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[Mephansteras]

You need to be a Corporal before you can get, and change, a nickname.

Thanks! I don't know how the new XCom works, so excuse me for my dumb-dumb.

No worries. I recommend reading up on your class so you can level him up in an informed manner as we go along.

[Nidilap]

Read it, now get it.

[Mephansteras]

We get notification from Ra that his covert op is nearly finished and he's ready to be picked up


With much of the roster fatigued or in the sick bay, we inform him that we'll be heading to him after 5 hours so that Miss Smith and Devil can be on the extraction team


No issues crop up while we wait, so the team is assembled. Tac Vests for all, this time, since mobility is going to be key on a mission like this.



I go ahead and give Vector Executioner, since I haven't heard back from her on the level up yet and we need our best for this mission.


The skyranger heads off to Russia

Spoiler: Operation Defiant Hydra (click to show/hide)

The team lands down at a dockside warehouse. Evidence of Exalt activity is all over the place.


Ra will need to hit the two Transmitters and get to the LZ for extraction




Since he's got the entire zone between him and the LZ, he starts us off with a scanner to see what's in the way. All clear, for now.


With that, we devise a plan. The team will secure the flank with the ground transmitter, while Ra will move up and hit the first one as soon as he can. Once that's done, he can drop down to the second one and join the team for extraction back to the Sky Ranger. The Extraction team moves up to start clearing out the left flank.


Glass breaking in the building. But whether Exalt is going in or out we don't know.


Ra heads into a container to keep eyes off of him. Next turn he'll be able to head up to the roof transmitter.


Sounds like Exalt is going to get in his way. We'll need to be ready to strike as soon as the first transmitter is hit.


Sure enough, two groups of Exalt troops are spotted as Ra heads up to the rooftop



Ra hacks the first transmitter and gets ready to move to the second


While the rest of the team takes advantage of Exalt's distraction to strike



O'Neill gets in the first kill with a close range shotgun burst


Exalt snipers drop in on the roof next to Ra. Time to move!


But not before giving them a taste of cutting edge weaponry


The team clears out the immediate threats near the second transmitter




And Ra makes a dash away from the snipers. Fortunately, he's much too close for them to get a good bead on with those long rifles


Miss Smith throws a smoke cloud to cover the team as Ra gets ready for the second hack


And a very good thing she did, as an Exalt sniper gets a flank shot in on Ra! The smoke keeps him safe, though.


More Exalt troops drop in to try and stop us



Vector and Kaos make quick work of them



Ra finishes the hack and the team starts falling back to the LZ



Exalt moves in to stop us




Not that they can. O'Neill gives one of them a parting gift and we lift off



Clean work by the team! We took a few out and got the data we needed with little fuss

Spoiler: Soldiers (click to show/hide)

Overall, a good mission! Two promotions and no injuries, although we got very lucky that Ra wasn't hit given that he got all the attention and had little armor to speak of.




Nidilap, you can choose between Gunslinger (+1 Damage with pistols and removes pistol aim penalties), Tactical Sense (+5 Defense per enemy, max +20), or Aggression (+10% crit chance per enemy in sight, max 30%)


i2amroy, you can choose between Gunslinger (+1 Damage with pistols and removes pistol aim penalties), Tactical Sense (+5 Defense per enemy, max +20), or Aggression (+10% crit chance per enemy in sight, max 30%). Also, you can choose a Nickname now. I don't have one one file for you.

Our Covert Intelligence has been updated


With a bit of money available, we work on strengthening our Air game by ordering another interceptor in Europe


We also sell some stuff off and order another Laser Cannon



Another Raider incoming over Africa. We send up some Interceptors in the hopes of driving it off


No suck luck. Our fighters get trashed in the process, and the alien ship only takes a few hits. We really need those laser cannons on all fighters!



It lands not long afterwords, though. Time to capture another ship!


We assembled a team with what we have available. Too many troops out of commission, but this team should be solid enough to handle it.


Next up, the results of Operation Bleeding Dream

[Jim Groovester]

Ugh, the dockside covert extraction map. I hate that map so much.

That's crazy damage to take from a Raider this early in the game.

