Zombie

So here is the EOM report from this past mission: Obviously excellent. We made a lot of cash, acquired a bunch of items, stunned the commander and Silencer was promoted. As always, let's allocate his points: Everything went into strength and shooting to max those out. Strength is an incredible 102 and shooting is 101! Needless to say, I'm stoked. When we are back on base I was looking at his stats again and I was dismayed to see he was lower: Both strength and shooting were lower by two points to 100 and 99 respectively. Not sure why this happens or what the cause is. (A bug? WAI?) Maybe it's because when you put one promotion point into a stat it goes up by 3 points for the soldier. If a soldier's max cap for say, strength, is 100 and that soldier is sitting at 99 pre-promotion and you put one promotion point into strength, one point will go into maxing that stat out while the other two will be lost. The promotion screen is just incorrectly showing that all three points went into the stat. If that makes any sense. Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with Silencer having 100 strength and 99 shooting as those are monster numbers. All we need to do yet is round out the other stats to make them more usable. It's time to sell some of the stuff we received from the last mission: That's nearly another $430k for the piggy bank. Not long after and one of the photon defenses finished construction at our base in Africa: The other one will take an additional 10 days to complete. Three heavy rocket defenses and two photon defenses should be sufficient. You can also see our engineers are building another thunderstorm to fill out our interception capabilities. Once that's done, then we can sell the last golden eagle and manufacture another thunderstorm. Nothing's been happening on the Geoscape as of late in terms of alien activity. So three days later our new Pegasus transport finished construction: Excellent stuff! We've been looking forward to this for a very long time. It's got hardpoints like an Avenger so we could kit it out for interceptions. Unfortunately, with the big switchover to thunderstorm interceptors in progress, all excess missiles and shields are being utilized. Not a big deal, we'll use this as a strict transport for now: I did have some legacy interceptor equipment stashed away so I later equipped it with that stuff in the interim. Our current transport (the Icarus) only has room for 10 soldiers which isn't a heck of a lot. It's really surprising what we've been able to accomplish with only 10 soldiers so far. Everyone comes off the Icarus and now we start to assign them to the Pegasus instead. It's got room for a massive 16 soldiers which means we can finally bring along a couple more rookies to get them experience. First up is Kret 2.0: And next is Sorbicol 2.0: Both will be fantastic additions to our team. And we have a couple more rookies waiting in the wings too. For now they will stay safely back at base. With the Pegasus finished, we can resume cranking out some more U238 ammo for our troops. A day later that completes along with two Thunderstorms: With the new rookies getting on the new transport we need some new shields for them too so we'll make 4 of them for now: In North America, we are going to build another Thunderstorm: In Europe, we are building a long spear missile launcher: Same deal for South America: As for Antarctica, it's all about the Thunderstorm interceptor because we have a lot of golden eagles stationed there: Ditto for Africa, but this time it's because they can help shoot down UFOs near our main base: Not too long after, we detect a Patrol Vessel in North America almost over our base: The base defenses are allowed to soften it up a little bit until we send out the interceptors: It doesn't take much and we cause it to crash land: I'll say it's the Knoxville, Tennessee / Ashville, North Carolina area. Probably closer to North Carolina. With our new shields produced, I decide to manufacture the Raven battle armor upgrade we've been sitting on for a while: We haven't used the Raven "tank" yet as I need the room on the transport for soldiers. But we do have one at the base in case the aliens invade there. Sure, I have vets like Thorondor, Space Voyager, Slaughter, Blade, Tammy, Bomb Bloke and others on-call there. But a big 2x2 unit might come in handy to block shots and stuff. Join me next time for that Patrol Vessel mission with a new transport and two new rookies! - Zombie

