Here's my lineup:
It's pretty much a random grab-bag of the third-raters who weren't fatigued, and very far from ideal -- note the total lack of Infantry and overabundance of explosives on a crash. The only noteworthy asset is my third-best sniper. I'll do my best to play without much forethought, so that I can demonstrate how to handle situations that go bad.
Here's the spawn. We're in a corner; the 'left' wall is just offscreen. I open by sending my scout directly ahead to the heavy cover treestump on the raised bit of rock. No contact, so it's safe to move the rest of the squad to that position. I sprint the rocketeer and heavy gunner to the front, since they're less mobile
and need to be near the forward edge of a fight.
When I end the turn, I hear a Mechtoid stomping around. That's an instant alert to take things much more cautiously, because it can easily one-shot any of my soldiers. I move my scout forward-right to more elevated heavy cover; he takes contact from a pod of three sectoids. That's not usual this late in the game, so my assumption is that the Mectoid is nearby. The rest of the squad moves to set up a field of fire, the scout stays put. The assault sprints right to set up for a flank.
Oh dear. The Mechtoid and another gaggle of sectoids just patrolled into me from the right-side canyon. At least the assault was far enough out to trigger them away from the rest of the squad. We've got ourselves into a pickle here, eh?
My gunner has HEAT rounds so I move her to cover the right. She gets into an excellent unflankable position without triggering the Mechtoid's overwatch. I have options here; I could just take the shot for free damage, or I could suppress and bring more troops in. For now, I'll wait. I bring the rocketeer into range to hit the Mechtoid if it charges me next turn. My scouts double-team the sectoid that was reaction-fired last turn, so there's only two left up there. The scouts have good cover and can handle them.
I shift my medic and engineer around so that the former can help deal with those two and the latter can shut down the Mectoid if it advances. Finally, I take the shot with my gunner. 10 damage, close to half its health gone.
The sniper steadies her weapon, everyone else with moves left goes into overwatch.
The Mechtoid runs forward and volleys at the assault, but misses. One of its sectoid buddies shields it, the other psi-panics the assault. No biggie.
The scout with the laser rifle has a 100% shot on the Mechtoid; the damage is completely negated, but it gets the holo-targeting on. After that it's fairly simple, rocket + gunner = 9 health remaining. The precision shot from my sniper fails to crit, only doing 4 damage. This is where someone who isn't paying much attention would begin to realize that they have a problem. On the flip side, the medic pops one of the north-side sectoids with a 59% shot.
The Mechtoid does the predictable thing by unloading on the assault again. She gets unlucky this time and dies straight-up, but nobody else panics.
This is why you play smart, that can easily be one of your star troopers that gets the shit-end of the stick like that. Of course for me, it was a low-ranked redundant guinea pig with a subpar Will score, so it doesn't matter much.
Another rocket + gunner shot puts the Mechtoid down. The sniper kills the visible sectoid. Since I've been keeping a running tally, I know that there are two left, one to the north and one to the east. I do the easy thing and overwatch all of my troops. The less wise sectoid pokes his head out and gets it blown off.
At this point, I know that since it was a small ship and I've already killed a Mechtoid and a bunch of sectoids, there shouldn't be too much left to deal with, right? Right? Yeah, that seems like a safe assumption to make! I take the time to reload everyone. The last sectoid pops up, misses a shot, and promptly dies. However, during that alien turn I also heard something which makes me advance more cautiously: Mutons.
Oh dear, clumsy me. I made contact by sprinting my rocketeer. A concentrated barrage of fire kills both Floaters and the weaker Muton. The Muton leader retreats inside the UFO. I take the chance to reload everyone who needs it, and overwatch everyone who doesn't. Good thing, too, because look what just patrolled into me, a pair of Berserkers and another duo of Mutons!
Now, the first temptation is to blow the fuck out of those Berserkers, right? WRONG. Remember, they'll Intimidate and rush you every time you do that. Bad luck means that they're going to be in the middle of your squad with half your troops panicked by the end of the turn. Here's how you deal with that:
1. Ignore the Mutons. They are a relatively minor threat right now; they'll kill troops in one or two shots, but they have to hit them first. Don't
forget about them, though.
2. Move the rocketeer away from the rest of the squad, to that convenient tree to the right. Hit the Berserkers with a Shredder rocket.
3. Naturally, he panics. But because you moved him away from the squad, the Berserkers charge away from it as well.
4. Hit them with a grenade, being careful not to damage the Rocketeer's cover.
5. Snipe the closer one. 14 damage critical, good. The sniper panics, but her job is done here. The rifle scout finish this one off without panicking.
6. What we're going to do now is a bit tricky: We use the SMG scout to draw the remaining Berserker away, backing him off to a farther bit of cover beforehand. This does three things: Holo-targets the 'zerker, damages it, and prepares us for the next step. We do the same thing with the medic, pulling the 'zerker even farther from the rest of the squad. We move the gunner back and away from everyone, into open ground.
Finally, we
suppress the Berserker. Naturally, when it starts its turn, it tries to charge and is reaction-fired, and it then turns and retreats. One of the Mutons takes a potshot at the rocketeer and misses, the other Blood-Calls the Berserker. The Muton leader shows his face again.
From here, it's straightforward. The gunner moves up and coup-de-graces the Berserker. The medic smokes herself and the panicked scout, then reloads. The engineer hunkers. The rifle scout advances and reloads, the rocketeer retreats and reloads. After that, it's a pretty simple game of 'Everyone sits in overwatch until something shows up, then the sniper kills it.'
But then we make another bad decision, moving our scout up to flank the Muton leader in the UFO, and trigger the Outsiders. How do we react to our stupid, hasty decisions? RUN HIM AWAY, OVERWATCH MORE.
The rocketeer picks off the wounded Muton who was hiding in the woods, and one of the Outsiders decides to charge straight at the squad. He dies to a flank shot from the engineer and concentrated fire. A turn later, the second one exits, eats overwatch fire from the gunner, and misses a shot on the SMG scout.
Our engineer, attempting to get a flank on it, reveals the Muton leader skulking about in the woods, and gets a flank critical on him. The rest of the squad cleans up the mispositioned Outsider, the Muton leader misses his shot at the engineer, and she returns the favor with a bit more accuracy.
So that's that, a walkthrough of a mission filled with bad situations made worse by bad decisions, demonstrating how to use careful tactics to deal with what could otherwise easily be squad wipes, even with subpar soldiers. It should also serve as a demonstration of why lasers, SCOPES, and careful positioning are crucial.
One last thing to keep in mind: During that entire mission, only a single enemy attack landed. One attack = one dead operative. 90% of the things out there on the field could have easily 1-2 shotted my troopers. Careful positioning and good target selection is far better protection than any armor. Also note that the only actual death was due to pure bad luck, a soldier with good health getting one-shotted while in heavy cover, as opposed to mispositioning from any of the bad decisions. The most important thing of all to remember is that the RNG is evil and hates you, which is why we rely as much as possible on good tactics and exploiting predictable AI behavior, rather than luck.
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Topic: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (New by Firaxis) (Read 973810 times)