20.
Ending It
(Pendulum - Propane Nightmares)
Unlike some people, I can resist the urge to play Knights of Cydonia in my final update.
Assaulting an Ethereal base is completely pointless by now, but I did want to show off just how broken psionics can be. This would be a fairly common endgame mission since the player has a large chance to come across Ethereal bases near the endgame and they'll need a Commander one way or another. Assaulting a base has always proven to be the easiest way to get a Commander in my opinion.
Express elevator to Hell, going down.
They're waiting for us.
@Polyboros2 is killed instantly on his clone's first mission, on the first move no less. But at least he was pointed the right direction when I dropped him down.
You will notice that the alien I just mind controlled is capable of conducting its own psionic attacks. Its rank isn't high enough to use Mind Control though, only Ethereal Leaders and Commanders can do this. It is fully possible though to mind control an alien, then have it mind control another alien, and so forth unitl you take over a target that has no psionic capabilities.
In this case we manage to seize control of no less than four aliens on one turn. With turns left over for further psionic attacks! Only wtfNeedSignUp is still stuck being able to use only two attacks per turn, being one Tine Unit short of being able to do three. Which I expect to change after this mission.
I manage control of a fifth Ethereal which probably means I have about a third of the enemies on the map neutralized. Its around this point I start having them kill each other off. To save myself a lot of screenshots of Mind Controlling and having aliens kill each other, I slowly shave their numbers down until its just two of them keeping watch over that side of the base so nothing slips through.
XCOM starts to spread out and secure our side of the base while R1PRhongoBongo gets Fougaro back on his feet.
Fuck.
To my surprise the Sectopod falls under my control with only two attacks. At first it seems like a powerful unit to have under my control, but its clunky, has a pretty sad amount of Time Units and doesn't really have anything to shoot at. Meh.
At least until my luck runs out and I can't get control of it again the next turn. It opens fire and McMitch narrowly avoids getting spattered on the wall. It also shrugs off three volleys of plasma fire from the troops who have room to shoot at it.
Its gonna be a close shave, but its worth a shot.
Was it possible to pull off this shot with only 9 waypoints in the DOS version?
Yes, but it was a Hell of a lot more nervewracking.
Genichiro threads the needle and reduces the Sectopod to scrap metal.
We take control of this guy with a Blaster Launcher so I have him nuke the control room. Two alien death cries are heard amongst the series of explosions that follow.
The Ethereal Commander must be in another room because none of the skinny bastards are panicking yet. They take a few potshots at us while one of them panics NerdShamer.
I attempt to cheap out and not mind control these two Ethereals, instead having
@Fougaro autoshot them. He kills the first one, and lands a blow on the second shot, only for the fucker to turn around and hit him with reaction fire.
I mind control it and kill it off along with a few other stragglers.
I clearly didn't learn my lesson though because
@RIPRhongoBongo is killed when I try the same thing.
The last enemy on the map turns out to be a Sectopod, which my psionic troops make short work of.
Coincidentally, three deaths leaves me one soldier short for the final mission. I take this as a sign of providence.
Been a long time since I checked this thread out...
Boss, I beg of you, lemme in one last time! I must see the gates of Cydonia and kick some ass myself! Even if both of my clones died lol
Pretty please? With sugar on top?
I really was going to be Harsh Lets Player Man and be like "nope snooze ya lose buddy" but the coincidence was too incredible to ignore.
Time to get everyone suited up. You may have noticed I outfit the troops that weren't seeing any direct fighting with Power Suits just so I could spare some Personnel Armor for the rookies, but I had 30 suits made ahead of time to make sure I could outfit the Cydonia expedition at a moment's notice.
McMitch is wounded but its only for three days and its not like our score for the month is in any danger of going down. In the mean time we shoot down one last Scout and complete one last piece of random research.
I thought maybe today would be my lucky day and I'd get the Base Defense mission I wanted to show off after all, but this Battleship was also too stupid to find Null's apartment in the Belgrade ghetto. Rather than reload and shoot it down I just let it get away.
The reason you get this prompt is because if you fail this mission in any way, the game is over, even if you abort and take off with zero casualties. I suppose this is because the aliens realize XCOM is a serious threat to their invasion and they show up with a real armada to wreck your shit, but it kind of begs the question of why they're being so casual about this invasion in the first place.
