Fenn Vs X-COM

[Fenn]

Merry Christmas everyone.

Part 21.1 - Power Armor Test Drive

After a few sweeps across Europe, another alien base is spotted from above (only aircraft can detect bases, along with a random chance of a freebie at the start of the month). Probably Floaters again.


At the same time, two Supply Ships and this Battleship appear over North America.


That marks the appearance of a Muton base somewhere on this continent, although a repeated scans do not reveal the base. With North America's vastness, it could take some time to pinpoint the base's location.


Later, the next type of aircraft is unlocked. The Lightning has limited use; it can't carry as many troops as the Skyranger and only has space for a single craft weapon, putting it in an awkward space between the other crafts. It can take more of a beating than any of those three at least, and a single Plasma beam is still sufficient to take out most anything. Perhaps I'll build one.


More excitingly, it opens up research into the ultimate aircraft, which is needed to complete the game.


While I skipped over the last Floater base, this time we have some new Power Suits and Hovertanks to test out. Two Hovertanks and six X-COM operatives are heading over to uproot this latest weed.


Squad leader Molach carries a Laser Rifle, proximity grenades and some utility items.


Quagma Blast is loaded up with grenades and little else.


AdrienIer's accuracy isn't too good, so he's equipped mostly for support, with some proxies to mine hallways with.


Whosit carries an Autocannon with explosive rounds to slay Reapers with, plus a pistol for backup.


Dp103 brings another Laser Rifle.


And fresh recruit novice will be here to stun any Floater Commanders we might run into.


Novice and Quagma Blast have the east entrance here; the others have the west. The Hovertank briefly checks the lower floor but sees nothing.


But on the next turn, here's a Reaper right under their feet. Quagma Blast and novice's plasma pistol take care of him.


Moving out, the hovertank spots a Floater hiding in the tunnels to the north.


One shot puts him away for good.


The turn after that, a Reaper goes up the elevator, bites the tank, and gets shot in the flank by novice.


Quagma lasers it to death on turn 3, and the hovertank deals with a third Reaper on the floor below.


Meanwhile, the west team has found nothing much thus far, but now sees a Floater at an awkward angle. Rather than try to shoot it, Dp and Molach throw two proximity grenades to block it off.


During the alien turn, a Floater shoots Dp from the south and another bumbles into the room.


X-COM's turn opens like this, with Dp barely clinging to life. The hovertank goes up to the southern Floater, but incredibly misses once at close range, and a second shot at point blank doesn't kill.


This is a bit tricky. Molach patches up Dp and shoots the nearby Floater.


The wounded Dp aims his laser rifle and manages a difficult shot on his attacker at 34% odds. Not bad for somebody on Death's door!

[Fenn]

Part 21.2

To the north is an encoraching Reaper, easy prey for Whosit's autocannon.


After the initial rush, all's quiet over on the east side. The hovertank rises to the top of this tunnel system and starts looking for hostiles while novice preps a proximity grenade.


Next turn, the western hovertank takes some knocks rounding the corner here. It gets its revenge against the culprit.


Moving on, Whosit blows up a wandering Floater...


And the hovertank, guided by Adrien's Motion Scanner, finds and destroys one who was hiding in this tower.


novice moves through the tunnels and comes across a Reaper facing away from him. Not enough TUs to shoot it, so he retreats and hopes it doesn't find him.


It doesn't, and the hovertank blasts it when X-COM's turn comes around. We're on Turn 8 now.


The western team is heading north, mining the paths they aren't taking.


Along with the east team they were making their way to this structure, which I had assumed was the command center but looks like something else now.


It's still got Floaters in it though; one of them shoots the hovertank from above.


When it tries to retreat around the corner, it finds a second who bounces a plasma bolt off its hull. The tank's own plasma misses so it steps back a little to get out of sight.


After a couple more shots, the Floater tries to run away. No dice. Quagma Blast and novice have formed up by the doors.


novice approaches, but is brained with a Stun Bomb from above and falls unconscious. Quagma doesn't have a Medikit on him, so novice will be out for a good long while.


The Stun Bomber gets shot next turn; the hovertank will check each room for Floaters.


Here's one. Quagma Blast should have a good angle.


Well, he hit one shot but that wasn't enough to end the Floater; who turns around and burns a hole in Quagma's chest.


Next turn he disposes of the hovertank too. It's a good thing aliens don't bother with unconsious soldiers or novice would be screwed right about now.


