Topic: Ethereals : XCOM Arms Race (Read 64867 times)

TopHat · « **Reply #795 on:** February 23, 2018, 05:55:05 am »

Here's the plan I've been working on, seeing Shadowclaw's it's remarkably similar. The first notable differences are that the medium scout mission is a harvest (our UP is starting to lag behind our increasing VP, and besides the mission description for RC suggests larger craft won't increase returns), that Elder's Scorn has been deployed, and that there's a fourth scout to act as a decoy. I'm sceptical about that last one though, given the lack of response X Com has shown to these in the past. Dropping it for a light fighter on a small scout may be the wiser option, come to think of it.

Spoiler: A different approach (click to show/hide)

Personally, I think one raven against a small scout isn't a done deal, given that our DPW can negate their missiles and they haven't had any major combat upgrades recently - if anything, they may give up weapon space for missile countermeasures. It's probably slightly in the raven's favour but some would get through.

Spoiler: A different approach, MKII (click to show/hide)

EDIT 2 - noticed that the month end bonus is a point, not a token, so modified accordingly. Also dropped the rifles from MK II mission 3 in favour of AAA missiles, which may be more useful.

NUKE9.13 · « **Reply #796 on:** February 23, 2018, 06:05:56 am »

Their Ravens still have railguns. I'm pretty sure that 1 Raven vs 1 Small Scout is still gonna end up with a dead Scout 9 times out of 10. Especially if it has Elder's Scorn, which makes it self-destruct upon receiving the slightest amount of damage.

TopHat · « **Reply #797 on:** February 23, 2018, 06:14:34 am »

I thought it was just that we'll lose the option to self destruct as damage is taken. I'm pretty sure it won't cause the craft to blow itself up the moment something scratches the paint.

Shadowclaw777 · « **Reply #798 on:** February 23, 2018, 06:14:58 am »

Isn’t my strategy effective than? All of the UFOs, even of the small ones have a light scout escort but with AAA missiles which makes them significantly more effective, and it doesn’t use the Elder’s scorn which makes our UFOs really frail. I mean something like this...

Quote from: Operation Versatility

Mission 1
Crafts: 1 Medium Scout, 1 Light Fighter (4 VP)
Units: 1 (Free) Skin Crawlers, 2 (1 Free Sectoid), 1 UP Scout Drone (2 UP)
Equipment: Light Fighter (AAA Missiles) (1 EP)
Destination: Mexico
Objective: Recruit Collaborators + Investigate Signals

Mission 2:
Craft: 1 (Free) Small Scout, 1 Light Fighter (2 VP)
Unit: (Half Cost) 1 Skin Crawlers, 1 Sectoid (2 UP)
Equipment: Sectoid (Plasma Rifles), Light Fighter (AAA Missile) (2 EP)
Destination: Russia
Objective: Recruit Collaborators

Mission 3:
Crafts: 1 Small Scout, 1 Light Fighter (2 VP)
Units: 1 Sectoid, 1 Scout Drones (2 UP)
Equipment: Sectoids (Plasma Pistols), Light Fighter (AAA Missiles) 1 EP
Destination: Australia
Objective: Harvest

Tokens Expended: Month Token on VP + EP Token (on Plasma Rifles)

The only weakness is that the medium ufo doesn’t get a plasma rifle, but it has a mortar on top of it to compensate. Maybe the first mission could do harvest if we need the DNA tokens really badly?

Edit: Change of making some Skin Crawlers not infiltrated, has allowed us to field 1 more Scout Drone

VoidSlayer · « **Reply #799 on:** February 23, 2018, 06:18:13 am »

Wait, could we use skin crawlers without UFOs? We could do a fourth mission with just a unit of skin crawlers doing recruit collaborators.

Shadowclaw777 · « **Reply #800 on:** February 23, 2018, 06:19:43 am »

Quote from: 10ebbor10 on January 01, 2018, 07:22:40 am

Infiltration is not a guaranteed success.

Also, yeah, you do need to assign at least 1 non-infiltrated unit. (Otherwise my system would get quite broken).

TopHat · « **Reply #801 on:** February 23, 2018, 06:19:58 am »

That was vetoed when we first got them, each mission needs at least one UFO allocated to it.
EDIT - Shadowclaw got there first. Also quite interested to note that our missions have converged significantly under independant editing.

