XCOM: Enemy Unknown aka the one where Haphazard dies repeatedly

[haphazard1]

Am I too late to sign-up to be lurker cannon-fodder? ... I haven't changed my sig in ages, it must surely be time for a new one

Welcome (back) to X-COM, pling! But what if we like the sig you have now?

If I get a chance, I will make you a Heavy so you get a rocket launcher. How's that?

[haphazard1]

Hmmm, we seem to be back online? Turnset is played, let me see if I can get my report loaded.

OK, have the save, had to struggle with (and eventually completely replace) my local profile to get it to show up. But got that working, eventually. If someone knows a better way, please let me know. Steam screenshots also appear to be working, although it sure puts them in a completely non-obvious place.

Anyway, let's get to the killing of aliens part!

Here are our brave soldiers:

Corporal Uberfish leading three squaddies, plus a bunch of un-named rookies waiting to be re-specced as forum members. We also have one wounded squaddie, an assault, also needing a new name.

Since it seems to be the team consensus, I start by switching research to Weapons Fragments. I consider building a medkit, but decide against it for now. Our guys are so weak, and the grenades are very useful when their aim is this bad. I do start excavation on the next tile on the top level, only 10 credits might as well keep clearing the space. We will need it.

I end up in Mission Control, watching the world turn. Nothing...nothing...more nothing...where are the aliens? I stop the scan on March 9th and go ahead and start our engineers on a satellite, since they have 20 days lead time.

This will max our starting uplink capacity at the end of the month. I was hoping to get another mission and maybe some more engineers first to lower costs further, but oh well. Our weapons fragments research completes, and I go back to Xeno-Biology as we can not start Beam Weapons yet. (Probably because we do not have the prerequisite alloys available.) I also start excavation on the last tile of the top level, only 10 credits so might as well.

After a couple more days we finally see some alien activity: our starting satellite over Nigeria spots a small UFO!

Our interceptor shoots it down easily, taking only minor damage. Time to load up the skyranger and check out the crash site. Here is our brave squad preparing for battle:

Ug the Barbarian and dazedroyalty are still hiding behind their helmets, until their originals can give them an appropriate look. Uberfish and I are rocking the glow in the dark hair, and need some more comrades to join the rainbow.

This mission is designated as 'Dying Sword' and will be set in a generic outdoors swamp map.

I start advancing the squad cautiously, but no aliens are seen at first. We do hear sectoid chittering noises from the first turn, though, so they are out there...somewhere...lurking...waiting...thirsting for human blood.

On the third round dazedroyalty takes the lead and spots a pair of sectoids to the left of our line of advance:

This is when I realized I had made a mistake back on the loadout screen. dazed is an Assault and is carrying a shotgun, which has terrible accuracy at anything past shortish medium range. I much prefer to go with a rifle for Assaults this early, as their base accuracy is not good enough to get guaranteed hits even up close, and at any significant range they essentially can not hit the broad side of a barn with the shotgun. Assaults can use rifle-style weapons, and it is often good to do so until later when they get more accuracy.

At the same time dazed spotted these two, haphazard on the other end of the squad heard sectoid noises from the right of our line of advance. Since there is almost no chance of dazed hitting the sectoids even in low cover, and little good cover between us and them, I pull dazed back to break contact. I move up the rest of the squad into what cover I can find and go to overwatch, carefully not moving anyone further forward so as to avoid triggering a second group of sectoids.

The sectoids mind meld (pretty much always their first action if there are more than one), and the strengthened one moves toward us triggering reaction fire. Haphazard hits but for only 2 damage; Uberfish misses; sniper Ug scores a hit and finishes off the sectoid. We need a sniper smiley face!

Since the remaining sectoid melded last turn it will not be in overwatch, so dazed advances. But due to his shotgun range limitations he can not reach it and goes to overwatch, as does the rest of the squad. The sectoid chooses to double move toward us, heading for full cover on our flank. Dazed and Uberfish miss reaction shots.

Now the alien is close enough for dazed to charge it and go for the close in shotgun kill. Even at point blank he only gets 78% odds (stupid shotguns), but he hits and the sectoid is killed. The rest of the squad takes the round to reload -- ammo is very limited this early in the game. Also, I don't want to move anyone forward and possibly trigger more aliens without the entire squad available to act.

Next round we move forward again, Uberfish leads and sure enough he spots two more sectoids lurking outside the heavily damaged UFO. One scurries for cover while the other ducks back inside the wrecked craft.

