Officer's Mess (mission reports)

[Tsathoggua]

Report in progress.

 

Infiltration mission detected by hyperwave decoders, some distance SE of N.America. three cruiser-weight alien vessels sighted, accompanied by single large vessel, terror ship.

 

Species-

 

Sent multiple craft to intercept, plus sent out skyranger-1 on course some distance north of alien vessel activity as they moved on patrol.

Firestorm-1 proved unable to carry sufficient fuel to intercept, returned to base.

 

Further vessels, all standard interceptor craft moved in and engaged, one of them taking quite a bit of damage, being equipped with only a single laser cannon. This interceptor is normally reserved for downing small to low-mediumweight enemy craft so as to preserve the elerium on board, and prevent the power core exploding. Tactic seems quite successful in terms of number of cores recovered when boots on the ground assault teams sent out to raise hades and crack skulls.

 

Assault team-9 extremely well trained and effective psykers, one who has a lower psi strength and is assigned an autocannon loaded with incendiary shells, since these do little damage to the other troops should he ever go berserkirgang, although its only ever happened the once, when on a mission to take down a large scout, crewed by ethereals, ethereal leader had been MC'ed by a trooper with sufficient

psi capability to take the leader over, and march it from the entry hallway of the scout vessel into the flight deck, open up with his heavy plasma, wiping a soldier out and then getting KO'ed by another of its brethren standing right up close and carrying a stun launcher. Dropped the pair of them in doing it, since it more or less stuck the launcher down the MCed alien's throat..

 

 

Sods law comes into play, of course, and what I didn't count on was the damnable creatures, two of them, waking up quick as hell, or else one did and there was a further unspotted bug inside the UFO, psi-ed the one trooper with weak psi strength.

 

So now he's getting an autocannon rather than a heavy laser in hand, the laser cannon is to be stowed in his nackpack from now on, after that ethereal out-psi'ed him and left him suffering the humliation of having to take the skyranger back to base whilst wearing

beshitten power armor.

 

 

 

He's going to be ravening for some payback now, ready to loose a blaster launcher round first turn, drop it and storm out guns blazing.

 

 

10 troopers total, accompanied by a plasma cannon hovertank. Main weapons carried are two men with autocannon and heavy plasma, plus the usual kit-smoke grenades, alien grenades, the odd heavyweight HE breaching charge,medkits, stun rods, psi-amps and motion scanners.

 

Terror ship or larger, not shot down but by virtue of foresight and fortune skyranger sent only a short flight to where the large craft touched down. Only damage to it has been 2 shots by twin-linked avalanche missiles, first salvo missed, second and third dead on target. Craft landed shortly after, skyranger engaged. Rest of troopers packing a mix of a heavy cannon, 2 rocket launchers, second autocannon seeing as unfortunately there was sod all choice but to either leave the thing to complete its infiltration mission and blast it out of the sky on takeoff. Not a great prospect. Or to take it on whilst landed, and with all its power cores intact meaning plenty elerium to fuel the firestorm plus the two avengers that are nearly ready to be armed, fuelled up and ready for takeoff. Much better all around, save for it meaning facing god only knows what kind of crew and terrorist units that would otherwise have ended up as sticky smears splattered around the UFO and surrounding area.

 

 

 

Question-do UFOs that have been hit by craft weapons fire suffer any damage if they are not destroyed or shot down but subsequently choose to land of their own volition?

 

Troops now engaging hostiles, report in progress.

[Zombie]

Question-do UFOs that have been hit by craft weapons fire suffer any damage if they are not destroyed or shot down but subsequently choose to land of their own volition?

 

No. Damage is only inflicted by Power Source explosions, not by weapons fire. It's not realistic, but that's the hand we were dealt.

 

Something similar is going to a map with a landed UFO, killing all the occupants except for one poor sap you left alive in order to grab anything and everything that isn't nailed down. You steal all the corpses, weapons, shoot out the power source and swipe the Elerium, and then shell the UFO with Blaster Bombs till there isn't anything left but a glass crater. Then you dust off and as soon as you enter the Geoscape the UFO is magically airborne. You have to shoot it down as it doesn't land anymore, but lo and behold the crash site has more aliens and a somewhat intact UFO. So how can a completely destroyed UFO become airborne automatically and be completely staffed by a fresh crew of aliens? Yeah, it's not realistic.

