Ok... I have an ethereal terror mission, and I think that I'll skip it. Basically, land there, and first turn, abort for score of Zero.

Why?

I came to this decision because I've tried playing it through, and out of my squad of 10 soldiers, I never come back with more than 6. Now, if they were 4 dead rookies, I could live with it. But when one, two, three, or all four of the dead are vets, well, I get angry.

So, I've played it through, and here's my question.

If your units are under Alien Control, and you stun them, then kill the last Alien, do they still have Alien flags on them, or since they are stunned, they become neutral?

Ethereal controls soldier, use Small Launcher and stun soldier, then kill ethereal. Is the solder MIA or back on your team?

Thanks.

I think if you stun him, end your turn, then on your next turn kill the last etheral your soilder should be listed as on your team.

Interesting scenario. I guess I'll give it a go and see what I can turn up with. Never really thought about those that were unconscious.

By the way, aborting the terror site will not cost you 0 points. It'll be negative from all the civilians you abandoned.

You mentioned before that you had a sectoid leader. It might be prudent to hold back on the ethereal missions and make up for the lost points via other means until you can screen your troops for their psi-strength stats. If you've got an Avenger, you could start using large numbers of laser and plasma HWPs. Compliment them with stun bombs to easily take on those pesky sectopods. But I suppose that's probably going a little too far for this temporary setback.

- NKF

It's worth mentioning that the latest version of XCOMUTIL, 9.3, adds a feature that might be of help. It reads on the website as:

- Recovery of MIAs when you win a battle

Sounds promising. I haven't tested it out myself yet.

*lurking mode off*

MIA if the soldier is still unconscious by the end or the mission, or if you wake him up and don't wait a turn before killing the ethereal and ending the mission.

*lurking mode on*

I don't know how this happened, by hey, I'm really glad.

I kept replaying that mission because I would lose too many soldiers. I had saved with the skyranger basically right next to it before landing, so it was the perfect spot. I figured after a few tries that running out of the skyranger really fast doesn't work when you don't have psi, vs Ethereals. What does work, however, is arming the first two people in the 'Ranger with blaster launchers, and killing any alien that moves within field of vision for a turn or two. Then, since one of my 80 TU people was holding the launcher, they could blast, reload, take like 2 steps, then kneel. So, I let this soldier (LowBrave 7 is her name, heh) out of the 'Ranger, and basically, I leap-frogged ALL of my units out of the ranger under the cover of one of my two blaster launchers. One of my soldiers got controlled for one turn, but I killed like 5 Sectopods and 10 Ethereals with about 8 Blaster Bombs :bomber: and probably a single Laser Rifle hit and a single Heavy Plasma hit. I was almost amazed, but since I've replayed this mission so many times, I found out that the Ethereals love to camp behind the Sectopods, so by killing a 'Pod with a BB, I would usually get one or two Ethereals with it. :devil: They were doing my "Battle by pairs" thing, so every BB took out at least 2 aliens. Of course, I did kill 2 civilians with the blast radius, and the Ethereals got 5 kills while I was still getting out of the Skyranger, but I lost NO ONE to this terror mission. I am indeed happy to have such skilled Blaster Launcher users.

PH34R T3H B145T3R B0|v|bZZZZ~~ LOlOLOLOLololOL gg thX~~
(Contextual Translation for non-1337 folk: Fear the Blaster Bombs! Haha! I win, thanks for wasting my time. Literal Translation: Fear the Blaster Bomb! LOL Good Game Thanks.)

But I'm still wondering about the alien flags on an unconscious soldier thing...

Hah, it's amazing. The only chance I get to test this out and I can't stun the mind controlled soldier with stun bombs. Even when I purposely edited the soldier's max and current health down to 1/1, and all the armour down to 0. Even when I shot the bombs point blank and almost knocked the shooter out with his own bombs.

Come to think of it -- can you stun a mind controlled soldier?

Doh, I forgot about the stun-rods.

- NKF

Man, NKF's soldiers get all the cushy jobs...
"How do you feel now?" "ED...NOT...STUNNED. ED...HAS...BRUISE...FROM...STUN...BOMB." "OK, Jurgen, go fetch the backup Sectoid and a stun rod and we'll try again. Ed, take off your pants."

Coincidentally, British police have now been issued Tasers. It was on the news yesterday.

I thinkit still counts as the aliens.(MIA)

There are no coincidences on this world. If you spot an orange robed figure on the middle of the crowd remember to run like hell....

I personnaly hate mutons more than etherials

Right, got it working this time.

Soldiers under the influence of mind control, if stunned, still go MIA. However, you don't get penalised for losing them (the game doesn't even mention this in the debriefing).

The soldier simply vanishes.

Look on the bright side though. Because of the soldier's inability to cope with psionics, you're bound to fire that soldier anyway, which costs about the same.

You will lose any armour the soldier was wearing. This is the same as firing soldiers without removing their armour first.

- NKF

I find soldiers are mind controlled till end of turn. If any troops are mind controlled on X turn, don't end the game on that turn! Wait till the attacks back off. The best defense is mind control, see if you can get a nice smart troop and mind control each etheral as you come to them. That way, they don't get to mind control in the first place.

That's the right one BB that's what I do when it happens, the only bad thing is when it happens before you get mind control technology, in that case what I usually do is trying to lure the alien into doing something else than controlling my soldier; one time I was so unlucky that the soldier that was trying to lure the alien was also psi-weak so it got controlled too, but eventually it won't be able to control all those soldiers...

I once saw it where an enemy controlled one of my units and then made him use what seemed to be the "bash" command. :dontgetit: