XCOM - Terror From the Deep SG

[haphazard1]

The Triton reaches Iceland after a long flight, the troops are tense -- the aliens have had a lot of time and initial reports indicate heavy damage to the port facilities.

"After all those underwater drills, here we are defending a city just like old times. Sure wish we had some heavy plasmas." complained Mardoc.

"All the Elerium was used up years ago. Now get your mind on the mission!" snapped Sergeant Pling. "Although off the record, I agree these new weapons leave a lot to be desired."

The new pilot is definitely better than that idiot we used to have -- elected President, what were people thinking? Probably some alien contaminant in the ground water.... Anyway, he sets the Triton down in the middle of the north edge of the port.



Round 1

- Sareln opens the Triton's hatch and immediately spots an alien to the east, inside a fenced storage area. "Some kind of green, scaly THING, sarge! What the hell is it?"

"Who cares? Shoot the damn thing, the brainiacs will figure it out later."

Sareln's snap shot hits the gillman in the chest, killing it.



After this good start, things rapidly start falling apart. Sareln moves out and spots a strange greenish-white thing with glowing red eyes southeast of the Triton. (Just to the right of the cursor.)



Ug fires a snap shot and misses badly; Dicorian fires an auto burst of harpoons and 1 hits, but these harpoon guns seem to suck and the alien ignores it. Refsteel misses 3 shots, ASM misses once, Tatan misses as well, followed by v8mark, Amelia, Zakalwe, Krill, hahazard2, then Fire&Ice misses 3 shots. Finally Pling misses a snap shot.

Argh! New recruits combined with poor weapons...18 shots fired, 1 hit with a harpoon for no visible effect. This was very unlucky here, as even with 25% - 30% for many shots there should have been several hits. The early weapons really suck in TFTD. Poor accuracy and little damage from the harpoon guns, and using burst mode rapidly empties the small 10-round clips. The gas cannon does better damage, but has no burst mode and takes a lot of TUs per shot. Plus it is heavy, and can easily slow recruits with low strength. Most of the time you are lucky to get one shot if the soldier has moved, 2 if stationary. Ick.

Anyway, the deep one is still standing at the end of the round, fortunately not facing us. Hopefully it will head inside the building and not shoot our troops who are out in the open. The alien turn begins, and civilians begin to die -- scream after scream, for a total of 7 dead civilians, including one just SE of our troops. Our score is going to stink with all these deaths.

Round 2

Tatan throws a flare to the south, and we spot a gillman on the ground and a deep one on the roof of a building.



Given the results of round one's shooting gallery, Sergeant Pling orders different tactics: Krill throws a sonic pulser at the gillman, haphazard2 throws another on the roof for the deep one, and Refsteel flings a regular grenade into the area where the deep one from round one disappeared.

IBT, the grenades explode and three alien screams are heard. Three more civilians are killed as the aliens continue their massacre of the local population.

Round 3

More flares go out, and we spot two gillman bodies along with the two deep ones to the south. Guess we got the second gillman for free, but we need to keep an eye on him in case he pops up again.

Sarlen leads the way south, but after only a step another deep one is spotted amidst the rubble of the southern buildings.



(The deep one is under the cursor; you can see the two downed gillmen as well as a lot of property damage.)

Tatan opens fire, and hits with 2 snap shots to kill the deep one.

Sareln takes one more step and spots yet another alien to the west of the Triton. He freezes to avoid drawing reaction fire, and Zakalwe lobs a sonic pulser over the Triton to deal with it.

IBT, the pulser kills the gillman to the west. But another one shows up from SW and shoots Sareln, killing him instantly.

An alien from the south throws a sonic pulser at a civilian wandering around SE of the XCOM squad, blowing the poor sailor apart. Fortunately he was far enough away that none of the squad takes any damage.

Round 4

Zakalwe now takes the lead moving south, and spots a gillman on the roof of another building to the south.



