"That's the last time I leave you in charge!"

[CapnKill]

Well, there was this one time I managed to get my guys out of the Ranger in one piece, then accidentally clicked Abort Mission and Yes on reflex, instead of End Turn.

 

 

Would've been nice to have seen the look on their faces as the ranger took off

[Matri]

EDIT: Nevermind.

[CapnKill]

OMG this happened to me last night.

 

Doing a routine crash site in farm country. Spot an alien on the roof giving my guys some trouble, so I figured I'd throw a heavy explosive up there, because I couldn't see him, but I figured it would take him out no problem.

 

Ok, so I prime the thing but ralize I don't have enough turns to throw it.. no biggie, I'll drop it on the floor and have someone else come and pick it up and do the rest...

 

So I dropped it on the floor and uhmmm.... not enough TUs to move away from the spot

 

You can figure out what happened next.

 

In retrospect I did have a way, I had a guy with a small launcher, I probably could've knocked the guy on the explosive square out and then walked over to pick it up... didn't think it out.

 

The mission was a loss, so I tried to save what I could, after all the dying and the screaming and bleeding and the panicking, I managed to get 2 guys into the ranger.

 

Pressed the take off button and the game crashed! I need to start saving after each turn I suppose, but I'll just chock this up to a horrible nightmare that one of the crew members had I guess.

[Bomb Bloke]

Did it crash before or after you confirmed the abort? If after, then you could probably've used the "georesume" batch in my toolkit to keep playing from there.

[CapnKill]

It crashed after I hit abort. Tell me more about this "georesume"?

 

I'll google it now

[Bomb Bloke]

It's in the toolkit on my projects page (check my signature).

 

The idea is that the game is made up of two separate engines, one for the tactical display, and one for the geoscape display. Whenever it switches between these two engines, one makes an auto-save, and the other loads it when it starts up. This just so happens to be the time when the game is most likely to crash.

 

Hence my "georesume" batch tells the geoscape engine to start up and load the auto-save made when combat last ended. "tacresume", on the other hand, starts the tactical engine from the point where you last attempted to start a battle.

 

Note that the CE version of the game will need its executable split to use these. There's some documentation included on how to do that, along with another tool for that purpose.

[CapnKill]

So it happened again on the same mission. This time the mission went smoothly, lost 2 guys, but took out the aliens, I then hit OK to the "alien died cause no containment facility" and then the game crashed. Do you think your toolkit can get me passed this or should I just avoid this mission?

 

It's possible that the reason for the problem is becasue this is a roswell crash mission which was generated by that mod that has alien ships occasionally crash on their own... maybe someting isn't adding up when I leave the mission. I'm curious to try next to see if I just start the missin, and then abort on the first turn if it will still crash.

 

As of now though I think I'll just skip it...

[Bomb Bloke]

The game crashes quite a bit even without any mods present. Funny how the best games always seem to have the worst bugs...

[CapnKill]

I just avoided that mission and moved on. Glad it wasn't a Terror Mission, that would have been a problem.

[ulairion]

I've had lots of "everyone dies as soon as they step out of the Skyranger" so I'm going to go for something a bit more epic: The Ballad of the Mindscrewed Rookies and the (Un)Lucky Bastard's Last Stand.

 

Some context first. While I prepared my second strike team I noticed some of the rookies had really awful stats. Rather than sacking them, I chose to rename them and give them a warm welcome to the glorious Red Shirt Brotherhood of X-Com. Their callsigns became things like "Dead Guy", "Cannon Fodder", "Meat Shield" and, the one of legend, "Unlucky Bastard".

 

So, first mission comes along. The Red Shirts did what they were meant to do: explore the map, reveal the alien's locations so they could be sniped from half the map away, and dying in awful ways so that my good soldiers could stay alive. After cleaning the surrounding area, comes the time to enter the UFO. Unlucky Bastard goes forth, steps through the door of the Large Scout, and sees a Floater staring at her. Shruging I order her to open Auto-Fire on the alien... and the sucker goes down in a single shot. She goes even further, to the engine room. Two floaters, and both are killed in a single Auto-Fire burst. The mission ends, and I'm mildly amazed at UB's luck.