Supply Vessel Part 2 It's three turns later and we've just spotted the last UFO cannons which cover the main doors. As usual, TV will mortar it: It's a weak spot hit for 178 damage which means it's gone: The next turn we spot the UFO cannon on the right corner. TV prepares a mortar for it: The blast does 89 damage so he sends another which also does 89 damage which destroys it: There's another cannon on the far corner which we are going to ignore for now as it's out of the current combat area. Plus, I don't want to waste another mortar bomb (or two!) on it. On the next round we notice the left UFO door has been opened. When AT investigates, he finds a Bonesetter inside yet. Time for an incendiary grenade: It does a decent 49 damage which isn't enough for the kill: That's all we can do against Mr. Bonesetter for this round so we decide to let it "roast in it's own shell". The next round the door is still opened, but the Bonesetter has disappeared. AT will "probe" the area with a photon grenade to see if it's still around: Nope, but the blast is sure pretty: Turns out, the thing was probably right around the corner from AT by the other door. The reason I say this is because a Bonesetter rounds the corner during it's turn which is met with reaction fire from Gimli and his trusted photon beamer. This shot looks like it'll be a hit: It connects and only does 10 damage. The second shot is way off target, hope it doesn't hit a certain someone by accident: Yup, it hits AT but the damage was absorbed. The last shot missed too. That's not it for the action as a Bonesetter opens a door to the building on the left and is met with reaction fire from MTR. The first bullet was absorbed: The next two bullets hit for 10 & 8 damage. Then Nook takes over with his first bullet doing 15 damage: The second bullet was absorbed, but the last hit for 26 damage which killed it: Nice shooting guys! There's still that other Bonesetter by AT yet. Silencer is gonna shoot at it because there's no way a miss will hit poor AT again: The first bullet missed while the next two did 25 & 15 damage so he'll shoot again: The first bullet missed again, but the next did 50 which killed it: Should've probably loaded up some U238 ammo and took snap shots instead, but it all worked out. During the alien's next turn, the Commander pays us a visit: It comes another tile closer and is met with reaction fire from MTR. Everything was absorbed unfortunately, but were still hits which counts to XP. The thing then "shoots" some sort of cold weapon at Pete dealing 17 damage: Pete shoots back, where the first two bullets were absorbed and the last did 7 damage: MTR loads up the "el-cheapo" bullets into his rifle and starts shooting at the thing for xp. First bullet is a hit: Silencer unloads on it next and now it's AT's turn: That's enough playing around for Pete. He's still injured and just wants to go home so he pulls out the cattle prod: He stuns it and ends the mission. Join me next time when we cover the EOM report, a promotion, research, manufacturing, bases, shooting down another UFO... a bunch of stuff. - Zombie

Hello Pete! It's a lot better for me now. Pages were timing out before even loading, that doesn't seem to be happening now at least. Is it perfect? No, far from it. But it's at least usable. - Zombie

Supply Vessel Part 1 More Supply Vessel goodness on the same map type as before. Oh well. The only difference is that this time we have a hot landing zone. Pete has a shot at the Rider so he'll take it (no need to kneel): The first bullet does 58 damage and kills the thing: As we deploy we spot another Rider just north of the craft. Nook steps off to auto shoot it (again, kneeling is for wussies): The first bullet hits a weak spot for 69 damage and kills it: On our next turn Gimli will take an aimed shot at a Rider on a rooftop with his photon beamer: The blast only does 27damage but that's enough for the kill: Why is there an alien spotted icon yet? Well, it's a UFO cannon: TV doesn't have enough TU to mortar the thing safely so we'll patiently wait our turn. We can also see a Bonesetter but first things first, let's take care of the cannon: He hits one cannon for 104 damage and another for only 42. The closest one reaction fires back at him: Thankfully it misses. He sends another mortar in the same spot and this time hits the first one for 33 damage which was enough to destroy it and only 57 damage to the other - not enough to destroy it: Let's change gears and have NKF shoot at that Bonesetter next: His insane 99% accuracy means he can take an auto shot at the thing. Obviously he hits all three times for 40, 11 & 17 damage which killed it: During the alien's turn, a Rider walks out from between the building and the UFO to see what all the fuss was about: When it's our turn, Pete is going to take an auto shot at it: He hits for 12 & 21 damage and kills it: He makes it look so easy. CG has just spotted that other UFO cannon we damaged from before so TV will nuke it again with a mortar: The blast only does 75 damage, but takes it out. We know there's a cannon in the center of the UFO so he will send a mortar there too: The blast does a pitiful 19 damage: We have to wait till the next turn to nuke it twice more for 86 & 91 which finally destroys it: A couple alien turns later and an Iron Rattler comes out of the building to the left of us. Gimli reaction fires at it with his photon beamer: All his shots miss badly for some reason. Performance pressure getting to you Gimli? When it's our turn, Nook is going to take an auto shot at it from an impossible angle: The first bullet hits for 57 damage and kills it: A couple turns later TV is moving closer to the UFO to get into position to nuke some more but a Bonesetter reaction fires at him for no damage. CG will shoot at it with some U238 ammo: His first bullet hits for 79 damage which kills it: There's another alien spotted icon which is yet another alien cannon. Because the mortar bombs seem to be super weak, CG will shoot at the cannon himself with this fancy new ammo: He hits all three times for 31, 64 & 24 damage but doesn't destroy it. So he'll shoot at it again: The next bullet does 28 damage and takes it out: Join me next time for more alien cannons, more Bonesetters and a visit from the commander outside the UFO again. Edit: I reached #3 on the Steam global leaderboards for UFOs shot down on Tuesday. Right now I'm at 5571 UFOs shot down. I figure it'll take me till Monday June 17 to get to #2, so I'm going to try for Sunday June 16 instead. All depends how busy I am during the week and how many swarms the game throws at me. Kinda regretting I didn't enable the mod which have UFOs spawn in packs. - Zombie

