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[Chiefwaffles]

Aalright.
XCOM security at Canada (also it's Canada how could you not help them) is the most important. Then we have an alien abduction in SA, which we should spend some effort towards countering because at this point it's probably better to aim to prevent the aliens from gaining tokens/research/whatever in order to prevent a snowball effect (also they may have MELD I really would like MELD). Theeen we have India, which is still airborne so we can send an Interceptor to assist.

Also something fucky is going on in Canada. Whether its the aliens or our own people (reinforced by something fucky going on with TACTICS security), we should probably at least see if our presence can shed any light on that.

To that end.

Operation Cryptic Prophet
Production/Logistics

• (1 VP) 1x Interceptor "Macarena"
• (2 VP) 2x Skyranger
• (2+1=3 UP, 0+1.75=1.75 EP) 1x Operator Squadron "Permission to Use a Real Gun, Sir"
  
  • (1 UP) 1x Engineer
  • (.75 EP) 1x TACTICS
  • (1-.25 = .75 EP) 1x Guardian
  • (.5-.25 = .25 EP) 1x Sky Eye
• (2+1=3 UP, 0+1.25=1.25 EP) 1x Operator Squadron "Bag 'em Tag 'em"
  
  • (1 UP) 1x CCQ Specialist
  • (.75 EP) 1x TACTICS
  • (.5 EP) 1x Sky Eye

Interception: Bogey 2 (India, Airborne)
Interceptor "Macarena" - Engage with prejudice.
Down and Capture: Bogey 1 (Canada, Landed)
Operators "Permission to Use a Real Gun, Sir" - Engage, keep eye out for suspicious human(/alien) activity. Clear area, prevent alien retreat, hunt down all alien combatants and potential infiltrators.
Down and Capture: Bogey 4 (South Africa, Landed)
Operators "Bag 'em, Tag 'em" - Engage with prejudice. Advance quickly using CCQ specialist, recover glowing alien technology. Breach UFO if tactically viable.

So, reasoning.
Canada is at risk of infiltration directly hurting us. Very bad. Nip that in the bud.
South America may have Meld and is an opportunity for the aliens to advance their research. Bad. Attack this to hurt their token(?) gain and to hopefully get some delicious Meld.
India, we can afford sending an Interceptor to deal with, which is nice since it's probably a terror attack or something of the sort. In the actual game, 1 Interceptor easily takes down 1 small UFO, but the aliens may have upgraded theirs and Ebbor may have rebalanced things. Still, unless they focused everything on upgrading UFO fighting capabilities an interceptor should be enough to hurt, if not completely stop, their operation here.

Permission to Use Real Gun squadron is equipped with tech and an engineer to most effectively clear the area. Sky Eye to spot aliens, turret to cover large sections of open area and bring in massive amounts of firepower, TACTICS because by god it's useful. Bag 'em Tag 'em is equipped to rush forward using TACTICS and the CCQ specialist, mainly retrieving maybe-Meld and hopefully being able to breach the UFO. CCQ should prove invaluable here, and while turret would have helped it won't help as much here as in Canada as here we're advancing quickly (whereas the Guardian would promote a slower advance) and may be breaching the small UFO (where the turret probably wouldn't be very useful). Sky Eye for them will help prevent being flanked in their blitzkrieg and will help locate maybe-Meld canisters very quickly.

In other news, making this operation plan has had me realize we desperately need more EP and to a slightly lesser extent UP.


Ebbor, I think the sky eye thing may be a misunderstanding. The quadcopter included in the TACTICS/TACTICAL actions was meant as basically just a civilian quadcopter with controls and video output linked to the TACTICS. So it's still flimsy and probably crappy, but beyond cheap enough to give to every soldier to let them quickly deploy it to, for instance, see around a corner via looking at its video uplink in TACTICS. Then grab it and put it back on their belt. Trivially cheap, it's basically just buying a toy quadcopter with a shitty camera and connecting it by Bluetooth (hopefully a joke) to TACTICS.
The Sky Eye we made as a part of an earlier revision is meant to be separate. A larger closer to military-grade quadcopter meant to generally be always deployed and well above the battlefield, constantly surveying the entire operation site and sending data to Guardians + TACTICS units and optionally its video uplink to an engineer's tablet or TACTICS picture-in-picture. Still aimed to not be particularly expensive, but definitely not free.

Also, what are the limits of the Investigation mission? The blurb in designs doesn't give much to go off of. Is it only for like areas that we suspect and that don't currently have alien combatants, or is it something more than that?

Thunder of the Guns (0):
KEEP THEM OUTTA OUR SYSTEMS (0):
Vengeful Line (0):
Cryptic Prophet (1): Chiefwaffles

[Madman198237]

Thunder of the Guns (0):
KEEP THEM OUTTA OUR SYSTEMS (0):
Vengeful Line (0):
Cryptic Prophet (2): Chiefwaffles, Madman

Bloody overachieving strategist.

[10ebbor10]

Also, what are the limits of the Investigation mission? The blurb in designs doesn't give much to go off of. Is it only for like areas that we suspect and that don't currently have alien combatants, or is it something more than that?

The investigation missions focusses on low exposure and information gathering. You can target it directly at an enemy action, in which you'll focus more on figuring out what they do than on trying to stop them. Investigation missions are also less overt, more MIB than XCOM.

[Madman198237]

The investigation missions focusses on low exposure and information gathering. You can target it directly at an enemy action, in which you'll focus more on figuring out what they do than on trying to stop them. Investigation missions are also less overt, more MIB than XCOM.

