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Subject: "XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG)"     Previous Topic | Next Topic
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Gryphonadmin
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Nov-02-17, 02:28 AM (EDT)
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26. "RE: quick update"
In response to message #21
 
   LAST EDITED ON Nov-02-17 AT 02:33 AM (EDT)
 
>So that's one, and before I called it a night this evening, I launched
>the equivalent mission to crash Starscream's crib. Don't know if I'll
>get back to that tomorrow, but everybody's in position to start
>ransacking the joint as soon as I do.

So yeah! That did end up happening tonight...

... and it was hilarious.

The squad: DJ+Marina, Rei+Violet, Mox+Outrider. One level-3 bond, two level-1s. Marina had the Assassin's gear. We arrived in the second room and immediately ran across a Heavy MEC and one of those morphing things I can't remember the name of. (Not a Faceless, those things that look like robot ninjas.) Rei used Haywire Protocol to shut down the MEC so that the rest of the squad could focus fire on the robot ninja, which made it not terribly challenging to bring down. (I don't actually know what those things do, every time we've seen one so far we've immediately murdered it, but Tygan seemed really impressed by its corpse, so I'm guessing they're bad news if you don't pwn them instantly.)

Start of the next round, I decided to move DJ up to flank the shutdown MEC, which would be coming back online in the following round, so that he could be sure and kill it. Unfortunately, I moved him a little too far up and tripped the It's Starscream! cutscene. He proceeded to move forward, past DJ, and up onto one of the balcony things in the middle of the room, where Mox and Elena were at the other end crouching behind a box.

I thought about reloading the autosave and starting the round over so that I could take care of the MEC without triggering him, but then I figured, well, what the hell, he just walked past DJ, I might as well take the shot. If he misses I'll reload.

DJ's beam cannon has a Repeater on it. This, as some of you may know, is a weapon mod that adds a chance to insta-kill the target, regardless of how many health it has.

The status message you get from that, in the same place as the flags that tell you you got a critical hit or applied a debuff or whatever, is Executed!

So that was richly satisfying, so much so that I decided I could not in good conscience reload. I would just have to rely on the rest of the squad to keep DJ from getting ventilated by the MEC, which would have him flanked when it woke up. It would mean giving the Chrome Monolith an extra round to heal Starscream up, but, well, better that than getting our heavy mauled.

The MEC was duly dispatched before it had a chance to wake up, at which point Starscream (just as Blackarachnia had before him) spawned a couple of Chryssalids in to waste our time units. Or, well, they would have wasted our time units if they hadn't spawned so close to Marina that she just, you know... killed them. You would think the game would know not to drop melee units right next to soldiers with Bladestorm, but it's 2 for 2 on doing that in these missions now.

Anyway, that, and judicious use of Teamwork on the squad members with the most firepower to shorten the time required to destroy the Chrome Monolith, meant that Starscream only had 38% health when he was forced to respawn. Still, every time we've run across him before, he's done significantly more harm to at least one member of the squad than Blackarachnia ever managed to do, so I was braced for the possibility of Problems when he reappeared. Can't count on DJ's Repeater to execute him every time.

He ported in a short distance behind Rei, who was on Overwatch, and made for the high ground. "... oh," she said...

... and then turned around and casually murdered him.

Rei's gun (which, since the plasma rifles arrived, has been named "Reigun", because I am five) doesn't have a Repeater. She just critted him in the face. :)

We haven't even met Megatron yet, so we didn't get a reaction dialogue from him after the fact, which is almost too bad. (I also didn't get a second "The Elders Are Not Very Happy About This Shit" cutscene, I'm not sure if there isn't one or if that, too, is a function of the fact that we haven't encountered the Warlock yet.)

So, yeah! That was pretty entertaining. I'm not really doing justice to how casual Rei's voice pack made her execution of the Hunter feel. The "Japanese Cynical Girl" voice is incredibly taciturn and unflappable. Even when she gets shot, she just very calmly says, "Itai." ("Ow.")