Alien Entertainment, right? After the last successful mission, I was selling just the stuff we recovered and found out it was a nice lump of cash: Almost $430k on top of the bounty from the mission. At our base in South America we have one "golden" Thunderstorm, a normal Thunderstorm and 3 Golden Eagle Interceptors. The golden Interceptor has the brand new Long Spear missile installed: We've been trying to switch over all the Golden Eagles to Thunderstorms, but they take forever to build. Having one or two at a base is a good idea to keep the bigger UFOs focused on them instead of the weaker Golden Eagles. And having an upgraded Thunderstorm helps even more. Time to install some ship parts on a Thunderstorm in North America as they just arrived: We are short an interceptor as a new Thunderstorm is currently under construction there. New ship parts go on a Thunderstorm in Antarctica too: That should beef up our interceptors for the time being, but we need lots more ship parts and Thinderstorms to improve our aging fleet. Almost on cue, an Alien Supply Vessel is detected near our main base so Interceptors from the neighboring bases are scrambled to attack: It doesn't make it very far and is already half damaged: It's heading right into the mouth of the lion as our base defenses in Europe start firing there too. It's all over pretty quick: None of the Golden Eagles or Thunderstorms were even damaged in the encounter. The crash site will be in darkness so we are going to wait. In the meantime, our engineers have managed to construct a bunch of things: We've switched gears from manufacturing Thunderstorms to Long Spear Launchers. Why the change in strategy? Well, now that we have upgraded Thunderstorms at each base the need for more is lessened. So far we've been handling the UFO interceptions just fine too. Look at it this way, which is more important? Having Thunderstorms with weaker missiles, or Having Golden Eagles with top of the line missiles? Thunderstorms take forever to manufacture, that's a known. Long Spears take a while too, but nowhere near that time. The most bang for the buck is to upgrade weaponry first. After all the interceptors have upgraded missiles, then we can manufacture more Thunderstorms. The nice thing about doing it this way is that you need to sell a Golden Eagle to manufacture a Thunderstorm (at a full base at least), so take the equipment off to sell, then manufacture the Thunderstorm. When that completes, put the equipment right back on. This shortens downtime too as everything is going through the installation process at the same time. Oh, and our first load of U238 ammo has finished so now everyone should have at least one clip of the stuff. That's huge. Anyhow, when the crash site is in daylight I send the team out: So stay tuned for that mission next time. - Zombie