 

- Zombie

[Tsathoggua]

You don't say

 

 

I have noticed one thing though and that there does indeed seem to be a difference in damage inflicted between heavyier craft weapons and lighter types. because I have been recovering a lot more power cores and elerium when taking down small to mediumweight UFOs with an interceptor mounting a laser cannon and plasma beam, but disabling the plasma cannon unless needing to take down a large vessel, or else for medium types hitting with a single plasma shot, switching to laser only and going in hard with an aggressive intercept seems to result in a good many more cores surviving.

[NKF]

Just to preface that, that will be with OpenXcom. It does fix a bunch of things and adds a lot of subtle but sensible changes like that. The vanilla game is still a donkus with the UFO damage and does its own thing with the map generation.

 

- NKF

[Space Voyager]

@Zombie: HE HE HE, never even tried anything like that! Love your analytical approach!

[Tsathoggua]

Just returned from a terror site, lost 5-6 men. Several to cyberdiscs, although they were promptly blasted out of the air with laser rifle fire. Made a satisfying mess. One unarmored soldier miraculously survived being blasted by a heavy plasma or plasma rifle and two hits from a cyberdisc. Fatally wounded but stabilized with a medkit. Barely survived, but still returned to base in one piece. Some sectoid snipers in various buildings, rooted out with gratuitous use of rocket launchers, incendiary shells from heavy cannon and autocannon HE and IC fire. Plus giving out those large HE blasting charges like they were candy.

 

Saved quite a few civilians, although at a heavy price in terms of soldier deaths and injuries. Had to buy a new tank/cannon also, after some inconsiderate git hit it at close range with multiple heavy plasma shots. Unfortunately one of the major causes of death was a soldier in smoke cover succumbing to smoke inhalation before they could toss the 0-primed demo charge they were holding, collapsed and before a response was possible, there was no longer anyone there to try and revive, just a smoking oily splatter in a large crater.

[Tsathoggua]

Aaaand...the shits just hit the fan royally. After a long time of facing nothing but sectoids, just took out a terror ship, sent in a firestorm armed with a plasma cannon and a fusion ball launcher, both missiles dead on target, one plasma round later and down it went. Somewhere in northern africa.

 

Sent in a crack team of the elites of the primary assault squad, psykers, the lot of them. Not a one that doesn't have psi strength pushing 80, bar a single soldier of still respectable enough strength not to get taken over and used as a meat-puppet, moderate strength but very, very high skill. Some of the team are pushing significantly past 100. Mean bastards in any case, even the comparative psi weakling isn't too shabby. He's on the team because he's built like an elephant in terms of strength and damned if he ever misses with the heavy laser he carries. Aimed shots from beyond visual range aren't in the least a problem, and he's carrying enough explosives to level a third-world city right back to molten sand.

 

That and dual-wielding heavy laser and blaster launcher.

 

Straight out of the transport, shits getting pretty hairy. Ethereals, sectopods and a pretty intense firefight right off the bat.

 

House just to the SE of the transport, ethereal sniper on the rooftop. Psi troops took control of it, took it to the base of the stairwell, and used the heavy plasma it carried to carve a hole through the wall, revealing another ethereal. Opened fire on the thing only to have it shrug off a couple of heavy plasma rounds and return fire, killing the taken ethereal. Shot it dead with a heavy laser round, then summoned a flyer to take care of things, cutting a further, wider hole in the top floor and blasting a hole in the floor. Second flier, the commander takes point, drops through the floor and blasts another ethereal soldier. Saw a leader come out of the UFO, or very near the doors, hovering a tile or so up, over the side 'wing' of the terror ship. Took it over, looked around, shot at another soldier, missed with it. Then had a soldier carrying a stun launcher open fire, miss, so had overwatch light the place up like a christmas tree with HC-IC shells, illuminating a soldier. Opened fire again with the ethereal leader, hit, failed to kill a sectopod in the distance triggering fatal react-fire from an unseen sniper to the south.

 

Which is now going to be dealt with imminently. And that sectopod is out there in the darkness still. Methinks it warrants a blaster launcher shell, because those fucks are no fun going toe to toe with.

[Tsathoggua]

THREE sectopods so far, only brought the last five blaster launcher shells the base commander possessed. Cannot yet make more although multiple bases, including the main industrial complex, 'Spazz Tech' base is dedicated to R&D and now to cranking out ammunition, armor and craft PWT shells. But current workshop is almost finished building the first of a pair of avengers to transfer to the interception and radar bases with currently no craft. For taking out bastard big battleships. Will load them up with fusion bombs and plasma cannon. Or do people recommend either dual fusion bomb launchers, or dual plasma cannon? or even laser cannon? could a pair of avengers, one loading dual fusion warheads, one with dual laser cannon, or one each laser and fusion bombs assisted by a firestorm with dual plasma cannon or plasma cannon and fusion missile take down a single battleship?

