In which we stop alien abductions in Brazil and let some time pass.
I'm adding a few names: Titan Ephrael is going to be based on my Destiny Titan character, and Warlock Misty will be based on my Destiny Warlock character (you don't name your people in Destiny, they're just a class, but I've made names and backstory for them all anyway, just it's all in my head.) I'm also adding Stand Von Hats as another stand in for Hatstand.
Alright, let's go stop these abductions!
Our squad leader will be Enhara Lavellan as a gunner, and I'm giving her a LMG, which hits harder and further than the other option, the SAW, but she can't move and shoot in the same turn, so I'm hoping there will be a good point to position her so she can lay down a stream of machine gun fire. I'll also bring Kelvas Amell as our medic with double medkits to keep us healed up. Then I'll bring all the named privates we have: Valdora Kacil, Titan Ephrael, Warlock Misty, Stand Von Hats, Malika Cadash and Mira Abasa.
Move out squad!
We appear to have deployed on a freeway... Lots of turned over and burning vehicles. That's good though, plenty of cover.
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| Lots of burning trucks. I'm not sure why the aliens have to blow everything up... |
We begin taking cover behind a semi truck cab, but Misty sees a pod of sectoids to our left, perpendicular to our lines of cover so far. I may have to shift my positioning.
Von Hats moves forward and spots a meld canister, but as I dash her forward she spots another pod of sectoids ahead of us. They have us somewhat surrounded, this could go south in a hurry. Von Hats is flanked and the sectoids could kill her pretty easily, so Lavellan tosses a smoke grenade to give her extra cover. I'm glad I randomly gave her that... let's hope it keeps Von Hats alive!
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| Oh Holy Smoke Grenade, give us extra cover! |
We get lucky, the smoke disuades the aliens and instead of shooting her, one sectoid mind melds the other, and then the melded sectoid mind frays Von Hats. So she only takes one point of damage at no risk of a critical hit killing her outright, and she'll be hallucinating for a few turns (so she won't be much help shooting, but she'll have a chance to recover at least!)
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| Alien Mind Fray attack |
Meanwhile, the sectoids on our other flank lay down suppression fire on Amell, fail to mindfray him, and then miss their final shot. So far so good? I wish I had better cover in that direction though.
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| Alien suppression fire! |
On our turn, Ephrael takes out the melded sectoid, and Levallan uses her long range and squadsight (which lets her see enemies that the rest of the squad has eyes on) to take out the suppression sectoid.
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| Levallan absolutely destroys that section with a critical hit! |
I get maybe a little greedy though, and move Von Hats up closer to the meld, and of course she spots another pod of sectoids further down the bridge. They take cover and prepare to fire on us.
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| More sectoids? Am I spawning every alien pod on the map at once? |
Poor Von Hats has another sectoid dash up and flank her, while a second lays down suppression fire on her position. And the sectoids to our left are in full cover and giving our people a hard time flushing them out. This is going swimingly! Whatever that expression means...
Ephrael once again takes out the flanking sectoid in one shot, probably my best positioned soldier so far this mission. The rest of the squad misses their shots or has to reposition, so I have the suppressed people hunker down to make a hit less likely. Misty is in flanking position for next turn though thanks to a dash to full cover behind a pickup truck, hopefully that lets me start removing some of these enemies in front of us...
Von Hats is mind frayed a second time, and fails her panic test this time, she'll be panicking next turn and possibly after that as well... fortunately she hunkers down again rather than running out of cover. The sectoids shift suppression to Cadash, but otherwise are ineffectual in their return fire.
On our flank Abas moves to flank and alien, giving Valdora the opening she needs to take it out, and Amell wounds the other one, but its armor absorbs a damage from the shot and it survives.
Misty moves around the pickup truck to flank the sectoid on the other end and finishes it off.
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| Flank shot, 100% hit chance and high critical chance! |
The sectoids do not shoot on their turn, so Abasa moves closer and finishes off the last sectoid on our flank. Cadash moves behind the final sectoid in front of us, and kills it as well, and the mission ends.
Operation Unceasing Fear is a success!
And promotions for everyone! We get our first two promotions to Lance Corporal. Kelvas I think will take the Steadfast ability, which prevents him from panicking from being wounded, seeing allies panic, seeing allies get wounded or killed, or enemy intimidation. This just seems like a great option for a medic, as I need him to be mobile when the rest of the squad is going to pieces.
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| I'm allowing myself to see the full promotion ability tree so I can plan a little better. You can turn this off. |
I'm not sure which ability Levallan should take though. Flush would let her force enemies from one set of cover to another, hopefully making them easier to hit for the rest of the squad. Covering fire is an overwatch upgrade, letting her take a reaction shot on more than just enemy movement. Finally Holo-Targeting lets the rest of the squad hit her target more easily if she shoots first. I decide to go with covering fire actually, Holo-Targeting is really good but I feel like I want my gunners to be finishers rather than initial shots. But I may change my mind for the next gunner.
The mission gives us some extra cash, so I start excavating one of the steam vents so we can build a thermo power generator.
Titan Ephrael promotes to Engineer while Warlock Misty becomes a second gunner. Malika Cadash gets to be a medic and Valdora Kacil becomes a new scout. Von Hats becomes a rocketeer and Mira Abasa rounds out my Engineers.
We let some days pass with no activity we have available, but there are reports of heavy UFO activity over India... and then India withdraws from the council. The aliens have set up a base there! (This is something Long War adds that the original game does not do, there is an automatic alien base right off the bat in this version, whereas they take a long time to do that in the original, is my understanding.)
It's going to be a long time before we're ready to try taking out that base and bringing India back.
We finish researching Xenobiology. Cutscene time! Dr. Vahlen wants us to capture a live alien.
Central is incredulous, thinking of the risk to our soldiers, but he is swayed when Dr. Shen (I finally remembered the engineering guy's name!) points out that if we could capture them we could perhaps learn to communicate with them, and we do not really understand our enemy yet.
Central is immediately thinking of the possibilities. We could find out what they want, where they're operating from... he promises to talk to me about it. Well I'll do what I can guys! But we have to build an alien containment facility first, and manufacture the arc thrower to stun aliens in missions. And I have no money right now, so this might take some time.
Dr. Vahlens report on the xenobiology research is that they've mapped the alien genome and it is surprisingly similar to human genetic structures, but that it appears to have been engineered beyond anything we've thought of on Earth. Based on this, I order research be conducted specifically on the Sectoid corpses we have, and begin the Sectoid Autopsy research.
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| The research screens have some in game explanation text, I'll try to read and summarize these as I play the game so I get more of the in game lore |
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| I'm glad that's not me. Either of them. |
We finish construction of our first satellite uplink, which increases our satellite capacity to 3. Now I just need to build the actual satellites and I can start increasing our coverage of the world!
Australia requests some Sectoid corpses for their own research. They ask for 4 of our 15 remaining corpses, but helping them helps them defend themselves and will slow the rate of panic growth amongst their population, so I ship them off. We also get a scientist to help speed up our own research in exchange. And I'm sure I'll kill more sectoids in the near future... We get a similar request from Egypt soon after, so I'm down to just 7 sectoid corpses. I need to get this satellite up soon.
And then I get a transmission from the XCOM Council. They have a mission for me. I need to escort a scientist who has been helping us out of Mexico and away from the alien threat.
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| Very Evangelion vibes from the Council here. |
Next time: An Escort mission!
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