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[LoSboccacc]

damn patch finished downloading now that I have to get to work.

[Sirus]

Well, this is something new. Giant UFO flying around over China, transmitting something. Sadly, the only aircraft I have in Asia are missile-armed Interceptors, and they need to pull out after a hit or two. I have plasma-armed Interceptors in Africa and Europe, but not enough alloys to build either more plasma cannons or the Firestorm.

ETA: What the-?!
Bastards shot down my satellite! I even had the stealth satellite upgrade! Now China's on the verge of pulling out entirely!

[alway]

Aww yeah; decided to screw around with odd builds seeing as I have approximately 2 weeks before XCOM is discontinued by teh council. Queue sending in the mecha and sniper squad to a touch terror mission.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

2 shivs died... As did 25 aliens, most of them crysalids. Also took out a disk. Major Zed is now Colonel Zed. Turns out that setup is extremely good at holding ground against crysalids. 2 snipers in back, preferably with squadsight, along with a shiv, 1 shiv at medium range, and 2 at a range such that the rearmost shiv fires when anything gets within a few tiles of them at the front line. Front line falls back and reloads, swapping places with the midground unit.

Luckily for me, I have a pair of replacement shivs already made.

Edit: And, as expected, that's the end of things. The sniper/shiv setup went on to complete 2 more missions with ease; with one shiv slot being replaced by a third sniper for the last mission. That third mission's team managed to take out a cyberdisk in 1 turn, with actions to spare. Colonel Zed survive to the last; a total of 16 missions and 47 kills under his belt. Ghalib became Lieutenant Zero, making his way quickly through the ranks thanks to his high kill counts. And so, XCOM ended at the beginning of August. So ends my Classic Ironman run; with a series of successful missions completed with ease. >_<

Which really kind of highlights the annoying nature of how it works in anything harder than normal mode... You can go on winning streaks and still lose because you weren't spamming satellites from the beginning.

[Farce]

I've been playing on Classic, but reloading reeeally hard.  Iron man just isn't my thing.

My first Terror mission came at a time when i had enough carapace armor for my entire squad of five, and enough laser guns for everybody but one.  Unfortunately, it also came when all my guys were wounded - I only had a defense-oriented Assault with a Scatter Laser and a Support of unexceptional talent, the rest of the squad being filled out with rookies.

It was a pretty good dropzone - but even then, I lost no one, saved ten out of eighteen civvies, didn't reload the game, and even barely had any injuries!  That felt pretty nice.  One rookie almost got his spine ripped out by a Chrysalid, though, which was kinda scary, but it merely punched him down to one health from full, instead instakilling him like an oldschool Chrysalid would've.  We melted it's face off in retaliation.

That Assault - who had previously missed an 80% shot that got his partner killed - is now my highest rank guy and also our first psion.  Fancy.

[Sirus]

I'd like to take a moment of silence to honor Squaddie Halverson.

After his initial stint back when Thin Men were the biggest threat XCOM faced, Halverson was handed a sniper rifle and was unceremoniously tossed back into the reserve after the wounded elites went back in action. Now, history seemed to be repeating itself. Several veterans were wounded after an encounter with Heavy Floater grenades. Poor Honor took two to the face on that mission, and two other squad members, including Hellsing, were wounded. After an Abductor UFO was shot down in Russia, Halverson found himself at the top of the waitlist, and was sent into battle carrying nothing but basic equipment...and an Arc Launcher.

The battle to enter the UFO was fierce. With lasers and plasma and rockets flying every which-way, Halverson calmly waited for his moment to shine.
And then the moment came. Two Heavy Floaters soared in through a hole in the roof. One landed right next to Halverson. A barrage of firepower killed one and knocked the one next to Halverson to just a single HP. He was too close to use his sniper rifle, and even at that close range I didn't trust his pistol odds. So he calmly took out his stunner, noticed that he only had a 70% chance to pull this off...and pulled the trigger. The alien fell to the floor, twitching and unconscious.

