Zombie

We just got back to base from this last mission and our scientists have finally finished researching the Positronic Beamer handheld weapon: Let's check out it's description next: It does great damage (U238 ammo only does 100) and the accuracy is much better. The biggest drawbacks is the weight of the weapon (35), the weight of the ammo (10, total weapon weight loaded is 45) and the small clip size (12). 4 auto shots and you'll be reloading already. Plus you can only use what you gather off missions - no manufacturing these. We may have a couple soldiers carry these to start and then slowly increase that. It all depends how many hardened bonesetter missions we need to go on. In the meantime, we need to research something else, like maybe the positronic grenade: Yup, let's do that. I'll put all the scientists on it: Nothing going on in the Geoscape really, and 3 days later research completes: Before we do anything else, let's check out it's description: 150 damage is just insane. For comparison, the next strongest grenade is the cryo which deals just 100. The most powerful grenade which deals only mechanical damage is the coveted golden pineapple (DG2) which only does 85. That's a 75%+ improvement. But again, we are going to have to ration these babies because we can only use what we recover on missions. In terms of research, the choice is pretty clear - all efforts are going into the Positronic Ship Cannon: The photon cannons just aren't cutting it anymore as we've been dealing with a lot of bigger UFOs lately. Back at base, let's check out our stockpiles of weapons and grenades and mortar bombs: Pretty happy with the quantity of mortar bombs, but I'd really feel safer with at least 100. With the huge variability in damage, we may need to use quite a few of the bombs to take out cannons and such. Back to the globe, not much has been happening on the geoscape lately. Six days later and our interceptors in North America shot down a UFO Recon Vessel west of the Galapagos Islands: And I'm totally fine with it crashing into the ocean. The small UFOs don't really give much of anything and with the crash happening on the opposite side of the world from our main base it would take our transport forever to get there anyway. Good riddance. Just about an hour later our research into the Positronic Cannon completed: Let's check out it's description first: It's a huge upgrade over the photon cannon, the biggest drawbacks being capacity and price. For comparison, here's the photon cannon: As for what to research next, I'm curious about that Hardened Bonesetter so let's put everyone on that: And now we finally can produce one of the Positronic Cannons in Africa since our engineers are ready: It's gonna take nearly 4 days though. Will the UFOs hold out long enough is the big question. Turns out, the answer to that question is a resounding "NO", as we spotted two UFOs. First is a Light Cruiser over Russia. The interceptors from my main base are scrambled to intercept: It's already half damaged by our defenses so this shouldn't take too long: It is downed easily. We aren't going to bombard this one as it'll be a quickie for our soldiers to mop up. The other UFO is a Recon Vessel over the Pacific Ocean: I scramble the interceptors from North America to take that out over water: No way I want to wait around for it to get near land. With lots of heavy missiles inbound, the UFO will not know what hit it: Five minutes later and a Battlecruiser is detected over India: Every available interceptor nearby is scrambled to intercept as it's headed to our main base: The thing stops short and is concentrating it's fire on an interceptor from Europe. Fine with me, as that means everyone can fire at will at close range: Plus it's situated between our main base and the aircraft carrier which means the base defenses can fire at it too. Doesn't take long and it's down: Geez, big enough explosion animation. Since the Light Cruiser will be in daylight first, we'll do that first. So stay tuned for that next time. - Zombie

Battlecruiser Part 3 It's four turns later and now everyone has made their way to cover both doors to the UFO. Pete goes inside and spots a Mega by two power sources so he'll toss a photon grenade between the two hoping that the explosion will be decent: Very pretty explosion but it only did 18 damage to the thing: During the alien's turn the Mega smartly books it outta there, but we still have eyes on it: DragonHawk is planning on tossing an Inferno grenade near it: But if he steps inside the door he can toss it directly on it: That's the better strategy, maximize damage. It does 53 fire damage which kills it: Nothing happens for a very long time. After 11 turns of that the team is getting very restless. Luckily we spot a Mega in a corner of the ship and this time Kret will toss an Inferno grenade on it: The fire hits a weak spot dealing 77 damage which kills it: During the alien's next turn a apparent Mega sneaks up on NKF and shoots him with it's chem weapon. He shrugs off the damage like Pete and fires back at the invisible alien: He hits for 25 & 87 which kills it. When it's our turn, Pete spots a Mega Commander at the door to the central room. CG is going to attempt to stun it: The poke does 79 stun which knocks it out cold. During the alien's next turn, another Mega Commander shows up: It shoots it's chem weapon at Pete which does 3 damage. You're slacking Pete, normally that kind of damage rolls off your back. When it's our turn the Mega is right in front of some team members so they load up el-cheapo ammo. Sorby will shoot first: Any damage was absorbed so now it's time for NKF to get some revenge (and xp): After NKF, Mouse and Knan shoot at it too. Everything was absorbed. Before we go too far, Silencer will patch up Pete with the Stimpack: And now you can shoot at the commander too Silencer: After Silencer. Kret even gets in on the action. Not a single bullet from anyone damaged the commander. That's as far as I want to push it so now Pete pulls out the stun rod and gets ready to poke it: It must've did enough stun damage to knock it out because the mission ended. EOM report: Three promotions! Time to allocate Knan's points first: That's right, max out strength and shooting. 9 missions and only 3 kills and he's kicking butt and taking names. Mouse is next: His strength is kinda low at 90 but that stat is maxed out already. Let's max out Shooting first, then dump the rest in throwing. He's gotta have something to fall back on. Finally we have Kret: One point goes in Strength to max that out, one goes into shooting to max that out too. I tossed one point into agility to make that kinda even with vitality then put the last two points into throwing. He's a real beast. As far as loot, we are selling some more and will make an additional $473k: Join me next time for an all-Geoscape episode where we mostly crank out some research projects in the downtime, and eventually shoot down a few more UFOs. Should be interesting! - Zombie

