- Joined
- Oct 16, 2019
Let's Sperg Let's Play XCOM UFO Defense (Completed) - Heavy casualties expected.
- Thread starter L50LasPak
- Start date
Honka Honka Burning Love
In Clown World, the only god is the one who Honks.
True & Honest Fan
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2019
Ooh Ice Cream? Two Scoops?
Dark Edea
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2020
- Joined
- Nov 21, 2019
Honka Honka Burning Love
In Clown World, the only god is the one who Honks.
True & Honest Fan
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2019
Is it really virginity if you die from an alien violating your body?
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
Anal plasma rape doesn't count.
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2019
But your guts still end up blown out....
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
Still looks better than your average picture in the SRS disasters thread.
Dark Edea
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2020
Last edited:
Peasant
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2019
My assumption is he's either taking a break (Understandable), or he got punched in the dick hard, in which case it will make for a great update.
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2021
He got quickscoped by an ethereal, that's my theory and I'll keep it.
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2020
I mean, spending a weekend doing literally anything other than playing video games is understandable.
Dark Edea
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2020
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
Late as hell but damn, my clone child was recruited and then got Snek'd without me even realizing. Time to throw another in the oven.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
Where do you think you are?
MikeFoxtrotTango
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2021
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2019
I often spend my weekends doing movienight unless the theme is really boring. I dunno why I stayed for Saturday to be honest, the Synder Cut of Justice League was a bomb. More XCOM to come today though.
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
Oh, Jesus. I'd rather be sniped by an ethereal than watch that abortion of a movie. I had a friend giving me the realtime commentary and... nope.
Glad to see you back, though. Can't wait to see the next casualty list!
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2021
HE LIVES, JUST LIKE A BEAUTIFUL CHRYSALID HE COMES BACK STRONGER THAN EVER
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2019
13. Battleship Raid
This Terror Mission is almost guarenteed to be Ethereals. We took that supply ship, and now we have much better weaponry, but can we fight off a Terror Mission? Command advises The Valeyard that Sectopods are hardened against plasma fire. He opts to trust his gut though and not equip any of his team with the inferior Heavy Laser weapon.
At least this mission is during the daytime. @Catgirls are Love is sniped from beyond visual range. No visual contact with the enemy at all on the first turn, but oddly enough no psionic attacks either. The team crosses its fingers for Mutons.
No such luck. A third of the team is already on the ground though so The Valeyard chooses to stay in the fight. He personally kills the first Ethereal the team encounters.
We get two more before a Sectopod wanders out of the darkness.
At this point we have no less than four soldiers covering the road so they're told to give the Sectopod everything they've got. Niggermancer, draggs, Pininas and Overcast dump mags into the target. The Sectopod absorbs probably nine shots overall.
Maybe its different on Superhuman difficulty, but the plasma-hardened nature of the Sectopods just can't take the sheer amount of damage the overpowered Heavy Plasma deals. Pinainas deep fries this chicken walker.
XCOM spreads out. The Valeyard takes rookie McMitch with him to clean out a shop. Radical Cadre already has a kill under his belt and gets Niggermancer for backup to take the south. A powerful firing line of five other troops is established to keep an eye on the fences on the other side of the road. During the alien turns there's always a bunch of alien activity over there, but sending troops in directly would be suicide. Conventional grenades are pitched into the fence line to give XCOM a look at what's going on over there without killing any of the civvies.
We're killing Ethereals but still the occasional psionic attack gets through. Highlights include draggs panicking with a live grenade but somehow not dropping it.
Radical Cadre gets another kill. Meanwhile, another Sectopod wanders into range.
We bomb it with a conventional grenade to try and clear away the cover protecting it.
Both the wiki and Xpiratez assure me that the back armor of a Sectopod is weaker than its front plating, but any XCOM player would do well to never fully trust the material. The smoke certainly doesn't help our accuracy but this thing shrugs off most of our plasma fire.
Niggermancer manages to land the killing blow.
We've got the aliens by the ass at this point. Radical Cadre bags a third kill while rookie McMitch gets his first.
McMitch only knocked his alien out, but its undoubtedly wounded and bleeding to death. An Ethereal Leader would be a pretty important thing to take back if we didn't already have the Sectoids from earlier. If I was inclined I could use the Medikit to heal the alien, but that almost always results in them getting back up, so this one is left to bleed out. McMitch can content himself with his first kill being somebody important.
