The impossible XCOM - a classic experience

Good news everyone,

this is going to be thread housing my XCOM LP. By now I am well prepared - I have played a total of one (1) tutorial on normal, and have two missions on classic under my belt. Since this clearly means I am well versed in the ways of this game I will go for classic.
For now form will be youtube videos of missions, followed by spoilered lists of high points and equally spoilered results screen. And of course text in between. If anyone wants to volunteer to defend earth, just send PM - the next free squaddie will be named in your honour ! And probably die rather fast. As usual, helpful tips, advice, criticisms and general asshattery are welcome. Mostly.

Edit: Uploading will take a while...crappy connection, crappy Youtube ! First mission will be up soonish.

Also to add - THIS IS NOT THE FORUM GAME ! This is HERE. I will happily add your name to the recruits, but the other one is where a great writer turns stuff into stories ! Here is where I am playing, and you can watch me lose !

This is wonderful news indeed.

And we are off !

Overall, a promising start into the game. I made a tactical error which should be easy to spot. Hint: The guy dies later.
Regarding technology - upload takes ages. At this speed I'll probably switch to really crappy quality and upload a nicer replacement weekdays, when at work. Also, quality suffers so much, so I will have to look into different encoding.

A tough decision. In the end, Mexico provides what no one else does - money ! And we will need that, so the people in Europe and Asia will have to wait.

One thing - for the moment quality will remain this crappy. Come Monday I will upload better videos, but for the moment this is all my connection can handle, I think.

We downed a UFO ! All is good in the world. If this is not a sign of our impeding victory, nothing is. So, let's send a few guys to collect the debris.

This was a good mission. Ok, we keep losing soldiers at a rate of two per mission. But still, recovered the UFO and did serious damage to the enemy.

A fitting title for this would probably be Chapter 4: In which a badass appears. In Hot Pink.

We keep losing rockies. Again two soldiers less. By now we need to buy a few new ones, and our cash is a bit low - construction ate it. On the plus side, our pink assault is a serious badass ! And the last living survivor of our first mission.



So, if everything else fails we'll just throw her at the enemy - she can handle it.

Chapter 1
Poor dupont, if he hadn't have been shot he would have exploded from the car.
A bit of an interesting choice going for the money over the engineers.
Chapter 4
1 HP aliens are what pistols were made for, oh wait, Novikov won't be reloading anything anyway....

I'm a little worried that you're not leveling up your core troops that fast since they keep dying, but I'm sure the survivors will be better off for it knowing that one mistake and it could be them in a flag draped coffin.

Engineers ? Money ? Hey, this is the first time I actually play the game ! I'll figure it out. Esprit de corps is what will give us victory ! And Dupont ? Yeah, that was the really stupid error I referred to. Should have drawn back and gone a bit more defensive.

Mission 5

We get new recruits - Matt Bowyer and Rapunzel join the squad ! Since Rapunzel needs a first name in game I borrow one from the Brothers Grimm. Grim Rapunzel has a nice, cheerful ring to it. (By the way, I tried to adjust the colors to fit your avatars...you need more colorful avatars)

And immediately the next mission - we are sent to fetch an argentinian politician called WIlliam Thorne - must be an immigrant - who used to work with the aliens. Fun, fun, fun.

We are supposed to 'escort' the guy across the map. Which in this case is emminently suited to this purpose - two large builings with a small alley in between. Since it is absolutely obvious that there will be no ambush in the alley whatsoever we enter the left building. Rapunzel takes the left flank ahead, the (yet) nameless rookie the right, Matt covers our rear, and Marie Curie goes wherever needed. Good plan ? Great plan ! What happened next:

Mission 6

Time for a little overview.

No money, little tech and

...nearly no soldiers. But the month is coming to an end, so we might get dollars soon, dollars to buy new soldiers. We just need to hold out a few days.

Yes ! We made it ! Money ! I order ten rookies and buy an Arc Thrower.
While the new soldiers are in delivery, one of our pilots shoots down a UFO. A new type, according to our staff. Still, we only have two soliders in actrive duty, both without combat experience, so I let the salvage go. While we wait our support expert gets released from hospital. During the welcome party for the new guys, in the evening the same day, he tells me his real name. Erwin QuantumBits. Weird name, that, I can see why he kept it secret for a while. But now he is the only guy with a rank above 'sacrifical lamb', so he probably feels that no one is going to tease him.

