I believe that Long War is the only version of the game that separates HP into health and armor. Soldiers in Firaxis XCOM 1 and 2 suffer wound time whenever they take damage, even if it was "extra" HP granted by higher level armor. Anyway, you took a lot less damage from the Chryssalids than I expected, considering that you weren't familiar how they worked in 2. That mission always frustrates me because I often get ambushed even though I know what precautions to take.
Quote:I think injuries are only supposed to happen if they pierce your original non-buffed HP
I seem to remember that this is the rule for XCOM 2012 (and maybe only Long War, at that) and any damage in 2 gives wound time.
(June 17th, 2017, 07:02)Whosit Wrote: I believe that Long War is the only version of the game that separates HP into health and armor. Soldiers in Firaxis XCOM 1 and 2 suffer wound time whenever they take damage, even if it was "extra" HP granted by higher level armor. Anyway, you took a lot less damage from the Chryssalids than I expected, considering that you weren't familiar how they worked in 2. That mission always frustrates me because I often get ambushed even though I know what precautions to take.
While the wiki isn't super reliable for XCOM, I looked it up for Enemy Unknown:
Speaking of Enemy Unknown rules, I think the reason why I didn't have trouble with the Chrysalids was because of my EU habits of going veeeery slowly in non-timed missions. Final turn count for the mission was 24.
With nothing else to do, I went to check out the Black Market. Been a while since I did that, I think.
Sold some stuff, but didn't find anything interesting to buy.
I went to contact a new region for the extra income. This might have been a macro mistake.. I wouldn't be surprised if new quests and facilities like to spawn in any regions that you haven't contacted.
If that happens, we'll have to upgrade our comms before we can contact another region.
Suddenly a freaking UFO appears, chasing us! I forgot all about it between sessions.
It caught us and forced us to land on the ground. To escape we have to destroy a spike that screwed with our systems.
We can deploy injured units for this missions. Great for us.. Sorry to Sunrise and RefSteel for dragging you off the med bay, but we need you for this battle.
Mission 32: Operation Spider Mask
This is a life or death situation, stop being so goddamn cool Sunrise!
Enough posing! This is now a no-posing underground anti-alien operation!
So we have to defend this platform and destroy the glowing orange spike in the distance. Interesting. Quite different from the base defense in Enemy Unknown.
Not sure what happens if any aliens reach the platform. Instant game over perhaps? That would be silly, but I'm playing on Ironman so better not take any risks.
Spotted an Archon, who promptly panicked after seeing Brick in an Archon skin suit. It then shot in the fog, enraging whatever is lying in wait there.
Did I mention this is a life or death situation? It's starting to resemble a slapstick comedy.
The pod was just a single Archon and a Sectoid. No trouble for us. The Sectoid took cover behind a car, but Sunrise made use of good ol' Combat Protocol to get the kill there.
I made sure the finish off the Archon despite it being panicked. They might be able to stop panicking on their turn.. I'd rather not risk that. We'll manage without Alien friendly fire.
More enemies showed up. An enraged berserker, two ADVENT, and some Chrysalids.
But they weren't the only one to get reinforcements! Lewwyn joins the battle on our side!
David fires a rocket at the grouped up Chrysalids. When he breaks concealment, the Berserker panicks and runs away. These Aliens are a bunch of wimps!
Old Harry's last rank up gave him an ability called Serial. For every kill he makes with the sniper rifle, he gets another action. Three shots later we've got three dead Chrysalids.
We put Lewwyn to good use right away.
After RefSteel softens up the MEC, Old Harry lands kills number 4 and 5. Only thing preventing kill number 6 is that he ran out of ammo.
Brick uses Fan Fire, which fires three shots at the same enemy. Not sure if they all hit/miss or each shot gets rolled independently. This result did not give me any clues.
We couldn't finish off the Berserker, but it kept panicking and did nothing. Two enemy ADVENT showed up as reinforcements.
Having reloaded last turn, Old Harry goes for the kill on the Berserker. No more shots this turn though, Serial has a 4 turn cooldown
Lewwyn fired off another plasma to get rid of the cover, Jkaen then killed the lancer and ranked up!
This explains much. So, so much.
After we finish off the last guy and end our turn, we get more reinforcements. It's.. Pindicator! Wait, we had a Pindicator on the roster? Uhhh.. Of course we did, yeah, I remember.
