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Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep

I'm back from vacation! Brief as it was, it was nice to get away from it all and spend some time in nature.

Part 7:
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After the usual sell-off of alien trinkets, There's enough cash lying around to afford a second listening post in the Atlantic. The more USOs you can intercept or storm, the more of a buffer you have against the point penalty of difficult missions going badly.

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Here's a first - a Large USO! That could be a huge windfall for X-COM if it can be recovered.

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The USO first appears over the Indian Ocean and flies in the general direction of home base, but sensors lose track of it as it passes through the gap between the stations' ranges.

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A few more days pass, and Aqua Plastics research completes - one more step on the path to improved armor.

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Near the end of February, there's another Large USO! Where's it headed?

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Oh, that's where. The Triton had already been following the sub, so soon enouh it's X-COM to the rescue!

But because the Triton had left base before the terror strike began, it was still loaded out for an undersea fight. As a result, there's not enough Gas Cannons and Gauss Pistols to go around; novice draws the short straw and wields just a Thermal Taser plus grenades.

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How badly can it go?

For the sake of caution, X-COM remains inside the Triton for the first turn. This gives the aliens opportunity to kill at least ten civilians already. That's a little faster than I'd like, but civilians are even more of a hopeless case in TFTD than UFO - any that live are a bonus at the best of times.

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Mardoc is first out of the gate, spotting an Aquatoid and one of their terror units, a Calcinite. These are melee aliens and not terribly dangerous, though at this early stage they're pretty resilient. RefSteel and Whosit start us off, throwing an explosive charge northwest of the Triton and a proximity mine under the Aquatoid.

The off-target explosive charge catches an unseen Aquatoid in the blast, while the mine does its job and blows up the alien we did see. The Calcinite is still at large, however.

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He's not very far away though - Mardoc sees him advancing through the mist. Alhambram and Old Harry throw a grenade each,and rho21 lobs a mine for good measure. Now let's check around the left side -

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Oh goodness.

Well, Dreylin and somebody else throw a pair of grenades up, but on a whim new recruit DaveV makes a snapshot with his Gas Cannon...hitting the alien and killing it instantly. There goes that corpse!

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The alien turn sees Old Harry compromised by alien psionics (much like their landbound cousins, Aquatoid commanders have Psi powers). He flies into a berserk rage and fires his explosive shells at a Calcinite that just wandered by. It's very lucky he didn't fire that at our own bunched up troops. On the other hand, basically everybody here is armed with explosives and thus a walking timebomb if the aliens can get to them. Um, we'd better finish this quickly.

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But just finishing off one Calcinite is hard enough! Four agents take shots at it with Gauss Pistols and Gas Cannons, only hitting occasionally. Finally, RefSteel steps up to the plate and brings it down with some pistol fire.

Turn 4:
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This time the psi attack on Old Harry just makes him panic. Another explosive accident averted - maybe we can just run far enough away that he can't shoot anybody when he goes berserk?

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The south team spotted this Calcinite walking through a garage door during the alien phase, and sure enough here it is still. Bob's explosive shell doesn't kill the Calcinite, but does kill an Aquatoid that was hiding behind it or something.

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Naturally everybody else proceeds to miss badly - so now it's up to novice and his Thermal Tazer! Don't mind all those aliens you see, you'll be just fine.

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See? No risk there at all.

As for the other aliens novice saw, the Aquatoid by the water tower is shot by Molach and the Calcinite gets an explosive pack from RefSteel.

Turn 5:
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Old Harry goes berserk again due to alien prompting, and nearly gives me a heart attack - see that tight group of agents to the right? He fires his Gas Cannon directly...between all four of them, sending the shell into a nearby shed where the explosion grazes Brian Shanahan. He's now bleeding out, but that's a lot better than 4-6 aquanauts dying instantly.

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In the process of getting far away from Old Harry in a hurry, El Grillo comes upon this Calcinite. DaveV is on target, and we kill it on the first shot instead of the eleventh.

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Up north, while everybody else engages in Plan Escape from Old Harry the stricken Brian finds and shoots down an Aquatoid. It turns out that this may have been the Aquatoid leader giving Old Harry grief - the psi attacks cease after this turn.

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Sadly, Brian Shanahan pays for his bravery with his life when a Calcinite runs up and...punches him to death? I'm not quite certain how these things attack.

Turn 6:
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It falls to rho21 to avenge his fallen comrade. He (of course) misses the Calcinite, but one of those misses strikes an oil barrel, which blows up the alien just as well.

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The south squad encounters another Calcinite moving through the smoke. novice stuns it (and Bob blows up the unconscious body a little later), but in so doing reveals an Aquatoid behind a fence. DaveV and Dreylin's shots miss, so it's back to grenades again: a frag from RefSteel and a proximity mine courtesy of Molach. Strangely, the mine doesn't go off during the alien turn...