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, it was horrible. Thing got 2 shots off on each fighter after I told them to disengage!

[UXLZ]

Man, our air game is really sucking at the moment.

[i2amroy]

I'll take tactical sense to help me survive any unlucky YOLO's or triggered overwatches, and I'll take "Sunny" as my nickname.

[Tiruin]

Man, our air game is really sucking at the moment.

Nah, we just need Laser Cannons on everything :3
Because of the percentages being equal on ALL forms, meaning that a Defensive Laser Cannon Aircraft is better than any other (because of the less chance for us to be hit).

[Mephansteras]

Operation Bleeding Dream


Excellent performance by the troops on this one! The ship was crewed by a fairly easy set, just Sectoids, Floaters, and Mutons. Our soldiers took them out quite handily.


Not very many promotions this time around, but good experience for the team regardless


Back to business as usual. We trade some weapon fragments in for another engineer


And production finally finishes on our Scatter Lasers, Alloy Plating, and another Laser Cannon




Not long after we finish research into Experimental Warfare! This doesn't do much for us right this moment, but if we get a Foundry up we'll have a few more options there. It also opens up several new research paths which are quite promising.



Of course, we now need to decide what to research next.

The new research options (Advanced Aerospace, Gauss weapons, Elerium) all take a month or more to research. Everything else is about a week or two.

Current Base status and upcoming events

[Toaster]

What's Adv. Aerospace get us?

Edit:  Wikied it.  We need it in the not too distant future, but let's get some captures going first; a floater would be nice for Reasons.

Xenoneurology.

[Burnt Pies]

Man, our air game is really sucking at the moment.

Nah, we just need Laser Cannons on everything :3
Because of the percentages being equal on ALL forms, meaning that a Defensive Laser Cannon Aircraft is better than any other (because of the less chance for us to be hit).

Unless that's a new thing introduced in this beta, the wiki disagrees with that. However, laser cannons have the highest accuracy out of everything, at 40/55/70% on defensive/balanced/aggressive (compared to 25/40/55% for the missiles, coilgun and plasma, and 15/30/45% for emp and fusion). They also have enough armour penetration to punch out most of the early UFOs (especially with the penetrator weapons aerospace project), and better damage than Stingrays. Supercapacitor research (comes with pulse lasers) makes them better than coilguns in every way except armour pen, so they're probably the weapon with the most longevity in the entire game.

With a bit of veterancy, a defensive laser cannon will take you very far.

[i2amroy]

Xenoneurology.

Edit:  Wikied it.  We need it in the not too distant future, but let's get some captures going first; a floater would be nice for Reasons.

Capturing a floater wouldn't yield anything for at least another month; you need to do autopsies before you can do interrogations in long war, and the floater autopsy requires alien biocybernetics, which requires both alien computers and xenogenetics for a total of (18 + 9 + 10) * 1.25 [for current research penalties do to less scientist/labs] = 46.25 days after we finish xenoneurology.

That said if we capture and interrogate a sectiod before they disappear that can cut those research times (and later foundry upgrade times) by 25%.

[Toaster]

Hm.  Well, we could at least capture the bastard.  Alternately, that gives us time for us to get the foundry upgrades for the Arc Thrower so some poor sucker (aka my character) doesn't get wasted trying to grab one.

I am ALL FOR any interrogations.  On that note, Sectoid Autopsy after Xenoneurology.

[i2amroy]

Hm.  Well, we could at least capture the bastard.  Alternately, that gives us time for us to get the foundry upgrades for the Arc Thrower so some poor sucker (aka my character) doesn't get wasted trying to grab one.

Also the Arc Thrower improvement kinda sucks too. At 1 hp it's like a 4% chance increase, it's really only big advantage makes it so that you can get much better chances on 4 and 5 hp aliens (instead of it being practically worthless to try).

(That said there are tons of missions, so it's really easy to just always try to stun the last alien on any given level once or twice and then just riddling them with bullets if it fails. I tend to pick up most of my captures that way.)

[Jim Groovester]

Gauss Weapons Xenoneurology.

We should probably get a few labs up for these lengthy upcoming research projects.