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[EnigmaticHat]

Just curious, why didn't you break the mechtoid shield by killing the shielding sectoid?

[GiglameshDespair]

I wondered that myself, but assumed it was out of sight or something.

[Flying Dice]

I wondered that myself, but assumed it was out of sight or something.

This. It was somewhere off in the fog of war (I didn't ever get vision of it between the initial spotting and when it ran back in to die), and the only way to get to it would have been to sprint someone through the same narrow canyon that the Mechtoid was in. For that to work, I would have had to have a couple of things work out for me:

1. The Assault would have to make her blue move, obviously. After that, if she didn't spot the sectoid giving the shield, everything would have been a gamble on whether her Run&Gun would give her vision and leave her in a position where she could kill it. That was highly unlikely, given that the full yellow-move sprint wouldn't have even gotten her past the Mectoid.

2. The rest of the squad would have to kill the Mectoid in the same turn, otherwise the Assault would die (and even if they did, the other sectoid would still shoot her, though that probably wouldn't be lethal). Granted, I didn't try it and the Assault died anyways, but it was a better chance of her living while sitting in full cover than hanging in the breeze out there while rolling the dice that I could find the sectoid in a mess of short sightlines and heavy cover.

[RedKing]

Been playing XCOM: Enemy Within with the Long War mod (had only played EU before that).

I'd just like to say, if I ever hear notice about a fishing village in Newfoundland going strangely silent....y'all Canadians are on your own.

DAT MISSION D: D: D:

[Flying Dice]

One way to handle it (the latter half, at least) is to abuse snipers starting with squadsight. I dealt with that mission by turtling on the upper section of that boardwalk/balcony so that the pods had to charge across the docks to get to me. I managed it without rockets, but the only reason one of my troops didn't get a chest full of alien wing-wang was because for some reason it decided to acid him instead. After that, I posted my pair of snipers on the roof of the boat at the bottom-left corner with an infantry for security, ran my assault up along the roundabout route to the upper deck, and had the remaining three popping the new spawns as they appeared.

Once they started overflowing, I had the snipers take down the spawns that went after the assault, and had the rest of the squad book it for the 'ranger.

Basically here's your ideal squad, at least by my reckoning: 2x sniper, 1x rocketeer, 1x scout (with the light armor and SMG to do the suicide-run), 2x assault, 1x infantry. The rocketeer puts both pods into killing range for the rest, and then you have them to guard the snipers while the heavy guns go up to camp the whale. The scout is speedy Gonzales and the snipers can pick off any unfortunately positioned Chryssies.

But the real tl;dr is FUCK THAT MISSION SO HARD/]ashfejasfn

[Execute/Dumbo.exe]

Oh, you mean that omega sniper? The one who I found you could equip with a skull helmet and immediately named piece wise?
(Also made Mexican?)
I restarted a few missions later, not because I lost, but because I'm horrible with sticking with something.
Once, at the start of another game, I finished the mission with about 3 misses altogether, they were perfect.
Again, I restarted a few missions later, but one day I will complete LW completely.

[RedKing]

One way to handle it (the latter half, at least) is to abuse snipers starting with squadsight. I dealt with that mission by turtling on the upper section of that boardwalk/balcony so that the pods had to charge across the docks to get to me. I managed it without rockets, but the only reason one of my troops didn't get a chest full of alien wing-wang was because for some reason it decided to acid him instead. After that, I posted my pair of snipers on the roof of the boat at the bottom-left corner with an infantry for security, ran my assault up along the roundabout route to the upper deck, and had the remaining three popping the new spawns as they appeared.

Once they started overflowing, I had the snipers take down the spawns that went after the assault, and had the rest of the squad book it for the 'ranger.

Basically here's your ideal squad, at least by my reckoning: 2x sniper, 1x rocketeer, 1x scout (with the light armor and SMG to do the suicide-run), 2x assault, 1x infantry. The rocketeer puts both pods into killing range for the rest, and then you have them to guard the snipers while the heavy guns go up to camp the whale. The scout is speedy Gonzales and the snipers can pick off any unfortunately positioned Chryssies.

But the real tl;dr is FUCK THAT MISSION SO HARD/]ashfejasfn

I think part of the problem is that I'm still low-tech. I have a handful of laser weapons, but that's it. No new armor, no gauss or plasma, no MEC troopers, no gene soldiers, no psy-trained.
Thankfully, I saved at the base before the mission was offered, so I'm gonna reload and hope the clock keeps ticking.