Battlecruiser Part 2 During the alien's next turn a pGehe shows up where Pete is. He's in cover and can't reaction fire at it, but DragonHawk has a clear shot and takes it. The first bullet hits a weak spot for a massive 107 damage which kills it: You can probably make out where the shot connected as it's just below the gas cloud and to the right of the fire. A couple turns later and we just spotted the close cannon on the roof of the UFO. TV will mortar it: The blast only does 52 damage. We may as well nuke it again: This time it hits a weak spot for 163 damage which destroys it: Such inconsistent damage rolls. There was some activity during the alien's turn and we now see two pGehes. First up is one by the flagpole again. Silencer will take some snap shots at it: His first bullet hits for an unlucky 13, but his next connects for 81 which kills it: The other pGehe is above the tanker truck and DragonHawk will take some snap shots at it too: His first hits for 16 and his next hits for 65 which kills it: Nothing really happens for 3 turns so Pete's going to find some work for TV. Mainly cannons. He teleports to the center of the roof and spots all of them: TV will mortar the one on the right first: The blast does a very decent 143 damage which destroys it. Next up is the cannon on the left: This blast also does a decent 137 damage which destroys it. That same blast also set something off inside the UFO which damages one alien for 4 but the other shrugs it off: Gotta love that. TV barely has enough APs left to mortar the last one: This blast does 147 and destroys it: Kind of an impressive weapon if you just look at it from the last three bombs. We know better though. Three alien turns later and we spot a Mega by both doors of the UFO: The closest one to us moves closer to it's friend: TV pulls out his mortar during our turn to put one between the two: The one on the right takes 38 damage and is killed while the other only takes 19: Really? 19? At least this alien is closer to the action so CG will auto shoot at it: His first bullet was absorbed, but the second did 41 which kills it: Five turns later and we've uncovered most of the map with no sightings. Everyone converges on the doors to the UFO. DragonHawk walks to the close door and is immediately met with reaction fire from a trigger happy Mega which injures him for 1 in his right leg. He makes a hasty retreat and Kret will patch him up with a Stimpack: MTR will throw a normal grenade at this pesky Mega: The damage is absorbed, so he steps it up with a Cryo grenade. This blast does an impressive 85 which kills it: Yeah, these cryo grenades is where it's at folks. And we can manufacture these babies instead of only recovering them from the battlescape so I think we may need to make some more of them the first chance we get. Join me next time where it's more Mega action, and even two Commanders come out to play which we stun, but not before we train up some soldiers by shooting at one with el-cheapo ammo. - Zombie

Battlecruiser Part 1 So this time we are on a desert map. Haven't seen that in a while so it's a good change. During the alien's first turn we spot a Mega floating around above the walled in area next to our transport: When it's finally our turn, it's gone. In it's place is a pGehe. Silencer is going to take some snapshots at it with U238 ammo: His bullets hit for 6, 12 and 1 damage. One? Really? Kret's going to try the same thing: His first bullet hit for a minuscule 8 but his second hit for a decent 41 which killed it: There was a lot of activity during the alien's next turn. When we can go again, Silencer is going to shoot at a Mega who is floating above a tanker truck: He hits for 16 & 40 which kills it: The other alien we can see is another pGehe which AT will take an auto shot at: It was hit or miss every other bullet so he had to shoot again. His second to last shot hit for 50 which killed it: After a quick peek, we now can see two Megas at the front of the transport. AT will take some snap shots at the one in the air by the flagpole: The damage was absorbed so now Silencer will do the same thing: His first bullet hits a weak spot for a massive 107 damage which equals a dead mega: MTR now spots another mega near the edge of the map. Nook will utilize aimed shots: His first was absorbed but his second hit for 33. Still not dead so now Sorby will do the same thing: It hits for a decent 39 damage which kills it: As for the Mega on the ground, Pete will toss an Inferno Grenade on it: It's a weak spot hit for a nice even 100 damage which kills it obviously: What's this? There's another pGehe in the air near Pete. Kret will take some snap shots at it: He hits for 12, 6 & 73 which kills it: DragonHawk now spots a Mega near Pete. He somehow has a shot at it. Aimed so it's a guarantee hit: It only does 18 damage. Luckily he has just enough AP's left for one more aimed shot: It hits for an identical 18 damage, but that's enough to kill it: We don't see any more aliens so that's the good news. 8 in one turn, I'm sure the aliens are reeling after that performance. Nope, during the alien's next turn a pGehe appears by Pete: It shoots it's chem weapon at Pete in close range, but you know Pete, he just shrugs it off like it was nothing. Pete shoots back at it, hits all three times but only manages to damage it once for 13 damage. It's now our turn again and Pete is going to try and finish it off with an auto shot: His first auto shot does a total of 28 damage which isn't enough to kill it. On his second auto shot his first bullet hits for 18 which kills it: Join me for part two where we deal with a few more pGehe's outside and then focus on taking out those pesky cannons on the roof of the UFO. - Zombie