Unless the new MIB movie is a lot different from the previous ones (I haven't watched it)….MIB does not do "covert", at least not in the movies. We're told they do covert, but generally they seem to end up shooting everything with alien weapons in the streets and wiping minds afterwards.

[Chiefwaffles]

Is it possible to run an investigation and engagement on alien activity at the same time?

Like if we sent operators to deal with an abduction then sent some other unit on an investigation for the same abduction.

[Aseaheru]

Thunder of the Guns (0):
KEEP THEM OUTTA OUR SYSTEMS (0):
Vengeful Line (0):
Cryptic Prophet (3): Chiefwaffles, Madman, AseaHeru

Bloody overachieving strategist.

Hey, it keeps those of us who are more nuts&bolts&bullets oriented from having to strain our brains on this "stratigist" guff.

[Man of Paper]

Thunder of the Guns (0):
KEEP THEM OUTTA OUR SYSTEMS (0):
Vengeful Line (0):
Cryptic Prophet (4): Chiefwaffles, Madman, AseaHeru, MoP

Sounds like a solid plan to me. Our low EP is really bad, as Chief said. You really notice just how bad it is when you're trying to equip dudes, and it's only going to get worse with every single piece of equipment. Depending on how this goes we definitely should plan on some infrastructure things.

[Madman198237]

I agree, so have this design again.

Industrialized Warfare Center
Warfare is always, in large part, based on your ability to outproduce your enemy. It is also based on technology, but if you don't have the means to produce the technology you create, well, why do you bother?

The Industrialized Warfare Center is just what it says on the tin: The world's most advanced factory, capable of rapidly producing equipment made out of the most difficult metals effort made into equipment. Advanced 3-D printers and CNC machines capable of incredibly precise and fast work, laser-based metal manufacturing using lasers to cut sheets or melt metal powder to fuse it together like a 3-D printer working in titanium.

Room after room of advanced materials science and manufacturing sprawls underground in XCOM's main base, allowing for the manufacture of any infantry equipment we can dream up, faster and cheaper than anyone else, while allowing us to study new avenues of materials science with the multitudes of advanced machines and testing equipment.

No the name should not look suspiciously familiar, why do you ask?

[Happerry]

Thunder of the Guns (0):
KEEP THEM OUTTA OUR SYSTEMS (0):
Vengeful Line (0):
Cryptic Prophet (5): Chiefwaffles, Madman, AseaHeru, MoP, Happerry

[Chiefwaffles]

We should probably do some kind of revision for an investigation unit next turn. They don't have to be some super-cool men in black just yet, but we need something that we can trust for more delicate matters a bit more than the meatheads we currently have. Seems to me that investigation is going to be more important than just "maybe decrease terror in an area if you think the aliens used some stealthy method to increase it".

[Happerry]

Well, if we're following on the example of Enemy Within and anti-Exalt operations for sneaky stuff, I feel I have to point out that in those shown cases the general troops turned out to be well able to do covert operations, or at least able enough to get stuff from Exalt reliably even if they needed to call in reinforcements at the end.

[Chiefwaffles]

That is true, though I do think the scope of investigations as intended by Ebbor is going to extend past anti-EXALT operations in Enemy Within. And what I think we'd get most out of in just like an "Agent" investigation is increasing the effectiveness to cost ratio. Like I'd rather not spend 2 UP to send not-incompetent-overall people to investigate an area (while the description change of Rookies does lead me to believe they're not aass awful as we may have assumed, I'm still not confident in the secret investigative abilities of a rookies) while being unable to avoid overkill in sending an entire squadron for an investigation.

In my opinion, a good revision like what I'm thinking about would just be something along the lines of "Take a 1-3 recruits and train them in investigation & stealth rather than combat". May not be a super-agent leaps and bounds better than sending an Operator squadron, but it should be cheaper than an Operator squadron. And if Ebbor is feeling generous, maybe it'd give equipment cost modifiers as well due to equipping a much smaller number of people per unit.

Regardless, Canada does need an investigation. While there's a good chance (definitely not guaranteed though) that the aliens aren't doing anything stealthy just yet there, the fact that it's home to some secret human activity that we, XCOM, don't know about is extraordinarily fishy.
But I don't think we can afford to only investigate it just yet, since that would (if I'm interpreting things right) let the aliens execute and finish their mission largely unaffected and we can't afford to let that happen considering all the other alien activity. My thoughts were that if we had cheaper agents and more UP, we wouldn't have to make that choice -- we could send a competent team to stop the aliens while the cheaper (but not necessarily bad at their jobs) agent team would perform the investigation mission.
Ultimately, I'm just worried about the effectiveness of investigating a site versus using those resources to directly stop the aliens. And naturally, the best way to solve that is to make investigations more effective for the amount of resources expended by decreasing effective cost.

Hopefully we can get some useful information out of the Down & Capture mission in Canada then start an investigation later.

[Carefulrogue]

Thunder of the Guns (0):
KEEP THEM OUTTA OUR SYSTEMS (0):
Vengeful Line (0):
Cryptic Prophet (6): Chiefwaffles, Madman, AseaHeru, MoP, Happerry, Carefulrogue

[Screech9791]

Thunder of the Guns (0):
KEEP THEM OUTTA OUR SYSTEMS (0):
Vengeful Line (0):
Cryptic Prophet (everyone lol 7): Chiefwaffles, Madman, AseaHeru, MoP, Happerry, Carefulrogue, 0cra

[Aseaheru]

 Also, to further hammer home in an unnecessary manner how important Canada is, if we only have one network, then they arent getting in our C2 loop, they are getting into out C5ISR loop, which would be bad on toomany levels to count. Far toomany levels.

 We should probably spend a revision breaking up our command infrastructure some so they cant play sillybuggers in future with it.