XCOM: Enemy Online

[Symphony D.]

MISSION 16: CURSED EMPIRE

I brought three snipers because of those amber waves of grain.

We move around a bit for cover and straight out of the fog come four Seekers.

By the end of our turn there's one on 1 health visible, and one invisible.

The invisible one strangles pole475 for one damage (it doubles every turn) and the second misses EQandcivfanatic on a flank. Both Seekers die easily.

Next turn, four more pop up, and I elect to simplify our problems. You can begin to see why Scouts are really awesome beyond just long moves, the ability to carry most weapons, and Lightning Reflexes: LW loves to throw missions every now and then that would otherwise be "Haha, all your dudes are suffocating, what now?"

Shoot 'Em Up. Good movie, by the way.

One is left alive and repeatedly tries to re-stealth rather than shoot the flanked pole475, whom I have nuke smoke grenade to try and up their survival chances. Normally they go hog wild and try and murder people by flying up to them and plasma rifling them. It dies the next turn.

nuke meets some new friends: 4 Drones.

Variations on this image describe what happens to them.

EQandcivfanatic injures 2 more Seekers by rolling a grenade through a door. Both take 2 damage and move up. One is killed outright after being revealed by a Battle Scanner and the other survives into the next turn only to cloaking error itself into extinction like the previous one.

While moving up, CivOasis spots two more. Human vision is exactly 1 tile farther than alien vision, so they haven't activated yet. This type of UFO seems to always have 19 enemies, 16 whatever, and 3 Outsiders. These are 15 and 16. I figured the Outsider fight will be tough, but I make an executive decision.

Humans: 16, Robots: 0

Then it turns out the Outsiders weren't waiting on the bridge. This ship has one large room beyond this blue door at top center, and then beyond that is the bridge. Normally they just wait there, but apparently they were roving too.

We take out this one with concentrated fire, but where are the other two?

nuke finds out they were trying to flank. We take out one but nuke's left staring down the barrel of the other. I ultimately decide his best chance at survival is running to the rocks on the left, as otherwise the Outsider can just flank him.

It works, and nuke lives to fight another day, a little worse for wear. After the Outsider is sniped by ChiefDesigner and grenaded by EQandcivfanatic, he runs up to finish it off.

Nicknames for everybody! nuke earns the one I discarded.

We make bank. Going Sniper heavy turned out really well here given the enemies we were fighting and the fact that roving pods made them all feed out into the open. It would've been less good if we'd had to fight our way into the UFO. We were also lucky; I had this kind of UFO as my second mission of the game back in one playthrough of Beta 6 and it was throwing around Chrysalids and Thin Men. On like March 5th.

 

[Symphony D.]

INTERMISSION 19

EQandcivfanatic gets Holo-Targeting, because The Power of Holo-Targeting. Watch Beagle's streams.

pole475 gets Flush. I've never really used it much before, but I like it better than the other options and I've heard good things about how it can be used. BILLSIF and ChiefDesigner both pick up Headshot. nuke gets Revive.

In recognition of his history of meritorious conduct, strangely high bodycount for the number of missions he's been on, his undisputed status as The People's Champion, and being the first person to qualify for the job, pole475 becomes our 5th Lieutenant, picking up Legio Patria Nostra.

With our new resources, we can take stock of our research situation. I decide to pick Beam Lasers because while I think it's sort of a trap, collecting enough Weapon Fragments to get Gauss Weapons will probably take until the end of May, and then we're looking at still around 2 weeks research time and a week of build time, meaning it'll be July before we have new weapons. That's a bad idea, so we'll go with Lasers and do what we can to collect Weapon Fragments with them instead.

We only get one Interceptor up and it doesn't manage to kill the Scout before it flees.

To paraphrase a meme of Neil deGrasse Tyson: "Y'all mike foxtrots need science."

Tune in next time.

 

[erez87]

So how long 'till I get super powers?

 

[Symphony D.]

Psi is a pretty low priority at the moment and I don't much care for it anyway, so figure 3-4 months if you even actually wind up having psi potential.

 

[ork75]

There was one time I couldn't kill a chrysallid so I fired stun bombs at all of the friendlies near it.

It worked flawlessly.

 

[Wrymouth3]

Did I get blown up during an earlier operation? I want to think that being eaten by a Muton would be a good way to go.

 

[Symphony D.]