Supply Vessel Part 3 It's the next turn and a Caretaker has appeared at the corner of the UFO. Sitting duck right there folks. DragonHawk comes around a corner to shoot at it with U238 ammo: His first bullet hits for an impressive 51 while the second does an incredible 89 damage which kills it: Five turns later, an invisible Caretaker shoots at Pete who is trying to set up an ambush: The blast is absorbed by Pete's armor and shielding. The Caretaker isn't as lucky and kills itself when the blast does 80 damage. Dummy: Normally I'd reload the game because I want my soldiers to get the kills, but this was too funny so I continued on. A little bit of wonkyness went on after this but I think the dead Caretaker's "explosion" animation was run which caused that small building to explode and do no damage to Pete again: Pete's Pete, explosions like that are meaningless to him. Shrug it off and move on, right? He'll take a couple steps because he wants to check the UFO door. As expected, a Caretaker inside the UFO shoots at him, but he absorbs the damage no problem. He'll shoot back then: The first two bullets do 27 & 56 damage which kills it: This guy is unstoppable. One little problem though, there is another Caretaker hidden in the darkness outside the door. Nobody really has a good shot on it, or heck, toss a grenade on it either, so TV will mortar it: It's a weak spot hit for a massive 180 damage: During the alien's turn a Caretaker comes up to the roof via the trap door. When it's our turn, Silencer will shoot at it: his first two bullets do 37 & 66 damage which kills it: Love that U238 ammo, it's a game-changer. During the alien's next turn, a Caretaker who is inside the closer UFO door to us becomes visible and shoots at Pete. He absorbs the damage and shoots back showing where it actually is: Not sure how much damage he inflicted, but it was enough to kill it which ended the mission. EOM report: 33 aliens killed and nearly $1million in bounty too. No promotions, but no serious injuries either. Back at base we sell the recovered components and weapons: Nearly $300k from that. We recently manufactured some weapons for our new Pagasus transport ship so let's get rid of that antiquated Fire Arrow Launcher and swap that bad boy out for the Long Spear: And we may as well install a hand of fate launcher too: There, all upgraded: Meanwhile, our engineers have been busy building another Thunderstorm to replace our aging fleet of Golden Eagles along with a Long Spear launcher: Our base in Antarctica is coming along nicely now as we have a full squadron of Thunderstorms, one's even upgraded: Same deal in Europe, but we need to upgrade the fire arrow launchers to long spears sometime soon: At the main base, the thing we need the most is more U238 ammo. Before we can complete that, a Battlecruiser shows up over Africa headed to Asia. Interceptors from all over are scrambled to shoot it down, but the ones in Africa are doing most of the heavy lifting: Or shooting. Take your pick.The stupid UFO makes a huge mistake and heads right into the mouth of the beast: One of the normal Thunderstorms is getting pretty beat up in this fight so we'll send it back to base. Just in time as the rest of the Thunderstorms shoot it down: Of course, we are going to visit this baby as it's going to have plenty of loot and xp for the soldiers. Let's get everything back to base first: When the crash site is in daylight the transport is sent out: So join me next time for that. Should be interesing... and probably long. -Zombie

