Carson's Long War (X-COM: EW / LW vignettes)

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pvtbones
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Re: Carson's Long War (X-COM: EW / LW vignettes)

Post by pvtbones »

D:

more reactions after I watch my demise.

*EDIT*

I looked Death in it's ugly ugly face and then shoved a grenade down it's throat, pretty badass for a days work.

also:

Terminal Boy and Bones for team awesome 2014.

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Ferrard Carson
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Re: Carson's Long War (X-COM: EW / LW vignettes)

Post by Ferrard Carson »

pvtbones wrote:I looked Death in it's ugly ugly face and then shoved a grenade down it's throat, pretty badass for a days work.
That you did - and you pulled off some seriously impressive shots. Seems like the Marksman Rifle really suits you!
pvtbones wrote:also: Terminal Boy and Bones for team awesome 2014.
Not gonna lie, you and Terminal have been making some pretty cool and clutch plays in this campaign.

And now for Part II of Operation Silent Savior:

-----

--CONTINUED--

Strike Team Alpha:
  • LT. Aleksandr "Juggernaut" Novikov (Gunner)
  • SGT Terminal "Batman" Boy (Assault)
  • CPL Ashley "Chief" Williams (Infantry)
  • LCPL Patricia Martinez (Medic)
  • SPEC Fiona Morrison (Scout)
  • SPEC Hans Mulder (Rocketeer)
  • PFC Andrey Ignatyev (Rookie)
Carlton Ranch, 5 mi. northwest of Jetmore, Kansas
LZ Orel, 0142 Hours, May 16

This is how I die, was my first thought. A tentacled horror the likes of which I have never seen in my darkest nightmares, swarming through the air toward my face as I took my first steps out of the LZ.

My second thought was, Fuck that! Distantly I could hear someone crying out, “Seeker!”

It was still ten meters away when I pulled the trigger. My lasgun belched a vicious lance of ruby light and stabbed into the seeker’s side. A gout of flame jetted from the monstrosity and it kept coming, but its unpredictable, eratic movements turned into a graceful ballistic arc that terminated in a hail of energy from Lieutenant Novikov’s autolaser.

The seeker’s smoldering wreckage skimmed over my head and crashed into the ground as Novikov hauled his weapon back around. “Guns up,” the lieutenant said. “Stay close and watch each other’s backs! Morrison, pull back from that flank, let him come to us!”

To our left, the Scot replied, “Yes lieutenant, I—Wait!”

“Morrison, do you-- Terminal!” Novikov looked at my team leader, his command unspoken but understood.

“Andy, on me!” Terminal shouted as he hefted his shotgun and took off running towards Morrison's last known location. In my left ear, I heard the distorted tones of our commander at Zander HQ: “Be advised, second seeker has engaged Specialist Morrison.”

Terminal disappeared behind the corner and I heard the blast of his shotgun as I turned and brought him into view. Stray pellets were bouncing everywhere – his shot must have glanced off the tentacled monstrosity.

It was thrashing around in a ball of confusion, but I could see that it had one mechanical tentacle wrapped around Morrison’s throat, and its erratic movements were very obviously meant to snap the Specialist’s neck like a twig – it was a miracle that she hadn’t been killed already. I brought my lasgun to bear and suddenly my sights were filled with nothing but Morrison’s terrified face.

Her screaming visage vanished just as quickly and she was rammed headfirst into the side of the silo hard enough to leave a dent. Terminal’s shotgun belched again, striking true at the wriggling terror, and a tentacle spun off, severed at its base. It curled and twitched, still wrapped around Morrison’s neck, as the seeker snarled at Terminal and launched itself in the air, its “mouth” opening to reveal a wicked looking gun barrel, glowing green.

My shot was clear, and I took it. The mouth must have been unarmored, for the lasgun cored straight through the seeker and emerged out the top of its head. The wreckage went ballistic and came crashing down to the ground not five feet from where Morrison was unwinding the severed tentacle and struggling to her feet, dazed from her brush with death.