Dicorian fires two auto bursts and hits once, but harpoons suck. Refsteel follows up with 2 more autobursts, and hits once. The alien falls, but no scream -- I repeat, harpoons suck.

Antisocialmunky peeks around the nose of the Triton and spots two aliens to the west, hiding in the darkness.



The cursor is on one, the other is 3 tiles further west. haphazard2 throws a sonic pulser over the Triton and lands it between the aliens.

IBT the pulser explodes and one scream is heard from the west. Another gillman appears in the SW and fires twice at Antisocialmunky, missing both shots. ASM reacts and kills the alien with his gas cannon.

Round 5

More flares thrown to the west reveal one down gillman, no sign of the second.

v8mark is sweeping the east side of the port and spots a gillman SE of the Triton.



Fire&Ice throws a grenade at its feet, but when it explodes the gillman shrugs it off and fires, killing v8mark.

Round 6

The squad is spreading out, trying to regain visibility on the gillman who shot v8mark. IBT, a gillman and a deep one appear to the SW. Antisocialmunky fires two reaction shots but misses both.

Round 7

ASM fires two more shots and kills the gillman to the SW.

Krill has circled behind the Triton to check the west, and spots an alien behind a building. Unfortunately there is no line of sight to fire on it -- maybe a wall/corner visibility bug?



Haphazard2 throws a regular grenade over the building to flush it out.

Zakalwe manages to regain sight on the gillman who killed v8mark, and this time Refsteel throws a sonic pulser at its feet. Let's see it survive that, eh?

It doesn't. The alien hiding to the west does not die, however.

Round 8

Antisocialmunky moves around the nose of the Triton and spots a deep one SW and the western target Krill saw the previous round. Dicorian misses the deep one with an aimed shot, but Tatan fires and kills it. ASM takes a snap shot at the western target but misses. Pling throws another grenade behind the building, but again no scream is heard between rounds.

IBT, a gillman fires from the south but misses.

Round 9

Some flares are shuffled around, but no one catches sight of the gillman to the south. IBT, he reappears and kills antisocialmunky.

Round 10

haphazard2 rounds the corner of the western building, and the lurking alien is revealed to be a deep one. hap2 fires twice and kills it.

Krill spots ASM's killer behind a building to the SW, but the angles are bad for shooting. Mardoc hurls a pulser but lands it on the roof of the building; Dicorian follows with another which should be close enough.

IBT the pulsers kill the gillman. Two deep ones are spotted moving around in the burning rubble of the southern buildings, they kill another civilian. (Surprising there are any civilians left by this point....)

Round 11

Tatan kills one of the deep ones with a snap shot; Krill spots the other and kills it with an aimed shot.

Dicorian spots another deep one behind the western building, climbing the stairs to the roof. He misses, but Ug follows up and kills it with an aimed shot.

Round 12

Refsteel spots a gillman to the south, beyond the line of buildings. Mardoc drops a sonic pulser next to it, killing it.

Rounds 13 and 14

The squad searches southwards. The alien turn is very short, probably only one left.

Round 15

Pling throws a flare further south, revealing a deep one. Refsteel kills it with a snap shot, and the mission is over.



Not a very good result. 4 XCOM dead, and the civilians massacred gives a negative score. And no live deep one -- I had some thermal tazers along, but all the deep ones were far away where they could fire at our troops from distance. Still, this will open the basic plastic armor research.

Several promotions:



I sold some corpses, but nothing else -- we may want to sell weapons for cash, but that is up to the next player. The second lab module is still a few days from completion, so we may want to save money for more scientists soon. Need some more soldiers to replace losses, though.

Save attached.

[sunrise089]

Our re-awoken troops arrive in two batches, and finally the Triton is fully crewed with some soliders left over to defend the base (and as future replacements). haphazard2, David Corperial, Selrahc...

Didn't Selrahc (and maybe some others) just die in the last mission?
_____________

What alien race equivalent from XCOM did you face in the first terror mission?

[haphazard1]

I was going by the list Brackard posted earlier. I guess it wasn't updated for mission #2.

