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[Urist Imiknorris]

I would kill to have that office.

[Darkening Kaos]

Spoiler: But, Great Commandy One, this is how we do stealth missions....... (click to show/hide)

     And in any case the building was between the LZ and VIP's Van {bottom middle of pic}.
     Can you imagine what we would have done if it wasn't a stealth extraction?
     ...
     ...
     ...
    Oh, and the Mutons started it, sir.

    Click for full size picture

     In the retaliation I've just started, I have three 'lids, a shield bearer and an elite officer, so my grenadier fires a grenade at the base of the two storey building they are all hiding in/on.  The shield bearer, on the roof takes damage, falls to the ground, stands up, then takes falling damage and dies.

[Sirbug]

I realized that cool kids make their own doors since Jagged Alliance 2.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Had my first run-in with Chryssalids. Retaliation mission, naturally.

First impressions had been underwhelming because... well, I had a sniper grapple up to a roof to watch for enemies further forward, and he managed to aggro a pack of three 'lids to himself (and away from a few juicy civvies strewn about). On their turn. So all they did was surround him and stare menacingly because they could only use their "scuttle to cover" actions and not attack. Next turn the sniper vaulted off the roof, and the nearest grenadier leveled the building with his suit's Shredder Cannon, reducing three full-health Chryssalids to one straggler on 1 HP, which was promptly finished off by the sniper's pistol.

Further impressions were better, as I had to meet the remaining two 'lids without having caught them off guard, and they proved sufficiently menacing, even if they only killed one civilian (and injured two of my troopers, who thankfully survived). Chryssalid poison seems to ramp up damage per turn, so I'm glad I packed a medkit. Also, that cocoon takes a mighty amount of killing to destroy.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also met Andromedons on a supply raid. Okay, I get that they are using an environmental powersuit to fight. But why does the powersuit attack you by itself when you kill the pilot?

[My Name is Immaterial]

Thanks for everyone for the advice! It's now just barely playable!

[Lightningfalcon]

Had my first run-in with Chryssalids. Retaliation mission, naturally.

First impressions had been underwhelming because... well, I had a sniper grapple up to a roof to watch for enemies further forward, and he managed to aggro a pack of three 'lids to himself (and away from a few juicy civvies strewn about). On their turn. So all they did was surround him and stare menacingly because they could only use their "scuttle to cover" actions and not attack.

What? I know for a fact that they will attack your soldiers on reveal. Its the reason I always roll with a bladestorm ranger in a war suit and hellfire armor in missions with chryssalids.

[Puzzlemaker]

Oh, and I forgot to mention the coolest thing I did, which I am so sad there isn't an achievement for:

I did a facility mission, and finished it the first turn I was revealed.  No enemy casualities, no friendly casualties, in and out before anyone knew what hit them.

[Man of Paper]

Mods I'm using on my latest run are

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• No Avatar Project
• SMG Pack
• Disable Timers
• Military Camouflage Patterns
• Less Gravely Wounded
• Rifleman
• XCOM International Voices Pack
• More Maps Pack
• World Expansion Project: ADVENT
• Nicknames Extended
• Trooper Custom Class
• Covert Ops Armor
• Psi Rifle

Mostly just getting a feel for various mods. And taking away timers and everything doesn't reduce difficulty as much as I'd have thought. All it does really is let you plan your opening engagement better. I've still had a good few missions fall apart on me. I just got the Trooper Mod, but the Rifleman is probably my favorite mod of the list. It's not an OP class but my second best fighter, and most consistently badass, happens to be a Rifle(wo)man. (Most badass character averages 3 kills/mission - Grenadier, obviously)

NINJA: Pulling off a true covert operation is always satisfying.

[Toaster]

My current resident badass is a sniper with Killzone.  He got Covering Fire from the AWC (a pretty meh pick on him) but doesn't care, because here's how we start the opening engagement:

High ground
Pack goes in killzone
Another soldier fires first shot (nade if they're armored)
Killzone triggers
The maybe one survivor gets picked off
Wonder what the other three soldiers are supposed to do

He's currently at 11 missions and 33 kills.  It's the sombrero, man; makes him awesome.

[Rolan7]

Had my first run-in with Chryssalids. Retaliation mission, naturally.

First impressions had been underwhelming because... well, I had a sniper grapple up to a roof to watch for enemies further forward, and he managed to aggro a pack of three 'lids to himself (and away from a few juicy civvies strewn about). On their turn. So all they did was surround him and stare menacingly because they could only use their "scuttle to cover" actions and not attack.

What? I know for a fact that they will attack your soldiers on reveal. Its the reason I always roll with a bladestorm ranger in a war suit and hellfire armor in missions with chryssalids.