 

Missions come and go and, every time, UB goes charging across the entire map, bursting through the UFO's door, and punching the blood out of anything moving along the way. Once and again I used her as a Red Shirt, and once and again she laughed at me from the top of a smoldering pile of alien corpses. I check her stats and I discover that her accuracy is over 70, and that she has survived over twenty mission, on an average of 3 kills each. I check again, and I discover that her stats and mission/kills ratio are actually higher than my Commander... or any other soldier I had. A new callsign comes along: "Lucky Bastard" (I thought about renaming her to Kara Thrace, but it felt a bit awkward)

 

So, I set another base, gather a new, all rookie strike team, and I send LB to lead them with a brand new flying suit. She has earned it.

 

A supply ship gets shot down over North Africa, a great chance to send the rookies to get their feet wet. With LB leading from behind and above, the rookies start deploying around the Skyranger and checking the area. First turn ends without any visual contact with the enemy. I deploy a bit further and one of my fresh, unexperienced rookies sees something that makes me recoil in horror...

 

Ethereals.

 

I try to spread my guys as much as possible. Not enough. As soon as my turn ends half the squad gets mind controlled and starts blowing the other half to fist-sized chunks. A small group under the Skyranger gets blown by an alien grenade, other two guy get plasma'd, the only survivors (besides the MC'd soldiers) are two wounded rookies and LB. As soon as my turn starts I rush to the inventory screen to try to patch up whatever I have left. No medkits. I forgot the bloody medkits.

 

Looking at the remaining HP and fatal wounds I figure I have about 5 turns before my two remaining rookies bleed to death. They charge across the burning sand, through the smoke and the bits of their ex-squad-mates, and open fire on some Ethereals standing behind a dune. The Ethereals die. The charge continues as my dying soldiers leave a bloody trail behind. Then, as one of them moves, a single plasma comes out of nowhere and puts him out of his misery. A single Ethereal is hidden near the UFO's hull. The remaining rookie moves slowly towards the Ethereal, opens fire... and misses. Opens fire again... and misses. No TU's left, not even for crouching to kiss his behind goodbye. The last rookie gets killed just as LB, who was going around the UFO, appears behind the ethereal, and shoots it down.

 

So, now it was a single soldier against whatever was left inside the UFO. She goes in, charging as ever. Two Ethereals go down in a single turn, and a third one on the middle floor manages to shoot her before getting killed. She's still alive, but wounded, and bleeding. After checking the middle floor, she goes down to take the elevator to the top floor to put an end to this mess. As soon as she reaches the lower floor, another Ethereal shoots her. Bleeding even more, but still alive. A two turns cat-and-mouse game begins, but she finally gets killed by that last remaining Ethereal just before she could blast it.

 

And so it ends the story of the Lucky Bastard, the Red Shirt that became the most badass soldier X-Com has ever known, who killed half an Ethereal crew by herself. The mission was a huge FUBAR from the start, but this single girl's thoughness almost managed to turn the odds against the aliens. Almost.

 

(Sorry about the lenght and the bad grammar, English is not my first language)

[CapnKill]

Ah good read

 

Strangely enough I just lost one of my red shirts that was with me from the very beginning to the last alien in a freaking supply ship... he too was the last soldier standing and the highest rank

 

Those damn supply ships... ugh.

[Space Voyager]

HE HE HE, great AAR, ulairion! Thanks for the story, brings back memories. You and CapnKill may yet convince me to rebuy the originals...

[CapnKill]

No reason not to, they're like 2.99 on Steam or something like that. If you do get it though I can point you to a helpful thread that helps you setup the game on Steam to work well, cause by default, it runs like crap in Dosbox.

[Matri]

No reason not to, they're like 2.99 on Steam or something like that. If you do get it though I can point you to a helpful thread that helps you setup the game on Steam to work well, cause by default, it runs like crap in Dosbox.

 

Link us already.

[CapnKill]

Ha ha, my bad, I was being lazy: https://forums.steampowered.com/forums/show...d.php?t=1146530

 

This makes the game a joy to play and also shows you how to bring in the PSX music, which is way better.

 

Also the UFO Extender has some very nice mods, like the ability to open the doors without having to walk through like TFTD and another that I"m using in my game where distance actually affects your accuracy...

 

Very cool stuff, highly recommend it!

[Bomb Bloke]

Distance affects chance-to-hit anyway. Seb's tweak makes it so that the further away your target is, the wilder your shots will go.

[CapnKill]

Gotcha, definitely a challenge with the laser pistol

[FullAuto]

I thought about renaming her to Kara Thrace, but it felt a bit awkward

 

Classic. Love it!