Terminal squared her shoulders and placed her lasgun back in her hands. “Tough it out, Morrison – we gotta see this through.”

“Right with you, Sarge,” the Scot replied between coughs. She kicked the still-active tentacle away from where it was trying to wrap around her leg.

“Andy,” Terminal turned to me. “Nice shooting.”

The wreckage smoldered at my feet. Not ten feet away, Novikov was kicking the other seeker over, bits and pieces falling off that first thoroughly-shredded automaton. I’d killed one and helped with the other.

The lieutenant said, “Negative contact.”

Terminal responded, “Agreed. All clear.”

“Were those scouts?” I asked Novikov. “Did they get off a warning?”

“These types don’t seem to communicate – Dr. Vahlen says they’re fully automated – no sentience or cooperation at all, just operational parameters. Trust me, you’ll know when an X-ray calls out to the other ETs.” Novikov turned back North, venting coolent from his autolaser as he called in to HQ. “Zander HQ, Strike Six. Orders?”

The commander spoke from our left ear again. “Strike Six, Zander HQ – UAV has the UFO on scope one-zero-zero meters north, and there’s a meld signature to your front left. Recommend you split your squad. Secure the meld on the left and clear the barn to your right. Use the cover of the barn to sneak closer to the UFO without alerting any crew inside.”

“Concur, Zander HQ. Wilco.” To us: “Terminal, take Black Team up to the meld canister and secure it for the salvage team. You know the drill. Yellow, on me and stack up on the barn.”

I paced Terminal, Fiona following behind, rubbing her neck where bruising was just starting to emerge. Behind us, I heard a muted, “3… 2… 1… Turn!”

The meld canister was like the ones I’d seen in the training vids, pulsing with a strange alien energy. Terminal looked at us and said, “Watch” as he nimbly plucked something off of the rotating top. Instantly, the blast shield atop the canister splayed open like a flower, revealing a glowing gold crystal. It pulsed and morphed in strange, regimented ways unlike anything I’d ever seen.

“And that’s how you do it,” Terminal said. “Now let’s see if they’ve gotten the party started.”

Yellow had cleared the interior of the barn, and as we jogged back over, Novikov was lifting open a tilting window for Mulder to climb through, rocket launcher and all. The thing clanked against the frame, the muted sound seeming to echo forever through the empty building. He paused in the open ground between the barn and the UFO and glanced around – we held our breath.

Clear Mulder signed to us. The lieutenant gestured us forward, and we each climbed through the window as quietly as we could, padding forward in the no-man’s land until I felt the strangely reassuring bulk of alloy hull cold against my left arm. In front of me, Martinez the medic was eying another meld canister to our front. To my rear, Mulder was eying another meld canister himself on the other side of the UFO. I glanced around, nervous. What if an alien saw us now? What if they’re over there in the tractors?

Then hopefully I wouldn’t feel a thing. They said that the plasma weaponry burned away the nerve connections so cleanly that the wounds were painless. The screaming I’d heard before from the infirmary seemed to indicate otherwise, but whatever made me most comfortable with the idea of impending death was what I would focus on. Plasma is painless. Plasma is painless.

A hand patted my shoulder, and I did the same to Martinez. We shifted forward – I took the corner and watched to the right as she padded forward, scanning to her left into the UFO itself.

Nothing.

She reached the meld and did the same flourish Terminal had done, and the canister flowered in its unnatural beauty. I glanced behind me and saw Mulder disarm his canister too, the lieutenant’s autolaser and ‘Chief’s heavy lasgun keeping a weather eye on the proceedings. All was going well.

And then it wasn’t.

I could feel something go wrong. It chilled my bones as I felt an unearthly wail sweep through my body that I couldn’t hear, and time slowed as I felt ‘Chief’ jog me into movement.