Turn 7:
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Indeed, an otherwise quiet alien phase leads to the redicovery of the little guy, right where he was last turn. Dreylin gets this one. But just remember that mine.

Apart from that, the turn is quiet - no aliens to be seen or heard. The alien phase is uneventful too, with only the sound of a door opening.

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Not that there's no aliens - one had cleverly concealed himself around this corner to hide from the player's view, but thankfully Bob's sight indicator averts an embarassing mistake and the Aquatoid goes down to a Gas Cannon blast.

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Old Harry rejoins the north squad having recovered his wits; Whosit pops open this garage door to find himself in an awkward position.

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Luckily RefSteel and Quagma Blast had yet to move, and the alien goes down in a flurry of Gauss bullets.

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During the alien phase, something in the northwest corner fires a stun bomb of some kind. Investigation by Alhambram and rho21 and report an Aquatoid mysteriously passed out and another wandering weaponless. rho can't land a hit with his Gauss pistol; nobody nearby can shoot or has any grenades to throw, so Whosit tosses one of his own from halfway across the map. On to the aliens...

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All of a sudden, another projectile flies out of the office building, knocking out Old Harry, Alhambram and Mardoc.

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The culprit is quickly found, but hard to get at - Whosit's Gas bolt misses the mark, and the others don't have enough TUs to shoot at him.

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While walking over, novice suddenly explodes after he walks over that one unexploded mine. Whoops! Farewell novice.

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At least the Aquatoid won't get a chance to do anything dangerous, as rho manages an unlikely long-range Gauss shot which puts him away for good.

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Putting so many aquanauts close to windows comes back to bite me - RefSteel eats a sonic blast through the other side of the building and collapses dead to the ground. Argh! That's a big loss - it might have been better to wait for better armor before sending him out, but I'd figured one more mission couldn't hurt. As it is, he'll never live up to his full potential.

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This last alien almost got rho21 too, but thankfully he lived to shoot back. That wraps up the mission.

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That could have gone better. The civilian deaths are about as expected, but losing RefSteel and especially novice were blunders that could easily have been avoided. Hopefully the good results on the previous mission will make up for it. In any case, soon Aqua-Plastic Armor will be online, which should help with X-COM agents' survival rate.

One other thing: up 'till now I've been reporting on every mission undertaken. But I think there comes a point when the nth small Gill Man sub assault isn't interesting anymore. So I might skip those missions, or take them on with some unnamed Aquanauts, and only report missions that are 'new' in some way.
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Messages In This Thread
Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Fenn - August 18th, 2017, 22:15
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by David Corperial - August 19th, 2017, 00:53
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by haphazard1 - August 19th, 2017, 00:57
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by sunrise089 - August 19th, 2017, 03:17
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Whosit - August 19th, 2017, 04:50
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by RefSteel - August 19th, 2017, 05:35
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Bobchillingworth - August 19th, 2017, 10:29
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Fenn - August 19th, 2017, 10:40
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Dp101 - August 19th, 2017, 11:15
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Whosit - August 19th, 2017, 12:50
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Fenn - August 20th, 2017, 09:05
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by RefSteel - August 19th, 2017, 17:15
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by RifleAvenger - August 20th, 2017, 00:15
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by haphazard1 - August 20th, 2017, 11:05
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Fenn - August 20th, 2017, 13:23
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by RefSteel - August 21st, 2017, 02:44
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Brian Shanahan - August 22nd, 2017, 17:48
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Dp101 - August 20th, 2017, 14:01
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by haphazard1 - August 20th, 2017, 19:20
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by David Corperial - August 21st, 2017, 00:44
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Fenn - August 21st, 2017, 12:45
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by shallow_thought - August 21st, 2017, 02:02
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by TankSinatra - August 21st, 2017, 14:24
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by RefSteel - August 21st, 2017, 18:06
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by haphazard1 - August 21st, 2017, 18:55
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Dreylin - August 21st, 2017, 21:03
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Kaiser - August 22nd, 2017, 02:37
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Fenn - August 22nd, 2017, 09:06
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Dp101 - August 22nd, 2017, 10:24
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Fenn - August 22nd, 2017, 16:48
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by haphazard1 - August 22nd, 2017, 10:38
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Alhambram - August 22nd, 2017, 10:41
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Fenn - August 24th, 2017, 10:08
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Whosit - August 24th, 2017, 18:08
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by RefSteel - August 24th, 2017, 18:51
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by haphazard1 - August 24th, 2017, 19:36
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Fenn - August 29th, 2017, 09:06
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Alhambram - August 29th, 2017, 10:17
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Brian Shanahan - August 29th, 2017, 14:50
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by RefSteel - August 29th, 2017, 16:05
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Fenn - August 31st, 2017, 17:13
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by Whosit - September 1st, 2017, 05:07
RE: Fenn Vs. Terror From the Deep - by haphazard1 - September 2nd, 2017, 07:36

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