[Wormburgerfish]

Well I know the last post in this thread was well... a long time ago, but I hope nobody minds me bumping this. Seems silly to make a new thread for the same topic when this is on page 2. Anyway, onto two of my most recent debacles.

 

First FUBAR Mission

 

The worst was what would have been my second terror-site if I hadn't managed to down the terror ship. It was sectoid, but I knew what to expect going in and I was confident. I had laser rifles and the heavy lasers, modded with UFO Extender to be worth a damn now in the right hands. It had been several months since I'd played X-Com, but the last time I had played I had some good memories attacking another sectoid terror ship that I took down with minimal losses (I think I lost only one rookie). You know, it's not too bad, you just move slowly and carefully and make sure to eliminate every enemy in range as you go so the leader can't mind control anybody.

 

Well, this time that didn't work. I think I was both unlucky and rusty. We started in the bottom right corner only about two sectors from the UFO with two cabins on our side, between us and the craft, in between them a grove of trees. With all that cover I thought it would be easy to cut down the enemies as they approached. Right at the start there were two cyberdiscs in front of us and they dropped one man, but we got the smoke grenades set and deployed. A turn later and one cyberdisc was dead with the other retreating out of range, or so I thought.

 

Unfortunately it turns out that disc rose up into the air and started spotting for the sectoid leader, who immediately start attacking my captain who was also the only guy on the squad capable of wielding the heavy laser. He killed one man but then panicked the next turn. A sectoid was hiding in each cabin and they claimed one more trooper but I put them down soon enough. As I made my way through the buildings though I discovered three more cyberdiscs on the other side. Reaction fire dropped two of my scouts but with some grenades and lucky shots I downed the cyberdiscs... I thought.

 

So feeling that the coast was clear, and with no more mind attacks for a few turns, I armed the captain again and we prepared to move forward as we discovered one more cyberdisc in the distance. I think this was the fifth or sixth one? (playing on Veteran, by the way) Reaction fire killed the man who sighted him but the captain needed one more turn to save up his energy for a heavy laser blast. Then the mind control attacks came again... and suddenly the captain had all the energy he needed. He shot two more men and the rest started panicking, running blindly into reaction fire from the cyberdisc and another foe I never got a look at. Two turns later and I was down to three soldiers minus the panicking and intermittently murdering captain. I knew things were bad and I never reload (unless I really lose my temper) so I was trying to evacuate. However this was still relatively early in the game and I didn't want to leave all of that valuable gear around. The last three soldiers I had left seemed to be doing well, avoiding panicking, so I scrambled to grab a few supplies and run for the skyranger. It didn't work.

 

What do you know, last turn where I'd have been ready to run all three up the ramps and finally the sergeant panics and all of a sudden one of the other remaining soldiers is the new target of mind control. He shoots his friend and next turn he panics and runs into the cyberdisc. Then the sergeant gets mind controlled. Ironically now only the formally alien-enslaved captain is left and he alone makes it up the ramp, completely empty handed, and aborts the mission. Sole survivor, all 13 men under his command dead (three or four of them killed by his own hand). For some reason this qualified him for a promotion and he was shortly made into a commander. In that mission we never made it more than one sector away from the skyranger.

 

We kept him out of rotation for about six months until we found our first alien base. He lead the assault... and was the last to fall, his mind scrambled by the final alien, but this time with four underlings to spare. I assume Xcom had him institutionalized.

 

Second FUBAR Mission

 

Sectoids again, but a different base, and several in-game months later. I was confident again but this was EuroCom's second mission. A chance to prove themselves. Ten soldiers plus a laser tank assaulting another downed sectoid terror ship. We wanted to capture a leader. We had learned our lesson from the last attempt.

 

Well, as with the first mission, right off the bat I knew we had a fight on our hands. There were two cyberdiscs just underneath the skyranger and a third a little ways off. There were three sectoids in the immediate vicinity too and I soon discovered there were a few more just beyond view. We were in the center of the edge of the map with no real cover to speak of.

 

Naturally I sent out the tank first and it drew some reaction fire. I hoped that the cyberdiscs were spent and sent out my first two troopers, a rookie and the sergeant, Patricia Horton. She as a good woman. The rookie hit the sand (we were in the Saudi desert) and dropped a cyberdisc. Reaction fire from another killed him and Patricia avenged him, the resulting explosion destroying another cyberdisc and a sectoid. She ran for cover as I made the next turn and took two plasma shots to the neck from a sectoid sniper. The tank was destroyed a second later.

