Lazy Saturnday

Things are going pretty well. Russian and Chinese are both moderately panicked. Though the government in China is still refuting the existence of aliens social media leaks continue to spread. Our engineers have built a pair of Satellites for us, but we only have the control capacity to launch one of them. We definitely need to get it in orbit in the next week or so. The question is where.

The council has gotten wind of an alien bomb in China. If we can defuse the bomb that may reduce the panic there, and then Russia would be the clear choice for where to deploy the Satellite.

I’m going to step OOC for a second here to mention that I just ran into my first bug w/ this game. It appears something has gone terribly wrong with Duncan’s face, and it’s been turned inside out and twisted around. It’s kind of hilarious, but hopefully it’ll be fixed next time I save the game.

March 23, 2015, The aliens have deployed some sort of nefarious device on the Liu To bridge in Hong Kong. There are several plasma Chargers we can easily spot. Joanna and Will moved up to the closest one and were able to disable it. It appears to be feeding some sort of runaway reaction, but shutting them off is pretty easy, and will likely buy us some time.

Laura H. moves over to disable a second device and spots a new alien. This one looks remarkably human-like, and might even pass as human in bad light. Unfortunately no one can quite draw a bead on it. Will and Duncan both take shots at it as it advances on Joanna’s position but it as very fast and takes cover on the other side of the taxi Joanna is hiding behind, and manages to wing her before ducking back into cover.

Will takes a second shot, and this time his aim is true and the x-ray explodes. No literally, it explodes into a miasmic cloud when it expires, fortunately Joanna is outside it’s poisonous influence and is able to tend to her wounds. Bandaged up she spots a Sectoid as she moves to disable the third device. Going above and beyond she not only disables the nefarious machine, but also puts down the newly spotted alien.

Time is a terrible factor, and control shows a growing energy source in the squads area.  Disabling these power nodes is slowing things down, but it’s not buying enough time, and it’s forcing us to move forward faster than might be safe. Duncan disables a 4th device, and Laura smashes the 5th. Joanna spots another Sectoid but chooses to take cover rather than fire from the open as she has already been wounded. Will can’t even see the beast and so moves closer. Duncan moves up to try and take a shot, but spots a third Sectoid. He trades fire with it, but loses the exchange and panics. Will waits till he’s in cover and then puts a bullet between the offending Xeno’s eyes. Joanna moves forwards and spots a different device, which can only be the alien power source.  Undistracted she trades fire with the alien she’d spotted earlier, and manages to put it down without taking any further wounds.

Objective in sight, the squad moves forward. Duncan grabs some cover and uses his medkit. Will reloads and Laura and Joanna both take point. Several cars have caught fire, and a couple even explode, but these soldiers are undeterred. Laura makes a mad dash to the alien device and disables it but control reports another wave of  x-ray is incoming.

Two more of the humanish looking aliens show up, as control predicted. Duncan manages to take one out, and Will snipes the other! The mission is a success. Duncan and Joanna are both mildly wounded, but the docs say they should both be ready for duty again in a week or two at most. Laura is a little bummed to be the only member of the squad to not receive a promotion, but things could have gone much worse.

March 6, a small UFO is detected over Germany and an interceptor is scrambled to shoot it down. It does so, suffering only mild damage during the dogfight. With several of our experienced soldiers still Medbay, Will and Joanna will be leading this mission, with Laura H. and Duncan donning the X-Com badge for the first time in a real fire-fight.

The squad touches down near the crash-site, in a lightly forested area. The squad moves forwards, and Joanna quickly spots a pair of Sectoids, but is able to get to cover and avoid their fire, as they spot her too. Laura moves up and fires from extreme range, but misses. Duncan wings the closer alien, Joanna shoots the farther back one and claims a Double Kill! Apparently there was some kind of psychic link between the two aliens, and the feed back of the ones death kills the other!

With the immediate threat dealt with the squad slowly moves forwards, alternating who is on overwatch until the alien wreck is in view. Joanna again spots a pair of Sectoids. Laura moves up and takes the first shot putting one of them down. Joanna also fires, but her shot goes wide. Will is far enough back that he can’t quite take a shot. The alien falls back and moves out of site. Laura follows, and takes a hit getting to cover. Joanna moves up and takes another shot, but misses as well.

Laura stays behind cover and bandages herself up. Duncan’s shot goes wide, but Will is able to put one directly between it’s eyes while it’s distracted. As the squad moves closer to the alien vessel a weird energy being materializes and takes up a defensive position. Duncan manages to put a few bullets in it, and this time Will misses, however Joanna moves up and finishes it off. A few minutes of surveying the wreckage and it’s evident that’s the last of them. Excellent, two promotions and only one injury.

Operation Flying Stallion

We’ve barely gotten the base set up. Engineering has put together some Medpacks for the likely eventuality that our soldiers get injured again, and are designing a shielded satellite to try and locate hostile aliens quicker. Our scientists are researching the weapon fragments recovered from the rooftop just yesterday, and already a report has come in of an alien abduction in progress in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Wendy will be leading Dave, Will and Joanna in to try and rescue any civilians and take out as many x-rays as possible.

The squad is moving slowly through the parking lot when Joanna spots not one, not two, but three pairs of the gray aliens, which the scientists have taken to calling Sectoids. Will moves up behind a red pickup-truck and takes a shot at one, but it ducks behind a cop car. Dave and Wendy move closer but can’t get clear shots, and so go into overwatch. Joanna has a clear shot, but chooses caution and dashes back into cover.