That part of the base was a bust, but there's still more ground to cover. A Floater was seen in this little hallway, so Dp throws a proximity grenade to catch him if he approaches.


He doesn't, but that doesn't stop Dp from just shooting him.


This must be the command center. The hovertank takes a few turns to kill this strangely cowardly Reaper.


Later, a plasma bolt comes in from around the corner; time to back off.


A perfect shot here, but Adrien's lousy aim means he only hits one out of nine shots. Whosit cleans up instead.


Getting closer now, the command center's halls are quiet.


Before heading inside, it seems prudent to check the surrounding rooms. The hovertank meets two Floaters this way.


And here's a third in panic.


AdrienIer gets him.


Whosit's been opening the doors every turn to check for aliens; he is thus able to find and kill this Floater before he can do anything nasty.


Still quite a few Floaters operating outside the command center; it's now past Turn 20, so every alien knows where we are and are presumably converging on this location.


Like this one over here; you can see where another one tripped the proximity mine.


After that, everything seems clear. Whosit and Molach start moving through the inner corridor.


And then a Floater with a Blaster Launcher runs up and blows up himself, Whosit, Molach, and most of the surrounding walls.

We only have two able-bodied soldiers and a Hovertank left. How can these remaining few succeed from here?

Well, the very next turn the last Floater walks over one of those proximity grenades from way back when.


Not bad, not bad.


Special mention goes to Quagma Blast, who has surpassed Bobchillingworth for the dubious record of most deaths to date. (Don't) keep it up!

[RefSteel]

Dear Diary,

I fondly remember the Floater base I helped everybody capture. Ah for those halcyon days of toting Blazing Betty in one hand and my trusty laser pistol in the other, killing Floaters through windows ... well, one of them anyway ... and ready to fire off bursts of high explosive rounds with joy and abandon at the slightest sign of incoming Reapers.

The squad is out there at the latest base, taking on the alien world, testing out the new hovertanks and giving the aliens extra helpings of searing plasma to the face, and here I am at my desk, performing my function as a Colonel, doing the right thing for the war effort and ready to take up my plasma rifle in case the aliens try to take our home the way they did to our first China base, but I can't help waxing nostalgic for my halcyon days as a rank rookie, hugging my powerful, low-tech, brute-force explosive ammo chaingun to my chest as I opened up with off-hand laser fire. Sometimes I wonder where those days have gone....

And then I remember our casualty rate on these tough missions, and I pat my desk and paperwork lovingly and take a moment again to admire my Colonel's insignia.

Yours always,
Colonel RefSteel (Clone #3)

[haphazard1]

Nice report, Fenn. Ouchie on that last minute blaster bomb attack. Probably the base commander -- they often seem to have blaster launchers once the aliens start deploying with them. But they aren't very good at actually guiding the projectiles through the twisty corridors...thus the self-demolition. But the things are so destructive they take out everything nearby, including X-COM agents.

Hmmm, Muton base in North America? Not sure if it would be Mutons, but the ship associated with it being Muton suggests that it would be. That would be a significantly tougher target than floaters. Fortunately you already have the leader and commander needed for the research unlocks, so you don't have to take that base on unless you choose to. Nice to see the ultimate craft being researched; not long until you are set for the end game.

Thanks for the great thread, keep up the very entertaining reports!

[Molach]

Funny, I make a comment in this thread about how good blaster lauchers are for xcom and aliens suck at using them...then my clone gets blown up by alien blaster launcher fire. Well, clones are cheap enough.

[haphazard1]

Funny, I make a comment in this thread about how good blaster lauchers are for xcom and aliens suck at using them...then my clone gets blown up by alien blaster launcher fire.

The aliens do suck at using them. Thus the alien also killing itself with the same shot. They just got lucky in this case and managed to still get some X-COM agents in the blast radius. Mostly because the blast radius of a blaster bomb is so ridiculously huge.

[Whosit]

God dammit! I almost made it through! Lol oh well. Darn those blaster bombs.

[Fenn]

Hmmm, Muton base in North America? Not sure if it would be Mutons, but the ship associated with it being Muton suggests that it would be. That would be a significantly tougher target than floaters. Fortunately you already have the leader and commander needed for the research unlocks, so you don't have to take that base on unless you choose to. Nice to see the ultimate craft being researched; not long until you are set for the end game.

As far as I can tell, the species that staffs a base is always the same as the one that sets it up in the first place. At least that's how it's been for me so far. It's a little strange how quickly the ultimate craft comes after the first Elerium-powered ships given that it obsoletes them both, but I won't complain about it.