Mulder’s light lasgun came up in slow motion, as though coated in molasses. Novikov’s mouth was screaming something as his autolaser spooled up, and Terminal with laspistol drawn was barging past me into the UFO shouting at me, “Go long!” with Fiona close behind.

Mulder’s warning reached me as my legs pumped into a sprint. I charged headlong into the front of the UFO and the world exploded with the blinding flare of energy weapons.

“Outsider!”

--TO BE CONTINUED--

-----

X-Com Procedures: Seeker Analysis

Seekers are a unique element of the alien arsenal with breathtaking computational and behavioral heuristics. Whereas aliens tend to be interrupted performing other duties, the Seeker is a vicious, single-minded machine, dedicated to the neutralization of enemy combatants. Able to quickly assess and sort threats, Seekers will move unpredictably towards any X-Com operatives, prioritizing our men and women over civilians, police and even non-X-Com military personnel. Seekers appear to have a highly accurate understanding of human anatomy, for despite their relatively light mass, their preferred method of attack is through gruesome manipulation of limbs, joints and the human neck. A Seeker will latch onto its target with one or more tentacles and then attempt to disable the operative by snapping bones and breaking joints. In the process, their movements are highly erratic and unpredictable, rendering them difficult to bring under effective fire without simultaneously endangering the grappled operative.

:clint: ~ Ferrard
"Take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turnin' of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' before she keels... makes her home."

Black Mamba
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Re: Carson's Long War (X-COM: EW / LW vignettes)

Post by Black Mamba »

Even though I do like the videos, amazing narrating skills as always, Ferrard!
I don't know if you mentionned it already, but if you did, I missed it, what level do you play on?

Obviously, as I'm an idiot, I launched my first LW campaign on Classic. I'm a fair bit further in (November now, IIRC), and I'm mostly getting my ass kicked at this point. Those Sectopods, man. No strict screening is kinda fun, though. Add some more managing of your troops.
On another note, might not be of interest for you right now, but for others or your future campaigns, I play with a custom Name List that contains pretty much everybody I played Arma with in Folk and FA. Has the added bonus of having all my soldiers named in ways that I recognize.
Here it is: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3uvsa3s44nyo4 ... t.ini?dl=0
Note that as it was made for my own entertainment, it does not contain people who joined the effort since I stopped playing, so since January I guess. Creating such a list is as easy as going there and pasting names, though.
Here is a .txt with all the names I used: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sxfa9xvj9p357 ... t.txt?dl=0

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Ferrard Carson
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Re: Carson's Long War (X-COM: EW / LW vignettes)

Post by Ferrard Carson »

Black Mamba wrote:Even though I do like the videos, amazing narrating skills as always, Ferrard!
I don't know if you mentioned it already, but if you did, I missed it, what level do you play on?
I'm really glad you enjoy it, Mamba! Do you want a trooper in my lineup? If so, just let me know what class! Currently there are no named: Gunners, Infantry, Snipers, Engineers or Medics.

And I'm running Normal Difficulty. Normal LW seems to feel nicely balanced to me - X-Com can still come out on top pretty reliably, but everything still feels just ever so slightly out-of-control
Black Mamba wrote:Obviously, as I'm an idiot, I launched my first LW campaign on Classic. I'm a fair bit further in (November now, IIRC), and I'm mostly getting my ass kicked at this point. Those Sectopods, man. No strict screening is kinda fun, though. Add some more managing of your troops.
Yeah, I'm not looking forward to my first Sectopod encounter :( And I play with Strict Screening as my only SW option - I hate recruits with below-average accuracy, and LW's fatigue means every troop is necessary (so I can't just fire all the ones who can't shoot straight).
Black Mamba wrote:On another note, might not be of interest for you right now, but for others or your future campaigns, I play with a custom Name List that contains pretty much everybody I played Arma with in Folk and FA. Has the added bonus of having all my soldiers named in ways that I recognize.
Here it is: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3uvsa3s44nyo4 ... t.ini?dl=0
Note that as it was made for my own entertainment, it does not contain people who joined the effort since I stopped playing, so since January I guess. Creating such a list is as easy as going there and pasting names, though.
Here is a .txt with all the names I used: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sxfa9xvj9p357 ... t.txt?dl=0
Awesome resource! I considered whether I wanted to try a custom name database, but I decided against - the named soldiers are just special compared to everyone else. It's hard to notice, but everyone's got a standard hat - Rookies have the baseball cap, Squaddies and Lance Corporals have fritz helmets, Corporals and above have the beanie, and officers have the radio headset. Only named characters get to deviate from them, so if you see someone with a head of hair, they're one of us :eng101:

