The Aliens were silent this week until Wednesday, when they sent a very weak attack force (3 fast attack and 3 scouts) to bomb some buildings. One of the fast attacks was shot down by Megapol, netting us our only tactical mission.
Finally on Thursday we research the mystery alien tech!
Meet: the Personal-
No… No, it deserves more than that. It deserves to be seen in action… We’ll come back. We do, however have 61 of them on hand, so we sell off 43 for $782,600, breaking one million for the first time.
Okay, now for the demo…
Our raiding force is going to show how these bad boys look in action. Here is their standard load out.
The most important thing to note is that every unit has two of the devices. Let’s go cause some trouble… a factory should do…
Okay, over powered mystery device example: Grouped enemies.
In the past a group of enemies like this would be somewhat of a crap shoot. It is possible for them to cause enough damage to take out a shield fairly quickly and also possible for the last one to throw a grenade setting off the explosives the first two carried. In general I would surround and suppress. It could take minutes!
Not anymore.
See the time difference between the two screen shots? Zero seconds? That is because the mystery device is a teleporter. It can teleport Agents anywhere on the map. Very very useful for ambushes.
Ouch. That sucked for the enemy. The rocket launcher got a one shot kill. Keep in mind you can do this with anything. Teleport in, drop a grenade or a stun bomb. Teleport in and open fire with a toxigun.
But really, the reason this is actually over powered is not because it lets you get into trouble.
But because it is a free ticket OUT of trouble.
Equipping two teleporters allows units to have a fire fight anywhere at any time and only ever on their terms. When we go up against aliens I can teleport a full squad around a group of aliens, open fire wildly and if any Agent starts taking damage I can teleport them to a safe spot and after a few seconds the teleporter is recharged and the Agent can go back to jumping in and out of combat.
Here is another example.
Squad one was teleported in on top of an enemy. After being there for a bit a boomeroid was thrown at them AND a rocket was fired. They used their second teleport to go back to a safe zone.
We raid 3 times and never come close to losing a shield. We could raid indefinitely really, but decide to give it a rest.
Then, in a twist, an enemy raids our HQ.
This should have been more of a problem, since all of our guns are toxiguns, but the security stations do most of the work and our units just have to play cleanup.
Thursday ended with more raiding (to promote some new squad leaders) and then just before midnight our engineers built our second Biotrans, obsoleting Nathan’s first craft, the Interceptor. Her last official flight was a tour of our three bases, then she was sold.
Early Friday we get a surprise.
The aliens managed to build another Battleship. This is excellent news! It is our chance to capture one of the rare types of aliens!
Against 2 Annihilators, 2 Retaliators, and a vintage Hawk Air Warrior, the Battleship doesn’t stand a chance and barely makes it into the walls of the city before going down.
We more or less take everyone. The hope is that we’ll get our first Colonel, a replacement captain and a couple of sergeants out of a single mission. We had to limit the number to 12 since that is all our BioTrans can hold and we only have 24 teleporters.
Right off the bat Squad 1 runs into a popper while squad 3 catches sight of a bunch of spitters. In the Pre-Teleporter world, this is bad news for squad one. They will lose shields and have to pull back while squad three gets all the glory.
In the Post-Teleporter world?
They take no shield damage and steal all the kills.
(Image note: The health damage is from a previous mission)
However much of a force multiplier the teleportor is against humans, it is at least twice as effective against aliens. The reason is simple. Their weapons hit our shields, which recharge, while our weapons hit their health, which does not.
After a few minutes of teleporting out of massive chain reactions, Squad 3 makes it deep inside the UFO and finally finds one of our primary targets.
Okay, two of our primary targets. Or one of our primary targets times 2. What ever.
Targets in sight, the cavalry arrives. Squad 1, 3, and 4 are tasked with killing the forward Megaspawn. Squad 2 is to capture the rear one.
The Dead-Megaspawn-Walking goes down fast, and squad 3 and 4 pull back while squad one moves in to help with stun duty.
Mission accomplished. Squad 1 and 2 are now on stun watch duty. Squad 3 and 4 are now in a race against time; the Megaspawn may bleed out.
But it doesn’t. In the end we manage to clear the UFO and bring home the live Megaspawn. Promotions were a bit more disappointing than expected, with only two units moving to the rank of Sergeant. (In a hilarious turn of events, it was the two who were most disgruntled about being stuck at Squad Leader)
To put things in perspective, the last time (only time) we assaulted a Battleship we lost a couple of units, several shields, and only managed win because the aliens fled. This time we were far more aggressive and didn’t lose a single shield. I don’t know how else to state the over powered nature of the double teleporter.
In the afternoon of Saturday, Mutant Alliance sends a decent sized force at X-Com Armaments.
But they die at the hands of our trained Agents!
Sunday afternoon brings another attack force from the aliens. It seems like they are either scrapping the bottom of the barrel on combat ready craft or they are simply not willing to risk more advanced ones. Either way, the megar force of 3 Fast Attack and 3 Scouts is shot down, searched, and recovered.
The fire fight in the air is finally enough to split the town. The Alien gates on the NE of MegaPrimus are most active, meaning any buildings in that area have been subject to collateral damage for several weeks. Everyone who owns buildings in that area or is allied to building owners in that area are now our enemies. Everyone who has enemies in that area now loves us.
There are a few frustrating implications. Raids are going to be more common. Even though they aren’t a threat they waste a bunch of time and do literally nothing to advance our cause. We also managed to piss off the group that allows us to hire more droids AND the group that allows us to hire Hybrids, meaning no more psi.
Finally we pissed off the group that manufactures medikits and the group that makes passenger modules. Since we can’t get any more passenger modules for our crafts, our Biotrans is stuck at moving a max of 8 people.
Late Sunday we start raiding Psyke again, in an effort to milk some promotions. After a few raids we get some welcome news. Nirur becomes our third captain (Nirur and Glyph were the ones that got promoted earlier).
Three captains means someone should be on the cusp of moving to Colonel, so we load up 12 Bay12ers and go for another raid. The whole squad consists of Squad Leaders (someone has to fill the SGT slot) and Captains.
When the dust settles Nirur is AGAIN tapped to move forward, becoming our first Colonel. The very next raid GlyphGlyph fills Nirur’s old spot as our third captain.
We can’t seem to force any more promotions so the week comes to an end with a pleasant letter from the Senate letting us know that they <3 X-Com.