Then this weeks abduction report comes in. We can help the US, who promised more engineers. Or we can decide if we help South-America, and might lose Asia in the process, or vice-versa. We go for Argentina.
QuantumBits armor is painted a bright blue yellow. We hand one rookie the Arc Thrower and white armor. The last two get S.C.O.P.E.s

First an admission - I cheated on this LP. In my folder of saved games this is game 3; my most current one is 9. I apologize. However, this at least gives me more experience and distance, allowing me to see the myriad of ways I screwed this game up. Just to list a few - far too many excavations, next to no actual infrastructure, only two satellites and no engineers that would allow me to get more anytime soon.
And now the scientists want a live sample. But befor that the game lets 19 days pass without incident ! Then a landed ufo appears on screen, difficulty 'Moderate'. So we send 4 rookies, with one marked in black. She carries the arc thrower instead of a S.C.O.P.E., so the color seems appropiate.



Just watch it - the painful thing is short enough ! Obviously the game needed to tell me to pack it in and start anew. In game 9 I am doing fairly well, at start of June with only one death and 10 or 12 trained non-rookie soldiers, two of which have the highest rank. But that is normal, so useless for LP purposes. Admit it, you come for human blood and gore, not alien ichor ! So, I'll start a fresh game on classic and will continue there.

In related news I'll start uploading high-rez versions of vids tomorrow, probably interleaving old missions with new.

Edit: Done ! Finally all the pain and suffering is available in HD ! More to follow tomorrow !

So, new game, new luck. Again classic, but with self-enforced Iron Man rules. Mainly since by now I had an ironman game die due to a bug.

We start in Africa, planning to get a satellite up in the US as fast as possible - spying on aliens seems natural there. Of course, first we have the tiny problem of a small mission to solve.

2:40 - moving behind half-cover and then ending your turn?
5:15 - using the second move to advance to half-cover rather than staying put and going into overwatch/reloading your gun/hunkering down?

Also, teehee at the German soldier named Axel Weber.

More broadly, it might be worth baiting a trap for the aliens - it looks like your typical procedure is to advance to contact with the entire squad once the point man makes contact? Instead, try running the point man back to where everyone is in cover and on overwatch. They'll usually charge after the point man and blunder into a barrage of overwatch fire. Anyone who survives will usually be close enough to hit easily, within sniper LOS pre-squad sight, or close enough to easily grenade. :D

Yep.

Actually this is what I tend to do when careful - for example in my normal game. But it feels very cheesy. And overwatch tends to be useless on rookies as well - this is the very first mission after all. But yes, once they have a few levels under their belt things get better.

Mission 2, Argentina has a few aliens around and needs them taken away. Or out.
Let's play a nice game of spot the screw-ups !

Mission 3 - the first downed UFO. I'll actually not add a list of worthwhile moments, since (in my opinion) there where no memorable screw-ups. Boring, I know.



I'll add one thing, though. Finally I was able to put in words a thought about this game that was coursing through my mind the past few days. In principle, most strategy games work on one of two two levels. In computer gaming, these could be called micromanagement and strategic layer. However, most video games only work on one of the two, and more often than not it is the micromanagement game that is emphasized. This does not seem to be true of Xcom. While the move-to-move decisions, positioning with regards to cover etc. is malleable, with an impact on the outcome, the general approach also offers a lot of meaningful choices. For example, I seem to be using a mostly aggressive strategy, constantly advancing and spreading out my troops to cover a lot of ground. In previous games I tended to be more clustered, and trying to stay as defensive as possible, which also works but feels unnatural to me. In other words, decisions need to be mode regarding both layers, and will impact the outcome. This was also a hallmark of the old X-com game. Lovely !
It should be noted that based on postings by others in the general thread I have the impression that this will change later in the game, with one clear strategy emerging and the only decision happening at the micromanagement level. But at least in the beginning, both layers seem to be important and work well, with perhaps a slight emphasis on the strategy, not the micromanagement.

A bomb-disarming mission. I hate those ! Ah well, nothing to be done but win it, I guess. Failure-wise this might be a underwhelming operation, but at least I got to finally choose colors for the whole squad. Of course I clothed them in the most manly colors available. Also, screw camouflage.
Talking strategy, I again go with my aggressive playstyle, advancing continuously. But only enough so that the aliens can feel my presence, so perhaps "passive-aggressive" might be more appropriate. Of course, bomb missions already force this playstyle onto the player. Given that it should fit my preferences well it might seem weird that I do not like them; then again, I generally do not like being funneled into one specific pattern, even if I would chose it myself anyways. Not sure what this says about me.
A third thing - I'll probably go to recording and posting all missions, but only talking about highlights here. So, expect as many postings as before, but with more advancement between the videos.

