Screenshot XCom Long War Ironman Impossible

[Elieson]

in Long War, if you want:

to avoid chain panic, since everything in this game can cause panic

to have a unit with a reliable PSI-anything, since Mind Fray isn't 100% anymore and Sectoids can PSI-Panic you as early as your very first mission.

[Balcerzak]

Welp. Good luck.

I've tried playing Long War before. I can't do it, not even on the easiest difficulty. (Feel free to laugh at me and heckle me with "git gud scrub" and other such taunts.)

My first exposure to Long War I played the easiest difficulty and it wrecked me. There's a lot of adjusting that has to be done, so there's no need to ridicule someone for struggling.

Anyway, contrary to my initial promise, I was doing a bunch of practice runs just to get back into shape and refamiliarize myself with the maps/AI etc. when I stumbled on a base layout that was pretty close to ideal, and I finished the initial mission flawlessly. I'll probably take it and run with it, and just edit over some of the current names manually. It'll take me awhile to rip the screenshots from the OBS video I saved, and then type things up, so don't expect an immediate update, but one will be coming in the next couple days.

[Balcerzak]

Immediately after selecting your starting base, you're throw right into an abduction mission on your home continent. It gets you right into the action, and that's okay more or less. I just really wish it would allow you to equip your squad with items you actually want them to have. Default seems to give way more AP grenades than HE grenades, and that's exactly the opposite of my personal preferences. I'm going to try something for the first update or two, to see which people prefer. I'll give what amounts to a "highlight reel" for the mission a spoiler, and then link to an imgur album with an exhaustive move-by-move (more or less) version of how things played out, but no additional commentary. Let me know your thoughts!

[spoiler=highlights]

Like mentioned in Update 0, I chose my difficulty, and starting location. There's a video that plays between the two of them, which you can see below.

We're thrown into a relatively nice map for our first excursion. There are three main buildings, and a few alleyways. There aren't any nasty stretches of no-mans-land, and there's ample cover and roof access. We'll be making good use of all of that.

In Long War, opposed to vanilla, there are a number of possible landing zones for each map, some of them are kinder than others. This one seems to be pretty decent, but I don't honestly remember the alternatives.

...alien life on Earth... we're witnessing something never before seen in recorded history!

I'm sure my team would love to get their hands on THAT thing.

I immediately take the roof, then on the second turn, while moving forward, we make contact with the first pod of aliens. It's a mixed pod of two sectoids and one drone. These are both relatively basic enemies that we should expect to see a lot of for the rest of March. Each has its relative strengths and weaknesses. Sectoids' main strengths are their psionic powers: Mind Merge, Mind Fray, and Psi Panic. Drones' main strengths are they can fly (which provides an innate defense boost), and they have damage reduction. Since most of my team is not in position, I immediately fall back, and wait for the drone to come to me, as it's currently the biggest threat, in my opinion. Also, occasionally the NPCs will talk to you, I'll try to include that as I just did for when it's not worth including multiple shots. Vahlen's text pops up the first time you encounter aliens, while Shen's is specific to your first Drone encounter.

I rearrange everyone on the roof to make sure they're in cover from the drone, and set up an overwatch trap. Overwatch allows you to fire on the enemy phase when a unit exits a square you have line of fire on (provided it moves more than one tile). It forms a vital part of any team's arsenal, and can be tricky to go up against when enemies use it against you. More on that later though.

Their weapons appear to self destruct when the operator dies. We should look closely for any fragments that could be salvaged for our own development programs.

The trap was successful, and we took out the drone before it even had a chance to fire on us. That blue shield looking icon means that 1 damage was absorbed by the drone's damage resistance, while 4 damage went through, enough to kill it. I'm honestly not sure which soldier got killing blow here, it can be hard on simultaneous fires during overwatch to keep track.

I then move forward to get angles on the sectoids that I assume are still hiding out in that alleyway, but I accidentally disturb a second pod. Oops!

Still, I'm undeterred, and move soldiers in to take out the remaining members of the original pod, as conveniently they have allowed themselves to be easily flanked. (The yellow icon indicates this, both when it colors their cover icon, and when it appears in the lower right corner in the list of enemies in line of sight.) Flanking gives a nice bonus 50% bonus to crit, and negates any defense the unit had from its cover. The fact that I have elevation bonus (+20 aim) on these guys also makes them pretty easy pickings.

I tried to get eyes on the second pod with my other members, but the roof was in the way I guess, so I moved my flanked guy out of line of sight of the ground and put the others into overwatch. During the Alien phase, one of the sectoids did a double-move up onto the roof, and somehow dodged both overwatch shots.

He didn't last long during XCOM phase, that's for sure.

Then it was a simple matter of dropping down off the roof and blasting one of the other guys, who was mind-merged to the last one. One neat thing about mind merge is that you can follow the wiggle astral trails to see where the other unit is in the fog of war. Also, mind merge is altered from vanilla, in that killing the provider will not necessarily kill the recipient. Instead they take twice as much damage as bonus health that was provided. (Provided I remember correctly, the benefits of mind merge are: extra health, bonus will, increased crit.)

Even with the info I got from the mind-merge, I misjudged the position to drop down and flank the guy inside the Mighty Cart, and Life ended up whiffing this shot.

Life dodges his return fire, though, so all is well.

Life misses the flank, though, so I have Marthur prepare to drop down for support next turn. The rest of the troops are moving forward and preparing to breach the doors to the final building. Also, do notice the ammo indicator. With basic ballistic weapons, you only get 3 shots before needing to reload, a change from vanilla. So I obviously reload Marthur here to be safe.

The sectoid actually double moved and climbed onto the roof, so it gets a swift and painless end.

Axioma catches sight of a Meld canister as I'm lining up next to the door. (That icon on the door is supposed to indicate the buttons of a mouse, I guess? Left clicking will pop open the door, and it is a free action.) Meld is one of many resources in this game. There's cash, alloys, elerium, fragments, and meld. Think of them like wood, stone, gems, sulfur, mercury from HoMM if that helps you, though it's obviously not a perfect parallel. Cash is the most widely used, fragments are solely used for various research projects, while the other three are used in varying amounts for both research and constructing new objects in engineering.