Radical Cadre is the fucking man. He snipes this Ethereal that Niggermancer and the rookies were having trouble with from across the map.
Fat Khazar Milkers gets shot in the face advancing on the fenced in houses. Somehow he's uninjured. Horus manages to spot another Sectopod. The Valeyard tells him to back off since he's almost certainly doomed without support fire.
Jesus Christ people, is this XCOM or a fucking women's baseball team? No less than three of our soldiers are affected by girly throwing when we try to lay waste of this Sectopod. Draggs, Judge Dredd and Overcast are all forced to throw their grenades a bit ahead of the Sectopod and hope the blast wave will do it in.
Naturally, this doesn't do anything at all.
Rookies Horus, Agent of ZOG and Fat Khazar Milkers are sent forward with veteran Pinainas to scout the previously fenced in houses through the smoke.
Oh great, there's two of them.
Any soldier that has one of these things in their sight is told to open up, snapshots only because autofire sure as hell isn't going to hit anything through the smoke.
Looks like all of those grenades did something after all. The northernmost Sectopod goes down after only two shots.
The other Sectopod advances through some of our reaction fire and picks off both @Agent of Z.O.G. and @FAT_KHAZAR_MILKERS.
The last one refuses to go down easy. Even Radical Cadre, finished sweeping his side of the map, goes Rambo and tries to take it out with only a window for cover.
Perhaps thinking its been surrounded on account of Radical Cadre, the Sectopod marches straight up against our firing line and picks off another rookie; @Horus.
Judge Dredd manages to deal the final blow.
The loss of one of our better officers is always regrettable, but what bothers The Valeyard the most is the sudden loss of three promising rookies at the end of the battle. All three performed reasonably well under the circumstances, Horus even managing two kills. Command is just happy the casualties were limited to only four troops on a mission against Ethereals. The Heavy Plasma really made up the difference and puts us on reasonable footing with the Ethereals.
Research on the Sectoid Leader completes shortly after the success of the mission. I hold off on researching The Martian Solution right now because that triggers immediate alien retaliation and I'd rather be a bit more ready for them. To that end, research on the Psi Lab starts right away.
While pursuing a UFO, the Jace Interceptor finds that the aliens completed their base in South america after all, simply moving it to the Andes and out of our radar range.
The Hyperwave Decoders at both bases have finished construction. We have no need of our Large Radar Arrays anymore, leaving an empty sector in both bases. I certainly know what I plan on putting in the new spot at Kiwi Farms.
The Council is very pleased to hear that XCOM has a fighting chance against Ethereal terror missions.
This is technically not the best craft weapon in the game, but based on how quickly it fires its a lot better than the Fusion Missile. The construction of six of these fearsome weapons is ordered immediately and completes two days later. Research is currently split evenly as possible between the Psi Lab and Plasma Defenses.
This screen shows the readout that our new Hyperwave Decoders give. You only get this readout if the alien craft is detected within the range of the Decoder though.
We lose the first UFO but detect an Ethereal one on an Alien Infiltration mission. These missions are dangerous because they can cause a government to turn against you and leave the Council even if you are on very good terms with them and getting maximum funding.
While en route back to base from shooting down that Scout, the Jace Interceptor makes contact with a much larger vessel. Command says to disengage at once, but The Commander has other plans
.
This type of alien craft is a Terror Ship, most likely piloted by Sectoids based on that Scout we failed to intercept earlier.
The new plasma weapons are unbelieveably powerful, knocking the Terror Ship right out of the sky
!
It crash lands into the Indian Ocean, meaning our troops won't have to risk a battle with Cyberdisks on the ground to retrieve the vessel.
My score is already undoubtedly high due to those interceptions, but I figure a routine UFO retrieval can't hurt.
I should really learn to leave UFO retrieval missions alone after a successful terror run. @Niggermancer is killed near a small apple tree grove. I've grown to despise this terrain tile more than any of the others.
Radical Cadre and Overcast make short work of the aliens.
A waste of time for sure, but at least the mission has a positive score.
Two Small Scouts are vaporized when they wander into our airspace.
Excellent. The research team finishes its work on Plasma Defenses. They are immediately diversified to catch us up on UFO technology and start the interrogation of our numerous prisoners.
We catch wind of an Ethereal Battleship on route for an Alien Infiltration mission in Asia. Japan or China are the most likely targets, I'm guessing Japan because their relationship with us is still low after that botched Terror Mission. The Amberlynn Ried is sent to intercept it when it lands, but it does so in the middle of the night.
