Difficulty 2 - heavy plasma on first ufo?!

[cptelerium]

I am playing on the almost-lowest difficulty, not the easiest but the next one.

After around 10-15 days I spoted first UFO in range of my base, shot it down - this is the small one (the 3rd smallest ufo) with sectoids.

One of aliens had heavy plasma - wtf? I thought they will be getting heavy plasma much later on, no?

EDIT: and now, on aroun 25-th day (just after shooting 1 ufo, and chasing but not downing one smallest ufo) I get a... base defence mission!

like WTF ?!?!  :O   

[cptelerium]

attaching the save game files

[ohartenstein23]

There is nothing wrong with your game, this is just RNG and X-Com at work.

The chance of heavy plasma in the first mission isn't that small, and it's not like your rookies are that likely to survive any plasma weapon. It's a much smaller chance to get a Retaliation on your first shot down UFO on lower difficulty, but it's not impossible.

[cptelerium]

this is all within the realms of possibility.
improbable, yes, but not impossible.

Was this also possible in original Ufo game? On the lowest difficulty (or is it different on 2nd difficulty)?

And are you sure? Never seen anything like that before in first mission.

Basin on https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Alien_Weapon_Loadouts

it seems in Large Scout you can get HP only in L... layouts - Late layouts.  The 1st month is a Late layout?

[Warboy1982]

Was this also possible in original Ufo game? On the lowest difficulty (or is it different on 2nd difficulty)?

And are you sure? Never seen anything like that before in first mission.

yes, this is completely consistent with the original, difficulty has a small influence on the odds of retaliation, but it's never 0%, not even on beginner. it has no influence over the appearance of heavy plasma, though.
and yes, i'm absolutely certain.

Basin on https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Alien_Weapon_Loadouts

it seems in Large Scout you can get HP only in L... layouts - Late layouts.  The 1st month is a Late layout?

yes, those are the loadouts, but what this table DOESN'T show you is the chances of each loadout occurring.

there's a 10% chance for "late loadout", 20% chance for "mid loadout" and 70% chance for "early loadout" in january, and that's on a per-alien basis.
statistically speaking, if you encounter ten aliens, there's a 100% chance of one of them having heavy plasma