Steady Weapon is a new action added to Long War that adds +20 aim to your next shot. Never breach doors without it, folks! Like Overwatch, which has a little Eye icon above the soldier, Steady Aim has an indicator as well, a dashed yellow circle surrounding them. You can see this in a shot a couple below this one.

We pop the door next turn and reveal the final pod, this time a four-man.

We have ~60s on these guys in half cover thanks to the steady aim, and we splat both of them.

The ~45 on the full cover guy doesn't pan out, and The End doesn't even have an angle, so I move him to prepare to flank next turn, while Life takes cover behind an SUV near the meld container.

The bastards both go on overwatch behind full cover, effectively putting the nix on my plans to flank them. I guess I should be thankful they weren't firing at my guys with their actions...

The End has a HE grenade that can just barely reach, I hope for cover destruction, pull the pin, and throw! Unlike in vanilla, damage falls off from a grenade the further you are from the center of the blast, so it did piddly damage to the sectoids. You'll also note here that the fact that they were behind full cover gives them the benefit of damage resistance, much like the drone had earlier.

We only destroyed one of their cover, but we immediately cash in on that and make it count.

I was prepared to take as many potshots as I had men left, but the first managed to hit, amazingly enough, and did just the exact amount of damage needed!

...If I may, Commander. The labs are on high alert, teams are standing by for your orders. We can begin researching the newly recovered artifacts immediately.

That brings Operation Lone Gaze to a successful conclusion.

Bradford's introduction video plays between the mission end screen and the results screen. Watch it if you are so inclined.

The troops load back up into the Skyranger and head home. Sadly, I bungled things pretty badly, and didn't get The End or Life any kills, so they don't promote (not even with the no casualty bonus XP).

9 X Sectoid Corpse

Drone Wreck

Elerium

Alien Alloys

10 X Weapon Fragment

6 X Meld

There's also a list of artifacts brought back. Note, unlike vanilla, you only get one fragment per kill.

Now that the mission's finally over, we can get to the base management phase. Since it's our first time here, there's a whole bunch of exclamation points competing for our attention.

I head to Engineering first, out of habit, as I like to evaluate the potential for the base layout. Shen's introduction video plays and you can view it here.

We've still got some room to grow up here, but if we really want to expand our facilities, we're going to have to start excavating beneath the base. Unfortunately, the deeper we go, the more it's going to cost.

This base is pretty damn good, though it might have been better if the steam weren't at the very bottom. Still, it's hard to complain when you can have a nice block of Satellite Uplinks (green), Power Plants (red), Workshops (blue), Research Labs (purple), Officer Training (brown), Alien Containment (orange), Hyperwave/Gollop (pink). The more adjacencies you can get between similar structures, the better. It's gonna be expensive to excavate, but worth it in the end. A shame we didn't have more pre-excavated tiles, but what can you do?

Then we stop in to the Research Labs, watch Vahlen's video, and look at our research options.

It seems the complexities of our latest research projects are overwhelming the current staff. I hope you'll consider seeking out additional scientists to bolster the team.

I start working on Xenobiology, as it gets the ball rolling on some council requests, so is a very useful detour from the all important weapons upgrade researches we have as a priority.

Every member of the Council is going to want satellite coverage, so we should plan our deployments carefully.

We take a quick peek in the Situation Room. There's a lot of options here, but we're just mostly checking the overall panic levels. True to Impossible, there are a lot of countries already quite poorly off. We've got our work cut out for us.

Full Gallery

Let me know if you feel I skimped on the explanations, or comment on how I was too lucky, or do whatever it is you do between updates. :)

Edited January 27, 2016 by Balcerzak

[Elieson]

In Long War, sidearm weaponry exists beyond mere Standard/Laser/Plasma pistols. They too, have limited ammunition per clip, unlike in EU/EW, in which sidearms have unlimited ammo per clip.

you had amazing luck with your RN rolls on hits

[Jedi]

Wow, that seemed to have gone super smooth.

[Balcerzak]

I kind of left off mid Geoscape last update, I tend to do that a lot when Ironmanning, because I'm pumped about a successful mission, but don't want to press my luck too far. Anyway, let's get right back into things with an update.

[spoiler=highlights]

As Elieson mentioned, alternate sidearms are indeed a thing, I order up more of these than I need, but they're literally free, so it's whatever, am I right? What the sawed-off shotgun is, instead of taking a pistol, you take a weapon that has the shotguns raw power, but there's an even worse range penalty to using it. It literally can only hit things one tile away, and it has only one bullet before needing to be reloaded. But sometimes you just need to have that clutch backup. I like sticking it on scouts using marksmen rifles, personally, because as a long-distance gun they have penalties up close, so the only up-close weapon serves as a complement to that, imo.

I pay a visit to my hangars, and click the rename button. Astute readers will understand that one of the random nicknames has left me very pleased. I also go ahead and equip Tex with Stingray missiles, just in case. It's unlikely we'd run into a fighter ufo on a satellite hunt in March, but stranger things could happen.

Several members of the Council have expressed an interest in acquiring some of the artifacts we've recovered. However, we should be careful in choosing what items we release...the Research Team may not have discovered their true value yet.

I pop in to look at the Gray Market, just to refresh my memory on what loot we have in stock, but I don't actually do anything here. This is the go-to place if you need to make a quick buck fast though, and a lot of hard decisions are made here.

Then it's time to scan for activity.

When your scanning, time passes by really quickly, but the clock will stop whenever anything important happens, like research completing, items being build, etc.

The quiet spell lasts long enough that I need to start building my satellite to ensure it finishes on time.

26 days till report, 25 days till satellite. Now we just have a few more days to get missions for the cash for that uplink or March is boned and this run is in for major hurt.

Looks like the aliens got tired of waiting too. We have our first UFO Contact. The air game has changed drastically from vanilla. There are three different settings you can intercept with: defensive reduces the aim for both you and the ufo, balanced goes in with defaults, and aggressive increases the aim for both you and the enemy. As long as it's a struggle to down a craft in one interception (because of the time limit), I always choose aggressive.

The interception window actually starts its timer at 7.0s, but it took about 1.5s for our craft to fire the first shot. I'm not sure precisely what the firing rates are, so often I end up leaving my craft in for the last second or two for no payout, and sometimes additional damage for longer repairs. (Spoiler, this is what happens to Hammer here.)