Supply Vessel Part 2 It's now three turns later and we've just spotted an alien cannon on the roof of the UFO. The Veteran goes up a lift in order to mortar it: It only hits for 97 damage though: And now that cannon fires back at TV. Looks like it's going to be a hit unfortunately: Somehow it only damages him for 1 point. Very lucky! He mortars the cannon again and this time the blast does 137 damage which destroys it: On our next turn we spot the scary central cannon. TV will again mortar it: The blast does an impressive 157 damage which destroys it: Next turn we spot that other cannon on the south east side. Same as before... TV, mortar, blah, blah, blah: The blast only did 53 damage but because he previously damaged it, the thing is destroyed: Next turn our fearless leader Pete teleports to the top of the UFO to check out our progress and get eyes on the remaining cannons up there: Three left. Pete teleports back out of there as it's time to split the difference between the two cannons on the west side with a mortar: The blast does 145 damage to the farthest one which destroys it, but only does 85 to the other one: The cannon then fires back. Our three intrepid soldiers shrugged off the damage from the first blast, but on the second one FA takes 2 damage, AT takes 1 and MTR shrugs off the damage completely: That's not so bad, right? Ordinarily yes, but the cannon has one more shot and this time it hits AT for 9, MTR for 2 and FA escapes. Nobody has critical wounds though so it's more of a formality at this point to cure the damage. FA is going to patch up AT with a stimpack: Since he has the stimpack out, he may as well heal MTR too: MTR returns the favor and heals up FA: Teamwork! Silencer is going to shoot at the offending cannon: His first bullet is absorbed, but his second does 46 which destroys it: MTR ran out of APs trying to escape the blaze the cannon created and has to tough it out in the flames during the alien's turn. He takes 3 fire damage so FA will patch him up again: Now TV will mortar the last cannon: The first blast only did 38 damage. TV inspects the mortar, shrugs , and fires it again. This blast does another 75 damage, but that's still not enough to destroy it: TV doesn't have enough APs to fire it again so we'll have to wait. On our next turn NKF tries to take a peek along the south side of the UFO but a Caretaker reaction fires at him, luckily for no damage. DragonHawk will shoot at it: His first bullet hits for an impressive 87 damage which kills it: And that's what makes the U238 ammo so nice. There's also a Trep on the roof of the UFO. DH still has plenty of APs left so he'll take a snap shot at it: It hits for 57 damage which kills it: Easiest xp ever. It's like taking candy from a baby. TV will now mortar that last cannon on the roof of the UFO: The blast does a pitiful 69 damage, but it was enough to destroy the cannon: Finally! Join me next time for part three where we deal with 5 Caretakers (luckily not at the same time). The we sell some stuff for extra $$$, equip our transport with weaponry, manufacture some more ship weapons and shoot down a pesky Battlecruiser which was getting a little too close for comfort. I had some time the last few days and was able to shoot down a bunch more UFOs. Right now I'm sitting at 9382 UFOs shot down which is a good start for the month. I had a little bit of a headache with one tough swarm that showed up. The game always spawns 6 UFOs for a swarm. What sizes of UFOs are in the swarm is kinda random but as you get farther in the game it switches mostly to Battlecruisers and Massive Patrol Vessels. For my swarm event I got 3 Battlecruisers and 2 Massive Patrol Vessels over Australia and a Medium Cruiser over the Pacific heading to North America. The part of the swarm over Australia quickly headed out over the Pacific and refused to come near any of my bases before disappearing. So my initial strategy was to send out the interceptors from Australia and Antarctica to maybe take one out or draw it back to a base to allow the defenses to help down it. Trouble was, all those UFOs swarmed the interceptors and would almost always down one or two. So then I switched my focus to that medium cruiser over the Pacific... sent the interceptors from North America to engage it. They were able to down it over land just before the rest of the swarm backups arrived. Then I let the base defenses in North America shoot at them for a while until they wandered off. I enticed them back by sending out an interceptor to bombard the medium cruiser with one bomb. Worked pretty good. I guess the moral of the story is not to focus on the group first. Pick out any outliers, then go after any single UFO which is being fired on by the base defenses. Leave everything else because they will probably head to your activity. - Zombie

Supply Vessel Part 1 This time we are on a cityscape map. Pete and CG go down to the ground from the platform via their teleporter to have a look around and spot a caretaker along side the transport on the ground. Nook gets off with an Inferno grenade at the ready. Yo may be able to make out the caretaker's eyeballs poking up: The Caretaker can't shoot at Nook because he's blocked by the transport so Nook feels pretty safe with tossing the grenade below: It's a weak spot hit for a massive 94 fire damage which obviously kills it: That's amazing! A turn later we spot a Rarach on a rooftop a couple stories above the transport. Somehow MTR has a shot on it: All his bullets hit for great damage doing 55, 25 & 42 which kills it: And that wasn't even the depleted uranium ammo. Down below the transport, CG spots another Rarach a fair distance away. Pete will shoot at it: His first two bullets do 58 & 29 damage which kills it: Again, great damage rolls. There's no stopping us this mission! That is until CG sneaks a little too close and is shot at by an alien cannon. Luckily for no damage. TV will mortar it: The blast does 121 to the cannon which destroys it, and also deals 91 damage to something else up there which didn't die: I'm assuming it's another cannon, so nothing to worry about yet. A couple alien turns later and there's a lot of activity we spot. First is a Rarach who is coming down a street towards CG and Pete: That may be an issue if it doesn't stop. We also see movement in a darkened building with a door open: That first Rarach got a little too close to CG so NKF is going to shoot at it with depleted uranium rounds just to make sure it goes down: He hits all three times doing 65, 20 & 28 damage which kills it: Quite impressive numbers from Mr Reliable. There's also a Rarach above that area in a glass hallway. Pete shoots out some windows so MTR who is on the platform is able to target it with U238 ammo: His first two bullets do 69 & 100 damage which kills it: Teamwork is the name of the game along with lucky damage rolls. Hope this keeps up! During the alien's next turn, that Rarach in the darkened building shows up at the doorway: When it's our turn the thing is still visible. NKF has a shot on it, but his auto accuracy with the good ammo is a little low so he opts for an aimed shot: His first shot hit for 82 damage which didn't kill it. NKF's next auto shot does 87 which kills it: There's also an Iron Rattler to the west of us which DragonHawk will take some snap shots at with U238 ammo: Oops, it's an Iron Rattler so it's a weakling. His first bullet does 43 damage which kills it: During the alien's next turn we spot an airborne Trep floating around above the UFO: DragonHawk reaction fires at it, hitting it once for 72 damage which kills it: During the alien's next turn another Iron Rattler shows up and immediately fires at DH with it's photon beamer: The damage was thankfully absorbed and now DH will reaction fire back at it: His first bullet hits a weak spot for a massive 113 damage which kills it: Join me next time for part two where we have some trouble taking care of all the UFO cannons. In the end they are all destroyed but we pay a price for it. - Zombie