~ Ferrard
"Take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turnin' of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' before she keels... makes her home."

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Ferrard Carson
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Re: Carson's Long War (X-COM: EW / LW vignettes)

Post by Ferrard Carson »

I've played ahead a bit - I've got two small-UFO missions in the recording buffer, a terror mission writeup starring the ever-popular-with-chryssalids Bones, and I've played my first EXALT mission.

Coincidentally, I've gone into the .ini and performed one last tweak. EXALT operatives should not be as hardy as my troops, let alone a damn Muton. Dat HP is going all the way down.

Regardless, enjoy this last writeup for PFC Andrey Ignatyev's first ever mission!

-----

Strike Team Alpha:
  • LT. Aleksandr "Juggernaut" Novikov (Gunner)
  • SGT Terminal "Batman" Boy (Assault)
  • CPL Ashley "Chief" Williams (Infantry)
  • LCPL Patricia Martinez (Medic)
  • SPEC Fiona Morrison (Scout)
  • SPEC Hans Mulder (Rocketeer)
  • PFC Andrey Ignatyev (Rookie)
Carlton Ranch, 5 mi. northwest of Jetmore, Kansas
Crashed Alien Scoutcraft, 0156 Hours, May 16

The interior of the UFO was ablaze with the glow of lasgun fire streaming from Lieutenant Novikov’s autolaser. Beneath the barrage of ruby beams, the Outsider shifted and squirmed behind an alloy recess, very obviously stunned by the sheer volume of fire. Terminal Boy was shouting at me, “Andy, go long!” as my boots pounded against the deck. His laspistol was trained and ready, waiting for the Outsider’s move. I shouldered past ‘Chief’ and her heavy lasgun, similarly fixed at a target that wasn’t yet presenting itself.

My nerves were singing something ominous and infused with fear. I felt some terrible compulsion from beyond a veil I’d never even known existed. Rescue! it screamed, and suddenly I knew as I saw the Outsider flinch from the hail of lasers over its head: It was afraid.

The thought struck me as absurd. Outsiders were energy constructs, Dr. Vahlen’s literature said. There were no neural structures, no electronic logic circuits to guide its thoughts; no sign that it had thoughts at all. Yet here I was, hearing its scream of terror and its call to its crew. These beings of pure energy, devastatingly powerful and resilient creatures who terrify our veterans.

We frighten them.

Distantly, I was watching the entire scene unfold: Lieutenant Novikov pinned the outsider in place. Terminal Boy and ‘Chief’ were ready and waiting to cut down the creature if it tried to move. Morrison was at our six, checking a direct UAV feed as she covered our flank. Mulder and Martinez were too far away to take part. Where did I fit in?

It came to me as I heard ‘Chief’s voice in my head. It’s just like your special forces training, Andrey – fire superiority and aggression is key. Aliens look all sorts of freaky to us, but they panic and die just like we do if you pour on the fire and overwhelm them.

I kept going. Go long! had been Terminal’s order, and I intended to follow it. In slow motion, the angles of the room changed as I charged forward, screaming at the top of my lungs. I slid into place behind a console with strange talismans flickering on its surface and hauled my lasgun around, where it was dawning on the alien that I had a clean shot at it.

Panic rose in my veins, but it wasn’t mine. A sense of fulfilled dread rolled up my spine and I watched the alien stagger to its feet in barely concealed terror.

