In which I dip my toes back into this game for the first time in nearly four months, and get a little burned on my first mission.
I got a bit distracted this summer, with the new Final Fantasy XIV expansion, several events in both XIV and Destiny 2, and playing several Fire Emblem games. I also started Children of the Zodiarc, and have been doing semi-regular Stellaris sessions with my cousin. And I started volunteering at an animal shelter socializing and caring for the cats there. So for several reasons, XCOM sort of fell by the wayside. Probably the biggest was I hit a bit of a mental/emotional snag in wanting to write up my game sessions, while also really wanting to use the blog as a means of motivating myself to finish the games I start. The part where most people seem less interested in these posts certainly wasn't helping. I think I was also having a bit of a motivation struggle again too. It's easier to keep my motivation up when I do group activities, but I also like doing things by myself. It's a difficult struggle, and definitely one I fall down on a lot of the time.
So I've decided to come back to XCOM, and try to do one session a week. I plan to write them up the way I'm doing Fire Emblem Echoes, less of a play by play experience, less screenshots, more notes on how the session goes. I will of course try to mark any particularly heroic moments the soldiers have, as I did name them after all my friends, but these will probably be shorter posts then before. I'm trying to remove the obstacles that made me not want to post things in the first place, so I can hopefully do better about being consistent. Maybe once I get consistency down, I can slowly creep back to longer write-ups. I've also decided that I'm playing this the way I want to, which means no worries about restarting missions, I'm not leaving dead soldiers if I think I can manage a better outcome, I'm ok with a little prior knowledge from restarting the mission. This isn't an Iron Man run. This is for me to have fun, and this is how I have fun with these games.
So, last time I played, I had left off at an EXALT mission. Valdora Kacil, cunning scout, had gone undercover to infiltrate the EXALT and attempt to get further information on their HQ. In the midst of her mission, the EXALT have wised up, and it is time to go get her out of danger.
I get a team of six for this mission, instead of the eight I'd gotten used to before. I pick a team with two sergeants and four corporals and head in.
The mission is for Valdora to hack two EXALT relays, and then evacuate. She starts on the far side of a long train yard from my rescue team.
My first attempt goes disastrous almost immediately. I tried to move Valdora up too fast, dashing instead of doing two separate movements, and it activates two squads of EXALT. I then rush the team in to save her, and we end up dead.
I restart the mission from the beginning. This time, I move more cautiously, and use my scouts' battle scanners to get an idea of the EXALT positions as I move. This works much better, and I'm better able to limit my interactions. At least, it goes well until I miss a few shots, and then an EXALT with a rocket launcher destroys my cover and Corporal Zhang, my medic gets killed outright.
I restart again. I'm getting frustrated now. I play it safe again, move slowly, try to control the field, but it is difficult. The positions of the EXALT squads is slightly different at each reset, but my starting position is the same, and for some reason the train cars I start by do not have ladders for Sgt. Hat Stand to climb for good sniping lanes. She has been getting a few good shots, but only like one per attempt. This mission goes the same as my second attempts, and the EXALT with the rocket launcher again destroys my cover and Chill Walk my scout dies.
I decide to take a minute to breathe at this point. Maybe I need to restart from my actual last save, not just reload the mission itself. Maybe I need a squad that is all sergeants. I don't want to, I was hoping to train the corporals a bit, but there are too many EXALT, and I'm having too much trouble. I don't want to get frustrated to the point of rage quitting on my first session in four months either.
I back out to the save I loaded from initially. The EXALT mission has 48 hours before it is canceled, but my Officer Training School will be done in 24. Let's get that first, yes? I let the time pass. It costs 100 credits to research the promotion... technology? I'm not sure what to call it, but before I can promote someone from the long lie of sergeant titles to the actual officer corps, I need 25 more credits, so I visit the Grey Market. I'm remembering this game now!