[Tsathoggua]

Had to start anew, because my other laptops screen broke.

 

Running linux on this, got it working just recently (UFO, that is)

 

Not long into the game, most advanced tech is personal armor and laser rifles.

 

Just had a terror site, the terror ship appeared and landed almost instantly, somewhere around the west to southwest of france.

Sent in a full squad in the skyranger, ten troops and a tank. Turned out to be sectoids, taking along quite a few cyberdiscs in tow. Damn glad of those laser rifles and even the pistols are quite effective with multiple hits.

 

First out of course was the tank, immediately spotted a sectoid, then a second one. First trooper out of the 'ranger was a bit of a bruiser, carrying a heavy cannon w/ HE loadout. He loosed off a round, that hit a house wall right to the side of the sectoid, one or perhaps two tiles away. Pained scream. No more sectoid. No more house wall either come to think of it. Oops.

 

The big hole showed another one, again to the south-southeast, not far from the first. Send another man out, covered by a smoke grenade. Second trooper slaughters the sectoid, again, packing another HC-HE. There are three of those in the squad, two with HE packing incendiaries for those sneaky little sniper problems so they can be burnt out of their hiding holes, either that or just roasted alive in the shell.-

General plan is position a few snipers with rapid reaction weapons, laser rifles or pistols if hunting sectoids, send a shell through the nearest window, or if there isn't a window handy then one can be arranged with a few laser bolts. Burn shooter out, and have the snipers positioned right to the side of the stairs, so the moment the sniper shows its face, it gets it shot off in a hail of laser fire.

 

There turned out to be a LEAST five, maybe six cyberdiscs present, can't remember which. Not too much trouble surprisingly as the team sent in the tank to check things out, scout and mark targets (and it did pop a pair of sectoids with its cannon.

 

First, spotted a sectoid and its second near some shops, both taken out with heavy cannon and autocannon shelling (two autocannon, three HC users, two rocket launcher support troops, all armed with laser pistols as sidearms, a handful with stun rods but only issued to the heavy support troops not using rocket launchers, so they can take point and use the rods and laser pistols to quietly drop anything that hasn't seen them. Saw first cyberdisk in the distance to the west, laser fire took that down, then a second one in the middle of a gas station. Wrong place to hide when there are soldiers carrying heavy rocket-loaded rocket launchers. Sent one right into the gas station, direct hit on the cyberdisk, and the entire place got blown straight to hades. Scratch one cyberdisk, and the resulting chain of explosions resulted in at least two screams, neither of them human, must have taken out two unseen sectoids. Saw another live one down there, or it was, until a HC shell blew one of the remaining two pumps, taking it to pieces.

 

 

Took a quick break, to eat, smoke a rollup and attend to a synthesis of 3,6-dipropionylmorphine, add a little more base, stir and a little more propionyl chloride, then got back to taking the bins out, because it is obviously trash day on mars

 

All in all, something in the region of 16 sectoid kills, not a scratch on any of the soldiers, or even on the tank. A couple of stray laser pistol rounds hit it and a HE shell from a cannon went off pretty close, but no damage done. Trickiest bit was a pair of sectoids, one to the north and one right to the far southwest in the corner of a building, in the back alley to the side taking potshots, and there was a cyberdisk in there right near to it. Rocket launcher put the sectoid out of action, but not before it very, very nearly killed quite a few soliders with its plasma rifle when it went berserk, and so did the other one hiding out in the shops. Both went apewaste, shooting at random, although luckily every single plasma bolt went sailing past the two fireteams and their support troops. Narrow misses sometimes, couple of troopers probably needed a change of under armor, but still, no harm done. Not to X-com forces anyhow, quite a lot done to the sectoids, both put down with extreme prejudice next turn, took a few to take the cyberdisc down, getting the heavy support and laser rifle equipped troops in position, then blasting holes in the wall and taking the nasty little sod out with a combination of heavy cannon, autocannon fire, a few laser rounds from the rifles hit, but what took it out in the end was repeated hits from the pistols at medium long range. Crunch, boom, bye bye. Job done, 5 civilians dead to 6 saved, score of several hundred, good rating. 8 turns from start to finish. Prope-dope done 10 minutes or so after, time for this commander to put his feet up and relax