Battleships are the largest and most difficult alien craft to take, they always carry Terror Units and high ranking aliens equipped with heavy artillery like Stun Launchers and the dreaded Blaster Bomb. In addition to that, they also carry 3-5 extra foot soldiers. These are also Ethereals, meaning they will have an abundance of psionic attacks. And, on top of all of that, this mission will take place at night.
Well fuck that. The Valeyard chooses to leave Japan or whoever to their fate. This isn't a mission XCOM has any chance of winning even under the best of circumstances.
On the way back though we catch wind of a hell of a lot of alien activity in Australia. Landing Site 38 is indicated to be a Very Large UFO. Our Hyperwave decoder can't tell us anything about any of these craft though because we're so far away. The Valeyard decides to chance it and make a landing on the alien Battleship.
XCOM is concerned with just wiping out the aliens and preventing the infiltration or base setup mission they are conducting. Command advises The Valeyard that powerful alien craft and alien installations such as Battleships and Bases most likely contain a supreme alien leader, dubbed Commander after XCOM's own highest rank. Capturing one would be very helpful to our research team.
Almost every soldier on Amberlynn Reid is equppied with a Stunrod, but no Stun Launchers. The Valeyard says he'll do what he can but once the Skyranger starts its landing sequence he orders the troops to kill everything that fucking moves and ask questions later. We can always capture a Commander on a base assault later on when we're better equipped.
We must have really caught these aliens off guard, there are none waiting in ambush and we don't even make visual contact until almost two thirds of our number have disembarked. We have an extremely advantageous landing zone that is behind the UFO (so newly disembarked aliens cannot shoot at us right away) and in the corner of the map. No psionic attacks go by for two turns. There's no way this Battleship can be manned by Ethereals.
Sectoids! This is a stroke of luck, as a Snakeman UFO would undoubtedly contain Chryssalids and Ethereals would be difficult to contend with.
The psionic attacks start as the team surrounds the Battleship entrance. Draggs loses his shit and sprays @Burning Bridge with plasma fire.
Draggs panics again as the turn ends. He tosses his gun on the ground and runs for his life, straight into the UFO and up to the second floor. A Cyberdisk, apparently just as surprised as our soldiers are, is waiting for him. Its either pointed the wrong way (difficult to tell with a Cyberdisk) or just thinks draggs isn't worth shooting right now.
The Cyberdisk takes a shot at our troops instead. Overcast is in a great spot to get a shot off, so The Valeyard gives him the all clear to open fire.
Cyberdisks explode with roughly the force of an alien grenade when they are killed, except under very rare circumstances. @draggs is right next to the explosion an consequently turned into paste. Short of suicide-rushing my troops up through the lift and hoping I get nine or ten successful Stunrod hits on an enemy with some of the best reaction time in the entire game, and then hoping no aliens pop out of the doorways or lifts to shoot at my now sitting duck team, this is really the best possible outcome.
This team apparently isn't all that good at reaction fire, since they only open up after an alien on the third floor blows @entropino's head off. Ponchik does kill the alien that got him though.
Alien Battleships have this incredibly annoying internal layout and a lift that goes up through all three floors, ensuring that unless you have eight troops on hand to cover all four direction on two floors, the aliens have at least one place they can come at you from. Further, its hard to see in the screenshot, but the second floor has four fucking lifts, each going down to a set of unconnected engine rooms. Each engine room usually has an intact power core that can blow up in your face if you encounter an alien down there.
I don't have enough troops to cover the third floor so I do a quick and dirty method of covering all four doors with two rookies. They're most likely fucked if they get encountered, but at least we don't have to deal with Chryssalids in this mess.
McMitch is given the extremely unenviable task of clearing out all four engine rooms one by one while Radical Cadre and Judge Dredd make their way to the UFO to reinforce the breaching team. If McMitch goes down in the mean time there's absolutely nobody who can be spared to save him without breaking our overwatch. Delaying McMitch's backup even further is Ponchik going berserk and shooting at anything that moves.
Cadre and Dredd make it inside the UFO just as Ponchik falls under alien control. Its possible he'll follow them, but unlikely. McMitch is relieved to hear his backup has arrived, and particularly happy that a badass like Radical Cadre has his back. So far he's only managed to clear one engine room on his own.
