Early on in the mission I encounter a problem I caused when I equipped all my soldiers with the Heavy Vest...
Soldiers who are carrying more than they can carry will suffer a reduction to the amount of Time Units they will have available, effectively causing a reduction in speed (and possibly fire rate).
I should probably equip my soldiers with armor
before I try to give them auto-cannons... Ah well. A little bit of fiddling around with inventory weights fixes that soon enough.
Welp, now it's time for turn one to start. Before we begin proper I just want to show off these two faces:
Do either of these look like faces of mercy? No?
That's probably because they aren't.
Anyway, the very first order of business, is, of course, to blow a few things up.
This doesn't actually reveal any aliens,
sadly thankfully. Then I get all my soldiers out of the Skyranger, placing several behind the nearby wall for cover. That'd likely be a grenade magnet, but nothing seems to have gone wrong for now.
In the next turn, a soldier comes across a Sectoid...
And no-one has enough time units and...
Shit...
God damn it.
Yeah, this is why I was saying it wasn't a smart idea to name soldiers just yet. They die really, really easily, even on the easiest difficulty.
Aside from that death message, a screen you'll see a lot is...
And here's where your ears come into play. Throughout the mission here I heard the doors of the UFO opening and closing. And when I turn the corner to see the UFO's entrance, I have my soldier take a single snap shot.
And target down.
As for the alien that killed our first soldier...
A rocket misses...
But a heavy cannon shot scores a solid hit and kill.
My shotgunner manages to score one kill with his primary...
And a second alien shows up a bit further away - where the shotgun would be useless, but thankfully my man's got a trick up his sleeve...
And that makes for his second kill.
Entering the UFO proper, I run into this issue...
Not pictured is one of my few riflemen, who shot the alien with a single bullet but didn't have the Time Units left to run or finish the alien off.
I have no choice but to end the turn, and once it ends I see the alien walk towards the soldier and then...
Away?
Welp...
Hopefully I won't run into moments where a solder's caught flat-footed like that. It might not end as well.
Anyway, from there on, it's pretty much smooth sailing.
Though we must take some time to mourn the first soldier we lost...
In the words of a certain Bay12 poster...