Our enemies get some reinforcements too. Well, with some delay. They will begin a full assault soon according to the voice-over. Let's not underestimate them. Would be an embarrassing way to lose a campaign.
Before moving forward, I checked the area with a Battle Scanner. That pod could be trouble. We'd ideally need to flash bang before the two codex go their separate ways.
David moved closer to them and didn't trigger the pod. But we CAN shoot at the objective? Well then, let's get cheesy. He took the shot and then we prepared to meet the reinforcements with an OW trap.
We took our everything but this MEC. I had Old Harry set up a Kill Zone but it didn't trigger cause the MEC never moved
Also, more enemy reinforcements dropping next turn, on the other side of the road this time.
First step is to get rid of the OW, shred through the armor and apply holo-targeting. Jkaen failed to do just that, but the unexpected hero of the mission Lewwyn makes himself useful again by succeeding at the task. Old Harry picks up another kill with his measly 100% chance to hit.
David took another shot at the spike. I had to move up RefSteel to finish it off. Notice the enemies chilling in the background, not noticing the destruction of the thing they're guarding
Enemy reinforcements drop in. Sunrise manages to injure the lancer. Our new objective is to safely retreat all our soldiers, since we can now take off with the Avenger. Let's kill off these two and then do just that.
Pindicator joins in the action with a grenade to get rid of the OW. It has been a while since we used a simple grenade without a grenadier.
Brick takes a bunch of shots, softening up the MEC and killing the lancer. Sunrise then kills the MEC. Next.. WE RUN!
See ya suckers!
Jkaen gets a promotion as mentioned earlier. No space in the screen for our reinforcements :P
It's actually his final rank up. He gets Rupture, which should be great against any late game bosses we might encounter.
Yeah, that was the base defense, kind of. I have to say, it was a bit of a bummer. Base defense in Enemy Unknown was by far the highlight of the campaign.
That said, if it was as unfair in this game as it was in Enemy Unknown, we might have easily had a campaign wipe. So.. Some good things come out of this change.
Unless there is an actual base defense mission later on. I think I've heard that there's nothing like that, but if there is, well it will catch me completely off-guard after this.
Hey - no need to be sorry! This was make or break for the planet here! Plus, you know, I got to feel pretty important, landing that killing shot on the Glowing Alien McGuffin of the Day. So the Avenger is saved! And I didn't even have to use any of my medkits or anthing because we ... didn't actually ever even get shot at before we killed everything in sight. Hurray! Uh, so ... um, speaking of medical assistance though? Yeah, back to the burn ward for me....
Nice to see an update on this campaign. Nice work on destroying the whatever-it-was. The aliens did not seem to put up a serious effort to defend it, did they? Or maybe your people are just that good?
(August 3rd, 2017, 07:14)haphazard1 Wrote: Nice to see an update on this campaign. Nice work on destroying the whatever-it-was. The aliens did not seem to put up a serious effort to defend it, did they? Or maybe your people are just that good?
It was a disappointment. I expected a tough fight, though perhaps there were more aliens just in the fog that I got lucky not to trigger. That kind of stuff can happen when the maps are procedurally generated.
Another problem is XCOM 2's balance. Long engagements just aren't a thing.. If it takes multiple turns to clear a pod, something has gone horribly wrong. Long engagements are something I miss from Enemy Unknown. Back in the base defense mission in that game, I got caught off-guard and all my guys had only basic weapons. It would take longer than a turn to kill a single enemy. Still I managed to just get by and survive. It was a thrilling fight, not a cakewalk like this mission was. Oh well, I'm sure I'll regret calling the game easy in a few missions time
Went to continue scanning and got interrupted again. Strangely enough we had no choice on what mission to take.
As a side note, the next Retaliation mission will be soon. I think after that is a good time to continue with the story missions assuming we make it out without injuries.
Time constraints can be a b, so we brought along some maxed out soldiers. Lewwyn earned himself a spot in the squad last time. Maybe he'll even earn a nickname.
Mission 33: Operation Demon Fist
The extraction point is across the open plaza, on a rooftop. We start with the VIP.
With his first move, David triggered two pods despite being concealed. Glad to have brought some heavy hitters with us. Otherwise this'd be a rookie massacre.
One of the Archons flanked us, but it panicked when it saw Old Harry (who wouldn't) and switched sides, for now.
My plan is to thin their numbers this turn. We can't possibly kill all of them. Mimic beacon will distract the stragglers.
Jkaen opened with his holo-sight. It was dodged, but still applied the status and did some damage.
