I was playing on UFO the other day, a new game, and doing pretty well. Only lost 1 guy so far, all my guys were pretty hot on the firing range picking off pretty much whatever I pointed them off in one shot.

Then second terror mission comes along, I lost an interceptor trying to down the ship, and slightly damaged the other, so I let the ship go, and a bit later it showed up.

So I take my Skyranger over to take a look, and upon landing find I landed on a big open green space, and the map was divided up into 4 by a road. 2 warehouses along the bottom, and on the top right is what I think of as a "slum" house, surrounded by rickity looking fencing etc.

So I deploy and spread out intending to spread my men along the road and camp out picking off the aliens as they appear. Then one of my guys gets panicked, and I relaise this is a sectoid mission, which I;m not too fussed about.

So I'm at the road, moving the last guy into position and all of a sudden he gets shot, not a big thing. I turn my heavy cannon around and take a shot at the cyberdisc that killed him, the shot sails along into the back of the next soldier along, and that set the tone for the entire mission.

I lost more of my men to friendly fire than the aliens. Soldiers being shot in the back all over the place, HE and AP shells flying in every direction except the right one, and all the while grenades and cyberdiscs exploding.

I went in with 14 men, and left with about 6. I left behind me half the map completly devastated. Nearly all the walls on the two warehouses were blown out and the insides were swirling with smoke and burning nicely. There were several large holes in the house, a bit was burning, and the only thing that wasn't damaged was the big green space because there was nothing to damage!

Has to be the worst mission I have played, not for result, but the way I lost my men, and what happened. A real comedy of errors but I enjoyed it, and next time I'm taking more explosives with me

Lost 11 guys to one sectoid on a small scout night mission. Last man standing was badly injured. It was just a mess. No friendly fire incidents just that one sectoid picking me off from all over the place. Sniper on the roof, send a team find out he went out the back door and is no tossing gernades into said building. Pissed me off cause the thing was super smart and carried on wasting my squad with 1 man ambushes.

FOr me is has to be a certain etherial mission, I kept on having my units taken over, they were priming all my grenades! Eventually all of my units got grenaded so everyone was hurt! I eventually won but since all my units were hurt they were taking up all my living quarters.(Except for 1 place) My units were to good to fire! I couldn't do that to my elites!

So I had to hire a single guy and use him on all my missions. He eventually turned up winning two battleships by himself so he was EXTREMELY tough.

Wow, Rattler. I have new respect for that 1990's vintage AI.

my first cydonia mission left me with 4 guys from a full avenger, 2 of them under mind control, i got to the "brain" and then the blaster launcher came out :devil: they killed my commander too... ill show them

My worst brush with incompetence came at the hand of two men with Autocannons loaded with Inciendiary Ammo. It was a nighttime UFO recovery mission, and my men were spaced out in a wide swath, so one grenade would not kill everyone. My ranking soldier was a little ahead of the pack, with two others.

All of a sudden, a grenade lands at my Sergeant's feet, and the whole team dies. Not from alien fire, but from my entire fire support team going bezerk, and lighting a whole screen on fire from their guns. They lit every soldier who survived the grenade on fire, and since I lacked medikits, only one man made it back to the Skyranger, and he was in the hospital for a month.

The lesson here: Never give heavy firepower to people with low bravery. Bad things will occur.

well, I made a mess of a perfectly normal mission, just because I forgot to stand up.

Yes, that's right because I didn't stand up from crouching I managed to mess up an etire mission.

I was about to throw a pack of HE into a small UFO (this was just after I started to replace normal grenades with HE :devil: ) I had already flattened the rest of the batlefield, not because there were aliens there, but out of principle, in fact I knew the last alien was in the ufo, but delieberately blue up every other structure first.

I primed the HE for 1 turn, to the end of x-coms go, then threw it through the door. I thought it had landed where I wanted it.

I end the turn, and just outside the UFO there is a huge explosion, which wipes out half my squad, and they weren't clustured, its just that was how big the explosion was, and when I look in the UFO the alien is still there.