Mission 6 - "The natural superiority of rocket launchers"
- while my sniper and assault mainly embarrass themselves, heavy and support treat the enemies like minor speed bumps on the road to victory

Mission 7 - 'They can't all be hits"
At least we can finally take along a fifth team member. The rest of the team gives him a crash course in alien manhandling...manhandling of aliens...alienhandling...whatever.
My sniper continues to embrrass himself. So much for training on the gun range - shooting aliens standing on an open plane is just too tricky. Maybe we can convince them to wear targets on their heads in the future ? As proof I offer 10:10. No, he didn't hit anything before that either. The guy is just sad to watch. If you need more proof, watch 16:58, and compare the kills/mission ratio.

Mission 8 - "Small steps"
Remember our rookie from the last one ? Given how much more fun the heavy had there, he decided to make this his career as well. Not surprising, if you ask me. However, the "small steps" are mainly taking by our sniper. He remembers that there might be more to his job then shooting; hitting should be involved at some point as well. So, just for shits and giggles, he does this. Once. And then goes back to his usual routine, waiting for the after mission report to see how well received the hit was. Ok, at the end he hits one more, presumably to remind the audience of his new found abilities.

So how's the Classic campaign coming along, Farnsworth? I just watched your latest video (#11 - the one where Mutons show up) and it looked like the alien guts were definitely outweighing the human ones. ;) It's always interesting to compare notes!

BTW - how much did you customise your soldiers' names? "All Day" is new to me!

At halt at the moment - too much work to continue *sigh*. And I haven't customized the names at all, but yes, that one stands out. A lot. Hopefully I can continue sometime later this week. But good to see someone is interested, thanks !

Look forward to it! And yeah, I was wondering about "All Day" and Axel Weber. ;) If you do decide to customise the names this time 'round, please throw mine into the hat. :D

One thing that jumps out at me, when I watch gameplay videos, is how good XCOM looks in motion. I was leery of the art style when I saw the first few screenshots, but the final game has changed my mind. The odd clipping glitch aside, the animations are smooth and fluid, the colours distinct, and the glam cam as exciting as I'd hoped. Based on what I've seen, Firaxis has really nailed the look of this one.

Ok, uploaded a few more videos. And will try to get around writing something on them one of these days/hours/or something.

This one is a refreshingly short mission; it will take 8:11 of your life to watch this. It is your choice to see if a simple terror mission is worth it. Yes, a terror mission. On my favourite terror mission map – the highway corridor, which is pretty open and allows for setting up nice fields of fire. This mission is mainly notable for the first appearance of Crysalisks in this playthrough. Sadly I am still not performing at optimum, see 4:30 for an example. Overall still easy enough.

After this mission we get a performance evaluation, and influx of money. Yes !

Another shorty, just 6 minutes. Our core team continues to gain experience and rock alien ass. Here we get to fight in a gas station – always nice. And I actually commit one deadly sin, around 1:50. But I do not get punished for it, so all is good. Guess what I mean. Also note my innovative use of a battlescanner at 4:05. And at 5:25 I demonstrate the correct us of a mid-level assault class soldier. Hell yes !
Funny enough, I am vastly more successful than in the first LP, perhaps due to my better start. Losing a lot of soldiers in the beginning game kind of cripples your chances.

Another day, another assault. By now my soldiers are lean, mean killing machines so accomplished at kicking alien butt that even I am scared of them. Yes, even my sniper. As evidence I present 1:15 and following. I also wonder what the hell changed in comparison to game one – next to no deaths, one success after the other, and I am waiting for the other shoe to drop. Although snowballing from early successes seems likely. But at least I am in danger of losing in Geoscape – has anyone noticed why ? If no, maybe 2:15 will help.
Missions by now do get harder, but are still not very challenging. A minor concern is that I have one squad of pros, and no one else is really trained. So from here onward I will try to swap in rookies where possible.
By the way – 8:05 'Man up' ? How inappropriate. And 9:50 – 'All Day', the fearless assault shows off again.