Battlecruiser Part 2 We have these 3 pRiders clumped up by the UFO which to me just screams mortar. Get to it TV: The blast does 82, 150 and 86 damage which kills them all: And just like that we have two left. NKF somehow has a shot on the pRider to the northwest: He's not using the depleted uranium bullets so his bullets hit for 13, 10 and 2 which kills it: Which shows that pRiders have 24 or 25 health - not a lot. Knan will shoot at the last one: His first bullet only does 5 damage but his second does a massive non-critical 85. This should mean it's dead, right? Wrong. It shoots back hitting Knan for 2 damage and then it dies. Figure that one out: Gimli is going to patch up Knan's head wound with the stimpack: Three turns later we finally spot an alien cannon on the east part of the UFO so TV will mortar it: The blast kills something (which I'm assuming is another pRider) for 92 non-critical damage and only damaged the cannon for 81: We are going to wait on nuking it again as TV needs more mortar bombs. During the alien's next turn we spot a pRider where those 3 Amigos were a few rounds ago: When it's our turn again, Silencer will shoot at it: He hits for 4 & 28 which kills it: And now TV will mortar that UFO cannon again: It's a weak spot hit for 161 damage which means it's gone: Nothing doing during the alien's turn so CG teleports to the top of the UFO to have a look around: He spots the last UFO cannon so TV will mortar that: The blast does a massive 227 damage which destroys it: A couple turns later we spot some movement on the far west side of the map where all the trees are. After a little scouting, it's another pRider. Sneaky! Silencer will shoot at it: His first bullet hits for 57 damage which kills it: Six turns later and we've managed to clear the map outside of the UFO with no alien activity. NKF opens a UFO door to peek inside and is promptly shot by a pRider for 1 damage. He's going to shoot back: His first bullet does 41 damage and kills it: A couple turns later and everyone has congregated by the UFO doors. There's another pRider inside which NKF will shoot at: He hits for 11 & 23 which kills it: We peek in the other UFO door and spot another pRider standing between two power sources. Sorby originally was going to toss an incendiary grenade at the closer power source: But if he moves 2 tiles he can throw it under the pRider: A power source explodes doing 62 damage which kills it: Gotta love that! Pretty explosion too! A couple alien turns later and a pRider shows up on the left side and runs out of APs. NKF is more than willing to reaction fire at it: That first bullet did 44 damage which killed it: Don't mess with NKF. A couple alien turns later and now we see a pRider on the right side of the UFO: DragonHawk is ready for it and reaction fires back. His first bullet hits for 7: His next bullet hits for 2 and the last was absorbed. Hrumph! The pRider fires back with heavy ammo in it's photon beamer: It connects with DragonHawk doing 10 damage. DH gets the last laugh as he fires back at it: That shot connects and kills it which ends the mission. I was a little worried about DH being wounded when the mission ends, but the game brushed it off like nothing ever happened: No promotions this time, but it went good as we killed 24 aliens. Well, technically 20 aliens and 4 cannons, but who's counting at this point? True, it was just pRiders, but there were a lot of them. It was a nice change though as we didn't have to worry about tougher aliens like hardened bonesetter. Back in the Geoscape and we complete manufacturing two hands of fate launchers for our interceptors: And we've been cranking out mortar bombs as well as TV has been using a lot lately. After this it's right back out to visit UFO #215 which is that Supply Vessel: So join me next time for that! Monthly update on shooting UFOs down... I'm still #2 on the Steam leaderboards with 9098. There were a couple points during the month where I maybe only shot down 10 in a day due to being tired and wore down from work. I really put the hammer down last weekend and managed to catch back up and then some. At last calculation the number of UFOs I need to shoot down per day has dropped to just under 26. I was trying out some of the different interceptor attack styles such as standard and cautious because the default for the game is aggressive. In fact, when you send out some interceptors to engage a UFO, there isn't an option to pick what style you want the interceptors to follow. You have to send them out, select them, pick the type and reengage the UFO. Not ideal as it adds a lot of steps. I'm not really sure what a standard attack does as I didn't check that out, but with cautious the interceptor will keep it's distance and actually withdraw if it takes too much damage. That's interesting. Recall that with the bigger UFOs that when they spot the closest interceptor, they will target only that one. Everything else is ignored. So I've been sending out a "golden" Thunderstorm set on cautious attack to get spotted first, then send out everyone else on aggressive. It's a little better strategy as you don't have to micromanage dogfights with the larger UFOs as much. But there's an up-front price of micromanaging your interceptors when you initially send them out. - Zombie