You can see that both craft are severely damaged by the fact that there are little yellow explosion clouds going off around them. Triggering that is enough for the alien craft to abandon its mission, but naturally we want to shoot the bastard down, so I send up another craft.

Spider gets the kill here. As your pilots down enemy craft, they get a little bit better at their job, having an easier time to hit, and doing a little more damage on each hit, IIRC. So just like managing your ground troops kills is important, so too is figuring out which aircraft gets the kills.

Also, downing the first UFO triggers a video.

Gearing up for the deployment to the mission, I decide to take two of my squaddies, and four rookies. I pick the two classes I want the most to deal with the Outsider, and emergencies. That would be Ether going Assault. Assault gives access to Run and Gun, which is an amazing perk that allows to fire your weapon after making a gold move (every third turn).

And Axioma going Engineer. In many ways, I prefer Engineers to Rocketeers for my explosives users, because I'm more worried about cover destruction generally than wiping out the aliens. Being able to carry twice as many offensive grenades (right now that HE and AP only) and being able to throw them a little further, is really useful.

Then I assemble the rest of the rookies, and apportion gear appropriately. I generally pick the "best" rookies for these early rookie heavy missions to increase survivability, prioritizing those with high aim generally. I have no idea if my small item choices are controversial or not, but I have each rookie a damaging grenade here for if something just absolutely needs to die now and I can't chance a 79%. Wist had really good aim, so I made that even better by giving him a laser pointer. I had Jedi take a flashbang because they're invaluable against the Outsider, and really handy escapes to unfortunate situations. I take two medkits, always, because tragedy can happen to anyone. The assault gets a ceramic plate for a little extra tankyness, and they also take a flashbang. Contrary to how I usually run it, Axioma takes AP and HE (usually I just load up on HE), because I may need to rely on the extra damage if I get in a bad way with the Outsider. I generally go half and half on terror missions too, because fuck chryssalids, but that's a story for another time.

Then Big Sky is on the way to the site of Operation Cold Stranger.

We land in the absolute corner of this map, and I take a mix of cautious and risky moves to try to gain ground fast, in hopes of managing to recover possible meld canisters. One risky move per turn, and usually taken first is how I like to play it. Honestly, this map is pretty spacious, and several turns go by before anything notable happens.

Every so many turns, if there are no enemies in sight, you get an on-screen indicator pointing to the nearest pod, and an audio cue indicating what type of enemy. You'll also get random other audio cues along the way, some of which can be very useful for gauging distance, or likely location (for instance if you hear doors slamming, glass breaking, etc.)

Another couple turns go by, and we catch sight of the UFO. I don't actually want to breach it yet, I'd prefer to take out any patrolling enemies outside before taking on the Outsider, so after this, I'll start skirting wide to the left, trying to avoid line of side on the doors and hull breaches.

I'm almost instantly glad of my choice when the next audio cue alerts me to a roaming pod of drones outside the UFO.

In addition, at the start of your turn there's a chance for a directional audio cue for meld canisters, but I'm a little less familiar on how and when those are triggered, and if your camera angle is wrong you can easily end up missing them entirely. At any rate, this confirms my decision. Even though you still get the meld from any unopened canisters if they haven't expired and you finish the mission, I have my doubts about managing that, so this time I want to actually tap them manually.

I continue advancing until the next audio cue which wants me to head to the UFO. Fuck that noise, I'm still skirting it to look for that roaming pod and the meld.

Speak of the devil, I trigger a pod of three drones on my first move of the turn taking some nice high cover tree.

Axioma falls back a little to the high cover rock and takes a potshot. Drones have a lot of defense while flying and can't be flanked, so I've got to just overwhelm with volume of fire, if possible. Grenades would be another option, but also the whole flying thing means you have to pixel hunt for lucky bounces which are sometimes just impossible.

At any rate, I have the devil's luck, apparently, and do a fair chunk of change to it. I move Jedi one space to the left, but he doesn't have an angle, so I set him to overwatch.

Merc manages a lucky hit, and we're down to two drones, which is amazingly better than I expected.

The rest of my turn is repositioning to high cover, overwatching, and having Ether hunker in low cover. The hunkering indicator is similar to the steady aim one, just much wider, and with a little crossed out eyeball symbol, representing the reduced vision.

Jedi misses his overwatch, but overwatch shots are always taken at an aim penalty anyway, so that's not surprising.

What's important is that he dodges the return fire.

Merc also manages to avoid getting sent to sickbay, so all in all, that's a lot of coin flips going heavily in my favor.

Remember that Wist is my rookie with the best aim, and the plus aim small item, and this hit rate is still atrocious. You need to be pointblanking a flying drone for any hope of reliability with rookies.

Or you know, just roll 40% and 5 on your damage, I guess that works too. Promote that man.

I send Merc in to point blank this, intending to wound the drone and have Jedi take the kill, but apparently she was thirsty this mission, and out for blood. That's the whole pod mopped up, and I didn't even rely on my squaddies. Damn, didn't expect that!

The truth is still out there!

It seems like all the other aliens must be holed up in the UFO, but I can't trust that, so I'm still advancing cautiously on the meld. Meld canisters can make for amazing traps and nasty squad-wipes if not properly respecting the situation.

During the long trek in the direction of the meld, I make sure to cycle my reloads, so I always have at least a few people on overwatch, while the rest are topping up their clips.

Finally, we've spotted it, and it's not even spinning rapidly or pulsing frequently in the audible spectrum, sure signs of a meld about to expire. We've still got plenty of time.

Okay, the goods are in hand, time to regroup, and head back towards the UFO. Maps can have anywhere from 0 to 3 meld canisters, and it's been long enough we would have seen meld cues for the others if they existed.

Looks like the aliens are at the top side of the UFO. Noted.

Found 'em boss. It's a pod of two drones, but I didn't believe it at first, as usually they come in threes or fours, so I thought one was just hiding somewhere out of sight. Anyway, I invoke standard drone procedure, fall into full cover, overwatch, pray.

But Bal, you said Wist had the best aim, why is Merc sporting a 50? THE DRONE LANDED! That's rare, and an amazing opportunity, as it's basically flanked itself for us.

See, I told you Wist could do it.

I had to start rolling poorly eventually. Naturally when a drone lands that means I've used up my good luck, lol.

I didn't want to put Axioma in half cover for this, but I fell prey to the Gambler's fallacy. Luckily it didn't backfire. There's still one drone out there, though, so this could turn out to bite me...