Part 22.1 - Escalation

Interrogation of the Ethereal Leader proceeds quickly.


Ethereals are very scary indeed. Despite what the description says they're one of the more resilient aliens, and decently well armored too. And in addition to being crack shots their psionic abilities can be devastating even operating on line-of-sight rules.


With our interrogation of a psionically capable alien, the Psi Lab opens up for research; with this one can determine the Psionic Strength of agents (influences their resistance to psionic attacks) and passively train them to improve their own psi attacking capability. Needless to say I direct research to this immediately - knowing which soldiers are psionically weak is very important when you're going up against Ethereals and high-ranking Sectoids.


Soon comes the monthly report, and as expected another country has defected. Thanks to a ludicrous 7840 rating overall funding is still up, but if more nations continue to be seduced by the aliens' lies we won't be able to keep this up.


Psi Lab research completes directly afterwards, and HQ starts on one immediately. $16,000 for upkeep is pretty steep, but it will be worth it.


On a whim, I've ordered up a Firestorm and Lightning for HQ, sending the Interceptors to other bases. Let's see how useful these new machines are.


Another development arising from that Ethereal interrogation is the Mind Shield. Alien Retaliation scouts are becoming increasingly common, and this should help keep the amount of base attacks to a reasonable level. You can always shoot down the scouts, but that can lead to further Retaliation missions and after too many shoot-downs they start sending Battleships to look for your bases, which we still can't go toe-to-toe with. Every base will have at least one Mind Shield, funds permitting.


As you can see. This Floater Battleship doesn't look friendly...


But it's just searching. There's nothing X-COM can do at this point but hope it doesn't find them.



Scientist produce detailed reports on the new Mutons. They're very weak to Psionic attacks, which is about their only weakness. Mutons have gobs of health, decent armor and take only 60% damage from normal bullets if you're crazy enough to still be using starter weapons.


This is a bad sign - even garden-variety misssions like this are using Battleships. I've shot down quite a few UFOs that I haven't shown, and this is the consequence.


Buying Mind Shields for all the other bases has severely drained the coffers, so it's only halfway into September that the Psi Lab is placed in HQ. Also note the Firestorm and Lightning in the hangars; the Firestorm's been pretty handy for chasing down faster UFOs, and Crete alone has over four hundred Elerium in storage so we're not about to run out of the stuff fueling this craft.


Here's the stats on the Blaster Launcher, research on which was done some time ago. It's an absolutely ridiculous weapon simply for its massive power, let alone the fact that you can precisely direct missiles to take any path you like. I won't be using these too much as I think they're a little too powerful, but demonstrations will be forthcoming.


This is what Ethereals look like beneath their robes. Creepy!


And speaking of Ethereals, they've been running infiltration missions in and near China, culminating in the appearance of another base; no doubt another funding nation is about to jump ship...


One more tech screen; the Heavy Plasma is powerful, accurate and sports a deep clip, making it perhaps the best handheld weapon in the game. Eventually, regular alien troops will use this and nothing else, making it easy to keep a supply of ammo.


Further scouring of North America reveals the Muton base.

At this point I sent a ten-man squad plus hovertank to raid the base. I won't be reporting on the specifics of that mission because nobody died and I just finished talking about a Floater base, but perhaps I'll get back to it later.


To fill in a large gap over the Pacific ocean, another radar station is going up in Hawaii. Once its Decoder finishes we can detect and track UFOs over nearly every mile of the globe.


Suddenly comes a Muton Battleship towards Canada base. They must not appreciate being kicked out of America.


Hopefully this goes better than the Snakeman invasion. Mutons have less dangerous terror units but are themselves tougher and will be better-armed by this date.

[Fenn]

Part 22.2 - Battle for Canada Base

Canada Base is staffed by 18 soldiers plus a Laser Tank, and outfitted with a mixture of Plasma and Laser Rifles, Laser Pistols and Rocket Launchers. Those who have the strength carry extra rockets.


A couple of the rocketeers are too weak to lug spares around, so the ammo carriers will be essential.


The base is laid out as a single snaking corridor, with the Hangars and Access Lift grouped together.


In the southwest, the Missile Defences extend the length of the corridor; the four agents behind it will take longer than usual to join the fight.