Battlecruiser Part 1 Back at it in a jungle type of map. Pete deploys first and is surprised by two pRiders standing next to each other. One shoots at him with a chem weapon but misses. CG is off the transport next and he'll toss an Inferno grenade on them: It does 28 damage to one and 65 to the other which immediately kills both: Fantastic! We deploy some more and barely spot a cannon on the roof of the UFO. Luckily TV still has APs left so he'll mortar it: The blast only does 101 damage which isn't enough to take it out: Nobody really feels like shooting at the thing so we'll let it be for now. Next turn and TV will mortar it again: This blast did 109 damage which destroyed it: At least we have a foothold now and can breathe a little bit easier. We can't relax too much as another pRider is spotted nestled in the corner of the UFO. Nobody really has a shot on it as there are some trees in the way. CG will shoot at the trees then: It took two auto shots worth of bullets to destroy the trees, but his last bullet hit the pRider damaging it for 21. It then shoots back: CG shrugs off the damage so MTR will shoot at it: His first bullet hits for 23 damage which kills it: We spread out some more and spot another pRider just southwest of the transport: It's in a bad spot due to all the trees blocking our shots. Suppose TV could have mortared it, but meh, it's a pRider. We let it go. Totally forgot about the other UFO cannons and during the alien's turn, one of them shoots at Pete who wasn't in very good cover: The first shot was absorbed, the second hit him for 18 damage while the last missed. When it's our turn again, NKF will take some wild shots at the trees providing cover for the pRider who is still milling about the same area. One bullet makes it through and does 13 damage to it: The second hits something in the darkness for 14 damage: I'll assume it's another pRider for now. NKF's last bullet hits the visible pRider for 25 which kills it: Pete's pale blue crystal has absorbed 10 of the damage he took from the UFO cannon. That's the good news. We could let the crystal slowly replenish his health but that'll take a while. Or we could have Silencer patch him up now: We eventually spot that other pRider who was hiding in the darkness and also make out another cannon which TV will mortar: The explosion only does 88 damage: So he mortars it again. This time the blast hits a weak spot and does 166 damage which destroys it: Kret will now shoot at the previously hidden pRider: His first bullet hits for a paltry 2 damage while his second hits a weak spot for 70 which kills it: During the alien's turn the floodgates open and aliens are pouring out of every area imaginable. One pRider on the west corner of the UFO tries to shoot at one of us: It missed thankfully. There's another pRider on the east side of the UFO too: Two more pRiders show up on the west side: And another showed up in the trees where the other two were. Busy turn! And we can see all 5 of them now: So join me for part 2 where we'll whip out the ol' mortar to address the 3 pRiders in the corner of the UFO. The other two are eliminated quickly. Then we work on removing the rest of the cannons while providing counter fire to more pRiders which show up. Stay tuned for that as it'll be interesting! - Zombie

Welcome to the forums! There are multiple conditions which can cause you to fail the game, a bad monthly rating is one of them. I think you have to do that multiple months in a row before it triggers though. What have you been doing to get into negative score for that long? I think score is saved in UIGLOB.DAT, so you may be able to hex edit the last offsets to be positive instead. - Zombie

Happy Birthday SV! - Zombie

Battlecruiser Part 3 After killing that last Hardened Bonesetter, all was quiet on the western front. Plenty of UFO door sounds though so everyone converges on the doors and eventually a few brave souls venture inside. Silencer is first and spots another Hardened Bonesetter which is between two power sources. Obviously, it's normal grenade time: The normal grenade is weak, but all we need it to do is to cause both power supplies to explode. That explosion does a massive 80 damage to the thing which kills it: Always a great feeling to use some unconventional methods to take out baddies. Silencer didn't have a lot of APs left to make it back outside so he huffed it back to the door and preyed. Yup, during the alien's turn another hardened bonesetter comes near but doesn't shoot. It would be rude not to shoot at the thing as this is almost a gimme: The first bullet was absorbed, the second did 9 damage and the third did 30. Not dead yet so he fired again. His first bullet does 69 which kills it: Four turns later we've basically canvassed the entire ground floor of the UFO and have soldiers everywhere. During the alien's turn there's a lot of activity going on: The hardened bonesetter on the left shoots at Nook with it's positronic beamer and critically damages him for 23. Ouch! He shoots back with his first bullet hitting for a whole 2 damage: His next bullet does 14 while the last was absorbed. When it's our turn again Gimli is going to patch Nook back up. First, he'll use the combat medikit to remove the critical wound in the leg: With the critical wound gone, he can use the stimpack to recover the lost health: And he's back up to full health again. No lasting effects either. Loonie will shoot at the bonesetter: His first bullet does a massive 77 damage which kills it: I move Sorby out from behind a pillar to shoot at the other bonesetter but it shoots back at him doing 4 damage. It's just an arm wound so FA will patch it up with a stimpack: And now he can finally shoot at the thing: His first two bullets do 21 & 36 damage but everything else was absorbed: Oh come now Sorby, you're capable of so much more! Well, Knan is going to have to clean up the mess: His first bullet was absorbed, but his second is going to be a hit: That did enough damage to kill it and also end the mission. Phew! EOM report card: Two promotions too! Let's do The Veteran first: His throwing wasn't maxed out yet so I put one point into that and the rest into agility and vitality. Next up is our fearless leader Pete: Everything went into agility and vitality. What a beast! Back at base we have a number of new research projects available. I say let's work on the Positronic Beamer weapon first: Yup, we'll put everyone on it: Maybe it'll help with the hardened bonesetter issue. Right? Or maybe not. We have to do something though. In the meantime, we head out immediately to assault the second Battlecruiser, so stay tuned for that mess! - Zombie