By the way, here are the two ending slides you get if you fail. The cutscene in the OP is from the later Playstation version.
(Muse - Knights of Cydonia)
bottom text
The song was obligatory, I couldn't resist.
A quick look around the map shows us that we landed right next to the entrance. Cydonia curiously doesn't have very robust defenses on the surface, just a Terror Mission's worth of Sectoids and Cyberdisks, but you do have the option of moving your troops to the elevator pyramid and hitting Abort, which well send you to the next level, just without any of your supplies. But lets be honest, even if you're playing on Superhuman and not using broke Psionic or Blaster Bomb tactics, you can still clear this level out no problem.
A lot of shit happens all in one turn. Two Sectoids unexpectedly pop out of the elevator pyramid and start a firefight.
At the same time, another one pops out of the temple my team to the south were going to surround.
Both
@Megatardingo and
@Radical Cadre are mowed down by plasma fire.
Because I was expecting at least one of them to get some reaction fire off, my south flank is left totally open and
@White Devil is killed when the aliens advance.
McMitch singlehandedly takes up the slack caused by the loss of Megatardingo and Radical Cadre. JongleJingle manages to secure the acess lift on his own.
McMitch's rampage has only just begun though. He wipes out a cyberdisk before it even has the chance to fire on anyone.
He takes out another alien as his backup, NerdShamer and AmpleApricots, arrives.
Since McMitch has expended his time units getting his latest kill, its up to NerdShamer and AmpleApricots to advance south. They come under fire immediately and NerdShamer takes a critical plasma hit, leaving him with only a tiny sliver of health.
Lacking better options I advance up enough to get a look at the alien, mind control it and pull NerdShamer back for some much needed healing and painkillers. I wanted to keep psionics to a minimum in this battle to give the aliens a fighting chance, but I draw the line at losing a soldier for no good reason.
A second Cyberdisk is found and wiped out.
The last alien on the map dies by panicking like a bitch, running unarmed out in front of the troops and getting showered in reaciton fire.
(Electric Light Orchestra - Fire On High Medley)
Let's do it.
I collect magazines from every extra Heavy Plasma we have and give everybody two spares even though I have yet to actually run out of ammunition a single time in this game.
The team down the first lift disperses about as cleanly as I can manage. For those unaware, the aliens in the final mission of Cydonia are mixed. Generally you have a mix of Ethereals, Mutons, and Snakemen. Snakemen of course only so the game can ambush you with Chryssalids, Mutons because for some reason the developers think their Terror Units are threatening and Ethereals since they are the best shots in the game and have psionics.
My team encounters this Celatid in an inconvienient spot. I could just mind control it but wiping it out with a nuke is just that much more satisfying.
There's another alien cry mixed in when the bomb goes off but I never really figure out what else was in there.
We run into another one as the second team starts advancing south but it gives us no trouble.
Watch it!
In a rather stunning display of competence, Penne Dreadful not only manages to get reaction fire on a Chryssalid but also kills it. Mooger Meng is targeted by psionic attacks though and starts spraying plasma fire while screaming about alien rape.
Our advance is slow but progressing. The Cydonia base is something like two or two and a half Alien Bases clipped together. Its pretty labyrinthine if you're trying to cover every little nook an cranny an alien can pop out of it, which you kind of have to since there's at least two Chryssalids on this map.
Speaking of which, the other one shows up at a section of the map covered solely by GrammaNazi, who is alone while his backup, AmpleApricots, is exploring annoying upstairs hallways. I have Gramma autofire it because I'm a fucking idiot. Not only do all three shots miss because I'm autofiring at a distant target that's through a window, but the third shot also punctures one of those glowing fuel tank objects and fills the corridor with smoke.
Oh joy, there's a third one. No reaction fire saved up and a smokescreen to cover the aliens as they move up. Vaya con dios, you're fucked buddy.
Meanwhile the aliens are still making sport of Mooger Meng.
The Virgin Silacoid shows up to remind us how useless it is compared to the Chad Chryssalid. Tactical Wizard guns it down in a hail of reaction fire.