It was subsumed in a blaze of fury – dozens of laser bolts smashed into the creature, burning off small craters everywhere. A lance of ruby emerged from Terminal Boy’s laspistol and snapped the creature’s rifle in half.

‘Chief’ finally put the Outsider out of its misery when she cored its chest with a blast from her heavy lasgun. I blinked away a blinding flash of light and the sound of a thunderclap and the alien was no more. The air shimmered where its very existence had lost coherence and evaporated into thermal energy.

My rifle came to a rest where the Outsider had been standing a half-second ago. It was over.

“It’s not over,” the lieutenant said. “Martinez?”

The medic was sliding into position behind a ruined side panel near the front door. “Yeah, he got off a call.”

Lieutenant Novikov nodded and vented his autolaser again. “Which means the rest of the crew is falling back to the ship now. Zander HQ, this is Strike Six.”

“Strike Six, this is Zander HQ, go ahead.”

“Zander HQ, we’ve secured the UFO…” I tuned out the lieutenant’s chatter and joined Martinez at the panel.

“Martinez,” I said. “Why’d the lieutenant ask you that?”

She answered without turning, “They briefed you about it in training, didn’t they, rookie? Every human hears the Outsider signals at some level, but it’s especially strong for certain people. The eggheads in Research are still trying to figure out why, but whatever the reason, I’m one of them."

"'Rescue'," I muttered.

That got her attention. She turned away from her lasgun sights and eyed me up and down. “You can hear the words?”

“More like feel them,” I said.

She held my gaze for a second, then smiled. “There’s hope for you yet, Andrey.”

“…concur, Strike Six. Make it happen. Zander HQ out,” the commander finished in my left ear. In my right, Lieutenant Novikov came through again.

“Listen up,” he said. “We’ve got ETs coming in from the east. Command says they’ve got shit for cover out there, so Yellow Team minus Mulder will make a stand here and hold the front door. Mulder, you’re with Black Team for firepower. Terminal, take Black Team back to the barn, then punch east and take the X-Rays from the side. The tractors should give you good position, but use your judgment. Questions?”

Terminal slid a new shell into his shotgun and racked the action in reply. “Yeah boss, want us to leave you any?”

“You know how ornery ‘Chief’ gets when she doesn’t have something to shoot at. It’s your call, ‘Batman’.”

“Decisions, decisions, decisions… Black Team, Mulder, vamanos!”

The farm was alive with sounds in a way it hadn’t been before we entered the UFO. Fences creaked, and the silos across the courtyard groaned in the wind as I padded up against a densely packed bale of hay. A distant chittering floated into our ears like the sound of bickering squirrels. Sectoids.

“Stay close,” Terminal said. “Mulder, cover from here. Everyone else, follow me.”

A gout of red light to our left announced contact. I couldn’t see what they were shooting at, but more ruby beams lanced out into the darkness and no flashes of green came back their way. I could only take that as a good sign.

Halt, Terminal signaled as we rounded a corner. I scanned to our left into the darkness. There! A small, grey alien with what looked like a toy strapped to its wrist scampered into view, ducking beneath a blast of lasers. Fire from what was clearly Novikov’s autolaser drove another Sectoid back off into the darkness. The first alien was still in sight though – the Sectoid lifted his arm, and I plucked a grenade from my belt, ready to throw.

Something moved again in the corner of my eye. I flicked my attention to the right as I heard the snap-whoosh of Mulder’s rocket launcher. The dying scream of a Sectoid echoed in time with the rocket’s explosion as I focused on the movement that had caught my eye.

A third and fourth Sectoid were watching us from the tractors directly ahead.

“Black team, charge, kill ‘em all!” Terminal yelled as he pounded forward, shotgun cradled in his hands. He sprinted past the near tractor and dove behind a second one further east. His shotgun roared, and I could see yellow blood spray out from behind the farming equipment.