Supply Vessel Part 2 It's a couple alien turns later and the team has just spotted an Iron Rattler on a porch of sorts to the east of us: Just before our turn starts, a Bonesetter also shows up above that. Pete's gonna take an aimed shot at it because his auto accuracy sucks: It's a non-weak spot kill for a whopping 84 damage: Showoff. As for that Iron Rattler, it's not visible anymore. But the door up there is open so I assume it went in there. NKF is going to toss a normal DG1 grenade up there to see if it catches the alien in the blast: It did hit something in there for no damage but the resulting explosion also opened up the side of the room where there was a Rider and an Iron Rattler a few tiles apart. Another DG1 grenade between the two killed the Rider for 39 damage and the blast was absorbed by the Iron Rattler: After the dust settles, Silencer is going to auto shoot at it: He hits for 28 & 16 which kills it: The next round we spot a Bonesetter on a catwalk to the north of us. Gimli technically doesn't have a direct shot at it, but he does have "heavy" photon beamer ammo loaded up which may help: The first blast misses and hits a pillar instead: The second also misses and hits a tree behind the alien: The final blast hits and deals 20 damage, it also destroys a section of the railing: With the obstruction gone, MikeTheRed is gonna shoot at it: He hits for 6, 2 & 31 damage which kills it: During the alien's next turn, the Bonesetter Commander comes out of the UFO from the roof and is seen floating. MTR will take some snap shots at it: He hits all three times but only managed to damage it once for 36. Accounting Troll will do the same thing: The first two bullets were absorbed, but the last did 40 damage which killed it: During the alien's turn a couple turns later, a cannon on the roof of the UFO shoots at the building Silencer is hiding in: Ok, TV will mortar it: The blast does 154 damage and destroys it: Two alien turns later and an Iron Rattler comes out of one of the UFO doors to shoot at Crazy Gringo, but the damage was thankfully absorbed. He now shoots back: He hits for 30 damage and kills it. Two turns later and there's a Trep on the roof of the UFO. Silencer comes up the lift from below so he has a clear shot at it: The first bullet hits for 58 damage and kills it: And that was the end of the mission. EOM report: Accounting Troll has been promoted? All right! Let's allocate his points: He was pretty well maxed out in all the good stats so I ended up putting 2 in agility and 3 in vitality. Probably will do something similar for his last promotion. The more APs, the more he can move. And we all know what Vitality does. I'll deal with the rest of the Geoscape stuff in my next post. Before I go though, I managed to hit #4 on the Steam global leaderboards for UFOs shot down at 5453 today. #3 only requires 65 more UFOs to be shot down so I suspect I'll get to that by Wednesday or so. After that, #2 will require 784 more UFOs and I estimate that'll take till the late part of June if all goes to plan. - Zombie

Ok, so here's the deal. Last year I played this game like, a lot. I'd do maybe an away mission every other day so I have dozens upon dozens of missions ready to be posted here. Trouble is, I can't post here everyday so they get banked until I have the time. I need to get caught up so it doesn't make sense to complete the game and sit on that for a few months. May as well keep that a surprise for myself and you guys. In the meantime, I just shoot down UFOs everyday until I catch up. I have a few research topics left to complete which would be a couple months of in-game time to finish, and then I'd also like to get a few more soldiers fully promoted to have a good squad for the final missions. So figure another month or so for that depending on the number of missions and the xp gained. So It would take me a little while to get the game to a point where I could go. - Zombie

Supply Vessel Part 1 This map is a human base type which I'm not very fond of. But it's better than some other maps possible so we stick with it. We deploy as normal but spot nothing on our initial turn. During the alien's turn, an airborne Bonesetter shows up but does nothing. When it's our turn again, Nook will take an auto shot at it with U238 ammo: The first bullet does an incredible non-critical hit dealing 94 damage which kills it: Unreal! This ammo is a real game-changer, that's for sure. A couple alien turns later, another airborne Bonesetter shows up only to be met with reaction fire from FullAuto who is toting a photon beamer with normal ammo.The first blast connects for 63 damage which kills it: And then another Bonesetter shows up in the same spot as the first one did: When it's our turn, Silencer will take a long range aimed shot at it: The shot missed somehow, but his next connected for 60 damage and killed it: On our next turn we spot an cannon on the roof of the UFO so The Veteran will send a mortar in: BOOM! The blast does 104 to one cannon and 43 to the other hidden one next to it. Both survive so he sends another which does 55 & 113 damage which destroys both: For the time being we have a little breathing room. 11 turns later and we eventually spot a Rider on a catwalk which FA will take an aimed shot at: The shot only does 23 damage so he takes another shot. This one will be a hit too: It does 37 damage which kills it: Some excellent damage rolls so far, hope this keeps up! During the alien's turn, a Trep show up where the first Bonesetter was: MTR will take an auto shot at it since his accuracy can't be beat (with el-cheapo ammo nonetheless): The first bullet does a decent 19 damage and the second is going to hit too: It only did 8 damage but his last hit for 32 which killed it: A couple turns later Nook scouts around to find another cannon. There will be another one next to it so when TV gets ready to mortar, he splits the difference: It's a weak spot hit on both for 146 and 151 damage respectively: The scary central cannon is also visible so TV will mortar it too: The blast only hits for 122 damage but that's enough to destroy it too: Three turns later and we spot a Rider on the ground at the South side of the map. FA will take an aimed shot at it just for giggles: The first blast does 15 damage and the second will be a hit too: It only does 10 damage but that's enough to kill it: Join me next time for part 2 where we kill an Iron Rattler and a few more Bonesetters, then take out another alien cannon and finally a meeting with the Bonesetter Commander outside which ends badly for it. Edit: Just hit #5 on the Steam global leaderboards with 5271 aliens killed so far. It was a grind, sure, but I did it little by little each day after work and got the job done one day ahead of schedule. I probably would have did it sooner but the game cancelled me due to negative funds again. To circumvent this a bit and prolong the inevitable from happening, I had my main base crank out positronic suits of armor to deplete some cash. Kinda wish I kept engineers at my other bases to manufacture some expensive stuff too. Maybe next time around. It'll probably take me till Sunday to get to #4, then another week to get to #3. Oh, I finished that terror mission in the Pacific Ocean the other day (took screenshots to document the whole thing too since it was on a different map and all). It was just Riders, so it was mostly pushover aliens, but there were alien cannons sprinkled around to make things interesting/difficult. I'll post that sometime soon. What I didn't realize is that there were no civilians present so that automatically got me the "Protector" Steam achievement for having less than 2 civvy casualties. Nice! - Zombie