Jedi and Ether overwatch. It's practically pointless to overwatch with Ether, considering shotgun range etc. and I don't think drone AI is smart enough to respect it, because they're mindless robots and dash overwatch 24/7, but I figured why not, maybe it double moves straight at her, right? Could happen. I absolutely did not expect what actually did happen to occur.

The drone makes two one tile moves, accomplishing almost nothing. WTF? Whatever, not looking a gift horse in the mouth.

Potshot season is back in session.

Amazingly, I land some really low odds.

I spend some time inching forward, hunkering, reloading, etc. as at this point I still believed I had one more drone to deal with somewhere.

Apparently a final pod of three drones was patrolling inside the UFO or something, saw Ether hunkered and charged us. Wist made a godlike overwatch shot. That's all rookies accounted for.

Another landing? Yes please.

Axioma missed this, but apparently I didn't save that screencap.

And one drone remains.

It double moves toward hunkered Ether. Do they have a hard-on for her? At least they were respectable length moves this time.

I took quite a few potshots (one hit) before saying "Fuck this, I have a shotgun". I just have nightmares about shotguns and damage resistance, leave me alone.

At this point, I'm confident it's only the Outsider left, but I'm not taking chances, I slowplay the fuck out of this map. Bal and Ether circle around to the top/left of UFO, while Axioma and Jedi circle to the bottom/right, and Wist and Merc stay near the door in front.

To withstand an impact like that, at such a velocity... the materials used in that vessel's hull must be at least an order of magnitude beyond any element we know of.

Having someone take cover against the UFO walls triggers Vahlen to gush about the alien technology.

Balcerzak and Ether have reached their locations, just waiting on the other two.

We're ready.

It's kind of disappointing that after all of that setup, I still manage to bungle the breach, approaching with Merc just sends the Outsider running all the way to the back, and even my positioned guys can't quite reach it to flank and kill. I should maybe have breach with Jedi and tried to make it run the other way I guess.

Shitty breaches are why flashbangs were invented though, so you can't say I wasn't prepared. Flashbangs give severe aim and mobility penalties to affected units. Against outsiders, you're still going to want solid cover though, so I make sure everyone is either line of sighted, or in heavy cover.

Does Jedi die to the 1%?

Not today!

Ether runs and guns for a meaty shotgun crit.

And I let Jedi finish the guy off, with style. You don't want to get into a war of attrition with Outsiders, as in Long War they've been given health regen. Flank them, nade them, do whatever you can to finish them in one turn if at all possible.

Artifacts Recovered:

8 X Drone Wreck

14 X Elerium

20 X Alien Alloys

9 X Weapon Fragment

5 X Meld

2 X UFO Flight Computer (Damaged)

UFO Power Source (Damaged)

Operation Cold Stranger was a roaring success. Obscene levels of luck are making this game look easy, I apologize.

The damaged UFO parts are literally junk, and exist only to make us money. Well, they also exist to make us sad we couldn't recover them intact, I guess.

Two of our birds will be out for quite awhile. Hopefully we get abduction missions until one of them gets repaired...

Full album

Edited January 28, 2016 by Balcerzak

[Jedi]

Wooo go team! And go me for not dying to a 1%.

[Elieson]

So fricken lucky

The interception window actually starts its timer at 7.0s, but it took about 1.5s for our craft to fire the first shot. I'm not sure precisely what the firing rates are, so often I end up leaving my craft in for the last second or two for no payout, and sometimes additional damage for longer repairs. (Spoiler, this is what happens to Hammer here.)

I assume the 1.5 seconds is related to your ship approaching to get within Range to initiate fire, coupled with a [lack of a] modifier for the weapon's firing range.

Granted, these weren't snipped from Long War's wiki but it's the principle of explaination here.

In addition, at the start of your turn there's a chance for a directional audio cue for meld canisters, but I'm a little less familiar on how and when those are triggered, and if your camera angle is wrong you can easily end up missing them entirely. At any rate, this confirms my decision. Even though you still get the meld from any unopened canisters if they haven't expired and you finish the mission, I have my doubts about managing that, so this time I want to actually tap them manually.

It's basically, every other turn that there's non-expired Meld, the closest one(s) trigger your audio cue, within like 60 tiles or so (i was messing around in the files and I recall EW with a 60 tile trigger, and I'm pretty sure EW is no different. If there's more than one meld within 40 tiles, they both trigger. I'm 80.2% sure about this.

Also, key point to mention; Units need to stand next to Meld to tap it, but they need to have an active action in order to do so. This makes Assaults with Run and Gun way more helpful for gathering Meld, since they can Yellow Move (a straight up Yellow Move gives you +1 to movement, and +10 Defense i believe), and since you have actions available, you can tap a Meld canister after this. No other classes can really do this, and need to otherwise Bluemove into the canister's adjacency.

The drone makes two one tile moves, accomplishing almost nothing. WTF? Whatever, not looking a gift horse in the mouth.

One-tile moves don't trigger overwatch, at least

[Nimbostratus]

You are making this look so easy. XD

(btw, please name a soldier after me, if you haven't already <3)

[TheMoniker]

For being Ironman Impossible, I'm seeing a very small amount of horrible death and struggling. I'm sure the pain will come soon.

[Elieson]

Just wait until Floaters and Thin Men

Thin men miss? Ha!

[Moblin Major General]

This is far more complicated than the board game. Best of luck to you, because I know that XCOM is unforgiving in all of its forms.

[Balcerzak]

We have Heavy abductions. Heavy scares me, that's a lot of pods for a squad this green.

I decide to lean on my specialists, finally choosing the Gunner promotion for Marthur. I feel like supression might come in handy.

I'm also bringing Axioma and Ether, even though they're fatigued. As far as gear, I don't think I make any choices that are too startling. Marthur is carrying a smoke, because my Gunners are often my core, and should be able to hit who I need covered.

Then it's time to start off Operation Flying Grave. The briefing said to expect contact shortly after touching down.

It wasn't lying.

I don't want him moving forward to new cover, and if I'm lucky, I can start his car on fire. More or less a successful toss.

I forgot the walls of this building are apparently paper before the Sectoids' plasma pistols, but Ether dodges the fire regardless.

Elie also exhibits good luck.