After some thought I realise that because I forgot to stand up the HE hit the fence my guy was behind and the HE fell to their feet. Since then, i have always made sure I have a couple turns to run on the timer when using HE

You might want to make a habit of checking the destination tile for the grenade (if you can see it), or your overhead map (if you can't) periodically when working with grenades. Nasty thing having an armed high-explosive charge drop at your feet

I sometimes have live grenades drop short in wheat fields. Just imagine how difficult finding the live grenade would be if it weren't for the help of the overhead map.

- NKF

My personal favorite mistake with grenades had me trying to pass a live proximity grenade to someone. Don't let those fall short, either.

thtas some funny sh!t, HE is the best thing though, if in doubt lob in HE and hope for the best. allways good!!!

too right, you know when my X-Com unit has passed through an area cus they do more damage than the aliens!

The worst mission I ever had, was a few months ago, when I simply moved a laser tank out of the Skyranger and ended the turn, and a blaster bomb just shot right into the ramp. It was a rookie squad, with no armor. Everyone died. So I reloaded to see what the hell happened, and a couple map squares over in a grass area was a Muton Engineer with a blaster launcher. Damn him.

But the most horrible slaughter I have ever had was a rookie laser squad on an avenger. I had 2 laser tanks, and 18 soldiers with personal armor. This new base I had launched from did not have a hyperwave decoder yet. I knew it was a terror ship, but what I didn't know was that there were Ethereals.

For a while I thought I was doing alright. I had narrowed down my psi-defenders and weaklings from how the Ethereals were attacking. But every other turn I was losing a guy. The Sectopods were annihilating a contingent of guys near the Avenger, while I was trying to get a squad around the UFO to go into the entrance that was not guarded by the Sectopods. Eventually the Ethereals just wiped everyone out on the bottom floor of the terror ship (There was a Sectopod in that little room that overlooks the bottom floor getting opp fire on my guys), and just Mind Controlled the hell out of everyone. I saved the ship with my Laser Tank, who was the last survivor. I had two other guys alive, but every turn they were getting mind blasted. I cursed heavily, and left. And that is why I hate Ethereals.

I know Jelly I would be totally embarrassed if it wasn't for the fact that mission had me on the edge of my chair. It was like watching a movie. Though I still think there was a glitch in the game cause that thing was 1 or 2 steps ahead of me


Had this one mission that I lost big time. Night Snakeman Terrorsite. Otherwise know as The Alamo. Lost every single man. But I put up a hell of a fight with just lasers and rifles. After I lost a few men I realised I wasn't going to win, so I ran the men into that big market building(2 level thing that took up like 1/8th of the map or something) and just set them up to guard every entrance. Dead Snakemen and those things that I can't spell the name so I won't even bother to try where all over the place. Think in the end there were only 2 bad guys left.

What principle was that? The Monty Python principle?

"Mr. Sectoid of 23 Bramley Lane, Cydonia has given us a poser."

My worst mission happened at a downed Terror ship.

My crew of rookies only had laser rifles, regular and proximity grenades. One of each per rookie, and 10 rookies total. The Skyranger was at the upper right corner, while the alien ship was at the lower left. The first turn I saw no aliens, so I set up a defensive perimeter around the ramp. The snipers were by the legs, and the scouts were ready to go. On the right side of the map, I saw two cyberdiscs and a sectoid. The top had one cyberdisc and two sectoids. All four scouts got wasted by reaction fire from the cyberdiscs. The snipers missed their targets. Morale was draining fast...

One by one, I sent each soldier to his doom. The first one got blown up by a cyberdisc explosion on the top. Luckily, that took out one of the sectoids. The other one got sniped in the head.