That's amazing! Wonder if there's any XCOM stuff in there... - Zombie

Light Cruiser Part 2 After the scaredy cat bonesetter ran off in a huff to the bridge, we didn't see it after dousing it in fire. Dead? We didn't hear a scream or see a body. So it's still alive somewhere. When CG opened the door to the bridge and took a step inside he was hit once with reaction fire from a bonesetter. Same one? Maybe. Well, he's gonna shoot at it: The first bullet looks like it'll be a hit: It's a weak spot kill for 117 damage, and somehow the corpse ends up in the central area by us: Strange. Nothing happens during the alien's turn and we stay put as well. During the alien's next turn a hidden bonesetter shoots at Nook, Silencer and Pete with heavy photon beamer ammo. Worst case scenario. Luckily, Pete was the only one injured for 5 damage: If that wasn't bad enough, the thing materializes and shoots at the group again. This time it injures Silencer for 19 damage but was absorbed by Pete. Nook starts the reaction fire proceedings out by hitting the bonesetter but the damage was absorbed: The next two bullets hit for 19 & 3. All of Silencers shots were absorbed. Pete's first two bullets hit for 34 and absorbed. His last bullet is going to be a hit as well: And that killed it (sorry, no screenie). Three turns later and we now have layers upon layers of backup just in case things turn buggy again. Silencer has been healed and we've made our way into the bridge where during the alien's turn a bonesetter exited the middle room with haste: What's the rush? Nook's going to greet it with an auto shot of U238 ammo: The first bullet does a decent 52 damage with more on the way: That killed it and ended the mission. Buggy! Probably should have reloaded somewhere to clear it, but we made it through in mostly one piece. EOM report: Yup, it's all good. No lasting injuries, we killed 11 (maybe 12 with that bonesetter we flame seared) and had two promotions. Nook obviously as it was almost all him this mission, but that critical hit kill from CG was enough to earn himself one as well. Let's allocate Nook's points first: I put 3 points into strength and 2 into shooting to get him to 97 in both stats. It looks like we can put one more point in shooting for his next promotion along with maybe 2 in strength (probably only one). Let's do CG next: A lot of his meaningful stats have been maxed out already so I put two in agility and 3 in vitality. Seemed like the right thing to do. He has one promotion left and I think I'll do the same thing again when that happens. Back in the geoscape, our research into the Pegasus transport finally completed: Let's take a look at this bad boy: It's all around better. And the best thing is that it carries 16 troops which means we can bring along more soldiers for rear-commander training (like my soldiers ever really sit idle in the craft, they always help somehow). It's gonna take a while to manufacture this and cost a fair dime too, but we have the means right now. Before that happens let's see what other topics are available for research: Just a live alien entry? Think I'll pass for the time being as I don't want to trigger any game events. Plus the money I save from not using them will go to the cost of that new Pegasus. We need an empty hangar to construct the thing so I transferred one of the Thunderstorm interceptors to a different base for the time being. I'm halting production of more U238 ammo too, everything is going on manufacturing that Pegasus: And here's what the base looks like: That's a big transport! It's really not that big, the devs just exaggerated the size in the hangar. We are going to hold on to the Icarus transport until the Pegasus is completed as our soldier still need to visit crash sites for xp. Speaking of such, we just started to shoot down a supply vessel over Europe: It doesn't take too long to down it with multiple Thunderstorms and Golden Eagles plus base defenses firing at it: We'll wait a little bit till the crash site is in daylight, then send out the team. So join me next time for that. Edit: I'm still #6 on the Steam global leaderboards with 4766 UFOs shot down. It's slow going but I try to shoot some UFOs down everyday. ETA to get to #5 is still mid-May sometime, that hasn't changed. And probably mid-June to get to #3 with #2 being late June to early July. - Zombie

