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[GlyphGryph]

This is also a good idea. I imagine capture squad overseer would be a pretty dull position, though.

He's the only guy on a squad tasked with the most deadly of missions that's carrying a real gun.

Sure, maybe he's only /supposed/ to use it on uncapturables... But I could see it not being all that dull given the right person and a willingness to ignore practicality for roleplaying purposes. And lets be honest, that whole squads gonna be replaceable anyway. Someone must enjoy subjugating the aliens we meet and extracting information from them.

Put him "in charge" of briefing us on what we learned from live aliens too. There's great potential there.

And it wouldn't be boring considering it's probably the most likely squad to be wiped out at any given time...

Better than the mandatory mind probe guy you'll probably want to ship with the squad and leave on the ranger for emergency evacs!

[Sirus]

Do you...have someone in mind for that task? <_<;

[GlyphGryph]

The bulk of our squad is mentally unstable in a variety of ways. I don't NEED anyone in mind.

[IronyOwl]

This is also a good idea. I imagine capture squad overseer would be a pretty dull position, though.

He's the only guy on a squad tasked with the most deadly of missions that's carrying a real gun.

Sure, maybe he's only /supposed/ to use it on uncapturables... But I could see it not being all that dull given the right person and a willingness to ignore practicality for roleplaying purposes. And lets be honest, that whole squads gonna be replaceable anyway. Someone must enjoy subjugating the aliens we meet and extracting information from them.

Well, technically these would be the very least deadly of missions, made considerably more dangerous by our refusal to use anything other than pointy sparkly sticks. In theory that should make them not very impressive for a guy with a rocket launcher.

Also, they're only replaceable (well, more replaceable than normal) if they're blank mooks.

Put him "in charge" of briefing us on what we learned from live aliens too. There's great potential there.

That'd be nice, but the info from live aliens tends to be more technical and concise than you'd expect to gather from locking them in a room with a psychopath. Unless you mean purely RP info, but I'm not sure what that would be.

And it wouldn't be boring considering it's probably the most likely squad to be wiped out at any given time...

Better than the mandatory mind probe guy you'll probably want to ship with the squad and leave on the ranger for emergency evacs!

*cough* Well, yeah, I suppose I do usually end up with someone with that job description...

Of course, since my default set has two free slots, they could be a temporary bonus operative who gets promoted to not-holding-coffee status when a new position opens up. Not that relying on someone with an interest in someone dying to ID aliens is particularly wise, but neither is hiring a bunch of lunatics and buying them whatever military-grade weapons they want.

[Mephansteras]

You could name them things like 'Mr. White' and 'Mr. Green', if they're not player characters.

[IronyOwl]

You could name them things like 'Mr. White' and 'Mr. Green', if they're not player characters.

This is a good idea. The other idea I had was allowing players and spectators to suggest names for them, but only existing words or names stolen from other characters. So you'd either end up with Mr. White and Mr. Red, or Brick and Pipe, or Lockjaw and Shakes, or Cammy and Ryu, or Harry and Hermione, etc.

Obviously, some ways of doing things a lot less silly than others. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.


Plus, I'm not entirely certain they would be mooks. I just have a hard time picturing sending actual, named characters with eventual preferences on a suicidal alien-clubbing assignment.

[Delta Foxtrot]

I love the smell of collateral damage in the morning.

And just because you have guys with stun rods doesn't mean you need to be overtly suicidal with them. In my squads I usually have two positions for scout/stunners who proceed to club a few live ones near the end of the mission if possible. Few more guys carry rods in their backpack just in case. Sure, it's a dangerous position but there's no reason not to incorporate a few las pistol/stun rod combatants in the squad. At least for now since you don't seem to be using minitanks so you should have plenty of room. The rapid fire laser pistol provides good close range protection if the alien is too far to stun and too close to escape from.

Definitely don't send them with JUST stun rods. At least load them with pistols and/or grenades. I'd rather kill an alien than lose an operative to capture one.

[Jacob/Lee]

Stunning with the rods is dangerous because you need to get close to an alien, preferably through doors. Murphy's law states that an alien will be facing the door you enter through and will always blow your head off with reaction plasma rifle fire. I have yet to actually get someone with a stun rod through a door without getting shot in the process.

[Delta Foxtrot]

That's a problem when breaching UFO's.

Farm houses on the other hand (or downtown Jakarta)... All you need to do is to rip a few more doors for your guys to swarm in through. And since the way stunning works (once stun damage exceeds enemy's remaining health bar, it faints), you might actually want to keep a few assault rifle/pistol mooks to wound the aliens beforehand to ensure they get stunned by one strike. Risky actions for questionable gains, but I still like to do it when I play. Sectoids and floaters are still fairly stunnable, but anything bigger than those will require some wounding if we want our stun guys to survive.

Or we could just wait until we get stun launchers and then spam those.

@IronyOwl

What's your policy on alien loot? Do you just let it sit in the storage gathering dust, or do you sell any excess? I remember getting ridiculous moneys out of selling most of the stuff I looted.

[EuchreJack]

Put him "in charge" of briefing us on what we learned from live aliens too. There's great potential there.

That'd be nice, but the info from live aliens tends to be more technical and concise than you'd expect to gather from locking them in a room with a psychopath. Unless you mean purely RP info, but I'm not sure what that would be.

: Commander, I would be the perfect psychopath for that job!  I'm a scientist, I love bossing people around, and I love research!  I could even learn to live with that whole "being armed with an explosive weapon" thingy.

Besides, don't you need to remove the civy-killer from your main squad for public relations reasons?

[MonkeyHead]

COMMANDER, IF NO HEAVY WEAPONS ARE AVAILIABLE FOR PRIORITY ONE, I AM MORE THAN ABLE TO SUBDUE SPECEMINS FOR LATER EVALUATION AS PRIORTY TWO...

[Burnt Pies]

What? No! You have to run around shouting things like "Eat my Laser. Eat It!". You can't do that with a stun rod!

[EuchreJack]

What? No! You have to run around shouting things like "Eat my Laser. Eat It!". You can't do that with a stun rod!

What? He can't yell, "Eat my Rod. Eat it!"?  Isn't that more hilarious, anyways? 

[GlyphGryph]

Also, as squad leader he gets a real weapon.

Well, technically these would be the very least deadly of missions

We may have different definitions of who needs to die for a mission to be considered deadly.

Although you might actually want two launcher dudes for making entrances for the capture team.

[Sonlirain]

Ok heres another X-Com funfact.
Smoke grenaes actually slowly stun over time so it might be a good idea to equip the stun team with stupid ammounts of those.