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[haphazard1]

For lurkers, this is why cyberdisks are bad news at close range

Yes, cyberdisks are very unpleasant inside buildings or UFOs.

Haphazard1 goes east and spots three more aliens - two sectoids and a cyberdisk

He shoots and kills the one to the north.

Yes! Die, alien scum!

DaveV gets attacked by psionics and panics, dropping his weapon and running east towards the aliens.

Of course. DaveV is -- by stats -- one of our very best soldiers. So of course he turns out to be a Psi weakling.

Haphazrd1 misses the sectoid with two aimed shots (needs more practice obviously).

Missed opportunities....

Haphazard tries two more aimed shots, hitting with one.

Aha! Progress!

Haphazard1 advances SE and spots another sectoid. Regoarrarr shoots at it twice. The first shot hits it but the second gets Haphazard1 in the back & kills him.

Noooooo! Brought down by friendly fire. An ignoble end for a brave warrior. Oh well, bring on version 3.

Cyneheard is actually slowly turning into a reasonable soldier - pity he's now wounded for 33 days.

The ongoing saga of Cyneheard has been very fun to watch. He has been wounded -- and survived with only personal armor -- how many times now?

Haphazard - apologies for slaying your avatar. I took a slight risk with a shot and it 'backfired' so to speak.

These things happen, unfortunately. And I managed to get your avatar killed last time, so I guess we are even. Sad to go down to friendly fire, though. Wonder if Regoarrarr owed my guy money or something?

Also noticed that we captured a Small Launcher & stun bomb on the mission - more research projects to be fitted in somewhere.

Excellent news! I had been wondering when one of these would show up. This should be a fairly high priority once we get Power Suits completed, so we have a better option than Stun Rods for capturing high-ranking aliens.

Very nice work, Ug, other than that minor blip of course.

[Sandover]

This thread is fun. When is it my turn to get killed?

[sunrise089]

I'd like to request a v2.0 please

[antisocialmunky]

You're on v3 or v4. We already had Sunrise090.

[Ichabod]

This is too fun to let go: I want an avatar too, if it's possible.

[Cyneheard]

The ongoing saga of Cyneheard has been very fun to watch. He has been wounded -- and survived with only personal armor -- how many times now?

A lot. I'm not sure if that's #2 or #3.

Oh, I'm loving it.

Of course, a month in the bacta tanks sucks, but at least I'm not dead yet.

[uberfish]

NEW RECRUITS: Kylearan, Ichabod, Pling, Sareln, Sevenspirits, Kronoz, Brian Shanahan, Pocketbeetle. Welcome to XCOM! Unfortunately none of them are particularly special except Sareln who got the luck of the draw. (59 reactions / 64 accuracy)

Checking our inventory I ordered some "special equipment" from our suppliers and sold excess alien gear to keep us financially afloat.

Told the chief scientist to research exactly what Elerium-115 was before he used it any more weapons. After that, we went for Power Suits and UFO Navigation, while manufacturing more Armour.

A week or two passed with no UFO activity, and we got the end-of-month report from our sponsors who are pleased with our effective handling of the alien terror crisis.



Early in April I was woken up in the middle of the night by sirens blaring.

"What is it? Are we under attack?" I asked.

"Radar picked up the two of the largest UFOs we've seen yet heading towards us from the south."

I rushed to the radar room. To my relief the approach vectors took the UFOs past our base.

"Looks like they're heading north of the Arctic Circle, two separate landing sites."

"Dispatch the skyranger, land at whichever UFO will be in daylight. Get me a real time uplink."

The larger of the two UFOs had landed in daylight and the Skyranger headed in to land. I swore when I saw the tactical display because this made even the previous idiotic landing zones look good.



"Can we fire that damn Skyranger pilot already?"

"Afraid he's on a one year contract and the accountants would have your head."