Light Cruiser Part 1 This mission is on an arctic map which will be a change of scenery for us. On turn 3 we spot a Rider by the corner of the UFO which Nook will shoot at: The first bullet hits for 24 damage and kills it. The other bullets would have hit too: The next turn Silencer spots another Rider in the same area and Nook will shoot at this one too: He hits it for 45 damage which is obviously a kill. A couple turns later Silencer spots a Bonesetter in the usual location and it's Nook who will take the shot: Three full auto shots later and the thing is still alive: Of course, he isn't using the U238 ammo so it's understandable there will be lots of absorption going on. But all the hits add up to more xp which he's after. The first bullet of his last auto shot hits for 45 and finally kills the thing: Free death aura. Eight turns later there's more Rider activity in the usual area by the UFO. Nook will shoot yet again: The first bullet hits for an impressive 55 damage and kills it: During the alien's turn, Silencer reaction fires at a temporarily hidden Rider behind those two columns in the center of the screen. The first bullet hits for 10 but more are on the way: The second did a decent 40 and killed it (at least the corpse is visible now): Honestly, I'm not sure how Silencer had the angle on that, but I'm not complaining one little bit. Four turns later Silencer spots another Bonesetter by the door of the UFO. Nook has one bullet left in his clip so he'll take a snap shot at the thing first: It deals a surprising 38 damage. Time to switch to U238 ammo for the auto shot: The first bullet hits for 50 and kills it: Then nothing happens for a number of turns. It sounds like maybe a Bonesetter is near the small building in back of the pillars so I have Full Auto shoot at the wall with his photon beamer to open things up. Bingo, it's right there too: I don't want to risk reaction fire from it in order to get Nook into a position to shoot so he'll toss an Inferno Grenade as close to it as he can: The blast didn't even register damage on the Bonesetter. Nook then threw a DG1 grenade at it which did no damage either. But the blast did open up the wall more and this gives Silencer a chance at tossing another grenade on it: The first hit for 20 and the second was absorbed: Disappointing showing guys. Accounting Troll shoots at it and hits for 43 damage which kills it: You can see that the crew is covering each other fairly well. There are usually multiple soldiers in a position to help in case someone gets into a pinch. We've also uncovered most of the map now and haven't found anything of interest. It takes the team a few turns to converge on the UFO and start the breaching process. The door to the right room inside the UFO is open so Silencer will toss a photon grenade in there: Four turns later Crazy Gringo opens the other door in the room looking back into the center and sees that the two far doors are also open. The one going to the bridge has a Bonesetter so he'll throw an Inferno Grenade at it: The blast does 47 damage. We'll just roast it in it's shell for a little bit. In the meantime Nook will "explore" the other small room by tossing a normal grenade inside: Nothing. Well, I guess the Bonesetter came out of there and ran into the bridge like a scaredy cat.Join me next time for part two where we start to get into it with the bridge crew, but Nook, Silencer and Pete get ambushed by a sneaky (glitchy?) rogue bonesetter. We persevered with multiple layers of reaction fire and then deal with the last bonesetter holdout. After the mission there will be 2 promotions, and back in the geoscape we finish our research and deal with manufacturing and shoot down the next UFO. Stay tuned for that next! - Zombie