And yeah, I went into (having experienced it once before and getting horribly wiped) with rocketeers and AP grenades out the yin-yang. Didn't expect a perpetual flood of xenos.

Also, is it just me or do the chryssalids in this mission not have lightning reflexes? because they typically do everywhere else, which makes a pack of four of them a sphincter-tightening discovery --  because all those oversights do naught but waste critical ammo while they race in at you at the speed of death.

[Flying Dice]

-snip-

I think part of the problem is that I'm still low-tech. I have a handful of laser weapons, but that's it. No new armor, no gauss or plasma, no MEC troopers, no gene soldiers, no psy-trained.
Thankfully, I saved at the base before the mission was offered, so I'm gonna reload and hope the clock keeps ticking.

And yeah, I went into (having experienced it once before and getting horribly wiped) with rocketeers and AP grenades out the yin-yang. Didn't expect a perpetual flood of xenos.

Also, is it just me or do the chryssalids in this mission not have lightning reflexes? because they typically do everywhere else, which makes a pack of four of them a sphincter-tightening discovery --  because all those oversights do naught but waste critical ammo while they race in at you at the speed of death.

I did it without lasers or explosives, just incredibly bullshit good luck. What it really comes down to is that, if you reach the point where you aren't killing the whale-spawned ones as they appear any more and you aren't about to call in the strike, you're already done. As long as you can wipe the pods that start on the map and get to the ship fairly quickly, you usually have a decent shot.

Actually, I think that multiple rocketeers/using grenades is actually less effective. Rockets are only really good against Chryssie if they're in clusters, and since you only fight two pods and a bunch of singletons, you only really need two rockets IMO (and once their rockets are gone, rocketeers kinda suck). "Grenade" is another word for "This could have been two rifle shots, a sniper shot, or a shotgun blast."

Precisely two of them do. The way pods work, they usually have a leader who has it, and IIRC there are only two pods. None of the ones spawned from the environment should.

[RedKing]

Okay, did it a second time with a slightly different lineup, and got through it relatively easy. 38 kills, no deaths and was in the evac zone with 2 turns to spare. Go fig.


Then the game decided "ho ho fuck you" and gave me a terror mission with 2 pods of 4 Chrysalids and at least 3 packs of 5 zombies each.
Fuck that, San Francisco is just going to have to get used to gay alien zombies.

[Delta Foxtrot]

Is it just me or are terror missions (first one anyway) fairly luck based?

I've won a few of them with no casualties. Chryssalids spawn near me very early, either infecting no one or only a few civvies. A little focused fire and it's done. Then it's off to kill the few floaters that float about. But most of the time at least one pod starts somewhere way far back and infects half the NPCs on the map. Cue retreat, usually with a casualty or five.

C/I vanilla EU if it matters. Any help? Or is my analysis spot on?

[umiman]

Seems about right. When you're in the late game (but just before sectopods) you can clear the whole map with no losses if you're lucky.

[BFEL]

In regards to Long War, its not that I don't know HOW to "play smart" its that doing so is absolutely mind numbing. Having to plot EVERYTHING 3 moves ahead is tiring, and I don't consider getting tired to be all that fun.

[Sindain]

I just ran into a rather weird glitch in Long War just now. It failed to properly close the build laser cannon interface when I left the engineering office or something, which then resulted in me accidentally "building" a laser cannon whenever I clicked on a button. However, it didn't actually build the cannon so it just kept on deducting money and alloys, even when I ran into the negatives on both. I ended up with -500 moneys and -13 alloys. Luckily restarting fixed it and then I cheated cause I'm on ironman.

[GiglameshDespair]

How strange. never seen something like that before.

[Flying Dice]

In regards to Long War, its not that I don't know HOW to "play smart" its that doing so is absolutely mind numbing. Having to plot EVERYTHING 3 moves ahead is tiring, and I don't consider getting tired to be all that fun.

* Flying Dice shrugs.

To each their own. That's exactly why I like XCOM, the tactical and strategic puzzles combined with the foibles of the RNG to make interesting emergent narratives.

Ofc. the strategic game was one place where I actually had a serious complaint with old X-COM, because you could just start making laser cannons for sale and never run out of money even if the whole world betrayed humanity.

--

The male French VA's reload quote, so cute~

"Clack clack... bang!"