This is the first big one, the one we trained for – assaulting a battleship ! We also took a rookie with us. Action starts at 0:50, with a stunning display of incompetence by my team. Sad, sad, sad. But the signal at around 1:40 gets them back into shape. By the way, I present this as exhibit to anyone who thinks heavies are useless. Snakemen demonstrate at 2:40 why I hate facing them – guaranteed hospital time. While they are otherwise mostly harmless, this fact alone makes them very, very annoying. After the mission I seriously considered painting rookie armor in red from then on, you'll see why at around 4:45. Pseudo creepy, pseudo German doctor comments at 5: 17, with a useless comments. Pretty much par for the course. I think. By 6:20 the initial fight is over. Reloading, healing and general maneuvering commences, punctuated by a lone killshot taken by our sniper. I remember when you were useless, stop showing off ! Fighting starts back in earnest at 8:00. At 9:12 you can see me screwing up – that muton should have died then and there. Again I do not pay a too large price for that, so all is good. One question – at 10:40 I felt I was flanking. Can anyone tell me why not ? The second fight is over at 12:00. While we only lost the one rookie we are in pretty bad shape. No more healthpacks and some soldiers heavily wounded. Any shot will kill them. Still, the mission isn't over yet, we actually haven't made it into the ship yet. My troops slowly advance. But it turns out that we killed nearly everyone; the final opponent appears after 21:35. This is were I cement future problems.

From now on rookies will be marked. Not red but white, in reference to their innocence. Furthermore I resist the temptation to name all of them 'Kenneth'. This mission is actually somewhat boring. There are only a few notable things in here. One is my failure to take the Geoscape problem into account – guessed yet what it is ? In this video there is a very good hint, since I at least try. Got it ? Good ! Perhaps also note (after 3:55) how nonchalant my soldiers are about being flanked by lowly floaters. Badasses will be badasses. And rookies will be rookies.
The final even of note is my use of a shredder rocket at 10:45. It removes a low-health enemy, takes away cover and softens up another one.

'All Day' is back in action – I missed my assault trooper. My only assault trooper. And just in time for a rescue mission, hurray! Which also means annoying snakemen, oh my. For a fun moment watch 6:35. Go team! If you do not yet appreciate battlescanners, watch 7:45. And for random acts of idiocy, go to 8:15 or 9:35. Finally, exhibit A for bad, immersion breaking and gamey design decisions can be seen at 12:00, exhibit B at 15:55.

So, taking a break for now. All missions uploaded so far were played before my break, before the last patch, and before Mind Elementals request to put him in game. There are even three more I haven't uploaded yet. ME, you will join the game at mission 18.
I also just now realized that I did not reply to

I absolutely agree! When I saw the pre-release gameplay vids I was underwhelmed with most design decisions, and the presentation. But watching the game in action is really nice, very well done. And most design choices I was wary of actually turn out to be really good when actually playing. Although I think that a few thing still keep this from being a classic. Mainly the weird AI choices ('drawing aggro') and strange shooting/cover mechanics - no friendly fire anymore ! My main grudge is still the squad size - initially four soldiers makes casualties prohibitive, and the six at later stages are still limiting due to the necessity to have and keep well trained troops by then. In my opinion, six to eight would have been far better.

*shudders* Urgh, that map. That was the one on which most of my squad, including you, died. :( I'm glad you had better luck!

Judging from the glimpses we see of the Geoscape - not enough satellites? I see one over Russia, and your earlier Council report card said you had also coverage over the US and Mexico. That's only three.


Alternately, you still have mostly ballistic weapons this late into the game, meaning perhaps not enough loot from landed/crashed UFOs, meaning not enough UFO interceptions?

Or is it both - unsuccessful interceptions leading to the aliens shooting down your sats?

Nice work (the poor rookie aside!) Bit of a nitpick - are you sure that was a battleship? Dr Vahlen indicated it was an abductor (a "large" UFO), and that UFO's floor plan did resemble the one abductor mission I did.

My experience is that heavies really shine in the early game, while snipers take over that role in the late game. Early on, when your guys are lousy shots and most aliens have 3-4 HP, being able to score at least one near-guaranteed kill (and possibly more) with a rocket is huge. If I hadn't rocketed/grenaded everything in sight during months 1-2, I would not have made it as far as I have. By contrast, snipers require both (a) the Corporal promotion and (b) a decent vantage point to be useful. (a) takes time to achieve, and (b) is very tricky without better armour (I've done it with archangel, but I imagine skeleton would also help). Later on, the 6 damage from the rocket is still useful but not quite so decisive against 10 HP mutons, 14 HP heavy floaters, 20 HP Cyberdiscs, etc; what matters is the high chance of an outright one-shot kill that you can get from a sniper.