Kylearan had drawn the short straw and was first out of the Skyranger. The moment he stepped off the ramp two Cyberdiscs that were flanking our position turned their plasma weapons on him, vapourising him instantly. Turned out the ramp was also in full view of the UFO entry shaft. I swore again. Cyberdiscs meant Sectoids leading them, and a ship that size was bound to have multiple psionics on it. With the aliens having full view of our exit ramp, this was a complete deathtrap. If we sent enough troopers down to defeat the two Cyberdiscs and still cover the UFO entrance against enemy snipers, they'd be very easily shredded by high explosives or mind control.

Not good odds at all. I ordered an immediate evac before anyone else got killed.

"And tell your damn accountants that damn pilot just cost us the life of a mediocre recrui... er, I mean good soldier. And if that doesn't get their attention, his gear was worth $250,000."

A couple more UFOs had been sighted up there. I dispatched an interceptor to investigate. It was unable to catch the UFOs as they departed but did manage to find up what they were up to: establishing a base at the North Pole.



We had a new plan. The aliens would have to keep that base supplied, and that means we'd be able to intercept the supply ships, and try to capture one of the psionic Sectoid leaders that way. Before we could execute the plan though, a medium-sized UFO was spotted in West Africa. The Sectoid raids would be dangerous and we needed to increase our cash and Elerium reserves (the hyperwave decoders and power armour being constructed were expensive), so I decided to take this UFO intact. This meant we'd have to land at night, so the "special equipment" I ordered was loaded onto the skyranger...

[Krill]

Hidden Move - another floater appears near its dead comrade to SW - obviously enraged it fires a plasma volley decapitating Krill.

Admit it, you guys were ecstatic this happened.

[haphazard1]

That's a very nice monthly report -- up over 600K on the funding.

Another rough start with that ice mission. Perfect situation for a smoke grenade or two, but aborting the mission was the right choice I think.

"Special equipment" and night missions...I am thinking incendiaries of some kind, maybe rocket launcher and some incendiary rockets or a heavy cannon and incendiary ammo. Sometimes referred to as HFD ("Hot Fiery Death").

An alien base...hmmmm. Maybe once we have Power Suits and the Stun Bomb launcher we can try to "harvest" a leader? Wiping out an alien base is also worth very big points and hefty loot, although clearing it out can be quite a task. We can try for the supply ships as you mentioned, but they are only on the ground for a short time -- I am not sure we can get a Skyranger there in time to catch them. Although if we handle the timing correctly, we can fly there ahead of time...Supply ships always make their runs at a standard time.

[uberfish]

I had failed in my quest to get the Skyranger pilot fired, apparently he was the son of some important US goverment official whom we needed to keep on our good side. He proceeded to do his usual stupid landing tricks.



At least this position was substantially improved in two ways; we were at the northwest corner of the map, and the UFO door was on the other side from the skyranger. For this mission we'd packed 6 laser rifles with their holders also carrying an assortment of grenades, 6 heavy plasmas and the "special equipment": an autocannon with Incendiary ammo and a rocket launcher.

We were able to disembark without seeing anything. Sevenspirits had difficulty moving around with the autocannon, but let off a few random shots at nothing in particular to start fires and provide some light. The fire revealed a Floater in the field east of the skyranger and Dazedroyalty hopped off the Skyranger and shot it.

The squad threw out a couple of flares to supplement. Fire*Ice and Sullla placed a flare on the west side of the UFO and camped there to secure our flank. There were several buildings to the east that the aliens might be using to snipe from, so I decided to sweep clockwise round the map with the rest of the team to clear everything out before meeting back at the UFO entrance.

A floater popped out from behind the UFO illuminated by the fire in full view of 9 or so Xcommies and was promptly killed. Another one popped out from a stable and threw a grenade, but wasn't able to throw it quite far enough to hit anyone and was immediately shot too. The blast did put out some of the fires in the field but this was easily rectified.



Dazed and Meiz headed round the east side of the stable to secure that flank while Sareln remained ready with the rocket launcher.



ASM (bravely leading from the rear), Dave and Pling were then able to advance and set up a second flare camp on the other side of the UFO while the rest of the team continued the clockwise sweep.



Ug spotted an floater hiding on the top floor of a farm building.



Sareln put a carefully aimed shot with the rocket launcher through the window, scoring a direct hit on the alien and blowing it to pieces along with most of the top floor.