Shadowclaw777 · « **Reply #802 on:** February 23, 2018, 06:24:23 am »

I just don’t have any faith in the elder’s scorn is all, that’s really where the divergence comes in place. Oh and being scared to utilize ECM masquerading, like maybe having my third mission have the light scout masquerade as a medium fighter to scare Xcom more

Edit: Also apparently really wanting to infiltrate Russia or even USA instead of a less determinate country, because their global power I believe.

Also me valuing VP as more of a critical resource for the Month point, just so we can field larger terror ships and landing ships, and whatnot

TopHat · « **Reply #803 on:** February 23, 2018, 06:41:11 am »

Quote

Spend one EP token on plasma rifles. Use Month End point on EP.
Mission 1:
Craft: Medium Scout (3 VP),
Units: Sectoid x3 (3 UP), Scout Drone (1 UP)
Equipment: AAA missile (medium scout) (1 EP)
Destination: India
Mission Type: Harvest + Investigate Signal

Mission 2:
Craft: Small Scout (free), Light Fighter (1 VP)
Units: Skin Crawlers (free), Sectoid (free)
Equipment: Plasma Rifle (sectoid) (free), AAA missile (light fighter) (1 EP)
Destination: Russia
Mission Type: Recruit Collaborators + Investigate Signal

Mission 3:
Craft: Small Scout (1 VP), Light Fighter (1 VP)
Units: Skin Crawlers (1 UP), Sectoid (1 UP)
Equipment: AAA missile (light fighter) (1 EP), Plasma Rifle (Sectoid) (1 EP)
Destination: Mexico
Mission Type: Recruit Collaborators + Investigate Signal

Here's what mine would look like with the Elder's Scorn replaced with a second set of rifles (we could instead give a second AAA missile to the medium scout). Each mission has a set of missiles (the light fighter is effectively useless once it's fired them, so I just put them on the Medium scout for mission 1), and enough ground power to take out a squad of X-Com soldiers. Given that X-Com only have 6/7 VP and Talons will cost 2, they should be hard pressed to respond effectively to all three. The mission locations I chose to investigate three more countries for psionic signals and gain infiltrators on another two continents, though shifting 2 and 3 to Brazil/Australia to further concentrate efforts there or US/Russia for possible greater effect are both good options.
EDIT - I'd rather have EP than VP given it's greater versatility currently (we have a lot of very good things requiring EP, and probably even more when we research armour). Larger landing craft I don't think will be that helpful in the short run; a filled medium scout (or lander revised from it) or two should be enough for early terror missions etc and achieving that well is more dependent on research and increasing UP/EP at the moment.
EDIT 2 - Mission 2 and 3 destinations changed to Russia and Mexico.

Shadowclaw777 · « **Reply #804 on:** February 23, 2018, 06:55:36 am »

I just hope you think I’m more inclined towards the VP for the Month point, because larger ships is a thing we should always go after; and those cost VP

I mean we could have floating drone control ships!, large landing crafts!, multi-role cruisers for sakes for those VPs. The really big bonus about more VP is... more escorts, the more things we have of those the better of us not getting air striked

Also I think infiltrated skin crawlers are actually really clutch even if they have scanners, not really useful when your getting bombarded by a mortar. Also they maybe make infiltration missions more successful as well?

I just think my Operation plan is best all-rounder, with a priority on aerial supremacy because we’re getting tired of getting rekt there

Edit: Also the strength of autonomous AI escort ships, is that we don’t need UPs to pilot them

Kashyyk · « **Reply #805 on:** February 23, 2018, 08:50:31 am »

Quote from: Missions

[] Actually not that spread out :
[] Mars Attacks :
[] A Different Approach :
[] A different Approach MkII :
[] Operation Versatility :
[] Plan TopHat :

I've collected the various plans people have suggested, for ease of reference.

I'm disposed towards any plan that uses our month end bonus as an EP, as that is the most powerful so far. We can spend it on Missiles in the air, and rifles on the ground, both of which are a serious bonus for us, more-so I feel, than another scout or some more sectoids are.