The brutal psionic attacks continue on Ponchik. At one point he throws his weapon to the ground. Whether or not its sheer terror or his own momentary self-awareness that compels him to do so is unknown, but he's now useless to the aliens. The only soldier left outside the UFO other than him is Affluent Reptilian, who has just finished up clearing out a barn.
Another engine room is cleared without incident. McMith and Cadre move on to a room on the second level. Its a strange area for sure, covered in pulsing floor and wall panels that give Mcmitch a headache, but clear of alien activity.
The aliens, having figured out that Ponchik is now unarmed, go after Overcast instead. Overcast's berserk rage sees him shoot Pinainas in the face for zero damage, somehow. Rather than leave him standing the entire time and risk him falling under alien control, Radical Cadre steps out of the door Overcast was guarding and stuns him to the ground.
This strategy isn't working. The aliens target The Valeyard himself and drive him berserk. Radical Cadre takes command of the operation and tell his troops to break overwatch and sweep the second floor as quickly as possible.
Cadre being in charge doesn't stop him from backing up McMitch while they clear another room on the second floor.
Judge Dredd wipes out an alien that comes up from the last uncleared engine room. It looks a lot like a Plasma Rifle in the tiny weapon sprite (refered to in the code as a "HandOb" for Hand Object) but I think this alien might have actually been armed with a Blaster Launcher. There were multiple occasions where this alien could have killed off most of the squad if it had been on the same level as us. I'll go a bit into the reasons why this alien was too afraid to open fire on us when I actually have a chance to explain Blaster Bombs as a whole.
Affluent Reptilian is finished his scouting mission and making his way to the rest of the team. Without much warning Ponchik falls under alien control again and tries to suicide bomb him. Both of them are wounded but manage to stay on their feet. Reptilian books it for the UFO entrance and gets patched up by Pinainas once inside.
The third floor of the alien Battleship is a bunch of tight intersecting corridors. You essentially need to send your entire team up here to cover all of the possible ways the aliens can come at you. Again, everyone is glad as hell we aren't fighting Chryssalids.
Ponchik is still wounded but still recieving psionic attacks from somewhere. Pinainas encounters this alien in the hallway. I'm tempted to have him just plug it, but I get a little ambitious on account of Ponchik still getting his brain melted. I have Affluent reptilian pull his Stunrod. He gets the alien on the only hit he has enough time units for.
Apparently that's the last alien. Ponchik is still wounded but the last time I got a look at his health he was nowhere near bleeding out so I feel secure ending the mission here.
WHAT
My original plan was just to take the UFO and leave grabbing a Commander for some other mission, probably a base assault. But nope, that random alien Affluent Reptilian knocked out was not, infact, a Leader but was an honest to god Commander. I now have captured every piece of technology and every type of alien I need to complete the game, including some examples of the alien Blaster Launcher and its ammunition. There is still a long way to go research-wise, but we have every object/prisoner.
The Psionics Lab finishes research and construction starts on one right away. I could build one at Deagle Nation too, but I see no purpose in it at this stage in the game.
If I wanted to seriously push my luck I could ignore all future UFO sightings and just let the timer run as fast as possible to research everything in a hurry, but where's the fun in that?
Next time: A lot of boring as fuck routine missions while I wait for the engame technologies to get researched.
This Terror Mission is almost guarenteed to be Ethereals. We took that supply ship, and now we have much better weaponry, but can we fight off a Terror Mission? Command advises The Valeyard that Sectopods are hardened against plasma fire. He opts to trust his gut though and not equip any of his team with the inferior Heavy Laser weapon.
At least this mission is during the daytime. @Catgirls are Love is sniped from beyond visual range. No visual contact with the enemy at all on the first turn, but oddly enough no psionic attacks either. The team crosses its fingers for Mutons.
No such luck. A third of the team is already on the ground though so The Valeyard chooses to stay in the fight. He personally kills the first Ethereal the team encounters.
We get two more before a Sectopod wanders out of the darkness.
At this point we have no less than four soldiers covering the road so they're told to give the Sectopod everything they've got. Niggermancer, draggs, Pininas and Overcast dump mags into the target. The Sectopod absorbs probably nine shots overall.
Maybe its different on Superhuman difficulty, but the plasma-hardened nature of the Sectopods just can't take the sheer amount of damage the overpowered Heavy Plasma deals. Pinainas deep fries this chicken walker.