What a great time to Chain Shot with David. If he gets the kill, he'll also auto-dodge the first shot on enemy turn.
Both shots hit, the Archon goes down. David triggers his extra move from getting a kill, but it turns out you can literally only move, not take actions. Lame.
Killing the far-away unit was quite tricky. I went with a Run & Gun on Brick, who'd have a flank on him.
I could have also used Old Harry's Icarus Armor to jump him there, but well, I keep saving it for emergencies and at this rate will never end up using it.
Brick kills the enemy with Lightning Hands + Fan Fire 4-shot combo. And that answer my question from last mission, all Fan Fire shots are indeed treated independently.
Lewwyn naded the other two and Old Harry killed the ADVENT. He also took a potshot at the Andromedon.
RefSteel placed the Mimic Beacon, which got attacked by the Andromedon, who in the process casually took down the huge statue. The Archon panicked and did nothing.
This would be a good time to test out Rupture. It actually almost killed the Andromedon due to a crit.. got it down to 1 HP.
Later I would find out that sadly the status effects on the first form won't be transferred into the second form, so Rupture in the end did not do a thing here.
Brick took down the first form with a pistol shot, then after Lewwyn softened it up, Brick finished off the second form as well.
Killing the Archon required some luck since it has a chance to dodge, but we landed all our shots. David ended up using the RAGE strike as the last hit just to be sure it dies.
Seemingly nothing up ahead, but I took it slow anyway with mostly blue moves.
Around the corner we spotted a Sectopod. It walked right through the gas tanks, leaving behind explosions in its wake
An EMP Bomb from Jkaen took it down a notch. The EMP also destroyed another gas tank and injured one of the ADVENT.
Lewwyn fired another nade to shred some armor and Brick took a sniper shot at the Sectopod (she was too far away for pistol spam with her EMP rounds).
Old Harry activated Serial mode and destroyed the Sectopod and one of the ADVENT. He even hit the third, but it survived with 1 HP.
Granted it WAS burning and would have died anyway, but I gave the kill to David to work towards his last rank up.
When approaching the extraction point, we ran into the last of the ADVENT. They took cover inside the building.
We do need to take down the cover to kill em, but I would need to aim carefully to not blow up the extraction point.
It's a success! For the most part. One of em still has High Cover, should have taken down that, um, future coffee machine or whatever.
Old Harry sniped the furthest one and Brick took down the other one on the open. Then I discovered that I actually can't even reach the last guy. So I used our second Mimic Beacon, might as well.
We took two OW shots as it ran out to punish the Mimic Beacon, both missed. You'll love this part..
Those misses set our freaking ladder on fire! Can't say I ever considered that possibility when I set things up.
Lewwyn one-shot the guy and earned himself a promotion.
Now we just have one last enemy to deal with. The most powerful one yet..
A ladder.
It works! We sent in everyone except RefSteel, who had another job to do before we embark:
She managed to hack it and get us a facility location. Shall we find out what happens when the meter goes down to zero?
And uh, I've got some bad news, to get out of here you're gonna have to walk through fire and flames. It won't hurt.. much.
At least you're now a Major! RefSteel got the Ever Vigilant perk, which I actually misread and highly regret picking. I thought it'd always proc OW at the end of the turn, but nah, it won't.
She'll only auto-OW if she ever spends both of her actions on moving, which is something that she will never do with my playstyle. Oh well.
Lewwyn got Suppression. Demolition is very outdated by now, we should have enough stuff to take down cover without it.
Oh it takes research time to grab that facility.. I guess we'll have it in the bank in case we ever need it. I would have went for it now for fun, but it'd just take time away from researching the story projects.
The aliens sure don't seem to care much about their pet humans' cities and facilities, do they? Blowing up statues, gas tanks, buildings...just total destruction all over the place.
Some of the perks are not described as well as they should be. Like you, I picked the one to get the bonus move, and only later realized it is only a move and not a full action. The Ever Vigilant one sounds similar -- the description sounds great at first, but it turns out to be so limited as to be nearly useless.
Nice work on the mission. Always nice to get a scientist and more intel, plus the hack reward could be useful later.
Nice work on destroying the whatever-it-was. The aliens did not seem to put up a serious effort to defend it, did they? Or maybe your people are just that good? 
Like you, I picked the one to get the bonus move, and only later realized it is only a move and not a full action. 
Always nice to get a scientist and more intel, plus the hack reward could be useful later.
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