10:40 - I think if you had taken one or two more steps to the left you would have flanked that muton. Remember, flanking works off basically 90-degree angles, and to me it looked like your soldier was just offset enough not to receive the bonus.

Will comment on the remaining videos after I watch them!

I would say my main complaint with the game, at this stage, relates to a flaw inherited from the original -- the tedium of playing "hunt the last alien". Your battle #12 is an excellent example of this, and I had a similar problem when assaulting the same UFO. Yes, now we have "Shh! Did you hear that?" to point us in the general direction, but given the extreme inadvisability of dashing into the dark, it can still take a long time to actually reach the source of the noise. This is especially bad in UFO missions, where you have to -- carefully! -- check every last freaking room, and the bigger the UFO, the more annoying this gets. I think the solution might have been to tweak the AI (this relates to your own complaint) so that (a) the fewer and fewer aliens remain on a map, and (b) the more turns elapse, the more aggressive the survivors become, until the last group will seek out the player and launch a banzai charge.

This would solve several problems at once. First, it would still give you an incentive not to dash recklessly - because you wouldn't want the first, previously dormant group to chew you up on their turn. Second, it would make it easier to deal with the last guy. Third, it would make each individual engagement more exciting (because the player would have an incentive to act quickly before alien reinforcements showed up). The risk would be overwhelming the player, so I suppose you'd need to be very careful to avoid this.

I love it ! Especially since no zombie or crysalisk can ever get close to me, with all the long lines of fire available ! Compared to the house/mansion/whatever map, where they can easily get into one turn kill distance from you it is heaven.

At this time I think I had five - two more came online after the report. Between there and mission 17 I got up to eight somewhere . No, not really.

That was just me always forgetting to equip the damn things. Not a problem.

Happened once, with my third satellite. Luckily a replacement was ready a day or so after. So, no.

Oh. Might have been a harvester. But I seemed to remember that it was the UFO searching for more satellites to kill. I am getting old.

I still like them a lot late game - removing cover from a group of aliens is really helpful. Also, in my more advanced (and abandoned) normal game they were routinely saving my ass well past the alien base assault by just opening kill lanes for everyone else.

Which was exactly my problem there - I thought I was at 90-degrees, at least if my soldier would have sidestepped. But it seems thy only do that when behind full cover, or ?

I actually think this is a small thing. With very few exceptions the last alien is easy to find. For example in #12 it is clear that the remaining one is in the final room - the ethereal. Of course I can't just charge, but it slows me down maybe a minute or two ? In the original you could easily spend 5 minutes and more going through all available nooks and crannies. So, definitely there, but minor.

OK, I give up. What is it?

Oh, I still like them! I just don't think they dominate to the same extent they do in the early game (where they racked up most of my kills); now it's the snipers filling that central role for my squad.

That must be it!

Hmm, in that case, it must be a problem with my playstyle. I think it took me something like an hour to clear that abductor map - sometimes battles in New XCOM take me as long as battles in Original X-COM, even though I have fewer units to move. x.x Also, I've been in situations where the last alien (the outsider) turned out not to be the last alien, and it wouldn't be good to be caught in an ambush due to that.

Not a single alien captured alive. Which will continue to be true for the next few missions. At which point enemies are nearly all mutons, which are pretty hard to get. So, not a loss yet, but getting close to a point where continuing will be very hard. And that also means that research time for weapons more decent than laser weapons is (thanks to a focus on engineers) still prohibitively extensive (25+ days for plasma).

Fully agree.

Playstyle ? Perhaps - it might only be my impression, but I think I always play rather careless. Which becomes worse when recording, no clue why. But it might be subjective. However, I only remember one case where an outsider (need to get used to the new names) was not the last guy standing. And in that case the final group seemed to rush me the moment he died, since they came in during my reloading round and were newly uncovered. Probably just coincidence, though. My longest mission so far was perhaps 45 to 60 minutes, and that was the base assault on normal, with me brewing coffees in between. Most missions take 10 to 15.

One more thing - has alien behavior changed in the last patch ? Suddenly it happens a lot more that aliens stumble into sight. I have a second game lagging behind this one, started to get back into the swing of things before I continue recording, and it seems to happen pretty much every mission there. Additionally, I now had it happen two or three times that groups of previously unknown floaters were suddenly spawning among my soldiers. Perhaps they used their special ability to get there, but in all cases they appeared in formation without any animation beside the "new alien group" cutscene.

