Fenn Vs X-COM

[Whosit]

I didn't want to die so young! My rockets were so useless!

I forgot how scary OG Chryssalids were, and that the zombies spawn even if you kill them! They really nerfed these monsters in the new XCOMs.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

What?! Assassinated! When is the court martial date booked? I seemed to be getting a good amount of kills too


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[Fenn]

What?! Assassinated! When is the court martial date booked?

You know, that gives me an idea.

[Fenn]

A short one this time:

Part 17 - Retaliation

As May ends, Hyper-Wave Decoders complete across the globe in various bases. With these, X-COM can now detect every UFO the aliens send and know exactly what they're doing.


June opens to a very favorable report from the council. X-COM's expenses now exceed their nominal income, but between looting UFOs and producing Laser Cannons finances are not a big issue.


Here's the first UFO detected with the new system - it even tells us where they're headed. Canada's Interceptor shoots 'em down.


Later, research on Mind Probes completes - with these, we can pick out Commanders and Leaders for capture, or check if some alien has any TUs left to reaction fire with. Very useful if you have somebody to spare.

But enough about that. On June 3, an emergency arises:

Battleship? Alien Retaliation? Southeast Asia?

...Five thousand knots? Snakemen?

Uh oh. That can only mean one thing...


China base has only ten soldiers guarding it - not even any tanks, they've all been sent away as they were built.


The only weapons in storage are shotguns, rocket launchers and proximity grenades. Why didn't I put some Laser Rifles in here? Now there's no time to correct that mistake.


In a few minutes, the Battleship is here.


Well, maybe it won't be so bad?


Here's the map; the layout of these base defence missions follows the layout of the base itself, and the whole map starts out revealed.

Our ten soldiers are scattered among the various Living Quarters and General Stores; the Snakemen will enter from the Hangar and Access Lift in the east. Let's take a look in that direction...


Oops. Farewell whoever you were. Well, maybe that Snakeman doesn't have enough TUs to fire again?


It did. But what's that Chryssalid Milos Soucek sees?


He tries a snap shot, but the rocket falls well short; Milos ducks into a side room and the other nearby agents approach the junction.


One agent is stuck uncomfortably close to where all the aliens are coming from. He throws out a proximity grenade and hopes nobody notices him.


Turn 2: How do you do, Chryssalid. Willy Moller shoots him thrice with his shotgun, but the pellets bounce off of its carapace for all the damage they do.


He moves aside and lets one of the rocketeers blow it up, but doesn't get far enough away to escape the blast. Well, somebody will be by to patch him up if there's time.


Kinya Audi steps out to quite a scene, Chryssalids and Snakemen everywhere. He throws another Proximity Grenade and steps in again.

During the alien turn, the proxie is triggered right away, but...


It doesn't save poor Kinya.


Turn 3: Two Chryssalids approaching now. The combined efforts of two rocketeers manage to bring down one, but the far Chryssalid is alive and well. Tamas here runs into the west corridor to try and escape notice.


The Chryssalid finds him anyway.


...And the guy next to him.


...And the guy next to Willy Moller. Willy shoots the zombie point-blank but it's still standing. Those other Chryssalids in the hallway are happy to see him.


Milos rocketed the Chryssalid clump, killing Willy in the process, but even this desperate act wasn't enough to avoid death.


Pretty soon the only one left is Dorya Antonova. If she can make it up those stairs, maybe she can draw the aliens into a bottleneck.

Just have to hope that the zombie she ran in front of doesn't know she's hiding right behind it!


It...


Worked! Unfortunately Dorya thought a moment about how many Chryssalids are out there and broke down in a panic.


And here comes a Snakeman to wrap things up.

With Dorya's death, the last human resistance is eliminated, and the entire base is destroyed.


Wiped off the map, even.

Welcome to X-COM!

[El Grillo]

Oof. How much of a setback will that be?

[RefSteel]

Oh no!!! Our manufacturing base! All right, come on, guys! That map thing's probably just a glitch. Let's get in there with some real troops and clean ... uh ... wait, how many engineers did you say were employed there? And you say now they're all Chryssalids???

Uhhhhhh...

Okay, I see why it's wiped off the map now. Command was wise to activate the place's self-destruct.

[Dreylin]

Ouch, that was rough!

[haphazard1]

More days pass. Proceeds from Paris fund expansion of the Antarctic base, and soon all of X-COM's scientists will be housed here in security and (dis)comfort.

Just think of it as a home away from home, where the scientists can focus on their research without any distractions.

Mission report...ouch, snakemen and their extremely dangerous pals the chryssalids. Nasty. I am still missing shots I see, but at least I am getting some exercise running from zombie versions of my friends. Until I get turned into a zombie myslef.  Ouchie! What a horrible way to die.

Chryssalids are very dangerous in original X-COM, way more so than in the reboot. As we unfortunately see in the base retaliation. Our manufacturing center wiped out...that is going to hurt. It is hard to have enough experienced soldiers to spread around to all your bases as the game progresses. And not having up to-date equipment for the defenders you do have...it doesn't tend to end well. RIP China Base.

Hopefully the cloning vats are safe back at HQ, so we can replace losses with the next generation of clones. Although copies of copies of copies...no wonder the new versions tend to be terrible. We are obviously getting some degradation in the process.

Thanks for continuing to post these reports, Fenn!   Rough outings, but X-COM will come back from these setbacks!

[Whosit]

Can X-COM keep funding itself, since the report mentioned the main reason it was staying in the black was due to sales of laser weapons? And I thought Chryssalids only showed up on terror missions, but clearly I was mistaken. I know that you can shoot down retaliation battleships (but they'll keep sending more). Missile-equipped fighters can't do that, but what kind of firepower is required to engage alien battleships?

[haphazard1]

The "terror" units (such as reapers with floaters, cyberdisks with sectoids, chryssalids with snakemen, etc.) can show up for the larger classes of UFOs as well as for actual terror missions. The base retaliation is always a battleship, so it has terror units. The recovery mission that cost so many lives (including mine! ) just happened to be a large enough UFO to have chryssalids along. Unfortunately for us.

Battleships are pretty tough in air combat. Standard interceptors with standard weapons don't really have any chance against them, even two or three together. It would probably take one of the advanced craft with at least laser cannon to shoot one down, maybe more -- it has been a while since I tried that. You can also build defensive modules in your bases, but as you noted more battleships will be sent so that tends not to be very useful unless you build enough to completely blow away a battleship, which takes quite a lot of modules. And we would most likely prefer to use that space for other things like labs, workshops, living quarters, etc. and just fight the occasional base defense if we have to.