Just behind him, Fiona pulled her trigger, and an all-too-bright flash erupted from her lasgun. “Shit! Shit, shit, shit!” Fiona was cursing a storm as her gun hissed and vented coolant from a crack in its barrel.

The grenade left my hand. It clanked off the far tractor and fell out of sight.

A wet thump sprayed fragments everywhere but up, sparking off the sides of the tractors, and a pregnant pause followed, even as Fiona smacked her lasgun with her hands. “Fucking fragile piece of shit!” she muttered.

I moved over to her and patted her shoulder as I scanned to our left. “Fiona, grab the laspistol off my belt. Better than your ballistic, and I know it works.”

“Thanks, rookie,” she said. I felt the weight leave my holster.

A ruby lasgun beam shot out from the door of the UFO, ending in an eruption of superheated steam and ichor. In the field, the Sectoid who’d fled Lieutenant Novikov’s fire collapsed into the dirt.

“Andy,” Terminal was saying. “Look at this, you landed the grenade right under the poor bastard.”

He was right. The Sectoid’s corpse was utterly shredded, the pieces almost unrecognizable. “You told us to kill them all. I felt it was appropriate.”

“Shit, you can be my grenadier any day!” he said.

“Strike Six, this is Zander HQ, come in.”

“Zander HQ, Strike Six. Go ahead.”

“UAV recon shows negative enemy contact, good job Strike Team Alpha.” Terminal fist-bumped Fiona as the commander continued. “Establish a perimeter and keep the crash site secure. Salvage teams are spooling up now, ETA 2 hours.”

Carlton Ranch, 5 mi. northwest of Jetmore, Kansas
LZ Orel, 0347 Hours, May 16

We were finally off duty. The first Osprey had been loaded with a squad of X-Com security personnel in skyblue fatigues. Their ballistic weapons were useless against the aliens we faced now, but they were sufficient to take over site security from us. You didn’t need a lasgun to warn off curious civilians, after all.

More Ospreys and a whole convoy of flatbed trucks followed. American National Guard troops. One of Dr. Shen’s senior advisors set up a command post for the salvage operation in the nearby house where Martinez and I had found the farm’s owners. Dead. Our kevlar and X-SAPI plates were hardly much armor against plasma fire, but it was very obviously better than civilian clothes.

Big Sky lifted off ten minutes later. I watched out the porthole as engineers swarmed over the UFO, cutting torches slicing huge chunks of alloy off the spacecraft and cranes lifting them onto flatbed trucks for transport back to base. The ride was smooth, and some eight times faster than those lumbering Ospreys had been. I closed my eyes.

X-Com "Zander" HQ - Cheyanne Mountain, Colorado
Hanger Prime, 0403 hours, May 16

We arrived back at base to our turn in quarantine. A tent was set up from the back of the skyranger to the isolation door. Biohazard suits went into the skyranger with heavy duty alkaloid solutions after we left.

Isolation started with an equipment room. We disrobed, our lasguns, armor, equipment, everything placed in disinfectant hoods.

The shower was functional – no curtains that would have to be decontaminated, just bare showerheads and a drain in the center of the room. We didn’t mind. The man or woman skinning by you now was the soldier you trusted to keep you alive two hours ago. You can’t ever be more naked than you are in battle.

A conference room of metal tables and metal chairs was our next stop. Central Officer Bradford appeared on the screen at one end of the room and began a remote interview from somewhere else in base. More faces on the screen showed almost all the observers. I noticed the commander wasn’t on the screen – not that it meant he or she wasn’t watching.

The after-action report started our five days in quarantine. As with the Strike Teams ahead of us, none of us ever came down with alien measles.