Shortly thereafter, we got a call from our pals the Skirmishers, asking us if we wouldn't mind collecting some important information that had to be left behind in a Resistance haven. A Resistance haven which was abandoned because it was overrun...

... by the Lost.

This mission spawned with a SITREP condition I had never seen before, "The Horde". With this SITREP in force, no ADVENT forces appear on the mission—only fucktons more Lost than usual. And this was one of the "eliminate all hostiles and open the box" missions.

RNGsus giveth, and RNGsus taketh away. :)

Team C dropped into the ruins of the Guadalajara metro (I didn't realize Guadalajara had a metro IRL, but in fact it does) with orders to do exactly the opposite of what you normally have to do on this kind of mission. There would be no EVAC. They genuinely had to kill all the zombies.

There turned out to be 45 of them.

I'll tell you what, the fact that Genki and Dr. Doom both have weapons that don't require ammo came in very handy. And once again, the Lost proved to be considerably more fun than I was expecting them to be, owing to the conditions of the mission. Yes, I had to kill forty-five of the damn things with a six-person squad, but there was no third party shooting at us while I was trying to get it done, so it was fine. Well, except for the part where Doc Turner accidentally set Asuka on fire. But she put her out immediately thereafter and no real harm was done!

(I'm still not sure how she did that. There must have been some environmental hazard that reacted to her Overwatch fire or something.)

Going to be a while before we get another Chosen mission, given that we haven't even found the Warlock's territory yet; but we're going to have to start going after Project Avatar sites in uncharted lands soon, so I'm sure we'll be encountering him any day now.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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  Subject     Author     Message Date     ID  
 XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) [View All] Gryphonadmin Oct-28-17 TOP
   RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Mercutio Oct-29-17 1
      RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) drakensis Oct-29-17 3
   RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) StClair Oct-29-17 2
      RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Verbena Oct-29-17 4
      RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Gryphonadmin Oct-29-17 5
   RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Gryphonadmin Oct-29-17 6
      RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) StClair Oct-29-17 7
          RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Gryphonadmin Oct-29-17 8
              RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) ebony14 Oct-30-17 10
                  RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) MoonEyes Oct-30-17 11
                  RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Peter Eng Oct-30-17 12
                      RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Mercutio Oct-30-17 15
      RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Gryphonadmin Oct-29-17 9
   RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Sofaspud Oct-30-17 13
   quick update Gryphonadmin Oct-30-17 14
      RE: quick update Gryphonadmin Nov-01-17 21
         RE: quick update Gryphonadmin Nov-02-17 26
              RE: quick update Gryphonadmin Nov-03-17 29
              RE: quick update Gryphonadmin Nov-04-17 30
                  RE: quick update Star Ranger4 Nov-04-17 31
                  RE: quick update Gryphonadmin Nov-05-17 32
   RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Peter Eng Oct-31-17 16
      RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Gryphonadmin Oct-31-17 17
          RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) ebony14 Oct-31-17 18
              RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Peter Eng Oct-31-17 19
                  RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Gryphonadmin Oct-31-17 20
                      RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Mercutio Nov-01-17 22
                          RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Gryphonadmin Nov-01-17 23
                              RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Mercutio Nov-01-17 25
   RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Peter Eng Nov-01-17 24
   RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) MoonEyes Nov-02-17 27
      RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Gryphonadmin Nov-03-17 28
          RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) MoonEyes Nov-12-17 38
              RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Gryphonadmin Nov-17-17 39
   just for the record Gryphonadmin Nov-06-17 33
      RE: just for the record Gryphonadmin Nov-08-17 37
   Ha! Gryphonadmin Nov-07-17 34
      RE: Ha! Verbena Nov-07-17 35
          RE: Ha! Gryphonadmin Nov-07-17 36
   RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Gryphonadmin Dec-04-17 40
      RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Trscroggs Dec-04-17 41
      RE: XCOM 2¾ (CAUTION: LONG) Peter Eng Dec-04-17 42


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