XCOM spreads out. The Valeyard takes rookie McMitch with him to clean out a shop. Radical Cadre already has a kill under his belt and gets Niggermancer for backup to take the south. A powerful firing line of five other troops is established to keep an eye on the fences on the other side of the road. During the alien turns there's always a bunch of alien activity over there, but sending troops in directly would be suicide. Conventional grenades are pitched into the fence line to give XCOM a look at what's going on over there without killing any of the civvies.
We're killing Ethereals but still the occasional psionic attack gets through. Highlights include draggs panicking with a live grenade but somehow not dropping it.
Radical Cadre gets another kill. Meanwhile, another Sectopod wanders into range.
We bomb it with a conventional grenade to try and clear away the cover protecting it.
Both the wiki and Xpiratez assure me that the back armor of a Sectopod is weaker than its front plating, but any XCOM player would do well to never fully trust the material. The smoke certainly doesn't help our accuracy but this thing shrugs off most of our plasma fire.
Niggermancer manages to land the killing blow.
We've got the aliens by the ass at this point. Radical Cadre bags a third kill while rookie McMitch gets his first.
McMitch only knocked his alien out, but its undoubtedly wounded and bleeding to death. An Ethereal Leader would be a pretty important thing to take back if we didn't already have the Sectoids from earlier. If I was inclined I could use the Medikit to heal the alien, but that almost always results in them getting back up, so this one is left to bleed out. McMitch can content himself with his first kill being somebody important.
Radical Cadre is the fucking man. He snipes this Ethereal that Niggermancer and the rookies were having trouble with from across the map.
Fat Khazar Milkers gets shot in the face advancing on the fenced in houses. Somehow he's uninjured. Horus manages to spot another Sectopod. The Valeyard tells him to back off since he's almost certainly doomed without support fire.
Jesus Christ people, is this XCOM or a fucking women's baseball team? No less than three of our soldiers are affected by girly throwing when we try to lay waste of this Sectopod. Draggs, Judge Dredd and Overcast are all forced to throw their grenades a bit ahead of the Sectopod and hope the blast wave will do it in.
Naturally, this doesn't do anything at all.
Rookies Horus, Agent of ZOG and Fat Khazar Milkers are sent forward with veteran Pinainas to scout the previously fenced in houses through the smoke.
Oh great, there's two of them.
Any soldier that has one of these things in their sight is told to open up, snapshots only because autofire sure as hell isn't going to hit anything through the smoke.
Looks like all of those grenades did something after all. The northernmost Sectopod goes down after only two shots.
The other Sectopod advances through some of our reaction fire and picks off both @Agent of Z.O.G. and @FAT_KHAZAR_MILKERS.
The last one refuses to go down easy. Even Radical Cadre, finished sweeping his side of the map, goes Rambo and tries to take it out with only a window for cover.
Perhaps thinking its been surrounded on account of Radical Cadre, the Sectopod marches straight up against our firing line and picks off another rookie; @Horus.
Judge Dredd manages to deal the final blow.
The loss of one of our better officers is always regrettable, but what bothers The Valeyard the most is the sudden loss of three promising rookies at the end of the battle. All three performed reasonably well under the circumstances, Horus even managing two kills. Command is just happy the casualties were limited to only four troops on a mission against Ethereals. The Heavy Plasma really made up the difference and puts us on reasonable footing with the Ethereals.
Research on the Sectoid Leader completes shortly after the success of the mission. I hold off on researching The Martian Solution right now because that triggers immediate alien retaliation and I'd rather be a bit more ready for them. To that end, research on the Psi Lab starts right away.
While pursuing a UFO, the Jace Interceptor finds that the aliens completed their base in South america after all, simply moving it to the Andes and out of our radar range.
The Hyperwave Decoders at both bases have finished construction. We have no need of our Large Radar Arrays anymore, leaving an empty sector in both bases. I certainly know what I plan on putting in the new spot at Kiwi Farms.
The Council is very pleased to hear that XCOM has a fighting chance against Ethereal terror missions.
This is technically not the best craft weapon in the game, but based on how quickly it fires its a lot better than the Fusion Missile. The construction of six of these fearsome weapons is ordered immediately and completes two days later. Research is currently split evenly as possible between the Psi Lab and Plasma Defenses.
This screen shows the readout that our new Hyperwave Decoders give. You only get this readout if the alien craft is detected within the range of the Decoder though.