I'd moved Elie back, opening up more space on the corner. The plan was for Marthur to pin it against the burning car with suppresion, but since I had a shot and nothing to do, I had Elie take it. He delivered.

My plan to take the roof doesn't go as smoothly as I'd prefer.

I take a risky run an gun with Ether, leaving them out of cover.

A mix of hunker and overwatch, hopefully will keep me safe from the 4 'toids still running around.

Fucking rookies can't hit for anything.

Ether takes her lickin' and keeps on ticking, no panic, thankfully.

Fuck aliens having cover. I won't allow it.

Fucking rookies, man. I'm telling you.

Ether takes cover and takes lives.

My ground troops are withdrawing to where they can also climb to the roof, and a second section of wall goes down to plasma pistol fire. Thankfully there's still half cover desks Elie can duck behind...

Excellen is not as lucky, but importantly keeps frosty and doesn't panic.

I waste a flashbang here because I wasn't sure I could deal with that one.

Ether retreats back to the rookie pack and gets healed up, nearly to full.

And this is why the flashbang was a waste. Oh well. I probably shouldn't have even gone for it, as even flashbanged it could have moved to have a good flank on Excellen, but at least the roof is clear for now.

Oh for fucks sake, that's the last thing I need, seven more sectoids... holy shit. That's what, nine total now running around? Alien Activity phase is now an orgy of mind melds. That fucking path was clear last turn too, I'm pretty sure. Goddamn.

Thankfully Marthur is able to take the heavy cover at the corner of the truck, hopefully keeping their attention and meaning they won't crawl up to the roof...

There's meld on the map, but fat fucking chance I'm going for it in this predicament.

I was hoping for an angle on the closer 'toid, because I had my Engie with a shotgun (hey it promised close quarters, I was trying to prepare for it). RN Jesus was on my side, though.

Commander! You may want to instruct your men to exercise restraint when using explosives... while certainly effective at killing aliens, they also destroy the artifacts we're hoping to recover from the bodies. Just something to consider.

Neither Ether, nor Elie could get an angle on that sectoid either, despite there being a flanking indicator flashing as they made the run across. I decide that it just needs to die, and fuck the consequences, so I throw the only AP grenade I brought. It rolls max damage, I think, and I assure Vahlen that my men are exercising exactly the right level of restraint, given the circumstances.

Excellen has a medpack, but I'm too paranoid about more aliens climbing up that pipe, so she's on pretty much permanent overwatch at her current location.

Mindfray is a stacking debuff that decreases Will, Mobilty, and Aim, as well as inflicting 1 point of damage. Axioma doesn't panic at least.

I take the riskier shot with Ether, our more experienced troop. Elie also didn't have an angle, so that helped with the decision.

This is the second sectoid to die in this exact location.

After three consecuitve misses, Axioma (still Mindfrayed, mind you) manages to take out a third at the same place. Marthur was standing by to throw smoke in case everybody missed. I probably should have thrown it anyway, considering they keep lining up at that car, but they've been relying more on mental fuckery than shooting so far, thanks to elevation.

I caught sight of a cheeky bastard trying to sneak around behind us and blew up his cover, intending on feeding him to Destiny Hero, but I forgot they were out of ammo, so Marthur takes a guaranteed kill. Everyone else is also low on ammo, so it's pretty much reloads all around, except Exellen, still guarding that pipe.

While advancing to prepare for a possible future drop-down, Axioma spots a flanked 'toid. You know what they say, you miss 100% of the 20% shots you don't take. Cannot fucking believe my luck, this is amazing, considering I was kicking myself for her having a shotgun at that moment.

Hunkering on the roof was a good idea this time. Sadly I wasn't paying attention, and missed the fact that the shot destroyed the guardrail... (totally not foreshadowing.)

If I was paying attention, I would have noticed that my choice to park Marthur right at the top of the pipe may have saved lives.

Axioma and Destiny Hero advance. There's three alive, drop-downs are definitely on the table as possible options, so I'm looking to try to exploit some opportunities if I can find them.

I try to set another car on fire. Axioma is making good use of her grenades so far. Very thankful I had an Engie on this mission.

Curiously enough, this triggered an audio cue, from a seemingly very odd angle. I wish I'd respected it more than the curious pan back and forth I gave it.

Oh you cheeky fucker, you're not even in cover, what are you doing?

Eat shit and die.

"Ether-Senpai," Excellen squeezes out between ragged breaths, clutching her bleeding side tghtly, in hopes that the more experienced soldier doesn't notice. "I've been saving this medpack for you, here, let me fix you up!"

More cues. With only two remaining, they've stopped Mindmeld orgies, so I can't hunt for ethertrails anymore...

That's a kill for each rookie, although at this point, I'd forgotten Excellen had one and was still gunning to give her one.

Whoa, I can't see you, but you can see me, huh? I see you want to play that game with me XCOM. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

There he is. Er, was.

Be still my heart, the adrenaline times are over now.

Axioma suffers an exhaustion wound, and Ether's fatigue exacerbates the one bar of actual health damage incurred. With Excellen, that makes three troops finally in sick bay.

13 X Sectoid Corpse

13 X Weapon Fragment

2 X Meld

We got some pity Meld at least, and only one body/fragment lost to explosives. Not bad at all.

The mission gave us enough cash to get the Sat Uplink started constructing just in time.

Commander, I realize our troops have to put their own survival first, but every alien we use explosives against is one less opportunity to recover new artifacts.

Oh please, Vahlen. My track record for explosives has been nothing but commendable. Shove it.

Finally giving you guys a shot of the barracks now that I don't have to hide people who haven't arrived yet.

I'm still having a hard time grasping what it is the aliens are hoping to accomplish here. Are they studying us? Why abduct humans seemingly at random? There must be a pattern that we haven't established yet.

You find an answer to that, Vahlen, and I'm all ears.

album

[Excellen Browning]

Shot takan, pipe guardan, killan, healan. I had a pretty good first mission, methinks. I also notice I have the most movement out of everyone. Go me!

[Jedi]

Some slight injuries, but still seemingly smooth!

[Elieson]

Curious to see where this goes, considering you've got exactly 0 of each.

Also thanks wiggy XCOM glitches. I swear this game's equally famous for bad luck as it is for bad bugs

[Nimbostratus]

Seriously, fuck off, Vahlen. Even in vanilla Ironman Impossible, being stingy with explosives is a horrible idea. Even moreso in Long War, I'd imagine.