This can be Selrahc v2, if necessary. We are likely to go through the whole list several times before this game is done.

[pling]

Ensign Pling is the current alien kill leader with 3 confirmed

his excellent accuracy and reactions are likely to mean a terrible MC score later though

Either that, or I'll be dead long before that matters Which thought made me read through haphazard's turn on tenterhooks But somehow I've made it to Lieutenant

[Ug the Barbarian]

Not a very good result. 4 XCOM dead, and the civilians massacred gives a negative score. And no live deep one -- I had some thermal tazers along, but all the deep ones were far away where they could fire at our troops from distance. Still, this will open the basic plastic armor research.

Its not a bad result - terror missions and artifact sites are very hard missions at this stage of the game, especially at night. Less losses for you than either Uberfish or myself with more opponents.

Avoiding either missing the terror mission entirely or a wipeout is more critical at this stage.

That said, we're going to have to get a live deep one fairly soon or it will block progress. Pressure on for whoever gets the next terror mission.

I'd suggest we go Magnetic Navigation -> Transmission Resolver after we complete Sonic Pistol + Clip. That we can at least keep our score up with intercepts.

[haphazard1]

Its not a bad result - terror missions and artifact sites are very hard missions at this stage of the game, especially at night. Less losses for you than either Uberfish or myself with more opponents.

It was pretty tough, especially with the darkness. The TFTD maps are generally tougher than EU -- more small buildings, more places for aliens to hide. I was worried in the early rounds about a grenade getting a large fraction of the assault team, since I was having trouble spreading out from the Triton. That sonic pulser that came flying at the civilian had me very worried for a moment, until I realized it was thrown at the civilian and not at one of our troopers. With no armor, an alien grenade would be very bad news.

Avoiding either missing the terror mission entirely or a wipeout is more critical at this stage.

Yeah, that big a negative score would really hurt us. Especially with few missions to score positive and offset it.

That said, we're going to have to get a live deep one fairly soon or it will block progress. Pressure on for whoever gets the next terror mission.

Maybe I should have tried to rush one of the deep ones at the end of the mission. But given the positions it would have cost us at least 2 troopers, and maybe more -- deep ones can blast a couple people each round, and with no armor those would have been almost certain kills. And two of the thermal tazers were being carried by soldiers who had been killed, so I would have had to send someone back for them, costing more time. Anyway, it didn't work out.

I'd suggest we go Magnetic Navigation -> Transmission Resolver after we complete Sonic Pistol + Clip. That we can at least keep our score up with intercepts.

I don't know what was up with the aliens, but I was just sitting in the geoscape at 1 hour setting and nothing happened. Just days passing, no detections. I really expected a mission much sooner.

[antisocialmunky]

I was doing so well but the aliens are much much much more deadly in this game. Also, we recovered a deep one corpse for aqua plastics and aqua plastics armor right?

[dazedroyalty]

Regarding the score, don't feel bad! It's unlucky that there were SO many civilians to be killed and give us a negative score. Sometimes there's as few as five but you had 14! That's a lot of negative points to lose.

I know it's a cheese move, but I recommend waiting till daylight for all terror missions. It's not that hard to do if you keep a Barracuda targetting the mission until the daylight comes. Then send the troops!

We defintiely should get the transmission resolver because they TFTD either has less alien activity in the early months or they made it harder to detect. It's totally plausible we'd go a whole month with nothing but one terror mission (which is about how often they show up). I think I'm up next so I'll make sure to dial up Magnetic Navigation after sonic pistol.

[uberfish]

4 deaths on a night terror mission is *good*, it's pretty much impossible to stop the aliens killing civilians so every grenade that blows up civilians instead of our people is good too. Basically, assume they're all going to die and treat it as a bonus if any survive.

There's less UFO recovery and more terror missions in TFTD because covering major land masses is easier than coastlines.

[antisocialmunky]

Yeah its quite good. Don't expect it to last when the sniper brains in jars and lobstermans show.