But the right side was the meat grinder. The second trooper got shot in the back by and overzealous sniper with bad aim. The third one ran out of TUs before she could make it out of alien sight. With only three troopers left, aborting was looking good. But I needed to take down some more aliens to up my score. The fourth managed to survive long enough for the sectoid and one of the cyberdiscs to explode. Then another sectoid came out of the ship and chucked a grenade. The fifth trooper went to scout for the last sniper, which managed to finally take out that blasted cyberdisc. Alas, a sectoid came in from the top side (which I had ignored) and shot the sniper. The last guy had no TUs left, no back up, and got pelted with plasma.

I've made it a point to abort when I have to now, especially with rookies.

THat's a mistake... NEVER EVER leave the msiion in rookies hands.(Well except at the beginning)

One time I was defended a newly established base with rookies. The only weapons I had there at that point were pistols and the mutons attacked. It had about twenty men and they took out about three of them. Click the advance turn and the blaster bombs started to fly. Lost most of the squad in three turns. All that was left were 3-4 panicking rookies. Managed to hide out in an upstairs living quarters for about 20 turns and got 1 or 2 mutons coming up the stairs but eventually ran out of ammo and had to go down stairs to scavenge. The men were killed in the corridor and I lost the base.

That's why I like laser wepons, infinite ammo, really there better than plasma weapons.In the right situations :hmmm:

I have two missions. One being the friendlyfire fest while the other is the most devistating mission ever. Mission one. Its a large scout mission in central US. (farm country). I deploy by spreading out in groups of two (total 14) some taking the upstairs barns and some ducking behind trees, bushwalls, and fences. So i see the scout entrence which is facing a grass field and a barn. I move my troops into a protected spot where they can pick off any aliens leaving.. I got two teams in the downstairs of the barn looking out windows. One team upstairs looking out a window, one behing a fence next to the barn, one around the corner of the UFO and the rest moving into possiton. Alien one exits UFO and walks into field. The trooper behind the fence fires a rocket launcher and it lands two squairs in front of him killing him and his partner. The alien fires wildly and misses the upstairs troops. One of the troops on the ground floor fires a laser round and hits one of the guys hidding around the corner of the ufo killing him. The guy then fires and kills the alien.... Alien two pops out and fires a stun bomb at the barn but misses and retreats back into the ship. Turn alien over. Turn X-COM over. Alien pops back out and fires into barn stunning one. Alien is still standing there. I move the stunned guys partner to pull the sleeping op out of harms way when a proxy bomb the KOed dude had in his pack goes boom killing them both. (proxy bug). The guys around the cornerner pull HE bombs and prime them and one throws it at the alien. it hits the side of the ship and falls one squair in front of him...... The guy upstairs fires at the alien and downs it (not kill stun). end turn BOOM!! the corner team and the alien are no more... Another team arrives and takes cover in the spot where the rocket peeps died. (not much cover but a rocket launcher is there.) Now alien three pops out and kills one of the newly bunkered troops and the other troop fires back killing the alien. The other team that wasn't near the combat site went back to the ship to get a blaster launcher and some bombs. One of them took aim and launched a bomb towards the ship trying to punch a hole in the roof of the ship......... Going good after three way points but it somehow does a 180 above the ship and goes streight for the barn second floor.... Boom one dead and the other in a world of pain.. Alien four pops out and is quickly greated with laser fired bringing an end to the worst x-com battle ever. Mission #2 is more of a summery... Terror site, laser rifles, rookies, blaster boms, snakemen... Two x-com troops dead $80,000, ten snakemen dead (no bodies), 6 chrysalids dead (no bodies), twelve blasterbombs used Free$, 4 civilians dead because of aliens -120 points, 6 dead because of x-com -300 points, Entire battlefield smoking pile of rubble millions of $$$. Feeling of satisfaction for wasting an entire city battlefield and 16 aliens (priceless).

-PSY GUY-
(long isn't it)

Once I had something very annoying, each person fired on reaction fire missing each time resulting in killing another person until I was down to 1 person left, he killed himslef by accendentaly hitting a wall beside him with a rocket launcher. Big mess.