Edited February 9, 2016 by Nimbostratus

[IGdood]

Meanwhile Tygan gives 0 shits

[Balcerzak]

[spoiler=it gets dicey here, part 1]

In Long War, during March, the Aliens send an Overseer to go take over a country and establish an alien base there, causing an instant defection from the council. Asia wasn't even close on my radar for continents to move into, so this is a good sign.

We get another abduction mission, medium this time. I decide to wait a few hours because some of my men are just coming off fatigue and I'd rather go in with specialists to get them some more XP and maybe get a real squad sooner than later. I'll level rookies on UFOs if I can. That's the plan anyway.

Snowy becomes a scout, Merc a sniper, Bal an Engie, and Wist a medic.

I take Life and The End, even though they're rookies because they already have a mission under their belts anyway. Then Operation Frozen Fall sets down. It's the construction scaffold park place thing, which is a decent Urban Large structure, espeically given I have a couple of long-range rifles (my hand was forced, given my available troops, even if it wasn't ideal). The only thing that might have been better for me would have been the subway, but I digress.

We set down in the shitty LZ, and get contact right off the bat. Full disclaimer now, do not take how I play this mission as a guide on how to XCOM. I fuck up all over the place, starting here. It must have been an off-day, as the mission after this I also really screw up on. I mean, part of it is shitty luck, but I didn't do myself any favors.

Even though this shot connects, I probably should never have taken it. Even though that would leave the sniper useless this turn, I should have put her in cover.

I do take out the drone she plinked though, and that's something.

I get close to, but don't seal the deal on taking out a second.

I hunkered Snowy, hoping he'd draw the drone fire, but apparently that's not how drone AI works.

The second pod was probably going to patrol into me anyway, part of the reason this is such a shitty LZ. We're stuck in a cross-fire boys, this is not shaping up well.

Apparently despite my hopes, the drones could move far enough forward to get a shot on Merc. This is why I should have put her in cover... Oops. A crazy dodge here, but there's still another drone to come.

Yup, that hurts! Two crazy misses was never going to happen, especially not when the enemy is taking shots.

There's meld on this map, but with two pods it's gonna be rough, if even possible. Definitely not a priority.

At this point, I figured I was too deep in shit to play it safe, I had to go balls to the wall to have a shot.

Life can't aim for shit apparently, I guess it cancels out Merc's coinflips.

The End cleans up.

Takes another pair of shots to clean up the last of the original pod.

In retrospect, this may have been the wrong call, but at the moment it made sense. Throw some smoke to try to increase survivability. Healing Merc is probably what I should have done, but if the drones triple teamed anyone else in low cover, shit could have gone just as badly.

Life dodges one shot, and wasn't even in the smoke zone, lol. This was the second drone to move, as the first took a doublemove.

Welp! It could have been worse. She could have staight up died and the squad could have chain panicked. Still a terrible start to what promises to be a rocky mission.

Still in crisis mode, I'm still balls to the wall. Bal goes in with the sawn-off shotgun. And fails to secure the kill! The drones have already bumped up their DR rating, either that or the shotgun is trolling me. You remember how I was taking potshots in that UFO mission instead of just having Ether shotgun it, this is what I was afraid of!

Life cleans up, thankfull not missing this one.

Snowy's sawn-off goes a little smoother, but we're still left with one drone roving, and only two units to act...

I might be out of the woods?!

Hahahahaha, who am I kidding? Someone's getting shot again, fuck.

It's Snowy. I guess that's okay? The meld is still calling, but hahahahaha, right.

I'm not rolling the dice anymore, I don't know how long it takes for a man to bleed out because it's random and they don't show you. I'm pretty sure you have one guaranteed turn, but after that it's anyone's guess.

Small comfort, but the drone landed, meaning it's for sure dead now. It's time to regroup, reload, and try to figure out shit out at this point.

There's apparently a second meld on this map, way off in the distance.

Wist patches up Snowy with dose 2 of his 3 medkit uses. Thanks be to medic, I guess. Merc had the other kit, if memory serves, lmao, it always ends up that way.

We get an audio cue, telling us little we didn't know, because based on the map design it pretty much has to be that direction. Still, it's useful to have.

But a battle scanner provides us more information. You can see a pod at the far end of the scanner range.

The first meld just expired this turn, I saw it collapse right in front of me. RIP.

The pod I caught can be seen moving backwards, and a new pod moves forward to take their place. That's probably all the enemy's left for a moderate, so it's just a matter of managing them. Highly unlikely to get that far meld deep in their control. Also with so many drones and no foot units, basically all of Bal's grenades are useless, and the flashbang is 100% dead weight. Sigh...

The pod I tagged initially seems to be two drones continuing to patrol away from us, while the new pod comes close enough to see Bal and activate. I probably should have kept hidden, but the battle scanner was on its last turn of free info, and letting them slip into complete unknown for a chance at more time to position might not have paid off. I did have Snowy at the ready with Steady Aim, but there ended up being no angle to shot them with. Sigh...

I don't really know what to do, so I put a bunch of guys in hunkered low cover. Hopefully they'll move somewhere I can converge on so I can wipe them out.

The unactivated pod for some reason still has my camera follow them around. Battle scanner bug ahoy. They're right on the edge of vision, gotta be careful.

One double-move and one dodge later, we find that both of the drones have moved in the shittiest direction possible.

Missing 40%s, expected.

Wist rolls big though, so I'm really lucky there. My other troops are basically repositioning and falling back as they can.

Well, fuck, that patrolling pod kept coming right for us and spotted Snowy.

Wist dodges return fire.

Wait, what the fuck, where did this drone come from? Was it like, a detached part of that patrolling pod just very far away from its buddies? I never asked for this! Fuck!

The Marksman Rifle allows Snowy to snipe after moving, which allows for some flexibility.

Here I make an absolute rookie mistake of not focusing my fire. I don't know what I was thinking...

I'm unable to seal the deal on it, and leave Life on Overwatch because I didn't know where to put them.

The fresh pod steals the shot, but it's not like it was going to hit anyway.

Apparently though Life channels the awesome power of missing shots and infect the enemy with it, so I guess I'm okay with that?

This is why you never split targets with drones. FML, wasted effort.