Here's where all the nasties will be pouring in from. Instead of trying to defend these tight quarters, the first line of defence will be the corridor heading south; rocketeers and the Laser Tank at the far end will have a clear shot at anything approaching, and agents can hide behind the shutters to ambush Mutons as they pass by. If necessary, we can pull back to the second corridor and finally behind the Missile Defences. It will ideally not come to that.

The first turn is occupied with laying down a smokescreen at the head of the corridor and moving faraway agents closer.


Turn 2: The first Muton is spotted by forward sentry Patrick. He throws his primed mine and fires a quick burst before ducking back inside.


The green man is finished off by a pistoleer from the other end of the corridor. The closet-hiding agents busy themselves filling the hall with proximity mines.


Turn 3: One of the mines blew up during the alien turn, and sure enough here's the one who set it off.


Two Mutons down now. Patrick is sort of trapped in his end of the corridor by all the proximity mines, so it's back into the room for him.


This proves fatal when a Muton invites himself in. Meanwhile four proximity grenades detonate, killing one Muton.


Turn 4:While trying to shoot this Muton, Shigeru Abe instead kills one behind him. Another soldier gets the intended target. Soldiers in the backlines pass a few proximity grenades to a single soldier - we're running out of the things up front.


Turn 5: No aliens spotted (or blown up by a mine), but there is this curious trail of scorched floor visible in the hangars...


Further inspection reveals one Muton around the corner. He's in a bad spot to shoot at, so a High Explosive is thrown at his feet instead.


Turn 6: The explosion may have knocked a Muton unconscious somewhere, but it hasn't stopped these two from closing in. Two riflemen in the rear group take 'em out.


Thinking the coast is clear, Shigeru Abe steps into the hallway and is immediately gunned down by another pair of Mutons.


Well, that's what rockets are for. One of the pair dies along with an unseen companion, but the other is still standing.


The Laser Tank comes through with a dead-on shot to the chest. Two more proximity mines are thrown down the corridor, and both explode during the alien turn. They don't let up at all, do they?


Turn 7: A Muton and a strange rock creature - the source of those mysterious scorch marks - are the latest challengers. The nearby agents dispose of both with a few laser shots.

Turn 8, 9 and 10 are uneventful, with no aliens seen. With the brief lull, one of the rocketeers gets proximity grenades passed to her to be primed and thrown down the length of the corridor. Finally on alien Turn 10, one of these mines detonates.


Turn 11: The Muton thus found falls easily to a few Laser Rifle shots. During Turn 12, a second rock creature is similarly detected by way of explosions and shot dead.


Turn 13: Several Mutons are heard firing wildly in the distance, and this guy drops his weapon and runs up and down the corridor.


He gets no mercy. With the aliens panicking, it may be time to send in the troops and finish this.


Turn 14: The smoke is thinning out; this Muton can be seen almost from the far end of the corridor.


A couple turns later, another unarmed Muton comes fleeing down the hall. One zap with the Stun Rod doesn't put him under, so it's the plasma for him too.


Let's move in.


...After Calvin here bleeds to death. Must have overlooked that, not that we have any Medikits here anyway.


Kwame here is very lucky: after shooting this Muton once, his armor absorbs three plasma bolts perfectly.

On the alien turn, a floating pancreas ambles towards the tank and is reaction-fired to death before we can get a good look at it.


Next turn, the tank scouts out the elevator and finds a Muton hiding in a corner. (also see the ex-floating pancreas just outside.)


He's taken care of with no issue, and the forward troops take positions to storm the hangars.


The tank takes point and finds another one of these strange creatures.


Whatever it is, it doesn't hold up well against lasers.


With that straggler taken care of, the assault is repelled! That was so much nicer than the Chryssalid attack on China base; it helped that the Canadians had lasers and plasmas to throw around and not just puny shotguns. I think they could have held out against a Snakeman attack, though probably with more losses.

Look at how many bodies were recovered compared to aliens killed, too. Plastering the floors with proximity grenades will do that for you.


Seven samurai, I mean sergeants, are promoted following the battle. I'm not sure which of them is supposed to be in command here? Maybe they'll take turns.

[haphazard1]

Nice work defending your Canada base! Good layout makes such a huge difference. Playing hide and seek with mutons and their friends throughout a default starter base can be very nasty. (Speaking from experience on that one. )

Another country infiltrated. Well, at this point it won't make too big a difference. Still rather annoying, however. But you are getting close to the end, and once your psi lab is done you can figure out which of your soldiers can not be risked facing psi-capable enemies. Too bad it takes an entire month to cycle soldiers through the training process.