With that out of the way, I have three Lieutenant slots. Basically promoting to an officer rank gives the officer a squad-wide benefit. I promote Lord Belros, as I'd always intended him to become an officer. As a lieutenant, I give him the option for +1 Will for everyone in the squad for each different nationality in the squad. (The other option I had was to reduce the fatigue time for the squad when he joins a mission, but I want my first officer to help boost my will so I have less panicking soldiers when we take an inevitable hit or death.
Let's try this again, shall we? I load the squad with sergeants, though I brought Hat Stand along as well. If I still can't get this I'll bring someone more mobile than the sniper.
This run goes much smoother, I'm able to get Valdora close to the squad before the enemy spots her, and then she makes several Lightning Reflex saves against enemy overwatch to join the team. Then she hacks a relay! Yay! One to go. The thing I realize at this moment, is that hacking does not cost her an action. She can move, hack, move again. And I ran past a relay on my way here. The OTHER thing I realize, is hacking these relays causes a turn of EXALT having to reload, rather than shoot me. I thought these other relay towers were for that, but those are just window dressing!
I reload a prior auto-save from a few turns previously. If I'd realized this at the time, I would have played this more intelligently. This time, Valdora does a run-hack-run past the first relay, and then again for the second relay closer to my squad. My objective changes to evacuating her, and I do. Then I get the "we can stick around and kill them all or we can run."
Um. I'm having enough trouble, shouldn't I run? But my squad is too spread out! And more EXALT keep coming in from literally every side of the map, boxing me in. All my people are flanked in some way, so cover is fast becoming pointless. When my gunner Misty goes down to flanking shots, I reassess.
Let's go back to the three minutes ago autosave, before Valdora left the field. Once again, I did not understand how my objectives would change as I went here. I honestly thought there would be a limit on the EXALT people too. I don't rush Valdora off stage this time, instead pulling my whole squad back towards the extraction point. The entirely exposed extraction point, I need to do this all in one turn. We focus fire on the EXALT soldiers nearest the extraction point as well, opening at least one flank I don't have to worry about. Then, in one fell swoop, we all run away.
Mission success! Operation Driving Fall. The game gives me a rating of Terrible for my performance, but you know what, we lived, and we did the hack. We now know the EXALT HQ is not in France. I call that a win. Also, up yours game, I rate that mission as terrible! Seriously, that would have been a full squad wipe if I'd been trying to do this without restarting.
At least it's done. And I don't have to do another one for another month in game.
Afterwards, Valdora is promoted to Tech Sergeant. She has three new abilities to choose from as my first Tech Sergeant character. If I give her Concealment, the enemy will not target her if she has full cover, unless the could see her starting location, or she shoots at them or does some other action. The second option is In the Zone. This ability says that every time she kills an enemy that is not in cover or is flanked, the shot is a free action and she can take another action. Her attacks go up in damage and critical chance for each kill in a turn, so she could potentially mow down an entire enemy squad in one go with this. The final ability is Hit and Run, which lets her first shot each turn be free if she shoots a flanked foe or a foe not in cover. So the difference between the latter two is In the Zone is more powerful, but only if she scores a kill. Hit and Run would be better if she only fires, whether she hits or not she can still run away afterwards.
Both Hit and Run and In the Zone sound great... but not for Valdora. I think I'm going to have her be one of my two dedicated EXALT infiltrators. Concealment would have saved me a LOT of trouble this last mission, if she could have advanced from full cover to full cover and had the enemy ignore her entirely until I was ready for her to act. So Concealment it is!
I let a little time go past in the game, and a medium sized UFO shows up. I fail to shoot it down, and it lands, so I get a mission to go attack it. Medium sized means more aliens than I've had to deal with in the past, and Landed instead of Crashed means they will all be alive, rather than missing a pod or two. Welp. I'm saving this for next time, since this may also turn into a frustrating mission.
Still, despite my frustration this session, I enjoyed the gameplay as much as I ever have. I just wish there were a way for me to know how the mission will play out regarding my objectives and enemy reinforcements before I start. It affects how I play! And I know, it's more challenging to play it as it comes... but as I say, that's not what I'm looking for most of the time.
Anyway, next time: MEDIUM UFO!
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