[Tsathoggua]

Just caught the buggers building a base, took the scout out, made too much of a mess to recover anything, dropped one craft, medium sized, right in the drink, two large craft downed on land, taken out by a squad of interceptors armed with a mixture of dual plasma cannon and plasma cannon/avalanche launchers, then had the skyranger on base loaded with my best troops, ten soldiers, plasma hovertank to follow a muton battleship or, I think possibly supply ship, went all over the place, assumed it was looking for x-com bases, as it went quite far from the area the swarm of UFOs building the base (or rather, intending to, they never got the chance.) were concentrated over, right from one side of the european continent to the other and back again, but caught it landing.

 

Could see a muton straight ahead the moment the craft landed. Caught a second one looking the other way, tank out, shot the first one, dead in one hit, shot the other in the back, downed that one also.

 

Several troops exited skyranger, taking up sniper positions, kneeling on the skyranger wings (all but one soldier is in a flying suit, the one who isn't, has just set the timer on a demo charge, about to leave it beside a wall in the hope of blowing through the upper floor and storming the bridge in order to work down and take it floor by floor, from where the aliens least expect it coming), if the charge fails to blow an entryway into the bridge then a couple of shells from the 3 blaster launcher-armed soldiers should do it. Send a missile in, have the same guy, hopefully pop off a regular incendiary rocket into the hole and flush targets towards holes created for the sniper teams to pick off anything crossing past with their heavy lasers and plasma cannons. Going to prox mine the entry/exit lift shaft, and blow a tank-sized hole in the bridge wall, as it can get a bit hairy going up those long corridors with only smoke cover.

 

Third muton walked out the entrance/exit lift before anyone had a chance to make with the proximity mines, one of the snipers spotted movement but could no longer see the target come next turn, sent him down, immediately traded shots with the target, having a plasma blast narrowly miss the soldier, who loosed off a burst from their heavy plasma, missed every time, another airborne rook aim with a rocket launcher and left the bug standing in a blazing inferno of WP from their incendiary rocket, direct hit, area lit up (its a night mission)

 

Other soldiers start filing out, grabbing stun rods, the two specialist stunner teams grabbing stun rods, launchers, some alien grenades and smokes, one grabs the laser pistol kept onboard the skyranger for downing heavily stunned but not unconscious aliens. Ready to make with the carnage.

 

One of the blaster launcher-equipped men, one of the two most senior soldiers on board, and a bit of a bruiser to say the least, able to carry several times the weight the rest are, bar the commander, capable of carrying, and dual-wielding launcher and plasma cannon flies out a little from the craft, and pops off a blaster round, guiding it up and through the entry hole, dropping it down into the blown-out floor tile immediately on the other, interior side from where the first round punched a hole through the side of the craft, and using the target selection box to feel out the walls in the dark, guided it to the middle of the + shaped corridor, then diagonally into the corner of the nearest side wall of the corridor so as to direct the blast as many ways as possible. Presumably grinning with satisfaction at the chorus of dying shrieks that followed. Nobody has yet been inside the craft itself but from the sound of it, that made a hell of a mess and took out quite a few mutons. Bet they really weren't expecting that to drop through the roof and blow them to hell haha.

 

Spotter camping out in a corner below the hole in the upper deck floor spotted more movement, called in another missile, the lift ended up not being connected to anything, as all the floor tiles there and on the upper deck had been blown to hell. Making things too easy really.

 

Spotted a couple more mutons, sniping from the SSE of the lift on the ground, plus one muton with a blaster launcher trying to sneak round the sniper there, but failed, when he just walked round and put a burst of plasma fire in its face.

 

Last enemy was a silacoid, in a house right at the bottom right of the map, in a house. Soon put an end to that, luring it to just where its TU ran out, in front of the soldier that sighted the creature, and who then promptly ended it, with a point blank plasma burst.

 

Rich pickings from the spoils of war, 4 power cores, had been being somewhat careful what explosives were used where for that reason, 4 cores, 200 elerium, 4 navigation whassits, and dead bodies everywhere. Plus a fair few blaster rounds and spare launcher. Could have done with those. Had made about 70-80 launcher rounds a while back but have been using them pretty liberally.

 

2 questions-does ammo from a completely unused magazine get returned to stores without unloading the weapon? and do part used clips get returned (whole) if ejected from the gun?

[Tsathoggua]

Mission-ground assault on landed craft.

 

Craft type-battlecruiser.