Operation Severed Savior



Alien abduction mission. It is time we bag us one of them 'xterrestials, so a double meaning if I ever saw one. We fan out, and not a lot happens until 2:30. Thin men appear and one of them immediately vanishes in a puff of heavy weapons logic. Most of our soldiers converge onto the are where the enemy appeared, triggering some floaters. Meanwhile our rookies try to flank, with All Day standing guard to keep them safe.
Our squad shoots it out with the enemy. An actual flanking manneuver at 5:00 uncovers a real threat - Mutons ! Shortly afterwars we are reminded of limitations on rockets. Not only can they miss wildly, they also sufferf rom not beung able to remove all obstructions. Sad day. But out sniper proves the dominance of high level soldiers, getting a one-hit kill on a muton. He continues to perform better and better, hope he reaches the final XP level soon.
7:45 - why does this soldier still carry a standard shotgun ? No wonder she doesn't hit anything - jeez !
After all living enemies are gone, we scrutinize the corner of the map they were in. After a minute or two it becomes clear that no one is left at ground level. So we storm the cabin on top of the largest buildin (11:00). Yes, thin men - cowardly hiding wehile we killed their comrades.But All Day and our support, Hitch, put an end to that. We won, and only sustained minor injuries. Please note the after mission screen.
Our sniper has 7 kills in 4 missions, our heavy 36 in 13, and All Day comes in at 28/14. Pretty impressive numbers, especially the last two.

A short while later we get our monthly evaluation:

But we still haven't abducted any aliens. Luckily we get to try again, this time in France.



Our sniper "Omega" starts by uncovering some floaters with his battle scanner. Shortly afterwards All Day scores the first kill. Floaters always remind me of skeet shooting. The second floater drifts away, and in pursuit we run into a tri of mutons. Omega takes one out, the rest of the team takes care of the other two. Shooting rockets at aliens standing besides cars is just brutal. But of course more mutons appear. Rinse, repeat. All Day tries to get closer to manage a stun shot, when one of them eliminates our other assault tropper. But in return we bag the killer. Our interrogatiom team will have a lot of fun with this guy ! We advance, find three more mutons and start kicking...Omega contributes his own little laser show to go with this. Turn for turn mutons die.Only the last one gives us real trouble - he drives our heavy over the edge, and in panic she shoots at All Day. The muton sees his chance and charges, only to run into the laserbeam of Omegas rifle. All Day retreats heavily wounded. The floater that ran at the start is the only enemy left, at least for a few moments.
The mission is over, alien successfuly abducted !

After acquiring our own living answering machine (for all questions we have related to the invasion) we are sent out to capture an outsider alien. Hurray ! First thing is that we decide that all highest rank personnel will only come along to the crucial missions, while normal ones are used to train up more soldiers as quickly as possible. So, All Day and our Heavy Abby "Richter" Wood stay at home. Instead we take a new recruit and a squaddie heavy, and embark on mission "Crimson Mother".



Funny enough we will assault a landed ufo, so we might as well try capturing this outsider now. Since we have two snipers on this one we immediately spread out to position ourselves on the highest level, at two spread-out locations. Overlapping sniper fields of fire sounds like a good idea to me. To cover our advance we use the available battle scanners. Lovely little machines. Finally, at 4:55, some mutons appear. Omega again demonstrates that yes, mutons can be killed in one shot. The follow-up fight turns some trees into glowing rubble, but stays indecisive for quite some time. Until one wounded muton decides to charge in, ignoring any cover (8:45). Stunning him fails, killing him does not. Our two snipers take out the last one, we reload and continue our assault. Slowly, carefully we make out way to the ufo. At 16:00 we open the entrance forcefield, and spread our troops around it. All under sniper cover. At 17:00 mutons counterattack, but most of them are wounded or killed by a hail of laser beams. Lena Koenig, our new heavy contributes rocket fire, removing some cover and heavily wounding most of the remaining aliens. Then she gets hit by a grenade and plasma fire. Abeunt Lena, followed closely by her killers. Before we can advance we have to do some skeet shooting, but by now this is at best a minor diversion. Then we search the ufo, converging on the comman center (25:10). Goal is to stun the appearing outsider, but our arc thrower has exactly one charge left. And of course we blow it, resulting in a wounded support trooper on our side. Then we kill it. Mission finished.