When a pod is revealed on the alien turn by happening across your soldiers, they don't get to attack.  Just scuttle to cover.

Ironically it can be a lot more advantageous to the player than launching an ambush, particularly if you're set up in overwatch.  You get the overwatch as they scuttle, then you get a full turn of actions to deal with them.

[Aklyon]

I might as well add my mod list for the current run too. On Commander.
Edit: there were a couple more mods here, but the game crashed when loading. Whoops!

Spoiler: Moooods (click to show/hide)

Gameplay:
Muton Centurion: Still not quite sure what it does.
Leader pack: Not too impressed by it, but its nice to have later I suppose.
smg pack: in case I want an smg for some reason. Haven't used them yet.
Accurate swords: Because fuck missed sword attacks.
No Squadsight Penalties: Because why not?
Evac All: Its nice.
Max Squad Size Fix (and an ini edit so it actually does something): Kinda necessary against IESS+, I was going to use it regardless.
Armor Utility Slots: Because I want to use moar items.
Stun Lancer Rebalance
Skulljack & EMP tweaks: Better hacking in exchange for an item slot. Didn't use the emp grenades last time.
Pistol Buff: Sure, why not.
True Concealment (Default Timers): I beat Veteran with normal timers, lets have it a bit easier to sneak around the second time.
Less Gravely Wounded
Grenades Unlimited
EnemyLoot: Expanded Loot - Loot! Small amounts of it over several battles. Nice to have.
Hunkerdownmod: Would've been useful for my grenadier last time...It changes the bonuses you get for hunkering. And extinguishes burning.
Alloyed Armor plate vest: Like the plated vest, but better! (and slower)
Non-tile-snapping-grenades
Xcom Energy shields: Not that great tbh. But its occasionally useful free damage soak, not gonna complain.
Patrol when Revealed: Keep moving, you damn aliens.
Elerium Grounds: Because upgrading suits is better than getting rid of them, or leaving them in storage. Plus you can build elerium cores if the proving grounds isn't already very busy.
Shield Vest: Might be better than the other shield mod, but I'll have to actually get one of these first to determine it.
Always Bleed Out: Still can't save everyone (you'll run out of stabilize/heal charges), but you get a chance to do so with this.
Engineer2Scientist: They need to stop being so useless later and go help other rooms, like the AWC or the Psi Lab. This does that.
Its just a scratch: So that you don't instantly get wounded when you take 2 damage and your armor soaked the rest of the shot, thats probably still bonus health!
Numeric Health Display: Looks nice. Looks helpful. (this is the one with the backgrounds, not just the numbers)
Weapon Upgrades Expanded: Not in /quite/ so much of a hurry to get to superior bits now.
Enhanced Hit Chance Display: Is nice.
IESS+: Lots of enemies. No limit of who can attack you at the same time. Using default squadsize would mean you're fighting 4v10 on the first mission, which is not a great idea. Use a bigger squad instead.
Point Blank: Because really now? You missed the alien that is literally breathing on your gun? Theres enough rng as-is.
True Retroactive AWC: useful fix.
Skip free alien move: This is probably broken. I like it, but its still probably broken. Not recommended for being srs.
Hazmat Vest Fix: I guess it was bugged? More of a jsut-in-case mod, if I get one of these.
Advanced Modular Weapons: Fixes two things, the first being Armed to the Teeth is the best bonus (by turning it into a research instead), and the second being giving your scientists more to do is good.
Psiblade Class: Sounds cool. Gonna try it.
Junkrat Class: See above.
Primary Weapon Sword: Prerequisite for the Psiblade class.
Better Armor stats: More balanced than a similar mod I saw.
Additional Tactical Dark Events: Because extra faceless is not a threat. Extra sectopods most certainly is.
Beatdown skill: Sounds interesting, unsure if worth using yet.
Quiet Bradford
Ignore Missing Content: Incase of mod oddities.
Ultimate Workshop: You're going to run out of things to build eventually, why not spend your supplies on other things?
Saturation Fireproof: This would explain so much. But I'll need to get a new high-rank grenadier to test it.

Cosmetic:
New Countries
Capnbubs Accessories Pack
Military Camoflage Patterns
Custom Bandanas - Armor
Expanded Callsigns and Nicknames
Ayy lmao 2
Free the Hood
Advent Helmets
Menace Tattoos
XCOM Patch tattoos
More Random Backstories
XCOM Int. Voice Pack: The only serious voice pack in the workshop I think.
Heavy TF2 Voice Pack: Apparently it updated!
MEC Voice pack: Getting closer to mecs!
Nod Soldier voice pack: Praise Kane!
Freeman's Mind voice pack
Space marine voice pack: Because clearly I needed even more shouting people in my guerilla ops.
Advent vocie pack: Not for people who want less balaten.