Did I get blown up during an earlier operation? I want to think that being eaten by a Muton would be a good way to go.

You've never lived. Adrift in the quantum maybe-a-supposedly-qualified-soldier-but-really-more-like-a-hobo-with-a-shotgun XCOM recruiting pool, stuck in untime.

 

[Symphony D.]

MISSION 17: BURNING HAMMER

Also starring: qoou.

We gotta save Brazilian ethanol.

So we start out in the open, per usual.

An enemy pod appears.

We take out the Seekers.

This what we call danger close.

We Flashbang the Thin Man. A bit later tuxedohamm runs up and shoots him in the face.

We're still running at 8 Meld.

We kill some Floaters.

One drops in the back, two more are in the front.

Grandkhan kills one, tuxedohamm takes out the other.

Shadowbound takes out the last one.

Easy peasy.

Daftpanzer becomes a Scout.

 

[Symphony D.]

INTERMISSION 20

Selling some of this Elerium.

Shotgun and Spider put three Stingray shots into the UFO, which is enough to drive it off before it can shootdown a satellite.

Elerium sales.

Beam Lasers completes, and we start up UFO Analysis: Harvester. We build 2 Laser Carbines, 4 Laser Rifles, 1 Heavy Laser, and 2 Laser Pistols.

Everybody wants Elerium.

THERE'S NOTHING THAT A HUNDRED MEN OR MORE COULD EVER DO

Also starring: qoou.

 

[Symphony D.]

MISSION 18: DRIVING SWORD

I'm not sure how we're supposed to beat whatever shot up these tanks, but okay. Apparently qoou forgot his armor.

We move up.

We shoot some Drones. CivOasis ultimately takes out both.

Eventually we surround the warehouse where all the others seem to be.

We reveal three Seekers, literally and more literally.

mrrandomplayer damages one, and erez87 gets two kills and weakens the third.

qoou damages what's left of its cover, and CivOasis finishes it off.

We find what are probably the last of the enemies, 3 Drones.

We take out the walls and take them down.

No big deal.

 

[Symphony D.]

INTERMISSION 21

CivOasis picks up Bring 'Em On, mrrandomplayer earns Close Combat Specialist, and qoou becomes a Medic due to our current lack of them.

We build plot, and another Laser Pistol.

Moose and Mongoose go up and bring down a Scout.

Also starring: Optical.

 

[Symphony D.]

MISSION 19: BROKEN GOD

IT'S NOT A POPULATED AREA, BRADFORD.

We can go forward, left, or right. We go right. We go right.

We send The Farow way far right and BILLSIF gets a kill.

I do something questionable by having The Farow duel a Muton opposite a Meld canister. Surprisingly it actually winds up working.

His Floater buddies get taken out.

We get all the Meld.

I do something mean and set the Outsider up for failure.

When they're not activated, hit chance is 100% and with Headshot, critical chance is 75%. It goes poorly for him.

Only 5 is pretty light.

 

[Symphony D.]

INTERMISSION 22

Iggy picks up Battle Scanner, while Optical becomes an Assault.

We sell some Meld.

We start Advanced Aerospace Concepts.

Welp.

Also starring: tuxedohamm.

 

[Symphony D.]

MISSION 20: LONE FALL

"Hey, haven't we been here bef—"
"Shut up."

So we gotta rescue this Van Doorn guy. I'll spare you what AN AWFUL HUMAN BEING HE IS.

We take up positions.

Our initial rocket salvos are less than effective.

We let some of them move up.

spryllino guns one down, one gets rocketed, one gets grenaded. Don't rely on car explosions in Long War.

Our last rocket is still not very effective.

Unfortunately, spryllino gets shot and killed with a mindflay.

We disorient the remaining ones and start gunning them down.

Somehow this wasn't a flank...

... But the Thin Man had to reload and so he got shot in the face anyway.

After we kill all the Thin Men we get Van Doorn and start leading him back. tuxedohamm eats plasma on his way to killing a Thin Man that drops in. The drops are timed to Van Doorn's movement progress.

Eventually only one is left back in the collapsed zone. He dies.

spryllino is our third death. BILLSIF gets a 5 day weekend for coming in on his days off.

 

[Symphony D.]

INTERMISSION 23

justokre gets Shredder Ammo. tuxedohamm earns Close Combat Specialist.