THAT WAS 80%!!! I'D RATHER YOU HAD TAKEN THAT ENEMY SHOT IF IT MEANT YOU WOULD MAKE THIS ONE!!!

[Balcerzak]

[spoiler=it gets dicey here, part 2]

I was still angry, so I fired with Snowy before really thinking things through here. Oops.

FUCK! IT'S EVEN INFECTED WIST!

I'm really hard up for options, I need it dead, and if Bal ends up taking bullets for it, so be it.

Finally, things are starting to go right again, only two drones left.

Oh for the love of fuck, Balcer was right in front of you. You didn't have line of sight on Snowy, how did you even know to fly over and gib them, fuck you XCOM. At least it has the decency to crit wound instead of kill, and my men all make their panic rolls, I guess...

Good, good, now just one more.

Please? Anyone?

Wist needs to reload, and Merc and Snowy aren't in fighting shape, so I guess that's a no...

46% when Wist is in full cover, this is a shit sandwich. At least the second one double-moves right next to him.

This is a fucking joke, right?

Whooo, deep breaths. We're almost through this. Unfortunately Life and The End are empy and need to reload.

Raise your hands if you didn't see that coming.

I swear to god I am being trolled so hard right now. A miss would have been acceptable, this damage roll though... Balc is completely empty, both main and side-arm. It's all down to Wist and his final shot.

It's good!

Bradford, you have a very loose definition of "successful operation".

I desperately need more Tacticals, so I guess it's okay?

The loot isn't anything to shake a stick at either.

Commander, if we don't address the lack of available scientists in the lab soon, we run the risk of falling behind on our research.

Believe me babe, I want more of them in there just as bad as you do.

Jedi just came off the fatigue bench, and other than that I believe it's rookies all the way down.

Fuck meld, it's earlygame and I need the money.

This means I can get my NA full coverage within the first week of April to buy some more birds and get them in the sky ASAP. That's easily worth the sacrificed meld, in my opinion. Who knows when my next mission (read cash influx) will come, no point gambling on something as crucial as slightly more reliable air game.

album

Edited February 9, 2016 by Balcerzak

[Elieson]

God Damn

That was a rough map. Welcome to XCOM, baby

It was only a matter of time until the game stopped being gracious to you

[Balcerzak]

And now, an episode you won't want to miss...

[spoiler=part 1]

Well, this didn't take long, we have another UFO inbound.

I send up the bird equipped with Stingrays first, as I trust it more to soften a UFO than to seal the deal. I could be wrong on that assessment, but it only managed to actually land one shot before I pulled it out.

Scuba somehow managed to shoot it down without taking damage. I'm considerably impressed.

I make Jedi a Sniper, and I bring along a fatigued Balcerzak. I'd contemplated brining Life, but they're my only non-sickbay Assault at the moment, and exhausting them might leave me without an Assault for the Council Mission, which might be a bomb disposal mission. Now, perhaps I made a severe mistake here, it's easy to play "what ifs" after the fact, especially considering the Assault would have served me much better than a Sniper on an Urban Block setting. But Jedi was my only non-fatigued non-Rookie, so... I dunno. Judge me, I guess?

Operation Broken Pipe takes place on a map which I don't actually have a lot of experience with. This leads me to take it a bit slower and safer than I might otherwise have.

We get our first audio cue pretty quickly.

The next round also shows us a Meld cue. They're both in same direction, which is always worrying, but nothing we can do here.

More audio cues as I try to creep up into a defensible-ish position.

The aliens patrol into me, and the whistler somehow lands his overwatch, then even more amazingly, eclipse finishes the job, downing the drone in the mixed pod, and leaving me with just two sectoids roaming free.

After they scattered for cover, the sectoids aren't really in line of sight, and we get a little more Meld cue going on.

While advancing to get an angle, I surprise another pod. That's XCOM for ya, baby!

A couple of psi attacks later, eclipse has lost their shit. I guess I can't fault, but it would've been nice if I could act with a full squad next turn...

Holy shit, my reaction fire is on point today. Heck, if the aliens hadn't upgraded sectoid health already, that would have been a OHKO.

Apparently the corner point on this car has buggy LOS, Cynthia can't fire from her new position, even though it looked like a perfectly good flank.

izmos manages to clean up, though.

Unfortunately my grenade wasn't good enough to eliminate the cover. Can't wait for Sapper perk... or alien grenades.

Jedi takes a shot through squadsight (indicated by the yellow crosshairs) and manages to connect.

Whistler connects another overwatch, damn, so many 4s...

Okay, I admit, I was relying too much on half-cover and was bound to get burned sooner or later.

Well, you can't hit all your reaction shots.

Thankfully that doesn't cause izmos to lose their life.

A third pod patrols into us, holy fuck, time to bunker down... So we're now dealing with, what, 1 drone and 6 sectoids?

Looks like there's a second meld behind the UFO? I don't think getting to it will be possible with all these activations.

Jedi misses a coin flip, but there wasn't anything better to do, he's out of sight of the enemy so I don't feel like I need to put him in better cover just yet.

I'm more upset with Cynthia missing this flank, but rookies gonna rook sometimes.

I change my focus to the drone because it's landed, and because it's definitely going to charge my ranks, run any overwatch, and try to flank and kill me, whereas the sectoids might fall back on psi-power hoodoo voodoo if I'm lucky, or at least hide behind cover at longer range.

Balcerzak had to climb a pipe to get a position that even had half cover and a decent shot. Thankfully the 90% connected.

Then, since I know I'm completely pushin my luck in all this half cover, I have whistler drop a smoke on everyone that can fit into the sphere. Only Jedi and Balcerzak are left out, but they're hopefully relatively safer.

I was pissing my pants at that hitrate until I reread that it was a Mindfray. I can live with that, he was planning on falling back off that roof into full cover next turn anyway.

Cue the psychic bullshit. Hilariously, izmos fails the panic then suceeds against two mindfrays. I'll definitely take that over the reverse, though, because one mindfray could have led to a chain where with progressively weaker will they just get mindfrayed to death.

The aliens are starting to get close enough that I should get a little concerned about Jedi's half cover position, but I'm still of the mind that I need to push harder on the offense than falling back. It pays off with a cinematic kill shot.

Whistler also manages to clean up one of the many wounded 'toids I hadn't been able to seal the deal on.