Uberfish is on slightly higher ground than the outside sectoid (note the green "buff" up arrow on Uberfish and the red "debuff" arrow on the sectoid in the shot above), and he has full cover while the sectoid only has partial. So he goes for the shot at decent (for this point in the game) odds:

Unfortunately he misses. The other members of the squad move up but are not in position to shoot this turn. The inside sectoid melds and the boosted sectoid moves further left to possibly flank in the future; it shoots at Uberfish but with full cover and height advantage on his side it does not hit him.

Here are the aliens as we start the next round:

Uberfish can now see both, and would like to shoot the originator of the meld as this would kill the other sectoid by psionic backlash. But the odds are very poor. The boosted sectoid is a bit better, but still only 48%.

But haphazard has been moving around the right side of the higher ground, and flanks the melding sectoid.

This gives good odds for the shot and for critical damage:

Sadly, he misses. Dazed is moving around the left side to try to flank next turn, and Ug moves up to try to get a sniper shot next turn. Uberfish goes ahead and takes a shot at the melding alien, misses, takes another and misses again. Oh well...it was worth it for a chance to take out both sectoids, but it did not work. And now Uberfish is out of ammo.

The sectoids both choose to advance, not staying melded. The one on the left shoots dazed and wounds him for 2 damage despite his full cover. The other moves up and goes on overwatch.

Ug starts the next round by firing his sniper rifle at the sectoid on overwatch:

One threat neutralized. Dazed uses his Assault perk of run-n-gun to close the gap to the other sectoid and blast it at point blank range. 78% again (stupid shotguns), and he misses.

Trouble, big trouble. Ug fired already, haphazard is too far away to get a shot, and Uberfish is out of ammo from last round. (I should have shot once and reloaded with the second action, given the low odds...but I was hoping for the double kill.) With dazed already wounded and at point blank and flanked, he will be killed by the sectoid.

But Uberfish has a grenade available, and in this game grenades are 100% accurate. If he can make a throw to blow up the sectoid which would not hit dazed immediately next door....

BOOM! Dazed is saved.

The squad spends the next round reloading (again, ammo management is crucial, even if I escaped the consequences of my screwup with Uberfish). Dazed hears some noise from the UFO. He moves up on the following round and triggers the Outsider, who takes cover behind a UFO wall section.

The alien has full cover, but with 4 squad members in range we go ahead and open up at low odds -- we should be able to overwhelm it with massed fire. Haphazard misses, Ug scores 1 damage with his pistol (he had to move and shoot), Uberfish misses on the first shot but destroys the Outsider's cover. That leaves him exposed for a high percentage shot and Uberfish blows it away with his second shot. The Heavy Bullet Swarm perk is awesome.

That completes the mission:

Operation Dying Sword is a success! Back at the base we get promotions to Corporal for haphazard and Ug:

Dazed will be spending 8 days in the medical wing, but our other Assault has recovered and can fill in his slot until he is back.

We get 4 sectoid corpses, 8 weapons fragments, 13 elerium, 51 alloys, and 2 UFO nav computers from the wrecked UFO -- a pretty good haul. We also get a damaged power source (already sold since it has no other use). With the alloys in hand we can now research Beam Weapons, and we can also research Alien Nav Computers. There are still 5 days left on Xeno-Biology, so we need to decide if we switch or finish the current project first.

Promotions are not taken, although I recommend Sprinter for haphazard and Squad Sight for Ug. Good luck with the next mission, should be a Council mission I think either bomb or VIP extraction.

The Save - End of Mission 3

[Ug the Barbarian]

Good mission. Agree about Assault with rifles early on and definitely on Bullet Storm. I find that giving a Bullet Storm heavy a scope really helps as their accuracy is the worst of the 4 classes.

On that note, please manufacture a scope for Ug asap and take Squad Sight.

I'd suggest finishing off Xeno Biology then moving onto Beam Weapons

[Catwalk]

Marine signing up! Requesting a soldier with impressive whiskers. Awesome reports, I think I'll need to get this sooner than planned.

[pling]

If I get a chance, I will make you a Heavy so you get a rocket launcher. How's that?

Awesome

Tho it doesn't look like people are dying as much in this game as the previous ones!

[uberfish]

Good mission. You got unlucky with the dice rolls there, but can't complain if the aliens mostly missed too I guess The council mission will probably be our first serious test.

