My own list:
Taken a Cryssalid LIVE with a Stun Rifle.
(More to come)

i threw a smoke grenade at an alien once hoping that he wouldn't be able to find his way out cause all my guys nearby were out of ammo...

Does fireing a Blaster Launcher at point blank range count?

Well I had two guys left, both far apart from each other,
The last alien on the map was a chrysalid and it came walking up to my guy with the blaster launcher and stoped right next to him, it didn't turn him into a zombie so I guess it ran out of time units.

I wasn't going to let my soldier be turned into a zombie on the next turn, making two aliens against 1 guy, so I fired the blaster launcher. Mission over, I won.

recovering a mutton battleship with 3 guys with laser rifles and stun rods

Thinking back over all the years I've played X-Com, I can't really recall any good ones at the moment except the one in TFTD where, during a night terror mission, I threw my Gas cannon at an enemy in desparation. I'm sure this was an accident rather than a concious decision to click on the 'throw' command.

Hmm, ah yes, here's one. You know the occasions where you make a big plan and really start to fuss over it, and by the time you actually put it into action, you suddenly realise in horror that everything has gone horribly wrong because of one minor oversight?

I bought a new Skyranger, then went through all the trouble of preparing the equipment and loading soldiers onto the ship. Then, after so much time was spent on the preparation, I finally send the ship out on its maiden voyage to show the dastardly aliens their what-for. The first thing I notice when the ship touches down and the inventory screen pops up, I suddenly realise with horror that I never put any of the blasted equipment on the ship.

While I think this particular story may have just been a hypothetical scenario in my head, I'm pretty sure I've goofed up this badly many times before.


- NKF

Well, I think this would qualify as desperate.

In TFTD, before I knew lobstermen suffered from tazers and shockers (thanks to these boards), I was absolutely freaked out when I met one. I had my soldiers assult it at near point-blank range with their regular weapons - Gauss rifles. It got knocked down eventually, but it took the concentrated auto fire from six or so shooters. :o

On a later occasion I tried to assult a Tricenes using Gauss rifles. That didn't go so well, actually. :hmmm:

Im just wondering, is this topic located under the UFO subcategory of this forum??? Answer to self: Yes it is. Then why are you writing about stuff that happened in Terror From The Deep? :hmmm:

on one of my first TFTD games against a Lobster man servay ship I had thought I read in UFOPedia that the lobster man was week agains Fire.. so I loaded up as mutch Phosphorus amo as i could carry... well I almost ran out of amo befor the one guy went down.. lost 6 out of 8 guys to that crustation.

-Blade FireLight

The worse was wanting to get a Navigator on a Medium Scout a couple of months ago. I had already captured a couple of the aliens and killed the rest outside so I gathered the remaining 6 soldiers, four with stun rods and 2 with rifles.
When I stepped inside the UFO *bang* there goes the first soldier. The second one is luckier and the plasma shot misses him but instead kills soldier #3 who was waiting ready with his stun rod outside.
Meanwhile I count four aliens inside the UFO, with the one facing my soldier and another one standing by the engine that just turns in reaction. One step forward *bang* there goes soldier #2 two also.
I get mad and send soldier four and he stuns both the aliens who are facing me. There's two left but since I need aliens to keep my research going I hit the turn button hoping that they won't see my lonely soldier inside. Wrong. *bang* There goes four.
The remaining two are equipped only with rifles so I step one inside and find myself facing the two aliens left. But instead of firing I chose to go to retrieve one of the stun rods still believing that I could stun them. *bang*
That really annoys me so I step in my remaining soldier to fill them with bullets. But as he moves...*bang*
At least the tank got them both afterwards as they stepped outside.

It needn't be that rigid. The games are very identical that the anecdotes from either games - apart from a few very special cases - can apply to the other as well, even if the names are different. For example, I would've thrown my heavy cannon at a floater if I'd started playing UFO first.

Speaking of other acts of desparation (of which happened several times in both UFO and TFTD): I have a whole bunch of soldiers hanging around a UFO/USO door, and there's an important alien inside that I really want to stun or get rid of. So I get one soldier to step inside. First soldier is killed with opportunity fire (usually from an unseen unit). Right, so I send another in. Another dead. I send another in and this one was killed as well. I keep doing it even though I know I shouldn't, until finally the alien(s) run out of TUs or I'm lucky enough to survive a few head on attacks. Then I deal with the alien. Why ? I don't know, it just happened. You just throw caution to the wind, say "bugger it" and go and do something stupid.

- NKF

Well, sometimes people don't exactly notice what category something is in when they respond. As long as the post is on-topic, which that one was, we don't worry about it. Trust me, there are worse things that people can do here. :rolleyes:

Nutty thing I've done? Well, I got X-COM CE for my brother for Christmas, and he was having some trouble with a floater medium scout. Everyone knows how it is. Well, his first soldier got shot trying to go inside, and then someone outside the door tried to shoot it, and then got nailed with plasma and died. Now, my brother just loves to be really tactical and sneaky and everything, so losing 2 soldiers really pissed him off. So, what did I do? I felt nutty. He had a rocket launcher guy on the OTHER SIDE of the map. So, he kneeled.... and aimed.... and fired... and the thing is, if he was about a degree off, he would have killed abou 4 xcom soldiers sitting outside the dor for reaction fire.

