Thought I'd share this little story even thought it'll probably be infinately less fun reading it than actually playing it...

Anyway.
It's July of 1999 and things are looking dicey for X-COM.
Despite having four bases providing decent global coverage, enough alien troublemakers have slipped through with the result of both the US and Canada withdrawing from the project taking with them a large chunk of our funding.

The cause of this unfortunate turn of events was an unlikely fluke: Only now (July) have we managed to recover an intact power source or alien fuel, meaning that we simply haven't been able to field anything more advanced than our laser weapons, so the larger UFOs can fly with impunity wherever they like.
And as our technicians are still stumped by these funny alien guns, we've recently been struggling to keep on top of recovery and terror missions as these green armoured hulk-things seem to be largely resistant to our weapons, much to the frustration of our commanders.

So far we've detected seven enemy bases, but due to one aborted (and chaos strewn) attempt at an incursion we daren't try again until we have at least some clue how they seem to be able to turn our soldiers against themselves.
Again our scientists have drawn a blank on the matter, while the aliens make good on thier advantage with constant raids which we can only repel with some difficulty thus further depleting our already dwindling resources.
The (remaining) funding nations however remain adamant with thier continued policy of reducing funding until they see an improvment in our performance.

----------------------

This has to be the funnest game I've had yet.
I've deliberately not researched the Plasma weapons just for giggles, however the not getting Elerium for the first six months was unexpected (and somewhat unlucky) and has made things interesting to say the least...
Also, I've not seen a psi capable alien since my first base defence where I had to kill them all as the only units I could control reliably were the HWPs.
And having to 'gang up' on UFOs with missile armed interceptors is expensive - its a shame your science guys can't come up with some way of armouring fighters with funky alloys

***********************
* FLASH TRANSMISSION *
***********************

DATE: 17 JUL 1999
ORIG: US Oupost [LocRef - Topeka]
DEST: XCMD EUR

*** NOTE - ORIGIN TRANSMISSION DISRUPTED ***

MESSAGE READS
---------------------------------

We a_e under a_ta_k.
Flo__r _aide_s us_ng str_ng_ miss_les, en_ire squa_ lost.
Engi_e_rs are atte_pt_ng to s_uttl_ the _ase, b_t we ha_e lit_le t.........

*** NOTE - ORIGIN TRASMISSION TERMINATED ***
*** NOTE - CARRIER SIGNAL TERMINATED ***



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Lol
My first encounter this game with blasters, and it was an ignominious defeat
Lost:
10 men
4 tanks
2 craft
Ah well...

For, um, what it's worth, next time stick to the sides of corridors, don't group your men, and above all DUCK!

It would have helped if I did'nt have to dig through a wall to get into the hangars, I had to use all my men to bore though the dirt by passing round the 2 hv. lasers I had =/
The turn after I broke down the final wall my guys saw a group of floaters doing floaty things just outside the hole, so I did the decent thing and flung a large rocket at them bagging 5 floaters and a reaper in one hit

The next turn saw a purple blur come sailing through the hole which killed 9 of my 10 men and 2 of the HWPs.
That last guy then died due to a fatal wound leaving a rocket tank and a laser tank to get trashed as soon as they tried to climb out of the debris.

Never played UFO on superhuman before

That's why I play the base defense missions defensively. Hide everyone in the small rooms, poke their heads out every turn and return to the room. It's not full proof, but much better than a frontal assault.

Heck... That wasn't a frontal assault, it was a mining operation.
I could have gone looking for gems or something, I felt like I was playing Dwarf Fortress not fighting alien hordes =P

The little rooms and HWP closets are probably the safest places to end your turn if you haven't yet taken down the alien carrying the blaster during your initial shelling of the hangar with rockets. I often find base defense ends up resembling a game of whack-a-mole. Granted the moles are armed.

You had to dig through walls? That would be the base disjoint bug. A fencepost error where the game falls short and never gets to knock out the walls for modules built along the eastern and southern edge of the map. Just one of the squillions of minor bugs in the game.

You can check the handy-dandy illustration on the wiki's known bugs section for a way to work around, avoid or even use the bug work to your advantage.

- NKF

Yea, that's the one.
I had my only access route down the right hand side of the base, and all of them I had to dig out to free the units.