Somehow the alien turn passed without either Chryssalid moving up enough to threaten GrammaNazi, so I decide I've got nothing to lose and start plotting a blaster bomb.
GrammaNazi probably has an uncomfortably long time to wonder just how good the Blaster Bomb technology is as the antigrav missile flies straight at him and then turns on a dime only inches away from his face. The missile impacts, but I don't hear any alien death cry. Which means the Chryssalid outside the little watch tower closet thing must have wandered off already, and the one on the inside must have been shielded from the explosion. Welp. I tried.
Bear in mind that while all of this is happening I have about 2-3 soldiers tied up exploring these pointless second floor rooms with only a single access lift. Everyone knows these rooms only exist just to fuck you and have Chryssalids drop down behind your troops if you try to blitz past them, so you ignore them at your own peril, but on the flipside you can end up with GrammaNazi's situation if your troops get spread too thin.
Out of nowhere the aliens switch their psionic attacks to Spunt and like immediately take him over. Even better, I've forgotten where the Hell he was and you obviously lose vision when somebody gets Mind Controlled.
Yep, here's the moment we all knew was coming GrammaNazi. That's great reaction fire actually but of course the hit bounces and-
Holy shit. GrammaNazi you are one lucky bastard.
The Siliacoid and Celatid are about as threatening as a team as they are on their own. I'm not even sure the Celatid benefits from the smoke the Siliacoid kicks up because its technically a flying unit.
Look sharp.
There was certainly a death cry that time. I'm not ruling out the possibility that there are more Chryssalids on this map, but the chance is pretty remote.
In a hilarious twist of fate,
@Overcast is shot and killed when I unwittingly tell him to walk past the hallway I'd left Spunt in.
Its pretty obvious that this is the room that leads to the alien brain entity, but I've held off on storming it while I clear out the rest of the base. Nothing really happens if you clear the rest of the map since you can only end the mission by killing the alien brain, but I felt like doing it because I'm a filthy completionist when I want to be.
Ethereal Leaders usually don't panic until shit is really fucked so there can't possibly be much left on the map.
TerribleIdeas pops a Siliacoid which makes like three we've encountered on this mission. They really should have been literally any other enemy to be honest. I move Sailing the Salty Seas up to support Tactical Wizard as he prepares to storm the brain room.
A Blaster Bomb with TerribleIdeas's name on it goes off just short of him. I'm surprised to find that not only is he not dead, he's totally uninjured.
Alien discipline is collapsing, but at least one of them still has enough mojo to seize control of TerribleIdeas, perhaps reasoning that a man who can survive a nuke unharmed is a worthy pawn.
Turnabout is fair play of course.
Jesus Christ. Mary the Goldsmith starts taking fire from a Sectopod that has apparently decided to be the final boss of this base.
There's still an Ethereal Commander camping out somewhere on this level fucking with our weaker-minded troops.
Mary's not having much luck with that Sectopod. The psionics are starting to not affect it just like with the first one we Mind Controlled too.
Man I could watch that thing go all day.
God damn it.
GrammaNazi tracks down the last Ethereal on the map and plugs it. The alien comically falls down a 1 meter wide hole made by one of the countless blaster bombs set off on this level.
The psionics team lobotomizes the Sectopod and forces it to stand still as Mary the Goldsmith and Alakazam223 pound away at it with plasma fire. Eventually its armor gives out and it flops over.
The Hidden Movement screen stops displaying, which is the tell that there are no enemy units actually left on the map. Tactical Sorcerer and Sailing the Salty Seas enter the brain room, which really looks more like a PTA meeting assembly hall than a room where the fate of the Earth is determined.
There's the brain monster. It has a kind of soft pulsating animation. You'd think this thing would be capable of psionic attacks, but apparently not. Like all other four-tile units it will be killed if the health of a single one of its tiles is reduced to zero. It also has ridiculously low health; you can easily win this mission if one of the Ethereals that spawns in the same room panics and sprays it with gunfire.
I have Sailing the Salty Sea take aim and fire first. I thought about doing something showy like having Dear Leader take the shot, but I figured the glory should go to the recruits that get there first. One shot is all it takes.
BOOM, GET FUCKED AYYLMAOS
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