Swarm Leader Part 6 During the alien's last turn, some of our soldiers caught a glimpse of a Bonesetter above the UFO somewhere. So Pete's gonna teleport up there to take a look around: Nothing. Well, that's odd. Maybe it was a game glitch? Whatever the case, he will stay up there as overwatch. During the aliens turn the (invisible) Bonesetter Commander hits Pete with it's freeze weapon for 12 damage. He fires back doing 4 damage, and the second bullet looks like it'll be a hit too: It hit for 6 damage and the last did a decent 26. Now we have bigger problems as a regular Bonesetter shows up on the roof of the North side of the UFO: When it's our turn, the Commander can be seen so Pete will poke at it with the stun rod: It's a weak spot poke for 125 stun damage. Nightie-night commander, you're coming with us! See that hole in the roof next to Pete? There's a door in the roof where aliens can enter/exit. That's why the commander appeared out of nowhere. We are going to have to station one or two soldiers up there from now on just in case. Anyhow, CG teleports up there to patch Pete up with a Stimpack but finds that instead of 12 freeze damage, Pete only has 2 in his head: Not sure what's up with that. Maybe the Pale Blue Crystal absorbed that damage again? Not complaining one little bit. Pete still has plenty of APs left so he'll shoot at that other Bonesetter with U238 ammo: The first bullet hit for 50. 50! The second is on the way and it looks like it'll be a hit too: It does 11 damage and kills the thing (free death aura and all): Atta boy Pete! The next turn another Bonesetter comes up to check out what all the fuss was about: It shoots at CG but the damage was absorbed. When it's our turn, Pete will shoot at it: It was a quick kill with this great ammo and that was the end of the mission. Phew! That was a long one. But fun too. EOM report is excellent: Nobody seriously injured, a commander captured, 60 aliens killed and MTR has his promotion again, same point scheme as the last time: What's different this time is MTR had 12 more kills and earned himself 85 more xp in the process. Not bad at all. The real reason we redid this mission was because we didn't recover all the advanced ship parts as a reward last time. This time, we got em: And to verify, they are in our stores too: Much better! We'll be equipping these to more Thunderstorm interceptors when they are built. In the meantime, we have to visit that Light Cruiser UFO which we shot down recently (seems like ages ago after this past mission). So stay tuned for that next time! - Zombie

Swarm Leader Part 5 It's 11 turns later and not much has been going on. We hear doors opening a lot so there must be a few aliens left somewhere. When Crazy Gringo sticks his head in the UFO and looks down a long hallway he spots a lone Bonesetter. Time to shoot at it with depleted uranium 238 rounds: The first two bullets do 43 & 51 damage which kills it: Love this new ammo! Three turns later CG peeks in the other exterior UFO door and spots... what the heck is this? It looks like a Rider attached to the wall. Let's shoot at it: The first bullet hits for 58 damage which "kills" it. And the game thinks this is a cannon, not a Rider. Um, okay. And the game now thinks the inner door is open when Pete peeks in. Well, if it's open, there must be an alien present nearby so he'll toss a sludge grenade in there to probe the darkness: The strategy pays off as the gas cloud kills a Bonesetter for 73 chem damage: Three turns later and the chem cloud dissipated, but MTR spots another Bonesetter in there again. He'll shoot at it with Ultra ammo: It was a little back and forth shooting, but in the end he prevails: The next round Silencer sees a Trep at the end of the hallway which he'll shoot at: The first two bullets hit for 40 & 45 damage which kills it: The next round Nook looks in the left exterior door and sees an Iron Rattler in a hibernation spawning room which he'll shoot at: The first bullet hits for 33 which kills it: Subsequent bullets destroy the pod which creates a pretty purple cloud of gas: The next round there's another Iron Rattler midway down the left hallway. Nook will shoot at this one too: He hits for 28 & 34 which kills it: Six turns later and during the aliens turn a Trep shows up in the hibernation cubby on the left side. We reaction fire back but only manage to explode the pod: It looks like one of the bullets hit, but the game refuses to acknowledge that: The Trep then comes to the door where we're at and proceeds to hack at MTR but the damage was absorbed. He'll shoot at it then: Took two auto shots but he managed to kill it: In the last part of the mission we'll deal three more Bonesetters with one being the commander. MTR is promoted "again". And we finally recover our advanced ship parts. - Zombie