But before he could celebrate his victory, before any of the seasoned elites could praise him...plasma fire gunned him down just a fraction of a second later. None of the other soldiers were in a position to see the shooter, and they were shocked by how quickly his life took a turn for the worse.

Squaddie Halverson marched into battle against things that would break a common man. He witnessed mind powers and weapons great enough to destroy tanks. He stood nose-to-nose with a cybernetically-rebuilt, rage-filled monster from beyond the stars, and took it down. He never, ever panicked.

Never forget. ( '.')7

[dogstile]

I was totally planning to skip out on my lecture today (Its networking, i'm ahead anyway) but the delivery guy/gal hasn't come with my game yet. Well played world. I hate you.

[jocan2003]

I was totally planning to skip out on my lecture today (Its networking, i'm ahead anyway) but the delivery guy/gal hasn't come with my game yet. Well played world. I hate you.

Thats X-Com for you, Screwing you big time...

[Tarran]

Wow, my lack of research into interceptors is actually coming to bite me in the ass. That, or I need moar interceptors.

There was a large UFO that withstood 1 interceptor with Avalanche missiles, 1 with a Phoenix Cannon, and 1 with a Laser Cannon. Jesus, that thing must be made of indestructium.

[Anvilfolk]

I was totally planning to skip out on my lecture today (Its networking, i'm ahead anyway) but the delivery guy/gal hasn't come with my game yet. Well played world. I hate you.

Thats X-Com for you, Screwing you big time...

Yeah, not only does it screw you in-game, it meta-screws you in real life. The bad thing? RL must be played in iron-man mode!


Also... How many classic ironmans did people try before reverting to normal ironman? Like people have said, all you need is for one squad wipe to happen and you're done for. You might stave off defeat for a bit with some officer school improvements and selling all the things, but it's impossible to recover.

[Tarran]

I did 5 non-official (option not on but no saves) 'Ironman' Classics before deciding to start saving more frequently. Funnily enough, now that I'm saving frequently I'm actually starting to do really well even without much savescumming.

I haven't even touched Normal yet.

[IronyOwl]

I did two, as Tarran put it, non-official Ironman Classic games before wussing down to Normal. Which, I have to admit, feels like easymode, but I still think I'd rather do that than play on Classic but keep reloading until I'm happy with the result.

[hemmingjay]

Endgame is still VERY hard on normal. Don't be fooled into thinking otherwise. Anyone tried impossible? I did for 3 missions and won't be going back any time soon.

[Tarran]

Hah, of course. The person with Psionics in my game is the gal nick-named "Angel".

She's now a VERY useful support. She can suppress, move further than normal, has good smoke, has two item slots, has 3 medkits that heal an additional 4 health each (For a total of 24 health!), and now she's got Psionics. Oh, and she's a colonel too.

[hemmingjay]

So I spent the first half of this game building up financial support. I rushed satellite coverage and made sure to protect the most valuable nations as a priority. This gave me an income of over 2k a month pretty early on which allowed me to dump that money into upgrades, research and now my game is pretty much purely about tactics. I also rotated all of my soldiers every mission for the first 5 or so, which gave me a decent roster to work with for the rest of the game. I have only lost 3 soldiers due to an overabundance of caution and even they only died in the first 10 missions. I have lost 1 nation and am pretty far in the campaign. Time will tell if this strategy works.

[forsaken1111]

So I spent the first half of this game building up financial support. I rushed satellite coverage and made sure to protect the most valuable nations as a priority. This gave me an income of over 2k a month pretty early on which allowed me to dump that money into upgrades, research and now my game is pretty much purely about tactics. I also rotated all of my soldiers every mission for the first 5 or so, which gave me a decent roster to work with for the rest of the game. I have only lost 3 soldiers due to an overabundance of caution and even they only died in the first 10 missions. I have lost 1 nation and am pretty far in the campaign. Time will tell if this strategy works.

Hm.. it sounds like I was putting too much early effort into upgrading my equipment. Maybe I should do this when I start my classic playthrough.