 

Species-ethereal (oh, great, just f*****g fantastic)

 

Caught the bugs at it base-building, a small scout, I think, two large craft, possibly a medium something or other, if there was that one must have gone into the drink, but can't remember for sure; and a very large craft, the battlecruiser in question. Sent a couple of interceptors out on intercept, plus one of the firestorms, all armed with twinlinked plasma cannons bar one with a plasma cannon and avalanche air to air missile mount.

 

All craft bar the very largest down bar the big bugger, that one wasn't assaulted in the air, because it would have been rather a been rather a messy task, although it would have been doable if I had decided to sick the three available firestorms (all w/ twin plasma cannons, contemplating outfitting the next two in production with some of the available fusion missile launchers, have 6 built plus 20 rounds, just haven't decided what to DO with them yet. I think I may decide to outfit standard interceptors so as to have some dedicated craft available for taking out V.large UFOs, rather than waste the versatility of the firestorms as fast interceptors with the plasma weapons. )

 

Anyhow tailed the battlecruiser with the skyranger, ground assault team inserted. Went perfectly, well almost perfectly. No casualties, one squad member taken over, although they were armed with an autocannon as primary weapon and didn't so much as scratch the flight suits of all but two of the rookie scouts on the team, who were kept away once that shit kicked off. An ethereal to the south below the transport, taken out with autocannon fire, one HC-IC shell shot up to the west to provide some light, set up a kill zone to the north just to the east of the edge of the craft, and to avoid heavy casualties, prox-mined the exits of the central lift shaft on both sides, which put off a sectopod later on. Meanwhile dropped a blaster bomb far to the west, after a sniper kept hammering at the troops, couldn't get a scout close enough, tried covering with a smoke grenade but it went off like some sort of half-smoke, half incendiary, no use, couldn't get anyoen close, too much suppression fire, so decided bugger it, lets deal with the sniper once and for all, blaster bomb straight down there after sneaking the plasma tank up and around to the rear, dropped the missile straight down on the top of the ethereal's head. Result, no more sniper fire. No more sniper either for that matter:D

 

Sectopod came stomping out to the east where the kill-zone was set up by a pack of airborne snipers with heavy plasma and autocannon, plus one wielding a HC and plasma rifle. Prox mine went off and seemed to slow the sectopod down some, it came to a halt shortly after without opening fire. Snipers laid waste to it with plasma and cannon fire. Plasma weapons may not be perfect for dealing with sectopods but there were enough troopers and they just opened up and kept on firing. Then next turn an ethereal made the first mistake on their part, of taking over the commander, wielding an autocannon and heavy plasma. Guy usually uses a blaster launcher and heavy plasma, and is now strong enough to have a LOT of TU. so after being panicked courtesy of a concerted stream of psi attacks aimed at him, he eventually went berserkirgang, only to turn towards the sectopod and hammer shell after shell after shell after shell right into the enemy terror unit from a range of 3-4 tiles away, finishing it off. Next turn had him out of the area, although he got taken over and opened up on several troopers with the cannon, though their armor proved impervious to the autocannon HE shells, quickly as possible confiscated his heavy plasma and plasma pistol sidearm to make sure he couldn't start racking up the wrong kind of bodycount, and used him to go pick up his blaster again and punch a HUGE hole through the underside of the side of the middle deck.

 

Sent in the plasma tank and 3-4 troopers, one blaster launcher round down the middle of the corridor taking out some ethereal. Sniper kill team racked up a big mound of smoking, roasted ethereal corpses, then went up through a hole left by the detonation of the blaster missiles used to breach the middle deck, a small hole left in the ceiling, troops up, and by good luck, managed to keep taking the routes that left the troops right behind the ethereals, to shoot them in the back with plasma autofire. Only to have one last ethereal cop line of sight, and walk round, carrying a blaster launcher, getting off a round. Only to make screwup number two and last. Must have sent the shell straight into the wall opposite wall to it, going from the pained squealing and the way the mission ended.

 

200 elerium recovered, all power cores intact, navigation systems intact and a LOT of alien alloys. All in all that one went as perfectly as it could possibly have done, no casualties, one scout left with 2 critical wounds after taking a burst of plasma bolts from that ethereal sniper, the one that got it's head turned to hot gas and bone fragments with the blaster bomb posted right down it's neck. Treated within a couple of turns left with only minor wounds. Got quite the stash of weapons, ammunition, UFO parts and elerium.

 

Kills: 13 ethereals, 1 sectopod assault walker.