Odd that you're not getting 100% or close to it at point blank with the shotgun. Were you shooting through some cover? The shotgun tends to work better on urban maps where there is naturally more close quarters combat, and also against 4 HP aliens which you're much more likely to get a one shot kill with a shotgun/sniper rifle/LMG than a regular assault rifle. Although once we get laser rifles we can just give our assaults those to make things easier.

I don't think you made a mistake with Uberfish. He still had grenade and rocket available to clean up, and no need to save them.

Vote we continue researching laser immediately as Xeno doesn't do anything for us until we get arc thrower too. Also it looks like we should get a Sergeant next mission if people don't die, which means we can get a quick OTS. So we can spend on that instead of Alien containment, and get more people involved in the squad!

[uberfish]

If I get a chance, I will make you a Heavy so you get a rocket launcher. How's that?

Awesome

Tho it doesn't look like people are dying as much in this game as the previous ones!

We're currently riding a positive snowball effect due to the aliens' tactical incompetence in the first two missions. So our troops are levelled up and still facing weak sectoids for now.

[xenin]

As uberfish said, the difference between a rookie and a squaddie is significant, particularly for assaults and heavies that get great special abilities, as well as the general health/accuracy boosts, so not losing anyone on the first couple of missions means that you can run with a full team of squaddies early on. There should be more potential for casualties once thin men show up, who have the annoying unmissable poison attack that leaves soldiers in one shot range as well as the tendency pre-nano vests to instakill your best soldier behind full cover with a critical. Deaths also tend to be snowbally via the panic effect, and low ranked soldiers sometimes panic just from being wounded.

[Sareln]

Good mission. Agree about Assault with rifles early on and definitely on Bullet Storm. I find that giving a Bullet Storm heavy a scope really helps as their accuracy is the worst of the 4 classes.

On that note, please manufacture a scope for Ug asap and take Squad Sight.

I'd suggest finishing off Xeno Biology then moving onto Beam Weapons

My preference is that we switch immediately to Beam Weapons. Reasoning: Xeno Biology gives Xeno Containment, but for that structure to be anything other than a power drain and negative cash investment we need to immediately research arc-throwers and start bringing in aliens to interrogate. Since we know we're prioritizing laser weaponry over the arc-thrower, we can put off Xeno Biology until we're ready to start grabbing aliens. We don't lose our research progress in Xeno Biology either.

If I get a chance, I will make you a Heavy so you get a rocket launcher. How's that?

Awesome

Tho it doesn't look like people are dying as much in this game as the previous ones!

People will start dying once you hand missions to incompetents such as myself.

Good mission. You got unlucky with the dice rolls there, but can't complain if the aliens mostly missed too I guess The council mission will probably be our first serious test.

Odd that you're not getting 100% or close to it at point blank with the shotgun. Were you shooting through some cover? The shotgun tends to work better on urban maps where there is naturally more close quarters combat, and also against 4 HP aliens which you're much more likely to get a one shot kill with a shotgun/sniper rifle/LMG than a regular assault rifle. Although once we get laser rifles we can just give our assaults those to make things easier.

I don't think you made a mistake with Uberfish. He still had grenade and rocket available to clean up, and no need to save them.

Vote we continue researching laser immediately as Xeno doesn't do anything for us until we get arc thrower too. Also it looks like we should get a Sergeant next mission if people don't die, which means we can get a quick OTS. So we can spend on that instead of Alien containment, and get more people involved in the squad!

Same wavelength. More people in squads is the strongest upgrade, and dirt cheap (50 + the cost of the OTS).

Assaults with double-fire or whatever it's called and laser rifles are basically life savers; I'm not sure I could justify flush (the other skill), yes it's nice, but often there's enough cover around that the alien will just hop to another piece of cover. There are some overwatch tricks to pull with flush, but in the era of lasers and weapons that don't one-shot aliens, double-fire is amazing. Depending upon how much alloy we have when we finish lasers, I think it might make some sense to gear assaults with shotties/laser pistols while saving the laser rifles for the Supports and Rookies. Once there's enough alloy to gear everyone with laser rifles, there's really no good reason not too though .

[Sareln]

According to the original order, I'd be up next but I can't get it that quickly so feel free to go now. In fact, let's just set a new order now for clarity. How's this?

Uberfish
Haphazard
Dazedroyalty (UP)
Ug (ON-DECK)
Xenin
Sareln