When Missions go BADLY wrong.

[NKF]

Well, I suppose 'Greens', 'Silvers' and 'Browns' just don't have the same ring to it as 'Greys'. So, we are beset by brown greys. Personally, I never really felt that they had anything to do with our Roswell Greys. They just aren't wrinkly enough.

 

As for the Skyranger Vs. Avenger argument, I see both crafts as being very advantageous in their own ways. However, just to provide balance to the discussion, what about if you run out of elerium (and all your ships were elerium fuelled and you didn't have an alternative troop transport to fall back on)? That's the biggest worry about using craft with elerium fuelled engines.

 

On the whole, though, I find that they compliment each other nicely in that one covers the flaws of the other. The Avenger is obviously the better craft, but only as far as the elerium will take it. The Skyranger is always present, so you can always fall back onto it when you don't need to save or just don't have any elerium.

 

As for the Lightning, now there's a ship that's neither one nor the other, but it does well at what it is rather than raising your expectations and hoping that it's a better inteceptor or a better troop transport.

 

Just so we don't stray too much off topic, a mission that went bad (don't know if I mentioned it in this thead):

 

Imagine starting a new game. You start out, things are fine. After the first few missions, some heavy weapons arrive (high explosives, rockets, etc), so you're ready to take on any cyberdiscs that come your way. Naturally, the first retaliation led by the sectoids comes through due to overly aggressive air combat on your behalf. Imagine everything in the mission is done perfectly, with every shot landing and the sectoids being akin to chaff blowing in the wind. They start panicking, making your job easier. When you get down to the last alien, you notice when it panics that it's a 'Commander'. Now, getting a commander about three or four missions into the game is a miracle in itself, though not unheard of.

 

This is where the mission goes horribly wrong. Not only do you not have a distinct lack of stun-rods, you've also used up all your bullets and grenades as well. The only things left are three smoke grenades. They are simply not enough to take out a commander at full health. What do you do? You can't do anything. It's a stalemate.

 

When this happened to me, all I could do was to start a brand new game. There I was, all giddy with excitement as I'd collected everything you need to get to the end-game mission (leader (on a previous encounter), commander and the bits and pieces that lead to the Avenger). I thought this was going to be my fastest game yet. Alas, bad luck happens.

 

- NKF

[M. Hoz]

Well,you could throw the smoke grenades at the Commander's head...

Also,I usually have my Skyranger full of unnecessary guns and explosives...

not intentionally,I just forget to remove them.

So I almost never run out of ammo,before I lose.

[Zombie]

NKF - how come you did not you have any Laser Pistols on board your transport ship? They do not have any ammunition limitations and it takes hardly any time to research Laser Weapons and the Laser Pistol. Even the production of one Laser Pistol with 10 Engineers takes 30 hours, or a little more than a day.

 

You should have got to the Laser Pistol by three to four missions into the game because hardly anything happens during the first few weeks anyway. Besides, it is impossible to get the proper funding to hire 100 scientists (around $5,400,000) to do the research and $900,000 to build the Avenger by the fourth mission. This does not even include the funds for building the necessary facilities at your base! I don't doubt you, but it seems unlikely you can get this far into the game by the fourth mission without using a game editor. Were you using one?

 

Anyway, I always have one Laser Pistol and 4 Smoke Grenades on board my transports for stunning purposes. Standard grenades work just as well if they are thrown a couple of tiles away from the commander. In addition, the Mind Probe is almost essential equipment for determining what his health/stun ratio is at. After dumping a couple of smoke grenades on the commander, and a snap shot with a laser pistol or some damage from a regular grenade, he will fall stunned rather easily.

[NKF]

I said I had all the components for the avenger, I didn't have the avenger itself. (I mean, I had alloys, power source, elerium, navigation, etc). I would've probably had to go at least a few months with intense and highly concentrated research to get the Avenger. My guess it would've probably have come by april, if not earlier.

 

As for not having a laser pistol, I think I moved straight onto armour at the time. I just didn't have one ready. I wasn't expecting to use all my ammo on that one mission (now, I can't for the life of me remember why it got all used up... I must've destroyed some) .

 

As for the commander, I tried all sorts of methods, and I was able to keep it under heavy smoke for quite a long time. While my troops got knocked out (well, almost), the commander would't go down. I can't explain why the commander didn't suffocate... unless its armour was enough to filter the smoke out. It was superhuman and it was a commander, so it must have got some pretty good armour (for a sectoid).

 

- NKF

[JellyfishGreen]

NKF - Too bad smoke doesn't concentrate in small rooms. I imagine you would have had enough soldiers left over to box the commander in and force him to move into a closet, pop in the smoke, block the door.

Oh well, never forget the stun rods, eh?

Although it is disappointing even with stun rods when you realize "I knew one of us was carrying a stun rod - who was it? - oh yes, Jeremy, who was vaporized in Cyberdisk chain reaction explosions."

[Psy Guy]

Would it make things intresting if aliens commited suicide or sacrificed itself to get a few kills. After cornering a sectoid commander it pulled a nade and dropped it blowing itself up.

 

Oh yea! Is it me or do aliens throw nades at stunned aliens? Sometimes i think they do it because of x-com forces in the area but sometimes ive seen them do it when theres been only 1 trooper in the area and they didn't even throw the nade close to that trooper.

[JellyfishGreen]

Geez, it's hard enough to catch these guys alive without them realizing what we're doing and topping themselves.

 

As for grenades - I think sometimes the aliens flub their accuracy rolls just like we do. Either that or they just THOUGHT that's where you were hiding, and were wrong.