 

That aside, things were going well for us. Only one hostile was left outside the skyranger and I could tell from the layout of the map that this guy represented just about the last of the alien resistance outside the ship. I sent out more troops and we killed the sniper and secured the landing zone at last. We fanned out over the dunes, picking off three more sectoids who came to investigate. One trooper got mind controlled by only after dropping all his weapons so we just let him wonder around the desert doing his own thing.

 

I'm running a mod that allows high explosives to breech UFO walls, so I sent in my demolitions man to blow open the back of the ship (we landed behind it). He got in close, primed his high explosive and prepared to throw it. Go figure the sectoid leader knew what I was up to and he chose right then to panic my explosives expert. He promptly dropped his ordinance at his feet and took off like a bat out of hell across the sand. He was fine, he got clear of the explosion, but I had been intending him to throw it several paces to the wall of the UFO. Right near him was one of my sharpshooters and she didn't have time to flee. She was killed instantly. A turn later, and the demoman was killed by an alien sniper (who was soon dropped by one of my own).

 

I had a reserve demoman with an extra pack of high explosive and he finished the job, opening up the way into the UFO. I sent my scout to spot any hostile inside (two cyberdiscs), and with some trouble we got them, losing a man to reaction fire in the process. There were five of us left at this point and so the captain lead the team inside, dropping two more stragglers and then making way for the bridge. There was just one alien left and he wasn't using psi attacks (oh well). However this one was no push-over. He was hidden in one of those alcoves that overlooks the bottom floor. I knew about these ambush spots and I thought I took the appropriate precautions, placing my troops in a place where they could get the 'drop' on him if he tried to drop in on them. He knew better. The little bastard lobbed a grenade through the opening and blew up my reserve demoman. The other sentry ran over to take him down, stopping to take cover behind the only standing wall in the place. It wasn't cover though, it turns out, and three shots to the back of the neck later killed him. I was just impressed the personal armor lasted that long.

 

Down to three, we decided to come at him from the top floor. In the same turn that the sectoid bastard shot the other sentry I figured he had no TU's left so I sent the captain into his little hidey-hole to blast him. It turns out, he wasn't finished, and he put one in the captain. Thankfully the captain survived and retreated. NOW the sectoid had no TU's left, right? Of-course not, so I sent in a squaddie... and she promptly got a ventilated body cavity and a one-way ticket to the after-life.

 

Well I had enough, so taking advantage of another mod that lets me open doors without going through I got smart and lobbed a grenade through to blow the little bastard up. 2 survivors out of 10 men and a heavy weapons platform.

 

Third FUBAR Mission

 

The sectoids were fixing to infiltrate a country in Europe and it seemed they were about to succeed with battleships landing everywhere and what not. We launched a joint strike with all my bases to hit each ship. Each mission was dramatic, but Euro-team got it the worst. They had such a promising start too. This time it was a team of 14 and they deployed in corner. Five dead aliens later they'd only lost one man and destroyed three cyberdiscs.

 

One word: Blasterbomb.

 

Long story short, there were four survivors (and a 5th who was MIA from mind control).

 

I had another bad mission a long time ago in a different playthrough, near the end of the game. We assaulted an ethereal supply ship. The crew had two hover tanks and all had flying suits and heavy plasma. With ease we eliminated the resistance and entered the ship, cutting our way through and gunning down all in our path. We even blew a hole in the roof and took out the bridge.

 

Then suddenly the last surviving ethereal, rather than panicking, went completely John McClain on my platoon. He sniped one man and then got another with reaction fire. My men inside the ship were divided into pairs so this bought Mr. McClain a temporary respite... which he used to focus and mind-control my commander, who then fired a blasterbomb and killed three more men. Next turn he panicked and a turn my captain was mind controlled and shot the commander in the back. Then a repeat with the captain and the hands of a squaddie. There were still about ten or so soldiers left but with the commander and captain dead the rest, including a colonel, began panicking and berserking, claiming more lives in the process. I had two soldiers on the bottom level of the ship and both were shot from above by the ethereal through one of the many holes in the ceiling.

 

I'm not even kidding, there was just that ONE ethereal left, I am positive. I never got the bastard either.

 

In disgust, I quit the game and started over completely.