What a painful mission

[Slythe1]

Okay so it was the first month of a game I started. On about the 23rd of that first month I detected a large ship moving across northern Africa (my starting base was in southern Europe). I knew this was about to become the first terror mission, happening a bit early. I immediately dispatched my two interceptors in the hopes of downing it before it actually turned into an actual terror mission. Thankfully I shot it down with no damage to my interceptors. I waited til daylight then sent my Skyranger filled with a rocket tank and 10 soldiers. Since it was so early in the game I had no armor, and 5 of my soldiers had laser rifles and 5 had laser pistols. I also brought along a rocket launcher and auto-cannon as always.

 

On the way to the site I had that single thought running through my head - are they floaters or sectoids ? I don't need to tell you there's a HUGE difference between the two terror ships, especially early in the game with no armor and no plasma weapons.

 

First turn, the tactical screen pops up, focused on my first soldier, and there are two flashing red icons indicating aliens sighted. I scroll the screen over with my mouse and what do I see but a sectoid and a cyberdisc. Oh crap. First turn I fill the Skyranger and the ground around the ramp with smoke. Alien's turn, they don't see inside my ship. That's a good thing. Okay on my turn I unload my tank to scout, fully expecting it to be obliterated. It drops down and sees the sectoid and cyberdisc, then turns towards the back and spots a second sectoid and a second cyberdisc. This won't be easy.

 

By the way, I wish I had kept track of this mission turn by turn, with exact numbers of enemies, but unfortunately I didn't and will have to estimate.

 

Anyway, I move my tank out of the way and oddly enough only take a single opportunity shot from one of the sectoids. I start unloading my soldiers to fire furiously at the cyberdiscs, missing 50% of the time with my laser weapons and needing to score several hits to actually destroy them. I lose one soldier but manage to destroy all 4 aliens.

 

Next turn more aliens move towards the Skyranger and I lose another soldier. My tank scouts once again and spots TWO more cyberdiscs and a sectoid. This pattern continues for a couple more turns. All the while of course I'm being psi attacked by the cowardly leader hiding on the bridge of the downed terror ship. Eventually my tank gets destroyed by reaction fire from a cyberdisc. I lose a few more soldiers to psi attacks and reaction fire.

 

Finally I get to a point where I have to storm the bridge of the ship, or to be more specific I have to go up the lift and kill whatever's left. I move a soldier out the first door into the hall and see yet another cyberdisc stuck in the hallway. Luckily my soldier's not shot so I move him quickly back inside. This is an impossible situation by the way. I would have to suicide a few soldiers to try to destroy it if I was lucky. I have no plasmas that can shoot holes in the roof/floor. Because of this silly design I have to resort to another silly design flaw and throw a high explosive up through the ceiling (something I never do but in this case I had no choice). This kills the cyberdisc and another sectoid.

 

All in all I saw more cyberdiscs than I've ever seen on any sectoid terror mission in all the times I've ever played this game. I lost count but it seemed like at least eight cyberdiscs. I'm not sure what the maximum number of cyberdiscs that can be generated on a terror mission - if there even is one - but if there is I certainly hit it. It was a brutal mission where I lost 5 of my 10 soldiers and my tank, but I actually captured the leader! My goal, once I realized it was a sectoid mission, was to try to capture as many of the aliens as I could in hopes of getting a navigator and/or the leader. I had no mind probe researched so I went after as many as I could with stun rods, capturing two. I was lucky to just lose 5 soldiers I think. It could've easily been much worse.

[JellyfishGreen]

Very impressive - I gues you didn't save the game? What was the difficulty level?

 

Could you also have hit the ceiling under the cyberdisk with a rocket? Or opened the door and tossed HE down the hall at an angle, with a suitable timer setting?

[Slythe1]

Very impressive - I gues you didn't save the game? What was the difficulty level?

 

Could you also have hit the ceiling under the cyberdisk with a rocket? Or opened the door and tossed HE down the hall at an angle, with a suitable timer setting?

I always play at superhuman now.

 

I've never tried firing a rocket into the ceiling, though I know cyberdiscs are rather resistant to rocket fire. To throw a high explosive into the hallway I would've had to go through the door into the hallway and would've been summarily slaughtered, so I saw no other option but to throw a high explosive through the ceiling. The design of starting a cyberdisc in the hallway where it can't move is a bit silly to begin with.

[cyrus]

The placing of aliens is a random thing, so it's a generator that you should blame

[Jman4117]

It's a spawn point.

 

*Jman blames the spawn point*

 

3-4 large rockets should do it.

[Hobbes]

The design of starting a cyberdisc in the hallway where it can't move is a bit silly to begin with.

