Adding some new names to the roster this session.
Merckie Baioine – mashing together the names of some of the cats I've had through my life; Mercury and Blackie to make Merckie, Buster, Maia and Hermoine to make Baioine. It's a technique I've used for character naming before (in Final Fantasy XIV I play Valris Kacil, a combination of Valefor and Aeris, our two girl cats, and Kain and Cecil, our two boy cats).
Over New Year's I also visited some friends back in Ohio who said they were interested in being included, but I've not received official names from them so I'm making some up.
Warlock Ciyin – because he plays Destiny with a Warlock as his primary class, and Ciyin is a frequent online name.
Tiger Yalith – Because she likes tigers and Yalith is an old screenname of hers.
Gifted Matryoshka – I know less about this friend's online screen names or other RPG character naming, but I know my cousin frequenly hides his secret Santa gifts inside multiple layers of boxes, so he's often “Gifted Russian Nesting Dolls” as it were...
At this point I have 5 remaining unnamed rookies, all male presenting in the game. I can hire a few more if need be but that gives me 33 named people. I can still add in people later (or rename existing people) if you'd like to join late, but I think 33 will be a good number for now, so I'm going to start focusing on progressing the game rather than training the rookies.
Anyway, last time we left off with an Abduction mission that needed to be done, so let's get to it!
Coming on this mission are our new rookies; Merckie, Ciyin, Yalith, and Gifted. Coming along to lead the team and train the new people are Malika Cadash, our medic, Hat Stand out sniper, Serevad Aeducan our scout, and Ezri Blackmoon providing heavy support with a rocket launcher.
Let's go save France!
Looks like we're at a dock, we start off next to a warehouse with a boat moored nearby. Lots of forklifts and shipping crates provide some decent cover.
I'll send Yalith carefully to the left where there's open ground around that boat, and Serevad will scout up to the first warehouse.
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| Sometimes it's hard to find good cover... |
The rest of the team needs to get to cover as soon as we can in case the aliens are right next to us. I don't want us caught in the open if we can avoid it. We open the warehouse door, but no aliens greet us. Rather than dashing inside and potentially activating a pod when half our movement is already used, I put everyone on overwatch except Hat Stand, who stabilizes her sniper rifle in anticipation of a shot next turn. No aliens wander into our guns, so on our next turn, Yalith moved to full cover behind some crates next to the boat. And a lucky thing because she spots (and activates) a pod of drones, which were camping on the roof of the warehouse!
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| They're above us! |
This complicates things, as it will be hard to get line of sight up there while they can shoot down on us with all the bonuses of the high ground. Fortunately Yalith still has a shot, and Ciyin was on our left flank and can grab half cover behind another set of boxes and also take a shot. Come on rookies!
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| The only two who can see the roof. |
Excellent work! Each of them takes out a drone (drones really aren't that scary, but these are rookies I'm dealing with and I wasn't expecting them on the roof), leaving one remaining drone. Nobody else can get over there so hopefully that drone doesn't do too much damage...
Serevad moves into the building, and activates a second pod. This pod has a single thin man and two of a new alien, a sort of hovering squid with tentacles. Dr. Shen gets on the coms and hypothesizes that these “Seekers” look like they were designed to isolate and eliminate single targets. Dr. Vahlen recommends avoiding their tentacles.
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| The new kids on the block have tentacles. |
We'll try to avoid them by shooting them with bullets. Maybe that will help. Merckie moves into the building and takes a shot, breaking the window we see them through and hitting one of the Seekers! He does three damage but the seeker's armor absorbs two of that, and it only loses one of its four HP. Gifted manages another hit, taking the wounded Seeker down another two HP but leaving it... floating? Hovering? It's certainly not standing, but kind of swaying back and forth... we'll go with floating. Hat Stand and Ezri are too far back to get line of sight, and their heavier weapons slow them down as well so they have to dash to better positions. Serevad finishes the turn by missing entirely.
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| How could you miss this shot? It's right there! |
This is unfortunate as the Seeker moves in and shoots Serevad point blank for 3 damage. One seeker turns invisible with a stealth mode.
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| Stealth mode means my people really need to keep to the buddy system. |
And I miscounted I think, looks like there are three seekers. The Thin Man misses his shot, but the drone drops off the building and also shoots Serevad for 3 damage. (I take it back, drones are scary right now!) Serevad is still standing, but only just. Medic!
Hat Stand turns around and destroys the Seeker that shot Serevad with one bullet from her sniper rifle, while Ciyin takes off two of the drone's 3 HP.
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| Hat Stand doesn't take kindly to these aliens. |
That leaves me with one Seeker at a single HP, a drone at 1 HP, and the Thin Man in annoyingly good cover. Yalith finishes off the drone, but Gifted fails to finish the Seeker. Serevad pulls back to the same cover Cadash is in and gets a shot of medkit, restoring 3 HP. Ezri is able to take out the wounded Seeker, and Serevad ends on overwatch. And then the Thin Man gets a critical shot on Cadash, gravely wounding her. Fortunately I gave one of the rookies medkits and she's not outright dead... As they say, Vengeance is a dish best served with a rocket launcher, as Ezri explodes the Thin Man's cover, and also the Thin Man.
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| Aim... |
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| Fire! |
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| What's "collateral damage"? |
The team reshuffles positions a bit and everyone else goes on overwatch. I think there's an invisible Seeker out there still... Nothing shows on the alien turn though. Gifted has a single medkit, and is able to stabilize Cadash. She'll take a willpower hit and be out of the fight for a month or so but she'll live...