Battlecruiser Part 2 After stunning that Hardened Bonesetter we just make out one of the cannons on the roof of the UFO. The Veteran will mortar it: The blast does 111 damage which isn't enough to destroy it: Well, it's teetering on the brink of going down so Silencer is going to risk it by shooting at it a couple turns later: The first bullet does 40 damage which destroys it: At least we didn't waste a mortar bomb on that. And for good reason... we just spotted the other cannon on the close side of the UFO which TV will mortar: The blast does 112 damage which again isn't enough to destroy the cannon: It looks like the blast was big enough to propagate through the UFO hull to cause something inside to detonate releasing some possible chemical gas. It was absorbed by one alien and another took 9 damage - let's face it, these are most likely bonesetters. Nobody is really in a good position to shoot at the cannon so TV mortars it again. This time the blast does 82 which takes it out: With those cannons out of the way, we feel pretty confident advancing on the UFO a little the next round. NKF wanted to make a dash for the fence but was shot at by a hardened bonesetter near the doors to the UFO, but the damage was thankfully absorbed. You better stay put. Pete's going to toss an inferno grenade over the roof of the terminal to land by the thing: It only does 20 fire damage: We decide to stay where we are at and hope the fire will roast the bonesetter in it's hardened shell. No death sounds were heard for a couple turns so Pete teleports to the roof of the terminal to take a peek. It's still there, cooking away: NKF will throw an incendiary grenade on it now: The fire only did 2 damage this time. NKF then threw a normal grenade on it which does 12: Sad damage rolls. Pete has plenty of APs left so he'll take an auto shot at it: The first bullet hits for 71 damage which kills it: Typical overachiever. A couple turns later we spot another hardened bonesetter sunning itself in the remnants of the fire. NKF will toss a sludge grenade on it as he's out of the lower power stuff: It's a weak spot explosion for 73 chem damage which kills it: Totally fine with that. Nothing really seemed to happen for the next few turns so Crazy Gringo eventually got the nerve to teleport to the top of the UFO to take a peek: Just as he expected, there are two more cannons left. CG teleports out of there and TV will mortar the cannon on the right: The blast does a decent 124 damage which takes it out: TV was too far away to mortar the other one so it took him a couple turns to get into range (you can see CG is covering the UFO doors): The first explosion did 103 damage so TV mortared it again and this time the blast did 133 which destroyed it: That didn't seem to phase the aliens one little bit so 4 turns later MTR goes into the hangar to take a look around. He spots a hardened bonesetter camped out inside: No way I'm letting him have a shootout with this thing so close so he withdraws. A number of soldiers spend some time shooting out the wall which gives FA a clear shot to use his photon beamer with heavy ammo: The first blast was absorbed and the second did 70 which killed it: Great teamwork guys! Join me for the final part where we use an unorthodox strategy to take out a hardened bonesetter and Nook and Sorby both get injured (Nook severely). But we fight back and prevail. Two more promotions after the mission and finally some new things to research before heading to the next mission. - Zombie

Battlecruiser Part 1 We start to deploy as normal and notice this is an airport map. Just so happens the control tower is right next to the transport so The Veteran is going to start off the proceedings by nuking the tower with his trusty mortar: He kills two aliens: one takes 83 damage while the second takes 73: That'll crimp the alien's style for sure. During the alien's turn there is a lot of activity to the north of us. When the dust settles we count 4. There are a couple pRiders standing next to each other which screams grenade. Nook is close enough to toss a DG1 over at them: The blast causes the helicopter to explode doing 51 which kills one. The blast only damages the other for 12 though: Nook still has plenty of APs left so he'll toss another one: This time the blast does 31 which kills it: And that's how you safely deal with two pRiders when you can't shoot at them. There's another pRider near the right side of the map but we have a clear shot at it so AT will auto shoot it: His first bullet hits for 57 damage which kills it: Easy stuff. The last alien is a different colored Bonesetter on a roof of a building farther north. FA will shoot at it with heavy photon beamer ammo: The first blast hits for 2 damage, the second is absorbed and the third misses. Sad panda. MTR will take a snapshot at it with depleted uranium ammo to see how that fares: The first and second were absorbed while his last did a decent 41 damage but doesn't kill it: Mouse Nightshirt shoots next and his first bullet hits for 23 damage which kills it: It's at this point that I actually bother to read the combat log and find out this is no ordinary bonesetter - it's "hardened". Well, that certainly explains the difficulty we've been having. During the alien's next turn, another pRider wanders into the fire from the exploded helicopter: It unfortunately absorbs the fire damage. But when it's our turn Mouse has moved closer and is able to throw a grenade near it: It hits for 28 which is enough for the kill: A couple alien turns later we spot a hardened bonesetter pacing around in the building north of us: When it's our turn again, we don't see it anymore so we have to let it be. I do move up Pete by teleporting him closer. He checked out the pRider to see what gun it was carrying: Positronic Beamer, eh? Looks kinda like bad news for the team as this sinister looking weapon has the potential to do a crap-ton of damage. We better be careful. Six turns later and that hardened bonsetter is back. We know that normal bonesetters don't like fire so Kret will try an Inferno grenade on it: The blast only does 6 damage which angers the bonesetter and causes it to shoot back wildly: Luckily the shot misses (but just barely). Nook will try another Inferno grenade on it: This time the blast does an impressive 54 fire damage which kills it: Well, there's the silver lining. At least these new bonesetters don't have blanket immunity to everything. In the meantime, part of the team has gained access to the lower level of the terminal by shooting out the walls. When we open the door going into the cafeteria we spot a pRider nearby which NKF will shoot at: He hits for 20, 3 and 9 damage which finally kills it: During the alien's next turn we spot a pRider milling around outside the terminal. When it's our turn, it's still visible, but there's a wall blocking us from shooting at it. No problem, Silencer will target the wall hoping to create a hole: That did a great job and allows him a clear shot at it now: The first bullet hits for 30 damage which kills it easily: Two alien turns later another pRider appears at the hole in the wall: NKF reaction fires at it, hits with the first bullet which does 41 damage and kills it: Atta boy! On our next turn we have the unenviable task of trying to clear the last room of the terminal. NKF opens the door for Silencer who takes one step in and spots a hardened bonesetter in there. Time to toss an inferno grenade at it: The blast does a decent 41 damage which isn't enough to kill it. And now it reaction fires back at Silencer. This may be bad: It hits him for 13 damage. Ouch! The next round NKF will patch him up with a stimpack: Ok, it's way too dangerous to send soldiers in there by walking. How about teleporting though? Pete teleports in there and will try to poke at it with his stun rod: It's a weak spot hit for 110 stun damage which knocks it out cold: Not ideal as it doesn't kill the alien, but it's a lot safer than other methods we've tried so far. At least stun still works on these new bonesetters. Join me next time when we deal with the alien cannons and then roast, gas and explode a couple more bonesetters exiting the UFO. - Zombie