Dave takes a shot at a Sectoid as it breaks cover, but misses as it’s inside a building and pretty far off. Another Sectoid takes a shot at him, but fortunately the car he’s behind takes the brunt of the plasma fire, unfortunately it catches
fire, and could explode at any moment.  He moves away from the car to take cover inside the building, but the x-ray behind the cop car manages to take him down from nearly 100′ away.

Will puts down one of the Sectoids that was trying to flank them, while Wendy and Joanna concentrate fire on the closest threat inside the building; both connect but Wendy claims she got the killshot.

The aliens move up, and take a shot at Joanna, the red pickup takes all of it though, and catches on fire. However this puts our heroes in a sticky situation, as the vile alien that killed Dave has moved up and is covering the three soldiers using the truck for cover. If they break cover, they’ll be under fire. If they don’t, the truck will likely explode and kill them.

Will distracts it, successfully dodging three shot, sliding into cover and returning fire. His shots connect, but do not kill the hated enemy. Fortunately it is distracted enough for Wendy and Joanna to get to some cover that isn’t on fire. Wendy falls back a bit, and claims another killshot, avenging Dave.

Joanna takes a snapshot at one of the aliens inside the building but misses, it crashes through a plate glass window and dive behind the cop car; returning fire it misses, but does take out a door and a good ten foot section of wall just beside her. Another alien half a block away fires on Will, but he hunkers down and is completely unscathed. Wendy unloads on the Sectoid hiding behind the cop car and while several shots connect it doesn’t go down. These buggers are frighteningly resilient. Joanna regains her composure and finishes off the alien behind the cop car while it’s distracted from Wendy’s fire. Will, his cover compromised moves to cover and fires at the alien down the block. His shots go wide, but the alien does fall back a bit before returning fire and missing wildly. There’s still at least one alien inside the building, as evinced by the shots that hit the windowsill Joanna is crouched behind. She unloads the last of her clip, but the display rack of beer takes the brunt of the attack, spraying glass and warm beer around, but not hurting the alien.

Will’s clip is also empty and he falls back to reload. Wendy unloads on the alien down the block but the dark and distance conspire against her. The alien in the building moves closer and fires on Joanna again, bricks glow with the heat of the plasma, but her cover holds. Will fires on the alien down the block but misses, fortunately so does the x-ray’s return fire.

Will’s car catches fire under the stream of plasma shots from the alien down the street, and he’s forced to fall back where he can’t get a shot on either of them. Joanna and Wendy, having both reloaded try to hit the one in the building but neither connect. Wendy gets hit but just barely manages to stay standing. Joanna pops into the building and takes out the offending Sectoid from behind, while Wendy patches herself up.

Will takes a shot at the last Sectoid as it tries to slip out of the bar, and while he misses it, he does force it down an alley where Joanna has a clear shot on it. She hits it but doesn’t kill it, Wendy also takes a shot, but her wounds throw her aim off and she isn’t able to steal the kill.  Will sees his chance and rushes forwards, taking out the final alien while it dodges Wendy’s barrage.

A successful mission, though rather sad as we have already lost one of our own.

So my last “Let’s Play X-Com” was an unmitigated disaster. Many gave their lives in an ultimately doom attempt to stem the vile invasion. As a commander, I’ve learned something. And that is “Classic” difficulty isn’t messing around. So we’re going to try it again, this time on Normal difficulty. Still Ironman mode, because if I was going to Save-scum, I might as well just start the game on Impossible difficulty.

First Contact, Operation Crimson Engine. March 1, 2015

Aliens are attacking the planet. An elite organization, composed entirely of my friends, has been tasked by the shadow council to fight this menace and save the planet. As yet with little funding, and only half a dozen recruits, four men and women have been sent in to investigate an alien incursion in Leeds.

The Skyranger sets down on top of an old office building that is in the midst of being renovated. A half dozen construction workers’ corpses litter the roof, their bodies covered in a disturbing green goo or slime of some kind. The squad doesn’t have time to investigate before a pair of gray aliens with big eyes are seen scurrying into cover. The squad takes cover, and Naeem trades fire with one of them; both are wounded in the exchange and return to cover. Another pair are spotted taking cover on a raised platform to the north.

Wendy fires a clean burst into the closer of the two on the platform, putting it out of commission. Sadly any hope we have of using their weapons against them are dashed. When the x-ray goes down it’s weapon explodes. Maybe we can capture some alive, or acquire a weapons cache some how.

Caitlin takes cover behind a giant spool of cabeling and finishes off the alien Naeem had wounded earlier. Joanna moves to closer cover, but can’t get a bead on the remaining alien. Naeem takes a shot, again glancing the alien but not putting it out of action. It hunkers down and one of the ones we saw earlier moves up and fires on Naeem. Fortunately, whatever is under the tarps he is hiding behind is sturdy enough to hold up to the plasma fire.

Naeem tries to finish off the x-ray on the platform, but between fire from the other one, and the first one taking cover his shots are ineffective. Caitlin moves closer, taking two solid hits before she can get to cover, but she manages to ignore her wounds and put down the alien on the platform.

Wendy runs forwards, grabs cover behind a shipping container and unloads into the last alien. Caitlin and Naeem are both hurt bad, and after quickly searching the roof-top the squad heads back to base This mission was a pretty resounding success all told.

Wendy and Caitlin have both been promoted, though it’ll be a week or so before Caitlin or Naeem are well enough to return to duty. All 4 alien corpse were recovered as well as most of the fragments of the alien weaponry. Maybe we can reverse engineer their guns.