Part of our reward package is Symphorien, who also has Shredder Ammo.

We sell dead bodies.

We build a Thermo Generator to solve our power problems for awhile.

Oh no!

At least they didn't steal our money like I was totally spending all our money to try and avoid.

We send EQandcivfanatic to handle it.

We duel a UFO ineffectually.

Sellin' some alloys.

We don't do enough damage over two Interceptors to save the satellite.

And the situation in Germany needs to be brought back under control

Also starring: Thlayli

 

[Symphony D.]

MISSION 21: BLACK PRIEST

Should've brought more snipers.

The flooded boulevard is the worst. They've added a bit more hard cover to it though.

erez87 misses an important rocket.

m.t.cicero is more on target.

We manage to whittle them down and force the last one to retreat.

erez87 misses another important rocket, blowing up a Meld canister and only just damaging the police car.

m.t.cicero's shredder rocket is on target but it's not the most effective. We miss all kinds of shot.

Popcornlord dies to a lucky enemy shot. It's unfortunate, he was a good Gunner.

Grandkhan applies more explosives to the problem. A lot more shots are fied.

Eventually, our front lines stabilize.

After a lot more shots fired, Grandkhan forces the issue.

Eventually, CivOasis gets his mojo back and kills the Sectoid on the right.

Grandkhan kills the Sectoid in the middle and m.t.cicero finishes off the Floater.

 

[Symphony D.]

INTERMISSION 24

m.t.cicero picks up HEAT Warheads. erez87 gets Snap Shot, hopefully helping prevent his prior performance. Grandkhan gets Flush. We hire an additional soldier.

We don't sell our Weapon Fragments. We do sell Meld.

Time to fight Humies.

How bad...can it be? Also starring: mrrandomplayer.

 

[Symphony D.]

MISSION 22: FIRST HERO

It's a joke because we already had Final Hero, right?

So we start beside this garage.

We immediately encounter EXALT. They're basically like us. Oh, also, they have Gauss Weapons. I didn't know this until later.

We gotta storm these gas pumps.

One of them grenades our forces and takes out the cover ChiefDesigner's behind, and he bites it.

Rockets continue to be less than effective.

Don't rely on setting off cars in Long War.

Eventually, Shadowbound gets critically hit and downed.

We start thinning them out.

Our shotguns also prove less than effective at range, but can still get the job done. Ideally, we'd be able to move EQandcivfanatic up to one of these transmitters to force all of the EXALT soldiers to reload, but we're not in position to.

I get Shadowbound back up.

pole475 is eventually brought down, and I cannot reach him in time. Earth's Hero falls fighting traitors.

bonefang is also brought down by their sheer numbers.

We're forced to pull back from the Encoder.

Fortunately, EXALT is forced into the open during their dashes toward the Transmitter.

And it's here that we hold the line and take them out.

436

437

438

439

The price, however, is high. Only BILLSIF walks away unscathed.

 

[Symphony D.]

INTERMISSION 25

Shadowbound takes Shredder Ammo. BILLSIF becomes our first NCO and earns his ODST helmet and spec ops black, taking Bring 'Em On. I promote to Captain, getting Semper Vigilans, +5 Defense in cover for the squad.

We sell Elerium.

And then we have to go again.

Also starring: J.K. Stockholme.

 

[Symphony D.]

MISSION 23: CURSED CRONE

Attack of the B-Team.

Let me tell you that this mission is going to suck.

Through precise application of high explosives, we take out most of two Chrysalid pods, with one left at one health.

That one health Chrysalid's enough to kill andis-1. The other pod scatters rather than swarming us.

We gun most of them down.

We deal with Zombie attacks, including from the fallen andis-1.

Another Chrysalid pod appears, surrounding Iggy. We shoot one down, get Iggy out, and go danger close.

We ultimately put andis-1 down again, along with many other Zombies, but one Chrysalid escapes to make more.

As we follow it, we activate 2 Floaters and a Muton.

Rockets prove less than effective again.

We're forced to form a firing line to defend J.K. Stockholme, who's been hit with acid from a Zombie slash and is on one health.

We succeed.

J.K. Stockholme is unfortunately killed by a Floater, making it somewhat moot. But we don't leave a man behind.

Iggy guns down both Floaters, while bombshoo grenades the Muton.

Once again, the price is high, both for our soldiers and the civilians.