We're back at base after that last mission and now a couple manufacturing projects just completed: another Thunderstorm and the Raven battle armor: If you recall, the Raven is a "tank" of sorts in this game. I tried it a few times outside of this playthrough and was less than impressed. The biggest issue was the lack of armor as the normal raven falls after a couple of hits of basically anything. Here's what the normal Raven looks like along with the battle armor upgrade on the right side: And here is the Raven after the upgrade: That's a 33.3% increase in mechanical protection and a 62.5 % increase in chem, fire and freeze. Plus a nifty new paint job to boot. Is it better? Well, yes. But only marginally so. This should be the level the normal Raven starts with as this upgrade takes a lot of research which means it doesn't come until our soldiers have the best armor. That ultimately lessens the usability of it. Not to mention that there are no improvements to APs, Health, the rocket power or accuracy. So it always feels like I have to babysit this with other soldiers just to make sure a Bonesetter doesn't one-shot it. Anyway, three days later and our research into the Caretaker alien just completed: Let's check out it's description next: Not super resistant to anything except regular bullets and grenades so that's the good news. I can attest to the power of their photon weapons, you really don't want to give them a chance to shoot them. Now to figure out what we should research next... I think we'll do the Poisonous Rider next: Not that these give anything of use, it's mostly for knowledge of the species. The next thing that happens is the End of Month Report, let's see how we did: Everyone either thought we did a good or excellent job and all of them are giving their maximum funding levels possible. Our expenses are lower than income too. A couple days later our research into the pRider completed: Time to check out it's description: Since there really isn't anything else to research except the live aliens, I think we'll pull our scientists and give them a rest for the time being. Plus they will not get paid for sitting idle so we can call them back when there are other topics to research. I figured that since all our manufacturing projects have completed that now would be a perfect time to take a closer look at that screen and the projects available to us. Here's the first screen: We probably should manufacture another mortar at some point. And more mortar bombs. We have a decent stockpile of ammo, but I could see cranking out some more... especially the U238 stuff. We have limited use of the stun rods so there's really no reason to make any more of those (along with rockets). We do use the DG2 "golden pineapple" grenades so more of those as well as the cryo grenades would be nice. Next screen: Ditto for the sludge grenades and incendiary grenades. As for the Medikit/Combat Medikit situation, well, we have enough Combat Medikits for now and even if those should go missing we can fall back on the normal Medikits as we have 7 spares. We could probably use more Sludge Suits of armor, but they are very expensive and take forever to manufacture. Final screen: I suppose more personal shields would be good as our soldiers have been taking some damage recently, but we've been managing that with prompt medical treatment in the field so it's not critical. Here's what the main base looks like right now: We have two Thunderstorms for interception duty along with a Pegasus transport along with a legacy Icarus transport just in case. Back in the Geoscape and we just detected a recon UFO as well as a battlecruiser. So the flyboys are sent out to intercept: We take out that recon vessel easily but I don't think I want to send out the team way over there (especially with powerful UFOs on the prowl). So we are going to bombard that. Just as we do, another battlecruiser is detected: Our normal Thunderstorms really take a beating with battlecruisers so I had to send one back to base early. And in a knee-jerk reaction sent out some reinforcements from South America. I doubt they will arrive in time though as we are making quick work of these bid UFOs: Just as we take it out a supply vessel is detected over the Indian Ocean: It's supposedly headed to Africa so it'll take a while to get there. We just shot down that other battlecruiser, and I think we'll keep this around so our soldiers get some xp: If you are battling a UFO and interceptors are en-route, and then you shoot it down which creates a crash site, those other interceptors will still continue on to the crash site. So If you don't want them to do that you have to select them and do that manually. Case in point: Had to do that with the interceptors from South America. And Antarctica too: With those safely back at base we patiently wait (a little too long actually) for that supply UFO to get near to it's destination, then send out the interceptors: Probably shouldn't have sent out that damaged Thunderstorm, but thankfully the UFO didn't target it. I sent it back to base manually just in case. The UFO crash lands soon enough and I think we'll keep this one around too: We'll have to see if there's time to do all 3. If some more UFOs show up, then maybe we'll have to bombard one or two. In any case, we'll wait till it's light out at the northern battlecruiser and then send out the squad again. So join me next time for that. Should be interesting! - Zombie