decides not to fire!

So I'm a pacifist now?

Nah self preservation, kicked in you didn't want to trigger a reaction shot from the snakie.

Eeeek, I suffered a pretty disastrous incursion of my European base by Snakemen and Crysallids(sp?). At the time, all my (4) Interceptors were repairing/refuelling/rearming (after a successful downing of a Battleship over Japan).

At least 2 of the Snakemen had those guided Blaster-Bomb Launchers, that was a painful discovery. A single blast wiped out my Captain and 2 other squaddies (note to self: spread out more), which drove one of the other remaining 7 squad members berserk (good thing he was alone in the room). There was a bit of luck in one of the hangars, a stray shot from one of the aliens hit one of the barrels (fuel, I presume), and set off a chain reaction that killed off all 3 in there \o/ .

I managed to wipe out the last of the invading force leaving me with 3 dead, 5 wounded (2 previously), and only 4 soldiers in fighting shape. Quick, to the recruitment tab. I only had to send 2 of the new recruits back.

I finished "New Fighter Craft", working on "New Transport Craft" (can't wait for the Avenger), just built my first Hover Plasma-Tank, and recovered 3 (THREE!!) Blaster-Launchers from that invasion. I'll start research on those soon.

I still need to get my hands on a live psionic alien!!! All I get lately are Snakemen >:( .

I'll fill a spot

You can use me as cannon fodder. Heck, maybe I'll do better in your game than I've been doing in my own. Man I suck at X-Com!

This might be tempting fate, but am I on leave or training the next generation of cannon fod....err, eager recruits ?

Just not heard the satisfying refrain of a rocket launcher hitting a snakeman for what seems like ages.

Apologies of course if my speed reading has missed my demise.