Sounds like a plan then. I only took two initial screenshots just to get an idea of what the map sorta looks like. We are at the corner of the map and the Southeast side of the transport is solid ground with some bridges or gangways connecting areas together: To the Northeast of the transport is all water baby: I didn't include a screenie of this yet, but the wall that rises up out of the water goes up another couple levels. This puts the team at a real disadvantage because the aliens hold the high ground. It's only Riders so far though, so there's not much of an advantage for them anyway. - Zombie

Swarm Leader Part 4 It's the next round now. Accounting Troll just got eyes on the North cannon on the roof of the UFO so The Veteran is going to mortar it: The blast does an impressive 148 damage which destroys it: Three turns later, Crazy Gringo teleports to the roof of the UFO to get a good look around. He spots the last two cannons up there: Teleporting does not alert a cannon to your soldier's position, so CG is safe as long as he doesn't move. The cannons also do not notice if you teleport away and out of view, which he does. Now TV can send a mortar between them: He hits one for 88 damage and the other for 93. Neither is destroyed, but it's close. Instead of wasting another mortar bomb on them, Nook is going to take a long range auto shot at the farthest: The first bullet was absorbed while the next two bullets both did a paltry 9 damage each. The cannon fired back and only managed to hit him for 2 damage. No biggie. But hey, why is he using the AK1 Ultra Ammo when he has the depleated Uranium-238 stuff? Oh, that's right, accuracy really suffers: The first bullet managed to hit for a nice 27 damage which destroyed it: Nook still has plenty of APs left so he'll shoot at the other cannon too: His first two bullets hit for 19 & 63 damage which destroyed it. Here's where he was shooting from: It's a good overwatch position as my team hasn't made their way over this far yet. Silencer runs over to him to patch him up with a Stimpack: Ten turns later and Pete finally joined CG in watching the doors to the UFO. When he entered from above (more on this some other time) he fell down below where he spots two Bonesetters. The closest to him is only a couple tiles away which means he'll crack out the U238 ammo to shoot at it: The first bullet hits for 62 damage and kills it: CG will shoot at the other Bonesetter: His first bullet hits for 69 damage which is a kill shot: CG can get back into safety in the anteroom, but Pete's almost out of APs so he'll have to stay put and cross his fingers that it's the right decision. As expected, during the alien's turn a Rider exits the middle room and shoots at poor Pete: The photon beamer shot was absorbed and when it's our turn again, Pete's in a perfect position to shoot at it: The U238 ammo does 43 damage which kills it: Pete teleports the heck out of there, and when CG goes in the door to glance around, he spots a Bonesetter in the middle room and an Iron Rattler a couple tiles away which he'll shoot at: The first bullet hits for a nice 88 damage which kills it. After that he decides to put his tail between his legs and retreat like Pete did by teleporting to the roof of the UFO: Glad he did, because he spots another Iron Rattler right where he was before: The thing doesn't come out to play for another 3 turns, and Accounting Troll will shoot at it because he's in a perfect position: The first two normal Ultra ammo bullets do 23 & 19 damage which kills it: Nothing happens for 4 turns so CG teleports in to investigate what the holdup is. It's just a normal Bonesetter which he'll shoot at: The first bullet hits for 78 damage and kills it: Love this U238 ammo! The other alien is a Iron Rattler outside which nobody can shoot at so we let it be. It comes along the side of the UFO where that other one was before: When it's our turn again, AT gets back into position to shoot at the thing: He hits all three times for 15, 1 and 37 damage which kills it: In the next part we'll deal with another Bonesetter and a whole boatload of alien hibernation spawns as well as an alien "cannon". We'll get into this more the next time. Update: I'm now #6 on the Steam leaderboards for UFOs shot down at 4498. It'll take 753 more UFOs shot down to get to #5 which will be a slog. I estimate that'll take till May 9-ish, assuming I have the time that week due to Mother's day that weekend. Might have to step up my efforts in the coming weeks to make sure I can keep up the pace. Oh, and remember when I mentioned that a UFO created a terror site in an ocean recently and thought that maybe it was a glitch? Well, it happened to me again today and this time I saved the game in a different slot and then sent in the team to see what would happen. Turns out it is a legit mission and has a new unique map type associated with it. I did take a couple screenshots in the first few turns for you guys to check out, but I'll wait on posting them. Do you want me to do only that or the whole mission? If you want to see more than the immediate LZ area I'd like to know beforehand as I have to take more screenies. - Zombie