Blast away the walls with a heavy plasma....then the Cyberdisk will be able to move

 

Those bugs on the spawn points can be fixed, though.

[Slythe1]

I didn't have heavy plasma yet.

[Zombie]

Slythe1 : Yep, that is a good mission debriefing! According to the Official Strategy Guide by David Ellis, you could see anywhere from 6-10 Cyberdiscs on a Terror Ship or Terror Site on Superhuman. So you only saw the minimum amount the game could actually throw at you!!! Just imagine 10 Cyberdiscs on a mission, OUCH!

 

A while back I was playing on the beginner level to determine how many time units a hand-to-hand-only alien uses per attack (turns out it is 14 time units per attack for the Silacoid, Chryssalid, Zombie, and Reaper). Anyhow, I needed a Floater terror mission or base to check out the Reaper stats. Boy, was I surprised when I saw the maximum number of Reapers possible on a Terror Mission - 6! The minimum is 2 and it averages around 3-4 Reapers. So 6 was a real surprise!

[NKF]

Rockets are actually quite good against cyberdiscs, even superhuman ones.

 

Large rockets, that is. Tank rockets, small rockets and auto/heavy cannon HE shells are far too weak to be very effective for a one or two hit kill.

 

High explosives are great , if you can throw them far enough.

 

- NKF

[Ki-tat Chung]

this is slightly irrelevent, but are the stats for the hovertanks the same as the cyberdisk? and i still think the looks for the hovertanks were a cheap cut/paste job by the editors....it would've looked better with a different turret. actually, it would have been a cheap job by the scientist/engineerers....stupid engineerers, just stealing cyberdisk "corpses" and chucking a turret on top...

[NKF]

The stats are way different. Apart from the superior stats (though they lack a superior gun), the hovertanks are very heavily armoured. They've literally got 130 armour for every section of armour (imagine a flying suit with front strength armour for all of its critical points), regardless of difficulty while the cyberdiscs' armour is adjusted based on difficulty.

 

Sadly, like X-Com units, they take double damage. But even then, 130 off a full 220 plasma damage is not that bad.

 

- NKF

[Slythe1]

Slythe1 : Yep, that is a good mission debriefing! According to the Official Strategy Guide by David Ellis, you could see anywhere from 6-10 Cyberdiscs on a Terror Ship or Terror Site on Superhuman. So you only saw the minimum amount the game could actually throw at you!!! Just imagine 10 Cyberdiscs on a mission, OUCH! 

As I said, I lost count of the cyberdiscs but I remember at least 8. It might've been the maximum of 10 for all I know. They seemed to never end.

[Hobbes]

The results of my last mission...

 

Human/Power Armor: 8, Dead: 6

Sectoid: 19, Dead: 16, Stunned: 3

Cyberdisc: 6, Dead: 6

Civilian Male: 10, Dead: 10

 

Basically a slaughterhouse for both sides. I had even brought a Blaster Launcher but the guy carrying it was more busy picking up heavy plasmas from dead buddies and killing Sectoids at point blank range (he was one of the survivors).

 

One point concerning the maximum limit of Cyberdisks: each of them counts as 4 objects, thus the more you have, the more the object table will be occupied. Ten Cyberdisks would occupy 40 slots, which adding to the 80 X-COM objects plus 14 soldiers would fill 134 slots of the 170 available. Adding civilians would leave even less space for Sectoid units (each one occupying 4 slots). The end conclusion is: the more Cyberdisks you have, less Sectoids will be on the battlefield.

[cyrus]

What interests me, is if I take more than 80 items of equipment for mission (it's possible but only by editing game files) and the overall item count would be greater than 170 what would be removed? Excess equipment, some aliens or their equipment (or maybe some of my soldiers ). And if it would be my equipment, will it be lost in space forever?

[Hobbes]

From what I've figured out so far the most likely result to removing that limit would be for the game to crash or turn unstable. But I'm not sure on that.

Each time the limit gets overcrossed (especially in Base Defense Missions) the game starts removing dead corpses from the map and injured and stunned aliens turn invisible.

[cyrus]

No, for me the game was stable with 90 or 100 items. Well of course, it was crashing in very rare circumstances but this is usual. Amazingly, if you edit the files and add one more item above the limit, the you'll be able to add more normally in the game, the limit checking is not working now! You may consider that cheating, but sometimes I'm adhere to this as I find 80 item limit very annoying.

[NKF]

Among the first thing that gets removed from the 170 item table would be corpses. Hence why corpses just vanish.

 

This is rather noticeable in base defense missions where you've got hundreds of heavy plasmas and clips (they have a higher priority than other objects) .

 

- NKF