If Shadowclaw mods his plan so that mission one Recruits Collaborators and all the scouts are equipped with the AAA instead of the fighters (as our fighters want to be dogfighting more than the scouts do), I'll vote for it.

Finally, an interesting revision for us would be to make our plasma pistols concealable, so that infiltrators can be equipped with them.

Unrelated: 10ebbor10, could we design a "Build Outpost" mission that, if successful, gives a bonus to a "Create Base" design at that same location?

I apologise for the stream-of-consciousness this post turned into, but I'm not getting much sleep lately.

Shadowclaw777 · « **Reply #806 on:** February 23, 2018, 09:07:33 am »

Quote from: Kashyyk on February 23, 2018, 08:50:31 am

Quote from: Missions
[] Actually not that spread out :
[] Mars Attacks :
[] A Different Approach :
[] A different Approach MkII :
[] Operation Versatility :
[] Plan TopHat :

I've collected the various plans people have suggested, for ease of reference.

I'm disposed towards any plan that uses our month end bonus as an EP, as that is the most powerful so far. We can spend it on Missiles in the air, and rifles on the ground, both of which are a serious bonus for us, more-so I feel, than another scout or some more sectoids are.

If Shadowclaw mods his plan so that mission one Recruits Collaborators and all the scouts are equipped with the AAA instead of the fighters (as our fighters want to be dogfighting more than the scouts do), I'll vote for it.

Finally, an interesting revision for us would be to make our plasma pistols concealable, so that infiltrators can be equipped with them.

Unrelated: 10ebbor10, could we design a "Build Outpost" mission that, if successful, gives a bonus to a "Create Base" design at that same location?

I apologise for the stream-of-consciousness this post turned into, but I'm not getting much sleep lately.

Indeed, the Operation has been changed so that it means the Scout UFOs are equipped with AAA missiles, and mission 1 is recruit collab

NUKE9.13 · « **Reply #807 on:** February 23, 2018, 09:16:18 am »

Thinking about it, I guess that two AAA missiles would probably destroy a Talon, or at least cripple it to the point it isn't a threat. So if they send a single Talon after a mission which includes missiles, we might survive.

Hmm.

I think you do actually want to give the AAA missiles to the Light Fighters, since they are toilets at dogfighting anyway, the Small Scouts don't want to be getting into combat, and with no plasma turret, the Small Scout would be defenseless against missiles.

Also Tophat, I would redirect the missions to Argentina and Nigeria to somewhere in North America and somewhere other than France in Europe, on the vague notion that EXALT might only have one psi-lab per continent and we have already found ones in SA and Africa.

TopHat · « **Reply #808 on:** February 23, 2018, 09:26:10 am »

Just as a note, the only difference between a different approach MkII and my unnamed plan (MkII - B?) is that the latter ditches Elder's Scorn in favour of more rifles. The first different approach can probably be safely removed from the list as not even I support it any more.

I'd rather have the AAA on the fighters as that still leaves all craft capable of using the plasma wave to destroy incoming missiles - especially as the scouts would have to close within missile range to fire them. I don't think that one plasma cannon will make that much of a difference in a dogfight anyway.

Concealable plasma pistols are a nice idea but I feel there are more important things to spend our revisions on at the moment.

EDIT - Nuke beat me to it. If we improve the missiles this turn (e.g. magazine size, preemptive counter-countermeasures), I think our odds of survival against a Talon will be pretty good, or decent without them. Also note that with a maximum of 7 VP they can't afford to send Talons and a skyranger after all three of the missions. Good thinking on the psi-base possibility; I'll re-route to Russia and Mexico. (Mexico as we've only found signals in countries we've previously lost craft in, which might be important. Though we have only investigated those countries, so that might just be due to biased sampling.)

NUKE9.13 · « **Reply #809 on:** February 23, 2018, 09:32:12 am »

Quote from: Missions

[] Actually not that spread out :
[] Mars Attacks :
[] A Different Approach :
[] A different Approach MkII :
[] Operation Versatility :
[1] Plan TopHat : NUKE9.13

I'll go with this one. It's worth a shot.

For our revision, I'd like to try upgrading our missiles a little.

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Author Topic: Ethereals : XCOM Arms Race (Read 64867 times)

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