The downside of the rocket is that now the entire rear side of the warehouse is on fire, and I'm reluctant to move too close... although I suppose the forklift ALREADY exploded so it's not going to explode again, right? Still, I don't move too far this turn, and everyone still ends on overwatch.
Hat Stand on the right flank hear's a sound ping from directly ahead. It turns out to be a pair of Thin Men that Serevad sees when I dash her up to the meld canister that was sitting behind the flames (which have died down a bit this turn...) I'm still concerned about that Seeker, so I leave Merckie and Ciyin on overwatch in case it shows up, and reposition the rest of the squad towards the right of the warehouse. Hat Stand misses her long range shot on one of the Thin Men...
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| One of the things I like about this game is that soldiers will break the window out with the butt of their gun before shooting through it if they're next to it. |
... who then runs at us in the alien turn, drawing overwatch from Merckie with wounds but does not kill that Thin Man. He spits acid on Serevad, and I forget how acid works at that moment. I move Serevad out of the acid to better cover, forgetting that it's best to hunker down in the acid and try to avoid its effects because Serevad panicks breathing the acid in. And hunkers down in the new location, so not all bad at least. Ezri once more exacts revenge, hitting a 53% shot and finishing that Thin Man off. Sadly the meld canister closed itself so we lost that one. One more meld canister... and I get reckless. Yalith dashes to it, and the second Thin Man takes a reaction shot, hitting Yalith for 4 damage. Still standing on 3 HP left, but Yalith will also be in the infirmary if she survives next turn... Which she does not. The Thin Man flanks her and finishes her off. Once again, rockets are my path to revenge, and Ezri delivers a blast that destroys his cover, allowing Ciyin a flanking shot on the now exposed alien, killing him and ending the mission. I must have counted the seekers correctly the first time, and something glitched on the second seeker's attempt to go invisible?
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| 1 death is still "Acceptable" by XCOM standards, I guess. |
The mission name game is still on point; Operation Lone Heart.
Well, sorry Yalith, you are the first casualty of the campaign, but I'll be recruiting a new soldier and will rename it after you so you can still join in.
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| The first name on our memorial wall. |
That could have gone better. I am out of practice, I haven't played this game in about 3 weeks, and I think it shows. I got reckless at the end of the mission. Also the aliens are ramping up their game, Thin Men are pretty dangerous at this stage, and so are Seekers. I need to remember that. Also I need to be more careful about the direction of my cover, I had really good cover several times there but the aliens were able to move around it and flank me several times. I'll try to do better next time.
Anyway I'm letting this one stand. I am perfectly willing to restart missions if things go really bad and I lose several soldiers at once, but one or two losses keeps the tension up I guess? Alright let's do the aftermath.
Ezri is promoted to Lieutenant Corporal, and she takes HEAT Ammo so I have at least two HEAT ammo rocketeers. Serevad, though out for over a month with injuries, is going to take Damn Good Ground and I'm going to try and keep her at higher elevations and in better cover! Malika, out for a whole 45 days with her injury, gets Steadfast. Not only will she not panic when other soldiers would, it gives her a boost to willpower that offsets some of the penalty her injury gave her. Hat Stand is taking Disabling Shot on promotion to Corporal, which is a skill that lets her take out a target's primary weapon until they use a reload action to fix it, which can give us an extra turn of shooting at really dangerous targets.
As for my surviving rookies... I have 4 scouts already, but 3 of them are gravely wounded. Apparently I'm not nice to scouts... though Gnife Gnife will be back in action in 9 hours, so should be before the next mission. I only have 3 snipers, 3 engineers, and 3 assaults though. I think I can bump each of them up to 4. Gifted has the best movement of the bunch so congratulations here's your shotgun. Ciyin has the next best movement, so he gets to be a gunner (high movement will go some way to making up for the penalty for lugging around the giant machine gun I think). This leaves Merckie to become my 4thengineer. I also pay to hire 6 more soldiers. They'll arrive in a few days.
Gnife Gnife is barely out of the infirmary before we see another UFO... this one a medium raider. It takes two raven interceptors, one of which takes enough damage that its out for a month, but I'm able to shoot it down. I can't keep doing that though...
We get enough of a break to finish research on the alien materials, and the scientists have plans for a better alloy plating for our armor, as well as some other improvements we can build from this.
I'm going to start research on the small Scout class UFO we shot down, it only takes 5 days and should help our air game in the future. Fortunately, Germany speeds our efforts by sending us scientists in exchange for some Sectoid corpses for their own research.
My new recruits arrive, so Yalith you're back in the game! Welcome Tigre Yalith. That gives me two more female soldiers and 3 more male soldiers available for renaming. I'm going to start taking fewer rookies on missions though, maybe just one or two, and start training up the existing squad. Things will only get more difficult as we go.
We finish researching the Scout UFOs.
Although there's a priority to research the alien neurology in order to develop capture equipment, and I can try researching the raider I just shot down or autopsy a Thin Man, I'm going to instead try researching improved body armor. We need more survivability out there if I'm going to make mistakes like last mission. We've also sent off more corpses and even some Elerium in exchange for scientists, and I start building a laboratory. I draw the line at meld though, I need that stuff for later!
We finish our third satelite, and I decide to launch it over Germany. They asked first and offered engineers, and I don't have the money or interceptors to start coverage of another continent right now. Next month though I'll try to make it a priority to get something over the Americas...
And before anything else happens we get our monthly Council mission. Apparently a group of humans intercepted a convoy of supplies. They don't appear to be working with the aliens, but the aliens are reported in the area, so we need to check this out...
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| It's always good when shadowy figures tell you what to do, right? |
"We'll try to avoid them by shooting them with bullets." LOL very Destiny-esque approach
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