Apparently I've killed enough of them their morale is breaking, as they are starting to turn tail and run.

Sadly I can't cash in on that.

We dodge some fire, I think that was even a flank on whistler, pretty sure this was the last round of smoke effect, that must have been what saved my bacon.

I'm not sure why that cover is indestructible, but I give it a try anyway. It's more DPS than a reload anyway. I do reload Cynthia and whistler though, after moving them to better cover, trying to get sort of a staggered reload going on amongst the squad.

Jedi connects another shot, I think he's 3 for 4 now?

That scares it off, but one of the others sticks around to fire, and another goes on overwatch. Apparently izmos is close enough that range bonus is making up for full cover, I'll have to keep that in mind and get them to safety.

I missed every fucking shot this round, holy shit.

Now that his pistol odds on izmos are shit, they use mindfray. fml

Oh shit, time to fall back now, they're shooting at my sniper.

The misses continue, holy fuck.

Even XCOM can't make you miss a 100%

The rest of the aliens have retreated, which gives me time to regroup and reload, I also get some audio cues because of it.

Whistler uses the medpack he has on izmos during the down time as well.

I don't want to go in too deep yet, so I'm trying to take it slow. I already saw the meld expire before my eyes, after all.

[Balcerzak]

[spoiler=part 2]

One of the sectoids pops his head out and lays down suppressing fire.

I'm trying to save the grenades for the Outside still, so I'm taking shots instead.

Another round of abject failure.

I blow flashbang, I wish I didn't have to do it, because again, I was worried about the Outsider, but I'll still have one, so hopefully it will be okay.

I don't know if it was necessary, but it made me feel better.

Finally we get a flank on the bugger and nail him to the wall.

There's still sectoids that have run away, and we get another cue about them. Not only that, but it walks into view, sees XCOM, pisses its pants, and runs away back into the fog.

Some repositioning and some height advantage allows us to take it out.

The final sectoid does the same thing as its recently departed brethren.

I spend some time carefully advancing on it.

It's taken out by tagteam reaction fire.

Now is the long boring advance, trying to set up a breach. This UFO looks terrible for breaching, tbfh.

I fuck things up brilliantly, and the Outsider runs the wrong way. I'm absolutely terrified. Without an Assault, there's no way I can close the distance and kill it, I have to fall back.

I took positions in the middle of 3-long wall segments, blocking line of sight and he double-moves out of the UFO after me. This is a nightmare, you never want this to happen.

My team on the far side of the UFO scrambles to get close enough to assist, and my team on the near side continues to frantically fall back to the best cover they can find.

I didn't know if it overwatched, so I had to take a one-space step to peer out around the corner, unfortunately limiting my future options. It's still chasing me.

This seemed like nice, safe cover. I actually thought that it would be safe, and line of sight blocked, but it turns out I misunderstood some of how stepping out works. I haven't really explained it, but when your men are in cover, they can step out into an adjacent tile to take their shot, and they are considered actively doing so for the purposes of enemies taking shots at them. I mistakenly believed you only stepped out from cover when it was an open, non-cover spot next to you, and that you didn't step from full cover to half cover, but apparently this was wrong, and the consequences were bitter and painful. I should have had Cynthia take one of the middle positions along the wall instead. I am a shitty commander, and my soldiers deserved better. Now, you might wonder why I'm suddenly giving you a lecture on what appears to be one of the perfectly ordinary moves I don't usually paste from the full album of images into the highlights spoiler reel. (More realisitcally you probably all have some sinking sense of what is about to come...)

From long distance, the Outsider has a 40% shot on my soldier in full cover. It's not even a crit and it does 7 damage (one of which was reduced because of the full cover). Poor Cynthia didn't even have a chance because I fucked up the breach on this ridiculous UFO, and I didn't make certain she was either hunkered or line-of-sighted. Even worse, after the fact since the wall they'd been taking cover against had been disintegrated by the plasma, for the week or so until I reviewed the footage I thought I'd just 100% fucked up and left her not in cover at all some how. I only feel marginally better that my fuck up was not quite that collosal.

I'm a little distraught now, perhaps operating in panic mode under pressure to clean up and get out without anything worse happening to my boys, so I toss the flashbang. I probably should have done so from a different spot so somebody could have used this flank position, but I wasn't thinking clearly I guess.

I roll minimum fucking damage on a perfectly centered AP grenade.

I miss an 85% flank shot.

Instead of bolting for cover the Outsider charges my man and critically wounds them (from full health) with another 7 damage shot.

The Outsider regens all the health lost from the grenade.

Things are finally starting to turn back to my favor, but too little, too late.

I can't quite get in range with anyone else to have a decent shot that won't get them killed, so I overwatch to try to scare it. I probably should have grenaded first? If I didn't roll piss poor again, eclipse's crit would have killed it, but at this point I don't want to risk it.

Of course my reaction fire misses.

Even flashbanged the Outsider has enough mobility to go pretty damn far with a double move, or maybe disorient wears off quicker than a full two rounds.

eclipse can't get the flank, so unloads an HE to demolish the cover.

izmos finishes the job.

If this is what "Acceptable" feels like, I can honestly say I never want to experience "Terrible".

Miraculously my wound times rolled pretty decently. Sadly, that's another Tactical in the sick bay for a long long time.

7 X Sectoid Corpse

2 X Drone Wreck

8 X Elerium

13 X Alien Alloys

10 X Weapon Fragment

Meld

2 X UFO Flight Computer (Damaged)

UFO Power Source (Damaged)

This is trash tier loot for a UFO salvage, imo. I almost got more alloys and elerium on that last disaster abduction. I immediately sell the useless junk.

The state of our barracks is pretty grim. I know for sure we have one council mission left in March, and I wouldn't be surprised with another abduction. Unless it's near the end of the month, I won't be able to sortie enough birds to reasonably take down a UFO and would have to pass on that. Hopefully we can get a little bit of breathing time. We still have a lot of rooks that need to be trained up too.

RIP you glorious motherfucker. You done us all proud, and are an eternal monument to never ever fucking underestimate an Outsider.

Here's what our schedule looks like before I pick things back up.

album link

[eclipse]

RIP Cynthia.

I'm glad I didn't mass-murder everyone else when I went nuts!

[Jedi]

Oh dear, the first loss.

Looks like its getting quite intense, those fire rates look finicky sometimes.