We lose the first UFO but detect an Ethereal one on an Alien Infiltration mission. These missions are dangerous because they can cause a government to turn against you and leave the Council even if you are on very good terms with them and getting maximum funding.
While en route back to base from shooting down that Scout, the Jace Interceptor makes contact with a much larger vessel. Command says to disengage at once, but The Commander has other plans
.This type of alien craft is a Terror Ship, most likely piloted by Sectoids based on that Scout we failed to intercept earlier.
The new plasma weapons are unbelieveably powerful, knocking the Terror Ship right out of the sky
!It crash lands into the Indian Ocean, meaning our troops won't have to risk a battle with Cyberdisks on the ground to retrieve the vessel.
My score is already undoubtedly high due to those interceptions, but I figure a routine UFO retrieval can't hurt.
I should really learn to leave UFO retrieval missions alone after a successful terror run. @Niggermancer is killed near a small apple tree grove. I've grown to despise this terrain tile more than any of the others.
Radical Cadre and Overcast make short work of the aliens.
A waste of time for sure, but at least the mission has a positive score.
Two Small Scouts are vaporized when they wander into our airspace.
Excellent. The research team finishes its work on Plasma Defenses. They are immediately diversified to catch us up on UFO technology and start the interrogation of our numerous prisoners.
We catch wind of an Ethereal Battleship on route for an Alien Infiltration mission in Asia. Japan or China are the most likely targets, I'm guessing Japan because their relationship with us is still low after that botched Terror Mission. The Amberlynn Ried is sent to intercept it when it lands, but it does so in the middle of the night.
Battleships are the largest and most difficult alien craft to take, they always carry Terror Units and high ranking aliens equipped with heavy artillery like Stun Launchers and the dreaded Blaster Bomb. In addition to that, they also carry 3-5 extra foot soldiers. These are also Ethereals, meaning they will have an abundance of psionic attacks. And, on top of all of that, this mission will take place at night.
Well fuck that. The Valeyard chooses to leave Japan or whoever to their fate. This isn't a mission XCOM has any chance of winning even under the best of circumstances.
On the way back though we catch wind of a hell of a lot of alien activity in Australia. Landing Site 38 is indicated to be a Very Large UFO. Our Hyperwave decoder can't tell us anything about any of these craft though because we're so far away. The Valeyard decides to chance it and make a landing on the alien Battleship.
XCOM is concerned with just wiping out the aliens and preventing the infiltration or base setup mission they are conducting. Command advises The Valeyard that powerful alien craft and alien installations such as Battleships and Bases most likely contain a supreme alien leader, dubbed Commander after XCOM's own highest rank. Capturing one would be very helpful to our research team.
Almost every soldier on Amberlynn Reid is equppied with a Stunrod, but no Stun Launchers. The Valeyard says he'll do what he can but once the Skyranger starts its landing sequence he orders the troops to kill everything that fucking moves and ask questions later. We can always capture a Commander on a base assault later on when we're better equipped.
We must have really caught these aliens off guard, there are none waiting in ambush and we don't even make visual contact until almost two thirds of our number have disembarked. We have an extremely advantageous landing zone that is behind the UFO (so newly disembarked aliens cannot shoot at us right away) and in the corner of the map. No psionic attacks go by for two turns. There's no way this Battleship can be manned by Ethereals.
Sectoids! This is a stroke of luck, as a Snakeman UFO would undoubtedly contain Chryssalids and Ethereals would be difficult to contend with.
The psionic attacks start as the team surrounds the Battleship entrance. Draggs loses his shit and sprays @Burning Bridge with plasma fire.
Draggs panics again as the turn ends. He tosses his gun on the ground and runs for his life, straight into the UFO and up to the second floor. A Cyberdisk, apparently just as surprised as our soldiers are, is waiting for him. Its either pointed the wrong way (difficult to tell with a Cyberdisk) or just thinks draggs isn't worth shooting right now.
The Cyberdisk takes a shot at our troops instead. Overcast is in a great spot to get a shot off, so The Valeyard gives him the all clear to open fire.
Cyberdisks explode with roughly the force of an alien grenade when they are killed, except under very rare circumstances. @draggs is right next to the explosion an consequently turned into paste. Short of suicide-rushing my troops up through the lift and hoping I get nine or ten successful Stunrod hits on an enemy with some of the best reaction time in the entire game, and then hoping no aliens pop out of the doorways or lifts to shoot at my now sitting duck team, this is really the best possible outcome.