[scriver]

If you're going to run into an almost always non-cover spot, you need to damn hit. Otherwise you might as well just shoot the alien instead of sword. Untouchable is a long ways off from squaddie and only covers one shot per turn.

The solution for this scenario isn't Untouchable, but Implacable. I can't remember what the other option on that level was though. Probably something much more useful.

[Sindain]

Had my first run-in with Chryssalids. Retaliation mission, naturally.

First impressions had been underwhelming because... well, I had a sniper grapple up to a roof to watch for enemies further forward, and he managed to aggro a pack of three 'lids to himself (and away from a few juicy civvies strewn about). On their turn. So all they did was surround him and stare menacingly because they could only use their "scuttle to cover" actions and not attack.

What? I know for a fact that they will attack your soldiers on reveal. Its the reason I always roll with a bladestorm ranger in a war suit and hellfire armor in missions with chryssalids.

When a pod is revealed on the alien turn by happening across your soldiers, they don't get to attack.  Just scuttle to cover.

Ironically it can be a lot more advantageous to the player than launching an ambush, particularly if you're set up in overwatch.  You get the overwatch as they scuttle, then you get a full turn of actions to deal with them.

I'm pretty sure 'lids only get an attack if you active their ambush attack when they're burrowed, not when you activate a pod.

If you're going to run into an almost always non-cover spot, you need to damn hit. Otherwise you might as well just shoot the alien instead of sword. Untouchable is a long ways off from squaddie and only covers one shot per turn.

The solution for this scenario isn't Untouchable, but Implacable. I can't remember what the other option on that level was though. Probably something much more useful.

Bladestorm's the other choice.

[scriver]

Ah. That explains why I've never taken Implaccable.

[misko27]

Thanks for everyone for the advice! It's now just barely playable!

I would do more searching around too. I got some ini advice (somewhere...) that fixed some stuttering I was having really well.

So I had a UFO defense. I was actually caught off-guard, because after evading it the first time around I figured it wouldn't come back. Well it came back for more, and in South Africa X-COM made what might be its last stand in Operation "Winter Giant". Our AO was a forest near some overgrown buildings (and a cemetery, love that). The Spike o'doom was behind a large building, so that complicated our efforts to make this easy. Having been caught off guard, our turrets didn't have an engineer in them, but nonetheless we had four of them and they performed admirably all things considered (barring one; I momentarily had options to move my turret, and after trying that it wouldn't work anymore). My original plan was to send in my Grenadier with some minor support backing him upwhile the rest of the team supported from behind: the plan was to blow up the building and allow the snipers to take out the spike. It didn't work. My forward elements got pinned down quickly, and within a couple of turns almost me entire team was pressing forward to help him (barring my sniper, who managed some sweet shit with serial and killzone). Unfortunately, the weren't fast enough, and my beloved grenadier got taken down before the rest of the team could support him (more on that poor son-of-a-bastard later). New Plan time: my rangers and WAR-suit Gunslinger went forward to attack the spike from around the buildings, while the rookies (and one barely-trained Psionics trooper) Bradford was sending me led by my surviving Colonel Grenadier (who was a heavy gunner) and my Specialist Medic held the middle area and pinned down reinforcements.

The Spike wasn't very concerning, but the troops holding the area proved to be more resilient then I expected, and we took relatively severe injuries. After taking down the spike, my forward elements retreated while my middle troops continued to rain hell on the reinforcements. Unfortunately we were just beginning to get over-run, so I ordered a general retreat of everyone but the few who couldn't make it to the hanger in time. A mis-click cost me a rookie at around this point. This is also the point where the turrets started paying for themselves, as they both hit the MECS hard and took the occasional shot for the team. My WAR armor gunslinger took the last of the hard hits (I finally have a chance to use the Shield-Wall ability), while someone retrieved my bleeding specialist from the Elite Lancers (I've had exactly two bleed outs this entire game, and it was the same guy both times; dude doesn't want to die). By the end multiple people were in serious shit: one of my rangers had exactly 1 hitpoint left, others were burning to death, and the only person who didn't take damage was my sniper (and maybe like one or two people here and there).

RIP Denis "Junkyard" Pavlov, my Hard-Luck, balding, former EXALT Grenadier. An inglorious end for someone who an old cynic. Final mission statistics tell me we took down 43 out of 46 of the bastards, in exchange for 6 wounded and two dead. Statically a good match, but still painful. Fun though, very exciting and tense.

Anyway, with that the resistance now wants to attack the Hunter UFO that they brought down. Ordinarily I would do something else, but I could use some revenge. After that I might try and contact the remaining regions before going for broke. I have more then enough breathing room on the AVATAR project currently, so I don't need to rush.