-----

X-Com Procedures: Recruiting Requirements

To be selected for the X-Com initiative, a potential soldier must meet many requirements, some overt, and some not. Raw combat-oriented skill and ability is just the bare minimum. Once the minimum cut of ability is passed, recruits are then screened for a variety of other factors, including, but not limited to: high technical aptitude, prior scientific training, battlefield adaptability, lack of national loyalty, high political objectivity, psychological hardiness and a moderate to high level of sociopathy. Some of these requirements would create public and private furor if revealed, but they are very necessary. An X-Com soldier must be more loyal to humanity as a whole than their home country, hometown and even their own family. As proven during the recent attack on Hong Kong, an X-Com soldier who hesitates in shooting a biologically compromised civilian or comrade may very well doom the mission. The extra-terrestrial threat demands nothing but the best of humanity in all aspects. Our fifty-odd troopers must be the best and brightest, for they are the souls who stand between mankind and total extinction.

:clint: ~ Ferrard
"Take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turnin' of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' before she keels... makes her home."

Terminal Boy
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Re: Carson's Long War (X-COM: EW / LW vignettes)

Post by Terminal Boy »

Having just completed my first Covert Operative extract mission against EXALT, I was also a little shocked to see that the basic EXALT soldier's waistcoat and chalkstripe trousers gave them 8 HP...

Fortunately, I had my best sniper sitting upon a tasty elevation bonus while the rest of the squad had laser weapons or a shotgun.

My Covert Agent had Holo-Targetting, so even her misses helped the rest of the team. Thanks to 2nd wave option Red Mist and EXALT soldier's tendency to relocate instead of shooting, it didn't take long to flank them with my Assaulter and shotgun the <REDACTED> out of them.

Loving the Strike Team Alpha Chronicles!

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Ferrard Carson
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Re: Carson's Long War (X-COM: EW / LW vignettes)

Post by Ferrard Carson »

Terminal Boy wrote:Having just completed my first Covert Operative extract mission against EXALT, I was also a little shocked to see that the basic EXALT soldier's waistcoat and chalkstripe trousers gave them 8 HP...
If you want to bring them down to sanity, here's how:
  • Find your LW files
  • Open "DefaultGameCore.ini"
  • Search for "EXALT"
  • Modify HP accordingly
Keep in mind that LW automatically adds HP according to tech progression.
Terminal Boy wrote:Fortunately, I had my best sniper sitting upon a tasty elevation bonus while the rest of the squad had laser weapons or a shotgun.

My Covert Agent had Holo-Targetting, so even her misses helped the rest of the team. Thanks to 2nd wave option Red Mist and EXALT soldier's tendency to relocate instead of shooting, it didn't take long to flank them with my Assaulter and shotgun the <REDACTED> out of them.
For me, it was an infantry who kept one-shotting the guys who dropped in. Street-level dudes were a little tougher to root out, but hidden Sapper Engineers on Civilian maps = hilarious cover destruction.
Terminal Boy wrote:Loving the Strike Team Alpha Chronicles!
Awesome! I've got a video or two to make, then it's Strike Team Bravo's moment in the limelight, since Alpha is on call for getting you out of enemy territory!

~ Ferrard
"Take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turnin' of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' before she keels... makes her home."

Black Mamba
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Joined: Sun May 27, 2012 12:11 pm

Re: Carson's Long War (X-COM: EW / LW vignettes)

Post by Black Mamba »

Ferrard Carson wrote:Do you want a trooper in my lineup? If so, just let me know what class! Currently there are no named: Gunners, Infantry, Snipers, Engineers or Medics.
Why not! I currently have a soft spot for gunners. Might have to do with the neverending reaction shots, though.


[quote=""Ferrard Carson"]
Yeah, I'm not looking forward to my first Sectopod encounter :( [/quote]

Why, they're fun!
http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/262 ... 9303E6737/
Hello, there! Piece of cake!
http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/262 ... 53426A689/
Oops, looks like daddy's home.

At which point I just went "Nope" and closed the game. Guess I'm gonna have to back the hell up, no way I'm killing that thing. They're immune to fire, more or less immune to disabling shot (seeing as it's their secondary weapon that hurts anyway), and that thing has pretty much every ability you don't want it to have. Ready for anything, Light'em up, Reactive sensors...

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