Well, it went as planned, killing all 4 floaters with a Small Rocket.

EDIT: my brother was playing, and I was directing him.

Nutty thing?

Tried doing a grenade relay while inside a skyranger. Problem was it was a primed proximity grenade. I'm sure it's happened to many. Grenade gets tossed and lands next to the intended soldier. Without thinking I move the soldier to pick it up to continue the relay. BOOOM! :o Hmmm. Not many soldiers left in the skyranger.

I filled the armoury of my first base with all sorts of equipment. I had 3 store rooms with lasers, plasma rifles, blaster bombs and about 15 new stun rods. This was due to needing to capture a commander and thinking giving a whole squad a rod each was a good way of getting one quickly. I had already killed a couple due to lack of planning and reaction fire from my troops. The aliens must have got wind of this and attacked the base. No problem, I thought as the loading screen came up, plenty of people and guns on the base. Then the tooling up section revealed nothing but a big pile of shiny new stun rods, medi-kits, mind probes.

It took while to get a snake man, stun him and nick his gun, but we did not lose the base !

In the same base-defence vein, my base was attacked by floaters - while the main 'Ranger team was in the air. On base I had four rookies, a rocket tank, assorted grenades, an antique pistol, a spare laser pistol, and heaps of captured heavy plasma.

All the rookies but one picked up a heavy plasma as a default weapon. Great, I thought. The game began and although the Prep screen had described each weapon as Heavy Plasma, the Battlescape Inventory screen called them Alien Artifacts - and I couldn't use them. (Research was only in progress.) Each rookie retreats from the aliens again, drops the useless weapon, and scrounges stun rods or whatever they can.

Thanks to copious use of HWP rockets and the laser pistol guy shooting 4 floaters in the back from his closet door, though, I made it out of the base assault with two rookies and the tank. Next time I'll try the plan that puts a motion-scanner guy hiding by the main lift.


Oh, and while assaulting a medium scout, I had a rocket tank outside. The breaching team spotted a floater by the corner nearest the tank* - I shot a rocket at the corner of the UFO (not the diagonal wall) figuring it couldn't hurt, anyway, and I might find an NKF-like tile exploit- I did. The floater went down from the blast effect.

* the North corner of the Eastern part of the cross

this wasnt my own desperation technique but since my friend doesnt post here i will for him it was in tftd a gillman terror mission. my friend being completely new at the game lost most of his troops and he had only 2 guys left with no ammo and really far from the rest of the squads corpses. but he was close to a gillman corpse.... he picked up the corpse and threw it...im not sure what happened after this but when i came back from getting a glass of juice.... the offending gillman appeared to have been taken out by the other gillman's corpse :dontgetit: as i said i have yet to confirm but has anyone else used offending corpses as projectiles?

Sectoid around corner (relative to soldier with AC-HE, duh!), noticed after HWP found it with just not enough units left to shoot (figures).

So I marched my tank right up to the sectoid, then shot my tank with the AC-HE ammo. No damage to my tank, the sectoid . . . . .

you can't throw things (other than grenades) at a hostile unit and expect it to do any damage, but it can make you feel better when you see a corpse or gun flying at an alien

One soldier, one chryssalid. Facing each other down. It's the moment of truth, with not a single blast left in the plasma rifle. Not having the time to prime and throw a grenade, the soldier has to make a choice. Blow himself up to save the rest of the squad from chryssalid swarms, or the much sillier option. Forget priming the grenade, just throw it anyway.
I had no idea this could happen, but the unprimed grenade smacks the chryssalid on the head and knocks it out cold.
Sir, we've got a live one!

hmm...i've had many silly things happen...but the silliest one i can remember was when i responded to this one terror site.....i landed the skyranger and moved like four men out in all directions...the fourth one spotted an enemy floater...my other guys did'nt have the tu's to put him down, and the guy who spotted him was a rookie with a lazer rifle...as we all know, lazer rifles are'nt the best accurate weapons u can get, but it was the best i had for now...he did'nt have enough juice for an aimed shot and his snap shot would've been a definate miss (damn rookies)
i decided to take a chance with the auto shot and fired at the menace...all three shots missed the alien and ended up smacking into three other floaters...it was the funniest thing i'd ever seen happen...a major strike of luck as the beams flew out in different directions and dropped three other aliens....when the floaters' turn came, my lucky rookie was offed by the alien grenade from the floater that he'd first spotted....a funny side to revenge for a luck shot and kills....i hope that soldier rests in peaces...or in peace if he's lucky enough....lol

AAAAARRRRGGGG!!!!!!