This team apparently isn't all that good at reaction fire, since they only open up after an alien on the third floor blows @entropino's head off. Ponchik does kill the alien that got him though.
Alien Battleships have this incredibly annoying internal layout and a lift that goes up through all three floors, ensuring that unless you have eight troops on hand to cover all four direction on two floors, the aliens have at least one place they can come at you from. Further, its hard to see in the screenshot, but the second floor has four fucking lifts, each going down to a set of unconnected engine rooms. Each engine room usually has an intact power core that can blow up in your face if you encounter an alien down there.
I don't have enough troops to cover the third floor so I do a quick and dirty method of covering all four doors with two rookies. They're most likely fucked if they get encountered, but at least we don't have to deal with Chryssalids in this mess.
McMitch is given the extremely unenviable task of clearing out all four engine rooms one by one while Radical Cadre and Judge Dredd make their way to the UFO to reinforce the breaching team. If McMitch goes down in the mean time there's absolutely nobody who can be spared to save him without breaking our overwatch. Delaying McMitch's backup even further is Ponchik going berserk and shooting at anything that moves.
Cadre and Dredd make it inside the UFO just as Ponchik falls under alien control. Its possible he'll follow them, but unlikely. McMitch is relieved to hear his backup has arrived, and particularly happy that a badass like Radical Cadre has his back. So far he's only managed to clear one engine room on his own.
Another engine room is cleared without incident. McMith and Cadre move on to a room on the second level. Its a strange area for sure, covered in pulsing floor and wall panels that give Mcmitch a headache, but clear of alien activity.
The aliens, having figured out that Ponchik is now unarmed, go after Overcast instead. Overcast's berserk rage sees him shoot Pinainas in the face for zero damage, somehow. Rather than leave him standing the entire time and risk him falling under alien control, Radical Cadre steps out of the door Overcast was guarding and stuns him to the ground.
This strategy isn't working. The aliens target The Valeyard himself and drive him berserk. Radical Cadre takes command of the operation and tell his troops to break overwatch and sweep the second floor as quickly as possible.
Cadre being in charge doesn't stop him from backing up McMitch while they clear another room on the second floor.
Judge Dredd wipes out an alien that comes up from the last uncleared engine room. It looks a lot like a Plasma Rifle in the tiny weapon sprite (refered to in the code as a "HandOb" for Hand Object) but I think this alien might have actually been armed with a Blaster Launcher. There were multiple occasions where this alien could have killed off most of the squad if it had been on the same level as us. I'll go a bit into the reasons why this alien was too afraid to open fire on us when I actually have a chance to explain Blaster Bombs as a whole.
Affluent Reptilian is finished his scouting mission and making his way to the rest of the team. Without much warning Ponchik falls under alien control again and tries to suicide bomb him. Both of them are wounded but manage to stay on their feet. Reptilian books it for the UFO entrance and gets patched up by Pinainas once inside.
The third floor of the alien Battleship is a bunch of tight intersecting corridors. You essentially need to send your entire team up here to cover all of the possible ways the aliens can come at you. Again, everyone is glad as hell we aren't fighting Chryssalids.
Ponchik is still wounded but still recieving psionic attacks from somewhere. Pinainas encounters this alien in the hallway. I'm tempted to have him just plug it, but I get a little ambitious on account of Ponchik still getting his brain melted. I have Affluent reptilian pull his Stunrod. He gets the alien on the only hit he has enough time units for.
Apparently that's the last alien. Ponchik is still wounded but the last time I got a look at his health he was nowhere near bleeding out so I feel secure ending the mission here.
WHAT
My original plan was just to take the UFO and leave grabbing a Commander for some other mission, probably a base assault. But nope, that random alien Affluent Reptilian knocked out was not, infact, a Leader but was an honest to god Commander. I now have captured every piece of technology and every type of alien I need to complete the game, including some examples of the alien Blaster Launcher and its ammunition. There is still a long way to go research-wise, but we have every object/prisoner.
The Psionics Lab finishes research and construction starts on one right away. I could build one at Deagle Nation too, but I see no purpose in it at this stage in the game.
If I wanted to seriously push my luck I could ignore all future UFO sightings and just let the timer run as fast as possible to research everything in a hurry, but where's the fun in that?
Next time: A lot of boring as fuck routine missions while I wait for the engame technologies to get researched.
Attachments
Last edited: