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Ahhh, activated every pod at once after halfway through your turn. Ok yeah, that's tragedy indeed.

Agree. GTS training should go down
+ First few soldiers should have Commander choice incorporated.
There is no regrets in save scumming class only annoyance . I can play with 75 aim Grenadier but then who is commander ?
Me retarded - This 18 mobility rookie should be Gunner (when I will get this mobility again ?).

Me probably not retarded (can't prove that) some close range class like Shinobi or Assault or even Ranger actually everything other than Gunner or Sniper. And I do not need to prove my sanity to Avenger crew or be mocked by Advent or birds.

Tac1 wrote:Part of why I use Commander's Choice.

I always play with Commander's Choice.

Another victim
Recover Item GOp, extremely light, easy going all the way, I activate the last two pods voluntarily because I have shinobi and assault ready to go (up Close) with gunner and Grenadier backup. Noice.
So I do an incredibly satisfying Play by sending my assault up on the Roof of a one Story Building and trench gunning two Advent Stone dead. Noice. Hail of bullets leaves the Scout with 1HP and my Grenadier flashbangs both the almost dead Scout and the Advent gunner that is left.

And then that god damn Scout hits my assault for 3, through red fog, disorient and half cover, and the flashbanged gunner hits him for 7 up Close (probably had some vicinity aim malus) and kills him.

Thank you, game. I love you too.

I start caring less and less. Ever since I started to not reload when shit like this happens enough of me has died inside so I don't even throw a fit anymore. One more dead soldier, what's the difference? I will be dropping nukes on my own troops no Problem in no time.

Code Black

This was the last time I did a 2-man Infiltration

Rescue VIP (the one where you are already uncloaked and ready to go with the VIP)
Made some good decisions. Tried one side, was blocked, hugged the other side of the map and made it to the vicinity of the Building with evac undetected. There, muton + Advent blocked the Approach. No choice, had to move.

Found out the hard way that command and oscar mike don't work for VIPs.

OH WELL

So VIP was Standing out in the open. I decided to not let him die like an idiot. Sliced the Advent with one shinobi, officer shinobi commanded him to flashbang muton. Muton misses, another Advent pod activates, as well as a 3-viper pod. We run at the top of the Building. First, Viper uncanningly flanks the cloaked officer and reveals him, Shooting him into bleeding out status.

I decide that there is no way I can save him and run into cover near evac Point (couldn't quite reach it because poison) with both VIP and shinobi.
VIP gets flanked and killed through glass Roof (oh I love those urban greenhouses), while shinobi was set on fire by an Event unknown to me and dies to poison + burn next round.

I shrugged and moved on

Honestly I'm at a point where I basically want things to go south so I can test new situations for a guide project I'm planning.

I've narrowed it down to:

- Reloading out of bugs and UI errors. Also I want saves to submit to the bug forum. E.g. Liberation can break some missions from loading.
- Misclicks, and I try to replay exactly what happened earlier.
- Testing new interactions: how will this rocket interact with this kind of terrain? What debuffs disable a Muton's combatives? Etc.
- Testing missions I'd otherwise abandon.

Dwarfling wrote:Honestly I'm at a point where I basically want things to go south so I can test new situations for a guide project I'm planning.

I've narrowed it down to:

- Reloading out of bugs and UI errors. Also I want saves to submit to the bug forum. E.g. Liberation can break some missions from loading.
- Misclicks, and I try to replay exactly what happened earlier.
- Testing new interactions: how will this rocket interact with this kind of terrain? What debuffs disable a Muton's combatives? Etc.
- Testing missions I'd otherwise abandon.

Sounds cool! Educate the Nation.

I don't have ironman enabled because I want to reload if some bug/crash would kill my campaign, or if I made a very nasty misclick, running to the open etc. Hasn't happened yet though. Otherwise I don't reload anything. I play on Veteran so the game so far has been easy enough, and I haven't in fact lost any soldiers, only 3 rebels in haven spy missions. My roster is close to 100 soldiers, close to 20 at tech sarge or better, so I could take some deaths and still continue the campaign with good odds of beating it.

But then I had to break my pseudo-ironman playthrough.

I had my first invasion happen and I did not know what to expect. The text box at the start of the mission said that I should destroy the alien beacon, and I should also save my resistance civilians. I ran to a civilian but it turned out to not count towards the amount of civvies rescued. OK so that's a needle in a haystack, because there are plenty of non-resistance civilians on the map. I guess you can't point out which actually matter? Is it worth spending time saving them?

That was not a big deal after all. But when I encountered enemies, the reinforcements started coming every turn, in increasing numbers. The beacon was very far away, and there were enemy pods scattered around the map as well. At one point I faced enemies from three directions, when a reinforcement pod dropped behind me and a map pod ran to me from the right, when I was fighting two small pods in front of me.

I had 10 good soldiers (or 9+spark), so I was able to take care of most of the opposition, even after a reinforcement of 8 enemies dropped near me. But the map was so scattered with bodies that my sound started to break up, and FPS dropped. After this 8 man pod the next reinforcements were, dunno, at least 12 enemies if not more, and I wasn't near the beacon, and there was still a regular pod in the map that also ran to the fight. I knew I wouldn't be able to handle those enemies and move towards the beacon at the same time (probably not even if I concentrated just to finish the enemies). I knew the next reinforcements would kill me anyway, and the game was so annoying to operate due to low FPS and breaking sound, that I restarted the mission. This crashed the game, and I then took a reload from the geoscape to start the mission again with new map layout so that I couldn't take advantage of my knowledge where the initial pods were.

Anyway, what I should have done had I known better, and what I did in the next iteration, is to go straight to the beacon and go forward at least with some units so that you can destroy it in time. In the first attempt I wasted too much time shooting the enemies, rescuing civilians, and staying at the same spot. Then in the next attempt I just ignored the civvies until they were on the right on your path to the objective. After a few reinforcement pods the mission becomes super hard and then impossible, so nothing matters but destroying the beacon. The next try was much easier and I finished it with a few light wounds. If the yellow text said: "Just get the beacon destroyed ASAP and ignore everything else or you will lose", who knows if I would have been able to finish it in one try.

By the way, do the reinforcements in invasions start dropping only after I encounter the first enemy pod, or will they start dropping after a few turns always? There is no concealment except for Phantom soldiers.

If I mess things up I restart the whole mission so if I reload it's usually an early activation out of stupidity or impatience.
Yesterday I had two Haven Spy missions in a row. The first one went so well that on the second mission I activated the second pod with the faceless a little too uncautious. Because of loot, of course. I reloaded after the fifth faceless transformed. I was like "Oh, there are two this time...oh, wait, three...what?...WTF!?!".

I hate faceless with a passion. If I was sitting next to a faceless on a plane, I would open the emergency exit dooming us all just to get rid of the faceless.

HQ assault, triggered 3 pods in close chronological proximity, grenadier flanked and shot, gunner shot for 7 damage by a heavily wounded viper through full cover
By all means a tech should be dead as well but I revived him from bleeding out status
Ugh

I feel like playing honest will ruin my campaign in the end

I just reloaded to a save 3 in-game hours ago in the strategy layer because I forgot to set a region back to full intel. Fortunately there was no mission inbetween. I'm becoming obsessive with not missing a day of optimised intel on the strategy layer.

Psieye wrote:I just reloaded to a save 3 in-game hours ago in the strategy layer because I forgot to set a region back to full intel. Fortunately there was no mission inbetween. I'm becoming obsessive with not missing a day of optimised intel on the strategy layer.

Sounds unhealthy, but I can relate. I restarted a campaign when I noticed that I did not buy Vulture way back when it became available. I did not have supply troubles on that save.

Are there other GTS upgrades that are useful? I never bothered with any of them. I figured why buy one of those if I can buy a full advanced outfit for one of my soldiers instead?

Phaseless wrote:Are there other GTS upgrades that are useful? I never bothered with any of them. I figured why buy one of those if I can buy a full advanced outfit for one of my soldiers instead?

Wet Works: x2 EXP on kills. Sort-of essential to push an ace towards a key perk faster. For example, an early TSGT assault by keeping him wound-free and feeing him Wet Works boosted kills becomes ridiculous.

There is argument in buying 2~3 early EXO suits (from EXO-before-Laser) instead of rushing out Vulture + Wet Works. Or getting Psionics up first. But if you get your GTS up by the time you get your first Sgt, you might not even have the research (or alloy/elerium) for good gear. Certainly you should have GTS up before you hit Mag if you get Laser first.

Vulture pays for itself eventually (excess elerium cores and other stuff), but it can take a while. It does however help a lot in getting your "gun soldiers" better equipped, aka. magazines and autoloaders. I prefer to build Power Relay > Resistance Comm first tho, because I think getting the 4th and 5th region is more important since your home region eventually becomes unusable for GOps missions because of Liberation or high strenght.

GTS is one of the first things I build. Wet works I actually did buy quite some time ago, just forgot. Since I amassed nice amounts of loot rather quickly I figured vulture is not worth the dough. But maybe it is.

Certainly Vulture pays for itself quicker when the Force level rises, as better enemies drop better loot. A lucky Lib 3 or PoI for +1 contact will shift the equation but assuming they don't happen it's very sensible to prefer building Res Comm.

Certainly, wet work and vulture is always the first 2 GTS upgrade I buy in every campaign, no doubt. They are too good to be missed.
For the others... well, they are not so good and that is why I always realize there are still upgrade purchasable after I spent all my supplies buying all the flashy new gear (EXO/spider suit, Mag/Coil guns), and say to myself 'may be next time'

I don't see so much value in vulture, mostly because it makes most sense to pick it at a time when you are most pressed for Money.
I maintain 5 Teams in my current campaign mid August and it rarely happens that I can't equip the 5th Team at least with the cheapest weapon mods available. I'd mostly Need PCS but on that front I got my most important Units covered as well.
When it would have made sense to pick vulture, at the beginning of the game, there is so much other stuff that seems more important. GTS, AWC, upgrading weapons and armor, resistance comms, power relay... literally everything is more important at that time than getting a bit more loot.

I find the real benefit to vulture is the extra elerium core drops, and being able to sell them on the black market.

In both my last two campaigns the black market happened to want elerium cores a few weeks after purchasing vulture. Easily made my money back and was a nice boost to early game economy.

TrainInVain wrote:I find the real benefit to vulture is the extra elerium core drops, and being able to sell them on the black market.

In both my last two campaigns the black market happened to want elerium cores a few weeks after purchasing vulture. Easily made my money back and was a nice boost to early game economy.

Hm I forgot about those. You're right, within a few missions you get back the cost of vulture.

Tried to path my Snapshot marksman around five Sentry Overwatches. Camera into a two story building, game flickers between first and second floors just as I choose a spot. Instead of diving through a window into a corner for a flank, my marksman runs out into the street, through every Overwatch, and is obliterated while trying to climb a pipe to the second floor.

Phaseless wrote:

TrainInVain wrote:I find the real benefit to vulture is the extra elerium core drops, and being able to sell them on the black market.

In both my last two campaigns the black market happened to want elerium cores a few weeks after purchasing vulture. Easily made my money back and was a nice boost to early game economy.

Hm I forgot about those. You're right, within a few missions you get back the cost of vulture.

I also think of Vulture as necessity for late game success, for me at least. I'm always swimming in supplies late game but hurting for elerium and alloys. Despite selling a bunch of cores early, I usually have a surplus late game to breakdown into regular elerium.

Tac1 wrote:Tried to path my Snapshot marksman around five Sentry Overwatches. Camera into a two story building, game flickers between first and second floors just as I choose a spot. Instead of diving through a window into a corner for a flank, my marksman runs out into the street, through every Overwatch, and is obliterated while trying to climb a pipe to the second floor.